The Jesuits had long exercised solely the function of confessors in the colony, and a number of
* La Salle, Mémoire, 1678.
** See Discovery of the Great West, 105.
*** Représentation faite au conseil au sujet de certaines
assemblées de femmes ou filles sous le nom de la Sainte
Famille, 1667. (Registre du Conseil Souverain.) The paper is
cancelled by lines drawn over it; and the following minute,
duly attested, is appended to it: “Rayé du consentement de
M. Talon”
curious anecdotes are on record showing the reluctance with which they admitted the secular priests, and above all the Recollets, to share in it. The Recollets, of whom a considerable number had arrived from time to time, were on excellent terms with the civil powers, and were popular with the colonists; but with the bishop and the Jesuits they were not in favor, and one or two sharp collisions took place. The bishop was naturally annoyed when, while he was trying to persuade the king that a curé needed at least six hundred francs a year, these mendicant friars came forward with an offer to serve the parishes for nothing; nor was he, it is likely, better pleased when, having asked the hospital nuns eight hundred francs annually for two masses a day in their chapel, the Recollets underbid him, and offered to say the masses for three hundred. * They, on their part, complain bitterly of the bishop, who, they say, would gladly have ordered them out of the colony, but being unable to do this, tried to shut them up in their convent, and prevent them from officiating as priests among the people. “We have as little liberty,” says the Recollet writer, “as if we were in a country of heretics.” He adds that the inhabitants ask earnestly for the ministrations of the friars, but that the bishop replies with invectives and calumnies against the order, and that
* “Mon dit sieur l’evesque leur fait payer (aux
hospitalières) 800L. par an pour deux messes qu’il leur fait
dire par ses Séminaristes que lei Récollets leurs voisins
leur offrent pour 300L.” La Barre au Ministre, 1682.
when the Recollets absolve a penitent he often annuls the absolution. *
In one respect this Canadian church militant achieved a complete success. Heresy was scoured out of the colony. When Maintenon and her ghostly prompters overcame the better nature of the king, and wrought on his bigotry and his vanity to launch him into the dragonnades; when violence and lust bore the crucifix into thousands of Huguenot homes, and the land reeked with nameless infamies; when churches rang with Te Deums, and the heart of France withered in anguish; when, in short, this hideous triumph of the faith was won, the royal tool of priestly ferocity sent orders that heresy should be treated in Canada as it had been treated in France. ** The orders were needless. The pious Denonville replies, “Praised be God, there is not a heretic here.” He adds that a few abjured last year, and that he should be very glad if the king would make them a present. The Jesuits, he further says, go every day on board the ships in the harbor to look after the new converts from France. *** Now and then at a later day a real or suspected Jansenist found his way to Canada, and sometimes an esprit fort, like
* Mémoire instructif contenant la conduite des PP.
Récollets de Paris en leurs missions de Canada, 1684. This
paper, of which only a fragment is preserved, was written in
connection with a dispute of the Recolléts with the bishop
who opposed their attempt to establish a church in Quebec.
** Mémoire du Roy a Denonville, 31 Mai, 1686. The king here
orders the imprisonment of heretics who refuse to abjure, or
the quartering of soldiers on them. What this meant the
history of the dragonnades will show.
*** Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
La Hontan, came over with the troops; but on the whole a community more free from positive heterodoxy perhaps never existed on earth. This exemption cost no bloodshed. What it did cost we may better judge hereafter.
If Canada escaped the dragonnades, so also she escaped another infliction from which a neighboring colony suffered deplorably. Her peace was never much troubled by witches. They were held to exist, it is true; but they wrought no panic. Mother Mary of the Incarnation reports on one occasion the discovery of a magician in the person of a converted Huguenot miller who, being refused in marriage by a girl of Quebec, bewitched her, and filled the house where she lived with demons, which the bishop tried in vain to exorcise. The miller was thrown into prison, and the girl sent to the Hôtel-Dieu, where not a demon dared enter. The infernal crew took their revenge by creating a severe influenza among the citizens. *