Tuesday last week was the feast of St. Isaac Jogues and companions, the first of among the North American martyrs. Those companions—John de Brébeuf, Jean de Lalande, René Goupil, Anthony Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, Noel Chabanel—and Fr. Jogues were martyred by the Iroquois Indians in the earlier part of the seventeenth century in the north eastern Americas.

As was the case with the Spanish in Central and South America, and the English in what later became the United States, the French explorers and settlers of the 1600s found not one united Indian nation but a number of distinct tribes, some coexisting in an uneasy peace and others battling it out as mortal enemies in struggles that rivaled the European Hundred Years War in length if not in scope, and surpassed it proportionally in bloodshed. The Indians, despite their many good qualities (courage and hardiness being chief among them), lacked the civilizing influence of Christianity. The truce and the peace of God, whereby Europeans set aside combat every Sunday and during Lent, the concept of ransom and mercy for survivors, the notion that noncombatants should be spared—all these were Christian practices that many of the Indian tribes would have regarded as foolish, weak, and even reprehensible.

The Iroquois were especially notorious for their lack of mercy. Because the neighboring Hurons were nominally allies of the French (although the Hurons themselves were responsible for some martyrdoms), their long-standing enemies the Iroquois developed an inveterate hatred of France and all things French—which included the “French” religion of the Jesuit priests.

Fr. Jogues had made many converts among the Hurons when he and some of his companions were captured by the Iroquois. After over a year of imprisonment, Fr. Jogues was able to escape and return to France. His hands had been mutilated by his Iroquois torturers, so that he had to receive a dispensation in order to say Mass. Pope Urban VIII famously gave him permission, saying that “It would be shameful that a martyr of Christ be not allowed to drink the Blood of Christ.” Fr. Jogues could easily have chosen to remain in France, but he returned to the New World after only a few months. In 1646 while traveling in what is now New York state, he was recaptured by a Mohawk war party, tomahawked, and beheaded.

St. Isaac Jogues and companions, pray for us!