PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 From Manuscript to Jesuit Relation in New France: The Case of the Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant M ICAH T RUE (U NIVERSITY OF A LBERTA ) A particularly fascinating and oft-commented passage in the famous Jesuit Relations from New France recounts the violent torture and execution of two French missionaries to the Huron on March 16, 1649, Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant. 1 It tells how an invading group of Iroquois captured the two priests at the Huron village of Saint Louis, stripped them naked, tore out some of their fingernails, and led them to the nearby village of Saint Ignace, near Georgian Bay in what is now southern Ontario, Canada. There, Brébeuf and Lalemant reportedly were beaten with clubs all over their bodies as a prelude to even worse torments: a collar of red-hot axe heads that severely burned their upper bodies, a belt made of bark and filled with burning pitch and resin, and - in Brébeuf’s case - what is characterized in the text as mock baptism with boiling water. Finally, the Iroquois stripped flesh from the priests’ bodies to be roasted and eaten as they watched, and then removed and ate their still-beating hearts. The published description of this sensational incident, which was not witnessed by any Frenchmen and had to be reconstructed after the fact, has attracted considerable attention from scholars, who most often have scrutinized it - along with two related manuscript accounts - for what it reveals about the historical event itself. As this article will show, the textual record of the priests’ ordeal also provides a unique window into how the Jesuits’ annual Relations were composed in New France prior to being sent to Paris for 1 The groups that the Jesuits called the Huron and the Iroquois are increasingly referred to in ethnohistorical scholarship as the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee, respectively. I opt for the names used by the missionary authors to highlight their mediatory role. This is, after all, a study of French representations of an event in New France, not the event itself. Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 54 publication. Here I trace Brébeuf and Lalemant’s torture and death from manuscript to published text, focusing in particular on how material written by another Frenchman in the colony was borrowed, but also altered, for presentation to readers in Paris. The process by which the Relations were composed in New France has only been described in vague terms, almost always acknowledging that the mission superior who was charged with compiling each installment in the series did not write every word himself, but instead often excerpted or paraphrased letters and reports submitted by other Jesuits or their French collaborators in the colony. León Pouliot, for example, highlights cases in which the mission superior quoted from letters sent by far-flung priests and French colonists: “Il puise à pleines mains, dans sa correspondance, et il cite volontiers, faisant ainsi parvenir à nous d’incomparables documents” (21). Lawrence W. Wroth reports that even in the absence of such direct quotation, the Relations were based on “reports in the form of letters or journals, coming fresh from the field of action and composed under circumstances of the greatest difficulty” and that “The Canadian Superior...edited the original reports, removing portions here, altering the language there, and welding the several pieces before him into a concise and comprehensive story of the year’s mission in Canada” (117-118). And Sara Melzer writes that “Each report began with the priests in the field who would write up their experiences. These reports were then taken by summer canoe to the superior in Quebec, who could compile them. He could copy some verbatim, rewrite others, and then sent the whole package to the Jesuit headquarters in Paris” (83). Accurate though such accounts may be within their limits, it remains poorly understood how, exactly, the raw reports received from Jesuits and other Frenchmen scattered throughout the Canadian wilderness were adapted for use in the published annual Relation, particularly in cases where no source is cited. The torture and death of Brébeuf and Lalemant offers a unique glimpse of this process, because three surviving accounts of the event together show how material written by another resident of the colony made its way into the annual Relation compiled by mission superior Paul Ragueneau. 2 This leader’s initial understanding of what had happened to the two priests is reflected in a letter he wrote in Latin to the Jesuit General Vincent Carafa in Rome, dated May 1, 1649. A more detailed version of events can be found in a manuscript written by a French unpaid lay assistant to the Jesuits, or 2 All citations of the Jesuit Relations and manuscript sources are drawn from Lucien Campeau's Monumenta Novae Franciae. In keeping with common practice, this edition is abbreviated as MNF throughout this article. Reuben Gold Thwaites’ century-old Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents is here abbreviated as JR. Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 55 donné, named Christophe Regnaut who lived and worked in the Huron mission at the time of Brébeuf’s and Lalemant’s deaths. 3 This report has survived in the form of a handwritten copy dated 1678, and although it cannot be said with any certainty when Regnaut’s account was first committed to paper, scholars who have considered the question have concluded that it - or at least the portion of it recounting the priests’ torture - most likely predates the initial composition of a third surviving version of the story, the published Relation for the years 1648 and 1649. 4 For example, Reuben Gold Thwaites concludes on the basis of the relatively unpolished style and urgent tone of the manuscript that “it was written not long after the event” (JR 34.237). Similarly, Guy Laflèche points out that Regnaut’s text is a personal and minutely detailed account of the donné’s attempt to gather all of the information he could about this ordeal, including participating in the excursion to recover the priests’ bodies and the examination of their wounds. The Relation, in contrast, reads more like a subsequent synthesis of the results of that process. And Laflèche adds that some of the facts in Regnaut’s account differ from Ragueneau’s two versions of the story, suggesting that the donné was not simply retelling a story he had read in the Relation (Laflèche 173). For example, Regnaut claims that the priests were first captured in the village of Saint Ignace, where they were tortured and killed, instead of in the nearby village of Saint Louis (MNF vol. 4.587-92 and 7.488). 5 All signs point, then, to Regnaut’s account being produced very soon after the priests’ demise, and independently of Ragueneau’s own efforts to describe it. Strikingly, the version of the story in the Relation does not merely repeat the same information presented in Ragueneau’s earlier letter to Rome, but also includes passages that closely echo Regnaut’s account, making it possible to identify clear instances in which the mission superior must have borrowed material from the donné’s manuscript as he prepared the version 3 Donnés pledged their service to the Jesuits in return for shelter and sustenance, but no pay, and assisted in a wide variety of mostly menial tasks: tending crops and livestock, caring for the sick, paddling canoes, procuring firewood, etc. For more on the work and life of these lay assistants and the sparse information that has surived about Regnaut himself, see Andréanne Vallée’s 2002 M.A. thesis. 4 For an analysis of the clues as to the dates on which the three accounts were composed, see Laflèche 173-174. 5 Similarly, Andréanne Vallée finds it reasonable to think that “Regnaut ait pris la plume...peu après le martyre des Père Brébeuf et Lalemant pour rédiger son récit” (145). Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 56 of the story that would be published. 6 Sometimes this amounts to verbatim repetition of sequences of words, as in the report in both accounts that Brébeuf continued to preach the faith while being beaten even though he was “accablé sous la pesanteur de ces coups” (MNF 7.489 and 592). Both also report that the Jesuits and their French associates went to retrieve the bodies of their slain brethren “Dez le lendemain matin que nous eûmes asseurance du départ de l’ennemy” (MNF 7.491 and 591). 7 In other cases, passages in the two texts vary by only a few words. The published Relation, for example, describes the greeting Brébeuf and Lalemant received upon their entry into the village of Saint Igance as “une gresle de coups de bastons sur leurs espaules, sur les reins, sur les jambes, sur l’estomac, sur le ventre et sur le visage, n’y ayant partie de leur corps qui n’eût dès lors enduré chacune son tourment” (MNF 7.592). Regnaut’s manuscript describes the same treatment in nearly identical terms: “une gresle de coups de baston sur les épaulles, sur les reins, sur le ventre, sur les jambes et sur le visage, n'ayant aucune partie de leurs corps qui n’ayt enduré ce tourment” (MNF 7.489). Coupled with the above-mentioned signs that Regnaut’s report was written before the Relation, such similarities in the two texts’ descriptions of events suggest strongly that Ragueneau enriched his initial account of the incident with material drawn from the donné’s manuscript as he was preparing the version of the story destined for readers in France. 8 But as the rest of this article will show, Ragueneau’s verbatim copying or close paraphrasing of language from Regnaut’s manuscript was not the full extent of his engagement with it. Instead, he sometimes adapted the material he borrowed in ways that can shed light on how the Relations’ role as texts destined for the French reading public shaped their contents. 6 Thwaites and Laflèche also conclude that the Relation drew material from Regnaut’s manuscript (JR 34.246 and Laflèche 173). 7 Although these phrases appear word-for-word in both texts, the spelling of some words varies slightly. Here I follow the language of the Relation. 8 It must be acknowledged that whatever Ragueneau wrote in New France could have been altered in Paris prior to publication, as sometimes occurred, and that any such changes in this case would be invisible to us due to the lack of a surviving manuscript version of the Relation. Still, since both Regnaut and Ragueneau were in the Huron mission when they composed their texts and there is no evidence of the donné’s account have been immediately sent to France, it seems reasonable to conclude that the superior himself was responsible for including the donné’s material. Any changes made subsequently in Paris do not undermine the point that the Relation both borrowed and altered material from manuscript sources in New France. On the editorial process that shaped the Relations in Paris, see chapter six of Micah True, Masters and Students. Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 57 Indeed, although the torture and death of Brébeuf and Lalemant is well known and has been considered from a variety of perspectives, little attention has been paid to how the knowledge that the Relation was destined to reach readers in France may have influenced its portrayal of events. Whether reading Regnaut’s manuscript and the Relation to build an argument for or against the priests’ status as martyrs, or to show how their deaths likely meant different things to various witnesses and participants, scholars have tended to treat the two texts as overlapping collections of facts, alternate sources that generally confirm each other and add up to a richly detailed record of the incident. In many cases, this equivalence is never explicitly stated, but is rather implied through an absence of comment on the texts’ different purposes and narrative characteristics. 9 At least one scholar, however, has explicitly asserted a kind of likeness between them, claiming that Regnaut’s manuscript, like the annual Relations, was “directed to an audience that was offstage but centrally important to the appropriation of colonial space and people” including not only the Jesuits and other settlers in New France but also “readers in France, and ultimately ecclesiastics in Rome” (56). And yet, the texts are clearly different, one a manuscript written by a layman to document the facts of the priests’ demise as quickly and thoroughly as possible after the fact, and the other an official report intended from the beginning for publication. By the time Ragueneau assembled the installment for 1648-1649, the annual Relations from New France had been published in the French capital for a decade and a half, and no one involved in the text’s production, whether the mission superior in New France, editors in Paris, or the printer who typeset it, could have been ignorant of that fact that this version of the story was destined not only for internal use by the Jesuits, but also for the French reading public. I turn now to three key moments in the story of Brébeuf and Lalemant’s violent end - the hot axe-heads, the belt of burning pitch and resin, and the mock baptism with boiling water - each of which can illustrate a broader pattern in how the mission superior altered what he borrowed from Regnaut. The description of the collar of red-hot axe heads in the Relation departs from Ragueneau’s preliminary letter to closely echo Regnaut’s account, but 9 For just a few examples of scholarship from diverse points of view that reflect this tendency, see Donnelly’s and Latourelle’s essentially hagiographical biographies of Brébeuf (pages 265-286 and 211-214, respectively); Anderson’s fine article “Blood, Fire, and ‘Baptism,’” which explores Brébeuf’s death from the points of view of the French, the Iroquois, and Huron apostates who participated in it; and Carson’s provocatively titled article “Brébeuf Was Never Martyred,” which attempts to recover an indigenous perspective on the priest’s death. Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 58 omits the contextualizing information included by the donné. Whereas the mission superior’s letter to Rome reports only the essential characteristics of this form of torment - burning axe heads hung around the neck, and the excruciating pain they caused - Regnaut goes into much more detail, explaining what made this particular method of torture so difficult to endure: Car vous voyez un homme tout nud, lié à posteau, qui ayant ce collier au col ne seroit en quelle posture se mettre. Car s’il se penche sur le devant, celles de dessus les épaulles pèsent davantage. S’il se veut pencher en arrière, celles de son estomach luy font souffrir le mesme tourment. S’il se tient droit sans pencher de costé ny d’autre, les haches ardentes de feu, appliquées égallement des deux costez, luy donnent un double supplice (MNF 7.503 and 490). The published version of the story describes the difficulty of this particular torment in the same way, albeit in mostly different words: leaning forward caused the axe heads to burn the back and shoulders more acutely, leaning back caused more intense burning of the chest, and standing perfectly erect caused what both texts called the “double supplice” of being burned on both front and back simultaneously (MNF 7.593). The absence of this explanatory material from Ragueneau’s earlier letter and its point-by-point appearance in the Relation makes clear that the mission superior borrowed Regnaut’s description of what made this particular torment so terrible as he composed the version of the story that would be published. Tellingly, Ragueneau opted not to include the donné’s subsequent comments about how the instrument of torture was made. Wrote Regnaut, Voicy la façon que j’ay veu faire ce collier pour d’autres captifs. Ils font rougir six haches, prennent une grosse hart de bois vert, passent les six haches par le gros bout de la hart, prennent les deux bouts ensemble et puis le mettent au col du patient (MNF 7.490). This reference to previous uses of the collar alerts the reader to its precise construction, but also suggests that what the priest endured was not unique or unusual, and that it was instead normal behavior for indigenous groups venting their rage on captured enemies. The selective borrowing for use in the Relation of Regnaut’s description of the hot axe heads is not the only time Ragueneau chose not to include contextualizing information that Regnaut’s account made available. Ragueneau’s preliminary letter, for example, says nothing about the consumption of the priests’ hearts (MNF 7.504). Regnaut, in contrast, writes that: Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 59 un autre de ces barbares, voyant que le bon Père alloit bientost mourir, luy fait une ouverture au-dessus de la poitrine et luy arrache le cœur, le fait rostir et le mange. D’autres vinrent boire son sang tout chaud, qu’ils beuvoient avec les deux mains, disant que le Père de Brébœuf avoit esté bien courageux à souffrir tant de mal qu’ils luy avoient fait et qu’en beuvant son sang ils deviendroient courageux comme luy (MNF 490-491). Regnaut’s reporting of the consumption of Brébeuf's heart and blood - devoid of any signs of shock, horror, or disgust - suggests that this was not seen as particularly novel behaviour, and indeed seems to attribute it to an indigenous belief that a slain enemy’s courage could be absorbed through ritual consumption of this body part. 10 Ragueneau includes this detail in the Relation - albeit without any mention of preliminary roasting and claiming that both priests’ hearts were eaten - but omits any hint of the alleged significance to the Iroquois of this particular action. Instead, the Relation attributes this behavior to a lack of religion, saying that the tormentors drew Lalemant’s and Brébeuf’s hearts from their bodies with a “main sacrilège” and fed on them “inhumainement” (MNF 7.594). Similarly absent from the Relation is anything resembling Regnaut’s concluding comment that the boiling water baptism - another instance of borrowing from the donné, as dicussed below - was an apparently novel form of torture: “j’ay veu faire le mesme traitement aux captifs iroquois que les sauvages hurons avoient pris en guerre, à la réserve de l’eau bouillante, que je n’ay point veu verser sur aucun” (MNF 7.491). Whereas Regnaut comments frequently on the relationship of Brébeuf’s suffering to pre-existing indigenous practices or beliefs, then, the published Relation does not, even in cases in which its contents are traceable to Regnaut’s manuscript. In the description of the torture by burning belt, it is not the context of indigenous practices that Ragueneau omitted while drawing material from Regnaut’s manuscript, but instead all indication of how this particular form of abuse fit chronologically with the other parts of the priests’ ordeal. Regnaut devotes two sentences to this particular torment, describing both the belt itself and Brébeuf’s simultaneous reaction to its use: Après cela, ils luy mirent une ceinture d’écorce toute pleine de poix et de raisine et y mirent le feu, qui grilla tout son corps. Pendant tous ces tourments, le Père Brébeuf souffrait comme un rocher insensible aux feux et aux flammes, qui estonnoient tous les bourreaux qui le tourmentaient (MNF 7.490). 10 As Laflèche points out, it is not clear that consumption of a courageous victim's heart was actually a common part of indigenous torture practices, as other parts of the body such as the head or liver were reportedly more prized (190 n23). Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 60 The published Relation goes well beyond the single-sentence description in Ragueneau’s preliminary letter (MNF 7.503), and echoes Regnaut’s language closely, testifying to the mission superior’s reliance on the donné’s manuscript. It also suggests that both priests were tortured in this way, not only Brébeuf: Ils leur mirent des ceintures d’escorce toute pleine de poix et de rasine, où ils mirent le feu qui grilla tout leurs corps. Dans le plus fort de ces tourments le Père Gabriel Lallement levoit les yeux au ciel, joignant les mains de fois à autres et jettant des soupirs à Dieu qu'il invoquoit à son secours. Le Père Jean de Brébeuf souffroit comme un rocher, insensible aux feux et aux flammes, sans pousser aucun cry et demeurant dans un profond silence qui estonnoit ses bourreaux mesmes (MNF 7.593). Whereas Regnaut specifies that this stage in Brébeuf’s suffering came “après cela” - cela referring to the hot axe heads that he had described just before - and indicates that the priest’s stoicism was simultaneous to it (“pendant que”), the Relation transitions abruptly from its description of the axe heads to the burning belt, and then begins a new paragraph with the chronologically vague observation that Brébeuf’s rock-like suffering came “dans le plus fort de ces tourments.” Lost in Ragueneau’s adaptation of Regnaut’s description of this torment and the priest’s reaction to it are the clear indications of chronology and simultaneity that make explicit when the various events reported in this portion of the text - the axe heads, the burning belt, and Brébeuf’s stony suffering - occurred in relation to each other. Regnaut’s insistence on chronological clarity in this instance is symptomatic of the rest of his account. Indeed, the second sentence of the manuscript starts the clock in an unambiguous way: “Ce fut le seizième jour de mars au matin que nous apperceûmes un grand feu au lieu où estoient allés ces deux bons pères” (MNF 7.488). The description of the ensuing ordeal ends with Brébeuf’s death, which is marked precisely in the text at the moment it occurs, “le mesme jour de sa prise, sur les quatres heures du soir” (MNF 7.491). Regnaut specifies that his mission to recover the bodies took place “le lendemain matin,” that he examined their remains for more than two hours, and that they were buried on March 21 st , a Sunday (MNF 7.491). In between these chronological precisions that bookend Regnaut’s account, the details of Brébeuf’s suffering are also presented in sequence, and without any advance hint of torments to come. This linear approach to recounting the event is marked in the text by repeated use of transitional expressions linked to the passage of time. Après cela appears twice in addition to the example cited above, including as a transition between the Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 61 mock baptism and the axe heads. And expressions indicating simultaneity - pendant que and pendant - are also prevalent. In short, Regnaut’s text shows consistent care to signal how the various stages of priests’ ordeal unfolded in relation to each other (MNF 7.488-490). In the published Relation, in contrast, Ragueneau seems to have intentionally avoided giving a chronological account of the priests’ torture and death, in at least two ways. First, instead of preserving the order of events as presented in his preliminary letter and confirmed by Regnaut’s manuscript - mock baptism with boiling water first, axe heads second, and then the burning belt - the version of the story in the Relation first tells of the hot axe heads, then the burning belt, and finally the mock baptism, without acknowledging this change in any way. And there are also moments when the text makes clear that events are being recounted out of order, such as the flashback to Brébeuf and Lalemant’s prayers and joy at the very beginning of the torture, at the prospect of their impending death and ascent to heaven, that the Relation inserts between the boiling water baptism and the removal of priests’ hearts (MNF 7.594). 11 Second, Ragueneau’s account in the Relation, unlike Regnaut’s manuscript, sometimes explicitly announces key events in the story before they arrive in the narration. The published version of the story, for example, signals the outcome of the priests’ ordeal before it has even begun to tell the story: “ayant eu...des nouvelles certaines par quelques captifs eschapez de la mort du Père Jean de Brébeuf et du Père Gabriel Lallement, nous envoyames un de nos Pères et sept autres François chercher leurs corps au lieu de leur supplice” (MNF 7.591-592). And the eventual removal of Brébeuf’s heart is likewise announced ahead of time, when Ragueneau writes that even though his lips had been removed, Brébeuf, “son cœur n’estant pas encore arraché” (MNF 7.593), continued to praise God and motivate the Christians around him. Perhaps not surprisingly, in light of this apparently deliberate choice to tell the story out of order, Ragueneau omits entirely the clear indications of chronological order - après cela and pendant - that Regnaut used repeatedly in describing the mock baptism, the axe heads, and the burning belt. And it is not until after telling most of the story that Ragueneau specifies the dates and times of the priests’ capture and death, 11 For another example, see the series of attacks that are related at the end of Ragueneau’s account in the pluperfect tense, indicating that they had occurred some unspecified time prior to the most recently related events, the roasting and eating of the priests’ flesh before their very eyes: “ils avaient fourré dans ces playes des haches toutes en feu. Le Père Jean de Brébeuf avait eu la peau arrachée qui couvre le crâne de la teste. Il lui avoient coupé les pieds,” etc. (MNF 7.594). Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 62 all at once instead of at the corresponding moments in the story, as Regnaut had done (MNF 7.594). Finally, the description of Brébeuf’s mock baptism with boiling water in the published Relation goes beyond the brief mention of the incident in Ragueneau’s first epistolary account, and echoes Regnaut’s treatment of this torture except for the donné's scrupulous notation of the source of his information. Ragueneau’s initial letter reports only that boiling water was thrice poured over Brébeuf’s body (MNF 7.503). Regnaut offers considerably more detail, most notably by quoting the priest’s tormentor. This Huron renégat reportedly reminded the priest of his own claim that baptism was necessary for access to heaven, and tauntingly claimed to be sending him there with this form of torture (MNF 7.489-490). Aside from its mention of multiple torturers instead of just one and the different words attributed to them, the version of this incident in Ragueneau’s Relation strongly resembles that in Regnaut’s manuscript in that Brébeuf’s tormentors express the same mocking sentiments in both texts (MNF 7.593-594). And the fact that both texts specify that this particular torment was done “en dérision du sainct baptemse” and was accompanied by “railleries piquantes” (MNF 7.490 and 593) seems to confirm the influence of the donné’s manuscript on the published Relation. One notable difference between the two texts in this instance, however, is that the donné introduces the episode by saying “Ils nous dirent encore” (MNF 7.489), in reference to a group of Hurons who had escaped the Iroquois and fled to safety among the French, whereas the Relation makes no mention of how this specific piece of information was obtained. This omission from the Relation is but one example among many of how Regnaut’s care to make clear at all times how he knew each particular detail gives way in the published text to fleeting and vague acknowledgment of sources. Regnaut begins the story of Brébeuf’s torture, for example, by crediting his indigenous sources: “Voicy ce que nous dirent ces sauvages de la prise du bourg de Saint-Ignace et des Pères Jean de Brébœuf et Gabriel L’Allemant” (MNF 7.489), and ends in similar terms: “Voilà ce que nous avons appris du martyre et de la bienheureuse mort du Père Jean de Brébœuf par plusieurs chrétiens sauvages dignes de foy” (MNF 7.491). 12 Regnaut’s text is also peppered with instances of nous and je that record what the donné and his countrymen saw with their own eyes, both from the safety of the nearby Jesuit settlement of Sainte Marie and upon visiting the site of Brébeuf’s death. The manuscript’s first paragraph alone, consisting of seven sentences, has twelve instances of notre and nous, foregrounding from 12 This non-standard spelling of Brébeuf’s name is Regnaut’s. Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 63 the very start the role of the French in gathering information about the priests’ violent death. Similarly, the manuscript’s description of Brébeuf’s torments concludes with a series of sentences detailing the damage done to his body that use the same phrase eight times: J’ay vu et touché la plaie d’une ceinture d’écorce toute plaine de poix et de raisine...J’ay vu et touché les brûleures du colier de haches qu’on luy mist sur les épaulles et sur l’estomach...J’ay vu et touché ses deux lèvres qu’on luy avoit couppées à cause qu’il parloit toujours de Dieu, etc. (MNF 7.491-92). The Relation, in contrast, recounts Brébeuf’s ordeal itself strictly in the third person and is silent on sources except for a single vague mention at the end of “personnes dignes de foy, qui l’ont veu et me l’ont rapporté à moy mesme” (MNF 7.595). Even in cases like the mock baptism, in which content and language in the Relation seems to have been taken directly from Regnaut’s manuscript, it appears that care was taken to eliminate acknowledgment the donné’s sources, whether indigenous witnesses or Frenchmen who examined the priests’ remains after the fact. One pattern that links these three ways the published text borrows but also alters material from the manuscript source is that they systematically draw the reader of the Relation closer to the action, as if Ragueneau were attempting to tell the story in as affecting a way as possible. First, the absence of any contextualizing comments about other, previous instances of the same torments - the hot axe heads, the consumption of Brébeuf’s blood and heart, the originality of the mock baptism - draws the reader’s attention squarely to the event being described, providing no opportunity to consider it in relation to typical indigenous behavior toward captives. Then, the choice to tell the story non-chronologically instead of maintaining the order used in the initial letter to Rome and confirmed in Regnaut’s manuscript adds suspense, announcing Brébeuf’s violent death and then building slowly to it by alternating scenes of brutal torture with quieter moments and creating the sense that the torture was building to a peak, the mock baptism with boiling water, even when it is necessary to report events out of order to do so. And finally, the absence of references to sources, whether Huron survivors or the nous of the French, eliminates the impression of distance created by Regnaut’s constant insistence on his own knowledge, which reminds readers at every turn that their own access to events comes only through the intermediary of a third party. To the common scholarly observation, discussed earlier, that the mission superior drew material from others’ writings while compiling the annual Relation, it can now be added that this was not a simple matter of stiching individual reports together and smoothing out rough edges to create a maximally informative and coherent Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 64 narrative. To judge from Ragueneau’s use of Regnaut’s manucript, it appears that the mission superior’s use of others’ writings also involved making writerly choices that would enhance readers’ experience of the material, even when the changes that resulted from such an approach caused a loss of context, chronological precision, and clarity around how particular facts were known. Indeed, I would like to suggest that the differences between the Regnaut’s and Ragueneau’s accounts of Brébeuf and Lalemant’s demise are less a matter of the facts they report or the arguments they make than of the calibration of the story for maximum affective impact on readers. The two versions of the story are very similar in their broad strokes, and the differences between them noted above concern relatively minor points such as whether both priests were tormented in a given way or only one, the number of indigenous participants in particular acts of violence, etc. 13 Nor are the differences in the arguments advanced on the basis of those facts particularly striking, as both Regnaut’s manuscript and Ragueneau’s Relation clearly seek to make the case for the priests’ status as martyrs. Of the coveted title of martyr, for example, the author of the published Relation writes that “Je les appelerois volontiers, s’il m’estoit permis, de ce nom glorieux,” and attributes the violent actions of the Iroquois to “la haine de la foy et le mespris du nom de Dieu” and their irritation and indignation at the priests’ zeal while suffering (MNF 7.592-93). And Regnaut also explicitly refers to the ordeal as martyrdom (martyre) (MNF 7.488 and 491) and insists on the hatred of the faith that allegedly motivated the Iroquois, who were “indignez contre luy de ce qu’il leur parloit toujours de Dieu et de leur conversion” and poured boiling water over Brébeuf’s body “en dérision du saint baptesme” (MNF 7.490). Whatever differences may exist in the details recounted in the two texts and how each of them makes the argument that the priests were martyred, a more glaring difference, as this article has shown, is that at every turn Ragueneau took care in his Relation to frame the story to be as engaging as possible to its readers in France, even when copying material directly from Regnaut’s more matter-of-fact manuscript. In addition to providing a rare glimpse of how the raw material of encounter was transformed into a text for the French reading public, this analysis points the way to a promising and so far little-explored approach to the famous Jesuit Relations, one that would account not only for how they transmit facts or opinions about actual events in New France, but also for how they specifically seek to engage readers on an emotional level. It has 13 More detailed comparisons of the facts recounted in each text can be found in Vallée 168-184 and Laflèche 171-204. Torture and Death of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 65 perhaps not been sufficiently appreciated - both in this particular case and more generally - that the famous Jesuit Relations from New France were written not only to record information or to frame it in such a way as to support a particular point of view, but also to induce a reaction in readers, an affective response that could fan the flames of faith in the context of the Catholic Reformation and its concern with shoring up French Catholicism and combating the threats posed by various forms of otherness (Melzer 78- 80). 14 Indeed, descriptions in the texts of the actual or anticipated reactions of readers in France to events in the colony frequently testify to this purpose by using the language of emotion, as if to signal that the Jesuits understood that their words were appealing to readers not, or not only, for what they made them know, but also for how they made them feel. To cite only a few examples, the first chapter of the 1636 Relation is entitled “Des sentiments d’affection qu’ont plusieurs personnes de mérite pour la Nouvelle-France” (MNF 3.190). French attitudes toward New France are also more than once described as burning zeal, as in the following year’s report that “la France estoit en feu pour nous” (MNF 3. 524). And Ragueneau’s own preliminary letter to the Jesuit provincial at the beginning of the Relation for 1647-48 expresses his aspiration that it be received by at least one well-placed reader as a source of comfort after so much difficult news from the mission in recent years: “J’espère que Vostre Révérence aura de la consolation en lisant cette Relation” (MNF 7.367). 15 Such comments highlighting the actual or anticipated emotional response of readers reveal an intriguing gap between how scholars have tended to understand the Relations, as a rich repository of facts framed rhetorically to advance the Jesuits' own arguments, 16 and how the missionary authors themselves sometimes characterized the texts, not as mere vehicles for data, but as emotionally charged testimony that could and did provoke feelings in readers. Works Cited Anderson, Emma. “Blood, Fire, and ‘Baptism’: Three Perspectives on the Death of Jean De Brébeuf, Seventeenth-Century Jesuit ‘Martyr’”. In Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, eds. Martin, 14 Léon Pouliot, himself a Jesuit, insists on the contrary that “ce n’était pas une composition, destinée, coûte que coûte, à émouvoir” (20). Marie-Christine Pioffet, on the other hand, observes a perspective of “engagement passionnel” in the way the Relations are narrated, but regrettably does not elaborate (62). 15 See also MNF 3.307 and 5.737. 16 See, for just a few prominent examples, Greer 1, Beaulieu 19, and Delâge 48. Micah True PFSCL XLVI, 90 (2019) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2019-0004 66 Joel W. and Mark A. Nicholas. 125-158. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Beaulieu, Alain. Convertir les Fils de Caïn: Jésuites et Amérindiens Nomades en Nouvelle-France, 1632-1642. Montréal: Nuit Blanche Editeur, 1990. Campeau, Lucien, ed. Monumenta Novae Franciae. 9 vols. Rome: Monumenta Hist. Soc. Jesu, 1967-2003. Carson, James Taylor. “Brébeuf Was Never Martyred: Reimagining the Life and Death of Canada’s First Saint.” Canadian Historical Review 97.2 (2016): 222- 243. Delâge, Denys. Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600-64, trans. Jane Brierly. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993. Donnelly, Joseph P. Jean de Brébeuf, 1593-1649. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1975. Greer, Allan, ed. The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2000. Laflèche, Guy. Les Saints Martyrs Canadiens, vol. 3: Le Martyr de Jean de Brébeuf. Laval: Les Editions du Singulier, 1990. Latourelle, René. Jean de Brébeuf. Saint-Laurent, Quebec: Bellarmin, 1993. Melzer, Sara E. Colonizer Or Colonized: the Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pearson, Timothy G. Becoming Holy In Early Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. Pioffet, Marie-Christine. La Tentation de l’Epopée dans les Relations des Jésuites. Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 1997. Pouliot, Léon. Étude sur les Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France (1632-1672). Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1940. Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610-1791. 73 vols. Cleveland: Burrows Bros, 1896-1901. True, Micah. Masters and Students: Jesuit Mission Ethnography in Seventeenth-Century New France. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. Vallée, Andréanne. François Gendron et Christophe Regnaut: deux voix données en Nouvelle-France. MA thesis, University of Ottawa, 2002. Wroth, Lawrence C. “The Jesuit Relations from New France.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 30 (1936): 110-149.