Mission Concepcion
Description:
The legacy and history of San Antonio and this region began with a simple ceremony when...
in 1718 Franciscans and Spanish representatives established the first mission. Within 13 years, five were located along the San Antonio River. The missions' purpose? To acculturate and Christianize the native population and make them Spanish citizens. Today, visitors can retrace the footsteps of the mission Indians and friars. And, possibly, meet descendants of those first inhabitants.
Pictured here is Mission Concepcion
Original image...my own.
Please Click On The Picture Links Below For More Information:
Mission San Jose
Description:
The legacy and history of San Antonio and this region began with a simple ceremony when...
in 1718 Franciscans and Spanish representatives established the first mission. Within 13 years, five were located along the San Antonio River. The missions' purpose? To acculturate and Christianize the native population and make them Spanish citizens. Today, visitors can retrace the footsteps of the mission Indians and friars. And, possibly, meet descendants of those first inhabitants.
Pictured here is Mission San Jos y San Miguel de Aguayo -
Known as the "Queen of the Missions", this is the largest of the missions and was almost fully restored to its original design in the 1930s by the WPA (Works Projects Administration). Spanish missions were not churches, but communities, with the church the focus. Mission San Jos shows the visitor how all the missions might have looked over 250 years ago.
Founded in 1720, the mission was named for Saint Joseph and the Marqus de San Miguel de Aguayo, the governor of the Province of Coahuila and Texas at the time. It was built on the banks of the San Antonio river several miles to the south of the earlier mission, San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo). Its founder was the famed Father Antonio Margil de Jess, a very prominent Franciscan missionary in early Texas.
San Jos, as it became known, was the largest of the missions in the area. At its height, the community contained about 350 Indian neophytes, sustained by extensive fields and herds of livestock. Viewed as the model among the Texas missions, San Jos gained a reputation as a major social and cultural center. It became known as the "Queen of the Missions." Its imposing complex of stone walls, bastions, granary, and magnificent church was completed by 1782.
So rich an enterprise was a natural target for Apache and Comanche depredations. Although they could not prevent raids on their livestock, the mission itself was almost impregnable. In his journal, Fray Juan Agustn Morf attested to its defensive character: "It is, in truth, the first mission in America . . . in point of beauty, plan, and strength . . . there is not a presidio along the entire frontier line that can compare with it." The danger was when working the fields or during travel to and from the ranch or other missions. With technical help from the two presidial soldiers garrisoned there, San Jos residents learned to defend themselves. Already proficient with bow and arrow, the men also learned the use of guns and cannon.
Mission San Jos has become a lasting symbol throughout the centuries for the Spanish mission frontier in Texas.
Having fallen into disrepair and partial ruin over the years, the San Antonio Conservation Society and the Federal Government among others, undertook to restore portions of the mission community in the 1920s and 1930s. The church, which had lost its dome, bell tower, and a wall, was rededicated in 1937.
In 1941, Mission San Jos was declared a State Historic Site, and later that same year, a National Historic Site. When the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park was established in November 1978, the Spanish colonial mission was assured of protection in cooperation with the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the parish.
History courtesy of the San Antonio National Park Service.
Image is a composite of a background image in the public domain by the NPS/E.Dupree and my own superimposed capture of the mission itself.
About Lianne:
I have a passion for the landscape of Western New York and for the sea that I am unable to express completely in my poetry alone. Now, I have converted both those loves into digital paintings in an impressionist style that express what I see with the heart more than with the eye. I added to that the metaphor of the spiritual journey in my Sea Stories paintings - a visual metaphor for our personal quest for character, courage and truth. Contemporary, yet timeless, my digital paintings are modern realism but with homage to the classic works. In addition to my current art work, I have two self-published volumes of poetry, 'Songs of the Heart's Longing' from Blurb publishing and 'Ecclesiastes for Sixty: Seasons in Solitude' from Xlibris. Both volumes contain my own original art and photography to accompany my contemporary style poetry.
My work has won a number of awards and contests including Light, Space and Time's Seascape competition for digital art, is on display at Trillium Gallery in Saugerties, NY and is currently appearing in Issue 4 of Trillium Gallery Magazine and Woven Tale Press online magazine.
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