THE SMALLER SEMINARY
The smaller seminary, founded by the Bishop of Petræa in 1668, for
youths destined to the ecclesiastical life, justified the expectations
of its founder, and witnessed an ever increasing influx of students. On
the day of its inauguration, October 9th, there were only as yet eight
French pupils and six Huron children. For lack of teachers the young
neophytes, placed under the guidance of directors connected with the
seminary, attended during the first years the classes of the Jesuit
Fathers. Their special costume was a blue cloak, confined by a belt. At
this period the College of the Jesuits contained already some sixty
resident scholars, and what proves to us that serious studies were here
pursued is that several scholars are quoted in the memoirs as having
successfully defended in the presence of the highest authorities of the
colony theses on physics and philosophy.
If the first bishop of New France had confined himself to creating one
large seminary, it is certain that his chosen work, which was the
preparation for the Church of a nursery of scholars and priests, the
apostles of the future, would not have been complete.
For many young people, indeed, who lead a worldly existence, and find
themselves all at once transferred to the serious, religious life of the
seminary, the surprise, and sometimes the discomfort, may be great. One
must adapt oneself to this atmosphere of prayer, meditation and study.
The rules of prayer are certainly not beyond the limits of an ordinary
mind, but the practice is more difficult than the theory. Not without
effort can a youthful imagination, a mind ardent and consumed by its own
fervour, relinquish all the memories of family and social occupations,
in order to withdraw into silence, inward peace, and the mortification
of the senses. To the devoutly-minded our worldly life may well seem
petty in comparison with the more spiritual existence, and in the
religious life, for the priest especially, lies the sole source and the
indispensable condition of happiness. But one must learn to be thus
happy by humility, study and prayer, as one learns to be a soldier by
obedience, discipline and exercise, and in nothing did Laval more reveal
his discernment than in the recognition of the fact that the transition
from one life to the other must be effected only after careful
instruction and wisely-guided deliberation.
The aim of the smaller seminary is to guide, by insensible gradations
towards the great duties and the great responsibilities of the
priesthood, young men upon whom the spirit of God seems to have rested.
There were in Israel schools of prophets; this does not mean that their
training ended in the diploma of a seer or an oracle, but that this
novitiate was favourable to the action of God upon their souls, and
inclined them thereto. A smaller seminary possesses also the hope of the
harvest. It is there that the minds of the students, by exercises
proportionate to their age, become adapted unconstrainedly to pious
reading, to the meditation and the grave studies in whose cycle the life
of the priest must pass.
We shall not be surprised if the prelate's followers recognized in the
works of faith which sprang up in his footsteps and progressed on all
hands at Ville-Marie and at Quebec shining evidences of the protection
of Mary to whose tutelage they had dedicated their establishments. This
protection indeed has never been withheld, since to-day the fame of the
university which sprang from the seminary, as a fruit develops from a
bud, has crossed the seas. Father Monsabré, the eloquent preacher of
Notre-Dame in Paris, speaking of the union of science and faith,
exclaimed: "There exists, in the field of the New World, an institution
which has religiously preserved this holy alliance and the traditions of
the older universities, the Laval University of Quebec."
Mgr. de Laval, while busying himself with the training of his clergy,
watched over the instruction of youth. He protected his schools and his
dioceses; at Quebec the Jesuits, and later the seminary, maintained even
elementary schools. If we must believe the Abbé de Latour and other
writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the children of the
early colonists, skilful in manual labour, showed, nevertheless, great
indolence of mind. "In general," writes Latour, "Canadian children have
intelligence, memory and facility, and they make rapid progress, but the
fickleness of their character, a dominant taste for liberty, and their
hereditary and natural inclination for physical exercise do not permit
them to apply themselves with sufficient perseverance and assiduity to
become learned men; satisfied with a certain measure of knowledge
sufficient for the ordinary purposes of their occupations (and this is,
indeed, usually possessed), we see no people deeply learned in any
branch of science. We must further admit that there are few resources,
few books, and little emulation. No doubt the resources will be
multiplied, and clever persons will appear in proportion as the colony
increases." Always eager to develop all that might serve for the
propagation of the faith or the progress of the colony, the devoted
prelate eagerly fostered this natural aptitude of the Canadians for the
arts and trades, and he established at St. Joachim a boarding-school for
country children; this offered, besides a solid primary education,
lessons in agriculture and some training for different trades.
Mgr. de Laval gave many other proofs of his enlightened charity for the
poor and the waifs of fortune; he approved and encouraged among other
works the Brotherhood of Saint Anne at Quebec. This association of
prayer and spiritual aid had been established but three years before his
arrival; it was directed by a chaplain and two directors, the latter
elected annually by secret ballot. He had wished to offer in 1660 a more
striking proof of his devotion to the Mother of the Holy Virgin, and had
caused to be built on the shore of Beaupré the first sanctuary of Saint
Anne. This temple arose not far from a chapel begun two years before,
under the care of the Abbé de Queylus. The origin of this place of
devotion, it appears, was a great peril to which certain Breton sailors
were exposed: assailed by a tempest in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, about
the beginning of the seventeenth century, they made a vow to erect, if
they escaped death, a chapel to good Saint Anne on the spot where they
should land. Heaven heard their prayers, and they kept their word. The
chapel erected by Mgr. de Laval was a very modest one, but the zealous
missionary of Beaupré, the Abbé Morel, then chaplain, was the witness of
many acts of ardent faith and sincere piety; the Bishop of Petræa
himself made several pilgrimages to the place. "We confess," says he,
"that nothing has aided us more efficaciously to support the burden of
the pastoral charge of this growing church than the special devotion
which all the inhabitants of this country dedicate to Saint Anne, a
devotion which, we affirm it with certainty, distinguishes them from
all other peoples." The poor little chapel, built of uprights, gave
place in 1675 to a stone church erected by the efforts of M. Filion,
proctor of the seminary, and it was noted for an admirable picture given
by the viceroy, de Tracy, who did not disdain to make his pilgrimage
like the rest, and to set thus an example which the great ones of the
earth should more frequently give. This church lasted only a few years;
Mgr. de Laval was still living when a third temple was built upon its
site. This was enlarged in 1787, and gave place only in 1878 to the
magnificent cathedral which we admire to-day. The faith which raised
this sanctuary to consecrate it to Saint Anne did not die with its pious
founder; it is still lively in our hearts, since in 1898 a hundred and
twenty thousand pilgrims went to pray before the relic of Saint Anne,
the precious gift of Mgr. de Laval.
In our days, hardly has the sun melted the thick mantle of snow which
covers during six months the Canadian soil, hardly has the majestic St.
Lawrence carried its last blocks of ice down to the ocean, when caravans
of pious pilgrims from all quarters of the country wend their way
towards the sanctuary raised upon the shores of Beaupré. Whole families
fill the cars; the boats of the Richelieu Company stop to receive
passengers at all the charming villages strewn along the banks of the
river, and the cathedral which raises in the air its slender spires on
either side of the immense statue of Saint Anne does not suffice to
contain the ever renewed throng of the faithful.
Even in the time of Mgr. de Laval, pilgrimages to Saint Anne's were
frequent, and it was not only French people but also savages who
addressed to the Mother of the Virgin Mary fervent, and often very
artless, prayers. The harvest became, in fact, more abundant in the
missions, and
"Les prêtres ne pouvaient suffire aux sacrifices."[4]
From the banks of the Saguenay at Tadousac, or from the shore of Hudson
Bay, where Father Albanel was evangelizing the Indians, to the recesses
of the Iroquois country, a Black Robe taught from interval to interval
in a humble chapel the truths of the Christian religion. "We may say,"
wrote Father Dablon in 1671, "that the torch of the faith now illumines
the four quarters of this New World. More than seven hundred baptisms
have this year consecrated all our forests; more than twenty different
missions incessantly occupy our Fathers among more than twenty diverse
nations; and the chapels erected in the districts most remote from here
are almost every day filled with these poor barbarians, and in some of
them there have been consummated sometimes ten, twenty, and even thirty
baptisms on a single occasion." And, ever faithful to the established
power, the missionaries taught their neophytes not only religion, but
also the respect due to the king. Let us hearken to Father Allouez
speaking to the mission of Sault Ste. Marie: "Cast your eyes," says he,
"upon the cross raised so high above your heads. It was upon that cross
that Jesus Christ, the son of God, become a man by reason of His love
for men, consented to be bound and to die, in order to satisfy His
Eternal Father for our sins. He is the master of our life, the master of
Heaven, earth and hell. It is He of whom I speak to you without ceasing,
and whose name and word I have borne into all these countries. But
behold at the same time this other stake, on which are hung the arms of
the great captain of France, whom we call the king. This great leader
lives beyond the seas; he is the captain of the greatest captains, and
has not his peer in the world. All the captains that you have ever seen,
and of whom you have heard speak, are only children beside him. He is
like a great tree; the rest are only little plants crushed under men's
footsteps as they walk. You know Onontio, the famous chieftain of
Quebec; you know that he is the terror of the Iroquois, his mere name
makes them tremble since he has desolated their country and burned their
villages. Well, there are beyond the seas ten thousand Onontios like
him. They are only the soldiers of this great captain, our great king,
of whom I speak to you."
Mgr. de Laval ardently desired, then, the arrival of new workers for the
gospel, and in the year 1668, the very year of the foundation of the
seminary, his desire was fulfilled, as if Providence wished to reward
His servant at once. Missionaries from France came to the aid of the
priests of the Quebec seminary, and Sulpicians, such as MM. de Queylus,
d'Urfé, Dallet and Brehan de Gallinée, arrived at Montreal; MM. François
de Salignac-Fénelon and Claude Trouvé had already landed the year
before. "I have during the last month," wrote the prelate, "commissioned
two most good and virtuous apostles to go to an Iroquois community which
has been for some years established quite near us on the northern side
of the great Lake Ontario. One is M. de Fénelon, whose name is
well-known in Paris, and the other M. Trouvé. We have not yet been able
to learn the result of their mission, but we have every reason to hope
for its complete success."
While he was enjoining upon these two missionaries, on their departure
for the mission on which he was sending them, that they should always
remain in good relations with the Jesuit Fathers, he gave them some
advice worthy of the most eminent doctors of the Church:--
"A knowledge of the language," he says, "is necessary in order to
influence the savages. It is, nevertheless, one of the smallest parts of
the equipment of a good missionary, just as in France to speak French
well is not what makes a successful preacher. The talents which make
good missionaries are:
"1. To be filled with the spirit of God; this spirit must animate our
words and our hearts: _Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur_.
"2. To have great prudence in the choice and arrangement of the things
which are necessary either to enlighten the understanding or to bend the
will; all that does not tend in this direction is labour lost.
"3. To be very assiduous, in order not to lose opportunities of
procuring the salvation of souls, and supplying the neglect which is
often manifest in neophytes; for, since the devil on his part _circuit
tanquam leo rugiens, quærens quem devoret_, so we must be vigilant
against his efforts, with care, gentleness and love.
"4. To have nothing in our life and in our manners which may appear to
belie what we say, or which may estrange the minds and hearts of those
whom we wish to win to God.
"5. We must make ourselves beloved by our gentleness, patience and
charity, and win men's minds and hearts to incline them to God. Often a
bitter word, an impatient act or a frowning countenance destroys in a
moment what has taken a long time to produce.
"6. The spirit of God demands a peaceful and pious heart, not a restless
and dissipated one; one should have a joyous and modest countenance; one
should avoid jesting and immoderate laughter, and in general all that is
contrary to a holy and joyful modesty: _Modestia vestra nota sit
omnibus hominibus_."
The new Sulpicians had been most favourably received by Mgr. de Laval,
and the more so since almost all of them belonged to great families and
had renounced, like himself, ease and honour, to devote themselves to
the rude apostleship of the Canadian missions.
The difficulties between the bishop and the Abbé de Queylus had
disappeared, and had left no trace of bitterness in the souls of these
two servants of God. M. de Queylus gave good proof of this subsequently;
he gave six thousand francs to the hospital of Quebec, of which one
thousand were to endow facilities for the treatment of the poor, and
five thousand for the maintenance of a choir-nun. His generosity,
moreover, was proverbial: "I cannot find a man more grateful for the
favour that you have done him than M. de Queylus," wrote the intendant,
Talon, to the minister, Colbert. "He is going to arrange his affairs in
France, divide with his brothers, and collect his worldly goods to use
them in Canada, at least so he has assured me. If he has need of your
protection, he is striving to make himself worthy of it, and I know that
he is most zealous for the welfare of this colony. I believe that a
little show of benevolence on your part would redouble this zeal, of
which I have good evidence, for what you desire the most, the education
of the native children, which he furthers with all his might."
The abbé found the seminary in conditions very different from those
prevailing at the time of his departure. In 1663, the members of the
Company of Notre-Dame of Montreal had made over to the Sulpicians the
whole Island of Montreal and the seigniory of St. Sulpice. Their purpose
was to assure the future of the three works which they had not ceased,
since the birth of their association, to seek to establish: a seminary
for the education of priests in the colony, an institution of education
for young girls, and a hospital for the care of the sick.
To learn the happy results due to the eloquence of MM. Trouvé and de
Fénelon engaged in the evangelization of the tribes encamped to the
north of Lake Ontario, or to that of MM. Dollier de Casson and Gallinée
preaching on the shores of Lake Erie, one must read the memoirs of the
Jesuit Fathers. We must bear in mind that many facts, which might appear
to redound too much to the glory of the missionaries, the modesty of
these men refused to give to the public. We shall give an example. One
day when M. de Fénelon had come down to Quebec, in the summer of 1669,
to give account of his efforts to his bishop, Mgr. de Laval begged the
missionary to write a short abstract of his labours for the memoirs.
"Monseigneur," replied humbly the modest Sulpician, "the greatest favour
that you can do us is not to allow us to be mentioned." Will he, at
least, like the traveller who, exhausted by fatigue and privation,
reaches finally the promised land, repose in Capuan delights? Mother
Mary of the Incarnation informs us on this point: "M. l'abbé de
Fénelon," says she, "having wintered with the Iroquois, has paid us a
visit. I asked him how he had been able to subsist, having had only
sagamite[5] as sole provision, and pure water to drink. He replied that
he was so accustomed to it that he made no distinction between this food
and any other, and that he was about to set out on his return to pass
the winter again there with M. de Trouvé, having left him only to go and
get the wherewithal to pay the Indians who feed them. The zeal of these
great servants of God is admirable."
The activity and the devotion of the Jesuits and of the Sulpicians might
thus make up for lack of numbers, and Mgr. de Laval judged that they
were amply sufficient for the task of the holy ministry. But the
intendant, Talon, feared lest the Society of Jesus should become
omnipotent in the colony; adopting from policy the famous device of
Catherine de Medici, _divide to rule_, he hoped that an order of
mendicant friars would counterbalance the influence of the sons of
Loyola, and he brought with him from France, in 1670, Father Allard,
Superior of the Récollets in the Province of St. Denis, and four other
brothers of the same order. We must confess that, if a new order of
monks was to be established in Canada, it was preferable in all justice
to apply to that of St. Francis rather than to any others, for had it
not traced the first evangelical furrows in the new field and left
glorious memories in the colony?
Mgr. de Laval received from the king in 1671 the following letter:
"My Lord Bishop of Petræa:
"Having considered that the re-establishment of the monks of the
Order of St. Francis on the lands which they formerly possessed in
Canada might be of great avail for the spiritual consolation of my
subjects and for the relief of your ecclesiastics in the said
country, I send you this letter to tell you that my intention is
that you should give to the Rev. Father Allard, the superior, and
to the four monks whom he brings with him, the power of
administering the sacraments to all those who may have need of them
and who may have recourse to these reverend Fathers, and that,
moreover, you should aid them with your authority in order that
they may resume possession of all which belongs to them in the said
country, to all of which I am persuaded you will willingly
subscribe, by reason of the knowledge which you have of the relief
which my subjects will receive...."
The prelate had not been consulted; moreover, the intervention of the
newcomers did not seem to him opportune. But he was obstinate and
unapproachable only when he believed his conscience involved; he
received the Récollets with great benevolence and rendered them all the
service possible. "He gave them abundant aid," says Latour, "and
furnished them for more than a year with food and lodging. Although the
Order had come in spite of him, he gave them at the outset four
missions: Three Rivers, Ile Percé, St. John's River and Fort Frontenac.
These good Fathers were surprised; they did not cease to praise the
charity of the bishop, and confessed frankly that, having only come to
oppose his clergy, they could not understand why they were so kindly
treated."
After all, the breadth of character of these brave heroes of evangelic
poverty could not but please the Canadian people; ever gay and pleasant,
and of even temper, they traversed the country to beg a meagre pittance.
Everywhere received with joy, they were given a place at the common
table; they were looked upon as friends, and the people related to them
their joys and afflictions. Hardly was a robe of drugget descried upon
the horizon when the children rushed forward, surrounded the good
Father, and led him by the hand to the family fireside. The Récollets
had always a good word for this one, a consolatory speech for that one,
and on occasion, brought up as they had been, for the most part under a
modest thatched roof, knew how to lend a hand at the plough, or suggest
a good counsel if the flock were attacked by some sickness. On their
departure, the benediction having been given to all, there was a
vigorous handshaking, and already their hosts were discounting the
pleasure of a future visit.
On their arrival the Récollet Fathers lodged not far from the Ursuline
Convent, till the moment when, their former monastery on the St. Charles
River being repaired, they were able to install themselves there. Some
years later they built a simple refuge on land granted them in the Upper
Town. Finally, having become almoners of the Château St. Louis, where
the governor resided, they built their monastery opposite the castle,
back to back with the magnificent church which bore the name of St.
Anthony of Padua. They reconquered the popularity which they had enjoyed
in the early days of the colony, and the bishop entrusted to their
devotion numerous parishes and four missions. Unfortunately, they
allowed themselves to be so influenced by M. de Frontenac, in spite of
repeated warnings from Mgr. de Laval, that they espoused the cause of
the governor in the disputes between the latter and the intendant,
Duchesneau. Their gratitude towards M. de Frontenac, who always
protected them, is easily explained, but it is no less true that they
should have respected above all the authority of the prelate who alone
had to answer before God for the religious administration of his
diocese.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Racine's _Athalie_.
[5] A sort of porridge of water and pounded maize.