_François de Laval.--His Position and Character.--Arrival of
Argenson.--The Quarrel._
|We are touching delicate ground. To many excellent Catholics of our own
day Laval is an object of veneration. The Catholic university of Quebec
glories in bearing his name, and certain modern ecclesiastical
writers rarely mention him in terms less reverent than “the
virtuous prelate,” or “the holy prelate.” Nor are some of his
contemporaries less emphatic in eulogy. Mother Juchereau de Saint-Denis,
Superior of the Hôtel Dieu, wrote immediately after his death: “He
began in his tenderest years the study of perfection, and we have reason
to think that he reached it, since every virtue which Saint Paul demands
in a bishop was seen and admired in him;” and on his first arrival
in Canada, Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, Superior of the Ursulines,
wrote to her son that the choice of such a prelate was not of man, but
of God. “will not,” she adds, “say that he is a saint, but I
may say with truth that he lives like a saint and an apostle.” And
she describes his austerity of life; how he had but two servants, a
gardener--whom he lent on occasion to his needy neighbors--and a valet;
how he lived in a small hired house, saying that he would not have one
of his own if he could build it for only five sous; and how, in his
table, furniture, and bed, he showed the spirit of poverty, even, as she
thinks, to excess. His servant, a lay brother named Houssart, testified,
after his death, that he slept on a hard bed, and would not suffer it to
be changed even when it became full of fleas; and, what is more to the
purpose, that he gave fifteen hundred or two thousand francs to the
poor every year. * Houssart also gives the following specimen of his
austerities: “I have seen him keep cooked meat five, six, seven, or
eight days in the heat of summer, and when it was all mouldy and wormy
he washed it in warm water and ate it, and told me that it was very
good.” The old servant was so impressed by these and other proofs of
his master’s sanctity, that “I determined,” he says, “to keep
every thing I could that had belonged to his holy person, and after his
death to soak bits of linen in his blood when his body was opened, and
take a few bones and cartilages from his breast, cut off his hair, and
keep his clothes, and such things, to serve as most precious relics.”
These pious cares were not in vain, for the relics proved greatly in
demand.
* Lettre du Frère Houssart, ancien serviteur de Mg'r de
Laval a M. Tremblay, 1 Sept., 1708. This letter is printed,
though with one or two important omissions, in the Abeille,
Vol. I. (Quebec, 1848.)
Several portraits of Laval are extant. A drooping nose of portentous
size; a well-formed forehead; a brow strongly arched; a bright, clear
eye; scanty hair, half hidden by a black skullcap; thin lips, compressed
and rigid, betraying a spirit not easy to move or convince; features of
that indescribable cast which marks the priestly type: such is Laval, as
he looks grimly down on us from the dingy canvas of two centuries ago.
He is one of those concerning whom Protestants and Catholics, at least
ultramontane Catholics, will never agree in judgment. The task of
eulogizing him may safely be left to those of his own way of thinking.
It is for us to regard him from the standpoint of secular history. And,
first, let us credit him with sincerity. He believed firmly that the
princes and rulers of this world ought to be subject to guidance and
control at the hands of the Pope, the vicar of Christ on earth. But
he himself was the Pope’s vicar, and, so far as the bounds of Canada
extended, the Holy Father had clothed him with his own authority. The
glory of God demanded that this authority should suffer no abatement,
and he, Laval, would be guilty before Heaven if he did not uphold the
supremacy of the church over the powers both of earth and of hell.
Of the faults which he owed to nature, the principal seems to have been
an arbitrary and domineering temper. He was one of those who by nature
lean always to the side of authority; and in the English Revolution
he would inevitably have stood for the Stuarts; or, in the American
Revolution, for the Crown. But being above all things a Catholic and a
priest, he was drawn by a constitutional necessity to the ultramontane
party, or the party of centralization. He fought lustily, in his way,
against the natural man; and humility was the virtue to the culture
of which he gave his chief attention, but soil and climate were not
favorable. His life was one long assertion of the authority of the
church, and this authority was lodged in himself. In his stubborn fight
for ecclesiastical ascendancy, he was aided by the impulses of a nature
that loved to rule, and could not endure to yield. His principles
and his instinct of domination were acting in perfect unison, and
his conscience was the handmaid of his fault. Austerities and
mortifications, playing at beggar, sleeping in beds full of fleas, or
performing prodigies of gratuitous dirtiness in hospitals, however
fatal to self-respect, could avail little against influences working
so powerfully and so insidiously to stimulate the most subtle of human
vices. The history of the Roman church is full of Lavals.
The Jesuits, adepts in human nature, had made a sagacious choice when
they put forward this conscientious, zealous, dogged, and pugnacious
priest to fight their battles. Nor were they ill pleased that, for the
present, he was not Bishop of Canada, but only vicar apostolic; for,
such being the case, they could have him recalled if, on trial, they did
not like him, while an unacceptable bishop would be an evil past remedy.
Canada was entering; a state of transition. Hitherto ecclesiastical
influence had been all in all. The Jesuits, by far the most educated and
able body of men in the colony, had controlled it, not alone in things
spiritual, but virtually in things temporal also; and the governor
may be said to have been little else than a chief of police, under
the direction of the missionaries. The early governors were themselves
deeply imbued with the missionary spirit. Champlain was earnest above
all things for converting the Indians; Montmagny was half-monk, for he
was a Knight of Malta; Aillebout was so insanely pious, that he lived
with his wife like monk and nun. A change was at hand. From a mission
and a trading station, Canada was soon to become, in the true sense, a
colony; and civil government had begun to assert itself on the banks
of the St. Lawrence. The epoch of the martyrs and apostles was passing
away, and the man of the sword and the man of the gown--the soldier and
the legist--were threatening to supplant the paternal sway of priests;
or, as Laval might have said, the hosts of this world were beleaguering
the sanctuary, and he was called of Heaven to defend it. His true
antagonist, though three thousand miles away, was the great minister
Colbert, as purely a statesman as the vicar apostolic was purely a
priest. Laval, no doubt, could see behind the statesman’s back another
adversary, the devil.
Argenson was governor when the crozier and the sword began to clash,
which is merely another way of saying that he was governor when Laval
arrived. He seems to have been a man of education, moderation, and
sense, and lie was also an earnest Catholic; but if Laval had his duties
to God, so had Argenson his duties to the king, of whose authority
he was the representative and guardian. If the first collisions seem
trivial, they were no less the symptoms of a grave antagonism. Argenson
could have purchased peace only by becoming an agent of the church.
The vicar apostolic, or, as he was usually styled, the bishop, being, it
may be remembered, titular Bishop of Petræa in Arabia, presently fell
into a quarrel with the governor touching the relative position of their
seats in church,--a point which, by the way, was a subject of contention
for many years, and under several successive governors. This time
the case was referred to the ex-governor, Aillebout, and a temporary
settlement took place. * A few weeks after, on the fête of Saint
Francis Xavier, when the Jesuits were accustomed to ask the dignitaries
of the colony to dine in their refectory after mass, a fresh difficulty
arose,--Should the governor or the bishop have the higher seat at table?
The question defied solution; so the fathers invited neither of them. **
Again, on Christmas, at the midnight mass, the deacon offered incense
to the bishop, and then, in obedience to an order from him, sent a
subordinate to offer it to the governor, instead of offering it himself.
Laval further insisted that the priests of the choir should receive
incense before the governor
* Lalemant, in Journal des Jesuites, Sept., 1659.
** Ibid., Dec., 1659.
received it. Argenson resisted, and a bitter quarrel ensued. *
The late governor, Aillebout, had been churchwarden _ex officio_; ** and
in this pious community the office was esteemed as an addition to his
honors. Argenson had thus far held the same position; but Laval declared
that he should hold it no longer. Argenson, to whom the bishop had not
spoken on the subject, came soon after to a meeting of the wardens,
and, being challenged, denied Laval’s right to dismiss him. A dispute
ensued, in which the bishop, according to his Jesuit friends, used
language not very respectful to the representative of royalty. ***
On occasion of the “solemn catechism,” the bishop insisted that
the children should salute him before saluting the governor. Argenson
hearing of this, declined to come. A compromise was contrived. It was
agreed that when the rival dignitaries entered, the children should
be busied in some manual exercise which should prevent their saluting
either. Nevertheless, two boys, “enticed and set on by their
parents,” saluted the governor first, to the great indignation of
Laval. They were whipped on the next day for breach of orders. ****
Next there was a sharp quarrel about a sentence pronounced by Laval
against a heretic, to which the governor, good Catholic as he was, took
* Lalemant, in Journal des Jésuites, Dec., 1659; Lettre
d’Argenson MM. de la Compagnie de St. Sulpice.
** Livre des Délibérations de la Fabrique de Québec.
*** Journal des Jésuites, Nov., 1660
**** Ibid., Feb., 1661.
exception. * Palm Sunday came, and there could be no procession and no
distribution of branches, because the governor and the bishop could not
agree on points of precedence. ** On the day of the Fête Dieu, however,
there was a grand procession, which stopped from time to time at
temporary altars, or _reposoirs_, placed at intervals along its course.
One of these was in the fort, where the soldiers were drawn, up, waiting
the arrival of the procession. Laval demanded that they should take off
their hats. Argenson assented, and the soldiers stood uncovered. Laval
now insisted that they should kneel. The governor replied that it was
their duty as soldiers to stand; whereupon the bishop refused to stop at
the altar, and ordered the procession to move on. ***
The above incidents are set down in the private journal of the superior
of the Jesuits, which was not meant for the public eye. The bishop,
it will be seen, was, by the showing of his friends, in most cases the
aggressor. The disputes in question, 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
* Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1661.
** Ibid., Avril, 1661.
*** Ibid., Juin, 1661.
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
Hence it is not surprising to find a memorial, drawn up apparently by
Argenson, and addressed to the council of state, asking for instructions
when and how a governor--lieutenant-general for the king--ought to
receive incense, holy water, and consecrated bread; whether the said
bread should be offered him with sound of drum and fife; what should
be the position of his seat at church; and what place he should hold in
various religious ceremonies; whether in feasts, assemblies, ceremonies,
and councils of _a purely civil character_, he or the bishop was to hold
the first place; and, finally, if the bishop could excommunicate the
inhabitants or others for acts of a civil and political character, when
the said acts were pronounced lawful by the governor.
The reply to the memorial denies to the bishop the power of
excommunication in civil matters, assigns to him the second place in
meetings and ceremonies of a civil character, and is very reticent as to
the rest. *
Argenson had a brother, a counsellor of state, and a fast friend of the
Jesuits. Laval was in correspondence with him, and, apparently sure of
sympathy, wrote to him touching his relations with the governor. “Your
brother,” he begins,
* Advis et Résolutions demandés sur la Nouvelle France.
“received me on my arrival with extraordinary kindness;” but he
proceeds to say that, perceiving with sorrow that he entertained a
groundless distrust of those good servants of God, the Jesuit fathers,
he, the bishop, thought it his duty to give him in private a candid
warning which ought to have done good, but which, to his surprise, the
governor had taken amiss, and had conceived, in consequence, a prejudice
against his monitor. *
Argenson, on his part, writes to the same brother, at about the same
time. “The Bishop of Petræa is so stiff in opinion, and so often
transported by his zeal beyond the rights of his position, that he makes
no difficulty in encroaching on the functions of others; and this with
so much heat that he will listen to nobody. A few days ago he carried
off a servant girl of one of the inhabitants here, and placed her by
his own authority in the Ursuline convent, on the sole pretext that
he wanted to have her instructed, thus depriving her master of her
services, though he had been at great expense in bringing her from
France. This inhabitant is M. Denis, who, not knowing who had carried
her off, came to me with a petition to get her out of the convent. I
kept the petition three days without answering it, to prevent the affair
from being noised abroad. The Reverend Father Lalemant, with whom
I communicated on the subject, and who greatly blamed the Bishop of
Petræa, did all in his power to have the girl given up quietly, but
* Lettre de Laval à M. d’Argenson, frère du Gouverneur, 20
Oct, 1659.
without the least success, so that I was forced to answer the petition,
and permit M. Denis to take his servant wherever he should find her;
and, if I had not used means to bring about an accommodation, and if M.
Denis, on the refusal which was made him to give her up, had brought the
matter into court, I should have been compelled to take measures which
would have caused great scandal, and all from the self-will of the
Bishop of Petræa, who says that _a bishop can do what he likes_, and
threatens nothing but excommunication.” *
In another letter he speaks in the same strain of this redundancy of
zeal on the part of the bishop, which often, he says, takes the shape of
obstinacy and encroachment on the rights of others. “It is greatly to
be wished,” he observes, “that the Bishop of Petræa would give
his confidence to the Reverend Father Lalemant instead of Father
Ragueneau;” ** and he praises Lalemant as a person of excellent sense.
“It would be well,” he adds, “if the rest of their community were
of the same mind; for in that case they would not mix themselves up with
various matters in the way they do, and would leave the government to
those to whom God has given it in charge.”***
One of Laval’s modern admirers, the worthy Abbé Ferland, after
confessing that his zeal may now and then have savored of excess, adds
in his defence, that a vigorous hand was needed to
* “--Qui dict quun Evesque peult ce qu’il veult et ne
menace que dexcommunication.” Lettre d’Argenson a son
Frère, 1659.
** Lettre d’Argenson à son Frère, 21 Oct., 1659.
*** Ibid., 7 July, 1660.
compel the infant colony to enter “the good path;” meaning, of
course, the straitest path of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. We may hereafter
see more of this stringent system of colonial education, its success,
and the results that followed.