* 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.
** Increased soon after to thirty-six by Saint-Vallier,
Laval’s successor.
*** Mémoire a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678; Le Roy a
Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.
must do the impossible to accomplish my intentions, which are always that the curés should live on the tithes alone.” * 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.” ** 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. ***
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. **** He had emerged from his condition of apostolic poverty to find himself the richest land-owner in the colony.
If by favors like these the king expected to lead the ecclesiastics into compliance with his
* Le Roy a Duchesneau, 30 Avril, 1681.
** Le Ministre a l’Evêque, 8 Mai, 1694.
*** Bougainville, Mémoire, 1757.
**** 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.
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. * “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.” ** 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; *** 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. ****
* Le Ministre a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678.
** Instruction a M. de Meules, 1682.
*** 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.
**** 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.
Meanwhile Saint-Vallier, the new bishop, had raised a new tempest. He attacked that organization of the seminary of Quebec by which Laval had endeavored to unite the secular priests of Canada into an attached and obedient family, with the bishop as its head and the seminary as its home, a plan of which the system of movable curés was an essential part. The Canadian priests, devoted to Laval, met the innovations of Saint-Vallier with an opposition which seemed only to confirm his purpose. Laval, old and worn with toil and asceticism, was driven almost to despair. The seminary of Quebec was the cherished work of his life, and, to his thinking, the citadel of the Canadian church; and now he beheld it battered and breached before his eyes. His successor, in fact, was trying to place the church of Canada on the footing of the church of France. The conflict lasted for years, with the rancor that marks the quarrels of non-combatants of both sexes. “He” (Saint-Vallier), says one of his opponents, “has made himself contemptible to almost everybody, and particularly odious to the priests born in Canada; for there is between them and him a mutual antipathy difficult to overcome.” * He is described by the same writer as a person “without reflection and judgment, extreme in all things, secret and artful, passionate when opposed, and a flatterer when he wishes to gain his point.” This amiable critic adds that Saint-Vallier believes a
* The above is from an anonymous paper, written apparently
in 1695 and entitled Mémoire pour le Canada.
bishop to be inspired, in virtue of his office, with a wisdom that needs no human aid, and that whatever thought comes to him in prayer is a divine inspiration to be carried into effect at all costs and in spite of all opposition.