Lamy of Santa Fe. Paul Horgan

      i.

       Defiance

      A LEADER IN THE JUBILANT WELCOME given to Lamy, Juan Felipe Ortiz, the rural dean (or vicar forane) at Santa Fe, reserved until later the most unexpected news he had for the new bishop. Having paid all proper respect to mitre and crozier—Lamy was undoubtedly a bishop—Ortiz, and the local clergy over whom he presided, suddenly maintained that Lamy was not the bishop for Santa Fe, and refused to recognize him as such.

      It was astonishing to be told this after all the triumphal arches, the episcopal palace of mud placed at his disposal, the public excitement. How could this be?

      Ortiz stood his ground, believing he had good reason to do so. Only a few months ago, his own bishop, Zubiría of Durango, had been in Santa Fe, when the two discussed the ruling given to Durango by Rome—that Mexican bishops should “continue to exercise their episcopal authority north of the border.” What else (as Bishop Blanc had noted earlier) could have taken Zubiría to New Mexico after the 1846 war?

      But the papal bulls, the faculties vested in Lamy, all set forth in the documents which he carried with him?

      Well and good, conceded Ortiz; but he had had no word from Durango that the episcopal power was to be transferred, and lacking such direct authority, the dean would continue to disavow Lamy as his ordinary. His local clergy would do the same, for it was to him that they looked as the representative of Bishop Zubiría. As rural dean since 1832, Ortiz had been responsible for the entire administration of the Church in New Mexico—the duties of the clergy, the upkeep of the churches, the keeping of parish records, the strict observance of the liturgy, the care of sick priests, continuous visits to his parishes, and the making of annual reports to his bishop. Ortiz had shown no zeal for his duties, and under his regime his clergy had lost theirs. But in the matter of a change of bishops, he was suddenly zealous, legalistic, and rudely stubborn.

      Lamy, in his amazement, yet considered the matter from the dean’s point of view and patiently concluded that the dean was technically justified in his position. Conferring with Machebeuf, he wrote to Zubiría in Durango asking for a swift confirmation by letter of Rome’s new appointment.

      The news of Lamy’s presence and pretensions went to Zubiría from another source—the pastor of Taos, Father Antonio José Martínez. “Your illustrious lordship,” he wrote, “perhaps knows that New Mexico has been erected as a bishopric [actually vicariate apostolic], and Fr. Juan Lamy was appointed to be its bishop.… I have regretted a great deal the separation of New Mexico from the diocese of your Illustrious Lordship,” and he hinted that a “superior authority”—evidently referring to the territorial United States governor—was behind the move.

      Durango lay five hundred leagues to the south in Mexico. A letter from there must take time to arrive. Meantime, Lamy could not remain idle. His documents made one matter binding—he had in them a legal claim to the Church properties of New Mexico; and even the dean must bow before this. The new bishop moved swiftly to take custody of Church buildings, chapels, and other properties, and succeeded in all but one case. This instance, before it was resolved, was a scandal, a farce, an occasion for the public passion for which the citizens of Santa Fe have always been famous. The case had to do with the Chapel of Our Lady of Light on the south side of the earthen plaza of the old city. This was popularly called the “Castrense”—a word signifying that which belonged to the military.

      It had been the old military chapel of the Spanish/Mexican garrison of Santa Fe, and, in much disrepair, it had been appropriated by the United States territorial government after the 1846 war, evidently without protest by the rural dean. A United States lieutenant in 1846 noted it as “the richest church in Santa Fe,” though it was then in ruins, the roof fallen in, and bones of parishioners once interred below the earth floor lying about in random exposure. He saw the carved stone reredos, dated 1761, with its panels of saints and a central bas-relief of Our Lady of Light “rescuing a human being from the jaws of Satan whilst angels are crowning her.” He fancifully detected Egyptian influence in the ornamental carved columns which enclosed the central panels. By 1849, the roof had been repaired, and the building was in use as a storehouse by the United States authorities.

      Within a few days of his arrival, Lamy had already taken steps to bring the chapel into his possession. Writing to Purcell, he said, “It is not very large but admirably proportioned, and the sanctuary is enriched with a great deal of fine work in stone. The military authority seems to allege a claim to this property, though the territorial legislature has relinquished all right to interfere. I hope I shall not have much trouble in its recovery.…”

      But on a Sunday night soon afterward, while Lamy was still awaiting a reply from Zubiría, the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of New Mexico, Chief Justice Grafton Baker, ruminating drunkenly over Lamy’s campaign to take the Castrense from United States jurisdiction, declared that he would never yield the chapel to Lamy and Machebeuf; on the contrary, he would have them both hanged from the same gallows.

      It was the wrong thing to say in the presence of a few Mexican Americans who with others were drinking with him that evening; for like their fellow Latins of the time, they held the Church and its priests in reverence. They repeated abroad what the chief justice had threatened to do. On Monday morning a petition was swiftly circulated which demanded the return of the chapel to the Church. Over a thousand citizens signed it—Catholic, Protestant, civilian, military; and a great crowd came together out of nowhere and marched on the profaned chapel where the chief justice had taken refuge. “Fearing for his life,” wrote Machebeuf to his sister much later (she had heard of the episode even in France, which astonished him), the judge demanded military protection from the American commandant at Fort Marcy, the United States fortification. His plea was disdainfully refused, and an officer came to the bishop to assure him that if he should need protection (presumably from the court) the entire garrison would be at his disposal. Feeling ran so high during the day that Machebeuf and a Catholic officer of Fort Marcy took up a position at the door of the church to protect Chief Justice Baker until he asked for safety and vowed to yield to the bishop. That Monday evening, “the poor judge, wholly humiliated and abashed, went to make reparation to the bishop, and proposed to return the church to him with all possible solemnity.”

      So it was that on Tuesday morning, in the presence of the governor and all the military and civil authorities, “they surrendered the building,” declared Lamy, “according to all the formalities of the law; the court itself sitting in the church, myself being present, they gave me the keys. I said few words in Spanish and English, and right on the spot I got up a subscription to repair the church in a decent manner, the governor and the chief justice liberally subscribed the first ones and in a short time, we had upwards of thousand dollars our list is increasing every day … I hope to say mass in it in three month, when I come back from Durango…”

      For