offers, baptizes, and confirms,” and then prayed that all present would intercede for Lamy that he receive the abundance of God’s grace in his duties.
The consecrating bishops and Lamy then prostrated themselves upon the steps of the altar in an act acknowledging their submission to higher powers than they could, as men, aspire to; and the litany of the saints was recited.
After this invocation of the great forebears, all rose, and Lamy came to kneel before Spalding. The consecrating bishops then took the books of the Gospels and laid them upon the bent neck and shoulders of Lamy so that the printed words touched him. So receiving the Gospels as their custodian, he was ready for that other touch which transmitted, to one who believed as he did, more than symbolic tradition. Spalding, and his assistants, all wearing the mitre, laid their hands in turn upon Lamy’s head, and Spalding said,
“Receive the Holy Ghost.”
It was the essential act by which the creation of a bishop, as of a priest, was done.
Now the Mass was resumed with the intoning of the Preface, in the course of which the acts of Moses and Aaron were recalled, and the power of their symbolic vesture in their sacred functions, and the text went on to declare, “… the adornment of our minds fulfills what was expressed by the outward vesture of that ancient priesthood, and now brightness of souls rather than splendor of raiment commends the pontifical glory unto us. Because even those things which were sightly unto the eyes of the flesh, demanded rather that the eyes of the spirit should understand the things they signified. And therefore we beseech Thee, O Lord, give bountifully this grace to this Thy servant, whom Thou had chosen to the ministry of the supreme priesthood, so that by what things soever those vestments signify by the refulgence of gold, the splendor of jewels, and the variety of diversified handiwork, these may shine forth in his character and his actions.”
Visible splendor was neither to be scorned nor valued for its own sake, but for what it represented in the gift of reverence.
“Fill up in Thy Priest,” intoned Spalding, finishing the Preface, “the perfection of Thy ministry and sanctify with the dew of Thy heavenly ointment this Thy servant decked out with the ornaments of all beauty.”
Lamy’s head was now bound with a white cloth; Spalding knelt facing the altar and began to intone the hymn Vent Creator Spiritus, calling upon the Holy Spirit to be upon them all, as He had come to the apostles at the first Pentecost. As the hymn proceeded, Spalding anointed Lamy upon the head with the chrism, and upon the hands, at great length reciting manifold duties and invoking graces. He then blessed a crozier and presented it to Lamy, and then blessed his episcopal ring—it was a large amethyst surrounded by small pearls—and placed it upon the ring finger of his right hand, and once again gave him the book of the Gospels; and finally raised him up and gave him the kiss of peace, saying, “Pax tibi.”
Lamy returned to his altar, cleansed his head and hands of the holy oil with bread crumbs presented to him in a dish, and resumed the Mass, and when the time for the sermon arrived, Purcell preached on the appropriate theme of the apostolic succession. At the end of the Mass proper, Lamy was again presented to Spalding, who, having blessed a mitre, placed it upon Lamy’s head, with the weighty words of commitment,
“We, O Lord, place on the head of this Thy bishop and champion, the helmet of protection and salvation, so that his face being adorned and his head armed with the horns of both testaments”—the front and rear spires of the mitre—”he may seem terrible to the opponents of truth, and through the indulgence of Thy grace may be their sturdy adversary, Thou who didst mark with the brightest rays of Thy splendor and truth the countenance of Moses thy servant, ornamented from his fellowship with Thy word: and didst order the tiara to be placed on the head of Aaron Thy high priest. Through Christ our Lord,” and all replied “Amen” to this second invocation of the powers in the Hebraic Old Testament. Spalding then blessed the new bishop’s ceremonial gauntlets and placed them upon his hands, and Lamy, now fully vested as a bishop, turned to the people and gave them his first episcopal blessing, making the sign of the cross over them three times, “May the Almighty God bless you, the
And now he was released from the passive role of victim of the ancient powers enacted upon him throughout the three-hour ceremony; and wearing his mitre and walking with his crozier, he went to his separate altar and recited the Last Gospel, “In principio erat verbum” at the end of which he was divested of his ceremonial garments. He turned and bowed to his consecrators with thanks, and all departed “in peace.”
In St Peter’s, the people moved, the church was emptied, the episcopal colleagues and their friends—along with Lamy’s sister and his niece (surely Machebeuf was present)—gathered to sit down together at table, and the concerns of the common day were eagerly resumed after the timeless impersonality of the just completed ritual.
Bishop Rappe undertook to do “all possible to persuade the new bishop to go to Europe” (instead of setting out for New Mexico) “to seek after new priests who knew Spanish.” The attempt was useless. Lamy was firm in his plans. He would leave tomorrow for New Orleans, and then he would begin his arrangements for his long journey westward. At New Orleans he would wait for his new vicar general to join him whenever Machebeuf should have resolved his affairs at Sandusky, and they would then set out together for Santa Fe.
III
TO SANTA FE
1850–1851
i.
New Orleans
ON 25 NOVEMBER 1850, Lamy sailed from Cincinnati by river on the first of the several long stages of his way to the Far West. His ultimate destination was that whole immense area of the Rocky Mountains and the high plains which was lettered in a sweeping arc on early- and mid-nineteenth-century maps as “The Great American Desert,” Since the end of the war in 1847, and the discovery of gold in California in 1848, travel to the West had increased vastly, by many alternate routes, including trails straight westward overland; Atlantic travel by ship to Mexico or the Isthmus of Panama, followed by an overland passage to the Pacific, and again by ship north to the California gold fields; or, by ship, all the way around Cape Horn. News came eastward, not too much of it accurate, but people responded. Inevitably settlements took root along the westward trails, and new details soon came to light on later maps. But beyond the Mississippi much was still alive only in the imagination, and impressions owed as much to legend as to fact. Lamy had little detailed knowledge of the continent, other than that known at second hand to the fellow bishops who had elected him.
How full, as preparation, had been his work in the intimate forest villages and their confined landscape during the past ten years? He had no way yet to measure this, and it was not in his nature to indulge in imaginative speculation, and in any case he had little enough to go on to form any true idea of what lay ahead. Habitually he met the occasion of the day, under the calm sense of confidence and guidance which animated him.
His river steamer wound slowly away from Cincinnati, taking the great double bend of the Ohio to the south and west of the city. The populated slopes were soon lost to sight. Wilderness America followed, with its rolling hills and winding valleys, broken only now and then by wide
