Death Comes for the Archbishop

Father Joseph Vaillant

Father Joseph Vaillant is the Bishop's closest friend and vicar, a man of boundless energy and humble origins who thrives on frontier hardship. Where Latour is contemplative and cultured, Vaillant is impulsive and gregarious, and his extraordinary personal magnetism inspires fierce loyalty in red men, yellow men, and white alike. His eventual departure to Colorado leaves a void at the center of the Bishop's life, making his absence as formative as his presence.

Bishop Jean Marie Latour

Bishop Jean Marie Latour arrives in New Mexico as a stranger to its deserts, its people, and its stubborn old priests, armed with little but his faith and his refined sensibilities. His deep friendship with Father Vaillant and his quiet respect for men like Jacinto and Eusabio shape his long mission, while his longing for a cathedral worthy of the land becomes the measure of his life's work. In old age he sits at the center of his own consciousness, where past and present blur, and the people he has loved remain within reach.

Jacinto

Jacinto serves as Bishop Latour's guide through the mountains and pueblos, a man whose knowledge of the land is matched by his reserve. During a snowbound night in a cave, the Bishop watches him press his ear to a sealed hole in the rock, listening with a solicitude that seems to exceed the natural, and the memory of that moment never quite leaves the Bishop's mind. His loyalty and quiet competence make him indispensable to the mission's survival in its earliest and most dangerous years.

Eusabio

Eusabio is a respected Navajo who befriends Bishop Latour during the tribe's exile and return, sharing with him the lambing season on the Little Colorado and the slow work of survival. His presence in the Bishop's life represents a rare bridge between the conquering Church and the people it has displaced, and the Bishop's memory of the Navajos waiting to be ferried into exile haunts him long after. When the old Archbishop is dying, Eusabio comes to Santa Fe in the flesh, one of the last of the strong people of the deep days.

Friar Baltazar Montoya

Friar Baltazar Montoya is the priest at Ácoma, a man of tyrannical disposition who believes the pueblo exists chiefly to support its fine church and his own comfort. He exacts tribute in corn, hides, and labor, drafts Indian boys into his service, and grows a wonderful garden watered by women who owe him so many ollas a week, all while his appetite for brandy and fish and roast rabbit grows more exacting. His sensual, overbearing rule stands as the novel's sharpest portrait of the old order's corruption, the world Bishop Latour has come to reform.

Kit Carson

Kit Carson appears in the novel as a working scout and settler rather than a myth, a man whose help Bishop Latour relies on to understand the country and its powerful old priests like Martínez. When Father Vaillant falls ill in a stricken pueblo, Carson hurries to the rescue with a pack of venison, arriving just before the storm breaks, and later helps carry the enfeebled priest back to Santa Fe. His death is one of the losses that empties the Bishop's present, leaving only minor characters in the world of the living.