1649.
THE MARTYRS.
The Ruins of St. Ignace • The Relics found • Brébeuf at the Stake • His
Unconquerable Fortitude • Lalemant • Renegade Hurons • Iroquois
Atrocities • Death of Brébeuf • His Character • Death of Lalemant
On the morning of the twentieth, the Jesuits at Sainte Marie received
full confirmation of the reported retreat of the invaders; and one of
them, with seven armed Frenchmen, set out for the scene of havoc. They
passed St. Louis, where the bloody ground was strown thick with corpses,
and, two or three miles farther on, reached St. Ignace. Here they saw a
spectacle of horror; for among the ashes of the burnt town were
scattered in profusion the half-consumed bodies of those who had
perished in the flames. Apart from the rest, they saw a sight that
banished all else from their thoughts; for they found what they had come
to seek,--the scorched and mangled relics of Brébeuf and Lalemant. [1]
[1] "Ils y trouuerent vn spectacle d'horreur, les restes de la cruauté
mesme, ou plus tost les restes de l'amour de Dieu, qui seul triomphe
dans la mort des Martyrs."--Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1649, 13.
They had learned their fate already from Huron prisoners, many of whom
had made their escape in the panic and confusion of the Iroquois
retreat. They described what they had seen, and the condition in which
the bodies were found confirmed their story.
On the afternoon of the sixteenth,--the day when the two priests were
captured,--Brébeuf was led apart, and bound to a stake. He seemed more
concerned for his captive converts than for himself, and addressed them
in a loud voice, exhorting them to suffer patiently, and promising
Heaven as their reward. The Iroquois, incensed, scorched him from head
to foot, to silence him; whereupon, in the tone of a master, he
threatened them with everlasting flames, for persecuting the worshippers
of God. As he continued to speak, with voice and countenance unchanged,
they cut away his lower lip and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat.
He still held his tall form erect and defiant, with no sign or sound of
pain; and they tried another means to overcome him. They led out
Lalemant, that Brébeuf might see him tortured. They had tied strips of
bark, smeared with pitch, about his naked body. When he saw the
condition of his Superior, he could not hide his agitation, and called
out to him, with a broken voice, in the words of Saint Paul, "We are
made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." Then he threw
himself at Brébeuf's feet; upon which the Iroquois seized him, made him
fast to a stake, and set fire to the bark that enveloped him. As the
flame rose, he threw his arms upward, with a shriek of supplication to
Heaven. Next they hung around Brébeuf's neck a collar made of hatchets
heated red-hot; but the indomitable priest stood like a rock. A Huron in
the crowd, who had been a convert of the mission, but was now an
Iroquois by adoption, called out, with the malice of a renegade, to pour
hot water on their heads, since they had poured so much cold water on
those of others. The kettle was accordingly slung, and the water boiled
and poured slowly on the heads of the two missionaries. "We baptize
you," they cried, "that you may be happy in Heaven; for nobody can be
saved without a good baptism." Brébeuf would not flinch; and, in a rage,
they cut strips of flesh from his limbs, and devoured them before his
eyes. Other renegade Hurons called out to him, "You told us, that, the
more one suffers on earth, the happier he is in Heaven. We wish to make
you happy; we torment you because we love you; and you ought to thank us
for it." After a succession of other revolting tortures, they scalped
him; when, seeing him nearly dead, they laid open his breast, and came
in a crowd to drink the blood of so valiant an enemy, thinking to imbibe
with it some portion of his courage. A chief then tore out his heart,
and devoured it.
Thus died Jean de Brébeuf, the founder of the Huron mission, its truest
hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a noble race,--the same, it is
said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but never had the
mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so
prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and "his death
was the astonishment of his murderers." [2] In him an enthusiastic
devotion was grafted on an heroic nature. His bodily endowments were as
remarkable as the temper of his mind. His manly proportions, his
strength, and his endurance, which incessant fasts and penances could
not undermine, had always won for him the respect of the Indians, no
less than a courage unconscious of fear, and yet redeemed from rashness
by a cool and vigorous judgment; for, extravagant as were the chimeras
which fed the fires of his zeal, they were consistent with the soberest
good sense on matters of practical bearing.
[2] Charlevoix, I. 294. Alegambe uses a similar expression.
Lalemant, physically weak from childhood, and slender almost to
emaciation, was constitutionally unequal to a display of fortitude like
that of his colleague. When Brébeuf died, he was led back to the house
whence he had been taken, and tortured there all night, until, in the
morning, one of the Iroquois, growing tired of the protracted
entertainment, killed him with a hatchet. [3] It was said, that, at
times, he seemed beside himself; then, rallying, with hands uplifted, he
offered his sufferings to Heaven as a sacrifice. His robust companion
had lived less than four hours under the torture, while he survived it
for nearly seventeen. Perhaps the Titanic effort of will with which
Brébeuf repressed all show of suffering conspired with the Iroquois
knives and firebrands to exhaust his vitality; perhaps his tormentors,
enraged at his fortitude, forgot their subtlety, and struck too near the
life.
[3] "We saw no part of his body," says Ragueneau, "from head to foot,
which was not burned, even to his eyes, in the sockets of which these
wretches had placed live coals."--Relation des Hurons, 1649, 15.
Lalemant was a Parisian, and his family belonged to the class of gens de
robe, or hereditary practitioners of the law. He was thirty-nine years
of age. His physical weakness is spoken of by several of those who knew
him. Marie de l'Incarnation says, "C'était l'homme le plus faible et le
plus délicat qu'on eût pu voir." Both Bressani and Ragueneau are equally
emphatic on this point.
The bodies of the two missionaries were carried to Sainte Marie, and
buried in the cemetery there; but the skull of Brébeuf was preserved as
a relic. His family sent from France a silver bust of their martyred
kinsman, in the base of which was a recess to contain the skull; and, to
this day, the bust and the relic within are preserved with pious care by
the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu at Quebec. [4]
[4] Photographs of the bust are before me. Various relics of the two
missionaries were preserved; and some of them may still be seen in
Canadian monastic establishments. The following extract from a letter of
Marie de l'Incarnation to her son, written from Quebec in October of
this year, 1649, is curious.
"Madame our foundress (Madame de la Peltrie) sends you relics of our
holy martyrs; but she does it secretly, since the reverend Fathers would
not give us any, for fear that we should send them to France: but, as
she is not bound by vows, and as the very persons who went for the
bodies have given relics of them to her in secret, I begged her to send
you some of them, which she has done very gladly, from the respect she
has for you." She adds, in the same letter, "Our Lord having revealed to
him (Brébeuf) the time of his martyrdom three days before it happened,
he went, full of joy, to find the other Fathers; who, seeing him in
extraordinary spirits, caused him, by an inspiration of God, to be bled;
after which time surgeon dried his blood, through a presentiment of what
was to take place, lest he should be treated like Father Daniel, who,
eight months before, had been so reduced to ashes that no remains of his
body could be found."
Brébeuf had once been ordered by the Father Superior to write down the
visions, revelations, and inward experiences with which he was
favored,--"at least," says Ragueneau, "those which he could easily
remember, for their multitude was too great for the whole to be
recalled."--"I find nothing," he adds, "more frequent in this memoir
than the expression of his desire to die for Jesus Christ: 'Sentio me
vehementer impelli ad moriendum pro Christo.'... In fine, wishing to
make himself a holocaust and a victim consecrated to death, and holily
to anticipate the happiness of martyrdom which awaited him, he bound
himself by a vow to Christ, which he conceived in these terms"; and
Ragueneau gives the vow in the original Latin. It binds him never to
refuse "the grace of martyrdom, if, at any day, Thou shouldst, in Thy
infinite pity, offer it to me, Thy unworthy servant;" ... "and when I
shall have received the stroke of death, I bind myself to accept it at
Thy hand, with all the contentment and joy of my heart."
Some of his innumerable visions have been already mentioned. (See ante,
(page 108).) Tanner, Societas Militans, gives various others,--as, for
example, that he once beheld a mountain covered thick with saints, but
above all with virgins, while the Queen of Virgins sat at the top in a
blaze of glory. In 1637, when the whole country was enraged against the
Jesuits, and above all against Brébeuf, as sorcerers who had caused the
pest, Ragueneau tells us that "a troop of demons appeared before him
divers times,--sometimes like men in a fury, sometimes like frightful
monsters, bears, lions, or wild horses, trying to rush upon him. These
spectres excited in him neither horror nor fear. He said to them, 'Do to
me whatever God permits you; for without His will not one hair will fall
from my head.' And at these words all the demons vanished in a
moment."--Relation des Hurons, 1649, 20. Compare the long notice in
Alegambe, Mortes Illustres, 644.
In Ragueneau's notice of Brébeuf, as in all other notices of deceased
missionaries in the Relations, the saintly qualities alone are brought
forward, as obedience, humility, etc.; but wherever Brébeuf himself
appears in the course of those voluminous records, he always brings with
him an impression of power.
We are told that, punning on his own name, he used to say that he was an
ox, fit only to bear burdens. This sort of humility may pass for what it
is worth; but it must be remembered, that there is a kind of acting in
which the actor firmly believes in the part he is playing. As for the
obedience, it was as genuine as that of a well-disciplined soldier, and
incomparably more profound. In the case of the Canadian Jesuits,
posterity owes to this, their favorite virtue, the record of numerous
visions, inward voices, and the like miracles, which the object of these
favors set down on paper, at the command of his Superior; while,
otherwise, humility would have concealed them forever. The truth is,
that, with some of these missionaries, one may throw off trash and
nonsense by the cart-load, and find under it all a solid nucleus of
saint and hero.