300 Years of the Biblioteca Nacional

I´m in Madrid right now and I went to a new exhibit today that commemorates the 300th anniversary of the National Library. The building in which it is currently located was built for it in the 19th century, and it had been located in a couple of other places in the preceding century or so.

They have brought out wonderful things for the exhibit, and you can see original documents – not facsimiles – from the earliest times of the book  - or even written document – in Spain.  You can see parchments, books, maps, photos, and even hear early sound recordings.

I lucked out, however, because I saw something completely different downstairs in their permanent exhibit. They had moved something from that exhibit upstairs to the special exhibit and replaced it with this:

What is it? Part of a set of measuring and mapping tools made for the Spanish king Carlos II when he was 14 years old in the late 17th century.  I was delighted, because I am going to be giving a talk on early maps of St Augustine and I wanted to show people the tools used in creating them. So here they are.

However, this set was a multi-purpose tool.  It was designed by a Jesuit in Toledo, and even included a way the user could use the device to tune instruments.

Walls of St Augustine

After a long, long silence – as a result of my labors with Tolomato Cemetery this year – I have made a pre-New Year’s resolution to resume this blog. The posts may be sporadic, but they’ll be there!

One of the most interesting things going on in St Augustine right now is the dig at the Mission Nombre de Dios.  This is near the site where the Spanish landed, and is the site of the first church or chapel that they built.  There was an Indian mission at the site and a chapel with an image of Nuestra Señora de la Leche y Buen Parto, Our Lady of Milk and Safe Childbirth, known locally as Our Lady of La Leche.  The original image,  a sculpted figure, is thought to have been carried off in Palmer’s Raid in 1728.

The Mission is also the site of the first stone church built by the Spanish in 1677, although the exact location of this has been lost for centuries.

The original church was blown up by the Spanish themselves during Palmer’s Raid in order to prevent the South Carolinians from using it to attack the Castillo. The current chapel on the site dates only to the early 20th century, but it replaces several earlier ones destroyed either during British attacks on St Augustine or by hurricanes.   But no sign of the original church remained.

Just this fall, new information surfaced about the location of this church.  It was actually old information, discovered by a priest stationed at the shrine in the 1950s, but like everything else about the Mission, it had been lost.  The priest felt that he had found the location of the foundations of the building and did a map of it, although unfortunately because of changes over the years, the map was fairly meaningless. But Dr. Kathy Deagan, who has devoted her life to digging up St Augustine, sat down and analyzed it and came up with some ideas about its location.

 

On he very first test pit, they found a wall.  And here we see it: a massive coquina wall or foundation.  Was it the original church?  Was it perhaps the church and Franciscan convent?  Or was it something else altogether?  I’ll keep you posted as Dr. Deagan and Dr. Jim Gifford pursue this surprisingly elusive past.

More Mysteries under St Augustine

This photo shows you everybody who’s anybody in St Augustine archaeology, puzzling over the latest find under our streets.  Carl Halbirt, Susan Parker, Buff Gordon, Herschel Shepherd, and Kathy Deagan (blond hair, green shirt with her back to the camera) and St Augustine Archaeological Association members Toni Wallace, Janet Jordan and Lin Masley ponder a series of 16th/17th century postholes.

The postholes (now just stains in the soil) were found in the course of digging up San Marco Avenue to put a tourist trolley stop in across the street from the Castillo de San Marcos. There are many postholes of varying sizes, and speculation is that these were from temporary buildings used during the construction of the earliest fort in the 16th century.  There is also the possibility that the buildings were storage buildings or some other utility structures. Herschel Shepherd suggested that we consult Spanish traditional architectural styles to answer some of the questions about the size, placement and possible use of these buildings.

Spanish New Orleans?

Spain had a significant but now nearly ignored or even unknown influence on Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular. I’m in New Orleans this week and thought I’d look for Spanish traces.

I didn’t have far to look. The Cabildo was built as the  headquarters for the Spanish governor and council in the 18th century. Spain acquired Louisiana shortly after it gave up St Augustine, in both cases because of the settlement of the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War).  Louisiana was under Spain from 1764 to 1803; in fact, it was Spanish until just a few days before the Louisiana Purchase, which made it American.  In a complicated treaty maneuver, Spain returned Louisiana to France, and the US then purchased it. In fact, the agreement for the Louisiana Purchase was signed in the Cabildo, which nowadays is the Louisiana State Museum.

Interestingly enough, the Spanish governor of Louisiana was a man named Alejandro O’Reilly. Yes, that’s right: another of the Wild Geese, the Irish who went to the Continent.  He’s no relation to St Augustine’s Fr. Miguel O’Reilly, his contemporary and fellow Irish Spaniard.

Here’s another little trace of Spain.  If I find any more, I’ll let you know.

Twelve Grapes till Midnight

OK, Hispanophiles – ready your grapes!

The first time I ever participated in the mysterious Spanish grape ritual was years ago with a group of people –whose names I have long forgot, since I had only met them a few hours earlier on the train – in the Puerta del Sol on what had to be the hottest New Year’s Eve on record.  Still, it was fun trying to cram our mouths with grapes or time their chewing appropriately.  Some people had brought peeled grapes, which I would say is the way to go if you really want efficiency.

This Spanish custom, which is now spreading throughout the Spanish speaking and even Anglo world – I’m sure I’ll see some folks here in St Augustine tonight chomping down on their grapes – actually originated in 1909 as a commercial promotion after a bumper grape harvest in Northern Spain.  It was obviously a “custom” waiting for its moment!

But whatever and wherever, ¡ Buen Año Nuevo! Happy 2011!

Christmas–and ¡Turrón!

This has been a very silent Fall on Towers of Avila, since travels and a medical problem have kept me away from my desk. But now I’m back, just in time for Christmas…not, alas, Christmas in Spain this year, but Christmas nonetheless, with a few Spanish touches.

Anyone who has ever been to Spain at Christmastime will be familiar with turrón, the traditional honey nougat candy that comes in a wide (and growing) variety of styles and flavors. My favorite is the so-called “turrón de Alicante,” which is a simple, hard nougat studded with almonds and encased in papery wafers on either side.

But there are other people who love soft turrón, which is somewhat the texture of halvah (for you New Yorkers out there) and now comes in every flavor from coconut to tutti frutti.  The more somber early versions included yema, in the style of the egg-yolk candy popular in Avila, or chestnut or other nut-based delights.   Below you see my 2006 photo of blocks of soft turrón in the window of a shop in Madrid.  The brown block has glazed chestnuts on top; the golden brown block is yema quemada, where they have run it under a broiler or a salamander to caramelize the topping. And of course, there’s coconut and something pink, possibly a berry flavor.

At the top of the stack, you will see (not very well because of the reflection on the plastic wrap) a large, blue-eyed marzipan anguilla or eel. These are also traditional.  The slightly better photos below reveal that they are elaborately decorated. Marzipan figures are popular at all times of the year in Spain and are a very ancient sweet. They are particularly popular in this season, and in fact the eels appear only at Christmas.

But this year I was unable to get to Spain for Christmas, so I had to take emergency measures: I ordered some turrón and figuritas de mazapán from the on-line Spanish food supplier La Tienda.  They are made by the company 1880, a very respectable large commercial producer. While their products are obviously not going to be exactly like the ones you might buy from that beautiful little shop not far from the Puerta del Sol, they’re quite good. I got a box of turrón and a box of figuritas, although of course it contained nothing as elaborate as the eel and runs more to stars and geometric shapes. But turrón is turrón, and now I really feel that I can get into the Christmas spirit.

¡Felices Navidades a todos!

Aviles Street – in 1572

Because of a street-widening and improvement project, the City Archaeologist, Carl Halbirt, has been able to dig extensively in Aviles Street ( a long-held ambition of his).  So far, we’ve found supporting posts of the west wall of the original parish church, Los Remedios, an exciting find because the few early maps that remain aren’t laid out in a way that makes it possible to determine the exact location of the buildings displayed on them.  Below, we see Carl digging the trench where we found one of the post holes.

Nuestra Señora de los Remedios was built in 1572, burned by Drake in 1586, rebuilt and then partially destroyed by another fire in 1699. At that point, the parish moved to the church of La Soledad on what is now St George Street, and what remained of Los Remedios was destroyed in 1702.  It was a wooden building, oriented east-west with the altar on the west end.  It may have had some form of apse, although we’re not sure about that yet.

Over the weekend, we found human remains. It has long been known that there were burials under the old church floor, and in fact it was even possible to open a little door in the floor and look down on them in one of the old tourist attractions. However, this burial was either under the altar or parallel to it, head to the north, which was unlike the other burials. Furthermore, the body had been disinterred, and all that we found were bones from the feet and possibly hands, that is, extremities that probably fell off or were accidentally left behind when they disinterred the body. 

The identity of the person is a mystery. He was probably buried at the time that the first church was built, and possibly disturbed when church was rebuilt after Drake’s raid and then moved when the parish moved.  It must have been someone who was important to the early Spanish community, since the other bodies were left buried at the location of Los Remedios.  We can see the outline of the grave in which he was buried (the Spanish at that time in St Augustine generally buried people in shrouds and not in coffins), we have a few fragments of bone, and beyond that we know nothing. Because of the location of the burial, it is possible that this was one of the early priests of the St Augustine parish church, and in the photo above, we see city officials, archaeologists an the current pastor of the Cathedral examining the remains of what he referred to as “possibly one of his predecessors.”

The bones will be examined by the University of Florida and then reburied.