Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière

Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière (; 18 March 1597 – 6 November 1659) was a French nobleman who spent his life in serving the needs of the poor. A founder of the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, he also helped to establish the French colony of Montreal. He was the founder of the Congregation of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, Religious Sisters dedicated to the care of the sick poor and has been declared venerable by the Catholic Church.

Biography He was born in La Flèche in the ancient Province of Maine on 18 March 1597, the younger son of Jérôme le Royer, first seigneur of La Dauversière, a local tax collector, and of Renée (or Marie) Oudin. His family originated in Brittany.

Royer was one of the first pupils of the Jesuit Collège at La Flèche, founded in 1604 by King Henry IV of France. There he met Father Charles Lalemant, who had entered the Society of Jesus in 1607 and was ten years his senior, and also Father Paul Le Jeune, who had entered in 1613. In addition to the philosopher René Descartes, he had as fellow-students several of the great missionaries of New France, such as François Ragueneau, Claude Quentin, Charles Du Marché, and Jacques Buteux. With them, in 1614 he heard Father Énemond Massé speak of the Acadian missions, recently abandoned as a result of the English conquest. and six persons formed The Company of Montreal . They raised between them 75,000 livres.

The Company of Montreal was founded in Paris in 1639, notably by Dauversiere, with his friend the Baron de Fancamp and the Abbé Olier. These three were men who had become part of the movement for "montreal" and who, as a result of a near mystical vision shared nearly identically but independently by Royer and Olier, had bought the rights to the Island. Chausseau relinquished his seigneural rights in 1639 to the Intendant of the Association, Jean de Lauson, who, in turn, signed it over to Royer on 7 August 1640.

The society sponsored Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance, a lay woman, to go to Ville Marie with French colonists to evangelize the Native Americans, and establish a hospital, which became the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, to care for the poor, founded by Mance in 1642.

In 1657 Mance returned to France, where she recruited three Hospitallers from a community of Hospitallers in Laval founded in 1650, Judith Moreau de Brésoles, Catherine Mace and Marie Maillet, to work at the hospital she had established. They set sail from La Rochelle for Ville-Marie on 2 July 1659. Dauversière boarded the boat before its departure to bless his spiritual daughters. A fellow traveler on that boat was Marguerite Bourgeoys, who was to play a major role in the future of the colony, founding the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal. The Hospitaller Sisters received letters patent from King Louis XIV of France authorizing them to take over the hospital and its operations two years after their arrival.

Place de la Dauversière is a space for rest and relaxation that opened in Montreal in 1997.

Death and veneration Dauversière took ill when he arrived home from La Rochelle where he had traveled to see the fulfillment of his vision. He spent four months with increasing debilitation, until his death on 6 November of that same year. His writings were approved by theologians on 27 November 1937, and his cause for canonization was eventually begun. On 6 July 2007, he was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI.

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