This
is my seventh post on Willa Cather’s Death
Comes for the Archbishop.
Part1 was on the landscape theme.
Part2 a photo essay of the New Mexican landscape.
Part3 a photo essay of the actual Cathedral referred to in the novel.
Part4 on the civilizing effect of Catholicism.
Part 5 on the reform of the Church from the old order.
Part 6 on the relationship with the indigenous
people.
In
wrapping up Cather’s Death Comes for the
Archbishop I would like to explore the significance of its final and
dominating image, the Cathedral that Latour has built over the course of his
lifetime. The Cathedral is there throughout
the novel, either in directly after it has been built, in desire to be built
once Latour conceptualizes it, and perhaps in allusion prior to its being
conceived. It may be helpful to go to
Part 3, the photo essay on the Cathedral (see link above) as you read this
post.
We
see only see the Cathedral fully built late in the novel. It occurs on Latour’s last entry into Sante
Fe, and he contemplates its beauty as the sun sets upon it.
Father Latour made his
last entry into Santa Fé at the end of a brilliant February afternoon; Bernard
stopped the horses at the foot of the long street to await the sunset.
Wrapped in his Indian
blankets, the old Archbishop sat for a long while, looking at the open, golden
face of his Cathedral. How exactly young
Molny, his French architect, had done what he wanted! Nothing sensational, simply honest building
and good stone- cutting,--good Midi Romanesque of the plainest. And even now, in winter, when the acacia
trees before the door were bare, how it was of the South, that church, how it
sounded the note of the South! (p. 269)
The
significance of the architectural style—“Midi Romanesque”—is given right there
in Latour’s thoughts: simplicity. I
couldn’t find anything on “midi” but Romanesque refers to a style of late
antiquity which absorbed many of the pagan Roman simple geometric forms. Midi I suppose refers to a revival of
Romanesque during the middle ages. What
it most certainly is not is Gothic, with hard lines and abundant—perhaps overly
abundant to the point of garish—embellishments.
Latour is proud that this style is most fitting to the “South,” and here
I think he means the Southwest. Latour
then contemplates the Cathedral in its setting.
No one but Molny and the
Bishop had ever seemed to enjoy the beautiful site of that building,--perhaps
no one ever would. But these two had
spent many an hour admiring it. The
steep carnelian hills drew up so close behind the church that the individual
pine trees thinly wooding their slopes were clearly visible. From the end of the street where the Bishop's
buggy stood, the tawny church seemed to start directly out of those
rose-coloured hills--with a purpose so strong that it was like action. Seen from this distance, the Cathedral lay
against the pine-splashed slopes as against a curtain. When Bernard drove slowly nearer, the
backbone of the hills sank gradually, and the towers rose clear into the blue
air, while the body of the church still lay against the mountain. (p. 269-270)
The
Cathedral is set against the hills and slopes of the mountains that are the
terrain of the New Mexican landscape that has been so crucial to the novel. It is as if the church building grows out of
the mountainside, “to start directly out of those rose-coloured hills.” And here is the significant qualifier: “with
a purpose so strong that it was like action.”
The church building may stem from nature, but it has power over
nature. We see this even more so in the
next paragraph.
The young architect used
to tell the Bishop that only in Italy, or in the opera, did churches leap out
of mountains and black pines like that.
More than once Molny had called the Bishop from his study to look at the
unfinished building when a storm was coming up; then the sky above the mountain
grew black, and the carnelian rocks became an intense lavender, all their pine
trees strokes of dark purple; the hills drew nearer, the whole background
approached like a dark threat.
Despite
storm or hills that have an ominous “dark threat,” the church stands calmly and
with strength in opposition to the dangers that nature presents. It is planted in place and stands strong
against the dark forces of the world. It
recalls Matthew 16:18, “upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of
the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”
But
the Cathedral doesn’t just emerge from the mountain; it is part of the
mountain. The very stone of the
Cathedral came from one of the mountains in the area. We get a little vignette of Latour showing
Vaillant one day as they passed that particular mountain.
The two priests left
Santa Fé a little after midday, riding west.
The Bishop did not disclose his objective, and the Vicar asked no questions. Soon they left the wagon road and took a
trail running straight south, through an empty greasewood country sloping gradually
in the direction of the naked blue Sandia mountains.
At about four o'clock
they came out upon a ridge high over the Rio Grande valley. The trail dropped down a long decline at this
point and wound about the foot of the Sandias into Albuquerque, some sixty
miles away. This ridge was covered with
cone-shaped, rocky hills, thinly clad with piñons, and the rock was a curious
shade of green, something between sea-green and olive. The thin, pebbly earth, which was merely the
rock pulverized by weather, had the same green tint. Father Latour rode to an isolated hill that beetled
over the western edge of the ridge, just where the trail descended. This hill stood up high and quite alone,
boldly facing the declining sun and the blue Sandias. As they drew close to it, Father Vaillant
noticed that on the western face the earth had been scooped away, exposing a
rugged wall of rock--not green like the surrounding hills, but yellow, a strong
golden ochre, very much like the gold of the sunlight that was now beating upon
it. Picks and crowbars lay about, and
fragments of stone, freshly broken off.
"It is curious, is
it not, to find one yellow hill among all these green ones?" remarked the
Bishop, stooping to pick up a piece of the stone. "I have ridden over these hills in every
direction, but this is the only one of its kind." He stood regarding the chip of yellow rock
that lay in his palm. As he had a very
special way of handling objects that were sacred, he extended that manner to
things which he considered beautiful.
After a moment of silence he looked up at the rugged wall, gleaming gold
above them. "That hill, Blanchet,
is my Cathedral." (p. 238-239)
Deep
into the heart of the landscape is where the very rock that will be used to
build the Cathedral resides. The stone
is of a distinct color, unlike the stone in the entire region. It is part of the mountain itself. One supposes that all stone that go into
buildings must come from nature, but given the importance of landscape to this
novel, seeing the virgin stone in the mountain, seeing the picks and crowbars
that will cut the stone out, and holding sample stone in a character’s hand
allows the reader to fuse the Cathedral with the landscape. But it is more. It is not just from the landscape; in being
transformed into a Cathedral it has been transfigured into the holy. It is akin to transubstantiation, where the
simple elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Through the simple elements of mountain rock,
a holy tabernacle is formed.
There
are several churches that either prefigure or contrast against the Latour’s
cathedral. First in contrast was the
mission church at Ácoma, an “old warlike church.” “Gaunt, grim, grey, its nave rising some
seventy feet to a sagging, half-ruined roof, it was more like a fortress than a
place of worship.” When Latour served Mass there,
he felt as if he were
celebrating Mass at the bottom of the sea, for antediluvian creatures; for
types of life so old, so hardened, so shut within their shells, that the
sacrifice on Calvary could hardly reach back so far. Those shell-like backs
behind him might be saved by baptism and divine grace, as undeveloped infants
are, but hardly through any experience of their own, he thought. When he
blessed them and sent them away, it was with a sense of inadequacy and
spiritual defeat.” (p. 100)
The
church at Ácoma represents the spirituality of the old order, the Spanish
missionaries of the latter generations that maintained a power relationship
over the population, and that had fallen into corruption and heresy.
There
was also the “Gothic chapel” of the cavern where Jacinto and Latour took refuge
from the winter storm. Here was a pagan
structure where dark ceremonies were performed and an underground river flowed
untamed, “far, far below, perhaps as deep as the foot of the mountain, a flood
moving in utter blackness under ribs of antediluvian rock. It was not a rushing
noise, but the sound of a great flood moving with majesty and power” (p.
130). Here the forces of nature threaten
existence itself. These are the very
forces that Latour’s Cathedral stand against.
And
there are the churches that prefigure the Cathedral. We get a glimpse in the Prologue of the dome
of the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, set against the hills of Rome. Here too at one time the hills of Rome were
pagan and “antediluvian,” encompassing a savage culture. Latour’s Cathedral is clearly an allusion to
what St. Peter’s achieved, the taming of the savage culture not by war as the
Church at Ácoma projected but by assimilation.
The Catholic Church didn’t conquer pagan Rome; it assimilated it.
Finally
there is another prefiguring of the Cathedral early in the novel, when Latour
is on his first journey in New Mexico and lost comes upon the simple and devout
Mexicans. There he performs baptisms and
marriages and a Mass. He performs the
sacraments in a house, which in essence becomes a House Church. Near this idyllic community is also a stream,
a spring overhung by the sharp-leafed variety
of cottonwood called water willow. All about it crowded the oven-shaped
hills--nothing to hint of water until it rose miraculously out of the parched
and thirsty sea of sand. Some subterranean stream found an outlet here, was
released from darkness. The result was grass and trees and flowers and human
life; household order and hearths from which the smoke of burning piñon logs
rose like incense to heaven. (p. 31)
Here
we see that same stream that was below the “Gothic chapel,” which threatened
with its dark powers, now “released from darkness” and graces the landscape in
a sort of benediction. Bishop Latour sat
by that river and contemplated its existence.
This spot had been a
refuge for humanity long before these Mexicans had come upon it. It was older
than history, like those well-heads in his own country where the Roman settlers
had set up the image of a river goddess, and later the Christian priests had
planted a cross. This settlement was his bishopric in miniature; hundreds of
square miles of thirsty desert, then a spring, a village, old men trying to
remember their catechism to teach their grandchildren. The faith planted by the
Spanish friars and watered with their blood was not dead; it awaited only the
toil of the husbandman. (p. 31)
Here
the Christian priests had planted a cross as well. Here that cross had tamed the subterranean
river. That cross serves as the
Cathedral in place. The cross may be
local, but the Cathedral will stand as that cross for the entire
archdiocese.
And
so, the Cathedral encapsulates all four of the themes: the landscape as
defining the life of the region, the civilizing effect of Catholicism, the
reform of the Church from the accumulated heresies, and the assimilation of the
indigenous culture. The novel itself can
be seen as the building of the Cathedral.
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| Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi, Sante Fe |
