crc
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Post by crc on Jan 5, 2008 16:51:00 GMT -5
Thanks Tom,
-Craig
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crc
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Posts: 30
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Post by crc on Jan 18, 2008 18:19:18 GMT -5
Some background here for the next posting:
At mission San Juan Capistrano in 1982, Jake Ivey pointed out to me how much the north wall ruins of the unfinished stone church there bore a resemblance to the peculiar wall that connected the Alamo church to the long barrack as depicted in various 1840s illustrations, and that comment stuck in my Alamo brain bank. During the ‘80s and 90s, Jake was exploring the idea that the 1740’s - 60’s temporary church at Valero was located at the southern end of the convento, and made, I thought, compelling arguments for it. One thing it explained was why the “second” church – today’s Alamo – was so awkwardly placed in relation to the convento: the temporary church was in the preferred position and forced the builders eastward to gain clear ground to build the “first” church. (See George Nelson’s wonderful illustrations of this same idea in his Illustrated Alamo.) When it was done, the temporary church, no longer needed, was torn down with the exception of its north wall, which was incorporated into the convento. The temporary church’s interior stone carvings were now exposed and other odd features of the now “connecting wall” finally had an explanation. The problem for me was, Jake had also said to me at one point that the missionaries would never go to the trouble of decorating a temporary church’s walls with stone carvings. I wondered if the “temporary” church on the south end of the convento perhaps wasn’t so temporary. When repeated careful readings of the Valero inventories led me to the conclusion the temporary church had in fact been lodged in the granary extending north from the convento, it made more sense to me that the structure south of the convento had been the first permanent church, and I began to pursue that idea further, which I will get into later in subsequent posts.
Meanwhile, after studies of the master masons who built the churches of Valero, and his own realization that the various reports were placing the temporary church in the granary, Jake revamped his conclusions to the question of what, where, how and when about Valero’s 3 major churches.
Both of our interpretations and postulations have problems and weaknesses. Our “battling” back and forth isn’t about destroying each other’s arguments, or “counting coup” when we score a hit (I hope) – it’s about stress-testing ideas and seeing what survives the fire and ultimately best serves History. I asked Jake if we should take this battle “off line” because it might alienate readers, and he was adamant it should be out in front of this forum’s members and readership for their critique. Aside from just enjoying a good “dust up” now and then, Jake really likes to have his conclusions challenged by an interested, informed party (more than I do, I reckon). I don’t expect to change his mind on anything - only he can do that – but maybe I can help better his arguments to change mine.
I do feel strongly that there is something to the idea of the first church being built forward of the second, and I suppose my objective is to see if I can get Jake to a point where he might say “your arguments show that is a viable idea” even though he’d follow it up with ''but I like mine better."
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crc
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Posts: 30
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Post by crc on Jan 18, 2008 18:19:55 GMT -5
OK, Jake, I’ve read and re-read your postings in answer to mine many times, and think I have a pretty good idea of where you are at, and will answer your comments one-by-one:
"Craig: The granary is said to be 19 feet high as of 1793, so a choir loft in the building would be at about 9 feet above the floor. The 1793 inventory says the main convento rooms are 4 varas high, or 11 feet. The 1762 report states specifically that the temporary church was in the building built to be the granary, and that it had a choir loft. The previous reports all indicate that the same building was in use as the temporary church, with its choir loft. As far as I can see, the reports leave no doubt that the granary building was in use as the temporary church from before 1745 until the temporary church was moved to the new sacristy between 1762 and 1772”.
Jake, Habig puts the height of the granary (and so we’re all in agreement here, the heights, etc., of rooms as given in inventories is accepted as meaning inside dimensions) at 18.4 feet, but I trust you over Habig on this.
Despite my declaration to the contrary, you seem to think I am arguing against the idea that the temporary church was in the granary (the stone building comprising the northern half of today’s “long barrack”), and that it had a choir loft. It was clear from my repeated readings of the inventories, that Marion Habig, O.F.M. in his The Alamo Mission book, was confused on this issue, and that his “textile shop” adjoining the north end of the friary was, in fact the granary. As to when it started being used as a temporary church, it was certainly after Brigadier General Rivera visited in 1727 and mentioned the church was in a temporary structure (probably meaning adobe or palisado?), and probably later than the end of 1740, when Captain Toribio de Urrutia reported the mission churches had “only thatched roofs of straw” which would leave out the flat-roofed granary. In the report of 1745, when the stone granary is first possibly mentioned as in use as the temporary church (“possibly” because it is not explicitly expressed as such), it’s composition (stone or adobe) is not stated, which may be why Habig added the word “adobe” in brackets to its description. He probably assumed since it was temporary, it must have been adobe. He repeated the adobe construction claim in the 1756 report, not even in brackets this time, probably thinking it was safe to do so because it was the same building as described in 1745. This assumption has led to much confusion in the past for both of us.
In 1756, the temporary church is mentioned as being the same one as described in 1745; in 1759, the temporary church is mentioned as being the same one as in 1756. As you said, the first mention of the granary being used as the temporary church is in the 1762 report, but it is not too much of a stretch to accept that it was the same building as reported previously, as the building(s) actually being used for a granary were described as being made of temporary materials, and descriptions of the temp church are very similar from one report to the other. So for you readers, Jake and I independently came to the same conclusion that the temporary church was probably housed in the stone granary from a fairly early period – around the time the first permanent church was started. Jake’s claim that “the reports leave no doubt” about it may be a little too strong of a statement though, for the lack of specific identification as I stated above. (The reports sure threw Brother Habig.) Please keep in mind Jake’s dates for the move from the granary/temp- church to the sacristy, 1762 – 1772.
“As to the stairway – Come on, Craig, you know you can’t say “there was only one set of stairs in the convento [implied: throughout the history of the convento] …in the southeast part of the convento.”
Yeow, methinks you protest too much – you inferred what I did not intend to imply. My statement “There was only one set of stairs in the convento” was made in the context of our interpretations of the only mention of the dual-purpose stairs – the 1756 report, not “throughout the history of the convento.” I thought we were obliged to use what we actually have as evidence and not go conjuring up undocumented, additional stairs when we need them.
My apparently misplaced confidence that the stairs were in the southeast end of the convento was born of several reasons enumerated below:
1.) The missionaries didn’t go about stacking stones willy-nilly and hoping something useful would result – they had procedures and plans. I won’t get too far “a field” here with the “Idealized Plan Evolving from the Plan of St. Gall,” “The Friary Plan as Developed by the Franciscan Mendicants,” or “Laws of the Indies” and such, which is more your bailiwick anyway; but suffice to say, however random the Texas missions’ layouts seem to us now, there was an organized approach at the start.
In “Preliminaries to ‘Permanent’ Construction,” Part I, Chapter 2 of the Park Service’s mammoth manuscript on the San Antonio missions (among whose authors was one James E. Ivey), the prep for a site included a "planning session" where the “final plan of the entire friary enclosure and at least the general outline of the stone or “permanent” church were laid out on the ground...”
As early as the sixteenth century, the typical plan of a Franciscan church and convento placed the church snugly alongside the friary, and with the church façade and a wing of the friary often on the same line, often facing west. I’m not saying there weren’t variations or exceptions, just that this was the ideal or “traditional” arrangement. If you want to guess what the original arrangement was for Valero, I say you would be best off going with the traditional one. Since Antonio Tello and his “over-complex approach to church/convento design” was years away from making his fateful appearance in Bexar, and the missionary in charge (not a future architect) decided where buildings would go anyway, I maintain the Valero missionaries new exactly what they wanted and where they wanted it; that they were practical as well as economical. Point: the friars likely placed their church location in its traditional spot; in this case against the south end of the planned convento (as the north end was slated for the granary); and if they were as sharp as I think they were, planned their stairs for the convento where they could do double duty for the planned permanent church’s choir loft - in the southern end of the first convento wing.
“Sure, LaBastida and Everett put a staircase here, but you notice that Everett only shows a staircase here in 1848. In 1846 he shows the convento with the center section of the back porch fallen in, and no stairs. So by graphic evidence we would have to assume that the Everett stairs were replacements for the LaBastida stairs, that had fallen between 1836 and 1846, not the same stairs.”
Yes, I assumed the stairs as depicted by LaBastida and Sanchez-Navarro were probably either the mission stairs or in their position for the previously stated reason. Your “Everett” complaint is empty because LaBastida pre-dates him and I said the mission stairs “were where La Bastida, Everett, et AL, placed them,” not that Everett’s stairs were the original stairs. So,
2).Law of inertia: if the building was designed a particular way and the stairs logically placed, there would be no need to change their location, and subsequent replacements would end up in the same spot.
3). There is no indication on maps or plats that there was a “hole” or opening in the floor/roof of the second story cloister fragment on the north end for stairs to poke through; no description, no specific mention of stairs on the north end, no vestige on later plats, etc.
“How many stairs were on the building through the previous century is not knowable, although we do have the 1756 statement that there was a set of stairs somewhere on the building.”
5). How many sets of stairs do you need on the west wing? How many places can you really find to put stairs on there? It’s either north or south ends if it is to communicate with a permanent or temporary church choir loft - a 50-50 proposition.
We are not talking about “through the previous century” we’re talking about the 1756 report and I’m glad you acknowledge that only one set is mentioned.
“The point is, the stairs shown by LaBastida could have been built at any time. There is no way to state as fact that this was the only set of stairs ever in the convento, or that there were never stairs at the north end of the convento building, south end of the granary.”
Yes, the stairs shown by LaBastida could have been built at any time prior to the siege of 1836; and I didn’t make any such claims as to the 1756 stairs being the only set “ever” in the convento or “never” on the north.
6). You are an influential scholar on the subject, and you wrote in your “Mission to Fortress” manuscript: “All evidence indicates that these stairs were in the south end of the western corredor.” (Note to readers: this was, and is a work-in-progress that Jake was gracious enough to share with me. He has every right, and in fact an obligation to change his mind as new evidence or a re-interpretation of existing evidence compels him to do so.) You also placed the stairs there on your conjectural plat of the convento in 1772, 64 years before LaBastida drew them there.
“That, by the way, is the implication of all this, that the choir loft in the granary was in the south end of the building, …”
Sure you have inferred the choir loft is in the south end of the granary because you accept the statement we’re ultimately tussling over refers to the temporary church and not a permanent one- well and fine. I’m not saying the loft wasn’t in the south end, it’s never explicitly stated in reports which end it was in. It can be in either if my interpretation is correct.
“…and the main entrance into the granary/temp. church, always under the choir loft, was therefore through a doorway on its west side at its south end.”
Whoa, I could blurt a “Come on, Jake” retort of my own here. ALWAYS under the choir loft?! Never say “never” and never say “always” when it entails sticking one’s chin out as far as I think you just did…
I only have to go as far as mission San Juan de Capistrano in San Antonio to show a thoroughly appropriate model to refute your statement and two assumptions you harbor. At San Juan we have a granary, again converted to a “temporary” church; and even though the granary was extended and its roof raised to accommodate its use as a church, it still had its stairs to its choir loft inside the building, requiring no external connections and hacking through walls to make access to it. The granary/church’s two large doors are on the side facing the plaza, as at Valero, and most certainly did not allow one to enter under the choir loft, which was off to one’s right (north) upon entry. (The “circa 1790” loft was removed in 1968 according to the HABS.) The south end is partitioned off by an adobe wall which creates a separate room for the sacristy and makes a “backstop” for the sanctuary. Sounds exactly like what was done earlier at Valero. I urge all readers to go to the Historic American Buildings Survey web site (type “HABS” in Google) to see how San Juan’s “chapel” provides an illustration of what the likely configuration was of the granary/temp-church at Valero. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Valero provided the model for what was done at San Juan.)
Points:
It’s not true that an entrance is “always” under the choir loft.
In your own summation of its description in 1756, the loft is called a “little choir loft.” Of the doors we have as documented in the granary, the southernmost was some 16 feet from the south end of the building – way too far for your “little” loft to stretch to even reach the door, never mind overhang it; so you need a door in the “west side at its south end.” If you discard all else I have said here, please don’t continue to advocate an undocumented door in the southern end of the west face of the convento to channel worshipers under your choir loft. You don’t need it for your argument. Up to sixteen feet is plenty deep for a “little” choir loft (San Juan’s choir loft was only 12-13 feet deep); and you can use an existing door for the entrance,* because as it turns out, you don’t have to force entrants underneath the loft after all.
*If my radar is working, Ivey, I hear a potential “in-coming,” so I’ll say it here instead of later: the door’s location is documented as early as 1846; in an 1848 drawing by Everett it had carved stone frames (stone because a fragment or two survives on the northernmost granary doorway) meaning it was not an Army door and predates 1846, Although it was obliterated when a larger opening was made around it by Grenet, it’s position today jibes with its 1846 (and before) location – about 16 feet from the southwestern corner of the convento.
Your interpretation of “to the choir loft of the church" to mean “to the choir loft of the temporary church” in this instance carries with it the implication that it was necessary to get there via this external (and as we are to see) rather complicated fashion. As San Juan shows, an uncomplicated set of stairs within the building does the job just fine.
This is a good time to start with “why I thought the stairs were in the south end of the convento,” reason seven: Occam’s razor
7). For those not married to a professor of philosophy, as I am, the principle of Occam’s razor is attributed (appropriately enough) to Franciscan friar and logician William of Ockham. It is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” Jake, at one time you argued persuasively for a “temporary” church where Mark Lemon and I are trying to make a case for the first permanent church: the southern end of the west wing of the convento. When you realized the temp church was most likely the granary on the opposite end of the west wing, you had to banish your southern temp church “to the cornfield” like it was an evil twin, and re-locate the stairs from where “all evidence” previously located them. But as you know and have mentioned to me, when you move one thing there is a domino effect that potentially alters many others, and when you moved the stairs you created some complications that have required invention to rectify, and this ultimately leads to more complications and invention, such as the door in the south end of the granary as previously mentioned, thought necessary for entry under the choir loft.
“Your whole argument depends on the 1756 statement about the staircase that communicates with the choir loft. The report mentions only one choir loft, and that’s the one in the granary/temporary church, so when it says in the discussion of the convento that there’s a staircase that communicates to the choir loft, that’s the only choir loft available to be referred to.”
Fortunately or unfortunately my whole argument patently does not depend on the 1756 statement – I could give it up this instant and all it would do is free up my options on where to place the first church; but I think it is crucial to your argument.
Think again, it’s your interpretation that the report mentions only one choir loft. The loft in the granary is mentioned in the paragraph describing the temporary church; and when the convento is described in a later paragraph, the staircase is mentioned as having a door to the choir loft of the church. My interpretation has been that this reference means literally what it says – the church and not the temporary church. Yes, the permanent church is a ruin, but the mention could be nothing more than of an existing architectural detail that was until “recently” of some importance. In support (other than what I have offered so far about placement of stairs) is the fact that the communication between the granary/church and convento is never mentioned again after 1756, even though descriptions of the temporary church are detailed in 1759 and 1762. This might indicate any number of things, and one possibility is that my interpretation is correct, and after 1756 this “doorway to nowhere” on the south end of the friary was blocked-up for safety reasons (as you once proposed) or filled halfway up to make a window which ended it being an issue worth mentioning in reports. Jacob Edmund Blake shows a window there in his1845 drawing; and later, in 1848, Edward Everett shows elongated openings, the one in question definitely becoming a door, the other a window. Knowing the Army sought openings of convenience to use as doors and windows rather than attack massive stone walls to create new openings, I might speculate that the fill in the doorway from mission times was easier to remove than integrated stone, and once gone, revealed the defined door, intended to communicate with the choir loft of the first permanent church, which the U.S. Army then utilized.
“Assuming the first permanent church ever got finished enough to have a choir loft (something that isn’t a certainty considering the changing story the statements about it made later tell us) that choir loft was gone in 1756, …”
Careful here, you don’t need to pad your argument to its own detriment. If you minimize the first church’s completeness, you won’t have enough of it to fall down. The fact that later it was mentioned as being still under construction when it collapsed doesn’t conflict with the detailed 1762 description of what fell, just its assertion that it was “finished perfectly.” Since “its tower and sacristy” also “came to earth,” you don’t have much of an argument about there being no choir loft – you know very well how and in what order these buildings were constructed; and if the tower was done, the choir loft was more than likely done too.
“… and I think it unlikely that the staircase description would be referring to that now-vanished choir loft instead of the still-existent one in the granary.”
Now that’s reasonable, and I think most people will agree with you, as your last conclusion appears logical and my interpretation requires a context not readily apprehended. SO, even after all I offered about the stairs I might tend to agree with you too, if it weren’t for Occam’s razor and one last complication, engendered by your relocation of the stairs to the north. I’ll explain after your closing comments on your first post in answer to my "provocation” -(my word)…
“The business about a “second story choir loft in a one story building” clearly doesn’t enter into this, since the choir loft would have been only two feet lower than the second floor of the convento.”
You shouldn’t have made the quoted phrase in your sentence above look like it was mine. I said “The granary is a one-story building (albeit a tall one),” which is factual, and I mentioned “second-story access to a choir loft in a one-and-a-half-story temporary church.” I was using your manuscript where you had the door on the second floor, and was pointing out one can’t walk straight across from a second floor to anything else but the same level. I didn’t have your 9 foot height for the loft then, 19 foot height of the granary, or location of the door in the stairs. Habig, and you (when you thought the temp church was a larger building on the south), had no problem interpreting the sentence in question to mean the door to the loft was on the second floor. Now you don’t want it on the second floor, even though you are arguing here that it could be, because your choir members would have to first climb up the stairs to the second floor, then down to the choir loft, and that would seem unnecessarily complicated. So, sounds to me that the gist of what I wrote does enter into this, and still stands.
I think your choir loft would have been closer to three feet lower than the second floor of the convento, because you need to include the thickness of the convento’s second floor. “Note that the description of the staircase says the doorway is in the stairway, not on the second floor, which implies a landing (which would fit with the additional statement that there was a painting hanging on the wall in the stairway, as well – this sounds like the landing decoration in the stairway of the convento at San Jose, which had a little santo there), or just a doorway in the stairway wall a few steps down from the top.”
I’m clear that you propose a doorway somewhere in the stairway, and not on the second floor. I honestly don’t see the implication of a landing in the translation of escalera or because there was a painting in the stairway. The 1836-on stairs only show a straight shot up, so a landing may not have been necessary, but it wouldn’t be unusual. It’s not completely clear to me if you are saying the door might have been in the landing too, or just that a landing is implied, and perhaps necessary for you to engineer the communication with the choir loft.
Maybe it’s just me, but I just can’t make it work – Using your plat and criteria, I can get a door in roughly the right spot if I have a short landing, so the staircase forms an “L” shape rather than a “U” as at Concepcion. It would be an awkward and dangerous step in and out of the door in the stairway, but it would “communicate.” But no matter what I come up with there is one eventual problem. I asked everybody to keep in mind your dates for the transfer of the granary/temporary church to the new sacristy of the second, “between 1762 and 1772,” because therein lies the rub. In 1756 the west wing is the only existing side of the convento and I can manage a solution. By 1759 however, you’ve got the north wing of the convento butting up against the granary’s east side, obliterating any possible first-floor or between-floor (landing) egress to the temporary church. On reflection, it should have been clear from the start that since there was no access to the granary from its south end because the convento rooms butt up against it, and that since access to the granary from a convento staircase mandates that the entry to the granary must be on its east side (as you proposed), any solution here results in a direct conflict/contradiction to the known plans for the convento, realized soon after 1756.
So, if there was access, somehow, from the stairway in the convento to the temporary church choir loft on the east side of the granary, it’s blocked, mooted, gone by 1759. What happened then? For the next three to ten years the choir was either without access to its loft, or they finally got smart and put some stairs in the building?
I’ll wrap up this session with a nod to Occam’s razor:
You are obliged to relocate your previously-accepted location for the stairs to accommodate your new interpretation of the 1756 quote and its stair-to-loft connection. You set a height for the loft that is not necessary, but I presume you have a formula or reason for it beyond mere justification for the elevated, exterior access to it. Perhaps it was to create headroom for the faithful to enter underneath because the entrance is “always under the choir loft.” Now you felt you need to have an undocumented door cut into the west face of the granary, south of the present-day southernmost door location (which is virtually in its location documented in the 1840s), so entrants can pass beneath the loft. On the opposite (east) side of the building, you need to cut another undocumented door in its wall to access the 9-foot high yet “little” choir loft, and somehow bridge to it from neither the second floor nor “implied” landing in the stairs, but somewhere in between - in the steps.
Since the padres didn’t know the first church would be delayed, then fall down once it was built, and that the temp church would stay in use for more than 20 years, their complex approach and amount of work necessary to merely access and utilize a choir loft of a temporary-use building seems uncharacteristic of the frugal friars and is totally unnecessary in light of the later example at San Juan. It seems you are forced into an awkward, if not complicated solution to explain the consequences resulting from a re-interpretation of a single phrase - and after all that, you have to come up with a totally new access plan because some time after 1756, a kitchen (I believe you wrote) was butting up against the very location where the granary choir loft door and connection to the stairs was located.
If the simplest explanation is the more likely, I’m not sure this is it as it stands now.
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Post by Herb on Jan 18, 2008 20:17:46 GMT -5
I'm glad you all didn't take this off line. Speaking for myself, I don't have the knowledge to comment, but reading y'alls thoughts and arguments is an education in itself.
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Post by marklemon on Jan 18, 2008 23:58:47 GMT -5
Sometimes its possble to overthink a problem (which lately I've had some experience in). To my thinking, this "where was the first church" issue need not be overly esoteric, and is a matter of a conclusion being reached by an accumulation of documentary evidence, linked to circumstatial evidence, mixed with common sense. The issue is unessesarily complicated when conjectural features are thrown in to fit a new theory. One needs only to closely read the inventories, have a good basic working knowledge of area mission layouts, and study the evidence at the southern end of the mission, to come to a strongly held conclusion that the first permanent church was once attached to the southern face of the convento. The evidence, circumstantial but strong (contrary to popular belief, circumstantial evidence is not in and of itself "flimsy,"many, many cases are proven in courts every day in this country based on a totality of the circumstantial evidence alone) includes: 1. the odd placement of the church far back to the east of the convento proper, 2. the placement of the steps as shown by Labastida and Navarro (where go the steps, so goes the permanent church, and it's quite unlikely that these steps are not the original stone ones which once led to the upper floor of the cloister, and the choir loft) 3. the odd angle of the connecting wall running from the church to the convento, suggesting a later structure (church) being built slightly out of square to the axes of the convento, and correcting the mis-alignment with the slightly angled wall. 4. the stepped quatrefoil, and unknown bas-relief shown not only by Gentilz, but also in at least one photo from the 1860's, which appear on the "outside" of the wall, but which are much more appropriate on the inside of a church. In addition, they may be one other significant piece of data, which, since I'm not sure if it reflects a correct translation of the original Spanish , I'll not place much weight on. That is a passage in Habig's "The Alamo Mission," page 63, paragraph 3. Habig quotes Fr. Mariano de los Dolores who wrote in 1762: " Although the church of this mission (the one begun in 1744) had been completely finished, including a tower and sacristy, it fell to the ground because of the poor skill of the architect;and another of harmonious design is now being built with quarried stone which is found almost on the spot. ..." If this is a correct translation ( a big "if"..Jake?) this may be very significant. This actually says that the second church was being built with quarried stone found almost on the spot, not quarried almost on the spot. Where does one "find" QUARRIED stone in such close proximity, unless it had been quarried earlier, for use in the first church, had fallen, and was found "almost on the spot," as a result. However, as I am not depending strongly on this interpretation, if the translation turns out not to be specifically accurate, it does nothing to refute the earlier points, which still stand. The standard of proof may be the issue here. In my opinion, we need not be held to a conclusion which is beyond any doubt. Seldom in life, much less architectural reconstruction, are we given this luxury. Perhaps, then, the matter falls between that which is beyond a reasonable doubt, and that which is found to be a totality of the evidence. I would say, in this situation, we may not yet have quite reached the point of being beyond a reasonable doubt, but certainly, we are at the stage where we can feel confident that the first church was placed at the southern end of the convento based on totality of the evidence. Oh, and Occam's razor....
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Post by Jake on Jan 19, 2008 16:58:33 GMT -5
Holy Toledo, Batman!
I'm going to go sit in my corner now, grumbling, and read through this mass of stuff, and then count my fingers and toes and see if I still have all my bits...
And then I'll come up with some sort of answer.
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crc
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Post by crc on Jan 19, 2008 17:30:03 GMT -5
OK, Jake, but I have more coming about your second post in answer to my first, so if you want to wait until after that, that would be fine too - it'd give you more time to sharpen your projectiles...
Mark - your points are well taken, but with respect, it isn't a slam dunk about the first church being where we propose it was. The contemporary reports are so equivocal, it makes one want to reach through time and shake these reporters while screaming at them "you're making people crazy hundreds of years after you're gone!"
I think the plunge into esoterica is necessary to make sure we're "getting it right," and I've been burned before about "sure things."
The "totality of evidence" is good to have on one's side; but I suspect Jake is thinking the same way, as he has ideas about what the different master masons did, and what physically remains of each one's work, and what that might tell us about when and where something was built. Anyway, I'm looking forward to some more thoughts and material...
-Craig
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Post by marklemon on Jan 19, 2008 18:26:47 GMT -5
OK, Jake, but I have more coming about your second post in answer to my first, so if you want to wait until after that, that would be fine too - it'd give you more time to sharpen your projectiles... Mark - your points are well taken, but with respect, it isn't a slam dunk about the first church being where we propose it was. The contemporary reports are so equivocal, it makes one want to reach through time and shake these reporters while screaming at them "you're making people crazy hundreds of years after you're gone!" I think the plunge into esoterica is necessary to make sure we're "getting it right," and I've been burned before about "sure things." The "totality of evidence" is good to have on one's side; but I suspect Jake is thinking the same way, as he has ideas about what the different master masons did, and what physically remains of each one's work, and what that might tell us about when and where something was built. Anyway, I'm looking forward to some more thoughts and material... -Craig Craig, Apparently, I must try to be more clear in my attempts to communicate. I certainly never said it was anything close to a "slam dunk," or a "sure thing." In fact, I took great pains to say just the opposite. But I stand by my statements, that the available data, as well as other forms of evidence, strongly supports the placement of the first church at the south end of the convento. And this position requires the manifestation of no unknown or undocumented doorways, steps, or other features. You and I are saying the same thing, it's just that I'm streamlining the arguments for those who are less inclined to pore over and parse the minutia. Mark
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crc
Full Member
Posts: 30
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Post by crc on Jan 20, 2008 3:46:29 GMT -5
Mark,
Don't worry, you were quite clear; sorry if I wasn't. If you look again, "slam dunk" wasn't in quotes - they're my words.
I shouldn't have made it sound like a scold or said "we" implying I was speaking for you - I just meant that I'll still need to take baby steps with the minutia to build enough of a case for myself to be satisfied. If the readers can't or don't want to follow my rather tortuous path, believe you me I'll surely understand. That was one of my warnings/questions on my December 23 post; and I only got word from Tom that he'd like it to continue, and Wolfpack after the last post so maybe it does put most people off. But I'd still like to present it here for reference if nothing else, until somebody says enough is enough.
Your point about "standards of proof," "circumstantial evidence," and "beyond a reasonable doubt" deserves its own thread: there is a sort of "post-OJ" "CSI" disease going on in the courts where juries want HD video of a crime, DNA evidence, and a full confession before they'll convict someone, and I'm seeing the same symptoms in some historical writing too. This impacts Alamo research in particular, where court-like standards of proof are being applied to second-hand reports of translations, newspaper stories, eyewitness testimony, etc.; and I've heard way too much of the legal dismissal "if one part of a witness's testimony is deemed as untrue, you may disregard all the witness's statements." Another version I have a gripe about is the: "you're cherry picking the evidence!" syndrome. If we don't cherry pick the good stuff (and justify it), and instead throw out every source that has a problem, instead of very little, we'll have nothing. I've run into this with the Mexican reports and Alamo pictorial evidence before, and have tried to take a more constructive than destructive approach, and instead of chucking things with problems, try to understand why the problems are there, and distill out the good stuff. I've reaped a few rewards from this process too. Anyway, I think it deserves a thread.
Back to the matter at hand - Mark, I apologize if my post seemed like a poke in the eye - I meant it to be a whisper in the ear, and you really didn't need either.
-Craig
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Post by stuart on Jan 20, 2008 5:18:10 GMT -5
Keep talking guys, like Herb I'm still interested.
Although I've no axe to grind on this particular issue I would toss in a couple of observations.
We know there was an original church which fell down and on those grounds alone I'd rule it out having been built on the present site. A church can lose its roof (or a tower) in a gale, or it can burn down, and afterwards you can repair or rebuild it with confidence.
Massive structural failure on the other hand requires a completely fresh start from the foundations up. In theory there's nothing to prevent complete clearance of the old side, but far better to peg out a new one and use the ruins of the original as a quarry.
That means we need to look for a different site for the old one. Right now we have a theory it was in front; the wall carving could be an indicator (although it could simply have been re-used from another location) but I think its worth bearing in mind the apparent lack of other alternatives, ie; if the original church (the one that fell down) was neither under, nor in front of the existing one, where else could it have been?
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Post by Jake on Jan 20, 2008 13:43:01 GMT -5
This is a sort of catch-all post while I’m waiting for CRC’s next broadside.
Stuart, normally I’d agree with you about having to give up on a church if it collapses. But the circumstances in this case are a little different.
Tello, a master mason, began the church. He built the foundations and the beginnings of the above-ground walls, and he built these to support a church intended to be vaulted and domed. This was therefore a substantial and (presumably) well-designed beginning. Tello then left town, after only about three months of work on the Valero church. Someone else, and someone apparently not a master mason, since I can’t find any mention of another one in town in the period this happened, more or less finished the first permanent church, presumably with a flat roof, since it took a master mason to build vaults. At some point in this process of construction by the non-master, the church fell.
My position is that because the construction above Tello’s original foundations was shoddy enough to collapse (I figure the tower fell over onto the roof and blew out the side walls), even thought it was probably only a flat-roofed building, then the collapse could well not have affected Tello’s original construction, and the master mason Hieronymo Ibarra, on clearing off the rubble and looking things over, then decided to go ahead with Tello’s original design on his original foundations. This would explain why Valero has a plan identical to the Concepcion church, which we know was also Tello's design, and his construction up to about the mid-point of its height.
You guys have to see this from my perspective. I’m writing the definitive (actually, so far, the only) architectural history of Valero, and at the same time a complete rewriting of the architectural history of the other missions, based on but completely revised from the original structural history Craig mentioned – among other things, I worked out the master masons who designed and worked on the San Antonio churches that Mark has told you about in terms of what they did at Valero, and through a long process of physical examination compared with the documents, what they actually built. (At the same time, I’ve finished an MA in art history specializing in the architecture of the Spanish colonial American southwest and northern Mexico, what we in the biz call Mexico North, and I’m almost finished with a PhD on the same area.) I see Valero in the context of the other missions in San Antonio, and the broader context of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century missions of New Mexico, about some of which I’ve also written major studies, one of which is about to be published by UNM press, the missions of southern Arizona and northern Sonora, the missions of Baja California, and the missions of Alta California, the present state of the US, and to some extent, in the context of the seventeenth-century missions of Florida. I have to go with what seems to be the least complicated, most direct sequence of events that I can support from the documents and the physical remains themselves, within what I’ve become familiar with as standard procedures for Franciscans and Jesuits.
One reason I want to have this fight is to see what it is I haven’t thought of, what I didn’t allow for, or what I ignored because I didn’t like it. We all do these things, but you have to go over the stuff again and again and try to see the obvious, one of the hardest things to do.
Mark – you’d think your question about the original words for Habig’s statements about the quarrying would be a simple one, but it isn’t. The Spanish says: “[the first church fell] por la mala inteligencia del artifice, y se está fabricando otra de armoniosa arquitectura con piedra de canteria, la que aqui se halla á medias con la solidéz, y perfeccion que se requiere, para su hermosura, y sostener las vovedas.” Once again, as Craig says, you’d swear these guys were doing this on purpose. “[the first church fell] because of the poor skill of its maker, and another is being built of harmonious architecture with cut stone [or “stone from a quarry” – “canteria” can mean either the quarry, or the cut stone from it, or the art of cutting stone], *la que aqui se halla* at the midpoint with the solidity and perfection that is required for its beauty and to support the vaults.” The critical phrase here is “la que aqui se halla” – if the sentence had ended there, that would have meant “which is found here,” or something like that. But it didn’t, and in the context of the whole sentence, the phrase continues with “á medias” and means, more or less, “which is now at its midpoint.” In other words, Habig made a mistake with his translation, or paraphrase, or whatever you want to call what he was doing. Tom, can you confirm my reading on this?
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Post by TRK on Jan 20, 2008 18:25:58 GMT -5
Assuming I'm the Tom who's being paged (there are a couple of us here now), "a medias" indeed means halfway, or midpoint.
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Post by marklemon on Jan 21, 2008 18:34:34 GMT -5
Jake/Craig Yeah, I too have wrestled many times with the narrative "powers" of the friars who wrote the inventories, and find their ambiguities to be maddening more often than not. But what I cannot fathom is why we make this problem harder than it need be by failing to simply dig an exploratory trench along the south end of the convento/connecting wall to look for footings which, if the first church WAS there, we'd surely find. The answer is there, right now, under a foot or two of earth, and yet we'll go on parsing words and their possible meanings, until this is done. I long for the day that the DRT becomes seriously interested in the archeaological history of the mission, but I'm not holding my breath. Mark
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Post by stuart on Jan 22, 2008 1:45:56 GMT -5
If the problem here is the "political" one of digging a supposed campo santo, surely ground penetrating radar would pick up large anomalies like wall footings?
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Post by Jake on Jan 22, 2008 11:47:05 GMT -5
Stuart: The problem is more like background noise. That area has been re-used so many times that we would probably get mostly a god-awful mess rather than a good return -- but still, the results could clear things up -- it's worth a try.
Mark: You're right -- the answer is in the earth, if I may quote a well-known archaeologist. I've got such a list of things about San Antonio history that could be resolved with just one little dig.
Jack Eaton had no real problem with people protesting that he was digging in a camposanto, but that was a different time. Right now, I think you could dig a trench right along the base of the wall's south face without anyone objecting -- I don't know what sort of review process is now in place for this sort of thing, but a) we don't have anything that specifically says this area was a camposanto,, and b) it's less likely to hit burials right along the boundary wall, and c) you can recognize burials by the burial pit outline, without having to go deeper to hit bodies, so you can explore an area without the potential of big, toothy smiles to surprise you.
But of course, we are talking about politics, and reason doesn't necessarily enter into it.
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