Chaumonot, Pierre-Marie-Joseph

CHAUMONOT, PIERRE-MARIE-JOSEPH. - Jesuit, missionary among the Canadian Redskins, b. near Châtillon-sur-Seine on 9 Aug. 1611, d. at Québec on 21 Feb. 1693. Having run away from home in search of adventure, after much wandering he was received into the Society of Jesus at Rome (1632), whence he set out again in 1639 for Canada. There he devoted himself for 54 years to the conversion of the Hurons, the Algonquins and the Iroquois; he witnessed the wonderful flourishing and the ruin of the mission to the Huron people, afterwards accompanying the survivors in their changing dwellings. On the island of Orléans he founded with them a village, which somewhat recalled the reductions of Paraguay (1651); at Côte-St-Michel, near Québec, he erected the first stone church, dedicating it to Our Lady de Foy (1668); having moved farther into the forest, he built the sanctuary of Our Lady of Loreto (1673), entirely similar to the Holy House of Loreto, which soon became a famous goal of pilgrimages. By his people and by his fellow missionaries he was venerated as one of the noblest figures of the Canadian Church.

Besides several letters and reports on his activity, he left a kind of autobiography, published later: La vie du p. J.-M. C., écrite par lui-même sur l'ordre de son supérieur, l'an 1688 (ed. M. G. Shea, New York 1858); Suite de la vie... par un p. de la C. de J., avec la manière d'oraison du vœu. Père, écrite par lui-même (id., ibid. 1858), reproduced more exactly in A. Carayon, Documents inédits concernant la C. d. J., XIII (Poitiers 1869, pp. 1-197).