Canadian Martyrs | |
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![]() Holy card depicting the martyrs | |
Born | France |
Died | 17th century, Canada and Upstate New York |
Martyred by | Iroquois |
Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church Anglican Church |
Beatified | June 21, 1925, Rome, by Pope Pius XI |
Canonized | June 29, 1930, Rome, by Pope Pius XI |
Major shrine | Martyrs' Shrine, Midland, Ontario, Canada National Shrine of the North American Martyrs, Auriesville, New York |
Feast | September 26 (in Canada and among Traditional Roman Catholics) October 19 (General Calendar); Anglican Church of Canada |
Patronage | Canada |
The Canadian Martyrs (French : Martyrs canadiens), also known as the North American Martyrs (French: Saints martyrs canadiens, Holy Canadian Martyrs), were eight Jesuit missionaries from Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. They were ritually tortured and killed on various dates in the mid-17th century in Canada, in what is now southern Ontario, and in upstate New York, during the warfare between the Iroquioan tribes the Mohawk and the Huron. They have subsequently been canonized and venerated as martyrs by the Catholic Church.
The martyrs are:
Name | Date of death | Place of death | Means of death |
---|---|---|---|
René Goupil | September 29, 1642 | Ossernenon, near Auriesville, New York | tomahawk to the head [1] |
Isaac Jogues | October 18, 1646 | Ossernenon, near Auriesville, New York | tomahawk to the head [2] |
Jean de Lalande | October 19, 1646 | Ossernenon, near Auriesville, New York | tomahawk to the head [3] |
Antoine Daniel | July 4, 1648 | Teanaostaye, near Hillsdale, Ontario | shot [4] |
Jean de Brébeuf | March 16, 1649 | St. Ignace, near Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, Ontario | boiling water and fire at the stake [5] |
Gabriel Lalemant | March 17, 1649 | St. Ignace, near Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, Ontario | boiling water and fire at the stake [5] |
Charles Garnier | December 7, 1649 | near Collingwood, Ontario | shot [6] |
Noël Chabanel | December 8, 1649 | Nottawasaga River, Ontario | tomahawk to the head [6] |
Jesuit missionaries worked among the Huron (Wendat), an Iroquoian-speaking people who occupied territory in the Georgian Bay area of Central Ontario. (They were not part of the Iroquois Confederacy, initially made up of five tribes south and east of the Great Lakes.) The area of their traditional territory is called Huronia. The Huron in this area were farmers, fishermen and traders who lived in villages surrounded by defensive wooden palisades for protection. [7] Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was the headquarters for the French Jesuit Mission to the Huron Wendat people. [8]
By the late 1640s, the Jesuits believed they were making progress in their mission to the Huron, and claimed to have made many converts. But, the priests were not universally trusted. Many Huron considered them to be malevolent shamans who brought death and disease wherever they travelled; after European contact, the Huron had suffered high fatalities in epidemics after 1634 of smallpox and other Eurasian infectious diseases.
The nations of the Iroquois Confederacy considered the Jesuits legitimate targets of their raids and warfare, as the missionaries were nominally allies of the Huron and French fur traders. Retaliating for French colonial attacks against the Iroquois was also a reason for their raids against the Huron and Jesuits.
In 1642, the Mohawk captured René Goupil, [1] and Father Isaac Jogues, [2] bringing them back to their village of Ossernenon south of the Mohawk River. They ritually tortured both men and killed Goupil. After several months of captivity, Jogues was ransomed by Dutch traders and the minister Johannes Megapolensis from New Netherland (later Albany). He returned for a time to France, but then sailed back to Quebec. In 1646 he and Jean de Lalande were killed during a visit to Ossernenon intended to achieve peace between the French and the Mohawk. [3]
Other Jesuit missionaries were killed by the Mohawk and martyred in the following years: Antoine Daniel (1648), [9] Jean de Brébeuf (1649), [5] Noël Chabanel (1649), [6] Charles Garnier (1649), [6] and Gabriel Lalemant (1649). [5] All were canonized in 1930 as the Canadian Martyrs, also known as the North American Martyrs.
The martyrs were canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930. [10] They are collectively the secondary patron saints of Canada. St. René Goupil, St. Isaac Jogues, and St. Jean de Lalande are the first three U.S. saints, martyred at Ossernenon, 9 miles (14.5 km) west of the confluence of the Schoharie and Mohawk rivers. Their feast day is celebrated in the General Roman Calendar and in the United States on October 19 under the title of "John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs," and in Canada on September 26.
The Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ontario, [11] the site of the Jesuits' missionary work among the Huron, is the National Shrine to the Canadian Martyrs.
A National Shrine of the North American Martyrs has been constructed and dedicated in Auriesville, New York. [12] It is located south of the Mohawk River, near a Jesuit cemetery containing remains of missionaries who died in the area from 1669 to 1684, when the Jesuits had a local mission to the Mohawk.
Churches dedicated to the martyrs include the following:
Many schools also honour the martyrs, including the following:
The torture of the martyrs by the Iroquois is the subject depicted in the twelve-light World War I memorial window (1933) by Charles William Kelsey at the Loyola College (Montreal) chapel, at the Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes on the campus of Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Maryland, and a side shine at Madonna Della Strada Chapel on the campus of Loyola University Chicago. Fordham University additionally has named the Martyrs' Court residential complex in their collective honour, as well as individual halls in the complex being named for Jogues, Goupil and Lalande. The North American College in Rome has a crypt chapel dedicated to the North American Martyrs.
The martyrs are also honoured at Camp Ondessonk, a Catholic summer camp in Ozark, Illinois, where each unit of cabins is named after one of the martyrs, and also at the American Martyrs Retreat House in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Jean de Brébeuf, SJ was a French Jesuit missionary who travelled to New France (Canada) in 1625. There he worked primarily with the Huron for the rest of his life, except for a few years in France from 1629 to 1633. He learned their language and culture, writing extensively about each to aid other missionaries.
The Kanien'kehá:ka are in the easternmost section of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. They are an Iroquoian-speaking Indigenous people of North America, with communities in southeastern Canada and northern New York State, primarily around Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. As one of the five original members of the Iroquois League, the Mohawk are known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door – the traditional guardians of the Iroquois Confederation against invasions from the east. The Mohawk are federally recognized in the United States as the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe.
Kateri Tekakwitha, given the name Tekakwitha, baptized as Catherine, and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, is a Mohawk Catholic saint and virgin. Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, in present-day New York, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred. She converted to Catholicism at age nineteen. She took a vow of perpetual virginity, left her village, and moved for the remaining five years of her life to the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, just south of Montreal. She was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter's Basilica on 21 October 2012.
Charles Garnier, S.J., was a Jesuit missionary working in New France. He was killed by Iroquois in a Petun village on December 7, 1649.
Isaac Jogues, SJ was a French missionary and martyr who traveled and worked among the Iroquois, Huron, and other Native populations in North America. He was the first European to name Lake George, calling it Lac du Saint Sacrement. In 1646, Jogues was martyred by the Mohawk at their village of Ossernenon, near the Mohawk River.
Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was a French Jesuit settlement in Huronia or Wendake, the land of the Wendat, near modern Midland, Ontario, from 1639 to 1649. It was the first European settlement in what is now the province of Ontario. Eight missionaries from Sainte-Marie were martyred, and were canonized by the Catholic Church in 1930. Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1920. A reconstruction of the mission now operates as a living museum.
The Shrine of the Canadian Martyrs, commonly known as the Martyrs' Shrine, is a Roman Catholic church in Midland, Ontario, Canada, which is consecrated to the memory of the Canadian Martyrs, six Jesuit Martyrs and two lay persons from the mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. It is one of six national shrines in Canada, including, among others, Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal and the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.
René Goupil, S.J., was a French Jesuit lay missionary who became a lay brother of the Society of Jesus shortly before his death. He was the first of the eight North American Martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church to receive the crown of martyrdom and the first canonized Catholic martyr in North America.
Antoine Daniel was a French Jesuit missionary in North America, at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, and one of the eight Canadian Martyrs.
Jean de Lalande, SJ was a Jesuit missionary at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons and one of the eight North American Martyrs. He was killed at the Mohawk village of Ossernenon after being captured by warriors.
Gabriel Lalemant was a French Jesuit missionary in New France beginning in 1646. Caught up in warfare between the Huron and nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, he was killed in St. Ignace by Mohawk warriors and is one of the eight Canadian Martyrs.
Auriesville is a hamlet in the northern part of New York state and west of Albany. It was the site of Ossernenon, a Mohawk village where French Jesuits established a mission. This operated from 1667 until 1684, when the Mohawk destroyed it as part of continuing confrontations with French colonists. Auries is said to have been the name of the last Mohawk known to have lived there. Later settlers named the village after him.
Father Simon Le Moyne, S.J., sometimes spelled Simon Le Moine, was a French Jesuit priest who became involved with the mission to the Hurons and Iroquois in the Americas. Le Moyne had acquired sixteen years of education and experience through priesthood in France before his arrival in New France in 1638. During that same year, he headed out to his mission in Huron country. The destruction of the Huron nation by the Iroquois brought him back east to what is modern day Quebec in 1650.
Fathers and Crows is a 1992 historical novel by the American author William T. Vollmann. It is the second book in the seven-book series Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes.
The National Shrine of the North American Martyrs, also known as the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, is a Roman Catholic shrine in Auriesville, New York dedicated to the three Jesuit missionaries who were martyred at the Mohawk Indian village of Ossernenon in 1642 and 1646.
Jesuit missions in North America were attempted in the late 16th century, established early in the 17th century, faltered at the beginning of the 18th, disappeared during the suppression of the Society of Jesus around 1763, and returned around 1830 after the restoration of the Society. The missions were established as part of the colonial drive of France and Spain during the period, the "saving of souls" being an accompaniment of the constitution of Nouvelle-France and early New Spain. The efforts of the Jesuits in North America were paralleled by their China missions on the other side of the world, and in South America. They left written documentation of their efforts, in the form of The Jesuit Relations.
Between 1634 and 1655, the Jesuits established a home and a settlement in New France along the Saint Lawrence River. They soon moved deeper into the colony’s territory in order to live with and convert the local Huron population. During this time, however, their missionary efforts were fraught with disappointment and frustration. In other colonies, such as in Latin America, the Jesuit missions had found a more eager and receptive audience to Christianity, the result of a chaotic atmosphere of violence and conquest. But in New France, where French authority and coercive powers did not extend far and where French settlement was sparse, the Jesuits found conversion far more difficult. Nevertheless, the French missionary settlements were integral to maintaining political, economic, and military ties with the Huron and other native peoples in the region. The contact between the two had important consequences in lifestyle, social and cultural attitudes, as well as in spiritual practice. The French Jesuits and Huron found they had to negotiate their religious, social, and cultural differences in order to accommodate one another.
Camp Ondessonk is an outdoor, Catholic residential youth camp run by the Diocese of Belleville. It is located in the Shawnee National Forest of Southern Illinois, near Ozark, Illinois. The mission of the camp is "Exceptional outdoor and spiritual adventures empowering kids of all ages." Camp Ondessonk is accredited by the American Camp Association.
Eustache Ahatsistari was a Huron warrior. He is famous for his conversion to Catholicism and his death at the hands of the Iroquois. Ahatsistari was captured alongside St. Isaac Jogues and several other Huron prisoners in 1642 and was tortured and executed. He is notable for his conversion to Christianity and his role in the lives of early French missionaries in the Americas.