The Canadian Martyrs (), also known as the North American Martyrs (
French: ''Saints martyrs canadiens'', Holy Canadian Martyrs), were eight
Jesuit missionaries
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...
from
Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. They were ritually
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
d and killed on various dates in the mid-17th century in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
, in what is now
southern Ontario
Southern Ontario is a Region, primary region of the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada, with approximately 13.5 million people, approximately 36% o ...
, and in
upstate New York
Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York (state), New York that lies north and northwest of the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York. Upstate includes the middle and upper Hudson Valley, ...
, during the warfare between the
Iroquioan tribes the
Mohawk and the
Huron. They have subsequently been
canonized
Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of sa ...
and venerated as
martyrs
A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...
by the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
.
The martyrs are:
Background
Jesuit missionaries worked among the Huron (
Wendat), an
Iroquoian
The Iroquoian languages () are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
As of 2020, almost all surviving I ...
-speaking people who occupied territory in the Georgian Bay area of
Central Ontario
Central Ontario is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario that lies between Georgian Bay and the eastern end of Lake Ontario.
The population of the region was 1,123,307 in 2016; however, this number does not in ...
. (They were not part of the Iroquois Confederacy, initially made up of five tribes south and east of the Great Lakes.) The area of their traditional territory is called
Huronia. The Huron in this area were farmers, fishermen and traders who lived in villages surrounded by defensive wooden palisades for protection.
["Canadian Martyrs and Huronia", Athabasca University]
/ref> Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was the headquarters for the French Jesuit Mission to the Huron Wendat people.
By the late 1640s, the Jesuits believed they were making progress in their mission to the Huron, and claimed to have made many converts. But, the priests were not universally trusted. Many Huron considered them to be malevolent shaman
Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...
s who brought death and disease wherever they travelled; after European contact, the Huron had suffered high fatalities in epidemics after 1634 of smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...
and other Eurasian infectious diseases
infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...
.
The nations of the Iroquois Confederacy considered the Jesuits legitimate targets of their raids and warfare, as the missionaries were nominally allies of the Huron and French fur traders. Retaliating for French colonial attacks against the Iroquois was also a reason for their raids against the Huron and Jesuits.
In 1642, the Mohawk captured René Goupil, and Father Isaac Jogues
Isaac Jogues (10 January 1607 – 18 October 1646) was a French missionary and martyr who traveled and worked among the Iroquois, Wyandot people, Huron, and other Native populations in North America. He was the first European to name Lake Geo ...
, bringing them back to their village of Ossernenon south of the Mohawk River. They ritually tortured both men and killed Goupil. After several months of captivity, Jogues was ransomed by Dutch traders and the minister Johannes Megapolensis from New Netherland (later Albany). He returned for a time to France, but then sailed back to Quebec. In 1646 he and Jean de Lalande were killed during a visit to Ossernenon intended to achieve peace between the French and the Mohawk.
Other Jesuit missionaries were killed by the Mohawk and martyred in the following years: Antoine Daniel (1648), Jean de Brébeuf
Jean de Brébeuf () (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 Huron for the rest of his life, except for a few years in France from 1629 to 1 ...
(1649), Noël Chabanel (1649), Charles Garnier (1649), and Gabriel Lalemant (1649). All were canonized in 1930 as the Canadian Martyrs, also known as the North American Martyrs.
Legacy and honours
The martyrs were canonized
Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of sa ...
by Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI (; born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, ; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939) was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 until his death in February 1939. He was also the first sovereign of the Vatican City State u ...
in 1930. They are collectively the secondary patron saint
A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...
s of Canada. St. René Goupil, St. Isaac Jogues, and St. Jean de Lalande are the first three U.S. saints, martyred at Ossernenon, 9 miles (14.5 km) west of the confluence of the Schoharie and Mohawk rivers. Their feast day
The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does n ...
is celebrated in the General Roman Calendar
The General Roman Calendar (GRC) is the liturgy, liturgical calendar that indicates the dates of celebrations of saints and Sacred mysteries, mysteries of the Lord (Jesus Christ) in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, wherever this liturgic ...
and in the United States on October 19 under the title of "John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs," and in Canada on September 26.
The Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ontario
Midland is a town located on Georgian Bay in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada. It is part of the Huronia/Wendat region of Central Ontario.
Located at the southern end of Georgian Bay's 30,000 Islands, Midland is the economic centre of the region ...
, the site of the Jesuits' missionary work among the Huron, is the National Shrine to the Canadian Martyrs.
A National Shrine of the North American Martyrs has been constructed and dedicated in Auriesville, New York. It is located south of the Mohawk River, near a Jesuit cemetery containing remains of missionaries who died in the area from 1669 to 1684, when the Jesuits had a local mission to the Mohawk.
Churches dedicated to the Canadian Martyrs
Churches dedicated to the martyrs include the following:
* National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
.
* Nostra Signora del Santissimo Sacramento e Santi Martiri Canadesi, the Canadian national church in Rome
* Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ontario
* Canadian Martyrs Parish in Calgary, AB
* Canadian Martyrs Church in Halifax, Nova Scotia
* Canadian Martyrs Catholic Church in Ottawa, Ontario
Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...
br>
* Canadian Martyrs Parish in Richmond, British Columbia
Richmond is a city in the coastal Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. Mainly a suburban city, it occupies almost the entirety of Lulu Island (excluding Queensborough, New Westminster, Queensborough), between the two estuarine dis ...
* Canadian Martyrs Parish in Invermere, BC
* The parish of Saints-Martyrs-Canadien
founded in 1961 in St. Boniface (now part of Winnipeg), Manitoba
* North American Martyrs Parish and School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania
Monroeville is a Home rule municipality (Pennsylvania), home rule municipality in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is a suburb with mixed residential and commercial developments located about east of Pittsburgh. As of the 202 ...
* North American Martyrs Catholic Church in Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska. The city covers and had a population of 291,082 as of the 2020 census. It is the state's List of cities in Nebraska, second-most populous city a ...
* North American Martyrs Catholic Church in Auburn, Massachusetts
Auburn is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 16,889 at the 2020 census.
History
The Auburn area was first settled in 1714. On April 10, 1778, parts of Worcester, Sutton, Leicester and Oxford, Massac ...
* North American Martyrs Catholic Church, a parish of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in Seattle, Washington
Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...
* American Martyrs Parish in Manhattan Beach, California
Manhattan Beach is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States, on the Coastal California, Pacific coast south of El Segundo, California, El Segundo, west of Hawthorne, California, Hawthorne and Redondo Beach, and north ...
* American Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Bayside, New York
Bayside is a neighborhood located in the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of Queens. It is bounded by Whitestone, Queens, Whitestone to the northwest, the Long Island Sound and Little Neck Bay to the northeast, Douglaston, Queens, ...
.
* American Martyrs Catholic Church in Kingsford, Michigan
Kingsford is a city in Dickinson County, Michigan, United States. Its population was 5,139 at the 2020 census, a slight increase from the 5,133 recorded at the 2010 census. It was named for the developer Edward G. Kingsford.
Geography
Kingsf ...
.
* The Chapel of the North American Martyrs at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
* The Chapel of the North American Martyrs at Jesuit High School Sacramento, California
Sacramento ( or ; ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat, seat of Sacramento County, California, Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento Rive ...
* The Chapel of the North American Martyrs at Jesuit High School New Orleans New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
*The Chapel of the North American Martyrs at Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
Cuyahoga Falls ( or ) is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 51,114 at the 2020 census. The second-largest city in Summit County, it is located directly north of Akron and is a suburb in the Akron metropolitan ar ...
*The Kaboni Catholic Church (St. Anthony Daniel Parish), located in Wiikwemkoong First Nation, Ontario.
* Canadian Martyrs' Church in Hamilton, Ontario
* St-Charles Garnier Church in Hamilton Ontario
* St-Charles Garnier Church in Kelowna, British Columbia
* The parishes of Saints-Martyrs-Canadiens in Montréal, in the City of Québec, in Victoriaville, in Trois-Rivières, and in Beauharnois (province of Québec, Canada).
* Holy Martyrs of North America Catholic Church in Falmouth, Maine
Falmouth ( ) is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The population was 12,444 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan area.
A northern suburb of Portland, Falmouth borders Casco Bay a ...
.
Schools dedicated to the Canadian Martyrs
Many schools also honour the martyrs, including the following:
* The sports teams of the Pontifical North American College
The Pontifical North American College (NAC) is a Catholic Church, Roman Catholic educational institution in Rome, Italy, that prepares seminarians to become priests in the United States and elsewhere. The NAC also provides a residence for Prie ...
in Rome
* Elementary schools named after them in Guelph, Ontario
Guelph ( ; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as The Royal City, it is roughly east of Kitchener, Ontario, Kitchener and west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Ontario Highway 6, ...
, Newmarket, Ontario
Newmarket (Canada 2021 Census, 2021 population: 87,942) is a town and regional seat of the Regional Municipality of York in the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. It is part of Greater Toronto Area, Greater Toron ...
, East York, Ontario
East York is a district and former municipality within Toronto, Ontario, Canada. From 1967 to 1998, it was officially the Borough of East York, a borough within the upper-tier municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. The borough was dissolved ...
, Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. Hamilton has a 2021 Canadian census, population of 569,353 (2021), and its Census Metropolitan Area, census metropolitan area, which encompasses ...
, Burlington, Ontario
Burlington, officially the City of Burlington, is a city and List of municipalities in Ontario#Lower-tier municipalities, lower-tier municipality in Regional Municipality of Halton, Halton Region at the west end of Lake Ontario in Ontario, Can ...
, Penetanguishene, Ontario, and Victoria Harbour, Ontario
* Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis, Indiana
Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...
* Jesuit High School in Sacramento, California, where each building on the campus has been named after one of the saints
* Jesuit High School in New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
* Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
Cuyahoga Falls ( or ) is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 51,114 at the 2020 census. The second-largest city in Summit County, it is located directly north of Akron and is a suburb in the Akron metropolitan ar ...
, which holds the martyrs as their patron saints. Walsh Jesuit's chapel is named in their honour.
* Brebeuf College School, Jesuit (formerly) Catholic Secondary School in Willowdale (north Toronto) established in 1963, named after St. Jean de Brébeuf
*Canadian Martyrs Elementary School (Grades Kindergarten to Grade 8) Ottawa, Ontario
Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...
established by Oblates Of Mary Immaculate 1930-198
Municipality named after the Canadian Martyrs
* The parish municipality of Saints-Martyrs-Canadiens, in Quebec, Canada
The torture of the martyrs by the Iroquois is the subject depicted in the twelve-light World War I memorial window (1933) by Charles William Kelsey at the Loyola College (Montreal)
Loyola College was a Jesuit college in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was founded in 1896 and ceased to exist as an independent institution in 1974 when it was incorporated into Concordia University. A portion of the original college remains as a ...
chapel, at the Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes on the campus of Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Maryland
North Bethesda is a census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, located just north-west of the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C. It had a population of 50,094 as of the 2020 United States ce ...
, and a side shine at Madonna Della Strada Chapel on the campus of Loyola University Chicago
Loyola University Chicago (Loyola or LUC) is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic Church, ...
. Fordham University
Fordham University is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit research university in New York City, United States. Established in 1841, it is named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx in which its origina ...
additionally has named the Martyrs' Court residential complex in their collective honour, as well as individual halls in the complex being named for Jogues, Goupil and Lalande. The North American College in Rome has a crypt chapel dedicated to the North American Martyrs.
The martyrs are also honoured at Camp Ondessonk, a Catholic summer camp in Ozark, Illinois, where each unit of cabins is named after one of the martyrs, and also at the American Martyrs Retreat House in Cedar Falls, Iowa
Cedar Falls is a city in Black Hawk County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the city population was 40,713. Cedar Falls is home to the University of Northern Iowa, a public university.
Cedar Falls along with neighbori ...
.
See also
*Ajacán Mission
The Ajacán Mission () (also Axaca, Axacam, Iacan, Jacán, Xacan) was a Spanish attempt in 1570 to establish a Jesuit mission in the vicinity of the Virginia Peninsula to bring Christianity to the Virginia Native Americans. The effort to found ...
1571 massacre esuit Martyrs* Jesuit missions in North America
*Christian martyrs
In Christianity, a martyr is a person who was killed for their testimony for Jesus or faith in Jesus. In the years of the early church, stories depict this often occurring through death by sawing, stoning, crucifixion, burning at the stake, or ...
* Martyrs' Shrine
* National Shrine of the North American Martyrs
References
Further reading
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martyrs, Canadian
Jesuit martyrs
Canadian Roman Catholic saints
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
History of Catholicism in Canada
History of Catholicism in the United States
People of New France
Groups of Roman Catholic saints
Martyred groups
1642 deaths
Canadian martyrs
Canadian torture victims
1642 in the Thirteen Colonies
2017 in Canada
17th century in the Province of New York
17th century in Ontario