The Franciscan martyrdom of 1597 was not an unprecedented event in the young history of Japanese Christianity, as a first wave of persecutions occurred ten years earlier. But the echo it found in Asia, America and Europe, was unparalleled. This article aims to account for Franciscan success in giving worldwide publicity to what could otherwise be seen as a local event of limited consequence. The martyrdom of 1597 finds it roots in a context of tensions between Christians and Buddhists, who formed an overwhelming majority in Japan. However, the persecutions had more to do with the suppression of troubles than with theological considerations. But this political aspect is hardly apparent in Franciscan sources, which were mostly concerned with describing the martyrdom. From the start, the Franciscans were keen to actively circulate witnesses’ accounts of the martyrdom in Mexico and in Europe. What also helped the event achieve worldwide publicity was that the Franciscans blamed the Jesuits for the outbreak of persecutions. The martyrdom indeed became the object of a dispute between religious orders, but with political ramifications, as the Spanish in the Philippines supported the Franciscans while the Jesuits were closely dependent on the Portuguese in Macao.
In his account of the Franciscan missions to Asia, chronicler Marcelo de Ribadeneira lauded the “glorious martyrdom of the Cross” that six Franciscans had just suffered in Nagasaki.
This famous episode immediately received considerable attention around the Christian world, publicized as it was by the Franciscans themselves.
The first item that this article addresses is the actual causes of the event, which have not been critically examined by historians. It must be said that the Franciscan mission to Japan itself has not been submitted to much scrutiny, and even less as an object in its own right. Arriving later and in much smaller numbers, the Franciscans are often treated as a minor phenomenon whose only interest is to put the Jesuit mission into perspective. As for the events of 1597 themselves, there has been a tendency to follow either the hagiographic Franciscan account or the deeply hostile perspective of their Jesuit rivals (
As St. Augustine phrased it, “Martyrern non facit poena, sed causa” — It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr. The chroniclers were expected to address the reasons that had led the Japanese authorities to execute their brethren, providing explanations compatible with the claim to martyrdom. A difficulty was that Hideyoshi had warmly welcomed the establishment of the first Franciscans in the 1590s, even granting them a plot of land in the capital Miyako in addition to the official right to preach in the country (
First and foremost, the leader of Japan had taken previous measures against missionaries. In 1587, alarmed by the influence the Jesuits enjoyed over the converted
More importantly, and perhaps much less discernibly for the missionaries, the martyrdom of 1597 had precedents in the violent repression of another religious minority, the Ikkō. Hideyoshi’s predecessor, Oda Nobunaga, had led a brutal campaign to eradicate the radical Buddhist sect, which he understood to be inherently inimical to the centralized state he hoped to build.
Hideyoshi had been pleased with the arrival of the Franciscans, if only because he hoped to open diplomatic and commercial relations with the Spanish Philippines (
And indeed it is above all the
The Franciscan chroniclers indeed quite explicitly blame the Society of Jesus. While ultimately they hold Hideyoshi responsible, they accuse the Jesuits of having done their best to undermine their presence in Japan before scheming for the Franciscans’ arrest.
Relations between the two orders were notoriously tense in 1597, but had in fact been so ever since the first Franciscans landed in Japan, in 1584. The following year, the Jesuits started lobbying papal authorities for the enforcement of their monopoly on the Japanese mission, which was reasserted by the
The coexistence of missionary orders such as the Franciscans and the Jesuits was inherently difficult because their values, organization and methods stood completely at odds.
The chroniclers’ description of the event is geared towards the glorification of Franciscan action in Japan, against the idea that the persecutions decreed by Hideyoshi implied a rejection of their methods. “Persecution” is by the way somewhat misleading, as only missionaries were targeted, and no measures were taken against Christians in general.
Marcelo Ribadeneira provides the most detailed account of the martyrdom, from the arrest to the executions on the hills of Nagasaki. “Narrative” is probably a better word here, as the unfolding of the event is rearranged into an edifying drama, in the vein of the religious literature prevalent in 16th century Spain — in which martyrdom is a leitmotiv (
Thus acted the discalced friars of San Francisco in Japan, and for that they earned the glorious crown of martyrdom, like those of the early Church etc. And the fathers of the Society, who had different methods, the Lord did not allow them to obtain this crown; the Lord wanting to show in this that those who only go down the path of Christian sincerity are rightful etc.
The violence is exploited by way of a thorough dramatization of the martyrdom.
This intention was not so much to thrill readers as to convince them that a miracle akin to the early Church’s heydays had just taken place. Many explicit parallels with ancient Rome are found in the text: the young Japanese Church — a minority faith exposed to pagan power — is compared to the primitive Church, and the disciples of St. Francis, to the early Christian martyrs, such as St. Cyprian (
But the Franciscans went further, by presenting the martyrs as living portraits of Christ himself.
Following Thomas Aquinas’ scholastics, which asserted that the value of martyrdom lay in the imitation of Christ, the chroniclers worked as self-styled hagiographers to demonstrate the perfection of the lives and deaths of the martyrs (
This inseparably Christ-like and Franciscan triumph naturally paves the way for a vindication of the order’s methods against the policies of their Jesuit rivals. Jerónimo de Jesús indeed denounces the latter’s opposite choice of focusing on the upper tiers of society:
The company looked for the leaders, because by winning the great, they win their vassals; although by losing the Great, they lose their vassals, as experience has shown. [...] The Holy Commissar [Pedro Bautista], on the contrary, sought the poor and gave to the poor, remembering what Christ our Lord said, that his Eternal Father sent him to preach to the poor:
As a result of their dedication to the poor, the conversions obtained by the Franciscans are authentic and sincere:
The company wanted to be the largest in Japan and around the world and to obtain the conversion of Japan by way of its prudence, wealth, commerce and goods; and conversely, the holy Commissioner, as so true son of St. Francis, a follower of the highest evangelical poverty, wished to obtain the conversion of Japan but through God only, and wanted and desired to show how souls could be converted without wealth.
The references to St. Francis and to evangelical poverty are as many ways of asserting the distinctive identity of the Franciscan mission to Japan, against its Jesuit competitor. The martyrdom of 1597 appears as divine sanction of the mendicant orders’ methods. For the chroniclers, there could be no question as to the holiness of the martyrs. They wasted no time in asking the pope for their recognition - the request was made the same year — and to encourage their worship in Japan and beyond. In a very small lapse of time, the Franciscans managed to turn a local and relatively minor incident into a significant event for Christians across the world.
Some Franciscans might have hoped that the martyrdom would bring a (victorious) end to their conflict with the Jesuits. In fact, their rivalry only worsened. More, it was compounded by a new trade dispute between the Portuguese and the Spanish in the region.
The difficult coexistence of the Iberians in the Far East began with the arrival of the Spanish in the Philippines, which breached the 1529 treaty of Zaragoza. Charles V had indeed pledged to renounce any claim on the Moluccas and accepted the antemeridian of the earlier Treaty of Tordesillas as a line of demarcation (
The new Jesuit bishop, Luís Cerqueira, who succeeded Pedro Martins in 1598, proved even more combative (
But the bishop also describes how Japanese Christianity suffered in the wake of the executions. First, he denies the Franciscan chroniclers’ claim that the Jesuits, thanks to their supposed closeness to the Japanese leadership, were spared. He points out that several Jesuit churches and establishments, including the college of Amakusa, dedicating to the training of indigenous personnel, were destroyed on Hideyoshi’s orders. It was only thanks to their role as negotiators with the Portuguese in Nagasaki that they escaped a worse fate. Cerqueria also laments that the Franciscans will not learn from their mistakes, as Jeronimo de Jesús, who narrowly escaped the persecution, returned to the country a few months later, and therefore risked provoking further action from the Japanese authorities.
But the martyrdom also sent Shockwaves among the lay Portuguese and Spaniards in the region. The Portuguese were alarmed that Hidyoshi might put an end to the trade with Macau, which would be a significant blow to the finances of the
Paradoxically, in their effort to deny the authenticity of the martyrdom, Cerqueira and the Society of Jesus probably contributed to magnify the event in the region. In any event, the Franciscans themselves were determined to bring it to much wider attention.
Not only were the Franciscans quick to spread the news of the martyrdom and to ask for the beatification of the crucified missionaries, but their efforts at constructing the event as an exemplary display of holiness seem to have been well received. The martyrdom quickly attracted considerable attention across the Catholic world. Besides boosting their mission’s profile, the Franciscans were hoping to nip in the bud the Jesuit’s opposition to the beatification, and more generally, to silence for good their claim to a monopoly on Japan. A new battle for influence began, pitting the two orders against each other in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
A long and uncertain process, the recognition of sainthood was an ideal breeding ground for a protracted struggle. Rome was, since the 12th century, the only authority capable of awarding sainthood (
While the Society of Jesus could not deny the fact of the crucifixions, it refused to use the word “martyr” and denied the recognition of any miracles that could be attributed to the victims. The Jesuit stance was that the Franciscans brought Hideyoshi’s violence on themselves by refusing to behave with discretion in spite of the warning embodied by the edict of 1587. The ultimate cause of the incident thus lied with the Franciscans’ insubordination to temporal power (
The Franciscans were thus quick to assemble all the necessary evidence for the process, with the backing of the administrative and religious authorities in Manila. As early as 1597, the colony’s Franciscan commissar compiled the testimonies of some fifteen witnesses. The majority of them were residents of the Philippines, but the group included the captain of the
The martyrdom of 1597 was shrouded in considerable ambiguity, a fact the Franciscan chronicles themselves did not quite conceal. It was largely provoked by the attitude of the missionaries, which in principle should have ruled out its recognition. The Franciscan chroniclers developed literary strategies to elide their responsibilities and instead put the blame on the Society of Jesus, to the point of mitigating the responsibility of the Japanese authorities. This was part of a wider struggle, pitting the two orders against each other across three continents over the recognition of the martyrdom, the respective value of the two orders’ evangelical methods, and, ultimately, over the legitimacy of the Franciscan presence is Japan. It resulted in a clear victory for the order of St. Francis: the mission gained considerable publicity and the order as a whole benefited from the recognition obtained first from the faithful, later from the Holy See. The Jesuits’ hopes of convincing Rome and Madrid to order their rivals to leave Japan were effectively dashed. Meanwhile, the ease with which the Franciscans saw the cult of the martyrs spread in Asia testifies of the spiritual integration of the European presence across the continent. The conflict between the Franciscans and the Jesuits, however, continued. It would only be settled by the Japanese authorities in 1614, with an outright ban on Christianity that would be strictly enforced up until the 19th century.
26 men, European and Japanese alike, were executed in 1597 on the hills of Nagasaki: six Franciscans, 17 lay tertiary Franciscans and three Jesuits.
The accounts of the 1597 martyrdom are too many to be cited here. Many were written in the 19th century, as the martyrs were canonized by Pius IX in 1862. This article relies mostly on the accounts of two Franciscan who were members of the Japanese mission at the time of the persecutions and as such were key witnesses of the event: Marcelo de Ribadeneira and Jeronimo de Jesús. See
The Ikkō (Jodo Shinshu) sect was founded in 1224 by the monk Shiren. During the
The Jesuits also came into conflict with the Dominicans and the Augustines, who established themselves in Japan soon after the Franciscans, albeit in even small numbers. On the Dominicans in Japan, see
On the implication of the Jesuits in the silk trade, see
Ribadeneira himself admits to that fact, but he uses the word “persecution” nonetheless.
For his part, Ribadeneira mocks the Jesuits’ envy at the Franciscan martyrdom. See
The Jesuits effectively ruled the city from 1580 to 1587, when it passed under the control of governors appointed by Hideyoshi. See
I have yet to find missionary sources attributing a single conversion to the impression created by the martyrs.
The Jesuit mission was established in a context where central authority was yet inexistent. They had to build alliances with local
The theme of the
The mode of execution however differed from the ancient Western model in that the victims died by spearing, and not by suffocation.
Letter by Luís Cerqueira to the governor of the Philippines, written in Nagasaki, 1 October 1598, in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome [ARSI], Japsin 13 I, f. 164.
The Holy See proceeded with the canonization in 1862, which resulted in the production of more
The Franciscan testimonies dispute this: they mention a public notice explaining that the crucifixion was ordered by Hideyoshi as a punishment for preaching the law of God.
Letter by Luís Cerqueira to the provincial for the Franciscans, Nagasaki, 17 October 1601, in ARSI, Japsin 20 I, f. 109v.
Letter by Luís Cerqueira to the King, Nagasaki, 5 March 1605, in ARSI, Japsin 21, f. 6v.
This is actually a Spanish translation of a Portuguese document attributed to the bishop. I have not yet come across the original, but the discourse lent to Cerqueira is consistent with other letters at our disposal, where the bishop and his predecessor castigate the Franciscans and the martyrdom.
The martyrdom of 1597 is also depicted by a large mural which was painted in the 18th century in the cathedral of Cuernavaca (Mexico).