Abigail Beckett
September 26th marks Jean de Brebeuf’s Feast Day to celebrate his life and legacy as a saint. Brébeuf was part of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, and participated in religious missions in colonial Canada in the early 17th century. Brebeuf, along with his colleague Gabriel de Lalemant, were killed in 1649 on one of these missions. After their martyrdom, a fervent Christian cult emerged around Brébeuf and his bodily remains. Brébeuf, along with the other Canadian Martyrs, were canonized in 1930 by Pope Pius XI. Brébeuf’s remains were offered by the Jesuits of Quebec to the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ontario in 1992 where they remain today. These remains include only half of his skull as the other half remains in the Augustine Monastery in Hotel Dieu encased in a silver bust. In 2024 Brébeuf’s skull toured throughout the United States and in 2025 in Western Canada as part of the Martyrs’ Shrine relic tour. Even now, Brébeuf’s relics are sought after for their spiritual powers. People pray to the relics, leave prayer intentions on paper and place them in a basket, or press their holy cards to the reliquaries to bring home. The popularity of his story and relics warrant more attention to be place on his role in spiritual healing in the colonial and medical context of the 17th century.
On March 16, 1649, Father Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649) and his colleague Father Gabriel de Lalemant (1610-1649) were captured, tortured, and killed by the “Iroquois” in St. Ignace, Ontario. The martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalemant was first recounted by fellow Jesuit of the Huron mission, Christophe Regnault. Although Regnault notes that he did not witness the incident himself, the events were told to him by Christian Wendat (Huron) who were taken captive by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). The story goes that Brébeuf and Lalemant left the mission to go to the nearby village of St. Ignace to instruct the new Christian Wendat. Everyone back at the mission camp, including Regnault, saw a fire in the direction of the village and soon after, some of the Wendat fleeing toward them. The Wendat told Regnault that the Haudenosaunee came to the village and seized Brébeuf and Lalemant. What was recounted after was vivid: according to the Wendat the two Jesuit Fathers were brutally tortured and cannibalized. Flesh was consumed, blood was drunk, and Brébeuf’s heart was torn out and eaten, as narrativized in the Catholic writings of the Jesuit Relations. The Relations is a useful source to understand how the Jesuits maintained information networks, but it is crucial to consider the potential hyperbole in these accounts as demonstrated in specific language employed like barbarism, cannibals or Caribs, and sauvage.
The Jesuit missionaries sought to preserve the two fathers’ bones to be kept as relics and ensure that each of them would be cast as martyrs: the goal of each good missionary. Regnault collected the remains at the village where Brébeuf was killed and described in detail this process in which he boiled the bodies in lye (sodium hydroxide), scraped and dried the bones, and wrapped them. After Regnault finished preparing the remains, they were wrapped separately in silk cloth and transported across the Wendake region to Quebec, where according to Regnault, “they [were] in great demand.”[1] The remains travelled to Quebec City and were sent to the Catholic hospital of Hotel-Dieu de Quebec (1637) and to the Ursuline Monastery (1639), institutions both associated with the Jesuits. The consumption of Brébeuf was not over with the account of Brebeuf’s martyrdom. Brébeuf was later consumed medicinally at Hotel Dieu in Quebec City.
In 1665, according to Les Annales de L’Hotel-Dieu de Quebec, nursing sister Marie Catherine de Saint Augustin cured a heretic with the bones of Brébeuf. She pulverized his bones and incorporated this powder into the heretic’s beverage in which he consumed.[2] Unfortunately, the Annales do not offer detail as to what the supposed heretic was inflicted with, it only notes that his body was restored to health. This situates the miraculous cure over the ailment itself emphasizing the power of relic. While the Annales only record that Catherine used bone (os), it is likely that she used part of the skull or bone fragments that were kept at Hotel Dieu where she worked.
While Catherine had never met Brébeuf, she learned of his virtues and efforts from the Relations and stories from his companions.[3] Catherine recorded in a journal that while praying, a vision of Brébeuf appeared and guided her through the dedication ceremony of the new cathedral in Quebec City.[4] In 1663 when she became Hospitalière d’office (the first nun in charge of the sick wards), she prayed to Brébeuf to help her take care of her office and all the hospital’s dying patients during her term.[5] Catherine’s visions are reflective of the wider tradition of female mysticism in which mystics often followed the dictation of their visions.
Catherine was not the first to use Brébeuf’s relics for healing. Relics were thought to be a powerful force against demonic possession because they held Christian spirits that would dominate over the demonic. In 1662, Brébeuf’s rib was used to cure a young girl, Barbe Hallay. The rib was lent out by Jesuit Paul Ragueneau and placed on the side of Hallay’s body and was recorded to have cured her from demonic possession.[6] In another case in 1665, an infant was instantly cured when the relics of Brébeuf and Lalemant were placed on its skin.[7] In all these cases, including Catherine’s cure for the heretic, Brébeuf’s relics were consumed via touch whether on the body or in the body.
This case study of Jean de Brébeuf emphasizes the intricacies of colonial tensions and complicates colonial narratives and ideas of civilization hierarchies. Alleged Indigenous cannibalism was used as a means of ‘othering’ conducted by Catholic missionaries in the writings of the Jesuit Relations that recount the story of the cannibalization and martyrdom of Brébeuf and Lalement. The prescription of Brébeuf’s relics by a Catholic nun in 17th century Quebec complicates the simplicity of this process by contrasting it with the long standing European medical tradition of human consumption: corpse medicine. European medical practitioners believed that substances derived from the human body help powerful medicinal qualities including bones, blood, flesh, and mummies. Catherine used the pulverized bone of Brébeuf as recorded in the Annales. This is the same medium that famous English physician Nicholas Culpeper recommended when preparing skull as a remedy against falling sickness (epilepsy). He stated that “The powder of man’s bones cure[s] the Falling-sickness, according to Galen.”
The introduction of these practices in colonial contexts brought new kinds of tensions between Indigenous peoples and colonists. These tensions were stronger due to uncomfortable parallels between European and Indigenous practices. European scholars commented on these parallels and contradictions, most famously Michel de Montaigne in chapter 30 of his Essais, “Des Cannibales.” Montaigne contemplated the supposedly barbaric act of cannibalism in the New World and contrasted it with the torturous crimes of Europeans. Included in this commentary, Montaigne exemplified this question as follows, “And our medical men do not flinch from using corpses in many ways, both internally and externally, to cure us. Yet no opinion has ever been so unruly as to justify treachery, disloyalty, tyranny and cruelty, which are everyday vices to us.”[8] However, Montaigne’s essay rather helped to cement the association between Indigenous peoples and cannibalism. Contrary to his intentions, the subtle critique he made about corpse medicine has been lost, erased to a curious footnote, much like corpse medicine generally. Nonetheless, Montaigne’s comparison was embodied in the journey of Brébeuf’s remains from alleged torture and cannibalism to materia medica in a Catholic hospital.
[1] Christophe Regnault. “Morts des Peres Jean de Brébeuf et Gabriel Lalemant,” in Lucien Campeau, Le Temoignage du sang (1647-1650). Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu; Editions Bellarmin, 1994, 492.
[2] St-Ignace, Albert Jamet, Ste Hélène, and Hôtel-Dieu de Québec. Les Annales de L’Hotel-Dieu de Québec, 1636-1716. Québec: Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 1939, 148.
[3] L. Hudon, Vie de la mére Marie-Catherine de Saint-Augustin: religieuse de l’Hôtel-Dieu du Précieux-sang de Québec, 1632-1668. Bureaux du Messager Canadien, 1907, 56.
[4] Timothy G. Pearson, ““I Willingly Speak to You about Her Virtues”: Catherine de Saint-Augustin and the Public Role of Female Holiness in Early New France,” Church History, 79: 2, (June 2010), 306.
[5] Hudon, Vie de la mére Marie-Catherine de Saint-Augustin, 225.
[6] Letter “Attestations de la guérison miraculeuse de Barbe Halley,” by Marie Regnouard, 20 fév. 1663 – 9 avr. 1663, Q-1.257.6, The Archive of the Jesuits in Canada.
[7] Letter “Lettre attestant la Guérison instantannée d’un Enfant par le[sic] Reliques des Pères de Brébeuf et Lalemant,” by Jean Guion du Buisson, 5 sep. 1665, Q-1.308.2, The Archive of the Jesuits in Canada.
[8] Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, Translated by Donald M. Frame, Stanford University Press, 1958, 236.
Further Reading
Jesuits, and Reuben Gold Thwaites. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents : Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in North America (1610-1791). Edited by Edna Kenton. Albert & Charles Boni, 1925.
Emma Anderson, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs. Harvard University Press, 2013.
Timothy G. Pearson, ““I Willingly Speak to You about Her Virtues”: Catherine de Saint-Augustin and the Public Role of Female Holiness in Early New France,” Church History, 79: 2, (June 2010): 305-33.
The Martyrs’ Shrine, https://martyrs-shrine.com/
Abigail Beckett is a graduate student at McGill University in the History and Classics Department PhD program. Her work focuses on corpse medicine and medicinal uses of the body in early modern Europe.
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