Since being founded in 1967, the Joliette Art Museum has beer
concerned with the protection and publicizing of the regional heri age. Several initiatives have been taken since the classification o he Lacombe House in 1969 and of the church of Saint-Paul de JoliettE n 1973, the unfortunately vain efforts to save the former registry officE It Joliette in 1975, and the numerous interventions undertaken in thE >arishes which were occupied in rearranging their church accordin£ o the regulations of the new liturgy.
    These visits repeated everywhere in the diocese have quickly >ointed out that if buildings disappear rather easily in the movement >f what is called progress, movable objects, little objects, are jisposed of still more rapidly, on account of the ease with which they :an be transported, modified, made to vanish without hardly anyone )eing informed or noticing. Very quickly did the urgency become >bvious that a reasoned, complete inventory of all the works of art in he possession of the Joliette diocese fifty-five fabrics should be jrawn up.
    The idea of a systematic survey of the artistic heritage is not a lew one. In fact, it dates from the French Revolution. In the 19th :entury, several countries began operations of this kind. Thus 3ermany published 500 volumes of a systematic topographical nventory.
    In Quebec, very astute men understood the necessity of taking :his inventory before too-serious upheaval occurred. Messrs. Jules 3azin, Gerard Morisset and Maurice Gagnon began this task and Jy 1938 they were at work in the diocese of Joliette. However, their 3fforts produced only limited results.
    The inventory they had prepared was not comprehensive and jid not cover all the parishes. In the absence of appropriate rules, the information it contained, lacking much application, long remained t>uried on some government shelf.
    It is enough, for instance, to observe that Saint-Cuthbert Fabric Nhich in 1938 owned one of the most beautiful treasures of gold- smith's craft in the province with its twelve works hall-marked Delezenne, Paradis, Arnoldi, Amiot, Morand and Huguet now retains no more than one: all the others have disappeared. One of the :ensers by Laurent Amiot was bought in October 1957 by a Montreal antique dealer and sold to the Detroit Museum where it is presently to be found. As for the other pieces, they were either sold or simply stolen or given away, or else exchanged for vases doubtless more brilliant but without any real artistic merit.
    Therefore it was necessary to return to the parishes, old as well as new, realizing that the mobility of small objects often makes them take strange journeys: in this way at Sainte-Marcelline, a parish founded in 1927, were found two ciboria that had been acquired a hundred years earlier by the Fabric of Saint-Roch, just as it happened very often that at the founding of a new parish or colonization mission, an early parish made a gift of sacred vessels to an unprovided church struggling with increased construction costs and the relative poverty of its flock.
    The importance of setting up a complete inventory is more ob- vious to-day than ever. The economic and cultural upsets of recent years have greatly changed the face of a society that was almost unalterable until lately. Important and precious evidence of that civilization will disappear in the coming years without our being able to prevent this: fire, for instance, is a constant threat in spite of all the efforts expended to prevent destruction. When we think that the three interior church decors sculpted in the diocese between 1808 and 1840 by Joseph Pepin, a sensitive scrupulous artist, and which formed the most complete and the most harmonious ensembles produced by this sculptor, have all perished in fires1, we understand better why we must increase our efforts and initiatives in order to assure at least the conservation of what we can snatch from fate and fatality.
     At the least, it is important to conserve the memory of lost works. Photographs of the period often cover a whole area of our collective memory and it is regrettable that no institution in Quebec presently has the responsibility of keeping a complete photo-library up to date. These photographs are evidence of the transitory character of man's constructions and especially of the swiftness of the change in the environment which goes on almost without his knowing it. It is, in fact, as though man was changing at the same time as the setting that serves him as reflecting mirror. The most disturbing photographs are probably those which contrast a new church with the old one that is soon to be demolished, as if the next generation could survive only in the destruction of the preceding one: the offspring devouring his parents, the aberrant mythology that says that life feeds on its own destructions.
     There lies the mystery of the photographs of the two churches at Mascouche, the one from the 18th century and the one from 1881 ; of the two churches at Joliette, from 1842 and 1892; of the church at Rawdon, whose smoking ruins were watered down on July 9, 1954 because it had been handed over to the demolisher's pick. And further, the hard lessons of the churches at Sainte-Elisabeth that collapsed one after the other in 1864, 1902 and 1949, like so many engulfed cathedrals, because they were built without respecf for the hidden forces of unstable, shifting ground.
     And the archives that reveal that it was in the wake of prescrip- tions ordered by Mgr. Ignace Bourget during his episcopal visits, that the interior decor of the Montreal region churches was percep- tibly modified from the middle of the 19th century: the prescription for the suppressing of the churchwardens' pew, the order to admin- ister baptism at the back of the church, then in the sacristy, the order to remove the choir-master and his throne from the sanctuary, all caused the disappearance of important works of ornemental sculpture.
     From that period there remain in the diocese of Joliette only two arm-rests from churchwardens' pews, at Saint-Paul and at Lavaltrie2, only one single picture representing the baptism of Christ, which had adorned a baptisery at Saint-Paul, and a single choir-master's throne in the sanctuary at Berthier.
     The influence of Mgr. Bourget, second bishop of Montreal (1840- 1876) was not limited to causing the disappearance of some of the elements of the decoration and furniture of the churches. A Vaticanist, he also ordered changes in the costume of priests, all the remains of Gallicanism; he substituted the Roman collar for the French bands, the flat biretta for the square cap and the waist-belt for the waist- ribbon. Following his many journeys to Rome, he spread the taste for pictures painted by lesser Italian masters: Oreggio, Zoldattis, Zapponi and Porta have replaced on the walls of the sanctuaries Beaucourt, Dulongpre, Roy-Audy and Tessier. For almost twenty years, the churches of the diocese of Joliette would abandon the traditional copies produced by Quebec painters to acquire, through some journey of the vicar or the priest, an Italian or French picture, such as those obtained by the Church of lie Dupas in 1871, by the Rouen painter Dupuis de Laroche. Even the portraits of priests, canons, vicars and superiors would at that time be painted by Italian or French artists, and not by the itinerant portraitists who, at the begin- ning of the 19th century, had recorded on canvas the tranquil good nature or the caustic arrogance of the village priests. In religious architecture, Mgr. Bourget encouraged the style of the basilica and of the Roman church.
     Victor Bourgeau (1809-1888) and Father Joseph Michaud (1822- 1902), professor at the Joliette seminary, became the interpreters in the Joliette diocese of this influence on the architecture of churches and convents built at that period. Bourgeau made the plans or altered more than sixteen churches in the Joliette diocese3. Very soon, Father Michaud, C.S.V., cooperated with him, himself drawing up the plans for the Sainte-Melanie church (1868), the Joliette Institute (1868), the Saint-Thomas church (1869-1892), the convent (1871) and the church (1887) at Saint-Liguori, the presbytery at Sainte-Elisabeth (1873), the brick wing of the Joliette seminary (1875), the chapel of Notre-Dame de Bonsecours (1875-1883), the church (1875) and the convent (1888) of Saint-Norbert, the chapel of Saint-Joseph at Joliette (1876) and the presbytery at Saint-Calixte (1881).
      No comprehensive study has yet allowed us to grasp the scope and the importance of the architectural work of Victor Bourgeau, his associate Alcibiade Leprohon and Father Joseph Michaud4. Only a systematic inventory of the archives of all the dioceses would offer the opportunity of gathering all the presently scanty informations. What the inventory drawn up in the Joliette diocese has revealed is that the work of these architects is much more notable and important for the comprehension of the evolution of architectural art in Quebec in the second half of the 19th century than all that it has been possible to write or read up to now.
      At the beginning of the sixties, hardly twenty years ago, the movement of the renewed liturgy would again upset the interior decor of the churches. The first targets of this upheaval were the pulpits. There are only two pulpits which have remained untouched in the Joliette diocese: at Saint-Paul and at Saint-Lin; twenty-six others have been dismantled, reduced or have disappeared; among them were works by Amable Gauthier, Victor Bourgeau, Father Joseph Michaud, Dangeville Dostaler, Lucien Benoit, Joseph Giroux and Alphonse Roger.

    Then vanished chapel altars, high altars and railings: Saint-Felix- de-Valois lost two of these, the work of Lucien Benoit, the designs of which, found at the home of one-of his grandsons6, recall their quality and character; Lavaltrie, Saint-Alexis and Saint-Calixte suffered the same misfortune. What seems obvious in the course of research is that the disappearance of the sculptured decor and the furnishings of the sanctuaries is very often the result of a change in the regulations of liturgy, a change that has not been accompanied by measures for the conservation of antiquated works. By removing the wardens' pew that fronted the pulpit, they destroyed the architectural balance of the nave; by dismantling the chapel altars, they created artificial voids in the sanctuaries. By replacing the old tabernacles with others of metal in order to protect against fire, they caused the disappear- ance of doors sculptured in high relief, masterly works. In sum, the need to adapt, unaccompanied by conservation measures, has caused the disappearance of a great many works that it would still have been easy to preserve. In this way we would have understood better how, even in the expression of his faith, the works of man do not escape the calamity of his fate.
     This inventory will therefore have been much more than an artistic survey. "Here the whole is not only the sum of its parts," Andre Malraux wrote. At the same time as it completes our knowl- edge, the inventory suggests an unprecedented questioning of the values upon which this knowledge is founded.
     The inventory has given the opportunity of identifying three articles of goldsmith's craft from the 18th century (a candlestick, a chalice and a ciborium), a ciborium by Jean-Fran~ois Landron (1686-1762); a piscina by Paul Lambert dit Saint-Paul (1691- 1749); a goblet and a chalice by Roland Paradis (1696-1754); an ampulla and a tray by Ignace-Fran~ois Delezenne (1717-1790); two extraordinary chalices and an ampulla by Fran~ois Ranvoyze (1739- 1819); a chalice by Michel Arnoldi (1763-1807); a ciborium by Robert Cruickshank (1755-1808); five articles by Pierre Huguet (1749-1817); eight by Salomon Marion (1782-1830), among which was an excep- tional monstrance; and eleven pieces by Paul Morand (1775-1856), among which were a monstrance, an incense-boat and a beautifully worked chalice.
     The inventory also made possible the identifying of sixteen works by painter Louis Dulongpre (1759-1843); nine by Yves Tessier (1800-1843); one by painter Antoine Plamondon (1804-1895); thre.e portraits by Samuel Hawksett (active between 1856 and 1905) ; and five works by Eugene Hamel (1845-1932), also including the works of Abbe Jules-B. Rioux, Georges Delfosse, Narcisse Poirier and the many canvases by Ozias Leduc (1864-1955) in the vault of the cathedral at Joliette (1892-1893).
      The most unexpected results of this inventory probably were the identification of the sculptures by the associates, pupils and collaborators of Louis Quevillon (1749-1823) and his school. Among
 the latter, the works by Joseph pepin (1770-1842), saved from suc- cessive fires, offer a very restrained quality and sensitivity; the works by Pierre Viaud, at Saint-Lin and Saint-Calixte; by Paul Lefebvre at Sainte-Elisabeth and lie Dupas; by Pierre Guibord at Saint-Paul and Sainte-Elisabeth; and finally, those by Amable Gau- thier (1792-1876), a little-known sculptor whose strong, enthusiastic works are the best examples of a sculptural tradition that lasted right through the 19th century. This research also made possible the lifting of the veil on an unappreciated but talented sculptor particularly active at the turn of the century: the discovery of a chest containing more than a hundred drawings by sculptor Lucien Benoit (1850-1935), representing works produced for several Quebec churches, among which were nine in the Joliette diocese. These drawings, of inesti- mable value for research in the history of art in Quebec at the end of the 19th century, like sculptor Alphonse Durant's7 works and those of architects Perrault and Mesnard8, make us see clearly that, without a systematic inventory, the field of research shrinks to the best-known masters, but leaves in shadow the works of schools, the study of influences, borrows and mimesis, a phenomenon whose importance has been little considered in the old art of Quebec.
       A complete inventory would allow us to publicize all the works of a period and open new vistas to thought and analysis at the same time as it would give rise to new conclusions on the books published until the present.
       It is not to be believed that this is a matter only of an evolution in taste: it is not solely taste that, at the end of the 19th century, associated ornamentation with triumphal ism in style. Men of that time did not see it with our eyes. In order for the work of art to be inventoried, it must be shown in its context: in the face of the inter- pretation given it later, present-day liturgy makes us better under- stand the meaning of the previous one.
       The work of art does not escape disaffection from the fact of

its perfection, however great it may be, but from the change in the values whose symbol it was, through the meaning given to it by man in the different periods of his social life.
    "Every survey is directed by values: it is not the result of enumeration, but of filtration", that is, of the perception we have to-day of a reality of which only a few shreds, sometimes debris, remain.
    The Tresors des fabriques du diocese de Joliette exhibition, as it was presented to the public from January 15 to March 15, 1978, could have created a false impression: from seeing the silver and the gold glow, the wood taking shape under the sculptor's skilful hand, the photographs lining up in impeccable order as in a family album, one might believe that all this heritage has been carefully preserved. It is true that in some places particular care is taken of it; such is unfortunately not the case in general. Dispersal, frittering away, hiding in corners as if to forget bad memories of the cumber- some dead make us realize that a similar exhibition held five years later would have been deprived of one or other of its photographs or of its most important pieces of goldsmith's work. During the two years it took to complete this inventory, two rare articles disappeared: one of the two ampulla by Fran~ois Ranvoyze, indexed at Saint-Roch in January 1975, and a chalice by Paul Morand identified at Saint-Lin in February 1975 could not be found so that they might be shown at the exhibition. Also an enamelled holy-water basin disappeared from Saint-Paul.
     Diocesan authorities and the government must certainly be urged to pay immediate attention to putting in a safe place what appears in the Regional Inventory, once it has been completed. The Cultural Property Commission pays only too little attention to inven- tories of movable objects and to their classification. It is necessary, as soon as possible, to draw up the inventory of all dioceses: at Three Rivers, for instance, almost nothing has been done in spite of the wealth and importance of the history of this region of auebec. In the diocese of Joliette, it would be necessary to put safely away everything that appears in the Inventory which is not in current use. Besides, a periodical census ought to make possible the assurance that the objects are still preserved in the place where they were found. Incidentally, a descriptive catalogue containing an anal- ysis, a photographic illustration and a graphic documentation for each of the articles in the inventory will be published soon.
     This important body of work is urgent. The heritage of the pro- ductions of the mind is the essential condition of a people's survival. If we do not want to disappear as a society, we must examine tradi- tion, identify our roots and take up in the face of to-day's events the path that alone can allow us to define the meaning of the length of an effort of civilization that is not limited only to the arts but which has succeeded in producing a synthesis of the values that give Quebec a unique identity.