Background
Isidore Robot was born at Tharoiseau in Burgundy, France, of a patriarchal family which maintained the traditions of faith and piety.
Isidore Robot was born at Tharoiseau in Burgundy, France, of a patriarchal family which maintained the traditions of faith and piety.
He was threatened with consumption while in school and in the seminary, but at the age of twenty he entered the austere Benedictine Preachers of the Monastery of Pierre-Qui-Vire, in the diocese of Sens, under the founder, the Venerable Mary John Baptist Muard (1808 - 54), whose life by Abbe Brullee he later translated and published (1882). Here he completed his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood in December 1862.
He was ordained to the priesthood in December 1862. After several years in the monastery, he volunteered for the American missions on the invitation of Archbishop Napoleon Joseph Perche of New Orleans and arrived in New Orleans in 1871. Four years later he founded a monastery of the Benedictine Congregation Casinese of the Primitive Observance at Sacred Heart, Okla. The Benedictines became the first resident priests in Indian Territory, and under the indomitable Robot, who lacked no courage for the arduous and dangerous labors on the frontier, they founded the first Catholic mission among the Potawatomi Indians. Stations were soon established for the Choctaws at Atoka, MacAllister, and Caddo, while the Jesuits were assigned to the Osages. In 1876 Indian Territory was made a prefecture-apostolic under Dom Isidore, and a year later his monastery was elevated to an abbey by Pius IX. As prefect apostolic, Robot labored ten years, laying the foundations of Catholicity in the region, building a college for boys at Sacred Heart, establishing Indian agricultural and missionary schools, founding an academy for girls, and conducting annual visitations on horseback to the isolated mission stations and scattered settlers. In 1884 he took a prominent part in the deliberations in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore where he pleaded the cause of the Indian missions. A year later he was in Europe seeking recruits and further financial aid for the construction of stations and schools in the villages along the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In 1886 he resigned his duties to his successor, Ignatius Jean, O. S. B. , and retired to Dallas, Texas
A brusque and uncompromising man, Robot seems to have alienated parishioners and fellow monks alike.
He had never been married