A Tale of Two Saints at San Xavier del Bac^*

* Wa:k is the native name for the settlement, and San Xavier del Bac is the name of the church. Bac is a Spanish corruption of Wa:k.

Abstract

In the late eighteenth century, after the expulsion of the Jesuit Order from the Pimería Alta, the Franciscan missionaries who replaced them built a new church at the native settlement of Wa:k (Bac), near Tucson, Arizona. Despite rivalry between these orders, the Franciscans retained the Jesuit name of the place, San Xavier del Bac, and moved the sculpture of the titular saint, Francis Xavier, from the high altar of the old church to that of the new church. In the Catholic Church, the high altar was the conventional location of the titular saint and a second image of the saint could be featured on the church façade. However, photographs of the Bac façade reveal the image of the founder of the Franciscan Order, Francis of Assisi, in the honored facade position. This essay reviews the historical situation that led to this unconventional juxtaposition of saints, and explores the logic behind the Franciscan retention of Jesuit components in their iconographic program.

En el siglo dieciocho tarde, después de la expulsion de los jesuitas del Pimería Alta, los misioneros franciscanos quienes los replacieron construieron una iglesia nueva en el poblado indigeno de Wa:k (Bac), cerca de Tucson, Arizona. A pesar de rivalidad entre los dos ordenes, los franciscanos retenieron el nombre jesuito del lugar, San Xavier del Bac, y movieron la escultura del santo títular, Francisco Xavier, del altar mayor de la iglesia vieja hasta el altar mayor de la nueva. En la Iglesia Católica, el altar major estaba el lugar proprio del santo títular, y tal vez una figura del mismo santo puedó destacadose en la fachada. No obstante, fotos del fachada de Bac revela la imagen de Francisco de Asís, el fundador del orden franciscano en la fachada. Esto ensayo reexamina las circunstáncias históricas que resultaron en esa yuxtaposición de santos honrados en una iglesia monástica. Tambián explora la lógica del programa franciscano iconográfico.

KEYWORDS:

• Southwest missions
• Church iconography
• US-Mexico Border
• Franciscan order
• Jesuit order
• Jesuit expulsion
• Pimería Alta
• Sobaipuris/Tohono O’odham

Acknowledgments

I thank Father Greg Adolf, Luisa Elena Alcala, Barbara Anderson, Clara Bargellini, Klint Erickson, Bernard Fontana, Gwen Isaac, Timothy Lewis, Kimberly Mast, Jeremy Rowe, and Deni Seymour. I am especially grateful to Deni Seymour for her direction and ideas, to Jean Giliberto for sharing her work on photographic evidence of the disintegration of the figure before Bishop Salpointe’s time, and to Aleta Ringlero for her work on the photos of the 1860s and 1870s, the foundation of this essay. An appendix of photos relating to this project will be published later.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

* Wa:k is the native name for the settlement, and San Xavier del Bac is the name of the church. Bac is a Spanish corruption of Wa:k.

1 Anderson (1979:22) added that highlighted façade figures could include holy figures and the patron saint of a place, if the place was named for a saint who was not the titular saint.

2 The end of the hanging rope is still visible today on the lower left (the proper lower-right side of the figure) where the cement coat is lacking. However, this has been damaged farther through erosion.

3 For effects of the expulsion of the Jesuits on Central Mexican churches (see Anderson 1979:chapter 6).

4 References to McCarty are to translations of primary sources.

5 According to Deni Seymour (2011, 2019), the “miserable house” was probably a church, given the usual small size of church structures in Jesuit times.

6 For different hypotheses on the location of the Jesuit church (see Duell 1921:76, Building H on plan; Fontana 1996:14).

7 Under the clothing, the lower bodies of processional sculptures consisted of light, wooden frames. The clothing could change according to the occasion.

8 Among earlier artworks in Jesuit churches, Kino mentioned a painting of Our Lady of Sorrows by Juan Correa at his head church and the sculpture of the Virgin of Remedies at Remedios (Bolton 1936:249–250, 255, 269, 272, 390–392). A canvas painting, mentioned at Bac in a 1737 inventory represented “the Seraphic Francis” (Kessell 1970:199), most likely Francis Xavier, and possibly the painting mentioned in a late inventory. The portraits of Mary and Joseph in Espinosa’s church were said to have been painted by Cabrera, either the famous eighteenth-century Mexican painter Miguel Cabrera or a follower (Ahlborn 1974:note 33).

9 For the use of prints for religious instruction in sixteenth-century Mexico, see Valadés (1989 [1579]:illustrations on pp. 471, 478, and 499).

10 Kino did not mention Francis Xavier in this account, presumably because his ministry had been to Asia, not the New World.

11 For analysis of documents, see Hernández Serrano (2011); English translations are in McCarty (1977:64–70). For physical evidence in churches from this period, see Hernández Serrano (2011, 2012); for Bac in particular, see Eleazar Herreras (1981:4ff).

12 In Jesuit times, Xavier’s cassock would have been more distinctively Jesuit, although the 1765 Bac inventory does not indicate this: “1 statue of San Xavier with cassock of ribbed silk” (Fontana 2015:12). Whatever its form in earlier years, the black color has remained.

13 At Bac, where bilateral balance of motifs on the Gospel (left from the point of view of the entrance) and Epistle (right) sides was strictly observed, Dominic and Ignatius, as a pair, would have occupied comparable niches in the Franciscan arrangement. Scholars generally agree that Ignatius, who is now in a lower niche nearer the Sanctuary, is out of place. He should be above the Virgin Mary as mother of Christ, to match Dominic’s location in the niche above Joseph. See Anderson (1979) for the common practice in Catholic churches of bilateral balance and the presence of this balance within categories of figures (e.g. apostles, parents of Christ, etc.). They are not in these positions now, due to reorganization, probably in the nineteenth century. See Note 31.

14 The figure is too high on the retablo to have been examined carefully, so its technical attributes are unstudied (see Fontana 2010:240). Also, see Ahlborn (1974) on the general technologies used for other figures at Bac.

15 In a contrapposto pose, a standing figure places most weight on one foot, so that shoulders and arms and hips and legs tilt or twist off axes set up by other parts of the sculpture.

16 Fontana (2010:240) first identified this special type of halo.

17 Although the rich material of his habit contrasts with the signs of his humble qualities (the rope and bare feet), the artists’ intention was to emphasize the saint’s sacred elevation above the earthy plane.

18 The small Franciscans have yet to be studied. as a group. Their inconsistencies seem random, not the result of a comprehensible strategy.

19 Aleta Ringlero (2011) was the first to identify Gentile’s photos as the earliest known of the façade figure. His photos are not focused enough to be reproduced here.

20 Prints and Photographs, Lot 13024.

21 Stereo view, California State Library, Sacramento;

22 Many of Reynolds’ photos are in the Arizona Historical Society (e.g., 25215, 25212, 25211). Roughly contemporary photos showing the figure in the same condition are in the Henry and Albert Buehman Memorial Collection in the Arizona Historical Society (e.g., BN200310, B111429, B68673, and BN201707).

23 The present location of this photo and the name of the photographer are unknown.

24 The name of the photographer and the date of this photo are derived from information in different parts of Fontana’s work (2006:10; 2015:51, 72).

25 Other relevant photos may be in the Duell Collection at the Library of Congress, but these have yet to be digitized.

26 The Jesuit images of Joseph and Mary were paintings, which the Franciscans replaced with sculptures. Both the Jesuit paintings and the first set of Franciscan sculptures are now missing. The latter, in turn, were replaced in mid-nineteenth century by two other sculptures (Giffords 1978).

27 For illustrations of the murals in the nave, see Fontana and McCain (2010:figures 5.5 and 5.6); for the sculptures, see Fontana and McCain (2010:figures throughout chapter 5).

28 Salvation, the eventual return from the dead, resulted from the unification of believers with Christ through the consumption of bread and wine miraculously transformed into Christ’s living flesh and blood.

29 As previous scholars have noticed, there are actually three groups of Apostles at Bac, each group having twelve men, but changing membership, as individuals left or were added. The names of those at the Last Supper are well known and fixed but those at Pentecost are disputed, as are the early missionaries. Because Paul is included among the wooden sculptures, they probably represent the early missionaries.

30 On Franciscan ideas, in particular, see Phelan (1956).

31 The likely suspects are two Jesuit fathers, Aloysius Bosco and Carolus Evasius Messea, who resided at the church for about six months in 1864. (The Pope had reinstated the Jesuit Order in 1814.) According to J. Ross Browne (1869:141–142), they knew that Wa:k was originally a Jesuit mission site and they spoke of remodeling the Franciscan church. So, during their short stay, they may have rearranged some of the figures, removing the two Franciscans wearing vestments from the sanctuary and moving the Jesuit Ignatius Loyola closer (Umberger 2007:after 89 passim, and 104–109).

32 Fontana and McCain (2010:figure 5.7) reproduce a close-up photo of the cord on the interior. The cord on the exterior façade is seen in Figure 13.

33 Valadés’ prints (1989) date this notion back to sixteenth-century Central Mexico. In one print a friar uses pictures to explain the early events of Christianity to his native charges. In another, the friar and his students are included in the foreground of a depiction of the Crucifixion, as if they had been transported into the past through illustrations.

34 The display of only symbols of human actions on church exteriors was a form of censorship that also had precedents in sixteenth-century central Mexico (see McAndrew 1965:247–254; Monteverdi 1972).

35 The lions symbolized the support of the Spanish king, a subtle reminder perhaps that the same monarch had expelled the Jesuits.