History
The Church's presence in this part of Florida stretches back nearly five hundred years to the arrival of the Spanish explorers and the missionaries who accompanied them. After Juan Ponce de Leon's initial discovery of Florida and Tampa Bay in 1513, explorers over the next several decades such as Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528 and Hernando de Soto in 1539 came here, bringing with them priests and religious in the hope of native conversions. Fr. Juan Xuárez O.F.M. (sometimes written "Suárez") lead a group of thirteen Franciscan and diocesan priests in the Narváez expedition which came ashore in April 1528.
The hostility of the native peoples in this area, however, continued to frustrate Spanish missionary and expansionist plans as demonstrated by the martyrdom of Fr. Luis de Cancer on the shores of Tampa Bay in 1549. Spain finally gained a firm foothold on the Florida peninsula with the establishment of the St. Augustine colony in 1565. This prompted another missionary effort to this area that was begun by the Jesuits in 1567, though it was abandoned five years later because of the poor living conditions and the continued hostility of the native tribes. Spanish missionaries then turned their attention to the friendlier tribes of north Florida.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholic Diocese Of Saint Petersburg
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)