Georgetown University - Ye Domesday Booke Yearbook (Georgetown, DC)

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Spring 168

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FATHER JOHN DE BRf BEUF $J. 1649 |ORN at Conde-sur-Vire, near Lisieux, France, on March 25, 1593, John deBrebeuf may be called the father of all the Huron missions, for he labored first and longest among the Indians — a period of fifteen years. He was a man of tremendous physique, and for this he was admired, and perhaps envied by the Indians. But in spreading the gospel, his soul was refined in the crucible of affliction. He was accused of being a sorcet-er, the cause of an epidemic of smallpox ; and for this he received a severe beating with clubs from his beloved Hurons. However, it was at the hands of the warring Iroquois that he met his death through martyrdom at Forte Ste. Marie, near Midland, Ontario, on March 16, 1649. Some insight into the torture that he and his companion, Fr. Lalemant, S.J., endured may be gained from a description written five days later by Christophe Regnault, a donne — I saw and touched their arms and legs, stripped of their flesh to the bones; the big blisters made by the boiling water; the burns caused by the flaming pitch belts and the red hot axes. ... I touched Fr. Brebeuf ' s scalped head and torn lips, and put my hand into the opening, through which their hearts had been torn from their bodies, and I knew that the story of their torments, told by fugitive prisoners, was true. It may be said in truth that Brebeuf was a saint before he became a martyr; and that his privilege in Heaven is to wear the double crown of a Confessor and a Martyr. 167

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L.NDER IHE TREE- 169