St. Isaac Jogues

St. Isaac Jogues Stained Glass Window in the Newman Center

About the Window

Represented with the Eucharist and a chalice, held by his mutilated fingers after returning to Iroquois territory. The man kneeling at his feet represent the conversion of his murderer and a tomahawk as a symbol of his martyrdom.

The background represents the native land and the Mowawk river where his body was placed after martyrdom.

Biography 

French missionary, born at Orléans, France; martyred at Ossernenon, in the present State of New York, 18 October, 1646. He was the first Catholic priest who ever came to Manhattan Island (New York). He entered the Society of Jesus in 1624 and, after having been professor of literature at Rouen, was sent as a missionary to Canada in 1636.

From Quebec he went to the regions around the great lakes where the illustrious Father de Brébeuf and others were laboring. There he spent six years in constant danger.
Though a daring missionary, his character was of the most practical nature, his purpose always being to fix his people in permanent habitations.

On 3 August 1642, Jogues, Guillaume Couture, René Goupil, and a group of Christian Hurons were heading back from Quebec City when they were waylaid by a war party of the Mohawk Nation, part of the Iroquois Confed­eracy. Jogues allegedly hid in reeds and bushes, but decided to leave his hiding place to join the prisoners so that he could comfort them and ensure that their faith in Christi­anity remained strong. Shortly thereafter, and in retaliation for comforting a tortured Frenchman, the Mohawk beat Jogues with sticks, tore out his fingernails, then gnawed the ends of his fingers until finger bones were visible. The war party then took their captives on a journey to a Mohawk village. There, the villagers marched them through a gaunt­let, which consisted of rows of Iroquois armed with rods and sticks beating the prisoners walking in single-file.

From New York he was sent; in mid-winter, across the ocean on a logger of only fifty tons burden and after a voyage of two months, landed Christmas morning, 1643, on the coast of Brittany, in a state of absolute destitution. Thence he found his way to the nearest college of the Soci­ety. He was received with great honor at the court of the Queen Regent, the mother of Louis XIV, and was allowed by Pope Urban VII the very exceptional privilege of cel­ebrating Mass, which the mutilated condition of his hands had made canonically impossible; several of his fingers hav­ing been eaten or burned off.

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 their 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.

The story holds a curious double martyrdom of Jogues. Ab­original allies of the French captured Jogues’ killer in 1647 and condemned him to death. While awaiting his execu­tion, this man was baptized and renamed with the Chris­tian name of Father Isaac Jogues. His death represented a secondary martyring of Isaac Jogues.