Raymond Breton

Raymond Breton OP (born September 3, 1609 in Beaune , France, † January 8, 1679 in Caen ) was a French Dominican missionary and linguist among the Caribbean natives, especially among the Garifuna ("Black Caribs" or "Callinago" in the self-name ).

Life

Breton joined the Dominican Order at the age of seventeen and was sent to the monastery of St. Jacques in Paris in 1627 to receive his classical education and study philosophy and theology. After graduating, he sailed with three friars to the French West Indies in 1635 and was one of the first Europeans to live in Guadeloupe .

Breton devoted nearly twenty years to mission in the Antilles . From 1641 to 1651 he lived on Dominica , where he lived with the Caribs. However, he moved from island to island, teaching and evangelizing the indigenous people in their own language. This also made him a specialist in the different variants of the Caribbean languages . According to Breton's own report, he also came to St. Vincent , but did not stay on the island because the Caribs had previously killed two missionaries there.

In 1654 he returned to France and prepared young priests for the duties as missionaries in the West Indies.

Works

• Petit catéchisme traduit en la langue des Caraïbes insulaires. Auxerre, 1664. ( digitized version )
• Dictionnaire caraïbe-français. French-Carib and Carib-French dictionary, Auxerre 1665. (The linguist Douglas Macrae Taylor says that it was more like Arawak . - “quite clear that the language described by Breton (in the Lesser Antilles) was Arawak, not Carib (though containing many Carib elements) ”)
• Grammaire caraïbe 1667.

At the request of the Superior General , he also wrote a history of the first five years of missionary work among the Caribs:

• Relatio Gestorum a primis Praedicatorum missionariis in insulis Americanis ditionis gallicae praesertim apud Indos indigenas quos Caribes vulgo dicunt from anno 1634 ad annum 1643 (MSS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sybille de Pury, Marcella Lewis: The language of the Callinago people: Father Breton's Dictionnaire caraïbe-français (1665) compared with Garifuna. 2001. sup-infor .
2. ↑ Gerald H. Anderson: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions 1999: 89.
3. ↑ Sybille de Pury, Marcella Lewis: The language of the Callinago people: Father Breton's Dictionnaire caraïbe-français (1665) compared with Garifuna. 2001 [1] .
4. ↑ David Wahayona Campos Reyes: The Origin and Survival of the Taino Language. 1999. Archived copy ( memento of the original from June 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Taylor 1977. 

literature

• Jacques Quétif OP, Jacques Échard OP, Script. Ord. Praed.
• "Raymond Breton". In: Charles Herbermann (ed.): Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton 1913.