Isaac Jogues (10 January 1607 – 18 October 1646) was a French missionary and martyr who traveled and worked among the Iroquois, Huron, and other Native populations in North America. He was the first European to name Lake George, calling it (Lake of the Blessed Sacrament). In 1646, Jogues was martyred by the Mohawk at their village of Ossernenon, near the Mohawk River.

Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf and six other martyred missionaries, all Jesuit priests or laypeople associated with them, were canonized by the Catholic Church in 1930; they are known as the Canadian Martyrs, or the North American Martyrs. A shrine was built in their honor at Auriesville, New York, formerly believed to be the location of the Mohawk village. Their feast day is celebrated on 19 October in the General Roman Calendar and 26 September in Canada.

Early life and education

Isaac Jogues was born to Laurent Jogues and Françoise de Sainte-Mesmin on 10 January 1607. He was born in Orléans, France, into a bourgeois family, where he was the fifth of nine children. He was educated at home until the age of ten, at which point he began attending Jesuit schools. In 1624, at the age of seventeen, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen in Northern France. Here, his master of novices was Louis Lallemant. The Jesuit community had a strong missionary spirit, beginning in 1625 with their first mission to New France, including missionary pioneers, Énemond Massé, and later, Jean de Brébeuf. Lallement had two brothers and a nephew serving as missionaries in the colony of New France. These Jesuit missionaries inspired Jogues, and he aspired to follow in their footsteps.

Jogues professed simple vows in 1626, and went to study philosophy at the royal college of La Flèche. In 1629, he taught humanities to boys in Rouen. In 1633, Jogues was sent to the Collège de Clermont in Paris to pursue his studies in theology. In 1636, he was ordained a priest at Clermont.

Early missions

In 1636 missionary fathers Brébeuf, Charles Lallemant and Massé returned from New France. They told Jogues of the hardships, treacheries, and tortures which ordinarily awaited missionaries in New France. Their accounts however, increased Jogues's desire to "devote himself to labour there for the conversion and welfare of the natives". Soon after Jogues was ordained, he accepted service in the missions and embarked to New France with several other missionaries, among them Charles Garnier. Jogues was assigned as a missionary to the Huron and Algonquian peoples; both were allies of the French in New France. The war party then took their captives on a journey to a Mohawk village. The villagers marched them through a gauntlet, consisting of rows of Mohawk armed with rods and sticks, beating the prisoners walking in single-file. Afterward, they forced the prisoners onto an elevated platform where they were mocked. A captive Algonquin woman then cut off Jogues's thumb. At night, the prisoners were tied spread-eagle in a cabin. Children threw burning coals onto their bodies. Three days later, Jogues and the other prisoners were marched from one village to another, where the Iroquois flogged them in gauntlets and jabbed sticks into their wounds and sores. At the third village, Jogues was hung from a wooden plank and nearly lost consciousness until an Iroquois had pity on him and cut him free. Throughout his captivity, Jogues comforted, baptized, heard confession from, and absolved the other prisoners. Reformed minister Johannes Megapolensis accompanied him to New Amsterdam, where Jogues stayed with the minister while waiting for a ship to take him to France. Jogues was the first Catholic priest to visit Manhattan Island.

Return to France

Pope Urban VIII considered Jogues a "living martyr" and gave him dispensation to say Mass with his mutilated hand. Under Catholic Church law of the time, the Eucharist could not be touched with any fingers but the thumb and forefinger. Jogues was unable to follow this law after losing two fingers while in Iroquois captivity, resulting in the requirement for dispensation by the pope. Jogues visited his mother in Orléans, but was eager to return to the missions. Jogues experienced regret over his time in captivity, and a longing for martyrdom that motivated his return to New France in 1644 after only a year and a half in France, first to Quebec, followed by a trip to Wendake.

Return to New France and death

thumb|Jogues, along with the other seven [[Canadian Martyrs, on a stained-glass window in St. John's Church in Omaha, Nebraska]]

In the spring of 1646, Jogues returned to Iroquois territory, along with Jean de Lalande, to act as the French ambassador to the Mohawk. His ambassadorship was intended to maintain the tentative peace reached in 1645 between the Iroquois and the French, the Huron and the Algonquin. This was done to ensure a safe passage for trade and travel.

Jogues and Lalande were met with hesitation upon arrival, as some Mohawk regarded missionaries as evil practitioners of foreign magic. The Europeans transmitted European diseases, such as smallpox and measles, that spread among Native Americans. These diseases resulted in high fatality rates among the Mohawk, who lacked immunity to the new diseases. When the Mohawk suffered yet another outbreak of infectious disease and crop failure at Ossernenon, they blamed these unfortunate events on Catholic paraphernalia left behind by the Jesuits, which the Mohawks perceived as magically harmful. Additionally, as a result of his previous experience on the territory, Jogues demonstrated an uncanny knowledge of the territory, which the Mohawks perceived as threatening.

On 18 October 1646, the Mohawks killed Jogues with a tomahawk; they killed Lalande the next day. They threw the missionaries' bodies into the Mohawk River. The killing seems to have been the work of an anti-French faction within the Mohawk community.

Native allies of the French captured Jogues's killer in 1647 and condemned him to death. While awaiting his execution, the man was baptized and given the Christian name of Father Isaac Jogues. His death represented a secondary martyring of Isaac Jogues.

Attitudes towards martyrdom

Jogues's refusal to escape and how he embraced torture demonstrate selflessness that, like many other Jesuits in New France, he believed that being martyred would mean partaking in the torment that Jesus had endured on the cross. This would indicate his acceptance "into the pantheon of heroes whose physical and spiritual strength had been equal to the cruel persecutions inflicted on the primitive church." Jogues is quoted as saying: "He [Jesus] was making us share his sufferings, and admitting us to participate in his crosses." His feast day is celebrated on 19 October in the General Roman Calendar, and on 26 September in Canada. Jogues and his companions are patron saints of North America.

thumb|Interior of the Shrine of the North American Martyrs

There are several buildings and monuments dedicated to Jogues. The largest of these monuments is the Shrine of the North American Martyrs, built in Auriesville, New York in 1930. It honors Jogues, René Goupil, Jean de Lalande, and Kateri Tekakwitha. The shrine also honors Jean de Brébeuf and five of his companions killed in Canada in 1648 and 1649.

There is also the Martyr's Shrine located in Midland, Ontario, Canada, which honors the Canadian Martyrs (another term for the North American Martyrs).

A seasonal chapel on the east shore of Saratoga Lake, New York is named after Jogues. A statue of Jogues stands in front of the main entrance to the chapel that faces the lake. While he was being taken into captivity, Jogues is said to have been the first European to see this lake.

Fordham University, a Jesuit university in New York, has a dormitory building at its Rose Hill Campus named Martyrs' Court. The three wings of the building are named after Jogues, Goupil, and de Lalande.

Another statue of Jogues was erected in 1939, in the village of Lake George, in the Battlefield Park by the lake.

Camp Ondessonk, a Catholic youth camp located in Ozark, Illinois, is named after Jogues's Mohawk name. The living quarters for campers are named for the North American Martyrs and others influenced by their ministry, including Tekakwitha, de Brébeuf, Noël Chabanel, Antoine Daniel, Garnier, Goupil, de Lalande, and Gabriel Lalemant.

References

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine. Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine. Auriesville, New York
  • "St. Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf, and Companions," by Leonard Foley, Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media