Cunning Pedagogics: The Encounter between the Jesuit Missionaries and Amerindians in 17th-century New France

2005 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Welton
Keyword(s):  
17Th Century ◽  
New France ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries

scholarly journals The First Evangelization of Indigenous Peoples of New France: The Radical Way to Martyrdom of Jesuit Missionaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-178
Author(s):  
Piotr Piasecki
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
New France ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Church Communities

The French Jesuits played a significant role in the first evangelization of the indigenous peoples of North America in the early 17th century. They focused on the evangelization of the Huron and Iroquois tribes which remained in constant conflict with each other. In their work they cut themselves off from the commercial interests of colonial countries, especially of France. After a dozen or so years, they were already able to convey evangelical values in tribal languages, being firmly immersed in the local culture. Thus, they were precursors of the inculturation of the Gospel. The missionaries were characterized by deep Christological spirituality, founded on contemplation of the cross, and, therefore, able to endure boldly the hardships of evangelization. As the result of the vile strategies of colonial powers stirring up tribal disputes, they faced numerous misfortunes, and, ultimately, many of them suffered martyrdom. Consequently, their missionary effort became a path to personal holiness and an irreplaceable contribution to the strengthening of the newly established Church communities on the American soil.

scholarly journals Medical Encounters and Exchange in Early Canadian Missions 1

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Medicinal Plants ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
New France ◽  
Indigenous Plants ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Medical Treatments ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Colonial Botany

Abstract The exchange of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge was an important facet of the encounter between native and newcomer in early Canada. Throughout New France Récollet and Jesuit missionaries were given privileged access both to indigenous peoples and indigenous plants. Curiously, however, when it came to describing medical treatments, it was people, rather than medicinal plants, that were targets of what might be called “the descriptive enterprise.” Attempting to divide suspect shamanic remedies from those deemed natural, missionary observers carefully documented the context of medical treatments rather than simply the specific remedy applied for treatment. Using records left by early Canadian missionaries this paper will look at the peculiar character of medical exchange in the missions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century New France to look at the interpersonal encounters that formed a constitutive element of colonial botany and framed the way in which indigenous knowledge was represented to metropolitan audiences.

scholarly journals Andrzej Rudomina—unforgettable Lithuanian Jesuit missionary scholar: from Vilnius University to China

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
Jan Konior
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jesuit Missionary ◽  
Vilnius University ◽  
Great Wall

Jesuit University of Philosophy and Education ‘Ignatianum’ This paper explores one of great Lithuanian Jesuit missionaries to China—Andrzej Rudomina (Lith. Andrius Rudamina, Chin. Lu an de) 盧安德 (1595–1631)—also providing a look at the cultural and spiritual background of Lithuania and Poland in which he was brought up. It also shows the situation of the Society of Jesus in the 16th and 17th centuries, with particular focus on the Lithuanian–Polish–Chinese context and connection. Andrzej Rudomina was the first Lithuanian Jesuit to set foot behind the Great Wall of China in the 17th century. In 1625 he reached Goa, and then Macau, before studying Chinese literature in Nankeen Province. There he began to immerse himself in the complexities of Chinese customs. The natives called him Lu an de (the Chinese name of Andrzej Rudomina). He reports participating in the Kating Conference (1627), at which was sought the Chinese equivalent for the name of the Lord our God, Tian Zhu 天主. He was very much valued by his Jesuit brothers and by the Chinese. He died prematurely at the age of 35 of tuberculosis. This article will explore the life of Rudomina. We will try to understand this man of holiness, mobility and disponibility. He was a man on mission, but what was nature of the mission and who was it for? What does he have to tell us today in the 21st century? What kind of sign is he for us today?

Institutional Care of the Mentally Disordered in Canada — a 17th Century Record

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 274-278
Author(s):  
John D. Griffin ◽  
Cyril Greenland
Keyword(s):  
Length Of Stay ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
New France ◽  
General Hospitals ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Mentally Disordered

“General hospitals” for the care of the helpless poor, the aged and infirm, lunatics and idiots, which were developed in the mid-17th century by Louis XIV of France, soon spread to the colony in New France. Francois Charon, a wealthy businessman, built the Hôpital Général de Ville Marie, Montreal, which was opened in 1694 to care for impoverished and helpless men. The Hospital Register, discovered in the Archives of the Soeurs Grises, Montreal, provides details of the patients’ names, dates of and reasons for admission and the dates of discharge or death. An analysis of the Register, covering the 45 years of the Charon period, reveals that among the 66 boys and men admitted, from 1694 to 1738, at least seven inmates suffered from some form of mental disorder or retardation. This suggests that the Hôpital Général de Ville Marie, together with the Hôpital Général de Québec, were the first Canadian institutions to provide care for the mentally disordered. Pierre Chevallier, who was retarded, lived in the hospital for 44 years until his death at the age of 85. The length of stay in the hospital indicates that the early settlers of New France were men of robust constitution and that the regime provided by the Frères Charon was physically as well as spiritually sustaining.

scholarly journals “Seeing These Good Souls Adore God in the Midst of the Woods”

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Muriel Clair
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
New France ◽  
Hunting Season ◽  
Subarctic Region ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries

Up to 1647, Jesuit missionaries in New France attempting to evangelize nomadic Algonquians of North America’s subarctic region were unable to follow these peoples, as they wished, in their seasonal hunts. The mission sources, especially the early Jesuit Relations, indicate that it was Algonquian neophytes of the Jesuit mission villages of Sillery and La Conception who themselves attracted other natives to Christianity. A veritable Native American apostolate was thus in existence by the 1640s, based in part on the complex kinship networks of the nomads. Thus it appears that during that decade, the Jesuits of New France adopted a new strategy of evangelization, based partly on the kinship networks of the nomads, which allowed for the natives’ greater autonomy in communicating and embracing Catholicism. A difficulty faced by the Jesuit editors of the Relations was how to concede to the culture of the nomads without offending their devout, European readers of the era of the “great confinement,” upon whom the missionaries depended for financial support. One way the Jesuits favorably portrayed nomadic neophytes—who were often unaccompanied by a missionary in their travels—was by underscoring the importance during hunting season of memory-based and material aids for Catholic prayer (Christian calendars, icons, rosaries, crucifixes, oratories in the woods, etc.). Thus, in the Jesuit literature, the gradual harmonization between Native American mobility and the Catholic liturgy was the key feature of the missionaries’ adaptation to the aboriginal context of the 1640s—a defining period for the Jesuit apostolate in North America through the rest of the seventeenth century.

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