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

Propaganda, however, added that "Sua Santita non avra difficolta di deputare per vicario apostolico 10
stesso ecclesiastico eletto per vescovo di quel capitolo."s3 [See Appendix A for translation.] A few
years later, at the beginning of the American War of American Independence, Propaganda was not
disturbed by the fact that this was, after all, a revolution against an established authority. It waited to
see who would come out the winner, and then it came to terms with the representatives of the
American Congress, managing to convince the new rulers to accept the establishment of a Catholic
hierarchy in the United States. 54
It would be a mistake to consider this unchanging working style of Propaganda and the
uniformity of its decisions as evidence that Propaganda was not affected by the general shift in the
European perception of the New World. Things did indeed change, even for Propaganda officials. Over
the decades, a new geographical awareness slowly replaced the confusion North America had caused
to the early officials of the Congregation. In the l620s they had been unable to locate Lord Baltimore's
colony of Avalon on the island of Newfoundland, which was probably the portion of North America
best known to early seventeenth-century Europeans. ss They appointed Pacifique de Provins prefect of
the missions of Canada (i.e., Acadia), and continued to style him with that title even though he never
went to North America and spent most of his American life in the West Indies. 56 They suggested that
a mission in Guyana could make it possible to find an overland passage through North America leading
to the Indians of New Mexico. 57 Random mistakes of this kind became less and less frequent in the
second half of the seventeenth century, and were virtually non-existent in the eighteenth century.
Marginal notes, which served the purpose o~ identifying the geographical location of a document,
became more precise, although there was still room for confusion. "Canada" became "Quebec" after
the erection of the bishopric, and reverted to "Canada" in the late eighteenth century. The British
continental colonies were always "Indie Occidentali" (and as such were often confused with the islands
proper), until they were referred to as "Baltimore" on account of the new bishopric. "America" usually
meant Spanish or Portuguese America, while Newfoundland was simply "Terranova." Saint-Pierre and
Miquelon were a special case, as they are today. Since they were islands, they were usually included
with the West Indies, although it was evident that they were far away from the Caribbean seas.58
In view of what was happening elsewhere in the world, it is not surprising that this shift in
perception became more evident in the second half of the eighteenth century, as shown by the sheer
quantity of North American material received by Propaganda from the early l760s onwards. From the
end of the Seven Years War the amount of mail increased out of all proportions to the previous period.
It is worth noting, for example, that a third (33.5%) of the 460 letters of North American interest
written by Propaganda over the 177 years between 1622 and 1790 are dated between 1622 and 1759,
while the other two thirds (66.5%) were sent between 1760 and 1799. Correspondence with the bishops
of Quebec (Briand, d'Esgly, Jean-Fran~ois Hubert, Pierre Denaut) became a regular duty for Propaganda
officials. Even more time-consuming was Propaganda's correspondence with the bishop of Quebec's
vicar general in Paris, the Abbe de L'Isle-Dieu, whose passion for letter-writing was almost matched
by his successor, Villars. After Carroll's appointment as prefect apostolic of the missions in the United
Provinces of America, Propaganda began a regular correspondence not only with the future bishop, but
also with a number of his American confreres who had been in hiding most of their lives and wanted
to profit from the new climate of religious tolerance. On some matters relating to North America,
Propaganda prepared detailed dossiers for the use of the secretary -- a small change from previous
working practices that can be interpreted as a new awareness of the importance of American events. S9
At the same time, new openings for missions were found in Newfoundland, in Saint-Pierre and
Miquelon, in the Canadian Northwest, among the Iroquois, and along the Ohio River. 60
In the second half of the eighteenth century, a better knowledge of North American events
accompanied Propaganda's increasing awareness of the geography of the New World. The instruction
sent to Pietro Pamphili Colonna, archbishop of Colossus and nuncio in France, on 28 March 1764, well
described the state of the French colonies of America after the Conquest and the political strategy to
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