December 12, 1531

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Traditional unveiling of the Guadalupan image on Juan Diego’s tilma

The bishop's servants tried three times to seize flowers from Juan Diego's cloak. Each time, the Nican Mopohua says, the flowers looked painted or embroidered on the cloth.

12 December 1531, in the tradition

According to the Nican Mopohua tradition, Mary intercepted Juan Diego beside Tepeyac on 12 December 1531 while he was seeking a priest for his gravely ill uncle.

She assured him that his uncle had recovered and directed him to gather flowers from the hilltop — flowers growing, in the narrative, among rock, thorns, prickly pear and mesquite in the frost of December.

Zumárraga had asked for a convincing sign before acting on the reported request to build a shrine.

The flowers and the cloak

Juan Diego carried the flowers in his tilma to Juan de Zumárraga's residence. When he opened the garment, the flowers fell out and an image of Mary was said to appear on the cloth.

In the narrative Zumárraga and those present knelt. He removed the tilma from Juan Diego and placed it in his private chapel.

The following day the bishop's party inspected the requested shrine site and found Juan Diego's uncle recovered. The image was then displayed in Mexico City's principal church.

The dates arrived later than the story

The apparition and the miraculous imprint are matters of Catholic tradition, not events established by contemporary documentation.

The Nican Mopohua says only that the story began on a Saturday a few days into December 1531. A 2026 scholarly analysis reports that the now-familiar 9–12 December chronology was not associated with the devotion until Mateo de la Cruz's 1660 work.

New Spain still used the Julian calendar in 1531. A nominal Julian 12 December corresponds to 22 December in the proleptic Gregorian calendar; the modern feast keeps the nominal date.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 10 sources not yet audited Traditional date

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Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

The apparition and miraculous imprint are matters of Catholic tradition, not events established by contemporary documentation.
The Nican Mopohua says only that the story began on a Saturday a few days into December 1531. A 2026 scholarly analysis reports that the now-familiar 9–12 December chronology was not associated with the devotion until Mateo de la Cruz’s 1660 work.
The authorship and date of composition of the Nican Mopohua remain disputed. Its earliest known printing is from 1649; proposed composition dates range across the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
New Spain still used the Julian calendar in 1531. A nominal Julian 12 December corresponds to 22 December in the proleptic Gregorian calendar; the modern feast retains the nominal date of 12 December.