LALEMANT, CHARLES. - Jesuit, missionary, b. in Paris on 17 Nov. 1587, d. there on 18 Nov. 1674. He left for Québec in 1625 as superior of the first group of Jesuits assigned to the missions among the Indians; two years later he was already in France to plead its interests in person. Having set out again for Canada (1628), he was taken prisoner by the English; once freed, he attempted the journey a third time (1629), but was picked up shipwrecked at San Sebastián; the fourth time (1634) he succeeded in setting foot again in Québec.
In 1635 he was one of the first professors of the new college founded there, and he gathered the last breath of Champlain, the founder of the Canadian colony, whose friend and spiritual director he was. In 1638 he was again in France, where he remained as procurator of the mission, attending to new foundations and to the publication of the Relations des Jésuites. He was also rector of various colleges, of the professed house of Paris, and vice-provincial.
There survive from him a long account, which is a letter to his brother Jérôme, of 1 Aug. 1626, and opens the series of the Relations des Jésuites: Lettre... ou sont contenus les moeurs et façons de vivre des sauvages habitans de ce pays là [Canada], et comme il se comportent avec les chrétiens françois qui y demeurent (Paris 1627), and the ascetical work: Diverses entretiens sur la vie cachée de Jésus-Christ en l'Eucharistie (ibid. 1657), which had several editions.
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