Death Comes for the Archbishop

“The faith planted by the Spanish friars and watered with their blood was not dead; it awaited only the toil of the husbandmen. He was not troubled about the revolt in Santa Fe, or the powerful old native priest who led it, Father Martínez, of Taos, who had ridden over from his parish expressly to receive the new Vicar and drive him away.”

This passage alludes to the fraught history of colonialism and the Catholic Church in the region. Catholicism was part of Spain’s “soft power” within its territories, and it used the church to help advance the assimilationist project of colonialism. Indigenous populations were, in some cases forcibly, “encouraged” to convert, but the process wasn’t always easy or free of violence. Some local clergy, like Father Martínez in Taos, sided with their Indigenous parishioners in disputes between locals and the church, and priests occasionally fought alongside Indigenous men and women in their efforts to retain freedom and autonomy.

“The lady spoke to him with all comfort, telling him that his uncle would be healed within the hour and that he should return to Bishop Zumarraga and bid him to build a church where she had first appeared to him. It must be called the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

Death Comes for the Archbishop engages with many aspects of New Mexico’s cultural and religious history. Here, Father Latour learns of the appearance of the Blessed Virgin and of the construction of the famed shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. This anecdote is historically accurate and reflects the importance of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Catholics in Mexico, in New Mexico, and throughout Latin America.

“He harangued them in such Spanish as he could command, and they listened with respect. But bring their children to be baptized, they would not. The Spaniards had treated them very badly long ago, and they had been meditating on their grievances for many generations.”

This passage refers to the violence of the Spanish colonial project. In the name of assimilation, Spain not only encouraged Indigenous people to adopts its customs and practices, but also brutally suppressed those who tried to hold onto their beliefs and values.

“Before the travelers had crossed the mountain meadows, the rain turned to sleet. Their wet buckskins quickly froze, and the rattle of icy flakes struck them and bounded off.”

Fathers Latour and Vaillant encounter difficult conditions in the rough territory of New Mexico. Part of their success as priests depends on their ability to endure harsh weather, forbidding terrain, and a sometimes hostile populace. This depiction is a largely accurate account of the early days of New Mexico as a territory and grounds the novel within the area’s history.

“He took the scout’s hand. I have long wanted to meet Kit Carson, he said, even before I came to New Mexico. I have been hoping you would pay me a visit at Santa Fe.”

While traveling to Mora, the two priests meet the famed scout Kit Carson. Carson was a real person and an important historical figure within the history of New Mexico. His depiction in Death Comes for the Archbishop is largely accurate: Although a soldier, a fur trapper, and a famed frontiersman, he was known for his kindness and understated personality.

“Taking leave of Isleta and its priest early in the morning, Father Latour and his guide rode all day through the dry desert plain west of Albuquerque. It was like a country of dry ashes, no juniper, no rabbit brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus, and patches of wild pumpkin, the only vegetation that had any vitality.”

The harsh New Mexico landscape and its stark beauty are an important motif in the novel. They help the author create a portrait of how isolated and remote life was for newcomers on the frontier at the edges of growing US territories. The landscape’s wildness mirrors the harsh conditions that Fathers Latour and Vaillant endure during their years in the newly formed Diocese of New Mexico.

“The Bishop seldom questioned Jacinto about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn’t think it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the mind of the Indian, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience which no language could translate to him.”

This passage speaks to the vast gulf between New Mexico’s Indigenous peoples and its Spanish priests and settlers. Fathers Latour and Vaillant encounter many cultural differences between themselves and the men and women they’re sent to live and work among. To Father Latour’s credit here, he respects Jacinto and his beliefs and values.

“It was clear that the friar at Acoma lived more after the flesh than after the spirit.”

The story of the corrupt priest at the Acoma pueblo and his gruesome death reveal the fraught role of religion in New Mexico. Spain viewed Catholicism as a way to “civilize” the Indigenous populations, but the relationship between Spanish colonialism and the church was assimilationist, often sheltering tyrannical clergy.

“Why, the Bishop was asking himself, had he ever brought his friend to this life of hardship and danger?”

Life is rugged and isolated for Fathers Latour and Vaillant, and their friendship helps sustain them in New Mexico’s wild and sometimes dangerous frontier. Many other friendships in the novel endure difficult ordeals that likewise illustrate the importance of human connection and the enduring nature of real friendship.

“Father Latour remarked that their veneration for old customs was a quality he liked in the Indians, and that it played a great part in his own religion.”

Father Latour mostly refrains from stereotyping the region’s Indigenous groups and has a marked respect for their wisdom, ways, and customs. Despite his interest in converting the local populations to Catholicism, he tries to meet people where they are spiritually and demonstrates admiration for them. In this way, he presents a contrast to figures like Fathers Gallegos and Martínez, both of whom embody hypocrisy and corruption.

“Father Martínez had been dictator to all the parishes of northern New Mexico, and the native priests of Santa Fe were all under his thumb.”

Many corrupt figures exist within the New Mexico clergy, and Cather’s representation of them speaks to the novel’s fraught politics of religion. Although some characters experience religion as a way to glorify God, others use it as a way to wield power. In a broader sense, the role of religion in New Mexico is still fiercely contested: Indigenous populations understand it as an assimilationist tool of oppression, while those who identify as Hispanic Catholics see it as an important part of their cultural heritage.

“We have a living church here, not a dead arm of the European church. Our religion grew out of the soil, and has its own roots. We pay a filial respect to the person of the holy father, but Rome has no authority here.”

Although nominally a man of God, Father Martínez refuses to live according to church doctrine or recognize the power of Rome, the seat of the Catholic Church. He’s one of many troubled clerical figures in the text, and they support the novel’s interest in exposing deep fissures within the church in New Mexico.

“Bishop Latour had one very keen worldly ambition, to build a Santa Fe cathedral which would be worthy of a setting naturally beautiful.”

The construction of the cathedral in Santa Fe is one of the novel’s key focal points. Although much of the narrative is meandering and lacks a cohesive plot, Latour’s ambitions in the New Mexico territory are to help bring it under control of the church and to build an imposing cathedral symbolizing his work in the region.

“Chavez boasted his descent from two Castilian knights who freed the city of Chavez from the moors in 1160.”

This quote alludes to the role of Spanish history in the lives of many New Mexico inhabitants. The diverse population has roots in local Indigenous populations, Mexico, and Europe. For those of European descent, Europe and its history are key facets of their identity, and (in part to distinguish themselves from local Indigenous people) they value their distant rather than recent cultural past.

“I shall never forgive you, Father Joseph, nor you Bishop Latour, for that awful lie you made me tell in court about my age!”

This quote helps build Isabella Olivares’s characterization. She’s devout and loyal to the priests in her life but is also vain and wants to preserve the fiction of her youth. She lies about her age until she’s forced to admit the truth in court, but even in what she perceives as her humiliation, she retains her sense of humor.

“By the Gadsden Purchase, executed three years after Father Latour came to Santa Fe, the United States took over from Mexico a great territory which now forms southern New Mexico and Arizona.”

Many historical events underpin the story, and the Gadsden Purchase is one of the most important. New Mexico has long been characterized by diversity and shifting borders, and the Gadsden Purchase instantly transferred portions of Mexico to the US. That the national boundary had changed did little to alter the culture, and Fathers Latour and Vaillant still preside over a region that is largely Mexican in both culture and heritage.

“The faith, in that wild frontier, is like a buried treasure.”

Forging faith and community against the backdrop of a still-evolving frontier is one of this novel’s key focal points. Fathers Latour and Vaillant encounter many people who are hostile to the church and its assimilationist goals but also meet markedly devout individuals. They view these frontier Catholics as “diamonds in the rough” and are always grateful to encounter such deep religiosity.

“Though the Bishop had worked with Father Joseph for twenty-five years now, he could not reconcile the contradictions of his nature. He simply accepted them, and when Joseph had been away for a long while, realized he loved them all.”

One of the novel’s most important themes is Friendship and Community Against the Backdrop of Frontier Isolation. Prioritizing friendship and maintaining human connections helps combat loneliness in the harsh physical and emotional environment. Father Latour reflects on his friendship with Father Vaillant. The two have clearly forged a deep bond during their service together.

“The Navajo was careful to obliterate every trace of their temporary occupation. He buried the embers of the fire and any remnants of food, unpiled any stones he’d piled up together, filled up the holes he’d scooped in the sand.”

This passage alludes to the cultural differences between Indigenous and white communities. Fathers Latour and Vaillant are always struck by these points of divergence. In this case, Latour deeply respects Indigenous ways and wisdom.

“He reflected as he went quietly into his own room that there was a great difference between their natures. Wherever he went, he soon made friends that took the place of family and country. But Jean, who was not at ease in any society and always the flower of courtesy, could not form new ties.”

This passage supports the characterization of Fathers Vaillant and Latour as well as the novel’s thematic interest in the importance of friendship in an environment of isolation. The two priests are markedly different: Vaillant is gregarious and extraverted, whereas Latour is reserved and introverted. Despite their differences, the men forge a deep bond that sustains them through years of difficulty and isolation on the frontier.

“If you take Contento, I will ask you to take Angelica as well. They have a great affection for each other. Why separate them indefinitely? One could not explain to them, they have worked long together.”

In this passage, the two mules that have for many years belonged to Fathers Latour and Vaillant represent their masters. Latour, through his suggestion that the mules would prefer not to be separated, obliquely communicates to Vaillant that he values their friendship and will greatly miss Vaillant after he leaves for Colorado. Vaillant understands the implication of Latour’s assertion and, without directly communicating about it, also understands that this is Latour’s way of telling Vaillant how much he cares about him.

“I shall not die of a cold, my son, I shall die of having lived.”

This quote speaks to the novel’s interest in depicting the entire arc of Bishop Latour’s life. Forgoing a quiet and easy post in Europe, Latour journeys to new territories in the US to forge his own path in the challenging frontier amid an unforgiving landscape. At the end of his days, instead of returning to Europe, Latour chooses to remain in the US because he feels that it shaped him as a man and as a priest, and he wants to die in the land that defined him rather than the one that sent him there.

“The next morning Father Latour wakened with a grateful sense of nearness to his cathedral, which would also be his tomb.”

Death Comes for the Archbishop unfolds in a series of episodes that sometimes resist a cohesive plot, reflecting how the priests’ frontier life isn’t always cohesive or easy. One of the few narrative elements that does connect each of the novel’s episodes to the next is Latour’s desire to build a cathedral in Santa Fe and its construction process. The cathedral represents Latour’s life work in the priesthood and in New Mexico, and he intends for it to glorify God and to memorialize his life and career.