THE HISTORY OF SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE: Two churches, two cities, an unusual connection

The Parroquia of San Miguel

St Vitus Cathedral of Prague

My attachment to San Miguel de Allende is so deep I have a hard time visiting any city in the world without finding something that connects to what has become my hometown. This spring we visited Prague in Czech Republic, and it didn’t take me long to find the connections.

The first is simply a comparison of two buildings, an external connection. In a previous article I explained how the cathedral of Cologne has been considered by most historians as the model for the Parroquia. However, in Prague there is a the giant St. Vitus cathedral, and although it is quite different from the Parroquia—the photos indicate that—what it does highlight is the reason why so many people call the church in San Miguel a cathedral, even though it is not. The Parroquia truly looks like a cathedral with its stately and imposing design. Therefore when seeing any cathedral anywhere in the world it’s hard to dismiss the Parroquia a simply a parish church. It is too grand for that.

The other connection between the Czech Republic and Mexico is historical, by way of Spain and its royals.

It may seem a bit roundabout, but the story is so fascinating it’s hard to resist. To tell this we need to roll back the clock to 1576 when Rudolph II became Holy Roman Emperor and chose Prague as his seat of government instead of Vienna. Rudolph had a direct connection to Spanish monarchs through his mother Maria, great granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella—the exact ones who paid for Christopher Columbus’ journey of discovery of the New World, He was also heir to the Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire which he inherited from his father Maximillian II. 

For those familiar with the history of Mexico you may recall that centuries later, there was another connection to the Habsburg line. In 1864, a mere 288 years later, Maximilian I, Archduke of Austria became emperor of Mexico.

Maximilian I died at the age of 32, so he appears as a much younger man, and we’ll never know if he would have resembled his forbearer to a greater extent at a later age.

Maximilian’s protruding lower lip certainly has the marks of the Habsburg lineage—the formidable mandibular prognathism resulting from interbreeding among the royals.

Rudolph II, the ancient ancestor of the ill-fated Maximilian, was a fascinating character. Born in 1552 he grew up in what one would today call a dysfunctional family. His mother Maria, a devout Catholic, insisted that he be raised with strict religious and cultural training. Rudolph was sent off to his uncle in Spain from the age of 11 until 19, and absolutely abhorred the severe, un-humorous years he spent there where his uncle forced him to witness the horrors of punishments meted out by the Inquisition. Rudolph’s father was a much more relaxed individual who despised strict rules, particularly religious ones (although he himself was the Holy Roman Emperor!), and was shocked at how Rudolph had changed because of the strict Spanish upbringing. “You have been Spaniolated!” he cried out in horror when his son returned.

The years of orthodox education in Spain, however, failed to change Rudolph’s basic character. He, like his father was forward thinking, rejecting strict religious rules, promoting freedom of religious belief, and his progressive ideas flourished when he became the Holy Roman emperor himself. His father died in 1576, and Rudolph inherited the reign as emperor at the age of 28, moved his court to Prague and settled in a castle high on a hill, next to the Cathedral of St. Viatus. He began to absorb all the knowledge he had been thirsting for while in Spain where only books sanctioned by the Catholic Church were permitted. Rudolph was fascinated by magic and mysticism and absorbed any such literature he could lay his hands on.

In his castle Rudolph began collecting strange objects—unicorn horns, the jawbone of a siren, feathers of a phoenix, and even a demon trapped in glass. He also built an entire art gallery filled with paintings by many great artists: Da Vinci, Titian, Durer, Bosch, and others. People were also part of his collection. He invited artists to work at the castle, providing them with studios and workshops, and brought in the greatest intellects—philosophers, alchemists, astrologers, astronomers, and inventors of the day to carry out their experiments and studies. He surrounded himself with the greatest minds of the Renaissance—John Dee, Tycho Brahe, Edward Kelley, Johannes Kepler and Giordano Bruno among others.  His castle became an island in a sea of religious narrow-mindedness, the nursery of progressive ideas that would foster scientific inquiry in the next century.

The grand, magical castle of Prague

One of the most unusual manuscripts Rudolph acquired was a collection of beautifully executed drawings of unearthly plants, tiny naked women, astrological signs and strange writing. No one in his court was ever able to decipher the writing, nor did anyone else over the next few centuries, and the last reference to it being undecipherable was in 1665, more than 50 years after Rudolph’s death. The manuscript was never mentioned again until it reappeared in 1912 when it was purchased from Jesuit priests in Rome by Polish antique book dealer, Wilfrid Voynich, whose name it bears.

That manuscript, a legacy of Rudolph II, remains undeciphered to this day and is considered the most mysterious manuscript in the world. None of the brilliant minds of the 20th and the 21st century, not even the code breakers of WWII, nor today’s AI have been able to figure out what the uncanny writing means.

Some early researchers believed that it had some similarities to another ancient manuscript—the Florentine Codex, shown on the left. That document was compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun in the 16th century. It is a description of the flora and fauna of the New World, and documents details about Aztec culture. But, unlike the “Rudolph manuscript,” the Florentine Codex was written in Spanish and it can be understood.

It is reasonable to think that the reader might feel that the connection between Prague and San Miguel de Allende is just as odd as the aforementioned manuscript. However, there is an additional relation between the two cities which makes the connection not as tenuous as one would imagine. San Miguel de Allende became a hub of culture and art in the early part of the 20th century and has continued to be one of the most artistic and intellectually stimulating cities anywhere. Historian Peter Marshall said that Rudolph II was instrumental in creating “in Prague’s renaissance period, a cultural revolution that still continues to reverberate to this day.” Those words easily apply to San Miguel de Allende because in the 1930s and beyond, the artists and intellectuals who arrived here caused a true renaissance of the city after almost one hundred years of dormancy, reshaping it into a cultural and artistic center which it still is today.