_LaVal’s Visit to Court.--The Seminary.--Zeal oF the Bishop.--His
Eulogists.--Church and State.--Attitude of Laval._
|That memorable journey of Laval to court, which caused the dissolution
of the Company of New France, the establishment of the Supreme Council,
the recall of Avaugour, and the appointment of Mézy, had yet other
objects and other results. Laval, vicar apostolic and titular bishop of
Petræa, wished to become in title, as in fact, bishop of Quebec. Thus
he would gain an increase of dignity and authority, necessary, as he
thought, in his conflicts with the civil power; “for,” he wrote to
the cardinals of the Propaganda, “I have learned from long experience
how little security my character of vicar apostolic gives me against
those charged with political affairs: I mean the officers of the Crown,
perpetual rivals and contemners of the authority of the church.” *
* For a long extract from this letter, copied from the
original in the archives of the Propaganda at Rome, see
Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 432
This reason was for the Pope and the cardinals. It may well be believed
that he held a different language to the king. To him he urged that the
bishopric was needed to enforce order, suppress sin, and crush
heresy. Both Louis XIV. and the queen mother favored his wishes; * but
difficulties arose and interminable disputes ensued on the question,
whether the proposed bishopric should depend immediately on the Pope
or on the Archbishop of Rouen. It was a revival of the old quarrel of
Gallican and ultramontane. Laval, weary of hope deferred, at length
declared that he would leave the colony if he could not be its bishop in
title; and in 1674, after eleven years of delay, the king yielded to the
Pope’s demands, and the vicar apostolic became first bishop of Quebec.
If Laval had to wait for his mitre, he found no delay and no difficulty
in attaining another object no less dear to him. He wished to provide
priests for Canada, drawn from the Canadian population, fed with sound
and wholesome doctrine, reared under his eye, and moulded by his hand.
To this end he proposed to establish a seminary at Quebec. The plan
found favor with the pious king, and a decree signed by his hand
sanctioned and confirmed it. The new seminary was to be a corporation
of priests under a superior chosen by the bishop; and, besides its
functions of instruction, it was vested with distinct and extraordinary
powers. Laval,
* Anne d'Autriche a Laval, 23 Avril, 1662; Louis XIV. au
Pape, 28 Jan., 1664; Louis XIV. au Duc de Créquy,
Ambassadeur à Rome, 28 June, 1664.
an organizer and a disciplinarian by nature and training, would fain
subject the priests of his diocese to a control as complete as that of
monks in a convent. In France, the curé or parish priest was, with rare
exceptions, a fixture in his parish, whence he could be removed only for
grave reasons, and through prescribed forms of procedure. Hence he was
to a certain degree independent of the bishop. Laval, on the contrary,
demanded that the Canadian curé should be removable at his will, and
thus placed in the position of a missionary, to come and go at the order
of his superior. In fact, the Canadian parishes were for a long time so
widely scattered, so feeble in population, and so miserably poor, that,
besides the disciplinary advantages of this plan, its adoption was at
first almost a matter of necessity. It added greatly to the power of
the church; and, as the colony increased, the king and the minister
conceived an increasing distrust of it. Instructions for the
“fixation” of the curés were repeatedly sent to the colony, and
the bishop, while professing to obey, repeatedly evaded them. Various
fluctuations and changes took place; but Laval had built on strong
foundations, and at this day the system of removable curés prevails in
most of the Canadian parishes. *
Thus he formed his clergy into a family with
* On the establishment of the seminary. Mandement de
l’Evêque de Petrée, pour l’Etablissement du Séminaire de
Québec; Approbation du Roy (Edits et Ordonnances, I. 33,
35); La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. VI.; Esquisse de la Vie de
Laval, Appendix. Various papers bearing on the subject are
printed in the Canadian Abeille, from originals in the
archives of the seminary.
himself at its head. His seminary, the mother who had reared them, was
further charged to maintain them, nurse them in sickness, and support
them in old age. Under her maternal roof the tired priest found repose
among his brethren; and thither every year he repaired from the charge
of his flock in the wilderness, to freshen his devotion and animate his
zeal by a season of meditation and prayer.
The difficult task remained to provide the necessary funds. Laval
imposed a tithe of one-thirteenth on all products of the soil, or,
as afterwards settled, on grains alone. This tithe was paid to the
seminary, and by the seminary to the priests. The people, unused to such
a burden, clamored and resisted; and Mézy, in his disputes with the
bishop, had taken advantage of their discontent. It became necessary
to reduce the tithe to a twenty-sixth, which, as there was little or
no money among the inhabitants, was paid in kind. Nevertheless, the
scattered and impoverished settlers grudged even this contribution to
the support of a priest whom many of them rarely saw; and the collection
of it became a matter of the greatest difficulty and uncertainty. How
the king came to the rescue, we shall hereafter see.
Besides the great seminary where young men were trained for the
priesthood, there was the lesser seminary where boys were educated in
the hope that they would one day take orders. This school began in 1668,
with eight French and six Indian pupils, in the old house of Madame
Couillard; but so far as the Indians were concerned it was a failure.
Sooner or later they all ran wild in the woods, carrying with them as
fruits of their studies a sufficiency of prayers, offices, and chants
learned by rote, along with a feeble smattering of Latin and rhetoric,
which they soon dropped by the way. There was also a sort of farm-school
attached to the seminary, for the training of a humbler class of pupils.
It was established at the parish of St. Joachim, below Quebec, where
the children of artisans and peasants were taught farming and various
mechanical arts, and thoroughly grounded in the doctrine and discipline
of the church. * The Great and Lesser Seminary still subsist, and form
one of the most important Roman Catholic institutions on this continent.
To them has recently been added the Laval University, resting on the
same foundation, and supported by the same funds.
Whence were these funds derived? Laval, in order to imitate the poverty
of the apostles, had divested himself of his property before he came to
Canada; otherwise there is little doubt that in the fulness of his
zeal he would have devoted it to his favorite object. But if he had no
property he had influence, and his family had both influence and wealth.
He acquired vast grants of land in the best parts of Canada. Some of
these he sold or exchanged; others he retained till the year
*Annales du Petit Séminaire de Quebec, see Abeille, Vol. I.;
Notice Historique sur le Petit Séminaire de Quebec, Ibid.,
Vol. II.; Notice Historique sur la Paroisse de St. Joachim,
Ibid., Vol. I. The Abeille is a journal published by the
seminary.
1680, when he gave them, with nearly all else that he then possessed, to
his seminary at Quebec. The lands with which he thus endowed it included
the seigniories of the Petite Nation, the island of Jesus, and Beaupré.
The last is of great extent, and at the present day of immense value.
Beginning a few miles below Quebec, it borders the St. Lawrence for a
distance of sixteen leagues, and is six leagues in depth, measured
from the river. From these sources the seminary still draws an abundant
revenue, though its seigniorial rights were commuted on the recent
extinction of the feudal tenure in Canada.
Well did Laval deserve that his name should live in that of the
university which a century and a half after his death owed its existence
to his bounty. This father of the Canadian church, who has left so deep
an impress on one of the communities which form the vast population of
North America, belonged to a type of character to which an even justice
is rarely done. With the exception of the Canadian Garneau, a liberal
Catholic, those who have treated of him, have seen him through a medium
intensely Romanist, coloring, hiding, and exaggerating by turns both his
actions and the traits of his character. Tried by the Romanist standard,
his merits were great; though the extraordinary influence which he
exercised in the affairs of the colony were, as already observed, by
no means due to his spiritual graces alone. To a saint sprung from
the _haute noblesse_, Earth and Heaven were alike propitious. When the
vicar general Colombière pronounced his funeral eulogy in the sounding
periods of Bossuet, he did not fail to exhibit him on the ancestral
pedestal where his virtues would shine with redoubled lustre. “The
exploits of the heroes of the House of Montmorency,” exclaims the
reverend orator, “form one of the fairest chapters in the annals of
Old France; the heroic acts of charity, humility, and faith, achieved by
a Montmorency, form one of the fairest in the annals of New France. The
combats, victories, and conquests of the Montmorency in Europe
would fill whole volumes; and so, too, would the triumphs won by a
Montmorency, in America, over sin, passion, and the devil.” Then he
crowns the high-born prelate with a halo of fourfold saintship. “It
was with good reason that Providence permitted him to be called Francis:
for the virtues of all the saints of that name were combined in him; the
zeal of Saint Francis Xavier, the charity of Saint Francis of Sales,
the poverty of Saint Francis of Assissi, the self-mortification of Saint
Francis Borgia; but poverty was the mistress of his heart, and he loved
her with incontrollable transports.”
The stories which Colombière proceeds to tell of Laval’s asceticism
are confirmed by other evidence, and are, no doubt, true. Nor is there
any reasonable doubt that, had the bishop stood in the place of Brebeuf
or Charles Lalemant, he would have suffered torture and death like them.
But it was his lot to strive, not against infidel savages, but against
countrymen and Catholics, who had no disposition to burn him, and would
rather have done him reverence than wrong.
To comprehend his actions and motives, it is necessary to know his ideas
in regard to the relations of church and state. They were those of the
extreme ultramontanes, which a recent Jesuit preacher has expressed with
tolerable distinctness. In a sermon uttered in the Church of Notre Dame,
at Montreal, on the first of November, 1872, he thus announced them.
“The supremacy and infallibility of the Pope; the independence and
liberty of the church; _the subordination and submission of the state to
the church_; in case of conflict between them, the church to decide, the
state to submit: for whoever follows and defends these principles,
life and a blessing; for whoever rejects and combats them, death and a
curse.” *
These were the principles which Laval and the Jesuits strove to make
good. Christ was to rule in Canada through his deputy the bishop, and
God’s law was to triumph over the laws of man. As in the halcyon days
of Champlain and Montmagny, the governor was to be the right hand of the
church, to wield the earthly sword at her bidding, and the council was
to be the agent of her high behests.
France was drifting toward the triumph of the _parti dévot_, the
sinister reign of petticoat and cassock, the era of Maintenon and
Tellier, and the
* This sermon was preached by Father Braun, S. J., on
occasion of the “Golden Wedding,” or fiftieth anniversary,
of Bishop Bourget of Montreal. A large body of the Canadian
clergy were present, some of whom thought his expressions
too emphatic. A translation by another Jesuit is published
in the “Montreal Weekly Herald” of Nov. 2, 1872; and the
above extract is copied _verbatim_.
fatal atrocities of the dragonnades. Yet the advancing tide of priestly
domination did not flow smoothly. The unparalleled prestige which
surrounded the throne of the young king, joined to his quarrels with the
Pope and divisions in the church itself, disturbed, though they could
not check its progress. In Canada it was otherwise. The colony had been
ruled by priests from the beginning, and it only remained to continue in
her future the law of her past. She was the fold of Christ; the wolf
of civil government was among the flock, and Laval and the Jesuits,
watchful shepherds, were doing their best to chain and muzzle him.
According to Argenson, Laval had said, “A bishop can do what he
likes;” and his action answered reasonably well to his words. He
thought himself above human law. In vindicating the assumed rights of
the church, he invaded the rights of others, and used means from which
a healthy conscience would have shrunk. All his thoughts and sympathies
had run from childhood in ecclesiastical channels, and he cared for
nothing outside the church. Prayer, meditation, and asceticism had
leavened and moulded him. During four years he had been steeped in the
mysticism of the Hermitage, which had for its aim the annihilation of
self, and through self-annihilation the absorption into God. * He
had passed from a life of visions to a life of action. Earnest to
fanaticism, he saw but one great object, the glory of God on earth. He
was penetrated by the poisonous casuistry of the Jesuits,
* See the maxims of Bernieres published by La Tour.
based on the assumption that all means are permitted when the end is the
service of God; and as Laval, in his own opinion, was always doing the
service of God, while his opponents were always doing that of the devil,
he enjoyed, in the use of means, a latitude of which we have seen him
avail himself.
II. THE COLONY AND THE KING.