Glancing off to the west from the 19 Freeway, I glimpsed what the St. Xavier del Bac mission must have looked like in the 1700s: A gleaming white dome rising above the shrubs and trees like a lighthouse in the desert. Was it offering shelter? Or warning of danger?
The St. Xavier Mission church is surrounded by the large St. Xavier Indian reservation. The homes and buildings on the reservation are spread out and from this distance, invisible.
The road that winds across the Reservation leads to the church, the parking lot and the small amount of land that still belongs to the Tucson diocese.
In the parking lot outside the church locals were selling frybread under traditional ramadas.
I was particularly interested in how the architecture of this mission, established in 1701 differed from the oldest California mission in San Diego, founded 68 years later. The first thing I noticed was that it was grander, more “cathedral-like” than the ones in California that are more like a local parish churches. Much of the interior painting was far more sophisticated than the California missions.
Father Kino
I suspect that this difference in architecture and design is due to the fact that the St. Xavier Mission was founded by a worldly, intelligent German Jesuit priest, Fr. Kino. Kino was highly educated, taught math at a German university, and was respected as a cartographer before he became a Jesuit.
Here are a few of the photos I took at the Mission…
The colorful ‘wainscotting’ around the bottom of the walls is typical of many California missions, like St. Luis Rey, but the paintings on the upper walls is not. The statue dressed like a priest is supposed to represent St. Xavier. I was surprised to see how much larger it is than the Christ on the Cross. Sorry this photo is so blurry.I am not sure who this statue of a Native American woman represents.The paintings on the ceiling are quite sophisticated. I wonder who painted them.Looking out to the courtyard which is a lovely refuge today but was probably a work space back in the 1700s.The Mission is now a parish church–albeit a very grand one. Interestingly enough Father Kino was never the official priest at this church, although it was named after his favorite saint. Kino was in charge of the Mission Dolores (not the one in San Francisco!) which was further south in what is now Mexico and has over the centuries vanished into the desert.It must have been over 120+ degrees fahrenheit inside this chapel where hundreds of candles were burning.An unrestored wall. There is an ongoing campaign to complete the restoration of the east wings of the main church.
3 thoughts on “Flashback to the past at St. Xavier Mission near Tucson”
Thanks, Carol. I feel as though I was there. Wonder if there is a study of the church that elaborates on your observations. Meanwhile, you need to get to TX where the Alamo is only one of several
missions in the San Antonio area.
I am not certain there is an independent study of St. Xavier’s church. The docent who leads a tour is, obviously, looking at everything through the eyes of a church member. And, I discovered later online that at least one of the claims for Fr. Kino was in error. A poster beside his photo claimed that he proved that California was not an island in the early 1700s by leading an expedition to the coast. In fact one of Cortes’ navigators went far enough north in the Sea of Cortes in 1539 to run into the mouth of the Colorado river. “Ah. Ha! Not an island!” Kino may have created the first good map of the area, however, because one of his assignments as a cartographer was to map the Southwest.
Anyway…on Wednesday I’m heading to El Paseo where there are 3 missions and then onto San Antonio where there appears to be 4 of them. I never thought this was going to be a Mission Tour…
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Thanks, Carol. I feel as though I was there. Wonder if there is a study of the church that elaborates on your observations. Meanwhile, you need to get to TX where the Alamo is only one of several
missions in the San Antonio area.
I am not certain there is an independent study of St. Xavier’s church. The docent who leads a tour is, obviously, looking at everything through the eyes of a church member. And, I discovered later online that at least one of the claims for Fr. Kino was in error. A poster beside his photo claimed that he proved that California was not an island in the early 1700s by leading an expedition to the coast. In fact one of Cortes’ navigators went far enough north in the Sea of Cortes in 1539 to run into the mouth of the Colorado river. “Ah. Ha! Not an island!” Kino may have created the first good map of the area, however, because one of his assignments as a cartographer was to map the Southwest.
Anyway…on Wednesday I’m heading to El Paseo where there are 3 missions and then onto San Antonio where there appears to be 4 of them. I never thought this was going to be a Mission Tour…