St. Diego

Why isn’t this blog called Travels in San Miguel?  That’s what Juan Cabrillo named the big bay and the place around it when he landed here in 1542.  But 60 years later, when explorer Sebastian Vizcaino arrived, he renamed everything San Diego, after the fellow pictured to the right. Although he’d been dead for almost 140 years, St. Diego de Alcala had recently captured European imaginations.  Indeed, one of Vizcaino’s ships was named after him.  Here’s why.

A humble Franciscan monk who never learned to read or write, Diego’s holiness and charity evidently impressed those who knew him.  According to local historian Thomas Case, who wrote about the Spanish monk in a 1988 issue of the Journal of San Diego History, some had even begun to consider him a saint, and his burial place drew sick and lame individuals seeking miraculous cures. But Rome didn’t sanction any of this until after what happened to the 17-year-old son of King Phillip II of Spain.

Named Carlos, the prince was “an infirm and moody lad who neglected his studies and preferred to spend a good part of his day in bed,” according to Case. Carlos also “delighted in amorous escapades.” While attempting to sneak out of the palace one night, he fell down a rickety staircase, landed on his head, and fell into a deep coma. Even the best doctors couldn’t do anything to relieve the pressure on his brain, so the king ordered Fray Diego’s coffin to be opened and his body put in bed with the unconscious boy. “The following day,” Case writes, “the prince awoke and told of a dream in which he had seen the Franciscan friar holding a cane cross in his hand. Soon after, he was up and around, the beneficiary, many thought, of a miracle.”

Not long thereafter both Phillip and the prince began petitioning Rome to recognize  Diego.  But more than just the creepy miracle deserves credit for the monk’s eventual canonization. As Case explains, powerful political forces also were at work; the timing was right for Rome and Spain to team up against the Protestant Queen Elizabeth. In fact Diego’s canonization ceremonies unfolded in Rome as the Spanish Armada sailed toward the English Channel, and later celebrations in Spain took a bit of the sting out of the Spanish fleet’s defeat.

The good vibes associated with Diego must have persisted a dozen years later, when Vizcaino was building and naming the ships for his exploratory voyage. When he landed just two days before San Diego feast day, the temptation to rename “San Miguel” as San Diego must have been irresistible. Later Diego’s feast day was changed to November 13, and although I’ve read one account that says it was later changed back to November 12 (the anniversary of the saint’s death), both the website Catholic Online, the local Catholic diocese, and Case say it’s on the 13th. So I say, happy feast day, St. Diego!