Ornaments, Jewels, Etc.

The Catholic parish in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine in what is now the state of Florida was more than its priests, church building, and sacred vessels. The parish was the heart of its community, and it brought together longtime residents, recent arrivals, the free and enslaved, Euro-Americans, Africans, and Native Americans as parishioners. As an institution, it was present for every major event in their lives—baptism, marriage, burial—performed in the church, in homes, or in the churchyard. The priests recorded them all, from the highest person in society to the least elevated members of the community, in the parish registers. In the colony of St. Augustine, membership in the Church was the sine qua non to participate in the life of the community, and usually to reside in the city as well.

The parish began its existence with the first Mass, which was held on September 8, 1565, as part of the formalities of claiming territory for King Philip II of Spain. On that day, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés led his colonists across the salt marshes to the shore. At St. Augustine, Menéndez named Father López as pastor with the concurrence of the bishop of Santiago de Cuba. From the outset, then, the parish was closely tied to both the monarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Caribbean.

To ensure the viability of the Roman Catholic Church in Florida, the Crown assumed financial responsibility for it as part of the annual government appropriation for the colony—the situado (subsidy). The parishioners themselves provided substantial support for religion, and the situado was not the sole source of Church support. By the eighteenth century, the parishioners were increasingly called upon to offset the Crown’s diminished support of the parish.

The early decades were hard in other ways. The English privateer Francis Drake attacked the town in May 1586, causing extensive damage. The year 1599 brought destruction once again, this time from an accidental fire and a hurricane. The Spanish Crown took responsibility for replacing items needed for worship that had been stolen or destroyed. This pattern of losses partly offset by royal provision would recur throughout the history of the parish.

As the seventeenth century progressed, Spain faced the growing threat of English incursions into the southeast. The strongest defensive response was the construction of the Castillo de San Marcos, the first stone fort and the last of the forts built in St. Augustine. Queen Mariana decreed an increase in the number of soldiers to protect Florida and in the funds to pay for them, and men arrived from Spain, Mexico, and Cuba to fill the new and existing military positions. The soldiers brought with them folk religious traditions from their home regions and their affection for local saints and feast days of childhood. All of them would worship at the parish church.

Attacks, fierce weather, and accidental tragedy had already assailed the colony, but none equaled the devastation of the siege of 1702 by English forces, which began in November and lasted for more than a month. By the time the English invaders retreated in the face of Spanish warships that finally appeared, the city itself had been almost totally destroyed. The parish church was badly damaged, but the sacramental items were preserved, along with parish records. In 1703, the new king, Philip V authorized twenty thousand pesos to rebuild the church, the Saint Francis monastery, and other structures. When the money arrived four years later, in 1707, it was used not for the repair of buildings but to feed and clothe the residents.

Only months before the siege, in March 1702, Philip had altered Florida’s financial support by transferring responsibility for the situado from the viceroy in Mexico City; it would now come from sales taxes collected in Puebla de los Ángeles. The archbishop of Puebla was authorized to distribute the current situado for Florida and to provide additional funds to retire debts which had accumulated over many years as Mexico City failed to pay the full amount.

At first this new system worked, for the simple reason that the bishopric could well afford the obligation. But by 1712, new claims on sales tax revenue in Puebla caused a shortfall in funds available for Florida. Parishioners in St. Augustine hoped to compensate for the lack of royal funds to repair or replace items necessary for worship through the contributions of their religious confraternities. This the Crown not only accepted but expected. The confraternities had long contributed to worship in Florida by purchasing sacramental necessities. They provided opportunities for laymen to participate actively in the rituals of the Church. Members visited the bedsides of the dying, assisted with the arrangement of funerals, and took part in burials. By 1738, the governor Manuel de Montiano reported to the Crown that the St. Augustine parish church had to rely for its sole support upon the confraternities, which were themselves in need of funds.

The confraternities needed money to pay for items that were not available in St. Augustine. Cash—or at least credit—was needed to acquire processional and sacred items made of precious metals, usually acquired in Mexico or Cuba. The confraternal fees also paid priests for celebrating Mass and preaching on festival days. Confraternities required a membership or initiation fee, and some of them also levied annual dues. Many people belonged to more than one, and the dues often stretched them beyond their means.

In March 1763, a representative of the British governor of South Carolina arrived with news of the ratification of preliminary articles of peace to end the Seven Years’ War, in which Spain and Great Britain were combatants. Spain had ceded Florida to Britain, and because St. Augustine was a presidio (a military town), all Spanish residents would be relocated. All of the evacuees headed to Havana, except for thirty-four who went to Campeche. The schooner Nuestra Señora de la Luz y Santa Bárbara transported property of the Roman Catholic Church in Florida from St. Augustine to Cuba. All items and paraphernalia were stored in the hall of the parish church of Havana.

The relocation led to a thorough inventory of church property. The bishop of Santiago ordered a listing and evaluation in 1764, and Father Juan Joseph Solana, himself an evacuee, testified that “it was well known that the devotion and charity of the parishioners” as confraternity members had sustained the parish. Until the evacuation there had been no reason to record this fact, but now high-ranking officials asserted that contributions of the parishioners had maintained worship in St. Augustine and in the missions. The Crown had continued its responsibility for the livelihoods of the parish priests and Franciscans but for the most part had abdicated its role in providing “ornaments, jewels, etc.” which were necessary for worship and rites. Solana reported that “His Majesty had given neither items of silver nor gold for the chapel that served as the parish church.” It survived by the voluntary donations of the residents and the largesse and efforts of the members of the confraternities. The investigation concluded that the Church, not the Crown, should retain ownership of the items brought from Florida.

History is filled with dramatic ironies. The role of St. Augustine’s parishioners, especially through their religious organizations, was brought to light only after the parish effectively no longer existed. In Havana there were the treasures of St. Augustine’s parish and no parish to use them. It is doubtful that any of the persons who were involved in the inventory expected that Spain would one day return to the Florida peninsula and re-establish the parish. Yet after twenty years of British rule, Spain regained Florida in 1784, and the parish of St. Augustine was restored and continued its central role in the lives of Florida’s residents. Yet the mission effort was not renewed. Franciscan missionaries wished to return, but no parallel to California’s late-eighteenth-century successes emerged. Plans to build chapels and establish parishes in the rural areas did not come to fruition, although in 1787 Father Miguel O’Reilly undertook a campaign of baptisms in remote areas. St. Augustine parish thus became the sole center and locus of the Catholic Church in Spanish Florida. Construction of a new church was authorized by the Spanish Crown in December 1786, and the objects removed in 1764 were returned to furnish the new building.

But this state of affairs would not persist indefinitely. In 1821, Spain transferred Florida to the United States, ending state financial support for the parish. St. Augustine, which had little experience governing itself, was left without external financial support and with minimal episcopal oversight. Yet the parish community served as a bulwark against changes brought to the newly American city—legal and administrative changes and the arrival of new, mostly Protestant residents. In the face of Protestants’ and Northerners’ disdain for the church, the parishioners fought to retain ownership of the building and to maintain their religion. Their efforts were successful: In 1870, the church became the Cathedral of St. Augustine. Later it would be designated both a minor basilica and a National Historic Landmark. Today it remains the oldest extant site of Christian worship in the contiguous United States.

This essay is adapted from Catholicism and Native Americans in Early North America: Parish, Church, and Mission (Notre Dame University Press).