Lamy of Santa Fe

Few figures of nineteenth-century America have appealed more to the modern imagination than Juan Bautista Lamy, first archbishop of Santa Fe. Born in France, he served a pioneer apprenticeship in the American Middle West until he was sent to New Mexico as bishop at the relatively youthful age of thirty-seven. A prime civilizer of the frontier Southwest, Lamy made his presence felt from the Rocky Mountains across new Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona into old Mexico—and as far as Rome. (Readers of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop have met him in fictionalized form as Bishop Latour.)

Almost alone in the beginning, Lamy face up, physically, to a desert and mountain domain larger than his native France. As the works and institutions of knowledge, mercy, and amenity came alive under his touch in a land of ignorance and savage terror, yet of ample promise, he gave his life to the founding of today's great American Southwest. Lamy was a pioneer hero, then, of the raw American frontier—a man as strong as he was unpretentious, and as charming as he was wise. America's history rests in the end on her good men and women who were more concerned for their fellows than for themselves. Such was Lamy, and as such he will emerge for the readers of this animated life story.

Paul Horgan here gives ius Lamy's definitive biography in a life filled with hardy, often extraordinary, adventure. It is a chronicle sustained by Lamy's magnificent strength of character, which grew and deepened during his long life (1814-1888). The saga follows the young priest of twenty-five from France to Cincinnati in 1839, and then to his "Desert Diocese" in 1851. He faces antagonists, scandal at Taos, repercussions of the Civil War at Santa Fe, and even an attempt on his life. He attends the Vatican Council in Rome, and in 1875 is made an archbishop. In his last years, his fame spreads as an ecological pioneer in the frontier region, especially as a tree planter and gardener. The concluding chapter, "Day's End at Santa Fe," brings this long and impressive lie to a close