GALLERAN, GUILLAUME, Recollet priest, visitor of the Canadian missions in 1622; b. Franconville; d. 1636 at Metz.
He made his profession with the Recollets of the province of Saint-Denis in 1599 and received the tonsure in Paris on 27 May 1600. Guardian of the monastery of La Charité-sur-Loire from 1613 to 1615, he became in 1618 the first superior of the monastery at Montereau. Then from 1619 to 1621 he was in charge of the community at Melun.
On his appointment as visitor to the missions in New France he sailed from Dieppe on 15 May 1622 with the title of provincial commissioner. During the crossing he baptized a young Indian whom the Recollet Le Baillif had taken to France the year before and who, having been seriously ill for several days, died at sea shortly afterwards. Father Galleran had orders to carry on the work of the seminary at Notre-Dame-des-Anges and to establish a noviciate at Quebec “with special power to receive into our holy habit not only Frenchmen but also the Indians of our seminary if in due course one could make them sufficiently Christian to warrant the hope of bringing them to a state of evangelical perfection.” In September he gave the Recollet habit to Pierre Langoissieux, who had for three years been teaching the Indians at Trois-Rivières. Ever since his arrival at Quebec the provincial commissioner had been carrying out his inquiry into the condition of the missions. In the fall of 1622 he sent to Father Le Baillif, the general agent for Canadian affairs at the court, a memorandum entitled “Advice on the present state and needs of the Canadian mission.”
After spending a year in Canada, Father Galleran was in 1623 again named superior of the monastery at Montereau, and in 1626 became superior at Clamecy. His strong sense of charity had often led him to assist victims of the plague; he was himself stricken and died at Metz on 17 June 1636.
ASQ, MSS, 200, Mortuologe des Recolets. Le Clercq, First establishment of the faith (Shea), I, 175, 330, 343. Sagard, Histoire du Canada (Tross), I, passim. Jouve, Les Franciscains et le Canada (1615–1629). Hugolin Lemay, “L’œuvre manuscrite ou imprimée des Récollets de la mission du Canada, (Province de Saint-Denis), 1615–1629,” RSCT, 3d ser., XXX (1936), sect.i, 115–26.