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Jesuit Missions in Baja California*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Francis J. Weber
Francis J. Weber*
Affiliation:
Queen of Angels Seminary, San Fernando, California
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Extract

Whatever history may record about his personal life, there is no denying that Pope Alexander VI was among the most efficient and far-sighted of the Church’s long list of vicars. Perhaps nowhere is this fact more obvious than in the pontiff’s concern and zeal for the missions. In a decree addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, issued at Rome on May 4, 1493, the pope stated, in part:

We order you in virtue of holy obedience (for as you promise, so we do not doubt you will do, in your noble dedication and royal magnanimity) that you dispatch to the designated mainlands and islands virtuous and God-fearing men endowed with training, experience, and skill, to instruct the natives and inhabitants before mentioned and to imbue them with the same Christian faith and sound morals, using all speed in the premises.

With this and subsequent papal mandates, the Spanish monarchs inaugurated the Christianization and colonization of the New World.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , April 1967 , pp. 408 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1967

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Footnotes

*

The author gratefully acknowledges the critical observations of the distinguished Jesuit historian, Father Ernest J. Burrus, of Saint Louis University.

References

1 Alexander VI to Ferdinand and Isabella, Rome, May 4, 1493. Reproduced in Eugene Shiels, W. S. J., King and Church (Chicago, 1961), p. 81.Google Scholar

2 Bolton, Herbert Eugene, “The Black Robes of New Spain,” Catholic Historical Review, XXI (October, 1935), 257.Google Scholar

3 Eugene Shiels, W. S.J., “The Critical Period in Mission History,” Mid-America, XXI (April, 1939), 97.Google Scholar

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6 Dunne, Peter Masten S. J., Pioneer Jesuits in Northern Mexico (Berkeley, 1944), p. 7.Google Scholar

7 Schaefer, Ursula, “Father Baegert and His Nachrichten,” Mid-America, XX (July, 1938), 155.Google Scholar

8 Mariano Cuevas gives the distinction of an earlier arrival to Marcos Ruiz de Rojas and Melchior Díaz de Alarcón in 1529. Cf. “The Missions of Lower California,” Mid-America, XVI (October, 1933), 73.

9 Dunne, Peter Masten S. J., Black Robes in Lower California (Berkeley, 1952), p. 29.Google Scholar

10 According to the annals, the first Jesuit to visit Baja California was Father Roque de Vega, chaplain for Captain Francisco de Ortega’s twelve man expeditionary force of 1636. However, in his forthcoming volume, Apocryphal Western Americana, Father Ernest J. Burrus states that the third report of Ortega, in which Roque de Vega figures, “is either entirely or in great part a forgery.”

11 Rudkin, Charles N. (trans.), Father Kino at La Paz (Los Angeles, 1952), p. 20.Google Scholar

12 Wagner, Henry R., “The Descent on California in 1683,” California Historical Society Quarterly, XXVI (December, 1947), 314.Google Scholar

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18 Bancroft, op. cit., I, 280.

19 Dunne, Black Robes …, p. 158.

20 Clinch, Bryan James, “Christian Work in the Barren Peninsula,” Month, XVII (December, 1872), 456.Google Scholar

21 Perhaps the author is referring here to Pedro Porter Casante?

22 Dunne, “Salvatierras Legacy …,” p. 32.

23 Caughey, John Walton, California (New Jersey, 1953), p. 72.Google Scholar

24 Lake, Sara E. and Gray, A.A. (trans.), The History of (Lower) California by Don Francisco Javier Clavigero, S. J. (Stanford, 1937), pp. 158 ff.Google Scholar

25 The doctrina consisted of the Sign of the Cross, Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed; Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity; the Confiteor, Ten Commandments, Six Precepts, Seven Sacraments, the Necessary Points of Faith, and the Four Last Things. Neophytes were required to know the doctrina before being baptized.

26 V. g. “Alabado sea el Santísimo Sacramento del Altar! Bendita sea la Limpia y Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora María Santisima sin mancha de pecado original!“

27 Atole was a mush or gruel made from corn flour.

28 Pozole was corn cooked with bits of meat.

29 Father Jacob Baegert, S. J., as quoted in Ursula Schaefer, op. cit., p. 158.

30 The Our Father, for example, offered untold difficulties since the Baja California Indians lacked nine of the words needed to properly express that simple oration.

31 Bolton, “The Black Robes …,” p. 280.

32 Salvatierra had established a foundation at San Juan Londo in March of 1699 on the site of Atondo’s San Isidro but it remained chiefly a visita.

33 Geiger, Maynard J. O. F. M., The Life and Times of Fray Junipero Serra (Washington, 1959), I, 198.Google Scholar

34 Bryan James Clinch, op. cit., 460.

35 Cf. Dunne, Peter Masten S. J., “Report on Mission Santa Rosalia,” Mid-America, XXXIII (January, 1951), 43-55.Google Scholar

36 Quoted in Dunne, Black Robes …, p. 126.

37 Bancroft, op. cit., I, 279.

38 Cf. Bayle, Constantino S. J., Misión de la Baja California (Madrid, 1946), p. 202.Google Scholar

39 Cf. Bolton, Herbert Eugene, Rim of Christendom (New York, 1960), pp. 97-99Google Scholar. Another influencing factor in the refusal was the privilege of exempt religious to be visited only by the local ordinary, not his delegate.

40 José Echeverría to Marqués de Villapuente, Baja California, February 10, 1730. Quoted in Dunne, “Salvatierras Legacy …,” p. 50.

41 Bolton, “The Black Robes …,” pp. 278–279.

42 Krmpotic, M.D., Life and Works of the Reverend Ferdinand Konscak, S. J. (Boston, 1923), p. 4 Google Scholar. For an account of the incident, cf. Wilbur, Marguerite Eyer’s translation of The Indian Uprising in Lower California, 1734–1737 by Taraval, Sigismundo S. J., (Los Angeles, 1931).Google Scholar

43 Leonard, Irving A., “An Attempted Indian Attack on the Manila Galleon,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XI (February, 1931), 71.Google Scholar

44 Dunne, Black Robes …, p. 25.

45 Cf. Dunne, Peter Masten S. J., “Baegert Pictures a Lower California Mission,” Mid-America, XXX (January, 1948), 44-65.Google Scholar

46 A major plague had broken out in the peninsula in 1708 and carried off half the Indian population.

47 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, History of Mexico (San Francisco, 1883), III, 437.Google Scholar

48 The German historian Schoell, quoted in Campbell, Thomas J. S. J., The Jesuits, 1534–1921 (New York, 1921), p. 550.Google Scholar

49 The Jesuits did restrict the entry of whites believing that spiritual success was attainable only “if the selfish interests of white settlers were not allowed to complicate the situation.” Cf. Chapman, Charles E., “The Jesuits in Baja California,” Catholic Historical Review, VI (April, 1920), 54.Google Scholar

50 Cf. Dunne, Peter Masten S.J., “The Expulsion of the Jesuits from New Spain, 1767,” Mid-America, XIX (January, 1937), 3-30.Google Scholar

51 Simpson, Lesley Byrd, Many Mexicos (Berkeley, 1941), p. 192.Google Scholar

52 Caughey, op. cit., p. 98.

53 Greenhow, Robert, The History of Oregon and California (Boston, 1847), pp. 106-107.Google Scholar

53 Greenhow, Robert, The History of Oregon and California (Boston, 1847), pp. 106-107.Google Scholar