The duty continues to go back to basics of French Americafocusing on the exploration Quebec newspapers and archives. To broaden our horizons, we will travel from the northern confines of the Hudson to the sunny dreams of Florida, while tracing the thread of a shared history. Today: the excavation of the Jesuit college in Quebec.
Quebec City, August 31, 1878. In a city that had just been shaken by popular uprisings, a worker smashed the grave of a Jesuit missionary buried in the 17and century. The brutally unearthed skeleton rests on a fir plank forming the bottom of a coffin, most of which has been decomposed. The bones appear complete, with the notable exception of the head: it is not there. And for good reason: it was cut. In place of the skull, there is a small white porcelain cross.
We are on the site of the chapel of the former Jesuit college, razed the previous year. Amid the hastily excavated remains, the silhouette of a mustachioed man in his thirties stands out: Narcisse Faucher de Saint-Maurice, veteran of Maximilien’s army, the deposed emperor of Mexico (1864-1867) shot at the end of an incredible reign, has embarked on archeology!
Faucher served as clerk of the Legislative Council of Quebec. It was the Prime Minister, Henri-Gustave Joly, who commissioned him to excavate the foundations of the college.
This self-taught archaeologist’s only training was natural curiosity, which led him to survey the ruins of the Aztec civilization between two military operations. The native of Quebec is also a pioneer in denouncing the dispersion of the treasures of the former empire of Maximilian. “The rarest and most curious antiquities of the country are almost all exiled in the libraries of Europe or in private collections”, he complained in 1874 in his account From Quebec to Mexico. This plea did not prevent him from bringing back in his trunks the fragments of an “idol” of the god Huitzilopochtli. Offered to the Laval University museum by Faucher, this travel souvenir is untraceable today, noted The duty.
Scientific island
The Jesuit College of Quebec was erected in the heart of the upper town starting in 1647. This massive three-storey building was four times larger than the Saint-Louis castle of the governor of New France. It would be one of the most beautiful in the colony, according to the Swedish botanist and traveler Pehr Kalm: “It resembles the new palace in Stockholm and contains within its walls a spacious courtyard. Its dimensions are such that 300 families could comfortably stay there. »
The building, surrounded by orchards, is the starting point for the Jesuits to the Great Lakes as well as the Mississippi River. “It was towards the mother house of Quebec that the news of the sufferings, the combats, the triumphs of the missionaries converged”, wrote Faucher in his excavation report submitted to the Prime Minister in 1879. “Each member of the Society of Jesus who came in Canada picked up his cross at Quebec and however heavy it might be, he carried it without batting an eyelid. »
This college has a remarkable library and apothecary. A comprehensive education is provided there, at least for young men. Father Bonnécamps taught mathematics, hydrography and astronomy there at the end of the French Regime. “He’s a Jesuit who only has the robe”, observes Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.
But the college’s activities were interrupted by the British bombardments of 1759. The building was gradually transformed into barracks under the new regime. The classical course was abandoned in 1768. And the primary classes stopped in 1776, during the American Revolution.
Destruction of heritage
The degradation of Jesuit Barracks accelerated with the departure of the British garrison from Quebec in 1871. The disused building was used in particular as a shelter for some of the 3,000 victims thrown into the street by the fire that devastated the Faubourg Saint-Louis in 1876. heat, the refugees tore up the floors and joists of the upper floors. The engineer subsequently assigned to assess the state of the building did not care about its historical importance: he recommended its demolition.
“We had a mania for destroying everything that gave our town a cachet of antiquity,” laments this singular writer, Faucher de Saint-Maurice.
At the beginning of the 1870s, the fortified walls of the upper town suffered particularly badly. Its gates have been demolished, like its outposts. “The new houses of our little rentiers absorbed the debris of all these demolitions as best as possible”, carried away the amateur archaeologist. “By dint of leveling, we had succeeded in making an exceptional, curious city, which we came to visit from afar, a gloomy, poor city, without poetry, and which seemed plunged in the horrors of the bombardment. »
The widespread destruction has brought to the surface the remains of old guns and swords. “What has become of these relics of the past, useless to the worker who encounters them, and so precious to those who want to study the history of their country? asks Faucher. “Everything has disappeared in the hands of people who only see old pennies, rusty iron, ridiculous antiques, in these silent witnesses of our greatness and our anguish. He regrets that no thought was given to rewarding the workers to encourage them to report their fortuitous discoveries. “In this country, when you have drawn public attention to a building, a ruin or a historical relic, you think you have done everything. We discuss in the press, or we question it between dog and wolf […], then we think of something else. »
In 1877, it was the turn of the former Jesuit college to fall under the pick of the wreckers. “In a few days, there will be nothing left of what was, for 114 years, thealma mater of education in North America”, notes Faucher, annoyed. “A year older than Harvard College, near Boston, that of the Jesuits in Quebec City will now only exist in the memories of those who are proud of their past. »
Why this demolition? “The walls are extraordinarily strong and could have stood the test of another century,” reads The Journal of Quebec of June 12, 1877. “We used the strongest explosives known to get the better of these walls, and even the masonry of Brother Le Faulconier, the framework of Brother Ambroise Cauvet, only seemed to crumble with regret,” adds Faucher.
Among the unfortunate expelled from this building, we note the presence of an octogenarian and a “mentally insane person” with nowhere to go. Eventually, a temporary home was found for him in a prison cell. “How is it that in a civilized city such deprivations can occur? asks the correspondent of the Log.
The sandstone stones are salvaged to serve as foundations for the Quebec Parliament Building erected by underpaid and abused workers. The location of Jesuit Barracks was originally to house the Legislative Palace. Rather, it will see the birth of the neo-medieval city hall of Quebec.
Skull
While cleaning the quadrangle of its past, the workers come across a skull “covered with rather long and still adherent red hair”. For Faucher, these are the remains of Father Jean de Quen, the one who gave his name to Lac Saint-Jean before dying in 1659. However, the remains would rather be those of Brother Ratel, the remains of Father de Quen being found not far from there in 1992.
The fortuitous discovery led Premier Joly to entrust the excavation of the perimeter, in a hurry, to Faucher de Saint-Maurice. He places the red-haired skull in a box. He also stores there the decapitated skeleton of Brother Jean Liégeois, executed by the Iroquois in 1655. beginning of September.
All these bones are stored in a padlocked service building. But all that vanished when Faucher showed up there the following spring. It will be necessary to wait 10 years before they are found, in one of the mass graves of the Belmont cemetery, in Sainte-Foy. A coroner had the remains moved without anyone’s knowledge. The remains will be repatriated to Old Quebec in 1891, to be buried in the vault of the Ursuline chapel in the presence of a “deputation of the descendants of the tribe of Hurons”.