Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412140039
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD BENKE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: TAOS, N.M. LENGTH: Long
Antonio Jose Martinez, the legendary 19th-century priest vilified by novelist Willa Cather in ``Death Comes for the Archbishop,'' is finally finding his proper place in history.
In Cather's 1927 novel, Martinez is portrayed as a womanizing priest who had illegitimate children and presided over ``the old order,'' resisting change to the point of armed rebellion. Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy - called Latour in the book - is cast, contrastingly, as a great reformer.
While it's accepted today that Martinez did have children - descendants still live in his home just off Taos Plaza - modern historians believe Martinez was ahead of his time. He established Taos schools that produced a new generation of New Mexico clergy, which the current Roman Catholic archbishop, Michael Sheehan, acknowledges in praising Martinez.
The padre also owned one of New Mexico's first printing presses. He was a proponent of land reform and American democracy and was the first president of the upper house of New Mexico's first U.S. territorial legislature.
``He was very much an intellectual. He lived through Spain, he lived through Mexico and through the United States,'' says great-great-grandson Vicente Martinez, who is acting chief curator at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos. ``The constitutional form of government was something he clearly understood.
``I think Willa Cather was tremendously unfair to him, and I think the church was unfair to him, but I think history has proven him to be truly a great leader and a man way beyond his time.''
About Cather, he says, ``She had to have a villain.''
Vicente's son, the padre's namesake, Antonio Jose Martinez, 18, is proud of the heritage.
``I definitely think he was a hero,'' says young Martinez, a freshman at Amherst College in Massachusetts. ``It's like being related to any great historical figure. Everytime I sign my name I think of him.''
Asked what Martinez would stand for today, young Antonio Jose Martinez says: ``I have an idea he'd be out there fighting the condo developers.''
Archbishop Sheehan says: ``I think Father Martinez was a very talented man and made many contributions to the life of New Mexico. His good points should be remembered.''
Lamy, the first archbishop of New Mexico, was long believed to have excommunicated Martinez, but current church authorities say the prelate never formalized it.
This year, the Rev. Edmund Savilla, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church here, held a Mass commemorating the church's first 160 years and honoring Martinez.
Born in 1793 in Abiquiu, N.M., Martinez grew up in his father's Taos hacienda, now a museum. Visitors can see how family life arrayed itself in adobe-walled rooms around a central courtyard. They can also see the padre's vestments.
Padre Martinez had been married as a young man, but his wife died before he sought to join the priesthood. His only child of that union died at 12.
Martinez was ordained in Durango, Mexico, in 1823 and was a strong influence in northern New Mexico for more than 50 years afterward, despite his conflicts with Lamy, who came to Santa Fe in 1850.
Those disputes centered on the archbishop's tithing demands, which threatened in some cases to withhold sacraments from church members who did not pay 10 percent of income, as well as on Martinez's support for the Penitente Brotherhood, a sect that practiced self-scourging.
Martinez also ran afoul of some American political interests by opposing the Maxwell Land Grant, which he saw as a land grab by U.S. newcomers.
The youngest Martinez has never doubted he's a direct descendant of the priest.
The lineage is accepted by the Martinez family, the community and historians. Padre Martinez's will instructs Santiago Valdez to take the Martinez name because, the padre acknowledged cautiously, ``he has not recognized any other father and mother but me.''
Antonio Martinez is the great-great-grandson of Valdez.
The Rev. Juan Romero of Los Angeles, who this year completed a translation of Padre Martinez's autobiography, says too much has been made of the illegitimate children.
``Nobody claims him as a patron saint,'' Romero says. ``The guy functioned effectively as a parish priest for a long time. He was astute and in no way wanted to be public. ... He did not flaunt, did not fly in the face of conventional public morality.''
Romero has been in the vanguard of a modern movement to recognize Martinez's achievements.
``What I would like to see,'' he says, ``is a promotion of a consciousness that Padre Martinez did a lot more not only for Catholics but all people of the Southwest, that his contribution was more long-lasting. He was a great person in terms of a priest, of culture, protector of the poor, a deeply religious man who did a lot in establishing a native clergy.''
The 214-year-old Martinez Hacienda, tucked among cottonwoods along the Rio Pueblo, became the Martinez family's home in 1804.
As the family understands it, the hacienda was built by Taos Pueblo Indians starting in 1780, then purchased and enlarged by Severino Martinez, father of Padre Martinez.
``It is the last of the grand old traditional-style placita haciendas remaining in northern New Mexico - the traditional fortress-style construction where basically there are no external windows, where the entire life of the structure focuses inward toward the courtyard instead of outside. It was built that way for defensive purposes,'' says R.C. Gordon-McCutchan, director of the Kit Carson Historic Museum, which restored it and opened it to the public.
When attacked by Comanche or Navajo Indians, neighbors rounded up their livestock and hid inside the hacienda.
Closer to town, in fact just around the corner from Taos Plaza, is the house Padre Martinez called home until his death in 1867. Built in 1803, it was purchased by Padre Martinez in 1825. Vicente and Antonio Martinez still live there - and they say the padre himself may still be present.
``We may be standing over his grave,'' Vicente Martinez said during a tour of the home. ``He requested that he be buried under his oratorio, which might mean his study. This could be it.''
The padre's gravestone is in Kit Carson Park, a few blocks away, but Vicente Martinez says he's not convinced those remains are the padre's.
The Martinez home, unlike the hacienda, is closed to the public.
``I don't want it to be a tourist attraction,'' Martinez says.
by CNB