Tracy escaped clerical attacks. He was
* Instruction au Sieur Talon.
** Mémoire pour M. de Tracy.
*** Talon au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1666.
**** Talon, Mémoire de 1667.
(v) La Salle, Mémoire de 1678 This sermon was preached on
the 12th of March, 1667.
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. * 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.
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.” ** “It is the will of his Majesty that you confine him and the Jesuits within just bounds, and let none of them
* A curious account of his relations with Laval is given in
a letter of La Motte-Cadillac, 28 September, 1694.
** Colbert a Duchesneau, 1 Mai, 1677.
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.” * “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.” **
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. *** 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.” ****
While Louis XIV. tried to confine the priests to
* Colbert a Duchesneau, 28 Avril, 1677.
** Instruction pour M. Bouteroue, 1668.
*** Mémoire succinct des principaux points des intentions
du Roy sur le pays de Canada, 18 Mai, 1669.
**** Talon au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1670.
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 main-stay. 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. * 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, ** 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. *** “You say,” he wrote to the intendant, “that it is impossible for a Canadian curé to live on five hundred francs. Then you