Thus with a Rueful Epitaph: Church and State Relations During The

Thus With a Rueful Epitaph: Church and State Relations During the Holy Wars in 19th Century Quebec by Colin Borgal B.A. Hons, M.A. (Political Studies) A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 15 January, 2009 Copyright © Colin Stewart Borgal, 2009 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. i*I Canada Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 Abstract The thesis concerns the 'Holy Wars' in mid-19 century Quebec - a crucial period not studied in English academic literatures in just proportion to its importance. The thesis asks how, during the 'Holy Wars,' the ultramontanes could lose every judicial decision to which they were party, see the more extreme articulations of their position fall out of favour even at the Vatican, and nonetheless remain a force of profound importance in Quebec well into the 20th century. The answer conceives of the 'Holy Wars' in terms of two competing and incommensurable legal idioms: the understanding of the law according to the ecclesiastical authority; and the understanding of the law according to the civil authority. The thesis posits that the ecclesiastical understanding enjoyed a structural advantage whereby it alone maintained profound influence within the private sphere, giving ultramontanism a basis from which to survive the defeats it suffered during the 'Holy Wars.' Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii Acknowledgements The long process of completing this thesis would not have reached the desired conclusion without the aid of numerous persons whom I now gratefully acknowledge. First, my partner, Judit Fabian, and my parents, George and Shirley Borgal, whose loving support allowed me to continue. Second, my supervisor, Professor Barry Wright, who has displayed the patience of Job and whose excellent comments and criticisms were essential to defining the task and evaluating progress. Third, Laszlo and Julianna Fabian, whose generous hospitality, blackberries and raspberries were essential to the completion of the third and fourth chapters. Fourth, Lieutenant Commander Robert Peck and Major Arthur Henry, who provided continual encouragement and very generously gave me the time away from work necessary to the completion of the thesis. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction 5 Chapter 1 - The Holy Wars In Cases At Law 23 Chapter 2 - The Ecclesiastical Understanding of the Law 49 Authority 51 Substance 56 Scope 59 Application 70 Chapter 3 - The Understanding of the Law According to the Civil Authority 84 Authority 86 Scope 89 a) Appeal 100 b) Membership 112 c) Undue Influence 115 d) Codification 118 Chapter 4 - The Structural Advantage of the Ecclesiastical Understanding 136 Political Spirituality 143 The Understanding of the Civil Authority and the Limits of Liberalism 150 The Gendered Hyphen 156 Conclusion 164 Bibliography 171 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 Introduction Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "There reposes a rebel who has been buried by force of arms."1 Thus with a rueful epitaph closed what was probably the most famous of the battles that came to constitute what has become known to history as Quebec's "Holy Wars." Indeed, the Guibord Affair was one of the most famous causes celebres of the second half of the 19th century. The burial of Joseph Guibord in consecrated ground, by order of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, assisted and protected by 1,235 soldiers, against the wishes of the Catholic Church, 5 years after his death, was probably the archetypal example of the passions and stakes of the 'Holy Wars' in Quebec. At a more general level, Bishop LaFleche of Trois-Rivieres wrote in 1882 in "The Religious Troubles in Canada" that the 'Holy Wars' could be categorized under three heads. The first was the political question, which was essentially the conflict and confusion between Catholic liberalism, political liberalism and ultramontanism. The second was the question of undue influence, which concerned the extent to which clerical interference in elections was justified. The third was the universities question, which concerned whether the province of Quebec ought to have more than one Catholic university. The thesis focuses upon the first two categories, since these most directly concern the intersection between the political, the religious and the legal. In these two categories are found two incommensurable legal idioms fundamentally opposed each to the other. The first is the understanding of the law according to the ecclesiastical authority, which is, in essence, a totalizing application of Catholic doctrine and dogma. This was the idiom of the ultramontanes; it recognized no 1 Mason Wade, The French Canadians 1760-1945. (Toronto: MacMillan, 1955) 349. 2 Ibid. 375. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 distinction between public and private in terms of its application, and arrogated to itself the right to determine its proper application. The separation of Church and State was anathema to this understanding, and while it admitted of a distinction between ecclesiastical and political authority, it maintained that in cases of conflict the political authority was subordinate. The second idiom is the understanding of the law according to the civil authority. By this term is meant the understanding of the law held by those authorities that were not ecclesiastical. 'Secular' would not be an ideal appellation in this context, since it has come to imply an irreligiousness that is entirely inappropriate to many of the leading figures who found themselves in opposition to the ultramontanes, such as Wilfrid Laurier and Henri-Elzear Taschereau. In the same way, the term 'liberal' is insufficient to describe this idiom, since the liberals of the 1837 rebellions had greatly moderated their opinions by the time of the Holy Wars. Moreover, many of the leading business figures, who supported codification and the dissolution of seigneurial tenure, were classically liberal in economic matters only, and quite conservative in most other respects. Finally, to refer to this idiom simply as the 'civil understanding' is to invite confusion with 'civil law,' 'civil rights,' 'civil society,' 'civility,' and other uses of the word 'civil.' Nevertheless, the term 'civil' was the most frequently used in period documents to describe those who found themselves in opposition to the ultramontanes, and captures best the totality of the non-ecclesiastical authorities.3 For this reason, the term 'understanding of the civil authority' is used throughout the thesis to refer to this second 3 The term appears with great frequency in the encyclicals of Pius IX, for example. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 of two incommensurable legal idioms. This idiom, the understanding of the law according to the civil authority, held strictly to the separation of public from private, Church from State, and political from ecclesiastical authority. Like the ecclesiastical understanding, however,

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