Abigail Beckett
September 26th marks Jean de Brebeuf’s Feast Day to have a good time his life and legacy as a saint. Brébeuf was a part of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, and took part in spiritual missions in colonial Canada within the early 17th century. Brebeuf, alongside together with his colleague Gabriel de Lalemant, had been killed in 1649 on certainly one of these missions. After their martyrdom, a fervent Christian cult emerged round Brébeuf and his bodily stays. Brébeuf, together with the opposite Canadian Martyrs, had been canonized in 1930 by Pope Pius XI. Brébeuf’s stays had been supplied by the Jesuits of Quebec to the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ontario in 1992 the place they continue to be at the moment. These stays embody solely half of his cranium as the opposite half stays within the Augustine Monastery in Resort Dieu encased in a silver bust. In 2024 Brébeuf’s cranium toured all through america and in 2025 in Western Canada as a part of the Martyrs’ Shrine relic tour. Even now, Brébeuf’s relics are wanted for his or her non secular powers. Individuals pray to the relics, go away prayer intentions on paper and place them in a basket, or press their holy playing cards to the reliquaries to deliver house. The recognition of his story and relics warrant extra consideration to be place on his function in non secular therapeutic within the colonial and medical context of the 17th century.
On March 16, 1649, Father Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649) and his colleague Father Gabriel de Lalemant (1610-1649) had been captured, tortured, and killed by the “Iroquois” in St. Ignace, Ontario. The martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalemant was first recounted by fellow Jesuit of the Huron mission, Christophe Regnault. Though Regnault notes that he didn’t witness the incident himself, the occasions had been advised to him by Christian Wendat (Huron) who had been taken captive by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). The story goes that Brébeuf and Lalemant left the mission to go to the close by village of St. Ignace to instruct the brand new Christian Wendat. Everybody again on the mission camp, together with Regnault, noticed a fireplace within the route of the village and shortly after, a few of the Wendat fleeing towards them. The Wendat advised Regnault that the Haudenosaunee got here to the village and seized Brébeuf and Lalemant. What was recounted after was vivid: in line with the Wendat the 2 Jesuit Fathers had been brutally tortured and cannibalized. Flesh was consumed, blood was drunk, and Brébeuf’s coronary heart was torn out and eaten, as narrativized within the Catholic writings of the Jesuit Relations. The Relations is a helpful supply to know how the Jesuits maintained info networks, however it’s essential to contemplate the potential hyperbole in these accounts as demonstrated in particular language employed like barbarism, cannibals or Caribs, and sauvage.
The Jesuit missionaries sought to protect the 2 fathers’ bones to be saved as relics and be sure that every of them can be solid as martyrs: the purpose of every good missionary. Regnault collected the stays on the village the place Brébeuf was killed and described intimately this course of wherein he boiled the our bodies in lye (sodium hydroxide), scraped and dried the bones, and wrapped them. After Regnault completed getting ready the stays, they had been wrapped individually in silk fabric and transported throughout the Wendake area to Quebec, the place in line with Regnault, “they [were] in nice demand.”[1] The stays travelled to Quebec Metropolis and had been despatched to the Catholic hospital of Resort-Dieu de Quebec (1637) and to the Ursuline Monastery (1639), establishments each related to the Jesuits. The consumption of Brébeuf was not over with the account of Brebeuf’s martyrdom. Brébeuf was later consumed medicinally at Resort Dieu in Quebec Metropolis.
In 1665, in line with Les Annales de L’Resort-Dieu de Quebec, nursing sister Marie Catherine de Saint Augustin cured a heretic with the bones of Brébeuf. She pulverized his bones and integrated this powder into the heretic’s beverage wherein he consumed.[2] Sadly, the Annales don’t provide element as to what the supposed heretic was inflicted with, it solely notes that his physique was restored to well being. This situates the miraculous treatment over the ailment itself emphasizing the ability of relic. Whereas the Annales solely report that Catherine used bone (os), it’s seemingly that she used a part of the cranium or bone fragments that had been saved at Resort Dieu the place she labored.
Whereas Catherine had by no means met Brébeuf, she realized of his virtues and efforts from the Relations and tales from his companions.[3] Catherine recorded in a journal that whereas praying, a imaginative and prescient of Brébeuf appeared and guided her by the dedication ceremony of the brand new cathedral in Quebec Metropolis.[4] In 1663 when she grew to become Hospitalière d’workplace (the primary nun in command of the sick wards), she prayed to Brébeuf to assist her maintain her workplace and all of the hospital’s dying sufferers throughout her time period.[5] Catherine’s visions are reflective of the broader custom of feminine mysticism wherein mystics typically adopted the dictation of their visions.
Catherine was not the primary to make use of Brébeuf’s relics for therapeutic. Relics had been regarded as a strong pressure in opposition to demonic possession as a result of they held Christian spirits that might dominate over the demonic. In 1662, Brébeuf’s rib was used to treatment a younger woman, Barbe Hallay. The rib was lent out by Jesuit Paul Ragueneau and positioned on the aspect of Hallay’s physique and was recorded to have cured her from demonic possession.[6] In one other case in 1665, an toddler was immediately cured when the relics of Brébeuf and Lalemant had been positioned on its pores and skin.[7] In all these instances, together with Catherine’s treatment for the heretic, Brébeuf’s relics had been consumed by way of contact whether or not on the physique or within the physique.
This case examine of Jean de Brébeuf emphasizes the intricacies of colonial tensions and complicates colonial narratives and concepts of civilization hierarchies. Alleged Indigenous cannibalism was used as a method of ‘othering’ performed by Catholic missionaries within the writings of the Jesuit Relations that recount the story of the cannibalization and martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalement. The prescription of Brébeuf’s relics by a Catholic nun in seventeenth century Quebec complicates the simplicity of this course of by contrasting it with the lengthy standing European medical custom of human consumption: corpse drugs. European medical practitioners believed that substances derived from the human physique assist highly effective medicinal qualities together with bones, blood, flesh, and mummies. Catherine used the pulverized bone of Brébeuf as recorded within the Annales. This is identical medium that well-known English doctor Nicholas Culpeper really helpful when getting ready cranium as a treatment in opposition to falling illness (epilepsy). He acknowledged that “The powder of man’s bones treatment[s] the Falling-sickness, in line with Galen.”
The introduction of those practices in colonial contexts introduced new sorts of tensions between Indigenous peoples and colonists. These tensions had been stronger resulting from uncomfortable parallels between European and Indigenous practices. European students commented on these parallels and contradictions, most famously Michel de Montaigne in chapter 30 of his Essais, “Des Cannibales.” Montaigne contemplated the supposedly barbaric act of cannibalism within the New World and contrasted it with the torturous crimes of Europeans. Included on this commentary, Montaigne exemplified this query as follows, “And our medical males don’t flinch from utilizing corpses in some ways, each internally and externally, to treatment us. But no opinion has ever been so unruly as to justify treachery, disloyalty, tyranny and cruelty, that are on a regular basis vices to us.”[8] Nonetheless, Montaigne’s essay reasonably helped to cement the affiliation between Indigenous peoples and cannibalism. Opposite to his intentions, the refined critique he made about corpse drugs has been misplaced, erased to a curious footnote, very like corpse drugs usually. Nonetheless, Montaigne’s comparability was embodied within the journey of Brébeuf’s stays from alleged torture and cannibalism to materia medica in a Catholic hospital.
[1] Christophe Regnault. “Morts des Peres Jean de Brébeuf et Gabriel Lalemant,” in Lucien Campeau, Le Temoignage du sang (1647-1650). Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu; Editions Bellarmin, 1994, 492.
[2] St-Ignace, Albert Jamet, Ste Hélène, and Hôtel-Dieu de Québec. Les Annales de L’Resort-Dieu de Québec, 1636-1716. Québec: Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 1939, 148.
[3] L. Hudon, Vie de la mére Marie-Catherine de Saint-Augustin: religieuse de l’Hôtel-Dieu du Précieux-sang de Québec, 1632-1668. Bureaux du Messager Canadien, 1907, 56.
[4] Timothy G. Pearson, ““I Willingly Communicate to You about Her Virtues”: Catherine de Saint-Augustin and the Public Position of Feminine Holiness in Early New France,” Church Historical past, 79: 2, (June 2010), 306.
[5] Hudon, Vie de la mére Marie-Catherine de Saint-Augustin, 225.
[6] Letter “Attestations de la guérison miraculeuse de Barbe Halley,” by Marie Regnouard, 20 fév. 1663 – 9 avr. 1663, Q-1.257.6, The Archive of the Jesuits in Canada.
[7] Letter “Lettre attestant la Guérison instantannée d’un Enfant par le[sic] Reliques des Pères de Brébeuf et Lalemant,” by Jean Guion du Buisson, 5 sep. 1665, Q-1.308.2, The Archive of the Jesuits in Canada.
[8] Michel de Montaigne, The Full Essays of Montaigne, Translated by Donald M. Body, Stanford College Press, 1958, 236.
Additional Studying
Jesuits, and Reuben Gold Thwaites. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Paperwork : Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in North America (1610-1791). Edited by Edna Kenton. Albert & Charles Boni, 1925.
Emma Anderson, The Dying and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs. Harvard College Press, 2013.
Timothy G. Pearson, ““I Willingly Communicate to You about Her Virtues”: Catherine de Saint-Augustin and the Public Position of Feminine Holiness in Early New France,” Church Historical past, 79: 2, (June 2010): 305-33.
The Martyrs’ Shrine, https://martyrs-shrine.com/
Abigail Beckett is a graduate pupil at McGill College within the Historical past and Classics Division PhD program. Her work focuses on corpse drugs and medicinal makes use of of the physique in early trendy Europe.
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