Jansenist Heresy Reaches Canada

The Jansenist doctrines of election and salvation by grace were to the Jesuits an abomination.

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Continuing Chapter 4.

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?” [1] 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 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. [2] “He was as crazy at sight of a Jesuit,” writes an adverse biographer, “as a mad dog at sight of water.” [3] 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.[4]

[1: Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.]

[2: Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.]

[3: Viger, Notice Historique sur l’Abbé de Queylus.]

[4: Papiers d’Argenson.]

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 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 molded 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. [5] 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.[6]

[5: See Jesuits in North America, chap. xiv.]

[6: La Tour, Vie de Laval, gives his maxims at length.]

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 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.

[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.]

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 subtle 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 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.

[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,]

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 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.

[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.]

“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.”

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 4 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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