PERREAULT, HYACINTHE, Recollet, eighth provincial commissioner of his order in New France; b. 1654 in France; d. 1700 in Paris.

Hyacinthe Perrault joined the Recollets of the province of Saint-Denis in 1670. When his theological studies were finished, his superiors ap-pointed him reader in theology, an office he filled until 1686. He was engaged in preaching retreats to the religious of his order when, in 1692, the council of definitors of his province appointed him provincial commissioner of the Canadian Recollets and superior of the convent of Notre-Dame-des-Anges at Quebec.

His term of office was noteworthy for the construction in the Upper Town of a new convent, of which he became the superior after the convent of Notre-Dame-des-Anges had been transferred to the bishop by a contract signed 13 Sept. 1693. Anxious to provide his religious with a suitable place for retreats, Father Hyacinthe secured, 14 Nov. 1693, the permission of the bishop and the intendant to build a hermitage, “l’hermitage St-Roch,” on the banks of the St. Charles River.

On 10 May of the next year, Bishop Saint-Vallier [La Croix*] was invited to open the first Recollet convent and church at Montreal. The ceremony, attended by Louis-Hector de Callière*, was marred by the unpleasantness of the “prayer-stool incident,” as a result of which the bishop laid first the church and later the religious themselves under interdict. Father Hyacinthe devoted himself to the settlement of this dispute, in which the Recollets were the innocent victims. The matter was not resolved until the spring of 1695. When his term expired in 1696, Father Hyacinthe went back to France and died in Paris 26 April 1700.

Frédéric Gingras