BIARD, PIERRE. - French Jesuit, one of the initiators of the Society's missions in "New France." Born in Grenoble in 1567 and having entered religious life in 1583, he had been teaching theology for seven years when Fr. Coton chose him, together with Fr. Ennemond Massé, to found a mission in Acadia (Nova Scotia), where the Calvinist Jean de Poutrincourt was to establish a French colony. A wealthy benefactress, the Marquise de Guercheville, bought a share for the fathers in the colonists' association, in order to overcome the opposition of the Protestants; when the mission, begun in 1611 at Port-Royal of Acadia (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; carried off to England and having returned to France in 1614, B. died at Avignon on 17 Nov. 1617.
The letters in which he recounts to his superiors the events in America are 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 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 announces the series of the famous Relations de la Nouvelle France, begun in 1627.
Bibliography4 works
Edmondo Lamalle
BIBAUX (BIBAUT, BIBANCE, better BIEBUYCK), GUILLAUME: v. BIEBUYCK, GUILLAUME.