The Jesuit Revelations

With his latest book, Mark Bourrie ushers readers into a world replete with exotic rituals, social and cultural habits long extinct (or, more precisely, obliterated by sovereign European powers), and not a few mutual slaughters. Gripping stuff, grippingly told. The book’s grand sweep takes us from the arrival of Jean de Brébeuf in Canada in 1625 up to the 1984 visit of Pope John Paul II, who prayed over the Jesuit’s skull, strategically positioned at the Shrine of the Canadian Martyrs in Midland, Ontario. There are some preliminaries, such as an ultra-condensed sixteenth-century history, as well as some updates on archeological excavations at the site where Brébeuf and several companions died in 1649. In addition, Bourrie provides a glossary of nations, places, and sundry other items, including a dramatis personae of near-Tolstoyan magnitude, to help us keep track of the many players who people the text.

The competing ambitions, savvy conniving, venal exploits, and...