img The Great Intendant A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672  /  Chapter 6 TALON AND THE CLERGY | 66.67%
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Chapter 6 TALON AND THE CLERGY

Word Count: 2469    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

and that the superiority of the civil power should be cautiously asserted. The intendant was quite ready to follow these directions. He had been reared in the principles of the

and ready to protect the missionaries, as well as the charitable and educational institutions, in their work. Neither is it sur

stractions and dissipations of the world. Seeing that many members of the association had departed from the rules by taking part in these pleasures, Laval threatened to suspend their meetings. Naturally a strong impression was made on the public mind. Talon resented what he deemed an undue interference. He laid a complaint against the bishop's action before the Sovereign Council and asked that two of their number be directed to report on the social entertainments held during the last carnival, in order to show that nothing improper had taken place. When the report was made, it declared that nothing deserving of condemnation had occurred in these festivities, and that there was no occasion to censure them. Evidently, if there was encroachment upon this occasion, it was encroachment of the

the civil magistrate. He went on to say that too strict a moral discipline of confessors and spiritual directors put a constraint on consciences, and that, in order to counterbalance the excessive claims to obedience of the clergy then in charge, other priests shoul

enty-sixth part of all that the soil grows, naturally or by man's labour, for the benefit of the priests who ministered to the spiritual wants of the people. There was a proviso stating that the words 'by man's labour' did not include manufactures or fisheries, but only the products of the soil when cultivated and fertilized by human industry. The assessment of one-twenty-sixth was to be levied for a term of twenty years only, after which the tithes were to be fixed according to the needs of the time and the state of the country. Later on, in 1679, a royal edict made perpetual the rate of one-twenty-sixth. For years the practice prevailed of levying tithes only on grain. But in 1705 two parish priests maintained that they should be levied also on hemp, flax, tobacco, pumpkins, hay-on all that is grown on cultivated land. A heated discussion in the Sovereign Council took place, led by the attorney-general Auteuil. The two priests contended that the ordinance of Tracy, Courcelle, and Talon did not limit the tithes to grain; it stated that they should be levied on all that the soil grows naturally o

of civilizing the Indians would be to bring up Indian and French children together. So he withdrew from the Jesuits' College a number of pupils whom he had previously placed there and established them, with a few young Indians, in a house bought for the purpose. Such were the beginnings of the Quebec Seminary, opened on October 9, 1663. The first class consisted of eight French and six Indian children. The seminary trained them in the practice of piety and morality. For ordinary instruction they went to the Jesuits. The Jesuits' College had been founded in 1635 and was of great service to the colony. It was pronounced by Laval in 1661 almost equal in educational advantages and standing to the Jesuits' establishments in France;

s. The Indian girls had special classes and teachers, but they were lodged and boarded along with the French children. Some of these Indian pupils of the Ursulines afterwards married Frenchmen and became excellent wives and mothers. Special mention. is made of one of the girls as being able to read and write both French and Huron remarkably well. From her speech it w

eceiving welcome accessions to their number; the Abbes Trouve and de Fenelon arrived in 1667, and the Abbes Queylus, d'Allet, de Galinee, and d'Urfe in 1668. In the latter year Fenelon and Trouve were authorized by Laval to establish a new missionary station. for a tribe of Cayugas as far west as the bay of Quinte on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The progress of mission work was now most encouraging. Peace prevailed and the Iroquois country was open to the heralds of the Gospel. Fathers Fremin and Pierron were living among the Mohawks; Father Bruyas with the Oneidas. In 1668 Father Fremin was sent to the Senecas, Father Milet to the Onondagas, and Father de Carheil to the Cayugas. The bloody

been saved from destruction and was now full of new vigour. Every one in the colony knew that the great intendant had been the soul of the revival, the leader in all this progress. It may therefore be easily imagined what was the state of popular feeling when the news came that Talon was to leave Canada. He had t

m here as intendant, this country has developed more and progressed more than it had done before from the time of the first settlement by the French.' The annalist of the Hotel-Dieu was not less sympathetic, but there was hope in her utterance: 'M. T

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