DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP

Death Comes For the Archbishop, is a 1927 novel by American author, Willa Cather, published that year by Alfred A. Knoff, NYNY. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory. The narrative is based on two historical figures of the late 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, and rather than any one single plot, is the stylized re-telling of their lives serving as Roman Catholic clergy in New Mexico. The narrative has frequent digressions, either in terms of stories related to the pair (including the story of the Our Lady of Guadalupe and the execution of an oppressive Spanish priest at Acoma Pueblo) or through their recollections. The narration is in third-person omniscient style. Cather includes many fictionalized accounts of actual historical figures, including Kit Carson, Manuel Antonio Chaves and Pope Gregory XVI. The novel is based on the life of Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814–1888), and partially chronicles the construction of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. The capture of the Southwest by the United States in the Mexican–American War is the catalyst for the plot. "The Padre of Isleta", Anton Docher is identified as the character of Padre de Baca. Among the entities mentioned in the novel are Los Penitentes, a flagellant lay confraternity in Southern Colorado and New Mexico that still operates today.