CCHA Study Sessions, 34(1967), 9-28

by Cornelius JAENAN, Ph.D.
United College, University of Manitoba

    A wide-ranging study of church-state relations in seventeenth century New France, indicating to what extent church and state were complementary or conflicting forces in the cultural, economic, political and military foundations of the colony, is long overdue. Little has been done since the informative, if restricted, study by Mack Eastman and the general overviews provided by Faillon and Gosselin. French-Canadian historians have tended to repeat the dated, but well-documented, findings of Faillon and Rochemonteix; English-Canadian historians, for the most part, have been content, or at least have made do, with Francis Parkman's interpretation. ⁽¹⁾

    There are many who have taken in hand to write about some aspect of the life of the Catholic Church in New France. Côté, Delanglez, Jouve, Lanctôt, Paradis, Porter, Pouliot, Rayez and many others come to mind. ⁽²⁾ Hagiography and moralizing essays abound. The Jesuit Relations, the work of the various religious communities, and some of the Indian missions have been studied. The parochial system; the intellectual roots of French-Canadian Catholicism; the role of great personalities; the varying influences of metropolitan France, French North America and English North America; the economic basis of both missions and parishes; the social attitudes and religious convictions of the masses and of their clergy: these are some of the areas still begging investigation. It is astonishing that a society, in which religion is regarded as having played a dominant role, possesses what Falardeau restrainedly describes as "une littérature scientifique encore si hésitante sur ces questions." ⁽³⁾

    Obviously, this paper is not intended to correct the deficiencies of this area of social history. By examining one phase of religious history, which can here be summarized in only the most general terms, it is hoped that a generally valuable frame of reference may be provided for seventeenth century Canadian studies and that a valid conceptual framework may emerge for further investigation of church history. The validity of a study of church-state relationships in New France, then, rests upon its relevance to historical interpretation and to analytical consideration of interacting "history-making forces."

    No study of the church in New France is complete unless the institutional and ideological factors considered in their colonial context are measured by and with similar institutional and ideological factors, first, in metropolitan France and, secondly, in other North American colonies of European settlement. It is remarkable that while some attention has been focused on French administration in Canada comparatively little attention has been directed to the metropolitan church. Among the lignes de force operative in the French church those of predominant influence in the St. Lawrence riparian colony were: royal or constitutional Gallicanism; the dévotisme of the early seventeenth century religious revival (particularly the rechristianization crusade by coteries of patrician zealots, the Company of the Holy Sacrament); the new, activist, and often Ultramontane, Catholicism of laymen and religious in foreign missions; the administrative concern with religious uniformity which was threatened by Jansenism, Huguenotism and the regalian rights controversy.

    Louis XIV's education and temperament fortified the Gallican tradition to the point that in 1681 he recommended, to the kings of Tonkin, Cochinchina, Siam and Persia, the Catholic religion as "the highest, the most noble, the most holy, and especially the most appropriate to enable kings to reign absolutely over their peoples. ⁽⁴⁾ The effectiveness of Catholicism as a vehicle for social control in overseas territories may be questioned, however, and one French traveller observed that metropolitan controls "lost their strength with distance, just as an arrow falls short of the target which is too far from the archer's arm." ⁽⁵⁾ So while the King clung to his ideology, the Church in the colony functioned in a very different social and political milieu from that premised by the ideology. Gustave Lanctôt has demonstrated that the colonial church submitted to a certain servitude. ⁽⁶⁾ Constitutional Gallicanism at Quebec, on the other hand, required neither the renunciation of the Ultramontane mentality nor espousal of doctrinal Gallicanism. Bishop Laval, for example, awaited his nomination from the Crown, waited on the King for the creation of his diocese, and later submitted his resignation to Versailles. But he remained ever an Ultramontane. The "liberties of the Gallican Church," nevertheless, proved to be convenient cause for the proscription, now and then, of clerical activities. Conflicting and contradictory forces are very compatible historical companions.

    Louis XIV was the "eldest son" of a Church which Janus-like bore two faces. In addition to a Gallican face, there was a revivalist one. The French church, at least in several sectors, witnessed an outpouring of spirituality and became activist as the number of canonizations, of new religious foundations and of charitable enterprises attest. This revivalism, fed by Jesuit self-discipline and Carmelite mysticism, relayed and developed the decisions of the Council of Trent which were never formally accepted or published in France. Allier, Beauchet-Filleau, Rébelliau, Pascal and Souriau have uncovered for us the activities of the semi-secret, militant Company of the Holy Sacrament organized in 1630 and soon operating throughout the realm by means of cells designed to promote pious practices, to sponsor projects for charitable assistance, and to repress vice, impurity and lower class disorders. ⁽⁷⁾ Adair has indicated to us the spiritual fount which fed the zealotry of the founders of Montreal, governors Ailleboust and Mézy, Bishop Laval, the curate Bernières, Mother Marie de l'Incarnation, and generally, the Jesuits, the secular clergy of the Seminary of Quebec, the Ursulines and the Hospitalières. ⁽⁸⁾ The so-called "puritanical" flavour of religion in New France has sometimes been attributed to Jansenist influences. All the evidence paints to dévotisme of the stamp of the Company of the Holy Sacrament as the source of Canadian rigourism.

    On one occasion there was some fear that Jansenism had crossed the Atlantic to undermine the unity of the colonial church. The Annales de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec speak of a Hospital Nun who came from Paris in 1651:

She had been brought up by people tainted with Jansenism which was already making great trouble in France. This obliged us to examine her and to place her on probation longer than we would have done otherwise. Since we did not discover in her anything that seemed heretical, she was allowed to take veil. ⁽⁹⁾

    The dévotisme of Canada differed from Jansenism in two essential ways it was strongly attached to Ultramontanism and it was a non-intellectual movement. Even the Jesuits, commonly regarded as the intellectual élite, concluded, at one point, that the Canadian church required more young men with "less science, more humility and zeal." ⁽¹⁰⁾

    In the seventeenth century there was a rustling in the heavy draperies of orthodox thought, both in science and in religion. This was the age of Descartes, Carrenti, Pascal, Perrault, Blasius and the Académie Royale des Sciences. The ideas of Copernicus, of Newton and of Galileo underpinned scientific speculation. Pierre Bayle, for example, in considering the comet of 1680 set about to prove that, contrary to popular belief, celestial phenomena could not be miraculous warnings sent from God and he brought into question religious superstitions. New France was directly influenced by this scientific thought. Father Le Jeune was to lend support to Galileo's hypothesis of the rotation of the earth. The missionaries among the Indians of the hinterland took care to record observations requested by French scientists and from their quills we have descriptive accounts of the earthquake of 1663 and the parhelions of 1670-71. There were researchers in botany and in medicine. Monsieur Tronson's reactions to charges of witchcraft in the colony reveal surprisingly enlightened views for the times and provide a striking contrast to dominant views in Massachusetts. The sacramental system may explain in part this difference but the penetration of new scientific views among the élite is a much more important factor. ⁽¹¹⁾

    It is proposed to consider ten areas of church-state relations which are being investigated further.

    First of all, let us turn to the question of the clergy in the colonial administration. The seigneurial rights of the missionaries and the support and protection promised in the contracts of the Company of New France and the Community of Habitants, while indicating special privileges, granted no effective share in administration. During the period of the commercial counter (i.e. to 1663) devout and pious Governors established a tradition. In the atmosphere of a small overseas missionary outpost it is understandable that eye-witnesses should report, particularly in propagandist publications, "a great union" between civil and ecclesiastical powers and "familiar conversations" between missionaries and governors. ⁽¹²⁾ In 1647 leading colonists and the Superior of the Jesuits were appointed to the Council of Quebec. The result for the clergy was that they gained in prestige without any real gain of political power. Indeed, the Jesuits saw themselves associated in the minds of many with the few oligarchs, "the aristocracy of the beaver," who profited from the fur trade at the expense of the menus habitans. More consequential was the fact that their Superior, not the Bishop, was appointed to the Council. Governor Avaugour reported to Condé, the Viceroy:

I put at the head of a general council for the service of the King and the welfare of the country the Reverend Father Ragnaust (sic), who has the honour to be known to Your Highness, and who with three others deliberates every day public affairs. Because of his merit I could do not better. If the occasion presents itself I beg Your Highness to authorize this conduct and to be altogether convinced that the Jesuits have worked more than any others for this country. ⁽¹³⁾

    Political power was not distasteful to the Jesuits, but open assumption of political office was undesirable. Not until May 24, 1661, did a brevet from the Council of State give the Bishop a seat and a vote in this colonial Council. ⁽¹⁴⁾ When Laval visited France to solicit metropolitan intervention and direction in colonial affairs, the illness of the Queen Mother and the generous don gratuit of the French clergy had created a climate favourable to his requests. To assist in the establishment of a royal government in Canada, Laval was asked to nominate a Governor and together with the latter to nominate resident Sovereign Councillors. Laval nominated Mézy, a dévot who like himself had been associated with the Hermitage of Caen, and six colonial oligarchs most of whom seem to have been implicated in the financial irregularities investigated by Dumesnil and Gaudais-Dupont. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Laval and Mézy acted together in revoking titles to unsettled lands and in challenging the jurisdiction of a naval tribunal, but soon Mézy began to assert himself and to restrict the Bishop's role in administrative affairs. A bitter quarrel erupted and the colonial oligarchs, Villeray, Bourdon and Auteuil supported Laval. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Successively, Laval was obliged to give way in disputes concerning his role in appointing a substitute attorney-general, in the election of syndics, and in the reconstitution of the Sovereign Council. The appointment of an Intendant in 1665 terminated any effective assertion of his "pretentions." Talon was carefully instructed:

It is absolutely necessary to hold in just balance the temporal authority, which resides in the person of the said Bishop and the Jesuits, in such a manner, nevertheless, that the latter be always inferior to the former. The first thing which the Sieur Talon will have to observe well, and about which it is good for him to have fixed ideas before leaving here, is to know perfectly the state in which these two powers are at present in the colony and the state in which they naturally ought to be. ⁽¹⁷⁾

    Colbert counselled Governor Courcelles to "act with great prudence and circumspection," optimistically surmising that "when the country increases in population assuredly the Royal authority will surpass the Ecclesiastical and will resume the correct proportion it ought to enjoy." ⁽¹⁸⁾ Meanwhile, judicious employment of state subsidies and careful exploitation of popular chafings at ecclesiastical restraints were employed to buttress the secular authority against "encroachments by the clergy."

    The influence of the colonial clergy did not rest so much on the fact that they outnumbered the civil officers as on the fact that the clergy were a highly structured group. They were knit into an effective "party" by common motivations, shared aims and a collective experience in the French religious revival. Weakness in the administrative structure before 1663 also invited clerical activity. Marie de l'Incarnation., for example, offered the following evaluation of the Governor's resignation in 1661:

The inability to protect the country, the lack of advisors with whom he could communicate freely on certain secret matters, his misunderstandings with the most influential men in the country... have made him decide to obtain peace by requesting his recall. ⁽¹⁹⁾

    Generally, the civil officers did not permit their powers and judgment to be interfered with in matters of justice, appointments, Indian policy and land distribution.

    In the second place, the two-power orientation of juridical thinking, based on the Gelasian assertion that the world was ruled by the sacerdotium and the imperium, produced as much confusion and conflict in New France as in Old France. An ecclesiastical court or Officialité had been created in 1659 (in accord with the Royal Declaration of 1571, the Ordinance of 1629, and Declaration of 1637). It successfully asserted its jurisdiction in the charges brought against the abbé Guillaume Vaillant of Beaupré, whose life and morals the parishioners petitioned the Governor to investigate. ⁽²⁰⁾ But Laval's attempts to forcibly place a young domestic with the Ursulines to be educated and to have a "relapse heretical prisoner, blasphemer and profaner of the sacraments" executed were less successful. ⁽²¹⁾ Three cases, none originating as disputes over the relative rights and jurisdiction of church and civil courts, but all developing into incidents in which this question became the paramount, illustrate the problem of separation of powers.

    The first incident grew out of Frontenac's quarrel with Governor Perrot of Montreal in 1674 over trading activities, and especially out of the abbé François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon Easter sermon which denounced civil magistrates who abused their powers but which also depicted clearly the events leading to Perrot's arrest. The abbé Fénelon refused repeatedly to give the Sovereign Council a copy of his sermon (though he possessed a certified copy), demanded that specific charges be laid, and insisted on receiving the honours and enjoying the privileges of his estate by ostentatiously seating himself and pulling his hat down firmly over his ears with both hands when commanded to remain standing and uncovered to answer to charges. He finally announced "my case is pending before the Officialité" and added "I cannot and ought not to reply to the Council until I have been judged by my Bishop." ⁽²²⁾ In Laval's absence the Grand Vicar Bernières was asked to testify and he reasserted the clerical privileges and claimed the right to the Bishop's seat at the head of the Council table. Judicial proceedings commenced in May so wearied the Councillors by September that Perrot's and Fénelon's recusation of judges divided them. Charges of seditious conspiracy against Fénelon were not proceeded with at Québec. Fénelon was fined 37 livres and the King's decision was awaited with the returning vessels in the spring of 1675. Louis XIV's verdict settled none of the issues:

    Monsieur Tronson thought it useful to warn his Sulpician colleagues at Montreal that they should profit "by the example of Mr. de Fénelon" who having "intrigued too much in worldly matters" had "spoiled his own interests and harmed those friends whom he had wished to assist." ⁽²⁴⁾

    A second test case developed from Laval's denunciation of a petition sent to the Sovereign Council by a trader named Roland, from Lachine, alleging that his parish priest had refused to hear his confession and grant him absolution because he traded with the Indians, and that the priest had incited some parishioners to use violence to bar him from hearing mass. The Bishop, in the presence of a Récollet, Father Custode, offered to pay Roland's expenses in appearing at Quebec if he agreed to withdraw his accusations. Roland was determined to pursue his cause but Father Custode refused to testify against his bishop as contrary to the sacred canons. As time wore on, Roland became anxious to return to his farm but the Sovereign Council now wished to proceed and the Sulpician community at Montreal demanded that the case be transferred to a church court. In the end the Sovereign Council forbade the Sulpicians to proceed, reprimanded the parish priest of Lachine and fined one of the parishioners 100 livres for having taken signatures at the door of the church for a petition against Roland. ⁽²⁵⁾

    A third case saw the abbé Thomas Morel arraigned before the Sovereign Council in 1677 for failing to comply with its orders (La Salle, incidentally, accused him of violating the secret of the confessional) but the case was soon transferred to the Oftcialité as there was much uncertainty about jurisdiction and procedure. Only in February, 1678, did a royal edict clarify both jurisdiction and procedure. ⁽²⁶⁾

    These case histories confirm that the clergy emphasized the Gelasian view that in the area of public discipline the priesthood recognized the secular prince's authority but that the secular magistrates ought to defer to the clergy in spiritual matters. The state officials emphasized, for their part, that the secular power was of great advantage to the faith and that it was not the custom of France to allow temporal matters to come under the jurisdiction of the church. Agreement existed, nevertheless, on the proposition that the French monarchy and the Catholic church were instruments of God for the salvation of souls.

    In the third place, problems of precedence affected church-state relations. In the first decades of exploitation a Jesuit missionary "laid down the principle that it was not at all requisite to consider the matter of honor." ⁽²⁷⁾ This was normal for an undeveloped, unpopulated, largely unorganized and unsophisticated commercial counter. Nevertheless, social distinctions and conventional honours were soon in evidence. Governor Lauzon was "scarcely liked," according to La Chesnaye, "because of the little care he took to maintain his dignity, living without a servant and eating only pork and peas like an artisan or a manual labourer." ⁽²⁸⁾ In the late 1640's there was already interminable wrangling over precedence in processions, distribution of blessed bread, receipt of the Communion, disposition of soldiers at church parades, and in placement of pews. In each case the eventual issue was symbolical of the relative authority of church and state. The bitter controversies between Bishop and Governor determined Argenson to write to his brother in France:

I have asked you to send by return vessels the regulation I want concerning incensing in church because M. de Petrée pretends that the Governor must be incensed only after the choir, although the Cérémonial des Evéques determines the matter in the chapter on incensing and is based on existing practices ... It is my duty to have the matter regulated. ⁽²⁹⁾

The observant and intelligent Marie de l'Incarnation did not condone the Bishop's arbitrary conduct in these chicanes:

The character of Monseigneur our Prelate is such as I described to you in my previous letters, that is, very zealous and inflexible ... Perhaps (without blaming his conduct) if he were not so much so, things would be better; because nothing can be done here without the help of the temporal power. But I may be mistaken, for each has his own way of approaching God. ⁽³⁰⁾

    Moreover, the officers of the Company of the West Indies, the Sovereign Councillors, the seigneurs, the military officers, the patron founders of churches, and the churchwardens of Quebec found it necessary to assert their presumed rights and privileges, engendering thereby much strife and controversy. Frontenac had a prominent share in many of the controversies but the role of personality must be balanced against social factors evident in France and in the colonies both before and after his gubernatorial term in order to evaluate fairly causation.

    The churchwardens, usually successful traders and often seigneurs, reflected the bourgeois values of the colony. The important role of the bourgeois and merchants encouraged an emphasis on wealth and entrepreneurship as the basis of social distinction. Dissension between Governor Frontenac and Intendant Duchesneau was regarded by Colbert as detrimental to royal Gallicanism, therefore the Intendant received a warning "to avoid these petty contests" without detracting from "the precautions and measures to be taken to prevent the ecclesiastical power from encroaching in any way on the temporal power." He was advised also to "read carefully books which deal with the subject and the ordinances of the realm." ⁽³¹⁾ The Crown reacted with decrees and ordinances respecting the precedence to be enjoyed by the officers of the Crown, the trading company, the military, the justices, the seigneurs, and the churchwardens, ⁽³²⁾ which, while defining and identifying, did little to eradicate the source of pique and contention.

    The quarrels over precedence brought together two distinct social developments: first, the struggle between royal Gallicanism and clerical Ultramontanism; secondly, the excessive demands of colonial merchants and traders for social recognition. There was revealed both a desire on the part of the evolving colonial bourgeoisie to assert social status and guarantee upward social mobility and a desire on the part of the clergy to maintain their class privileges and rights.

    In the fourth place, the protracted negotiations and intrigues which characterized the establishment of the diocese of Quebec reveal a fundamental problem: so long as the North American missions were without diocesan organization the area came under the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (founded June 22, 1622); if a bishopric were created dependent upon a French archbishopric (Rouen and Paris claiming jurisdiction) then the colony would fall under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Gallican Church. Three episcopal candidates were considered - a Recollet, a secular priest associated with the Company of the Holy Sacrament, and a Jesuit - supported respectively by the Propaganda, the associates of Montreal, and the Company of New France, but all came to nought following internal dissensions in the colony and civil and clerical apprehensions in France. ⁽³³⁾ Marie de l'Incarnation observed:

As for me, my feeling is that God does not desire a Bishop at present in Canada; the country is not developed sufficiently ... ⁽³⁴⁾

    Eventually, two candidates were put forward, the abbé Gabriel Quéylus, a Gallican backed by the Montreal associates, Cardinal Mazarin and the archdiocese of Rouen, and the abbé François de Laval, an Ultramontane backed by the Queen Mother, the Jesuits and influential individuals associated with the Company of the Holy Sacrament. The Ultramontane party was anxious to assert the distinction between order and jurisdiction, affirming that the order of bishops derived from Christ but their jurisdiction derived from the Papacy; the Gallicans asserted, on the contrary, that the bishops derived both their office and their power immediately from Christ. The Ultramontane view disturbed the King because it invited "foreign jurisdiction."

    By 1658 the Ultramontanes won a singular victory. Louis XIV nominated Laval and accepted the creation of a Vicariate Apostolic in Canada, in the hope of strengthening social controls in the colony, pending conclusion of negotiations with Rome for the erection of a bishopric. Thus the claims of Rouen were set aside because the vicariates were directly dependent upon the Holy See, and Laval had been appointed in partibus infidelium. The royal declaration of confirmation, the terms of which were protested by the papal nuncio, did insert a stipulation "until the erection of a bishoric, at which time the titular holder shall be suffragan of the Archbishopric of Rouen." ⁽³⁵⁾

    Negotiations between Rome and Paris for the establishment of a Canadian diocese were complicated by the regalian rights controversy. By 1673 Louis XIV, probably less concerned about Quebec than about metropolitan dioceses, compromised and instructed the Due d'Estrées, ambassador at Rome:

After having examined the memorandum you sent me concerning the difficulties that arose in the dispatching of the bulls for the erection of the diocese of Quebec, I have judged it proper to order you not to insist any longer on the request which you made that the diocese should depend upon the archdiocese of Rouen, or of some other of my kingdom. My plan is that you should renew the petitions to His Holiness which you have already presented on this subject without committing yourself to this condition if His Holliness continues to insist. ⁽³⁶⁾

A correspondent from the Seminary of the Missions Etrangères in Paris reported:

M. de Québec was never so happy as when he learnt he was being recommended. A joyous look has spread over his face and makes him look ten years younger. You can imagine what it will be like when he receives his bulls. He is worried how they will draw up the bull and what terms they will employ to express the liberties of the Gallican Church and under what equivocation they will have them pass. ⁽³⁷⁾

The Roman curia compromised little by inserting in place of "Gallican liberties" the phrases "common rights of the French church" and "legitimate observances and customs of the national church" because these indicated that right and custom were involved and not a privileged position. ⁽³⁸⁾

    In the fifth place, the policy of Frenchification of the Indians, the acquiring of "a French heart and spirit" as Champlain termed it, must be considered. The objective was enunciated by the Duke of Montmorency at the beginning of the century:

... to seek to lead the natives to the profession of the Christian faith to civilization of manners, an ordered life, practice, and intercourse with the French for the gain of their commerce; and finally their recognition and submission to the authority and domination of the French crown. ⁽³⁹⁾

    Evangelization, assimilation, economic exploitation and imperialism were inextricably interwoven. The missionaries, as cultural ambassadors, often failed to distinguish between Europeanization and evangelization, between cultural assimilation and Christianization. Successively, the Recollets, the Jesuits, and the Bishop, through harsh experiences in the colony, modified their preconceived programs and came to the conclusion that the Indians to be prepared to assume their role in a French Catholic Empire should be segregated on reservations (similar to the réserve at Sillery which was patterned on the reducciones of Paraguay.) The King, Colbert and the civil magistrates in Canada continued to criticize the church for resisting inter-racial settlement, miscegenation and integrated education. Colbert instructed the Intendant Bouteroue:

...it is necessary to act slowly to make them change, and to employ all the temporal authority to attract the said savages among the French, which can be done through marriages and through the education of their children. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

But the modest Mother Marie de l'Incarnation of the Ursulines was much less optimistic:

If His Majesty wills it, we are ready to do so, because of the obedience we owe him... Nevertheless, it is a very difficult thing, not to say impossible, to gallicize or civilize them. We have more experience in the matter than anyone else, and we have remarked that out of a hundred who have passed through our hands we have civilized scarcely one. ⁽⁴¹⁾

Acrimonious debate on the Frenchification policy embittered church-state relations, until, finally, in 1685, Governor Denonville declared the traditional state policy to be an unqualified failure:

It was believed for a very long time that domiciling the savages near our habitations was a very great means of teaching these peoples to live like us and to become instructed in our religion. I notice, Monseigneur, that the very opposite has taken place because instead of familiarizing them with our laws, I assure you that they communicate very much to us all they have that is the very worst, and take on likewise all that is bad and vicious in us ... ⁽⁴²⁾

    No phase of the work of the church in Canada illustrates better the reluctance of civil officers to accept the environmental influences and limitations when these were delineated by churchmen. There was little understanding on the part of bureaucrats of the cultural clash that occurred when a highly competitive commercial European civilization came into contact with a primitive semi-nomadic hunting economy. Moreover, there was little willingness to admit that the French as a minority dispersed over a large territory, and less well adapted to the environment than the Indian in many respects, too frequently were assimilated into Indian society.

    In the sixth place, the role of the religious communities, male and female, regular and secular, in the colony reveals a means employed by the state to maintain control over church activities. Rivalry within predetermined bounds was promoted but never was this competition of the agencies of education, public welfare and state religion permitted to proceed beyond the point where disorders and popular agitation might be encouraged. Rivalry was fostered to promote evangelical zeal within the church, to increase the dependence of the several communities on civil bodies and crown officials, and to encourage a currying of favour by the clergy. One of the best examples of this practice was the issue given to Laval's opposition to the Recollet hospice in Quebec's Upper Town. His opposition knew no bounds when the Recollets dared to say mass and hear confessions, and went so far as to erect a modest belfry (1683) on their property against his wishes. It was charged at Court that Laval failed to employ them in preaching missions and to name them to parish charges. In fact, they served as chaplains, in missions and in parishes and when they were less exacting in imposing penance for illicit trading or brandy trafficking than were other priests there followed a "troubling of consciences," as it was then called, because the Jesuits and secular clergy of Laval's Seminary questioned the validity of the sacraments administered by the Recollets. ⁽⁴³⁾ The church, by providing schools, hospitals, orphanages, hostels and retreats was the handmaiden of the state and was expected to meet the standards of service demanded by state officials. The work ethic and populationist thinking of mercantilists such as Colbert, who wanted to control the number of religious vocations, had little application to Canada where the church was under-staffed and perpetually in need of more missionary volunteers. ⁽⁴⁴⁾

    In the seventh place, the problem of a Protestant party illustrates that if the church were the handmaiden of the state, the state reciprocated by acting as secular arm of the church. Intolerance in France and the colonies was fed by the concept that to be different from the King in religion was akin to sedition. Some Protestants sought unsuccessfully to contrast Huguenot fidelity with the undermining doctrine of the Jesuits:

    Where is it commonly taught that the Kings depend on God himself and that they possess a divine power of which no ecclesiastical person, no community of people, may relieve them? Is it not in the Protestant religion? Where is it at least permitted to believe that royalty is only human authority which always remains in submission to the people, who have granted it, or to the Church which may deprive of it ? Is it not in the Roman church? ⁽⁴⁵⁾

Examining the matter from the part of the State, it appears to be no less important. Everybody knows that Protestants in general are not as attached to His Majesty as are Catholics. Quebec is not very far from Boston and other English cities; to multiply the number of Protestants in Canada would be to give occasion to foment revolutions. Those who are here have scarcely taken any outstanding part in the success of His Majesty's arms; we saw them answer with a certain haste at every setback that occurred. A prohibition to French merchants to send out Protestant clerks would suffice to remedy this abuse. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

The police regulations of Quebec, promulgated on May 11, 1676, included the provision:

Prohibition is made to persons of the Pretended Reformed Religion to assemble together for the exercise of their religion throughout the extent of the said country under penalty of chastisement following the rigours of the ordinances, which persons may not winter in future in the said country without permission, and if some do winter there for legitimate cause will enjoy no public exercise of religion and will live as Catholics without giving offence. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

    Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which never applied to Canada, Denonville was ordered to have all Protestants abjure heresy and much against his own will he forced Gabriel Bernon, chief merchant at Quebec, to return to La Rochelle. A royal ordinance of March 30, 1687, drafted to prevent the possible emigration of Huguenots, forbade the inhabitants of New France to take up residence in neighbouring colonies. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

    The time limitations imposed on this paper do not permit a detailed consideration of the problems of tithing, parochial organization, the fur trade and brandy trafficking which were important to relations between church and state. Tithing, introduced by Laval in 1663 as a "new tithe" and therefore subject to the direct administration of the Bishop, was set at the average metropolitan rate of 1/13th with the Seminary of Quebec as recipient and distributor of this income. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ The habitants refused to pay the tithe at this rate because of the irregularity of church services and the pioneering conditions which prevailed. The bishop yielded and reduced the rate, in 1664, to 1/20th and finally to 1/26th. When he attempted to restore the original rate, the following year, there was an outcry, a popular assembly was called to sample opinions, and the state imposed a rate of 1/26th for a twenty-year term. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ There were to be no changes except by royal command or by "the common consent of the populace of the aforesaid country." Furs were never subjected to tithing, and when it was rumoured wood, vegetables, poultry and eggs might be included in computing the tithe there were threats of an émeute.

    Laval understood that tithing was inextricably bound up with parochial organization, but he decided against creating parishes with permanently appointed curates because, as he rationalized, a colonial church required central control, was unable to provide the necessary minimum stipends for curates, and was unable to bear the costs of constructing adequate stone edifices. ⁽⁵¹⁾ When Colbert insisted on the creation of a parochial system in New France, Laval met with the Governor and Intendant to delimit the parishes and a royal edict of 1679 confirmed these parishes and decreed that their curés be resident, enjoy tenure and receive an annual stipend of 500 livres (compared to 300 livres in most of provincial France) raised by tithes and direct levies. ⁽⁵²⁾ By 1680 there were only 25 parishes supported by tithing; in the other areas the royal edict was ignored. When the metropolitan authorities suggested the abandonment of state subsidies to poor parishes and a restoration of the tithe at the rate of 1/13th, the Bishop hastily protested saying that the habitants could not (would not, might have been more accurate) pay. ⁽⁵³⁾ It is not possible to substantiate the thesis that the parochial system was an effective means of social control. In some areas, however, it provided a social organization.

    These problems arose out of the slow agricultural development and settlement of the colony. Out of the commercial activities arose much more bitter conflicts - questions of the involvement of the clergy in the fur trade and the dispute over brandy trafficking. In a colony where furs were a medium of exchange, it was natural that a Jesuit conference in 1649 should decide on the legitimacy of restrained trade and that in 1644 the right to trade in order to meet mission expenses as it was in Japan should be defended. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ There is evidence that the clergy were interested in La Chesnaye's enterprises on Hudson's Bay, in the clandestine trade off the Gaspesian shores; and the dominant role of the "mission Indians" of the Montreal area in the illicit trade with the Hudson River outlet is well known.

    The brandy traffic is a case study in the relative strength of the economic and moralistic motivations. The principle that profit was socially degrading as well as morally and religiously dangerous was soon questioned in Canada. Many habitants persisted in the brandy traffic, state prohibitions and threats of excommunication notwithstanding. Popular consultative assemblies revealed that the majority opinion held that in the long run the traffic had harmful moral effects but it was of immediate, short-term economic and political expediency to permit the trade. The church could not compromise on this question of principle. But the state was not more successful than the church in efforts to control brandy trafficking and illicit trading with foreigners, although it employed such expedients as annual leaves and frequent amnesties to coureurs de bois. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

    Finally, in the matter of enforcement of a code of morality the church was seconded by the state because religion was dedicated to imbuing the inhabitants with loyalty and devotion to the King, and respect for civil authorities as "powers ordained of God." The state supported the church in matters of censorship of reading matter; observance of holy days; attendance at mass; control of rumblings of witchcraft, crimes of violence, blasphemy and seditious talk; combatting begging, prostitution and secret assemblies. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ The general impression one obtains of the colonists is that while independent and self-assertive, they were generally devout and much attached to various pious practices. The catechetical method of instruction imbued them with a facility in handling abstract ideas uncommon to most developing colonial societies.

    If any general conclusion may be drawn from so extensive a field of study it is that New France was neither a tyranny nor a theocracy. A wide Atlantic, virtual isolation, government by correspondence, and the absence of any effective police power, explain, to some extent, the colonial independence, the resistance to oppression and, within closely defined limits, non-conformity. Appeals to France in petty quarrels indicate not despotic intervention but some deficiency in local agencies of control, just as repeated regulations seem to indicate either nonenforcement or continued infringement. A distinction must be made between the rational framework for colonial development provided by church and state and the role of dominant forces in the development of a riparian outpost. The church appears to have provided a rational organization for life without at the same time being the chief conditioning force in daily life. Although the church affected everyday undertakings, and it was associated with every major decision to be made, it did not overshadow, in practice, environmental materialistic considerations and influences.

    Church and state in their inter-relations in Canada were influenced by the North American environment, or the "frontier" as it has been called in American historiography. Three factors need to be considered. First, the government of New France was never oppressively despotic because the exercise of power was seriously limited. Secondly, the problem of the limits of power in the colony must be assessed on the basis of sociological analysis more than on juridico-constitutional grounds. In spite of the grandiloquent claims of official pronouncements (whether they emanated from the Ministry of the Marine, the Bishop's residence, or the Sovereign Council of Quebec), decisions were not implemented if these ran counter to the well articulated interests of the leading habitants. Thirdly, the power élite is not easy to identify in New France but its existence is unmistakable. If in the English colonies to the south the presence of representative assemblies did not prevent power from being exercised by a small élite, it is not surprising that in New France the absence of representative institutions encouraged a similar élite to exercise direct influence on church and state officials. There was an independence of spirit and an expression of individualism in New France which appeared incongruous with royal government and an established church. However, this very singularity may have been the inner strength of a system which on the surface appeared oppressive and arbitrary. Seventeenth-century Canada does not provide the social scientist with a monolithic social and political model.

1. Mack Eastman, Church and State in Early Canada (Edinburgh, 1915); abbé Etienne-MichelFaillon, Histoire de la Colonie française en Canada avant Mgr. de Laval, 1615-1659 (Evreux, 1909); abbé Auguste Gosselin, Vie de Mgr. de Laval, premier évêque de Québec et apôtre du Canada, 1622-1708 (Quebec, 1944); Camille de Rochemonteix, s.j., Les Jésuites en la Nouvelle-France au XVIIº siècle (3 vols., Paris, 1859-1896). The Parkman interpretation is found in Volumes III, IV, VI, and VII of the Frontenac Edition of his works: Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America (2 vols., Toronto, 1899); Francis Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada (2 vols., Toronto, 1899). The more useful bibliographical works for church-state relations in the seventeenth century are: Henry Putney Beers, The French in North America. A Bibliographical Guide to the French Archives, Reproductions, and Research Missions (Baton Rouge, 1957); M. R. Bonin, p.s.s., "Les archives sulpiciennes sources d'histoire ecclésiastique," Rapport de la Société Canadienne de l'Histoire de l'Eglise (1935), pp. 39-50; Auguste Carayon, s.j., Bibliographie historique de la Compagnie de Jésus ou catalogue des ouvrages relatifs à l'histoire des Jésuites (Paris, 1864); Ivanhoë Caron, ""Inventaire des Documents concernant l'Eglise du Canada," Rapport de l'Archiviste de la Province de Québec, 1939-1940 (Quebec, 1940), pp. 157-353; A. G. Doughty, "Sources for the History of the Catholic Church in the Public Archives of Canada," Catholic Historical Review, No. XIX (1933-1934), pp. 148-166; H. Harrisse, Notes pour servir à l'histoire, à la bibliographie et à la cartographie de la Nouvelle-France et des pays adjacents, 1545-1700 (Paris, 1872); Gustave Lanctôt, L'Œuvre de la France en Amérique du Nord: Bibliographie sélective et critique (Montreal, 1951); Guy Laviolette (Frère Achille Gingras, i.c.), Répertoire des Sources Manuscrites de l'Histoire Religieuse Canadienne en Europe (4 vols., Paris: Thèse de l'Institut Catholique de Paris, 1958-1959) ; Charles Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana (2 vols., Paris, 1881-1887); Waldo G. Leland, Guide to Materials for American History in the Libraries and Archives of Paris (Washington, 1932-1943), Vols. I, II; E. Massicotte, "Arrêts, édits, ordonnances, mandements et règlements conservés dans les Archives du Palais de Justice de Montréal," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third series, Vol. XI, Sec. I (Dec. 1917 & March 1918), pp. 147-174; Bernard Mahieu, "Les archives de l'Eglise Catholique en France," Archivum, Vol. IV (1954), pp. 87-104; E. B. O'Callaghan, Jesuit Relations of Discoveries and other occurrence in Canada and the Northern and Western States of the Union, 1632-1672 (New York, 1914), Vol. I; Joseph Sabin, A Dictionary of Books relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time (20 vols., New York, 1868); Carlos Sommervogel et al., Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (11 vols., Paris, 1890-1892); Lawrence C. Wroth & Gertrude L. Annan, Acts of the French Royal Administration concerning Canada, Guiana, the West Indies and Louisiana prior to 1791 (New York, 1930). There are of course the numerous inventories of the Public Archives of Canada, the Archives de la Province de Québec, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the Archives Nationales in Paris.