LIGHT BEAMS AND ARCHITECTURE MARKED CELESTIAL EVENTS IN COLONIAL CHURCHES AND MISSIONS IN NEW SPAIN AND PERÚ: NEW EVIDENCE FROM MORELIA

Abstract

The lights that I report here exist because windows were designed by architects to project light into aisles and impact other objects of interest on days of ecclesiastical interest in American Colonial Churches. Surprisingly, since such phenomena are widely known in the Europe (see examples in this issue), they have not been reported as European architectural designs in the Americas previously except for the work of Ruben Mendoza in the missions of California (2005) and my work in Latin America (2013). I have previously described missions and churches from in and around San Cristóbal de las Casas, México, Lima, Perú, and San Antonio, Texas, and here I report additional cases from another Colonial town, Morelia, Michoacán, México. Lights discovered by Mendoza in Franciscan missions from the northern frontier of New Spain, now California, were associated with both eschatological architecture as well as ecclesiastical iconography (2005). I briefly review equinoctial, solsticial, and cross-quarter alignments of four previously described Colonial churches from San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México. New data are presented for two additional Colonial churches from Morelia, Michoacán, México. These new data make clear that the phenomena from Chiapas are not unique to that state although the tracing of the Meridian line by a beam of light from the dome down the aisle was found only in Chiapas and in Lima, Perú.