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Asistencias

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San Antonio de Pala Asistencia, an asistencia of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, is located in Pala, California

Asistencias or visitas were smaller sub-missions of Catholic missions established during the 16th-19th centuries of the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. They allowed the Catholic church and the Spanish crown to extend their reach into native populations at a modest cost.

Description[edit]

Asistencias were much smaller than the main missions with living quarters, workshops and crops in addition to a church. They were typically staffed with a small group of clergymen and a relatively small group of indigenous neophytes in order to maintain the complex.

Particularly strategic asistencias were later elevated to the status of a full mission. This typically included an expansion of existing facilities to support a larger clergy and indigenous neophyte population, improvement of basic infrastructure such as roads, and rechristening under a new Catholic saint.[1][2]

In Spanish Florida, visitas were mission stations without a resident missionary. Church buildings at visitas were simple, or sometimes absent.[3] Visitas were often in satellite villages associated with a town with a doctrina (a mission with one or more resident missionaries). The mission of San Juan del Puerto served nine visitas in 1602.[4]

List of asistencias[edit]

The following is a list of asistencias that remained so at the time of their abandonment, sorted by year of establishment.

Arizona[edit]

Baja California[edit]

Baja California Sur[edit]

California[edit]

Sonora[edit]

List of former asistencias[edit]

The following is a list of asistencias that were elevated to the status of mission, sorted by year of establishment.

Arizona[edit]

Baja California Sur[edit]

California[edit]

Sonora[edit]

Misión San Diego de Pitiquito in Pitiquito, Sonora

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "California Mission Life". Factcards.califa.org. Retrieved 2015-06-12.
  2. ^ "Mission Trail Today - Mission Asistencias and Estancias". U.S. Mission Trail. Retrieved 2015-06-17.
  3. ^ Worth, John E. (1998). Timucua Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida. Volume 1: Assimilation. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. p. 35. ISBN 0-8130-1575-8.
  4. ^ Hann, John H. (April 1990). "Summary Guide to Spanish Florida Missions and Visitas with Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries". The Americas. 46 (4): 436. doi:10.2307/1006866. JSTOR 1006866. S2CID 147329347.