JEANTOT (Jantot), JEAN, Brother Hospitaller of the Cross and of St Joseph, schoolmaster, superior; b. c. 1666; d. 12 Aug. 1748 in the Hôpital Général of Montreal.

Although he was not one of the founders, Jean Jeantot took part from its beginning in the work of the Hôpital Général of Montreal and in the founding of the community of the Brothers Hospitallers of the Cross and of St Joseph. From 1695 he worked in the hospital, which in fact had only received its letters patent on 15 April 1694. On 25 April 1701, at the same time as François Charon* de La Barre, the founder of the two institutions, he assumed “the habit of the Brothers Hospitallers.”

Together with François Charon, Jean Jeantot pronounced his simple vows on 17 May 1702 and his oaths of stability on 27 July 1704. A few days later, on 6 August, he was elected counsellor for a year; the next year his term of office was renewed for another year. At the end of this second term of office, in 1706, Jeantot went to Pointe-aux-Trembles on Montreal Island as a schoolmaster, for according to their founding letters patent the hospitallers were to attend to the teaching of boys. Brother Jeantot was back at the Hôpital Général in 1721 when on 16 September he was re-elected counsellor. In 1718 he had acquired 63 acres of land at Pointe-aux-Trembles, and four years later he donated it to the parish priest there so that the priest and his successors would sing four low masses each year for souls in purgatory and two for him.

On 17 April 1731 the members of the community entrusted to Brother Jeantot the office of superior, which he held until 13 July 1745, when he was replaced as a result of the strong opposition he had shown to a decision by Bishop Pontbriand [Dubreil]. The bishop had expelled Brother Pierre Martel from the community because of the bad company he kept.

During the 14 years that Jeantot was superior the community was unable to solve its financial difficulties due on the one hand to the financial commitments entered into by the founder, and on the other to the hospitallers themselves, who in 1735 were recognized to be responsible for the bad situation in which the community found itself [see Louis Turc de Castelveyre]. But these difficulties were also to be attributed to the overall economic situation, to the loss of the royal subsidies for the upkeep of schools, the economic slump of 1737–38, and the lack of new members. Jeantot worked to ensure the financing of the hospitallers’ work by selling school equipment, increasing the production of beer, and trying to draw as much revenue as possible from the “store,” from hiring out horses, and from tending animals. Despite all efforts to restore the institution’s finances the Hôpital Général, along with the community, fell into bankruptcy. The hospitallers had to give up the administration of the hospital, which was handed over to Marie-Marguerite Dufrost* de Lajemmerais on 27 Aug. 1747.

Jean Jeantot, who after 1745 held no further office, was lodged in the Hôpital Général where he had laboured selflessly almost his entire life. There he died on 12 Aug. 1748, and there he was buried the same day. Of all who were engaged in it from the start, Jeantot was the only one to witness the sad ending to François Charon’s work.

Jacques Grimard