In the year 1759, however, the Bishop of Quebec, the Abbé de la Corne, was of Canadian origin; notwithstanding which, he was at that critical time in France. When the Bishopric of Quebec was erected by Louis XIV. in 1664, he endowed the new see with the revenues of the two abbacies, Benevent and l'Estrie; subsequently these were resigned to a general fund for the increase of small livings, from which a yearly income of 8000 livres was allowed instead for the colonial bishopric. The chapter was also enriched by a royal pension and an abbey in France, together valued at 12,000 livres annually. Besides some liberal allowances from the French crown, the Hôtel de Ville, and other external sources, no less than one fourth of all the granted lands was bestowed upon the Church establishment, and the several religious, educational, and charitable institutions of the colony, and a tithe of a twenty-sixth part of all the produce of the fields was also appropriated to the support of the parochial clergy. First in establishment, and beyond all compare foremost in importance among the religious orders in the colony, was that of the Jesuits: to their particular care were intrusted the education of youth and the Indian missions. Here, as in all other countries where that mysterious and once terrible brotherhood had taken root, the traces of their vampire energy were plainly and painfully visible. We can not, however, but regard with admiration the courage and unquenchable zeal of these extraordinary men; their union of strange and contradictory qualities astounds us: the strong will of the tyrant, the enterprise of the freeman, and the discipline of the slave. With variety and versatility of power, but singleness of purpose, they pursued their appointed course; whether warping the minds of their civilized pupils in the chill tranquillity of the cloister, or denouncing idols among the fiercest of the heathen, ever devoted and unwearied. The mission of the Jesuit priests was to bring the savage, on any terms, within the pale of the visible Church; not to advance him in civilization, but to tame him to the utmost possible docility. They overleaped the tedious difficulties of conversion, and proselyted whole tribes in a single day. At times they even adapted the forms of Catholicism to the ferocious customs of the Indians. On one occasion, when the Christian Hurons were about to torture and slay some heathen Iroquois taken in battle, the missionary, by bribes and prayers, gained permission to baptize the victims, but made no intercession to save them from an agonizing death: while under the torments of the fire and the knife, they recited their new creed instead of chanting the last war-song. The Jesuit historian of this dreadful scene calls on his readers to rejoice in the providential mercy that brought the captured Iroquois within the blessed fold of the Church. In the triumph of Christianizing the heathen, he despised the task of humanizing the Christian.