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The Mallorcan Contribution to Franciscan California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Maynard Geiger O.F.M.
Maynard Geiger O.F.M.*
Affiliation:
Old Mission, Santa Barbara, Calif.
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Extract

Between 1769 and 1853, one hundred and twenty-eight Fernandinos or Franciscan missionaries from the College of San Fernando in Mexico City founded in Upper California twenty-one missions, christianized close to 100,000 Indians, developed the agriculture, the arts and crafts of its earliest civilization, thus effecting the spiritual and in part the temporal conquest of the land. These Fernandinos, with very few exceptions, were natives of Spain. They represented a cross section of practically all the Spanish provinces from Galicia to Catalonia and from Cantabria to Andalucia. Not to be forgotten are the Balearic Islands. Sixteen of California’s missionaries came from Mallorca and thus formed eight percent of the total missionary personnel. Some of these sixteen were among California’s greatest.

Before touching on the spiritual and scientific contribution of the Mallorcan group, it will be well to insist on the fact that the very establishment of apostolic colleges in America antedating the California conquest, thus making possible the future Mallorcan contribution, was due to a Mallorcan, himself an outstanding missionary organizer both in Spain and the Indies, Fray Antonio de Jesús Llinás.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , October 1947 , pp. 141 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1948

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References

1 These missionaries axe listed in Engelhardt’s Index to his Missions and Missionaries of California, pp. 71–72.Google Scholar

2 Data on the biographies of the California missionaries have been gathered from Engelhardt and Bancroft as well as from the Santa Barbara Mission Archives; the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico; the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville; and the Convento de San Francisco, Palma, Mallorca. The material will be used in composing a Biographical Dictionary of the Franciscans in California between 1769 and 1853.

3 Ample details of the life and activity of Llinás may be found in “El P. Antonio Llinás y los colegios de Misiones hispanoamericanas” by Faus, Eduardo O.F.M. in Archivo Ibero Americano, XVI, pp. 321–341 and XVII, pp. 176–244.Google Scholar

4 Palóu, , Relación histórica de la Vida y Apostólicas Tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra. (Mexico. 1787), 9–11.Google Scholar

5 Writing to his cousin, Fray Francisco Serra, O.F.M., from Cádiz, August 20, 1749, asking him to communicate the message to his parents, Junípero Serra wrote: “I wish I were able to make them partakers of the joy of my heart. I think that if they knew it, they certainly would encourage me always to go forward and never to fall backwards.” Capuchin Convent Archives, Barcelona.

6 In the case of Serra and Crespí in various regions of Mexico from 1750 to 1769; in the case of Palóu from 1750 till 1773.

7 Tomás to the vicar general, Palma, June 15, 1809. Desbrull Collection, Palma, Mallorca.

8 Succinct lives of the Mallorcan missionaries in English may be found in the volumes of Bancroft, History of California (7 volumes); Engelhardt’s Missions and Missionaries of California (4 volumes); and in. Engelhardt’s histories of the individual missions (16 volumes).

9 Fray Juan Crespi Missionary Explorer on the Pacific Coast 1769–1774. (Berkeley, 1927), pp. xv-xvii.Google Scholar