Great Missionaries | 6. Joseph Aubery

Tuesday, 10 Mars, 2015

Verse of the Day: «Mais sanctifiez dans vos cœurs Christ le Seigneur, étant toujours prêts à vous défendre, avec douceur et respect, devant quiconque vous demande raison de l'espérance qui est en vous.» 1 Pierre 3.15

Quote of the Day: “Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”—Martin Luther King Jr.

«Tout ce que nous voyons n’est qu’une ombre projetée par les choses que nous voyons pas.»—Martin Luther King Jr.

French Fun Fact: The Eiffel tower was originally intended to be dismantled and sold as scrap after its construction. (confessedtravelholic.com)

What’s Really Happening Over Here:

Weather – Clear, Precip. 0%

Temperature – 57⁰F, high of 62⁰

News – French sports stars killed in helicopter crash (thelocal.fr)

More News – http://www.lepoint.fr/

A Day In the Life:

I finally finished my online classes yesterday! My first three anyway…but I only have one to take in the second half of the semester, which is entirely doable. It feels good to breathe! Other than that, my Monday was incredibly boring by all accounts (except my own) – I kicked one of those round things around for a couple hours and did some work for my internship.

Joseph Aubery

Born in France, Joseph Aubery was a missionary to Canada during the first part of the 18^th century. He had a major impact on the people there through his influence as a member of the Abenaki mission to which he was assigned. There is not much known about him, but here is an abridged version of his story:

Joseph Aubery (born at Gisors in Normandy, 10 May 1673; died at Saint-François, Quebec, Canada, 2 July 1755 was a French Jesuit missionary in Canada. Chateaubriand reproduces the life-story of Father Aubery in the character of the missionary in his Atala.

Life

At the age of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus, and for four years studied in Paris. He arrived in Canada in 1694 and completed his studies at Quebec where he was also instructor for five years, and where he was ordained in 1700.

Assigned to the Abenaki mission, he re-established in 1701 the mission at Medoctec. It was on the Saint John River, at Hay's Creek, and appears to have been abandoned by the Franciscans about a year earlier. In 1708 he was given charge of the Abenaki reduction at St. François. He remained in that mission for nearly half a century.

Works

Numerous manuscripts, with the mission registers, were destroyed by fire in 1759. He wrote several memorials in opposition to the claims of the English in Acadia, and sent them to the French Government, urging that the boundary between the French and English possessions should be determined by mutual agreement. To these memorials he added a map, giving the boundaries as defined by the treaty of Utrecht. His plan, however, was not accepted. These documents were preserved in the Paris archives.

An unpublished French-Abenaki dictionary came to light in the twentieth century.

(The above indented information is a direct quote from the Wikipedia.com article on Joseph Aubery.)