Japan and the Japanese

74 JAPAN. A. D. 15501551.
represented by the bonzes as so miserable a vagabond as to disgust
the very vermin with which he was covered. The young king
received him very graciously ; and he preached and disputed with.
such success as greatly to alarm the bonzes, who vainly attempted
to excite a popular commotion against him as an enchanter, through
whose mouth a demon spoke, and a cannibal, who fed on dead bodies
which he dug up in the night.
Finally, after conquering, in a long dispute before the king of
Bungo, the ablest and most celebrated champion of the bonzes,* and
converting several of the order to the faith, Xavicr embarked for
Goa on the 20th of September, 1651, attended by two of his Japanese
converts. Of these one died at Goa. The other, named
Bernard, proceeded to Europe, and, after a visit to Home, returned
to Portugal, and, having entered the Society of Jesus, closed his
life at the Jesuit college of Coimbra, a foundation endowed by John
III. for the support of a hundred pupils, to be prepared as mis-
sionaries to the East.
At Amanguchi, after Xavier's departure, the bonzes, enemies of
Catholicity, were more successful. An insurrection which they
raised so alarmed the king, that he shut himself up in his palace,
set it on fire, and, having slain his only son with his own hand,
ended by cutting himself open. The missionaries, however, were
saved by an unconverted princess, who even induced certain bonzes
to shelter them ; and a brother of the king of Bungo having been
elected king of Naugato, the Catholics, not one of whom, we^ are
told, had been killed in the insurrection, were soon on a better foot-
ing than ever.
* Pinto gives a long account of this dispute, which has been substantially
adopted by Lucina, the Portuguese biographer of Xavier, whose life of the
saint was published in 1600, and who, in composing it, had the use of Pinto's
yet unpublished manuscript. Tursellini's Latin biography of Xavier was
published at Rome and Antwerp, 1596. From these was compiled the French
life by Bouhours, which our Dryden translated. Tursellini published also
four books of Xavier's epistles, translated into Latin. Eight books of new
epistles afterwards appeared. Charlevoix remarks of them " that they are
memoirs, of which it is not allowable to question the sincerity, but which
'furnish very little for history, which was not the writer's object." They are
chiefly homilies.