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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

King Louis IX of France -- sanctified for his piety and his leadership in the Crusades -- presided over the flowering of French Gothic architecture in the 13th Century. It is a long way, geographically and stylistically, from the intricate stone tracery and elaborate stained glass of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to the rustic simplicity of San Luis Rey de Francia in Oceanside. But this Southern Californian Mission church is an architectural masterpiece in its own right. What it lacks in refinement and detail it makes up for in the absolute rightness of its sparse decorative program.

The exterior of the building complex (begun in 1798 and repeatedly reconstructed) provides the keynote. The pilaster-framed church facade is flanked on one side by a narrower domed tower, and on the other by an long, low, arcaded cloister. The proportions of these three major elements seem accidental, yet the impression is one of harmonious serenity.

The harmony is achieved by balancing a few basic structural and decorative forms. The arcade's semicircular arches, springing from the flat-molded capitals of their pilasters, provide one form. The tall, thin pilasters and horizontal cornices framing the main facade provide another. The rounded triangular pediment above, with its curlicued silhouette, provides a third.

These components are reassembled to give the entire exterior a graceful coherence. The semicircular arch is repeated in the central doorway, in the small windows to the left and right, in the niche of the pediment, and in the two upper stories of the tower. The square frame, with its pilasters and moldings, is reiterated three times around the entrance, in ever-increasing sizes. An especially deft idea is the way the shapes of the pediment (including the arch at its middle) are repeated at ground level as an extension of the facade wall to the right of the tower. The whitewashed adobe walls, ruddy trim, and sky-blue dome add a further harmony of colors, bold and simple.

The interior exhibits the same qualities. The overall shape, which goes back beyond 13th-century Gothic to the early Christian basilica, consists of a very long shoebox, with whitewashed walls and a flat ceiling supported the full length of the nave by a great number of wood beams. This is the typical form of the California Mission churches. What is unusual, however, is that -- alone of all the Missions -- San Luis Rey retains its domed transept: a lofty octagonal dome on pendentives, beneath which the recessed chancel, framed by an arch, contains a two-level, architectural altarpiece. The height of the nave itself, along with the rhythmic alteration of the dome and transept, gives the interior a majesty exceeding that of our local Mission, the much simpler San Diego de Alcalá.

The majesty is tempered throughout with decorative elements that are graceful, delicate, and even pretty. The giant square pilasters punctuating the side-walls (as though actually holding up the roof) are painted in pastel colors and lively patterns, and the painted outline of an arabesque-shaped molding surrounds the whole interior, just below the ceiling beams. Doorways and windows in the thick adobe walls are surrounded by painted moldings of the same style, dissolving all straight lines in a flutter of curvilinear fretwork.

The influence of the Missions on the architecture of Catholic churches in San Diego County is immense. Many of our churches imitate their aesthetic characteristics with only slight variations: the whitewashed adobe, the flat and unadorned facade, the multi-curved pediment, the tower, the arches, the basilica shape, the flat-beamed interior ceiling, and the painted pastel decorative patterns on the walls.

Aside from their aesthetic value, these elements carry with them a certain attitude toward Catholic worship that comes from their connection to a specific era in the Church's history. The padres who brought the faith into California aimed at creating grand buildings that would impress the natives with the powerful truth of Catholicism. But at the same time, they wanted to convey the sense of joyfulness and grace, of lightness and airiness, that can fill the hearts of a Catholic community. Using a simplified version of 18th-century Spanish architecture, and making use of local materials, they devised a style that still appeals to the religious sensibility of Catholics.

-- Sean-Michael de Carvalho

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia
4070 Mission Avenue
Oceanside