When was junipero serra born

This was the first of a total of nine missions he would create in what is now known as California. While working at the missions Junipero Serra taught the natives about faith, but had run-ins with the Spanish because of the way they treated the natives. While Junipero Serra believed in the rights of the natives, he also believed in corporal punishment when they broke rules.

He was 70 years old. Junipero Serra was buried in the floor. Junipero Serra is credited with concerting 4, Native Americans.

He immersed himself in rigorous studies of logic, metaphysics, cosmology, and theology. In , Serra became a priest, and three years later earned an ecclesiastical license to teach philosophy at the Convento de San Francisco. Serra was considered intellectually brilliant by his peers. He received a doctorate in theology from the Lullian College in Palma de Majorca, where he also occupied the Duns Scotus chair of philosophy until he joined the missionary College of San Fernando de Mexico in Serra had a singular purpose to save, in his mind, Native American souls.

He believed that the death of an unconverted heathen was tragic, while the death of a baptized convert was a cause for joy. The missions were primarily designed to bring the Catholic faith to the native peoples, other aims were to provide a framework for organizing the natives into a productive workforce in support of new extensions of Spanish power, and to train them to take over ownership and management of the land.

As head of the order in California, Serra not only dealt with church officials, but also with Spanish officials in Mexico City and with the local military officers who commanded the nearby garrison. Converted Indians were segregated from Indians who had not yet embraced Christianity, lest there be a relapse. Discipline was strict, and the converts were not allowed to come and go at will. Indians who were baptized were required to live at the mission and conscripted into forced labor as plowmen, shepherds, cattle herders, blacksmiths, and carpenters on the mission.

Disease, starvation, overwork, and torture decimated these tribes. The missions served economic and political purposes as well as religious ends.

Economically, the missions produced all of the colony's cattle and grain, and by the s were even producing surpluses sufficient to trade with Mexico for luxury goods. San Juan was the seventh of nine missions established under the direction of this indomitable Spaniard. Until he was 35, he spent most of his time in the classroom—first as a student of theology and then as a professor.

He also became famous for his preaching. Suddenly he gave it all up and followed the yearning that had begun years before when he heard about the missionary work of Saint Francis Solano in South America. For 18 years, he worked in central Mexico and in the Baja Peninsula. He became president of the missions there. Enter politics: the threat of a Russian invasion south from Alaska.

In , when he was fifty-four years of age, he was appointed to the charge of the Missions to be established in Upper California. He arrived at San Diego in , and, with the exception of one journey to Mexico, he spent all the remainder of his life here. Our knowledge of his character is derived almost exclusively from his biography by Palou, who was also a native of Majorca, a brother Franciscan Monk, had been his disciple, came across the Atlantic with him, was his associate in the college of San Fernando, his companion in the expedition to California, his successor in the Presidency of the Missions of Old California, his subordinate afterward in New California, his attendant at his death-bed, and his nearest friend for forty years or more.

Under the circumstances, Palou had the right to record the life of his preceptor and superior. All his actions were governed by the ever-present and predominant idea that life is a brief probation, trembling between eternal perdition on one side, and salvation on the other.

Earth for its own sake, had no joys for him. His soul did not recognize this life as its home. He turned with dislike from nearly all the sources of pleasure in which the polished society of our age delights. The conversation of his own sex was not a source of amusement.

He was habitually serious.