Fray Angelico Chavez: Poet, Priest, and Artist (review)

With assistance of nine scholars whose specializations are diverse and far-ranging, Ellen McCracken embarked upon an ambitious, gallant effort to reconstruct from documentary fragments and perspectives the complex life of Fray Angélico Chávez as poet, priest, and artist. The outcome is not a full biography, but a compendium of essays by writers who either knew Fray Angélico personally or who, through analyses of his multi-faceted works, became vicariously acquainted with the subject.

Two of the essays approximated the design of biographical framework. Marc Simmons, prominent southwestern author, tapped a variety of sources (both primary and secondary) to inject imagination, vigor, and depth to Fray Angélico's gradual development as a serious researcher and writer of history. A confrere in New Mexico, Jack Clark Robinson, sorted through a windfall of original materials in the Angélico Chávez File, curated in the Saint John the Baptist Province Archives in Cincinnati, to narrate the educational and spiritual formation of a Franciscan aspirant for the priesthood. Fray Angélico emerged as the first native New Mexican to be ordained in his homeland. Like two sturdy buttresses supporting a massive center, Simmons and Robinson inserted hooks into the biographical scaffolding upon which the other writers suspended their respective essays. In an introductory treatise, "A Rose for Fray Angélico Chávez," the editor provided an intellectual framework for the volume. Each writer addressed a particular subtheme of Fray Angélico's life journey: religiosity and the friar's staunch advocacy of Hispanic New Mexico's place in the chronicles of North America (Mario T. García); a comparative overview as "History and Fictitious Autobiography" of the pictorial representation of La Conquistadora, traditionally associated with the reconquest and reoccupation of New Mexico in 1692 (Luis Leal); Fray Angélico as writer of short stories (Thomas J. Steele, S.J.); the Gospel as depicted in poetry and painting (Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez); a seminarian's literary quest for Saint Francis of Assisi (Murray Bodo, O.F.M.); and a rigorous search for the roots of New Mexican families (Clark Colahan).

Provocative essays by Ellen McCracken and Thomas E. Chávez completed the anthology. As editor of the series, McCracken reserved the center stage for a discussion of Fray Angélico as artist and historic architectural conservationist in the remote parishes (Peña Blanca, Golden, and Domingo Station) in which he served the faithful. An impressive gallery of photographs depicted Chávez' contributions to ecclesiastical iconography that fell under the wrecking ball of material progress. Rounding out the collection of essays, Thomas E. Chávez, a historian, shared poignant reflections of his uncle as priest and scholar.

This well-balanced volume is an elegant summary of Fray Angélico Chávez' contributions to New Mexican art, history, and literature.