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THE
smaller seminary, founded by the Bishop of Petraea in 1668, for
youths destined to the ecclesiastical life, justified the
expectations of its founder, and witnessed an ever increasing influx
of students. On the day of its inauguration, October 9th, there were
only as yet eight French pupils and six Huron children. For lack of
teachers the young neophytes, placed under the guidance of directors
connected with the seminary, attended during the first years the
classes of the Jesuit Fathers. Their special costume was a blue
cloak, confined by a belt. At this period the College of the Jesuits
contained already some sixty resident scholars, and what proves to
us that serious studies were here pursued is that several scholars
are quoted in the memoirs as having successfully defended in the
presence of the highest authorities of the colony theses on physics
and philosophy.
If the first bishop of New France had confined
himself to creating one large seminary, it is certain that his
chosen work, which was the preparation for the Church of a nursery
of scholars and priests, the apostles of the future, would not have
been complete.
For many young people, indeed, who lead a
worldly existence, and find themselves all at once transferred to
the serious, religious life of the seminary, the surprise, and
sometimes the discomfort, may be great. One must adapt oneself to
this at-niosphere of prayer, meditation and study. The rules of
prayer are certainly not beyond the limits of an ordinary mind, but
the practice is more difficult than the theory. Not without effort
can a youthful imagination, a mind ardent and consumed by its own
fervour, relinquish all the memories of family and social
occupations, in order to withdraw into silence, inward peace, and
the mortification of the senses. To the devoutly-minded our worldly
life may well seem petty in comparison with the more spiritual
existence, and in the religious life, for the priest especially,
lies the sole source and the indispensable condition of happiness.
But one must learn to be thus happy by humility, study and prayer,
as one learns to be a soldier by obedience, discipline and exercise,
and in nothing did Laval more reveal his discernment than in the
recognition of the fact that the transition from one life to the
other must be effected only after careful instruction and
wisely-guided deliberation.
The aim of the smaller seminary is to guide, by
insensible gradations towards the great duties and the great
responsibilities of the priesthood, young men upon whom the spirit
of God seems to have rested. There were in Israel schools of
prophets; this does not mean that their training ended in the
diploma of a seer or an oracle, but that this novitiate was
favourable to the action of God upon their souls, and inclined them
thereto. A smaller seminary possesses also the hope of the harvest.
It is there that the minds of the students, by exercises
proportionate to their age, become adapted unconstrainedly to pious
reading, to the meditation and the grave studies in whose cycle the
life of the priest must pass.
We shall not be surprised if the prelate's
followers recognized in the works of faith which sprang up in his
footsteps and progressed on all hands at Ville-Marie and at Quebec
shining evidences of the protection of Mary to whose tutelage they
had dedicated their establishments. This protection indeed has never
been withheld, since to-day the fame of the university which sprang
from the seminary, as a fruit develops from a bud, has crossed the
seas. Father Monsabr£, the eloquent preacher of Notre-Dame in Paris,
speaking of the union of science and faith, exclaimed: "There
exists, in the field of the New World, an institution which has
religiously preserved this holy alliance and the traditions of the
older universities, the Laval University of Quebec."
Mgr. de Laval, while busying himself with the
training of his clergy, watched over the instruction of youth. He
protected his schools and his dioceses; at Quebec the Jesuits, and
later the seminary, maintained even elementary schools. If we must
believe the Abb£ de Latour and other writers of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the children of the early colonists, skilful
in manual labour, showed, nevertheless, great indolence of mind. "In
general," writes Latour, "Canadian children have intelligence,
memory and facility, and they make rapid progress, but the
fickleness of their character, a dominant taste for liberty, and
their hereditary and natural inclination for physical exercise do
not permit them to apply themselves with sufficient perseverance and
assiduity to become learned men; satisfied with a certain measure of
knowledge sufficient for the ordinary purposes of their occupations
(and this is, indeed, usually possessed), we see no people deeply
learned in any branch of science. We must further admit that there
are few resources, few books, and little emulation. No doubt the
resources will be multiplied, and clever persons will appear in
proportion as the colony increases." Always eager to develop all
that might serve for the propagation of the faith or the progress of
the colony, the devoted prelate eagerly fostered this natural
aptitude of the Canadians for the arts and trades, and he
established at St. Joachim a boarding-school for country children;
this offered, besides a solid primary education, lessons in
agriculture and some training for different trades.
Mgr. de Laval gave many other proofs of his
enlightened charity for the poor and the waifs of
fortune; he approved and encouraged among other
works the Brotherhood of Saint Anne at Quebec. This association of
prayer and spiritual aid had been established but three years before
his arrival; it was directed by a chaplain and two directors, the
latter elected annually by secret ballot. He had wished to offer in
1660 a more striking proof of his devotion to the Mother of the Holy
Virgin, and had caused to be built on the shore of Beauprd the first
sanctuary of Saint Anne. This temple arose not far from a chapel
begun two years before, under the care of the Abbe de Queylus. The
origin of this place of devotion, it appears, was a great peril to
which certain Breton sailors were exposed: assailed by a tempest in
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, about the beginning of the seventeenth
century, they made a vow to erect, if they escaped death, a chapel
to good Saint Anne on the spot where they should land. Heaven heard
their prayers, and they kept their word. The chapel erected by Mgr.
de Laval was a very modest one, but the zealous missionary of
Beaupre, the Abbe Morel, then chaplain, was the witness of many acts
of ardent faith and sincere piety; the Bishop of Petraea himself
made several pilgrimages to the place. " We confess," says he, "that
nothing has aided us more efficaciously to support the burden of the
pastoral charge of this growing church than the special devotion
which all the inhabitants of this country dedicate to Saint Anne, a
devotion which, we affirm it with certainty, distinguishes them from
all other peoples." The poor little chapel, built of uprights, gave
place in 1675 to a stone church erected by the efforts of M. Filion,
proctor of the seminary, and it was noted for an admirable picture
given by the viceroy, de Tracy, who did not disdain to make his
pilgrimage like the rest, and to set thus an example which the great
ones of the earth should more frequently give. This church lasted
only a few years; Mgr. de Laval was still living when a third temple
was built upon its site. This was enlarged in 1787, and gave place
only in 1878 to the^ magnificent cathedral which we admire to-day.
The faith which raised this sanctuary to consecrate it to Saint Anne
did not die with its pious founder; it is still lively in our
hearts, since in 1898 a hundred and twenty thousand pilgrims went to
pray before the relic of Saint Anne, the precious gift of Mgr. de
Laval.
In our days, hardly has the sun melted the thick
mantle of snow which covers during six months the Canadian soil,
hardly has the majestic St. Lawrence carried its last blocks of ice
down to the ocean, when caravans of pious pilgrims from all quarters
of the country wend their way towards the sanctuary raised upon the
shores of Beaupr£. Whole families fill the cars; the boats of the
Richelieu Company stop to receive passengers at all the charming
villages strewn along the'banks of the river, and the cathedral
which raises in the air its slender
spires on either side of the immense statue of Saint Anne does not
suffice to contain the ever renewed throng of the faithful.
Even in the time of Mgr. de Laval, pilgrimages
to Saint Anne's were frequent, and it was not only French people but
also savages who addressed to the Mother of the Virgin Mary fervent,
and often very artless, prayers. The harvest became, in fact, more
abundant in the missions, and "Les
pretres ne pouvaient suffire aux sacrifices."
From the banks of the Saguenay at Tadousac, or
from the shore of Hudson Bay, where Father Albanel was evangelizing
the Indians, to the recesses of the Iroquois country, a Black Robe
taught from interval to interval in a humble chapel the truths of
the Christian religion. " We may say," wrote Father Dablon in 1671,
"that the torch of the faith now illumines the four quarters of this
New World. More than seven hundred baptisms have this year
consecrated all our forests; more than twenty different missions
incessantly occupy our Fathers among more than twenty diverse na-^lions
; and the chapels erected in the districts most remote from here are
almost every day filled with these poor barbarians, and in some of
them there have been consummated sometimes ten, twenty, and even
thirty baptisms on a single occasion." And, ever faithful to the
established power, the missionaries taught their neophytes not only
religion, but also the respect due to the
king. Let us hearken to Father Allouez speaking to the mission of
Sault Ste. Marie: " Cast your eyes," says he, " upon the cross
raised so high above your heads. It was upon that cross that Jesus
Christ, the son of God, become a man by reason of His love for men,
consented to be bound and to die, in order to satisfy His Eternal
Father for our sins. He is the master of our life, the master of
Heaven, earth and hell. It is He of whom I speak to you without
ceasing, and whose name and word I have borne into all these
countries. But behold at the same time this other stake, on which
are hung the arms of the great captain of France, whom we call the
king. This great leader lives beyond the seas; he is the captain of
the greatest captains, and has not his peer in the world. All the
captains that you have ever seen, and of whom you have heard speak,
are only children beside him. He is like a great tree; the rest are
only little plants crushed under men's footsteps as they walk. You
know Onontio, the famous chieftain of Quebec; you know that he is
the terror of the Iroquois, his mere name makes them tremble since
he has desolated their country and burned their villages. Well,
there are beyond the seas ten thousand Onontios like him. They are
only the soldiers of this great captain, our great king, of whom I
speak to you."
Mgr. de Laval ardently desired, then, the
arrival of new workers for the gospel, and in the year
1668, the very year of the foundation of the
seminary, his desire was fulfilled, as if Providence wished to
reward His servant at once. Missionaries from France came to the aid
of the priests of the Quebec seminary, and Sulpicians, such as MM.
de Queylus, d'Urfe, Dallet and Brehan de Gallinée, arrived at
Montreal; MM. Francis de Salignac-Fdnelon and Claude Trouve had
already landed the year before. "I have during the last month,"
wrote the prelate, "commissioned two most good and virtuous apostles
to go to an Iroquois community which has been for some years
established quite near us on the northern side of the great Lake
Ontario. One is M. de Fenelon, whose name is well-known in Paris,
and the other M. Trouve. We have not yet been able to learn the
result of their mission, but we have every reason to hope for its
complete success."
While he was enjoining upon these two
missionaries, on their departure for the mission on which he was
sending them, that they should always remain in good relations with
the Jesuit Fathers, he gave them some advice worthy of the most
eminent doctors of the Church :—
"A
knowledge of the language," he says, "is necessary in
order to influence the savages. It is, nevertheless, one of the
smallest parts of the equipment of a good missionary, just as in
France to speak French well is not what makes a successful preacher.
The talents which make good missionaries are :
"1. To be filled with the spirit of God; this
spirit must animate our words and our hearts :
Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur.
"2. To have great prudence in the choice and
arrangement of the things which are necessary either to enlighten
the understanding or to bend the will; all that does not tend in
this direction is labour lost.
"3. To be very assiduous, in order not to lose
opportunities of procuring the salvation of souls, and supplying the
neglect which is often manifest in neophytes; for, since the devil
on his part
circuit tanquam leo rugiens, queer ens quern devoret, so
we must be vigilant against his efforts, with care, gentleness and
love.
"4. To have nothing in our life and in our
manners which may appear to belie what we say, or which may estrange
the minds and hearts of those whom we wish to win to God.
"5. We must make ourselves beloved by our
gentleness, patience and charity, and win men's minds and hearts to
incline them to God. Often a bitter word, an impatient act or a
frowning countenance destroys in a moment what has taken a long time
to produce.
"6. The spirit of God demands a peaceful and
pious heart, not a restless and dissipated one; one should have a
joyous and modest countenance; one should avoid jesting and
immoderate laughter, and in general all that is contrary to a holy
and joyful modesty:
Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus homin-ibus."
The new Sulpicians had been most favourably
received by Mgr. de Laval, and the more so since almost all of them
belonged to great families and had renounced, like himself, ease and
honour, to devote themselves to the rude apostleship of the Canadian
missions.
The difficulties between the bishop and the Abb£
de Queylus had disappeared, and had left no trace of bitterness in
the souls of these two servants of God. M. de Queylus gave good
proof of this subsequently; he gave six thousand francs to the
hospital of Quebec, of which one thousand were to endow facilities
for the treatment of the poor, and five thousand for the maintenance
of a choir-nun. His generosity, moreover, was proverbial: "1 cannot
find a man more grateful for the favour that you have done him than
M. de Queylus," wrote the intendant, Talon, to the minister,
Colbert. "He is going to arrange his affairs in France, divide with
his brothers, and collect his wordly goods to use them in Canada, at
least so he has assured me.. If he has need of your protection, he
is striving to make himself
Worthy of it,
and I know that he is most zealous for the welfare of this colony. I
believe that a little show of benevolence on your part would
redouble this zeal, of which 1 have good evidence, for what you
desire the most, the education of the native children, which he
furthers with all his might."
The abbe found the seminary in conditions very
different from those prevailing at the time of his departure. In
1663, the members of the Company of Notre-Dame of Montreal had made
over to the Sulpicians the whole Island of Montreal and the
seigniory of St. Sulpice. Their purpose was to assure the future of
the three works which they had not ceased, since the birth of their
association, to seek to establish: a seminary for the education of
priests in the colony, an institution of education for young girls,
and a hospital for the care of the sick.
To learn the happy results due to the eloquence
of MM. Trouv£ and de Fdnelon engaged in the evangelization of the
tribes encamped to the north of Lake Ontario, or to that of MM.
Dollier de Casson and Gallin^e preaching on the shores of Lake Erie,
one must read the memoirs of the Jesuit Fathers. We must bear in
mind that many facts, which might appear to redound too much to the
glory of the missionaries, the modesty of these men refused to give
to the public. We shall give an example. One day when M. de F^nelon
had come down to Quebec, in the summer of 1669, to give account of
his efforts to his bishop, Mgr. de Laval begged the missionary to
write a short abstract of his labours for the memoirs. "
Monseig-neur," replied humbly the modest Sulpician, " the greatest
favour that you can do us is not to allow us to be mentioned." Will
he, at least, like the traveller who, exhausted by fatigue and
privation, reaches finally the promised land, repose in Capuan
delights ? Mother Mary of the Incarnation informs us on this point:
"M. L'abbd de Fdnelon," says she, " having wintered with the
Iroquois, has paid us a visit. I asked him how he had been able to
subsist, having had only sagamite1 as sole provision, and
pure water to drink. He replied that he was so accustomed to it that
he made no distinction between this food and any other, and that he
was about to set out on his return to pass the winter again there
with M. de Trouvd, having left him only to go and get the
wherewithal to pay the Indians who feed them. The zeal of these
great servants of God is admirable."
The activity and the devotion of the Jesuits and
of the Sulpicians might thus make up for lack of numbers, and Mgr.
de Laval judged that they were amply sufficient for the task of the
holy ministry. But the intendant, Talon, feared lest the Society of
Jesus should become omnipotent in the colony ; adopting from policy
the famous device of Catherine de Medici,
divide to rule, he hoped that an order of
mendicant friars would counterbalance the influence of the sons of
Loyola, and he brought with him from France, in 1670, Father Allard,
Superior of the Recollets in the Province of St. Denis, and four
other brothers of the same order.
We must confess that, if a new order of monks
was to be established in Canada, it was preferable in all justice to
apply to that of St. Francis rather than to any others, for had it
not traced the first evangelical furrows in the new field and left
glorious memories in the colony ?
Mgr. de Laval received from the king in 1671 the
following letter: "My Lord Bishop of Petraea: "Having considered
that the re-establishment of the monks of the Order of St. Francis
on the lands which they formerly possessed in Canada might be of
great avail for the spiritual consolation of my subjects and for the
relief of your ecclesiastics in the said country, I send you this
letter to tell you that my intention is that you should give to the
Rev. Father Allard, the superior, and to the four monks whom he
brings with him, the power of administering the sacraments to all
those who may have need of them and who may have recourse to these
reverend Fathers, and that, moreover, you should aid them with your
authority in order that they may resume possession of all which
belongs to them in the said country, to all of which I am persuaded
you will willingly subscribe, by reason of the knowledge which you
have of the relief which my subjects will receive. . ."
The prelate had not been consulted ; moreover,
the intervention of the newcomers did not seem to him opportune. But
he was obstinate and unapproachable only
when he believed his conscience involved; he received the Recollets
with great benevolence and rendered them all the service possible.
"He gave them abundant aid," says Latour, "and furnished them for
more than a year with food and lodging. Although the Order had come
in spite of him, he gave them at the outset four missions: Three
Rivers, He Perc£, St. John's River and Fort Frontenac. These good
Fathers were surprised; they did not cease to praise the charity of
the bishop, and confessed frankly that, having only come to oppose
his clergy, they could not understand why they were so kindly
treated."
After all, the breadth of character of these
brave heroes of evangelic poverty could not but please the Canadian
people ; ever gay and pleasant, and of even temper, they traversed
the country to beg a meagre pittance. Everywhere received with joy,
they were given a place at the common table; they were looked upon
as friends, and the people related to them their joys and
afflictions. Hardly was a robe of drugget descried upon the horizon
when the children rushed forward, surrounded the good Father, and
led him by the hand to the family fireside. The Recollets had always
a good word for this one, a consolatory speech for that one, and on
occasion, brought up as they had been, for the most part under a
modest thatched roof, knew how to lend a hand at the plough, or
suggest a good counsel if the flock were attacked by some sickness.
On their departure, the benediction having been given to all, there
was a vigorous handshaking, and already their hosts were discounting
the pleasure of a future visit.
On their arrival the Recollet Fathers lodged not
far from the Ursuline Convent, till the moment when, their former
monastery on the St. Charles River being repaired, they were able to
install themselves there. Some years later they built a simple
refuge on land granted them in the Upper Town. Finally, having
become almoners of the Chateau St. Louis, where the governor
resided, they built their monastery opposite the castle, back to
back with the magnificent church which bore the name of St. Anthony
of Padua. They reconquered the popularity which they had enjoyed in
the early days of the colony, and the bishop entrusted to their
devotion numerous parishes and four missions. Unfortunately, they
allowed themselves to be so influenced by M. de Frontenac, in spite
of repeated warnings from Mgr. de Laval, that they espoused the
cause of the governor in the disputes between the latter and the
intendant, Duchesneau. Their gratitude towards M. de Frontenac, who
always protected them, is easily explained, but it is no less true
that they should have respected above all the authority of the
prelate who alone had to answer before God for the religious
administration of his diocese. |
