Book 3, chapter 20 How the Heretics of England Criticize the Pope for the English Seminaries He Supports, While the New Christians of Japan Thank Him for Having Done the Same in Their Land
To make clearer what we have just finished saying, to prove that what the pope is doing in aiding the exiled English Catholics and supporting the English sem- inaries is not subverting that kingdom, as Elizabeth’s edict would have it, but rather fulfilling the obligations of his office and the paternal responsibilities that he, as universal shepherd, has for the entire Church, we shall leave aside the other seminaries Gregory xiii of glorious memory founded for the benefit of so many nations. Allow me instead to include here two letters to Pope Sixtus v from two Japanese kings, in which, among other things, they thank him for his generosity toward the fathers of the Society of Jesus and the students of the seminaries of Japan. These letters will also serve to show us the difference there is between the impiety and hatred that the queen of England and her ministers harbor for the Apostolic See, and the devotion and reverence of the Christian princes of Japan. To the end that the accursed heretics might be con- founded and bewail their blindness, while the true children of the holy Church are comforted and rejoice in the Lord, offering him infinite thanks for his pro- tection and for his care in extending, augmenting, and expanding the Church to kingdoms and regions so far-off, bringing so many sheep who had wandered astray to his knowledge and love, to be joined with the others he has here, together becoming a single flock under a single shepherd, as the Lord himself said he would.1 For indeed all the servants of the Lord who are afflicted and consumed by the holy Church’s calamities and bewail its troubles and losses will find supreme solace and joy in contemplating how God has expanded our sacred faith in our own times, into so many sprawling, remote realms, and how although with one hand he wounds and lashes us, with the other he heals and comforts us, with the losses among the heretics made up and recompensed with overwhelming profit among the pagans. May he be blessed and praised
1 John 10:16.
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Transcript of a letter, written in the Japanese language, with a summa- ry in the Portuguese tongue, from Don Protasius, king of Arima,3 to the blessed memory of Pope Sixtus v, which was headed thus:
The letter of Don Protasius, king of Arima, to His Holiness, Sixtus v.
The second heading runs thus:
To the great and saintly Pope Sixtus v, who upon the earth holds the place of the king of heaven, Don Protasius, king of Arima, offers this letter with the utmost reverence.
Most holy father, supreme among all Christians, upon the sixteenth of the sixth moon, which was July 21, 1590, the father visitor of the Society of Jesus arrived with my cousin Don Miguel Chijiwa, Don Mancio, and the other companions who went to Rome in our name to place their heads beneath the feet of Your Holiness. I have received as much joy at their arrival as if I had won a thousand autumns and another ten thousand years of life. Don Miguel has recounted to me the honors and favors he has received from Your Holiness, King Don Philip, and the other Chris- tian princes of Europe. For these, my thanks to Your Holiness are so in- finite that I cannot express them with pen or paper. He has also given me the letter that Your Blessedness has deigned to write to me, in which you do me the grace to place me in honor among the other Christian monarchs. He has likewise brought the sacred splinter of the true cross upon which Christ our Redeemer died, and the sword and hat that Your
2 Though this letter was printed in Portuguese in 1593, the one that follows was not. Accord- ingly, it seems more likely that Ribadeneyra used an Italian translation produced the same year: Gasparo Spitilli, ed., Ragguaglio, 22–28. For the Portuguese version of the first letter, see Cartas do Iapam nas quaes se trata da chegada a quellas partes dos fidalgos Iapões que ca vierão, da muita Christandade que se fez no tempo da perseguição do tyrano, das guerras que ouue, & de como Quambacudono se acabou de fazer senhor absoluto dos 66. reynos que ha no Iapão, & de outras cousas tocantes ás partes da India, & ao grão Mogor (Lisbon: Em casa de Simão Lopes, 1593), 56v–58r. 3 Arima Harunobu (1567–1612), a daimyo (feudal lord) based in Shimabara in Kyushu, who was baptized as Protasius in 1579. “Arima” is actually the name of the clan the daimyo headed, rather than that of his domain. Cooper, Japanese Mission, 13.