Guide to Documents Relating to French and British North America in ...

its way to Rome. In fact, the Newfoundland Catholics soon welcomed O'Donel to their island -- the
very priest and person for whom they had asked.
This small incident is a good example of the relationship that existed in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries between the Catholics of North America and the Holy See. It is an extreme
example only in the sense that the whole hierarchical ladder is represented and that all steps were duly
recorded. (In most cases, there was a more direct way of reaching Rome, or it may only seem so
because not all documents are extant.) This chapter will examine the general framework of the
relationship between Rome and North America, the way the Holy See shaped its North American policy
and whether this changed over time. It will also briefly discuss whether it is possible to determine the
impact of the Holy See upon the history of North America.
2. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
When, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, France and England decided to add the New
World to their maps, they found that Spain had left unoccupied most of what is now Canada and the
United States, and was in no position to continue its previous massive colonial effort. They began the
acquisition of their American empire at random. Port-Royal was established in 1605, Jamestown in
1607, Quebec in 1608, and Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland, in 1610. Bermuda was first settled in 1612,
and the Pilgrim Fathers landed in Plymouth in 1620. At first, profit was the only measure of a colony's
success and therefore plans were continually made and unmade, both by individual entrepreneurs and
by governments, according to the immediate income from the colonies. Some fifty years passed before
France decided that its colonies had grown too important to be left in the hands of a number of semiprivate
commercial companies and before it tried to centralize the colonies' administration. Jean-
Baptiste Colbert attached the colonies to the Ministry of the Marine. Difficulties arose from overlapping
responsibilities, and it was found that commis were not always experts in colonial affairs. The rivalry
between the French colonial governor and the intendant was theoretically resolved by the central figure
of the King. In most cases, however, this rivalry was fostered by the King himself, who wanted to
limit the powers of his two officials. As for England, it never had a central agency that controlled the
development of the thirteen continental colonies or any of its West Indian possessions, let alone a plan
for their establishment. The Board of Trade, created in 1669, had only advisory powers. Any final
decision rested with the Privy Council, whose members dealt with the whole range of government
decisions. 3
During the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal had occupied most of Central and South
America. Since both were Catholic countries, Catholicism had played a vital role in the early conquest
of America. Catholicism in fact had been the ideology of the Conquest. Paradoxically, Rome had
almost no part in it. By virtue of the so-called royal patronage, the Pope had delegated all spiritual
powers over Spanish and Portuguese possessions around the world to their respective kings. The
religious orders, which operated in Central and South America, and which played such an important
role in the conquest of the New World, because of royal patronage were responsible to their Iberian
kings, not to Rome. The Pope had in fact confined himself, in the early stages, to drawing a line
separating and establishing in perpetuity Spanish and Portuguese America. 4
Although some suggested, in the l640s, that the Pope, like any other prince in Europe, should
have his own colonies,S the Holy See, unlike France and England, had no colonies. From 1622 on,
however, it did have a central agency to deal with these "Catholic" colonies, or, more precisely, to
profit from other countries' efforts to build and maintain colonial empires. In 1622 the Sacred
Congregation "de Propaganda Fide" was established to spread the true faith among the infidels, to
protect it where Catholics lived side by side with non-Catholics, and ultimately to achieve union with
the Protestant and Orthodox churches. The new Congregation was meant to pursue these goals by co-
2