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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

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Chaumonot records yet another miracle. "One evening, when all the chief
men of the town were deliberating in council whether to put us to death,
Father Brébeuf, while making his examination of conscience, as we were
together at prayers, saw the vision of a spectre, full of fury, menacing
us both with three javelins which he held in his hands. Then he hurled
one of them at us; but a more powerful hand caught it as it flew: and
this took place a second and a third time, as he hurled his two remaining
javelins. . . . Late at night our host came back from the council,
where the two Huron emissaries had made their gift of hatchets to have us
killed. He wakened us to say that three times we had been at the point
of death; for the young men had offered three times to strike the blow,
and three times the old men had dissuaded them. This explained the
meaning of Father Brébeuf's vision." [ Chaumonot, Vie, 55. ]

They had escaped for the time; but the Indians agreed among themselves,
that thenceforth no one should give them shelter. At night, pierced with
cold and faint with hunger, they found every door closed against them.
They stood and watched, saw an Indian issue from a house, and, by a quick
movement, pushed through the half-open door into this abode of smoke and
filth. The inmates, aghast at their boldness, stared in silence.
Then a messenger ran out to carry the tidings, and an angry crowd
collected.

"Go out, and leave our country," said an old chief, "or we will put you
into the kettle, and make a feast of you."

"I have had enough of the dark-colored flesh of our enemies," said a
young brave; "I wish to know the taste of white meat, and I will eat
yours."

A warrior rushed in like a madman, drew his bow, and aimed the arrow at
Chaumonot. "I looked at him fixedly," writes the Jesuit, "and commended
myself in full confidence to St. Michael. Without doubt, this great
archangel saved us; for almost immediately the fury of the warrior was
appeased, and the rest of our enemies soon began to listen to the
explanation we gave them of our visit to their country." [ Ibid., 57. ]

The mission was barren of any other fruit than hardship and danger,
and after a stay of four months the two priests resolved to return.
On the way, they met a genuine act of kindness. A heavy snow-storm
arresting their progress, a Neutral woman took them into her lodge,
entertained them for two weeks with her best fare, persuaded her father
and relatives to befriend them, and aided them to make a vocabulary of
the dialect. Bidding their generous hostess farewell, they journeyed
northward, through the melting snows of spring, and reached Sainte Marie
in safety.

[ Lalemant, in his Relation of 1641, gives the narrative of this mission
at length. His account coincides perfectly with the briefer notice of
Chaumonot in his Autobiography. Chaumonot describes the difficulties of
the journey very graphically in a letter to his friend, Father Nappi,
dated Aug. 3, 1640, preserved in Carayon. See also the next letter,
Brébeuf au T. R. P. Mutio Vitelleschi, 20 Août, 1641.

The Récollet La Roche Dallion had visited the Neutrals fourteen years
before, (see Introduction, note,) and, like his two successors, had been
seriously endangered by Huron intrigues. ]

The Jesuits had borne all that the human frame seems capable of bearing.
They had escaped as by miracle from torture and death. Did their zeal
flag or their courage fail? A fervor intense and unquenchable urged them
on to more distant and more deadly ventures. The beings, so near to
mortal sympathies, so human, yet so divine, in whom their faith
impersonated and dramatized the great principles of Christian truth,--
virgins, saints, and angels,--hovered over them, and held before their
raptured sight crowns of glory and garlands of immortal bliss. They
burned to do, to suffer, and to die; and now, from out a living martyrdom,
they turned their heroic gaze towards an horizon dark with perils yet
more appalling, and saw in hope the day when they should bear the cross
into the blood-stained dens of the Iroquois. [ This zeal was in no
degree due to success; for in 1641, after seven years of toil, the
mission counted only about fifty living converts,--a falling off from
former years. ]

But, in this exaltation and tension of the powers, was there no moment
when the recoil of Nature claimed a temporary sway? When, an exile from
his kind, alone, beneath the desolate rock and the gloomy pine-trees,
the priest gazed forth on the pitiless wilderness and the hovels of its
dark and ruthless tenants, his thoughts, it may be, flew longingly beyond
those wastes of forest and sea that lay between him and the home of his
boyhood. Or rather, led by a deeper attraction, they revisited the
ancient centre of his faith, and he seemed to stand once more in that
gorgeous temple, where, shrined in lazuli and gold, rest the hallowed
bones of Loyola. Column and arch and dome rise upon his vision, radiant
in painted light, and trembling with celestial music. Again he kneels
before the altar, from whose tablature beams upon him that loveliest of
shapes in which the imagination of man has embodied the spirit of
Christianity. The illusion overpowers him. A thrill shakes his frame,
and he bows in reverential rapture. No longer a memory, no longer a
dream, but a visioned presence, distinct and luminous in the forest
shades, the Virgin stands before him. Prostrate on the rocky earth,
he adores the benign angel of his ecstatic faith, then turns with
rekindled fervors to his stern apostleship.

Now, by the shores of Thunder Bay, the Huron traders freight their birch
vessels for their yearly voyage; and, embarked with them, let us, too,
revisit the rock of Quebec.




CHAPTER XIII.

1636-1646.

QUEBEC AND ITS TENANTS.


THE NEW GOVERNOR.--EDIFYING EXAMPLES.--LE JEUNE'S CORRESPONDENTS.--
RANK AND DEVOTION.--NUNS.--PRIESTLY AUTHORITY.--CONDITION OF QUEBEC.--
THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES.--CHURCH DISCIPLINE.--PLAYS.--FIREWORKS.--
PROCESSIONS.--CATECHIZING.--TERRORISM.--PICTURES.--THE CONVERTS.--
THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.--THE FORESTERS.


I have traced, in another volume, the life and death of the noble founder
of New France, Samuel de Champlain. It was on Christmas Day, 1635,
that his heroic spirit bade farewell to the frame it had animated,
and to the rugged cliff where he had toiled so long to lay the corner-
stone of a Christian empire.

Quebec was without a governor. Who should succeed Champlain and would
his successor be found equally zealous for the Faith, and friendly to the
mission? These doubts, as he himself tells us, agitated the mind of the
Father Superior, Le Jeune; but they were happily set at rest, when,
on a morning in June, he saw a ship anchoring in the basin below, and,
hastening with his brethren to the landing-place, was there met by
Charles Huault de Montmagny, a Knight of Malta, followed by a train of
officers and gentlemen. As they all climbed the rock together, Montmagny
saw a crucifix planted by the path. He instantly fell on his knees
before it; and nobles, soldiers, sailors, and priests imitated his
example. The Jesuits sang Te Deum at the church, and the cannon roared
from the adjacent fort. Here the new governor was scarcely installed,
when a Jesuit came in to ask if he would be godfather to an Indian about
to be baptized. "Most gladly," replied the pious Montmagny. He repaired
on the instant to the convert's hut, with a company of gayly apparelled
gentlemen; and while the inmates stared in amazement at the scarlet and
embroidery, he bestowed on the dying savage the name of Joseph, in honor
of the spouse of the Virgin and the patron of New France. [ Le Jeune,
Relation, 1636, 5 (Cramoisy). "Monsieur le Gouverneur se transporte aux
Cabanes de ces pauures barbares, suivy d'une leste Noblesse. Je vous
laisse à penser quel estonnement à ces Peuples de voir tant d'écarlate,
tant de personnes bien faites sous leurs toits d'écorce!" ] Three days
after, he was told that a dead proselyte was to be buried; on which,
leaving the lines of the new fortification he was tracing, he took in
hand a torch, De Lisle, his lieutenant, took another, Repentigny and
St. Jean, gentlemen of his suite, with a band of soldiers followed,
two priests bore the corpse, and thus all moved together in procession to
the place of burial. The Jesuits were comforted. Champlain himself had
not displayed a zeal so edifying. [ Ibid., 83 (Cramoisy). ]

A considerable reinforcement came out with Montmagny, and among the rest
several men of birth and substance, with their families and dependants.
"It was a sight to thank God for," exclaims Father Le Jeune, "to behold
these delicate young ladies and these tender infants issuing from their
wooden prison, like day from the shades of night." The Father, it will
be remembered, had for some years past seen nothing but squaws, with
papooses swathed like mummies and strapped to a board.

He was even more pleased with the contents of a huge packet of letters
that was placed in his hands, bearing the signatures of nuns, priests,
soldiers, courtiers, and princesses. A great interest in the mission had
been kindled in France. Le Jeune's printed Relations had been read with
avidity; and his Jesuit brethren, who, as teachers, preachers, and
confessors, had spread themselves through the nation, had successfully
fanned the rising flame. The Father Superior finds no words for his joy.
"Heaven," he exclaims, "is the conductor of this enterprise. Nature's
arms are not long enough to touch so many hearts." [ "C'est Dieu qui
conduit cette entreprise. La Nature n'a pas les bras assez longs,"
etc.--Relation, 1636, 3. ] He reads how in a single convent, thirteen
nuns have devoted themselves by a vow to the work of converting the
Indian women and children; how, in the church of Montmartre, a nun lies
prostrate day and night before the altar, praying for the mission;
[ Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 76. ] how "the Carmelites are all
on fire, the Ursulines full of zeal, the sisters of the Visitation have
no words to speak their ardor"; [ Le Jeune, Relation, 1636, 6. Compare
"Divers Sentimens," appended to the Relation of 1635. ] how some person
unknown, but blessed of Heaven, means to found a school for Huron
children; how the Duchesse d'Aiguillon has sent out six workmen to build
a hospital for the Indians; how, in every house of the Jesuits, young
priests turn eager eyes towards Canada; and how, on the voyage thither,
the devils raised a tempest, endeavoring, in vain fury, to drown the
invaders of their American domain.

[ "L'Enfer enrageant de nous veoir aller en la Nouuelle France pour
conuertir les infidelles et diminuer sa puissance, par dépit il
sousleuoit tous les Elemens contre nous, et vouloit abysmer la flotte."--
Divers Sentimens. ]

Great was Le Jeune's delight at the exalted rank of some of those who
gave their patronage to the mission; and again and again his satisfaction
flows from his pen in mysterious allusions to these eminent persons.
[ Among his correspondents was the young Duc d'Enghien, afterwards the
Great Condé, at this time fifteen years old. "Dieu soit loüé! tout le
ciel de nostre chere Patrie nous promet de fauorables influences, iusques
à ce nouuel astre, qui commence à paroistre parmy ceux de la premiere
grandeur."--Le Jeune, Relation, 1636, 3, 4. ] In his eyes, the vicious
imbecile who sat on the throne of France was the anointed champion of the
Faith, and the cruel and ambitious priest who ruled king and nation alike
was the chosen instrument of Heaven. Church and State, linked in
alliance close and potential, played faithfully into each other's hands;
and that enthusiasm, in which the Jesuit saw the direct inspiration of
God, was fostered by all the prestige of royalty and all the patronage of
power. And, as often happens where the interests of a hierarchy are
identified with the interests of a ruling class, religion was become a
fashion, as graceful and as comforting as the courtier's embroidered
mantle or the court lady's robe of fur.

Such, we may well believe, was the complexion of the enthusiasm which
animated some of Le Jeune's noble and princely correspondents. But there
were deeper fervors, glowing in the still depths of convent cells,
and kindling the breasts of their inmates with quenchless longings.
Yet we hear of no zeal for the mission among religious communities of
men. The Jesuits regarded the field as their own, and desired no rivals.
They looked forward to the day when Canada should be another Paraguay.
[ "Que si celuy qui a escrit cette lettre a leu la Relation de ce qui se
passe au Paraguais, qu'il a veu ce qui se fera un jour en la Nouuelle
France."--Le Jeune, Relation, 1637, 304 (Cramoisy). ] It was to the
combustible hearts of female recluses that the torch was most busily
applied; and here, accordingly, blazed forth a prodigious and amazing
flame. "If all had their pious will," writes Le Jeune, "Quebec would
soon be flooded with nuns." [ Chaulmer. Le Nouveau Monde Chrestien, 41,
is eloquent on this theme. ]

Both Montmagny and De Lisle were half churchmen, for both were Knights of
Malta. More and more the powers spiritual engrossed the colony. As
nearly as might be, the sword itself was in priestly hands. The Jesuits
were all in all. Authority, absolute and without appeal, was vested in a
council composed of the governor, Le Jeune, and the syndic, an official
supposed to represent the interests of the inhabitants. [ Le Clerc,
Établissement de la Foy, Chap. XV. ] There was no tribunal of justice,
and the governor pronounced summarily on all complaints. The church
adjoined the fort; and before it was planted a stake bearing a placard
with a prohibition against blasphemy, drunkenness, or neglect of mass and
other religious rites. To the stake was also attached a chain and iron
collar; and hard by was a wooden horse, whereon a culprit was now and
then mounted by way of example and warning. [ Le Jeune, Relation, 1636,
153, 154 (Cramoisy). ] In a community so absolutely priest-governed,
overt offences were, however, rare; and, except on the annual arrival of
the ships from France, when the rock swarmed with godless sailors,
Quebec was a model of decorum, and wore, as its chroniclers tell us,
an aspect unspeakably edifying.

In the year 1640, various new establishments of religion and charity
might have been seen at Quebec. There was the beginning of a college and
a seminary for Huron children, an embryo Ursuline convent, an incipient
hospital, and a new Algonquin mission at a place called Sillery, four
miles distant. Champlain's fort had been enlarged and partly rebuilt in
stone by Montmagny, who had also laid out streets on the site of the
future city, though as yet the streets had no houses. Behind the fort,
and very near it, stood the church and a house for the Jesuits. Both
were of pine wood: and this year, 1640, both were burned to the ground,
to be afterwards rebuilt in stone. The Jesuits, however, continued to
occupy their rude mission-house of Notre-Dame des Anges, on the
St. Charles, where we first found them.

The country around Quebec was still an unbroken wilderness, with the
exception of a small clearing made by the Sieur Giffard on his seigniory
of Beauport, another made by M. de Puiseaux between Quebec and Sillery,
and possibly one or two feeble attempts in other quarters. [ 1 ] The
total population did not much exceed two hundred, including women and
children. Of this number, by far the greater part were agents of the fur
company known as the Hundred Associates, and men in their employ.
Some of these had brought over their families. The remaining inhabitants
were priests, nuns, and a very few colonists.

[ 1 For Giffard, Puiseaux, and other colonists, compare Langevin,
Notes sur les Archives de Notre-Dame de Beauport, 5, 6, 7; Ferland,
Notes sur les Archives de N. D. de Québec, 22, 24 (1863); Ibid., Cours
d'Histoire du Canada, I. 266; Le Jeune, Relation, 1636, 45; Faillon,
Histoire de la Colonie Française, I. c. iv., v. ]

The Company of the Hundred Associates was bound by its charter to send to
Canada four thousand colonists before the year 1643. [ See "Pioneers of
France," 399. ] It had neither the means nor the will to fulfil this
engagement. Some of its members were willing to make personal sacrifices
for promoting the missions, and building up a colony purely Catholic.
Others thought only of the profits of trade; and the practical affairs of
the company had passed entirely into the hands of this portion of its
members. They sought to evade obligations the fulfilment of which would
have ruined them. Instead of sending out colonists, they granted lands
with the condition that the grantees should furnish a certain number of
settlers to clear and till them, and these were to be credited to the
Company. [ 1 ] The grantees took the land, but rarely fulfilled the
condition. Some of these grants were corrupt and iniquitous. Thus,
a son of Lauson, president of the Company, received, in the name of a
third person, a tract of land on the south side of the St. Lawrence of
sixty leagues front. To this were added all the islands in that river,
excepting those of Montreal and Orleans, together with the exclusive
right of fishing in it through its whole extent. [ 2 ] Lauson sent out
not a single colonist to these vast concessions.

[ 1 This appears in many early grants of the Company. Thus, in a grant
to Simon Le Maitre, Jan. 15, 1636, "que les hommes que le dit . . . fera
passer en la N. F. tourneront à la décharge de la dite Compagnie," etc.,
etc.--See Pièces sur la Tenure Seigneuriale, published by the Canadian
government, passim. ]

[ 2 Archives du Séminaire de Villemarie, cited by Faillon, I. 350.
Lauson's father owned Montreal. The son's grant extended from the River
St. Francis to a point far above Montreal.--La Fontaine, Mémoire sur la
Famille de Lauson. ]

There was no real motive for emigration. No persecution expelled the
colonist from his home; for none but good Catholics were tolerated in New
France. The settler could not trade with the Indians, except on
condition of selling again to the Company at a fixed price. He might
hunt, but he could not fish; and he was forced to beg or buy food for
years before he could obtain it from that rude soil in sufficient
quantity for the wants of his family. The Company imported provisions
every year for those in its employ; and of these supplies a portion was
needed for the relief of starving settlers. Giffard and his seven men on
his seigniory of Beauport were for some time the only settlers--excepting,
perhaps, the Hébert family--who could support themselves throughout the
year. The rigor of the climate repelled the emigrant; nor were the
attractions which Father Le Jeune held forth--"piety, freedom, and
independence"--of a nature to entice him across the sea, when it is
remembered that this freedom consisted in subjection to the arbitrary
will of a priest and a soldier, and in the liability, should he forget to
go to mass, of being made fast to a post with a collar and chain, like a
dog.

Aside from the fur trade of the Company, the whole life of the colony was
in missions, convents, religious schools, and hospitals. Here on the
rock of Quebec were the appendages, useful and otherwise, of an
old-established civilization. While as yet there were no inhabitants,
and no immediate hope of any, there were institutions for the care of
children, the sick, and the decrepit. All these were supported by a
charity in most cases precarious. The Jesuits relied chiefly on the
Company, who, by the terms of their patent, were obliged to maintain
religious worship. [ 1 ] Of the origin of the convent, hospital, and
seminary I shall soon have occasion to speak.

[ 1 It is a principle of the Jesuits, that each of its establishments
shall find a support of its own, and not be a burden on the general funds
of the Society. The Relations are full of appeals to the charity of
devout persons in behalf of the missions.

"Of what use to the country at this period could have been two
communities of cloistered nuns?" asks the modern historian of the
Ursulines of Quebec. And he answers by citing the words of Pope Gregory
the Great, who, when Rome was ravaged by famine, pestilence, and the
barbarians, declared that his only hope was in the prayers of the three
thousand nuns then assembled in the holy city.--Les Ursulines de Québec.
Introd., XI. ]

Quebec wore an aspect half military, half monastic. At sunrise and
sunset, a squad of soldiers in the pay of the Company paraded in the
fort; and, as in Champlain's time, the bells of the church rang morning,
noon, and night. Confessions, masses, and penances were punctiliously
observed; and, from the governor to the meanest laborer, the Jesuit
watched and guided all. The social atmosphere of New England itself was
not more suffocating. By day and by night, at home, at church, or at his
daily work, the colonist lived under the eyes of busy and over-zealous
priests. At times, the denizens of Quebec grew restless. In 1639,
deputies were covertly sent to beg relief in France, and "to represent
the hell in which the consciences of the colony were kept by the union of
the temporal and spiritual authority in the same hands." [ "Pour leur
representer la gehenne où estoient les consciences de la Colonie, de se
voir gouverné par les mesmes personnes pour le spirituel et pour le
temporel."--Le Clerc, I. 478. ] In 1642, partial and ineffective
measures were taken, with the countenance of Richelieu, for introducing
into New France an Order less greedy of seigniories and endowments than
the Jesuits, and less prone to political encroachment. [ 1 ] No
favorable result followed; and the colony remained as before, in a
pitiful state of cramping and dwarfing vassalage.

[ 1 Declaration de Pierre Breant, par devant les Notaires du Roy, MS.
The Order was that of the Capuchins, who, like the Récollets, are a
branch of the Franciscans. Their introduction into Canada was prevented;
but they established themselves in Maine. ]

This is the view of a heretic. It was the aim of the founders of New
France to build on a foundation purely and supremely Catholic. What this
involved is plain; for no degree of personal virtue is a guaranty against
the evils which attach to the temporal rule of ecclesiastics. Burning
with love and devotion to Christ and his immaculate Mother, the fervent
and conscientious priest regards with mixed pity and indignation those
who fail in this supreme allegiance. Piety and charity alike demand that
he should bring back the rash wanderer to the fold of his divine Master,
and snatch him from the perdition into which his guilt must otherwise
plunge him. And while he, the priest, himself yields reverence and
obedience to the Superior, in whom he sees the representative of Deity,
it behooves him, in his degree, to require obedience from those whom he
imagines that God has confided to his guidance. His conscience, then,
acts in perfect accord with the love of power innate in the human heart.
These allied forces mingle with a perplexing subtlety; pride, disguised
even from itself, walks in the likeness of love and duty; and a thousand
times on the pages of history we find Hell beguiling the virtues of
Heaven to do its work. The instinct of domination is a weed that grows
rank in the shadow of the temple, climbs over it, possesses it, covers
its ruin, and feeds on its decay. The unchecked sway of priests has
always been the most mischievous of tyrannies; and even were they all
well-meaning and sincere, it would be so still.

To the Jesuits, the atmosphere of Quebec was well-nigh celestial.
"In the climate of New France," they write, "one learns perfectly to seek
only God, to have no desire but God, no purpose but for God." And again:
"To live in New France is in truth to live in the bosom of God." "If,"
adds Le Jeune, "any one of those who die in this country goes to
perdition, I think he will be doubly guilty."

[ "La Nouuelle France est vn vray climat où on apprend parfaictement bien
à ne chercher que Dieu, ne desirer que Dieu seul, auoir l'intention
purement à Dieu, etc. . . . Viure en la Nouuelle France, c'est à vray
dire viure dans le sein de Dieu, et ne respirer que l'air de sa Diuine
conduite."--Divers Sentimens. "Si quelqu'un de ceux qui meurent en ces
contrées se damne, je croy qu'il sera doublement coupable."--Relation,
1640, 5 (Cramoisy). ]

The very amusements of this pious community were acts of religion.
Thus, on the fête-day of St. Joseph, the patron of New France, there was
a show of fireworks to do him honor. In the forty volumes of the Jesuit
Relations there is but one pictorial illustration; and this represents
the pyrotechnic contrivance in question, together with a figure of the
Governor in the act of touching it off. [ Relation, 1637, 8. The
Relations, as originally published, comprised about forty volumes. ]
But, what is more curious, a Catholic writer of the present day, the Abbé
Faillon, in an elaborate and learned work, dilates at length on the
details of the display; and this, too, with a gravity which evinces his
conviction that squibs, rockets, blue-lights, and serpents are important
instruments for the saving of souls. [ Histoire de la Colonie Française,
I. 291, 292. ] On May-Day of the same year, 1637, Montmagny planted
before the church a May-pole surmounted by a triple crown, beneath which
were three symbolical circles decorated with wreaths, and bearing
severally the names, Iesus, Maria, Ioseph; the soldiers drew up before it,
and saluted it with a volley of musketry. [ Relation, 1637, 82. ]

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