Brébeuf, Jean de (1593–1649), Jesuit priest and martyr of Canada. Born in Normandy, Brébeuf became a Jesuit at Rouen in 1617. His health was so affected by tuberculosis that he could neither study nor teach for the customary periods. But he offered himself for the Canadian mission and sailed in 1625. He worked among the Huron Indians, unsuccessfully at first, but with considerable reward from 1633 until his death. At their request he lived among them, sometimes with companions and sometimes alone, preaching and catechizing in their own language. Superstition, violence, and cannibalism were among the obstacles to the apostolate; equally important was the fact that Brébeuf and his companions, however disinterested and spiritual, belonged to an alien, conquering race. He founded schools and baptized over 200 neophytes in one year. Once he was condemned to death, but spoke so eloquently about the after-life that he was reprieved. In 1646 his companion, Isaac Jogues, was killed by Iroquois tomahawks. In 1649 the Iroquois, deadly enemies of the Hurons, attacked the village where Brébeuf and his companion Gabriel Lalemant were. They were captured, mutilated, tortured, burnt, and eventually eaten. Their passion was one of the most horrifying in the records of martyrdom.

These Canadian Jesuit martyrs were canonized in 1930; their cult was extended world-wide in 1969 as the proto-martyrs of North America. Feast: 19 October (formerly 26 September).

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• R. G. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations (1897–1901); H. Fouqueray, Martyrs du Canada (1930); R. Latourelle, Étude sur les Écrits de S. Jean de Brébeuf (1953)

Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649), a French missionary to Canada, was a Jesuit priest who suffered martyrdom in North America.

Jean de Brébeuf was born on March 25, 1593, in Condésur-Vire, Normandy, where his family belonged to the petty landed aristocracy. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1617 and was ordained in 1622. For the next 3 years he was treasurer at the Jesuit secondary school in Rouen. In 1625, at his own request, he went to the newly opened Jesuit mission in New France.

In order to master the native tongue, Brébeuf left Quebec in October 1625 and lived for 5 months among the Montagnais, who belonged to the Algonquin nation. His missionary labors concentrated on the conversion of the Huron in southeastern Ontario.

Brébeuf was the first apostle to contact the Hurons, and evangelization involved the severest physical hardships, augmented by surroundings revolting to Christian norms of morality and European sensibilities. Added to this were the insults and calumnies heaped on him by jealous native sorcerers, who blamed the Jesuits for the periodic plagues, famines, and wars and who associated them with the shortcomings of the French colonists. During his initial stay, lasting 3 years, Father Brébeuf familiarized himself with Huron ways and translated the catechism into Huron, but he made no converts.

The English occupation of Quebec in 1629 necessitated Brébeuf's return to France. There he reverted to his former work as treasurer at the school in Rouen. When France and England signed a peace treaty in 1633, he returned to Quebec in company with its founder and his friend, the explorer Samuel de Champlain.

Brébeuf's second journey to Huronia was more successful. The natives were in awe of his unusual height, strength, and fortitude. Like his fellow Jesuits, they admired his nobility of character, leadership qualities, patience and prudence, and fluency in the local dialect. He found the Huron more receptive to the Gospel and baptized numerous dying infants and adults, along with a small number of healthy adults. Yet the Huron condemned the missionaries to death for causing the epidemic in 1636-1637, and only the subsidence of the plague saved their lives.

Brébeuf was head of the Mission of St. Joseph, a community of Christian Native Americans at Sillery near Quebec, from 1641 to 1644, when he left for his third and final stay in Huronia. A rapid increase in conversions greatly strengthened his hopes for Christianizing the entire people. But on March 16, 1649, Iroquois braves - implacable enemies of the Huron, the French, and the missionaries - captured Fathers Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant at the mission station of St. Louis, dragged them a short distance to St. Ignace Mission, and tortured them for hours before killing them. These two, along with four other priests and two lay assistants, known collectively as the North American Martyrs, were beatified in 1925 and canonized in 1930.

Further Reading

Brébeuf's own narratives are collected in the monumental Jesuit Relations, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites (73 vols., 1893-1901). Letters of Brébeuf and a report of his death, selected from the Jesuit Relations, are in Edna Kenton, ed., The Indians of North America (2 vols., 1927). Francis Xavier Talbot, Saint among the Hurons (1949), is a biography of Brébeuf. Recommended for general background is W. J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (1969), which includes an extensive bibliography.

Additional Sources

Donnelly, Joseph Peter, Jean de Brébeuf, 1593-1649, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1975.

Latourelle, René, Jean de Brébeuf, Saint-Laurent, Canada: Bellarmin, 1993.

For more information on Saint Jean de Brébeuf, visit Britannica.com.

Brébeuf, Georges de (1618-61). Poet and man of letters, the friend of Conrart, Ménage, and Pierre Corneille, with whom he shared a Normandy background. In the manner of Scarron he burlesqued the epics of antiquity (L'Énéide de Virgile en vers burlesques, 1650; Lucain travesti en vers enjoués, 1656). Brébeuf is now best known on account of the numerous unkind references Boileau makes in the Art poétique to his translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, and the scarcely more charitable couplet: ‘Malgré son fatras obscur | Souvent Brébeuf étincelle.’

— Peter Bayley

(zhäN də brāböf') , 1593–1649, French Roman Catholic missionary, one of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America. A Norman, he was sent (1625) to Quebec and did missionary work among the Huron. The warfare of the Huron and Iroquois caused the abandonment of his mission in 1628, and in 1629 on the surrender of Quebec to the English he went back to France. In 1633 he returned to Canada and carried on his work among the native people, enduring great hardships. In 1649 the Iroquois took the Huron village and the mission. Father Brébeuf and his colleague, Gabriel Lalemant, were tortured to death. He was canonized in 1930. Feast: Sept. 26 or (among the Jesuits) Mar. 16.

Bibliography

See his Travels and Sufferings of Father Jean de Brébeuf among the Hurons of Canada, ed. by T. Besterman (tr. 1938); biography by F. X. Talbot (1949).