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Miracles hold a hallowed place in Catholic tradition. Because they signify the presence of the divine in the temporal realm, they form a mystical connection between the believer and God and provide crucial justification for faith. In late colonial Mexico, as elsewhere in the contemporary Catholic world, a miracle most often expressed divine intervention to thwart a calamity such as grave illness, blindness, or injury, providing the faithful with a psychic hedge against everyday uncertainties. Catholic shrines associated with miracles credited to saints or an apparition of the Virgin Mary functioned as sites of devotional practice where pilgrims seeking protection or offering thanks left tokens in the form of candles, flowers, milagritos (wax or metal figures, usually of body parts), or, if they could afford to pay an artist, ex-voto paintings. Yet miracles also existed within a theological context founded on the idea that the church mediated the interaction between God and the laity. The church held that miracles were possible, but altogether rare. It regarded reports of miracles with a skepticism driven by dedication to defend true religion from superstition and heresy, that is, to preserve the Holy Catholic Faith from unsanctioned beliefs borne out of unmediated religious experience. Therefore only a church court could authenticate a miracle. People from all walks of life submitted evidence of miracles to church officials, making the documentation generated by the investigation of their claims into a valuable source of insight into the social, cultural, and political dimension of religious practice.
