Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/338

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
320
MISSIONS AND SECULARIZATION.

what extent the Fernandinos in California knew or approved what was being done. Beyond the presence of the ten in Baja California, at the time Figueroa's soldiers revolted,[1] there is no account of their journey, no official record of their arrival, and no list of their names. President Duran in a circular to the padres, January 23d, devoted to several general matters, but especially to the urgent calls of the college for aid, alluded to the cession as a matter in which he should lose no time, having already permitted the Zacatecan prelate to station his friars so as to learn the routine and prepare for a formal delivery of the missions. He hoped the change would enable some of their number to go to the relief of the mother college, and declared that no one might hope for a license from him to retire to any other destination.[2] In assigning his padres to their different stations on and about February 13th, Prefect García Diego used the following formula: "Inasmuch as the supreme government of the Mexican republic has intrusted to our college some of the missions of Alta California, which hitherto the worthy sons of the college of San Fernando have administered with such honor; and it having been agreed between the venerable discretories of both colleges that there should be delivered to us the missions of the north as appears from orders which I have shown to the Very Rev. Padre President Fr. Narciso Duran; therefore," etc.[3] Soon a concordat funeral was concluded between the two bands of missionaries, by which each agreed to say twenty masses for the soul of any member of the other band who might die; and thus the new order of things was permanently established.[4]


  1. Dept. St. Pap., Ben. Cust.-H., MS., i. 35.
  2. Duran, Cordillera á los Padres en Enero de 1833, MS.
  3. This in the appointment of Gonzalez to S. José. Corresp. de Misiones, MS., 39-41. García assumed formal charge of Sta Clara on March 6th. Sta Clara, Paroquia, MS., 19.
  4. S. José, Patentes, MS., 190-1; Coronel, Doc., MS., 11-12; Arch. Obispado, MS., 52. General mention of the transfer in Mofras, Explor., i. 274, who states that the division was made in Cal. to avoid disputes, the old