Huei tlamahuiçoltica
religious tract written in Nahuatl, published in Mexico City in 1649
Huei Tlamahuiçoltica ("The Great Event") is a tract in Nahuatl comprising 36 pages and was published in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1649 by Luis Laso de la Vega, the vicar of the chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac outside the same city. In the preface Luis Laso de la Vega claimed authorship of the whole work, but this claim is the subject of an ongoing difference of scholarly opinion.
The tract is written almost entirely in Nahuatl and includes the Nican Mopohua, which narrates the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac in 1531. It also includes the Nican Motecpana, which enumerates the miracles attributed by some to Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl; Luis Laso de la Vega does not mention either him or Antonio Valeriano as authors.
The traditions recounted in the 1649 tract were first published in the Spanish book Imagen de la Virgen María, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe ("Image of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God of Guadalupe"), written by Miguel Sánchez in 1648 and being a theological dissertation linking the Guadalupan Image to Revelation 12:1.
There is an equally contentious and much shorter manuscript in Nahuatl preceding the Nican Mopohua, which is titled the Inin Huey Tlamahuiçoltzin ("This Is the Great Marvel"), also known as "The Primitive Relation" of the apparitions. It is in The National Library of México.
Sections
Preface
The first section, a preface, is titled in Nahuatl "Noble Queen of Heaven, Forever Virgin, Mother of God". In it Lasso addresses the Virgin directly, and after an introduction of four to five lines proceeds to the reason why he took up Nahuatl in order to publish the history of the apparitions:
"You yourself spoke in Nahuatl to a poor Indian and painted yourself in his ayate, thus showing you are not displeased with many languages".
"That the Indians of this land remember and keep in their language all you did for them and how it happened".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Huei tlamahuiçoltica” as religious tract written in Nahuatl, published in Mexico City in 1649. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as religious tract written in Nahuatl, published in Mexico City in 1649. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13426682. The Library of Congress control number is n98053970. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1649, 1531 and 1648.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Huei tlamahuiçoltica” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.