CHAPTER XIII

LAVAL RETURNS TO CANADA

Mgr. de Laval was still in France when the edict of May, 1679, appeared, decreeing on the suggestion of Frontenac, that the tithe should be paid only to "each of the parish priests within the extent of his parish where he is established in perpetuity in the stead of the removable priest who previously administered it." The ideas of the Count de Frontenac were thus victorious, and the king retracted his first decision. He had in his original decree establishing the Seminary of Quebec, granted the bishop and his successors "the right of recalling and displacing the priests by them delegated to the parishes to exercise therein parochial functions." Laval on his return to Canada conformed without murmur to the king's decision; he worked, together with the governor and commissioner, at drawing up the plan of the parishes to be established, and sent his vicar-general to install the priests who were appointed to the different livings. He desired to inspire his whole clergy with the disinterestedness which he had always evinced, for not only did he recommend his priests "to content themselves with the simplest living, and with the bare necessaries of their support," but besides, agreeing with the governor and the commissioner, he estimated that an annual sum of five hundred livres merely, that is to say, about three hundred dollars of our present money, was sufficient for the lodging and maintenance of a priest. This was more than modest, and yet, without a very considerable extension, there was no parish capable of supplying the needs of its priest. There was indeed, it is true, an article of the edict specifying that in case of the tithe being insufficient, the necessary supplement should be fixed by the council and furnished by the seigneur of the place and by the inhabitants; but this manner of aiding the priests who were reduced to a bare competence was not practical, as was soon evident. Another article gave the title of patron to any seigneur who should erect a religious edifice; this article was just as fantastic, "for," wrote Commissioner Duchesneau, "there is no private person in this country who is in a position to build churches of any kind."

The king, always well disposed towards the clergy of Canada, came to their aid again in this matter. He granted them an annual income of eight thousand francs, to be raised from his "Western Dominions," that is to say, from the sum derived in Canada from the droit du quart and the farm of Tadousac; from these funds, which were distributed by the seminary until 1692, and after this date by the bishop alone, two thousand francs were to be set aside for priests prevented by illness or old age from fulfilling the duties of the holy ministry, and twelve hundred francs were to be employed in the erection of parochial churches. This aid came aptly, but was not sufficient, as Commissioner de Beauharnois himself admits. And yet the deplorable state in which the treasury of France then was, on account of the enormous expenses indulged in by Louis XIV, and especially in consequence of the wars which he waged against Europe, obliged him to diminish this allowance. In 1707 it was reduced by half.

It was feared for a time by the Sulpicians that the edict of 1679 might injure the rights which they had acquired from the union with their seminary of the parishes established on the Island of Montreal, and they therefore hastened to request from the king the civil confirmation of this canonical union. "There is," they said in their request, "a sort of need that the parishes of the Island of Montreal and of the surrounding parts should be connected with a community able to furnish them with priests, who could not otherwise be found in the country, to administer the said livings; these priests would not expose themselves to a sea voyage and to leaving their family comforts to go and sacrifice themselves in a wild country, if they did not hope that in their infirmity or old age they would be free to withdraw from the laborious administration of the parishes, and that they would find a refuge in which to end their days in tranquillity in a community which, on its part, would not pledge itself in such a way as to afford them the hope of this refuge, and to furnish other priests in their place, if it had not the free control of the said parishes and power to distribute among them the ecclesiastics belonging to its body whom it might judge capable of this, and withdraw or exchange them when fitting." The request of the Sulpicians was granted by the king.

It was not until 1680 that the Bishop of Quebec could return to Canada. The all-important questions of the permanence of livings and of the traffic in brandy were not the only ones which kept him in France; another difficulty, that of the dependence of his diocese, demanded of his devotion a great many efforts at the court. The circumstances were difficult. France was plunged at this period in the famous dispute between the government and the court of Rome over the question of the right of régale, a dispute which nearly brought about a schism. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. de Harlay, who had laboured so much when he was Bishop of Rouen to keep New France under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Normandy, used his influence to make Canada dependent on the archbishopric of Paris. The death of this prelate put an end to this claim, and the French colony in North America continued its direct connection with the Holy See.

Mgr. de Laval strove also to obtain from the Holy Father the canonical union of the abbeys of Maubec and of Lestrées with his bishopric; if he had obtained it, he could have erected his chapter at once, assuring by the revenues of these monasteries a sufficient maintenance for his canons. The opposition of the religious orders on which these abbeys depended defeated his plan, but in compensation he obtained from the generosity of the king a grant of land on which his successor, Saint-Vallier, afterwards erected the church of Notre-Dame des Victoires. The venerable prelate might well ask favours for his diocese when he himself set an example of the greatest generosity. By a deed, dated at Paris, he gave to his seminary all that he possessed: Ile Jésus, the seigniories of Beaupré and Petite Nation, a property at Château Richer, finally books, furniture, funds, and all that might belong to him at the moment of his death.

Laval returned to Canada at a time when the relations with the savage tribes were becoming so strained as to threaten an impending rupture. So far had matters gone that Colonel Thomas Dongan, governor of New York, had urged the Iroquois to dig up the hatchet, and he was only too willingly obeyed. Unfortunately, the two governing heads of the colony were replaced just at that moment. Governor de Frontenac and Commissioner Duchesneau were recalled in 1682, and supplanted by de la Barre and de Meulles. The latter were far from equalling their predecessors. M. de Lefebvre de la Barre was a clever sailor but a deplorable administrator; as for the commissioner, M. de Meulles, his incapacity did not lessen his extreme conceit.