François Crépieul

Who was François Crépieul?

François Crépieul was a Jesuit missionary in Canada and vicar apostolic for the Montagnais Indians.

Crépieul was born in Arles, France. As a youth he studied in the Jesuit college of his native town and in that of Douai, becoming a member of the order at Tournai in 1659. He continued his studies at Lille and Douai and taught at Lille and Cambrai. In 1670 he sailed for Canada. Upon the completion of his theological studies in the College of Quebec, he was assigned in October 1671 to the Tadoussac region, where, with untiring devotion and great success he toiled among the Montagnais and Algonquin tribes for twenty-eight years. Writing to his brethren he tells them that the life of a Montagnais missionary is a tedious and prolonged martyrdom, and that his journeys and the cabins of the savages are truly schools of patience, penance, and resignation. For the benefit of his fellow missionaries Crépieul wrote a series of instructions embodying the results of his long service among the Indians, which are interesting and practical. These observations are given in the sixty-third volume of Reuben Gold Thwaites' The Jesuit Relations.