Fray José Servando Teresa de Mier Noriega y Guerra (October 18, 1765 – December 3, 1827) was a Roman Catholic priest, preacher, and politician in New Spain.
On December 12, 1794, during the commemorations of the Virgin of Guadalupe apparition, in the presence of Viceroy Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca y Branciforte, marqués de Branciforte, Archbishop Manuel Omaña y Sotomayor and the members of the Audiencia of New Spain, Mier preached a sermon affirming that the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe had happened 1750 years before, and not in 1531.
He argued that the original painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe was on the cloak of Saint Thomas the Apostle, who had preached in the Americas long before Spanish conquest, and this had been re-discovered by Juan Diego.
Our Lady of Guadalupe represented an intense and highly localized religious sensibility that Creole leaders, such as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, would later use in their opposition to Spanish rule as a symbol of Mexico.
The sermon initially drew no attention but one week later, Archbishop Nuñez de Haro condemned Mier to 10 years' exile in the convent of Las Caldas del Besaya in Cantabria, Spain; a perpetual ban from teaching, preaching, or hearing confessions; and the loss of his doctoral degree.
In Paris, he came to know Chateaubriand; Lucas Alamán, then traveling as a student but later an important conservative politician in Mexico; Baron Alexander von Humboldt; and the Duke of Montmorency.
He moved to London, where he collaborated with José María Blanco on El Español, a newspaper that supported the independence movements in Latin America.
After this escape Mier returned to the United States again in June 1821, where lived in Manuel Torres' home in Philadelphia for three months along with Ecuadorian activist and future president Vicente Rocafuerte.
[2] Through Torres, Mier contacted Colombian secretary of foreign relations Pedro José Gual to encourage him to send a diplomat to Mexico to counter the monarchist movement there, which he did the next year.
Mier published several works while in Philadelphia, including a new edition of A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies and the anti-monarchical tract Memoria politico-instructiva enviada a los gefes de Anáhuac.
Historian Charles Bowman suggested one pamphlet bearing Mier's name, La América Española dividida en dos grande departamentos, Norte y Sur o sea Septentrional y Meridional, was uncharacteristically moderate for Mier—and was actually Torres' work.
[3] The priest involved himself in a controversy surrounding St. Mary's Church, to which he was connected through Torres and merchant Richard W. Meade, another acquaintance.
[2] In February 1822, he returned to Mexico, at Veracruz, but was again taken prisoner and held at the castle of San Juan de Ulúa, still in control of the Spanish.
In 1797, he wrote a letter where he confirms that the original date of the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe was celebrated by the Mexica natives on September 8 (of the Julian calendar), and by the Spanish on December 12.
Mier's name is inscribed in letters of gold on the Wall of Honor of the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro, the building that today houses the Chamber of Deputies in Mexico City.