Old California: The Missions

California.  The word conjures up images of a vast urban landscape, mountains with towering trees in them, a pleasant climate, dramatic looking beaches, orchards and vineyards that seem to go on forever, and depending on one's political views, either a paradise or a cesspool.  Both in state and abroad, the left focuses on what they deem to be progress, while the right focuses on what a mess progress has made of things.  The past gets ignored quite well here, dismissed either as backwards or a pointless exercise in nostalgia.  Here and there, historical memory can be a bit hard to ignore.  Many of the names of the cities of California bear witness to both a colonial Spanish and Mexican past, and many recall the peoples who once dwelled for thousands of years here.  In some places, the names remain unchanged or slightly altered from older designations that identified them as missions.

First, a little history.  In the push northwards into the deserts and mountains, colonial Mexico stopped sending forth armies to subdue the frontier, and instead encouraged missionaries to introduce Christianity to the various peoples there.  The Franciscans and the Dominicans were usually the first to heed the call, but they were not extremely successful in adapting to very foreign cultures.  Though they would not give up, these orders knew that they were not making steady progress in evangelization.  They were proud of their histories, and proud of the work they were doing in the name of their faith.  Needless to say, when an upstart, young, and fancy religious order came along that seemed to improve on their work everywhere they went, well, rivalries developed into heated debates.  This new group, of course, was called the Society of Jesus, known commonly as the Jesuits.

The Jesuits started off a little differently from the older religious orders.  They did not have a cloistered division, they were not founded for any particular reason to reform or combat the enemies of Roman Catholic Church, and they centered themselves on a theme of "contemplation in action", meaning they existed to bring otherwise secular experiences and disciplines into a religious and theological context and understanding.  Needless to say, they drew in many different kinds of men, but most if not all of them shared a common intellectual fire.  As such, when missionary opportunities presented themselves, the Jesuits leaped at the chance.  Evangelization, you see, was not only a chance to spread the faith, but to explore the world, and even more exciting, to explore cultures outside of the European theater.  This got them into trouble in China, when the Dominicans insisted that religious conversion had to go hand in hand with cultural assault.  The Pope sided with the Dominicans, and, well, China did not see significant missionary activity again until the 19th century.

On the other side of the world, as the doors to China were closing, the gates in New France were thrown open by the Franciscans who were daunted by the wilderness and seemingly savage native cultures before them.  They invited the Jesuits to join them, who proved to have far more vigor in engaging the mysterious forests of Quebec and Ontario than they could have imagined.  In 1629, both orders were thrown out of New France by the English, who briefly held Quebec.  When the dust settled in 1632, the Franciscans did not return.  The Jesuits, on the other hand, threw themselves into their efforts.  In 1639, they founded Sainte Marie on the southern shores of Georgian Bay, the eastern enclosure of Lake Huron.  By 1642, they had founded a mission at Windsor, which would later become Assumption Parish.  This work among the Hurons (Wyandottes), Algonquins, Muskegon, Ottawa, Montagnais, and Iroquois was extremely difficult.  Flexibility aside, the two worlds were very different from one another, with entirely different outlooks on civilization.  The Iroquois openly attacked the Jesuits and French, the Muskegon, Ottawa, and Montagnais tolerated but largely ignored their efforts, and the Algonquins and Hurons suffered greatly for supporting them.  In 1649, the Society of Jesus learned a very painful lesson in adaptation: their first major loss.  Saint Marie was burned to the ground.  Today a church stands over the long lost ruins, which, in the opinion of your author, is one of the holiest places on this planet.

The Jesuits would later return, and push further inland.  Far to the south, they opened up a second front in the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts.  Running the length of Baja California, as well as along the western slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental and north into Arizona, there are a series of missions founded by the Jesuits, many of which remain intact and in use as parishes.  One of the most famous remains as Tumacacori, south of Tucson.  The Jesuits had a significant impact on the local culture, offering the "northern" peoples a different look at Spanish and Mexican civilization than they had otherwise become forcibly accustomed to.  Unfortunately, again, this would not last.  On the 21st of July, 1773, after decades of struggle with European monarchs regarding human rights, the Society of Jesus was suppressed.  Overnight, the black robes in the missions were replaced with grey and brown robes of the Franciscans.  Fortunately, much had changed in the relations between the two orders by that point, and the Franciscans, while not abandoning their methods, knew that the walk in this frontier world did indeed require adaptability.  Perhaps more strikingly, they also continued the Jesuit tradition of evangelization through art, and embraced the exquisitely ornate Baroque and Rococo styling of the Jesuit missions.  They built their missions in this style as they moved up the coast of California under the leadership of Junipero Serra.  Here is the most famous of their missions, San Juan Capistrano, built in 1782.

As you can see, Alta California never really disappeared, even under the smog and glitz.  Sorry if the image was a bit blurred, I had issues keeping the camera steady because I was in a state of awe, and this is after having been throughout some pretty amazing churches in Europe.  The smell of cedar wood and countless flowers outside, in gardens planted by the friars (who are better horticulturalists than Jesuits... well... maybe), combined with the wooden beams of the ceiling and hanging chandeliers absolutely shout "Alta California".  I half expected Zorro to jump out at me!  San Juan Capistrano lies mostly in ruins, having been damaged by an earthquake in 1812.  The above "side chapel" is intact, while the main sanctuary forms some of the most impressive ruins in the United States.

This is far from the end of the story, however.  The rest of the mission is largely intact.  In 1833, the mission was secularized, but a parish was formed later, and President Lincoln returned the property to the Church in 1865.  The parish here lives on, having been rebuilt in present form in the 1980's.  Come by tomorrow to see it, and be prepared to be shocked in a good way.