The First
Parish Churches
by Michael Gannon, Ph.D.
The first parish Mass at the infant settlement of St. Augustine,
on Sept. 8, 1565, was celebrated alfresco, under an azure sky,
before a rustic altar fashioned from logs. That Mass on the
grass took place before the first step was taken to build a
human habitation, leading the late 19th century Catholic
historian John Gilmary Shea to observe, “The altar was older
than the hearth.”
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This drawing, from about 1593, depicts
the parish church, Nuestra Señora de los
Remedios, at St. Augustine, Fla. |
While a church and living quarters were being
erected, the large congregation of 800 persons
continued to worship out-of-doors. Even the
completed first church could not contain all the
members of the community at one time. Early
buildings were of wattle-and-daub (cuje y
embarrado) construction: upright wood poles were
joined by a lattice work over which river mud
was spread. When the mud dried it was covered
inside and out with whitewash. Like the
surrounding natives, the Spanish used palm
thatch for roofing.
The first churches stood adjacent to the Nombre
de Dios (Name of God) site where Pedro Menéndez
de Avilés and his settlers had made their
landing. For a six-year period beginning in 1566
the community lived and worshipped eastward
across the Matanzas River. In 1572, St.
Augustine relocated to the mainland site it
occupies today. There, at the southeast corner
of the central plaza that one sees today, a
relatively large parish church was erected under
the patronage of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios
(Our Lady of Healing). That riverfront building
was constructed of vertical wood planks with a
thatch roof. No glass of any kind was used in
the windows. A cross and weathervane surmounted
the façade. To one side stood an open timber
belfry (campanario) with four bells. When
completed, Los Remedios was the first parish
church in the country that we know of by name;
as it was also the only church in existence
north of Mexico.
Like the rest of St. Augustine, the parish
church was ransacked and burned by an English
pirate force under Francis Drake in 1586. Los
Remedios was reconstructed in wood, as before.
(By that date the Spaniards knew of the
existence of coquina shell rock which abounded
beneath the sands of Anastasia Island across the
river, but they had no tools as yet with which
to quarry it.) The church fell victim to
accidental fire in 1599 and was rebuilt in 1605.
Toward the close of the 16th century the parish
undertook the construction of a hospital and
chapel dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Soledad
(Our Lady of Solitude). Completed in 1598, on a
site opposite today’s St. Joseph Convent on
south St. George Street, Soledad was the first
hospital in what is now the United States. The
building would serve that purpose for most of
the next century. In 1702 St. Augustine was set
on fire by an English force out of Carolina, and
Soledad was one of the few structures left
standing. From that year until 1764 the hospital
and chapel would serve as the parish church.