Pierre Biard

Background

Pierre Biard was born in 1567 at Grenoble, France.

Education

Pierre Biard studied philosophy and theology at Avignon.

Career

Biard entered the Society of Jesus, June 5, 1583, and in 1608, while professor of theology and Hebrew at Lyons, was named by the Royal Confessor head of the Acadia Mission founded in 1603 by the Huguenot, De Monts. In spite of Calvinist opposition, two Jesuits, Biard and Massé, sailed on January 26, 1611, with the expedition financed largely by the Marquise de Guercheville, and after violent storms, graphically described in Biard's Letter, reached Port Royal on May 22. Here, with only scanty supplies, they held religious services and instructed the Indians. With difficulty they learned the language and endeavored to convey some general spiritual concepts to a people whose ideas were solely of sensible objects. By means of the material helps of the Church and by aiding the Indians in illness, Biard won their confidence.

Biard visited the French trade-posts of the St. John and the St. Croix and also the later Castine where he saw the Penobscots, "the finest assemblage of savages. " On a trip along the coast from Port Royal to Kinnibéqui to see the English fort, as he entered the Great Bay of the "very beautiful river Pentegoet" he was in grave danger of attack; yet soon he was performing a cure on a sick native.

In 1613 with La Saussaye he helped found a settlement at St. Sauveur, now Bar Harbor, which was soon plundered by the English under Samuel Argall, later governor of Virginia. The carrying off of Biard and another priestto Virginia, their escape from hanging, their forced return to witness the destruction of Port Royal, their second storm-tossed voyage with their captors, the drifting to the Azores and to Wales, and the final landing in France all make a thrilling tale. Lescarbot, the parliamentary advocate and historian, differs, however, from Biard in his account of the sacking of the settlements, and intimates that dissensions had arisen between Biard and Saint-Just, the head of the colony, which provoked Biard in resentment to tell the Governor of Virginia that colonists had captured an English vessel and were about to fortify the post with thirty cannon.

On his arrival in France, Biard was accused of having been in league with the marauders who destroyed the settlements, and set to work upon his Relation which constitutes his defense. Upon its publication he returned to his work as professor of theology; later, he served as spiritual adviser in an army campaign and, as a result of its privations, died at Avignon while resting among simple novices of the order.

Achievements

• Pierre Biard was in charge of a mission at Port-Royal in Acadia. There he was successful in catechizing the Native Americans in their own language. Biard was well-respected and recognized as having shamanistic powers after presiding over those who were ill during an Abenaki epidemic.

Religion

Pierre Biard was a member of the Jesuit Church.