Playing Cards at the Eucharistic Table: Music, Theology, and Society in a Corpus Christi Villancico from Colonial Mexico, 1628

Abstract

As part of the festivities of Corpus Christi in 1628, a cathedral choir in colonial Mexico sang about the Eucharist through the metaphor of a card game. This music is a previously unstudied, fragmentary villancico, composed by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla for the cathedral of Puebla de los Ángeles, and it opens a window into the social history of card-playing and gambling in the Spanish colonies. It stems from a broader tradition of “divinizing” cards, including poetry and drama by Lope de Vega and González de Eslava. The article explores the theological and social implications of using liturgical music to present Christ as a rogue card player, winning humanity back from the devil by laying down the trump card of his own body on the table. Includes an edition of the surviving music. The online version includes a recording played on the organ by the author.