Lecture – Gabriel Sagard, Récollet and Author

A captivating look at missionary rivalries in New France

In the early 17th century, several missionary orders, including the Récollects and the Jesuits, coexisted in New France. Gabriel Sagard, a Récollect and author, arrived here in the 1620s, working with the Jesuits at first before his order was excluded from the missionary enterprise.

How did this little-known missionary, a witness to the beginnings of colonization, move from cautiously cooperating to making an embittered plea to defend his order? Through his writings, another facet of the missions in New France is revealed, exposing fragile alliances and underlying rivalries. An opportunity to better understand the beginnings of the missionary presence in Canada and the French colonization of this region.

Madeleine Savart

Madeleine Savart (PhD) studies the representations of languages in 17th century travel narratives. She takes a particular interest in the relationships between oral languages and written transcription, as well as the dialogues of these representations with the French linguistic imagination of the same period. She has been a lecturer at the Université de Montréal, Université Jean Monnet (France), and McGill University. Madeleine currently teaches at the college level.

This lecture is presented by the Société historique de Montréal.