Death comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather is a classic novel about New Mexican history and religion. I have wanted to read it for years, and finally got around to it this past week. It is a neat book because it is based on true events and the work of Jean Baptiste Lamy, the first Archbishop of Santa Fe, who was sent by the Pope in 1850 to restore the Catholic Church in the American southwest.
In the novel, the fictional Father Jean Marie Latour (who is based on Archbishop Lamy) arrives in New Mexico in 1851 with his friend and fellow priest Father Joseph Vaillant. The novel is the story of their work to build the Church and the resistance they meet, as well as the deep friendship the two share. What I enjoyed was the various settings throughout early New Mexico, such as Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Taos, Mora, Pecos, Acoma. Father Vallant works in various places in the southwest (New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado) while Father Latour builds the church at Santa Fe, including the building of Saint Francis Cathedral.
There were some great quotes in the book which I liked:
“Where there is great love, there are always miracles.”
“Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky….the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!”
“To fulfil the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man.”
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Saint Francis Cathedral is built in the Romanesque style that Archbishop Lamy brought from his native France. He began construction on the cathedral in 1869, using yellow limestone blocks quarried near the present site of Lamy. The cathedral was built around and over the old adobe church of La Parroquia. The cathedral was finished in 1884. All that remains of the old adobe church is the Conquistadora Chapel. Saint Francis Cathedral is the Mother Church of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, and was elevated to a basilica in 2005. The Romanesque style of the cathedral stands in stark contrast to the pueblo adobe architecture of the rest of the city.
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Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873. In 1883 she moved with her family to Nebraska, and many of her novels depict pioneer life in that state. She graduated from the University of Nebraska, was a high school English teacher and wrote for several magazines prior to her career as a novelist. She was a Baptist but converted to Episcopalianism. She was politically conservative. She was noted for her friendships with women, and rumors persisted about her sexual orientation. She was a very private person who destroyed many of her old drafts, personal papers, and letters. She died in New York in 1947 and is buried in New Hampshire.
As far as I can tell, Death Comes for the Archbishop is her only novel set in New Mexico.
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I am glad I read the book. It adds to my knowledge of New Mexico, but also to my intrigue about the spiritualism, the mystique, the enchantment of this land. The soul of New Mexico shines all through Death comes for the Archbishop.
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