INTRODUCTION
This year, 1997, marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Clerics of St. Viator
in Quebec. For the Musée d'art de Joliette, which owes so much to the Clerics,
this landmark date was an ideal opportunity to review an artistic chapter in the
community's history. They were concerned above all with education, and from 1846 to 1967
the Clerics' Séminaire de Joliette was one of the most active classical colleges in
Quebec when it came to the arts, in the broadest sense of the term.
This internet site, a summary of the exhibition,
illustrates the lasting emphasis placed by the community on music and beauty, from the
outset . During the first third of this century, the Clerics began focussing even more on
the arts. It was the start of a veritable golden age of culture, as the school's dynamic
environment and the Christian humanist values of its members flourished in a period when
the world was being shaken by new realities.
This golden age came at a time when the Church was
feeling growing pressure from the modern world. Science was proffering new explanations of
natural phenomena, while industrialization, urbanization and modern communications were
eroding its underpinnings. Shaken to its very foundations, the Church in Quebec eventually
fell apart by the 1960s.
The cultural work of the Clerics of St. Viator in
Joliette can therefore be seen as straddling the gulf between an increasingly modern world
and a Church that was still firmly entrenched, between a new, innovative force and an old,
conservative one. It might appear that the Clerics of St. Viator were caught in an
uncomfortable position between the two, but paradoxically this uncertainty appears to have
nourished their creative endeavours, producing the tension or disorder that fosters
creativity, yet giving them the stability they needed to carry out their ambitions.
During this golden age, the community played a
significant role in encouraging the development of religious and secular art, music,
theatre and architecture in a Quebec that was joining the modern world. The fruits of this
artistic explosion extended well beyond the walls of the college, in fact, surviving long
after the community disbanded during the Quiet Revolution. The Festival international
de Lanaudière and the Musée d'art de Joliette are important parts of its
legacy.
[FOREWORD]
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