THE CHURCH IN NEW FRANCE
Nearly all that was distinctive in the life of old Canada links itself
in one way or another with the Catholic religion. From first to last
in the history of New France the most pervading trait was the loyalty
of its people to the church of their fathers. Intendants might come
and go; governors abode their destined hour and went their way; but
the apostles of the ancient faith never for one moment released their
grip upon the hearts and minds of the Canadians. During two centuries
the political life of the colony ran its varied rounds; the habits of
the people were transformed with the coming of material prosperity:
but the Church went on unchanged, unchanging. One may praise the
steadfastness with which the Church fought for what its bishops
believed to be right, or one may, on the other hand, decry the
arrogance of its pretensions to civil power and its hampering
conservatism; but as the great central fact in the history of New
France, the hegemony of Catholicism cannot be ignored.
When Frenchmen began the work of founding a dominion in the New World,
their own land was convulsed with religious troubles. Not only were
the Huguenots breaking from the trammels of the old religion, but
within the Catholic Church, itself in France there were two great
contending factions. One group strove for the preservation of the
Galilean liberties, the special rights of the French King and the
French bishops in the ecclesiastical government of the land, while
the other claimed for the Pope a supremacy over all earthly rulers in
matters of spiritual concern. It was not a difference on points of
doctrine, for the Galileans did not question the headship of the
Papacy in things of the spirit. What they insisted upon was the
circumscribed nature of the papal power in temporal matters within the
realm of France, particularly with regard to the right of appointment
to ecclesiastical positions with endowed revenues. Bishops, priests,
and religious orders ranged themselves on one side or the other, for
it was a conflict in which there could be no neutrality. As the royal
authorities were heart and soul with the Galileans, it was natural
enough that priests of this group should gain the first religious
foothold in the colony. The earliest priests brought to the colony
were members of the Récollet Order. They came with Champlain in 1615,
and made their headquarters in Quebec at the suggestion of the King's
secretary. For ten years they labored in the colony, striving bravely
to clear the way for a great missionary crusade.
But the day of the Récollets in New France was not long. In 1625 came
the advance guard of another religious order, the militant Jesuits,
bringing with them their traditions of unwavering loyalty to the
Ultramontane cause. The work of the Récollets had, on the whole, been
disappointing, for their numbers and their resources proved too small
for effective progress. During ten years of devoted labor they had
scarcely been able to make any impression upon the great wilderness of
heathenism that lay on all sides. In view of the apparent futility of
their efforts, the coming of the Jesuits--suggested, it may be, by
Champlain--was probably not unwelcome to them. Richelieu, moreover,
had now brought his Ultramontane sympathies close to the seat of royal
power, so that the King no longer was in a position to oppose the
project. At any rate the Jesuits sailed for Canada, and their arrival
forms a notable landmark in the history of the colony. Their dogged
zeal and iron persistence carried them to points which missionaries
of no other religious order would have reached. For the Jesuits were,
above all things else, the harbingers of a militant faith. Their
organization and their methods admirably fitted them to be the
pioneers of the Cross in new lands. They were men of action, seeking
to win their crown of glory and their reward through intense physical
and spiritual exertions, not through long seasons of prayer and
meditation in cloistered seclusion. Loyola, the founder of the Order,
gave to the world the nucleus of a crusading host, disciplined as no
army ever was. If the Jesuits could not achieve the spiritual conquest
of the New World, it was certain that no others could. And this
conquest they did achieve. The whole course of Catholic missionary
effort throughout the Western Hemisphere was shaped by members of the
Jesuit Order.
Only four of these priests came to Quebec in 1625. Although it was
intended that others should follow at once, their number was not
substantially increased until seven years later, when the troubles
with England were brought to an end and the colony was once more
securely in the hands of the French. Then the Jesuits came steadily,
a few arriving with almost every ship, and either singly or together
they were sent off to the Indian settlements--to the Hurons around
the Georgian Bay, to the Algonquins north of the Ottawa, and to the
Iroquois south of the Lakes. The physical vigor, the moral heroism,
and the unquenchable religious zeal of these missionaries were
qualities exemplified in a measure and to a degree which are beyond
the power of any pen to describe. Historians of all creeds have
tendered homage to their self-sacrifice and zeal, and never has work
of human hand or spirit been more worthy of tribute. The Jesuit went,
often alone, where no others dared to go, and he faced unknown dangers
which had all the possibilities of torture and martyrdom. Nor did this
energy waste itself in flashes of isolated triumph. The Jesuit was a
member of an efficient organization, skillfully guided by inspired
leaders and carrying its extensive work of Christianization with
machine-like thoroughness through the vastness of five continents.
We are too apt to think only of the individual missionary's glowing
spirit and rugged faith, his picturesque strivings against great odds,
and to regard him as a guerilla warrior against the hosts of darkness.
Had he been this, and nothing more, his efforts must have been
altogether in vain. The great services which the Jesuit missionary
rendered in the New World, both to his country and to his creed, were
due not less to the matchless organization of the Order to which he
belonged than to qualities of courage, patience, and fortitude which
he himself showed as a missionary.
During the first few years of Jesuit effort among the Indians of New
France the results were pitifully small. The Hurons, among whom the
missionaries put forth their initial labors, were poor stock, even as
red men went. The minds of these half-nomadic and dull-witted savages
were filled with gross superstitions, and their senses had been
brutalized by the incessant torments of their Iroquois enemies. Amid
the toils and hazards and discomforts of so insecure and wandering a
life the Jesuits found little opportunity for soundly instructing the
Hurons in the faith. Hence there were but few neophytes in these early
years. By 1640 the missionaries could count only a hundred converts in
a population of many thousands, and even this little quota included
many infants who had died soon after receiving the rites of baptism.
More missionaries kept coming, however; the work steadily broadened;
and the posts of service were multiplied. In due time the footprints
of the Jesuits were everywhere, from the St. Lawrence to the
Mississippi, from the tributaries of the Hudson to the regions north
of the Ottawa. Le Jeune, Massé, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Ragueneau, Le
Dablon, Jogues, Gamier, Raymbault, Péron, Moyne, Allouez, Druilletes,
Chaumonot, Ménard, Bressani, Daniel, Chabanel, and a hundred
others,--they soon formed that legion whose works of courage and
devotion stand forth so prominently in the early annals of New France.
Once at their stations in the upper country, the missionaries
regularly sent down to the Superior of the Order at Quebec their
full reports of progress, difficulties, and hopes, all mingled with
interesting descriptions of Indian customs, folklore, and life. It is
no wonder that these narratives, "jotted down hastily," as Le Jeune
tells us, "now in one place, now in another, sometimes on water,
sometimes on land," were often crude, or that they required careful
editing before being sent home to France for publication. In their
printed form, however, these _Rélations des Jésuites_ gained a wide
circle of European readers; they inspired more missionaries to come,
and they drew from well-to-do laymen large donations of money for
carrying on the crusade.
The royal authorities also gave their earnest support, for they saw
in the Jesuit missionary not merely a torchbearer of his faith or a
servant of the Church. They appreciated his loyalty and remembered
that he never forgot his King, nor shirked his duty to the cause of
France among the tribes. Every mission post thus became an embassy,
and every Jesuit an ambassador of his race, striving to strengthen the
bonds of friendship between the people to whom he went and the people
from whom he came. The French authorities at Quebec were not slow to
recognize what an ever-present help the Jesuit could be in times of
Indian trouble. One governor expressed the situation with fidelity
when he wrote to the home authorities that, "although the interests of
the Gospel do not require us to keep missionaries in all the Indian
villages, the interests of the civil government for the advantage of
trade must induce us to manage things so that we may always have at
least one of them there." It must therefore be admitted that, when the
civil authorities did encourage the missions, they did not always do
so with a purely spiritual motive in mind.
As the political and commercial agent of his people, the Jesuit had
great opportunities, and in this capacity he usually gave a full
measure of service. After he had gained the confidence of the tribes,
the missionary always succeeded in getting the first inkling of what
was going on in the way of inter-tribal intrigues. He learned to
fathom the Indian mind and to perceive the redskin's motives. He was
thus able to communicate to Quebec the information and advice which
so often helped the French to outwit their English rivals. As
interpreters in the conduct of negotiations and the making of treaties
the Jesuits were also invaluable. How much, indeed, these blackrobes
achieved for the purely secular interests of the French colony, for
its safety from sudden Indian attack, for the development of its
trade, and for its general upbuilding, will never be known. The
missionary did not put these things on paper, but he rendered services
which in all probability were far greater than posterity will ever
realize.
It was not, however, with the conversion of the Indians or with the
service of French secular interests among the savages that the work of
the Jesuits was wholly, or even chiefly, concerned. During the middle
years of the seventeenth century, these services at the outposts
of French territory may have been most significant, for the French
population along the shores of the St. Lawrence remained small, the
settlements were closely huddled together, and a few priests could
serve their spiritual needs. The popular impression of Jesuit
enterprises in the New World is connected almost wholly with work
among the Indians. This pioneer phase of the Jesuit's work was
picturesque, and historians have had a great deal to say about it. It
was likewise of this service in the depths of the interior that the
missionary himself wrote most frequently. But as the colony grew and
broadened its bounds until its settlements stretched all the way from
the Saguenay to Montreal and beyond, a far larger number of _curés_
was needed. Before the old régime came to a close there were far
more Frenchmen than Indians within the French sphere of influence
in America, and they required by far the greater share of Jesuit
ministration, and, long before the old dominion ended, the Indian
missions had to take a subordinate place in the general program of
Jesuit undertakings. The outposts in the Indian country were the chief
scene of Jesuit labors from 1615 to about 1700, when the emphasis
shifted to the St. Lawrence valley. Some of the mission fields held
their own to the end, but in general they failed to make much headway
during the last half-century of French rule. The Church in the settled
portions of the colony, however, kept on with its steady progress in
achievement and power.
New France was the child of missionary fervor. Even from the outset,
in the scattered settlements along the St. Lawrence, the interests
of religion were placed on a strictly missionary basis. There were
so-called parishes in the colony almost from its beginning, but
not until 1722 was the entire colony set off into recognized
ecclesiastical parishes, each with a fixed _curé_ in charge. Through
all the preceding years each village or _côte_ had been served by a
missionary, by a movable _curé_, or by a priest sent out from
the Seminary at Quebec. No priest was tied to any parish but was
absolutely at the immediate beck and call of the bishop. Some reason
for this unsettled arrangement might be found in the conditions
under which the colony developed in its early years; with its sparse
population ranging far and wide, with its lack of churches and
of _presbytères_ in which the priest might reside. But the real
explanation of its long continuance lies in the fact that, if regular
_curés_ were appointed, the seigneurs would lay claim to various
rights of nomination or patronage, whereas the bishop could control
absolutely the selection of missionary priests and could thus more
easily carry through his policy of ecclesiastical centralization.
Not only in this particular, but in every other phase of religious
life and organization during these crusading days in Canada, one must
reckon not only with the logic of the situation, but also with the
dominating personality of the first and greatest Ultramontane, Bishop
Laval. Though not himself a Jesuit, for no member of the Order could
be a bishop, Laval was in tune with their ideals and saw eye to eye
with the Jesuits on every point of religious and civil policy.
François Xavier de Laval, Abbé de Montigny, was born in 1622, a scion
of the great house of Montmorency. He was therefore of high nobility,
the best-born of all the many thousands who came to New France
throughout its history. As a youth his had come into close association
with the Jesuits, and had spent four years in the famous Hermitage at
Caen, that Jesuit stronghold which served so long as the nursery for
the spiritual pioneers of early Canada. When he came to Quebec as
Vicar-Apostolic in 1659, he was only thirty-seven years of age.
His position in the colony at the time of his arrival was somewhat
unusual, for although he was to be in command of the colony's
spiritual forces. New France was not yet organized as a diocese and
could not be so organized until the Pope and the King should agree
upon the exact status of the Church in the French colonial dominions.
Laval was nevertheless given his titular rank from the ancient see of
Petraea in Arabia which had long since been _in partibus infidelium_
and hence had no bishop within its bounds. From his first arrival in
Canada his was Bishop Laval, but without a diocese over which he could
actually hold sway. His commission as Vicar-Apostolic gave him power
enough, however, and his responsibility was to the Pope alone.
For the tasks which, he was sent to perform, Laval had eminent
qualifications. A haughty spirit went with the ultra-blue blood in his
veins; he had a temperament that loved to lead and to govern, and that
could not endure to yield or to lag behind. His intellectual talents
were high beyond question, and to them he added the blessing of a
rugged physical frame. No one ever came to a new land with more
definite ideas of what he wanted to do or with a more unswerving
determination to do it in his own way.
It was not long before the stamp of Laval's firm hand was laid upon
the life of the colony. In due course, too, he found himself at odds
with the governor. The dissensions smouldered at first, and then broke
out into a blaze that warmed the passions of all elements in the
colony. The exact origin of the feud is somewhat obscure, and it is
not necessary to put down here the details of its development to the
war _à outrance_ which soon engaged the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities in the colony. In the background was the question of the
_coureurs-de-bois_ and the liquor traffic which now became a definite
issue and which remained the storm centre of colonial politics for
many generations. The merchants insisted that if this traffic were
extinguished it would involve the ruin of the French hold upon the
Indian trade. The bishop and the priests, on the other hand, were
ready to fight the liquor traffic to the end and to exorcise it as the
greatest blight upon the New World. Quebec soon became a cockpit where
the battle of these two factions raged. Each had its ups and downs,
until in the end the traffic remained, but under a makeshift system of
regulation.
To portray Laval and his associates as always in bitter conflict with
the civil power, nevertheless, would be to paint a false picture.
Church and state were not normally at variance in their views and
aims. They clashed fiercely on many occasions, it is true, but after
their duels they shook hands and went to work with a will at the
task of making the colony stand upon its own feet. Historians have
magnified these bickerings out of all proportion. Squabbles over
matters of precedence at ceremonies, over the rate of the tithes, and
over the curbing of the _coureurs-de-bois_ did not take the major
share of the Church's attention. For the greater part of two whole
centuries it loyally aided the civil power in all things wherein the
two could work together for good.
And these ways of assistance were many. For example the Church,
through its various institutions and orders, rendered a great service
to colonial agriculture. As the greatest landowner in New France,
it set before the seigneurs and the habitants an example of what
intelligent methods of farming and hard labor could accomplish in
making the land yield its increase. The King was lavish in his grants
of territory to the Church: the Jesuits received nearly a million
_arpents_ as their share of the royal bounty; the bishop and the
Quebec Seminary, the Sulpicians, and the Ursulines, about as much
more. Of the entire granted acreage of New France the Church
controlled about one-quarter, so that its position as a great
landowner was even stronger in the colony than at home. Nor did it
fold its talents in a napkin. Colonists were brought from France,
farms were prepared for them in the church seigneuries, and the new
settlers were guided and encouraged through, the troublous years of
pioneering. With both money and brains at its command, the Church was
able to keep its own lands in the front line of agricultural progress.
When in 1722 the whole colony was marked off into definite
ecclesiastical divisions, seventy-two parishes were established, and
nearly one hundred _curés_ were assigned to them. As time went on,
both parishes and _curés_ increased in number, so that every locality
had its spiritual leader who was also a philosopher and guide in all
secular matters. The priest thus became a part of the community and
never lost touch with his people. The habitant of New France for his
part never neglected his Church on week-days. The priest and the
Church were with him at work and at play, the spirit and the life of
every community. Though paid a meager stipend, the _curé_ worked hard
and always proved a laborer far more than worthy of his hire. The
clergy of New France never became a caste, a privileged order; they
did not live on the fruits of other men's labor, but gave to the
colony far more than the colony ever gave to them.
As for the Church revenues, these came from several sources. The
royal treasury contributed large sums, but, as it was not full to
overflowing, the King preferred to give his benefactions in generous
grants of land. Yet the royal subsidies amounted to many thousand
livres each year. The diocese of Quebec was endowed with the revenues
of three French abbeys. Wealthy laymen in France followed the royal
example and sent contributions from time to time, frequently of large
amount. While the Company of One Hundred Associates controlled the
trade of the colony, it made from its treasury some provisions for
the support of the missionaries. After 1663, a substantial source of
ecclesiastical income was the tithe, an ecclesiastical tax levied
annually upon all produce of the land, and fixed in 1663 at
one-thirteenth. Four years later it was reduced to one-twenty-sixth,
and Bishop Laval's strenuous efforts to have the old rate restored
were never successful.
In education, yet another field of colonial life, the Church rendered
some service. Here the civil authorities did nothing at all, and had
it not been for the Church the whole colony would have grown up in
absolute illiteracy. A school for boys was established at Quebec in
Champlain's day, and during the next hundred and fifty years it was
followed by about thirty others. More than a dozen elementary schools
for girls were also established under ecclesiastical auspices. Yet
the amount of secular education imparted by all these seminaries was
astoundingly small, and they did but little to leaven the general
illiteracy of the population. Only the children of the towns attended
the schools, and the program of study was of the most elementary
character. Religious instruction was given the first place and
received so much attention that there was little time in school hours
for anything else. The girls fared better than the boys on the whole,
for the nuns taught them to sew and to knit as well as to read and to
write.
So far as secular education was concerned, therefore, the English
conquest found the colony in almost utter stagnation. Not one in five
hundred among the habitants, it was said, could read or write. Outside
the immediate circle of clergy, officials, and notaries, ignorance of
even the rudiments of education was almost universal. There were no
newspapers in the colony and very few books save those used in the
services of worship. Greysolon Du Lhut, the king of the voyageurs, for
example, was a man of means and education, but his entire library,
as disclosed by his will, consisted of a world atlas and a set of
Josephus. The priests did not encourage the reading of secular books,
and La Hontan recounts the troubles which he had in keeping one
militant _curé_ from tearing his precious volumes to pieces. New
France was at that period not a land where freedom dwelt with
knowledge.
Intellectually, the people of New France comprised on the one hand a
small élite and on the other a great unlettered mass. There was
no middle class between. Yet the population of the colony always
contained, especially among its officials and clergy, a sprinkling of
educated and scholarly men. These have given us a literature of travel
and description which is extensive and of high, quality. No other
American colony of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries put so
much, of its annals into print; the _Rélations_ of the Jesuits alone
were sufficient to fill forty-one volumes, and they form but a small
part of the entire literary output.