SOURCE: “Art and Religion in Death Comes for the Archibishop,” in The Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter, 1973, pp. 293-302.

In the following essay, the Stoucks argue that Cather's faith in the redemptive effects of and similarities between art and religion form a fundamental theme in Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.

Godfrey St. Peter in The Professor's House, p. 69.

In criticism of Death Comes for the Archbishop one finds a curious reversal of emphasis. Where studies of most fictions are concerned to a great extent with theme or content, essays written about the Archbishop, except for those which are part of a comprehensive view of Miss Cather's work, are almost exclusively concerned with the novel's form.¹ The reason for this is obvious; there are few other...