BIARD, PIERRE. — French Jesuit, one of the initiators of the missions of the Society in “New France.” Born in Grenoble in 1567 and entering religious life in 1583, he had been teaching theology for seven years when Fr. Coton chose him, together with Fr. Ennemond Massé, to establish a mission in Acadia (Nova Scotia), where the Calvinist Giovanni di Poutrincourt was to create a French colony. A wealthy benefactress, the marquise de Guercheville, bought a share in the colonists’ association for the fathers, in order to overcome the opposition of the Protestants; when the mission, begun in 1611 at Port-Royal d’Acadie (Annapolis), encountered new difficulties, Guercheville had the fathers transferred to the opposite coast, where in 1613 they founded St-Sauveur (today Bar Harbor, in the State of Maine, U.S.A.). However, the English pirate Samuel Argall destroyed St-Sauveur a month later and Port-Royal the following year; transported to England and returned to France in 1614, B. died at Avignon on 17 November 1617.
The letters in which he recounts the events in America to his superiors were published by A. Carayon, Documents inédits concernant la Compagnie de Jésus, XII (Poitiers 1864), reprinted in R. G. Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations and allied documents, I-III (Cleveland 1896–97).
Attacked by the Protestants as the cause of the colony’s failure and of the ruin of Port-Royal, B. defended himself by writing his Relation de la Nouvelle France, de ses terres, nature du pays et de ses habitants, item du voyage des pères Jésuites audicées contre les et de ce qu'ils y ont fait jusques à leur prime par les Anglois (Lyons 1616, reprinted in Thwaites, III, pp. 21–283; IV, pp. 7–117), which already heralds the series of the famous Relations de la Nouvelle France, begun in 1627.
BIBAUX (BIBAUT, BIBANCE, better BIEBUYCK), GUILLAUME: V. BIEBUYCK, GUILLAUME.