Place

Chapel

The Chapel is accessed from either the Second Spanish Room or the American Indian room. This room’s exhibits, in English and Spanish, describe religion at the Castillo. This room is described as if entering from the Second Spanish room.  The courtyard entrance has a wooden door that forms an arch and opens inward to the room. That door remains closed. Above the door is a window.  The room is about 20 feet wide and 30 feet long, with an arched ceiling about 17feet high.  In the center of the back wall, a 5 foot tall arched niche is recessed about one foot into the wall. A narrow four foot ledge runs the length of the back wall with a five foot long, 4 foot section in the center. All ledges have a wooden top and trim. The altar has 4 images of the chapel during different time periods.  The entrance to the American Indian room is on the east wall.  Standing at the Second Spanish Room entrance to the room, the description, moving from left to right, includes:  Religion at the Castillo Exhibit. An illustration of a religious service with soldiers attending. Illustrations of the chapel. Text explains that this chapel was the scene of daily worship. Religion guided all aspects of colonial life. Roman Catholic Christianity was the common faith throughout the Spanish empire.  López De Mendoza Grajales. 1530 – 1590. Text explains, in 1565, Father López De Mendoza Grajales celebrated the first mass in St. Augustine that would become the United States’ oldest parish. The portrait shows an older priest standing behind a wooden table wearing a gray robe. He is partially bald, with a tidy, thin circle of hair around the bare crown of his head. The robe is long sleeved with a simple knotted white rope at the waist. He holds an embossed black book. A skull rests next to his arm on the table.  What do the Walls Tell Us? Exhibit. A vertical glass panel protects an ornate arch inset in the wall. Below, a photo shows holes in the stone wall. The text explains that Catholics dip their fingers in Holy Water and make the sign of the cross before worship and prayer in the Castillo’s chapel.  On the south wall of the Chapel is a closed, inaccessible door to the courtyard.  What do the Walls Tell Us? Exhibit. A vertical glass panel protects an ornate arch inset in the wall. Below, a photo of two men outside a wooden doorway with an arched top. The text explains that behind the glass are the remains of a plastered holy water font.

Quick Facts

Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Wheelchair Accessible

This chapel was the scene of daily worship for hundreds of years. Religion guided all aspects of life in the 15th through 18th centuries. Roman Catholic Christianity was the common faith throughout the Spanish empire, maintaining a single culture and system of government. One of the most important reasons Spain spent so much treasure and blood founding an empire throughout the Americas, the Philippines, and Africa was to take Christian beliefs to lands where they were unknown.

British Protestant ideas of Christianity differed yet upheld a similar, if opposing, empire. U.S. soldiers also used this chapel during the 19th century. In the 1870s and 1880s, it also became the center of Captain
Richard Pratt's efforts to assimilate Plains and Apache Indian prisoners into white society. Church services and lessons in Christianity were held here for the Native Americans.

Castillo de San Marcos National Monument

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Last updated: February 11, 2021