Customer Reviews

Death Comes for the Archbishop

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop is a deceptively simple but profound novel about two French missionaries in the Southwestern United States. These men are not terribly otherworldly and they are capable of enjoying good books, good wine, and good food. They are tough guys too, up to the task of traveling thousands of miles on horseback or facing down some bad guys. The religion they promote provides support and comfort to Mexicans, Indians, and some Anglo miners who need spiritual succor.

The book presents us with several vignettes in the lives of these urbane priests, as well as some fables and Southwestern folklore. By living in harmony with God's law and the world he created, the men prosper. Eventually, they must part, and they must grow old and die. But death holds no horror for men like these who have spent their lives in service to others.

Cather's writing is beautiful and direct. In the following passage, one of the priests and his friend spend several days traveling together:

As Father Latour and Eusabio approached Albuquerque, they occasionally fell in with company; Indians going to and fro on the long winding trails across the plain, or up into the Sandia mountains. They had all of them the same quiet way of moving, whether their pace was swift or slow, and the same unobtrusive demeanor: an Indian wrapped in his bright blanket, seated upon his mule or walking beside it, moving through the pale new-budding sage-brush, winding among the sand waves, as if it were his business to pass unseen and unheard through a country awakening with spring.

North of Laguna two Zuni runners sped by them, going somewhere east on "Indian business." They saluted Eusabio by gestures with the open palm, but did not stop. They coursed over the sand with the fleetness of young antelope, their bodies disappearing and reappearing among the sand dunes, like the shadows that eagles cast in their strong, unhurried flight.

Her book also contains some beautiful ideas. In this passage, the two priests discuss Our Lady of Guadalupe:

"Where there is great love there are always miracles," [Father Latour] said at length. "One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always."

This book has it all: fine writing, adventure, and some lessons for living. Most highly recommended.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is an anomaly among Cather's works, and, for that matter, all twentieth-century works. In this book, you will not find chronology, action, or drama. You will, however, find a story that will grip you and will not let you go until Death finally does come for the Archbishop. If you are interested in precise, simple prose, a heart-warming story, and have a few hours to spare (the novel is rather short; the font is large), pick up a copy and enjoy yourself.

erhem...to all you acedeca "decathaleats" i ask one question.

Y

As close to history as Cather can make this story
Written as a novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop is historical fiction based on the lives of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy and his associates within the church. As such, it is representative of Cather's strong spiritual side. Set mostly in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico, it chronicles the bishop's efforts to organize the Catholic diocese of NM. A character study in the old sense of the word, this book explores the paths and pitfalls of men determined to build a mission, a cathedral in the wilderness.
After you've read this book, should you travel to New Mexico, be sure to visit the chapel of the archbishop on the grounds of Bishop Ranch, just outside Santa Fe.

In the early 21st century, Willa Cather is perhaps best remembered for her chronicles of prairie lives, but one of her best works is DEATH COMES TO THE ARCHBISHOP, which depicts the southwest some 300 years after the Spaniards arrived, but barely into its American infancy. In the 1850s, there are no maps yet, and to the European eye, the landscape is a vast, primitive "geometric nightmare." It is peopled by Mexicans and Native American Indians, and by a few rogue priests who so far from Rome and civilization have built fiefdoms and empires in the desert wilderness. It has been left so long untouched that Christian legends have grown up and become ancient alongside the lore of the Indians. By turns, the land and its people are hospitable and inspiring, misguided and harsh.

In 1848, the church of Rome believes it is time to find a leader who will bring order to this region. Going against conventional wisdom, the leaders decide on a younger priest, Jean Marie Latour, a Frenchman currently stationed in Michigan, for the task. The first question that persists through this episodic story is, is he the right person? The book becomes a portrait of his steady cerebral yet compassionate leadership through the chaos he finds and the upheavals of an extraordinary period in history.

The movement of the book zigzags among the people, both imagined and real (Kit Carson shows up), and the land. Especially, it looks at the land as it is shaped by belief-Christian, Indian and political. Cather does an extraordinary job of creating very vivid, complex characters. She also describes the land in a way that needs no photographs or maps to build it in our minds. Her prose is elegiac and yet nearly as clean as Hemingway's. There is power in it, and just when you think deep into the book that it is a series of sketches, it moves forward in the last part to the later 19th century and reveals how some characters' lives have taken some unexpected yet comprehensible curves and others were able to hold a course-the suspense was building all the time. In Latour there is the story of the human vs. the self, nature, other humans, and God. His personal story reflects the broader array of church and national history.

A new Bishop, Father Jean Marie Latour, is sent by Rome to spread Chrisitanity through new territory purchased in the Americas as part of the Gadsden Purchase. Father Latour takes with him his close friend, Father Jospeh Vaillant, to help with this cause. Latour is handsome, non-judgemental, amiable, keeps himself in check; Vaillant is his opposite, being not so pleasant of face but very very sociable and incredibly strong in faith.

There isn't much of a plot for this novel. It's more of a photo album or a series of episodes about the unexplored Western United States. The reader sees what the territory of New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico were like before trains, when the desert was both a beautiful and a harsh place. And, the reader learns about the people living there, from the French Fahters sent to Chrisitanize the Indians to the Mexican and Spanish settlers to the native Indians who are untrusting of white men and still hold to their gods. And the reader sees it all through the eyes of Father Latour so we get his wonder and awe at this strange, new world into which he's been sent to spread the word of God.

After reading this book, I would not name my Great Dane Willa Cather, but I did very much enjoy her portrait of the Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe. I am sympathetic with those who say that the Bishop is a harbinger of capitalism and out-of-touch with the Indians and Mexicans, and at first I was bothered by Cather's acceptance and relative lack of bias towards all groups. Although she seemed to occasionally stereotype, for the most part she didn't seem to take sides at all. I wanted her to be more critical and judgmental!

It is a rather slowly told tale, but not difficult for any level of reader. And finally near the end she begins to achieve beauty. My favorite landscape line: "Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky". My favorite explanation of alone time: "It was not a solitude of atrophy, of negation, but of perpetual flowering." And finally she hints at environmental destruction and the difference in how different people treat the planet, discusses the plight of the Navajo, and calls Kit Carson, who until nearly the last page has been a gentleman and a scholar, "misguided". I was relieved. Go get 'em Willa.

It may be slow going at first, but it's rewards are many especially if you are interested in history. In Stuart Udall's The Founding Fathers, you will also find some discussion of Bishop Lamy.

A story about two French priests, Bishop (later the Archbishop of the title) Jean Marie Latour, and his longtime friend and colleague, Father (later Bishop) Joseph Vaillant, who take on the job of traveling to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the newly acquired territory of the United States of America, to act as missionaries in that country, and the events of their lives as they meet Kit Carson and his wife and all sorts of Indians and Mexicans. Good historical but fictional account of life after the acquisition of New Mexico to the United States.

Yes, it evokes the landscape--but in a telling passage, Latour looks at the mountains in the landscape and sees them as scattered buildings that look "like mountains" and in a later passage says the terrain is waiting to become a landscape. Really in touch, isn't he?

And then, rather than challenge the white people who keep a slave, he secretly gives the enslaved woman a religious medal that's supposed to make feel better. This is the church as promising a good life in heaven and ignoring the very real social ills that hamper the growth of people on this earth.

Finally, that yellow cathedral he builds is built on the backs of workers who have to lug that stone for him, piece by piece, in a harsh terrain of desert heat.

These men are anything but sweet and simple--in fact they are the forerunners of the spread of capitalism and the forstering of racial discrimination.

I would agree with all those who see this is a wonderful novel, but not for the same reasons. It's a wonderful example from a novelist who truly loves the landscape but certainly doesn't know doodly-squat about the indigenous people who live in it.

This wonderful novel from Willa Cather is loosely based on a true story. It is the tale of Father Jean Marie Latour, a Catholic Bishop from France who is sent to be the first Bishop in the newly annexed territory of New Mexico, in the late 1850s. Latour and his companion, Father Vaillant, toil over the course of many years to build and develop the church there, strengthening the faith of Mexican and Indian alike. Latour's labor of love becomes a great cathedral in Santa Fe, completed before his death, while Vaillant is sent to spend the rest of his days working among the miners at Pike's Peak and throughout Colorado.

This is a fairly simple tale of two very faithful men, whose love for their work created a legacy for each. Despite its simplicity, however, this novel approaches epic proportions, as the two men work side by side to, literally, convert the world. Over about thirty years and in an area covering thousands of square miles, these two Fathers fight almost alone to cleanse the church, purify the faith, and propagate their religion to everyone in the Diocese.

This novel is a classic in Western literature, and definitely earns its place as one of the greatest stories of the American West. It belongs in the library of any fan of Western literature, or even American literature in general.