By the early 19th century, Spanish-speaking residents of villages in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado felt the need for a brotherhood that would preserve their traditional social and religious beliefs. Known as "brothers of light," or penitentes , these Spanish-Americans centered their activities in a houselike building, or morada , especially equipped for Holy Week ceremonies. For the first time, two intact moradas have been fully photographed and described through the cooperation of t

This study describes two earthern buildings and their special furnishings—humble but unique documents of Spanish-American culture. The two structures are located in Abiquiú, a rural, Spanish-speaking village in northern New Mexico. Known locally as moradas , they serve as meeting houses for members of a flagellant brotherhood, the penitentes . The penitente brotherhood is characteristic of Spanish culture in New Mexico (herein called Hispano to indicate its derivation from Hispanic traditions in

Penitente brotherhoods usually are made up of Spanish-speaking Catholic laymen in rural communities. Although the activities and artifacts vary in specific details, the basic structure, ceremonies, and aims of penitentes as a cultural institution may be generalized. Full membership is open only to adult males. Female relatives may serve penitente chapters as auxiliaries who clean, cook, and join in prayer, as do children on occasion, but men hold all offices and make up the membership-at-large.

By 1833, bodily penance practiced in lay brotherhoods of Hispano Catholics attracted criticism from the Church in New Mexico and resulted in the pejorative name penitentes . [8] Historically, however, within the traditional framework of Hispanic Catholicism, the penitentes had precedents for their religious practices, including flagellation. Penitente rites were derived from Catholic services already common in colonial New Mexico. Prayers and rosaries said before altars comprised an important pa

Figure 1. Mid-19th-century New Mexico, showing pertinent geographical features, Indian pueblos (indicated by solid triangles), and Spanish villages cited in text. About three generations before the first morada was built at Abiquiú, the conditions of settlement mentioned earlier and subsequent historical events resulted in an environment conducive to the development of penitente activity. Shortly after 1740, civil authorities in Santa Fe attempted to settle colonists along the Chama River in ord

Figure 2. The Abiquiú area, showing the Chama River, U.S. Highway 84, and siting of buildings (the mission of Santo Tomás and the two moradas are circled). In a modern map (Figure 2), circles enclose the Mission of Abiquiú and its two penitente moradas . The moradas lie 300 meters east and 400 meters south of the main plaza onto which Santo Tomás Mission faces from the north. Between the moradas rests the local burial ground ( campo santo ), a cemetery that serves penitentes as "Calvary" ( calva

The plans of the two penitente moradas of Abiquiú (Figure 4) reveal an identical arrangement of interior space. There are three rooms in each morada : (1) the longest is on the west end and, with its constricted sanctuary space, acts as an oratory; (2) the center room serves as a sacristy; and (3) the east room is for storage. The only major difference between the two moradas is the length of the storage room, which is nearly twice as long in the east morada . The remarkable similarities in desi

The two Abiquiú moradas are clearly parallel in their architectural design (including the constricted chancels), in their artifacts—especially bulto identities such as Jesus ( Cristo , Nazareno , Ecce Homo , Santo Niño de Atocha ), Mary ( Dolores , Immaculata Concepción , Soledad , Guadalupe ), Saint John of Nepomuk, Saint Peter, and death—and lastly, in the ceremonies held in the buildings, which link rather than separate the penitente movement and the common social values of Hispano culture. E