The Jesuit Martyrs of Canada and the Virgin Mary

The first saints of North America

In 1930, Pope Pius XI canonized eight Jesuit missionaries who had shed their blood on the lands of what is today Canada and the north-east of the United States during the 17th century. They were the first canonized saints from the American continent, and their history - a history of mission, courage, martyrdom and deep devotion to the Virgin Mary - is one of the most extraordinary chapters of the history of the Church in the New World.

Their names are Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, Gabriel Lalemant, Antoine Daniel, Charles Garnier, Noël Chabanel, Jean de Lalande and René Goupil. They were all French, all Jesuits (except Goupil and Lalande, who were donated, that is, lay people associated with the Society of Jesus). All of them died between 1642 and 1649, victims of the violence of the conflicts between the Huron-Wendat and the Irochese peoples, in which the missionaries were trapped by their presence in the Huron camp.

His feast is held on October 19 in the liturgical calendar of the universal Church. In Canada, they are also copatterns of the nation. They were beatified in 1925 and canonized on June 29, 1930 by Pope Pius XI.

The mission in Huronia: evangelizing in the heart of the forest

To understand the martyrdom of the Canadian Jesuits, it is necessary to understand the missionary undertaking in which they embarked. The Huronia was the territory of the Huron-wendat peoples, a confederation of four nations living south of Georgia Bay, in what is now the province of Ontario. It was a region of immense forests, of countless lakes, of winters of a ferocity that the European missionaries had not imagined possible.

The Jesuits arrived in the Huronia in 1626, with Jean de Brébeuf as one of his first missionaries. The mission was interrupted by the English conquest of New France in 1629 and resumed in 1634, when Brébeuf returned with new companions. In 1639, the Jesuits founded Sainte-Marie-aux-Hurons (Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons), a permanent settlement in the heart of the Wendat territory that functioned as the mission center until its destruction in 1649.

Life in Sainte-Marie-aux@-@ Hurons was hard for all, but especially for missionaries. The extreme cold, the little and different food, the diseases, the cultural tensions, the rejection by the native population of the Christian message, and the growing threat of the Iroquese attacks made the mission a company of permanent sacrifice.

Jean de Brébeuf: the apostle of the ferrets

Of all the Jesuit martyrs, Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649) is the best known and most venerated. Born in Normandy, France, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1617 and arrived in New France in 1625. He was the first Jesuits to live among the ferrets, and spent more than fifteen years learning his tongue, studying his culture and evangelizing with patience and respect that the ferrets themselves recognized.

His mastery of the Wendat language was extraordinary: he learned the language of ferrets to the point of writing a dictionary, a grammar, a catechism and a series of liturgical texts in that language. Your Relations - the annual letters that the Jesuits sent to France relating the advance of the mission - are documents of exceptional historical and ethnographic value, the main source of our knowledge of the life and culture of the ferrets in the 17th century.

Brébeuf was a man of great physical stature and a robustness that impressed the ferrets, who nicknamed him Echon (the one who drags the weight). His physical strength was only the reflection of his spiritual strength: he spent several years among the ferrets without turning anyone, without seeing visible results, and he was not discouraged. I knew that God's time is different from human time.

The Jesous Ahatonhia: the Virgin Mary as the mother of the Wendat people

Jean de Brébeuf's most extraordinary contribution to American Christian spirituality is perhaps the Christmas anthem he probably composed around 1642 in the Wendat language: the Jesous Ahatonhia, que en español puede traducirse como «Jesús, ha nacido». Es el villancico más antiguo de Canadá, y uno de los primeros en todo el continente americano.

What does the Jesous Ahatonhia unique in the history of Christian religious music is its method of radical inculturation: Brébeuf did not simply translate into wendat the text of a European villain. He reconstructed the whole Nativity scene in terms that ferrets could recognize as their own. Jesus is not born in a stable in Bethlehem: he is born in a tree-bark cabin in the forest. It is not embroidered with fine fabrics: it is wrapped in rabbit skins. He is not visited by three Magi with gold, incense and myrrh: he is visited by indigenous leaders who bring him fox and beaver skins.

And the Virgin Mary - in the anthem Wendat - is represented in the language and image that listeners can see and recognize: the Mother of God is not a lady far from a strange world, but a mother of the people who has given birth to the Saviour in the forest of Huronia. The Marian inculturation of Brébeuf makes Mary the mother of all, including the men and women of the peoples of the Great North.

The anthem was forgotten for more than a century after the martyrdom of Brébeuf. It was recovered around 1747-1794 by the father of Villeneuve, a Jesuit who collected the lip text of the Wendat of Lorette, Quebec, where some survivors of the Huron nation had settled. The English version that today is sung worldwide -Twas in the Moon of Wintertime- was composed by Jesse Edgar Middleton in 1926.

Isaac Jogues and the rosary in captivity

If Brébeuf is the symbol of the untiring apostle, Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) is the symbol of the missionary who suffers without giving up. Born in Orléans, France, Jogues arrived in New France in 1636 and began his mission among the ferrets under the direction of Brébeuf.

In August 1642, Jogues traveled by canoe from Quebec to the Huronia, accompanying a group of missionaries and converted ferrets, when they were attacked by an Irochess Mohawk departure. In the attack, Jogues was captured with his partner René Goupil - a layman who had given up a medical career in France to serve as a donation in the missions - and several ferrets.

Goupil was killed just days after the capture, while teaching a few ferret children to make the sign of the cross. He was buried by Jogues with a rosary in his hand, becoming the first martyr of Canada's mission. Jogues survived as a slave of the Mohawks for thirteen months, during which he was systematically tortured: he was cut off from his hands, burned, wounded. Nevertheless, he continued to exercise his ministry in secret, baptizing dying children and consoling other captives.

During his captivity, Jogues prayed the rosary when he could, sometimes in a very low voice, sometimes simply counting in his mind the tens of oatmeal that his mutilated fingers could no longer count on a physical rosary. Mary was for him the mother who could not see him but who knew he was there, praying with a prisoner who had lost his fingers but not the faith.

The martyrdom of Jean de Brébeuf: March 16, 1649

On 16 March 1649, an Irochess party attacked the people of Saint- Ignace, capturing Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant. They were taken to the neighbouring town of Taenhataron, where they were subjected for several hours to a martyrdom of cruelty that subsequent testimonies cannot be read without being shaken.

Brébeuf endured the torment without giving a single cry or asking for mercy. The Irocheses, who had known him during years of coexistence and had a respect mixed with fear, were impressed by his resistance. For the Jesuits who collected these testimonies, Brébeuf's behavior was the confirmation that he had gained with his martyrdom the respect that he had cultivated with patience during his missionary life.

Gabriel Lalemant, much younger and weaker in constitution, survived seventeen hours more than Brébeuf before dying on March 17, 1649. Jesuit relations described his martyrdom with the same horror and admiration: the most fragile of the missionaries proved to be, at the time of the trial, as strong as the most robust.

The relic of the heart in the basilica of Midland

After the martyrdom, the remains of Brébeuf and Lalemant were recovered by the surviving Jesuits and kept with reverence. The heart of Brébeuf, especially preserved, was sent to New France and later to France, where it was venerated for centuries in various Jesuit communities. Today it is preserved in the basilica of Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons, in Midland, Ontario, next to the exact place where Brébeuf lived and worked during the years of his mission. In September 1984, Pope John Paul II prayed to the skull of Brébeuf during his visit to Canada.

The Martyrs Basilica in Midland, built in 1926, is now one of the main pilgrimage shrines of English-speaking Canada. Every year, on the weekend near October 19 (the feast of the martyrs), tens of thousands of pilgrims come to venerate the relics and remember the sacrifice of the eight missionaries.

The other martyrs: Antoine Daniel, Charles Garnier, Noël Chabanel and Jean de Lalande

The martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalemant was not an isolated fact but the culminating point of a process that had begun years before with the death of René Goupil (1642) and Isaac Jogues (1646), and which continued in the following days with other missionaries.

Antoine Daniel was killed on 4 July 1648 in the attack on the people of Saint- Joseph. Charles Garnier fell on December 7, 1649 on the mission of Saint- Jean. Noël Chabanel, the least linguistically gifted of the Jesuits but the most faithful in his perseverance, was killed on December 8, 1649 by an apostate ferret. Jean de Lalande, a lay donated partner of Jogues, died on October 19, 1646, the day after Jogues' martyrdom.

Each of these eight men came to Canada knowing that he could die, and he chose to stay. Marian devotion held them in that choice: the Virgin Mary, who had accompanied her Son to the foot of the cross, was the model and companion of all who chose to follow him to the end.

The Canonization of 1930 and the Marian Heritage

After decades of canonical process, the eight Jesuit martyrs of Canada were beatified by Pope Pius XI on June 21, 1925, and canonized by the same Pope on June 29, 1930, in the Basilica of St. Peter of Rome. They were the first canonized saints from the American continent. Ten years later, in 1940, Pope Pius XII declared them co-patterns from Canada.

The history of the Jesuit martyrs of Canada cannot be understood without the Marian devotion that permeated all the spirituality of the Society of Jesus in the 17th century. The Jesuits carried rosaries on each expedition, as the most important spiritual baggage of their mission. Isaac Jogues prayed the rosary in captivity, with the mutilated fingers that could no longer go through the accounts. René Goupil died with the rosary in his hand. Brébeuf composed a hymn in which the Virgin Mary became the mother of the ferret people.

Mary's presence in the mission of Huronia was not a pious detail: it was the very fabric of the spirituality of those men who chose the life they chose. Today, the pilgrims who visit the Martyrs' Sanctuary in Midland, Ontario, meet with this Marian heritage: the certainty that the Virgin does not abandon those who call on her, even if her way through martyrdom.