The Spanish Baroque Mission San Jose, known locally as "the Queen of the Missions," is one of five 15th and 16th century Spanish Missions in San Antonio, Texas. While Mission San Antonio de Valero is more famous (it's better known as The Alamo), and Mission Espada is older (built 1720), Mission San Jose is the grandest and most beautiful, due to its elaborate Baroque flourishes and its famed "Rose Window."
From the Texas Monthly magazine artcle "The Reign of Spain" by Michael Ennis: (
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"Even in its fragmentary state, the Alamo is arguably the finest piece of authentic early Spanish baroque style in North America. It is not, however, the masterwork of baroque architecture in San Antonio. That distinction belongs to Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, seven miles downriver from the Alamo. The present church was begun in 1768, only twelve years after the Alamo, but stylistically its facade was considerably more up-to-date. Done in a cutting-edge, late “ultra-baroque” style known as Churrigueresque (after a whole family of influential Spanish architects, none of whom ever worked in the New World), the facade of San José is a fantastically effervescent concoction of carved stone: Renaissance cupids gambol over a Moorish arch; mannerist statues of saints, borne upward on vinelike columns, appear to levitate in their niches; the simplest floral motifs are improvised into frothy, deep-relief sculptures. (By comparison, San José’s celebrated Rose Window, which was carved later on the southwest side of the church, is less flamboyant and not as fluently executed.) In the mid-1780’s a cleric who had toured the entire frontier of New Spain recognized San José as “the first mission in America, not in point of time, but in point of beauty.” San José remains just that; later claimants, such as Tucson’s San Xavier del Bac or California’s Santa Barbara, are far more provincial in character."
From the National Park Service website: (
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"Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo
Founded in 1720, the mission was named for Saint Joseph and the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo, the governor of the Province of Coahuila and Texas at the time. It was built on the banks of the San Antonio river several miles to the south of the earlier mission, San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo).
Its founder was the famed Father Antonio Margil de Jesús, a very prominent Franciscan missionary in early Texas. . . .
Queen of the Missions
San José, as it became known, was the largest of the missions in the area. At its height, the community contained about 350 Indian neophytes, sustained by extensive fields and herds of livestock. Viewed as the model among the Texas missions, San José gained a reputation as a major social and cultural center. It became known as the "Queen of the Missions." Its imposing complex of stone walls, bastions, granary, and magnificent church was completed by 1782.
So rich an enterprise was a natural target for Apache and Comanche depredations. Although they could not prevent raids on their livestock, the mission itself was almost impregnable. In his journal, Fray Juan Agustín Morfí attested to its defensive character: "It is, in truth, the first mission in America . . . in point of beauty, plan, and strength . . . there is not a presidio along the entire frontier line that can compare with it." The danger was when working the fields or during travel to and from the ranch or other missions. With technical help from the two presidial soldiers garrisoned there, San José residents learned to defend themselves. Already proficient with bow and arrow, the men also learned the use of guns and cannon.
Mission San José has become a lasting symbol throughout the centuries for the Spanish mission frontier in Texas. . . .
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The Rose Window
La Ventana de Rosa, the Rose Window, is located on the south wall of the church sacristy. The window has been described as the site where the Host was shown to gathered mission celebrants during the Feast of Pentecost.
The window, sculpted ca. 1775, has been the object of both legend and admiration. It is considered one of the finest examples of baroque architecture in North America. The meaning behind the name is currently unknown, but legend has it named for Rosa, the betrothed of Juan Huizar who many believe created the window."