For decades, Stafford Poole has stood at the forefront of scholarship on the historicity of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an icon that serves as one of the most important formative religious and national symbols in the history of Mexico. Poole’s groundbreaking first edition of Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first ever to examine in depth every historical source of the Guadalupe apparitions. In this revised edition, Poole employs additional sources and commentary to further challenge common interpretations and assumptions about the Guadalupan tradition.

Reverend Stafford Poole, a member of the Congregation of the Mission of Saint Vincent de Paul (Vincentian Community), was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1956 and received his PhD in U.S. and Mexican history from Saint Louis University in 1961. A former president and rector of Saint John’s Seminary College, Poole is retired and a full-time research historian, focusing on the Catholic Church in sixteenth-century Mexico. Previous works include Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 and The Guadalupan Controversies in Mexico.

“Poole’s account remains required reading for all historians of early modern and modern Mexican religion, society, and culture. This revised edition represents the single most comprehensive and most thoroughly researched work on the origin of the apparition story and the rise of what would become a lodestar of Mexican and Chicano culture. This book is the product of a lifetime of careful scholarship and is likely to last several more.”—HAHR

“Poole’s updated work employs new sources, commentary, and impressive archival acumen to boldly stand by his revisionist scholarship on the historicity of the Virgin of Guadalupe that has stood firm now for over two decades.”—Mark Z. Christensen, author of Translated Christianities: Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION
 
“The most complete and thorough study of the Guadalupan tradition to date, this is also an outstanding representation of the historian’s art. It sensitively probes every available reference to the devotion and apparition stories related to the Lady of Guadalupe Shrine near Mexico City. . . . Highly recommended for every sort of library.”—Choice
 
“Lively and engaging. [Poole’s] careful scrutiny of sources paves the way for a revealing and sensitive cultural history of colonial Mexico. . . . An important book, one that will endure.”—American Historical Review
 
“[Poole] highlights the relevant aspects of [his] sources, listing and describing the innumerable manuscripts, together with the events and personalities of the time. . . . This study is the most thorough and daring of its kind available in any language.”—America
 
“Poole’s analysis of the sources provides a fascinating step-by-step view of an evolving tradition.”—Ethnohistory
 
“Provides an important insight into the development of Mexican national identity . . . [and] illustrates the way in which careful scholarly research can lay bare the roots of a phenomenon.”—Sixteenth Century Journal