boiling water over his head. The Jesuits Christophe Regnault and Paul Ragueneau provided the two accounts of the deaths of Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant. According to Regnault, they learned of the tortures and deaths from Huron refugee witnesses who had escaped from Saint-Ignace. Regnault went to see the bodies to verify the accounts, and his superior Ragueneau's account was based on his report. The main accounts of Brébeuf's death come from The Jesuit Relations. Jesuit accounts of his torture emphasize his stoic nature and acceptance, claiming that he suffered silently without complaining. Potential martyrdom was a central component of the Jesuit missionary identity. Missionaries going to Canada knew they were at risk from harsh conditions, as well as from confronting alien cultures. They expected to die in the name of God; they believed the missionary life and its risks were a chance to save converts and be saved. Relics, beatification and canonization Fathers Brébeuf and Lalement were recovered and buried together in a Sainte Marie cemetery. Brébeuf's relics later became important religious objects within Catholic New France. Historian Allan Greer notes that "his death seemed to fit the profile of a perfect martyr's end" and was preceded by what were considered religious signs pointing to correspondences with the Passion of Christ, which added to the significance of Brébeuf. On 21 March 1649, Jesuit inspectors found the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalement. In the late spring of 1649, Christophe Regnault prepared the skeletal remains of Brébeuf and Lalemant for transportation to Québec for safekeeping. Regnault boiled away the remaining flesh and reburied it in the mission church, scraped the bones and dried them in an oven, wrapped each relic in separate silk, deposited them in two small chests, and sent them to Québec. Brébeuf's family later donated his skull in a silver reliquary to the Catholic church orders in Québec. It was held by the women of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec and the Ursuline convent from 1650 until 1925, when the relics were moved to the Québec Seminary for a ceremony to celebrate Brébeuf's beatification. According to Catholic belief, these relics provide physical access to the influence of the saint of whom they are a part. In 1652 Paul Raguenau went through the Relations and pulled out material relating to the martyrs of New France. He formalized this material in a document, to be used as the foundation of