THE EARLY YEARS OF FRANÇOIS DE LAVAL
Certain great men pass through the world like meteors; their brilliance,
lightning-like at their first appearance, continues to cast a dazzling
gleam across the centuries: such were Alexander the Great, Mozart,
Shakespeare and Napoleon. Others, on the contrary, do not instantly
command the admiration of the masses; it is necessary, in order that
their transcendent merit should appear, either that the veil which
covered their actions should be gradually lifted, or that, some fine
day, and often after their death, the results of their work should shine
forth suddenly to the eyes of men and prove their genius: such were
Socrates, Themistocles, Jacquard, Copernicus, and Christopher Columbus.
The illustrious ecclesiastic who has given his name to our
French-Canadian university, respected as he was by his contemporaries,
has been esteemed at his proper value only by posterity. The reason is
easy to understand: a colony still in its infancy is subject to many
fluctuations before all the wheels of government move smoothly, and Mgr.
de Laval, obliged to face ever renewed conflicts of authority, had
necessarily either to abandon what he considered it his duty to
support, or create malcontents. If sometimes he carried persistence to
the verge of obstinacy, he must be judged in relation to the period in
which he lived: governors like Frontenac were only too anxious to
imitate their absolute master, whose guiding maxim was, "I am the
state!" Moreover, where are the men of true worth who have not found
upon their path the poisoned fruits of hatred? The so-called praise that
is sometimes applied to a man, when we say of him, "he has not a single
enemy," seems to us, on the contrary, a certificate of insignificance
and obscurity. The figure of this great servant of God is one of those
which shed the most glory on the history of Canada; the age of Louis
XIV, so marvellous in the number of great men which it gave to France,
lavished them also upon her daughter of the new continent--Brébeuf and
Lalemant, de Maisonneuve, Dollard, Laval, Talon, de la Salle, Frontenac,
d'Iberville, de Maricourt, de Sainte-Hélène, and many others.
"Noble as a Montmorency" says a well-known adage. The founder of that
illustrious line, Bouchard, Lord of Montmorency, figures as early as 950
A.D. among the great vassals of the kingdom of France. The
heads of this house bore formerly the titles of First Christian Barons
and of First Barons of France; it became allied to several royal houses,
and gave to the elder daughter of the Church several cardinals, six
constables, twelve marshals, four admirals, and a great number of
distinguished generals and statesmen. Sprung from this family, whose
origin is lost in the night of time, François de Laval-Montmorency was
born at Montigny-sur-Avre, in the department of Eure-et-Loir, on April
30th, 1623. This charming village, which still exists, was part of the
important diocese of Chartres. Through his father, Hugues de Laval,
Seigneur of Montigny, Montbeaudry, Alaincourt and Revercourt, the future
Bishop of Quebec traced his descent from Count Guy de Laval, younger son
of the constable Mathieu de Montmorency, and through his mother,
Michelle de Péricard, he belonged to a family of hereditary officers of
the Crown, which was well-known in Normandy, and gave to the Church a
goodly number of prelates.
Like St. Louis, one of the protectors of his ancestors, the young
François was indebted to his mother for lessons and examples of piety
and of charity which he never forgot. Virtue, moreover, was as natural
to the Lavals as bravery on the field of battle, and whether it were in
the retinue of Clovis, when the First Barons received the regenerating
water of baptism, or on the immortal plain of Bouvines; whether it were
by the side of Blanche of Castile, attacked by the rebellious nobles, or
in the terrible holocaust of Crécy; whether it were in the _fight of the
giants_ at Marignan, or after Pavia during the captivity of the
_roi-gentilhomme_; everywhere where country and religion appealed to
their defenders one was sure of hearing shouted in the foremost ranks
the motto of the Montmorencys: _"Dieu ayde au premier baron chrétien!"_
Young Laval received at the baptismal font the name of the heroic
missionary to the Indies, François-Xavier. To this saint and to the
founder of the Franciscans, François d'Assise, he devoted throughout his
life an ardent worship. Of his youth we hardly know anything except the
misfortunes which happened to his family. He was only fourteen years old
when, in 1636, he suffered the loss of his father, and one of his near
kinsmen, Henri de Montmorency, grand marshal of France, and governor of
Languedoc, beheaded by the order of Richelieu. The bravery displayed by
this valiant warrior in battle unfortunately did not redeem the fault
which he had committed in rebelling against the established power,
against his lawful master, Louis XIII, and in neglecting thus the
traditions handed down to him by his family through more than seven
centuries of glory.
Some historians reproach Richelieu with cruelty, but in that troublous
age when, hardly free from the wars of religion, men rushed carelessly
on into the rebellions of the duc d'Orléans and the duc de Soissons,
into the conspiracies of Chalais, of Cinq-Mars and de Thou, soon
followed by the war of La Fronde, it was not by an indulgence synonymous
with weakness that it was possible to strengthen the royal power. Who
knows if it was not this energy of the great cardinal which inspired the
young François, at an age when sentiment is so deeply impressed upon the
soul, with those ideas of firmness which distinguished him later on?
The future Bishop of Quebec was then a scholar in the college of La
Flèche, directed by the Jesuits, for his pious parents held nothing
dearer than the education of their children in the fear of God and love
of the good. They had had six children; the two first had perished in
the flower of their youth on fields of battle; François, who was now the
eldest, inherited the name and patrimony of Montigny, which he gave up
later on to his brother Jean-Louis, which explains why he was called for
some time Abbé de Montigny, and resumed later the generic name of the
family of Laval; the fifth son, Henri de Laval, joined the Benedictine
monks and became prior of La Croix-Saint-Leuffroy. Finally the only
sister of Mgr. Laval, Anne Charlotte, became Mother Superior of the
religious community of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament.
François edified the comrades of his early youth by his ardent piety,
and his tender respect for the house of God; his masters, too, clever as
they were in the art of guiding young men and of distinguishing those
who were to shine later on, were not slow in recognizing his splendid
qualities, the clear-sightedness and breadth of his intelligence, and
his wonderful memory. As a reward for his good conduct he was admitted
to the privileged ranks of those who comprised the Congregation of the
Holy Virgin. We know what good these admirable societies, founded by the
sons of Loyola, have accomplished and still accomplish daily in Catholic
schools the world over. Societies which vie with each other in piety and
encouragement of virtue, they inspire young people with the love of
prayer, the habits of regularity and of holy practices.
The congregation of the college of La Flèche had then the good fortune
of being directed by Father Bagot, one of those superior priests always
so numerous in the Company of Jesus. At one time confessor to King Louis
XIII, Father Bagot was a profound philosopher and an eminent theologian.
It was under his clever direction that the mind of François de Laval was
formed, and we shall witness later the germination of the seed which the
learned Jesuit sowed in the soul of his beloved scholar.
At this period great families devoted to God from early youth the
younger members who showed inclination for the religious life. François
was only nine years old when he received the tonsure, and fifteen when
he was appointed canon of the cathedral of Evreux. Without the revenues
which he drew from his prebend, he would not have been able to continue
his literary studies; the death of his father, in fact, had left his
family in a rather precarious condition of fortune. He was to remain to
the end of his career the pupil of his preferred masters, for it was
under them that, having at the age of nineteen left the institution
where he had brilliantly completed his classical education, he studied
philosophy and theology at the Collège de Clermont at Paris.
He was plunged in these noble studies, when two terrible blows fell upon
him; he learned of the successive deaths of his two eldest brothers, who
had fallen gloriously, one at Freiburg, the other at Nördlingen. He
became thus the head of the family, and as if the temptations which this
title offered him were not sufficient, bringing him as it did, together
with a great name a brilliant future, his mother came, supported by the
Bishop of Evreux, his cousin, to beg him to abandon the ecclesiastical
career and to marry, in order to maintain the honour of his house. Many
others would have succumbed, but what were temporal advantages to a man
who had long aspired to the glory of going to preach the Divine Word in
far-off missions? He remained inflexible; all that his mother could
obtain from him was his consent to devote to her for some time his clear
judgment and intellect in setting in order the affairs of his family. A
few months sufficed for success in this task. In order to place an
impassable abyss between himself and the world, he made a full and
complete renunciation in favour of his brother Jean-Louis of his rights
of primogeniture and all his titles to the seigniory of Montigny and
Montbeaudry. The world is ever prone to admire a chivalrous action, and
to look askance at deeds which appear to savour of fanaticism. To Laval
this renunciation of worldly wealth and honour appeared in the simple
light of duty. His Master's words were inspiration enough: "Wist ye not
that I must be about my Father's business?"
Returning to the Collège de Clermont, he now thought of nothing but of
preparing to receive worthily the holy orders. It was on September 23rd,
1647, at Paris, that he saw dawn for him the beautiful day of the first
mass, whose memory perfumes the whole life of the priest. We may guess
with what fervour he must have ascended the steps of the holy altar; if
up to that moment he had merely loved his God, he must on that day have
dedicated to Jesus all the powers of his being, all the tenderness of
his soul, and his every heart-beat.
Mgr. de Péricard, Bishop of Evreux, was not present at the ordination of
his cousin; death had taken him away, but before expiring, besides
expressing his regret to the new priest for having tried at the time,
thinking to further the aims of God, to dissuade him from the
ecclesiastical life, he gave him a last proof of his affection by
appointing him archdeacon of his cathedral. The duties of the
archdeaconry of Evreux, comprising, as it did, nearly one hundred and
sixty parishes, were particularly heavy, yet the young priest fulfilled
them for seven years, and M. de la Colombière explains to us how he
acquitted himself of them: "The regularity of his visits, the fervour of
his enthusiasm, the improvement and the good order which he established
in the parishes, the relief of the poor, his interest in all sorts of
charity, none of which escaped his notice: all this showed well that
without being a bishop he had the ability and merit of one, and that
there was no service which the Church might not expect from so great a
subject."
But our future Bishop of New France aspired to more glorious fields. One
of those zealous apostles who were evangelizing India at this period,
Father Alexander of Rhodes, asked from the sovereign pontiff the
appointment for Asia of three French bishops, and submitted to the Holy
See the names of MM. Pallu, Picquet and Laval. There was no question of
hesitation. All three set out immediately for Rome. They remained there
fifteen months; the opposition of the Portuguese court caused the
failure of this plan, and François de Laval returned to France. He had
resigned the office of archdeacon the year before, 1653, in favour of a
man of tried virtue, who had been, nevertheless, a prey to calumny and
persecution, the Abbé Henri-Marie Boudon; thus freed from all
responsibility, Laval could satisfy his desire of preparing himself by
prayer for the designs which God might have for him.
In his desire of attaining the greatest possible perfection, he betook
himself to Caen, to the religious retreat of M. de Bernières. St.
Vincent de Paul, who had trained M. Olier, was desirous also that his
pupil, before going to find a field for his apostolic zeal among the
people of Auvergne, should prepare himself by earnest meditation in
retirement at St. Lazare. "Silence and introspection seemed to St.
Vincent," says M. de Lanjuère, the author of the life of M. Olier, "the
first conditions of success, preceding any serious enterprise. He had
not learned this from Pythagoras or the Greek philosophers, who were,
indeed, so careful to prescribe for their disciples a long period of
meditation before initiation into their systems, nor even from the
experience of all superior men, who, in order to ripen a great plan or
to evolve a great thought, have always felt the need of isolation in the
nobler acceptance of the word; but he had this maxim from the very
example of the Saviour, who, before the temptation and before the
transfiguration, withdrew from the world in order to contemplate, and
who prayed in Gethsemane before His death on the cross, and who often
led His disciples into solitude to rest, and to listen to His most
precious communications."
In this little town of Caen, in a house called the Hermitage, lived Jean
de Bernières of Louvigny, together with some of his friends. They had
gathered together for the purpose of aiding each other in mutual
sanctification; they practised prayer, and lived in the exercise of the
highest piety and charity. François de Laval passed three years in this
Hermitage, and his wisdom was already so highly appreciated, that during
the period of his stay he was entrusted with two important missions,
whose successful issue attracted attention to him and led naturally to
his appointment to the bishopric of Canada.
As early as 1647 the king foresaw the coming creation of a bishopric in
New France, for he constituted the Upper Council "of the Governor of
Quebec, the Governor of Montreal and the Superior of the Jesuits, _until
there should be a bishop_." A few years later, in 1656, the Company of
Montreal obtained from M. Olier, the pious founder of the Seminary of
St. Sulpice, the services of four of his priests for the colony, under
the direction of one of them, M. de Queylus, Abbé de Loc-Dieu, whose
brilliant qualities, as well as the noble use which he made of his great
fortune, marked him out naturally as the probable choice of his
associates for the episcopacy. But the Jesuits, in possession of all the
missions of New France, had their word to say, especially since the
mitre had been offered by the queen regent, Anne of Austria, to one of
their number, Father Lejeune, who had not, however, been able to accept,
their rules forbidding it. They had then proposed to the court of France
and the court of Rome the name of François de Laval; but believing that
the colony was not ready for the erection of a see, they expressed the
opinion that the sending of an apostolic vicar with the functions and
powers of a bishop _in partibus_ would suffice. Moreover, if the person
sent should not succeed, he could at any time be recalled, which could
not be done in the case of a bishop. Alexander VII had given his consent
to this new plan, and Mgr. de Laval was consecrated by the nuncio of the
Pope at Paris, on Sunday, December 8th, 1658, in the church of St.
Germain-des-Prés. After having taken, with the assent of the sovereign
pontiff, the oath of fidelity to the king, the new Bishop of Petræa said
farewell to his pious mother (who died in that same year) and embarked
at La Rochelle in the month of April, 1659. The only property he
retained was an income of a thousand francs assured to him by the
Queen-Mother; but he was setting out to conquer treasures very different
from those coveted by the Spanish adventurers who sailed to Mexico and
Peru. He arrived on June 16th at Quebec, with letters from the king
which enjoined upon all the recognition of Mgr. de Laval of Petræa as
being authorized to exercise episcopal functions in the colony without
prejudice to the rights of the Archbishop of Rouen.
Unfortunately, men's minds were not very certain then as to the title
and qualities of an apostolic vicar. They asked themselves if he were
not a simple delegate whose authority did not conflict with the
jurisdiction of the two grand vicars of the Jesuits and the Sulpicians.
The communities, at first divided on this point, submitted on the
receipt of new letters from the king, which commanded the recognition of
the sole authority of the Bishop of Petræa. The two grand vicars obeyed,
and M. de Queylus came to Quebec, where he preached the sermon on St.
Augustine's Day (August 28th), and satisfied the claim to authority of
the apostolic vicar.
But a new complication arose: the _St. André_, which had arrived on
September 7th, brought to the Abbé de Queylus a new appointment as grand
vicar from the Archbishop of Rouen, which contained his protests at
court against the apostolic vicar, and letters from the king which
seemed to confirm them. Doubt as to the authenticity of the powers of
Mgr. de Laval might thus, at least, seem permissible; no act of the Abbé
de Queylus, however, indicates that it was openly manifested, and the
very next month the abbé returned to France.
We may understand, however, that Mgr. de Laval, in the midst of such
difficulties, felt the need of early asserting his authority. He
promulgated an order enjoining upon all the secular ecclesiastics of the
country the disavowal of all foreign jurisdictions and the recognition
of his alone, and commanded them to sign this regulation in evidence of
their submission. All signed it, including the devoted priests of St.
Sulpice at Montreal.
Two years later, nevertheless, the Abbé de Queylus returned with bulls
from the Congregation of the Daterie at Rome. These bulls placed him in
possession of the parish of Montreal. In spite of the formal forbiddance
of the Bishop of Petræa, he undertook, strong in what he judged to be
his rights, to betake himself to Montreal. The prelate on his side
believed that it was his duty to take severe steps, and he suspended the
Abbé de Queylus. On instructions which were given him by the king,
Governor d'Avaugour transmitted to the Abbé de Queylus an order to
return to France. The court of Rome finally settled the question by
giving the entire jurisdiction of Canada to Mgr. de Laval. The affair
thus ended, the Abbé de Queylus returned to the colony in 1668. The
population of Ville-Marie received with deep joy this benefactor, to
whose generosity it owed so much, and on his side the worthy Bishop of
Petræa proved that if he had believed it his duty to defend his own
authority when menaced, he had too noble a heart to preserve a petty
rancour. He appointed the worthy Abbé de Queylus his grand vicar at
Montreal.
When for the first time Mgr. de Laval set foot on the soil of America,
the people, assembled to pay respect to their first pastor, were struck
by his address, which was both affable and majestic, by his manners, as
easy as they were distinguished, but especially by that charm which
emanates from every one whose heart has remained ever pure. A lofty brow
indicated an intellect above the ordinary; the clean-cut long nose was
the inheritance of the Montmorencys; his eye was keen and bright; his
eyebrows strongly arched; his thin lips and prominent chin showed a
tenacious will; his hair was scanty; finally, according to the custom of
that period, a moustache and chin beard added to the strength and energy
of his features. From the moment of his arrival the prelate produced the
best impression. "I cannot," said Governor d'Argenson, "I cannot highly
enough esteem the zeal and piety of Mgr. of Petræa. He is a true man of
prayer, and I make no doubt that his labours will bear goodly fruits in
this country." Boucher, governor of Three Rivers, wrote thus: "We have a
bishop whose zeal and virtue are beyond anything that I can say."