BREDA
r52
BREHAL
who could have escaped but rejected the offer made
to tliem and remained with their flock. The two
priests were dragged to St. Ignace, which the Iro-
quois had already captured.
On entering the village, they were met with a sliower of stones, cruelly beaten with clubs, and then tied to posts to be burned to death. Br^beuf is said to have kissed the stake to which he was l)ound. The fire was lighted under them, and their liodies slaslied with knives. Brdbeuf had scalding water poured on his head in mockerj' of baptism, a collar of red-hot tomahawk-heads placed aroiuid his neck, a red-hot iron thrust down his throat, and when he expired his heart was cut out and eaten. Through all the torture he never uttered a groan. The Iroquois withtlrew when they had finished their work. The remains of the victims were gathered up subsequently, and the head of Brebeuf is still kept as a relic at the Hotel-Dieu, Quebec. His memory is cherished in Canada more than that of all the other early missionaries. .\lthough their names appear with his in letters of gold on the grand staircase of the public build- ings, there is a vacant niche on the facjade, with his name under it, awaiting his statue. His heroic virtues, manifested in such a remarkable degree at every stage of his missionary career, his almost incomprehensible endurance of privations and suffering, and the conviction that the reason of his death was not his association with the Hurons, but hatred of Christianity, has set on foot a move- ment for his canonization as a saint and martyr. .A.n ecclesiastical court sat in 1904 for an entire year to examine his life and virtues and the cause of his death, and the result of the inquiry was for- warded to Rome.
RocHEMONTEix. Les Jesuites el la nourelle France (Paris, 1S90). H; Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days (New York, ISSS); Charlevoix. Histoire de la nouvelle France, tr. Shea (New York, 1S71): Parkman, Jesuits in North America (Boston, ISSo); Bancroft, History of the U. S. (Boston. 1853). T. J. Campbell.
Breda (Bred.\na). Diocese of, .situated in the Dutch province of Brabant and suffragan of Utrecht. The city was founded in the twelfth century and with the surrounding territory formed the Barony of Breda, an imperial fief hereditarj' in the house of Nassau to which Queen Wilhelmina belongs. This barony was formerly within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the See of Liege, but became subject to .\ntwerp when Pius IV made that city (1561) the seat of a new diocese. Breda suffered much during the political disorders of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, in consequence of which the free exercise of the Catholic religion was more or less re- stricted. The iconoclasts in their outbreak of 22 Au- gust. 1566, left some sad traces yet visible at Breda. In the years immediately following, the city and its district were alternately held by Spanish troops and by those of the States-General, though the latter were destined to be its eventual masters. It pas.sed finally into their hands 10 October. 1(537, when it surrendered to the Stadtholder, Prince Frederick Henrj'.
Tlieneeforth, as was their custom, the Dutch Pro- testants prohibited strictly the exercise of the Catho- lic religion. At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 the liarony of Breda was made directly subject to the States-General and lost thereby the last remnants of its ancient liberty. The " reformed " religion was alone allowed, and rigorous measures were used to prevent the exercise of the Catholic religion. However, as elsewhere in the Dutch provinces it was kept alive secretly by good priests whose ex- emplarj' zeal was imitated by their flocks, in whom the love of the ancient Faith was purified and inten- sified by persecution. This unhappy situation lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century. A
little earlier the Bata\'ian Republic had proclaimed
(1796) liberty of rehgious worship, and in this
Catholics saw a presage of better days. The con-
stitution of the new Kingdom of the Netherlands
(1815) guaranteed this boon more effectively.
When the Diocese of Antwerp was abolished by the Concordat of 15 July, 1801. Pius VII created by his Brief of 22 March. 1803, the Vicariate Apos- tolic of Breda and allotted to it the northern part of the former Diocese of Antwerp, then within the limits of the Batavian Republic. He also added thereto a part of the former Diocese of Ghent, situated in the province of Zeeland and known as Staats Vlaanderen. The Right Rev. Adriaan van Dongen (1803-26) was the first vicar Apostolic, and he estab- lished the diocesan (theological) seminary at Hoeven. By the terms of the Concordat, signed 17 August, 1827, between the Holy See and King William I, the Vicariate Apostolic of Breda was incorporated with the new See of Bois-le-Duc, whereby the ecclesi- astical independence of the former was seriously threatened. Indeed, this arrangement was already becoming effective when the Belgian Revolution of 1830 broke out. The final separation of Belgium from Holland (1831) now made it impossible to execute the Concordat of 1827. The ecclesiastical situation, therefore, remained unchanged, except that the vicar Apostolic of Breda was made tem- porarily administrator Apostolic. When Pius IX re-established the hierarchy in Holland by his Brief, " Ex qua die" (4 March, 1853), the Vicariate Apostolic of Breda was made one of the four suffragans of the new Archdiocese of Utrecht.
The first bishop of the new See of Breda was it- vicar Apostolic, the Right Rev. Jan van Hooydonk. Apostolic administrator since 1826, and titular Bishop of Dardania since 1842. He died in 1867 and was succeeiled first by the Right Rev. Jan van Genk who held two diocesan sjmods (1868, 1869) and died in 1874; later by the Right Rev. Hendrik van Beek, a celebrated Hellenist, who died in 1884; and then by the Right Rev. Peter Leyten. Besides the above-mentioned theological seminary at Hoeven there is a preparatory ecclesiastical seminary at Oudenbosch, known as De Ypelaar and founded in 1839. The new cathedral (1875) is dedicated to St. Barbara and is a masterpiece of the famous Dutch architect Cuypers. The finest of the churches of Breda is the superb Gothic edifice of Notre Dame, built in the fifteenth centurj'. It has long been held by the Protestant community. In it may still be seen several sepulchral monuments of the house of Orange-Nassau. According to the most recent statistics there are in the Diocese of Breda 198,(100 Cathohcs. 100 parishes, 245 priests in actual service, 23 charitable institutions, and 59 free (Catholic) schools.
Kruger, Kerkelijke geschiedenis van het bisdom van Breda ( Bergen-op-Zoom, 1875), i-iv; Albers, Geschiedenis van het hcrstcl der hierarchic in de Ncderlanden (Nimwegen, 1903-1904), i-ii; Neerlandia catholica (Utrecht, 1888).
GiSBERT BrOM.
Breeches Bible. See Editions op the Bible.
Brehal, Jeax, a French Dominican theologian of the convent of Evreux; died c. 1479. He was made Doctor of Theology at the University of Caen, 1443; Prior of St.-Jacques, Paris, 1455; and Inquisitor General of France, 1452, which office he held until 1474. At the instance of Charles VII, he was dele- gated to revise the acts and proceedings of the trial of Joan of Arc, and on 7 July, 1466, he solemnly declared her condemnation to have been iniquitous and unjust. His review of the case and his investi- gations, which are exhaustive, are given at length by the Dominican Fathers Belon and Balme in ".lean Brehal, Grand Inquisiteur de France et la r^habihtation de Jeanne d'Arc" (Paris, 1893), and
