The Worlds of Junipero Serra: Historical Contexts and Cultural Representations 9780520968165

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the Del Amo Fund.

The Worlds of Junípero Serra

WESTERN HISTORIES William Deverell, series editor Published for the Huntingon-USC Institute on California and the West by University of California Press and the Huntington Library 1. The Father of All: The de la Guerra Family, Power and Patriarchy in Mexican California, by Louise Pubols 2. Alta California: Peoples in Motion, Identities in Formation, edited by Steven W. Hackel 3. American Heathens: Religion, Race, and Reconstruction in California, by Joshua Paddison 4. Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California, edited by Peter J. Westwick 5. Post-Ghetto: Reimagining South Los Angeles, edited by Josh Sides 6. Where Minds and Matters Meet: Technology in California and the West, edited by Volker Janssen 7. A Squatter’s Republic: Land and the Politics of Monopoly in California, 1850–1900, by Tamara Venit Shelton 8. Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster, by Norris Hundley Jr. and Donald C. Jackson 9. Other California: Land, Identity, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands, by Verónica Castillo-Muñoz 10. The Worlds of Junípero Serra: Historical Contexts and Cultural Representations, edited by Steven W. Hackel

The Worlds of Junípero Serra Historical Contexts and Cultural Representations

Edited by

Steven W. Hackel

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2018 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hackel, Steven W., editor. Title: Worlds of Junípero Serra : historical contexts and cultural representations / edited by Steven W. Hackel. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: lccn 2017040400 (print) | lccn 2017043459 (ebook) | isbn 9780520968165 (ebook) | isbn 9780520295391 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Serra, Junípero, Saint, 1713–1784. | Missions, Spanish— California—History. | Indians, Treatment of—North America—History. | Franciscans—Missions—California—History. | Slavery and the church—History—18th century. | California—History—To 1846. | Indians of North America—Missions—California. Classification: lcc f864.S44 (ebook) | lcc f864.S44 w67 2018 (print) | ddc 979.4/01—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040400

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contents

Acknowledgments Introduction. Junípero Serra: New Contexts and Emerging Interpretations

vii

1

Steven W. Hackel

part one. mallorca: from student to professor 1. Junípero Serra’s Mallorcan Origins

13

José Juan Vidal

2. Father Junípero Serra’s Education and Ideology

25

Antoni Picazo Muntaner

3. Eiusque Manu Scriptus: Junípero Serra’s Mallorcan Class Notes

37

John Dagenais

part two. mexico and california: serra as missionary 4. Junípero Serra’s Mission Muse: Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda and Her Writings

69

Anna M. Nogar

5. Inside the Cloister: Exploring the Life of Fray Junípero Serra in the College of San Fernando David Rex Galindo

87

6. Serra among the Faithful: The Popular Mission

107

Karen Melvin

7. Within the Confessional: Franciscan Utopias and Daily Practices in Mission San Carlos

125

José Refugio de la Torre Curiel

8. Junípero Serra’s Approach to the Native Peoples of the Californias

148

Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz

part three. art and architecture: the aesthetic eye of serra 9. Junípero Serra’s Tastes and the Art and Architecture of the California Missions

165

Clara Bargellini and Pamela Huckins

10. Between Worlds: Junípero Serra and the Paintings of José de Páez

195

Cynthia Neri Lewis

part four. junípero serra: invention and consumption 11. The Invention of Junípero Serra and the “Spanish Craze”

227

Richard L. Kagan

12. The Public Consumption of Junípero Serra

257

Michael K. Komanecky

Contributors List Index

285 289

acknowled gments

This book emerged out of an international exhibition on Junípero Serra and the legacies of the California missions that the Henry Huntington Library mounted in 2013. Without the skill, support, enthusiasm, counsel, and generosity of Steven Koblik, David Zeidberg, Laura Stalker, Susan Turner Lowe, Catherine Allgor, Alan Jutzi, Susan Green, Holly Moore, John Sullivan, Lauren Tawa, Randy Shulman, Kristy Peters, Lana Johnson, and many others at the Huntington, the exhibition would not have been possible. Special thanks also are in order for Catherine Gudis, my colleague at the University of California, Riverside, alongside whom I curated the Huntington exhibition. The conference from which this collection of essays grew, “Junípero Serra: Context and Representation, 1713 to 2013,” was generously supported by the Huntington Library Division of Research, the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, the Academy of American Franciscan History, the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, whose director, Peter C. Mancall, was especially encouraging. Robert C. Ritchie, former director of research at the Huntington, supported the idea of this conference even as he was turning his scholarly gaze back to beaches, and Steve Hindle, W. M. Keck Foundation director of research at the Huntington (and now interim president of the Huntington), oversaw the conference with his incredible energy and administrative skill. The editorial staff at the University of California Press took an early interest in this book and did a wonderful job copyediting and producing the volume. The Del Amo Fund at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences supported the editing of this book at a pivotal moment in the life of the project. vii

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This editor would like to offer an extra dose of heartfelt appreciation to the volume’s authors for their incredible patience and good spirits as this book moved forward at what must have seemed like a slow and uneven pace. I hope it is clear that each of these essays is a stunning achievement and a credit to the authors’ collective commitment to multiple revisions and uncompromising standards. It was an honor for me to play a role in the publication of their work. William Deverell, Western Histories series editor and California historian extraordinaire, never lost faith in this volume, always encouraged its publication, and worked especially hard to make it the best it could be, and thus all of us whose scholarship is represented here are in his debt. All the essays profited immensely from a careful and close reading by two external readers, Tey Ruiz and Jim Sandos. My own work on this book was done at the Huntington, where I enjoy a tranquil office, an intellectual home away from home, and a bird’s-eye view of a steady stream of incomparable scholars and inspirational scholarship. For all of that and more, I thank the Huntington Library Research Division. Above all else and on a more personal note, I offer sincere gratitude to my family, friends, and colleagues for their support during the years that this volume moved from a collection of conference papers to a refined manuscript. To one and all, thanks.

Introduction Junípero Serra: New Contexts and Emerging Interpretations Steven W. Hackel

Few figures in California history have proven as polarizing as Junípero Serra, the Mallorcan Franciscan who initiated the chain of twenty-one missions that runs from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. Because of his importance to early California history, Serra has long been a staple of California’s fourth-grade curriculum, and statues of Serra as well as Serra schools, roads, and buildings can be found across much of the state as well as in the nation’s capital. But in the past few decades, especially after his beatification in 1987 and the publication of numerous books and articles describing the toll that missions exacted on California Indians, Serra’s reputation as a benevolent and pioneering missionary and agent of Western civilization has come under reconsideration.1 With a widely observed commemoration and an unanticipated papal pronouncement, this reconsideration accelerated. The year 2013 brought the three hundredth anniversary of Serra’s birth, and in January 2015 Pope Francis stunned journalists and others when he said that “God willing,” he would “canonize Junípero Serra.” “He was the evangelizer of the West in the United States,” the pope said of Serra as he jetted from Sri Lanka to the Philippines.2 In declaring his intent to waive the customary requirement of two miracles for sainthood and canonize Serra, the pontiff, perhaps unwittingly, ushered in a nearly yearlong debate over Serra’s life and legacy. The run-up to Serra’s canonization in Washington, D.C., on September 23, 2015, was characterized by scrutiny of his life, in particular his work in the missions of California. Every major news outlet—print, cable, and broadcast—in the United States, Mexico, and Spain discussed the virtues and flaws of Serra, the California missions, and, more generally, Spanish colonization of the Americas. In hindsight, however, it is clear that all of this media attention and the public adoration and 1

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Introduction

condemnation that it embodied and reinforced opened up no new inquiries into Serra’s life and led to no new discoveries of his past. It did, however, give voice to a range of individuals whose passionate views about Serra might never have reached a wider audience. Furthermore, even though church spokesmen argued that Serra’s defense of corporal punishment in the missions was emblematic of Serra’s age, the pope, in something of a first, acknowledged that the church had committed “grave sins” and “crimes” against indigenous peoples during its zealous attempt to spread the gospel across the Americas.3 Regrettably, though, the surge of public commentary on Serra can be said to have narrowed if not diminished popular understandings of him. By canonization day as protesters and supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., to witness the papal mass and the canonization ceremony, Serra was either a saint in the making who brought civilization to California or a monstrous destroyer of Indian worlds akin to Hernán Cortés and other rapacious conquistadores. Scholars, activists, and leading church officials, who envisioned the canonization as a teachable moment about the complexity of Spanish colonization, called for a reconsideration of the place and importance of Spanish missionaries and settlers in the larger tapestry of European colonization of the Americas, imagined Serra’s journey from Spain to Mexico to California as a counternarrative to the rising tide of xenophobic Trump Republicanism that gripped much of the nation in 2015, or observed that some Indians were Catholic and held complicated views about the missionary—all were marginalized by the media’s need to simplify the news into tasty sound bites. Serra thus by the time he was officially recognized as a saint had been simplified into an evildoer or a righteous servant of God.4 Today as Serra’s canonization recedes more Americans are aware of him, yet their firm convictions about his life and legacies rest on an ever-simplified version of the man and the course of his life. Fortunately, if the Serra year of 2015 can be said to have been all heat and no light in terms of deepening and expanding popular understandings of Serra, the same cannot be said of 2013, the tercentennial of Serra’s birth. By contrast, 2013 witnessed the completion or publication of several new books on the life and times of Serra,5 the opening of numerous exhibitions on Serra and his worlds,6 and the unfolding of carefully planned academic gatherings dedicated to a reconsideration of Serra’s life in Mallorca, Mexico, and California. This volume is the product of one of those extended intellectual forays, the academic conference “Junípero Serra: Context and Representation, 1713 to 2013,” that occurred at the Henry E. Huntington Library some fifteen months before the pope’s stunning midair announcement and almost exactly two years in advance of the canonization ceremony at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception at the Catholic University of America. Unbeknownst to the presenters who gathered at the Huntington Library in September 2013, their ideas about Serra were shared and then turned into essays

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during a period that now appears to have been a veritable calm before the storm. And so much the better, for the scholarly presentations that emerged over two remarkable days at the library offer profound insight not only into Serra himself but also into the various communities—intellectual, religious, regional, and artistic—of which he was a part and at times the driving force behind. The chapters that follow therefore provide essential context for a greater understanding of Saint Junípero Serra and his place in the related histories of the worlds he inhabited and shaped: Mallorca, Mexico, California, and, long after his death, the larger culture of the United States. •

•

•

While Serra’s legacy is contested, the basic facts and timeline of his life are widely known. Junípero Serra was born Miquel Joseph Serra on November 24, 1713, in the village of Petra on the island of Mallorca in the western Mediterranean. The son of a farmer, Serra spent his early childhood working the family’s land and attending a Franciscan school situated just down the street from his home. Catholicism loomed large in both his home and in the greater community of Petra. At an early age Serra moved to Palma, Mallorca’s main city, and began studying for the priesthood. When he joined the Franciscan order, he took the name Junípero in honor of one of the early followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. Serra rose quickly through the ranks of the Franciscan hierarchy in Mallorca and soon held an important position as a professor of theology at the Lullian University in the Mallorcan capital. In 1749, Serra and several other Mallorcan Franciscans decided to answer what they believed was a divine call to go to Mexico as apostolic missionaries. After a harrowing journey across the Atlantic and a challenging trek from Veracruz, Serra arrived in Mexico City on January 1, 1750, and took up residence at the College of San Fernando. Soon thereafter he was assigned to the Sierra Gorda region of northern Mexico, where for eight years he oversaw five missions and supervised the construction of more permanent mission structures. As part of his work in the Sierra Gorda, Serra served as a comisario (field agent) for the Spanish Inquisition, investigating individuals accused of witchcraft and other spiritual offenses. He also traveled widely throughout the countryside as an itinerant minister, trying to instill greater religious fervor in Catholics. For this work he won wide accolades. But Serra’s intention to devote himself fully to the life of an apostolic missionary to Indians never faded. And by 1768 he was in Baja California, reorganizing missions in the wake of the expulsion of the Jesuits the previous year. High-ranking Spanish officials soon became worried that Russians or other Europeans might attempt to settle the coastal region north of Baja California and thereby threaten Spain’s interests in northern Mexico. They were eager to lay full claim to the area that would become Alta California. The Crown therefore called on Serra to establish and oversee missions in San Diego, Monterey, and points in between. Serra, in

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the company of other Franciscans and dozens of soldiers, worked his way north from Baja California and established Mission San Diego in the summer of 1769. The following year Serra established a mission in Monterey, and he and Gaspar de Portolá, the leader of the military in Baja California, took possession of Alta California for Spain. Serra was as dedicated a missionary as he was a skilled administrator, and under his administration the Franciscans established nine missions in coastal California. Thousands of Indians accepted baptism and relocated to these missions. In keeping with Franciscan practice, Serra believed that Indians should accept Catholicism as the one true religion, adopt European agriculture to sustain themselves, and live their lives at the mission, “under the bell.” To this end, the Franciscans sometimes resorted to coercion to force Indians to follow Catholic precepts, remain in the missions, and provide the labor necessary to maintain them. While some Indians may have been taken by Serra’s vision, others resisted, sparking rebellions of varying intensity at all of the missions. At the same time, however, there was a blending of cultures in colonial California. For instance, Indians brought their own cultural traditions of music, art, and basketry to the missions, elements of which made their way into Catholic liturgical music, paintings, and decorative arts. But disease undermined much of what Serra hoped to accomplish and what Indians sought to gain from the missions. By the time Serra died in Mission San Carlos (Carmel) in 1784, he had shepherded the building of nine California missions. Franciscans would initiate another twelve. While the padres could point to impressive numbers of Indians baptized and married in the missions, the death registers told another story. Frighteningly high mortality rates stalked the missions, claiming thousands and thousands of newborns and children and young adults. Further, the fertility of women plummeted. Missions became so unhealthy that the populations were rarely if ever self-sustaining, and it was only through the recruitment of Indians from greater distances that the missions’ populations grew. Once the supply of recruits dwindled, the population of individual missions plummeted as their graveyards swelled. Nevertheless, many Indians survived the missions. In the 1830s during the Mexican period, the avarice of local settlers and a rising liberal ideology that saw missions as anachronisms led to the secularization of the missions. As the missions were being dismantled and the majority of their assets and property distributed to non-Indians and carved up into large ranchos, the survival of California Indians became increasingly imperiled. Then with the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the advent of the California Gold Rush, the incorporation of California into the Union in 1850, and the exclusionary and racist attitudes of the great numbers of U.S. citizens who flooded into the region, California’s remaining Indian population was decimated and dispossessed, forced onto the most unproductive land and into an intensely exploitative wage

Introduction

5

labor system. Indians were stripped of nearly all the rights they had retained under Spanish and then Mexican rule. In the gold mining regions, thousands were murdered in cold blood. Remarkably, Indians persisted throughout California. Their survival is a testament to human strength and courage and allows added insight into what the missions and their aftermath meant for Indians. In the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century through the efforts of local boosters and promoters, the decaying missions would become tourist attractions and a defining architectural motif for California, influencing the look of commercial, religious, and residential structures across California, the Southwest, and other parts of the nation. From red tile roofs to John Steven McGroarty’s The Mission Play and the story of Ramona, missions took on a different and highly romanticized meaning—creating a Spanish fantasy past for the state and many of its inhabitants. •

•

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If more than a century of academic writing, the tercentenary observation, and the canonization year proved anything about the state of Serra studies, it is this: Serra’s California years (1769–1784), and in particular his administration of the missions, have been examined in great depth, but most other aspects and periods of his life have received comparatively little scholarly attention. This volume by design therefore seeks to redress that imbalance by looking beyond Serra’s California years. Its twelve chapters explore Serra’s life in full and attempt to situate it within contexts well beyond the daily occurrences in and around the California missions. Divided into four parts, this collection explores Serra’s life in Mallorca, his early years in Mexico and his approach to California Indians, the content and style of the liturgical art that he selected for the missions, and the ways in which Serra and the California missions have become a part of America’s commemorative culture. As these chapters demonstrate, even though Serra’s most enduring work will forever associate him with California, California’s saint was shaped by events, ideas, and institutions from across New Spain and his native Mallorca, and his influence in turn reached regions well beyond where he oversaw missions and extended into centuries more recent than the one in which he lived. Even though he lived much of his life elsewhere, Junípero Serra was first and foremost a Mallorcan. He was shaped in profound ways by the island’s institutions, leaders, and history. As Josep Juan Vidal suggests in chapter 1, Serra’s formative years were influenced by the imposition in Mallorca of the Castilian language and Bourbon institutions in the wake of Philip V’s victory over the Hapsburg’s in the Spanish War of Succession. The Mallorca of Serra’s youth and early adulthood was one that experienced cultural change and grinding poverty in the wake of the collapse of Hapsburg rule. Nevertheless, communal life, as in Petra, and institutions, such as the Catholic Church, provided stability and structure. As Antoni Picazo

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Muntaner shows in chapter 2, Serra’s intense interest in a missionary life was deeply Mallorcan and can be traced to the career of another Mallorcan, Antoni Llinás, the Franciscan who founded a missionary college in Querétaro, Mexico, in the late seventeenth century. Perhaps more than Bourbon rule and the life of Llinás, it was the Mallorcan philosopher, missionary, and polymath Ramon Llull and the philosopher theologian Duns Scotus who most shaped the scholarly mind of Serra during his years as a student and professor. In chapter 3, John Dagenais explores the depth of Serra’s intellectual indebtedness to Llull and Scotus through a remarkable analysis of class notes from Serra’s years as both a student and a professor in Mallorca. Further, Dagenais’s research shows how Serra’s own devotion shifted from San Bernardino of Siena to Brother Juniper, the disciple of Saint Francis, and how Serra grew in confidence during his years of study and teaching, immersed as he was in the writings of Llull and Scotus. The teachings and lives of Llull, Scotus, and Llinás were key ingredients of Serra’s Mallorcan Catholicism, but it was Serra’s devotion to a Spanish woman of the seventeenth century, Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, that in part led him to leave Mallorca for the life of an apostolic missionary in Mexico. As Anna M. Nogar shows in chapter 4, “Junípero Serra’s Mission Muse,” Ágreda’s influence on Serra was profound, and her writings and seemingly countless bilocations to New Spain, where she preached to Indians in their own language, were never far from the minds of Franciscan missionaries in New Spain. As Nogar argues, Serra and other missionaries carried copies of her writings to Alta California when they embarked on the colonization of the region and were spurred on by their deep faith in her revelations. Ágreda traveled from her convent in Spain to New Spain, she wrote, on the wings of angels. California’s future saint’s journey to the New World was more prosaic. He was recruited by the College of San Fernando in Mexico City and crossed the Atlantic by ship. As David Rex Galindo shows in chapter 5, by 1750 the College of San Fernando was an institution with a rich institutional life and a large contingent of Spanish friars. Rex Galindo’s careful study of the records of the college yields insight into Serra’s place atop the college hierarchy and the ways in which a regimented daily schedule was intended to impart among missionaries the discipline they needed for life in the field. It was the College of San Fernando that sent Serra to the Sierra Gorda, where he worked for most of the 1750s. As Karen Melvin shows in chapter 6, the Fernandino missionaries, as those from the college were known, wore at least two hats—they proselytized among Indians who had not yet heard the gospel and also preached among Catholics in an attempt to encourage them toward a more devoted religious practice. In her illuminating view of Serra’s work carrying out “popular missions,” Melvin captures the rhythm and goals of Serra’s work in the small villages and isolated towns of New Spain. This was a Serra who was familiar to legions of

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Catholics in his own day but one who is all but unknown today, as most people see him as exclusively a missionary to California Indians. Serra, of course, did devote the final and most productive phase of his life to the evangelization of California Indians. As José Refugio de la Torre Curiel shows in chapter 7, by the time Serra established missions in Alta California, Franciscans had long experience with missions in the Mexican North, but they continued to wrestle with the gap between their utopian goals and what they could accomplish. And as Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz reveal in chapter 8, Serra not only struggled with and against those around him but also battled with internal tensions and inconsistencies within his own policy prescriptions. Thus, Serra and his fellow missionaries were far more complicated figures than most scholars have acknowledged. Spanish coercion and the snap of the lash—both supported by Serra—are among the most lamentable features of California mission life. But as art historians Clara Bargellini and Pamela Huckins show in chapter 9, the missions, at least in Serra’s mind, were to be held together not just by violence but also by a common devotion to Catholicism that was reinforced by architecture and art. Bargellini and Huckins show that Serra had a clear sense of how he wanted to adorn the missions in the Sierra Gorda and those of Alta California, and he saw architecture and liturgical art as an important tool in the conversion of Indians. Images of the Virgin, Christ’s Passion, and Franciscan saints all took center stage in the churches of the California missions, and Serra favored an older Baroque style over the emerging Neoclassicism. As Cynthia Neri Lewis argues in chapter 10, it was the Mexican artist José de Páez whom Serra leaned on most to fill his missions with beautiful and edifying paintings. Through the patronage of the College of San Fernando, Serra, and other California missionaries, Páez’s works would eventually hang on the walls of many if not all of the early California missions. Just as Serra’s life and missionary career were the product of larger political, religious, and artistic influences across the Atlantic world, so too was his ensuing broad appeal in the United States part of a larger late nineteenth-century fascination in America with all things Spanish. As Richard L. Kagan shows in chapter 11, in the latter decades of the nineteenth century a “Spanish Craze” captured the imagination of boosters and developers from California to Florida. This craze was manifested not only in an embrace of Spanish-like architecture but also in a growing sense that Spanish colonists and their descendants were somehow integral to the American experience. Serra himself was among the historical figures whose reputation most benefited from this period’s reappraisal of Spaniards and the wane of the Black Legend, the belief that Spanish colonization was uniquely cruel and destructive. Serra no doubt in part catapulted to fame as a result of this Spanish Craze, and as Michael K. Komanecky reveals in chapter 12, Serra’s notoriety was embodied

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and spread through a proliferation of largely laudatory images. Public representations of Serra and Spanish culture abounded after the late nineteenth century, with the most notable examples being Albert Bierstadt’s monumental landscape of the Spanish landing in Monterey that now hangs in the grand stairwell of the East Front of the U.S. Capitol, McGroarty’s The Mission Play that played before millions in San Gabriel, and the monumental statue of Serra placed in the National Statuary Hall in 1931. Lest anyone conclude that these images of Spaniards and Serra have lost their power to inspire and provoke, it is worth noting that in 2013 The Mission Play was restaged with a much more ambiguous Serra at its center, and in the run-up to Serra’s canonization in 2013 some California lawmakers—motivated by the belief that Serra had been cruel to Indians—attempted to remove his statue from the National Statuary Hall.7 In the immediate wake of Serra’s canonization, vandals attacked statues of him at Mission San Carlos and decapitated another that had been placed on the coast of Monterey by Jane Stanford in the 1890s.8 The reconsideration of Serra’s public visibility has shown little sign of abating and has accelerated as part of a larger national debate over the appropriateness of commemorative sculptures of controversial historical figures in public places. In 2017, vandals attacked Serra statues at Missions Santa Barbara, San Fernando, and San Gabriel. Only recently, Stanford University convened a faculty committee to consider whether Serra’s name should be removed from campus buildings and streets.9 But for every Serra building that might be renamed, another seems to emerge. In 2015 New York’s Siena College acquired a brick building adjacent to the campus, and the English-style building is now known as Serra Manor. It seems highly unlikely that anytime soon Californians and others will stop debating Serra’s legacies. It is the hope of the volume’s authors and editor that the chapters contained herein help to inform and shape these conversations. NOTES 1. Steven W. Hackel, “Junípero Serra across the Generations,” in A Companion to California History, ed. William Deverell and David Igler, 99–115 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). 2. Carol J. Williams, “Pope Francis Announces Plan to Canonize Junípero Serra,” Los Angeles Times, January 15, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-vatican-junipero-serracanonization-20150115-story.html. 3. Jim Yardley and William Neuman, “In Bolivia, Pope Francis Apologizes for Church’s ‘Grave Sins,’” New York Times, July 9, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/world/americas/pope-francisbolivia-catholic-church-apology.html?_r=0. 4. For example, in the period before the canonization, the BBC, NBC News, The Economist, the Voice of America, National Public Radio, and Public Radio International all ran stories carrying some variant of the headline “Junípero Serra: Saint or Sinner?” 5. Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013); Gregory Orfalea, Journey to the Sun: Junípero Serra’s Dream and the Founding of

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California (New York: Scribner, 2014); Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma: 2015). 6. “Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions,” Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Virginia Steele Scott Galleries, Erburu Wing, August 17, 2013– January 6, 2014. 7. Matt Fleming, “State Lawmaker Is on a Mission to Swap Out Statue of Father Serra,” Orange County Register, February 17, 2015, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/statue-651497-serra-lara.html. For the failure of this effort, see Michael Smolens, “Gov. Brown: Serra Statue Not Going Anywhere,” San Diego Union-Tribune, July 25, 2015, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdutgov-brown-serra-statue-not-going-anywhere-2015jul25-story.html. 8. Kate Linthicum, “Shock after Junípera Serra Statue Vandalized Days after Sainthood Declared,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-junipero-serravandalized-20150927-story.html; David Schmaltz, “Junípero Serra Statue at Presidio of Monterey Is Decapitated,” Monterey County Weekly, October 15, 2015, http://www.montereycountyweekly.com /blogs/news_blog/junipero-serra-statue-at-presidio-of-monterey-is-decapitated/article_b3742f3a7378-11e5-979a-3388cabc6213.html; “Decapitated Head of Serra Statue Found in Cove,” Monterey Herald, April 2, 2016, http://www.montereyherald.com/article/NF/20160402/NEWS/160409934. 9. Kathleen J. Sullivan, “Stanford to Establish Principles for Renaming Streets and Buildings,” Stanford News Service, March 4, 2016, http://news.stanford.edu/2016/03/04/faculty-senate-meeting-030416/.

pa rt one

Mallorca From Student to Professor

1

Junípero Serra’s Mallorcan Origins José Juan Vidal

Miquel Josep Serra Ferrer—the future Fray Junípero—was born in Petra, a small village on the island of Mallorca, on November 24, 1713. He set sail from Palma to Cádiz to go to America on April 13, 1749. Thus, he lived in Mallorca for more than thirty-five years. He was born, raised, and educated in his birthplace, Petra, a rural community with between two thousand and twenty-five hundred inhabitants. It was there that he came into contact with the Franciscan monastery of San Bernardino. When he was fifteen years old he moved to Palma to enter the Franciscan order, and he was ordained in 1731. While he is today most associated with California, he came of age in Mallorca. There, he was shaped by the political panorama of Mallorca during a period after the advent of the new Bourbon dynasty. As this chapter will discuss, long after he left the island he carried with him legacies of its economic structure and the importance of the religious orders and the tradition of Mallorcan missionary friars in America, particularly that of the Franciscan order, which in the second half of the seventeenth century was driven by other Mallorcans, among whom Fray Antoni Llinás stands out. T H E C O N SE QU E N C E S O F T H E SPA N I SH WA R O F SU C C E S SIO N

The year of Serra’s birth, 1713, was a watershed not just in Spanish history but also in European and worldwide history. It was the year in which after lengthy diplomatic negotiations a series of European powers signed a peace treaty in the town of Utrecht that concluded the Spanish War of Succession.1 The war, which began after the death of the last sovereign of the Hapsburgs in 1700, was much more than 13

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a dynastic conflict between the Austrians and the French Bourbons. It was a war that divided Europe as well as Spain and the territories that came under the Spanish monarchy.2 And it also had repercussions in the Americas.3 The heir to Charles II, who died in 1700, was a Frenchman, Philip Bourbon, who came to the throne in Madrid as Philip V and, among other things, immediately put in place a series of measures that were judged to be contrary to the interests of various European powers. Among these were commercial concessions to the French in America, which maritime powers such as England and Holland that had business interests on the continent considered an act of provocation. The maritime powers immediately formed a powerful coalition with Austria to champion an alternative candidate to Philip V for the Spanish Crown and put him on the throne by armed force. This candidate was Archduke Charles of Austria, the second son of Emperor Leopold, who from 1703 was proclaimed king in Vienna.4 What began in 1702 as an international conflict turned into a civil war in 1705, when large parts of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly the Crown of Aragon, deposed Philip V as king and recognized Archduke Charles as Charles III. Mallorca joined them in 1706 and remained the last nucleus of resistance to Philip V’s authority. The island was not conquered by the Bourbons until the beginning of the summer of 1715. The war at the international level ended in 1713 after a series of diplomatic negotiations that concluded with the Treaty of Utrecht. As a result of the treaty, Philip V, the first Spanish sovereign from the House of Bourbon, was internationally recognized as the king of Spain.5 But this recognition did not come free of charge. The new sovereign had to make concessions of territory and in the realm of commerce. Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century Spain lost its vast European empire in what some historians refer to as the “loss of Europe.”6 In exchange for seeing their right to reign in Spain recognized, the Bourbon’s gave up their European possessions outside Spain: the Netherlands, Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia as well as parts of Spanish territory such as Gibraltar and the island of Menorca.7 The European map changed shape. A different Europe in which Spain no longer predominated emerged. Today it is impossible to understand Europe without Utrecht. The Spanish imperial colors were significantly reduced in Europe, but Spain retained, practically intact, the largest known colonial empire up until then on the American continent. In the colonies Spain had to make commercial concessions to Great Britain, which meant the end of the theoretical commercial monopoly that the metropolis had enjoyed over its American colonies. Spain carried on with the task of colonizing areas it considered to be insufficiently controlled, such as the large coastal Pacific areas within the framework of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Meanwhile, the Treaty of Utrecht did not mean the end of war in Spain. From 1705 to 1706, the kingdoms under the Crown of Aragon had recognized Archduke

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Charles of Austria as an alternative monarch to Philip V, and they proclaimed him King Charles III. His sovereignty over some zones in the interior of the peninsula and in the Balearic Islands was maintained, even after Utrecht. Nevertheless, there were territories that persisted in their resistance after falling to the Bourbons. A part of Catalonia, including the city of Barcelona, and the islands of Ibiza and Mallorca actively resisted recognizing Philip V as king. Thus, when Miquel Josep Serra—the future Friar Junípero—was born in 1713, the king of Mallorca was therefore, in the eyes of most Mallorcans, Charles III, the emperor of Austria.8 However, the days of Charles III’s reign in Catalonia and Mallorca were numbered.9 He left Spain in 1711, never to return. Charles had taken possession of the empire and intended to defend those rights over Spanish territory that were still recognized as his from Vienna. He refused to sign the peace treaty with Spain in Utrecht and did not recognize Philip V, whom he continued to call “the usurper,” as king. In the meantime, the Bourbons were conquering the last remaining Austrian territories. The city of Barcelona fell to the Bourbon army on September 11, 1714, and Mallorca and Ibiza were taken in June 1715.10 Despite the brevity of their rule, during Serra’s childhood the Austrians had an influence on the island of Mallorca. In 1715, he was confirmed in Petra by Bishop Atanasio de Estarripa.11 The holders of the Spanish monarchy had the right of patronage over the church. This meant that when there was a vacancy in a diocese, the king presented his candidate to fill it to the pope, who merely had to confirm the king’s choice. When Mallorca allied with the Austrian option in 1706 and proclaimed Charles III as king, the bishop at the time, the Franciscan friar Antonio de la Portilla, chose to remain faithful to Philip of Bourbon, which served to exile him from the island. He died in exile in Barcelona in 1711. So, the candidate for the vacant diocese in 1712 was proposed by the Austrian government, and the successor was Bishop Estarripa.12 As a result of the war, the Mallorcan bishopric had been vacant for six years. It was essential that the new bishop make a pastoral visit to the parishes to administer the sacraments that had not been administered for nine or ten years. After the Bourbon military conquest, there were substantially important changes to the constitutional structure of the territories, Mallorca included, that had recognized Charles of Austria as king. The Spanish monarchy stopped being an agglomeration of kingdoms, with each one being governed by different laws and institutions, and went on to be governed by the same laws, namely those that governed now Bourbon Castile. In regions that Philip V considered to have betrayed him by deposing him as king, proclaiming an alternative sovereign, and making pacts with foreign powers, he repealed representative institutions and governed them from then on under the laws of Castile. In effect, a process of Castilianization of the non-Castilian kingdoms under the Spanish monarchy took place through edicts that are known as the Nueva Planta Decrees. These decrees

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abolished centuries-old judicial and municipal institutions in the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon.13 In the peace agreements signed in 1715 prior to the Mallorcan capital being handed over to the Bourbons, there was a clause stating that the bishop and other clergy would remain in their posts. This clause was observed. The bishop, however, saw that some clergymen remained fully committed to the archduke’s cause. They boasted of their political connections to the former monarch, and in response the bishop called them to order and reminded them of their obligation to obey the newly constituted authorities. Thus, the bishop, who had been appointed by the Hapsburgs, remained at his post in exchange for collaboration with the Bourbon authorities in bringing peace to the country.14 When the order was given that those persons in possession of arms had to surrender them, the bishop urged all clergymen to do so. But the Austrian side had many diehard supporters among the ranks of the clergy. Some continued to brag about their political ideals and preached them in public. In light of this, the Bourbons took drastic measures: they exiled from the island nine incumbent priests and twelve friars from the Convent of St. Francis of Assisi in Palma, where some years later Junípero Serra would live as a Franciscan. The Bourbon conquest of the island was not only institutional; it also affected other areas such as culture and language. The Castilian language was, without doubt, known by the educated classes in non-Castilian territories under the Spanish monarchy prior to the eighteenth century, but from then on its introduction and propagation among the reading classes was intensified. It became the official language and was used by all of the government for writing and documents. There is no doubt that as a child Serra spoke the Catalan language at home, with his family, and that this was the language used by the rural population of his hometown, Petra, the majority of whom could not read or write. But it is also true that early on he became familiar with the Castilian language, which was used in more cultured circles and which he used in his writings to document his later journeys and his colonization activities in America. It is safe to say that he learned this in the Franciscan convent of San Bernardino in Petra,15 where the young Miquel Josep learned his first letters as well as Latin and song. The change in the constitutional structure and methods of government and administration in the first part of the eighteenth century in Mallorca did not, however, transfer to the island’s economic structure. The Mallorcan population, apart from the capital, was still overwhelmingly agricultural, and the size of the harvests determined the growth and even the fate of the population. Mallorca had more than 100,000 inhabitants for the first time in its history in the last third of the seventeenth century but by 1768–1769 had only slightly more, 126,500. Petra, the birthplace of Serra, had a small population, and its growth too was constrained by challenging harvests. In 1667 its population numbered 2,462 inhabitants, or about

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2.48 percent of the total for the island.16 Roughly a century later, the population was just about the same. A pastoral visit in 1750 gave Petra a figure of 2,271 souls. In 1769 in a national count made by parish, Petra had some 1,959 inhabitants,17 while the neighboring community of Villafranca counted some 589 souls. The 1769 census gives us other details about the town of Petra. The municipal district was governed by five people: a batle (mayor), who was the top municipal authority, and four councilors, like the rest of Mallorcan towns. Among those with higher education in the town, there was a doctor. In relation to its small number of inhabitants, Petra had a large number of clergy. The parish had a rector, a curate, three incumbents, four resident priests, a sacristan, and two church servants. Furthermore, the Franciscan convent had twelve priests, a chorister, three laymen, two brothers or lay brothers, and three lay servants. Serra spent his first fifteen years in Petra, which was a rural environment. Its inhabitants were farmers with smallholdings who mainly worked on others’ lands as day laborers. They depended on the size of the cereal crop harvest for their subsistence. An abundant crop provided demand for workers and the opportunity to earn money through day labor working the land. A bad harvest was synonymous with paralysis of rural activity and involved low demand for workers rurally. Moreover, a good harvest meant a period of low prices for essential foodstuffs. On the contrary, a bad harvest or a consecutive series of bad harvests meant a rise in prices for essential subsistence foods that was difficult to bear. For the families of Petra, fluctuations in the harvests dictated hard choices in terms of family planning. As was the case across early modern society in Europe, in a period of good harvests and low prices couples tended to marry earlier. But bad harvests were often followed by couples delaying marriage. Thus, in many ways the limited agricultural productivity of rural Mallorca was the true contraceptive weapon of the age. A period of financial bonanza meant not just a greater number of marriages and nuptial ties at a younger age but also more births and at the same time fewer deaths. On the other hand, famines and crises in subsistence were accompanied by demographic crises that manifested themselves in a reduction in marriages and births and an increase in the death rate in adults as well as children and adolescents. The Mallorca that Serra knew in the first half of the eighteenth century was dominated by the burden of short, ephemeral life. A high birthrate was essential to combat the elevated death rate of the age. Families therefore often produced large numbers of children, but families remained small, as a high percentage of those born never reached adulthood. About 50 percent of those born never lived to be adults. In 1713 there were 101 births in Petra, of which 42 died. Miquel Josep Serra’s family is a good example of how high childhood mortality shaped family size. His parents had 5 children, yet only 2 survived to adulthood: Miquel Josep and his younger sister Joana María. Miquel Josep was the third child to be born to the

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couple Antoni Serra and Margalida Ferrer. His sister Joana María was the fourth and was the only one to get married and have children. In 1713 while 59 of those born in Petra survived, in the same parish 47 adults died, which meant that the natural growth of the population was just 12 people. Without a doubt growth was weak, but positive growth did not always happen. The previous year there was a deficit of 35 souls and the year prior to that another of 12. The population evolved in a zigzag, with small steps forward and backward that made for slow growth over the passage of long periods of time. On Mallorca, agricultural harvests often fell short of the island’s needs. During the first half of the eighteenth century, there were twenty-six years in which the grain harvest was enough to supply the island with all it needed without having to resort to imports from outside, but in twenty-four years production did not reach the required amount, and supplies from exterior markets had to be resorted to. The best harvests occurred particularly in the first two decades of the century, with the harvest in both being more than half of the twenty-six years of good harvest, fourteen to be exact, while in the remaining thirty years good harvests alternated with bad ones, with fluctuations being especially common in the 1730s and 1740s. Out of all the crisis years, 1737 was particularly severe, being one hundred thousand quarteras (around seventy liters each) of wheat short; in the three following years, 1747, 1748 and 1749, more than one hundred thousand quarteras were short in the first, fifty thousand in the second, and almost two hundred thousand in the third. The Mallorcan food crises of 1709–1712 and 1747–1749 are well known in Petra. Periodic illnesses and famines, together with the lack of hygiene, caused an extremely difficult and problematic situation. This in turn caused the slow growth over long periods of time. In 1726 Petra experienced a decrease in population of 148 people. And the bad harvest of 1748 caused a significant increase in the death rate in the spring of 1749, when Friar Junípero visited Petra for the last time before leaving Mallorca, never to return. One of the main tasks of the municipal authorities was to solve the problems arising from the lack of supplies and the hunger suffered by the population by buying wheat. In 1729, two commissioners were sent to Palma to buy grain to help the many poor people in the town. Nevertheless, the municipal district of Petra saw a growth in the production of alternative crops to cereals to fill the gap in their main food, such as vegetables and vines, as well as a smaller amount of industrial crops such as hemp and linen. Nonagricultural activities were scarce and carried out by people who alternated manufacture with working on the land. A good part of the manufacturing production was done by people who were not specialized in production but instead by people who continued to be part-time farmers. They worked in manufacture during slack periods when agricultural work was not in high demand, and they received an additional payment for their work that was not to be sniffed at in getting around

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the effects of the agricultural crises. Livestock mainly consisted of sheep and goats, which grazed on the stubble after the harvest, and there were very few cattle on lands that were predominantly dry. Cardinal Despuig’s map from 1787 tells us that in Petra the harvest is cereals, wine, vegetables, and livestock—all typical products from a municipal district with dry lands in the Mediterranean. Doubtless, in Petra the young Miquel Josep learned to work the land and look after livestock, skills that he would later try to impart to the indigenous people in the Sierra Gorda and California. In addition to having a strong agricultural ethos, Petra was a town that was deeply imbued with a collective mentality steeped in a strong religiosity. The rural population of Mallorca considered it necessary to tithe a tenth of everything collected from the land in exchange for God providing the other nine-tenths. This was the ecclesiastical tithe that was in force from the medieval age until the nineteenth century. In Petra, apart from the parish church, there was a Franciscan convent dedicated to San Bernardino that had existed since the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was one of seven Franciscan convents in existence at that time in Mallorca. Two of them were associated with Palma, the capital, one inside the city walls and one outside, and five in towns—Alcudia, Artà, Inca, Soller, and Petra. The Franciscans had been present in Mallorca since the thirteenth century. Although the foundation of the Petra convent was documented in 1609, the construction of the church was carried out, in the Baroque style, in the second half of the seventeenth century between 1652 and 1677. It was consecrated in 1672 under the name of San Bernardino de Siena. The influence of the convent of San Bernardino over the future Friar Junípero was decisive. His parents, modest farmers but highly religious, went to the two churches that existed at the time in Petra—the parish church and the one at the Franciscan convent. It was in the latter that Miquel Josep began to help as an altar boy at mass and first began to study. It was there that he learned his first letters, his first prayers, and his first hymns. It was there that he learned the alphabet, rudimentary Latin, and basic Gregorian chants. As a young boy he was a part of the convent choir. He was one of the boy singers at the solemn inauguration of the altarpiece on the main altar dedicated to the Immaculate Conception in 1721. Other altar pieces that stand out in the convent are those of Saint Francis of Assisi and Our Lady of the Angels, which were built at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the memory of which endured in Friar Juniper Serra’s foundations. Without doubt the future Friar Junípero extracted an intellectual and spiritual benefit from the convent’s classrooms that he developed later on. It was also in this convent that his vocation to enter the Order of Saint Francis was born. The knowledge, the life, and the charisma of the order led him to want to become a Franciscan friar. As Serra progressed in his education at Petra he was motivated to move to Palma, and he did so when he was fifteen, commended to a priest who was a fellow

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Petran, to begin philosophy classes in the Convent of St. Francis in the capital. As the Mallorcan historian Bartolomé Font Obrador has stated, Friar Junípero was born in an unlettered part of Mallorca but became one of its most eminent professors and preachers.18 He came into his own as an intellectual and religious leader at the Convent of St. Francis, which was the main center for philosophical and theological studies on the island.19 After more than a year of preparation—between September 1730 and December 1731—Serra officially donned the Franciscan habit in the Convent of Jesus outside the city walls. In 1731, he made his vows and changed his name from Miquel Josep to Junípero, one of Saint Francis of Assisi’s companions. Serra moved from the Convent of Jesus to that of Saint Francis in the capital. This was a much bigger convent where between 125 and 130 people lived. The illustrious thinker Ramon Llull, who is entombed in Saint Francis in Palma, never stopped being an influence or capturing the imaginations of Mallorcans, and Friar Junípero was no exception. Serra was influenced by the medieval thinker in respect to perfecting a moral life and the spreading of Christianity across the globe. In the Franciscan convent, he passed philosophy studies brilliantly and went on to continue his education with theology studies that concluded in 1737. At twenty-four years of age, he competed against another six clergymen for the post of lecturer in philosophy. In November 1737 he obtained the post and became the philosophy teacher in the Palma convent. He taught Scotist philosophy in the Convent of St. Francis until 1743. Friar Francisco Palou and Friar Juan Crespí were among his disciples, as was Father Bartolomé Pou.20 Serra was elected as head lecturer in the Lullian University in Palma and occupied the university chair until April 1749, when he departed for the Indies. Serra’s sermons from his years in Palma, especially those he delivered during Lent in various towns in Mallorca, are well known. Even though he was a university professor, Friar Junípero, due to his rural upbringing, knew how to adapt to the language that Mallorcan farmers, who were uneducated and largely unable to read and write, needed to hear to understand the evangelical message. Being bilingual—speaking both Catalan and Castilian—allowed him to choose which was the language he should use in his university classes and which should be used to preach from the pulpit with skill to a rural Mallorcan parish. His capacity to adapt to the audience listening to him was perfect in the decade from 1740. His travel around the various towns on the island as a preacher is an unquestionable demonstration that the work of preaching and apostolate among uneducated people attracted him just as much if not more than his work as a professor of Scotist philosophy in the university classrooms among students who were already previously prepared. If during his time in Petra Junípero Serra had made contact with the Order of Saint Francis from his early years, in Palma he was able to do so with other religious orders that were in the capital of the island. In Palma there were convents of many

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religious orders, such as Cistercians, Dominicans, Hermits, Augustines, Philip Neri, Carmelites, Antonianos, and Capuchins (the order entered by a nephew of Friar Junípero), Mercedarians, Trinitarians, mission fathers, Theatins, and Jesuits, whose missionary work in California he took over after they were expelled by Charles III in 1767. Friar Junípero Serra was perfectly aware of the stream of Mallorcans who had preceded him in the work of colonizing America. If in the sixteenth century most immigrants to the Americas went to Peru, in the eighteenth century New Spain substituted it as the main attraction for immigrants, which agrees with the importance that Mexico and later the Californias revealed to have in attracting Mallorcans.21 Friar Junípero was accompanied in many of his missionary adventures by his friend, collaborator, confessor, and biographer, Friar Francisco Palou. In the Americas, they encountered the famous sea captain Juan Peréz.22 Also linked to Friar Junípero and his evangelical work is Friar Juan Crespí, who left a daily chronicle of everything he saw around him that is the most finely detailed relation of the land and Californian villages that he traveled.23 These Mallorcans followed a grand tradition that the Franciscan order maintained of a missionary relationship with America ever since Friar Antoni Llinás founded the Propaganda Fide Apostolic Schools24 and Friar Damián Massanet took active part in the colonization of Texas. As history has made clear, Junípero Serra would achieve great notoriety for his work in California. But he carried with him across the Atlantic decades of experience living on the island of Mallorca. His worldview was shaped by the economic struggles of the island and the Bourbon imposition of power, and his religious ideals were informed by the teachings imparted to him by Franciscans in his native land. He would leave the island in 1749, never to return, but in ways that would shape his missionary career he in a sense never left the island. Ultimately, he would bring to California the language, religion, agricultural economy, and ecclesiastical order that he had known as a young boy in the tiny community of Petra.

NOTES This chapter is part of the research project HAR2015-67585-P, “Government, War, Power and Society Groups in the Kingdom of Mallorca during the Modern Age” (AEI/FEDER, EU). 1. J. M. Jover and E. Hernández Sandoica, “España y los tratados de Utrecht,” in Historia de España de Ramón Menéndez Pidal: La época de los primeros Borbones; La nueva monarquía y su posición en Europa (1700–1759), xxix–1 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1985); L. Frey and M. Frey, The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996); L. Bély, “Casas soberanas y orden político en la Europa de la Paz de Utrecht,” in Los Borbones: Dinastía y memoria de nación en la España del siglo XVIII, ed. P. Fernández Albaladejo, 69–96 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2002); T. Daston and J. H. Elliott, eds., Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht (London: Legenda, 2014); M. Torres and S. Truchuelo (dirs.), Europa en torno a Utrecht (Universidad de Cantabria, 2014);

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Joaquim Albareda i Salvadó and Agustí Alcoberro i Pericay, eds., Els Tractats d’Utrecht: Clarors i foscors de la pau; La resistència dels catalans, Actes del Congrès celebrat a Barcelona del 9 al 12 d’abril de 2014 al Museu d’Història de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2015; R. M. Alabrús, La memoria de la guerra de Sucesión y el tratado de Utrecht (Madrid: CEU ediciones, 2015). 2. H. Kamen, La Guerra de Sucesión en España, 1700–1715 (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1974); D. Francis, The First Peninsular War, 1702–1713 (London: Ernest Benn, 1975); C. Perez Aparicio, “La Guera de Sucesión en España,” in Historia de España de Ramón Menéndez Pidal: La transición del siglo XVIII; Entre la decadencia y la reconstrucción, Vol. 28 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1993), 303–503; V. León Sanz, Entre Austrias y Borbones: El Archiduque Carlos y la Monarquía de España (1700–1714) (Madrid: Sigilo, 1993); W. V. Dickinson and E. Hitchcok, The War of Spanish Succession, 1702–1713: A Select Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwwood, 1996); P. Voltes, La Guerra de Sucesión (Bardelona: Planeta, 1996); C. Sanz, La Guerra de Sucesión española (Tres Cantos, Madrid: Akal, 1997); La Guerra de Sucesión en España y América, Actas X Jornadas Nacionales de Historia Militar, Sevilla, 2000; J. Juan Vidal, Política interior y exterior de los Borbones (Madrid: Itsmo, 2001); J. L. Pereira Iglesias (coord.), Felipe V de Borbón (1701– 1746), Universidad de Córdoba, 2002; E. Serrano, ed., Felipe V y su tiempo: Congreso Internacional (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2004); A. Guimerá and V. Peralta (coords.), El equilibrio de los Imperios de Utrecht a Trafalgar, VIII Reunión Científica de la Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, Madrid, 2005; J. Calvo Poyato, La Guerra de Sucesión, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Anaya, 2009); F. García González (coord.), La Guerra de Sucesión en España y la batalla de Almansa: Europa en la encrucijada, Sílex, Madrid, 2009; J. Alabareda, La Guerra de Sucesión en España, 1700–1714 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010). 3. Various authors, La Guerra de Sucesión en España y América, Actas X Jornadas Nacionales de Historia Militar, Sevilla, 2000; A. Bethencourt (coord.), Felipe V y el Atlántico: III Centenario del advenimiento de los Borbones, Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2002. 4. L. Frey and M. Frey, A Question of Empire: Leopold I and the War of Spanisch Succession (1701– 1705) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 5. C. Martínez Shaw and M. Alonso, Felipe V (Madrid: Arlanza, 2001); P. Voltes Bou, Felipe V, fundador de la España contemporánea (Barcelona, RBA: 2005). 6. A. Alvárez-Ossorio, B. García, and V. León (coords.), La pérdida de Europa: La guerra de Sucesión a la Corona de España, Fundación Carlos de Amberes-Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2007. 7. R. Majó, “Gibraltar y el tratado de Utrecht,” Africa 48 (1954): 170–72; J. A. Nuñez Villaverde, “El tratado de Utrecht; consecuencias en la evolución del contencioso hispano-británico,” in Congreso Internacional: El Estrecho de Gibraltar, Vol. 4, 521–46 (Madrid: Univeridad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 1988); J. Juan Vidal, La conquista inglesa de Menorca: Un capítulo de la guerra de Sucesión a la Corona de España (Palma: El Tall Editorial, 2012). 8. V. León Sanz, Carlos VI, el Emperador que no pudo ser rey de España (Madrid: Aguilar, 2003); V. León Sanz, El Archiduque Carlos y los austracistas: Guerra de Sucesión y exilio (Sant Cugat: Arpegio, 2014). 9. P. Voltes Bou, L’Arxiduc Carles d’Àustria, rei dels catalans (Barcelona: Aedos, 1967). 10. J. Juan Vidal, “El Reino de Mallorca del Filipismo al Austracismo, 1700–1715,” in Felipe V y su tiempo: Congreso Internacional, Vol. 2, ed. E. Serrano, 151–210 (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2004); “La guerra de Successió a la Corona d’Espanya: Les Balears,” Afers 52 (2005): 581–605; “La guerra de Successió a la Corona d’Espanya: Les Illes Balears; Filipistes, Austriacistes i Anglesos,” in L’Aposta Catalana a la Guerra de Successió (1705–1707), 415–28 (Barcelona: Museu d’Història de Catalunya, 2007); “La Guerra de Sucesión a la Corona de España: Las Islas Baleares entre Austrias y Borbones,” in Hispania-Austria, Vol. 3, La Guerra de Sucesión española, ed. F. Edelmayer, V. León Sanz, and J. I. Ruiz Rodríguez, 240–26 (Alcalá-München-Wien: Universidad de Alcalá de Henares-Verlag für

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Geschichte und Politik Wien-Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag München, 2008); “El austracismo en el reino de Mallorca,” Cuadernos dieciochistas 15 (2014): 165–93. 11. A. Furió, Episcopologio de la Santa Iglesia de Mallorca (Palma: Imprenta de Juan Guasp, 1852), 468–74. 12. M. Barrio, “Sociología del alto clero en la España del siglo ilustrado,” Manuscrits 20 (2002): 51. 13. J. Mercader, “La ordenación de Cataluña por Felipe V y la Nueva Planta,” Hispania 43 (1951): 258–366; P. Voltes Bou, “Felipe V y los fueros de la Corona de Aragón,” Revista de Estudios Políticos 84 (1955): 191–214; P. Perez Puchal, “La abolición de los fueros de Valencia y la Nueva Planta,” Saitabi 12 (1962): 179–98; J. Camps I. Arboix, El Decret de Nova Planta (Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau, 1963); M. Peset, “Notas sobre la abolición de los fueros de Valencia,” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 42 (1972): 657–715; F. Canovas Sánchez, “Los Decretos de Nueva Planta y la nueva organización política y administrativa de los países de la Corona de Aragón,” in Historia de España de Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Vol. 29, La época de los primeros Borbones: La nueva monarquía y su posición en Europa (1700–1759), 1–77 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1985); J. Pradells, Del foralismo al centralismo (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1984); W. P. Frank, “Regionalism and Revocation of the Fueros of Valencia and Aragon during the War of the Spanish Succession,” PhD dissertation, University of California–Los Angeles, 1992; E. Gimenez, Gobernar con una misma ley: Sobre la Nueva Planta borbónica en Valencia (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1999); E. Gimenez, “La Nueva Planta y la Corona de Aragón,” Torre de los Lujanes 38 (1999): 85–99; J. M. Iñurritegui, Gobernar la ocasión; preludio político de la Nueva Planta de 1707 (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2008). 14. M. Barrio, “El clero en la España de Felipe V, cambios y continuidades,” in Congreso Internacional: Felipe V y su tiempo, Vol. 1, ed. E. Serrano, 281–316 (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2004). 15. B. Font Obrador, Juníper Serra: L’empremta mallorquina a la Califòrnia naixent (Palma: Ajuntament de Palma, 1988), 66–74; S. Vicedo, Convento de San Bernardino de Sena: La escuela del Beato Junípero Serra (Petra: Caja de Ahorros de Baleares Sa Nostra, 1991). 16. J. Juan Vidal, “La población de Mallorca en 1667,” Estudis Baleàrics 36 (1990): 21–24. 17. J. Juan Vidal, El Cens d’Aranda a Mallorca (1768–1769) (Palma: El Tall Editorial, 1996), 130–31. 18. B. Font Obrador, Juníper Serra: L’empremta mallorquina a la Califòrnia naixent (Palma: Ajuntament de Palma, 1988), 84–88. 19. B. Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra” Boletín de la Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana 33 (1974): 121–29. 20. B. Font Obrador, El Padre Francisco Palou O.F.M. (Palma: Ayuntamiento de Palma, 1976). 21. B. Font Obrador, “Franciscanos mallorquines en Texas” Boletín de la Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana 33 (1974): 199–203. 22. Fr. F. Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólica tarea del V.P. Fr. Junípero (1787; reprint, Madrid: de Aguilar, 1944); J. de Ybarra y Bergé, De California a Alaska: Historia de un descubrimiento (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos Madrid, 1945); F. de Las Barras De Aragón, “D. Juan Pérez y D. Esteban José Martínez, grandes marinos y etnógrafos,” in Homenaje a D. Luis de Hoyos y Sáinz, Vol. 2 (Madrid: Gráficas Valera, 1949), 45–51; M. Hernández Sánchez-Barba, La última expansión española en América (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1957); B. Escandell, Baleares y América (Madrid: Mapfre, 1992), 149–56. 23. H. E. Bolton, Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542–1706 (New York: Scribner, 1916); H. E. Bolton, Fray Juan Crespí: Missionary Explorer of the Pacific Coast, 1769–1774, 2nd ed. (New York: AMS Press, 1971); H. E. Bolton, Font’s Complete Diary: A Chronicle of the Founding of S. Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1931); M. F. Geiger, “The Mallorca Contribution to Franciscan California,” The Americas 4 (1947): 141–50; J. Crespí and B. Font Obrador, El Padre J. Crespí, explorador de la costa pacífica (Mallorca: Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, 1994). 24. I. F. de Espinosa, Crónica Apostólica y Seráfica de todos los Colegios de Propaganda Fide de esta Nueva España de Misioneros Franciscanos Observantes (Mexico City: Viuda de Joseph Bernardo de

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Hogal, 1746); A. Gili, Antoni Llinás, missioner de missioners (Mallorca: Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, 1991); A. Picazo and B. Tous, “Fray Antonio Llinás y el primer colegio de propaganda Fide de América,” in América y Mallorca: Del Predescubrimiento hasta el siglo XX, 115–24 (Palma: Ajuntament de PalmaEdicions Miramar, 1991); A. Picazo, Mallorquines en la colonización de Texas (Palma: El Tall, 1993), 57–89; B. Font Obrador, “Fray Junípero Serra: De doctor de gentes a doctor de gentiles,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Luliana 54 (1998): 233–35.

2

Father Junípero Serra’s Education and Ideology Antoni Picazo Muntaner

As scholars have observed, there is a long tradition of historical scholarship concerning Father Junípero Serra and Spain’s colonization of California and the American Southwest. Yet as exhaustive as that scholarship is, there are still avenues where new research is needed, especially in regard to the Mallorcan origins of Serra’s missionary career as well as the individual style that he brought to it. Thus, the aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it threads together the ideological lines which, via the Propaganda Fide colleges and the personality of their founder, Fray Antoni Llinás, Serra himself inherited as a Franciscan and a student of those very colleges. Second and more deeply, the chapter explores the actual lines of daily thought and pragmatism that occupied Serra’s own singular personality and ideology, two facets that enabled California to be colonized. SPA I N A N D A M E R IC A AC R O S S T H E SEV E N T E E N T H C E N T U RY

On a political level, over the course of the seventeenth century Spain was immersed in an era of steep decline across Europe as a result of wide-ranging hostilities. In America, on the other hand, this decline was not so perceptible. This was in part because the creole1 elite were extremely comfortable with the great amount of political freedom they had under the Austrians2 and in part because economic activity was diversifying, gradually drawing away from metropolitan dependence. Yet, Spain’s territorial hold on the borderland regions of North America was changing rapidly. The Spanish had established a defensive line of presidios in the northern area of the borderland region, and at that time they were under threat. 25

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Native rebellions continued to challenge Spanish authority.3 A clear example of this was the loss of Santa Fe in New Mexico in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. But in the seventeenth century native rebellions were practically a constant: the Acaxees in 1601, the Tekax in 1610; the Tepehuans in 1616, the Bakhalals in 1639, and the Oaxacans in 1660. Then in 1690 the Sonora border was under constant pressure from the Tarahumaras, Janos, and Yumas; in 1694 there was an uprising by Apaches, Keres, Teguas, and Jemes striking ranches and villages; and in 1696 it was the Conchos and Sobas.4 Elsewhere, rival powers were taking up positions and becoming a danger to the mining zone. This also brought with it a problem of serious size and consequences, especially where French traffickers were selling firearms to Indians. By the beginning of the eighteenth century Apaches and Comanches all used French firearms.5 In this regard, we can call to mind Father Serra writing about the Comanche attack on the mission of San Sabá in Texas in the 1750s, where “Father Terreros was executed by firing squad and Father Molina was shot.”6 After the failure of the Spaniards’ “blood and fire” war against Indians, the authorities understood that to achieve total peace in the northern borderlands they had no choice other than to seek support in the form of the help that the clergy could offer in a revitalized attempt to integrate Native Americans into the Spanish realm. Thus, preserving peace with Indians soon constituted one of the objectives of the Spanish court.7 Common sense and wisdom were in, and new ideas began to surface among the main advisers to Carlos II’s government.8 Among these first “reformers” were people who advocated recovering and developing two old ideas: the peaceful conversion of Indians through the propagation of the Catholic faith and a theory applied during a good part of Phillip II’s reign, namely that “to conquer is to populate.”9 A N T O N I L L I NÁ S

Among these innovative thinkers was a Mallorcan Franciscan, Antoni Llinás, who was born in 1635 in the small rural village of Artá, a district that borders Petra, the birthplace of Junípero Serra. The missionary-explorer Damián Massanet was also born in Artá, and it was he who drove the colonization of Texas following guidelines from his friend and teacher, Llinás. Llinás studied at the Franciscan Convent of San Buenaventura in Artá and later furthered his studies at the Jesús, outside the walls of Palma. In 1653 he took his religious vows. A short time later he moved to the convent of San Francisco, also in Palma, where he studied philosophy, training in the Scotist and Lullian schools of thought. In 1664 after he was appointed rector of the Querétaro faculty of philosophy, where he lectured in logic, Llinás set out on his first journey to America. In 1667 he was appointed reader of philosophy in Celaya. The following year he moved to

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Valladolid, the capital of Michoacán, lecturing in Scotist philosophy, and left some works and commentaries on it. After a long stay in America, he returned to Europe to carry out great religious and missionary activity on the mainland as well as on the island of Mallorca. His idea was to request permission to recruit twelve missionaries to support the evangelization of Mexico’s Sierra Gorda region. In 1681 he met with his order’s superior, Friar José Jiménez de Samaniego.10 Samaniego refused him permission to recruit followers but, to Llinás’s surprise, directed him to draw up an appeal addressed to the king and the Council of the Indies to create a seminary-college. Having drawn up this highly important document, Llinás showed it to Samaniego, who gave him approval to present it to his superiors. In 1682, twenty-four clergymen along with Llinás left Spain to build the first Propaganda Fide college, which would be in Querétaro. A whole series of affiliates arose from it that would consolidate the evangelization and colonization of the borderlands, including the Cristo Crucificado college in Guatemala, San Fernando in Mexico, San Francisco in Pachuca, San José de Gracia in Orizaba, and Nuestra Señora in Zapopán. The brief that Antoni Llinás presented to the Spanish court was fully consistent with royal interests. In it, Llinás explained the dual function that the missionary colleges would have: they would be apostolate centers for existing populations and bases for working in territories populated by those as yet unconverted. The creation of these colleges in America would enable consolidation of territories already colonized as well as the incorporation of new ones.11 The ideas and new method12 for evangelization expressed in the brief that Llinás presented to the king rested on three points. First, the graduates of the new college were to engage in popular preaching to Catholics, not just to those as yet unconverted. This was an enterprise that would be very easy due to the intellectual but also pragmatic preparation of the missionaries trained in the new college. Second, the missionaries were to embark on a deeper evangelization and control of native life than previously attempted in the borderlands.13 Finally, they were to work toward the integral “human development” of the natives. This point was the main one and involved feeding, clothing, and housing Indians, all in an attempt to convince them to leave the mountains and live in communities with Spanish rules and laws. The Indians were to communally cultivate the land and hold posts that would allow them to meet their needs and those of their families. That is to say, this new method was to be an authentic spiritual catechism that created good civil and financial government. This last aspect was fundamental within the framework of the idea of “peaceful colonization” and was one of the basic pillars to the process of indigenous acculturation. The nucleus of Llinás’s method therefore rested on the evident improvement in the circumstances of the Indians’ economic system, with better efficiency in its organization and in obedience, work, and egalitarianism. To achieve these

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goals, it was necessary and fundamental for missionaries to study the indigenous languages. Thus, the creation of the missionary college in Querétaro sought to achieve two main purposes: (1) Christianize and educate the Indians of the Sierra Gorda and (2) commence new entries or incursions into new territories and definitively incorporate them under the Crown. This was most evident in three large areas in the whole of the northern borderlands: Texas on the Atlantic seaboard, New Mexico, in the central zone, and California on the Pacific coast.14 In this position the missions played an extremely important and dynamic role. As Félix Almaraz explained, it went in five steps: (1) Establishment of the mission and statement of the objectives to be achieved, (2) curtailment and congregation of the Indians, (3) formal religious conversion and instruction of the natives, (4) monitoring the natives’ Christianity, (5) and the creation of a village or parish. This vision was proposed by Llinás and would be the method chosen by Junípero Serra to use in California.15 J U N Í P E R O SE R R A

Father Junípero Serra’s16 training ran in parallel to that of Antoni Llinás at all times. Serra undertook his religious instruction at the convents of Jesús, just outside Palma, and also at the Convento de San Francisco within Palma, where he specialized in Scotist17 and Lullian philosophy18 (Scotism was adopted as the Franciscans’ official philosophy after the Council of Trent and the convent of San Francisco venerated Ramon Llull’s tomb). After this process and having gained his professorship, Serra went on to teach theology at the Lullian University in Palma, upholding the basic principles of Scotism—science and simplicity. In order to understand both Llinás and Serra, and their similarities it is worth delving into Scotus’s theories, even if only in outline, and to call to mind some examples of Lullian thought. Duns Scotus belonged to a generation of Franciscans who were able to live and defend the idea of primitive Christianity, of poverty and of following the message of Christ at all times. Scotus delved into platonic discourse, writing critiques on Aristotle or, in reality, practicing an unorthodox Aristotelism. It was a theology that focused on the example of Christ and, as a result, charity. This was a human and intellectual route that some Franciscans, and Serra in particular, adopted as a model. Father Serra followed the practice of humility as conducted by Jesus and the apostles—the guiding principle being the dissemination of Christianity, attracting goodwill, and ruling out force and violence unless absolutely necessary as a last resort. This method was based on expectations of collective progress and personal example and would be the fundamental basis for Serra in his own eyes in becoming a defender of the natives. He also maintained a very militant attitude toward the problem of forced labor.19 For example, the

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captain of a ship that supplied the California missions demanded Indian laborers to unload the goods. Father Serra, however, flatly refused even though the captain threatened to leave without unloading.20 With regard to Llull’s works, the one that perhaps had the most influence over Llinás and Serra was the construction of his own missionary college. Indeed, in 1276 and under the sponsorship of Mallorca’s King Jaume II, Llull founded the Miramar college in the Mallorcan northern Sierra.21 There clerics were trained in Arabic and Asian languages, with the final aim their being able to go on missions in the territories dominated by these languages. Llull not only preached in Paris but also entered the Franciscan order and went on missions in North Africa. This influence on the work of Llinás and Serra is unquestionable, and suffice it to say that the last sermon Serra gave in Mallorca was on Llull. In addition, on January 24, 1774, Serra, on the Californian coast and on the point of leaving for San Diego, remembered while writing that this day was the Vigil for Saint Paul and the blessed Ramón Llull.22 Thus, when Serra moved to New Spain he had already strongly marked out the basic ideas that later on he would end up deploying in the Sierra Gorda23 and California. These ideas were the humility of an exemplary Christianity and, in the missions, the desire to apply the example of poverty, charity, and pardon as basic pillars of missionization and even personal development. In effect, from the perception that many Spaniards of the era had a priori of the American natives, which mixed totally conflicting elements, the image that Serra had was to a certain extent mythification, although once he arrived on the North American continent he quickly changed this perception for one that was far more realistic. After years of teaching in Mallorca, Serra left the island and went to Mexico with the idea of continuing the evangelical work performed by the Franciscans in the colony of New Spain. His reference point would be the Propaganda Fide college in San Fernando, Mexico, which was founded at the beginning of the eighteenth century and that, together with Celaya College24 becoming a university, had become one of the fundamental pillars of new Hispanic culture, with one of the most extensive and richest libraries in the entire colony. All of this work was done in the shadow of Llinás. After a short training and adaptation period in what would be his college for the rest of his life, Serra went to the Sierra Gorda in 1750 on popular missions among the Pames Indians,25 who were considered by the Spanish authorities at the time to be “bow and arrow Indians” and therefore resistant to their settling them in one single place. Military leaders José de Escandón26 had taken action against the Chichimecas in the Sierra, defeating them and congregating Indians into five missions. Indian resistance to the new culture of the Spaniards continued, however. Because of this, a different missionary model was needed. Serra was appointed president of the missions in the area, including Jalpan, Landa, Concá, Tilaco, and

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Tancoyol. It was here that he implemented the old Lullian maxim taken up by Llinás—the best stimulus for the unbelievers was example. And it was also here that Serra and his colleagues (Palou, Crespí, and Lasuén) would perfect the model that he later applied in California. In the Sierra Gorda, Serra noted the need to understand the native tongue, teach the Pames the doctrina in their own language, and have a constant approach. The missionaries there tried to do nothing less than “get into the native mentality” to understand the Pames and attract them. These were missionary elements that, from this moment on, were constantly and permanently present in their work. The demonstration of preaching by example was proven in the Sierra Gorda. Serra struggled to learn the Pames language, encouraging the other clergymen to follow in his path. He translated speeches and doctrinal texts into the language, although sometimes he put Spanish and Pames in the same text. The results with the Pames were highly positive, at least according the Franciscans, as in addition to teaching Indians new farming methods and techniques, the missions experienced some commercial successes. In Serra’s biography, Palou27 explains this triumph as coming from Serra following down to the letter the instructions for missionaries designed by Antoni Llinás. In spite of the advances in the Sierra Gorda, the Spanish Crown suffered huge erosions of authority and territory in the northern borderlands, and as already mentioned, its problems were accumulating. Yet, a series of factors that occurred in parallel enabled the colonization of California by the Spanish military and the Franciscans. After expulsion from Baja California28 in 1767, the Jesuits handed the peninsula over to the Franciscans of the College of San Fernando, while the whole of the Pimería Alta29 zone was under the supervision of missionaries from Querétaro, and Sonora was under the supervision of missionaries from Jalisco. One of the surprises that we find in the inventory that the Franciscans made of the Jesuit missions upon their arrival, which were extremely detailed, is the high degree of financial independence they had and the creation of libraries that were relatively well stocked with some Enlightenment titles. Among the many books in the library at the Nuestra Señora de Loreto mission we find works by Solórzano on protection of the native; the History of the Californias in three volumes (which we also find at the San Francisco Javier mission), the Art of the Kayta Language, and various cartographic works.30 Just a few years after the Franciscans moved into Baja California, the international situation led Spanish authorities to push for an extension of the northern frontier through the occupation of Alta California. This circumstance was not well received by some religious authorities, among them Archbishop Lorenzana, who thought that such a large expansion, which included Alta and Baja California, could not remain in the hands of just one religious order, much less with one single apostolic college. At the same time Friar Juan Pedro de Iriarte submitted a proposal

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to the Council of the Indies31 for Christianizing and consolidating the Spanish presence on the Baja California coast, a plan that would be backed up by the attorney general and the council just a few months later over fierce criticism from Visitor-General José de Gálvez, who was more in favor of the Franciscans. Gálvez protested and insisted that Iriarte’s report was full of errors, as it wrongly supposed that the Baja California territory was extremely fertile. The views of Gálvez were decisive for the new design, as the authorities, supported by the Franciscan Mallorcan Father Rafael Verger,32 custodian of the San Fernando college, opted for a distribution of territories between various orders. The Baja California missions were granted to the Dominicans, while new foundations in Alta California would be entrusted to the Franciscans. In this regard, Serra emerged as the ideal person to carry out the California project to establish missions to Indians and settle the Spanish presence on the coast. The basic principle was that they must follow but with time would be completely independent, both economically and productively. This position was favored and sponsored by Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, who wanted to avoid having Spaniards mistreat the natives. Bucareli drew his inspiration from an idea that was already old and well established, which was to build on Indian subjects who would serve the Crown. The goal was to enable the conversion of the various indigenous nations that were scattered around the whole of California’s coast and interior and turn them into faithful taxpayers who had left behind their Indian cultures. Serra’s actions in the Sierra Gorda, and later in California, suggest that he was a person who thoroughly studied problems down to the smallest detail and faced them with the saying that made him famous: “Always go forward, never turn back.” An in-depth analysis of Father Serra’s letters shows the lines that he followed during the process of the colonization of Alta California.33 In these missives, the spirit of the missionary himself is reflected: his day-to-day tasks, his worries, the hardship of his travels, the impact caused by bad news, and his way of facing difficulties or convincing his rivals. In summary, the full weight of his thoughts is perfectly reflected in his extensive correspondence.34 The care that Serra devoted to his interaction with California Indians35 was foreshadowed on May 15, 1769, when he encountered twelve Indians as he was journeying north from Baja California to San Diego. It was there that Friar Junípero demonstrated what would be his mode of action in these encounters— the demonstration of what he took to be affection and friendliness. “One by one I put both hands on the heads of each of them as a show of affection and I filled both hands with figs which they then ate.”36 And he always retained the Christian maxim of giving food to the hungry and clothing to the unclothed. For centuries the natives had supplied provisions, voluntarily or by force, to some expeditions going into the Great North. Now it looked like the dialogue had changed. It was Serra, to facilitate approaches, who now provided food for the indigenous peoples.

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On May 28 they once again encountered a group of natives, this time armed, and the Spaniards gave them some food. As thanks, the Indians showed them their weapons and how to handle them. It is in this diary entry that Friar Junípero catalogs the various types of human beings he finds in his path. In a certain way it is a pragmatic method of defining them momentarily. Thus, for Serra there were hostile, inquisitive, elusive, and communicative Indians, and the easiest way to attract them and gain their confidence was, in the first place, to supply them with food but also give them clothes. As he explained, “They yearn for clothes.”37 Father Serra, in the tradition of Llull and Llinás, always retained the firm conviction of “attracting” the indigenous peoples, that they should attend the missions of their own free will, and that the padres should speak the Indians’ languages. He made this perfectly clear on many occasions, but it is sufficient to cite one example. In his letter to Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix, marqués de Croix, on June 18, 1771, regarding the natives of the islands in the Santa Barbara Channel, Serra wrote that “we must not try to extract the natives from the islands where they were born and live . . . [;] procuring that from those who frequently come onto the mainland we can win their confidence and understand something of their language.”38 We can find a clear example of the missionaries’ interest in the local languages in the work of Padre Buenaventura Sitjar who, following Serra’s orders at Mission San Antonio de Padua,39 achieved what the padres took to be excellent results. Fray Buenaventura, complying with the guidelines established by the College of San Fernando and those of Friar Junípero, showed complete mastery of the native language, drawing up a catechism in the language as recorded by Father Pedro Font in his daily message to Monterrey. But apart from his doctrina, Sitjar wrote a small and practical etymological and phonetic dictionary, some fifty-three pages long, in the Mutsun language. This was a work that was first published in 1861 by Dr. John Gilmary of the Smithsonian Institute with the title Vocabulary of the Language of San Antonio Mission, California. Another of Serra’s followers who is worth mentioning was Padre Jerónimo Boscana, author of the Chinigchinich, a real treatise on the religious beliefs of the Californian Indians. For Serra, a good attitude toward and a good example to the natives were fundamental to achieving their attraction to the new culture as well as the new religion. In the missionaries’ view, the only problems that could arise were those that the soldiers provoked. Referring to this question, Friar Junípero explained it this way to the custodian of the San Fernando college, Father Rafael Verger, on August 19, 1778: “The truth is that I have always found the poor gentiles to be affectionate and that the greatest danger is that some injustice by the military agitates them, which is what has happened.”40 Finally, the letters sent by Father Serra make reference to the practice that he maintained throughout the entire process of colonizing California: preaching by example and deploying in one of the main dogmas of Christianity, the pardon.

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Effectively, on December 15, 1775, Junípero Serra sent a letter to Bucareli narrating the total destruction of San Diego, including the death of some men from the mission who, together with Padre Luís Jayme, were shot with arrows by Indians from the mission as well as those who remained unbaptized. However, what draws attention most is that he asks for pardon for all of them, raising a question that implies its own answer: What are we going in search of with military campaigns? He was able to be magnanimous with the natives, as it was only in this way that the colonization process would end, particularly in the San Diego area. Later on in a missive to Teodoro de Croix dated April 26, 1782, Serra explained just how serious that rebellion had been—the San Diego mission was destroyed by the country’s gentiles “joined together from more than 70 villages that, in a formidable number, invaded the mission with arms.”41 Previously, on August 22, 1778, Serra sent a letter, also to Teodoro de Croix, narrating the fruits of his labors: “and with much consolation we obtained general pardon for those who set fire to the San Diego mission.”42 This was no more than the result of a meditated and assumed personal conviction; it was one of the factors that drove and allowed colonization. We can remind ourselves that the port of San Diego was not the first time that serious grief was caused to the viceroy as well as to the Crown. In 1715 Juan Manuel de Oliván Rebolledo, judge at the Mexican court, sent a complete report on the suitability of populating and defending such a strategic port. It should be controlled way before potential enemies could take it and, in alliance with the natives, could disrupt and threaten three elements that were fundamental for Mexico: sailing the galleon from Manila, controlling the Baja California peninsula, and pearl fishing in the same area. The Crown send a report to the viceroy ordering that because the port of Monterrey, near San Diego, was under control, he should control this zone to prevent such ills. C O N C LU S I O N

The ideology and methodology that Junípero Serra ingrained into the Alta California missions must be sought in the lines of education implemented in the various Propaganda Fide colleges. These were driven by Antoni Llinás, a Mallorcan whose life helped to shape Serra’s. These colleges produced outstanding students who were able to keep the same impetus and an identical educational philosophy in the various colleges that they would go on to found all over Spanish America. From this idealism emerged several points that were fundamental to the Franciscans’ work in California. First, there was the primacy that missionaries placed on learning the various languages of the natives, which is shown in the work done by some of Serra’s colleagues, such as Sitjar and, later on, Boscana. Second was the primary idea inspired by Ramon Llull, which Antoni Llinás was able to translate into practice and was evidently taken up by Junípero Serra: the use of dialogue and

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the search for peace, which was the same as seeking to protect the natives as a fundamental element for achieving the success and survival of the missions.

NOTES This chapter is part of the research project HAR2015-67585-P, “Government, War, Power and Society Groups in the Kingdom of Mallorca during the Modern Age” (AEI/FEDER, EU). 1. B. Lavallé, “El criollismo y los pactos fundamentales del imperio americano de los Habsburgos,” in Agencias criollas: LAa”ambigüedad” colonial en las letras hispanoamericanas, Vol. 1, ed. J. A. Mazoti ed., 37–54 (Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 1990). See also Virginia Gil Amate, “De españoles a americanos: De españoles a Americanos; Variantes de criollismo en el siglo XVIII,” Arrabal, no. 1 (1998): 23–38. 2. See Pilar Gonzalbo, Historia de la vida cotidiana en México (Mexico City: El Colegio, 2009). 3. Native wars received much attention of the Council of War. See Juan Carlos Domínguez Nafria, El real y supremo Consejo de Guerra: Siglos XVI–XVIII (Madrid: CEPC, 2001). 4. On native wars, see Antoni Picazo Muntaner. “El Impacto de las guerras nativas en el norte de Nueva España,” Illes i imperis, no. 12 (2009): 7–19. 5. Biblioteca Nacional de México (hereafter BNM), Archivo Franciscano (hereafter AF) 8/140, “Informe de Felipe Rábago al virrey marqués de Cruillas del presidio de San Saba, 2 de marzo de 1761,” fol. 1; BNM, AF 8/143, “Certificación que José Felipe de Rábago hace sobre los informes de tratos con indios, 1 de abril de 1764,” fol. 2. 6. Salustiano Vicedo, Escritos de fray Junípero Serra, Vol. 3 (Petra: Apóstol y Civilizador, 1984), 19. 7. Bartolomé Yun Casalilla, “Del Centro a la Periferia: La economía española bajo Carlos II,” Studia Historica 20 (1999): 45–75. J. A. Ribot García writes that “durante el reinado de Carlos II se produjo una mejora general de las relaciones entre la Corte y la Periferia de la Monarquía.” J. A. Ribot García, “Carlos II, el centenario olvidado,” Studia Historica 20 (1999): 39. 8. Antoni Picazo, Mallorquines en la colonización de Texas (Palma: El Tall, 1993). 9. José Miguel Morales, La construcción de la utopía: El proyecto de Felipe II para Hispanoamérica (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2001), 22. 10. See E. Corsi, ed., Órdenes religiosas entre América y Asia: Ideas para una historia misionera de los espacios coloniales (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2008). 11. The basic points of the Llinás brief were (1) creating colleges in Spain to train missionaries; (2) including the study of indigenous languages, especially Mexican, Otomi, Matalcinga and Nahua; (3) making the basic function of the missionaries who went on to the Indies indoctrination of the natives; (4) and deepening of the apostolate in zones already Christianized that would serve as bases for new entries (the idea was that incursions into unknown territory to consolidate colonization would be paid for by “alms,” that is, at no cost to the Crown); (5) constructing colleges in New Spain and Peru; (6) instituting a “province” declaration whereby twenty-five or more missions were created in the new territories (the creation of a “province” would enable more colonials and clergy to come in); (7) having all of the missions occupied by clergymen from the seminary-colleges; and (8) supporting the appointment of “creoles” as superior clergymen, as they had better knowledge of the land and also in this way there were fewer travel expenses to be paid for by the king. See Picazo, Mallorquines en la colonización de Texas. 12. Antoni Picazo, “El ideario de fray Antoni Llinás OFM para la creación del primer colegio de Propaganda Fide de América,” Archivo Ibero-Americano, no. 237 (2000): 437–46. 13. The costs of the officers were governor, 4,000 pesos annually; captain, 3,000; lieutenant, 700; ensign, 500; chaplain, 480; sergeant, 350; corporal, 300; soldier, 290; Indian auxiliary, 90. 14. BNM, AF 7/43, “Informe de Jacinto de Barros al virrey conde de Revillagigedo,” fol. 1. Read as “nos hallamos situados a la Boluntad de los franceses y siempre que haia novedad entre las dos coronas

Father Junípero Serra ’ s Education and Ideology

35

seremos sacrificados por los indios a la voz de los franceses . . . se hallaron en la Movila 36 compañías de 50 hombres y otra de usares suizos de 200 hombres . . . y van llegando muchas embarcaciones con municiones de Boca y Guerra y mucho número de hombres y hasta granadas reales y de mano.” 15. Félix Almaraz, The San Antonio Missions and Their System of Land Tenure (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). 16. Junípero was born at the end of the great conflict of the Spanish War of Succession. See Josep Juan Vidal, La conquista inglesa de Menorca: Un capítulo de la Guerra de Sucesión a la Corona de España (Palma: El Tall Editorial, 2013). 17. Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance.” Modern Theology 21, no. 4 (2005): 543–74; Antonie Vos, The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2006). 18. Ramon Llull and Anthony Bonner, Doctor illuminatus (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 19. D. T. Barajas, Espacio y economía en la Península de California, 1785–1860, Vol. 5. (La Paz: Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, 1999); Carlos Pacheco, La controversia acerca de la política de colonización en Baja California, Vol. 12 (La Paz: Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, 1997). 20. Salustiano Vicedo, Escritos de fray Junípero Serra, Vol. 5 (Petra: Apóstol y Civilizador, 1984). 21. Joaquim Xirau, Vida y obra de Ramón Llull: Filosofía y mística (Madrid: FCE, 2004); F. Benhamamouche, “Ramon Llull y su empresa islámica,” Quaderns de la Mediterrània 9 (2008): 1–7. 22. The Vigil of Saint Paul is on June 29. 23. Francisco Palou, “Misiones franciscanas de la Sierra Gorda, lo que trabajó y practicó en ellas,” Antropología: Boletín Oficial del INAH 67 (2002): 93–95. 24. Jorge René González, Misioneros del desierto: Estructura, organización y vida cotidiana de los Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide de la Nueva España, siglo XVIII, (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2009). 25. Carlos Viramontes, De chichimecas, pames y jonaces: Los recolectores-cazadores del semidesierto de Querétaro, Vol. 416, (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2000). 26. Jesús Mendoza Muñoz, El Conde de Sierra Gorda don José de Escandón y la Helguera: militar, noble y caballero, Vol. 2 (Cadereyta: Fomento Histórico y Cultural de Cadereyta, 2005). 27. Francisco Palou, Relacion historica de la vida y apostolicas tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junipero Serra, y de las Misiones que fundó en la Carolina Septentrional, y nuevos establecimientos de Monterey (Mexico City: en la Imprenta de Don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1787). 28. Ulises U. Lassépas, Historia de la colonización de la Baja California y decreto del 10 de marzo de 1857, Vol. 8 (La Paz: Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, 1995). 29. James E. Officer, “Kino and Agriculture in the Pimeria Alta,” Journal of Arizona History (1993): 287–306; B. Pavao-Zuckerman, “Rendering Economies: Native American Labor and Secondary Animal Products in the Eighteenth-Century Pimería Alta,” American Antiquity (2011): 3–23. 30. See Eligio M. Coronado, Descripción e inventarios de las misiones de la Baja California, 1773 (Palma: Govern Balear, 1987). 31. Archivo General de Indias, Estado, 5112. 32. Ignacio Del Río Dueñas, “La adjudicación de las misiones de la Antigua California a los padres dominicos,” Estudios de historia novohispana 18 (1998): 69–82; Mario Alberto Magaña Mancillas, “Sobre nuevo método de Gobierno espiritual de misiones de Californias, por fray Rafael Verger, 1772,” Relaciones (Zamora) 35, no. 139 (2014): 197–229. 33. Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 2005); Robert Howard Jackson, Edward Castillo, and Edward D. Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians (Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1996).

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34. Catherine R. Ettinger, “Pueblo, presidio y misión en la estructuración del territorio de la Alta California en el siglo XVIII,” Anais: Seminário de História da Cidade e do Urbanismo 8, no. 2 (2012): 94–116. 35. David Rex Galindo, “Franciscanos e indios en la Alta California española, 1769–1822,” Espacio Tiempo y Forma: Serie IV, Historia Moderna 20 (2007): 157–70. 36. Salustiano Vicedo, Escritos de fray Junípero Serra, Vol. 1 (Petra: Apóstol y Civilizador, 1984). 37. Ibid. 38. Salustiano Vicedo, Escritos de fray Junípero Serra, Vol. 2 (Petra: Apóstol y Civilizador, 1984). 39. Frances Rand Smith, The Mission of San Antonio de Padua (California) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1932). 40. Salustiano Vicedo, Escritos de fray Junípero Serra, Vol. 4 (Petra: Apóstol y Civilizador, 1984). 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid.

3

Eiusque Manu Scriptus Junípero Serra’s Mallorcan Class Notes John Dagenais

Junípero Serra lived from November 24, 1713, until August 28, 1784, nearly seventyone years. He spent the first half of his life, for most of us our most important formative years, on his native island of Mallorca. He did not leave Mallorca for the New World until April 1749, when he was thirty-five years old. His time in Mexico and the Californias occupied his final thirty-five years. Yet it is these years, and in particular the last fifteen years of his life, spent in founding missions in Alta California, that have received the bulk of scholarly and popular attention. Even Tibesar’s magnificent and massive collection of Serra’s writings begins with August 1749, four months after Serra had left Mallorca forever.1 It is a significant impediment to our fuller understanding of Serra the man and of his achievements—almost always viewed through the lens of our interest in the aged and experienced missionary—that more than twenty-one hundred pages of documentation concerning Serra’s life from seventeen to thirty-five years of age have received comparatively little attention from scholars. Of these pages, well over a thousand are written in Serra’s own hand. Thus, my title is taken from one of these pages in which Serra declares the copy to be his “and written with his own hand” (“eiusque manu scriptus”). Another eight hundred pages represent Serra’s own words as recorded by a student and approved by Serra.2 Although these are far from being the most exciting or indeed the most personal pieces of evidence for Serra’s early life, they do occasionally afford some surprisingly vivid images of Serra the young man and offer us the ability to establish the chronology of Serra’s student and early teaching years in great detail, a detailed view that can be coordinated with other document sources to provide an increasingly concrete outline of Serra’s younger years. 37

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The content of these documents—broadly, page after page of Scotistic scholastic philosophy—takes us rather far from modern interests in Serra’s “life and times” and seems at odds with much of what we know about the mature Serra, or at least with the things that interest us about him.3 But that is precisely their value for any attempt at a complete and balanced understanding of the man. They represent a not trivial portion of his youth and his preparation for the deeds that today we see as his lifework. We need always to keep in mind that writing (or speaking) the hundreds of pages of clear but cramped and heavily abbreviated Latin prose was a task that must necessarily have occupied major portions of Serra’s time and intellectual focus during these years, especially if we take into account the relatively cumbersome writing tools and materials of the day.4 In a sense, then, these are our most intimate details on Serra, down to the tiniest movements of his hands. They show the very thought processes he learned and taught, the underlying mechanisms of his mind, and the major intellectual sources of his worldview as he set out on his missionary career. Finally, we should not forget that the single most important document regarding Serra’s whole career, Francisco Palou’s life of Serra, grows out of the bond formed between teacher and student precisely in these years. Palou was a student in the class for which we have Serra’s lectures, nearly word for word, as was Joan Crespí, another lifelong companion. The friendships with Palou and Crespí are arguably Serra’s most significant personal bonds throughout his later life, and it is worthwhile in itself to attempt to understand the context in and bases on which these bonds began to be forged. It seems crucially important to remember, for example, that the final words of the death certificate Serra signed in January 1782 for his lifelong friend, the person he asked to be buried next to, Joan Crespí, are “In witness whereof [Crespí’s death] I, who was once his Professor and of late his comrade for many years, have placed my signature.”5 Nearly forty years after Serra was last Crespí’s teacher (“maestro”) in 1743, the bonds formed in the Mallorcan classroom were still very much on his mind. A great deal has been learned by scholars about the chronology of Serra’s early years through documents and other sources.6 This study focuses on the three largely unexplored Latin manuscript books from Serra’s years as a student and teacher in the Convent of St. Francis in Palma. Serra was a student at the Convent of St. Francis from 1731–1737. Three years later, he was a teacher of the course on Aristotelian-Scotian philosophy from 1740 to 1743 in the same Convent of St. Francis. In addition, he served as a professor of Scotian philosophy in the Lullian University from October 1743 until April 1749, when he departed for Mexico.7 Serra had received his doctorate from that same university, probably in 1742 or 1743.8 Two bound manuscript books contain Serra’s own student notes on lectures given by his professors during his time as a student at the Convent of St. Francis from 1731 to 1737.9 A third book of notes was prepared by a student, Francesc

Junípero Serra ’ s Mallorcan Class Notes

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Noguera, in “Professor” Serra’s own later classes.10 Noguera takes credit for these notes, describing himself as “scriptor” (fol. Ar) or “auditor” (fol. 79v), but gives credit to Junípero Serra as “auctor,” so we may assume that Serra at least read and approved these notes, though he probably took a still more active role in their preparation.11 These notes illuminate the period 1741–1743, when Serra was a teacher in the same convent. The notes are found together in a single manuscript book.12 All three of these manuscripts were created in the environment of the Franciscan convent. Unfortunately, no similar class notes, either from any additional formal studies Serra may have engaged in prior to receiving his doctorate or from his teaching at the Lullian University as professor de prima in Scotian philosophy, have so far come to light. It is quite possible, then, that there are more such manuscripts to be found covering those years. Much of the work in these courses was taken up with exercises that had been the bread and butter of scholastic education since at least the thirteenth century: the task of reconciling the techniques of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine. This was accomplished through the use of dialectical analyses in which a number of positions were laid out, their contradictions explored and reconciled using the techniques of logic via a series of questiones. Propositions that could not be reconciled or reframed were rejected. In Serra’s particular classes, as student and as teacher, the dialectical method was applied through the lens of the theological and philosophical ideas of the thirteenth-century Franciscan thinker John Duns Scotus: “iuxta mentem Scoti.” A second series of classes looked at various Catholic doctrinal matters, also through the lens of Scotism: matrimony, grace, the nature of God. Cassanyes and Ramis offer a usefully succinct summary of the intellectual environment in which Serra studied and taught when they characterize him as “un producto ejemplar de la espiritualidad escoto-luliana del franciscanismo mallorquín de su época.”13 The present study stems from research in the archives of the Santa Barbara Mission Archive and Library, in the library of Sant Felip Neri in Palma de Mallorca, and with digital copies of manuscripts held in the Biblioteca Pública in Palma. The word “class notes” in my title is intended to cover both types of documents relating to Serra’s education in Palma: (1) his own notes taken as a student in a variety of classes in the Convent of St. Francis and (2) notes taken by students in Serra’s own classes after he had become a lector at that same convent. In this chapter, I seek only to lay the groundwork for the more detailed study that the content of these manuscripts deserves. For now, this brief overview can help us to refine the chronology of Serra’s student years and his first years as a teacher, allow us to appreciate the atmosphere of the classrooms in which Serra studied and taught, and, on very rare occasions, perhaps give us a glimpse of Serra, the young man. An appendix found at the close of this chapter provides the basic data that underlie my observations in the present study.14

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The two manuscript books from Serra’s student days are both held at the Biblioteca Pública in Palma de Mallorca. [Summaries on Aristotle], Ms. 882 (310 ff.).15 This manuscript contains notes from classes taught by Bernardí Castayó and, perhaps, other teachers at the Convent of St. Francis on Aristotelian philosophy, dialectics, physics, etc., during the three academic years from 1731 to 1734. Nearly all of them mention explicitly that the course is taught from the perspective of Scotian philosophy. These classes seem to parallel rather closely the course on Aristotle that Serra will later give during his own terms as lector in that same convent. [Treatises on Various Topics], Ms. 76 (416 ff.) includes notes for a series of courses taught from 1734 to 1737 in the Convent of St. Francis on the thought of John Duns Scotus in the context of various theological questions, classes taught by Pere Vaquer, Bernardí Castayó, Joan Pol, and Bonaventura Amorós.16 It also includes three treatises dated outside the chronology of Serra’s student years, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, but there is good reason to think that they also formed a part of Serra’s training, as I explain below. The third manuscript contains notes from classes taught by Serra himself at the same convent, taken down by one Francesc Noguera, a student in the class, and, it seems, reviewed in all or in part by Serra himself. They are found in the manuscript currently located in the library of the Congregation of Sant Felip Neri in Palma. The spine of this manuscript has a modern shelf number label pasted to it: 68900.17 At the beginning of its 406 folios, this manuscript includes a very interesting title page on which, among other things, the title Compendium Scoticum is provided.18 For convenience’s sake, I refer to these bound volumes as the Summaries, the Treatises and the Compendium, respectively.

SE R R A’ S S T U D E N T N O T E S : T H E SUM M A R I E S ( 1 731 – 1 73 4 ) A N D T H E T R E AT I S E S ( 1 73 4 – 1 73 7 )

What can these notes tell us about Serra, the young man? It is too easy always to imagine him as the mature missionary portrayed in familiar images and statues— indeed, the man who comes across in most of Serra’s writings from the second half of his life. But Serra was only seventeen years old when he began his studies. He was a very young and a rather inexperienced person, like most of us, when he entered his studies. The detailed chronology that these manuscripts allow us to establish can perhaps help us to gain a more nuanced understanding of Serra during the years in which he studied, attained the priesthood, rose to subdeacon and

Junípero Serra ’ s Mallorcan Class Notes

41

deacon, and traveled around the island as a home missionary, finally becoming a professor in his own right. I offer one interesting example.19 We know that Serra entered the Franciscan order and took the name Junípero on September 15, 1731. It is about this time that he moved into the Convent of St. Francis. The Summaries shows us that Serra’s studies actually began five days before he took the name Junípero, on September 10, 1731, with a course on Aristotle’s dialectics taught by Bernardí Castayó. The opening dedication is of a type that will become familiar in these notebooks, mentioning the course title and the name of the teacher, dedicating the class to a list of Franciscan saints, and giving the place and the date on which the course began (Figure 3.1).20 Accompanying this dedication, written across it actually, is the notation “Ad usum Fratris Juniperi Serre eiusque manu scriptus” (For the use of Brother Junípero Serra and written by his own hand). This inscription looks a bit out of scale with the rest of the writing in the dedication, not balanced across the page and with its lines not evenly ruled, suggesting that this was a later and perhaps even somewhat hasty addition to this page. It was obviously written subsequent to the events of five days after the date in the opening dedication in which Serra actually took the name he mentions proudly here. This inscription lacks the formal balance, the elaborateness and restraint of the “signatures” that Serra places within scrolls in the later Treatises manuscript, for example. Although we may assume that there was some lag time from the date of the class until these very carefully transcribed notes were actually copied, nevertheless it seems quite possible that Brother Junípero went back over these notes at some point and added his new name to the dedication he had already written. In a way we might not find atypical for a young man just beginning his studies, Serra seems a bit possessive here as well as proud of his work in copying this complex Latin text. Perhaps we are even looking at one of the first times Josep Miquel wrote his name as “Junípero.”21 During his first months with his new name, Serra was still mindful of his roots and mentioned on two occasions Saint Bernardino of Siena: on December 18, 1731, as “ad honorem . . . D. Bernardini Seninsis mei ex corde specialissimi patroni” (my special patron from the bottom of my heart) and on June 23, 1732, toward the close of this academic year, as “my special/signal [assignatus] patron.”22 We are at an important transition moment in Serra’s young life. He is putting away childish things, including his special relationship with the Franciscan Convent of San Bernardino in his native Petra.23 He is transferring that special loyalty of the heart to Brother Juniper, disciple of Saint Francis. Indeed, in the colophon Serra wrote a few months before this last colophon, he had used almost the same language in his mention of his new patron: “ad laudem . . . V[enerablis] Fratris Juniperi mei ex corde patroni [in praise . . . of the Venerable Brother Juniper, my patron from the bottom of my heart].”24 In the June 23, 1732, colophon just referred to, nearing the

figure 3.1. Serra Signature (Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Palma (Mallorca). Ms. 882, fol. 2r).

Junípero Serra ’ s Mallorcan Class Notes

43

close of his first year of studies Serra mentions Brother Juniper together with Saint Bernardino, the former as the “exemplar of humility, simplicity and every virtue.”25 But this will be the last time Serra refers to Saint Bernardino as his “patron” in these manuscripts. In the colophon written a month later, at the end of the academic year, he will mention Brother Juniper alone and with a surprising lack of Juniperian humility: “in honorem . . . Fr[atris] Juniperi cuius nomine sigillatus exulto [in honor of . . . Brother Juniper in whom I, who bear his name, exult]” (July 23, 1732).26 The mixed feelings one may have at the end of a school year and the elation one feels at the completion of one’s studies are both expressed by Serra in these notes. Thus, at the end of his first year of classes, Serra invokes the names of the Virgin, of Saint Francis, of Saint Anthony of Padua, of Saint Bonaventure, of Saint John the Baptist,27 of Saint Bernardino of Siena, of Brother Juniper, of John Duns Scotus, and of “all the saints,” whose prayers, he hopes, may reach God, so that “hoc triennium finire valeamus” (that we may have the strength to complete this three-year course of study; July 23, 1732).28 Beyond whatever formalities may be involved in this colophon, one gets the sense that Serra has found his first year of study to be challenging.29 A more schooled and confident Serra emerges at the very end of his six years of study at the Convent of St. Francis. At the end of the final colophon of his final class, a class on “Angels According to Ramon Llull” taught by Joan Pol, Serra writes, quite literally with a flourish: “Scribente fidelit. Fratre Junipero Serre hodie studiis finem dante” (Faithfully written by Brother Juniper Serra, today bringing his studies to an end; June 22, 1737).30 Throughout these notes, Serra also shows himself to be a gifted draftsman and spirited doodler.31 The most elaborate of his drawings is the “square of opposition” that he created in the course of his studies on rational philosophy with Bernardí Castayó (Figure 3.2).32 The “A” proposition in this square is “hominem esse animal est necesse” (it is necessary that man is an animal). Five religious figures of primary importance to Serra are drawn in and around the diagram. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception presides above the square (the date appearing on the same page refers to the Feast of the Visitation). “S. D. Scotus” is drawn within the circle of the “A” Proposition, holding a pen aloft and with his books at his feet, a common representation of Scotus.33 To his right, we find the “E” proposition: “hominem esse animal est impossibile” (it is impossible that man is an animal). In this figure is a drawing of the “illuminatus doctor,” that is, Ramon Llull, the thirteenth–fourteenth-century Mallorcan religious thinker, who is shown in the most common iconography of the day: the rays of his illumination are shown shooting from his head; he holds a pen aloft, like his near contemporary Scotus; and there are books scattered at his feet. This is a standard representation of Llull’s illumination on Mount Randa in Mallorca, where he received the knowledge of his famous art. The story depicted is, briefly, that following his “conversion to penitence” (that

figure 3.2. Square of Oppositions (Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Palma (Mallorca). Ms. 882, fol. 115v).

Junípero Serra ’ s Mallorcan Class Notes

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is, the conversion from a worldly life to one dedicated exclusively to God) during which he studied philosophy intensively and learned Arabic, Llull went up to the tranquility of Mount Randa on Mallorca to contemplate his next steps. After less than a week there, while he was gazing heavenward, God filled him with “the form and method” for converting unbelievers to Christianity, a philosophical method that Llull would refer to as his “Art.”34 In Serra’s sketch, the rugged landscape of Mount Randa lies beneath Llull’s feet.35 The subaltern propositions below, “hominem esse animal est possible” (it is possible that man is an animal) and “hominem esse animal possibile non est” (it is not possible that man is an animal), are occupied by Saint Berard of Carbio on the left and Saint Bernardino of Siena on the right. Saint Berard of Carbio was among the first group of Franciscan martyrs, sent by the founder himself to preach among the Muslims of Morocco. He is usually depicted, as here, with a pen in his hand. The scimitar cutting into the top of his head portrayed here is no doubt a reference to Berard’s beheading by the king of Morocco, outraged that Berard refuses to convert to Islam.36 The sketch’s almost whimsical appearance here may suggest the sort of gallows humor not unknown among young students. However, we should not forget that the mature Serra took martyrdom very seriously; indeed, he saw it as one of the possible, even likely, even desired, ends for his own life. Saint Bernardino is shown with the most popular iconography of the saint: there are three miters at his feet, representing the three episcopal appointments he rejected in order to continue his missions. He also holds up a badge from which rays emanate, a badge that typically bears the inscription “IHS.” The text on the badge is hidden here by the scroll bearing the proposition, but this lack is corrected on the facing page, where an identical badge shooting out rays is made of the capital letter “Q.” This one does contain the “IHS.” Overall, Serra’s square seems rather skillfully drawn. It depicts three-dimensional curled scrolls and uses fairly delicate shading. There are various decorative features, including a detailed flowering plant in a pot. Another square of oppositions, dealing with the proposition “omnis homo est animal” and its derivatives, is yet more ornate but lacks the human figures found in the previous one.37 Far less scholarly than these squares of opposition are the doodled human faces that Serra includes sometimes when he writes the capital letter “Q” in the titles of sections of the notes. We have just seen that the letter “Q” was used to illustrate the badge commonly found in the iconography of Bernardino of Siena. This letter appears more frequently than one might think, since some form of the word “Questio” is perhaps the most common word in these titles. I have given these faces the name “Q-faces,” for want of a better term. They suggest the drolleries found in medieval manuscripts. There are around twenty-five of these in the Summaries manuscript. Some of these are rather schematic, but the most interesting ones manage to capture an individual face and even an emotional expression

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figure 3.3. Q-face (Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Palma (Mallorca). Ms. 882, fol. 103r).

within the limiting frame of the Q.38 There is a sequence of faces of chiefly tonsured figures that appear in the Summaries manuscript (fols. 101r, 103r [Figure 3.3], 104v, 106r, 108v, 109r, 111r) that might represent Serra’s fellow students, or his teachers, or even some of the same figures portrayed in his square of opposition. Perhaps the most distinctive of these is the plump-cheeked and cheery Q-face found on fol. 103r. I note too the sketch of a tonsured and bearded figure that appears below the opening prayer to the entire collection in Ms. 882.1, fol. 1r. Is this perhaps a portrait of his teacher Bernardí Castayó? One final graphic element worthy of note is the set of rotating circles representing the circles of the heavens according to the Ptolemaic system (Figure 3.4).39 This movable figure, which accompanies the notes to the course titled “Brevis in Physicos Aristotelis Libros de Celo et Mundo Elucidatio” (Brief Explanation of Aristotle’s Books on Heaven and Earth), reveals no influence of the work of Copernicus some two hundred years earlier or that of Galileo from the preceding century. In the center is Earth, drawn as a collection of hills reminiscent of Mallorca itself, with the word “terra” written on it. This refers to the element, not (or as well as) the planet, and the other elements—”aqua,” “aer,” and “ignis”—are also contained within this circle. Successively larger circles follow: the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and then the “Coelum stellarum” (the heaven of the stars). This is followed by the “Cęlum cristallinum” and the “Cęlum primum mobile.” Surrounding this is the “Celum Empyreum Beatorum Sedes” (Empyrean Heaven, Seat of the Blessed). This last sphere and the flowery field around it appear to have been drawn on the notes page itself. On the digital image of the recto side of this page, one can see a rectangular smudge that may be a small tab of paper pasted onto the page to which the rotating circles were affixed. To appreciate the

figure 3.4. Circle of the Heavens (Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Palma (Mallorca). Ms. 882, fol. 258v).

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skill that went into creating this figure, one need only consult the similar sphere made by Francesc Noguera when he studied this same topic with Serra in 1742: its drawing of Earth is little more than a smudge, the concentric circles are eccentric, and the overall execution is frankly sloppy in comparison with Serra’s.40 Serra, then, taught the same Ptolemaic system to his students. This is not a surprise, but it is worthwhile to remember that this was the vision of the structure of the universe that Serra carried with him in his encounter with the realities of a new world. C L A S S N O T E S F R OM SE R R A’ S T E AC H I N G C A R E E R : T H E C OM PE N DI UM S C OT I C UM

This last comparison will bring us to consideration of the notebook prepared by one of Serra’s students during Serra’s time as a lector in the Convent of St. Francis from 1740 to 1743. Francesc Noguera took detailed and copious notes during his study with Serra.41 It is of great interest, as we have noted above, that among the students in Serra’s class with Noguera were Francisco Palou, future companion and biographer of Serra and Joan Crespí, who would also follow Serra to New Spain. The title page of Noguera’s notebook bears the following description: Compendium Scoticum elaboratum tamquam ab auctore å Patre Fratre Iunipero Serra, et tamquam ab scriptore a’ Francisco Noguera studente in conventu Seraphici Patris Nostri sancti Francisci ab Assissio. Fuit inceptus luce nona mensis Septembris anno a Nativitate Domini nostri 1740.42 Compendim Scoticum, written in part by the author Father Brother Junipero Serra and in part by the scribe Francesc Noguera a student in the convent of Our Seraphic Father Saint Francis of Assisi. It was begun on the ninth day of September in the year of Our Lord 1740.

The Compendium itself seems to be anything but a compendium. It is over eight hundred pages of scholastic Latin prose. Below the title are several “borrowers’ notes.” The notes were at one time in the hands of a Brother Lawrence and a Brother Sebastian, for example. Then there is a drawing that seems to be a portal with, I believe, a stairway to Heaven beyond it (Figure 3.5). This is suggested by the poem in what seems to be the same ink below it: “Nadie pase por este portal / Sin que diga por su vida / Maria ser Consebida / Sin peccado Original” (No one may pass through this Portal / Unless they say on their life / That Mary was conceived / without original sin).43 This is another reminder of the raging controversy concerning the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in eighteenth-century Mallorca, and it is no accident that it appears on the title page of classroom notes of a course on Duns Scotus: Scotus (and the Franciscans) were among the earliest and certainly staunchest defenders of this doctrine in the Western Catholic Church.

figure 3.5. Title page of Compendium Scoticum (“San Felipe Neri de Palma de Mallorca,” #68900, fol. Ar). Photo by John Dagenais.

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There is not space here to examine all the interesting features of Noguera’s notebook in detail. I can only mention a few places that allow a glimpse of the personalities of both Serra and Noguera. The first is a very interesting place in which Serra’s native Mallorcan language inserts itself into the tangle of Latin prose. It is the only place in these three manuscript books (more than two thousand pages in total) in which I have so far found Serra using the vernacular. He is talking to his students about signs here and about whether there is such a thing as a “natural sign,” a sign that one understands without having to learn the conventions of a visual or verbal language. In the course of explaining this, Serra cites what he calls “a vernacular proverb”: “infant y ca naturalment conex, qui be ly fá” (the infant and the dog know automatically, “naturally,” who their principle benefactors are, who it is who does them good).44 This reveals an unusually folksy Serra, eager to connect with his native Mallorcan students, including, we must remember, Joan Crespí and Francisco Palou. Are there natural signs that allow for nonverbal communication of benevolent disposition? This will certainly be a crucial question for Serra as he encounters people whose language he does not know but to whom he needs to communicate—and rather quickly—his benevolent intent. Another intimate glimpse of Serra’s classroom is a tree drawn by student and note taker Francesc Noguera (Figure 3.6). It represents the chain of being, descending from ens (i.e., being) through substance, form, and life, animate life to Man. This tree is one of the small delights of this sober and rather dull set of lectures on scholastic philosophy. Noguera, the apparently sedulous and serious disciple, reveals a different side of himself in the lowest branches of the tree, moving from Man as a general category to its manifestation in an individual human being. The concrete example of a Man in Noguera’s tree is not Socrates but “Franciscus . . . Petrus . . . Noguera,” who signs proudly that he drew this tree and perhaps draws himself in the elegant student in top hat and tails sitting in the lowest branches.45 We are fortunate to have a page (and a few citations) preserved from a set of notes for this same series of lectures, taken by another student in the class with Noguera who is still unidentified by name.46 Having a second witness to these class notes, however fragmentary, helps us to understand a bit better how they came into being. In the sections I have been able to compare both sets are identical, nearly word for word. It seems likely, then, that students copied their personal class notes from a standardized set of notes made available by their professor. Thus, the notes themselves are unlikely to reflect much of the individual student’s personality, and this goes for Serra’s own notes as a student as well.47 We have seen, certainly in the case of Noguera, that individual traces can emerge in less controlled spaces such as drawings, though we should not rule out the possibility that making a tree descending from ens to oneself was a part of the standard academic exercise, just as creating a rotating model of the heavens seems to have been. It is not clear how the professor’s exemplar for copying was prepared. Perhaps one or more students in the class

figure 3.6. Noguera tree (“San Felipe Neri de Palma de Mallorca,” #68900, fol. 30r). Photo by John Dagenais.

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took quick notes that were then approved for recopying into a fair copy that was then circulated among students. This would be a system similar to the medieval system of reportatio. This is certainly a time-honored Franciscan tradition, and much of Duns Scotus’s thought is known precisely through such reportationes, such as the Reportatio parisiensis. This is also the scenario suggested by Noguera’s introduction cited above in which both he and Serra seem to have taken part in preparing the notes. Alternatively, the professor himself may have made an exemplar for the “notes” for his class, which were then circulated for copying among students. Six years after his three-year course of lectures on Scotus ended in 1743, Serra set out on his missionary career, in 1749. This moment too is recorded on the important title page of Noguera’s Compendium, suggesting the continuing importance of this class and these notes, at least in the heart of Noguera. At the bottom is the heartrending account by Noguera of his farewell to his teacher Serra and to his classmate Francisco Palou. This text is no doubt familiar to most students of Serra and is much quoted, but I believe it is worthwhile to see it again in its original context among the class notes of Serra and of his own students and to try to imagine Serra and his three students, Francisco Palou, Joan Crespí, and Francesc Noguera, all as young men who had little idea of what the future held for them: Dia 13 Abril de 1749 se partiran para Mexico ahont hauran de exercitar lo offici de missionistas para reducir infaels a nostre fe Catholica, y Santa, al M.R.P. Fr Junipero Serre Lector de Philosophia, y al present Cathedratich de prima de Theologia, y al molt R.P. Fr. Francesch Palou, lector de Philosophia, y dexeble del sobre dit lector, este natural de Ciutat y al primer natural de la vila de Petra. de la orde de N.S.P. S. Francesch; anime eorum in pace requiescant. Amen. perque no pens tornarlos veurer. Notat per mi Francesch Noguera Subdiaca dexeble de Philosophia, y Theologia del primer y condexeble de lo altre; et amicus alter ego illorum.48 On the 13th Day of April, 1749, there left for Mexico where they will carry out the duties as missionaries to bring unbelievers to our Holy and Catholic Faith, Master Reverend Father Brother Junipero Serra, Reader in Philosophy and presently morning Professor of Theology and the very Reverend Father Brother Francesc Palou, Reader in Philosophy and disciple of the aforementioned Reader, the latter born in the city of Palma and the former in the town of Petra, both of the Order of Our Holy Father Saint Francis, may their souls rest in peace. Amen. Because I don’t think I will ever see them again. Written by me, Francesc Noguera, subdeacon, Student in Philosophy and Theology of the first [i.e., Serra] and fellow student with the other [i.e., Palou]. And friend to them both. April 13, 1749.

In many ways, it seems that Serra wished to make a clean break with Mallorca and, perhaps, especially with the life he had led in the Convent of St. Francis in Palma and in the Lullian University. He carefully keeps his plans to leave Mallorca a secret.49 He waits until he is in Cádiz, waiting to board a ship for Veracruz, before he writes a farewell letter in his native Mallorcan addressed to his cousin Francesc

Junípero Serra ’ s Mallorcan Class Notes

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Serra asking him to explain his missionary calling to his family and bid them farewell for him.50 How much of his years in Mallorca did Serra take with him, and how much did he leave behind? This examination of Serra’s class notes offers us a chance, first of all, to add detail to the chronology of Serra’s life in that we can at least now say what he was studying in any given month and day of these years and, often, with whom he was studying it. Second, a fuller study than the one I can offer at present promises to help us understand Serra’s intellectual background, his modes of thought, and his mental furniture, as it were, as he set out on his missionary journeys.51 We will have a deeper understanding of the ways in which Serra dealt with the physical, spiritual, and political challenges in the New World when we understand the intellectual processes and the worldview he learned and taught in the classroom in Mallorca.52 A P P E N D I X : SE R R A C H R O N O L O G Y

The appendix that follows provides the essential information on the general outlines of Serra’s student and teacher days as revealed in the three manuscripts under discussion here. This appendix is based on a detailed examination of the two manuscripts in the Biblioteca Pública in Palma (Serra’s student notes from the three academic terms of 1731–1734) in digital format. I have consulted the Sant Felip Neri manuscript in person. Information on that manuscript contained in the appendix is based on this examination, on notes taken in Sant Felip Neri, and on a series of photos of selected pages that I was graciously permitted to take. I have also taken material from the physical examination of the second manuscript copy of notes taken in the class taught by Serra from the description by Font and referenced this in this appendix as “Costa Ms.”53 The most important difference between this appendix and a simple listing of the manuscripts’ contents such as that found in Font and in García and Marsá is that the texts copied are here arranged chronologically, not in the order in which they are currently found bound together in these manuscripts. The dates used to establish this chronology are taken from the introductory “incipits” (dedications), which state the date that a particular class began, or from the “explicits” (colophons), which commonly appear at the close of a course. Sometimes, especially in the case of longer courses stretching over many months or an entire academic year, there are “internal” incipits or, most often, explicits that give the ending date for a particular section of the course. In the case of a series of such explicits, as in 882.3, one can assume that the starting date for the next section of the class was the same date as the ending of the previous section or shortly thereafter: these internal transitions generally end and start on the same page. The appendix is organized as follows:

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Academic year. The dates of the academic year, generally running from early September to late June, for the classes/notes listed in the series of classes that follow. Class start date and class end date. The beginning and ending dates for each class as found in incipts, titles, prologues, or colophons. When I have not been able to locate a beginning or ending date in the manuscript, an em dash after a date means a beginning date, and an em dash before a date means that it is the concluding date for the class. Degree of Serra’s involvement. In each entry, after the dates for each course I provide a quick indication of my degree of certainty that a given set of notes was transcribed by Serra himself. Those marked *** are the most easy to establish as Serra’s work: they include Serra’s name and ascribe the copying of the text to him, for example, “Fideliter Scribente F. Iunipero Serre” (in scroll around colophon, Treatises, fol. 241r, 76.5). A second level of certainly is indicated by **. These are cases in which the name of the Blessed Brother Juniper, disciple of Saint Francis, whose name Josep Miquel Serra took on September 15, 1731, is mentioned in an incipit or colophon along with the usual list of Franciscan saints generally included in these, a list familiar to anyone who has followed Serra’s subsequent career in Mexico and the Californias: the Virgin Mary and her Immaculate Conception, Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Bernardino of Siena, and, of course, John Duns Scotus. My logic is that Serra himself would have been the most likely person to mention the disciple of Saint Francis whose name he took. There are a few cases in which both the remembrance of “the Blessed Junipero” and “Junípero Serra” are included and tend to confirm this logic. The incipits and colophons also seem to me to be in a hand very similar to those that attribute the copying to Serra explicitly. I have assigned * to those texts that bear neither name but whose handwriting, habits of layout, etc., are similar enough to those of texts that bear Serra’s name explicitly that I am reasonably certain they are copied by Serra. In most of these cases, the style of the dedications and explicits themselves is also quite similar to those found in more surely identifiable texts: they mention the same list of saints and follow the same general order in presenting information on the title of the class and the dates of its inception or completion. In one case I have awarded a [*] to a text. This is 76.6, one of three texts found among the Treatises whose dates fall well outside the dates in which Serra was a student. In fact, two of them actually antedate his birth! But in the case of 76.6, a Tractatus de peccatis et vitiis, the final page seems to me to have been added by Serra himself, in his own hand and style.

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These three texts, which I will call extravagantes because they wander outside the established chronology of Serra’s student and teaching years according to the dates found in their incipits and/or colophons, all appear in Ms. 76. They are written in a hand or hands quite different from Serra’s, a hand or hands far more cursive in style and far less heavy in their use of common Latin abbreviations. Nevertheless, I believe that they were read and used by Serra, because he seems to have supplied a missing final page for one of these treatises in his own hand, as just noted. A list of contents that appears on the initial leaves of Ms. 76 provides additional evidence to support the idea that these texts reflect a part of Serra’s studies, along with the other texts found in Ms. 76 more appropriately dated to Serra’s study years and bearing, in many cases, clear signs of his direct involvement in their copying. The list, on folio 2r, is as follows: De Deo Vno De Deo Trino De gratia habitualis De Angelis De Peccatis De conscientia De ordine De matrimonio As can be seen from this list, treatises from both the group most easily identified with Serra and the extravagantes (the Tractatus de Peccatis et Vitiis, the Tractatus de Divinissimo Trinitatis Archano and the Tractatus de Ordine) are found listed together here. This list is in an eighteenth-century hand, quite similar to Serra’s, which leads me to believe that these texts, whatever the date they bear, were bound together, perhaps by Serra himself, already in the eighteenth century. In any case, either the dates found in the extravagantes are the dates of the original courses in original copies, or the dates were copied along with the texts in subsequent copies of these texts over several decades. The identification of the teachers/authors of two of these texts, De Peccatis and De Deo Trino (that is, De Divinissimo Trinitatis Archano) as Michaelis Coll and Josephus Carbonell, respectively, might help to clarify the dating. I have not been able to do so with the resources available to me at present. Coll taught his course at the Lullian University, not in the Convent of St. Francis. Carbonell taught his course in the Convent of “Sancta Maria de Nazarethi.” It is also possible that the extravagantes treatises were acquired by Serra not during his years as student at St. Francis but instead during his years at the Lullian University leading up to his doctorate in 1742. Title of course/notes. In creating the short titles for the classes/notes, I have sought to reflect the original spelling, which may be Serra’s own, but have capitalized according to modern style for citing Latin titles in English texts.

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The “titles” of these courses and their notes are more descriptions than actual titles and are sometimes quite lengthy. It should be noted than in almost every case, the original descriptive title specified that the course was taught: “iuxta mentem/viam/doctrinam/methodum Johannis Dunz Scoti [according to the thought/way/teaching/method of John Duns Scotus]”. Professor. Following the course title, I supply the name of the professor, when it is mentioned, in the Latin form given in the manuscript. The last name of Serra’s most frequent teacher during these years, Bernardinus Castayó, may be found in other sources written “Castelló.”54 These two forms are phonetically identical in the Mallorcan variety of Catalan. García and Marsá transcribed “Castayo” without the accent mark, but it seems to me that Serra, or whoever copied these treatises, nearly always placed an accent over the final “o.” Serra references. In each entry, following these schematic indications of Serra’s degree of involvement I cite the evidence used to arrive at these conclusions: the text of signatures, colophons, etc. These are where we come in closest contact with Serra the student and teacher. Current order in manuscript. The following column contains the numbers I have assigned to each section of the manuscripts. The first number is the number of the particular manuscript in its collection. The second is the physical as opposed to the chronological order of the text within the manuscript, given as the manuscript number followed by the number of its order in the manuscript. It will be noted that the order of the texts in the manuscript books as presently bound does not always correspond to the chronological order in which Serra took the classes that they represent. The purpose of this appendix, as its title indicates, is, I emphasize, to establish the chronology of Serra’s years as student and professor as they are evidenced in these manuscript books, so I have given second place here to the physical order of the texts in the bound manuscripts. In the case of texts with multiple dated sections, there appears a third number or letter. The letter “P” in this position stands for “Prologus,” “Praefatio,” or “Proemium,” according to the case. “V” appears in Ms. 68900 where Serra offers a farewell “Vale” to his students. “T” refers to the title page of the Compendium Scoticum. Folios. Finally, I give the inclusive folio numbers for each treatise or section of treatise found in the manuscript. These numbers may differ from those given by Font and by García and Marsá. I have used the numbers indicated by the Adobe Acrobat program in counting the folios in the digital (pdf) copies of these manuscripts. This should be reasonably reliable, but it is always possible that a single folio (especially if it is a blank one) was photographed twice or that some folios were skipped in the process of

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photography, so this count may also be off. My foliation refers only to pages with text for the inclusive folios of each class. Folios need to be recounted in the physical manuscripts in order to arrive at a definitive foliation of these texts, and a full collation needs to be made in order to determine, among other things, which blank folios belong to which treatises. Part I: Serra’s Student Notes Biblioteca Pública, Ms. 882 1731–1732 1. 9/10/1731–12/18/1731: *** Brevis in Sumularum Aristotelis Dialecticam Introductio [with dedicatory prayer to Virgin on leaf 1r], Bernardinus Castayó. “Ad usum Fratris Juniperi Serre eiusque manu scriptus” [Flanking Incipit; 2r]; “ad honorem . . . D. Bernardini Seninsis mei ex corde specialissimi patroni” [colophon]; “Fideliter Scribente Fe. Junipero Serre Ord. Min.” [in scroll at end of colophon, with shield of five wounds and Franciscan escutcheon; 45r], 882.1, ff. 2r–45r. 2. 1/2[?]/1732–: ** Tractatus Racionalis Philosophiae, Bernardinus Castayó. 882.2.P, ff. 48r-75r.55 “ad laudem . . . V[enerablis ?] Fratris Juniperi mei ex corde patroni” [in colophon; 75r]. 2.2. –6/23/1732: *** [Tractatus Racionalis Philosophiae], Pars 2a. De Ente Rationis, Bernardinus Castayó. “in honorem . . . Divi Bernardini Senensis mei assignati patroni . . . acque illius humilitatis simplicitatis virtutumque omnium exemplaris Venerabilis[?] inquam Frat[r]is Juniperi mei scribentis dilectissimi patroni” [in colophon; 111v]; “in honorem . . . Joannis Baptistae cuius festivitatem provenimus celebrandam” [111v], 882.2.2, ff. 75v–111v. 2.3. –7/2/1732: [Tractatus Racionalis Philosophiae], Pars 3a. De Enuntiatione seu Propositione, Bernardinus Castayó. “ad laudem . . . purissimae virginis Mariae cuius festivitatem visitationis suae hodie celebramus” [115v], 882.2.3, ff. 112r–115v. 2.4. –7/23/1732: *** [Tractatus Racionalis Philosophiae], Pars 4a. et Vltima, De sylogismo in Communi, Bernardinus Castayó. “. . . in honorem . . . Fr[atris] Juniperi cuius nomine sigillatus exulto . . .” [in text of colophon; 121v]: 882.2.4, ff. 116r–121v.56 1732–1733 3. 9/9/1732–9/15/1732: * Breve in Octo Libros Phisicorum Commentum Aristotelis [Proemium], Bernardinus Castayó. 882.3.Prologue, ff. 127r–131r. 3.1. –12/16/1732: Liber Primus Phisicorum, Bernardinus Castayó. 882.3.1, ff. 131r–174r. 3.2. –3/24/1733: Liber Secundus Physicorum, Bernardinus Castayó. “in laudem . . . causa . . . causatricis causae, cuius mysterium Anunciacionis praevenimus celebrandum” [211r], 882.3.2, ff. 174r–211r.

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3.3. –4/24[?]/1733: Liber Tertius Physicorum, Bernardinus Castayó. 882.3.3, ff. 211r–219r. 3.4. No date: Liber Quartus Physicorum, Bernardinus Castayó [text incomplete]. 882.3.4, ff. 219r–220v [incomplete]. 1733–1734 4. 9/9/1733–9/19[?]/1733: * Brevis tractatus Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Libros Continens, “Proemium,” Bernardinus Castayó. [Title in style of 882.1; with shield of five wounds and Franciscan escutcheon], 882.7.P, ff. 262r–266r. 4.2. –11/10/1733: Distinctio 2a. De Natura Entis, Bernardinus Castayó. 882.7, ff. 266r–296r. 5. No date: * Brevis Tractatus in Librum Categoriarum, seu predicamentorum Aristotelis. 882.8.1, f. 297r–300r. 5.2. –11/27/1733: Pars 2.a De Predicamentis. ff. 300v–311r. 5.3. –11/27/1733: Pars 3.a De Postpredicamentis. [ref. to Feast of All Franciscan Saints?; 312r], 882.8.3, ff. 311v–312r. 6. 11/27/1733–12/11/1733: ** Tractatus Vtilissimus in Libros Aristotelis de Anima, Preludium & Liber Primus. 882.4.P&1, ff. 226r–233v. 6.2. –12/15/1733: * Liber Secundus de Anima. 882.4.2, ff. 234r–236v. 6.3. –1/15/1734: ** Liber Tertius de Anima. “in laudem . . . sanctae simplicitatis speculi Fratris Juniperi” [in colophon; 244v], 882.4.3, ff. 236v–244v. 7. 1/15/1734–3/15/1734: * Brevis Explicatio in Libros de Coelo et Mundo. 882.6, ff. 254r–260v. 8. –3/22/1734: * Tractatus Brevissimus de Elementis. 882.5, ff. 249r–251r. Biblioteca Pública, Ms. 76 1734–1735 9. 9/9/1734–6/23/1735: *** Tractatus Theologicus de Gratia Habituali, Petrus Vaquer. “Fideliter Scribente F. Iunipero Serre.” [in scroll around colophon; 241r], 76.5, ff. 198r–241r. 10. 9/9/1734: * Tractatus Theologicus de Sacramento Matrimonii, Bonaventura Amorós. 76.9, ff. 369r–421v (incomplete). 1735–1736 11. 9/9/1735–: *** Tractatus Theologicus de Dei Natura [=pt. 1], Petrus Vaquer. “Hic liber est ad simplicem Vsum Fratris Iuniperi Serre Minoritae” [written across bottom of ‘incipit’; 3r], 76.1, ff. 3r–18v. 12. 12/6/1735–6/23/1736: *** Tractatus De Deo Vno [= pt. 2], Bernardinus Castayó. [is continuation of preceding text], 76.2, ff. 19r–40v. 13. 9/9/1735–11/21/1735: *** Tractatus Practicus de Conscientia, Bonaventura Amorós. “Scribente Fratre Iunipero Serre” [in scroll below colophon; 355v], 76.7, ff. 342r–355v.57

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1736–1737 14. 9/10/1736–6/22/1737: *** Tractatus Theologicus de Angelis B. Raymundi tramitem insequendo, Joannes Pol. “Scribente fideliter Fratre Junipero Serre hodie studiis finem dante” [written beneath colophon, followed by flourish; 195v], 76.4, ff. 157r–195r. Texts bound in Ms. 76 bearing dates outside Serra’s time as student, with at least one of them perhaps used by him: 15. 9/10/1703–6/23/1704: [*] Tractatus de Peccatis et Vitiis, Michaelis Coll. 76.6, ff. 245r–339r. 16. 10/19[?]/1711–6/23/1712: Tractatus de Divinissimo Trinitatis Archano, Josephus Carbonell. 76.3, ff. 44r–152r. 17. –6/24/1718: Tractatus de Ordine. 76.8, ff. 357r–365r. Part II: Noguera’s Notes for Classes Taught by Serra Sant Felip Neri, #68900 1740–1741 Title page. 9/9/1740: “Compendium Scoticum elaboratum tamquam ab auctore . . . Patre Fratre Iunipero serra, et tamquam ab scriptore . . . Francisco Noguera studente in conventu Seraphici Patris Nostri sancti Francisci ab Assissio” [Ar], 68900.T, fol. Ar. 1. 9/9/1740–12/16/1740: Brevis in Sumularum Aristotelis Stagirite Dialecticas Institutiones Elusidatio. “auctore P. F. Junipero Serra . . . philosophiae lectore” [incipit; 1r]; “in honorem . . . dilectissimi socii [of Saint Francis] Beati Juniperi” [in colophon; 48v]; “est Francisci Noguera” [follows colophon; 48v], 68900.1, ff. 1r–48v. 2. 1/9/1741 [=Costa Ms.]–3/24/1741: Brevis in Logicam Aristotelis . . . Elusidatio [=Costa Ms., incomplete at end]. “acutore P. F. Junipero Serra” [incipit; 9v]; “Scripta ab auditore Francisco Noguera” [colophon; 79v], 68900.2.1, ff. 49r–79v. 2.1. –6/13/1741: Pars 1a de Proemialibus Logicae. “in honorem . . . dignissimi illustrissimique socii Beati Juniperi Sancte . . . simpilicitatis exemplaris maximo”; “Frater Juniperus Serra Or. Mi.” [colophon; 133v], 68900.2.2, ff. 80r–133v. 1741–1742 3 (“Prohemium”) 9/9/1741–9/20/1741: Brevis in 8 Phisicorum Aristotelis Libros . . . Elusidatio, “Prohemium.” “autore P. F. Junipero Serre” [incipit; 135v], 68900.3.P, ff. 135r–135v. 3.1. –2/9/1742 [=Costa M’s.]: Liber primus physicorum [=Costa Ms., incomplete at beginning], 68900.3.1, ff. 135v–203r. 3.2. –5/12/1742 [=Costa Ms.]: Liber Secundus Physicorum [=Costa Ms.]. “Noguera” [explicit; 259r], 68900.3.2, ff. 204r–259r. 3.3. –5/29/1742 [=Costa Ms.]: Liber 3us Physicorm [=Costa Ms.]. “Noguera” [explicit; 270r], 68900.3.3, ff. 260r–270r.

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3.4. –6/2/1742 [=Costa Ms.]: Liber 4us Physicorum [=Costa Ms.]. “Noguera” [explicit; 283r], 68900.3.4, ff. 270r–283r. 3.5. –6/12/1742: Liber 5us Physicorum [=Costa Ms.; minus 1 fol.]. “Noguera” [explicit; 284v], 68900.3.5, ff. 283r–284v. 3.6. –6/21/1742 [Costa Ms. = 6/22]: Liber 6us Physicorum [=Costa Ms.]. “Noguera” [explicit; 291v], 68900.3.6, ff. 284v–291v. 3.7. –6/22/1742: Liber 7us Physicorum [=Costa Ms. ?]. “Noguera” [explicit; 293v], 68900.3.7, ff. 291v–293r. 3.8. –6/23/1742: Liber 8us Physicorum [=Costa Ms.]. “F[rances]ch Noguera” [explicit; 294v]; “P. F. Iuniperus Serra Or. Min.” [across bottom of page; 294v], 68900.3.8, ff. 293r–294v. 4. 6/26/1742–4/3/1743 [sic]: Brevis in Physicos Aristotelis Libros de Celo et Mundo Elusidatio [=Costa Ms., incomplete at end]. “auctore Patre F. Junipero Serra” [incipit; 295r]; “Scripta ab auditore Francisco Noguera” [explicit; 309r], 68900.4, ff. 295r–309r. 1742–1743 5. 9/10/1742 [=Costa Ms.] –9/20/1742: Brevis in Metafisicam Aristotelis Libros . . . Elusidatio, “Prefatio” [=Costa Ms.]. “auctore Patre Fratre juni [sic] Junipero Serra O. M.” [incipit; 316r], 68900.5.P, ff. 310r–316r. 5. –12/7/1742: Brevis in Metafisicam Aristotelis Dificultatum Libros . . . Elusidatio. “in laudem . . . dilectisimi socii Beati Juniperi” [explicit; 357r]; “Noguera” [scrolling explicit; 357r], 68900.5, ff. 316r–357r. 6. 1/22/1743–: Concise super Aristotelis Cathegoriarum seu Predicamentorum Librum [=unidentified fragment in Costa Ms.?]. “a P. Fratre Junipero Serra” [incipit; 358r]; “Ultimum vale” [explicit; incomplete?; 379v], 68900.6, ff. 358r–379v.58 7. 3/27/1743–4/30/1743: Brevis in Aristotelis de Anima Physicos Libros . . . Elucidasio [=Costa Ms., fols. missing]. “auctore P. F. Junipero Serra” [incipit; 381r]; “sit honor . . . dilectisimo socio meo Beato Junipero . . . Franciscus Noguera” [explicit; 400v], 68900.7, ff. 381r–400v. Ultimum vale. 6/23/1743: “Vltimum Vale.” “Pater Juniperus Serra” [401r], 68900.UV, fol. 401r. Index. Post 6/23/1743: Index Omnium Questionum. 68900.Index, ff. [401v]– [403r]. NOTES 1. Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, trans. Antonine Tibesar, 4 vols. (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955–1966), 1:1–9. This document is the letter of farewell he sends to Father Francesc Serra asking him to bid farewell to his parents, family, colleagues, and friends. Tibesar stresses that even his four-volume collection “must represent only a fraction of those [letters?] which came from his hand during his adult life” (1:xv). Note the focus of interest on Serra’s adulthood.

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What Cassanyes and Ramis have to say about the impact of Serra’s fame on our appreciation of other Mallorcan Franciscan intellectual figures might easily be applied to Serra himself: “es que Fr. Junípero fue un exponente de la cultura franciscana de su época, al igual que muchos de sus correligionarios. Frente a la figura notoria del evangelizador de California, sus maestros y compañeros han quedado reducidos a una oscuridad que no hace completa justicia a su labor intelectual.” Albert Cassanyes-Roig and Rafael Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 107 (2014): 438. The famous figure of the California missionary has also tended to obscure Serra’s own intellectual achievements in Mallorca. 2. We might add yet another three hundred pages to this last figure if we take into account another copy of these lecture notes, last noted as being in the possession of Dr. José Costa Ferrer in 1969, where their contents are described. Bartomeu Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” Boletín de la Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana 33 (1969): 125, 127–28. See also Samuel d’Algaida, “Documents per a la història de la filosofia catalana,” Criterion 34 (October–December 1933): 327, 330. Amore, writing in 1981, states that its present location is unknown. [Agostino Amore], Catholic Church, Diocese of Monterey-Fresno (Calif.), and Catholic Church, Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum: Officium Historicum; Beatificationis et Canonizationis Servi Dei Iuniperi Serra, Sacerdotis Professi O.F.M. (1784); Positio Super Vita et Virtutibus ex Officio Concinnata ([Vatican City]: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1981), 16n55. In these pages I refer to this as the “Costa Ms.” after its last recorded owner. 3. Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca,” is the most detailed and useful study to date of both the intellectual background of Serra’s studies and their content. 4. We can also add that simply learning to read and speak Latin and learning how to write it in the clear and evenly ruled pages evident in these manuscripts was a time-consuming apprenticeship in itself. 5. Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, 4:376–77. 6. Francisco Palou, La Vida de Junípero Serra [Relación Histórica de la Vida y Apostólicas Tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra . . .]. (1787; reprint, New York: Readex Microprint, 1966), 1–13; Maynard J. Geiger, “Junipero Serra Collection: Calendar of Documents in the Santa Bárbara MissionArchive Junípero Serra Collection,” Santa Barbara Mission Archive and Library, 2009, http://sbmal.org /docs/catalog/SBMAL-Serra_Collection.pdf; Maynard J. Geiger, “The Scholastic Career and Preaching Apostolate of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M., S.T.D. (1730–1749)” The Americas 4 (1947): 65–82; Maynard J. Geiger, “Junípero Serra, O.F.M., in the Light of Chronology and Geography (1713–1784)” The Americas 6 (1950): 290–333; Amore, Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum, 1–45; Bartomeu Font Obrador, Juníper Serra: L’empremta mallorquina a la Califòrnia naixent (Palma: Ajuntament de Palma de Mallorca, 1988); Bartomeu Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” Boletín de la Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana 33 (1969): 121–29; Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 3–60; Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca.” 7. Amore, Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum, 30. 8. No record of the date for this event survives. See Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca,” 94, and the sources cited there. 9. Palma de Mallorca, Biblioteca Pública y del Estado, Ms. 76 (18th C.) and Ms. 882 (1731–1734). 10. Ibid. 11. The role of “auditor” can mean simply “pupil” or “disciple” but can also emphasize that one listens to and transcribes what is said. This role is perhaps indicated by the full mention on 79v: “scriptus ab auditore Francisco Noguera.” See below for some ideas on the process by which these notes were prepared. 12. In Serra’s student notebooks in particular, a number of blank pages are found between the notes for each class. This suggests that the notes for each class were originally separate pamphlets that used

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these extra blank sheets as covers for the notes and as extra space for writing. This observation can only be confirmed by a full collation of these manuscripts. Noguera’s lecture notes generally lack such multiple intervening pages, suggesting that these notes were created as part of a single project, perhaps intended to serve as an exemplar for other students to copy (see note 21 below), as may be the case of the Costa manuscript described by Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 125–27, and d’Algaida, “Documents per a la història de la filosofia catalana,” 34.327 and 330. 13. Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca,” 428. 14. These manuscripts have been described previously by Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 125–27, who remains the only scholar to have described all four manuscripts de visu, by d’Algaida and by Jesús García Pastor and María Marsá, Inventario de Manuscritos de la Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Mallorca (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección General del Libro y Bibliotecas, Centro de Coordinación Bibliotecaria, 1989), 17, 121. There will be a number of differences among my foliation, Font Obrador’s (“El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 125–27), and García and Marsá’s and some dating and spelling differences as well. For reasons of space, I do not note these differences in this chapter. Only a full and careful examination of these manuscripts de visu will be able to resolve these generally minor differences. 15. The manuscript is unbound, written on paper, 210 x 150 mm (Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 126; García and Marsá, Inventario de Manuscritos de la Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Mallorca, 121). 16. On the spine: “Materiae Theolog.” Paper, 205 x 150 mm. (Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 127; García and Marsá, Inventario de Manuscritos de la Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Mallorca, 17). On Serra’s teachers, see Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca,” 436–40. 17. On spine: “Juniperus Serre Cursus Phil.”; parchment cover; 211 x 160 mm. (Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 128–29). 18. I wish acknowledge here my deepest gratitude to the late Father Marc Vallori, who permitted me to examine and photograph portions of this manuscript in 2008. I also wish to thank Antonio Cañellas Borrás, C.O., of the Parròquia de Sant Pau in Palma for permission to reproduce images from the Sant Felip Neri manuscript and María de Lluc Alemany Mir, Director of the Biblioteca Pública del Estado in Palma, for permissions to reproduce images from the manuscripts in this library. Final thanks to Catalina Font, Patrona-Secretaria of the Fundació Casa Serra, for her assistance in securing permissions and in other aspects of the research for this chapter. 19. A review of some other aspects of Serra’s early life—his study, preaching, and teaching relating to Ramon Llull—are found in John Dagenais, “A Lullist in the New World: Junípero Serra.” In A Companion to Ramon Llull and Lullism, ed. Amy M. Austin and Mark D. Johnston (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2018), in press. For important information on and insights into these matters, especially relating to Serra’s Lullism, see Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca.” 20. Summaries, 882.1, fol. 2r. References in this form throughout refer both to the list found in the appendix to this chapter (e.g., 882.2) and to the physical manuscript book (e.g., fol. 1r). 21. We still need to understand how these notes were actually created. It seems unlikely that the copies we have are the actual notes taken in the classroom: they are too neat and too carefully laid out. More likely, professors circulated their own notes for copying by students, though the organization and administration of such multiple acts of copying remain unclear. We see that in the case of the Compendium Scoticum, Francesc Noguera identifies himself as the copyist but is at pains to indicate that Serra is the “auctor.” The description of these notes on 68900, fol. Ar, suggests that Serra himself reviewed the notes before the final copy was made. 22. Summaries, 882.1, fol. 45r; Summaries, 882.2.2, fol. 111v.

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23. For Serra’s relationship with the Convent of St. Bernardino in Petra, see Hackel, Junípero Serra, 21–25, and Steven W. Hackel, “The Competing Legacies of Junípero Serra,” Common-Place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life 5, no. 2 (2005), http://www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-02/hackel /index.shtml. See also Salustiano Vicedo, Convento de San Bernardino de Sena: La escuela del Beato Junípero Serra (Petra: n.p., 1991). 24. Summaries, 882.2.P, fol. 75r. 25. Ibid., 882.2.2, fol. 111v. 26. Ibid., 882.2.4, fol. 121v. 27. On John the Baptist, see note 55 below. 28. Summaries, 882.2.4, fol. 121v. 29. Treatises, 76.4, fol. 195r. A part of this exhaustion may be due to the fact that the academic year seems to have extended one month past the traditional end day of June 23 (St. John’s Eve). 30. I am presently working on an edition of this text in which these two major figures of Mallorcan missions intersect. 31. The following discussion is based on the assumption that is was Serra himself who, in addition to copying the text, supplied the graphic elements found in these notes. This seems to me the most likely scenario, but certainly it is not the only possible one. 32. Summaries, 882.2.3, fol. 115v. I wish to thank Steven Hackel for bringing this square to my attention and for helping me to identify the figures found in it. On the square of opposition in general, see Terence Parsons, “The Traditional Square of Opposition,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/square/. This square was such an important tool of scholastic education that bound in the Sant Felip Neri manuscript containing Noguera’s notes from Serra’s classes are at least two printed pages containing blank squares of opposition for use by students wishing to try out various propositions. That such blank squares were actually printed up for schoolroom use shows both their popularity and their importance in education in Serra’s day. 33. An image of Scotus holding his pen aloft appears on the ceiling of the mission of La Purísima Concepción de Landa in the Sierra Gorda in Mexico, one of the five missions overseen by Serra. For a reproduction of this image, see Richard D. Perry, “Duns Scotus in Mexio,” Colonial Mexico, 2012, http:// www.colonial-mexico.com/West%20Mexico/duns%20scotus.html. A statue of Scotus also appears on the facade of this mission. For Scotus in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mexico, see Monique Gustín, El barroco en la Sierra Gorda: Misiones franciscanas en el Estado de Querétaro, Siglo XVIII (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antroplogía e Historia, 1969), 194–95. 34. See Anthony Bonner, ed. and trans., Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 10–18. 35. For an excellent introduction to Llull, see Bonner, Doctor Illuminatus. In the Serra manuscript it is clear that the circle bears the inscription “ILL D.” I think it may be possible to argue that the inscription is, in fact, “ILL[VMITS] D,” that is, “ILL[UMINATU]S DOCTOR.” The portion I give in brackets represents letters I read as having been written over when the bottom skirts of Llull’s robe were added later. Perhaps Serra had forgotten them in the first pass or someone else has supplied them. This question can perhaps be resolved through direct physical inspection of the manuscript. On the iconography of Llull, see Catalina Cantarellas Camps, “Sobre la iconografia de Ramon Llull,” in Fundació La Caixa, Ramon Llull: Història, Pensament i Llegenda, 109–16 (208–12, English text) (Palma de Mallorca: Fundació La Caixa and Obra Social, 2008), and Rosa Planas Ferrer, “La projecció de Llull,” in Fundació La Caixa, Ramon Llull: Història, Pensament i Llegenda, 97–106 (201–8, English text) (Palma de Mallorca: Fundació La Caixa and Obra Social, 2008). Llull’s illumination on Mount Randa is the frequent topic of paintings, statues, and engravings in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mallorca. See the images reproduced in Fundació La Caixa, Ramon Llull, 136, 139, 146–49, 155–57. It is significant, I believe, that one of the many engravings depicting Llull’s illumination is pasted into Noguera’s handwritten notes from his class taught by Serra. Llull is mentioned occasionally in the course of these notes

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when Serra compares Llull’s thought to that of Scotus and in colophons throughout both his student and professorial class notes. A similar painting of Llull’s illumination appears above the altar in Serra’s home church of the Convent of St. Bernardino in Petra in the chapel dedicated to Ramon Llull. It seems that this altar was completed by 1744, that is, before Serra left for Mexico. On the altar frontal of the same chapel is a simple painting of Llull as illuminated doctor very much in the same genre as Serra’s sketch (Vicedo, Convento de San Bernardino de Sena, 175–77). Llull appears together with Scotus as promoter of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the tympanum of the Collegi de la Sapiència in Palma in a relief sculpture dated c. 1770 (for the image, see Cantarellas Camps, “Sobre la iconografia de Ramon Llull,” 110). In her discussion of the mission of La Purísima Concepción de Landa in the Sierra Gorda, Gustín (El barroco en la Sierra Gorda, 195) observes that Scotus and Llull were often represented together defending the Immaculate Virgin in engravings produced in Serra’s century by the Mallorcan printer Guasp. 36. See Stephen Donovan, “St. Berard of Carbio,” New Advent: The Catholic Encyclopedia, http:// www.newadvent.org/cathen/02485b.htm. 37. Summaries, 882.1, fol. 36v. 38. Perhaps my favorite among the cruder Q-faces is the image of a broadly smiling man with what seems to be a red nose (Summaries, fol. 90r). 39. Summaries, 882.6, fol. 258v. 40. Compendium, 68900.4, fol. 306r. 41. Compendium, fol. Ar, 68900.T, Fig. 5. There is, as we have mentioned, another fragmentary set of notes to this same course, which we refer to as the “Costa Ms.” after the name of its last known owner. It coincides almost exactly in dates, order, and text to the extent that we can determine through comparison with the Compendium (Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 127–28). 42. I have not been able to determine the exact significance of the signs that precede Serra’s and Noguera’s names—ao and a’ respectively, but perhaps they refer to their respective roles as “auctor” and “auditor.” 43. Compendium, fol. Ar, 68900.T. 44. Compendium, fol. 19r, 68900.1. 45. Compendium, fol. 30r, 68900.1, Fig. 6. 46. The present location of this manuscript has not been established. It is described in detail by Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 127–28: parchment cover, name of Junípero Serra on spine, 218 x 154 mm, many missing folios. It is also available in one photograph and a brief transcribed passage (d’Algaida, “Documents per a la història de la filosofia catalana,” 34.327 and 330). I refer to this manuscript as the “Costa Ms.” and integrate some of the information from Font Obrador into the appendix at the close of this chapter. Amore (Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum, 16n55) considered this manuscript lost as of 1981. It includes another set of student notes from the course on Aristotelian/ Scotian logic and the first book of physics taught by Serra from January 9, 1741, to February 9, 1741. The dates correspond precisely with those found in the Sant Felip Neri manuscript (see appendix, 68900.2.1–68900.3.1). One hopes that this manuscript can be recovered. It would be especially interesting if it could be determined that these notes were made by Palou or by Crespí, students along with Noguera in this class. 47. The exception to this, as we have seen, is in the opening dedications and explicits for each course, where both Serra and Noguera mention their own names. In the case of Serra, we have the prologues to each of his courses, as recorded in the Noguera manuscript, and an ultimum vale (final farewell), where he speaks in a personal way to his students at the close of classes. The next stage of my project is to edit these passages. Geiger (“The Scholastic Career and Preaching Apostolate of Fray Junípero Serra,” 73–74) summarizes Serra’s ultimum vale for the close of class on June 23, 1743. 48. Compendium, fol. Ar, 68900.T. 49. Palou, La Vida de Junípero Serra, 6–13.

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50. This letter and another written to Francesc Serra are reproduced in Amore, Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum, 49–55. I wish to thank Fra Valentí Serra de Manresa for graciously permitting me to view the originals of these letters during my visit to the Arxiu Provincial dels Caputxins de Catalunya i Balears in 2012. 51. See the excellent beginnings for such a study by Cassanyes-Roig and Ramis-Barceló, “Fray Junípero Serra y la Universidad Luliana y Literaria de Mallorca.” 52. It is useful to remember that Serra’s life span corresponded almost exactly to that of Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713–July 31, 1784), the great French Enlightenment encyclopedist whose intellectual world seems as far removed from Serra’s scholastic training in Mallorca as does Diderot’s experience from those of Serra in the Americas. On the Enlightenment in Mallorca, see Tomás Carreras y Artau and Joaquín Carreras y Artau, Historia de la filosofía española: Filosofía cristiana de los siglos XIII al XV, 2 vols. (Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, 1939, 1943), 2.354–86; Miguel Ferrer Flórez, “Controversias y luchas entre lulistas y antilulistas en el siglo XVIII,” Memòries de la Real Acadèmia Mallorquina d’Estudis Genealògics, Heràldics i Històrics 16 (2006): 157–66; and Miguel Ferrer Flórez, “Culte a Ramon Llull: Discòrdies i controvèrsies. Studia Lulliana 41 (2001): 65–89. The enduring interest in the Mallorcan thirteenth–fourteenth-century philosopher Ramon Llull in north European centers such as Munich meant that already in early eighteenth-century Mallorca typical Enlightenment activities such as works of edition, biography, and bibliography relating to Llull took off. Interestingly, it is in the generation after Serra that a truly original Enlightenment figure emerges in Mallorca, Serra’s nephew Miquel de Petra. 53. See Font, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 125–27. 54. Amore, Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum, 13 and 23. 55. On this page, ink has bled through from the verso side, creating blots of ink that make it difficult to read the date and other portions of this dedication in the digital copies. Font Obrador, “El Padre Lector Junípero Serra,” 126, reads “1/7/1732.” 56. The date of July 23, 1732, for the close of this course presents several problems. This seems to be rather clearly the date written across the page below the colophon. This is already curious because, first, it would suggest that this course lasted a month longer than the traditional date for the end of the academic year on St. John’s Eve: June 23. Second, the colophon itself mentions Saint Bonaventure: “cuius festivitatem provenimus celebrandam” (whose feast we came to celebrate). This would place the date around July 14. Finally, after the name of Saint Bonaventure, the name of John the Baptist is written in the interlinear space, making the phrase “whose feast we came to celebrate” seem to refer to John the Baptist, not Saint Bonaventure. This would return us to the more traditional date of June 23. However, John the Baptist is already mentioned at the close of 882.2 (Ms. 882, fol. 111v) as the saint “cuius festivitatem provenimus celebrandam.” I have kept the date written clearly at the bottom of the page: July 23. This fits with the sequence of dates in these notes: June 23 (St. John’s Eve), July 2 (Feast of the Visitation), July 14 (Feast of St. Bonaventure). The reference to the Feast of St. Bonaventure would be a reference to a recent event, not referring to the day on which the course ended specifically. The interlinear reference to John the Baptist remains unexplained unless it was made in error or without regard to the possible confusions resulting from inserting it in that place or was a mistaken “correction” based on the tradition I have mentioned of ending the course on St. John’s Eve. 57. Note that Serra began two courses in the fall of 1735: our numbers 11 and 13. 58. The manuscript contains two distinct versions of the ultimum vale, this first one apparently incomplete.

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Mexico and California Serra as Missionary

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Junípero Serra’s Mission Muse Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda and Her Writings Anna M. Nogar

In 1771, upon selecting the site for the Mission San Antonio de Padua, Fray Junípero Serra had the church bells destined for the as yet unbuilt mission unloaded and hung from a nearby tree.1 Serra vigorously rang the bells, arousing the interest of the other friars who accompanied him. When one of Serra’s religious brothers, the mission’s future president Fray Miguel Pieras, chided him for this jubilant turn, Serra unabashedly replied, “Allow me, father, to express my heart’s will, which wishes that this bell be heard throughout the whole world, as the Venerable Mother Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda herself desired.”2 Caught up in the moment of establishing the Alta California mission, Serra compared his own labors not to those of his fellow Franciscan friars or to those of the missionaries who preceded him. Rather, Serra’s model was the evangelization carried out by a cloistered Spanish nun who was alleged to have spiritually traveled to New Mexico in the early seventeenth century: Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda. In the 1760s while preaching in the Sierra Gorda with Fray Miguel Campos, Serra trekked through the Mexican highlands wearing alpargatas (hemp-soled sandals) instead of the shoes he typically wore while in Mexico City at the Propaganda Fide college of San Fernando. He did this for specific reasons that again related to Sor María and her writing. According to Fray Francisco Palou’s biography of Serra: “[Serra commenced] the office of preaching in imitation of Jesus Christ and [Christ’s] hemp sandals, as we are told by the Venerable Madre María de Jesús de Ágreda in her Mystical City of God, part 2, book, 4 chapter 28, number 685.”3 The friar’s decision regarding the proper footwear during mission work derived directly from Sor María’s writing, specifically from her famed seventeenthcentury Marian treatise La mística ciudad de dios.4 This anecdote about the 69

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alpargatas appears as part of a longer episode in Palou’s Relación histórica . . . del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra in which Serra’s humility is traced back to other practices prescribed by Sor María in her writing on devotional activities, her doctrina. Palou says of Serra that “[t]his divine doctrine in this manner imprinted itself upon Serra’s heart . . . such that from that moment on, he set forth in his heart to imitate it, following the doctrine to the extent he could, putting it into practice.”5 Sor María’s reflections and recommendations, expressed in her writing, were deeply woven into Serra’s spiritual and intellectual formation, and the friar followed her precepts regarding how to pray, work, and dress to the proverbial letter. These are but two instances in Serra’s life in which what he carried out as a missionary and how he conceived of mission work generally drew on the idea of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda as a New Spanish protomissionary as well as an authority on mission work.6 Her writing, including La mística ciudad de dios and other texts on spiritual practices and mystical theology, outlined behaviors and beliefs to which Serra rigorously subscribed. Sor María served, as the title of this chapter suggests, as a muse to Serra in the field, influencing his real-life actions and beliefs throughout his time as a Franciscan mission friar. Serra’s zeal for Sor María was both personal in nature and the result of the active promotion of such devotions on the part of his order. This was no more acutely the case than at the Franciscan Colleges of Propaganda Fide in New Spain including Serra’s College of San Fernando, where missionaries were trained for the field. Serra’s personal devotion to Sor María began before his arrival in New Spain and, according to his biography, in fact influenced his decision to leave Spain for northern Mexico’s missions. Serra, like many other Franciscans of his day, was well acquainted with the precept of the Immaculate Conception: the belief that the Virgin Mary was conceived free from original sin. While teaching at the Convent of San Francisco in his native Mallorca, Serra presented an exhortation on the Immaculate Conception in his first formal lecture in 1740, a lesson that many of his students took to heart.7 For years the Franciscan order had taken the writings of thirteenth-century theologian Duns Soctus as its basis for the Immaculate Conception theology. The Franciscans promoted the Immaculist/Conceptionist view advanced by Scotus, namely that it was possible and appropriate that Mary would have been conceived without sin.8 The long-standing challengers to this perspective were the Dominicans, who assumed a Maculist perspective argued by Saint Thomas Aquinas; it pointed to theological contradictions of the Conceptionist line of reasoning. By the seventeenth century when Sor María penned La mística ciudad de dios and throughout the early eighteenth century as her work was debated, the theological question remained pressingly relevant, and many Franciscans read La mística ciudad de dios as a Conceptionist text due to the discussion of the Immaculate Conception in the text. Although Serra’s education on the topic was

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undoubtedly informed by Scotus and his apologists, La mística ciudad de Dios also shaped his understanding of the topic. By the time Serra took his vows, Spanish Franciscans had been promoting Sor María’s case for sainthood for over seventy years, primarily on the basis of the Conceptionist content of her writing.9 Among many other steps taken by the order—including seeking out the support of the Spanish Crown, lobbying Rome directly for Sor María’s beatification, and negotiating the examination of her works by Vatican officials—the order took its promotion of Sor María a step further. It established a press in Madrid that bore her name, La Imprenta de la Venerable Madre Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda. The press printed many editions of La mística ciudad de dios and of Sor María’s vita, or holy biography, over the course of several decades in the eighteenth century. These texts were read and distributed throughout Spain and its colonies. The funds collected from the sale of these and other books produced by the press were used to fund the nun’s beatification effort. That Sor María’s writing was well known and valued by Spanish (and later New Spanish) Franciscans should come as no surprise, given their efforts on her behalf. It is almost to be expected, then, that Serra’s familiarity with her as a spiritual writer predates his time at the College of San Fernando. According to Palou, Serra’s fundamental motivation for becoming a missionary was rooted in Sor María’s writing. Palou explains how Serra was called to the American mission field, claiming that Serra prayed for divine intervention in the decision about whether to embark and asked “If this calling were from God, that He touch the heart of another [Palou] who would accompany him in this far-flung voyage.”10 Palou goes on to say that being a missionary in the Americas is “a joy so great that, in the opinion of the Venerable Mother Ágreda, it is the envy of the faithful departed.”11 Serra and Palou believed that their call to Franciscan mission work was of particular spiritual importance based on Sor María’s writing to that effect. Palou and Serra’s source for this idea was a 1631 letter from Sor María that “the said Servant of God wrote to the missionaries of our Seraphic Order [the Franciscans] employed in the conversion of the Gentiles in the Custodia of New Mexico”12 and that as of the mid-eighteenth century had been printed in Mexico several times as the Tanto que se sacó de una carta.13 Palou goes on to say that he will reproduce this important letter in its entirety at the end of Serra’s biography “if I have space,” noting that “it is sufficiently effective to motivate all those who would come work in the Lord’s vineyard.”14 From Palou’s perspective, the letter was an influential recruiting tool for other future missionaries to the Americas, as it had successfully convinced both him and Serra to follow that path. Further, Palou avows that the Tanto que se sacó de una carta “confirms and approves of the practices in place for administering these missions,”15 reassuring missionaries or potential recruits to New Spain that their work was blessed, based on the divine sanction of it that Sor María relays in the letter. For Serra, Sor María’s call to the mission

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field was sufficient encouragement for him to embark on a transatlantic trip to Mexico and to become, in imitation of Sor María’s own mystical evangelizing travels, a missionary. Although Serra arrived to Mexico already familiar with Sor María and her biography, who she was, what she wrote, and why exactly she was such a central part of Serra’s life bear some explaining for a modern reader. Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda was born María Coronel de Arana in Ágreda, Spain, in 1602. When she was a child, her parents Catalina and Francisco converted the family estate into a convent into which Catalina, María, and María’s sister Jerónima entered; Francisco and his two sons were admitted to Franciscan religious life as well, joining a nearby religious community. In the 1620s when María was a young woman, she related to her confessor that she had traveled spiritually to northern New Spain, where she repeatedly visited tribes in eastern New Mexico and western Texas. During these visits, she was reported to have convinced tribal members to seek baptism from Franciscan friars stationed nearby. Although the accounts of spiritual travel may seem far-fetched to modern readers, neither Sor María’s claims nor Serra’s (nor the Franciscans’) belief in them were particularly unique in their context. At that time in Spain, rumors of mystical travel circulated widely; in fact, Sor María was preceded in her voyages by Spanish Franciscan friar Francisco de la Fuente, who also claimed to have traveled mystically to the Americas.16 Both de la Fuente and Sor María were examined by the Spanish Inquisition, and Sor María’s case was compared to de la Fuente’s in examining the validity of her claims. Although such mystical experiences frequently incurred Inquisitorial question, they were also often the subject of popular devotion. Sor María’s notoriety grew through the circulation of news of her travels via male superiors; the nun herself had little control over what was said about her. Later in life, Sor María would contest elements of the popular version of her bilocations to New Mexico. Her 1649 letter to Franciscan vice commissary-general Pedro Manero carefully explains that though her spiritual travel had legitimately occurred, it had happened many years previous, was essentially complicated, and had been misrepresented by those who reported on it.17 When New Mexican custos (local Franciscan administrator) Alonso de Benavides met with Sor María in her convent in Ágreda to corroborate her travels, Sor María followed orders of obedience and wrote a letter back to the friars of New Mexico, assuring them that their mission work was of highest spiritual importance. This 1631 letter also suggested that the Franciscan order had a divine sanction to convert native peoples in that part of New Spain, a message of particular relevance to Franciscan missionaries, as the order was embroiled in conflicts with other orders over American mission territories.18 Though the letter was never published in Spain, it circulated informally in Franciscan circles from the mid-seventeenth century onward. The abridged version of this letter, published in Mexico in 1730,

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1747, and 1760, is that which Palou reproduces at the end of Serra’s biography.19 During Sor María’s life, her mystical evangelization brought her both great fame and intense scrutiny: she became the lifelong trusted adviser of Spain’s king Felipe IV, yet she was also investigated twice by the Spanish Inquisition.20 Sor María’s posthumous legacy as a writer was as significant as her great renown as a mystical missionary. Sor María wrote prolifically throughout her lifetime, penning parts of her own biography, a history of her family, and an extensive collection of letters, including those she wrote to Felipe IV, over the course of twentythree years. She also composed many devotional works such as the Escala para subir a la perfección, the Ejercicios espirituales de retiro, and the Ejercicio cotidiano that served as guides to personal spiritual practices. Serra as well as other Propaganda Fide missionaries such as Fray Antonio Márgil de Jesús and Fray Francisco Hidalgo implemented her spiritual practices into their private prayer lives. The most widely read of her works was undoubtedly La mística ciudad de Dios, an autobiography of the Virgin Mary that Sor María claimed was divinely imparted to her. The book was received with great interest and controversy, as the Immaculate Conception theology was still hotly debated in the seventeenth century.21 Sor María’s biography, which included a description of her travels to New Mexico, was included as the book’s preface in nearly all of its many editions, which were published in Spain and elsewhere from the late seventeenth century onward.22 By the time Serra began his mission enterprises, Sor María’s writing was already well known in Spain and Mexico, in secular and well as religious contexts, for the reasons explained above. Yet Serra’s knowledge of her would expand further still in the context of his stay at the Propaganda Fide college of San Fernando in Mexico City. The interest expressed in Sor María by nearly all the mission colleges was rooted in the Franciscans’ particular interest in La mística ciudad de dios. This interest lent considerable weight to Sor María’s writing and to the understanding of her as a mystical missionary in the mission Colleges; both were central to the instruction that Serra and other missionaries received. The mission colleges’ investment in Sor María was explicit and implicit, figuring into their very foundation. Fray Joseph Ximénez Samaniego, Sor María’s biographer, was instrumental not only in advancing Sor María’s case for sainthood in Spain but also in the establishment of the Propaganda Fide colleges in Mexico, which were created to train missionaries to ensure the longevity and success of the mission endeavor. In 1681, Fray Antoni Llinás proposed sending twelve missionaries to the northern frontier of New Spain to Ximénez Samaniego, who was then minister-general of the Franciscan order. Ximénez Samaniego considered Llinás’s initial request and instead ordered the founding of a college near the mission field.23 The establishment of Colleges of Propaganda Fide at Querétaro (Santa Cruz) and later at Zacatecas, Mexico City (San Fernando) and Guatemala, among other sites, was thus initially a joint effort between Ximénez Samaniego and Fray

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Llinás. Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa’s chronicle of the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro thus succinctly notes that Sor María’s longtime advocate “played a principal role in the establishment of the apostolic mission colleges.”24 Further, it is likely that Ximénez Samaniego made copies of the 1631 letter by Sor María and Benavides available in manuscript form to Llinás’s friars. A manifiesto (report) sent from the College of San Fernando in 1776 claims as much, stating that Ximénez Samaniego sent “un tanto” of the letter from Sor María and Benavides to Fray Mateo Heredia, the procurator of the provinces of New Mexico at the Spanish court, “so that along with other papers, the letter be presented at the Real Consejo de Indias as a testament to what the Order of Saint Francis continually does in that New World in terms of the conversion of infidels, in response against a certain emulation that seeks to obscure this glory.”25 Sor María, her writing, and her mystical evangelization were woven into the fabric of the Propaganda Fide colleges, including Serra’s College of San Fernando, from their inception. The founding members of those early mission colleges were themselves devotees of Sor María’s writing and spiritual practices and brought their fervor for her with them to Mexico. Friars Antonio Márgil de Jesús, Isidro Felix Espinosa, Francisco Hidalgo, and Damián Massanet were among those initial collegiates responsible for bringing Sor María’s writing into contact with the many novices who studied at the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, the first of the Mexican Propaganda Fide mission colleges. A model for the colleges that would follow it, the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro became one of the principal sites of dissemination for Sor María’s writing in Mexico and at its mission sites in Texas and northern Mexico. Among Santa Cruz’s faculty, which ranged in number from thirty to twelve in the eighteenth century, the college maintained a faculty position dedicated solely to the teaching of Sor María’s writing. The establishment of this position was announced in the December 1729 edition of the Gaceta de México, which noted among the cátedras (professorships) listed at the college a new position dedicated to the teachings of the Venerable Ágreda and Duns Soctus.26 This position was filled at the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro from 1729 until at least October 1793, the last time it is listed in the college’s administrative records. In addition to the professorship dedicated to teaching Sor María’s writing at the College of Santa Cruz, the institution housed an impressive collection of her writing. The 1766 inventory of the College’s Biblioteca común is revealing in this regard.27 Within the library’s modest holdings are many copies of La mística ciudad de dios, including six copies of the three-volume set, several loose volumes from those printings, one copy of a six-volume edition, four copies of an eight-volume edition, two copies of the Escuela Mística de María Santíssima (the version of La mística ciudad de dios published in Mexico), and two books of the Aurora Alegre by Fray Francisco Antonio de Vereo, an abridged monthly reading of La mística ciudad de dios with accompanying prayers. Four copies of Fray Joseph Ximénez

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Samaniego’s Vida de la Venerable Madre Sor María de Jesús de Agreda also counted among the inventoried books. Sor María’s writing as well as critiques and commentaries on it are represented to an extent accorded no other female writer, and indeed few male writers, in the college’s library. Established after the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, the College of San Fernando followed in the footsteps of that institution in its devotion to Sor María and her writing. By the time Serra and Palou arrived in Mexico City, Sor María’s influence as a spiritual writer suitable for novice missionaries was already well rooted at the College of San Fernando, as was the idea of her as a protomissionary model promoting Franciscan mission endeavors. Originally established as a hospital for Franciscan friars, San Fernando became a college under Fray Espinosa’s leadership in 1733. In the later half of the eighteenth century, the mission friars trained there were destined for areas formerly inhabited by the Jesuit order prior to their 1767 suppression—Baja California, Arizona, and Sonora—as well as Alta California and the Sierra Gorda. An anonymous painting at the college depicts Sor María, Duns Soctus, and the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, supported by San Francisco as the Atlas Seraphicus and holding aloft three blue spheres representing the Franciscans, Poor Clares, and Tertiaries. This painting, dating from the mideighteenth century, is an apt metaphor for how Sor María was constitutive of the institution itself, playing a pivotal role in its theological training.28 Serra, already fully formed as a priest and well versed in Ágreda before arriving in Mexico, was in a sympathetic context with his fellow San Fernando missionaries as far as Sor María was concerned. In fact, while Serra was in California from 1769 to 1783–1784, the College of San Fernando continued to frame the nature of its mission endeavors in terms of Sor María’s writing and mystical evangelization. As Steven Hackel notes, although Serra appears to have ceased mentioning Sor María in his writing after the 1775 revolt at Mission San Diego, his confreres at the San Fernando college continued to reference the narrative of the bilocating nun as an authoritative account relating to the California missions.29 In 1776, the college’s leadership submitted a manifiesto that reported on exploration and discoveries made by its friars in Alta California. The manifiesto includes information about Quivira and the Strait of Anián collected not only from Serra’s travels but also from those of Francisco de la Bodega y Cuadra, Juan Pérez, Juan Crespí, and Miguel Constanzó.30 In this document, Sor María is specifically invoked as an expert on the region of Quivira.31 In fact, in the context of testimony by explorers who traveled in the flesh to the Spanish frontier, Sor María’s authority regarding Quivira is never doubted, demonstrating the college’s continued devotion to her as a mission figure. In the manifiesto, the San Fernando friars defend the legitimacy of her travel from the critique of a Jesuit historian of California, Miguel Venegas, who considered Sor María’s commentary on Quivira and Anián “of pure conjecture.”32 This piqued the San Fernando friars’

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ire, as “that which most offends us [in Venegas’s text] is [the critique of] what the Mother Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda left written and signed by her own hand.”33 The San Fernando friars respond to Venegas’s condemnation of Sor María’s account with incredulous indignation: “Who could believe that this was pure conjecture, coming up with fantastical cities [such as Quivira]! We do not see it this way.”34 Farther along in the manifiesto, the San Fernando college’s confirmation of Sor María’s travels to the Quivira region is emphatic and painstakingly elaborated, drawing from textual accounts: The censure is baseless and lacking in piety; baseless because it is not founded in reason, nor in authority; and lacking in piety because it capriciously says that what Our Mother Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda confirms having seen is confabulation. This Servant of God was, from the year 1620 to 1631, taken innumerable times by the ministry of angels to preach the Holy Gospel to the Indians of New Mexico and to others of this Kingdom as one sees in her vita, written by the Illustrious Samaniego, paragraph 12, and in another Relación that cites the Father Custodian Fray Alonso de Benavides, printed later in this City of Mexico in 1730, the original of which is located in the archive of the Custodia of New Mexico.35

This vigorous defense of Sor María as an authority on Quivira continues, as the letter cites the Tanto que se sacó de una carta (a copy of which the authors attached to the manifiesto for the king’s perusal), decries those who would discredit the account as petty, and finally proclaims critique of her as foundationally lacking:36 What premeditated carelessness, and what shrewdness of this author to say, as one who does not love the thing, that the Relación of Our Mother Ágreda is confabulation, and that, consequentially, so is the glory and the honor that through her is reflected not only onto the Seraphic Religion, as a most interested party, but also on the entire Spanish nation, and even onto all of Christendom.37

The manifiesto then turns more specifically to Sor María’s credibility as a source for information about Quivira, arguing that her obedience in responding to the critique of La mística ciudad de dios was likewise exercised when she was questioned about her travels to New Mexico: When asked, [Sor María] confessed to [Fray Benavides] that she had seen him and the other religious in [the region of New Mexico], indicating the day, hour and place in which she had seen those who he took with him and the characteristics of each, as the cited Samaniego says, with other circumstances that make us believe that the cited Relación is true and, it follows, so is the existence of Quivira.38

By virtue of Sor María’s obedience to superiors and honesty and completeness in the recounting of her travels to New Mexico, the San Fernando friars saw her account as unimpeachable proof of the existence of Quivira and took seriously her

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encouragement for its continued pursuit by the Spanish Crown. In so doing, it establishes from the perspective of Serra’s college the primacy of the nun’s mission authority. This devotion to Sor María institutionalized at the San Fernando college had ramifications for the friars trained there, who shaped the California missions with Serra and Palou. In this vein, Palou records an unusual episode from Mission San Antonio that he had likely heard from Fray Verger, Fray Sitjar, and Fray Pieras, who had been stationed there.39 Though the anecdote is unrelated to Serra directly, it reflects the degree to which Sor María was present and alive in the mission field for the San Fernando friars. As Palou tells it, a new convert, a very old woman named “Agueda” who “seemed to be about one hundred years old”40 would visit the mission and request baptism from the friars. When asked by the friars why, she claimed that a long time ago a man dressed like the missionaries, with the ability to fly, came to her tribe and taught them the same doctrine as that taught at the missionaries. Other members of her tribe confirmed this legend. Palou concludes that the individual who visited this tribe must have been one of the two men who, as Sor María reported in the Tanto que se sacó de una carta, had visited the region during her lifetime. The San Fernando friars also connect the hypothetical flying missionary friar to Sor María’s writing, recounting this episode from the Tanto que se sacó de una carta in the 1776 manifiesto: Regarding the account of the two religious that the same Servant of God, Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, says that through the intercession of Our Holy Father Saint Francis took to the kingdom of Titlás, which according to the Venerable Mother is to the west of Gran Quivira, perhaps one of those fathers is the one that the gentiles saw at the site of present-day Mission San Antonio, as it seems to have happened at the same time as that stated in the Relación by the same Venerable Mother, printed in this capital of Mexico City in 1730.41

Other friars continued to refer to Sor María in the context of the California missions and cited tribal histories that recalled a Catholic evangelization predating Serra and Palou.42 As was the case at the other Propaganda Fide colleges, San Fernando’s understanding of Sor María as a mission figure was based in part on familiarity with her writing, which was nurtured in its students through its institutionalization at the college. The college possessed several copies of La mística ciudad de dios in its library collection at the time Serra was sent to the Sierra Gorda missions.43 Palou and Serra each took their personal volumes of La mística ciudad de dios with them to the Sierra Gorda, and additional copies were sent to them from the college while they were at the Jalpan mission.44 From the San Fernando college’s perspective, the text was a necessity in the mission field. Serra’s affection for the book itself (and for

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figure 4.1. Facade of the Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Landa Mission church.

its author) was made manifest at one of the Sierra Gorda sites, the Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción del Agua church at Landa.45 This mission church, thought to have been completed in 1768, was one of five constructed while Serra was in the region. The sites at Jalpan, Tilaco, Concá, Tancoyol, and Landa each had mission churches constructed in the mid to late eighteenth century. Although it is unclear who designed and supervised the construction of the Landa church (both Serra and Fray Miguel de la Campa are thought to have influenced its development), its high-relief stone facade, prominently featuring Sor María de Ágreda, was in keeping both with Serra’s personal devotion to her writing as well as with the San Fernando college’s promotion of it (Figure 4.1).46 In the Landa facade, Sor María is featured directly above the mission church’s entrance. She is seated and writing, presumably La mística ciudad de dios, as in other artistic representations of her. Across from her sits Duns Scotus, at a bufete (covered table), quill in hand. The two defenders of the Immaculate Conception flank the Virgin Mary, who is centered above the doors to the church, below an octagonal window. This juxtaposition of Scotus and Sor María likely was inspired by the illustrations accompanying many editions of La mística ciudad de dios in which the two appear together. Certainly that pairing appears in several other examples of Spanish and New Spanish art and architecture, including a painting by renowned New Spanish artist Cristóbal de Villalpando.47

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Villalpando’s work La mística Jerusalén, displayed as part of the 2013 Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions exhibit at the Huntington Gardens and Library, is typical of the eighteenth-century illustrations accompanying La mística ciudad de dios. The design is intended to represent the book’s Conceptionist content, with Scotus on the left, Ágreda on the right, Saint John the Evangelist in the middle, and the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception and the City of God above all three writers, who are looking up as they write. Serra’s facade at Landa draws on this representative tradition, reproducing the connection between Sor María, Scotus, and the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. By including Sor María in the Landa facade, Serra, like other artists and writers of New Spain, literally inscribes her onto the face of the mission field, illustrating through the architecture of the missions he oversaw how he perceived of her in that context. Sor María’s writing accompanied Serra from the Sierra Gorda to Alta California, and one can shadow his and the other San Fernando friars’ progress by tracing where copies of La mística ciudad de dios appeared in the mission libraries. In Serra’s February 5, 1775, report to the Mexican viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, for example, he states that among the improvements made to the five new California missions, Mission San Luis Obispo had recently acquired “the three volumes of La mística ciudad de dios for the library.”48 A set of La mística ciudad de dios was documented at Mission San Diego in 1777, as was a copy of her vita; Mission Santa Barbara counted La mística ciudad de dios among its collection in 1834.49 A 1744 printing with the inscription “Fr. Thomas de la Pena Saravia. Del Colegio de San Fernando” was among the holdings of the collection at Mission Santa Clara,50 founded in 1777, and an 1815 inventory of that mission’s library confirms that the text was in its possession at that time. In addition to the prevalence of Sor María’s writing in the Alta California missions, Serra himself envisioned his work there in light of the nun’s words and actions as a missionary. In 1769 as Serra traveled from the presidio of Loreto in California to San Diego, the friar discussed Sor María in his personal diary and in a letter to his colleague Fray Juan Andrés. Serra writes in his diary on May 18 that after baptizing a tribal leader and forty-three of his followers, the leader was renamed “Francisco” in honor of Saint Francis, “through whose intercession I piously believed to have resulted that happy circumstance, in fulfillment of the word attributed to God the Father in these last centuries (as the Venerable Mother María de Jesús affirms) that the gentiles, upon looking at the sons of St. Francis, would convert to our Holy Faith.”51 Serra frames what he perceives as willingness among the tribes to convert to Christianity as evidence of Sor María’s assurances regarding the Franciscan friars’ mission labors. This point was accepted as a guiding notion for what the Propaganda Fide friars could expect in the missions—that native peoples would happily and easily convert upon simply seeing the friars. In a letter dated July 3, 1769, Serra repeats this

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Ágredan message but assumes that the letter’s recipient, Fray Juan Andrés, will understand his allusion to the Franciscans’ effect on the tribes. In this instance, Serra says of the conversions at the new San Diego mission that “with God’s grace, it seems to me that one may convert as many as one wishes, and that God the Father will make good on his promise given to our Seraphic father Saint Francis in these last centuries that solely upon seeing his holy sons, the gentiles will be converted.”52 His presentation of the incident makes clear his opinion that Andrés, another member of the College of San Fernando, was already familiar with the belief associated with Sor María, and thus Serra did not need to specify the source of the narrative. A 1770 letter that Serra wrote from Mission San Carlos to the future minister of the Indies, Joseph de Gálvez, reveals yet more insight into the friar’s acquaintance with Sor María in regard to the missions. Finding that he lacked the candles needed to light a Corpus Christi ceremony, Serra remembered a lantern that had been left in the ship’s cabin and proceeded to open cargo boxes looking for it. Fortunately and to everyone’s great surprise, the crew opened a box they believed contained medical supplies and instead “found glass lamps that had never been used, about which nobody was aware.”53 At first blush this incident seems simple enough, but it is Serra’s commentary about their origin that is surprising. Serra says of the unexpected lamps that “if angels had not brought them, at least to us it seemed as though they had been rained down from heaven.”54 Serra’s gentle allusion to angels bringing the lamps to the California missionaries has its basis in an anecdote penned by Sor María, which Serra refers to at the outset of the episode, “keeping in mind the well-known case of the two Franciscan friars who were taken to the remote rein of Titlas.”55 Serra assumes that Gálvez knew about the reference in Sor María’s letter to the two friars who mystically traveled to the missionary field. The two friars in Sor María’s account found a custodia (monstrance) “that was brought to them from Spain by the hands of angels and by the Venerable Madre Ágreda.”56 While Serra does not anachronistically suggest that the longdeparted Sor María brought the lamps to the friars in California, he does parallel the lamps’ appearance to Sor María’s conveyance of a monstrance to New Mexico. By comparing the miraculous appearance of the lamps in his mission field to Sor María and the angels bringing religious paraphernalia to the friars in Texas, Serra demonstrates that he conceived of himself and his labor as a continuation of Sor María’s missionary tradition. Further, the phrasing of Serra’s letter confirms the degree to which the friar assumes that the narrative is known, believing that anyone charged with the administration of large portions of northern New Spain, where the narrative of Sor María’s evangelization formed part of the historical landscape, would understand Serra’s references. A 1772 letter from Serra to Palou, written while the former was at Mission San Carlos, discusses the progress of the mission project there, invoking once again

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Sor María’s commentary regarding the Franciscan order’s efficacy in converting indigenous populations. In the text, Serra likens his experiences and the success of the friars in conversion to Sor María’s writing, saying that “above all, as regards the promise made by God in these last centuries to our Holy Father Francis (as the Seraphic Mother María de Jesús says) that the Gentiles, only upon looking at his sons, will convert to our Holy Catholic faith, it already seems to me that I see it and touch it.”57 For Serra, Sor María’s assertion that the Franciscan order would be successful converting native peoples because it was divinely mandated was actualized under his leadership in California; Serra himself carried out the nun’s mission charge. In a later letter discussing Serra’s efforts to move Mission San Carlos to the Carmel River, Palou comments that Serra did not foist this substantial responsibility onto other friars but instead worked on the project himself, specifically because Sor María viewed such labors as especially valuable. According to Palou, basic mission labor “[is] directed to such noble ends and [is] pleasing to God (as the Venerable Mother María de Jesús says in her cited letter).”58 Both the conversions at Mission San Carlos and the later relocation of the mission are conceived of in terms of Sor María’s authority on the matter and her expression of a divine approbation of Franciscan mission efforts. Toward the end of Serra’s biography, Palou reasserts his own reasons for becoming a missionary, couched in light of Sor María’s proclamation that becoming a New Spanish missionary was vitally important: This is a joy so great that in the mind of the Venerable Mother Ágreda it is the envy of the blessed as this Servant of God wrote to the missionaries of my Seraphic Order, who were laboring for the conversion of the pagans in the Custodia of New Mexico.59

In the appendix of Serra’s biography, after an exposition on Serra’s sanctity, Palou makes good on his promise in the work’s introduction and reproduces the document that had so influenced Serra and also Palou in their choice of a mission career in New Spain: the Tanto que se sacó de una carta. Palou viewed the document, which the “above-mentioned Servant of God [Sor María] wrote to the missionaries of our Holy Order employed in the conversion of the Gentiles in the Custodia of New Mexico,”60 as an element that could not be omitted from any worthy account about his longtime companion and his holy mission work.61 Junípero Serra, his mission work, and Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda were, at least from Palou’s perspective, integral elements of the same story. In spite of Palou’s expressed concern that Serra’s vita as a whole was too short or incomplete to have encompassed all of his virtues (a common trope of the vita genre), Palou nonetheless ensured that the entire Tanto que se sacó de una carta was featured in the text. From Fray Benavides’s introduction of the young nun and the description of her travels to New Mexico, to Sor María’s exhortation and

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encouragement of the friars as they continued to work among the native peoples in New Mexico, and to Fray Benavides’s closing words on the issue of her travels to the region and the Franciscan order’s particular importance in these endeavors, nothing is omitted from the version included in Serra’s vita. That the entire text was included in Serra’s biography at all reveals much about how that letter was perceived. Palou reveals his own belief that her evangelizing writing was absolutely central to the story of Serra’s life as a missionary, and his superiors, who issued the permissions for the biography, demonstrate that they shared that view. They, like Palou, trusted that just as the Tanto que se sacó de una carta and other writings by Sor María had inspired and sustained Serra in his mission work, readers of the Tanto que se sacó de una carta in Serra’s biography would be similarly motivated “to ready themselves to work in the vineyard planted by that extraordinary missionary [Serra].”62 Certainly the letter served that purpose for Serra, wound well through each step he took along the path from Spain, to Mexico City, the Sierra Gorda, and finally Alta California. Fray Junípero Serra understood Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda in several different manners throughout his time in the missions of New Spain. Through her famed writing, she informed Serra’s Franciscan belief in the Marian principle of the Immaculate Conception. The zeal with which her writing affirmed his order’s role in the conversion of native peoples in northern New Spain inspired his decision to leave Mallorca and become a missionary. Though the nun provided few specifics regarding mission administration, Sor María’s announcement of the Franciscans’ predestined evangelization success nonetheless reinforced Serra’s faith and mission sensibility—and others’ as well. From wearing hemp sandals as he traveled from Mexico City to Alta California, bringing his personal copy of La mística ciudad de dios into the field, and creating the Landa mission facade to joyously ringing the bells at Mission San Antonio, it is evident that Serra’s mission muse was Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda.

NOTES 1. Portions of this essay form part of my forthcoming monograph on Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda: Anna M. Nogar, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628–the Present (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018). 2. “Déxeme Padre explayar el corazón, que quisiera que esta campana se oyese por todo el Mundo, como deseaba la V. Madre Sor María de Jesús de Agreda.” Francisco Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1966), 122. 3. “Empezando su oficio de la predicación á imitación de Jesu Christo de las sandalias, como nos lo dice la V. Madre María de Jesús de Agreda en su Mística Ciudad.” Ibid., 290 (part 2, lib. 4, cap. 28, no. 685). 4. La mística ciudad de Dios was first published officially in 1670, though versions of it likely circulated much earlier. Maria de Jesus de Ágreda and Joseph Ximénez Samaniego, Mystica ciudad de Dios . . . : Historia divina, y vida de la Virgen Madre de Dios . . . ; Manifestada en estos ultimos siglos por

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la misma Señora à su esclava Sor María de Iesus . . . ‘Prologo galeato’ and ‘Relación de la vida de la venerable madre Sor María de Jesus’ (Madrid: B. de Villa-Diego, 1670). 5. “Esta divina doctrina de tal manera se imprimió en su corazón . . . que desde luego propuso en su corazón imitarlo, siguiendo su doctrina en quanto le fuera posible, poniéndola en práctica.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 290. 6. A protomissionary is here defined as one who converted neophytes prior to the arrival of Franciscan friars. 7. Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 43. 8. Scotus, a doctor subtilis of the church, was often attributed with the following phrase describing how or why the Immaculate Conception could have occurred: “potuit, decuit, ergo fecit.” 9. The Spanish Franciscan interest in Sor María extended to Franciscans in the Spanish colonies and beyond. Serra’s devotion to Sor María can be seen as typical of that of the Spanish Franciscans generally. 10. “Si era de Dios dicha vocación, tocase el corazón á alguno que lo acompañase en la empresa de tan dilatado viage.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 7. 11. “Una felicidad tan grande que en sentir de la Venerable Madre es envidiable de los Bienaventurados.” Ibid., 8. 12. “Escribió dicha Sierva de Dios a los misioneros de Nuestra Seráfica Religión empleados en la conversión de los Gentiles de la Custodia del Nuevo México.” Ibid. 13. Alonso de Benavides and María de Jesús de Ágreda, Tanto que se sacó de una carta, que el R. Padre Fr. Alonso de Benavides, custodio que fue del Nuevo Mexico, embió a los religiosos de la Santa custodia de la conversión de San Pablo de dicho reyno, desde Madrid, el ano de 1631 (Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1730). 14. “Si tengo lugar”; “Es bastantemente eficaz para animar á todos á que vengan al trabajo de la Viña del Señor.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 8. 15. “Confirma y aprueba el régimen que acostumbramos en estas Misiones.” Ibid. 16. This questioning of mystical experiences by the Inquisition, including that of Fray De La Fuente and Sor María, responded to the increase in “maravillosismos” of the period, according to Pérez Villanueva. Joaquin Pérez Villanueva, “Algo más sobre la Inquisición y Sor María de Agreda: La prodigiosa evangelización americana,” Hispania Sacra 37, no. 76 (1985): 585. 17. In her letter to Manero, Sor María states that she did travel to New Mexico, though the means by which it occurred were not clear to her, and other details of the travel were not correctly reported: “Whether or not I really and truly went in my body is something about which I cannot be certain. And it is not surprising I have questions in my mind, for Saint Paul understood things better than I and yet tells us that he was carried up to Heaven but does not know whether it was in his body or out of it. What I can assure you beyond any doubt is that the case did in fact happen, and that as far as I know, it had nothing to do with the devil or wrong desires. This I will affirm once, twice, or many times. I will not stop here to tell the story again, for it is all in that report [the 1631 letter]. I shall just give the reasons tending to support the opinion that the trips happened to me in my body, as well as those that point to an angel, and then I shall state the things in that report that were invented.” Clark A. Colahan, The Visions of Sor María De Agreda: Writing Knowledge and Power (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), 121. The nature of her travel was examined during her life and was addressed by her biographer, Fray Joseph Ximénez Samaniego, in her vita. 18. Daniel T. Reff, “Contextualizing Missionary Discourse: The Benavides Memorials of 1630 and 1634,” Journal of Anthropological Research 50, no. 1 (1994): 51–67. 19. Benavides and Ágreda, Tanto que se sacó de una carta; José Toribio Medina, La imprenta en Mexico (1539–1821), Vol. 4, 1718–1744, and Vol. 5, 1745–1767 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989).

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20. Clark Colahan, “María de Jesús de Agreda: The Sweetheart of the Holy Office,” in Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Giles, 155–74 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Pérez Villanueva, “Algo más sobre la Inquisición y Sor María de Agreda,” 28; Carlos Seco Serrano, Cartas de Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda y de Felipe IV, Biblioteca de autores españoles 108–9 ed. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1958). 21. As theological historian Ángel Uribe notes, the publication of La mística ciudad de dios was “uno de los motivos que más exacerbó los ya caldeados ánimos de los teólogos de aquel tiempo.” Ángel Uribe, “La inmaculada en la literatura franciscano-española,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 15 (1955): 203. 22. José Antonio Pérez-Rioja, “Proyección de la Venerable María de Agreda,” Celtiberia 15, no. 29 (1965): 77–122. One complete edition of the text was published in Mexico: María de Jesús de Ágreda, Escuela mystica de Maria Santissima en la mystica ciudad de Dios en las doctrinas (Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1731). 23. Alberto María Carreno, “The Missionary Influence of the College of Zacatecas,” The Americas 7 (1951): 298. 24. “Jugó papel principalísimo en la institución de los Colegios apostólicos de misiones.” Isidro Félix Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide de la Nueva España, ed. Lino Gómez Canedo (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1964), 284. 25. “Para que con otros papeles la presentase en el Real Consejo de Indias en testimonio de lo que la religión de San Francisco continuamente obra en aquel Nuevo Mundo en la conversión de los infieles contra cierta emulación que le pretendía obscurecer esta gloria.” Carlos Contreras Servín, “Manifiesto que el decreto de este apostólico colegio hizo al rey en 26 de febrero de 1776: Sobre los nuevos descubrimientos en la alta California,” Revista de Historia de América 130 (2002): 197. 26. “Los Venerables Agreda y subtil Escoto, de cuya doctrina también se hace explanación, por un Lector Jubilado.” Gaceta de México (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1728–1744), 220. 27. “Inventory of Books at Santa Cruz: Librería Común,” Archivo Histórico Provincial de los Franciscanos de Michoacán, Celaya, Mexico, 1766. 28. Ricardo Fernández Gracia, Iconografía de Sor María de Ágreda: Imágenes para la mística y la escritora en el contexto del maravillosismo del Barroco (Soria, Spain: Caja Duero, 2003), 148, 153. 29. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 209. 30. Carlos Contreras Servín, “La frontera norte de la Nueva España y las exploraciones en el Pacífico, Siglo XVIII,” Revista de Historia de América 130 (2002): 181. 31. Ibid., 179. 32. “Se ve ser puras conjecturas.” Contreras Servín, “Manifiesto que el decreto de este apostólico colegio hizo al rey en 26 de febrero de 1776.” Ibid., 193. 33. “Lo que más sentimos atropellando lo que bajo de su firma dejó escrito la Vuestra Madre Sor María de Jesús de Agreda.” Ibid. 34. “¡Quién ha de creer que procedió por puras conjeturas escribiendo ciudades fabulosas! Nosotros no lo pensamos así.” Ibid., 194. 35. “La censura si carece de apoyo, y piedad: de apoyo por que no se funda en razón, ni autoridad; y de piedad por que por su antojo dice ser fabuloso lo que la Vuestra Madre Sor María de Jesús de Agreda afirma haber visto. Esta Sierva de Dios desde el año de 1620 hasta el de 1631 innumerable veces fue llevado por ministerio de Angeles a predicar el Santo Evangelio a los indios de Nuevo México y otros de este Reino como se vé en su vida escrita por el Ilustrisimo Samaniego paragrafon [párrafo] 12 y en una relación que cita el padre custodio fray Alonso de Benavides impresa después en esta ciudad de México año 1730 cuyo original para en el archivo de la custodia del Nuevo México.” Ibid., 197. 36. Ibid. 37. “Que descuido también premeditado, y que sagacidad la de este autor para decir como quien no quiere la cosa que la relación de la Vuestra Madre Agreda es fabulosa, y consiguientemente lo es

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también la gloria, y honor que de ella resulta no solamente a la religión seráfica como mas interesada sino a toda la nación Española, y aun al cristianismo entero.” Ibid. 38. “Preguntada confesó que a el mismo con los otros religiosos habia visto en ellas [the regions of New Mexico] señalando el día, hora y lugar en que le habia cisto [sic] la gente que llevaba en su compañía, y las señas individuales de cada una como lo dice el citado Samaniego con otras circunstancias que nos hacern [sic] creer ser verdadera la dicha relación, y consiguiente la existencia de la Quivira.” Ibid., 199. 39. Maynard Geiger, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M: Or, the Man Who Never Turned Back, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959), 1:293. 40. “Representaba tener de edad cien años.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 124. 41. “La de dos religiosos que dice la misma sierva de Dios que por su intercesión llevó Nuestro Santo Padre San Francisco al reino de Titlás el que según la misma Venerable Madre deberá estar al oriente de la gran Quivira y tal vez puede ser que alguno de estos padres sea el que vieron aquellos gentiles en el paraje en que hoy día está la misión de San Antonio de Padua, pues sucedió según parece en aquel mismo tiempo como consta de la Relación de la misma Venerable Madre impresa en esta capital el año de 1730.” Contreras Servín, “Manifiesto que el decreto de este apostólico colegio hizo al rey en 26 de febrero de 1776,” 210. 42. Geiger, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, 1: 295–96. 43. Francisco Palou, Palou’s Life of Junípero Serra, trans. Maynard Geiger (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 408. 44. Ibid. 45. Fernández Gracia, Iconografía de Sor María de Ágreda, 152. 46. Mercedes Gómez Mont and Rafael Camacho Guzmán, Las misiones de Sierra Gorda (Querétaro: Gobierno del Estado de Querétaro, 1985), 81–82. 47. Fernández Gracia, Iconografía de Sor María de Ágreda, 151. 48. “Los tres tomos de la Mística Ciudad de Dios, para la librería.” Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, trans. Antonine Tibesar, 4 vols. (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 2:235. 49. Geiger, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, 2:291. 50. “Guide to the Mission Santa Clara Book Collection, 1548–1835,” Online Archive of California, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf967nb3tr/. 51. “De cuya intercesión píamente creí provenir aquella feliz novedad como cumplimiento de la palabra que le tiene dada Dios Nuestro Señor en estos últimos siglos (según afirma la Venerable Madre María de Jesús de Agreda) de que los gentiles con sólo la vista de sus hijos se han de convertir a nuestra santa fe católica.” Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, 1:64. 52. “Y con la gracia de Dios me parece que se hará cuanto se quisiere, y que le cumplirá Dios Nuestro Señor la palabra dada a nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de que con sola la vista de sus hijos se conviertan en estos últimos siglos los gentiles.” Lino Gomez Canedo, De México a la Alta California (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1969), 79. 53. “Se halló ser de faroles de vidrio sin esttrenar, de que nadie tenía noticia.” Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, 1:184. 54. “Si no lo trageron los Angeles al menos a nosottros se nos hizo como llovido.” Ibid. 55. “Teniendo pressente el caso que se refiere de los dos religiosos nuesttros llevados al remoto reyno de Titlas.” Ibid., 1:182. 56. “Les fue llevada desde España por manos de Angeles y de la Venerable Madre de Agreda.” Ibid., 1:184. 57. “Y sobre todo, la promesa hecha por Dios en estos últimos siglos á N.P.S. Francisco (como dice la Seráfica M. Maria de Jesús) de que los Gentiles con solo ver á sus hijos se han de convertir á nuestra Santa Fé Católica, ya me parece que la veo y palpo.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 137.

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58. “Se dirigen á tan noble fin, y son muy del agrado de Dios (como dice en su citada Carta la V.M. María de de [sic] Jesús).” Ibid., 127. 59. Palou, Palou’s Life of Junípero Serra, 292. 60. “Como lo escribió dicha Sierva de Dios a los misioneros de Nuestra Seráfica Religión empleados en la conversión de los Gentiles de la Custodia del Nuevo México.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 8. 61. The artwork from the cover of the vita leaves no doubt as to how Serra’s life was to be understood: as one primarily rooted in his mission work. It is interesting to note that Sor María is posed similar to Serra on the frontispiece of the Mexican printings of the Tanto que se sacó de una carta, published in Mexico years before Serra’s biography. 62. “Movería á muchos á alistarse para Operaciones de la Viña que plantó este exemplar Misionero.” Palou, La vida de Junípero Serra, 327.

5

Inside the Cloister Exploring the Life of Fray Junípero Serra in the College of San Fernando David Rex Galindo

On January 1, 1750, Fray Junípero Serra crossed the lobby (portería) of the Franciscan Apostolic College of San Fernando in Mexico City as a new member of the community. The trip had been arduous since he left his hometown on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Soon after his arrival Serra began a prolific missionary career in central New Spain and since 1767 on the California borderlands until his death in 1784. In 1787 only three years after his death, his pupil Fray Francisco Palou published a hagiographic work that highlighted Serra’s evangelical ministry mostly in the California missions. Serra’s legend thereafter reached all corners of the Hispanic world. Avid missionaries read Serra’s hagiography in distant sites such as the College of Tarija’s library in current southern Bolivia. Thanks to Palou’s biography and California’s preeminence in the popular imagination, Serra became a missionary celebrity who transcends the history of the “spiritual conquest” of America and the history of California. In September 2015, Pope Francis canonized him in Washington, D.C., in the first ceremony of this kind in the United States.1 Scholars of the California missions have written extensively on the founder of California. Given Serra’s well-known missionary achievements in California, his life before 1767 surprisingly remains enigmatic. One reason for this lacuna is the scarcity of sources that track his deeds in central Mexico compared to the archival data on his life in California. The dominance of missionary studies in California has also overshadowed the pre-1767 Serra. With the exception of recent biographies by Steven W. Hackel as well as Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, most works briefly touch, if at all, on Serra’s earlier career in Mexico.2 Although the Mallorcan friar took his vows in the Franciscan province of Mallorca, to which he belonged until his departure to Mexico in 1749, he accomplished an extraordinary 87

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missionary career as a member of San Fernando community. Only six months after his arrival in San Fernando he was exceptionally stationed in the Sierra Gorda missions, where he became president from 1751 to 1754. He was elected to reestablish the failed San Sabá mission in 1758 and actively participated in itinerant preaching campaigns to revitalize the faith of Catholics in central New Spain. Serra further led the California missionary endeavor as president from its beginning in 1767 until his death in 1784. To shed light on Serra’s life before his arrival to California, this chapter examines the operations of the Franciscan College of San Fernando in Mexico City, from where Fray Junípero Serra and others advanced to New Spain’s northern frontiers. The Franciscan apostolic colleges for the propagation of the faith (colegios apostólicos de propaganda fide) to which San Fernando belonged (and thus Fray Junípero Serra) were created in the late seventeenth century to reinvigorate the Franciscan evangelical program in Spain and the Americas through missionary instruction, a strict spiritual life, and intense missionary endeavors. The new missionary institution developed within the Franciscan order, independent from the traditional Franciscan provinces in which the Order of Saint Francis had been geographically divided since its foundation. As a member of the College of San Fernando, Serra combined a spiritual life of meditation, study, and retreat with a missionary training program and intense evangelical ministry to Christians and non-Catholics alike. He was active in all of these important facets of the colleges. Serra lived through and took an active part in the religious life and management of San Fernando. He participated in the daily acts of the community, took leadership and administration roles, evangelized non-Christians, and preached from the pulpit and in popular missions. All of this shaped the Serra who arrived in Baja California in 1767 and in Alta California two years later. From his arrival in 1750 until his death in 1784, the apostolic seminary of San Fernando oversaw Serra’s missionary career.3 P R O PAG A N DA F I D E A R R I V E S I N M E X IC O C I T Y

When Serra reached the Mexican port of Veracruz in late 1749, the College of San Fernando had been training missionaries for fifteen years. Other New Spain colleges in Querétaro, Guatemala City, and Zacatecas had over four decades of missionary experience. The first Franciscan college of Propaganda Fide had been established in the city of Querétaro in 1683, two hundred miles northwest of Mexico City. Querétaro was, however, no random choice. It was strategically positioned in the camino real (main road) to the northern mining and mission regions and by the late seventeenth century had become a major textile center in New Spain and the main supplier of fabrics and garments to the capital and the mining centers to the north. Thus, economic success partially explains the choice of a city that could support a

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new missionary community of religious mendicants in a time when royal decrees opposed the expansion of the mendicant orders. New foundations of missionary colleges in Guatemala City in 1700 and Zacatecas in 1707 catalyzed the Franciscan evangelical program in northern New Spain and in Central America.4 Then, why establish another college in Mexico City, a city with the largest ecclesiastical population in Spanish America, including diocesan priests, where all religious orders were already represented and distant from frontier missions? No Franciscan colleges of Propaganda Fide were founded in any major Spanish cities or in the other viceregal capital, Lima. The erection of new convents was exceptional during Serra’s times. For over a century, reformists had fruitfully lobbied to secure royal legislation that prohibited the establishment of new mendicant convents in the territories of the Spanish monarchy. To overcome the prohibition of establishing new colleges, Franciscan authorities refurbished existing convents into colleges. However, the heavy economic burden on those who requested new foundations, the unending bureaucratic paperwork, and local ecclesiastical and civil opposition meant that most of the plans for new colleges never passed the proposal stage. Franciscan missionaries required the cooperation of civil and ecclesiastical authorities as well as strong local backing to first found a hospice, where aged and ill preachers and missionaries could rest and recuperate during their popular missions while friars residing at the hospice replaced them in the itinerant preaching tours. Some of these hospices for missionaries eventually became colleges, as was the case with Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas and San Fernando in Mexico City. New foundations were backed by important local lobbyists, who in the case of Mexico City included the archbishop, the Franciscan commissary-general of New Spain, and the viceroy.5 While scholars have highlighted the conflicts between Franciscans and diocesan authorities, a look at the genesis of San Fernando in Mexico City unveils another side of the relationship. Through itinerant preaching in what scholars have called “popular, interior, or civilizing missions,” missionaries from Querétaro not only incited parishioners’ religious fervor but also reached high levels of popularity among parishioners and authorities alike. Every sweeping wave of missionary endeavors in Mexico City must have left a religious imprint among its inhabitants. Archbishops acknowledged their importance and aimed at securing a closer center of missionary works in their own vast archdiocese. Both secular and ecclesiastical authorities recognized the importance of these popular missions to Catholics. In 1683, the year of the establishment of the first college in Querétaro, Francisco de Aguiar y Seixas, the archbishop of Mexico, vehemently offered Fray Antoni Llinás, founder of the first colleges of Propaganda Fide, his support and the sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Tepeyac to overcome royal and papal opposition to found a Franciscan apostolic college in the viceregal capital. Almost two decades

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later after an itinerant preaching campaign conducted by Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús in the city, the cathedral dean in vain offered land in the vicinity of the Church of San Cosme for the foundation of a hospice for Franciscan missionaries. In 1723 Fray Fernando Alonso González, Franciscan commissary-general of New Spain, initiated the process of the new foundation by first soliciting the missionaries from the College of the Holy Cross of Querétaro to preach to the capital’s population. This included the collection of alms and local endorsement for new establishments, which generally required large sums of money. The process was, however, put on hold again until 1730, when eight Querétaran friars were sent to Mexico City under the leadership of Fray Diego de Alcántara. After ministering in towns and haciendas, they reached the capital on November 19, 1730, and preached for three days from the pulpits of the cathedral and three other churches. According to contemporary witnesses, their evangelical ministry was so successful that they stayed for almost two months in Mexico City, an unusual situation but perhaps worth the effort to secure support in the capital.6 In 1731 the archbishop of Mexico wrote a letter to King Philip V praising the missionary labor of the Querétaran friars in his archdiocese, which in the archbishop’s words was in an “inexplicable need . . . of useful workers to attend mainly to the cultivation of God’s vineyard.” The adulatory rhetoric used in the letter summarizes the expectations put on the new foundation: the missionaries stood out for “the indefatigable task and continuous exercise of the mission and especial direction of the faithful, not only in the vicinities of this court but also in the remote and forgotten places of this kingdom, where their zeal and obedience takes them. One can see in their new profession the exact and punctual observance of what they profess.” Consequently, the hospice of San Fernando was established in 1731—an event important enough to make the pages of the single newspaper in New Spain, La Gazeta de México—and King Philip V finally authorized the College of San Fernando two years later.7 When Junípero Serra arrived in San Fernando, the college was already a well-connected institution in the capital. The long list of benefactors included prominent nobles such as the marquises of Torre-Camargo, the marquises of San Miguel de Aguayo, members of the Sánchez de Tagle family (linked to the former and the marquises of Altamira), and the marquises of Villar de Águila as well as royal and local officials, military officers, merchants, physicians, and surgeons. Serra entered an institution well interwoven to the local elites and Bourbon administrations.8 Like Serra, most his companions in San Fernando came from Spain. A 1772 roster shows that Serra had 113 Franciscan brethrens, of whom 72 had become Franciscans in Spanish convents and 37 had taken the vows as friars in San Fernando. Strikingly, 20 of these 37 friars were lay brothers, friars in charge of manual labor in any Franciscan convent and who had not been ordained as priests—a disproportionate number that illustrates the discrimination against American-born

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Disaffiliations Professions 20

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figure 5.1. Number of Friars in the College of San Fernando of Mexico City, 1730s–1820s. Source: Chart created from data in Pedro Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros a América durante la época española (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1977), 51–52.

friars in the college. Thirteen missionaries were serving in recently founded Alta California missions under the leadership of President Serra, while 30 led by Serra’s pupil Fray Francisco Palou were stationed in the former Jesuit missions of Baja California. Authorities from the College of San Fernando nonetheless deemed that more friars were needed and that missionary arrivals fell too short.9 The College of San Fernando’s missionary recruitment of mostly from Spanishborn friars followed a common pattern in most Franciscan colleges that contradicted American Franciscan provinces where American-born friars comprised the majority. Between 1742 and a last voyage in 1820, about 260 friars sailed from Spain to the College of San Fernando distributed among nineteen expeditions. Both Fray Junípero Serra and his pupil Fray Francisco Palou sailed in one of the expeditions under Fray Pedro Pérez de Mezquía in 1749. Data shows that over 100 hundred laymen professed as Franciscans in the college and that almost 100 friars incorporated from other American provinces and colleges until 1820. We also know that over 170 friars requested to be disaffiliated from the college, mostly voluntarily but certainly some forcibly. In total, between 1733 and 1820 at least 400 men lived in the Fernandino Franciscan community (Figure 5.1).

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I N T E R NA L O R G A N I Z AT IO N O F T H E C O L L E G E O F S A N F E R NA N D O

The hierarchical structure and the decision-making process of the College of San Fernando was not alien to Fray Junípero Serra, though he encountered differences with his province in Mallorca. Like in his provincial friary of Mallorca, the College of San Fernando kept a pyramidal structure peaked by a guardian, or prelate, the highest executive authority, and a discretorio (council of government) of San Fernando, a consultant body that legislated inside the community with complete autonomy from the Franciscan provinces. Members of the discretorio approved new aspirants to the college as well as the dismissal of friars, punished and rewarded the friars, decided internal spiritual and material matters, and passed legislation accordingly. In secret elections, the discretorio elected some college positions, including the important commissary and prefect of the missions (comisario y prefecto de misiones), who oversaw the recruiting and staffing of missionaries to the colleges and their frontier missions. In addition to four elected discretos, the discretorio also included the guardian, all former guardians who completed a laudable triennium, and the current and past commissaries of the missions. A vicar or president and the maestro de novicios (master of novices) completed the list of officials elected by the discretorio to high-power positions within the community. The vicar presided over the acts of the community in the guardian’s absence and would automatically become president in capite if a guardian resigned, was forced out, or died in office, an unlikely event in the history of the College of San Fernando. Masters of novices were in charge of preparing novices to take their vows as Franciscan friars and hence held prerogatives in the preparation of new religious men. Since the College of San Fernando enjoyed independence from the provincial leadership and held more autonomy than provincial convents, guardians and the discretorio skipped provincial ministers to only respond about their actions to the commissary-generals of New Spain and of the Indies in Madrid, who had the authority to remove negligent prelates.10 Serra’s curriculum is mostly remembered for his management positions in mission outposts. He embarked on the college’s most important evangelical effort in the Sierra Gorda missions just a few months after his arrival in Mexico City (1750– 1758), he led such missions between 1751 and 1754, and finally he became president of the missions of Baja California (1767–1769) and Alta California (1769–1784). True, all of this would have been impracticable without the very existence of San Fernando and its missionary endorsement. However, despite Serra’s academic credentials—he was a professor of theology at the Lullian University in Mallorca— and proven managerial abilities in his missionary work, it seems striking that he kept a low profile within the college’s leadership. He never held the guardianship, was elected as discreto once (1758–1761), and spent three years as the college’s

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master of novices (1761–1764), the same term during which his disciple Fray Francisco Palou held the vicariate. Despite his impressive record of leadership in the missions, the idea of a humble Fray Junípero Serra who refused authority positions and his eagerness to selfless missionary dedication has lured the popular and scholarly imagination. Serra’s biographer and disciple Francisco Palou eulogized his mentor for avoiding authority positions in the community of San Fernando. Emphasizing Serra’s humility to support a future canonization process, Palou exaggerated that Serra was elected to the guardianship in every election, though only Serra’s humility and prudence prevented him from being confirmed guardian. According to Palou, the one time it seemed inevitable was on Serra’s trip to Mexico City from his mission post in California in 1772–1774. Palou pointed out that Serra in early 1774 “escaped the honor they wanted to give him through the Port of San Blas, thus avoiding the occasion to be in danger of having to admit the Guardianship,” though voting patterns in the “Libro de Decretos” (Book of Decrees) show that Fray Junípero was the fourth most elected member in the guardian chapter celebrated that year of 1774; hence, he was not an elected finalist to the guardianship.11 Scholars have concluded that Serra’s distaste for authority positions and eagerness for a missionary career dictated his avoidance of the guardianship.12 It is, however, difficult to unveil why Serra was never confirmed as guardian even though he was among the three most elected candidates on six occasions, although not in 1774. A look at the election process in San Fernando and in other colleges might offer some alternative interpretations. Both Palou and Serra encountered a new electoral process when they arrived at San Fernando in 1750. Unlike in their province of Mallorca, where the provincial definitorio appointed guardians and discretos for each convent within the province, college members elected directly their guardians and discretos. Colleges such as San Fernando held elections to the prelacy and the discretorio during the guardian chapter (capítulo guardianal), a pinnacle in the daily life of any Franciscan community. Held every three years, local political leverage played key roles in the composition of the colleges’ government bodies. In this sense, the colleges represented a political microcosm of the largest Franciscan corporative political structure. It was during the guardian chapters when tensions and enmities, passions, alliances, and rivalries more publicly surfaced, sometimes with unpredictable consequences. Guardian chapters were also a repetitive ordeal of what community members might have perceived as a tedious inspection that lasted a few days and finally culminated with the day of the election. In the case of San Fernando, the commissary-general of New Spain or an appointed substitute initiated a brief inspection of the college before he presided over its guardian chapter. The inspector who also chaired the chapter thus got himself acquainted, though superficially, with the personnel, operations, and standing

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of the college. According to the “Libro de Decretos,” elections were formulaic. First, friars eligible to vote cast their ballots to elect the four most voted members as discretos. In a second election, the inspector/president of the chapter had the prerogative to confirm the guardian from a list of the three most voted candidates, who need not have received the majority of votes. If the chosen prelate had previously been elected as a discreto, another balloting was cast to elect his replacement in the discretorio. This electoral mechanism remained mostly unchanged until the turn of the nineteenth century.13 Because of this process, scholars have pointed out that the guardian chapter of the mendicant orders reflected a “democratic” electoral feature of the mendicant orders while acknowledging that obedience and hierarchy were pivotal characteristics within the religious orders and, more particularly, the College of San Fernando.14 However, voting representation had certain limitations. One was the president’s discretionary power to confirm the guardian. Moreover, the 1686 general constitutions of the colleges clearly admonished that only professed priests who had resided in a college for at least one year could vote canonically in the guardian election. Novices, lay friars (legos), oblates (donados), friars in their path to priesthood, and professed friars from other provinces or colleges within their year of aprobación (probation) were thus excluded from voting (voz activa) and from being elected to office (voz pasiva). Serra, Palou, and the rest of the 1749 expedition from Spain thus voted for the next 1751 guardian chapter. That year, Serra received four votes as discreto and one as guardian (Palou’s?), an insufficient number to be elected to any of these positions, yet this proves that he enjoyed certain backing among some friars.15 Palou would later overstate that Serra had been elected to all guardian chapters, though the “Libro de Decretos” reveals otherwise. The College of San Fernando held twelve guardian chapters during Serra’s time in America. Even though he was a reputed missionary and member of the community, only in 1751 (a year after his arrival), 1758, and 1764 did he receive votes in the discreto election. He received no votes in the other nine elections to the discretorio! However, he was among the most voted friars for the guardianship in most elections after 1758, a year after his return from the Sierra Gorda missions. His most successful candidacy was that year, when he was elected discreto and led the guardian election with twenty-five votes, followed by Fray Esteban Basabé and Fray Juan Antonio Pico, with nineteen votes each. Serra’s disciple and friend Fray Francisco Palou probably rejoiced counting the votes that led to Serra’s most victorious political partaking in the college. The president of the election nonetheless confirmed Pico instead. In 1764, Fray Francisco Palou was elected discreto with twenty-five votes, while Serra received eighteen; Serra was a finalist for the guardianship, though again not confirmed. In the six elections between 1767 and his death, a period that coincides with his presidency of the California missions, Serra received no votes as discreto. In 1767, he was the most voted candidate for the position of

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commissary-prefect of missions though not confirmed. Both Palou and Serra were two of the three finalists for the guardianship in the 1777 and 1780 elections, but neither were confirmed by the president of the election. Fray Rafael Verger became guardian in 1777, and Fray Francisco Pangua became guardian in 1780. This pattern continued with the second president of the California missions, Fray Fermín de Lasuén, a less committed missionary than Serra—at least initially. Lasuén also received a high number of votes as guardian and no votes for the discretorio, revealing some sort of complicity among all friars of the college when it came to voting.16 Why did Serra’s peers constantly support him as guardian but not as discreto? Serra’s notorious disgust toward holding office does not fully explain these results. First, there is no evidence of Serra officially renouncing being elected during the election process, a rare petition in any case. An election as discreto would have forced him to resign as president of the California missions and return to Mexico City. Being elected to the guardianship still gave space to the president of the election to confirm one of the two other elected friars, as it always happened with Serra, Palou, and Lasuén. The San Blas story is therefore misleading. Serra was not one of the three most voted candidates to the guardianship in 1770 and 1774, and thus he did not need dodge the honor. While he might have eluded such honor, obedience forced all friars to accept offices. College friars seem to have been tuned with the idea of not bringing Serra in as discreto, but many would have wanted him (and Palou) to return as guardians. It could be that presidents of the guardian chapters preferred to keep Serra in California against the will of San Fernando friars. Or perhaps since the president confirmed one of the three most voted friars as guardian, by voting for Serra and Palou, two missionaries in California whom voters believed the president would unlikely choose, some friars might have tried to secure the election of certain candidates and prevent others from reaching the prelacy. These hypotheses also have to be taken carefully. Distance, for example, did not prevent the president of the guardian chapter from choosing Fray Francisco de San José as guardian of the College of Querétaro in 1696 in spite of being missionizing in the remote Talamanca missions in Costa Rica. Lacking news from Fray Francisco, the following year the commissary-general of New Spain ultimately appointed Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús, who was also evangelizing in Costa Rica. Margil arrived at the College of Querétaro six weeks after being notified of his appointment. In 1715, the president of that year’s guardian chapter in Querétaro chose veteran Fray José Díez as new guardian even though he was the third most voted candidate. Experience was the major reason behind the president’s favoritism of Díez over two recently arrived inexperienced candidates. Moreover, obedience, one of the friars’ three solemn vows, was above one’s disgust toward holding office.17 In any case, it is difficult to know what guided the commissary visitors’ decisions as presidents of the guardian chapters.

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Overall, notwithstanding Serra’s unsuccessful political career in San Fernando, California missionaries were appointed to all college offices, including nineteen former Baja and Alta California missionaries who became discretos; six were appointed vicars, and three missionaries became masters of novices of the college, including Fray Juan Cortés, who held the position for a decade between 1808 and 1818. Taking into account that the Californias were the major Fernardino missionary field throughout the colonial period and that of the around 110 Fernandino missionaries who labored in California fewer than 50 returned to the college, their percentage in office holding seems remarkable. Nonetheless, in contrast to the total number of residents in the community, their political leverage and influence seems less crucial than has been assumed. A missionary became bishop. However, many of these men, like Serra, reached a position of power inside the college before their departure to California. Out of twenty-two guardian chapters between 1770 and 1853, 4 returning California veterans reached the guardianship. Fray Francisco Palou was the first Alta California missionary to be elected guardian in the 1786 guardian chapter, only four months after his return from California. He died in office. The following election of 1789 also elevated a California veteran to the guardianship; Fray Pablo de Mugártegui became a guardian perhaps also a few months after his return from the mission field. The college had to wait for Fray Baldomero López’s election in 1818 and reelection in 1824 to elect the last missionary veteran to the highest office in the college. Only Alta California veterans Fray Juan Sancho, Mugártegui, and López became perpetual discretos. While five Baja California veterans were elected discretos between 1774 and 1780, not a single Alta California veteran reached the discretorio until 1792: Matías Noriega.18 DA I LY L I F E

Fray Junípero Serra spent a decade as a sporadic resident of the college. For six months before his departure to the Sierra Gorda missions in June 1750 and then again intermittently between September 1758 until 1767, Serra took part in the daily activities of San Fernando’s community. Life in a Franciscan apostolic college was not easy. Serra, along with other missionaries and friars, observed (and many indeed struggled to observe) the rigorous schedule imposed within the walls of the college. More than once, the need to balance education, spirituality, retreat, and evangelical ministry stretched the boundaries of Serra’s physical and mental resistance to the limit. All residents of San Fernando endured a prolonged and intensive program of prayers, spiritual exercises, classes, debates, and the regular sequence of the divine office, daily masses, and the Catholic calendar. Franciscan theorists formulated that a rigid and demanding schedule would guide their confreres to avoid the dangers of laxity and sloth. In the words of the chronicler of the colleges of New Spain Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, the founders did not want the

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missionaries to “have an idle instant so that the enemy [the devil] would always find them active.”19 A rigid timetable kept Fray Junípero Serra active during his time at the College of San Fernando. The Divine Office structured his daily schedule around the three major canonical hours (matins, vespers, and compline) and four minor hours (prima, terce, sext, and none). Serra woke up with the rest of the community to a bell toll (a son de campana tañida) at midnight for the one-hour matins (maitines) or midnight spiritual prayer in the church choir—the first canonic hour of the day—followed by a half hour of mental prayer. A first daily mass at four o’clock generally lasted for half an hour. Around sunrise, all able friars returned to the choir to recite the four minor canonic hours and to attend a subsequent conventual mass.20 In the afternoon, Serra joined the community in the choir to attend the vespers and then gathered in the library for an hour of class on moral theology. The spiritual day for Serra concluded with the compline and a last round of evening prayers, which culminated with the stations of the cross, the corona, the Tota Pulchra, the Miserere, and a round of self-imposed corporal punishment. Finally, after a long day of spiritual devotion, studies, and material tasks, the bell tolled for silence at eight o’clock in the evening; all religious had to seclude themselves in their own cells and avoid assemblies in their rooms.21 In his stays in the college, Serra participated regularly in the religious activities, the confessionary, and the choir during the mass in addition to reading at the refectorio (dining hall). According to Palou, this rigorous schedule made Serra the ideal friar.22 Through an intense timetable of continuous prayers and meditation, Fray Junípero Serra sought to reach a spiritual trance that would aid him in reaching a state of self-denial and holiness and ultimately a symbiosis with his spiritual leader, Jesus Christ. It was with their god that was all and enough, namely, the only means, Serra thought, to gain what he understood as eternal salvation after death. As the influential Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Ávila wrote in the sixteenth century, once the soul “empties itself of all that is created,” God will “necessarily fill it with himself.”23 The daily life of the College of San Fernando and other Franciscan apostolic seminaries was orchestrated to enhance the religious community to fill their own souls with their god, a means to get the necessary strength to resist the hardships of the daily routine in the colleges and in the harsh conditions of the missions. All friars ate the three meals of the day in the refectorio (dining hall). At least while serving in the college, Serra enjoyed a higher dietary standard than most of Mexico City’s residents. The kitchens and the storage room, on the lower level, were well supplied with fresh products from the college’s dairy and huerta (orchard) and donations by devoted parishioners. Lay friars, donados, and mozos prepared the meals every day. Chocolate, a major drink in New Spain’s society, could not be absent from the college’s table. Chocolate was prepared in the chocolatería, a special

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room on the first floor of the college above the kitchens, early in the morning and served daily to any friars who requested it.24 Even missionaries were encouraged to drink chocolate after their siesta on popular missions, and in frontier missions, chocolate served as consolation for their loneliness. In California, Franciscans also provided the mission neophytes with chocolate for breakfast on holidays.25 Tobacco apparently was also abundant in the college and generously shared with the friars, though there is no reference to Serra’s smoking habits. Cigars might have been so widespread that in 1743 just a few years before his arrival, the commissary-general of the Indies forbade religious men from the colleges of San Fernando, Querétaro, and Zacatecas from smoking tobacco in cigars unless prescribed by the surgeon, authorized by the guardian, and smoked only in a pipe.26 The refectorio satisfied the body as well as the spirit. During his meals, Serra joined other friars to listen to the Franciscan Rule, the statutes of the apostolic colleges, the Christian Doctrine, passages from the scriptures, or points of mystic and moral theology. Moreover, the refectorio was commonly the space to show discipline to the members of the community, where public punishment took place to teach lessons to the religious by openly exposing illicit behaviors to the community. While others dined, reproachable characters wore gags in their mouths or ate underneath the table if they repeatedly violated the silent time.27 Serra kept an assigned seat at the table according to his status as professor, discreto, and master of novices. Deference in seating in the refectorio was the most important aspect of hierarchy and precedence within any Franciscan community to such a degree that those seats vacated while their holders missionized remained empty. We do not know if that was the case with Serra’s place at the table.28 Palou points out that in spite of his status, Serra lectured during the meals as “Lector de mesa” in the refectorio. To emphasize his humility, Palou also claims that Serra further served lunch and dinner to his fellow brethrens, something that was reserved to the lay brothers, students, and oblates—the lowest members within the Franciscan hierarchy.29 In 1763 around the time Serra was master of novices, complains about veteran missionaries doing the work of and dressing like deacons and subdeacons “due to the lack of chorists and simple priests” reached the commissary-general of New Spain. It was Fray José Vélez who openly defended all friars regardless of their status to perform humbling community acts despite the opposition of the discretorio and the commissary-general, who waived former guardians, lectores, current discretos, the vicar, and the master of novices to take deacon and subdeacon roles.30 That Palou underscores Serra’s eagerness to do chorists’ duties at the dining table, including reading and serving, as acts of humility perhaps reflected those needs and triggered the protests. We do not know which side Serra supported. In between spiritual exercises, devotions, and meals, Serra, like other friars at San Fernando, also attended classes that prepared them for the evangelical ministry in America.

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M I S SIO NA RY T R A I N I N G

Missionary instruction remained the raison d’être of the apostolic colleges of Propaganda Fide. Since most friars came from Spain, they had sworn the Franciscan vows as friars and been ordained as priests in their Iberian convents, where most missionaries to California including Serra and Palou overwhelmingly professed. Thus, most peninsular friars in San Fernando were already veteran Franciscans, preachers, and confessors and in some cases lectores and professors. Serra himself held a doctorate degree in theology and was a lector of philosophy and the chair of Scotistic theology at the Lullian University in Palma de Mallorca. As a novice in Mallorca, Serra had earned a good reputation for piety, retreat, intellectual capabilities, lineage, and purity of blood. Franciscan authorities in Mallorca waived Serra’s minimum age to enter the novitiate, profess as a friar, and be ordained as a priest. Before Mexico, he thus underwent seven years of general instruction that included a year as a novice before professing as a friar and undertaking the three years of philosophy study and three years of theology study required to be ordained as priest. He took further theology courses to become a preacher and confessor. Like those laymen who entered a friary in Mallorca, the college also included a novitiate and studies of philosophy and theology to admit laymen into the Franciscan order and train them as priests, preachers, and confessors. The colleges thus offered an instruction program to accommodate a wide array of members, from inexperienced novices to notorious physicians, noblemen, university-endowed chairs, and other experienced Franciscans.31 In San Fernando, novices and students lived and studied in their own quarters, where they had their own cells, under the strict supervision of the maestro de novicios (master of novices) until priestly ordination.32 The novitiate in San Fernando operated on a smaller scale than the novitiate Serra attended in Mallorca. As master of novices, Serra only directed four novices, a very small number compared to his novitiate year shared with sixteen men in Mallorca. With his students, Serra probably tried to inculcate his devotion to the Immaculate Conception dogma and his intellectual enthusiasm for Franciscan John Duns Scotus’s philosophy.33 Not only did Serra put a special emphasis on the education of the novices, but he also had to denounce those unfit for religious life. Teachers such as Serra during his tenure as masters of novices assessed their pupils throughout the academic year and dismiss those judged “inept.” In the first year, novices familiarized themselves with the new religious environment: a life of abjection, refusal of the self, and wholehearted dedication to their god and to others, ideals imprinted on the novice’s mind through constant exercises of humility that included daily practice of corporal punishments, prayers, studying, fasting, manual service to the community, retreat, and enclosure under a regime of strict surveillance.34 Michel Foucault points out that “[t]he success of disciplinary power derives no doubt from the use

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of simple instruments; hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination.” Using a military example, disciplinary power was based, Foucault claims, on the idea that to impose discipline, the hierarchy had to be vigilant, exercising power in a discreet manner. “In the perfect [military] camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power.”35 For masters of novices such as Serra, their hierarchical position over their pupils and their power of observation and finally examination became their main tools to enforce discipline. No wonder friars translated such sense of authority, obedience, and control to their evangelical program to native peoples in the frontier missions.36 The cornerstone of missionary instruction in San Fernando rested on the study of moral theology and preaching techniques. Being the part of theology that focused on the reformation of customs, specialization in moral theology (the Latin term mores means “customs”) was crucial for the conversion of Catholics and non-Christians alike. To obtain their preaching licenses, all friars had to finish a two-year course on moral theology, which Serra might have waived due to his experience in Mallorca. Moreover, all students and friars alike gathered in the library in daily meetings, called conferencias, where they discussed and debated different problems and issues that concerned their evangelical ministry. During his time in the college in early 1750 and from 1758 until his departure to California in 1767, Serra not only attended the daily debates, an unmatched regularity if it is compared to their frequency in other ecclesiastical institutions, including other missionary orders, but probably led some of them. In these dialectical meetings, an appointed lecturer set the theme of the meeting, moderated the debate, gave the final conclusions, and controlled the attendees. The theme could have been chosen in advance to allow attendees to peruse the holdings of the college library, rich in works pertaining to canon and civil law, history, philosophy, homiletics, science, and theology.37 The objective of the conferencias was to better prepare students in arguing their position when facing others with different, if not opposing, ideas and thus to facilitate the capacity of the friars to shape and indoctrinate the worldviews of others in their future evangelical careers. At the beginning of the class, the leader introduced a hypothesis and chose a friar or a group of friars to defend the assigned thesis while the rest of the class refuted his arguments (antithesis). Since there are no extant minutes of these debates in San Fernando, we can only guess the themes under discussion and the role played by Serra and other friars. Sources from other colleges suggest that topics during the debates encompassed doctrinal and moral issues to be developed in sermons, preaching, and confession; various methodologies for teaching Christian doctrine; administration of the sacraments, Catholic liturgy, and other rituals and ceremonies; clerical honesty and discipline; the moral

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reformation of Catholics’ way of life; and tactics to evangelize the frontiers. Friars discussed not only the content of the message but also the forms of delivery. The conferencias offered the intellectual context to conceptualize, draft, revise, and improve sermons, pláticas, doctrinas (Catholic catechisms), missionary guides, and other preaching material.38 Intellectual brainstorming in the conferencias fused theoretical learning with stringent spirituality and learn-by-doing know-how to shape the missionary. Junípero Serra also practiced preaching mock-ups in the dining hall, read in the library the deeds of other missionaries, and preached to Catholics in the church of the college, in open spaces of Mexico City, in other churches, and in other regions. Off the record, in their close contacts in the colleges, students, friars, and missionaries, including Serra, conversed about the missions and the conversion of Catholics and non-Christians. When Serra traveled to the northern frontiers of New Spain, he had already accumulated decades of theoretical and practical missionary schooling. C O N C LU S I O N

To his disciple and biographer Fray Francisco Palou, Fray Junípero Serra was the ideal friar and missionary. Taking Palou’s bait, California elevated the missionary into religious and historical preeminence to take mythical proportions in the state. Despite critics, in 2015 Serra finally reached the altars in a ceremony celebrated by Pope Francis in Washington, D.C., in front of hundreds of thousands of fervent Catholic believers. Moreover, Palou’s work on Serra has been a historical reference for more than two centuries. Arguably, Palou’s ambition to promote his mentor to fame and veneration has been a success. Until recently, scholars and the promoters of his canonization have, however, paid scant attention to Serra’s life before California. Hence, what does studying his life in the College of San Fernando reveal of the historical Serra? Was he an exceptional missionary and friar, as Palou wants us to believe? Fray Junípero Serra’s evangelical career is definitely impressive, though hagiography and historiography have mostly focused on Serra’s labors in the California frontiers. This chapter has relied on historical context and archival sources to dispel the haze that surrounds the life of missionaries such as Serra. Thus, a look at what his time in the College of San Fernando might have been unveils an intense though perhaps not so exceptional life. In this chapter I focused on two aspects: Serra’s involvement in college government and his quotidian activities within the community. As a member of the San Fernando community, Serra was subject to its internal rules. Life was certainly not easy for him and other friars. Obedience, a key feature of the Franciscan order, vowed Serra to his community. In San Fernando, Propaganda Fide norms hence required complying with community obligations guided

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by the strict observance of the vida común (community life), a rigorous spiritual retreat, intense instruction, and a commitment to missionary work. Most friars endured the hard life of the colleges of Propaganda Fide and labored in their apostolic fields whether in frontier missions, itinerant missions, or both. It has been noted that Serra nonetheless preferred missionary life over college life. Notwithstanding this notorious evangelical pledge, he also took part of San Fernando’s administration, taught novices and friars, and was a student himself (and perhaps led) in the conferencias. In the college, Serra polished his managerial and evangelical skills with theoretical and practical learning. It might seem striking that the most important missionary leader of San Fernando did not, however, take important leading roles inside the college. The voting patterns in the guardian chapters show that many friars wanted Serra as their guardian, despite his dislike for such positions. Obedience would have forced him to accept. The bizarre voting arrangement during the California mission period suggests that their brethren favored Serra’s and his successor Fray Fermín Francisco de Lasuén’s leading roles in distant missions. Some might also have wanted to bring the California presidents back but perhaps only as guardians, not as discretos. Perhaps voting connivance prevented other friars from being elected as guardians. In all cases, the presidents of the guardian chapters prevented their confirmation as the highest authority of the college, and both Serra and Lasuén died in Mission San Carlos nearby Monterey, California. NOTES 1. Fray Francisco Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra (Mexico City: Imprenta de Don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1787). Fray Manuel Mingo de la Concepción, missionary and biographer of the College of Tarija in Bolivia, mentions Fray Junípero Serra as one of the four most important Franciscan missionaries in New Spain’s colleges. See Fray Manuel Mingo de la Concepción, Historia de las misiones franciscanas de Tarija entre Chiriguanos, Vol. 1, introduction by P. Bernardino del Pace (Tarija: Universidad Boliviana “Juan Misael Saracho,” 1981), 29. For Serra’s canonization in Washington, D.C., see “Holy Mass and Canonization of Blessed Fr. Junípero Serra: Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis,” The Vatican, September 23, 2015, http:// w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150923_usa-omeliawashington-dc.html (accessed March 3, 2017). 2. Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013); Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press in Cooperation with the Academy of American Franciscan History, 2015). A book that analyzes Serra’s spirituality within the context of the California missions is James A. Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). See also the work of Maynard J. Geiger, OFM, especially his classic The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M.: Or, the Man Who Never Turned Back, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959). 3. Two broad works on the colleges in Latin America are the classic Félix Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide en Hispanoamérica, 2nd ed. (Lima: CETA, 1992), and David Rex Galindo, To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683–1830 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University

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Press; Oceanside, CA: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2017). For the colleges of New Spain, see Michael B. McCloskey, O.F.M., The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz of Querétaro, 1683–1733 (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955); Jorge René González Marmolejo, Misioneros del desierto: Estructura, organización y vida cotidiana de los Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide, siglo XVIII (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2009). 4. McCloskey, The Formative Years, 24–25; Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 51. For the prosperity of Querétaro in the late seventeenth century, see Peter Bakewell in collaboration with Jacqueline Holler, A History of Latin America to 1825: The Blackwell History of the World, 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 303, 356. 5. Most of the material dealing with the foundation of hospices for Franciscan missionaries is in the legajos in Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán-Fondo del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro (hereafter AHPFM-FCSCQ), Letter D. Intense opposition to new foundations of religious convents throughout the seventeenth century halted mendicant expansion in eighteenth-century Spain and its empire. Among the most ferocious opponents to religious expansion were economic counselors called arbitristas, who linked Spanish economic and imperial decadence to religious excesses. See Ángela Atienza, Tiempos de conventos: Una historia social de las fundaciones en la España moderna (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, Universidad de la Rioja, 2008), 53, 63–69; Ángela Atienza López, “Fundaciones frustradas y efímeras en la España Moderna: Memoria de los conventos franciscanos que no pudieron ser,” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 39 (2014): 189–209; Enrique Martínez Ruiz, ed., El peso de la Iglesia: Cuatro siglos de Órdenes Religiosas en España (Madrid: Actas, 2004), esp. chaps. 4 and 5. 6. See Fray Isidro Felix de Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España, 2nd ed. (1746; reprint, Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan Historians, 1964), Book 2, chap. 19, 309–10; Fidel de Jesús Chauvet, La iglesia de San Fernando y su extinto colegio apostólico (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Bernardino de Sahagún, 1980), 15–25. For a thorough study of the Franciscan colleges’ popular missions in the Hispanic world, see Rex Galindo, To Sin No More, chapts. 4 and 5. 7. Report of the archbishop to the king, Mexico City, November 16, 1731, quoted entirely in Fray Juan Buenaventura Bestard, “Memorias historicas del Apostolico Colegio de Progaganda Fide de S. Fernando de Mexico y de sus Misiones. Recogidas y Coordinadas en forma de Cronica por el P. Fr. Juan Buenaventura Bestard hijo de la S.a Prov.a de Mallorca aora Predicador Ap.co y Escritor del mismo Colegio,” 1789, Mexico City, University of Texas, Austin, Nettie Lee Benson Library, Genaro García Collection, fol. 81. La Gazeta de México, Núms. 41–42, por Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, Ministro, é Impresor del Real Tribunal de la Santa Cruzada, April, May, 1731, in Gacetas de México: Castorena y Ursua (1722)—Sahagún de Arévalo (1728 a 1742), Vol. 1, ed. Francisco González de Cossío (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1949), 320, 327. 8. This list comes from the “Libro de Decretos del Colegio de San Fernando,” Archivo General de la Nación, Colección de Documentos para la Historia de México/187846/Volumen 14, 2da Serie, T9 (hereafter “Libro de Decretos”). 9. Pedro Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros a América durante la época española (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1977), 51–52; Maynard Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734–1858),” The Americas 6 (1949): 3–31. 10. For a study of the internal organization of the College of San Fernando that relies on its “Libro de Decretos,” see Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734–1858).” Only three times did the vicar become president in capite in San Fernando: in 1752 after the guardian’s resignation, in 1796 after the sudden death of the guardian, and in 1833 after his resignation. For the internal organization of the colleges in general and New Spain in particular, see Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 159–66; González Marmolejo, Misioneros del desierto, 169–76; Rex Galindo, To Sin No More, 46–48.

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11. Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra, “Capítulo Ultimo”, 295: “hizo fuga á la honra que le querian dar para el Puerto de San Blas, con lo que evitó la ocasion de ponerse en peligro de haber de admitir la Guardiania.” See the 1774 election in “Libro de Decretos,” fol. 74r. 12. This is the case with religious historians such as Maynard Geiger, for instance, who closely followed Palou’s story. 13. For the College of San Fernando, see guardian chapters in the “Libro de Decretos”; Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734–1858),” 13–14. For other colleges, see Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 159–66; Rex Galindo, To Sin No More, 49–51. 14. For a complete discussion on the democratic character of the guardian chapters in the mendicant orders, see Antonio Rubial García, “Votos pactados: Las prácticas políticas entre los mendicantes novohispanos,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 26 (January–June 2002): 51–83; Asunción Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 116–17. 15. Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, October 16, 1686, in Joaquín Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, y Estatutos Generales para la erección y gobierno de las custodias de misioneros observantes de Propaganda Fide en las Provincias Internas de Nueva España (Madrid: D. Joachín Ibarra, Impresor de Cámara de S. M., 1781), 63–68. 16. The elections are in the “Libro de Decretos.” For the 1758 election, see fols. 38r–39v. Palou and Fray José Vélez were the two vote counters and witnesses of the 1758 election, held on November 25. See, for example, Fray Joaquín Osorio and Fray Pedro Arrequibar renunciations to being elected in 1774 to the guardian chapter in “Libro de Decretos,” May 13, 1774, fol. 68r–v. For Lasuén, see, for instance, the guardian chapters of 1789 and 1792 in “Libro de Decretos,” fols. 130r–131r, 138r–139v. 17. See Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734– 1858)”; Rex Galindo, To Sin No More, 61–62. For the guardian chapters of 1770 and 1774 in San Fernando, see “Libro de Decretos,” fols. 62r–63v, 73r–74v. 18. Fray Juan Sancho was stationed in Baja California and returned to the college in 1772. He was elected discreto in 1774 and 1780 and then guardian in the 1783 election. In the elections of 1795, 1800, and 1803, the community elected one California missionary, though none were elected in 1806, 1808, 1824, and 1827. Two were elected in 1812, three in 1815, and one in 1818 and 1821. These data and analyses come from Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734–1858)”; Maynard Geiger, Franciscan Missionaries in Hispanic California, 1769–1848: A Biographical Dictionary (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1969); “Libro de Decretos.” Geiger has nevertheless overstated the political leverage of California missionary veterans inside the San Fernando community. 19. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España, Book 1, chap. 16, 173. 20. Terce, midmorning or third hour after sunrise; sext (origin of the term “siesta”), noontime or sixth hour after sunrise; and none, midafternoon or ninth hour after sunrise. In the colleges, it seems as these hours were recited altogether in the morning. 21. For San Fernando, see nonapproved Constituciones, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México (hereafter AHPSEM), Caja 201. This plan is based on evidence from the Colleges of Querétaro, Tarija, and Escornalbóu in Tarragona, Spain. Fray Diego Miguel de Bringas, guardian, and Fray José Ximeno, discreto, “Plan Diario de la vida regular de este Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, between 1813 and 1815, AHPSEM, Caja 214. Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa describes the same schedule for the College of Querétaro in 1746; see Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España, Book 1, chap. 16, 173–74. Fray Pascual de Varisio, minister-general of the order, mandated that all capable religious men attend all ceremonies and the choir in his Patent, Convent of San Francisco of Madrid, August 19, 1768, in Joan Papió, Facsímil del llibre de “La història d’Escornalbou” del pare Joan Papió: Any 1765, 2nd ed. (Valls: Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 1987), 67–69.

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22. In his biography of Serra, Fray Francisco Palou linked Serra’s spiritual dedication in the college to his virtuous life. See Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra, chap. 5, 22; chap. 10, 47–48; “Capítulo Ultimo,” particularly 312–13, 325. 23. Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the CounterReformation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), 47. 24. See the Plano of the Colegio de San Fernando, Archivio Storico Generale dell’Ordine dei Frati Minori in Rome, Year 1854, M38, and San Fernando’s Nonapproved Constituciones, AHPSEM, Caja 201. 25. An instance of the use of chocolate in the missions to the Catholics appears in “Directorio de misiones para la Nueva España o Apuntes para el modo de hacer misiones entre fieles en la Nueva España,” February 14, 1748, AHPFM-FCSCQ, Letter H, Legajo 8, Number 2, fol. 18v. For the use of chocolate in the California missions, see Sheburne F. Cook, The Conflict between California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 52. 26. Patent by fray José Ortiz de Velasco, commissary of the missions of the colleges of Propaganda Fide, to the guardians of San Fernando of Mexico City, the Holy Cross of Querétaro, and Guadalupe of Zacatecas, Convent of San Agustín of Maninalco, March 3, 1744, includes the patent by fray Matías de Velasco, commissary-general of the Indies, to the commissary of the missions of the colleges of Propaganda Fide, Convent of San Francisco of Madrid, September 14, 1743, in “Libro de Patentes Zedulas, Elecciones y autos de Visita,” 1691–1751, AHPFM-FCSCQ, Letter E, Legajo 4, Number 1, fol. 155v. 27. See also Patent by fray José Sanz, commissary-general of the Indies to the guardian and other religious of the College of the Holy Cross of Querétaro, Convent of San Francisco of Madrid, November 18, 1716, in “Libro de Patentes Zedulas, Elecciones y autos de Visita,” fol. 146v. 28. This was ordered in one of the first guardian chapters. See Auto de Visita by fray Bartolomé Giner, commissary-general of New Spain, November 13, 1700, in ibid., fol. 31v. 29. Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra, chap. 10, 47. 30. Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros a América durante la época española, 50: “por carencia de coristas (estudiantes) y sacerdotes simples.” See Decreto, May 9, 1763, and commissary-general of New Spain’s patent, August, 9, 1763, in “Libro de Decretos,” fols. 47r–49r. 31. I have discussed the general aspects of the Franciscan general curriculum in the colleges in David Rex Galindo, “Conferences on Theology and Indian Languages: A Program to Train Missionaries in New Spain,” in From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands, ed. Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville, 251–70 (Berkeley, CA: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013); Rex Galindo, To Sin No More, 137–143. 32. For the college of San Fernando, see approved Constituciones, 1735, and nonapproved Constituciones, AHPSEM, Caja 201. Following the Council of Trent’s disposition on priestly ordination, this could only occur at the age of twenty-five, or at least five years after their profession. 33. Beebe and Senkewicz, Junípero Serra, 102. See also John Dagenais, “Eiusque Manu Scriptus: Junípero Serra’s Mallorcan Class Notes,” in this volume. 34. Nonapproved Constituciones, AHPSEM, Caja 201. 35. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 170–71. 36. Patent By fray Antonio de Cardona, commissary-general of the Cismontane Family, to all religious, Convent of San Francisco of Madrid, April 2, 1698, in “Libro de Patentes Zedulas, Elecciones y autos de Visita,” fols. 24v–25r. Ramón A. Gutiérrez, based on two documents used for the training of novices that rely on Saint Bonaventure’s approach to education—Cartilla y doctrina espiritual para la crianza y educación de los novicios que toman el hábito en la orden de N. P. S. Francisco and Instrucción y doctrina de novicios (both published in Mexico City in the eighteenth century)—offers a vivid description and interesting interpretation of how life may have been in a Franciscan novitiate, with a special emphasis on the sexual anxieties that enclosure and celibacy might have infringed on the novices.

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Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in Colonial New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 67–71. 37. “Elenco de los Libros, que hay en esta Libreria de S. Fernando de Mexico oy dia 23 de Julio de 1789,” AHPSEM, Caja 201; Geiger, “The Library of the Apostolic College of San Fernando, Mexico in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Americas 7 (1951): 425–34. For the conferencias in the colleges, see Rex Galindo, “Conferences on Theology and Indian Languages,” 251–70. 38. For the topics discussed in the conferencias, see, for instance, Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana, Centinela dogmatico-moral con oportunos avisos al confessor, y penitente. Vigilias apostolicas en que Daniel, y Maximo, Sacerdotes Missioneros, proponen, y resuelven algunas dudas, especialmente sobre el uso de las Opiniones, Tratos, y Contratos (Mexico City: Imprenta de la Bibliotheca Mexicana, 1767), 157–58.

6

Serra among the Faithful The Popular Mission Karen Melvin

On October 18, 1749, a group of twenty Franciscan missionaries, including Friar Junípero Serra, stepped ashore in Puerto Rico. Their voyage from Spain had passed without serious misfortune, but their six weeks aboard the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe had not been without hardship. Many suffered from seasickness, and water rationing had left Serra so thirsty that he claimed he “would not have hesitated to drink from the dirtiest puddle in the road.”1 The tranquility of the friars’ monastic lodging in San Juan must have come as a relief, and surely no one would have blamed them for spending their layover convalescing and praying within its walls. Yet within a day of arriving, Serra announced that he and his fellow missionaries would begin a mission to the city of San Juan. What exactly did they intend to accomplish with this mission? After all, Puerto Rico did not have a large native population, and how much of a transformation could the missionaries hope to effect during a stay just long enough to repair and reprovision a ship? What they had in mind were commonly referred to as popular missions. These revivalist spectacles were conducted by groups of missionaries who traveled through cities and towns seeking to inspire people to new levels of devotion and leave trails of good Catholics in their wake. Unlike the Indian settlement missions fixed at sites in California and New Mexico, popular missions were mobile, transient, and aimed squarely at already Christianized populations. Despite the distinct formats, aims, and audiences of these two types of missions, they were closely linked within the Franciscan missionary enterprise. Contemporaries described them as complementary, two sides of the same coin. The chains of missionary settlements would bring people to the faith; the popular missions would make Catholics better Catholics. 107

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The priority that Serra and his fellow travelers gave their San Juan mission indicates just how much popular missions mattered to them, but so too do Serra’s own pained reflections on the mission. In a letter to his family in Mallorca, Serra celebrated the mission’s triumphs as he lamented his personal failures. People packed into the cathedral, he explained, but when he and the mission’s other preacher sought to rouse those souls, the effects were as different “as between straw and gold.” He confessed: Every evening that Father President preached, the audience was shaken with tears, lamentations and beatings of the breast, etc.; so much so, that after the preacher had come down from the pulpit, for a long time the church still resounded with their shouts and cries. Still weeping, they made their way back to their homes. . . . [W]hereas when I preached not a sigh was heard although I preached on the most terrifying subjects and used my voice to its fullest extent. You may guess my disappointment, it was so evident, and such a great humiliation for my pride. I was the only one utterly lacking in interior fervor, being unable to find the right words to move the hearts of my audience.2

Perhaps Serra’s lame exhortations fell as flat as he claimed, or perhaps his letter demonstrates an exceptional level of Franciscan humility, but the urgency of the endeavor is unmistakable: hearts needed to be moved. These days Serra spent missionizing in San Juan were not some fleeting interlude, a brief detour in a career dedicated solely to the evangelization of New Spain’s native populations. He later spent nearly a decade (1758–1767) assigned to a Franciscan missionary college in Mexico City where popular missions were a central part of his duties. This chapter examines these popular missions and, when possible given the scarcity of documents, Serra’s role in them. I begin with the colleges that organized these missions, situating them in the context of a missionary project that thrived in eighteenth-century America and Europe. I then turn to what happened on missions and what friars such as Serra did in hopes of producing dramatic transformations in just a few days. I conclude with why these missions mattered to so many people in late eighteenth-century New Spain and why they matter to those of us who, centuries later, seek to understand Junípero Serra and the Franciscan missionary program. •

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After weighing anchor in San Juan the missionaries made their way to New Spain, surviving a hurricane and near shipwreck on the voyage. They then braved the road, as notorious for its mud as its bandits, from the port city of Veracruz to Mexico City. Most traveled on horseback; Serra and another set out on foot. Traversing the approximately 250 miles from Veracruz’s sea level to Mexico City’s

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nearly 8,000 feet above sea level took the walkers about three weeks. Their destination was the San Fernando missionary college. Brought into official existence through a royal order in 1733, it was one of twenty-nine Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide (colleges of the Propagation of the Faith) founded throughout Spanish territories between 1683 and the early nineteenth century.3 Seven were in New Spain: Querétaro (1683), Guatemala (1700), Zacatecas (1704), Pachuca (1732), Mexico City (1733), Orizaba (1799), and Zapopan (1812). These colleges were created with the dual roles of ministering to Christians and the still unconverted. As the petition to found the first colleges explained, they would serve as “centers of popular apostolic missions for Christianized populations and as bases of penetration to the territories still populated by infidels.”4 Or, as New Spain’s Fourth Provincial Council (1771) neatly summarized these functions, they were intended to convert souls and to restore others to grace.5 The colleges organized this work through the two types of missions. It is easy to think of these colleges’ work as something specific to the Americas and the lofty goals of incorporating native populations into the Catholic fold. But the colleges were part of a missionary movement that extended throughout Catholic lands across the globe.6 Observant Franciscans, Capuchins, and Jesuits (among others) organized their own versions of popular missions so that by the eighteenth century these missions had reached unprecedented scales. Spain, which was home to twelve Franciscan colleges, “hummed with missionaries,” a level of activity that led William Callahan to conclude that the missionary movement was “the most vigorous spiritual effort of the eighteenth-century [Spanish] church.”7 Such humming could be heard throughout much of Europe. Louis Châtellier, noting intensified Jesuit missions in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Central and Northern Europe, labeled the first half of the eighteenth century “the golden age of the mission in Europe.” The sheer number of missions as well as the “systematic character” of the enterprise, he concluded, “indicated that this was an action resolved upon for the Catholic world as a whole.”8 This visibility helps explain why Serra and his companions were prepared to run a mission upon arriving in Puerto Rico. Popular missions were very much part of the world from whence they had come.9 Serra’s missionizing took him throughout much of New Spain especially during the years 1760 to 1767, after his posting in the Sierra Gorda and before his appointment to the California missions. He ran popular missions close to home in Mexico City and the Archbishopric of Mexico but also traveled east to Puebla and the Caribbean coast, south to Oaxaca and Campeche, west to Michoacán, and north to Guadalajara. If he followed college regulations, he would have alternated six months in study and reclusion in his college with six months of working in missions. In practice, this balance frequently shifted, given the challenging realities of travel to distant places, the college’s most pressing needs, missionaries’ illnesses and convalesce, and the dispositions of the men involved. For example, Serra’s first

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biographer, his friend and fellow missionary Francisco Palou, reports that Serra spent two years in the college holding various administrative posts but later spent nine months on one set of missions—seven months in the actual work of missions and two months traveling from place to place.10 Serra’s labors in popular missions and their close connection to his labors in settlement missions can be seen in the eighteenth-century print (Figure 6.1) that opens Palou’s biography.11 The print’s caption notes that Serra dedicated half of his life to missionary work, a span that included not only his years in the California missions but also his years in central New Spain as a itinerant missionary.12 The image itself compresses his missionizing into one all-encompassing scene. Serra stands at the center, elevated on a rock that links his apostolic work to that of Saint Peter: “Upon this rock, I will build my church.”13 Surrounding him are rapt listeners who comprise his multiple audiences. Gathered on the right side are the Indian targets of the settlement missions, their lack of civilization and newness to the faith emphasized by their nakedness and feathered head wear. The one so far to the right that most of his body sits out of frame holds a bow and bears a quiver of arrows on his shoulder, reminiscent of the savage indios bárbaros included in many sets of the casta paintings so popular at this time.14 There are signs that Serra’s message has penetrated these potential dangers to society. Hands are raised, fingers point, a breast is clasped, and the man in front bows acceptingly before what Serra has brought them. We are to assume that they will no longer threaten Christian society and instead will join it. Meanwhile, the print’s other side features a mix of figures who could have been found in the more diverse crowds of popular missions. New Spain’s Hispanicized urban areas included Spaniards such as the gentleman with his fancy coat, ruffled sleeves, and sword who stands with arms spread and back dramatically arched. Clearly moved, he appears ready to follow the examples of Serra and Christ crucified and, as a man of wealth and standing, lead others to do the same. The man and woman located under Serra’s right arm also seem to have been influenced by Serra’s teachings. She, with her head covered, is a model of modest dress. (Is she maybe a nun? Perhaps even Serra’s inspiration, María de Ágreda, has bilocated into the print?) He appears to be wearing a Franciscan habit like Serra’s, but as he does not have a tonsure, he is more likely a member of the Franciscan Third Order who has been allowed to wear his habit in public, a dispensation granted only to those judged appropriately devout.15 The bearded figure in front offers an even less certain but no less intriguing possible reading. His garb is not typical of New Spain and instead resembles that of a church patriarch. Or perhaps he is Ramon Llull, the theorist of missions among Muslims and Jews whose philosophy Serra taught in Mallorca. Whatever the case, the gesture of respect he gives Serra’s missionizing lends his authority to the evangelization and reform of customs taking place before him. •

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figure 6.1. “A True Portrait of the Venerable Father Friar Junípero Serra, son of the Holy Province of San Francisco on the Island of Mallorca, Doctor of Theology, Commissioner of the Holy Office [of the Inquisition], Missionary from the Apostolic College of San Fernando in Mexico City, founder and President of the Alta California Missions. He died with great fame of saintliness in the Mission of San Carlos in the Presidio of Monterrey on August 25, 1784, at the age 70 years, 9 months, and 4 days, having spent half of his life laboring as an Apostolic Missionary.” Source: Francisco Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra (Mexico City: Imprenta de Don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1787). The text is Karen Melvin’s translation of the text in the image.

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Mexico and California: Serra as Missionary

As missionaries were leaving the church at the end of a mission’s opening night, they should, advised one guide, ring a hand bell three times and then offer a call to action: Christians, hear an announcement That offers great favors: God offers Forgiveness In this Holy Mission To all Sinners16

It was meant to be a dramatic moment, one that would inspire people to think about how the mission could help them earn them God’s forgiveness for their sins. The prayer and its use encapsulates two hallmarks of missions. First was the use of theater. Creating a population of better Catholics required education but especially inspiration. Popular missions should therefore grab people’s attention from the moment friars entered town and leave an impression deep enough to last long after they left. Second, missionaries sought to instill a range of good habits, including regular attendance at mass, daily prayers, and, most important, making good confessions on a regular basis. Confession, as explained in a devotional work distributed by missionaries, was “a spiritual medicine, through which we are pardoned for sins committed after Baptism.”17 Essential to avoiding the eternal pains of Hell and eventually achieving the glories of Heaven, a good confession was foremost among a mission’s goals. This section sets out what happened during missions, the scope of missionaries’ methods, and what Serra might have been like as a missionary. How individual missionaries went about their work and what people experienced in missions varied, but most missions followed a standard structure. They began with a scripted entrance into a town and formal opening ceremonies and continued with multiple days of a structured program before an official closing and an equally scripted exit. How many days this fanfare continued depended on the location. In large urban centers such as Mexico City, a mission might last a couple of months, beginning in the cathedral and then repeating its cycle of events in the city’s other parishes and convent churches.18 In small towns with only one church and a few hundred people, a mission might take but a few days. As events that disrupted the routines of daily life, missions attracted intense interest. Word of their imminent arrival could spread quickly, especially if the friars followed procedure and notified local officials the day before their arrival. If people had not already heard the news, their first indication might be the sound of the friars’ voices singing hymns as they approached the town. Upon turning to look, they would see a procession that included the missionaries, a large cross, an image of Christ or Mary, and any local officials who had gone out to formally receive the mission. Residents might also join in as the friars, perhaps as an entire

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group or perhaps splitting up to cover more ground, slowly snaked through the streets on their way to the church hosting the mission. The hoped-for results of these entrances can be seen in Palou’s description of the beginning of Serra’s mission to Antequera: They entered in great silence, the six missionaries, and they spread out two by two through the streets of the city, raising high the [image of] Christ. They delivered their [spiritual] assault, firing off many saetas [a religious song but also a dart], which they amplified with their fervent speeches. Everyone was so moved that they emptied out of their houses and crowded in the streets, following all the Fathers to the cathedral.19

Although churches served as missions’ spiritual home bases, friars sought to get their message to those who might not come to the church without extra encouragement, especially “the impious libertines and dissolute.”20 For example, on a mission’s first night, messengers ran through the streets ringing bells, announcing the mission’s arrival and hailing people to come to the church. The goal was to muster as many people as possible to join a public procession that would announce the mission. The “Formulario de Missionar,” an unpublished how-to guide for missionaries credited to the founder of the Querétaro missionary college, Antonio Margil de Jesús, suggests how missionaries might have organized this procession. First came the large mission cross accompanied by two lanterns and followed by separate groups and men and women. The faithful might have walked in silence so that the only sounds would have come from the missionaries’ handbells or their chanted prayers. Or, everyone might have joined together in hymns set to wellknown tunes.21 One of these hymns recommended by a well-used book of prayers and songs for missions that went through multiple editions in eighteenth-century New Spain highlighted the importance of expiating sin: In this mission God is knocking At the doors of your conscience. Do penance, do penance, If you wish to be saved. Today the Divine Shepard Who sacrificed his life Calls the lost sheep And invites the sinner With love and compassion He mercifully calls out to you: Do penance, do penance If you want to be saved.22

Along the route, probably in plazas or busy corners, the missionaries stopped to make brief speeches. Meant to introduce the purpose and importance of the

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mission, these talks were supposed to move hearts more than educate minds. The text of some such speeches left in Antonio Arbiol’s compilation of the life and writings of Friar Ignacio García, a Spanish Franciscan missionary, center on the dangers of sin and Christ’s ability to save souls, often in ways that incorporated the surroundings. One speech opens by asking the audience to listen to Christ’s voice that was summoning them to the mission: Wisdom Incarnate preaches in these streets; in the plazas rises the voice of Christ Our Redeemer calling to sinners. . . . And what does he preach and say to them? How long will you remain dedicated to the dangerous delights of this world? How long will you be heavy of heart? How long will you love vanity and search for lies? Look, this afternoon the Wisdom of the Eternal Father searches for you: listen to the loving voices that call to you so as to convert you to His Majesty.23

People could expect to learn more specifics from the sermon that followed back at the church. According to the “Formulario de Missionar,” missionaries were to explain that they were there to help everyone make good confessions and earn spiritual benefits such as indulgences (remissions of sin that would lessen one’s time in purgatory and hasten one’s ascension to Heaven). Missionaries would then announce the mission’s daily schedule (in the morning, confession; in the evening, a procession, doctrinal lessons, spiritual exercises, and a sermon) and call attention to the jubilee near the mission’s end. They were also to share exemplary stories that would convince skeptics of the good that would come from participating.24 Although the guide did not suggest examples of these stories, Palou’s hagiography and Felix de Espinosa’s history of the Querétaro college offer a wealth of possibilities. For example, Palou warned of a sickness that spread through one village, but the only people who died were those who had not attended a recently completed mission.25 Another prevalent theme of these tales centered on confession. Espinosa shared the parable of a woman who had spent fourteen years in a scandalous relationship with a man in her town. Although she attended the mission and was moved by its sermons, she was “unable to break the hardened chains of bad customs” and did not confess her great sin. When the mission moved on, she found herself forlorn and wondered, “Is it possible that when everyone has been consoled and left in the grace of God, only I continue to be so disgraced that I will be condemned [to Hell]?” The repentant woman struck out on the road, found one of the missionaries, and made a general confession. From that point on, she lived an exemplary life.26 After the opening, missions settled into routines like that described by the parish priest in the town of San Antonio.27 During the friars’ two weeks there, they spent their time “preaching every evening and explaining doctrine” as well as “celebrating Mass at dawn and offering confession the rest of morning until midday.”28 Indeed, the daily events seem to have varied less than the contents of those

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events. Consider the tripartite program that was to take place each evening in church. It opened with a lesson on Christian doctrine, whose topic might be one of the mysteries of the faith, the Ten Commandments, or the seven sacraments. Next, the missionaries were to lead people in a spiritual exercise, which might have meant praying the rosary, meditating on the sufferings of Mary, or walking the stations of the cross. The evening would conclude with a sermon that was supposed to be short—no more than one hour—and easy to understand. Missionary guides recommended that sermons’ subject matter progress over the time of the mission in a way that led people through the process of understanding how much was at stake with their salvation, how God worked, and what they needed to do to earn entrance into Paradise. One such progression can be found in Ignacio García’s sermons, which worked their way through the topics of confession, the gravity of sin, the certainty yet unpredictability of death, God’s judgment, Hell, Heaven, pardoning enemies, and perseverance. This final topic—perseverance and how to ensure that gains won during a mission were not lost after the friars left town—was of particular concern to missionaries. One way they sought to solidify those gains was by leaving residents with devotional aids, such as small books of spiritual exercises or printed images. For example, when a mission came through the town of Colima in 1781, the parish priest reported that the friars “distributed various spiritual booklets and prints for contemplating the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ to my parishioners so that they would exercise their devotion.”29 Some booklets included instructions on how to celebrate a novena (a nine-day commemoration of a saint or an important event in the life of Christ or Mary) or what to contemplate and pray at each stage of the Way of the Cross. Or, like the Avisos métricos a las almas contra algunos vicios comunes, they might offer spiritual guidance on worldly dangers such as lying, swearing, gossiping, drunkenness, and lust. This particular booklet was composed in metered verse that people could easily call to mind so that they might resist being seduced by temptations such as drink or lewd song and dance: Dishonorable drunk, you must mend your ways, because your drunkenness will condemn you. ... The devil founded a school in order to propagate his kingdom, where people learned dishonest dance and song30

The schedule of a mission’s events suggests what missionaries wanted people to learn: sin on its own would condemn them to Hell, but with a good confession and

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God’s mercy, they could win a better eternal fate. But what these schedules do not tell us is how people experienced a mission—a crucial element of an event meant to inspire as well as teach. Missions were created as Baroque theater but theater where audience members were also participants. Missionaries endeavored to captivate people with drama and immerse them in an emotionally intense, life-altering experience. There was the solemn pageantry of the evening processions, where missionaries and the faithful, encompassed within the flickering light of lanterns, wound their way through streets, literally and symbolically following images of Mary and Christ. Imagine the long shadow of the processional cross, the sounds of shuffling feet and occasional chanted prayers breaking through the silence, the sensation of walking shoulder to shoulder with neighbors. In sermons, preachers employed images, lights, objects, dramatic storytelling, soaring rhetoric, and the power of their voices. The faithful were asked to consider their sins, to conceive of their own death, and to ponder their eternal fate. They were asked to imagine the terrors of Hell: to visualize its demons, to smell its stench, to hear the wails of the damned, and to feel their eternal, desperate pain. And then they were asked to conjure the glories of Heaven: its sweet fragrances, celestial music, and the peaceful, all-encompassing presence of God’s love. What would they be willing to do to avoid this damnation and earn this salvation? Just how dramatic a sermon was—whether or not the preacher burned playing cards, whether or not he scourged himself, whether or not he held aloft a skull during his discussion of death—depended on the individual missionary. There seems to have been a wide range of preaching styles, from missionaries who inspired regulations against excess to those who preferred more sedate talk about God’s love. As an example of the former, statutes from Serra’s college of San Fernando condemned tactics such as wiring skulls with movable jawbones and using mechanical crucifixes with hinges to make Christ’s eyes blink and his arms move. As an example of the latter, Friar Antonio de Jesús y Ganancia was remembered as someone who “rarely preached of Justice and hell, everything was singing and shouting the goodness of God, his blessings, mercies, and devotion to Our Lord. He seldom used the chains, torches, lit hachas (a large torch with multiple wicks), and paintings of the condemned commonly used by missionaries.”31 Serra seems to have fallen on the more dramatic end of this spectrum. His own account of his preaching in San Juan noted his attempts to speak of terrifying subjects and shout at the top of his lungs. Palou’s accounts indicate that Serra went even further. Palou tells of one of Serra’s “fervent sermons” during a mission in Mexico City: After having exhorted [the audience] to penitence, he took out a chain, and allowing his habit to fall in order to uncover his shoulders, began to whip himself so cruelly that all his listeners broke down in tears. A man rose up and rushed to the Pulpit, took the chain from the Penitent Father . . . and following the Venerable Preacher’s

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example, disrobed from the waist up, and began to make public penitence, saying with tears and sobs: “I am an ungrateful sinner who must do penitence for my many sins, and not the Father who is a Saint.” So cruel and without compassion were his blows that in front of everyone he fell judged by all as dead. . . . Soon after he died.32

However apocryphal, this story of a man who, inspired by Serra, whipped himself to death while atoning for his sins suggests that Serra was the sort of preacher who sought to reach people through actions as well as words and the power of his voice. The example of a sinner standing bare-shouldered and exposed before God and the bloody physicality of the chain demonstrating repentance indicates that this was not an intellectual exposition but instead was an emotional wake-up call, with the message tangibly played out to his audience. It is very possible that Serra developed this experiential style of preaching while a member of the College of San Fernando. He arrived in the Americas as an accomplished preacher, one who seems to have grasped how to tailor his preaching style to his audience. For example, his sermons to a convent of Mallorcan nuns during Lent of 1744 employed personal appeals, familiar metaphors, and a “general tone of tempered moderation,” but when he traveled around the island preaching to more general audiences, he seems to have transitioned to a “more theatrical pulpit persona.”33 Despite this experience, when he preached that first time in San Juan it was to a congregation so silent and unmoved that it shamed him. He diagnosed the problem as being unable to find the right way to reach what was to him a new audience. He therefore expressed hope that God would “teach me to love Him with all my heart, and enable me to become more useful in this high calling.”34 How Serra sought to become more useful and how exactly his preaching style changed between San Juan and California is difficult to know with so little surviving evidence, but he seems to have decided that reaching New World audiences required yet another pulpit persona, one that featured props and heightened levels of theatricality. Serra appears in this role of experiential preacher in the printed image in Palou (see Figure 6.1). On the ground by Serra’s feet sit material objects that he could employ from the pulpit: a skull (a reminder of the inescapability of death), a lit torch (the pains of Hell), and a chain (penitence), which might even refer back to Palou’s story. There is no pen, paper, book, or any other literary implement to emphasize learned discourse, despite Serra’s experience and reputation as a theologian. Furthermore, in his hands Serra holds a rock and a crucifix, which Palou says were part one of his regular preaching routines. After the sermon during the Act of Contrition, Serra “held up the Image of Christ Crucified in his left hand and taking in his other the rock or stone, he gave his chest such cruel blows throughout the entire Act of Contrition that many of his audience were amazed that he did not break his chest and fall down dead in the Pulpit.” So often did he employ this device that Palou speculates that it was the cause of Serra’s chest pain and breathing

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difficulties later in life.35 In the artist’s interpretation of this scene, a man stands with his outstretched hand just beneath the stone. Perhaps like the man who ended up whipping himself to death with Serra’s chain, he stands ready to take up the stone and follow the preacher’s example. The goal of preachers who took this approach from the pulpit was not to drive people to physical penance for its own sake but instead to push them toward the difficult work of expiating sin from their conscience, especially in the confessional. As one Franciscan explained, “To sow in order to reap is the collective work of human prudence, and the greatest prudence is that of the apostolic workers [missionaries] who sow in pulpits in order to reap the fruit in confessionals.”36 In fact, instead of the more visible and celebrated work of preaching, the ultimate yardstick of a mission’s success was confessions. Serra, for instance, measured the success of the mission in San Juan in people brought to the confessional: “The mission conducted by such apostolic workers as the reverend missionaries, helped also by the zeal displayed by others in hearing the confessions—and all were edified at it—proved to be a wonderful spiritual harvest. For days we had to stay in the confessionals, beginning as early as three and four o’clock in the morning, and in the afternoons, too, and we did not finish before midnight.”37 The standard missionary schedule did indeed devote much time to this sacrament, and reports from parish priests indicate that missions may well have done so in practice as well. For instance, the parish priest in Cuernavaca reported that the missionaries who visited his town in 1799 rose at 4:00 a.m., said mass, breakfasted, and then worked in the confessional until noon and again from 3:00 p.m. until their evening duties.38 The particular place of confession in a Franciscan mission can be better understood with a brief comparison to the place of confession in a Jesuit popular mission. Despite the importance of a good confession to both types of missions, the sacrament figured differently in the missions’ structures, reflecting each order’s approach to the sacrament. For Franciscans, the goal of confession was to achieve a comprehensive list of all sins so they could be cleansed from the soul. Even one sin that remained unsaid in the confessional could lead to damnation. Confessors were to ask each penitent about possible sins they might have committed, gearing questions toward their particular status—whether they were married or single, male or female, a wealthy landowner or his poor servant—and therefore their most likely sins. For Jesuits, confession was not just an opportunity to obtain forgiveness for sins but instead was a chance to reflect on one’s life and reform and improve it. The role of the confessor was not simply to help penitents itemize a list of sins; rather, it was to help them construct a narrative of “spiritual selfhood” whereby the penitent “evaluated his or her entire life, in an effort to recognize and cull out enduring patterns of sin. Then, rather than confess a list of sins, the penitent would narrate the story of sin in his or her life.” This method would give people a powerful format for understanding and therefore avoiding sin.39 For Jesuits, confession

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required preparation, in the case of missions several days of talks and sermons based on the Jesuit practice of Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Confession should therefore only be done at the very end of the mission, and they designated a special day for it. For Franciscans such as Serra, there was no need to wait. Not only did the uncertainty of death always loom, but more opportunities to confess also meant more opportunities to complete fully that accounting of sins. With people educated, inspired, and confessed, the mission was now ready to come to a close. Missionaries led the faithful on one final procession of penitence intended “as a sign of our true repentance.” Participants prayed the rosary, pled for God’s mercy, meditated on Christ’s sufferings, and sought to imitate his humility. Some carried crosses, wore crowns of thorns, rubbed ashes on their faces, and walked barefoot. They stopped to hear a sermon of “spiritual prescriptions” and were reminded that all they accomplished during the mission would be of no avail if they did not maintain good habits. They might even have sung along with the missionaries: While a Mission lasts you feel the fervor. But oh! The blossom remains but the fruit never matures. Then the Devil will be sure to seek his old haunts.

Soon after, friars such as Serra would make their way out of town the same way they came in, following a cross and holy images. •

•

•

In his time as a popular missionary, Serra traveled hundreds of miles, visited dozens of towns, and shared his message with thousands of people, and he did so at the height of one of the great trends of the age. Popular missions turned out to have broad appeal. Like the San Juan mission where Serra says the audience spilled out of the cathedral, they typically drew large crowds in New Spain. In the mines of Zimapán where Serra once gave a mission, the parish priest reported that so many people attended the mission that they spilled out of the church and filled the cemetery, leaving people to climb onto its walls in order to hear the preachers.40 Similarly, when missions came to the Franciscans’ main Mexico City church—a place where Serra made at least two missions—sacristans had to prepare additional forms because so many people came to take communion. Support came from other places, some perhaps more unexpected, as well. Officials of the Bourbon government, well known for their attempts to reduce the size and power of the church, especially its mendicant branch, were generally supportive of missions. In fact, the Crown continued giving permission to found new

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missionary colleges throughout the eighteenth century even as it was denying licenses for other types of Franciscan convents.41 Secular clergy could also be counted among missions’ supporters. Despite ongoing rivalries with mendicant orders and even amid campaigns to force orders to turn over their doctrinas42 to secular clergy, many parish priests actively campaigned to bring missionaries to their churches. Their letters certifying the events of the mission often gushed with praise for the friars and what they accomplished during the mission. The biggest surprise might be that during the late eighteenth century a group of reformist bishops backed missions. These reformers, most notably the bishop of Puebla Francisco Fabian y Fuero (1765–1773), the archbishop of Mexico Francisco Antonio Lorenzana (1766–1772), and his successor Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta (1772–1800), sought to transform religious practices in ways that on the surface seem at odds with how popular missionaries such as Serra worked. Especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, much devotional activity in Mexico was dominated by a Baroque religious piety. Baroque piety was performative, emotional, communal, and often physical—the sort of experience that Serra sought to create from the pulpit. In contrast, reformers preferred a piety centered on quiet prayer, individual meditation, and thoughtful reflection. They viewed many Baroque practices as excessive and distracting from the true goal of knowing and understanding God. Nor was the difference between the two approaches a matter of surface-level process. It had to do with, as the title of one recent book put it, the very nature of God. Baroque Catholicism was based on the belief that “the sacred could inhere within the physical world and thus was proximate and palpable,” while Reformed Catholicism took as its premise the idea that “God was eminently spiritual and thus largely incapable of being confined within the physical world.”43 These two sets of beliefs thus relied on fundamentally different ideas about God’s presence in this world and, accordingly, sought to approach him through different means. As emotional pieces of theater, full of ritual gestures and physical displays such as Serra’s use of rocks and chains, Franciscan popular missions seem to fit into the Baroque category. Yet, reformist bishops said yes when Franciscans requested the licenses required to make these missions. Bishops’ support also took less passive forms in their frequent requests for and participation in missions. One reason for missions’ widespread support among New Spain’s secular and religious leadership can be found in the widely held belief that much of New Spain’s nonelite population was in urgent need of reform. Missionaries, reformist churchmen, and government officials were among those who saw popular missions as a way of addressing the problem. Franciscan missionary and author Felix de Espinosa argued that what made missions so valuable was that they transformed people’s behavior, prompting people who lived in illicit unions to marry. Missions also aided in reconciling hatreds; ending usury; stopping gossip; reforming women’s

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scandalous clothing; turning people away from bullfights, gambling, and profane dancing; and putting an end to disgraceful public bathing done with music and picnics. Dr. Don Juan Carlos de Cassassola declared that he and his fellow parish priests in Aguascalientes were grateful for missions because of “the many benefits to their flocks in the reform of customs, conversion of sinners, and [increased] frequency of sacraments.”44 The missionaries were not only useful, he concluded, but necessary. Transforming society by fixing individuals and their bad habits was at the heart of what many reformist churchmen wanted to accomplish. Disciplining an undisciplined population required, according to Archbishop Lorenzana, getting them to “attend Mass, frequent the Sacraments, and live as Christians”— the very behaviors missions were designed to encourage.45 These missions undoubtedly meant a great deal to Serra too, but if he ever confided his thoughts about them to paper, the words remain lost to us. Still, it is difficult to imagine that someone who once wrote “the role of the apostolic preacher is so much more when it is put into practice” did not find his work in popular missions deeply significant.46 Without the heavy teaching obligations he had in Mallorca or the burdens of his administrative post in the California missions, this period of Serra’s life was certainly when he was most intricately absorbed in the apostolic endeavor that he so valued. And yet today, Serra’s work in the California missions thoroughly overshadows this part of his identity, leaving us with misleadingly incomplete depictions of him. To better understand Serra as well as his brethren from New Spain’s Franciscan missionary colleges, a shift in perspective is needed, one that includes popular missions and connects these two parts of the Franciscan missionary project. After all, contemporaries considered missions among the faithful and missions among the unconverted as two sides of the same coin and, as visually represented in the print found in Palou, two sides of the same image. It is this image with Serra standing at the confluence of these enterprises that best defines his missionary career. NOTES 1. “Letter to Father Francesch Serra,” in Writings of Junípero Serra, Vol. 1, ed. Antonine Tibesar (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1960), 11. 2. Ibid., 13. 3. Félix Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide en Hispanoamérica (Lima: Provincia Misionera de San Francisco Solano, 1998). 4. “Memorial de Antonio Llinás al Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias,” Archivo General de las Indias, Gobierno, México 310, fol. 2, cited in Antonio Picazo Muntaner, “El Ideario de Fray Antoni Llinás,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 60, no. 237 (2000): 437. 5. Luisa Zahino Peñafort, El Cardenal Lorenzana y el IV Concilio Provincial Mexicano (Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 1999), 289. 6. Karen Melvin, “The Globalization of Reform,” in Ashgate Research Companion to the CounterReformation, ed. Mary Laven, Alexandra Bamji, and Geert Janssen, 435–50 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013).

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7. William J. Callahan, “The Spanish Church,” in Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century, ed. William J. Callahan and David Higgs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 43, quoted in Charles C. Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain: Teaching Social Virtue in the Eighteenth Century,” in The American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985): 868. 8. Luis Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c.1500–c.1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 79, 89. 9. As missions periodically came through Mallorca, it is likely that Serra had previously encountered them. Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013) 9. 10. Palou includes the following destinations for Serra’s missions: Real de Zimapán, Pueblos de la Provincia del Mezquital, Villa de Valles, Aquismon, Tacubo, Texpan, Tamiagua, Villa-Alta, Antequera, Quinquagésima, Tepic, Jalisco, Ciudad de Compostela, Mazatlan, and San Joseph Guaynamotas. Francisco Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra (Mexico City: Imprenta de Don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1787), 44–47. Steven Hackel records that the missions around Mexico City probably took place in 1760 and 1763, the Oaxaca mission in 1763, and one to the north between September 1764 and May 1766. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 118–19. 11. Although Palou’s text centered on California missions, giving only six of the book’s sixty chapters to the two decades Serra spent in New Spain before leaving for California, the print suggests a less skewed balance. 12. Serra spent his first years in New Spain working in the Indian missions of the Sierra Gorda (1750–1758) before his years as a popular missionary (1758–1767) and, finally, his posting to the California missions. 13. Matthew 16:18. 14. These sets of paintings depicting various combinations of racial pairings and the children who resulted frequently ended with a painting of indios bárbaros. Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 136–37, 146–47. 15. These Franciscan-sponsored lay organizations that were connected to the first order (friars) and second order (nuns) could be found in most towns where Franciscans had convents or doctrinas. 16. “Oíd Christians un Pregon / Que ofrece grandes favores / Que Dios ofrece Perdon / En esta Santa Mission / A todos los Pecadores,” Antonio Arbiol. Epitome de la virtuosa, y evangelica vida del R. Venerable Padre Fr. Ignacio García (Zaragoza: Pedro Carreras, 1720), 111. 17. “Una espiritual medicina, por la que se nos perdona el pecado cometido despúes del Bautismo.” Actos de fé, esperanza, y caridad, que todo fiel Christano está obligado á hacer con frequencia y devocion, especialmente alla hora de la muerte (Puebla: Imprenta de D Pedro de la Rosa, 1791). 18. For example, see the San Fernando college’s 1771 request to make a mission there “como se acostumbrada.” Biblioteca Nacional de Antropoligia e Historia (BNAH) Fondo Franciscano, Vol. 122, fol. 118. 19. “Entraron con gran silencio los seis Misioneros, y repartidos de dos en dos por las calles de la Ciudad, enarbolando el Santo Christo, dieron el asalto, disparando abundantes saetas que glosaban con fervorosas Platicas. Conmovióse sobre manera toda la gente, de suerte, que desamparando las casas, y agolpandose en las calles, siguieron todos á los Padres hasta la Catedral.” Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra, 52. 20. Archivo Historico de la Provincia de Santo Evangelio de México (hereafter AHPSEM), Caja 208. 21. Benson Library, Antonio Margil de Jesus Collection, G168, “Formulario de Missionar, que hizo y dictó N.V.P.Fr. Antonio Margil de Jesús.” 22. Aljaba apostolica de penetrantes flechas: para rendir la fortaleza del duro pecador, en varias canciones, y saetas, que acostumbran cantar en sus missiones apostolicos, de N.S.P. San Francisco (Mexico

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City, 1785), qtd. in Maynard J. Geiger, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959), 167. Dios toca en esta Misión Las puertas de tu consciencia Penitencia, Penitencia Si quieres tu salvación Hoy el Divino Pastor Que sacrificó su vida Llama la oveja perdida Y combida al pecador Por amor y compación Te repite con clemencia Penitencia, penitencia, Si quieres tu salvación 23. Arbiol, Epitome de la virtuosa, 262–63. “La Sabiduria encarnada predica por estas Calles; en las Plazas levanta la voz Christo Nuestro Redentor, llamando á los pecadores. . . . Y que les predica, y les dize? . . . Hasta quando aveis de estar entregados á los deleytes dañosos de este mundo? . . . Hasta quando sereis pesados de corazon? Hasta quando amareis la vanidad, y buscareis la mentira? . . . Mirad, que esta tarde os busca la Sabiduria del Eterno padre: atended á sus vozes amorisissimas con que os llama, para que os convirtais á su Magestad” 24. Benson Library, Antonio Margil de Jesus Collection, G168, “Formulario de Missionar, que hizo y dictó N.V.P.Fr. Antonio Margil de Jesús.” 25. Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra, 48. 26. “Es possible, que cuando todos han quedado consolados, y en gracia de Dios, solo yo he de ser tan infeliz, que me he de condenar?” Felix de Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1964), 71. 27. Possibly what is now the municipality of Mixquiahuala de Juárez in the state of Hidalgo. 28. AHPSEM Caja 210, “Certificaciones de Missiones.” His report from 1749 refers to a mission from the Pachuca college. 29. “repartido varios libritos espirituales entre mis feligreses para que se exersitacen en su devocion y estampas contemplativas de la Pasion de N.ro Señor Jesuchristo.” Ibid. 30. Avisos métricos a las almas contra algunos vicios comunes (Puebla, 1790). Infame borracho, has por te enmendar, porque tu embriaguez te ha de condenar. Una escuela fundó el Diablo Para propagar su reyno, en donde cursan las gentes bayle y canto deshonesto 31. BNAH, Colección Federico Gómez de Orozco, legajo 98, “Vida Ejemplar del Religiosos y Apostolico Varon Fr Antonio de Jesus y Ganancia (1768).” 32. “sacó una cadena, y dexandose caer el hábito hasta descubrir las espaldas, despues de haber exhortado á penitencia, empezó á azotarse tan.cruelmente, que todo el auditorio se deshacia en lágrimas; y levantandose de él un hombre, fue á toda prisa al Púlpito, quitó la cadena al Penitente Padre, baxó con ella, hasta ponerse en lo alto del Presbiterio, y tomando exemplo del V. Predicador, se desnudó

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de la cintura para arriba, y empezó á hacer pública penitencia, diciendo con lágrimas y sollozos: ‘Yo soy el pecador ingrato á Dios, que debo hacer penitencia por mis muchos pecados, y no el Padre que es un Santo.’ Fueron tan crueles y sin compasion los golpes, que á vista de toda la gente cayó, juzgandolo todos por muerto. Habiendolo oleado allí, y sacramentado, murió poco despues.” Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra, 44. 33. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 49–52; Rose Maria Beebe and Robert Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 55, 68. 34. “Letter to Father Francesch Serra,” 13. 35. “mas de ordinario sacaba una grande piedra, que solia tener prevenida en el Púlpito; y al concluir el Sermon, con el acto de Contrition, enarbolaba la Imagen de Christo Crucificado, con la mano izquierda, y cogia con la otra el canto ó piedra, con la que se daba en el pecho todo el tiempo del acto de Contricion tan crueles golpes, que muchos del auditorio rezelaban no se rompiese el pecho, y se cayese muerto en el Pulpito.” Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra, 261. 36. BNAH, Gómez de Orozco, Leg. 98, “Vida Ejemplar del Religioso y Apostolico Varon Fr. Antonio de Jesus y Ganancia.” 37. “Letter to Father Francesch Serra.” 38. AHPSEM Caja 210, Certificación of Don Martin José Verdugo de la Rocha, March 25, 1799. 39. J. Michelle Molina, To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520–17 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 116. 40. AHPSEM, Caja 210, Certificaciones de missiones. 41. Karen Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). 42. Doctrinas were temporary parishes run by mendicant orders that were originally intended to be turned over to secular clergy once their Indian residents were judged sufficiently Christianized. Originally created in the sixteenth century, most doctrinas remained under mendicant control until the second half of the eighteenth century. 43. Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010), 4, 7. 44. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 175–90; Biblioteca Nacional Madrid, MS 12046. 45. Sylvia Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774–1871 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 20. 46. “Letter to Padre Frencesh Serra, Aug. 20, 1749,” in Beebe and Senkewicz, Junípero Serra, 63.

7

Within the Confessional Franciscan Utopias and Daily Practices in Mission San Carlos José Refugio de la Torre Curiel Because of your sins, God was about to send you to hell: In hell you would burn as dry wood burns . . . , therefore, feel sorrow in your heart, for the Devil fooled you so he could take you to hell. confesional en carmeleño

Among the first Franciscans in New Spain the ideal of establishing a church that resembled the purity and evangelical aspirations of early Christianity was the cornerstone of their missionary activities. Under that time’s standards, sixteenth-century Franciscans were primarily concerned “with native Americans, the Indians, peoples deemed by Spain to be in need of conversion and civilization. It was up to the missionaries to fashion American Indians into Christianized, civilized, law-abiding, tax paying citizens of the Spanish crown.” In so doing, Franciscans could be described as “agents of directed culture change [and] . . . promoters of assimilation, [since] in the process of converting the religious disposition of a person to one’s own disposition, cultural traditions . . . inevitably come under attack.”1 More than apocalyptic visionaries, sixteenth-century Franciscans partook of an attempt to revitalize contemporary society by promoting a return to the basis of evangelic life, a project that would find fertile soil in the New World. In this context, the ideal of a heavenly Jerusalem and the parallelisms those missionaries established between New Spain’s indigenous population and early Christian communities laid the foundations for the friars’ structuring of Indians’ daily life around complementary sets of spiritual and worldly activities.2 Thus, Indians would be 125

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instructed in the Christian doctrine, and over time missionaries were to administer the sacraments to the Indians.3 European notions of ordered life—vida en policía— were also to be promoted by the friars within the community; finally, the missionary would oversee Indians’ participation in communal productive activities and intervene in the election of local indigenous authorities.4 In sum, Franciscans— and members of other religious orders in their respective doctrines—aspired “to retain the spiritual guidance of the regions they had converted, with no condition other than nomination by their superiors and the assent of the secular authority.”5 This Franciscan utopia was far from unproblematic, as missionaries acknowledged in various occasions during the colonial period such as the 1562 Inquisition trials in Yucatán and after the 1680 rebellion in New Mexico. Scholars have shown that from its very inception in the sixteenth century, such a project of religious conversion and adoption of Spanish traditions eventually revealed itself as a multilayered process of imposition, violence, defiance, and constant negotiation of power—between Spaniards and indigenous societies and within the ranks of the former groups.6 Moreover, this ideal was not entirely consistent with the roles that indigenous communities, secular clergy, colonists, and viceregal authorities envisioned for the first group. In this respect, when the Third Mexican Council (1585) made clear that missionaries and parish priests—including members of the mendicant orders serving as doctrineros—were the bishop’s coadjutors concerning the spreading of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, it explicitly stated that in their respective dioceses the bishops were the flocks’ shepherds. Members of the mendicant orders still had a crucial role to play in bringing Indians into Christianity; within mission communities, missionaries could organize daily activities according to their superiors’ instructions. However, their methods of indoctrination should conform to the catechism approved by the council.7 Nearly two centuries after these decrees were promulgated, Fray Junípero Serra and José de Gálvez met in southern Baja California in 1768 to discuss the settlement of Alta California in the context of a complex political and administrative reform in New Spain. In the mind of the visitor-general, the best way to secure Alta California for Spain was to establish a set of missions “based on Spanish agricultural methods and strong Franciscan control”; in addition, a couple of presidios would provide military aid and escorts for the missions.8 Assessing how this project unfolded or what its impact on the lives of California indigenous people was is far from this chapter’s objectives, as other works in this volume already touch on those issues. What interests me here is analyzing the ways in which sixteenthcentury models of Franciscan evangelization shaped the socioreligious program that Serra and his companions developed in California. While it is true that Serra’s worldviews were primarily influenced by medieval thought through the teachings of Ramon Llull and Duns Scotus,9 it is important to underscore that California missions also drew on forms of evangelization developed in the Spanish peninsula

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and central New Spain early in the sixteenth century. In particular, the dialogue between Franciscans and Indians—or Franciscan monologues, according to some scholars—and the compilation of bilingual texts—catechisms and manuals for confession—were essential for the exposition of the Christian doctrine in California, just as they were in central New Spain two centuries before.10 In fact, prior to their arrival in California, missionaries from the Colegio de San Fernando de Mexico—or Fernandinos—had attempted to structure their work among the Pames in the Sierra Gorda in this way, and Serra himself had promoted the use of bilingual catechisms and confessionals there. In this context, the analysis of a bilingual manual for confession, associated with the period of Fray Junípero Serra in Mission San Carlos Borromeo, offers an invaluable entry point for discussing not only what the padres asked the Indians to internalize but, more important, the accommodations that took place in this kind of communication between friars and Rumsen Indians in the late eighteenth century.11 How the Fernandinos locally interpreted the situations, dialogues, and precepts, other confessionals suggested, and what those adaptations meant are the main concerns in this chapter. In order to address those issues, this chapter elaborates on the opinion of an eighteenth-century priest from Guadalajara when he commented that confession was also about minding the peculiarities of every place and individual, since “one cannot take the same approach with rustic people and those who are prone to evildoing; [or] with people living in rural areas and in the cities.”12 Therefore, the priest acknowledged, expertise and prudence were required, for not all the questions listed in the manuals for confessors suited every individual. Confession might be interpreted as an instrument of control, a means to foster cultural change, or an invitation for repentance and the return to a lost communal path, as some scholars have debated.13 All of this might be true in the case of Mission San Carlos, but as we will see, in the confessional mission Indians learned that they could bend some Christian precepts and remain at peace with the missionary or that there was room for some of their traditions and daily practices as long as they did not conflict with the idea of God as the source of spiritual and corporal health. In the confessional, the missionary attempted to alter the Indians’ notions of property, sexuality, or healing but at the same time made clear that he could not impose a radical or complete change in such matters. Limited as communication might have been in the confessional, this verbal exchange constituted important middle ground in mission history. O N T H E M A N UA L S F O R C O N F E S S O R S I N N EW SPA I N

In the Catholic tradition, penance was established as a sacrament by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215–1216) and prescribed as an annual obligation for the faithful. Confessional manuals emerged in this context “to provide both confessor and

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penitent the questions and answers related to the sacrament.”14 During the sixteenth century in the Counter-Reformation era, confessional manuals “experienced widespread popularity in Spain”15 at a time when “penance changed from a communal rite designed to maintain the peace of the community to a process in which the individual was reconciled with God in the depths of the soul.”16 When the Franciscans arrived in New Spain, they emphasized the importance of auricular confession and introduced the sacrament of penitence in 1526 “in a very methodical fashion”: Every Sunday afternoon they gathered up the Indians who were to confess during the following week, examined them in the Christian doctrine . . . and instructed them in the necessity and efficacy of penitence, and the three conditions required for the remission of sins: repentance, acknowledgment, and restitution, after which they gave them practical instructions about confessing. On the morning of confession day they read them a list of all sins that man can commit. During Lent, the season especially designated for the administration of the sacrament, the friar-interpreters devoted themselves solely to confessing the Indians.17

During this initial stage of evangelization, the use of manuals for confessors such as Martín de Azpilcueta’s Manual de confesores y penitentes or Constantino Ponce de la Fuente’s Suma de doctrina cristiana seem to have been commonplace in New Spain among Franciscans and members of the other mendicant orders.18 Those texts summarized the basic principles of the Christian doctrine and provided examples for explaining them to the community; beyond that necessary synthesis, Franciscan methods of evangelization in New Spain also emphasized the translation of prayers, questionnaires, and exposition of sacraments into Indian languages. In so doing, New Spain’s Franciscans certainly benefited from preexisting manuals for confessors, but in turn they “incorporated questions or themes particular to the contexts they were dealing with.”19 On November 25, 1551, in Session XIV, the Council of Trent formally established the doctrine on the sacrament of penance—contrition, confession, and satisfaction constituted the process of reconciliation of the individual, with God and the community. A few decades later, the Third Mexican Provincial Council (1585) adapted those canons and decrees to the indoctrination of the Indians and the spiritual attention of Spaniards in New Spain.20 One of the decrees of that assembly explained that complete understanding of a penitent’s confession was required before the priest could grant him absolution. Confessors should also get a copy of the catechism and the manual for confessors approved by the council; the bishops reminded all priests in New Spain—either secular clergy or members of any religious order—that they should conform to the contents of those guidelines, and in the cases of priests working in Indian parishes or protoparishes (doctrinas), learning to communicate in the respective Indian language was mandatory.21 In this

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respect, New Spain’s bishops echoed a long-lasting concern with conformity consistent with “the drive for uniformity which characterized the post-Trent era”; for several years, bishops had discussed “the diversity regarding the doctrine and sacraments that had arisen in New Spain,” and the crafting of a standard ritual handbook attempted to curb this problem.22 However, in spite of the council’s desire for standardization in the form of administering the sacraments to Indians, Spaniards, and mixed populations alike, members of the mendicant orders continued to produce and follow their own renderings of other general manuals: “Not surprisingly, although ecclesiastics desired a uniform message, they typically wanted that message to originate from their own order.”23 By the time the Third Mexican Provincial Council set the doctrinal framework for New Spain’s Catholic Church, Franciscans had assembled a body of literature that served as a guide “to the appropriate and vernacular expressions [the friars] required in the interrogatories, and to the thorough comprehension the administration of the sacrament of penance demanded.”24 As a result, Fray Alonso de Molina’s Doctrina Christiana (1546), and his Confesionario mayor (1565) were the preferred sacramental manuals among the Franciscans in New Spain in the sixteenth century.25 The purpose of composing those manuals, Molina stated, was twofold: I thought I would write you these two confessional manuals as reminders. The first is a bit long. It is necessary for you, as with it I will help you a little bit concerning your salvation—you, a Christian, who is dedicated to our savior Jesus Christ, who is already a believer and observes the holy Catholic faith. And the second, smaller, confessional manual will belong to your confessor so that he will be able to understand your Nahua speech.26

In his Confesionario mayor, Fray Alonso de Molina included questions on medicinal and shamanistic practices as part of the attempts to eradicate what the Spaniards identified as idolatry. Daily relations between Indians and Spaniards were also a concern in Molina’s manual for confessors, which led him to inquire about various examples of possible transgressions to the Ten Commandments in daily life. Also in connection with everyday activities, Molina’s manual included detailed explanations on the sacraments of the Catholic Church, suggesting examples on how to invite the Indians to abide by these principles, as can be seen in some comments on matrimony: Sexual restrain [is another reason] to get married, so that from this time on you don’t live freely together—no os amancebeis—, you don’t commit adultery . . . but be faithful to your [spouse] . . . until you die. For Our Lord has turned both of you into one person, so you can find salvation together; for you, the man, will be saved through your wife and will marry her with your heart and your flesh . . . [,] and in the same vein, you, who are the woman, will be saved through your husband.27

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In their capacity as bilingual texts, manuals for confessors have been considered invaluable sources for the study of Indian languages in New Spain. On top of that, some scholars consider that manuals such as Molina’s offer detailed glimpses about “the situation of Indian populations under the Spanish regime” in colonial times. From a different perspective, these texts have been considered useful aids in our understanding about evangelization methods in sixteenth-century New Spain and about “Franciscan mentality on the Indians and the latters’ forms of resistance to the spiritual conquest.”28 The Confesional en Carmeleño analyzed here takes part of the catechetical genre that flourished in central Mexico, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,29 and, as we will see below, eventually reached New Spain’s northern frontier as Franciscan missionaries improved their knowledge of Indian languages there. California’s missions were part of a large-scale project of religious conversion, cultural change, and imperial expansion that by necessity adapted general rules to local realities. Whether they were composed in central New Spain or in California, manuals for administering the sacraments to Indian catechumens expressed similar views on the ways to bring Indians into Christianity and reproduced ideas about the Indians’ need for tutelage: In the realm of introduced religion, Indians learned a catechism pitched to a child’s level of comprehension, yet, when they approached the Catholic sacraments, they found themselves subject to adult standards of comprehension and conduct. In the realm of marriage and sexuality, Indians encountered a Catholic system that insisted upon uncompromising adherence to monogamy and marital fidelity yet contradicted itself in tolerating or pardoning exceptions.30

The following pages highlight some of these complexities by analyzing the ways in which Franciscans from Mission San Carlos in the age of Junípero Serra attempted to structure indigenous spirituality and daily practices.

PAT T E R N S O F M I S SIO N G OV E R N M E N T I N N O RT H E R N N EW SPA I N

In general terms, by the eighteenth century most ecclesiastics and secular authorities in New Spain seemed to agree that, in theory, the mission was a temporary stage with a projected life span of ten to twenty years. During that time frame, the padres’ initial entradas would be followed by a systematic congregación— relocation—of Indians in suitable locations;31 then, formal religious instruction should begin in the mission until local residents knew the doctrine and observed the rituals of Christianity. Only then would the transformation of the mission into a “parish and town” be accepted.32 In practice, Jesuits and Franciscans, the religious orders most actively involved in mission work in northern New Spain,

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succeeded in prolonging that ten-year span and in securing some leverage in frontier societies.33 Up to 1767 in Sinaloa and Sonora, Jesuits benefited from the military escorts the Crown assigned to their missions from their first entradas to this region; another important feature of their beginnings there were the financial resources that private benefactors and Jesuit colleges destined to those missions. In this initial setting, missionaries’ control over Indian labor was of paramount importance, allowing the Jesuits to organize mission towns with a solid economic base.34 Missions were thus able to produce “for their own subsistence and in sufficient quantities to prepare for times of hunger. This Jesuit conception of the model of indigenous community or ‘mission’ was oriented to forming a community closed to contact with the Spanish.”35 In other cases, such as in the provinces of Parral and Santa Barbara in Nueva Vizcaya, Jesuit missionaries arranged for the temporary work of mission Indians in nearby mines, haciendas, and ranches as a way to secure broader means of subsistence for the mission.36 In short, what the Jesuits achieved in the communities under their direction was a mode of organization and control meant to promote the Hispanization of Indians and the transition from subsistence economies to market-oriented communities while focusing on religious conversion, economic sufficiency, and control of Indian population.37 On the Franciscan side, the establishment of the Texas missions somehow followed the aforementioned structure. In 1690 Viceroy Conde de Galve organized a series of reconnaissance travels in eastern Texas, given the proximity of French troops in that region.38 Once the missions were founded around the region comprising San Antonio, La Bahía, and Los Adaes, Franciscans developed a form of organization that resembled the structure of a Jesuit mission in western New Spain: missionaries had been trusted with the organization of town government, and soldiers were to protect the missions and help the padres retain local Indians there. In essence, what the friars attempted to implant in Texas was a chain of missions characterized by communal property and labor, with Indians living in “policía” under the supervision of the padres.39 Iconic Franciscan missionaries as Fray Antonio Margil de Jesus were involved in the initial stages of this mission, which epitomized the evangelic call of Propaganda Fide colleges among nonChristian populations. Over time, this social organization would be evoked by many Franciscans in New Spain as an ideal structure, referring to it as “the Texas method,”40 since it placed all the components of mission life—Indian residents, military aid, mission assets, local government—under the padres’ care. As the eighteenth century unfolded, Enlightenment-minded officers systematically tried to undermine the missionaries’ intervention in elections of indigenous officers and the handling of temporalities, attempting to circumscribe the missionaries to spiritual affairs only. Thus, when Franciscans from the College of San Fernando arrived in the Sierra Gorda in 1744, Coronel José de Escandón allowed the

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Fernandinos to organize daily religious and economic activities in the five missions to the Pames, although election of oficiales de república would remain outside of the missionaries’ control.41 In 1750 Fray Junípero Serra arrived in the Sierra Gorda aiming to revitalize missionary work among the Pames; there, “Serra made his mark . . . through his more intensive application of the Fernandino plan, his work to expand agriculture at the missions, and his role in the construction of new churches.” What Serra could not prevent, however, was getting involved in bitter disputes with soldiers and local settlers over access to lands surrounding Pames missions.42 California’s missions were a continuation of larger patterns of Spanish settlement and evangelization methods. Relocation of Indians, the presence of Christian indoctrination, the use of Indian labor, economic self-sufficiency, and the incorporation of the mission to local and regional markets are some of the features rooted in previous experiences. However, specific circumstances during the 1760s led to a particular design for the establishment of Franciscan missions in California. By that time, New Spain’s northern frontier was threatened by two pressing problems. On the one hand, the expansion of rival imperial powers—French, British, and some years later even Russian—kept viceregal authorities busy discussing new reconnaissance expeditions that might secure Spanish claims over already-visited but long-neglected territories; Baja and Alta California, Texas, and the Gila and Colorado Rivers were of paramount importance in this respect. Reorganization and renewed attention to these regions “would come only in the wake of Spain’s humiliating defeat in the Seven Year’s War” in 1763. On the other hand, rumors of a widespread Indian rebellion as well as repeated raids by multiethnic bands and the permanent threat of Apaches and Comanches along the frontier called for stronger military aid in order to fight or win over hostile groups.43 In the middle of this precarious scenario, the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions in 1767 brought the royal officers’ attention back to the need for reform of the missions’ political and economic basis. Thus, when José de Gálvez and Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix called upon the Franciscans to staff the former Jesuit missions, they initially decided to keep the missionaries from having real control over their new Indian charges: “They were to administer sacraments and nothing more,”44 or at least that was the original plan for Baja California, where Junípero Serra and other Franciscans from the College of San Fernando had been assigned to replace the Jesuits.45 At some point in October 1767 while still waiting for a means of transportation to Baja California, the Fernandinos learned that a plan to send Franciscans from the province of Santiago de Xalisco to the peninsula was in preparation and that they would be reassigned to Pimería Alta, in Sonora. According to Steven Hackel, in Serra’s mind this imminent shift “was akin to a return to the Sierra Gorda,

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where there had been little opportunity for evangelism among the unbaptized.” The change of plans was heartbreaking for Serra, as he had imagined “thousands of infidels who are waiting . . . on the threshold of Holy Baptism” in Baja California; on the contrary, he regretted that “such a field of evangelization does not exist in Sonora,” where “you have to walk many leagues through unpopulated lands to meet one infidel.”46 This shift didn’t take place in the end, as the Fernandinos persuaded Gálvez and Viceroy Croix to allow them to travel to the peninsula, while Franciscans from the province of Xalisco and the college of Querétaro were destined for Sonora.47 In late August 1768, Gálvez changed his mind regarding mission government in Baja California. He granted the Fernandinos “full power over the missions they had inherited, and he and Serra began to dramatically reorganize the missions, primarily by redistributing their Indian populations, just as the Jesuits had done.”48 Soon after reorganizing Baja California missions in this way,49 José de Gálvez got orders to explore the surroundings of Monterey and to occupy Alta California. Gálvez knew that establishing missions and presidios was the mechanism that Spanish tradition and regulations leaned toward.50 Thus, when Junípero Serra volunteered for the evangelical side of this venture, Gálvez agreed and tried to secure the best possible conditions for the Fernandinos’ work, granting full powers to Serra over mission Indians. As Hackel reminds us, Gálvez was impressed with the Fernandinos’ work in the Sierra Gorda . . . and he wanted the new missions of Alta California to be based on Spanish agricultural methods and strong Franciscan control. Hence, “he ordered that there should be packed and shipped all kinds of articles for use in dwelling quarters and field, with necessary implements of iron for working the land and planting, and every type of seed from both Spain and New Spain.” All of this would come from Baja California. . . . From November 1768 through late March 1769, Serra [who had been appointed president of the Baja California missions by father guardian Fray José García], traveled the peninsula, going from mission to mission in a search for extra chalices, vestments, baptism shells, thuribles, cassocks, surplices, cruets, crosses, bake irons, and liturgical and devotional paintings and statues that could be sent to Alta California.51

Thus, the Spanish settlement in California began under exceptional conditions: “The king gave the lead hand to Junípero Serra . . . and the Franciscans”;52 this was a privilege that contemporary Franciscans—Querétarans and Xaliscans in Sonora, for instance—did not enjoy.53 It was no surprise, then, that two days after his arrival in San Diego, Serra described Alta California as a “good country,” “beautiful to behold,” and a “promised land”; in that region there were not only fertile soil and sources of freshwater “but [also] an immense population of unbaptized Indians awaiting conversion.” From that standpoint, “Alta California promised ‘poor’ and ‘naked peoples’ who could be remade according to Catholic teachings.”54

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Mission San Carlos Borromeo was founded by Junípero Serra on June 3, 1770, a few months after the establishment of the first Californian Mission in San Diego (1769). The mission was relocated from its original site in Monterey to the Carmel River in the summer of 1771.55 At the time of the Spaniards’ arrival in the Monterey region, the Rumsen and Esselen peoples had lived there for several hundred years; by 1770, between twentyfive hundred and three thousand Rumsen and Esselen peoples lived in that region.56 These Indian groups were particularly diverse, since the region they inhabited “represented the southernmost extent of Costanoan languages and the northern reach of the Esselen linguistic family.” They spoke mutually unintelligible languages and “had extensive repertoires of music, ritual and dance” of their own.57 Sacramental records in Mission San Carlos include both Rumsen and Esselen Indians, and from the Spaniards’ perspective both groups would eventually be identified as “Carmeleños.” However, recent demographic studies show that in the early days of this mission local residents were primarily Rumsen, which as the chapter explains later, suggests that the Confesional en Carmeleño dates back to this initial stage. By analyzing baptismal records in Mission San Carlos for the period between 1707 and 1808, Steven Hackel has identified four distinct waves of Indians coming into the mission—each successive wave involving villages located a greater distance from Carmel. It should be noted that the first movements to San Carlos, up to 1778, “involved Indians from five associated Rumsen villages situated within ten miles of Mission San Carlos in the hills and valleys of the Carmel River and San Jose Creek.” After 1782 Esselen Indians appear more frequently in these records, comprising the majority of Indians moving into the mission.58 We should bear in mind that while still in Monterey, Serra and his companion there, Fray Juan Crespí, made little progress in baptizing adult Indians; thus, up to May 1771, children accounted for the majority of baptisms in the mission-presidio. As we know, neither Serra nor Crespí were prepared to understand the languages spoken in the Monterey region. However, “before long, four young Rumsen boys— Buenaventura, Francisco, Fernando, and Diego—were beginning to pick up the padres’ Castilian language. Serra saw them not just as additions to his flock but as potential interpreters.”59 Whether any of these or other Rumsen children participated in the crafting of Mission San Carlos’ confessional is not clear.60 However, it should be remembered that during his tenure in the Sierra Gorda missions Serra relied on the use of bilingual confessionals and catechisms as auxiliaries in the indoctrination process; in that context, Fray Pedro de Font’s indications that by 1776 California missions tried to adapt Bartolomé Castaño’s Catecismo breve to

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local situations, lead us to believe that attempts to draft a Rumsen-Castilian confessional and catechism might be in place by that time in Carmel.61 It is well known that by 1792 Father Lasuén, Serra’s successor as president of the California missions after 1785, had completed a trilingual—Rumsen-Esselen-Castilian—vocabulary and a short catechism, but this text obviously emphasized the differences between two different Indian languages spoken at Carmel.62 The hypothesis that the Confesional en Carmeleño is a Rumsen text,63 related to the first decade of Franciscan administration in Mission San Carlos, still needs linguistic verification beyond the coincidence in some words listed in other late colonial Rumsen vocabularies;64 meanwhile, significant connections can be established between this manual and similar documents in use in other contemporary missions in northern New Spain. Bringing Indians to Catholicism and making them good Christians were part of the moral justification of Spanish missions, but by no means were those two spheres equivalent. In the spiritual realm, missionaries were committed to religious conversion and the formation of Christian praying communities, and for that goal to be achieved, effectively explaining the contents of the Christian doctrine to the Indians was an essential step to take. Hence, bilingualism—written and spoken— became a central issue in mission contexts. Neglecting the interest in Indian languages was more than problematic, as Fray Antonio Barbastro—a missionary to the Pima Indians in Sonora—underscored in a 1777 report while denouncing the missionaries’ lack of consistency in learning how to communicate with their catechumens: At some missions [the Indians] always pray in Castilian; in others one day in Castilian and another in their own language. At some [missions] [they respond to] certain questions, in others [to] other ones. At some missions they recite the general confession, a long act of contrition, and the rest of the doctrine. . . . Prayers in Castilian are commonly led by one temastián, but by another in Pima; and what follows from this? That (except for a very few) they do not know how to pray in either Pima or Castilian. . . . Some ministers are convinced that their Indians know how to pray well, because when they pray much noise is heard in the church; and I have been one of them, but upon testing them individually, I found that three-quarters of the Indians knew nothing at all.65

From a different perspective, what Barbastro identified as “confusion” when addressing the alleged cacophony and his distrust on the reception of the Christian doctrine might be more adequately described as a creative display of accommodation to mission life. How Pima Indians prayed and sang and what they interpreted through their performances and religious practice needed to be measured according to standards other than the ones Barbastro suggested. One possibility, as Haas suggests, involves indigenous appropriation of these rituals in order to re-create memory and power in their own terms, associating their own stories, their own

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needs and social structures, to the forms and concepts offered by Catholicism.66 It might also be suggested that “confusion” was the middle ground between imposition and acceptance of new forms and concepts; in that sense, it was part of a symbolic covenant more than an expression of linguistic barriers. In fact, this kind of testimony makes clear that eighteenth-century Franciscans kept struggling with sixteenth-century concerns, when missionaries in New Spain wondered if Indians could understand and embrace every concept and belief contained in the Christian doctrine. Then, some friars wondered whether [the Indians] were capable of confessing properly and whether they should be admitted to the sacrament any longer. [Augustinian fray Juan Bautista de Moya] answered that the errors and omissions of the Indians should not be given an excessive importance, for they were almost always attributable to faulty memory; that one should only ask them to acknowledge their sins with complete sincerity, to repent of them truly, and to resolve not to repeat them. The Franciscans who faced the same problems came to the same conclusions.67

Now and then, eighteenth-century missionaries in California echoed this debate when reflecting on “whether neophytes understood the sacrament of penance and could be trusted to give a full and sincere confession.”68 Although they considered that there was no reason to deny this sacrament to the Indians, few neophytes, however, approached the confessional voluntarily. As we have previously discussed, confession had a central place in the indoctrination process. California missions were not the exception in this respect; while in the confessional, “Indians had their consciences probed for sin and their minds tutored in basic Catholic beliefs.”69 By comparing the manuals for confessors in some California missions—San Buenaventura, La Purísima, Santa Barbara— Hackel reconstructed the general picture of how this sacrament was administered to the Indians: During the confession, Indians responded to a battery of prepared questions, propounded in either Spanish or an Indian language, and focused on beliefs and behaviors Franciscans considered sinful and dangerous. At the outset Indians were asked a simple question calculated to determine their most basic knowledge of Catholicism: “Do you know how to pray?” If their answer revealed an unfamiliarity with basic Catholic prayers, they were admonished: “Look here: try to learn how to say prayers, for every Christian must know whatever is required to get to heaven.” Then they were told to affirm the central teachings of the catechism. These confessions must have been frightening and isolating, a time when many Indians learned what Catholicism promised them: to burn in hell if they did not repent and express sincere remorse for sins they committed.70

Through these dialogues and questions, the missionary introduced the JudeoChristian concept of guilt, thus confronting indigenous ideas about their body and

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their connection with other worlds with abstract concepts such as the sin of intent and the sin of thought.71 To do so, the author of the Confesional en Carmeleño divided the manual in five sections, which in turn comprise diverse sets of questions and explanatory comments. With the exception of the opening prayer in Latin, the rest of the manual is a Rumsen-Spanish document structured as follows: I. [Dedication in Latin and Spanish-Rumsen Introduction]72 II. [Guide for confession] 1. [Pecados de la carne / On the “sins of the flesh”] 2. Sobre el robar / On theft 3. Sobre el aborrecer o querer mal a otro / On ill will 4. Sobre la borrachera [y bebidas alucinógenas] / On drunkness [and hallucinogenic drinks] III. [Contrition. (Overlapped section)] 1. Breve exorto para mover a dolor después de oída la confesión [y] antes de la absolución / Exhortation for bringing true sorrow after hearing confession and before granting absolution 2. Exorto para la caridad y contrición / Exhortation for experiencing charity and contrition IV. [Guide for confession. (Section continued)] 1. [Sobre la misa / On attendance to Mass] 2. Sobre el no comer carne / On restraining from eating meat 3. Sobre hechicerías / On wizardry V. Breve explicación de los otros sacramentos / Short exposition on the rest of the sacraments 1. Bautismo / Baptism 2. Comunión / Communion 3. Matrimony / Matrimony 4. Santa Unción / Extreme Unction As noted above, the opening questions in the Confesional en Carmeleño show some concerns about the Indians’ sexual activities, advising the confessor to inquire about fornication, polygamy, and masturbation among his catechumens. In that respect, the Confesional closely follows the decrees of the Council of Trent and the Third Mexican Provincial Council, which in turn inspired similar manuals for confession used in New Spain. Unlike Lasuén’s catechetical guide, which admonished Indians to carefully prepare for confession and reminded them the importance of not telling lies,73 the Confesional showed a less elaborated ritual and a more

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direct approach, without pondering if the Indians would lie or not. An initial short declaration of the missionary invited the penitent to approach the confessional and confess his sins: “Don’t be afraid; don’t be ashamed to confess your sins; I will not reprehend you; therefore, confess all the sins you committed, so that God may forgive you” (Figure 7.1).74 Then, attention was directed to sexual intercourse, what the missionary considered “the most common” sin among the Rumsen: “Have you taken [a] woman?” or “Have you taken [a] man?” were the initial questions the missionary asked.75 Finding out whether the sexual partners were single or married and if the encounters were frequent or not were the following steps in the confession. The general recommendation in these cases was to end such illicit encounters. The Confesional en Carmeleño’s concerns on sexual activities paralleled the questions and recommendations included in other manuals for confessors composed in California and New Spain.76 However, the document takes a different approach when dealing with theft and, more precisely, petty theft against mission assets. In this respect, the missionary understood that despite the doctrinal definition of theft as the illicit appropriation of other person’s possessions, a different concept needed to be enforced in Carmel. The missionary was instructed to ask “Have you stolen anything?” Once the missionary was headed in that direction, the manual suggested being more specific inquiring about the Indians’ possible taking of wheat, barley, beans, corn, peas, or other mission produce. As the Confesional en Carmeleño reveals, missionaries did not seem to have been that concerned about the act of taking goods, even when the questionnaire specifically asked about mission produce being taken. The real deal seems to have been the amount of goods thus acquired: “Did you steal a lot or a few?” (¿robaste poco o mucho?) was the specific suggested question. The manual did not offer any guidance in the event of a revelation of large portions of produce being taken away by the penitent. On the other hand, when it came to tiny portions, the missionary’s acquiescence was very revealing, since the suggested admonition was “Whenever you steal in small amounts, you are not sinning a lot” (cuando robas poco no es mucho pecado). A laconic “Don’t steal a lot” (no robes mucho) is equally significant.77 From an orthodox point of view, the debate on theft did not have much to do with the amount of things illicitly taken. Gerónimo de Ripalda’s Catechism of the Christian Doctrine, the standard exposition of the Christian precepts since 1591—a text widely known and distributed in New Spain by the late eighteenth century— considered that the core of the Seventh Commandment was to keep individuals from taking, having, or wanting other persons’ property against their will. Furthermore, forgiveness for this sin could not be achieved “if [the sinner] does not pay back that which he owes, or at least the portion he can afford.”78 Why, then, did the Confesional en Carmeleño suggest looking the other way in such cases? One way to answer this question relates to Mission San Carlos’s erratic

figure 7.1. “Al principio de la confesión” [At the beginning of confession], fragment of Confesional en Carmeleño, Archivo Histórico Franciscano de Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico.

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capacity for supplying goods to local Indians. Shortly after the relocation of the mission to the Carmel River, Serra found himself there subsisting “on milk from the mission’s cows, the few vegetables from the mission’s gardens, and the charity of the local Rumsen and the Salinan . . . affiliated with Mission San Antonio.” Only after returning from Mexico City, in 1774, could food be found in abundance in Mission San Carlos; by that time, Serra gladly remarked, mission Indians “three times a day eat from our hands.”79 Reciprocity and gift exchanges were fundamental components in Indian-Spanish relations in colonial California, so bending some rules did fit into the larger scheme of things. Furthermore, if sharing food and provisions with the Indians was one of the mechanisms the Franciscans trusted the most in order to attract Indians to the mission, then a relatively lax understanding of theft seemed appropriate. Finally, Rumsen rituals were also subject to scrutiny in the Confesional en Carmeleño. Across California’s Indian communities, spiritual specialists, or shamans, “played important roles in communitywide ritual and privately gave comfort to individuals needing help.”80 Depending on the sort of specialized knowledge a shaman possessed, he or she could be considered a healing doctor, a midwife, an herb curing doctor, a seer, a war councilor, or a dream interpreter. In the confessional, Franciscans seemed to have kept a close eye on healing rituals, as their questions targeted practices such as using charms, bloodletting, sucking, or blowing smoke over afflicted persons.81 In Mission San Carlos, as a general principle the missionary should discourage the use of “wizardry,” since the devil was its inspirer.82 At the same time, the confessor should determine, in a discrete manner, if the penitent used charms, if he had given any kind of amulets to other person, or if he was a “sucking doctor”83 or had been in contact with any such shaman. In the missionaries’ view, shamans induced people to believe that the devil could help them to heal or to cause harm; that was part of the reason they rejected these practices as superstitious84 and confronted the shaman in the confessional by exhorting “Do not think that if you suck anyone . . . the Devil will help you. Therefore, do not suck anyone anymore. Do not carry on such superstition.”85 The associated practice of bloodletting, however, seemed less troubling to the author of the Confesional en Carmeleño, as he acknowledged that such remedy was not a sin as long as it did not involve invoking to the devil: [S]carifying the sick person just to let the blood out is not sinful, as long as they do not wish to see the Devil involved in it, [likewise, one must remind them] not to suck anymore and not to perform what they call ûirrèè upon sick people, for that is a dance, or a dance-like performance, for invoking or perhaps driving away the Devil. Hence, the verb ûal, which means to cut or to make incisions, has a positive connotation for it only relates to superstition-free bloodletting . . . [,] but [the verb] loj, which means sucking, or ûirrèè which is even worse, stand for the already mentioned superstition.86

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Whether the missionary effectively believed that there was a separation of spiritual and physical spheres in bloodletting practices or whether this description was the result of an Indian translator’s desire to conceal the meaning of determined cultural practices is not clear. After all, from its very inception, the Confesional en Carmeleño might have suffered from the silences and misperceptions that Franciscans faced in other missions in California, as one padre noticed when he reported that his Luiseño catechumens “never reveal more than that which they cannot deny.”87 F I NA L C OM M E N T S

Who was the author of the Confesional en Carmeleño? How does this manual linguistically compare to other records of the Rumsen language? Those are central pending issues that speak of the possibility of enhancing our views about IndianSpanish relations in California. Determining whether this manual bears the imprint of the first president of the California missions, Junípero Serra, or that of his successor will be highly significant; this interest notwithstanding, we cannot overlook this text’s connections with a widespread catechetical genre, with Carmel’s foundational period, and, above all, with the lives and beliefs of the Rumsen catechumens it meant to reach. As every manual for confessors in New Spain did, the Confesional en Carmeleño reproduced long-held concerns on the religious instruction of old and new Catholics, making the core principles of the Christian doctrine available to the faithful by inviting them to look into their souls and by asking forgiveness for their transgressions. By the same token, this manual also attests that “not all missionaries envisioned the same methods”; religious indoctrination, after all, was time and space sensitive.88 Finally, just as the missionaries’ work depended on institutional constraints, individual motivations, and personal understandings of and adaptations to local landscapes and populations, mission Indians also underwent “a process of adaptation that reflected their needs to comprehend, deal with, and maneuver around the missionaries’ religious concepts and practices.”89 In this last respect, the Confesional en Carmeleño offers ample opportunities for understanding how Catholicism and incorporation to the colonial society were negotiated in Mission San Carlos, thus expanding the “diverse scene of many Catholicisms extending throughout the colonial period and branching outside central Mexico.”90 By explaining Rumsen words and rituals to the Franciscans, by persuading the missionaries about the innocuous nature of local traditional practices, or even by conforming to the highly structured sacrament of confession, Rumsen Indians gave testimony of a sustained effort to find room for their worldviews in a period of multiple changes.

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The epigraph is from Anonymous, Confesional en Carmeleño, Archivo Histórico Franciscano de Zapopan, Fondo Colegio de Guadalupe, Box 53 (Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico). The original text says “Por esos pecados que hiciste estaba para echarte Dios al infierno: allí en el infierno te abrazarías, como un leño se abraza . . . , por esto siéntete de tu corazón, que el Demonio te engañó para llevarte al infierno.” 1. Daniel Matson and Bernard Fontana, eds., Friar Bringas Reports to the King: Methods of Indoctrination on the Frontier of New Spain, 1796–97 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 1. 2. Lino Gómez Canedo, Evangelización y Conquista: Experiencia franciscana en Hispanoamérica (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1977); Elsa Cecilia Frost, La historia de Dios en las indias: Visión franciscana del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2002), 164–209; Antonio Rubial, La hermana pobreza: El franciscanismo: de la Edad Media a la evangelización novohispana (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1996), 119–33. 3. In the Catholic Church, sacraments—etymologically “sign of the sacred”—are considered special liturgical celebrations that “manifest and communicate to . . . [the believer] . . . the mystery of communion” with God. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), Part 2, Section 1, chap. 1, para. 1118, www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P31.HTM. In 1547, the Council of Trent sanctioned a “Decree on the Sacraments”—Session VII, March 3, 1547—in response to Protestant criticisms against the doctrine of justification in general and the sacraments of the Catholic Church in particular. The decree established baptism, confirmation, eucharist (or communion), penance (or reconciliation), extreme unction (or anointing of the sick or last rites), holy orders, and marriage (or holy matrimony) as the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. 4. In 1562 in a letter sent to the Franciscan commissary-general of the Indies (comisario general de indias), Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta described what he imagined as a “Christian Republic” in New Spain. In his letter, Mendieta advocated a Franciscan ministry “without intromission or objections from bishops or court officials [oidores].” Joaquín García Icazbalceta, ed., Colección de documentos para la Historia de México, Vol. 2 (Mexico City: Antigua Librería, 1866), 529. 5. Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 109. 6. For a succinct balance on diverse ways of approaching this issue, see William Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 51–62. In a recent study on indigenous responses to mission life and the establishment of colonial relations in California, Lisbeth Haas underscores the continuity of indigenous forms of authority, knowledge, and power after 1769, addressing the pivotal role that native translators, artisans, dancers, elders, and community leaders played in mission contexts. Lisbeth Haas, Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 7. “Concilio III Provincial de Mejico: Año 1585,” in Colección de cánones y decretos de todos los concilios de la Iglesia de España y de América, Vol. 5, ed. Juan Tejada y Ramiro (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Pedro Montero, 1859), 537. See especially Book 1, Title I, “On the spreading of the divine word.” From this prescriptive point of view, some authors suggest that this provincial council represents the end of the evangelization period and the beginning of New Spain’s ecclesiastical history proper. See Alberto Carrillo Cázares, “Un problema central: El Concilio Tercero y la capacidad de los clérigos para administrar las parroquias en la lengua de sus naturales,” in Derecho, política y sociedad en Nueva España a la luz del Tercer Concilio Provincial Mexicano (1585), ed. Andrés Lira (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán—El Colegio de México, 2013), 426. 8. Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 150. 9. Ibid., 40–41.

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10. Osvaldo F. Pardo, The Origins of Mexican Catholicism: Nahua Rituals and Christian Sacraments in Sixteenth-century Mexico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 63–65. 11. As Mark Z. Christensen reminds us, the study of these kinds of sources reveals the presence of a continually negotiated religion and the vitality of cultural practices and Indian peoples who were thought to have been “spiritually conquered.” Mark Z. Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, Stanford University Press, 2013), 4. 12. Gerónimo Thomás de Aquino Cortés, Arte, vocabulario y confessionario en el idioma mexicano, como se usa en el obispado de Guadalaxara (1765; reprint, Guadalajara: Edmundo Aviña Levy, 1967), 128. 13. Pardo, The Origins of Mexican Catholicism, 80; R. Emmet McLaughlin, “Truth, Tradition, and History: The Historiography of High/Late Medieval and Early Modern Penance,” in A New History of Penance, ed. Abigail Firey, 19–71 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 14. Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 91. 15. Ibid. 16. McLaughlin, “Truth, Tradition, and History,” 63. 17. Also during this initial period, Augustinian friars combined communal absolution “for venial sins and ordinary lapses” with individual confession “for graver faults.” Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 116–17. 18. Verónica Murillo Gallegos, Problemas de evangelización, problemas de traducción: Fray Juan Bautista de Viseo y sus textos para confesores, Nueva España (siglo XVI) (Zacatecas: Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 2009), 28–35. 19. Roberto Moreno, “Introducción,” in Confesionario mayor en la lengua mexicana y castellana, Fray Alonso de Molina (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1984), 17. 20. The council summarized these concerns in Book 5, Title XII, “On penance and absolution.” Juan Tejada y Ramiro, ed., Colección de cánones y decretos de todos los concilios de la Iglesia de España y de América, Vol. 5 (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Pedro Montero, 1859), 633–36. 21. Ibid., 634–63; Alberto Carrillo Cázares, “Un problema central: El Concilio Tercero y la capacidad de los clérigos para administrar las parroquias en la lengua de sus naturales,” in Derecho, política y sociedad en Nueva España a la luz del Tercer Concilio Provincial Mexicano (1585), ed. Andrés Lira (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán–El Colegio de México, 2013), 427–31. 22. Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 59. 23. Ibid., 64. For a detailed discussion on the diversity of religious manuals in New Spain between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, see ibid., 59–68. 24. Fray Alonso de Molina, Confesionario mayor en la lengua mexicana y castellana (1565; reprint, Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1984), 2. The quote comes from Molina’s letter to bishop Fray Alonso de Montufar dated November 6, 1564, published as part of the manual’s Introduction. 25. One testimony of the widespread use of Molina’s Doctrina Christiana is the report that the Franciscan province of the holy gospel sent to Juan de Ovando in 1568. There, the Franciscans described the use of Molina’s bilingual—Nahuatl and Castilian—version of prayers such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Holy Father, the Salve, and parts of the Christian doctrine: articles of faith, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, and theological and cardinal virtues. Joaquín García Icazbalceta, ed., Códice Franciscano (Mexico City: Editorial Salvador Chávez Hayhoe, 1941), 30–54. 26. Molina, Confesionario mayor en la lengua mexicana y castellana, 6v. The translation into English comes from Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 71. 27. Molina, Confesionario mayor en la lengua mexicana y castellana, 54 (my translation). 28. Moreno, “Introducción,” 20; Verónica Murillo Gallegos, “Fray Juan Bautista de Viseo y sus Advertencias para los confesores de los naturales,” in Fray Juan Bautista de Viseo, Advertencias para los confesores de los naturales (1600; reprint, Mexico City: Los libros de Homero, 2010), xii.

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29. Besides Fray Alonso de Molina’s texts, other manuals for confessors that circulated in New Spain during the colonial period were Fray Juan Bautista de Viseo, Confesionario en lengua Mexicana y castellana (1599) and Advertencias para los confesores de los naturales (1600); Bartolomé Alva Ixtlixóchitl, Confesionario mayor y menor en lengua Mexicana y pláticas contra las supersticiones de idolatría que el día de hoy an quedado a los naturales desta Nueva España (1634); Diego Jaimes Ricardo Villavicencio, Luz y método de confesar idólatras (1692); and Gerónimo Thomás de Aquino Cortés, Arte, vocabulario y confessionario en el idioma mexicano, como se usa en el obispado de Guadalaxara (1765). Among the catechisms and guides for the explanation of the Christian doctrine that were especially important are Gerónimo de Ripalda, Catecismo de la doctrina Cristiana (1591), originally printed in Spain and widely known in New Spain during the second half of the seventeenth century; Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, Itinerario para párrocos de indios (1668); Fray Manuel Pérez, Farol indiano y guía y cura de indios (1713); Pedro Murillo Velarde, Catecismo o Instrucción Christiana (1752); Ignacio de Paredes S.J., Promptuario Manual Mexicano (1759); and Catecismo para uso de los párrocos hecho por el IV Concilio Provincial Mexicano (1772). For a more complete list of the manuals printed and read in New Spain, see Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 51–95. 30. Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 3. 31. “The goal of the [congregación] policy was to count all the local Indians, record their names and family relations in a census, and then relocate them from their villages to a central mission.” Hackel, Junípero Serra, 91. 32. Felix D. Almaraz, The San Antonio Missions and Their System of Land Tenure (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 2. For Charles Polzer, the evolutionary process of the mission had three stages: “entrance,” “conversion,” and “doctrine,” followed by a phase of secularization that resulted in conversion of missions into parishes. Quoted in David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 400. This process should not be confused with the actual evolution of mission districts, a cycle identified by some authors as emergence, consolidation, and crisis of the missions. Sergio Ortega Noriega, “El sistema de misiones jesuíticas, 1591–1699,” in Tres siglos de historia sonorense (1530–1830), ed. Sergio Ortega Noriega (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1993), 53–61; Ana María Atondo and Martha Ortega, “Entrada de colonos españoles en Sonora durante el siglo XVII,” in Historia general de Sonora, Vol. 2, ed. Sergio Ortega Noriega (Hermosillo: Gobierno del Estado de Sonora, 1996), 79. 33. José Refugio de la Torre Curiel, “La frontera misional novohispana a fines del siglo XVIII: Un caso para reflexionar sobre el concepto de misión,” in El Gran Norte Mexicano: Indios, misioneros y pobladores entre el mito y la historia, ed. Salvador Bernabéu Albert, 285–330 (Seville: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009); James A. Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 11–12. 34. Ortega Noriega, “El sistema de misiones jesuíticas,” 53–54; David A. Yetman, The Ópatas: In Search of a Sonoran People (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), 83; Edward Spicer, Los Yaquis: Historia de una cultura (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1994), 12. 35. Ortega Noriega, “El sistema de misiones jesuíticas,” 53–54. 36. Chantal Cramaussel, Poblar la frontera: La provincia de Santa Bárbara en Nueva Vizcaya durante los siglos XVI y XVII (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2006), 55–81. 37. Cynthia Radding, Las estructuras socioeconómicas de las misiones de la Pimería Alta, 1768–1850 (Hermosillo: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1979), 1–10; Spicer, Los Yaquis, 31; Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 67–68. 38. Luis Arnal Simon, “Las fundaciones del siglo XVIII en el noreste novohispano,” in Arquitectura y urbanismo del septentrión novohispano, ed. Luis Arnal Simón, 12–32 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999), 12–32.

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39. José María Rodríguez Jiménez, “Conflictos, poblamiento, y luchas de poder en tierras de frontera: La primera organización territorial de Texas (1680–1731),” in Expansión territorial y formación de espacios de poder en la Nueva España, ed. José Refugio de la Torre Curiel (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco, 2016), 160–69. 40. An example in Fray Francisco Garcés to Fray Sebastián Flores, San Xavier del Bac, August 3, 1768, The Bancroft Library, Fr. Marcelino da Civeza Collection (microfilm), reel 201, exp. 24. 41. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 91–93. 42. Ibid., 96, 103–7. 43. Hackel, Children of Coyote, 41; José Refugio de la Torre Curiel, “Talking to the Desert: Franciscan Explorations and Narratives of Eighteenth-Century Arizona,” in From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands, ed. Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville (Berkeley, CA: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013), 299–301. 44. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 145. “The secular administrators whom Governor Portolá had appointed immediately after the expulsion of the Jesuits would continue to manage the mission Indians.” 45. Mario Alberto Magaña Mancillas, Población y misiones de Baja California (Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 1998), 41. Bourbon officers repeatedly complained against the missionaries’ control over local residents. In 1778, Comandante General Teodoro de Croix considered that under the “old method,” “soldiers forced Indians into missions, and Franciscan missionaries would not let them leave without a permit. Inside the mission an Indian ‘has nothing to aspire to for the rest of his life; continuous work, nakedness, hunger, lack of liberty, and bad treatment are his fortune.’“ David Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 91. For Weber, Spanish missions in the San Antonio area “retarded civilian economic growth.” Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 195. 46. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 144. 47. Fernandinos finally arrived in Baja California on April 1, 1768. Ibid., 144–45. 48. Ibid., 148. 49. On the demographic crisis of Baja California missions after 1768, see Robert Jackson, Indian Population Decline: The Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1687–1840 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 59. 50. José Omar Moncada Maya, Miguel Constanzó y la Alta California: Crónica de sus vaijes (1768– 1770) (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico–Instituto de Geografía, 2012), 38–72. 51. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 149–50. 52. Sandos, Converting California, 3. 53. For the Querétarans, their first impression in Sonora was far from encouraging: “Churches and residential buildings were so badly neglected that they were about to fall in. The Indians had ‘little instruction, great liberty, no subordination [to authority], too much idleness and an excess of defiance,’ according to one friar who lamented the policy adopted by the governor of Sonora prohibiting the missionaries [the usage of unpaid] Indian labor.” Mission assets had been trusted to civil administrators, and if the missionaries requested any of those goods, they would be charged against the stipend they had been granted by the Crown. José Refugio de la Torre Curiel, Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization in Sonora, 1768–1855 (Stanford and Berkeley: Stanford University Press and the Academy of American Franciscan History, 2012), 194. 54. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 162. 55. Sandos, Converting California, 53; Hackel, Junípero Serra, 179. 56. Hackel, Children of Coyote, 17–21. 57. Ibid., 22–23. 58. Ibid., 77–78. “The period from 1773 to 1778 represented the first major wave of gentiles: 454 were baptized during these years, roughly 30 percent of all the 1,525 gentiles baptized at the mission through 1808.” Out of those 454 Indians, 417 then baptized at Mission San Carlos came from the

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Rumsen villages of Achasta and Tucutnut (the two villages closest to the mission) as well as Ichxenta, Socorronda, and Echilat. “The period 1782–1785 constituted the second major migration of gentiles to the mission. In these years, the Franciscans expanded their reach to groups beyond the immediate vicinity: the [Esselen-speaking villages of] Excelen, Eslenajan, Ecjeajan, Sargeantaruc, [and the Costanoan-speaking] Kalendaruc, and Ensen. From these groups, about 400 gentiles attained baptism, approximately 26 percent of all the gentile baptisms that would occur at the mission. The third movement of gentiles to San Carlos occurred in 1790–1792, when 213 were baptized, 78 from the Costanoan group Ensen. . . . The last major wave took place in 1805–1807, when the final outlying villagers came into the mission.” Hackel, Children of Coyote, 75–77. 59. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 177. 60. During his 1772–1774 trip to Mexico City, Serra took Juan Evangelista, a young Rumsen boy, as his servant. According to Hackel, on the way back to Carmel Serra “with an eye toward recruiting more Indians to San Carlos . . . began to instruct Juan Evangelista on how he might describe all that he had seen in Mexico.” Hackel, Junípero Serra, 195. 61. Ibid., 97; Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 245–73. 62. Victor Golla, California Indian Languages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 166. 63. Rumsen is one of the eight Costanoan languages, which in turn comprise part of the Penutian stock. For a detailed linguistic analysis of California Indians, see William Shipley, “Native Languages of California,” in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8, ed. William C. Sturtevan, 80–90 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978); Richard Levy, “Costanoan,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 8:485–95; Randall Milliken, Laurence H. Shoup, and Beverly R. Ortiz, Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today (San Francisco: National Park Service, 2009), 19. 64. In this respect, an important leading could be the word muquianc used in the Confesional en Carmeleño as the equivalent in English for “man.” Geiger and Megan identified that word as Rumsen, although they spell it mugiano. The Spanish officials who got a copy of Lasuén’s trilingual vocabulary while accompanying the Malaspina expedition registered that Rumsen word as muguyamk. Maynard Geiger and Clement W. Meighan, eds., As the Padres Saw Them: California Indian Life and Customs as Reported by the Franciscan Missionaries, 1813–1815 (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Mission Archive Library, 1976), 20; Dionisio Alcalá Galiano, Relación del viage hecho por las goletas “Sutil” y “Mexicana” en el año 1792 para reconocer el estrecho de Fuca . . . (Madrid: En la Imprenta Real de José Espinosa y Tello, 1802), 172. 65. Torre Curiel, Twilight of the Mission Frontier, 86–87. 66. Haas, Indians and Citizens, 7. 67. Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 118. 68. Hackel, Children of Coyote, 157. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., 159. 71. Sandos, Converting California, 10, 20–32; Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 118–20; Levy, “Costanoan,” 485–95; offer useful descriptions of Costanoan rituals and religious practices. 72. Numerals and subtitles in brackets have been added for clarity in the exposition. 73. “[We need to] think first of our sins, then tell all the big ones to the priest; feel in our hearts that we have not obeyed God’s commandments, vow in our souls that we will not tell lies anymore.” Qtd. in Sandos, Converting California, 97. 74. “No tengas miedo, no tengas vergüenza para confesarte. No te regañaré. Por eso, confiesa todos los pecados que hiciste, para que Dios te perdone.” Confesional en Carmeleño, fol. 1v. 75. “¿Has robado mujer? . . . ¿Has robado hombre?” In this context, the Spanish verb robar (to steal) is related to the idea of “taking” a sexual partner without marrying him or her.

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76. Sandos, Converting California, 120, analyzes the Franciscan’s treatment of Indians’ sexual activities in other missions in California. 77. Confesional en Carmeleño, fol. 5. 78. Gerónimo de Ripalda, Catecismo de la Doctrina Cristiana (1591; reprint, Mexico City: Editorial Tradición, 1977), 30–31. 79. Hackel, Junípero Serra, 184, 196. 80. Sandos, Converting California, 26–27. 81. For an overview on these practices in California missions, see Sandos, Converting California, 118–19. 82. “Wizardry involves the Devil (El Demonio se mete en las hechicerías),” Confesional en Carmeleño, fol. 9v. 83. A missionary from San Diego described this practice as follows: “[The curer] places a stone, a piece of wood or a hair in his own mouth then puts his mouth to the affected part and begins to draw or suck on that part. When he withdraws he shows the patient what he had placed in his mouth and convinces him that was the object causing him harm. At this, they become very quiet and contented judging that they are now free from evil.” Geiger and Meighan, As the Padres Saw Them, 71. 84. Another reason for the missionaries’ rejection of these practices was the existence of Indian spiritual specialists. 85. “No creas que si chupas a alguno . . . con esto te ayudará el Diablo. Así, no chupes más ahora a alguno. No hagas la dicha superstición.” Confesional en Carmeleño, fol. 11. 86. “[E]l sajar solo para sacar sangre al enfermo no es malo, como no quieran que intervenga en ello el Diablo, [asimismo, debe decirse] que no chupen mas ni que hagan con los enfermos lo que ellos llaman ûirrèè, que viene a ser el bailar o otra cosa semejante para llamar al Diablo, o tal vez para ahuyentarle. De modo que el verbo ûal, que es cortar o sajar, tiene buen sentido, y que solo sacan sangre sin superstición . . . [,] pero el loj, que es chupar, o el ûirrèè que parece aun peor, dan a significar la ya mencionada superstición.” Confesional en Carmeleño, fol. 11v. 87. Qtd. in Sandos, Converting California, 30. 88. Matson and Fontana, Friar Bringas Reports to the King, 1–2; Mariah Wade, “The Missionary Predicament: Conversion Practices in Texas, New Mexico, and the Californias,” in From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands, ed. Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013), 285. 89. Ibid., 285. 90. Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 7.

8

Junípero Serra’s Approach to the Native Peoples of the Californias Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz

Junípero Serra, like most complex historical figures, has been interpreted in multiple ways. History and cultural location have been two of the most significant determinants in this complicated process. Historically, Serra was first interpreted through the perspective of the eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms. The self-consciously Protestant Yankees who became California’s first professional historians after the gold rush had a different take on Serra and the missions. Those who later constructed or were influenced by the myths of the Spanish Revival movement had still another perspective. Then Serra’s image was dramatically altered by the new social history of the 1960s and even more so from the foregrounding of indigenous voices in subsequent decades.1 From the perspective of cultural location, Serra looked different if one were a Mallorcan, or an Anglo booster of the benefits of California life, or a member of one of California’s indigenous communities. In this chapter we focus on a central aspect of Serra’s life, the manner in which he approached the native peoples of California. His approach was conditioned by the manner in which he interpreted them. And that interpretation was greatly determined by his own history and cultural location. A good amount of our essay is drawn from Serra’s own writings. These writings are part of the Spanish colonial archive. As Ned Blackhawk has recently remarked, colonial archives are to be regarded with “moderate to deep suspicion” when they deal with indigenous cultures.2 In Serra’s case, these very suspicions can help us understand what he was able and unable to accomplish. A good introduction into the manner in which Serra approached the native peoples is offered by a series of events that occurred in December 1776. During that month in a drenching downpour, a group of Chumash, one of California’s 148

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most numerous native coastal groups, suddenly confronted a small Spanish party in the foothills along the Santa Barbara Channel. The group of Spaniards slogging through the mud that day had little doubt that they had just walked into a welldesigned ambush. The group consisted of a small number of soldiers and two Spanish priests, Junípero Serra and Fermín Francisco de Lasuén. Serra was returning from San Diego, where he had supervised the beginning of the reconstruction of the mission there after its destruction and the killing of one of its priests by a large band of Kumeyaay. He had long been eager to evangelize the Chumash, but recent signs had not been promising. Lasuén had witnessed an intense skirmish between Chumash and soldiers a year earlier and had drawn the following lesson from that event: “These Channel Indians know that they are strong and they act on the principle that whoever harms them will have to pay a price.”3 Therefore, any journey through Chumash territory was not to be taken lightly. A severe storm made matters worse. As Serra recounted, “Strong winds, heavy rains, much mud, and rough, high seas did not allow us to set foot on the beach, which would have made for a shorter and easier walk.”4 So, the party was forced to seek higher ground and travel along the foothills. The soldiers and missionaries were well aware that this was the perfect occasion for an ambush. Sure enough, the Chumash soon appeared. Serra did not record his or his companions’ immediate reaction to their presence, but what happened next confounded his expectations and made a lasting impression on him. Instead of attacking, the Chumash began to assist the beleaguered Spanish group. Serra found himself the special object of native attention, as they did everything they could to help him out. He wrote a few months later: “Since I could not travel on foot or on horseback, with one person on each side, they took hold of my arms and carried me over the muddy hills. I was not able to repay them for their efforts and their act of compassion, nor do I think I will ever be able to repay them as I would hope to do.”5 A year later the memory of the episode was still strong, and he referred to it again in another letter: “One time, when the ground was so muddy (because shortly before it had rained heavily), since I could not travel on foot or on horseback, with one person on each side, they took hold of my arms and carried me a great distance until they could set me down on firmer ground.”6 Groups of native people remained with the traveling party for the next few days, and Serra did everything he could to interact with them. He remembered: “When I was able to sing, a large number of them would happily join in and accompany me. When we stopped, I blessed those who had helped me and then a second group came over and asked me to bless them as well. A number of them accompanied us for many days.” Serra concluded his account by recording the intense feeling he had for these people: “And for me, this served to deepen the compassion I have felt for them for quite some time.”7

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For Junípero Serra this encounter on a stormy winter day symbolized what he hoped to achieve in California. The interaction between Chumash and Spanish, with one group seeing another in need and spontaneously offering to come to its aid, was the foundation for the kind of evangelization he hoped to carry out along the Pacific slope. Serra hoped that this sort of cooperation would allow further contact and dialogue and that California’s native peoples would gradually come to understand and accept the truth of Christianity. As Francis of Assisi, the founder of his religious order, had respectfully preached to Sultan Melek el-Kamel in Egypt in the thirteenth century, Serra also believed that he could respectfully spread the Christian gospel among the indigenous peoples with whom he had freely chosen to spend the rest of his life. But Serra realized that unlike Francis, he did not travel alone. He was embedded in an elaborate, complicated, and often violent colonial project that stretched back almost three hundred years. As an eighteenth-century academic whose career was built on interpreting the work of John Duns Scotus, a thirteenth-century philosopher, Serra well understood the significance of the past. He firmly believed that the two-century-long history of Spanish expansion into northern New Spain pointed to an inescapable conclusion. He further believed that his and his fellow missionaries’ experiences in the mid-eighteenth century in the Sierra Gorda and Nuevo Santander pointed in the same direction: that the most likely outcome of Spanish expansion into areas controlled by the indigenous peoples of northern New Spain was the exploitation of those peoples by ranchers and soldiers (often the same people). He further believed that the only realistic alternative to this exploitative domination was a benevolent and protective domination of those peoples by missionaries.8 Serra’s interpretation of that history did much to set his cultural location and determine the posture he presented to the native peoples he encountered. In that context, we will focus on the related themes of conversion and punishment. We also ask what the documentary record might indicate to us about the ways in which the native peoples responded to Serra’s approaches. Though it might seem obvious, it is important to underscore that Serra’s primary—and at times almost exclusive—frame of reference was religious. His own religion was a mix of the traditions he inherited, the personal fashion in which he received and interpreted that inheritance, and the environment in which he lived out his commitments. As one born on the periphery of Spain, his own Catholicism was quite different from that of eighteenth-century Germans in Bavaria, English in Maryland, or French in Orléans. Serra’s cultural posture and personal views were outlined in a religious venue, a series of sermons he delivered in Palma in 1744 to a convent of cloistered nuns. His overarching theme in the sermons was a verse from Psalm 33, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Serra

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argued that conversion was an affective process, not an intellectual process, and that more often than not it was gradual rather than sudden. Picking up on the words of the psalm, Serra suggested that God was a kind of culinary delicacy. If you have never tasted that particular dish, you do not know what you are missing, but when you do taste it, you find that it grows on you and that you want it more and more. In Serra’s words, Anyone who has tasted the sweetness of the Lord just once regards as empty all of this life’s pleasures and delights, if they even deserve to be called these. . . . Those who do not know anything about this sweetness and do not taste it do not have any appetite for it. But someone who has tried it just once discovers that he has an increasing appetite for it, for he finds it very soothing. As the Lord himself says, “Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.”9

This notion informed Serra’s conception of the initial days of a mission, before any baptisms took place. He wanted the church and the primitive compound surrounding it to be open, where people could come in and have informal contact with the missionaries. For instance, in 1770 less than a week after the initial site for the presidio and mission at Monterey had been determined by Gaspar de Portolá, Serra was unsatisfied with the location. He was troubled by the fact that it was too far away from the Indian settlements in the area. He had learned from Juan Crespí that the Carmel River, where the land party had initially camped, was closer to indigenous villages. He quickly concluded that the mission might better be located there: There is no ranchería at all in the vicinity of this port. Because of this, if we see that they are determined to accept our holy faith, we need to recognize the special difficulty they will have in taking up residence here. It might be necessary to leave the presidio here and with a few soldiers of the escort, move the mission close to the Carmel River, two short leagues to the south. It is a truly splendid location, capable of producing abundant crops because of the plentiful and excellent land and water.10

Serra’s initial reason for questioning Monterey as a place for a mission was not primarily the infertility of the land or the proximity of the soldiers—two reasons commonly adduced to explain his desire to move from Monterey. Rather, the basic reason was that Monterey was too distant from existing native villages. Serra wanted the mission to be close to the existing settlements so that people could easily visit the mission, where they could “taste and see” what Serra confidently believed would be the attractive sweetness of the gospel. His immediate and overriding concern was to get closer to the local native peoples so he could begin to establish a relationship with them. Less than a month after his arrival, Serra expressed frustration in a note to a nun in Spain that the inevitable necessities

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involved in getting himself and his fellow Franciscans organized in these new surroundings was keeping him from that task: Here I am, having just arrived, with so much to do building a small house of wooden poles in which to live. It will also serve as a place to store food or to store the items for the church, the house, and the supplies that were brought on the ship. It will also serve as a church where we can say Mass. All of these inconveniences are inevitable in the beginning stages. I have barely been able to find time to meet the gentiles who live at some distance from here, even though they have come to see us a number of times. They very humbly and generously have given us some of their food.11

The same insistence was responsible for some of his difficulties with military commander Pedro Fages, especially concerning the early days of Mission San Gabriel. Less than two months after its founding, Fages decreed a limit to the number of indigenous people who could come into the mission at any one time. He was probably responding to the skittishness of his soldiers about the effects of having so many native people wandering around the primitive complex, which was exactly what Serra wanted. Mission San Gabriel was located in a very populated area. None of the soldiers at San Gabriel—either the Baja California men or the Catalan volunteers—had ever been posted to a garrison where they were so thoroughly surrounded by so many non-Christian native peoples, and they did not know what to expect. Thus, from their perspective, restricting access to the mission was perhaps a reasonable precaution. But for Serra, that restriction struck at the heart of what he thought a fledgling mission ought to be.12 A similar tension arose with Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, who succeeded Fages as military commander. In July 1775 a boat arrived at Monterey, and Rivera y Moncada asked Serra to have some Indians come over to unload it. Serra balked. His refusal was based on his missionary strategy, as he indicated to Rivera y Moncada: I am being presented with a very delicate situation. The work the Indians do here is their own work. Even though they are never asked to work without receiving food and clothing in return, they are so wary that at times from a group of fifty, we are lucky to get even a dozen who are willing to work. We find ourselves without firewood to cook the pozole for them, even though it is easy to find because there is so much of it. We are tolerating this and are carefully trying to encourage them so that little by little they will learn.13

Thus, Serra claimed that he was very reluctant to put additional burdens on the people at the mission when he was still in the process of trying to instill in them the habits of work that European-style agriculture would entail. His preferred approach was to attempt to attract the native peoples into the rhythms of mission life in a gradual fashion, and he felt that he was the best judge of the appropriate pace of that effort.

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We can see what Serra believed was the result of his efforts in a letter he wrote describing the harvest of 1775. He reported that just as the harvesting of the mission crops was beginning, a very large number of sardines appeared offshore: The harvesting began on July 18. It had to be prolonged until August 11 because as soon as the harvesting began, so many sardines appeared on the beach near the mission that we found it necessary to harvest wheat until noon and then gather sardines in the afternoon. This arrangement lasted for twenty consecutive days. Ten barrels were prepared for some other people, but seeing that we were running out of barrels and salt, it occurred to us to open up the sardines, debone them, and set them out to dry in the sun, which is how the gentiles who live in the Santa Barbara Channel do it. We give away the sardines that we have dried in this manner to anybody who asks for them. After two weeks of meatless meals, the following Sunday the Indians took a break from eating sardines and went out as a group to look for the nests that fish-eating birds build between the rocks. They pulled out large numbers of young birds which were the size of a large hen. They spent that Sunday camped out on the beach of Carmel, divided up into countless little groups, each with its own fire upon which they roasted the birds, and then they ate. I went with two other Padres to see the gathering. It was a period of contentment, a beautiful setting.14

This portrayal of native peoples gradually learning the techniques of European agriculture, of a mission work schedule divided evenly between imported and traditional occupations, of Europeans appreciating the skill of Native California fishermen, and of priests appreciatively watching a Rumsen community gathering may well have been an idealized one. However, it contained a strong vision of the kind of Christian community Serra thought he was in the process of creating in Alta California. In describing this scene, Serra used the Spanish phrase “bello teatro,” which was probably an allusion to the well-known 1698 work by Fray Agustín Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano.15 He was thus consciously placing his own efforts in Alta California in the heroic Franciscan tradition of missionary accomplishments in the New World. But in Serra’s mind, attraction was always balanced with discipline and coercion. The theme of his third 1744 sermon was “The Gentleness of the Lord Even in the Sufferings He Sends Us.” In the sermon, he stated that the afflictions God sends people are those of a loving father: But you will say, how can the tender love of a father for his child be reconciled with punishing and afflicting him? Actually, a harmony between love and strictness is what characterizes a true father. It is precisely because the father loves him that he teaches him to obey. When he misbehaves, the father scolds and punishes him so that the son can correct his mistakes. . . . In this way, even though it might seem at first glance that the son is his father’s slave, it becomes clear that he is his father’s deeply beloved son. The divine father behaves in a similar way with men, who are his own sons.16

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Serra also used another analogy, that of a doctor and his patients, to drive home the same point: So tell me, which doctor loves his patients—the one who treats them with bitter liquids and bleeding or the one who indulges his patient’s whims and does not forbid anything that the patient’s corrupted taste might long for? Certainly, you will answer, the first one.17

When it came to baptized Indians, Serra took his self-appointed role as stern father and reliable doctor seriously. This role of father was one that had deep roots in the Iberian colonization worldview. As Anthony Pagden has shown, by the middle of the seventeenth century Spanish thinkers were referring to Native Americans not with the Aristotelian concepts of natural slavery but instead with the more relativistic concept of natural infancy. By Serra’s time, Spanish discourse had somewhat humanized and, at the same time, somewhat infantilized the indigenous peoples. Serra’s use of the parent-child analogy in his third sermon neatly fit into this developing conception.18 Serra could be a stern parent in the area where the folkways of the native peoples and the dictates of religion especially collided, the area of sexuality. In January 1775, for instance, he wrote Rivera y Moncada: During today’s siesta, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, Simón Carpio, the Indian muleteer, was caught fornicating at the river with a Christian woman from this mission. . . . I beg Vuestra Merced to arrest him and we will punish him here, so it will serve as an example.19

Even though Rivera y Moncada thought that the whole thing was related to issues among the various Baja California Indians (Carpio was from Baja California), he agreed to have Carpio receive twenty-five lashes. Serra recommended the same punishment for baptized Indians who left the mission, such as four baptized Indians whom a party of mission Indians, led by a native person from Baja California, captured in July of that same year, 1775.20 Flogging was the punishment of choice for baptized Indians who violated the boundaries that Serra imposed upon them, even though most people who submitted to baptism were unaware that such boundaries were so sacrosanct. It was the standard punishment in the Spanish military and in frontier areas under the jurisdiction of the military, even though in more settled areas of New Spain political and clerical opinions about that sort of punishment were in flux. A few years after the Kumeyaay rebellion at San Diego, Serra recounted to Lasuén a conversation he had with Governor Felipe de Neve about the governor’s refusal to send more soldiers to Mission San Diego. Neve’s response was that he could not spare any additional soldiers, so flogging the Indians would have to suffice. Serra wrote:

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I kept insisting on this point but the answer was always that there were few troops at the presidio and he could not spare any. For if he offered a certain number of soldiers to one place and other soldiers to another place, there would be none left for the presidios, and the mission is safe with the measures that are in place. Frankly, that reason will always remain the same, no matter how many soldiers there are. —I told him, as Vuestra Reverencia has said, that everyone is aware of the temperament of those Indians. To which he responded: “Well, flog them.” —”Well, even for that we need troops in order to carry it out without fear. Vuestra Merced, give the Padres some assistance.” —To which he responded, “They can do without it, there is no reason for it, things being as they are.”21

Serra also argued with Neve that the priests needed the authority to order the flogging of any Indian, even an Indian alcalde. He insisted that the Indians would eventually understand that the priests were like loving parents trying to help their children. He was unaware that the child-rearing practices of most Alta California Indians did not involve this sort of corporal punishment. In fact, when missionaries commented on the way in which California Indians raised their children, they criticized them for being too lenient, for showing an “extravagant love” for their children, and for refusing to “chastise them.” It is therefore difficult to see how indigenous Californians could have interpreted flogging in the sense Serra intended.22 Serra also justified flogging by appealing to some stories that were current in the religious narrative of the Americas. He cited a tradition relating to Hernán Cortés that originated in Franciscan circles. According to a story popular in religious writings in New Spain, in Texcoco an Indian was flogged for missing Mass. This caused anger in the local community, and Cortés arranged with the priests to be late for the next Mass himself and allow himself to be whipped for this offense. The story says that in this way the Indians were taught that religious edicts were to be obeyed by all and that they were not being singled out for punishment.23 The existence of this story indicates that at least some missionaries realized that the widespread flogging of native peoples was controversial and could perhaps require justification from as many sources as possible. Flogging also bore a superficial resemblance to the Christian practice of selfflagellation, a practice to which Serra subscribed during his entire life as a member of the Franciscan order. For those religious who practiced self-flagellation, flogging might seem similar to what they did to themselves. However, the whips used for flogging were considerably more substantial and painful than the instruments religious used to discipline themselves. In addition, a good religious was supposed to flog himself in private and at the same time comport himself normally in public so that no one could tell that he was whipping himself. The effects of flogging, on the other hand, were meant to be visible and publicly painful.

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The disconnect between flogging and self-flagellation leads to our final question: What do the written sources tell us about the ways in which the native people responded to Serra’s overtures? There is no simple answer to this question, for each indigenous nation responded to the Spanish from within the perspective of its own cultural, social, and religious traditions. But a good way to approach the question would be to listen to how Serra reported two incidents. On June 10, 1769, as he was heading through Baja California on the way to San Diego, Serra and the group of which he was a member were approached by a member of the Pai-Pai people. This is how Serra reported the encounter in his diary: During the morning, while preparations were underway for our departure, one of the gentiles who allowed themselves to be seen from a small hill nearby, approached us with a club in one hand and a rattle in the other. After welcoming him with much affection, we tried to get him to eat without being afraid. It is a long story how we tried everything imaginable to get him to eat. . . . He finally explained his behavior, saying that he was the dancer of that region and that he could not eat anything until he had performed a ceremonial dance around the food. He said that if we wanted to give him something, we should put it on the ground and allow him to do his dance. Then he would eat. We gave him permission and freedom to proceed. He then began to dance and sing around the offerings. While this was going on, a soldier would come with a piece of tortilla, sugar, or meat and try to put it in the Indian’s mouth, but he always resisted, making signs that they should put the food on the pile so he could dance around it. The pile of food seemed small to the Indian, so after asking us for permission he danced around all of our provisions and animals. It seemed he was preparing himself to eat everything we had brought. After that he was very happy and said he was no longer afraid. He ate and began to answer very frankly the questions from our interpreters. . . . But all was lost. When we were ready to leave this place, someone from our group said something to him, which he misunderstood. He ran off to the hill as if he were a deer, leaving everything we had given him behind, except for the club and rattle he had brought.24

Serra told the story in a whimsical, almost bemused fashion. But there was more to it than he realized. Two months earlier in this same territory, the first leg of the expedition had captured an old man who said he was some sort of shaman. José Cañizares, who was on that first leg of the expedition, described him as “arrogant.” Juan Crespí stated that he did not know “how this [old] man might be distinguished from the ugliest demon ever depicted. . . . For a single glance at his face with its bands of white, yellow, and red paint was enough to horrify one.” Since the Baja California Indians accompanying the expedition did not understand the man, communication proved impossible. Rivera y Moncada sent him away with some beads and ribbons, and he and those with him “left well pleased.”25 Such sketchy descriptions make it difficult to ascertain what actually occurred, let alone its significance to the native peoples involved. It seems reasonably clear,

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however, that the Spanish had captured and insulted one of the group’s leading figures, and it is doubtful that they actually “left well pleased.” There is no reason to assume that the old man who visited Serra was the same person who had been captured by Rivera y Moncada, but it seems that whoever he was, the object of his dancing was perhaps to purify the land that had been contaminated by this second group of interlopers, to engage in a ritual that would protect the people from them, or to effect some kind of damage on them. Whatever the man was doing, he was hardly dancing for food.26 The second episode occurred in the spring of 1774. As Serra was on his way from San Diego to Carmel, he had a series of conversations with an Indian boy whom he had baptized in 1771 and named Juan Evangelista. Juan Evangelista had accompanied Serra to Mexico City and back. This is how Serra summarized some of those conversations: As I was getting closer to these lands with my Juan Evangelista, I was considering how he might be able to explain to his relatives a portion of how very much he had seen. I wanted to give him some guidance in doing this, so I asked him if he and his people, after seeing the Padres and the soldiers, imagined that there might be lands totally inhabited by these types of people, who wore clothing, were Christians, etc. He said no, that the elders said they had come from below the earth, and (as he explained) they were the souls of their ancestors, the old gentiles, who had reappeared in that guise. But he now saw that it was all a lie and he would tell that to his people.

According to the Indians’ explanation, there was nothing these poor people knew better than that demons do exist, that they are bad, and that they are their enemies, which is what a Christian should know. The Indians call their demons Muur. They are now happy to find out that the demons’ home is in Hell and that God is punishing them. With God’s help, I will carefully gather information about the wicked behavior the demons engaged in with the Indians, and other things. I should point out that the aforementioned stories are just from this area around Monterey. I have heard other versions from other missions, as well as from here. I hope these stories do not remain untold.27 This exchange between Serra and Juan Evangelista pointed to a deeper dynamic involved in the encounter between the Spanish missionaries and the native peoples of California. The missionaries were always on the lookout for aspects of the local culture that they thought might serve as a bridge for the introduction of Christianity, as Serra thought that the Rumsen concept of mu’ur (darkness) might be useful in explaining the notion of the devil. But their ignorance of the local languages, especially at the beginning of the encounters, made that difficult. So they had to resort to using Spanish words to express key concepts of their religious view. For instance, in the Monterey area the missionaries tried to adapt the Catecismo breve, which was put together in 1644 on the northern Mexican frontier by

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Jesuit missionary Bartolomé Castaño, to the local situation. However, by 1790 many of the words had been put into the local language. For instance, the 1790 Rumsen version of the catechism shows that by then the word sirre, which meant “intestines” or “liver” (basically “the insides” of the body), was being used to express the Christian concept of soul. That decision, and others like it, was made not by the missionaries but instead by the local people in consultation with local translators, who were most likely other native people from Baja or Alta California. But when a local word was used to express a Christian concept that was new to the people, it did not shed its older and more traditional connotations. We do not know exactly what those connotations were, but we can be reasonably sure that the connotations of sirre were significantly different from the connotations surrounding the immaterial and immortal soul that was a staple of medieval Christianity.28 At other points in the 1790 catechism, the priests would simply retain a Spanish word if they thought it expressed something too different from indigenous concepts or if the local community was unable to come up with an agreed equivalent. So, for instance, they used the Spanish word “Dios” for God. But the simple use of the Spanish term did not significantly affect the dynamics of translation. Thus, the catechism answer to the question “Where is God” was “In Heaven, on the earth, and in all things.” This came out in Rumsen as “Sky, land, all thing(s).” But sky and land already had a rich context in the stories and tales of the group, so this Dios, whoever else he or she may have been, would have to have been the kind of entity who fit into the ideas current in the indigenous community of what happened in the sky and into their experience of their land and their ground. Lisbeth Haas’s recent study of Pablo Tac demonstrates that this dynamic was at work among mission Indians in southern California. A Jesuit working among the Hurons in the seventeenth century once lamented that because of the irreducibly relational nature of indigenous words, “We find it impossible to get them to say properly in their language, ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”29 The hidden difficulties with language pointed to a larger issue: native peoples concealed much more than they revealed to the newcomers. Perceptive missionaries in the Americas had long realized this. For instance, Juan Guadalupe Soriano, a Franciscan who followed Serra in the Sierra Gorda and composed the first written grammar of the Pames language and thus knew more about this particular culture than most Spaniards, once said about the Pames people that “the more one deals with them, the less one knows about them.”30 Our suspicion is that for all of his intelligence and sophistication, Serra never quite came to that insight. These two aspects of Serra’s approach to the native people—inviting them to taste the sweetness of his religion and punishing them when they transgressed norms they had no part in establishing—did not sit well with each other. We suspect that his continuous call to found more and more missions, for which he was

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severely criticized by his religious superiors in Mexico City, stemmed from a desire to keep himself busy enough so that he would not have the time to confront these contradictions. His inability to found additional missions after January 1777 largely accounted for the increasingly cranky tone of his correspondence during the second half of his time in Alta California and for the giddiness with which he described the founding of the one additional mission he was able to accomplish during this time. Inviter and punisher, founder and administrator, Junípero Serra was not only a man caught between two worlds; he was a man caught between two sides of himself. Serra’s inability to resolve these tensions presaged the contradictions that would plague California’s missions after the death of the founder. Serra’s successors would continue his strategy of attempting to mix invitation and coercion. They would often find the certainty of coercion, which they could direct and manage themselves, more compelling than the vagaries of invitation, which depended on an uncertain and potentially negative response from California’s native inhabitants.

NOTES 1. The extensive historiography on Serra is covered in Steven W. Hackel, “Junípero Serra across the Generations,” in A Companion to California History, ed. William Deverell and David Igler, 99–115 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), and Robert M. Senkewicz, “The Representation of Junípero Serra in California History,” in To Toil in That Vineyard of the Lord: Contemporary Scholarship on Junípero Serra, ed. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, 17–52 (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2010). 2. Ned Blackhawk, H-SHEAR Roundtable Review of Brian Delay, War of a Thousand Deserts, November 16, 2010, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-shear&month=1011&w eek=c&msg=uVUNhGt6MuzzYjXM5jArxA&user=&pw=. 3. Francis F. Guest, Fermín Francisco de Lasuén (1736–1803): A Biography (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1973), 62; Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Writings of Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, 2 vols., edited by Finbar Kenneally (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1965), 1:46–47. 4. Junípero Serra to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, March 1, 1777, Junípero Serra Collection, Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library (hereafter JSC), doc. 705. All translations of Serra’s writings in this essay are taken from Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). 5. Junípero Serra to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, March 1, 1777, JSC, doc. 705. 6. Junípero Serra to Teodoro de Croix, August 22, 1778, JSC, doc. 748. 7. Junípero Serra to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, March 1, 1777, JSC, doc. 705. 8. On the Sierra Gorda and Nuevo Santander, see Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, “What They Brought: The Alta California Franciscans before 1769,” in Alta California: Peoples in Motion, Identities in Formation, 1769–1850, ed. Steven W. Hackel (Berkeley: Published for the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West by University of California Press, Berkeley, California, and Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 2010), 32–37. 9. Four sermons preached by Junípero Serra to the nuns of Palma, 1744, JSC, doc. 16. 10. Junípero Serra to Juan Andrés, June 12, 1770, JSC, doc. 217.

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11. Junípero Serra to Sister Antonia Valladolid, June 30, 1770, in Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, Vol. 1, ed. Antonine Tibesar (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 180. 12. There are a number of accounts of incidents at Mission San Gabriel. The earliest one was a letter from resident missionary Pedro Cambón, which is summarized in Maynard J. Geiger, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M.: Or, the Man Who Never Turned Back, 1713–1784; A Biography, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959), 1:304–7. 13. Fernando Rivera y Moncada, Diario del Capitán Comandante Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, con un apéndice documental, 2 vols., ed. Ernest J. Burrus (Madrid: Ediciones J. Porrúa Turanzas, 1967), 1:150. 14. Junípero Serra to Antonio María de Bucareli, August 24, 1774, JSC, doc. 453. 15. Agustín de Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano: Descripción breve de los sucesos ejemplares de la Nueva-España en el Nuevo Mundo Occidental de las Indias, 4 vols., Colección Chimalistac de libros y documentos acerca de la Nueva España 8–11 (Madrid: J. Porrúa Turanzas, 1960). 16. Four sermons preached by Junípero Serra to the nuns of Palma, 1744, JSC, doc. 16. 17. Ibid. 18. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 146–97. See also William Taylor, “‘. . . de corazón pequeño y ánimo apocado’: Conceptos de los curas párrocos sobre los indios en la Nueva España del siglo 18,” Relaciones 10, no. 39 (1989) 8–11, 33; William Taylor, “Introduction,” in Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, ed. Ilona Katzew (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 18; Ilona Katzwe, “‘That This Should Be Published and Again in the Age of the Enlightenment?’: Eighteenth-Century Debates about the Indian Body in Colonial Mexico,” in Race and Classification: The Case of Mexican America, ed. Ilona Katzew (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 75. 19. Junípero Serra to Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, January 22, 1775, in Rivera y Moncada, Diario del Capitán Comandante Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, 1:102. 20. Junípero Serra to Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, July 31, 1775, in ibid., 1:165–66. 21. Junípero Serra to Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, June 10, 1778, JSC, doc. 741. 22. This critique of indigenous child rearing appears most fully in the missionaries’ responses to question four of the 1812 Interrogatorio: “Do they love their wives and children? What sort of education do they give their children? And do they urge them on to agriculture and mechanical arts?” See Maynard Geiger and Clement W. Meighan, As the Padres Saw Them: California Indian Life and Customs as Reported by the Franciscan Missionaries, 1813–1815 (Santa Barbara: Santa Bárbara Mission Archive Library, 1976), 25. 23. Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano, 3:6–7; Andrés Cavo, Historia de México, paleografiada del texto original y anotada, ed. Ernest J. Burrus. (Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1949), 183; Cristina Cruz González, “Landscapes of Conversion: Franciscan Politics and Sacred Objects in Late Colonial Mexico,” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009, 145. We would like to thank Cristina Cruz González for bringing the Vetancurt reference to our attention. 24. Junípero Serra, Diary of Journey from Loreto to San Diego, JSC, doc. 184. 25. José de Cañizares, “Putting a Lid on California: An Unpublished Diary of the Portolá Expedition,” ed. Virginia E. Thickens and Margaret Mollins, California Historical Society Quarterly 31, no. 3 (1952): 268–69; Juan Crespí, A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769–1770, ed. Alan K. Brown (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2001), 211; on the giving of beads, see Dennis H. O’Neil, “The Spanish Use of Glass Beads as Pacification Gifts among the Luiseño, Ipai, and Tipai of Southern California,” Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly 28, no. 2 (March 1992): 1–17.

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26. On the varieties of music and dance among the Pai Pais, see Roger C. Owen, Nancy E. Walstrom, and Ralph C. Michelsen, “Musical Culture and Ethnic Solidarity: A Baja California Case Study,” Journal of American Folklore 82, no. 324 (1969): 99–111. 27. Junípero Serra to the Guardian and Council of the Colegio de San Fernando, July 18, 1774, JSC, doc. 440. 28. Pedro Font, With Anza to California, 1775–1776: The Journal of Pedro Font, O.F.M., ed. Alan K Brown (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2011), 180; Robert Fleming Heizer, ed., California Indian Linguistic Records: The Mission Indian Vocabularies of H. W. Henshaw (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 18; A. L Kroeber, The Chumash and Costanoan Languages, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Berkeley: University Press, 1910), 244; David Leedom Shaul, “Two Mission Indian (Ohlone/Costanoan) Catechisms,” Wyoming Linguistics, September 5, 2012, http://www.wyominglinguistics.org/2012/09/05/chalon-and-rumsencatechisms/. 29. Shaul, “Two Mission Indian (Ohlone/Costanoan) Catechisms,” 29; Lisbeth Haas, Pablo Tac, Indigenous Scholar: Writings on the Luiseño Language and Colonial History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); Allan Greer, “Conversion and Identity: Iroquois Christianity in SeventeenthCentury New France,” in Conversion: Old Worlds and New, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 182. 30. Francisco Pimentel, Lenguas indígenas de México (Mexico City: Tipografía de Isidoro Epstein, 1875), 451.

part three

Art and Architecture The Aesthetic Eye of Serra

9

Junípero Serra’s Tastes and the Art and Architecture of the California Missions Clara Bargellini and Pamela Huckins

What qualities did Junípero Serra look for in art and architecture? How might we be able to know and understand them? These are the principal and obviously related questions addressed here. Although these concerns do appear in the historiography of the Alta California missions, the problems they raise are by no means resolved. On the contrary, much is assumed and taken for granted. Often, buildings and objects are used merely to illustrate general mission history without regard to the specific processes of planning and creation that went into making and furnishing each building at different times. Indeed, only recently have writings about the art and architecture of the missions of Alta California begun to take into account the art and architecture of New Spain, which is their matrix. In order to offer new perspectives on Fray Junípero’s California missions, this chapter takes a broad view of his use of art and architecture. Particularly, we compare and relate his approach in California to his previous experiences, especially in the Sierra Gorda, but also to what he had known at San Fernando and in Baja California, and we address his ideas about the use of art for religious devotion. The questions around Serra’s tastes with regard to mission building and furnishings draw attention to problems of authorship and intentions, both intellectual and practical, that touch on artistic quality, styles, and iconography. Needless to say, much of what we propose here is more exploratory than definitive, but we trust that a fuller understanding of California mission art and architecture can emerge from the discussion. First, a brief overview of the historiography of the architecture and art of the Franciscan California missions is in order. Twentieth-century histories of the mission buildings began in the 1930s with very useful photographic surveys and collections of measured drawings by the Historic American Building Survey.1 The 165

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genre, which privileges visual documentation, continues to this day. Its most recent example goes much beyond the presentation of plans, drawings, and photographs to include historical sources such as earlier drawings and plans, painted views of the missions, and the missions’ dwellers and activities along with information and assessments of selected furnishings as well as the history and conservation status of each mission, all based on previously scattered sources as well as on fresh research and observation.2 It is the most complete presentation to date of the California missions as architectural and cultural creations, with much information gleaned from documents and recent studies about the buildings and about a few works of painting and sculpture. As for detailed attention to painting, sculpture, and other types of objects we now call “art” at the California missions, it has mainly focused on the holdings of individual missions; there has been no systematic project resembling that of the Building Survey of the 1930s. Since the remarkable 1955 publication on artworks at Santa Barbara by Kurt Baer,3 the basic method has been that of the catalog, with photographs accompanied by explanatory texts. An important aspect of Baer’s book is the information about the varied origins of mission artworks, which encourages caution in drawing conclusions about their place in mission history. Of all the mission objects, those at San Carlos Borromeo at Carmel have received the most attention, with two publications that focus on them.4 Another approach was taken in the writings of James L. Nolan, a pioneer in exploring the original locations and functions of California mission objects.5 Most recently, Norman Neuerburg, armed with much more art historical knowledge especially concerning art in New Spain than any of his predecessors, directed the study of Alta California mission art toward the path we shall follow here: looking closely at the objects and the histories and contexts of their making and use.6 T H E SI E R R A G O R DA

Five Franciscan mission churches of the Sierra Gorda, in what is now the eastern part of the state of Querétaro, were built as we know them today under Junípero Serra’s leadership. The specific places had been chosen by the future Conde de la Sierra Gorda, José de Escandón, who surveyed the area in 1743 for the purpose of choosing mission sites for the Franciscans of Propaganda Fide from the convent of San Fernando in Mexico City.7 Since the sixteenth century, Franciscans as well as Augustinians and Dominicans had all been active in the area, so the “Fernandinos” were not pioneers but were part of a campaign to bring the Sierra Gorda under Spanish control for good. The architecture and decoration of the first of the five missions, Santiago Jalpan, was due directly to Serra’s work and presence there between 1750 and 1758.8 The other four churches in the group, in chronological order and preceded by the names of their dedications, are San Francisco

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Tilaco, San Miguel Concá, Nuestra Señora de la Luz Tancoyol, and Inmaculada Concepción Landa. These buildings follow the basic model of Jalpan in plan and in the richness of facade decoration. Although by no means identical and all finished after Serra’s departure for California, these Sierra Gorda missions are a coherent group in architectural, sculptural, and iconographic terms. Indeed, these buildings, including Jalpan, constitute a striking case of the merging of architecture, ornament, and figural elements in order to convey specific Franciscan messages in a way seen nowhere else in the area. There can be little doubt that Serra was committed to the imagery and ideas displayed there, and the five Serra Gorda missions express them in effective and memorable visual terms. The use of architecture and its decoration to convey meaning was, of course, no novelty in the eighteenth century. Church architecture ever since early Christian times communicated meaning through typology. Well-known cases in point are octagonal baptisteries, to symbolize the perfecting of history achieved with the coming of Christ, and the repetition of the basilica plan throughout Europe, once it had been established in the early fourth century as the architectural program of the Roman church, typified in the first basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome. Richard Krautheimer wrote eloquently and repeatedly about this many years ago. His work made clear how spaces and their functions in key buildings became canonical and were repeated throughout Europe to evoke church history and affirm tradition.9 Indeed, the basilica would also be repeated in Franciscan buildings in sixteenthcentury central New Spain, as can still be seen at Tecali in the present-day state of Puebla,10 and archaeology has recently shown that basilicas also existed at Huejotzingo before the erection of the stone church we know today.11 Furthermore, a basilica was built at the late seventeenth-century Jesuit mission at Nombre de Jesús Carichi in what is now the state of Chihuahua. It is practically certain that the missionary who built it and later went to Baja California, Francesco Maria Piccolo, was directly inspired by the early Christian basilicas he had seen in Rome.12 These examples demonstrate that in New Spain, as elsewhere in the Roman Catholic world, church buildings themselves, and not only their figural decoration, were meant to convey meaning through their spatial characteristics. To what extent this was a conscious decision in individual instances may be debatable, but the case of Carichi proves that such explicit choices were indeed made. All five of the Serra missions of the Sierra Gorda are similar to one another in ground plans and general characteristics. At the same time, they are unique if we compare them to other eighteenth-century projects in New Spain. These two facts, taken together, suggest that their architecture was linked to particular ideas. Although these buildings have been defined as “simple,”13 it is clear that conscious efforts were made to emulate essential elements of sixteenth-century Franciscan building projects in the native towns (“pueblos de indios”) of central Mexico, which Serra and his companions would certainly have known. These

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sixteenth-century churches are each set within an enclosed atrium, generally marked at the center by a large carved stone cross. Capillas posas (processional chapels) are at the corners of the atrium. Usually, an open chapel, which in combination with the atrium space was used for liturgy and other celebrations, is to one side of the church, while the convento (monastery) has its monumental public entrance (the portería) facing the atrium.14 In Fray Junípero’s Sierra Gorda, the sixteenth-century scheme was resuscitated and amalgamated with the cruciform plan and domed crossing of most eighteenth-century churches in New Spain. The atrium with its cross, the posa chapels, and the portería are all there as well as the convento, of course. Missing is the open chapel, no longer necessary in this mission territory whose native population was not unfamiliar with church buildings and practices, nor was it so numerous as that of the sixteenth-century towns to the south. On the one hand, the unmistakable presence of the sixteenth-century elements signals a desire to hark back to what would have been considered the golden age of early Christianity in New Spain.15 On the other, the size and number of these elements were reduced. For example, none of the Sierra Gorda churches have more than a couple of posa chapels, and the atrium crosses are not of carved stone but instead are of forged iron. They also adopted, as has already been noted, standard eighteenth-century cruciform and domed church plans, usually smaller in size than most of the sixteenth-century churches. In other words, although Serra, his companions, and collaborators could not re-create the grandeur of the sixteenth century, they could reference and reproduce some characteristic sixteenth-century spaces and forms. The monumentality, so obvious in the scale of sixteenth-century convento complexes, gave way in the eighteenth century to a very contemporary interest in richness of ornament and iconographic content, both within the interiors and on the facades. This is what has most captured the attention of twentieth-century scholars and audiences. However, it is important not to ignore the older tradition that the Sierra Gorda churches were meant to evoke and revive, because certainly the references to it are an index of the friars’, including Fray Junípero’s, intentions. To put it succinctly, the architecture of these missions makes clear that they were meant as manifestations and witnesses of the firm establishment of the Catholic religion by the friars in the places where they are found, following a tradition that had its roots in the Franciscan efforts of the sixteenth century. Now that the word “intentions”—much akin to taste—has been mentioned, we must turn from what the architecture can tell us to the messages of the decoration of the Sierra Gorda mission churches. What we know about it is largely limited to what can still be seen of the painted—and repeatedly repainted—sculptures and reliefs of their facades, because the interiors have lost most of their original furnishings. Monique Gustin published the 1762 inventories of the five churches, which manifest the richness of the interiors and provide clues about the progress

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of work at that date,16 but detailed analyses of these documents, comparing the lists with the extant objects at the sites, is still lacking. In any case, what is left at the churches today is a bare sample of what is listed in the inventories. The facades are immediately visible, on the other hand, and their decoration is what has been most studied and published about these buildings. The figural iconography is quite straightforward, based as it is on relatively few personages whose relationships are easy to understand. It is also immediately recognizable as inspired by the Propaganda Fide friars, since similar subjects are to be seen in paintings at San Fernando in Mexico City and at other sites, including Guadalupe, Zacatecas, and, of course, Alta California. Each one of the Sierra Gorda facades highlights, in the central upper part, the patron to which the church is dedicated. For example, at Santiago Jalpan, Serra’s first Sierra Gorda mission, Santiago was above the window (he was replaced by a clock in the early twentieth century) (Figure 9.1). Below, at either side of the window, are sculptures of the Virgin Mary in her guises as patroness of New Spain and Spain: the Mexican Guadalupe and the Virgin del Pilar of Zaragoza. Framing the entrance are the founders of the principal mendicant orders, Saints Francis and Dominic, while Peter and Paul, representatives of the first apostles, frame the door. Throughout are Franciscan symbols: above the entrance are the five wounds of Christ that were impressed on the body of Francis; the crossed arms of Christ and Francis are below the window. The Franciscan cord is everywhere. In short, Franciscan iconography is clearly a main focus, while leafy plants with abundant fruits as well as some animals complement the whole. Significant details at Jalpan are the crowned double-headed eagles devouring serpents below Dominic and Francis. They “sustain” the entire church facade precisely through their “support” of the two founders of the first missionary orders that arrived in New Spain. They are thus an acknowledgment of the efficacy of the Spanish Hapsburg monarchy in establishing Christianity in the New World. In the eighteenth century the Hapsburgs had been succeeded by the Bourbons on the Spanish throne, but the Franciscans, who were conscious of having been the first missionaries in New Spain, did not allow the memory of Charles V’s initial support for their pioneering efforts to be forgotten. It is appropriate to recall here the eighteenth-century vestments made for the Franciscan mission of Nombre de Dios, Chihuahua, established in 1697, which would later become the center of an important mining district.17 The richness of the symbolism of spiritual growth and “flowering,” in conjunction with the Hapsburg eagle on this chasuble, very probably made in New Spain, are remarkably akin to what can be seen at the Sierra Gorda missions. Franciscan themes are emphasized repeatedly at all of the Sierra Gorda churches. A particularly interesting case is that of the central part of the facade at Landa, where we see Duns Scotus and Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda both being inspired to write about the Immaculate Conception, who is in the niche below the window.

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figure 9.1. Facade of the church of Santiago, Jalpan, Querétaro, 1751–1758. Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

This was a theme of particular interest for the friars of the colleges of Propaganda Fide, including San Fernando. It was perhaps first represented in sculpture on the facade of their church at Guadalupe, Zacatecas, which was finished in the early 1720s (Figure 9.2).18 The general idea of the entire composition is that Saint Francis, at the lower center, supports the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe (whose iconography is that of the Immaculate Conception), who represents the church in New Spain. The Ágreda nun and Duns Scotus, both enthusiastic proponents of the idea of the Immaculate Conception, are to the right; Saint Luke, who was said to have

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figure 9.2. Detail of the portal of the church of Guadalupe, Zacatecas, ca. 1720. Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

painted the Virgin’s portrait, and Saint John, who had the vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse, who has Immaculate Conception attributes, are to the left. The Guadalupe relief is furthermore a variation on a Peter Paul Rubens sketch now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in which Francis supports the Immaculate Conception while Franciscans fight the devil, with deceased and living members of the Hapsburg family looking on. This composition was to have an enormous diffusion in Franciscan establishments throughout Spanish America via its print by Pontius.19 The iconography of the sketch and the print suggest that it was commissioned either by some member of the Hapsburg monarchy or by the Franciscans themselves, since the theme is the aggrandizement of the dynasty’s fame as promoter of the order’s exploits in spreading the Catholic faith. Indeed, Saint Francis supporting the Virgin is to be seen on paintings throughout Spanish America since the late seventeenth century. The same theme is also the subject of a painting in the nave of the Franciscan Propaganda Fide church of San Fernando in Mexico City, where Serra was based before going to the Sierra Gorda (Figure 9.3). Both Duns Scotus and Maria de Jesús de Ágreda, as important personages of the Franciscan order, also appear at San Fernando and in the art of the California missions, where Franciscan and particularly Propaganda Fide pride in their own religious order is repeated through images, as will be discussed below.20

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figure 9.3. Unknown painter, The Immaculate Conception with Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda and Duns Scotus, oil on canvas, Church of San Fernando, Mexico City, ca. 1760. Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

We now turn to the importance of the Sierra Gorda churches from another point of view: that of their esthetic and formal properties. The Franciscan figural iconography combined with rich vegetation on the Sierra Gorda mission facades has sometimes been explained as the mixing of European religious doctrine with native traditions of plant and animal ornament. This view needs to be examined critically in order to begin to make sense of what we see at all mission sites in New

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Spain, including Alta California. The notion that human figures are related to European ideas while ornament is relegated to native tastes assumes that European traditions, which had reached Mexico in the sixteenth century, did not include plant and animal ornament. Besides being false, this view also misconstrues the central role of ornament in art more generally and in Baroque art in particular. Finally, and most important for the topic at hand, it assumes a great and fixed divide between friars and natives and eliminates other possible agents at the missions. We owe these polarized notions to the Neoclassicism of the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century as well as to more modern essentialist ideas of race and class, but they are not helpful in explaining the interactions of Fray Junípero and the Franciscans of New Spain with their varied audiences in the Sierra Gorda and elsewhere. In the decades before the middle of the eighteenth century, architectural ornament throughout New Spain had enriched its formal vocabulary and increased its presence, both in the interiors as well as on the exteriors of church buildings. This was a general tendency in all church architecture and objects, and Serra would have seen it from the moment of his arrival in the New World. He also surely would have heard it discussed at San Fernando in Mexico City, whose church was still being finished as he was preparing to go to the Sierra Gorda. The church at San Fernando was formally consecrated in 1755.21 Furthermore, elaborate church ornamentation would not have been foreign to him, since the same tendency was present in Europe, and he most certainly would have seen it in Cádiz while waiting to embark for New Spain. His Sierra Gorda project clearly follows this tendency, though on a smaller scale and not always with metropolitan technical qualities. In other words, Serra’s churches demonstrate the taste for lavish decoration, which was considered fit for all churches in New Spain at the time as well as in the Spanish world more generally. On the other hand, as just mentioned, at the Sierra Gorda there seem to have been few qualms about accepting less than ideal professional quality, as might be judged by the standards set in the cities of New Spain about conventional proportions, figure types, and “correctness” in drawing and coloring. Although famous Mexico City artists, particularly painters, sent their works all over New Spain22 and there were professional artists in nearby Querétaro,23 these better-known masters generally did not travel to remote places such as the Sierra Gorda, but they did send paintings and sculptures there, as is clear in the inventories published by Gustin and in California as well. However, there were other human resources able to fill the many requests for material objects and visual representations painted on walls and carved on facades and furnishings. Unlike in later years in California, in the mid-eighteenth century in the Sierra Gorda, Serra had available to him persons with specialized knowledge of building and painting.24 The capacity for local artistic production can be seen not only in Serra’s five missions but also in another

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figure 9.4. Main altarpiece of the church of Santa María Acapulco, Querétaro, ca. 1760. Photograph courtesy of Renata Schneider.

Franciscan building of the general area, which still exists at least in part and, fortunately, in good photographs. The church of Santa María Acapulco, farther north in the Sierra Gorda, was erected either around the same time as the five missions attributed to Serra’s efforts, between 1753 and 1765, or later in the century, between 1775 and 1790, or perhaps at both times, in two stages.25 At any rate, the later dates would correspond to the dates of Serra’s Landa, at least. Unfortunately, a fire in

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figure 9.5. Wall painting in the Church of San Miguel, Concá, Querétaro, completed 1754. Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

2007, started by lightning, destroyed the interior of Santa María, but we know what it looked like from photographs (Figure 9.4).26 Fragments of similar types of paintings and ornamentation can still be seen on some of the interior walls of Serra’s group of missions, as at San Miguel Concá (Figure 9.5), and they are recorded in the 1762 inventories, especially at Tancoyol and Landa, which were still not finished in their present form at that date but retained parts of previous churches.27 As they now exist, the Sierra Gorda missions built in Serra’s time have lost most of their interior decoration, but it no doubt was Baroque in style. Since the exteriors of the five missions have been repainted, it is not possible to get a precise visual sense of what they originally looked like. The point, however, is that there were artists and artisans in the area. Some of them may have been local natives, but others would have been artisans of different origins who arrived in the Sierra Gorda with earlier friars and settlers or with Serra and the Fernandinos themselves. They would have been responsible for teaching local natives about materials, techniques, and forms. We know very little about these people, in part because we have not looked for them, since missions are often imagined as inhabited only by friars and local natives. There is no doubt, nevertheless, that they were present and active in the area in the eighteenth century.

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C A L I F O R N IA

The situation in Alta California in 1769 when Serra arrived there presented him with difficult challenges in regard to the construction and decoration of church buildings. The circumstances corresponded much more to an earlier phase of mission work than the one he had inherited in the Sierra Gorda, where he could count on competent craftspeople for construction and architectural decoration. In Alta California, he would have to begin to build up such a workforce. This was, in fact, one of his major preoccupations. The early architecture of Serra’s nine missions was perforce simple because skilled labor was scarce.28 The situation was such that in 1772–1773, when Serra returned to Mexico City, he made a point of informing the new viceroy, Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, of the needs of the new mission territory on this score. One result was that on his return to California in 1774, he had a few artisans with him. However, we know of no one with complex architectural skills in Alta California who might have arrived before Serra’s death in 1784.29 None of the churches built in Serra’s time were vaulted, nor were their plans complex. The very simple rectangular “Serra Church” at San Juan Capistrano is the only extant building attributed to the founder’s time, and recent archaeology has uncovered the foundations of Serra’s very first chapel at Monterey.30 In any case, it is obvious that Serra was unable to carry out architectural projects of the kind he had promoted in the Sierra Gorda or anything like some of the spectacular Jesuit buildings he saw in Baja California31 because of the precarious circumstances but also because the necessary skilled labor was not there. No doubt this limitation was a source of concern for him as well as a permanent challenge, which his successors were able to partially fulfill only after his death. Fittingly, it was Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, who succeeded Serra as padre presidente of the Alta California missions, who began the process of replacing adobe churches with stone buildings. The work was partly carried out by Manuel Esteban Ruiz, a stone mason who arrived in Alta California from Guadalajara in 1791.32 Although the lack of local artisans limited Serra’s ability to construct grand architecture in Alta California, he was able to go beyond the basics in the furnishings and interiors of his churches. Serra compensated for the simplicity of the buildings by commissioning colorful decorative wall paintings, obviously created on-site, and adorning the simple churches with easel paintings and statues mostly imported from Mexico City. Moreover, he did this from the very start, since it is well known that along with fine silver liturgical utensils, Serra selected works of art from various Baja California former Jesuit missions to take to the new mission territory to the north.33 He himself had been stationed at Loreto, so he certainly was familiar with the quality of the objects that the Jesuits had accumulated there.34 Because of the survival of some of these works, which originally had been sent north to the Jesuit missions mostly from Mexico City, and of other objects that

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were commissioned by Serra specifically for the Alta California missions, we can be certain that Serra was keen on questions of decorum, that is, on the appropriateness of imagery and objects for liturgical and paraliturgical celebrations.35 One category of objects that was especially important for initial mission work was the iconic representation of important holy personages, often the Virgin Mary. The story told by Serra’s protégé and lifelong companion, Francisco Palou, of the initial contact between a native California group and a religious image is paradigmatic of how the padres perceived the significance of these objects in their evangelization efforts. Palou recounts that in August 1770 just as the newly arrived friars were deliberating about the choice of a site for Mission San Gabriel, a numerous band of pagans, led by two chiefs and armed, made its appearance. . . . [T]hey attempted to impede the mission’s founding. Fearing that a battle was imminent and that casualties would result, one of the fathers brought forth a canvas painting which depicted Our Lady of Sorrows, and held it up for those barbarians to see. No sooner was this done than they were conquered by that beautiful image. They threw down their bows and arrows, and the two chiefs rushed forward to place at the feet of the Sovereign Queen the beads they wore around their necks, as gifts of their great esteem. . . . They called together the Indians of the nearby villages. . . . They came bearing various seeds, which they placed at the feet of the Most Blessed Lady, thinking she would consume them as other humans did.36

Palou also reported how at the Port of San Diego an image of the Virgin seemed to similarly affect aboriginal women: When they were shown another painting of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady, with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and . . . the native women came in to see it . . . they thrust their breasts in between the posts of the enclosure, meanwhile signifying in a vivid manner that they came to give milk to that tender and beautiful Child in possession of the fathers.37

These accounts by the Franciscan chronicler recall the 1645 triumphal narrative of the Jesuit Andrés Pérez de Ribas about how in 1621 natives in the Chínipas region (a mountainous area between what are now the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico) had welcomed the entrance to their territory of a painting of “Nuestra Señora del Pópulo.”38 In fact, the particular missionary in question, Pedro Juan Castini, reported in a letter that he had been received by Indians “carrying crosses and singing” and with “dances, arches, drums.”39 It is interesting that the chroniclers of both religious orders are the ones who emphasize the presence of the images and their apparent miraculous impact on natives who were unfamiliar with such representations. It would seem that this was a topos, or recurring theme, for conversion narratives, and that those who wrote about missions sought to emphasize the power of images in these circumstances. Their conviction about the efficacy of images and about the impact of seeing holy images was surely one that

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Serra would have shared. It is, of course, the explanation for the title “La Conquistadora” given to the famous sculpture of the Virgin at Carmel.40 With respect to the immediate impact of seeing images, it is also useful to recall that Serra was familiar with the practice of missions among Catholic Christians, which he himself had led while at the College of San Fernando. These were intensive reconversion events lasting several days that included preaching, processions, the sacraments, and liturgy, designed to renew religious fervor among Catholics. Images played an important role on these occasions, for which the Jesuits too had been famous.41 The paintings present at these events, which were often of the Virgin Mary, would themselves have been considered to be “missionaries,” who accompanied the priests and friars. Very possibly the paintings that can be rolled up for storage and transport, which are extant today at some of the missions, were used for conversion events in Alta California during which these images would have been displayed in processions or at particular sites. Among these would have been the paintings of the Virgin as the Divina Pastora and Christ as Ecce Homo, both now exhibited in the San Carlos Borromeo Mission Museum.42 Among other such paintings that can be rolled are another Divina Pastora signed by Ignacio Ayala at Mission San Buenaventura, a Baptism of Christ by José de Páez now at San Luis Obispo (Figure 9.6), and Saint Francis with the Immaculate Conception also at the church in Ventura.43 Given all these circumstances, it is not surprising that paintings and sculptures began to arrive in Alta California with Serra’s first trip north. They would have been initially necessary, of course, for the friars and the settlers but also for future converts. Based on a working inventory of nearly five hundred mission-era works of art compiled from archival records,44 we know that the most common themes represented in paintings and sculptures in the Alta California missions both during and after Serra’s lifetime were images of Franciscan saints, most frequently of Saint Francis, as one would expect; representations of Christ, mostly in his Passion but frequently in the scene of his baptism by Saint John; and paintings and sculptures of the Virgin Mary in the guise of various devotions. The selection is not at all surprising in Franciscan buildings, of course. However, a more careful look at some of these themes in specific works that are still extant or for which records survive can deepen our analysis. As already mentioned, the Immaculate Conception is an idea that had been especially promoted by the Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus since the late fourteenth century and, consequently, by his order in later times. Not surprisingly, a statue of the Immaculate Conception arrived with Serra in 1769, and a painting was acquired in 1777 (both for San Diego); another statue was recorded at San Gabriel in 1783. Eventually every one of the twenty-one Alta California mission churches had at least one image of this subject. For the record, we should recall that one of the Sierra Gorda missions was dedicated to the Immaculata and

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figure 9.6. José de Páez (ca. 1720–after 1801), New Spain, Baptism of Christ, 1775. Oil on canvas attached to a wood carrying case; ca. 33 x 25 inches (83.8 x 63.5 cm). Signed Jph. de Páez, inscription: Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi. Old Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, San Luis Obispo, California.

that there were at least ten images of this devotion among the five Sierra Gorda missions.45 As for the iconography of Christ’s Passion, in addition to the numerous crucifixes brought and sent to California, narrative representations center on the stations of the cross, which are cycles of fourteen paintings of episodes that took place on Christ’s way to Calvary. The emphasis on these cycles is not surprising, because the devotion was associated with Saint Francis himself but also because the Franciscans were charged with the care of the original Way of the Cross in Jerusalem.46 Four sets of the stations of the cross, for the mission churches of San Gabriel, San Francisco/Dolores, San Juan Capistrano, and San Diego, arrived between 1771 and

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1787. These four initial sets of stations at the Alta California missions were prints, not paintings. No doubt, early on the other missions also had prints of the stations for which the records simply do not exist or have not been found. Eventually, however, every one of the mission churches had at least one painted set. Passion images and via crucis were also numerous at the Sierra Gorda.47 We should also point out that Serra established an outdoor via crucis or Way of the Cross on the road to his own Carmel mission,48 probably recalling the one he had erected in the Sierra Gorda. Palou described how on Fridays during Lent while in the Sierra Gorda, Father Serra, made the stations of the Way of the Cross in procession from the church to the Calvary chapel. This latter he had constructed on a high hill outside town and within view of the church. During this holy exercise the Venerable Fray Junípero carried a cross so large and heavy that I, stronger and younger though I was, could not lift it. When he returned to the church he concluded the religious exercise with a tender sermon on the Passion of our Lord, which devotion he encouraged the Indians to practice.49

Another important category of imagery is that of Franciscan saints. During Serra’s lifetime, most of the images of Franciscans as well as other saints were of those to whom the planned missions would be dedicated. Thus, Serra either carried with him to Alta California or shortly thereafter received images of the titular saints of the first nine missions: San Diego, San Carlos Borromeo, San Antonio, San Gabriel, San Luis Obispo (Figure 9.7), San Francisco, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Clara, and San Buenaventura. A measure of the importance of these images for Serra is the fact that by 1773 there were no fewer than three images of San Diego de Alcalá, the patron of the first Alta California mission. Adhering to the conditions that had been stipulated by the Council of Trent in 1563, these images were simple compositions that were easy to read and portrayed their subjects in a doctrinally appropriate and respectful manner. By and large, they were iconic images of an individual saint with a minimum of narrative or allegorical elements.

TA S T E A N D I D E A S

As a learned theologian, Serra may well have been familiar with the ideas of Gabriele Paleotti, a participant at the Council of Trent and among the most important sixteenth-century ecclesiastical reformers and writers, whose authoritative and widely disseminated Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images50 argues that the aim of Christian imagery is to “persuade to piety and bring people to God.”51 Paleotti’s views were later espoused by Francisco Pacheco in his Arte de la pintura, which likewise emphasizes the power of art as the common language of all peoples, with artists serving as “silent theologians.”52 Like Paleotti and Pacheco, Serra favored the

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figure 9.7. José de Páez (ca. 1720-after 1801), New Spain, Saint Louis of Toulouse, eighteenth century. Oil on canvas; ca. 47¼ x 36 inches (120 x 91.4 cm). Old Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, San Luis Obispo, California.

fundamentals in religious imagery, that is to say, narrative accuracy and iconographic clarity. He was also heir, however, to the Baroque tradition that emphasized the power of art to move the spectator and to induce one to devotion and faith through naturalistic and dramatic effects. As was the case with every missionary in New Spain—from the earliest Franciscans who arrived in 1524 to the founding of the Alta California missions nearly two and a half centuries later— Serra’s interest was in artworks that aided evangelization. Thus, it would not have been unusual for a missionary of Serra’s age to desire accuracy and clarity, but in

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the late Baroque times of the second half of the eighteenth century he would also expect emotional impact in works of art. Consequently, it is not surprising that a late Counter-Reformation visual language was favored by Serra in Alta California, as it was by contemporary clerics in other territories of New Spain, in order to introduce and affirm Catholic tenets to the local population, including Indians, soldiers, government officials, and colonists. Further key insight into Serra’s taste in art is evident in his letters to officials in Mexico City in which he consistently expressed the desire for paintings and sculptures. He did not leave to chance the content of the artworks that were to be sent to his Alta California missions. On the contrary, he was explicit in his wishes. For example, in a June 1771 letter to Friar Rafael Verger, guardian of the College of San Fernando, Serra wrote: The requests that I would like to make of Your Reverence are first: that you should order the five patron saints of the missions to be painted, for each mission its own. That is to say, . . . : the archangel Gabriel[;] . . . Saint Louis, the Bishop, with his episcopal insignia, showing below the level of his surplice, the Franciscan habit and cord plainly to be seen, a miter on his head, the cope decorated with flowers, and his royal crown and scepter at his feet . . . [;] Saint Anthony of Padua, the preacher, attractive in appearance, and, above all, with the Infant Jesus. For the other two missions . . . : Saint Clare, with her Franciscan habit and her veil, not as the nuns here wear it, but falling on the shoulders, as she is painted in Europe. And for the other mission, Our Father Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, or as Your Reverence may prefer, so long as they do not paint him in blue.53

This last instruction is crucial for understanding Serra’s intentions. As there was no standard color for the Franciscan habit at this time, habits of different colors were worn by various groups of Franciscans. Friars of the Apostolic College of San Fernando, including all Alta California missionaries, wore gray habits. Serra wanted the images of Franciscan saints—particularly Saint Francis—in gray habits, thus identifying the patron saints as Fernandinos. This insistence on the authority of the Franciscans from San Fernando at the Alta California missions was a clear and ubiquitous message in paintings and sculpture, suggesting that art at these missions was also about affirming Fernandino capacity and authority, not only about instructing natives. Seeing their saints depicted in their own habits would hearten the friars in Alta California, but the colonists, government officials, and natives who saw the paintings would recognize the habits and connect the local friars with these venerated figures, thus perceiving a powerful visual connection between the saints depicted in the paintings and the friars living in their midst. Besides the wish to fulfill the needs of the missionaries in their work and personal devotion through his petitions for specific subjects and iconography, Serra’s desire for visual materials is evidence of his appreciation for the power of sight, identified as the “noblest of the senses” by classical and medieval philosophers and

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theologians.54 Aristotle, for example, wrote that “[w]e prefer sight . . . to all other senses. The reason for this is that, of all the senses, sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.”55 The understanding handed down in the dominant philosophical schools was that sight is privileged because it is the only sense that permits the distinction between the mutable and the immutable. That is to say, whereas “all other senses operate by registering change,” only sight affords the sensory basis “on which the mind may conceive of the idea of the eternal, that which never changes and is always present.”56 Plato considered the contemplation of beauty a conduit to higher thinking and as such a means by which to glimpse true beauty in the divine.57 Saint Augustine explained this concept particularly well in terms of the visual arts. For him, a work of art—a thing of beauty—delights the eye and attracts human affection to itself so that the viewer pondering the work of art spiritually ascends away from the material object to the immaterial divine source of its beauty.58 The foremost Franciscan theologians Saint Bonaventure59 and Duns Scotus60—the latter whose works Serra especially knew and appreciated— privileged the sense of sight when they concluded that things of beauty such as works of art are pathways to the divine. As did the Franciscan Ramon Llull, who stated that although all five senses must be involved for the proper contemplation of God, it is the sense of sight that is the most powerful.61 In other words, the beauty in art is one of the ways God chooses to be revealed.62 Master works of art were thought of as pathways (via pulchritudinis) to divine revelation. A scholar of philosophy and theology, Serra would have been familiar with these prevailing theories of beauty and the privileging of the sense of sight that no doubt influenced his taste, manifested in his desire to have works executed by leading artists in Mexico City. Serra surely believed that the beauty and efficacy that he perceived in these objects would attract the unconverted, bringing native people into the mission fold. Serra’s companion and biographer Francisco Palou described how Serra would use works of art for maximum visual impact. As already mentioned, among the objects recorded in the California missions are numerous crucifixes placed on altars, used in the pulpit, and carried in procession. This “principal object of our preaching,” as Serra refers to the crucifix in his memoria of July 1775,63 was a vital presence among the Christian images in the missions. In addition to the small handheld crucifixes used for preaching in accordance with the dictates of Carlo Borromeo, each California mission possessed a large crucifix hung high in the church to signify the victory of Christ.64 These life-size crucifixes were realistically portrayed, with heavily coagulated bloody wounds, dramatically rendered; dark streams of blood running the length of the corpus from the gaping wound in the chest; and skin shredded from the back of the corpus exposing the white bones of the rib cage. The look of agony on Christ’s face, the glass eyes, the bone (or porcelain) teeth, and actual human hair added to the dramatic and tragic effects. One

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can envision the impact that a full-scale human figure in such an acute state of suffering must have had on the aboriginal viewers, who after all had no artistic legacy of figural images, not to mention three-dimensional, life-size, and realistically portrayed. Moreover, the arms of many of these crucifixes were articulated at the shoulders, as was the case with the large crucifix at Serra’s own mission in Carmel, so that the figure could be detached from the cross for liturgical and paraliturgical events, notably during Holy Week. Palou recorded Serra doing this at his mission in the Sierra Gorda: On Holy Thursday he placed the Blessed Sacrament in the repository, and on this day, as well as on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, all the other ceremonies and practices established by custom were carried out. To these he added various processions, after which he preached a sermon on some moral topic. On Holy Thursday, after having washed the feet of twelve of the oldest Indians and eaten with them, he preached the sermon on the Mandatum.65 At night he held a procession with the image of Christ Crucified, in which the whole town participated. On Friday morning he preached a sermon on the Passion, and in the afternoon, in a most realistic manner, the Descent from the Cross was represented. This was done by means of a lifelike image, ordered made with hinges for that purpose. Preaching on this topic with the greatest devotion and tenderness, he placed our Lord in a casket and then the procession of the sacred burial was held. The casket was placed on an altar which had been specially prepared for this purpose. . . . On Easter Sunday, very early in the morning, the procession of the Risen Christ was held. In this there were carried a devotional image of our Lord and another of the Most Holy Virgin.66

Serra understood that actually witnessing the entombment and resurrection of Christ with their own eyes would move his listeners more than mere words possibly could. Accordingly, he deliberately ornamented the mission churches with impressive decoration and works of art not only to glorify the house of God but also to amaze and astonish the indigenous people so that “they receive through their eyes first impressions . . . [that] will arouse their interests and desires.”67 This notion of awe had long been considered an effective method of evangelization. In the year 735, for example, Boniface, apostle to the non-Christians in Germany, requested a manuscript of the New Testament written in gold in order to “impress honor and reverence for the Sacred Scriptures visibly upon the carnally-minded to whom I preach.”68 Boniface was unconcerned that the non-Christians could not read the Bible as long as they were impressed and drawn to it by its glittering appearance. The circumstances were similar in the Alta California missions. The overall goal would have been to achieve maximum visual impact with magnificent decoration. Although imposing carved and gilded retablos were not possible in Serra’s California, paintings on canvas and life-size painted statues complemented the visual splendor of light from candlesticks, glittering vestments, mirrors, and

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implements of silver and gold. This aspect is important in understanding Serra’s taste in art, his appreciation of the power of sight and the concomitant functions and meanings of art in the mission setting. In accordance with the notions of beauty and the divine, beyond attention to the accuracy of iconography and the care to identify the saints portrayed with himself and his companions at the Alta California missions, Serra was also concerned with quality, which, of course, is intimately related to notions of beauty. His interest in quality is corroborated by an August 1775 letter to Fray Francisco Pangua, guardian of the College of San Fernando, in which he instructs that an image of San Juan Capistrano “should not be painted by any kind of painter . . . [but] have Páez paint it or some other good artist.”69 José de Páez, a follower of Miguel Cabrera, was one of the most important painters of the second half of the eighteenth century in New Spain. Serra had probably become familiar with his work via the artist’s painted cycle of the life of Saint Francis Solano in the lower cloister at the Fernandino college in Mexico City. The cycle is thought to have been completed around 1764, the same year the artist was appointed official painter of the college and when Serra was in his second residency there from 1758 to 1767. Indeed, it is likely that the friar personally knew the artist.70 It is no small matter that Serra requested works executed by a specific artist, especially a master of the caliber of Páez, whose most important work in California is the Glory of Heaven at Carmel, which was ordered by Serra in 1771 along with the now lost Horrors of Hell.71 The Glory of Heaven is an outstanding work by Páez in its handling of color and expressive figures. It is also noteworthy in that it includes natives among the blessed, as does another canvas that may also have been commissioned by Serra: the Virgin of Light, probably painted between 1769 and 1772 by Luis de Mena and originally at the San Diego mission.72 It was not common to include natives so prominently and in a positive light in religious paintings in New Spain unless they were commissioned by natives themselves or by missionaries, such as Serra.73 Further confirmation of Serra’s attention to quality is the fact that an important number of extant paintings in the upper California mission collections are signed by or attributed to other known Mexico City artists. In addition to Páez, Luis de Mena, Ignacio Ayala, and Josef de Ledesma, there are extant works by José Joaquín Esquíbel, Andrés López, and José de Alcíbar and lesser-known artists such as Francisco Cabrera, José Francisco de Servín, and Marcos Lopez.74 While some of these works arrived in Alta California after Serra’s death, it is not unrealistic to surmise that for many of the same reasons Serra had preferred high quality— namely, their impact and trust in the artist as a silent theologian—his successors wished to continue the standard he had set of acquiring fine artworks by some of the most accomplished artists of New Spain. However, the presence of painters such as José de Alcíbar and Andrés López— painters who bridged the stylistic transition from late Baroque to Neoclassical—can

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only be explained within the context of a change of taste imposed from Mexico City from the 1780s onward, which would render the California missions very different in appearance from the Sierra Gorda missions and also from what Serra could have wanted or imagined. The Royal Academy of San Carlos was officially established in the capital in 1781. It was meant to modernize taste in the direction of Neoclassicism as well as to reorganize the education and work of artists, architects, and artisans. Alcíbar and López, though they had begun their careers within the guild system in Mexico City, became part of the new institution. Their work traveled throughout New Spain not only in commissions from missionaries and important civil personages but also through the agency of the viceregal government, which was taking its cues from events in Madrid concerning the role and appropriate appearance of art. Churchmen too, of course, were part of the new system. To better understand the significance of this change of taste for the California missions, we can give an idea of what Serra might have imagined and wanted for his missions if events had continued to unfold in the stylistic paths they had begun to take under his leadership. The well-preserved church of San Xavier del Bac in present-day Arizona would doubtless have been much to Serra’s taste. Founded by the legendary Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1692, the mission was totally rebuilt by the Franciscans who took over the Sonora missions after the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish territories in 1767. The new church at Bac was erected between 1783 and 1797 by Fray Juan Bautista Velderrain and his successors, who were from the College of Propaganda Fide of the Santa Cruz in Querétaro. In other words, besides being of the same reformed Franciscan branch to which Serra belonged, they were from Querétaro, the nearest large city to the Sierra Gorda. Furthermore, because the new Bac church was built right after Serra’s death, it is not at all far-fetched to think that such a structure, with its vaulted architecture and ornate interior decoration, would have been to Serra’s taste, especially after so many years of struggling with poor architecture and imported art in Alta California. That Serra probably ended his days still in the thrall of the late Baroque—the style with which he was most familiar and one that he considered most effective in the mission field—and not the emerging Neoclassical style is attested to by the elaborately fashioned monstrance sent to him by Viceroy Bucareli, made in Mexico City in 1777, which delighted him enormously.75 A final Baroque touch is the Carmel mission church choir window, which Serra never saw, since the stone church was designed and constructed between 1793 and 1797. The window resembles the choir windows at the Sierra Gorda churches, especially that at Concá. It is one of the least Neoclassical architectural details to be found in Alta California and appears to mark the end of the Baroque there. Nothing like it was made afterward. The change in taste and administration of the arts that occurred in Mexico City after 1781 and its impact in Alta California are attested to by the decision to send to the capital for approval the drawing for the facade of the Monterey Presidio chapel

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presented by the master stonemason Ruíz, mentioned above, who is said to have later designed the church at Carmel.76 Meant for a government building, the design of the Presidio chapel was subject to greater stylistic scrutiny, so Ruiz’s original late Baroque design was modified to a more Neoclassical one by Antonio Velázquez, the architectural director at the Academy of San Carlos.77 Ruiz appears not to have been held as strictly to the new style in his design for the decidedly more Baroque Carmel mission church. After that, mission architecture and its decoration became more and more Neoclassical. The sequence is easily seen in the altarpieces at Mission Dolores in San Francisco. The painted apse altarpiece is in ornate eighteenth-century late Baroque style, and the carved wooden altarpiece in front of it is Neóstilo (a term used in Mexican art historiography to define a mix of Baroque and Neoclassical that emerged before the transition to the Neoclassical of the Academy of San Carlos), but the side altarpieces, sent from Mexico City and installed in 1810, are fully Neoclassical.78 The result is a succession of styles that Serra surely would not have envisioned for his California mission churches. We close this chapter with a brief analysis of the interior of the mission church at Mission San Miguel, founded in 1797, after Serra’s death, and finished in 1820 or 1821.79 The embellishment of the church is the only fully extant original interior decorative scheme that is practically wholly preserved in California (Figure 9.8). Its design is remarkably germane for a mission church, yet its symbolism is not easily understood by a viewer unschooled in Christian history, theology, and symbolism. It is a sophisticated program that simultaneously points to different facets of the mission experience. The entire scheme visually manifests the idea, expounded by Duns Scotus, in which Christian life is a pilgrimage toward unity with God. The progressive and hierarchical interior decoration of the church reflects the religious purpose and function of the mission: to lead indigenous people from itinerancy to settled living and through evangelization and conversion to salvation. This message culminates with the confluence of Heaven and Earth, with Saint Michael standing front and center on the altarpiece, ready to escort the soul to divine union. Above, the all-seeing eye of God representing the Trinity visually signifies the climax of the journey: a journey undertaken by all faithful Christians, not just recent converts. Additionally, the sanctuary and altarpiece also are meant to evoke the Tabernacle in the wilderness, equating the Israelites’ journey in the desert with the pilgrimage from native pre-Christianity or from baptism, as the case may be, to the liberation of divine union and eternal life. At the same time, the trompe l’oeil colonnade in the nave relates the tradition of early Christian Roman church buildings with the church at Mission San Miguel, thereby equating the new Christians of California with the new Christians of Rome. Moreover, facets of the decoration reference the secular social and cultural concerns of the mission enterprise—the moral and civil aspects of Spanish citizenship—as well as the concomitant notions of appropriate individual behavior and the idea of ordered and settled communal living.

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figure 9.8. Nave looking west. Church of Mission San Miguel Archangel, San Miguel, California, ca. 1933. Library of Congress/Historic American Buildings Survey.

Built and dedicated long after Serra’s presence in Alta California, the San Miguel interior expresses many of the same deep concerns and beliefs that moved the founder of the Alta California missions. Although incorporating Neoclassical style and motifs, the thematic unity of the decorative scheme suggests a continuation of Serra’s ideals. The complexity of the symbolism, iconography, and erudite sources indicate that the interior decoration was designed by someone steeped in Christian allegory and theology, as Serra, his companions, and his successors were. Furthermore, the decoration and architectural elements are entirely derived from western European architectural and visual traditions. However, the execution of all of this, the architecture as well as the decoration, was mostly done by local workers, many of whom would have been Native Americans. What they really thought is, of course, the most difficult question. However, it is not unrealistic to believe that the creation of what were, after all, communal projects that required the practice of visual and manual skills would have been the source of personal satisfaction as well as local pride. We thus have come full circle to the basic questions raised at the beginning of this chapter. First, who were the authors, both intellectual and practical, of the California mission buildings and their decoration, and what were their aesthetic preferences? And finally, who were the audiences for whom the mission buildings and their decoration were meant? The fuller answers to these queries will come

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with time, research, and discussion. Here we will add only a few last thoughts. The agency of the friars, beginning with Fray Junípero, is unquestionable. Also, Serra’s eighteenth-century taste is undeniable. Indeed, late Baroque eclecticism, as seen in Spanish architecture more generally and certainly in eighteenth-century building and decoration in New Spain, explains the willingness to incorporate medieval traditions and native presence within Catholic iconography. Turning from the architectural iconography to that of the figural works, we find Franciscan symbols and themes repeated throughout, from Serra’s first mission in the Sierra Gorda to the final missions in California. The devotions and iconographic programs persisted. The ways and forms for expressing all of these ideas did change over time, however, so much so that the Neoclassicism that is fully represented in the abstractions and order of the decorative painting at San Miguel may well not have been to Fray Junípero’s taste had he lived to have seen them. In conclusion, one cannot wholly discern Serra’s taste in art by looking at the California missions as they exist today. Rather, a fuller indication of his inclinations and wishes in architecture and art can be observed in the buildings and highly decorated exuberant facades of the mission churches in the Sierra Gorda whose initial creation he directly oversaw. Though the interiors of these churches have lost most of their original paintings and furniture, the survival of artworks that Serra personally obtained and commissioned for the Alta California missions affords insight into his taste in the spheres of painting, sculpture, and church furnishings. Thus, in addition to analyzing Fray Junípero’s letters and requests and the witness of Palou, it is by examining the still-extant examples of the broader course of what can fairly be considered his patronage of the arts over the years, including the five churches in the Sierra Gorda and the extant works of his final years in Alta California, that we can more clearly perceive the fabric of Serra’s taste in art: it was unquestionably firmly rooted in the Baroque. NOTES 1. A recent compilation is Historic American Building Survey, California Missions Measured Drawings (Santa Margarita, CA: Learning Windows Publications, 1999). 2. Edna E. Kimbro and Julia G. Costello, The California Missions: History, Art and Preservation (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2009). 3. Kurt Baer, Painting and Sculpture at Mission Santa Barbara (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955). 4. Martin J. Morgado, Junípero Serra’s Legacy (Pacific Grove, CA: Mount Carmel, 1987); Gail Sheridan and Mary Pat McCormick, Art from the Carmel Mission (Carmel, CA: Carmel Mission, 2011). By now it has become clear that all of the mission collections deserve to be carefully cataloged, at least for internal use by the institutions responsible for their safekeeping. 5. James L. Nolan (text published in three parts), “Anglo-American Myopia and California Mission Art,” Southern California Quarterly 58 (1976): part 1, 1–44; part 2, 143–204; part 3, 261–331; James L. Nolan, Discovery of the Lost Art Treasures of California’s First Mission (Los Angeles: Copley, 1978).

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6. Norman Neuerburg, “The Angel on the Cloud, or ‘Anglo-American Myopia’ Revisited: A Discussion of the Writings of James L. Nolan,” Southern California Quarterly 62 (1980): 1–48. For a much fuller review of the bibliography on the California missions, see Pamela Jill Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches, 1769–ca. 1834,” doctoral dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2011, 6–45. 7. Monique Gustin, El Barroco en la Sierra Gorda (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1969), 74–83. This is the best source for the history and characteristics of the five churches built after the arrival of Serra in the Sierra Gorda. It is important to note that Serra did not establish these missions; he reorganized them and began the task of rebuilding them. 8. Ibid., 122–36. 9. Richard Krautheimer, Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press) 1969. 10. John McAndrew and Manuel Toussaint, “Tecali, Zacatlán, and the Renacimiento Purista in Mexico,” Art Bulletin 24 (1942): 320. 11. Mario Córdova Tello, El Convento de San Miguel de Huejotzingo, Puebla. Arqueología histórica (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1992), chap. 4. 12. Clara Bargellini, “Arquitectura jesuita en la Tarahumara: ¿centro o periferia?,” in Órdenes religiosas entre América y Asia, ed. Elisabetta Corsi, 145–49 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2008). 13. Jaime Font Fransy and Diego Prieto Hernández, “Missions Franciscaines de la Sierra Gorda de Querétaro,” Patrimoine mondial 39 (2005): 66–79, published on the occasion of the declaration of the five missions as UNESCO World Heritage sites. 14. George Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press) 1948, is still the basic source for these buildings; the most recent, annotated and more fully illustrated edition is: Arquitectura mexicana del siglo XVI (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica) 2012. 15. Gustin, El barroco en la Sierra Gorda, 129, uses the term “resurgimiento” for the posas of the Sierra Gorda. 16. Ibid., 241–62. 17. Dylis Blum, “Chasuble,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, ed. Clara Bargellini and Michael Komanecky (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009), 318. 18. Clara Bargellini, La Arquitectura de la plata (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1991), 270–71. 19. Clara Bargellini, “Painting in Colonial Latin America,” in The Arts in Latin America 1492–1820, ed. Joseph J. Rishel (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2006), 328–32; Cristina Cruz González, “Our Lady of el Pueblito: A Marian Devotion on the Northern Frontier,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture 23 (2012): 3–21. 20. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), emphasize the political aspect of the Sierra Gorda missions, by which the Propaganda Fide Franciscans affirmed the superiority of their methods in advancing Spanish control of indigenous territories. 21. Fidel de Jesús Chauvet, La iglesia de San Fernando de México y su extinto Colegio Apostólico (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Bernardino de Sahagún, 1980) 41, 56–69, discusses the interior and its paintings, which remain to be carefully studied. For more detailed discussion of the construction process of the college and church of San Fernando, see Oscar Humberto Flores, “El arquitecto José Eduardo de Herrera (ca. 1690–1758): Una reflexión sobre la arquitectura novohispana de su tiempo,” PhD dissertation, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2011, 351–71. 22. Clara Bargellini, “Painting for Export in Mexico City in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Art in Spain and the Hispanic World: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Brown, ed. Sarah Schroth, 285–303 (London: Paul Holberton, 2010).

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23. Mina Ramírez Montes, Niñas, doncellas, vírgenes eternas: Santa Clara de Querétaro (1607–1864) (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2005), 189–263. 24. Gustin, El barroco en la Sierra Gorda, 125. 25. Rosario Inés Granados, “El fuego no se llevó la memoria: Santa María Acapulco durante el periodo virreinal,” in Rescate, conservación y restauración del templo de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Santa María Acapulco, 2007–2014, ed. Renata Schneider (Mexico City: INAH-Gobierno del estado de SLP, 2016). 26. Renata Schneider, personal communication, 2010, on information and photographs of this building. 27. Gustin, El barroco en la Sierra Gorda, 255, 258–62. 28. For a detailed account of what is known of the craftsmen in upper California, see Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller, Building and Builders in Hispanic California (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, 1994), 11–36, esp. 15–17 for the workers available to Serra. For a drawing that illustrates the building processes of Santa Barbara, see Kimbro and Costello, The California Missions, 14. 29. Schuetz-Miller, Building and Builders in Hispanic California, 149–58. 30. Rubén G. Mendoza, “The Cross and the Spade: Archaeology and the Discovery of the Earliest Serra Chapel of the Royal Presidio of Monterey 1770–1772,” Boletín of the California Mission Studies Association 29, no. 1 (2013): 30–58. 31. Marco Díaz, Arquitectura en el desierto: Misiones jesuitas en Baja California (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1986). 32. Kimbro and Costello, The California Missions, 98–101 and 174. Guadalajara as a source for qualified artists and artisans for northern New Spain needs more scholarly research. 33. Beebe and Senkewicz, Junípero Serra, 152–56, provide information on the route Serra followed overland from Loreto to San Diego, passing through the sites of two of the most spectacular and wellfurnished Jesuit missions of Baja California: San Javier and San José Comondú. 34. For the objects at Loreto today, though not all of these were there in Serra’s time, see Bárbara Mayer de Stinglhamber, Arte sacro en Baja California Sur, siglos XVII–XIX (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2001), 34–152. 35. Morgado, Junípero Serra’s Legacy, 17–22; Clara Bargellini, “Art at the Missions of Northern New Spain,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 1600–1821, ed. Clara Bargellini and Michael K. Komanecky (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009), 62, 68–69, 88. 36. Francisco Palóu, Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, trans. Maynard J. Geiger (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 118–19; Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles (San Gabriel, CA: Mission San Gabriel, 1927), 3–6. For the original Spanish, see Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 512. 37. Palóu, Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, 119; Palou apparently did not consider that the women were wholly unfamiliar with figural paintings. For the original Spanish, see Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Missions,” 513. 38. Andrés Pérez de Ribas and Daniel T. Reff, History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith amongst the Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples of the New World (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), 272. 39. Francisco Zambrano, Diccionario Bio-bibliográfico de la Compañía de Jesús en México, Vol. 5 (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1965), 37–38. 40. Kimbro and Costello, The California Missions, 121; Don DeNevi and Noel Francis Moholy, Junípero Serra: The Illustrated Story of the Franciscan Founder of California’s Missions (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 103; deserving of more rigorous investigation, this image had been a gift to José de Gálvez, the visitor-general of New Spain who personally oversaw the expansion into upper California, from Don Francisco Lorenzana, a former archbishop of Mexico City, and was lent by Gálvez to Serra for the initial maritime expedition. Although also known as the Virgin of Bethlehem (or La

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Belen), as is not unusual for a statue known as La Conquistadora, this one originally represented the Virgin of the Rosary. 41. These missions among the faithful were the origin of the Virgin del Refugio, another painting of the Virgin introduced by the Jesuits and adopted especially by the Propaganda Fide Franciscans. Clara Bargellini, “La Recuperación y recreación de imágenes sagradas en la Nueva España: La Virgen de El Zape y la Virgen del Refugio,” in Estéticas del des(h)echo, 245–61 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2014). 42. Alejandro Reyes-Vizzuet, personal communication, June 29, 2014. The recent restoration of the Divina Pastora has revealed the signature of its author, Josef de Ledesma, and the date 1796. Ledesma’s signature appears on only one other known painting, which is said to be in the Merced of Toluca. Abelardo Carrillo y Gariel, Autógrafos de pintores coloniales (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972), 70. 43. Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 183, 195–96, 211, and 245; Pamela Jill Huckins, “Baptism of Christ,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 1600–1821, ed. Clara Bargellini and Michael K. Komanecky (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009), 265; Pamela Jill Huckins, “Divine Shepherdess,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 1600–1821, 279. 44. Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 426–81. 45. Gustin, El Barroco en la Sierra Gorda, 241–62. 46. Alena Robin, “Devoción y patrocino: El vía crucis en Nueva España,” doctoral dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de México, 2007. 47. Gustin, El Barroco en la Sierra Gorda, 241–62. 48. In upper California, an eyewitness in 1815 reported that a part of the road from Monterey to Carmel, which was referred to as “Calvary,” comprised a Way of the Cross. Theodore Hittell, History of California, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: N. J. Stone & Company, 1897), 639. Another visitor to the same in January 1827 recorded that along the approach to the mission were “three large crosses erected upon Mount Cavalry.” Capt. F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering’s Strait . . . in the years 1825, 26, 27, 28, Vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831), 86. 49. Palóu, Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, 30. For the original Spanish, see Francisco Palou, La Vida de Junípero Serra (Mexico City: Imprenta de Don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1787), 30. Hittell and Beechey’s comments confirm the presence of a via crucis along the road to the Carmel mission. A popular form of devotion in Europe and the Spanish and Portuguese American colonies, a via crucis was frequently constructed on hillsides known as Sacri Monti (Sacred Mountains) such as that constructed by Serra in the Sierra Gorda or, as in the case of Mission Carmel, on roads leading to a church or sanctuary or along streets passing through the center of a town. Alena Robin, “Chemins de Croix et Passos da Paixão au Brésil colonial,” conference presentation, University of Montreal, April 14, 2009, www.teiaportugesa.com/ABAPORU/conferencealenarobin.htm; Alena Robin, “Devoción y patrocino”; Edward J. Sullivan, “O Aleijadinho,” in Brazil Body & Soul, ed. Edward J. Sullivan (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2001), 238; William W. Hood, “The Sacro Monte of Varallo: Renaissance Art and Popular Religion,” in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. Timothy Verdon (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1984); Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 160–61; Pamela Jill Huckins, “The Via Crucis in the Franciscan Missions of Alta California,” in Procedimientos del IV Foro Internacional de las Misiones del Noroeste del México, Origen y Destino, ed. José Rómulo Félix Gastélum and Raquel Padilla Ramos, 153–60 (Hermosillo: FORCA Noroeste, 2006). 50. Gabriele Paleotti, Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images, trans. William McCuaig (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2012). 51. Ibid., 111. See also Anne H. Muraoka, “Il Fine dell Pittura: Canon Reformulation in the Age of Counter-Reformation, the Lombard-Roman Confluence,” doctoral dissertation, Temple University, 2009, 39.

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52. Francisco Pacheco, Arte de la Pintura, ed. Bonaventura Bassegoda I Hugas (Madrid: Cátedra, 1990), 234–48. 53. Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. Antonine Tibesar (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 221. For the original Spanish, see Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 70. 54. Danijela Kambaskovic and Charles T. Wolfe, “The Senses in Philosophy and Science: From the Nobility of Sight to the Materialism of Touch,” Academia, http://www.academia.edu/3146325/The_ Senses_in_Philosophy_and_Science_From_the_nobilityof_sight_to_the_materialism_of_touch. 55. Ibid. 56. Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14, no. 4 (1954): 145. 57. Robin M. Jensen, The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian Community (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 7. 58. Ibid., 8–9. 59. Peter S. Dillard, A Way into Scholasticism: A Companion to St. Bonaventure’s the Soul’s Journey into God (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke, 2012), 31–33; Philotheus Boehner Bonaventura and Stephen F. Brown, The Journey of the Mind to God (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), chap. 2. 60. Trent Pomplun, “Notes on Scotist Aesthetics in Light of Gilbert Narcisse’s Las Raisons de Dieu,” Franciscan Studies 66, no. 1 (2009): 249–52. 61. Charles Burnett, “The Five Senses in Ramon Llull’s Liber contemplionis in Deum,” in Gottes Schau und Weltbetrachtung: Interpretationen zum “Liber contempationis” des Raimundus Lullus I, ed. Fernando Domínguez Reboiras (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011), 182. 62. By the sixteenth century these ideas had permeated artistic thinking much beyond the Franciscans and the clerical world. Leon Battista Alberti, for example, concurred that “truth” emerges from “what is seen.” Kambaskovic and Wolfe, “The Senses in Philosophy and Science,” 9. 63. Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Antonine Tibesar (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1956), 278–79. 64. Evelyn Carole Voelker, “Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae, 1577,” doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977, 150n5. 65. Mandatum is the official term for the ceremony of the washing of the feet. 66. Palóu, Palóu’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, 30. For the original Spanish, see Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 503. 67. Excerpt from 1768 letter from Jose de Gálvez to Fray Francisco Palou, in Harry W. Crosby, Gateway to Alta California: The Expedition to San Diego, 1769 (San Diego: Sunbelt Publications, 2003), 39. See also Miguel León-Portilla, “California in the Dreams of Gálvez and the Achievements of Serra,” in Junípero Serra and the Northwestern Mexico Frontier, 1750–1825, ed. Antonine Tibesar, 1–8 (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1985). 68. “Medieval Sourcebook: The Correspondence of St. Boniface,” letter 21, “Boniface Asks Abbess Eadburga to Make Him a Copy of the Epistle of St. Peter in Letters of Gold,” Fordham University, www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/boniface-letters.html. 69. Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, 2:318–19. 70. Manuel Toussaint, Colonial Art in Mexico, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Wilder Weismann (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 177 and Fig. 335. In all likelihood, the woodcut of Serra that served as the frontispiece for Francisco Palou’s La Vida de Junípero Serra was modeled on one of Páez’s paintings of Saint Francis Solano in the cloister of the college. Paintings of the cycle are now at the Franciscan convent of Zapopan. See Manuel Romero de Terreros, “José de Páez y su Vida de San Francisco Solano,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 5, no. 17 (1949): 23–26. 71. Huckins, “The Glory of Heaven,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 262.

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72. Huckins, “Virgin of Light with Native Devotees,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 259–60. 73. Elisa Vargaslugo, Imágenes de los naturales en el arte de la Nueva España (Mexico City: Banamex, 2006). Serra seems to have had a particular devotion to the Virgen de la Luz, evident at Tancoyol in the Sierra Gorda but also in a small painting at Carmel, which includes in the lower right corner the figure of a friar (perhaps Serra himself?) offering his heart to Mary. Sheridan and McCormick, Art from the Carmel Mission, 90–91. 74. Many of these signed and attributed paintings can be traced to their respective missions during the Spanish era. Some of them, however, arrived in upper California with the friars from the College of Zacatecas in the late nineteenth century. See Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches,” 97. 75. Morgado, Junípero Serra’s Legacy, 75–79. The chalice that matches it in style was sent to Carmel after Serra’s death. It is just as Baroque in style as the monstrance. 76. Schuetz-Miller, Building and Builders in Hispanic California, 162–66. 77. Ibid., 40. 78. Yunuen Maldonado Dorantes, personal communication, 2014, sharing a document that discusses the shipment. 79. Pamela Jill Huckins, “John Duns Scotus, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and the Interior Decoration of the Church at Mission San Miguel Archangel,” in From la Florida to la California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands; Essays from a Conference Hosted by Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida, ed. Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville, 389–406 (Berkeley, CA: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013).

10

Between Worlds Junípero Serra and the Paintings of José de Páez Cynthia Neri Lewis

In July 1770 just a month after establishing the mission at Monterey, Junípero Serra opened a crate containing three large oil paintings of Saints Carlo Borromeo, Buenaventura, and Diego de Alcalá. Serra excitedly reported in a letter to Joseph de Galvez that My delight knew no bounds. We took my saints on shore to remain there. We put them on the altar, and there was the Blessed Virgin surrounded by her Cardinals and her lay sacristans, seemingly as pleased as could be.1

The three paintings temporarily displayed in Monterey were soon to be transferred to their respective missions.2 Though Serra does not name the artist in his letter, the artist’s signatures and mission-era inventories confirm that at least two of the paintings were produced by the Mexican artist José de Páez (ca. 1720–1801) who, with his canvases displayed in almost every California mission, was clearly Serra’s favorite.3 In his memorias to the College of San Fernando, Serra requested works specifically by this artist, and many of these commissioned canvases can still be viewed in the missions today. The Páez paintings commissioned by Serra for the Alta California missions between 1771 and 17774 were produced within the complex social, religious, and artistic landscapes of Mexico City, where post-Tridentine policies, Scholasticism, criollo nationalism, Catholic mysticism, Enlightenment dialogues, and early modern spiritual ideologies clashed and competed. An exploration of selected paintings by Páez and his contemporaries who worked within this complicated milieu provides an understanding of the artistic climate of Serra’s Mexico City; through this wider art historical lens, we gain further insight into how Páez came to be Serra’s preferred painter in California. 195

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Beginning with the rise of the Bourbon dynasty in 1700, the Mexico City in which José de Páez lived and worked would in the course of his life be transformed into a center of Neoclassical art and architecture. With such a contrast between this increasingly modern city and the intensely spiritual world of Serra’s northern missions where many of Páez’s paintings were displayed, where are the artist and his work situated historically? Little is known about the life of José de Páez. He was born in Mexico City circa 1720 and died after 1801. His teacher was possibly Nicolás Enriquez,5 who had a workshop in the Centro Histórico, the city’s central neighborhood and historic center that the Spanish had built on the ruins of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. On February 10, 1743, Páez married Rosalia Manuela Gil Caballero in the Ascuncion Sagrario Metropolitana. They had four children and lived on la calle de Pila Seca, which is today the Republic of Chile.6 A favorite of the Franciscan and Jesuit orders in Mexico and the Bethlemite order in Guatemala, the prolific and longlived artist produced casta paintings, ex-votos, nuns shields, portraits, and large oil paintings for churches throughout New Spain. The majority of his works were displayed in Mexico, but many were exported to Peru, Guatemala, New Mexico, Alta and Baja California, Texas, and even Spain and the Canary Islands. While he adjusted his style and subject matter to meet the needs of his diverse patrons, he was generally considered a cabreriano, a follower of the better-known Mexico City painter of the eighteenth century Miguel Cabrera (1695–1768). T H E PA I N T E R’ S WO R K SHO P

Since the sixteenth century, artisans and painters had lived and worked in the area surrounding the church and plaza of Santo Domingo7 in the Centro Histórico. This strategic position placed the artists in close proximity to the Franciscan Colegio Apostólico de Propaganda Fide de San Fernando,8 the Alameda Park, and the Zócalo. The Parián, the artisans’ central marketplace, was built in the center of the Zócalo in 1703. It was flanked by the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Viceroy’s Palace— indicative of the deliberate framing of artistic production and exchange within the vigilant eye of commerce, the “Inquisitive” Catholic Church, and the Crown. Throughout the viceregal era in New Spain artisans were organized into cofradías and guilds, with formal constitutions that governed production, training, iconography, examinations, and sales as well as the artists’ behavior and spiritual activity. Membership in a guild helped artists to establish direct relationships with other artists, procuradores (art solicitors), and patrons. The workshop model of training, especially given the proximity of these workshops to one another, resulted in a long line of Mexican painters who passed their skills on from one generation to the next. The dynastic structure of artistic production in New Spain’s capital city resulted in an art world that was very small and tightly controlled. A 1686 ordinance imposed the following:

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No Indian9 may make a painting or other image of the saints, if he has not learned the trade to perfection and been examined (by the governors, overseers, and two other officials of the appropriate profession).10

Given this rigid system, we can assume that Páez was sponsored by a cofradía that promoted his work, approved of both his spiritual and artistic standing, and recommended him to the procuradores of the College of San Fernando. It was a common practice for the syndic of the college to order paintings from selected Mexico City studios, where duplicates and almost exact copies of the typically requested subjects were kept in stock.11 This stock consisted heavily of paintings derived from Flemish prints and from the compositions of the seventeenth-century Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682).12 Miguel Cabrera, who had been trained by Juan Correa (ca. 1645–1716), came to be known as the “Mexican Murillo,” and his workshop was the most prolific and highly regarded in Mexico City. Another student of Correa’s, the Guadalajaraborn José de Ibarra (1688–1756), also led a very successful workshop; some art historians have suggested that his reduced color palette and sometimes gestural style might have been a result of the tight schedule he kept in order to meet the high demand for his paintings.13 Though they experienced the social and financial benefits of this long-standing workshop system and the New World export market, both would be involved in attempts to elevate the status of their profession and to form the first Mexican Art Academy in 1753. Páez, a generation younger than Ibarra and Cabrera, clearly followed many of the compositional and stylistic formulas that they established, which often makes his works difficult to distinguish from theirs. Because Páez was a cabreriano, his paintings would have sold for lower prices than Cabrera’s, which may partially account for the popularity and success of his own workshop.14 Páez signed many of his works “Joph. de Paez fecit,” often adding “en Mexico,” aware that they were intended to be exported to Alta California and elsewhere. Whether he realized it or not, through this economic arrangement he would come to play an integral part in the history of the art of California.

M E X IC A N R O C O C O

Art historian Kurt Baer has attributed numerous unsigned paintings in the California missions to Páez based on what he describes as “the sensitive quality of the features and the delicacy of the modeling of the hands.”15 In general, such delicate features, sweet expressions, pastel colors, feathery brushwork, and flowery ornament are typical of Mexican Late Baroque or Rococo paintings of the late eighteenth century. Also characteristic of Páez’s paintings are his rocaille leyendos (legends or cartouches framing inscriptions), his successful imitation of Murillo’s vaporous effects in atmosphere, and his often porcelain-looking flesh, specifically

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in his representations of the Virgin. Such stylistic traits may be related to the heavy influx of French Rococo and Chinese porcelain figurines16 exported to Mexico City in the late eighteenth century. Originating in France in the early eighteenth century, the Rococo style was commonly employed by painters in that country who specialized in fête galantes and scenes of aristocratic leisure set in lush, arcadian landscapes. The popularity of this lighthearted and colorful style in Mexico City is no doubt related to the increased ties with France resulting from the rise of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, but it might also be explained in relation to the simultaneous formulation of criollo identity and nationalism in New Spain. As Edmond O’Gorman phrased it, New Spain was originally like “an overseas Spain located in the New World but not rooted in it; a Spain in America, but not of America.”17 In an attempt to reverse this colonial phenomenon, New Spain’s born citizens adopted customs that would distinguish them from their Old World counterparts and from the peninsulares, such as colorful clothing, fanciful furniture, and debonair mannerisms.18 Painterly palettes, even those employed in the production of the ultimate criollo symbol, the Virgin of Guadalupe, became similarly sweet, light, and soft. Páez’s most flowery manifestations of the Rococo are his numerous escudos de monjas commissioned by various convents in Mexico City, including the Carmelites and the Jeronymites. These small badges, usually featuring nativity scenes or the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception within a sacra conversazione, were worn by nuns to decorate their habits, especially on feast days and on the day of their initiation. The type illustrated here was worn by male members of the Bethlemite order in Guatemala, but its subject and style is similar to the escudos Páez produced for the female religious orders (Figure 10.1). A large segment of the female religious population in New Spain came from wealthy criollo families, who paid large dowries to the nonreformed orders for their daughters to gain entry into the prestigious convent life, where they might enjoy lives of privilege with access to education, entertainment such as theater and musical training and performances, and opportunities for interaction with the outside world. They often wore expensive clothing and escudos made of gold and precious stones, but in 1629 Archbishop Francisco Manso y Zuniga instituted a series of reforms aimed at restricting the luxurious lifestyle of the nuns, including a ban on such escudos. In a response that has been interpreted as a symbol of criollo resistance, many nuns continued to wear ornate badges throughout the eighteenth century, though they were now embroidered or colorfully painted on copper and framed in tortoiseshell. Though small in scale and invisible to a wide viewership, the most successful painters in Mexico City, including Cabrera and Páez, did not hesitate in their acceptance of these commissions. Wealthy criollos outside of the convents embraced the Rococo style and affectations through their commissions of biombos (painted screens) of secular life, including New Spain’s version of the fête champetrê—the

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figure 10.1. José de Páez, Nun’s Shield, ca. 1770. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, public domain, www.lacma.org.

elegant garden party theme. That the Franciscan Junípero Serra would favor a painter associated with this frivolous style is not as contradictory as it appears, for when applied to the realm of the spiritual, the Rococo would prove to be quite effective, as illustrated later in this chapter.19 Serra, whose early years in the antiBourbon Spanish province of Mallorca had led to a general distrust of the Spanish monarchy and its institutions,20 would have surely been aware of the increasing tensions between peninsulares and criollos. In 1764 and 1765 while Serra was in the midst of his residency at the College of San Fernando, the Regiment of America, a permanent battalion of white-uniformed Spanish troops whom the criollos dubbed blanquillos and “gringos,”21 were installed on the streets of Mexico City in a vain attempt to quell the rising nationalism. His years in Mexico City also coincide with the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits, with whom the Franciscans had fierce theological debates. Given this religious and political context, the question of Serra’s apparent acceptance of Jesuit ideas (at least in relation to artistic production

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and the Jesuit promotion of artists working in this Ultra-Baroque style) should be considered. After the 1767 expulsion, the Franciscans of the Propaganda Fide inherited not only the Jesuit mission churches and the artworks contained within them but also Jesuit-sponsored artists (such as Páez, who may himself have been educated in one of the many Jesuit schools in Mexico City) and the continued support of the Jesuitinstituted Fondo Piadoso. With this convenient transfership of artworks, sacred spaces, funding, and access to trained artists, the Franciscans may have been more willing to accept Jesuit themes, interpretations, and uses of such art and spaces. As Clara Bargellini notes, many of the artworks the Franciscans found in the abandoned Jesuit missions in Baja California were sent to the new missions in Alta California.22 Differences between Franciscan views on art and those of their rival religious orders have a long-standing history, but concerning their application in the New World, the most famously recorded are the Guadalupe debates of 1556 in which the Franciscan provincial Francisco de Bustamante passionately argued against the promotion of cult images and icons.23 However, as Cristina Cruz González has argued, “while the Franciscans are seemingly ‘detached’ from numinous objects, they are also leading advocates of images, trusting in their merits and believing in their effects.”24 From their earliest missionary ventures in New Spain, the Franciscans had always understood the didactic power of images, as evidenced in the visual aids they used for teaching Christian doctrine and the almost immediate building and success of the Flemish lay brother Pedro de Gante’s art school for natives, San José de Belen de Los Naturales, originally located on the grounds of the Franciscan monastery in Mexico City. In seventeenth-century New Spain, the supposed Franciscan animosity toward miraculous, performative, animous, numinous, and cult images had decreased, and by the eighteenth century the order had gone as far as creating its own cast of miracle-working and proselytizing images, including the statue of La Conquistadora (brought by the Franciscans to New Mexico in the 1620s and later employed by the Spanish during the 1680 Pueblo Revolts) and a painting of the Virgin of Sorrows supposedly used to quell the native Tongva in the foundation of San Gabriel Mission in Alta California.25 In 1771, just a few years after the Jesuit expulsion, the Fourth Mexican Provincial Council was held in Mexico City. Supported by Enlightenment religious reformers and absolutists, the council sought to curb the excessive religiosity and the “Baroque Catholicism” associated not only with the Jesuits but also with post-Tridentine art ideologies in general.26 Serra, who by the 1770s was establishing his missions in Alta California, still practiced self-flagellation and was devoted to several mystical saints and traditions, so he would have been aligning himself with this flamboyant and outdated brand of spirituality. While most of the California mission churches would be built in the more refined classical architectural style, Serra and

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his Franciscan successors filled them with Baroque- and Rococo-style paintings and sculpture. Serra’s decision to commission and select painted images of angels, saints, the Virgin, Heaven, and Hell produced in the prereform and criollo-preferred vein poses the following questions: Was this a practical matter of using/ applying inherited, affordable, or familiar works into the late eighteenth-century Franciscan context of Alta California? Did he believe that art that supported and reflected the ideologies of Baroque Catholicism would be more powerful and effective evangelical tools? Or was this a personal decision on his part to resist the reforms and maintain a position just between the competing Mexican Catholic factions and agendas? B E T W E E N WO R L D S

In his vocation and commitment to preaching in the New World, Serra was influenced by the writings of the Spanish Conceptionist nun and mystic Sor María Jesús de Ágreda (1602–1665), specifically her four-volume Mystical City of God, which was first published in 1670. Sor María’s writings were widely disseminated in New Spain, and Serra’s devotion to the Virgin was partially inspired by Ágreda’s defense of the fundamental doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as the Virgin had delivered it to her. In her writings, Ágreda also described how she bilocated to convert the native peoples of the New World. Jumano Indians in northern Texas and New Mexico reported seeing this beautiful Lady in Blue who encouraged them to seek the Franciscans for baptism.27 In a 1770 canvas by Páez painted for a mission in New Mexico and now in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, an ethereal María de Ágreda floats into an American landscape and addresses a group of natives. Wearing the Conceptionist nun’s habit draped with a blue garment (which was the symbolic color associated with the Immaculate Conception),28 she points to the image of the crucified Christ. The natives’ gestures, facial expressions, and kneeling positions reflect their instant devotion and willingness to convert. Having never set foot in the northern provinces, Páez’s representation of the natives likely stems from his experience in producing and viewing casta paintings. In the first panel of his casta painting series produced circa 1770–1780, Páez depicts indios barbaros montarases (barbarian mountaineer Indians). Upon comparison of the casta painting and the Ágreda painting, the similarity in the skin coloration and the costume of the indios is immediately apparent. The difference lies in the settings—in the casta paintings, the indios are grounded in an earthly space, their physical forms at one with the untamed landscape and the local flora and fauna. It has been suggested that the production of casta paintings was an effect of the Bourbon Reforms and was rooted in Enlightenment principles of categorization and order. Thus, the paintings did not illustrate the actual process of mestizaje but instead served to regulate

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society and locate the castas within the specific physical spaces to which they were relegated.29 In the Ágreda painting, with its heavy atmospheric perspective, soft clouds, and melodramatic spirituality, the emphasis is not on the empirical but instead on the mystical—the miracle of her bilocation, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that she promoted, and the promise of salvation through conversion. Ágreda herself claimed that some of her visions were inspired by painted or sculpted images.30 Páez’s possible teacher, Nicolás Enriquez, claims to have been deeply inspired by Ágreda’s Mystical City of God.31 If Páez was indeed trained in the workshop of Enriquez, the teacher may have passed to his student not only his sound painterly skills but also his belief and acceptance of the metaphysical aspects of the faith. V I SUA L I Z I N G T H E L I F E O F S A N F R A N C I S C O S O L A N O

Serra most likely met Páez in 1764, when he was painting a series on the life of Saint Francis Solano (1549–1610) for the lower cloister of the church of San Fernando in Mexico City. Serra was in residence at the college32 at the time Páez was working on the painting, so it is possible that he came to know the series and perhaps the artist well during this decade and when he regularly returned to the college in later years. The series included eight large canvas paintings33 of the Spanish Franciscan saint, known as the “Apostle of Peru,” but only six survive.34 In the 1920s, Father Luis de Refugio Palacio rediscovered the badly damaged paintings in the staircase leading to the choir of San Fernando while conducting research for a history of the Franciscans in Mexico.35 He took the six rescued paintings to his home church, the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Zapopan in Jalisco, and placed the folded canvases in a cabinet in the sacristy for safekeeping. True to his Franciscan roots, he claims to have carried the paintings to Zapopan on a humble donkey! In panel 1 of the series, Páez presents San Francisco’s birth scene by drawing directly from the birth of the Virgin formula prescribed by the Spanish art theorist Francisco Pacheco, wherein the Virgin’s birth takes place in a domestic setting and servants attend to the newborn and the mother. While in other parts of Europe, where scenes of the Virgin’s birth were painted in heavenly settings surrounded by angels, the Spanish prototype persisted into the eighteenth century in New Spain. Here, Páez presents Dona Ana Jiménez as “Ana” and replaces the infant Virgin with the infant Francisco. Francisco’s father, Don Mateo Sánchez Solano, is dressed in the eighteenth-century manner and stands to the right of the birth scene as “Joaquim.” The senior Solano was the governor of Montilla, and the painter includes furniture and household objects that speak to the family’s social position and comfortable lifestyle. A clock painted on the back of his garment serves as a memento mori but also symbolizes the fulfilled prophesy of the saint’s birth, iconography derived from earlier painted representations of the Virgin’s birth as well

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as from contemporary versions by Miguel Cabrera.36 Three scenes of the saint’s youth are illustrated in atmospheric vignettes surrounding the birth scene: the adolescent Francisco is shown cultivating a garden, imparting Christian doctrine, and intervening in disputes between a group of his schoolmates near the Aguilar River and unruly adults dueling in the woods. He was trained by the Society of Jesus in Montilla, and during his student years he started playing the violin. He was known to have spent hours alone in the garden singing while weeding and watering fruit trees. Many references to the lush gardens of Andalusia and the beauty of Montilla’s flower-covered landscape are included in the 1647 biography of the saint; the garden theme would come to serve as a symbol of his physical and spiritual cultivation. “Digging, planting and watering kept his body fit.”37 Such scenes would have held particular relevance for Serra, whose life in Mallorca centered on agriculture and tilling the soil and who, like Solano, would develop a love for music. In the typical convento plan, the cloister was the ideological “soul center,” with its enclosed garden symbolizing the purity of the Virgin’s womb.38 In addition to the location of the painted panels within the cloister walls of San Fernando, Páez’s side-by-side placement of garden and womb imagery reinforces the themes of birth, growth, maturity, and the cultivation of Christian knowledge and courage. In panel 2, the central figure is a kneeling San Francisco taking his vows. He made his profession on the feast day of Saint Mark, April 25, 1570. The gospel for this day is Luke 10:2, whose message relates to missionization: “And he said to them, ‘the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest send forth laborers.” Thus, the general theme of this panel is commitment and preparation for the harvest of the Christian virtues planted in panel 1. Flowers are strewn on the ground where the future saint kneels to take his vows. On the right he is shown saying penance before the community, revealing the wounds on his scourged back, and then bidding his farewell to Andalusia as he prepares to depart on his apostolic mission to Peru, a scene that would have most strongly resonated with the Franciscans at the college preparing for their own missionary endeavors. In the legend at the bottom of the painting is a dedication to Don Joseph Calderón, possibly the patron. San Francisco’s apostolic duties are highlighted in panel 3, all of which relate to the physical body: working at a hospital, preaching and distributing communion (Christ’s body), and saying a blessing over a tomb (Figure 10.2). Though apparently set in the New World, these scenes also recall his earlier hospital training and years of administering to the sick in Montoro, Spain, where he went in 1583 to assist with victims of the bubonic plague. On an altar in the central background and just above the main figure of San Francisco is an image of the martyred body of San Sebastian. Tied to a column and shot with five arrows, this saint was commonly invoked against plague.

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figure 10.2. José de Páez, panel 3 from the series La Vida de San Francisco Solano. Provincia Franciscana de los Santos Francisco y Santiago en México, La Basilica de la Nuestra Señora, Zapopan. Photograph courtesy of the author.

The featured scene in panel 4 is San Francisco preaching among indios barbaros, who are attired exactly as in Páez’s casta paintings (Figure 10.3). In the foreground are four European figures (possibly portraits and references to the Four Evangelists) who have appeared to support Francisco in his spreading of God’s word to the natives. While the main subject is preaching, the corporal theme of the painting series continues here. In the background are Indians participating in the procession of el Señor de la Columna, a common subject in Catholic CounterReformation art in Italy and Spain, as it inspired pity and compassion and visually shocked with its bloody theatricality and focus on the flesh. The popularity of this subject increased after the 1734 appearance of a column in the sea off the beach of San Pedro de Lurín, Peru. Below the image of Christ, Francisco flays his own skin before a group of natives. Though not pictured in this panel, one of his major miracles was the taming and baptism of nine thousand natives who stormed the church at Tucumán on Holy Thursday. He addressed them in their various native dialects and instructed them to imitate Christ at the column: “Y muchos dellos se disciplinarian aquella noche con los cristianos, instruidos que hacian aquella disciplina, a imitacion de Cristo nuestro senor, que fue azotado en la columna.”39 Serra’s biographer Francisco Palou reported that Serra fasted and practiced selfflagellation often, imitating the Peruvian missionary by scourging himself with a

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figure 10.3. José de Páez, panel 4 from the series La Vida de San Francisco Solano. Provincia Franciscana de los Santos Francisco y Santiago en México, La Basilica de la Nuestra Señora, Zapopan. Photograph courtesy of the author.

chain,40 and in fact chose to highlight related iconography (rock, chain, flaming torch) in the print produced for his 1787 biography of Serra. At the time that Páez was working on the series La Vida de San Francisco Solano, a print of the saint published in Friar Antonio di Caprarola’s 1672 Vita del gran servo di Dio Fra Francesco della regolare osser. di S. Francesco might have been available to him for reference.41 The Caprarola print is one of the earliest known of the saint and presents a common trope used for early modern paintings and prints of Franciscan preachers in the New World: the centrally positioned missionary stands on a slightly elevated rocky outcrop while raising a cross in his right hand over a large gathering of the indigenous peoples encountered. The soon to be converted turn toward the missionary while clutching their breasts, bowing, pointing, and raising their arms toward the crucifix. As art historian Kelly Donahue-Wallace has pointed out, engraved portraits of missionaries and clerics appeared in eighteenth-century vidas (printed biographies), which were popular in Spain and New Spain. They were meant to inspire readers to live similar exemplary Christian lives, and it is clear that the young Serra was influenced by this literary genre and printed imagery: Palou writes that while in Mallorca, Serra spent much time “reading the Vidas with such attention and care, that it seemed that they had

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imprinted themselves in his memory.”42 While several seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prints depicting saints, clergy (including María de Ágreda, San Francisco Xavier, and Saint Francis of Assisi), and Christ himself may have served as models for Páez’s panel 4, the Caprarola print would have served as an ideal source for Páez. In turn, both the Caprarola print and panel 4 of Páez’s Solano series are the most likely sources for the 1787 print of Serra, given that Palou understood his fellow Fernandino’s dedication to this saint and would have also known the painting.43 In panel 5 of the series, Páez features scenes of the saint within the physical and symbolic body of the church, likely the one in Tucumán where he performed his ministries. He is depicted several times, apparently involved in a conversation with Christ himself. A figure in the central background dressed in contemporary clothing with a noose is likely a reference to Carlo Borromeo, who during the plague of 1576–1577 in Milan wore a noose around his neck in imitation of the condemned Christ.44 The Borromeo figure is repeated in several scenes within the panel, but due to the condition of the canvas, the specific subject matter is unclear. (He appears to be the same figure represented in the birth scene in panel 1 as Solano’s father.) In the right foreground, the saint kneels before a standing Christ displaying the wounds on his hands. The missing two panels may have included the scene of one of the saint’s bestknown miracles, the herding of a bull. Like his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi, Francisco was known for his compassionate treatment of animals. During a bullfight in San Miguel de Tucumán a frightened bull escaped, and Francisco calmly collected the animal and led him back to the corral as onlookers watched in admiration. The Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo painted this scene in 1645, highlighting a symbolic irony: the saint gently ties the cord of his Franciscan robe around the bull’s neck to both contain it and lead it to safety. As this action serves as a metaphor for the Franciscans’ gentle (yet steadfast) conversion of the natives in the New World, the scene would have no doubt been intended as a lesson for the residents of the College of San Fernando. The saint’s famed cordon used to tame the bull is now displayed in Tucumán in the Museo de Arte Sacro, Saint Francis Solano. Another popular story from the life of the saint that Páez might have included in the series was the “Symphony of the Selva” that took place in the year 1590. While resting on a brook in the forest, Francisco listened to the sounds of the soft tinkle of the water at his feet and the light wind stirring the tree branches above him. Inspired to join this symphony with the music of his violin, he began to play in harmony with nature. In the midst of this musical and spiritual moment he heard the sound of a speeding arrow and realized that he was not alone, but he kept playing. The stranger who shot the arrow happened to be the curaca, Tayaquín. He was calmed and enchanted by the symphony, and after Francisco spoke to him in tongues asking for hospitality and protection, they became allies. Later, the

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native and the Spaniard worked together to commemorate the symphony and special meeting place by building a chapel on the site. The violin becomes one of Solano’s major attributes, as seen in another eighteenth-century painting of the saint now displayed in the mission dedicated to him in Sonoma, California. As Páez visually expressed the multifaceted nature of Solano’s persona in the series, Palou would similarly point out that Serra’s deep asceticism was balanced by a “peaceful” demeanor and a love of art and music. Solano died on July 14, the feast day of Saint Bonaventure, a saint whom he had a special devotion to during his years in Lima. Serra might have heard stories of Francisco praying before a large canvas depicting Saint Bonaventure while “inflicting some of his most rigorous discipline,” as evidenced by the “blood on the pavement found beneath the painting most mornings.”45 Weak and frail at the end of his life, he began to experience mystic rapture and visions of the Virgin. Panel 6 (meant to serve as the last in the series) illustrates the 1610 death and interment of the saint, whose funerary procession took place in the main square in front of the convento and Templo de San Francisco in Lima (Figure 10.4). Citizens in ill health who kissed the dead saint’s feet were cured, and all of Francisco’s cohermanos in the infirmary were cured and attended the funeral—these grateful figures are shown kneeling in the foreground. The viceroy of Peru, Marqués de Montesclaros, leads the procession, carrying the saint’s flower-covered body.46 While funerary flowers are traditionally included in death portraits of saints in New Spain, here they also recall the gardens of Francisco’s youth.47 Páez would have been able to refer to painted portraits of the Peruvian viceroy that were displayed in Mexico City. Though the saint’s biographer states that the archbishop of Lima, Don Bartolomé Lobo Guerrero, “insisted on serving as a pallbearer,”48 Páez presents him on the right side of the procession holding lit candles. An inscription at the bottom of the canvas includes a dedication to Archbishop Don Manuel José Rubio y Salinas,49 a leader of the Jesuit church who was instrumental in the process of establishing the Virgin of Guadalupe as the patroness of New Spain. Padre Juan Venido, comisario general for all the Franciscan provinces, sang the funeral mass and is likely portrayed in this panel. Twelve hours after Solano’s death, the Poor Clares in their nearby convent witnessed a huge column of fire flare up in the clouds (seen on the top right of the painting), and the birds sang for five hours straight. Solano’s triumphant exit is summarized in a painted inscription running across the processional scene reading “loc honore condignus elt quem cumque Rex voluerit honorare.” The Páez cloister cycle of paintings at the college would have had a very personal and lasting effect on Serra. Their placement in the lower cloister, the hortus conclusus, the garden and “womb” of the convento where the friars meditated daily, must have enabled Serra to maintain a connection to his native Mallorca via identification with a Spanish role model, San Francisco. The saint was canonized in 1726, when Serra was a teenager, and was reportedly one of his favorite. A popular Jesuit

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figure 10.4. José de Páez, panel 6 from the series La Vida de San Francisco Solano. Provincia Franciscana de los Santos Francisco y Santiago en México, La Basilica de la Nuestra Señora, Zapopan. Photograph courtesy of the author.

practice encouraged by Saint Ignatius Loyola in his 1522–1524 Spiritual Exercises called “composition of place” was clearly employed by Páez in the San Fernando series and was not lost on Serra or the other Franciscans trained here—the idea was that by contemplating the almost life-size painted images of San Francisco, Serra could make himself present in the place and time where the saint’s preaching and missionary endeavors took place. Loyola’s exercises, well known to painters in New Spain, also involved sensory experience in which the viewer could, through contemplation of the saint’s (or Christ’s) wounds, body, blood, and martyrdom, feel the physical and emotional pain and suffering himself. While Páez presents the life of San Francisco in sequence, the series is not meant to be read as a strict narrative. His juxtaposition of key saintly moments with earlier or later vignettes, scenes of Spain with New Spain, and contemporary portraits and landscapes with sacred images of inspirational saints and Christ himself results in a painted vision that is compositionally and conceptually between time and worlds. The daily viewing of these eight panels during his final

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four years in residence would allow Serra to visualize his future journey, his successful apostolic mission, and, quite possibly, his own sainthood. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises had become one of the major instructional vehicles of the Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation and the two centuries following. Loyola emphasized the use of the five senses to help create mental images of a place, a person, or an emotion. The Archbishop of Milan and dynamic Counter-Reformation leader Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584), who was depicted in the Solano series, was strongly influenced by Loyola in his promoted uses of art as a means of educating and inspiring piety, but he believed that sight was the most direct route to the soul: “the eyes,” he said, “are like two gates to the castle of our body.”50 Borromeo was also influenced by the Discorso of Gabriele Paleotti, another participant in the Council of Trent, who wrote about “the transformation of Christian life through vision” and the ideas of muta predicatio (silent preaching) and pictura-litteratura illiterata (pictures are the literature of the illiterate).51 That Serra dedicated his home mission to Borromeo is demonstrative of his devotion to this saint and the Tridentine mystical/visual methods he promoted. As Lisbeth Haas has summarized the significance and function of devotional art to Serra, “Serra writes vividly about his relationship to images that he imagined could offer him protection, guidance, inspiration, and intercession with God.”52 Serra likely realized that the Ignation practice of visualization promoted by Borromeo actually stemmed from the Franciscans. An early Franciscan book on meditation describes the suggested exercise: “It is necessary that when you concentrate on these things in your contemplation, you do so as if you were actually present at the time he suffered . . . and that he was present to receive your prayers.”53 A large painting of the destruction of the San Sabá mission produced circa 1758–1765 has been attributed to Páez54 and is worth discussing briefly here in relation to the ideas of both Jesuit and Franciscan visualization processes. Portraits of the two martyred priests, Fray Alonso Giraldo de Terreros and Fray José de Santiesteban, frame a panoramic vista filled with illustrations of various stages of the 1758 Apache attack on the Texas mission. Central to the composition is a scene of the destruction of an enrollado of the Virgin herself.55 The large leyendo in the center of the canvas provides a description of the iconoclastic event. While the graphic portraits of the two profusely bleeding, dying priests featured in the foreground were intended to inspire and assist Franciscans in visualizing their own martyrdom and sacrifices, the artist’s decision to place the sacred image of Our Lady of Refuge and the scene of the decapitation of the statue of Saint Francis of Assisi at the very center of the picture might have been a personal compositional choice—for a Catholic artist such as Páez, the ultimate affront to the faith and symbol of Indian barbarism is represented by their wanton destruction of divine images, especially Marian ones. Serra, whose placement at San Sabá had been canceled, was greatly inspired by the event. He visited a survivor of the

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San Sabá attack in the hospital back in Mexico City, and he and/or the Franciscan procuradores at San Fernando may have seen the painting in progress or at completion in Páez’s studio before it was delivered to Texas.56 In admiration of the martyred priests, Serra wrote to his nephew, Fray Miguel de Petra, that “I realize my nothingness and feebleness for such a glorious enterprise. But God is powerful, and can call great things out of nothing.”57 By commemorating the heroic lives and deaths of contemporary “American” Franciscans such as Solano, Terreros, and Santiesteban, Páez visually heralded “a new Franciscan Golden Age”58 in which the recent arrivals to the continent, including Serra, might play a part. As Caravaggio historian Andrew Graham-Dixon contends, in the Catholic world of the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries, “religious painting and religious meditation were, in fact, branches of the same activity.”59 The dual role of the artist as both image producer and Christian meditator was essential—the painters were expected to be hagiographic experts and “professional visualizers” of the holy stories.60 For Páez to receive the important La Vida de San Francisco Solano commission for the college, which was clearly intended to inspire the Franciscan residents before their missions, the friars there must have trusted that the artist had carefully studied the life of this model saint and possessed the abilities to visually express it for others to meditate upon. It is also important to consider the major influence of the Spanish art theorist Francisco Pacheco (1564–1654) on the art of Páez and most artists working in Spain and New Spain. Pacheco was a member of the lay branch of the Franciscan order, the Third Order of Saint Francis, and a painting censor for the Holy Office in the early seventeenth century.61 Pacheco argued that a key aspect of Christian painting was the artist’s obligation to convince the viewer, as an orator or a preacher might. The painter’s role was to “persuade men to be pious and to lead them to God.”62 In his 1649 El arte de la pintura (The Aims of a Christian Artist), Pacheco wrote that painting, which before had imitation as its sole aim: now, as an act of virtue, takes on new and rich trappings . . . [and thus] elevates itself to a supreme end—the contemplation of eternal glory. And as it keeps men from vice, so it leads them to the true devotion of God our Lord.63

The painters in New Spain understood another crucial responsibility: to visually solidify and make tangible Catholic doctrines and figures particular to the various (and often competing) religious orders. In addition to Pacheco’s treatises, late eighteenth-century painters in New Spain were artistically and spiritually guided by similarly prescriptive writings such as Juan de Loyola’s Meditaciones del sagrado corazón de Jesus (1739), Fray Juan de Abreau’s book of spiritual exercises dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows (1726), Fray Juan Interián de Ayala’s The Christian Painter (1730), and the Capuchin friar Isidoro de Sevilla’s La Pastora Coronada (1704). Our

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Lady of Sorrows and the Divine Shepherdess enjoyed great popularity and devotion in New Spain, and all of the California missions featured paintings or sculptures of both. Franciscan padres preaching in popular missions carried an image of the Divine Shepherdess, as mandated by the Franciscan College of San Fernando.64 In 1775, Serra commissioned a painting for the San Juan Capistrano Mission of “Mary as our Heavenly Shepherdess” with “one under sentence of condemnation” in the background, as described in Isidore’s vision.65 A painting of the Divine Shepherdess attributed to Páez in the collection of the New Mexico History Museum features a sumptuously attired reclining Virgin surrounded by flowers and adoring sheep. The pastel colors, peachy flesh tones, delicately painted flowers, and pastoral setting are characteristic of secular art of this era and are reflective of the approach he had used to appeal to his many female religious patrons in New Spain. Serra and all Franciscans were well aware of the Sevillian debates, campaigns, and papal tribunals of the early seventeenth century that led to the dogma and confirmation of the Immaculate Conception, which they zealously promoted. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, guided by Pacheco’s writings, created the Spanish prototypical representation of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, and henceforth countless artistic representations of the subject were made in order to affirm the doctrine in New Spain. Páez painted several Immaculatas based on Murillo’s model for Mexican churches and convents, but there are none signed by or attributed to Páez in the California Missions and no specific requests from Serra for such, though he does refer to “a wonderful painting of Our Lady” that was on loan at San Carlos.66 The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was named patron saint of California in 1779, and most of the missions would centrally display a sculpted image of the Immaculata above their tabernacles. For the Franciscans in California, second-rate paintings of this all-important figure would not suffice, and they perhaps found sculptural representations of her, with their realistic flesh tones, inlaid eyes, jeweled crowns, and sumptuous estófado decoration more appropriate for display on the main retablos, which had been installed in several of the missions by the late 1770s. Though not discussed in this chapter, bultos of Virgins and saints took the processes of visualization into the three-dimensional realm. “ T H E C O N T E M P L AT IO N O F E T E R NA L G L O RY ”

Perhaps Páez’s best-known signed painting in California, The Glory of Heaven (ca. 1770), was commissioned by Serra in 1771 along with its companion, The Horrors of Hell (now lost).67 The Glory of Heaven features San Miguel, a favorite of the Franciscan order, as his slaying of the demon symbolized the victory of Christianity over paganism (Figure 10.5). The archangels Gabriel and Raphael flank him. Above San Miguel is the Holy Trinity represented as three identical men, an iconographic tradition prohibited by an edict issued by the Council of Trent and banned by the

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figure 10.5. José de Páez, The Glory of Heaven, ca. 1770, at Mission Carmel. Courtesy of Mission San Carlo Borromeo, Carmel.

pope in 1748 but regularly ignored in New Spain, where it was thought that the dove symbol of the Holy Spirit might reignite indigenous animism.68 The Virgin and Saint Joseph are on Michael’s right side, with Anna and Joaquim on the other. Within this traditional hierarchical composition, Old Testament figures gain entry into Heaven alongside New Testament saints, founders of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, virgins, martyrs, priests, and neophytes. The Rococo palette, diaphanous drapery, and vaporous atmospheric effects are particularly suited to this heavenly theme. In contrast with the representations of natives in the previous paintings I have discussed, the Indians here are only distinguishable by their darker skin color. The Franciscan friar Juan de Torquemada referred to a “marvelous variety of colors” created by God to describe the mixed population of the Americas, arguing that differences in human complexion were divinely ascribed.69 The converted natives depicted on the lower right tier of figures are, like the Virgins and European figures on the opposite side, clothed in the same flowing garments, holding palm leaves and wearing crowns of roses on their heads. As in Páez’s casta paintings, there is still an imposed hierarchy in this “colorful” order, but while their skin

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color determines their lower ranking in the divine scheme, conversion has equalized their position in terms of the promise of their salvation. Serra believed that man was inherently sinful, and thus he understood that paintings might not only promise but also terrify. Envisioning and appreciating the full glory of Paradise required a simultaneous glimpse into Hell, a dichotomous topic often referenced and dramatically expressed in his sermons. As Rudolf Wittkower summarizes Loyola’s approach, the native viewers were surely intended to experience Páez’s missing companion piece, The Horror of Hell: St. Ignatius requires the exercitant to see the flames of Hell, to smell the sulphur stench, to hear the shrieks of the sufferers, to taste the bitterness of the tears and feel their remorse.70

PA I N T E D S A I N T S I N C A L I F O R N IA

In 1775, Serra ordered a painting by Páez for Mission San Juan Capistrano of its titular saint. The signed painting is still on display in the new church at this mission and has been recently restored. In his letter to Father Guardian Francisco Pangua, Serra requested that the procurador “should find a good engraving and have Páez paint it or some other good artist.”71 Serra expressly indicated that the painting should not be purchased in the alcaysería (silk market), where untrained artists sold their works. These comments indicate Serra’s general understanding of the hierarchy that existed in Mexico City’s art world and his own appreciation of the standardized yet high-quality work coming out of the Mexico City workshops. While the print source has not been identified, Páez painted the saint in accordance with the standard attributes, wearing a Franciscan habit and a breastplate, brandishing a sword in his right hand and carrying a red banner displaying the seal of the Society of Jesus. This monogram had originated in early Christian catacombs and was popularized by Bernardine of Siena in the fifteenth century. The Franciscan San Juan de Capistrano (1385–1456) had studied and become a close follower of Bernardine and is best known for his participation in the 1456 crusades against the Turks in Belgrade in which he led a Christian army to victory. Statues of San Bernardino and San Juan Capistrano were both featured on the main altar of Serra’s home church, the Convento de San Bernardino in Petra, Mallorca. Páez apparently did not work with live models and often repeated himself in his standard contrapposto stance, slender proportions, and faces. San Juan Capistrano’s face is the same one used in many of the artist’s saint portraits, but here it is slightly darkened, rugged, and stern. The surface of the gray-brown Franciscan robe is rendered in linear pointillist patterns that create a dynamic quality and energy well suited to this Christian soldier. Páez’s signed San Antonio de Padua (ca. 1770) is quite worthy of its status as the “finest” painting of this saint in California.72 Commissioned by Serra in 1771, it was

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sent to Mission San Antonio in 1773 or 1774. It was transferred to Mission San Miguel in the late nineteenth century for safekeeping. Though his pose and facial features are almost identical to those of his later San Juan Capistrano painting, Páez softens the features of this gentle saint and the Christ Child he holds with the addition of rosy hues, sweet smiles, and graceful hands. Wearing the Franciscan robe73 and cord, the saint holds white lilies in his right hand, symbolizing his connection to the Virgin, whose child has been temporarily placed in his care. San Antonio was born in Portugal in 1195 and joined the Franciscans in 1221. Canonized in 1232, he was considered a worker of miracles, and the Christ Child is said to have appeared to him while praying. In mission days, the traditional iconographic program might feature Virgins and saints associated with the Christ Child on the Epistle side of the nave where the female congregation was seated, while masculine saints and “cross santos” were often placed on the gospel side where the men sat.74 While there is little documentation regarding the original placement of the painted saints in all of the California missions, it is certain that these images, with their clearly presented masculine and feminine attributes, served as aids not only in visualizing saintly acts and miracles but also in the construction of gender models for the native populations. Many of Páez’s saint paintings, including San Luis Obispo, San Miguel, San Gabriel, San Rafael, San Diego, San Buenaventura, and several San Juan Bautistas, are still on display in the California missions today. A signed painting of San Francisco de Assisi was once at Mission Santa Barbara but is now missing.75 All of them adhere to his standard formula, which presents the full-length figure of the saint in either an Umbrian landscape or a tiled interior framed by a table and a window or floating in a cloudy, celestial space. Other unifying elements of Páez’s saint paintings are the clearly presented attributes based on common hagiography; the sweet, gentle countenance; and the sense that the figures seems to float in the space—they are painted against the scene rather than in it. This flatness and frontal positioning gives the paintings an iconic sensibility—we look at them, and they are well aware of our gaze. In a twist on Loyola’s “composition of place” exercise, these are not scenes from the lives of the saints but instead “views from outside the world”76 in which we can already know and contemplate their lives and sainthood. PA I N T I N G A S A N AC T O F D EVO T IO N

A signed painting titled Our Lord According to St. Luke (1765) was not received at the Santa Barbara Mission until 1882.77 The large-scale highly realistic rendering of Christ’s face and the detailed treatment of the dove’s feathers and claws immediately set it apart from his saint paintings of the same period. This concern with realism can be explained by the inscription at the bottom of the painting, which reveals that Páez painted this in accordance with Saint Anselm’s writings and Saint

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Luke’s portrayal.78 Saint Luke is the patron saint of painters—legend has it that he painted the first portraits of the Virgin and Child and sculpted images of Christ. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) was one of the founders of Scholasticism and had been proclaimed a doctor of the church in 1720. Anselm attempted to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity in rational terms by using the analogy of the self-consciousness of man: just as memory and intelligence are combined to create self-consciousness in man, so is the love between Father and Son combined to create the Holy Spirit. Unlike Páez’s ethereal paintings of the saints, here he has painted God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and adoring angels looking down on a very manly, palpable Christ, with huge feet and a massive body, corresponding with the more earthly gospel of Saint Luke. Anselm takes particular care in his treatment of Christ’s face, applying glazing methods and coloration very similar to Pacheco’s prescribed technique for painters of bultos, called “encarnaciones.”79 Páez has used his brush not only to demonstrate his skill in executing and highlighting Christ’s flesh tones but also to express his personal interpretation of the Trinity by creating a triangular allegory in which, like Anselm, he reconciles faith and science (technique) to present Christ literally “made flesh.” For Páez, the painting may have functioned as a personal ex-voto honoring his occupation’s patron saint, Luke, and as a summation of his own artistic practice. Like Serra, who was as inspired by mysticism as he was versed in Scholasticism,80 Páez had no difficulty in combining these seemingly contradictory realms. Páez’s reconciliatory approach in Our Lord According to St. Luke mirrors the symbolism and compositions of seventeenth-century thesis prints used in European Franciscan seminaries. Such prints helped students understand the teachings of Duns Scotus and visualize the relationship between man, God, and the cosmos and between spirituality and matter. I am not certain that Serra ever encountered such prints in his student or teaching years, but it is clear that the painters either shared the same pedagogical devices and dialogues in their own training or were at least aware of their own position within the scheme of Scholasticism. In Clara Totius Physiologiae Synopsis, a 1615 print by Leonard Gaultier after Meurisse, a painter before his easel is metaphorically positioned in the center of a conversation led by Meurisse, who quotes Scotus’s ideas regarding the relationship between spirit and substance. Similarly, a peek at the bookshelf in a portrait of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz as painted and imagined by Páez’s contemporary, Miguel Cabrera, reveals that eighteenth-century painters saw their own theories in relation to the current scholarly and theological discourses. Classical tomes, scientific volumes, theological texts (including Anselm and Aquinas), and Pacheco’s art treatises81 all reside together on the same shelves—in other words, artists, clergy, art theorists, and theologians were informed by the same texts. This conceptual compendia of eighteenth-century ideas had been visually expressed as early as 1713 on the painted bookshelf included in a portrait of Sor Juana painted by Juan de Miranda.

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In 1751, Páez’s contemporaries, including Miguel Cabrera and Jose de Alcíbar, were granted permission to view and make copies of the miraculous tilma of the Virgen de Guadalupe. They proceeded to author the 1756 Maravilla Americana, an account of five artists’ opinions regarding the production and origin of this image.82 This fascinating account provides details of the lives of painters in late eighteenthcentury Mexico and demonstrates the required melding of personal spiritual beliefs and artistic goals of the artists who were part of Páez’s circle. After their close analysis of the tilma’s physical composition and materials, they concluded that the image could not have possibly been produced by human hands or methods. Their comments reflect their hagiographic knowledge as well as an understanding of their own role as Catholic painters—the paintings of the Mexican Colonial School of artists were perfectly suited for the task of evangelization, because these image producers apparently believed (or were expected to believe) in the miracles of the faith themselves. The Mexican painters’ involvement in promoting the cult of sacred objects is also evidenced in the numerous paintings of Christ of Ixmiquilpan produced in the late eighteenth century. In the early seventeenth century, a highly venerated cornstalk-paste painted image of the crucified Christ in the church of Mapethé near Ixmiquilpan had become so moth-eaten and terrifying that Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna ordered it buried with the next person from the town who died. Over the next six years no townspeople died, and the image, according to several eyewitnesses, miraculously detached itself from the cross, then sweat, bled, and renovated itself. The image was later transferred to the Episcopal Palace in Mexico City, then given to the Carmelite nuns when they founded their convent in the same city. The leading Mexican painters of the eighteenth century produced numerous images of the miraculous sculpture, including three versions by José de Ibarra, circa 1731, and one by Páez, circa 1770, the latter now on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In all of these versions, the emphasis is on the milky white, miraculously repaired flesh of Christ; the exquisitely decorated gold brocade cloth that covers his body; and the tiny drops of blood seeping from his skin. In their attempts to present faithful images of the original sculpture and to indicate their physical observation of it, both artists replaced their typically soft brushstrokes and color palettes with sharp lighting and crisp, precisely rendered details. A N E N L IG H T E N E D C I T Y

In the early 1770s when Serra was filling many of his newly established California missions with sumptuous liturgical objects and Baroque paintings and statues of saints, King Charles III began organizing a series of ecclesiastical councils in the major cities of the New World (Mexico City, 1771; Lima, 1772; Bogota, 1774) in an

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effort to modernize the Catholic Church. In 1772 Alonso Nuñez de Haro, the archbishop of Mexico, presented a rousing sermon warning of the “criminal” and frivolous nature of ornate Catholic art and church interior decor.83 In a rather rigid portrait of the archbishop painted by Páez the following year, the artist deliberately modified his Baroque formula to better suit his patron’s modern image and more conservative agenda. The long marriage of spiritual devotion and artistic production as manifested by the paintings of the Mexican Colonial School had come to an end. This disruption related directly to the expulsion of the Jesuits and the crusade to replace “Baroque Catholicism” with more subdued and spiritually based practices. For artists, the effects of the Bourbon Reforms were made most visible by the arrival in Mexico City of the Neoclassical style via the engraver Antonio Gil in 1778, who founded the Royal Academy of San Carlos in 1781. Gil enlisted a few painters of Páez’s generation as teachers at the academy, but by the official opening in 1783, only European teachers versed in the Neoclassical idiom would be hired.84 Within a decade, the academy had replaced the guild and workshop system; the rank of academician, or professor, came to supersede the rank of master painter. It is not clear whether Páez ever became an official member of the new academy, but he did sign a petition supporting royal support of it in 1768. Given that many of his peers were involved in promoting the academy and that he had lost a major Franciscan patron of his Baroque efforts when Serra died in 1784, it is hard to imagine that he could ignore the pressures to participate in this classical revival. The academy, designed in the rational Neoclassical style, was located just blocks away from Páez’s studio and from the Baroque-style College of San Fernando, where his Solano series still hung.85 The academy’s walls would soon be filled not with images of saints and Virgins but instead with classically inspired history paintings that expressed the ideals of Mexican protoindependence and nationalism. The Parián in the Zócalo was torn down and replaced by a balustraded elipse-shaped plaza based on Michelangelo’s Campidoglio. A classical equestrian statue of Carlos IV was placed directly in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral, transforming the plaza into a secular space and visually signaling the end of the Baroque Age of Faith. A PA I N T E R F O R C A L I F O R N IA

Willing to adapt to the shifting artistic climate of eighteenth-century Mexico City, Páez successfully negotiated an intermediary position, satisfying private patrons, guild interests, the Spanish Crown, criollos, academicians, the male and female religious, and the Jesuits and Franciscans alike. In his painting now displayed at the Denver Art Museum titled The Sacred Heart of Jesus with Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Louis Gonzaga (ca. 1770), the two Jesuit saints experience the miraculous vision of Christ’s heart surrounded by thorns and a ring of cherubs.

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The sweet and powdery Rococo cherubs contrast sharply with the extreme, almost scientific naturalism of Christ’s heart. José de Páez, a man of Serra’s generation and aesthetic sensibilities, painted in the spaces between the deeply sacred and the secular, between science and spirituality. Like Serra, Páez navigated and charted the ambiguous boundaries between the religious and cultural worlds of Spain, New Spain, Mexico, and California. Serra’s personal experiences with art, specifically in his Mexico City years at the College of San Fernando, may have launched his commitment to the use of Páez’s particular late Baroque style of liturgical art in the California missions he was soon to found. While the production of Hispanic Catholic images on both sides of the Atlantic was regulated by the same doctrines and art treatises, resulting in an art market that was fairly standardized, Páez’s paintings were singled out by Serra. Just as the paintings of Saint Francis Solano had enabled Serra to visualize his missionary endeavors, he might have recognized the potential of this “good artist”86 to aid the native Californian population in imagining their salvation. AU T HO R’ S N O T E

This article is an expanded version of “Serra’s Painter: José de Páez” published in the fall 2013 edition of the California Missions Foundation’s Boletín 29, no. 1: 79–98. californiamissionsfoundation.org AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

I would like to thank Dr. Steven Hackel, Dr. Clara Bargellini, Dr. Frances Pohl, Dr. Charlene Villaseñor Black, and Dr. Ruth Maria Capelle for providing valuable feedback on this chapter. I am grateful for the support of David Bolton and the California Missions Foundation and of my colleagues on the San Gabriel Mission Museum Board: Dr. John Macias, Dr. Yve Chavez, Kim Walters, and Chris Coleman. I appreciate the generous assistance of Jaime Soler Frost, head of publications at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, and Father Marco Antonio Hernandez of the Basilica Nuestra Señora in Zapopan, who provided access and information on the migration of Páez’s Solano series. NOTES 1. A. Tibesar, O. F. M., ed., Writings of Junípero Serra, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Academy of Franciscan History, 1956), 1:189i. 2. The painting of San Diego was received at the mission in Carmel in 1772 and is still displayed there. Norman Neuerburg, Saints of the California Missions (Santa Barbara, CA: Bellerophon Books, 1989), n.p., says that no original paintings of San Carlos Borromeo remain at the mission in Carmel. A painting of San Buenaventura attributed to Páez is still displayed in the mission dedicated to him.

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3. Páez is specifically referenced in Serra’s June 20, 1771, and August 22, 1775, memorias to the College of San Fernando. See Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 1:221, 2:319. In a request for two paintings, he suggests that the college should “get together with the painter Páez and arrange for both” (ibid., 2:319). 4. Some of these paintings have been briefly examined in the recent exhibitions Contested Visions (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012) and The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 1600– 1821 (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009). About twelve paintings in the California missions have been attributed to Páez based on inventory records and/or Serra’s specific written requests for paintings by this artist. Eight signed paintings in the California missions by Páez have been confirmed. There has been no major study of the larger Novohispanic oeuvre of José de Páez. 5. Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, Repertorio de Artistas en Mexico: Artes Plasticas y Decorativas, Vol. 3 (Mexico City: Grupo Financiero, 1997), 26. 6. Eva María Ayala Canesco, “José de Páez y la bonanza novohispana,” Museo Soymaya, July 13, 2012, www.soumaya.com.mx. 7. Santo Domingo was also the site of the Inquisition Tribunals. Serra served as a comisario for the Holy Office, so it is certain that he was familiar with this neighborhood. 8. The College of San Fernando was built and established in 1734. 9. Art historian Ilona Katzew explains that this was a euphemism for any “unskilled” painter. Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 9. 10. Manuel Toussaint, Pintura colonial en México, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1990), 221. 11. Lee Davis and Maureen Bourbin, “Mission Dolores and the Missing Miraculous Painting,” Boletín, Journal of the California Mission Studies Association 28, nos. 1–2 (2011–2012): 62; Martin J. Morgado, Junípero Serra’s Legacy (Pacific Grove, CA: Mount Carmel, 1987), 91. 12. Murillo set a standard for combining images of the earthly and heavenly realms via his vaporoso mode of painting; this combination is evidenced in Páez’s work. Murillo would have been an obvious model for painters in New Spain, especially those working for Franciscan patrons; his paintings of Franciscan saints were featured in the Franciscan convent in Seville and served as prototypes for images of these saints produced in New Spain. 13. Richard Scott White, “The Painting: The Destruction of Mission San Sabá; Document of Service to the King,” PhD dissertation, Texas Tech University, 2000, 83–84. 14. Rogelio Ruiz Gomar concludes that “Cabrera has been forged more than any other colonial artist. . . . Andrés de Islas and José de Páez worked in styles very close to Cabrera’s.” Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, “Unique Expressions: Painting in New Spain,” in Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–1821, 47–78 (Denver, CO: Denver Art Museum, 2004). He argues that painters such as Páez have not been given due consideration, as their achievements have been obscured by Cabrera’s. 15. Some of Kurt Baer’s Páez attributions in the California missions are loose, in my opinion, and require further investigation; a Virgin at Mission Santa Ines, for example, should be reattributed to Juan Rodriguez Juarez. For more on Baer’s attributions of paintings in the California missions, see his “Spanish Colonial Art in the California Missions,” The Americas 58 (1961): 33–54; The Treasures of Mission Santa Ines (Fresno: Academy of California Church History, 1956); and Painting and Sculpture at Mission Santa Barbara (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 118. 16. Such items were sold in the Parián in the Zócalo. 17. Juan O’Gorman, quoted in Gutiérrez Haces, “The Eighteenth Century: A Changing Kingdom and Artistic Style,” in The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures of the Museo Franz Mayer, ed. Héctor Rivero and Borell Miranda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 52. 18. Ibid., 55. 19. Similarly, the art historian Gauvin Alexander Bailey echoes Martin Scheider’s lament that “it seems no one has found a way yet to speak in the same breath of French Rococo art in general and of

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the sacred.” Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Spiritual Rococo: Décor and Divinity from the Salons of Paris to the Missions of Patagonia (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 6. I have deliberately applied the stylistic term “Rococo” to several of Páez’s paintings in an attempt to draw attention to the successful application of this primarily secular style to Catholic art. 20. Steven W. Hackel, “The Competing Legacies of Junípero Serra,” Common Place, 5, no. 2 (January 2005): II, www.common-place-org. 21. Haces, “The Eighteenth Century,” 47. 22. Clara Bargellini, “Art at the Missions of Northern Spain,” in The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain, ed. Clara Bargellini and Michael Komanecky (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009), 87. Some of Páez’s paintings had been hanging in the Jesuit missions in Tepehuan and southeast Tarahumara; it is not clear from Alta California mission inventories whether some or any of the Páez paintings that arrived there came directly from the artist’s studio in Mexico City or from the Jesuit missions in Baja. 23. The Franciscan Bustamante argued against the Dominican archbishop Alonso de Montúfur, who promoted the idea of a “miraculous” appearance and function of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. 24. Cristina Cruz González, “Landscapes of Conversion: Franciscan Politics and Sacred Objects in Late Colonial Mexico,” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009, http://pqdtopen.proquest.com /doc/305052601.html?FMT=AI. 25. Francisco Palou, Palou’s Life of Fray Junípero Serra, trans. Maynard J. Geiger (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 130. Clara Bargellini, in “Art at the Missions of Northern Spain,” The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009), suggests that Palou’s version is an attempt to emulate Jesuit accounts of similar “conquering” images such as the Virgin of Light and Our Lady of Refuge (73). For more on the San Gabriel Virgin of Sorrows, see Yve Chavez, Cynthia Neri Lewis, and John Macias, “Imagery, Materiality, and Evolving Histories at Mission San Gabriel,” Boletín: Journal of the California Mission Studies Association 31, no. 1 (2015): 88–102. 26. Lauren G. Kilroy-Ewbank, “Holy Organ or Unholy Idol? Forming a History of the Sacred Heart in New Spain.” Colonial Latin American Review 23, no. 3 (December 2014): 320–59. 27. Jeanette Favrot Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of the Americas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 264. 28. Like the Spanish artist Murillo, Páez reserved the use of aquamarine pigments for the drapery of the Immaculata. 29. Magali Marie Carrera, “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico,” Art Journal 57 (March 1998): 38. 30. Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 265. 31. Desireé Moreno Silva, National Museum of Art Guide (Mexico City: National Fine Arts Institute, 2006), 79. 32. Serra was in residence between 1758 and 1768. 33. The paintings measure about 3.7 x 2.7m each. 34. Photographs of the badly worn canvases were last published in the aforementioned 1949 article by Romero de Terreros. The six surviving canvases are housed at the Basilica de la Nuestra Señora in Zapopan. Four of the panels are currently hung in the sacristy, and two hang in the chapel. Páez’s large painted depiction of the arbol seraphicus, the spiritual genealogical tree of the Seraphic Order of St. Francis, is still in situ at the College of San Fernando. 35. Manuel Romero de Terreros, “Jose de Páez y su vida de San Francisco Solano,” Anales de Institution de Investigaciones Esteticas 5, no. 27 (1949): 23. 36. Miguel Cabrera, Birth of the Virgin (1751), collection of the Denver Art Museum. 37. Fanchon Royer, St. Francis Solanus: Apostle to America (Patterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1955), 12.

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38. Samuel Edgerton, Theatres of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 208. 39. Diego de Cordova Salinas, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros del Apóstol de la Argentina y el Perú (Madrid: 1647 and 1676), translated by Lino Gómez Canedo in Crónica Franciscana de las Provinicas del Perú (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1957), 541. 40. Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 1:xxxiv. 41. Antonio di Caprarola, Vita del gran servo di Dio Fra Francesco della regolare osser. di S. Francesco: Illustre in virtù, e prodigij; predicatore apostolico nell’Indie Occidentali; acclamato per padrone della città di Lima metropoli del Perù; e da altre famose città dell’Indie (Roma: per Michele Hercole, 1672). 42. Palou, quoted in Kelly Donahue-Wallace, “Picturing Prints in Early Modern New Spain,” The Americas 64, no. 3 (January 2008): 336. 43. My thanks to Pamela Huckins for sharing her thoughts on the Serra print and the “preachersaint” trope in a conversation in January 2015. 44. Saint Gregory the Great had done the same during the plague of 590 in Rome. 45. Royer, St. Francis Solanus, 160. 46. After the 1610 interment of the saint, Viceroy Montesclaros realized that no commemorative portrait of the saint existed, so the body was exhumed and a portrait was painted that night. This portrait is now displayed above the door to his cell in the convento of San Francisco in Lima. 47. According to eyewitness accounts recorded by his biographer, Diego de Cordova Salinas, the dead saint’s skin was described as smooth, fresh, and sweet-smelling. 48. Cordova Salinas, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros del Apóstol de la Argentina y el Perú, 175. 49. Identified by the inscription “A devoción de Nro. Especialísimo Bienechor, el señor Arzobispo.” The Jesuit archbishop Rubio y Salinas (1703–1765) was also the key patron of the painter Miguel Cabrera, who painted numerous portraits of him. 50. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (New York: Norton, 2010), 43–44. 51. Art historian Pamela J. Huckins discusses the Franciscan application of such methods in the art of the California missions in the International Franciscan Conference “The Genesis and Realization of Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands,” St. Augustine, Florida, March 24–26, 2011. See Pamela J. Huckins, “Art in the Alta California Mission Churches, 1769–ca. 1834,” PhD dissertation, New York University, 2011. See also Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre et profane (1582; reprint, Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1990). 52. Lisbeth Haas, Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 98. 53. David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 171, quoting from The Little Book on the Meditation on the Passion of Christ Divided into the Seven Hours of the Day. 54. I support this attribution, as the large canvas was produced just before the Solano series, and many stylistic and compositional similarities between the two can be noted. 55. Enrollados, or rolled canvas paintings, were a common vehicle for easily transporting evangelical images to the mission frontier setting and are often featured and even credited in conversion stories in the New World. 56. I believe that the success of the San Sabá painting may have been a factor in the college’s decision to select Páez for the Solano project, but in addition, the choice of the artist may have been dictated by one of their important patrons. Don Pedro Romero de Terreros (1710–1781), the Count of Regla, served as a formal patron of the Franciscan order between 1745 and 1781. During these years he donated 41,933 pesos to the College of San Fernando and also funded the San Sába venture. He commissioned the subsequent painting of the attack to commemorate his cousin, one of the slain friars. He would later (in 1775) commission a series of paintings by Páez to decorate his new Nacional Monte de Piedad, the

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first large public lending institution in Mexico City. At least two of the panels from this series, including a portrait of Nuestra Señora del Real Monte de Piedad, are still displayed there. 57. Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 1:xxxiv. 58. James Oles, Art and Architecture in Mexico (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2013), 129. 59. Andrew Graham Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (New York: Norton, 2010), 33. 60. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991), 45. 61. Xavier Bray, The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600–1700 (London: National Gallery, 2009), 173. Pacheco requested that he be buried wearing the habit of the reformed branch of the order, the Capuchins. 62. Francisco Pacheco and Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, El arte de la pintura, trans. F. J. Sánchez Cantón (Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1956), 1:212–13. 63. Ibid., 1:236. 64. David Rex Galindo, “Propaganda Fide: Training Franciscan Missionaries in New Spain,” PhD dissertation, Southern Methodist University, 2010, 48. 65. Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 2:311. 66. Ibid., 1:169. 67. Serra carried the set to Monterey, according to Morgado. 68. Gabrielle G. Palmer and Donna Pierce, Cambios: The Spirit of Transformation in Spanish Colonial Art (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art in cooperation with University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 38. 69. Katzew, Casta Painting, 203. 70. Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 24. 71. Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 2:319. 72. Norman Neuerburg, Saints of the California Missions (Santa Barbara, CA: Bellerophon Books, 1989), 27. 73. Serra was specific about his requests that the saints be painted in gray Fernandino habits, not the blue habits worn and painted in much of Mexico. See Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 1:221. 74. James Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New York: Yale University Press, 1994), 45. 75. Kurt Baer Papers, Santa Barbara Mission Archive and Library, Mission Santa Barbara painting folder. 76. This phrasing is borrowed from Sandos (Converting California, 4), who similarly explains an apocalyptic view of the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. 77. Kurt Baer, Painting and Sculpture at Mission Santa Barbara (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 118. 78. “Erit enim magnus coram Domino . . . et Spiritu Sancto replebitur adhuc ex utero matris suæ” (For he will be great in the sight of the Lord . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb) (Luke 1:15). 79. In the seventeenth-century Spanish version of the Italian, paragone—the comparison of the merits of painting and sculpture—was argued among the art theorists of the day, including Pacheco. Ultimately, painting and sculpture came to be considered sister arts, with panel painters often hired to paint the flesh tones and facial details of bultos. 80. Serra earned a doctorate in theology and held the post of Duns Scotus Chair of Philosophy at Lullian University in Palma de Mallorca. From 1737 to 1743, he lectured on metaphysics, logic, the definition of substance, and the nature of the soul. It is possible that he used illustrated thesis prints, such as those produced by the Franciscan philosopher Martin Meurisse (1544–1644), who wrote a 1623 book on the metaphysics of John Duns Scotus.

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81. Two of the book spines read “El arte de la pintura,” and “Glor. del Pintura,” referencing Francisco Pacheco’s 1649 volume published in Madrid and one of its major themes. 82. See Miguel Cabrera, “Maravilla Americana (1756),” in Ernesto de la Torre Villar y Ramiro Navarro de Anda, Testimonios Históricos Guadalupanos (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982), 494. Páez was not one of the five artists chosen. 83. Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010), 138–39. 84. Katzew, Casta Painting, 21–23. 85. The academy is located on Puente de Alvarado near Monumento de Revolucion. The college is located on Puente de Alvarado just northeast of the Alameda. 86. Tibesar, Writings of Junípero Serra, 2:319.

part four

Junípero Serra Invention and Consumption

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The Invention of Junípero Serra and the “Spanish Craze” Richard L. Kagan Viva España! Lo que era Lo que es y Lo que ha de ser! charles f. lummis

As statues honoring his memory and streets named in his honor across California readily suggest, Junípero Serra is now regarded as one of California’s founding fathers. The Franciscan friar did not achieve that status overnight, nor was it an isolated event. Rather, the “invention” of Serra in the United States can be traced to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Chronologically, it coincided with the creation of what the journalist and critic Carey McWilliams, writing in the 1940s, labeled the state’s “Spanish fantasy heritage,” his term for California’s commercially driven appropriation of a romanticized Spanish past for the purpose of promoting both tourism and development.1 California, however, together with the Southwest, was far from the only region of the country to champion its Spanish heritage. Nor was that movement— something I will refer to here as the Spanish Craze—inextricably linked to commercial interests and touristic concerns. Rather, much of its energy sprang from a wholesale reevaluation of Spain and its culture that began during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Additional momentum came from the reassessment of Spain’s contribution to the history of North America that followed in the wake of Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the final conflict in an imperial rivalry between Spain and the United States that had begun over a century before. Just as many Americans, starting with such writers as James Fennimore Cooper, had displayed a marked tendency to romanticize the continent’s “vanishing” Indians in the decades immediately prior to the American Civil War, 227

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figure 11.1. Charles Dana Gibson, “Come, Let Us Forgive and Forget,” Life magazine, August 11, 1898.

their counterparts at the start of the twentieth century did the much same with respect to Spain when that country, in the wake of defeat, no longer posed a threat to American interests in the Caribbean.2 No sooner in fact had hostilities between the two countries ended than the New York artist Charles Dana Gibson published a cartoon in Life magazine that captured the spirit of America’s new and decidedly benevolent attitude toward Spain (Figure 11.1). The cartoon depicted an outsized figure of a woman representing the United States offering an olive branch to a diminutive and clearly humiliated matador, who represents Spain. The caption reads “Come, let us forgive and forget.”3 Combined with the end of the 1898 war, the idea of “forgive and forget” contributed to other changes in America’s attitudes toward Spain. One was the transformation of the centuries-old anti-Spanish Black Legend into a White Legend that championed Spain’s contributions to “civilization” as defined by the efforts of both its soldiers and churchmen to hasten the conversion of North America’s native population to Christianity. Key figures in this “civilizing” process included Christopher Columbus together with Hernando de Soto, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, and other conquistadors who ventured into North America. Yet as far as California was concerned, attention focused on Junípero Serra (1713–1784), the

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Spanish friar credited with having Christianized the region’s natives in addition to having introduced them to the benefits of agriculture, education, and hard work. But to understand California’s fixation on Serra, I would first like to introduce the wider movement—the Spanish Craze—of which it formed a part.

C A L I F O R N IA A N D SPA I N

A good place to start is the Panama-California Exposition held in San Diego in 1915. The avowed aim of that exposition was to draw attention to and also promote San Diego’s—and broadly California’s—Spanish heritage with an eye toward attracting both investment and tourist dollars. Apart from a series of Spanishthemed dances and parades, that heritage was best reflected in the fair’s architecture. Initially, the organizers contemplated buildings constructed in the unadorned but increasingly popular Mission style of architecture but later rejected that in favor of a more exuberant style combining elaborate facade decorations and window surrounds modeled on the Plateresque architecture of Renaissance Spain and Baroque Mexico and designed by the East Coast architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue.4 The overarching idea was to transform San Diego’s Balboa Park into a “city of Old Spain.” As one local newspaper reported several months ahead of the fair’s actual opening, The Spanish atmosphere has been carried out to the finest detail. The guards and attendants of the Exposition will be garbed as caballeros and conquistadors, and the dancing girls, who will move to the hum of the guitar and the click of the castanets, will be Spanish dancing girls in the bright costumes of Old Spain, in the dances which have been performed for hundreds of years in the plazas of Castile. It is all very quaint and very romantic and very beautiful.5

San Diego was far from the only California city that attempted to evoke the spirit of Old Spain. The planners responsible for the suburban enclaves of Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego and Palos Verdes Estates outside Los Angeles during the 1920s had similar ideas. Municipal officials in Santa Barbara followed suit. Writing in 1882, the Massachusetts-born writer Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) had compared Santa Barbara to “one of a dozen New England towns—stodgy, smug, correct, and uninteresting,”6 but starting early in the 1920s, local officials there, following the advice of Goodhue and other architects, decided to “Hispanicize” the city with a new courthouse, a theater, a new hotel (the Biltmore), and other buildings designed in the Spanish Revival style in an effort to create the “romance” of a “city in Spain.” The aim of Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days festival, inaugurated in August 1925, was much the same.7 The emphasis that Santa Barbara accorded its connections with Spain as opposed to its more immediate Mexican past does much to explain why McWilliams would

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later label California’s Spanish heritage a “fantasy” that was created primarily for commercial and touristic ends.8 Charles F. Lummis (1859–1928), a New England transplant who settled in Los Angeles in 1885 and the writer responsible for creating much of that “fantasy,” harbored similar concerns. In 1925 on the eve of the first Old Spanish Days festival, Lummis worried that “pirates and materialists and moneychangers will try to vulgarize and commercialize that beautiful occasion” and tarnish what he understood as “the old romantic beauty that was California.”9 McWilliams was also right to believe that the emphasis that California had accorded to Spain was racist to the extent that it ignored the traditions and culture of the state’s Mexican inhabitants as well as those of its native peoples. Helen Hunt Jackson, Gertrude Atherton, and most of the other nineteenth-century writers seeking to romanticize California’s Spanish past were accustomed to branding Indians as “savages” in need of civilization. They were also quick to “whiten” the state’s wealthy Mexican ranchers, the Californios, by transforming them into Spaniards of noble Castilian descent. A case in point is Bret Harte’s “Bohemian Days in San Francisco,” a short story written circa 1860 but only published in 1900. In it Harte contrasts the city’s Mexican “greasers” with the inhabitants of the “Spanish Quarter, where three centuries of quaint customs, speech, and dress were still preserved; where the proverbs of Sancho Panza were still spoken in the language of Cervantes, and the high-flown illusions of the La Manchian knight [were] still a part of the Spanish Californian hidalgo’s dream.”10 On the other hand, the materialist motives that McWilliams ascribed to the architects of California’s “fantasy” heritage are open to question. The lure of tourist dollars accounts for much of San Diego’s interest in capitalizing on the runaway success of Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1883 novel Ramona by labeling one of its old adobe dwellings the “House of Ramona.” Commercial motives were also central to the movement promoting the restoration and preservation of the state’s crumbling missions along with the “restoration” of El Camino Real, with 450 distinctive bells serving as markers along the route. The idea of such a road dated to the 1896 but required the efforts of Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes—whose husband manufactured the bells—and Lummis, arguably the chief proponent of the restoration movement—to make it a reality. While Lummis was right to fear that materialist concerns would undermine these efforts to preserve the romance of Spain, he also observed that “[t]he old missions are worth more money . . . than our oil, our oranges, or even our climate.”11 Money alone, however, was not the only reason why California was so keen to recover—and to invent—a Spanish past. The post–Civil War era was one in which regional identities were being forged throughout much of the United States, and as Emily Leider has written, different parts of the nation were “hungry for myths that were home-grown rather than imports from Europe.”12 As far as California was concerned, those myths were best found in its Spanish heritage and representing itself as a state whose history and culture originated primarily in Spain.

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T H E B L AC K L E G E N D

Even then, it was by no means certain that investment in a Spanish heritage would necessarily bring the state handsome returns. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, Spain’s image in the United States was primarily colored by the Black Legend, the traditional cluster of anti-Spanish ideas that depicted Spaniards as fanatical Catholics who were both murderous and cruel. The origins of that legend can be traced to the sixteenth century. Some authors believe that it started with the 1527 Sack of Rome by soldiers in the pay of the Emperor Charles V, while others attribute it to the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brief History of the Destruction History of the Indies, a scurrilous pamphlet first published in 1552. Still others attribute it to the propaganda whipped up by Dutch Protestants during their revolt against King Philip II that centered on Spanish cruelty, the horrors of the Inquisition, and the shortcomings of the Roman Catholic Church. Whatever its precise origins, the Black Legend also surfaced in England around the time of the defeat of Philip II’s “Invincible Armada” in 1588. The Black Legend subsequently spread to Great Britain’s colonies in North America with assistance from ongoing imperial rivalries between the Spanish and the British throughout much of the Atlantic world. It was particularly well entrenched in Massachusetts, where the fiery Puritan preacher Cotton Mather schemed about “bombing” Havana with Bibles so as to drive the Spanish out of the Caribbean as well as South Carolina and Georgia, where fears that the Spanish in Florida were arming runaway plantation slaves for a possible rebellion figured in a series of British attacks—the first in 1702, a second in 1740—on the Spanish fort at St. Augustine.13 Spain’s image took a turn for the worse during the age of the Enlightenment, when a number of thinkers, starting with Voltaire, imagined Spain as a retrograde kingdom under the sway of malevolent inquisitors and fanatical priests hostile to learning and scientific progress of every sort. These attitudes were neatly summarized by Nicolas Masson de Morvellier, who posed the following (and oft-cited) question in his Encyclopedie Methodique of 1783: “What do we owe Spain? After two centuries, after four, after six centuries, what has she done for Europe?”14 His answer? Nothing, especially when it came to the arts, science, progress of civilization. Such was the impression of John Adams, one of the first Americans ever to visit Spain. Adams arrived there by accident after the ship carrying him to Paris foundered off the country’s northwestern coast in December 1779. Finding no other ship to get him to France, Adams and his entourage elected to journey by coach, and in the course of that journey he entered the following comment into his diary: [T]ogether Church, State and Nobility exhaust the Labour and Spirits of the People to such a degree, that I had no Idea of the Possibility of deeper Wretchedness. Ignorance more than Wickedness has produced this deplorable State of Things, Ignorance of the true Policy which encourages Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce. The

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In making that journey, Adams was accompanied by his twelve-year-old son, John Quincy, who kept his own diary and whose impression of the Spanish peasants he met echoed those of his father. “They are Lazy, dirty, Nasty, and in short I can compare them to nothing but a parcel of hogs.”16 Harsh words. But such notions shaped Protestant America’s view of Spain and its people throughout most of the nineteenth century. And emergent ideas about biological racism, especially when coupled with the concept of national character, did little to improve Spain’s image. Most Americans, especially those of white Protestant background, regarded Spaniards, together with those labeled “Spaniards of the Mexican type,” otherwise known as mestizos—and indeed, Latins in general—as racially inferior to Anglo-Saxons. Examples of such racially charged thinking can be found in the histories of Henry Adams—he regarded Spaniards and Americans as so racially and radically different that the two peoples were “natural enemies”—as well in Theodore Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, where in addition to branding Spaniards as “weaklings” he represented them as uniformly treacherous, duplicitous, and corrupt and thus no match for “stout-hearted” American backwoodsmen whom he depicted as representatives of a “young and vigorous race” and members of an “advancing civilization.”17 As far as California is concerned, a roughly similar and negative view of Spaniards surfaced in the Annals of San Francisco, a history of the city published by Frank Soulé and two other San Francisco journalists in 1855. These journalists held a dim view of Serra and the other Franciscan “monks” who in their view achieved little except to leave the region’s natives “ignorant, superstitious, and besotted.” They expressed optimism for the state, however, because another race—the “Anglo-Saxons”—was “destined soon to blow aside the old mists of ignorance and stupidity.”18 The California publisher-turned-historian Herbert Howe Bancroft steered clear of such racially charged ideas in his multivolume History of California (1885–1890), but his opinion of Spaniards and their legacy was dismally low. Consider his California Pastoral of 1888, where Bancroft criticized Spain for its “ultra-religiosity” in addition to blaming the Catholic Church for having reduced Spaniards to “ignorance and fanaticism.” As for Spain’s contribution to America, Bancroft likened the Spanish Empire to a backward-looking “system of destruction” that did its very best to prevent innovation and to “squash liberty.”19 More, much more, in the way of this kind of racial thinking surfaced during the run-up to the Spanish-American War, especially in the newspapers controlled by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolf Hearst, both ardent advocates of armed American intervention in Cuba. Eager to increase circulation, the two press barons

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fed readers a steady diet of sensationalist anti-Spanish propaganda that harked back to era of Las Casas and the horrors of the Inquisition and ultimately helped trigger widespread support for the war.20 Thus, for reasons connected both to politics and race, at the end of the nineteenth century the Black Legend was alive and well.21 But as I shall argue here, starting just about then the dark, almost gothic image of Spain was challenged by a romantic vision of the country together with one that represented Spain as a nation—and a people—capable of momentous actions and heroic deeds.

“SU N N Y SPA I N ”

Spain: land of romance. This Spain was initially popularized in the United States by Washington Irving, especially in his best-selling Tales of the Alhambra, published in 1832 with many editions thereafter. Irving’s Spain had little in common with that of the Black Legend. That Spain was dark and foreboding. In contrast, Irving’s was refreshingly sunny, lighthearted, and irresistibly picturesque. This Spain was not without its defects; it was backward, impoverished, and politically inept but otherwise was inhabited by a people whose curious racial admixture—a blend of Celtic, Roman, Visigothic, and Moor—supposedly endowed them with a series of admirable qualities such as pride, patriotism, and honor. Sunny Spain was also a land of adventure and romance, populated less by loathsome Catholic priests than by dashing dons, fearless matadors, and gypsies—think Carmen, featured in George Bizet’s opera of 1874—who did little but play castanets and dance the fandango. This was largely the same Spain that influenced Charles Christian Nahl’s artistic vision of life in Spanish California in a series of pictures commissioned by San Francisco’s Crocker family starting around 1870 (Figure 11.2). Irving’s Spain was also southern Spain, Andalusia to be precise, and Andalusia imagined as little more than the old Muslim cities of Córdoba, with its fabled mosque; Seville, best known for the former minaret known popularly as the Giralda; and Granada, home of the Alhambra, the Moorish palace that Irving helped to make famous. In this respect Sunny Spain was heavily tinged with the kind of Orientalism that nineteenth-century Europeans associated with North Africa and the Middle East, whereas Spanish culture was commonly, if erroneously, considered little more than a blend of both Spanish and Moorish. Yet it was precisely this mixture that endowed the country with a special allure that, starting in the 1870s, attracted scores of American artists—among them Samuel Colman, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and William Merritt Chase— in search of subjects deemed quintessentially picturesque (crumbling ruins, matadors, gypsies, etc.) as well as uniquely Spanish.22 Tourists soon followed, among them Thomas Hastings, a young New York–based architect who, following a visit

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figure 11.2. Charles Christian Nahl, The Fandango, 1873. Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection.

to Granada and Seville, proved instrumental in creating a vogue for Spanish-cumMoorish–styled buildings in the United States that started on East Coast during the 1880s and later spread to California and other parts of the Southwest. The history of this particular style of building has yet to be written in detail. Neo-Moorish–style buildings first made their appearance in the United States during the late 1860s—one of the first was New York City’s Temple Emanu-El, designed by émigré Czech architect Leopold Eidlitz. A decade later, Granada’s Alhambra inspired the Horticultural Hall designed by Hermann J. Schwarzmann at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition of 1876 and eventually scores of theaters and other entertainment venues—bathhouses, cinemas, hotels—across the United States. The style called Neo-Moorish, or Hispano-Moresque or simply Spanish Renaissance, began in St. Augustine, Florida, in the late 1880s. It was there that Henry B. Flagler, a railroad magnet turned developer, hired Thomas Hastings to design the glamorous Hotel Ponce de León. Except for its red tile roof, some inscriptions and other architectural details around its entrances, and a grand dining room richly decorated with shields representing various cities and provinces in Spain, there was little in the hotel that was distinctly Spanish, or Moorish. But when the Ponce de León opened its doors in December 1887, critics referred to the building as one that successfully captured the spirit of “old Spain.”23 Asked why he

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had opted for a Spanish-themed hotel, Flagler explained that he wanted to do away with the “dark and forbidding” aspects of the Spanish character and use the Ponce de Léon to capture the “bright side of the Spanish race.” Flagler also compared the hotel to a “pleasure dome,” a palace inspired by the one, contrary to the the British poet Alfred Tennyson, that Kubla Khan had decreed, and thus connected it with the romantic view of Spain as a land of Moorish—read Oriental—luxury and delight.24 In the 1880s, moreover, what is often called medievalism was all the rage throughout the United States inasmuch as the Middle Ages were thought to embody many of the values—authenticity, honesty, integrity—that the country, in its headlong rush toward urbanization, industrialization, and modernization, was believed to have lost. Interest in that era led in one direction to places—Spain among them—whose backwardness supposedly ensured the preservation of those traditional values and in other—to paraphrase T. Jackson Lears—homegrown “places of grace” accessible to vacationers and offered some respite from their workaday world.25 These linkages—Spain, romance, adventure, pleasure dome, Oriental luxury, relaxation, escape—were central to Flagler’s vision of St. Augustine, a city that he sought to transform into a resort for wealthy northerners seeking to escape winter’s chill. Toward this end Flagler built a second Spanish-themed hotel, the Alcázar, and purchased the Casa Monica, built by another developer, that he promptly renamed the Córdoba. To enhance St. Augustine’s Spanish atmosphere, he persuaded the town council to Hispanicize its streets by giving them new Spanish names. Washington Street morphed into Granada Street, Gregg Lane into Cádiz Street, Hospital Street into Aviles Street, etc. The council stopped short of allowing Flagler to change the name of King Street to simply Alameda but agreed to invest in an elaborate annual festival named after Ponce de Léon with an eye toward creating—and of course selling—the romance and other attractions attached to Old Spain. Spain in this sense was domesticated, and St. Augustine’s Spanish colonial past was refashioned in ways that allowed it to become an integral part of America’s history. That same vision soon manifested itself in other cities in different parts of the United States. In New York City, for example, it served as part of the inspiration for the design of a new Madison Square Garden designed by Stanford White and opened to the public in 1890. The building’s tower was a replica of Seville’s Giralda. The style of that twelfth-century minaret was distinctly Islamic and similar to that of others in the Moroccan cities of Marrakesh and Rabat, but the first critics of the garden’s tower alternately described its style as both “Baroque” and “Spanish.” Other Giralda replicas, nearly twenty in all, soon appeared across the United States. They included one, designed in 1892–1993 by A. Page Brown, a disciple of Stanford White, that doubled as the clock tower of San Francisco’s Ferry Building,

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completed in 1898; still another was in the guise of the Electric Tower specially constructed for Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition of 1901 and whose style was described as that of the “Spanish Renaissance.” One critic went so far as to suggest that this tower “may be called essentially American. As in the [fair’s] other buildings, use has been made of classic and Renaissance forms.”26 “Classic” and “Renaissance” are terms that were also applied to the prevailing style of architecture for the Columbian World Exposition held previously in Chicago in 1893. That exposition also boasted a Giralda replica as a tower atop the fair’s Cold Storage Building, although it was destroyed by fire soon after the fair was opened. Other Spanish-themed architectural replicas at the Chicago exposition included one of La Rábida monastery, where Columbus allegedly spent the night before embarking on his momentous voyage across the Atlantic, and another of Valencia’s fifteenth-century Lonja (Merchants’ Exchange), a building meant to symbolize Spain’s business acumen and served as the exposition’s Spanish pavilion. Also built in a loosely Spanish style—or what its architect, A. Page Brown, called “semi-Spanish Renaissance”—was the fair’s California State Building. The commission responsible for the design competition for this building had called for one built in a combination of Mission and “Moorish” style. The result was something of a mongrel building but proved to a real crowd-pleaser, and the State of California’s official report on the fair, published in 1894, indicated that the mixture of Mission and Moorish was “distinctive and typical of the earliest architecture in California.”27 Inherent in the commission’s call for a “Mission-Moorish” building was the idea that Spanish culture had been deeply colored by the centuries during which the country had been subject to a Muslim past.28 Spanish soldiers and friars had supposedly carried that “Moorish” culture with them to the Americas in the sixteenth century and ultimately into el Norte, the old Spanish term for the American Southwest. From there it was easy to suggest that Mission architecture, with its characteristic adobe construction, plain whitewashed walls, and red-tiled roofs, reflected Spain’s Muslim heritage together with what writers such as Lummis referred to as “the noble romance of Spain.” That same romance evoked ideas of Oriental luxury, notions of elegance, and tinges of exoticism as well, along with the old medieval dream of owning “a castle in Spain.” These associations do much to explain the nationwide popularity of Spanish Revival architecture during the opening decades of the twentieth century not only in California, Florida, and the Southwest but also in parts of the country—the North Shore of Long Island; Wilmette, Illinois; Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; West Hartford, Connecticut—that had little in the way of Spanish heritage. Take Cleveland. When in 1923 that city inaugurated a new hotel named the Alcázar, a local newspaper announced “Picture yourself living in a castle of sun-blessed Spain . . . dreams of architectural perfection have come true; the tiles used in the floors and

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walls imported directly from Spain. The beautiful fireplace and the wonderful stairs are exact duplicates of those in the famous Casa del Greco in Old Spain.”29 The “romance” fed directly into the Spanish Craze, a movement that, beyond architecture, embraced the interest of art collectors in paintings by El Greco, Diego de Velázquez y Silva, and other Spanish Old Master artists; a Spanish-themed musical “blaze” that raced across New York and other cities starting in 1916; the fascination of such writers as Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, Waldo Frank, and Ernest Hemingway in Spain; the runaway popularity of books by Spanish novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez together with that of films based on his books and that featured Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, and other Hollywood stars; and a growing demand for furniture, clothing, and ceramics of Spanish design.30 S T U R DY SPA I N

Yet for all of its connections to Sunny Spain, the craze I am referring to here derived inspiration from something more than the “romance of Spain” and developers such as Flagler hoping to transform that romance into dollars and cents. It was also connected to the emergent idea that Spaniards, despite their supposedly inbred penchant for the proverbial mañana, were also an industrious people capable of great and heroic action. Here the influence of a number of historians was key. The first was William Hickling Prescott, the Boston author whose best-selling histories of the conquest of Mexico (1837) and the conquest of Peru (1843) conjured up the image of Spaniards as courageous adventurers who carried the torch of both Christianity and civilization to the New World. These same adventurers, larger than life, also appeared in such paintings as De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi (1851) and similar works featuring Hernán Cortés by Peter F. Rothermel (director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts), William H. Powell, Emanuel Leutze, and other artists, all of whom were seemingly inspired by the conquistadors featured in Prescott’s books. Note that Prescott, a Unitarian, together with Serra’s secular hagiographers (see below), did not dwell on the fact that the Christianity in question was that of the Roman Catholic Church, nor did Rothermel in his picture De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi, where Spaniards are raising a simple wooden cross as opposed to a crucifix with a figure of Christ (Figure 11.3). The next to further the idea of Spaniards as sturdy pioneers were a brace of Florida-based lawyers—Thomas Buckingham Smith (1810–1871) and George Fairbanks (1820–1901)—whose immersion in the maze of lawsuits and property disputes stemming from old Spanish land titles issued prior to the U.S. acquisition of that territory in 1821 led to both the study of Spanish and a shared interest in Florida’s Spanish past. Smith was the pioneer. In 1851, he published an English

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figure 11.3. Peter Frederick Rothemel, De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi, 1851. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Funds provided by the Henry C. Gibson Fund and Mrs. Elliott R. Detchon.

translation of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s peregrinations through Florida and the Southwest, followed by another devoted to Hernando de Soto’s account of his adventures in Florida. In the preface of this last book, Smith steered away from the Black Legend and instead painted a heroic portrait of de Soto, describing him as “brave, prudent, kindly, magnanimous” and Spaniards of his era “as refined, enlightened and humane as any [people] in Europe.”31 Smith also set the stage for Fairbanks, whose histories of Saint Augustine (1868) and of Florida (1871) lauded the early Spanish explorers, de Soto in particular, for their “nobility of spirit, compassion towards the natives, . . . and manly virtues.” Together with Smith’s books, these histories paved the way—first for Florida, then California and other parts of the Southwest, and finally the nation at large—for a wholesale reevaluation of the contribution of Spain to the history and civilization of the United States.32 They did so by portraying Spaniards as bold and courageous men whose qualities matched those of Roosevelt’s “stout-hearted” Kentucky backwoodsmen, and in the case of Lummis, arguably Spain’s greatest champion in the

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United States, his best-selling book The Spanish Pioneers (1893) portrayed Spaniards as virile yet humane and progressive pioneers whose achievements were every bit as important as those of such homegrown American folk heroes as Daniel Boone.33 The idea of the Spaniard as a kind of proto-Yankee also emerged in New Mexico where, starting in the 1870s, officials first recognized the importance of the territory’s Spanish heritage as one way of transforming Santa Fe into a “tourist shrine.” The campaign began in 1876, in the middle of celebrations marking the centennial of the United States, when Eugene A. Fiske, a prominent lawyer (and future U.S. district attorney) in Santa Fe, delivered an address in which he referred to Spaniards as a “brave, generous and enlightened people” and underscored the importance of the achievement of those men “who carried the name of Spain and the Christian religion into the heart of a new continent then swarming with a strange and hostile people.”34 Similar themes emerged during the course of the Tertio-Millennial Exposition, which was held in Santa Fe during summer of 1883 and was intended to showcase New Mexico’s “three great civilizations”—the indigenous, the Mexican or Spanish American (that term was just coming into use), and the American—along with its potential as a mecca for tourists and settlers alike. Organized under the auspices of New Mexico’s Historical Society, the exposition’s name derived from the more than three hundred years, or roughly a third of a millennium, that the territory was subject to Spanish influence and control. But while the celebration accorded an important place to the Pueblo, Zuni, Apache, and other native peoples, the overarching idea was to recognize what Spaniards had brought to the region in the way of advancement and progress. Starting already in 1870s, Santa Fe’s annual Fourth of July parade had featured marchers attired as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. In the Tertio-Millennial’s historical pageant, these literary figures were replaced by members of the newly founded Order of Coronado costumed as Spanish knights. They were followed by friars carrying Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, the image of the Virgin Mary affectionately known as La Conquistadora who symbolized the “peaceful” reconquest of New Mexico by Spanish troops in the wake of the fabled Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Various native groups also marched in the pageant, but the main event was a mock battle pitting Pueblos against Spaniards and a staged ceremony in which the defeated Pueblos humbly surrendered to the victorious Spaniards. The Tertio-Millenial was a financial fiasco, as it failed to attract the crowds its organizers had envisioned, but this setback did little to deter local officials in Santa Fe, starting at the end of the nineteenth century, from continuing to stress the town’s Spanishness as a way to burnish its image as a resort that northerners might wish to visit. They did this by restoring the governor’s palace in ways designed to make it look more “Spanish,” encouraging the construction of adobe-style buildings, and, following St. Augustine’s example, Hispanicized the names of some of its streets in an effort to enhance its Spanish aura in the belief that this was what

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tourists wished to experience.35 Not all of these changes had been completed by the time of the Tertio-Millennial, but they enabled a group of Spaniards who visited that fair to inform their countrymen that “[i]n Santa Fe we almost could believe that we in Spain and in some small Castilian town.”36 In later years there were also efforts to link Santa Fe with the original Santa Fe, the military encampment laid out by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the form of a cross in 1491 and used to launch the crusade to conquer and Christianize Granada, the last remaining Muslim outpost in peninsular Spain. The symbolism underlying this linkage— visually demonstrated by images in the interior of the city’s Scottish Rite Temple (1914) that depicted Ferdinand and Isabel being handed the keys of the city by Boabdil, Granada’s last Muslim ruler—was that the Spaniards in the new Santa Fe, as heirs to the old one, had also conquered, civilized, and Christianized what had been a pagan land.37 The idea of Spaniards as the agents of civilization and religion was central to the rehabilitation of Spain’s image in the United States. The cruelty and exploitation of native peoples of Spain’s conquest and colonization of North America underscores the fictive quality of such an idea. But fiction had its uses. In New Mexico, Anglo officials embraced it largely on account of its commercial potential. But it also received support from the territory’s hispano elite who, in an effort to distance themselves both socially and culturally from their poorer paisano brethren, styled themselves as the pure-blooded descendants of noble Castilian conquistadors as opposed to Mexicans of mestizo stock. Many of California’s surviving population of wealthy Californio merchants and ranchers harbored similar pretensions, styling themselves as members of a raza, or people distinct from the poor—and often browner—Mexican farmers and day laborers known to Anglos as “greasers.” One of the first to broach this idea was General M. G. Vallejo, who in a letter addressed to his fellow Californio, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, in 1867 spelled out the differences between their raza and Yankees. Yankees, he opined, were temperamentally well suited for enterprise and making money, but “we are better at taste, pleasures, romanticism.” He concluded, however, that a mixture of the two races would be “even better, more energetic, stronger, but also sweeter in character, moderate, and thus stronger.”38 Convictions of a roughly similar kind appear in an essay written by the famed albeit somewhat controversial poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) in 1883. Whitman was an ardent admirer of Columbus as well as Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish monarchs who set the mariner on his way. By the 1880s Columbus was already seen as an American hero, and his role as America’s discoverer—and fictive founding father—was celebrated at the above-mentioned Columbian World Exposition of 1893. But Columbus was Genoese, not Spanish. The problem: how to connect the two? The Chicago fair did this by celebrating Queen Isabella and, by extension, Spain itself. Whitman, in contrast, had a different answer, one that reflected his

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personal interest in contemplating an America far more inclusive than one that was strictly Anglo-Saxon and white. Instead, he envisioned a society that transcended both racial and religious lines. It was undoubtedly for this reason that the organizers of the Tertio-Millennial Exposition invited Whitman to Santa Fe. Living in Camden, New Jersey, and aged seventy-three, Whitman was not able to attend the festivities and sent a letter that was read aloud on the fair’s opening day. Titled “The Spanish Element in America’s National Character,” the letter underscored Whitman’s respect for the “Spanish character” and especially its importance for the “American identity”: Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to be established. . . . To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect—grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. . . . It is time to realize—for it is certainly true—that there will not be found any more cruelty, tyranny, superstition, etc., in the résumé of past Spanish history than in the corresponding résumé of Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think there will not be found so much. As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that we do begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race element. Who knows but that element, like the course of some subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?39

The language is flowery and poetic, but the message is crystal clear. Taking direct aim at nativists touting America as both Anglo-Saxon and white, Whitman clearly regarded the heritage of both Spaniards and Spanish Americans as an integral part of the United States. Whitman was something of an eccentric, and while one Philadelphia newspaper published his oration, its reception, let alone its influence, is difficult to trace. But Whitman’s idea of forging a rapprochement between Spaniards and Americans—think of it as antidote to Henry Adams’s conception of Spain and America as “natural enemies”—was clearly out of the bottle. That same idea surfaced in Lummis’s Spanish Pioneers, where he represented Spain’s achievements in the Western Hemisphere as an exercise in American “manhood.” In the process Cortés becomes the first “Spanish American” hero, and Pizarro became “the greatest self-made man” deserving of the “utmost respect and admiration.” Lummis also credited Spain with exploration and colonization of what is now the United States—to build its first cities and till the first farms of the greatest nation on Earth, observations that led to the conclusion that “[h]ad there been no Spain four hundred years ago, there would be no United States to-day.”40 In other words, the two countries were essentially one. It was easy to lose sight of that idea in the torrent of anti-Spanish propaganda surrounding the Spanish-American War, but it reemerged almost as soon as the

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war was over, partly in the spirit of noblesse oblige but, for reasons stated at the outset of this chapter, also because Americans were then free to embrace the culture and traditions of their vanquished enemy. In 1906, for example, one British observer, Martin Hume, an expert on Spain’s history, put forward the idea that Spaniards and Americans were “natural friends” inasmuch as their differing national temperaments were fundamentally complementary.41 William Collier, a New York lawyer who served as U.S. ambassador in Spain starting in 1905, echoed Hume’s observation in his memoirs, published in 1912. In addition to emphasizing “the strength and sincerity of the good-will of the Government and people of the United States” toward Spain, Collier went so far as to suggest that Spaniards were a model people. “Is it possible,” he asked, “to find a nobler example of the fortitude, perseverance, and constancy of a race than that of the Spaniards who, after having been hurled back to the mountain fastnesses of the North by the wave of Mohammedan-invasion that swept over Europe, emerged from their caves of refuge and, year after year, for seven long centuries, waged ceaseless warfare until at Granada they captured the Moslem’s last stronghold and saved the world to Christianity?”42 Strength, tenacity, courage—these Spanish traits were also American traits, and in making this observation, Collier was clearly suggesting that the time had come for his fellow citizens to reevaluate whatever prejudices, let alone grudges, they held against Spain. Similar ideas were contained in the address that Joseph Scott, director of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and a close friend of Charles Lummis, delivered in Washington, D.C., on the occasion of the unveiling of the capital’s new Christopher Columbus monument on June 8, 1912. That monument—it still stands in the plaza fronting Union Station—was as much a paean to the mariner as to Ferdinand and Isabella, and Scott, cognizant that his address was likely to be printed in the Los Angeles Times and other California papers, made a speech certain to appeal to Lummis and other Californians interested in promoting the cause of both Serra and Spain. “Long before the so called Anglo-Saxon had set foot as a colonist upon the American soil,” Scott observed, “the Spanish race, with its indomitable faith, pursued almost alone its mission of civilization and evangelization of the aborigines of America.” Echoing an essay Helen Hunt Jackson had published about Serra in 1883 (discussed below) along with Lummis’s ideas about Spain’s “humane” pioneering, Scott also observed that Spaniards had managed to solve “the Indian problem as it has never been attempted since.”43 Encoded here was the notion that Spaniards and Americans, despite their perceived racial differences, were brethren in arms to the extent that they shared a common historic mission—that of converting the hemisphere’s indigenous population to Christianity and thus furthering the cause of civilization itself. For Scott as for Lummis, Spain’s soldiers and friars such as Serra had initiated this campaign and in ways from which Americans, especially its Protestants, had much to learn.

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Their example, moreover, was one that the United States, as the new standardbearer of the Americas, could use as it endeavored to see this grand mission through to completion. From this linkage emerged the idea that whatever their political differences, these were but superficial and temporary inasmuch as the culture, the language, and indeed the history of Spain and America were deeply and profoundly intertwined, especially in those regions previously under Spanish rule. To be sure, old prejudices lingered, and even avowed Hispanophiles such as Lummis recognized that “foolish race-prejudice” continued to color American views of Spaniards and Mexicans alike.44 Yet the “romance of Spain” took the edge off these racial antipathies and in doing so helped fuel and sustain the craze for Spanish-themed architecture together with Spanish fashion, furniture, literature, music, and food.45 Still more surprising is that this position is one that even Theodore Roosevelt could adopt. As noted above, prior to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt had little use for Spaniards and their culture. After the war, possibly because of his experience charging up Cuba’s San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898, one of the bloodiest battles of the entire conflict, his attitude toward Spain began to soften. The first real evidence of this change came in June 1914 when Roosevelt traveled to Spain in order to attend the wedding of his son, Kermit, to the daughter of Joseph Willard, then serving as the U.S. ambassador in Madrid. Some Spanish newspapers, remembering Roosevelt’s belligerency toward Spain, opposed the former president’s visit. But Roosevelt ignored these criticisms, taking advantage of his stay in and around the Spanish capital to meet the reigning monarch, Alfonso XIII, and to learn more about Spain’s history. Roosevelt also toured such monuments as the Escorial, visited Toledo, and toured the Prado Museum, where he especially admired the work of Velázquez. But when asked about politics Roosevelt demurred, saying that this topic was one he wished to avoid. “I am here on a spree,” he remarked. “I want to meet literateurs and geographers and see the museums.”46 Roosevelt also emphasized the importance of the Spanish language and the need for Americans to learn it.47 As for ties between the two countries, he expressed his ideas about the subject in an address he delivered in 1915 at the time of his visit to the Panama-California fair. After having visited Balboa Park and absorbed its “Spanish atmosphere,” he told the assembled audience that It is unwise ever slavishly to copy anything from another civilization, but it is still more unwise not to copy anything that is of use from an alien civilization and then adapt and develop it to your own uses. It is an admirable thing to have taken both the old Spanish and the pueblo Indian styles of architecture and adapt and develop them in the typical and characteristic American fashion as you have done here.48

The Spanish Craze in this sense was not just a fantasy, nor was it simply something invented for purely commercial ends. Instead, it was part of the country’s efforts to

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create a usable past and to use history to forge a comprehensive identity at a time when it was dealing with unprecedented waves of immigrants from both Eastern Europe and Mexico while also attempting to integrate those of Spanish-cumMexican background living in the U.S. Southwest. That process involved the making of myths and the invention of heroes such as Serra. In this respect, California’s invention of Serra, together with its embrace of its Spanish heritage, was but a chapter in a much larger story in the history of the United States. T H E “I N V E N T IO N ” O F SE R R A

The invention of Serra as an exemplary, quasi-saintly human being begins in 1787, just three years after the friar’s death, with the publication in Mexico City of a biography-cum-hagiography titled Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra. The volume in question came from the pen of Francisco Palou, Serra’s disciple, fellow Franciscan, and longtime companion, and was a less than transparent effort to publicize the importance of his order’s missionary efforts in upper California and also enhance his mentor’s credentials for beatification and eventual sainthood. With these aims in mind, Palou crafted an account of Serra’s life and achievements that aligned with a particular genre of early modern historical writing centered on the sacrifices, sufferings, and, in some instances, martyrdoms endured by missionaries among non-Christian peoples in various parts of the world. In the Americas, histories of this kind first made their appearance at the end of the sixteenth century, with the Dominicans leading the way.49 Authors attached to other religious orders—Augustinians, Franciscans, Jesuits, etc.—quickly followed suit, with some focusing on individual missionaries and others focusing on their order’s collective missionary experiences in particular regions. These ecclesiastical histories differed in content, but the rhetoric they employed was customarily hyperbolic to the extent that virtues were inflated, accomplishments were overwrought, miracles were invented, and facts were purposely tweaked in ways designed to enhance the sanctity of the individuals involved. Palou’s account of Serra incorporated similar strategies in an effort to promote Serra’s reputation, and over time the strategy worked. Pope John Paul II beatified Serra in 1988, and in September 2015 during his first visit to the United States, Pope Francis elevated the “Evangelizer of the West” to sainthood.50 In the short term, however, Palou’s Relación practically disappeared until its rediscovery in the mid-nineteenth century by a cluster of California authors interested in documenting the colonial history of their newly minted state.51 Some of these authors were Catholics—call them “hagiographers”—who, taking their cue from Palou, set out to secure the attention of the papacy’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints by emphasizing Serra’s role as a “apostolic” missionary. One was

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William Gleeson, a transplanted Irish priest whose History of the Catholic Church in California, published in 1872, included several chapters dedicated wholly to Serra. Drawing directly and largely uncritically from the Relación, Gleeson represented Serra as “noble and godlike,” underscoring his activities as a missionary among the “untamed and fierce” inhabitants of Alta California and emphasizing his tireless efforts to deliver the souls of these savages from the “Prince of Darkness.”52 Another was Reverend Angelo D. Casanova, a priest of Swiss origin serving in Monterrey. Starting around 1882, Casanova took it upon himself to begin the work of restoring the ruined San Carlos Church, which Serra had founded and where he is buried. After having located Serra’s burial records along with the site of his tomb, Casanova generated support for his project by organizing a public ceremony during which Serra’s coffin was opened in order to determine if the body was actually there and still intact. Precedents for this kind of ceremony dated back to the medieval church and generally constituted a key step along the road to sainthood.53 By the time Serra’s bones were uncovered, however, the hagiographers had been joined by another group of writers—”secular hagiographers” in the language of Steven Hackel—whose interest in the friar was sparked less by religious concerns than by civic concerns.54 It also derived from their determination to create for California a founding father comparable in stature and importance to Massachusetts’s John Winthrop, Rhode Island’s Roger Williams, and Pennsylvania’s William Penn and in doing so create for the state a colonial history in which all its residents, Catholics and Protestants alike, could take pride. The first of these “secular hagiographers” was arguably Mrs. Elizabeth Hughes, a progressive writer living in San Francisco and the author of a short history of California’s missions published as California of the Padres: Or Footprints of Ancient Communism in 1875. Relatively little is known about Hughes or the reasons for her interest in the history of the missions, but she was determined to present the work of the friars in a wholly favorable light. In doing so Hughes took issue with the Scottish writer Alexander Forbes, whose History of Upper and Lower California . . . had appeared in 1839. No friend of the Catholic Church, Forbes had expressed grudging respect for Serra as an individual but criticized the missions for having achieved little more than transforming California’s “free savages into pusillanimous and superstitious slaves.” Hughes, in contrast, praised the missionaries both for their success in bringing Christianity to California and especially their humane treatment of the region’s natives (“The Indians had all their needs supplied, and lived in peace and piety”). Writing moreover for a primarily Protestant audience— she pointedly reminded her readers that even though she was not a Catholic (“I am no advocate of Romanism”), they would do well to drop their prejudices against such missionaries such as “Jumpero Lerra [sic]” who, together with other Franciscan fathers, was a humane teacher who managed the spiritual conquest of California through the “feminine power of love and inspiration.”55

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Similar messages could be found in the work of Helen Hunt Jackson, the author who can be credited with Serra’s achievement to a national audience with her twopart essay “Father Junipero and His Work,” which first appeared in the New York periodical Century Magazine in May and June 1883. Jackson’s interest in Serra and the missions sprang from her work as an activist for Native American rights. Her reading of Palou’s life of Serra, together with several visits to California, had also persuaded her of the flawed character of U.S. Indian policy and how much the nation’s leaders could learn from the “admirable simplicity and system” of the missions that had guaranteed the well-being and the welfare of “savages” by instructing them in “all the laborious occupations known to civilized society.”56 Jackson’s description of both Serra and his followers was also couched in language designed to appeal to Protestants skeptical of anything remotely connected with Roman Catholicism. She did so by representing Serra primarily as a Franciscan and the member of a religious order famous for being “helpers of men” and one to which America was “pre-eminently” in debt owing to the support it had provided Columbus. In addition, by describing Serra’s work as one of “struggle, hardship, and heroic achievement,” Jackson employed rhetoric traditionally applied to New England’s Puritan pioneers and reiterated this point by favorably comparing the work of the Franciscans on the West Coast to the better-known history of the Puritans on the East Coast. Whereas the latter, she wrote, were “driving the Indians further and further into the wilderness every year, fighting and killing them,” Serra and his followers were “gathering the Indians by thousands into communities, and feeding and teaching them.” In this respect, Jackson set out to present Serra and the friars as moral exemplars deserving both admiration and respect, together with a place in the textbooks of American history.57 But while Jackson had acknowledged Serra’s mission as one linked to the Catholic faith, Serra’s California-based “secular hagiographers” tended to play down that connection in an effort to broaden the friar’s appeal to the state’s increasingly diverse population of Protestants. A rather more secular and civic-minded Serra appeared, for example, in the opening volume of Theodore Hittell’s History of California, first published in 1885. A San Franciscan lawyer turned historian, Hittell candidly observed that the friar’s “memory will live longer and be preserved greener as the Founder and First of Pioneers of Alta California than either as a missionary or a priest or even a saint.”58 Charles F. Lummis was equally keen on casting Serra in the role of “a magnificent old hero” as opposed to a Catholic missionary. Well known as the spark behind the movement to restore California’s crumbling missions, Lummis’s particular interest in Serra accompanied his efforts to increase public awareness of Spain’s role in the colonization of the American Southwest, a topic he examined in The Spanish Pioneers (1893). It did not take long, however, for Lummis to emerge as one of Serra’s most ardent supporters, and by 1929 in a revised version of his

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1893 book, he pointedly referred to the missionary as “the Apostle of California– Founder of California.”59 But while the agendas of Serra’s secular hagiographers were not exactly alike, they shared a common goal: to downplay his Catholicism and present him simply as a Christian. Over time this refocusing enabled the friar to become more like a transcendental religious figure who could be credited with bringing both “Christianity” and “civilization” to California. The overarching idea was to make Serra into the state’s spiritual father, its first citizen and a patriot to boot. This secularized Serra first came into public view on October 8, 1876, during San Francisco’s centennial celebrations of the founding of the San Francisco de Assis mission, popularly known simply as the Dolores Mission owing to its location at the intersection of Mission and Dolores Streets. Organized under the auspices of the Society of California Pioneers, the celebration was a decidedly ecumenical event, as the speakers included Joseph S. Alemany, the city’s archbishop, along with Oakland’s mayor, John W. Dwinelle, who at the start of his oration pointedly reminded his listeners that he was a Protestant. Another speaker was the aging Californio politician General Manuel G. Vallejo, whose speech, delivered in Spanish and without a translator, undoubtedly went over the heads of a crowd said to have numbered “upwards of 5,000.” Alemany spoke first. Mindful that his listeners were predominantly Protestant, he downplayed the “Catholicism” of Serra’s achievement, emphasizing instead his “heroic sacrifices” and success delivering California from “the darkness of Paganism.” As for the other friars, they became “heroic, disinterested Christian pioneers,” and carefully avoiding any reference to their efforts to win converts to Catholicism, Alemany credited them for “establishing Christianity in this country.”60 The day’s chief speaker and evidently the one the crowd most wanted to hear was Dwinelle. He reminded the crowd that Spain’s “colonization of California” was primarily “religious”—”the work of the Roman Catholic Church”—and was intended “to convert the native savages into Christians, afterwards into citizens, with organized civil institutions, and then leave them in the possession of the conquered, civilized and Christianized territory.” Such was the importance and magnitude of that achievement, he continued, that it transcended the Church’s quest for souls to become one worthy of the “American Republic.” As for Serra, by describing him as a “man of fervent piety, indomitable will, irrepressible energy, and unconquerable fortitude,” Dwinelle, surely mindful that 1876 also marked the centennial of the United States, invoked qualities commonly associated with the country’s founding fathers.61 Once again, the idea was to broaden the friar’s appeal and to represent him as the founding father of the state. The apotheosis of this reformulated Serra came in 1884, the centennial of this death. In April of that year the California state legislature voted to declare August 29, the day of the friar’s death, a legal holiday. That action was symbolic, but it heralded a fundamental change in Serra’s status—from that of a Catholic

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missionary into a more Columbus-like figure credited with bringing all of the benefits of civilization to California. The year 1884 also brought the start of a carefully orchestrated campaign designed to increase public awareness of Serra. It included publication of an English translation of portions of Palou’s biography together with a fund-raising campaign endorsed by the governor, the mayor of San Francisco, and Archbishop Alemany that was intended to raise the monies needed to complete the work of restoring Mission Carmel. The pamphlet announcing this appeal referred to Serra as a “pioneer” and a “venerable man” but purposely downplayed his Catholicism in an apparent effort to attract the support of Californians of every creed.62 A similar theme marked the unveiling of the first (but, as of this writing, recently disfigured and beheaded) Serra statue in 1891. Funded by Mrs. Jane Leland Stanford, designed and executed by John W. Combs (a sculptor living in San José), and erected on a site near what was thought to be his first landing place in Monterrey, the statue depicted the moment when Serra, perched on a small landing craft, first set foot on California soil. It depicts him wearing Franciscan robes, but he fails to carry a crucifix, which in an apparent nod to California’s Protestants was conveniently left in the boat in a place where it was difficult for onlookers to see. The accompanying plaque also reflected the secular hagiographers’ agenda. The plaque described Serra as a “philanthropist,” a “hero,” and a “faithful servant of His Master Lord.” Significantly, the word “Catholic” did not appear, nor was it mentioned in the accompanying ceremonies, which though organized in part by Casanova, trumpeted Serra’s contribution to California and, more broadly, the United States, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church.63 Much the same applies to the Serra appearing in John Steven McGroarty’s The Mission Play, first performed in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mission in 1912. The first two acts of this drama celebrated Serra’s achievements in California but represented him more as a Christian than a Catholic, whereas the missions themselves are presented as agents of civilization as opposed to instruments designed to win converts to Catholicism and thus propagate the faith. At the same time, advertisements promoting the play—and it was a runaway success for almost a decade— elevated Serra to a status equal to that of America’s other founding fathers, a true patriot who brought the torch of civilization to a pagan and barbarous land.64 Nowadays, such rhetoric would rightly be greeted with catcalls from representatives of California’s native population, but it was then commonplace and was in tune with racial prejudices of the day. Similar language could be in Governor Hiram Johnson’s announcement of October 18, 1913, that November 24, Serra’s birthday, would be a state holiday in recognition of the friar’s success in having brought “modern civilization” to the state. Municipal authorities in Pasadena refused to honor that holiday, but the overwhelming response to the governor’s announcement was positive, especially among Catholic groups such as the Knights

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of Columbus. They took advantage of the holiday to organize a pilgrimage to Serra’s tomb in Monterrey. That pilgrimage soon become an annual event, although newspaper reports suggest that it quickly evolved into a pageant featuring marchers in period dress, bullfights, and other festivities largely devoid of any spiritual content or historical accuracy.65 Not everyone was happy with Serra’s secular turn. One was German-born friar Zephyrin Engelhardt, who in his official capacity as the historian of California’s Franciscan order wanted to the put something of the Catholic back into Serra and did so in his sweeping The Missions and the Missionaries of California, published starting in 1910. In this monumental work, Engelhardt branded Hittell an “enemy of the religious orders” and took every opportunity he could to point out what he saw as the errors in Herbert Howe Bancroft’s treatment of Serra. He was equally determined to remind readers that Serra was as “an ideal missionary, the father of the Church in California,” and that the primary reason the friars came to California was to spread the gospel.66 Engelhardt had equally harsh words for McGroarty’s The Mission Play, which was attracting huge crowds year after year. In a letter addressed to Lummis in 1916, he criticized the play’s “deception and unworthy treatment” of the missions and especially its lack of respect for “their sacred character and mode of life and system of activity.”67 Engelhardt’s understanding of both Serra and missions was colored by his religious views, but most Californians— Kevin Starr estimated that some 2.5 million people attended the play between 1912 and 1929—evidently preferred a secularized Serra engaged in what could be understood as a mission civilisatrice.68 In other words, the die was cast. Although Engelhardt and other Catholics continued to push Serra along the slow road to sainthood—finding miracles associated with the friar proved difficult—it was the more secular Serra, more Christian than Catholic, who prevailed. It was that same Serra—Governor Johnson’s “Father of California”—whose likeness would appear in numerous murals and statues across the state and whose memory would be invoked on important public occasions as the state’s spiritual founder. One such occasion came on January 1, 1915, the day marking the opening of San Diego’s Panama-California Exposition and one on which fairgoers would hear Gilbert Aubrey Davidson, a prominent banker serving as the exposition’s president, offer the following remarks: The name of Fray Junipero Serra is one to stir men’s hearts to nobler efforts in all parts of the civilized world. He has a part in the glory of the coast and is especially cherished in San Diego where his little band began to make headway among savage conditions and where his first mission was erected.69

While Serra loomed large in this oration, Davidson also took the time to invoke other Spaniards—Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475–1519), Juan Rodríguez de Cabrillo (?–1543), Sebastián Vizcaíno (1545–1640), and Gaspar de Portolá (1716–1784)—credited with

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having played a central role in San Diego’s as well as California’s early history. Describing them collectively as “daring spirits of adventure,” he indicated that each had played an important role in planting the seeds of what he called “Pacific coast civilization.” One can also imagine that as Davidson intoned their names, he is likely to have gestured in the direction of the recently completed and elaborately sculpted facade of the exposition’s California State Building, where statues of these Spaniards, together with that of Serra, appeared. These Spaniards—explorers, soldiers, conquistadors— had been feted before: San Diego had celebrated the landing of Cabrillo in 1892 and again in 1911, whereas San Francisco had staged a celebration honoring Portolá in 1909.70 On this occasion Davidson, in addition to recognizing Serra as California’s spiritual father, acknowledged Spaniards as the state’s progenitors. In doing so, however, he failed to make any reference to California’s indigenous peoples. The absence of natives in Davidson’s remarks does much to explain why Carey McWilliams would characterize California’s Spanish heritage as a “fantasy” in the sense of something fabricated and wholly artificial, more myth than reality. Relying in part on the research of the Berkeley physiologist Sherburne Friend Cook, who had recently published articles focused on the high rates of mortality among natives linked to the missions, McWilliams argued that Jackson, Lummis, and Davidson had not only created a wholly idyllic portrait of the missions but had also whitewashed it by seemingly eliminating all references to the exploitation and harsh treatment of the natives that these institutions entailed. He also maintained that emphasis on the “Spanishness” of California’s early history was a racial construct to the extent that it ignored the importance of both its native and Mexican cultures.71 McWilliams was right to emphasize the importance of the state’s native cultures together with the role that Mexicans, as opposed to Spaniards, had played in California’s past. So too was his insistence that the history of the missions was far more problematic than Jackson, Lummis, and other promoters of Serra and the friars had allowed. On the other hand, McWilliams’s suggestion that the state’s Spanish legacy was a “fantasy” was exaggerated, as so many of California’s place-names, from San Diego in the south to Point Reyes in the north, readily attest.72 But whether invented or not, virtually all of the California-based historians who have addressed this legacy, McWilliams included, have ignored the extent to which other parts of the country, in some cases prior to California, also found something of their past in Spain.73 In this respect California’s discovery of Spain was in fact part of a broader, almost national conversation centered on the reassessment of America’s relationship with both Spain and its culture. It is no surprise, then, that Serra, having become California’s first citizen, would also become the equivalent of a honorary citizen of the United States when in 1931 his likeness, cast in bronze, was placed on display in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall as one of two statues representing the Golden State (Figure 11.4). With Serra holding a crucifix in his raised right hand and a model of a mission in his left

figure 11.4. Ettore Cadorin, Father Junípero Serra, 1931. National Statuary Hall Collection, Washington, D.C. Reproduced with permission of the Architect of the Capitol.

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hand, the statue demonstrates his unequivocal vocation as a Catholic missionary. Yet in the speeches that accompanied the statue’s unveiling the secular Serra won out, as the word “Catholic” was only uttered once and then in passing. Serra was instead likened to “a pioneer of pioneers,” the “torchbearer of civilization,” and as a representative of Spain’s great colonial domains, the individual responsible for the “Christianization and civilization of the natives on our Western shore.”74

NOTES 1. Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: Spanish-Speaking People in the United States (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1949). 2. The literature on the vanishing American Indian is extensive. My understanding of the phenomenon rests chiefly on Brian Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982). 3. Life, August, 11, 1898, xx. 4. The fair’s architecture is analyzed in Iris H. W. Engstrand, “Inspired by Mexico: Architect Bertram Goodhue Introduces Spanish Colonial Architecture into Balboa Park,” Journal of San Diego History 58 (Winter–Spring 2012): 57–70. 5. “Balboa Park History 1914,” San Diego Evening Tribune, September 30, 1914, http://www .sandiegohistory.org/archives/amero/balboapark/bp1914/. 6. As cited in Roberto Ramón Lint Sagarena, Aztlán and Arcadia: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Creation of Place (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 66. 7. Ibid., 117–25. 8. See McWilliams, North from Mexico. 9. Braun Research Library, Chares F. Lummis Correspondence, 1.1.44, letter of Lummis to the Duke of Alba, 15 April 1924. 10. Bret Harte, “Bohemian Days in San Francisco,” in Writings of Bret Harte, Vol. 18 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 134–55. The story was first published in 1900. 11. As cited in David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 345. 12. Emily V. Leider, California’s Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 109. 13. Julián Juderías coined the term “Leyenda Negra” (Black Legend) to refer to this tradition of anti-Catholic/anti-Spanish writing in his 1914 book La Leyenda Negra. Subsequent bibliography on this subject has been immense. For a recent overview of this literature with bibliography, see Friedrich Edelmayer, “The ‘Leyenda Negra’ and the Circulation of Anti-Catholic and Anti-Spanish Prejudices,” European History Online, June 29, 2011, http://www.ieg-ego.eu/edelmayerf-2010-en. 14. Nicolas Masson de Morvellier, ed., Encyclopedie Methodique, Vol. 1 (Paris: Panckoucke, 1782), entry for “Espagne.” 15. “John Adams Autobiography, Part 3, ‘Peace,’ 1779–1780, sheet 12 of 18, January 6–11, 1780,” Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive Massachusetts Historical Society., http://www.masshist. org/digitaladams/. 16. Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. David G. Allen, Robert J. Taylor, Marc Friedlander, and Celeste Walker (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1981), 25. 17. I refer here to Henry Adams, History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Vol. 1 (New York: Scribner, 1889), 341; Theodore Roosevelt, “The Winning of the West” [1894], in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Putnam, 1902), xi, 329.

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18. Frank Soulé, John H. Gihon, and James Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco (San Francisco: D. Appleton, 1855), part I, chap. 3. 19. Herbert Howe Bancroft, “California Pastoral,” in Works, Vol. 34 (San Francisco: San Francisco History Co., 1888), 43, 72, 88. 20. The literature on the role of the press in the making of the war is vast. For an insightful introduction on how the newspapers and periodicals represented Spain, see Bonnie Miller, From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish American War of 1898. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011). 21. For the history of the Black Legend in the United States, see Philip Wayne Powell, Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Policies Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1971; 2nd ed., 2008). See also the essays gathered in Richard L. Kagan, ed., Spain in America: Origins of Hispanism in the United States (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002). 22. For the discovery of Spain by American artists, see M. Elizabeth Boone, Vistas de España: American Views of Art and Life in Spain, 1860–1914 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 23. The same was said of Flagler’s two other St. Augustine hotels: Alcázar and Córdova (originally Casa Mónica). 24. For more on the Ponce de León and Flagler efforts to make St. Augustine into a “Spanish” town, see Richard L. Kagan, “The Old World in the New: Florida’s Discovery of the Arts of Spain,” in La Florida: Five Hundred Years of Spanish Presence in Florida, ed. Viviana Díaz Balsera and Rachel May Tallahassee, 192–208 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2014), together with Thomas Graham, Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2014). 25. I refer to T. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Anti-Modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981). 26. For White’s “Giralda,” see Richard L. Kagan, “Blame It on Washington Irving: New York’s Discovery of the Art and Architecture of Spain,” in Nueva York: 1613–1945, ed. Edward J. Sullivan, 154–71 (New York: New York Historical Society, 2010). Page’s Giralda and others that were planned for San Francisco during the 1890s but never built can be approached through Richard Longstreth, On the Edge of the World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983). For the one in Buffalo, see C. D. Arnold, The PanAmerican Exposition. Illustrated (Buffalo, NY: C. D. Arnold, 1901). 27. As cited in California’s World Fair Committee: Final Report of the California’s World Fair Committee (Sacramento, CA: State Office, 1894), 11. The committee was not the first to link Moorish and Mission styles. That connection had already been made by Leland Stanford, who envisioned that the buildings of his new university “will be in the Moorish style of architecture . . . to preserve as a local characteristic the style of architecture given to California in the churches and the mission buildings of the early missionary fathers.” See Karen J. Wetize, California’s Mission Revival (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1984), 22. See also Frank Blackmar, Spanish Institutions of the South West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1891), 261, where he suggests that the design of the “early Spanish buildings in the South West” was a mixture of “ancient Rome” (i.e., classical) and “Moorish.” 28. Richard V. Francaviglia, Go East Young Man: Imagining the American West as Orient (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011). 29. Cleveland Town Topics (1923), as quoted in Michael C. DeAloia, Lost Grand Hotels of Cleveland (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014), 20. 30. For the collecting of Spanish art, see Richard L. Kagan, “The Spanish Turn: The Discovery of Spanish Art in the United States, 1887–1920,” in Collecting Spanish Art: Spain’s Golden Age and America’s Gilded Age, ed. Inge Reist and José Luis Colomer, 3–23 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2012). I examine the other aspects of the Spanish Craze in Richard L. Kagan, The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Art and Culture of the Hispanic World, 1779–1939 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming).

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31. Narrative of the Career of Hernando de Soto . . . , trans. T. Buckingham Smith (New York: Bradford Society, 1856), xxv–xxvi. 32. I refer here to George Fairbanks, History and Antiquities of St Augustine (New York: C. B. Norton, 1858) and his History of Florida (New York: Lippincott, 1874). 33. Charles F. Lummis, The Spanish Pioneers (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1912), 23. 34. Centennial Celebration (Santa Fe: Williams & Shaw, 1876), 51. 35. For an insightful analysis of Santa Fe’s “Hispanicization” and the politics it entailed, see Charles Montgomery, The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power and Loss on New Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), esp. chapters 3 and 4. 36. Juan Bustamante y Campuzano, Del Atlántico al Pacífico (Madrid: Imprenta Central, 1883), 155. 37. John M. Nieto-Phillips, The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s–1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004). 38. See Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, ed. Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita (Houston: Arté Público Praa, 2001), 59. 39. For Whitman’s complete text, see Chris Wilson, Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 188. 40. Lummis, The Spanish Pioneers, 11, 51, 68, 77, 91. 41. Martin Hume, “The United States and Spain,” International Conciliation 23 (October 1909): 3–9. 42. William Miller Collier, At the Court of His Catholic Majesty (Chicago: A. C. Mclurg, 1912), ix. 43. For a transcription of Scott’s oration, see Archivo General de la Nación: Alcalá de Henares (Spain): Caja 54/8122. 44. Braun Research Library. Lummis Correspondence, Ms. 1.1.992A, letter to Arturo Cuyas, March 7, 1914. 45. For more on this craze, see Richard L. Kagan, “The Spanish Craze: The Discovery of Spanish Art and Culture in the United States,” in When Spain Fascinated America, ed. Ignacio Suárez-Zuloaga, 25–26 (Madrid: Fundación Zuloaga, 2010); Richard L. Kagan, “The Spanish Craze in the United States: Cultural Entitlement and the Appropriation of Spain’s Cultural Patrimony, ca. 1890–ca. 1930,” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 36 (2010): 37–58. 46. “Roosevelt Rides with King Alfonso,” New York Times, June 9, 1914, 1. 47. “Roosevelt in Madrid,” Washington Post, June 9, 1914. 48. San Diego Evening Tribune, July 15, 1915. 49. I refer to Fray Agustín Dávila Padilla, Historia de la fundación y discurso de la provincia de Santiago de México, de la orden de predicadores, por las vidas de sus varones insignes, y casos notables de Nueva España (Madrid, 1596). For more on Palou’s motives and to historiography relating to Serra, see Robert M. Senkewicz, “The Representation of Junípero Serra in California History,” in “To Toil in That Vineyard of the Lord”: Contemporary Scholarship on Junípero Serra, ed. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, 17–52 (Berkeley: American Academy of Franciscan History, 1910), esp. 17–20; Steven W. Hackel, “Junípero Serra across the Generations,” in Companion to California History, ed. William Deverell and David Igler, 101–13 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008); Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). 50. See James A. Sandos, “Junípero Serra’s Canonization and the Historical Record,” American Historical Review 93, no. 5 (December 1988): 1253–69. For Serra’s canonization, see “Pope to Canonize ‘Evangelizer of the West’ during US Trip,” National Catholic Register, June 28, 2015. 51. Portions of Palou’s original 1787 biography appeared in the appendix of Francisco S. Clavigero, Historia de la Antigua o Baja California (Mexico City: J. R. Navarro, 1852). The first historian of California to cite Palou was Alexander Forbes in his California: A History of Upper and Lower California from Their First Discovery to the Present Time (London: Smith Elder and Co., 1839).

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52. William Gleeson, History of the Catholic Church in California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1872). 53. For this ceremony and Casanova’s efforts to restore the Carmel Mission, see Fray Junípero Serra and the Mission Church of San Carlos de Carmelo (San Francisco: P. F. Dougherty and Co., 1884). 54. See Steven W. Hackel, “Junípero Serra across the Generations,” in A Companion to California History, ed. William Deverell and David Igler, 99–115 (New York: Wiley, 2013), 99–115. 55. Forbes, California, 231; Elizabeth Hughes, California of the Padres: Or Footprints of Ancient Communism (San Francisco: L. N. Coyniski, 1875), esp. 29, where “Jumpero Lerra” appears. My reading of Forbes’s view of Serra and the missions differs substantially from the much more positive assessment appearing in Senkewicz, “The Representation of Junípero Serra in California History,” 21. 56. Helen Hunt Jackson, “Father Junipero and His Work: A Sketch of the Foundation, Prosperity, and Ruin of the Franciscan Missions in California,” Century Magazine 26, no. 2 (June 1883): 203, 205. 57. Ibid., 201. 58. Theodore H. Hittell, History of California, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: N. J. Stone, 1898), 448. 59. See Braun Research Library, Charles F. Lummis Correspondence Ms. 1.1. 1340, letter to Zephryn Engelhardt, April 26, 1927; Charles F. Lummis, The Spanish Pioneers and the Missions of California (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1929), 327. Lummis’s engagement with Serra evidently began late in the 1890s and first expressed itself in his critical translation of Serra’s diary, which recorded his journey from Loreto to San Diego in 1769. It was published in Out West 16 (January–June 1902): 293, where in a brief introduction Lummis refers to the “quenchless courage of the greatest missionary who ever trod on the soil of the United States.” 60. Patrick J. Thomas, Our Centennial Memoir: The Founding of the Missions; San Francisco de Asis in Its Hundredth Year: The Celebration of Its Foundation; Historical Reminiscences of the Missions of California (San Francisco: Compiled, Printed and Published by P. J. Thomas, 1877), 21. 61. Ibid., 83–84. 62. For this campaign, see Fray Junípero Serra and the Mission Church of San Carlos de Carmelo. 63. Dorothy Regenry, “The Stanfords and the Serra Statue: Presidio Monterrey,” Sand & Tile 13, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 1–12. 64. For the original text, see The Mission Play by John McGroarty (Los Angeles: Grafton Publishing, 1914). The history of the play and its reception is best approached through William F. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), chap. 6. See also Chelsea K. Vaughn, “The Joining of Historical Pageantry and the Spanish Fantasy Past: The Meeting of Señora Josefa Yorba and Lucretia del Valle,” Journal of San Diego History 57, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 213–33. 65. See, for example, “California News Briefs,” Livermore Journal 9, no. 51 (August 30, 1928): 2, which notes that the Serra pilgrimage that year was also a “fiesta” featuring a “day of the dons” historical pageant. 66. Zephyrin Engelhardt, The Missions and Missionaries of California, Vol. 2 (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1912), 316, 325–36. 67. Braun Research Library, Chares F. Lummis Correspondence, Ms. 1.1. 1340, letter dated April 16, 1916. 68. Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 88. 69. “Official Address of G. A. Davidson, President Panama-California Exposition,” San Diego Union, January 17–24, www.sandiegohistory.org/amero/notes-1915.htm. 70. Sally Bullard Thornton, “San Diego’s First Cabrillo Celebration, 1892,” Journal of San Diego History 30, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 167–80. 71. Carey McWilliams initially articulated these ideas in his South California Country: An Island on the Land (New York: Duell, Slone & Pearce, 1946), esp. chap. 1, and again in North from Mexico, esp.

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chap. 2. For Cook’s research, see Sherburne F. Cook, The Conflict between the California Indians and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), a compilation of various articles Cook had published starting in 1940. 72. For an extensive analysis of this “fantasy heritage,” see Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe; Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in an American Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Also useful is C. Schmidt-Nowara, “Spanish Origins of American Empire: Hispanism, History, and Commemoration, 1898–1915,” International History Review 40 (March 2008): 32–51. 73. Other than McWilliams, I refer here to Keven Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe; Kropp, California Vieja. 74. The three speakers I quote here are Hiram Johnson, the former governor of California then serving in his third term as U.S. senator; Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur; and Isidore Dockweiler, a prominent Catholic politician from California and the individual largely responsible for Serra’s presence in the National Statuary Hall. See The Unveiling and Acceptance of the Statues of Junipero Serra and Thomas Starr King (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932); Richard Peterson, “Junípero Serra and Thomas Starr King: California’s Statuary Monuments in Washington, D.C.,” Southern California Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 65–84. King’s statue was removed and replaced by one of Ronald Reagan in 2009. Serra’s statue remains in situ.

12

The Public Consumption of Junípero Serra Michael K. Komanecky

There are few, if any, accounts of European explorations of the Americas that have endured with such persistence and popular appeal as the story of the Franciscans’ founding of the California missions. A fundamental component of Spanish conquest, the missionary enterprise was a global undertaking under the Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit orders. It was with the Jesuits’ expulsion from the New World in 1767 and the Spanish Crown’s desire to strengthen its hold on territories along the Pacific coast it had first explored in the sixteenth century, however, that the Franciscans began what became the final episode in Spain’s missionary activities in New Spain. This resulted in the founding of twenty-one missions in what was known as Alta California, each of them richly furnished with paintings, sculpture, and a range of liturgical and other objects intended to serve the missionaries in their efforts at conversion as well as sustaining and nourishing their own faith.1 Foremost among the many Franciscans who served there was Junípero Serra, the Mallorcan-born friar recognized as the founder of California’s missions whose life’s activities are discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how Serra was presented and perceived in the United States from the late nineteenth century into the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in popular culture. This exploration is part of a much larger narrative about how the missions of the American Southwest were portrayed, which in its breadth and scope takes on the features of a vast metanarrative.2 The volume of material on Serra alone necessitates here a much-abbreviated overview that seeks to elucidate the main features of the Serra story and its relationship to California’s own carefully constructed history.3 This chapter will concentrate on select works 257

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on Serra and the missions intended for public audiences, spanning from the first in the late eighteenth century to those in the mid-twentieth century. The story of California’s missions and the use of images to illustrate this story emerged at the very time the missions were founded and begins with Francisco Palou’s 1787 biography of the recently deceased Serra, the source for countless later descriptions of the missionary and his activities. This depiction of Serra, not unexpectedly, is replete with Catholic symbolism and attributes associated with Serra’s life. He is surrounded by Indians and non-Indians alike who respond to his evangelistic message. Serra holds in one hand the rock he used to beat his breast, one of many such acts of devotion that he practiced and thus drawing a connection between Serra and Saint Jerome, one of the four doctors of the Catholic Church who was also traditionally depicted with a rock in his hand. Serra is shown as an old but still vibrant man, and it is tempting to think that Palou would have had some say in how his nearly lifelong friend and fellow Franciscan would have been shown. The next group of images of California’s missions and, by extension, Serra’s role in their formation stem from European explorers’ published accounts of their journeys to California, almost all of which mentioned and illustrated the missions. Among the most artistically sophisticated of these images is the earliest known published view of Serra’s home mission, San Carlos Borromeo. Included in George Vancouver’s 1798 Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Around the World, it was an account of the British naval commander’s 1791–1795 journey to implement a treaty restoring property at Nootka Sound from Spain to England and to seek the elusive Northwest Passage while charting the coast. Master’s mate John Sykes accompanied Vancouver and made numerous drawings on the voyage including two of San Carlos, which they visited on November 18, 1792. One served as the model for the engraving by Benjamin Thomas Pouncey, showing the mission’s interior courtyard and conveying both the mission’s isolation and the relatively crude character of its early structures (Figure 12.1). Though he did not mention Serra in his posthumously published report, Vancouver remarked at length on the mission and the missionaries who were responsible for creating it: The church, which for its magnitude, architecture, and internal decorations, did great credit to the constructors of it; and presented a striking contrast between the exertions of genius and such as bare necessity is capable of suggesting. The raising and decorating of this structure appeared to have greatly attracted the attention of the fathers; and the comforts they might have provided in their own humble habitations, seemed to have been totally sacrificed to the accomplishment of this favorite object.4

This early illustrated report on the missions of Alta California was one of the first of what became a virtually uninterrupted procession of public commentaries that

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figure 12.1. Benjamin Thomas Pouncy (English, 1772–1799), after John Sykes (English, 1773–1858), The Mission of San Carlos, Near Monterey, 1798. From George Vancouver, Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World, Vol. 1 (London: G. G. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards, 1798), 10. Huntington Library 2392.

typically presented the missions and their Franciscan founders in laudatory fashion, describing Serra and his fellow Franciscans in heroic terms—even when noting, as some did, that the missionary enterprise in California had a devastating effect on the Indians whom the missionaries sought to convert, devastation that continued long after California became part of the United States.5 This procession gathered momentum in the late nineteenth century in conjunction with a series of events of both regional and national importance. The first was the nation’s centennial in 1876, and the second was the centennial of Serra’s death in 1884 during which time numerous illustrated publications and other works of art reinforced his place in California’s history and, importantly, promoted him in increasingly public fashion as a genuinely heroic figure. The 1870s saw several publications that related the mission story and Serra’s role in it, some intended in part to establish California’s centuries-old history, including for its growing Irish Catholic population.6 William Gleeson, a Catholic

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clergyman and professor at St. Mary’s College in San Francisco, published An Illustrated History of the Catholic Church of California in 1872. As his book’s subtitle proclaimed, Gleeson intended to be thorough in presenting this history “from the time Christianity was introduced into the country in the 17th century, down to the present date.”7 As was now so often the norm, Catholicism’s introduction into Baja and Alta California was presented in order to establish the religion’s deep and ancient roots there and to carry this history into the present, “inasmuch as the Church on this coast has long since ceased to be a missionary body, in the sense of being governed by the Vicars Apostolic, having for several years obtained an honorable place in the American hierarchy.”8 Even so, the vast majority of his twovolume text was devoted to this mission history, and the book’s few illustrations included portraits of the Jesuit founder of Baja California’s missions, Juan María de Salvatierra, and of the Franciscan founder of Alta California’s missions, Junípero Serra, as well as scenes of the missions in Santa Barbara and Monterey. No such history, it seemed, could be complete without such increasingly familiar images of California’s mission past. This predilection is acknowledged in the frontispiece illustration for Volume 2, Father Junípero Serra: Apostle of Upper California, showing a young Serra, haloed and tonsured, holding a crucifix in one hand and a lily, a symbol of the Virgin Mary’s purity, in the other, while behind him in this simultaneous narrative he is shown baptizing a kneeling Indian, a Spanish ship at anchor in the harbor beyond.9 This is the beneficent Serra, leading California’s Indians to salvation by the power of his presence. It is possible that the artists who did the illustrations for both Gleeson’s and Thomas’s books may have had access to Palou’s biography, which some Americans did from the mid-nineteenth century on, hence the portrait of Serra on its frontispiece. While most of the nation was celebrating the centennial in 1876, San Francisco also recognized that year the one hundredth anniversary of Mission San Francisco de Asís, commonly known as Mission Dolores. In his Our Centennial Memoir: The Founding of the Missions, Patrick J. Thomas not only related the various events that took place on the anniversary but also provided a thorough and well-informed history of the missions throughout California. He made clear the underlying theme of his history: “The Missions of California are the landmarks of its civilization. The struggles of the early missionaries, against the most appalling obstacles, to plant the Cross in a wild and unknown country, are full of interest to those who have profited by their unexampled heroism.”10 Thus, Thomas implicitly linked California’s Anglo pioneers to these earlier heroic pioneers, people who came from afar and not only prevailed but also thrived. Thomas’s book contained several wood engraved illustrations, including among others a scene of the founding of San Carlos Borromeo, a view of Santa Barbara, and, of course, one of Mission Dolores.11 Its image of Serra, however, closely followed Gleeson’s, with an Indian

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hut replacing the scene of Serra baptizing. And even more prominently than the scene in Gleeson, the sun’s rays gleam in the sky beyond the Spanish ship, presumably a sign of the spiritual light brought to California’s shores by the Spanish and their missionaries. Serra also appeared at the beginning of Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1883 two-part Century series on Serra’s life and the history of California’s missions.12 Jackson is best known, of course, for her tremendously popular 1884 novel Ramona: A Story, in which the California missions figure. Her articles on Serra, in fact, provided her with the background for her novel’s exploration of the disastrous effects on the state’s Indians following the decline of the mission system. Her first article, “Father Junipero and His Work,” contained a brief and sympathetic biography of Serra and an account of the subsequent history of the missions up to the U.S. annexation of California following the Mexican-American War. Jackson held an unambiguously adulatory view of the missionary enterprise and those who were responsible for it. “It is worth while, in studying the history of these Franciscan missions, to dwell on the details of the hardships enduring in the beginning by their founders.” In an age of strong anti-Catholic feeling, she proclaimed, “Only narrow-minded bigotry can fail to see in them proofs of a spiritual enthusiasm and exaltation of self-sacrifice which are rarely paralleled in the world’s history.”13 And despite her considerable and still-growing knowledge of the treatment to which America’s Indians had long been subjected and the depredations suffered by the mission Indians of southern California, she still claimed that Serra and his Franciscans helped “change in the Indian, from the naked savage with his one stone tool, grinding acorn-meal in a rock bowl, to the industrious tiller of soil, weaver of cloth, worker in metals, and singer of sacred hymns.”14 Perhaps sensing that her view could elicit criticism from like-minded proponents of Indian causes, she cited Jean-François de Galaup’s account of the considerable size of Indian populations he encountered at the missions during his 1786 journey to California, claiming that “[s]uch figures seem sufficient refutation of the idea sometimes advanced, that the Indians were converted by force and held in subjection by terror.”15 In Jackson’s case, because of her reputation and the national audience that Century enabled her to reach, her comments were arguably the most influential articulations of the bedrock foundations of California’s mission myth in American culture: heroic missionaries bringing Christianity and civilization to improve the lives of the socially, economically, and spiritually inferior Indian subjects of their enterprise. The Serra in Jackson’s article is the man who appears closer to the end of his life than the energetic missionary he was at the beginning of his time in Alta California, looking worn if not gaunt from the demands of his labors and his dedication to them (Figure 12.2). The format of the portrait is also more formal, a common type of bust-length presentation seen in many European religious and secular

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figure 12.2. Artist unknown, Father Junipero Serra, 1883, halftone illustration from Helen Hunt Jackson, “Father Junipero and His Work: A Sketch of the Foundation, Prosperity, and Ruin of the Franciscan Missions in California,” Century 26, no. 1 (May 1883). Huntington Library.

portraits (and subsequently adopted by American artists), both painted and sculpted, from the sixteenth century on, thus grounding this representation of Serra in a long-established tradition of depicting important historical and contemporary figures. Gravity rather than fervor dominates, perhaps consistent with Jackson’s intent to portray Serra in the most sympathetic terms possible. The source for this illustration, in fact, is itself closely tied to the evolution of the Serra narrative. As Jackson relates: Among the treasures of the Franciscan College in Santa Barbara, California, is an old daguerreotype, taken from a portrait painted more than a hundred years ago at the

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College of San Fernando, in Mexico. The face is one, once seen, never to be forgotten; full of spirituality, tenderness, and unutterable pathos; the mouth and chin so delicately sensitive that one marvels how such a soul could have been capable of heroic endurance of hardship; the forehead and eyes strong, radiant with quenchless purpose, but filled with that solemn, yearning, almost superhuman sadness, which has been in all time the sign and seal on the faces of men born to die for the sake of their fellows. It is the face of Father Junipero Serra, the first founder of the Franciscan Missions in South California.16

Emphasizing to her readers the deep faith and spiritual strength possessed by this hero of California’s missions, Jackson even compared this portrait of Serra with one of his order’s founder, Saint Francis of Assisi, claiming that “[t]here seems a notable likeness between the two faces.”17 Interestingly, when an English translation of Francisco Palou’s 1787 biography was published, fittingly in 1884 on the centenary of Serra’s death, yet another Serra is depicted. The frontispiece of Reverend J. Adam’s Life of the Ven. Padre Junipero Serra shows a middle-aged Serra, in a bust-length three-quarter pose, his head raised. He wears the typical Franciscan habit but here with a stole around his neck, a symbol of his ordination. Neither active nor aged, this Serra is seemingly depicted as more content with knowledge of his role rather than needing to express it through action or gesture.18 It was also during this period, from the mid-1870s up to around 1900, that even more public images of Serra appeared. Though not a portrait, one of the most significant was by the American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, its significance defined by the site for which the work was destined: the U.S. Capitol. Bierstadt, eager for such a prestigious commission, began seeking congressional support for his project in the 1860s.19 In 1875 he prevailed upon Congress to acquire his Discovery of the Hudson River, celebrating the English explorer’s 1609 voyage for the Dutch East India Company that led to the Dutch’s 1624 settlement in New Amsterdam, an important event in the European colonization of America. After failed efforts to convince the House of Representatives to buy a second painting of a Rocky Mountain theme, Bierstadt turned to the idea of another history subject that would form a pendant to his Hudson discovery painting. He first considered the discovery of the Columbia River on the Pacific, a companion based on the importance from east to west of navigable waterways. He rejected the idea, however, and then tried to persuade Congress to buy one of his western landscapes, Kings River Canyon, which he had been able to place on display in the House chamber. Again, the theme was that of identifying features of the American landscape that signaled the country’s span across the continent. Unsuccessful in this effort, Bierstadt began work on a new subject, one showing the Spanish arriving at the Bay of Monterey that he subsequently exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (Figure 12.3). This time his lobbying

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figure 12.3. Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830–1902), The Landing of the Spaniards in California in 1770, 1875, oil on canvas, 72 x 120 inches. Courtesy of the Office of Architect of the Capitol.

efforts paid off, and the House agreed in the summer of 1878 to acquire the Monterey subject.20 Both six-by-ten-foot paintings were installed in the House chamber, the California scene on the left of the dais and the Hudson on the right.21 Despite the four years that passed between the two paintings and the changes in subject that preceded the final commission, compositional relationships between the two confirm that Bierstadt viewed them as pendants.22 The precise subject of the Monterey picture, however, has been a matter of debate, its title having been changed by Bierstadt even as it was being shown at the Centennial. When the painting was first installed in the House, Bierstadt gave it the generic title California Landscape. At the Centennial Exhibition he renamed it The Landing of the Spaniards in California in 1770, which has given rise to confusion over whether it shows the landing of Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno in Monterey in 1601 or the arrival in 1770 of Franciscan Junípero Serra and Captain Gaspar de Portolá’s expedition, with recent scholars claiming that it shows the latter and retitling the picture Settlement of California, Bay of Monterey, 1770.23 Evidence indicates, however, that title aside, Bierstadt drew on a specific source for his subject. Serra’s activities in Alta California were well documented, thanks to Palou’s 1787 biography. In it, Palou includes the text of Serra’s letter to him describing the party’s arrival in Monterey, a place regarded as strategically important by the Spanish military, where Spain officially took possession of Alta California. Serra’s letter reveals that

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When the holy day of Pentecost arrived, which was on the 3rd of June, the whole of the officers, naval as well as military, and all the people, assembled together in a small ravine, where the Fathers caused an altar to be erected, and the bells to be rung. They then chanted the Veni Creator, blessed the water, erected and blessed a grand cross and the royal standards, and chanted the first mass that was ever performed in this place. We afterwards sung the Salve to our Lady, before an image of the most illustrious Virgin, which occupied the altar, and then I preached a sermon. We concluded the festival with a Te Deum. After this the officers took possession of the country in the name of our Lord the King, whom God preserve. We all dined together in a shady place on the beach; the whole ceremony being accompanied by many volleys and salutes, on the land as well as from the vessels.24

Bierstadt’s rendering matches precisely the scene described by Palou, which Bierstadt could well have known from John Russell Bartlett’s excerpt from Palou published in his 1854 narrative of his work on the U.S.-Mexican Boundary Commission. Bierstadt’s painting, then, was a commemoration of Serra’s founding of the second Franciscan mission in Alta California, near Monterey (the first in San Diego), the two together strategically important in that they reasserted Spain’s claim from south to north. Monterey held a special importance, in fact, in Spain’s colonial enterprise in northern New Spain. It was the place where Serra and his military counterpart, Gaspar de Portolá, officially took possession of Alta California for the Spanish Crown. Bierstadt’s choice of the subject was important in several respects. The subjects of the two pendants portray the colonization by European powers—specifically England and Spain—of what became the United States. Yet these nations’ acts of discovery and conquest were only preludes to the expansion of a new nation from which these European powers were expelled—as surely would have been evident to members of Congress sitting before his paintings. The paintings’ installation in the House, in fact, reflected this geography, as Monterey Bay was on the left and the Hudson on the right. Moreover, they also made evident that by the time of its centennial the United States had prevailed over those foreign powers who had first explored and colonized the continent and that the geographical and political aims so clearly associated with manifest destiny had been achieved. The importance of the missions in California and to Californians was not likely lost on Bierstadt, who traveled there repeatedly in the 1860s and 1870s and in 1864 made a drawing of Mission Dolores.25 Thus, his painting of Serra’s founding of the mission at Monterey emphasized the contemporaneous significance of California’s missionary past within the broader historical narrative that the two pendants invoked, bringing Junípero Serra to a national stage. Although subsequent public monuments to Serra did not share such a distinguished venue, they nonetheless served a similar civic and often commemorative purpose. In 1891 Mrs. Leland Stanford, the wife of the wealthy California

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figure 12.4. Jason Coombs (American, active late nineteenth century), Father Presidente Junipero Serra, 1891. From Paul Elder, Old Spanish Missions of California (San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company, 1913). Huntington Library 30651.

industrialist, commissioned a sculpture of Serra to be installed in Monterey not far from Serra’s San Carlos Borromeo and close to the site where Serra first landed. More than five thousand people attended the statue’s unveiling on June 3, the day on which Serra had first arrived 121 years earlier.26 The sculpture that Stanford commissioned, by Jason Coombs, shows Serra just about to embark from his boat, an arrival that in the view of so many aficionados of California’s missions changed history (Figure 12.4). It depicts a young, vigorous Serra, with no attempt to reconcile his facial appearance with the many earlier images that in some way

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depend on a presumed lost model. Instead it is a generic, physically impressive young hero whom we encounter, adding another variant to the growing Serra iconography. In 1907 another sculpture of Serra was placed in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.27 It was the work of Arthur Putnam, who gained prominence as a sculptor of public monuments and for architectural commissions in San Francisco and San Diego.28 In his sculpture of Serra, the Franciscan is seen vigorously striding forward, his robes flowing behind him, carrying high in the air above him a large cross, in a display of no mean physical strength apparently intended to suggest as much his enormous spiritual strength. Such images corresponded entirely with descriptions of the heroic personage so often found in the period’s mission publications. The Serra celebrations continued in 1907, when Lilly Reichling Dyer, founder of the Native Daughters of the Golden West, launched a campaign throughout the state to have one of California’s mountains named for him. The highest peak in the Santa Lucia Mountains overlooking Mission San Antonio de Padua was selected. In an effort to make this news of national rather than regional importance, the public announcement of Mount Junípero Serra was made in Washington, D.C.29 The impact of these sculptural monuments was extended by their appearance in some of the many illustrated books on the missions published just before and after 1900. To be sure, most of these books were produced for tourists coming to see the missions, and the inclusion of illustrations of such monuments was but a part of the effort to promote knowledge of and visits to the missions. The growing awareness of the missions as historic monuments in need of preservation and the missions’ potential importance as models for an architectural style were powerful factors as well, generating a significant number of articles in the architectural and popular presses.30 Not surprisingly, images of these various Serra sculptures found a place in these publications. One was Paul Elder’s 1913 The Old Spanish Missions of California,31 a more luxurious book than most in which poems by well-known authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson,32 Bret Harte,33 and Charles Fletcher Lummis were included,34 along with works by many other far less well-known writers.35 Very near the beginning of Elder’s book is a full-page image of the 1891 Jason Coombs Serra sculpture commissioned by Jane Stanford (see Figure 12.4). It is in a section titled “The Old Spanish Missions of California: Their Purpose and the Manner of Their Founding” in which an image of a seated Serra appears at the very beginning. A poem on the page following the Coombs sculpture illustration describes Serra as “a seraphic spirit, . . . a New-World Francis of Assisi; . . . beholder of visions, believer in miracles, merciless wielder of the penitential scourge; yet through simple purity of heart, possessed of a courage not unequal to labors the most arduous, and of a wisdom not unequal to situations the most perplexing.”36

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Serra’s importance in this narrative about the missions continued unabated in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1914 another similarly luxurious illustrated book on the missions, Racine McRoskey’s The Missions of California, featured Serra prominently, this time not only by illustrations but also by texts that sought to identify his labors with those of Saint Francis of Assisi.37 In this fairly luxurious publication by the standard of these popular books on the missions, Serra’s key role is signaled by the book’s color frontispiece, showing a young mother and presumably her daughter sitting in the flower-filled field in front of Mission San Carlos Borromeo, described in the caption below as “Fr. Junípero’s own charge.” A few pages later is an image of Arthur Putnam’s 1891 Serra monument at Golden Gate Park bearing the inscription “No limit to his endurance, or bound to his desires” (Figure 12.5).38 A photograph of Putnam’s sculpture also appears in a little-known mission book of the period, Ludovico Preta’s 1915 Storia della missioni Francescane in California, likely produced to appeal to the growing number of Italian Catholic immigrants who came to the San Francisco area in the first decades of the twentieth century, an effort by its Franciscan author to further expand the public’s embrace of Serra, in this case to a Catholic audience who may not have been aware of his preeminent role in the founding of California.39 The desire to celebrate Serra extended, not surprisingly, to his native Mallorca, fittingly on the two hundredth anniversary of his birth in 1913. Francisco Torrens y Nicolau’s Bosquejo histórico del insigne Franciscano40 contained a thorough biography of Serra, followed by a description of the California missions and finally a section on various public monuments to Serra, including those in Monterey, Golden Gate Park, and Mount Rubidoux, where a large cross dedicated to Serra had been erected in 1913 and where on Easter that year a sunrise service attracted an enormous crowd.41 It also included a photograph of a plaza in Petra dedicated to the city’s native son where Guillem Galmes’s Serra monument was destined to reside. It is a familiar Serra we see, middle-aged, cross in one hand and a book held close to his chest. Torrens’s book, of course, was a celebration of Mallorca’s native son whose efforts had such an impact in distant California. This single publication, however, stands in sharp contrast to the ever-burgeoning number of publications of all kinds that celebrated Serra’s central and by now mythic position in California’s history, at least in terms of how he was presented in popular culture. These artistic celebrations of Serra’s mythical status in California just before and after the turn of the twentieth century found another medium of expression that contributed still further to his increasing visibility in American popular culture: drama. Chester Miller Gore’s 1894 play Father Junipero Serra: A New and Original Historical Drama, in Four Acts was the first of several that would portray Serra and his life in the adulatory terms that continued the tendency dating back to Palou for hagiography rather than biography. Published in Chicago, it was written by Gore over a period of three years prior to its release.42 The play is set in Monterey

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figure 12.5. Arthur Putnam (American, 1870–1930), Serra Monument, 1907. From Racine McRoskey, The Missions of California (San Francisco: Philopolis, 1914). Collection of the author and Huntington Library 278632.

and takes place between March 18, 1784, and Serra’s death on the afternoon of August 28, 1784. The plot centers around Serra’s ultimately successful efforts to gain from the governor of Alta California, Don Pedro Fages, support promised to the Franciscans’ missionary efforts by the Spanish Crown specifically to provide soldiers to protect the missions and missionaries.

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Far more popular and long-lasting was John Steven McGroarty’s The Mission Play, first presented in April 1912 in a specially constructed playhouse at Mission San Gabriel.43 An author of several books and articles on California history, McGroarty was well prepared when approached in 1911 by Frank Miller, the entrepreneur behind Riverside’s Mission Inn whose deep admiration for the Oberammergau Passion Play, the well-known and much-admired German drama whose origins date to the middle ages, inspired him to commission what was described as “an epic production for California.”44 McGroarty and Miller may have been influenced by Martin V. Merle’s 1910 The Mission Play of Santa Clara, which is known to have been performed at least occasionally during the period.45 Within two months of his meeting with Miller, McGroarty completed his script. Although Miller hoped that it would be performed at the Mission Inn, McGroarty’s play, with its cast of nearly a hundred, was too large for the inn. Unable to find another site, Miller decided to build his own playhouse on land donated by the Church at San Gabriel—the fictional Ramona’s birthplace about which McGroarty had previously written.46 The play proved to be enormously popular: since its initial appearance in 1912, The Mission Play has been performed more than three thousand times and by the end of World War II had been seen by an estimated two million people.47 The first act relates the missions’ founding, from Serra’s arrival in Mexico through his 1769 expedition with Gaspar de Portolá to San Diego, concluding with the dramatic arrival of a supply ship that saves them and their companions. The second act opens fifteen years later at Serra’s home mission of San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel, where a convocation of padres from the nine missions Serra founded report on the well-being of their Indian converts. In one of the dramatic high points of the play, Serra forcefully resists Alta California’s military commandant’s lecherous attempts to take as his wife a half-Indian, half-white girl, Anita, excommunicating him and driving him from the mission. The mission’s Indians then gather for a fiesta, which includes both Indian dances and Spanish songs and dances, one of which was composed by Serra himself. The act concludes after the fiesta with the aged Serra kneeling amid the beauty of the moonlit mission, praying for blessings upon his Indians, and acknowledging that death will soon overtake him. The final act takes place some years later in the ruins of San Juan Capistrano, where cattle now roam the mission and one of its former neophytes, Ubaldo, has become caretaker of the mission for the Mexicans. A band of Indians arrive carrying the body of Capistrano’s Franciscan padre who died of starvation, a poignant reminder for those who embraced the Serra myth of one of the tragic effects of secularization, and whom they seek to bury at the mission. From other perspectives, including that of California’s Indians, however, secularization represented the end of the Franciscans’ control and granted them emancipation from the

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mission system. In its promulgation of the Serra myth, the play closes with a mournful prayer, a plea that the Americans help restore the missions to their former glory. Thus, the play links the long-standing view of the heroic Serra with the growing public efforts to preserve the missions as symbols of California’s heritage and a link to its European past. Thanks to a December 1913 article on The Mission Play by the popular and prolific author of romantic western stories, Henry Van Dyke, there is evidence of the how the play was originally presented. Van Dyke, who was suggested to McGroarty as a possible author for the play,48 was taken by McGroarty’s creation, assigning its success and indeed its value to the character of Junípero Serra. “Here lies the strength of the drama. Its hero is an idea, and that idea is incarnate in a man.”49 Serra’s mythic place in California’s history was perhaps never more succinctly stated. One of the illustrations that accompanied Van Dyke’s article shows both Serra and his fellow Franciscan Palou, old but still vigorous, standing tall and resolute in their conviction of the worthiness of their tasks. Color postcards of scenes of the play were also produced, expanding the reach of this public performance beyond the stage on which it took place.50 Images of The Mission Play were also reproduced in Anne Jennings Nolan’s 1928 book on the California missions that included a special section on McGroarty’s drama. Here an older Serra speaks before his fellow missionaries, who raptly listen at the padre presidente’s plea that they remain resolute in their cause to bring the Indians into the church’s fold, regardless of the forces that may act against them.51 By far the most comprehensive and artistically sophisticated of these artistic paeans to California’s Franciscan missionary is Joseph Jacinta Mora’s 1924 monumental Serra Cenotaph, so named because it is not actually a tomb but instead is a monument that rests near Serra’s grave, which is in the adjacent basilica (Figure 12.6). The cenotaph was designed as a memorial to Serra at San Carlos Borromeo and conceived with the intimate involvement of San Carlos’s pastor, the Spanish-born Ramón Mestres.52 In 1903 he made his first trip to California and, like so many first-time visitors to the state, was entranced by the missions after a visit to Santa Inés. He was so entranced in fact that he decided to visit all of California’s missions as well as some in not-so-nearby Sonora, making drawings and taking photographs along the way and recording his impressions of them in his diaries.53 His affection for the missions was deep, so much so that when in 1906 he was married, he arranged for the ceremony to take place at his favorite mission, San Gabriel. After beginning to establish himself as a sculptor in the 1910s, Mora was commissioned to create the Serra cenotaph, arising largely from Father Ramón Mestres’s devotion to both Serra and the Franciscan’s home mission, San Carlos Borromeo, where as pastor Mestres had been working to restore the mission. He came upon the idea to create a permanent monument to Serra at the mission and is reported

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figure 12.6. Joseph Jacinto Mora (American, 1876–1947). Serra Cenotaph, 1924, bronze and marble, Mission San Carlos Borromeo, Monterey, California.

to have seen Mora’s sculpture of Cervantes at Golden Gate Park, leading him to seek an introduction to the sculptor through a curator at the De Young Museum.54 Mestres was probably also inspired by the various Serra memorials, physical and otherwise, created in California in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and his visit to Golden Gate Park may well have given him the opportunity to see Arthur Putnam’s 1907 monument to Serra there. By 1920 Mora was engaged in the project, writing to one of its patrons, California senator James Phelan of San Francisco, that he was about “to ‘settle up’ one of the most important and interesting commissions I have ever been given. It is to execute the Sacrcophagus for Father Junipero Serra and the Three Franciscans buried beside him in the Carmel Mission.” Mora’s enthusiasm was matched by apprehension. “Could anything be grander for the sculptor who loves California— or fraught with any more romantic and sentimental possibilities? I’m girding my loins for the supreme professional effort of my life.”55 By 1921 Mora moved to Carmel, where he bought a lot at First Avenue and San Carlos, designed and built his own house, and began work on the monument. His first conception, carried out in a small plaster model, was for a smaller monument showing Serra as he appeared in death—an image often portrayed in written

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accounts as well as the illustrations that accompanied them, such as in a Henry Sandham illustration for Helen Hunt Jackson’s articles on Serra. Bas-reliefs of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Carlos Borromeo were to have accompanied the figure of Serra, appropriately connecting him with the founding of the Franciscan order as well as the saint for whom his home mission was named. After Mora made life-size plaster maquettes for the cenotaph, both he and Mestres realized, however, that it would take up a significant amount of space in its intended spot within the church’s sanctuary.56 Recognizing too that the increasing attendance at memorial masses held on the anniversaries of Serra’s birth and death would further constrict the space, Mora and Mestres began to consider whether a separate chapel connecting to the church could be constructed to house the monument. Mestres decided to forge ahead with plans for a new chapel, apparently as a way of furthering his efforts to restore the mission compound and to attract additional worshippers to San Carlos. The idea for the chapel was in part based on the chapel at San Juan Capistrano, the only surviving site among California’s missions where Serra was known to have celebrated mass. Thus began the revised plan for the Serra cenotaph and its new chapel. Mora set up a workshop in the courtyard of the mission complex, working on the life-size clay models that were eventually shipped to New York to be cast in bronze, then returned to Carmel for finishing touches and ultimately the assembly and final placement of the cenotaph in the chapel. The cenotaph was unveiled to large crowds on October 12, 1924, only a few months after the 140th anniversary of Serra’s death on August 28, 1784. The event was duly recorded in the San Francisco Call, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Oakland Tribune’s “Daily Magazine” section. Frank L. Pettigrew’s account in the San Francisco Call identifies the various subjects on the cenotaph, revealing what evolved as the richest and most comprehensive iconographic program than had yet been attempted among all the many works of art devoted to Serra. Although there is no documentation indicating who was responsible for this program, it seems likely that it must have been a joint undertaking between Mora and Mestres. Mora’s life-size tomb sculpture of bronze and California travertine marble shows Serra lying on its top with his friends and fellow Franciscan missionaries Juan Crespí, Julian Lopez, and Fermin Lasuén reverently surrounding him.57 As Pettigrew noted, “Father Serra is not represented as in life in the monument, but as in death, which accords with the solemn tradition of the age of cathedral building. His body, recumbent upon the sarcophagus, is clothed in the Franciscan habit, with stole, crucifix, cord and rosary, as he was prepared for burial, in accordance with his dying request.”58 Indeed, Mora made conscious reference to medieval tomb sculpture, as he did in his first conception, conferring upon Serra a link to this venerable tradition of representing monarchs, royalty, and

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high-ranking members of the clergy. Mestres had intended to move Serra’s remains into the new monument, but apparently the sentiments associated with the celebrated, long-sought discovery of the remains just forty years earlier were such that Mestres was dissuaded from doing so by parishioners and other Serra devotees who felt that the Franciscan should enjoy his eternal rest in his tomb near the main altar. The life-size bronze figures of Crespí, Lasuén, and Lopez (who are also buried in the sanctuary of San Carlos Borromeo) surround Serra’s recumbent figure on the tomb, serving as mourners to their lost companion, again a conscious reference to the European tradition of tomb sculpture. Crespí, who traveled with Serra and Portolá from San Diego to Monterey Bay, is shown at Serra’s head “bending forward in an attitude of veneration and benediction.” Lasuén, who succeeded Serra as father president of the missions of Alta California, kneels on the left at the foot of the tomb, with hands folded across his breast in a well-understood gesture of reverence. Lopez, who with Serra served at San Carlos Borromeo, kneels at the right. The restrained dignity with which all the figures are rendered was apparently well received by Pettigrew, who commended Mora for not portraying “these standing and kneeling figures with an expression of grief ” and instead portraying “in their faces that affection found among true churchmen, lightened with religious ecstasy.”59 This portrayal corresponded to the reverence with which Serra had been treated in both text and image in California from the nineteenth century on. An inscription on a thin band of bronze surrounding the cenotaph recites the essential facts of Serra’s life: the names of his parents; his birth date and place; the dates of his initiation into the Franciscan order, his departure to Mexico, his promotion to the presidency of California’s missions, and his death; and that he founded nine missions there. In addition, the inscription identified that the work was a collaboration between Mestres and Mora, who dedicated it to the memory of Serra.60 By placing Serra’s sandalless feet upon a grizzly bear cub, Mora emphasized Serra’s identification with California, using a symbol already found on the state flag that, in Pettigrew’s words, “replaces the heraldic symbol of fidelity, the dog, or the lion, the insignia of strength.”61 The eight bronze and four marble reliefs immediately below Serra tell the abbreviated story of his arrival in California and present the long-accepted narrative of the Franciscans’ missionary enterprise there. The bronze relief at his feet shows God the Father with his right hand in a gesture of benediction and holding a lily in his left. He is depicted within a circular frame with an angel on either side of him. To the right Serra kneels and faces God in prayer, and to the left a galleon sails toward him in full sail, a reference to the miraculous arrival in San Diego of a supply ship that allowed Serra and his companions to continue their missionary activities northward. Below this bronze, carved in low relief in marble, is Spain’s

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coat of arms surrounded by the knotted cord of the Franciscans, thus together with the bronze above signifying God’s blessing upon the Franciscans’ missionary work undertaken under the Spanish Crown. On the left side of the tomb (as seen from Crespí’s viewpoint, looking from Serra’s head toward his feet) are three bronze reliefs relating the story of the Franciscans’ arrival in California following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. At the far right of the three are Serra and Captain Gaspar de Portolá, the military head of the expedition from Baja to Alta California, leading this procession. The middle relief shows a squadron of Spanish soldiers on the march whose supplies are carried on pack horses that follow them. At the end of the tomb where Lasuén and Lopez kneel is a relief showing the Franciscans teaching their Indian charges to till and sow, reinforcing the notion that the Franciscans, aided by their spiritual weapons, taught the Indians how to support themselves through agriculture and thus bringing them one of the many measures of civilization as seen not only in Spanish eyes but also by virtually all the Anglo commentators on the missions right up to Mora’s time. Below the band of these bronze reliefs are three more deeply carved marble reliefs. On the left is a group of three barefoot Indians naked except for loin cloths, each holding a wooden tool or spear, and at the right are three clothed Indians, one holding a long-handled spade and another a whip, their garments and tools the benefits of the Franciscans’ missionary efforts. In the otherwise empty field between these two groups of three figures is a medallion profile portrait of Pope Pius V, who gave the Spanish Crown papal authority to colonize the New World in the service of the Catholic Church. On the right side of the cenotaph, the narrative continues in the same fashion. In the upper register of three bronze reliefs, at the far left Serra is shown baptizing Indians while the newly anointed neophyte’s father stands next to his young son as soldiers and other Indians stand nearby. Baptism was the essential initiation into the church, and the Franciscans assiduously recorded the number of Indian baptisms as a means of measuring their successes, reporting these figures regularly to their superiors. In the long-popular literature on the missions, particularly in California where mission records were relatively well preserved, the numbers of baptisms were frequently included. The next relief shows a battle between Spanish soldiers on the left who fire their guns at the Indians on the right while Serra stands in the doorway of an adobe building. This scene depicts the violent 1775 Indian uprising at San Diego, an unsuccessful attempt to repel the Spanish invaders. It is a story not often told in the vast literature that grew up around Serra and the missions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it was depicted even more rarely. Mora’s inclusion of the scene was surely intended to emphasize the very real dangers that Serra and his fellow missionaries faced in converting California’s Indian population, so

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often referred to in the literature in the period as gentle, docile, and generally welcoming to the missionaries. In this sense, the narrative that Mora depicts on the tomb is more accurate in its allegiance to historical events, albeit included to emphasize the Franciscans’ perceived heroism. From battle and conquest, the narrative continues at the far right in a relief showing Serra celebrating the first mass at Monterey signifying Christianity’s arrival in the place that Serra would eventually establish as his home and where his cenotaph now rests. The essential nature of the Spanish conquest—so often symbolically referred to in terms of the cross and the sword—finds its way into Mora’s narrative in the marble reliefs directly below. On the left three soldiers stand with their weapons in hand, representatives of the Spanish Crown and its military might, and at the right stand three Franciscans, the one at the left holding a hoe, the one in the middle kissing a crucifix, and the one at the right clasping a book in his hands. Between this pair of reliefs is a portrait of King Carlos III, under whom and with whose support Serra and the Franciscans’ carried out their work in Alta California. Through his iconographic program Mora created the fullest expression in any artwork of the nineteenth or twentieth century of Serra’s seminal role, perceived and actual, in California’s history. In the process the Serra cenotaph demonstrates the degree to which the Franciscan mission founder had become publicly venerated by a wide cross section of the state’s citizens. In Pettigrew’s words, its main characters were “[t]he Franciscans friars, who developed and perfected the work begun by the expelled Jesuits from Lower California; the Spanish soldiers, who were employed to repel savage marauders; the neophytes, or Indian converts to Christianity, who till the soil about the missions and lastly, the wild Indians—or gentiles, as they were called by the friars—who were gradually conquered, less by force of arms than by the power of Christian love.”62 This kind of public veneration of Serra in the form of public artworks continued into the 1920s. In 1926 Maynard Dixon, with whom Jo Mora would soon become friends, received a commission for a mural in the ballroom of the newly opened Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. The mural, commissioned from Dixon and his fellow artist Frank Van Sloun by the hotel’s architect, Charles Peter Weeks, was a nine-section frieze in the “Hall of the Dons” and depicted various events from California’s history.63 Surrounding a lunette with a figure of the mythical female figure of Calafia, after whom the state is named, were the horizontal scenes of the Spanish discovery, city dwellers and miners during the gold rush, Anglo migration across the Overland Trail, and, of course, Serra’s arrival in 1769.64 The tonsured Serra, on foot and carrying a cross, leads a group of armed Spanish soldiers who trail behind him on foot and on horseback. At the far right he encounters three Indians, the targets and intended beneficiaries of his message. By the 1920s, Serra’s repeated appearances in these various public realms confirmed his position in the secular world as much as the spiritual.

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Another national and distinctly public recognition of Serra took place in 1931 when Ettore Cadorin’s bronze of the missionary was placed in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. The hall, located in the House of Representatives until 1933, was created by an act of Congress in July 1864 that authorized each state to contribute no more than two sculptures, in bronze or marble, to celebrate U.S. citizens, living or dead, who were renowned for their civic or military accomplishments. By the time California gave its Serra sculpture in 1931, more than fifty had already been placed there, joining three other sculptures given that year, including one from Mississippi depicting Jefferson Davis. The artist was the now little-known Venetian-born painter and sculptor Ettore Cadorin, who came to California from New York in 1925 and remained there for the rest of his life. He depicts a young, robust, standing Serra, tonsured and wearing his Franciscan habit, looking at a cross held in his right hand, high above his head, and holding in his left hand a small model of his home mission, San Carlos Borromeo. In a hall of heroes, Carodin’s sculpture conforms to the norm, celebrating in this case the man considered responsible for not only bringing civilization to California’s indigenous population but also building the very foundations of the state’s growth and prosperity. There is yet another distinctive, if exaggerated, and highly public example of Serra that deserves mention. In 1951 Isabelle Gibson Ziegler published her novel The Nine Days of Father Serra, dramatizing Serra’s initial arrival in Mexico City, his demanding journey to Alta California, his founding of Mission San Diego, and the miraculous appearance of supply ships that saved the Spaniards’ party and allowed him to go on to Monterey, where he founded his home mission, San Carlos Borromeo.65 By the time Ziegler wrote her novel, Californians especially had been repeatedly exposed to the Serra myth for more than half a century, and it is not hard to imagine Hollywood seeking to take advantage of the Franciscan’s wellknown story and presenting it to a national audience. In 1955 Twentieth Century Fox released its film based on her novel, Seven Cities of Gold, starring Michael Rennie as Serra and Anthony Quinn as Gaspar de Portolá, the military commander on Serra’s 1769 expedition, as well as Richard Egan and Rita Moreno in supporting and entirely fictional roles of doomed lovers whose story adds a tragic note to the otherwise heroic episode in Serra’s life.66 The film was one of many dating to the very beginning of the film industry in the United States that directly or indirectly incorporated the California missions’ history. D. W. Griffith, for example, was introduced to the missions in 1910 when he took his fledgling film company to California. In 1910 and 1911, the intensely prolific Griffith made six films in which southern California’s missions figured prominently, thus in the words of cultural historian Kevin Starr putting the missions “immediately at the service of Southern California’s own major effort at identity, the mission myth.”67 Griffith was not the only early director to make use

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of the missions as actual sites or fictional settings for their films, many of which are known only through brief reviews, simple listings, or advertisements in the journal Moving Picture World, including one by Griffith’s famed French contemporary, Georges Méliès, in a picture set at San Luis Rey described as “one of the most intense dramas and beautiful stories surrounding the Mission Period of Old California.”68 Hollywood’s interest in the missions continued throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, most often incorporating the missions, or re-creations of them, as backdrops for countless westerns. The buildings themselves frequently served as sanctuaries for falsely accused or persecuted cowboys and drifters, and their noble and heroic padres standing up for justice in whatever tales were spun around the missions sites.69 The 1934 film La Cruz y La Espada, produced by Twentieth Century Fox, for example, was at the time one of the company’s most successful Spanishlanguage movies.70 Based on a story by Miguel de Zárraga and featuring several songs including “Carmela,” a Spanish California folk song, it is set in late eighteenth-century California near one of Serra’s missions. In a variation on the wellknown Cibola myth associated with early Spanish exploration of the Southwest and particularly with New Mexico, the lead character, Chico, tells his Franciscan padre friend that he wants to search for gold so he can marry his beloved Carmela. Bandits come to the mission and kidnap her, but she is rescued by the padre, Francisco, who inadvertently discovers gold while searching for her. In the movie’s happy ending, Francisco sings a wedding song for the couple, whose marriage takes place at the mission, thus providing another staple of the mission westerns, the brave and noble padre. The movie inspired by Ziegler’s book on Serra was, in fact, one of several Catholic-themed films that appeared in the 1940s and 1950s, including one, The Flowers of Saint Francis (1950), on the life of the founder of the order to which Serra belonged.71 It differed, however, in its focus on Serra and its purported ties to the story of by then the long-enshrined Franciscan. Challenged to find a suitable location that would suggest the rugged deserts through which Serra traveled as well as the pristine California coast he encountered, executive producer Darryl F. Zannuck and director Robert D. Webb selected Guadalajara and the coastal town of Manzanillo, Mexico. An Indian village was constructed in the hills nearby, and in a noteworthy feat of set design, a small-scale reproduction of the original San Diego mission was built on the beach, ushering in a new level of fiction on the already larger-than-life story of the Franciscan missionary. It must be said that overall the film, like Ziegler’s novel, is thoroughly sentimental, and its dialogue is a test to any but the most fervent believers in Serra’s mythic role in the founding of California’s missions—and thus those willing to overlook the devastating impact of Spanish colonization on California’s Indians, not to mention the film’s unflattering portrayal of them and its underlying racism.

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That role, as these various examples attest, is one that was repeatedly and consistently bolstered by the use of images, spawning a visual material culture that is both wide and deep in its dimensions. There are few figures in American history who have garnered such attention—George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are among those who immediately come to mind—and in this context it is easy to understand why Serra has been described as a founding father of California. The images served in various ways to enhance the viewer’s, and often the public’s, favorable perception of Serra, and although numerous accounts written during the same period that these images were produced were highly critical of the Franciscans’ missionary enterprise and of its leader72—a long-standing criticism that has continued to the present day at the very moment of Serra’s canonization— there can be little question that these images, whether for propagandistic purposes, to promote cultural tourism, or to produce works in drama and film with the hopes of attracting a mass audience and garnering the financial rewards that come with them, presented an uncritically laudatory view of a mythical Junípero Serra. NOTES 1. This aspect of Spain’s missionary enterprise is discussed in Clara Bargellini and Michael K. Komanecky, The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 1600–1821 (Mexico City: Antiguo Collegio de San Ildefonso, 2008). 2. The story of the missions was reported by numerous observers from the time of their founding, and both the means by which the story was broadcast and the audience it reached expanded enormously in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This evolving narrative of the missions, which found currency in the visual arts, fiction, poetry, drama, and film, is discussed in Michael K. Komanecky, “Spanish Missions in the American Imagination,” in Bargellini and Komanecky, The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain, 154–99. 3. This chapter abbreviates further the author’s presentation at the September 2013 Serra conference, concentrating on select examples of the works shown and discussed in that presentation. 4. George Vancouver, Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Around the World, Vol. 1 (London: G. G. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards, 1798), 14. 5. The most notable late nineteenth-century expression of both Serra’s perceived heroic accomplishments and the ongoing destructive impact on California’s Indian population was by Helen Hunt Jackson in a series of four 1883 articles for Century Magazine: “Father Junipero and His Work: A Sketch of the Foundation, Prosperity, and Ruin of the Franciscan Missions in California. I,” Century Magazine 26, no. 1 (May 1883): 3–19; “Father Junipero and His Work: A Sketch of the Foundation, Prosperity, and Ruin of the Franciscan Missions in California. II,” 26, no. 2 (June 1883): 199–216; “The Present Condition of the Mission Indians in Southern California,” 26, no. 5 (August 1883: 511–29); and “Outdoor Industries in Southern California,” 26, no. 6 (October, 1883): 803–20. Jackson, of course, became famous for her enormously popular 1884 novel based on her visits to California’s missions and its Indians, Ramona: A Story. 6. Irish Catholics in California are estimated to have numbered about 54,000 by 1870, when San Francisco, by far the state’s largest city, had some 150,000 inhabitants. See John T. Doyle, “The Remaking of Irish America, 1845–1880,” in Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the

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United States, ed. J. J. Lee and Marion R. Casey (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 225, 240–41. 7. William Gleeson, History of the Catholic Church in California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company, 1872). 8. Ibid., v. 9. Titled Father Junipero Serra, signed in the block “J. A. H.” and “Reitner.” J. A. H. may be the initials of the designer of the image, and Reitner may be the name of the engraver. See Patrick J. Thomas, Our Centennial Memoir: The Founding of the Missions; San Francisco de Asis in Its Hundredth Year: The Celebration of Its Foundation; Historical Reminiscences of the Missions of California (San Francisco: Compiled, Printed and Published by P. J. Thomas, 1877). 10. Thomas, Our Centennial Memoir, 7. 11. Found on pages 12, 41, and 128 and the frontispiece, respectively. 12. Jackson, “Father Junipero and His Work.” 13. Helen Hunt Jackson, “Father Junipero and His Work,” in Jackson’s Glimpses of California and the Missions (Boston: Little, Brown, 1911), 20. 14. Ibid., 34. 15. Ibid., 35. She refers to the posthumously published account by Jean-François de la Galaup, Comte de Lapérousse, of his travels to the California coast, The Voyage of La Pérouse round the World in the Years 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, 2 vols. (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1798). 16. Jackson, “Father Junipero and His Work” (part 1), 3. 17. John Russell Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, Connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission, during the Years 1850, . . . 51’, ’52, and ’53 . . . with map and illustrations, Vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1854), 75–78. 18. See Very Rev. J. Adam, Life of Ven. Padre Junipero Serra (San Francisco: P. E. Dougherty, 1884). 19. Bierstadt’s work for the Capitol is discussed by Linda S. Ferber, “Albert Bierstadt: The History of a Reputation,” in Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1990), 40–45 and 49–53; Kimberly S. Jones, “Albert Bierstadt: History Painter for the Capitol,” in The United States Capitol: Designing and Decorating a National Icon, ed. Donald R. Kennon, 256–73 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000). 20. The story of the commissions is recounted in Ferber, “Albert Bierstadt,” 40–45, 49–53. 21. Shown in Jones, “Albert Bierstadt,” 265, Fig. 5. 22. Discussed in ibid., 265–68. 23. Ibid., 268–69. 24. See page XX and note 23 above. 25. See the chronology in Ferber, “Albert Bierstadt,” 223–29. Old Mission, San Francisco, is referred to in Gordon Hendricks, “The First Three Western Journeys of Albert Bierstadt,” Art Bulletin 46, no. 3 (1964): 346n77, as having been sold in the Thompson sale in New York in 1870. 26. Msgr. Francis J. Weber, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra (San Luis Obispo: EZ Nature Books, 1988), 93. 27. Ibid., 93. An image of the sculpture can be found in Racine McRoskey, The Missions of California (San Francisco: Philopolis, 1914). 28. Putnam (1873–1930) was born in Mississippi and moved to San Francisco permanently in 1899. He quickly ensconced himself in the city’s cultural and social life, receiving commissions from newspaperman E. W. Scripps, befriending writer Jack London, and with artist Maynard Dixon and others forming the California Society of Artists. 29. Weber, The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, 94. 30. On this last point, see Karen J. Weitze, California’s Mission Revival (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1984), chaps. 2 and 4.

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31. Paul Elder, The Old Spanish Missions of California: An Historical and Descriptive Sketch by Paul Elder; Illustrated Chiefly from Photographs by Western Artists (San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company, 1913). The colophon at the end of the book states that John Bernhardt Swart was its designer and that it was printed at Elder’s Tomoye Press in San Francisco in August 1913. 32. Ibid., 13. 33. Ibid., 25. 34. Ibid., 37. 35. They include Agnes K. Gray, Clarence Urmy, Mrs. Volney Howard, Lucius Harwood Foote, Charles Warren Stoddard, Elizabeth Bacon Custer (the widow of the famed army general), Gussie Packard Dubos, Ina Coolbrith (who also wrote for Lummis’s magazine, The Land of Sunshine), Amelia Truesdale, and John S. McGroarty, the author of the immensely popular The Mission Play, which appeared in 1912. 36. Elder, The Old Spanish Missions of California, 2, where it is cited as an excerpt from Irving Richman’s California under Spain and Mexico: 1535–1847. 37. Racine McRoskey, The Missions of California: With Sketches of the Lives of St. Francis and Junípero Serra (San Francisco: Philopolis, 1914). 38. Ibid., 10. 39. P. Lodovico Preta, O. F. M, Storia della missioni Francescane in California con Illustrazioni (San Francisco: Tipografia Catagno, 1915). The book contains rather poor-quality reproductions of photographs of the missions, and the author acknowledges his debt for his text to various earlier popular publications on the missions. 40. Francisco Torrens y Nicolau, Bosquejo jhistórico del insigne Franciscano . . . (Felanitx: Establecimiento tipográfico de R. Reus, 1913). 41. Both scenes are reproduced in George Wharton James, The Old Franciscan Missions of California (Boston: Little, Brown, 1913). James was the author of many books on the missions of both California and New Mexico. 42. Almost nothing is known about Miller other than that he was also the author of Chihuahua: A New and Original Social Drama, in Four Acts (Chicago: Kehm, Fietsch & Wilson, 1890). Miller’s Serra play was published by the Press of Skreen, Baker & Co. Whether either pay was ever performed is not known, but given the flurry of activity surrounding Serra’s one hundredth birthday, the later play probably was performed. 43. The evolution of the play is explored in William Deverell, “The Drama of Los Angeles History,” in his Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past, 207–49 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 44. Clyde Cook, “The Mission Play,” Sunset Magazine (September 1926): 34–35. 45. For example, at Mission Santa Clara’s centennial celebration in 1922, where it was performed by students and faculty from Santa Clara University and set to music by the university’s Professor S. J. Mustol. 46. There was yet another connection with Jackson’s novel. Carlyle Channing Davis and William A. Alderson, The True Story of “Ramona” Its Facts and Fictions, Inspirations, and Purpose (New York: Dodge Publishing, 1914), 105–6, indicate that the leading female role in McGroarty’s play was played in 1913 by Lucretia del Valle, daughter of the senator whom Jackson visited at the Camulos ranch, the place that inspired Jackson’s depiction of the Moreno ranch in her novel. A photograph in Davis and Alderson’s book shows del Valle wearing a dress and shawl that belonged to her grandmother that del Valle wore during her performances. 47. The play was performed from 1912 through 1931 at the Mission Playhouse across from Mission San Gabriel. According to Davis and Alderson, The True Story of “Ramona,” 105, the play was performed daily during the spring and summer of 1913 and later in San Francisco and other cities. Interrupted in 1932 by the Great Depression, it was revived for the 1936 San Diego World’s Fair. It was not

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performed again until 1947, when the City of San Gabriel acquired the Mission Playhouse for use as a civic auditorium and the Mission Play Foundation was founded to support its performance. See the program to The Mission Play: Twenty Second Season January 1947 (Los Angeles: Mission Play Foundation, 1947), a copy of which is in the Autry Library at the Autry National Center, Los Angeles; Cook, “The Mission Play,” 34. The figure of two million is cited in the 1947 program. 48. See Deverell, “The Drama of Los Angeles History,” 210. 49. Henry Van Dyke, “The Mission Play of California,” Century Magazine (December 1913): 180. 50. A collection of these postcards can be found at Mission San Gabriel. 51. Anne Jennings Nolan, The Old Spanish Missions of California Missions (Chicago: Historic America, 1928). 52. Biographical information on Mora can be found in Peter Hiller, Jo Mora: Artist and Writer (Monterey: Monterey Museum of Art, 1998). 53. Hiller, Jo Mora, 6. For an examination of Mora’s work in Mexico, see Michael K. Komanecky, “Jo Mora and the Missions of California,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas num. 91 (Autumn 2007): 207–217. 54. Peter Hiller, The Story of the Father Junipero Serra Memorial Cenotaph (Carmel, CA: Carmel Mission, 2006), 4. My thanks to Peter Hiller for this reference as others related to Mora and his work on the cenotaph. 55. Ibid. 56. From an account of the tomb’s evolution prepared by Sir Richard Joseph Menn, former curator at Mission San Carlos Borromeo. 57. The stone portions of the monument were carved by the Italian sculptor Thomas Corsini from Mora’s clay models. 58. Frank L. Pettigrew, “Monterey to Honor Padre: Unveiling of Statue Starts Gaiety,” San Francisco Call and Post, September 27, 1924, 1. 59. Ibid., 20. 60. “Junipero Serra, hijo legiimo de Antonio Serra y Margarita Ferrer. Nació en Petra, Isla de Mallorca, España, 24 de noviembre, 1713. Vistió el habito Franciscano 15 de septiembre 1737. Embarco para las misiones de México 1749. Fue nominado Presidente de las misiones de la Baja y Alta California en el colegio de San Fernando de México 1767. Fundo en Alta California, nueve misiones. Esta obra fue ideada y llevada a cabo por el Rev. Ramon Mestres y originiada y ejecutada en 1924 por el escultor Joseph Mora. Ambos patricios de V.P. President que murió aquí 1784. R.I.P. Dedicado a la memoria del V.P.T.” My thanks to Peter Hiller for providing the text of this inscription. 61. Pettigrew, “Monterey to Honor Padre,” 20. 62. Ibid. 63. Donald J. Hagerty, The Life of Maynard Dixon (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2010), 160–61. 64. See Paul O. Bingham and Beverly Bubar Denenberg, “Maynard Dixon as Muralist: Sketches for the Mark Hopkins Hotel Murals,” California History 69, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 53–59. 65. Isabelle Gibson Ziegler, The Nine Days of Father Serra (New York: Longmans, Green, 1951). 66. Alan Gevinson, ed., Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 903. 67. Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 291. 68. Georges Méliès, “The Mission Waif,” Moving Picture World 10, no. 2 (September 30, 1911): 927. 69. These films include, among others, The Phantom of Santa Fe (1936), The Romance of the West (1946), The Daring Caballero (1949), The Mysterious Desperado (1949), Border Treasure (1950), Bandit Queen (1950), and The Guns of Fort Petitcoat (1957). See Gevinson, Within Our Gates, 773–74, 859–60, 255, 694–95, 116, 64, and 424, respectively. 70. Ibid., 237.

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71. These movies include, for example, The Song of Bernadette (1943), Diary of a Country Priest (1951), The Robe (1953), and Saint Joan (1957). 72. See, for example, Alexander Forbes, California: A History of Upper and Lower California from Their First Discovery to the Present Time, Comprising an Account of the Climate, Soil, Natural Productions, Agriculture, Commerce, &c.; A Full View of the Missionary Establishments and Condition of the Free and Domesticated Indians: With an Appendix Relating to Steam Navigaion in the Pacific (London: Smith, Elde and Co. Cornhill, 1839).

contribu tors

clara bargellini’s first encounters with art history took place in her native Florence, Italy. Eventually she received a PhD in art history at Harvard University. She also met her Mexican husband there and moved to Mexico City, where since 1979 she has been a professor at the National University. Her specialty is the art and architecture of Mexico’s colonial and early modern periods. Much of her research and numerous publications have focused on northern New Spain, both in the wealthy towns and cities of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, connecting Mexico City to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and at the Jesuit and Franciscan missions to the west and northwest, including California. rose marie beebe is a professor of Spanish at Santa Clara University, where she has taught since 1978. A graduate of Santa Clara University, she received her PhD from Stanford University. Her areas of research include California during the Spanish and Mexican periods. She has coauthored many books, among them the highly acclaimed Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (2015). In 2015 she was awarded the University Award for Sustained Excellence in Scholarship. josé refugio de la torre curiel is a professor in the Department of History, Universidad de Guadalajara (Guadalajara, Mexico). He received his PhD in history at the University of California, Berkeley (2005). His research focuses on the history of interethnic contacts in northwestern New Spain, the Franciscan order in colonial Mexico, and the connections between male religious orders and the history of cartography, on which he has published several articles and chapters in academic journals and collective volumes. His most recent book is Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization in Sonora, 1768–1855 (2012). john dagenais is a professor of medieval Iberian literature and culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in Urbana in

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1981. Dagenais’s publications include The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the “Libro de buen amor” (Princeton University Press, 1994); Decolonizing the Middle Ages, special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, coedited with Margaret Greer (2000); and “Medieval Spanish Literature in the Twenty-First Century” for the Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, edited by David Gies (2004). Dagenais has published articles, editions, translations, and reviews on medieval Catalan, Latin, Castilian, GalicianPortuguese, and Occitan literature. He is currently at work on a book on Anselm Turmeda/ Abdullah al-Tarjuman, on an English translation of Ramon Llull’s Doctrina pueril (Támesis, 2018), and on Junípero Serra’s study and teaching in Mallorca prior to his missionary journey to the New World. In 2011, Dagenais was awarded the Josep M. Batista i Roca Prize by the Institut de Projecció Exterior de la Cultura Catalana. juan vidal josé is a professor of modern history at the Universitat de les Illes Baleares. He has published more than one hundred works including articles, chapters of books, and works of tribute to historians. Vidal has contributed to collective works, such as the Gran Enciclopèdia de Mallorca, the chronological Atlas of the History of Spain, and the Spanish Biographical Dictionary. He has lectured at universities in Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, and the United States. In 2006 Vidal was elected a member of Spain’s Real Academia de la Historia. His most recent book is a study of the English conquest of Menorca, La conquesta anglesa i la pèrdua espanyola de Menorca com a conseqüència de la guerra de Succesió a la Corona d’Espanya (2008). steven w. hackel is a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. Born and raised in California, Hackel earned his BA at Stanford University and his PhD in American history from Cornell University with specializations in early America and the American West. Within the larger field of early American history, Hackel’s research specializes on the Spanish borderlands, colonial California, and California Indians. He is the general editor of the Early California Population Project and the project director for the Early California Cultural Atlas. Hackel co-curated the Huntington Library’s international exhibition Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions. His Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (2013) was awarded the Norman Neuerburg Award for the best book on California before the gold rush. pamela huckins is an assistant professor of humanities at Southern New Hampshire University. She holds a PhD in the history of art from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a master of arts in religion and the arts from Yale University Divinity School. Dr. Huckins conducts cultural tours in Mexico and the United States on behalf of the nonprofit Corredor Histórico/CAREM. She has lectured widely in both the United States and Mexico and has contributed to numerous academic publications on colonial New Spanish art, the missions of Baja and Alta California, and the art and architecture of early California. She serves as chair of the Historic Preservation Committee for the City of San Buenaventura. richard l. kagan is the Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor Emeritus of History and Academy Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University. Kagan is the author of Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain and other books on the history of Spain and Spanish America. His current research focuses on the perception of Spanish and Hispanic culture in the United States. Kagan’s contribution to this volume forms part of this

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project, as does his forthcoming book, The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Art and Culture of the Hispanic World, 1779–1939. michael k. komanecky is a specialist in both American and European art and is chief curator of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. He has organized major exhibitions, lectured, and published widely in both fields, most recently on the work of American artists Robert Indiana, Paul Caponigro, and N. C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth. Komanecky’s interest in the art of the American West has focused on images of the missions of the Southwest in American art, literature, drama, and film, most notably the figures of Junípero Serra, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Carleton Watkins, whose photographs of the California missions will be the subject of a forthcoming exhibition and publication. cynthia neri lewis is a professor of art history at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, California, and a PhD student at the University of California, Riverside. She specializes in the colonial art of the Americas with an emphasis on the missions of Alta California and Spanish borderlands. In addition to her continuing study of the oeuvre of José de Páez and late eighteenth-century Mexican painters, Lewis also writes about representations of the missions in early photographs and nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings. karen melvin is a professor of history and a member of the Latin American studies program at Bates College. She is the author of Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain (2012), a coeditor of Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America: Synoptic Methods and Approaches (2017), and a principal investigator of “Reading the Inquisition,” an online collection of transcribed and translated Inquisition cases. Melvin is writing a book about alms collected in Mexico for charitable projects in North Africa and Jerusalem. anna m. nogar is an associate professor of Hispanic Southwest studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico. She is the author or editor of several books treating colonial Mexican literature and culture, including A History of Mexican Literature (2016), Colonial Itineraries of Contemporary Mexico (2014), and Sisters in BlueHermanas de azul (2017). The forthcoming Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Present treats the centuries-long history of Spanish nun and Serra muse Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda. Nogar also researches writers and cultural producers in the U.S./Mexican borderlands from the seventeenth-century to the twenty-first. antoni picazo muntaner is an associate lecturer in the Department of Modern History at the Universitat de les Illes Baleares. A noted expert on the history of Mallorca, he has published books on the history of Jews in Mallorca, Els xuetes de Mallorca: grups de poder i critojudaisme al segle XVII (2006), and the Franciscan Mallorcan missionaries of colonial Texas, Mallorquines en la colonización de Texas (1993). david rex galindo teaches in the Facultad de Artes Liberales at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. He holds a PhD in history from Southern Methodist University. Rex Galindo is the author of To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683–1830 (2017), and a coeditor of La frontera en el mundo hispánico (2014). He has published articles and essays on the Franciscan missionary program in Spanish America in the Colonial Latin American Historical Review, Archivo Ibero-Americano, and Espacio, Tiempo, Forma, among others.

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contributors

robert m. senkewicz is a professor of history at Santa Clara University, where he teaches courses in early American history, concentrating on the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. Senkewicz received his PhD in history from Stanford University in 1974. He is a leading interpreter of early California and Father Junípero Serra and, along with Rose Marie Beebe, is the coauthor of several books including Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (2015).

Index

Abreau, Juan de, 210 Adams, Henry, 232, 241 Adams, John, 231–32 Adams, John Quincy, 232 Adams, Reverend J., Life of the Ven. Padre Junipero Serra, 263 Ágreda, María de Jesús de, 6, 69–70, 72–73; 1631 letter of (see Tanto que se sacó de una carta [Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda]); birth of, 72; defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, 201; depiction of in the Landa façade, 78, 78fig., 79; the Franciscans’ interest in, 71, 83n9; investigation of by the Inquisition, 72, 73; and La Imprenta de la Venerable Madre Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 71; La mística ciudad de dios, 69, 70–71, 73, 77, 78, 79, 82n4, 201; mystical experiences of, 72–73, 76, 83n17, 201, 202; writings of, 73 Aguiar y Seixas, Francisco de, 89 Alberti, Leon Battista, 193n62 Alcalá, San Diego de, 180 Alcántara, Diego de, 90 Alcázar Hotel (Cleveland, Ohio), 236–37 Alcíbar, José de, 185, 186, 216 Alderson, William A., 281nn26–47 Alemany, Joseph S., 247 Alfonso XIII, 243 Almaraz, Félix D., 28

Amore, Agostino, 61n2, 64n46 Amorós, Bonaventura, 40 Andrés, Juan, 79, 80 Annals of San Francisco (Soulé, Gihon, and Nisbet), 232 Anselm of Canterbury, 214, 215 Anthony of Padua, 54, 214 Aquinas, Thomas, 70, 215 arbitristas, opposition of to religious convents, 103n5 architecture: Mexican Baroque style, 229; Mission style, 5, 229, 236; Mission-Moorish style, 236; Neo-Moorish, Hispano Moresque, or Spanish Renaissance style, 229, 234–35; Spanish Revival style, 229, 236–37. See also architecture, church architecture, church: baptisteries, 167; basilicas, 167; and typology, 167 Aristotle, 28, 183 art: Baroque, 173, 181; casta paintings, 122n14, 201–2; Neoclassicism, 173; Neóstilo, 187; Rococo, 198; the stations of the cross, 179–80; the theme of Christ of Ixmiquilpan, 216; the theme of Francis of Assisi supporting the Virgin Mary, 171; the theme of Franciscan saints, 178; the theme of the Immaculate Conception (Immaculata), 178–79, 211; the theme of Llull’s illumination, 63n35; the theme of the procession of el Señor de

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art: Baroque (continued) la Columna, 204; the themes of Our Lady of Sorrows and the Divine Shepherdess, 210–11 El Arte de la pintura (Pacheco), 180 artists: and cofradías and guilds, 196; workshop model of training of, 196–97 Atherton, Gertrude, 230 auditors, role of, 61n11 Augustine, 183 Augustinians: and confession, 143n17; missions of in Mexico and California, 166 Avisos métricos a las almas contra algunos vicios comunes, 115 Ayala, Ignacio, 178, 185 Ayala, Juan Interián de, The Christian Painter, 210 Azpilcueta, Martín de, Manual de confesores y penitentes, 128 Baer, Kurt, 166, 197, 219n15 Bailey, Gauvin Alexander, 219–20n19 Balboa, Vasco Núñez de, 249 Bancroft, Herbert Howe, 232; California Pastoral, 232; History of California, 232 Bandit Queen (1950), 282n69 Baptism of Christ (Páez), 178, 179fig. Barbastro, Antonio, 135 Bargellini, Clara, 200, 220n25 Bartlett, John Russell, 265 Basabé, Esteban, 94 Baxandall, Michael, 210 beauty, theories of, 182–83 Beebe, Rose Marie, 87 Benavides, Alonso de, 72 Berard of Carbio, 45; martyrdom of, 45 Bernardino of Siena, 41, 45, 54, 213; Serra’s devotion to, 6, 41, 43 Bierstadt, Albert, 263–67; Discovery of the Hudson River, 263, 265; Kings River Canyon, 263; The Landing of the Spaniards in California in 1770, 8, 263–65 Bizet, George, Carmen, 233 Black Legend (Leyenda Negra), 7, 231–33; coining of the term by Juderías, 252n13; origins of, 231 Blackmar, Frank, 253n27 Boabdil, 240 Bodega y Cuadra, Francisco de la, 75 “Bohemian Days in San Francisco” (Harte), 230 Bonaventure, 183 Boniface, 184 Border Treasure (1950), 282n69

Borromeo, Carlo, 183, 206; influence of Loyola on, 209; influence of Paleotti on, 209 Boscana, Jerónimo, 33; Chinigchinich, 32 Bosquejo histórico del insigne Franciscana (Torrens y Nicolau), 268 Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies (Las Casas), 231 Brown, A. Page, 235, 236 Bucareli y Ursúa, Antonio María de, 31, 79, 176, 186 Burton, María Amparo Ruiz de, 240 Bustamante, Francisco de, 200, 220n23 Cabrera, Francisco, 185 Cabrera, Miguel, 185, 196, 197, 203, 215, 216, 221n49; as the “Mexican Murillo,” 197 Cabrillo, Juan Rodríguez de, 249 Cadorin, Ettore, 277; bronze of Serra by, 277 California: A History of Upper and Lower California from Their First Discovery to the Present Time (Forbes), 254n51 California of the Padres: Or Footprints of Ancient Communism (Hughes), 245 California Pastoral (Bancroft), 232 California Society of Artists, 280n28 Callahan, William J., 109 Cambón, Pedro, 160n12 Campa, Miguel de, 78 Campidoglio (Michelangelo), 217 Campos, Miguel, 69 Cañizares, José, 156 Caprarola, Antonio di, Vita del gran servo di Dio Fra Francesco della regolare osser. di S. Francesco, 205 Carbonell, Josephus, 55 Cardona, Antonio, 105n36 Carlos II, 26 Carlos III, 276 Carmen (Bizet), 233 Casanova, Angelo D., 245, 248; efforts of to restore the Carmel mission, 245 Cassanyes-Roig, Albert, 39, 60n1 Cassassola, Juan Carlos de, 121 Cassatt, Mary, 233 Castaño, Bartolomé, Catecismo breve, 134–35, 157–58 Castayó, Bernardí, 40, 41, 56 Castilian language, 16 Castini, Pedro Juan, 177 Catalan language, 16 Catalonia, 15

index Catechism of the Christian Doctrine (Ripalda), 138 Catecismo breve (Castaño), 134–35, 157–58 Celaya, 29 Charles II, 14 Charles III, 14, 15, 216 Charles V, 169, 231 Chase, William Merritt, 233 Châtellier, Louis, 109 Chihuahua: A New and Original Social Drama, in Four Acts (Miller), 280n42 Chinigchinich (Boscana), 32 Christensen, Mark Z., 129, 141, 143n11 Christian Painter, The (J. Ayala), 210 Clara Totius Physiologiae Synopsis (Gaultier), 215 Coll, Michaelis, 55 College of San Fernando, 6, 29, 74, 75, 88, 109, 219n8; 1776 manifiesto of, 75–77; benefactors of, 90; daily life at, 96–98; dedication of to the writings of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 74, 77–78; and the Fernandinos, 6, 127, 132, 132–33, 145n47, 166, 182, 211; genesis of in Mexico City, 89–90; internal organization of, 92–96; missionary training at, 99–101; number of friars in, 90–91, 91fig.; Serra’s life in, 87–106 passim, 108 College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, 88–89; choice of the location of, 88–89; collection of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda’s writings at, 74–75; as a model of Propaganda Fides colleges, 74; as a principal site for the dissemination of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda’s writings in Mexico and Texas, 74; professorship at dedicated to the teaching of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda’s writings, 74; and the Querétarans, 145n53 Collier, William, 242 Colman, Samuel, 233 Columbian World Exposition (1893), 236, 240; and Spanish-themed architecture, 236 Columbus, Christopher, 228, 240 Combs, John W., 248 [Compendium Scoticum], Ms. 68900, 40, 62n17 Concepción, Manuel Mingo de la, 102n1 Confesional en Carmeleño, 125, 130, 134, 137–38, 139fig., 140–41; and the hypothesis that is it a Rumsen text, 135; scrutinizing of Rumsen rituals in, 140; on sexual activities, 138; structure of, 137; on theft, 138, 140; the word muquianc used in, 146n64 Confesionario mayor (A. Molina), 129 confession, 112, 127; and the Augustinians, 143n17; confessional manuals, 127–30; and

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the Franciscans, 118–19; as a goal of popular missions, 112; and the Jesuits, 118–19; and popular missions, 115, 118–19 Constanzó, Miguel, 75 Convent of San Bernardino, 19 Convent of St. Francis of Assisi, 16, 20, 38 Cook, Sherburne Friend, 250 Coolbrith, Ina, 281n35 Coombs, Jason, statue of Serra by, 266–67, 266fig., 267 Cooper, James Fennimore, 227 Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 228 Correa, Juan, 197 Corsini, Thomas, 282n57 Cortés, Gerónimo Thomás de Aquino, 127 Cortés, Hernán, 3; popular story about in religious writings in New Spain, 155 Cortés, Juan, 96 Costanoan languages, 134, 146n63 Council of Trent (1545–1563), 128, 137; “Decree on the Sacraments,” 142n3; on images, 180; on priestly ordination, 105n32 Crespí, Juan, 20, 21, 30, 38, 48, 50, 75, 151, 156, 274 Croix, Carlos Francisco de, 32, 132 Croix, Teodoro de, 33, 145n45 crucifixes, 183–84; articulated crucifixes, 184; discouragement of the use of mechanical crucifixes in popular missions, 116; mechanical crucifixes, 116 Custer, Elizabeth Bacon, 281n35 Daring Caballero, The (1949), 282n69 Davidson, Gilbert Aubrey, 249–50 Davis, Carlyle Channing, 281nn46–47 del Valle, Lucretia, 281n46 de Soto, Hernando, 228, 238 De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi (Rothermel), 237, 237fig. Diary of a Country Priest (1951), 283n71 Diderot, Denis, 64–65n52 Díez, José, 95 Dippie, Brian, 252n2 Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images (Paleotti), 180, 209 Discovery of the Hudson River (Bierstadt), 263; installation of in the U.S. Capitol (House chamber), 264–65 Divine Office, 97, 104n20 Dixon, Maynard, 276, 280n28 Dockweiler, Isidore, 256n74 Doctrina Christiana (Alonso de Molina), 129, 143n25

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doctrinas (Indian parishes or protoparishes), 120, 124n42, 128 Dominicans: challenge of to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, 70; missions of in Mexico and California, 166; and the writing of hagiographies, 244 Donahue-Wallace, Kelly, 205 Dos Passos, John, 237 Dubos, Gussie Packard, 281n35 Dwinelle, John W., 247 Dyer, Lilly Reichling, 267 Eakins, Thomas, 233 ecclesiastical councils, in the New World, 216–17 education, Scholastic, 39; and the square of opposition, 63n32 Eidlitz, Leopold, 234 El arte de la pintura (Pacheco), 210 Elder, Paul, The Old Spanish Missions of California, 267 El Greco, 237 Encyclopedie Methodique (Morvellier), 231 Englehardt, Zephyrin, 249; The Missions and the Missionaries of California, 249 Enriquez, Nicolás, 196, 201 Escandón, José de, 29, 131–32; choice of the locations for mission churches in the Sierra Gorda, 166 Espinosa, Isidro Félix de, 74, 96–97, 114, 120 Esquíbel, José Joaquin, 185 Estarripa, Atanasio de, 15 Fabian y Fuero, Francisco, 120 Fages, Pedro, 152, 269 Fairbanks, Douglas, Sr., 237 Fairbanks, George, 237, 238 “Father Junipero and His Work” (Jackson), 246, 261–63; illustration of Serra in, 261–62, 262fig. Father Junipero Serra: A New and Original Historical Drama, in Four Acts (Gore), 268–69 Felipe IV, 73 Ferdinand and Isabella, 240 Fiske, Eugene A., 239 Flagler, Henry B., 234–35, 237; vision for St. Augustine, Florida, 235 Flowers of Saint Francis, The (1950), 278 Font, Pedro, 32, 134 Font Obrador, Bartolomé, 20, 62n14, 64n46 Fontana, Bernard, 125 Foote, Lucius Harwood, 281n35

Forbes, Alexander, California: A History of Upper and Lower California from Their First Discovery to the Present Time, 245 Forbes, Mrs. A.S.C., 230 Foucault, Michel, 99–100 Fourth Lateran Council (1215–1216), 127 Fourth Mexican Provincial Council (1771), 109, 200 Francis of Assisi, 54; compassionate treatment of animals by, 206; preaching of to Melek el-Kamel, 150 Franciscans: and confessions, 118–19; defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by, 48, 70, 178; habits of, 182; interest of in Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 71, 83n9; and Jesuit themes, interpretations, and uses of art, 200; in Mallorca, 19; Scotism as the official philosophy on, 28; third order lay Franciscans, 122n15. See also missions, Franciscan, in Mexico and California Frank, Waldo, 237 Fuente, Constantino Ponce de la, Suma de doctrina Cristiana, 128 Fuente, Francisco de la, 72 Galaup, Jean-Françoise de, 261; The Voyage of La Pérouse round the World in the Years, 1785, 1786, 1777, and 1778, 280n15 Galve, Conde de, 131 Gálvez, José de, 31, 80, 126, 132, 133, 191n40, 195 Gante, Pedro de, art school of for natives, 200 García, Ignacio, 114; sermons of, 115 García, J. A. Ribot, 34n7 García, José, 133 García Pastor, Jesús, 62n14 Gaultier, Leonard, Clara Totius Physiologiae Synopsis, 215 Geiger, Maynard, 104n12 Gibson, Charles Dana, Life magazine cartoon of, 228, 228fig. Gihon, John H., Annals of San Francisco (with Soulé and Nisbet), 232 Gil, Antonio, 217 Gilmary, John, 32 Giner, Bartolomé, 105n28 Giraldo de Terreros, Alfonso, 209 Gleeson, William, 259–60; An Illustrated History of the Catholic Church in California, 245, 260 Glory of Heaven, The (Páez), 185, 211–13, 212fig. Gomar, Rogelio Ruiz, 219n14 González, Cristina Cruz, 200 González, Fernando Alonsio, 90

index Goodhue, Bertram Grosvenor, 229 Gore, Chester Miller, Father Junipero Serra: A New and Original Historical Drama, in Four Acts, 268–69 Graham-Dixon, Andrew, 210 Gray, Agnes K., 281n35 Gregory the Great, 221n44 Griffith, D. W., 277 Guerrero, Bartolomé Lobo, 207 Guns of Fort Petticoat, The (1957), 282n69 Gustin, Monique, 168–69 Gutiérrez, Ramón, 105n36 Haas, Lisbeth, 135–36, 142n6, 158, 209 Hackel, Steven W., 75, 87, 122n10, 126, 130, 132, 132–33, 133, 134, 144n31, 145n44, 145–46n58, 146n60, 245; on the administration of confession to Indians, 136 hagiographies, of missionaries, 244; hyperbolic rhetoric in, 244 Harte, Bret, 267; “Bohemian Days in San Francisco,” 230 Hastings, Thomas, 233–34, 234 Hearst, William Randolph, 232–33 Hemingway, Ernest, 237 Heredia, Mateo, 74 Hidalgo, Francisco, 73, 74 Historic American Building Survey, 165 History of California (Bancroft), 232 History of California (Hittell), 246 Hittell, Theodore, 246; History of California, 246 Horrors of Hell, The (Páez), 185, 211, 213 Horticultural Hall (Centennial Exposition, 1876), 234 Hotel Ponce de León (St. Augustine, Florida), 234–35 Howard, Mrs. Volney, 281n35 Huckins, Pamela J., 221n51 Hughes, Elizabeth, California of the Padres: Or Footprints of Ancient Communism, 245 Hume, Martin, 242 Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco, 237 Ibarra, José de, 197, 216 Ibiza, 15 Illustrated History of the Catholic Church in California, An (Gleeson), 245, 260; frontispiece of Volume 2, 260, 280n9 Immaculate Conception, doctrine of, 70, 73, 211; defense of by the Franciscans, 48, 70, 178; defense of by Scotus, 48, 70, 83n8, 179; defense of by Serra, 70; defense of by Sor

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María de Jesús de Ágreda, 201; the Dominicans’ challenge to, 70; paintings of (Immaculata), 178–79, 211; statues of in Alta California mission churches, 178–79, 211 Indians, in Mexico and California: appropriation of Catholic rituals by 135–36; decimation and dispossession of, 4–5; effect of the Franciscan missions on, 4; rebellions of, 26, 132; waves of Indians coming into Mission San Carlos Borromeo, 134, 145–46n58 Inquisition, the, questioning of mystical experiences by, 72, 73, 83n16 Iriarte, Juan Pedro de, 30–31 Irish Catholics, in California, 259, 279n8 Irving, Washington, Tales of the Alhambra, 233 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 229, 230, 242, 246, 261; 1883 series of articles in Century Magazine, 279n5 (see also “Father Junipero and His Work” [Jackson]); Ramona: A Story, 230, 261, 279n5 James, George Wharton, 280n41 Jaume II, 29 Jayme, Luís, 33 Jerome, 258 Jesuits: and art, 199–200; and confessions, 118– 19; expulsion of from the Spanish dominions, 30, 132, 199, 217, 257. See also missions, Jesuit, in Mexico and California Jesús y Ganancia, Antonio de, 116 Johnson, Hiram, 248, 256n74 Jonas, Hans, 183 Juan of Capistrano, 213; participation of in the 1456 crusades, 213 Juárez, Juan Rodríguez, 219n15 Juderías, Julián, La Leyenda Negra, 252n13 Juniper, 3, 6, 20, 41, 54; Serra’s devotion to, 6, 41, 43 Katzew, Ilona, 219n9 Kings River Canyon (Bierstadt), 263 Kino, Eusebio Francisco, 186 Krautheimer, Richard, 167 La Cruz y La Espada (1934), 278 La Leyenda Negra (Juderías), 252n13 La mística ciudad de dios (Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda), 69, 73, 77, 82n4, 201; the Franciscans’ interest in, 73; illustrations in, 78; in mission libraries, 79; reading of as a Conceptionist text, 70–71; Sor María’s biography as the preface to, 73 La mística Jerusalén (Villapando), 79

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index

Land of Sunshine, The, 281n35 Landing of the Spaniards in California in 1770, The (Bierstadt), 8, 263–65, 264fig.; installation of in the U.S. Capitol (House chamber), 8, 264; retitling of as Settlement of California, Bay of Monterey, 1770, 264 La Pastora Coronada (Sevilla), 210 Larkin, Brian, 120 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies, 231 Lasuén, Fermín Francisco de, 30, 95, 102, 135, 149, 154, 176, 274; catechetical guide of, 137 Lears, T. Jackson, 235 Ledesma, Josef de, 185, 192n42 Leider, Emily, 230 Leopold I, 14 Leutze, Emanuel, 237 Life of the Ven. Padre Junipero Serra (Reverend J. Adams), 263; frontispiece of, 263 Little Book on the Meditation on the Passion of Christ Divided into Seven Hours of the Day, 209 Llinás, Antoni, 6, 13, 21, 26–28, 33, 73–74; appeal of addressed to the king and Council of the Indies to create a seminary-college, 27–28, 34n11; birth of, 26; education of, 26; founding of Propaganda Fide colleges by, 89; influence of Llull on, 29; joining of the Franciscan order, 26 Llull, Ramon, 6, 20, 29, 33–34, 43, 65n52, 110, 183; founding of Miramar college by, 29; illumination of on Mount Randa in Mallorca, 43, 45, 63n35 London, Jack, 280n28 López, Andrés, 185 López, Baldomero, 96 López, Juan, 274 López, Marcos, 185, 186 Lorenzana, Francisco Antonio de, 30, 120, 121, 191n40 Loyola, Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, 119–20, 208 Loyola, Juan de, Meditaciones del sagrada corazón de Jesus, 210 Luke, as the patron saint of painters, 215 Lummis, Charles F., 230, 236, 238–39, 242, 243, 246–47, 249, 255n59, 267; The Spanish Pioneers, 239, 241, 247–48 Madison Square Garden, 235 Mallorca: active resistance of to recognizing Philip V as king, 15; birth rates in, 17–18; conquering of by the Bourbons (1715), 14,

15; death rates in, 17–18; economic structure of, 16; effect of the Bourbon conquest on, 16; food crises in (1709–1712 and 1747–1749), 18; Franciscan convents in, 19; population of, 16. See also Petra Manero, Pedro, 72 Manso y Zúñiga, Francisco, 198 Manual de confesores y penitentes (Azpilcueta), 128 Maravilla Americana (1756), 216 Márgil de Jesús, Antonio, 73, 74, 90, 95, 113, 131 Marsá, María, 62n14 Massanet, Damián, 26, 74; and the colonization of Texas, 21, 26 Mather, Cotton, 231 Matson, Daniel, 125 McGroarty, John Steven, The Mission Play, 5, 8, 248, 249, 270–71, 281n35 McRoskey, Racine, The Missions of California, 268 McWilliams, Carey, on California’s “Spanish fantasy heritage,” 227, 229–30, 250 medievalism, 235 Meditaciones del sagrado corazón de Jesús (J. Loyola), 210 Méliès, Georges, 278 Mena, Luis de, Virgin of Light, 185 Mendieta, Jerónimo de, 142n4 Menn, Richard Joseph, 282n56 Merle, Martin V., The Mission Play of Santa Clara, 270 Mestres, Ramón, 271–72, 273 Meurisse, Martin, 222n80 Michelangelo, Campidoglio, 217 Miller, Frank, 270; Chihuahua: A New and Original Social Drama, in Four Acts, 280n42 Miranda, Juan de, 215 Mission Play, The (McGroarty), 5, 8, 248, 249, 270–71, 281n35; advertisements for, 248; color postcards of, 271; connection of with Jackson’s novel Ramona, 270, 281n46; first act of, 270; images of in Anne Jennings Nolan’s The Old Spanish Missions of California Missions, 271; performances of, 281n45, 281–82n47; popularity of, 270; second act of, 270; third act of, 270–71 “Mission Play of California, The” (Van Dyke), 271; illustration of Serra and Palou in, 271 Mission Play of Santa Clara, The (Merle), 270 Mission San Carlos Borromeo, 134–41; four waves of Indians coming into the mission, 134; memorial to Serra at (see Serra

index Cenotaph [Mora]); and the supply of goods to local Indians, 140 Mission San Diego, destruction of by Indians, 33 Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), 260; centennial celebrations of the founding of, 247 Mission San Gabriel, 152 Mission San Miguel, mission church at, 187–88, 188fig. Mission San Sába, Comanche attack on, 26 Mission San Xavier del Bac, mission church at, 186 missions, Franciscan, in Mexico and California, 4–5, 30, 125–27, 257; and catechisms, 127, 130, 134–35; and coercion, 4; as a continuation of larger patterns of Spanish settlement and evangelization methods, 132; and the expansion of rival imperial powers, 132; and high mortality rates, 4; and Indian hostility, 132; and the learning of indigenous languages, 33, 135; and manuals for confessions, 127, 127–30, 134–35; mission churches, 77–78, 78fig.; nineteenth-century secularization of, 4; patterns of mission government, 131–33; and plummeting fertility rates among Indian women, 4; and the recording of the number of Indian baptisms, 275; and recruitment of Indians from greater distances, 4; and “the Texas method,” 131; as tourist attractions, 5; the use of dialogue and the search for peace, 33–34. See also missions, Franciscan, in Mexico and California, art and architecture in California missions, Franciscan, in Mexico and California, art and architecture in California, 176–80; and the scarcity of skilled labor, 176; wall paintings and sculpture, 176–80. See also missions, Franciscan, in Mexico and California, art and architecture of the Sierra Gorda mission churches missions, Franciscan, in Mexico and California, art and architecture of the Sierra Gorda mission churches, 166–75, 170fig., 171fig., 172fig., 174fig., 175fig.; emulation of sixteenthcentury Franciscan building projects in the native towns of central Mexico, 167–68; focus on ornamentation and iconography, 168, 169, 172–74 missions, Franciscan, in Texas, 131; and “the Texas method,” 131 missions, Jesuit, in Mexico and California, 30, 131; creation of libraries, 30; financial

295

independence of, 30; patterns of mission government, 130–31 missions, in Mexico and California: as actual sites or fictional settings in films, 277–78; the evolution of a mission, 144n32; the evolution of a mission district, 144n32; illustrated books on, 267; manuals for confessors, catechisms, and guides used in, 130, 144n29 missions, popular, 89, 107, 109, 112–21, 178; broad appeal of, 119; and confessions, 115, 118–19; daily schedule of, 114; and devotional aids, 115; discouragement of the use of mechanical crucifixes in, 116; and the instillation of good habits, 112; and missionaries’ speeches, 113–14; and public processions, 112–14, 116, 119; and the reform of the non-elite population, 120–21; and sermons, 116–17; structure of, 112; support of from the Bourbon government, 119–20; support of from parish priests, 120; support of from reformist bishops, 120; and the use of paintings (enrollados), 178, 221n55; and the use of theater, 112, 116 Missions of California, The (McRoskey), 268; frontispiece of, 268 Missions and Missionaries of California, The (Engelhardt), 249 Molina, Alonso de: Confesionario mayor, 129; Doctrina Christiana, 129, 143n25 Molina, J. Michelle, 108 Monterey: importance of in Spain’s colonial enterprise, 265; Serra’s dislike of as a place for a mission, 151–52 Montúfar, Alonso de, 220n23 Mora, Joseph Jacinta, Serra Cenotaph, 271–76, 272fig. Moreno, Roberto, 128 Morvellier, Nicolas Masson de, Encyclopedie Methodique, 231 Mount Junípero Serra, 267 Moving Picture World, reviews, listings, and advertisements in for films with missions as actual sites or fictional settings, 277–78 Moya, Juan Bautista de, 136 Mugártegui, Pablo de, 96 Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban, 197, 206, 211; as a model for painters in New Spain, 219n12 Murillo Gallegos, Verónica, 130 Mustol, S. J., 281n45 Mysterious Desperado, The (1949), 282n69 mystical experiences, 72; and popular devotion, 72; and the Spanish Inquisition, 72

296

index

Nahl, Charles Christian, 233, 233fig. Neuerburg, Norman, 166, 218n2 Neve, Felipe de, 154–55 Nine Days of Father Serra, The (Ziegler), 277 Nisbet, James, Annals of San Francisco (with Soulé and Gihon), 232 Noguera, Francesch, 38–39, 40, 48; circles of the heavens drawing by, 48. See also Serra, Junípero, class notes from the teaching career of Nolan, Anne Jennings, The Old Spanish Missions of California Missions, 271 Nolan, James L., 166 Noriega, Matías, 96 Nueva Planta Decrees, 15–16 Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar, 238 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Alonso, 120, 217 nuns, in New Spain, 198; and escudos de monjas, 198 Obermmergau Passion Play, 270 O’Gorman, Edmond, 198 Old Spanish Missions of California, The (Elder), 267 Old Spanish Missions of California Missions, The (A. Jennings Nolan), 271 Oles, James, 210 Oliván Rebolledo, Juan Manuel de, 33 Orientalism, 233 Ortega Noriega, Sergio, 131 Ortiz de Velasco, José, 105n26 Our Centennial Memoir: The Founding of the Missions (Thomas), 260–61 Our Lord According to St. Luke (Paéz), 214–15 Ovando, Juan de, 143n25 Pacheco, Francisco, 210, 222n61; Arte de la pintura, 180; and bultos, or encarnaciones, 215; El arte de la pintura, 210; formula of for paintings of the Virgin Mary, 202 Páez, José de, 7, 185, 195–223 passim, 219n4; Baptism of Christ, 178, 179fig.; as a cabreriano, 196, 197; casta painting series of, 201, 212; escudos de monjas of, 198, 199fig.; The Glory of Heaven, 185, 211–13, 212fig.; The Horrors of Hell, 185, 211, 213; Immaculatas of, 211, 220n28; Our Lord According to St. Luke, 214–15; painting of Christ of Ixmiquilpan, 216; painting of the destruction of the San Sabá mission, 209–10; painting of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 201–2; portrait of Archbishop Haro, 217; the Rococo style of his

paintings, 197–201; The Sacred Heart of Jesus with Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Louis Gonzaga, 217–18; Saint Louis of Toulouse, 181fig.; saint paintings of, 213–14; San Antonio de Padua, 213–14; standard features of the portraits by, 213. See also Paéz, José de, series on the life of Francis Solano (La Vida de San Francisco Solano) Paéz, José de, series on the life of Francis Solano (La Vida de San Francisco Solano), 185, 193n70, 202–10, 208fig., 220n33; current locations of the extant panels, 220n34; panel 1, 202–3, 206; panel 2, 203; panel 3, 203, 204fig.; panel 4, 204, 205fig., 206; panel 5, 206; panel 6, 207, 208fig.; placement of the church of San Fernando, 207; possible subjects of the two missing panels, 206–7; rediscovery of by Refugio Palacio, 202 Pagden, Anthony, 154 Paleotti, Gabriele, 180, 209; Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images, 180, 209 Palma, religious orders in, 20–21 Palou, Francisco, 20, 21, 30, 38, 48, 50, 80, 91, 94, 95, 104n16, 114, 177, 183, 207; on basic mission labor, 81; election of as guardian, 96; influence of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda on, 71; reprinting of the Tanto que se sacó de una carta as an appendix to his biography of Serra, 81–82. See also Palou, Francisco, biography of Serra by Palou, Francisco, biography of Serra by, 69–70, 71, 87, 93, 97, 101, 105n22, 110, 113, 114, 116–17, 177, 180, 184, 204, 244–45, 258, 264–65; appendix of (Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda’s Tanto que se sacó de una carta), 73, 81–82; emphasis on Serra’s humility in, 98; frontispiece of, 110, 111fig., 117–18; as hagiography, 244; rediscovery of in the mid-nineteenth century by California authors, 244–45 Panama-California Exposition (1915), 229, 249; and the transformation of Balboa Park into a “city of Old Spain,” 229 Pangua, Francisco, 95, 185, 213 penance, sacrament of, 127–28. See also confession Peréz, Juan, 21, 75 Pérez de Mezquía, Pedro, 91 Pérez de Ribas, Andrés, 177 Pérez de la Serna, Juan, 216 Pérez Villanueva, Joaquín, 83n16 Petra, 13; agriculture in, 17, 18–19; birth rates in, 17; clergy in, 17; death rates in, 17;

index government of, 17; marriage rates in, 17; population of, 16–17; religiosity of, 19 Petra, Miguel de, 65n52, 210 Pettigrew, Frank L., 273, 274, 276 Phantom of Santa Fe, The (1936), 282n69 Phelan, James, 272 Philip II, 26, 231 Philip V, 5, 14, 15, 90 Pickford, Mary, 237 Pico, Juan Antonio, 94 Picolo, Francesco Maria, 167 Pieras, Miguel, 69 Plato, 183 Pol, Juan, 40, 43 Polzer, Charles, 144n32 Pope Francis: apology of for the church’s sins against indigenous peoples, 2; and the canonization of Serra, 1, 101, 244 Pope John Paul II, and the beatification of Serra, 244 Pope Pius V, 275 Portilla, Antonio de la, 15 Portolá, Gaspar de, 4, 151, 249, 264, 265, 270, 275 Pou, Bartolomé, 20 Pouncy, Benjamin Thomas, engraving of the Mission of San Carlos, 258, 259fig. Powell, William H., 237 Prescott, William Hickling, 237 Preta, P. Lodovico, Storia della missioni Franciscane in California con Illustrazioni, 268, 280n39 Propaganda Fides colleges, 21, 27–28, 70, 88, 89, 101–2, 109; conferencias at, 100–101; electoral process in, 93–94; investment of in Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 73–74; purpose of, 73, 88, 109; and the recruitment of Spanish-born friars, 91; the seven colleges in New Spain, 109. See also College of San Fernando; College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro protomissionaries, 83n6 Pulitzer, Joseph, 232–33 Puritans, in New England, 246 Putnam, Arthur, 267, 280n28; statue of Serra by, 267, 268, 269fig. Ramis-Barceló, Rafael, 39, 60n1 Ramona: A Story (Jackson), 230, 261, 279n5 Refugio Palacio, Luis de, 202 reportatio, medieval system of, 52 Reportatio parisiensis (Scotus), 52 Ricard, Robert, 126, 136

297

Ripalda, Gerónimo de, Catechism of the Christian Doctrine, 138 Rivera y Moncada, Fernando, 152, 154, 156 Robe, The (1953), 283n71 Romance of the West, The (1946), 282n69 Romero de Terreros, Pedro, 221–22n56 Roosevelt, Theodore, 238, 243; softening of his attitude toward the Spanish, 243; Winning of the West, 232 Rothermel, Peter F., De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi, 237, 237fig. Royal Academy of San Carlos, 186, 217 Royer, Fanchon, 207 Rubens, Peter Paul, 171 Rubio y Salinas, Manuel José, 207, 221n49 Ruiz, Manuel Esteban, 176, 187 Sack of Rome (1527), 231 sacraments, in the Catholic Church, 142n3. See also penance, sacrament of Sacred Heart of Jesus with Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Louis Gonzaga (Paéz), 217–18 Saint Joan (1957), 283n71 Saint Louis of Toulouse (Páez), 181fig. Salvatierra, Juan María de, 260 San Antonio de Padua (Paéz), 213–14 Sánchez Solano, Mateo, 202 Sancho, Juan, 96, 104n17 Sandham, Henry, 273 Sandos, James, 133, 140, 214, 222n76 San José, Francisco de, 95 Santa Fe, New Mexico, officials’ stress on the Spanishness of, 239–40 Santa Fe (military encampment), 240 Santiesteban, José de, 209 Santo Domingo, 196, 219n7 Sanz, José, 105n27 Sargent, John Singer, 233 Schneider, Martin, 219–20n19 Schwarzmann, Hermann J., 234 Scott, Joseph, 242 Scotus, John Duns, 6, 28, 39, 54, 150, 183; on the Christian life as a pilgrimage toward unity with God, 187; defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by, 48, 70, 83n8, 178; image of on the ceiling of the mission of La Purísma Concepción de Landa, 63n33; Reportatio parisiensis, 52 Scripps, E. W., 280n28 Sebastian, 203 Senkewicz, Robert M., 87

298

index

Serra, Francesc, 52–53, 60n1 Serra, Junípero, 1, 228–29: “always go forward, never turn back” saying of, 31; beatification of (1988), 1, 244; as bilingual, 20; birth of, 3, 13; Cadorin’s bronze of, 277; canonization of (2015), 1–2, 87, 101, 244; the centennial of his death, 247–48, 259; childhood of, 3, 19; chronology of his student and teacher days, 53–60; on the Comanche attack on Mission of San Sabá in Texas, 16; as comisario (field agent) for the Spanish Inquisition, 3; confirmation of by Bishop Atanasio de Estarripa (1715), 15; Coombs’s statue of, 266–67, 266 fig., 267; correspondence of, 31; death of, 4; death date of declared a legal holiday, 247–48; defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, 70; devotion of to Bernardino of Siena, 6, 41, 43; devotion of to Brother Juniper, 6, 41, 43; devotion of to the Virgen de la Luz, 194n73; doctoral degree of, 38; education of, 19–20, 28, 38; family of, 17–18; first statue of, 248; historical interpretations of, 148; importance of to early California history, 1; influence of the Convent of San Bernardino on, 19; influence of Llull on, 20, 29, 126; influence of the Propaganda Fides colleges on, 28–34; influence of Scotus on, 126; “invention” of as the founding father of California, 244–52; joining of the Franciscan order and taking of the name Junípero, 3, 13, 20, 41; last visit of to Mallorca (1749), 18; the media’s simplification of, 2, 8n4; Mora’s Serra Cenotaph, 272–76, 272fig.; ordination of, 13; as philosophy teacher in the Palma convent, 20, 38; portraits of, 110, 111fig., 117–18, 261–63, 262fig.; and the practice of self-flagellation, 155, 200, 204–5; as professor at the Lullian University, 3, 20, 28, 38, 92, 99, 222n80; Putnam’s sculpture of, 267, 268, 269fig.; sermons of, 20, 116–17, 153–54; statue of in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, 250, 251fig., 252; taste in art of, 180–89; the tercentennial of his birth, 1, 2; vandalism of statues of, 8. See also Serra, Junípero, class notes from the teaching career of; Serra, Junípero, as a missionary to Mexico and California; Serra, Junípero, student notes on the Summaries and the Treatises of Serra, Junípero, class notes from the teaching career of, 48–53; Noguera’s farewell to Serra and Palou in, 52; Noguera’s self-identification as the copyist in, 62n21; Noguera’s tree draw-

ing in, 50, 51fig.; Serra’s use of the vernacular in, 50; title page of, 48, 49fig., 52 Serra, Junípero, influence of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda on his mission work, 6, 69–86 passim; his choice of footwear, 69, 82; his fundamental motivation for becoming a missionary, 71; self-conception of as a continuation of her missionary tradition, 80–81; writings about in his diary, 79 Serra, Junípero, as a missionary to Mexico and California, 3–4, 29–30, 41, 107–24 passim, 122n12, 126, 132, 133; approach of to indigenous peoples, 32, 148–61 passim; conversations of with Juan Evangelista, 146n60, 157; dedication of his home mission to Borromeo, 209; descriptions of in the period’s mission publications, 267; destinations for the missions of, 122n10; and the giving of food and clothing to indigenous peoples, 31–32; life of in the College of San Fernando, 87–106 passim, 108; and Mission San Carlos Borromeo, 134–41; and the pardon, 32–33; and preaching by example, 32; religious frame of reference of, 150–51; on speaking indigenous languages, 32. See also Serra, Junípero, influence of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda on his mission work Serra, Junípero, student notes on the Summaries and the Treatises of, 40–48, 42fig.; circles of the heavens drawing in, 46, 47fig., 48; names invoked by in, 43; “Q-faces” in, 45–46, 46fig., 64n38; “square of opposition” drawing in, 43, 44fig., 45 Serra Cenotaph (Mora), 271–76, 272fig.; influence of medieval tomb sculpture on, 273–74; inscription on, 274; unveiling of, 273 Serra Manor, 8 Servín, José Francisco de, 185 Seven Cities of Gold (1955), 277 Sevilla, Isidoro de, La Pastora Coronada, 210 shamans, 140, 147n84; “sucking doctors,” 140, 147n83 Sitjar, Buenaventura, 32, 33; catechism of, 32; dictionary of (Vocabulary of the Language of the San Antonio Mission, California), 32 Smith, Thomas Buckingham, 237–38 Solano, Francis, 202; as the “Apostle of Peru,” 202; canonization of (1726), 207; commemorative portrait of, 221n46; compassionate treatment of animals by, 206; death of, 207; devotion of to Bonaventure, 207; joining of the Franciscan order, 203; love of gardening

index and music, 203, 207; ministry of to the sick in Montoro, Spain, 203; and the “Symphony of the Selva,” 208–9. See also Paéz, José de, series on the life of Francis Solano (La Vida de San Francisco Solano) Song of Bernadette, The (1943, 283n71 Soriano, Juan Guadalupe, 158 Soulé, Frank, Annals of San Francisco (with Gihon and Nisbet), 232 Spain, 25–26; colonial empire of, 14; colonization of California, 30; and the “loss of Europe,” 14; and native rebellions in North America, 26 Spanish-American War (1898), 227, 241; Americans’ support of, 233 “Spanish Craze,” 7, 227–28, 243–44; and California’s recovery and invention of its Spanish past, 229–30; and the change in America’s attitude toward Spain, 227–29; and the popularization of Spain as “Sunny Spain,” 233–37; and the popularization of Spaniards as sturdy pioneers, 237–44 “Spanish Element in America’s National Character, The” (Whitman), 241 Spanish Pioneers, The (Lummis), 239, 241, 247–48 Spiritual Exercises (I. Loyola), 119–20; and the practice of “composition of place,” 208 Stanford, Jane, 8, 248, 265–66 Stanford, Leland, 253n27, 265–66 Starr, Kevin, 249, 277 St. Augustine, Florida, Flagler’s vision for, 235 Stein, Gertrude, 237 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 267 Stoddard, Charles Warren, 281n35 Storia della missioni Franciscane in California con Illustrazioni (Preta), 268 Suma de doctrina Cristiana (C. Fuente), 128 [Summaries on Aristotle], Ms. 882 (310 ff.), 40, 62n15 Sykes, John, 258 Tales of the Alhambra (Irving), 233 Tanto que se sacó de una carta (Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda), 71, 72–73, 76, 77, 81, 86n61; publication of in Mexico, 72–73; reproduction of as an appendix to Palou’s biography of Serra, 73, 81–82 Teatro mexicano (Vetancurt), 153 Temple Emanu-El (New York), 234 Tennyson, Alfred, 235 Teresa of Ávila, 97

299

Tertio-Millennial Exposition (1883), 239–40; as a financial fiasco, 239; historical pageant of, 239 thesis prints, use of in European Franciscan seminaries, 215 Third Mexican Provincial Council (1585), 126, 128, 137, 142n6 Thomas, Patrick J., Our Centennial Memoir: The Founding of the Missions, 260–61 Tibesar, Antonine, 37, 60n1 Torquemada, Juan de, 212 Torrens y Nicolau, Francisco, Bosquejo histórico del insigne Franciscana, 268 [Treatises on Various Topics], Ms. 76 (416 ff.), 40, 62n16 Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 13, 14 Truesdale, Amelia, 281n35 Uribe, Ángel, 84n21 Urmy, Clarence, 281n35 Valentino, Rudolph, 237 Vallejo, Manuel J., 247 Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe, 240 Vancouver, George, Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Around the World, 258 Van Dyke, Henry, “The Mission Play of California,” 271 Van Sloun, Frank, 276 Vaquer, Pere, 40 Varisio, Pascual de, 104n21 Veláquez, Antonio, 187 Veláquez y Silva, Diego de, 237 Velasco, Matías de, 105n26 Velderrain, Juan Bautista, 186 Vélez, José, 98, 104n16 Venegas, Miguel, 75–76 Venido, Juan, 207 Vereo, Antonio de, 74 Verger, Rafael, 31, 32, 95, 182 Vetancurt, Agustín, Teatro mexicano, 153 via crucis, 180, 192nn48–49 Vida de la Venerable Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda (Ximénez Samaniego), 74–75 vidas (printed biographies), 205–6; engraved portraits of missionaries and clerics in, 205 Villapando, Cristóbal, 78; La mística Jerusalén, 79 Virgin of Light (Mena), 185 Virgin Mary, 54; as La Conquistadora, 200, 239; the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception as the patron saint of California, 211. See also Immaculate Conception, doctrine of

300

index

Vita del gran servo di Dio Fra Francesco della regolare osser. di S. Francesco (Caprarola), 205 Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 249, 264 Vocabulary of the Language of the San Antonio Mission, California (Sitjay), 32 Voltaire, 231 Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Around the World (Vancouver), 258 Voyage of La Pérouse round the World in the Years 1785, 1786, 1777, and 1778, The (Galaup), 280n15 Wade, Mariah, 141 War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), 5, 13–14 Weeks, Charles Peter, 276

White, Stanford, 235 Whitman, Walt, 240–41; “The Spanish Element in America’s National Character,” 240 Wilbur, Ray, 256n74 Winning of the West (Roosevelt), 232 Wittkower, Rudolf, 213 Ximénez de Samaniego, Joseph, 27, 73–74; distribution of copies of the 1631 letter of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda by, 74; Vida de la Venerable Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 74–75, 83n17 Zárraga, Miguel de, 278 Ziegler, Isabelle Gibson, The Nine Days of Father Serra, 277