Maria Luisa Gabriela de Saboya as the Woman of the Apocalypse: Ceremony, Oratory, and Millenarianism in New Spain, 1701–14

On October 29, 1714, New Spain’s viceregal court held funerary honors for the queen consort of Spain, Maria Luisa Gabriela de Saboya, in its cathedral. Decorated with one thousand candles, the funerary catafalque held twenty-two statues representing virtues, each clutching a bouquet of flowers, as well as emblems featuring roses intended to represent the queen. At the very top of the pyramidal structure, onlookers could admire a lily growing upwards until just grazing the side of the cathedral’s dome.

Taking the queen’s funerary catafalque in Mexico City as a point of departure, this paper examines representations of the queen consort in royal ceremonies held throughout New Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714). With the death of the last Hapsburg king of Spain in 1700, the Bourbon Philip V assumed the Spanish throne. Soon, orators in New Spain began characterizing the new monarch as a millenarian hero. However, in cities as dispersed as Puebla, San Luis Potosi, Durango, and Antequera, orators and designers of ephemeral art also used the ceremonies surrounding the birth of the first Bourbon crown prince of Spain in 1707 to characterize Luis I as a messiah.

As his mother, the queen represented the woman laboring to give birth in the Book of Revelation. From 1707 through at least 1710, orators repeatedly signaled Luis I would save Spain, and through references to the natural world, they celebrated the queen as an agent of regeneration and future abundance. Part of a larger study, this research sheds light on early attitudes and expectations regarding the incoming dynasty, as well as the queen consort’s importance to Bourbon political legitimacy.