by Paul Horgan
There was talk of a facade with two towers a hundred feet high, and a dome eighty-five feet high at the crossing of the transepts, and a nave two hundred feet long. The cornerstone was blessed after vespers on its Sunday, and on the following Saturday, the city awoke to learn that it had been stolen, and its contents rifled, never to be recovered. The act might have served as a forecast of the halting history of the cathedral church; but the fact was, Lamy had begun the construction, and all its later vicissitudes could seem only a repetition of the pattern of his whole life in the diocese where there was always trouble enough in the moment briefly to obscure the increase of his achievement over all the years. In dealing with stones as well as men, distance as well as hazard, his patience was still equal to his strength as the new decade of 1870 approached its turn.
He knew his joys, also. His brother Etienne’s son, Anthony, who had come with him last time from France, to study in the Baltimore seminary, was now in Santa Fe, and the reunion of this nephew with his older sister, Marie, Sister Francesca of the Loretto convent, brought a sense of family to them all. Anthony, the seminarian, was twenty-four when he came to Santa Fe. He and Marie had kept their family ties only through correspondence since they had been parted—she to go to America when he was still a very small boy. Now when he arrived in Santa Fe and went to the Loretto convent, and she was sent to meet him in the parlor, he cried, “Marie! I am Anthony!” and they made a strong alliance in family love. The nuns noticed that whenever Anthony came to call, Sister Francesca always had a new piano piece ready to play for him.
iii.
Vatican Council
SALPOINTE AND MACHEBEUF had expected to travel together to Europe in 1869. There were two great events calling them there. One was Salpointe’s coming consecration by his old bishop, the now aged Féron, in Clermont; the other was to present themselves to Pius IX as new bishops. On his way, Salpointe went east from Tucson, planning to turn north to Santa Fe and there take leave of Lamy. But he found Lamy at Las Cruces, and the two rode by stage together to Santa Fe, while Lamy gave certain errands to his younger suffragan to carry out for him in France. Salpointe coached on to Denver to meet Machebeuf, who had to disappoint him—fire had destroyed St Mary’s Academy in Denver and Machebeuf could not leave just yet. But he promised to hurry away soon afterward in order to attend Salpointe’s consecration in Clermont. This, too, failed to happen, as Machebeuf missed his sailing on a French steamer and had to wait a fortnight in New York for the next one. He arrived in Clermont a day after the consecration. But there were moments of jubilation still to enjoy, and Machebeuf was positively harassed by dinner invitations which he could not refuse.
One of Lamy’s most important charges upon Salpointe, now the vicar apostolic of Arizona with the title of Bishop of Dorylla in partibus infidelium, was to find and engage for Santa Fe an architect and some skilled stonemasons who would undertake to proceed with the building of the new cathedral, for the earlier contractor-architect—an American—had proved inefficient in the laying of the foundations, which were already shifting. Salpointe found his men. They were Antoine Mouly and his son Projectus, who in turn found stonecutters. All would go to Santa Fe to work on the new shell of the stone cathedral. For the rest, the two vicars apostolic returned to old scenes in Clermont and Riom. With emotion, Machebeuf “officiated and confirmed” in the college where he “had been educated nearly forty years ago.” Six seminarians of Mont-Ferrand actually did not wait for solicitations, but approached Salpointe asking to go with him to Arizona. He promptly accepted their offer, which was approved by Bishop Féron as, said Salpointe humorously, a favor not to be denied a guest.
Three days after Machebeuf’s arrival the two new bishops set out together for Rome, arriving in 23 July. They remained for twelve days, saw Pius IX three times and discussed their vicariates with him in detail. The Pope examined maps of Colorado and Arizona and heard reports of how much was to be done in the desert and the mountains—so much, in fact, that he dispensed them both from remaining in Rome to take their places as bishops in the forthcoming Vatican Council of 1870, the preparations for which were resounding throughout St Peter’s and all Rome.
“You cannot wait for the Council,” said Pius, “you have too much to do to organize your vast dioceses.” He paused with a gleam in his eye, and added, amiably, “In any case, being only young bishops, you have not yet much experience and could not give us much assistance!”
Machebeuf later noted, “How true was this remark—of course.” They returned to France passing through Pisa, Florence, Milan, over the Simplon Pass, and into Geneva. Salpointe continued his journey directly to America, but Machebeuf paused in Ireland, calling at the colleges of All Hallows’, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Maynooth, where students for holy orders in each place were eager to go to Colorado with him; but he lacked funds to pay their way and he had to leave without them. Salpointe, on the other hand, sailing from Brest on the City of Paris on 18 September had secured for his colony five seminarians, three deacons, and twelve subdeacons.
Lamy, in his turn, set out for Rome and the Council. Barnabo had passed from the scene, and his successor, Giovanni Cardinal Simeoni, must become familiar with the world pastorates under his Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda Fide. Presented with a questionnaire from him, Lamy gave in abbreviated form much the same information as he had laid before Barnabo in 1867.
When the first Vatican Council was convened by Pius IX on 8 December 1869 in the wide and lofty north transept of St Peter’s, Lamy was in his place among the six hundred bishops in white mitres and copes who were seated on ranks of tribunes at right angles to the papal throne which stood at the far end of the chapel. Red cloth covered the seats for cardinals, green those for the bishops. Flemish tapestries were hung on the walls. A great pedimented partition painted to simulate marble, and reaching across the whole mouth of the transept and halfway up to the gold coffered vault, separated the scene of the Council from the public spaces of the basilica. But though it was only a screen, it had great double doors, and these, by the Pope’s order, were left open so the wandering public could hear the liturgical events of the opening session, and in the crowd those used to doing so sang the responses with the assembled prelates. Eighty thousand people thronged St Peter’s and joined in with the Veni Creator as it was intoned at the temporary altar facing the Holy Father. The vaults themselves so far above, and the distant walls with their gray marble pilasters, and the very floors of gray lilac, seemed to be the actual source of sound of the antiphonal choirs and the murmuring public. In the midst of this, the single voice of the celebrant was a small thread of supplication wavering into the gray and golden spaces. Silver dust in the upper vastness made farther what already seemed distant in the arches and vaults, the domes and cupolas, the glimpses of side aisles. All the attendant magnificence was a material analogy for the power of spiritual intention. As such, it was expensive, and gave rise to the famous witticism of Pius IX, who, touching on the dominant issue of the Council, hinted, at the same time, that the affair was costly, when he said, “I don’t know whether the Pope will come out of this Council fallible or infallible; but it is certain that he will be bankrupt.”
As for the proceedings, in which beyond simple attendance Lamy seemed to take no active part, they were, despite the grand good humor, charm, and vitality of Pius, tumultuous and disorganized. Factionalism was everywhere. Procedure was obstructive rather than helpful. Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of St Louis wrote after three months of it, “Most of us are very tired of Rome and would willingly leave it.… Nothing has been done. The Body is too big for work, unless divided into Sections, and those who had the management of matters were, and are, unwilling to attend to the suggestions made to them by those who had experience in similar assemblies”—possibly citing the order and dispatch of the American bishops in their Baltimore synods.
“The Council appears to have been convoked for the special purpose of defining the Papal Infallibility a
nd enacting the proposition of the Syllabus as general laws of the Church. Both objects are deemed by a minority, of which I am one, inexpedient and dangerous, and are sure to meet with serious resistance. The men of both parties are considerably excited; and there is every reason to fear that the Council, instead of uniting with the Church those already separated from it, will cause division among ourselves most detrimental to Catholic Interests.…”
Tempers ran so high that when the bishop of Bosnia, in his turn on the rostrum, spoke against the infallibility motion as inimical to Christian unity, he was assailed with cries of “Let him come down … He is Lucifer, anathema, anathema … He is another Luther, let him be cast out,” and “Come down, come down”; and, vigorously protesting, he came down. “No wonder,” said a later commentator, “no wonder Cardinal Newman dismissed [such aspects of] the council’s proceedings as ‘a grave scandal.’ ” The American bishops in general were against the doctrine of infallibility, which was finally promulgated in July 1870; but by then Lamy was gone, his view on the issue unknown. On a tablet which was placed on a wall of the basilica, his name was included with those of the bishops attending.
For his chief concern in Rome was once more, even in the unpropitious atmosphere of the Council which must have disrupted ordinary administration, the scandal of his territorial claim, still in abeyance after two decades. He wrote a new memorandum for Simeoni, who was not so familiar with the case as Barnabo had been.
He reviewed the entire history of the matter, bringing it up to two years ago, when on the creation of the vicariate apostolic of Arizona, the whole disputed area had been assigned by the Vatican to Salpointe.
“This, however, did not yet eliminate the inveterate evil, since the Bishop of Durango [Salinas] has not yet relinquished his jurisdiction, despite all the official Apostolic papers …” and so on and on. “Therefore I ask, and insistently ask, the Sacred Congregation that before I leave for America the eminent Cardinal Prefect of this congregation issue an official document in which the jurisdiction be given to the Apostolic Vicar of Arizona over the counties of El Paso, Doñana (or Mesilla Valley),” and he asked for this in duplicate copies, one to go to Salpointe, the other to Salinas in Durango, whose delivery he, Lamy, personally would assure through “a trusted hand.” He specified further that henceforth all the priests in the area should receive their priestly faculties from Salpointe only. “The time is certainly come that there must be an end to all this for the good of our Faith,” and a powerful endorsement was added by Archbishop Kenrick, who wrote on it, urgently asking that as soon as possible the request therein be granted and “the whole matter be settled once and for all.” Lamy, with two other American bishops, was granted leave to return to his diocese “on account of the urgent wants” there.
He left for Auvergne, and there, on the first Sunday after Easter 1870, he reconsecrated the parish church of Lempdes, the home of his childhood faith and his mature vocation, where considerable renovation had been done. He was also to bring back a loan of twelve thousand francs which Machebeuf had asked his brother Marius to raise for him. Machebeuf was anxiously in debt for a brick church, and for the travel expenses of two or three Irish priests who were coming over after all, and for two freight consignments which were impounded by customs until he could pay the duty on them.
Homeward bound, Lamy sent one more bolt of argument to Simeoni in the territorial matter; for he had received certain information at Lyon which seemed to suggest strongly that Salpointe had come to the end of his endurance, and, unless the matter were settled immediately, would resign as apostolic vicar of Arizona—may, in fact, already have sent in his resignation, which would not “surprise” Lamy, for he knew him well. Salpointe might not suffer in futility the dismissal of all the efforts he had made on his own part to resolve the affair with Durango. Could Arizona be expected to slip away once again, until a third start on her spiritual colonization would have to be undertaken? As in all affairs between the field and headquarters, time alone could tell; and Lamy returned to America, and a peaceable crossing of the prairies, much of the way, now, by the railroad, and arrived at Santa Fe to receive the usual welcome on 23 June 1870.
iv.
Follies and Dangers
SALPOINTE DID NOT RESIGN—but neither was the Durango dispute resolved out of hand. A year later, Bishop Salinas wrote a long letter to the Vatican declaring that he would agree to ceding the locality of “Mesilla”—but not Doñana or “El Paso,” which embraced the three downriver villages so long ago delegated to Lamy by Odin. His argument was that the “El Paso district” was not in United States territory but in Mexican; and if he gave over spiritual jurisdiction of them to an American bishop, “sooner or later it would come to this: the forcible entry of those people [i.e., the North Americans] into the Republic [of Mexico] whose ancient tendencies, as we all know, are already manifest as to their eventual absorption of the entire frontier of Mexico.” His fears were not groundless—there had been some agitation in Congress at the time of the 1846 war for the annexation of all of northern Mexico.
But Bishop Salinas was confused by nomenclature, as his predecessor had been, for Mesilla and Doñana were practically interchangeable terms, and “El Paso,” designating the Mexican town south of the Rio Grande, had also been used since 1858 as the name of the settlement plotted in that year on United States land north of the Rio Grande. Moreover, he seemed not to recognize that the three villages once belonging to Mexico had become part of the North American possession when the course of the river had shifted and had passed to the south of them, thus leaving them north of the boundary line in the river’s midstream. Salinas avowed that he would obey the Pope, whatever the decision, but until he had direct orders, he would hold his present position—and territory. Lamy told Rome that unless Salinas acceded, Salpointe would lose “half of his already poor diocese.” Moreover, Salpointe was concerned with that which, “by right,” belonged to him, “as he is in American, and not Mexican Territory.”
Rome once again issued an Apostolic Letter naming “El Paso” and “Doñana better known as Mesilla Valley” as part of the vicariate of Arizona, and had sent a copy to Tucson. Was it over at last?
Salpointe once again journeyed to Durango to see the bishop and show him the papal order, after twice notifying him by mail without effect. Surely the actual papal document in hand would be “sufficient,” wrote Salpointe to Simeoni, “to show the will of the Holy Father and let his intentions take full effect. But”—he went on—”things turned out differently, and I am hesitant to relate this.” For the fact was that, after having actually read the Roman bull, Salinas “lost his composure and used words which had no reverence and refused to give the requested jurisdiction unless he received direct word from the Roman Curia …” Salpointe returned home hoping that Rome would support him by sending the papal order direct to Salinas. Further, he served notice that so far as he was concerned, he would carry out his duties in the disputed lands in full obedience to the decree of Rome, using the Mexican priests who remained in “Doñana,” though trouble could be expected of them.
Legally, the affair seemed done with; but in 1874 local residents of Las Cruces in the Condado petitioned Rome for “a foreign bishop” and “foreign priests” to establish a diocese at the city of Chihuahua who would minister to the old sore spot. But as this presumed territorial ties to Mexico instead of the United States, nothing came of it, and the Mexican mails must at last have carried to Durango the decree of cession to which Salinas bowed.
The twenty-three-year-old dispute was finally over.
Meanwhile, Salpointe asked Rome for a coadjutor bishop to help him in his far-flung duties; but this was not granted him.
In 1871 Lamy had the happy opportunity to ordain his nephew Anthony, who was assigned first to Taos, later to Abiquiu, and finally to Manzano. The bishop was now concerned largely with consolidations of works long begun. He went east as far as Baltimore to raise funds for the cathedral, and w
as grateful to “the two good ladies who gave me the gold buttons and the box of jewelry.” On his way home he paused in his old parishes in Ohio, and between the two visits was given “near $400.” In St Louis the donation was $275, and he gave thanks for all such generosity, “considering the sad circumstances of the Chicago fire which occurred at the very time” he was making his appeal. Bringing three more Loretto sisters and a deacon from Santa Fe whom he had sent East for study, he came to Denver, found Machebeuf “as lively as ever,” and was snowbound there for eight days before he could turn homeward to Santa Fe.
There the cathedral walls were slow in obscuring the old earth church within. Local masons had been trained by the Moulys, and scaffolding stood clear at the top of San Francisco street, and rows of cut stone, marked for placing, lay on the cathedral grounds. But it was slow, slow—and the cost seemed at times impossible to meet.
But the schools, convents, hospital, and orphanage were making their gains, and the bishop took his meals with the orphans, whose flour and fuel he personally supplied. Lamy and Machebeuf grieved over the news from France—the empire at war, the defeat, the disorders of the commune—“Nos pauvres compatriotes”
Excitement seized Santa Fe and the whole West—and even a portion of the financial marts of New York and San Francisco—when a tremendous discovery was announced in 1872: precious stones, mostly diamonds and rubies, were suddenly found lying on the very surface of the Arizona desert. The “diamond fields” made news everywhere. Santa Fe papers were at first skeptical, then intrigued, at last in full cry of enthusiasm as they reported developments. Jewel experts in New York, London, and San Francisco had authenticated certain gems submitted for inspection by the discoverers and promoters of the great find. Parties of experts were led circuitously in blindfold to the fields and once there were allowed to see and to pick up gems from the earth. Stock speculation fed on its own excitement, there were fortunes to be made. But in a matter of months it was all over, for Clarence King, United States geologist, left his survey along the fortieth parallel, went to visit the rich sites with an associate, and promptly proved that the fields had been “salted” with a few real rubies and diamonds, while what were native were only garnets of small size, all too common to certain parts of Arizona. The affair was a swindle, and never more clearly so than when, among the “salted” jewels, prospectors found diamonds already cut and faceted. If the event had the air of an episode out of the cultural loam which produced Mark Twain and some of his moods, the sardonic style of public wit was present in an editorial item in the New Mexican for 16 December 1873: