Visitas

Visitas or "asistencias", were subsidiary missions of larger Catholic missions established during the 16th-19th centuries of the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. They allowed the Catholic church and the Spanish crown to extend their reach into native populations at a modest cost.

Description
Visitas served missions and were much smaller than the main missions with living quarters, workshops and crops in addition to a church. They were typically staffed with a small group of clergymen and a relatively small group of indigenous neophytes in order to maintain the facility. 

Particularly strategic visitas were later elevated to the status of a full mission. This typically included an expansion of existing facilities to support a larger clergy and indigenous neophyte population, improvement of basic infrastructure such as roads, and rechristening under a new Catholic saint.

In Spanish Florida, visitas were mission stations without a resident missionary. Church buildings at visitas were simple, or sometimes absent. Visitas were often in satellite villages associated with a town with a doctrina (a mission with one or more resident missionaries). 

 Early history 
The first Visita that was founded and documented seems to be one established in the village of Soloy (in modern-day Florida). Pedro Menéndez de Avilés designated it to become a blockhouse in 1567, but it became a visita to the Mission Nombre de Dios in the beginning of the 1600s.

References

Category:Churches