Must we now recall the edifying deaths of the sons of Loyola, who brought the glad tidings of the gospel to the Hurons?—­Father Jogues, who returned from the banks of the Niagara with a broken shoulder and mutilated hands, and went back, with sublime persistence, to his barbarous persecutors, to pluck from their midst the palm of martyrdom; Father Daniel, wounded by a spear while he was absolving the dying in the village of St. Joseph; Father Brebeuf, refusing to escape with the women and children of the hamlet of St. Louis, and expiring, together with Father Gabriel Lalemant, in the most frightful tortures that Satan could suggest to the imagination of a savage; Father Charles Garnier pierced with three bullets, and giving up the ghost while blessing his converts; Father de Noue dying on his knees in the snow!

These missions had succumbed in 1648 and 1649 under the attacks of the Iroquois.  The venerable founder of St. Sulpice, M. Olier, had foreseen this misfortune; he had always doubted the success of missions so extended and so widely scattered without a centre of support sufficiently strong to resist a systematic and concerted attack of all their enemies at once.  Without disapproving the despatch of these flying columns of missionaries which visited tribe after tribe (perhaps the only possible method in a country governed by pagan chiefs), he believed that another system of preaching the gospel would produce, perhaps with less danger, a more durable effect in the regions protected by the flag of France.  Taking up again the thought of the Benedictine monks, who have succeeded so well in other countries, M. Olier and the other founders of Montreal wished to establish a centre of fervent piety which should accomplish still more by example than by preaching.  The development and progress of religious work must increase with the material importance of this centre of proselytism.  In consequence, success would be slow, less brilliant, but surer than that ordinarily obtained by separate missions.  This was, at least, the hope of our fathers, and we of Quebec would seem unjust towards Providence and towards them if, beholding the present condition of the two seminaries of this city, of our Catholic colleges, of our institutions of every kind, and of our religious orders, we did not recognize that their thought was wise, and their enterprise one of prudence and blessed by God.

Up to 1658 New France belonged to the jurisdiction of the Bishops of St. Malo and of Rouen.  At the time of the second voyage of Cartier, in 1535, his whole crew, with their officers at their head, confessed and received communion from the hands of the Bishop of St. Malo.  This jurisdiction lasted until the appointment of the first Bishop of New France.  The creation of a diocese came in due time; the need of an ecclesiastical superior, of a character capable of imposing his authority made itself felt more and more.  Disorders of all kinds crept into the colony, and our fathers felt the necessity of a firm and vigorous arm to remedy this alarming state of affairs.  The love of lucre, of gain easily acquired by the sale of spirituous liquors to the savages, brought with it evils against which the missionaries endeavoured to react.