Jean de Brébeuf



Saint Jean de Brébeuf (March 25, 1593 – March 16, 1649) was a Jesuit missionary, martyred in Canada on March 16, 1649.

Early years
Brébeuf was born in Condé-sur-Vire, Normandy, France. He was the uncle of the fur trader Georges de Brébeuf. He studied near home at Caen. He became a Jesuit in 1617, joining the Order. He was almost expelled from the Society because he contracted tuberculosis—an illness which prevented both studying and teaching for the traditional periods.

Priestly years
In 1622 he was ordained. Against the voiced desires of Huguenot Protestants, officials of trading companies, and some native North Americans, he was granted his wish and in 1625 he sailed to Canada as a missionary, arriving on June 19, and lived with the Huron natives near Lake Huron, learning their customs and language, of which he became an expert (it is said that he wrote the first dictionary of the Huron language). He has been called Canada's "first serious ethnographer." Because of a war with England, Brébeuf was forced to return to France but when the peace was signed, he returned to the Hurons in 1634, travelling 1 280 km (800 miles) from Quebec via the Ottawa River.

Brébeuf was said to have been massive in body, hugely strong, yet gentle in character. He was known as "The Apostle of the Hurons". The Huron people (Ouendat) called him "Echon". ["Echon" pronounced like "Ekon" – this name meaning "Healing Tree", as a representation of how much Brébeuf had helped the Hurons and of the medicines he brought them from Europe. An alternate definition for "Echon" is "he who bears the heavy load", as Brébeuf was massive in stature and carried more than his share when working with the Ouendat people.) John Steckley wrote that Jean de Brébeuf was the first of the Jesuits (hatitsihenstaatsi’, ‘they are called charcoal’) to become fluent in their language.

Brébeuf told many of his experiences in Canada in the Jesuit Relations, an invaluable source of early Canadian history. He was head of the Huron mission, a position he relinquished to Father Jérôme Lalemant in 1638. His success as a missionary was very slow and it was only in 1635 that he made his first converts [Jesuit Relations, p. 11, vol. X]. He claimed to have made 14 as of 1635, and as of 1636 he said the number went up 86 [Jesuit Relations, p. 11,vol. X]. The Jesuits were frequently blamed for disasters like epidemics, battle defeats, and crop failures and once Brébeuf was condemned to death and another time beaten.

He unsuccessfully attempted to convert the Neutral Nation on Lake Erie in 1640. After this failed mission, he returned to Quebec in 1641 and stayed there for three years. He returned to the Huron in 1644 and finally experienced some success. By 1647 there were thousands of converted Huron.

It is said that the modern name of the Native North American sport of lacrosse was first coined by Brébeuf who thought that the sticks used in the game reminded him of a bishop's crosier (crosse in French, and with the feminine definite article, la crosse). 

Brébeuf’s charismatic presence in the Huron country helped cause a split between traditionalist Huron and those who wanted to adopt European culture.

Montreal-based ethnohistorian Bruce Trigger argued that this cleavage in Huron society, along with the spread of disease from Europeans, left the Huron vulnerable.

Martyrdom


However, the Iroquois began to win their war with the Hurons. They destroyed a large Huron village in 1648 and on March 16, 1649, 1200 Iroquois captured the mission of St. Ignace and then a few hours later captured another Huron village where they seized Brébeuf and his fellow Jesuit Gabriel Lallemant and brought them back to St. Ignace. There they were fastened to stakes and tortured to death by scalping, mock baptism using boiling water, fire, necklaces of red hot hatchets and mutilation. According to Catholic tradition, Brébeuf did not make a single outcry while he was being tortured and he astounded the Iroquois, who later cut out his heart and ate it in hopes of gaining his courage. Brébeuf was fifty-five years old.

Recognition
Brébeuf’s body was recovered a few days later. His body was boiled in lye to remove the flesh, and the bones became church relics. His flesh was buried, along with Lalemant's, in one coffin, and today rests in the Church of St. Joseph at the reconstructed Jesuit mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons across Highway 12 from the Martyrs' Shrine Catholic Church near Midland, Ontario. A plaque, circa 1969 near the grave of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant was unearthed during excavations at Ste Marie in 1954. The letters read "P. Jean de Brébeuf /brusle par les Iroquois /le 17 de mars l'an/1649" (Father Jean de Brebeuf, burned by the Iroquois, 17 March 1649.

In September, 1984, Pope John Paul II prayed over Brebeuf's skull before saying an outdoor Mass on the grounds of the Martyrs' Shrine. Thousands of people came to hear him speak from a platform built especially for the day.

Brébeuf was canonized in 1930 with seven other missionaries, known as the North American Martyrs or Canadian Martyrs. He is a secondary patron saint of Canada. His feast day in Canada is celebrated on September 26, while in the United States it is celebrated on October 19.

The Huron Carol, a Christmas carol which Brefeuf wrote the Huron language (Wendot) in or around 1643, has been translated into French and English, and is still sung today.

Brébeuf and his mission were the subject of Canadian poet E.J. Pratt's 1940 epic, Brébeuf and his Brethren.

Many Jesuit schools are named after him, such as Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal, Brébeuf College School in Toronto and Brebeuf High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. There is also St. John de Brebeuf Catholic High School in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada; and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. There is also Eglise St-Jean de Brebeuf in Sudbury, Ontario.

Publications

 * Huron Relations for 1635-1636 Jean de Brébeuf, a translation by Fr. William Lonc.