QUENTIN, JACQUES, priest, Jesuit; b. 1572 at Abbeville; d. 18 March 1647 at Charleville. Fathers Claude and Jacques Quentin have sometimes been confused. They did not however live in Canada at the same period.
Jacques Quentin was a Master of Arts of the Collège of Douai and a priest when he entered the noviciate of the Society at Nancy in 1604. After teaching in the colleges at Bourges (1606–8) and Rouen (1608–9), he was appointed minister of the college at Eu. There he received Fathers Pierre Biard and Énemond Massé who were on their way to Acadia (1610). It lay within his province to introduce them into the various communities of the little town; it was doubtless he who made known to them the presence in the monastery of the Augustinians of the relic of St. Lawrence O’Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, which they took with them [see the bibliography for a note on O’Toole]. At the beginning of 1613 he was appointed to take charge of the new mission (Saint-Sauveur) planned by Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville, in the event that the two missionaries had died. If this had not happened, he was to return to France. He reached Acadia on 16 May. Early in July the English from Virginia, under the command of Samuel Argall, seized the French possessions. Brother Gilbert Du Thet was mortally wounded and the other Jesuits were taken prisoner. Father Quentin shared Father Biard’s fate: “We remained in captivity during nine months and a half,” wrote the latter. “We were in the ship all the time, except when we landed at Pembroke, as related. There were three months during which we daily received only about two ounces of bread, and a small quantity of salt fish, with water that was nearly always fetid.” Upon his return to France in 1614 Father Quentin was assigned to the preaching ministry, residing most of the time at Charleville. He died there 18 March 1647.
Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. JR (Thwaites) passim (the index of the Quebec edition of the Relations des Jésuites confuses Claude and Jacques Quentin) Première mission des Jésuites au Canada: lettres et documents inédits, éd. Auguste Carayon (Paris, 1864). Rochemonteix, Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle-France au XVIIe siècle, I, 83. Marquis de Saint-Pierre, “Note historique sur saint Laurent O’Toole, archévêque de Dublin, patron du fleuve Saint-Laurent,” BRH, LXII (1956), 33–36. [In this note there is much excellent material and also much that is poor. One may accept the data on St. Lawrence O’Toole; but the documents relating to the transfer and return of the relic have been copied from the originals. The great river, however, owes its name to Jacques Cartier (1535). The Archbishop of Dublin’s relic has nothing to do with the matter. l.p.]
Cite This Article
Léon Pouliot, “QUENTIN, JACQUES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed December 21, 2024, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/quentin_jacques_1E.html.
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| Permalink: | https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/quentin_jacques_1E.html |
| Author of Article: | Léon Pouliot |
| Title of Article: | QUENTIN, JACQUES |
| Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1 |
| Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
| Year of publication: | 1966 |
| Year of revision: | 1979 |
| Access Date: | December 21, 2024 |