Jean de Brébeuf (French: [ʒɑ̃ də bʁe.bœf]) (25 March 1593 – 16 March 1649) was a French Jesuit missionary who travelled to New France (Canada) in 1625. There he worked primarily with the Wendat (Huron) for the rest of his life, except for a few years in France from 1629 to 1633. He learned their language and customs, writing extensively about each to aid other missionaries.
In 1649, Brébeuf and another missionary were captured when a group of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) raided a Wendat village (referred to in French as Saint-Louis). Together with Wendat captives, the missionaries were ritually tortured and killed on 16 March 1649. Afterwards, his heart was eaten by Haudenosaunee tribesmen. Brébeuf was beatified in 1925 and with eight Jesuit missionaries was canonized in the Catholic Church in 1930.
Brébeuf was born 25 March 1593 in Condé-sur-Vire, Normandy, France (He was the uncle of poet Georges de Brébeuf.). He joined the Society of Jesus in 1617 at the age of 24, spending the next two years under the direction of Lancelot Marin. Between 1619 and 1621, he was a teacher at the college of Rouen. Brébeuf was nearly expelled from the Society when he contracted tuberculosis in 1620—a severe and usually fatal illness that prevented his studying and teaching for the traditional periods.
His record as a student was not particularly distinguished, but Brébeuf was already beginning to show an aptitude for languages. Later in New France, he would teach Native American languages to missionaries and French traders. Brébeuf was ordained as a priest at Pontoise Cathedral in February 1622.
After three years as Steward at the College of Rouen, Brébeuf was chosen by the Provincial of France, Father Pierre Coton, to embark on the missions to New France.
In June 1625, Brébeuf arrived in Québec with Fathers Charles Lalemant and Énemond Massé, together with the lay brothers François Charton and Gilbert Burel. He worked at the Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. For about five months Brébeuf lived with a tribe of Innu, who spoke an Algonquian language. He was later assigned in 1626 to the Wendat (Huron) with Father Anne Nouée. From then on Brébeuf worked mostly as a missionary to the Wendat, who spoke an Iroquoian language. Brébeuf briefly took up residence with the Bear Tribe at Toanché, but met with no success in trying to convert them to Catholicism. He was summoned to Québec because of the danger to which the entire colony was then exposed by the English. He reached Québec on 17 July 1628 after an absence of two years. On 19 July 1629, Samuel de Champlain surrendered, and the missionaries returned to France.
In Rouen, Brébeuf served as a preacher and confessor, taking his final Jesuit vows in 1630. Between 1631 and 1633, Brébeuf worked at the College of Eu (now in Seine-Maritime) in northern France as a steward, minister and confessor. He returned to New France in 1633, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.
Along with Antoine Daniel and Ambroise Davost, Brébeuf chose Ihonatiria (Saint-Joseph I) as the centre for missionary activity with the Wendat. At the time, the Wendat suffered epidemics of new Eurasian diseases contracted from the Europeans. Their death rates were high, as they had no immunity to the diseases long endemic in Europe. They, with our hindsight, rightly blamed the Europeans for the deaths, with none of the parties understanding the causes.
Called Échon by the Wendat, Brébeuf was personally involved with teaching. His lengthy conversations with Wendat friends left him with a good knowledge of their culture and spirituality. He learned their language and taught it to other missionaries and colonists. Fellow Jesuits such as Paul Ragueneau describe his ease and adaptability to the Wendat way of life.
His efforts to develop a complete ethnographic record of the Wendat has been described as "the longest and most ambitious piece of ethnographic description in all The Jesuit Relations". Brébeuf tried to find parallels between the Wendat religion and Christianity, so as to facilitate the conversion of the Wendat to Catholicism. Brébeuf was known by the Wendat for his apparent shamanistic skills, especially in rainmaking. Despite his efforts to learn their ways, he considered Wendat spiritual beliefs to be undeveloped and "foolish delusions"; he was determined to convert them to Christianity. Brébeuf did not enjoy universal popularity with the Wendat, as many believed he was a sorcerer. By 1640, nearly half the Wendat had died of smallpox and the losses disrupted their society. Many children and elders died. With their loved ones dying before their eyes, many Wendat began to listen to the words of Jesuit missionaries who, unaffected by the disease, appeared to be men of great power.
Brébeuf's progress as a missionary in achieving conversions was slow. Not until 1635 did some Wendat agree to be baptized as Christians. He claimed to have made 14 converts as of 1635 and, by the next year, he claimed 86. He wrote a detailed account in 1636 of The Huron Feast of the Dead, a mass reburial of remains of loved ones after a community moved the location of its village. It was accompanied by elaborate rituals and gift-giving.
In 1638, Brébeuf turned over the direction of the mission at Saint-Joseph I to Jérôme Lalemant; he was called to become Superior at his newly founded Saint-Joseph II. In 1640, after an unsuccessful mission into Neutral Nation territory, Brébeuf broke his collarbone. He was sent to Québec to recover and worked there as a mission procurator. He taught the Wendat, acting as confessor and advisor to the Ursulines and Religious Hospitallers. On Sundays and feast days, he preached to French colonists.
Brébeuf is credited with composing the "Huron Carol", Canada's oldest Christmas song, written around 1642. He wrote the lyrics in the native language of the Wendat people. The song's melody is based on a traditional French folk song, "Une Jeune Pucelle" (A Young Maid).
The educational rigour of the Jesuit seminaries prepared missionaries to acquire native languages. But, as they had learned the classical and Romance languages, they likely had difficulty with the very different conventions of the New World indigenous languages. Brébeuf's study of the languages was also shaped by his religious training. Current Catholic theology tried to reconcile knowledge of world languages with accounts in the Bible of the tower of Babel, as this was the basis of European history. This influence can be seen in his discussion of language in his accounts collected in The Jesuit Relations.
Jean de Brébeuf's remarkable facility with language was one of the reasons he was chosen for the Wendat mission in 1626. He is distinguished for his commitment to learning the Wendat language. People with a strong positive attitude towards the language often learn the language much more easily. Brébeuf was widely acknowledged to have best mastered the Native oratory style, which used metaphor, circumlocution and repetition. Learning the language was still onerous, and he wrote to warn other missionaries of the difficulties.
To explain the low number of converts, Brébeuf noted that missionaries first had to master the Wendat language. His commitment to this work demonstrates he understood that mutual intelligibility was vital for communicating complex and abstract religious ideas. He believed learning native languages was imperative for the Jesuit missions, but noted that it was so difficult a task that it consumed most of the priest's time. Brébeuf felt his primary goal in his early years in New France was to learn the language.
With increasing proficiency in the Wendat language, Brébeuf became optimistic about advancing his missionary goals. By understanding Wendat religious beliefs and communicating Christian fundamentals, he could secure converts to Christianity. He realized the people would not give up all their traditional beliefs.
Brébeuf worked tirelessly to record his findings for the benefit of other missionaries. He built on the work of Recollects priests but significantly advanced the study, particularly in his representations of sounds. He discovered and reported the feature of compound words in Wendat, which may have been his major linguistic contribution. This breakthrough had enormous consequences for further study, becoming the foundation for all subsequent Jesuit linguistic work.