Colonial North America (17th century)
Feast: October 19
Mohawk warriors chewed off his fingers — and after he escaped to France, he asked to go back.
Isaac Jogues was a Jesuit professor teaching literature in Rouen when he volunteered for the North American missions in 1636. Within six years, he was captured by a Mohawk war party along with René Goupil and several Huron Christians. The Mohawks tortured them for days — beating them with clubs, biting off Jogues's fingers, burning them with coals. Goupil was tomahawked. Jogues survived as a slave for over a year before Dutch traders helped him escape to New Amsterdam and then to France. He arrived home a celebrity — the priest whose mutilated hands could barely hold the chalice. Pope Urban VIII granted him special permission to say Mass despite his missing fingers, saying, 'It would be shameful that a martyr of Christ should not drink the blood of Christ.' And then Jogues asked to go back. He returned to Mohawk territory in 1646 as a peace ambassador. The peace didn't hold. A faction blamed him for a crop failure and a disease outbreak. They tomahawked him at Ossernenon, near present-day Auriesville, New York. He was forty-six.