Parkman Vol 4, Chapter 19

Conflicts between church and state in French Canada were in a peculiar way.

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

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada. Beginning chapter 19.

When Laval and the Jesuits procured the recall of Mézy, they achieved a seeming triumph; yet it was but a defeat in disguise. While ordering home the obnoxious governor, the king and Colbert made a practical assertion of their power too strong to be resisted. A vice-regal officer, a governor, an intendant, and a regiment of soldiers, were silent but convincing proofs that the mission days of Canada were over, and the dream of a theocracy dispelled forever. The ecclesiastics read the signs of the times, and for a while seemed to accept the situation.

The king on his part, in vindicating the civil power, had shown a studious regard to the sensibilities of the bishop and his allies. The lieutenant-general Tracy, a zealous devotee, and the intendant Talon, who at least professed to be one, were not men to offend the clerical party needlessly. In the choice of Courcelle, the governor, a little less caution had been shown. His chief business was to fight the Iroquois, for which he was well fitted, but he presently showed signs of a willingness to fight the Jesuits also. The colonists liked him for his lively and impulsive speech; but the priests were of a different mind, and so, too, was his colleague Talon, a prudent person who studied the amenities of life and knew how to pursue his ends with temper and moderation. On the subject of the clergy he and the governor substantially agreed, but the ebullitions of the one and the smooth discretion of the other were mutually repugnant to both. Talon complained of his colleague’s impetuosity; and Colbert directed him to use his best efforts to keep Courcelle within bounds and prevent him from publicly finding fault with the bishop and the Jesuits. [1] Next we find the minister writing to Courcelle himself to soothe his ruffled temper, and enjoining him to act discreetly, “because,” said Colbert, “as the colony grows the king’s authority will grow with it, and the authority of the priests will be brought back in time within lawful bounds.” [2]

[1: Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.]

[2: Colbert a Courcelle, 19 Mai, 1669]

Meanwhile, Talon had been ordered to observe carefully the conduct of the bishop and the Jesuits, “who,” says the minister, “have hitherto nominated governors for the king, and used every means to procure the recall of those chosen without their participation; [3] filled offices with their adherents, and tolerated no secular priests except those of one mind with them.” [4] Talon, therefore, under the veil of a reverent courtesy, sharply watched them. They paid courtesy with courtesy, and the intendant wrote home to his master that he saw nothing amiss in them. He quickly changed his mind. “I should have had less trouble and more praise,” he writes in the next year, “if I had been willing to leave the power of the church ¦where I found it.” [5] “It is easy,” he says again, “to incur the ill-will of the Jesuits if one does not accept all their opinions and abandon one’s self to their direction even in temporal matters; for their encroachments extend to affairs of police, which concern only the civil magistrate;” and he recommends that one or two of them be sent home as disturbers of the peace. [6] They, on their part, changed attitude towards both him and the governor. One of them, Father Bardy, less discreet than the rest, is said to have preached a sermon against them at Quebec, in which he likened them to a pair of toadstools springing up in a night, adding that a good remedy would soon be found, and that Courcelle would have to run home like other governors before him. [7]

[3: Instruction au Sieur Talon.]

[4: Mémoire pour M. de Tracy.]

[5: Talon au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1666.]

[6: Talon, Mémoire de 1667.]

[7: La Salle, Mémoire de 1678 This sermon was preached on the 12th of March, 1667.]

Tracy escaped clerical attacks. He was extremely careful not to provoke them; and one of his first acts was to restore to the council the bishop’s adherents, whom Mézy had expelled. [8] And if, on the one hand, he was too pious to quarrel with the bishop, so, on the other, the bishop was too prudent to invite collision with a man of his rank and influence.

[8: A curious account of his relations with Laval is given in a letter of La Motte-Cadillac, 28 September, 1694.]

After all, the dispute between the civil and ecclesiastical powers was not fundamental. Each had need of the other. Both rested on authority, and they differed only as to the boundary lines of their respective shares in it. Yet the dispute of boundaries was a serious one, and it remained a source of bitterness for many years. The king, though rigidly Catholic, was not yet sunk in the slough of bigotry into which Maintenon and the Jesuits succeeded at last in plunging him. He had conceived a distrust of Laval, and his jealousy of his royal authority disposed him to listen to the anti-clerical counsels of his minister. How needful they both thought it to prune the exuberant growth of clerical power, and how cautiously they set themselves to do so, their letters attest again and again. “The bishop,” writes Colbert, “assumes a domination far beyond that of other bishops throughout the Christian world, and particularly in the kingdom of France.” [9] “It is the will of his Majesty that you confine him and the Jesuits within just bounds, and let none of them overstep these bounds in any manner whatsoever. Consider this as a matter of the greatest importance, and one to which you cannot give too much attention.” [10] “But,” the prudent minister elsewhere writes, “it is of the greatest consequence that the bishop and the Jesuits do not perceive that the intendant blames their conduct.” [11]

[9: Colbert a Duchesneau, 1 Mai, 1677.]

[10: Colbert a Duchesneau, 28 Avril, 1677.]

[11: Instruction pour M. Bouteroue, 1668.]

It was to the same intendant that Colbert wrote, “it is necessary to diminish as much as possible the excessive number of priests, monks, and nuns, in Canada.” Yet in the very next year, and on the advice of Talon, he himself sent four more to the colony. His motive was plain. He meant that they should serve as a counterpoise to the Jesuits. [12] They were mendicant friars, belonging to the branch of the Franciscans known as the Recollets; and they were supposed to be free from the ambition for the aggrandizement of their order which was imputed, and with reason, to the Jesuits. Whether the Recollets were free from it or not, no danger was to be feared from them; for Laval and the Jesuits were sure to oppose them, and they would need the support of the government too much to set themselves in opposition to it. “The more Recollets we have,” says Talon, “the better will the too firmly rooted authority of the others be balanced.” [13]

[12: Mémoire succinct des principaux points des intentions du Roy sur le pays de Canada, 18 Mai, 1669.]

[13: Talon au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1670.]

While Louis XIV. tried to confine the priests to their ecclesiastical functions, he was at the same time, whether from religion, policy, or both combined, very liberal to the Canadian church, of which, indeed, he was the mainstay. In the yearly estimate of “ordinary charges” of the colony, the church holds the most prominent place; and the appropriations for religious purposes often exceed all the rest together. Thus, in 1667, out of a total of 36,360 francs, 28,000 are assigned to church uses. [14] The amount fluctuated, but was always relatively large. The Canadian curés were paid in great part by the king, who for many years gave eight thousand francs annually towards their support. Such was the poverty of the country that, though in 1685 there were only twenty-five curés, [15] each costing about five hundred francs a year, the tithes utterly failed to meet the expense. As late as 1700, the intendant declared that Canada without the king’s help could not maintain more than eight or nine curés. Louis XIV. winced under these steady demands, and reminded the bishop that more than four thousand curés in France lived on less than two hundred francs a year. [16] “You say,” he wrote to the intendant, “that it is impossible for a Canadian curé to live on five hundred francs. Then you must do the impossible to accomplish my intentions, which are always that the curés should live on the tithes alone.” [17] Yet the head of the church still begged for money, and the king still paid it. “We are in the midst of a costly war,” wrote the minister to the bishop, “yet in consequence of your urgency the gifts to ecclesiastics will be continued as before.” [18] And they did continue. More than half a century later, the king was still making them, and during the last years of the colony he gave twenty thousand francs annually to support Canadian curés. [19]

[14: Of this, 6,000 francs were given to the Jesuits, 6,000 to the Ursulines, 9,000 to the cathedral, 4,000 to the seminary, and 3,000 to the Hôtel-Dieu. Etat de dépense, etc., 1677. The rest went to pay civil officers and garrisons. In 1682, the amount for church uses was only 12,000 francs. In 1687 it was 13,500. In 1689, it rose to 34,000, including Acadia.]

[15: Increased soon after to thirty-six by Saint-Vallier, Laval’s successor.]

[16: Mémoire a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678; Le Roy a Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.]

[17: Le Roy a Duchesneau, 30 Avril, 1681.]

[18: Le Ministre a l’Evêque, 8 Mai, 1694.]

[19: Bougainville, Mémoire, 1757.]

The maintenance of curés was but a part of his bounty. He endowed the bishopric with the revenues of two French abbeys, to which he afterwards added a third. The vast tracts of land which Laval had acquired were freed from feudal burdens, and emigrants were sent to them by the government in such numbers that, in 1667, the bishop’s seigniory of Beaupré and Orleans contained more than a fourth of the entire population of Canada. [20] He had emerged from his condition of apostolic poverty to find himself the richest landowner in the colony.

[20: Entire population, 4,312; Beaupré and Orleans, 1,185. Recensement de 1667. Laval, it will be remembered, afterwards gave his lands to the seminary of Quebec. He previously exchanged the island of Orleans with the Sieur Berthelot for the island of Jesus. Berthelot gave him a large sum of money in addition.]

If by favors like these the king expected to lead the ecclesiastics into compliance with his wishes, he was doomed to disappointment. The system of movable curés, by which the bishop like a military chief could compel each member of his clerical army to come and go at his bidding, was from the first repugnant to Louis XIV. On the other hand, the bishop clung to it with his usual tenacity. Colbert denounced it as contrary to the laws of the kingdom. [21] “His Majesty has reason to believe,” he writes, “that the chief source of the difficulty which the bishop makes on this point is his wish to preserve a greater authority over the curés.” [22] The inflexible prelate, whose heart was bound up in the system he had established, opposed evasion and delay to each expression of the royal will; and even a royal edict failed to produce the desired effect. In the height of the dispute, Laval went to court, and, on the ground of failing health, asked for a successor in the bishopric. The king readily granted his prayer. The successor was appointed; but when Laval prepared to embark again for Canada, he was given to understand that he was to remain in France. In vain he promised to make no trouble; [23] and it was not till after an absence of four years that he was permitted to return, no longer as its chief, to his beloved Canadian church. [24]

[21: Le Ministre a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678.]

[22: Instruction a M. de Meules, 1682.]

[23: Laval au Père la Chaise, 1687. This forms part of a curious correspondence printed in the Foyer Canadien for 1866, from originals in the Archevêché of Quebec.]

[24: From a mémoire of 18 Feb., 1685 (Archives de Versailles) it is plain that the court, in giving a successor to Laval, thought that it had ended the vexed question of movable curés.]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 19  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.

MORE INFORMATION