BERTRAND, JOSEPH. — French Jesuit and missionary, born at Fréland (Haut-Rhin, Alsace) on 9 November 1801, died at Notre-Dame de Liesse (Ain) on 13 January 1884. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1823 and studied theology at the Roman College (1828–32), where he also taught physics and mathematics. In 1837 he departed for India as the first superior of the Society of Jesus’ new mission in Madura; he governed it at a very difficult time, marked by ecclesiastical reorganization and vigorous struggles with the so-called “Goan schism.” Forced by illness to return to Europe in 1854, he negotiated in Rome the appointment of the first apostolic vicar of Madura and subsequently served as superior and spiritual director in several houses in France; in 1870 he founded an apostolic school at Issenheim (Alsace). In 1872, however, as a result of the Kulturkampf, it was transferred to Amiens, and B. then exercised, until his death, the office of vicar at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Liesse.
B.’s publications must be appreciated in the context of the controversies then raging in Europe concerning the Jesuits’ missionary methods and their alleged opposition to the indigenous clergy. In this sense, his Apologie des missionnaires réguliers des derniers siècles (Paris 1848), subsequently reprinted in a more temperate tone as Mémoires historiques sur les missions des ordres religieux et spécialement sur les questions du clergé indigène et des vites malabares (ibid. 1862), responds to the attacks of Lucquet, Marion-Brésillac, Blancher, and others. The work was extracted from the first volume of his collection, La Mission du Maduré d'après des documents inédits (ibid. 1847–54), which remains useful because volumes II–IV constitute a collection of unpublished documents concerning the former mission. Of the same documentary character, but concerning the restored mission, are the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de la nouvelle mission du Maduré.