Santa Clara: The first mission honoring a woman
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By Miguel Pérez
She is the first California Franciscan mission named after a woman, and the only one residing on a university campus, which makes the manicured landscape of Mission Santa Clara de Asís logically beautiful. But this was not always the landscape for this mission. Since it was established by Father Junípero Serra on January 12, 1777, floods, earthquakes and fires have forced this Native American neophyte community to relocate four times – occupying five different locations in its first 45 years! |
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She started on the banks of the Guadalupe River, becoming the eighth of California’s 21 Franciscan missions, and finally settled at its current location in 1825. A map on exhibit at the mission shows “the five sites of Santa Clara de Asís.” (See image).
She is the namesake of the city, county and University of Santa Clara. Established only three months after Mission San Francisco de Asís (Oct. 9, 1776), this mission was meant to cover the southern flank of San Francisco Bay. It became very relevant once a new pueblo called San José was established 10 months later, on Nov. 29, 1777, less than four miles east of the mission. (See map). The mission chapel became the main church for San José residents until the city’s St. Joseph Church was built in 1803. |
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According to a "self-guided tour" pamphlet given to visitors here, Mission Santa Clara was meant to serve as the sister mission to Mission San Francisco de Asís and would be "receiving goods and services meant to the new Pueblo of San José."
Of course, the idea of sister missions named after two saints who were contemporaries and friends, both from Assisi, made a lot of sense. “Saint Clare's close friendship with Saint Francis inspired Padre Junípero Serra to name this mission after her,” an exhibit here explains. Although born into a noble family, “Clare left her privileged existence to follow Francis of Assisi and embraced his life of simplicity and compassion.” And she “inspired many other women to join,” as she “founded an order that came to be called the Poor Clares.” |
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The pamphlet notes that, “Mission Santa Clara seemed to thrive at first: boasting the highest number of converts and recording record productivity made possible by the fertile, well-watered lands and temperate climate." It also had "acreage to the east for cattle grazing, numerous Indians nearby and easy access to the Bay," according to a mission exhibit. "It was often praised as an example of the ideal setting for a mission."
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The mission became so successful that it was able to help another mission get started in 1897 with a substantial donation of 600 cows, 4 teams of oxen, 3 mules, 4 tame horses, 2 bulls, 28 steers, 98 sheep, and two rams, according to an exhibit in Mission San José, which received the donation.
But that success occurred while the mission was managed by Spanish Franciscan friars. Like at many other missions, many things changed at Mission Santa Clara after Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. |
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“The always present clash of cultures, epidemics and growing rivalries with the nearby Pueblo of San José were only made worse by Mexico's succession from the Spanish empire ... when royal funding completely dried up," the pamphlet says. "At the secession, the fledgling Mexican government found few resources for supporting such distant missions."
When Mexico expelled the Spanish Franciscan friars loyal to the King of Spain and the Mexican Congress passed the Secularization Act of 1833, the government transferred control of the vast mission lands from the missionaries to government bureaucrats appointed by the governor. |
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Unfortunately, most of the lands and livestock that were promised by the Act to revert to the ownership of the natives who lived and worked at the missions were sold off by Mexico and went to influential Mexican citizens.
In other words, the Indians were often swindled out of their lands and left homeless. But it was a slow process, with the secularization law taking effect some time after it was enacted. In California during those days, sometimes hearing about new Mexican government policies took months, and implementing them took years! |
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At Mission Santa Clara, secularized on December 27, 1836, the new Mexican government “inadvertently abandoned the Ohlone to the pioneers and the profiteers,” the pamphlet says.
The Mission Santa Clara property, with a rich pastureland in the Santa Clara Valley, was broken into several ranchos for raising cattle. They were owned by wealthy Californios, except for a small parcel of land, holding the decaying mission buildings, that was retained by the Catholic Church. The mission chapel continued to be used as a parish church when the mission was closed, but natives fled back to the villages or went to work for the new ranchos. And on March 19, 1851, those the surviving mission buildings were turned into a college campus. Ownership of the mission property was transferred from the Franciscan to the Jesuit Orders of the Catholic Church and "Santa Clara University became the first college of higher learning in the new state of California," the pamphlet says. Today, the mission chapel sits in the middle a beautiful college campus, the oldest university in California, and serves as the chapel for the community and for university students. |
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To the right of the chapel there is a beautiful rose garden honoring more than 6,000 Native Americans, Spaniards, Californios and Americans who were buried at the nearby Santa Clara Mission Cemetery between 1777 and 1851.
The mission museum tracks each of its five locations with detailed information and images. Through various exhibits here you learn that the original 1777 mission church, made of wood and thatch, was “near the current site of the San Jose airport,” and that it was “destroyed by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in 1779.” |
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You learn that “a second temporary mission was erected while the third mission was being constructed” and that “when the third mission complex was completed in 1784, it was made out of adobe blocks instead of wood.”
But the third mission had to be abandoned in 1818 “because of earthquake and water damage” and “a temporary adobe and tile church served as the fourth mission from 1819 to 1825.” And when the fifth and current mission chapel was completed in 1825, “the fourth mission church was converted into dormitories for the Ohlone.” And some of those dormitories were eventually restored into college classrooms! |
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However, in 1926, a devastating fire destroyed the 1825 adobe chapel and a restored and an enlarged church reopened in 1928. Today, the chapel’s Spanish colonial façade features in relief statues of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Clare and Saint Francis.
In the center of the façade, and on the high altar inside the church, statues of Saint Clare represent the moment in 1240 A.D. when she confronted marauding mercenaries – holding her Abess' staff and sacred ciborium containing the Body of Christ – and courageously dissuaded them from plundering the town of Assisi. (See photos). |
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Little did she know that she would be so well remembered in a "New World" that had not yet been discovered, or by Spanish priests in a Native American community in California! Or by college students in the 21st century!
Nowadays, we often think of the “Spanish Missions” as if they were once populated by Spanish colonists, when in fact they were mostly communities of Indian neophytes. While Hispanics obviously survived the colonization of California, it is important to note that the Ohlone neophytes of Santa Clara, as those of many other missions, “did not disappear,” the guide/pamphlet affirms. Despite the adversities of natural disasters, waves of epidemics, the breakup of the missions and the exploitation of the Indians by those who came to California during the Gold Rush, a museum exhibit here notes that, “Today, numerous families have reclaimed their Ohlone heritage and still reside in the Bay Area.” |
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CALIFORNIA ROAD TRIP/25
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