Lamy of Santa Fe

by Paul Horgan

  But much came first—Machebeuf’s parishioners sent delegations to plead with Purcell not to let their pastor go. They could not see the bishop, who was making a retreat at the Ursuline convent in Brown County, in Ohio. The decision was not reversed. Plans for Lamy’s consecration went forward at Cincinnati. He himself went to the Ursulines to make his own spiritual preparations for the consecration which would take place on 24 November 1850. His sister Margaret, the nun who was at New Orleans Ursuline Convent, and his little niece Marie, were coming for the ceremony, after which they would return to New Orleans with him. Margaret Lamy must go home to France, for her health was alarmingly poor. Marie would remain in the New Orleans convent to continue her education.

  The question of how to travel to Santa Fe had its complications. There were two possible routes. One led to St Louis and across the prairies with a merchant train along the Santa Fe Trail, which could take up to ninety days. The road led through Indian country, and by now there were hazards from Indian attack, as a result of brutal encroachments by some of the later trading caravans, where the earliest waggon parties of the 1820s had given and received little or no hostility in the plains empire of the Indians. The other way to Santa Fe was more complicated and lengthy. It would require a voyage to New Orleans, another on the Gulf of Mexico, and another from there to Indianola, Texas, followed by passage overland to Port Lavaca and San Antonio. Once there, an accommodation must be made to travel with a United States Army supply train as far as Fort Bliss opposite El Paso del Norte on the Rio Grande; and then must come a northward turn to follow the Rio Grande for many days, until a final, and brief, deviation led northeastward to the unimaginable capital, all of which would take six months.

  By 21 September Lamy’s plan to follow the second of these routes was known. Not everyone thought this a wise decision. Archbishop Blanc of New Orleans wrote to Archbishop Purcell—both had been promoted—assuring him that Lamy would be well received in New Orleans, but he could not imagine why Lamy had chosen the longer and more complicated road over the shorter and swifter. In any case, he must be given all possible assistance, and Blanc wrote also to Bishop Odin at Galveston to send helpful details of how Lamy should plan his journey to San Antonio, and how to meet supply requirements for the further approach to Santa Fe. It seemed that a certain officer had arrived from Cincinnati with a hundred soldiers, some of whom were destined for Santa Fe; and he advised that Lamy would do well to buy at New Orleans the mules he would need for the overland passage, as they cost much more at San Antonio. Did Odin agree that this was so?

  Meanwhile the solemnities planned for 24 November 1850 were taking form. It was always moving to see within daily circumstances the extraordinary acts of elevation by which, in any society at any epoch, the high priests were brought to be dedicated to their office. Ancient ways, preserved through empowering ritual, were let into the common day, not only as an act of the affirmation of a person—but also as a celebration of a collective need above personality.

  Cincinnati in 1850, as seen from Lamy’s Covington, where St Mary’s steeple rose a few blocks from the river front, was a far greater city than that which the new arrivals from France had seen in 1839. Tall industrial chimneys by the dozen gave out announcements of progress into the otherwise clear air. The river was densely busy with every sort of craft—the ferries from Cincinnati to Covington, sailing sloops, steam tugs, barges in tow, the great house-like paddle-wheelers with their towering stacks. On the Cincinnati shore, the city had spread widely across the hills which met the river, and two great buildings stood out in the panorama. One of these, on the highest hill, was an astronomical observatory dedicated in 1843 by President John Quincy Adams, and the other was the new St Peter’s Cathedral which had been dedicated in 1845.

  The cathedral was a monument to that American mood which from the beginning had seen the nation as an offspring of the classical learning of Greece. Purcell had built it. “The Cathedral I would propose,” Purcell had written to the Ohio architect Thomas Spare of Somerset, “to have about 70 by 100 feet, grecian style of architecture, with portico and colonnade in front, with vestibule, all about 30 or 40 feet deep, and with a steeple carried up from the foundation.… These specifications, I presume, will be sufficient.” They were enough for Mr Spare, and by 1850 all was complete in hard Dayton limestone except for the portico, which still had to be built. But the centered steeple rose in six diminishing octagonal blocks to support the high thin needle. Corinthian columns supported the clerestory and the coffered ceiling within; a pair of marble kneeling angels flanked the altar. They had been commissioned by Purcell from the American sculptor Hiram Powers, who at eighteen had been manager of Dorfeuille’s “museum” at Cincinnati but was now living abroad in Florence. Above the tabernacle was a large painting of St Peter in Chains, which was another gift to the Church in America by Napoleon’s uncle. Modern times brought additions and other changes to St Peter’s in Cincinnati, but it remained a moving testament to the energy, taste, and style of frontier America. It was, in effect, the ecclesiastical capitol of interior America between Baltimore and St Louis. So many bishops were consecrated there—to the number of twenty-one, most destined for new dioceses to the Far West, a few assigned to the even farther Orient—that St Peter’s was known among the clergy as “the bishop factory.”

  Here, on 24 November 1850, Lamy entered, following a long procession of religious, priests, bishops, and his consecrators, to endure the second ceremony of commitment to his life’s design. It would take three hours, and he would be at its center as the victim and protagonist of an office which reached him through the centuries by the touch of St Peter. He was, so, the heir of Christ’s own words to the first of the apostles, and himself became on that November day a successor as bishop to symbolic custody of the Rock upon which the Church was built.

  Before the public, and in the presence of many of his peers, he was subjected to an examination of his faith, and then to the act of consecration, and finally to the investiture with the regalia of his office—pectoral cross, mitre, crozier, gloves, and ring. Bishop John Martin Spalding of Louisville was his consecrator, assisted by Bishop James Maurice de Long d’Aussac de Saint-Palais, of Vincennes, Indiana, and Bishop Louis Amadeus Rappe, as co-consecrators.

  Bishop Spalding and his mitred assistants officiated at the central altar. For the bishop-elect a smaller altar was prepared to one side, where as the ritual proceeded he celebrated those portions of the Mass to which, after long and exhaustive passages of the sacral process, the ceremony returned. The event proceeded with a dream-like slowness, woven of countless lights against white stone, and vestments in color brocaded in silver and gold, and figures moving in traditional order from one prescribed position to another in the sanctuary which was clouded with the smoke of censers amidst which the distant voices of the celebrants seemed like disembodied sounds.

  When the members of the procession were all stationed according to their function and rank, seated or standing, Bishop de Saint-Palais rose and approached Bishop Spalding where he was seated on a faldstool in front of the high altar facing the church. “Reverendissime Pater,” he said, presenting the candidate for promotion to the burden of the episcopate, “postulat sancta Mater Ecclesia Catholica ut hunc praesentem Presbyterum ad onus Episcopatur sublevetis.” Speaking, as did all throughout, in Latin, Bishop Spalding asked,

  “Have you the Apostolic Mandate?”

  “We have,” replied Bishop de Saint-Palais.

  “Let it be read.”

  A notary took the papal bull from the co-consecrator and read aloud the text by which Pius IX promoted Lamy to his bishopric. When he was finished, all said, “Thanks be to God.”

  Now Lamy came to kneel before Bishop Spalding to read his oath as a new bishop. He vowed to sustain with all his power the Pope, the Papacy, the Church and its decrees; to attend synods when called and to make his visit ad limina to Rome and the reigning pope every ten years at which time he would account
fully for his stewardship, or if prevented from coming by legitimate reason, he would send a qualified representative from among his clergy; and to guard strictly all the Church properties in his care; and “if through me any … alienation shall occur, I wish, by the very fact, to incur the punishments contained in the constitution published concerning this matter.”

  Bishop Spalding sat facing him, holding open the books of the Gospels so that Lamy could see them. Lamy concluded,

  “So help me God and these Holy Gospels.” Saying this, he touched the pages of the Gospels with both hands, completing his oath, and Bishop Spalding said, “Thanks be to God.”

  All now being seated, Bishop Spalding conducted Lamy’s examination. In a preamble, he restated the ancient rule that anyone who was chosen for the order of bishop should be diligently examined, and with all charity, concerning his faith and his fealty to his duties, for the Apostle had said, “Impose hands hastily upon no man.”

  “Therefore,” declared Bishop Spalding, taking cognizance of human frailty, “with sincere charity, we ask you, most dear brother, if you desire to make your conduct harmonize, as far as your nature allows, with the meaning of the divine Scripture.”

  “With my whole heart I wish in all things to consent and obey,” replied the bishop-elect.

  There followed seventeen questions, some humbly concerned with mundanities, others tremendous in their citations of the Deity, all of them requiring an affirmative reply. The examination done, and witnessed, Lamy was conducted to his separate altar where in his first assumption of the bishop’s insignia, he received his pectoral cross, and unlaced his stole so that its bands hung straight down instead of being crossed, as simple priests wore it. After being fully vested, he then began the Mass. At the Alleluia he was again taken before Bishop Spalding, who, wearing his mitre—an act which always signalized that the wearer was performing in his authority as a bishop rather than as a simple priest—said to him,

  “A bishop judges, interprets, consecrates, ordains, offers, baptizes, and confirms,” and then prayed that all present would intercede for Lamy that he receive the abundance of God’s grace in his duties.

  The consecrating bishops and Lamy then prostrated themselves upon the steps of the altar in an act acknowledging their submission to higher powers than they could, as men, aspire to; and the litany of the saints was recited.

  After this invocation of the great forebears, all rose, and Lamy came to kneel before Spalding. The consecrating bishops then took the books of the Gospels and laid them upon the bent neck and shoulders of Lamy so that the printed words touched him. So receiving the Gospels as their custodian, he was ready for that other touch which transmitted, to one who believed as he did, more than symbolic tradition. Spalding, and his assistants, all wearing the mitre, laid their hands in turn upon Lamy’s head, and Spalding said,

  “Receive the Holy Ghost.”

  It was the essential act by which the creation of a bishop, as of a priest, was done.

  Now the Mass was resumed with the intoning of the Preface, in the course of which the acts of Moses and Aaron were recalled, and the power of their symbolic vesture in their sacred functions, and the text went on to declare, “… the adornment of our minds fulfills what was expressed by the outward vesture of that ancient priesthood, and now brightness of souls rather than splendor of raiment commends the pontifical glory unto us. Because even those things which were sightly unto the eyes of the flesh, demanded rather that the eyes of the spirit should understand the things they signified. And therefore we beseech Thee, O Lord, give bountifully this grace to this Thy servant, whom Thou had chosen to the ministry of the supreme priesthood, so that by what things soever those vestments signify by the refulgence of gold, the splendor of jewels, and the variety of diversified handiwork, these may shine forth in his character and his actions.”

  Visible splendor was neither to be scorned nor valued for its own sake, but for what it represented in the gift of reverence.

  “Fill up in Thy Priest,” intoned Spalding, finishing the Preface, “the perfection of Thy ministry and sanctify with the dew of Thy heavenly ointment this Thy servant decked out with the ornaments of all beauty.”

  Lamy’s head was now bound with a white cloth; Spalding knelt facing the altar and began to intone the hymn Vent Creator Spiritus, calling upon the Holy Spirit to be upon them all, as He had come to the apostles at the first Pentecost. As the hymn proceeded, Spalding anointed Lamy upon the head with the chrism, and upon the hands, at great length reciting manifold duties and invoking graces. He then blessed a crozier and presented it to Lamy, and then blessed his episcopal ring—it was a large amethyst surrounded by small pearls—and placed it upon the ring finger of his right hand, and once again gave him the book of the Gospels; and finally raised him up and gave him the kiss of peace, saying, “Pax tibi.”

  Lamy returned to his altar, cleansed his head and hands of the holy oil with bread crumbs presented to him in a dish, and resumed the Mass, and when the time for the sermon arrived, Purcell preached on the appropriate theme of the apostolic succession. At the end of the Mass proper, Lamy was again presented to Spalding, who, having blessed a mitre, placed it upon Lamy’s head, with the weighty words of commitment,

  “We, O Lord, place on the head of this Thy bishop and champion, the helmet of protection and salvation, so that his face being adorned and his head armed with the horns of both testaments”—the front and rear spires of the mitre—”he may seem terrible to the opponents of truth, and through the indulgence of Thy grace may be their sturdy adversary, Thou who didst mark with the brightest rays of Thy splendor and truth the countenance of Moses thy servant, ornamented from his fellowship with Thy word: and didst order the tiara to be placed on the head of Aaron Thy high priest. Through Christ our Lord,” and all replied “Amen” to this second invocation of the powers in the Hebraic Old Testament. Spalding then blessed the new bishop’s ceremonial gauntlets and placed them upon his hands, and Lamy, now fully vested as a bishop, turned to the people and gave them his first episcopal blessing, making the sign of the cross over them three times, “May the Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” After this, he faced Spalding and intoned three times, at a rising pitch with each utterance, and genuflecting three times, “For many years …”

  And now he was released from the passive role of victim of the ancient powers enacted upon him throughout the three-hour ceremony; and wearing his mitre and walking with his crozier, he went to his separate altar and recited the Last Gospel, “In principio erat verbum” at the end of which he was divested of his ceremonial garments. He turned and bowed to his consecrators with thanks, and all departed “in peace.”

  In St Peter’s, the people moved, the church was emptied, the episcopal colleagues and their friends—along with Lamy’s sister and his niece (surely Machebeuf was present)—gathered to sit down together at table, and the concerns of the common day were eagerly resumed after the timeless impersonality of the just completed ritual.

  Bishop Rappe undertook to do “all possible to persuade the new bishop to go to Europe” (instead of setting out for New Mexico) “to seek after new priests who knew Spanish.” The attempt was useless. Lamy was firm in his plans. He would leave tomorrow for New Orleans, and then he would begin his arrangements for his long journey westward. At New Orleans he would wait for his new vicar general to join him whenever Machebeuf should have resolved his affairs at Sandusky, and they would then set out together for Santa Fe.

  III

  TO SANTA FE

  1850–1851

  i.

  New Orleans

  ON 25 NOVEMBER 1850, Lamy sailed from Cincinnati by river on the first of the several long stages of his way to the Far West. His ultimate destination was that whole immense area of the Rocky Mountains and the high plains which was lettered in a sweeping arc on early- and mid-nineteenth-century maps as “The Great American Desert,” Since the end of the war in 1847, and the d
iscovery of gold in California in 1848, travel to the West had increased vastly, by many alternate routes, including trails straight westward overland; Atlantic travel by ship to Mexico or the Isthmus of Panama, followed by an overland passage to the Pacific, and again by ship north to the California gold fields; or, by ship, all the way around Cape Horn. News came eastward, not too much of it accurate, but people responded. Inevitably settlements took root along the westward trails, and new details soon came to light on later maps. But beyond the Mississippi much was still alive only in the imagination, and impressions owed as much to legend as to fact. Lamy had little detailed knowledge of the continent, other than that known at second hand to the fellow bishops who had elected him.

  How full, as preparation, had been his work in the intimate forest villages and their confined landscape during the past ten years? He had no way yet to measure this, and it was not in his nature to indulge in imaginative speculation, and in any case he had little enough to go on to form any true idea of what lay ahead. Habitually he met the occasion of the day, under the calm sense of confidence and guidance which animated him.

  His river steamer wound slowly away from Cincinnati, taking the great double bend of the Ohio to the south and west of the city. The populated slopes were soon lost to sight. Wilderness America followed, with its rolling hills and winding valleys, broken only now and then by wide flat fields on each side of the river, and an occasional farm house in Indiana and Kentucky. On the Ohio and the Mississippi, the river voyage to New Orleans would take nine days. The paddle steamer would pass many others of her general sort. They all made a brave sight, with their fancifully crowned stacks, showing dense smoke by day, and sparks and even flames by night. They were capacious ships—some had room for over fifteen hundred passengers—with luxurious fittings and flattering service which were meant to rival those of the wooden scroll-saw hotels in the inland cities.