M. d'Ailleboust was now called upon to act as governor general, replacing M. de Lauson-Charny ad interim, till another was formally appointed. On arriving M. Queylus, superseding Father Pijart, unwisely and ambitiously took up the functions of parish priest himself in the hitherto Jesuit church and remained there for a year. This was open hostility. He was assisted on occasions by the chaplain of the Ursulines, M. Guillaume Vignal, and that of the Hôtel-Dieu, M. Jean Lebey, both secular priests. M. Queylus lived at the château with the governor general while the Jesuits inhabited the official presbytery. The position was electrical and there was open hostility. There were two factions. Occasional interchange of courtesies and ministry were, however, carried on and a semblance of diplomatic peace at last arrived at, so that d'Argenson, the new governor general, writing on September 5, 1658, a year later, says: "I was surprised, after having heard in France of the little differences between the reverend Jesuits and M. l'Abbé de Queylus, to see the union between them and the church entirely at peace." He recommended, however, the appointment of a bishop as a solution of the difficulty. D'Argenson had arrived unexpectedly at Quebec on July 11th. He brought over powers to settle the ecclesiastical "impasse." During the year the Jesuits had communicated with the archbishop of Rouen, Mgr. de Harlay, and a brief of March 30, 1656, written in French, arranged that there should be two "grands vicaires," one for the Quebec district in the person of the superior of the Jesuits, and M. de Queylus, who should exercise his jurisdiction in that of Montreal only. This was not communicated to M. de Queylus till August 8th. He was at first inclined to dispute the situation, but d'Argenson, assuring him of the cognizance of the Company of Montreal of this matter, he "peacefully" acquiesced, departing from Quebec on August 21st with M. and Mme. d'Ailleboust, whose presence was no longer required there. During his stay in Quebec M. Queylus founded the church of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, since, the great Canadian shrine, the scene of many pilgrimages, and in many ways showed himself a progressive administrator. He was certainly an active man, with the defects of his qualities.
The explanation of the letter brought by d'Argenson is as follows: Shortly after the surprise received by the appearance of the Sulpician vicar general the superior of the Jesuits, Père de Quen wrote to Father Brisacier, the Jesuit rector of the college at Rouen, to ask him to enquire of his Grace the Archbishop of Rouen if he had withdrawn his faculties as vicar general or not.
He also wrote at the same time to the general of the order, Goswin Nickel, acquainting him of the new situation in Canada. On December 17, 1657, the general himself also wrote to Father Brisacier in Latin as follows: "Father J. de Quen, superior of the Canadian missions, has written to me on September 20th of this year, that he and his subjects are being harassed by the Abbé de Queylus, sent out there last summer by his Eminence the Archbishop of Rouen, to act as his vicar general, asserting that the marriages celebrated by fathers acting as parish priests are null; that they are abusing the power and jurisdiction of the vicar general which they had obtained; that he could dispose of our men 'ad libitum,' and other things which have no little disturbed the nascent church. The evil might increase from day to day unless his Grace the Archbishop, through his zeal and piety, will early look into the matter. Your Reverence will see whether you can obtain from him either that the power of this abbé may be revoked or that he shall so treat with ours that he shall have come to New France not for its destruction but for its upbuilding." (Arch. Gen., 89.)
The final response to the difficulty came to Quebec on July 11, 1658, when the letter of Mgr. de Harlay, the archbishop of Rouen, arrived.
"To put an end to the differences," he says, "which have intervened between the Sieur Abbé de Queylus and the venerable superior of the Jesuits of the house of Quebec, both our grands vicaires in the part of our diocese called La Nouvelle France, until it may be more amply provided for by your authority, we have ordered that Sieur Abbé de Queylus shall exercise hereafter and from the day of the present ordinance, the vicariate which we have given him, according to the powers we have given him, in the extent of the Island of Montreal; as also the superior of the Jesuits of the house of Quebec shall exercise the same powers that we have accorded him, without either one or the other of the two grands vicaires being able to undertake anything in their different territories without the consent of the one and the other." This act was made and signed at Paris on March 30, 1658.
It would certainly appear then that Father de Quen's powers had never been revoked, that Abbé de Queylus had forced the sense of his letters patent accorded April 22, 1657, since in giving him an extended jurisdiction he did not revoke previous powers given. There were to be two independent parallel vicariates under Rouen. In a later letter of September 3, 1658, of Father de Quen to the general of his order, he interprets the above as a confirmation of his previous powers, and not a new concession.
"The Most Eminent Archbishop of Rouen has sent me letters in which he confirms the power conceded by him to us now since many years, of vicar general of Quebec and in other adjacent places. He has written also to the Abbé de Queylus a letter which has constituted him vicar general in the Island of Montreal only." (Arch. Gen., S. J.)
In spite of the storm clouds gathered over them, the arrival of the Sulpicians at Montreal was welcomed. They represented to the colonists, the Company of Notre-Dame de Montreal that had brought them out. M. de Queylus was wealthy and a member of the Company of Montreal, and the others were self supporting members of a body, to whom it had already been proposed by the Company to hand over the seigneury of the whole island, as indeed happened in 1663. This meant material advancement for the church and progress for the settlement. Although the Jesuits were very much loved by the people, their number was small, they had no settled income and frequently they were called to absent themselves from Montreal. The permanent presence of four Sulpicians, with the prospects of an assured continuity, was indeed gratifying also from a spiritual point of view. The honour of receiving them fell to Jeanne Mance, and they were allotted the large room in the hospital, which was at once the refectory, recreation, study, and bedroom, all in one. There they remained till the stone house named the Seminary was built for them. M. Souart being a doctor could also be on hand for assistance to the hospital sick.
Meanwhile, the peaceful situation at Ville Marie, during the above negotiations, claims our attention.
The advent of the Sulpicians marks the growth of organized progress in the development of the religious and civic life of Montreal. It was due to them that the church began to take on parish proportions, one of their first acts being the foundation of the "Oeuvre de Fabrique" soon to be chronicled. It was the mission of the Jesuits to be the hardy pioneers to succour the spiritual needs during their early days of the handful of struggling settlers; that of the Sulpicians to develop the sense of civic administration and to guide it for many generations. A modern historian [78] writing in 1887, pays the following tribute to the Sulpicians: