San Pedro y San Pablo, Teposcolula, View of Open Chapel

1550-1575

Name(s) currently unknown

Teposcolula, Oaxaca, MEX

This church complex, built in a Mixtec-speaking town, hosts an open chapel, an architectural innovation developed in the 16th century in New Spain for outdoor masses.

The atrio, or church plaza, in the foreground of this photograph, is one of the largest in Mexico and could have held thousands of local Mixtec people gathered for mass or religious holidays. To the left, the open chapel, with its enormous vaults set at angles to the façade, created a space to enclose the altar. Its arches are almost 40 feet high (ca. 12 meters). They dwarf the church façade to the right. The large monastery beyond once held living quarters for the Dominican friars and probably a school, and is currently being restored as a historical monument.

Built under Dominican patronage, the church of Saints Peter and Paul displays many of the features of monastic architecture constructed between 1550 and 1575 in New Spain. The open chapel, thought to have been designed by the Dominican architect Francisco Marín, is an architectural space born out of the fusion of indigenous and Catholic religious cultures.

The open chapel and church are made with stone vaulting, a technology introduced into the Mixtec region by Europeans, primarily Dominican friars, arriving in the 16th century.

Before the conquest, native communities typically worshipped in the open air, gathering in plazas outside temples. After the conquest, Catholic friars, seeing the need to accommodate huge numbers of people, built not only enclosed churches, but also large open chapels throughout Mexico. Other forms of architecture that reflect cross-cultural interaction are also found in Teposcolula. Not half a block from a church, overlooking the great chapel, a palace combing Mixtec and European features was built in 1560 and today is known as Casa de la Cacica (also in Vistas).

Church complexes with open-air chapels echoed one aspect of pre-Hispanic sanctuaries by allowing worshippers to gather outdoors. Friars said mass, celebrated Christian holidays, and taught the tenets of Catholic faith from the chapel. The extraordinary size and elegance of the open chapel here register the wealth of this community in the 16th century, and perhaps also the willingness of its leaders to invest themselves in new Christian architecture.

Byron Hamann

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

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