BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG, Charles-Étienne. Missionary, historian, and ethnographer, born in Bourbourg on 8 September 1814, died in Nice on 1 January 1874. He studied theology in Ghent and in Rome, where he was ordained a priest in 1845. The Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide sent him to Canada, where for several months he taught ecclesiastical history. He then became vicar general of Boston. His passion for historical research on Latin America led him to accept in 1850 the position of chaplain to the French legation in Mexico, and alongside the study of history he took up the study of Mexican languages.
From 1851 to 1854 he remained in France and published the *Histoire du Canada, de son Église et de ses missions* (Paris, 1852). He then undertook an exploratory journey across North America, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, serving as parish priest to the indigenous people in Rabinal and also devoting himself to the study of the Quechua and Mam languages. Between 1859 and 1860 he visited Tehuantepec and Chiapas, and in 1862 the ruins of Copán. In 1864 he accompanied a scientific expedition in Mexico and extended his research to Honduras and Yucatán. Political events forced him to return to Guatemala, which he left definitively in 1865.
Brasseur de Bourbourg published a large number of works and pamphlets on history, archaeology, linguistics, and ethnography, of unequal scholarly value, since at times enthusiasm, imagination, and preconceptions prevailed over critical sense.