Saint Isaac Jogues

These martyrs probably mean nothing to our European friends, but they were among the earliest saints of North America. All were French born Jesuits: Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, Antony Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel, priests; and John Lalande and René Goupil, lay-brothers. They selflessly worked among the native Hurons until they met their death at the hands of mortal enemies of the Hurons: the Iroquois and the Mohawks. The Iroquois were animated by the bitter hatred of the missionaries, whom they subjected to indescribable tortures before putting them to death.

Isaac Jogues (Born at Orléans, France, on January 1, 1607; died October 18, 1646) was the son of wealthy parents. He studied at the Jesuit school in his home town and entered the Society of Jesus at Rouen in 1624. He continued his education at Le Flèche. After his ordination in 1636, he requested and received permission to work as a missionary in Quebec, Canada. He took the Gospel to the Mohawks and in the course of his labors penetrated to the eastern entrance of Lake Superior, one thousand miles inland--the first European to do so.

Fr. Jogues' plan to preach the Gospel to the Sioux Indians in the region of the Mississippi headwaters came to an end when he was captured, together with René Goupil and other Jesuits, by an Iroquois war party on October 3, 1642. They had just completed a mission of mercy to the Hurons, who were suffering from famine and disease, when they were ambushed by the enemies of the Hurons. Saint René was killed. The rest were held for 13 months in slavery and so cruelly tortured that Father Jogues lost the use of his hands when the Indians, knowing the importance of a priest' fingers, chewed most of them off (Pope Urban VIII permitted him to say Mass despite this deformity. This was a unique dispensation in the history of the Church. The holy father observed, "It would be unfitting to refuse permission to drink the blood of Jesus Christ to one who has testified to Christ with his blood.")

After his return, he was captured and was staked. When he was about to be slowly roasted to death , friend from the nearby Fort Orange (Albany, New York) they helped him to escape to New York--thus, he became the first Catholic priest to come to that state. From New Amsterdam (as New York was then called), he traveled by small ship to England, arriving there on Christmas Day completely destitute. He finally reached France, where the Queen Mother received him with extreme deference, but in 1644 he requested to be allowed to return to Quebec.

Less than three years after his captivity, he set out with Jean de Lalande for his place of imprisonment (Osserneon, now Auriesville, NY), this time as a missionary to the Iroquois with whom a peace treaty had been signed. During this second visit, Father Isaac left behind a box of religious objects. These were wrongly believed to be the cause of an epidemic and a crop failure that occurred soon after his departure.

On his third visit, a member of the Mohawk Bear clan, believing him to be a sorcerer, blamed him for the suffering of his people. One afternoon the Mohawk invited Jogues for a meal. The priest was seized, together with the Jesuit lay-brother, Saint John Lalande. The other missionaries with them had fled at that change of attitude they sensed among the natives. Jogues and Lalande were beaten and slashed with knives and that evening Isaac Jogues was tomahawked. The next day Lalande was killed in the same way. Their heads were struck off and impaled on the settlement palisade, and their trunks thrown into the Mohawk River about 40 miles west of Albany, NY, near Midland, Ontario.

There is a portrait of Father Isaac that was painted in 1644 during his visit to France. In it you can see that only the middle and ring fingers remain of his right hand. He is a slender, white- haired man with a very long and flaring nose, deep-set eyes, curly hair, beard, and mustache. After his death, the fatal tomahawk wound was added to the picture.