In the Post-Tridentine World, new models of Christian sanctity were put forward, not only through wars of religion, but also through missions overseas. This was especially the case in Japan where, with the anti-Christian policies adopted by the authorities in the late 16th century, many new martyrs were born. The best known were the twenty-six martyrs of Nagasaki, who were crucified in 1597. The impact of their death on the cross was so great that they were beatified in 1627.

This panel examines the causes and the impact of this exceptionally speedy beatification, shedding new light, not only on the beatification process, but also on the development of the cult of the twenty-six martyrs and its implications, as well the reactions it caused in local contexts. In fact, in the modern period, this cult spread almost exclusively in Catholic territories. The beatification process took place mostly outside of Japan and, throughout their posthumous career, these martyrs were incorporated into a number of localized narratives, such as the worship of Felipe de Jesús in Mexico. However, the fate of the twenty-six was also discussed, and often doubted or criticized, in Protestant countries. In England, the martyrs of Japan were an inspiration for the Catholics, but the Protestants saw their cult as a proof of Catholic superstition.

This globalization of the twenty-six martyrs can, of course, be explained by the destruction of the Japanese church in the early 17th century, and the “closure” of Japan that followed. However, this panel will show the crucial importance of the strategies devised by the Roman Catholic Church, especially against Protestants, and of the rivalries between the religious orders both in the martyrs’ accession to sainthood and in their reception in the broad European context.

The Role of Crucifixion in the Beatification of the Nagasaki Martyrs

Hitomi Omata Rappo（Sophia University）

In 1597, twenty-six Christians were crucified in Japan, in the Western town of Nagasaki. While crucifying was in fact the standard way to execute criminals in 16th-century Japan, the missionaries immediately saw their deaths as a reenactment of Christ’s crucifixion. Accounts of this event had a massive impact in Europe, though some, like the French Protestant Agrippa d’Aubigné, doubted their veracity.

Following the Council of Trent (1562), the Jesuits had been conducting archeological studies of the crucifixion, as seen in the work of Justus Lipsius (1594), and this had a profound influence on the beatification of the twenty-six martyrs in 1627. Jesuit sources, such as Luís Froís, describe precisely the way the Japanese built and used their crosses and while the Jesuits, unlike the Franciscans, were at first reluctant to recognize the new martyrs, they did not completely dismiss their deaths on the cross. On the contrary, they included them, together with other crucified martyrs of Japan, in two illustrated books on the crucifixion, by Fathers Bartolomeo Ricci and Pedro Bivero (1608 and 1634).

The official proclamation goes so far as to cite the martyrs’ crucifixion as the main reason for their beatification. The cross was also a central feature of the new saints inside the Society of Jesus, as it became the defining iconographic element of the three Jesuits who were among the twenty-six. This presentation will show how the Jesuit view of the cross paved the way for and helped promote the beatification of the twenty-six.

The Worship of San Felipe de Jesús in Mexico Following the Beatification of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan

Reiko Kawata（Shiga University）

Felipe de Jesús is one of the twenty-six martyrs crucified in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1597. Largely unknown in Japan, where the martyrdom took place, and in Mexico, where he was born, Saint Felipe began to be worshipped in both countries after the arrival of the news of his beatification in Rome. My purpose here is to outline the circumstances in which the worship of San Felipe began.

The news that the twenty-six martyrs had been beatified in Rome would have reached Mexico on or about August 31, 1628. Ten years later, on August 27, 1638, after receiving permission from the King of Spain, one of the chapels in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City was dedicated to San Felipe. There were seven chapels along each side of the walls and all together only 14 chapels in the Cathedral. The fact that one of these precious spaces was dedicated to San Felipe must have played a significant role in the expansion of the worship of him as a martyr and, since 1638, the Cathedral has been the center of celebrations of San Felipe in Mexico.

The first stage of the worship of San Felipe is defined as the period between August 31, 1628 and August 27, 1638. Based on the minutes of the then existing Mexico City Council meetings, I will discuss how worship of the saint evolved during this formative period.

Protestant Polemic and the Japanese Martyrs

John Yamamoto Wilson(Sophia University, emeritus)

While the centrality of globalization is increasingly emphasized in early modern studies, European accounts of events in distant parts of the early modern world frequently need to be understood in their European context. Marcelo de Ribadeneira, in his account of the martyrdoms in Nagasaki, draws parallels with the early Christian martyrs and, as Alexander Walsham says, citing Joäao Rodrigues (St. Omer, 1630), “accounts of the ‘glorious combats’ and gruesome crucifixions of Jesuit evangelists in Japan inspired those who lived ‘in the happy danger of being partakers of the like crowns’ in England”. For both Protestants and Catholics the Christian martyrs of Japan were primarily fuel for discussion of polemical issues much closer to home.

The spat between the Franciscans and the Jesuits over the recognition of the Japanese martyrs was further grist to the Protestant mill, and the prevailing Protestant perspective of Catholics as superstitious idolaters nurtured a narrative of Catholic apostolicism among the “heathen” as merely replacing one set of superstitions and idolatries with another. Writers like Agrippa d'Aubigné and John Donne dismissed the accounts of the Japanese martyrs as idle fodder for the (Catholic) credulous.

However, while tales of miracles and the substitution of Catholic icons for “pagan” or “heathen” ones were fair game, the “torments and murders of the innocent in Japan”, as Richard Baxter put it, were less easily mocked or dismissed, and had powerful implications for the emerging recognition of the common humanity of the peoples of the world.