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{{short description|French Jesuit missionary and biographer}}
{{more footnotes|date=May 2014}}
'''Pierre Cholenec''' (June 29, 1641 – October 30, 1723) was a French [[Jesuit]] [[missionary]] and biographer in New France. He ministered to [[First Nations in Canada|First Nations]] in present-day Canada, particularly at the village of [[Kahnawake]] south of Montreal. He served as superior of the Jesuit residence in [[Montréal]]. He is known for writing multiple biographies about [[Kateri Tekakwitha]] which contributed to her [[canonization]] in 2012 by [[Pope Benedict XVI]].

==Early life and education==
Cholenec was born in [[Saint-Pol-de-Léon]], [[Diocese]] of Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Finistère, in the west of Brittany.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Biography – CHOLENEC, PIERRE – Volume II (1701-1740) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography|url=http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cholenec_pierre_2E.html|last=Bechard|first=Henri|date=1969|website=www.biographi.ca|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-03-29}}</ref> He attended Catholic schools.

After completing his education in seminary, Cholenec entered the [[Society of Jesus]] in Paris, 8 October 1659 at the age of eighteen.<ref name=":0" /> He taught in the colleges of [[Moulins, Allier]] and [[Eu, Seine-Maritime]] from 1661 to 1670.<ref name=":1">{{cite CE1913|wstitle= Pierre Cholonec |volume= 3 |last= Spillane |first= Edward Peter |short=1}}</ref> Also during that period, he studied philosophy for three years at Collège Henri IV in [[La Flèche]].<ref name=":1" /> After four years more of [[theology]] study in Paris at [[Lycée Louis-le-Grand|Collège de Clermont]],<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Greer, Allan.|title=Mohawk saint : Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits|date=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=1-60256-515-5|location=New York|oclc=252538755}}</ref> Cholenec departed for Canada in August 1674.<ref name=":1" /> In Montreal he learned the [[Mohawk people|Mohawk]] and [[Algonquian peoples|Algonquian]] languages before starting to work with the natives.

Two years into his missionary work, Cholenec was a high ranking Jesuit as a "professed father."<ref name=":2" />

==Missionary==
[[File:Stone Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Kahnawake.jpg|thumb|The first stone Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Kahnawake 1716 (Pierre Cholenec was Superior of the Mission from 1711 to 1722), seen from the river (drawing by Captain R. Piper of the Royal Engineers, 1830)]]
From 1683 to 1688 Father Cholenec performed mission work at Lorette, a Jesuit colony now known as [[L'Ancienne-Lorette, Quebec]].<ref name=":0" /> For many years, Cholenec was stationed among the Praying [[Iroquois]] at St. Francis Xavier du Sault, a Jesuit mission village also known as [[Kahnawake]], located south of Montreal along the St. Lawrence River. This is where [[Kateri Tekakwitha]], a converted [[Mohawk people|Mohawk]] woman, came in the fall of 1677 where Cholenec was her confessor.<ref name=":2" /> She became part of a group of women in the village who were very devout and regularly practiced [[mortification of the flesh]]. The natives who practiced mortification of the flesh caused the Jesuit priests to worry. Cholenec brought European self-torture devices to Kahnawake, such as whips and iron belts, in order to regulate the rituals.<ref name=":2" /> However, some of the most devout individuals simply began using the instruments Cholenec introduced while also practicing the indigenous methods of self-torture.<ref name=":2" />

Cholenec wrote multiple letters regarding the Iroquois Mission at St. Francis Xavier du Sault, which are found in [http://moses.creighton.edu/kripke/jesuitrelations/ The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents.]

Kahnawake became a Mohawk [[Indian reserve|reserve]], as did [[Akwesasne]], founded by Mohawk families upriver on the St. Lawrence in 1745.

=== Contribution to [[Kateri Tekakwitha|Kateri Tekakwitha's]] Canonization ===
[[File:Kateri Tekakwitha - Claude Chauchetiere.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Kateri Tekakwitha completed by Father Claude Chauchetière in 1690]]

On Easter Sunday in 1677 at the age of 19, Tekakwitha was baptized as Catherine, after Saint Catherine of Siena.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last=Andrew Newman|date=2011|title=Fulfilling the Name: Catherine Tekakwitha and Marguerite Kanenstenhawi (Eunice Williams)|journal=Legacy|volume=28|issue=2|pages=232|doi=10.5250/legacy.28.2.0232|s2cid=159560852|issn=0748-4321}}</ref> Baptismal names in Christian traditions link the convert to ancestors, often the converts patron saint. The patron saint is viewed as a protector and spiritual model.<ref name=":4" />

Following the death of [[Kateri Tekakwitha]] in April 1680, another Jesuit Missionary Claude Chauchetiere, and eventually Cholenec, came to believe she was a saint. Both Cholenec and Chauchetiere wrote of many extraordinary circumstances after she died, somewhat differing in their respective accounts. An excerpt from Cholenec reads: <blockquote>“This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death, and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately (for I was praying beside her) and cried out. . . . I admit openly that the first thought that came to me was that Catherine at that moment might have entered into heaven, reflecting in her chaste body a small ray of the glory of which her soul had taken possession.”<ref name=":2" /></blockquote>There was a disagreement between Cholenec and Chauchetiere regarding the location Tekakwitha was to be buried. Chauchetiere wanted her to be buried in the church, which was only allowed for the elites of Catholic Europe. Cholenec instead allowed her to be buried in the cemetery.<ref name=":2" /> While Chauchetiere was already starting to believe Kateri was a saint, Cholenec had doubts, and considered the possibility that the things he had witnessed were of the devil.<ref name=":2" /> Not long after Tekakwitha's death, Cholenec said she was "the most fervent" and wrote about a light that surrounded her when she engaged in mortification of the flesh.<ref name=":2" /> Two weeks after Tekakwitha died, Cholenec wrote a letter describing Tekakwitha's many virtues and pious nature.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Koppedrayer|first=K.I.|date=1993|title=The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha|journal=Ethnohistory|publisher=Duke University Press|volume=40|issue=2|pages=277–306|doi=10.2307/482204|jstor=482204}}</ref> Cholenec also wrote multiple biographies (or more accurately, [[Hagiography|hagiographies]]) regarding Tekakwitha.<ref name=":3" />

Father Cholenec completed an account of her life in 1696. It was published in the ''Lettres édifiantes'' (1781) and (1839).<ref name=":2" /> A translation is given in Kip, ''Jesuit Missions'' (New York, 1846). This is an abridgment of a more extended biography, which is preserved in the archives of the Jesuits in Montreal.

Cholenec also wrote about miracles and healings that had occurred in Tekakwitha's name. One writing from Cholenec reads: "We have noticed that she usually heals the soul as well as the body of those who need such a double cure, even if they do not ask for it."<ref name=":2" />

With regards to Cholenec's biographical accounts about Tekakwitha, not only did he write of her self mortification, the extraordinary events surrounding her death, the miracles that occurred in her name, but also her decision not to marry.<ref name=":2" /> Cholenec also exalted Tekakwitha because of her virgin status, and added the subtitle of "The First Iroquois Virgin" to his 1696 account "Life of Catherine Tegakouita."<ref name=":2" />

==Later years==
Cholenec was appointed as the superior of the Jesuit residence in [[Montreal]]. He died there at the age of 82.<ref name=":0" />

== References ==
<references />

==External links==
*''[https://web.archive.org/web/20110725115715/http://www.thelifeofkateritekakwitha.net/en/pc/chapter1.html The Life of CatherineTekakwitha, First Iroquois Virgin]'' by Pierre Cholenec; text online

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cholenec, Pierre}}
[[Category:1641 births]]
[[Category:1723 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Saint-Pol-de-Léon]]
[[Category:French Roman Catholic missionaries]]
[[Category:17th-century French Jesuits]]
[[Category:Roman Catholic missionaries in Canada]]
[[Category:French biographers]]
[[Category:French male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Jesuit missionaries in New France]]

Pierre Cholenec - Revision history

imported>UrielAcosta: MOS:EUPHEMISM, said "said" as said in MOS:SAID, MOS:GEOLINK, MOS:OVERLINK, MOS:EDITORIAL ("though"),