Japan and the Japanese

FIRST MARTYRS. 125
quer, who, as soon as they had converted a part of the inhabitants,
were followed by troops, which troops, being joined by the converts,
easily succeeded in subduing the country. This statement,
it is
said, was immediately reported to the emperor, who no sooner heard
it than he ordered guards to be placed at the doors of the Fran-
ciscan convents at Miako and Osaka, at which latter city, since the
earthquake, the emperor
also placed at the houses of the Jesuits ;
had made his residence. Guards were
but in that at Osaka there
was only one young priest with two proselytes, and in that at Miako
only the aged Father Gnecchi, who soon, through the dexterity of
some of his friends, was conveyed out of it unobserved by the guards.
There were taken in the convents of the Franciscans three priests,
a clerk and two lay brothers, one of them a Spanish Creole of Mex-
ico, the other a Portuguese creole of the East Indies. A list was
also ordered to be taken of the persons who frequented the Fran-
ciscan churches at Miako and Osaka. A great many names were
originally placed on it, but the governor of Miako, desirous to limit
as much as possible the number of victims, finally struck off all but
fifteen, who also were put under arrest.
On the 3d of January, 1597, these twenty-four prisoners were
taken to a public square in Miako, where each of them had the tip
of his left ear cut off, after which they were placed in carriages and
paraded through the streets. A similar ceremony soon after took
place in Sakai and Osaka, whence the prisoners were sent to Nagasaki
to be executed. At all the towns and cities on the way they
were made a spectacle of, as if to terrify those of the same faith.
But they exhibited, we are told, great fervor and firmness, making
many new converts and inspiring many old ones with the desire of
martyrdom. On the way their number was increased to twentysix
by the addition of two others who had greatly busied themselves
in ministering to the wants of the prisoners, and who, upon being
asked if they were Catholics, replied that they detested the gods
of Japan.
Fortunately for himself, Terezaba, the secretly-converted governor
of Nagasaki, had been ordered to Corea, his place being supplied by
a
pagan brother of his, by whom an edict was issued threatening
with death all who should embrace the foreign religion. At the same
time he intimated to the Jesuits that he should allow no Japanese