Mississippi missionaries’ workplace spirituality and organizational commitment (1698–1725): a case study

Abstract

The relationship between workplace spirituality and organizational commitment in modern settings is often examined using models focused on personal and organizational performance. Meant for contemporary practices, such tools can enhance understanding of organizations in the historic record, benefiting not only historians but researchers who wish to ameliorate commitment in organizations. Utilizing a recent model focused on workplace spirituality and organizational commitment, this study examines the leadership of the Séminaire de Québec and the Séminaire des Missions Etrangères de Paris as well as their secular missionaries assigned to work in villages on the Mississippi River in the early eighteenth century. Analyses demonstrate that the inability to maintain communication, support, and community between leadership and missionaries greatly hampered commitment to the organization and to the Mississippi missions. Only Father Bergier remained strongly committed to his work and the Seminaries due to his personal sense of calling, devotion, leadership, and spirituality.

Keywords:

• Workplace spirituality
• organizational commitment
• personal spirituality
• climate for spirituality
• community
• historic analysis

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Judi Neal and Rhonda Bell-Ellis for their feedback and support of this article.

Notes

1. Only five missionaries were specifically assigned to work along the Mississippi by the Séminaire de Québec. The five priests were: François de Montigny, assigned leader of the Seminary Priests in the Lower Mississippi Valley; Antoine Davion, assigned to the Tunica Mission; Jean François Buisson de Saint-Cosme, assigned to the Natchez Mission; Marc Bergier, second leader of the missionaries along the Mississippi, assigned to the Tamarois Village; and Nicolas Foucault, assigned to work among the Arkansas or Quapaw Indians.

2. This interdenominational organization supplies missionaries throughout the world. The missionaries come primarily from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.

3. Lettres Patentes de Mgr de Saint-Vallier au Séminaire de Québec pour l’établissement des missions du Mississippi, April 30, 1698, Archives du Séminaire de Québec (hereinafter ASQ), Polygraphie 9, #3.

4. Quelques avis pour servir de règles aux missionnaires du Mississippi, puis envoyés à ceux de l’Acadie, July 1699, ASQ, Polygraphie 9, #28.

5. Henri-Jean Tremblay to MM. du Séminaire de Québec, June 18, 1707, ASQ, Lettres M, #38, 2.

6. Henri-Jean Tremblay to Louis Ango des Maizerets, May 22, 1710, ASQ, Lettres O, #50, 14; Tremblay to Charles de Glandelet, 1711, ASQ, Lettres O, #52, 17; Tremblay to Charles de Glandelet, June 5, 1712, ASQ, Lettres O, #53, 17–19.

7. Nomination de M. de Montigny, Supérieur des Missions du Mississippi, May 12, 1698, ASQ, Missions #61.

8. Montigny à Ma Reverende Mère, January 2, 1699, Archives National de France (hereinafter ANF), K1374, 84; Tremblay to des Maizerets, April 2, 1701, ASQ, Lettres O, #31, 17–18.

9. The leadership in Paris was exacerbated by Saint-Vallier’s refusal to support the missions as much as promised: Tremblay to Glandelet, May 28, 1701, ASQ, Lettres O, #34, 11.

10. Saint-Cosme à Mgr. de Laval, traitant des missions, March 1700, ASQ, Lettres R, #29.

11. He would say such things as “one must make the savages men before one can make them Christian”, Saint-Cosme à l'abbé Henri-Jean Tremblay, traitant des missions, May 4, 1704, ASQ, Lettres R, #37, 12. ; or, “they are all thieves; they will kill you for your knife.”, Saint-Cosme à l'abbé Tremblay, traitant des missions, October 21, 1702, ASQ Lettres R, #36, 1. Saint-Cosme further commented that it was best to await the death of the elderly before one could begin to Christianize the Indians and suggested that a servant was needed to help him as it was inappropriate for a priest to hit an Indian. Saint-Cosme à Mgr de Laval, traitant des missions, January 2, 1699, ASQ, Lettres R, #26.

12. Davion to Bishop Saint-Vallier of Québec, December 12, 1702, Séminaire des Missions Etrangères (hereinafter SMEP), Vol. 344, 71.

13. M. Henri-Jean Tremblay to M. Louis Ango des Maizerets, June 15, 1703, ASQ, Lettres O, #39, 19.

14. Davion to Bishop Saint-Vallier, December 12, 1702, SMEP, Vol. 344, 65–69.

15. Davion to Bishop Saint-Vallier, SMEP, Vol. 344, 71.

16. Lettre de Antoine Davion sur les missions de l’Ile Dauphine, October 20, 1711, ASQ, Missions #46, 2.

17. de Montigny a MM du Séminaire de Québec, May 22, 1726, ASQ, Lettres M, #48, 4. Davion died on April 8, 1726.

18. Mémoire de la Mothe de Cadillac, September 28, 1694, Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer (hereinafter ANOM), COL C11A 13, fol. 178–191v.

19. M. Henri-Jean Tremblay to M. Charles de Glandelet, May 7, 1700, ASQ, Lettres O, #28, 22.

20. Bergier to Bishop Saint-Vallier, March 13, 1702, ASQ, Lettres R, #50, 1.

21. Bergier to Jacques de Brisacier au Séminaire de Paris, March 10, 1703, ASQ, Lettres R, #60.

22. SMEP, Vol. 95, 148.

23. Saint-Vallier Grants le Grand Vicaire to Marc Bergier, July 6, 1700, ASQ, Polygraphie 9, #’s10, 10A and 10B.

24. Bergier wrote, “My name is Marc Bergier, priest … Coming to Canada not knowing a soul, I arrived here with a spirit of renouncing all of my goods and all of my pretentions, abandoning myself entirely to Providence, very persuaded, as I still am, that the more I worked or desired to work for God, the less I would need. Therefore, I came here completely raw, not counting on paying with my goods but only with my person, believing that this is similar to Jesus Christ.” Bergier to Louis Tiberge, August 15, 1699, ASQ, Lettres R, #41, 1–2.

25. Bergier to Louis Ango des Maizerets, March 19, 1702, ASQ, Lettres R, #51.

26. Bergier to Tremblay, December 7, 1701, ASQ, Lettres R, #49, 2–4.

27. Bergier to ??, July 14, 1704, ASQ, Lettres R, #67.

28. Bergier to ??, June 12, 1704, ASQ, Lettres R #65, 1–4.

29. Henri Roulleaux de la Vente à ??, February 5, 1709, ASQ, Lettres R #86, 1–4.

30. De la Vente à ??, ASQ, Lettres R, #86.

31. Bergier to Louis Tiberge, August 15, 1699, ASQ, Lettres R, #41, 1–2.