2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Essay, Reviews,
and Interview
by Tina Matthews
The Priest and the Professor
While teaching New Mexico History last year at the new History
Museum, History Professor Andrew Lovato instructed his students to be
present at the 400 year centennial celebration. The celebration, out at
Marcy park had several tents set up for the interest of the community- I
spent several minutes listening to interesting historians at the story tent.
Next door was the book tent. As I wandered over, several books were
placed on a table with the Franciscan, Fray Angelico Chavez on the
cover. Who was this man who named himself after a monk in Italy some
five hundred years before In the ensuing months I forgot about it, until
I was researching material on poets at the main library in Santa Fe.
Leaving the library, and walking back to my car, the statue of a figure of
a monk caught my attention. Reading the placard, it was dedicated to
Fray Angelico. I noticed this library was also named for him- The Fray
Angelico History Library and Photographic Archives.
Fray Angelico, (born Emmanuel Ezekiel Chavez) retired from the
priesthood in 1971, yet his duties as a priest were not over. The Archbishop
of Santa Fe then called upon him to catalogue the archives of the
Archdiocese. It took him six years to complete this enormous task. He
wrote several books about the people who came here from their Spanish
roots and is mainly known apart from his priestly Franciscan life as a well
known historian, yet I found he was also a poet, and a muralist. Thumbing
through an old copy of his poetry book, Clothed With the Sun, I found
an inscription in the front page. It said- “I like to drive stakes in the
ground for climbing things…” The writing was small, and precise. It
was signed- “gratefully, Fray Angelico Chavez,” with the place and date
noted as Pena Blanca, 1939. (Pena Blanca was the town he was assigned
to after his ordination, and where he spent his first six years.)
As I flipped through the pages, I was struck by the timeless quality of
Santa Fe Literary Review 137