Lamy of Santa Fe (62 page)

But if the bishop was paid indirect respects in the editorial, he must still report, not in a spirit of pessimism, for this was never his way, but in his sober realism, that “the thousand of emigrants that were to come to our territory don't seem to have moved yet we have then to resign ourselves to go on slowly as in old times.” Meanwhile, a newspaper item reflected a new turn in the popular culture, with a listing of a “collection of select novels” to be had at two dollars a volume, including such titles as
Dear Experience
by Ruffini,
Out of His Head
, by Aldrich,
The Alchemist
, by Balzac,
Who Breaks Pays
(paper cover),
LuLu
, by M. C. Walworth,
Don Quixote de la Mancha, Wa-Wa-Wanda
(anon.),
From Hay-Time to Hopping
(anon.),
Sprees and Splashes
, by Morford, and
Tactics; or, Cupid in Shoulder Straps, A West Point Love Story
. A month later, the paper reported: “Bishop Lamy is making some much needed improvements around the ancient church of the Parroquia in this city”—referring to the old clay cathedral of St Francis.

The improvements were actually preparations in clearing the area of the old church for the beginning of construction on a new cathedral, to be built of native stone, of which Lamy had first spoken in 1864. For he had never changed his response to the mud constructions of New Mexico—though he understood as he deplored the necessity of making them from their humble materials. But to him a chapel, a
church, a cathedral above all, should rise to the glory of God as more than a “stable of Bethlehem”; and with his own memory of the high architectural art whose tradition he had inherited, he must, whenever he could manage it, build his cathedral out of another vision than the local one. Byzantium and ancient Rome would still speak through him. There was suitable native stone to be had near Santa Fe. Ochreous limestone for the exterior could be quarried in the Arroyo Sais, and the light volcanic stone for the vaults in the Cerro Mogino within a few miles of the city; and for the interior walls, a heavy granite could be taken from the low hills in the country where the bishop's land lay seventeen miles away on the Santa Fe Trail [the site of the present railroad junction of Lamy, New Mexico]. Preliminary donations were solicited, and the response, though modest, was enough to encourage Lamy to proceed with his plans. The
New Mexican
announced that the cornerstone would be laid on Sunday, 10 October 1869.

In a general way, it was known what Lamy wanted—the Romanesque style was decided upon from the start. There were few detailed architectural plans, or engineering drawings; all that was technically certain was that the new cathedral would be constructed around and over the old earthen church, and foundation footings were accordingly placed outside the walls of old St Francis's. As the new stone walls would rise, they would gradually hide the adobe elevations; there would for years be a complete church within one on the outside, unfinished. With that much to go on, a cornerstone could be set down as a promise.

The cornerstone contained gold, silver, and copper coins; newspapers of the day; official historical documents naming the public officers of the nation, state, and cathedral—President Grant, Governor Pile, and Bishop Lamy. Enclosed also was a list of the first donors to the building fund which gave the names of all those giving twenty-five dollars or more. Lamy led off with a donation of $3000. The sister of the late Rural Dean Ortiz gave $2500, and also presented to the cathedral many altar vessels and ornaments of great value, which brought to mind those missing ever since Vicar Ortiz had departed from his Santa Fe duties in 1852 taking with him certain religious articles of the parish church of St Francis, claiming them as his own. The list of first donors included the Mother Superior Mary Magdalen of the Lorettines ($500), the Spiegelberg brothers ($500) and many other non-Catholics, and members of the once-rebellious Armijo family of Albuquerque.

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

S
ALPOINTE AND
M
ACHEBEUF
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 and 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.