Laval Versus Queylus

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.

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Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians. Continuing Chapter 4.

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.”

[Eloge funèbre de Messire François Xavier de Laval- Montmorency, par Messire de la Colombière, Vicaire Général.]

In truth, Laval’s zeal was boundless, and the exploits of self-humiliation recorded of him were unspeakably revolting. [1] Bernières himself regarded 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.

[1: 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.]

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. [2] 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 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.

[2: See the famous Quatre Articles of 1682, in which the liberties of the Gallican Church are asserted.]

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 program 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. [3] In the question of papal supremacy, as in most things else, Laval was of one mind with them.

[3: For example, not long after this time, the Jesuits, having a dispute with Innocent XI., threw themselves into the party of opposition.]

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, 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. [4] He was but thirty-six years of age, but even when a boy he could scarcely have seemed young.

[4: 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.]

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, [5] 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 partisans, the arm of the vicar apostolic was long enough to reach him.

[5: Journal des Jésuites, Sept., 1657.]

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.[6] 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. [7] By these means, writes Father Lalemant, order reigned for a season in the church.

[6: Lettre du Roi à d’Argenson, 14 Mai, 1659.]

[7: Belmont, Histoire du Canada, a.d. 1659. Memoir by Abbé d’Allet, in Morale Pratique des Jésuites, XXXIV. 725.]

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. [8] Queylus, however, repaired to Rome; but even

[8: 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, [9] to the extreme wrath of Laval.

[9: Journal des Jésuites, Août, 1661.]

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. [10] At the same time he demanded of the governor that he should interpose the civil power to prevent Queylus from leaving Quebec. [11] 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

[10: Lettre de Laval à Queylus, 4 Août, 1661.]

[11: Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, Ibid.]

due to him, the vicar apostolic. [12] At the same time he sent another to the offending abbé, threatening to suspend him from priestly functions if he persisted in his rebellion. [13]

[12: Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, 5 Août, 1661.]

[13: Lettre de Laval a Queylus, Ibid.]

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 dispatched a letter after him, declaring him suspended _ipso facto_, if he did not instantly return and make his submission. [14] 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, [15] now reluctantly interposed the secular arm, and Queylus was again compelled to return to France. [16]

[14: Ibid, 6 Août, 1661.]

[15: Lettre du Roi à d’Argenson, 13 Mai, 1660.]

[16: For the governor’s attitude in this affair, consult the Papiers d’Argentan, containing his dispatches.]

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 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.”

[Lettre de Laval au Pape, 22 Oct., 1661. Printed by Faillon, from the original in the archives of the Propaganda.]

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.

– 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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