Fruits of Martyrdom
An exterminated people—The Missions not a failure—Virtues of the Missionaries—Their memory in veneration—Influence after death—Monuments in their honor—Protestant devotion— General Clark and Auriesville, site of Jogues' death—The long memory of the Church.
The Hurons were an exterminated people. Gradually the missionaries gathered the remnants of their race in reservations about Quebec. In one sense the missions in Huronia and the surrounding country were a failure. The Iroquois mercilessly destroyed the Neutrals and the Eries. They harassed the Algonquins and the Ottawas, while all this time some of their warriors were fighting with the Mohicans to the south and the Illinois and Cherokees to the west.
Apparently the time, labor, self-sacrifice, suffering and even the death of the martyred priests and their two companions had gone for naught. They, of course, and their fellow-missionaries thought otherwise. It was enough for the martyrs that for them the mission was an occasion of sacrifice. It had civilized and christianized many souls. It had even cultivated many of them to extraordinary devotion, Stephen Totiri, for instance, Teresa Oiouhaton, Theondechoren, Tsondatsaa, Ahasistari, as it would later, Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks. The martyrdoms themselves aroused a new fervor both in New and Old France.
They were an inspiration to the missionaries who were already working in the field, and to the three hundred and twenty others of the Jesuits alone, who were to work at saving the remnant of it, developing the vast continent beyond the gate at Sault Ste. Marie, which Jogues had happily opened.
The lay auxiliaries of the missionaries would grow in number, whilst their two champions were dying for the Faith, from six to twenty-three. No sooner would word of the death of Goupil, "gallant surgeon", as Vimont called him, reach Jogues' native city, than another well known young surgeon at Orleans would gallantly offer to take his place.(98)
Could the humility of the Martyrs have allowed them to dream of the glorious outcome of their sacrifice, they would have entered into their bliss before consummating their ordeal. They knew their blood would not be an unfruitful seed, but they could never have imagined how soon their successors, Le Moyne and Le Mercier, Dablon and Lamberville, Fremin and Bruyas, would be down among their very executioners in their Mohawk Valley strongholds, "taking captive their fierce conquerors" in the toils of the Faith in Christ. Much less could they have had the vision of Menard, Allouez, Druillettes, and finally Marquette pushing their way into the lakes, valleys and rivers of the great west and south, developing the new French civilization which Le Jeune had designed, and visiting and Christianizing members of "every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation",(99) among the Indians. This vision, as well as the vision of a great new people in Canada, growing out of the handful of colonists who were there when they died, was reserved for them as part of their reward where they rest from their labors in the vision of God who hath accomplished all this with their aid as His instruments. In it all endures, and will endure for eternity, not only the memory of what they did, but the fruit of it in the countless generations that hold them in honor.
Not only among the three million Canadians of French origin, who are signed and sealed with the tradition that the Martyrs and their associates planted in them; not only among the Catholic people in this part of North America and all the world over, but among Protestants also, and men and women of no faith, is the memory of Jogues, Brebeuf and their companions alive today and a source of inspiration to nobler ideals and appreciation of real religious faith. The missions in Huronia were far from being a failure.
After reading Brebeuf's remarkable self-revelation in his charge to missionary candidates, and Jogues' pathetic confession during his captivity, it is needless to dwell upon their extraordinary virtues. All the missionaries who came to Canada were men of superior training and character. Le Jeune, Ragueneau, Vimont, Charles and Jerome Lalemant, Le Moyne, towering as they are in moral stature, are only types of the rank and file, over three hundred in number, who served on these missions for one hundred and forty years. Seven others, besides the martyrs mentioned in these pages, died at the hands of the Iroquois, and two, Rasle and Delmas besides, died for religion. Three were imprisoned, and fifteen perished by shipwreck, drowning and attending the plague-stricken. They were all men of refinement and knowledge. They knew beforehand all the hardships, the perils and the risk of death. Once at their post, they clung to it as if their lot was an enviable one. Their faith in God, their hope in His goodness, their love of Him and of souls, were extraordinary. They were men of singular prudence and fortitude, necessarily most abstemious of habit, with a fine sense of justice which led them to see, even in their enemies, merits and rights which they felt under obligation to respect. In all these virtues the eight Martyrs excelled. Gamier considered it a favor from Almighty God that he was permitted to serve on such a mission, as did Jogues. Daniel felt that he owed it to his Indians not only to instruct them but to lead them along the way of Christian perfection. Lalemant and Chabanel had little time on the missions to manifest their special virtues, but Lalemant had shown his by his many years of effort to be appointed missionary before he was finally chosen. Chabanel's vow is sufficient evidence of his heroism. They were all prayerful men, the lay auxiliaries as well as the priests, and they not only faced the likelihood of martyrdom with composure, but even desired it.
It is no wonder, therefore, that they have been held in veneration by all who knew the story of the birth of the New World. Immediately after the death of Gamier and Chabanel, the Archbishop of Rouen, who at that time claimed jurisdiction over the Canadian Missions, instituted an inquiry into their virtues and the heroic manner of their death for religion. Father Paul Ragueneau, then Superior of the Missions, collected from different sources his famous 'Memoir' concerning the virtues of these martyrs, and of others also of the missionaries who had died in the discharge of their duties. It was to be used as a plea for their beatification. So high was the regard of the faithful both in New and Old France for the saintliness of these men, that many were moved to invoke their intercession with Almighty God for needed temporal and spiritual favors. Remarkable answers to such prayers were occasionally recorded, as for instance, the cure of Marie Brevost at Poitiers, attributed to the intercession of Jogues soon after his death, and many similar remarkable cures since then, notably that of a Sister of Mercy in Buffalo, November 17, 1906, and of numerous others which have been recorded in the 'Pilgrim of Our Lady of Martyrs' since 1886.(100) In the annals of the Hospital Sisters at Quebec is an account of one of their most distinguished members who with her sister was desirous of leaving France for the Canadian Mission. They could not prevail upon their father to give his consent, but he changed his mind overnight after reading the narrative of Jogues' sufferings and death. Similar remarkable favors are believed to have been received through the intercession of Brebeuf and his companions. One of these, the relief of a woman from demoniac possession, is recorded in the archives of the Diocese of Quebec under date of August 9, 1663. Others are mentioned in the 'Relations.(101) Indeed, the 'Relations' contain numerous proofs of the veneration of these Martyrs and of the belief in their power of intercession.
Thus, in reporting one hundred and fifty-one baptisms among the Mohawks during the years 1668 and 1669, the writer adds: "The birth of this flourishing Church is due, next to God, to the death and the blood of the Reverend Father Jogues. He poured out his blood on the same spot where this new Christianity is beginning to be born; and we seem to be able in our day to verify, in his person, those beautiful words of Tertullian,—that 'the blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Christians'."(102)
Again in the 'Relation' for 1648-1649, it is stated:
"From the death of Father Antoine Daniel, which occurred July Fourth of last year, 1648, up to that of Father Jean de Brebeuf and of Father Gabriel Lalemant, who were burned and eaten on the 16th and 17th of the month of March in the present year, 1649, we baptized more than thirteen hundred persons; and, from the latter months up to the month of August, we baptized more than fourteen hundred. Thus, the Christian Church was increased by more than two thousand seven hundred souls in thirteen months, without counting those baptized at the Breach (i.e., the storming of the Huron villages), and those who were made Christians in other places. So true are those words, Sanguis Martyrum semen est Christianorum,—'The blood of the Martyrs', if they may be so named, 'is the seed and germ of the Christians'."(103)
From the Mohawk Mission in 1670 Millet, after telling how he had made a difficult conversion through the help of Jogues, adds: "During the year that I have spent here, I have baptized nearly fifty persons, nine or ten of whom died happily after baptism; three or four have escaped me—two children and an old woman who, notwithstanding my efforts, died without baptism. My heart bleeds for them, and I am inconsolable."(104)
Le Jeune will account for the grace of baptism to a dying Iroquois by the fact that he had been one of those who attacked the village where Brebeuf and Lalemant died and had actually for a time saved the two Fathers from the fury of their captors. One of the torturers of these two missionaries died a Christian, as also did the man who tomahawked Jogues. Chauchetiere in 1672 says that of the Indians then living at La Prairie the Mohawks took the first rank as Christians, and he ascribes this to the death of Jogues and also of Brebeuf who has been killed by members of that tribe.
Evidences of veneration for these Martyrs are found in many places. Their names are favorite ones for many Catholic organizations. Near the site of Ihonatiria at Penetanguishene is a church erected to their memory. At Waubashene on the site of one of the villages is a place of pilgrimage and a House of Retreats.
Brebeuf's relics are encased in a silver bust of natural size presented to his fellow Jesuits by his family, "and, from 1802 until now in possession of the Hotel Dieu at Quebec. On one of the family tombs, at Venoix near Caen in France, is inscribed a record of his martyrdom, and there is a memorial window of him in the Church of St. Martin (Anglican) at Brighton, England.
There are memorials of Jogues at West-port, on Lake Champlain, where he was tortured on the way down to the Mohawk settlement. There is an oratory dedicated to him at the home of the Paulist Fathers on Lake George. One of the principal statues at Dunwoodie Seminary is of Jogues. His principal monument is at Auriesville, the present name of the site of the village of Ossernenon where he was tortured and kept as a slave. During the summer of every year since 1884 there have been large pilgrimages from the cities along the Valley and occasionally from more distant centres, the pilgrims often exceeding five thousand in number, all of them devoutly convinced that Jogues is among the Blessed in heaven and more powerful now to intercede with Almighty God than when he was on earth.
The site at Auriesville was fixed by the late General John D. Clark of Auburn, New York, with the aid of the historian, Gilmary Shea, Reverend Clarence Walworth of Albany, and others who were expert in the study of Indian remains and village sites. Fortunately, Jogues' description of the place and its surroundings had been so detailed, and his estimate of distances so precise, that there can be no doubt about the General's conclusions. The pains which this devoted Protestant took to determine the actual site of the Mohawk village are only one instance of what has been done for Jogues by men who, like Governor Kieft of New Amsterdam, now New York, Commandant of Fort Orange, now Albany, Arendt van Corlaer, and the others who sought to rescue him, though not of his Faith, venerated him even in life for his Christian heroism. Since the Canadian Government published its edition of the 'Jesuit Relation' in 1858, there has been a 'cloud of testimony' from writers of every creed, Parkman, Bancroft, Kip, Thwaites, Finley, to speak only of those who are of our own country, all testifying with affection to the supreme devotion of Jogues and of his companions to the cause of religion and civilization.
The reader may imagine the impressions of the writer of this book on receiving in 1904 the following letter from General Clark:
"It will give me great pleasure to aid in any manner possible in the Beatification of Father Jogues and his companions. The same charges that were made against Jogues were made against the Huron missionaries, against Brebeuf and Chaumont when they visited the Neutrals in 1640, and against the missionaries who visited the Tobacco Nation. They were held responsible for all the public and private calamities to which the people had been subject. The box that Jogues left among the Mohawks is a fine example of the ridiculous and absurd suspicions that the enemies of the French and of the Faith had succeeded in spreading everywhere, and naturally a spirit of vengeance was aroused against the man who was looked upon as the author of all their woes. I say enemies of the Faith, because there can be no question in regard to this matter. It was 'the doctrine' that caused their death by charms and spells, it was this that caused the destruction of their grain and produced contagious diseases."
Six years before, this same devout Indian antiquarian had written: "My philological researches located the castle sites at the mouth of the river and between the two rivers. My mythological researches reveal why Jogues was condemned to death. The Turtle and Wolf clans were brothers and formed one side of the Council, the 'peace' side. The Bear and Beavers were brothers and constituted the 'war' side of the Council. The peace side made every effort to save his life, but their efforts could not prevail against those favoring the bloody sacrifice. Agreskoui, whom Jogues has offended, must be appeased by blood. He was sacrificed to appease the Sun God, Agreskoui, or God of War." With sentiments like that prevailing among Christian people everywhere, it is not surprising that the Catholic hierarchy of the United States in 1884 authorized a formal preliminary inquiry into the lives and deaths of these servants of God with a view to ascertaining whether the result would justify a petition to the Holy See for opening the Apostolic process necessary for their beatification. The wonder everywhere is that this had not been done long before. Although an inquiry was instituted after the death of the Martyrs, many things conspired to prevent its completion— a change in the Episcopal jurisdiction of Canada; the unsettled condition of the missions there; the suppression of the Society of Jesus to which the missionaries belonged; the disturbance caused by the French Revolution; the interval between the suppression and the restoration of the Jesuits in Canada in 1842; the time it took to discover all the 'Relations' of the Jesuits and make them available as testimony for the Martyrs; and, finally, the patience and time required for the process of beatification itself. Needless to say, that in the course of this process, an important factor in helping the Commission which conducted it to a conclusion in favor of the beatification of these Martyrs, was the testimony of so many who are not of the Catholic faith and who yet had publicly testified in their writings to their veneration for these noble men.
The Church of Christ has a long memory. It ranges over the past, and views in detail its conflicts and its conquests, its apparent failures and its glorious triumphs.
The heroes who have achieved these triumphs are never forgotten. Out of annals of remote times and obscure places it selects those who best exemplified in their members as well as in their spirit, their Divine exemplar Christ. These, already immortal in supernal bliss, it endows with an immortality among the faithful still striving toward that goal. Our land is fortunate that the first to be so favored were so heroic as to surpass even the most extravagant and mythical heroes of other lands; fortunate also in that their holiness was such as to inspire veneration and imitation, to some extent, by all who value what is noblest in human life.
The achievements in science, literature, art and politics of the men who lived in the half-century during which our Martyrs lived and died, still exert their influence and excite our admiration.
Excellent as these achievements were, they are not to be compared with the heroic accomplishments of these Martyrs. It is the difference between mental and moral grandeur. As we benefit by the science, art and literature, the mental genius of that day, may we not hope to benefit also by its examples of holiness, the moral and supernatural genius of these men. The blood of these Martyrs was to be Christian seed, not for races that are now extinct, but for our own that is only in the making. Why should it not so fructify that men born and things done in our day be as immortal as the men and things of the half-century which produced our Martyrs?
Sunday, June 21st, has been chosen for the formal declaration by the Holy See that Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brebeuf, Noel Chabanel, Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier, Gabriel Lalemant, Rene Goupil and John Lalande died for the Faith and therefore deserve to be called Martyrs. They are consequently entitled to public veneration. It now behooves all who believe in the intercession of the Blessed in heaven to invoke their aid for favors, temporal or spiritual, that are beyond the ordinary powers of nature, for the miracles which will prove that the Church has been justified in declaring them Blessed, and that there is every reason for declaring them Saints as the final step towards their glorification.