French
missionary, born at Orléans, France, 10 January, 1607; martyred at
Ossernenon, in the present State of New York, 18 October, 1646. He was
the first Catholic priest who ever came to Manhattan Island (New York).
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1624 and, after having been professor
of literature at Rouen, was sent as a missionary to Canada in 1636. He
came out with Montmagny, the immediate successor of Champlain. From
Quebec he went to the regions around the great lakes where the
illustrious Father de Brébeuf and others were labouring. There he spent
six years in constant danger. Though a daring missionary, his character
was of the most practical nature, his purpose always being to fix his
people in permanent habitations. He was with Garnier among the Petuns,
and he and Raymbault penetrated as far as Sault Ste Marie, and “were the
first missionaries”, says Bancroft (VII, 790, London, 1853), “to preach
the gospel a thousand miles in the interior, five years before John
Eliot addressed the Indians six miles from Boston Harbour”. There is
little doubt that they were not only the first apostles but also the
first white men to reach this outlet of Lake Superior. No documentary
proof is adduced by the best-known historians that Nicholet, the
discoverer of Lake Michigan, ever visited the Sault. Jogues proposed not
only to convert the Indians of Lake Superior, but the Sioux who lived
at the head waters of the Mississippi.
His plan was thwarted by his capture near Three Rivers returning from
Quebec. He was taken prisoner on 3 August, 1642, and after being
cruelly tortured was carried to the Indian village of Ossernenon, now
Auriesville, on the Mohawk, about forty miles above the present city of
Albany. There he remained for thirteen months in slavery, suffering
apparently beyond the power of natural endurance. The Dutch Calvinists
at Fort Orange (Albany) made constant efforts to free him, and at last,
when he was about to be burnt to death, induced him to take refuge in a
sailing vessel which carried him to New Amsterdam (New York). His
description of the colony as it was at that time has since been
incorporated in the Documentary History of the State. From New York he
was sent; in mid-winter, across the ocean on a lugger of only fifty tons
burden and after a voyage of two months, landed Christmas morning,
1643, on the coast of Brittany, in a state of absolute destitution.
Thence he found his way to the nearest college of the Society. He was
received with great honour at the court of the Queen Regent, the mother
of Louis XIV, and was allowed by Pope Urban VII the very exceptional
privilege of celebrating Mass, which the mutilated condition of his
hands had made canonically impossible; several of his fingers having
been eaten or burned off. He was called a martyr of Christ by the
pontiff. No similar concession, up to that, is known to have been
granted.
In early spring of 1644 he returned to Canada, and in 1646 was sent
to negotiate peace with the Iroquois. He followed the same route over
which he had been carried as a captive. It was on this occasion that he
gave the name of Lake of the Blessed Sacrament to the body of water
called by the Indians Horicon, now known as Lake George. He reached
Ossernenon on 5 June, after a three weeks’ journey from the St.
Lawrence. He was well received by his former captors and the treaty of
peace was made. He started for Quebec on 16 June and arrived there 3
July. He immediately asked to be sent back to the Iroquois as a
missionary, but only after much hessitation his superiors acceded to his
request. On 27 September he began his third and last journey to the
Mohawk. In the interim sickness had broken out in the tribe and a blight
had fallen on the crops. This double calamity was ascribed to Jogues
whom the Indians always regarded as a sorcerer. They were determined to
wreak vengence on him for the spell he had cast on the place, and
warriors were sent out to capture him. The news of this change of
sentiment spread rapidly, and though fully aware of the danger Jogues
continued on his way to Ossernenon, though all the Hurons and others who
were with him fled except Lalande. The Iroquois met him near Lake
George, stripped him naked, slashed him with their knives, beat him and
then led him to the village. On 18 October, 1646, when entering a cabin
he was struck with a tomahawk and afterwards decapitated. The head was
fixed on the Palisades and the body thrown into the Mohawk.
In view of his possible canonization a preliminary court was
established in Quebec by the ecclesiastical authorities to receive
testimony as to his sanctity and the cause of his death.
Parkman, The Jesuits in North America (1867); Bancroft, History of the United States,III; J.G. Shea, Life of Father Jogues (New York, 1885); Jesuit Relations, 1640-1647; Abbe Forest, Life of Isaac Jogues, MSS. (St, Mary’s College, Montreal); Memorial of the death of Isaac Jogues and others, MSS. (University of Laval, Quebec); Dean Harris, History of the Early Missions in Western Canada (Toronto, 1893); Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, I (published by the State, 1891); Charlevoix, History of New France, II; Richemonteix, The Jesuits and New France, I, II.
T.J. CAMPBELL (Catholic Encyclopedia)
[
Note: He, as well as those below were canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29, 1930]
Jesuit
missionary; born 1607, in Anjou; martyred in New York State, 23
September, 1642. Health preventing him from joining the Society
regularly, he volunteered to serve it gratis in Canada, as a
donné.
After working two years as a surgeon in the hospitals of Quebec, he
started (1642) for the Huron mission with Father Jogues, whose constant
companion and disciple he remained until death. Captured by the Iroquois
near lake St. Peter, he resignedly accepted his fate. Like the other
captives, he was beaten, his nails torn out, and his finger-joints cut
off. On the thirteen days’ journey to the Iroquois country, he suffered
from heat, hunger, and blows, his wounds festering and swarming with
worms. Meeting half way a band of two hundred warriors, he was forced to
march between their double ranks and almost beaten to death. Goupil
might have escaped, but he stayed with Jogues. At Ossernenon, on the
Mohawk, he was greeted with jeers, threats, and blows, and Goupil’s face
was so scarred that Jogues applied to him the words of Isaias (liii, 2)
prophesying the disfigurement of Christ. He survived the fresh tortures
inflicted on him at Andagaron, a neighbouring village, and, unable to
instruct his captors in the faith, he taught the children the sign of
the cross. This was the cause of his death. returning one evening to the
village with Jogues, he was felled to the ground by a hatchet-blow from
an Indian, and he expired invoking the name of Jesus. He was the first
of the order in the Canadian missions to suffer martyrdom. He had
previously bound himself to the Society by the religious vows pronounced
in the presence of Father Jogues, who calls him in his letters “an
angel of innocence and a martyr of Jesus Christ.”
Bressani, Les Jésuites Martyrs du Canada (Montreal, 1877);
Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days (New York, 1886);
Rochemontiex, Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1896); Martin,
Le Pére Isaac Jogues (Paris, 1882).
LIONEL LINDSAY (Catholic Encyclopedia)
Jesuit missionary, born at Condé-sur-Vire in Normandy, 25 March,
1593; died in Canada, near Georgian Bay, 16 March, 1649. His desire was
to become a lay brother, but he finally entered the Society of Jesus as a
scholastic, 8 November, 1617. According to Ragueneau it was 5 October.
Though of unusual physical strength, his health gave way completely when
he was twenty-eight, which interfered with his studies and permitted
only what was strictly necessary, so that he never acquired any
extensive theological knowledge. On 19 June, 1625, he arrived in Quebec,
with the Recollect, Joseph de la Roche d’ Aillon, and in spite of the
threat which the Calvinist captain of the ship made to carry him back to
France, he remained in the colony. He overcame the dislike of the
colonists for Jesuits and secured a site for a residence on the St.
Charles, the exact location of a former landing of Jacques Cartier. He
immediately took up his abode in the Indian wigwams, and has left us an
account of his five months’ experience there in the dead of winter. In
the spring he set out with the Indians on a journey to Lake Huron in a
canoe, during the course of which his life was in constant danger. With
him was Father de Noüe, and they established their first mission near
Georgian Bay, at Ihonatiria, but after a short time his companion was
recalled, and he was left alone.
Brébeuf met with no success. He was summoned to Quebec because of the
danger of extinction to which the entire colony was then exposed, and
arrived there after an absence of two years, 17 July, 1628. On 19 July,
1629, Champlain surrendered to the English, and the missionaries
returned to France. Four years afterwards the colony was restored to
France, and on 23 March, 1633, Brébeuf again set out for Canada. While
in France he had pronounced his solemn vows as spiritual coadjutor. As
soon as he arrived, viz., May, 1633, he attempted to return to Lake
Huron. The Indians refused to take him, but during the following year he
succeeded in reaching his old mission along with Father Daniel. It
meant a journey of thirty days and constant danger of death. The next
sixteen years of uninterrupted labours among these savages were a
continual series of privations and sufferings which he used to say were
only roses in comparison with what the end was to be. The details may be
found in the “Jesuit Relations”.
In 1640 he set out with Father Chaumonot to evangelize the Neutres, a
tribe that lived north of Lake Erie, but after a winter of incredible
hardship the missionaries returned unsuccessful. In l642 he was sent
down to Quebec, where he was given the care of the Indians in the
Reservation at Sillery. About the time the war was at its height between
the Hurons and the Iroquois, Jogues and Bressani had been captured in
an effort to reach the Huron country, and Brébeuf was appointed to make a
third attempt. He succeeded. With him on this journey were Chabanel and
Garreau, both of whom were afterwards murdered. They reached St. Mary’s
on the Wye, which was the central station of the Huron Mission. By 1647
the Iroquois had made peace with the French, but kept up their war with
the Hurons, and in 1648 fresh disasters befell the work of the
missionaries – their establishments were burned and the missionaries
slaughtered. On 16 March, 1649, the enemy attacked St. Louis and seized
Brébeuf and Lallemant, who could have escaped but rejected the offer
made to them and remained with their flock. The two priests were dragged
to St. Ignace, which the Iroquois had already captured.
On entering the village, they were met with a shower of stones,
cruelly beaten with clubs, and then tied to posts to be burned to death.
Brébeuf is said to have kissed the stake to which he was bound. The
fire was lighted under them, and their bodies slashed with knives.
Brébeuf had scalding water poured on his head in mockery of baptism, a
collar of red-hot tomahawk-heads placed around his neck, a red-hot iron
thrust down his throat, and when he expired his heart was cut out and
eaten. Through all the torture he never uttered a groan. The Iroquois
withdrew when they had finished their work. The remains of the victims
were gathered up subsequently, and the head of Brébeuf is still kept as a
relic at the Hôtel-Dieu, Quebec.
His memory is cherished in Canada more than that of all the other
early missionaries. Although their names appear with his in letters of
gold on the grand staircase of the public buildings, there is a vacant
niche on the façade, with his name under it, awaiting his statue. His
heroic virtues, manifested in such a remarkable degree at every stage of
his missionary career, his almost incomprehensible endurance of
privations and suffering, and the conviction that the reason of his
death was not his association with the Hurons, but hatred of
Christianity, has set on foot a movement for his canonization as a saint
and martyr. An ecclesiastical court sat in 1904 for an entire year to
examine his life and virtues and the cause of his death, and the result
of the inquiry was forwarded to Rome.
T.J. CAMPELL (Catholic Encyclopedia)
Noël Chabanel
A
Jesuit missionary among the Huron Indians, born in Southern France, 2
February, 1613; slain by a renegade Huron, 8 December, 1649. Chabanel
entered the Jesuit novitiate at Toulouse at the age of seventeen, and
was professor of rhetoric in several colleges of the society in the
province of Toulouse. He was highly esteemed for virtue and learning. In
1643, he was sent to Canada and, after studying the Algonquin language
for a time, was appointed to the mission of the Hurons, among whom he
remained till his death. In these apostolic labours he was the companion
of the intrepid missionary, Father Charles Garnier. As he felt a strong
repugnance to the life and habits of the Indians, and feared it might
result in his own withdrawal from the work, he nobly bound himself by
vow never to leave mission, and he kept his vow to the end. In the
“Relation” of 1649-50, Father Ragueneau describes the martyr deaths of
Chabanal and Garnier, with biographical sketches of these two fathers.
EDWARD P. SPILLANE (Catholic Encyclopedia)
Jesuit
Missionary, born at Paris, 1606, of Jean G. and Anne de Garault; died 7
December, 1649. He studied classics, philosophy, and theology at the
Jesuit college of Clermont, joining the order in 1624. He begged to be
sent to the Canadian mission, and sailed in 1636 on the same fleet as
Governor Montmagny. He was sent forthwith to the Huron country, where he
was to spend the fourteen years of his heroic apostolate without once
returning to Quebec. In six months he mastered the difficult language,
and began a career of unceasing charity which was to be crowned by
martyrdom. His zeal for the conversion of infidels brooked no hindrance
nor delay. Neither distance nor weather, nor danger of death could
prevent him from hastening to the stake to baptize and exhort captives
of war. Filth, vermin, fetid and loathsome disease could not deter him
from tending and redeeming dying sinners. His frail frame miraculously
resisted the intense strain. His angelic patience amidst endless trials
won him the title of “lamb” of the mission, whereof Brébeuf was styled
the “lion”. Several times — first in 1637, then in 1639 with Jogues, and
later with Pijart — he strove to convert the Tobacco nation. His
constancy finally overcame their obstinacy. They asked for the black
robes (1646), and Garnier went to dwell with them until death. After the
martyrdom of Fathers Daniel (1648), Brébeuf, and Lalemant (march 1649),
he calmly awaited his turn. After decimating the Hurons, the Iroquois
attacked the Tobacco nation. During the massacre of St. John’s village,
Garnier went about exhorting his neophytes to be faithful. Mortally
wounded he dragged himself towards a dying Indian to absolve him, and
received the final blow in the very act of charity (1649) on the eve of
the Immaculate Conception, a dogma he had vowed to defend. His letters
to his brother, a carmelite, reveal his sanctity. Ragueneau testifies to
his heroic spirit of sacrifice. Parkman compares his life to that of
St. Peter Claver among the blacks and styles it a voluntary martyrdom.
LIONEL LINDSAY (Catholic Encyclopedia)
Jesuit
missionary, b. at Paris, 10 October, 1610, d. in the Huron country, 17
March 1649. He was the nephew of Charles and Jerome Lalemant, and became
a Jesuit at Paris, 24 March 1630. He arrived in Canada, 20 September,
1646 and after remaining in Quebec for two years, was sent to the Huron
missions as de Brébeuf’s assistant. He was scarcely there a month when
the Iroquois attacked the settlement of St. Ignatius which they burned,
and then descended on the mission of St. Louis where they found de
Brébeuf and Lalemant. After setting fire to the village and killing many
of the inhabitants, they led the two priests back to St. Ignatius where
they were tied to stakes and after horrible torture put to death.
Lalemant stood by while his companion was being killed. De Brébeuf
expired at three in the afternoon. Lalemant’s suffering began at six
that evening and lasted until nine o’clock next morning. When the
Iroquois withdrew, the bodies of the two priests were carried over to
St. Mary’s where they were interred. Some of the relics of Lalemant were
subsequently carried to Quebec.
Relations, passim; ROCHEMONTEIX, Les Jesuites de la Nouvelle
France; MARTIN, Hurons et Iroquois; FERLAND, Histoire du Canada; Journal
des Jesuites.
T.J. CAMPBELL (Catholic Encyclopedia)
The legend of the image of Edessa is recorded in the Historia Ecclesiastica
written by Eusebius. According to the account, King Abgar, being ill,
sent a letter to Jesus through a messenger by the name of Hannan. In
this letter Abgar asked Jesus for a cure. Hannan either painted an image
of the face of Jesus, or received it miraculously, by Jesus lifting a
cloth to His face and imprinting His image upon it. The royal messenger
brought the image back to Edessa. After the death of our Holy Savior,
the apostle Thomas sent Jude to Abgar, and Jude cured the king
miraculously. Astonished, the king accepted Christianity and many of his
subjects were baptized.
Paul
Francis Danei was born on January 3, 1694, at Ovada, a small town in
the then Republic of Genoa. He spent his youth at Castellazzo, in
Lombardy, where his parents had taken up their residence when Paul was
only ten years old. It was in Castellazzo, his father's native town,
that Paul received his first inspirations concerning the work for which
God had destined him. From his earliest years the crucifix was his book
and the Crucified his model. 
Inflamed
with a desire for God's glory he formed the idea of instituting a
religious order in honor of the Passion. The Bishop of Alessandria, his
director, clothed him in a black tunic bearing the emblem of Our Lord's
Passion, and barefooted and bareheaded, he retired to a narrow cell
where he drew up the Rules of a new congregation according to a plan
made known to him in a vision. He was still a layman and had no
companions to form a community but drew up the rules during a five day
period in December, 1720. Writing in obedience to his confessor, Paul
narrates how Our Lord inspired him with the design of founding the
congregation, and how he wrote the Rules and Constitutions. "When I was
writing," he says, "I went on as quickly as if somebody were dictating
to me. I felt the words come from my heart".
Jesuit
missionary, b. at Paris, 10 October, 1610, d. in the Huron country, 17
March 1649. He was the nephew of Charles and Jerome Lalemant, and became
a Jesuit at Paris, 24 March 1630. He arrived in Canada, 20 September,
1646 and after remaining in Quebec for two years, was sent to the Huron
missions as de Brébeuf’s assistant. He was scarcely there a month when
the Iroquois attacked the settlement of St. Ignatius which they burned,
and then descended on the mission of St. Louis where they found de
Brébeuf and Lalemant. After setting fire to the village and killing many
of the inhabitants, they led the two priests back to St. Ignatius where
they were tied to stakes and after horrible torture put to death.
Lalemant stood by while his companion was being killed. De Brébeuf
expired at three in the afternoon. Lalemant’s suffering began at six
that evening and lasted until nine o’clock next morning. When the
Iroquois withdrew, the bodies of the two priests were carried over to
St. Mary’s where they were interred. Some of the relics of Lalemant were
subsequently carried to Quebec.
Luke
was not a Jew but a Gentile, and thought to have been a Greco-Syrian,
probably born in Antioch. Though one of the four Gospel writers – known
as the Evangelists – he was not one of Christ's Twelve Apostles. Whether
he converted to Christianity from Judaism or paganism is not certain.
Ignatius,
born in Syria, converted to Christianity at a young age, and was
thought to be a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. He is one of the
five Apostolic Church Fathers, who were instructed personally by
Christ’s apostles.
He
was martyred in Rome on the last day of the public games, December 20
in the year 107. Condemned to be devoured by lions in the public arena,
his prayer before his death was: “I am God's wheat, and I am to be
ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread
of Christ. Indeed the lions devoured all of his body leaving only the
large bones.
