The Varela Chapel Amid Stormy Seas

 

Our humble, peaceful Varela Chapel was shown in a different light in 1853, the year of the death of Fr. Varela.

We have been doing research on the chapel and its building, and came across a pamphlet published for the dedication of the cornerstone on March 22, 1853, less than a month after the death of Fr. Varela (February 25, 1853). The money for the building of the chapel had originally been collected by his Cuban friends to get medical treatment and more comfort for him while he was living in the little wooden room behind the schoolhouse next to the current Cathedral. But when they arrived with the money, they found that he had died only a few days earlier.

So they immediately decided to build a mausoleum and funeral chapel, since Fr. Varela himself had often regretted the fact that the cemetery had no chapel at that time and had unsuccessfully urged that one be built.  The chapel was speedily designed by a local builder, in consultation with the Cubans, making a conscious effort to keep it simple and unpretentious and in keeping with Fr. Varela’s life.  His friends felt they were fulfilling a wish of his, as well as providing a dignified final resting place for him.

The dedication was conducted by the parish priest, the French Fr. Edmond Aubril, and attended by a priest representing the Archdiocese of New York and a priest representing the Diocese of Savannah, since Fr. Varela had spent nearly 30 years working in New York City and was the Vicar General of New York, while St Augustine at that time was not a diocese but was under the Diocese of Savannah.  It was also attended by the church wardens, the children from the parish school, and large number of local citizens. A contemporary account states that “the deep feeling which pervaded the spectators might have been observed from the tears and sobs of the many who knew so well, and love so tenderly, the good Father Varela.”

The addresses and homilies that were delivered – in Spanish and English - at the dedication were sealed into a metal box and placed in the cornerstone, where we may assume that they remain to this very day.

The Ermita of Tolomato

The 18th century maps we call upon for much of our knowledge of the layout of St Augustine, including the location of the “Pueblo de Indios de Tolomato,” the Indian Village at Tolomato, often label the building there as an “ermita.”  In fact, the word “ermita” turns up all over our early maps.  Below is the description from the 1763 de la Puente Map of the “Ermita de Piedra” at Tolomato. It is often translated “hermitage,” but was it?  Were there really hermits scattered all over early St Augustine?

Highly unlikely, since the word “ermita” had by then come to mean simply a chapel usually located in some place outside of town to make religious services more available to the population that lived around there, or occasionally to house a shrine and be the focus for particular devotions.   Usually an ermita did not have a resident priest, and was often served not by the priest of the nearest parish, but by a member of a nearby religious order.   In the case of the ermitas in St Augustine, this would have meant a Franciscan from the Convento de San Francisco, now the St. Francis Barracks. 

Above we see the depiction of the ermita at Tolomato on the 1763 map.  The chapels that were built for the Indian towns or missions were often referred to as “ermitas” on the maps, although an “ermita” back in the Old World generally did not provide full parochial services (such as baptisms, funeral masses,  etc.). However, we can assume that the mission chapels did so. Tolomato had a doctrinario, that is, a friar who was the regular spiritual shepherd of the little group of mostly Guale Indians, and thus Tolomato must have been considered a doctrina, or a settled Christian Indian village with regular instruction, prayers, and religious activities.  A doctrina often had a resident priest, although in the case of Tolomato, since the Convento was so close, we don’t know whether the friars actually lived in the village or not.

But what was the origin of the “ermita” as a concept?  A couple of years ago, spending time in La Rioja, the winegrowing region of Northern Spain, I saw this in action.  In the photo below is a bluff filled with caves, which were very probably what the first ermitas looked like. Except that there would have been a genuine hermit living there, descending from his cave only occasionally to get water or food and once in a while, to attend prayers with the other hermits who had settled in the area.

Monasticism came to Spain very early, from the deserts of Egypt, and early monasticism was “eremitical,” that is, based on a collection of hermits living in some proximity but not really having a community life.  The word “eremitical” comes from the Greek word erēmia, “desert,”  and the English words “hermit” and “hermitage” refer to this tradition of living alone in the desert.  Below we see the cave of San Millán, a 6th century hermit in La Rioja.

 

But as time went by, the hermits began to develop a more regular community life and community prayer.  Rules were written to govern their lives together, with one of the very first ones being the Rule of St Augustine, written by St Augustine in the 5th century.  As more hermits accepted the rule, they built permanent structures, such as the building we see below, San Millán de Suso (the “upper” San Millan), built high on the mountain next to the hermit’s then abandoned cave.

Eventually, they built huge monasteries to accommodate hundreds of monks for a cycle of regular prayers, chant and study.  Below is San Millán de Yuso, the “lower” San Millán , built down in the valley when the group of hermits turned into a “cenobitical” community, a term coming from the Greek words meaning “common life.”

 

And of course, towns grew around the monasteries.  This photo shows us the town cemetery.

So we can see that the ermitas of San Agustin were far removed from the origins of the term.  And now we generally translate the word as chapel or even church, which was how the structures at the mission village sites were described by the English when they in turn began to make their maps of Florida after their installation in 1764. 

Santa Helena to Santa Fe to San Diego

Spending Christmas in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I came across an unexpected trace of St Augustine, or more properly, of Florida.

As we all know, the Franciscans established an extensive mission chain in Florida, starting in the 16th century. It lasted until the 18th century, when it was finally destroyed by British and hostile Indian attacks. La Natividad de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de (or possibly "del") Tolomato was one of these missions, having started in Georgia in the 16th century, relocating to Florida in the 17th century and finally moving to the site that is now Tolomato Cemetery in the early 18th century.  At one point, Tolomato probably looked like this New Mexico cemetery below, although minus the plastic flowers.

Franciscan administrative areas are divided into provinces, and "our" Franciscans were from the Provincia de Santa Helena de la Florida, which had a convento in Havana that served as its convent, seminary and headquarters. They founded a convento in St Augustine, at the site where the St Francis Barracks are now located, on land given them for this purpose in 1588.  The wooden convento and its library, alas, were destroyed in 1702 by the English pirate Robert Searles, but it was rebuilt in stone sometime in the mid-18th century, only to be turned over to the British shortly thereafter when Britain received St Augustine in the settlement of the French and Indian War in 1763.  This more or less terminated the Franciscan presence in St Augustine.

 
However, I found one of our Franciscan community a long way from home, in the Southwest where he died in 1781 during an Indian revolt. I found this out from a rather unexpected source, a painting done in the late 18^th century (with very little information offered about it, unfortunately) on display at the New Mexico Museum of History in Santa Fe.  It shows two friars, wearing the grey-blue habits worn by these missionary Franciscans, standing in front of a scene depicting their deaths. They were both clubbed to death at their remote mission. 

 

While the sign next to the painting attributes the scene to the Pueblo Revolt, this turned out not to be the case. The well-known Pueblo Revolt in what is now New Mexico, the culmination of Indian conflicts with the Spanish administrators over the years, began in 1681 and was over a few years later; in fact, only 12 years later, the Spanish returned, since the idyllic era that the revolt’s leader, Popé, had promised never materialized and conditions were in fact worse than before for the Indians (who were also now vulnerable to hostile tribes such as the Apaches).  But in the meantime, several hundred Spanish settlers and 21 friars had been killed. 

But reading the text, I found that the Franciscans in this painting were killed nearly 100 years after the Pueblo Revolt, and in fact, the places mentioned were not even in New Mexico.  Who were they and when and where did they die?

Reading the information under their portraits, we find that the friar on the left was Fr. Francisco Garcés, who took the habit in his native Aragon, Spain, and went directly to the Franciscan missionary school (Colegio Apostólico de San Fernando, but more about that some other time) in Mexico City in 1763.  He died at the “Misión de la Purissima Concepcion del Rio Colorado” in the area rather vaguely known as Sonora (a formerly disputed territory now part of Mexico, Texas, Arizona and even California) in 1781 at the age of 42.

The other friar was Fr. Juan Antonio Barreneche, a native of Navarra, Spain, who had come to the New World, specifically, to Havana, where he was took the habit and was ordained, becoming a member of the Franciscan province of Santa Helena de la Florida.  This, of course, was during the period in which St Augustine was no longer Spanish, so the Franciscans no longer had a presence in our town.  After ordination, he went to the missionary school in Mexico City, and from there, accompanied Fr. Garcés to the mission, where he arrived in 1779 and died a holy death there in 1781 at the age of 31. It is recorded that during the attack, he continued to hear confessions and give last rites to the Indians and the Spaniards until he himself was finally killed, one of the many who died in what looks to us like a barren and unpromising land.

Having eliminated the possibility that they died in the Pueblo Revolt, I moved on to other possibilities. There were several different tribes in this area, the Yaqui, the Pima, the “Moquis” or Hopi, the Quechua, etc. and at various times, particularly as conflicts flared between peninsular Spain and the criollos of Mexico and then between Mexico and the North American settlers in the West, there had been many fierce but generally brief conflicts.  And of course, there were several missions dedicated to the Purísima Concepción (Immaculate Conception), for whom the Spanish and particularly Spanish Franciscans had a great devotion. Below we see La Conquistadora, a Spanish statue that is now an image of the Immaculate Conception, brought to Mexico by Franciscans in 1625 and eventually arriving in Santa Fe,  where it has been a devotional focal point for centuries, through all wars and disturbances and crises.

One mission of that name turned out to have been founded by the Jesuits, which disqualified it immediately; another important mission of that name was founded by the Franciscans, but it was in San Antonio, Texas. And then, finally, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I found that a Misión de la Purísima Concepción had been established in 1779 in what is actually now a part of California, a place now known as Fort Yuma (right across the Colorado River from the city of Yuma, Arizona) by Padres Francisco Tomás Hermenogildo Garcés and Juan Antonio Barreneche.

It didn’t last long, because there was an uprising of the Quechan (or Yuma) Indians in 1781, and while it was directed at the Spanish administrators, the missionaries were killed as well, even though the mission population tried to protect them.  The mission itself was destroyed and in its place a fort was built by the US government some years later in the 19^th century.  And then in 1919, it became a mission again, and is now known as St Thomas Indian Mission, which constitutes the easternmost parish of the Diocese of San Diego.

There is a monument to Fr. Garcés at the mission.  Below is a photo, from the town’s website, but better photos and a more detailed history can be found at US Mission Trail, a site maintained by a devotee of the missions.
 

So while the museum’s caption on the painting was completely wrong, it’s a story that certainly was repeated throughout the Franciscan missions and no doubt reflects the situation in New Mexico as well.

The text underneath the painting tells the personal side of the friars’ stories.  Let’s translate that of Brother Juan Antonio, who passed through Cuba at the same time that most of St. Augustine’s former residents had been long established around Havana.  Here is his story:

V. R. del Ven P. Fr. Juan Antonio Barreneche, Originario del Pueblo de Lecazor en el Reino de Navarra, tomo el Santo habito en la Prov. De Sta. Helena de la Florida, en el Convento de la Avana, hizo tránsito y se afilió en este Apostólico Colegio el año de 75, en el de 79 fue destinado a las Missiones de Sonora, Estando de Ministro en la de la Purissima Concepcion del Rio Colorado, y en compañía del Venerable P. Fr. Fran. Garcés, se sublevaron los Yndios y el día 12 de julio de 1781 le quitaron la vida a palos. Se advirtieron in este V. Religioso mientras el motín algunas cosas prodigiosas y después de quatro meses de enterrado su cadáver se hallo casi incorrupto Fue Religioso mui apacible, humilde, pobre, penitente y Oediente, con cuias virtudes y otras en q[ue] se exercitó constante dio exemplares pruebas de su Apostolico espíritu. Pasó de esta vida a la eterna de edad de 31 años.

 [Religious Life] of the Saintly Fr. Juan Antonio Barreneche, a native of the town of Lecazor in the Kingdom of Navarra, who took the Holy habit in the Province of Santa Helena of Florida, in the Convent of Havana, was transferred and affiliated with this Apostolic College in the year [17]75, and in [17]79, was sent to the Missions of Sonora, having his Ministry at the mission of the Purissima Concepcion del Rio Colorado [Mission of the Immaculate Conception on the Colorado River], accompanying the Saintly Fr. Francisco Garcés, when the Indians revolted and on July 12, 1781, they took his life by clubbing him.  During the riot, some remarkable things were observed about this Holy Religious and four months after his burial, his body was found to be almost incorrupt. He was a very gentle friar, humble, poor, penitent and obedient, who through these virtues and others that he constantly practiced gave an example that was proof of his Apostolic spirit. He passed from this life to eternal life at 31 years of age.

So we find a connection between Spain, St. Augustine, New Mexico, Mexico, Arizona, California, numerous Indian tribes, and, most important of all, St. Francis.  Below we see the Nativity Scene in the Cathedral Basilica of Santa Fe, since, after all, the Nativity Scene as such was introduced by St. Francis in 1223 and it also continues to this day.

 

 

Christmas at Tolomato Cemetery

This year, thanks to a suggestion from TCPA member Buff Gordon, we decided to decorate for the holidays.  We went to a local Christmas tree lot and got two lovely real fir-branch wreaths, which we hung with nylon fishing line and which so far have remained hanging through some very rough weather!  Knock wood...

The weather today was beautiful clear winter weather, however, and the cemetery was at its most beautiful.  I went out to take a photo of the wreaths for this blog and spent the morning snapping various scenes, although I am certainly not a great photographer, alas.  But little details stood out in the bright sun. Below is the trefoil Chi-Rho symbol on the vault of Fr. Miguel O'Reilly (d. 1812), reflecting the trees in the little pool of rainwater that always collects in it.

 

During my photographic excursion, our resident fish-hawk, seen here against the almost unreal blue sky, watched me like...well, like a hawk.

 

 

Tolomato Cemetery will be open this Saturday, December 21, from 11-3, for visits and tours.  It's supposed to be another nice, clear day, and all photographers are hereby reminded to bring their cameras!

A Cuban Star

Last week, we had a visit from a large group from Miami, members of the Asamblea Provincial de La Habana, a group of Cubans living in the US who are very devoted to the city of their birth, Havana.  The city of St Augustine was closely connected to the city of Havana throughout most of its early centuries, and Cubans have a special feeling about St Augustine.  Despite the cold and gloomy weather, their excitement about being in St Augustine – and especially at Tolomato - shone through.

Added to this is the fact that the current bishop of St Augustine, Bishop Felipe Estevez, was born in Havana and spent his childhood there.  Before it became a diocese, St. Augustine was administered by the bishops of Santiago de Cuba and then Havana, but this is the first time since becoming a diocese in 1870 that the town has had a Cuban-born bishop, so this made the visit even more special.  Above we see the bishop greeting the Cuban delegation as they arrive.  Docents Louise Kennedy, Pat Kenney, Mary Jane Ballou and Elizabeth Gessner were also on hand to welcome the group and show them around the cemetery.

The purpose of this visit was to install the star commemorating the place where the Cuban liberator Jose Marti knelt to pay his respects at the tomb of Fr. Felix Varela, regarded by Cubans as one of the intellectual heroes of Cuban independence.  His writings on freedom of conscience and political freedom were crucial to the 19th century independence movement, and while Cuba has had some significant problems since that time, Fr. Varela has remained a Cuban hero. He is also greatly respected in modern Cuba for his educational theories. 

The star on its accompanying granite base will be installed in the floor near the crypt where Fr. Varela was buried. His remains were moved to Cuba in 1911, but the place is still significant. In fact, the plaque could not be placed permanently because we are in the process of restoring the ledger stone, which was damaged after having been hung on the wall for decades after Bishop Verot was also buried in the crypt in 1876.  The area around the crypt opening will be repaired with marble and the stone itself will be cleaned and reset, and then the Marti star will be installed permanently.

But in the meantime, we had a wonderful visit from this warm, enthusiastic group of people who are among the many who find their roots and connections at Tolomato Cemetery.

Just where is Minorca, anyway?

This is a frequent question when we discuss the Minorcans at Tolomato Cemetery, and I’ve never been sure that people can really visualize it.  We might have to attach a map of Spain to the Minorcan informational sign that we have at the cemetery.

Minorca is one of the Balearic Islands (Islas Baleares, in Spanish) that are located off the northern Mediterranean coast of Spain (the three blobs at the center right in the above photo). The Spanish spelling is Menorca, and you will see it spelled both ways in St. Augustine.

Like all Mediterranean islands, they had a long history of being overrun by diverse invading forces, and during their existence have been dominated by unknown pre-historic peoples probably from the Levant, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Kingdom of Aragon (a largely Catalan-speaking pre-unification Spanish kingdom), modern Spain, and even, at various times, by England and France.  The big island, Mallorca, also had a large and ancient Jewish population, probably established during Roman times and the Diaspora.

Minorca and the other Balearic Islands are now part of Spain, and form one of the 17 “comunidades autonomas” (territorial divisions similar to US states) into which Spain was divided in its 1978 Constitution. 

There are three important islands that make up the Baleares. Minorca refers to the “small island,” while its neighboring island is named Mallorca, or the big island.  As you can see from the photo of Minorca below, taken when I was actually on my way to Mallorca last spring, it is indeed a small island.

Much of it is very dry and windswept, particularly the northern part, which is subject to a constant gale from the Mediterranean and features trees that are practically lying on their sides.  That part of it has been established as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve because of the unusual or even unique animals, plants and natural conditions found there.  It is also littered with prehistoric sites (dolmens, menhirs, etc.) from whatever the mysterious peoples were who first arrived at the island thousands of years ago. The rough coast is also the site of many shipwrecks and is of great interest to marine archaeologists.

The other side of the island is a little more moderate in climate, and features the old city of Ciutadella (“Citadel”) as its main city.  But the city on the east side of the island, Mahon, is the capital and the one from which “our” St Augustine Minorcans set forth. 

The British had captured Minorca in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1708 and settled in Mahon for several decades, losing the island to the French in 1756. However, Minorca was returned to England in the settlement of the Seven Years’ War, the same one that led to St Augustine’s British Period (as a result of the treaty settling that war) and the English occupied it until 1783, as they did St. Augustine. And it was for this reason that the Scottish Dr. William Turnbull, who brought the Minorcans to Florida, based his operations there.  Below we see the Hugo Ohlms mural in the Cathedral that depicts the arrival of the Minorcans in St Augustine after they fled Dr. Turnbull’s indigo plantation.

Mahon is the second deepest port in the world and was a site of British naval activities. For this reason, Minorca was also the setting of parts of the famous Patrick O’Brian nautical tales (such as Master and Commander) concerning the fictional British commander Jack Aubrey. 

The British left two further important cultural items: cows and gin.

Spanish cheeses are generally made of sheeps’ milk or goats’ milk, and cow milk cheeses are rare except in a couple of parts of “wet Spain,” such as Galicia, which has enough rain to provide grazing for cows.  Somehow the British, devoted as they were to butter and mild cheeses, managed to raise milk cows on Minorca and left behind a cows’ milk cheese heritage reflected in the Spanish cheese known as “Mahón.”

Accompanying this is the British-descended local gin production and a local gin and lemonade drink that is popular on the island.

Mahon is also famous as the source of the name of the condiment now known as mayonnaise, a variant on a Catalan aioli (oil and garlic or egg based sauce) that became popular in France and England after their conquests of the island. 

The British ceded Minorca to Spain in 1783, briefly recaptured it during the French Revolution, and after disputes with France following the Revolution, in 1802 they once again returned it to Spain and it has been part of Spain ever since.

Mahon reflects this past, for when you come into the harbor on the ferry from Barcelona or one of the huge cruise ships that docks there, you will glimpse a row of high, narrow, long-windowed 18th century British houses on one side – and the low, flat-roof, thick-walled, limewashed traditional Minorcan masonry houses on the other side. Or at least you did,  years ago when I first saw the harbor. Now, of course, now these are nearly concealed behind vacation “chalets” or condos built in recent years.

Let’s see…what else?  Modern Minorca (Menorca, in Spanish and Catalan) is now a big tourist destination, known for its little calas or coves with blue waters and white sands. It also many wealthy semi-resident foreigners docking their yachts in its harbors, and supports a charming rural tourism industry in the more remote farms and towns.  The languages are Catalan and Spanish, but you can hear virtually any other language in the world as you go through the old stone streets of Ciutadella or Mahón.

A Fungus Among Us

When we were at the cemetery last week, Louise and Nick spotted what looked like invading columns of fungi approaching from points on the south side of the cemetery.

We went over to investigate more closely and found that these dense clusters of light brown fungus were thriving at the base of trees that had been cut earlier in the year or were dead from some other cause. 

Thinking it would be an easy task to identify them, I went to the internet – but I had forgotten how many thousands of kinds of mushrooms exist in the world!  Finally I came up with a possible name for our invaders: amillaria tabescens, known to its friends as the ringless honey mushroom.

This fungus is actually growing from a root system underground and follows the course of decaying roots and branches of dead trees.  It is common in the fall, especially after patches of rainy weather, and we met all the qualifications for its survival: warm, moist soil, yummy rotting vegetation, and cozy shade.

It is very short-lived and has probably already dissolved back into the ground from which it seemingly emerged. But watching the natural phenomena come and go at Tolomato Cemetery is one of the most interesting features of visiting the cemetery.