artículo
Otherness Underfoot: Enemies of Occidental Christian Culture Defeated by the Apostle St James
Fecha
2022Registro en:
10.1484/J.IKON.5.132365
1846-8551
SCOPUS_ID:85139724216
Autor
Sanfuentes, Olaya
Institución
Resumen
The figure of St James riding his white horse and conquering the enemy is found throughout the Hispano-American world. While the image originated in Compostela (Galicia) in the 13th century to celebrate the victory of Christ's apostle over the Muslims, in the 16th century it migrated to America to defeat the Christian faith's new enemy: the indigenous Americans. This equestrian figure of a hero crushing the enemy underfoot would be what Aby Warburg referred to as a pathosformel - an effective, efficient figure that visually embodies the emotional charge of a time period and is part of a cultural strategy. The horseback rider is a triumphant hero who embodies the possibility of salvation for a culture that feels threatened with extinction. A fierce, white horse tramples the enemy underfoot. This enemy represents Otherness, which is a threat to the system's stability. The conquest of America brought with it a new enemy, which embodied religious and cultural Otherness, a new enemy whose beliefs and 'idolatry' needed to be destroyed, a new enemy to be crushed by St James' fierce horse: the indigenous Americans. With regard to the conquest of the American territory's visual strategy, images that portrayed the Moor as an enemy continued to be produced, turning this iconography into a demonstration of the overall victory of the Christian religion over other belief systems. The simultaneously emerging iconography depicted a defeated indigenous American and a victorious St James the Moor-slayer. The formula has proven to be successful, as new uses have arisen lately.