Saint Magdalena of Nagasaki and Martyr Priests

7 Saint Magdalena of Nagasaki and the Four Augustinian Recollect Martyr Priests1 by Pablo Panedas OAR Three hundred seventy-five years ago, on 16 October 1634, Saint Magdalena of Nagasaki perished, drowned in the torture at the pits. It is now time to remember this personality. We base our account on the pamphlet we wrote years ago Mártires del Japón. Llamas de amor vivas [Martyrs of Japan. Living Flames of Love] and on the magazine Canta y camina [Sing and Walk] nos. 7 and 8] on the occasion of her canonization on 18 October 1987. The main characters of this history of pesecution which lasted almost half a century Saint Magdalena of Nagasaki. Oil painting by David Cornejo OAR (1597-1637) are the different religious orders which raced from the Philippines, India and Macau to have the privilege of harvesting more martyrs in Japan. In some occasions, the healthy competition turned to rivalry and even degenerated into sectarianism. It even reached a point of employing means not so holy as the goal to be attained. 1 The article“Magdalena de Nagasaki, joven santa de 375 años” was downloaded from www.agustinosrecoletos.org/reportajes/ 200910/200910_ nagasaki. php?id=00, in October 2009, during the 375th anniversary of their martyrdom. The article was retrieved on 24 November 2009 and then translated for my book project on Saint Magdalene and the Martyrs of Japan. Saint Magdalena of Nagasaki and the Four Augustinian Recollect Martyr Priests 127 The zeal of the religious was great until it seemed imprudent to many. In fact, in the same manner that it turned them to the best ambassadors of their respective countries, it made them jeopardized trade relations between Spain and Portugal and Japan. That is why in some instances, the archbishop of Manila forbade the religious to go to Japan, and the governor general of the archipelago investigated and aborted the mission expeditions which were clandestinely organized in spite of the prohibitions. This phenomenon provoked emulation from all over the world, rather than fear or pity. At the outset of the 17th century, the entire Universal Church focused its sight on Japan, attentive to what was going on there, ever anxious of news. Both the letters of the missionaries and Nagasaki, Japan (marked A) the information from the Far East were earnestly devoured. And the Empire of the Rising Sun was changed into a pilgrimage mecca for many Christians from different parts of the world, whether from Spain and Portugal or from the Netherlands and Mexico. First Recollect Martyrs: Francisco de Jesús, Vicente de San Antonio The sixteenth century was one with the greatest missionary adventure of the Church. And the Augustinian Order made the leap, first, to Mexico and therefrom to the Pacific shores, to the Philippines where the missionariesd first set foot in 1565. It was the first of the five religious orders to evangelize this archipelago. The last order would arrive in 1606: the Augustinian Recollects, another branch of the same old trunk. Everyone from the first to the last group brought the same Gospel with the same missionary zeal, and underwent the exhaustion and risks of the mission among savages with identical fidelity. Soon the scattered extension of the 7,000 Philippine Islands would shrink to both Augustinan and Recollect communities. It would make them 128 Pablo Panedas OAR look far beyond the Philippine horizon, towards Japan, certainly attracted by the massive holocaust of 26 martyrs crucified in 1597. Carried away haphazardly by storms at sea, the first two Augustinians had stepped ashore on Japanese soil in 1584. But it was until 1602 when Manila superiors sent missionaries to Japan openly. It was the time when the international star of Spain had commenced to fade out. England and Holland disputed it with all kinds of tricks in their trade with the East when Ieyasu Tokugawa imposed his authority over two hundred feudal lords and consequently unified Japan. When Buddhist monks saw it was time to shake off foreign competition, the authorities gave way to their view that missionaries constituted the fifth column of the Spanish monarch. The skirmishes and encounters between Spanish and Japanese or Dutch ships became all the more frequent. In two of such combats in 1610, two Augustinians Juan Damorín and Pedro de Montejo lost their lives. In 1614, the Japanese emperor, egged on by the English and Dutch, on the one hand, and by Buddhist monks, on the other, outlawed Christianity and expelled all the missionaries. Some of them went into hiding like Hernando de Ayala who outwitted the imperial decrees. One hundred and four priests and religious—among them was Bartolomé Gutiérrez who would later return and die as martyr in 1632—were deported to Manila or Macau. Since that year, Japan was closed to Catholic missionaries who risked the danger of death if they returned and were captured. Despite that, the missionaries did not cease creeping into Japan or at least attempting to gain entry into it. They went there in merchant ships in disguise or in clandestine expeditions defrayed by their own orders. Thenceforth, the Philippine Church followed attentively the news that arrived from Japanese shores, and celebrated as its own the victories of the martyrs there and exerted effort to acquire their relics. Still, the religious orders in the Philippines tried their best to continue their charitable service to the Church in Japan by sending more missionaries, training seminarians and dispatching more workers within their meager resources. The sole Augustinian religious who remained on Japanese soil after the 1614 decree was Hernando de Ayala. They finally arrested him only in May 1617, and he was decapitated on 1 June. In August of the following year, Bartolomé Gutiérrez and Pedro Zúñiga successfully entered Japan in disguise. Zúniga was discovered very quickly, but he eluded martyrdom: he was the son of the former viceroy of Mexico and the governor of Nagasaki shipped Saint Magdalena of Nagasaki and the Four Augustinian Recollect Martyr Priests 129 him back to the Philippines. However, Zúñiga returned in June 1620, and he was imprisoned practically the whole time until he was burned alive in Nagasaki on 19 August 1622. The Augustinian Recollects also had their share of adventure in Japan. In a very modest way according to their meager personnel resources, but with great hope, strength and fruit fitting for a religious congregation that was young but full of life. The first was Francisco Terrero de Jesús, born in Villamediana, Palencia, Spain in 1590. He entered the Recollect convent of Valladolid where he professed in 1615 and three years after he was ordained as priest. The superiors sent him to Salamanca for further studies but he volunteered for the Philippine missions. He arrived in Manila in August 1620, after a journey that lasted one and a half year. The next batch—composed of twenty- The Augustinian Recollect martyrs two religious Augustinian Recollects— reached of Japan. Mosaic at San Nicolás de the Philippines in July 1622. One of the members Tolentino Parish Church, Barangay was already a priest and had sought the habit in Bahay Toro, Quezon City Mexico. He was Portuguese and bore the religious appellation of Vicente Carvalho de San Antonio. The two, Francisco and Vicente, together with four Franciscans and four Dominicans, were sent to Japan the following year. They arrived there on 20 June 1623 after a journey of two months, dubbed by Vicente as “a journey of miracles.” The subsequent historical account of the two in Japan was short but intense. The first phase lasted till November 1629—six years of very intense apostolate done in all secrecy—“like rabbits fleeing from greyhounds,” according to a picturesque image used by Francisco in one of his letters (26 May 1630). Francisco and Vicente were arrested, on the 18th and on the 25th of November 1629, respectively. At first, they were detained at Omura prison, across Nagasaki Bay, for two years. A second phase—in Francisco’s words—was that of the so-called “Hell in Arima” because of the sulphuric and caustic waters from a volcano, Mount Unzen. The phase lasted thirty-one days, in the cruelest of winter. Here the martyrs still remained firm, without retracting at all, hence, they 130 Pablo Panedas OAR were taken down to Nagasaki to be burned alive. After another nine months in jail, they suffered martyrdom in the Hill of Martyrs of Nagasaki on 3 September 1632. Martín de San Nicolás and Melchor de San Agustín To smother in an instant a great conflagration was not easy. It was not acquired by force of prohibitions, although they might stem from the governor or the archbishop of Manila. Least of all could it be when the fire was internal. The great rivers could not suppress the love (cf. Canticles 8, 7). Persecutions could only enkindle the embers and spread the flames. The sacrificial martyrs had the privilege of being chosen among many religious who yearned to go to Japan. The news coming from them that kept coming from it contributed all the more—with news of other martyrs from different parts of the world—in inflaming the angst for the mission and for martyrdom of the entire Order. Amid this ambience of plenitude and euphoria, the Augustinian Order, like all the others, should send more missionaries. Only the dearth of personnel, and mainly the great hardships in their journey to the Philippines and from there to be able to enter Japan, all that was delaying the plans and it wasted so many endeavors. Suffice it to say, for example, that between 1624 and 1632 the Philippine province of the Recollects tried to organize five expeditions.

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