_Domestic Strife.--Jesuit and Sulpitian.--Abbé Queylus.--Francois de
Laval.--The Zealots of Caen.--Gallican and Ultramontane.--The Rival
Claimants.--Storm at Quebec--Laval Triumphant._
|Canada, gasping under the Iroquois tomahawk, might, one would suppose,
have thought her cup of tribulation full, and, sated with inevitable
woe, have sought consolation from the wrath without in a holy calm
within. Not so, however; for while the heathen raged at the door,
discord rioted at the hearthstone. Her domestic quarrels were wonderful
in number, diversity, and bitterness. There was the standing quarrel of
Montreal and Quebec, the quarrels of priests with each other, of priests
with the governor, and of the governor with the intendant, besides
ceaseless wranglings of rival traders and rival peculators.
Some of these disputes were local and of no special significance; while
others are very interesting, because, on a remote and obscure theatre,
they represent, sometimes in striking forms, the contending passions and
principles of a most important epoch of history. To begin with one which
even to this day has left a root of bitterness behind it.
The association of pious enthusiasts who had founded Montreal * was
reduced in 1657 to a remnant of five or six persons, whose ebbing zeal
and overtaxed purses were no longer equal to the devout but arduous
enterprise. They begged the priests of the Seminary of St. Sulpice
to take it off their hands. The priests consented; and, though the
conveyance of the island of Montreal to these its new proprietors did
not take effect till some years later, four of the Sulpitian fathers,
Queylus, Souart, Galinée, and Allet, came out to the colony and took
it in charge. Thus far Canada had had no bishop, and the Sulpitians now
aspired to give it one from their own brotherhood. Many years before,
when the Recollets had a foothold in the colony, they too, or at least
some of them, had cherished the hope of giving Canada a bishop of
their own. ** As for the Jesuits, who for nearly thirty years had of
themselves constituted the Canadian church, they had been content thus
far to dispense with a bishop; for, having no rivals in the field, they
had felt no need of episcopal support.
The Sulpitians put forward Queylus as their candidate for the new
bishopric. The assembly of French clergy approved, and Cardinal Mazarin
* See Jesuits in North America, chap. xv.
** Mémoire qui faiet pour l’affaire des P.P. Recollects de
la province de St Denys ditte de Paris touchant le droigt
qu’ils ont depuis l’an 1615, d’aller en Quanada soubs
l’authorité de Sa Maiesté, etc. 1637.
himself seemed to sanction, the nomination. The Jesuits saw that their
time of action was come. It was they who had borne the heat and burden
of the day, the toils, privations, and martyrdoms, while as yet
the Sulpitians had done nothing and endured nothing. If any body
of ecclesiastics was to have the nomination of a bishop, it clearly
belonged to them, the Jesuits. Their might, too, matched their right.
They were strong at court; Mazarin withdrew his assent, and the Jesuits
were invited to name a bishop to their liking.
Meanwhile the Sulpitians, despairing of the bishopric, had sought their
solace elsewhere. Ships bound for Canada had usually sailed from ports
within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen, and the departing
missionaries had received their ecclesiastical powers from him, till he
had learned to regard Canada as an outlying section of his diocese. Not
unwilling to assert his claims, he now made Queylus his vicar-general
for all Canada, thus clothing him with episcopal powers, and placing him
over the heads of the Jesuits. Queylus, in effect, though not in name,
a bishop, left his companion Souart in the spiritual charge of Montreal,
came down to Quebec, announced his new dignity, and assumed the curacy
of the parish. The Jesuits received him at first with their usual
urbanity, an exercise of selfcontrol rendered more easy by their
knowledge that one more potent than Queylus would soon arrive to
supplant him. *
* A detailed account of the experiences of Queylus at
Quebec, immediately after his arrival, as related by
himself, will be found in a memoir by the Sulpitian Allet,
in Morale Pratique des Jésuites, XXXIV. chap, xii. In
chapter ten of the same volume the writer says that he
visited Queylus at Mont St. Valérien, after his return from
Canada. “II me prit à part; nous nous promenâmes assez
longtemps dans le jardin et il m’ouvrit son cœur sur la
conduite des Je'suites dans le Canada et partout ailleurs
Messieurs de St. Sulpice savent bien ce qu’il m’en a pu
dire, et je suis assuré qu’ils ne diront pas que je l’ai du
prendre pour des mensonges."
The vicar of the Archbishop of Rouen was a man of many virtues, devoted
to good works, as he understood them; rich, for the Sulpitians were
under no vow of poverty; generous in almsgiving, busy, indefatigable,
overflowing with zeal, vivacious in temperament and excitable in temper,
impatient of opposition, and, as it seems, incapable, like his destined
rival, of seeing any way of doing good but his own. Though the Jesuits
were outwardly courteous, their partisans would not listen to the new
curé’s sermons, or listened only to find fault, and germs of discord
grew vigorously in the parish of Quebec. Prudence was not among the
virtues of Queylus. He launched two sermons against the Jesuits, in
which he likened himself to Christ and them to the Pharisees. “Who,”
he supposed them to say, “is this Jesus, so beloved of the people,
who comes to cast discredit on us, who for thirty or forty years
have governed church and state here, with none to dispute us?” * He
denounced such of his hearers as came to pick flaws in his discourse,
and told them it would be better for their souls if they lay in bed at
home, sick of a “good quartan fever.” His ire was greatly kindled
by a letter of the Jesuit Pijart, which fell into his hands through a
female adherent, the pious
* Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.
Madame d’Aillebout, and in which that father declared that he,
Queylus, was waging war on him and his brethren more savagely than
the Iroquois. * “He was as crazy at sight of a Jesuit,” writes an
adverse biographer, “as a mad dog at sight of water.” ** He cooled,
however, on being shown certain papers which proved that his position
was neither so strong nor so secure as he had supposed; and the
governor, Argenson, at length persuaded him to retire to Montreal. ***
The queen mother, Anne of Austria, always inclined to the Jesuits, had
invited Father Le Jeune, who was then in France, to make choice of a
bishop for Canada. It was not an easy task. No Jesuit was eligible, for
the sage policy of Loyola had excluded members of the order from the
bishopric. The signs of the times portended trouble for the Canadian
church, and there was need of a bishop who would assert her claims and
fight her battles. Such a man could not be made an instrument of the
Jesuits; therefore there was double need that he should be one with
them in sympathy and purpose. They made a sagacious choice. Le
Jeune presented to the queen mother the name of François Xavier de
Laval-Montmorency, Abbé de Montigny.
Laval, for by this name he was thenceforth known, belonged to one of the
proudest families of Europe, and, churchman as he was, there is
* Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.
** Viger, Notice Historique sur l’Abbé de Queylus.
*** Papiers d’Argenson.
much in his career to remind us that in his veins ran the blood of
the stern Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency. Nevertheless,
his thoughts from childhood had turned towards the church, or, as
his biographers will have it, all his aspirations were heavenward. He
received the tonsure at the age of nine. The Jesuit Bagot confirmed and
moulded his youthful predilections; and, at a later period, he was one
of a band of young zealots, formed under the auspices of Bernières de
Louvigni, royal treasurer at Caen, who, though a layman, was reputed
almost a saint. It was Bernières who had borne the chief part in the
pious fraud of the pretended marriage through which Madame de la Peltrie
escaped from her father’s roof to become foundress of the Ursulines
of Quebec. * He had since renounced the world, and dwelt at Caen, in a
house attached to an Ursuline convent, and known as the Hermitage. Here
he lived like a monk, in the midst of a community of young priests and
devotees, who looked to him as their spiritual director, and whom he
trained in the maxims and practices of the most extravagant, or, as his
admirers say, the most sublime ultramontane piety. **
The conflict between the Jesuits and the Jansenists was then at its
height. The Jansenist doctrines of election and salvation by grace,
which sapped the power of the priesthood and impugned the authority of
the Pope himself in his capacity of holder of the keys of heaven, were
to the Jesuits
* See Jesuits in North America, chap. xiv.
** La Tour, Vie de Laval, gives his maxims at length.
an abomination; while the rigid morals of the Jansenists stood in
stern contrast to the pliancy of Jesuit casuistry. Bernières and his
disciples were zealous, not to say fanatical, partisans of the Jesuits.
There is a long account of the “Hermitage" and its inmates from the
pen of the famous Jansenist, Nicole; an opponent, it is true, but one
whose qualities of mind and character give weight to his testimony. *
“In this famous Hermitage,” says Nicole, “the late Sieur de
Bernières brought up a number of young men, to whom he taught a sort of
sublime and transcendental devotion called _passive prayer_, because
in it the mind does not act at all, but merely receives the divine
operation; and this devotion is the source of all those visions and
revelations in which the Hermitage is so prolific.” In short, he and
his disciples were mystics of the most exalted type. Nicole pursues:
“After having thus subtilized their minds, and almost sublimed them
into vapor, he rendered them capable of detecting Jansenists under any
disguise, insomuch that some of his followers said that they knew
them by the scent, as dogs know their game; but the aforesaid Sieur de
Bernières denied that they had so subtile a sense of smell, and said
that the mark by which he detected Jansenists was their disapproval of
his teachings or their opposition to the Jesuits.”
The zealous band at the Hermitage was aided in
* Mémoire pour faire connoistre l'esprit et la conduite de
la Compagnie établie en la ville de Caen, appéllée
l'Hermitage (Bibliothèque Nationnale Imprimés Partie
Réservée). Written in 1660.
its efforts to extirpate error by a sort of external association in the
city of Caen, consisting of merchants, priests, officers, petty nobles,
and others, all inspired and guided by Bernières. They met every week
at the Hermitage, or at the houses of each other. Similar associations
existed in other cities of France, besides a fraternity in the Rue St.
Dominique at Paris, which was formed by the Jesuit Bagot, and seems to
have been the parent, in a certain sense, of the others. They all acted
together when any important object was in view.
Bernières and his disciples felt that God had chosen them not only to
watch over doctrine and discipline in convents and in families, but
also to supply the prevalent deficiency of zeal in bishops and other
dignitaries of the church. They kept, too, a constant eye on the humbler
clergy, and whenever a new preacher appeared in Caen, two of their
number were deputed to hear his sermon and report upon it. If he chanced
to let fall a word concerning the grace of God, they denounced him for
Jansenistic heresy. Such commotion was once raised in Caen by charges
of sedition and Jansenism, brought by the Hermitage against priests and
laymen hitherto without attaint, that the Bishop of Bayeux thought it
necessary to interpose; but even he was forced to pause, daunted by
the insinuations of Bernières that he was in secret sympathy with the
obnoxious doctrines.
Thus the Hermitage and its affiliated societies constituted themselves a
sort of inquisition in the interest of the Jesuits; “for what,”
asks Nicole “might not be expected from persons of weak minds and
atrabilious dispositions, dried up by constant fasts, vigils, and other
austerities, besides meditations of three or four hours a day, and told
continually that the church is in imminent danger of ruin through the
machinations of the Jansenists, who are represented to them as persons
who wish to break up the foundations of the Christian faith and
subvert the mystery of the Incarnation; who believe neither in
transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, nor indulgences; who wish
to abolish the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of Penitence,
oppose the worship of the Holy Virgin, deny freewill and substitute
predestination in its place, and, in fine, conspire to overthrow the
authority of the Supreme Pontiff.”
Among other anecdotes, Nicole tells the following: One of the young
zealots of the Hermitage took it into his head that all Caen was full of
Jansenists, and that the curés of the place were in league with them.
He inoculated four others with this notion, and they resolved to warn
the people of their danger. They accordingly made the tour of the
streets, without hats or collars, and with coats unbuttoned, though it
was a cold winter day, stopping every moment to proclaim in a loud voice
that all the curés, excepting two, whom they named, were abettors of
the Jansenists. A mob was soon following at their heels, and there was
great excitement. The magistrates chanced to be in session, and, hearing
of the disturbance, they sent constables to arrest the authors of it.
Being brought to the bar of justice and questioned by the judge, they
answered that they were doing the work of God, and were ready to die
in the cause; that Caen was full of Jansenists, and that the curés had
declared in their favor, inasmuch as they denied any knowledge of their
existence. Four of the five were locked up for a few days, tried, and
sentenced to a fine of a hundred livres, with a promise of further
punishment should they again disturb the peace. *
The fifth, being pronounced out of his wits by the physicians, was sent
home to his mother, at a village near Argentan, where two or three of
his fellow zealots presently joined him. Among them, they persuaded his
mother, who had hitherto been, devoted to household cares, to exchange
them for a life of mystical devotion. “These three or four persons,”
says Nicole, “attracted others as imbecile as themselves.” Among
these recruits were a number of women, and several priests. After
various acts of fanaticism, “two or three days before last
Pentecost,” proceeds the narrator, “they all set out, men and women,
for Argentan. The priests had drawn the skirts of their cassocks over
their heads, and tied them about their necks with twisted straw. Some
of the women had their heads bare, and their hair streaming loose over
their shoulders. They picked up filth on the road, and rubbed their
faces with it, and the most zealous ate it, saying that it was necessary
to mortify the taste. Some
* Nicole is not the only authority for this story. It is
also told by a very different writer. See Notice Historique
de l'Abbaye de Ste. Claire d’Arqentan, 124,
held stones in their hands, which they knocked together to draw the
attention of the passersby. They had a leader, whom they were bound to
obey; and when this leader saw any mudhole particularly deep and dirty,
he commanded some of the party to roll themselves in it, which they did
forthwith. *
“After this fashion, they entered the town of Argentan, and marched,
two by two, through all the streets, crying with a loud voice that the
Faith was perishing, and that whoever wished to save it must quit the
country and go with them to Canada, whither they were soon to repair.
It is said that they still hold this purpose, and that their leaders
declare it revealed to them that they will find a vessel ready at the
first port to which Providence directs them. The reason why they choose
Canada for an asylum is, that Monsieur de Montigny (Laval), Bishop of
Petræa, who lived at the Hermitage a long time, where he was instructed
in mystical theology by Monsieur de Bernières, exercises episcopal
functions there; and that the Jesuits, who are their oracles, reign in
that country.”
This adventure, like the other, ended in a collision with the police.
“The priests,” adds Nicole, “were arrested, and are now waiting
trial, and the rest were treated as mad, and sent back with shame and
confusion to the places whence they had come.”
* These proceedings were probably intended to produce the
result which was the constant object of the mystics of the
Hermitage; namely, the “annihilation of self,” with a view
to a perfect union with God. To become despised of men was
an important, if not an essential, step in this mystical
suicide.
Though these pranks took place after Laval had left the Hermitage, they
serve to characterize the school in which he was formed; or, more justly
speaking, to show its most extravagant side. That others did not
share the views of the celebrated Jansenist, may be gathered from the
following passage of the funeral oration pronounced over the body of
Laval half a century later:--
“The humble abbé was next transported into the terrestrial paradise
of Monsieur de Bernières. It is thus that I call, as it is fitting to
call it, that famous Hermitage of Caen, where the seraphic author of
the ‘Christian Interior’ (_Bernières_) transformed into angels all
those who had the happiness to be the companions of his solitude and
of his spiritual exercises. It was there that, during four years, the
fervent abbé drank the living and abounding waters of grace which have
since flowed so benignly over this land of Canada. In this celestial
abode his ordinary occupations were prayer, mortification, instruction
of the poor, and spiritual readings or conferences; his recreations were
to labor in the hospitals, wait upon the sick and poor, make their beds,
dress their wounds, and aid them in their most repulsive needs.” *
In truth, Laval’s zeal was boundless, and the exploits of
self-humiliation recorded of him were unspeakably revolting. **
Bernières himself regarded
* Eloge funèbre de Messire François Xavier de Laval-
Montmorency, par Messire de la Colombière, Vicaire Général.
** See La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. I. Some of them were
closely akin to that of the fanatics mentioned above, who
ate “immondices d’animaux” to mortify the taste.
him as a light by which to guide his own steps in ways of holiness. He
made journeys on foot about the country, disguised, penniless, begging
from door to door, and courting scorn and opprobrium, “in order,”
says his biographer, “that he might suffer for the love of God.”
Yet, though living at this time in a state of habitual religious
exaltation, he was by nature no mere dreamer; and in whatever heights
his spirit might wander, his feet were always planted on the solid
earth. His flaming zeal had for its servants a hard, practical nature,
perfectly fitted for the battle of life, a narrow intellect, a stiff
and persistent will, and, as his enemies thought, the love of domination
native to his blood.
Two great parties divided the Catholics of France,--the Gallican or
national party, and the ultramontane or papal party. The first, resting
on the Scriptural injunction to give tribute to Cæsar, held that to the
king, the Lord’s anointed, belonged the temporal, and to the church
the spiritual power. It held also that the laws and customs of the
church of France could not be broken at the bidding of the Pope. *
The ultramontane party, on the other hand, maintained that the Pope,
Christ’s vicegerent on earth, was supreme over earthly rulers, and
should of right hold jurisdiction over the clergy of all Christendom,
with powers of appointment and removal. Hence they claimed for him the
right of nominating bishops in
* See the famous Quatre Articles of 1682, in which the
liberties of the Gallican Church are asserted.
France. This had anciently been exercised by assemblies of the French
clergy, but in the reign of Francis I. the king and the Pope had
combined to wrest it from them by the Concordat of Bologna. Under this
compact, which was still in force, the Pope appointed French bishops on
the nomination of the king, a plan which displeased the Gallicans, and
did not satisfy the ultramontanes.
The Jesuits, then as now, were the most forcible exponents of
ultramontane principles. The church to rule the world; the Pope to rule
the church; the Jesuits to rule the Pope: such was and is the simple
programme of the Order of Jesus, and to it they have held fast, except
on a few rare occasions of misunderstanding with the Vicegerent of
Christ. * In the question of papal supremacy, as in most things else,
Laval was of one mind with them.
Those versed in such histories will not be surprised to learn that,
when he received the royal nomination, humility would not permit him
to accept it; nor that, being urged, he at length bowed in resignation,
still protesting his unworthiness. Nevertheless, the royal nomination
did not take effect. The ultramontanes outflanked both the king and
the Gallicans, and by adroit strategy made the new prelate completely a
creature of the papacy. Instead of appointing him Bishop of Quebec,
in accordance with the royal initiative, the Pope made him his vicar
apostolic for Canada,
* For example, not long after this time, the Jesuits,
having a dispute with Innocent XI., threw themselves into
the party of opposition.
thus evading the king’s nomination, and affirming that Canada, a
country of infidel savages, was excluded from the concordat, and under
his (the Pope’s) jurisdiction pure and simple. The Gallicans were
enraged. The Archbishop of Rouen vainly opposed, and the parliaments
of Rouen and of Paris vainly protested. The papal party prevailed.
The king, or rather Mazarin, gave his consent, subject to certain
conditions, the chief of which was an oath of allegiance; and Laval,
grand vicar apostolic, decorated with the title of Bishop of Petræa,
sailed for his wilderness diocese in the spring of 1659. * He was but
thirty-six years of age, but even when a boy he could scarcely have
seemed young.
Queylus, for a time, seemed to accept the situation, and tacitly admit
the claim of Laval as his ecclesiastical superior; but, stimulated by
a letter from the Archbishop of Rouen, he soon threw himself into an
attitude of opposition, ** in which the popularity which his generosity
to the poor had won for him gave him an advantage very annoying to his
adversary. The quarrel, it will be seen, was three-sided,--Gallican
against ultramontane, Sulpitian against Jesuit, Montreal against
Quebec. To Montreal the recalcitrant abbé, after a brief visit to
Quebec, had again retired; but even here, girt with his Sulpitian
brethren and compassed with
* Compare La Tour, Vie de Laval, with the long statement in
Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 315-335. Faillon gives
various documents in full, including the royal letter of
nomination and those in which the King gives a reluctant
consent to the appointment of the vicar apostolic.
** Journal des Jésuites, Sept., 1657.
partisans, the arm of the vicar apostolic was long enough to reach him.
By temperament and conviction Laval hated a divided authority, and the
very shadow of a schism was an abomination in his sight. The young
king, who, though abundantly jealous of his royal power, was forced
to conciliate the papal party, had sent instructions to Argenson,
the governor, to support Laval, and prevent divisions in the Canadian
church. * These instructions served as the pretext of a procedure
sufficiently summary. A squad of soldiers, commanded, it is said, by the
governor himself, went up to Montreal, brought the indignant Queylus
to Quebec, and shipped him thence for France. ** By these means, writes
Father Lalemant, order reigned for a season in the church.
It was but for a season. Queylus was not a man to bide his defeat
in tranquillity, nor were his brother Sulpitians disposed to silent
acquiescence. Laval, on his part, was not a man of half measures. He had
an agent in France, and partisans strong at court. Fearing, to borrow
the words of a Catholic writer, that the return of Queylus to Canada
would prove “injurious to the glory of God,” he bestirred himself
to prevent it. The young king, then at Aix, on his famous journey to
the frontiers of Spain to marry the Infanta, was induced to write
to Queylus, ordering him to remain in France. *** Queylus, however,
repaired to Rome; but even
* Lettre du Roi à d’Argenson, 14 Mai, 1659.
** Belmont, Histoire du Canada, a.d. 1659. Memoir by Abbé
d’Allet, in Morale Pratique des Jésuites, XXXIV. 725.
*** Lettre du Roi a Queylus, 27 Feb., 1660.
against this movement provision had been made: accusations of Jansenism
had gone before him, and he met a cold welcome. Nevertheless, as he had
powerful friends near the Pope, he succeeded in removing these adverse
impressions, and even in obtaining certain bulls relating to the
establishment, of the parish of Montreal, and favorable to the
Sulpitians.
Provided with these, he set at nought the king’s letter, embarked
under an assumed name, and sailed to Quebec, where he made his
appearance on the 3d of August, 1661, * to the extreme wrath of Laval.
A ferment ensued. Laval’s partisans charged the Sulpitians with
Jansenism and opposition to the will of the Pope. A preacher more
zealous than the rest denounced them as priests of Antichrist; and as to
the bulls in their favor, it was affirmed that Queylus had obtained them
by fraud from the Holy Father. Laval at once issued a mandate forbidding
him to proceed to Montreal till ships should arrive with instructions
from the King. ** At the same time he demanded of the governor that he
should interpose the civil power to prevent Queylus from leaving Quebec.
*** As Argenson, who wished to act as peacemaker between the belligerent
fathers, did not at once take the sharp measures required of him, Laval
renewed his demand on the next day, calling on him, in the name of God
and the king, to compel Queylus to yield the obedience
* Journal des Jésuites, Août, 1661.
** Lettre de Laval à Queylus, 4 Août, 1661.
***Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, Ibid.
due to him, the vicar apostolic. * At the same time he sent another to
the offending abbé, threatening to suspend him from priestly functions
if he persisted in his rebellion. **
The incorrigible Queylus, who seems to have lived for some months in a
simmer of continual indignation, set at nought the vicar apostolic as he
had set at nought the king, took a boat that very night, and set out
for Montreal under cover of darkness. Great was the ire of Laval when
he heard the news in the morning. He despatched a letter after him,
declaring him suspended _ipso facto_, if he did not instantly return
and make his submission. *** This letter, like the rest, failed of the
desired effect; but the governor, who had received a second mandate from
the king to support Laval and prevent a schism, **** now reluctantly
interposed the secular arm, and Queylus was again compelled to return to
France. (v)
His expulsion was a Sulpitian defeat. Laval, always zealous for unity
and centralization, had some time before taken steps to repress what
he regarded as a tendency to independence at Montreal. In the preceding
year he had written to the Pope: “There are some secular priests
(_Sulpitians_) at Montreal, whom the Abbé de Queylus brought out with
him in 1657, and I have named for the
* Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, 5 Août, 1661.
** Lettre de Laval a Queylus, Ibid.
**** Ibid, 6 Août, 1661.
**** Lettre du Roi à d’Argenson, 13 Mai, 1660.
(v) For the governor’s attitude in this affair, consult the
Papiers d'Argentan, containing his despatches.
functions of curé the one among them whom I thought the least
disobedient.” The bulls which Queylus had obtained from Rome related
to this very curacy, and greatly disturbed the mind of the vicar
apostolic. He accordingly wrote again to the Pope: “I pray your
Holiness to let me know your will concerning the jurisdiction of the
Archbishop of Rouen. M. l’Abbé de Queylus, who has come out this year
as vicar of this archbishop, has tried to deceive us by surreptitious
letters, and has obeyed neither our prayers nor our repeated commands to
desist. But he has received orders from the king to return immediately
to France, to render an account of his disobedience, and he has been
compelled by the governor to conform to the will of his Majesty. What I
now fear is that, on his return to France, by using every kind of means,
employing new artifices, and falsely representing our affairs, he may
obtain from the court of Rome powers which may disturb the peace of our
church; for the priests whom he brought with him from France, and who
five at Montreal, are animated with the same spirit of disobedience
and division; and I fear, with good reason, that all belonging to the
seminary of St. Sulpice, who may come hereafter to join them, will be
of the same disposition. If what is said is true, that by means of
fraudulent letters the right of patronage of the pretended parish of
Montreal has been granted to the superior of this seminary, and the
right of appointment to the Archbishop of Rouen, then is altar reared
against altar in our church of Canada; for the clergy of Montreal
will always stand in opposition to me, the vicar apostolic, and to my
successors.” *
These dismal forebodings were never realized The Holy See annulled
the obnoxious bulls; the Archbishop of Rouen renounced his claims, and
Queylus found his position untenable. Seven years later, when Laval was
on a visit to France, a reconciliation was brought about between them.
The former vicar of the Archbishop of Rouen made his submission to the
vicar of the Pope, and returned to Canada as a missionary. Laval’s
triumph was complete, to the joy of the Jesuits, silent, if not idle,
spectators of the tedious and complex quarrel.
* Lettre de Laval au Pape, 22 Oct., 1661. Printed by
Faillon, from the original in the archives of the
Propaganda.