Isaac Jogues
Saint Isaac Jogues was a French Jesuit missionary born in 1607, who became notable for his dedication to missionary work among Indigenous peoples in North America during the 17th century. After entering the Society of Jesus, Jogues was inspired by the accounts of missionaries who faced adversity and suffering. He arrived in Quebec in 1636 and initially ministered to the Huron nation, confronting challenges such as disease and mistrust from the local populations.
Jogues' significant life events include his captivity by the Mohawk, where he endured severe torture but remained committed to his faith and mission. His experiences among the Iroquois were later documented, becoming influential narratives within missionary literature. After escaping captivity and returning to France, he became a celebrated figure, even receiving a special dispensation from the Pope to continue celebrating Mass despite his injuries.
In 1646, Jogues returned to New York, only to be captured and ultimately killed by the Iroquois in a violent confrontation. He was canonized in 1930, recognized as a martyr and a symbol of Catholic perseverance during the Counter-Reformation. Today, he is remembered as one of the North American martyrs and is regarded as a patron saint of Canada, reflecting the complex interplay of faith, culture, and colonial history.
Isaac Jogues
- Born: January 10, 1607
- Birthplace: Orléans, France
- Died: October 18, 1646
- Place of death: Ossernenon, near Fort Orange, New Netherland (now Auriesville, New York)
French-born colonial Canadian priest and missionary
The Jesuit Jogues served as a missionary to the Hurons and Iroquois in New France (Canada). His prolonged torture by the Iroquois made him a celebrity and a symbol of French Counter-Reformation spirituality, and his later death at their hands rendered him a martyr in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
Area of achievement Religion and theology
Early Life
Saint Isaac Jogues (ee-zahk zhawg) was the third son born to Laurent Jogues and his second wife, Françoise. Both parents were from prominent and prosperous Orléans families, and five of their six sons entered business or professional careers. Isaac, however, was drawn to the religious life, and at the age of seventeen, he entered the newly founded Jesuit College in Orléans.
The Jesuits were rapidly expanding their missionary work in Asia and the Americas at the time, and young Jogues was enraptured by the accounts he heard of missionaries suffering in the cause of religion. In 1624, he entered the Society of Jesus as a novice in Rouen and began his formal study of philosophy and theology there before moving to the College of La Flèche in Anjou in 1626. At La Flèche, Jogues met for the first time some of the Jesuits who had labored in New France (Canada), and it was probably during this time that he determined his own calling lay as a missionary in the wilderness of North America. In 1634, he moved to Paris to continue his studies at the College of Clermont but became impatient to enter the missionary life. He requested and obtained from his superiors his release from further study, and in January of 1636, he was ordained to the priesthood. Four months later, Jogues set sail for New France.
Life’s Work
Jogues arrived in the colony of Quebec during the summer of 1636 and from there traveled to Ihonatiria, the largest of the villages of the Huron nation. The Jesuit mission to the Hurons had been expanded, and Jogues’s first assignment was to minister to the natives who had succumbed to smallpox and the other diseases inadvertently brought by the colonists. Native suspicions that the “Blackrobes” were themselves the cause of “the fever” placed the Jesuits in great danger, even though Jogues himself was afflicted. The Hurons’ death threats against the missionaries were never executed, however, and in 1639, Jogues was chosen to open a mission among the Petun (Tobacco) Nation on the shore of Georgian Bay. Two years later, he and Brother Charles Raymbault traveled to the western end of Lake Huron to preach among the Algonquians and Ojibway, becoming, during this journey, the first Europeans to visit Lake Superior.
Upon their return to the Huron villages in June, 1642, Raymbault fell ill, and Jogues was chosen in his stead to accompany a group of Huron converts to Quebec for supplies. On the return journey, Mohawk warriors from the Iroquois confederation ambushed the company; three Hurons were killed and twenty-two were captured, along with René Goupil, a lay assistant. Jogues and another lay assistant, Guillaume Coûture, initially escaped and hid in the woods but then surrendered themselves to remain with their companions. Their captors immediately began to torture the prisoners, chewing off their fingernails and beating them with fists and clubs, before beginning the two-week journey to the village of Ossernenon.
Jogues’s account of his captivity among the Iroquois—versions of which were included in the periodical Jesuit Relations—became a classic narrative of missionary literature. The tortures inflicted by the Iroquois were designed to make their captives cry out and so allow the captors to gain superiority over both body and spirit, but Jogues’s thirst for physical mortification and desire for martyrdom proved to be an equal match for his captors’ cruelty.
At Ossernenon, the prisoners were forced to run the gauntlet and then were brought to a platform for public mutilation. Jogues and Goupil each had a thumb sliced off with a sharpened oyster shell, and hot coals were placed on their wounds; such tortures continued intermittently for a number of days. Coûture was eventually adopted into a Mohawk family, but Goupil was killed after a few weeks of captivity by a hatchet blow to the head. Jogues himself became a virtual slave, although as something of a curiosity he was allowed to travel among the Mohawk villages to meet with other Christian captives and even to preach to the Iroquois.
Although Jogues found spiritual gratification in his condition, after thirteen months of captivity, he took advantage of an opportunity to escape when he accompanied a trading party to the settlement of Fort Orange (now Albany). Hidden by Dutch sympathizers, Jogues was eventually smuggled to New Amsterdam (now New York City) and from there traveled incognito to Europe. He landed on the coast of Brittany on Christmas Day, 1643, and early in the new year made his way to the Jesuit community in Rennes, where he presented himself to the surprised rector.
In France, Jogues found himself an instant celebrity. The regent, Queen Anne of Austria, requested an audience with the “living martyr,” and Pope Urban VIII granted him a special dispensation to continue to say Mass despite his deforming injuries. By the spring of 1644, however, Jogues obtained permission to return to Quebec, although he was denied his request to return to the missions. Finally, he was permitted to travel to Ossernenon as a member of a peace delegation, and the success of the trip and the warm reception he received from his former captors renewed his determination to open a mission among the Iroquois. In autumn of 1646, Jogues and a lay assistant named John Lalande, while on their way to the Mohawk villages, were intercepted and brought again as captives to Ossernenon. Although a tribal council urged that the missionaries be released in honor of the recently concluded peace, Jogues and his companion were ambushed and decapitated.
Significance
On June 29, 1930, Pope Pius XI canonized Jogues and seven others—including René Goupil and John Lalande—as the North American martyrs. Thus honored as a Catholic saint, the powerful story of his captivity, mutilation, and death make objective analysis of his life difficult. Most biographical accounts offer little more than hagiography; even the strongly anti-Catholic historian Francis Parkman was forced to salute Jogues’s heroic virtue, even if he never quite comprehended his motivation.
Although Jogues aided in the establishment of numerous mission posts and probably baptized some two thousand Hurons (as well as a few dying Iroquois), his real significance is as a symbol of the Counter-Reformation piety of seventeenth century France. After surviving a century of civil war provoked by religious differences, French Catholicism found renewed confidence in the willingness of Jesuits such as Jogues to submit themselves to torture for the sake of the Church. In 1940, Jogues and the other North American martyrs were collectively proclaimed the patron saints of Canada.
Bibliography
Greer, Allan. “Colonial Saints: Gender, Race, and Hagiography in New France.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. 57 (2000): 323-348. Although Jogues is not the focus of this study, Greer examines some of the issues concerning the genre of hagiographic narratives, including those of the North American martyrs.
Parkman, Francis. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. Vol. 2 in France and England in North America. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Recounts the efforts of Jogues and others in New France. As a historian, Parkman can be justly criticized for anti-Catholic and ethnocentric sentiments, but his prose remains vivid.
Roustang, François. An Autobiography of Martyrdom: Spiritual Writings of the Jesuits in New France. St. Louis, Mo.: Herder, 1964. Although the introductory material is very hagiographic, the long section on Jogues contains translations of letters and other original documents that are not otherwise easily available in English.
Talbot, Francis, S. J. Saint Among Savages: The Life of Isaac Jogues. Reprint. New York: Image Books, 1961. Probably the best biography in English, but still encumbered by hagiographic concerns and outdated attitudes toward Native American cultures.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 73 vols. Cleveland, Ohio: Burrows Brothers, 1896-1901. Criticized for occasional sloppiness in its transcription of original French, Latin, and Italian documents and their English translations, this still remains the definitive source collection for the Jesuit missions. Contains both letters written by Jogues to his superiors and accounts of his work by others; the most famous account of his capture and torture is in volume 31.
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