Cristóbal, Antonio and Juan. Los Niños Martires in Mexican colonial art.

Among those canonized by Pope Francis in October 2017, were a trio of Mexican saints known as Los Niños Martires.
   One of the best known episodes of the Spiritual Conquest of Mexico is that of the Niños Martires.
   The story goes that shortly after the conquest, in 1527, Axotécatl, one of the Four Lords of Tlaxcala—allies of Cortés in the defeat of the Aztecs—sent his three sons to be educated in the Franciscan monastery of Tlaxcala.
   On their return, the young men set about smashing idols and reproaching their father for his polygamy and excessive drinking. The enraged lord beat his son Cristóbal and had him burned him to death. The other two boys, Antonio and Juan, fled but continued their preaching and iconoclastic ways, until they too soon suffered a martyr's fate. 

Although popular figures of the trio appear in a few Mexican churches, the martyrdom of the three only appears in two colonial era murals; initially in the porteria of the Franciscan monastery of Ozumba east of Mexico City and later in the church of Santa Maria Atlihuetzia, in the state of Tlaxcala, the location of some of the events portrayed.

At Ozumba, the boy martyrs are identified by inscriptions and are shown in a rural landscape being killed by the villagers by different methods in graphic detail. Churches in the background portray the nearby towns of Tlaxcala (l) and Tecali (r). Note the broken idol on the lower right.

Ozumba mural detail

 

Ozumba mural details

The parish church of Santa Maria Atlihuetzia is a shrine to the memory of Los Ninos Martires, as the boys are known in the pantheon of the Mexican church; their fate is recorded in a pair of dramatic, late colonial paintings with Nahuatl speech inscriptions.

text and images ©2002 Richard D. Perry