Among shops and offices, the Church of San Agustín survives. Inside it keeps the image at the centre of one of Chile's oldest traditions: the Christ of May.

1The earthquake of 1647

The Augustinian friars reached Santiago in 1595 and began this church in 1608. In 1613, Friar Pedro de Figueroa carved a crucifix known as the Lord of the Agony. On the night of 13 May 1647, an earthquake flattened the city. The church collapsed almost entirely, but the wall holding the Christ remained standing.

The chroniclers say the crown of thorns had slipped down to the figure's neck and that, when they tried to put it back, they could not. It remains there today. The Augustinian bishop Gaspar de Villarroel ordered a procession, and ever since, every 13 May, the Christ is carried through the centre to the Plaza de Armas.

2The legend of La Quintrala

Enter Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, known as La Quintrala, a seventeenth-century landowner accused of cruelty to her servants. According to the story told by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, the image hung in her house, and one day, annoyed that the Christ "looked at her badly" while she was whipping a servant, she had it thrown into the street. The friars next door supposedly picked it up.

The Augustinian archives place the image in their church from the start: the Quintrala story belongs to legend.

3What to look for

  • The four-column portico, added by Fermín Vivaceta in the mid-nineteenth century.
  • The side towers, also rebuilt after successive earthquakes.
  • The Christ of May, on a side altar, if the church is open.

Documented

The image was carved in 1613 by Friar Pedro de Figueroa, and the 13 May procession has been held since the earthquake of 1647.

Oral tradition

The link between the Christ and La Quintrala, and the episode in which she supposedly threw it out of the window, are legend; the slipped crown is presented as a wonder by religious tradition.

Sources and credits

Augustinian Province of Chile, history of the church and the Christ of May; Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Los Lisperguer y la Quintrala (1877); Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, Church of San Agustín.

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