Pour la gloire de Dieu et du Roi. Les récollets en Nouvelle-France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles by Caroline Galland (review)

In 1904, a dispute broke out between historian Thomas Chapais, author of a newly-published biography of Intendant Jean Talon, and a Récollet friar, Brother Colomban-Marie Dreyer. The burden of the friar’s complaint was that in the writing of this and other historical works, the Récollets were being treated unfairly. There was no doubt: as missionaries in New France they had frequent run-ins both with the Jesuits and with the episcopate. This, in the eyes of Chapais and others, made them unfaithful servants to the Church of Québec. Since history always favours the victors, and since the Récollets were the losers, they were relegated to something close to oblivion. “Les Récollets n’ont rien à perdre; tout est perdu pour eux,” wrote Dreyer (p. 144).

Caroline Galland recognizes this unfairness, which she attributes to the ideology of late nineteenth-century Québec. A nascent nationalism infused with ultramontanism had created a foundational myth in which the Church, unified and unshakeable, stood like a rock between the habitants and the British conquerors. In this scheme of things, the Récollets were, so to speak, the burr under the saddle. They were Gallican in their loyalties and laxist in their administration of confession — both of these things anathema to the rigorists of the seventeenth (and the nineteenth) century: so historiography set them set aside.

And, says the author, the misperception has been allowed to continue to this day. Even now, historians downplay the role of the friars in New France. She purposes to correct this; but first, she takes their problems head-on. As missionaries to the Amerindians they were no match for the Jesuits. They were poor communicators: nothing that they wrote could match the Jesuits’ Relations — or inspire comparable moral and financial support. Their poverty was a constant hindrance to them. Above all, their Gallicanism was an affront to Bishop Laval who suspected (quite reasonably) that they were in league with the Crown to degrade, or at least dilute, his power. Had he not been ordered otherwise, he would have kept them penned up in their convents, away from the parishes and the Indian missions. For years, the Récollets lived with frustration. But is not all this worthy of record? “Quand bien même l’histoire des récollets en Nouvelle-France est celle d’un échec, cette histoire mérite d’être écrite” (p. 146).

The progress (or, sometimes, lack of it) of the Récollet friars in the Canadian missions provides an excellent illustration of the political entanglements of seventeenth-century Catholicism. Initially favoured by Champlain, they soon found themselves sidelined in favour of the Jesuits. Then, in 1632, when France took back the colony after a brief occupation by the Kirke brothers, the Jesuits returned, but the Récollets did not. To find out why, Galland looks to the interplay of politics in Paris. The favour of powerful patrons was a deciding factor, and in the 1620s and 1630s the Jesuits enjoyed more of it than did the friars.

In 1669, however, the situation changed. The Récollets were ordered to return to New France, for reasons both political and religious. Louis XIV and his minister Colbert were determined that the Crown, not the bishop or the Jesuits, should control the colony. This meant, among other things, tamping down its religious extremism. The Jesuits used their monopoly to enforce a rigorist observance, especially painful where the sacrament of penance was concerned. Complaints came back to Paris of “la genne des consciences”, a problem that, it was feared, might impel some colonists to return to France. The Récollets, already known for confessing seculars in a milder and more compassionate manner, were chosen to offer an alternative. Whatever their own missionary aspirations, they came as instruments of...