Death Comes for the Archbishop

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1927

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Book 2

Books 3-4

Books 5-7

Books 8-9

Character Analysis

Themes

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Themes

Faith and Religion

The impact of faith and religion on the lives of various characters, which the Prologue immediately introduces, is the novel’s most important and overt theme. It’s initially framed through Bishop Latour’s experiences. Latour found God early, and his religiosity drove all his major life choices. A deeply devout man, he feels “called” to missionary work. He’s willing to endure great difficulty in order to spread God’s word even in the furthest reaches of the church’s territory, and he puts his own comfort aside during trying experiences. After he loses his way in the desert while traveling to his new diocese in Santa Fe, he keeps his thoughts on God and on his goals: “The Passion of Jesus became for him his only reality; the need of his own body was but a part of that conception” (13). He stops only to pray by a cross-shaped tree, and when he finishes his devotions, he resumes his journey. He carries this deep religiosity throughout his entire ecclesiastical career in Santa Fe and at the end of his life feels satisfied that he served both God and the Catholics whose souls God had entrusted to him in his role as bishop.

Latour’s friend and fellow priest Joseph Vaillant also experiences religion as a calling. He’s less given to scholarly meditation than Latour but equally devout, and he becomes another religious modality within the novel. For Latour, God is something to experience and share, and he uses his skills, gifts, and talents to help the church achieve its goals in the region. A warm and gregarious man, he’s an effective evangelizer and a charismatic fundraiser. Like Latour, he’s willing to endure great difficulty in spreading God’s word, and he returns to work again and again, even after serious injury. Through the contrast between Latour and Vaillant, Cather suggests that there are many paths to God, all of them equal even in their differences.

Latour, Vaillant, and the various other European priests tasked with bringing Catholicism to New Mexico recognize that their parishioners, too, have many paths to God. The novel’s discussion of the tension between miracles and doctrine also alludes to its interest in the many ways that individuals experience religiosity. For many Catholics in Mexico and New Mexico, church doctrine and religious teachings are lofty and unapproachable. Devotion to God and the church increases when they see physical embodiments of God’s love, and for many that means miracles like the appearance of the Virgen de Guadalupe to an ordinary working man outside Mexico City. The text also mentions Santiago (whom people in New Mexico more commonly call Santo Niño de Atocha): His shrine at the northern New Mexico hamlet of Chimayó plays an important role in Latour’s diocese. Santiago, a small boy, is said to have miraculously walked mile after mile each night to deliver food to imprisoned Catholics, and many of Latour’s flock venerated him as a saint, seeing his story as “proof” of God’s existence. Although Latour is more open to the use of church doctrine to instruct and inspire, he ultimately realizes that his worldview isn’t the only one and is increasingly open to other paths to God.

Religion’s role in the history of New Mexico (and in the colonization of the US in general) is fraught and contested, and although Cather’s depiction of the Catholic Church in the diocese of Santa Fe refrains from outright judgment, she engages with the region’s history of corruption and troubled clerical figures. Corrupt clergy abound within the text, and their presence speaks to the abuse and exploitation to which many priests subjected their parishioners. Father Gallegos is one such figure, as is Father Martínez, whom the text describes as “an old scapegrace, if ever there was one. He’s got children and grandchildren in almost every settlement here” (55). That many priests in the Americas robbed, enslaved, abused, and sexually assaulted Indigenous peoples and impoverished Mexicans alike is well documented, and those abuses often led to open conflict between communities and those in power. Cather provides historical depth and detail, and by showing the darker side of the church that Fathers Latour and Vaillant hold in such high esteem, the author creates a more thorough and balanced narrative.

Colonization, Assimilation, and Cultural Differences

This theme is closely tied to religion because converting the local Indigenous populations in the Americas to Catholicism was one of the central aspects of Spain’s assimilationist project in their territories. Nevertheless, Cather goes beyond the role of Catholicism in colonization and assimilation, examining many other ways that Spanish colonial rule impacted Indigenous populations. Additionally, the text explores how cultural differences shaped relations between Indigenous communities and the Europeans with whom they came into contact.

Cather begins her interrogation of colonization, assimilation, and cultural differences through the somewhat “surface” differences between local and European food. Both Fathers Latour and Vaillant dislike strongly flavored cuisine and object to the presence of chiles in their food. Chiles are an important cultural food as well as nutritional source in both Indigenous and Mexican communities in the American Southwest, and they provide much needed micronutrient diversity in a diet dependent on beans and grains. Also, the priests use different methods to cook meat, and their hosts are horrified by “undercooked” pink lamb. To the people of each culture, the culture of the other is alien, and small differences initially impact how they view one another.

Additionally, Cather depicts the European practice of renaming places and landmarks whose Indigenous names are thousands of years old. The names that Fathers Latour and Vaillant learn are more recent: Colonizing Spaniards chose them in a hurry to put their mark on a region where their authority was often tenuous. Latour learns the proper Indigenous names for several places from Jacinto, and through these conversations he begins to understand the true gulf between his culture and the Indigenous traditions of the region. Jacinto scoffs at Latour’s surprise that so many landmarks had names before colonization, telling him, “Indians have nice names too” (66).

Indigenous versus white place names are only the beginning of Latour’s cultural awakening, and he uses his conversations with Jacinto as a springboard for self-reflection and critical analysis of white-Indigenous relations. During a conversation about the stars and planets, Jacinto shares his belief that the stars are “leaders, great spirits,” while Latour responds that to him they’re “worlds like ours” (67). He realizes that they have entirely different worldviews, rooted in experiences that are in many ways irreconcilable. He doesn’t dismiss Jacinto’s beliefs but develops a sense of respect for them. He sees how thoughtful and intelligent Jacinto is and realizes that he arrived at his beliefs much like Latour did: through reflection and contemplative analysis. Latour also identifies ways in which Indigenous beliefs systems might be superior to European ideas, particularly regarding land management and environmental stewardship. He reflects that while European colonizers and settlers seek to tame the land, to name and claim it and alter it as they see fit, Indigenous communities seem “to have none of the European’s desire to master nature” (172). Although he would never say that Indigenous spirituality is superior to Catholicism, he comes to believe that Indigenous attitudes toward nature have much to teach Westerners.

In addition, Latour reflects on the role of colonization in the decline of Indigenous societies in the Americas during the years since Spain’s first ships landed in the Caribbean. His conversations with Jacinto spark reflection about the diseases Spaniards brought, crop failures, and anti-Indigenous violence. He stops short of faulting the Catholic Church for damage to Indigenous societies but understands that colonization and assimilation have not been entirely positive forces in the lives of the civilizations that Spain encountered in the Americas.

Friendship and Community Against the Backdrop of Frontier Isolation

The human need for friendship, belonging, and community even in remote and isolated frontier locations is another of the novel’s key themes and connects with many of Cather’s other works. She’s known for frontier novels that depict both isolation and the need for human connection, and this novel engages with that idea both through the friendship between Fathers Latour and Vaillant and through the way each man forges strong bonds and community in their far-flung corner of the New Mexico frontier. The isolation of northern New Mexico is immediately apparent, as Latour observes: “In all his travels, the Bishop had seen no country like this. From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals” (69). The land is beautiful but also rugged and unforgiving. Cather establishes the bleak difficulty of the landscape to underscore the difficulty of living and working in such a remote location.

Partly because of how isolated they are, Fathers Latour and Vaillant work hard to maintain their friendship. They share a deep and meaningful bond. Both men of the cloth, both are devoted to God and committed to spreading His word and furthering the interests of the Catholic Church in the American Southwest. After spending their youths together in France, they attend school together, journey to the same part of Ohio, and then travel together to Santa Fe. They choose a difficult path in life and endure physical struggles and loneliness, but their friendship always sustains them. When they’re separated, Latour struggles and experiences “a period of great coldness and doubt” (162). The two remain in close contact, and their friendship survives great distances and the course of their lifetimes. Even after Vaillant’s death, Latour observes that he feels “nearer to him than ever before” (197). Vaillant too values his friendship with Latour, although he’s more extraverted than Latour and forges other friendships with ease.

In addition to their relationship with each other, the two men try to build community in the diocese. They visit many of the area’s Pueblos and get to know as many people as they can. They connect with area clergy, even those in remote locations, and see their work in the church, at least partly, as relationship building. To priests not given to problematic behavior (Like Fathers Gallegos, Martínez, and others) they provide both material support and friendship, bonding over their shared faith and commitment to religious life in New Mexico. They also make friends within Santa Fe society, and their admiration for Don and Doña Olivares is sincere.

Cather often suggests that a special bond exists among people who are both isolated from urban US society and the more settled parts of the country and engaged in expanding society into regions previously unexplored (by white Americans). In many ways, her work is an elegy to a frontier period that had, even by the time of her writing, already passed. In Death Comes for the Archbishop, she examines friendship and isolation through the lens of New Mexico, placing the text in dialogue with many of her other works.