44 THEISLAND ACADIANS 
     
    
   
   
    
     four ewes, One ram, three pigs and six hens*’. In the winter prior to 
     
     this census, the inhabitants on the island had lost 414 head of cattle 
     
     through sickness and lack of fodder®*. 
     
    

    
     The preferred meats were pork, chicken and, less frequently, 
     
     mutton. Cattle were rarely slaughtered for meat. Oxen were used 
     
     mainly as draft animals for clearing the land and ploughing. Veal calves 
     
     were kept exclusively for export to Louisbourg. 
     
    

    
     In conclusion, the years were rare when the population of the 
     
     colony was self-sufficient. fle Saint Jean never experienced agricultural 
     
     prosperity under the French regime due to the various disasters that 
     
     destroyed the crops, to the lack of seed and to the accelerated influx 
     
     of Acadian refugees. The tiny colony often had to appeal to Louisbourg 
     
     for food. 
     
    
   
   
    
     THE SPIRITUAL FRAMEWORK 
     
    
   
   
    
     Virtually all the French immigrants who came to settle in Acadia 
     
     in the seventeenth century belonged to the Catholic religion. Indeed, 
     
     they left a country where Catholicism was the state religion and where 
     
     the Church had considerable political power. Among the most influen- 
     
     tial ministers of the King at the time was Cardinal de Richelieu who, 
     
     in 1627, limited the colony in New France to Catholic immigrants 
     
     only®’. Thus the Acadians, like the French Canadians generally, were 
     
     destined to form a very homogeneous people from a religious point 
     
     of view. 
     
    

    
     When a French colony was founded, the recruitment of a priest 
     
     was always a priority. The Compagnie de l’Isle Saint Jean, responsible 
     
     for the first settlement on the Island, called upon Father Charles-René 
     
     de Breslay. He was a sixty-two-year-old Sulpician priest who had a 
     
     long career as a missionary in the New World, and served for many 
     
     years in the Montreal region. Given his age and his ill-health, he was 
     
     accompanied by a young Sulpician, Father Marie-Anselme Métivier, 
     
     who also had several years’ experience in New France”. It is thought 
     
     that both priests arrived with the approximately three hundred col- 
     
     onists who left France for fle Saint Jean in the spring of 1720. 
     
    

    
     Father de Breslay and Father Métivier only stayed on the Island 
     
     for three years. When they accepted the mission they had planned