The
Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki
by
Luke O'Hara
Above a hilltop overlooking Nagasaki Bay
floats a row of men and boys in bronze, frozen eternally in attitudes of joy.
'Floats,' I say, because they seem to hang suspended in mid-air along a wall of
stone. These are the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan. Most of them have their hands
folded in prayer, and all their mouths are open in praise. Like a halo around
each martyr's head, words are inscribed behind him in bronze relief. These are
the last words each was heard to say or sing before being pierced with spears
from below; this is how Japanese crucifixions usually ended.
The
Twenty-six were crucified on this hill on the Fifth of February, 1597 because,
according to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man who then ruled Japan, they were
"foreigners ... come from the Philippines" who had "built
churches, preached their religion, and caused disorders." In point of
fact, most of the martyrs—twenty of them—were Japanese.
The
'disorders' they had caused were as follows: they had built hospitals,
orphanages and leprosaria for the poor and outcast, offered charity to the
indigent, and labored tirelessly to spread the Gospel of Christ in a land whose
people had been esteemed by Saint Francis Xavier as "the best who have yet
been discovered." As for their having "built churches,"
Hideyoshi himself had given the Franciscans a plot of land on which to build.
But
a few of the Franciscans had indeed arrived recently from the
Philippines. They had come in a crippled Spanish galleon headed for
Mexico that had been blown off course by a typhoon and had limped into Japan in
dire need of repairs. When the battered San Felipeshowed up at the
port of Urado richly laden with Chinese silks and other treasured cargo, the
local ruler contrived to tow the ship into port against the ship's pilot's
wishes—ostensibly for repairs—and in the process broke her back on a sand bar,
spilling much of her cargo into the bay. Now the San Felipe was
a shipwreck, and now, by Japanese law, her cargo was forfeit.
But
Hideyoshi himself had promised his personal protection to Spanish ships only
four years earlier. With this in mind the Spaniards sent a deputation to him to
petition for return of the confiscated cargo, but by the time they arrived, the
divvying-up of the spoils had already been decided. Now Hideyoshi had to save
face. He contrived to 'discover' a Spanish plot to take over Japan by Catholic
infiltration, and when he had produced some fishy evidence he flew into a rage
and ordered the rounding-up of the Franciscans. In the end the round-up netted
six Franciscans, three Jesuits and seventeen hapless Japanese laymen: the
youngest twelve years old, another thirteen, and the oldest sixty-four.
Hideyoshi
ordered that their ears and noses be cut off and they be paraded around the
cities of Osaka and Kyoto in carts and then marched to Nagasaki to be
crucified, a journey of perhaps eight hundred kilometers; it would take them
twenty-seven days. A sympathetic official mitigated the sentence; only their
left ears were cut off.
Along
the route, Jesuit Brother Paul Miki distinguished himself for his constant
preaching; Bishop Dom Pedro Martins called him the best preacher in Japan. The
youngest, Louis Ibaraki, traipsed along laughing, and reportedly laughed even
when they cut off his ear. Four days before the end the boy was offered his
life on condition that he renounce the Faith. His reply: "I do not want to
live on that condition, for it is not reasonable to exchange a life that has no
end for one that soon finishes."[1] When
the Twenty-six arrived at the execution-ground their crosses were there
awaiting them. Twelve-year-old Louis asked "Which one is mine?" and
then ran to embrace the one pointed out.
The
monument depicts in bronze how they died: Paul Miki, hands spread, was
preaching to the thousands of Nagasaki Christians kneeling on the hillside
below when the spears pierced his heart, and Louis's last words shout out from
the wall behind him: "Paradise! Jesus! Mary!"
Saint
Francis Xavier's praises still ring true.
(The Twenty-Six were
canonized on June 8, 1862.)
(First
published in Our Sunday Visitor.)
