PLAN DE MONTREAL
de
1673 A 1687
EARLY MAP OF MONTREAL
CHURCH AND STATE
The difficult equipoise of neutrality, aimed at by the Seigneurs in the Frontenac-Perrot dispute, was rudely jolted on Easter Day, little more than a month later, in a most dramatic manner. The scene was the crowded Hôtel-Dieu chapel, then being used as a parish church, while the new parish church higher up the street was being slowly raised, and all the notables of Montreal were present at the High Mass. The celebrant was M. Perrot, the curé, in the absence of the superior of the seminary, Dollier de Casson, who was confined to his bed in the hospital from the effects of fever, after an accident on the St. Lawrence, when the ice having broken he had almost lost his life through cold from the long immersion in the water, before rescue came. The deacon was M. de Cavelier, La Salle's brother, and the subdeacon M. Rémy, the lawyer Sulpician. After the gospel, M. de Fénelon, the same who had preached the eulogium of Frontenac the year previously, mounted the pulpit. The preacher announced that he would speak on the Christian's double necessity, of dying with Christ, and of rising with him. Following the scholastic divisions of St. Thomas Acquinas he divided the life of man into the vegetative, sensitive and rational states. The sinful vices, destroying the vitality of this threefold life, must die in Christ and the new man must arise with Christ, purified and reestablished in his threefold life. In pursuing this second point the preacher entered into the details of the various dispositions that risen Christians of different conditions should manifest as a sign of the new Easter life in them. Turning to those vested with temporal authority, he said, "that the magistrate, animated with the spirit of the risen Christ, should have as much diligence in punishing those faults committed against the person of the prince, as he had of readiness in pardoning those against his own person...."
La Salle, who had been sitting towards the back of the chapel, near the door, and had listened with approbation to the familiar doctrine of St. Thomas, which as a Jesuit he had studied in his philosophical course, began now to show unusual interest in the preacher's application. In order to get a better view of the speaker, he rose from his seat. He saw that M. de Fénelon, a man who was known to have been in sympathy with Perrot and to have had trouble with his own patron, Frontenac, was treading on delicate ground and might commit himself. La Salle had, what journalists call, the reportorial instinct for "news." Besides, since the famous expedition of 1669, his relations with the Sulpicians were cold. As the preacher proceeded, La Salle's face flushed with anger, and casting his eyes around, he drew the special attention of several to what the preacher was saying. Among these was Jean Baptiste Montgaudon de Bellefontaine, the brigadier of de Frontenac's guard. Soon La Salle's gestures attracted the attention of the celebrant, seated in the sanctuary, to what was being said; but he shrugged his shoulders in return, as though to convey that no personal allusions were being made. The preacher had also noticed La Salle, "and changed colour," said Bellefontaine later in giving his procès verbal. The preacher went on: "The Christian magistrate should be full of respect for the ministers of the altar, and should not maltreat them, when in the exercise of their duty, they strove to reconcile enemies and to establish peace everywhere; that he should not make creatures to praise him, nor oppress under specious pretexts persons also vested with authority and who, serving the same prince, were opposed to his enterprises; that he should make use of his power to maintain the authority of the monarch and not to further his own interests; that looking upon his subjects as his own children and treating them as a father, he should be content with the rewards which he received from the prince, without troubling the commerce of the country and without ill using those who did not share their profits with him; and, that in fine, he should not harass the people with extraordinary and unjust corvées for his own interests, under cover of the king's name, who was unaware of their extent and that they bore so heavily on them."
These phrases were shortly afterwards attested to, in the official declarations of MM. de la Salle, Jean Baptiste Montgaudon de Bellefontaine, Jacques LeBer, de la Nouguère, commandant of Montreal, Rémy, and Jean Baptiste Migeon de Branssat, procurator fiscal of the seigneury of Montreal and others, before Commissioners Legardeur de Tilly and Dupont, sent from Quebec as the court of investigation which opened on May 2d and lasted for a fortnight.
To La Salle, every phrase appeared leveled at the conduct of the governor general, especially as the preacher was M. de Fénelon. Jacques LeBer testified that the curé, who came to visit him the same day, declared that the words of the preacher appeared to him so imprudent and out of place that he was very near intoning the Credo to cut the sermon short. Others saw in them only generalities within the legitimate sphere of a preacher. The Sulpicians took immediate steps to disclaim to M. de la Nouguère all responsibility for the utterance of one of its members. It was in no way authorized or foreseen, and Dollier de Casson left his sick bed to confirm this and to assure the commandant that M. de Fénelon should never preach again. They also wrote immediately to Frontenac a similar disclaimer. That afternoon M. de Fénelon, before his fellow clergy, gave his word of honour as a man and a priest, that he had meant no conscious personal allusion, but had spoken in general terms of all bearing authority. There is no doubt, however, that M. de Fénelon, though a virtuous and zealous missionary, had been "blazingly indiscreet." In his want of prudence, he had also but recently personally canvassed the householders of the Island of Montreal for signatures to a petition to be sent to court, on behalf of Madame Perrot, in which the subscribers stated that they had no complaint to make against her husband. The memorial was signed by many prominent men, such as Louis Chevalier, the syndic, Zacharie Dupuis, Sieur de Verdun and Mayor of the Isle of Montreal, Philippe de Hautmesnil, Picoté de Bélestre and others. Madame Perrot had previously approached d'Ailleboust to make the canvass, but the judge, already in hot water, was too wary. M. de Fénelon fell an easier victim, and his action was not calculated to prejudice M. de Frontenac in favour of his pretentious of absence of malice prepense, in his Easter sermon. La Salle communicated the details of the latter to Frontenac. On April 23d, in his anger, the governor wrote, ordering the Sulpicians to expel the offending preacher from their community. This they could not do, without a formal conviction of rebellion, as required by canon and civil law. M. de Fénelon, however, resigned from the "congregation," using his right to do so, as the Sulpicians was not a "religious order," and thus saved the situation. In this way, there was no acquiescence to any claim of jurisdiction of the governor general over ecclesiastics. M. de Fénelon retired to Lachine as a secular priest, and is reckoned one of the first curés of this place.
With the above letter M. de Frontenac sent out a set of questions to be answered by each of the Sulpicians. This was equivalent to giving evidence against M. de Fénelon in a civil court, whereas they claimed the right of trying such a case in a prior ecclesiastical court, according to precedent. They, therefore, refused, but later consented when assured that their information would not be used juridically. Commissioners Legardeur de Tilly and Dupont accordingly arrived at Montreal, and opened a court of investigation, beginning on May 2d.