Lamy of Santa Fe

1976 Pulitzer Prize for History. It caught my eye this past July while I was in Santa Fe. Fascinating window into the difficult life that was the West in the mid to late 19th century. Horgan takes us from France to Ohio to New Mexico and back many times as we follow Jean Baptiste Lamy and his lifelong friend, Joseph Projectus Machebeuf on their journey from young priests sneaking away in France to Archbishops of Santa Fe and Denver respectively. Horgan painstakingly details the conditions and tribulations these two men encountered as they did their part in bringing education and religion to the American West. Well researched and well written translates into well-read.

This book is a valuable historical biography suitable for a parish or public library collection — especially in sections on Church history, American Catholic history, or spiritual biography categories. It provides a vivid portrait of a major 19th‑century Catholic leader and gives cultural and ecclesiastical context to the Catholic Church’s expansion in the American Southwest.

This is the Pulitzer Prize winning account of Bishop Lamy's beginnings in a small village in rural central France and his eventual appointment as Archbishop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lamy is a compelling and even heroic figure. This is a powerfully written narrative and trumps Willa Cather's fictional account of Lamy in Death Comes to the Archbishop. I recommend reading this book in combination with Horgan's Great River - a comprehensive history of the Rio Grande.

1390 Lamy of Santa Fe: His Life and Times, by Paul Horgan (read 1 May 1976) (Pulitzer History prize in 1976) This is a masterful work--not under ecclesiastical sponsorship--but heavy with solid respect for John Baptiste Lamy, born in France 11 Oct 1814, ordained in 1838 in France and arriving in the USA on 21 Aug 1839. He was appointed vicar apostolic of New Mexico in 1850 and on July 29, 1853, was confirmed as bishop of Santa Fe and on 12 Feb 1875 as archbishop. I found this an enthralling biography, and it is no doubt the definitive work. Lamy is the inspiration for Willa Cather's famed novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, which I read 8 Nov 1946.