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According to the chamber of commerce brochures, San Juan
Capistrano— located roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San
Diego— is home to “the Jewel of the Missions.”
That could be a rare example of an honest and accurate advertising
slogan. Father St. John O’Sullivan, the Mission’s parish priest from
1910 to 1933, devoted himself to restoring and rebuilding decrepit ruins
into a romantic idealization of what a Spanish Colonial mission should
look like. Pedantic historians might have conniptions over the pleasing
array of flowers, trees, and fountains. Those would have been out of
place in an 18th century mission, which was essentially a rough-hewn
labor camp. But anyone else can simply enjoy the serene beauty of Father
O’Sullivan’s vision and efforts. An uncrowded autumn weekday afternoon
is a particularly good time for leisurely exploration.
In the late 18th century, Russian traders began to make incursions into
the Spanish territory of Alta (“upper”) California. (The southern
section of Spanish California was the peninsula still called Baja—
“lower”— California.) So the Spanish king decided to establish a
permanent military presence there. The Pope also saw an opportunity to
expand his own empire in the New World, with its flock of Indians ripe
for conversion. Franciscan friars led by Father Junípero Serra
accompanied the Spanish military forces and eventually founded 21
missions along the California coast. San Juan Capistrano was the seventh
in the chain.
The official account— dispensed to mission visitors as well as to
schoolchildren throughout California when they study the state’s history in
the fourth grade— says that Father Serra and the Franciscans had
the most altruistic of intent. Enduring significant hardship, they set
out to rescue the Indians from both a backward and uncivilized existence
while on Earth and the fires of Hell thereafter. For this selfless
dedication Pope John Paul II beatified Serra in 1987, the penultimate
step on the path to sainthood. Though at least some of the Franciscans
may have genuinely sought to help the Indians, any such noble intent too
often didn’t work out in practice.
Father Fermín Lasuén— Serra’s lieutenant who would
found twelve missions after Serra’s death— first founded Mission San
Juan Capistrano on 30 October 1775. He chose a site halfway between the
San Gabriel Mission (in what is now the northern suburbs of Los Angeles)
and San Diego. He named
it for Saint Giovanni da Capistrano, an Italian 15th century Franciscan
friar whose saintly attributes included fiery proselytizing oratory,
zealous attacks on heresy and heretics, and loyal service to the Pope.
But only eight days later, Father Lasuén had to rush back to
the San Diego Mission to help put down an Indian rebellion.
Indian rebellions, riots, and attacks were all too frequent occurrences
at the California missions. The Franciscans’ “gifts” of civilization and
salvation came at a price that Indians weren’t always willing to pay.
Indians were effectively conscripted as slave labor to grow crops,
manufacture goods, and construct buildings for the mission padres and
the military. The Spanish also brought smallpox, measles, and other
European diseases to which Indians lacked immunity; the crowded
conditions of the new mission “communities” contributed to their
devastating spread. And some Indians may have simply resented being
forced to give up their traditional religion and way of life.
A year later, on 1 November 1776, Serra and Lausén returned to
San Juan Capistrano. For their second attempt at founding a mission they
selected a new location five kilometers to the west, near an Indian
village with a better water supply. Not surprisingly, their first order
of business was to build a church. Now known as the Serra Chapel, it’s
the only surviving California mission church where Father Serra is known
to have celebrated Mass.
By the 1790s the Mission’s Ahachamai Indian population (the Spanish
called them Juaneños) had outgrown the Serra Chapel. The padres
decided they needed an appropriately impressive church. They hired
renowned Mexican architect and stonemason Isidoro Aguílar to
design the church and to supervise the Indians who built it. Laid out in
the shape of a cross, it had a dome with six vaults and a campanile
(bell tower) 37 meters high. Construction of the “Great Stone Church”
began in 1797, and reportedly required the participation of the entire
Ahachamai labor force. The church stood for only six years after its
consecration in 1806.
1812 was definitely not a good year for California’s missions. During
morning Mass on 8 December, an earthquake destroyed the Great Stone
Church and killed 42 Indians. It probably didn’t help that Aguílar
died in 1803, and the padres couldn’t find anyone else with
the skills to complete the construction properly. Three weeks later,
another large earthquake destroyed
La Purísima
Mission on the central coast in present-day Lompoc, and severely damaged
the nearby Santa Barbara and
Santa Inés
Missions. The San Juan Capistrano padres tried to rebuild the church in
1815, but quickly abandoned the effort because they still couldn’t find a
competent mason.
The ruined church provides a home for San Juan Capistrano’s most famous
residents, the cliff swallows that spend more than half the year there.
Nooks and crannies in the ruins provide nesting sites similar to the
cliffs they used before humans arrived. Saint Joseph’s Day, on 19 March,
is the official date of the swallows’ arrival from their winter home in
Argentina. To welcome them, the city sponsors (and reaps significant
revenue from) the week-long Fiesta de las Golondrinas. The
swallows have a scheduled departure date as well, Saint John’s Day on 23
October; but for some reason that doesn’t merit a fiesta.
The Juaneño Indians apparently never rioted or attacked the
Mission. But they gradually left during the 1820s because of crop
failures, drought, floods, and Spanish settlers who coveted the
Mission’s land. The buildings began to deteriorate from lack of
maintenance. After winning independence from Spain, the Mexican
government “secularized” (i.e., “appropriated”) all the missions in
1834. The Franciscans went back to Spain, and the former church land
went to favored cronies who dismantled the missions for construction
materials. Mexican Alta California became American territory in 1848,
and a state in 1850. President Lincoln returned the what was left of the
California missions to the Catholic Church in 1865.
At the end of the 19th century, the Mission underwent just enough inept
repairs to serve as a parish church. Serious restoration had to wait for
Father St. John O’Sullivan to arrive in 1910. He started with the Serra
Chapel, fixing the collapsed roof, adding windows for light, and
installing a 17th century baroque altarpiece from Barcelona. The
altarpiece is far more ornate than the long-lost original, but Father
Serra would probably feel right at home.
Other additions Father O’Sullivan made in the 1920s include an
ornamental arcade on the outside of the Serra Chapel, and a “Sacred
Garden” behind the bell wall between the church ruins and the Serra
Chapel. The four bells once occupied the campanile of the Great Stone
Church. The two largest bells (cast in 1796) cracked when the campanile
collapsed in the earthquake. Even though the bells no longer rang
properly, the padres installed them in the wall they built in 1813. In
2000, ringable replicas cast from the original molds finally replaced
the damaged bells in the wall. The original bells now hang in a frame
where the campanile once stood.
Numerous trees and two large Moorish-style fountains stocked with water
lilies and koi completed the restoration. These were not
features of the original Mission, as the main courtyard was then a dirt
work area for “mission industries.” Father O’Sullivan may have drawn
inspiration from the Spanish Colonial Revival craze that began in
San Diego’s Balboa Park
and swept through Southern California. Father O’Sullivan died in 1933.
He is buried next to the Serra Chapel, beneath a monument he erected to
honor the mission’s original builders, in the cemetery he shares with
around two thousand Indians.
Travel note: Six guardian angels, in the form of automated red
light cameras, continuously watch over the main intersections near the
mission. If you’re inclined to suspect that their benefit to the city
goes beyond traffic safety, you might consider riding a train instead of
driving. San Juan Capistrano is a stop on Amtrak’s Pacific
Surfliner that runs from Paso Robles and Santa Barbara to Los
Angeles and San Diego. It’s also on the route of Metrolink commuter
trains that run to and from Los Angeles. Both are frequent enough to be
practical transportation options. The 1894 Santa Fe Railway Depot is one
of the very few remaining brick train stations. Designed in the “Mission
Revival” style with a 12-meter-high dome and bell, the builders may have
taken that architectural term literally. It quite likely is made of
bricks and wood pilfered from the Mission. The depot is now a
restaurant, but the current Amtrak/Metrolink station is only a few
meters away from it. It’s an easy walk from there to the Mission.
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