THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL
The pious bishop who is the subject of this study was not long in
proving that his virtues were not too highly esteemed. An ancient
vessel, the _St. André_, brought from France two hundred and six
persons, among whom were Mlle. Mance, the foundress of the Montreal
hospital, Sister Bourgeoys, and two Sulpicians, MM. Vignal and Lemaître.
Now this ship had long served as a sailors' hospital, and it had been
sent back to sea without the necessary quarantine. Hardly had its
passengers lost sight of the coasts of France when the plague broke out
among them, and with such intensity that all were more or less attacked
by it; Mlle. Mance, in particular, was almost immediately reduced to the
point of death. Always very delicate, and exhausted by a preceding
voyage, she did not seem destined to resist this latest attack.
Moreover, all aid was lacking, even the rations of fresh water ran
short, and from a fear of contagion, which will be readily understood,
but which was none the less disastrous, the captain at first forbade the
Sisters of Charity who were on board to minister to the sick. This
precaution cost seven or eight of these unfortunate people their lives.
At least M. Vignal and M. Lemaître, though both suffering themselves,
were able to offer to the dying the consolations of their holy office.
M. Lemaître, more vigorous than his colleague, and possessed of an
admirable energy and devotion, was not satisfied merely with encouraging
and ministering to the unfortunate in their last moments, but even
watched over their remains at the risk of his own life; he buried them
piously, wound them in their shrouds, and said over them the final
prayers as they were lowered into the sea. Two Huguenots, touched by his
devotion, died in the Roman Catholic faith. The Sisters were finally
permitted to exercise their charitable office. Although ill, they as
well as Sister Bourgeoys, displayed a heroic energy, and raised the
morale of all the unfortunate passengers.
To this sickness were added other sufferings incident to such a voyage,
and frightful storms did not cease to attack the ship until its entry
into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Several times they believed themselves on
the point of foundering, and the two priests gave absolution to all. The
tempest carried these unhappy people so far from their route that they
did not arrive at Quebec until September 7th, exhausted by disease,
famine and trials of all sorts. Father Dequen, of the Society of Jesus,
showed in this matter an example of the most admirable charity. He
brought to the sick refreshments and every manner of aid, and lavished
upon all the offices of his holy ministry. As a result of his
self-devotion, he was attacked by the scourge and died in the exercise
of charity. Several more, after being conveyed to the hospital,
succumbed to the disease, and the whole country was infected. Mgr. of
Petræa was admirable in his devotion; he hardly left the hospital at
all, and constituted himself the nurse of all these unfortunates, making
their beds and giving them the most attentive care. "He is continually
at the hospital," wrote Mother Mary of the Incarnation, "in order to
help the sick and to make their beds. We do what we can to prevent him
and to shield his health, but no eloquence can dissuade him from these
acts of self-abasement."
In the spring of the year 1662, Mgr. de Laval rented for his own use an
old house situated on the site of the present parochial residence at
Quebec, and it was there that, with the three other priests who then
composed his episcopal court, he edified all the colonists by the
simplicity of a cenobitic life. He had been at first the guest of the
Jesuit Fathers, was later sheltered by the Sisters of the Hôtel-Dieu,
and subsequently lodged with the Ursulines. At this period it was indeed
incumbent upon him to adapt himself to circumstances; nor did these
modest conditions displease the former pupil of M. de Bernières, since,
as Latour bears witness, "he always complained that people did too much
for him; he showed a distaste for all that was too daintily prepared,
and affected, on the contrary, a sort of avidity for coarser fare."
Mother Mary of the Incarnation wrote: "He lives like a holy man and an
apostle; his life is so exemplary that he commands the admiration of the
country. He gives everything away and lives like a pauper, and one may
well say that he has the very spirit of poverty. He practises this
poverty in his house, in his manner of living, and in the matter of
furniture and servants; for he has but one gardener, whom he lends to
poor people when they have need of him, and a valet who formerly served
M. de Bernières."
But if the reverend prelate was modest and simple in his personal
tastes, he became inflexible when he thought it his duty to maintain the
rights of the Church. And he watched over these rights with the more
circumspection since he was the first bishop installed in the colony,
and was unwilling to allow abuses to be planted there, which later it
would be very difficult, not to say impossible, to uproot. Hence the
continual friction between him and the governor-general, d'Argenson, on
questions of precedence and etiquette. Some of these disputes would seem
to us childish to-day if even such a writer as Parkman did not put us on
our guard against a premature judgment.[1] "The disputes in question,"
writes Parkman, "though of a nature to provoke a smile on irreverent
lips, were by no means so puerile as they appear. It is difficult in a
modern democratic society to conceive the substantial importance of the
signs and symbols of dignity and authority, at a time and among a people
where they were adjusted with the most scrupulous precision, and
accepted by all classes as exponents of relative degrees in the social
and political scale. Whether the bishop or the governor should sit in
the higher seat at table thus became a political question, for it
defined to the popular understanding the position of Church and State in
their relations to government."
In his zeal for making his episcopal authority respected, could not the
prelate, however, have made some concessions to the temporal power? It
is allowable to think so, when his panegyrist, the Abbé Gosselin,
acknowledges it in these terms: "Did he sometimes show too much ardour
in the settlement of a question or in the assertion of his rights? It is
possible. As the Abbé Ferland rightly observes, 'no virtue is perfect
upon earth.' But he was too pious and too disinterested for us to
suspect for a moment the purity of his intentions." In certain passages
in his journal Father Lalemant seems to be of the same opinion. All men
are fallible; even the greatest saints have erred. In this connection
the remark of St. Bernardin of Siena presents itself naturally to the
religious mind: "Each time," says he, "that God grants to a creature a
marked and particular favour, and when divine grace summons him to a
special task and to some sublime position, it is a rule of Providence
to furnish that creature with all the means necessary to fulfil the
mission which is entrusted to him, and to bring it to a happy
conclusion. Providence prepares his birth, directs his education,
produces the environment in which he is to live; even his faults
Providence will use in the accomplishment of its purposes."
Difficulties of another sort fixed between the spiritual and the
temporal chiefs of the colony a still deeper gulf; they arose from the
trade in brandy with the savages. It had been formerly forbidden by the
Sovereign Council, and this measure, urged by the clergy and the
missionaries, put a stop to crimes and disorders. However, for the
purpose of gain, certain men infringed this wise prohibition, and Mgr.
de Laval, aware of the extensive harm caused by the fatal passion of the
Indians for intoxicating liquors, hurled excommunication against all who
should carry on the traffic in brandy with the savages. "It would be
very difficult," writes M. de Latour, "to realize to what an excess
these barbarians are carried by drunkenness. There is no species of
madness, of crime or inhumanity to which they do not descend. The
savage, for a glass of brandy, will give even his clothes, his cabin,
his wife, his children; a squaw when made drunk--and this is often done
purposely--will abandon herself to the first comer. They will tear each
other to pieces. If one enters a cabin whose inmates have just drunk
brandy, one will behold with astonishment and horror the father cutting
the throat of his son, the son threatening his father; the husband and
wife, the best of friends, inflicting murderous blows upon each other,
biting each other, tearing out each other's eyes, noses and ears; they
are no longer recognizable, they are madmen; there is perhaps in the
world no more vivid picture of hell. There are often some among them who
seek drunkenness in order to avenge themselves upon their enemies, and
commit with impunity all sorts of crimes under the pretext of this fine
excuse, which passes with them for a complete justification, that at
these times they are not free and not in their senses." Drunken savages
are brutes, it is true, but were not the whites who fostered this fatal
passion of intoxication more guilty still than the wretches whom they
ignominiously urged on to vice? Let us see what the same writer says of
these corrupters. "If it is difficult," says he, "to explain the
excesses of the savage, it is also difficult to understand the extent of
the greed, the hypocrisy and the rascality of those who supply them with
these drinks. The facility for making immense profits which is afforded
them by the ignorance and the passions of these people, and the
certainty of impunity, are things which they cannot resist; the
attraction of gain acts upon them as drunkenness does upon their
victims. How many crimes arise from the same source? There is no mother
who does not fear for her daughter, no husband who does not dread for
his wife, a libertine armed with a bottle of brandy; they rob and
pillage these wretches, who, stupefied by intoxication when they are not
maddened by it, can neither refuse nor defend themselves. There is no
barrier which is not forced, no weakness which is not exploited, in
these remote regions where, without either witnesses or masters, only
the voice of brutal passion is listened to, every crime of which is
inspired by a glass of brandy. The French are worse in this respect than
the savages."
Governor d'Avaugour supported energetically the measures taken by Mgr.
de Laval; unfortunately a regrettable incident destroyed the harmony
between their two authorities. Inspired by his good heart, the superior
of the Jesuits, Father Lalemant, interceded with the governor in favour
of a woman imprisoned for having infringed the prohibition of the sale
of brandy to the Indians. "If she is not to be punished," brusquely
replied d'Avaugour, "no one shall be punished henceforth!" And, as he
made it a point of honour not to withdraw this unfortunate utterance,
the traders profited by it. From that time license was no longer
bridled; the savages got drunk, the traders were enriched, and the
colony was in jeopardy. Sure of being supported by the governor, the
merchants listened to neither bishop nor missionaries. Grieved at seeing
his prayers as powerless as his commands, Mgr. de Laval decided to
carry his complaint to the foot of the throne, and he set sail for
France in the autumn of 1662. "Statesmen who place the freedom of
commerce above morality of action," says Jacques de Beaudoncourt, "still
consider that the bishop was wrong, and see in this matter a fine
opportunity to inveigh against the encroachments of the clergy; but
whoever has at heart the cause of human dignity will not hesitate to
take the side of the missionaries who sought to preserve the savages
from the vices which have brought about their ruin and their
disappearance. The Montagnais race, which is still the most important in
Canada, has been preserved by Catholicism from the vices and the misery
which brought about so rapidly the extirpation of the savages."
Mgr. de Laval succeeded beyond his hopes; cordially received by King
Louis XIV, he obtained the recall of Governor d'Avaugour. But this
purpose was not the only one which he had made the goal of his ambition;
he had in view another, much more important for the welfare of the
colony. Fourteen years before, the Iroquois had exterminated the Hurons,
and since this period the colonists had not enjoyed a single hour of
calm; the devotion of Dollard and of his sixteen heroic comrades had
narrowly saved them from a horrible danger. The worthy prelate obtained
from the king a sufficiently large assignment of troops to deliver the
colony at last from its most dangerous enemies. "We expect next year,"
he wrote to the sovereign pontiff, "twelve hundred soldiers, with whom,
by God's help, we shall try to overcome the fierce Iroquois. The Marquis
de Tracy will come to Canada in order to see for himself the measures
which are necessary to make of New France a strong and prosperous
colony."
M. Dubois d'Avaugour was recalled, and yet he rendered before his
departure a distinguished service to the colony. "The St. Lawrence," he
wrote in a memorial to the monarch, "is the key to a country which may
become the greatest state in the world. There should be sent to this
colony three thousand soldiers, to be discharged after three years of
service; they could make Quebec an impregnable fortress, subdue the
Iroquois, build redoubtable forts on the banks of the Hudson, where the
Dutch have only a wretched wooden hut, and in short, open for New France
a road to the sea by this river." It was mainly this report which
induced the sovereign to take back Canada from the hands of the Company
of the Cent-Associés, who were incapable of colonizing it, and to
reintegrate it in the royal domain.
Must we think with M. de la Colombière,[2] with M. de Latour and with
Cardinal Taschereau, that the Sovereign Council was the work of Mgr. de
Laval? We have some justification in believing it when we remember that
the king arrived at this important decision while the energetic Laval
was present at his court. However it may be, on April 24th, 1663, the
Company of New France abandoned the colony to the royal government,
which immediately created in Canada three courts of justice and above
them the Sovereign Council as a court of appeal.
The Bishop of Petræa sailed in 1663 for North America with the new
governor, M. de Mézy, who owed to him his appointment. His other
fellow-passengers were M. Gaudais-Dupont, who came to take possession of
the country in the name of the king, two priests, MM. Maizerets and
Hugues Pommier, Father Rafeix, of the Society of Jesus, and three
ecclesiastics. The passage was stormy and lasted four months. To-day,
when we leave Havre and disembark a week later at New York, after having
enjoyed all the refinements of luxury and comfort invented by an
advanced but materialistic civilization, we can with difficulty imagine
the discomforts, hardships and privations of four long months on a
stormy sea. Scurvy, that fatal consequence of famine and exhaustion,
soon broke out among the passengers, and many died of it. The bishop,
himself stricken by the disease, did not cease, nevertheless, to lavish
his care upon the unfortunates who were attacked by the infection; he
even attended them at the hospital after they had landed.
The country was still at this time under the stress of the emotion
caused by the terrible earthquake of 1663. Father Lalemant has left us a
striking description of this cataclysm, marked by the naïve exaggeration
of the period: "It was February 5th, 1663, about half-past five in the
evening, when a great roar was heard at the same time throughout the
extent of Canada. This noise, which gave the impression that fire had
broken out in all the houses, made every one rush out of doors in order
to flee from such a sudden conflagration. But instead of seeing smoke
and flame, the people were much surprised to behold walls tottering, and
all the stones moving as if they had become detached; the roofs seemed
to bend downward on one side, then to lean over on the other; the bells
rang of their own accord; joists, rafters and boards cracked, the earth
quivered and made the stakes of the palisades dance in a manner which
would appear incredible if we had not seen it in various places.
"Then every one rushes outside, animals take to flight, children cry
through the streets, men and women, seized with terror, know not where
to take refuge, thinking at every moment that they must be either
overwhelmed in the ruins of the houses or buried in some abyss about to
open under their feet; some, falling to their knees in the snow, cry for
mercy; others pass the rest of the night in prayer, because the
earthquake still continues with a certain undulation, almost like that
of ships at sea, and such that some feel from these shocks the same
sickness that they endure upon the water.
"The disorder was much greater in the forest. It seemed that there was a
battle between the trees, which were hurled together, and not only their
branches but even their trunks seemed to leave their places to leap upon
each other with a noise and a confusion which made our savages say that
the whole forest was drunk.
"There seemed to be the same combat between the mountains, of which some
were uprooted and hurled upon the others, leaving great chasms in the
places whence they came, and now burying the trees, with which they were
covered, deep in the earth up to their tops, now thrusting them in, with
branches downward, taking the place of the roots, so that they left only
a forest of upturned trunks.
"While this general destruction was going on on land, sheets of ice five
or six feet thick were broken and shattered to pieces, and split in many
places, whence arose thick vapour or streams of mud and sand which
ascended high into the air; our springs either flowed no longer or ran
with sulphurous waters; the rivers were either lost from sight or became
polluted, the waters of some becoming yellow, those of others red, and
the great St. Lawrence appeared quite livid up to the vicinity of
Tadousac, a most astonishing prodigy, and one capable of surprising
those who know the extent of this great river below the Island of
Orleans, and what matter must be necessary to whiten it.
"We behold new lakes where there never were any; certain mountains
engulfed are no longer seen; several rapids have been smoothed out; not
a few rivers no longer appear; the earth is cleft in many places, and
has opened abysses which seem to have no bottom. In short, there has
been produced such a confusion of woods upturned and buried, that we see
now stretches of country of more than a thousand acres wholly denuded,
and as if they were freshly ploughed, where a little before there had
been but forests.
"Moreover, three circumstances made this earthquake most remarkable. The
first is the time of its duration, since it lasted into the month of
August, that is to say, more than six months. It is true that the shocks
were not always so rude; in certain places, for example, towards the
mountains at the back of us, the noise and the commotion were long
continued; at others, as in the direction of Tadousac, there was a
quaking as a rule two or three times a day, accompanied by a great
straining, and we noticed that in the higher places the disturbance was
less than in the flat districts.
"The second circumstance concerns the extent of this earthquake, which
we believe to have been universal throughout New France; for we learn
that it was felt from Ile Percé and Gaspé, which are at the mouth of our
river, to beyond Montreal, as likewise in New England, in Acadia and
other very remote places; so that, knowing that the earthquake occurred
throughout an extent of two hundred leagues in length by one hundred in
breadth, we have twenty thousand square leagues of land which felt the
earthquake on the same day and at the same moment.
"The third circumstance concerns God's particular protection of our
homes, for we see near us great abysses and a prodigious extent of
country wholly ruined, without our having lost a child or even a hair of
our heads. We see ourselves surrounded by confusion and ruins, and yet
we have had only a few chimneys demolished, while the mountains around
us have been overturned."
From the point of view of conversions and returns to God the results
were marvellous. "One can scarcely believe," says Mother Mary of the
Incarnation, "the great number of conversions that God has brought
about, both among infidels who have embraced the faith, and on the part
of Christians who have abandoned their evil life. At the same time as
God has shaken the mountains and the marble rocks of these regions, it
would seem that He has taken pleasure in shaking consciences. Days of
carnival have been changed into days of penitence and sadness; public
prayers, processions and pilgrimages have been continual; fasts on bread
and water very frequent; the general confessions more sincere than they
would have been in the extremity of sickness. A single ecclesiastic,
who directs the parish of Château-Richer, has assured us that he has
procured more than eight hundred general confessions, and I leave you to
think what the reverend Fathers must have accomplished who were day and
night in the confessional. I do not think that in the whole country
there is a single inhabitant who has not made a general confession.
There have been inveterate sinners, who, to set their consciences at
rest, have repeated their confession more than three times. We have seen
admirable reconciliations, enemies falling on their knees before each
other to ask each other's forgiveness, in so much sorrow that it was
easy to see that these changes were the results of grace and of the
mercy of God rather than of His justice."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _The Old Régime in Canada_, p. 110.
[2] Joseph Séré de la Colombière, vicar-general and archdeacon of
Quebec, pronounced Mgr. de Laval's funeral oration.