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=                   Death_Comes_for_the_Archbishop                   =
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                            Introduction
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'Death Comes for the Archbishop' is a 1927 novel by American author
Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a
priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory.


                            Plot summary
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The narrative is based on two historical figures of the late 19th
century, Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, and rather
than any one single plot, is the stylized re-telling of their lives
serving as Roman Catholic clergy in New Mexico. The narrative has
frequent digressions, either in terms of stories related to the pair
(including the story of the Our Lady of Guadalupe and the execution of
an oppressive Spanish priest at Acoma Pueblo) or through their
recollections. The narration is in third-person omniscient style.
Cather includes many fictionalized accounts of actual historical
figures, including Kit Carson, Manuel Antonio Chaves and Pope Gregory
XVI.

In the prologue, Bishop Ferrand, an Irish bishop who works in the New
World, solicits three cardinals at Rome to pick his candidate for the
newly created diocese of New Mexico (which has recently passed into
American hands). Bishop Ferrand is successful in getting his
candidate, the Auvergnat Jean-Marie Latour, recommended by the
cardinals over the recommendation of the Bishop of Durango (under
whose territory New Mexico had previously fallen). One of the
cardinals, a Spaniard named Allende, alludes to a painting by El Greco
taken from his family by a missionary to the New World and lost, and
asks for the new Bishop to search for it.

The action then switches to the primary character, Bishop Jean Marie
Latour, who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from
Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico. At the time of Latour's departure for
New Mexico, Cincinnati is the end of the railway line west, so Latour
must travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence overland to
New Mexico, a journey which takes an entire year (and includes losing
most of his supplies in a shipwreck at Galveston).  The names given to
the main proponents reflect their characters. Vaillant, 'valiant', is
fearless in his promulgation of the faith, whereas Latour, 'the
tower', is more intellectual and reserved than his comrade. Vaillant,
described as being ugly but purpose-filled, is given the nickname
"Blanchet" ("Whitey") as well as "Trompe-la-morte" ("Death-cheater")
for his complexion and his numerous instances of bad health,
respectively. While the narrative speaks of Vaillant positively, it
also alludes to his willingness to acquire (he "forces the hand" of a
landowner into giving him and Latour two prize mules, Angelica and
Contento, chastises the widow Dona Isabella Olivares for refusing to
assert her rights under her husband's will and thereby blocking the
church from its testamentary share, and goes on frank "begging trips"
to acquire money) and near the end of the novel his questionable
financial behaviour receives an investigation from Rome. Latour, again
presented favourably, nevertheless does operate with a view to
politics: he successfully canvasses donations to build a Romanesque
cathedral in Santa Fe according to his own desires (he chooses the
stone and brings the architect Molny from France to complete it), and
bides his time to remove dissenting priests and help  a poor Mexican
slave-woman named Sada until he is in a position of political strength
(his help of Sada is never described in the novel). The novel ends
with the death of (retired) Archbishop Latour in Santa Fe: Vaillant
has pre-deceased Latour as the first Bishop of Colorado after the
Colorado gold rush (in reality Machebeuf was the first Roman Catholic
Bishop of Denver).

Near the beginning of the novel, Latour and Vaillant are saved from
being murdered by the villainous Buck Scales (at whose house they have
sought shelter for the night) by Scales's abused wife Magdalena. All
three escape, and Scales is hanged for the murder of four of his
former guests, while Magdalena ultimately serves nuns whom Latour
brings from Europe and who run a school in Santa Fe.
While some of the clergy already established in New Mexico are
portrayed favourably (such as the Padre of Isleta Pueblo, the blind
priest Father Jesus de Baca, who collects parrots), several of the
entrenched priests are depicted as examples of greed, avarice, and
gluttony. The priest of Albuquerque, Father Gallegos, is removed for
not being devout enough (he dances and enjoys fine food and hunting),
replaced by Vaillant. Father Martinez at Taos is removed for denying
the necessity of priestly celibacy (and having children, although he
is also described as starting a revolt and then profiting from the
executions of the rebels to seize their property) and his friend
Father Lucero at Arroyo Hondo (described as a miser) is also removed
when he joins Father Martinez's new church (Martinez dies an apostate
while Lucero receives absolution from Vaillant after repenting near
death).

Cather portrays the aboriginal people of the Pueblos, the Hopi and the
Navajo sympathetically, including a discussion of the Long Walk of the
Navajo (mentioned as a reminiscence of the dying Latour of his Navajo
friend Eusabio and the Navajo leader Manuelito). Latour reflects that
the removal of the Navajos was a wrong comparable to "black slavery,"
and the narrator describes Kit Carson's actions with the Navajo as
"misguided" and "a soldier's brutal work."


                       Historical background
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The novel is based on the life of Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), and
partially chronicles the construction of the Cathedral Basilica of St.
Francis of Assisi. The capture of the Southwest by the United States
in the Mexican-American War is the catalyst for the plot.

"The Padre of Isleta", Anton Docher is identified as the character of
Padre de Baca.

Among the entities mentioned in the novel are Los Penitentes, a
flagellant lay confraternity in Southern Colorado and New Mexico that
still operates today.


                        Publication History
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The novel's U.S. copyright expired on January 1, 2023, when all works
published in 1927 entered the public domain.


                     Significance and criticism
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The novel was reprinted in the Modern Library series in 1931. It was
included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of
1924-1944. It was also included on 'Time' 100 Best English-language
Novels from 1923 to 2005 and Modern Library's list of the 100 best
English-language novels of the 20th century and was chosen by the
Western Writers of America to be the 7th-best "Western Novel" of the
20th century.

James Paul Old of Valparaiso University uses 'Death Comes for the
Archbishop' as a literary example of the notion that religious faith
is able to develop and maintain strong social bonds in nascent
democratic political orders. He argues that even though Cather's early
novels, such as 'My Ántonia', typically represent religious characters
as closed-minded, her personal religious realignment at the time
allowed her to alter her perspective and develop more positive
religious characters, in this case Catholic ones. And while some of
her contemporary critics found her out of step with the experiences of
common people, later critics, such as Old, praised her for a "search
for a basis of order and cultural stability beyond the confines of
contemporary secular culture."

Additionally, scholars note that Latour's character is not strictly
placed within the male-female binary, but instead, as Jennifer A.
Smith argues, "oscillates between norms of femininity and
masculinity." In developing a theory that Cather had questioned her
own gender in the 1920s, Patrick W. Shaw suggests that "fundamental
double entendres" and "elaborate image clusters" throughout the novel
support a reading of sexual disregularity and ambiguity.


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