Resumen de Delendus est Lutherus: The Triumph of the Saints and the Virgin Mary over Heresy in New Spain's Imagery
Mayer pays her attention here to the Mexico of the Modern Age and the connections between the popular devotions and the configuration of an image of Luther that represents heresy, error and evil. Mayer takes texts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that allude to Luther and in opposition to the saints and the Virgin, and relates these texts to paintings and sculptures on the same theme and the so-called “Triumphs of the Church”, which follow European models. In some of these paintings Luther’s image is used as a representation of the defeat of evil and heresy. Other iconographies of the power of Catholicism over its enemies are related to some medieval saints or to the Society of Jesus and the Carmelite Order. All of these follow European models, but are adapted to the American context; in contrast, a synthesis of attributes from Mary and the woman of the Apocalypse combined with native American elements led to the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who also came to be praised in sermons as the guardian of Mexico against Protestant infection, and whose images, quite deliberately, associate her with the protector Archangel Michael.
