La Isabela
The settlement founded by Columbus on the coast of Hispaniola on his second voyage, about the end of 1493. A church was among its first buildings, and mass was celebrated there at Epiphany 1494.
The fleet’s physician, Dr Chanca, describes the place in the first weeks: a good harbour with plenty of fish, two rivers close by, and a town being built on the bank of one of them, protected on one side by a rocky ravine and on the other by a dense wood. He calls the town Marta (Chanca, Letter pp. 307–308). Peter Martyr says that houses and a church were built within a few days and that mass was celebrated on the feast of the Three Kings (Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo decade 1, book 2). Ramón Pané calls it Isabella (Pané, Antiquities of the Indians p. 28). See Christianity Crosses the Atlantic.
What happened here
- 1493, firm dateChristianity Crosses the Atlantic
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI grants the lands Columbus has found to the crown of Castile and charges it to convert their peoples. A second fleet carries priests to Hispaniola, where mass is said in January 1494 and a friar, Ramón Pané, records the first baptisms.