The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most important
elements in the development of a specifically Mexican tradition of
religion and nationality over the centuries. This volume makes available
to the English-reading public an easily accessible translation from the
original Nahuatl of the story itself and the entire book in which the
story is embedded. The study also provides scholars with new
perspectives on a text long at the center of Mexican intellectual
currents. Through the use of technical philological methods, it
indicates that the text may have been authored in the mid-seventeenth
century by a Spanish-Mexican priest, based on an earlier text by a
colleague of his, and that it was not the product of Nahuatl oral
tradition. The present edition offers a translation and transcription of
the complete text of the 1649 edition, together with critical apparatus,
including comparisons of the Sanchez and Laso de la Vega texts, and
various linguistic, orthographic, and typographical matters that throw
light on the date and manner of composition.