Japan and the Japanese

MARTYRDOMS. 179
Such, indeed, was the zeal for martyrdom on the part of the Japanese,
in which they were encouraged by the friars, and which the
Jesuits strove in vain to keep within some reasonable limits, as to
lead to many acts of imprudence, by which the individual was glori-
fied, but the church damnified. Henceforth the missionary letters,
which still found their way to Home, though in diminishing numbers
and with decreasing regularity, contain little but horrible accounts of
tortures and martyrdoms, mingled, indeed, with abundant exultations
over the firmness and even the jubilant spirit with which the victims
met their fate, now by crucifixion, now by the axe, and now by fire.
Infinite were the prayers, the austerities, the fasts, the penitential
exercises, to which the converts resorted in hopes to appease the
wrath of Heaven. Even infants at the breast were made to bear
their share in them, being allowed to nurse but once a day, in the
hope that God would be moved by the cries of these innocents to
grant peace to his church. But, though many miraculous things
mary of the Japanese mission from 1609 to 1G12, published during this visit
to Europe, just before his departure in 1618 (taking with him forty-four mis-
sionaries, who had volunteered to follow him to China) , he completed
four books
concerning the triumphs of the Christians in the late persecution in Japan ;
to which, while at Goa, on, his way to China, he added a fifth book, bringing
down the narrative to 1616. The whole, derived from the annual Japanese let-
ters, was printed in 1623, in a small quarto of five hundred and twenty pages,
illustrated by numerous engravingsof martyrdoms, and containing also a short
addition, bringing down the story to the years 1617 1620, and a list of Japanese
martyrs, to the number of two hundred and sixty-eight. There is also
added a list of thirty -eight houses and residences (including two colleges, one
at Arima, the other at Nagasaki), which the Jesuits had been obliged to
abandon ;
and of five Franciscan, four Dominican and two Augustinian con-
vents, from which the inmates had been driven. These works of Trigault,
published originally in Latin, were translated into French and Spanish.
Various other accounts of the same persecution appeared in Spanish, Italian
and Portuguese. A Brief Relation of the Persecution lately made against
the Catholic Christians of Japan was published at London, 1616. MCJID-
vrhile Purchas, in the successive editions of his Pilgrimage, gave an account
of the Japanese missions, which is the best and almost the only one (though
now obsolete and forgotten) in the English language. That contained in the
fourth edition (annexed as a fifth part to the Pilgnmes), and published in
1625, is the fullest. Captain Saris, according to Purchas, ascribed the per-
secution to the discovery, by the Japanese, that the Jesuits, under the cloalf
of veligien, were but merchants.