(piano music) - [Narrator] We're looking
at the famous Atrial Cross at the site of a very
early mission or convento. A place where the indigenous
population was converted very soon after the Spanish conquest. And this cross at Acolman
would have originally been in the center of the atrium. But today it's actually
just across the street from the entrance to
this missionary complex, this convento. An atrium was an important
part of the convento. It was this very large open courtyard where you would have processes, where newly converted
individuals would be taught about Christianity,
they'd be preached to from this open elevated balcony
chapel here at the convento. So it was a multi-purpose,
very important space. So right in the middle of
that space would be the cross. And this particular cross
is decorated in such a way that it's very didactic meaning that it's this exceptionally important teaching tool to help the newly converted
indigenous population learn about Christianity and particularly the passion of Christ of the events leading
up to the Crucifixion. We read a series of symbols that tell us more about Christ's suffering. So while inside the convento,
particularly in the cloisters, you have these wonderful murals that are displaying for us the various
scenes of the passion. Here we have this condensed
symbolic version of that where we see symbols
associated with the passion. Things like the rooster that was supposed to crow three times as a sign that Saint Peter would denounce Christ. We see the crown of
thorns that Christ wore when he was on the cross. And a variety of these other instruments. Right above Christ's
head, I see that symbol associated with the Augustinians
of the pierced heart, marking this atrial cross as being part this Augustinian convento. The arms of the cross end in flowers. The arms are actually
covered in foliate imagery. There's a particular type of marigold which in Nahuatl, the language
of the Nahua population is called cempaxochitl
which is a particular type of marigold that
you still see used for day of the dead and it had
this relationship to death. So there might have been multiple ways of reading this image. So if you're an indigenous
viewer using these flowers associated with death
might have relevance in relation to the martyrdom of Christ. What's also important to keep in mind is that there could have
been this bilingual process or what we could even
call visual bilingualism. The symbol of the cross is
not something introduced by the Europeans, it's
a longstanding ancient symbol here in Meso-America that had associations with fertility, with the cosmos, with the center of the universe. So an indigenous viewer
looking at this could have read these images or
this cross simultaneously in two different ways. And the artist was likely
an indigenous artist. The labor used to build these conventos and to decorate them were drawn from the indigenous population. And down at the bottom of the cross we seem to see an image of Mary and other symbols related
to the passion of Christ. We think this is the virgin Mary in part because her arms are
crossed over her chest which is at this point in time at Europe how Mary is usually
shown when she's grieving for her dead son. And some of the other symbols that we see include a skull, a twisted snake and even what looks like
a disc of some sort. So the date of this cross is so early in the history of New Spain. This cross was probably constructed sometimes between the 1540s and 1560s. And it's representative of atrial crosses that you would see at other conventos. And just to go back to
what we said earlier about this being an education tool in the center of the atrium speaks to the need for educating people about the tenants of Christianity, about what it means to be Christian in the wake of the conquests and the evangelization that's following. And the important role
of images in doing that. Images were crucial to
the conversion process because they were a primary means of teaching people about Christianity in the face of language barriers. (upbeat music)