390 years ago, on
August 25, 1624, five Christian heroes were executed “by slow fire” for the
crime of bringing Christ to the Japanese.
Burned at the stake in Ōmura, east of Nag-asaki, were the Jesuit Father
Miguel Carvalho, the Franciscan Fathers Luís
Sotelo and Luís Sasada, the
Dominican Father Pedro Vázquez, and Brother
Luís Baba, a Lay Franciscan Japanese
catechist who made his religious profession before his martyrdom.[i] A decade had passed since the “retired”
Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu had promulgated his ironclad Anti-Christian Edict, and
all five of the holy martyrs knew full well that a grisly death awaited anyone
caught in the act of obeying Christ, the Prince of Peace, in furthering His
Great Commission; daring the flames of death, they all obeyed nonetheless.
Padre Miguel Carvalho, the Jesuit,
had entered Japan in 1622 on a Portuguese trading-ship, disguised as a
Portuguese soldier. The three Franciscans had been arrested on their return to
Japan from an ambassadorial mission to King Philip III of Spain and the Vatican
sponsored by a Japanese daimyō, Date Masamune.
Fray Pedro Vázquez, the dauntless
Dominican, had once disguised himself as a Japanese official and gained entry
to Nagasaki’s prison, where he heard the confessions of Catholic prisoners
bound for execution.[ii]
On the day of their martyrdom they
were taken to the execution-ground with ropes around their necks, the four
priests carrying crosses. The Palme of Christian Fortitude (Douai,
1630) relates their ordeal thus:
They
arrived at the place appointed for their death, a field called Hokonohara[iii], when
giving thanks unto those who had conducted
them, … the Priests lifting on high the crosses which they bare in their hands,
they began to recite psalms with a loud voice;
when Father Carvalho, perceiving now a great multitude to be assembled, turning
unto them, you must understand, said
he, that we are Christians, and that we die of our free and voluntary
accord, for the faith of Christ our Lord.
The admirable serenity of their countenances
put their joy so clearly in view of the beholders, that amazed thereat they
said, these men seemed to go rather to some
feast or banquet, than unto death.[iv]
They were loosely tied to their
stakes in order that they might provide amusement to the crowd, flailing about
in their agonies; the loose cords would also burn away quickly, giving each
victim the chance to flee the flames and apostatize.
None did. The first to die was Brother Luís Baba, the native Japanese
catechist. Freed by the burning cords,
he ran to the stakes of his priest-companions to kneel and kiss their
hands,
then exhorting with a loud
voice the standers by to embrace the faith of Christ in which alone is true
safety and salvation, he returned
generously unto the stake again, and leaning himself unto it, without any further
tying … he endured, without ever moving
himself, the fury of those flames, until at length he rendered his invincible
soul to God.[v]
The next to die was Father Carvalho,
and then Father Luís Sasada,
another native-born Japanese who tried, like Luís Baba, to leave his stake and do reverence to the surviving
priests but could not move his feet, already burnt to cinders. The longest survivors were Fathers Luís Sotelo and Pedro Vázquez, who endured the torment of a slow, smoky fire of
straw “and other dry litter” artfully heaped in two piles about their feet to
make their deaths as lingering and torturous as possible—to the end of
effecting their apostasies. Needless to say, these two champions of Christ hung
on "3 hours in the fire, ever
immovable, consuming away in lingering slow flames; after which space of time
they ended the course of a combat so
much [the] more glorious, as it was produced longer, upon the twenty-fifth of August
1624, by order of the Governors
of Ōmura and Nagasaki."[vi]
Five glorious examples of superhuman
faith, five men to remember when asking
for prayers in Heaven.
©2014 by Luke O’Hara
See: Kirishtan.com
[i] Directorio Franciscano, Año Cristiano
Franciscano, at: http://www.franciscanos.org/agnofranciscano/m08/dia0825.html
[ii]
Boxer, C. R. The Christian Century in
Japan. Manchester: Carcanet, 1993,
p. 358.
[iii]
Hōkonohara,
now known as Hōkobaru.
[iv]
Boxer, quoted on p. 436.
[v]
Ibid, quoted on p. 437.
[vi]
Ibid, quoted on p. 437.
