St. Jean de Brébeuf

St. Jean de Brébeuf (born March 25, 1593, Condé-sur-Vire, Normandy, France—died March 16, 1649, Saint-Ignace, near Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, Huronia, New France [near what is now Midland, Ontario, Canada]; canonized 1930; feast day October 19) was a Roman Catholic missionary to New France and martyr who became one of the patron saints of Canada.

Brébeuf entered the Society of Jesus in 1617, was ordained a priest in 1623, and arrived in New France (the French colonies of North America) in 1625. Noted for his facility with language, he was assigned to Christianize the Wendat (Huron) people between Georgian Bay and Lake Huron in 1626. The Wendat language proved challenging for him, but he is said to have eventually mastered the Wendat people’s oratory style and diligently worked to record the language so that other missionaries could also gain proficiency. He lived a harsh life in danger of death until forced by the English to return to France in 1629.

Back again in “Huronia” in 1634, Brébeuf labored for 15 years in unforgiving surroundings. In 1639 he and another French Jesuit priest, Jérôme Lalemant, established Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, the first European settlement in what is now Ontario. He was a veteran of 18 missions when, in 1647, peace was made between the French and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois), who were competitors with the Wendat in the fur trade and their bitter enemies. The Haudenosaunee, determined to destroy the Wendat Confederacy, continued their fierce war against the Wendat and in 1648–50 destroyed all villages and missions. When they raided the mission of Saint-Louis, they seized Brébeuf and his fellow missionary Gabriel Lalemant (nephew of Jérôme) and ritually tortured the missionaries and Native converts to death at the neighboring village of Saint-Ignace. Brébeuf endured stoning, slashing with knives, a collar of red-hot tomahawks, a “baptism” of scalding water, and burning at the stake. Because he showed incredible courage and no signs of pain, his heart was eaten by the Haudenosaunee.

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Brébeuf was canonized in 1930 with Lalemant and six other Jesuits who were killed on various dates in the mid-1600s in New France. The group is collectively called the Canadian Martyrs or the North American Martyrs, and their feast day is September 26. Brébeuf’s individual feast day is October 19.

Brébeuf’s writings, which are source materials for historians and ethnologists, include a Wendat grammar and a translation of the catechism into Wendat. His annual narratives are translated in Reuben Gold Thwaites’s Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vol. (1896–1901).