THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF KYUSHU: A WORLD-HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE JESUIT MISSION TO JAPAN, 1549-1650 by ERIK GLOWARK A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of History and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2020 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Erik Glowark Title: The Christianization of Kyushu: A World-historical Interpretation of the Jesuit Mission to Japan, 1549-1650. This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of History by: Jeff Hanes Chairperson Andrew Goble Core Member Robert Haskett Core Member Bruce Batten Core Member Mark Unno Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2020. ii © 2020 Erik Glowark iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Erik Glowark Doctor of Philosophy Department of History June 2020 Title: The Christianization of Kyushu: A World-historical Interpretation of the Jesuit Mission to Japan, 1549-1650. This dissertation locates Japan’s place in the world-historical phenomenon of Christianization. Intended as a case study in the spread of Christianity across cultures, it uses the Japanese experience with Jesuit missionary activity to highlight the shared features of Christianization as a “connective” world-historical process over centuries. The project aims: 1. To overturn notions of Japan as an isolated society with negligible participation in world history during the premodern period, focusing specifically on its so-called “Christian Century;” and 2. To explore Japan’s place in the inherently polymorphic universe of Christianity that was extended through missionization. With this dissertation, I shed light on how the religion there and elsewhere permits us to see “connections,” across time and space, in how we think about seemingly disparate cultures such as the Japanese, the Nahuas, the ancient Romans, and medieval Germanic peoples. Moreover, it demonstrates how early modern Catholicism resonated with Japanese religious sensibilities. Employing four parts, three of which mirror the ecclesiological concept of the Communion of Saints, I show how the Japanese fully engaged Christianization on Kyushu. Part One, “The Mechanics of Christianization,” outlines for the first time how this world-historical process played out on Kyushu specifically. Its three chapters focus on three common aspects of the process of Christianization world-historically, namely “missionization,” “community,” and iv “tension.” Part Two, “The Church Militant,” examines how Christian forms of exorcism acted as a “native mode of persuasion” in a variety of premodern societies, Japan included. Japanese Christians embraced and practiced Catholic exorcism on their own, thus greatly facilitating the transplantation of the religion. Part Three, “The Church Suffering,” focuses on how the Christian living and the Christian dead constituted one community on Kyushu. Through “the praxis of purgatory,” which included penitential practices, suffrages, and indulgences, Japanese Christians cared for their own “future dead selves” and their dead family members and coreligionists in the afterlife. Part Four, “The Church Triumphant,” shows how the translation of relics was an important part of establishing sacred landscapes in both Buddhism and Christianity. On Kyushu, Japanese Christians carried relics as personal loci of sacrality in addition to those enshrined in churches. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Erik Glowark GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Louisville, Louisville DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, History, 2020, University of Oregon Master of Arts, History, 2011, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History and Humanities, 2005, University of Louisville AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Modern and Premodern Japan, World History, China, History of Christianity, Maritime History, Religious History PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Instructor, University of Oregon, 2014-2015; 2018-2020 World History II: Early Modern, Summer 2020 The Pacific War, Summer 2019 Japanese Religions, Summer 2018-2019 Piracy, Faith, and Seafaring in East Asia, Summer 2014-2015 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Thomas T. Turner Prize (2020) Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) (2015-2016), J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan vi University of Oregon Department of History Summer Research Award (2014) Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon and Jesuit Archives (ARSI), Rome World History Association (WHA) World Scholar Travel Fund 2014 Sixteenth Century Society Conference Graduate Student/Early Career Travel Grant (2013) UO Center for Asian and Pacific Studies Small Professional Grants for Graduate Students Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship Japanese (2012-2013) Japanese (2011-2012) Phi Beta Kappa of Kentuckiana Award for University of Louisville 2005 Mary Katherine Bonsteel Tachau Award for Excellence in History (UofL) 2005 Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Scholarship for History, 2001-2005 (UofL) PUBLICATIONS: “Early Christian Maritime Networks in Kyushu during the Sixteenth-Century Jesuit Mission to Japan” (Accepted for Publication by the Journal of World History (Pending Revisions) vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Though a great many people have supported me through this project and the long journey through graduate school, I owe the biggest debt to my advisor and mentor Jeff Hanes. Simply put, this dissertation would not exist without him. He has not only encouraged me every step of the way but has frequently believed more in the project than I did—namely in those abject periods of the writing process that many authors experience. My work has been “tempered” far beyond what I could have achieved alone. Jeff Hanes did not just help me reach “the Promise Land of Done” (as he has put it) but enlisted me into the Church Militant, aided me in the Church Suffering with disciplina and suffrages (for what amounted to a kalpa), and helped me to realize the Church Triumphant of graduation. One could not hope for a better advisor. Thanks goes to my other mentors as well, namely Andrew Goble, Robert Haskett, Bruce Batten, and Mark Unno. Professor Goble has always offered much encouragement, both in moral support and in his unparalleled expertise on medieval Japan. Robert Haskett has been no less influential on my work, and I have learned a great deal from his classes and comments. The astute reader should be able to discern just how much he has influenced my approach to studying Christianity in sixteenth-century Kyushu. Mark Unno was gracious enough to join my dissertation committee and to read through such a long project. I am also grateful to Stephen Shoemaker and the Department of Religious Studies for hiring me to be a GE on a number of occasions. I would like to thank Bruce Batten for two things. First, for showing me that it is possible to really push the traditional boundaries of Japanese history and more fully integrate it into world history. Second, for sponsoring me on a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship in Japan. Our regular viii meetings were always enjoyable and helped me to make sense of some of my findings. The aforementioned people have helped me greatly, but all mistakes are my own. There are others who helped me greatly in a variety of ways. Yui the Voxx!!, Rolling Pieru Guitar, and Shingo Star of the Chiba rock band ザスイスポルノmade my time in Japan much more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been—12 years after first seeing them in Ikebukuro. At Oregon, the History Department provided me with a generous summer travel award to jumpstart archival research in Lisbon and Rome. I owe much success to this reward. The UO Library has been a great resource, and I want to thank the Interlibrary Loan Department in particular for tracking down many obscure books in a variety of languages. This dissertation would have suffered greatly without them. In Louisville, I want thank my first mentors, Andrea McElderry, Blake Beattie, Karen Spierling, and Mary Ann Stenger. All four inspired me to study history and religion, and I was extremely fortunate to have them as professors as an undergraduate. And lastly, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my family. My parents, Richard and Patricia Glowark, have supported me in so many ways and in everything through all these years. They have always encouraged me to pursue my learning and talents wherever my interests led me. Without them and the education that they provided, none of this would have been possible. And I want to thank my wife Terra, for her love all these years even though it meant much time apart. I am glad that we never have to talk history because we enjoy so many real world things together. After years of spending too much time away from her and my parents, I am finally happy to put an end to this. As a way of marking completion, I will repeat the words that Alessandro Valignano wrote at the end of his Sumario: “FINIS LAUS DEO.” ix For my parents, Richard and Patricia, my wife Terra, and my friend Mike. x TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page PART ONE: THE MECHANICS OF CHRISTIANIZATION …………………….. 1 I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 2 II. MISSIONIZATION................................................................................................. 33 The Jesuit Mission as an Evangelical Partnership ................................................. 39 Christianity and “Native Modes of Persuasion” .................................................... 67 The “Serious Pacification of Many Consciences:” Modification of Orthopraxy................................................................................... 87 III. COMMUNITY....................................................................................................... 107 Communal Praxis................................................................................................... 110 Communal Self-help and Taking Care of the Living............................................. 116 Communal Time and Spaces ................................................................................. 126 IV. TENSION .............................................................................................................. 144 “Agents of Christianization”.................................................................................. 144 Persecution............................................................................................................. 183 Martyrdom, Native Saints, and the Church Triumphant........................................ 192 PART TWO: THE CHURCH MILITANT.…………………………………………...205 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHURCH MILITANT .………………………………. 206 V. WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH US? EXORCISM AS A “NATIVE MODE OF PERSUASION”...................................................................... 209 “Demonization” and Exorcism as a “Native Mode of Persuasion” in Early and Medieval Christianity ........................................................................ 215 Exorcism as a “Native Mode of Persuasion” in Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England ..................................................................................... 240 xi Chapter Page Three Early Modern Missions: Reformed England, China, and Vietnam ............. 251 VI. FOR WE ARE MANY: THE ROLE OF EXORCISM IN DEMONSTRATING THE SPIRITUAL EFFICACY OF CHRISTIANITY ON KYUSHU ......................... 259 Jesuit Predisposition to Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Asia .......................... 274 Exorcism in Japan as a Native Mode of Persuasion .............................................. 293 Japanese Christian Exorcists.................................................................................. 313 PART THREE: THE CHURCH SUFFERING.………………………………..……. 328 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHURCH SUFFERING.…………………………...… 329 VII. CARING FOR THE DEAD IN BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY................ 336 Care for the Dead in Early Buddhist India and its Role in Spreading the Religion to China....................................................................... 342 Japanese Buddhist Care for the Dead and the Importance of Merit Transfer ........ 358 Penance, Suffrages, and Care for the Dead in Premodern Christianization........... 372 Satisfaction, Penitential Practices, and Their Connection to the Dead.................. 381 VIII. THE TEACHING OF PURGATORY ON KYUSHU........................................ 400 The Earliest Teachings on Purgatory ..................................................................... 404 The Terminology of Purgatory in Catechesis on Kyushu ...................................... 418 Teaching Purgatory in Later Catechetical and Missionary Works............................ 426 IX. THE “PRAXIS OF PURGATORY” IN THE JAPANESE CHURCH ................. 433 Merit in the Catechetical and Devotional Works................................................... 448 Taking Care of the Dead in the Kyushu Church .................................................... 456 Suffrages at Funerals, All Souls’ Day on Kyushu, and Caring for the Dead in Confraternities ............................................................ 496 xii Chapter Page Merit, Fumi-e, and Martyrdom .............................................................................. 516 PART FOUR: THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT.……………………………………. 523 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT.………………………..… 524 XI. THE TRANSLATION OF RELICS AND THE CREATION OF NEW AND INDIGENOUS SACRED LANDSCAPES.............................................. 527 Early Christian Relics and the Transformation of the Pagan Landscape.................. 531 The Buddhist Precedent: The Emergence of Relics in India and the Sacralization of China ................................................................................ 550 Relics and the Sacralization of Japan as a Buddhist Realm.................................... 567 The Extension of the Christian Sacred Landscape to India........................................ 579 XII. THE TRANSLATION OF RELICS TO KYUSHU AND THE IMPORTANCE OF RELICARIOS IN CREATING A NATIVE CHRISTIAN LANDSCAPE .............................................................................................................. 601 The Translation of Christian Relics from Europe and India to Kyushu................. 606 The Distribution of Relics and Relicarios to the Laity .......................................... 631 The Problem of Relic Distribution at the Jesuit Consultations of 1580 and 1581........................................................................................................ 646 XIII. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 657 APPENDIX: CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS......................................... 668 REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................ 670 xiii PART ONE: THE MECHANICS OF CHRISTIANIZATION 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The story of Christianity in Japan begins with murder. In 1546, Anjirō of Satsuma (c.1511 - c.1551) killed a man in the port city of Kagoshima in the southernmost province of the island of Kyushu. Fearing justice, either from private retribution or the laws of the domain, Anjirō took refuge in a monastery. As was the custom of the time, monasteries 1 occasionally served as places of refuge for criminals seeking relief from secular justice. Evidently this tactic did not work, however, since Anjirō and his Japanese servant (known only to us as Joane), soon decided to flee Satsuma altogether. Fortunately for Anjirō, he had connections among the Portuguese merchants who had only recently started visiting Satsuma in Chinese junks. He had hoped one of these, his friend Alvaro Vaz, would offer him some sort of aid. Vaz could not take him out of the country at that moment—his ship was not ready to set sail—so he gave Anjirō a letter of introduction to another Portuguese merchant, a certain Dom Fernando. Moving about at night to escape detection, Anjirō encountered a different captain, Jorge Alvarez, and mistook him for Fernando. Although this was not the man he sought, Anjirō gave him the letter. Vaz’s introduction worked, and Anjirō (with Joane) boarded Alvarez’s vessel and escaped from 2 Satsuma. On the voyage to Malacca, Anjirō apparently felt remorse for having killed a man, as well as regret over some “sins which he had committed in his youth.” Alvarez, who happened to be “great friends” with the Jesuit Francis Xavier, told Anjirō about the padre. The Portuguese merchant also began telling Anjirō things about Christianity, baptism, and what it meant to be a Christian. There, on the ship, Anjirō decided to become 1 Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 47. 2 If Mendes Pinto is to be believed, Anjirō and his servants came aboard Alvarez’s ship in the nick of time as twenty-three horsemen appeared on the beach demanding Anjirō’s head. Pinto is a notorious story-teller, but there may be some accuracy in his account as he was a crewmember on Alavarez’s ship. Pinto has the horsemen threatening the Portuguese and saying: “If you take that Japanese man along with you, a thousand other heads like yours will roll.” Fernão Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto, trans. Rebecca Catz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 452-453. 2 Christian. As luck would have it, however, Anjirō just missed Xavier at Malacca. The Vicar of the city refused to give Anjirō baptism after questioning him and upon learning that he wanted to return to his “gentile wife.” So, Anjirō abandoned hope of becoming Christian and departed for Satsuma. Just within sight of Japan, however, the ship encountered a massive storm that lasted “four days and nights” (certainly a typhoon), compelling it to turn back to China. Anjirō apparently took the storm as some sort of omen since he then renewed his determination to become Christian. Back in China, he met his old friend Alvaro Vaz, who advised him to seek out Xavier once again and receive baptism. With additional travels to Malacca and Goa, Anjirō’s efforts bore fruit: he met Xavier, entered the Jesuit college of Goa (at Xavier’s suggestion), and was baptized with his servant Joane and another Japanese named Antonio (he had been “given” to Xavier as a slave). By 1549, Anjirō and his now-friend Xavier made plans to missionize Japan. Anjirō not only hoped to make his wife and family Christian, but also to convert a “large part of Japan.” Formed in Goa, the mission party comprised the three Portuguese-speaking Japanese (Anjirō, Joane, and Antonio), three Iberian Jesuits (Xavier, Cosme de Torres, and the lay brother Juan Fernández), and three “menservants” (the Malabar Indian named Amador, the Chinese named Manuel, and the Eurasian named Domingos Dias). The mission departed Goa on a Portuguese caravel on April 15 and headed for Malacca. They stopped there for a month and then boarded the junk of a Chinese captain named Avan, who Xavier nicknamed “the pirate,” for passage to Kagoshima. The party arrived in the city on August 15 1549 (the Day of the Assumption). Three years after fleeing his home for killing a man, Anjirō 3 returned to Satsuma as a missionary. So began the Jesuit mission and Japanese Christianity. 3 Anjirō tells his story in two letters. MHJ II, 38-44; 185-187. Anjirō to Ignatius, Simon Rodrigues, and the rest of the Jesuits, from Goa, Nov. 29 1548; and Anjirō to the Jesuits in India, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. It is thought that Cosme de Torres, who was Anjirō’s spiritual director at the time, helped him to write the first letter. Xavier also includes some details about Anjirō’s back story in his letters, particularly the reference to sins of his youth. He says: “This [Anjirō] came with the desire of making a confession to me, since he had told the Portuguese about certain sins which he had committed in his youth and has asked them for a cure so that God our Lord might pardon him for such grievous sins.” Xavier also confirms Anjirō’s story about the tempest off the coast of Japan. M. Joseph Costelloe, The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 177. Xavier to the Jesuits in Rome, from Cochin, Jan. 29 1548. EX I, 390-391. 3 The story of what follows usually focuses on a number of well-trodden paths concerning Jesuit missionary activity in Japan: the mutual misunderstandings between the first Jesuit missionaries and the first “converts” over the nature of the new teachings; the supposedly superficial interests that some Kyushuan daimyo had in Christianity for the purposes of trade; the so-called Jesuit “accommodative method” of missionization that is said to have stood in stark contrast to the methods of the mendicants in the New World; and the eventual rejection of Christianity as an incompatible foreign element by the Tokugawa as they sought to create an new socio-political order. While a number of recent works have begun to offer a fuller picture of the Japan mission during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as centrality of women in the apostolate, the emergence of Japanese Christianity in the period has yet to be fully contextualized world- historically. This study intervenes in the historiography of the Jesuit mission to Japan by explicitly framing it within the parameters of Christianization—a process that many different peoples engaged the world over throughout the premodern period. Key to the world-historical framework is a focus more on the “missionized” rather than the “missionizers.” The interplay between these two was a universal feature of the Christianization process across cultures, but it was always the “missionized” that directed how that process would occur and what features of Christianity would be important to the native community. This dissertation extends recent scholarship on the agency of Japanese Christians. However, it does not aim to show agency vis-à-vis the foreign Jesuit; rather it presumes Japanese agency as the primary force driving the Christianization process as it occurred on Kyushu and elsewhere. Although there is much unique about early modern Japanese Christianity, this dissertation examines the shared features of Christianization across cultures so that we can think usefully about the participation of Japanese Christians (and Japan more broadly) in world history. In doing so, we will examine the so-called “other side” of the Jesuit mission (to borrow a phrase from Duncan Ryūken Williams), such as the importance of Catholic exorcism, the popularity of indulgences, the healing power of sacramentals, and the widespread distribution of relics. Explaining these understudied topics not only illustrates the so-called “popular” or “local” elements of Japanese 4 Christianity but articulates broader patterns in the spread of the religion across cultures during the premodern period. The origins of the mission—an evangelical partnership between Anjirō of Satsuma and Francis Xavier—had humble beginnings in Kagoshima. This partnership, between native and foreign advocates of the religion would characterize the entire mission period. Though the foreign missionaries were “experts” on Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy, Japanese advocates of Christianity directed missionization in some fascinating ways: they worked as translators and co-authors of catechisms and devotional literature; they undertook the majority of the preaching; and they challenged the foreign Jesuits’ own notions of Catholic orthopraxy. Japanese Christians likewise saw appealing elements in Catholicism and guided its advocates to provide healing sacramentals, exorcism, and communal charity. Japanese Jesuits also played key roles as irmãos (or lay brothers) within the society, and the first Japanese priests were ordained in 1601. Ultimately, there would be fifteen Japanese priests, of whom seven were members of the secular clergy. Led by Japanese advocates, namely dōjuku (lay catechists) and kambō (local lay leaders), membership in the Christian community increased steadily throughout the sixteenth century. The following estimates for the numbers of Japanese Christians illustrate the rapid rate of conversion: 6,000 in 1559; 20,000 by 1569; 130,000 by 1579; 4 and perhaps as many as 300,000 by 1601. Japanese Christian communities defined themselves vis-à-vis their non-Christian neighbors in a variety of ways, such as through communal charity, displays of penitential activity, and new Christian festivals, spaces, and sounds. Some areas on Kyushu had a very high percentage of Christians, such as in Bungo and Arima. In fact, the newly founded port city of Nagasaki was almost entirely Christian in orientation if not practice. Despite this success, the beginning of the end for early modern Japanese Christianity coincided with the political reunification of the entire country under the Toyotomi and Tokugawa regimes. Christianity had found the requisite political patronage to take root during the so-called Sengoku (“Warring States”) period, but it was among the 4 Kentarō Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” in Mark R. Mullins, ed., Handbook of Christianity in Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 7. 5 daimyo of Kyushu rather than a powerful centralized overlord. As the country reunified in the 1580s, the fate of the religion would be decided by new national hegemons. Tension that was first local or regional, such as minor conflict between Christians and their non-Christian neighbors and the destruction of sacred spaces, soon transformed into widespread state-sponsored persecution. The Tokugawa, though initially tolerant of the Japanese Christian presence, became increasingly anti-Christian in the 1610s. Seeing the religion as both a pernicious religious sect and a destabilizing socio-political force, Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually expelled the missionaries (both European and Japanese) in 1614. An unremitting and intense persecution ensued. At first, executions were the norm. Crucifixions, beheadings, and burning at the stake were common. When this did not have the desired effect, the Tokugawa turned to forcing apostasy through a variety of tortures. They enacted a surveillance program that required everyone to register at a Buddhist temple (the danka system) and frequently conducted inquisitorial examinations to identify Christians. One of the most common was the so-called fumi-e test, during which a person was made to tread upon a sacred picture of either Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Many gave up Christianity. A significant number, at least 3,000, chose martyrdom. Others practiced their religion in secret, risking death for not only themselves but also their entire families. In the gonin gumi system (“five-family groups”), if any one of the five families was found to be harboring a Christian, then all five families were held responsible and faced execution. Some Japanese Christians braved these perils and practiced in secret, a group of underground Christians that historians generally refer to as Kakure Kirishitan (“hidden Christians”). Against all odds and in the face of over two hundred years of persecution, some of these Christians emerged publicly during the latter half of the nineteenth century after the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, the legalization of Christianity, and the return of Catholic missionaries. Christian missionaries would have likely found their way to Japan eventually, but the unlikely concentration of events leading up to Anjirō’s co-founding of the Jesuit mission were the historical happenstance by which the religion first entered the country. This occurred within several related historical contexts, all of which shaped the way in which Christianity made its way to Japan. As the westernmost main island of Japan, Kyushu (at Tanegashima) was the natural location where the Japanese and the Catholic 6 Portuguese would first make contact. It was also the logical place where much future trade between the two parties would take place. Independent lords (daimyo), such as the Shimazu and the Matsura, proactively sought foreign trade and welcomed the Portuguese to their harbors. Because each ruled over his own territory, Catholic missions had a greater chance of finding patronage among at least one of them. All of the Kyushuan daimyo were opportunists and sought ever greater economic and militarily advantages vis-à-vis their rivals. They hoped that strong connections with the Portuguese (via the missionaries) would enrich them through trade and allow them greater access to firearms and cannon. Above all, the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were a time of great openness for Japan. During this time, the country had many overseas connections to China, Korea, the Ryūkyūs, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Portuguese colonies in India, and all the way to Europe. Japan was more connected with the outside world than it ever had been before. It is of little wonder, then, that a second foreign but universal religion would once again make its way to Japan. And it is also of little wonder that the first place for it to arrive was the shores of Kyushu, an island that was long held to be “the gateway” 5 of Japan. The first main reason to concentrate on Kyushu as a site for the analysis of Japanese Christianity is that the island was highly receptive to foreign influences during the premodern period and had an “outward-looking perspective” towards the continent. A growing body of scholarship in both Japanese and English over the last two decades has done an admirable job of highlighting the international character of the island. These works, as a whole, have shown the following about premodern and early modern Kyushu: 1. It was oriented just as much toward East Asia as it was to the traditionally defined centers of Japanese culture and power of Kyoto, Kamakura, and Edo; 2. It boasted a relatively high number of international émigrés, particularly Chinese and Koreans; 3. It acted as a “gateway” or a “stepping stone” the ingress of cultural influences from outside 5 The term “gateway” was first used to describe Hakata by Bruce Batten. Bruce L. Batten, Gateway to Japan, Hakata in War and Peace, 500-1300 (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006). 7 6 world, especially through the port of Hakata;” and 4. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, daimyo and other lords (some of middling rank) cultivated and maintained international contacts through diplomacy and trade with East Asia and Southeast Asia. To be sure, this list is not exhaustive of the new and exciting ways in which historians of Kyushu are analyzing the “outward-looking perspective” of the island to explore additional dimensions of Japan’s engagement with the world. In Japanese-language scholarship, the work of Kage Toshio has been particularly 7 influential in exploring the liminal and international natures of the island. He has been a prolific writer in recent years, and most of his work has emphasized the outward-looking perspective of Kyushuan rulers during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In Kage’s Kyushu, one is introduced to the island as a land where international contact, travel, trade, and diplomacy were the norm. Kyushu’s rulers self-consciously created a multi- cultural environment within their own domains. Chinese culture, in particular, flourished in the many “China towns” that existed around the island (Hakata and Funai being the most important). These “Asian Sengoku daimyo,” as Kage has termed them, sponsored major overseas voyages as part of the official Ming Tally Trade with China. The most powerful among them, such as the Ōtomo, Ōuchi, and Shimazu, conducted international diplomacy and received recognition from rulers as far away as Cambodia, India (the Portuguese Viceroy), and even Europe itself (King João III and the pope). Visitors to Kyushu would have seen foreign monks, various China towns, Korean émigrés, Chinese goods such as silks and porcelains, goods from “Southern Barbarian” regions, and, if it had survived the journey, a southeast Asian elephant sent from the King of Cambodia. Other Japanese scholars have also emphasized Kyushu’s maritime links with East Asia and Southeast Asia. Tokunaga Kazunobu has highlighted Satsuma’s overseas engagements, noting that the domain had strong relations with the Ryūkyūs (which it conquered in the early seventeenth century), China, and Korea. A recent biography of Shimazu Takahisa, the daimyo who first received Christian missionaries, places his 6 Andrew Cobbing, Kyushu: Gateway to Japan, a Concise History (Folkstone: Global Orient, LTD, 2009), xiii-xiv. 7 Representative publications include: Toshio Kage, Sengoku daimyō no gaikō to toshi ryūtsū: Bungo Ōtomo-shi to Higashi Ajia sekai (Kyoto: Shinbunkaku, 2006); Toshio Kage, Ajian Sengoku Daimyō Ōtomoshi no Kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2011); and Toshio Kage, Ajia no naka no Sengoku daimyō: Saigoku no gunyū to keiei senryaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2015). 8 engagement with foreign powers in the context of the Shimazu’s consolidation of power over Satsuma Hyūga, and Ōsumi provinces. Key international ports in their territory 8 included Bonotsu, Yamakawa, and the island domain of Tanegashima. In fact, as Nakamura Tomohiro has shown, the Shimazu were prolific shipbuilders. They 9 constructed many vessels to engage in trade with both central Japan and the continent. Suda Makiko has examined the important role that the Ōuchi family, whose domains straddled western Honshu and the northern part of Kyushu, played in maintaining 10 diplomatic and trade relations with Korea during the later medieval period. Still other scholars have shown that even less powerful families sought international trade and diplomacy. Concentrating on the Kikuchi family, Hashimoto Yu ̄ has explored how this regionally powerfully family in Higo province was able to exploit its position on the Ariake Sea to establish an alternative to the great port city of Hakata for trade with 11 China. The overall impression that one gets from these works is that the ruling families of Kyushu sought to cultivate foreign contact whenever and wherever they could. English-language scholarship has also seen much interest in Kyushu’s contact with the outside world. Though not explicitly concerned with Kyushu’s role as a “gateway,” Jurgis Elisonas’s chapter “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relationship with China and Korea” in the Cambridge History of Japan did much to highlight Kyushu’s contact with the continent. Elisonas brought attention to the so-called “bafan trade” of southern Kyushu (it was a combination of smuggling and piracy) as well as the pirate “lairs” of the Matsura on Hirado. This “unofficial” trade was just as important as the “official” trade regulated by the Ming government in China. Much more recently, Bruce Batten and Andrew Cobbing have done much to reassess Kyushu’s place in Japanese history as a crossroads for trade and foreign 8 Kazuhito Niina, Shimazu Takahisa: Sengoku daimyō Shimazu-shi no tanjō (Tokyo: Ebisu Kōshō Shuppan, 2017), 149-179. 9 Tomohiro Nakamura, “Shimazushi no ryōgoku shihai to suijyō kōtsu,” Nenpō Chūseishi Kenkyū/Chūsei Kenkyūkai Henshūiinkaihen 31 (2006): 105-129; and Tomohiro Nakamura, “Sengoku-ki minami Kyushu ni okeru zōsen to Shimazu-shi: Hyūga kuni o chūshin toshite,” Historical Review of Transport and Communications 80 (2013): 52-69. 10 Makiko Suda, Chūsei nicchō kankei to Ōuchi-shi (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011). 11 Yū Hashimoto, Chūsei Nihon no kokusai kankei: Higashi Ajia tsūkōken to gishi mondai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2005). 9 relations. Batten’s 2003 book, Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War and Peace, 500-1300, explores the international vicissitudes of northern Kyushu’s most important port city throughout the premodern period. Focusing on such topics as piracy, trade, and diplomacy, Batten’s goal is to “show why Hakata and its history are relevant, not just to our understanding of Japanese society but also to the broader theme of globalization.” Describing medieval Hakata as “forward looking,” he takes readers on a virtual tour of the city and shows us everything international that it had to offer: anchors of Chinese merchant vessels (junks), excavations of karamono (Chinese goods, including porcelain) from the “original Hakata ‘China town,’” Japan’s first Zen temple at Shōfukuji, and the cosmopolitan Oki-no-hama district where Christian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean artifacts have been found. During the so-called sakoku (“closed country”) period under the Tokugawa, Hakata may have “lost its international character” until the modern period, but shows us that Japan, over its long history, has hardly been the “naturally 12 insular” country that many historians have described. Though Batten’s work focuses on the important port city of Hakata, his term for the city, “the gateway to Japan,” serves well to describe the entire island of Kyushu. Andrew Cobbing, in Kyushu: Gateway to Japan, a Concise History, extends the international dynamism of Hakata to all of Kyushu over the course of its entire history. Cobbing’s work offers a fresh perspective on the course of Japanese history, one that looks at Japan from a southern and transnational perspective. Key to this perspective is liminality, whereby Kyushu sat betwixt and between two very different cultural zones: on the west and north to the continent and on the east “abroad” to the Japanese islands of Shikoku and Honshu. That Cobbing’s book has failed to gain much attention is baffling—and, in my view, revealing of the power that the Honshu-centric approach to Japanese history continues to hold. While regional studies of Hakata, Nagasaki, and Satsuma have brought greater exposure to Kyushu, English-language scholarship on the 13 island, continues to lag behind the Japanese language historiography. Indeed, Cobbing’s edited volume Hakata has likewise received little attention, though its authors explore 12 Batten, Gateway to Japan, xiii, 124-140. 13 Cobbing, Kyushu, xiii-xxiii. Cobbing offers a good historiographical overview of the island. 10 many international dimensions of the city, such as “Zen in Northern Kyushu,” the prevalence of an “Asian” identity in modern Fukuoka (Hakata), and the city as a “hub of 14 international trade.” More specialized studies on particular aspects of the history of Kyushu have been published in recent years. For example, Allan Grappard has examined the religious and spatial history of shugendo sites on Kyushu, namely Usa, Hiko, and Kunisaki, and Derek Massarella has explored in detail the hapless English “factory” (trading outpost) on the island of Hirado in the seventeenth century. Where Christian Kyushu is concerned, Reinier Hesselink has written the first detailed history in English on the founding of Nagasaki as a “Christian city.” Unfortunately for us the book lacks a central thesis and consists mainly of loosely connected vignettes. Nevertheless, Hesselink’s work shows us just how much cultural, mercantile, and religious mixing was going on in the 15 northwestern corner of Kyushu during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In short, as the efforts of previous scholars have made clear, Kyushu offers us an excellent vantage point from which to examine Japan’s place in world history. In the premodern period, it had an extremely long and fruitful engagement with the rest of East Asia as a “gateway.” Many foreigners, foreign goods, and foreign influences passed through it to other parts of Japan. The obverse is true as well, since many Japanese going to the continent frequently stopped there. In building upon the work of these Kyushu- focused scholars, this dissertation extends the designation “gateway” in one other sense, namely that Kyushu was a “gateway” for Japan’s participation in the world-historical phenomenon of Christianization. Before proceeding further, we must articulate what world history is and what it is not as a research field (as opposed to a teaching field). First, it is not about presenting the history of the world, nor is it meant to be comprehensive. It does not have to be “global,” nor always focused on “globalization.” A good functioning definition of world history is offered by Patrick Manning: “…[world history] is the story of past connections in the 14 Andrew Cobbing, ed., Hakata: The Cultural Worlds of Northern Kyushu (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 15 Reinier H. Hesselink, The Dream of Christian Nagasaki: World Trade and the Clash of Culture, 1560- 1640 (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2016). 11 16 human community.” Though this does include actual connections, such as trade networks, missionaries, warfare, and migrations, I think the more important consideration in Manning’s “connections” is how we think about seemingly disparate places, people, societies, and events. In this view, a world-historical approach is primarily about breaking down traditionally circumscribed areas of study and viewing them from a different and frequently larger perspective. As Eric Vanhaute describes this kind of world-historical perspective: World history looks at diverse forms of human society that have developed over time, but does not view them on their own. World history is a translocal, transregional and transnational history. The world is the context and stage…World history always places humankind’s journey within the worldwide arena. This results in meta-stories, stories about the history of human beings and the human race that are embedded in local and regional experiences and that look 17 for wider correlations, patterns, connections, and systems. This dissertation takes such an approach, though it concentrates explicitly on Kyushu. Its entire methodology is influenced by the larger world stage of how Christianity spread across different cultures. Its case studies are also influenced by regional developments in East Asia, such as the spread of Buddhist relics from India to Japan. Essentially, the goal of this study is to examine the Jesuit mission on Kyushu—a topic whose analysis has traditionally been circumscribed by time and place to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japan—and to explore it from the wider perspective of Christianization as a world- historical process. Over the last two decades, a number of English-language scholars have sought to place Japan within the wider context of world history, either through actual connections (such as trade systems), experiences (modernity), or environmental history. Bruce Batten, in To the Ends of Japan (2003), has argued for a Japan framed within the “big picture.” His work examines the limits of a “Japan” seen through the analytical lenses of 16 Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 15. 17 Eric Vanhaute, World History: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2013), 10. Vanhaute also offers this definition for world history: “The most accepted definition of world history or global history is that it studies the origin of, growth in and changes to human communities in a comparative perspective and within their mutual connections. Key words include communities, comparisons, connections and systems. Human communities that have shaped the world over time are central rather than the world itself. World history studies those communities in a dual manner: (1) in a comparative perspective to detect patterns, similarities and differences; and (2) in their interaction via contacts, connections and influence.” 12 boundaries, borders, and frontiers, asking us instead to pose big questions, such as “What is Japan?” and “how does it fit within the larger world?” To do so himself, Batten uses concepts developed outside the field of Japanese history, drawing specifically from theories on “frontiers” and “borderlands” used in U.S. history and the history of the Roman Empire in late antiquity. As well, Batten applies “world systems theories,” namely that of Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall, to analyze Japan’s foreign 18 engagements. But the most important aspect of Batten’s work, I think, is that it seeks to bring Japan into greater conversation with the field of world history for the premodern period. Japan has already been well-acknowledged as a participant in the East Asia regional sphere, particularly with its maritime contacts. Batten’s work takes us one step further, helping us to reframe how we think about Japan world-historically rather than 19 just regionally. A more recent work that places Japan within an emerging global system of trade is Geoffrey Gunn’s World Trade Systems of the East and West: Nagasaki and the Asian Bullion Trade Networks. Gunn seeks “to place Nagasaki and pre-modern Japan firmly within a broader world regional framing that does not erect artificial boundaries, academic or otherwise, between interacting maritime (Southeast Asian) and continental (East Asian) traditions and areas.” Even though Gunn integrates Nagasaki into “interdependencies of exchanges mediated across vast space and cultures,” the book is a relatively conventional world-historical take on the movement of goods and trade 20 systems with an ultimate eye towards globalization. Nevertheless, Gunn’s work signifies a greater emphasis on asking the question: “What was Japan’s role in world history in the premodern period?” 18 Bruce L. Batten, To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003), 5-12; 125-142. 19 For example, the conference publication Tools of Culture admirably extends Japanese history to the seas and “firmly [embeds] premodern Japanese history in eastern Asia.” This is to some extent world-historical in framing (this is not meant to be a criticism) but its focus is fairly circumscribed. Andrew Edmund Goble, Kenneth R. Robinson, and Haruko Wakabayashi, eds., Tools of Culture: Japan’s Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000s-1500s (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2009), 3. 20 Geoffrey C. Gunn, World Trade Systems of the East and West: Nagasaki and the Asian Bullion Trade Networks (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 2-3; 244. 13 Thinking about “Japan in world history” is much more common for the modern period. William Tsutsui, in the Japan volume for the Blackwell Companions to World History, sums up Japan’s continuing integration into world history: Only relatively recently have Western scholars begun actively to conceive of Japan as part of the greater flow of world history, as a site for exploring global phenomena like modernization, imperialism, and environmental change, rather than as an inscrutable enigma, an eternal latecomer, or a culturally exceptional odd nation out. If this trend continues, and if the field remains as lively and contentious as it has over the past quarter-century, then Japanese history may yet 21 prove a trend-setting “paradigm generator” for the discipline. Histories of modern Japan are naturally more open to this approach since there were simply so many more points of contact. Social and economic histories of Japan and its struggles with modernity have been a common field for global and world-historical analysis. As Mark Jones and Steven Ericson have noted, “[the stories of English-language historians of prewar Japan] are filled with global comparisons and contrasts, as they try to understand Japan’s social transformation as an instance of the modern, one that was not an example of Western influence and Japanese imitation but a story of comparisons and 22 commonalities in modern social experience within and across national borders.” A good weathervane for Japan’s integration into world history is the appearance of Japan-focused textbooks and surveys. Over the last two decades, there has been a more conscious effort to frame Japan’s history within the global context. One relatively recent survey, part of The New Oxford World History series, is James L. Huffman’s Japan in World History (2009). The series is meant “to present local histories in a global context and gives an overview of world events seen through the eyes of ordinary people. This 23 combination of the local and the global further defines the new world history.” The text 21 William M. Tsutsui, ed., A Companion to Japanese History (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 4. A very early call for Japan’s inclusion in the field of world history (which did not exist as we know it) came from George Sansom: “I am pleading for the study of Japanese history not as an end in itself, not as a mere record of events occurring in isolation, but as an integral and important part of world history.” George Sansom, Japan in World History (New York: international Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1951; reprint, New York: Routledge, 2011), 6. Samson meant that Japan should be studied as an important counter to Eurocentric perspectives common in the first half of the twentieth century. 22 Mark Jones and Steven Ericson, “Social and Economic Change in Prewar Japan,” in Tsutsui, Companion, 172-173. 23 James L. Huffman, Japan in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), x. 14 itself is far too short to fully take advantage of its title, but Huffman does highlight Japan’s interactions with the foreign at every opportunity. L.M. Cullen’s A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds (2003) takes a novel approach to this challenge, reframing the story of modern Japan as one in which interaction with the 24 outside world were just as important as internal developments. More recently, Brett Walker’s textbook, Japan: A Concise History (2015), seeks to bring Japan into greater conversation with environmental world history. In particular, Walker seeks to undermine the myth that Japan had some sort of uniquely harmonized relationship with the 25 environment unlike all the other modern nations that exploited and controlled it. Though not a textbook, nor a survey of Japanese history, Mark Ravina’s To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History (2017) offers a broad perspective on one of the most significant periods of modern Japanese history. Focusing on Japan’s transformation into a modern power, the study is explicitly world- historical in its thinking and reframes the Meiji Restoration in three “big picture” contexts: 1. “locally and diachronically;” 2. “globally and synchronically;” and 3. “asynchronically.” Taken together, these three contexts help us to weave together the ancient and modern and the local and global. As Ravina states, “Ancient and imperial policies [vis-à-vis continent] such as the creation of national taxation and a national army, gave Meiji leaders ancient precedents for modernizing reforms. In the context of modern 26 globalization, the process of ancient globalization felt immediate and vital.” This is a novel approach that transcends the traditional historical and temporal boundaries of the Meiji Restoration. Despite focusing on a particular time and place, Ravina suggests how Japanese participation in world history in the past affected Japanese participation in world history in the nineteenth century. The present work resonates with the world-historical perspective of those mentioned above by framing Japan’s experience with the Jesuit mission as part of a larger world-historical phenomenon. In approaching the subject of Japanese Christianization in 24 L.M. Cullen, A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 25 Brett L. Walker, A Concise History of Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 5-7. 26 Mark Ravina, To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 16. 15 this way, I propose to look beyond the obvious world-historical connections of contact with Europeans, international trade in the nascent global economy, and even the “accommodation” of missionaries to native customs and cultures. In order to identify the broad patterns of Christianization—and especially the ways in which the religion confronted new cultures—I have been compelled to venture beyond the traditional boundaries of the Jesuit mission to Japan to such seemingly distant times and places as the Roman Empire, Anglo-Saxon England, and Colonial Mexico. What this wider study reveals, as I see it, is yet one more world stage on which Japan has participated. Before examining Christianization as a concept, we must first establish how significant a presence the Japanese Christian community had on the island of Kyushu. To this end, we need to look at the estimated number of Christians, the estimated total population of Kyushu, and the estimated percentage of Christians in Kyushu’s entire population. A quick tally reveals, first of all, that what has commonly been called “Japanese Christianity” might more accurately be identified as a regional phenomenon particular to Kyushu. Estimates of the number of Christians in Japan during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries vary widely. Some scholars have put the number at around 300,000, while others have suggested, astonishingly, that the number might have reached 700,000. Others put the total number of Christians during the entire eighty-year period from 1549 to 1630 at 760,000. Lower estimates have tended to be endorsed by historians from the U.S. or Europe, particularly those writing in the latter half of the twentieth 27 century. C.R. Boxer put the total at just under 300,000 for the year 1614, and George Elison (Jurgis Elisonas) notes that “300,000 appears as a reasonable rough estimate for 28 the peak, the first decade of the seventeenth century.” Oliveira e Costa, using numbers 29 from Valignano, likewise puts the number at 300,000 for the year 1600. The higher 27 Boxer also states: “In 1606, the Jesuits could claim a Christian community of about 750,000 believers, with an average annual increase of five or six thousand, and Nagasaki could vie with Manila and Macao for the title of the ‘Rome of the Far East.’” C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 187; 230; 321; 360. 28 George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 397, note 16. 29 João Paulo A. Oliveira e Costa, “O Cristianismo no Japão e o Episcopado de De. Luís Cerqueira” (Ph.d. diss., Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1998), 99-100. 16 estimates of Christian numbers have tended to come from Japanese scholars. Gonoi Takashi has estimated that the number of Japanese Christians in the year 1614 was 370,000. He has also calculated that the number of baptisms for the whole eighty-year 30 period amounted to 760,000—a number that subsequent scholars have frequently cited. Miyazaki Kentarō, in the Handbook of Christianity in Japan, places the numbers at 31 300,000 for 1601 and 760,000 for the eighty years leading up to 1630s. Some scholars do not specify whether the larger numbers represent the number of converts at the height of the mission or the number of converts for the entire eighty-year period. Haruko Nawata Ward, using a variety of statistics, states that “in 1612 the numbers of Kirishitans under Jesuit care rose to 600,000.” She also notes that Satoru Obara, the former director of the Kirishitan Bunko at Sophia University, puts the number at 700,000 out of a 32 national population of 18 million. Andrew Ross describes the community as 33 “approaching half a million people.” These higher numbers have started to make their way into other, related scholarship that deals with the Tokugawa or Bakumatsu period (the periodization for the end of the Tokugawa regime). A recent study of foreign relations in the Edo period by Ōishi Manabu placed the number at 700,000. Using Ōishi’s numbers, Mark Ravina points out that there were 150,000 Japanese Christians by the early 1580s and that in 1600 the number of converts possibly reached as high as 34 700,000. Besides making their way into histories that only tangentially deal with 30 Takashi Gonoi, Nihon Kirisutokyōshi (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan,1990), 11-12. Also, Takashi Gonoi, Tokugawa shoki Kirishitanshi kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1983), 130. 31 Mullins, Handbook, 7. 32 But in the very next sentence she states, “The total numbers of Kirishitans were about 400,000 in 1614 under the care of 140 Jesuits, 26 Franciscans, 9 Dominicans and 4 Augustinians.” Haruko Nawata Ward, Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549-1650 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 6-7, notes 15-16. Ward cites Obara’s work, Satoru Obara, Acceptance, Rejection and Transformation: Christianity and the Historical Climate of Japan (Tokyo: Kirishitan Bunko, Sophia University, 1994), 49- 50. However, this source is difficult to obtain, and I have not been able to consult Obara’s work. 33 Andrew Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742 (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994), 115-116. 34 Ravina, Nations, 24. 17 Japanese Christianity, these higher numbers have also been used in works that aim to 35 highlight the global missions of the Catholic Reformation and the early modern periods. Of greater concern to this study than the total estimated numbers of Japanese Christians is the percentage of Christians out of the total population of Japan at the time, circa 1600. Scholars have produced ranges for the percentages of Christians within the entire country. Elison suggests that Christians only amounted to 1% out of a population of 20-25 million—a figure, we should note, that conveniently helps further his thesis that Christianity had little impact on Japan other than being the cause for the so-called Sakoku 36 or “closed country” policy. Gonoi, for his part, puts the percentage of Christians at 37 1.5% out of a total population of 25 million, and Obara’s estimates put the percentage at 3.88% out of a population of 18 million. Miyazaki Kentarō, though only implying the percentage, puts it at roughly 6%, “equivalent to approximately ten times the percentage 38 of Catholics in present-day Japan.” Finally, Ravina, estimating that the number of Christians reached 760,000, notes that the Christian population stood at 5.83% in a total 39 population of 12 million. Going simply by these percentages, it would seem that Christianity represented a very small minority for the country as a whole in 1600. But what if we were to limit our purview to Kyushu alone rather than whole of Japan? Surprisingly scholars have not estimated what percentage of the population was Christian for Kyushu (including western Honshu, namely Suō and Nagato provinces, where there was also a significant Christian population) around the year 1600. This is puzzling since Kyushu has long been acknowledged as a stronghold for Japanese Christianity, while most other parts of the 35 In her essay, “Translating Christian martyrdom in Buddhist Japan in the early modern Jesuit mission,” Ward states: “The Jesuit mission continued to grow despite several Kirishitan martyrdoms. By 1612, when the Kirishitan population had risen to 600,000, the Second Shogun Hidetada (1605-1623) reissued the ban of Christianity and began systematic arrests, inquisitions, expulsions, and executions of missionaries and Kirishitans.” In Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Global Reformations: Transforming Early Modern Religions, Societies, and Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2019). 36 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 397, note 16. Elison uses the very high population figures of between 20-25 million that was current at the time of his writing. 37 Gonoi, Tokugawa, 130. 38 Mullins, Handbook, 7. 39 Ravina, Nations, 223, note 16. 18 country remained untouched by the religion. This oversight is the result of two factors: 1. Not factoring population estimates for Kyushu and western Honshu alone; and 2: Thinking about the importance of Christianity nationally rather than regionally. As I will demonstrate with estimates below, the percentage of the Christian population on Kyushu was much higher than the aforementioned percentages for the entire country. Obviously, a higher percentage means that the religion had a bigger impact on the entire population of Kyushu (Christian and non-Christian). First we must come to some kind of rough consensus about the overall population of Japan. Like estimates for the number of Christians, estimates for the population of Japan at c.1600 have varied widely. Older estimates tended to be on the higher end. Demographic data for premodern Japan is, of course, very incomplete, and precise figures will never be known with certainty. Therefore, we can only treat population totals as best-guess estimates. Two recent estimates will be used in our calculations. The first is based upon the scholarship of Kitō Hiroshi, who placed the population of the entire 40 country in 1600 at 12,273,000. More recently, William Wayne Farris has estimated that 41 the population was between 15 and 17 million by 1600. The next step is to establish an estimate for the population of Kyushu (including the western Honshu provinces of Nagato and Suō). According to Kitō Hiroshi, who has broken down his population estimates for the entire country (12,273,000) by province, 42 the entire population for Kyushu (including Nagato and Suō) was 1,472,700. However, if the population for the entire country was higher, as Farris has argued, then it stands to reason that the population for Kyushu and the western tip of Honshu was also higher. 40 Hiroshi Kitō, Jinkō kara yomu Nihon no rekishi (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000), 16-17.Akira Hayami hypothesized that at the beginning of the Tokugawa, the population was less than 10 million. Akira Hayami “The Population at the Beginning of the Tokugawa Period: An Introduction to the Historical Demography of Pre-industrial Japan” in Keio Economic Studies, Vol. 4 (Tokyo: Keio Economic Society, Keio University, 1967), 28. 41 William Wayne Farris, Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006), 7. See his introduction for an overview of premodern demographics scholarship. Also, William Wayne Farris, Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), 171-175. 42 For Kyushu proper the estimated population is 1,266,100. Northern Kyushu was 797,500 and southern Kyushu was 468,600. We add the estimate for Nagato (90,800) and Suō (115,800) to that total to arrive at our estimate of 1,472,700 for the area under study. Hiroshi Kitō “Meiji izen Nihon no chiiki jinkō” Jōchi Keizai Ronshu 41, Issue 1-2, (1996): 74-75. 19 Extrapolating from both Farris’s population for the whole country and Kitō’s estimates 43 for Kyushu, we can get a maximum estimate for the island at 2,039,916. Therefore, an estimated population for Kyushu (as we define it to include Nagato and Suō) at the year 1600 probably ranged between 1,472,700 and 2,039,916. Using the above demographic data, my estimates for the percentage of Christians 44 out of Kyushu’s total population range from 13.1% to 43.43% (certainly too high). This latter percentage reveals that the estimate of 700,000 converts or higher at any one point in time is almost certainly too high. Moreover, if we were to eliminate the southern provinces of Satsuma and Ōsumi, where the numbers of Christians was always lower, the percentage for northern Kyushu would be higher still. Again, my estimated percentages (13.1% to 43.43%) are not meant to be hard facts. Rather, they are meant simply to call attention to one fact in particular: that the percentage of Christians on Kyushu was much higher than the percentage of Christians for the entire country. Our lowest estimate (13.1%) simply indicates that a significant minority of the population on the island was Christian around the year 1600. This is a far cry from the mere 1% that other scholars have stated for the national perspective. Moreover, my estimates do not reflect the percentage of the population that was affected by Christianity to some degree or another. This is an unknowable figure, but a significant number of non-Christians interacted with the Japanese Christian community. These 43 Farris’s highest estimate for the total population of Japan at 1600 is 1.385154 times higher (or 38.5154% higher) than Kitō’s population total. Therefore, we need to add 38.85154% to Kitō’s estimate for Kyushu. 44 In order to arrive at the estimated population of Christians at their highest for Kyushu, I have subtracted the 13,000 converts claimed by the Franciscans. They mostly worked at various locations on Honshu, including Edo and Mutsu. This leaves us with a number of between, 287,000 and 687,000. The next step is to determine the percentage of these Christians on Kyushu versus the percentage in the capital. Christians in the capital only accounted for 6.9% of all Christians in 1592 (15,000 out of a total of 217,500). I then subtracted 6.9% from the totals of 287,000 and 687,000 respectively to account for these non-Kyushu Christians. I then divided these totals by the population totals based upon Kitō and the extrapolation made from Kitō and Farris. Both Gonoi and Schütte are using the Catalog from Jap-Sin 25, 21-26v. The printed text can be found in MHJ, 285-300. Schütte seems to have inadvertently left out 10,000 in his recording of this manuscript. Gonoi gives the following totals based upon the “Rol das Casas & Residências que tem a Companhia na Viceprovíncia de Japão” for Nov. 10 1592: Bungo, Buzen, Yamaguchi: 22,000 Arima: 68,000 Ōmura: 40,000 Nagasaki: 30,000 Amakusa and Higo: 35,000 (Schütte seems to have neglected 10,000 in his total for Amakusa and Higo) Hirado, Gotō Islands, Chikugo, Chikuzen: 7,500 Total: 217,500 (or 207,500 according to Schütte). 20 included non-Christian family members, neighbors, Buddhist monks, and warriors. These also included people who resisted the emergence of Japanese Christianity. If 13.1% of Kyushu’s population was Christian, the overall percentage affected by Christianity was certainly much, much higher. When Japanese Christianity is framed in this manner, as a regional phenomenon rather than a national one, we can begin to get some idea of just how much of an impact Christianization as a world-historical phenomenon had on the Japanese of Kyushu. (Estimates for the Percentage of Christians on Kyushu) Circa 1600 287,000 (Christians) 687,000 Population 267,197 total on Kyushu (Christians) 639,597 total 1,472,700 (Kyushu) 18.14% of Kyushu’s 43.43% of From Kitō population Kyushu’s population 2,039,916 (Kyushu) 13.1% of Kyushu’s population 31.35% of Extrapolated from Farris Kyushu’s and Kitō population One good way of assessing the world historical significance of this is to compare our estimates of the percentage of Christians on Kyushu to that of the Roman Empire around the turn of the fourth century. Rodney Stark estimates that the percentage of Christians around the year 300 was only 10.5%. By 350, following Constantine’s edict of toleration, he estimates that it increased to 56.5% based upon a population of 60 45 million. Hopkins has also put the percentage at around 10% (6 million out of 60 46 million) in the year 300. Ramsay MacMullen notes that by the year 400, “pagans still 45 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 7. 46 Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, No. 2 (1998): 191-194. 21 47 made up a good half of the population.” Elsewhere, MacMullen has estimated that, in the fourth century, the Christian population ranged from 1% to 8%. Other estimates place 48 the percentage between 7% and 10% at the beginning of the fourth century. This comparison between the percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire and Kyushu is not meant to suggest that the island would have become fully Christianized like the Roman Empire did. Rather, it is meant to reframe how we think about Japanese Christianity in relation to world history. No scholar of the Roman Empire in late antiquity would dismiss the impact that Christianity had on society during the fourth to fifth centuries. If the numbers of Christians in the Roman Empire were as low as MacMullen has proposed for the fourth century, the impact grossly outweighed those creating the impact. It therefore stands to reason that a Christian population of at least 13.1% would have had a significantly bigger impact on Kyushu society as a whole at the turn of the seventeenth century. A great many people on the island participated in the Christianization process without ever becoming Christian through their interactions, positive or negative, with the Japanese Christian community. The same was undoubtedly true for the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. What this means is that Japanese Christianity is fully worthy of being incorporated into a larger world-historical framework of Christianization in which many people the world over participated. 47 Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 84-85. For MacMullen’s later and lower estimates, he reasons: “Here too there are uncomfortable possibilities; for out of some 255 churches in some 155 towns and cities, wherever the remains survive for the record, the expected attendance arranged between a mere 1 per cent and 8 per cent of the general population.” MacMullen uses archaeological data to estimate sizes of churches and therefore estimated attendance of the population at those churches. Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church, Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 101. 48 For a good overview of the numbers, see “The Growth of the Chruch” in Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (New York: Simon &Schuster Paperbacks, 2018), 160-177. See also Trombley’s chapter in the Cambridge History of Christianity, “Overview: The Geographical Spread of Christianity” in Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young, eds., Cambridge History of Christianity Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 306-313. A recent monograph by Thomas A. Robinson “attacks” MacMullen’s and Stark’s numbers and, in particular, the thesis that Christianity was an urban phenomenon. However his conclusion regarding the numbers is not helpful at all: “Must we abandon all attempts at specifying raw numbers or percentages of Christians or of Jews in the Roman Empire? I think we must. We are confronted, it seems, by the necessity of numbers and the impossibility of numbers. This is not a good position to be in, but it is a better situation than being wrong about numbers that we have accepted as reliable.” Thomas A. Robinson, Who Were the First Christians? Dismantling the Urban Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12; 210. 22 The most important thing to remember about “Christianization” is that it was the agency of the non-Christian population itself that determined the success or failure of the new religion in the long run. Even scholars of Colonial Mexico and Peru acknowledge that, whatever success Christianity had among indigenous peoples, was the result of their own agency and not a “spiritual conquest” conducted by the Spaniards. As in these distant contexts, in Japan it was the Japanese people themselves who guided the process of Christianization. This dissertation, therefore, is focused centrally on the missionized rather than the missionizers. So, how do we define Christianization? As a recent critic of the term has pointed out, the term has been used so vaguely as to render it “a contentious paradigm for interpreting events.” Nathan Ristuccia explains the issue: The problem is not that Christianization cannot be defined. It is that it can. Christianization can, and sometimes has, been defined in two dozen different ways—none obviously better or less arbitrary than any other. Judging from the diverse essays within collections devoted to the study of Christianization, the word can refer to missions, catechesis, the suppression of pagans, the physical spread of church institutions, changing ideologies of power, the enforcement of Patristic ethical norms and popular expectations, new vocabulary, new art forms, new material culture, new burial patterns, new rituals sacralizing time, space, and the lifecycle, and more. Indeed, the word is so flexible it is almost vacuous. In offering his own definition of Christianization, Ristuccia restricts its meaning to a specific to a specific time and place. “During the Middle Ages,” he writes, “Christianization was a ritual that happened to individuals, not countries, ethnicities, or habits…A new paradigm for Christianization, therefore, ought to restrict the term to what 49 medieval people themselves meant when they spoke of ‘making Christians.’” Ristuccia’s answer begs an important question, however: What about people outside of medieval Europe who became Christian? Surely, people of a wide variety of cultures could become just as Christian as medieval Europeans--just not in the same way. 49 Ristuccia goes on to say: “Once the modern concept of religion is removed, Christianization designates a relatively brief sequence of changes. People built infrastructure for pastoral care: cathedrals, high crosses, baptisteries, and so forth. They performed mandatory rituals there. And, if they performed these rites properly, they were recognized as members of the local congregation. In the case of baptism, for example, historical research indicates that by the year 700 churches and clerics were prevalent enough that virtually all Western Europeans were baptized as infants. They had become Christians.” Nathan J. Ristuccia, Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 5-10, 15. 23 Christianization, because of its malleability as a term, remains a useful “paradigm” for analyzing how it is that many disparate peoples and cultures produced their own versions of Christianity. No version of Christianity can be said to be more valid than another. Indeed, when we look at the subject of Christianization from a world-historical perspective, we see that medieval Europeans were just one people among many who became Christians. Christianization, then, is an overarching term for analyzing how many different peoples “became Christians” world-historically because it can account for both similarities and differences. In other words, the term Christianization is useful precisely because it is so flexible. Christianization, as I will use the term here, broadly denotes the process whereby non-Christians brought Christianity into their respective societies in a deep and penetrative manner though which the religion affected political relationships, definitions 50 of the community, relationships with the dead, notions of sacred space, among others. To be sure, this did not happen the same way for each non-Christian society that 51 Christianity engaged. Nor does the term simply refer to an outcome. Not every society that engaged in Christianization became Christian. If this definition seems malleable, that is because I mean it to be. Seen as a broad-gauged framework, “Christianization” allows us, among other things, to recognize “connections” between different societies and cultures that deeply engaged the Christian religion where we usually think there are none. To confine the word’s use to a particular time and place, such as Medieval Europe, obscures these connections and forces us into a myopic view of the phenomenon that cannot be divorced from particular contexts. Revealing these connections beyond a single time and place is the essence of world-historical thinking and allows us to tell more of the global human story. 50 My definition is similar to Nora Berend’s definition that “Christianization [refers] to the process of the penetration of Christianity into society and accompanying societal change.” Nora Berend, ed., Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe, and Rus’ c. 900-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2. 51 As James Russell has noted, “each historical instance of an attempt to Christianize a society is unique and dependent upon many factors.” James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 11. However, I do not hold to his assertion that “the primary long-term problem is usually one of cultural confrontation.” 24 It should be noted that “Christianization,” however scholars define it, is almost always distinct from “conversion.” Typically Christianization is used when discussing societies or whole groups of people that eventually become Christian, such as Anglo- Saxon England, while conversion is used when discussing individuals who become Christian. Lewis Rambo offers a good working definition of conversion for an individual in the broadest sense: Conversion is a process of religious change that takes place in a dynamic force field of people, events, ideologies, institutions, expectations, and orientations…(a) conversion is a process over time, not a single event; (b) conversion is contextual and thereby influences and is influenced by a matrix of relationships, expectations, and situations; and (c) factors in the conversion process are multiple, interactive, and cumulative. There is no one cause of conversion, no one 52 process, and no one simple consequence of that process. This definition of conversion as “a process” is particularly useful because it does not denote an end result. In this study, when the word “conversion” or “convert” is used for an individual, it does not mean a completed event or a complete reorientation to Christianity. Rather, it refers to the process whereby a person has at least begun to engage Christianity by receiving baptism. Baptism is the near-universally recognized act whereby a non-Christian officially gains entry into a Christian community. In this definition, baptism is thus not the end of conversion to Christianity but really only the beginning. Indeed, in the Catholic sense (both then and now), conversion should be construed as a never-ending process. Even though one might be a “Christian,” conversion does not stop because to be truly converted to God is an impossible task. For Catholicism, in contradistinction to other forms of Christianity (mainly Protestant), conversion after baptism is encapsulated in the sacrament of penance. The constant personal reenactment 53 of sin, confession, and penance is a never-ending process for all Catholics. This is how Francis Xavier, a convert if there ever was one, could exhort his fellow Jesuits to seek their own spiritual conversions for the benefit of the conversion of others. In fact, Jesuit 52 Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 5. 53 In brief, The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in section 1486: “The forgiveness of sins committed after Baptism is conferred by a particular sacrament called the sacrament of conversion, confession, penance, or reconciliation.” https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c2a4.htm. 25 spirituality, both in Japan and Europe, demanded continual conversion of the 54 missionaries themselves. Having established inclusive definitions for Christianization and conversion, both of which do not denote an end result, we move next to describe how the Japanese on Kyushu engaged in it as a world-historical process. The main reason that Christianization has not been used as a comparative framework for the Jesuit mission to Japan is that the term, as Robert Bartlett has observed, implies a “before” and an “after.” For example, in central and northern Europe, “the ‘before’ is the world of indigenous European paganism, and the ‘after’ is medieval 55 Christian Europe. Obviously no such transformation occurred on Kyushu (perhaps only in Nagasaki) let alone the rest of Japan. As stated before, the Christian percentage of the population on Kyushu was relatively high, but they remained a significant minority. It makes much more sense, therefore, to view Christianization as a process through which we might discern commonalities between different peoples who engaged Christianity. While some scholars maintain that “completion” of Christianization as a process takes many centuries—indeed, some have argued that Europe, according to their definitions of the terms, was not fully Christianized until sometime in the late Middle Ages—we will take a different approach. In speaking of the Christianization of Kyushu, we do not look forward to the completion of a process—that is a state of being “Christianized”—but rather simply the a deep engagement of the process by which people brought Christianity into their societies. This world-historical process, as articulated below, is our “connective tissue” that allows us to think about the Japanese, Nahuas, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Germans world-historically. Though our focus is on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kyushu, Christianization as a process (not an outcome) is our larger vantage point. The first part of this dissertation, “The Mechanics of Christianization,” uses the Japanese experience with Christianity on Kyushu to sketch a world-historical process of 54 “Always ask God to grant you to feel within your soul the impediments for which you are responsible and are the reason why he ceases to manifest himself to the people through you, not giving you the necessary credit so that you might produce fruit among them. In your examinations of conscience, do not fail to examine yourself particularly on the fault which you commit in preaching, hearing confessions, and in dealing with others. Free yourself from them, since it is through the correction of these faults that God grants you an increase of his gifts and graces.” Instruction for Father Antonio de Heredia, from Cochin, around April 24 1552. Costelloe, Letters, 420. EX II, 450. 55 Robert Bartlett “From Paganism to Christianity in medieval Europe,” in Berend, Christianization, 47. 26 Christianization for the premodern and early modern periods. This part delineates three main features of that process, namely “Missionization,” “Community,” and “Tension.” Although I explore these features diachronically on Kyushu for the sake of narrative, they actually occurred synchronically and frequently reinforced one another. The first, “Missionization,” explores how Christianity, as a foreign religion, entered into a non-Christian society. For Kyushu, because the Christian society and the non-Christian society were so distant from one another, the main character of missionization was one of evangelical partnership. Since Christianity could not move organically to Japan via diffusion through cross-cultural contacts, partnership between foreign advocates of the religion (Jesuit missionaries) and native advocates (Japanese Jesuits, lay preachers, catechists, and other lay people) was the norm for the entire mission period. As an outgrowth of that partnership, Christianity adopted as a key feature of the Christianization process what I call “native modes of persuasion.” These are the main methods, varying from culture to culture, that advocates used to win people over to the new religion. On Kyushu, these included intellectual modes of persuasion, Christian literature, and the use of Catholic sacramentals for “this-worldly benefits,” such as healing. Finally, within the “Missionization” component of the Christianization process, we see the relaxation of praxical norms as the religion moved into different societies. On Kyushu this was mainly an issue for the foreign missionaries, who struggled to reconcile their views of Catholic orthodoxy with orthopraxy. Of the two, orthopraxy was easier to relax in the transmission of Christianity. In the Japanese context, this provoked an inner tension within the foreign missionaries regarding Japanese marriage customs, translation of key Christian terms using Buddhist equivalents, Jesuit involvement in the silk trade, and Jesuit secular rule over Nagasaki. The second feature of the Christianization process is the self-defining Christian community. Of course, this grew in many different ways in many different societies. But on Kyushu it consisted of three main aspects: 1. Communal Praxis; 2. Communal self- help and care for the living members of the community; and 3. Communal (and Christian) time and spaces. Regarding the first aspect, I argue that disciplina (self- flagellation) was a uniquely Christian penitential and devotional praxis that helped to define members of the Christian community For the second aspect, communal self-help, I 27 argue that the practice of charity within the Christian community acted, in effect, as an attractively circumscribing feature of the religion to potential converts. Charity could be performed individually or corporately (serving the objective of communal self- definition), through confraternities and Christian funerals. Japanese led confraternities organized charity, such as alms for the poor, orphanages, and care for widows, that gave members of the Christian community a sense of social support during the harsh times of Sengoku Japan. Among the most important acts of charity offered by the Christian community were funerals since each Christian was assured that their body and spirit would be taken care of in death. Misericordias and confraternities provided funeral rites for their own members or as acts of charity under the corporal works of mercy (one being to bury the dead). Finally, this section looks at the role of the liturgical calendar (particularly feast days) and communal spaces and structures in defining the Christian community. Special liturgical times could be celebratory or penitential, and participation in them denoted membership in the community. These did not replace non-Christian festivals, such as New Year’s (Shōgatsu) but were additional times in which Christians participated. Similarly, new and exclusively Christian places emerged, namely churches, cemeteries, and public crosses. All of these provided actual sites on the physical landscape for the general community that announced the presence of the Christian community as a whole. The final feature of the Christianization process that I will examine is what I call “Tension.” This encompasses the ways in which the existence of the Christian community produced friction vis-à-vis non-Christians. The first important element in producing “tension” was individuals or groups of individuals that I term “agents of Christianization.” These were people, frequently in a position of secular power, who facilitated the spread of Christianity without necessarily becoming Christian themselves. In this section, I explore how these individuals patronized Christianity for both religious and non-religious reasons (the two were never mutually exclusive in the premodern period). The first “agents of Christianization” on Kyushu were those daimyo who supported the missionaries for a time without making overtures regarding conversion. By patronizing the missionaries, some daimyo, such as Shimazu Takahisa and Matsura Takanobu, opened up divisions within their polities that followed religious lines. Others, 28 namely the so-called “Christian daimyo,” used the religion to exert power over their domains. Their conversions frequently tested the bonds of loyalty between themselves and their vassals (kashindan). The tension that this created could strengthen or weaken domains. The second element within “tension,” is persecution, which could either be experienced or perpetuated by the Christian community. We first take note of quotidian persecution, namely rumors against the missionaries or the community, such as accusations of “evil” and attributions of blame for disasters such as rebellions. Other forms of non-violent persecution also took place, among them vandalism in the form of the cutting down of public crosses. Occasionally, such as in the case of the former wife of Christian daimyo Ōtomo Yoshishige, persecution of the Christian community and missionaries could come from those in secular power. Known derisively as “Jezebel” by the Jesuits, Ōtomo’s former wife railed against the presence of Christianity in Bungo and sought to expel the missionaries and the religion from her territory. Finally, “tension” explores the last element of the Christianization process, namely the emergence of native connections to the Church Triumphant in heaven. The creation of native saints and other manifestations of heaven on earth, such as miraculous apparitions, did not always involve “tension.” But on Kyushu, many native saints were created through martyrdom as the Tokugawa regime violently sought to exterminate all traces of the Christian religion. At least several thousand Japanese chose martyrdom over apostasy in the seventeenth century. Their executed bodies then became relics for the Christian community and were highly sought after by ordinary lay Christians as well as the foreign missionaries. Through relics, Japanese Christians had immediate physical access, via their own native saints (martyrs were generally considered to gain immediate entrance into heaven), to the presence of the divine. Some martyrs were formally canonized by the wider Catholic Church and recognized formally as Saints. Additionally, relics of Japanese martyrs were exported (“translated”) from Japan, and collected and venerated in Europe and Asia. Today still, Japanese saints are venerated the world over and are included in the liturgical cycle of the Catholic Church. Part One is world-historical in its characterization of Christianization as a process on Kyushu and only makes reference to non-Japanese examples as needed. Parts Two, 29 Three, and Four are full world-historical investigations of particular aspects of “Missionization,” “Community,” and “Tension.” As such, they are case studies—each with its own particular focus and argument. I have divided these cases studies by using the ecclesiological concept of the Communion of Saints. This serves as a metaphorical structure to illustrate the full participation of Japanese Christians on Kyushu in the Christianization process. It consists of the Christian living (the Church Militant), the Christian dead (the Church Suffering), and the martyrs and saints already in heaven (the Church Triumphant). All three together make up the Church, which is thought to transcend temporality and earthly existence. They are also thought to interact with one 56 another through “a constant interchange of supernatural offices.” This structure, while providing a metaphor for Christianization, also allows us to explore three separate but interrelated aspects of the Church (the Christian living, the Christian dead, and the immediacy of the holy) on Kyushu vis-à-vis their manifestations in other societies and times. Part Two (the Church Militant) explores one prominent “native mode of persuasion” on Kyushu, namely exorcism. Its two chapters investigate the role that exorcism played in the spread of Christianity across cultures. The first chapter argues that Christian exorcism was important in the spread of Christianity from Judea, into the Roman Empire, and beyond. On Kyushu, Japanese Christians identified Christian exorcism as an important means to address a native spiritual problem: harassment and possession by harmful spirits. Though foreign missionaries did sometimes perform exorcisms, it was Japanese Christians themselves who took up the practice with great enthusiasm. Japanese Christians used prayers, Catholic sacramentals, and even relics to perform exorcisms both within the community and without. These exorcisms also frequently precipitated baptism and entrance into the Christian community. Part Three (The Church Suffering) is a case study of one aspect of community, namely how the Japanese Christians cared for their dead. Its three chapters are concerned with how the living and the dead, in both Buddhism and Christianity, constituted one community. The first chapter in this part examines how Buddhism adapted to the 56 See the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry for the Communion of Saints: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04171a.htm. 30 funerary customs of other cultures and provided a means by which people could care for their loved ones after death. In part, this involved the generation of karmic merit and the transfer of it from the living to the dead. Prior to Christianity’s entrance into Japan, there existed complex and elaborate rites to prepare people for death and to care for their spirits after death, and more specifically to help them avoid suffering in the samsaric cycle. This chapter also examines how Christianity provided living members with means to care for their dead in purgatory. The second chapter examines “the teaching” of purgatory in Japanese Christianity on Kyushu, including an explanation of how the missionaries communicated the concept of purgatory to Japanese Christians both in language and concept. The third chapter, finally, explores “the praxis of purgatory,” examining how penitential and devotional practices, suffrages, and indulgences all enabled Japanese Christians to prepare themselves for purgatory and to care for their dead already there. Taken together, these three chapters show that even though they were separated by death, the Christian community of the living and the Christian community of the dead remained one. Part Four (the Church Triumphant) is less about “tension” on Kyushu than about how the physical products of “tension” in Christianity’s past made their way to the island. These products of “tension” were relics of the martyrs and saints that were “translated” from Europe and other locations to Kyushu for veneration. Veneration of relics is a common feature of both Christianity and Buddhism. Thus, the first chapter examines the importance of relics in the spread of Buddhism into China and Japan. Drawing upon the work of Tansen Sen, this chapter explores how relics helped transform China and Japan into Buddhist countries in their own right. This chapter also explores a different but parallel process of relic translation in Christianity. Relics in the Christian tradition were important for sacralizing the landscape of non-Christians areas because they were direct conduits to the martyrs and saints in the Church Triumphant. The second chapter argues that translated relics from the center of Christendom were important in establishing Christian points of sacrality farther east. Relics were first translated to India, which then acted as a waypoint for relics making their way to Kyushu. Relics from Europe and India were also translated in some numbers to Japan. These included such relics as pieces of the True Cross and a head of the so-called 11,000 31 Virgins. These relics were installed in churches in Japan, but the Jesuits left little information about them. However Jesuits distributed relics widely to individual lay Christians in the form of relicarios (a kind of personal reliquary locket). These personal reliquaries gave individual Christians personalized and mobile points of sacrality away from the relics formally enshrined in the churches. Although these case studies investigate aspects of the Japan mission that have typically been neglected, all three serve the main point of this dissertation, which is to think about the Japanese experience with Christianity in a larger world-historical view. The process that I propose for Christianization as a world-historical phenomenon is not meant to be complete or indicative of every society that engaged it. Rather, it is one way of thinking about how it was that many different peoples brought Christianity into their societies. Other scholars of Christianization, such as those who focus on Colonial Mexico, will likely recognize many familiar elements in the story that I tell of Christianity on Kyushu. For example, confrarias, care for the dead, and the importance of indigenous translators in rendering Christian concepts into Nahuatl are all aspects of the larger world-historical process at work “connecting” people in Mexico and Kyushu. By focusing on how the Christianization process played out on Kyushu, this dissertation will show how the Japanese people were full participants in this one important part of the global human story. 32 CHAPTER II MISSIONIZATION The first and most important element of the Christianization process is the evolution of advocacy for the religion from the foreign advocate to the native advocate. As Lewis Rambo has defined the term “advocate” in general, “[s/he] assesses the potential target audience and formulates persuasive tactics to bring converts into the 1 religious community.” Advocates in the world-historical process of Christianization were those individuals who attempted to persuade non-Christians to join the community by accepting baptism, forming belief in the central tenets of the religion, and participating in the Church through individual and communal praxis. Advocates could be clerical members of an order, such as the Jesuits, or they could be lay members of the community. Advocates were both men and women and sometimes children. They were husbands, wives, relatives, and neighbors. Accordingly, when we use the term “advocates” of Christianity, we acknowledge the participation of many more others than just foreign missionaries. As Christianity spread across cultures, two “polarities” (foreign and native) often characterized the advocate. When contact between the missionizing culture and the society targeted for conversion was low, such as was the case between Iberia and Japan, the distinction between the foreign (European) advocate and native (Japanese) advocates was great due to stark contrasts in language, customs, and physical appearance. When contact between different cultures was high and predated missionization, such as contact between Jewish Christians and Gentiles in the Roman Empire, there were less clear-cut parameters as to who was native and who was foreign. In these situations, there existed a special and extraordinarily effective type of advocate, one that I have termed the “foreign-native advocate.” These individuals had one foot in the foreign culture and one foot in the native culture. They used their privileged bilingual and bicultural position to transmit the foreign religion (Christianity) to the native population in its own language and in accordance with its own customs. Acting as intermediaries and interpreters, they 1 Rambo, Understanding Religious, 66-67. 33 developed “persuasive tactics” that resonated with the native population and thus seamlessly adapted Christianity to the new cultural setting. As we will see, the lack of foreign-native advocates posed an enormous obstacle to the transmission of Christianity to Kyushu, one that the missionary enterprise did its best to overcome. Within the long history of the spread of Christianity across cultures, we can identify only a few instances where introduction of the religion occurred without much 2 prior contact between the missionizing society and the society targeted for conversion. The transmission of Christianity from Iberian societies to the people of Japan was one of these instances. In these cases of missionization, there existed no bilingual and bicultural individuals who could immediately act as potential foreign-native advocates. Christianity could not organically diffuse through them (and their linguistic and cultural adaptations) into the new society. Advocates (both foreign and native) overcame this stumbling block by forming evangelical partnerships. By working together, the two kinds of advocates 3 could support one another and compensate for each other’s deficiencies. Native advocates specialized in the language, culture, social customs, and religious practices of the society targeted for conversion, while foreign advocates acted as authorities on Christian tradition (orthodox beliefs, standard praxis, integration with the rest of 4 Christendom). Evangelical partnerships were needed to compensate for the lack of foreign-native advocates but they did not always operate smoothly. Not only did they face difficulties in translating key Christian terms, but also misunderstandings regarding social norms. As in the case of Japanese and the Portuguese, geographical, linguistic, and cultural distance between the two peoples naturally exacerbated these difficulties. The mission to Japan began with an evangelical partnership aimed at overcoming the absence of bilingual and bicultural foreign-native advocates. Formulated primarily by Anjirō of Satsuma and the European missionary Francis Xavier, these evangelical partnerships, which developed over the course of decades, reached ever-higher levels of 2 The transplanting of Christianity to the New World and parts of seventeenth-century China come to mind. 3 Similar partnerships were formed during between the mendicants and indigenous elites and their children in New Spain and Peru. 4 Japan had witnessed such foreign authorities before during the introduction of Buddhism, as Korean, Chinese, and even Indian monks came to the archipelago and were revered for their knowledge of the religion. 34 sophistication as educated Japanese advocates joined the enterprise. These individuals, some of whom were former monks skilled in preaching and disputation, worked with the foreign advocates to gain converts for the emerging religious community. Nevertheless, the mission attempted to approximate the critically important foreign-native advocate on several occasions by bringing European youths to Japan and sending Japanese youths overseas to Europe. It was hoped that these individuals, because of their young age, would become sufficiently bicultural and bilingual to serve the mission in ways that the foreign-native partnership could not. Although the mission operated as an evangelical partnership to overcome a lack of foreign-native advocates, the enterprise was, for the greater part, Japanese in composition. Before discussing the case of Japan in more detail, we must explain how the evolution of advocacy from foreign to native occurred in other instances of Christianization. Culturally and linguistically the first advocates of Christianity, the immediate followers of Jesus, were not foreign advocates. They were Jews preaching in a Jewish context to a Jewish audience. But their message, namely the message that Jesus had been resurrected, was sufficiently “foreign” to constitute a new sect within Judaism. In other words, what made the followers of Jesus “foreign” was not so much cultural, linguistic, or ethnic difference, but rather sectarian religious difference. These “advocates” had the job of convincing other Jews to join their movement and to accept certain beliefs concerning Jesus and what his resurrection signified. The initial spread of the so-called “Jesus movement” in the Jewish milieu in and around Jerusalem evolved, in a short time, into what scholars identify as Jewish Christianity. This new sect of Judaism appealed to Jews within and beyond Judea, as well as some Gentiles (non-Jews) who had been attracted to Judaism. These Gentile sympathizers, sometimes referred to as “God- fearers,” were attracted to the monotheism and ethical principles of Judaism, but balked at the praxes of Mosaic Law, such as circumcision. The spread of early Jewish Christianity beyond Judea and out into the rest of the Roman Empire owed to the work of the so-called Hellenist Jews and God-fearers, who acted as foreign-native advocates. Hellenist Jews were associated with the Jewish Diaspora spread across the Empire. They had one foot in the Jewish world and one foot in the Gentile world, as did the God-fearers, who were more Gentile than Jewish, but 35 could still act as foreign-native advocates. Such individuals had the native capacity to act as linguistic and cultural brokers of early Jewish Christianity to the Greco-Romans, being able to translate the Aramaic preaching of Jesus’ immediate followers into Greek or whatever native language they spoke. They also had the capacity to explain the “foreign” elements (related to Jesus) of this new type of Judaism within a purely Gentile context. A passage from the Book of Acts (2:5-13) preserves a memory of this process even if we cannot take the passage as strict a historical account of the spread of Jewish Christianity. It recalls how on the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Shavuot; Pentecost in Greek) Jews from all over the Empire gathered in Jerusalem and heard the preaching of Jesus’ followers: Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at [the sound of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles] the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What 5 does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” Despite its theological prerogatives, this passage represents some historical truth in how Jewish Christianity spread out of Judea: many Jews from the Diaspora did reside permanently in Jerusalem; many Jews of the Diaspora were present temporarily in Jerusalem during Shavuot; and many Jews were likely bilingual and bicultural enough to translate the new teachings about Jesus (not on a single day but over time) into their own 6 Gentile language and context. These Jews of the Diaspora were effectively pre-existing synthesizers of language and culture whose efforts enabled the Jewish Christians of Galilee and other parts of Judea to overcome more easily the difficult obstacles of Gentile languages and cultures. In fact, many of these obstacles had already been overcome during prior centuries as Hellenism infiltrated the Jewish world and Jews moved out into the Empire. The Jewish scriptures had already been translated into Greek (the Septuagint) 5 Acts 2:5-13. 6 See Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), 42-43. See also Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G.A. Williamson (London: Penguin Books, 1981), 124. 36 for Jews in the Diaspora who did not know much Hebrew. Individuals like the Hellenist Jew Philo of Alexandria (c. 15 BCE – c. 50 CE), made great headway in reconciling Judaism to Greek philosophy. Thus when early Jewish Christians sought to expand the sect out of Judea, they used these preexisting linguistic and cultural bridges to great effect 7 to adapt their message to the new contexts. The prime example of foreign-native advocacy in early Christianity was Saul of Tarsus (later Paul; d. 62-67 C.E.). Scholars are in universal agreement that he, more than anybody, did the most to translate Jewish Christianity into the Gentile context. Paul was an important foreign-native advocate for the following reasons: 1. He traveled widely, founding many Gentile-Christian communities (such as in Corinth); 2. He wrote and preached in Greek rather than Aramaic; 3. He dispensed with certain Jewish praxes such as circumcision. This list is not exhaustive, but demonstrates some of the concrete ways in which this foreign-native advocate opened up the religion to the Gentiles. Once the foreign-native advocate created cultural and linguistic bridges, they, in turn, trained purely native advocates. The emergence of these individuals represents a key step in the Christianization process since the religion could spread wholly within the native context. These advocates knew the best “persuasive tactics” to gain converts among their own people. Two examples of early native advocates in the Roman Empire are the Greco-Roman Justin Martyr (100-165) and the Carthaginian Tertullian (c. 155-c. 240), both of whom we will discuss in greater detail in Part Two. Both individuals were highly educated pagans and had studied philosophy. Both, upon becoming Christian, used their intellectual backgrounds and languages (Greek and Latin respectively) to argue for Christianity in treatises and apologies. Both translated Christian ideas, originally born out of Judaism, more fully into their native Greco-Roman contexts. These were not the only high-profile native advocates in the early centuries of Christianity, however. Other famous pagans-turned-Christian included Clement of 7 For a good overview of Jews in the Diaspora, see Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement, Volume I (Maryknowll: Orbis Books, 2001), 16-21. See also “The Hellenistic Jewish Christians in Jerusalem” in Eckhard J. Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, Volume 1 (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 653-660. Schabel underscores the importance of the so-called Hellenists: “The missionary work of the early Christians was significantly advanced by the theological position of Hellenistic, Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Jerusalem during the first years of the existence of the Jerusalem church.” Naturally the movement of Jewish Christianity out of Jerusalem was to such transregional areas like Damascus where there was a large population of Hellenist Jews. 37 Alexandria, Ignatius of Antioch, Cyprian of Carthage, Hilary of Poitiers, Tatian, and Augustine of Hippo. All played some part in developing Christianity within their own respective cultures in ways that made sense to their own people. Indeed, over the centuries and across the world, any number of foreign-native advocates aided the spread th of Christianity. The Roman-British Patrick (5 century, dates uncertain) spread Christianity to Ireland after having been a slave there during his youth. Likewise, the so- called Apostle to the Goths, Ulfilia (c. 311-383), who was born to non-Goth Christian slaves but was raised as a Goth and became fluent in the language, later missionized them 8 and translated the Gospel into the Gothic language for the first time. In the New World, second-generation Nahua Christians, though native born, fulfilled the role of the foreign- native advocate since they had one foot in Christianity and one foot in traditional religion and culture. They acted as important authors, interpreters, and translators for the foreign 9 (Spanish) advocates seeking to Christianize the population more thoroughly. In most cases of the Christianization process, the existence of foreign-native advocates greatly facilitated the introduction of the religion across cultures. Sometimes, as in the case of Japan, preexisting cross-cultural contact was virtually nonexistent, and missionization occurred within years of first contact between the Christian society and the non-Christian society. In such cases, all the normal problems of transplanting Christianity into a new society, such as translation of key terms, became all the more difficult because there was no precedent. Accordingly, as we have argued, the foreign- native advocate dynamic had to be created through an evangelical partnership between the foreign advocate and the native advocate. In the next section, we will see how evangelical partnership between foreign and native was a defining feature of the mission on Kyushu. 8 Knut Schäferdiek notes that “early Gothic Christianity consisted, therefore, not of Christianised Goths but of Gothicised Christians.” See “Germanic and Celtic Christianities” in Mitchell and Young, Cambridge History of Christianity, 52. 9 For example, a group of interpreters and scholars aided the linguist Fray Juan Bautista at his colegio at the turn of the seventeenth century when he and his team composed a number of Christian texts in Nahuatl. Like some of the native advocates in Japan, these foreign-native advocates could transform texts into highly eloquent Nahuatl, so much so that one, a certain Esteban Bravo from Texcoco, could cause “astonishment” with his language skills. See Louise Burkhart, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 65-73. Scholars of Colonial Mexico frequently call these individuals “allies” and “co-authors” of these new translated texts. 38 The Jesuit Mission as an Evangelical Partnership The arrival of the 1549 Jesuit mission in Kagoshima is a rare example of the Christianization process in which the missionizing society had little prior contact with the society targeted for conversion. First contact with a Christian society had only occurred six years earlier when a Chinese junk (upon which were several Portuguese merchants) was blown off course and accidentally landed on the island of Tanegashima (present-day Kagoshima Prefecture). Most of the interaction between the Japanese and the Portuguese that subsequently took place was related to trading; and since these interactions were largely conducted in pidgin, they involved little in the way of meaningful cultural 10 exchange or understanding beyond the needs of the moment. Enormous distance, the dictates of the monsoons, and the relatively low numbers of people involved all prevented an increase in cross-cultural interaction. As a result of the rather recent and infrequent contact between the Japanese and Portuguese traders, no bilingual or bicultural population existed through which elements of Christianity could diffuse organically. There were no readymade foreign-native advocates like the Hellenistic Jewish Christians of the Roman Empire. Nor were there any culturally and linguistically fluent individuals, like Ulfilas the Goth, who could spread Christianity autonomously as native advocates. There was not even a Christian ruling power, as there had been for medieval Saxony and, more recently, the New World, that could use its enormous resources to impose the religion and teach it to conquered peoples. A concerted missionary enterprise, ideally comprised of highly trained and adaptable clerics, was the only path forward for transplanting the religion to the archipelago. Because there was no longstanding history of cross-cultural contact, the typical problems of transmitting the religion from foreign (or foreign-native) advocates to native advocates were accentuated. The most obvious and nagging problem was the language barrier. Portuguese merchants, such as Mendes Pinto, may have picked up a smattering of 10 Most significantly, this is when the European-style firearms were first introduced to Japan. The Japanese adopted the new weapon with great enthusiasm and began producing it almost immediately with great skill. By the end of the Sengoku period, Japan was the leading firearms producer in the world. For a full study of these first few years of contact, see Olof G. Lidin, Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europe in Japan (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2002). 39 the most basic Japanese, but no Iberian could adequately speak the language. On the Japanese side, there was not yet a pool of potential native advocates who could parley their conversational skills in Portuguese, most of which were directed toward trade, into the sort of fluency that would permit them to translate key but difficult Christian terminology and concepts. Thus neither side could fully grasp the other linguistically or culturally for the purpose of transplanting Christianity. A partnership had to be formed. Both sides needed to learn much from one another before any path forward could be forged. Since no foreign-native advocates existed, the strengths of the foreign advocate (understanding of doctrine and experience in missionization) needed to be paired with the strengths of the native advocate (language, knowledge of the native culture and its religious needs) in order to overcome vast cultural and linguistic differences. The evangelical partnership that formed between Anjirō of Satsuma and Francis Xavier was crucial in bringing Christianity to Japan; and the importance of evangelical partnerships did not diminish with time. Unlike in prior instances of the Christianization process, the Japan mission was quite literally at the edge of the world geographically. There was no influx of Christians to Japan as there had been in the New World, and only a handful Japanese ever went abroad to the great centers of Christendom where they could internalize what they had seen and recontextualize it upon returning to the homeland. Indeed, many people died traveling between Europe or India and Japan, and simple communication via letters typically took more than a year. Japanese travel east across the Pacific would only occur in the early seventeenth century. But in spite of these difficulties—or perhaps because of them—the evangelical partnership between the foreign and native on Kyushu strengthened and remained extraordinarily successful for the entire period of the mission. Previous scholarship has done well in acknowledging the partnership by highlighting two types of institutional native advocates, namely Japanese irmãos (Jesuit lay brothers) and dōjuku (lay catechists). These figures essentially “bore the burden and heat of the day” through their 11 yeoman’s work for the mission. Though not padres, and therefore unable to perform the mass, Japanese irmãos were fully Jesuit brothers and performed the critical work of 11 Quote from Boxer, The Christian Century, 220. 40 preaching and directing the laity. The dōjuku, on the other hand, were lay people within the community itself who performed the important work of catechesis and frequently undertook certain clerical responsibilities, such as funerals and baptisms, when a cleric was unavailable. By the time that the Tokugawa shogunate expelled the foreigners in 1614, these two kinds of native advocates had come to provide much pastoral care for the Japanese Christian community. Save for a few hidden Jesuits who stayed behind in Japan and a few clandestine entries into the country, the evangelical partnership between the foreign and native advocates was permanently decoupled until the modern period. With only native advocates to lead a heavily persecuted community, many of the strengths that the foreign advocate could provide, such as guidance in practice and doctrine, were no longer present. Nevertheless, the remaining native advocates, whether in positions of communal authority or within Kakure (Hidden Christian) families, maintained the religion the best they could for two centuries. Though important and worthy of in-depth examination, the overall contributions of the Japanese irmãos and dōjuku have been covered adequately elsewhere. They are frequently held up as exemplars of Alessandro Valignano’s so-called “accommodative” method of missionization, which sought greater adaptability to native culture on the part of foreign advocates through the training of native clerics. However, the foreign and native evangelical partnership began much earlier than this and went far beyond the high profile and institutionalized roles of the irmão and dōjuku. As with Christianization in the Roman Empire, native advocacy included many people, the vast majority of whom were lay people of the every day sort. They were neighbors, wives, and even children. Some conducted exorcisms, some proclaimed miraculous healings, some cared for the sick, and some sought to convince others of the manifold spiritual or practical benefits associated with the new religion. Such people need not have even been fully Christian (from our modern perspective) to have advocated for the religion in some fashion. We need not rehash Anjirō’s story here except to reemphasize that he was the first native advocate and co-prime mover of the mission. Indeed, it was Anjirō’s own spiritual impulses that led him to bring Francis Xavier and the Christian religion back to his homeland. Xavier, for his part, had been tantalized by Portuguese reports about Japan and 41 had already hatched plans to undertake a mission there. But he had no informant to show him the way. With the meeting of these two minds and motives, we see the formation of the first evangelical partnership between foreign and native advocate on Kyushu. This partnership, which became characteristic of the entire mission, was a direct manifestation of the foreign/native dynamic crucial to the beginning of the Christianization process. Within the Christian expedition to Kagoshima, it is clear that Anjirō was the leader of the native advocates. This Japanese half of the mission consisted of himself, his manservant Joane, and the former slave Antonio. The Japanese names of the latter two elude us, as the letters only use their baptismal names. Anjirō’s own baptismal name, Paulo de Santa Fé (Paul of the Holy Faith), signified his leadership of the native advocates, much as Paul of Tarsus had been the leading foreign-native advocate to the Roman Gentiles some fifteen hundred years earlier. As leading native advocate, Anjirō also made a crucial decision, which Xavier followed, regarding the composition of the foreign half of the mission: that no Portuguese aside from the Jesuits be included. His astute reasoning was that the Portuguese, as lay merchants, did not always act in the most Christian manner and therefore might be detrimental to the religious objectives of the mission. Instead, they would bring with them what he disparagingly called “Chinese chickens” (China galinha), who were already considered to be base in the eyes of the 12 Japanese. 13 Xavier, of course, was the leader of the foreign half of the mission. As a founding member of the Jesuits, he ranked above his friend and fellow padre Cosme de 12 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 10. Anjirō is quoted in Perez as saying “This is the work of God: so many dealings with Portuguese and nothing accomplished. Now a Chinese is taking the priest there. When he goes to Japão, if Portuguese go there and the Padre and his companions do good things which pertain to Christianity, but the Portuguese evil things which do not pertain to the rules of the Christians, the Japanese will be scandalized and will say: ‘They are not Christians, for how is it that they live against the law of the Christians?’ You, Father, speak very well and act very well, and also your companions; but how is it that these others, who are Christians, do what is bad and do not live well?’ So God has willed that no Portuguese should go with Padre Mestre Francisco, but Chinese, by who the Japanese would not be offended, for China galinha [literally Chinese chickens] act badly and speak badly, since they are not Christians.” Josef Wicki, ed., “Informação acerca do princípio da Companhia da India (1579),” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 34 (1965): 63. With the exception of Domingo Diaz, who joined the party in Malacca, Xavier briefly describes the rest of the party in a letter to Paulo, Antonio Gomes, and Baltasar Gago, from Malacca, June 20-22, 1549. Costelloe, Letters, 274. 13 Anjirō’s actual name is almost certainly Yajirō. When using this name, Japanese scholars frequently leave it in katakana (ヤジロウ). They have also made the educated guess that the kanji for his name was (弥次郎). A few scholars call him Anjirō and leave this name in katakana (アンジロウ), which denotes 42 Torres, as well as the youthful irmão Juan Fernández. Not counting the party’s slaves 14 15 16 (Domingo Diaz, Amador, and Manuel), about whom little is known, these six individuals formed a true evangelical partnership whereby, it was hoped, the enormous that it is foreign transliteration of his name. The full scope of the arguments need not detain us here. The main thrust is that during the first decades of contact, the Iberian ear frequently transliterated certain Japanese words by dropping the “y” consonant from the syllable “ya” (や). For example, the city of Yamaguchi was rendered as “Amanguche.” We must not forget that there was no system of transliteration worked out initially, so orthography varied. I have decided to use the name Anjirō since that is the name most common in the literature. João Rodrigues, who was fluent in Japanese as a result of growing to adulthood in the country, later corrected the name. In addition, I believe that the corrupted name Anjirō is a mark of prominence that no other Japanese can claim as a result of his pioneering cross-cultural interactions. There are plenty of Yajirōs to go around in Japanese history, but only one Anjirō. This helps give him the recognition that he deserves in the absence of any concrete details about his family name. That Anjirō was a certain Yajirō from Nejime seems unlikely. Kishino Hisashi has provided sufficient reasons for why this was not the case. In all likelihood, Anjirō was simply a different Yajirō from the port district of Kagoshima city. See Hisashi Kishino, Zabieru to Nihon: Kirishitan kaikyōki no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1988), 10-14. Of the first three native advocates, we know the most about Anjirō. And even then the information is not as complete as we would like it to be. We know that he was from the port city of Kagoshima, gained a knowledge of Portuguese by engaging with the first Iberian merchants to visit Kyushu, committed the murder, fled his homeland, and then ended up studying at the college of St. Paul in Goa along with Antonio and Joane. He was about 37 years old when he returned home to Kagoshima in 1549 to begin missionizing Japan. Joane was apparently some kind of manservant for Anjirō and had accompanied him in his flight from Satsuma. It is unlikely that the two were brothers, as some have asserted. (Kishino, Zabieru, 161-165.) Antonio, on the other hand, seems to have been a slave to a Portuguese in Malacca, whereupon he was transferred to Xavier once the idea to missionize Japan began to form. Eventually, Antonio joined Anjirō and Joane in Goa, where he and Joane were thought to be the servants of Anjirō. Once there, the three Japanese studied language and Christian doctrine (thus becoming the first Japanese to engage in Christian studies) and became the native half of the foreign-native evangelical partnership to Japan. (The slave trade and indentured servitude was common amongst both the Portuguese in Asia and in Japan domestically. For slavery in Japan and among the Portuguese, see Thomas Nelson, “Slavery in Medieval Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica 59, no. 4 (2004): 463-492 as well as the recent comprehensive study by Lúcio de Sousa, The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 14 Little is known about the non-Jesuit foreigners in the mission party. One, a certain Domingos Diaz, was a mestizo servant of Dom Pedro da Silva, the captain of Malacca. He had joined the party in order to report back about what he experienced. Xavier writes that Diaz was “a very good friend and I of his, because of the fine company he afforded us during our voyage.” He charged Diaz with carrying one of his letters from Kagoshima to da Silva. Costelloe, Letters, 322. MHJ II, 184; 115, note 8. 15 The Malabar slave Amador would spend a longer time in Japan, traveling around with the party to Hirado, Bungo and Yamaguchi as late as 1555. Being of darker complexion, Amador would have likely generated interest from the population. See Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 138, 242; Sousa, Slavery, 42. 16 Manuel, who was Xavier’s Chinese slave or servant, seems to have made it to Kagoshima but his fate there is unknown. He had suffered a grievous head injury during a storm on the voyage to Japan and either died there or returned with the junk. He was likely a Christian, and might be the Manuel to whom Cosme de Torres gave the Spiritual Exercises in Goa. See Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 130, note 25. For the reference to a Manuel by Cosme de Torres, see Indica I, 478. Torres to Ignatius, Simão Rodrigues, and Jesuits in Europe, from Goa, Jan. 25, 1549. There is no mention whether or not these slaves were Christian. It is also unknown how much these individuals contributed to the spreading Christianity on Kyushu, though Amador, being in Japan the longest, likely had the most influence. 43 practical difficulties of bringing Christianity to Japan could be overcome. In practice, the role of the foreign-native advocate that so aided the spread of the religion in other earlier instances of Christianization would be exceedingly difficult to replace. Still, both halves of the partnership worked well enough to at least begin proselytization. As the leader of the native advocates, Anjirō became the first person to preach Christianity in Japan. He was also the first person to make converts, most of whom were 17 his family and friends. His importance in this regard was not lost on the foreigners, who felt as they were like “mute statues” while Anjirō did all of the linguistic and cultural 18 brokering necessary to begin proselytization. Beyond oral preaching, Anjirō worked with Xavier to write several Japanese-language explanations of Christian doctrine, both in kana and in Roman letters. The pinnacle of this work, the so-called “Kagoshima Catechism,” gave the foreign advocates an initial (if imperfect) means to preach in broken Japanese. When Xavier decided to proceed to the capital, as was his original plan, Anjirō remained in Kagoshima to take charge of the small Christian community in Satsuma rather than one of the foreign Jesuits. The numerous Buddhist monks in the city then proceeded to persecute this lone native advocate. They likely drove him into exile to the coasts of China where he died in some kind of piratical confrontation. All of this occurred within the span of one year. Anjirō’s end was an unhappy one, but on August 15, 1549 (the feast day of the Assumption of Mary), prospects for the mission in Satsuma seemed rather bright. Anjirō’s family and fellow townspeople, who had seemingly given him up for dead after his flight from Satsuma three years earlier, enthusiastically received him. He took the mission party to his home whereupon he immediately began preaching. The foreign advocates, lacking the necessary language skills, stood on the side as living curiosities. Xavier, writing nearly three months later, writes glowingly about the first preaching of Christianity on Japanese soil: 17 Xavier writes, “Paul [Anjirō], our good companion, has taken such great pains in preaching to his relatives by day and night that he has converted his mother, his wife, his male and female relatives, and many others of his acquaintances, who are now Christians.” Costelloe, Letters, 320. Xavier to Dom Pedro da Silva, in Malacca, from Kagoshima, November 5, 1549. By the end of Xavier’s time in Kagoshima, there were some one hundred converts. Costelloe, Letters, 327; 330. Xavier to his companions in Europe, from Cochin, January 29 1552. 18 Costelloe, Letters, 306. Xavier to his companions in Goa, from Kagoshima, November 5, 1549. 44 Paul [Anjirō] has taken such great pains with his relatives and friends, preaching to them by day and night, that he has been the reason why his mother, wife, and daughter, and many of his relatives and friends, both men and women, have become Christians. Up until now the people here are not offended by others becoming Christians… Xavier also notes that these first “converts,” if we wish to call them that, learned some basic prayers (probably the Pater Noster and the Gloria Patri) since they could read and write. Presumably, Anjirō had written out the prayers he had learned in Goa and distributed them for memorization. Whether these were Japanese translations or transliterations of Latin or Portuguese, Xavier does not say. The mysterious sounds of a foreign prayer, similar to the unintelligible transliterations of Sanskrit in some Buddhist mantras, would have been deemed worthy and spiritually wholesome for recitation. Sanskrit featured prominently in the praxis of esoteric Buddhism, such as mantras and dhāraṇī (a kind of chant), to which even ordinary lay Buddhists would have been 19 exposed. In any event, this was the first time that such a transmission occurred, and Anjirō likely explained the meaning and function of the prayers as he had learned them at St. Paul’s in Goa. Without the native half of the party, as Xavier makes clear in his letters, the foreign half of the mission would have been utterly useless. But this dependence was not completely lopsided. Just as the foreign needed the native on Kyushu, the native needed the foreign. This had also clearly been the case in past instances of the Christianization process, such as when the prestige of Rome gained Augustine of Canterbury much favor with local potentates like King Æthelberht during his mission to the Anglo-Saxons. Anjirō, having been to India, had done something that no other Japanese could lay claim: he had journeyed to the land known as Tenjiku (from the Chinese Tianzhu) where the dharma had first been revealed and propagated in this age. Moreover, he had brought three foreign and exotic clerics with him, an accomplishment that immediately gave him a certain amount of religious cache and respectability. The Jesuit showpieces, so to speak, 19 For Sanskrit study in esoteric Buddhism, see Ryūichi Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 113-127. For an overview of Sanskrit study in Japan in general, see Upendra Thakur, India and Japan: A Study in Interaction during the 5th Cent.-14th Cent. A.D. (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1992), 53-64. 45 at once propelled him from the status of murdering criminal to international diplomat and missionary. As Xavier relates: In the city of Paul [Anjirō] of the Holy Faith, our good and faithful friend, we were received with great kindness and love by the captain of the city [likely the jōdai] and the mayor of the land [likely the bugyō] and also by all the people, who were much amazed at seeing priests from the land of the Portuguese. They were not at all offended by the fact that Paul had become a Christian, but rather had a high regard for him; and all, both his relatives and those who were not, were happy that he had been in India and had seen things which those here had never seen. The duke of this land [Shimazu Takahisa] was greatly pleased with him and paid him much honor, and he asked him many things about the manners and means of the Portuguese. Paul gave him an account of everything, and the duke 20 showed that he was much content with it. If Anjirō had journeyed home from India alone, he likely would have still generated a minor buzz in Kagoshima. Without the foreign advocates to bolster his religious prestige, Anjirō’s new teaching would likely have been of slight interest before being quickly subsumed by the already well-established sects as a titillating religious riff. However, the fact that he brought priests from India gave his experiences and teaching far more legitimacy and credibility than it otherwise would have had. Such foreign clerics, buoyed by their strange appearance and tongues, not only interested the general population of Kagoshima but also the ruling lord of Satsuma, Shimazu Takahisa, and the eminent Buddhist monks of the city. Commanding the exotic prestige of his foreign partners, Anjirō, as the prime native advocate, immediately undertook a flurry of activity. He first met with the local authorities, the so-called “captain of the city” (the jōdai) and the “mayor of the land” (the bugyō), from whom he perhaps received exoneration for his crime of murder. These authorities also probably informed their lord, Shimazu Takahisa, of the newly arrived Tenjiku priests. Takahisa was not in the city at the time, so he summoned Anjirō to the nearby castle of Ijūin, some thirteen miles away, where he was staying. This audience was significant not only because it was the first time that a daimyo heard preaching about Christianity, but also because it was undertaken alone by a native advocate. Leaving behind the foreigners in Kagoshima, all Anjirō took with him was a small altarpiece of the Virgin Mary with Child as testament of his new teaching. Takahisa and his family 20 Costelloe, Letters, 306. Xavier to his companions in Goa, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. 46 certainly failed to comprehend the full significance of the subject and likely thought it to be a depiction of Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), the bodhisattva of mercy, who is frequently depicted as a woman holding a child. Still, the icon produced its desired effect: a certain curiosity in the new teaching. Takahisa’s mother (the daughter of Shimazu Narihisa) was particularly interested in the altarpiece and what Anjirō had to say; some days later, she sent a messenger to Kagoshima asking for the image to be reproduced and that the beliefs of the Christians be explained in written form. We do not know what Anjirō told Takahisa and his family about Christianity during this initial meeting. They more than likely thought his teaching to be a new transmission of the dharma, direct from India, rather than a completely different religion. However, this meeting is important because Takahisa’s mother “activated” the evangelical partnership between the foreign and native advocate for the first time on Kyushu by requesting a written explanation of Christianity. The interested family knew that Anjirō was no cleric—he was a lay native advocate despite studying at St. Paul’s in Goa—and they knew that the foreign priests would be able to provide a better account of the basics. Upon receiving the request from Takahisa’s mother, Anjirō then spent several days composing the explanation and “wrote many things about [the] faith in her language.” Unfortunately Xavier does not tell us what exactly was contained in this explanation, but it is safe to conclude that he had some input into Anjirō’s composition. Though the two advocates would later work together to create a much more systematic account of Christianity with the Kagoshima Catechism, this was the first time that the two strands of foreign and native intertwined for the proselytization of Christianity on Kyushu. In the subsequent months, as interest in the mission party increased, Anjirō acted as an interpreter and cultural broker for the foreign advocates. Xavier began his first meeting with Takahisa on September 29, 1549 in diplomatic fashion with an exchange of gifts. Through Anjirō, Xavier secured permission to proselytize, as well as material support in the form of a house in the city. Though the mission party no longer had to stay with Anjirō and his family, he continued in his role as native advocate by preaching, interpreting for Xavier, and teaching the foreigners (particularly Juan Fernández) something of the Japanese language so they could preach simple things like the Ten 47 21 Commandments. Anjirō even acted as an interpreter for what might be one of the first instance of Buddhist-Christian interfaith dialogue. Visiting the Zen monastery of Fukushōji with some frequency, Xavier struck up a friendship with its abbot, Ninshitsu (d. 1556). The two held conversations the best they could, via Anjirō’s translating skills, on such topics as the nature of the soul. Xavier writes with fondness of the abbot, though he is somewhat melancholic that he could not covert him. Ninshitsu, for his part, indulged Xavier and allowed him to preach in malformed Japanese at the monastery’s main staircase. Besides acting as an interpreter and teacher, Anjirō also took the enormous first step of composing a Japanese-language catechism with his foreign partner. Recognizing that Japan was a highly literate society, Xavier saw a detailed catechism as key to successful missionization: I believe that we shall be busy this winter in composing a rather long explanation of the articles of the faith in the language of Japan so that it may be printed, since all the leading people know how to read and write, in order that our holy faith may be spread through many regions, since we cannot go to all of them. Paul [Anjirō], our dearest brother, will faithfully translate all that is necessary for the 22 salvation of their souls into his own language. Xavier had worked with other native advocates before to translate the articles of faith but none with the training that Anjirō had as convert at St. Paul’s in Goa. This meant that Anjirō would not just be employing his linguistic skills but also his knowledge of Catholicism. As a result, the Kagoshima catechism became quite extensive and sought to explain God’s intervention into the whole of human history. While the catechism does not survive, unfortunately, we know that it was divided into two parts with the first corresponding to the Old Testament and the second relating the story of Christ and the 23 Last Judgment. In addition to this book, Anjirō composed at least one other extensive 21 Anjirō apparently worked with Xavier for some forty days so the padre could say the Decalogue in Japanese. This is quite the length of time for something so simple and it serves as an indication of the linguistic difficulties present this early in the mission. 22 Costelloe, Letters, 312. Xavier to his companions in Goa, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. 23 Schurhammer provides extensive commentary and notes on this catechism. He also quotes Rodrigues, who describes the contents of the catechism as it was remembered decades later: “With the help of Paul of the Holy Faith as interpreter, [Xavier] translated his catechism (doutrina) into the language of Japan where he treats at length the creation of the world and the immortality of souls, the necessity of the incarnation of 48 document that Xavier left with some Christians in Ichiki. This book is thought to have consisted of basic prayers, the Seven Penitential Psalms, and the formula and instructions 24 for baptism among other things. By the summer of 1550, it was apparent that the mission party needed to move elsewhere in order to achieve wider exposure. Takahisa had supported them for a year in Kagoshima, despite pleas for transport northwards, in the hope that the foreigners might attract a Portuguese ship to one of his harbors. This hope proved to be illusory, however, as the next ship to Japan docked at the island of Hirado, over 200 miles to the northwest 25 via the coastal sea routes. For his part, Xavier hoped to receive news from overseas, so he and his interpreter, Joane, managed to gain leave from Takahisa and rendezvoused with the ship in July. The two returned to Kagoshima at the beginning of August, whereupon Xavier decided to leave Satsuma for good. Two factors reinforced this decision: 1. It was Xavier’s original plan to go to the capital (not remain in the very south) and receive permission from the “king of Japan” to preach throughout the whole country; and 2. The Buddhist establishment in Kagoshima (save for the Zen sect) grew increasingly opposed to the Christian presence as they realized that the teaching was not, in fact, a new transmission of the dharma. The mission party, which now consisted of the foreign Jesuits, the Japanese advocates Joane and Antonio, and the Malabar slave Amador, therefore departed Kagoshima at the end of August. Anjirō, who was a native of the city, elected to remain at home. Still, his lot in the evangelical partnership was not entirely lost, as a newly converted poor samurai by the name of Bernardo (d. 1557) joined the mission in his stead. Aside from the simple motive of wishing to remain in his home, why did Anjirō, the first Japanese advocate of Christianity, elect to stay behind in Kagoshima? Surely, his the Divine Word as a remedy for sins, the life, sufferings, and death, the resurrection and glorious ascension of Christ our Lord. This treatise of the blessed Father Francis was the first Japanese catechism and was used until the voyage of Father Master Melchior Nunes [Barreto, in 1556], who composed another, more comprehensive catechism in Japan by enlarging that of the blessed priest, and which was called the Ni jū go cagiō because of its twenty-five chapters or sermons.” Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 105-109, with Rodrigues’s quote in the note on p. 106. 24 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 127. 25 The ship was that his friend, the captain Francisco Pereira de Miranda. It is worth noting that nearly a quarter of his crew were Chinese. Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 123. The distance between Kagoshima and Hirado, as the crow flies, is approximately 135 miles or 218 kilometers. 49 linguistic skills and understanding of Christianity would have been immeasurably helpful to the mission going forward. A major clue can be found in the second of his two letters, which was written in November of 1549 and sent back to India along with Xavier’s reports. In it, he expresses the hope that his family, whom he converted, would persevere as Christians: In His great mercy God fulfilled my longing and brought me to Japan so that I might make my mother, wife, and daughter, along with many of my relatives, men and women, and many others of my acquaintance, Christians. And now that they are Christians, I am living with other desires. I ask God that he may give them perseverance to the end. And, for the love our Lord, I am also asking you, my Fathers and Brothers, that you be particularly mindful to recommend me and all my newly converted relatives to God in your prayers, for it is not sufficient for our salvation that one begins to serve God if one does not persevere unto the end. I hope that with God’s help a large part of Japan will be converted to our faith, for they are happy to hear me when I speak to them about the things of Jesus Christ. Even the priests of Japan are not offended; on the contrary, they are much pleased 26 when I speak to them of the law of the Christians. Although the mission, which Anjirō co-founded, would have benefited greatly from his presence going forward, he wanted to stay with his family and guide them in Christian belief and praxis. Moreover, he was the most knowledgeable Japanese advocate to assume the role of religious authority in his own right. By this time, there were an estimated hundred or so Christians in Kagoshima, all of whom Anjirō had converted. Since Anjirō seems to have wanted to remain with his family, Xavier put him in charge of their pastoral care. Xavier, writing to his companions in Europe following his departure from Japan in 1551, recommended Anjirō in this role enthusiastically: “I left Paul, a native of the land and an excellent Christian, with these Christians [in Kagoshima] 27 so that he might teach and instruct them.” Unfortunately, he was apparently driven from his home by local persecution and had to escape once again to the sea where he was subsequently killed (probably by pirates). Anjirō was, in many ways, the perfect evangelical partner for Xavier given the historical circumstances in which the mission originated. Both had keen intellects and were extraordinarily adaptable to new situations. Anjirō had willingly lived in Goa, 26 Quoted in Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 80. The original text can be found in MHJ II, 185-187. To the Jesuits in India, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. 27 Costelloe, Letters, 331. Xavier to his companions in Europe, from Cochin, Jan. 29 1552. 50 become the first Japanese to learn Portuguese well, converted to Christianity of his own accord, and desired to spread his faith among the people of his homeland. Xavier, prompted by missionary zeal, traveled throughout south and southeast Asia knowing full well that he was likely to die there spreading the Gospel. Anjirō, in deciding to seek Xavier out could not have formed a better partnership for the introduction of Christianity to Kyushu. But most importantly and fruitfully, both were men of action. Their main task was simply to begin the mission. Any problems in translating specific Christian terminology and concepts could be worked out later as each side grew more familiar with each other. In this regard, the partnership between Anjirō and Xavier proved to be quite effective. Anjirō’s evangelical partnership with Xavier was important for getting the mission started, but it was merely the first of many. There were a great deal of individual pairings, such as that between the later Mission Superior Francisco Cabral and the Japanese Jesuit irmão Juan de Torres. While each of these are worthy of detailed investigation, it is expedient here to think of the entire mission in toto as an evangelical partnership between foreign and native advocates with many permutations among individual pairings. Since there has been much prior analysis of the foreign advocates (i.e. the European Jesuit missionaries), the remaining space in this section will be devoted to explaining the many different facets of the native advocates and what they brought to the table. The most obvious way that native advocates advanced the spread of Christianity is through their language skills. Their help in translating and interpreting was particularly crucial during the first few decades of the mission, as most of the foreign advocates (Juan Fernández being the exception) had a limited knowledge of the language. Anjirō had taught Fernández some Japanese during the voyage to Kagoshima, and, because of his youth and an innate ability for language, the irmão was able to excel at it. Fernández was considered one of the best speakers of Japanese as a second-language until the arrival of other and younger foreign advocates like João Rodrigues. Though Fernández’s Japanese was adequate for many common situations, it was always preferable to have a native advocate in a supportive role to help interpret, translate, and preach. 51 Like Anjirō, the first two native advocates learned Portuguese in Goa and studied Christianity at St. Paul’s. These were Anjirō’s Japanese compatriots, Joane and Antonio. Joane was Anjirō’s “servant” in Japan in some capacity and had fled Satsuma with him. Antonio was the slave of a Portuguese merchant and had been “given” to Xavier. When Anjirō and Xavier planned the mission, Antonio joined Anjirō and Joane in Goa. All three were baptized there. Unfortunately, we know less about these native advocates than we do about Anjirō. Both were reputedly capable catechists and interpreters as they did the heavy lifting of preaching for the foreign advocates during the party’s travels. For example, Joane had accompanied Xavier on his first voyage to Hirado in 1550 while Anjirō stayed in Kagoshima taking care of his followers. When the entire mission party moved to Hirado (sans Anjirō), Joane and Antonio (along with a new convert, Bernardo) acted as the primary interpreters alongside Fernández. Joane and Antonio also remained with Torres in Hirado to preach and care for the small numbers of Christian converts made on the island. They likely assisted Torres in the celebration of mass there, as Xavier left the necessary equipment for it in Hirado 28 during his journey to Yamaguchi and Miyako. Joane and Antonio also moved to 29 Yamaguchi when the missionaries were given permission to there. Later, in fact, Antonio saved the lives of Torres, Fernández, and Amador on the streets of the city. While the missionaries were residing in Yamaguchi, a rebellion broke out against the lord of the land (Ōuchi Yoshitaka). Threatened by the city-wide violence, the mission party had to flee for their lives. Antonio, because he was Japanese, was able to guide the foreign missionaries through the violent streets to the home the wife of Naitō Okimori (a secretary of Yoshitaka and Christian sympathizer). While making their way to the new sanctuary, the foreigners were targeted by a roving band of armed men who blamed them for the disasters that befell the city. Fernández reports them as saying: “Since these men 30 are from Chejiqu [Tenjiku], let us slay them…” Antonio was apparently able to talk his way out of the situation, and the armed men left Torres and Fernández unmolested. 28 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 138-139. 29 MHJ II, 298. 30 Schurhammer, Xavier, 274 and MHJ II, 259. Fernández to Xavier, from Yamaguchi, Oct. 20 1551. Fernández, who relates the event, downplays Antonio’s involvement, even though it was likely that he was the one who convinced the men not to kill the foreigners. 52 Without the “diplomatic” skills of Antonio, two of the most important foreign advocates for the early decades of the mission might very well have been killed. Fernández was instrumental in helping to teach other foreigners Japanese, and Torres guided the mission as Superior until 1570. By 1551, Fernández and other recent Japanese converts could take over interpreting duties from Antonio and Joane. Fernández, because of his youth, was able to acquire conversational Japanese relatively quickly and worked with Japanese converts to interpret for Cosme de Torres. This freed Antonio and Joane to perform other important work for the mission, namely to bring foreign Jesuits from India or Malacca to Japan. Thus, when Xavier departed Japan for India later that year, Antonio and Joane went with him to serve as guides and teachers for future missionaries who had no knowledge of the language or the country. As the only Japanese advocates who had a high level of Portuguese-language skills and experience living overseas, they furthered the mission by meeting foreign advocates in Portuguese ports, teaching them some Japanese, informing them about the culture, and acting as guides once they landed. Antonio acted as an interpreter for Pedro Alcaçova, Balthazar Gago, and Duarte da Silva when the company landed on Tanegashima in 1552. The party was there for eight days and were received 31 well by the lord of the island. Joane traveled back to India at least once more, in 1554, 32 where he gave testimony concerning one of Xavier’s supposed miracles in Japan. Unfortunately, there are not many records concerning their activities, and the ultimate fates of Joane and Antonio are unknown. During the subsequent decades, the mission on Kyushu benefited enormously from an influx of new native advocates, many of them possessing unique skills that furthered the spread of Christianity. Highly educated former monks were among the most valued advocates. These were the kinds of native advocates that Xavier had originally 31 MHJ II, 391-392; 407. Fróis to the Jesuits in Coimbra, from Goa, December 1 1552. Pedro Alcaçova to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Goa, March 1554. 32 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 295, note 89. Indica III, 78. Barreto writes, “In Japan, a brother of Paul of the Holy Faith, who is now going with us and was traveling there with the Padre [Xavier], affirmed to us that he gave sight to a blind man; and many other things that I am not writing…” Melchior Nunes Barreto to Ignatius, from the sea between Goa and Cochin, May 1554. This indicates that Joane was actively helping the mission into the mid-1550s. 53 hoped to partner with—the Jesuits were after all highly educated clerics. Anjirō, Joane, and Antonio were extremely important for getting the mission started due to their Portuguese-language skills, but highly educated advocates were sorely needed. As a result, Xavier made several early attempts to send interested monks overseas to Malacca and India in order more about Christianity. In Kagoshima, Xavier managed to convince four men, two of whom were monks who had studied “in the universities of Bandu and 33 Meaco” to go overseas to India. Like Antonio and Joane, it was hoped that these men would partner with the foreign Jesuits in Malacca and teach them things about Japan during the voyage. It was also hoped that once back in Japan, they would become advocates for the Christian cause. All four, per Xavier’s instructions, were to be “lavished” upon in Malacca and housed in the abode of a Chinese Christian. After arriving in the city, they came frequently to the Jesuits’ residence in Malacca where they learned something about Christianity. They accepted baptism on the Day of the Ascension (May 15 of 1550). Evidently, most of them were not impressed with what they found in Malacca, as only one in the party decided to remain in the city in order to sail to 34 Goa. The others returned to Japan, where nothing else is known of them. Xavier thought “many Japanese” would be willing to go overseas to learn something about his new teaching. He was, however, mistaken and overestimated how many would want to brave the very dangerous sea voyage to Malacca and India. Even though Xavier’s initial hopes for highly educated native converts did not amount to anything with these four men (they disappear from the record), one can hardly blame him for trying. Fortunately for the mission, some educated people began to be attracted to Christianity and helped to advocate for the religion in various ways. The central contribution of these individuals was to translate Christianity fluently, both in terms of actual language and comprehensibility, and thus appeal to a Japanese audience of higher social rank. One of the first educated native advocates was an unnamed former monk in Yamaguchi. Although we do not know exactly what his contributions to preaching 33 Indica II, 109-110. 34 Indica II, 110. Padre Francisco Perez to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Malacca, Nov. 24 1550. If the Chinese Christian knew how to read and write, he might have been able to communicate with the two monks via written messages as both would have known how to read Chinese. 54 Christianity were, his conversion occurred at an important time when the foreign advocates were just starting to take pains to articulate clearly that their teaching was different than Buddhism. In “becoming Christian,” this former monk had, at the very least, an affinity for talking with the foreign advocates. In doing so, he certainly taught them more about Buddhism and the variety of sects in Japan. Additional learned converts in both Yamaguchi and on Kyushu proper helped the foreign advocates immensely during the first decade. They not only explained Buddhism to the missionaries but also helped them to formulate arguments against the various sects and to articulate responses in properly written Japanese. Duarte da Silva records several of the activities of these learned native advocates. He writes that two former monks from Miyako, “very learned in their laws… became Christian” after they asked Cosme de Torres many questions and saw “the good life of the Christians.” For example, one learned convert in Yamaguchi named Paulo was a “benevolent man and of great fame for his ability in letters and in judgment.” He started copying everything that had been translated up to that point. Apparently many were impressed by what he was doing and came to hear the teaching and be baptized. One of these was his own brother, who was described as “very learned.” This educated individual took everything that had been translated, reviewed it, and then 35 fixed certain parts to make it much more fluent. One Zen monk in Bungo converted, whereupon “the [local] Christians were much consoled with him.” Other educated converts in this area during the 1550s include Paulo Senshu, a former Zen monk on Hirado and Paulo Yesan of Yamaguchi, who was a samurai and 36 medical doctor. Almeida, visiting in Hakata in June of 1561, converted two monks, one of whom had been “the preacher for the king of Yamaguchi [Ōuchi Yoshinaga, d. 1557].” 37 As a result of his conversion, “many others became Christian.” Another converted monk was José, who took up the faith sometime before 1587, and resided in Unzen on 38 Amakusa. The biggest “conversion” of monks, however, occurred in 1574 when the 35 Fróis I, 89-90; Cartas, 43; Cartas 1575, 73-73v; MJH II, 518-519. Duarte da Silva to the Jesuits in India, from Bungo, Sept. 10 1555. Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 106-107, note 9. 36 Fróis I, 142-143. He later worked in Shimabara. 37 MHJ II, 381. Almeida to Antonio de Quadros, from Funai, Oct. 1 1561. 38 Ward, Women, 159; Kiyoshi Nei, Shugendō to Kirishitan (Tokyo: Tokyodō Shuppan, 1988), 113. 55 Christian daimyo Ōmura Sumitada (Dom Bartholomeu) ordered all of his subjects to 39 become Christian, including “the bonzes [monks] from fifty or sixty monasteries.” Although the Jesuits record educated converts on Kyushu, the most significant ones occurred in Miyako. Given that the capital was home to the most important monasteries and was a center of learning and culture, it should come as no surprise that this was where the highest number of learned converts were made. This mattered a great deal to the spread of Christianity on Kyushu because these educated advocates effected a transfer of outside knowledge and learning of the highest caliber to the evangelical partnership overall. Educated converts from or living in the capital aided the mission greatly by providing information on each Buddhist sect and instruction on how to argue against each one of them. Religious disputation was a prominent feature of religious life in the capital, and there was no better source of instruction than former monks from Miyako. Xavier, if we recall, had planned to go to the capital and then have foreign missionaries study at the Japanese “universities” so that they might uncover the secrets of Buddhism for the purpose of refuting it. This plan never came to fruition—no foreigners would ever study at the Japanese “universities.” Instead, the missionaries made several converts of former monks who had studied in monasteries around the capital. Some of these worked as native advocates and taught the foreign missionaries about Buddhism. The first two former monks from the capital are known to us by the names of Paulo Kyozen (d. 1557) and Bernabé Senyō. Both had come to Yamaguchi from Yamato province and both had been at a monastery on Tōnomine. Realizing that their monastic connections might make it possible to establish a mission in the capital, Cosme de Torres sent Lourenço Ryōsai (the blind biwa-hōshi) and Bernabé himself with a letter of introduction from Paulo Kyozen with the purpose of gaining entrance to the “university” of Hie-zan (Enryakuji). Since Lourenço and Bernabé were essentially nobodies in the high-brow monastic circles of the capital, nothing actually came of this expedition. Nonetheless, the seed to enter the monastic fray of Miyako had been planted. 39 Quoted in Shinzo Kawamura, “Making Christian Lay Communities During the ‘Christian Century’ in Japan: A Case Study of Takata District in Bungo” (Ph.d. diss., Gerogetown University, 1999), 109; Cartas, 352. Cabral to the Provincial of Portugal, from Nagasaki, Sept. 12 1575. 56 The next attempt to penetrate the intellectual center of Japan occurred a few years later in 1559. This time, however, the expedition consisted of one foreign advocate (Padre Gaspar Vilela) and two Japanese advocates (the future irmãos Lourenço and Damião of Akizuki, c.1536-1586, in Chikuzen province on Kyushu). All three shaved their heads and beards, in the manner of Buddhist monks, so they might look the part of learned and ascetic religious figures. This partnership, too, was rejected by the monks of the capital, but the missionaries found sympathy and hospitality from an elderly nun as well as a monk named Eigenan. With their help, the missionaries secured an audience with Shogun Ashikaga Yoshitaka and received official permission to proselytize in the 40 capital. The deciding factor this time, it seems, was that the two native advocates brought with them a foreign advocate, namely an exotic priest of “Tenjiku” who had 41 likewise shaved his head. Word about the priest from Tenjiku apparently traveled fast, prompting many to visit the missionaries. Because Vilela knew little Japanese at this point, Lourenço and Damião did the interpreting, disputing, and preaching. If they could not answer a question about Christianity, Vilela would have provided the answer to his two companions. Lourenço states that “fifteen bonzes became Christian, leaving their 42 books and their parishioners and all of their past life.” Some of these monks would go on to teach the missionaries (foreign and Japanese) about Buddhism, how to engage in religious disputations, and how to write in a fluent and educated style. Perhaps the two most important educated native advocates to come out of the Miyako expedition were the medical doctor Paulo Yoho (c. 1510-1596; sometimes Yōhōken) and his son Vicente Hōin (b. 1538). Both were from the province of Wakasa 40 Joseph Jennes, A History of the Catholic Church in Japan, from its Beginnings to the Early Meiji Era (Tokyo: Oriens Institute for Religious Research, 1973), 19-21. Jennes provides a good summary of the events as related by Fróis. There were actually four (Lourenço, Damião, Vilela, and Diego of Miyako, who lived in the Sakamoto neighborhood) in their party plus one lay Christian guide (Mancio). They departed from the port of Okinohama, which served Funai. They arrived nearby the capital in Sakai. MHJ III, 263. Fróis I, 179-180. For a brief biography of Damião of Akizuki see Oliveira e Costa, “O Cristianismo,” 771. 41 Fróis relates that the “gentiles” called Vilela the Padre “from Tenjiku” during the journey. Lourenço, in a letter from Miyako in 1560, describes how the exoticness of Vilela had an effect on one monk from the province of Harima: “… he had a vision that some padres who came from Chenchiqu would teach him the road to his salvation, and then the other day after the dream he heard that there was in Yamaguchi some padres of Chenjiqu who came to preach things about the other life.” Lourenço says that this man “left his vows and false penances and became Christian.” He further notes, “of this bonze I write because it was a thing to be noted.” MHJ III, 275-276. Lourenço to the Jesuits in Funai, from Miyako, June 2 1560. 42 Cartas 1575, 95-96v; Cartas 70v-71. 57 (modern-day Fukui Prefecture). The father was converted first in 1560. His son, displeased by this change, attempted to talk him out of becoming Christian. But he too converted upon hearing the preaching of Lourenço. Both men would become Jesuits and were received into the Society by Valignano in 1580. After years of service in partnering with foreign advocates to translate, preach, and compose Christian works, the two appear in Valignano’s Catalogue with the following entries: 113. Brother Yōhō Paulo…eighty-five years of age, very feeble….received [into the Society] at that age because of his distinction in the letters of Japan and because he had spent more than fifteen years living as a dōjuku in our houses and had done the Society much service with his learning. 114. Brother Hōin Vicente…He is a man outstanding and unique among all of Ours in the language of Japan, a great preacher in his language, and he has composed in Japanese and translated into Japanese the greater part of the spiritual 43 and learned books which have so far been made in Japanese. The father and son translated “The Acts of Saints” (Sanctos no gosague ono…), which had tales of saints and martyrdom from the Acts of the Apostles as well as Christian writers such as Eusebius and John of Damascus. It was printed at Kazusa on Amakusa in 1591. They also likely contributed to the translation of an abridgment of Luis de Granada’s Introductió del símbolo de la Fe (Fides no doxi…), certain “monogatari” or “stories” for language study, and an adaptation of the Heike Monogatari. According to Fróis, Vilela (undoubtedly with Paulo and Vicente’s help) had translated “devotional books and some of good doctrine,” as well as half of the Flos Sanctorum (Lives of the Saints 44) by Alonso de Villegas sometime before 1564. In the annual letter for 1583, Fróis highlighted the importance of Vicente to the work of the mission: …rare ingeniousness…called Vicente, a great preacher and renowned in speech and elegant in language, much instructed in knowledge of the sects of Japan, a thing in extreme necessity to our preachers in order to refute in arguments the errors and false opinions of the Bonzes and of more Gentiles. This irmão is 43 Valignano stated that Vicente “came with the intention of perverting his father. But the opposite happened, because he was persuaded to listen to Brother Lourenço, and with that he too remained caught in the net.” This and the entries are quoted in J.F. Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits: Alessandro Valignano in Sixteenth-Century Japan (London: Routledge, 1993), 185. 44 Ward, Women, 40-41. Quote from Cartas, 177. Damião also helped Fróis translate the “lives of some saints.” Fróis to the Jesuits in China and India, from Miyako, Feb. 20 1565. 58 occupied some of the time with these children in instructing them this material, and teaching to them the prayers of our holy Catholic faith in order to confound them and they…made in this such progress that in a few months they go out…and 45 begin to preach… Besides being exotic showpieces, the foreign advocates were highly educated as Jesuits and typically well versed in philosophical argumentation. When their expertise was paired with the expertise of educated native advocates, such as Vicente or Lourenço, an intellectually rigorous and articulated form of Christianity could be propagated both in preaching and in the written word. The fruit of the Miyako mission soon invigorated the intellectual side of Christian proselytization on Kyushu as Japanese Christian works produced in the capital were eventually printed and distributed on the island. This was only possible through the kind of evangelical partnership started in much humbler circumstances by Anjirō and Xavier. One of the benefits of the influx of native converts, both from Kyushu and from Miyako, was that they made extremely effective preachers. The most important native advocate for the early mission period was the blind biwa-hōshi Lourenço Ryōsai. Born in Shiraishi (in Hizen Province), Lourenço had only one eye, was very nearly blind in the 46 other, and had a “very ridiculous face.” He could neither read nor write due to his vision but made up for this with an incredibly sharp mind, eloquence in speech, deep understanding of people, and a prodigious memory. Lorenço was reputedly the greatest preacher to appear during the entire mission period and was instrumental in converting common people, educated monks, and powerful lords. Fróis praises him profusely, saying that he was: …one of the most respected preachers that we have up to now in the Company in Japan. With his preaching, many thousands of souls were converted, arguing and disputing publicly with very learned bonzes and noble lords…even now he has already passed 65 years of age, already very sick and disabled, from the work that he did for the span of 40 years in the Company in Japan, he remains in the parts of 45 Cartas II, 91-91v. Fróis to the General of the Society, Jan. 2 1584. 46 Lourenço has not received the attention he deserves in English-language scholarship. The only study to focus on him is Ebisawa’s article. He was, however, the subject of a recent biography in Japanese. But this work mostly uses his life and work as a frame to discuss various aspects of cross-cultural encounter and the mission. A truly original assessment of this very important figure in Christianity’s spread in Japan is much needed. Elisonas calls this important figure a “mountebank” on no less than two occasions. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 26. 59 Shimo in the lands of Dom Bartholomeu, exercising his office of preaching the Gospel, preaching to Christians and Gentiles, two or three times a day when it is necessary. Lourenço formally entered the Society of Jesus as an irmão and catechist under Mission 47 Superior Torres in 1563, thus becoming the first Japanese Jesuit in Japan. As a native advocate, Lourenço brought with him all of his preconvesion skills and aptitude as an itinerant minstrel. Yūki Ryōgo gives us a vivid description of what his life might have been like as a biwa-hōshi in Hirado. To make a living, he would have had to develop the following skills in order to offset his visual disability: musical talent, including singing; vivid and eloquent storytelling; people skills; worldliness; the ability to talk with people from all types of social and educational backgrounds; knowledge of literature in its oral form; Buddhist teachings; and, not the least, the art of persuasion. Lourenço would have had to go “from town to town, temple to temple” never knowing where he might settle down for the night and always having to provide for himself via his talents. He would have met different people every day and, during his travels to different temples, he would have listened to the teachings of many different Buddhist sects. He 48 would have also developed a great deal of self-sufficiency and freedom. Lorenço’s story-telling skills were certainly useful in preaching and were employed to great effect when partnered with a foreign advocate. When he could not answer a particularly incisive question about some point of Christian doctrine or practice, he is said to have employed a delaying tactic similar to the one that Scheherazade uses in One Thousand and One Nights. He would keep the listener hanging until their next meeting so he could have time to get a good answer from one of the foreign advocates. He would then answer the person’s questions in dramatic fashion as if he had known the answer all along. Other times he would stun his audience by reciting (perhaps singing) the Credo in Latin. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his former occupation as a biwa-hōshi, Lourenço could proselytize among all levels of society including the common poor, warriors, great lords, and the most educated of monks. This skill was exceptionally helpful to the mission since the foreign advocates would not dare to preach when a native 47 Bernardo, the poor samurai who had followed Xavier, was actually the first Japanese Jesuit. He had been received into the society in Europe but died there. See Oliveiria e Costa, “O Cristianismo,” 95; 138. 48 Yūki Ryōgo, Rorenso Ryos̄ ai: Hirado no biwa hōshi (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha, 2005), 20-21. 60 advocate could do so instead. In the end, Lourenço converted no less than eight high- ranking daimyo in the capital region and several high-profile monks. These convert- monks included men of various ranks from the different sects in the capital and even a so- 49 called zasu (superintendent priest) of the Tendai sect. Had Lourenço not been able to convert these monks, the missionaries would have lacked “insider” knowledge about Buddhism in order to undermine it while missionizing Kyushu. No matter how excellent native advocates such as Lourenço might have been, bicultural and bilingual advocates (the foreign-native advocate) were still a crucial missing piece to missionization. To form such advocates, the Jesuits brought children from Europe to Japan and trained the children of Japanese Christians. It was quite evident that the younger a European was when he arrived in Japan, the greater the chance that he could learn the language well. The same was true in the obverse, where children brought up as Christian could bridge the linguistic, cultural, and educational gaps that separated foreign and native advocates. Such missionary tactics had been used throughout the history of Christianity, particularly where contact between the Christian society and non- Christian society was sudden. For example, missionaries in the Americas hoped that the children of indigenous people would bridge the native-foreign gap and aid them in the transplantation of Christianity to the New World. One of the earliest attempts to train indigenous youths to be linguistic, cultural, and religious bridges as the establishment of the Franciscan College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1536. At this school, sons of the local indigenous nobility were taught in the European humanist style. They helped to translate Christian terms and concepts into Nahuatl as well as to translate Nahuatl terms and concepts into Spanish. These bicultural individuals were able to move fluidly 50 between the European and indigenous worlds. One of the first steps in training the children of Japanese Christians was the establishment of a school in Funai in the 1550s with the help of future convert Ōtomo Yoshishige. The school was run by Gaspar Vilela and the irmão Duarte da Silva, and the 49 Arimichi Ebisawa, “Irmão Lourenço, the First Japanese Lay-Brother of the Society of Jesus and His Letter.” Monumenta Nipponica 5, no. 1 (1942): 230-231. 50 Peter B. Villella, Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 37-39. 61 two would teach the children prayers and other things “of doctrine.” Writing in 1561, Fernández held out great hope for the school that it might produce “instruments to 51 manifest [God’s] holy Catholic faith in this blind Gentiledom of Japan.” One of the most important of these bilingual advocates was the Japanese Jesuit irmão Juan de Torres (c. 1542- d. after 1611). He had been baptized by Cosme de Torres at the request of his parents while still a youth. Juan de Torres’s father (Andrés) had been a samurai in the service of Ōuchi Yoshinaga in Yamaguchi. When the Mōri clan invaded Yamaguchi and forced Yoshinaga to commit suicide in 1557, Andrés became a masterless samurai (rōnin) and asked Padre Balthazar Gago to care for his young son. Andrés ended up being killed in 1559 during some violence in the city of Hakata, whereupon his wife (María) joined her son in Funai and dedicated her life to the Christian community there. The missionaries celebrated Andrés as one of the first Japanese martyrs, equating him with Saint Stephen the proto-martyr of all of Christianity. As a second generation Japanese Christian and advocate, Juan de Torres acted in a similar manner as foreign-native advocates did in other instances of Christianization when the non-Christian and Christian societies were in close contact. He was fluent in Portuguese and acted as official interpreter for Francisco Cabral (the Mission Superior after Torres) and the Padre Visitor Valignano. Having come from a warrior family himself, Juan was able to preach to other warriors without having to worry about being from a lower social rank. He disputed with monks, delivered sermons, and taught the children of some of the Christian daimyo. In effecting the conversion of his fellow warriors, Juan was quite successful. He was instrumental in the conversion of Ōtomo Yoshishige, for example—who first informed Juan of his decision rather than Francisco Cabral. He was also present at the baptism of Arima Yoshisada, who the Jesuits considered important for the conversion of Shimabara domain. Despite his service for decades, he ended up being dismissed from the Society in 1610 or 1611 for “incorrigible” 52 faults, likely meaning that was living contrary to the tenets of the order. 51 MHJ III, 410. Fernández to Antonio de Quadros, from Funai, Oct. 8 1561. 52 Medina has written an extensive biography of this important advocate. See Juan Garcia Ruiz de Medina, “Un Japones com Nombre Español, Juan de Torres, S.J. (1551-1612…),” Missionalia Hispánica 41 (1984), 5-98. This was also published in Japanese as “Iezusukaishi Hoan de Toresu (1551-1612),” Kirishitan kenkyū 24 (1984). See also Oliveira e Costa, “O Cristianismo,” 782-783 for a biographical sketch. Some of 62 The so-called Tenshō embassy (1582-1590), named for the Japanese reign era in which it occurred, represents the culmination of an attempt to train Japanese youths to be bilingual and bicultural advocates. Since a great deal has been written about this interesting aspect of the Jesuit mission, treatment of it here will be brief. The Tenshō embassy was an ambassadorial mission orchestrated by the Padre Visitor Alessandro Valignano that sent four Kyushuan boys, all of samurai lineage, to Europe on behalf of the most powerful Christian daimyo. The youths arrived in Lisbon in 1584, toured Europe, met the pope, and saw all the glories that Catholic Christendom in Europe had to offer. They returned to Kyushu in 1590, all remarkably still alive after the long journey. Although it had political elements, the Tenshō embassy is best thought of as a training mission to approximate completely bilingual and bicultural foreign-native advocates crucial to the Christianization. Prior to their departure from Kyushu, the boys had received some education befitting their status as samurai of well-to-do families. When trained by the Jesuits, they received the education that any normal European oblate might receive, studying such subjects as Latin, theology, and philosophy. They also became fluent in Portuguese. Once back home, they were to study at the higher levels of Japanese education, learning such subjects as literary Japanese and Buddhist philosophy. In the end, the mission was successful in training bilingual and bicultural advocates. Three of the four boys were eventually ordained in 1608 (Mancio, Martinho, and Julião). The fourth, Miguel, appears to have been put off by the unnecessarily long road to ordination for Japanese clergy and seems to have eventually abandoned Christianity 53 during persecution. The three padres, however, had very successful careers as advocates. Martinho was exceptionally skilled in language and served as an important interpreter. He also acted as a translator for some very important theological and devotional works, such as the Guia de Peccadores, the Símbolo de la Fe, and the Imitation of Christ. Julião worked as a preacher and confessor for “people both high and low.” He was martyred after receiving the horrendous torture of the “hanging in the pit” the above information is from Erik Glowark, “The Christianization of Japan during the First Thirty Years of the Jesuit Apostolate” (M.A. Thesis, University of Oregon, 2011), 120-122. 53 A recent excavation of Miguel’s grave, however, uncovered Christian rosary beads. Asahi Shimbun Digital, Sept. 8 2017. https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASK984W3WK98TIPE01P.html 63 (anatsurushi). Mancio worked in northern Kyushu and Hyūga province until his death in 54 Nagasaki in 1612. Though successful at creating bilingual and bicultural advocates, the Tenshō embassy illustrates just how significant the obstacles were in the transmission of Christianity from the foreign to the native in Japan. The Tenshō embassy took eight years to complete, and it is a wonder that none of the four boys died from illness or shipwreck during their travels. Gil de la Mata, sent from Japan to Europe, made the round trip voyage in record-speed: six years. Traveling to India, Malacca, and Macau was easier and shorter, but still dependent on the seasonal monsoons. In addition, sea travel during this period was very hazardous. Shipwrecks and sinkings were all too frequent and some missionaries died en route to Japan. Mata, who had survived one shipwreck in Europe, died along with seventy others when the Portuguese junk he was sailing on went down between Nagasaki and Macao in 1599. In fact, the future first bishop of Japan (Pedro Martins) was one of seven people to survive a shipwreck in the Mozambique Channel in 55 1583. In other cases of Christianization, such difficult travel was not an issue, and potential foreign-native advocates either existed prior to the transmission of Christianity or emerged organically through frequent contact. In cases where this did not occur, short distances, such as between Anglo-Saxon England and Rome, was relatively easily overcome. In societies under colonial domination by a Christian power, such as in the New World, where there was a large influx of European Christians, mestizo children and second generation Christians became bilingual and bicultural advocates. Still, these kinds of native advocates were rather few in number considering the large population of indigenous vis-à-vis Spaniards in the New World. The Tenshō embassy was the most famous example of sending Japanese to Europe in order to study and become effective native advocates. However, it was not the first. Xavier, a much more freewheeling kind of missionary, hit upon the same idea as a matter of course in 1549. The monks Xavier sent to India were not interested in going 54 Michael Cooper, The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582-1590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys Through Portugal, Spain, and Italy (Kent: Global Oriental, 2005), 180-192. 55 Moran, The Jesuits and the Japanese, 42-43. For more info on the dangers of sailing from Europe to India and from India to Japan, see Michael Cooper, Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York: Weatherhill, 1974), 27-36; 107-110. 64 further than Malacca and chose to return home to Satsuma. Two Japanese who did desire to go to Europe, the poor samurai Bernardo and Matheus, never returned to Japan. Matheus died in Goa waiting for passage to Europe. Bernardo actually did travel to Europe, the first known Japanese to do so, and became the first Japanese Jesuit there. He studied at the university in Coimbra and impressed many. He died in Europe before being able to return to Japan. Further “missions” to Europe or even India probably should have taken place in the years between 1549 and 1582, but they did not. Evidently there were no volunteers, and Valignano only drummed up the participation of the Christian lords since the entire expedition was framed as an exercise in international diplomacy. In the end it took some forty years for Japanese to successfully travel to Europe and back in order to help prosecute the mission more effectively. This underscores the enormous logistical challenges the mission faced in forming foreign-native advocates. Attempts at creating bilingual and bicultural European advocates were also rare given the distance between Europe and Japan. In order to be brought up at least somewhat bicultural and bilingual, European boys had to arrive in Japan at a fairly young age. Fernández, who was in his early twenties, actually became rather fluent (conversationally) in Japanese. His language skills started the Jesuits on the road to publishing a dictionary and grammar, none of which would have been possible without his partnering with native advocates. One early attempt at forming bilingual and bicultural advocates on the European side occurred when four orphans from Lisbon were sent to Japan early in the 1550s. This attempt had actually been the brainchild of King João III (1502-1557), who ordered Pedro Domenech, the padre and master of an orphanage in Lisbon, to send orphans to aid the missionization of Brazil. Several orphans were selected to go eastward, with four eventually arriving in Japan. As Melchior Nunez Barreto explains, they were to “make more solemn the diverse offices [through signing] and to learn the language so they can 56 serve as interpreters of the padres who come from Rome to Japan…” Only one of these orphans, Guilhermo Pereira (1537-1603), who arrived in Japan when he was just 56 MHJ II, 449-450. Barreto to Ignaitus, from between Goa and Cochin, April of 1554. Aside from Periera, the other boys did not last. A certain Regueira apparently learned Japanese well but left the mission around 1558. Ruy Perera was fifteen or sixteen when he came to Kyushu but returned to India in 1560 as a result of bad health. Manuel and Gaspar only made it as far as Malacca before turning back to India. 65 eighteen, stayed to serve his intended function. Pereira arrived in 1556 and entered the Society in 1558. He spent the remainder of his life in Japan, studying Latin and scripture, acting as an interpreter and catechist until his death in 1603 in Arima. Although limited to one successful boy, this attempt at approximation of the foreign-native advocate worked well as Mateus de Couros remarked upon the death of Pereira: “He knew Japanese so 57 well that he spoke it like a native.” The most successful attempt to create a European foreign-native advocate involved Padre João Rodrigues Tçuzzu (“the interpreter” c. 1561-c. 1633). He arrived on Kyushu when he was only fifteen or sixteen years old in 1577. He traveled widely in the country, not just in Kyushu, meeting all sorts of potentates and learned monks. Rodrigues by far was the best Japanese speaker among all the Europeans. He may have helped to create the Vocabulario but certainly wrote the Arte a Lingoa de Iapam. He also began a massive history of the mission but never finished. The first section of it, which has nothing to do with missionization and describes many aspects of daily life in Japan at the time, demonstrates his level of cultural fluency. The achievements of these bilingual and bicultural advocates were only possible after decades of the combined efforts and learning of both foreign and native advocates in evangelical partnership. Had travel been easier between Portugal and Japan or even India and Japan, actual foreign-native advocates might have been possible. The partnership of the foreign and native advocates, which necessarily had to exist to overcome the complete lack of geographic, linguistic, and cultural proximity, was finally starting to bear fruit by the end of the seventeenth century with Japanese padres. The next step would have been to have more Japanese secular clergy (clerics not following a regula, or rule, like Jesuits padres) and a Japanese bishop. Other Christianized societies achieved native clergy and native bishops quicker due to their proximity and greater incorporation with the rest of Christendom. By the time the foreign advocates were expelled by the Tokugawa in 1614, the mission was on the verge of transcending a complete reliance on evangelical partnership by having a bishop in Japan and greater numbers of secular clergy. After the expulsion of the foreigners and the ever-increasing intensity of persecution, the Japanese church was effectively cut off from the rest of the Catholic 57 Cooper, Rodrigues, 24-25. 66 world and the partnership between the foreign and the native, so carefully built over the decades, was rent asunder. Christianity and “Native Modes of Persuasion” Boniface in their presence attempted to cut down, at a place called Gaesmere, a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter…When he had made a superficial cut, suddenly the oak’s vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above, crashed to the ground…At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord. Willibald, The Life of Saint Boniface58 c. 725 Central Europe The emergence of native advocates was a critical step in the Christianization on Kyushu, but it occurred synchronically and in conjunction with Christianity’s use of Japanese modes of persuasion. In fact, these two elements are closely related in the Christianization process since someone from the target society must first be “persuaded” to become Christian and then an advocate for the religion. Native advocates, in turn, highlighted particular features of Christianity (Rambo’s “persuasive tactics”) that appealed to certain spiritual, praxical, or intellectual requirements of the native population. Just as there were many different kinds of native advocates, so too were there many different kinds of “modes of persuasion.” In using the term “native modes of persuasion,” I have appropriated the term from Ramsay MacMullen who has used the term “modes of persuasion” to describe the various ways in which Christianity in the Roman Empire of late antiquity convinced pagans of its spiritual efficacy. While MacMullen used the term for a particular society and period, I have added “native” to it in order to describe the great many ways in which Christianity, through foreign and native advocates, was able to persuade people of its viability for their particular religious needs. 58 Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 126- 127. 67 Somewhat ironically, the first premodern foreign society into which Christianity spread was also perhaps its most skeptical: the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. At first glance, there should have been much to attract non-Jews to Jewish Christianity. Different versions of monotheism were attractive to people of the ancient world, and many Gentiles engaged the numerous Greek-speaking synagogues found in the eastern part of the Empire. Many were also attracted to Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas that approached a kind of monotheism. However, there were a few inherent obstacles that the first Jewish Christians and then later Gentile Christians had to overcome with certain modes of persuasion. Firstly was the increasing recognition by the Romans that Christianity was distinct from Judaism. No longer was it part of an ancient (but still strange) national religion. Rather it was something that had sprung up within recent memory and something that the Jews themselves had rejected. Secondly, its revered figure was not a deity or even some kind of demigod. Instead Christians revered a criminal that had been executed by the state in the most abject and humiliating form possible. Thirdly, Greco- Roman Christians vehemently denied the goodness of other gods and instead reinterpreted them as wholly evil demons. These were essentially non-starters for most Greco-Romans. If someone were to become a member of this new, weird, and fundamentally atheistic religion (to the Romans), there needed to be some kind of persuasion to do so. There were many reasons why someone might become a Christian in spite of the 59 many real disadvantages, such as social and legal commendation. The Judaic idea of a personal and loving god (as opposed to the non-loving impersonal pagan gods) was appealing to many people. On this front, Judaism had already done much of the persuading. The idea eternal life as opposed to a shadowy existence in the netherworld— nobody saw the pagan afterlife as a “good thing”—was also a strong selling point. Various mystery cults, like that of Mithras, offered a similar kind of salvation. The difference was that they were older and perfectly acceptable while Christianity, being new, was not. More importantly, Mithraism and other mystery cults were inclusive of 59 Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan clearly showed these two aspects. Some were anonymous denunciations, so accusing someone of being a Christian could be a useful way to cause problems for one’s enemies. 68 other gods. In addition, certain types of Christianity were more philosophical than others. For example, Gnostic Christianity won a great deal of its adherents precisely because it combined elements of pagan mysticism and Judaic ideas in a convincing and compelling 60 manner. Over time, Christianity also used intellectual modes of persuasion as it gained more converts among educated pagans who invigorated the religion with their philosophical backgrounds. Such was the case for a number of the early Church Fathers, such as Justin Martyr in the second century and Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century. Both found intellectual and spiritual solace in Christianity after intense personal quests in search of the best philosophy and both, in turn, used their intellects to persuade others. This “conversion by philosophy,” as Wayne Meeks has termed it, could occur as a result of an attraction to Christianity’s program of morality, a field that was “the business of 61 philosophy rather than of religion” in the ancient world. As we will see later, there were also social dimensions to becoming Christian; one might join the Christians simply because they took care of one another. All of these were modes of persuasion native to the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. Two, however, were rather dramatic and frequently transcended time and place, namely wonder-working (thaumaturgy) and exorcism. As MacMullen has argued, these two modes of persuasion were some of the most important ways that people came to convert. Christian exorcism is taken up at length in Part Two, so no mention of it will be made here. Wonder-working was widespread in the ancient world and could involve many things, not the least of which was miraculous healing. As Christopher P. Jones explains, conversion precipitated by thaumaturgy was “probably far more usual than the slow and painful conversion of an Augustine—the performance of medical cures that, given the state of medical knowledge in antiquity, could readily seem like miracles.” 60 W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984), 201-205. “Though the religious environment of Alexandria was probably the most important single factor in the rise of Gnosticism, it would seem also that a number of tendencies within paganism and Judaism throughout the Greek-speaking world were occupied with the same aspirations towards salvation and the same problems of the place of humanity in the universe. These found a common focus in the person of the Christ-Savior.” 61 Wayne Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 23-26. See also Christopher P. Jones, Between Pagans and Christians (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 91-95. 69 Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213-270), bishop of Neocaesare, is a good example of advocates using wonder-working to persuade people to become Christian. He was said to have converted nearly the whole population of his bishopric to Christianity by performing 62 exorcism and other miracles. MacMullen argues the point further, noting that Christ was not a deity that was just good at healing or exorcism; he was better at it than other 63 deities like Mithras or Jupiter of Doliche. Moving away from thaumaturgy in the Roman Empire, Christianity adopted other native modes of persuasion as it encountered new cultures. Similar to contests of wonders, contests of strength were deemed particularly persuasive among the Germanic tribes of central and northern Europe. Intellectual persuasion by reasoned philosophy would simply not work in these cultures as it had in the urban parts of the Roman Empire. Rather, Christ had to be proven stronger than the native gods. If not, what good was he? As Nora Berend explains: In areas where Christianity was not imposed by sheer force, where missionaries were not backed by military power, or where the new religion was adopted through consensus, clerics had to adapt to local customs, and could only promote Christianity if they made it acceptable to the local population: the latter accepted Christ only if he was useful, and has something to offer. They often saw Christ as 64 a stronger god, rather than as part of a different, monotheistic, religion. To the Germans and Scandinavians, this was enacted rather dramatically, such as in the epigraph at the beginning of this section. In that story, Boniface had demonstrated that Christ was stronger than their gods using a mode of persuasion accepted to the Germans (a trial by ordeal). In northern Europe, the process repeated, with Christians “[appealing] to the early Scandinavian warrior mentality.” They presented Christ as a victor, which 62 Jones, Between Pagans and Christians, 94-95. A conversion could happen simply as a result of “the miraculous cure of a bad toothache.” Paul, in his letter to the Romans, claimed the performance of wonders and signs to his converts. Rom. 15:18-19. 63 MacMullen, Christianizing, 28. 64 Berend, Christianization, 22. James C. Russell also explains this process in general for the Germanic peoples: “In attempting to demonstrate the superior power and reliability of the Christian God, and in employing terms derived from the comitatus institution to convey Christian concepts, advocates of Christianization were implicitly reinterpreting Christianity in accordance with the world-view of the Germanic peoples.” Russell, Germanization, 212. 70 65 “played a central part in the spread of Christianity among the Vikings.” In Gaul, the Frankish king Clovis was aghast after one of his children died following baptism—his gods would not have allowed for the child to die but his Christian wife’s god did. Eventually he too became persuaded to convert after appealing to his wife’s God before an important battle against a rival. Clovis won the battle and, in a trope similar to the story of Constantine, attributed his victory to the Christian god. Such tropes can also be found in the history of the various Anglo-Saxon kings who fought one another for dominance in Britain. If the viability of Christianity was demonstrated by acts of strength and power in the Germanic world, it was demonstrated by conquest among the Nahuas in sixteenth century Mexico. Having been defeated by the Spaniards and their indigenous allies, the Nahuas needed little actual persuading that the Christian god was real and worthy of reverence. In their worldview, the conquest itself had proved that. In preconquest Mesoamerica, it was simply a matter of course that the national deity of a conquering polity, such as Huītzilōpōchtli for the Aztecs, be incorporated into a particular locality’s 66 pantheon. The god’s viability had been proven on the battlefield. As this very brief survey should make clear, whenever Christianity moved into a new culture, people in that culture chose beliefs, practices, and various element of the new religion that resonated with them. Through these many different modes of persuasion, the society targeted for conversion pulled the religion into itself rather than the advocates pushing non-native modes of persuasion. Both foreign and native advocates engaged in dialogue with these choices, naturally being led to what mode of persuasion worked for a particular society. Because of their cultural fluency in the target society, 65 Alexandra Sanmark, “Power and Conversion-A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia” (Ph.d. Diss., University College London, 2012), 97 66 As James Lockhart explains, “One can hardly speak of an indigenous inclination to disbelief in Christianity. For the people of preconquest Mesoamerica, victory was prima facie evidence of the strength of the victor’s god. One expected a conqueror to impose his god in some fashion, without fully displacing one’s own; the new god in any case always proved to be an agglomeration of attributes familiar from the local pantheon and hence easy to assimilate. Thus the Nahuas after the Spanish conquest needed less to be converted than to be instructed.” James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 203. 71 foreign-native advocates and native advocates were particularly adept at finding modes of persuasion. One of the key moments where we can see Christianity adopting native modes of persuasion in Japan occurred in 1551 when Xavier found himself engaged in disputations with the Buddhist monks of Yamaguchi. The daimyo who ruled the city, Ōuchi Yoshitaka, had given the foreign priests from Tenjiku an old monastery known as Daidōji. This donation was important because now the missionaries had a base at which they could preach to the population. Instead of roaming about the streets shouting about Deus, Xavier and the rest of the mission party could stay put while many interested people came to question them. Some people came to see the priests from Tenjiku 67 themselves or Amador, the only one who was actually from India. People also likely came to see some of the spectacular material objects that they had brought with them, such as the highly ornate glossa ordinaria (a collection of Biblical commentary) and any 68 images that were done in the western style. Some people dismissed what the foreigners had to say, while others remained intrigued and came back to talk with them again and again about such things as astronomy, the idea of a creator, the nature of good and evil, and anything else they wanted to know about this seemingly new buppō (Buddhist law or teaching). All sorts of people came to Daidōji, including commoners, monks, nuns (bikuni), merchants, and warriors. After Xavier, Antonio, and Joane left, Torres continued these kinds of debates at the old temple with Fernández acting as his 69 interpreter. Unbeknownst to the missionaries at the time, they had just entered into a long- held native mode of persuasion in Japan: the religious disputation (shūron). Developed 67 The Japanese of the period were apparently very curious about people of dark complexion. Later, when African slaves and sailors came ashore with the Portuguese, some Japanese were said to have traveled thirty or forty miles to see them. Boxer, Christian Century, 35. Although not African, Amador was a Malabar Indian and was likely of dark complexion. 68 App gives a nice summary of the spectacle surrounding the foreigners in Yamaguchi. Urs App, “St. Francis Xavier’s Discovery of Japanese Buddhism: A Chapter in the European Discovery of Buddhism (Part 3: From Yamaguchi to India 1551-1552),” The Eastern Buddhist, New Series XXXI, No. 1 (The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1998), 47-48. 69 Costelloe, Letters, 332-336; EX II, 262-268. Xavier to the Jesuits in Europe, from Cochin, Jan. 29 1552. For the debates after Xavier’s departure, see Fernández’s long and detailed account of them in his letter to Xavier, from Yamaguchi, Oct. 20 1551. MHJ II, 238-261. 72 over the course of two thousand years, disputation was an inherent part of Buddhism itself. When the religion arrived in Japan, it continued this tradition. Learned monks throughout the premodern period would lecture upon various topics and then debate certain points against those of differing schools. Sometimes records of these kinds of debates were kept, such as those held in Hosshōji in 1131 between monks of the Nara 70 schools against those of the Tendai. In the later medieval period, when big monasteries had their own warriors, debates could even descend into violence. Most Sengoku daimyo prohibited debates in their domains due to the rioting and disorder that might occur, both by monastics and laypeople. The later Tokugawa shogunate also prohibited debates, 71 occasionally punishing those who violated this law rather severely. When the missionaries first entered into this established mode of persuasion, they were both well prepared for it and at a loss of how to proceed. On the one hand, the foreign advocates, particularly Xavier, were trained in disputation as a result of their education and formation in the Society. And later Jesuits, as the Society formed its own 72 education program in Europe, were accustomed to debating. On the other hand, this was Buddhist turf, so to speak, and they knew virtually nothing about how to dispute effectively in the Japanese context. Joane and Antonio were likely of little help, aside from interpreting. Still, the Jesuits managed to get their footing somewhat and offer what 73 Urs App has called “a crash course in Aristotelian and scholastic logic.” In addition, they started to understand that there were many nuances between the different Buddhist schools. The actual substance of these debates is not our concern here and they have been covered elsewhere. The important point is that the foreign advocates were just successful 70 These are known as the “Records of Questions and Answers.” Minowa Kenryō, “The Tendai Debates of 1131 at Hosshōji” trans. Paul Groner, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 41, No. 1 (2014): 133-151. 71 Neil McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 247. Some could even be dangerous for the monks themselves. The hegemon Oda Nobunaga orchestrated a farcical debate so that he could kill the losers. Gyūichi Ōta, The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, trans. J.S.A. Elisonas and Jeroen Pieter Lamers (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 315-320. 72 Xavier had taught Aristotelian philosophy at the University of Paris for a time. Jesuits in Europe held several notable debates with Protestants in England. See McCoog’s essay “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission” in Thomas M. McCoog, ed., The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2007), 139-163. 73 App, “St. Francis,” 57. 73 enough to start persuading learned people, namely former monks, to become native advocates (as described above). Since these advocates had already been familiar with Buddhist disputation and argumentation, the foreign and native advocates proceeded together to participate effectively in this mode of persuasion. The input of both native and foreign in this regard enabled Christianity to make intellectual conversions through rigorous argumentation and debate in the Japanese style. Only native advocates could accomplish this since no foreign advocate could reach enough fluency in both writing and rhetoric to participate effectively in more formal debate. As mentioned, Lourenço was critical in converting learned men and women around the capital. He not only converted people with preaching but also disputation. Lourenço was directly responsible for the conversion of Kiyohara Shigetaka (1509- 1580), a member of the eminent Kiyohara house that held the hereditary title of myōkyō hakase (“office of doctor of Confucian teachings”). Shigetaka gave lectures, had the rank of geki (editor-writer of the imperial legal documents”) and was a court-appointed teacher of imperial biographies and Chinese classics. Shigetaka and a warrior friend (Yūki Tadamasa) were charged with investigating the missionaries in the capital when they had arrived in the early 1560s. To this end, they decided to hold a disputation in Nara to see if the new teachings should be condemned. Lourenço was the appointed debater for the Christian side, and both Shigetaka and his friend ended up converting. Converts from Zen backgrounds were also particularly valuable for engaging intellectual modes of persuasion. Not only was Zen argumentation the most difficult for the foreign advocates to grasp, it proved useful for undermining other sects in disputations. These Christians applied their Zen training to analyzing Christian catechetical works and taught the foreign advocates more about Buddhism. As Ward explains: Zen practices involved close examination of the foundational texts, sangaku (daily meditation) on kōan (topic), mondō (disputation) with the Zen master, and keeping commentary notebooks on their new religious knowledge and self- revelation gained through study, meditation, and disputation. Similarly, these converts from Zen closely examined the Christian texts, made spiritual exercises, had discussions with the Jesuit catechists about the differences between Japanese 74 religions and Catholicism, and kept their notebooks of commentaries on their 74 newly acquired Christian knowledge. Thus when Christianity adopted the religious debate as a mode of persuasion, it did so first by the guidance of potential converts (at Yamaguchi in 1551) and then by the invigoration of learned converts who had backgrounds in monastic disputation. Fortunately for the missionary enterprise, the foreign advocates as a whole were likewise experienced in debate and argumentation in their own tradition. The combination of the two foreign and native strands made Japanese Christian disputation a powerful mode of persuasion. Besides disputation, Christianity also adopted a literary mode of persuasion in the form of catechetical and devotional literature. Starting with the Kagoshima Catechism that Anjirō and Xavier composed, Japanese Christians copied whatever Japanese- language literature the mission produced. The private copying of sutras and other religious literature had a long tradition in Japan as wealthy patrons sponsored sutra- copying as early as the Nara period. Some wealthy people even had “household scriptoria,” most notably among Nara and Heian aristocrats. And individual copying of 75 sutras not only served to reproduce texts but to gain merit for the person copying them. Potential converts and Japanese Christians frequently copied and circulated texts in the decades prior to the arrival of the Jesuit mission press in 1590. These early texts were written in kana and therefore likely to be copied by even people with modest education. Although the Kagoshima Catechism was adequate for the first few years of the mission, it was in need of revision since it contained numerous Buddhist terms that did not accurately reflect key Christian ideas. Revising this catechism and producing new ones could only occur in partnership between educated foreign advocates and educated 74 Haruko Nawata Ward, “Jesuit Encounters with Confucianism in Early Modern Japan” The Sixteenth Century Journal 40, No. 4 (Winter, 2009), 1049-1051; 1054. Both Shigetaka and Tadamasa heard a sermon by Vilela, likely interpreted by one of the Japanese, and then accepted baptism. But it is clear that both were persuaded by Lourenço in the debate. 75 Bryan D. Lowe, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (Honolulu: A Kuroda Institute Book, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2017), 32-36; 134-143. Copying texts by hand was the prime method for reproduction in Japan during the period. Before 1590, only some Buddhist monasteries engaged in printing, and the great flowering of texts made with woodblock printing would not occur until the 1630s in the Tokugawa period. Haruo Shirane, ed., Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 10-12. 75 native advocates. Only the foreign advocate could check its theological integrity while only the native advocate could make it intellectually presentable both in argumentation and in style. The subsequent catechisms read by educated converts were a product of this evangelical partnership. The first foreign advocate to revise the Kagoshima Catechism was Baltazar Gago. After spending three years in country, he realized that some fifty words in it were problematic because they imparted Buddhist concepts for key Christian terms. Only a foreign advocate would be able to determine what pushed the bounds of orthodoxy or not in terms of language. Gago naturally worked with educated converts on determining which word was appropriate or not, but the ultimate decision of which terms to change 76 was the responsibility of the foreign advocate. As Gago states in his letter, both Fernández (the best foreign speaker of Japanese) and “another Japanese” (the former monk Paul Kyozen) preached and translated in tandem. Fernández was said to have composed two books in colloquial style and Paul Kyozen corrected the language. According to Gago, the books were “a life of Christ” and 77 “one from the beginning of all things” (i.e. the Kagoshima Catechism). Gago then composed a new catechism to replace the Kagoshima Catechism, which Lourenço translated in 1555. This was the so-called Nijū Kagyō Catechism (“Twenty-five Chapters”). Revised by the Provincial Melchior Nunes Barreto in 1556, this Catechism was to be the new standard until the 1570s since it made greater effort to distinguish Christian concepts from Buddhist ones. It was also the same catechism that Lourenço and 78 Vilela took to Miyako and likely used to win over the highly educated there. 76 A good overview of the problematic Japanese terms and the substitution of foreign transliterations from the beginning to the end of the mission is Stefan Kaiser’s essay “Translations of Christian Terminology th th into Japanese, 16 -19 Centuries: Problems and Solutions” in John Breen and Mark Williams, eds., Japan and Christianity: Impacts and Responses (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 8-29. The Kagoshima Catechism was being used in 1554. Duarte da Silva mentions that he and Barreto on Christmas evening read in turns for an hour from “a book that was written in the language of Japan, of the six ages from Adam to the end of the world…” MHJ II, 521. Duarte da Silva to the Jesuits in India, from Bungo, Sept. 10, 1555. 77 MHJ II, 548. Schurhammer lists the potential Pauls that Gago references. This has to be Paul Kyozen since Gago, in 1555, was sent to Hirado with Fernández and “Paulo de Tonomine” as described in Frois I, 87. Georg Schurhammer, Das kirchliche Sprachproblem in der japanischen Jesuitenmission des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tokyo : Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, 1928), 51-52. 78 Gago refers to the revision that Nunes Barreto made in a 1559 letter: “They took [to Miyako] a book that the Pader Master Melchior [Nunes Barreto] made, composed into Japanese by the same Lourenço.” Gago 76 The compounding partnership of the foreign advocate (eyeing orthodoxy) with the learned native advocate (eyeing fluency, rhetorical finesses, interaction with Buddhism) is the defining feature of how the mission produced catechisms as a textual form of persuasion. While the Nijū Kagyō was suitable for the early decades, Mission Superior Francisco Cabral began work on a brand new catechism during the 1570s with the close help of learned native advocates. For this he enlisted two men with two different talents: 1. a converted monk from Hakata named Kenzen João and 2. the Japanese irmão and interpreter Juan de Torres. Kenzen lived permanently in the Jesuit residence where he explained to Cabral, likely through the bilingual Juan de Torres (Cabral’s usual interpreter), “some books of the laws of Japan.” Cabral, during his travels to Miyako, had acquired “some leading works [of Buddhism]” and Kenzen, because “he was familiar with all their secrets,” explicated them to the padre. Cabral then wanted to refute these “secrets” with arguments from Aristotle and other western philosophers. Cabral composed his catechism in Kuchinotsu from 1571 to 1578. Once completed, Cabral wanted the catechism to be read by other educated converts for revision. Ultimately, he hoped to have it copied extensively and sent throughout Japan, particularly to the daimyo. As Schütte explains, “his main purpose was to give a philosophic basis to the praemabula fidei Christianae [preambles of the Christian faith] 79 for the benefit of his non-Christian listeners and readers.” Cabral wanted a catechism that would hit its reader hard with a different way of thinking based upon western philosophical argumentation but in a fluent style that would appeal to those accustomed to listening and reading Buddhist debates. The foreign Jesuits knew that using a foreign to the Jesuits in India, from Funai, Nov. 1, 1559. MHJ II, 189. See Medina’s note on p. 189 and his summary of Gago on p. 55. Torres refers to it as well in a letter to Melchior Nunes Barreto, from Funai, Oct. 20 1560. MHJ III, 280. Frois also mentions the use of the new catechism: “In Hirado, Padre Balthazar Gago wrote a treatise, in the manner of a catechism, which was entitled Nijugocagiô, that is 25 chapters, because much was contained in it.” Frois I, 114. See also Rui Manuel Loureiro “Jesuit Textual Strategies in Japan between 1549 and 1582,” Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies No. 8 (June, 2004), 39-63. 79 Josef Franz Schütte, Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan Volume I: From His Appointment as Visitor until His First Departure from Japan (1573-1582) Part I: The Problem (1573-1580), trans. John J. Coyne, S.J. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980), 219-220. Cabral requested that works of philosophy, particularly commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics, be sent to Japan for this purpose. See also José Luis Alvarez-Taldiz, ed. Sumario de las cosas de Japón (1583) Adiciones del Sumario de Japón, (Tokyo: Sophia university, 1954), 139*-143*. For a brief summary in English, see Ana Carolina Hosne, China and Peru (New York: Routledge, 2013), 131-133. 77 mode of thinking would work well to undermine their opponents; they had been the victims of such tactics in debates with Zen monks who used a completely different way 80 of thinking than what they knew. Just as no foreign advocate could learn fully “the laws” of Buddhism on his own accord without the help of an educated native advocate, so too could no native advocate use arguments from the western philosophical and theological tradition since they had yet to be exposed to them. Thus the catechism of Cabral and Kenzen was a true example of the dialogical process that characterized the evangelical partnership. The catechism composed by Cabral and Kenzen never saw distribution in Japan as the Mission Superior intended. When the Padre Visitor Valignano arrived in Japan in 1579, he decided to suppress and absorb it into a brand new catechism. Valignano’s new catechism (Catechismus Christianae Fidei) was also composed with the input of highly educated converts, namely Vicente Tōin. This catechism was not only a summary of the Christian faith but also a sort of manual of how to refute Buddhism for native preachers and other advocates who might have to engage in debate. It was also intended for educated potential converts. Here, scholastic learning was brought to bear against Buddhism in the arena of disputation, as Valignano’s sole purpose was to undermine it for the benefit of proselytization. As Urs App describes the catechism, “his intention was not to create straw men to shoot at but rather to offer a strictly rational and reliable presentation of the core teachings of Japan in order to use it as a basis for a devastating refutation.” Though only printed in Lisbon in 1586 (in Latin), the manuscript of the Japanese-language version of the catechism (not extant) seems to have served as the basis for Vicente Tōin’s lectures to Japanese preachers at the Jesuit schools in central Honshu 81 (Azuchi and Miyako). 80 See the chapter “The Zen Shock” in Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness: the Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought and the Invention of Oriental Philosophy (Rorschach: UniversityMedia, 2012), 23-32. Dumuolin points out: “The nihilistic version of Buddhism recurs in all the disputations of Jesuits with Zen disciples after Torres. The Jesuits [sic] theologians were not able to grasp the Mahāyāna philosophy, to which they found no counterpart in European thought as they knew it…” Henrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: Japan, trans. James W. Heisig and Paul Knitter (World Wisdom, Inc, 2005), 267. 81 App, The Cult, 51-60, with the quote on pp. 55-56. Remarkably, Japanese-language lecture notes ended up in a folding screen that was sent to Evora and only discovered in 1902. See App’s spaghetti chart on p. 56. This text, though composed for use on Kyushu, heavily influenced Matteo Ricci’s catechisms, Tianzhu Shilu (1584; True Record of the Lord of Heaven) and Tianzhu Shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven). 78 More useful as a textual mode of persuasion was the Dochirina Kirishitan (Christian Doctrine), which was based upon Marcos Jorge’s very popular Portuguese- language catechism (Doctrina Christã…) of 1566. First printed in 1591 with the newly installed printing press, Dochirina Kirishitan went through two other editions, with one being in Romaji so that foreign advocates could use it. Unlike Valignano’s catechism, this was the most widely used catechism and the easiest to understand since it followed a series of questions and answers between a master and disciple. The text was printed and distributed widely. A 1592 conference among the Jesuits in Japan decided that it should “prevail across the country, bringing great benefits to the Christians.” If each Christian community had a copy, as Higashibaba believes, this catechetical text would have been incredibly helpful to laypeople, both men and women, wanting persuade their family 82 members and neighbors to become interested in Christianity. The text itself covers all of the basic church teachings, what the sacraments are, and basic church praxis. With the printing and distribution of the Dochirina Kirishitan, the missionaries enabled anyone who was literate to become an effective advocate. Valignano, by bringing an entire printing press all the way from Italy via Goa, had created a virtual print revolution for the Christian textual mode of persuasion. By the time it stopped printing in 1614, due to the edict of expulsion, foreign and native advocates had produced anew or translated some one hundred titles of all sorts of genres including the catechism, manuals of devotion, Christian didactic literature, the Tale of the Heike, and ancient secular literature like Aesop’s Fables. For many of these, as Farge observes, “the translation methods of the mission press show an increasing flexibility and growing willingness to adapt and change the original [European works].” Translators such as Hara 83 Martinho (discussed later) edited and rewrote good portions of the original works. Ana Carolina Hosne, China and Peru, 131-133. Hosne includes a very well-explained summary of Valignano’s catechism. 82 Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 53-54; quote on p. 56. 83 William J. Farge, The Japanese Translations of the Jesuit Mission Press, 1590-1614: De Imitatione Christi and Guía de Pecadores (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 2003), 4-7; José Miguel Duarte Leite Pinto dos Santos, “A Study in Cross-cultural Transmission of Natural Philosophy: The Kenkon Bensetsu” (Ph.D. diss., Universidade de Nova Lisboa, 2011), 106-109. 79 Christian literature (Kirishitan-ban) was so popular that the foreign Jesuits eventually outsourced all Japanese-language printing to a layman, Gotō Thome Sōin, who was a very “distinguished Christian of Nagasaki.” Gotō Thome ran this division of the press entirely on his own, putting up the cost for all Japanese-language texts. The mission had been distributing the texts to Christians for free, but this became too much of an expense. In exchange for printing the literature, Gotō was able to keep all the profits. Christian literature must have been popular enough for the enterprising Gotō to at least 84 cover his own costs. The popularity and effectiveness of the textual mode of persuasion can be seen in the Tokugawa regime’s efforts to destroy all Christian literature. According to the contemporary Jesuit historian Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685), the 85 Tokugawa set fire to “a mountain” of Christian texts in 1626. Aside from outright destruction, anti-Christian texts, such as the chapbook Kirishitan Monogatari (The Christian Story) and the learned treatise Ha Daiusu (Deus Destroyed), circulated to persuade people of the evils of the religion. These were efforts to counteract the popularity of Christian literature. One of the other most important modes of persuasion was the use of objects and actions known as sacramentals. These were used by both Japanese Christians and non- Christians. Some of the most common sacramentals used on Kyushu were the sign of the cross, crucifixes, holy water, agnus deis, rosary beads, nominas (a kind of phylactery), “veronicas” (the image from Veronica’s veil), and medals. Their spiritual and temporal benefits were thought to be manifold. A modern-era (Pre-Vatican II) Catholic handbook for the laity provides an excellent description of the spiritual and “this-worldly” benefits of the sacramentals: The chief favors we obtain from the sacramentals are: actual grace, protection from evil spirits, aid to devotion, forgiveness of venial sins, the remission of 84 Diego Pacheco, “Diogo de Mesquita, S. J. and the Jesuit Mission Press” Monumenta Nipponica 26, No. 3/4 (1971): 441. Other Japanese missionaries who worked the press included irmão Jorge de Loyola, the padre and dōjuku Constantino Dourado of Isahaya, irmão Petroro Chikuan (or Kuya), irmão Miguel Ichiku, irmão Leo Togumse, and the layman Antonio Harada. See Johannes Laures, Kirishitan Bunko: A Manual of Books and Documents on the Early Christian Missios in Japan (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1957), 19-24 for brief biographies. 85 Quoted in Moran, The Jesuits and the Japanese, 145. Laures claims Bartoli’s history is based upon accurate sources. 80 temporal punishment due to sin, and certain temporal blessings, such as health of 86 body. Sacramentals are distinct from the sacraments (such as baptism and confession), which are considered to have been instituted by Christ himself and impart sanctifying grace. The sacraments operate on the principle of ex opere operato (from what is done), meaning that spiritual benefits (sanctifying grace) originate from the act itself rather than from the spiritual disposition of the person receiving it or performing it. In addition, a person must be baptized (the prime sacrament) in order to receive any of the other sacraments. But sacramentals could be used by anyone. They are considered to operate on the principle of ex opere operantis and ex opere operantis Ecclesiae (from the work of the doer, from the work of the Church). This means that the efficacy of the sacramental was in relation to the spiritual disposition of the person using it. In this sense, use of these objects was a material form of and aid to prayer, whereby its effectiveness was directly dependent upon the prayerful disposition of the person using it. For the foreign missionaries, it was completely acceptable for non-Christians to use sacramentals so long as they had good faith in them (i.e. hoping that it would provide some kind of spiritual or temporal benefit). The very fact that a non-Christian would hope to obtain some kind of benefit from a sacramental was de facto evidence of a good spiritual disposition towards it. Many in Europe and elsewhere at the time used them like charms and talismans. Still, this had an important function, as R. W. Scriber explains: “the Sacramentals provided an important link by means of which various ritual actions of the church were made 87 effective in all areas of daily life.” For Japanese Christians, sacramentals were the tangible power of Deus and the Church. Christians and even non-Christians could use them for spiritual protection, healing, and protection from physical harm. 86 John F. Sullivan, The Externals of the Catholic Church: A Handbook of Catholic Usage, Second Edition, completely revised by John C. O’Leary (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1959), 217. The full list of sacramentals from this handbook includes: the sign of the cross, the cross and crucifix, holy water, vestments, the stations of the cross, the holy oils, candles, the rosary, scapulars, the agnus dei, palm branches, incense, church bells, religious medals, ashes, and Christian symbols. 87 R. W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 260-263. 81 As any visitor to Japan today knows, various kinds of amulets (omamori), talismans (ofuda), and votive tablets (ema) can be had at virtually every Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine throughout the country. These objects can be used for a wide variety of purposes, such as protection from harm, success in business, and healing, just to name a few. Even the most philosophically minded Buddhist sect, that of Zen, sells such objects (its specialty are aides to career advancement). This use of sacred objects, if we might 88 call them that, has always been a feature of both Buddhism and Shinto in Japan. During the medieval period, itinerant holy men and women (hijiri), such as Ippen (1234-1289), traveled throughout the country handing out talismans. Such objects were also sold as part of so-called kanjin campaigns (donation campaigns for a temple or public works project). For example, the monk Chōgen gave out amulets in exchange for 89 donations, which were likely thought as “guarantee[s] of salvation in the next world.” One Zen monastery, Yōkōji, “consecrated” (tengen) talismans for protection against fire 90 and distributed them to its patrons. The connection between faith and such objects can most clearly be seen in Ippen’s dialogue with the deity of Kumano Shrine (being a manifestation of Amida Buddha): In Amida Buddha’s perfect enlightenment ten kalpas ago the birth of all sentient beings was decisively settled as Namu-amida-butsu. Distribute your fuda [talismans] regardless of whether people have faith or not, and without discriminating between the pure and impure. Then Ippen opened his eyes and looked around. About one hundred children of twelve or thirteen came up and, holding out their hands, said, “let us have your 91 nembutsu.” Taking the fuda, they uttered Namu-amida-butsu and went off. 88 See Ian Reader and George Tanabe, Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1998) for a good account of such objects in modern Japan. According to one somewhat recent survey, around 70% of people responded in the affirmative to the question of whether or not they ever buy amulets of talismans. Michael K. Roemer “Japanese Survey Data on Religious Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices in the Twenty-first Century” in Inken Prohl and John Nelson, eds., Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 48-49. 89 Janet Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1994), 102; 115-116. 90 William M. Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1993), 117. 91 Quoted in Dennis Hirota, No Abode: The Record of Ippen (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1997), XXXV. 82 Similarly, the Shingon monk Myōe advocated the use of ordinary sand (dosha) after it had been “illuminated” by chanting the Mantra of Light. The sand was intended as a 92 material aid to releasing a person from their attachments. Although fuda like those of Ippen, could act as aides for and expressions of “a single act of faith and utterance,” they and other types of objects could provide very real this-world benefits (genze riyaku). Myōe’s sand was not just for spiritual benefit, it could 93 also heal any physical conditions from which a person was suffering. Chanting the Healing Buddha Mantra or the nembutsu was also thought to aid physicians in treating 94 their patients. During the Tokugawa period, ingesting talismans was a popular form of healing, and the practice was said to heal such ailments as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, stomach pains, and the inability to urinate. Buddhism, as Duncan Ryūken Williams 95 observes, “has always been a religion of healing.” Objects such as talismans were physical aides to that healing power. When the foreign advocates of Christianity introduced Catholic sacramentals on Kyushu, they tapped into this long tradition of using “sacred objects” for both spiritual and practical benefits. As a result, both Japanese Christians and non-Christians alike enthusiastically received sacramentals. Mahayana Buddhism’s “normative” practice of combining spiritual and practical benefits with sacred or devotional objects led to the 96 expectation that Christianity could and should do the same. The missionaries clearly recognized this similarity, as Frois reports in his Tratado: 92 Mark Unno, Shingon Refractions: Myōe and the Mantra of Light (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2004), 115. 93 Mark T. Unno “Recommending Faith in the Sand of the Mantra of Light” in Richard K. Payne, ed., Re- visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1998), 178. 94 Andrew Edmund Goble, Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011), 73-74; 145-146, notes 30 and 31. 95 Duncan Ryūken Williams, The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sōtō Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 104-108; quote on p. 88 96 George Tanabe explains, “Healing and all of the other practical benefits are not functional concessions to folk superstitions but normative expressions of one of the mainstreams of Mahāyāna Buddhism.” Quoted in Unno, “Recommending Faith,” 178. 83 Free of charge, we give others rosaries that have been blessed as well as relics from saints; the bonzes sell for a very good sum of money a great number and 97 variety of amulets in the form of a written piece of paper. The Jesuits really were all too happy to hand them out for free, and their letters are filled with references to requests for sacramentals. This was a very shrewd missionization tactic on their part. Since several scholars have already noted the popularity of sacramentals among the Japanese, it is not necessary to give many examples here. Japanese Christians, 98 sometimes literally in droves, constantly requested sacramentals from the missionaries. Crosses, medals, rosary beads, images, holy water, and “veronicas” were all very popular. Aside from the Jesuits’ own references to these many requests, archaeological excavations of Japanese Christian graves reveal that many were buried with sacramentals, no doubt in the belief that these objects would help them in death. Because they were made of metal, crucifixes and medals are particularly numerous in the archaeological 99 record. Japanese Christians used sacramentals for all kinds of this-worldly benefits, such as healing of illness and other physical ailments, help in childbirth, protection from evil spirits, protection from disasters (fire), accidents, and protection during battle. Christian samurai put imagery, such as the instruments of the Passion, on their banners, weapons, and armor. Giovanni Battista de Monte, in 1564, relates how sacramentals were popular for both Christians and non-Christians: Many sick they take here to the church, and through the supernatural virtue that God our Lord has put in the holy water, the sick receive with it health…and already among the gentiles the opinion spreads, that the sick, in order to receive health, they have to go to our church and not to their temples [varelas]. We ask 97 Richard K. Danford, Robin D. Gill, and Daniel T. Reff, The First European Description of Japan: A Critical English-language Edition of Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Jaapn by Luis Frois, S.J. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 105. 98 For example, Cartas 147. Frois to the Jesuits in India, from Hirado, Oct. 3 1564. 99 See Kōichi Gotō, Kirishitan Ibutsu no Kōkogakuteki Kenkyū: Fukyōki ni okeru Kirishitan Ibutsu Ryūnyū no Purosesu (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2015), for a recent study in Funai. 84 God our Lord that he might want to give light to all, and his holy grace in order 100 that they know him and save their souls. Amen. Battista de Monte’s last line is revealing. Conscious that many Japanese and even non- Christians used sacramentals for this-worldly benefits, the missionaries hoped that these objects would impel people into saving their souls through higher means. Sacramentals were thus a gateway into knowledge of God and ultimately the grace-imparting sacraments of the Church. This was not unlike how Myōe used ordinary sand, which could bestow temporal benefits, as a means for the greater end of dispelling negative karma and attachments in a person’s mental state. As Mark Unno has explained, “the expiation of negative karma is at once petitionary [for this-worldly benefits] and soteriological; for the medieval Japanese, the mental, physical, moral, and spiritual dimensions of life were inseparably bound up with one another, and to grasp the 101 significance of one required grasping all of the others.” Sacramentals, both on Kyushu and elsewhere in Catholic Christendom, operated on a similar principle. They simultaneously acted as a tangible means for petitioning a higher power (God) for this- worldly benefits, such as health, while bringing non-Christians into the Church and reinforcing belief in God for those already Christians. Because both the Japanese and foreign missionaries thought that sacramentals could produce this-worldly benefits, these objects functioned on Kyushu in the following manner: 1. as material aides for reinforcing belief and praxis for those already Christian; 2. as material aides for ordinary lay people to be native advocates of Christianity; and 3. as material aides that pulled non-Christians into the orbit of Christianity or even into the Church (sometimes into the literal church building). All three functions occurred simultaneously and reinforced one another. For example, a Japanese Christian might use holy water in healing one of their non-Christian relatives. If both parties attributed the healing to the holy water, the Christian would be reinforced in their belief of God and the praxis of going to church, receiving the sacraments, etc. The non-Christian, intrigued by 100 Frois I, 381. Frois is quoting a letter from Funai, December 1564. The letter is now thought to be lost. Higashibaba also provides a partial quotation, but his translation is from a Japanese translation of the Portuguese. 101 Mark T. Unno, “Recommending Faith,” 178. 85 the this-worldly benefits of using holy water, might begin to take interest in becoming Christian, likely with the guidance of their relative. Anti-Christian propagandists took notice of how Japanese Christians proclaimed the this-worldly benefits of sacramentals and other miraculous occurrences with which they were frequently associated. They realized that to undermine Christianity itself they had to undermine the connection between the religion and the miraculous. While not specifically addressing sacramentals, the Zen monk Suzuki Shōsan, in Ha Kirishitan (Christians Countered), attempts to discredit any and all Christian miracles: The Kirishitan sect, as I have heard, in general places high value on miraculous occurrences, claiming that they are testimonies to the glory of Deus. Contriving various sorts of trickery, they delude the people. To counter, I reply: If miraculous occurrence are to be esteemed, then one should worship the King of Evil. Even the foxes and badgers of our own country work miraculous happenings. In addition to undermining Christianity’s supposed miracles by framing them as the products of evil trickery, Shōsan then argues that miracles, even Buddhist ones, in and of themselves, are nothing more than delusions and distractions to the true path to enlightenment. Concluding his argument against miracles in general, Shōsan matter-of- factly states, “Men who endeavor to practice the Buddha’s Way devote themselves to the 102 study of this path. They have no use at all for miracles.” Had miracles (undoubtedly miracles like healing) not been valued by Japanese Christians nor used as “testimonies to the glory of Deus,” Shōsan clearly would not have taken pains to refute them. During persecution, state authorities would specifically seek out and destroy any sacramentals found in the possession of suspected Christians. The modes of persuasion that we have examined are by no means the only ones that Christians used on Kyushu. And much more could be said about sacramentals, disputations, and Christian literature. The point, however, is that Christianity was successful precisely because it was capable of meeting the religious needs of the population on so many different levels. The religion had an intellectual side, as illustrated by the reasoned argumentation of advocates engaged in religious debate with Buddhists especially, and it developed an extremely rich textual tradition that even moderately 102 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 381-382. 86 educated people could access to learn about God and the Church. It also deployed material aids (the sacramentals) that both Christians and non-Christians could access and use for this-worldly benefits. As in other cases of Christianization, the religion did not win converts via foreign modes of persuasion. What was deemed persuasive in one culture, such as philosophical reasoning, would not necessarily be deemed persuasive in another. Advocates had to persuade people of Christianity’s viability as a belief system in ways that made sense to them: otherwise it would have had little chance of success. By adopting different native modes of persuasion wherever it went, the religion was able to penetrate a wide variety of different societies and meet the incipient religious needs of many different native populations. This inherent flexibility in modes of persuading people also extended the missionaries themselves, who frequently had to adapt to new customs and cultural contexts. They did this, as we will see below, by modifying elements of orthopraxy to meet certain situations in the mission field and certain the culture and customs of non- Christians who they were trying to convert. The “Serious Pacification of Many Consciences:” Modification of Orthopraxy Strategic modification of orthopraxy during missionization is as old as the Church itself. The very first missionaries, the apostles themselves, had to grapple with the issue of praxis almost immediately as their movement extended beyond the confines of Judea. As Jews, they were bound by the praxis requirements of Mosaic Law, such as circumcision, dietary restrictions, and avoidance of certain things, like corpses, that caused ritual impurity. But as missionaries spread to Jewish communities in the Gentile world and then, by extension, to the Gentiles themselves, the very serious question arose: should the Church, as a whole, require Gentile believers to adhere to the strictures of the Mosaic Covenant? As any student of early Christianity knows, this was perhaps the most significant issue the Church faced in its first decades because it determined just who could become Christian and whether or not the movement could spread more widely in 87 the Empire. Would the followers of Jesus be fundamentally Jewish or would the Church adapt itself to the Gentile world? To simplify the matter greatly and the turmoil that it caused, we will simply note that the Church did decide to modify its orthopraxy. The leading apostle to the Gentiles, Paul of Tarsus, had been a Pharisee and, by his own admission, a scrupulous devotee of Mosaic Law. Nevertheless, he argued powerfully for the abandonment of this fundamental aspect of the early Jewish Christian movement, something that brought him into direct conflict with the other apostles, namely James the Just (the brother of Jesus). After much debate, Paul and his Gentile mission won out. Presided over by James and attended by Paul and other Church leaders who had actually known Jesus, the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem (c. 50) decided that almost all orthopraxical requirements should be lifted for Gentiles wanting to join the Church. One no longer had to be circumcised or avoid specific foods. The Book of Acts (15:19-21), written decades later, offers an idealized account of the decision: [James said,] Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues. This passage, though not an actual record of the council, nevertheless had great importance for the Church moving forward regarding adherence to praxical norms. As Luke Timothy Johnson explains, “Alone in the New Testament writings Luke has given fundamental and programmatic expression to the nature of Christianity as a people of faith and as potentially inclusive of all humans; he has done so, moreover, in a narrative of paradigmatic force, so that despite every other dispute and division Christianity 103 subsequently experienced, this issue never again required resolution.” The ways in which foreign missionaries modified orthopraxy, as they knew it, are manifold and, in any event, comprehensive treatment of the subject is not required here. 103 Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 280. Also Acts 15: 28-29 presents a letter to the Gentiles: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.” 88 But a few key examples, which we will draw from Anglo-Saxon England, are in order. Generally, we need to keep in mind that issues of orthopraxy were not so much issues of concern to the society targeted for conversion. Rather, they were issues for the foreign advocates who, as guardians of orthodoxy and orthropraxy, encountered new and very real situations in the daily lives of the people they aimed to convert. As Christians themselves, they were bound by certain norms, both in belief and praxis, that they could not or would not violate without endangering their own salvation. Therefore, whenever they were faced with a new situation in the mission field, e.g. differing marriage customs, they had to evaluate whether or not modifying certain norms would be in direct violation of the Church or even God’s will. For example, in the early Church, the leaders could not and would not allow sacrifices to the pagan gods, even though this would certainly have facilitated the spread of the religion. To be sure, there were Christians who had no problem tolerating such practices, but the leading advocates condemned them nonetheless as a violation of orthodoxic and orthopraxic norms. One of the clearest examples of modification of orthopraxy occurred when Christianity broke the bounds of the Roman Empire and penetrated the Germanic warrior cultures of Anglo-Saxon England and central Europe (Francia and Saxony). Modifications of praxis could either occur over time or be sanctioned for the individual missionaries by higher ecclesiastical authorities. For example, when Boniface was missionizing the Germans, he wrote to the pope in Rome about what to do when faced with new Germanic customs that posed challenges to the praxical norms of Christianity. The pagan warrior-centric cultures of the Germanic tribes held vastly different norms of morality and social behavior than the more “civilized” Greco-Roman cultures in which the Church had developed. For example, retribution killings were considered to be a normal part of Germanic justice and an appropriate response by the family of a murdered individual. But in Christianity, they were seen as immoral and evil acts. Of course, the Church could never fully condone such acts, as they explicitly contradicted the words of Jesus (turn the other cheek). What it could do was achieve compromises within Germanic custom by relaxing its praxis. This kind of relaxation of praxis is clearly shown in a penitential (a manual that lists appropriate penances for all kinds of sins) attributed to the Greek-born (Anatolia) 89 Bishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus (602-690). As a foreign advocate and church leader, he observed the tension between the martial ethos of the Anglo-Saxon culture and the Church’s teachings on non-violence. Accordingly, in his penitential, he compromised on the issue of manslaughter: While the penance for killing a man was up to ten years, if he paid the customary compensation to the dead man’s family (as was the norm to prevent escalating blood feuds), his penance would be halved. If the killing occurred on the order of his lord (as a thegn), essentially an assassination, the bishop decreed that “[he] shall keep way from the church for forty days; and one who slays a man in public 104 war shall do penance for forty days.” Clearly, this was a compromise between the tenets of Christianity and those of Germanic culture that an Anglo-Saxon warrior could get behind. Theodore clearly knew that if he held this warrior culture to a foreign standard, he would no longer have any Christians among the warrior elite. One consistent modification to orthopraxy in Christianity’s transmission across all cultures was to make room for elements of native ritual in Christian praxis. Since praxis was in the large part communal (the mass is usually a public not a private celebration), dialogue necessarily had to occur between the foreign advocate and the native Christian population regarding such things as rituals and celebrations. A letter from Pope Gregory to the Abbot Mellitus (d. 624), one of the foreign missionaries to Anglo-Saxon England and the first bishop of London, shows this compromise at work at a time when the abbot was at a loss over what to do about the customary offering of animal sacrifice: And because they are in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils, some solemnity ought to be given them in exchange for this. So on the day of the dedication or festivals of the holy martyrs, whose relics are deposited there, let them make themselves huts from the branches of trees around the churches which have been converted out of shrines, and let them celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts. Do not let them sacrifice animals to the devil, but let them slaughter animals for their own food to the praise of God, and let them give thanks to the Giver of all things for His bountiful provision. Thus while some 104 John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbook of Penance: A Translation of the Principal “Libri poenitentiales” and Selections from Related Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 187. A murder, with no justification whatsoever, deserved “ten or seven years” penance. Other relaxed penances included those for “excess and drunkenness.” As Marilynn Dunn explains, “this ruling seems to indicate that the Church understood the need to come to terms to some extent with the realities of military service and ties of loyalty governing the life of the Anglo-Saxon thegn.” Marilynn Dunn, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons C.597-C.700: Discourses of Life, Death and Afterlife (London: Continuum, 2010), 135-136. 90 outward rejoicings are preserved, they will be able more easily to share in inward rejoicings. It is doubtless impossible to cut out everything at once from their 105 stubborn minds… Though obviously chauvinistic in tone, Gregory’s response underscores the recognition that certain strategic relaxations had to be made if the mission, which he originated, was going to be successful. Mellitus, as the foreign advocate on the ground, had been caught between a rock and hard place. If he had tacitly approved of these sacrifices, he would have been party to them and thereby endangered his own salvation. His solution, as we will see with the foreign missionaries on Kyushu, was to appeal to a higher authority (the Pope) in order to resolve the tension that he faced—between needing to accommodate the Anglo-Saxons and needing to fulfill his grave responsibility to uphold Church norms. Germanic culture created similar tensions for other missionaries, namely Augustine of Canterbury and Boniface, the so-called “Apostle to the Germans.” Like Milletus, both of these medieval missionaries wrote to the popes for advice. From Augustine’s experience with the Anglo-Saxons, such questions arose as: How should a person who robs a church be punished? May two brothers marry two sisters? Can a bishop be consecrated without the gathering of other bishops? How soon after childbirth 106 can a woman enter a church? Should a pregnant woman receive baptism? Boniface also wrote many letters to the popes asking for advice: Are baptisms still valid if they are conducted by “sacrilegious priests” who sacrifice bulls and goats to the heathen gods? 107 Are baptisms using garbled Latin still valid? To be clear, none of these questions were being asked by the Anglo-Saxons or the Germans themselves. Rather, they were the expressions of the missionaries’ desire to initiate praxical norms that would enable Christianity to adapt to new situations. The quandary for the foreign missionary was very real, particularly in far-flung locations where he did not have as easy access to the popes as did Augustine of Canterbury and Boniface. As Richard Fletcher frames the tension, “When does 105 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, I: 30 in Judith McClure and Roger Collins, eds., The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Greater Chronicle, Bede’s Letter to Egbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 57. 106 Bede, Historia, I:27, in McClure and Collins, The Ecclesiastical History,41-54. 107 Boniface, The Letters of Saint Boniface (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), LXIV; LIV. 91 108 compromise become surrender?” The foreign advocate, bound by his own orthodoxy and orthopraxy, was typically unwilling to surrender totally to the native population. Nor was he able to walk away, even from difficult situations. Likewise the native population would not surrender their long-held beliefs and customs. In relaxing his own orthopraxy (and that of the Church) in key circumstances, foreign advocates worked to achieve sufficient latitude that both sides could move forward with the transmission of Christianity. In the process, both sides were correspondingly transformed by the practices of the other. A great deal of scholarship on the Japan mission has been devoted to the Jesuits’ so-called policy of accommodation. Championed by the Padre Visitor Alessandro Valignano, the European Jesuits were instructed to adapt themselves as much as possible to the culture, customs, and language of the Japanese. This included everything from keeping their “residences” in a Japanese manner (such as serving tea to guests), observing the custom of gift-giving to important persons of rank, and adopting table manners, clothing, and the use of honorifics. Most importantly, however, Valignano was determined to train more Japanese Jesuits and, eventually, a Japanese secular clergy 109 (priests in charge of parishes). Instead of concentrating on how the foreign Jesuits accommodated themselves culturally to the Japanese, as other scholars have done before, I wish to concentrate on something more substantive world-historically—namely the ways in which the foreign advocates on Kyushu pushed the boundaries of their own orthopraxy to meet the exigencies of mission. As the previous section shows, the relaxation of orthopraxy went beyond cultural adaptation of table manners and the use of native language. Rather, it tapped into a tension within the foreign advocate himself. After all, his goal in missionizing a society was not merely to bring people the Gospel but to guide them as 108 Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 271. 109 In these two latter endeavors, it should be noted that this had always been a goal but the mission constantly lacked resources. Cabral, as Mission Superior prior to the arrival of Valignano, had continually asked for resources to do so and train Japanese Jesuits. But none were forthcoming. Valignano, acting as a direct extension of the Jesuit General himself, was the only person who could really muster the resources to found seminaries. Scholars have been right to highlight these developments but, when considering the long history of the transmission of Christianity across cultures, accommodation to language and culture was hardly remarkable. 92 close as possible to the normative practices of the Church as a whole. For the foreign advocate, modifications of praxis were always preferable to modifications of orthodoxy. For example, no Catholic missionary in the sixteenth century would have eliminated the sacrament of penance simply because it was alien to the native culture. What missionaries could do, on the other hand, is make significant alterations to the way in which the sacrament was presented and practiced based upon both practical exigencies and the needs of the native culture. For example, both in Japan and in the New World, interpreters between the priest and the penitent were frequently employed in the sacrament even though this violated normative practice. Though this section concentrates primarily on the foreign Jesuits as the “experts” on Christianity and guardians of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, it in no way discounts Japanese agency in determining how praxical norms of the Church would be maintained on Kyushu. The foreign Jesuits had to make determinations regarding certain praxis of the Church in response to Japanese customs and culture. That foreign Jesuits struggled with adherence to and modification of orthopraxy is prima facie evidence of that agency. To illustrate how the foreign advocates modified their own orthopraxy in response to the Japanese and the practical needs of the mission, we will examine the following topics: preaching in an unknown language, autonomy of native advocates, mass baptisms, involvement in the silk trade, the governance of Nagasaki, and marriage. Since we have already covered the dynamic between the foreign and native advocate, our treatment of the Japanese language and its use will be limited here. As noted before, both Xavier and Anjirō were men of action when it came to preaching Christianity. Anjirō was an able translator, and his contributions to the mission have been discussed. He had used Buddhist terminology to express concepts in Christianity because no alternatives existed in the Japanese language (aside from transliteration) and they were terms that made sense to him and his audience. One key difference between Xavier and Anjirō was that Xavier, as an educated cleric, could not consciously violate orthodoxy in his evangelization campaigns. He pushed the limits of orthopraxy to their breaking points, but did not knowingly cross the line separating the orthodox from the heretical. Though humorous to modern observers, the Dainichi controversy is particularly illuminating in this regard. Xavier, nearly completely ignorant of the Japanese language 93 and of Buddhism, had entrusted Anjirō to translate the term “Deos” or “Deus” into Japanese. Anjirō used a word for the Christian God (Deus) that made sense to him (the Cosmic Buddha Dainichi). Without knowing the full import of the word, Xavier himself went about preaching Dainichi in the streets to anyone who would listen. However, once he realized that he had been using the name of a demon (from his perspective), he immediately began using a transliterated term for the Latin “Deus.” Xavier chalked the mistake up to a “trick of the devil,” but in reality it had been his cavalier (and necessary) attitude regarding translation. Right there, on the streets of Yamaguchi, we can see where modification of orthopraxy (preaching in a foreign language with unproven terminology) crossed the line of orthodoxy for Xavier. With the meaning and identity of Dainichi revealed, Xavier simply could not go on using the term without becoming a heretic, no matter how useful it had been. Xavier, in his desire to get the mission up and running, had clearly pushed the modification of orthopraxy to a near breaking point. Only when Xavier’s own orthodoxy had been violated did he actually backpedal on any of the relaxations. The need to overcome the lack of the foreign-native advocate, who would have translated more organically and carefully, required this cavalier approach. After all, early Jewish Christianity had benefited enormously from the centuries-long efforts of Diaspora Jews to translate Hebrew and even Aramaic terms and concepts into Koine Greek. Xavier had no such luxury if he wanted to missionize Japan. The dual need to maintain orthodoxy and modify praxis in terms of language can be seen most clearly in the subsequent development of the catechism. As the foreign advocates worked with educated native advocates and former monks, they came to a greater understanding of some of the Buddhist terminology that had been used in the Kagoshima Catechism. Revisions were made periodically, but the most notable was the removal by Gago of some fifty terms that held the potential for misunderstanding. Though the terms posed no problems for the Japanese, the foreign advocates felt they would be violating orthodox teaching in using them. A stasis between orthodoxy and modification of praxis for translation can finally be seen in the Dochirina Kirishitan in 1591 and 1600. By this time the foreign advocates (as taught by educated Japanese) had a much firmer grasp on both the Japanese language 94 and the nature of Japanese Buddhism. They were in a better position to evaluate which Buddhist words were acceptable and which were not. As Takao Abé points out, the Dochirina still uses a great deal of terminology with Buddhist overtones, such as shikishin (“physical body or rupakaya, of Buddhism”); tengu (used for the devil); nen (mental recitation); kotowari (“Buddhist law”) and jihi (“Buddhist mercy”). Since the catechism was a collaborative effort between the foreign and native, the foreign Jesuits clearly did not have a problem with using these terms whether they realized their full implications or not. The Jesuits found other terms problematic and decided to transliterate them in order to avoid potential misunderstandings. These included anima (soul), inferno (hell), etc. This hybrid text of Japanese and transliterated Latin and Portuguese was really the only path forward. As Abé has explained, “Full use of Portuguese and Latin words would have hindered the Japanese-speaking congregations’ understanding of the faith. Conversely, a complete Japanese language translation of Christianity would have created another version of Buddhism because Buddhist terminology had existed in indigenous 110 Japanese culture since the sixth century.” While this is a correct assessment, I would add that the key foreign terms in transliteration were ones that the foreign advocates simply could not use without feeling as though they were potentially violating orthodoxy. They simply could not knowingly use words that had the potential for complete misunderstanding, especially if they imparted a Buddhist meaning. Only by working with educated native advocates could they come to this kind of determination. Thus, defining the limits of orthopraxy in terms of the Japanese language was not an executive decision by the foreign padres but rather a collaborative effort with native advocates: together, they determined what was acceptable and not heretical. During the first few decades of the mission (until the arrival of Valignano in 1579), the foreign Jesuits were also quite lax in ensuring that potential converts had 110 He explains further: “The key notions that were non-existent in Japanese were transcribed literally into Japanese letters and were not translated culturally, while other religious terms were converted to Japanese words through assimilatory translation. Using the hybrid combination of untranslateable key concepts in the original Euro-Christian language and other translatable words in Japanese was the best possible solution in order to achieve cross-cultural communication between Europeans and Japanese.” Takao Abé, “Christian Catechisms and Practice in Japan in the Era of the Jesuit Mission: An Intercultural Approach,” in Antje Flüchter and Rouven Wirbser, eds., Translating Catechisms, Translating Cultures: The Expansion of Catholicism in the Early Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 292-295; 305-306. 95 adequate catechetical instruction prior to receiving baptism. Xavier, the missionary most revered by later Jesuits, had baptized anyone who sought it regardless of how much they truly understood of his teachings. To be sure, many likely never gave Christianity a second thought, particularly those in Satsuma where the religion struggled to take hold during the early decades. But some people apparently held an affinity for Christianity, since later Jesuits reported meeting Japanese whom Xavier had baptized. Regardless, Xavier thought it far preferable for a person to be baptized without much knowledge of Christianity than to not be baptized at all. This principle would guide the mission until Valignano’s attempts to curb the practice in the 1580s. Each person receiving baptism was supposed to do so willingly and after adequate instruction in the faith. Even in the early centuries of Christianity, when the numbers of converts were rather small, catechumens were required to undergo a lengthy process of conversion that prepared them for baptism by reforming their moral life. In becoming Christian, they were instructed, one should not do certain things, such as visit the brothels, attend the bloodthirsty circus games, or sacrifice to the pagan gods. Only after making this moral transformation could the catechumen be admitted to the community of believers. The Church was so small during the early centuries that most frequently it was the bishop who administered baptism. The early Church, perhaps because it was a suspect minority, valued quality over quantity. For the foreign Jesuits during the early decades of the mission (and in other places such as Mexico), it was clearly a case of quantity over quality. Under the Mission Superiors Cosme de Torres and Francisco Cabral, the foreign Jesuits could and often did administer baptism to people with little or no prior catechetical instruction. This is most evident in the mass baptisms (to be discussed later) that followed in the wake of the conversion of three Kyushuan daimyo: Ōmura Sumitada, Ōtomo Yoshishige, and Arima Harunobu. These mass baptisms amounted to a substantial increase in the numbers of “Christians.” Upon the departure of Xavier from Japan, the mission claimed 1,000 “converts” (most of them nominal in that they simply had received baptism). By 1571, there were some 30,000. These were good numbers considering that there were never 111 more than nine Jesuits in country before 1563. Here it is tempting to think that these 111 Boxer, The Christian Century, 78. 96 numbers were just boasts, as many Franciscans in the New World were prone to do. But we might instead view them as evidence of the laxity with which the Jesuits administered the sacrament. Baptism itself was simple and, if adequate catechetical instruction was dispensed, it would not have taken very long. After the mass baptisms of the 1570s, the Visitor Valignano expressed his disappointment to the Jesuit General in 1579 about how many were baptized without the proper catechetical instruction: 1. …the majority of our converts, especially in this district of the Shimo [Kyushu], have no supernatural motive in seeking admission to the Church; they lack the requisite dispositions of faith and love of God and the desire to follow our holy law…we must reckon with the probability that they lack the proper disposition for baptism, it appears that they should not be baptized, as baptism is a sacrament which requires an adequate preparation. 2. After conversion they usually live such tepid lives that they differed little from the heathen; they easily relapse; it is impossible to introduce any positive Church law among them. Considering the tepidity in which they live and the readiness with which they fall away again, they injure the good name of our religion. They seem no better, I should say, nor holier nor more reliable than the followers of heathen sects…Better to have no Christians than Christians of that type! So it would appear, especially in districts where the gospel is just beginning to be preached. Valignano had unrealistic expectations for the mission. But after stating his objections, he then reasoned through the opposing arguments, in true scholastic fashion, demonstrating why this method of baptism would be acceptable. In the end, he agreed with the methods of Torres and Cabral: “even though some irregularity may have insinuated itself into 112 results achieved, these were not reached by wrong means.” This last line is important. Valignano knew and was displeased by the laxity of practice regarding baptism (hence the “irregularity”) but argued that he and his fellow missionaries had acted for the right reasons and thus did not violate orthodoxy. The Mission Superiors, in opening up baptism to anybody who wanted it (or were told by their lords to receive it) had created a situation in which the typical standards of “conversion” were lowered so that more Japanese, even nominally, could be admitted to the Church. 112 Schütte, Valignano I, 296-299. Schütte has abridged Valignano’s full scholastic argumentation. For a full discussion on the catechumenate, see Jesús López-Gay, El Catecumenado en la Mission del Japon del S. XVI. (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1966), 11-71. Valignano is also quoted on p. 20. 97 Improperly administering baptism was something only the foreign Jesuits had to worry about. Yet the exigencies of the mission, particularly the lack of manpower and the lack of a parish system, necessitated that the missionaries dispense with normal catechesis. The Jesuit missionaries, up to the 1580s, had made the decision that it was better to baptize as many as possible since they could be counted among the supernatural body of the Church (i.e. the body of Christ) and might achieve salvation at the day of judgment. To them, any non-Christian behavior or continuation of Buddhism would then be left up to the mercy of God, who would surely take into account the “newness” of their faith. Valignano himself also had to determine whether or not it made sense to expand the mission (make more converts with little instruction) or instead to use scarce resources to solidify the quality of those already baptized through greater instruction and pastoral care. Among his reasons for continuing to baptize without adequate catechesis are: 1. We would act cruelly towards this vast heathen world if we did not spread the Christian faith where it was possible to do so. Even if an adequate care of souls is ruled out, still it is better that the land should be Christian rather than pagan. For (a) despite their weakness, Christians of goodwill can find salvation in the Church. Even if they are in a state of mortal sin, they can be saved by repentance and trust in God. But this is beyond the reach of pagans. (b) Though many of the Christians are indifferent and tepid, still a great number of them who receive pastoral care lead good lives and secure eternal happiness, whereas if they remained pagan they would all be lost. (c) At least the children who die after baptism, before attaining the use of reason, reach heaven; but as heathens they would be deprived of that grace. (d) Idolatry and the sins connected with it would cease [in the domains where the daimyo had converted], and that alone would be a great gain. Valignano’s anxiety here is palpable. Should he follow orthodox practice, or should he modify his own praxis in order to secure the salvation of many Japanese? Like Augustine of Canterbury and Boniface, Valignano was compelled to appeal to high authority, namely Rome and the Jesuit General. The curia discussed all of his concerns at length. The response came upon his return to Goa in November of 1583. Rome approved, and Pope Gregory XIII had signed off on appropriate relaxations of orthopraxy. Valignano could breathe a sigh of relief. It was a good thing too because, as Schütte notes, he had decided already that relaxations in the catechumenate were permissible in Japan. In short, 98 Valignano put his own orthodoxy (and potentially his salvation) on the line for the needs 113 of mission. One of the most notable examples of tension between orthodoxy and orthopraxy can be found in the introduction of Catholic marriage. Although several scholars have highlighted the problems that missionaries faced in introducing marriage as an indissoluble union—that is, the “translation” or accommodation of Catholic marriage to Japan—the focus here will be on how the foreign missionaries pushed their own adherence to orthodoxy to the limits in order to meet Japanese expectations regarding marriage. In doing so, I have relied mostly upon Rouven Wirbser’s recent explanation of 114 the difficulties surrounding the sacrament of marriage in the Japanese context. To start, we should note that the foreign Jesuits never budged on the praxis of Catholic marriage as a sacrament administered to Christians on Kyushu. The Council of Trent had reaffirmed that marriage was one of the seven sacraments (it had not always been one) and that it was not dissoluble through divorce. The Dochirina Kirishitan explained to potential converts that marriage was a sacrament, and missionaries used different arguments to teach that Christian marriage was for life. The Manuale, issued by the bishop of Japan, made it very clear that marriage was a sacrament and for life. There was no tension between orthodoxy (marriage as a sacrament) and relaxation of orthopraxy when marrying Christians on Kyushu. To admit divorce (which was extremely common in Japan) to Catholic marriage would have been a heretical practice that no foreign missionary would have ever entertained. But the foreign advocates faced the following crucial questions of praxis: Were they to recognize the first husband or wife of a Christian convert when that person had 113 Schütte, Valignano I, 301-306. Schütte notes the tension in his letter: “Though he had marshaled all the data for an intensive discussion of the matter, he preferred not to settle it himself, but for greater security to ask Rome for a decision. Forced, however, to take action before this decision reached him, he went ahead as though both problems would be decided in a positive way. But his letter is eloquent of the grave doubt and anxiety which he experienced in the meantime.” 114 Rouven Wirbser, “A Law Too Strict? The Cultural Translation of Catholic Marriage in the Jesuit Mission to Japan,” in Flüchter and Wirbser, eds., Translating Catechisms, 252-284. See also Ward’s section, “De Japponensium Matrimonio,” in Women, 132-143. Ward covers the very real example of Ōtomo Yoshishige (Dom Francisco) putting away his first wife, who the Jesuits derisively called Jezebel, in order to marry a second Christian wife, Julia. Cabral authorized the marriage on the condition that when Yoshishige converted and married Julia, it would be for life. For an extensive study of the overarching marriage problem, see Jesús López Gay, El Matrimonio de los Japoneses: Problema, y soluciones ségun un ms. inédito de Gil de la Mata, S.J. (1547-1599) (Roma: Liberia Dell’Università Gregoriana, 1964). 99 contracted the marriage as a non-Christian? If they had divorced and wanted to remarry with a Christian spouse after converting, was that second marriage invalid? Should foreign advocates, in an attempt to protect marriage as a sacrament, pressure the remarried convert to go back to their non-Christian spouse? What if the first non- Christian spouse had converted in the meantime and wanted to be with their former partner again? The tension between orthodoxy and relaxation of orthopraxy in marriage first arose in the 1560s with the growth of the Christian community and the conversion of more and more samurai. When Christian samurai wanted to marry non-Christian spouses (something against normative Church praxis) in the 1570s, Mission Superior Cabral simply requested a dispensation to allow it (a normal procedure). Christians, particularly those of high ranks, could often not find partners of suitable rank who were Christian. Marriage alliances were extremely important to warriors, so marrying a non-Christian 115 remained the norm. In 1565 two missionaries, Meclhior Nunes Barreto (in India) and Cosme de Torres (in Japan) asked the Jesuit General at the time, Diego Laynez, about how they should proceed in cases where a Japanese Christian had divorced his pagan wife and remarried with a Christian wife. More complicated were cases where the pagan ex-wife had subsequently converted to Christianity and then wanted to be in marriage with her ex-husband. This was a very real pastoral problem for Torres and Barreto. Like Augustine of Canterbury and Boniface, they were uncomfortable with making a decision on their own. As Wirbser relates, the Church already had a ruling on a similar case from the thirteenth century under Innocent III (r. 1198-1216). Called Gaudemus in domino, this decree stated that Christian husbands who had left pagan wives (Muslim in the original context of the document) to remarry a Christian wife had to return to their pagan wives because the original marriage was still valid. There were a couple of exceptions, namely “if the non-Christian partner stays pagan and refuses to live with the newly converted Christian, or if the marriage cannot be continued without danger to the 115 Schütte, Valignano I, 215. 100 116 Christian’s faith or ‘blasphemy of the Creator’…then the marriage can be dissolved.” In spite of this decree, the two missionaries offered two different solutions. Barreto did not deny the validity of Gaudemus in domino, but requested that it be relaxed in the case of India (and Japan). Torres, on the other hand, asked for even more flexibility: namely, that Japanese non-Christian marriages not be considered valid at all in the eyes of the Church since they were not meant to be permanent. Both missionaries struggled to adhere to their own orthodox conceptions of marriage (no divorce) while being confronted with the marriage customs of a different culture. Both were asking permission (after the fact) to modify standard Catholic praxis on marriage in light of its reaffirmation as a sacrament. At first glance, Torres’s solution (stating that Japanese marriages are not really marriages at all) reeks of cultural chauvinism. But, in asking Laynez to consider all Japanese marriages invalid, he was actually requesting carte blanche in relaxation of orthopraxy to meet the very real needs of Japanese Christians. Given such wide latitude, Torres could avoid violating Catholic orthodoxy and be empowered to affirm (in good spiritual conscience) Japanese Christian marriage practices; he would not have to condemn the new Christians marriages and persuade Japanese Christians to go back to their pagan ex-wives or ex-husbands. The Secretary to the Jesuit General in Rome, Juan Alfonso de Polanco, denied Torres’s extremely lax solution and upheld the decree Gaudemus in domino. This meant that the only solution was for the missionaries was to declare that going back to the first spouse would be a danger to the Christian’s faith. Polanco’s reply should have settled the matter for the Jesuit order. But since correspondence with Rome took so long (3-4 years), the missionaries in Japan looked to their immediate superior in Goa, Antonio Quadros (1528-1572), for a more immediate answer. Quadros actually issued a ruling contrary to Polanco, stating that the Jesuits in Japan should not consider Japanese marriages to be valid at all. Therefore, Gaudemus in domino had no applicability. The issue was further complicated as more Jesuit authorities became involved. One was the Jesuit bishop of Macau, Melchior Carneiro (1516-1583), who presided over 116 Flüchter and Wirbser, Translating Catechisms, 259. For an overview of Innocent III’s various rulings on specific cases of matrimony that did not fit normal Christian praxis at the time, see Augustin Fliche, “The Advocate of Church Reform” in James M. Powell, ed., Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World, Second Expanded Edition (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 65-70. 101 the mission territories of China and Japan. He offered a solution stating that Japanese marriages were utterly unique and therefore constituted “a new category differing from 117 marriages of ‘other pagans.’” Another, the Padre Visitor Valignano, thought any attempt to enforce Gaudemus in domino would be ruinous to the mission and offered the solution that the foreigners should “conceal” the decree of Gaudemus in domino in 118 Japan. As if this were not confusing enough, the special procurator charged with going from Japan to Europe to get a definitive answer, Gil de la Mata (1547-1599), had come down against any lax measures: Gaudemus in domino had to be enforced because Japanese marriages were valid pagan marriages. So what are we to make of this hopelessly confusing situation? Wirbser describes this as a “Church-internal” debate. However, I think this somewhat misses the mark. What all the debates over the issue of marriage indicate was a constant search to relieve the inherent tension of enacting matters of Catholic orthodoxy to new cultures and customs. The sacrament of marriage simply could not be altered to include divorce, and Japanese Christians would never have agreed to a strict interpretation of Gaudemus in domino. This certainly was a “church-internal” debate, but it was one that the missionaries clearly agonized over because violating Church teaching on a sacrament would put their own souls at risk. The missionaries very clearly felt a tension between adhering to their own orthodoxy and modifying elements of Catholicism to the Japanese context. The many solutions to the marriage problem in Japan were various kinds of safety valves whereby they hoped to achieve the “serious pacification of many 119 consciences.” 117 Pius V (r. 1566-1572) ruled in Romani Pontificis (1571) for “Indian marriage” (the Americas) that the “neophytes” did not have to return to their first spouses. 118 “And I do not see how this doctrine can be published in Japan for the moment, that the pagans can in no circumstances leave their first wives and marry others, or that when they have married they are not really married, and that if they become Christians they have to go back to their first wives. Publishing this doctrine would achieve nothing, and would be an impediment and indeed a disaster as far as the propagation and acceptance of our holy law is concerned. We would be abhorred by the pagans, for even to say that Christians can never leave their wives and marry others is without a doubt the greatest impediment that we find in Japan to the acceptance of our holy faith.” 1588 letter. Quoted in Moran, The Jesuits and the Japanese, 111. 119 Flüchter and Wirbser, Translating Catechisms, 260. 102 Finally, I only wish to briefly address two more matters that caused the Jesuits much consternation: their involvement in the silk trade to finance the mission and their acceptance of Nagasaki (in perpetuity) as a donation from Ōmura Sumitada. Both actions were not only highly controversial among the foreign Jesuits in Japan, but also within the Church in Rome and among other orders (the mendicants) in the Philippines. Needless to say, involvement in the silk trade between Kyushu and Macao violated normal praxis for the clergy, who were forbidden to engage in commercial enterprise. However, the Jesuits in Japan faced an acute problem: how to fund the mission. Having already decided that they could not ask converts to contribute money to the enterprise, as this might undermine their spiritual integrity, the missionaries were forced to rely entirely upon outside sources of funding. The solution that they eventually reached was to invest money (partly the sum that the former merchant Luis Almeida brought into the society with him) in the Macau trade. Cabral, who was extremely flexible in terms of praxis where he was able, euphemistically called this investment “the alms from the China ship.” This investment strategy was a risky endeavor that put the Jesuits’ orthopraxy at risk as well as their personal vows of poverty. Additionally, it posed a financial risk, as ships could sink and with them much needed funds for the mission. One alternative might have been to invest in land, but profits of the Macau trade looked much better. After much internal debate, Valignano approved Cabral’s decision and continued it throughout the 1580s. That Valignano had to defend the decision from criticism in Europe suggests just how extreme a relaxation of orthopraxy it represented. From his perspective, the Europeans simply did not understand what kinds of adaptations were needed in such a far-away mission zone as Japan. In fact, Jesuits in the New World owned plantations and even African slaves. One wonders if this scenario would have been more tolerable since it involved land ownership rather than investment in trade. The other major relaxation of orthopraxy that I would like to discuss is how the Jesuits accepted rule over the newly founded port city of Nagasaki when it was donated to them by Ōmura Sumitada (Dom Bartholomeu). This caused a major discussion among all the Jesuits in Japan because it was not clear if they could actually accept the gift. Valignano, in customary scholastic fashion, weighed the pros and cons. The benefits for 103 accepting Nagasaki were the following: 1. The territory would not fall into the hands of Sumitada’s enemy to the south, Ryūzōji Takanobu; 2. Christians would very likely suffer persecution at the hands of Takanobu if he gained Nagasaki; 3. The city would be a refuge in general for Christians all over Kyushu in times of persecution; 4. It would be a refuge for the foreign missionaries themselves; 5. The city would give the mission stable income as a result of trade (harbor dues would be shared with Sumitada); and 6. the city might be useful as a see for the eventual bishop of Japan.. In a letter to the Jesuit General in August of 1580, Valignano revealed the decision (made independently) and the new problem that it created for the Jesuits: So I decided to accept, and Nagasaki now belongs to us. Don [Bartholomeu] also gave us Mogi, which is one league from here. The main problem is that as we are now lords of this place we have to administer justice…But it is normal for the lords to give the captaincy of the land to yakunin. The lord is still the owner, but the yakunin have full powers, and do not have to refer or report to the lord. So we got Don [Bartholomeu] to make some just laws, to be observed in this port, modifying the Japanese laws as best we could to make them just. He gave authority to whomever we nominate as yakunin of this port to administer justice, including the death penalty, according to these laws. So it is the lord who confers power over life and death, etc…. Not only were the Jesuits claiming ownership over land in Japan, but they were also dealing even more heavily in trade. And above all else, they essentially became civil administrators of justice (including the death penalty). All of these issues were of no concern to Sumitada since he made the donation simply to avoid having Nagasaki fall into Takanobu’s hands. Valignano, on the other hand, knew that the administration of secular justice was problematic. Adapting their own praxical norms to the Japanese context, the Jesuits decided to use intermediaries (the yakunin), as was common in Japan, to fulfill the role of administrators of justice. Still, one can sense that Valignano, even as the representative of the Jesuit General, was completely ill at ease with his decision. As a result he makes this extraordinary request to the Jesuit General at the end of his letter: Your Paternity should ask His Holiness the Pope to issue a brief giving us wider faculties, so that without scruple we can exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction, so as, for example, to be able to make new laws with the sanction of 104 capital punishment. All this may seem very strange, but things really are different 120 here in Japan. The Jesuit General Mercurian obtained the permission Valignano desperately sought (after the fact 121), and sent approval in a letter to the Visitor at the end of 1583. As Valignano’s last lines make clear, the foreign Jesuits modified orthopraxy in whatever way they could for the successful prosecution of the mission. Because the Jesuits adhered to a religion ruled by orthodoxy, there were certain issues, such as the sacraments, that simply could not be altered since they were thought to have been instituted by Christ himself. Catholicism of the period, however, was extraordinarily flexible in terms of praxis. The foreign Jesuits on Kyushu took full advantage of this flexibility. And, in doing so, they endorsed and implemented a critical element of the Christianization process: namely, the modification of orthopraxy as the religion moved across cultural boundaries and territories cut off from the core of Christendom. Like the early apostles who had to decide whether or not to dispense with Mosaic Law in order to expand their movement to the Gentiles; and like Augustine and Boniface among Germanic peoples, the Jesuits were confronted with many issues plagued their consciences over the need to maintain orthodoxy and the need to modify practice. Such cultural accommodations as wearing silk instead of a black cassock were one thing, but accommodating customs that had a direct impact on Catholic orthodoxy or the orthopraxy of the Jesuits as an order was another. Through certain measures, such as receiving dispensations from the General or approval from higher authorities like the pope, the tension between the need to maintain orthodoxy and the need to relax orthopraxy could be released. Though most of this tension was only felt by the foreign Jesuits, it was nevertheless an important part of introducing Christianity to the Japanese. Although much more can be said about “missionization” during the Christianization process on Kyushu, it is important at this point to turn to the Japanese Christian community itself. Both foreign and native advocates worked tirelessly in evangelical partnership so that a Church of believers could exist in Japan. They worked 120 Valignano to Mercurian, Oct. 9 1580. Quoted as an abbreviated translation in Moran, The Jesuits and the Japanese, 201-203. 121 See Schütte, Valignano I, 327-334, for the complicated matter. 105 together to gain converts for this Church through various Japanese modes of persuasion, such as disputation and the distribution of Christian literature. They also widely distributed the sacramentals, which both Christians and non-Christians alike found to be efficacious at healing and other temporal benefits. These objects, which Japanese lay Christians showed to their non-Christian family members and neighbors, acted as a gateway into the Church itself. And finally, the foreign advocates took great internal pains to ensure that Christianity met the needs of the Japanese while remaining consistent with the normative practices of the wider Roman Church. The next section focuses on the fruits of all these labors—and, more specifically, on how the Japanese Church defined itself as a community. 106 CHAPTER III COMMUNITY The relaxation of orthopraxy on the part of the foreign advocates, particularly in delegating certain duties such as preaching and the administration of baptism, prompted the emergence of native lay leaders for Christian communities. These leaders, as noted previously, were known as dōjuku, kambō, and until the 1560s, the jihiyaku. These positions, as well as their names, were based upon analogous lay positions in Buddhism, particularly the Jōdo Shinshū sect. While the foreign padres operated in key areas where the Japanese Christian community was largest, such as Funai and Nagasaki, the rural districts (inaka) had smaller but more independent Christian communities. The padres were the only ones who could celebrate mass, so their visits to smaller Christian communities and churches were sporadic. As a result, these communities were sustained by the local lay leaders. The jihiyaku (brothers of mercy) began their leadership in the 1550s when the Japanese Christian community was first emerging and the lack of both foreign and native advocates was acute. For example, in the Funai area until the year 1570 there was only one padre and one irmão to care for a Christian population of 3,000. According to Vilela, the area required at least four Jesuits for basic ministry. In the Takata district alone (near Funai) there were twenty-four separate villages in need of pastoral care. Jihikyaku and lay leaders in these areas, therefore, were the main spiritual leaders while padres and irmãos provided assistance for mass and confession. Kawamura proposes that the jihiyaku, who had been leading lay charitable organizations (confraternities) in Funai, stepped in to fill the need for pastoral care. As the community grew, especially after the conversion of Ōtomo Yoshishige in 1578, the Christian population grew as well. By 1587, it had reached about 50,000. The jihiyaku and their successors, the kambō, were the primary Christian leaders who guided the population on a day-to-day basis. A foreign Jesuit or even a dōjuku (lay catechist) might 107 only visit sporadically, so it was to these individuals that the vast majority of lay 1 Christians looked to for spiritual and practical guidance. Although the kambō were often described as lay individuals who “[took] care of the churches,” they did not merely take care of the church and sacristy as buildings and spaces. Rather, they took care of actual churches (the community itself) in a variety of important ways. Valignano, in his Regimento, gives a description of their leadership: they assembled the local Christians on Sunday, performed the spiritual reading, administered baptism (when necessary), buried the dead, and taught children basic catechesis. They also visited the sick, made sure padres were requested for the sacraments of confession and extreme unction when someone was dying, and generally monitored the spiritual state of the village. Because they were supposed to be moral and spiritual exemplars, many of them were former monks, village elders (otona), and warriors of minor rank (the so-called kokujin). With the obvious exception of the performance of mass and the administration of the sacraments (baptism excluded), the kambō effectively functioned much like a parish priest would in terms of providing spiritual leadership. Each village was to have their own kambō, but frequently this was not possible and one kambō 2 oversaw multiple villages. The importance of these native Christian leaders can be seen in their numbers. In his tally of missionary personnel for 1583, Valignano calculated that in all there were some 150,000 Christians with about 200 churches. Mission personnel stood at about 500, the vast majority being Japanese dōjuku and kambō. By contrast, there were only 32 3 European padres, 32 foreign irmãos, and 20 Japanese irmãos. At this early juncture, then, the vast majority of Japanese were under the direct spiritual care of the kambō. Later, when there were more Jesuits, both European and Japanese, the Bishop of Japan 4 (Luis de Cerquira) counted some 190 churches and with 170 kambō. 1 Kawamura, “Making Christian Communities,”169-183. 2 Josef Franz Schütte, Valignano's Mission Principles for Japan Volume I: From His Appointment as Visitor until His First Departure from Japan (1573-1582) Part II: The Solution (1580-1582), trans. John J. Coyne, S.J. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985), 206. 3 Ross, Vision, 65. 4 Higashibaba, Christianity, 27. 108 Save for a few clandestine Jesuits (both foreign and Japanese) who stayed behind after the edict of expulsion in 1614, it was the kambō who ultimately cared for the vast majority of Christians. Writing in 1617, Jerónimo Rodrigues stated that there were many kambō “who are men who take the office of visiting the sick and procuring a confessor for them where there is one, helping them die well, bury the dead, baptize the children, and perform other similar offices with the Christians, principally where there are no 5 Padres.” In 1623, the Provincial Francisco Pacheco recorded that there were only 28 Jesuits (23 padres and 5 Japanese irmãos) left in Japan, but there were “many native dōjukus, good catechists, and many kambōs who are people who in the absence of the Padre take care of this Christendom, traveling through various parts, baptizing, reading spiritual books, and teaching, and all these workers: priests, irmãos, and dōjukus and kambōs some are occupied in converting the gentiles, others in the administration of the 6 sacraments and the teaching of holy doctrine.” With kambō at the center of individual communities, Japanese Christians began differentiating themselves from their non-Christian neighbors through new types of religious praxis and new markings of sacred time. These two elements of the Christianization process naturally varied from society to society and age to age, but all Christian communities had to do certain things that marked them off as Christian. This is not to say that Japanese Christians engaged in Christian praxis and festivals to the exclusion of other communal gatherings or festivals, but rather that, by doing them at all, Christians differentiated themselves. Kyushu was not only the site where this differentiation was most intense (Nagasaki and its environs were almost totally Christian in population), but also where the community was most visible to the rest of the non-Christian population. A non- Christian in Miyako might be aware of the small Christian community in general around the capital, but this likely had little impact on day-to-day life. On the other hand, non- Christians in Hizen, Bungo, Chikuzen, and Hyūga were much more aware of the new community given the sheer number of Christians. Their neighbors might be Christian or 5 MHJ I, 708. Jerónimo Rodrigues, “A Brief Relation of the Number of Workers and of the Places Where they travel, from the year 1614 until the present year of 1617, for Japan, occupied in conserving and cultivating that Christendom, the entire time from the last persecution.” 6 MHJ I, 930. March 7 1623. See also Oliveira e Costa, “O Cristianismo,” 591. 109 even some of their relatives. They might encounter a Christian procession during Holy Week or walk by a Christian cemetery. What Christians did as a group had much more impact on the local non-Christian population of Kyushu than anywhere else in Japan. Communal Praxis The first way that Japanese on Kyushu engaged in building a Christian community was through praxis. Communal activities (such as going to church, communal self-help, charitable enterprises, and penitential practices) helped to differentiate Christians from non-Christians. The second way they built community was through new markings of sacred time. Japanese Christians introduced the Catholic liturgical calendar, of which Lent, Easter, and Christmas were by far the most important and visible, and they marked off their community with processions, public penitential acts, and music, all of which announced their presence as a distinct community. But none of this, it should be stressed, meant that Japanese Christians did not see themselves as part of the rest of the local community. They still participated in non-Christian festivals, such as Shōgatsu and Bon, and they belonged to any number of other “communities” in daily life. One of the most important ways in which Christians distinguished themselves as a community was through public elements of praxis. And among these, the most visible were penitential practices, particularly disciplina (self-flagellation). Long ignored by scholarship on the mission, this extremely important element of Japanese Christian praxis has recently received the attention of Junhyoung Michael Shin and James Fujitani. Shin has argued that Buddhist notions of “negating the flesh” and ascetic practices from shugend 7ō preconditioned the Japanese to adopt this rigorous form of penitential activity. Fujitani argues that the enthusiastic adoption of disciplina was the result of a dialogical process between the foreign advocates and the Japanese laity. Both parties found this penitential activity to “express intense piety,” which is why it was such a common feature 7 Junhyoung Michael Shin, The Jesuits, Images, and Devotional Practices in China and Japan, 1549-1644, (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2017), 159-164; Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The Passion and Flagellation in Sixteenth-Century Japan.” Renaissance and Reformation, (36, no. 2, 5-43), 22-30. 110 8 of Japanese Christian praxis. As explored in Part Three, the Church Suffering, penitential practices in the Japanese Church gave individuals a means with which to perform satisfaction (compensation to God for the temporal penalty of sin) and avoid suffering in purgatory. It was also a practice with which they sought to gain Christian merit. Although the reasons why Japanese Christians adopted disciplina with enthusiasm were manifold, the important point here is to note that it was a specifically Christian practice. Disciplina was frequently performed in public, such as in processions, and served to delineate who was and was not a Christian in terms of practice. As both Shin and Fujitani have observed, disciplina was the most public and popular form of penitential activity in the Japanese Church. The Jesuit sources are filled with many examples of either individuals or processions of people engaging in disciplina, usually to the great edification of the Christian community. The practice had started with Xavier himself, who had brought his own disciplina (the term also refers to the scourge or whip itself as well as the practice) for personal use during missionization. He and other missionaries thought that self-mortification would provide the proper spiritual disposition for spreading the Gospel and please God to favor the mission in Japan. Xavier seems to have only used it a short time, however, as he left the scourge with the newly baptized community at Ichiki led by a Christian known as Miguel. This community apparently used the disciplina, not rigorously but in a symbolic way, to cure illness and to perform exorcism. Almeida, in his 1562 letter, mentions that the Christians of Ichiki had been 9 using the scourge for twelve years. The real popularization of disciplina in the Kyushu churches came under the direction of Mission Superior Cosme de Torres, who added more dramatic elements to it after the Spanish Franciscan style. This included the signing of psalms, such as the Miserere Mei (Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me…”). This was still a relatively less rigorous type of disciplina than the kind performed in Europe since the Japanese scourges were only leather and did not draw blood. Only later did the Japanese adopt a much harsher 8 Fujitani stresses the shugendō influence more than Shin. James Fujitani, “Penance in the Jesuit Mission to Japan, 1549–1562” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Volume: 67, No. 2 (2016), 306-324; and 316-321 specifically for disciplina. 9 MHJ III, 546-547. Almeida to the Jesuits in Europe, from Yokoseura, Oct. 25 1562. 111 form of the practice, one that used metal barbs on the end of the whip and regularly drew blood, after seeing Portuguese sailors do so during a Holy Week procession in Funai in 1557. This new rigorous practice became popularly very quickly and was reported as 10 early as 1559. In subsequent decades, Japanese Christians of all ages, social standing, and gender, engaged in disciplina privately and in public. The most spectacular examples of public disciplina came during community processions in Holy Week and on other feast days. The corporal punishment of self-mortification was also combined with public commemoration of the Passion, which emphasized the suffering of Christ for contemplation and imitation. Fróis reports such a procession happening in Bungo in 1563: …the flagellating people began to come in their black robes and thorn crowns, others with crosses on their backs and other various instruments of penitence and devotion, and always there were flagellants even after the procession. Among these I saw an old nobleman, who was a secretary of the lord of Hirado, already past the age of seventy, by the name of Xenxu Paulo, well recognized by all for his great virtue. And he flagellated himself with such fervor and did such colloquies [with God] that he moved all those in the church to great devotion and tears…After the preaching on the Passion, which Japanese brother Damiao [sic] did, a procession began in due order: Thus the procession went out with much order and devotion. And they went to the mount of the cross, and turned back in procession to a church where many people gathered and heard the lesson of the 11 Passion for almost the entire night. Public disciplina, such as the one in Bungo, took on ever-rigorous forms until it became a common feature. Both men and women flagellated themselves until they bled, something that women in Europe never did. One woman in Ōmura named Marina, who was the older sister of Ōmura Yoshiaki (Dom Sancho), was said to perform disciplina in secret every day during Lent. On three or four occasions, she was said to have drawn blood from her self-flagellation. Such was the intensity of her disciplina that one padre had to 10 Fujitani, “Penance,” 316-318. Fujitani includes a translation of Vilela’s letter, which can be found in MHJ II, 695. Vilela to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Hirado, Oct. 29 1557. 11 Quoted in Shin, The Jesuits, 151. Original in Fróis I, 293-294. For an interesting study on later teachings about the instruments of the Passion, see Patrick Schwemer, “My Child Deus Grammar versus Theology in a Japanese Christian Devotional of 1591” Journal of Jesuit Studies Volume 1 (2014), 465-482. 112 12 restrain her hands so that she would not whip herself anymore. Such enthusiasm challenged the European’s notions of self-mortification for women. Ward points to one example, in 1564, where the Padre Giovanni Baptista de Baeca was “utterly shocked” when women wanted to use “rosetas de ferro” (iron balls with barbs attached to the end of the scourge) to flagellate themselves as the men did. He had to deny them permission 13 “because the women already tended to excessively discipline themselves.” The Japanese Christians were apparently much edified by such activity. One Hirado Christian visiting Bungo during Holy Week, where there was much self- mortification, wrote this to his fellow Christians back home (translated from Japanese by Fernández): It almost seems impossible to me that anyone who has been present here could be a mediocre Christian. Because this whole day and night, I have heard nothing which did not move me to tears. And everyone disciplined themselves in such a way that blood was running in the streets like water. For this reason, if you can, do not fail to come here. Ironically, as Fujitani points out, it was the foreign Jesuits who tried to curb this enthusiasm for disciplina. Torres and the other foreigners were aware of debates concerning the appropriateness of self-flagellation in Europe (it had been most popular following the Black Death). But in Japan, the more pressing issue was one of “scandal and excess.” Torres instituted policies that separated men and women during flagellation, that made sure the women were behind the closed doors of the church while performing it, that penitents wore special black tunics (probably to stop sanguinary mortification or to make the blood less visible), and that people took turns flagellating themselves. Moreover, the flagellation was only to last for the duration of one Miserere Mei. Yet apparently even this did not reduce the intensity of disciplina; Torres relates that on one 12 João Rodrigues from Macau, Dec. 20, 1618. Quoted in Josef Franz Schütte, P. Afonso de Lucena S.J.: Erinnerungen Aus Der Christenheit von Ōmura: De Algumas Cousas Que Ainda se Alembra o Padre Afonso de Lucena Que Pertencem À Christandade de Ōmura [1578-1614] (Roma: Insitutum Historicum S. I., 1972), 248, note 100. 13 Ward, Women, 327. Cartas, 153v. Giovanni Baptista de Baeca to Polanco in Rome, from Bungo, Oct. 9 1564. Ward gives a few other examples as to the rigors with which Japanese women adopted disciplina. 113 occasion he had to ask Vilela to speed up the pace of the Miserere Mei to shorten the time 14 for flagellation. For outsiders, it must have been strange to see such intense mortifications being performed by their family members, neighbors, and friends. While various kinds of mortifications were common among the yamabushi, these individuals were special and thought to possess supernatural powers, such as protection from fire. They trained rigorously in the mountains, sometimes mortifying themselves close to death, in order to gain special abilities that included healing and exorcism. Christians performing disciplina, on the other hand, were not religious adepts. They were ordinary people, living and working in cities or villages. Yet they too, by means of a simple scourge, could engage in an ascetic practice that was at once individual and corporate. The individual private act of disciplina served to internalize a Christian identity for the person performing it. When disciplina was conducted in a group setting visible to the public, it projected a Christian identity to outsiders who observed it. Both internal and external aspects of disciplina served to strengthen personal identity and the cohesiveness of the community. During processions, such as those during Holy Week, the non-Christians surrounding any given Christian community could not have failed to notice that one of their neighbors was engaging in a rigorous practice that was specifically “Christian.” Should we think that the Jesuit descriptions of disciplina are just exaggerations, anti-Christian propagandists highlighted the activity to show the perversity of the religion and as a marker of who was part of the community. For example, the anti-Christian text Deceit Disclosed (Kengi-Roku), which might have been written by the apostate Jesuit Cristóvão Ferreira, singles out disciplina and its performance during Lent as a sure 15 marker of a Christian. Another anti-Christian text, the Nanbanji monogatari (Tale of the Temple of the Southern Barbarian), which was probably written by former Christians, 16 describes the disciplina (the scourge) as a “radish grater.” But perhaps the most vivid 14 Fujitani, “Penance,” 319-321. Fernández is quoted on pp. 319-320. Original in MHJ III, 426. Fernández to Antonio de Quadros, from Funai, Oct. 8 1561. 15 Quoted in Elison, Deus Destroyed, 312. 16 Quoted in Jan C. Leuchtenberger, Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature, (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2013), 177. “Then the padres said, “Let us pray,” and they pulled out an instrument called a cruz. This cruz was made of gold and was two and 114 description of disciplina and how the Christians literally set themselves apart through its practice can be found in the anonymous chapbook Kirishitan monogatari: And for the evening there is the penitencia: in his mouth the believer mutters contrition for all his accumulated misdeeds, and flogs his back with an object somewhat like a fly-swatter spiked with copper thorns, besmirching himself with blood—and all the while intoning, “Zensumaru, Zensumaru.” First the Christian is taken into the “Room of Mystery,” then later into the back of the Christian temple to the “Room of Repentance.” Here the Bateren (padre) flogs the hapless Christian some more as the rest of the lay congregation cheers him on. The 17 anonymous author then notes that the Christians “call this a great deed!” Although both the Kirishitan monogatari and the Nanbanji monogatari are clearly playing upon popular fears and spreading rumor through exaggeration and invention, they do show that non-Christians took disciplina as a unique marker of someone in the Christian community. Normal people simply did not perform this perverse activity, they asserted, and this was something that set the Christians apart from everybody else. Moreover, if the Christians engaged in this perverse activity publicly, and with pride, what additional private horrors occurred deep inside the Barbarian temple that only initiates knew about? Being a Christian was not all blood and gore as the anti-Christian writers wanted people to believe. There were many attractive aspects of the Christian community, not the least of which was social solidarity during a period of Japanese history characterized by endemic warfare and social tumult. Sengoku Japan was an uncertain time for everyone, and social bonds formed by the Japanese Christian Church helped some people survive. And nowhere was this more evident than the Christian community’s care for its own through charity and social welfare. a half inches square at one end, with a handle that was two feet long. Nails were imbedded in rows along the end, and it looked very much like a radish grater. The supplicants bared their right shoulders and the padres dragged the cruz across their backs, tearing their flesh and causing them great pain. Then the padres smeared the hands of the supplicants with the blood from their own backs and told them to join their hands and pray to the image of Deus.” 17 Kirishitan Monogatari, quoted in Elison, Deus Destroyed, 329-331. 115 Communal Self-help and Taking Care of the Living If disciplina served as a negative marker for the Christian community, a decidedly more positive one was charity and communal self-help through confraternities and other institutions, such as hospitals, orphanages, and homes for widows. Such charitable institutions were not entirely new to Japan, of course: Buddhist temples during the medieval period had organized charitable activities and run hospitals. For example, Ninshō (1217-1303), the founder of Gokurakuji temple in Kamakura, established a home for elderly monks, a dispensary of medicine, and a hospital for lepers (ryōbyōjo). He even established a horse hospital, treating suffering horses with medicine and attaching 18 talismans around heir necks containing the Mantra of Light. As in Christianity, compassion was a fundamental teaching of Buddhism that could be carried out by individuals or by communities. One of the easiest ways to practice charity as a Japanese Christian, either individually or communally, was by almsgiving. This practice was specifically encouraged by the missionaries as a way of helping the poor and needy of the Christian community. Very early on, the European Jesuits made the strategic decision not to accept alms themselves in order to dismiss the rumor that they had been poor men in their own countries and had come to Japan to make a living by fleecing people. In fact, as we have argued, the decision not to fund the mission with alms from Japanese Christians was precisely the reason that it turned to the Macau silk trade. The mission also refrained from accepting alms in order to trump their rivals, Buddhist monks, who the Jesuits criticized for selling talismans and charging for funeral services. However, when Torres refused alms for the church, Japanese Christians “became dissatisfied with this state of affairs” because it was customary for them to give donations to religious figures like the Jesuits or Buddhist monks. As a result, Torres decided to allow the practice of almsgiving officially but made sure that the alms went back into the Japanese Christian community for the needy rather than to the Jesuits themselves. A lay person, acting on behalf of a confraternity, was usually in charge of collecting and distributing the alms. Though 18 Katja Triplett, Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500-1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2019), Section 7.3, 182-185. 116 almsgiving was Jesuit-directed, it was the Japanese laity who were actually the driving force behind the practice. As the irmão Pedro de Alcaçova recalls of the church in Yamaguchi: At this time, the bonzes began to murmur, saying that the Japanese were becoming Christians to avoid giving alms to the pagodas. Knowing this, the Christians came to speak about it with Father [Torrès], saying that it seemed good to them, since we do not accept money, that we keep a box at the door of the Church, and that Christians put in there whatever they wish, and that this money be given to the poor who would come to beg for alms, both Christians and pagans. 19 The Christians also ordained that once a month they should feed the poor. In other words, Japanese Christians themselves made almsgiving an important part of their community. Redirected by Torres inwardly, the alms fostered a sort of self-help that any community member could access in times of need. Some of the money collected was even used for ministry outreach: by accepting alms from the Christians—and thus receiving a means of social support—a non-Christian could be drawn into their ranks. One Jesuit-led initiative, serving food to the poor, was decidedly rejected by Japanese Christians particularly those of higher rank in society. As a European, Torres encouraged Japanese Christians to find value in the humility of serving the destitute. In this vision of charity, Torres would have warriors of high rank offer and serve food in communal-style meals to the poor and needy. Unfortunately for Torres, this did not accord with Japanese notions of social hierarchy. Most of the higher rank warriors were aghast at this kind of role reversal. As Fujitani points out, these types of communal charity meals, where the rich and socially superior would serve the poor and socially inferior, were subsequently abandoned for the most part in the early decades of the mission. Although Torres sought to create greater communal solidarity through this kind of charity, the role-reversing meals did not meet the social rules and expectations of 20 Japanese society on Kyushu and simply caused tension within the Christian community. Outside of communal meals, Christian charity sometimes even transcended specific locations and indicates that Japanese Christians felt a religious kinship to other Christians far away. For example Christian communities in different locations 19 Quoted in Fujitani, “Penance,” 310-311. Original found in MHJ II, 422. Alcaçova to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Goa, March 1554. 20 Fujitani, “Penance,” 315-316. 117 occasionally helped one another during times of persecution or disaster. In 1559, Christian community in Hakata appealed to the one in Hirado for material aid: The Christians of Facata consulted the Padre and sent a small ship to Firando to ask those Christian that they might see if they had a way to send to them a ship well equipped, which would be possible to take from the beach of Facata at night and to take them to Firando; and if that was not possible, that they might send a loan of ten cruzados in order to search for another means by land. The Christians of Firando did not find a way to send a ship, since Fixo [Takanobu] expelled Padre Gaspar Vilela, and the bonzes burned there with hate against the law of God, and since they had gentile neighbors who of new might betray and persecute them again. However, they knew of the state in which the Padre and Irmão remained, the Christians of Firando helped three or four times, with much rice, wheat, pork, fish, salt, wood, porcelains from China, chamber pots, knives and fine clothes, and cloth to make what they might want, and firewood and silver; finally it was such a provision that they took to them, those who were already in fear of enemies. And so the Christians of Hakata as well as those of the kingdom of Chicugen [Chikuzen] they had been at once provided with all that was 21 necessary… Within the local community, the most important way in which Japanese Christians practiced charity was through misericordias and confrarias. These organizations were made up of lay Christians who appointed leaders from within their own ranks, usually respected members of the community such as samurai or former monks. A foreign Jesuit might serve as a guide but, for the most part, these organizations were wholly independent and lay-driven. They began to emerge in the 1550s on Kyushu in such areas as Takushima, Ikitsuki, Hirado, Arima, Hakata, and Funai. The padre Afonso de Lucena describes the formation of one of these confraternities: There was no confraternity of the Misericórdia to provide for the poor and those who lived on charity, as there already was in Nagasaki, but by the teaching of our brothers and preachers, the Christians of Ōmura decided to organise a kind of confraternity (um modo de confraria) that imitated the Misericórdia; the Christians elected their officials and these officials enjoined that some of them go every Sunday to the houses of the Christians to ask for donations that were later 22 given to the poor. 21 Fróis I, 130. 22 Quoted in João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, “The Misericórdias Among Japanese Christian Communities in the 16th and 17th Centuries” Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies 5 (December, 2002), 72. Original in Josef Franz Schütte, P. Afonso de Lucena S.J.: Erinnerungen Aus Der Christenheit von Ōmura: De Algumas Cousas Que Ainda se Alembra o Padre Afonso de Lucena Que Pertencem À Christandade de Ōmura [1578-1614] (Roma: Insitutum Historicum S. I., 1972), 178. 118 Smaller and more informal groups also existed in the village setting, but there is little documentation on them. The confraternities with the most members and the most money were, of course, in Nagasaki. Lay groups in that city were able to take care of anyone in need. These groups chiefly practiced the “seven corporal works of mercy” (works that are directed towards the physical body, such as feeding the poor) and the “seven spiritual works of mercy” (works that are directed towards spiritual development). Among the corporal works, particularly in times of persecution, was to visit those members who had been imprisoned on account of their faith. For example, the Japanese irmão Kimura Leonardo (1575-1619) was visited often by lay members of the community while imprisoned in Nagasaki just prior to his martyrdom. It was through these visits that Leonardo managed to get a letter out of the prison and communicate his situation to confreres in Macau. Describing the charity of his visitors, Leonardo writes: “The most influential people of this town are still performing works of charity as they used to do before. In particular, every two or three days without fail I receive a note or visit from Yūfo Isabel, while for the rest Diogo always wants to know how he can help us. Both have made a donation for the people in jail, and they are even more concerned about us than parents are for their 23 children.” Local Christians provided the prisoners with food for dinner and strips of clothing and gauze. In terms of psychological support, they shared news with them about the community and reminded them that they were not forgotten nor forsaken. The community literally kept them alive physically and mentally while they awaited their executions. Moreover, community members still brought children to Leonardo while he was in jail so that they might be baptized by someone with authority. Shortly after the 24 letter was written, Leonardo was burned at the stake. Besides fostering communal cohesion and providing relief with the “corporal works of mercy,” the confraternities upheld Christian morality and spiritual integrity with “spiritual works of mercy.” For example, the rules of the Confraternity of Nossa Senhora da Assunsão directed its members to exhort Christians to confession, to pray for the dead, 23 Quoted in Reinier Herman Hesselink, “A Letter from Jail: Christian Culture in Seventeenth-Century Nagasaki,” Journal of World Christianity, 7, No. 2 (2017): 166-186, with quote on p. 175. 24 Hesselink, “A Letter from Jail,” 166-186. 119 25 and to “procure remedies to scandals.” Confraternities also sought to instruct their fellow Christians in the faith, particularly by introducing children to it through catechesis. Although confraternities prioritized their own members, they also reached out into the community at large with their charitable works. As Ward has shown, Christian women were particularly admirable leaders in confraternities and other less formal lay organizations. Perhaps the most famous and influential of these “mothers of mercy” for the community was Justa of Nagasaki. She created her own Confraternity and Consorority of the Misericórdia in 1585 to take care of women in the community. This included setting up a hospital for older women who were particularly vulnerable members of society. Justa’s rules for the Consorority specifically mandated that the organization should care for widows and other women in need: Upon hearing some persons in distress, they should inform the padres to remedy the situation. They should set up a kind of hospital in which they would shelter and sustain with offering money to old, ill and destitute women who do not have sons or daughters or relatives who would aid them. Since these old women cannot work any longer, their office would be to devote themselves to prayers for the state of the Catholic church, and conversion of Japan and other non-Christians in the world. Later, Justa shaved her head and moved into the hospital herself, “so that with more care 26 and liberty she might serve and teach them the things of God.” Even though confraternities like Justa’s provided works of mercy primarily to Japanese Christians as a form of communal self-help, the Christian community also organized corporate charitable enterprises for non-Christians. One of the earliest of these was a hospital established in Bungo in 1555 that offered treatment to anybody who came for help. While this institution provided actual medical treatment through both Chinese and western medical practices, above all else, as James Fujitani has argued, its purpose was to “offer appropriate social and spiritual support to the community.” Indeed, it had been founded more as a shelter than as a location where people could receive actual 25 Kawamura, “Making Christian Lay Communities,” 422-432. Shinzō Kawamura, Kirishitan shinto soshiki no tanjō to hen’yō: “konfurariya” kara “konfurariya” e (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 2003), 422-430. 26 Fróis writes of Justa: “The wife of Justino, although she was naturally sickly, exceeds her husband in her zeal to serve God. She has ministered to many [poor] persons in both material and spiritual needs by her prudence and works of mercy. Everyone has great respect for her virtue.” Quotes in Ward, Women, 300; 303-304, which are taken from Fróis IV, 122-123; and Fróis V, 228. 120 medical treatment. Balthazar Gago seems to have initiated the project, first conceiving of it as an orphanage and a shelter that would provide material aid to the poor. It was only after numerous people began requesting medical treatment that the shelter transformed into a hospital. Fujitani points out that this was a direct result of Japanese Christians and potential converts coming to the Jesuits for medicine just as they would ask a Buddhist monk for treatment. By 1557, the hospital was offering Chinese medicine, thanks to the converted doctor Paulo Tōnomine and his assistant (also named Paulo). Paulo Tōnomine had been a monk and physician within the Tendai sect, which was known for practicing medicine. At the hospital, he treated patients “in the manner of the land [Chinese medicine], with herbs and many other medicines that he would make from herbs.” When Paulo died in 1557, the hospital was left without a doctor of Chinese medicine. The Jesuits therefore hired a Buddhist doctor to treat patients. Eventually, another Paulo, the son of Uchida Thomé, an 27 educated convert, took over the position. Luis de Almeida, who had recently entered the society, was a surgeon and provided western medical treatment. After Gago, he had been instrumental in founding the hospital back when it was initially just a shelter. Ōtomo Yoshishige, some twenty years away from converting, supported Almeida in the endeavor by providing a plot of land for the hospital and an adjoining cemetery. Although Fujitani is correct in pointing out that the hospital functioned as a center for charity that also offered medical treatment upon request, the institution actually became much more than this—it became a beacon of faith that drew non-Christians into the orbit of the Christian community at Funai. The hospital itself was run by a confraternity, which had authority akin to that of a supervisory board. Nunes Barreto, in a letter from 1558, describes how the Funai hospital brought people into contact with Christian forms of communal charity: These Christians of Bungo commonly are very poor and at the beginning of their conversion, many of them were moved by some necessity, especially from ailments, which is the reason why they seek out the aid of the padres, in whom 27 Paulo Tōnomine likely studied at Myōrakuji temple. Paulo the assistant seems to have acted as the subordinate for the non-Christian doctor hired to help. Presumably the non-Christian doctor was more knowledgeable and of higher rank as a monk than Paulo, who had been a lay dōjuku for a monastery. James Fujitani, “The Jesuit Hospital in the Religious Context of Sixteenth-Century Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 46/1 (2019): 79-101, quote on p. 88. Fujitani is quoting Vilela, MHJ II, 688. Vilela to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Hirado, Oct. 28 1557. 121 they find much charity. Because they cure them, especially the brother Luís de Almeida, who knows a little something of this, and has done much in the world and went to Japan to find the sick and in order that there he might serve God our Lord with them. He has knowledge of herbs and other medicines with which he cures them, preaching to them to eradicate their gentile errors and preaching the truth of our holy faith; and with him guiding their intentions they became Christians by the love of God. These ones, seeing the charity of the padres and how through his [Luís de Almeida] means they achieve health in holy baptism, they bring their parents and sons and friends, and so many have become 28 Christians. The hospital quickly gained a reputation for providing care to people suffering from all sorts of ailments. One of these was what Fernández describes as “bubosos.” He noted that each year, people “from all parts of Japan” came to the hospital for care. Once treated, the patients then told others suffering from the same condition that they could receive care at the hospital. As a result, Fernández believed that the hospital was acting as “a bell of the Law of God that rings for all of Japan.” We should not be mistaken, however, in imagining that people’s attraction to the hospital was superior medicine or care. Rather, what it provided was an alternative source of care. In meeting people’s basic physical needs, such as malnourishment, thirst, and lack of shelter, the hospital likely helped people recover from a wide variety of illnesses to which they otherwise might have succumbed. Besides offering medical treatment and basic care, the hospital also offered spiritual care. If the patient was Christian, they would be reinforced in their faith. Both Europeans and Japanese Christians visited the sick and taught them prayers. In one of the main hallways, there was even an altar set up for the celebration of mass so that patients could worship without having to leaving the hospital. The hospital also employed spiritual methods of healing, such as prayer, holy water, and the use of other sacramentals. If a patient attributed their recovery these spiritual means of healing, they might very well become Christian. In addition, they had direct experience with the kind 28 MHJ III, 93-94. Melchior Nunes Barreto to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Cochin, Jan. 8 1558. Almeida likewise mentions the effectiveness of the hospital at drawing people to the community: “Many of the sick are gentiles, and some of them are knights and bonzes. With the sermons that they hear, they come into knowledge of the truth, and so many have become Christian, but the padre has such a manner that as soon as they are cured, nobody wants to become Christian except those who, after they become healthy, attended the sermons and know the prayers. Because there are some who want to become Christian for it seems to them that if they become one then they might be cured better.” MHJ III, 238. Almeida to another Jesuit physician, from Funai, Nov. 20 1159. 122 of communal charity they could expect to receive once they became a Christian. If they happened to fall ill again or on hard times, they knew they could count on the social welfare that the Church and confraternities provided. Charity was such a defining feature of the Japanese church as a community that anti-Christian propagandists strove to discredit it. In Ha Daiusu (Deus Destroyed) the Jesuit apostate turned Tokugawa propagandist, Fabian Fucan (c.1565-1621), attempted to discredit Christian charity by revealing that it actually had insidious and avaricious goals. Employing a dialogue between one person who knows only knows about the Christians through hearsay and another who knows all of its secrets, Fucan tries to demolish the so- called charity of the community: You ask: I have heard that for the most part the adherents of Deus are unselfish and that they make charity their basic practice. Is this true? And I answer: For them the border between unselfishness and pure cupidity just does not exist. They greedily seek parishioners…A parishioner may keep all their precepts and may be praised as a righteous man: but if he is poor they will just compliment him out the door… And also: If their basic practice is to give alms for charity, then it all is done only for the sake of prestige and profit. It’s only done to make people think, “My, how 29 praiseworthy!,” and thereby to attract more converts; you can be sure of that! Just as people were attracted to the Christian community for its charity in life, many were impressed with how the community cared for its members when they died. Among its most prominent and spectacular activities from the point of view of an outsider was its handling of funerals. For the most part, these were held with a modicum of solemnity for even the poorest members. For the rich and important, however, they were absolutely lavish, and many non-Christians came to witness and even participate in the spectacle. As Carla Tronu Montané has demonstrated, funerals in the Japanese Christian community combined European funeral rites with Japanese sensibilities and custom. Funerals for high-ranking individuals, such as warriors, might proceed in the following manner: The body would be carefully prepared for burial (washing) and placed in a wooden coffin decorated with Christian imagery such as crosses. The coffin would then 29 Quoted in Elison, Deus Destroyed, 287. Arimichi Ebisawa, ed., Kirishitansho; haiyasho (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970), 444. 123 be carried in public procession to the church for funeral rites before burial. Later, a more elaborate procession would take the coffin to the actual gravesite. Processions were led by a cross-bearer, who typically raised the cross high on a pole, with others holding candles and torches. Relatives would act as pallbearers, and the church leaders, both clerical and lay, followed in hierarchical order in order to evoke solemnity. The padres would be dressed formally with surplice and cape. The rest of the attendants would follow, bringing up the rear of the train, singing psalms and responsorials. Many would also hold “candles, silk banners with Christian signs, and lanterns.” Finally, if the deceased was a daimyo, all of his retainers and vassals would parade in their full armaments. Following this, there was a funeral mass in the church, preaching, and a eulogy praising the dead delivered by a Japanese irmão. Finally, there would be distribution of alms for the poor made from the donations for the funeral. Knowing that people of high rank received such lavish funereal care in the Buddhist tradition, the Jesuits strove to make Christian funerals as solemn as possible. Fortunately for Japanese Christianity, the Europeans were accustomed to offering highly elaborate funerals for persons of importance and influence. Incorporating Japanese elements was rather simple, particularly as Japanese Christians guided them through the proper customs. These customs included use of a palanquin for the padre, the display of banners (whose numbers were determined according to the rank of the deceased or by their membership in a confraternity), the wafting of Japanese incense, donations at the funeral to the priests (redirected as alms to the poor), chanting in unintelligible Latin (as opposed to transliterated Sanskrit in Buddhist funerals), and the sharing of food 30 (including mochi and sake) at a funeral feast (not customary in Europe at the time). All of this showed that the bonds of the Christian community extended into death—a subject that we will explore in detail in Part Three. However, funerals were not restricted to those of high rank. The Christian community distinguished itself by making sure that any member received a suitable funeral according to their position in society. Most of this work was carried out by lay people, particularly the misericordias whose 30 Carla Tronu Montané, “The Jesuit Accommodation Method in 16th and 17th Century Japan” in José Martínez Millán, Henar Pizarro Llorente, and Esther Jiménez Pabolo, eds., Los jesuitas: Religión, política y educación (siglos XVI-XVIII) Tomo III (Madrid: Unión de Editoriales Universitarias Españolas, 2012), 1617-1642, with the main desrciption of the funeral on p. 1621. 124 chief responsibility was burial of the dead (one of the seven corporal works of mercy). Members of confraternities especially were assured that their bodies would be treated with respect after death and given a funeral in accordance with the organization’s charter rules. Even the poor and destitute could count on some kind of funeral if they were considered members of the community, as burying the dead was an opportunity to display charity. Even though funerals for high-ranking individuals like daimyo and their wives were the most spectacular, being attended by Christians and non-Christians alike, it was likely that ordinary funerals made the biggest impression overall, accentuating the distinctiveness of the Christian community. Not everyone could receive an elaborate funeral whether Christian or non-Christian, but anyone who joined the Christian community could at least anticipate a basic one. Fernández describes how funerals, even for the poor, “edified” both Christians and “gentiles”: The burial of the dead Christians causes much edification, for Gentiles as well as Christians, of which the most charitable Duarte da Silva has charge. All are buried, poor as well as rich, with much sumptuousness. Because the house of the Misericordia helps the poor…So, most charitable brothers, the burial of the dead and the medicines that they are given and that are made in the hospital, are two works that much fortify the Christians, spiritually and corporally and edify the Gentiles. Of this manner, that even their idols, for our cause, they lose credit and 31 are destroyed… In describing the average funeral, Fernández notes that the community of Christians helped with the funeral every step of the way. The processions were accompanied by “men and women” and with “much devotion.” In one case, Fernández notes how the funeral of a certain Christian prompted a woman and her son to come to the church and, after learning the prayers, to receive baptism. The funerals that Fernández describes were likely those of people who had died at the hospital in Funai, meaning that the dead were poor or did not have any family members to care for them. In death, the Christian community fulfilled this very important duty. Because funerals often involved the entire community, they also involved the local church building. Most Buddhist funerals of the period took place in the home, 31 MHJ III, 430-433. Fernández to Antonio de Quadros, from Funai, Oct. 8 1561. The quote is on p. 430 but Fernández describes funerals in more detail on the following pages. 125 where the family welcomed any non-family members to participate. By holding funerals at the church, a space common to the entire community, Christian funerals invited participation from their fellow coreligionists. The family and the home were still important (the dead were prepared at home) but the solemn and public rites as well as the funeral mass were held in the community’s common home: the local church building. In the next section, we will see how physical spaces and common sacred time helped to 32 define the Christian community. Communal Time and Spaces Leaving the self-defining activities of the Christian community behind, we need to examine how Japanese Christians defined themselves through the application of Christian time and spaces. Christian festivals (or feast days), as laid out by the liturgical calendar, were the major way in which Christians on Kyushu marked a new sacred time. Frequently marked by processions, Catholic feast days on Kyushu were fully visible, meaning that Christians and non-Christians alike would have been aware of them. In terms of sacred communal spaces, the two most obvious and important were churches and cemeteries. As landmark buildings, churches were the most visible structural manifestation of the Christian community. One famous example of this can be seen in the so-called Nambanji (“Southern Barbarian Temple”) on a folding screen attributed to the famed artist Kanō Mitsunobu (1561/65-1608). This screen depicts a parade of Portuguese merchants and Jesuits in Nagasaki, but features the Nambanji prominently in the 33 background. It is in the style of a temple but with a gold cross atop the roof. Another church in Sakai, as depicted by Kanō Naizen (1570-1616), also stood out for the gold cross that was erected on its roof. A depiction of a church of Our Lady of the Assumption by Kanō Sōshū (1561-1601) shows how the “temple of the southern barbarians” was one 32 Fróis noted this distinction in his Tratado, though he uses it to take a parting shot at the bonzes. “Our priests conduct funeral rites for the deceased in churches; the bonzes quite often hold them in the home of the deceased, in order to eat and drink there.” Danford, Gill, and Reff, The First European Description of Japan, 106. For other comparsons, see pp. 120-122. 33 Michael Cooper, ed., The Southern Barbarians: The First Europeans in Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1971), 186-187. 126 of the most visually prominent buildings in Kyoto. This church was three stories, which was unusual, and followed “neither traditional canons of native religious architecture, nor 34 those of Catholic churches in Europe.” Cemeteries, usually near the churches, were also marked off as specifically Christian places with the erection of crosses and small chapels for private prayer. In considering time and space as distinct ways in which the Christian community defined itself, we should not forget that Christian forms did not necessarily replace traditional ones, such as festivals, in the Japanese Christian community. The foreign missionaries had certainly hoped they might obliterate what they considered pagan customs, but Christian festivals and spaces instead came to represent distinct additions to prevailing notions of sacred time and space. Japanese Christians still engaged in local festivals and important dates, such as Shōgatsu (New Year’s) and Obon. Such important Christian times as Holy Week and Christmas were added to the mix. Perhaps more so than with Christian festivals, Christian spaces were prominent in the minds of non- Christians. As permanent structures and sites, these Christian spaces were incorporated into existing traditions surrounding communal space like temples and shrines. The Sunday service (mass) united both time and space (at the church) as a marker for the community. Because it occurred weekly, the mass served most importantly as a temporal marker. A good description of Sunday mass can be found in Valignano’s Obedencias, which sought to make the saying of mass uniform throughout the entire Church in Japan. The congregation would be sprinkled with holy water (asperges), followed by announcements and the recitation of the Confiteor in Japanese. The padre would then lead the congregation in the Misereatur vestri (said in Latin) and give absolution for venial sins incurred during the week. An irmão or dōjuku would then read the Gospel and preach a sermon for about half an hour (in Japanese). The rest of the mass 35 was performed by the padre, namely the consecration of the host and its distribution. In addition to Sunday mass, the most significant Christian times in the liturgical calendar were Lent, Holy Week, and Christmas. Lent, which is a forty-day period of penance, culminates in Holy Week. Holy Week itself culminates in the Paschal Triduum 34 Rie Arimura, “The Catholic Architecture of Early Modern Japan: Between Adaptation and Christian Identity” in Japan Review 27 (2014): 65-66. 35 Schutte, Valignano II, 213. Also MS 17620, fl. 1381-1383. 127 (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday). Easter begins on the evening of Holy Saturday, as the Catholic Church follows the Jewish custom of the new day beginning at nightfall (rather than dawn). Christmas, of course, was celebrated on a specific day, but the Church also celebrated a four-week period of preparation known as Advent. In the Jesuit letters, both Lent (Quaresma) and Advent (Natal) are described as the most prominent and popular times in the Japanese Church. During their annual reports, the Jesuits always emphasized the spectacle of their Lenten and Easter celebrations. Japanese Christians were particularly given over to public precessions of disciplina during Lent as a penitential and devotional activity in preparation for Good Friday (when one is to contemplate the suffering of Christ) and Easter. Fróis, recounting Holy Week of 1582 at Usuki in Bungo, gives a vivid description of how Japanese Christians made public their festivities. There was first a procession for Palm Sunday and the usual dramatic reading of the Passion, with Ōtomo Yoshishige and other high-ranking Christians taking the active parts. The Church then performed “the offices of Tenebrae and the Passion of Holy Thursday and Good Friday with as much solemnity and ceremony as was possible.” The Church also built a mock tomb for the burial of Jesus, and Ōtomo Yoshishige (perhaps acting the part of Pontius Pilate) appointed a dozen armed men to guard it in imitation of the Roman centurion guarding Jesus’ tomb from the Gospel of Matthew. There were also performances of so-called mystery plays (misterios) that taught the basic stories and moral lessons of the Christian community. Many were biblical, with the Passion being a prominent subject, as well as 36 stories from the Old Testament, such as “Lot Monogatari” and “Joseph Monogatari.” On Good Friday, according to Fróis, the Christians of Usuki held a public procession with children dressed in albs (white liturgical robes), each wearing a crown of thorns and preaching the Passion in Japanese. After this, “a great quantity of people” gathered to kiss the crucifix, so many that it lasted long into the night. At the vigil on Holy Saturday, “the Christians began to gather with many types of lanterns of paper of 36 Eta Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 455-456. Such plays were common in the New World and popular among indigenous peoples since they were performed in native languages like Nahuatl. See four-volume edited collection of these plays in Barry D. Sell, Louise M. Burkhart, and Gregory Spira, eds., Nahuatl Theater (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2004). 128 diverse shapes and colors for the procession of the following day [the Day of Resurrection].” Fróis estimated that the number of lanterns was three thousand. At the start of the procession, just before dawn, people ignited branches (shikake-hanabi) and other “artifices of fire.” The crowd for this procession was so great that it overflowed the church and spread out into the “public square” (terreiro). Some had even come in boats by sea to witness the festivities. Fróis says that Yoshishige was so pleased with each of 37 these things that he was rendered speechless. Aside from the major feasts like Easter and Christmas, other feast days were celebrated. The most important to the local community was the celebration of the patron saints for whom their church buildings were named. For example, the largest church in Nagasaki, Nossa Senhora da Assunção (Our Lady of the Assumption), celebrated its feast th day of the Assumption of Mary (August 15 , also the first day the mission came to Kagoshima). The feast day was celebrated with the utmost solemnity and festivity, and 38 became the chief festival for the whole city. In other much less heavily Christian areas, the feast day of the churches were celebrated on a smaller scale. Still, the sense of community was present. During each Sunday service, the congregation would be notified about upcoming feast days. Liturgical calendars were also printed, after the press became operational, and distributed to the laity. Local Christians also had some sense of wider community with Christians in other parts of the world through the liturgical calendar. During the announcement of the upcoming feast days at church, Japanese Christians would be told which feasts of the universal liturgical calendar were being celebrated in other parts of the Christian world. Only the most important feast days were celebrated in Japan due to the low manpower of missionary staff as well as the numerous other obligations that Japanese Christians had. As mentioned earlier, the foreign missionaries certainly hoped that Christian festivals would replace non-Christian ones. This had happened in the Christianization of other societies, after all—though the transformation had sometimes taken centuries, with vestiges of the old pagan holidays remaining. The best-known examples are Christmas 37 Fróis III, 321-323. 38 Hesselink, Nagasaki, 121. For an excellent description of the celebration of Corpus Christi in Nagasaki, see pp. 150-152. 129 (which replaced both Saturnalia and the celebration of Sol Invictus in Rome), All Souls’ Day, and All Hallow’s Eve (replacing the Celtic holiday of Samhain). In celebrating the th feast of the Assumption on August 15 , the missionaries certainly hoped that Christian communal identify would overcome any desire to celebrate Obon, which took place in early August according to the lunar calendar. The same was true for New Year’s (Shōgatsu), which the missionaries hoped to supplant by establishing a new feast day with solemn rites. Bishop Luis de Cerqueira, when he arrived on Kyushu, implemented a special service on Japanese New Year. This special feast was called “On mamori no Santa Maria” (Santa Maria of Protection) and was to include banquets, drinking, and the 39 benefits of indulgences and a Jubilee. This was, of course, accepted by Japanese Christians as an addition to their yearly calendar and not in supplantation of Shōgatsu. Evidence that Christian festivals overlapped with Japanese markers of sacred time can be seen in Valignano’s Obediencias, which instructs the foreign missionaries that participation in non-Christian festivals was not to be discouraged. In the foreigners’ eyes—with the benefit of rationalization—Shōgatsu was a perfectly fine custom to celebrate, particularly with the social obligations of greeting people and gift-giving that accompanied the occasion. Obon, on the other hand, presented them with a trickier issue because it focused on supplicating and honoring spirits of the dead. The foreigners did not try to curb the dancing that occurred at the festival (Obon odori). Instead, they expressed the hope that Japanese Christians would perform the dancing simply because it was a customary activity rather than as a way to honor and welcome the dead. The debate over Obon dancing among the foreigners is clear indication that Japanese Christians celebrated traditional festivals right alongside the new Christian festivals specific to their 40 community. Another way the Christian community defined itself was through music. European forms of music were introduced early on, and, as mentioned earlier, orphans were brought from Lisbon in order to make masses more solemn. The use of European music is important because it brought new and specifically Christian sounds to Kyushu. 39 MHJ I, 945. Francisco Pacheco, Provincial to the General, from Japan, Sept. 22 1623. Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan, 123-124. 40 For Obon, see Schutte, Valignano II, 212. 130 The Japanese Christian community, however, went beyond this, fusing European liturgical sounds and styles with Japanese ones to create unique sonic markers of their community. The new music aided catechesis in that it served as a mnemonic aid (such as 41 singing prayers) and as a new means for “collective identity-formation.” As has long been noted, the “lute priest” (biwa-hōshi) Lourenço set Christian didactic tales and other stories to the native tunes; and Japanese Christians, we are told, frequently sang prayers and psalms in Japanese “in their own way.” The latter kind of singing, which was often performed in public, such as at Lenten processions and for Christmas, served to define the Japanese Christian community sonically. Even children, singing prayers in the streets as they had been taught to do, reminded all, both Christian and non-Christian, of the presence of the community. The loudest Christian sounds of all, church bells (both small and large), punctuated the sonic landscape with a new and distinct sound that fused sound and praxis: At the sound of the bell announcing prayer time all the Christians kneel down and pray loudly, even the small children. They sing the responsories in every mass and after mass the Pater noster, Ave Maria, Salve Regina, and the Commandments. Every Wednesday there is procession with singing of the Ave Crux; in the evening, after the angelus bell, they are accustomed to sing for a full hour. Even the heathens sing the doctrine in the streets. There are small children who, although they cannot yet talk properly, already sing the doctrine and happily 42 signing, toddle down the streets. Gueillermo Pereira also described how Gaspar Vilelea would go about the streets ringing a small bell in order to get the children to follow him into the Christian school so they 43 could learn prayers and other basics of the faith. This practice was common in the Jesuit overseas mission in the East. Small handheld church bells, such as the one mentioned above, had been introduced in the first few years of the mission. But as the community grew and the size of churches increased, large church bells were installed in towers. Most of those on 41 Makoto Takao Harris, “‘In their own way’: contrafactal practices in Japanese Christian communities th during the 16 century,” Early Music, Vol. XLVII, No. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2019), 194. 42 Harich-Schneider, Japanese Music, 450. 43 MHJ III, 157. Pereira to a Jesuit of the College, from Funai, Oct. 4 1559. 131 Kyushu were broken during the persecution, but the bell installed in the “Nambanji” in 44 Miyako in 1577 was appropriated as a Buddhist bell for the Zen temple of Myōshinji. Only four large church bells in total survive. One, from Santiago Church and hospital in Nagasaki, survives in Hachimangu (Takeda City, Oita Prefecture). The bell is fairly substantial, being some 80.5 cm tall and weighing 108.5 kg. It is inscribed with “Hospital Santiago 1612.” A Christian couple in Nagasaki (Giustino and Giusta) who were in the business of molding are thought to have made the bell with a mix of native and imported 45 metals. Another bell, which once belonged to the church of Santa Isabel, was 46 appropriated for use at the newly constructed Daionji temple in 1619. The most extensive use of church bells was, not surprisingly, in Nagasaki. The very large church of Our Lady of the Assumption installed a bell tower in 1603 with three bells and a large clock to link time to sound. This clock showed the time in Japanese as well as the lunar 47 and solar calendars. By 1604, all churches in Nagasaki had large bells. The large church bells not only marked the time of day but important moments specific to Christianity, such as marriages, baptisms, and Sunday masses. Carla Tronu points out that the sound of the bells for these occasions was quite distinct in Japan because they differed sonically from large bells at Buddhist temples (bonshō or ōgane), which used timber as a striking mechanism, and were generally lower in register and produce greater reverberation. The Christian bells, using an iron clapper, were higher in pitch and altogether louder. Because the Christian bells summoned both the religious community (such as misericordias) and the general laity, they “must have strengthened the image of Nagasaki as a deeply religious town to outsiders and contributed to the forge 44 Takeshi Nishikawa, ed., Junkyō: Nihon kirishitan-shi (Tokyo: Shufu no Tomo Sha, 1984) , 41; 242. 45 Takeda kenkyūjyo shiryō shitsu https://www.taketan.jp/christian-taketa/index_e.html Takeda City Official Website http://kou.oita-ed.jp/taketa/For%20Taketa%20City%20Official%20Website.pdf See also Hesselink, Nagasaki, 249, note 27. 46 Tronu, “Sacred Space,” 233. 47 Bébio Vieira Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki ni okeru shisetsu ni kansuru kenkyū” Abridged, (Ph.d. diss., University of Tokyo, 2016), 144; 153. 132 48 its sense of identity as a Christian city.” We must not forget, however, that church bells were not the sonic culmination of the Christian community. Rather the voices of the Christians themselves were since they could be heard from the most Christian cities (Nagasaki, Funai, and Usuki) to the smallest village church run by the kambō. Prayer, whether sung or chanted in Buddhist style, was the predominate way in which Christians made themselves known through sound. The last and most obvious way that the Christian community manifested itself publicly was through church buildings, cemeteries, and other physical markings, such as crosses and gravestones. If music and singing defined the community in the soundscape of any given location, then these structures, which were explicitly identified as Christian, marked the community on the actual landscape of a village, town, or city. With the exception of Nagasaki, which was founded specifically as a Christian city, these markers of the Christian community represented additions to the general community’s religious buildings and sites. In some cases, as will be discussed later, competition for public space resulted violence and destruction of buildings, both Christian and non-Christian. Despite this tension, the Christian community was able to make itself known spatially by repurposing Buddhist temples or constructing churches anew. House churches, sponsored by leading Japanese Christians, continued to be important as gathering places and shelters during times of persecution. These were prominent in the region of the capital around Kyoto where there was much less political security and where the Christian community numbered much less than in the Christian areas of Kyushu. Christian women in particular organized themselves into house 49 churches for gatherings where they supported and taught each other in spiritual matters. On Kyushu itself, house churches became prominent again after the start of the Tokugawa persecution in the 1610s. With the churches in Nagasaki and other areas torn down, Christianity moved back into the home, often at significant risk. Since the padres could no longer move out in the open, these homes were the only place to hear mass. And, as is well known, Christianity persevered in the home through the so-called Kakure 48 Tronu,“Sacred Space,” 163. 49 Ward, Women, 38-39; 246-247, note 7. Two of the most important house churches in the capital region were sponsored by Hibiya Ryōkei Diogo, Mécia of Miyako, and the famed Hosokawa Tama Gracia. 133 Christian underground community. Only in the nineteenth century could Christians, if they chose to do so, move out of the home and back into a church building. Although not technically a temple conversion, as in a temple being converted into a church, house churches followed the same principle. During the early years of the mission and in the years of persecution, peoples’ homes were “converted” into churches in which Japanese Christians gathered to hear mass or simply to engage in prayer or devotional reading. Rather than thinking of the “the church” as a building, we should remind ourselves that it was, first and foremost, a gathering of believers that existed quite apart any physical structure. Japanese Christian house churches, like those in the early decades of Christianity in the Roman Empire, were churches in every sense of the word. Japanese Christians and potential converts opened their homes to create a new sense of community where one did not necessarily exist before. Besides missionaries, both foreign and Japanese, they welcomed anyone else who might have an interest in becoming Christian. These spaces represented the first true steps toward creating “the Church” in the spatial sense of the word. Yet, house churches, as important as they were, could not meet the needs of the growing Christian community for long. The first actual church building came not from a wealthy Japanese Christian, but a Buddhist daimyo: Ōuchi Yoshitaka of Suō (Yamaguchi). Interested in all things religious, Yoshitaka naturally supported the foreign padres. To this end, he bestowed upon Christianity a sort of “proto-church” building in Japan, which consisted an old abandoned monastery known to us as Daidōji. The building itself became an actual church after the missionaries received permission from the next lord of Yamaguchi, Ōuchi Yoshinaga, in 1552. Using some 300 cruzados donated to the mission by the merchant Mendes Pinto, the missionaries built the church and maintained an adjacent plot of land for Japan’s first Christian cemetery. Here, for the first time, was dedicated Christian space, known to both Christians and non-Christians, that was for the living and the dead. As the Christian community grew and the missionaries gained political patronage, the number of churches and cemeteries likewise increased. As Bébio Vieira Amaro has explained, churches in the first decades of the mission were usually “small, unimpressive” structures made out of “inexpensive materials.” There were four general 134 types: 1. Churches using a temple with no architectural modification; 2. Churches built with new materials; 3. Churches built with materials reused from temples and houses; and 50 4. House churches in private residences. The emergence of a Christian style of architecture that was both new and “accommodative” of Japanese styles has already been well studied, we will instead concentrate on the use of Japanese temples and their materials for the building of 51 churches. For example, Carla Tronu has shown that one of Valignano’s “accommodative” principles was to make churches in the Japanese style and constructed 52 with Japanese methods. When churches were not built as new structures, the missionaries converted Buddhist temples. Although the use of old temples and their building materials was, in part, necessary due to a lack of resources, converting non- Christian spaces into Christian ones was an important element of the world-historical process of Christianization. Scholars studying the emergence of Christianity in other times and places, notably the ancient Roman Empire, medieval Europe, and the New World, use the terms “temple conversion” and “spolia” to describe the appropriation of sacred sites and structures for use by the Christian community. Temple conversion may be defined simply as the appropriation of a non-Christian 53 sacred site or structure for Christian use. There are a great many examples of temple conversions throughout the history of Christianity. Some of the most famous include 50 Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 35. 51 The emergence of specifically Christian architecture has already been well-explored, so we will only note it in brief. Moreover, styles of architecture, while important, hide a much deeper manifestation of this spatial dimension of community in the Christianization process, namely a phenomenon known as “temple conversion.” As Rie Arimura has shown, the foreign Jesuits sought to differentiate the buildings of the Christian community, the churches and seminaries, architecturally from similar religious buildings in Japan (mainly temples). See Arimura, “The Catholic Architecture of Early Modern Japan,” 53-76. 52 Tronu, “Sacred Space,” 23-31. 53 Frank Trombley defines it more in the context of the Roman Empire: “The term ‘temple conversion’— the demolition or partial dismantling of a sacred edifice and its modification into a church or martyrion— was the logical consequence of the theological tendency to recategorize pagan deities into destructive daimones. The expression has been applied not only to the transformation of a temple building into a church…” Also, “The term ‘temple conversion” is used as well to describe the demolition of the old buildings to make way for Christian basilicas.” Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization, C. 370-529 Volume I (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 108-109. See also Richard Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004), 3-7 for a good overview of the phenomenon. 135 appropriation of the Roman Pantheon (Sancta Maria ad Martyres) and the site of the Templo Mayor (for Mexico City Cathedral). Temple conversions were most numerous in the Roman world, but the phenomenon occurred virtually everywhere that Christianity appeared. Even shrines and sacred natural sites, such as springs, became sites for churches or Christian shrines. This type of temple conversion was particularly prominent in pagan Europe and in the New World where natural sites were frequently held to be sacred. The most explicit example of this during missionization can be found in a message from Pope Gregory the Great to the missionary Augustine of Canterbury in 731 concerning pagan shrines in Anglo-Saxon England: …I have decided after long deliberation about the English people, namely that the idol temples of that race should by no means be destroyed, but only the idols in them. Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them. For if the shrines are well built, it is essential that they should be changed from the worship of devils to the service of the true God. When this people see that their shrines are not destroyed they will be able to banish error from their hearts and be more ready to come to the places they are familiar with, but now 54 recognizing and worshipping the true God. On Kyushu, apart from Daidōji in Yamaguchi on western Honshu, there were a number of temple conversions that made Buddhist temples into Christian churches. One such church was the church on Ikitsukishima (off of Hirado Island). Balthazar Gago mentions that four or five of the churches in Japan as of 1562 were converted temples whose architectural styles remained unmodified. As Bébio Vieira Amaro points out, one of these former temples could hold 600 people and had a water basin for people to wash their feet in order to preserve the tatami mats. The converted temple on Ikitsukishima was marked as Christian by a large cross and a nearby cemetery. Inside these churches, the Christians turned the “altars” into Christian ones by decorating them with images of Christ and the 55 Virgin. Amaro provides some very helpful statistics regarding temple conversions. For the years 1549-1569, of 42 church buildings: 18 were “newly built” (42.8%), 11 were 54 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, I:30 in McClure and Collins, The Ecclesiastical History 57. Islam also employed “temple conversion” to great effect, transforming many churches and other sites into mosques and shrines. The most notable of these are Hagia Sophia and the shrine of the Dome of the Rock on the Jewish Temple Mount, which is said to be directly over the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. 55 Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 36. MHJ III, 595. Gago to the Jesuits in Portugual, from Goa, Dec. 10 1562. 136 house churches (26.1%), 7 were former temples/shrines that had to be rebuilt (7.1%), 2 were likely reused temples (4.7%), and 1 was a private home rebuilt into a church (2.3%). Many of the newly built churches during these years were small and constructed out of poor materials, such as straw. Many were destroyed by fires and wars. These were not really suitable churches for the long run or for the growing community. While many private homes under the sponsorship of Japanese Christians were used, this was only a temporary measure since the community would inevitably outgrow them. As a result, “half or over half” of all Jesuit churches by 1584 were converted temples. As Amaro points out, the number of converted temples was higher in areas where the daimyo, by fiat, had made the entire population “Christian.” The Obediencias from 1612 state that burning temples should be avoided. Rather, they should be turned into churches or, at least, private houses for the non-religious. In locations that were “made Christian” by the daimyo, temple conversion played a major role in the spatial formation of the community. Because these structures had been used precisely for religious purposes and for gatherings, they could adequately serve a growing community. Until completely new church buildings could be constructed, something that required resources and patronage, temple conversions were key since they provided a large space immediately available for gatherings. Temple conversions increased precipitously after the Christian conversion of Ōmura Sumitada, who ordered many in his realm to accept baptism. The sudden growth of the Christian community that ensued led the lord to order the conversion of temples into churches, frequently against 56 the will of the Buddhist monastics who resided in them. Temple conversions on Kyushu served to establish the Christian community with dispatch and economy—and in a manner that caused little visual disturbance to the landscape of any particular location. Japanese Christians inherited familiar structures with a religious lineage and in a style to which they were accustomed (recall tatami mats). This meant that a public space for a Christian gathering could be opened up almost immediately, thus enabling the rapid socialization of all its members. The temple-turned- 56 Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 41. As a result of Sumitada’s decision, some sixty temples were turned into churches. Amaro transcribes a letter from Cabral that the say the missionaries have converted “more than sixty monasteries of the Bonzes, those same monasteries remaining that before served the cult of the devil now served the divine cult [Christianity]…” Quoted on p. 39. 137 church itself was certainly important, but it only served as a shell for the real Church (i.e. the community itself). Temple conversion on Kyushu was similar as it occurred in other instances of Christianization. However, instead of transforming an inherently sacred site, like a spring or a grove, into a Christian one, temple conversions on Kyushu turned Buddhist sites for gathering into Christian sites for gathering. Temple conversions were important because they converted space for the nascent Christian community. Even though the missionaries preferred to build new churches, as they would do later to spectacular effect in Nagasaki, the exigencies of the mission and the desires of Japanese Christians themselves prompted the conversion of temples into churches. Unbeknownst to Japanese Christians, such temple conversions were common in the Christianization process; as the new religion acquired new spaces it competed with sacred sites of the native religions that it encountered. Likewise, when missionaries reused building materials from temples and other sites, they engaged in a practice common to the Christianization of space: spolia. From the Latin word “spolium,” meaning “the flayed skin of an animal,” spolia in its plural form refers to “plunder,” or “the booty of war.” In terms of architecture, it refers 57 to the reuse of materials, such as columns, as elements of a new structure. Many churches built in Rome and elsewhere in the Mediterranean used materials from Rome’s pagan past, particularly temples. When Christians were in the dominant position of secular power, such as in the later Roman Empire (Byzantium) or the New World, they often interpreted the use of spolia as evidence that Christianity had emerged “victorious” 58 over the old pagan religion. On Kyushu, materials from temples were sometimes used as spolia for Christian churches. One notable example was the first church in Nagasaki, Todos os Santos (All Saints). In 1569, a Christian warrior, Nagasaki Jinzaemon Sumikage (Bernardo), gave his family temple (possibly a bodaiji) to Gaspar Vilela to live in and to make into a church. 57 Maria Fabricius Hansen, The Spolia Churches of Rome: Recycling Antiquity in the Middle Ages, trans. Barbara J. Haveland (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2015), 9-10. 58 Saradi uses an example of pagan statues as having crosses carved on their foreheads to symbolize “their baptism and the acceptance of the represented figures into the Christian community.” Helen Saradi, “The Use of Ancient Spolia in Byzantine Monuments: The Archaeological and Literary Evidence” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 3 No. 4 (April, 1997): 422-423. 138 Since there were not yet many Christians to use the converted temple, Vilela simply used it as a house until more joined the community. Describing the structure as a “pagoda, which is a temple of idols,” Vilela coordinated with the Japanese Christians to take it apart. He then directed the Christians to use the materials to build a small church, which 59 he describes as “very pleasing.” Although Vilela does not explicitly say why he had the Christians dismantle the temple, it did occur during a spate of temple destruction in the area that occurred under Sumitada and the local Christians. Instead of simply using the temple as it was, Vilela wanted to “destroy” it and make a new church, probably as a statement that Christianity had “conquered.” Another example of spolia can be found in 1585 in Funai, but this time at the prompting of the Christians themselves. Appropriating a large piece of timber that had been used in the local Gion festival, the Christians erected a large cross on the site of a 60 future church. Although Abé portrays this as a uniquely Japanese syncretistic action, it was part and parcel of the way in which Christianity established itself spatially in new cultures. As any historian of the spread of Christianity knows, spolia and the reuse or repurposing of structures from pagan traditions was both normal and frequent. Rather than a sign of mere syncretism, use of spolia meant that the religion was taking root in the landscape of a particular location and culture. Two other spatial markers of the Christian community were cemeteries and crosses. These two were somewhat interrelated, as many cemeteries, aside from their uniquely Christian gravestones, had large crosses erected within their precincts to mark them as the community’s burial grounds. Cemeteries were important sites spatially because they allowed for physical proximity of the living Christian community to the dead Christian community. Although the manner in which the Christian living cared for 59 Vilela to the Jesuits in Portugal, Feb. 4 1571. Cartas 302v. Cartas 1575, 312v. Amaro, 47. Hesselink, Nagasaki, 48; 234 note 28. After the dechristianization campaigns of the Tokugawa in 1630, the site of Todos os Santos once again became the site of a Buddhist temple (the Rinzai Shuntokuji). Tronu, “Sacred Space,” 231. 60 Cartas II, 121v-135, pagination in the Cartas here is in error. Fróis, from Nagasaki, Aug. 20 1585. Also Fróis IV, 128. Takao Abé offers a different interpretation: “…the converts either treated the lumber simply as another deity [?] or considered this foreign religion to be compatible with Shintô. Above all, in the harmony-based Japanese spiritual system, they could not imagine that God would reject a crucifix made of sacred Shintô wood.” Takao Abé, The Jesuit Mission to New France: A New Interpretation in the Light of the Earlier Jesuit Experience in Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 170. 139 the dead (See Part Three) did not require proximity to the corpse, being close to the physical remains was then, as now, a source of comfort to loved ones. Gravesites in both the Buddhist and Christian tradition were locations where memorial services could be performed and the dead visited. Contrary to the near universal present-day custom of cremation, Japanese of the premodern period did sometimes bury their dead—but commonly did not. Fróis, in his Tratado, notes the following difference in burial customs: “We bury our dead; the Japanese generally cremate theirs.” When corpses were actually buried, he observed, they were “seated and bound with their face between their knees” and placed in a roundish 61 casket that looked like a “half-barrel.” Christian burial of the corpse was obviously not a huge departure from this native custom. Regardless of the manner in which the community disposed of the corpse, cemeteries were necessary for both the sake of the living and the final repose of the remains (ashes, bones, or the entire body). When possible, Christian churches on Kyushu included a nearby plot of land for a cemetery. Most often, these were directly adjacent to the church. Some misericordias also had their own cemeteries, meaning that there were general cemeteries for community and special cemeteries for specific confraternities so their members could be buried together. Some cemeteries had small, simple chapels as well, particularly those in urban areas like 62 Nagasaki where Christians could go to pray for their dead. Sometimes burial places 63 would be out of the way for protection. Christian cemeteries, particularly during times of persecution, were targets for vandalism and destruction by non-Christians. Gravestones could be smashed and, most frequently, crosses were cut down. For example, after the expulsion edict of 1614, Christian cemeteries were “desecrated” and 64 some bodies were exhumed for destruction. As mentioned above, the first cemetery near the island of Kyushu was in Yamaguchi. The next two earliest were in Hirado (1555) and Funai (1557), given to the 61 Danford, Gill, and Reff, The First European Description of Japan, 120-121. 62 MHJ I, 722. 63 MHJ I, 371. Gabriel de Matos mentions one for Hakata in 1604. 64 Boxer, The Christian Century, 334. 140 65 missionaries by the daimyo Matsura Takanobu and Ōtomo Yoshishige respectively. For the Hirado cemetery, Gago notes the donation: “[The lord of the land] gave to us a field where we put with the Christians a very large cross proper for [the feast of the Exaltation 66 of the Cross, on Sept. 14], so that there they are to be buried.” The Funai cemetery, for its part, was on the land where the hospital complex was built, not doubt for easy burial 67 of the many patients who died there. By October of 1562, there were several Christian 68 cemeteries “with crosses” in and around Funai. Aside from using land donated by daimyo, Japanese Christians were instrumental in creating cemeteries on their own. One of the cemeteries near Funai, in the village of Kutami, was opened by a Christian known as Lucas of Kutami. Apparently very wealthy, he had a church built that was “very big and good” that had a cemetery attached to it. In 69 the middle of the cemetery, he placed a large cross made of stone. One cemetery, which has only been recently excavated, is that in present-day Shimofuji ward in Usuki. Land for this cemetery was donated by a Christian known as Rian (Leão). Like Lucas of Kutami, Leão was wealthy and donated part of his estate for use as a cemetery in 1579, erecting a large and splendid cross in it. He also seems to have been responsible for its 70 maintenance. Fróis provides some information on Leão: Leão of Notsu proceeded with his zeal and fervor, and made a church in his house in order that the Christians might be able to hear mass and the Gentiles preaching....and on the mountain that is above the church, in a suitable place, Leão had with his people put into order an open square in which he had raised a very beautiful cross, and so it was made with great solemnity and pomp, and happiness of all the Christians...and there together he made nearby a capable 71 churchyard very well accommodated for the burial of the Christians. 65 MHJ II, 423, Pedro de Alcaçova to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Goa, March 1554. See also p. 429 of the same letter and Medina’s notes on p. 423 and p. 429. 66 MHJ II, Gago to Ignatius, from Hirado, Sept. 23 1555. MHJ II, 550; 569. 67 MHJ III, 739. Torres to Ignatius and Antonio de Quadros, from Funai, Nov. 7 1557. 68 MHJ III, 540. Almeida to the Jesuits in Europe, Oct. 25 1562. Almeida reports five churches but does not explicitly say that each of them had a cemetery. 69 MHJ III, 595. Gago to the Jesuits in Europe, Dec. 10 1562. 70 Usukishi Kyoiku Iinkai, Shimofuji chiku kirishitan bochi (Usuki-shi, 2016), 101-102. 71 Fróis III, 119-120. 141 Fróis reports that some 200 people were involved in the entire project. Clearly, the local Christian community held the construction of a cemetery specific to their own as an important endeavor for religious solidarity. In addition to crosses in cemeteries, the erection of large crosses elsewhere was a distinct spatial marker of the Christian community. As Amaro observes, crosses sometimes acted as a place of gathering when no actual church building was available. In heavily Christian areas, very large crosses were erected, frequently by the people themselves, as markers identifying particular locations as Christian. One such cross was placed on the shore of Fukuda Bay (near Nagasaki), announcing to all mariners that they had entered Christian territory. Another was likewise erected in Yokoseura, at 72 Hachinokoshima, to serve as a marker to all vessels, particularly the Portuguese ships. Some crosses were very well made, with lacquer, and some were partially gilded. Occasionally, they were also in different styles, such as ones that included a titulus (the 73 placard that says “INRI”) and stepped crosses. Although “the Church” was actually the community of Japanese Christians themselves, actual church buildings, public crosses, and cemeteries were important ways in which “the Church” was made known spatially. Church buildings provided the main focal point where Japanese Christians engaged together in worship, penitential practices, and formed new social bonds based upon their shared commitment to Christianity. Church buildings, for their part, strengthened the sense community among believers, softening the occupational and social differences that otherwise divided them. Crosses served as focal points for activities like prayer and processions—and, in the absence of a church building, for gathering. Finally, were special spaces for the dead members of the community where the living could visit to pray for their souls. Moreover, all of these sites were visible to non-Christians, thus serving to define the Christian community as distinct. As the Christian community itself became more visible and more local, ruling authorities, ranging from the daimyo to lower-ranking lords, converted; and this created tension between the Christian and non-Christian communities. These two elements of the Christianization process, community self-definition and tension with those outside of it, 72 Hesselink, Nagasaki, 46; 49. 73 See Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 93-94, for examples. 142 occurred synchronically and mutually reinforced one another. Various non-Christians on Kyushu, as in many other cases of Christianization, came to object to the new community. Buddhist monks, common people, and above all else, secular authorities, sought to curb the expansion of the Christian community and, ultimately, to eradicate it. One reason behind their objections was that Japanese Christians, particularly warriors, antagonized non-Christians by forcing baptisms and destroying temples. As one might imagine, this ratcheted up the tension between the Christian community and the non- Christian community. This tension, which was an important manifestation of the Christianization process, is the subject of the next chapter. 143 CHAPTER IV TENSION “Agents of Christianization” Having examined some of the ways in which the Christian community on Kyushu defined itself, we must examine a category that I call “agents of Christianization.” This term denotes individuals or groups of individuals that either facilitated the penetration of Christianity into their society or reacted against it. They were chiefly in positions of secular power, ones in which they exercised immense influence on their subordinates and subjects. These included kings, warlords, and, in the case of Japan, the daimyo and lesser lords. Agents of Christianization may or may not themselves have been Christian; they need not had religious reasons for facilitating the spread of the religion either. Some were non-Christian rulers who permitted the religion to be established in their territories for a variety of reasons. Some agents actually did convert and used their positions of power to protect missionaries and patronize the Christian community. These rulers spread the religion with authority and, at times, with violence as extensions of their secular power. Most often they made segments of their population “convert” or attacked elements of native religion, such as shrines and temples. Sometimes they used the new religion as a mechanism with which to establish their authority over both Christian and non-Christian segments of society. Other agents of the Christianization process opposed the religion and sought to counter an emerging Christian community through varying degrees of persecution. Resistance and persecution were frequent reactions to the new religion and were extremely important to Christianization as a phenomenon. Persecution could be simple and non-violent, such as spreading scandalous rumors about community members. At other times it could be intense, with the aim to break apart the Christian community through violence. Though these individuals were actually opposing the spread of Christianity, they were nevertheless part of the Christianization process because the religion provoked them into some sort of action or redefinition of their communities. By 144 accounting for non-Christian participation in the Christianization process via persecution or resistance, we acknowledge that the phenomenon itself had much wider impact in societies than is commonly conceded. To illustrate the importance of secular rulers as agents of Christianization, one has to look no further than the years 312 and 313. It was in these years that the pagan would- be emperor Constantine (c. 272-337) began to turn the tide for Christianity in the Roman Empire. In 312, Constantine fought and won the decisive battle of Milvian Bridge against his rival Maxentius for rulership of the Empire. Constantine attributed this victory to a vision he had had just preceding the battle, a vision of the so-called Chi Ro (a 1 Christogram) accompanied with the following message: “In this sign you will conquer.” Constantine crushed his rival, and from that point forward began to favor Christianity though he did not “convert.” In 313, he published the Edict of Milan which, by decreeing all religions legal, ended Roman state persecution of Christianity in the territories that he 2 governed. Constantine was by no means exclusively a Christian during these years. He chose to be baptized on his deathbed, decades after the vision of the Chi-Ro and decades after all the nasty business that a Roman Emperor needed to do (he had his wife drowned in boiling water and his son imprisoned and executed). In addition, Constantine continued to be a devotee of the pagan martial god Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), who he favored along with the Christian god. Constantine himself was even apotheosized upon his death, joining the ranks of the divus (divine) alongside Julius Caesar and Augustus. Despite all these decidedly “unchristian” attributes, Constantine acted very much as an agent of Christianization by throwing imperial support behind the religion. He undertook a massive church-building campaign throughout the empire, offering 1 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, XXVIII in Henry Wace and Philip Schaff, eds., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Volume I: Eusebius (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1890), 490. Eusebius says that he heard this version of the story from Constantine himself. 2 “We, Constantine and Licinius the Emperors, having met in concord at Milan and having set in order everything which pertains to the common good and public security, we are of the opinion that among the various things which we perceived would profit men, or which should be set in order first, was to be found the cultivation of religion; we should therefore give both to Christians and to all others free facility to follow the religion which each may desire, so that by this means whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven may be gracious and favorable to us and to all who have been placed under our authority.” Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed., Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 3. 145 Christians huge public edifices that announced their presence in the local community. He opened the funds of the state’s treasury to the Christians, enabling them to achieve a security of wealth they had never known before. He also began to favor Christians for the bureaucratic positions in his government. Above all else, Constantine began the process of fusing Christianity and the state, an eventuality that required some “accommodation” on the part of the religion as it had very much been “anti-empire.” In fact, the religion espoused a message that the so-called Kingdom of God was the only realm that 3 mattered. Subsequent rulers in different ages and in different cultures followed Constantine as agents of Christianization, and many had the power to make or break the religion. When Christianity entered into their territories, secular rulers had to decide whether to support, tolerate, or oppose the new religion. Some, such as the many pagan Anglo- Saxon lords of Britain, sought to counter it. Others, such as the Frankish King Clovis, recognized in the religion an opportunity to grow closer to a powerful political and cultural center (Rome in his case). Such agents frequently continued to practice and support pagan religion—and they often engaged in behavior contrary to Christian ideals, 4 such as murder, assassinations, and concubinage —but their acts as agents of Christianization (and conversions) were critical to the religion’s diffusion into their territories. This should be seen as unremarkable since even fully Christian rulers frequently engaged in such acts all throughout history. Finally, some agents saw secular utility and military advantage in tolerating Christianity. The Tlaxcalan lords, who allied with Cortés, “accepted” Christianity as a means of overthrowing a hated imperial overlord (the Aztecs). The lords likely saw baptism as a sort of “ritual of alliance” at the very least and certainly did not interpret the act as the Spaniards did. On that side, the baptisms was a stage performance of a type of “conquest theater” that was to be held up 5 as an example to other indigenous. Regardless of what the lords themselves thought, 3 Fletcher calls this the “Eusebian accommodation,” named after Eusebius of Cesaria. Author of both the Life of Constantine and the Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius “brought the Roman empire within the divine providential scheme for the world.” Fletcher, Barbarian Conversion, 24-26. 4 E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 84-86. 5 Thanks goes to Professor Robert Haskett for this information. 146 later colonial-era Tlaxcalans remembered the event with much pride. These baptisms, after all, symbolized that the Tlaxcalan people were among the first Nahuas to adopt Christianity and thus cement the new and successful alliance with the Spaniards. The Kyushuan daimyo in the sixteenth century were all of these things. And like other previous rulers who found themselves confronted with the Christian presence, they had to make choices about how best to handle this new religion in their society. Aside from personal interest or disinterest in the religion, their decisions regarding Christianity mattered a great deal to the stability of their domains. Although these “domains” were essentially the territories that they ruled, and usually overlapped with the old imperial system of provinces, they were actually much more than just areas to govern. As Sengoku historians have long noted, these “domains” were essentially mini-states that could be as described as kokka (“countries”). As Katsumata Shizuo has pointed out, one of the major characteristics of the kokka was “the autonomy or complete integrity of the sphere of political control.” Within the daimyo’s kokka, all inhabitants (warriors, commoners, and religious) were “seen by the daimyo as constituent members of the kokka.” What this means is that the Sengoku daimyo strove to control absolutely everyone and everything in the kokka in order to make it as strong and cohesive as possible. They frequently did this autocratically and by binding the kokka’s inhabitants (including themselves) with law codes. Indeed, the Jesuits, as astute outside observers, frequently referred to daimyo as “kings,” “princes,” or “lords.” To them, the kokka was what they knew in Europe as small independent petty kingdoms. More specifically, the daimyo sought to control and manage group loyalties within the kokka—especially those of his retainers and vassals. As Katsumata notes about group loyalties in the kokka, “the obligations of the lord-vassal relationship were regarded as relative ones, the product of choice based on prevailing social and political 6 circumstances.” Certain acts by the daimyo could strengthen these bonds or weaken them to the point where he could be faced with rebellion. Daimyo therefore sought to strengthen ties of loyalty between subordinates and himself rather than allowing them to 6 Katsumata Shizuo with Martin Collcutt, “The Development of Sengoku Law,” in John Whitney Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura, eds., Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 107; 113-114, see also p. 19. 147 form horizontal bonds of loyalty that could sow the seeds of rebellion. Furthermore, if the daimyo (as chief overlord) made decisions that resulted in the perceived weakening of the kokka, his vassals might loosen their bonds of loyalty and try to overthrow him. For the daimyo, one wrong decision, one military defeat, or one instance of letting his guard down might spell complete disaster. Gekokujō (literally “the lower overthrows the higher”) was the spirit of the age, and the Sengoku daimyo’s position was never immune to rebellion from below. Overthrow or death could happen at a moment’s notice, as was the case when Ōuchi Yoshitaka was suddenly deposed by his vassal Sue Harukata and 7 forced to commit suicide (seppuku). The daimyo frequently had to manage the religious forces (both Buddhist and Shinto) within their domains since many temple complexes, even the smaller ones, held considerable secular influence in the medieval period. Some even had allies among the warriors who would fight for the temple if it came under attack. This was a potential source of divided loyalties. Needless to say, the daimyo who flirted with Christianity (either personally or as a matter of policy) always risked alienating and antagonizing his retainer band (kashindan) and the Buddhist establishment. This would have been particularly dangerous if there were bonds of loyalty (such as family ties) between warriors and Buddhist temples in the kokka. Still, deciding to become Christian could mean the further assertion of power over both the kashindan and religious institutions in the domain. If a subordinate opposed the lord’s decision to support the missionaries or even become Christian, what other aspects of their power might they oppose? Sengoku daimyo as a whole could not tolerate insubordination simply because it could and often did lead to their individual downfalls. The most famous agents of Christianization in Japan are the so-called “Christian daimyo.” These were daimyo who actually converted to the religion and used their positions of power to spread Christianity within their domains. These included a number of the major lords of the island during the sixteenth century, namely Ōtomo Yoshishige (Dom Francisco), Ōmura Sumitada (Dom Bartholomeu), Arima Harunobu (Dom Protasio), and Konishi Yukinaga (Dom Agostinho, installed in Higo Province). Warriors 7 The most famous example of gekokujō is Akechi Mitsuhide’s surprise attack on his lord, Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga was caught completely unawares and perished as the temple (Honnō-ji) he was staying in burned to the ground. He either died fighting or (most probably) committed seppuku. 148 of less prominence, the so-called kokujin (sometimes translated as “provincials”), also either converted or supported Christianity within their own lands. Although they owed allegiance to their lord, many acted quite independently within their own territories. For example, among these Christian kokujin, were five families on the Amakusa Islands who converted to Christianity and made their subordinates Christian as well. Other warriors, who were sometimes vassals of non-Christian overlords (such as the Koteda on Hirado), were also significant agents of Christianization within their territories. These rulers had to balance their own personal convictions and actions as agents of Christianization with the non-Christian or even anti-Christian policies of their overlords. Aside from the “Christian daimyo,” a number of other powerful daimyo in the region actively supported Christianity, some just for a time, without entertaining thoughts of becoming Christian themselves. These agents of Christianization included Shimazu Takahisa (Satsuma and Ōsumi provinces), Ōuchi Yoshitaka (Suō and Nagato provinces on the western edge of Honshu), and Matsura Takanobu (Hirado). Each of these daimyo fostered the missionary enterprise during its infancy and allowed many of their subjects to become Christian. Without these patrons, the missionary enterprise would have had a much more difficult time sinking roots. Some daimyo and warriors of lesser rank persecuted Christianity for a variety of reasons, for varying lengths of time, and with varying intensity. Some, like Matsura Takanobu, swung like pendulums, first supporting the religion, then persecuting it, and finally tolerating it. A few Christian warriors later rejected the religion, particularly in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when national interests on the part of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) began to turn against Christianity. These former Christians went on to expel missionaries and to force their subjects to become Buddhist again. Still others, such as warriors who were newly installed on the island by the national hegemons Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, were hostile to the religion from the outset and attempted to assert their control over the Christian community. These rulers were agents of Christianization in a very different sense— persecuting the religion instead of facilitating it. In the mid-1500s, which is our focus, secular rejection or persecution of Christianity was by no means a given. In fact, the daimyo of Kyushu were more often 149 disposed than not to patronize the foreign priests from Tenjiku in the hopes of opening up additional international contacts. Nearly all of the powerful clans on the island had an outward looking perspective and fostered overseas trade and diplomacy. Kyushuan daimyo had contact and trade with Korea, the Ryūkyūs, China, Cambodia, and Siam. A few, particularly the Ōtomo and Ōuchi, actively sought overseas religious connections. For example, Ōuchi Yoshitaka had strong connections with Korea and tried to import a copy of the entire Buddhist canon (the Tripiṭaka). The Ōtomo were also great patrons of Buddhism, building temples in their domains and sponsoring monks to travel between Japan and China. Even the Shimazu were great religious patrons, building and renovating temples such as the gigantic Zen complex Fukushōji. Thus, when the missionaries arrived on the island, where foreign maritime trade and the presence of foreign communities (namely Chinese) was the norm, they simply represented a new presence within a very cosmopolitan part of Japan. So long as this new presence remained under their control and the Buddhist institutions within their domains did not push back too vociferously, the daimyo had no reason not to support the missionaries and a Japanese Christian community. As the first agent of Christianization in Japan, Shimazu Takahisa (1514-1571) was presented with this exact scenario. Though the daimyo of Satsuma, his position as the family head was tenuous throughout the 1540s and 1550s. He had been adopted as successor and rose to power during civil war with a rival branch family in the 1530s. 8 Takahisa only gained victory in 1539. Finally, in 1542, the Shimazu family council recognized him as the new head. Thereafter, he continued to rule with his biological father, Tadayoshi (1493-1568), as a guiding figure. The kokujin of southern Kyushu continued to be problematic throughout the 1560s, and the Shimazu family only consolidated their power over southern Kyushu (Satsuma, Ōsumi, and Hyūga provinces) in the 1570s under Takahisa’s successor Yoshihisa (1533-1611). Thus, when the missionaries arrived in Kagoshima in 1549, Takahisa had to proceed with caution. If the missionaries turned out to be a destabilizing presence, this could have sown political and social discord in his capital. 8 The rival family was led by Shimazu Sanehisa (d. 1553), who was based just to the northwest of Kagoshima in Izumi. The civil war is known as Sanehisatō no tatakai. 150 Yet there was much to recommend the missionaries. Like other Kyushu daimyo, the Shimazu engaged extensively in overseas trade. Satsuma was a notorious den for the so-called “Bafan” trade, which was essentially smuggling-cum-piracy. During the sixteenth century, the Shimazu established contact with the Ryūkyūs, China, and the “Namban” (Southern Barbarian) region of Southeast Asia. But most importantly for Takahisa’s immediate needs, the missionaries could potentially provide him greater access to guns. Though Japanese blacksmiths had been able to replicate Portuguese guns almost immediately after their introduction to Tanegashima in 1543 (the Shimazu began manufacturing at Bonotsu on the tip of the Satsuma peninsula), lords like Takahisa sought additional weaponry—and especially cannons, which could not yet be made in 9 Japan, and gunpowder, whose manufacture the Portuguese had perfected. The presence of these Nambanjin (Southern Barbarians) promised not only to increase Takahisa’s prestige as an international statesmen, but also to help him beat down his rivals and consolidate control over Southern Kyushu. Even though his plan to use the missionaries to gain greater access to guns did not ultimately pan out, it was a sound plan on paper; guns would be used frequently in his later conquests. In 1554, during the siege of Iwatsurugi castle in Aira, Takahisa’s general (Shimazu Tadamasa) equipped five ships with guns to bombard the recalcitrant defenders. Ultimately, the Shimazu would go on to conquer Ōsumi, Hyūga, and Higo provinces, and nearly take over most of the island (including Bungo) in the mid 1580s. Their advance and consolidation of power was only stopped when the national hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Kyushu to bring them to heel in his reunification campaigns. Takahisa also likely took an interest in the missionaries for religious reasons since his family were great patrons of Buddhism. For example, the major Zen institution of Satsuma, Fukushōji monastery, had some 1,500 monks attached to it at one point. Takahisa himself was educated in part at a Shingon monastery, but he actively supported Fukushōji. The monastery had declined during the Sengoku period, but Takahisa restored 9 The Shimazu had close marriage ties to the lords of Tanegashima and the island was considered part of their territory. Lidin, Tanegashima, 6; 50; 168. 151 10 it to its former glory by 1546. Takahisa also founded another major Zen monastery in 11 Kagoshima, Nanrinji, in 1556, and the Shimazu family sponsored individual Zen monks of learning. The learned Rinzai monk Keian Genjō (1437-1508) had tutored the family, 12 and two of Keian’s disciples were among Tadayoshi’s teachers. When Anjirō and the foreign missionaries (as priests of Tenjiku) arrived, Takahisa thus had both secular and religious motivations for supporting them. He gave them material support in the form of a house and permission to proselytize. He also allowed his subjects to become Christian. This patronage was, of course, on the condition that the missionaries not be too much of a disruptive presence in the city. Since he was in a relatively weak state vis-à-vis his familial rivals and the semi-independent kokujin, Takahisa’s authority only went so far and he could not, by fiat, completely back the missionaries should fierce opposition to them arise. Takahisa clearly wanted the missionaries to stay put in Satsuma as long as possible, as evidenced by his delaying tactics to keep Xavier from traveling to the Miyako. Since his arrival, Xavier had been asking for transport to the capital in order to get permission from the “king of Japan” to preach. But Takahisa would not hear of it. His first excuse was that the winds were bad for sailing to the capital and that departure would not be possible until the Spring of 1550. When this time came, Xavier was confronted with another excuse: that there were many wars in the region and that the 13 missionaries should remain in Kagoshima until they were over. Later missionaries would remember this advice for what it was, namely a delaying tactic to keep the foreigners in his lands. As Valignano recalls the situation: The king of the land [Takahisa] with his counselors (hoping that a ship of the Portuguese might come there…) delayed there the Padre [Xavier] with many 10 Kishino, Zabieru no dōhansha, 162-163. The emperor Go-Nara accorded it the status of Chokuganji in 1546. Chokuganji temples were officially recognized by the emperor himself as designated temples for offering prayers for the tranquility of the realm. See John Whitney Hall and Takeshi Toyoda, Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 344. 11 For a detailed physical description of Fukushōji see Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 69-73. 12 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 59-60. 13 MHJ II, 208. Torres to the Jesuits in Goa, from Yamaguchi, Sept. 29 1551. Fróis I, 28. 152 tricks and promises saying that they would give to them ships and favor to go to 14 Miyako, permitting meanwhile that some Christians could be made…” Unfortunately for Takahisa, his delaying tactics were in vain. The next Portuguese ship (one from China) came to Hirado rather than to one of his ports in July of 1550. Upon hearing the news, Xavier made the voyage to Hirado by sea—Takahisa perhaps gave him a boat to induce the Portuguese to come to Satsuma—and returned to Kagoshima that August with a new resolve to leave Satsuma. This time, Takahisa relented, lent the 15 missionaries a boat, and allowed them to leave Satsuma for good. So why did Takahisa have a change of heart? Could Takahisa, by his own personal authority, not have kept the missionaries in Satsuma as virtual prisoners to lure future Portuguese ships? Surely the potential rewards in trade would have offset the minimal expense of maintaining them. Some previous scholarship portrays Takahisa as being angry with the missionaries because the Portuguese ships had not come to his 16 domain. As a result, the argument goes, he prohibited Christianity and expelled them. But Xavier himself provides a more accurate answer to these questions. When he returned from Hirado, the monks of the city (he does not specify which sects) had 14 Alessandro Valignano, Historia del Principio y Progresso de la Comañia de Jesús en las Indias Orientales (1542-1564). ed. José Wicki (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesus, 1944), 167. Partial quote in Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” in John Whitney Hall, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4: Early Modern Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 310. Rodrigues, writing his history of the mission, also relates the delaying tactics of Takahisa. Giuseppe Marino, ed., Crónicas desde las Indias Orientalis: Segunda Parte da História Ecclesiástica de Japão y otros escritos por João Rodrigues “Tsuzu” SJ (c. 1561-1633) (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2019), 122. 15 Fróis I, 29. Fróis fills in the gaps of how the mission was able to go to Hirado. He notes that “the king gave permission in order to go with his companions to Hirado, where there was that ship that was going to India; which he was glad with this, and he lent him a boat in which they might go….” If the missionaries were not dependent upon Takahisa for transport to northward to the capital, they would have departed sooner. Fróis knew Torres and Fernández in Japan and likely heard the details of the trip from them. 16 See Elisonas in Hall, Cambridge, 310. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 34. Elisonas/Elison says the prohibition was in response to the ship going to Hirado. Valignano is partly responsible for this because he states that Takahisa neither gave the missionaries a boat nor favor to go to Miyako. This is contradicted by Torres’s first-hand report that Takahisa had “lent” them a boat. Andrew Ross states: “Things changed dramatically, however, when the Portuguese ships arrived in 1550 but did not come to [Takahisa’s] ports. Angrily, he expelled the foreign priests though he did not demand recantation of their faith by the newly baptized Japanese Christians within his fiefdom.” Ross, Vision, 25. Schurhammer, however, believes that Takahisa had to finally “[yield] to the demands of the bonzes.” Xavier’s final request “freed [Takahisa] from the difficult position in which he had been placed by the presence of the foreign preachers and the insistence of the bonzes and their influential friends.” Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 125-127. 153 become increasingly agitated by the presence of the missionaries and put pressure on Takahisa to forbid anybody from following them: We were in [Kagoshima] for more than a year. The bonzes [monks] told the lord of the land, who is a duke of many lands, that if he permitted his subjects to accept the law of God, he would lose his land and his pagodas would be destroyed and plundered by the people, because the law of God was contrary to their laws, and the people who accepted the law of God would lose their earlier devotion to the [Buddhist] saints who drew up their [religious] laws. The bonzes eventually persuaded the duke of the land to forbid under the pain of death anyone to become a Christian; and the duke thus forbade any of his [subjects] to accept the law of 17 God. By Xavier’s own words, the missionaries had clearly antagonized the Buddhist establishment in Kagoshima. As early as November of 1549, he had correctly predicted opposition: “since our tenets with respect to the knowledge of God and the salvation of men are so opposed to theirs, it is quite likely that we shall be severely persecuted by 18 them, and not merely in words.” We do not know if the monks of the city collectively opposed the missionaries or if it was only certain sects that did. But it is likely that pressure came from the Jōdo Shinshū, Shingon, and Jishū sects. There are three reasons for believing that this was the case. First, the missionaries seemed to have been on good terms with the Zen monks. Xavier describes the abbot of Fukushōji (Ninshitsu Bunshō) as “an amazingly good friend of mine” and that he “would be [a] blessed [man]” if he were Christian. The elderly abbot allowed Xavier to proselytize on the steps of the monastery. Whatever Ninshitsu thought of the new teaching, he was simply not concerned about it in 1549. 17 I have substituted “subjects” for Costelloe’s original rendering of “vassals” in the last line. Xavier’s original word is “nenhum.” This refers to the word “vasalos” earlier in the passage, which Costelloe translates as “subjects.” “Vassallo” can mean either “subject” or “vassal.” Since most of the Christians were Anjirō’s family and friends, it is unlikely that this term meant Takahisa’s actual vassals (kashindan) but rather just anyone in the population. Costelloe, Letters, 330. EX II, 258-259. Xavier to his the Jesuits in Europe, from Cochin, Jan. 29 1552. Valignano likewise states that the monks of Satsuma induced Takahisa to prohibit Christianity and let the missionaries leave. Rodrigues also mentions that the monks were responsible for putting pressure on Takahisa. Since Valignano and Rodrigues wrote decades after the event, this was how the Jesuits collectively remembered Takahisa’s motivations. Marino, Crónicas, 134-140. Schurhammer points out that Rodrigues’s account of the prohibition conflates accounts of persecution from Yamaguchi in 1552 and Bungo in 1557. Xavier, unfortunately, does not give much detail in his letters. Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 125, note 7. 18 Costelloe, Letters, 308. EX II, 204. Xavier to the Jesuits in Goa, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. 154 Friendly relations between the missionaries and the Zen sect in Kagoshima resumed in 1561, when Almeida visited the seventeenth abbot of Fukushōji, Unshū Genzai (Ninshitsu had already died by then). Not only did the two of them get along well, Almeida says that this monk had remembered Xavier from the 1549-1550 visit and 19 thought well of him. If the Zen monks in Kagoshima were hostile the missionaries in 1550, it is unlikely that Almeida would have been so well received a decade later. The second reason is that the missionaries found themselves opposed by the other Buddhist sects of the city because they were competing for followers among the common people. Christianity, after all, shared far more superficial similarities with the Shingon, Jōdo Shinshū, and Jishū sects than with the more intellectual Zen sect. Anjirō and the priests from Tenjiku were revealing a new teaching about Dainichi direct from India; and since the Shingon sect similarly emphasized the veneration of Dainichi (Mahavairocana), its adherents in the city could not have been too happy about this new development. In terms of antagonizing Jōdo Shinshū monks, Xavier took pains to emphasize the existence of hell and the need to be saved from its eternal flames. The missionaries’ message undoubtedly sounded similar to the Jōdo Shinshū emphasis on faith in Amida as the sole means of escaping suffering (hell included). By contrast, Zen and Christianity shared very few such similarities; and, in any event, the Zen presence in the city was already dominant and secure under Shimazu patronage. Thirdly, Xavier seems to have thought much more highly of the Zen monks (whom he described as “clerics”) than of other monks and nuns (bikuni). These latter monks, who he describes as “friars,” were likely members of the Jōdo Shinshū and Jishū sects. These two groups, Xavier says, were “hostile to one another.” After talking with the people of the city (via interpreters), he learned of certain “sins” they had committed 19 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 125, note 7, per Aoyama. Aleimda writes that the monk, who he does not name, was in charge of three monasteries. One of the other Zen ones was certainly Nanrinji. MHJ III, 550- 557. Almeida to the Jesuits in Europe, from Yokoseura, Oct. 25 1562. Cartas, 106-107v. See also Fróis I, 216-221. But Laures points out that Fróis is mistaken about the identity of the monk that Almeida met (it was not Ninshitsu). See Johannes Laures, “Notes on the Death of Ninshitsu, Xavier’s Bonze Friend” Monumenta Nipponica, 8, No. 1/2 (1952), 407-411. Kishino, Zabieru to Nihon, 190-191. Kishino, Zabieru no dōhansha, 161-167. During the early modern period, the most numerous sects were in Satsuma were the Sōtō sect, then followed by the Jishū and Jōdo sects. In Ōsumi it was Sōtō, then Shingon and Hokke. Kagoshima-shi hensan iinkai hen, Kagoshima-shi shi Vol. 1 Part 4, (Kagoshima: Kagoshima City, 1969), 515. This comprehensive history is available at: http://www.city.kagoshima.lg.jp/kikakuzaisei/kikaku/seisaku-s/shise/shokai/shishi/kagoshima-04.html. 155 and denounced them publicly. These “sins” included abortion and pederasty with the younger students in the monasteries (something that happened in Europe as well). In addition to revealing that the missionaries were publicly attacking the “friars,” Xavier mentions that the there were “many boys, sons of men of rank” (hidalgos) in their charge. According to Xavier, then, the Buddhist establishment in Kagoshima city had many and direct local ties to warriors in Satsuma. Thus, in attacking the “friars” for their “sins,” he antagonized monks who likely had connections to those in political power (i.e. part of the 20 Shimazu kashindan or the Satsuma kokujin). Although the distinctions that Xavier made between the various sects in Kagoshima are muddled, it seems safe to say that he allied himself with the “learned monks” (i.e. Ninshitsu and Zen) and made enemies of the other monks (the “friars”). On top of this, the missionaries also seem to have inadvertently entered into preexisting hostilities between monastic groups in Kagoshima city. By having friendly relations with the Zen sect in the city, Xavier inadvertently joined their 21 side against the other sects. Unfortunately, we do not have Japanese documentation of Takahisa’s prohibition. The only reference comes decades later from the diary of Uwai Kakuken (1545-1589), who makes a passing concerning prohibition against Christianity since the time of 22 Takahisa. If Xavier’s account of the prohibition is to be believed, it seems that these monks threatened Takahisa with rioting and the potential loss of his power (“he would lose his land and his pagodas would be destroyed and plundered by the people”). This 20 “Those who are not bonzes are delighted to hear us condemn this abominable sin, wince they believe that we have good reason for saying how evil, and how much they offend God, are those who commit such a sin. We frequently tell the bonzes that they should not commit such shameful sins…” Later, Xavier mentions that there are “many other errors among the bonzes, and those who are more learned have those that are worse.” These “errors” likely mean wrong beliefs and likely refer to Zen monks since he describes how he frequently conversed with “some of the most learned of these bonzes” (Ninshitsu). Costelloe, Letters, 299. EX II, 188-189. Xavier to the Jesuits in Goa, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. 21 Costelloe, Letters, 299. EX II, 188-189. Xavier to the Jesuits in Goa, from Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. Xavier writes of the bonzes: “We frequently tell the bonzes that they should not commit such shameful sins [meaning pederasty and abortion for the nuns or bikuni].” 22 Kagoshima-shi hensan iinkai hen, Kagoshima-shi shi Vol. 1 Part 3 (Kagoshima: Kagoshima City, 1969), 304. http://www.city.kagoshima.lg.jp/kikakuzaisei/kikaku/seisaku-s/shise/shokai/shishi/kagoshima-04.html Uwai Kakuen is quoted on p. 3 in Tomoe Tanaka, “Shimazu Takahisa no Kirishitan kinsei nitsuite” Bulletin of Association for the Study of Kirishitan Culture (1967): 1-22. 156 could only have been a threat from the side of the monastics and their warriors allies since the Christian community in Kagoshima was insignificant in terms of numbers and completely dependent on the good graces of Takahisa. Religious violence between sects and partisan rioting frequently occurred in medieval Japan. Following the start of the Ōnin War (1467-1476), Miyako (Kyoto) had become a burned down battleground where adherents of the Tendai sect (Enryakuji) and Hokke sect (Nichiren) fought one another with particular ferocity. In 1536, one diarist described religious violence in the capital: The forces of [Enryakuji] cut into Kyoto. They set fire to the twenty-one temples of the Hokke sectarians and, beyond this, all southern Kyoto. More than half of northern Kyoto has also burned. They have attacked and killed Nichiren adherents and various others. I do not know the number of number of the dead. I think it is 23 about three thousand. Whatever threats the Buddhist establishment made towards Takahisa, the daimyo could ill-afford to treat them as idle while his hold on both the Shimazu family and the region remained tenuous. As a result, Takahisa was forced to issue the prohibition against Christianity and allow the missionaries to leave for Hirado in 1550 even though it was against his desire to use the missionaries as intermediaries for trade. Takahisa could and should have kept the missionaries in his domain if he had been strong enough to oppose the rancor of the monks. As Tanaka Tomoe and Senba Yoshikazu have argued, Takahisa’s prohibition of Christianity must be seen within the context of the Shimazu family’s overall religious policy of controlling disruptive elements within their domains. Later, when the Shimazu lords were more powerful and had consolidated control over southern Kyushu, they were able to ban the Jōdo Shinshū sect entirely. Adherents of this sect, like Japanese Christians later, were driven underground and forced to practice in secret. Known as “kakure nembutsu,” Shinshū adherents had to meet in the middle of the night and faced imprisonment, mutilation, and death if caught. Although Jōdo Shinshū was permitted throughout the country under the Tokugawa once the threat of the Ikkō-Ikki had passed, 23 Gensuke onen-ki, quoted in Mary Elizabeth Berry, The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (Berkley: University of California Press, 1994), 165-166. 157 the Shimazu continued the ban throughout the early modern period and only lifted it in 24 1875. But Takahisa’s position had changed by 1561, for it was in that year he invited the missionaries back into his domains in order to gain greater access to Portuguese trade. Throughout the 1550s, he watched as the Portuguese junks and naos passed him by and favored his rivals to the north, Matsura Takanobu and Ōtomo Yoshishige. Only two Portuguese ships (one nao and one junk) had called at Tanegashima and Yamakawa in 1552. Due to this poor showing, one of Takahisa’s subordinates (“uno de los regedores”) wrote to Cosme de Torres at Funai in 1561 (the letter has not been preserved) asking for the Portuguese to return to his lands. Fernández, in an unrelated letter, preserves the gist of this request and Torres’s shrewd response: In Kagoshima, which is the first port where arrived our blessed Padre Master Francisco, who is in heaven, does not have a material church [church building], but there is a spiritual one, though small. One of the governors of the land wrote to the padre [Torres] complaining that the Portuguese were not coming to his land. And the padre responded that if he could have his lord give a plot of land to build a church and license to manifest the law of God in his kingdom, that he 25 would work on getting the Portuguese to come to his land. The strategy worked, as Takahisa once again allowed the missionaries to proselytize in his domain. We can get some idea how desperate Takahisa was for trade from two letters that he sent to the Portuguese Viceroy of India and the Jesuit Provincial in Goa (Antonio de Quadros) in January of 1562. Takahisa’s tone, at least in Almeida’s translations, is rather obsequious and shows just how much he desired Portuguese trade. In addition, he reveals that all was still not well in his domain and that he had yet to consolidate authority. In his first letter, he expresses regret that he could not meet personally with the Jesuit irmãos that Torres sent to Satsuma since he had had to engage in a military campaign. Secondly, he attempts to deflect blame for the recent murder of a Portuguese merchant (Afonso Vaz) that happened in one of his ports (likely Akune). According to 24 Tanaka, “Shimazu Takahisa”, 1-22. Senba Yoshikazu, “Satsumahan shū tōseisaku no ikkosatsu: Kirishitan no kinrei kara” (A Study of the Satsuma clan’s Policy of religious control: from the ban on Jodo Shinshu and Christianity), Nihon Syukyou Bunkashi Kenkyu (The Journal of Japanese religious and Cultural History) 11 No. 1 (May 2007): 134-153. 25 MHJ III, 443-444. Fernández to Antonio de Quadros, from Funai, Oct. 8 1561. Takahisa himself sent a letter to Torres, but this also has not been preserved. 158 Takahisa, Vaz was murdered mistakenly by some outside “bandits who had come to plunder” his lands. What likely happened was that Vaz got into a dispute with some local warrior and was killed, in spite of Takahisa’s desire to conduct trade with the Portuguese. Although maritime trade for both the Japanese and Portuguese often included violence, the incident suggested that Takahisa did not have full control over law and order within his domain. Takahisa, desperate for trade, was obviously worried about what kind of effect the incident might have: I would greatly rejoice if [the Portuguese] came to traffic in my land; neither need they be afraid of robbers, for there are none where there are Christians. I beg your reverence to send some Fathers very soon, whose arrival I am awaiting with all 26 my heart on the shore. Even accounting for Almeida’s influence in translating the letter, Takahisa’s message is clear: send both the padres and the Portuguese ships. Despite these reassurances, missionaries to Satsuma faced strong opposition from the monks of the city over the remainder of the 1500s. According to Fróis, the monks in Satsuma always had “great power and authority,” and “many family ties and alliances 27 with the fidalgos [warriors] and noble people [members of the ruling family].” Almeida reports that “[in Kagoshima] the bonzes of this land prosper and are our greatest 28 enemy.” Opposition descended into violence and murder on one occasion. A vassal of Takahisa’s successor, Shimazu Yoshihisa (1533-1611), had supported Almeida and was subsequently dragged out of his house in the middle of the night and stabbed to death. According to Fróis (via Almeida), the monks of the city orchestrated the hit because the man had spoken out in favor of allowing the missionary into Kagoshima. This event, says Fróis, was known throughout the city and, as a consequence, no one would subsequently 26 MHJ III, 480-487. Takahisa to the Viceroy of India and Takahisa to Antonio de Quadros, both dated Jan. 3 1562 from Satsuma. Quoted in C.R. Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon: Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1963), 316. Boxer provides translations of both letters. 27 Fróis III, 6 28 Cartas, 410. Almeida, from the kingdom of Satsuma, 1578 159 publicly support the padre. The tactic apparently worked, and Almeida was forced out of 29 the city. By the 1590s, the Shimazu seem to have subjugated the religious establishment in their domains, as had most other lords, and they could once again try their hand at using missionaries as conduits for international trade. This time, instead of attempting to gain advantages against their Kyushuan rivals, the Shimazu were looking to maintain independent overseas contact in the wake of the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. Although the Shimazu family was on the losing side of the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), it still maintained a very high degree of autonomy in Satsuma, one of the greatest of all the Tōzama (outside) domains. Looking to gain every advantage they could against the new central warrior government (the Tokugawa shogunate), the Shimazu looked to trade with Spain via the Philippines. But the Jesuits wisely declined to participate in any trade ventures with them since this would risk antagonizing the Tokugawa. In 1602, the seventeenth family head, Shimazu Iehisa (1576-1638; also known as Tadatsune) invited several Dominicans, led by Francisco de Morales (1567-1622), to begin work on Koshikijima. These islands, some 28 miles offshore to the west of Kyushu, were a good location to isolate the Dominican presence and prevent any religious discord on the mainland. In 1603, Iehisa became a bit bolder and allowed the Dominicans to move into Satsuma proper and build a church at Kyōdomari at the mouth of the Sendai River. This port city ultimately served the China, Ryūkyū, and Luzon trade. The Buddhist monastic establishment soon protested once again but they could no longer 30 force the daimyo’s hand: the missionaries would stay in Satsuma for the time being. Unlike their rivals to the north, the heads of the Shimazu clan made no overtures or feints regarding Christianity. None of their major vassals broke rank (with one notable exception) and became Christian or supported it as an independent measure. As a consequence, the Shimazu have been typically seen as falling outside the story of Christianity in Japan, except as foils for its establishment in southern Kyushu. Their chief 29 Fróis III, 309-313. Cartas II, 93-93v/83-83v. The pagination in Cartas II is irregular here due to a printing error. Fróis, Annual Letter of Japan for 1583, to the General, Jan. 2 1584. 30 Shigeyoshi Shigeno, Satsuma Kirishitan shiryō shūsei (Kagoshima: Minami Nihon Shuppan Bunkyōkai, 1966), 63-65. 160 contribution was providing initial hospitality to the foreigners (out of self-interest), which they subsequently revoked because the Portuguese went to Hirado. Their limited engagement with Christianity is marshaled out as premier evidence that the Kyushuan daimyo were interested in trade above all else and cared nothing for the Christian message. In most scholarship, they are barely mentioned unless it is in reference to their war against Bungo and their near conquest of the entire island in the 1580s. Nevertheless, the Shimazu were active participants in the Christianization process on Kyushu. By attempting to patronize missionaries and allowing their subjects to become Christian, the Shimazu opened themselves up to potential political and social discord as had other agents of Christianization. Christianity for them became a minor test of strength vis-à-vis other powerful elements in their kokka, namely the non-Zen Buddhist establishment and whatever alliances it had among the Shimazu kashindan and the semi-independent kokujin. Takahisa attempted, by fiat, to keep the missionaries in Satsuma for purposes of trade but found himself unable to do so in the face of strong opposition from monastics in Kagoshima city. His prohibition of Christianity in 1550 and “expulsion” of the missionaries should not be seen as a policy against Christianity per se, but rather as evidence that he did not have sufficient power to keep the missionaries there for something that he deemed important for the well-being of the kokka: international trade. Only in 1561, as rival daimyo reaped the benefits of trade with the Portuguese, were the Shimazu able to realize their long-term goal to use missionaries as human lures for the naos. By this time, Takahisa had beaten down more of his rivals and gained greater autonomy. His successor, Yoshihisa, pursued a similar path, allowing the missionaries to come to Kagoshima. Still, resistance to Christianity was too strong, and the mission as well as trade was forced out. Throughout the latter part of the 1580s, when there was no contact with the missionaries, the Shimazu were at the height of their power and thus had no need for the benefits that Christianity might bring. Only after their defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara, as part of the anti-Tokugawa coalition, did they once again attempt to use Christianity as a means for trade that would strengthen the kokka. Another agent of Christianization who was critical during the first years of the mission was the daimyo of Suō, Ōuchi Yoshitaka. Although he gave no indications of being interested in Christianity personally, Yoshitaka was a major boon to the mission by 161 providing it with its first base of operation. Unlike the Shimazu, the Ōuchi were primarily interested in patronizing the missionaries out of a sense of cosmopolitanism. As is well known, Yoshitaka had extensive overseas contacts and sought to make his capital city of Yamaguchi as cultured as possible, particularly that of the court culture of Miyako, Confucian learning, and Zen Buddhism. The Ōuchi not only had much contact with Korea, claiming descent from Korea royalty, but also with Ming China throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Western Japan and northern Kyushu were, partly through their overseas contacts, awash in so-called karamono (Chinese things). These 31 included such things as Chinese paintings, lacquers, clothes, and candles. Besides sponsoring foreign trade, the Ōuchi were great patrons of Buddhist culture. The family built no less than sixteen temples in Yamaguchi alone during the 32 medieval period, most of them Zen temples. Yamaguchi became known as a center for the aristocratic arts, such as renga (a type of collaborative “chain” poetry), under Yoshitaka’s father Ōuchi Yoshioki (1477-1529). Yoshitaka himself was raised as a man of culture. He studied classical Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, dabbled in Zen, Shingon, and Tendai Buddhism, and invited monks from the capital “to conduct Buddhist 33 ceremonies in the same splendid fashion as at the imperial court.” Some monks and officials were also refugees from the war-torn capital region, and Yoshitaka sponsored 34 them to teach the Confucian classics in his domain. Yoshitaka even tried to take advantage of his Korean connections and obtain a complete copy of the Buddhist canon ṭ 35(the Tripi aka). 31 For trade with China, see the overview in Kage Toshi, Ajia no naka no sengoku daimyō, 10-20. For Korea, see Kōji Itō’s chapter, “Ōuchishi no taigi to Ōtomo shi no taigai, in Toshio Kage, ed., Ōuchi to Ōtomo: Chūsei Nishi Nihon no nidai daiymō (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2013), 479-492. Relations with Korea had started during the Namboku-cho period (1336-1392) under the family head Ōuchi Yoshihiro (1356-1400). The family’s involvement in the official Ming Tally Trade was also extensive and they sponsored several ships during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 32 Shinji Mashino “Chūsei no Yamaguchi,” in Kage, Ōuchi to Ōtomo, 273-275. 33 James T. Araki “Yuriwaka and Ulysses: The Homeric Epics at the Court of Ōuchi Yoshitaka” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 33, No. 1 Spring (Sophia University, 1978): 1-36. Quote on pp. 31-32. 34 Martin Collcutt, “The Confucian Legacy in Japan” in Gilbert Rozman, ed., Confucian Heritage and its Modern Adaptation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 126. 35 In 1539, he sent a monk in his service named Sonkai to obtain a copy for a temple of his on Itsukushima (Miyajima) but the Korean monarchy did not have any available. Etsuko Hae-Jin Kang, Diplomacy and 162 Due to the Ōuchi’s very strong international connections dating back centuries, they were less concerned about accessing the foreign trade of the Portuguese. Yoshitaka’s motives for meeting and ultimately sponsoring the missionaries in Yamaguchi stemmed instead from his cosmopolitan perspective and cultural interests. Because his authority and prestige as daimyo was based, in part, on his ability to gather a vast array of cultural artifacts and activities in his capital city, when the foreign Jesuits showed up at his court, he was faced with a golden opportunity. There had been no visitors from India within living memory, after all, and it would have been poor form for such a cultured daimyo as Yoshitaka to dismiss the foreigners outright. Yet, the fact is that Yoshitaka nearly withheld patronage because Xavier did not play the part of the cultured and refined ambassador at their first meeting. Upon arriving in Yamaguchi, Xavier, Fernández, and the poor samurai Bernardo caused a buzz in the city as news of the priest from Tenjiku spread. This attracted some important people: 1. The convert known as Uchida Thomé, and 2. The Christian sympathizers Naitō Okimori (known as Naitōdono) and his wife. Uchida opened his home to the missionaries and was perhaps the very first baptism in Yamaguchi. He and his son would go on to work as missionaries for decades. Naitō Okimori was no less important. He was a “secretary” in the employment of Yoshitaka. Fróis reports that he later received baptism with his two 36 sons a year before his death in 1554. It was his wife who had rescued the mission party during the first rebellion in Yamaguchi in 1551 when Yoshitaka was overthrown. On the initial visit to Yamaguchi, the Naitō supported the missionaries and, acting as foreign ambassadors, introduced Xavier to Yoshitaka. According to Fróis (Xavier barely mentions the first meeting), the visit occurred in diplomatic fashion: [He said] to the king that there was a man from Tenjicu [India], that is from the kingdom of Siam, where there are fotoques [buddhas], and he said that he wanted to see him. They went in the company of that fidalgo to a chamber where the king ordinarily would see ambassadors and people who came from abroad, and being in front of him, prostrated themselves on the tatamis, revering him twice. They were in this room with only the king, a monk and a fidalgo [Naitō Okimori] who were presenting them, and, in the outer chambers and on the outside verandas, there were a great number of fidalgos and noblemen. Afterwards, the king talked Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations: From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 72. Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2001), 294. 36 MHJ II, 643. Fróis to the Jesuits in Goa, from Malacca, Jan. 7 1556. 163 with them happily, and asked them about some things concerning navigation and of the parts of India and Europe, and he said that he wanted to hear about the new 37 law the foreigners were talking about and that they wanted to preach in his land. In actuality, the shabbily dressed Jesuits and the obviously poor samurai Bernardo did not make impressive figures. Yoshitaka patiently listened to Fernández’s reading from the 38 Kagoshima Catechism until he had had enough, dismissing them from the audience. The missionaries then decided to continue with their original plan of heading towards Miyako in order to meet the “King of Japan.” Needless to say, there was no “King of Japan” who could offer them protection and patronage. Xavier only found a burned out shell of a capital in war-torn Miyako. At this point, there was nothing to do but return to Hirado where Torres, Joane, and Antonio awaited them. But this is when the missionaries’ fortunes changed. Xavier had brought with him letters of diplomatic introduction and a great many gifts for the “King of Japan” and decided to present them to the most powerful figure that he had thus far encountered: Yoshitaka. Naitō Okimori arranged for another meeting, but this time Xavier was prepared. He dressed himself as handsomely as he could—perhaps with vestments for mass—and acted the part of an official ambassador. Though no mention of them is made during this second audience, Joane or Antonio might have acted as an interpreter since at least one of them came to Yamaguchi. Xavier presented Yoshitaka with the following: diplomatic letters from the Viceroy of India and the Bishop of India (on behalf of the Pope), an engraved three-barreled musket, a pair of eyeglasses, a telescope (apparently still extant), cut glass, Portuguese wine (probably for mass), an ornate book, and a 39 mechanical clock that played music. 37 Fróis I, 31-32. 38 Xavier also insisted on condemning pederasty at the court. Fernández later recalled that he had feared that Yoshitaka was going to have them killed for blatant disrespect. 39 App gives a good summary of the gifts, “Xavier,” 47-48. This clock likely made the biggest impression, as it became worthy of mention in a biography of Yoshitaka published around the turn of the nineteenth century: “Among the various gifts offered by the man from India was [a device that] showed the invariable length of day and night when ticking away twelve periods, ringing a bell that played tunes of five and twelve scale tones without needing to pluck the thirteen strings of a koto [lute].” See Ryuji Hiraoka, “Jesuits and Western Clock in Japan’s “Christian Century” (1549–c.1650)” Journal of Jesuit Studies 7, No. 2 (2020): 204-220. Quote on p. 206. Valignano also recalls the diplomatic nature of the meeting, Valignano, Historia, 176. Shurhammer gives details about Joane or Antonio sailing to Yamaguchi with Xavier. Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 216, note 8. 164 This second, better choreographed diplomatic appearance made all the difference. Yoshitaka now had foreign men of rank and culture at his court rather than a wandering and poor religious figure akin to the Buddhist hijiri (a kind of wandering monk). Seeking to reciprocate Xavier’s gestures, Yoshitaka offered the missionaries “much gold and silver,” but they refused it—asking only for was permission to preach. This was granted, as Xavier recalls: He very graciously granted us permission for this and then ordered placards in his name to be set up in the streets of the city stating that he was pleased that the law of God was to be preached in his lands, and that he gave permission to those who wished to accept it to do so. He also gave us a monastery, like a college, so that we might stay there. When we were in this monastery, many people came to hear our preaching on the law of God, which we usually did twice each day. At the end of our sermon there were always disputations that lasted for a long time. We were continuously occupied with answering questions or in preaching. Many priests and nuns, nobles, and other people, came to these sermons. The house was almost always full, and frequently there was not enough room for everyone…after the passage of many days, they began to become Christians. The first to become such were those who had been most hostile to our sermons and disputations. Many of those who became Christians were nobles; and after they had become Christians, they were such great friends of ours that I could never end writing about it. And they thus gave us a very faithful account of all that is contained in the laws of the 40 pagans… Unbeknownst to Yoshitaka, he had just played an absolutely critical role in the establishment of Christianity in Japan. Not only had he given them protection, his “placards” amounted to free advertising for the missionaries and could only have served to prompt popular curiosity. Any cultured individual in Yamaguchi, of which there were many, would surely have wanted to pay a visit to the new monastery with the priests from India. As discussed earlier, the missionaries made several important conversions there, not the least of whom was Lourenço. He alone would go on to win many “thousands of souls” for Christianity. Unfortunately for Yoshitaka, he fell victim to the same thing that many of his Sengoku peers did: gekokujō. One of his vassals, Sue Harukata, revolted and forced Yoshitaka to commit suicide as his cultured city burned to the ground. As in other instances of rebellion and urban warfare during the Sengoku period, Yamaguchi’s 40 Costelloe, Letters, 332-333. EX II, 262-263. Xavier to his companions in Europe, from Cochin, Jan. 29 1552. 165 temples were looted and also destroyed. The old temple of Daidōji was likewise destroyed, and the missionaries were forced to flee the city for their lives. With the help of Naitō Okimori’s wife, the missionaries found shelter and were able to regroup once Yamaguchi came under the rule of Ōuchi Yoshinaga (1532-1557). The younger brother of Ōtomo Yoshishige, Ōuchi Yoshinaga restored the mission to the city and honored Yoshitaka’s donation of a monastery. The letter of patent, which still exists in the original Japanese, was given to the Jesuits in 1552: Regarding the Daidō monastery, province of Suō, district Yoshiki, Yamaguchi prefecture: The bonzes who have come here from the Western regions may, for the purpose of promulgating Buddhist teaching, establish their monastic community [at the Daidō monastery]. In witness, following their wish and request, this document of permission was issued, Tenbun era, 21st year, 8th month, 28th day. Suō-no-suke Seal 41 [To the] occupant of the said temple. This permit also likely included Yoshitaka’s original promulgation, by fiat, that no one should harm the missionaries. The donation of Daidōji and the protection afforded the missionaries together show that agents of Christianization need not have been personally invested in Christianity to have a major impact on its penetration into a society. Yoshitaka and then Yoshinaga facilitated the spread of Christianity in Japan for their own purposes, purposes that were completely consistent with the prevailing cultural orientation and international perspective of western Japan. The missionaries were just one additional, albeit rather 41 Quoted in App, “Francis Xavier,” 237. I have excised the characters from the text for sake of clarity. For a full discussion of the Japanese-language version of the patent vis-à-vis the contemporary interlinear translation, see App’s analysis. App regards the inclusion of “Buddhist law” and the missionaries’ translation of it “the law that produces saints,” as a mutual misunderstanding, something akin to James Lockhart’s concept of “double mistaken identity,” whereby the missioners thought the daimyo were giving them permission to preach Christianity and the missionaries were simply preaching a new kind of Buddhist law. This is certainly a possibility, but the Buddhists in Yamaguchi were not slow in recognizing that what the missionaries were teaching constituted something fundamentally different or, at the very least, a Buddhist heresy. For a much more nuanced take on how the familiar language of “Buppō” was used as an early appellation for Christianity, see Jason Ānanda Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012). Lockhart defines “double mistaken identity’ as a process within cultural interaction “in which each side of the cultural exchange presumes that a given form or concept is functioning in the way familiar within its own tradition and is unaware of or unimpressed by the other side’s interpretation.” James Lockhart, Of Things of the Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 98-99. 166 exotic, element in an already multiculturally oriented perspective that looked as much to the continent as it did to the capital in central Japan. Yoshitaka may have had designs for trade with the Portuguese, but the Jesuit letters give no indication of this. The Ōuchi had a long history of international trade with Korea and China, and it is likely that any demand for Chinese goods, such as silk or porcelain, were already being met through the usual channels. The Jesuits also give no indication that Yoshitaka may have been interested in them in order to obtain guns. The most reasoned explanation for Yoshitaka’s interest in the foreign missionaries was mainly cultural and religious (as evidenced by Xavier’s second and more formal audience with the daimyo and the donation of a monastery). As a result of Yoshitaka’s interest in foreign goods, people, and ideas, his patronage of the missionaries was as normal as it was impactful. Aside from major daimyo, such as Shimazu Takahisa or Ōuchi Yoshitaka, lower- ranking warriors on Kyushu acted as agents of Christianization. Their choice to adopt and promote the religion, sometimes quite forcefully, could provoke tension between themselves and their overlord to the potential detriment of the kokka. The earliest and clearest example of this was the tension that arose from the conversion of Koteda Yasutsune Antonio (1532-1582), his younger brother Koteda Kageyu João, and (later) his father Koteda Yasumasa (1508-1557). The two brothers were baptized by Balthazar Gago in 1553 following the arrival of the second nao to Hirado (that of Duarte da Gama.) The Koteda family were vassals of the daimyo of Hirado, Matsura Takanobu (1529-1599). The Matsura family had long ruled over the northwestern islands of Hizen province and were both famous and infamous for their seafaring skills. They simultaneously participated in foreign trade, smuggling (after Ming maritime prohibitions), and outright piracy. In fact, the famed Chinese pirate Wang Zhi (d. 1560) had made Hirado his adoptive home. When the Portuguese arrived for the first time in 1550, Takanobu naturally welcomed them with open arms. The Portuguese were merchants who sometimes practiced outright piracy, as did Wang Zhi, and they 42 frequently collaborated with Chinese smugglers and pirates. 42 Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese all made use of the notorious smugglers’ lair of Shuanyu, off the coast of China in the Zhoushan Islands. 167 As a pirate daimyo, Takanobu happily welcomed the Portuguese to his harbors, received Xavier in audience in 1550, and gave him permission to proselytize. Early on, Takanobu was said to be a “great friend to the Portuguese and was very happy with the padres, giving them a plot of land to make their houses.” He also gave them a cemetery. At this point, Takanobu was so friendly and supportive of the missionaries that he 43 claimed to be “in his heart a Christian.” In 1555, he even wrote a letter to Melchior Nunes Barreto feigning interst in receiving baptism: I saw Padre Master Francisco [Xavier] here in my land [in 1550], where he had made some Christians, and from whom I take much delight and contentment…Nevertheless he has come two times, the padre from Bungo [Baltasar Gago], and he made some Christians among my relatives and noblemen. I heard sometimes his doctrines and words, which seem to me very good, and I hold them in my heart, and I am very close to becoming one [a Christian]. I will rejoice much when V.R. [Your Reverence] comes to this land, because even though I lied one time [presumably about becoming Christian], I will not do it another time. And from me he will receive all the honor and welcome that I am able to offer, and he will do much service to God. 44 Taqanombo King of Friando As one might expect of a pirate lord, however, Takanobu was not being totally honest. But as an agent of Christianization, he was facilitating the spread of the religion in Japan, particularly in the critical first decades. The missionaries, for their part, realized that Takanobu was never seriously thinking about converting. The Jesuits had hoped for Takanobu’s conversion in their initial dealings with him but quickly abandoned hope of it. Still, they were content to reap the benefits of his patronage, even if they were purely for economic considerations, in order to facilitate the spread of Christianity among the people of Hirado. In fact, when push came to shove, the Jesuits learned that Takanobu was willing to persecute Christianity rather than patronize it. Between the years 1558 and 1564, Takanobu had actually expelled the missionaries from Hirado. Later, when he saw that most of the Portuguese trade was going to his rivals in Ōmura and Bungo, he somewhat reluctantly allowed the Christian community on Hirado to exist and even 43 MHJ II, 429. Pedro de Alcaçova to the Jesuits in Portugual, from Goa, March 1554. Also MHJ III, 550; 569. Gago to Ignatius and the rest of the Jesuits, from Hirado, Sept. 23 1555. 44 MHJ II, 574-575. Matsura Takanobu to Melchior Nunes Barreto, from Hirado, Oct. 16 1555. 168 allowed missioners back into his domains to support the church. For the remainder of his tenure as daimyo of Hirado, the Jesuits would speak of him as a “cruel enemy” of the 45 faith. In 1568, Takanobu retired as daimyo in favor of his son, Shigenobu (1549-1614) who was much more favorable to Christianity than his father had been. Although Matsura Takanobu only patronized the missionaries for a short time, Christianity had a profound effect on his domain. Specifically, it strained his relationship with the Koteda, who were among his principal and most favored vassals. This was a far more serious situation than the one that the Shimazu faced over the presence of the missionaries. Should Takanobu force the issue for the Koteda by banning Christianity from their territories, he could face rebellion. Therefore, he could only ban Christianity on Hirado Island proper, leaving the Koteda to do as they pleased within their own semi- independent territory. Christianity in Hirado, in other words, threatened to unravel lord- vassal ties of loyalty. At this point, there was no Japanese fear of divided loyalties between the Church and the Pope vis-à-vis Japanese secular overlords as there would be in the Tokugawa period. Here, within the domain, the greater concern was over whether or not subordinate lords, such as the Koteda, would independently become Christian despite the will of the daimyo. On the other end, the issue was whether or not a daimyo could become “Christian” without provoking revolt from below. Christianity then, was testing bonds within Japanese political systems of domainal power as an internal matter. Takanobu’s antipathy towards the missionaries came to a head in 1558 after Buddhist monks from Koteda’s territories (Ikitsukijima and Takushima) complained to him that their lord was taking an extremely heavy-handed approach to spreading the religion. According to Gago, Koteda Antonio, with the full support of Vilela, had forced the entire population of his territory to become Christian (including Buddhist monks), turning temples into churches and burned any Buddhist images and objects: There is one Christian of the three principals of the land, by the name of Dom Antonio, who has three or four villages, and small islands two or three leagues from Hirado. And in the year of [1558], he made these Christians, by the encouragement of the padre [Gaspar Vilela] and his farmers, and some servants [vassals] who were still not Christian and all his house, that he will have one thousand five hundred Christian souls to this Dom Antonio, more or less. 45 Fróis I, 353; Fróis II, 155. 169 [Dom Antonio] was walking with the padre through the village preaching and encouraging them to convert, and to the houses that were of the pagodas he took the idols and made them into churches with a cross; and they made cemeteries in some places, for those who died, with large planted crosses. And in order that this work might be completely Christian, they burned the idols small and large, 46 because also their ministers became Christian. Conventional narratives have placed the blame for temple-destruction on the head of Vilela. Such an interpretation, however, gives the foreign Jesuit far too much credit and agency. Koteda Antonio had been Christian for five years already, and some of his family members (his younger brother) and vassals were already baptized. At the same time in 1558, or just prior, Koteda Antonio had his entire family baptized. This included his father Yasumasa (Jerónimo), his mother, sisters, wife (Isabel), a sister named Beatriz, and 47 his heir Koteda Sakae (d.1614). Having his family made Christian while his subjects remained Buddhist under the care of the monks simply would not do for Koteda. Vilela no doubt encouraged Koteda wholeheartedly, but the forced conversions, mass baptisms, temple conversions, and destruction of Buddhist paraphernalia was entirely Koteda’s decision and doing. What seems to have happened is that Koteda realized there was a growing divide between the Christian elements and the non-Christian elements in both his family and his territory. Instead of having his house and lands divided in terms of religion, Koteda decided, as lord of his territory, to force unity so that there would be no divided loyalties nor potential for religious discord. Those who would not become Christian would be proving themselves disloyal to his rule, having refused what amounted to a direct order. Koteda’s forceful tactics may have been partly born out of personal religious convictions, but, as a Sengoku lord, his main concern was undoubtedly the loyalty of his 46 MHJ III, 201-202. Gago to the Jesuits in India, from Funai, Nov. 1 1559. There is a partial translation in Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 55. The other islands Koteda controlled were Shishi, Ira, and Kasuga. Fróis I, 115. Three temples were also converted into churches. Vilela puts the total at 1,300 in two months. MHJ III, 146-147. Vilela to Jesuits in Goa, from Funai, Sept. 1559. 47 Madalena Ribeiro, “Gaspar Vilela. Between Kyushu and the Kinai” Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies, Vol. 15, December (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2007), 18. See also Madalena Ribeiro, “The Christian Nobility of Kyushu. A Perusal of Jesuit Sources,” in Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies, Vol. 13, December (Lisboa: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2006), 48-53. Also, Madalena Teotónio Pereira Bourbon Ribeiro, “A Nobreza Cristã de Kyûshû. Resdes de Parentesco e Acção Jesuítica” (Ph.d. diss., Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2006). Elisonas attributes the event to “Vilela’s method of evangelization” in Hall, Cambridge, 322. Hesselink also blames Vilela, Nagasaki, 48. 170 subjects and the unity of his territory. Vilela may or may not have persuaded him to undertake this forcible conversion of his lands, but Koteda’s behavior was entirely consistent with men of his station. Later, when Christianity was outlawed and Christian lords converted to Buddhism, they often made their vassals and subjects adopt their preferred sect. For example, in 1606, when Ōmura Yoshiaki (Dom Sancho; 1568-1615) gave up Christianity, he ordered all of his subjects in Ōmura domain to become members of the Jōdo sect. Wishing to make an alliance with the powerful and anti-Christian daimyo Katō Kiyomasa in Higo (Kumamoto), Yoshiaki himself converted to Nichiren Buddhism (at Kiyomasa’s behest) and had his vassals do the same. According to 48 Pacheco, political alliances in this case begat religious alliances. Takanobu was certainly aghast at Koteda’s actions. From his perspective, two of his most important vassals were sowing the seeds of discord in the kokka. According to Guillermo Pereira, the monks of Hirado went directly to Takanobu and gave him an ultimatum: either they or the padre (Vilela) had to go. Takanobu, recognizing that the monks had the support of his other vassals, made the easy decision to expel Vilela. He 49 then burned down the Jesuit house and church. That said, Takanobu could not force the issue on Ikitsuki and Takushima because that was Koteda turf. Moreover, he seems to have had a soft spot for the Koteda. Antonio’s father (Yasumasa; Jerónimo) had actually helped to raise Takanobu when he was a youth, after the daimyo’s father died. The Koteda family was actually instrumental in preserving Takanobu’s patrimony as daimyo of the Matsura clan, so his personal loyalties to them also likely prevented his ban on 50 Christianity from extending to their lands. Most of the time Takanobu is seen as taking out his anger on Vilela for having destroyed temples. But something a bit more complicated was arguably at work here. Koteda, operating as he wished within his own territories, had fractured the internal stability of the kokka along religious lines. The monks, understandably concerned by what was happening on Ikitsuki and Takushima, mobilized and forced Tanaknobu’s hand 48 Hesselink, Nagasaki, 132 and 246 note 52. Also, Diego Pacheco “El primer mapa de Nagasaki” in Boletin de la Asociacion española de Orientalistas, Año II (1966), 14. 49 MHJ III, Pereira to a Jesuit of the College, from Funai, Oct. 4 1559. 50 Stephen Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: A Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day, (Richmond: Japan Library, 1998), 28. 171 (similar to the situation in Kagoshima). Takanobu, while owing his position as daimyo to the help of the Koteda, could not or would not risk losing the support of his other important non-Christian vassals by allowing the missionaries to stay solely to preserve the benefits of international trade. Like the Shimazu, Takanobu would have had to risk the internal stability of the kokka by sheltering the padres or risk losing the benefits of the Portuguese nao by expelling Vilela. Instead of risking everything for trade, Takanobu wisely expelled the padre and banned the missionaries entirely from 1558-1564, while exempting Koteda lands from the decree. In the years following Vilela’s expulsion, the Portuguese continued to call on Hirado for a time, despite Takanobu’s anti-Christian stance and an incident in 1561 when fourteen Portuguese were killed (including the Captain major) in a dispute concerning the price of a bolt of silk—Hirado was a pirate town after all. But in 1564, Takanobu’s anti- Christian policy came back to haunt him as the Jesuits (led by Cosme de Torres) shrewdly and successfully managed to get the Portuguese to abandon Hirado. Instead, they had the naos stop in the newly founded port of Yokoseura in Ōmura domain. This new port seems to have been the brainchild of none other than Koteda Antonio, who, in secret consultation with Luis de Almeida, helped the Jesuits broker a deal with the daimyo of Ōmura domain (Ōmura Sumitada). Torres sent the oldest convert from Yamaguchi, Uchida Thomé, as messenger to Sumitada to confirm the agreement. Sumitada kept up his end of the deal, which was to be favorable to the missionaries, and Portuguese ships would no longer call at Hirado. Done in by the duplicity of his own vassal and his antagonism toward the Jesuits, Matsura Takanobu no longer had access to the ever-increasing Portuguese trade, much to the detriment of the kokka. From 1564 onwards (1586 being the exception), the Matsura lost out on massive profits from the 51 newly established Portuguese silk trade between Japan and Macau. 51 Gonoi, Nihon Kirisuto Kyōshi, 58. There is much more that can be said of the Matsura, the Portuguese, and the Jesuits. Takanobu, driven to desperation for trade, had a fleet of boats attack the Portuguese nao at Fukuda. The ship, armed with cannon, inflicted much damage on the Mastura vessels, which were much smaller. The Jesuits attempted to warn the Portuguese of the impending attack on the ship at Fukuda. The Matsura “flotilla” involved as many as sixty vessels. There is said to have been some 200 casualties on the Matsura side. See C.R. Boxer, The Great Ship, 24-31; 48-49. For a full overview of the Matsura and their incredibly rocky relationship with the Portuguese and Jesuits see Mikio Toyama, Hizen Matsura Ichizoku (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 2008), 226-260. Also Mikio Toyama, Matsurashi to Hirado Bōeki (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1987) 118-136. 172 As agents of Christianization, the Koteda presaged the major “Christian daimyo” on Kyushu in the following ways: the conversion of entire warrior households, the baptism of vassals at the behest of their overlord, mass baptisms of subjects within the domain as an act of authority, and temple destruction and conversion. All three Christian daimyo (Ōmura Sumitada, Ōtomo Yoshishige, and Arima Harunobu) engaged in similar acts in their respective domains of Hizen, Bungo, and Shimabara and Amakusa. Because of their efforts to convert the entire population of their domains, these areas became the most thoroughly Christianized in all of Japan. In fact, just prior to the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1614, Nagasaki and its environs were almost entirely Christian, due in large part to Sumitada’s program of Christianization. Attributing such missionary success to the Jesuits’ “top-down” approach to conversion ignores the agency of the daimyo themselves and the context in which they ruled. To be sure, the Jesuits targeted rulers for conversion; but this “strategy” was born out of the political realities of Sengoku Japan and the daimyo’s ever-increasing authority within their own kokka. There was no situation in which they could have proselytized without the implicit or explicit patronage of the daimyo. When they did not have permission, they could sometimes rely upon more powerful local lords, such as the Koteda, who might be exempt from the overlord’s fiat; but all of this hinged on Japanese bonds of political loyalty with a measure of shrewd politicking on the part of the Jesuits. By having their families, vassals, and subjects baptized, Christian lords in Japan acted in a manner similar to that of other agents of Christianization throughout history. Secular rulers, in accepting Christianity into their lands or even receiving baptism themselves, always had a profound influence on the Christianization of their families and subjects. When a king, a warlord, or even a family head had accepted baptism, those under his authority frequently followed suit. Baptism and the acceptance of Christianity intertwined with preexisting power structures, family dynamics, and social and political 52 bonds. Therefore, people around or under the ruler frequently accepted baptism not because a missionary converted the ruler but because the ruler, as the most influential member of society, chose to convert. This was particularly the case among societies 52 For the importance of kinship and friendship networks, see Rambo, Religious Conversion, 108-113. 173 where rule was achieved through personal ties of loyalty, such as in the Germanic cultures of Central Europe, Anglo-Saxon England, and Scandinavia. As Alexandra Sanmark has explained, “The strong bonds of loyalty that seem to have operated at all levels of Germanic society could provide another reason why the acceptance of Christianity by the wider population followed the baptism of their king.” For example, in Anglo-Saxon England, advisers helped the king make important decisions, which helped to minimize rebellion from below. These same advisers were also dependent upon the king and needed to remain in his goodwill. The advisors, in turn, had their own retainers 53 so that any decision that a king took would have a “trickle down” effect. This is not to say that the bonds of loyalty between a daimyo and his vassal band and family in Japan were the same as in Germanic culture. The point here is that these kinds of bonds were important in group decisions of whether or not to follow an overlord into Christianity. One could be on the same page as one’s overlord, or use his attitude toward the new religion to chart a different course. This might also lead to the weakening of bonds of loyalty within the daimyo-vassal structure and, in some cases, a coup against the daimyo. In the age gekokujō, a lord’s decision to take up Christianity was as good a reason as any to rebel and attempt to claim overlordship. The acceptance of Christianity by family heads also held a great deal of influence. If the family was prominent, others families in the community might follow suit. The following early “snapshot” from sixteenth-century Central Mexico is illustrative. Unlike the first Christianized lords of medieval Europe, Christianized lords of Central Mexico did not force their subjects to convert. Nor did they prevent conversions among commoners. However, as Sarah Cline has shown, the baptism of a lord generally influenced the decision of those in his family to receive baptism. According to census data from the 1540s, the baptism of a lord did not necessarily lead to the baptism of the entire household. In some cases, only a few household members followed the lord’s example and received the sacrament, while in other cases, the majority of the members were also baptized. As Sarah Cline has concluded, “the decision to be baptized could have remained an individual one for adults [in the household.]” Members of the community also had the ability to choose whether or not to receive baptism, but it appears 53 Sanmark, “Power and Conversion,” 40. 174 they were often influenced by the number of people in the lord’s household that were baptized. By comparing data for the number of people baptized in a ruler’s household to the number of baptisms in the community at large, Cline has pointed out a correlation: when the percentage of baptisms in a ruler’s house was low, it was low in the community; and when the percentage of baptisms was high in the household, it was also 54 high in the community. This indicates that members of the community often emulated the actions of politically and socially prestigious families in deciding whether or not to receive baptism. If the majority of the lord’s household received baptism then the sacrament seems to have carried with it the social prestige of that family. Within a few decades, however, the situation changed rapidly and there was a more forceful compulsion to baptism via the Church and the indigenous elites acting on its behalf. Spanish colonial authorities expected all indigenous to be “Christian” and expected the local indigenous lords in power to enforce this mandate. Other surviving indigenous elites, acting as “church constables” and fiscales likewise ensured compliance on the 55 ground. While family structures in Sengoku Japan were different, family heads, particularly those in warrior houses, held considerable influence and authority. This extended outward into bonds of loyalty and religion. As Madalena Ribeiro has argued, kinship ties and marriage alliance could be beneficial or detrimental to the spread of Christianity on Kyushu. In one case, that of the Koteda and Ichibu families, it was beneficial. The Koteda had converted and, through a marriage alliance, so did members of the Ichibu families. As a second son, Koteda Kageyu João could not inherit the Koteda patrimony (it went to his older brother Yasutsune/Antonio). Instead he married out into the nearby Ichibu family (on Ikitsukijima). His father-in-law then adopted him, and he became the family’s new heir apparent, Ichibu Kageyu. In 1565, subjects in the Ichibu territories converted to Christianity in response to this new bond of kinship and loyalty. The obverse could happen as well. Unable to defeat his archrival Ryūzōji Takanobu, Ōmura Sumitada had to swear allegiance to him. Part of this involved a new marriage 54 Sarah Cline, “The Spiritual Conquest Reexamined: Baptism and Christian Marriage in Early Sixteenth- Century Mexico” in John F. Schwaller, ed., The Church in Colonial Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2000), 78-89; 93-96. Quote on p. 79. 55 Thanks goes to Professor Robert Haskett for this info as well. 175 alliance. Sumitada offered up one of his Christian daughters in marriage to the non- Christian Ryūzōji Ietane. Though the Jesuits do not say anything about it, Sumitada’s daughter more than likely gave up Christianity in order to become a part of the new 56 family. Occasionally, Christianity could be used to test the bonds of loyalty outright. These instances are what we might call “forced” conversions, but many times Christianity was ancillary to other dynamics operating within a conquered territory or in an overlord-vassal relationship. One of the most infamous examples of “forced” conversions is Charlemagne’s conquest of the Saxons in Central Europe in the late eighth century. Constantly at war with the Saxons, Charlemagne forced baptism on his defeated foes following battles in the 770s and 780s. As the Royal Frankish Annals make clear: “A multitude of Saxons were baptized and, according to their custom, they agreed that if they changed back any more to their evil customs, they would forfeit all their freedom and property.” By submitting to Charlemagne, the Saxons were to submit themselves also to the Christian god. To break the new bond of ruler and subject in one was to break it for the other. Most infamously, Charlemagne was said to have massacred “many thousands 57 of pagans” at Verden who would not submit to his authority by undergoing baptism. By 785, the conversion was inextricably tied to subjugation: “If there is anyone of the Saxon people lurking among them unbaptized, and if he scorns to come to baptism and wishes 58 to absent himself and stay pagan, let him die.” Nothing so dramatic happened on Kyushu. But when the major Christian lords converted, bonds of loyalty were tested: some strengthened and others strained. In the case of the Koteda, bonds of loyalty held firm, and many of their subordinates as well as 56 Ribeiro, “Christian Nobility,” 48-57. 57 Quoted in Ingrid Rembold, Conquest and Christianization: Saxony and the Carolingian World, 772-888 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 51-52; 77-78. A Frankish poet celebrates the conquest and conversion that it entailed: “Prince Charlemagne, girded with gleaming arms, Adorned with a plumed helmet, Aided by the miraculous power of the eternal judge, Conquered this people through various massacres, through a thousand victories, And crushed them through bloodied shields, through bellicose spears, Through the strength of courage, through blood-smeared arrows, And he subjected them to himself with a glittering sword, And dragged the legions of forest-worshippers to the heavenly kingdom…” 58 Quoted in Lawrence G. Duggan, “‘For Force is Not of God’? Compulsion and Conversion from Yahweh to Charlemagne,” in James Muldoon, ed., Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 49. 176 their subjects accepted baptism. In other cases, such as that of Ōmura Sumitada, conversion nearly cost the lord everything. With the Ōtomo, Yoshishige’s conversion further weakened some bonds of loyalty, but did not take down the kokka. The story of these so-called “Christian daimyo” is well known and has been told many times, so there is no need to rehash the many details here. Instead, we will concentrate on how Christianity was a sort of litmus test for how much the overlord could count on the 59 loyalty of his subordinates. The most well-known “Christian daimyo” is Ōmura Sumitada. Not only was he the first major lord to convert, but the one who donated the ports of Nagasaki and Mogi to the Jesuits in perpetuum. This land grant created the most thoroughly Christian area in all of Japan. Given this outcome, we might assume that Sumitada’s conversion and the subsequent Christianization of his lands went relatively smoothly—but this was hardly the case. Rather than imposing Christianity on his territory from a position of power, Sumitada became Christian in a position of weakness when his right to being the lord of Ōmura was challenged. He then used the faith as a forge to test bonds of loyalty both within his family and with retainers that would ultimately aid his consolidation of power. As Jurgis Elisonas has pointed out, Sumitada’s accession as Ōmura family head was a “long, rocky, and perilous path.” Indeed, his succession was in doubt the moment he assumed the mantle of family head since he was an adopted heir to the previous head Ōmura Sumiaki (d.1551). Sumiaki had cast out and disinherited his biological son and first heir, Ōmura Matahachiro (b. 1534), in order to ally the Ōmura with a family to the south, the Arima clan (also future Christians). Matahachiro, looking for alternative pathways to power, found an ally in the Gotō family. This family was under vassal ties to Ōmura’s future archenemy, Ryūzōji Takanobu. With his new backing, Matahachiro (known to history as Gotō Takaakira) sought to regain what was rightfully his: the Ōmura 60 inheritance. 59 For example, Gonoi Takashi has edited a book with mini biographies of all the key Christian daimyo and lesser lords. Gonoi Takashi, ed., Kirishitan daimyō: fukyō, seisaku, shinkō no jissō (Kyoto: Miyaobi Shuppansha, 2017). 60 Elisonas in Hall, Cambridge, 323-326. The story is recounted at length in Masaharu Yoshinaga, Kyūshū no Kirishitan daimyō (Fukuoka-shi: Kaichōsha, 2004), 15-72. 177 If Sumitada had any doubts about the loyalty of those under him (which he should have), everything was made clear when he was baptized in 1563. Although much has rightfully been made about Sumitada’s strategic considerations in choosing baptism, which also secured him trade and Portuguese military aid, not much has been said about what this meant for ties of loyalty. With his baptism, Sumitada effectively drew a line in the sand: anyone who opposed it was de facto unreliable while those who supported it could be counted as loyal and dependable. This was a serious gamble, and Sumitada came close to losing everything, including his life. His conversion prompted a general rebellion in Ōmura and revealed the already fractured bonds of loyalty lurking beneath the surface of his kokka. Incensed by his conversion, some of his “liegemen” (kashindan) staged a coup. He only survived the ordeal by escaping into the rural parts of Ōmura. His new allies, the Portuguese, came to his aid with cannon from the naos. Eventually, Sumitada was able to counterattack and defeat Gotō Takaakira. As a result Sumitada regained control of the Ōmura house. His enemies outside of Ōmura, however, were more powerful, and he remained beleaguered by Ryūzōji Takanobu. Narrowly escaping gekokujō, Sumitada decided that all of his key vassals should be made Christian. According to Padre Giovanni Francesco, Sumitada had five of his main retainers accept baptism along with all of their subordinates. One, who took the 61 name João, had 1300 people underneath his command in two separate forts. Mass baptisms ensued throughout the domain, and, by 1575, Mission Superior Francisco Cabral claimed that there were some 20,000 new Christians. According to Fróis, writing a decade later, Sumitada’s order had been quite effective: And so it came to pass through the boundless goodness of God, out of whose mercy all good flows, that after the destruction of the pagodas and temples all of [Ōmura’s subjects], numbering sixty thousand souls, became Christians, and in this present year of 1585…there were in all his lands 87 churches, where Mass 62 was read and Our Lord God glorified. In addition to making his vassals and subjects receive baptism, Sumitada also embarked on a campaign of temple conversion and outright temple destruction. As noted earlier, 61 Cartas, 353-353v. João Francisco, from Japan, Sept. 14 1575. Tronu, “Sacred Space,” 78. 62 Fróis II, 431. Translation quoted from Elison, Deus Destroyed, 92. I have changed Elison’s use of “vassals” to “subjects.” 178 many temples were made into churches. The monks who ran the temples were Sumitada’s subjects as well, so they had to accept baptism. The ones who did not were said to have fled to Satsuma where, as we have already noted, the monastic establishment was virulently anti-Christian. Cabral mentions that with the closure of some “fifty or sixty monasteries,” all the monks were made Christian by Sumitada’s fiat. By the end of 1574, Sumitada “ordered the dismantling of all Buddhist temples in his territory and the local Christians organized raids escorted by Sumitada’s retainers.” These daimyo- sanctioned squads went about destroying Buddhist objects, including books, statues, and 63 other priceless artifacts. Opposing these measures, no matter how heavy-handed, would have constituted opposition to Sumitada’s authority. And, in any event, such actions were hardly unprecedented: Sengoku daimyo frequently destroyed and looted temples with complete abandon. Hideyoshi’s famous accusation that the Christian destruction of temples and 64 shrines was “a thing unheard of in previous ages” was not exactly accurate. Hideyoshi’s own overlord, Oda Nobunaga, notoriously burned down the famed Enryakuji on top of Mt. Hiei, ordering thousands to be slaughtered on the mountain, including monks, women, and children. Indeed, Hideyoshi himself achieved the complete destruction of the powerful temple Negoroji (it manufactured firearms) in 1585, just two years before his edict condemning such behavior by “the Christians.” And Tokugawa Ieyasu, in his rise to power in Mikawa province, completely destroyed several temples and took their land for 65 himself when they refused to recognize his claim to absolute authority. In summary, then, Sumitada’s actions were par for the course as far as Sengoku daimyo went. Sumitada was not alone in acting as a heavy-handed agent of Christianization. Other “Christian daimyo” and lords directed the conversion of vassals, mass baptisms, and temple conversions and destructions. The powerful daimyo of Bungo, Ōtomo Yoshishige (also known as Ōtomo Sōrin), is perhaps the second-most famous of the Christian daimyo. He converted, had many of his retainers made Christian, and even tried 63 Tronu, “Sacred Space,” 58-62. 64 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 115-116, for Hideyoshi’s famous edict of 1587. 65 Carol Richmond Tsang, War and Faith: Ikkō Ikki in Late Muromachi Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007), 206-207. 179 to turn parts of Hyūga into a Christian territory when he invaded it. Arima Harunbou likewise ordered his domains to be Christian. Valignano, if we recall, had deep misgivings about the mass baptisms that these lords ordered. But when he himself baptized Harunobu in 1580, he acquiesced to the lord’s wishes to baptize his subjects: And together with him all those in his lands became Christians, and all the temples of their idols were destroyed, and the few that were not yet baptized are now being baptized, and when the wheel turns, as we hope it will, all the rest of the people of Takaku will become Christians. Some 20,000 people received baptism as a result of Harunbou’s decree. When the lord took back the greater part of Takaku from an enemy, the number swelled to an astonishing 70,000. In Bungo, mass baptisms followed Ōtomo Yoshishige’s conversion in 1578. Prior to this event, there were only about 2,500 Christians in all of Bungo. This small number was mainly the work of regular missionary work at the hospital in Funai and not the result of any lords converting and making their subjects Christian. By 1590, only twelve years after Yoshishige’s baptism as Dom Francisco (he specifically named himself after Xavier), Valignano estimated that the number of baptized swelled to 50,000. Some 20,000 of these, however, died in wars (specifically with the Shimazu) and from 66 famine or local persecution. The Christian daimyo and the lesser lords underneath them also engaged in temple conversion and destruction. When he moved to Usuki, Yoshishige established a new church at a temple called Tentokuji. To accomplish this, he converted the temple into a church, dispensed with the monks who were caring for it, and burned Buddhist objects that it contained. It was at this converted temple that Yoshishige was initially 67 buried. But the most well-known of these campaigns was when Yoshishige attacked the Shimazu clan. Not more than four months after his baptism, Yoshishige invaded the province of Hyūga. All along the campaign trail, Yoshishige and his warriors converted temples into churches or razed them completely. One general, identified by the Jesuits as Giao, seems to have truly relished these acts of destruction. Fróis records him destroying a renowned temple in Hyūga by setting 66 Moran, the Japanese and the Jesuits, 64-66. See also Jennes, History, 34-35. 67 Christopher Mayo, “Mobilizing Deities: Deus, Gods, Buddhas, and the Warrior Band in Sixteenth- Century Japan” (Ph.d. Diss., Princeton University, 2013), 104. 180 fire to it, even though there were many soldiers still inside who had decided to risk their lives to save some of the sacred images from the flames. The rescued images were promptly consigned to the fires, however—some by one of Giao’s own vassals, anxious to impress his lord. In at least one instance, Giao seems to have gone out of his way to desecrate a temple-shrine before burning it: Giao, trusting in God and recking nothing of the indignation which in such a crowd of heathens might be roused against him, first rode on horseback right into the temple to the altar. There he ordered his meal to be brought in to him, and, moreover, to be brought in those very vessels of the Cami [sic] since they were spotlessly clean. After his repast he had them washed, and then gave orders to his followers to take them away with them for use during the war…He then told the two general his companions that he could not go any further till he had burned the 68 temple down. Part of Yoshishige’s plan in invading Hyūga was to establish a “model Christian community” or “utopia.” Going through the territory, Yoshishige and Yoshimune (his eldest son and heir, only baptized ten years later) “went about ordering that the temples of the camis [Kami] and fotoques [Buddhas] located there should be burned and laid to waste; and so it was being done.” Apparently, Yoshishige wanted this newly conquered 69 territory to be ruled by “new laws and institutions, different from those in Japan.” Like other agents of Christianization before him, Yoshishige clearly wanted to use Christianity as a means of subjugation in Hyūga against the Shimazu. His plans were deflated when the Shimazu counterattacked and all but destroyed his forces at the battle of Mimikawa (1578), a result brought about by the notoriously incompetent Tawara Chikakata. As with Sumitada, Christianity ended up being a test of loyalty for Yoshishige and his heir Yoshimune. After the disaster at Mimikawa, anti-Christian forces (including those of Chikakata) broke out in revolt in Bungo. Led by Chikatata and his mother, Yoshishige’s former non-Christian wife Ōtomo Nata (the Jesuits derisively named her “Jezebel”), a coup against Yoshimune broke out in 1579. Some of Yoshimune’s retainers apostatized and went over to the anti-Christian side. Yoshishige had to come out of 68 Fróis to his brethren from Usuki Sept. 30, 1578, quoted in Georg Schurhammer, Shin-tō: The Way of the Gods in Japan (Bonn and Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1923), 34. 69 Quoted in Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 338-339. Fróis III, 18-19. 181 retirement to quash the rebels, and Bungo became increasingly Christian throughout the 70 1580s as a result. Although they were not missionaries, the so-called “Christian daimyo” made more “Christians” than the missionaries could ever hope to convert. To be sure, their actions did not engender a deep-seated internal conversion. Mass baptisms, by this standard, should perhaps not be called conversions at all. But in terms of the Christianization process, mass baptisms and “forced” conversions were extremely important. These were activities that only secular rulers could undertake and for their own purposes. The Jesuits were certainly joyful about this, but they had no claim on the vast increases in Christians from the 1560s to the 1580s on Kyushu. The famous “top- down” approach belonged exclusively to the daimyo and the lower-ranking lords, such as the Koteda, who made the choice for Christianization. Over time, they produced prodigious change for the state of Christianity in their domains. After all, Nagasaki and its environs became almost entirely Christian with the help of Sumitada’s actions. By converting and pressuring others to accept baptism, some Kyushuan daimyo and lesser lords acted as many other agents of Christianization had before them. Each might not have been an Emperor, such as Charlemagne was, but they strived for absolute authority within their own states (the kokka). They exploited the bonds of loyalty incipient in the political structure and used their familial authority to make people Christians. They also subjugated sacred places, converting Buddhist temples into churches or even destroying them—something even the Buddhist daimyo did. The choices they made drew lines in the sand, so to speak, that their vassals and subjects understood as tests of loyalty. If the daimyo had decided for the good of the kokka that Christianity should be accepted, his subordinates would either have to follow his decisions or begin to work against it. In the end, the missionaries might have administered the sacrament of baptism, but it was the daimyo who were responsible for the baptism of tens of thousands. 70 See Ward, Women, 169-178 for the details. 182 Persecution With the conversion of some Kyushuan daimyo, the nascent Christian community in areas such as Ōmura, Arima, and Bungo, went from being a weak religious minority to a ever-increasing group of people who now enjoyed the political back and favor of their lord. This naturally entailed a change in relationship between Christians and non- Christians. Prior to this infusion of political power, the Christian community (foreign missionaries included) was subject to all the normal “persecution” that minority religious communities face: rumor, harassment, and general social ostracization on the “sporadic 71 and local” level. Since missionaries had to have the permission of the daimyo or local lord, anything more than this, such as outright violence, was rare because it would be in violation of their authority. Yoshitaka’s placards on the streets of Yamaguchi must have instilled fear in any would-be persecutors. On the other hand, once Christians in a given area gained some political power, they, like many nascent Christians communities before them, engaged in persecution of the non-Christian population. Members of the Christian community could be bold in pushing back against non-Christian hostile elements, and those actions often ratcheted up tension between the two segments of the population. To be clear, this did not mean that the two sides were constantly at odds with one another. Rather, outbreaks of persecution might be viewed as outbreaks of latent tension within the overall community that, for the most part, were managed civilly or even ignored altogether. Nevertheless, persecution is indicative of the Christianization process at work because it shows that the religion altered social interactions based upon whether one was a Christian or not. For the Christians, persecution also served to reinforce “membership” in the Christian community. Although intense state-sponsored persecutions, such as those of Diocletian and the Tokugawa, capture the imagination and are important, this section will explore the importance of quotidian persecution. This kind of persecution included social slights and other forms of social discrimination and harassment. For example, in the first few 71 As Candida Moss notes, use of the phrase “sporadic and local” has become “commonplace” in scholarly literature on the early persecutions in the Roman Empire. Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 49-50 with the explanation on p. 178, note 1. 183 centuries of Roman Christianity, the community faced the following: rumors and accusations of cannibalism, charges of atheism and incest, anonymous pamphlets denouncing the performance of “sacred rites more foul than any sacrilege,” and drunken 72 orgies. Occasionally, the “sporadic and local” persecutions did bleed over into violence. Most often these were incidents of mob violence directed at a minority community for one purpose or another. The cause and tension were entirely local in character. There was no systematic persecution in the Roman Empire until the emperors Decius and Diocletian in the third century. In Germanic culture, there were occasions of violence, but many times these were byproducts of other tensions. In Anglo-Saxon England, sometimes a Christian king, as the authority who had decided in favor of the religion, was 73 assassinated. Occasionally, missionaries would be killed. Sometimes non-Christian kings would see Christian segments of the population of a rival kingdom as dangerous. For example, when King Aethelfrid of Northumbria defeated his British foes, he executed 300 monks who had come to pray for the success of the British side. He thought them to 74 be dangerous magicians who would only cause harm to his consolidation of power. Persecution and sometimes violence, on both sides, was part and parcel of Christianization. Given the potential for violent persecution on Kyushu, it is remarkable that none of the foreign missionaries were killed and that only a few members of the Christian community were killed during the first few decades. Anjirō almost certainly suffered a localized persecution when the rest of the missionaries left Kagoshima, but in the end he died overseas in some kind of fracas between the bafan “traders” and other pirates. Up until the first state-sponsored executions in Japan by Hideyoshi in 1597 (the 26 Martyrs 72 A good overview can be found in Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). The quote is from the Octavius (IX) of Minucius Felix, Roberts and Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume IV, 178. 73 Sanmark gives the examples of King Eorpwald and King Sigeberht. On one occasion, the missionary Willehad had angered the local population by denouncing the traditional gods. The crowd wished to put him to death but decided to cast lots to determine his fate. Fortunately for Willehad, the lots were in his favor, a sign to the pagans that he should not be killed. Sanmark, “Power,” 58; 61. 74 Carole M. Cusack, The Rise of Christianity in Northern Europe, 300-1000 (London: Cassell, 1998), 106. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II: 2-3 in McClure and Collins, The Ecclesiastical History, 74. 184 of Nagasaki), only some 25 Christians were killed and could be considered “martyrs.” Many of these occurred in and around Hirado when Matsura Takanobu took his anti- Christian stance. In 1565, he had four Christians executed, among them a former monk 75 who was the kambō of the local church. These low numbers stand in stark contrast to Oda Nobunaga’s extermination campaigns against the Ikkō-Ikki (Jōdo Shinshū ) sectarians. In conquering Nagashima, Nobunaga gave his captains the following orders to deal with adherents of the Jōdo Shinshū sect: “negiri, nadegiri, and tategiri” (or “eradicate, wipe out, and mow down”). He even boasted to have wiped out “several tens 76 of thousands” of the sectarians. To be sure, the Ikkō-Ikki were a major military threat. But Nobunaga’s attack on them was as much about subjugating the Ikkō sect as it was about defeating a military rival. In comparison to Nobunaga’s subjugation of the Ikkō- Ikki, the persecution of the Christian community on Kyushu prior to the Tokugawa’s eradication campaign was very mild. Aside from Anjirō, about whose persecution we know next to nothing, the first documented “persecutions” were those experienced by the foreign missionaries themselves. This included minor harassment, specifically name calling (such as being “magicians”), being spat upon, and getting pelted with stones. This was not unlike other controversial Buddhist figures in Japanese history who were forced into exile for their views. The incredibly pugnacious Nichiren (1222-1282) also faced this kind of mild persecution. He claimed that he had been “reviled, ousted, falsely accused, and struck across the face, but these were all comparatively minor incidents.” On one occasion, a government official (shōbō) struck him “across the face” with a scroll of the Lotus 77 Sutra. The abuse that the foreign Jesuits experienced was completely normal for religious figures who wanted to stir things up—something that even they recognized. 75 Juan G. Ruiz de Medina; El Martirologio del Japón, 1558-1873 (Roma: Institutum Historicum, 1999), 275-287. MHJ III, 528 note 28. 76 Elison, “The Cross and the Sword” Patterns in Momoyama History,” in George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, eds., Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1981), 71. 77 Nichiren Letters #131 “Persecution by sword and staff,” in Sokka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism Library, The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin: Volume I, trans. The Gosho Translation Committee (Sokka Gakkai International), 962-966. Available at: https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/131 185 More significant to the Christianization process was the persecution experienced by the Christian community as a whole, which included both the laity and the foreigners. The inclusion of the latter is important because, as the community grew, an attack on the padres and missionary staff was essentially an attack on the community itself. Often, the entire community would mobilize in the face of such persecution with the goal of protecting the missionary or the church building when it was targeted or vandalized. Scandalous rumors regarding the padres or about what went on during Christian gatherings also affected the entire community. One of the earliest forms of persecution in Japan came on the heels of disaster. When Ōuchi Yoshitaka had been overthrown and Yamaguchi had been put to the torch, people were quick to blame the presence of the foreign padres because they were “demons” and “evil.” Rumors evidently traveled fast: The bonzes and the laity of this land say many things about us because of the jealousy that they have toward us, for they are angered to be reprimanded of their sins in which they live. Some say that the devil came and talked by means of an idol, saying that we were his disciples. They were also saying that a flame of fire fell from heaven on the house of the king [Ōuchi Yoshitaka], and that many saw it, and that it came from the devil for our cause. Others say that we eat men, 78 dishonoring us much with it. According to Melchiro Nunes Barreto, monks openly blamed the missionaries for the burning of the city: “the padres from Chinchico [Tenjiku] and the law that they preached and the Christians that they made were the cause of [the] gods being so angered and of 79 the land’s destruction.” These sentiments were not just missionary hyperbole. A diary entry by a member of the famed Yoshida family mentions how the “sorcery” or “mahō” (the author was referring negatively to Christianity by describing it as “mahō”) of the 80 missionaries brought about the destruction of Yoshitaka. Later, when Christian daimyo suffered reversals on the battlefield, as with Yoshishige at Mimikawa in 1578, the decision to embrace Christianity was naturally seen to be the cause of military defeats. 78 MHJ II, 258. Fernández to Xavier, from Yamaguchi, Oct. 20 1551. 79 MHJ III, 188. Nunes Barreto to the Jesuits in Portugal, Jan. 8 1558. 80 Higashibaba, Christianity, 44. Akio Okada, Kirishitan Bateren (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1955), 160. 186 The best examples of how non-Christians persecuted the Christian community by spreading scandal and rumor are the anti-Christian writings of the Tokugawa persecution. Though they date from the seventeenth century and after Christianity was officially proscribed, the accusations of the perversity of the Christian sect were nothing new. Anti- Christian propagandists did not need to make up accusations, as many had already been circulating for decades. For the most part, tracts like Kirishitan monogatari and Raichō jikki portray Christianity as a heretical Buddhist sect and its followers as utterly perverse individuals. Among the many accusations made were: cannibalism; the practice of evil magic (mahō); strange and bloody practices exemplified by the ritual of disciplina; theft 81 of lordly wealth by the foreign missionaries; and pollution, including leprosy. Besides attacking the reputation of the Christian community in general, non- Christians pushed back against it by attacking Christian objects and spaces. One of the most common methods of persecution was the destruction of public crosses that had been erected by the Christian community. Crosses on the side of the road or at important locations, such as at cemeteries, were favored targets. By cutting down a cross, the perpetrator was essentially trying to cut down the Christian community as an alien presence. Sometimes the cutting down of crosses was even directed by Buddhist monks. After Takanobu ejected Vilela from Hirado, the monks of the island went out and “cut down crosses and made many offenses [to the community],” all to the consternation of 82 the Christians. In 1563, monks were once again reported to have destroyed crosses on Hirado. Fróis identifies the culprit behind the cross destructions as a certain monk by the name of “Yasumandaqui” who was “like an archbishop.” Several Christian houses were 83 also reportedly burned down. The public nature of crosses and the ease with which they could be destroyed in secret made them popular targets for vandalism. Mission authorities evidently recognized that public crosses could produce tension in communities, particularly if they had been set up in the wake of a lord’s conversion. Valignano noted in his Adiciones that crosses erected on public roads were 81 For a good overview, see Leuchtenberger, Conquering Demons, 9-24. 82 MHJ III, 147. Vilela to the Jesuits in Goa, from Funai, Sept. 1 1559. 83 Fróis I, 359. 187 causing problems. He does not state what kind of problems, just that they were “inconvenient.” Therefore, he ruled that only a padre should set up a cross on a public road and, on top of this, that they would need direct permission from the Rector (his superior). If that was not possible, the padre was to use his own judgment in the matter to 84 determine if it was “convenient.” If we read between the lines, Valignano was attempting to stop lay Christians from placing crosses wherever they wish and angering their non-Christian neighbors. Crosses were evidently very popular with the laity. Though not from Kyushu, Christians 85 in Takayama Ukon’s territory on Honshu erected some fifty crosses after he converted. In some cases, public crosses might have even been erected over other roadside sacred sites, such as Jizō statues. At worst, the crosses incensed non-Christians as constant public reminders of the new community. Some of these crosses could have genuinely inconvenienced people using the road. Christians frequently prayed at crosses, sometimes on their knees, and even gathered there. No doubt some saw this as a nuisance. The Portuguese merchant Garcia Garces noted that when Christianity was prohibited and churches and crosses torn down in Nagasaki, the Christians would still go to the ruins of 86 crosses to pray and gather. Destruction of roadside crosses would also have been a cause for hostility between Christians and non-Christians in mixed communities, which is an other potential reason why Valignano wanted to restrict their placement to “padres only.” If a Christian had privately erected a cross and found it to be cut down, he might privately try to redress the situation. If a padre erected the cross, the padre might also be able to mediate the situation if the cross ended up being destroyed. Conflicts could easily result from the cutting down of one of these crosses. In one case in Koteda Antonio’s lands, a group of non-Christians cut down a cross that had been erected in the Christian cemetery, causing the laity “many tears.” Guillermo Pereira describes the reaction: 84 Alvarez-Taladriz, Sumario, 166. Also, Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 81. There are a great many references in Fróis’s Historia of public crosses being destroyed. 85 Schütte, Valignano II, 113, citing Fróis. 86 Amaro, “Kōshi Nagasaki,” 176-177. 188 Dom Antonio, because he was a Christian, wanted to go out for his honor, and some of the Christians wanted to take revenge. But the padre was always advising them to have patience, that God would punish them [the culprits]. Still, the land was so agitated, and the people so prepared with arms, that if Dom Antonio was not going to obey the lord of the land [Takanobu], we were all running a risk. Because even the bonzes carried arms… Eventually Vilela was able to calm Dom Antonio, and wider conflict was avoided. Although the Jesuits frequently referred to the Buddhist monks as their greatest enemy, Ōtomo Yoshishige’s first wife, Ōtomo Nata or “Jezebel,” offered the Christian community the greatest resistance in Bungo throughout the 1570s and 1580s. Jezebel was a Shinto high priestess of the war god Hachiman. Her family, the Nata, maintained a shrine to the deity in Bungo and had allied themselves with the Ōtomo through a number of marriages. As a Shinto priestess, she would have performed clerical, liturgical, and Ō 87oracular offices for the tomo. Jezebel, as a religious leader, fiercely resisted the presence of missionaries and the emergence of a Christian community in her lands. Throughout the 1570s, she attempted to counter the spread of the Christian religion by trying to obstruct conversions among Bungo‘s ruling elite. Both Jezebel and her brother, Tawara Chikakata, an advisor to Yoshishige, strongly opposed the conversion of the daimyo’s second son, Chikaie, as well as Chikakata‘s adopted son, Chikatsura. Whenever she found rosaries hanging around the neck of someone or saw a Christian image, she would see to their destruction by fire. But when several of Yoshishige’s friends became Christian, and when an increasing number of vassals began converting, Jezebel became enraged and resisted the religion all the more vigorously. Yoshishige, who had strong Christian sympathies at that point, found her behavior too divisive and decided to divorce her in 1578. He took a new wife that same year, had her baptized with the name Julia, and decided to receive baptism himself shortly thereafter. While Jezebel vigorously resisted the introduction of Christianity during the 1570s, her efforts to oppose it took on a more violent tone following the defeat of Bungo at the hands of Satsuma in the battle of Mimikawa in December of 1578. Together with 87 For Jezebel, I follow Ward, Women, 145-192. Ward‘s study contains the most exhaustive account of Jezebel in English to date. Much of the above is originally in Glowark, “The Christianization of Japan,” 96- 98. 189 her brother, Chikakata, Jezebel blamed the defeat on Yoshishige‘s abandonment of traditional religion. After recruiting several high-ranking vassals, Jezebel and her brother formed a conspiracy to oust the church from the domain. Rumors of a coup against Yoshishige began circulating, as well as plans for the execution of the padres and the expulsion of Christians. The missionaries began to fear that she would have them poisoned or that she would set fire to the residence in Funai. These fears were not unfounded. One night, in 1579, Jezebel and her resistance movement stirred up an anti- Christian mob to attack the church in Usuki. The crowed, armed with axes and ropes, threatened to destroy the building, but ultimately refrained from doing so. Nonetheless their efforts at intimidation were successful: the missionaries feared for their lives for several months after the incident. Chikakata and others eventually broke into open rebellion later that year, and Yoshishige, who had retired earlier to Tsukimi, put down the coup rather quickly. For her part, Jezebel continued to oppose the church in Bungo throughout the 1580s. Eventually, when she was unable to mount effective resistance against Christianity any longer, her antagonism toward the religion subsided. She died in either 1586 or 1587. Persecution and tension in the community was not always unremittingly dark. We know of at least one case of religious rivalry in which the participants took a somewhat light-hearted tone. On one occasion, a group of Buddhist revelers during a local matsuri (festival) came across the harbor to perform their dances in front of the Christians at their church. Taking this as a taunt, the Christians returned the gesture by sailing over to the Buddhist side and performing some mystery plays and “dancing and singing.” Whatever the locals might have thought about this, Cosme de Torres did not take it as harmless fun. He knew well that the situation could get out of hand very quickly (especially if alcohol was involved, as was and still is normal at festivals). To chastise the Christians for creating a potentially dangerous situation, Torres locked up the church and disbarred the Christians until the ringleader, a warrior, gave himself up as the instigator. As penance for his stunt, he had to perform public disciplina. Torres no doubt intended this to serve 190 as a message that the Christians should refrain from antagonizing their non-Christian 88 neighbors. Much more could be said about the various forms of persecution experienced by the Christian community and the persecution that Christians themselves perpetrated. For example, we have said nothing of tension and persecution that might have occurred 89 within families. Social and political pressures, above all else, must have weighed heavily on ordinary Christians. If one’s Christian overlord died or was overthrown, there was a very real chance that the new lord would order his subjects to give up the faith. A case in point involves the lord Arima Yoshisada (Dom Andre), who had turned his lands into a Christian territory. Upon his death and the succession of his heir (Arima Harunobu), who had not been baptized, the new lord and his retainers “raised a violent persecution against the new converts.” They destroyed crosses, burned churches, and forced the Christians to apostatize. Only the port of Kuchinotsu resisted. Eventually, Harunobu relented in his persecution, ultimately converting to Christianity, taking the name Dom Protasio, and pulling down some temples while converting others into 90 churches. The Christian community as a whole could and often did weather local persecutions. The daimyo or local lord certainly held the fate of Christianity in his hands as far as his territory went, but a stasis on Kyushu had been reached by the 1590s after Hideyoshi’s invasion of the island. Many areas had become heavily Christian, particularly areas of Hizen (Nagasaki and Ōmura-han), Bungo (despite the failures of Ōtomo Yoshimune and the invasion by the Shimazu) and much of Arima. By this time, Christianity was not totally dependent upon the lord of the land; the laity themselves 88 Cartas, 171v. Almeida to Fróis in Miyako, from Fukuda, Oct. 25 1565. Harich-Schneider, Japanese Music, 452-453. See also Danford, Gill, and Reff, The First European Description, 101. The editors of this volume say that Torres was just being a “wet blanket” and that he was “dismayed and laid into his neophytes for the disgraceful behavior.” Perhaps reading too much from accounts of the New World where dances were discouraged among the “neophyte” population, the editors seem to have missed the point that the retaliation of the Christians could have resulted in a very serious incident with violence between Christians and non-Christians. They note that Almeida said “nothing about whether Cosme de Torres may have overreacted.” Torres was, in fact, being very prudent. 89 For example, one girl suffering from spirit possession wanted to receive baptism. Her uncle was opposed and threatened violence if she received it. Ward, Women, 160. Fróis V, 132-133. 90 Schutte, Valignano I, 319-322, quoting the Annual letter from Mexia, Oct. 20 1580. 191 propagated the faith and increased its numbers. With the establishment of his national government, whose power reached Kyushu, Hideyoshi put an abrupt stop to the daimyo acting as agents of Christianization. The religion still spread and the numbers of converts still increased, but the daimyo themselves, as ordered by Hideyoshi, could no long force conversions. Despite Hideyoshi’s measures, the Christian community on Kyushu thrived until the intense state-sponsored persecution campaign of the Tokugawa shogunate. Once the national government had turned fully against Christianity, apostasy, practicing one’s faith in secret, and martyrdom were the only outcomes. Martyrdom, Native Saints, and the Church Triumphant The Christianization process culminated in the emergence of native connections to the Church Triumphant (i.e. the Church in Heaven, discussed at length in Part Four). This occurred in a wide variety of ways, such as through the emergence holy men and women, as well as ascetics (e.g. St. Simeon Stylites); miraculous apparitions and images (e.g. the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe); and the relics of martyrs. To take the history of relics as one example, those of martyrs and the early Apostles established popular connections to the Church in heaven during the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. In colonial Mexico, translated relics were promoted but did not attain popularity with the native Christians. Rather, holy men and women (at first) and then miraculous images 91 were the primary connections to the Church in heaven for the Christian community. There were not many martyrs in the New World, and Spanish attempts at creating some, namely the so-called “Boy Martyrs,” met with little enthusiasm amidst the native 92 population. In medieval Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England, the tombs of saints 91 William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 379; 383-384. “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, celebrated images of Christ and Mary often were referred to as holy ‘relics’—the most heavily promoted and, for many, the most potent of all earthly vessels of divine presence and favor in New Spain.” 92 Robert Haskett, “Dying for Conversion: Faith, Obedience, and the Tlaxcalan Boy Martyrs in New Spain,” in Colonial Latin American Review 17, No. 2 (Routledge, 2008): 185-212. But the Catholic Church plays the long-game, and the boys were canonized by Pope Francis in 2017. They are now the patron saints 192 represented spatial connections to heaven while the contact relics produced at these special locations became tangible manifestations of the divine. Although the creation of native saints and other connections to the divine differed from culture to culture, making the Church Triumphant “native” was one of the final stages of the Christianization as a world-historical process. On Kyushu, the primary means of making the Church Triumphant native was through the collection of relics of Japanese martyrs by both the laity and the clergy. As a result of high numbers of Japanese martyrs and the exportation of their relics, Japanese saints became incorporated into the wider Church Triumphant and were revered by Catholics the world over. Like the relics of the Roman martyrs, relics of the Japanese martyrs eventually made their way to Macau, Manila, Goa, Iberia, Rome, and even North 93 America. Unlike the state-sponsored persecution of Christianity in the Roman Empire, the Tokugawa persecution was so unrelenting and effective that it all but eradicated Japanese Christianity. That the so-called Kakure Christians survived at all is remarkable given the thoroughness of the persecution and the two-hundred-year ban on the religion. Executions were the norm at first, typically by crucifixion (Japanese style), burning at the stake, being boiled alive in sulfurous hot springs, beheading, and being pressed to death in straw mats by being stacked on top of one another. But once these proved ineffective at getting people to relinquish the faith, the Tokugawa, led by the arch-inquisitor Inoue Chikugo, devised specialized tortures to induce apostasy rather than death. One of these was the wooden horse, a large wooden wedge upon which the Christian would be seated. Weights would be attached to the legs to create a splitting pressure in the groin area. By far the most effective torture at inducing apostasy was the “hanging in the pit” (anatsurushi). The victim would be bound tightly together (with just one hand free) and then lowered upside down into a pit of excrement. A cut in the forehead released blood pressure slowly to prevent death. The torture would last until the person signaled of Mexican childhood. https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2017/11/pope-francis-canonizes-the-martyred- children-of-tlaxcala/ 93 See the website for the Shrine of All Saints at St. Martha of Bethany Church in Morton Grove, Illinois. It claims to have a relic cache of over 2,000 saints: http://shrineofallsaints.org/relics-currently-included-in- our-collection 193 apostasy with an easy flick of the wrist of their free hand. Most people did not last very long, but some, such as one young woman, died of the torture after three days in the pit. The true number of Japanese martyrs cannot ever be known with pinpoint accuracy. A safe and conservative estimate seems to be around 4,000 though it was likely 94 more. There were at least 3,000 for certain. Recent estimates of 40,000 are certainly much too high and would have to include those Christians slaughtered by Tokugawa 95 forces during the Shimabara Rebellion (1637-1638). The Tokugawa certainly viewed the Shimabara Rebellion as a Christian revolt once it started, and the rebellion only served to harden their position on the eradication of the pernicious religion. But this rebellion, which took over 27,000 lives (mostly Christian), was much more akin to a peasant rebellion against local tyranny than a case of mass martyrdom. Nonetheless, considering that the Tokugawa designed tortures specifically to induce apostasy, the number of martyrs and (hence) native saints is remarkable— especially when compared with estimates for the Roman Empire. Scholars have tended to shy away from hazarding guesses about the number of martyrs in the early Church. While no numbers can be given with true confidence, it has been estimated that there were up to 10,000 over the course of 300 years, out of a empire-wide population of 50 million. Martyrdom seems to have been much more prevalent in the Persian Empire, at the same time, where severe persecution produced martyrs possibly numbering into “the tens of 96 thousands and higher.” Whatever the number of martyrs in Japan, our point here is that state persecution, first under Hideyoshi and then under the Tokugawa regime, produced native saints. These included both saints officially canonized by the Catholic Church and those saints who achieved that status by virtue of martyrdom. These included some missionaries (Jesuits 94 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 397 note 15. Laures arrives at the total of 4,045. 95 Ward, Women, 6. She uses Obara’s statistics. See also Haruko Nawata Ward, “Translating Christian Martyrdom in Buddhist Japan in the Early Modern Jesuit Mission,” in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Global Reformations: Transforming Early Modern Religions, Societies, and Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2019), 37. “The estimated 40,000 martyrdoms during the Christian Century in Japan far exceeded the number of martyrdoms in any of the Reformation confessions or state churches in Europe or in the Catholic world generally.” Elsewhere, she has mentioned 20,000. Boxer gives a figure of 2,128 martyrs. Christian Century, 448. 96 Irvin and Sunquist, World Christian Movement, 137; 196. 194 and Mendicants, European and Japanese), but the vast majority were Japanese laity who, when encouraged to apostatize, chose to face death rather than deny their faith. One might be naturally be suspicious of Jesuit or European accounts of the numbers of martyrs in Japan, but anti-Christian Japanese sources and records, such as those of the inquisitor Inoue, note just how pervasive and pernicious the problem was. There are several reasons why martyrdom became an important phenomenon within the Japanese Church. First, there was a similar precedent for it in the Ikkō-Ikki movement of the Jōdo Shinshū sect. Rennyō and a few other Shinshū patriarchs allowed, even if they did not explicitly promote, the belief that they were the guarantors of salvation. This widespread belief among Shinshū adherents found much enthusiasm in the Ikkō-Ikki’s war of annihilation with Oda Nobunaga. One popular slogan was: “Advance and be reborn in paradise, retreat and go straight to hell!” For some members, 97 “fighting became an expression of faith.” This was not quite Christian martyrdom, but the impetus of dying for one’s faith was there, and some historians believe indeed that the ban on Christianity was partly inspired by the Three Unifiers’ experience with the Ikkō- Ikki. The other, more immediate explanation for martyrdom, is that Japanese Christians fully embraced and reenacted scenarios of ancient Christian martyrdom as depicted in devotional and catechetical literature (in Japanese). Among these texts were Santosu no gosagyō (Acts of Saints), Lives of the Saints (Flors Sanctorum) and others that emphasized suffering in imitation of Christ, namely Kontemutsusu Munji (The Imitation of Christ) and Go Passion (which recounted the Passion narrative). As Haruko Nawata Ward has argued, Japanese-language hagiographic texts and accounts of martyrdom (some presented in the contemporary setting) “gave converts the power to resist the unjust oppressors, one that was not lost on women and children, who Japanese regarded 98 as weak and marginalized.” Indeed, many martyrs were women, and even the Tokugawa authorities noted that they were the most faithful of all Christians when put to 97 Richmond Tsang, War and Faith, 237-243. 98 Haruko Nawata Ward, “Kirishitan Veneration of Saints,” in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Robert Aleksander Maryks, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, eds., Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 68. 195 99 the test. In addition, missionaries compiled a text known as Exhortation to Martyrdom (Maruchiro no susume) that stressed how grave a sin it was to deny Christ and that eternal reward awaited a martyr’s death. Even the inquisitor Inoue pointed out that Christians had been taught that they would not enter heaven if they failed to persevere in 100 martyrdom. One of the first ways in which Japanese Christians revered their native saints was by gathering at sites of martyrdom. The first of these was the site of the 26 Martyrs in Nagasaki. These martyrs had been condemned by Hideyoshi in February of 1597. The pageantry of this martyrdom had actually started with the hegemon himself, as he ordered the condemned people to have their heads mutilated (their ears were cut) and then paraded around the capital as demonstration of his authority over Christianity. The condemned then had to trek all the way to Nagasaki, where they were set up on crosses on Nishizaka Hill (Mt. Tateyama) for maximum visibility. They were each transfixed with two spears while on the cross, as was customary in the Japanese form of crucifixion. The message was clear enough: the new national government had complete authority over Christianity just as it had authority over all the Buddhist sects. This message evidently backfired, however, as crowds of Japanese Christians turned out to witness the executions and support the martyrs. The crosses were set up in a semi-circle for display, and crowds soon gathered to venerate them and watch them from 101 rooftops. This scene was repeated all throughout the early decades of persecution. During the burning of Christians at Arima in 1613, local Christians gathered at the site, and fell to their knees to sing prayers. They also held up an icon of Jesus to inspire the martyrs. At another execution (of the Friars Flores and Zuñiga) some 30,000 people were 99 This extended to Korean women. “Korean Kirishitans, once converted, are deeply dedicated, the men and the women. Especially the women, once persuaded, are deeply dedicated.” Quoted in Elison, Deus Destroyed, 206. 100 Boxer, Christian Century, 340-341. See also Ward, “Translating Christian Martyrdom,” 33-51. 101 Hesselink, Nagasaki, 112. As Avila Girón relates: “Although they did not allow the Japanese to approach, there were a large number of people, men as well as women, on top of the mountain at the foot of which this slope is situated. Many others watched from the tops of the roofs of their houses and these were the upper class of the town, whose moans rose up to heaven and echoed back at them. Everywhere, in the streets, the mountains, and the valleys these echoes went back and forth until they became on single lament.” 196 said to have witnessed the burning in 1622. These spectators likewise sang hymns, psalms, and prayers, such as the Te Deum. Perhaps realizing that the blood of the martyrs could be a source of inspiration for the Church, the Tokugawa attempted to curb such demonstrations of support. At the “Great Martyrdom” in Nagasaki in 1622, guards threatened to cut down any spectators who sang or invoked the name of Jesus. To discourage any inspiration from the martyrs themselves, such as preaching from the cross, executioners sought to humiliate them physically by shaving part of their head and to silence them by putting bits in their mouths. They also forced the faces of the condemned upward so they could not look at 102 any of the spectators. That Japanese Christians were willing to die for their faith completely puzzled the Tokugawa and strengthened their resolve to eradicate the religion. For example, in the Kirishitan monogatari, the anonymous author mocks Christians who embraced martyrdom. After noting how the hapless Christians were wrapped up in straw mats to be piled upon one another (so they would be pressed to death by the collective weight), the author has them proclaim: “Well, now, how fortunate! Just us and us alone…we’ll obtain salvation from Deus and be born in Paraiso…” The author then depicts their apostasy after receiving a warning that they would be burned alive: “One day’s endurance for 103 honor’s sake is enough. Please let us fall away now!” For the author, these fictional would-be martyrs (based on real-life examples) made a good show of resistance before making the sensible choice of giving up their faith and not the ghost. Before coming to the realization that public executions were counterproductive, Tokugawa authorities were likewise completely perplexed as to why other Christians praised and supported the soon-to-be martyrs. To them, the martyrs were base criminals who did not want to bend to the very reasonable mandates of the Tokugawa concerning the ordering of religion in Japan. One astonishing letter, apparently sent on the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu himself, asked one of the foreign padres to help control the Christian crowds that showed up in support of one Christian who was being executed for stealing: 102 Boxer, The Christian Century, 342-344. 103 Quoted in Elison, Deus Destroyed, 359. 197 …I send the bringer of this letter with the purpose to inform you that the King [Ieyasu] has heard that innumerable Christians of this city of Miyako have gone to worship the cross on which Jirōbyōe, a Christian from Nagasaki, is crucified at this moment for having broken the law which forbids the exchange and transport to Kyushu of unmarked silver. The King has said that a religion that teaches the adoration of a breaker of the laws of the realm, a thief, and a great crucified sinner, and all those others who have been decapitated or burned, that such a religion is inspired by the devil, and a great crime, which worries me very 104 much…. The man was in fact a criminal, but no matter. The Christians came to support him and venerate him on the cross. If the habit of revering Christian “criminals” at their places of execution astounded the Tokguawa, the veneration of their bones and rotting body parts by the Japanese laity seemed downright perverse. Whenever possible, Japanese Christians carefully collected the bodies and body parts of those who were executed, cherishing and venerating them as having both spiritual and healing powers. While relics of the Buddha or some saint from ancient times were one thing, venerating the remains of the recently dead was another. Yet, this too had some precedence in the Japanese Buddhist context. Sometimes relics of a recently dead monk were preserved, such as when hair clippings and fingernails of the Zen monk Musō 105 Soseki (1275-1351) were cherished at the hermitage of Unoan near Kyoto. The Emperor Gomizuno-o (1596-1680) enshrined his own body parts, such as his teeth, in Zen temples. His daughter, the nun Bunchi (1619-1697), followed suit and created many relic images that contained her father’s fingernails and hair. In addition, she used her own blood to copy sutras. From the Heian period on, people thought that fingernails and hair, 106 like bones, “possessed some essence of the deceased.” Kōya-hijri (wandering holy men 104 Hesselink, Nagasaki, 144. 105 Molly Vallor, Not seeing Snow; Musō Soseki and Medieval Japanese Zen (Leiden, Brill, 2019), 149. 106 Patricia Fister, “Creating Devotional Art with Body Fragments: The Buddhist Nun Bunchi and Her Father, Emperor Gomizuno-o” in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27, No. 3/4 (Fall, 2000): 213-238. Eubanks notes “gifts of the body” could be used for copying out sutras, mainly hair and blood. The donor would provide these corporal elements and thus become part of the sutra. This practice evidently increased in the Kamakura period and was perhaps due to the martial ethos of the age. Charlotte Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture & Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 119-120. 198 from the temple at Koya-san) sometimes went out into villages on fundraising campaigns in which, for a small donation, they would take the bones or other relics of a deceased 107 loved one for burial on the sacred mountain of Kōya. One need not even be dead to have organic material venerated. Urine from the wandering holy man (hijiri) Ippen, collected via bamboo shoots, was thought to have curative properties for a variety of 108 illnesses. This, however, was not common practice. In the Christian context, some Japanese thought Cosme de Torres to be a particularly holy figure, likely in the same vein as Ippen and other hijiri. Torres, despite consistently poor health, wandered in simple clothing and did not wear shoes. He seems to have been a joyous person, always welcoming people and genuinely living a saintly life. He was well-loved as the Mission Superior by the Japanese laity. While still alive, people sought to collect his relics, such as parts of his clothing or pieces of a letter that he had written. On one occasion, after receiving a hair cut, Japanese Christians collected his hair clippings. At his funeral, Fróis reports that large numbers of people came to kiss his hands and feet and to take away parts of his clothing and contas (rosary beads) even 109 though the padres and irmãos tried to prevent it. Japanese martyrs, for their part, achieved holy status in death. Instead of simply being someone’s neighbor or relative, the martyr was now a saint in the Catholic Church (unofficially), and their body parts were direct conduits to the Church Triumphant in heaven. Japanese Christians collected the body parts and bloody effusions of these native saints with great determination and fervor. According to Franciscan Marcelo de Ribadeneira (c. 1560-1610), an eye-witness to the 1569 Nagasaki Martyrdom, the Christians (including some Portuguese): …went to catch the blood of the martyrs on pieces of cotton and taffeta that they had brought with them for just that purpose. And the onrush of the Christians who wanted to take home relics was such that the gentiles were powerless to stop them from taking what they coveted, although they wounded many and one person was seriously hurt in the head. But it was no use: they could not prevent them from taking the blood or the soil on which it had dripped. The Christians also cut 107 Emperors and Empresses also had their bones and hair enshrined near the patriarch Kūkai’s tomb. Philip L. Nicoloff, Sacred Kōyasan: A Pilgrimage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 83; 112. 108 Goble, Confluences, 15; 127 note 29. 109 Fróis II, 330. 199 whatever they could from the crosses and the clothing of the holy martyrs, showing how much they valued these holy relics. When the guards, who had been keeping the ropes and some mantles of the holy friars, saw this they later sold these articles of clothing to devout Christians for a very good price. The bodies stayed up on the crosses throughout the rest of the year, and the corpses were stripped completely of all their clothing—to the point that members of the local 110 misericordia had to cover them up again. Some remained exposed until October of that year, by which time many of the limbs and heads had been removed for relics. Authorities posted guards and even built a fence to stop the harvesting, but they 111 seemingly had no effect. References to the collection of relics that permeate European sources were not just pious exaggerations. The Tokugawa regime was very concerned about this behavior and tried to stop it. After twenty years of rooting out and exterminating Christians, the inquisitor Inoue Chikugo left a manual of advice for future inquisitors known as the Kirishito-ki (Records of the Shūmon-aratame yaku or “office of the inquisitor”). Two articles of advice testify to the collection and veneration of relics: 4. They engrave sword pommels with tiny imagem [images] or put imagem and Bateren [padre] bones, ashes, and suchlike inside their pillows, inside pottery and incense boxes, or into medicinal salve. All of this has happened, so pay attention. 11. Formerly when Bateren were executed their bones and ashes were secretly distributed to various parts. The bones and ashes of outstanding religionists were also gathered up. Quite a long time ago the bones and ashes of those who died martyr 112 in Japan were even shipped to foreign parts. The Kirishitan monogatari actually goes on to mock relic-hunters, referencing the 1597 Martyrdom in Nagasaki: They were crucified in Nagasaki. For a while a guard was posted at the site; but then the bodies rotted on the crosses. Their bones and skulls were stolen by other believers, and afterwards the crosses, too, were whittled down to toothpicks. 110 Ward, Women, 325. 111 Quoted in Hesselink, Nagasaki, 112. Marcello de Ribadeneira, Historia de las Islas del Archipielago, y Reynos dela Gran China, Tataria, CvChinchina, Malaca, Sian, Camboxa y Iapon... (Barcelona: En la Emprenta de Gabriel Graells y Giraldo Dotil, 1601), 535. 112 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 204-206. 200 These relics were used as amulets, and what is more (so report has it), were later 113 bartered at high prices. Eventually, the Tokugawa regime determined to put an end to this and started burning corpses of Christians and casting either the body or ashes into the sea. Occasionally, the severed heads of Christians would be put on stakes for display and deterrent, such as those of some 80 Christians who were executed in Higo Province in the mid-seventeenth 114 century. These were likely disposed of carefully after they serving their purpose. As predicted by the Exhortation to Martyrdom, the relics of Japanese martyrs would be enshrined and adored by princes. Not a few relics were secretly ferried out of Japan. Prior to the 1614 expulsion of the Jesuits, the foreigners exhumed many of the dead Jesuits and collected the relics of Japanese martyrs to take with them out of the 115 country. Japanese martyrs became members of the Church Triumphant not only by their martyrdom but also by the dispersion of their relics throughout the Catholic world. These relics were physical testaments to native Japanese sainthood. Japanese relics were to inspire Catholics the world over just as other relics of martyrs had done. One Japanese Jesuit in training, Pedro Kasui Kibe (15817-1639), was instrumental in gathering relics to ship out of the country. He undertook “search and acquire” missions to get relics of 116 martyrs from Akizuki as proof of the martyrdoms. One of the relics sent to Rome as proof, for the beatification of the martyrs, was a bloodstained katana that was deemed “a 117 great relic.” 113 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 334. 114 These incidents are recalled in Hagakure, written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and Tashiro Tsuramoto: “When it came to the last three, Mitani Senzaemon completed his assignment [beheading the Christian prisoners] with much flair…The bodies were transported to the sea off Higo by boat and dumped into the ocean.” Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai, trans. Alexander Bennett, (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2014), 221. 115 Boxer, The Christian Century, 327. 116 After traveling to Rome to become a priest and entering into the society, Kibe infiltrated Japan in 1630. He was eventually questioned by the apostate Cristóvão Ferreira and then martyred via hanging in the pit. He himself became numbered among the relics of the Japanese saints. Takashi Gonoi, Petoro Kibe Kasui (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 2008), 93-95. For a short biography of Kibe, see Elison, Deus Destroyed, 196-197. 117 Hitomi Omata Rappo, “La quête des reliques dans la mission du Japon (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle)” in Archives de sciences sociales des religions (2017): 268-269. 201 Some of these relics ended up in the Jesuit base of Macau, along with relics of Vietnamese martyrs. According to a list compiled by Padre Montanha (arrived in Macau in 1743), the Japanese relics were kept in St. Paul’s Church. These included “8 small cases and 11 big cases, 19 in all, containing relics of martyrs of Japan.” Later, the bones were identified (presumably by phylacteries). These were said to include 59 distinct 118 individuals, both men and women. There also exists a cache of relics in the Seminary of San José in Manila. Most notable of these relics are the radius bone of João Goto and the ulnas bone of Paulo Miki and Diogo Kisai, all of which are preserved and viewable in a 40cm tall reliquary. These relics are preserved with relics of other Saints from Late Antiquity, including some of the Twelve Apostles, John the Baptist, Gregory of 119 Nazianzus, and others. Veneration of Japanese relics was not limited to Asia. As Luke Clossey has pointed out, European patrons of overseas missions often expected relics in return for their donations. They would use these for their own personal collections or install them in local churches. William V of Bavaria (1548-1626) was one such patron, collecting relics from the world over. He also sought to distribute relics so they could be venerated elsewhere. On one occasion, he requested the head of a Japanese martyr. On another, when there were no relics from China yet to be had, Japanese relics were sent to him instead. These included the head of a certain Fayaxinda Leo (burned at the stake) and relics of his Christian children Magdalena and Jacobus. These latter relics included a rib from Magdalena for the duke’s daughter, also named Magdalena. In addition, the procurator sent a Japanese style cross-reliquary full of other relics. When informed of this gift, William responded that they “were more welcome to us than a treasure of gold and 120 silver.” This was exactly what the author of the Exhortation to Martyrdom promised: to be enshrined and venerated by Christians the world over. 118 Manuel Teixeira, A Precious Treasure in Colonae: The Relics of Japanese and Vietnamese Martyrs (Macau: Centro de Informação e Turismo, 1979), 2-6. A photo of the box of relics, which appears to contain a partial skull, can be seen in Nishikawa, Junkyō, 103. According to an investigation by the 26 Martyrs Museum the remains include those martyr from Arima, Ikitsuki, Kuchinotsu, see p. 252. 119 E. Pigot, “Reliquias existentes no Seminario de S. Jose” in Boletim Eclesiático Dioceses de Macau, Ano 36, (1978): 283-294. 120 Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 220-223. 202 The cult of the Japanese martyrs today is at once local and universal. The main sites are Nagasaki at the Basilica of the Twenty-six Holy Martyrs of Japan in Ōura and the Twenty-six Martyrs Museum and Monument on Nishizaka Hill, the site of the 1597 martyrdom. Both sites possess relics, with the arm bone of Jacobus Kisai (sent from Spain) now displayed in the “Relics Chamber” of the “Hall of Glory.” Other relics dot churches in Iberia, and several relics, namely those of Paul Miki, João Goto, and Pedro 121 Kasui Kibe, are housed in the Gesu (the main Jesuit church) in Rome. Officially canonized in 1862, the Twenty-Six Martyrs at Nagasaki were celebrated in Japan with a local feast day as is common for local saints the world over. However, there is now a universal memorial (a liturgical ranking) according to the General Roman Calendar to be th celebrated on February 6 as the feast of “Saint Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs.” Even more Japanese martyrs have been recognized recently by the Catholic Church. In 2008, at a baseball stadium in Nagasaki packed with a crowd of 30,000, some 188 122 Japanese martyrs were officially beatified on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. Altogether, there are 42 Catholic saints (officially canonized) from Japan as of writing. Even though there are only 500,000 Catholics in Japan today, and Christians only make up about 1% of the total population, the Japanese martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comprise a sizable number of the “white-robed army” of martyrs in 123 the Church Triumphant. The martyrs might have signified the end of Japanese participation in the Christianization process as a world-historical phenomenon since the Tokugawa persecution was so effective, but they also represent the fullness of that participation. The Japanese Church truly spanned the Church Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant. For the Militant, they worked with foreign advocates in finding the most effective modes of persuasion to establish a Japanese Christianity that was at once native and Catholic (universal). Their laity defined themselves as a community through specific ritual actions, public Christian spaces, and acts of mercy. Together, they faced mundane types of persecution and, when in political power, engaged in persecution and antagonism 121 Nishikawa, Junkyō, 211. 122 “188 Japan martyrs beatified” Japan Times Article, November 25, 2008. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/11/25/national/188-japan-martyrs-beatified/ 123 This often-used description can be found in the Te Deum and in Rev. 7:14. 203 with non-Christians. Their lords, as the highest form of leadership at the time, charted religious courses for their subjects as they saw fit and acted as effective agents of Christianization (if not of individual conversions). And when put to the test, thousands willfully chose to perish in martyrdom rather than make a simple gesture forsaking their faith. In death, the martyrs cemented Japan’s place in the universal history of the Church as a transnational and transtemporal institution. They were not Kirishitan, limited to a specific time, place, and understanding of the religion, but Christian in every sense of the word. The following three parts of the dissertation are comprised of specific case studies that further explore world-historical aspects of missionization, community, and tension. Part Two (The Church Militant) explores how the Japanese chose one mode of persuasion among many—namely exorcism—to illustrate the viability of the new religion. Part Three (The Church Suffering), explores how charity and self-definition of the community extended beyond the living to include the dead. And finally, though not a direct consequence of tension, Part Four (The Church Triumphant) explores how the martyrs of the Christian past became relevant to Japanese Christians as local and mobile manifestations of sacred power (potentia). Altogether, the story of the Christianization process on Kyushu is a Japanese one; but it is also a world-historical story that that many other people in different times had a hand in writing. 204 PART TWO: THE CHURCH MILITANT 205 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHURCH MILITANT Despite its name, the Church Militant (Ecclesia Militans) does not refer to the secular conquest of people in the name of the church either for itself or for a Christian 1 power. The term is ecclesiological and describes members of the living Church on earth in distinction to the Church’s dead members in purgatory and heaven. However, these living members are considered metaphorically to be “soldiers,” (mīlitāre, meaning “to serve as a soldier”) just as spiritual “soldiers” serving in the physical world. On earth, Satan and evil forces were thought to be operative and able to influence humans. According to ecclesiological understanding of the Communion of Sains, evil cannot operate in purgatory or in heaven; instead its influence is thought to be bound in the living world, both in terms of supernatural evil and human evil. Though the physical world in and of itself was thought to be good as a creation of God, evil was thought to have entered into it through the “Fall of Man.” Humanity, a good creation, had chosen evil and thereby allowed it to permeate the world. Thus, by the very act of living, the members of the Church Militant were thought to be engaged in a struggle with evil in general. A simple definition of the Church Militant is: “the earthly church presently engaged in Christian warfare against sin, death, 2 and the devil.” This struggle was thought to be constant, only ending with the completion of earthly life and entrance into the other two states of the Church. As implied by the three-fold nature of the Church, the Church Militant is not an end in and of itself. Rather, membership in it is thought to be the first step towards the 1 Boxer uses it in such a way to refer to the close ties between the Church and Iberian colonialism. He notes, “ The great majority of the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries were very conscious of being the vanguard of the Church Militant as well as loyal subjects of their respective crowns….for better or for worse, the Iberian spiritual pioneers played a vital role in the overseas expansion of Europe which initiated the making of the modern world.” C.R. Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440-1770 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), x. 2 See the definition of ecclesia in Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017). Dispensing with the “militant” imagery, the current Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the living Church as “pilgrims on earth.” Section 954. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p5.htm. See also Donald Attwater, A Catholic Dictionary, Third Edition (Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, INC, 1997), 97. 206 ultimate soteriological goal, the Church Triumphant in heaven. Key to this end was the reception of the sacraments in the Catholic Church. As Scott H. Hendrix explains, “The church of the sacraments where Christ dwells with the faithful is to be admired, but it is not the ultimate goal of the journey of the faithful pilgrim. It is like a highway with many roadside rest areas where the true fidelis receives sufficient rest and nourishment to 3 continue his journey toward his final destination in the triumphant church.” Though there were seven sacraments by the time of the Jesuit mission to Japan (reaffirmed by Trent) the sacraments most pertinent to the Church Militant were the so- called “sacraments of the dead” (baptism, penance, and the anointing of the sick). These are called the “sacraments of the dead” because, according to Catholic sacramental theology, they restore grace to the living from a state of lacking grace (mortal sin). These sacraments are therefore considered to be administered to the “dead” (i.e. the spiritually dead) in order to bring them back to “life” (i.e. eternal life, spiritually). For the Jesuits in Japan, baptism was the most important of all sacraments, because it brought membership into the Church Militant and thus restoration of life form a state of spiritual “death.” In using the Communion of Saints as a metaphor for the full Japanese participation in the world-historical process of Christianization, the Church Militant corresponds to Japanese entry into the world-wide Roman Catholic Church through “missionization.” As noted in Part One, “native modes of persuasion” were key to this entry. Japanese advocates were essential for finding ways in which to present the efficacy of Christianity as another foreign universal religion in addition to Buddhism. These were manifold, but one that was of particular importance was exorcism. This part, therefore, explores how the Christian brand of exorcism was an instrumental “native mode of persuasion” in several cultures that engaged Christianization, Japan included. The first chapter examines how exorcism was part and parcel of the spread of Christianity from its very beginning, both in the Jewish and Gentile contexts. It also explores the so-called “demonization” of all spirits outside the Judeo-Christian worldview by Jews, Jewish Christians, and finally converted Gentile Christians. This was important for the world- historical spread of Christianity because it gave the religion the ability to make room for 3 Scott H. Hendrix, Ecclesia in Via: Ecclesiological Developments in the Medieval Psalms Exegesis and the DICTATA SUPER PSALTERIUM (1513-1515) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 76. 207 native gods and spirits, albeit as wholly evil entities rather than dismissing them outright as fictions. The second chapter demonstrates the importance of Christian exorcism on Kyushu where it helped to address the age-old problems of harassment and possession by harmful spirits. Though foreign Jesuits did perform exorcism on occasion, it was primarily practiced by Japanese lay Christians through the use of prayer, relics, and sacramentals. Sometimes exorcism of a non-Christian would precipitate that person’s reception of baptism and their entry into the Church Militant. Because exorcism was a sacramental, both Christians and non-Christians could benefit from it (unlike the actual sacraments). Although exorcism for potential Japanese converts was a means to this-worldly benefits (relief from a harmful spirit), to the Jesuits it was primarily seen as a means to an end, namely membership into the church itself. In their view, it acted as other sacramentals did by providing an entry point into the live-giving (spiritually) sacraments of the Church. To them, once baptism was received , that person was no longer “dead.” They could now draw upon the rest of the sacraments of the church to contend with sin and evil as members of the Church Militant. Once baptized into the church, the new member would inevitably fail and fall back into “death” again and again. But as members of the Church Militant, they could receive the other sacraments of the dead (mainly penance) and so continually be restored to “life.” Exorcism, in much the same manner as other sacramentals, was a means by which Japanese chose to join the Christian community. From the Catholic perspective, they could then avail themselves repeatedly of the true sources of “life” that only the Church Militant can enjoy, the sacraments. 208 CHAPTER V WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH US? EXORCISM AS A “NATIVE MODE OF PERSUASION” When he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs coming out of the tombs met him. They were so fierce that no one could pass that way. Suddenly they shouted, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a large herd of swine was feeding at some distance from them. The demons begged him, “If you cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And he said to them, “Go!” So they came out and entered the swine; and suddenly, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water. The swineherds ran off, and on going into the town, they told the whole story about what had happened to the demoniacs. Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their neighborhood. -Matt. 8:28-34 Derived from the Greek compound ex (“out”) and horkizein (“to cause to swear, or to bind by an oath”), the word exorcism, in its most basic sense, may be defined simply as a “swearing out of invasive spiritual forces from the body in a formal rite of expulsion.” Invasive spirits, which gain access to the body through the phenomenon of spirit possession, are, in most cultures, typically thought to be some kind of demon or 1 restless ghost. Though mostly associated with Roman Catholicism in the popular mind, exorcism and, perhaps to an even larger degree, spirit possession are in fact near universal concepts in the religious traditions of the world. Both occur in the Abrahamic faiths, the religions derived from Hinduism, and, of course, animism, which is perhaps the oldest form of religion and emphasizes “the plurality of spirits and ghosts.” Indeed, exorcism and spirit possession remain common features of many of today’s religions and 2 cultures throughout the world. Insofar as the religious traditions of humanity are 1 Lindsay Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion (Detroit: Macmillian Reference USA, 2005), 2927. 2 According to a study conducted from 1963 to 1968 under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health, spirit possession in some form or another could be found in 77% of 488 cultures surveyed from around the world. If historical examples were included, the percentage would be much higher. Ibid., 362. 209 concerned, Japan was in the mainstream. Japanese believed (and some still believe) in various forms of spirit possession, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic exorcism offered people a means of redressing it. My understanding of Catholic exorcism as a “native mode of persuasion” is inspired by Ramsay MacMullen’s brief, but influential, discussion of its importance to the Christianization of the Roman Empire. It is important to note here once again, however, that exorcism was just one native mode of persuasion that Christianity adopted as it transplanted itself in different societies. Some cultures might have had little to no use for it at first or the importance of it might have waxed and then waned. Other native modes of persuasion, such as miraculous healing or religious debate were commonly practiced as well. I have chosen exorcism as a case study for the “Church Militant” because it was a common native mode of persuasion during the premodern period, because it was extremely important in the Christianization process on Kyushu, and because it has been oddly neglected in the historiography of the Japan mission. Not long after the Jesuits arrived in Kyushu, Catholic exorcism began to exert a powerful influence on the people there, prompting many to convert. Though first performed by foreign advocates (the Jesuit padres), Catholic exorcism soon nativized. Early Japanese Christians recognized the exorcistic power of the new religion and brought to the missionaries those who were either actually possessed or somehow harassed by harmful spirits. The missionaries, as the vessels for of a 1,500-year tradition of exorcism within Christianity, found such requests consistent with their Catholic word- view and conducted ad hoc exorcisms as a matter of course. These usually employed prayers, relics, and sacramentals such as holy water and crucifixes rather than the formal rite of exorcism with which we are most familiar. Because such exorcisms did not have to be conducted by a clergyman, lay members of the church on Kyushu quickly adopted the practice, providing an important service for anyone suffering possession or harassment by a harmful spirit. Both lay Christians and Jesuits performed exorcisms not only for Joesph P. Laycock, ed., Spirit Possession Around the World: Possession, Communion, and Demon Expulsion Across Cultures (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2015), xvi. In her survey of possession throughout the world in modern times, Felicitas D. Goodman notes, “We can also point out that in all religious communities around the world, of whatever cultural allegiance, people indicate by their behavior that for them; spirit beings are part of the larger, all-encompassing reality.” Felicitas D. Goodman, How About Demons?: Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 126. 210 members of the Christian community, but also for non-Christians, including family members and neighbors. Frequently, these exorcisms would be successful, thus demonstrating to non-Christians that the new religion was efficacious for resolving issues related to harmful spirits. The attraction led to conversions, and we might even argue that without it the Japanese Christian community on Kyushu might not have taken root as it did. Since the clergy were so few in numbers and exorcism was such a common need, we see the emergence of exorcistic specialists within the Christian community whose special talent to expel and ward off unwanted spirits was recognized. In addition, baptism, from the Catholic point of view, provided some exorcistic functions in that it ostensibly protected the catechumen from the chief malignant spirit, Satan, and his minions. That exorcism became such an important native mode of persuasion for the mission had nothing to do with the designs of the missionaries but rather the ubiquity of spirit possession and harassment in the Japanese world-view. Since the natural world was populated by innumerable spirits, some of which were described as Kami, it is not surprising that they frequently came into conflict with humans or sought to possess people. Possession by such fearsome spirits, including fox spirits (kitsune) among others, seems to have been prominent in areas of Kyushu where the mission flourished. Fortunately for its residents, there were several types of religious specialists who could manipulate them, with Buddhist monks and the so-called yamabushi (mountain ascetics) being the most widely accessible. These figures helped people cast off possessions, overcome spiritually induced illnesses, and ward off any spirits that might do a person harm or cause them misfortune. By the time Christianity arrived on Kyushu, there was already a millennium worth of exorcistic tradition in Japan—even longer if we consider shamanistic practices—upon which the Japanese could graft the Christian brand of exorcism. If Christianity could not address the very real problem of possession and harassment by harmful entities, it would leave this very important religious need unfulfilled. Conversely, if Christianity could handle harmful entities effectively, other aspects of the religion might also prove appealing to potential converts. In adopting Christian exorcism to deal with harmful spirits, Japanese on Kyushu were hardly alone among societies engaging Christianization. In fact, exorcism was a mode of native persuasion that dated all the way back to Jesus himself who had used it to 211 demonstrate the truth of his message that the “Kingdom of God” was at hand for the Jewish people. For his followers who went out into the Gentile world of the Roman Empire, performing exorcism seems to have been an important ministry of the early Church and one of the methods with which they religion gained converts. Greco-Romans could turn to Christians for help with the lesser spirits called daemon, which frequently caused possession, illness, and misfortune. In the “spiritual marketplace” of late-antique Rome, Christian exorcists came to exist alongside magicians for help with spirits; and indeed critics of Christianity frequently denounced Christian exorcists as performers of magic. The use of exorcism as a native mode of persuasion continued outside the Mediterranean region of the Roman Empire into Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England where it took on its own particular characteristics. For Gaul, exorcism acted as a mode of persuasion not so much to gain converts as to reinforce Christianization. The healing of many demoniacs at the tombs of the saints, such as that of St. Martin, reminded the population that they should trust in the power of God through the Church Triumphant rather than the paganism of traditional healers who claimed to address the same problems. Likewise, in Anglo-Saxon England, exorcism combined with traditional healing to counter such creatures as elves (often invisible) and dwarves so that the people might not look to completely pagan methods for dealing with them. In the process, use of exorcism Christianized these harmful entities by equating them with demons, a foreign concept. Beyond the medieval period, exorcism became a prominent feature in missions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most notably in China where it arguably played an even more important role in conversion to the faith than it did on Kyushu. Many Chinese converted because of successful exorcisms, most frequently performed at the hands of a Chinese Christian. There was likewise demand for exorcism in the missions to Vietnam and Protestant England. In the latter country, persistent need for effective exorcism from Catholic priests caused many to convert to Catholicism even though Protestants had their own form of it. In addition to being a native mode of persuasion that gained converts to Christianity, exorcism played an extremely important role in the “demonization” of 212 native spirits and deities. Demonization, which means the transformation or reinterpretation of non-Christian spirits and gods into demons, had actually begun out of the tensions that Judaism experienced as it struggled to define its exclusivist monotheism with the existence of the deities in the Gentile world. For a variety of reasons, as explained below, foreign gods became “demons,” that is wholly evil entities that were in league with the arch-evil Satan. As Jewish Christians encountered the manifold deities and spirits of the Roman Empire, they too “demonized” the spirits, thrusting previously amoral spirits into league with evil. These spirits could be manipulated through exorcism by the power of Jesus. Though transformed, the “demonized” pagan entities now actually held a place in the Christian world-view where they could endure in a different guise. Thus Christian exorcism, wherever it went, became a means for the incorporation of a variety of spirits, gods, and creatures under the vast umbrella concept of “demon.” The Jesuits, as they entered Japan, were at the tail end of this long process of exorcism and “demonization” in the premodern period. Both advocates and the native population could then meet on mutual ground (exorcism); at first, the Christian party simply considered the native harmful spirit to be a demon, and the non-Christian party considered the demon to be one of the native spirits. In short, exorcism was extremely important in the mission to Kyushu as it frequently precipitated conversions. The Japanese themselves identified its utility, and since Christianity had a long history of exorcism as it passed through many cultures, its own accommodation to Japanese notions of spirit possession and exorcism was rather easy. The Jesuits were accustomed to possession and provided exorcism as requested wherever they went. But it was the Japanese Christian community itself that adopted it wholeheartedly, so much so that it became a feature of everyday life and acted as an instrument of conversion for non-Christian family members and neighbors. In no way was this situation unique to Japan, as exorcism was important in the Christianization process in many other societies; rather, exorcism tied the people of Kyushu to other Christianized people who had experienced something similar: that is, deciding for themselves what practices and beliefs of the religion were acceptable and made sense. As this case study should make clear, the Jesuits did not “impose vainly” their own ideas of the devil, possession, or exorcism upon the Japanese as some have argued. 213 Rather, I contend that the demand and popularity for the Christian brand of exorcism emerged as a result of the Japanese themselves acknowledging that the foreign padres and native advocates offered a means of dealing with the very common, preexisting problem of harmful spirits. As a native mode of persuasion for the Japanese, exorcism was a requirement of the Jesuits and native advocates rather than a means for the foreign padres to measure the “spiritual progress” of the newly converted. Reports of exorcisms in the Jesuit letters were less examples of “good” Japanese Christians than examples of Japanese finding Christian exorcism useful for dealing with cases of possession and 3 spiritual attack. And if Christianity were to have any success, it needed to be able to exorcize harmful spirits even better than native religious specialists. Otherwise, those who became Christians would either have to dismiss the notion of hostile spirits (something inherent in their worldview) or continue to appeal to native specialists. By situating the practice of exorcism in Kyushu within its role in the Christianization of other societies, we will find that the adoption of this particular native mode of persuasion was by no means unique to Japan and thus formed part of a larger continuous process that many Christianized peoples shared in common. We begin here by examining how exorcism acted as a native mode of persuasion throughout the history of the Christianity and in the various cultures that experienced the Christianization process during the premodern period. 3 Giuseppe Marino, “El Japón del siglo XVI entre endemoniados, exorcismos y carismas. Historias inéditas de los informes misioneros.” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, Tomo 212, Cuaderno 2 (2015): 291-332. Marino’s concluding section, from which I quote, can be found on pp. 321-324. Marino notes that the “devil held an important place in the catechumenate of the mission.” However, he does not see this as a reflection of the Japanese recognition of Christian exorcism as a new and efficacious method for dealing with harmful spirits. Rather, he argues that “it was part of an ecclesiastical strategy that intended to propagate fear of the devil as a means of keeping the Japanese gentiles, including the neophytes, under control. Similar to how they were transplanted to the New World with other feudal institutions, these strategies did not penetrate thoroughly the Japanese substratum, to the same degree that they infiltrated and consolidated in Europe during the Renaissance.” 214 “Demonization” and Exorcism as a “Native Mode of Persuasion” in Early and Medieval Christianity Scholars have long recognized exorcism as being important not only to the ministry of Jesus but also to the rise of the early church when Christians were a small and persecuted minority. One of the reasons why it has received much attention is because scholars wonder just how Christianity, as a strange new religion that denied all other gods, managed to increase its numbers and spread from the backwater province of Judea to the rest of the wider Gentile world. Not all potential converts in the Roman Empire could have been persuaded by intellectual or moral proofs, and the superiority of the Christian god—for that is what the early arguments amounted to—needed to be demonstrated over the very real and familiar pagan deities and spirits to which people were accustomed. These traditional gods had proven themselves over and over, from time immemorial: they healed, enabled the oracles, and provided fortune. And there were many gods from which to choose. A god that demanded exclusivity, such as the one the Christians espoused, could not be incorporated into the all-inclusive Greco-Roman pantheon as so many had been before. Given its monotheistic bent, Christianity needed to show that it was just as efficacious as the traditional gods in all the things they could do. To accomplish this, Christianity had to create some sort of spiritual arena, so to speak, in which Christians could demonstrate that the other divinities were simply no match for its one true god. The eminent historian of the Roman Empire, Ramsay MacMullen, has argued that the most significant arena in which the Christian god differentiated himself from other gods was “the miraculous.” And exorcism in particular was one of the most potent tools that Christians employed to demonstrate the power of their god directly vis-à-vis the pagan gods. This type of contest, which god could exorcize better, was something new. In the Roman spiritual marketplace, gods did not compete with one another for wonderworking. Certainly, one god might heal more frequently, such as Apollo, but that did not necessarily deny the healing powers of any other deity. Some situations might call for Apollo while others, such as in the case of a fever, might call for the goddess Febris 215 (protector against fevers and malaria). But in the Christian brand of exorcism, this was not really the case. Christians pitted their god exclusively against pagan deities and spirits in order to discredit them entirely. This helped to make exorcism, according to MacMullen, “the chief instrument of conversion” and “possibly the most highly rated activity of the early Christian Church.” MacMullen explains: The manhandling of demons—humiliating them, making them howl, beg for mercy, tell their secrets, and depart in a hurry—served a purpose quite essential to the Christian definition of monotheism: it made physically (or dramatically) visible the superiority of the Christian’s patron Power over all others. One and only one was God. The rest were daimones demonstrably, and therefore already familiar to the audience as nasty, lower powers that no one would want to worship 4 anyway. Exorcism, therefore, not only handled very real spiritual problems for pagans (such as possession and spiritually induced illnesses), but also denigrated the other divinities that were supposed to be in control of these things. That an ordinary Christian, as opposed to a temple priest or a dubious magician, could exorcize one of these spirits indicated to the non-Christian observer that there must be something special about the Christian god. A few scholars have quarreled with MacMullen’s emphasis on exorcism as the main engine of conversion in the Roman Empire, but most still acknowledge that it played some sort of role. For example, Robin Lane Fox admits that “a successful exorcism would certainly win credit, and if it was worked on a pagan, it would probably make him a believer.” But he notes that catechumens also had to go through a lengthy process of moral instruction and behavioral reform to “convert.” The exorcism might “awaken their interest,” but this alone would not necessarily have been sufficient for a 5 person to abandon the other gods. Citing a lack of concern with exorcism in the Pauline epistles as well as some early Christian writings, Graham Twelftree is also of the opinion that exorcism was not all that important. But this is an argument from silence and only 6 shows that Paul did not happen to write about exorcism in his extant letters. Other 4 MacMullen, Christianizing, 27-28. 5 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 329-330. 6 We only have seven indisputably authentic letters from Paul, so the source base is not exactly wide. Twelftree also notes that the Gospel of John has no interest in exorcism. See Graham H. Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 279-280. 216 scholars, such as Eric Sorensen and Alan Kreider, have deemed exorcism important, for a 7 variety of different reasons but just not to the same degree as MacMullen. Nevertheless, we have eyewitness statements, such as those made by Origen in the third century, that indicate exorcisms and the miraculous were clearly important in converting people: For without miracles and wonders [Jesus’ apostles] would not have persuaded those who heard new doctrines and new teachings to leave their traditional religion and to accept the apostles’ teachings at the risk of their lives. Traces of that Holy Spirit who appeared in the form of a dove are still preserved among Christians. They charm daemons away and perform many cures and perceive 8 certain things about the future according to the will of the Logos. In my own assessment, exorcism was but one manifestation of the manifold ways in which Christianity became persuasive to a variety of cultures. The importance attached to exorcism varied according to the strength of the exorcistic traditions already present in different native cultures. In cases where exorcism already flourished, as in Japan and China, it helped to demonstrate the spiritual efficacy of the new religion. While it might not cause people to convert outright (though, we actually do see examples of this in Kyushu and elsewhere) at the very least, it would excite interest and curiosity. Since advocates frequently presented exorcism as a contest between the Christian god and the traditional gods of the culture into which Christianity moved, we must first investigate how the religion “demonized” other deities. In casting native gods and spirits as demons, sought to demote them, reinterpret them as evil entities, and ultimately subdue them. Still, by transforming these native spirits into demons, Christianity acknowledged their existence whereby they could endure long after a culture had been Christianized. Although we will primarily concentrate on the importance of exorcism here, we must take a moment to acknowledge how the practice enabled non-Christian gods and spirits to endure and transform within new and expanding Christian frameworks. Such “However one attempts to solve the various aspects of the problem of exorcism among early Christians, I recognize that the results cannot be held too firmly. For it is to be acknowledged that we are dealing with the mere fragmentary remains of the once much larger body of literature that was produced. Further, the literature is, at times, only tangentially related to our interests.” 7 Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 112-114. 8 Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 42; 1:46. Partially quoted in Twelftree, Name, 27-28, note 21. 217 deities and spirits, like the Greco-Roman daimon (hereafter, the Latin: daemon) or the many types of Shinto-related spirits in Japan, did not simply vanish from religious thought and practice as Christianity entered a given society. Despite what some Christian writers and missionaries would have us believe, these entities frequently took on new Christian or quasi-Christian attributes and functions as demons. Instead of being disregarded as non-existent or completely impotent, Christian exorcists acknowledged the power of these spirits to affect people. David Frankfurter has carefully explained this process in an illuminating article that examines possessions and exorcisms at saint-shines in the late-antique Roman Empire. Frankfurter argues that the dramaturgy enacted in these holy places through possession and exorcism served to reorganize pagan pantheons “for the shaping of spirits in relationships to the Christian pantheon and to the predilections, beliefs, and needs of particular audiences.” The possessed who went to the saint-shrines for exorcism were, in effect, agents in the “process of appropriating Christianity.” Frankfurter explains how demoniacs, through their own agency, were able to integrate a reorganized and transformed non-Christian pantheon into a Christian context: [The cases he presents in the article] demonstrate above all that, in receiving this reorganized or polarized Christian pantheon, people in local communities were not passively acquiescent. Instead, they actively engaged in the mimesis and articulation of the new configuration of spirits through ritual performance and possession. This is the crucial element of agency in the religious transformation of the local sphere. Rather than depending on missionaries and prophets, it is quite often laity themselves who demonstrate the new spirits in action, the old spirits in submission or resurgence, or combinations of both—an overall dramaturgy of religious transformation, Christ’s victory, and often the continued relevance and potency of ancestral spirits. In fact, Frankfurter argues that the “the category ‘demon’” enabled Christianizing people to “maintain a broader supernatural pantheon and even, through possession, the actual 9 presence of ancestral spirits and their various functions.” This “category ‘demon’” is important for us going forward because it created common ground in which both sides, Christian and non-Christian, acknowledged the deities and spirits of the native society. The same was true for exorcism in general. 9 David Frankfurter, “Where the Spirits Dwell: Possession, Christianization, and Saints' Shrines in Late Antiquity,” The Harvard Theological Review 103, no. 1 (2010): 27-46. Quotes are on pp. 29, 44, and 46. 218 Harmful spirits could be manipulated by entirely pagan means in the form of magical exorcism or appealing to some higher divinity. In Judaism, on the other hand, God had power over all. With the advent of Christianity, that power extended to Jesus, the man- god, who could command all spirits regardless of who they were. Numerous episodes in the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus as an exorcist, adjuring and exorcizing demons and the so-called unclean spirits. The logical extension of this would be for the first Christians, as Jews themselves, to equate pagan spirits with the evil sprits (the demons). If Jesus had been able to command these pagan spirits (as demons), then, early Christians reasoned, those acting in his name would likewise be able to manipulate them throughout the Gentile world. This “demonization” of local spirits and gods was what enabled exorcism to operate as a native mode of persuasion. One might assume that the “demonization” of foreign gods and spirits began as Christianity made its way out of Judea and into the wholly Gentile Roman Empire. After all, missionaries all the way from the New World to Japan denounced native gods and spirits as demons who held the non-Christian population in diabolical error. However, the process of the “demonization” of other gods and spirits actually started well before the advent of Christianity during two epochal periods in Jewish history: namely the Post- Exile Period (following the Babylonian Captivity of the sixth century BCE) and the so- called Intertestamental Period (roughly spanning from the late fifth century BCE to the first century CE). During both periods, the Jewish people were exposed to foreign theological concepts and practices to such a degree that this would color their perceptions of and interactions with the Gentiles and their manifold gods for centuries moving forward. The change in perception of foreign gods and spirits in Judaism was particularly important to the socio-religious milieu of Jesus, who was simultaneously the source of and model for Christian exorcism, as well as those later Christians who apparently won many pagans to the faith by casting out harmful spirits. Much later missionaries, particularly those during the early modern period like the Jesuits, also regarded the gods and spirits of vastly different cultures as demonic entities. Some of these gods and spirits could possess people and, as a consequence, could be expelled through both formal and informal practices of exorcism. Because Christianity of the premodern period considered all other spirits and gods to be demons and therefore 219 subject to exorcism, it is important to explore this process of “demonization” as it began within Judaism and then was carried into the Gentile world through Christian advocates and apologists. As is well known, the “exclusivist monotheism” of the Jews in the ancient Near East was, at the time, something rather unusual; most peoples of the region had little issue with incorporating other gods into their pantheons and providing suitable worship to 10 them in conjunction with the worship of their national or cultic god. The Israelites were 11 different, as they had been commanded by their god to have “no other gods.” These other gods were not fictions worshipped by their deluded neighbors, like the Canaanites, nor were they considered demonic or entirely evil entities at first. Rather, the Israelites believed that foreign deities could actually exist, although they paled before the god of Abraham that the Israelites worshipped. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of references to the manifold deities and spirits of the surrounding cultures, such as the infamous child- consuming Molech and the fertility god Baal. These spirits were not evil per se, but were essentially posers unworthy of veneration in comparison with the god who had created and commanded the entire universe. One of the first steps in the “demonziation” of these other gods and spirits occurred during the Babylonian Exile and the Post-Exile Periods. The Jews, having been taken to Babylon in captivity in the sixth century BCE, came into intimate contact there with the highly dualistic religion of Zoroastrianism; this contact continued following their release from captivity by Cyrus the Great (r. 559-530 BCE) as the Jews had further interactions with the Persian Empire. Thought to have been founded by the shadowy figure known as Zoroaster (dates uncertain), Zoroastrianism as a religion posited that there were two gods engaged in struggle: the god of good and light (later known as Ahura Mazda) versus the god of evil and darkness. This dualism, which had not been present in ancient Israelite religion before, developed further in the literature of the post-Exile and the Intertestamental periods in such books as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of Solomon. It is during these two periods that we see the emergence of Satan (Lucifer) as 10 See Mark S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010), 149-180 for a highly detailed discussion of the various degrees to which Israelite “monotheism” was or was not at odds with other Mesopotamian cultures. 11 Take, for example, the Decalogue in Exod. 20. 220 an autonomous source of evil (though permitted by God to act) along with his minions of evil, the demons. Though the origin of Satan and the demons had several versions—one positing that Satan and other angels had rebelled against God in Heaven, the other characterizing demonic entities as the offspring of angels who had copulated with human women—the effect was the same in that some sects of Judaism developed a supreme malevolent entity who, with the help of his servants, sought to rupture the bond between 12 humanity and God. The other key development in the “demonization” of foreign gods and other spirits was the translation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) into Koine Greek during this period as a result of Jewish contact with Hellenism. Known as the Septuagint (meaning “seventy”), this translation would serve as the scriptural basis not only for Hellenic Jews, such as Philo of Alexandria, but also Greek-reading Christians since they considered it to be the original and official version of their Old Testament. This was an incredibly important development, since the Greek text allowed the Jewish scriptures to break their linguistic confinements and reach a larger audience in the Gentile world. The translation itself was considered divinely inspired, so whatever nuances emerged between the 13 Hebrew and the Greek were nevertheless considered to be correct. Regardless of how inspired the Septuagint actually was, the translators had to use Greek equivalents for a variety of Jewish concepts. For example, they used the Greek word christos for the Hebrew messiah (māšîaḥ). Naturally, they also had to render into Greek whatever Hebrew words had been used in the Tanakh to refer to other gods and spirits. The translators, in many of these instances, chose to use the Greek word daimon 12 See G.J. Riley’s entry for Devil in Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter Willem van der Horst. Eds. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible DDD, (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 244-249. 13 Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1987), 890, discusses the importance of this translation: “The Septuagint was one of the great literary enterprises of the ancient world, and it served to fashion and shape a distinctively Jewish-Hellenistic culture, which attempted to synthesize Hebraic and Greek thought and values. Eventually, it became a powerful literary medium for the spread of early Christianity throughout the far-flung Greek-speaking world, thereby transforming the culture and religion of a goodly segment of humanity.” This translation became known as the Septuagint (literally meaning “seventy”) because seventy Jewish scholars, according to tradition, translated the Hebrew Scriptures independently of one another but all came up with the exact same translation. According to Jewish legend in Alexandria, God had, in a sense, sanctioned the translation because it came as a result of some seventy-two Jewish scholars who, all working independently, came up each with the exact same translation. 221 (in English demon, from the Latinized daemon) for some of these entities. For any Greek or Jew living in a Hellenized area, such as Egypt, the word referenced a wide variety of spirits within traditional Greek and then later Roman religion. The word “daemon” could describe a good or bad spirit as well as one that could bring fortune or ill-effects. Daemones could also be autonomous entities or simply agents of a higher spiritual power such as a god. There was nothing inherently “evil” or amoral about them, and they mostly represented the spiritual cause and effect that operated in the world simultaneously with physical cause and effect. In using the word daemon to describe the gods and spirits of non-Jewish cultures, many passages in the Hebrew Bible took on a new form in that they subsumed very 14 specific deities into the wide category of “demon.” Perhaps the most explicit change in name to foreign deities was made in Psalm 95:4-5 (or 96:4-5 in some Christian Bibles). In English-language Bibles using the original Hebrew, this Psalm read: For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be revered above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols [emphasis mine], 15 but the Lord made the heavens. In short, all other gods are essentially false gods. Interestingly, the Septuagint makes a key change in verse 5 by replacing the word “idols” (’ĕlilim) with the word “demons” (daemones). This change was particularly important for the medieval and early modern Christian versions of the Psalm 95 (96), both in the east and the west. The Eastern churches naturally used, and indeed still use, the Septuagint because it was already in 14 Much of the above information has been taken from G.J. Riley’s entry for Demon in van der Toorn, Becking, and Willem van der Horst Dictionary of Deities and Demons, 235-240. For example, Leviticus 17:6-7 expresses the hope that Israelite priests will sacrifice to the Lord and that “they may no longer offer their sacrifices for goat-demons, to whom they prostrate themselves.” In this case, “goat-demons” refers to certain spirits of the desert, namely satyrs (Hebrew: śě'îrîm, sometimes translated as Azazel). Similarly, Deuteronomy 32:17 recalls the sins of the Israelites’ ancestors as “they sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared.” In this case the word “demons” is a translation and alteration of the Hebrew word “šēdîm,” meaning “tutelary spirits.” These were the foreign deities that Israel, in violation of God’s commandments, had absorbed into their own worship at various times in their history. 15 The English is taken from the Douay-Rheims translation of 1610 and the later (1752) Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims. Later Catholic Bibles, such as the New American Bible, use the word “idols” to denote “non-existent things” (i.e. false gods). The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) 1917 translation of the Tanakh, which is for a Jewish readership, translates this verse as: “For all the gods of the peoples are things of nought; But the LORD made the heavens.” Jewish Publication Society, The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917). 222 Greek and was thought to have divine sanction. The West, on the other hand, used Jerome’s Latin translation of the Septuagint as found in the both the medieval and the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate (1592). Though Jerome translated and revised the Psalter from the Septuagint and the original languages a number of times, it was the Psalters derived from the Greek (Psalterium Romanum and the Psalterium Gallicanum) that became the standard for the Vulgate in the West throughout the medieval and early modern periods. The Latin and corresponding English-language (the Douay-Rheims translation of 1610 and the Challoner Revision) texts read: Quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia… Because al the Gods of the Gentils are diuels [devils]…. 16 For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils [emphasis mine]… Thus, for both Diaspora Jews and later Christians using Greek and Latin versions of the Old Testament, the “idols” of the foreign gods are conflated with “demons.” The point is that through this Psalm verse, as well as other Old Testament passages, later missionaries framed the deities of non-Christian peoples and cultures as “demons” rather than simply as “false gods” or fictions. For users of the Septuagint at least, all other gods essentially became demons (daemones) in the nominal sense. Still, the “demonization” of these spirits was not complete. It was only when the usage of the word daemon merged with the theological trend within Judaism to consider all other gods and spirits as evil in nature that all “demons” came to be associated with the absolute evil of the Devil. These are the demons referred to in the New Testament and thereafter for the rest of Christian history. The many spirits referred to in the Tanakh (the so-called Hebrew Bible), prior to their “demonization,” could and did harm people in a variety of ways but were not associated with Satan. Having been fused with the Greek daemon and viewed through the demonological lens of the dualistic-influenced Post-Exile and Intertestamental periods, 16 The Vulgate text comes from Bonifatius Fischer and Robert Weber, eds., Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). Commentary on this Psalm from the 1610 Douay- Rheims offers a connection between demons and idolatry: “What creatures ſoever ſpiritual or corporal, viſible or inuiſile the Pagans ſerue for Gods, ſtil they be diuels that deceiue them, and diuers wayes vſurpe diuine honour, making ſuch idolaters to thinke, that there is diuine power, where none is.” 223 these gods and spirits were, by Jesus’ day, wholly evil in how they possessed people and harmed them through illness. Such was the state of foreign gods and spirits in first-century Roman Judea when Christians started exorcizing demons and unclean spirits. Though Jesus is not known to have used the Septuagint, later Christian writers did, with the Gospel-writers and Paul (a Jew of the Diaspora) being the most notable. It was through them that the concept of Jewish “demons” as evil and malevolent entities who attacked humanity with all sorts of illnesses, infirmities, and calamities diffused throughout the Gentile world. But, fortunately for both Jews and Gentiles, there was an effective way to deal with these hostile spirits—namely exorcism. At the very start, we must take note of the complete normalcy of exorcism within the ancient Near East. It was only because of the ubiquity of possession and exorcisms in this region that Jesus and his followers could use exorcism as a native mode of persuasion in the first century CE. Though early Christians certainly put their own spin on exorcism, many different forms of the exorcism had existed for thousands of years before them in many different cultures. The earliest forms of exorcism for possessed people appear in the various cultures of ancient Mesopotamia, many of which shared belief in malevolent spirits in the form of “demons.” There were a variety of specialists who could deal with the harmful effects of these spirits, with the āšipu or “conjurer” being the most similar to later exorcists. These specialists, as one scholar has noted, “act[ed] as mediators between the patient and the spirit-world in [their] efforts to release the victims from their sufferings.” There was also a strong tradition of exorcism from Persia, and especially within Zoroastrianism, that people could ward off spirits through the use of certain words and that they could even expel them by seeking help from the 17 divine. Much more immediate to Jesus and his followers was the somewhat subdued tradition of possession and exorcism that existed in early Judaism. These were never prominent themes in either the Hebrew Bible or the Apocryphal writings, though there are several accounts of “spirits” influencing people in a negative manner. Possession and 17 Eric Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 19-20; 46. 224 exorcism became a bit more pronounced in Jewish Intertestamental literature, mostly 1 Enoch, as well as some of the Qumran literature (the Dead Sea Scrolls). Several major figures in Jewish history and religious history were also described as performing exorcist- like activities. For example, King David was said to have driven out demons; Solomon was said to have had a ring that could expel demons; and Moses had some exorcistic practices attributed to him. Still, there is little direct evidence of exorcism until the first century when Jesus was operative. One of the most famous extra-biblical accounts of Jewish exorcism comes to us from Josephus (37-c. 100) in his Jewish Antiquities where he describes a certain Eleazar as having performed an exorcism in front of the General (and later Emperor) Vespasian (9 CE-79 CE): “…for I have seen a certain Eleazar, a countryman of mine, in the presence of Vespasian, his sons, tribunes and a number of 18 other soldiers, free men possessed by demons…” Despite being considered somewhat strange by Greco-Romans for their “exclusivist monotheism,” the Jews had an excellent reputation in the Gentile world as efficacious exorcists. Apparently, Gentiles thought the “Most High god” of the Jews was particularly powerful at commanding “lesser spirits” 19 such as the daemon. The Gentile world of the Greeks and Romans boasted long traditions of possession and exorcism that made the Jewish and Christian brands of expelling spirits easily transferable outside the Jewish context. In terms of possession, we must note that Greco-Roman notions of the phenomenon did not necessarily carry the negative connotations of “demonic possession.” Possession by some kind of entity was possible, but many times this was achieved by a non-malevolent spirit. For example, some deities, such as Aphrodite and Dionysus, could possess people, and this was not viewed as evil. The lesser daemon, who were intermediaries between mortals and the divine, could also possess people, as could avenging spirits. Possession could in turn produce good or bad 20 outcomes, such as the ability to prophesy or, alternatively, epilepsy and madness. Besides actual possession, spirits like the daemon could cause harm to people through 18 Jewish Antiquities, 8. 45-49. Josephus, Flavius, Jewish Antiquities. Volume V, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Ralph Marcus (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1950), 595-597. 19 Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 327. 20 See Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism, 74-103. 225 sudden misfortune or disease. They were not necessarily evil, though they could cause 21 harm to people and those afflicted might want to be rid of their influence. Greco-Romans had a number of exorcistic options to counteract harmful spirits, ranging from protection against harmful spiritual influence to expelling a spirit that had taken over a person’s body. Specific measures one could take against a harmful spirit included incanting spells, reciting specific lines from Homer, or invoking magical types 22 of texts. Pagans, at least after the first century, could hire out exorcist-like figures to cure them of spiritually induced illnesses, rid of them misfortune, or banish harassing spirits. But there were relatively few exorcists with the powers of Jesus and the later Christians. There might be the occasional wandering charismatic figure and wonderworker, such as those among the Cynics, who could perform exorcisms and heal. A few other wandering Jewish exorcists invoking Jesus can be found in the Gospels and the Book of Acts, namely “the unknown exorcist” (who is approved; Mark 9:38-41) and the “seven sons of Sceva” (who are condemned; Acts 19:11-20). In the Gospel of Mark, “the unknown exorcist” is approved by Jesus for casting out demons in his name. The author of the Book of Acts, however, condemns the seven sons of Sceva, possibly for 23 their use of texts to exorcize rather than relying solely on the power of the Holy Spirit. The one pagan exorcist who mostly closely resembles Jesus is Apollonius of Tyana (d. 96-98 CE), a Neo-Pythagorean sage. Evidence of his exorcisms comes entirely from Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius (c. 217), which depicts the sage conducting 24 miracles and expelling various harmful spirits. In one case, Apollonius (in India) exorcizes a boy of the spirit of a dead soldier. What is notable about this exorcism is that 21 For an analysis of how philosophers might see the daemon, see Algra Keimpa, “Stoics on Souls and Demons: Reconstructing Stoic Demonology” in Nienke Vos and Willemien Otten eds., Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 71-96. 22 Lane Fox notes that there was not “organized order of exorcists, because they accepted no organized ‘kingdom of Satan.” In other words, there was not supremely evil force that necessitated exorcists like those that would appear later in the Church. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 327. 23 See Twelftree, Name, 125-127; 148-153, for a possible explanation of these exorcists. 24 Scholars are unsure just how much of these stories are historical given that a hundred years had elapsed since Apollonius’s death. Some also think Philostratus was trying to defend Apollonius from charges of being a magician. And some think the stories about his exorcisms and healings might be in some way influenced by the Jesus tradition given their similarities. 226 Apollonius does not actually encounter the boy but rather gives to his mother a letter containing some sort of abjuration. Though not explicitly stated, Philostratus implies that the spirit left the boy once he had read the letter. The Gospels also depict Jesus conducting this kind of exorcism at a distance, specifically with the cases of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter and the Centurion’s servant (Mark 7:24-30; Matt. 8:5- 25 13). Though there were various types of Jewish and pagan exorcists prior to the first century, it was Jesus himself who set the precedent for exorcism as a native mode of persuasion for Christianity moving forward. Whatever else might be said about the Jesus of the Gospels, most if not all scholars of the historical Jesus would agree that he was a renowned exorcist and apocalyptic preacher. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) in particular devote considerable attention to Jesus’ exorcistic activity and its relationship to the so-called Kingdom of God. In addition, it is clear that Jesus’ exorcisms had a profound effect on his followers during the first several centuries as Christianity moved out of its Judaic context and into the much wider Gentile world. As the disciples went out missionizing, they invoked Jesus’ name in exorcisms as a sort of imitation of 26 this aspect of his original ministry. It is in this context that exorcism became an important part of Christian ministry in general and became a significant mode of persuasion throughout the Roman Empire. One key aspect of Jesus’ exorcistic activities is that they explicitly linked the possession of “demonic” with so-called “unclean” and other spirits thought to induce certain types of illnesses. All three Synoptic Gospel writers use the epithet “demon” to describe a number of cases of spiritual possession and harassment. Sometimes, they also 25 In another, more famous episode, Apollonius exorcizes a second boy while teaching in Athens in front of a crowd of people. Having been freed from the spirit, the boy takes up the lifestyle of a wandering ascetic in imitation of Apollonius. Philostratus, F. C. Conybeare, and Eusebius. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, The Epistles of Apollonius and the Treatise of Eusebius, (London: W. Heinemann, 1912), 3:38; 4:20. See also Amanda Witmer, Jesus, the Galilean Exorcist: His Exorcisms in Social and Political Context (London: T & T Clark, 2012), 52-55; Twelftree, Exorcist, 23-34; and Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism, 186-189. 26 Jesus’ exorcistic activities are too numerous to list here. The Synoptic Gospels detail all of Jesus’ exorcisms; John has none, though that gospel does at least allow for the possibility of people being possessed. Mark in particular is universally regarded as having a special concern for exorcism. See E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: The Penguin Press, 1993), 149-150, for a concise list. For the possibility of possession in John’s Gospel, see p. 304, note 11. 227 describe possessed people as having an “unclean spirit” (pneuma akatharton). In a few cases, such as Luke’s description of the Gerasene demoniac, the epithets of “unclean spirit” and “demon” are ascribed to the same possessing spirit. This indicates that the two, though originally distinct from one another, could be at least conflated on the linguistic level. Functionally, they served the same purpose, namely to possess people and cause illness and other maladies. Jesus himself exorcizes a wide variety of “ill” people in the Gospels: a mute; an epileptic; people suffering from erratic behavior and engaging in self-harm, etc. Because early Christians thought that they shared in the power of Jesus, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, they also thought themselves capable of exorcizing and healing wherever they went. By explicitly linking maladies like epilepsy with the Greek daemon, the Gospel writers certainly opened up a wide variety of conditions under 27 which suffering people could obtain exorcism. This connection was already current in the Jewish world, but the Christians could now attribute all manners of possession and illness by daemon in the Gentile context to unclean spirits or evil entities in league with 28 the Devil. As for the actual performance of his exorcisms, Jesus did not use the sort of magical aides that were so popular among his contemporaries both in Judea and in the Gentile world. Instead, he used a variety of other methods, including simple prayer, adjurations, and expulsion of spirits from a distance. In addition, he sometimes confronted spirits in a dramatic and confrontational manner, used specific words of power (e.g. Mark 9:25: “I command you. Come out of him, and never enter him again!”), and transferred them into some other object or being (such as when he made Legion go 27 Twelftree explains, “Luke has broadened the scope of the demoniac. He has blurred the distinction between demon possession and other kinds of sickness so that in effect all sickness (and healing) is given a demonic and cosmic dimension. Luke believes that the church has a warrant for including exorcism as part of its mission. The basis of this warrant comes, first, in the idea that Jesus is the pattern for the ministry of the early church. Just as exorcism was an integral part of Jesus’ ministry, so also it was to be an integral— though not the only or the most important—part of the church’s ministry.” Twelftree, Name, 154. 28 While modern-day scholars have proposed possession to be the healing of very real diseases and psychological conditions, we should recall that is not what people of the period believed; the Gospels clearly indicate that those who underwent exorcism were possessed rather than suffering from ordinary illnesses known at the time. In the ancient mind, the daemon and other spirits could certainly cause these things, so we cannot dismiss them as mere misunderstanding of modern diseases and conditions. 228 29 into the pigs in Mark 5:12-13). All of these methods would have been intelligible and familiar to both Jewish and Gentile audiences. Though Jesus did not employ amulets and other devices, he did share some exorcistic practices with other figures of the time; and this rendered his exorcisms entirely believable in the historical context in which he performed. They were, in effect, a native mode of persuasion for Jew and Gentile alike. But exactly what were Jesus’ exorcisms supposed to prove to spectators? In other words, to what end were they supposed to be persuasive? Since the Gospels do not explicitly address Jesus’ self-understanding of exorcism, his intentions have been the matter of some scholarly debate. A safe interpretation is that Jesus did not perform exorcisms to confirm his identity as messiah—because the casting out of demons was not expected of that figure in Jewish tradition. Rather, some have argued that Jesus’ exorcisms were meant to be evidence of the “in-breaking” of the Kingdom of God that would herald the imminent eschaton (i.e. the end of the world). According to Jewish thought from the Intertestamental period, the eschaton was supposed to be preceded by and accompanied with the binding of Satan and his evil forces, leading ultimately to his 30 final destruction. In other words, for Jesus’ Jewish audience, the exorcisms were a native mode of persuasion meant to convince them that the Kingdom of God was at hand and that the end of the world would soon follow. This is entirely consistent with the argument made by many modern scholars that, in addition to being an exorcist, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. Regardless of what Jesus’ exorcisms meant for his audience at the time, the exorcisms performed by both his immediate and later followers throughout the Roman Empire were supposed to be proof-positive of the truth and authenticity of their teaching regarding him. That Jesus’ disciples performed exorcisms as part of their ministry in Judea can be seen in the Synoptic Gospels, though there is no evidence that Jesus charged 29 Twelftree, Exorcist, 143-156. 30 Twelftree, Exorcist, 228. Witherington writes, “If one closely evaluates texts (such as Isa. 24:21-22; 1 Enoch 10.4ff; Jub. 23.39; 1QS 4.18-19; T.Mos. 10.1; T. Levi 18:12; T. Jud. 25.3; and Rev. 20:2-3), then part of the Jewish expectation was that Satan would be vanquished at the end of the age. Jesus, then, would be claiming in a saying such as Luke 11:20 (which coheres well with other similarly synoptic material; cf. Mark 3:20ff.) that he was bringing in the final eschatological age. This was evidenced by his bringing about the demise of Satan's control over human lives.” See Ben Witherington III, The Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 204. 229 them specifically to perform exorcisms. In other words, exorcisms were part of the general ministry. For example, Luke (10:17) explicitly portrays exorcism as part of the 31 ministry of the universal Church. The passage depicts seventy disciples returning to Jesus after having been sent out on mission. Upon returning, they state, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” Jesus responds by saying, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” The implications of this for the Greek-reading audience were clear: the Greek daemon is intimately connected to Satan, and those who make them submit are of the Kingdom of God. Other passages, namely the passage of the unknown exorcist (Mark 9:38-39) and the disciples’ failure to cast out a demon (Mark 9:14-29), also indicate a memory that the followers were conducting exorcisms while Jesus was still alive. Other New Testament materials beyond the Synoptics likewise indicate that leaders within the very early church performed exorcism as part of their proselytization efforts. This is worth examining in some detail because the mission was directed to Jews (for a short while at least) and Gentiles alike, thereby previewing Christianity’s translations into other cultures. Some of the earliest references come from the letters of Paul, though he does not explicitly state that he performed any exorcisms. Twelftree concludes from four different passages that Paul modeled himself on Jesus in the 32 performance of miracles, some of which were most likely exorcisms. References to miracles (i.e. signs and wonders) in Paul’s letters are particularly interesting because Paul directed them towards Gentiles specifically, meaning that he saw such things leading them to conversion. Writing to the Church in Corinth (2 Cor 12:12), he states, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, signs and wonders and mighty works.” Likewise, in 1 Cor 2:4-5, he states “My speech and my proclamation 31 Twelftree, Name, 140-141; 154. Twelftree explains, “Just as Jesus had authority to perform exorcisms (Luke 4:36) and to heal (cf. 5:24; 7:8, 10; 20:1-8), and as the apostles received authority over demons (9:1), authority to defeat Satan, so the early Christians had been given that authority to be involved in the same preliminary defeat of Satan.” 32 Twelftree, Name, 64-7; the passages are Rom. 15:18-19; 2 Cor 12:12; 1 Thess 1:5; and 1 Cor 2:4-5. 230 were not with plausible words of wisdom [or persuasiveness of wisdom], but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” But it is Paul’s letter to the Romans that connects the working of signs and wonders with persuasive proselytization among a Gentile population or at least a community of Jews living among Gentiles: For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem 33 and as far around as Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ. Though Paul does not specifically mention exorcism in this passage, it surely would have been one of his “signs and wonders.” Exorcism as a native mode of persuasion would have naturally been more prominent in some locations and times than in others as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. The practice may have started with the historical Jesus in Palestine and among Jewish Christians, but its real flourishing occurred within the Gentile community. Most of this testimony comes from the early Church Fathers of the period, who speak to the efficacy of Christian exorcism in the Roman world and its ability to win converts. Among these numerous highly educated pagan-converts from the second century are Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Theophilus of Antioch. One voice born into Christianity, Iraenaes of Lyons, also regarded Christian exorcism to be a persuasive path to conversion. For us, however, pagan-turned-Christian advocates are most relevant because they straddled both sides of the religious and cultural divide. These individuals were not outsiders to Greco-Roman Gentile culture trying to project foreign beliefs (such as a Jewish Christian would upon pagan audiences). Rather, they were natives themselves who reinterpreted their own culture’s relationship with the quasi-divine daemones and the ways in which a person could deal with them. This should not be forgotten as we move forward in our exploration. Some of our earliest evidence for the full adoption of Christian exorcism as a 34 native mode of persuasion comes to us from Justin Martyr (c. 100-165). Justin was a 33 Romans 15:18-19 34 Other early evidence is the so-called longer ending to the Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) and the so- called Letter to Diognetus. See Twelftree, Name, 231-238. 231 Gentile of Greco-Roman descent, had devoted himself to philosophy, specifically Plato and Socrates, before becoming Christian, and continued to wear philosopher robes well after his conversion. Justin did not totally abandon his pagan past after conversion, continuing to reference it as a Christian advocate, and his background in philosophy is particularly important as he could understand both the quotidian and intellectual aspects of the daemon. In other words, Justin was able to explain how the daemon interacted with ordinary people as well as how they fit into the Greco-Roman cosmological and theological order. Most of Justin’s demonology can be found in his First Apology (c. 150s) where he explicitly links the neutral daemon of Greco-Roman religion to the evil demons of the Jewish and Jewish Christian world-view. Here, he also attests to the efficacy of Christian exorcism in handling those spirits. For Justin, exorcism revealed a larger cosmological truth, namely Christ’s victory over Evil. The exorcisms that the Christians conduct on a daily basis constituted irrefutable proof to Justin of the cosmic subjugation not only of demons but of Satan himself. Wherever Christians exorcized demons, believed Justin, they were in fact reenacting this cosmic victory right here on Earth. As one scholar has observed about Justin, “…it should not be forgotten that his [Justin’s] practical concern, as with his fellow Christians, lay in winning the increasing fight against evil spirits which were seeking to win control of the universe and the souls of men.” Another scholar has 35 described Justin’s view of the universe as “demon-ridden.” It was only through Christ, who acted through the ordinary Christian in exorcism, that this “demon-ridden” earthly existence could be transformed into something more heavenly. Justin, having been raised a pagan and being familiar with the activity of the traditional gods and daemon in the Greco-Roman context, no doubt knew they could possess and cause harm to people. Following his conversion, he found a grander explanation of these divine activities in Jewish and Christian demonology as found in such texts as 1 Enoch. Following these texts, the First Apology firmly equates the morally ambiguous daemon and gods of traditional Greek and Roman religion with the demons of 35 L.W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 110. Also Theodoor Korteweg, “Justin Martyr and his Demon-Ridden Universe,” in Vos and Otten, Demons and the Devil, 146. Demonic infestation of the world through the daemon is actually quite important in Justin’s overall theology. 232 the Judeo-Christian worldview. In attempting to explain why Christians should not be considered atheists—a charge frequently leveled at them because they denied the existence of other gods and divinities—Justin reveals that Christians do acknowledge these deities; it is just they see them in a different light, as purely evil demons rather than potentially good divinities: “…we not only deny that they who did such things as these are gods, but assert that they are wicked and impious demons, whose actions will not bear 36 comparison with those even of men desirous of virtue.” Here, Justin, having been raised within Greco-Roman culture, has not only made room for the entities that populated the pagan worldview within the Judeo-Christian context, but transformed them into evil spirits. Proof that the pagan gods and daemones are actually evil spirits (demons) can be found, so Justin argues, in the effective practice of Christian exorcism. As Twelftree has noted, “Justin considered exorcism the most important weapon of evangelism Christians possessed against the various threats to the church in a demon-infested world.” Justin’s descriptions of exorcisms, which he provides in a number of his writings, would have been immediately intelligible to any non-Christian in the Roman world since pagans could manipulate daemones in a similar manner. The only thing that distinguished Christian exorcists was their use of the power-authority of Jesus, whose name they 37 invoked during exorcisms to command harmful spirits. The connection between the Christian exorcism and the Christian church’s ability to gain converts can also be seen in Justin’s Second Apology: But “Jesus,” His name as man and Saviour, has also significance. For He was made man also, as we before said, having been conceived according to the will of God the Father, for the sake of believing men, and for the destruction of demons. And now you can learn this from what is under your own observation. For numberless demoniacs throughout the whole world, and in your city, many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ [italics mine], who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, have healed and do heal, rendering helpless and driving the possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be cured by all 38 the other exorcists, and those who used incantations and drugs. 36 Chapter V. First Apology in Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, 164. 37 Twelftree, Name, 242. 38 Second Apology in Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, 190. 233 Here Justin argues that Christian exorcists are beating pagan exorcists at their own game in solving issues related to problematic spirits. As Twelftree has commented, this is not necessarily proof that Christians have the correct belief, but that their beliefs enabled 39 successful exorcism. As such, if one were to become Christian, then one presumably would have access to the power of Jesus to control the daemon. The second pagan-turned-Christian writer who provides evidence of exorcism becoming a native mode of persuasion in the Roman world is Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160- c.225). Like Justin Martyr, Tertullian was well-educated and converted as an adult. He essentially lived half his life as a pagan and half his life as a Christian. As an adult convert, Tertullian would have been fully aware of the important role that both the gods and the daemon played within the Greco-Roman religious context. First, as a Christian convert, Tertullian recognized the reality of the gods and daemon in the world. They really did exist and could have influence over humanity. However, this influence was decidedly negative, as all of these kinds of spirits were actually demonic in nature. In a manner similar to Justin Martyr, Tertullian demonized all other gods and spirits, finding them present in many aspects of the Roman religion and culture of his day. For him, demons had their “bodies” in statues representing the gods and even ordinary images of the dead. (XII De Spectaculis; VII, De Idolatria). According to Tertullian, people could and actually did get possessed by spirits after attending the theater or the circus games, both of which had sacred associations in the pagan context (XXVI De Spectaculis). Even if Tertullian considered the Greco-Roman gods and daemon to be purely evil in nature rather than morally ambiguous, both he and his pagan contemporaries agreed that these spirits could possess people and influence them in a negative manner. In this regard, Tertullian acknowledges the existence and widespread practice of pagan exorcists, but also notes that they were rather ineffective in comparison with the demonstrable efficacy of Christian ones. The two forms of exorcism thus competed with one another in the so-called “spiritual marketplace.” One important thing that distinguished pagan and Christian exorcists, according to Tertullian, was that the latter did not charge any sort of fee for the expulsion of a spirit and merely performed the 39 Twelftree, Name, 242. 234 service out of concern for the well being of the possessed. In defending Christians from persecution in his Apology, Tertullian mocks the ineffectiveness of pagan exorcisms in comparison with those performed by a Christian: Who would save you, I mean, from the attacks of those spirits of evil, which without reward or hire we exorcise? This alone would be revenge enough for us, that you were henceforth left free to the possession of unclean spirits. But instead of taking into account what is due to us for the important protection we afford you, and though we are not merely no trouble to you, but in fact necessary to your well-being, you prefer to hold us enemies, as indeed we are, yet not of man, but 40 rather of his error. For Tertullian, the efficacy of Christian exorcism was proof-positive that Christians were should not be persecuted. Instead of representing an atheistic threat to the Empire’s well- being, as most thought, he argued that they provided an important spiritual service to the entire population, and did so altruistically. Elsewhere in his Apology, Tertullian is so confident of the efficacy of Christian exorcism that he is willing, at least in his treatise, to stake the life of a Christian exorcist on his ability to cast out evil spirits and heal the possessed. In effect, what Tertullian calls for (rhetorically) is a public demonstration of exorcism as a native mode of persuasion. First, he charges that the deities of popular cults, such as that of Caelestis and Aesculapius, are nothing more than evil demonic entities. Then he argues that those same deities could offer no resistance to the spiritual machinations of a Christian exorcist. Here Tertullian claims that the pagan audience and judges of the contest would undoubtedly be convinced of the efficacy of the exorcism and that the Christian was not some kind of magician: Let a person be brought before your tribunals, who is plainly under demoniacal possession. The wicked spirit, bidden to speak by a follower of Christ, will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a demon, as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god. Or, if you will, let there be produced one of the god-possessed, as they are supposed, who, inhaling at the altar, conceive divinity from the fumes, who are delivered of it by retching, who vent it forth in agonies of gasping. Let that same Virgin Caelestis herself the rain-promiser, let Aesculapius discoverer of medicines, ready to prolong the life of Socordius, and Tenatius, and Asclepiodotus, now in the last extremity, if they would not confess, in their fear of lying to a Christian, that they were demons, then and there shed the 40 Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume III, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, 45. XXXVII. 235 blood of that most impudent follower of Christ. What clearer than a work like that? what [sic] more trustworthy than such a proof? The simplicity of truth is thus set forth; its own worth sustains it; no ground remains for the lease suspicion. Do you say that it is done by magic, or some trick of that sort? You will not say anything of the sort, if you have been allowed the use of your ears and eyes. For what argument can you bring against a thing that is exhibited to the eye in its 41 naked reality? Tertullian, though he was probably the most forward in calling for public demonstrations of exorcism, was not the only convert from paganism writing in the second century to attest to Christian exorcism as a native mode or persuasion. Other pagan-turned- Christians, such as Tatian (c. 120-c. 180) and Theophilus of Antioch (d. 180s) argued that either Christian exorcism or simply becoming a Christian were effective means for dealing with harmful spirits. One of the most interesting pieces of evidence for exorcism as a native mode of persuasion during late antiquity comes to us through a treatise, Contra Celsus (Against Celsus), by Origen in the third century. This massive work was written to counter the effects of a particularly scathing and influential denunciation of Christianity by the second-century anti-Christian polemicist and philosopher known as Celsus. That Origen felt compelled to take up his formidable pen against this long-dead philosopher tells us that Celsus’s criticisms of Christians and their religion were so telling that they raised significant concern among intellectuals in the community (such as Ambrose, who prompted Origen to write it). There are many facets to explore in the work, but our main concern here is what it says about Christian exorcism in the second and third centuries. Most importantly, perhaps, it reveals how an educated pagan of the second century 42 viewed the practice. 41 Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume III, 37. Tertullian, in some of his other writings, makes matter of fact references to the reality of demonic possession, the power of Christian exorcism, and the pagan gods as demons. In his treatise, “On Idolatry,” he charges those making idols of conferring “bodies on demons” (Idolatry VIII). Tackling non-Christian exorcists, he mentions that they should not be praised since they are acting in conjunction with the very spirit they are expelling. Praise would be better suited than exorcisms (Idolatry XL). As to the normalcy of Christian exorcism he writes, “But as for demons, that is, your genii, we have been in the habit of exorcising them, not of swearing by them, and thereby conferring on them divine honour.” (Apology XXXII). 42 Contra Celsus contains some 70% of Celsus’s original anti-Christian treatise, On the True Doctrine. 236 The main criticism that Celsus levels against Christian exorcism—and the one that reveals it to be a native mode of persuasion in the Empire—is that it was essentially 43 the same as exorcisms conducted by magicians and sorcerers. Celsus charges that the Christian exorcists “get the power which they seem to possess by pronouncing the names of certain daemons and incantations…” This, he says, was similar to Jesus, who was able to perform miracles such as the expulsion of demons due to powerful magic rather than 44 some sort of divine nature. Celsus then drives his point home by making a direct comparison between Christians, who perform miracles (including exorcism) and magic- wielding Egyptians (renowned for the magical and esoteric arts) who could be found to produce similar effects: Come, let us believe that these miracles really were done by you….the works of sorcerers who profess to do wonderful miracles, and the accomplishments of those who are taught by the Egyptians, who for a few obols make known their sacred lore in the middle of the market-place and drive daemons out of men and blow away diseases and invoke the souls of heroes…Since these men do these wonders, ought we to think them sons of God? Or ought we to say that they are 45 the practices of wicked men possessed by and evil daemon? Celsus, as an educated philosopher, saw such things as deceptions wrought upon the uneducated. In fact, such types of magic, as he had been told by someone considered knowledgeable in the magical arts (an Egyptian musician), “were effective with 46 uneducated people and with men of depraved moral character…” Christians, he says, specifically targeted “anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, [and] anyone childish…” and “show[ed] that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, 43 Twelftree concludes, “In light of what we learn from Celsus, whose information is likely to be dominated by his experience in Alexandria, we have to take seriously that in the late second century, exorcism among Christians in that city was indistinguishable from other kinds of exorcisms: books of spells, barbarian names, and rites that included at least the act of blowing in conducting exorcisms for profit.” Twelftree, Name, 276. 44 Origen, Contra Celsus, 9-10 and R. Joseph Hoffman, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), On the True Doctrine, 53-54. Chadwick’s translation is of Contra Celsus in its entirety whereas Hoffman’s is a reconstruction of Celsus’s text only. 45 Origen, Contra Celsum, 62-63 and Hoffman, On the True Doctrine, 59-60. 46 Chadwick, Contra, 355-356 and Hoffman, On the True Doctrine, 59-60. 237 47 dishonorable and stupid, and only slaves, women and little children.” Whether or not the Christians or the magicians were simply deceiving uneducated people is not the issue for us here, but rather Celsus’s assertion that Christian miracles are believable to the uneducated because they also believe in the magic practiced by magicians. In short, according to Celsus, the Christian message, as evidenced by the performance of an exorcism, had the same level of credibility as the secrets of a magician who also practiced exorcism. Origen’s responses to these charges, some seventy-five years later, are also revealing of how exorcism operated as a native mode of persuasion in the third century. If Celsus accused the Christians of imitating magicians, then Origen took pains to show that the Christian brand of exorcism was, in fact, fundamentally different. This might seem to us a deviation from the concept of a native mode of persuasion—namely exorcism by incantations and magical papyri like the magicians—but Origen stresses that Christian exorcism is even simpler than those methods: one only had to be Christian and invoke 48 Jesus’ name. This last part, as we remember, was a native mode of persuasion linked to the invocation of power-authority of calling down the help of a power like Apollo. The simplicity of the Christian exorcism—and we are not referring to formal rites here—must have been appealing since literally anyone could perform an exorcism by invoking the name of Jesus. Origen reveals how it worked in his own day: [The sprit that possesses the Pythian priestess] must be like that race of daemons which many Christians drive out of people who suffer from them, without any curious magical art or sorcerer’s device, but with prayer alone and very simple adjurations and formulas such as the simplest person could use. For generally speaking it is uneducated people who do this kind of work [he is saying that some Christians are not even smart enough to do magic]. The power in the word of Christ shows the worthlessness and weakness of the daemons; for it is not necessary to have a wise man who is competent in the rational proofs of the faith in order that they should be defeated and yield to expulsion from the soul and 49 body of a man. 47 Hoffman, On the True Doctrine, 72-73. 48 Such forms did continue among Christian exorcisms. In Egypt particularly, do we find papyri containing all sorts of non-Christian like modes of exorcism coupled with Christian elements. These could have been used among both Christians and non-Christians. 49 Chadwick, Contra, 397-398. 238 Elsewhere in Contra Celsus, Origen states that such exorcisms could even be performed by “bad men.” Such was, he claimed, the power-authority of the name of Jesus. In stating the efficacy of Christian exorcism, Origen is not so much trying to convince people like 50 Celsus, but rather people who know little about Christianity or are “weak in faith.” His implied directive is for his reader to test his arguments by going out and observing the efficacy of Christian exorcism in the community. In presenting the daemons as demons, Origen is actually meeting pagans on common ground. Instead of acknowledging them as figments of imagination or misguided superstition, he is affirming their reality and making room for them in the Christian world-view. Even by casting the daemons as wholly evil, Origen is still finding common grounds with the pagans because “it is not only we [Christians] who say there 51 are evil daemons, but almost all people who hold that daemons exist.” In other words, even among pagans, there existed the belief in malignant spirits that caused all sorts of harm, such as disease, famine, bad weather, droughts, the death of animals, and plagues. To both Christians and pagans, the daemons were the “direct creators” of these kinds of 52 calamities and carried them out like “public executioners” upon humanity. It was on this ground that Origen met the non-Christians regarding exorcism. In both the pagan and Christian view, there existed harmful spirits that needed to be dealt with. Exorcism, either of the Christian or pagan (magical) variety, was one method of handling them. And it was in this arena that Christians excelled far above their pagan counterparts. Origen is so confident of Christian exorcism that he essentially challenges non-believers to witness its effectiveness for themselves. If they found the Christian exorcist to be successful, they 50 Origen notes in his preface that “it is as though there was not in the mere facts a clear refutation better than any written reply, which dispels the false charges and deprives the accusations of any plausibility and force.” Origen says that the book is not for true Christians (who presumably know what he is about to say) but “either for those entirely without experience of faith in Christ, or for those whom the apostle calls ‘weak in faith...’” Origen, Contra, 3; 6. Origen also claims, matter-of-factly, that Christians “by prayers and formulas from the holy scriptures, drive [demons] out of human souls and from places where they have established themselves, and sometimes even from animals,” to whom they occasionally give harm. Origen, Contra, 450. 51 Origen, Contra, 452. 52 Origen, Contra, 31; 474-475. Origen, like Justin and Tertullian, thought that the gods were demons and that they fed upon the sacrifices offered to them. There are many references in Contra Celsus concerning the diabolical nature of the pagan deities and how they literally feed off of the sacrifices offered unto them. 239 might at least start to consider becoming Christian. In fact, receiving baptism was a kind of preemptive exorcism, as we will discuss shortly, since it provided protection against harmful spirits like the daemons. In the end, we do not find any statement in Origen’s Contra Celsus that says a person converted as a direct result of either seeing an exorcism or being exorcized themselves. But if we take into consideration Celsus’s acknowledgment that Christian exorcists in the second century were akin to magicians and other non-Christian exorcists, it is easy to see how non-Christians could jump from the more magical brand of exorcism to the Christian brand. The practice was close enough to those with which they were already familiar. Trying a different version of exorcism, one that was simpler and free of charge, might not seem so alien. Instead of relying upon magical papyri, special charms, incantations, spells, or seeking the help of a god like Asclepius, they could simply invoke the name of Jesus. Both Christians and pagan exorcists played on the same field, so to speak, when it came to “manhandling” the daemon. But unlike pagan exorcists, the Christians sought to drive all competition from the field by demonstrating that the power- authority of Jesus could command any and all pagan spirits. Exorcism as a “Native Mode of Persuasion” in Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England Many exorcisms throughout the early part of the Middle Ages in areas beyond the Roman Empire were conducted in an impromptu manner. The most important agents of these kinds of exorcisms were not the minor clergy or even ordinary Christians as had been the case in the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. Rather, as Christianity spread into Germanic territory, the main purveyors of exorcism became the saints. These individuals, whether living (as holy men and women) or dead (as entombed relics), were instrumental in providing relief from demons and other spirits as Christianity in Frankish Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England. Many of these cultures continued to hold pagan beliefs and practices for centuries following the introduction of Christianity, and the new religion needed to continue demonstrating its superior ability in dealing with hostile and malevolent forces. Thus exorcism in these Germanic cultures not only helped to convert 240 pagan segments of the society, but also to reinforce the slow process of Christianization. Nominal Christians were still just as likely to engage in pagan practices to deal with harmful spirits as they were Christian ones. By offering a constant source for exorcism and healing, namely at the tomb of a saint, Christianity aimed to compete more effectively against traditional remedies or native religious specialists. Because Frankish Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England (the two areas we will use as examples) were quasi-Christian by the start of the early Middle Ages, when exorcisms began to be recorded in some numbers, we should take a look at how they reinforced Christianization and sometimes led to the conversion of non-Christians. To this end, Peter Brown has provided what is generally considered the classic explanation of how saints and their exorcisms operated in such a time and place beyond the Mediterranean. According to Brown, exorcisms at the shrines of saints during this period demonstrated both the praesentia of the saint at that particular location and their potentia which, by virtue of their holiness, was “the power of God that carried unanswerable authority.” Against this “clean” power of the saints was the dark power of the demonic which infected people not only with possession but also with all manners of ailments, madness, and diseases. The saint (as an extension of God) acted in the manner of a late-Roman judge, putting the demon (or harassing spirit) on public trial, using spiritual torture (i.e. the saint’s potentia) to exact submission and expulsion of the demon, and thus healing the person under its influence. In the end, Brown notes that it was “the liberating precision of exorcism that commended itself so strongly to late antique men. It was a deeply assuring 53 drama for men anxious about themselves and their society.” Whatever anxiety people had, whether it be affliction by a hostile spirit, an illness, madness, or fear of violence stemming from political rebellion, the potentia of the saint provided recourse and assurance that could be demonstrated in a public setting at the tomb-church. To begin our discussion we must first look to the saints themselves who, as living holy men and women, exercised the potentia of God over evil spirits. All throughout the Mediterranean world of late-antiquity there were numerous saints engaged in 53 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 110; 106-113. Brown’s argument is more complex than this and takes into account the reintegrative aspects of exorcism, namely that outcasts of society in the form of the possessed could find suitable social and religious meaning at the saint’s shrine. 241 thaumaturgy (miracle-working). Part of this thaumaturgy was, naturally, exorcism of demons and the healing of all sorts of maladies caused by them. A brief glance at any hagiography from the period illustrates the ability of the holy person to “man-handle” demons. Athanasius’s Life of Antony is replete with the hermit-saint’s struggles with demons, both literally and figuratively. Some of Antony’s thaumaturgy included exorcism of others so afflicted. Saint Simeon Stylites (c. 390-459), who lived upon a small pillar dozens of feet in the air for some decades, likewise was able to cast out spirits and heal the possessed. A younger version of him, Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger, 54 also had the power of exorcism as his hagiographer, Evagrius, tells us. Eugippius, the biographer of St. Severinus of Noricum, noted that the saint conducted exorcisms through 55 prayer, fasting, and using the sign of the cross. Jerome writes that Hilarion overcame demonic attacks on his person and “had often cured many Saracens possessed by 56 demons” as a by-product of his holy life. Outside of the empire in Frankish (Merovingian) Gaul, which was even less Christianized, the holy man Caesarius of Arles (c. 468-542) was said to have performed all sorts of miracles and exorcisms for the still pagan population. Christianity was still very tenuous in the region, and the Frankish king Clovis (c. 466-511) had only recently accepted baptism. Nevertheless, in this semi-Christianized environment, miraculous healing and exorcism came to be viewed as complimentary “wonder-working” that often occurred in tandem. Caesarius was said to have healed those who made contact with his clothing (as had the Apostles Peter and Paul) and through the use of relics. For his exorcisms, he used sacramentals, laying on of hands, anointing with oil, and prayer. He was even said to have raised the dead. Miracles were said to continue after his death via 57 contact relics, but no exorcisms were reported at his tomb. 54 Pauline Allen, Evagrius Scholasticus, the Church Historian (Leuven: Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense, 1981), 262. 55 Joan M. Petersen, The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Their Late Antique Cultural Background (Toronto, Ont., Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), 113-114. 56 Carolinne White, ed. Early Christian Lives (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 103, 92; chs. 6-8; 25. 57 Petersen, Dialogues, 109-111. 242 Though Caesarius is just one example of how the Eastern hagiographical trope of the holy man had spread beyond the Mediterranean into Gaul, the activities of St. Martin, in life and in death, provide us with the best example of how exorcism acted as a native mode of persuasion in Christianizing Gaul. As a missionary to Gaul, Martin is well known for his activity in temple-conversion, that is destroying or converting pagan shrines into Christian ones. However, Martin was also well known as a healer and an exorcist. If he set about converting the landscape of Gaul by destroying one pagan shrine at a time, he also set out to convert the pagan population and reaffirm Christian converts in their faith by demonstrating his potentia through the subjugation of malevolent spirits. Much of what we know about Martin comes to us from the hagiography of Sulpicius 58 Severus’s Life of Martin. According to Severus, Martin was almost ordained to the minor order of exorcist prior to setting off on his missionary endeavors, thus setting the stage for him to become a holy man with power over demons. Regardless of whether or not this ordination occurred, Martin did conduct informal exorcisms throughout his time in Gaul. Some of these exorcisms acted as mode of persuasion for the pagan population, as illustrated by the story of the conversion of a certain proconsul named Taetradius. This official apparently had a slave who had become possessed by some sort of malevolent spirit and sought help, and Martin seems to have used his exorcistic power not merely to help the slave but to get Taetradius to convert. After being asked by the proconsul to exorcize the slave, Martin indicated that he was unable to enter the home of a pagan (Taetradius). This in turn elicited a promise from the proconsul that should his servant be exorcized, he would become a Christian. In the end, Martin agreed to go to his house, and performed the exorcism successfully. As a result, Taetradius kept his promise to convert: “When he saw this [the exorcism], Taetradius believed in the Lord Jesus and was immediately made a catechumen; not long afterwards he was baptized and continued always to have an 58 Severus himself was “converted” by Martin to give up his high-ranking job as a jurist and to live an ascetic lifestyle. Severus had heard of Martin from his friend Paulinus, who Martin had cured of an eye ailment. Severus’s Life of Martin was an immensely popular work, which followed the topos of Athanasius’s Life of Antony, is remarkable for the genre because Severus actually wrote it during Martin’s lifetime rather than years or decades after his death. 243 59 extraordinary affection for Martin as the person responsible for his salvation.” In this case, we see an exorcism prompting a pagan official to become a catechumen. This is noteworthy because the exorcism is merely the impetus for the official’s conversion. Once made a catechumen, he had to undergo a period of catechesis in order to receive baptism. Taetradius’s conversion was, ultimately, one part miracle and one part teaching. Since Martin’s activities as an exorcist are part of his hagiography, their historicity is, of course, suspect. Taetradius’s conversion may never have happened at all 60 and could be modeled upon similar stories from the Gospels. What is more important for our purposes is that Martin’s method of persuasion by exorcism was historically plausible for Severus’s audience. They had to find the story credible if it was going to have any effect at all. In addition, Severus’s audience was supposed to find Taetradius relatable. As a proconsul, Taetradius seems to have been a Roman, or at least a Gallo- Roman, and his worldview would have allowed for the possession of people by daemones. Taetradius’s worldview would have also allowed for the existence of exorcists, whether or not they were Christian. Since Gaul was both quasi-Roman and quasi-Christian at the time of Martin and for centuries thereafter, other types of native modes of persuasion existed based upon the pagan population’s expectations. One of these was the healing of various ailments, illnesses, and madness by exorcism. Not simply limited to possession, spirits in Gaul (interpreted by Christians as demons) were believed to cause various physical and mental misfortunes. Martin’s activities as a kind of medical exorcist are best told by a later hagiographer and successor to his bishopric, Gregory of Tours (c. 538-594). Though Martin did conduct healing as part of his missionary campaigns, it was in death, as a collection of relics, that the saint used his exorcistic powers to reaffirm the nominally Christian population of Gaul in their faith. Two of Gregory’s most notable writings, his Life of St. Martin and the History of the Franks (Historia Francorum), are filled with all sorts of miraculous occurrences at the tombs of the saints, with Martin being the most noteworthy and effective. Among these miracles are numerous accounts of exorcisms of 59 White, Early Christian Lives, 150. XVII. 60 Philip Burton, “The Discourse of Later Latin,” in Philip Rousseau, ed., A Companion to Late Antiquity (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 337-338. 244 possessed people and those suffering some sort of illness as a result of demonic 61 influence. The exorcisms typically follow a pattern whereby the possessed would either come to Martin’s tomb or hang about the church for spontaneous exorcism; the expulsion of the demon would then come about as a result of proximity to the saint’s relics. Sometimes the demoniac would rave publicly or demonstrate some type of illness, only to be healed in visible and certain fashion, such as by the vomiting of pus and blood thought to contain the afflicting demon. A typical exorcism might go as follows: In those same days, one of the possessed in the basilica of the blessed man cried out that he was suffering many demonic torments, and said that he was being violently expelled by the bishop from the body he had captured; then he fell to the ground and began to spew putrid blood from his mouth. After he had lain there for 62 almost two hours, the demon was expelled, and he rose up cleansed. Such scenes were apparently common and the possessed were ubiquitous in and around churches. In fact, Gregory glosses over many cases of exorcism at churches and the 63 tombs of saints, simply saying: “many possessed people too were cleansed.” Besides recording exorcisms at the tomb of Martin, Gregory also tells us of a number of exorcisms that occurred at the tombs of other Gallic saints or by contact with their relics. So how do these hagiographical accounts of exorcism indicate that the phenomenon acted as a native mode of persuasion in late-antique and early medieval Gaul? Apart from Severus’s tale of Taetradius’s conversion, Gregory nor the other writers indicate that exorcism convinced non-Christians to become Christian. Gaul, by the time Gregory was writing, was at least nominally Christian for the most part, even if pagan beliefs and practices still flourished. Still, exorcism acted as a persuasive force within the still-Christianizing society as it reaffirmed the Christian religion vis-à-vis the traditional religion. In this capacity, it proved to be very persuasive. Public acts of healing and exorcism demonstrated the efficacy of the saints to such a degree that non- Christians or nominal Christians would not need any traditional methods to treat possession and certain illnesses. By promoting these deeds of power, churchmen in Gaul 61 For instance, see Gregory of Tours, Lives and Miracles, trans. Giselle de Nie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), VSM 1.381. 1.20.1; 2.28.2; 2.34.2 among many others. Gregory notes how others, that is Severus and Paulinus, also extol Martin’s miracles and exorcistic activities, p. 429, VSM, 1.2.2. 62 Lives and Miracles, 611, VSM, 2.37. 63 Lives and Miracles, 813; VSM 4.24.1. 245 used the healing and exorcizing efficacy of the entombed saints to strengthen Christian belief in the population. Gregory in the prologue for Book I of his Life of Martin tells us this much: The miracles which the Lord our God deigned to perform through the blessed Martin, his priest, while he was situated in the body, he now deigns to confirm every day in order to strengthen the faith of believers. The same Lord who now illuminates his tomb with powerful deeds worked in him when he was in the world, and he now presents benefits to Christians through him…. Let no one, therefore, have any doubt about the powerful deeds done earlier when he sees the gifts of the signs being given in the present: when he sees the lame raised up, the blind receiving their sight, demons being put to flight, and all other kinds of 64 illnesses being cured by his healing. Sometimes the exorcistic power of the saints competed directly with that of native religious specialists who could also relieve the possessed. Gregory relates one tale from the “The Miracles of the Martyr Julian” in which a boy was exorcized by some relics of the saint. Sent by the bishop to retrieve some of Julian’s relics, the cleric charged with the task encountered a young man on the road, upon his return, who had been possessed. The young man’s relatives accused the cleric of having killed him by “magical arts,” thus equating the churchman with some kind of wizard or sorcerer. But the cleric instead employed the relics to exorcize the youth, who then “vomited out both blood and the demon and left cleansed.” The effect of all this was persuasion, as the exorcism 65 “confirmed [the boy’s] faith…” 64 Lives and Miracles, 423, VSM, Book I Prologue. 65 Lives and Miracles, 405-407, VSJ 44. The potentia of Martin and other saints vis-à-vis traditional practices can be seen in two additional cases of exorcism that Gregory recounts. The first is a story about a certain Aquilius who had apparently been “disturbed by an incursion of the devil” while out hunting in the woods. According to Gregory, he subsequently “lost his senses.” His parents then followed the traditional curative exorcisms by giving him “ligatures and potions from sorcerers and wizards.” After these had failed, they decided to try the tomb of St. Martin. The power of the saint apparently worked, as the young man recovered and then abandoned his parents in order to serve the church at Tours. This last line likely means that he was a pagan and, after having been exorcized, decided to convert, leave his home, and remain at the church. Lives and Miracles, 497, VSM 1.26. In another case, which Gregory learned about personally, the wife of one of the church’s servants, Serenatus, fell to the ground mute while coming back from the fields one day. According to Gregory, “after this, wizards came saying that she was suffering an incursion from the noonday demon [meaning acedia], and administered ligaments of herbs and words of incantations but, as usual, they were not able to give a cure to the dying woman.” When she was near death, the woman’s son removed the exorcistic cures of the wizards and poured some oil from the tomb of Martin into her mouth and lit a candle for her. The use of this oil-relic seems to have worked, as she was able to speak and “the deceit of the demon was broken through, and the sick woman recovered her health.” Lives and Miracles, 835-837, VSM 4.36 246 These kinds of episodes indicate that Christian exorcism, like the miracles of healing by the saints and their relic-tombs, was beginning to be adopted by the semi- Christian population of Gaul to deal with age-old spiritual or physical afflictions. By pitting the healing and exorcizing potentia of Martin against the sorcerers (sortilegi) and wizards (arioli), Gregory, as David Frankfurter notes, “censures the entire spectrum of these healers’ local roles. This denigration of local healers as nefarious fortune-tellers seems to mask a historical rivalry between the regional shrine of the deceased saint and 66 ritual experts of the local milieu…” For this type of competition to exist, adds Frankfurter, the saint and the local healers needed to face one another on the same playing field. Exorcism, it seems, was just one facet of this competition, and the Christian side could only compete effectively if it could manipulate spirits just as well or even better than the traditional pagan specialists. If exorcism reinforced Christianization in Gaul, the phenomenon acted in a similar, albeit less frequent, manner among the Anglo-Saxons in England during the seventh and eighth centuries. Though the Augustinian mission under Pope Gregory the Great reintroduced Christianity to the British Isles in 596, large portions of the island remained at least partially pagan into the tenth century. Traditional Anglo-Saxon beliefs still held sway for centuries, in fact, as the foreign concept of Christian exorcism was gradually integrated into an increasingly mixed religiosity. These two elements, the native (pagan) and the foreign (Christian), were not, as Karen Jolly argues, necessarily in conflict. In the British mixing of Germanic folklore and Christianity, neither was the passive victim of the other. Pagan folkloric beliefs and practices were not the “degenerate fringe of a dominant Christian orthodoxy,” nor was Christianization a failure because it did not totally replace traditional elements. Rather, as a result of interaction between the two, “Christianity succeed[ed] by way of acculturation and Germanic culture triumph[ed] 67 in transformation.” Anglo-Saxon Christian exorcism, in all its permutations, was but one aspect of this larger context. 66 David Frankfurter, “Beyond Magic and Superstition,” in Virginia Burrus, ed., Late Ancient Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 277. Frankfurter translates sortilegi and arioli as “diviners” and “soothsayers.” I have followed Nie’s translations. 67 Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 11. 247 As in the Roman Empire, Gaul, and, much later, in Japan, Christian exorcism and traditional beliefs about harmful spirits often found common ground that enabled to interact. Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon beliefs and practices, which were highly animistic and polytheistic, were very similar to the other Germanic cultures on the continent from which they originated. According to a generalized Germanic worldview, many different kinds of spirits abounded in the natural world, where the lines between the “supernatural” and the “natural” realms were not fully delineated. Major gods had their presence in temples and shrines, but a great many more spiritual entities could be found in natural sites such as springs, trees, and forests. As in other societies, some of these could be helpful to humans while some could be downright harmful. Because elves and dwarves, as autonomous spirits, could inflict illness and misfortune upon people, traditional Anglo- Saxon folklore identified charms and other types of apopotraic measures to protect 68 them. Elves, in the traditional belief, were essentially invisible or nearly invisible creatures of an amoral nature who frequently caused harm to both people and animals like cattle. In this sense, they were similar to the daemon of the Greco-Romans. Their main method of affliction was the so-called “elf-shot” in the form of an arrow or spear that would pierce the victim and cause some type of disease for which there was no conventional explanation. The elf would sometimes enter into the victim, and the necessary cure would involve purging the elf somehow from within. Naturally, the concept of elves lent itself just as easily to “demonization” as other harmful spirits did elsewhere. Both the daemon and the elf could invade people’s bodies and cause all sorts of harm, including physical disease, nightmares, madness, etc; and the elves’ amoral nature also could also be “demonized,” turning them into evil beings, as demons. With the reintroduction of Christianity, exorcism provided Anglo-Saxons a powerful new method for dealing with elves. Exorcism in Anglo-Saxon England was less about its performance as a specific rite than its ability to counteract harmful spirits. Christian exorcisms, in this context, were generally informal and simply made use of some sort of Christian element, such as the sacramentals or an invocation of the name of 68 Jolly, Popular Religion, 27-28. Here Jolly is discussing the Christianization of the landscape, though this background is relevant to exorcism. 248 Jesus. Among the most common methods employed to counteract attacks by elves were herbal remedies applied as salves, potions, and smoking, all of which were supposed to have a purgative effect. In addition, pricking the afflicted person or animal could sometimes purge the elf from the body. Because most of the Anglo-Saxon remedies against elves were medicinal in nature, or relied upon charms, Christian exorcisms would naturally work within this framework. Christian exorcistic formulae, such as the invocation of the names of saints or the use of amulets with written adjurations, combined with the standard pagan remedies to produce more effective cures. Two texts from the Late Anglo-Saxon period, the Lacnunga (Remedies) and the Leechbook (Book of Medical Prescriptions), containing both traditional herbal remedies against elf-shot alongside elements of Christian exorcism, illustrate the interaction of traditional religious practices and Christianity. Some in the Lacnunga are entirely devoid of Christian elements, while other remedies are almost entirely exorcistic and Christian. One Christian remedy (CLXIV), for example, purported to be effective for a horse suffering from elf- shot: May the beasts on earth be healed, they are vexed in health; in the name of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit let the Devil be expelled through the imposition of our hands; who shall separate us from the love of Christ; through the invocation of all your saints; through Him who lives and reigns forever. Amen. “Lord, wherefore they are increased” thrice. Jolly notes that this exorcistic remedy was purgative in nature (like traditional herbal cures) and that it was specifically for “elf-shot” that had been ascribed to demonic powers. If a “demonized” elf caused the illness, then it would make sense that a “Christianized” remedy would make the traditional remedy all the more effective. Indeed, traditional cures and Christian exorcism remained an integrated whole, for the most part, since elves/demons could be dealt with by a combination of the two. Only later in the thirteenth century—when England was much more fully Christianized and the natural and supernatural realms were separated along the lines of a Christian worldview—did 69 traditional herbal remedies and exorcism become separate. 69 The above information is taken from Jolly’s chapter “Elves, Demons, and Other Mind-Altering Afflictions: Evidences of Popular Practices” in Popular Religion, 132-168. The quote from the Lacnunga is found on pp. 143-144. 249 Peter Dendle has explained that accounts of Christian exorcism in Anglo-Saxon England come from a generation or two after Christianization began and that they reflect a society in religious transition. Anglo-Saxon kings typically converted first, then imposed the new religion on their subjects. Unsurprisingly, many pagan elements endured, especially in areas where there was not a significant ecclesiastical presence. Falling away from Christianity, even if one had only nominally been Christian, was common for both the population at large and the kings themselves. Dendle explains: …in the period of our only detailed references to possession in Anglo-Saxon England, the country was still largely a religious frontier: paganism was fresh in the minds of many, backsliding was frequent, and the nascent church was struggling to establish authority and recondition a populace to the practices and conceptual categories of Latin Christianity. The society was in flux, religiously, and possession and exorcism seem to have emerged as a reflection of this condition. Dendle elaborates on the Northumbrians: “[those] of Cuthbert’s time—while not fully immersed in the Christian worldview, and while perhaps not fully conversant in the ritual drama of possession and exorcism—were actively accommodating local beliefs to the incoming Christian paradigm of 70 possession.” In other words, native problems regarding spiritual entities, like elves, conformed themselves to the foreign (Christian) concept and practice of exorcism. In part, this was accomplished through the transformation of elves, as amoral beings, into evil demonic entities. Instead of exorcism conforming itself to the needs of the native society, the harmful spirits and creatures of a native society, such as elves, conform themselves to Christianity. This can be seen in an illustration of a scene from Psalm 37 (38) in the Eadwine Psalter th (12 century). The illustration depicts the psalmist, wounded by many arrows, having his cloak being torn at by demons. However, as Karen Jolly explains, the figures tearing at the man’s cloak “have a more elflike appearance in view of later 70 Peter Dendle, Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2014), 145. 250 iconography; the rotund little shapes with spritely grins and little hats (hair?) appear to us 71 to resemble elves or sprites rather than demons.” If Christian exorcism accommodated native conceptions of the practice, then so too could native conceptions of harmful spirits, such as elves, be accommodated to the new and Christian concept of demons. Both sides accommodated one another since neither side completely denied the other. Thus Christian exorcisms could be practiced on elves and daemons, and elves and daemons could be reinterpreted as demons. This pattern would continue the world over; wherever there was a substantial trend toward Christianization, traditional beliefs about possession and exorcism certainly moved to accommodate Christian notions of the phenomena, and vice versa. Three Early Modern Missions: Reformed England, China, and Vietnam Before examining how exorcism acted as a native mode of persuasion on Kyushu in the next chapter, we should comment briefly on how it played an important role in several other mission zones during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This will serve to show that Japanese Christians were by no means exceptional in adopting Catholic exorcism during this period. One of the most interesting examples of exorcism as a native mode of persuasion can be traced to Anglican England during the Jesuit mission to reconvert the country to Catholicism beginning in 1580. Alexandra Walsham, in her study of miracles in the Jesuit English mission, highlights exorcism as a potent form of thaumaturgy. A number of Jesuits in England performed exorcisms, sometimes in dramatic settings, that resulted in the reconciliation of those Protestants who witnessed them. Some priests even won fame as exorcists. While the Church of England tried to suppress exorcism as a kind of “ecclesiastical magic” or “lewd practice,” going so far as to make it completely illegal in 1606, there appears to have been a native demand for the rite. This owed to that fact that the Anglican Church (i.e. the Church of England) did little 71 Jolly, Popular Religion, 136-138. “The apparent similarity between the appearance and behavior of elves and pictures of demons helps illustrate the convergence of elves and demons [in some medical remedies].” 251 to help demoniacs. Walsham explains the usefulness of the Catholic rite under these circumstances: Exorcism was a compelling demonstration of Catholicism’s ability to triumph over the forces of evil, and it is not surprising that it made many converts. One witness thought that no fewer than 500 persons had been reconciled to the Roman Church as a consequence of the dramatic events at Denham [the site of a well- known exorcism]; others estimated 3,000 or 4,000. In this respect, England mirrored other Protestant areas (notably Germany) in which demoniacs could not or would not be exorcized by members of the Reformed faiths. Catholic priests were able to offer the important spiritual service and undoubtedly won 72 more than a few people back to Catholicism as a result. In China, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jesuits used exorcism as a native mode of persuasion, albeit in a somewhat subdued manner so as not to tarnish their image as high-class foreign literati. We can identify a number of cases in which missionaries performed exorcisms; but, for the most part, the real adoption of the practice occurred among Chinese Christian converts. The popularity of exorcism in China arguably owed to the fact that two of China’s three main religions (Daoism and 73 Buddhism) conducted exorcisms as a matter of course. Daoist exorcisms were the most prevalent, as spirit possession and harassment, whether by non-human entities or ghosts, were frequent occurrences; but Tantric Buddhist clerics also appear to have conducted exorcisms from time to time. Little has been written to date about exorcism in the Jesuit mission to China, though Eugenio Menegon has briefly addressed the topic in his study 74 of Christianity as a local religion. Here, I will draw primarily on Menegon’s research to 72 Alexandra Walsham, “Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England,” The Historical Journal 46 no. 4 (2003): 779-815. The quote is on p. 803. See also Francis Young’s chapter “Dealing with the Devil: Catholic Exorcisms” in Francis Young, English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553-1829 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 189-223. Young notes that “the Jesuits were the moving spirits behind most exorcisms, even if they sometimes involved secular clergy as well.” See also Richard Raiswell and Peter Dendle, “ Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon and Early Modern England: Continuity and Evolution in Social Context,” Journal of British Studies 47 no. 4 (2008): 748-767. 73 Confucianism, the third tradition, generally did not concern itself with spirits and spirit manipulation of this sort. 74 Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2009), 221-230. 252 provide readers with a brief overview of the importance of exorcism to the spread of Christianity in China. In the premodern Chinese world-view, there were all sorts of spirits, deities, and ghosts, all of which could affect humans in negative ways. As in many other cultures, spirits caused sickness, death, misfortune, possession, and hauntings. People from all levels of society could be susceptible to spiritual attack or harmful influence by ghosts and other entities. Ed Davis, in his study of possession and exorcisms during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), notes that one book from the period, The Record of Hearsay (Yijian zhi 75), describes almost two hundred cases. To counteract hostile spirits, writes Davis, there existed a whole class of exorcists. These Daoist exorcists were known as “ritual masters” (fashi) and frequently acted in conjunction with spirit-mediums (wu). One general form of Daoist exorcism, dating back to the later Tang Dynasty, called on the fashi to help a person afflicted with a spiritually induced illness by first summoning the demon and then interrogating it for its personal name. With this information, the exorcist could then bind the spirit in some form of incarceration and ask “celestial soldiers” to execute it, thereby releasing the patient from its influence. Tantric Buddhist monks also had their own methods of exorcism, many of which employed a spirit-medium. For example, Davis describes the so-called “Rite of the Three Altars,” which includes the creation of a ritual space, various incantations, obtaining the name of the demon, and the 76 “bringing down of divinities.” In the Daoist tradition, there existed both large-scale 77 public exorcisms and more personal small-scale exorcisms known as xiaofa. The most important thing to note in this regard is that the exorcistic “manhandling” of demons and spirits was an important feature of premodern Chinese religiosity. Thus, when Christianity reentered China during the sixteenth century, there was already a very strong tradition of exorcism onto which the Christian brand could graft its practices. Although the Jesuits in China were generally hesitant to perform exorcisms, they did so from time to time, especially when requested by a Chinese convert. Chinese 75 Ed L. Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2001), 3. 76 Davis, Society, 95; 115-117. The Daoist text that Davis is describing is called the Guide to the Flowing Pearls of the Golden Lock (Jinsuo liuzhu yin). 77 Menegon, Ancestors, 222. 253 Christians deemed Christian exorcism efficacious and would either ask the padres to perform them or perform them on their own. A successful exorcism would frequently precipitate interest in conversion among those who had been witness to the event. An early example of one such exorcism can be found in the edited journals of Matteo Ricci. During a description of the Jesuit house at “Sciauquin” (Zhaoqing in present-day Guangdong Province) in the late sixteenth century, Ricci writes of an exorcism performed by one of the padres that resulted in several conversions. Apparently there was a man in the town well known for having been possessed by some sort spirit. The possession, it seems, had impelled him to do strange things like walking around among tombs at night. His family, attempting to correct this disturbing behavior, were said to have employed a number of exorcists. These specialists tried all of the traditional remedies, including hanging pictures of fearsome deities to scare the hostile spirit away, but none had any effect—that is, until a Chinese Christian told the man’s father that the Jesuits had the power to expel spirits. What is notable in the following description of this case is the skepticism with which the padre approaches the spirit possession and his insistence that the exorcism could actually be performed by any layperson: The Father who was summoned was slow to believe that the victim was really possessed of a devil, and so he did not perform an ecclesiastical exorcism. Instead, he ordered them to take down all the horrible pictures of monsters attached to the walls and to burn them. Then he recited some prayers and suspended a little reliquary, containing a holy relic, about the neck of the afflicted and went away. No sooner had he left the house than the man seemed to have shaken off his torment and was perfectly well. Later on, his father brought him to the chapel where he received instructions and became a Christian, as did his whole family, and the father went about the streets telling everyone that his son 78 had been delivered form a devil by the God of the Christians. This type of informal exorcism would achieve great popularity among ordinary Christians since laypeople could perform them not only for themselves but also for their non-Christian neighbors. 78 Matteo Ricci and Nicholas Trigault, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci (1583- 1610), trans. Louis J. Gallagher (New York: Random House, 1953), 203. Another example comes from 1633 in which a woman who was tormented by a sprit for years and had fallen ill received exorcism. Her whole house received baptism as a result. Ajuda 49-V-11, 12v. 254 Later, in other accounts, Chinese Christians themselves began using exorcism in haunted houses. One such incident is reported in a seventeenth century collection of supernatural tales involving Christianity titled A Mirror of Self-Cultivation (Lixiu yijian). According to the tale, a demon takes up residence in the house of a “Fuzhou literatus.” The traditional spirit-medium is of no use, so a local Christian suggests that the local Jesuit, Beato de Matos (1600-1652), might be of service. The padre suggests that they take the “necessary measures,” which were “bringing holy images, holy water, and candles to the house and having Christians pray in situ.” The padre himself did not get involved but merely directed the local Christians on how to solve the problem, which 79 they apparently did. If the Jesuits and friars set the example for personal exorcisms, it was Chinese Christians who took the rite, made it their own, and employed it to address the age-old problem of hostile spirits. But occasionally, it seems, some spirits proved too powerful for the laity, who teamed up with the padres for support. The Dominican Francisco Varo (1627-1687) recounted a story about a “parasitic demon” that had possessed a non- Christian. Both of the traditional forms of exorcism were tried, as well as some sort of Muslim exorcism, but to no avail; the demon, who said he was a “jiogui or evil spirit” did not want to leave the woman whom he possessed and actually laughed off the attempts at exorcism. A local Christian suggested that the non-Christian family of the woman should ask Varo to perform an exorcism, but he was unavailable. So, instead, the Christian converts conducted one, using the standard sacramentals, with the whole event lasting several days. Still, the woman remained possessed. After hearing word that the efforts of the laity were unsuccessful, Varo determined that the only way to exorcize the spirit was to offer up fifteen masses for St. Dominic. The exorcism was greatly publicized with the whole thing apparently impressed many. Both the family of the demoniac and some sixty other people accepted baptism, and many of those who knew of the episode were “moved to become Christians by this case. Many of them had been our [former] enemies, and some [who were now converting] had been indifferent for many years to the friars’ 79 This story is recounted in Menegon, who has consulted Zurcher’s translation of the story. Erik Zürcher, “The Lord of Heaven and the Demons—Strange Stories from a Late Ming Christian Manuscript,” in Hans Steininger, Gert Naundorf, Karl-Heinz Pohl, and Hans-Hermann Schmidt eds. Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien: Festschrift fu ̈r Hans Steininger zum 65. Geburtstag (Würzburg: Königshausen + Neumann, 1985), 369-370. 255 preaching.” This case, notes Menegon, “proved a powerful incentive to shift allegiance to the Christian god and to abandon the other local gods.” In addition, the story shows that the local population, at times, considered Catholic exorcism more efficacious than native practices. Chinese friars also took up exorcistic activities in the Christian community. For example, Gregorio Luo Wenzao, a Chinese Dominican, exorcized a possessed woman after some Buddhist monks failed to do so, claiming that the demon “had no fear of the Buddhist monks but only of the Lord of Heaven [the Christian god.]” The woman, some of her family, and others in the village reputedly converted as a direct result of the 80 exorcism. Some Chinese native advocates even published literature about exorcisms, though this was atypical. As Junhyoung Michael Shin has pointed out, A Mirror of Self- Cultivation was a piece of Chinese-language devotional literature that featured many exorcisms and other kinds of miracles. It was published by the Chinese Christian literatus Li Jiugong (d. 1681) and for a Chinese general audience. Shin argues that this work is important because it not only shows that uneducated common people valued exorcism 81 and miraculous events, but also the educated class of the literati. Exorcisms also seem to have been a factor in the early modern mission in what is today Vietnam. This area of Jesuit activity is much less studied than that of China and Japan. Still, there are a few examples that we might cite for Christian exorcism being adopted as a native mode of persuasion. As in China and Japan, spirit possession and harassment were common problems; and the mission in Tonkin was accordingly asked to exorcize many possessed people and haunted houses. One letter to the Jesuit General Mutio Vitelleschi in 1635 describes how people sought help from the church for help with haunted houses: “There are in this city many houses infested by demons, they [the people] come to church, and ask for the customary remedies, the holy name of JESUS 80 Menegon, Ancestors, 224-226. Menegon retells and quotes the story from a manuscript held in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. 81 Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The Supernatural in the Jesuit Adaptation to Confucianism: Giulio Aleni’s Tianzhu Jiangsheng Chuxiang Jingjie (Fuzhou , 1637),” History of Religions 50 no. 4 (2011): 344-354. Christian exorcisms still flourish to some extent in China today. For example, Duan Runcheng, a controversial Christian preacher in recent decades, had published a manual for conversion that told people how to perform exorcisms with holy water and by holding a crucifix over “the five organs of the body.” See Henrietta Harrison, The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 182. 256 and Mary and the Holy cross…” Deeming these interventions highly effective, the letter describes how one person was exorcized though prayer and holy water. These things, the 82 letter concludes, brought “much credit to our Holy Law in this Metropolis.” As noted by Tara Alberts, the exorcisms conducted by Jesuits and Christian converts in Vietnam helped “to demonstrate the superior salvic power of Christianity.” Converts, armed with holy water, blessed candles, and images of the Virgin Mary, could “chase away demons,” curing those struck with plague and disease. As one Jesuit wrote, “against these demons Our Lord God has given great power to the Christians, and the Christians need only pray, or throw holy water at someone possessed to soon cast it out, and the demon leaves that body.” In one case, local Christians destroyed the “oratory” of a possessed woman while waiting for a priest to exorcize her. The so-called oratory was apparently some kind of room that contained an image of a deity or spirit; the woman herself was likely some kind of medium. The spirit in her put up some resistance but was ultimately exorcized. In addition, some converts thought of baptism as having an exorcistic function in the sense that the sacrament would protect their child against spiritually induced illnesses or prevent the return of the child’s spirit should it die and be 83 vengeful. In discussing possession and exorcism as aspects of Christianization during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, much could be said about their prevalence in the New World. There exists a vast literature on how European clerics saw the demonic everywhere and in everything when it came to the cultures of the Nahuas in Mexico and 84 the Andean peoples of South America. To delve into that subject at this point would be far beyond the scope of this chapter and perhaps too tangential to our argument of exorcism as a native mode of persuasion. To be sure, there are accounts in Jesuit letters and other sources concerning the expulsion of harmful spirits that Europeans recognized 82 Annual Letter of 1635. Ajuda 49-V-11, 306v. 83 Tara Alberts, Conflict and Conversion, Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 117-119, 144, 152. 84 Only briefly: Andrew Redden, Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560-1750, (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008); Fernando Cervantes and Andrew Redden, eds. Angels, Demons and the New World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Kenneth Mills. Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1750 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Sabine MacCormack, “Gods, Demons, and Idols in the Andes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 623-647. 257 as demons. For example, shamans were highly valued members of indigenous communities in the northwest part of Mexico and were thought to be able to control and exorcize a variety of spirits. But Jesuits in these areas tried to show that shamans were frauds. They found a more effective mode of persuasion against shamans through healing, an activity that the disease-ravaged indigenous population valued immensely. But the overwhelming concern for both missionaries at the time and present-day scholars has been the role of diabolism rather than exorcism in the Christianization of the Americas. This is not unimportant, as we have briefly discussed how the demonization of the traditional deities of the society targeted for conversion actually reinterprets them and enables them to endure, albeit in different form. For example, the introduction of the Devil into Mexico seems to have actually facilitated the adoption of Christianity because 85 it gave indigenous people an analogue for some of their most important deities. Of course, what separates the situation in the New World from many other instances of Christianization is the overarching shadow of colonialism and conquest. It is for this reason that we cannot undertake a brief overview of how exorcism might have operated as a native mode of persuasion in the New World. Instead of non-Christians identifying Catholic exorcism as something of value and guiding missionaries to perform it, Church authorities in the New World imposed it upon the native population. But for Kyushu, and in many other instances of Christianization, it was the native population that prompted missionaries to perform Christian exorcism. Belief in the effectiveness of Christian exorcism stemmed exclusively from preexisting elements those societies regarding harmful spirits and humanity’s ability to manipulate them. Like the other cultures we have just explored, Japan had a long tradition of spirit possession and exorcism. In the next chapter, we will fully explore how Catholic exorcism addressed Japanese concerns of harmful spirits and bodily possession. 85 See Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), most notably his chapters “The Devil and the Amerindian” and “The Indian Response.” 258 CHAPTER VI FOR WE ARE MANY: THE ROLE OF EXORCISM IN DEMONSTRATING THE SPIRITUAL EFFICACY OF CHRISTIANITY ON KYUSHU [Yoshitsune] trades words with the phantom and closes in combat. Yet Benkei thrusts between them, crying, No skill at arms can ever best this foe! Rasping his prayer beads against one another, he summons the Five Mantra Kings…Fiercely he prays until the baleful spirit step by step falls back. Funabenkei 1 by Kanze Nobumitsu (1434-1516) One important feature of Japanese society since ancient times has been human interaction with a multitude of spirits. Known as Kami, these spirits populated the very landscape itself and frequently had awesome powers that filled humans with both reverence and dread. As the eighth-century Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan) relates, “in that land [Japan] there were many kami that shone with a luster like that of fireflies, and evil kami that buzzed like flies. There were also trees and herbs that could 2 speak.” In total, there are thought to be 88 million Kami; this figure, however, is not 3 meant to be exact, but rather a number that denotes an infinite multitude. The ancient and indigenous religion of the Japanese islands, which later evolved into what we know as Shinto, was essentially an animistic religion that developed out of worship and interaction with these Kami. But who or what exactly were they? As Matsumae Takeshi 1 Royall Tyler, ed., Japanese Nō Drama (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 94. 2 See Takeshi Matsumae’s essay “Early Kami Worship,” in Delmer M. Brown, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 1: Ancient Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 328. In fact, the term that preceded Shinto, kamunagara, which meant “way” had come directly from the kami themselves. Matsume quotes Aston’s translation of the Nihon shoki. W.G. Aston, Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, Transactions and Proceedings of The Japan Society, London (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1896), 64. 3 Louis Frédéric, Japan Encyclopedia, trans. Käthe Roth (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 461. 259 points out, they were, for the most part, spirits within natural bodies, such as the sun and the moon, and forces of nature like the wind and lightning. They were also present in the landscape, such as mountains and rivers, as well as man-made objects like buildings, boats, and hearths. Exceptional animals, such as wolves and serpents, could also be 4 Kami. Some Kami who were typically remote from human affairs might occasionally take on animal form and interact with humanity, such as when the legendary emperor Jimmu (660-585 BCE) fought an evil Kami in the shape of a bear upon the slopes of Mt. 5 Kumano. Although steeped in mythology, Kami-human interaction, especially of the more mundane kind, was a reality for premodern people in Japan. These interactions could either be positive or negative. Through proper reverence and rites, Kami could aid individuals and even entire villages in such matters as agriculture, pest control, and the prevention of fire and plague. For example, farming families would perform a singing and dancing rite called “playing in the fields” (ta asobi) in order ensure a good crop and send any plague-bearing spirits (shidara no Kami) to some other village. At other times, interactions could be quite negative due to the amoral nature of the spirit. A Kami that was not properly worshipped could cause plague, infertility, and a failed crop instead of 6 acting to prevent these disasters. In addition to Kami, a multitude of other spirits populated the Japanese world. Some of these could affect humans and society in quite an adverse manner through possession and calamity. Reflecting the ubiquity of Kami, the Japanese language contains a vast number of words to denote different types of spirits, as well as the many kinds of spirit possession, exorcism, monsters, ogres, demons, and even possessed objects. One common term is tsukimono (literally “possessing thing”). Broadly speaking, it is commonly used to denote spirits of possession. Here, a definition from the Japan Encyclopedia is particularly useful. Tsukimono are: 4 Brown, Cambridge, 318. 5 Brown, Cambridge, 340. 6 Carmen Blacker, The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), 41. Blacker’s work is not strictly a work of history, but her summation of the powers of the Kami is succinct and applies to a general discussion of the premodern period. See Farris, Japan’s Medieval Population, 68 for the example of the ta asobi. 260 Spirits or disembodied beings said to possess a person’s mind under certain conditions, provoking hallucinations or pain. Foxes (kitsune) are often accused of being such spirits; in certain regions, they are a sort of dog (inugami, izuna) or a snake tōbyō. Tsukimono can also be spirits of the deceased who are unhappy that 7 their memory has been neglected or kami wishing to avenge an offense. Tsukimono are further classified depending on the type of possession. As Lucia Dolce points out, possession in Japan, both in the past and present, exists in two basic types: 1. Unwanted possession, usually by negative spirits, that might be resolved through exorcism; and 2. Possession by positive spirits, which can be both involuntary and voluntary, such as in the case of a medium. The unwanted malignant spirits are often referred to as mono no ke (literally “thing of wonder/mystery”), many of which are 8 decidedly negative in that they cause all sorts of maladies and disasters for humans. These types of spirits frequently appear to afflict the dramatis personæ in such works as the Tale of Genji 9, resulting in sickness and even death. One spirit that could potentially be a mono no ke, at times, is the tama (or tamashii 10), which is the spirit of a dead person, i.e. a ghost. These spirits roam about the world at large and inhabit both living people and objects, such as trees (kodama). If descendants and family members properly revere the spirits of their dead kindred, all will be well and any potential interaction would likely be positive. However, if remembrance and veneration fell into neglect, the spirit of the dead could cause misfortune and harassment. There are several names in Japanese for vengeful or destructive spirits that could harass humanity, each denoting a specific kind of spirit. One ghostly spirit was the muenbotoke, or “spirits of no affinity.” These spirits are commonly known in English as “hungry ghosts” and are fated to wander the earthly realm craving some sort of repose. People who were either sick or weakened in some sense were particularly vulnerable to 7 Frédéric, Japan Encylopedia, 1000. 8 Laycock, Spirit Possession, 179. 9 For a thorough analysis of mono no ke in the Tale of Genji see Doris G. Bargen, A Woman's Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1997). 10 Blacker, Catalpa, 24-25. 261 11 the ghosts, and actual possession could result from an unlucky encounter. In the Buddhist spiritual hierarchy, there existed another kind of hungry ghost who had been demoted to a lesser and more ghoulish existence than humans. These entities, known as gaki (Sanskrit: Preta), were invisible phantoms that hung out at latrines and graveyards 12 feeding upon such bodily material as blood, excrement, and marrow. Both kinds of hungry ghosts had the potential to attach themselves to living humans and cause all manner of sickness and afflictions. Even more dangerous for humans were those ghosts that were deemed to be vengeful spirits (onryō, goryō). Occasionally, these could even be the disembodied spirits of the still-living if that person’s resentment and ill-will was strong enough. Like the muenbotoke, onryō could not only cause possession and illness, but also natural disasters 13 on a grand and spectacular scale. The Tendai monk Jien (1155-1225) took the onryō very seriously since they could literally “ruin the state and destroy man.” Writing in the Gukanshō, Jien offers this description of the onryō: The main point about a vengeful soul is that it bears a deep grudge and makes those who caused the grudge objects of its revenge even while the resentful person is still alive. When the vengeful soul is seeking to destroy the objects of its resentment—all the way from small houses to the state as a whole—the state is thrown into disorder by the slanders and lies it generates. The destruction of people is brought about in exactly the same way. And if the vengeful soul is unable to obtain its revenge while in this visible world, it will do so from the 14 realm of the invisible. 11 See Blacker, Catalpa, 48 for a succinct summation. She draws her information from the famed folklorist Yanagita Kunio. 12 See William R. LaFleur, “Hungry Ghosts and Hungry People” in Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, Nadia Tazi, eds., Fragments for a History of the Human Body Part One (New York: Zone Books, 1989), 270-303. Glassman notes that the gaki were “the functional equivalents of muenbotoke.”) Hank Glassman, The Face of Jizo: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2012), 138. 13 Laycock, Spirit Possession, 179. 14 Delmer M. Brown and Ichirō Ishida, The Future and the Past: A Translation and Study of the Gukanshō, an Interpretive History of Japan Written in 1219 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 218-221. Also quoted in Herbert E. Plutschow, Chaos and Cosmos: Ritual in Early and Medieval Japanese Literature (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), 204 and Steven T. Brown, Theatricalities of Power: The Cultural Politics of Noh (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 39. 262 Jien’s thoughts on vengeful spirits were nothing new. Since ancient times in Japan, it was generally believed that a dead person’s ghost would remain attached to the bones of its former self. If the person had died violently or if the bones had not received proper burial, their ghost would haunt and inflict harm upon the living. For the most part, the more powerful the person was in life, the more powerful they would be in death through their 15 vengeance. One such instance occurred after the Emperor Shōmu (701-756) had a certain Prince Nagaya (684-729) murdered and his ashes unceremoniously dumped in a river. Nagaya’s “cremated bones” were then sent to another province. Once there, the vengeful spirit of the Prince subjected the hapless and completely innocent population to 16 pestilence until he received a proper burial. There are many other such examples from Japanese history, such as when the souls of the many Mongol warriors who were slain on the shores of Kyushu in 1274 and 1281 caused pestilence throughout the country. But the most famous instance of this type of vengeful spirit is that of Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), who, following his exile from court and subsequent death, came back to the capital at Kyoto to rain plague and disaster upon the people. He was, at the time this 17 occurred in 923, even held responsible for the death of a crown prince. Whether through disaster or possession, onryō were a very real problem and were to be greatly feared. Perhaps the most common of the mono no ke were animals. A wide variety, both wild and domesticated species, could possess people; but foxes and snakes were the most likely to do so. These animals had supernatural powers that even allowed them to appear 18 as humans. In this respect, animals might also be ghosts who had taken this form for some specific purpose, such as to gain access to karmic instruction from a monastery or 19 monk. Other, less noble motives for harassing and possessing humans might include 15 Plutschow, Chaos, 205-210. 16 Kyoko Motomachi Nakamura, Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryōiki of the Monk Kyōkai (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 82-83. 17 Robert Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1994), 310-325. 18 Laycock, Spirit Possession, 180. 19 Bernard Faure, Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism, trans. Phyllis Brooks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 174-175. 263 desire for human food, of which fried bean curd was a favorite, or getting revenge on a hunter for the killing of one of their offspring. Human third parties could also employ foxes and other animals, usually through cajoling or coercion, to harass or possess 20 somebody for a specific purpose. According to ethnographic and folkloric studies, there still existed a wide spectrum of animal possession well into the modern period. Studying the geographic distribution of kitsune-mochi (fox keepers) and the “keepers” of other kinds of possessing animals, Hayami Yasutaka has shown that Kyushu and western Honshu were areas of high concentrations. In Kyushu, our area of focus, Inugami-mochi (“dog god” keepers) were prominent in the northeast (Bungo, present-day Oita Prefecture) and on Tanegashima. Kappa-mochi (“river imp” keepers) were prominent on the Gotō Islands, and yako-mochi (“field fox” keepers) could be found in both the Gotō Islands and in 21 northwestern Kyushu (Hizen, or present-day Nagasaki Prefecture). Many of the supernatural creatures and malevolent entities we have been discussing appear prominently in medieval literature, but perhaps nowhere more than in didactic religious literature of the period. One of the best examples of this genre, the Konjaku Monogatari Sh thū (probably compiled in the early 12 century), features whole chapters describing encounters between the malevolent supernatural and hapless human characters. The collection contains both religious and secular stories drawn from India, China, and Japan, all of which imparted some type of moral or practical teaching. Though somewhat fantastical (at least to the modern reader) and didactic in nature, these tales were meant to resonate with their medieval readership by portraying real people in real situations. In other words, as Marian Ury points out, the tales were valuable because they told the audience something about the world and about the things that could happen to 22 them in it. In these tales, the supernatural could and often did happen, and malevolent 20 See Blacker, Catalpa, 52-55, for an overview as well as modern examples. 21 Yasutaka Hayami, Tsukimono no mochi Meishin: Sono Rekishiteki Kōsatsu (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 1999), 39. 22 Marian Ury, Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-two Stories from a Medieval Japanese Collection (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 11-12. Setsuwa (“tales”), the specific type of literature to which the Konjaku belongs, were not always meant to be true. However, when their purposes were didactic, the events portrayed in them were usually supposed to have actually happened. While actual readership might 264 entities preyed upon humans in the wilderness or even in villages through illusions and various tricks. For example, as one tale concerning the transformation of a fox into a comely young woman puts it: “now think: there’s nothing unusual in a fox taking human 23 form; it’s happened often since ancient times.” The tales not only remind people that these kinds of things are facts of life but also that they can avoid the negative consequences of supernatural encounters by exercising greater sagacity. Among the many tales of the supernatural in the Konjaku are those that recount how an Oni attempts to eat a woman’s baby (27.15), how an old woman turns into an Oni and attempts to eat her sons (27.22), how an evil spirit impersonates a nurse and attempts to abduct a child playing alone (27.29), how a vengeful spirit in the form of a snake can kill their targets (14.3), and numerous examples of foxes bewitching or harassing people (14.5, 16.17, and 27.41). Sometimes the evil spirit or creature is thwarted due to the quick thinking of the protagonists. But other times, resolution and salvation requires outside help, either through the saving grace of a Buddhist deity, or transferring merit to the creature (who is apparently in need of it) by copying a sutra. Sometimes they even employ the skills of an exorcist. In one tale (27.29), exorcists help revive a nurse after a fox has attempted to abduct the child in her care. In another tale (16:17), that of Kaya no Yoshifuji, a hapless man is rescued from the enchantment of a fox only through the intercession of the bodhisattva Kannon. Though saved by such a divine power, the “evil 24 influences” of the fox still needed purging, and the family calls in a Daoist exorcist. If have been limited, the tales were likely to be used in Buddhist sermons, during which they would have reached a wider audience. See p. 2. 23 Ury, Tales, 170. 24 Foxes in these tales could be particularly tricky and harmful, as one was in the tale of Kaya no Yoshifuji. The main character, a lustful coin trader, falls for a woman while his wife is away and abandons his life in order to be adopted into the woman’s aristocratic household. There he spends years on end and eventually fathers a child with her. Unfortunately for Yoshifuji, his new wife is no woman, but a fox, who has had him enchanted and living underneath a storehouse for weeks. He is only rescued by the intervention of the bodhisattva Kannon, to whom his family had been praying in order to find his corpse. Upon his deliverance, the family was aghast: “they saw that Yoshifuji had the appearance of a man emaciated by severe illness…they had a servant look under the floor of the storehouse. A lot of foxes were there, and they scattered and fled. That was the place where Yoshifuji had lain. When they saw this they understood it all. Yoshifuji had been tricked by a fox and had become her husband and was no longer in his right mind. They immediately summoned an eminent monk to pray for him and called in a yin-yang master to exorcise the evil influences; and they had Yoshifuji bathed repeatedly.” It later explains that Yoshifuji’s confusion of the underbelly of the storehouse with a sumptuous home “was all because of the magic power of the 265 the Konjaku reminded its audience that there were supernatural powers out there in the world that could harm them, it also reminded people that there were avenues of recourse that would enable them to protect themselves and remedy the situation. In order to provide relief for humans suffering harassment and possession at the hands of Kami, muenbotoke, onryō, and mischievous animals, there existed a wide variety of religious specialists who could communicate and exorcize these spirits. One such specialist was the miko. Active in both the premodern and modern periods, miko were and are female spirit mediums who functioned as shamanesses and provided a wide th variety of spiritual services. According to Lori Meeks, late Heian (late 12 century) and th early Kamakura period (early 13 century) miko provided such services as the “transmission of oracles from gods and bodhisattvas (takusen), which was thought to occur through divine trance (kamigakari)/ channeling spirits of the dead (kuchiyose); divine petition (kitō), which sometimes involved exorcism; fortune telling (uramai); rituals and blessing for romantic relationships and childbirth and physical healing.” Miko throughout the medieval period were frequently attached to both shrines and temples, such as the group of miko that lived just outside the massive Daigo-ji complex in Fushimi as described by the monk Eison (1201-1290). But some, known as “arukimiko,” were itinerant. These miko typically provided their spiritual services along highways and other 25 major areas of traffic, such as pilgrimage routes. While miko and other shamans are not our primary concern, it is nevertheless important to note that in the premodern period there existed a class of religious specialists, common throughout Japan, that would routinely offer themselves up to be possessed for some type of positive outcome, such as speaking with the deceased. If this spirit-foxes.” In several other tales (such as 27.41), human protagonists subdue evil forces through the use of archery, which had an exorcistic effect about it. 25 Lori Meeks, “The Disappearing Medium: Reassessing the Place of Miko in the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan,” History of Religions 50 No. 3 (Feb. 2011): 218-222. Meeks gives several examples in her article of how the miko underwent possession by gods, such as Hachiman, and of their ability to conjure the dead for dialogue. A similar type of shamaness called the itako operated in northern Japan. Most of these mediums were blind, which signaled their ability to channel spirits. Like the miko, itako provided the living with an opportunity to speak to the deceased through a channeling or a possession of their body. Laycock, Spirit Possession, 181. There was a wide variety of mediums and shamanesses including: “miko, agato-miko, azusa-miko, ichiko, itako, aruki-miko, kannagi, and jisha.” She notes that distinguishing between the types is far from certain, but we can assume they were all somewhat similar specialists. See Barbara Ruch, “The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan” in Kozo Yamamura, ed., Cambridge History of Japan Volume 3: Medieval Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 522. 266 was prevalent in the religious landscape, it should come as no surprise that there also existed specialists that dealt with negative spirits and involuntary possession. More relevant to our investigation are religious figures that dealt with spirit possession by practicing exorcism. In the Japanese context, exorcism (yōrigitō or kitō), as Lucia Dolce points out, “relies on the supernatural power achieved by the performers through practices, as well as the power of the sacred words, scriptures or dharani [sacred 26 formulas], and of the gods and Buddhas that are invoked during the ritual.” The exact manner in which exorcism occurred, however, depended largely upon the exorcist himself. Both in the past and present, exorcisms were frequently performed by Buddhist monks. Most often, these monks came from the Shingon, Tendai, and Nichiren sects, with monks from the Zen sect only participating occasionally. Practitioners of shugendō, called shugenja (also known as genza and yamabushi), frequently performed exorcisms 27 as well. Wandering holy men known as hijiri, some of whom were formally associated with Mt. Kōya, also engaged the lower orders of society by offering exorcism and other 28 religious services through the chanting of the Lotus Sutra and the nembutsu. Exorcisms could occur under state and city patronage to ward off evil and vengeful spirits who caused disaster and plague. Both Buddhist monks and the population at large participated in these kinds of exorcisms. Monks sought to ward off malignant spirits through the recitation of sutras, ceremonies such as the segaki-e (“feeding the hungry ghosts”) designed to help karmic progression, the recitation of the Nembutsu, and other rites and performances. Exorcism at the city level, which operated on a much larger scale, often took the form of festivals known as goryō-e (“meeting of the August spirit”). These festivals included singing, dancing, the recitation of auspicious dramas, processions of portable shrines, the construction of temporary shrines, various offerings, and even acrobatics, all of which were thought to pacify angry and vengeful spirits. One such goryō-e occurred in 863 in Kyoto after the city suffered flooding at the ghostly hands of the exiled and assassinated Prince Sawara (ca. 750-785). Many other 26 Laycock, Spirit Possession, 183. 27 Kodansha Encyclopedia (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983), “Exorcism.” 28 Richard Bowring, The Religious Traditions of Japan: 500-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 230. 267 goryō-e were celebrated in the capital throughout the Heian period, and some continue to this day. Famous festivals such as the Aoi Festival, the Gion Festival, and the Tenjin Festival (used to pacify the spirit of Sugawara Michizane) all had their origin in goryō-e. The Aoi Festival first occurred in the reign of the emperor Yōmei (r. 585-587) as an attempt to placate certain evil spirits who were causing drought and famine. The Gion Festival, which originated in 869 following a bout of pestilence in the city; and the Tenjin festival, held to elevate Sugawara Michizane to the title of “August deity,” was a response to flooding, disease, droughts, and deaths in the imperial household caused by his vengeance. Besides public festivals, Buddhist temples also conducted formal goryō-e on a smaller scale. Sometimes, attempts at placating onryō were unsuccessful, especially if the ghost was particularly powerful (in this life and the next) or had suffered some sort of outrage such as that of Prince Sawara. Prior to the goryō-e held in his honor, Prince Sawara’s ghost plagued the new capital city of Nagaoka with disease, causing several deaths at court. Initial attempts at placation, which included the recitation of sutras, the construction of temples and shrines, and the unprecedented posthumous elevation of Sawara to the rank of Emperor, failed to stem the spirit’s vengeance. Ultimately, given no 29 other recourse, Emperor Kammu was forced to move the capital to Kyoto in 794. Besides moving the capital, Japanese emperors could also combat evil spirits by delegating exorcistic tasks to warriors engaged in military service. As Karl Friday points out, the bow had a magical and exorcistic function in addition to its usefulness in actual combat. The plucking of a bow, a practice most likely derived from Daoism, could ward off threats from the spiritual realm. Friday provides the example of the Takiguchi, a special corps of bodyguards attached to the private secretariat of the emperor. Created in the late ninth-century, this corps engaged in spiritual rather than physical combat. Their main duty seems to have been performing the meigen (“sighing bowstring”) or tsuru-uchi (“striking the bowstring”) rite of firing bows without arrows throughout the night and at 29 Plutschow, Chaos, 203-216 and Herbert Plutschow, Matsuri: The Festivals of Japan (London: Routledge, 1996), 72-89. 268 other important moments and events. Apparently common at court, this rite was even 30 mentioned in the Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari). Though fictional, both classical literature and medieval Noh (Nō) dramas provide us with a sense of just how ubiquitous malignant spirits, spirit possession, and exorcism were in the premodern worldview. The most famous piece of premodern Japanese literature, the Tale of Genji, contains numerous episodes of possession by mono no ke and 31 their subsequent exorcisms. Exorcisms and exorcists also feature prominently in medieval Noh plays. Some scholars have noted that the themes of possession and exorcism are so ingrained in Noh drama that the art itself, as described by Steven Brown, is “a sort of staged exorcism, a reinscription of the rites and rituals of exorcism performed by Buddhist priests and shamans throughout the medieval period.” Many Noh dramas not only highlight the possession of people by various spirits, but also the redressing of some 32 sort of ill so that they can achieve release from their grudge or gain karmic salvation. Plays with exorcisms also form a separate category known as shuramono, or “warrior pieces.” In studying the relationship between exorcism and medieval Noh theater, Herber Plutschow has analyzed several plays to show that theater preserved actual exorcistic rituals. In these, we see a wide variety of exorcistic practices and practitioners. For example, in the plays Sanemori and Atsumori (both by the famous playwright Zeami; c.1363- c.1443), the ghosts of Heike warriors undergo exorcism through the recitation of the nembutsu. The exorcisms in the two plays, as Plutschow 33 points out, have their basis in historical fact, particularly the exorcism in Sanemori. In 30 Karl F. Friday, Samurai, Warfare, and the State in Early Medieval Japan (London: Routledge, 2004), 32-33. 31 One notable example in this work is that of the pregnant Lady Aoi, Genji’s first principal wife, who was harassed by the still-living spirit of a rival consort, Lady Rokujō. This episode, one of many from classical literature, reveals the very real social context of spirit possession during Murasaki’s time. See Bargen, A Woman’s Weapon, 26; 76-96. This case is notable in that a living spirit causes possession. Some view that this is Murasaki’s invention for literary purposes since there is not a precedent for this in other literature. An alternative explanation is that the possessing spirit is that of Lady Rokujō’s late father. 32 Brown, Theatricality, 27-28. Plutschow notes that exorcistic dances are antecedents of exorcist Noh plays. Plutschow, Chaos, 234. 33 Taira no Sanemori, the subject of the play, died fighting the Minamoto in the Gempei War (1180-1185) in Kaga Province. His ghost later appeared there, causing people to fear crop failures. However, Sanemori’s ghost was exorcised by the head of the Jishū sect, Yūgyō Shōnin, who also appears in the play. Well into 269 the play Funa-Benkei (“Benkei on the Ship”) the famed warrior monk Benkei (d. 1189) exorcises a ghost using a yamabushi prayer that channels the power of Fudō Myōō. Yamabushi-style exorcism also figures prominently in the play Aoi no Ue (also by Zeami). Another common form of exorcism involved recitation of the Lotus Sutra, which was used in the play Kinuta (Zeami) to assuage the ghost of a certain Lady of Ashiya. This spirit took revenge on her husband due to the grief and loneliness that he had caused her. In some plays, ghosts even exorcize themselves, usually through public and self- revelation of their death or some past grief. Taken together, these plays and the actual exorcistic rituals they reenact, provided audience members with a highly dramatized form of emotional and social catharsis and spirit placation. This sort of exorcistic drama would be adopted by kabuki theater in the early seventeenth century, which itself had origins in 34 the exorcistic nenbutsu dances of its founder, Izumo no Okuni (born ca. 1572). Among those exorcists featured in Noh plays, the shugenja or yamabushi, as they are commonly known, were perhaps the most prevalent among the common population throughout the medieval period. Like the hijiri (wandering holy men), the yamabushi were quite mobile but usually had some sort of temple/shrine affiliation from which they traveled. Typically, these were located atop or around sacred mountains. The most important mountain ranges for shugendō, the religious tradition of the yamabushi, included: 1. Those in central Honshu (centering on Mt. Ōmine in Nara province and Mt. Kumano); 2. Mt. Hiko in northeastern Kyushu; and 3. the mountain of Dewa province in 35 the northeast of Honshu, including Mt. Haguro, Mt. Gasson, and Mt. Yudono. The yamabushi training in these mountain ranges can be traced back to the seventh-century ascetic and miracle worker En no Gyōja (634-701). Said to have founded shugendō, En modern times, the people of Kaga still attributed crop failures to the ghost of Sanemori and hold festivals to quell his spirit. 34 The above information has been taken from Plutschow. See pp. 229-254 for his in-depth and illuminating study. Okuni herself was a miko attached to the famed Izumo Shrine in Izumo province (present-day Shimane Prefecture). 35 Allan G. Grapard, Mountain Mandalas: Shugendō in Kyushu (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 6. 270 no Gyōja taught his disciples how to perform magical rituals, tame demons, manipulate 36 vengeful spirits, and perform feats of wonder. So of what did shugendō, as practiced by the yamabushi, consist? The tradition itself grew out of indigenous practices of sangaku shinkō (“mountain belief”) that entailed a variety of rituals and beliefs concerning sacred mountains. However, these ancient traditions mixed with influences from the continent, namely Daoism (Onmyō-dō) and, especially, esoteric Buddhism, both of which included elements of magic and 37 asceticism. In his sweeping study of shugendō and the yamabushi, Miyake Hitoshi explains that the religious tradition focuses on three main motifs: 1. Identification, in which the shugendō practitioner identifies with a higher universalist spiritual being (as opposed to local gods), most notably Fudō Myōō, through ascetic practice in sacred mountains; 2. Manipulation in which the practitioner uses identification with the higher spirit to control beings under its control or spirits of local importance and power to ascertain what evil spirit is causing misfortune; and 3. Exorcism, in which the practitioner 38 uses the manipulation of spirits to exorcize a possessing spirit once and for all. This last motif makes shugendō essentially exorcistic in nature, since the yamabushi can control, via a higher power, the various kinds of spirits that cause misfortune. The yamabushi (literally “mountain prostration”) take their name from the intense training they received on sacred mountains. This training, which consisted of a series of long pilgrimages under very harsh conditions, such as the Ōmine-iri pilgrimage, as well as physical and mental austerities, bestowed upon the yamabushi extraordinary 39 capabilities and powers. They also performed a wide variety of rituals, many of which 36 Recent scholarship has shown this not to be the case. Shugendō developed without a founder, but the lineage is nevertheless important because medieval yamabushi did think that En no Gyōja founded their tradition. See. H. Byron Earhart’s chapter “Shugendō, En no Gyōja, and Mikkyō Influence” in Richard K. Payne, ed., Tantric Buddhism in East Asia (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006), 195. 37 Payne, Tantric Buddhism, 191. 38 Hitoshi Miyake, Shugendō Girei no Kenkyū (Tokyo: Shunjūnsha, 1971). 39 These powers, called genjutsu, consisted of impossible feats such as flying, walking on fire, and imperviousness to boiling water. The purported founder of shugendō, En no Gyōja, set the precedent for this kind of training and manifestation of extraordinary powers. According to the Nihon Ryōki, “[En no Gyōja] went to live in a cave, wore clothing made of vines, drank the dewdrops on pine needles, bathed in pure spring water to rinse away the filth of the world of desire, and learned the formula of the Peacock [the holy scripture of Mahāmāyūrī vidyārājñī] to attain extraordinary power. Thus he could employ spirits and 271 include highly symbolic actions, that produced real spiritual benefits for the yamabushi themselves and those they were helping. Among the many practices were: participation in matsuri (festivals) for various spirits (shinsai), divination (bokusen), working with mediums to obtain oracles (fujutsu), prayers for possession (yori kitō), performing the goma fire ceremony for the prevention of disasters (sokusai goma), rituals for various deities using mudras and spells (shosonbō), incantations (kaji), exorcism (tsukimono otoshi 40 and chōboku), and distributing protective spells (majinai) and charms (fuju). The yamabushi had a wide variety of exorcistic options available for delivering someone from a malignant spirit. These included the basic tsukimono otoshi and the more forceful chōboku, or “subduing.” Among the tsukimono otoshi, there existed several options: the enlightenment option (kyōka), which sought the spiritual enlightenment of the possessing spirit, especially if it was a human spirit or demonic entity, thereby releasing the possessed person from their ills. Another was the “whistling arrow” method (hikime) that used a ceremonial whistling arrow to dispel symbolically an evil spirit (recall the ancient use of the bow to ward off spirits), especially those of animals such as foxes. Incantations against evil spirits (jyaki kaji) were also employed against malignant powers, ghosts, and yako kitsune (the field fox) in particular. A fifth method was to enlist the power of Fudō Myōō to manipulate mountain or water spirits. In terms of the more forceful, chōboku, several methods applied. A common one was the “kuji” (nine-letters) ceremony that used nine mudras and nine formulas to reproach the possessing spirit. Another was the Fudō kanashiba “Binding through Fudō” which involved identification with Fudō Myōō to subdue a spirit. Similarly, there was the Marishiten muchi (whip of Marishiten, i.e. the deva Marici), which uses the power of the deva to scourge the spirit out of the possessed. Lastly, there was Fūjikome (containment). All these methods were, Kami at his command. The Nihon Ryōki in Nakamura, Miraculous Stories, 141. Some of En no Gyōja’s powers included walking on water and the ability to travel from Izu Island to Mt. Fuji and back within one night. See also Ury, Tales, 82-83, which states that E no Ubasoku “by night summoned to his service demonic deities and made them draw water and gather firewood. All beings obeyed him.” In this tale, E no Ubasoku also “trussed [Hitokotonushi, the god of Kazuraki] up with spells and confined him in the bottom of a valley.” 40 This list is taken from Hitoshi Miyake, “Religious Rituals in Shugendō: A Summary,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 16, no. 2-3 (1989): 101-116. It is a very short summary of his work Shugendō girei no kenkyū. 272 to some degree, symbolic actions that accessed higher powers and involved the 41 incantation of secret formulas known only to the yamabushi. Throughout the medieval period, the yamabushi, while maintaining their focus on mountain asceticism, also traveled much more widely than before and mingled with all types of people. As a result, they conducted healing rites and exorcisms among both political elites and the common people. In fact, in the medieval period, generals 42 sometimes employed them as shamans and envoys during times of war. The yamabushi on Kyushu were no exception and frequently employed their powers to aid both commoners and the daimyo who rose to power there. The island, which was said to 43 possess some 120 “sacred mountains” (reizan), had several centers for shugendō. According to data in Shugdenō Jiten, there are some 57 mountains on the island still sacred to shugendō, with some 22 major temples and shrine complexes devoted to the 44 tradition. Although the whole of Kyushu is quite mountainous, the preponderance of sacred mountains is in the northern third of the island, concentrated in what is now Fukuoka Prefecture and Ōita Prefecture. As noted above, Mt. Hiko and its surrounding mountains, located in Buzen Province in the northeast part of the island, was one of the major centers of shugendō for all Japan. Nearby, the mountains of the Kunisaki Peninsula 45 were also home to many yamabushi. Political elites in the region, the Ōtomo in particular, had long availed themselves of the services of the yamabushi. Up to and through the spread of Christianity in Bungo, the family employed yamabushi from the nearby temple complex of Rokugōsan Gongen 41 Miyake, Shugendō, 445-509. 42 Hitoshi Miyake, Shugendō Yamabushi no Rekishi to Shisō (Higashimurayama-shi: Kyōikusha; Tokyo: Hanbai Kyōikusha Shuppan Sābisu, 1978), 46-47. Some figures included Minamoto no Yoshinako and the Utsunomiya family in Kyushu. 43 Grapard, Mountain Mandalas, 8. 44 Hitoshi Miyake, ed., Shugendō jiten (Tokyo: Tokyodō Shuppan, 1986), 438. Honshu and Shikoku have a combined total of 294 mountains sacred to shugendō. This number, plus the mountains in Kyushu, gives us a total of 448 sacred mountains for all islands, the exception being Hokkaido. 45 Grapard, Mountain Mandalas, 8; See pp. 48-66 for a detailed religious history for the early period of Kunisaki. 273 46 on the Kunisaki Peninsula as court prophets, advisers, and exorcists. On the western side of the island, the main shugendō center was Mt. Unzen, located on the Shimabara Peninsula in Hizen province (present-day Nagasaki Prefecture). Notable families in its vicinity, especially the Yasutomi family, patronized the mountain and its temples as a shugend 47ō center. In this area, missionaries reported that Ryūzōji Takanobu summoned “Yamabushis, Uranais [soothsayers], and Mikos” in 1584. The Kirishima mountain range in southern Kyushu was also home to many yamabushi. This shugendō center was patronized extensively by the Shimazu family. By 1706, there were some 880 yamabushi associated with temple complexes and shrines located in Kirishima. In the sixteenth century, the daimyo of Satsuma was also said to have summoned “sorceresses (“Dayxa 48 women”) to perform exorcisms for illness. Given Kyushu’s preponderance of sacred mountains devoted to shugendō, there seems to have been great need of the yamabushi’s services among the population. The yamabushi were important to the daily life of the island’s people, providing healing, divination, and, above all, exorcism. If the Christianity was going to have any chance at penetrating the lives of the island’s population, it would have to offer a suitable alternative. Like the Christian exorcists of ancient Rome, the foreign Jesuits and Japanese Christians sought to supplant native exorcists. Before proceeding further, we must first examine the Jesuit experience with exorcism in Europe, what the foreign Jesuits thought about Japanese possession, and how they believed that yamabushi were seemingly able to control harmful spirits. Jesuit Predisposition to Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Asia Back in Europe, in the decades that coincide with the Japan mission, the Jesuits held renown as superior exorcists. The Devil seemed to hold sway there as well since 46 Ward, Women, 145-148. 47 Nei, Shugendō to Kirishitan, 39-45. 48 Miyake, Shugendō jiten, 314. Georg Schurhammer, Shin-tō: The Way of the Gods in Japan (Bonn and Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1923), 143. 274 cases of possession and exorcism were quite common during the sixteenth century. Given the order’s geographical spread, they were able to practice the rite all across the continent, both in staunchly Catholic lands, such as France and Italy, as well as Protestant-contested areas, such as Augsburg and Vienna. The practice itself served not only to heal troubled demoniacs within a given community, but also as an evangelical tool to win Protestants back to the faith in religiously pluralistic areas. One of the most renowned (and somewhat controversial) exorcists of the mid-sixteenth century was the itinerant Belgian Jesuit Cornelius Wischaven (1509-1559). Wischaven’s knew fame as a subduer of demons among both the laity and the clergy. Writing to Peter Faber (1506- 1546), the first among the seven founding Jesuits to become a priest, the Dutch Jesuit Peter Canisius (1521-1597) stated that he personally saw Wischaven “put eight devils to flight that would not stir for the exorcisms of other priests.” His exorcistic activity in Rome alone caught the attention of ecclesiastical authorities there after what seemed to 49 be excessive application of the practice at the end of 1557 and the beginning of 1558. Canisius himself was also given to the practice of performing exorcisms, and, much like 50 Wischaven, received censure from his superiors to curb his activity. Although exorcisms were common throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were performed by a variety of orders, the early Jesuit hierarchy apparently had some reservations about the use of exorcisms by their members. Ignatius, despite his emphasis on the discernment of spirits and the ability of the Devil to influence the choices of mankind, seems never to have performed one on a possessed person. He did, however, exorcise a house that he was staying in since it was said to be 49 John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 267-268. Juan Alfonso de Polanco, Vita Ignatii Loiolae et rerum Societatis Jesu historica, Vol 1. (Madrid: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1894), 487. James Brodick, St. Peter Casinius (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1962), 65-66. Juan Alfonso de Polanco, Polanci Complementa: Epistolae et commentaria P. Joannis Alphonsi de Polanco, Vol. 2 (Madrid: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1917), 613-616. 50 Canisius’s Vice Provincial in the Upper Rhine, Paul Hoffaeus, mentioned in a letter to Francis Borgia in 1569 that “Father Canisius must be warned not to meddle so much in cases of possessed persons, and not to create difficulties for us; much time is wasted, and the proceedings are not according to our mode of acting.” Quoted in Robert Schwickerath, 1902. “Attitude of the Jesuits in the Trials for Witchcraft,” American Catholic Quarterly Review. 27, no. 107 (1902): 486-487. 275 51 infested by demons. Although Xavier himself makes no mention of performing exorcisms in Japan, later Jesuits there certainly thought he did. This, however, is likely a 52 backwards projection of their own experiences onto those of Xavier. Other early Jesuit leaders, such as the second General, Diego Laynez, were cautious about the practice as 53 well. It is important to note here that the Jesuit hierarchy was not condemning the practice of exorcism itself, but rather chastening their order not to become too involved in performing them (in Europe) for fear of becoming embroiled in any resulting controversies. This was especially true during the early years of the order, when it had only recently dispelled accusations of heterodoxy and alumbradism. In 1545, upon hearing of the exorcisms that a Jesuit was performing in Louvain, Faber wrote, “I cannot approve of these exorcisms. The Father should know that they are open to many deceptions. He ought to expel the devil from the souls of men, as is the office of priests, and should leave it to the exorcists to perform their work.” The third General, Francis Borgia, in an attempt to curb Casinisus’s exorcistic activities, wrote in 1570 that “he should not lose a single hour with the possessed, as such an occupation was alien to the 54 institute of the Society and liable to hinder more useful work.” Borgia’s reprimand is somewhat ironic, given that Francisco Goya immortalized him in a 1788 painting, Saint 51 Ignatius, Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual diary, Select letters Including the text of the Spiritual Exercises, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean, (London: Penguin Books, 1996). 368, note 82. Polanco, an intimate of Ignaitus, writes in his Latin life: “However, he had a room in the part of that house which was infested with ghosts. He was thus agitated by some kind of terror during the night, which he decided was vacuous and not to be given in to, entrusting himself to God. He began to provoke the demons both mentally and vocally: if you’ve got any power from God against me, use it. I’ll willingly put up with whatever God pleases. You can’t do anything more than God allows you.’ And that steadfastness of mind and heart, that steady faith and confidence in God, did not merely free him from every terror of the enemy then, but rendered him immune, with God’s help, from nocturnal terrors of this kind subsequently.” 52 Ajuda 49-IV-51, 148; José Wicki, ed., Primeira Parte da Historia dos Religiosos da Companhia de Jesus e do que fizeram com a divina graça na conversão dos infieis a nossa sancta fee catholica nos reynos e provincias da India Oriental Composta pello Padre Sebastiam Gonçalves, Volume I, (Coimbra: Atlântida, 1957-1962), 325. 53 The early Jesuit hierarchy apparently had reservations about the use of exorcisms by its members. Ignatius had not performed one, while a number of other leaders approached the practice with caution. See Lyndal Roper, Oedipus & the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994), 175. Nevertheless, members of the order performed exorcisms on their own or were drawn into performing them. 54 Schwickerath, “Attitude of the Jesuits,” 480. 276 Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent, that is commonly, though falsely, 55 thought to depict Borgia performing an exorcism. In fact, Borgia’s personal crucifix— the very one depicted in Goya’s painting—was recorded during his canonization as 56 having a miraculous effect on a demoniac in Peru. Apart from individual Jesuits who were renowned for performing exorcisms, the order itself was sometimes called in as specialists for particularly difficult cases of possession. In Vienna, after being ordered by the Emperor himself to find an exorcist for a poor demoniac girl, the bishop of the city commanded the rector of the Jesuit college there to undertake the rite. Lasting some eight weeks, the exorcism became a sensation 57 with the rector claiming to have freed the girl from “12,652 devils.” The Jesuits even took part in the most notorious case of mass possession ever, that of the Ursuline convent in the city of Loudun, between 1632 and 1638. Following several failed exorcisms, as well as the burning of the supposed malefactor who had caused the possessions (a local priest), the notorious Cardinal Richelieu ordered Jesuits on the scene to take over. The new and rather unconventional exorcist, Jesuit Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-1665), found the situation so severe that he offered himself up for possession in lieu of the principal demoniac, the Mother Superior, thus making his exorcism something of an “expiatory exorcism.” Demonic attacks on his personage continued for the next twenty years (he ended up suffering from obsession rather than possession), though the exorcisms at 58 Loudun were said to have been successfully concluded. 55 Andrew Schulz, “The Expressive Body in Goya’s Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent,” The Art Bulletin, (80), No. 4 (Dec. 1998): 666; 677. Schulz states that the original subject of the painting, as evidenced by a sketch, could have been exorcism or simply extreme unction. 56 A.M. Clarke, The Life of St. Francis Borgia of the Society of Jesus (London: Burns and Oates, Limited, 1894), 104-106. 57 Schwickerath, “Attitude of the Jesuits,” 486-487. The Jesuit priest who conducted the exorcism, Georg Scherer, noted in a sermon “that if the clergy and Catholic priests had not driven these spirits out, no doubt our enemies would have cast it in a most disreputable light and our entire holy religion would have received abuse because of it, seeing that a number of them were already starting to rejoice merely because of the delay.” See also Kasper von Greyerz, Religion and Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 142, for the quote. 58 Francis Young, History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 121-124. This case is, as it sounds, rather interesting. Loudun had been a divided city, where the Protestant Huguenots could obtain sanctuary. Surin, finding the case to be particularly difficult, ended up becoming possess himself after volunteering to share in the nuns’ suffering as a result of an outpouring of love for Christ. Some, however, state that he was obsessed, rather than possessed. See Brian P. Levack, The Devil 277 In more religiously pluralistic and contested areas, such as Augsburg and England, Jesuits also explicitly used exorcism as an evangelical tool. “Exorcism mania,” as one scholar puts it, overtook Augsburg between 1560 and 1580. There, the Jesuits, most notably Peter Canisius, held public exorcisms as demonstrations of the efficacy of 59 Catholicism to lure Protestants back to the fold. Jesuits on clandestine missions to Protestant England, starting in the 1580s, likewise heavily promoted the rite and “were prepared to exorcize virtually anyone or anything, even if they considered a person’s 60 suffering to be mental or moral rather than spiritual.” They did this through not only the ritual of exorcism itself, but also through exorcistic (sacramental) objects and practices. As part of their mission to win back Protestants and encourage the Catholic community in England, the Jesuits promoted the use of “the water of St. Ignatius,” relics of martyrs, the 61 Holy Eucharist, and confession and penance as means of driving away demons. Although they were just as likely to remind Catholics to stand firm in the oppressive Protestant environment, exorcisms sometimes prompted non-Catholics to return to the religion. At Denham and Hackney, the Jesuit William Weston (c. 1550- 1615), supervising a team of secular priests, exorcised a number of individuals using holy relics. This event apparently led to some 500 people converting to Catholicism, though others put the total closer to 3,000 or 4,000. Exorcisms were at least partly responsible for many of the 117 conversions that occurred at the Jesuit residence in Durham between 62 1638 and 1639. Whatever the gains, exorcism was an important if not fundamental element of missionization in England and other hotly contested areas. Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 17. The Jesuits were actually uncomfortable at becoming involved in such a high-profile and controversial case of possession. Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism: In Early Modern France (London: Routledge, 2004), 137-140. 59 Roper, Oedipus, 180, provides us with the quote. David Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 230-239. Levack, The Devil Within, 88. 60 Young, English Catholics, 196. 61 Young, English Catholics, 204-206. 62 Walsham, “Miracles,” 800-803. The Jesuits were not alone in this regard, and there were several famous non-Jesuit exorcists operating in England at the time. One such was the secular priest John Cornelius (1557-1594) who had been supervised by Weston during the Denham and Hackney exorcisms. He was martyred. Young, English Catholics, 204. 278 While their reputations as exorcists increased in Europe throughout the sixteenth century, the Jesuits routinely made use of a variety of exorcistic rituals in their missions to Asia. Prior to arriving in Japan, where exorcism played a significant role in the mission, as discussed below, the Jesuits employed exorcisms for the foreign Catholic community in Asia, native Christian converts, and non-Christians suffering from some type of spiritual malady. The first place where Jesuits might perform an exorcism was aboard the carrack, or nao, which carried them to their mission posts. As we saw with Xavier, sixteenth-century Jesuits and the mariners they sailed with frequently saw demons in the many tempests they encountered upon the sea. Some of these storms were frighteningly intense, sometimes developing into tropical cyclones, and shipwreck and or 63 sinking were constant dangers. However, if priests were aboard, the vessel did have recourse to exorcism in order to help it survive a storm. For example, during his journey from Lisbon to Cochin, a voyage that was presided over by plague and death, the Jesuit F. Alcaraz recounted how him and his brethren exorcised a storm with holy water and prayers. The rites seemed to work, as St. Elmo appeared shortly thereafter and ensured 64 that no more danger would come from that storm. In another instance, when the carrack Santa Cruz ran into a tempest near Formosa during a voyage from Macao to Japan, the 65 Jesuits aboard were able to quell the storm partially through exorcistic rites. 63 Note about description of storms from the 1604 Roteiro of Gaspar… “the setting sun inflamed in blood…” K.M. Mathew, History of the Portuguese Navigation in India (1497-1600) (Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1988), 22. For more info on shipwrecks see Ibid., 259-274. For narratives of shipwrecks during the period see, C.R. Boxer, The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589-1622: Narratives of the Shipwrecks of the Portuguese Indiamen São Thomé (1589), Santo Alberto (1593), São João Baptista (1622), and the Journeys of the Survivors in South East Africa (Cambridge: Published by the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1959). 64 Indica VI, 769-770. For the connection between demons and storms, Petrus da Cruz testified that when he passed by the island of Tristán de Ceña, where there was great tempests of wind, which are there perpetually, they say that demons walk there visibly.” Indica VI, 39. António Vieira, when traveling from Brazil to Lisbon, likewise performed exorcisms at sea. Robert Grant Watson, Spanish and Portuguese South America During the Colonial Period, Volume 2 (London: Trübner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1884), 86- 87. 65 One mariner, grateful to have survived the ordeal, mentioned in a letter from 1564 that a few of the Padres had been on deck offering up litanies and prayers against the storm, while one, Balthasar da Costa (b. 1531), took further measures by tying relics to a harpoon and lowering them into the sea. The storm later increased in fury, nearly killing everyone aboard, but, to the surviving mariner, the Jesuit’s exorcism had clearly helped their chances of survival. Cartas I, 150v-151. An English translation of the letter can be found in Boxer, The Great Ship, 309-310. 279 Once they arrived in India, the Jesuits continued their role as exorcists for the Catholic community and in the interest of attracting converts to the faith. Unlike the lengthy accounts of exorcisms they performed in Europe, which often involved spectators and dramaturgy that could occur over the course of many weeks, the accounts related from India and elsewhere in Asia were, for the most part, relatively simple affairs. Most often they featured an individual suffering from some sort of malady caused by a spirit, which the padre would address as a demon. The padre, or sometimes a native Christian, would then take steps to exorcise the evil influence upon the person, usually with some type of sacramental, such as holy water or a holy relic. Often, this deliverance prompted the apparent demoniac, if not already a Christian, to convert to the faith—on occasion, alongside members of the demoniac’s family and spectators who were present during the event. Although accounts of exorcisms in Asia could take on triumphalist tones, as the accounts of exorcisms in England have been labeled, they most frequently took the form of matter-of-fact descriptions. The majority of exorcisms recounted from India fall into this category. For example, in the mission zone of Punicale (Punnaikayal) in 1551, Joam di Mizquita describes the exorcism of a native woman who had sought out one of the padres to cure her spiritual malady, whatever it might have been. Through the recitation of the Gospel, as well as the sprinkling of some holy water, the woman “became well and 66 was never again tormented.” Nothing more is said of the matter. In a letter from Fróis a few years later, we hear of a Goan Christian in the parish of São Jão who apparently had problems with “demons” in his house. Running to one of the irmãos for some sort of relief, the Christian asked the brother to “baptize” (“bautizar”) a crucifix so that he might take it home and put the spirits to flight. Though Fróis found the episode worth mentioning in the letter, he does not dwell on the event and simply uses it as a brief example of what was considered being a “good Christian.” The entire event, it seems, 67 was a thoroughly quotidian experience. 66 Indica IV, 125. De Mizquita (de Mezquita) does not say if this woman was Catholic or not, nor does he say if she ended up converting from the experience. It is likely that she did, given the preceding anecdote was about a woman who was supposedly near death during childbirth, only to convert and have a healthy delivery. 67 Indica IV, 798-799. 280 We should stress here that Jesuit-led exorcisms in India were not the result of a preconceived missionary tactic to use the practice haphazardly as a method of conversion. Rather, it was typically the native population who initiated the practice by requesting a padre, a relatively new religious authority, to cure some sort of spiritual malady from which they were suffering. Already familiar with the practice of subduing demons, as their European exploits attest, the Jesuits obliged native requests to deal with harassing spirits by offering them the relatively common Catholic practice of exorcism. A few Indians deemed the missionaries effective at dealing with harmful spirits and decided to accept baptism as a result. Many probably did not think Christian exorcism to be particularly effective in comparison to native methods for dealing with harmful spirits. The Jesuit writers are naturally silent about these Indians, choosing instead to write about their successes. One of the most intriguing features of the Jesuit letters from the Asian mission zone is their matter-of-fact statements regarding the existence of demons and the willful obstruction of their mission by the Devil. In this regard, the Jesuits in Japan were no different than their brethren in India, China, and Siam, not to mention those operating in the New World. Missionary reports from these lands are replete with accounts of spiritual and physical confrontations with the Devil and his minions, both actual and metaphorical. Reading through the collected documents from Japan, one senses that the Jesuits considered the Devil to be the primary obstacle to their enterprise rather than persecution by secular authorities or antagonism from Buddhist monks. In fact, according to the Jesuits, opposition to the spread of Christianity by human actors was ultimately diabolical 68 since it was “the Enemy” that instigated them to do so. Part of the Jesuits’ willingness to engage in exorcism in Japan stemmed from their very real experience with things they considered demonic. In traveling East into non- Christian territory, the Jesuits (and many other Europeans) had the conviction that Satan would put up fierce resistance to any attempts at wresting a region of the globe that he had held in his clutches since the Fall of Man. Japan, or East Asia for that matter, was not 68 The idea that Satan was literally blocking the Christian missionary enterprise goes back to St. Paul and the earliest New Testament writing dating back to c. 52 CE. “For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way.” (1 Thessalonians 2:18) 281 69 the only region to have comprised Satan’s dominion. According to established Christian theology at the time, the entire world had been enthralled to the Devil prior to Jesus and the Resurrection. The Roman Empire, where Christianity first spread, had been no exception, as the metaphors of “the Whore of Babylon” and “scarlet beast” in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 17) make explicit. To early Christians, the Roman Empire itself was a mechanism of evil, an illusionary state that stood in stark contrast to the ultimate reality of the Kingdom of God. The Roman Empire did eventually become Christianized, as did other regions of Europe and Asia Minor, but vast swaths of humanity remained unexposed to the Gospel. Only natural law (law based upon the rationality of humankind as an approximation to divine law) remained in these areas—areas in which demonic influence had not been limited. There, humans were even more susceptible to pretensions of demonic power and paid them homage in the form of idols. This was certainly thought to be the case for the New World, where the bloody nature of Mesoamerican religion appalled invading Europeans and immediately reinforced preconceptions of the connection between indigenous religiosity and diabolism. The Portuguese, and the Jesuits who accompanied 70 them eastward, made similar connections between native religions and diabolism. When missionaries went even farther afield from India to Japan and China, it is hardly surprising that they cast the native religions of those countries in a similar, albeit modified light. During his previous missions, Xavier believed that he had personally encountered 71 the Devil in the form of native religious practices, deities, and, of course, idols. Indeed, 69 In a letter to the Archbishop of Evora Theotino de Bragança Valignano, highlights the importance of missionizing China since it was a land “in which the Devil for thousands of years has laid such strong roots…” Cartas II, 171v. Dated Dec. 23 1585, from Goa. 70 See Indica VI, 82 (Cabral) 102; 111; 123; 332; 417; 579; 582; 616; 682; 708 for casual references in the letters between 1563 and 1566 as to how the native population had praised the Devil and how the Brahmins were his ministers. See also Indica I, 289-291. Indica IV, 100. The religions of Sri Lanka had also been sown by the Devil. Indica II, 433. Even Roberto Nobili (1577-1656), the Jesuit who can be said to have adopted the most Indian lifestyle and accommodated himself to the local culture, describes Indian religious figures as “perverse idolaters” and “priests and slaves of the demon.” Ines G. Županov, Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-century India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 202. 71 For example, in a letter from Cochin in 1544, he writes, “When [the boys of the village] tell me about idolatries that are being practiced outside the villages, I collect all the boys of the village and go with them 282 he believed that the Devil and his servants had personally assailed him and sought to thwart his attempts at illuminating their dark dominion with the light of the Gospel. This was not mere hyperbole, as Xavier and other Jesuits truly believed that they encountered supernaturally evil beings and entities. Xavier believed that one such attack occurred on the voyage to Japan, when the Chinese junk he was aboard foundered in a storm. In order to quell the tempest, the “pagans” aboard the ship offered sacrifices of birds and food and drink to a certain “idol” they had aboard. The storm continued unabated, and Xavier’s manservant, the Chinese Manuel, accidentally fell into hold of the ship and received a grievous head wound. The daughter of the captain, a Chinese “pirate” named Aván, fell overboard and drowned in the surging waves. After this tragic incident, the pagans “cast lots” (divination) under the command of the deity in order to find out why the captain’s daughter had to die. It replied, through the lots, that if Manuel had died in the hold, the captain’s daughter would not have fallen into the sea. The implication of this preternatural revelation must have been clear to Xavier. The Devil or demons who controlled the storm (and the idol) had failed in their attempt to take the life of Manuel, who was on mission in service of God. Thus thwarted, they caused the poor girl to drown as a substitute. Explaining the incident to his brethren, Xavier writes, “see upon what our lives were depending, upon the lots of demons and upon the power of their ministers and servants. What would have happened to us if God 72 had permitted the demon to do us all the harm he desired?” Xavier then waxes theological upon the influence of the Devil over those who are pusillanimous and how humans can overcome the obstacles he places in their way. The tragic incident aboard the junk clearly made a deep impression upon Xavier since he still recalled it some two months later in his letter; and it is likely he kept this demonic encounter in mind as he formed his view of Japanese religion and the future of to the place where the idols have been erected; and the devil is more dishonored by the boys whom I take there than he was honored by their fathers and relatives when they made and worshiped them, for the boys take the idols and smash them to bits.” Costelloe, Letters, 66. 72 Costelloe, Letters, 294-295. From Kagoshima, Nov. 5 1549. Xavier goes on, later in the letter, to encourage his fellow Jesuits in Goa to be aware of the wiles of Lucifer, as the “enemy,” in perturbing them during their missionary work. See Costelloe, Letters, 302-303. 283 the mission there. In the same letter, Xavier considers demonic influence in Japan as he reflects upon the overarching purpose of the mission: …for we have come here solely out of love for [God, the eternal Father], as he well knows, since all our thoughts, intentions, and poor desires are manifest to him, namely, that we may free the souls which for more than fifteen hundred years have been enslaved to Lucifer, who has made himself be worshipped by them as God upon the earth, since he was unable to do this in heaven; and, after having been expelled from it, he takes his revenge upon as many as he can, and 73 also upon the sorry Japanese. While Xavier does not elaborate upon what sort of revenge the Devil was taking upon the Japanese, he very likely meant that Satan was taking their eternal souls as a result of false worship. The Devil apparently achieved this via lieutenants who had managed to set themselves up as objects of worship. Upon hearing about Shaka (the historical Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama) and Amida (a bodhisattva), Xavier concluded that these two must actually be “pure inventions of the demons” rather than wise and learned men as he first 74 suspected. If Shaka and Amida had been wise pagan sages similar to such figures as Plato, the resulting cults could have been cast in the padre’s mind as ignorant corruptions that developed over the centuries from the teachings of a learned master. But instead, he came to the conclusion that they were supernatural entities (demons) loathe to give up the 75 homage they received from the Japanese. 73 Nov. 5 1549 Costelloe, Letters, 310. Indica I, 164. Fróis makes a similar statement about the enslavement of the Japanese, “And they took with themselves Paulo de Tonomine, who was a grande preacher of the Gospel, and profited much the Christians, because he knew very well the tricks with which the Devil enslaved the Japanese…” Fróis I, 87. 74 To the Jesuits in Europe from Cochin, Jan. 29 1552. Costelloe, Letters, 336-337. He also states of the bonzes and nuns, “I am not surprised by the sins committed between the male and female bonzes, even though they are frequent, because people who cease to adore God worship the demon; and when they have him for their lord, they cannot refrain from committing enormous sins. Rather, I am surprised that they do not commit more than they do.” The sins he refers to are the supposed abortions that the bonzes and nuns use to hide their sexual relations. 75 Xavier thought in similar terms about China. In a letter to King João III of Portugal, from Goa, in 1552, he writes: “And we, priests of the Society of the name of Jesus, servants of Your Highness, are going to sow war and discord between the demons and the persons who adore them by making great demands on God’s behalf, first upon the king, and then upon all his realm, that they no longer worship the demon, but only the Creator of heaven and of earth, who created them, and Jesus Christ, Savior of the world, who redeemed them.” Costelloe, Letters, 381.Curiously, Xavier makes no reference to demonic possession in any of his letters concerning Japan. His mention of the “revenge” that the Devil takes upon the “sorry Japanese” could potentially be demonic possession, given Xavier’s belief in the very real effects of the demonic in this world. He had, after all, once been assaulted by a demonic entity during a stay in the haunted house of the Frangipani family in Rome that left him with a bloody nose. Ines G. Županov, 284 When the Jesuits entered the Japanese setting in 1549, they initially had no understanding of either Japanese spirit possession or the important role that yamabushi played in tending to those afflicted by it. However, as they made their way deeper into Kyushu and solidified their presence in Bungo and Hizen, they came to a gradual 76 understanding of this form of Japanese religiosity. The missionaries, of course, interpreted these things within their own worldview, and not favorably. Within ten years, they had identified the yamabushi as “servants of the Devil” and interpreted tsukimono as demons gaining influence over human bodies. The 1556 document known as the “Sumario de los Errores” represents the Jesuits’ first systematic explanation of Japanese religious traditions based upon first-hand observation. The author, probably either Padre Cosme de Torres or Juan Fernández, recognized that spiritual possession was a very real phenomenon in Japan. They also believed that the yamabushi had the ability to manipulate spirits, as a result of being in league with Satan, and seemingly able to aid the afflicted. Interpreting spirit possession as an act of the Devil (or demons), the author states that animals, such as pigs and dogs, could enter a person and demand “worship” until they departed the possessed. He also asserts that the “Iamambuxos” (yamabushi) had a special ability to expel these demons. According to the author, this ability had been gained as a result of performing austerities in the mountains and making a pact with the Devil himself. In keeping with this pact, the Devil or demons would voluntarily leave the Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India, 16th-17th Centuries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 40-41. However, there is nothing in his letters to suggest that he ever encountered any type of spirit possession in Japan, and the unfortunate death of the captain’s daughter is as close as we come to any type of demonic assault. Later hagiographic material would include exorcistic battles with demons in Japan, similar to those reported in actual letters throughout the rest of the century. But Xavier himself neither reports upon Japanese spirit possession nor upon the possibility that exorcism could be an effective means of proselytization and convincing the Japanese of the efficacy of Christianity. Later missionaries, however, would report at length on Japanese spirit possession and the role of exorcisms in some conversions. 76 The earliest report on yamabushi came not from any missionary, but from the captain Jorge Alvarez in either 1546 or 1547 in a letter to Francis Xavier while he was in Malacca. See MHJ II, 22-23. He describes them as “grandes feiticeiros,” or, “great sorcerers” and notes the beads that they wear around their necks. Nicolao Lancillotto also relates a brief description of the yamabushi in his summary of the early information coming in about Japan, dated December, 28, 1548 from Cochín. MHJ II, 65. Pedro de Alcaçova describes them in a brief paragraph as “bonzes who go to a mountain where there are no “pagode” to do penance.” He also emphasizes the fasts that they undertake. See Pedro de Alcaçova a los Jesuitas de Portugal, March 1554. See, MHJ II, 426. Nei, Shugendō to kirishitan, 123-124, gives a list of letters and documents that describe the yamabushi and their activities in some form or another. 285 possessed person whenever a yamabushi performed an exorcism. The entire production was meant to enrich the yamabushi monetarily and further encourage diabolical worship 77 among the population. The missionaries eventually gained much more accurate and detailed knowledge of the yamabushi and the religious context in which they operated. This information came to them courtesy of a “bonze” (monk) named Nishu, who had converted sometime before 1583 and taken the Christian name of João. Living in Arima, where he “was held in great esteem and veneration,” Nishu had actually been a yamabushi and had trained in the mountains of Yoshino and Kumano in central Honshu. There, he undertook the famed Ōmine-iri (“Entering the Great Mountains”), the most significant ritual peregrination in the shugendō tradition, some seven times. This mass pilgrimage was ostensibly required of all shugendō practitioners every year in order to maintain their spiritual prowess and purity. Relating Nishu’s inside knowledge in a letter from 1583, Fróis writes: According to their own account, their usual tasks are expelling devils from people’s bodies, foretelling future events, reading palms like gypsies, invoking devils for evil to befall a person when they are paid for this, selling written amulets for health, long life, wealth, and prosperity in this world, and, finally, 78 making use of many other magic arts and spells by which they earn their living. Fróis then goes on to describe in detail the ascetic practices of the Ōmine-iri, from which the yamabushi gained their exorcistic powers. Some of these practices were truly rigorous. For example, yamabushi on pilgrimage were only allowed a few handfuls of rice each day and little water intake for their entire 75-league journey through the lofty snow-covered peaks. Additional hardships included spending a day and night in an 77 Torres was the senior of the two, so he may have actually written the Sumario. But Fernández had, by far, the greater ability in speaking Japanese, so he undoubtedly contributed to it in some form. Padre Baltasar Gago (c. 1518-1583) might have also contributed. MHJ II, 659. See Schurhammer, Shintō, 168, for an old English translation of the part that concerns Shintō. Another early description of the yamabushi comes to us from the pen of Gaspar Vilela (c. 1526-1572) in his letter to the Jesuits of Portugal written from Hirado, October 29 1557. Vilela emphasizes the austerities that the yamabushi conduct and describes a rite involving a boat that seems to be unique to the yamabushi of Hirado. See MHJ II, 702-703. 78 Cartas II, 86. This English translation is found in Paul L. Swanson, “Shugendō and the Yoshino-Kumano Pilgrimage,” Monumenta Nipponica 36, no. 1 (April 1981): 80-84. See also, Nei, Shugendō to kirishitan, 116-129, for a Japanese translation and analysis. Further info can also be found in Arimichi Ebisawa, Kirishitanshi no Kenkyū (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1971), 79-84. Fróis also has more info on Nishu in Fróis III, 295-296. Another “bonze” who had been a yamabushi on Mt. Unzen itself also converted and took the name José. See Fróis V, 57-59. 286 awkward and pain-inducing squat to aid in meditation, being beaten by fearsome pilgrimage attendants called goki, and being left to hang from a tree over the side of a precipice for different infractions until the poor yamabushi “drops from exhaustion and is smashed to smithereens.” Perhaps most frighteningly of all was the ritual called “weighing of karma” (gō no hakari) in which, according to Fróis, the yamabushi were seated in a contraption that resembled a hanging scale. This contraption, with the yamabushi on one side of the scale, would be swung over the highest precipice on the mountain. The penitent would then confess his “sins,” until he balanced with the empty side and the goki brought him back to safety. Failing to do so would result in the goki dumping the scales and the poor 79 yamabushi falling into the void below to certain death. Any yamabushi who became too exhausted or ill at any point in the pilgrimage was left where he fell to either die or make his own way off the mountain. Those who made it through these austerities were confirmed in their spiritual abilities, exorcism included. Although Fróis acknowledged that the yamabushi undertook some very intense hardships to gain and maintain spiritual prowess, he viewed the entire endeavor as the training of diabolical agents. To him, pilgrimages like the Ōmine-iri were not about communing with a benevolent Buddhist deity (Fudō Myōō) through physical and spiritual austerities. Rather, in a view similar to Torres and Fernández before him, the yamabushi were making oblations to Satan himself so that they could manipulate both 80 him and lesser evil spirits for the general promotion of diabolism in Japan. This 79 The “weighing of karma” is mentioned in the 1215 document Shugen Hiōshō in which it is called “the rite of Hell.” See, Blacker, Catalpa, 212 for a brief quote of the document that lists six shugendō rituals. She also gives a summary and analysis of Fróis’s description of the Ōmine-iri, 209-213. The “weighing of karma” ritual is still practiced today, albeit in modified form. Another European resident of Japan, th Engelbert Kaempfer, relates how the pilgrimages at Mt. Hiko and Mt. Ōmine were practiced in the late 17 century. He also emphasizes the austerities of the yamabushi and the danger of the climbs: “A visitor [to the mountain] who has not cleansed his body and heart will meet the misfortune of crashing down, being smashed to pieces, or, if he manages to avoid this, he will be subjected to punishment throughout his life in the form of illness or another serious affliction.” Speaking of the pilgrimage to Mt. Hiko, he states, “The mountain is climbed under the greatest danger over several days and is such that anybody climbing it without preparing himself and being fujō [unclean] will be possessed by the fox (the devil) and go raving mad.” See, Englebert Kaempfer, Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, trans. Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999), 122. 80 In his own words, “the cult and worship of these men consist entirely in dedicating themselves to the service of the devil and regarding themselves as his servants.” In Cartas II, 86: “ O culto & veneração destes, he dedicarense totálmente ao serviçio do demonio, & teremse por seus criados.” 287 interpretation of the yamabushi eventually won out among the Jesuits, as evidenced by the dictionary entry for the 1603 Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam, which simply reads: 81 “Yamabuxi. Men dedicated to the cult of the Devil.” This type of condemnation notwithstanding, Fróis and other Jesuits maintained that actual spirit possession did occur in Japan and that the yamabushi were able to control these entities. The Jesuits simply attributed these interrelated phenomenon to the power of Satan and the demonic, from 82 which the yamabushi derived all of their powers. Thus, the foreign Jesuits agreed with the Japanese that the yamabushi really did have preternatural powers, such as exorcism and divination. However, to the foreigners, all of the spirits that the yamabushi controlled or called upon were simply demons or manifestations of Satan himself. Some of Xavier’s immediate successors in Japan, most notably the Padres Gaspar Vilela and Luis Fróis, also held the view that Japanese Buddhism stemmed from the diabolical. Unlike Xavier, their assessment was based upon widespread experience in Japan, close observation of religious practices, and direct experience with exorcisms. Their assessments were not simply an a prori assumption that demons existed in Japan. Rather, Vilela and Fróis formed their views by witnessing what they believed to be diabolical possession or by hearing about it from other Jesuits. For example, Fróis relates Almeida’s account of spiritual possession of miko at the Kasuga Shrine in Nara: [The miko] dances before the heathen idol. And she does it with such violence and musical accompaniment so passionate and ragingly fast that it sounds like the howling and screaming of hell until she falls down as if seized with a fainting fit. Then they say that the spirit of the kami has possessed her and when she has got up again she answers the questions that had been brought before her. And for this 83 people pay 1200 kasha and sometimes more. 81 João Rodrigues and Harumichi Ishizuka. Pari-bon Nippon Jisho=Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam, (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1976), 317. 82 “There is another great company of such as are called Yamabushi, with curled and straying hair, they make profession to find out again things either lost or stolen, after this sort. They set before them a child, whom the devil invadeth, called up thither by charms: of that child then do they all ask that which they are desirous to know.” Fróis quoted in Michael Cooper, ed., They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543-1640 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 324. Cartas 1575, 202- 202v.Also Richard Willes, England and Japan: The First Known Account of Japan in English, Extraced from the History of Travayle, 1577 (Kobe: J. L. Thompson, 1928), 54-55. The full version of Willes’s book is available on the University of Michigan’s “Early English Books Online” website, with the relevant passages 255-256v: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/a20049.0001.001/531?page=root;size=125;vid=22913;view=text 83 Quoted in Harich-Schneider, Japanese Music, 477. Frois II, 50. 288 Having lived in various places in Kyushu and in the ancient capital of Miyako for fourteen years, Gaspar Vilela had great opportunity to witness the full spectrum of Japanese religious traditions. In an early letter from Hirado in 1557, Vilela starkly portrays the animistic aspects of Japanese religion he found in northwestern Kyushu and the Gotō islands as devil worship. Figures in Buddhism, such as Amida, Shaka (the Buddha), and the bodhisattvas, he says, were men who had come to be adored as deities. Regardless of the supposed historical origins and personages of Buddhism, the religion, as Vilela saw it practiced, was orchestrated by the Devil so that ultimate homage would be paid to him. All of the superficial similarities between Christianity and Japanese Buddhism were not happenstance; they were conscious attempts by the Devil to imitate and pervert the Catholic faith. For Vilela, engagement with the Devil through worship could have very real consequences. If not adequately adored, the Devil could “torment [the Japanese] in many 84 ways.” Vilela very likely meant “torment” through possession, sickness, or some other type of calamity, all being possible in the Japanese worldview where vengeful spirits operated. In the exquisite Buddhist temples of Miyako, Vilela saw the Devil performing “false miracles” to trick the population into worship. According to him, the Devil would actually appear before people when invoked and interact with them in very real ways. He also recounts a number of cases of possession and exorcism, some of which will be 85 discussed below. In acknowledging the reality of spirits in Japan that could and did interact with the people, Vilela simply identified them as diabolical in nature. For him, the Devil and other demons were a very real presence in Japan that had a profound effect on the living. Simply put, Vilela believed that Satan had ensnared the Japanese because he actually saw the Devil at work through supernatural occurrences (“false miracles”) and possession that the Japanese themselves attributed to the Kami and onryō. 84 MHJ II, 702-704. Vilela maintained his view that Buddhism and Shinto were essentially diabolical in nature throughout his tenure in Japan. He says much the same thing in his letter from Goa, October 20 1571 after leaving Japan for good. See Cartas, 328v. 85 Vilela to Antonio de Quadros and the Jesuits of India. 17 de Agosto de 1561 from Sakai. MHJ III, 353- 355. 289 Like Vilela, Luis Fróis believed in both the diabolical nature of Japanese religion and the reality of demonic activity in Japan. More so than any other Jesuit writer, Fróis 86 highlighted the demonic wherever and whenever he saw it. His emphasis on the presence of demons in Japan stemmed from the deep-seated Jesuit view, as confirmed by Xavier, that Satan had held sway over the East and that local religious elites there were his servants. Fróis consistently espoused such a view throughout his many correspondences, but it is most succinctly summed up in his Tratado simply notes: “we abhor and abominate the devil; the bonzes [Buddhist monks] venerate and worship him, 87 building temples and making great sacrifices to him.” Fróis’s comparison was not meant to be taken in the abstract; that is, Fróis did not mean that the Japanese worshipped Satan through false and ultimately imaginary gods that he had induced them to create. Rather, he meant quite literally that the bonzes paid homage to demons through idols— and these malevolent entities could and did interact with the people. For example, when describing religious practices in the Gotō Islands, an area with which he had personal experience, Fróis took pains to equate the worship of native gods (in this case, Daikoku) for agricultural benefit with diabolical reverence: Of those towns almost all are fidalgos [samurai] who are in service of the lord, a political people and very civil, and given over in the extreme to idols and auguries, because whatever thing they take by the augury, and they have many superstitions, about what to do so that it is not on an inauspicious day or unlucky hours, or in certain times…and with these ceremonies and madness they are occupied, such that they are to be pitied as the devil dominates them. In that town of the lord they have great pagodas, and among them one of property in this life, who is called Daikoku, who is seated above two bundles of rice and has a bag in his hand, and he is much venerated among them. And with the people being very poor, having been much vexed by the Devil, and such great work given to them, and among them is more feared and revered; and it seems to be one of the lands in Japan in which there are the most gentile ceremonies and diabolical superstitions. And with the land being so poor and 86 This, however, might just be a byproduct of how voluminous he was as an author. Fróis was also the editor of the annual letters, a vantage point that allowed him to collate all of the other foreign-born Jesuit viewpoints. 87 Danford, Gil and Reff, The First European, 103. Concerning devotional images, Fróis states, “Ours are beautiful and inspire devotion; theirs are horrendous and frightening, with images of demons engulfed in flames.” See pp. 115-116. Here Fróis is referring to Buddhist depictions of Tengu and guardian demons, or manifestations of the Buddha, such as the fearsome Fudō Myō-ō. 290 lacking what is necessary, of little rice that they produce, the great part they use in festivals and other oblations, with which they to have to propitiate and placate the 88 Devil more. Although the Gotō Islands were one of the poorer areas of Kyushu and something of a cultural and religious a backwater compared to other regions, the same could not be said for the capital where Fróis saw Japanese religion on display in all its maleficent magnificence. Writing from Miyako to his brethren in China and India in 1565, Fróis confirmed that all of Japan, even the cultural and religious center of the archipelago, was 89 indeed under the influence of the Devil and demons. After giving his brethren a brief description of some “secular” matters, namely some of the customs and political climate of central Japan, Fróis provided a fairly lengthy description of various aspects of Japanese religion as he saw them from the capital. More than a matter of curiosity, the letter, which Fróis meant as a primer of Japanese religious practice, was intended to inform future missionaries concerning the “cults and adorations” of Japan so that “they might come to know…the manner that the devil has in tricking these people, and the great readiness they have in adoring and serving him.” In short, as Fróis saw it, future missionaries needed to know what kinds of spiritual forces they would be up against when they arrived in Japan in order to plan accordingly. While he does not dwell upon the connection between monastic Buddhism and diabolism in this letter, Fróis does explicitly link the veneration of Buddhist statuary with the veneration of demons in his description of the Kasuga (“Casúnga”) shrine-temple complex at Nara. There, he states, the people were beholden to a temple of a certain demon where they paid homage to him through the adoration and veneration of a pagode 90“ ” made entirely of metal and gilded in gold. Moreover, Fróis says, this demon made them worship and build temples to “false beasts,” that is animals, such as fish, that 88 Fróis Historia II, 121-122. 89 Fróis to the Padres and Brothers of the Society in India and China, from Miyako, Feb. 20 1565. Cartas, 173. 90 For spirit possession and miko at the Kasuga shrine, Terence Lancashire, An Introduction to Japanese Folk Performing Arts. London: Routledge, 2016), 25-29. For Fróis’s perception of it, see Harich-Schneider, Japanese Music, 477. 291 91 had been dedicated to the “pagode.” Uninformed about the true nature of Buddhism as this description is, Fróis’s letter is nevertheless important because it represents a 92 distillation of the Jesuit view on the demonic origins of Japanese religion. If, according to Fróis, some demons preferred to ensconce themselves in temples for homage, then there were others who preferred to interact with people directly and possess them outside of magnificent shrine-temple complexes. These demons, he says, were served by adherents of another “sect” called the “Iamanbuxí” (yamabushi), of which there were many. Chief among their diabolical activities, Fróis explains, was a sort of divination. The yamabushi would offer to find a lost or stolen object for a client through their dark arts. In this practice, the yamabushi employed child mediums to act as a host for a “demon” that they conjured up from the netherworld through an incantation. The client would then ask the child anything they wanted and receive an answer. As another service to their clientele, the yamabushi would use their powers to curse or bless third parties. These powers were a direct result of ascetic training and “penance” in the mountains, which culminated in the appearance of the Devil in various forms. Having once seen this apparition, the yamabushi would be sent out across all of Japan to perform their diabolical services. A subtype of the yamabushi, which Fróis calls “Yenquis,” also supposedly revered the Devil, whom they called Amida, and communed with him in the mountains in order to gain powers. Fróis’s account is also important because it represents how he processed Japanese religions as actual diabolism and transmitted that 93 interpretation to other missionaries in Japan and beyond. 91 The Kasuga Shrine was and still is a primarily Shinto Shrine dedicated to the ancient Fujiwara family. Fróis had just arrived in the capital when he wrote this letter, so it is natural that he did not know the area and its religious minutia as he would later, when he describes the scene in much more accurate detail in his Historia. See Fróis II, 48-51. Fróis’s reference to fish dedicated to the “pagode” is a reference to the fish contained in the famous Sarusawa pond, located near both Kōfukuji temple and the Kasuga shrine. When writing about the gilded idol, Fróis is likely referring to the golden Buddha at Kōfukuji. 92 Fróis, after spending many more years in Japan, revises his description of the shrines and the temples in the environs of the capital in his Historia. In that lengthy work, Fróis’s descriptions are much more travelogue-like, and he pays no special intention to the demonic origins of the temples or deities worshipped within them. In the Historia, the context would have already been established in earlier chapters, whereas in this letter, which was to alert his brethren in India and China of the tricks of the Devil in Japan, he found it important to state what would have been obvious in his massive history. 93 Other Jesuits who had been to Japan also disseminated the diabolical interpretation, though in slightly modified form. A figure no less than Alessandro Valignano, the Italian Vice-Provincial, adopted a similar stance, thinking that the Buddha had once been a wise man but had come to be worshipped through the influence of the Devil. Wicki, Historia y Progress, 136. Indica III, 80. Barreto says Japanese are enthralled 292 Exorcism in Japan as a Native Mode of Persuasion Our evidence for the ubiquity of exorcisms in Japan is found in the voluminous Jesuit documentation of the mission. Within it, the accounts of exorcisms come from three principal viewpoints: personal attestations contained in letters, secondhand reports in letters and histories whose authors derive their information from their fellow Jesuits or Japanese Christians, and finally, to a lesser extent, contemporary histories about the mission written by non-participants back in Europe. Letters by the Jesuits themselves are naturally our strongest evidence, but occasionally they are reporting second-hand information, such as an account of an exorcism that a Japanese Christian had told them. However, several authors explicitly report having been present at exorcisms, most notably Luis de Almeida, Francisco Cabral, Juan Baptista de Monte (1528-1587), and, of 94 course, Luis Fróis. Various other letters, and, above all, Fróis’s História, relate accounts of exorcisms at which the author was not present. The least reliable sources are those histories not written by missionaries present in Japan, such as Guzman’s História. Much of their material is based upon actual documents written by the missionaries themselves, but their authors had no firsthand knowledge of what the situation was like on the ground. Nevertheless, these histories are useful because they provide testament that exorcism on mission was thought to be normal to readers in the wider Catholic world and an appropriate means by which the faith could be extended to non-Christians. All these sources make it clear that the Jesuits did not force Catholic exorcism upon the Japanese. Rather, in attempting to deal with wholly native kinds spirit possession and attack, Japanese Christians prompted the missionaries to perform exorcism as a service to the community. The Jesuits, who were obviously well-familiar with subduing demons in both Europe and India, knew that Catholic exorcism could address Japanese explanations for spirit attacks (e.g. vengeful spirits, possessing spirits) and were happy to oblige Japanese requests. Exorcism in Japan did not begin as a result in the errors of the devil. Many other Europeans, many non-Catholics, likewise believed that in the supposed diabolical nature of Buddhism. 94 For example Fróis in Cartas 405v; Almeida in Cartas 410 and López-Gay, Catecumenado, 202; Juan Baptista de Monte whose letter from the end of December 1564 is quoted by Fróis in Fróis I, 381; Cabral in Cartas 360; Duarte da Silva in MHJ II, 525. 293 of European projection of the practice in the Japanese Christian community as some have 95 argued. Nor did they have to convince the Japanese that malevolent entities (demons) could possess and attack people because there was already a strong belief in harmful spirits. The Japanese Christians determined that Catholic exorcism was an effective missionary tool by seeking it out and, ultimately, practicing it for themselves. Native religious specialists, namely yamabushi and some Buddhist priests, had trafficked in exorcism for a millennium, so any new sort of religion would simply have to address the problem of harmful and possessing spirits in order to be deemed worthy of belief. When considered in this light, the ubiquity of Catholic exorcism in Japan was not the result of any sort of European design, but a natural adoption of a critical “native mode of persuasion” as determined by the Japanese themselves. This, then, represents a much earlier and previously overlooked way in which the Christianity “accommodated” itself to Japanese society. The first evidence of Japanese requesting some type of Christian exorcism comes to us in a 1549 letter from Xavier, who, stopping in Malacca on the way to Kagoshima, relates information that he had received from some Portuguese merchants visiting Kyushu. According to Xavier’s version of their report, the lord of the land ordered the merchants to take up shelter in some abandoned houses that had the reputation of being haunted by “the devil.” At night, some sort of spirit harassed the Portuguese contingent, an attack wherein their clothes were pulled by an unseen force and where one of their servants had a terrifying vision. In order to protect himself and his compatriots, the servant set up many crosses around the haunted house. The Japanese, prompted by the screaming that they heard at night, asked what the cause of it all was. “Then the lord of the land revealed to them that the house was inhabited by a demon. Asking about the remedies for casting it out, they responded that there was nothing better than the sign of † [sign of the cross]. And after that the Portuguese put crosses inside and outside the house, and they saw those of the land do the same. And so they put crosses throughout all those 95 If the Jesuits had projected their own notions of possession onto the Japanese situation, it would be reasonable to expect that there would be many reports of exorcisms during the initial years of the mission. However, we find that the majority of the exorcisms reported actually date from the later decades, meaning that it seems that there was a learning curve as to the applicability of the practice on both the Jesuit and Japanese side of things. Of the early reports, many exorcisms are prompted by the Japanese requesting help with a possessed person or evil spirit. 294 96 parts.” This might not have been a formal exorcism since it did not involve actual spirit possession (it seems to have been a case of obsession) or an actual religious rite, but nevertheless, it was a casting out of sorts. Because this is the first recorded episode of Catholic exorcism in Japan, it warrants further attention. First, we must recognize that there does not seem to be any sort of projection on the part of the Portuguese merchants since the houses were already abandoned and the lord told them specifically that the house was infested. The Portuguese may have thought about the harassing spirit in Christian terms (i.e. a demon), but the lord and the rest of the people interpreted it in their own way. The key point is that both sides acknowledged that some type of malevolent entity infested the house. Second, the Portuguese naturally protected themselves from assault with what was available and known to them as members of the Catholic laity: use of a sacramental (such as a crucifix) to perform a minor exorcism. The use of a crucifix to repel a harmful spirit would have been entirely familiar to the Japanese who witnessed it as talismans and charms could do the same. If anything, the foreignness of the crucifix and the Portuguese who wielded it would have made it seem all the more powerful. Since the spirit infesting the house was actively causing harm to people, using this new apotropaic object had little chance of making things worse. Their adoption of the cross as a sacramental, however temporary, is the first real evidence of the transmission of any aspect of Christianity to Kyushu as far as we know. This means that the first exposure that Japanese had to Christianity did not have to do with theology, salvation, or any kind of ethical teaching, but rather its exorcistic power. By asking the Portuguese merchants how they protected themselves from evil spirits, these unnamed Japanese were the first of many who would look to both the missionaries and Japanese Christians for a new and potentially more 97 powerful means of protecting themselves against harmful entities. 96 MHJ II, 121. This translation is mine, but another can be found in Costelloe, Letters, 278-279. Marino discusses this episode in brief, Marino, “El Japón del siglo XVI,” 297, and rightly points out that it is the first account of exorcism in Japan. It is unclear as to what “certain part of Japan” these merchants were in, and Xavier himself likely did not know. Schurhammer thought that the “Great Lord” mentioned just prior to this account was either Shimazu Takashisa or Ōtomo Yoshinori. The letter does not make clear as to whether the haunted house is in the domain of the “Great Lord” or somewhere else entirely. It is safe to assume though that it was Kyushu. EXII, 147. Rodrigues also recounts this story in the unpublished portion of his Historia, 49-V-53, fl. 195. Marino, Crónicas, 80-81. 97 This depends upon the reading of the word “moço” which could mean either “servant” or “youth.” I think the former is more likely and have followed Costelloe’s translation for this word in my own rendering. 295 The first mention of exorcisms on possessed people in Japan comes from letters written by Duarte da Silva (from Bungo) and Baltazar Gago (from Hirado), both dated 98 September 1555. These letters describe exorcisms performed in Bungo, and, on certain points, corroborate each other as to the specifics of those exorcisms. Da Silva’s letter places special emphasis on Japanese receptivity to exorcism and to the proactive nature of the lay community in utilizing it to free its members from spirit possession. Although there is no specific timeline cited in da Silva’s letter, it is noteworthy that he records the very first exorcism of a possessed person was administered not by a Jesuit but by a Japanese Christian named António of Bungo. The man’s Japanese name is not reported, but Fróis tells us that he was an elderly samurai, over seventy years of age, and from the district of Kutami in Bungo province. Earlier, he had traveled some 60 leagues by land to receive baptism by the hands of Cosme de Torres in nearby Yamaguchi, and impressed 99 the Jesuits with his virtue. Besides being the first exorcism recounted in our documentation, this episode is notable because António autonomously decided that Catholic sacramentals would be effective against the harmful spirit causing the man’s illness: In this same year a Christian by the name of António went to a place that was called Qutami [Kutami]…in order to gain his life. There he found a man who was 70 days that a demon [or, the devil] had tightened his throat in such a way that he was neither able to eat nor drink anything. And this António knowing, said that he had pity for him. And remembering the [good thief on the cross], because he had knowledge of his sins and asked them to be forgiven, Jesus Christ our Lord pardoned them, he took a porcelain of water and he made to it the sign of the cross, and prayed the Pater Noster, and said to the man [another manuscript says “demoniac” here instead of man] that if he would think about his sins, and that if he would ask pardon for What makes this even more noteworthy is that the servant who first exposes Japan to this practice was likely African, Indian, Malaccan, or Chinese, as was typical of servants aboard the merchant naos. 98 The correct date of this letter is September 10 not September 20 as it is dated in Cartas. See MHJ II, 512- 536. Baltasar Gago, in his letter from Hirado to the Jesuits of India and Portugal, dated Sept. 23, 1555, corroborates some of da Silva’s information of which he was a participant. See MHJ II, 552-572. 99 Fróis gives him the highest praise: “…he was a man of rare virtues, of whose life and works a large volume could be written, and through the zeal he had for the honor of God, and an insatiable desire for the conversion of souls.” Fróis I, 78. Da Silva mentions that in the absence of the padre, he prayed over a Christian woman and her husband, who was a non-Christian, in the absence of the padre. The implication is that he converted and possibly baptized the Christian woman’s husband. MHJ II, 534. 296 them…that he would be able to be saved. And the man saying that it was so, he gave to him a drink of water and the man drank much well, and after he ate some rice. And he put in his own will, as he was able, to come here to become Christian. And he gave up all the things that he was previously adoring, then 100 learned the prayers. After a few days he died. Here we must stress that António did all this on his own. He alone recognized the man’s throat malady as being caused by a malevolent spirit, and he alone determined to undertake the exorcism without consulting a padre. Employing the exorcistic power of his new religion—we do not know the exact circumstances as to how he learned it— António put the spirit to flight using prayers, the sign of the cross, and what was very likely a kind of holy water. Although da Silva does not give us much detail about how António used this last sacramental, Fróis reports that António blessed the water 101 himself. António also appears to have acted in conjunction with the padres in leading at least one exorcism. Da Silva reports that while they were saying prayers during mass, a woman appeared in the church. All who were present saw her tremble to such an extent that not even three men could restrain her as she gnashed her teeth, before António intervened: …a woman came here with her husband, and with the purpose of becoming Christians, and because the padre was not here, they wanted to return home: but a Christian by the name of António, said that we all might pray for their souls. And so many of us began to say the Pater Noster in a loud voice. Then began the woman, who was possessed, to tremble with such force, that three men were not able to hold her: and in the end they blessed her, and put holy water on her, and others continued with the Pater Noster: and with this it served the Lord for her to be free…she was by the next day very consoled, with the purpose to return with 102 her husband to be baptized, the padre being come from Hirado. 100 MHJ II, 525-526. Duarte da Silva to the Jesuits in India, from Bungo, Sept. 10, 1555. Blacker, in her modern study of shamnistic practices in Japan, reports that even into modern times, symptoms of possession include “aches, mysterious pains, lumbargo, hacking coughs, fainting fits, loss of appetite, inexplicable fevers, all these are even now commonly laid at the door of spiritual agencies.” Blacker, Catalpa, 300. 101 Fróis writes “E lembrando-se Antonio como Deos N. Senhor perdoou ao bom ladrão, que na cruz se conheceo por peccador, tomou huma porsolana de agua e benzeo-a…” Fróis I, 78. 102 Cartas 1575, 75v. The same story is told in Fróis I, 91. Fróis, for some reason, leaves out António from the narrative. Another version can be found in MHJ II, 534-544. Fróis’s account is as follows: “There was one time that the Brother Duarte da Sylva, practicing with the Christians in the church in Funai, there entered through the door a married gentile man with his demoniac wife. The Christians kneeled to pray in a 297 The only evidence that we have for António’s possible involvement in the other exorcisms is that he was known to have converted others in the area (the well-known and fervent Lucas of Kutami is his only specifically named convert) and that da Silva 103 conspicuously places António and his exorcism ahead of those performed by Gago. In any case, António’s only recorded exorcism attests to just how quickly and naturally the Japanese could adopt the Catholic practice in its various forms to their experiences with spirit possession. Besides recording the exorcistic activities of António, da Silva’s and Gago’s 104 letters are also the first to mention Jesuit-led exorcisms of possessed people in Kyushu. In these cases, it was Gago himself who performed the exorcisms rather than a native advocate such as António. Still, it seems that the Japanese Christian population played an important role in prompting Gago’s exorcisms, which were performed in and around the city of Funai, an area that had frequently reported cases of spirit possession. Since Gago also wrote from Hirado and the population there had been described by Fróis as being particularly vexed by demons—the islands were still known for their possessing spirits into the twentieth century—it is likely that he performed exorcisms in that locale as well. As practiced by Gago, these exorcisms were rather more solemn than the ad hoc ones performed by the Christians themselves and involved the identification of a demoniac, the use of exorcistic prayers, the invocation of sacred names, administration of holy water, and, sometimes, the seal of baptism. Also of particular note is that both authors give evidence both directly and indirectly of the active participation of Japanese Christians in not only helping to identify potential demoniacs, but to exorcise them as well. high voice the Pater noster. The woman began to tremble in such a manner that not even three men were able to hold her: They gave to her some holy water, and the others proceed with prayer. And so it pleased the lord to make her free, invoking with devotion the most holy names of Jesus, Maria, and saying that for seven years she felt great anguish in her heart. They went out by the next day very consoled with the purpose of retuning and hearing, in order to receive baptism.” 103 At the very least, the text does not mention that Gago himself identified demoniacs, which would force us to reconsider the role of Japanese Christians “jump-starting” the practice of exorcism in Japan. If this were so, it would be Gago who would be teaching the Japanese about the applicability of Christian exorcism rather than the other way around. But this is an argument from silence rather than one that includes the naming of other specific Japanese Christians. 104 They are also described in Fróis’s Historia. 298 The first exorcism that da Silva reports occurred involved an unnamed father and son in Bungo. Spirit possession had run in their family since the time of the man’s great- grandfather, constantly plaguing the family. This accords well with Japanese notions of spirit possession, as entire families, such as those known as kitsune-mochi (fox keepers), could be harassed over the course of generations. According to da Silva, the man had tried to find relief from the demon by giving all that he had to “idols,” but to no avail. Then suddenly his son, who was thirty years of age, also began showing signs of possession. After the son had not eaten for some fifteen days, Gago somehow got wind of his condition and paid the family a visit. The padre first instructed the afflicted to say the name of St. Michael, the archangel and heavenly opponent of Satan, but the man began to tremble fiercely and make wild gesticulations. This seems to have been a standard test that Gago used to determine the validity of a possession. Seeing that the man had failed this test, Gago immediately began the exorcism by simply saying over him, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” With these words, the spirit departed. The man then received baptism, along with six or seven other people, one of whom was his father, thus indicating the presence of other family members or neighbors familiar with the man’s condition. The man and his father took the Christian names of Miguel and Paulo respectively, with the adoption of the name Miguel being a nod to the 105 exorcistic source (St. Michael) of the conversion. Gago himself, unfortunately, does not corroborate da Silva’s account, so interpreting just how Japanese lay Christians might have handled this exorcism requires a bit more inference. First of all, da Silva does not state how Gago came to know about the demoniac. In all likelihood, however, a local Japanese lay Christian who was familiar with both the man’s condition and the family’s torment had told the padre. From other exorcisms in the letters, we know that certain people had been possessed for long periods of time and this would certainly have been widely known in their communities. For 105 MHJ II, 527. There are several versions of this letter but I have followed MHJ II, as it is a transcription of manuscripts rather than from the printed editions of the Cartas that López-Gay and Marino use. See also Cartas 1575, 74v; López-Gay, El Catecumenado, 201; Marino, “El Japón del Siglo XVI,” 301-302. Cartas 1575 is a Spanish version, while Cartas, 45v is a Portuguese version. Ruiz-de-Medina points out that “according to the Bible, the archangel St. Michael conquered the dragon, a metaphorical representation of the Devil. Xavier selected St. Michael as the heavenly patron of Japan.” See Doc. 27, n.101 also. Fróis also recounts the exorcism in Fróis I, 79. 299 example, in another case recounted by da Silva, a woman had been suffering from spirit harassment for some thirty years—information that he hardly could have known without 106 a Japanese Christian informant. In addition, we know from Fróis and Gago that Christians in the area would sometimes summon a padre to perform an exorcism or 107 administer baptism to a demoniac. Gago states that “in the days past, they [the Christians] called upon him to go a league off to [make a Christian] of a youth who had been a demoniac his whole life…” These Christians seemed to have recognized that spirit possession ran in the youth’s family since his sister and her two sons also suffered from 108 the same spiritual ailment. Thus in the mid-1550s, Bungo Christians decided that Catholic exorcism was an applicable and effective means for dealing with Japanese forms of spirit possession. The use of crucifixes, holy water, appeals to Jesus, and various prayers (sometimes in Latin) all resonated with native traditions such as the use of charms and appeals to higher powers such as Fudō Myōō. In addition, the Bungo Christians decided that Catholic exorcism actually worked. They therefore diagnosed the problem (spirit possession), prescribed a solution (Catholic exorcism), and then personally attested to its efficacy (liberation from the spirit). One example in the 1555 letters illustrates how this played out. On the “day of Our Lady,” after Gago had finished saying mass in “a house full of Christians,” a woman began showing signs of possession when the padre mentioned the name of Saint Michael. But when he ordered the spirit out of her, it refused, stating that it was accustomed to possessing members of her family. After this initial difficulty, the Christians stepped in and helped with the exorcism: The Christians that were there all put themselves in prayer, and after a moment, the demon separated from her, and the woman spoke and asked to drink, in all of her sense. Then they [emphasis mine] gave her some holy water to drink, telling her to say ‘Jesu Maria.’ And she said it in such a docile manner that it seemed that an angel was speaking. Then that she might say ‘San Miguel’, through which it 106 MHJ II, 528; Fróis I, 79. 107 MHJ II, 560. Fróis I, 89. Fróis’s information is based on Gago’s letter, but the fact that he includes it in his Historia no doubt means that he considered it to be entirely plausible. 108 MHJ II, 560. The original reads, “Os dias passados me chamarão pera ir obra de huma légoa ver hum mancebo que estava indimoninhado de toda a vida...” Cartas, 40 and Cartas 1575, 71. 300 was seen that she was free of the demon, and all gave thanks to God. Until now 109 she was no more tormented. She came here many times. She is called Maria. Gago himself later confirmed the involvement of local Christians in the exorcism, noting that “…through the prayers of these newly converted, she became free of the evil 110 spirit…” In both accounts, the exorcism was very much a team effort involving both the foreign religious specialist (Gago) and the local church community. In many later Jesuit exorcisms, the padre might take center stage as the acting religious authority, but the accounts of such events also record the efforts and support of ordinary Japanese Christians. Since there is no real mention of the rite of exorcism being performed prior to da Silva’s and Gago’s letters, we might surmise that the exorcisms of the 1550s represented a critical juncture in the adoption of exorcism as a native mode of persuasion. If we go simply by contemporary documentation, it seems clear that the unnamed Christians of Bungo were highly instrumental in linking the exorcistic power of Christianity (and, by extension, the Catholic rite of exorcism of the padres) with the ubiquitous phenomenon of Japanese spirit possession. For all intents and purposes, these Christians “jump-started” the practice in Japan because spirit possession, for whatever reason, was a very frequent and particularly problematic phenomenon for the residents of Bungo. Once Catholic exorcism became established in this corner of Kyushu—presented as an applicable mode of persuasion by the padres and vouched for by Japanese who had experienced or witnessed it—the practice of both lay- and clerical-led exorcisms became more frequent and quickly spread to other areas of Kyushu. In addition, because so many Jesuits resided in Bungo or stopped in the province on their way to other locations, they would have had the chance to see the normalcy of exorcisms in the Japanese Church there. Later, when they traveled about to other communities, they would have taken the knowledge gained in 111 Bungo and performed exorcisms among other groups of Japanese Christians. 109 MHJ II, 528-529. Cartas 45v-46. Cartas 1575 contains an edited version of da Silva’s letter, leaving out an entire paragraph. 110 MHJ II. 561. 111 For an overview of the prevalence of spirit possession in Bungo, see Ward, Women, 162-164. 301 Besides Gago and da Silva, other Jesuits performed exorcisms at the behest of Japanese Christians in Bungo and elsewhere during the first few decades of the mission. For example, the surgeon Luís de Almeida reported a significant exorcism of a woman (from a warrior family) that occurred as a result of a local Christian’s intervention. Almeida states that while he was in Bungo in 1562: An honorable Christian of the land came to the padre [Cosme de Torres] to ask him that he might want to give a remedy to the wife of a nobleman, a vassal of the king of Bungo; who was his neighbor, had gone many times through those fields wailing, and that there was no men who might be able to hold her, because the Devil was in her. The padre ordered them to come, and to put her in the hospital, that he might hold vigil in the room where she was, and the padre [Cosme de Torres] then ordered that she be indoctrinated and told of the things of faith, because she had hopes that with becoming Christian she would also become well, and he did this by the counsel of the Christians [emphasis mine]. And of the manner in which time of making her a Christian arrived, which was a Sunday, with many Christians present, herself being very quiet, and sprinkling her about the head with holy water, the padre Cosme de Torres baptized her, who arose with such great howls that all of us were frightened with that sudden movement. The padre ordered three or four men who might take her, because even these were barely able to hold her, until she had been finished being baptized. Of the manner which the baptism was finished, the poor woman because so weak that she was carried by her servants, to her chamber, which was in the hospital. It pleased the 112 Lord that from that time until now that that trouble never more came to her. 113 Almeida also performed exorcisms in Satsuma during his trip to that province in 1582. Like Bungo, Satsuma seemed to have had a particular problem with possessing and malevolent spirits. As Fróis described it, it was a land where “[demons] walked about freely” and that suffered from the strong presence of the Devil. As a result of the widespread “cult of idols,” continued Frois, “so the demons continued to and frequently entered into the miserable people, and gravely tormented them.” Following the performance of some exorcisms in Satsuma, at least one of which included the support of 112 MHJ III th, 538-539. Almeida to the Jesuits of Europe, from Yokoseura, Oct. 25 , 1562. See also, Cartas, 103v-104; Cartas 1575, 124-124v; López-Gay, Catecumenado, 201-202, Marino, “El Japón del Siglo XVI,” 301 note34. (also leads to the conversion of the household). 113 Quote in Fróis III, 310-312; Cartas II, 92-92v. 302 Christians who had been secretly catechized, Almeida attested that demons had appeared to him in the night with great noise in the shadows that made them both frightening and horrible. These entities, as Almeida relates, even assaulted him physically by beating him and making him ill for several days. Elsewhere, in 1588 at Amakusa, the local Christians called one of the padres from the college there to set an old woman free from a spirit. After some actual debate with the demon, the padre produced a relic and exorcized the 114 spirit. He then concluded the exorcism with a sprinkling of holy water. The entire missionary zone of Shimo (“Ximo”) was identified by the Jesuits as the area within Kyushu afflicted most greatly by spirit possession. Fróis acknowledges how this played into conversion, stating that “others, finally, come who are men possessed (of which there have always been a good amount in Japan through whom the Devil has over this gentiledom) are freed by some relics, exorcisms, and prayers which the Padres or Christians make, and they are moved to know the virtue of our holy law and are 115 converted and become Christians.” In the Gotō Islands, where the Jesuits also reported particular problems with spirit possession, some Japanese explicitly converted so that they might not suffer possession or harassment. Fróis, explaining some of the reasons for conversion, states, “First, that the Christians follow the law of salvation… and second, because they have seen by experience that the Christians are not vexed by the Devil in 116 their things, as they are…” In other words, either by direct observation or by word of mouth, non-Christians came to conversion because they witnessed the effectiveness of the new religion at dealing with the age-old problem of spirit possession. In a few cases, non-Christians, who were evidently familiar with the exorcistic power of Christianity, sought preemptive protection from malevolent spirits by receiving baptism. For example, in 1574, the non-Christian residents of Matsubara, who had previously been opposed to the preaching of Christianity in their territory, chose to be baptized en masse because an evil spirit had possessed a non-Christian girl from the area. Apparently the spirit had been exorcised from another possessed person in the land of the 114 Fróis V, 59-60. For additional accounts, see Ward, Women, 159-161. 115 Fróis V, 392. 116 Fróis V, 76. 303 Christians and came to the present land because, as it stated through the girl, “those others [i.e. the Christians] have already cast me out.” Fearing that they would also be possessed or harassed by the spirit, the residents of Matsubara asked a padre to receive 117 baptism in order to be free of the threat. A somewhat similar incident occurred near Hirado when, in 1576, irmão Aires Sanches encountered a group of people standing in the road. Apparently, these people had fled a certain location, where they were accustomed to making salt out of seawater, because of frequent attacks by a malevolent spirit. Taking consultation together, the residents decided to either “abandon the location or become Christian so that the demon might not vex them.” They then went to their lord to ask permission to be baptized because they knew that the Christians were immune from such attacks. Their direct overlord could not help them, so they next went to Dom Luis (Uku Sumitaka d. 1587), the son of the daimyo of the Gotō Islands, who had been baptized by Almeida and Lourenço in 1567. Dom Luis said that he would have some children of the area baptized and the rest catechized. Furthermore, he ended up giving them “names” (i.e. Christian names), destroying some of the “pagodas,” and having them “commended in their hearts to Jesus Christ, whom the demons could not harm.” Key to this enterprise were some “well-instructed Christians” who catechized the rest and “made Christian” children, as well as some men and women. Following the destruction of the “pagodas,” the area quieted down and there were no more disturbances by that spirit. News of the exorcistic effectiveness of the baptisms spread, apparently, as a neighboring community some two leagues away requested baptism to deal with a different harassing spirit. Sanches reports that some 220 people were made Christian over the course of a month as a result of these 118 spiritual vexations. From these episodes, as well as others, it is evident that at least some non- Christians saw baptism as an exorcistic ritual. Unlike the overt exorcisms discussed earlier—ones in which a padre or lay Christian used sacramentals, prayers, or relics specifically to “man-handle” a spirit—the exorcistic value of baptism would not necessarily be readily apparent to an outsider unfamiliar with the rite. As the first 117 Fróis II, 427; Ward, Women, 160; Cartas, 353. Gaspar Coelho, from Omura, Oct. 5, 1575. 118 Cartas, 373-373v. Irmão Aires Sanches from Hirado, Sept. 8 1576. 304 sacrament, baptism was the initiation ritual through which all Christians had to go, either as infants or as adults. Its primary goal was not exorcism, but to bring a person into a proper relationship with God so that they might be coheirs to eternal life. Still, non- Christians might well have recognized baptism instead as the primary mechanism through which preemptive exorcistic power could be obtained. If they really did believe that Christians had less problems with harassing spirits or spirit possession, baptism in and of itself would have been an appealing way to deal with this age-old spiritual problem. Until the later missionary period, when sufficient catechesis prior baptism was considered ideal, the Jesuits had no apprehension about administering baptism to seeking protection from spiritual attack. Also of note, the sacrament of baptism had several aspects that roughly corresponded with Japanese expectations of exorcistic power. For example, blessed salt was then a key component of the sacrament (this is frequently omitted in modern baptisms). Typically, the salt would be placed in the mouth of the catechumen so that the person “shall be delivered from the corruption of sin, shall experience a relish for good 119 works, and shall be delighted with the food of divine wisdom.” Since salt was frequently used in traditional Japanese rituals of purification known as harae, some of which were exorcistic in function in that they drove away evil spirits, we can easily imagine that some people were drawn to this aspect of the baptismal rite. An example of this can still be seen today at sumo matches where salt is thrown by wrestlers to drive off any potential evil spirits. Although the missionaries do not describe the use of salt in baptism, probably because it was so commonplace, we do know that they used it with some frequency. Sessō Sōsai (1589-1649), a Zen monk and anti-Christian propagandist, describes the use of salt in Christian baptism in a 1648 work entitled Taiji jashū ron (On Quelling the Pernicious Faith 120). 119 John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan, eds., Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests: Issued by Order of Pope Pius V, (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1947), 194. 120 Higashibaba, Christianity, 64; 106. Higashibaba notes that even if he did not observe the ritual itself, he likely obtained information about it from Japanese Christians or irmãos in Nagasaki. “In the beginning, [the bateren] places a piece of white cloth on the forehead of a follower to be, holding candles, and puts salt into his mouth. The bateren picks up water and pours it on him and chants a prayer…The chief bateren forms the sign of the cross (jūmonji) on the person’s forehead, picks up oil, puts it on his head, and slaps him on his right cheek.” Another anti-Christian tract, Fabian Fucan’s Deus Destroyed, likewise makes reference to blessed salt during baptism. Fabian, a Jesuit, would obviously have been very familiar with its use. He writes, “It is scarcely worthwhile to discuss the right or wrong of the part about the bestowal of a 305 In addition to the application of salt, some non-Christians might have seen the use of holy water in baptism as an exorcistic practice since it was also used in many Japanese purification rituals (misogi). The misogi ritual was primarily employed as a means of removing impurity or sin (tsumi or kegare) and typically involved the pouring of water, 121 immersion, or standing beneath a waterfall. These rituals were also involved in shugendo austerities, either in preparation for or as a part of exorcistic practices. One such misogi-type of ritual was recounted by Padre Francisco Perez (having heard it from the Japanese irmão Damião): he witnessed a possessed woman being placed beneath a waterfall to relieve her of a spirit (this episode will be recounted below in the next section 122 detailing Japanese exorcists). Besides being of exorcistic value, misogi was also one of the main forms of purification from all sorts of defilement, especially those which 123 accompanied death. Known by the Jesuits, but not potential converts, the sacrament of baptism does actually contain a certain kind of exorcism termed a “minor exorcism.” Present within the baptismal formulae since ancient times, this kind of exorcism is distinct from the solemn rite of exorcism contained in the Rituale Romanum (termed a “major exorcism”), which is reserved for performance by actual clerics. The “minor exorcism” is also distinct from the exorcisms we have covered above in that they are not attempts by lay-Christians or the clergy to “man-handle” demonic entities by freeing possessed people through prayer, name [baptismal name], the taste of salt, and the taper in the hand. So [Deus] will not save men who have not received the blessing of this baptismo, though they be righteous men! This is completely unheard-of. A man may not have received the blessing, but if he is righteous what reason could there be to condemn him?” See Elison, Deus Destroyed, 284. 121 See Stefan Köck’s chapter “Washing Away the Dirt of the World of Desire—On Origins and Developments of Notions of Ritual Purity in Japanese Mountain Religions” in Matthias Bley, Nikolas Jaspert, and Stefan Köck eds, Discourses of Purity in Transcultural Perspective (300–1600), (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 242-243. Köck also mentions that the term harae had its roots in purification but eventually took on the secondary meaning of “exorcism.” Eventually, the two terms merged together. 122 Fróis V, 132-133. Higashibaba offers a brief translation of the story in Higashibaba, Christianity, 32-33, as well as some analysis regarding the relationship between misogi, baptism, and holy water. Exorcism beneath a waterfall is still sometimes practiced today in Japan. A tragic example occurred in 2011 when a teenage girl drowned beneath an artificially-created waterfall while undergoing an exorcism at the hands of her father and a monk from a fringe Buddhist sect. Thomas Hardtke, “Deaths Resulting from Exorcism,” in Laycock, Spirit Possession, 103. 123 An early reference to the use of water for purification rituals can be seen in an entry for Japan in the History of Wei. 306 sacramentals, or relics. Rather, they are used to protect individuals from evil influence 124 and sin through the use of prayer and sacramentals. In the sixteenth century, the Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests (1566) reaffirmed the practice of performing minor exorcism in the baptismal rite that “it consists of words of sacred and religious import and of prayers, and is used to expel the devil, to weaken and crush his power.” And, in some editions, it further states, “wherefore the priest breathes three times into the face of him who is to be baptized that he may expel the power of the old serpent, 125 and may catch the breath of lost life.” Thus whosoever underwent baptism in the latter part of the sixteenth century, by both the old and new norms of the Church, should have received a minor exorcism as protection from evil influence in general. Though the Tridentine catechism for priests was not used in the early decades of the mission (or likely at all for that matter), Jesuits in Japan did include the minor exorcism in both the baptism of adults and infants. The baptismal formulae in the Manuale ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae Ministranda (1605 at Nagasaki) include several different versions of the standard exorcisms (exorcismus) and adjurations (adiuratio) 126 related to baptism. These formulae (and the manual itself) were edited by Bishop Luis Cerqueira based upon the original Roman liturgical texts so that there would be a uniform application of the sacraments all throughout Japan. Though several different prayers could be used for the exorcisms and adjurations of the minor exorcism, we will quote two used in the “Rite of Baptizing Women either Infants, or Adults:” 124 A good definition of a minor exorcism can be found on the website for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which states the following: “Minor exorcisms are prayers used to break the influence of evil and sin in a person's life, whether as a catechumen preparing for Baptism or as one of the Baptized faithful striving to overcome the influence of evil and sin in his or her life” http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacramentals/sacramentals- blessings/exorcism.cfm 125 McHugh and Callan, The Catechism of the Council of Trent, 194. 126 The Catholic Encyclopedia defines adjurations as the following: “Latin adjurare, to swear; to affirm by oath). An urgent demand made upon another to do something, or to desist from doing something, which demand is rendered more solemn and more irresistible by coupling with it the name of God or of some sacred person or thing.” https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01142c.htm 307 Exorcism I cast thee out, unclean Spirit, in the name of the Father ☩, and of the Son ☩, and of the Holy ☩ Spirit. Depart and vanish from this handmaid of God. For it is He Who commands thee, thou doomed and accursed one, He Who opened the eyes of the man born blind, Who raised from the tomb Lazarus who had been four days dead. Adjuration Wherefore, accursed demon, admit thy doom, and pay honor to the true and living God, pay honor to Jesus Christ, His Son and to the Holy Spirit, and keep far from this handmaid of God. For Jesus Christ, our Lord and God has graciously called her to His holy grace and blessing and to the fountain of baptism. And this sign of the holy ☩ Cross which we trace on her brow, do thou, accursed demon, never dare to violate. Through the self-same Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who shall come to 127 judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. ℟ [all respond]. Amen. In addition to these kinds of exorcisms and abjurations, the Manuale also contains formulae for the blessing of the salt and the exorcism of the water to be used in the baptism. The exorcism of the water Thou creature of water, I purge thee of evil in the name of God ☩, the Father almighty, in the name of Jesus ☩ Christ, His Son, our Lord, and in the power of the Holy ☩ Spirit. I cast thee forth, of all diabolical power, that every wicked phantasm may be dispelled and put to flight from this creature of water, that it be 128 a fountain springing forth unto life everlasting… Curiously, where the later Rituale Romanum explicitly exorcizes the salt used in the baptism with the words “I purge thee of evil, thou creature of salt…I exorcize thee by the living God…thou mayest become an outward sign of salvation, repulsing the enemy….” 127 Luís Cerqueira, Manuale ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae Ministranda D. Ludovici Cerqueira Iaponensis Episcopi opera ad usum sui cleri ordinatum (Nagasaki: Collegio Japonico Societatis Iesu, 1605), 33. The English translation is from Philip T. Weller, ed., The Roman Ritua: In Latin and English with Rubrics and Plainchant Notational Vol. 1, (Boonville: Preserving Christian Publications, Inc., 2016; reprint, The Bruce Publishing Company, 1950), 105. Weller’s English translation is from the Rituale Romanum in use after Trent and not a translation of the Maunale. However, the Latin text is exactly the same, save for some very minor differences such as the insertion of the catechumen’s name in the Roman text whereas the Manuale does not include that. I have conformed Weller’s translation to the Manuale. 128 The only real difference in Weller’s translation is that the Latin text of the later Rituale Romanum reads “omnis virtus adversárii diáboli” instead of the Manuale’s “omnis virtus diaboli.” Weller, Roman Ritual Vol. 1, 192-193. Cerqueira, Manuale, 35-36. 308 no such formula exists in the Manuale 129. That text merely blesses the salt (“Almighty God bless this creature of salt…”) rather than exorcizing it in the same manner as the baptismal water. Given that the Manuale is written in Latin (for the most part) and concerns the administration of the sacraments, it is fair to ask just how much of this knowledge about the minor exorcism in baptism would have filtered down to the Japanese converts themselves. There is likely no firm answer to this, so we cannot confirm exorcism as a reason for receiving the sacrament, but we might presume that there was some type of explanation regarding it. To this end, we have the Japanese-language supplement to the Manuale that explains certain concepts in the sacraments. Among those who might have had access to the text are Japanese padres, irmãos, and lay helpers such as the dōjuku and kanbō. The explanations in Japanese-language supplement served to adapt the material in the Manuale to the Japanese context. Of these supplemental texts, three concern baptism. In the first, there is an explanation of baptism according to the Roman Catechism, which makes specific mention of the minor exorcism contained in the sacrament. While the instructions fall short of describing it as an exorcism in and of itself, the text does state that those who are baptized become “soldiers of the Lord Christ” that the sacrament enables them to escape the “clutches of the Devil.” It goes on to state: Next is the exorcism in which prayers to God and the sacred words for casting out the Devil, who, until now, had dominion over the soul [of the person], are recited. Then [the person receiving baptism] is made to taste salt in their mouth so that the mouth will not corrupt on account of sin and that the precious words of God are remembered. Underscoring the exorcistic power of the baptism, the supplement to the Manuale goes on to state that the catechumens themselves become soldiers of Christ who go out in the world fighting against Satan as a member of the Church Militant: Then [while putting the sign of the cross on the forehead], is the anointing of the holy olive oil [on top of the head] in order to recall the catechumen having been 130 made a disciple and soldier of Christ who combats against the Devil. 129 Weller, Roman Ritual Vol. 1, 78-79. 130 Toshiaki Kōso and Luis de Cerqueira, Kirishitan-ban “Sakaramenta teiyō furoku”: eiin, honji, gendai gobun to kaisetsu (Tokyo: Yūshōdō Shoten, 2010), 115. This translation has been made from the modern Japanese translation of the document, which is originally in archaic romaji. The transcribed original Japanese can be found on p. 43. 309 Even though the supplement does not expound on the theology behind this kind of exorcism, the Japanese spiritual leader reading it would surely have understood it as part of the administration of baptism that protected the catechumen from evil influence. This surely would have been communicated to the catechumens themselves, either at the time of baptism or in the period leading up to it. Again, the Manuale and the Japanese supplement to it represent only a small fraction of what would have been taught orally to those undergoing baptism, from both foreign and native advocates. Besides containing formulae for baptisms that incorporate minor exorcisms, the Manuale contains a chapter (Exorcismi Contra Dæmones) on the formal rites of exorcism. Although most exorcisms in Japan seem to have occurred rather spontaneously and did not require strict adherence to a prescribed form, such as the one found in the 1614 Ritulae Romanum, the Jesuits did have access to an ecclesiastically sanctioned protocol for the practice. The Manuale, over the course of some 33 pages, suggests several methods of exorcism that the padres or irmão could use to expel demons. Written in Latin, this guide would have mainly served the European Jesuits and any Japanese 131 Jesuits, including native clergy later in the mission, who could read the language. The exorcisms for possessed persons contained in the Manuale rely upon a combination of prayers recited by both the religious and the laity, the frequent use of sacramentals, readings from scripture, the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed and the Athanasian Creed, and the invocation of the names of Jesus and the saints. The first form of exorcism described includes specific instructions and elaborate prayers for the completion of the rite. The padre should be dressed in a surplice and stola and have prepared in advance several sacramentals including a crucifix, holy water, and candles. The exorcisms, which should be in a church or some other suitable location, also 131 The Manuale, edited by the third bishop of Japan, Luis de Cerquira, was “based on the Latin original of the Roman liturgical texts and instructions for ceremonies, with many small and large changes added to adapt these words and ceremonies to the special circumstances of the Catholic community in Japan.” See Toshiaki Koso’s essay “Introduction to Manvale Ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae Ministranda), trans. Frank Scott Howell, in Jōchi Daigaku Kirishitan Bunko, Kirishitan Publications Printed by the Jesuit Mission Press in Japan (Tokyo: Yushodo Press, 2006), 5-6. This Manuale is very similar to those published in Spain in the preceding decades. For those exorcistic rites. See Manuale Ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae Ministranda Salmanticae of 1585, 242-266; and Manuale Valentinum Ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae Ministranda of 1592, 290-313. 310 call on the laity to participate actively through responsorials. These responses are in Latin, but are simple enough that ordinary Japanese could have easily learned them 132 through instruction or exposure at mass. The exorcism opens with the first sacramental, which is a blessing of the laity (populum) with the sign of the cross. The padre then proceeds with a lengthy prayer, after which he sprinkles the demoniac with holy water and invokes the name of the Trinity through the gesture of the sign of the cross. After an additional prayer, the Apostle’s Creed is recited, followed by more prayers. Passages from all four gospels concerning the expelling of spirits and the defeat of Satan are read (Matt. 17:14-20; Mark 16:14-20; Luke 4:31-35; and John 12:31-36). After this, the book is put on the head of the demoniac, and the priest abjures the demon to leave the possessed through commands and the sign of the cross. The padre then lays his hands above the head of the demoniac and prays again. A cross is then given to the demoniac, followed by the Kyrie, the Pater Noster, and responses by the laity. The entire rite is concluded with the prayer “Blessed almighty God, Father, and Son [cross sign here] and Holy Spirit, descend upon you and remain always.” The laity responds with, “Amen.” The last instructions are that if the demon should persist in vexing the possessed person, 133 the entire rite may be repeated. One important point to make here is that even though the many lengthy prayers are said by the padre in Latin, he is actually saying them on the part of the gathered laity. Each prayer is typically prefaced with an “Oremus” (let us pray), meaning that it is a collective prayer rather than a personal one being offered up by the padre. This can still be found in the Catholic mass today in the General Intercession portion of the liturgy. The other form of exorcism, though different in content, also relies heavily upon prayers, sacramentals, and invocations. The responsorials by the laity in this form are diminished in favor of longer prayers led by the padre. 132 The responses include: “Et clamor meus ad te veniat” (And let my cry come unto thee); “et cum spiritu tuo” (and with thy spirit); “Amen;” “Gloria tibi Domine” (Glory to the O Lord); “Et fugiant, qui oderunt eum à facie eius” (And let them that hate him flee from before his face; Ps. 67:2); “Deus meus speratem in te” (Who places his trust in thee); “Et filius inquitatis non apponent nocere ei” (And the son of evil do nothing to harm him); and “A facie inimici” (In the face of the enemy). The laity likely also joined the padre in saying common prayers such as the Pater Noster and the prayer of Mary. Some of these translations have been taken from Weller. 133 Cerqueira, Manuale, 342-351. 311 Besides rites for the exorcism of possessed people, the Manuale also contains exorcisms for a variety of other problems in which demonic influence might be felt. As mentioned earlier, there is a section on exorcising storms. This formula also involves the laity through responsorials. Holy water was also used in the rite, as well as the sign of the cross and the recitation of the litany of saints as supplied by the Roman Breviary (the main liturgical book of the Church). Like exorcisms for possessed people, the entire rite could be repeated in the event that the storm did not subside. Also of particular note is that this was intended to be performed on ships at sea, as instructions state that the words “a navi ista” (from this ship) could replace the words “a domo tua” (from your house) in the prayer, “a domo tua, quaesumus Domine, spirituals nequitiae repellantur, & aerearum discedat malignitas tempestatum.” (from your house, we ask O Lord, let wicked spirits be 134 repelled, and of the airs let the malignity of the storms depart). The last section on the performance of exorcisms in the Manuale is an exorcism for houses vexed by a demon. As noted earlier, haunted houses were a particular problem for people in Japan as they were in Europe. Spirits “haunting” or infesting a house could either be ghosts (human), or demons and Kami (non-human). The Catholic rite for cleansing a house, at least in this period, makes little distinction between them. Exorcisms of houses as stipulated by the Manuale, also relied upon prayers and holy water. But the rite also introduces incense into the exorcism, no doubt to sanctify the space of the home as well as its physical structure. The process went as follows: the padre makes general prayers, followed by responses (presumably the residents of the haunted house). Following a general prayer (oremus), the padre specifically abjures the demon. He then recites the Gradual Psalms (this might be a way of consoling the dead in the case of a human spirit) along with a repetition of the Gloria Patria (the Glory Be) and a sprinkling of the house with holy water. The Psalms (119-133) are read in three sections of five each, with each Psalm followed by a Gloria Patri and each section of the Psalms followed by the Kyrie, the Pater Noster, and responses by the laity. Each section begins with a prayer (oremus) and involves the sprinkling of holy water around the house. Once the final section of Psalms is recited, a passage from the Gospel of Luke (19:1-10) concerning Zacchaeus inviting Jesus into his home is read. Following the Gospel, the 134 Cerqueira, Manuale, 358-364. 312 padre then sanctifies the incense through a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, the Captain of the Heavenly Host who had defeated Satan in Heaven, through whose intercession the flame to burn the incense is blessed. Once the house has been blessed by incense, the padre blesses the entire house and those who live in it through the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the sign of the cross. The rite is then completed with 135 a final sprinkling of holy water. Again, we must emphasize that the exorcisms recounted above could be deemed “official protocol.” They supplemented the many ad hoc exorcisms that both European and Japanese, clerical and lay, performed for the community using sacramentals and prayer. The Japanese appendix to the Manuale offers no translation or additional commentary for the practice of exorcism. Instead, it concentrates on the administration of the sacraments, which were, at least at the time, more serious in their administration. Moreover, a Japanese appendix for exorcism might simply not have been needed. If many were conducted ad hoc and could be performed informally with relics and sacramentals, there might not have been any need for Japanese exorcists to learn and use a formal protocol. Indeed, I have yet to find any reference to exorcisms carried out in full, either by a European or Japanese exorcist. In the end, the formula contained in the Manuale indicates how elaborate exorcisms in Japan could be, even if the vast majority of them were relatively simple affairs involving the use of sacramental and the invocation of holy names. Japanese Christian Exorcists John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. –Mark 9:38-40 In the previous sections, we noted how Japanese Christians were primarily responsible for the adoption of Catholic exorcism in Kyushu. Although lay Christians 135 Cerqueira, Manuale, 364-373. 313 urged foreign advocates to perform exorcism for those afflicted with spirit harassment or possession, they also turned to native advocates of the religion, such as the aforementioned António, to lead these rites as spiritual leaders within the new community. Undoubtedly, there were many unnamed practitioners of Christian exorcism within individual homes, amongst neighbors, or in other mundane situations of which the Jesuits would not have been informed or taken the time to record. The Japanese voraciousness for sacramentals all but ensures that this happened, and many informal exorcisms likely consisted of no more than the application of one or more sacred object. If the problem was severe, then it is likely that spiritual leaders within the community were called on to intercede. Some, if not all, of these leaders also possessed relics, consistent with their status as spiritual leaders, and these offered them the means to provide the most effective exorcisms outside of those conducted by the clergy (the topic of relics is taken up in Part Four in full detail). As the new and seemingly effective Christian practice of exorcism became more widely known to both Japanese Christians and non-Christians, some individual Japanese Christians gained reputations within the community was potent exorcists. A few of them were so successful and well-known that the Jesuits mention them by name in their letters to India and Europe, such as Leão of Notsu and a layman named Gião. They wrote of them with ardent approval, noting how their activities did much for afflicted individuals and contributed as well to the spread of the religion on a person-to-person basis. These high-profile Japanese exorcists within the Christian community indicate that Christian exorcism had been fully adopted as a native mode of persuasion. Japanese Christians no longer needed to rely on the services of non-Christians, such as the yamabushi, to deal with harmful spirits, and non-Christians even sought them out if they found no relief from more traditional means. The emergence of these high-profile native exorcists indicates that the Christian brand of exorcism had been fully adopted as a native mode of persuasion in Kyushu, since we have native advocates using a foreign (albeit somewhat familiar) method to deal with a native spiritual problem. Frequently, when non-Christians either underwent exorcism or observed it at the hands of these native specialists, thus witnessing the practice’s spiritual efficacy, they would seek baptism and subsequent conversion. Several 314 of these Japanese exorcists, including the aforementioned António, are named in our sources, with a few of them, such as Juan of Bungo, Lucas of Takata, Román, and 136 Jamboro, mentioned in some detail. Lucas of Takata, who was known to “[have] great remedies for demoniacs,” was thought by the missionaries to serve “as an instrument for 137 expelling demons from the bodies of men.” And about Juan of Bungo and his exorcistic talents, Valignano writes, “Our Lord imparted to him the expelling of demons, 138 and so, there being many demoniacs then they are taken to his house…” Here, we will focus specifically on two heralded Japanese lay exorcists, Leão and Gião, as well as the blind biwa hōshi-turned-Jesuit, Damião. The samurai layman who took the name Leão, was a resident of the town of Notsu in Bungo near the city of Usuki. He had been converted by Fróis and two irmãos (one of them being the Japanese Damião) around 1578 along with his wife, Maria, and some 113 members of his “family,” which included servants and vassals as well as actual family 139 members. Fróis notes that Leão, perhaps because he was a warrior of some means, became a stalwart leader in the church due to his “zeal and fervor,” which he demonstrated by undertaking various activities and projects such as building a church, 140 preaching to the non-Christians, and helping to bury his fellow Christians. Later, Leão apparently gained a reputation for conducting exorcisms, as Gaspar Coelho describes in a 1582 letter: [there was] a demoniac in Notsu, surrounded by many Christians and gentiles, there arrived a good Christian of Notsu, called Leão (of whom it has been written other times), and he laid a relicario on her neck exorcizing the demon, that it then depart: this caused in the woman monstrous movements and her saying many 136 For the Christian called Jamboro, see Marino’s transcription of Cabral’s letter from 1589 in “El Japón del Siglo XVI,” 307-310. Cabral recounts an episode in which Jamboro engages in an exorcism contest with a yamabushi. The demoniac ends up being baptized and, apparently, the yamabushi himself became “determined to become Christian.” For Juan of Bungo and Román (a brother-in-law of the lord “Quitandono”), see pp. 313-314. Lucas of Takata’s exorcism is mentioned in Fróis V, 404-405. 137 Fróis V, 405. 138 Transcribed in Marino, “El Japón del Siglo XVI,” 313. 139 Fróis III, 59-63. Lourenço Meixa describes him as a “Christian fidalgo very virtuous” who helped build churches by obtaining wood and alms from Ōtomo Sōrin. 1580 Annual letter to the Padre General, Cartas II, 471. 140 Fróis III, 120. 315 different things, complaining of the torment that they gave to her with those relics, and Leão taking occasion that the demon was speaking asked some questions to her, one of which was where the gentiles would go [after they died] and of what torments they would have. The demon responded that they went to Hell, and the torments were very great and many, principally of fire and of cold, and saying how great were the torments of fire. It then turned the woman red hot in color, and her whole body began to smoke, and it seemed she was going to burst. Then, wanting to show the torments of cold, with a sudden change began then to chatter her teeth and tremble with her whole body, becoming so cold as if she were put in ice, and saying many other things of the power of God, and of the fear that it had of the relics… it went out of the body of that woman, and left free, that with many other Gentiles found there after they knew this they converted to our holy faith, becoming with this in all those parts the law of God more 141 accredited. Leão was also a preacher, so it should come as no surprise that he would use the exorcism of a non-Christian to illustrate the fate of the unconverted following death. On this occasion, Leão decided to use a possessed woman as a kind of spirit-medium (something the yamabushi frequently did with miko and itako) to remind onlookers of the torments of Hell. The punishments of “hell,” albeit in a Buddhist context, were very familiar to non- Christians audiences. The possessed woman’s physical manifestations of hell-fire and freezing cold approximate the manifold Buddhist depictions of Hell, such as the various infernos depicted in Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū (Collection of Essentials on Birth in the Pure Land) and the famous twelfth-century “Hell Scroll” (jigokuzōji). Whether or not those witnessing Leão’s exorcism were convinced by the spirit’s depictions of Hell for non- Christians, it seems, as Coelho tells us, that the successful performance of the exorcism acted as a native mode of persuasion to the Christian cause. A second lay exorcist worth mentioning was a man who went by the name of Gião. Despite only being mentioned in a few letters, Gião seems to have been one of the more renowned Japanese exorcists operating in Bungo. Described by Fróis as “a man of great prudence” who also possessed great virtue, Gião was a samurai in the court of “the king of Bungo.” According to Fróis, God had given Gião the ability to expel unclean spirits. This gained him some fame in the local community as “wherever they had 141 Cartas II, 28. Gaspar Coelho to the Padre General, from Nagasaki, Feb. 15 1582. Other demoniacs were set free and many sick with fevers went to the church in the time…they returned healthy to their houses. The Historia, which includes the episode for the year 1580, adds: “also, other demoniacs were freed by virtue of holy water.” Fróis III, 170. Leão also received/gave alms to the Church in Notsu, Fróis IV, 85 and was occupied in building a great church there Fróis IV, 22. 316 demoniacs, they were taken to his house,” where he would exorcize them by putting relics on their necks. In total, Fróis describes three exorcisms that Gião performed, all seemingly without Jesuit supervision. According to the few descriptions of Gião’s exorcisms, it seems that he was particularly active in helping non-Christians with spirit possession. After expelling a spirit, the person (frequently a woman) would inevitably end up “becoming Christian.” Fróis describes one exorcism as follows: Another [woman] was for many years a gentile walking hunched over and having by illusions of the Devil arms as a cripple, and in them huge swellings as huge as the fist of a man, this Gião made his exorcisms to her and throwing upon her the relics that he had to her neck, she became right and well, and those swellings then disappeared, and she became Christian. Fróis also reported several other instances in which Gião used exorcisms to free non- Christians of spiritual harassment and convert them by virtue of the results. Like Leão, Gião also interrogated possessing spirits and used the entities’ responses to warn his audience of the dangers of being a gentile. In one case he had a possessed person recite the Credo in Latin, after which the possessed person became free. No doubt Gião used the Credo, which starts out with the phrase “I believe in one God…” as a means of connecting the act of becoming Christian with protections from malevolent spirits. Though Fróis does not explicitly say that the person became Christian, this was the likely outcome. Unfortunately, Gião’s exorcisms are not mentioned in Fróis’s História, and we do not know more about his activities—except that he was close to the Christian lord Ō 142tomo Sōrin, who might well employed his exorcistic skills on behalf of the domain. We know more about yet another Japanese exorcist, Damião of Sakai (sometimes referred to as Damião of Yamaguchi). Blind, and a former biwa hōshi (“lute priest”), Damião was converted at the age of twenty-five in Yamaguchi and later became an irmão. While famous locally at the time and among his contemporaries as a preacher and exorcist, he was remembered and valorized by later Europeans for his martyrdom in “Ipponmatsu” (present-day Yamaguchi) in 1605 (possibly 1604) where he was drawn and 142 Cartas, 406-406v. Fróis, from Usuki, Sept. 30 1578. 317 143 quartered. Most of the information concerning his exorcistic activities comes from the História, as well as Fróis’s 1589 letter upon which the História is based and a letter from Francisco Perez also from 1589. Further information on Damião can be found in several manuscripts by the padre Gil de la Mata, some of which have been helpfully transcribed 144 and edited recently by Giuseppe Marino. Most of his background can be gleaned from Fróis, who states, “There was in that city of Yamaguchi a blind married man, a native of Sakai, of great ability and wonderful memory, very well-versed in the sects of Japan, and he would preach to them as any renowned preacher would, and he was instructed in sorcery and the diabolical arts, and each of these things was valued among the fidalgos and received by the people, so that by these industries he earned his living and supported 145 sufficiently his house.” What is of particular interest in the above passage is that Fróis mentions Damião as having training in “sorcery,” an art that the Jesuits strongly associated with the yamabushi and Japanese spirit manipulation and exorcism. Though not stated explicitly by Fróis, it is very likely that Damião had some sort of prior experience with exorcism. Biwa hōshi could perform exorcistic functions at times, and famous tales, such as the Tale of the Heike, are thought by some to have originated as ways to placate evil and 146 vengeful spirits. Although Fróis only records a few of Damião’s exorcisms, his prominence in Yamaguchi suggests that he performed others that were simply not recorded, especially after the Jesuits left that city following Hideyoshi’s 1587 edict of 147 expulsion. 143 Medina, El Martirologio, 301. 144 Giuseppe Marino,“La historia del ciego mártir Damián de Yamaguchi en los manuscritos de Gil de la Mata (siglo XVI),” Janus: Estudios sobre el Siglo de Oro (2014): 225-269. For a brief biography, see Nihon Kirisutokyō Reikishi Daijiten Henshū Iinkai, Nihon Kirisuto Kyō Rekishi Daijiten (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1988), 852-853. 145 124-125. Fróis’s original letter leaves out “diabolical arts.” Perez, in Cartas II, 264v-265, corroborates some details but leaves out Damião’s past interest in “sorcery.” Marino and Ruiz-de-Medina provide transcriptions of Fróis’s letter, though Ruiz-de Medina is only in part. Juan Ruiz-de-Medina, “The Role of the Blind Biwa Hōshi Troubadours in the History of the Christian Mission in Japan,” The Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 6 (June 2003): 107-145. 146 Plutschow, Chaos and Cosmos, 221-223. Plutschow notes, “Though such stories were later taken over by professional reciters, storytelling doubtless accompanied religious ritual, since the recitation of tales was, as we have seen, a means to exorcise deities and spirits.” 147 Fróis V, 229 for his activity in Yamaguchi. 318 As depicted in the História, Damião’s exorcisms tended to lead to the conversion of those involved. As an irmão and former biwa-hōshi, Damião seems to have been a very talented preacher (like the other former biwa-hōshi, Lourenço) and very likely followed his exorcisms with a round of preaching designed to explain the source of his exorcistic abilities. For example, when Damião exorcised one woman of a possessing spirit—this was likely an inu-gami (a “dog” spirit) since she was said to have actually taken on the physical features of a dog—two other women who were present at the 148 exorcism reportedly became Christian because he successfully expelled the entity. One particular exorcism of Damião’s, which is described in all its complexity in the História, commands our attention. With no foreign advocates involved, this exorcism vividly illustrates how the practice acted as a native mode of persuasion in the Japanese context. As such, it is worth recounting and analyzing in full. The episode takes place in Yamaguchi and was recorded in 1589, some two years after the European Jesuits had been expelled from the city: In this time, a demon entered into a Gentile widow, who was past fifty years in age, and she was greatly tormented by it. And through the grand compassion that one of her married sons (who supported her in her house) of whom she had and other relatives, they worked much to see her free of such great torments as she suffered. They made over her much sorcery, they invoked the kamis and fotoques. They called the bonzes and yamabushi in order for them to make their conjugations and exorcisms, they took her to monasteries and temples and petitioned their idols that they might take pity on her. And being so furious the violence with which the demon predominated her, her son of 30 years, some family members and relatives were not sufficient in order to restrain or make her quiet. Then all her relatives decided by the council of the yamabushi (who are a sect of sorcerers dedicated totally to the immediate service of the Devil) that only one remedy was left for her and that, if she was to do this work, she would infallibly become well. It was, that they take her to a channel [levada] of water that fell from a place very high, and that, putting her head in that water for seven days continuously put in a good place, there was no doubt as to her health. There gathered together each day a great number of men, women, and children to see that spectacle, and besides being a very great torment that the miserable woman suffered, through the grave vexation of the demon, it was increasing all 148 Fróis IV, 22-23. This is completely consistent with Japanese religiosity of the time since dog spirits were widely feared and could easily possess people. 319 the more that, the violence with which that water ran from above and gave to her on the head, enraged her and increased more her fury. There lived around there an honorable man and a good Christian, by the name of Mathias, who had sons, of which the youngest was called Paulo, who was then nine years old, and he said to another child a relative of that woman: If she would become Christian and take some medicine that is in the house of my father, then she would be well (understanding this through holy water, of which the Christians use much and have in their houses in order to remedy their infirmities, with whose faith God Our Lord agrees many times). And even though they took little notice of what the boy was saying, nevertheless they did not stop trying all that they might be able, they said to the boy that he might bring that medicine to her. He himself alone did not dare; he called two of his brothers, one twelve and the other thirteen years old, by the names of Justino and Mancio, and together they called the blind Damião who went with them in order to tell her something of God. Arriving at that house, when the demoniac saw them, she began to cry out in loud voices and to say: “What do you want with me? Depart from me, for I will leave!” And running quickly, she fled out into the garden. The three children and a grandson [of hers] ran after her, and the blind man after them, who took some disciplinas in order to castigate her; but because many gentiles ran from outside to see this act, he did not dare to give to her with those in order not to scandalize. But the blind man was working to cast onto her neck a nomina that he had of an Angus Dei and his relicario of contas [of holy wood from St. Thomas’s house?], but she repulsed them most greatly. And those children having grabbed hold of her and other relatives, the blind man gave to her a little holy water on her head and he prayed over her in loud voices the Credo. The woman fell to the ground as if dead and, returning afterwards to herself, she became totally well and free of the demon. And admiring of the great power of God, she heard preaching, as well as her son and family and they were made Christians. This began to be divulged throughout the city of Yamaguchi, and some were moved by the novelty of the thing, others grounded in the knowledge of the truth of what he was preaching, there became as many as 70 people Christians. From there the demon entered then into a relative of the aforementioned woman, who was a gentile youth, married, of seventeen years of age, and each day the hair from her head was being cut in the presence of her husband and of those who were in the house: that they saw the cut hair fall to the floor and did not see who was doing it, and the young woman was much disconsolate at this thing. 320 Some Christians went to talk with her and they testified to her that becoming a Christian the demon would not vex her anymore. She was desiring it much and … but an uncle of hers, a cruel gentile, in no case wanted to consent to it, saying that, when the demon would not come out of her, that he would rather cut off her head 149 than her to become a Christian. Although retold by Fróis in the História, it seems that this account of exorcism within the Christian community is only on a step removed from Damião himself. Fróis’s main source for the chapter on Damião is his own letter from Katsusa, dated September 20 1589. In it, he mentions that Damião “told us here of some things that happened in Yamaguchi after the padres left, and particularly of those things that happened to him, which was related to us in the same manner, before he arrived, by other Christians that 150 had come from those parts.” Even if we allow that some details have become distorted or even elaborated upon by Fróis, at the very least several kernels of the episode are entirely plausible and can be used to illustrate just how an exorcism conducted by an autonomous Japanese exorcist could have lead to conversion. If we distill the account, we can extrapolate the following: 1. The possession of the fifty-year old woman began strictly as a problem within the native religious tradition; 2. This problem involved the woman’s whole family, who sought outside help to find her relief; 3. The normal methods of exorcisms at the hands of Buddhist monks, the yamabushi, and an intense penitential/purification ritual (misogi) did not seem to expel the harassing spirit; 5. The entire episode, including the exorcisms, was of a public nature and interested the local community; 6. Japanese Christians in the community (if not their children) suggested their own brand of exorcism through the use of a sacramental (holy water); 7. A native 149 Fróis V, 132-133. I have yet to see another English translation of this episode. Marino has transcribed a Spanish version in “La historia del ciego mártir,” 240-241, from a manuscript found in the Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid. This manuscript has the date of Sept. 20 1589 from “Canzusa.” The letter’s title is “Of the things that happened in Yamaguchi after the padres and hermanos were thrown out from there by the order of the tyrant.” Part of this letter is also transcribed in Ruiz-de-Medina, “The Role of the Blind Biwa Hōshi,” in which he notes that Fróis uses the letter “almost verbatim in his Historia.” The Cartas also contain a version of this exorcism, though it leaves out the part where the spirit went into a relative of the woman. See Cartas II, 266v-267. Related by Francisco Perez as part of a letter from Fróis to the Padre Viceprovincial dated in the Cartas as July 22 1589. This is the very last letter in this edition of the Cartas. Ward offers a paraphrased version of the exorcism in Ward, Women, 160. She rightly notes that the chapter ends strangely and that Fróis does not tell us what happened to the girl. However, we might infer that the girl had to endure the spiritual harassment or found some other means of exorcisms since her uncle seemed this to be preferable to her becoming Christian. 150 Ruiz-de-Medina, “The Role of the Blind Biwa Hōshi,” 141, has a transcription of the original text found in ARSI in Jap-Sin 51, 134-137. 321 Christian specialist of rank (Damião) was called in to administer a Christian exorcism; 8. The Christian exorcist, along with other Japanese Christians, used a variety of methods, including sacramentals and prayer to exorcise the spirit in front of outside witnesses who were familiar with the woman’s history of spirit possession; 9. The successful exorcism offered proof-positive of the spiritual efficacy of Christianity and caused the woman and her family to convert; 10. Due to the public nature of the possession and exorcism, the news of its success spread and others soon converted; and finally 11. Christians then actively suggested conversion to other demoniacs in order to spare them from vexation (though sometimes they did not convert). What we see here is a full embracing of the 1,500-year-old Christian practice of exorcism to address a completely native spiritual problem. A Japanese Christian leader administered the exorcisms, and both Christians and non-Christians present at the event could attest to the efficacy of this new method. In such a way, the Christian brand of exorcism conformed itself to one of the concerns of Japanese religiosity as dictated by native demand for the practice. Though performed by a Jesuit, (Damião was the main leader of the Christian community in Yamaguchi at this time), the exorcism need not have been performed by one. Any member of the Christian laity, making use of prayers, sacramentals, and relics, could have taken the leading role in the exorcism as in some of the other aforementioned cases. Lay performance of exorcisms though prayer and sacramentals undoubtedly represented a very attractive feature of the Christian practice since this involved ordinary individuals and the community as a whole. There was no need to study in the monasteries or, worse still, to undergo intense and possibly life- threatening ascetic training in the mountains as the yamabushi did. Christian exorcism, in effect, undercut these religious specialists and turned the power of spirit manipulation and expulsion over to anyone, either as individuals or as a group. Nevertheless, there remained cases of spiritual harassment and possession that were just too difficult for the ordinary Christian to solve using holy water or a crucifix. These cases, such as the one recounted about Damião, required a communal exorcistic specialist. Sometimes this was a foreign padre or irmão; but, needless to say, their limited numbers meant that they could not always be present when needed. That Christian lay leaders, such as António, proved to be adept at performing these rites changed the 322 exorcistic landscape. Some of these seem to have been especially pious individuals or individuals of rank, such as Gião in Bungo, who would otherwise have commanded local respect. Others were exorcist specialists with prior training and experience, such as the former biwa-hōshi and “sorcerer” Damião. These specialists, of which there were probably a great many more than are actually recorded in the sources, would have performed their exorcisms completely independently from any missionary oversight and with the help and approval of the local Christian community. Some such exorcistic episodes did manage to filter their way into the Jesuit letters and histories, but, given the ubiquity of spirit possession in Japan, these accounts likely represent just the tip of the iceberg regarding the exorcistic appeal of the Christianity. Alessandro Valignano, the ever-pragmatic Visitor, thought that the Apostolic Age and the miracles associated with it had ended long before. God did not grant the missionaries in Japan the ability to perform miracles as he had the original Twelve Apostles, even though that might have benefited their endeavors immensely. Nevertheless, Valignano did recognize that some divine power was present: namely, that God had offered up the power of Christ to both the clergy and the laity in the Christian church on Kyushu in their efforts to “manhandle” evil spirits. This much he acknowledged, no doubt, because he had heard about the exorcisms or perhaps even witnessed a few himself. Such events were not out of the ordinary in Europe and would not have been a departure from Valignano’s world-view. What was somewhat unusual in Japan was the degree to which the laity led and participated in the exorcisms. Yet, compellingly, Valignano celebrated this unique characteristic of the Japanese church. In an unpublished manuscript of what was supposed to become his official history of the missions in the East, a text known as Principio y Progresso de la Religión Christiana en Japón (1603-1604), Valignano placed exorcistic power squarely in the hands of Japanese Christians themselves, noting that these believers had demonstrated the spiritual efficacy of Christianity by casting out malevolent spirits: … even though our Lord does not give to this Church gifts of miracles that he gave to the primitive [church], he did not forsake for this cause of allowing many miracles with which the Christians are confirmed in their faith and he also was giving sufficient proof of the truth of our Law to the gentiles. Because it is a true thing, and that it has happened many times in diverse parts, unclean spirits are cast out, which they have diverse demoniacs, with some relics that they were 323 casting them on the neck and with the prayers of the Christians, they were doing such incredible things and giving such evident signs that it was not possible to doubt nor to deny that they were demons. And this virtue our Lord conceded to many good Christians who with their faith and devotion with Agnus deis and relicarios and with praying around them they free diverse demoniacs. There have converted to our holy Law many Gentiles who were relatives and friends of those mentioned demoniacs and they were present when with ease they were casting out these evil spirits, by virtue of prayer and of relics. Others who have lucid intervals, are persuaded to become Christians, they remain free of the demon with the water of holy baptism, and others with being taken in front of crosses, and they tremble and make other strange grimaces, they remain free, as it has been 151 seen in some places of this History and will be seen ahead. As this passage makes clear, Valignano did not see the miraculous as emanating from the missionaries but rather being worked through the Japanese Christian in lay exorcism. To him, this represented divine sanction of the community and its place in the Catholic and Apostolic Church. Armed with relics and sacramentals like holy water, each Japanese Christian had the innate capability bestowed upon them by baptism to combat harmful spirits in the world. As the supplement to the Manuale put it, baptism made each Christian, in effect, a “solider of the Lord Christ” in the Church Militant. To be sure, people had non-Christian means of dealing with these problems, one of the most effective being to obtain the service of an exorcistic specialist like a yamabushi or Buddhist monk. But, in the Christian community, one did not have to rely on an ordained priest, but could turn for help to a Japanese leader in the community, or to a family member or neighbor. By becoming a Christian and having access to new but familiar methods exorcism, such as prayer and the sacramentals, Japanese Christians did not have to rely on spiritual adepts like the yamabushi or learned monks to resolve the age-old problem of possession and harassment by harmful spirits. The power to “manhandle” spirits, in other words, was no longer solely in the hands of religious specialists, but rather in those of everyone in the Christian community. One could protect oneself and one’s family simply by putting up a cross to ward off spirits or by wearing a personal relic in the form of the relicario. Exorcistic power was readily available to all, should they believe in Deus and made use of new and specifically Christian apotropaic objects. By believing that they could conduct exorcisms through prayers and 151 Transcribed in Alvarez-Taladriz, Sumario de Las Cosas de Japón, 287-288. Also transcribed in López- Gay, El Catecumenado, 211. 324 sacramentals, Japanese Christians not only reinforced their faith in Deus but sought to share it with others. It appears that for many, Christian exorcistic practices worked quite well—so much so that they chose to become Christian as a result of witnessing an effective exorcism. At first, Japanese were interested in crucifixes, holy water, and invoking the higher authority of Jesus precisely because they were new and foreign yet entirely familiar. Talismans, water purification (misogi), and appeals to Fudō Myōō were analogous to the Catholic sacramentals and invocation of Jesus’ name. Yet these were not merely syncretistic substitutes used with little or no thought. Foreign and native advocates explained to Japanese Christians and potential converts that belief in Deus alone empowered these objects and that an ordinary person, no matter if they had any special training or not, could use them to great effect against harmful spirits. Once a few Japanese Christians made this leap of faith, such as those in Bungo in the 1550s, both the laity and the Jesuit missionaries spread belief in the efficacy of Christian exorcism to others within and without the community. Japanese Christians shared their exorcistic practices with their non-Christian neighbors and relatives, and many appear to have been sufficiently impressed by their efficacy that they themselves began to believe in the power of Deus. Precisely because native advocates of the Christian religion adopted and preformed exorcisms in ways that resonated with the Japanese community at large but connected them with belief in Deus, the practice became a native mode of persuasion on Kyushu that produced converts. Once-possessed people, convinced that they had been administered a successful exorcism at the hands of these native advocates, told other people about its efficacy and attested to belief in Deus. In adopting exorcism as a native mode of persuasion, the Japanese on Kyushu were by no means unique. As we saw earlier, exorcism was an extremely important native mode of persuasion in many other cultures that underwent the Christianization process. Firstly, the “demonization” of non-Christian spirits and deities gave them a specific identity within the Christian world-view. There they could endure, albeit in a different form, rather than being dismissed and ignored as falsities. In the Christian framework, all non-Christian spirits and deities were simply reinterpreted as demons. Harmful native spirits could retain many of their original attributes, such as causing 325 possession, disease, or other ailments. And along with “demonization” came moralization. Once morally ambiguous entities could now be cast in a dichotomous light and understood for what they really were: evil entities who were no match for the cosmic good of the God-man. Secondly, and most importantly, Christian exorcism gave people an additional means with which to counteract harmful spirits, including the daimon of the Greco- Romans, the elves and dwarves of the Anglo-Saxons in England, and vengeful ghosts of China. Of course, each society had its own methods of dealing with these evil entities: magicians, Jewish exorcists, and wandering Cynics controlled spirits in the Roman Empire; herbal remedies purged the so-called “elf-shot” in England; and Daoist exorcists in China intimidated malevolent spirits and called down higher deities to “execute” them. With the arrival of Christianity into new cultures, we might argue, it was only natural that Christian exorcism would be used to control and protect against harmful spirits. After all, given the reality and seriousness of spiritual attack and possession in these cultures, how could Christianity be even remotely successful in the new environment if it did not have a way to address these problems? Both converts and potential converts would simply continue using the tried and true methods of native exorcism, some of which employed higher powers like Apollo and Fudō Myōō, thereby undermining the goal of the religion to instill sole devotion to one god. If the society targeted for conversion could not accommodate Christianity into their belief systems concerning spirits and exorcism they would certainly continue on with their respective specialists who had already proven themselves capable of handling such matters. And if Christianity did not accommodate these native beliefs, people would be far less likely to move away from their normative practices and adopt other Christian elements. For the Christianization process to have been activated in a given society, both sides need to move toward one another. Exorcism provided common ground where the non-Christian and the Christian could meet and interact. In each of the historical instances of the Christianization process that we have described (the New World being the major exception), missionaries did not have to impose their view that certain spirits were wholly evil (demonic) in nature. The native cultures already believed certain spirits to be harmful and dangerous. Hoping to find new and effective means for controlling 326 these spirits, native people looked to members of the Christian community (lay or clerical) for help. After finding Christian methods of exorcism effective, reinterpreting these traditionally harmful spirits as demons as the Christians was a natural evolution. Christian exorcism only flourished as a native mode of persuasion only because the exorcism of harmful spirits was already a major feature of native belief systems. In the end, we might say the native culture imposed upon Christianity to include exorcisms, a demand to which the religion could only acquiesce; and most importantly for converts, it was one element of the religion that, through clear and demonstrable proofs, was deemed to be particularly efficacious. 327 PART THREE: THE CHURCH SUFFERING 328 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHURCH SUFFERING Within the Communion of Saints (Communio Sanctorum)—that is the coternal solidarity of the living members of the Church on Earth (the Church Militant), its deceased members undergoing purification in purgatory (the Church Suffering), and the saints who directly experience the beatific vision of God (the Church Triumphant)—we might usefully think of the Church Suffering as the primary linkage between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. This is not to say that the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant could not interact independently of the Church Suffering, however, since Catholic doctrine states that the saints can intercede on the behalf of the living from whom they receive supplications for additional prayers on their part to the Godhead. Moreover, in the Catholic tradition, the saints remain present in the physical realm through their relics. The solidarity of the Communion of Saints is said to be so complete, in fact, that it enables all members of the Church to interact with one another. But among all the members of the Church, the souls in purgatory are thought to have the least agency as a result of their deceased and impure nature (in contrast to the deceased saints). Their time on this earth already passed, they can no longer commit sins nor do any good works. They cannot affect members of the living members of the Church Militant, except when permitted by God to appear on earth as ghosts, and they can do nothing that that would have impact on the saints in the Church Triumphant. Thus, if we were to adhere to a strict definition of the Church Suffering as simply the realm of dead Christians, this section of our study would be rather short since history cannot reach into the realm of the dead without reference to and the agency of the living. Consequently, for our purposes here, the Church Suffering represents the tie that unites the living and the dead through the common practice of penance (poenitentia). Indeed, the multiplicity of names traditionally used when referring to the Church in purgatory underscores its penitential nature and function. While I have chosen to employ the term “Church Suffering” (Ecclesia Dolens) to refer to this church of the dead, the souls in purgatory are also frequently referred to as the Church Penitent (Ecclesia Poenitens) and the Church Expectant (Ecclesia Expectans). This is because the souls of 329 the dead undergo forced penance in purgatory. They are, nevertheless, hopeful (expectant) because the suffering is a purificatory experience that will gain them entrance into heaven. The term “Church Suffering” underscores the themes that we will explore in the following chapters: that is, the penitent nature of the church of the living and the church of the dead as well as the suffrages (suffragium) that the living offer up as “help” on behalf of those in purgatory. Taken together, the three aforementioned names for the church of the dead fully describe the function of the Church in purgatory. Since penance (the making of satisfaction) is the tie that binds the living and the 1 dead, we need to address it before moving forward. For the Catholic tradition, the entire penitential process occurs within the sacrament of penance (sometimes called the sacrament of reconciliation), which has its roots in the very early centuries of Christianity; and, since the first Christians were Jewish, we might even think of it as going back to ancient Judaism with its own atonement and purification practices. However, the sacrament only became a formal obligation in the Roman west with the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), whereupon all Christians were obliged to perform it at least once a year. The sacrament of penance itself is divided into three main parts: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Contrition is the interior regret for some evil (sin), either against God or a fellow person, and is the first step in the penitential process. The next step is confession, where one expresses this interior regret to a priest (or the community as a whole in the early centuries) in order to receive forgiveness (absolution). Once a penitent receives absolution, which reconciles them with God, then that person must perform a penance (making satisfaction) in order to repay the debt to divine justice (God) that the sin has incurred. The penalty owed to God (satisfaction, from the Latin satisfactio “reparation”) is what specifically links the Church Militant and the Church Suffering. When a person commits a sin, there are two types of penalty that a person incurs depending upon the severity of the sin. In the case of the most severe sins (mortal sins), such as murder, the person incurs both an eternal penalty (separation from God) and a temporal penalty (a 1 What follows is a general account for the church of the dead in the Catholic tradition that does not take into consideration all the differences or variations present in the Eastern traditions. Nevertheless, the orthodox churches place great importance on suffrages and the like even if the theological explanations differ from those of the Roman Church. 330 debt or reparation owed to God). The eternal penalty can only be forgiven by divine justice if there is contrition and then confession. One must go to confession to be absolved of this penalty. In the case of lesser sins (venial sins), which do not have to be confessed since they do not incur the eternal penalty, the person only incurs the temporal penalty. This penalty, unlike the eternal penalty, does not endanger the immortal soul. Rather, it is a debt owed to divine justice that the person has to repay in some fashion while still alive, usually by undertaking an act of charity, saying prayers, or performing some type of austerity. One can either confess these sins or leave them unconfessed, since the temporal penalties pile up until they are repaid. Making satisfaction (penance) is therefore paying compensation to an aggrieved party (God) for having injured them in some fashion. If satisfaction is not made for this temporal penalty voluntarily before one dies, then one must forcibly repay it after death in purgatory where it will be treated much more severely since it is enforced against one’s will. Still, the soul of the person in purgatory who has not made satisfaction while alive is still guaranteed entry into heaven once they have made the appropriate satisfaction to divine justice. The Church Suffering is, therefore, the state of making satisfaction in death. The Church Militant is the living counterpart to this, as its members seek to make satisfaction in the here and now so as to 2 avoid, as much as possible, having to make satisfaction in purgatory. The Church Suffering is thought to be rather expansive and functions as follows: the vast majority of the Christian dead (though only those who have died with their mortal sins absolved) need to complete the penitential process. This involves only the making of satisfaction (temporal penalty) that they failed to perform during their lifetime on earth. They are subjected to the remaining temporal penalty in an intermediate state called purgatory. There, the repentant dead must undergo purgation (purgatio “cleansing”). This cleansing or “purification” is explained according to tradition—both metaphorically and sometimes literally—as a purifying fire. Naturally, the purification 2 As section 1459 of the modern Catechism of the Church usefully explains: “Many sins wrong our neighbor. One must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered, pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as much. But sin also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationship with God and neighbor. Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must “make satisfaction for” or “expiate” his sins. This satisfaction is also called “penance.” http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P4D.HTM 331 process entails some kind of suffering (dolens), which can parallel the suffering of some types of satisfaction on earth. Once the purification is complete, the soul is ready for the expected and assured entrance into heaven (hence the name of the Church Expectant, Ecclesia Expectans). Purgatory, therefore, purifies an impure soul so that it can ultimately experience the presence of a totally good and pure Godhead. The Church Suffering, then, is quite literally thought as the fulcrum that leverages repentant members of the Church Militant into the Church Triumphant. Besides making satisfaction, both the living and the dead may receive “merit” (meritum) from God. Just as sin incurs a temporal penalty, a good act receives merit. A good definition of supernatural merit, as opposed to secular concepts of merit, can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia: “In the theological sense, a supernatural merit can only be a salutary act (actus salutaris), to which God in consequence of his infallible promise owes a supernatural reward, consisting ultimately in eternal life, which is the 3 beatific vision in heaven.” However, this merit is not a quid pro quo transaction. Instead, it is thought to be a gift from God given to humanity out of charity rather than out of obligation. The living are the only ones capable of both producing and receiving merit, while the dead can only receive merit since they had already used up the opportunity to produce it in their lifetimes. Because the dead in the Church Suffering cannot repent of their sins nor accrue merit (essentially favor from God), they cannot alter their spiritual state in purgatory and must suffer purification as it is meted out according to divine justice. However, those in the living realm can and should help these souls to achieve quicker resolution of their purification in order to hasten their entry into heaven. The living can thus help the dead by transferring merit to them. The reward from the transferred meritorious act will then cancel some (or all) of the temporal penalty for a soul in purgatory. Such a transfer of merit is possible since all three states of the Church are coeternal and share in something called “the Treasury of Merit,” which serves as a storehouse of all supernatural merit. 3 The Catholic Encyclopedia also offers a good definition of merit in the ordinary sense: “By merit (meritum) in general is understood that property of a good work which entitles the doer to receive a reward (prœmium, merces) from him in whose service the work is done. By antonomasia, the word has come to designate also the good work itself, in so far as it deserves a reward from the person in whose service it was performed.” Both definitions can be found in the entry for merit here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm 332 This kind supernatural storehouse as well as the unity of all three Churches enables merit to be transferred from the living to the dead via a variety of mechanisms, such as suffrages and indulgences whereby the living give up the merit they have accrued in order, in an act of charity, to give that merit for the satisfaction of the dead. In this way, living members of the church could take care of the dead members. As we will see over the course of the next three chapters, much about the Church Suffering would have seemed entirely familiar to Japanese of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even if only educated Japanese Christians grasped the theological intricacies of the penitential system, the concept of satisfaction, the nature of purgatory, and common access to the Treasury of Merit, much of the population would have understood the Church Suffering through praxis. Just like Catholics of the period, the various sects and branches of Buddhism, Shinto, and Shugendō all had various practices that aimed at either purification of defilement or the generation of karmic merit. Concepts superficially akin to sin, satisfaction, charity, and (Christian) merit were well ensconced in Japanese religiosity, and the move from Buddhist practices geared toward the generation of karmic merit to Christian versions was not a very far one. Just as Japanese Buddhists had practices to offset the karmic demerit that would lead to a worse version of the afterlife (which always involved some sort of suffering), so too Japanese Christians could take steps to negate the temporal penalty of sin in order to reduce suffering in purgatory. Both Buddhism and Catholicism focused much praxis on preparing while alive for their version of the afterlife, something that we can usefully call “caring for one’s future dead self.” Even though one was alive at the moment, such a state of existence would not always be so. In both traditions, it was considered wise to plan ahead for this eventuality since the vast majority of ordinary people could expect some kind of suffering in the afterlife. Indeed, caring for the dead was paramount in Buddhism and Catholicism, and Japanese Catholics were able to carry out this deep-seated religious and social need in a highly effective manner. Catholicism offered people a new but familiar way to maintain connections to their dead and a have some positive effect on their state in the afterlife. Just as people transferred merit to the dead in Buddhist praxis so too could Japanese Christians transfer merit in the praxis of the Catholic Church. Just as people could gain 333 merit for themselves from caring for the dead in Buddhism, so too could Japanese Christians since doing so was seen as an act of individual charity. And in both traditions, as they approached the end of their lives, people could rest easy in the expectation that the current living community and those living for generations after would care for their spiritual state after death. Though the theological and philosophical reasoning that undergirded these similar practices was quite different, the praxis was not. What counted was that both individuals and communities of individuals could, through their own agency, affect the spiritual state of the dead. These kinds of similar practices effectively gave people agency over their own death, quelling natural anxieties over the fate of their dead loved ones. The following three chapters comprise our case study on how the Christian community extended across the living and the dead and how caring for the dead was an integral part of the world-historical process of Christianization. In Chapter Six, we will explore how the first universal religion, Buddhism, adapted to the “death needs” of the various societies into which it transplanted itself. We will pay particular attention to how Buddhist care for the dead operated in Japan since that religion led to the expectation among potential converts that Catholicism had already created strong ties between the community of the living and the community of the dead. In addition, by showing how Buddhism’s care for the dead developed over time and through the various cultures it passed, we acknowledge it as a precedent and parallel example for a similar world- historical process in Christianization. Leaving Buddhism behind, we then focus our attention on how Christianity was similarly influenced and influenced by the death needs of cultures foreign to the context in which it originated. Only with the input of these non- Christian societies did the full formation of the Church Suffering as described above develop by the late Middle Ages. As a result, the Catholic Church had an enormous and compelling toolkit with which to care for the dead when it arrived on the shores of Kyushu in 1549. Chapter VII is an in-depth examination of the Church Suffering as it was taught and practiced on the island of Kyushu. We will first explore how the idea of purgatory might have been disseminated amongst the population via preaching and catechetical materials. Then, using these same materials, we will examine what kind of praxis was available to 334 Japanese Christians to care for their dead. This “praxis of purgatory,” as I have termed it, enabled Japanese Christians to maintain very real connections to the realm of the dead, prepare themselves for death, and care for the spiritual state of their deceased loved ones. By the end of Chapter VIII, it should be evident that without an adapting and inclusive system of praxis with which various native Christians could care for their dead, the religion would have had a much more difficult time transplanting itself into different cultures around the world. Although the Japanese on Kyushu initially held very different notions of how to prepare and care for the dead from the many other cultures that experienced the Christianization process, their common interaction with the church of the dead was something that allows for us to unite them historiographically across time and space. 335 CHAPTER VII CARING FOR THE DEAD IN BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY This chapter serves as a preliminary discussion for the Church Suffering on Kyushu. As such, it explains the ways in which Buddhism and Christianity confronted the challenge of maintaining contact with and aiding those in the realm of the dead. During the historical development of both religions, and as they passed through new cultures on their way to Japan, each needed to expand its previously held beliefs and practices for effecting a positive outcome after death. The afterlife goal for Buddhism was samsaric release, the ultimate end to an aeons-old journey up and down through various levels of existence and degrees of suffering. In the case of Christianity, the afterlife goal was eternal union with God in heaven (the beatific vision)—the fate to be avoided being hell, or eternal separation from God (damnation or perdition) by willfully neglecting to repent of one’s sins before death. Since these afterlife goals (samsaric release and heaven) were absolutely fundamental to both religions, each necessarily had to integrate the native expectations and needs regarding death, both individually and societally, of the peoples they sought to convert. This “working together,” the interplay between the foreign religion itself, its soteriological goals, and the native culture led to mutual transformations in mortuary and funeral practices. As the religions encountered new cultures, they had to Buddhicize or Christianize death for native peoples. That is to say, each religion had to bring native practices and expectations regarding death in line with the soteriological goals of samsaric release or entrance into heaven. Simultaneously, native practices and expectations about death transformed how each religion approached it, not only in praxis but philosophically and theologically. As a result, both Buddhism and Christianity became increasingly adaptable to a wide variety of disparate cultural and anxieties about death. By the time the Jesuits landed on Kyushu in the middle of the sixteenth century, both Buddhism and Catholic Christianity had long since developed highly sophisticated 336 rites related to preparation for death and care of the dead. Both traditions had mechanisms, ranging from the simple to the elaborate, whereby people could achieve a positive afterlife (samsaric release or heaven) for themselves through their own efforts (caring for one’s own “future dead self”). And both placed a high degree of emphasis on dead members of the community metaphysically in the living religious community (the dharma and the Communion of Saints, respectively). The immediacy that both religions proclaimed between the dead and the living enabled them to proffer additional mechanisms (simple and elaborate) through which people could care for their deceased loved ones or the dead in general. These mechanisms mattered a great deal to people of the premodern and early modern periods. By exploring how Buddhism and Christianity facilitated interaction between the living and the dead in a mutually beneficial and necessary relationship as they entered into new societies and cultures, we will come to understand why many Kyushuans adopted Christianity. In tracing the historical development of Buddhist and Christian care for the dead as the religions interacted with foreign cultures, this chapter argues the following: 1. Both Buddhism and Christianity exhibited world-historical patterns of incorporating the death needs and practices of other cultures and religions into their own traditions; 2. By adapting themselves to the death needs of native peoples, these religions enabled societies targeted for conversion to maintain important connections between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead, even if those connections were fundamentally transformed by Buddhist or Christian notions of the afterlife; and 3. The immediacy of the realm of the dead to that of the living in both traditions enabled the development of sophisticated practices for the care of the dead, both for one’s own future dead self (preparation for the afterlife) and for the already dead (such as relatives or ancestors). Regarding our first focus—namely, the incorporation of native beliefs and practices related to death—we will see how Buddhism changed its original practices of caring for the dead (which it supposedly had none at all) to meet the death needs of Indic society. Buddhism’s basic approach to caring for the dead later underwent a great transformation in India, as Mahayana ideas began to take hold, providing a “greater vehicle” with which to Buddhicize China as the religion moved eastwards. Many new ideas and practices related to care for the dead centered on the idea of transferring karmic 337 merit, a concept that enabled the living to award sufficient merit to their deceased loved ones to secure a better rebirth or release from the samsaric cycle altogether. Concepts and practices of merit-transfer became much more elaborate under indigenous Chinese influence, where taking care of the dead was of paramount importance. When Mahayana Buddhism finally reached Japan and further developed its system for caring for the dead, it ensured that any new religion there would have to care for the dead in a similar manner. Even though the afterlife goals for Christianity were different than those of Buddhism, that religion also developed new ways for caring for the dead in as it entered new cultural contexts. First in the Jewish context and then in the Roman, Christianity emphasized a system of penance (later referred to as making satisfaction) by which one could gain entrance into heaven. As the religion developed further in the Gentile context and spread to include the Germanic and Celtic worldviews, the system of making satisfaction came to include ways for the living to help the dead through prayers and other suffrages (acts of making satisfaction for a dead person). These ideas and practices were not intrinsic to the religion and only emerged, like those of Buddhism, over centuries and with the input of a wide variety of cultures and native religiosities. Regarding our second focus, we will see that both Buddhism and Christianity made places for the dead in the thought and praxis of the living religious community. By the time these religions reached Japan, the dead were agents, so to speak, that prompted the living to generate merit (both in the Buddhist and Christian sense) for themselves while helping the state of others in the afterlife. For Buddhism, this meant transferring merit to deceased persons to help lessen their suffering in whatever type of existence they happened to be (such as the animal realm, hell, or as a “hungry ghost”). The very act of transferring merit likewise generated merit for the benefit of the living themselves, so that the positive karmic act would have a double effect. What one did now for the dead also affected positively one’s own future dead self. In Christianity, we see a parallel development with the concepts of suffrage and merit transfer. By attempting to “make satisfaction” for souls in purgatory—a practice that had emerged fully by the high Middle Ages—Christians could reduce the suffering of souls of the dead while gaining merit for themselves. This would, in turn, help their own future condition in purgatory or reward in heaven. Like karmic merit, Christian merit compounded upon itself to have a double 338 effect for both the living and the dead. In both religions, such concern for the dead linked the living and the dead in a common goal for a better afterlife. This shared afterlife goal made the community of the dead always present in the mind of the community of the living. For our third focus, I point to a variety of both simple and elaborate mechanisms by which Buddhists and Christians could influence the realm of the dead for the better. In Buddhism, this chiefly required the generation of merit and the transference of merit to the dead person, two elements of the religion’s praxis that even members of the laity could perform. By the sixteenth century in Japan, Buddhism had manifold ways of preparing for death and caring for the dead. Funeral rites, deathbed preparation, and donations to the sangha all produced merit for the freshly dead or soon to die. Such efforts ensured a better rebirth, such as in the Tuṣita Heaven or Amida’s Pure Land, and could even stop future rebirths. Among the mechanisms employed were gyakushu rites, burials societies that generated merit for their dead members, and the so-called yūzū nenbutsu. For Christianity, the living could offer suffrages for the dead. In their most simplistic form, these were supplicatory prayers to God to lessen the temporal punishment that the dead owed. Other suffrages included masses for the dead, acts of charity, and finally, most elaborately, indulgences, which involved transfer of merit through the coeternal nature of the Communion of the Saints (the so-called Treasury of Merit) from the living into the realm of purgatory. So what did these separate but parallel developments mean for the Japanese Christians on Kyushu? Following the world-historical strands of care for the dead, as practised by Buddhism and Christianity, is significant because the arrival of Catholic Christianity in Japan in the sixteenth century marked the first time in world history that two universal religions came together and overlapped in their respective approaches to a 1 high degree regarding care of the dead. Only by tracing how these religions developed similar concepts and practices for helping the dead achieve a better state in the afterlife 1 Islam also has several rites and mechanisms with which the living and plead to God on behalf of the dead. These include saying a specialized prayer at the funeral of the deceased in order that God might have mercy on the person. There is also a kind of “limbo” that a soul can go to before heaven and hell. Overall, as in Christianity, judgment by God rests upon the deeds committed, good or ill, during lifetime. Only after this “particular” judgment (in distinction to the Last Judgment) in Christianity does the soul enter purgatory where it could be affected by the actions of the living. 339 can we adequately explain how the Jesuit mission was able to Christianize the death rites and expectations of the afterlife of the Japanese with such success. For example, the Japanese expected to be able to prepare for death with merit-making activities, such as giving alms to the sangha or copying sutras. They also expected to be able to help a person after death by undertaking merit-making activities on behalf of that person and transferring the merit for their benefit. Similarly, Japanese Christianity offered people the ability to atone for sins with penitential activity and generate Christian merit with devotional acts. Christians could also undertake merit-making activities (Christian merit) that would aid the deceased after death in purgatory. Even though the ultimate goal of the afterlife was entirely different and actually mutually exclusive for Buddhism and Christianity, the ways in which people thought about and attempted to gain a better state of existence after death were strikingly similar. So much so, that Japanese Christians on Kyushu, in their personages and communities, effectively became the confluence of these two great religious traditions in terms of how they interacted with the dead. Rather than jumping back and forth topically between the respective approaches to care for the dead evinced in Buddhism and Christianity it will make more sense to trace the background of each separately before drawing appropriate comparisons and contrasts. Using this approach, we can see more effectively how each religion affected and in turn was affected by the death needs and practices of the native cultures they passed through on their way to Kyushu. This chapter represents the world-historical prelude to our case study of the Church Suffering on Kyushu. The following chapters will trace the both the catechetical instruction and praxis related to caring for the dead in the Japanese Christian community. In those chapters, we will explore how the concept of “making satisfaction” drew living and dead Japanese Christians into one community. While our ultimate objective is to address the issue of purgatory in the Christianization process on Kyushu, it is important first to establish that caring for the dead represented a universal human concern that both Christianity and Buddhism had to address as they carried their respective faiths beyond their original cultural and religious contexts across the world. One of the main reasons that Christianity and Buddhism proved so effective at penetrating new cultures was that they were able to offer new and effective ways for 340 indigenous people to care for their dead. As we will discuss below, both religions responded proactively to the death needs of the societies they strove to convert; and both religions also frequently adopted and adapted their own beliefs and praxis concerning care for the dead as they absorbed new cultural and religious elements initially foreign to them. The focus of both religions on death beliefs and practices owes to the simple, obvious fact that death is a “rite of passage” that every society must face. Rites of passage, as classically defined, are “a class of rituals that accompany a change of social 2 status, position, or group membership.” Standard rites of passage can involve virtually anything within a given society, and vary widely; a graduation, a marriage, or a coming of age ceremony. But birth and death, being common to every culture, call out for ritual intervention. As Arnold van Gennep has observed in his classic study on rites of passage in all their forms, those concerning death might be classified along the following lines: 1. Rites of separation, and 2. Rites of incorporation. Rites of separation, which mark the deceased off from the realm of the living can include a variety of practices such as the burning of the dead person’s belongings or even the killing of their wives and slaves. An important practice in these kinds of rites is the physical separation of the deceased, either through the destruction of the body (cremation, putrefaction) or its internment in a grave or tomb. On the other hand, death sometimes prompts rites of incorporation, which might include a celebratory feast or meal with the dead. These can serve “to reunite all the surviving members of the group with each other, and sometimes also with the deceased, in the same way that a chain which has been broken by the disappearance of one of its links must be 3 rejoined.” Indeed, in many cases, this separation and incorporation are met simultaneously through the same ritual. In religions that emphasize an afterlife, a community must take great care in how it handles the death of one of its members because rites of separation and inclusion can greatly affect the spirit of the deceased, not 2 Entry for rite de passage in Luis Antonio Vivanco, A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191836688.001.0001/acref-9780191836688-e- 315?rskey=p5EsU8&result=312 3 For his chapters on funeral rites, see Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle I. Caffee (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1906), 146-165, particularly 164-165. 341 only in terms of its relation with the still-living but also its own fate in whatever comes next. So, just as all societies develop different sorts of mortuary practice, virtually all, if not all, religions have death rites and customs in which both the living and the deceased 4 (to whatever extent) participate. This was most certainly the case for both Buddhism and Christianity. Since Buddhism developed before Christianity, we will explore how first explore how that religion enabled care for the dead across cultures. It is my contention as well that Buddhist beliefs and practices concerning the afterlife set an important precedent for Christian methods of caring for the dead later introduced onto Kyushu. Care for the Dead in Early Buddhist India and its Role in Spreading the Religion to China From its very beginnings in India, Buddhism, through its doctrines, practices, social customs, and institutions, has always emphasized the general themes of death and the dead. Doctrinally, death undergirds the entire karmic and samsaric process: it is the threshold that must be crossed by everyone after which they transition into either a better or worse state of existence. Those who reached nirvana in this life simply have to burn off their karmic residue (parinirvana) and then no longer have to go through the samsaric cycle upon death. In Buddhist practice, death often provides powerful motivation for spiritual conversion and discipline; it is a universal and powerful reminder of the transitory nature of existence. In a social and institutional sense, death underlies the basis for the monastic community and their ability to administer funerary rites for the aid of ordinary lay individuals in achieving a more desirable rebirth. In fact, as Cuevas and Stone have commented, “death, in short, generates the underlying urgency that sustains the Buddhist tradition and also provides the paradigmatic occasion for reasserting its 5 normative ideals, often with particularly dramatic force.” In other words, death is at the 4 For a recent survey of both historical and contemporary examples concerning how different cultures and religions handled death and funerals, see Christopher Moreman, ed. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying (London: Routledge), 2017. 5 Bryan J. Cuevas and Jacqueline I. Stone, eds. The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representation (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007), 1-2. See the introduction for Buddhism’s emphasis on death in general. 342 heart of Buddhism—and this indeed is what made the religion so attractive to the wide variety of cultures that it passed through on the Asian continent during the premodern period. By explaining suffering in this world, how to eliminate that suffering, and how to avoid suffering after death, Buddhism comforted a wide variety of peoples who held many different beliefs about and attitudes towards the afterlife. While we cannot undertake here a detailed survey of Buddhist practices concerning death prior to the religion’s arrival in Japan, we must explain the ways in which Buddhist funerary practices in both India and China connected the living and the dead to enable interaction across the two realms. The development of Buddhist funerary practice in these two cultures naturally set precedents for how Buddhism would approach the dead in Japan. Indeed, as we shall see later, something similar played out in Europe in regards to Christianity. One might imagine that the originating funeral in Buddhism would have been that of the religion’s founder, the Buddha. However, because he was the Buddha, his funeral was, by its very nature, different from the rest of his sangha and all those Buddhists who were to follow him in death down the ages. Both in life and in death, the Buddha was simply unlike any other individual in our age. There are several other reasons why we must consider the Buddha’s funeral unique. The first is that the Buddha had achieved parinirvana, meaning that he had achieved the final extinguishing of all karmic merit, meaning that he was no longer subject to any sort of rebirth. The only karma he had left 6 after enlightenment was residue that became fully exhausted upon death. This means that whatever rites were enacted upon the body of the Buddha, such as the veneration of 6 The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism notes this about the parinirvana: “Delineations of the Buddhist path set forth the experience of nirvana in two phases. The first occurs when all of the causes for future rebirth have been destroyed, at which point one becomes an arhat or a buddha. However, the karmic seed that had fructified as the final lifetime has not yet run its full course, and thus the enlightened person does not instantly die and pass into nirvāṇa, but instead lives out the remainder of his or her lifetime. This type of nirvāṇa is sometimes called the ‘nirvāṇa with remainder” [sopadhiśeṣanirvāṇa]. When the term of the last lifetime comes to an end, there is a total extinction of all conventional physical and mental existence because the adept has previously brought an absolute end to any propensity toward defilement [kleśa] and eradicated all the cause that would lead to any prospect of future rebirth. The nirvāṇa that is experienced at death is thus “without remainder” [anupadhiśeṣanirvāṇa], because there are no physical or mental constituents remaining that were products of previous [karma]…” Robert E Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., eds., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 1166- 1167. Online Version. Accessed through ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=1354685. 343 his corpse, wrapping it in many layers of cloth, putting it in some type of “iron” coffin with oil, or subjecting it to the final immolation, had no effect on a future rebirth simply because the Buddha had already exhausted karmic consequence. Therefore members of the sangha at the Buddha’s funeral had absolutely no concern for his state in the afterlife 7 because he had no afterlife of which to speak. If we cannot look to the Buddha’s funeral as an indication of how Buddhism’s early funeral rites connected the living and the dead, producing positive effects on the deceased’s state of rebirth, we must look to the funerals of others, either historically or canonically, who were regular members of the sangha or the laity. Unfortunately, there are not many sources for very early monastic funerals, and sources regarding lay funerals 8 are “almost nonexistent,” despite references to the sangha having performed them. Evidently, very early Indian Buddhism was simply not concerned with how and to what effect funeral rites were performed. Although the entire religion was concerned with death and what happens after, it apparently showed little regard for the actual disposal and care of the dead within its community during the earliest years of practice. Judging from remembrances in the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya (Monastic Code of the Mulasarvastivada) of how funerals were conducted for monks when the Buddha was still alive, early Buddhists were initially portrayed as having conducted no substantive funeral rites for their deceased. This does not mean that the sangha did not care about the deceased, but rather, in death, that the monk had ideally achieved liberation and his earthly and therefore transient remains were of no consequence. Detailing the death of one monk when the Buddha was in Shravasti (a major city near the Buddha’s hometown), the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya shows how early monks might have treated a corpse: The monks left him (i.e., his body), together with his robe and bowl, near a road. Later, Brahmins and householders who were out walking saw him from the road. One said, referring to him: “Good Sirs, a Buddhist monk (śākyaputra) has died.” 7 In fact, the Buddha himself purportedly told Ananda, his first cousin, and the rest of the sangha not to honor his remains but rather “[devote] yourselves to your own good!” Instead of the sangha, some prominent nobles of the Brahmins sought to “do due honor” to his remains. The translation of the Mahaparinirvana sutra by Davids is quoted in Lars Fogelin, An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 110. The original quotation can be found in T.W. and C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II, in Volume 3 of Sacred Books of the Buddhists (London: Oxford University Press, 1910), 154. 8 Fogelin, Archaeological History, 112. 344 Others said: “Come here! Look at this!” When they looked, they recognized the dead monk and said: “Good Sirs, this is the son of such and such a householder. This is the sort of thing that happens when someone joins the Order of those lordless Buddhist śramaṇas. Had he not joined their Order, his kinsmen would 9 have performed the funeral ceremonies for him. Though recorded much later than the historical events that it purports to depict, this passage indicates what seems to have been initial Buddhist mortuary procedure or care for the dead, namely the simple abandonment of the body by the side of the road. Since they were a new community and following a new teaching, the sangha was invariably at odds with the surrounding Brahmanical culture. Therefore, those outside of the sangha used the apparent disregard of the monk’s body as an easy opportunity to criticize the 10 entire movement. Because such objections might dissuade people from entering the sangha, the Buddha was thought to have course-corrected his teachings on funerals as 11 well as proper ritual cleansing following the handling of the corpse. Regardless of the historicity of the episode, it is important for its depiction of a likely scenario in which the early Buddhist community had yet to develop elaborate funerary customs. The movement was supposed to show non-attachment to such things it adopted some funerary practices current in India. Two interrelated factors seem to have spurred this transformation. One was to avoid criticism that the newly emergent Buddhist community did not care for their dead and treated them rather disrespectfully in light of societal conventions. If one’s son or daughter were to join the community, would their body simply be disposed of on the side of the road? The second was to conform to the concerns of the society into which it entered, where, in all cultures, disposal and obsequies for the community’s dead are typically a primary concern. Would all the native 9 Gregory Schopen, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1997), 217. The Mulasarvastivada Vinaya appears to have been composed in Sanskrit in the first or second centuries CE, see Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 1034-1035 for more information on the nature of this source. 10 Besides Schopen, see, briefly, John S. Strong, Relics of the Buddha (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 13-14. Strong notes that Brahmanical sources confirm that the early Buddhists did not take any measures for ritual purification after death nor make proper reverence to ancestors. 11 We are told, the Buddha instituted a ritual cleansing after funerals, stating that those who handle the corpse should “wash themselves together with their robes” while those only present need to wash their hands and feet. Schopen, Bones, 217. 345 rites of separation and inclusion have to be abandoned? In the milieu of sixth-century 12 BCE India, cremation was one normative way to take care of the dead. Society would not tolerate the abandonment of a corpse, particularly that of a loved one, so the Buddhists also had to partake on some level if they wanted more people to join the community. Such an accommodation was worthwhile to spread the more important message of how to eliminate suffering and rebirth. Despite initial reluctance, the sangha eventually adapted to Indic death needs by providing funeral rites for the laity and practices that would benefit them after death. If archaeological evidence is any indication, they regularly participated in caring for the dead. According to epigraphy found on a variety of early stupas, the sangha was a frequent beneficiary of donations that might have resulted from the distribution of property at the time of death. Therefore, it seems that early Buddhism in India, first begrudgingly and then normatively, engaged in funerals because “the communities in which they lived demanded them, and as a means to properly identify those who had a 13 right to inheritance.” By engaging in conventional mortuary practice, the sangha benefited from funerals monetarily and ultimately drew closer to the laity in a symbiotic relationship based around death. There is also some evidence from the aforementioned depictions of very early Buddhist funerals that what the living did for the dead in funerals could have an effect on the fate and nature of the deceased’s rebirth. This of course was yet another adaptation that Buddhism made to the death needs of Indic society. Buddhism itself was originally a monastic movement, after all, which held the belief that members who had gained enlightenment had no need for help after death. With the greater incorporation of lay members into the faith, however, fewer believers were able to reach enlightenment and escape the samsaric cycle. Such persons needed some kind of help so that they might have a better rebirth. If the newly instituted funeral rites were a rite of separation, then 12 Strong, Relics, 115. 13 Fogelin, Archaeological, 109-120. Fogelin, regarding the attitude of Buddhists towards funerals in the texts, comments: “Overall, the picture of Buddhist mortuary behavior that can be gleaned from texts is one of ambivalence. The deceased were given funerals grudgingly or, in the case of the Buddha, given to the laity for funeral rights and subsequent veneration. Funerals were a necessary chore, a distraction from the real focus of their actions, meditation, and learning. Funerals were more a social requirement than a religious obligation.” Quote on p. 112. 346 subsequent and continued efforts by the living, such as giving alms to the sangha on their behalf, to help the dead represent a rite of inclusion that brought the deceased person’s spirit into the life of the Buddhist community. The impetus for the first monastic funerals seems to have been the distribution of the deceased monk’s personal property. While the monk himself was gone, something necessarily had to be done with what he left behind, namely items such as his robe and begging bowl. This might seem like a rather perfunctory task, but, according to the remembrance of the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya, it was necessary so as not to disturb the spirit of the deceased. The text relates a story of one monk who died and was “reborn among the nonhuman beings,” which was obviously not the desirable fate for a member of the sangha. When a fellow monk attempted to distribute his belongings without first removing his corpse, the spirit of one deceased monk reputedly appeared with a club and berated his fellow monastics, stating that only after his body was removed should his effects be distributed. The poor monk acting as the “distributor-of-robes,” in this instance, became terrified and had to consult the Buddha as to what should be done. To avoid disturbing dead spirits, such as the angry ghost, the Buddha is said to have pronounced that the body should be removed first. Only then could the distribution of items take place. Later retellings of this story include efforts at merit-making for the dead monk’s spirit, thus indicating that the living could help the state of the dead in the 14 afterlife. If early Buddhists had to develop funeral rites that both aligned with conventional Indic mortuary practice and responded to the perceived spiritual needs of the dead (e.g. the aforementioned monk’s ghost), then the sangha, as it moved into other cultures vastly different from its own, would have to make additional adaptations in this regard. In China, which was a non-Brahmanical society where early Daoist sensibilities guided humanity’s relationship with the spirit world and where Confucian ideals structured all relationships in life and in death, Buddhism faced numerous obstacles to successful 14 This is the first in a series of texts from the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya depicting the same funeral under the Buddha’s watch. The evolution of the story will be taken up again below in the discussion concerning the transfer of merit. Schopen, Bones, 209-210. 347 15 integration in thought, practice, and community. Nowhere was this issue more evident and thorny than in funeral rites. Since Buddhist concepts such as karmic consequence, the transmigration of the spirit, and the potential for complete release from the cycle of existence were new to Chinese religiosity, one can easily imagine how Buddhist notions of the afterlife might conflict with native conceptions of what happened after death and what the appropriate funeral rites might be in order to address the deceased’s fate. Developed over more than a thousand of years of civilization, China’s mortuary culture was, as we might expect, extraordinarily complex by the time that Buddhism arrived in the country around the first century CE. Burial customs and funeral rites involved a wide variety of practices that drew a line between the dead and the living and also brought the two into closer communion. Funeral rites held serious consequences for both the living and the dead in China. One general assumption among ancient and early medieval Chinese was that the spirits of the dead continued to move about the world and that they could have positive and negative effects on the living. Describing the belief in ghosts and other spirits that could affect the living from the pre-Qin to the Early Han period (up to 220 CE), Poo succinctly notes that “for the common people, therefore, the issue with ghosts and deities is not whether they exist or not, but how to deal with 16 them.” For Buddhism, these facts of life and death in China necessitated the generation of funeral rites that enabled living people to care for the dead. For many in China, the tomb was the focal point for helping the deceased in the afterlife. As Guolong Lai points out, the freshly deceased entered into new relationships with both the living and the dead when finally put into the burial chamber. The tomb itself was a “way station on the journey to the afterlife” that served the dead and the living as “both the physical space where religious ritual and sacrifice took place and the imagined space in which people’s beliefs about the invisible world unfolded.” It was at the tomb that the living, through the appropriate funeral and mourning rites, could also 15 For some early and seminal scholarship on the problems that Chinese filial piety posed for Buddhism and how the religion adapted itself to the Chinese setting in various ways, see Kenneth K.S. Ch’en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). 16 See Mu-chou Poo’s essay “Images and Ritual Treatment of Dangerous Spirits” in John Lagerwey and Lü Pengzhi, eds., Early Chinese Religion, Part Two: The Period of Division (220-589 AD) Vol. 2, 1075-1094 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1075-1094. Quote on p. 1075. 348 have a positive effect on the spirit of the deceased so they would not come back as a malevolent force to harm them. Both the burial and funeral rites of ancient China effected “several gradual transitions whereby the deceased transforms from a living person to a corpse, from the host of the house to a spirit-guest, and from a potentially harmful ghost 17 to a benevolent ancestor.” In combining rites of separation and inclusion at the tomb, the realm of the living and the realm of the dead were essentially fused. Native Chinese mortuary practices and funeral rites illustrate is that Buddhism, if it was going to address Chinese precedents, would have to find some meaningful way for its adherents to care for family members after they departed. Leaving one’s parents by the side of the road to decompose was simply not an option for the Chinese, no matter what the Buddha had preached about the transitory nature of bodily existence. Fortunately, however, Buddhism had already developed a powerful and compelling mechanism with which it could address Chinese funerary sensibilities and filial piety as practiced in the ancestral rites: the transference of karmic merit (pariṇāmanā) from the living to the dead for the benefit of the deceased’s spirit. Having initially gained traction among Mahayanists in India, the transference of merit became a much more prominent feature of Buddhism in China as it acclimated to its new surroundings. With the ability to transfer merit, Buddhists in China did not have to forsake the obligation to take care of dead family members beyond the grave in either principle or practice. By engaging in activities that would generate karmic merit for the deceased, Buddhists in China demonstrated two things. First, they showed filial piety towards their parents and ancestors, thereby addressing frequent Confucian criticism that Buddhism undermined the established familial and social order. Second, they could ensure that the spirits of their loved ones would not come back to the earthly realm to cause misfortune for the living since they had helped to break the samsaric cycle. These two benefits of merit transfer in the Chinese context would ultimately allow the principle and practice to become highly developed by the time it reached Japan. To understand merit transfer and its relevance to our discussion of Buddhist care for the dead in Japan, we should describe exactly what we mean by it. The transference of 17 Guolong Lai, Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 93. 349 merit ultimately has its root in the idea of karmic merit itself, a central tenet of Buddhism from its earliest times. Merit (Sanskrit: puṇya) might be defined as: The store of wholesome [karma] created by the performance of virtuous deeds, which fructify in the form of happiness in the future. This merit may be accumulated [puṇyasambhāra] over many lifetimes and dedicated toward a specific out come [pariṇāmanā], such as favorable rebirth for oneself or another, or the achievement of buddahood… In other words, a person can directly affect a positive rebirth in the next samsaric cycle, provided that they do not achieve nirvana, by undertaking specific actions that will form a sort of positive karmic cache. Accruing merit offsets the accumulation of negative karma, which leads to a negative outcome after death, namely a rebirth into a lower state of existence. Positive and negative karma accumulate over endless kalpas (aeons), so one should strive to accumulate as much merit as possible in the present life. Fortunately for those in a human existence, there are various ways in which to generate merit. In Mahayana Buddhism specifically, merit-generating activities (called puṇyakriyāvastu, or “things that create merit”) traditionally fell into three types: charitable giving (dāna), 18 moral behavior (śīla), and meditative practice (bhāvanā). By the time we get to the Buddhism of Japan in the sixteenth century, there existed an enormous variety of merit- generating activities that could encompass ritual action, charity, asceticism, and teaching. Merit-generating activities soon led to the concept of merit transference, from living people to living people and from living people to dead people. Known in Sanskrit as pariṇāmanā, or “dedication,” this important term can be defined as follows: The practice of mentally or ritually directing merit [puṇya] produced from virtuous [kusala] deed or deeds [karma] to a particular aim. Merit may be dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings or to the benefit of a specific person or persons (such as a family member), but the term is used especially to refer to the dedication of the merit accumulated by a Bodhisattva to the greater goal of achieving buddhahood so that one may be able to liberate all beings from 18 Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 1262-1263. As Mahayana Buddhism developed, many other merit-generating activities emerged, such as the recitation of the Lotus Sutra and relic veneration. In some Mahayana circles, where ritual action came to be seen as superior to moral action, the recitation or copying of this particular sutra actually outweighed other merit-generating activities such as almsgiving. Among its adherents, the Lotus Sutra was considered so efficacious that it bestowed benefits “without limit or measure.” Robert E. Buswell Jr., ed., Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Vol. 2 (New York: Macmillian Reference USA, 2004), 532. 350 suffering. Merit may also be dedicated toward the goal of a rebirth in a specific 19 realm (such as a pureland or the heavens) in the next lifetime… Although the concept of merit transfer is primarily a feature of the Mahayana sects of East Asia, its roots reach back to India where we can find both textual and archaeological evidence of its application. If we recall how the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya depicted the origination of Buddhist funeral rites, all the Buddha had required was that the monk’s corpse be removed from the vicinity before his property was divided. This was done so that the monk’s spirit would not be disturbed and appear among the living. Nothing in this practice had to do with generating or transferring merit to the deceased monk for his benefit. However, the vinaya actually contains two more versions of this episode, with each episode elaborating upon and legislating the proper funeral rites more than the next. In the last version, the dead man’s ghost still appears despite removal of the body, the “worship” of it, and its cremation. Still unsatisfied, the ghost demands that the monks perform a “recitation of Dharma” for him before divvying up his possessions. The Buddha then institutes a final funerary pronouncement: “Having given a recitation of Dharma in his (the deceased’s) name, having directed the reward (to him), after that his monastic robes are to be distributed.” This text, while not historically accurate for the time period that it depicts, nevertheless provided the sangha with textual proof moving forward that the Buddha himself had instituted the normative rite of transferring merit to a deceased monk via Dharma recitation. As Schopen comments, “It is important to note that the monks who participate in the funeral generate the merit by giving a recitation of Dharma, and it is the monks who assign the merit to the deceased. This appears to be a straightforward case of religious merit being transferred or assigned to one who did not 20 produce it.” Due to the monastic nature of the funerals depicted in the vinaya, one might think that transferring merit was only the prerogative of the sangha. But in fact, the laity were also capable of generating merit for themselves, in preparation for the next rebirth, or transferring it to relatives (deceased or not) such as their parents. Frequently, though not exclusively, merit transfer by the laity occurred as a result of almsgiving, particularly 19 Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 1166. 20 Schopen, “On Avoiding Ghosts and Social Censure,” in Bones, 210-213. 351 through special charitable donations (dāna) to the sangha. This had not developed in China in response to filial piety, as we might expect, but in India prior to missionization and diffusion farther east. Importantly, we can conclude that it was part of the tool-kit that Buddhism could use to open up new cultures to the faith. According to Schopen, there exists clear archaeological evidence that Buddhism had developed and put into practice the concept of merit transfer well before it fully developed within Chinese Buddhism where filial piety was a concern. For example, one inscription at Nagarjunikonda (somewhat near modern day Hyderbad) reads: …this pillar was set up in order to transfer (it) to past, future, and present members of both of her families for the attainment of benefits and ease in both worlds, and for the procuring of the attainment of nirvana? For herself, and for the attainment of benefits and easy by all the world… Besides monuments such as pillars, both the laity and monastics could donate a variety of gifts to the sangha, some of which could actually forever generate merit for the benefit of an individual. Most of the gifts cited in South Asian inscriptions were objects associated with worship, such as relics, stupas, and paintings. Typically these items had spiritual rather than economic value. Schopen notes that aside from the merit generated from the one-time giving of the gift, each time somebody used one of the objects, such as venerating a relic, the donation would basically provide the user with an opportunity for generating their own merit. This compounding merit generation would quickly compound upon the person who was the original beneficiary of the donation. In the mind of the donor, such a gift would obviously be a very powerful mechanism for transferring merit to a deceased relative so that they would have a better chance at being reborn in a higher existence. The beneficiary would have, in theory, a mechanism with the never-ending 21 capability to generate merit that would be of benefit to them in death. 21 One inscription in Ceylon, thought to be from the late third century BCE, notes how a secular monarch donated a special cave for the expressed benefit of her parents: “The cave of princess (Abi) Tissā, daughter of the great king Gāmaṇī-Uttiya, is given to the Saṅgha of the ten directions, for the benefit of (her) mother and father.” Though the we do not know if the parents were already deceased, the inscription is a clear case of merit transfer from one person to another through gift-giving. Other archaeological examples abound in South Asia dating from an early period. Some inscriptions merely state a donation was made “as an act of pūjā [“worship” or “offering”] for my parents.” Additional inscriptions in South Asia that were contemporaneous with Buddhism’s movement into China are even more straightforward regarding their hope to help the dead. The above information is taken from Schopen’s essay “Filial Piety and the Monk in Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks” in Schopen, Bones, 56-71. While I have highlighted the laity’s role in gift-giving as a mechanism for the transfer of merit, Schopen notes that roughly 60% of all the inscriptions 352 These kinds of donations for the transfer of merit to the dead were not merely quid pro quo transactions made out of self-interest or a personal and compassionate desire to relieve a spirit from suffering. Rather, the donations and the transfer of merit that resulted from them were integral to Buddhism as a whole so that the Dharma could continue to be pronounced and an ever-increasing number of beings might find release 22 from samsaric rebirth. A donation to the sangha enabled an unfathomable compounding generation of merit for innumerable beings all throughout the rest of a given Buddhist age until the Dharma declined absolutely. Though this is not place for a detailed comparison, the reader should note the similarity between the Buddhist “fields of merit” (that is the Buddha, the sangha, etc.) and the Catholic doctrine of the “Treasury of Merit” when we explore that theological concept below in our section on Christian care for the dead. Both concepts are based upon compounded merit-accrual on a cosmic scale and the idea that such merit can be shared among the laity. Though the nature of merit is different in Buddhism and Catholicism, what is important is that both kinds of merit could be transferred from the living to the dead. Besides monuments, several early texts support the concept that merit could be transferred from the living to the dead. They also indicate that the practice only gained in importance over time, aiding Buddhism’s extension into other cultures outside of Brahmanical northern India. In a few cases, the living can see the suffering of a ghost, transfer merit to them, and see the positive effects. One Theravada sutra tells the story of some merchants who encounter a naked female ghost. She asks for their help and requests that they donate some clothes to the sangha after which the monks there (as a field of merit) offered up merit generated by the act for her benefit. The transfer he uses in his study were made by monks, some of whom were very high-ranking. This indicates that the concept of merit transfer was acknowledged and practice at the highest level of the Buddhist order and is not an outlying practice. Quotes can be found on p. 58 and p. 60. 22 th Such transfers of merit within the various fields still occur today. In 2010, or the 2554 year of the rd Buddhist Era, Haebong Jaseung, the 33 President of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, offered this message in the introduction to Muller’s translation of the Brahma’s Net Sutra: “With full sincerity, I offer this heartfelt wish: may all the merit deriving from this monumental work be transferred to the Buddhas, the bodhisattvas, and all sentient beings.” As mentioned, the most efficacious field of merit is that of the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas, so it is for this reason that the president has directed all merit to them. See Charles A. Muller, Exposition of the Sutra of Brahma’s Net, Collected Works of Korean Buddhism, Vol. 11 (Seoul: Compilation Committee of Korean Buddhist Thought, 2012), vii. http://www.acmuller.net/kor- bud/11_sutra_of_brahmas_net.pdf. Though a personal website, Muller is a trusted authority and Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo. 353 apparently worked, since the next time the merchants saw the ghost it was clad in a “beautiful garment.” The moral of this story is clear: donating to the sangha on the behalf 23 of a deceased person can directly benefit the state of their next rebirth. The practice of transferring merit, though present in Indian Buddhism from a relatively early period, reached much fuller development in China when it combined with 24 indigenous ideas about the afterlife and funerary rites. For Chinese Buddhists, the emergent funerary culture of Buddhism satisfied native mortuary and mourning expectations in two ways: funerary rites performed at burial prevented the deceased’s spirit returning as an angry and destructive ghost (sometimes called “hungry ghosts”); and subsequent memorial rites, which included the transfer of merit from the deceased’s kinship to his or her spirit, satisfied the expectation of performing filial service for those relatives and ancestors who were now beyond the earthly realm. On the first front, that of quieting a potential restless spirit in the grave, Buddhism itself was highly regarded as an effective means of manhandling ghosts and other harmful entities throughout the medieval period in China. Methods included the recitation of sutras, calling upon Buddhist deities, performing exorcistic spells, using sacred objects and rituals, and 23 This story can be found in Kenneth K. Tanaka, The Dawn of Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Doctrine: Ching-ying Hui-yüan's Commentary on the Visualization Sūtra (Albany: State University of New York Press), 207, note 29. Another early texts that addresses merit-transfer is Questions of Milinda (Milinda Pañha). Composed ca. 100-200 CE, this texts depicts a dialog between the King Milinda (the Indo-Greek king Menander I, c. 165-130 BCE) and the Sarvastivadan master Nāgasena (c. 150 BCE) over various concerns that the king had about Buddhist doctrine and practice. It notes: “Only those who are born as hungry ghosts who feed off the merit of others are able to share in the merit. Those born in hell, those in heaven, animals, and hungry ghosts who feed on vomit, or hungry ghosts who hunger and thirst, or hungry ghosts who are consumed by craving, do not derive any profit.” Merit transferred to these latter individuals would not be wasted but instead be of profit to the one making the transfer. Bhikku Pesala ed., The Debate of King Milinda: an Abridgement of the Milinda Pañha (Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991), 78-81. Also The Questions of King Milinda, Vol. 2, trans. T.W. Rhys in Wilhelm Max Müller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East Vol. XXXVI (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1894) 151-157. For the development of merit transfer in Sri Lanaka and in the Theravada tradition, see Heinz Bechert, “Buddha-Field and Transfer of Merit in a Theravāda Source” Indo-Iranian Journal 35, No. 2/3 (July 1992): 95-108. 24 Buddhism made its way slowly into native Chinese funeral and mourning rites. The inclusion of Buddhist paraphernalia, such as Buddhist figures, in tombs dating from the Six Dynasties period (220-589 CE), seems to indicate that the religion, as related to funeral activates, was seen as a means of accessing an additional member of the gods and “transcendents” in the form of the Buddha. See Bin, Bai’s essay “Religious Beliefs as Reflected in the Funerary Record” in Lagerway and Pengzhi, Early Chinese Religion, Part Two, Vol. 2, 1070-1073. 354 25 having monks become an incarnation of the power of the Buddha. Performing such methods during a funeral simply as part of taking care of the deceased was an obvious use of Buddhism’s exorcistic functions and served to diminish the chances that a spirit might harm the living. On the second front, Buddhist memorials for the dead satisfied the native custom of demonstrating filial piety to relatives and ancestors, such as offering periodic sacrifices and other mourning activities. For example, the Buddhist cooption of the native portrait eulogy (an image of the deceased combined with a written poetic eulogy) enabled Chinese devotees to fulfill this traditional mourning custom in a new and 26 even more effective way. The practice of transferring merit from the living to the deceased during and after funerals became even more widespread in the middle of the first millennium thanks to the creation of indigenous Chinese Buddhists texts that specifically addressed funerary issues. The two most important “apocryphal” texts for the development of a Chinese Buddhist funerary scheme were the Consecration Sutra (Guan Ding Jing) and the Brahma Net Sutra (Fang Wang Jing). Both of these texts were Chinese creations thought to date from the mid fifth-century, and both would enormously influence the Japanese 27 practice of transferring merit as it related to funerary culture. The Consecration Sutra is perhaps the most important apocryphal text for the prescriptive development of Buddhist funerals in China. This is for a variety of reasons, For one, as Alan Cole has argued, it was an early “self-conscious attempt by the Chinese to work out the logic and parameters of Buddhist funerals.” Secondly, the work was popular throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, becoming an “authoritative source” in other texts detailing funeral procedures. In fact, the sutra’s eleventh chapter, the one that 25 See Poo, Mu-Chou’s essay “The Taming of Ghosts in Early Chinese Buddhism,” in Mu-chou Poo, H.A. Drake, and Lisa Raphals, eds., Old Society, New Belief: Religious Transformation of China and Rome, ca. 1st-6th Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 165-181. 26 See Huai-yu Chen’s essay “Honoring the Dead: The Buddhist Reinvention of Commemorative Literature, Ritual, and Material Culture in Early Medieval China” in Poo, Drake, and Raphals, Old Society,91-105. 27 See the introduction to Robert E. Buswell Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1990), 1-2, and 19. For the authorship and dates of these texts, see Michel Strickmann’s chapter “The Consecration Sūtra: A Buddhist Book of Spells,” in Buswell, Apocrypha, 90-93 and Paul Groner’s chapter “The Fan-wang ching and Monastic Discipline in Japanese Tendai: A Study of Annen’s Futsū jubosatsukai kōshaku,” in Buswell, Apocrypha, 252-257. 355 primarily concerns funerary ritual, had widespread circulation on its own under the title of The Questions of Pu Guang 28. This text affirmed that it was possible to use merit transfer to help the spirit of the deceased be reborn in one of the Buddha lands. In summing up the overall thrust of the text as it applied to Buddhist funerals of the period, Cole notes that one’s disposition to Buddhist teaching upon death was very important to a good rebirth—one could convert on the deathbed or still have doubts about the Dharma while dying, but would still reap the benefits of having this right mindset. Also, the spirit goes to an intermediate state, a kind of “purgatory,” where its ultimate fate for rebirth has yet to be determined. The living could help the spirit in this state through the aforementioned practices and should do all they can to this end. And finally, “the transfer of merit enables the ritual power of this world to achieve salvific goals in the next.” This general outline concerning the aims of funerals applied to “Buddhists of all ranks” and influenced funerary practices throughout the Tang and Song dynasties. Like the Consecration Sutra, the Brahma Net Sutra states specifically that the living can help the state of their dead with specific acts designed to transfer merit. Rule 20 of the sutra actually makes this an obligation on the living, going so far as to state they would be committing an infraction in their Buddhist duties: If your father, mother, or brother dies, then on the death day, you must invite a dharma master to recite the bodhisattva vows, vinayas, or sutras in order to fortify and enrich (fu zi) the deceased’s [karma] so that they can see all the Buddhas, or [at least] be reborn among humans or in heaven. If one does not do this, he is 29 culpable of a secondary infraction. 28 Alan Cole, “Upside down/Right Side up: A Revisionist History of Buddhist Funerals in China” History of Religions 35, No. 4 (May, 1996): 307-308. The following paragraphs depend on Cole’s works, as well as Strickmann’s. The entire work itself is part of a larger body of literature known as dhāraṇī sūtras, which were essentially books containing spells and incantations. The twelve chapters lay out the following: “protective rites,” “rites of domestic protection,” “sepulchral protective rites,” “exorcistic rites,” “therapeutic rites,” “rites of salvation,” and “divination.” See also Stickmann in Buswell, Apocrypha, 79- 82. 29 Above from Cole, Upside down, 318-322, with the quote being on 321. The Brahma Net Sutra differs from the Consecration Sutra in that it exhibits more Pure Land sensibilities than the latter. An alternative translation of the quote is in Muller, Brahma’s Net, 355 and reads “On the day of the death of your father, mother, or elder and younger siblings you should request a Dharma teacher to deliver a lecture from the Bodhisattva Vinaya Sutra, blessing the deceased to [sic] that they may attain a vision of the buddhas, and to be reborn as a human or celestial. If you don’t do this, you are committing a minor transgression of the precepts.” 356 In addition to the death day, the living must also conduct merit-generating activities for their family members and teacher at specific intervals akin to a mourning rite. On the twenty-first and forty-ninth days after death, the living “should also chant and lecture on 30 the Great Vehicle vinaya and sutra, praying for their merit at these assemblies.” As if helping the dead gain a better rebirth was not urgent enough, the development of a kind of “purgatory” (see note) in Chinese belief about the afterlife positively necessitated action on the part of the living. Beginning around the seventh century, greater anxiety over exactly where a person’s spirit went immediately after death emerged, eventually giving way to a full- fledged intermediate zone of judgment akin to “purgatory.” A person remained in this intermediate zone until rebirth occurred around the third year after death. Over the course of the subsequent centuries, this “purgatory” came to be thought of as a court, presided over by the so-called Ten Kings, in which punishments were meted out for past actions and future rebirth was, in part, determined 31 by the merit the person’s living relatives could muster on their behalf. A later text, probably from the tenth century, notes that in all the services that the living could perform on behalf of the dead, the merit that would be transferred to the deceased would only be amount to one-seventh of the merit it would normally generate for a living person. According to this text, it was far better for the deceased to have performed meritorious actions while still alive. Though the living could only transfer a fraction of 30 Muller, Brahma’s Net, 399. 31 Using the term “purgatory” here is inaccurate because purgatory, in the Catholic sense of it rather than the popular notion of it, is not a place of judgment or waiting. Rather, it is a place of purification where souls are assured of an eventual entrance into heaven. Teiser, perhaps unintentionally, is using “purgatory” here in the popular notion of the word. Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi, 1994), 1 and 5-6. Note Teiser’s description of “purgatory” in the Chinese Buddhist sense: “Purgatory was that uncertain interstice where the spirit of the deceased awaited assignment to a new spoke [of the wheel of the six paths]. The motivating ethic of the system remained a karmic one, but rather than being understood in terms of the individual, karma was imagined under bureaucratic form. Karma was none other than the law administered by the ten kings and their staff. Rebirth was not a fact of nature; it was achieved only after submitting to a lengthy process of judgment overseen by powerful officials.” See also his essay “The Growth of Purgatory” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi, 1993), 115-145. 357 the merit they generated to the deceased, such merit would still be extraordinarily helpful 32 to their condition in the afterlife. Fortunately for Chinese Buddhists of the period, there were certain deathbed practices and rites that could generate merit immediately before death. These could be conducted individually or, most commonly, with the assistance of the family or Buddhist community in the moments before expiration. Having completed these rites and then expired, the person’s spirit would then subsequently and continually aided by the living through merit transfer. Thus, ritualistic merit-making actions, in this sense, could be initiated by those nearing death, continued by the living during the funeral, and then performed periodically after death as memorial and mourning rites. Two of the most important texts advocating such merit-making immediately before death are Daoxuan’s (596-667) commentary on the Dharmaguptaka vinaya known as “Attending to the Sick and Sending off the Dead” (zhanbing song-zhong) and Yijing’s (635-713) “Instruction for the Moment of Death” (Linzhong fangjue). Daoxuan’s text in particular would go on to have immense influence in Japan where the Tendai monk Genshin (942-1017), among 33 others, would further develop Chinese thought on merit-making at the moment of death. Now, with the theoretical and practical underpinnings of merit transfer in Buddhist funerary practices examined, let us explore how this merit-making and merit transference was adapted by the Japanese and, equally important, how and why these Buddhist practices presaged the advent of the Church Suffering on Kyushu in the sixteenth century. Japanese Buddhist Care for the Dead and the Importance of Merit Transfer The importation of Buddhism to Japan in the mid-sixth century was a watershed event, and not the least in its influence on mortuary rites and care for the dead in the 32 The text, the Scripture on the Original Vows of Ti-tsang [Dizang] Bodhisattva, has Dizang stating, “If there is a man or woman who during life did not cultivate good causes or who committed many sins, and if after his or her lifespan has ended, descendants engage in creating good fortune, no matter how much or how little, then of all the religious services, out of seven parts the deceased will receive only one. Six parts of the merit will profit the living.” Teiser, Ten Kings, 27. Dizang was a bodhisattva who acted as a “harrower of hell,” meaning he would descend into “purgatory” and assist those facing judgment from the Ten Kings. 33 In Chinese, Daoxuan’s commentary is entitled Sifen lü shanfan buque xingshi chao. 358 afterlife. This is not to say, however, that pre-Buddhists failed to have a complex mortuary culture. Early peoples in the archipelago, both the Jōmon (c. 14,000- c. 1,000 BCE) and the Yayoi (c. 1,000 BCE. – 300 CE) cultures, practiced funerary rites that evidenced clear efforts at ensuring the deceased’s entrance into some sort of positive afterlife. Because there no written records, we are reliant upon archaeological research to infer what prehistorical views of the afterlife might have been. This is particularly so for the shadowy Jōmon period. The few burials for which we have solid evidence from the early half of the Jōmon period offer us tantalizing clues. We know, for example, that corpses were abandoned in the woods, which suggests that some sort of rite of separation from the living was practiced. The reasoning behind this practice, archaeologists and others surmise, is that the Jōmon people identified death with a “Land of Darkness” (Yomi no kuni) that was “ghastly” and feared, with the entire realm being permeated with pollution. Beyond the Jōmon and Yayoi, the monumental keyhole tombs of the so-called Kofun period (roughly the third to the seventh centuries CE) leave little doubt that care for the dead in some sort of afterlife was an increasing concern among the elite. At these massive tumuli, elites practiced extremely elaborate rites of separation and inclusion for their dead. According to archaeologists the tombs had two sections, one for the living and 34 one for the dead, and that they were sites of “ritual feasts for the dead.” Also, placed within the tombs of the period, were a wide variety of grave goods, which, scholars believe, were meant to aid the deceased in some fashion after death. The Kofun tombs were grand and obvious testaments that the living could somehow help the dead in the afterlife. While the prehistoric and ancient Japanese showed a modicum of concern for the fate of their dead through careful burial practices, the arrival of Buddhism in the mid- sixth century only served to heighten greatly this aspect of the existing mortuary culture. For one, the new religion placed greater emphasis on the fate of the individual after death through a coherent system of karmic consequence that directly linked a person’s moral disposition in this world to rebirth in either a more positive or negative state of being. 34 See William E. Deal’s essay “Religion in Archaic Japan” in Karl Friday, ed., Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History (New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), 194. Deal is citing the work of Matsumura Kazuo. 359 Secondly, Buddhism created a much stronger connection between the living and the dead, and further emphasized their mutual ability to influence one another. The ability to influence the other realm(s) was particularly strong for the living since it was they who affected the fate of the dead through highly developed funerary rites and the performance of other meritorious practices. The dead could affect the living in turn, often appearing in the form of a ghost or visiting someone in a dream. Buddhism’s ability to affect the spiritual state of the dead was not lost on early potential converts in a culture such as that of Japan where deceased family members could wreak vengeance upon the living as a onryō (as discussed in Part Two). The first funerals and memorial rites with Buddhist elements in Japan must have occurred sometime in the sixth century, not long after the religion’s arrival. But, with the turn of the seventh century, Buddhist funerary practices rose to greater prominence as members of the imperial family adopted them with increasing degrees of devotion. Practices included merit-making practices, such as sutra copying, the creation of 35 Buddhist images, and enlisting public mourners to lament the emperor’s death. Buddhism offered the potential for a much more pleasant existence in the afterlife. Realms such as Amida’s Pure Land or the Tuṣita Heaven (tosotsuten) were far preferable, we might surmise, to the gloomy and nebulous “Land of Darkness” that awaited dead spirits in native thinking about the netherworld. As Pure Land thought and practices gained greater influence within Japanese Buddhism, so too did the possibility that one could not only affect their own birth into the Pure Land but also the spirits of others who had preceded them into death. In short order, concern for the spirits in the afterlife would come to dominate Japanese death rites of separation and inclusion. Like Indian and Chinese Buddhists before them, Japanese Buddhists in the Heian and medieval periods sought to generate merit for themselves and those already deceased. Doing so accomplished the following: 1. Securing one’s own beneficial rebirth, thus preventing a descent into one of the realms of hell, an existence as a “hungry ghost” (gaki), which prowled graveyards and latrines for food, or becoming vengeful ghost, which could cause sickness and calamity; 2. Karmically pacifying hostile or melancholic 35 Jacqueline Ilyse Stone, Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2016), 30. 360 spirits, thereby limiting the damage that they could do; and 3. Ensuring that their own dead would be reborn into a state that would ultimately lead to samsaric release. Fortunately, there were three basic practices that enabled the living to achieve these goals for themselves or others: namely, deathbed rites (rinjū gyōgi), gyakushu rites (rites akin to deathbed rite but conducted while a person is still alive), and merit transfer rites (tsuizen kuyō). Of these, merit transfer rites were seen as the least effective in terms of the amount of merit generated for the dead, since these were offered on the behalf of the deceased; any merit from these would be divvied up between the living and the dead since the act of merit transfer itself accrued merit, in part, for the living person. All three kinds of rites could be performed independently of one another or in conjunction. For example, a sudden death might preclude the performance of gyakushu or deathbed rites; family members could take up the deceased’s cause and perform merit transfer rites at a later date. However, the ideal scenario for death would have been the performance of all the rites as part of one continuous process. This might begin with self- preparation (the gyakushu rites). Then, sometime later when death became a distinct possibility, one would undergo the deathbed rites just prior to expiration, followed by the actual funeral itself, and then finally memorial rites and merit-making activities for years to come offered by the living on behalf of the deceased. Whether performed in part or in toto, the net effect of these rites was to strengthen the connection between the living and the dead in their mutual progression toward samsaric release. This journey, more than anything else, defined both the living and the dead as one indivisible Buddhist community. While deathbed rites (rinjū gyōgi) were extremely efficacious, they did require extra time to conduct the appropriate rites just prior to expiration. Not everyone in the medieval period had the good fortune to die slowly of old age or waste away as a result of some persistent illness like cholera or dysentery. A person might die suddenly, so it was wise to initiate preparations ahead of time with the so-called gyakushu rites. Since gyakushu meant “cultivation or practice ‘in advance’ (arakajime),” the term is a verbal indication that these rites were supposed to mirror funeral rites and could be performed by an individual or someone else on their behalf while the dying still lived. Unlike memorial rites that involved the transfer of merit to the deceased at a lesser value 361 (thought to be one-seventh of its normal efficacy), gyakushu rites bestowed upon the 36 intended recipient the full value of merit for actions performed. Because gyakushu rites were performed with death in mind, but well in advance of it, we might think of them as being penitential-like in nature. By doing certain actions in preparation for death, actions that were explicitly meant to have a positive effect on one’s state in the afterlife, an individual could eliminate or at least mitigate any negative karmic accumulation that might lead to an undesirable rebirth. As one scholar observes, gyakushu rites went beyond the simple Buddhist exhortation to practice charity in order to generate positive karma. The rites were nothing less than an “act of deliberate self- redemption that treats the self in advance as one of the honored dead so that it can receive an extraordinary infusion of merit through special rites and offerings.” In effect, it is the 37 living performing their own merit transfer rites (tsuizen) upon themselves. For all their emphasis on the individual, gyakushu were not necessarily solitary rites, as the still-living subject could enlist the help of others for their performance. Sometimes kanjin hijiri (wandering ascetics who went around asking for donations to support various Buddhist causes) would also participate in gyakushu, collecting donations 38 to support the rites for an individual and thereby generating merit for the donor as well. During the medieval period especially, the rites could also take on many different forms. Some gyakushu rites in Japan incorporated offerings designed to propitiate the Ten Kings (inherited from the continent during the Kamakura period). These consisted of “ritual 36 Stone, Right Thoughts, 34-35. See also, Janet R. Goodwin, “Shooing the Dead to Paradise” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 16, No. 1 (March, 1989): 70. A form of the gyakushu rites are still practiced today in Japan. Suzuki Hikaru sees them as being part of “a funeral-while-alive” which aims to do two things: celebrate the life and longevity of the deceased-to-be and have them undertake a rebirth (whilst alive) of sorts to purify them of their sins. See Hikaru Suzuki, “Funeral-while-alive as experiential transcendence” in Hikaru Suzuki, ed., Death and Dying in Contemporary Japan (London: Routledge, 2013), 117-119. 37 See Quitman E. Phillips, “Narrating the Salvation of the Elite: The Jōfukuji Paintings of the Ten Kings” Ars Orientalis 33 (2003): 127. Phillips notes: “Gyakushu reaches beyond the acts of piety and kindness promoted by basic Buddhist teachings about karma, the effect of the totality of one’s actions in successive incarnations upon the next. Gyakushu is an act of deliberate self-redemption that treats the self in advance as one of the honored dead so that it can receive an extraordinary infusion of merit through special rites and offerings. In other words, it is to that living self exactly what tsuizen is to the dead.” 38 Janet R. Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi, 1994), 123-124. 362 offerings” at specified intervals prior to death to ensure that the still-living would not have to suffer judgment by the Ten Kings in hell. Also in the medieval period, a person could even gain merit through gyakushu by making offerings before one’s very own (future death) portrait. Though still alive and sitting right before their own portrait, the person could treat themselves as one of the “honored dead,” a state in which the still- 39 living would gain the merit produced in the present. While both deathbed and tsuizen rites produced merit for everyone in attendance—helping a person achieve a good death and transferring merit were standard ways to generate merit—deathbed rites were one of the most important and effective ways for a person to secure a beneficial rebirth through their own actions. These rites were, for all intents and purposes, the final push for merit generation following (ideally) a lifetime of good and meritorious deeds. By maintaining mental detachment from the world in death, one could potentially make up for all attachment held during a lifetime. As faith in Amida deepened among Buddhists in the medieval period, deathbed rites became all the more efficacious. No longer did the dying have to rely upon their own power (jiriki) alone, they could entrust themselves to the other power (tariki) of a bodhisattva. The deathbed trust in Amida would reach its apogee in the Jōdo (Pure Land) teachings of Hōnen (1133-1212). Interestingly, Honen’s disciple, Shinran (1173-1262), who founded the Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land), completely rejected deathbed rites because they indicated that one had not yet fully realized trust in Amida. Shinran’s opponents criticized him heavily for this, thus showing just how important deathbed rites were for most sects of Buddhism at the time. Even though he was the “founder” of Jōdo Shinshū, later adherents of the sect began incorporating deathbed rites its teachings and 40 practice. Having established that Buddhism introduced new and compelling ways for the Japanese to prepare and care for their dead, it is important to examine these rites in 39 Karen M. Gerhart, The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi, 2009), 155 and 22-26. Gerhart notes the usefulness of rites in that they did not require any specific or advanced religious knowledge: “Thus, Buddhist mortuary rites provided the living with a way to help the dead (and by extension, themselves) obtain salvation, without needing to possess any particular religious wisdom.” This quote is on p. 25. 40 Stone, Right Thoughts, 331-332. For expanded information, see Jacqueline I. Stone, “Shinran’s Rejection of Deathbed Rites” in Imai Masharu Sensei Koki Kinen Ronbunshū Henshū Iinkai, ed., Chūsei bunka to Jōdo Shinshū (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 2012) 614-596, (reverse pagination). 363 further detail as they relate to exactly what kind of fate a person could expect to meet after death. Such a detailed discussion of medieval Japanese Buddhist death rites is critically important for us here because these practices anticipated later Christian ways of caring for the dead on Kyushu. Medieval Buddhist deathbed rites prefigured both the penitential practices (making satisfaction) and merit-making activities (Christian merit that is) of Japanese Christians as they prepared for their own deaths. And Buddhist merit transfer rites offered Japanese Christians a “native” model that allowed for the easy implementation of merit-transfer through the Catholic Church and the so-called Treasury of Merit. Though the karmic system of merit is fundamentally different from the Christian system of merit, the basic operative practices (accumulating and transferring merit) is similar in both religions. Without the Buddhist system deathbed rites and merit transference, it is likely that Christianity would have had a more difficult time establishing its own concepts and practices of making satisfaction and transferring merit in Japan. The ritual and thought behind medieval Buddhist deathbed practice is extraordinarily complex, and we will focus here on only a few specific practices. For this analysis, I rely heavily on Jacquline I. Stone’s recent and magisterial study of the topic. As Stone explains, deathbed rites became highly developed by the latter half of the Heian period among the aristocratic class, with some rites spreading to other segments of society. There were variations to be sure, but templates for proper deathbed practice appeared in the form of “deathbed manuals.” Written accounts of exemplary deaths, called ōjyōden, told of how people who practiced the appropriate deathbed rites had actually gained rebirth in the Pure Land. These usually contained stories in which a dead person tells a living person (sometimes in a dream) that the deathbed practices have worked and that they have, in fact, been reborn in a better state. Deathbed preparations were also a direct way of compensating for past karmic evils, and they offered insurance for gaining a good rebirth. Indeed, I would argue that they were even “penitential” in nature, though we need to be cautious in using this since they were not conducted to 41 pacify some sort of divine justice as in the Christian sense. 41 Stone, Right Thoughts, 128-129. See her chapter, “Exemplary Death” for a full discussion. Stone’s summation of a typical deathbed practice is as follows: fasting entirely or fasting from specific foods; 364 If gyakushu and deathbed rites were the most efficacious means of ensuring a propitious rebirth for oneself, tsuizen rites conducted by one’s family and friends were the next best alternative. Though highly developed in India and China, merit transfer rites to the dead reached an apogee in medieval Japan where they were taken up with great 42 fervor and applicability. Transliterated as ekō in Japanese, merit transfer was the operative principle in all tsuizen rites; and they were popular throughout the medieval period, as evidenced by prayers offered on behalf of deceased family members, such as 43 parents. If we recall, merit that was transferred to a deceased person could only amount to one-seventh of what it would have been had the person gained it while they were still alive. However, tsuizen rites offered two benefits that gyakushu and deathbed rites did not. First, despite tsuizen rites being a source of what we might call “supplemental” merit for the deceased, they could potentially be performed in perpetuity so long as one’s descendants (or a kind person) remembered to perform them. Theoretically, the rites could offer up an unlimited amount of supplemental merit for the dead even though they operated at one-seventh of the merit that would accrue for a living person. Second, tsuizen rites connected both the living and the dead through a mutual opportunity to obtain merit, thus blurring the distinct lines of these respective communities in the overarching dharma. This was a powerful rite of inclusion for the dead, whereby the praxis of the living made deceased members ever-present in the religious activities of their kin; and what it implied, of course, is that the living and the dead were on a journey of samsaric release together, helping one another achieve their goal. In helping the dead, all living people thus had to the opportunity to gain merit for themselves, at sixth-sevenths the amount (one-seventh was transferred to the dead person), while engaging in an unquestionably good and compassionate activity for a bathing and wearing clean clothes; receiving the Buddhist precepts; withdrawing into a specific structure for the practice known as an mujōin (“hall of impermanence”); sitting prostrating before an image of the Buddha; undertaking repentance, such as the Lotus repentance rite (Hokke senbyō); reciting the nenbutsu, the names of other bodhisattvas, sutras, and various esoteric spells and mantras; performing specific ritual gestures; and, finally, passing away in sleep or in a meditative state. Performing all of these was unrealistic for most people, of course, but they nevertheless provided an ideal to which people could aspire. 42 Stone, Right Thoughts, 311-314. Deathbed practices were introduced during the Heian period but became more widespread and highly developed during the Kamakura period. 43 For an overview of how merit transfer works, see Yūichi Kajiyama, “Satori” to “Ekō”: Daijō Bukkyō no seiritsu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983). 365 fellow being caught in samsara. Gyakushu and deathbed rites accomplished this as well, but not to the same extent since the people helping the soon-to-be dead person had to be present and living at the time of their passing. Tsuizen rites could be performed by distant descendants of the deceased, many of whom had not yet been born, or any compassionate person who evinced concern about their state in the afterlife. This extended the connection between the living and the dead far beyond the dead person’s circle of immediate friends and family to encompass literally anyone in the dharma at a future date. Thus even ghosts, as we have seen in the Indic context, could beg the help of compassionate strangers to perform merit transfer rites for their benefit in the afterlife. Such a scenario would be karmically beneficial to both parties involved and reinforce 44 interaction and cohesiveness across the porous barrier between the living and the dead. So how exactly did these rites operate in the Japanese context? In general, merit transfer rites in Japan were very much like the continental version in that they included: sutra copying, nenbutsu recitation, memorial services at designated times, erection of memorial stones (itabi), and performance of other charitable acts on behalf of the deceased. All of these activities were common deeds of merit that a person could perform for themselves; but as tsuizen rites, the merit generated was mentally, spiritually, and sometimes institutionally directed to a deceased member of the Buddhist community. For example, the copying of sutras or, in some cases, the entire Buddhist canon, was a very effective means of generating merit for one’s self. But one could also do this on the behalf of another. Transferring merit through such means was operative in Japan from quite early on. One early example is when the courtier Fujiwara no Nakamaro (706-764) instituted a massive copying project of the canon (the One Year Memorial Canon, shūkisai issaikyō) for his aunt, the Queen Consort Kōmyōshi (701-760), that involved the reproduction of 45 some 5,330 scrolls. Even with the standard deduction of sixth-sevenths of the merit that 44 Stone appropriately notes that, “Ideas and practices of merit transfer work to heal the social rupture that death creates and are thus linked to those aspects of funerals most commonly studied by sociologists and anthropologists of religion.” Stone, Right Thoughts, 7. 45 Bryan D. Lowe, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), 130-131. Lowe presents a thorough study of the importance of the copying of scriptures in Japan and its use as a merit-making activity. Kōmyōshi herself is an important figure in this regard as it was she who effected the Tōdaiji scriptorium that produced many 366 was inherent in any tsuizen rite, the merit generated for Kōmyōshi would have been enormous. The copies were likely used in lectures, as copying a given scripture and then 46 lecturing upon it was thought to be one of the most effective means of generating merit. From a wider point of view, the sutra-copying project would have, in effect, created a strong connection between the samsaric progress of the dead Kōmyōshi, the karmic state of her living nephew, and all those beings down throughout the ages in the dharma that would benefit karmically from reading and perhaps copying the memorial reproduction. Most tsuizen rites were not as spectacular as Kōmyōshi’s memorial service, but they nevertheless created strong connections between the living and the dead through actual karmic ties of generation and transfer. This could be done individually, in the personal setting or with the participation of the clergy, with the sangha, and in the form of commissions and donations. It could also be done, perhaps most effectively, with a mortuary society such as the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society (Nijūgo zanmai-e). On an individual basis, one could undertake a variety of charitable activities on behalf of the dead. Saying prayers for the deceased was common, as was dedicated recitation of the nenbutsu or the copying of sutras by individual mourners. Transferring merit to the deceased could also be accomplished by something as simple as appreciating a sacred image. For example, Shōkai (1261-1323), Ippen’s half-brother, stated that anyone who looked at the Ippen Hijiri-e picture scroll would generate merit and be able to transfer it to a dead person: “While merely appreciating [by honoring or dishonoring] these paintings, people will tie a karmic link, and they will bestow benefit both to the dead and 47 to the living.” If one could transfer merit simply by looking at a sacred image, this would have been especially helpful to common people, who more than likely did not have the ability to copy sutras or recite them from a text. copies of sacred texts for distribution. The merit generated by this operation would have been enormous as each copy was potentially a source of teaching, and therefore merit, for many other people. 46 Bryan Daniel Lowe “Rewriting Nara Buddhism: Sutra Transcription in Early Japan” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2012), 214-215. 47 This statement comes from the end of the illustrated biography of Ippen and is quoted in Chieko Nakano, “‘Kechien’ as Religious Praxis in Medieval Japan: Picture Scrolls as the Means and Sites of Salvation” (Ph.D. diss., Tucson: University of Arizona, 2009), 230-231. 367 Since the funeral was a distinct and separate occurrence from the tsuizen rites, the most appropriate time to transfer merit was at stipulated times during memorial services. These services naturally entailed the participation of the Buddhist clergy, who were a welcome addition to any act of merit transference because their presence was thought to make it all the more effective. In her study of Japanese funerary culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Karen Gerhart notes several instances of merit transfer conducted by individuals and families on behalf of the deceased at memorial services. During the memorial service of a certain Morosuke in 1345, the following were performed for him: chanting of scriptures by Buddhist priests, recitation of the nenbutsu by a group of nuns, offerings made of the Lotus Sutra copied out by family members, and reading of an ancient copy of the Lotus Sutra by priests. Morosuke’s family made additional transfers of merit at other memorial services and erected a gravestone and a grave-hall for his benefit at the one-month and one hundred-day memorials, respectively. Commissions for and donations to the sangha were also a common way to transfer merit to the deceased. Requests for sutra recitations might be submitted to the clergy to coincide with certain memorial days. Some of these could be substantial, involving tens of thousands of recitations of a particular sutra. Donations were also an effective means of transferring merit, especially since the money or goods would be used by the sangha to 48 support the community, ostensibly in the continued propagation of the dharma. The deceased could also receive merit transfer through communal undertakings, particularly if they had belonged to some kind of nenbutsu fellowship or society (kessha) like the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society. Though this group mainly operated as a mutual self-help group that emphasized the accrual of merit through pious activates while its members were still alive, it also, and perhaps more importantly, provided assistance at the moment of death and ensured that the deceased would receive a good and proper funeral. Yet, the bonds of this group also extended beyond death, as the society would help 48 Among the donations that Morosuke’s family members made were writing paper, candles, a straw mat, straw sandals, and a tea bowl. Some donations were for sutra recitation, as one relative of Morosuke made a donation to priests for 30,000 recitations of the Mantra of Light (Kōmyō shingon). Another relative offered a painting of the Amida Triad (Amida, Kannon, and Seishi), while Morosuke’s wife donated a facsimile painting of the Amida and his retinue coming down from the heavens to meet the deceased (raigo sanzon). For the full account of Morosuke’s funeral and the transfers of merit that his family conducted see Gearhart, Material Culture of Death, 18-40. Such acts of ekō were not limited to upper class laymen. Even the followers of Nichiren copied sutras for his benefit in the afterlife as an act of ekō. See p. 125. 368 deceased members achieve a better rebirth (if necessary) by transferring merit to him. In fact, mandatory care for the society’s dead members through specific mortuary rites was part of its own regulations (Kishō hachikajō) as formulated in 986. According to Stone, the regulations demanded that group members do the following for their dead: empower sand with the Mantra of Light for the purpose of sprinkling it over the dead; establish a communal graveyard for the society at the base of Nishiyama (near Kyoto); perform graveside rites in the spring and autumn of every year; make offerings (wildflowers and fruit) and say the nenbutsu for all those in the cemetery; transfer the remains of members to the communal cemetery if they had died far away from it; spend the night in the cemetery immediately following burials for the benefit of the person’s spirit; and assemble every seven days for forty-nine days after the member’s death to chant the nenbutsu with a lecture occurring on the forty-ninth day. Additionally, other kinds of offering might be made, such as Buddhist images, the copying of sutras, and the entering 49 of the deceased’s name in the society’s death register. By being a member of the Twenty-Five Samādhi society or some other similar society, one guaranteed that the appropriate tsuizen rites would be performed. The member did not have to rely upon their own family—if they had any—to act as a karmic advocate for their sake. Though the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society was a monastic society (which would presumably care for its own dead if needed), the guarantee of tsuizen rites was an important feature of membership as indicated by Genshin’s 988 revision of the 986 regulations: None of us are children from marvelous mansions or splendid palaces. Our parents were rather from poor families with rough houses. In our boxes there are no rare jewels, and on our beds there are no sumptuous spreads. Our servants are few and our friends and relatives even fewer. When we reach the time for us to die, who will come and visit us in our sea of suffering? So [when one of us dies], we should all gather together and go to the Mausoleum of Peace and Care, practice contemplation of [Amida] Buddha, and so lead the dead man [to the Pure Land]. And after the contemplation, we should throw ourselves to the ground and each of us should chant [the name of] his soul, so leading him to Supreme Bliss. This should be completed twenty-two times. And we should pray to [A]mida, to Kannon, and to Seishi, asking that within seven days we be shown where he has 49 Stone, Right Thoughts, 57-58. Stone briefly notes some other societies similar to the Twenty-five Samādhi Society on pp. 63-64. 369 been reborn. And depending on whether it is a good or an evil place, our hearts 50 and sympathies should reach out to him. With membership in such as society—namely, a group that provided not only guaranteed tsuizen rites, but also opportunities for merit cultivation and deathbed and funeral attendance—a person could thus avail himself of every opportunity to achieve a beneficial rebirth in the afterlife by entering into Amida’s Pure Land. Besides participating in formal religious groups for the purpose of accruing and transferring merit, people in Heian and medieval Japan could also transfer merit to the dead (and to the still living) by other methods that were less formal but no less communal. For example, pious individuals could generate and transfer merit to their loved ones by sponsoring and attending lectures on a sutra (kechien hakkō). In these lectures, karmic ties would be created between those present and those to whom they 51 wished to have the merit accredited. Group copying of a sutra was also a way to transfer 52 merit, though this limited the practice to literate individuals such as monastics. Perhaps the most famous example of group generation and transfer of merit (on a grand scale) is the yūzū nenbutsu (“mutually inclusive nenbutsu”) activities propagated by the Tendai monk Ryōnin (c. 1073-1132). In Ryōnin’s thought and practice, the individual chanting of the nenbutsu transferred merit to all individuals not only in this dharma-realm (dharmadhātu or J. hokkai) but also every other dharma-realm in 53 existence. In effect, the practice in the yūzū nenbutsu created kechien between 50 Bowring, Richard, “Preparing for the Pure Land in Late Tenth-Century Japan” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 25/3-4, (Fall, 1998): 221-257, with the quote on p. 242. 51 Nakano, “Kechien,” 72-73 and 147-148. 52 Chieko Nakano notes one visual example of this in the Dōjō Engi Emaki picture scroll, which depicts six monks participating in the sutra-copying at various stages. She notes that any participant at any stage would be able to gain and transfer merit through the creation of kechien (“karmic ties”) that tied the sutra directly to people needing aid in the afterlife. Nakano, “Kechien,” 147-148. People could also gain and transfer merit by attending liturgical and memorial rites. One example of this can be found in the Hōnen Shonin Eden picture scroll, which depicts a group of laypeople attending a memorial rite for the monk Jōshin-bō in order to form kechien between themselves, Hōnen, Amida Buddha, and the deceased. Nakano, “Kechien,” 244-245. 53 According to the Kokon Chomon Shū (A Collection of Tales with Moral Lessons for the Young) of 1254, the deity of Tamonten (Vaiśravaṇa, also known as Bishamonten) told Ryōnin in a dream the following: “Save suffering sentient beings by propagating the yūzū nembutsu. It is far better to recite the nembutsu together than to recite it singly.” The operating theory behind Ryōnin’s practice is also stated in the same work as: “Because one person’s practice is taken as all people’s practice, the merit is immense.” For the quotes and a brief overview, see Kazuo Kasahara, ed., A History of Japanese Religion (Tokyo: Kosei 370 individuals, Amida, and every other being in every realm, including deceased relatives and friends. Ryōnin himself, after leaving the confines of Mt. Hiei, traveled about the country enrolling people from all walks of life into his yūzū nenbutsu register. Thus everyone who participated in his yūzū nenbutsu activities could benefit from the collective merit and use their individually generated merit for the benefit of all the dead, 54 presumably including their relatives. However, as Genshin’s revision the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society’s regulations makes clear, a good rebirth was not necessarily a given, and the living had no idea if their karmic transfers did any good at all. Confirmation was sometimes possible with the deceased manifesting before the burial group and relating to the state in which their spirit existed. Such a visitation happened with the monk Ryōchin (d. 1013), whose spirit appeared to a member of the society in a dream and attested to the effectiveness of its tsuizen rites: “At first I was born into the lower grade (gebon). But thanks to the power of the nenbutsu of the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society, I have gradually advanced.” Such visitations by spirits were not limited to monastics or members of societies like the Twenty-five Samādhi. Ōjōden (a type of hagiography that details the death and fate in the afterlife of a particular individual) provide numerous examples of laymen, both good and evil in their lifetimes, returning to the realm of the living to either thank relatives for their 55 transfers of merit or to request additional tsuizen rites. As many ōjoden and setsuwa make clear, both monastics and laypeople in premodern Japan cared deeply about where they and their family members would end up in the afterlife. For all the possibilities of a good rebirth, such as in Amida’s Pure Land, there also existed a great many possibilities for rebirth into a much more miserable state of existence, such as the animal realm or the vast and torturous depths of hell. However, Publishing Co., 2013), 128-129. Also see the yūzū nenbutsu entry in the Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. 54 Participation in and sponsorship of yūzū nenbutsu activities were used to gain posthumous merit for some of the Ashikaga shoguns during the fourteenth century. Part of this included the creation and copying of the Yūzū nenbutsu engi emaki picture scroll by various individuals, all acting with the purpose of creating kechien between themselves and the dead shogun. See Takagishi, Akira, “The Reproduction of Engi and Memorial Offerings: Multiple Generations of the Ashikaga Shoguns and the Yūzū nenbutsu engi emaki” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 42, No. 1 (2015): 157-182. 55 Stone, Right Thoughts, 76. For an example, see Kyōkai, Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryōiki of the Monk Kyōkai, trans. Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 180-181. 371 death was not the end of all connections between the living and the dead. They were tied together not only by familial and religious connections from the earthly realm, but by a “cosmic” link through the dharma and the karmic ties that transcended any of the various realms and states of existence. Death and rites of separation might have divided the living from the dead physically, but they did not do so spiritually. Since barriers between the spirit realm and the earthly realm were porous, the living and the dead could continue to affect one another and, most importantly, aid each other in the common struggle to escape the samsaric cycle. Because the living and the dead could affect one another as a result of mutually held karmic ties, they constituted a single community. Though operating on entirely different spiritual principles and with an entirely different goal in mind, the Christian community in Kyushu and elsewhere, both living and dead, undertook a similar journey of salvation together. Having undertaken a rather lengthy but necessary exploration of how Buddhism enabled people to overcome the trauma and separation of death in the Indic, Chinese, and Japanese contexts, we should now examine how Christianity achieved a similar effect through the development of penitential rites, care for the dead, the concept of purgatory, and the emergence of indulgences. Penance, Suffrages, and Care for the Dead in Premodern Christianization Just as Buddhism had to meet different cultural expectations about death as it spread from culture to culture, so too did Christianity as it broke out of its Judaic context and into the world of the Gentiles, Germanic pagan peoples, and beyond. Every culture that Christianity passed through had its own indigenous rites of separation and inclusion. Our concern here is not to explore each of these in detail, but rather to note that Christianity, as it developed over centuries, became extraordinarily adept at meeting the death needs of different peoples and creating one community of both living and dead. This, as I argue, was a key mechanism of the world-historical Christianization process. Even though the exact nature of the afterlife and the fates of the Christian dead (both sinner and saint) underwent centuries of development in the Roman and Germanic religio-cultural contexts, we can nevertheless observe that caring for the dead was always 372 a feature of Christianization. From a very early date, many Christians sought to care for their dead and aid them in some fashion in the afterlife. The theology and practice of caring for the dead quickened over the centuries in conjunction with penitential practices, such as those of the Irish and the Visigoths, and eventually resulted in a full-blown concept of purgatory during the Middle Ages. The concept of purgatory cemented the dead’s place in the Communion of Saints as the Church Suffering. As the middle state between the earthly and heavenly realms, the Church Suffering itself was the fulcrum by which living Christians of the Church Militant were leveraged into the Church Triumphant in heaven. Defined with utmost clarity at the Council of Trent, the importance of suffrages for the dead and their efficacy for the deceased in purgatory, remain an important feature of Catholicism to this day. Thus, when we frequently make reference to sources such as the modern catechism or the Pre-Vatican II Catholic Encyclopedia as a means of illustrating care for the dead in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kyushu, we are tapping into the same tradition, though expressed differently, that the Jesuits brought with them to Japan on their mission. At the start, we must examine the initial cultural contexts (Judaic, Greek, and Roman) in which Christianity arose as they relate to care for their dead and how they sought to offer succor to the dead in the afterlife. One common element among all these cultures, despite their religious differences, was the obligation of the living to provide a proper burial for the dead; failing to do so could negatively affect the dead person’s state of existence. Many of the classics, namely the Homeric epics and Virgil’s Aeneid, extol the virtue of proper funerals (burials or cremation), and even suggest that such actions could “help the dead.” In the Jewish context, the provision of a proper burial was praised as a pious activity, particularly in the Book of Tobit (1:16), even if the effects upon the 56 deceased were not always clear. Epitaphs in the form of inscriptions, as well as the so-called “feeding of the dead,” were also thought to have some kind of positive effect. In the Roman and Greek contexts, feeding the dead often involved an entire banquet or perhaps, more simply, the pouring 56 Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: the Posthumous Salvation of non-Christians in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19-23. 373 out of a libation of wine or some other foodstuff. If such acts of remembrance and 57 reverence were not conducted, the spirit might remain unappeased and upset. For example, Ovid (43 BCE- c. 17 CE) writes in his Fasti: “Now the vaporous souls and 58 entombed corpses, Wander, now specters consume the food-gifts.” Clearly, according to Ovid, the living could nourish the dead in some fashion. However, this is not the same as altering a negative type of afterlife in which the spirit found itself. This could be accomplished in Buddhism, as shown above, but what about the religious traditions of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans? Trumbower notes that the evidence is somewhat ambiguous for the Greek and Roman contexts, but most definitely not so in the Jewish context. For example, 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 (late second century BCE) points specifically to a belief among some Jews of the period that the living could help the dead in obtaining atonement of sins. In caring for those killed in battle, Judas Macabeus took up a “sin offering” and prayed for those killed. The author of 2 Maccabees (44-45) takes this as a sign that such activity could have a positive effect on the dead: For if [Maccabeus] were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, as that they might be delivered from their sin. Trumbower notes that this anonymous author clearly believed that a “salvific ritual for 59 the posthumous forgiveness of sins was seen as possible and desirable.” Not all Jews of the period would have agreed—some like the Sadducees denied the Resurrection and thought the only afterlife was Sheol—but the idea that the living could help the state of the dead beyond some sort of sustenance and appeasement was circulating in Jewish one 57 Trumbower, Rescue, 14-19. 58 Ovid, Fasti, trans. A.J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 43-44; 2:533-570. See also Robin M. Jensen, “Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity” in Laurie Brink and Deborah Green, eds., Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context: Studies of Roman, Jewish, and Christian Burials (Berlin :Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 116-118. 59 Trumbower, Rescue, 26. The authorship of the Maccabean books is complex. Apparently a certain Jason of Cyrene wrote a five-volume history of the Maccabean revolt that is now lost. A later anonymous author condensed this into the books we have today. 374 hundred years prior to Jesus. Thus by the time Christianity took root in the first-century, it was believed in some circles at least that the living could have a sort of positive effect on the state of the dead in their afterlife existence. For all of Christianity’s continuities with its multicultural and religious roots, particularly those of first-century Judaism, it diverged from its roots in terms of funerals. As Frederick Paxton has emphasized, funerals gave Christian mourners “a new sense of the meaning of death and of the place of the dead vis-à-vis the community of the living.” The key turning point, it seems, was the belief that an extremely positive afterlife (paradise in God) was achievable through the death and resurrection of Jesus. In this sense, “death was the door to salvation” rather than the start of a shadowy kind of existence; and the dead, mostly the martyrs and the saints, could actually be sacred in physical form as a corpse in the earthly realm. Unfortunately, little is known about the earliest Christian funerals in terms of the prayers said (and their effect upon the dead, if any), so it is difficult to examine what exactly the relationship between the living and the 60 dead at this point was in terms of the funeral process. The lack of specific information concerning the nature and practice of the earliest Christian funerals and burial rites should not lead us to think that early Christianity had no mechanisms with which to care for the dead or connect them to the living. Rather, as Éric Rebillard has argued, Christians made use of and maintained burial practices and ways of caring for the dead already in existence in their respective non-Christian cultures. In other words, Christians used what they already had available to them until that time later when the Church assumed greater authority and oversight in the ecclesiastical relationship between the living and the dead. In fact, Rebillard forcefully states that “in Late Antiquity, Christianity was not concerned with the burial of the dead, nor even, to a 60 Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: the Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 22-25. Paxton notes the Jewish nature of the oldest extant Christian prayer over a dead person from the prayerbook of Bishop Serapion of Thmuis: “God...you who lead down to the gate of Hades and lead back up...we beseech you for the repose and rest of this your servant or this your handmaiden: refresh her soul and spirit in green pastures, in chambers of rest with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all your saints; and raise up the body in the day which you have ordained, in accordance with your trustworthy promises, that you may render to it also its fitting inheritances in your holy pastures. Remember not her transgressions and sins; cause her going forth to be prepared and blessed; heal the griefs of her relatives with the spirit of consolation; and grant unto us all a good end through your only-begotten Jesus Christ…” 375 great extent, with their memory. Thus it tolerated, to keep a negative formulation, a large secular sphere—one that covered even aspects of Christian life as important as their 61 relationship to the dead.” We should not take this to mean that early Christians did not care about the dead. Rather, it is clear that, Christianity operated within each cultural milieu it found itself— Greek, Roman, or Jewish—and appropriately used indigenous death practices until such time as the Church both adopted and adapted a system of its own based largely on what had come before in each distinct culture where it took root. For example, Rebillard points out that early Christians did not segregate themselves from their pagan neighbors in death by having specifically religious cemeteries. Familial considerations related to tombs (coemeterium), rather than some sort of exclusivist attitude toward faith, were often the 62 governing factor in burying like with like by religion. Likewise, because the Church initially left burial customs to the families for the first few centuries, pagan practices for commemorating and caring for the dead continued to inform Christian ones. Perhaps the best example of this is the communal feast for the dead (parentalia) that continued well into Augustine’s day (354-430). Tertullian, as no else could write, had already condemned this practice indirectly at the turn of the third century in De Spectaculis (On the Spectacles): “Temples or tombs, we abominate both equally; we know neither sort of altar; we adore neither sort of image; we pay no sacrifice; we pay no funeral rite. No, and we do not eat of what is offered in sacrificial or funeral rite, because ‘we cannot eat of the 63 Lord’s supper and the supper of demons.’ (1 Cor 10:21)” The pagan practice of feasting with the dead was clearly a rite of incorporation of the dead that both Christian and non-Christians found necessary. Absence the authority of the Church over burial customs and practices on the part of the family at this early stage, the practice of funereal feasts continued to thrive among Christians—to the point that it eventually received tacit approval from some intellectual members of the Church. By the 61 Éric Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 177-178. 62 See Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 13-36. 63 Quoted in Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 140-153. See p. 143 for Tertullian’s quote, which is taken from his (13.3-4) of his text. 376 fifth century, Augustine recommended toleration of the pagan-derived feasts for the dead 64 as ways of commemoration lest the Christian living forsake caring for them. Though much of how early Christians cared for their dead, namely in funerals, seems to have occurred in the shadows of our sources, it is readily apparent that both the intellectual spokesmen of the Church and the ordinary laity believed that one practice could affect the Christian (and sometimes even non-Christian) dead: the practice of prayer on their behalf. This practice would become incredibly useful as a rite of incorporation for societies undergoing Christianization, as it was an additional and compelling mechanism with which they could help their dead. In addition, this basic practice, the suffrage, became the entire basis for succoring souls in purgatory through masses, penitential activities, and indulgences. That prayer was applied to the dead is rather unsurprising since Jesus himself had emphasized its efficacy in general. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the views of early Christians toward prayer as an aid to the dead—though it is clear that they thought it to be efficacious. One of the earliest testaments to the appropriateness of prayer for the dead, either as succor or simple commemoration, is by Tertullian in three writings: De Corona (On the Crown), De exhortatione castitatis (Exhortation to Chastity), and De monogamia (On Monogamy). In On Monogamy, for example, Tertullian states that prayers for the dead (possibly at a commemorative meal) could benefit a deceased spouse: To be sure, she prays for his soul. She asks that, during the interval, he may find rest and that he may share in the first resurrection. She offers the sacrifice each 65 year on the anniversary of his falling asleep.” 64 See Augustine’s Epistulae 22.6 quoted in Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 148. Other churchmen still disapproved of feasts for the dead, such as Augustine’s spiritual teacher, Ambrose, though mostly out of fear that these feasts could lead to unchristian debauchery. Earlier, the Council of Elvira (295-314) discouraged activities such as these, particularly by women on the grounds that it could lead to debauchery. See p. 144. See also Megan McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 27. She notes “Most scholars are now agreed, however, that rituals for the dead had more than one meaning for the earliest Christians. Some were apparently performed in accordance with beliefs which Christians shared with many of their Jewish and pagan neighbors, while others carried meanings which were more specific to the Christian message. See p. 181. 65 See Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 153-154. On Exhortation to Chastity (11) contains the following: “You pray for her soul. You offer the annual sacrifice for her.” In On the Crown, Tertullian writes, “We make offerings (oblations facimus) on behalf of the dead every year for their (actual) rebirth” (3.3). 377 Although this is does not necessarily constitute a precedent for an actual anniversary mass for the dead, as would be developed later, it does indicate that some benefit for the soul of the dead person could be obtained simply through prayer on the anniversary of their death. Despite the widespread practice of prayer for the dead in the early centuries of the Church, the Church had yet to develop theories related to purgatory that might have addressed its effect upon the dead. Thus, there remained some anxiety over the fate of the dead, it would seem, and the living simply hoped for the best. Some churchmen in the fourth century supported the idea that the living could help the dead, while some were more cautious in their pronouncements. None, however, doubted the piety of prayers for the dead. For example, John Chrysostom (c. 349-407), archbishop of a city no less than Constantinople and born to one or more pagan parents, on the other hand, supported prayer for the dead with enthusiasm; he taught that a deceased Christian could be aided by the merits of another person still living: Let us not then be weary in giving aid to the departed, both by offering on their behalf and obtaining prayers for them; for the common expiation of the world is even before us. Therefore with boldness do we then entreat for the whole world, and name their names with those of martyrs, of confessors, of priests. For in truth one body are we all, though some members are more glorious than others; and it is possible from every source to gather pardon for them, from our prayers, from 66 our gifts in their behalf, from those whose names are named with theirs. As Rebillard interprets this passage, “the value of prayer for the departed depends upon the whole church—both earthly and ecclesiastical—joining forces, as shown by prayers of intercession…” Rebillard’s comment strikes at the heart of the matter of prayer in the early Church and over the subsequent centuries of Catholic tradition building, right down to the present: individual prayers were efficacious for a variety of spiritual and even 66 Homilies on 1 Corinthians 41.5, quoted in Rebillard, 171-172. Additionally: “Let us not busy ourselves about monuments, not about memorials. This is the greatest memorial: set widows to stand around him. Tell them his name: bid them all make for him their prayers, their supplications: this will overcome God: though it have not been done by the man himself, yet because of him another is the author of the almsgiving. Even this pertains to the mercy of God: widows standing around and weeping know how to rescue, not indeed from the present death, but from that which is to come. Many have profited even by the alms done by others on their behalf: for even if they have not got perfect (deliverance), at least they have found some comfort thence.” Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles 21.4, also quoted in Rebillard, 173. 378 earthly reasons, but the prayers of the entire Christian community gathered together possessed infinite value. Nowhere was this kind of prayer for the dead more efficacious than at primary gatherings of the living Christian community: the Eucharistic celebration (i.e. what would become the mass). As Megan McLaughlin points out, the clergy, who ostensibly led the liturgy of the mass, recognized that departed Christians had the right to be involved and that they needed the prayers performed at the ritual. Just because they had been separated from the living community physically did not mean they were not incorporated into it spiritually during the eternal sacrifice of the Eucharist. As a result, between the fourth and eighth centuries, churchmen incorporated rites and devoted more attention to the 67 dead in the increasingly expanding liturgy. Without a doubt, they were responding to the needs of the laity in this regard, since family members and coreligionists would naturally be most persistent in requesting prayers for their own dead. As the petitions for the dead became more common in the liturgical setting, actual masses for the dead also developed. We can see this development in a monastic rule attributed to Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636), which stipulated that an annual mass be offered for the dead. Part of the reason for this new and dedicated liturgical attempt to care for the dead was an ever-increasing anxiety on the part of the living over the fate of the dead in the afterlife. For example, one mass in the Liber sacramentorum Augustodunensis contains this supplicatory prayer, which was intended for the dead interred in cemeteries: Omnipotent and eternal God, grant what we ask in our prayers, and give to all those whose bodies rest here a place of refreshment, the blessedness of peace, [and] the brightness of light, so that the supplication of the church may commend 68 [to you] those who are burdened by the weight of their sins. As McLaughlin points out, this prayer is rather somber in nature. The last line, in particular, links the fate of the dead with the sins they had committed during their lifetime. But it offers hope that the supplication of the Church, as a community, could help alleviate some of their deserved suffering in the afterlife. 67 McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints, 62. 68 From the Liber sacramentorum Augustodunensis, quoted in McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints, 66. 379 Further developments in masses for the dead need not be recounted here. We should note, however, that suffrages and memorial masses first emerged within the context of a Christianizing Mediterranean world. They were not part and parcel of Christianity from its beginnings in Judaism and in Judea. Instead, as cannot be stressed enough, funerary and memorial practices for the dead emerged as Christianity developed within various pagan cultures and accommodated itself to the Gentile world-view. As the religion broke the geographical bonds of the Mediterranean, it passed through various other pagan cultures, particularly Germanic culture, and accommodated itself to their view and practices regarding the dead. As Christianity expanded northwards away from Roman culture and into the Germanic areas of Gaul, the British Isles, and Ireland, belief in the efficacy of prayer for the dead, either individually or through the Church as a community, only strengthened as these new cultures imparted their own conceptions of the relationship between the living and the dead. One important development in the ecclesiological and cosmological care for the dead was the establishment of the universal feast day of All Souls’ (November 2) in the Roman Church. The establishment of this feast day was arguably the culmination of liturgical care for the dead. Though it was initially confined to the Cluniac monasteries and their affiliates in the eleventh century, All Souls’ Day represented the formal recognition of all the Christian dead in the liturgical calendar. Its placement after All Saints Day (November 1) was not accidental, and one can easily see how the celebrations of the Saints (who did not need the prayers of the living) as the most holy dead would be 69 connected to the regular dead. This feast deserves our last word on the prayers for the dead in the Christianization process outside of Japan because it represents the day on which the universal living church (all across the former Roman empire) celebrated and prayed for the dead collectively. All Souls’ Day also represents the dramatic transformation of care for the dead as a rite of inclusion. What was once a familial responsibility and an affair for the local church was now the purview of all Christians that adopted the feast. This was, of course, celebrated in whatever cultures Roman Christianity transplanted itself, 69 The Venerable Abbot Odilo of Cluny (c. 962-1049) is seen as instituting the feast on what was at first a limited scope with in Cluny. See McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints, 75-78. 380 Japan included. As a collective celebration, the prayers offered on this day were all the more efficacious since they had the backing of the entire living Church. The dead were not just incorporated into their living families or local communities through this feast, but rather into the entire Church throughout all time. Satisfaction, Penitential Practices, and Their Connection to the Dead Though we have undertaken only the most cursory survey of how pre-Christian concern for the dead manifested itself in a nascent Church and in slowly Christianizing societies, we have not examined how penitential practices factored into care for the dead. Beyond individual and communal prayer for the dead, whose efficacy was only cautiously questioned by some, there did not seem to be much else that the living could do for the benefit of the dead in the afterlife. Since organic decomposition and rites of separation (funerals) physically separated the dead from the living and since Christianity emphasized the spiritual over the bodily, care was limited to the spiritual plane via prayer. One could not actually dip one’s finger into water, after all, and quench the thirst of those who suffered in the afterlife; and one was not supposed to nourish the dead with foodstuffs and wine (at least officially) as in the pagan days of yore. Therefore, the living could only offer up prayers for the dead and hope that this would have some sort of positive effect. Christians, like all people concerned for the dead, yearned to engage in some sort of physical action on behalf of the dead. By the time of Augustine in the fifth century, this situation would change and additional “physical” penitential practices were developed that enabled Christians to prepare themselves for the afterlife and to help those already in it. At the same time, Christians came to recognize a vague intermediate zone in the afterlife, between the saved and the damned, into which the vast majority of Christian souls, save the saints, ultimately fell. In contrast to the truly eternal natures of heaven and hell, this intermediate 70 zone was only temporary in nature. In time, over centuries, the doctrine of purgatory 70 Technically, this intermediate zone, which would develop into purgatory was coeternal in the sense that it existed both within time and outside of time. Though temporary, purgatory was eternal because in the spiritual world there is no actual time. It was temporary because that was not the ultimate state of the 381 would emerge to describe this vague intermediate zone, giving the whole process of caring for the dead new meaning and vastly strengthening the connection of the dead to the living. The theological concept that undergirded all this was “satisfaction.” This concept was not something intrinsic to Christianity from its beginnings in Judea. Rather, it developed out of the still-Christianizing world of the Romans and Germanic peoples during the long medieval period. This was particularly so after the establishment of a full-blown system of caring for the dead centering on purgatory during the Late Middle Ages that focused on the gaining of indulgences. A useful starting point for connecting penance to the care of the dead in what would later be called purgatory is Tertullian’s highly influential work, De paenitentia (On Penance). Here it is useful to recall that Tertullian, as a native advocate, was a Christian convert, and the primitive system of penance that he lays out in De paenitentia was the work of a Christianized mind. Given Tertullian’s background as a pagan-convert, I would argue that the system of penance he proposed was not something imposed upon Romans by Jewish Christians but rather developed by Roman-Christians themselves. Though this work (likely a sermon to catechumens in Carthage) has nothing to do with purgatory or the care of the dead, Tertullian emphasizes rather forcefully that penance was a necessary action following one’s baptism. According to him, baptism blotted out each catechumen’s previous sins, but, as imperfect beings, they would unavoidably sin again and thus require forgiveness from God. The manner in which he recommends achieving forgiveness was a precursor to the later penitential system of the Church, something called exomologesis. Though somewhat vague in his description of the actual practice, Tertullian explains exomologesis as “confess[ing] our sin to the Lord, not as though He were ignorant of it, but because satisfaction receives its proper determination though confession, confession gives birth to penitence and by penitence God is appeased [italics mine].” One method for appeasing God after sinning was to undertake some sort of severe physical discomfort publicly, such as the wearing of sackcloth, lying in ashes, or fasting for long periods of time. Moreover, the sinner’s coreligionists might also pray to God for afterlife for which the soul was destined. The limitations of human existence cannot help but to assign a temporal nature to states of the afterlife as metaphor for understanding them. 382 that person’s forgiveness or remission of sins, much in the same manner that the living would later pray to God for the dead. These acts, as well as exomologesis as a whole, served to: …render penitence acceptable and in order to honor God through fear of punishment, so that in passing sentence upon the sinner it may itself be a substitute for the wrath of God and, by temporal punishment [italics mine], I will not say prevent eternal torments but rather cancel them. Therefore, in humbling a man it exalts him. When it defiles him, he is cleansed. In accusing, it excuses. In condemning, it absolves. In proportion as you have had no mercy on yourself, believe me, in just this same measure God will have mercy upon you. Tertullian here is discussing what living Christians can do for themselves in the here and now (i.e. suffer temporally) as well as what others can do for sinners (pray on their behalf for God’s forgiveness) in order to avoid the (eternal) suffering that would later be 71 demanded by the absolute divine justice of God. For Peter Brown, it was Augustine, another Carthaginian convert and native advocate like Tertullian, who was a key figure in the development of another means to expiate sins: almsgiving. Eventually this mechanism for the living would be applied to making satisfaction for the dead as well. Augustine argued that the Church on Earth (the Church Militant) is made up of people who fall somewhere in between the “altogether good” (valde boni) and the “altogether bad” (valde mali). These were the so-called non valdes, that is the “not altogether bad” and the “not altogether good.” Such people sinned daily throughout the course of their lives, but these sins were not the kind that required a substantial penitential rite akin to the harsh sort of exomologesis that Tertullian emphasized. Rather, people could make the satisfaction demanded to God for these lesser sins by practicing charity—that is, giving alms to the poor. The idea behind this was to give up treasure in the here and now in favor of laying up “treasure in heaven” (Matt. 72 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22). Though not physically harsh or entailing direct 71 On Penance in Tertullian, Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and Purity, trans and annotated by William P. Le Saint (New York: Newman Press, 1959), 31-32. Tertullian. Le Saint notes in his commentary: “The concept of exomologesis as a compensatory work of satisfaction for sin is suggested if we think of this ‘change’ as an ‘exchange.’ It is possible, however, that they change sin for suffering, or harsh treatment (cf. De paen. 12.7), in the sense that they change over from a life of sin to a life of penance.” p. 174, note 156. 72 Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 54. See also pp. 25-46. Brown examines “how wealth came to play a role in the linking the living to the dead” during late antiquity sees this development in the larger context of 383 suffering, almsgiving fulfilled the goal of satisfaction in a roundabout way since the voluntary giving up of wealth necessarily meant the giving up of some kind of pleasure. Aside from actual money, almsgivings meant “every useful act that a man does in mercy,” such as visiting the sick and imprisoned, leading the blind, giving advice, and 73 comforting the sorrowful. Thus almsgiving for the expiation of past sins linked the state of one’s future dead self to the present living community in a mutually beneficial relationship. Besides being a means for the living to expiate their sins, almsgiving would also come to be a mechanism by which the living could make satisfaction for the dead. This practice ultimately took centuries to develop fully, but the potentiality was already there for it in Augustine’s day. He himself approved of almsgiving to make up for past sins and also approved (with some caution) of an intermediate zone where the non valdes would go temporarily after death. The exact nature of the intermediate zone between heaven and hell was still rather vague at this point, and Augustine was not comfortable making any strong pronouncements upon it. However, he did come to some basic conclusions: those who had not sinned in a major way (mortal sins) and were Christian would not go straight to hell since they did not deserve it; but neither would they go straight to heaven since they did not deserve that either. Instead they would be sent to a vague intermediate zone that Brown has aptly called “the Twilight Zone.” It was the dead there, in neither heaven nor hell, who could be potentially helped by the living through almsgiving. Again, we must remember that expiation of sins for the future dead and for the already dead developed in the context of a still-Christianizing society. Pagan elements, particularly with funereal practice, formed part of the basis for helping the dead spiritually in the intermediate zone through satisfaction. The most prominent element was the funeral feast where the pagan dead could be nourished by the food, company, and generosity of their living family members. In the Christianizing context, the family, which extended to other Christians, was able to nourish the future dead and already dead social changes occurring within the Church (such as the influx of wealth) and the dissolution of the Empire in the West as “barbarian” peoples became influential in the cultural and political spheres. 73 See chapter 72 of Augustine’s Enchiridon, in Philip Schaff, ed. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume III: St. Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises (Buffalo, The Christian Literature Company, 1887), 260-261. The text can also be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm. 384 spiritually rather than physically through almsgiving. Instead of making their offerings and libations in the vicinity of the corpse or near the ashes of the deceased in a columbarium, Christians made them among the living community—meaning that the poor and destitute rather than the corpse could actually benefit physically and spiritually from charity. This charity would at the same time “nourish” the future and already dead by making satisfaction to God, thus improving their state in the intermediate zone and 74 hastening their entry into heaven. If almsgiving by the living was about making satisfaction for past sins, then perhaps the living could offer them to make up for the sins of the non valdes dead. According to Brown, Augustine did not think of the intermediate zone as suffering in the same sense as making satisfaction in this world. Yet he described the intermediate zone as ignis purgatorius (“a purging fire”) where there was a “delay” for the non valdes on their eventual journey into heaven. Regardless of whether there was a “delay” or some kind of suffering from “a purging fire,” the end result was the same: the non valdes could not go directly to heaven; and there were things, such as almsgiving, that the living could do on their behalf to relieve their suffering. The “purging fire” that Augustine described was not an actual purgatory, as it would come to be defined later in medieval and early 75 modern Church councils. But, in both depictions, the connection of the living to the dead remained important. Augustine explains his own view most clearly towards the end of the Enchiridion: But these means are of profit for those who, when they lived, earned merit whereby such things could be of profit to them. For theirs is a manner of living neither so good that there is no need of these helps after death, nor so bad that they would not be of profit after death…Accordingly, when sacrifices, whether of the altar or of alms, are offered for all the baptized dead, these are thanksgivings when made for the very good, propitiatory offerings when made for the not very bad, and at least some sort of solace for the living, even if of no help to the dead, when made for the very bad. But when they are of profit, their benefit consists either in bringing a full remission of sin [satisfaction due] or at least in making the condemnation more tolerable. 74 Brown puts it eloquently as this: “Almsgiving to the poor became an irremovable part of the celebration of Christian funerals and memorial meals. And it did so, in no small part, because the state of the physically dead echoed with chill precision the state of the socially dead. Both the dead and the poor were creatures reduced to ultimate helplessness. Both depended on the generosity of others.” Brown, Ransom, 35. 75 Brown, Ransom, 104-111. 385 As Isabel Moreira points out, Augustine remained quite vague about what kind of relief the deceased person might receive as result of the living’s almsgiving. But on one point, he was crystal clear: the relief applied only to Christians, and especially to those who fell into that category of the non valdes. Others, such as pagans and the “altogether bad” 76 Christians (those whose sins destined them for hell) would obtain no help. We must not forget that North Africa, where both Augustine and Tertullian operated, remained under pagan influence and non-Roman elements. Moreover, both were converted pagans who, in addition to their learnedness and intellect, had a good understanding of how the living and the dead related to one another in the pagan context. As result, one cannot say that their views on how the living could help the dead were quintessentially “Christian.” Highly educated before their conversion, and ardent students of philosophy, including Neo-Platonism, Augustine and Tertullian fused native religiosity, philosophy, and Christianity in their theology and soteriology—a pattern that would be repeated by others in every area of the world where the Christianization process took hold. As the empire in the West disintegrated and Christianity became more of a presence in the non-Roman “barbaric” cultures, various Germanic peoples began to reshape how the religion approached preparing for the afterlife and caring for the dead in the still-morphing Christian context. Each of the cultures involved brought to Christianity its own sensibility regarding death and the afterlife; and each brought with it a unique socio-political context with which Christianity had to contend in order to attract converts; and each would add layer upon layer of changing, Christianizing concepts of helping the dead until an overarching and more common idea of the Church Suffering emerged 77 during the High Middle Ages. 76 Isabel Moreira, Heaven’s Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 34-36. The quote can be partially found in Moreira. The English translation that we both use is from Augustine, Ancient Christian Writers: Augustine, Volume 4, The Fathers of the Church, trans. Bernard M. Peebles (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1947), 461-462. 77 Reviewing Moreira’s work, John Contreni describes nicely this hodgepodge development of purgatory as Christianity passed through Germanic culture: “In an age known for its inventiveness, perhaps no medieval invention took as tortuous a path to ideation as the notion of a postmortem place where the souls of some of the departed would be cleansed by fire before entering the eternal bliss of heaven. The path to purgatory winds through many conversations—not all of them completed and not all of them known to the 386 The subsequent developments regarding suffrages for the dead and their relationship to purgatory during the early medieval period are too complex to address here, but we should address those that proved most relevant to how the church in Japan 78 expressed the Church Suffering. One of the most important developments was in how to make satisfaction prior to death: namely, the so-called “tariff penance” of the seventh and eighth centuries. Most commonly associated with Ireland, this type of penitential system was also a prominent feature on the continent. The “tariff” mentality in these still- Christianizing areas was a product of Christian, Germanic, and Celtic concerns about 79 preparing for death. “Tariff penance” in these cultures developed as an extension of making satisfaction or repayment to a wronged party in the secular and pagan world. Just as Germanic and Celtic laws required a wrongdoer to repay their injured victim, so too did the sinner have to repay God for injury committed through sin. If one murdered a person, one would have to offer some sort of restitution to the injured family under secular law. The amount of restitution was standardized according to legal custom, so each social infraction would have an appropriate amount of restitution attached to it. This “tariff” mindset was applied to the Christian realm, I would argue, in the interest of keeping Celtic and Germanic Christians stable and “meet[ing] the needs of the Christian 80 community as a whole.” speakers—that took place from early Christianity to the age of Bede, Boniface, and the Carolingians.” John J. Contreni, review of Heaven’s Purge, by Isabel Moreira, Speculum Volume 88, no. 3 (July, 2013): 834- 835. 78 For example, see Brown’s chapter entitled “Penance and the Other World in Gaul” for an excellent examination of the fusion of the theological, social, and political elements that influenced penance and satisfaction as Christianity spread beyond the boundaries of Rome. Brown, Ransom, 115-147. For an examination what purgation meant during the Merovingian period, see Moreira’s chapter “Purgation in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries” on Gregory of Tours and his more physical and medicinal interpretation of the expiation of sin. Moreira, Heaven’s Purge, 63-80. 79 Moreira, Heaven’s Purge, 134-145. As Isabel Moreira cautions us, we must not link “tariff penance” with the development of purgatory. Rather, brief comment upon “tariff penance” is necessary here because highlights the contributions on non-Romans in the making of satisfaction in life through a variety of penitential practices that would influence later developments in the sacrament of penance. 80 A very good summary of “tariffed penance” as it relates to Celtic and Germanic culture can be found in Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 Tenth Anniversary Revised Edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 239-247, with the quote on p. 243. I have omitted reference to the Egyptian monastic contributions to “tariffed penance” for simplification, but the information can be found in Brown. For a collection of penitentials with a brief introductory chapter, see 387 If there was a need to repay one’s neighbor for some wrong, the argument went, how strong would the need be to repay God for the wrong of a particular sin? What if the aggrieved party (God) could pronounce a most severe judgment and punishment in the event compensation was not given? To enable ordinary Christians in these societies to make compensation, so they would not have to face an injured and unpaid God, churchmen in these societies developed the so-called penitentials that quantified (tariffed) each individual sin and assigned a particular penance that corresponded to the injury committed. Sometimes these specific penances required a person to make satisfaction to 81 God and to the injured party if there was one. Some penances where God alone was the aggrieved could require years to complete and were a serious challenge to the penitent; and since satisfaction could only be made while a person was alive, it was necessary to correctly estimate the payment. A number of penitential practices aided the person making satisfaction, such as fasting, special fasting, disciplina (self-flagellation), various extreme mortifications, and “pilgrimages” (meaning exile for a period of time). Out of all these ways of making satisfaction in this life, disciplina was especially popular in the Irish context and would be something that the rest of the Church elsewhere, Japan included, would take up as a normative penitential practice. By the sixth century, non-Roman cultures also began influencing how western Christians prepared for the moment of death and cared for the already dead. In Merovingian Gaul, for example, a number of rites were developed to help the non valdes reduce the temporal penalties of their sins. For the expiation of sins prior to death, Caesarius of Arles (468/470 – 542) advocated the Anointing of the Sick (later becoming a sacrament in the early medieval period) in response to pagan magic and the performance of deathbed confession and penance. The sixth-century Gallican church, and perhaps John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the principal libri poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 81 For example the Irish Canons (Canones Hibernenses, ca. 675), pronounces this penance in the case of somebody killing a close relative: “The penance of a parricide is fourteen years, or half as long if [he commits the deed] on account of ignorance, on bread and water and with satisfaction.” Satisfaction here means repayment not to God but to the surviving relative. See McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 118. Another example making restitution to both God and the injured party can be found in the Penitential of Cummean (ca. 650): “He who by a blow in a quarrel renders a man incapacitated or maimed shall take care of [the injured man’s] medical expenses and shall make good the damages for the injury and shall do his work until he is healed and do penance for half a year [likely by fasting on bread and water].” McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 107. 388 Caesarius himself, also produced a burial ritual in which prayers said over the body would later be “basic” for subsequent Gallican and Frankish services. One of the prayers, the Pio recordationis affectu, explicitly calls for the remission (expiation) of the deceased’s sins: In the pious activity of remembrance, most dear brethren, let us commemorate our dear sister N. [the person’s name], whom the Lord has called from the temptations of this world, begging the mercy of our God, so that he himself may deign to grant her a quiet and pleasant dwelling; that he may remit all the offenses of momentary thoughtlessness [italics mine]; that having been granted the grace of full indulgence for whatsoever her own wandering in this world brought about, he may in his ineffable piety and goodness compensate her in full; through our Lord 82 Jesus Christ his son. Similar developments occurred in Visigothic Spain and in Ireland, particularly in terms of deathbed penance, rites for the sick, and the commemoration of the dead with the goal of aiding them in the afterlife. Such rites emphasized penitential rites for the passage of death and spiritual purification in this life and the afterlife through “prayers, alms, and commemorative masses.” These developments, which occurred in still Christianizing cultures through the input and influence of non-Christian elements, would form the basis of rites concerning death during the famed Carolingian Reforms of the ninth century. As Paxton argues, the Carolingian practices were based upon “the innovations and crosscurrents of the preceding centuries would become the foundation of a unified 83 response to death and dying for the Latin Middle Ages.” We must keep in mind that the aforementioned developments in penance and caring for the dead occurred in the early Middle Ages and prior to the full development of purgatory as a concept. It was only in the high Middle Ages, after the scholastic masters had worked out the logic of the concept, that the living became more concerned with their role in helping the dead. Theologians, such as Peter Lombard (c. 1096-1160), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and Bonaventure (1221-1274) together helped advance a 82 Paxton, Christianizing Death, 47-69, with the Pio on p. 53. 83 Paxton, Christianizing Death, 17; 69-91. For example, two mass formulas for the dead in the Verona Sacramentary (ca. 600) were to be said for people who had desired penance in this life but could not perform it. 389 systematic theory of purgatory in which the suffrages and merits of the living could serve 84 as satisfaction for those in the “purging fire.” The one theologian who, perhaps more than any other, connects the pious work of suffrages on the part of the living with the benefits of the dead as a mutually beneficial act is Thomas of Aquinas (1225-1274). The fullest articulation of his thought on how the living and the dead interact can be found in the Supplement to the Summa Theologica (1265-1274). This addendum to the main work, it should be noted, did not come from Thomas’s own hand, but those of his students and disciples. The work was, however, based upon his thought and earlier writings. Even if the Supplement is not, in the strictest sense, the work of Aquinas himself later Churchmen looked on it as though it was. Because of this provenance, the Supplement exerted enormous influence on how Catholics thought about purgatory and engaged in praxis related to it down through the ages. The Supplement addresses many thirteenth-century concerns about purgatory itself, but it is Article 71 that specifically ruminates upon the efficacy of suffrages performed by the living for the dead. Jacques Le Goff, in his discussion of Article 71, offers a convenient summary of Aquinas’s solutions to issues concerning suffrages. Here, I will list only those that are important for our upcoming discussion of purgatory in the Japanese context. Quotations from the actual Supplement are included as needed: 1. Suffrages can profit another as a result of the unity of the Communion of Saints (sanctorum communio) provided that the person receiving suffrages has already obtained the path to eternal life [the absolution of sins] 2. Suffrages can be extended from the living to the dead because charity “... Moreover, the dead live in the memory of the living: wherefore the intention of the living can be directed to them.” 3. Suffrages on the part of sinners are effective since they are “representative of the whole Church.” 4. Suffrages on the part of the living may not only expiate the penalties of the dead, but, simultaneously, they are acts of merit which the living accrue through charity. 84 Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 243; 247-249; 254. 390 5. Though there is some uncertainty regarding whether or not suffrages profit the dammed, “it is safer to say simply that suffrages profit not the damned, nor does the Church intend to pray for them…” 6. The suffrages profit those in purgatory since “the punishment of purgatory is intended to supplement the satisfaction which was not fully completed in the body… the works of one person can avail for another's satisfaction, whether the latter be living or dead….” 8. Suffrages cannot be applied to the saints because they need no assistance. 9. Prayers of the Church, the sacrifice of the altar, and alms all profit the dead. 10. Indulgences aid souls in purgatory since the Church can transfer common merits (these being much greater than individual merits), upon which indulgences are based, from the living to the dead. 11. That the rite of burial profits the dead, though somewhat indirectly: “It profits the dead in so far as one bears the dead in mind and prays for them through looking on their burial place, wherefore a “monument” takes its name from remembrance…” 12. That suffrages offered to one deceased person are more profitable than those which are general suffrages. 13. That suffrages offered for several are not as much value as if they had been offered for each in particular. 14. That general suffrages do avail those for whom special suffrages are not offered. Much of the above forms the basis for the ways in which the Church Suffering operated in Japan and how the living cared for their dead there. Though the Jesuits did not specifically refer to Aquinas’s thoughts on purgatory, much of his statements had, by the time of Trent, been assumed as part of Catholic soteriology. Having examined the inner-workings of suffrages, let us now look at a relatively new and popular mode of helping the dead: the indulgence. The full development of indulgences in the late medieval period coincides with the idea of purgatory as eventually 85 articulated at the Council of Trent. And like purgatory, the development of indulgences 85 Innocent IV (c.1195-1254) issued a pontifical definition of Purgatory in 1254, thus giving some official credence to the idea that it was essentially a place of purification by fire. This purgation would burn off the 391 was rooted in the concepts of performing penance and making satisfaction to God. The modern definition of indulgences—which, as Swanson notes, “would have been fully accepted among medieval Catholics”—stresses this aspect: The doctrine and practice of indulgences in the Church are closely linked to the effects of the sacrament of Penance…‘An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.’ ‘An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin.’ Indulgences may be applied to the 86 living or the dead. The term indulgence (indulgentia) to indicate these kinds of dispensations from satisfaction on earth or in purgatory only became common in the twelfth century; and it must be said that the term tends to obscure the connection to penance and satisfaction. The very first indulgences offered by the Church used the terms “remissiones,” “absolutions,” or “relaxations,” to indicate that it would “let up” on the length of those 87 penitential activities that a person had to perform after confessing. If we recall the Celtic and Germanic penitentials from the last section, some penances could be quite severe and last over a decade. Not everyone could carry out their penance to completion, penances that the soul did not complete before death (the remaining satisfaction) as well as any venial sins not repented. Another affirmation was put forth by the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. 86 For Swanson’s quote, see R.N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 8. For the current definition of indulgences see section 1471 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P4G.HTM In addition, section 1472 states: “To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.” 87 Robert W. Shaffern, The Penitents’ Treasure: Indulgences in Latin Christendom, 1175-1375 (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2007), 45. The term indulgence actually came from later Roman law in which an emperor would forgive criminal penalties in celebration of Easter. 392 and, in the “tariffed penance” system, it was reasonable to develop a safety valve for long penances whereby a person could have some of the penance remitted. While the system of indulgences emerged in conjunction with a new kind of sacramental penance and the concept of purgatory, we can briefly explain their earlier evolution. If we recall the earlier penitential system and the calculated forms of penance and satisfaction typified in the early medieval penitentials, the actual satisfaction due to God by a penitent could last many years, in proportion with the severity of the sin. This “mathematics of punishment,” as Swanson aptly calls the “tariffed” penance system, could lead quickly to the accumulation of a punishment that might be impossible to fulfill temporally. One way out of this dilemma for those in purgatory, as we have seen, was through a transfer of satisfaction (as merit) from the temporal to the eternal. Another solution would be to remit the temporal punishment as a result of some other action. In this way, the “mathematics of punishment” became a bit more manageable, allowing sinners to 88 actually and feasibly perform the penance. This remission of punishment could be quantifiable—through a “bartering principle” under which the indulgence could generate a sufficient amount of merit to repay the debt of satisfaction. Thus, we see a “mathematics of commutation” in operation that had a subduing effect on the 89 “mathematics of punishment.” Because indulgences operated on this kind of “bartering principle,” they were not simply remissions of penalties or “get out of sin free cards,” as is commonly thought today. As the product of acts of merit, they necessarily involved something pious and good. They also, as we shall see, involved the entire Church community. Robert Shaffern helpfully illustrates these points by framing them within the terms “Labor et Devotio Penitentis” and “Communio Suffragiorum.” The “labor and penitential devotion” aspect of the indulgence denoted by the first term could take many forms, but the main idea was that an “act of charity which the indulgence enjoined was an outward sign of the inner 88 I have purposefully left out a discussion on sacramental penance for space, though this is important to the concept of indulgences. 89 Swanson, Indulgences, 10-11. See also Schaffer, Penitents’ Treasure, 37-44 for the relationship to penitentials. 393 renewal brought about by an infusion of grace through the sacrament of penance.” The 90 pious work, at least initially and ideally, would be of service to the wider Church. Personal acts of piety also included almsgiving on a small scale, such as donations to lepers. Various types of personal devotion were also requirements for indulgences. These could have included hearing sermons and masses, praying the rosary, saying certain prayers at certain times, obtaining catechetical instruction, participating in church 91 services or the activities of a confraternity, or visiting a saint’s shrine. The other half of Shaffern’s schema, the “communio suffragiorum,” highlights the unity of all three churches (Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant) in terms of the generation of merit through pious acts. This union represented the foundation upon which the Church could grant indulgences to the living as well as apply them to the dead. In short, Christ (through suffering) and the saints (through pious acts) created an inexhaustible supply of merit in a kind of storehouse known as the “Treasury of Merit” (thesaurus ecclesiae; literally “treasury of the church”). As the authority over the living—the only members of the Communion of Saints actually able to generate merit— the Church on Earth was the mechanism through which this transfer of merit could occur, typically through the granting of indulgences. As Shaffern colorfully describes it: “Just as a sound right arm dressed the wounds of a traumatized left, so did the saints, martyrs, Blessed Mother and Christ Himself pay off the debt of sin for a confessed and contrite 92 penitent in the form of indulgences.” To understand how the application of indulgences to the dead work, we must keep in mind that indulgences, both for the living and the dead, are rooted in two things: 90 See Shaffern’s essay “Medieval Theology of Indulgences” R.N. Swanson, ed., Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 14-28. We also tend to forget that the Crusade was, in many respects, a pilgrimage, one that the penitent would likely die on. Also, any crusading indulgence would be null and void if the penitent did not undertake it with the appropriate spiritual dispositions and actions. 91 Shaffern, Penitents’ Treasury, 63-69. Thomas Aquinas himself later became a site for obtaining indulgences when he was canonized in 1323. John’s XXII’s (1316-1334) indulgence reads: “So that a multitude of Christians may more ardently and profitably visit Thomas’s venerable tomb, and that the feast of that confessor may be celebrated with joy, we, by the mercy of omnipotent God and by the authority of His saints and apostles Peter and Paul, remit one year and forty days of enjoined penance to all truly penitent and confessed, who shall make visitation there seeking Thomas’s suffrages on the anniversary of the feast; and to pilgrims who visit the said tomb within seven days immediately following the feast in subsequent years, one hundred days of enjoined penance.” 92 Shaffern, in Swanson, Promissory Notes, 21. 394 penance and care for the dead. Both these things are of direct concern for us since they were extremely popular in the Japanese church. In the penitential sense, indulgences were opportunities for the living to perform charity as a way to remove the temporal penalty assessed on sin. As charity, an indulgence was supposed to provide real benefits in the here and now: to those in need (alms, building projects, etc.), to the local Christian community, and to the universal Church. They thus linked a person’s future dead self (all but guaranteed to be in the Church Suffering) to the living community now (the Church Militant). The pious act needed for an indulgence, whether it was a devotion, pilgrimage, or some other act, was indeed supposed to be a sort of temporal penalty. In terms of care for the dead, the reduction of a deceased person’s “time” in purgatory would be similar to that of standard suffrages. Instead of offering prayers and masses, the obtaining (living) party of the indulgence paid a penalty of loss (loss of time, money, etc.) that was deemed sufficient for its obtainment by the issuing party (the Church). The results of the indulgence were then applied, via the charity of the (living) obtaining party, to the recipient (a dead person in purgatory). In other words, the one who obtained the indulgence for the dead person forsook his or her own remission of temporal penalty in favor of the remission of penalty for someone else. This was, of course, a splendid act of charity. The indulgence, applied to the dead, was then an additional way in which the two realms of Christians, the living and the dead, could interact. Pity, hope, and charity for a dead person thus prompted a person in the Church Militant to perform some deed for the material or spiritual aid of the living community. Although the theology and practice of indulgences developed in the context of a near fully-Christianized Europe, they appealed to many different cultures when Catholicism spread beyond is original confines. Indulgences became extremely popular in the New World in the century or so after the introduction of Christianity, particularly with burial societies and other confraternities. Indulgences gave indigenous and culturally mixed peoples there new ways to think about and care for their loved ones in the afterlife. Similarly, indulgences were popular in China during Jesuit missionary activity there in 93 the seventeenth century. In Japan, as we shall see, indulgences were especially popular because they maintained close links between the living and the dead. As we have argued, 93 Menegon, Ancestors, 256-258. 395 Buddhism already had a mechanism for this, through the transfer of merit; Christianity, for its part, pursued something remarkably similar to the Buddhist concept of merit transference through suffrages and indulgences. Both religions provided the laity with compelling and effective means with which they could genuinely care for their dead. The need to prepare for an afterlife and care for the dead in some fashion was a near universal trait of premodern peoples. To be sure, there was and still are a wide variety of ways to accomplish these two things, but the overarching anxieties about death that drove them arguably defined the human condition. Typically, societies perform a combination of rites of separation and rites of incorporation that first exclude the dead from the living (usually physically) and then reinclude them (usually spiritually) in the community. For universal religions such as Buddhism and Christianity, these death needs absolutely had to be addressed in any society where the religion hoped to take hold. Both religions adapted core tenets regarding death, preparing for the afterlife, and caring for the dead to whichever cultures they spread. Naturally, the religions themselves would not remain unaffected by contact with these differing death needs, and they incorporated and addressed new concerns about the dead, layer upon layer, with specific mechanisms that united the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. Both religions maintained a sort of unified realm, which was frequently important to indigenous religiosity, where the living and the dead affected one another. Buddhism, as the older religion, had to struggle first with the death needs of vastly different cultures than the one in which it originated. If the Buddha had seemingly created a new movement that avoided attachment to death needs—whereby people prepared for their own death by reaching enlightenment, completing the samsaric cycle, and thus obviating community concern over their transitory earthly remains—in fact this lack of concern drew ire in the Indic context and the religion reacted accordingly and appropriately. In its Mahayana forms, Buddhism reinforced death needs for the living and the dead to be of one community, developing the principles of merit transfer which enabled family members to take care of their loved ones in the afterlife if need be. There was no harm in being on the safe side by generating and then transferring merit to a dead person since karmic consequence would not let it go to waste; if the dead person to whom the merit was transferred no longer needed it, the person offering the merit would benefit 396 from anyway. In this way, the dead, by the very condition of being dead, helped the living by prompting them to generate merit for their own samsaric betterment. Occasionally, the dead could even appear as ghosts requesting merit, which, generation upon generation, would benefit both the dead and the living involved in the process. As Buddhism moved out of the Indic context and into the vastly different cultural and religious landscapes of China and Japan, it adapted to the death needs of these cultures with great effectiveness. Even though Buddhism came under fire in China for its anti-Confucian attributes, the religion provided an effective means to take care of one’s filial duties in a new way with a new cosmic significance. Merit transfer ensured the peaceful rest of loved ones and helped prevent them from becoming harmful entities that could plague the living. Yet, Buddhism’s ability to care for the dead arguably reached something of an apogee in medieval Japan from the thirteenth century when where anxieties about death raged. After all, this was the age of the mappō (Final Law) when a deceased person could use all the karmic help they could get. Generating merit during the preparation for one’s own death was paramount in this context. Burial groups like Genshin’s Twenty-Five Samādhi Society, or yūzū nenbutsu activities, could provide a measure of reassurance, since they promoted a mutual bond between members, both living and dead. By the time Christianity arrived in Japan during the sixteenth century, the Japanese expected that they should be able to prepare for death through various mechanisms that would generate merit; and, beyond this, they expected to be able to transfer that merit to the dead in order to aid them in achieving a better samsaric state. The Japanese also viewed the realm of the living and the dead as fused to some extent. Fortunately for Christianity, its own experience of passing through and incorporating other cultures eminently prepared it to meet these needs. Like Buddhism before it, Christianity adapted itself to the death needs of various different cultures. Wherever it went in the premodern period, Christianity responded to the seemingly universal human aspiration to maintain contact with and care for the dead in some fashion. As it evolved out of its Jewish background, passing through Roman, Celtic, and various Germanic cultures—all of which had their distinct ways of dealing with the dead— Christianity developed particularly effective mechanisms that enabled all who encountered the religion to help the dead. This occurred over many centuries, 397 culminating in the concept of purgatory and that practice of indulgences in the Late Middle Ages. However, one thread remained common in all times and across all of the cultures that the religion passed through and incorporated: the need to make satisfaction to God for sins committed during this lifetime. Both the living and the dead (in purgatory) needed to make satisfaction for their sins. Under this precept, people living on the earth were obliged to prepare for their own afterlife by making satisfaction in the here and now so that they would not have to do so after death and thus risk leaving unpaid compensation owed to God. All penitential activity for one’s self was geared towards this end. In this way, the living’s concern for performing satisfaction now was a concern for their own future dead selves. Since most Christians were the non valdes, and did not deserve either heaven or hell, they could expect in death to be delivered to what was called “the intermediate zone” in the early centuries and then “purgatory” from the High Middle Ages on. Since this was place in between heaven and hell that existed outside of physical time, what Christians did in this life, in terms of penance, instantaneously affected their eternal fate outside the material and temporal universe. Because humans live and think temporally, purgatory necessarily had to be defined in terms of “temporal” penalty even though it existed outside of time. What one did now affected one’s eternal state in the purgatory after death. In other words, any sin for which a person failed to do penance in the present life immediately intensified their penalty in purgatory that would “delay” their entrance into heaven. Among the already dead—that is, those members of the community who had crossed the permeable boundary between the living and the dead—many still owed God something for the sins they had committed while still alive. Caring for the dead by making satisfaction for them could be considered a highly developed rite of incorporation for Christian communities because it acknowledged that the dead were members of the Christian community and people in need of help from the living. Furthermore, due to the coeternal nature of the Communion of Saints, the dead needed immediate help in reducing their temporal penalty. Only the living could help them because the already dead had absolutely no means of reducing their temporal penalty in purgatory. Thus it was extraordinarily important for the living to help their relatives, or the dead in general, in order to reduce the temporal penalty they owed to God. This immediacy between the 398 living and the dead placed them in an intimate relationship; and much of Christian praxis, such as suffrages, devotions, masses for the dead, transfers of merit, and ultimately indulgences all facilitated this relationship since the living could expiate some or all of the temporal penalty their dead loved ones owed. In a nearly fully Christianized Europe, only the clergy and educated Christians would have understood the theological intricacies of and connections between making satisfaction, purgatory, and the Communion of Saints. Still, ordinary people in different Christianizing cultures throughout the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages did things, such as offering suffrages, that they thought to be helpful for their loved ones who had “fallen asleep.” As the religion spread beyond the confines of the Mediterranean and into vastly different cultures, many of which had very different ideas about how to prepare for the afterlife and take care of the dead, missionaries were compelled to transmit both the theology and the praxis for these two important facets of the new religion. For Japan, as we will see in the next chapters, foreign and native advocates accomplished this distinctly and successfully through catechetical works and everyday community praxis. 399 CHAPTER VIII THE TEACHING OF PURGATORY ON KYUSHU As discussed at length in the previous section, there existed in Japanese religiosity by the sixteenth century numerous ways in which the living and the dead could interact with one another. The two realms had never been entirely separate in Japan, and the arrival of Buddhism gave living Japanese new and compelling mechanisms with which to memorialize and help those already dead. On the other side of the Eurasian landmass, Christianity likewise reinforced interaction between the living and the dead in each society that it encountered. As the religion in that part of the world passed through many different cultures, it developed a wide variety of mechanisms with which the living could care for the dead. If both Buddhism and Christianity had not developed convincing ways of maintaining contact with and caring for the dead, I would argue, they would have been far less successful in transplanting themselves into new and foreign cultures. Both religions simultaneously incorporated native sensibilities of caring for the dead while altering those sensibilities to their own soteriological ends. Native traditions were at once enduring while the universal religions were malleable. The combined strands produced new ways in thinking about the dead and caring for them in a given society while preserving the expectation that the living and dead were still one community. Like other societies that underwent the Christianization process, the Church on Kyushu needed to maintain important preexisting links between these two realms whereby the living could affect the state of the dead. Buddhism had been extraordinarily successful at this, and Christianity, as a new religion, needed to preserve if not strengthen the permeable barrier between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. It had to introduce its own rites of separation and, more importantly, inclusion, so that death would not rupture community entirely. Fortunately for the religious and social expectations of the Japanese on Kyushu, the Catholic Church could accomplish this by adapting the many elements of its preexisting praxis focused on purgatory. At the prompting of Japanese Christians, who were extraordinarily receptive—one might even say 400 demanding—of Catholic mechanisms for preparing for death and caring for the dead, much praxis in the church on Kyushu focused upon the Church Suffering. Purgatory for Japanese Christians was not so much a theoretical realm of the afterlife. Rather, it was a lived experience, both individually and communally, acted out in penitential practices, devotional activity, the performance of suffrages, and the gaining of indulgences. Through these mechanisms, Japanese Christians not only took care of their dead loved ones and coreligionists in the Church Suffering but also cared for their “future dead selves” in purgatory by making satisfaction or gaining merit in the here and now. This “praxis of purgatory,” as I call it, gave Japanese Christians a palpable and immediate sense of the Church Suffering through their own agency over the afterlife while still in the Church Militant. Purgatory awaited all but the most extraordinary Christians (the later Japanese martyrs), and it was to be a state of unimaginable suffering. Since no individual could know the length or intensity of suffering that awaited them in purgatory—that knowledge was a prerogative of divine justice—the praxis of purgatory was instrumental in reducing anxiety about this spiritual truth for Japanese Christians. In exploring this very important aspect of the Christianization process (how Christianity incorporated the dead), we will concentrate on the following ways in which the Church Suffering overlapped with the Church Militant on Kyushu: 1. How the teaching of purgatory, a Christian state of the afterlife in which the dead could be affected by the living, was transmitted from foreign advocate to native advocate and then to the laity at large; 2. How Japanese-language catechetical texts connected the concepts of the temporal penalty of sin, the making of satisfaction, and the gaining of merit with the state of purgatory; 3. How these same catechetical texts taught “the praxis of purgatory,” that is the ways in which Japanese Christians could affect the Church Suffering for themselves and others with their actions here on earth; 4. The popularity of indulgences among Japanese Christians in order to reduce temporal penalties in purgatory; 5. How the community cared for the dead through general suffrages; and 6. The importance of confraternities in gaining and transferring merit among their members both living and dead. Although scholars have long noted the enthusiasm with which Japanese Christians engaged in penitential and devotional activities, none have explored Japanese-language 401 catechetical materials in sufficient depth to connect them to the larger issue of caring for the dead in purgatory. For example, Junhyoung Michael Shin has argued effectively that disciplina (self-flagellation) was popular among the Japanese because such ascetic activity was already familiar due to its presence in native religiosity. He rightly states that the rigorous ascetic practices of Shugendō and Jōdo Shinshū had already “equipped the Japanese with the notions of negating bodily values, cleansing accumulated sin through asceticism, and the even more drastic idea that death could serve as a transit to blessed 1 states…” This led Japanese Christians to empathize with the teachings on the Passion, argues Shin, thereby connecting individual suffering through mortification to the suffering of Jesus as a savior-type figure. Likewise, in a recent article, James Fujitani has emphasized the importance of alms, mortification (mostly disciplina), and fasting (something too difficult for poorer Christians) as products of negotiation between Japanese Christians and the missionaries to satisfy desires for engagement of penitential activity. These practices were by no means imposed upon Kyushuans from above, but rather issued from the ordinary laity. Fujitani, however, casts demand for these practices in a more syncretistic light, emphasizing the superficialities between Christian and Shugendō ascetic practices. He does acknowledge that certain Shugendō terms to describe Christian satisfaction, such as tsugunai (defined as “retribution”), “[do] not reflect a syncretism of doctrine or theology, but something more indirect, concerning the underlying logic of ritual: assumptions about how sin functioned, what penalties should be expected for wrong-doing, and what 2 rewards should be expected for proper expiation.” Ikuo Higashibaba has analyzed Japanese-language catechetical texts alongside Japanese Christian practice, though his general interpretation is one of syncretism. Instead seeing how penitential and devotional activities were extremely attractive mechanism with which people could lessen suffering in the next life, he sees them as being used mainly for “this worldly-benefits” (two things that were not necessarily 1 Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The Passion and Flagellation in Sixteenth-Century Japan” Renaissance and Reformation 36, No. 2 (Spring, 2013), 29. See recent monograph also has much of the same information. Junhyoung Michael Shin, The Jesuits, Images, and Devotional Practices in China and Japan, 1549-1644 (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2017), 137-164. 2 James Fujitani, “Penance in the Jesuit Mission to Japan, 1549-1562,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 67, No.2 April, 2016): 318. 402 mutually exclusive in Catholicism anyway). For example, he attributes Japanese Christian attempts to gain merit to belief in its “mysterious power” (how he defines kuriki) something akin to what a shugenja (a master of Shugendō; a yamabushi) achieves. To be sure, Japanese Christians used prayer and sacramentals to perform exorcisms and healing, but in terms of gaining merit and making satisfaction, much church practice involving penance and devotion was clearly directed towards the afterlife. In fact, Higashibaba claims that, as foreign religions, both Buddhism and Christianity “took root and grew in the Japanese cultural context by responding to people’s religious 3 expectations concerning the mysterious power of its rituals.” In attempting to show that Christian penance was merely an extension of folk practices for the gaining of this- worldly “mysterious power,” Higashiaba has ignored the soteriological aspects of entire system of contrition, confession, satisfaction, and merit that undergirded Christian penitential and devotional activities. According to Higashibaba’s interpretations, Christians did not really do these practices to prepare themselves for death or in order to help their dead. Though Japanese Christians clearly prayed for this-worldly benefits, such as rain during a time of drought, so too did Christians the world over all throughout the premodern period. Instead of reflecting the influence of “folk religion,” penitential practice, merit accumulation, and merit transfer all had much more to do with the influence of Buddhism and its emphasis on the afterlife. What is missing in previous analyses of Japanese Christian penitential and devotional practices is how they relate to purgatory, the making of satisfaction, the gaining and transfer of merit, and care for the dead. Purgatory, as a third state of the Christian afterlife, was the crucial point of connection between Japanese Christian belief in salvation after death (most basically, a better afterlife) and the actual praxis of the church on Kyushu. Much like the dichotomy of tariki “other power” and jiriki “self- power” present in many Buddhist schools of thought, purgatory, as connected to the praxis of the church, gave Christians individually and communally a certain amount of jiriki in their own quest for salvation. While salvation was only possible through the merit won by Christ (tariki in our comparison), according to Catholic doctrine, Christ’s merit also opened the door for individual actions in the form of making satisfaction for 3 Higashibaba, Christianity, 102; 109-125. 403 sins and gaining merit (the jiriki component in our comparison). These latter two activities enabled people to reduce suffering after death in purgatory or spiritual rewards 4 (thought of as grace, life everlasting, and “increase in glory”). Christ, as the God-man, enabled salvation from hell; human efforts at satisfaction and merit enabled reduction of suffering in purgatory. These two aspects of Catholic soteriology, combined in the praxis of purgatory, were quite appealing to Kyushuans because it united individual effort with reliance upon a higher power to achieve a better afterlife. Indeed, the praxis of purgatory even transcended death, as individual efforts of the living to care for their dead could result directly in a reduction of their suffering in purgatory. Only through careful examination of Japanese-language catechetical materials can we see how the making of satisfaction through penance, the acquisition of merit, and the alleviation of suffering purgatory, as a state between hell and heaven, intertwined in church praxis on Kyushu. Penitential and devotional practices not only enabled Christians to prepare for their death by reducing suffering in purgatory, but enabled them to relieve the intense suffering that deceased members of the community were presently experiencing. With funerals being the main Christian rite of separation, the praxis of purgatory was thus the main rite of inclusion that kept the dead integrated into the community of the living, as both realms pursued the common goal of gaining entrance into heaven. Since purgatory is the key concept in making this all possible, we must first examine just how, as a theological concept, it might have been introduced to Japan through preaching and catechetical texts. The Earliest Teachings on Purgatory Because the Jesuits make little reference as to exactly how and what catechists taught about the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, we must look to other sources for clues as to how the concept might have reached ordinary Christians. In particular, we do not know exactly how Japanese lay catechists explained purgatory to ordinary or illiterate 4 See the section “Objects of Merit” in the entry for “Merit” in the Catholic Encyclopedia. These “objects” of merit were affirmed by the Council of Trent (Canon XXXII of Session VI). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm. 404 Christians since this occurred orally. In terms of teaching the doctrine to more educated Japanese Christians such as native advocates and other church leaders, however, we are fortunate to have access to a number of catechetical works and pastoral manuals that give us much insight into this important aspect of Japanese Christian religiosity. Since native advocates were the primary “on the ground” teachers of both Catholic doctrine and praxis, we can reasonably assume that they applied official missionary teaching on purgatory (as initially explained by foreign advocates) in their discussions of the afterlife with the laity. This “official” seminarian and catechetical teaching on purgatory, as transmitted by Japanese advocates, made a significant impact on how Japanese Christians practiced their faith by focusing penitential and devotional practices (both individually and communally) for the care of souls in purgatory. Although purgatory was an important concept in the Catholic version of the afterlife, it seems that the Jesuits initially put much more emphasis on first explicating the eternal nature of heaven and hell. Indeed, neither the Myōtei Dialogues nor Valignano’s catechism mention the intricacies of purgatory nor its importance in the Catholic doctrine of the salvific process (soteriology). And many of the Jesuit letters highlight the preaching of heaven and hell rather than discussing the preaching of purgatory. So why was there such a lack of emphasis on the preaching of purgatory in the Jesuit letters? Here, I offer an answer: Because they were eternal, neither heaven nor hell could be “experienced” in this life. Only purgatory could be “experienced” on earth through penitential and devotional activities that emphasized suffering (mortification, fasting). As a result, purgatory was not so much taught as it was practiced through such acts as disciplina and such mechanisms as suffrages and indulgences. By performing penitential and devotional acts (sometimes for a dead loved one), Japanese Christians were “experiencing” purgatory in this life since they were exchanging suffering in the here and now for a reduction of suffering in the next. I call this experience of purgatory through the ritual life of the Christian community “the praxis of purgatory.” In addition, the eternal nature of heaven and hell was most at odds with native Japanese sensibilities regarding the samsaric cycle (nothing was truly eternal, though kalpas were enormous lengths of time). An evil person might experience millions of years of intense suffering in hell but would eventually make their way out of it through 405 rebirth. Therefore, the eternal nature of Christian heaven and hell had to be explained much more carefully and thoroughly. The transitory nature of purgatory already made sense to the Japanese, particularly within the context of the accumulation and transference of merit. In other words, the conceptual capacity for purgatory was already present in Japan via Buddhism; purgatory just needed to be put into practice in the Catholic mode through mortification, suffrages, and indulgences. Nevertheless, we should begin by examining the few explicit references to purgatory that can be found in the Jesuit letters. The first Jesuit reference to purgatory in the context of Japanese religiosity comes to us from Xavier in 1552 after he gained some familiarity (however imperfect) with the culture and country. In a letter to Ignatius from Cochin, Xavier describes some of the challenges, both physical and spiritual, that future missionaries will have in Japan. In a word of warning, he notes what will happen if the missionaries criticize the various Buddhist sects and try to teach of the eternal nature of hell: What, then, will happen when they [future missionaries] speak ill of all their sects and their open vices, and especially when they say that those who go to hell cannot be helped? Many will become furious when they hear this about hell, that there is no remedy for it. Others will say that we know nothing, since we cannot 5 rescue souls from hell. They have no knowledge of purgatory. It seems that Xavier did not see the superficial similarities between the non-eternal nature of suffering in Buddhism through the samsaric cycle and the non-eternal nature of the purification in purgatory. If he did, then it seems he thought the two to be qualitatively different (which they are). In any case, our point here is that Xavier gives no indication that purgatory was taught as part of the Jesuits’ initial proselytization efforts. He must have probed the issue to some extent, asking muddled questions through his translator Anjirō, but there is no evidence from his letters that he even tried to broach the subject on a place of purification in Christianity. Instead, he preferred to press the issue of the eternity of heaven and hell. For twelve years following Xavier’s departure from Japan, the Jesuits did not record any instances of the teaching of purgatory in their letters. However, the mission, 5 Xavier to Ignatius, from Cochin, January 29 1552. Costelloe, Letters, 345-346. Also MHJ II, 321. Xavier, EXII, , 289. 406 under the direction of Cosme de Torres during this time, did make efforts to teach the doctrine to a small but growing Japanese Christian community. This is evident in a 1563 reference by Fróis to purgatory being a part of actual catechesis. Detailing the preparation of Ōmura Sumitada’s conversion earlier that year, Fróis’s letter provides a valuable glimpse of how the doctrine might have been introduced in preaching or face-to-face conversations. Though missionaries made much more of push to convert Sumitada due to his position atop the social hierarchy of the warrior class, the account of his catechesis on purgatory could have easily been replicated among potential converts who were commoners. Such teaching typically involved a standard question and answer format, with the potential convert asking the advocate for more details on specific beliefs or practices. According to Fróis, Sumitada (later Dom Bartolomeu) would frequently come to the Jesuits to ask questions about the faith, inquiring about this and that aspect of the afterlife: …and because he was liking the things of God, he remained until the end of the doctrine [catechesis] for children, which was said after mass, and… in order to have knowledge of the mysteries of the mass, and of the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, he was [there] one night for three hours until close to five, the brother Juán Fernandez in order to declare to him and he was extremely glad to hear and to understand. Another time, he called him [Fernandez] close to the middle of the night to his house, and he was with him until almost the morning, asking him many quesitions of divers things of the faith, saying that it was necessary that he know them, in order to teach the lords who who are always with him and also in order to respond to the gentile Bonzes, when they asked him of these things: and after that, he was informed by the irmão very minutely about the 6 penalties of purgatory, and in which they are distinguished from those of hell... This texts shows us a number of things regarding the teaching and dissemination of the doctrine of purgatory in the early mission. First, potential converts were intensely interested in the states of the Christian afterlife. This should not be surprising, given the focus that some Buddhist sects had on the dangers of falling into one of many different hells or achieving better rebirth in the Pure Land. Secondly, we see that the missionaries, even a foreign one who had an excellent though non-native grasp of the language, could effectively preach and discuss the concept of purgatory in some detail. Purgatory as a concept, in its simplest form as an intermediate place of purification, is one of the easier 6 Fróis to the Brothers of Europe, from Umbra, Nov. 14 1567. Cartas, 132; Cartas 1575, 158v. 407 elements of Catholic theology to explain. Teaching the doctrine at a basic level would have occurred in simple but effective language that made use of Japanese terms for heaven and hell to describe contrasting states of the afterlife. Thirdly, we see that Sumitada wanted to know details of the full scope of the Christian afterlife in order to teach his fellow bushi (warriors) about the religion. Even though he was not a convert at this point, Sumitada’s interest in the new religion was palpable and would have prompted those in his circle to inquire about it. To satisfy these inquiring minds, the daimyo needed to know the basics about the Christian afterlife and how it differed from that of Buddhism. In effect, Sumitada’s inquiries not only reflected his own curiosity about the Christian afterlife but that of his immediate circle. One of most important points in the above exchange is that Sumitada wanted to know how to respond to criticisms of Christianity coming from educated Buddhist monks within his domain. The easiest and most consistent criticism involved denunciation of the Christian belief in the eternal nature of hell. Though Buddhist hells could near eternity in terms of time spans (billions and billions of years), there was always an apparatus available to the living (the sangha) to aid the poor unfortunate beings stuck in one of the many hells. The Christian idea of an eternal hell ran completely counter to this and rendered one state of the afterlife beyond all human influence. This would have been completely appalling to Buddhists of the age since so much praxis was geared either toward the generation of merit to achieve a better rebirth or toward the transference of merit to improve the lot of the already dead. The answer to Buddhist critiques about the eternal nature of Christian hell was purgatory. Sumitada could tell his naysayers that there was in fact an intermediate state in the Christian afterlife, somewhere between the two eternals of heaven and hell, that was not permanent and where dead people could be helped by the living. One could be less than perfect and still have hope for a positive afterlife (heaven) and still receive help from one’s living relatives and the rest of the community in the form of the Church. Although Sumitada was a high-profile convert, one could easily imagine the very same critique about the Christian afterlife playing out among the lower classes. Local Buddhist clergy, potential converts, and the families of converts all would have been skeptical of the eternal nature of hell. Armed with the idea of purgatory, a state after death where the “not 408 altogether good” would go and progress to heaven with the help of the living, Japanese Christians had a very good answer to one of the most frequent objections to their religion. Apart from Fróis’s one reference, there is no other mention of missionaries explicitly teaching converts or potential converts about purgatory as a counter to Buddhist criticism. One place where we would expect to see purgatory mentioned is in the long account that Fernandez gives of the earliest public debates over Christianity in the city of Yamaguchi in 1551; yet there is no mention of it. Torres, who had been preaching to a crowd via (imperfect) translation by Fernandez, only emphasized the 7 eternal nature of heaven and hell as Xavier had before him. In addition, Torres may not have seen any need to explain purgatory since there was, as of yet, no substantial 8 Christian community in Japan. Even if the Jesuits did not write about teaching purgatory in their early letters, this does not mean that they failed to teach the doctrine at all. Before examining some of the later catechetical works that discuss purgatory, we should investigate the likelihood that the very first catechetical materials in Kyushu (the ones that Xavier and Anjirō had composed together) contained anything at all about the doctrine. Unfortunately these materials have been lost; their so-called Kagoshima catechism underwent numerous revisions in the decades following Xavier’s departure so that its exact original contents are somewhat unclear. Since the Kagoshima catechism does not survive, it makes the most sense to turn to Xavier’s previous catechisms for other cultures as well as his instructions to his fellow missionaries to determine what, if anything, he said about purgatory in Japan. The very first catechism that Xavier produced for the Eastern mission zones was the so-called “little” or “short” catechism (Catechismus Brevis) in May 1542 immediately after 7 He may have just been following Xavier’s lead as his evangelical mentor this early on or he may have found the doctrine too similar to the Buddhist teachings, which the missionaries were only just beginning to grasp. Fernández to Xavier, from Yamaguchi, Oct. 20, 1551. Quoted in Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 283-284. See the original in MHJ II, 245-246. 8 If the Jesuits adhered strictly to Catholic orthodoxy in this regard, converts would not be able to care for their dead in purgatory in any theologically sound way. Since the Japanese Christian community was just forming, there were few, if any, dead Christians that could have been considered members of the Church Suffering. Any virtuous ancestors would not have gone to purgatory. If there was any salvation for them, according to Catholic orthodoxy, they had to be saved during Christ’s descent into hell (discussed below). Purgatory was the exclusive preserve of dead Christians who had not died in a state of mortal sin. 409 arriving in Goa. In composing this text, Xavier simply adapted the popular Portuguese- language catechism of João de Barros (c.1496-1570) that had been published in Lisbon in 1539. Though Xavier’s composition is quite similar to Barros’s, he does include a section stating that whosoever follows the Ten Commandments shall go to paradise (paraiso) and whosoever does not shall go to hell (inferno). This catechism deftly sidesteps the issue of whether or not someone had to be a Christian in order to go to heaven, instead making the requirements much simpler by stating that any ancestors only had to adhere to the old Mosaic covenant broadly construed. What is also notable about this part of the Catechismus Brevis is that Xavier does not mention purgatory at this junction. Rather, he saves mention of that temporary state of the afterlife for a section on the spiritual works of mercy, thereby tying it Catholic praxis. This was a first step in teaching the doctrine through the “praxis of purgatory” that would become so common among ordinary Japanese Christians on Kyushu. In the text, Xavier states (italics mine): “The seventh [spiritual work of mercy] is to pray to God for the living, so that he may preserve them from mortal sins; and for the deceased, so that he may free them from the pains of purgatory 9 and bring them to paradise.” So even though Xavier does not include a specific section on purgatory in his “little” catechism, he does explicitly tie the living and the dead members of the Christian community together through suffrages that only the living could perform. In other words, Xavier taught the recently converted that the living can and should undertake steps to care for their deceased loved ones as well as the general community of the dead. Whether or not a potential convert thought “correctly” that their ancestor was in purgatory is beside the point. What was more important was that they could help the dead in some fashion. Besides the “little” catechism, Xavier, while in the Moluccas, sent instructions to “the catechists of the Society of Jesus in the Indies” informing them just how they should teach the Catholic articles of faith. He also told them how to reinforce key doctrines through the use of communal questions and answers. Among the key doctrines he wished the catechists to emphasize were those concerning heaven, hell, and purgatory; and it is obviously his writings on the latter state that most interests us here. Since Xavier tells the 9 Costelloe, Letters, 44; EX I, 113. Barros’s text is similar, stating “to pray to god for the living, that he free them of mortal sins. And for the dead, that he free them from the penalties of purgatory and bring them into his glory.” 410 catechists to connect explicitly the concepts of purgatory and making of satisfaction, he is clearly warning them to convey to their listeners that any satisfaction not completed in this life will have to be completed in purgation. Xavier does not tell the catechists to teach them ways of making satisfaction, either for themselves or for those in purgatory through suffrages. He does, however, instruct them to say at the end of catechesis three Hail Marys, with “the first for those who are present, the remaining two for others of their own choice.” Presumably, these last two prayers could have been said for someone else, either living or for the dead as a suffrage. Thus, to converts in these parts of the world, Xavier introduced simple prayer (the basis of all suffrages) as the first and most 10 accessible way to care for a dead person’s state in the afterlife. Since Xavier wrote the “little” catechism in Portuguese for use in Goa, he clearly meant for it to be directed toward those Indians who fell under the Portuguese colonial shadow. Its importance, however, transcended this limited audience as it became the basis for later offshoot catechisms in the eastern mission zones. The very first such catechism was in the Tamil language for use in the southern part of the subcontinent. This step in catechism translation was important for Kyushu because the entire process previewed the creation of a Japanese version of the same catechism later in the decade. The necessity for this work arose when Xavier lived among the Paravars for a year (1542-1543) in Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin). Having no experience with the language, Xavier had to rely upon the linguistic skills and understanding of local native interpreters. Together, this team of native translators, working with the foreign missionary, produced an initial if imperfect Tamil catechism that contained the most important parts of the Portuguese catechism. The catechism does not come down to us in original form, but we do know that it 11 contained teaching on heaven and hell. Since Padre Henrique Henriques’s later revision 10 Costelloe, Letters, 132-133, from Malacca, possibly Nov. 10 1545. The Latin text, from 1667, is in EX I, 305-306 and is also partially quoted in Schurhammer, Xavier II, 222. Also of note in these instructions is a rare reference in the Jesuit letters to the descensus, or the so-called “Harrowing of Hell,” in which Christ descended into the region of “hell” where the righteous awaited his arrival. Xavier instructs the catechists to ask their listeners if they believe Christ “descended into the lower world and freed from it the souls of the holy Fathers, who had been waiting there for his holy coming[.]” 11 In a 1544 letter, Xavier specifically mentions that he had a section on “what thing heaven is, and what thing hell is.” To the Jesuits in Rome from Cochin, Jan, 15 1544. Xavier, Letters, 68 and EX I, 168. 411 of it referred to the doctrine, it seems likely that Xavier included some kind of teaching on purgatory in this first Tamil catechism. In his revision, Henriques chose to leave the Portuguese “purgatorio” transliterated in the Tamil script as “puagotorio” and “limbo” as 12 “olimpo.” Xavier’s first co-produced translation of the “little” catechism into a non- European language thus seems to have included some teaching, however minimal, about purgatory. Since there was no suitable Tamil word for purgatory, the word was simply transliterated as it would later be on Kyushu. Before going to Japan, Xavier would repeat the process of translating the “little” catechism into another language, this time for new Christians in the Moluccas 13 (Makassar). Along with this effort, Xavier wrote a long explanation of the Creed in Portuguese for later use and translation. The explanation is much more complicated than the basics that the “little” catechism provided and would have necessitated much greater linguistic capabilities than were available to him at that time. Nevertheless, the content of the explanation is what is important here because it indicates Xavier’s thinking about how missionaries in general should teach purgatory to non-Europeans in other mission zones. In fact, Xavier offered the explanation to Francisco Pérez and Roque de Oliveira when they went to Malacca, as well as to Gaspar Barzaeus when he went to Hormuz. Almost immediately, the explanation was to be distributed widely and would serve as a sort of foundational document for the Jesuit missionary enterprise in the Padroado. Moreover, Xavier fully intended for the explanation to be translated into native languages. He later had the native priest Gaspar Coelho (a different person than the later Vice-Provincial of Japan of the same name) translate the explanation into Tamil for 12 See note 38 in EX II, 587 regarding the vocabulary of the catechism. The Houghton Library at Harvard has a copy of Henrique’s catechism in Tamil, which is viewable online. Henriques, Henrique, 1520-1600, Doctrina christaã trsladada em lingua tamul pello...Impressa em Coulam no Collegio do Sauador aos vìnte de octubro de. M.D.LXXVII Typ 100 578. See also Georg Schurhammer and G.W. Cottrell J.R., “The First Printing in Indic Characters” in Harvard Library Bulletin, Volume VI, No. 2 (Spring 1952): 147-160, for more information on Henriques’s revised catechism. 13 “In order that they may learn how to pray to God so that he grants them an increase in faith and the grace to observe his law, I shall translate into their language the Pater noster, Ave Maria, and other prayers such as the Confiteor so that each day they may confess their sins to God. This will serve them in place of sacramental confession until God provides them with priests who know their language.” Xavier to Master Diogo and Father Micer Paulo, in Goa. From Mailapur, May 8, 1545. Costelloe, Letters, 127; EX I, 292. 412 distribution “and explanation to the women in the churches on Saturdays and Sundays” in 14 villages on the Fishery Coast and other regions. In terms of content, Xavier’s explanation of the Creed was supposed to move the new Christian’s understanding of Catholicism beyond the basics. Native Christians would have likely memorized the Creed in their own language as part of catechesis, but there were many things in it that demanded elaboration, particularly in relation to praxis. Therefore, Xavier took pains to explain such Catholic praxes as going to confession, performing penance, and offering suffrages as they related to Catholic doctrine. In order to accomplish this goal, Xavier provided lengthy explanations of the importance of the Crucifixion and the various states of the afterlife, including heaven and hell. He also included a relatively extensive reference to purgatory in this section, even though the Creed makes no explicit reference to the various states of the afterlife beyond a tangential section on Christ’s descent into hell (the descensus). Here Xavier’s explanation of purgatory and limbo is rather remarkable. Not only does Xavier connect purgatory with the need to pay satisfaction after death, he suggests, somewhat faintly, that any good or just person has the possibility of escaping limbo and thus being saved. This would obviously appeal to the recently converted since they could imagine their ancestors as having been just and good people, which would preclude them from being automatically confined to the Christian version of hell. In addition, the explanation offers the possibility that living Christians could and should take care of their fellow Christian dead, something that would have been appealing to the converted. Most importantly, it gave them a measure of agency and control over the spiritual fate of loved ones following their deaths. Though lengthy, this passage is worth quoting in full since it has not received much attention elsewhere. Following a brief section on significance of the Crucifixion, Xavier explains: [All italics are mine for emphasis] The most holy soul of Jesus Christ was separated from his body when he died upon the cross. Then, after his death, the most holy soul of Jesus Christ, being united with the divinity of God the Son, as it had always been from the moment that it had been created by the Lord God, descended into limbo, which is a place under the earth where the holy fathers, prophets, patriarchs, and many other just 14 See Costelloe’s notes, Letters, 150-151. 413 men were waiting for the Son of God, who was to rescue them from limbo and to bring them to paradise. In every age, beginning with Adam and Eve, there had been good men who, because they were friends of God and spoke the truth, had reproached the wicked for their sins and vices, through which they offended their God and Creator. And the wicked, since they were slaves and captives of the devil, persecuted the good, who were the friends of God, arresting them, banishing them, and doing them much harm. Consequently, when the good died their souls went to limbo. Since it is below the earth, limbo was called the lower world, and not because it has the pains of fire and torments. Lower than limbo there is another place which is called purgatory. To this purgatory go the souls of persons who die in the sate of grace and without a mortal sin; and, for the sins which they have committed in their past life for which they have not done full penance or given satisfaction before their death, they go to this purgatory, where there are grave torments, in order to pay for the evils and sins which they have committed during their lifetime. When they have paid the punishment for their sins, they leave purgatory and go directly to paradise. The last place below the earth is called infernal hell, where the torments of fire and wretchedness are so great that men, if they would reflect on them for an hour each day, would not commit as many sins as they do now…Those who go to this infernal place have no means of salvation; forever and forever, and without any end, they must remain there…The Church and the saints who are in heaven with God never pray for the dead who are in hell, since they have no means of going to paradise; but the Church and the saints pray for the dead who are in purgatory, and for the living 15 so that they do not go to hell. These two passages deserve a full analysis. First, let us examine Xavier’s teaching on limbo as it might be interpreted by someone who no knowledge of Christian theology of the time or the teachings of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). In teaching the rescue of the just or the “good” from limbo, Xavier is effectively teaching the Harrowing of Hell (descensus Christi ad inferos, “the descent of Christ into hell”) in which the souls of the good who died before the coming of Christ were saved through his descent into Hades (distinct from Gehenna—this state is also called the limbo Patrem, i.e. limbo of the Fathers, or sometimes “Abraham’s Bosom”). In Xavier’s explanation, as we have it, he refers to these souls as “good men” (homens bons), “the good” (aos bons), “the friends of God” (amigos de Deus), “souls who were waiting for the Son of God, Jesus Christ” 15 Costelloe, Letters, 155-156.Xavier, An Explanation of the Creed, from Ternate, August-September, 1546. Costelloe has used a Portuguese copy from 1553 for his translation. According to Costelloe, the later published version of 1556 revised slightly Xavier’s explanation. Part of this was to make some of the theological points clearer. A comparison with this revised text and the original will have to be done at a later time. The Portuguese text from 1553 can be found in EX I, 362-363. 414 (quantas almas lá estavão esperando polo Filho de Deus, Jesu Christo) and “souls of the holy fathers” (almas dos sanctos Padres). Xavier’s language in referring to those who died before the coming of Christ is similar in some respects and different in others from the Catechism of the Council of Trent (Catechismus Romanus) of 1572. Though this catechism postdates the death of Xavier, much of it represents normative Catholic thought during the first half of the sixteenth century. In referring to the descensus, the Trent Catechism describes the rescue of souls in limbo as “the souls of the holy” (animae sanctorum) and “holy souls” (piorum animas), and “those holy Fathers, and other holy ones” (ſanctos illos Patres, cæ terosá; pios 16). The differences here are subtle, but revealing. Xavier’s teaching agrees with the Catechism Romanus in that the holy Fathers were rescued from limbo (Sheol or Hades). These would have been all the major Old Testament figures, particularly Moses, the Patriarchs, and the Prophets. However, Xavier seems to expand the scope of those saved by the descensus to ordinary people. Rather than just the “holy souls,” which implies some type of reverence to the Jewish god and adherence to Mosaic Law (these would presumably been pious Jews awaiting the Messiah), Xavier simply says that “good men” were rescued from limbo. This seems not to limit post-mortem salvation to just pious Jews, but rather expands it to anybody who was good as well as those who vaguely longed for God (friends of God). Even allowing for cultural differences across time, certain actions, such as outright murder, grievous lying, and the whatnot, have generally been seen as immoral or “bad” by the majority of the world’s cultures. Thus the new convert could perhaps take solace in the fact that any conventionally good person 16 Catechismus Romanus, 63-65. Various English translations of the Catechismus Romanus render these souls as “the just.” Catechism of the Council of Trent, Translated into English. Trans. Rev. J. Donovan (Dublin: James Duffy, 1867). Donovan translates the souls as “pious” rather than “just.” Interestingly, the modern Catechism states the following on the descensus: 633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham's bosom” “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him. 637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven's gates for the just who had gone before him. What is interesting is that in 631 “the just” is a direct translation of the official Latin “Iustis.” This is in distinction to the “pious” of the old Catechismus Romanus. 415 according to their own culture’s standards (not holy by Christian or Jewish standards) might be saved from damnation via the descensus. This could also be applied to their ancestors beyond the living members they had met or heard about, providing that the convert believed them to have been “good” people. Just who might be saved during the descensus was a matter of considerable debate 17 throughout early Christian history. What is rather interesting for our purposes is that Xavier’s explanation of the descensus to new Christians seems to be purposefully ambiguous. Essentially, he leaves it up to the newly converted to decide who among their ancestors were virtuous and who might be saved from hell. His teaching in the document allows, at least theoretically, for the rescue from Hades (Sheol or limbo) of any ancestors who might have been considered “good men,” even if they had no knowledge of Christ. For any new convert, whose knowledge of the Catholic afterlife would likely have been rather basic, the ambiguity of “good men” could have been sufficient to overcome fears that their ancestors would be sent to hell for all eternity. This, of course, did not apply to those ancestors who were obviously evil, such as persons who engaged in wanton murder. Xavier’s seemingly liberal view that “good men” might have been saved by Christ in the descensus seems to run contrary with his explicit explanation to Japanese Christians that their ancestors could not be rescued from hell: The Christians of Japan are afflicted with sadness, and the reason for this is that they feel keenly what we have told them, that there is no remedy for those who go to hell. They feel this because of their love for their fathers and mothers, wives, children, and others who have died in the past; and they feel pity for them. Many weep for their dead, and they ask me if there is any remedy for them through alms and prayers. I tell them that there is no remedy for them. They feel this sadness; but I am not disturbed by this, only that they do not become careless about themselves and go to suffer with their ancestors. They ask 17 The “most general Patristic opinion” was that the rescue from limbo was reserved only for the Old Testament prophets and “saints,” like Abraham, Jacob, and the Prophets. Later writers, particularly those of late-antiquity, held a wider notion of who might be saved by the descensus. For example, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150- c. 215) regarded the descensus as an offer of salvation to all the dead—just and unjust—some of whom might accept Christ and some of whom might reject him in the afterlife. Others, such as Origen, Philaster, Ambrose, Ambrosiaster, and John Chrysostom, also conceived of a wider salvation than just the righteous Old Testament figures; each gave a variety of reasons why this might be so. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 99-100. See also J.A. MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930; reprint New York: Ams Press, 1983), 253-287. His chapter “The Release of Souls from Hades” gives a good overview of the Patristic views. 416 me if God can rescue them from hell, and the reason why they must ever remain in hell. I give them extensive answers to all this. They do not cease to weep when they see that their ancestors cannot be helped. And I also experience some sadness when I see my friends, so loved and cherished, weeping over things for which 18 there is no remedy. Here, I would argue, that Xavier is simply taking the Japanese Christians at their own words. In asking about hell, the Japanese were certainly asking about jigoku, which is usually translated as “hell” both then and now. People in “jigoku” were de facto bad or “evil” people who were burdened so completely by karma that they fell into a state of intense suffering for many kalpas (many billions of years). One of the most vivid articulations of the evil being punished in hell can be found the monk Genshin’s (942- 1017) Ōjōyōshū. Predating Dante’s vision of hell by three centuries, the Ōjōyōshū describes eight different levels of hell (each with its own subdivisions) including “Wailing Hell,” “Scorching Heat Hell,” and “Black Rope Hell.” The worst, “Unremitting Hell,” was where “there is nothing but flames.” All of these featured horrendous tortures to which evil people would be subjected. For example, “murderers, thieves, adulterers, drunkards, liars, [and] people who hold mistaken views, and defilers of pure precept- keeping nuns” could all expect to find themselves in the “Great Scorching Heat Hell.” There they could expect to be skinned alive, have molten iron poured upon their bodies, 19 and be “completely engulfed in flames.” Thus when Xavier told the Japanese Christians that their ancestors “in hell” had no hope of being helped, he was not referring to any type of limbo to which the good but unbaptized went. Rather, like his Japanese Christian interlocutors, he was referring to bad people who, having died in a state of mortal sin, were in hell. The main difference was not that the “evil” was to be punished or to experience some type of suffering, but rather the eternal nature of that suffering and whether or not living people could help them. For Xavier and later missionaries, there was no remedy for those in hell. But for those in 18 Xavier to the Jesuits in Europe, from Cochin, Jan. 29 1552. Costelloe, Letters, 341. EX II, 276-277. 19 Robert F. Rhodes, Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2017), 183-202; quote on pp. 198-199. See also Allan A. Andrews, The Teachings Essential for Rebirth: A Study of Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970), 47-49. 417 purgatory, there was much that the Japanese Christians and the Church as a community could do for them. The Terminology of Purgatory in Catechesis on Kyushu As the above discussion should make clear, Xavier taught the doctrine of purgatory and connected it to elements of Catholic praxis, namely caring for the dead, in his catechetical materials for both India and the Moluccas Islands. When he embarked later on his missionary activities in Japan, it stands to reason that he would have taught purgatory there as well. Based upon prior experience of composing catechisms, he would have likely included some reference to purgatory in the catechism he composed with Anjirō. Unfortunately for us, these initial teachings were overwritten when the Jesuits and their translators gained greater linguistic capabilities and fixed many deficiencies in them. Still, we can study how the early native advocates translated similar terminology about the afterlife, namely heaven and hell, to determine if there were any equivalent Japanese terms for purgatory. This is important because it would determine how native advocates taught the doctrine among ordinary Japanese and if a false equivalency (between Buddhist and Christian concepts) would have led to any inherent misunderstandings relating to caring for the dead. Translation was, understandably, a significant problem when it came discussing the states of the Christian afterlife in the Kagoshima Catechism. Indeed, Gago, in his oft- cited letter from 1555, stated that there were some fifty Christian terms that were problematic due to their associations with Buddhism. Some of these concerned Japanese translations for Christian versions of the afterlife. For example, Anjirō used the terms jōdo (Pure Land) to denote “heaven” and jigoku to denote “hell” in the Kagoshima 20 catechism. Carrying, as they did, Buddhist connotations of samsaric rebirth, these terms distorted the eternal natures of heaven and hell in the Christian sense. They undermined 20 MHJ II, 570. Gago to the Jeuits in India and Portugal, from Hirado, Sept 23, 1555. See also Higashibaba, Christianity, 9; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitan Shi, 179; Kishino, Anjirō, 168-173. For an analysis of a similar phenomenon in the New World, see Louise M. Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989). 418 the key notion of the permanency of hell in particular—something the foreign advocates took great pains to emphasize all throughout the mission period. For purgatory, we can easily imagine that a similar distortion of the Catholic doctrine would take place as a result of using a single Japanese word. If Anjirō had to translate the Portuguese “purgatorio” as had been used in Xavier’s other catechism, it is unclear just what, if any, Japanese or Buddhist term he might have employed. The lack of a specific reference to a Japanese equivalent for purgatory should not make us imagine, however, that Xavier would have avoided the term altogether. He had not been cautious in making any of his translations—Xavier simply wanted to get things moving without consciously violating orthodoxy—and any difficulties regarding the actual translation of a word could be overcome through transliteratiion. Such had been the case in the Tamil translation of the “little” catechism, in fact. If Anjirō could not find an adequate Japanese word for purgatory, the term “purgatorio” was very likely left transliterated as a loan word rather than translated. This was especially the case for Christian terms that seemed to have no rough equivalent in Japanese. João Rodrigues, the European Jesuit most fluent in Japanese, wrote in his Arte da Lingoa de Iapam (1604- 1608): Because the Japanese language lacks some words to express many new things which the Holy Gospel contains, it is necessary to invent some new ones, or to take them from our own language [transliteration], corrupting these words so that 21 they sound better according to Japanese pronunciation. Purgatory, it seems, fit this exact scenario. If Anjirō had invented a new Japanese term for it, the word does not come down to us since the earliest reference is in transliteration. More than likely, the term had to be transliterated and explained. Much later, in printed Japanese-language catechetical texts, we find many transliterated terms with explanations. If this were to occur orally, the term would be spoken and then explained by someone knowledgeable, namely an advocate. Thus the lack of a Japanese equivalent 21 Quoted in William J. Farge, “Adapting Language to Culture: Translation Projects of the Jesuit Missions in Japan and China,” in Michal Jan Rozbicki and George O. Ndege, eds., Cross-cultural History and the Domestication of Otherness (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Juan Ruiz-de-Medina points out, in reference to Gago’s statement about changing key terms, that this was the case in the early Church, which lacked the terminology to express Christian teaching. Such terms included “maranatha”, “talitha cum,” “Kyrie eleison,” and “amen.” MHJ I, 570, note 79. 419 would not have prevented Xavier and Anjirō from teaching about purgatory just as it did 22 not prevent later advocates from teaching the doctrine. To see how Xavier and Anjirō potentially arrived at a transliterated term for purgatory and the terms jōdo and jigoku for heaven and hell respectively, I offer the following reasoned speculation. Anjirō would first relate aspects of the Japanese afterlife to Xavier in Portuguese telling him the Japanese words for each of them. If any of the terms sounded like Christian versions of the afterlife, such as jigoku for hell, he would then have to decide whether or not to use it in the Catechism. Jigoku was simple enough; the nearly endless tortures of hell as one of the six samsaric cycles of rebirth certainly sounded like a Christian version of hell. Xavier also likely determined that jōdo sounded enough like heaven. If Anjirō mentioned a kind of Japanese “purgatory,” one that was essentially a place of purification, Xavier would also have to determine whether or not to use the term. All of this would have occurred orally in the many conversations that the two friends and evangelical partners likely had about Japanese Buddhism during the entire winter that the two worked on the catechism. Xavier makes reference to one such conversation in a letter from Malacca in 1549, just prior to making the final leg of the journey to Kyushu. In the conversation, Anjirō told him of a monastery (like the Zen monastery of Fukushōji) where “friars” meditated, heard lectures, and engaged in philosophical discussion. According to Anjirō, one of the philosophical questions had to do with purgatory. After a period of meditation, 22 The modern Japanese word for purgatory is rengoku (煉獄), a word that suitably captures the meaning of the original Latin term, purgatorius (“cleansing”). Comprised of two characters, ren 煉 and goku 獄, the word literally means “to refine metal” (pronounced neru) or “kneading over fire” and “prison.” In other words, rengoku is literally a prison where one is refined through fire. One cannot leave on the prison on their own, and a judge, perhaps influenced by the pleadings of others, is the only one that is able to grant clemency. This compound obviously refers to both the metaphorical purifying fires of purgation and the temporary (for however long) nature of the state as a kind of incarceration from which one will be released. Similarly, the modern Japanese for limbo (rengoku 辺獄; or rinbo), which literally means “border prison,” likewise reflects the Latin word limbus which means “hem” or “border.” In this case, the first character means “boundary” or “border” while the last one means “prison.” These two terms, unlike the modern Japanese words for heaven and hell (tengoku 天国) and (jigoku 地獄) seem not to have existed in the sixteenth century when both native and foreign advocates of Christianity were trying to translate them as terms and concepts. In two dictionaries from the period, we have the following terms for heaven and hell but no entries for Japanese equivalents of purgatory. For the etymology of limbo, see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09256a.htm. Interestingly Limbus Patrum can be rendered into koseisho (古聖所) in modern Japanese. This literally means “place of the ancient saints.” It is also sometimes rendered as fuso no renbo (父祖の辺獄), or “limbo of the ancestors.” 420 the “superior” would ask the “friars” a question such as this one: “[what would those] 23 who are in hell or in purgatory, if they should return to this life, what would they say?” Whether or not this is accurate is beside the point. What is important was that Anjirō had been discussing the states of the afterlife in Japanese Buddhism, one of which was something that Xavier initially took to be purgatory. Fortunately, there is additional evidence that Anjirō had talked with Xavier about a vague kind of Japanese “purgatory.” For this, we cannot look to any of Xavier’s own writings but rather to those of the Jesuit Nicolò Lancilotto (rector of the college in Goa; sometimes Nicolao Lancillotto) who records some of the first European descriptions of about the Japanese afterlife as received directly from Anjirō. According to Lancilotto, Anjirō described a sort of purgatorial state of the afterlife that was like a “customhouse” where the good and the evil were sorted out; the good went to paradise and the evil went to hell. He also apparently stated that the “soul” of the person had to go through some kind of fire which would be in appropriate relation to the evil they had done. Once the fire had purged them, they would be released from that state. Demons lived in both this 24 state and the “hell” where the evil went in order to torture souls. The state of the afterlife that Anjirō described was, in all probability, a version of the court of the Great King Enma (Enma Dai-Ō). Developed in China, this element of the afterlife in Mahayana 23 Xavier to the Jesuits in Europe, from Malaca, June 22 1549. Costelloe, Letters, 282. EX II, 152. 24 Lancilotto, Information about Japan, from Cochin, December 28, 1548, in MHJ II, 55. The words that Lancilotto uses for “customhouse” is “dugana o alfandica,” which is a version of two words “aduana” and “alfândega.” See Ruiz-de-Medina’s note on the terminology. The original is in Italian, so I have also relied on Schurhammer’s translations in Schurhammer, Xavier III, 483 and 574. For his first report on Anjirō’s information, Lancilotto writes: “They also preach that there is a paradise, a place of purification, and a hell; and they say that all souls when they depart from this world, go to the place of purification, both the good and the bad; and from there the good are sent to the place where God is and the evil to the place where the devil is.” Later in his revision of the material, he writes, “Purgatory is a kind of customhouse where the good and evil souls go after death; and the evil are sent from there to hell, and the good to heaven.” For information on the manuscripts of Lancilotto’s revision, see Q4102 and Q4103 in Georg Schurhammer, Die zeitgenössischen Quellen zur Geschichte Portugiesisch-Asiens und seiner Nachbarländer (Ostafrika, Abessinien, Arabien, Persien, Vorder- und Hinterindien, Malaiischer Archipel, Philippinen, China und Japan) zur Zeit des hl. Franz Xaver, 1538-1552 (Roma: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1962), 270. A Portuguese version of Lancilotto’s report can be found in A. Thomaz Pires “O Japão no Seculo XVI,” O Instituto: Revista Scientifica e Litteraria, 53 (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1906), 760. See also, Jurgis Elisonas, “An Itinerary to the Terrestrial Paradise: Early European Reports on Japan and a Contemporary Exegisis,” Itinerario, 20, No. 3 (1996): 35; 48. According to Elisonas and his translation of the document, “Purgatory is ‘like a customs area or a boarding house for transients’, a quarantine where the souls of those who part from this life without having done adequate penance are cleansed.” 421 Buddhism held that a king of the underworld presided over various courts after death— the underworld being equivalent to the living Chinese governmental bureaucracy—where a person would be sentenced to various tortures in hell or a more positive rebirth depending on their karmic merit. Living relatives could help the dead person through this by various means, such as offerings directed towards the king and other judges or through 25 merit transfer. Although Lancilotto describes this “customhouse” as “purgatory,” he does not do 26 so literally and merely states what Anjirō had said. There were simply too many differences, such as the presence of demons in the purgatory-like state, for a Jesuit to make a direct equivalent. Instead, at this very early stage, Lancilotto and Xavier both likely viewed this as a heretical or demonic corruption of Christianity. Anjirō likely gave the same description of the “customhouse” to Xavier as he did to Lancilotto, and it is very unlikely that the padre would have seen it as a true equivalent of purgatory. Catholic purgatory was most definitely not a “customhouse” where one went to be judged. Rather, it was the Church of dead Christians who were already assured of heaven but in need of purification. Whatever word Anjirō used to describe “purgatory,” Xavier should have excluded it based upon this customhouse-like description. Doing so would have violated his principle of teaching Catholic orthodoxy when he actually knew of mistranslations (like the Dainichi episode), so it is most likely that he had the word “purgatorio” 27 transliterated. Indeed, the fact that Anjirō’s Japanese term for the “customhouse,” whatever it was, did not make it into any early Jesuit documentation strongly suggests that the term was quickly discarded as an equivalence for purgatory. 25 King Enma, in Chinese, is known as Yanmo Wang. For information on the transmission of Yanmo Wang and the Ten Kings to Japan, see Tieser, Ten Kings, 57-62. In order to help their loved ones after death, adherents of the cult of the ten kings (jūō shinkō 十王信仰) used the ten Buddha rites (jūbutsuji 十仏事) to offset whatever negative judgment they might pronounce on them. See Stone, Right Thoughts, 314; 357. Much more could be said about how living Japanese help their dead loved ones go through the courts of the ten kings successfully. 26 Ruiz-de-Medina points out that by “introducing the plural impersonal dicono Lancilotto separates himself from the explanations of Anjirō.” See his note in MHJII, 55. 27 Even if Anjirō did not discuss the “customhouse” with Xavier, which is unlikely, we know that the padre read Lancilotto’s description of it because he helped to translate it into Spanish and Portuguese. See Schurhammer’s note in Schurhammer, Xavier III, 480. 422 One way of confirming that no suitable word for purgatory already existed in Japanese, thus necessitating transliteration is to,examine the mid-seventeenth-century writings of the anti-Christian polemicist Sessō Sōsai. Sōsai frequently employed Christian terms in his arguments to undermine the religion. By this time, the transliterations of Christian Portuguese words like “inferno” and “paraizo” had substituted for inaccurate Buddhist equivalents and become the norm. Since Sōsai wrote in kanbun, the Japanese form of classical Chinese, (modern editions usefully render his writings in classical Japanese), he necessarily had to use Chinese characters to translate foreign words. His transliteration used a system of man’yōgana, which used Chinese characters for their sounds rather than for their meaning to approximate foreign words. When using Christian terms, Sōsai employed transliterations of them precisely because they were foreign words. But when explaining the meaning of these transliterated terms, he usually employed a Buddhist equivalent (in Japanese with characters containing the meaning of the words) to show that some religious concepts of Christianity, such as the afterlife, were actually corruptions of Buddhist concepts. A few examples are necessary. For the Christian concept of hell, Sōsai transliterated the term as inheruno (因辺婁濃), but equated it to the various non-eternal Buddhist hells, jigokou (地獄). For heaven, he transliterated paraizo (頗羅夷曾) and equated it with tendō (天堂), a Buddhist term that corresponds to “heaven” or “Amida’s Pure Land.” However, when Sōsai set out to undermine the concept of purgatory, he employed a rather awkward Buddhist equivalent not in use among Christian advocates. He first transliterated the term “purugatōriyo” with the characters “附婁伽倒利夜,” then explained that it corresponded to nindō, that is “the human realm” (i.e. the current world 28 of existence for people), another one of the six realms in the Buddhist samsaric cycle. Although presenting purgatory as the human realm fit nicely into his plan to undermine Christianity, it was not an accurate representation of that particular state of the Catholic afterlife. Based upon his renditions of heaven and hell as tendō and jigoku respectively, Sōsai would have used a Buddhist equivalent for purgatory if he was able to do so. This 28 Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 462. The editors gloss nindō as 人間堺 (the human world). The Bukkyōgo Daijiten has this entry for nindō: 五趣・六道の一つ。人としての生存、その在り方。また、その世界。 Ishida Mizumaro, ed., Bukkyōgo Daijiten (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1997). 423 means that even after a hundred years of Christianity on Kyushu, there was still no roughly equivalent Buddhist term that even a highly educated person, such as Sessō Sōsai, could use to explain and undermine Christian purgatory. To Xavier’s uniformed ears, any description of jigoku or jōdo by Anjirō would have sounded much like the Christian version of heaven and hell. Xavier would have likely rejected whatever description Anjirō gave of a Japanese “purgatory.” In the Catholic view, purgatory was not the “human realm,” nor was it a “customhouse.” Rather, it was state of the afterlife for dead Christians only, where they underwent purification just prior to entering heaven. It is unlikely, as the Dainichi-Deus translation debacle proved, that Xavier would have knowingly used any potential terms for purgatory that described it as a kind of “custom house.” Rather, it is likely that the earliest missionaries like Xavier would have simply transliterated purgatorio and then explained its meaning in simple terms. In all of the important catechetical materials that survive, purgatory and other terms associated with it, such as limbo, are always transliterated and then explained to the reader. This indicates that purgatory was special, both conceptually and linguistically, and needed careful teaching in order to explicate how it was different from any potential Japanese versions of a similar state. The Portuguese “purgatorio” was translated in these materials using kana syllabary, Chinese characters (as indicated by Sessō Sōsai), or Rōmaji (Romanized script) of the period. Occasionally it was transliterated with a combination of kana and characters (e.g. プルが当理与). In terms of orthography, it is found in various forms with minor variations such as purugatauriyo, furukatōriya, or purugatōriyo. Even in the Jesuit-produced dictionaries of the period that give Japanese 29 equivalents, there are no entries for “purgatorio.” By turn of the seventeenth century, 29 The very useful Jesuits’ own dictionary, Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam of 1603, has been published in facsimile version a number of times. The version I have used is Seitsū Ishizuka, ed., Nippo Jisho: Parihon (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1976). Hereafter, simply Vocabvlario da Lingoa. I have also used the earlier Jesuit dictionary, the 1585 Dictionarivm Latino Lusitanicvm, ac Iaponicvm…, published at Amakusa. This has been reproduced in three volumes by the Tōyō Bunko Library, Dictionarivm Latino Lusitanicvm, ac Iaponicvm…3 Volumes (Tokyo: Tōyō Bunko Library, 1950-1952). Hereafter referred simply as Dictionarivm. I have also used the Spanish-Japanese dictionary, Tomas Pinpin and J. Magourha, Vocabvlario de Iapon declarado primero en Portvgves…(Manila, 1630). Hereafter, simply Vocabvlario de Iapon. A list of various Japanese, Latin, and Portuguese words in use concerning states of the of the afterlife is as follows: -Ten = Ceo (heaven) (Vocabvlario da Lingoa) 424 even the Portuguese words for heaven and hell were normally transliterated rather than translated to avoid any misunderstandings. For example, hell, or inheruno, was frequently used in kana syllabary (other forms are inuheruno and inuberuno); and heaven was frequently transliterated as paraizo in kana with variant forms like haraizō. Transliterated terms related to the Christian afterlife persisted even among the Kakure Christians. As found in the Tenchi hajimari no koto (The Beginning of Heaven and Earth), limbo was transliterated as benbō (べんぼう), though the word is rare in comparison with purgatory 30 and, especially, in comparison to heaven and hell. One of the benefits of transliterating the term purgatory is that any initial encounter with the word demanded some kind of explanation and thus some kind of teaching about it. Whenever a Japanese listener or reader encountered “purugatōriyo” for the first time, there was likely an explanation aimed at acclimating the person to the concept. A similar situation occurs in college-level classes on religion all across the United States. For example, in an introductory class to Asian religions, we might use the transliterated Sanskrit word saṃsāra rather than “reincarnation” to denote the cycle of death and rebirth since it is more nuanced than the simple English equivalent. The teacher would explain this unfamiliar term to students, who would then add it to their religious vocabulary with less chance of simply ascribing the basic meaning of reincarnation. The same likely occurred during oral preaching of purgatory on Kyushu. Because the word never seems to have been translated into Japanese with a Buddhist equivalent, an explanation always had to accompany it when the concept was presented to a potential -Gigocu. Inferno. Vt. Gigocuni voçusu. Cair no inferno. [to fall into hell]. (Vocabvlario da Lingoa) -Gigocudo. Inferno aſsi llamado. p. 207 (Vocabvlario de Iapon) -Acuxu. I. inferno ut. Acuxuni daſuru. Cair no Inferno (Vocabvlario da Lingoa) -Naracu. Inferno (Vocabvlario da Lingoa) -Muqen. Vt. Muqengigocu. Inʃerno, ou lugar de tormentos onde ʃem ceʃsar ʃão atormétados os danados. -Nairi. I. Inferno. Ut, Nairino ʃoconi xizzumu. Eʃtar metido nas proʃundez as do Inʃerno. -Acudǒ. Axii michi. Ruim caminho, ou peccado. Words from the Dictionarivm: Cælum, i. Lus. Ceo. Iap. Ten. Damnatus, us. Idem. Aeternus, a um. Lus Couſa do ceo… Ten, l, vô zorami ataru coto. Infernus, i. Lus. Inferno. Iap. Gigocu. Paradisus, i. Lus. Opmar, ou orta. Iap Sono. Item Paraiſo terreal. Iap. Deus adamuo voqitamaixi yoroco bi… Purgation; onis Lus. O alimpar. Iap. Nogô coto nari, sǒgi, qiyome. 30 See Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 406, for an example of furukatōriya and p. 387 for an example of benbō. Both are from the Tenchi. 425 convert. This explanation would have been short and in simple Japanese since the basic concept is a realm specific to the Christian community where they experienced purification before heaven. As later catechetical materials show, keeping the word transliterated and then helped to make purgatory a specifically Christian teaching vis-à- vis Buddhism. Teaching Purgatory in Later Catechetical and Missionary Works Even though we have hardly any direct references to the preaching of purgatory in the Jesuit letters and the contemporary histories, we are fortunate to have catechetical materials and other works that fully explain the doctrine as one of several states of the afterlife in Christianity. Most of these works, which were either composed in Japanese or translated into Japanese, were printed at the mission press in either Amakusa or Nagasaki on Kyushu for clerical and lay study. Some theological works, such as the Compendium catholicae veritatis… and its Japanese translation, were clearly meant for both native and foreign padres. However, as indicated by references in Jesuit letters and other sources, many catechetical and devotional works that teach purgatory theologically, such as the Dochirina Kirishitan, did find their way into the hands of more educated Japanese Christians and lay leaders. Armed with the theological knowledge of purgatory from these texts, native advocates (both clerical and lay) were the primary teachers of the doctrine in the lay community. Through preaching and face-to-face conversations, they not only taught the community how purgatory worked theologically in relation to the sacrament of penance but also demonstrated how via certain mechanisms of the Church they could care for any of their dead members undergoing purgation. The first catechetical work we ought to examine is the Dochirina Kirishitan (Christian Doctrine; hereafter simply Dochirina) since it was printed in several different versions and had fairly wide distribution among the laity. There were three different printings: one in kana syllabary and kanij (1591), one in Rōmaji (1592), and one in both Japanese and Roman scripts (1600). Having two scripts ensured as wide usage as possible, since educated laymen and brothers could read the Japanese script and the 426 foreign advocates could use the Rōmaji version. Though we do not know how many copies were actually printed, other works from the Jesuit mission presses had printings of over a thousand copies. An important text such as this one likely found its way into the hands of many who were educated enough to read it or into the hands of educated local leaders who could teach it to those unable to read. Higashibaba believes that circulation of the Dochirina was fairly widespread, with each Christian community in Japan having 31 at least one copy. For Christian communities in Kyushu only, it is easy to imagine that circulation was widespread due to proximity of the place of publication and the increased ratio of native and foreign advocates to lay people. There simply would have been much more demand for the text in Kyushu as well, given the high number of Christians. Potentially, all that was required to spread the teachings in the Dochirina in any given Christian community was one copy of the text and one person who could read it. Using the critical editions of the 1592 and 1600 versions of the Dochirina, we can 32 get a fairly clear idea of how advocates explained the doctrine of purgatory. Advocates using the Dochirina first explained purgatory as one of five states of the afterlife which humanity could achieve upon death; and potential converts would certainly have expected or even demanded to hear about this in minute detail. By explaining the different “levels” of the Christian afterlife, missionaries were able to offer a competing schematic to similar explanations in Japanese Buddhism. During the medieval period, explanations and depictions of the six samsaric realms were part and parcel of Buddhism in Japan. There were a great many textual, oral, and visual depictions of the Pure Land in 31 Higashibaba, Christianity, 52-54. 32 Both versions can be found in Arimichi Ebisawa, Katsumi Ide, and Kishino Hisashi, eds., Krishitan Kyōrisho, Kirishitan Kenkyū vol. 30, Kirishitan Bungaku Sōsho (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1993). Only the 1591 version is found in Ebisawa, Kirishitansho. Comparing the 1591 text against the 1600 text, we see but minor variations, usually only differences in orthography or transliteration. There is, however, one notable difference in the teaching on purgatory. The 1600 version states that the souls in purgatory will pass into “the pleasures of paradise” (paraizo) rather than into gloria (gurauria). This must have been done for clarification, since the statement just begs the question as to what gloria actually is. Those doing the revision must have known that this term prompted further questions from the reader or listener and decided to change it to something that did not require explanation. The 1600 text also removes “children’s limbo” in favor of “limbo,” but keeps a reference to children as being the ones in limbo as a result of dying without baptism. This would have been in contrast to adults who died without baptism and committed mortal sin. The 1592 text only has minor variations from the 1592 text. It seems that otherwise the 1591 explanation of purgatory did not have any problems for a trial period of eight or nine years. Clearly, the missionaries thought it to be effective or else more would have been changed during the revision. Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Krishitan Kyōrishi, 46. 427 33 use for proselytization. More gruesomely fascinating were all the depictions of the variously horrific levels of hell to which Japanese were accustomed through preaching and images. Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū has already been mentioned, but there were many visual representations as well. One famous depiction is the so-called “Hell Scroll” or jigokuzōji th (c. 12 century), which provided urgent visual reminders to all that intense suffering 34 awaited those who descended into the underworld. Another famous example is the Gaki-zoshi (Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts), which depicts invisible beings with “skeleton- 35 thin limbs and swollen bellies” feasting upon human waste and other excretions. If Christian advocates did not include basic depictions of their afterlife, which was a catechetical necessity anyways, they would not have met the powerful need to know (in detail) what awaited people after death. Heaven and hell were easy to explain since Japanese on Kyushu already had much familiarity with those kinds of realms due to similarities between Buddhist hell and realms like the Pure Land. Purgatory and its associated realms, like limbo, were another thing entirely. Catechists had to explain where such locations in a physical sense, what purpose they served, and what existence would be like in them. Indeed, even with today’s access to catechetical materials, one could argue that many Catholics only know the gist of what purgatory is rather than the finer points of the doctrine. The first place in the Dochirina that purgatory is mentioned occurs in teachings about the four states of the “underworld” (daichi no soko) as opposed to heaven. The Dochirina includes the following dialogue: Disciple: As for the “underworld” into which the soul of the lord Jesus Christ descended [the descensus], what kind of place is it? Master: There are four states under the earth. The first is called hell (winheruno) [i.e. Gehenna or eternal hell], and it is the place where sinners who die in mortal 33 For the prevalence of Pure Land imagery and its use in preaching, see Kaminishi’s chapters “Deciphering Pure Land Imagery” and “Etoki as a Pure Land Method of Proselytization” in Ikumi Kaminishi, Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan (Honolulu: University of HawaiʻI Press, 2006), 57-99. For a comparison between the Kumano Ten-Worlds Mandala and European Christian images of the afterlife, see pp. 145-150. 34 The “Hell Scroll” can be viewed online at: http://www.emuseum.jp/detail/100237/000/000?mode=detail&d_lang=en&s_lang=en&class=1&title=. 35 The “Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts” can be viewed online at the website for the Kyoto National Museum: https://www.kyohaku.go.jp/eng/syuzou/meihin/emaki/item03.html. 428 sins are as well as demons (tengu). The second state is a little above this and is called purgatory (purugatōriyo) where souls of people who died detached from grace and who had not expiated their sins in this life make compensation, and from here they pass into glory…. The third which is above purgatory is called children’s limbo, where children who die not having received baptism…. The fourth one is above this limbo, it is the place called Abraham’s Bosom [Aburan no seyo, also known as the limbo of the Fathers]. This place is where the ancient virtuous people (korai zennintachi) were raised up from waiting for ascension, and into which Lord Jesus Christ descended, and he raised up from this place the 36 souls of those saints. In this succinct passage, the Dochirina teaches the full scope of the Christian afterlife outside of heaven, including a brief reference to the descensus. Many of these concepts would have been intelligible to potential converts because Buddhism already taught various “levels” of existence. Indeed, some levels of Buddhist hell had as many as sixteen subdivisions. “Demons” (usually depicted as ogres) were known to inhabit the lower nether reaches of the samsaric realms and to assist in the many grisly tortures (such as being ground up into hamburger) that awaited evil people there. The idea of a kind of children’s limbo would have been easily intelligible, as there already existed such a place in Buddhism. Some children, after death, went to a kind of intermediate zone called Sai no Kawara (literally “dry riverbed for children”). This place was a riverbed where children would spend an indeterminate amount of time trying to build pyramids of stone to improve their karmic condition. Unfortunately, demons, or sometimes, more specifically, the demon-hag Sōzuka no Baba, would knock the pyramids down and 37 prevent the children from achieving samsaric release. To Japanese of the period, even the general idea of the descensus would have sounded familiar. The Bodhisattva Jizō (Kṣitigarbha), a bodhisattva of mercy, was known to roam about the various hells looking for souls to free from the torturing demons. Specifically, he was said to rescue the poor children stuck in the “limbo” of Sai no Kawara, taking them out of the underworld altogether in the wide sleeves of his robes. The Dochirina’s version of this kind of underworld rescue mission, however, only applied to one specific part of the Christian “hell,” namely Abraham’s Bosom (the limbo 36 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Krishitan Kyōrishi, 125. 37 See Glassman, The Face of Jizō, 160. 429 of the Fathers, part of Hades or Sheol). Possible rescue via the descensus did not apply to any of those stuck in eternal hell, which was by definition the place of the damned and of demons (Gehenna). Still, the Dochirina’s explanation of the descensus would have offered hope to potential converts, as it had to those in other mission zones. Like Xavier’s earlier catechisms, this explanation seems to expand the scope of the people whom Christ rescues from Abraham’s Bosom. Instead of limiting it to righteous and holy Jews, like the prophets, the Dochirina merely says that Christ raised up “ancient virtuous people” from this region of the netherworld. Depending upon how a reader might interpret this, it could easily mean that any good ancestor had been saved by Christ and taken out of the underworld. Any truly evil ancestor (e.g. a murderer, thief, etc.) deserved suffering in either Christianity (according to divine justice) or Buddhism (karmic consequence). For Christianity, it was Gehenna for eternity. For Buddhism, it was one of the many nether regions of hellfire and torture for billions of years. Thus the Dochirina’s explanation of purgatory would have been intelligible enough for any convert or potential convert to understand the nature of the Christian afterlife as this: 1. Hell (Gehenna) was the worst afterlife; 2: The next best state was purgatory where there is intense but temporary suffering that ultimately and assuredly leads to heaven; 3: Limbo, for children who die without baptism, though the exact nature of limbo as a “bad” place is left undefined; 4. Abraham’s Bosom (Limbus Patrum) where the saints and “good people” (however that might be interpreted) from old had already been rescued by Christ himself and taken into heaven; and finally 5: Heaven, a place of “pleasure” or “glory.” Even if the convert or potential convert did not understand the text as it is, they would presumably have been able to ask a native advocate, local leader, or a fellow member of the Christian community who would have had greater understanding as to the exact details. Though this explanation was provided in textual form, it was simple enough that any sort of preacher (native or foreign) would also have been able to teach it. In fact, oral explanations of the afterlife were probably much more in-depth since the listening party had the opportunity to ask questions in real time. The Dochirina was the main catechetical text of the mission, but other works also taught purgatory. A work known as Kirishitan kokoroesho (Book of Instructions for Christians; hereafter simply Kokoroe) contains a very similar explanation of the four 430 38 states of the Christian underworld to that in the Dochirina, with some minor omissions. Another text that discusses purgatory is Pedro Gómez’s (1533-1600) Compendium 39 Catholicae veritatis... (hereafter, simply Compendium). Composed between 1593 and 1594 in Latin at the college in Amakusa (Kawachinoura), the work consists of three main sections covering western astronomy (De Sphaera), Aristotelian philosophy of the soul (De Anima), and Catholic theology (De Theologia, Catechismus Tridentinus). Pedro Ramón (1550-1611) had the entire manuscript translated into Japanese just one year one year after it was composed. Though the original and the translation only exist in 40 manuscript form, it was very likely printed by the mission press. Much attention has been given to the section on astronomy (De Sphaera) since it concerns the introduction of western science into Japan, but our concern for purgatory lies within the last section De Theologia. Since the books were for the training of clergy and lay brothers, both foreign and Japanese, they are proof that the Jesuit seminaries taught both the doctrine of purgatory and the theological significance of the descensus to which it is linked. Even though this text was for clerical use, Japanese priests and advocates would have been able to communicate the concept of purgatory to the Christian community via diffusion and guide the laity in devotional and penitential activities related to it. Having established that missionaries taught the purgatory on the ground among ordinary Christians, we need to examine what type of praxes within the Japanese church were directed towards this state of the afterlife. Most ordinary Christians would have learned this “praxis of purgatory,” that is penitential and devotional activities, by virtue of participating in the community; parents taught their children, neighbors taught their neighbors, and lay leaders instructed the community as a whole. As discussed in Part One, one of the most popular penitential practices was disciplina. This particular devotion was on fully display for the community, as people engaged in it frequently did so at 38 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Krishitan Kyōrishi, 185-186. The online Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database notes differing opinions on whether this the Kirishitan Kokoroe sho is identical to the Dochirina Kirishitan or whether it was written earlier and remained unpublished. See the entry at http://digital- archives.sophia.ac.jp/laures-kirishitan-bunko/view/kirishitan_bunko/JL-KB46-45-36-1 39 This text is known in Japanese as Iezusukai Nihon corejiyo no Konbendiumu. 40 This is the assessment of the Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database. Its entry states that the Compendium is on a list of printed books that was found in Macao. https://digital-archives.sophia.ac.jp/laures-kirishitan- bunko/view/kirishitan_bunko/JL-38-37-3 431 church and in processions. Even Kakure Christians continued the practice of disciplina at a family level all throughout the Tokugawa period. Still, there is a textual basis for the “praxis of purgatory” that has hitherto been ignored by scholars. Texts such as the Dochirina, the Compendium, and others linked the penitential and devotional practices of the church with purgatory as a state of the Christian afterlife. Certainly, a great many Christians would have never had access to these texts. But native advocates did, and it was they who bore the great burden of leading the community in preparing for death and taking care of the dead. Therefore, we should examine just how these advocates learned about the “praxis of purgatory” and then translated their soteriological knowledge into action in the Japanese church. 432 CHAPTER IX THE “PRAXIS OF PURGATORY” IN THE JAPANESE CHURCH The lack of references to purgatory in both the early Jesuit letters and Fróis’s Historia might lead us to believe that it was of little concern to both the advocates of Christianity on Kyushu and the Japanese Christian community itself. Instead, both sources are filled with many references to the many penitential and devotional practices that Japanese Christians engaged in with much enthusiasm. For example, disciplina was popular as a penitential and devotional activity, and Japanese Christians frequently performed it in public and in processions. The letters and Fróis’s Historia do not make reference as why Japanese Christians might have engaged in penitential and devotional activities with such great fervor. To find out the answer to this question, we have to examine just exactly what Japanese-language catechetical and devotional texts taught about these activities and, more importantly, how they could possibly benefit a person’s soul in the afterlife. In this chapter, I contend that the concern for suffering in purgatory motivated much of the penitential and devotional praxis of the Japanese Church. Christians performed these activities to reduce their own suffering in purgatory. In addition, they also engaged many elements of Catholic praxis concerning the dead, namely suffrages, memorial masses, and indulgences, out of a concern for alleviating the suffering of their dead family members and coreligionists. These practices built upon concepts already present in Buddhism, such as merit transference, to create a new and appealing way to care for the dead in Japan in both the individually and communally within confraternities and the Church as a whole. As taught by catechetical materials, purgatory (the Church Suffering) was not simply one of several possible outcomes that a Japanese Christian could experience after death; rather, concern for the dead was a focus in the daily spiritual lives and practice of Japanese Christians. Through the nexus of penitential and devotional practices, as we will observe, the living members of the Communion of Saints (the Church Militant) were able 433 to interact with and affect the condition of souls in purgatory, including their own future dead selves. Our examination of Japanese-language catechetical and devotional texts, such as the translation of Gómez’s Compendium, will reveal that that the primary soteriological reason behind penitential activities was to perform satisfaction in this life so that an individual’s soul would not have to suffer more intensely in purgatory after death. In this way, “the praxis of purgatory” provided an important means to positively affect one’s own afterlife much as Buddhism did through practices that generated karmic merit for a better rebirth (or none at all). Since Buddhism was the religion that concerned itself with soteriology in Japan (Shinto has no such concern), Christianity simply had to offer similar mechanisms with which people could prepare for death and take care of those already dead. Moreover, these texts provide the theological basis from which native advocates explained to ordinary Japanese Christians how they could gain merit for themselves and, through the Treasury of Merit, transfer it to the dead. They also show that other mechanisms for lessening the satisfaction due to God were extremely important to the Japanese laity so that their loved ones would suffer less in purgatory. Through suffrages, indulgences, and various charitable acts that allowed for the transfer of merit, Japanese Christians could care for their dead in purgatory and relieve their suffering either in part or in toto. What they did on earth in the here and now had a direct and immediate effect on their own souls and the souls of their loved ones in a state of purgation. The benefits of these mechanisms (both merit and satisfaction) would compound upon one another, affecting both the living and the dead simultaneously in one specific act of ecclesiological unification. Importantly, this type of Christian double merit generation and transfer also met the expected death needs of the Japanese as they had been satisfied by very similar mechanisms within Buddhism for many centuries. Before examining the Japanese-language catechetical and devotional works, we should briefly review how the Church Militant and the Church Suffering were connected in ecclesiological thought. The two communities were not separate with purgatory being some far off state in a future time. Instead, they were understood as overlapping communities, one physical (the Church Militant) and one spiritual (the Church Suffering) coexisting at the same time and separated by an invisible but permeable barrier. Ghosts 434 were sometimes thought to appear to the living to prompt them to some sort of action, 1 such as praying for their soul in purgatory. But typically the barrier was thought to be one-way, with only the living being able to influence the state of the souls on the other side. They did this through a variety of mechanisms, namely suffrages. The dead, though typically passive, prompted the living to undertake suffrages and other devotions due to their very state of purgation. The living, concerned with the purgatorial suffering of their dead loved ones, took action to relieve some of the dead’s spiritual pains and earn merit for themselves at the same time. Thus the dead, by their very existence in the Church Suffering, had a measure of indirect influence over the spiritual state of the living for the positive. In terms of how the living might be included in a discussion about the Christian dead, we must remember that the great majority of Christians fell into neither the category of the “altogether good,” like the saints, nor that of the “altogether bad,” like the truly evil. This means that for the average everyday Christian, their eventual afterlife would include some time in purgatory where they would have to make compensation to God for their sins. In the Japanese Church, similarly, living Christians took steps, mainly through devotional and penitential practices, to make satisfaction for their sins while still alive on earth or to gain merit in order to preemptively offset the debt that they might have to pay God when they died. This is to say, many penitential activities by the living were directed towards their future selves in the Church Suffering, either through performing satisfaction as part of the sacrament of penance or by earning merit that might be applied against the later suffering in purgatory as demanded by divine justice. In this way, we can see how purgatory was a palpable and immediate state that permeated the living Japanese Church. Since one had to actually engage in some kind of penitential activity to make satisfaction in this life, the idea of purgatory (whether stated explicitly or not) dominated Japanese Christian praxis as it did elsewhere in the period. 1 The dead could appear at times to the living to ask for help in purgatory. These ghostly visitations were both common in medieval Europe and in Buddhist countries. There are a few instances on the Japan mission of ghosts of Japanese Christians asking for help in purgatory, though it does not seem to be a very common occurrence. I intend to research this at a future date. One such visitation can be found in Ajuda 49- IV-59, 15 (Annual letter of 1600). For an overview of this in medieval Europe see, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: the Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998). 435 Since prior scholarship on penitential activities within the Japanese church does not associate these practices with the performance of satisfaction and the gaining of merit to reduce suffering in purgatory, we must examine how the catechetical works produced by the mission connected these two concepts. This is important because the catechetical works show that advocates at the highest level of the mission (priests, lay brothers, dōjuku, kanbō) had received the theological and soteriological training necessary to guide the ordinary laity into the “praxis of purgatory” on the ground. Rather than examining the implementation of the sacrament of penance in the Japanese church as a whole, we will concentrate exclusively on how the catechetical material explicated the aspect of making satisfaction within the sacrament of penance since this was the impetus for all penitential activities on the part of the living. The first catechetical work that we need to examine is the Dochirina, since this had the most widespread readership among the laity. The 1591 version introduces the concept of satisfaction in its explanation of the fourth sacrament, the sacrament of penance. Describing the sacrament as “medicine for the soul [anima],” the teacher notes that there are three components of penance. The first is contrition, which is interior regret for having committed a sin. The second is confession in which one repents by means of words (the text uses sange, a Buddhist term). The third is satisfaction, in which one “compensates through conduct” (i.e. praxis). Thereupon the master explains how one should properly be contrite and make a confession. The disciple then asks specifically about satisfaction: Disciple: What is satisfaction? [sachishihasan] Master: It is what we offer up in settlement to the Lord Jesus Christ as compensation for our sins. It is the settlement we make by means of remorse, 2 interior suffering, and the compensation administered upon us by the padre. 2 See Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Krishitan Kyōrishi, 152 for the 1591 Rōmaji version and pg. 83 for the 1600 version of the Dochirina. There are no differences in the passage on satisfaction between the 1591 and 1600 versions, indicating that the explanation was already sufficient. But, in the 1600 version, the section on contrition is much expanded and includes an explanation of how contrition and confession is the source of the forgiveness of hell. See also Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 71-72 where sachishihasan is transliterated by mistake as sashichihasan. I have rendered the term toga okuri (科送り) as “compensate” or “compensation” (i.e. satisfaction) since the term literally meant “to repay sins” during the Muromachi period. Higashibaba errs in translating it as “sending way of sins (toga-okuri)” and uses both a literal and modern reading of the two characters “sin” (科) and “to send” (送り). He also renders it “passing away of sins.” The passage, as he translates, it is: “It is to make up for your sins to the Lord Jesus Christo. It is done 436 Here we have a simple yet effective communication of the concept of satisfaction. Though the Dochirina does not state what methods a person could use to perform satisfaction—something they likely learned from the actual praxis of the community—the explanation it provides not only equates satisfaction with some type of suffering but also the penance imposed during confession via the authority of the priest (ex opere operato satisfaction). The passage also does not explicitly connect making satisfaction (togavocuri) with purgatory. However, the Dochirina already accomplished this in an earlier passage by stating that purgatory was a location after death where a soul (within 3 the grace of God) had to make satisfaction since they had not done so in this life. So, how, then, was one to make satisfaction? The Dochirina states that it was imposed during confession by the padre, which would have entailed some type of oral instruction—most likely, to say prayers or to undertake a fast. Priests always had discretion when assigning penances and they would have made sure that the penitent 4 knew how to perform them. Even then, the penances were likely very simple prayers that by your sorrow and spiritual pains as well as the sending away of sins (toga-okuri) as directed by the padre.” This completely misses the nuance of repayment to God for one’s sins. See Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan, 109, 171, 201. There are several reasons to translate it as “compensation” or “making compensation for sins.” First, the editors of the Dochirina correctly gloss the term as “tsumi no tsugunai” (罪のつぐない) given the context. See Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 44. Elsewhere, they gloss the verb okuru as つぐないをする or “to pay compensation” or “to make atonement.” Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 95. Second, the Jesuits’ own dictionary defines Togavocuri as “satisfação dos peccados” or “satisfaction of sins,” which is essentially making compensation for sins, p. 259. The dictionary also states that “Vokuri, uru” means “satisfazer” (i.e. to satisfy), p.277. Furthermore, a later dictionary, the Vocabulario de Iapon Declarado Primero en Portvgves… of 1635 and printed in Manila, defines “Togavocuri” as “satisfacion de los pecados.” If this were not enough, the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (日本国語大辞典 ) has the following entry for 送る, stating that one of its usages during the Muromachi and early modern periods as: (4) 相手への恩返し、つぐないなどを果たす。 The verb okuru, written either with the kanji 送 or the kanji 贈, actually meant to pay something back to someone and not “to send away” as it does more commonly in modern Japanese. In this case, the sinner is paying something back to God. For the root 授け (sazuke) I have translated it as “administer” after the Vocabulario, which gives the entry: “Sazzuqe, uru… Adminiſtrar, or dar alguna coſa ſagrada, ley, dignidad, &c.” 3 Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 44; and Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Krishitan Kyōrishi, 46. 4 For example, the Manuale, gives instructions on how to enjoin satisfaction (penance) for according to each person’s faculties. It recommends prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Cerqueira, Manuale, 77. See also the decrees of Trent, Session 14, Chapter 8. “The priests of the Lord, therefore, as the spirit of prudence shall suggest, must enjoin salutary and appropriate penances in keeping with the type of offence and the ability of the penitent, so as not to become sharers in the sins of others by imposing very light tasks for very serious faults, and perhaps thereby conniving at the sins by acting with too great indulgence towards the penitents.” Tanner, Decrees, Volume II, 709. 437 all would have been taught during induction into the community. In addition, many Japanese Christians would have known how to perform penance through praxis in the community. For example, during certain festivals, especially Lent (Quaresma), the whole community engaged in common penitential activities, and new members would have learned quickly from more experienced Christians. And, in any event, “penitential” practices were already ingrained in Japanese religiosity. Both Buddhist monks and Shugendō practitioners undertook a wide variety of ascetic practices that lay people could imitate. Therefore the Catholic penitential system did not have to be created out of whole 5 cloth, but could be built upon a preexisting foundation. As those who administered the sacrament of penance, both foreign and native clergy were in charge of enjoining penitents to perform some type of satisfaction. Most, if not all of the foreign padres, had been trained in the sacramental theology behind satisfaction and how to prescribe penance. Moreover, they had been exposed to the penitential system during their formative years in Europe simply as a part of Catholic culture. However, clergy and other advocates trained in Japan, particularly native padres and lay brothers, would have needed some type of official explanation as to how the sacrament worked and what its connections were to temporal penalties here on earth and in purgatory. To this end, the missionaries provided a seminarian textbook, Gómez’s Compendium, in both Latin and Japanese editions. Though this textbook only began to be used after 1597, its overall teachings on satisfaction were surely part of the training of native advocates prior to this date. Like the Dochirina, the Compendium offers us textual evidence of how the satisfaction component of the sacrament of penance was taught among the missionaries and then spread to the lay community. Both the Latin and Japanese versions of the Compendium contain detailed chapters on the theology behind and the practical implementation of the sacrament of penance. Here we will concentrate on the Japanese translation since it was directed toward the training of native clergy and advocates who worked within the community. By reviewing the Compendium’s explanation, we can infer that native advocates would have urged penitents to make satisfaction in this life since the absolution of sins in confession 5 This is also the basic position of Shin and Fujitani. Shin, “The Passion and Flagellation” and Fujitani “Penance.” 438 did not remit temporal penalties. The first explanation of how the sacrament of penance worked is a chapter entitled “An Explication of the Tenth Article, Which is: I Believe in the Remission of Sins.” The section begins by explaining how Christ himself (in a cosmological sense) enables the forgiveness of all sins and how his disciples (and, by extension, the padres) were given authority to remit them on earth. These claims are supported by appropriate scriptural passages from both Old and New Testaments. The passage then describes how both guilt (transliterated as kurupa from the Latin and Portuguese culpa) and temporal punishment (hena, meaning poena or penalty) can be forgiven through the completion of the sacrament of penance. Here, it instructs the reader that even though the guilt is forgiven through absolution, the temporal penalty must still be paid no matter what. The key part of this instruction is that some of this penalty might remain after death so that it will have to be paid in purgatory. Given this explanation of the sacrament of penance, native advocates would not have failed to mention that it 6 would be far better to make satisfaction now rather than after death. The overarching point of this chapter of the Compendium is that it is far better to undertake voluntary suffering in this world than involuntary suffering in purgatory. To this end, it suggests a number of ways how a person can repay the temporal penalties of sin in this life. The first is through the interior act of simple contrition. The second, which requires some type of exterior action (i.e. actually doing something), is through typical works of satisfaction, such as “prayer, fasting, and charitable work.” These would have been the standard penances that foreign and native padres enjoined upon the majority of penitents. The third method is through indulgences, which, as we will see, were accompanied by one of the typical works of satisfaction. And finally, the Compendium states that if one does not the performed these “ascetic practices” (shugyō, a Buddhist term), meaning works of satisfaction that cause some kind of suffering, a person will have to suffer in purgatory. Indeed, the Compendium more than any other Japanese 6 One interesting note is that the corresponding Latin text specifically mentions alms and disciplina as part of these penitential acts, though they are omitted from the Japanese translation. Alms could fall under “charitable acts,” but the absence of disciplina is notable. Perhaps it was a given, or perhaps the translators omitted it on purpose to avoid any potential excesses of the practice in favor of more prayer or charity. The Latin also uses specifically the term “satisfaction” whereas the translation does not. Latin text of the Compendium can be found in Kirishitan Bunko Library, ed., Compendium Catholicae Veritatis I, (Tokyo: Ozorasha, 1997), 309-310 or pgs. 395-397; irregular pagination. The corresponding Japanese is in Satoru Obara, ed., Iezusukai Nihon Korejiyo no Konpendiumu II (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1997-1999), 371-374. 439 Christian text links suffering in this world in lieu of suffering in the next. And it casts suffering in the here and now for the temporal penalties of sin as a reflection of Christ’s suffering on the Cross that enabled the forgiveness of all sins. A later chapter, “De Sacramento Poenitentiae” (On the Sacrament of Penance or Henitenshia no sakaramento no koto), also underscores the connection between the sacrament of penance, suffering in 7 this world through satisfaction, and the avoidance of more intense suffering in purgatory. In addition to the Compendium, other Japanese texts directed to native advocates specifically reinforced the connection between making satisfaction now and one’s future state of suffering in purgatory. The Japanese supplement to the Manuale, which was intended for native padres and possibly lay brothers, specifically reminds its users that some type of satisfaction must be paid to God now or later in purgatory. This text was particularly important because it was composed as a sort of field manual on how to 8 administer the sacraments, such as the sacrament of penance. Although the supplement does not go into detail as to what penance the Japanese padre should assign, the much more thorough Latin Manuale does. Preceding the form for absolution (the act in the sacrament that forgives the eternal penalty or culpa), the Manuale suggests that the padres “enjoin a penance according to the measure of his own choosing, and the faculties of the penitent” (enjoining meaning to prescribe). Elsewhere, in the section on “enjoining 7 “De Sacramento Poenitentiae” explains more thoroughly the sacramental theology behind penance, particularly the difference between the eternal penalty and temporal penalty of sin. It also explains the three parts of the sacrament, namely contrition, confession, and satisfaction, and how they each factor into the forgiveness of the sin as well as the remission of the two types of penalties. It also notes how the padre has been given license to forgive sins due to the authority (Mt. 16) that Jesus bestowed upon the apostles. The part that concerns us, however, is its explanation on satisfaction as it connects directly to the concept of purgatory. As the third part of the sacrament of penance, the Compendium states that satisfaction is compensation for sin. It then explains that sin incurs penalty. Mortal sins incur an “eternal penalty,” which means that the person who accrued it has incurred the penalty of hell (i.e. eternal separation from God). The “merits of contrition” and confession, a person is able to have that “eternal penalty” forgiven and thus escape damnation (this is the absolution of sin). However, even though the eternal penalty has been forgiven, the sin always causes some type of damage (arasu). In other words, the contrition and confession aspects of the sacrament forgive the eternal penalty, but the temporal penalty still needs to be paid. This, the Compendium says, can be forgiven through penance given by a padre, of which there are two types. The first type is through common penances, namely “fasting, prayer, and disciplina.” The second is through indulgences. Like the previous section on the remission of sins, this chapter concludes by saying if the penalty of sin is not repaid in this life by these means, it must be paid in purgatory after death in compensation. Obara, Konpendiumu III, 40-42. For the corresponding Latin manuscript, see Kirishitan Bunko Library, Compendium I, 336v or p. 450. 8 Toshiaki Kōso, ed., Kirshitan-ban “Sakaramenta teiyō furoku” : eiin, honji, gendai gobun to kaisetsu (Tokyo: Yūshōdō shoten, 2010), 47-50; 118-120. 440 satisfaction,” it is more specific. There the Manuale suggests the standard penitential acts of satisfaction, as recommended by the council of Trent, which are “prayer, fasting, and 9 giving alms.” In all likelihood, native padres using the supplement to the Manuale would have applied their own individual discretion and have enjoined similar easy-to-do penances like those suggested in the Latin text. The aforementioned works, the Compendium, the Supplement, and the Manuale, all connect the performance of certain penitential activities with the performance of satisfaction. But these works were not for the laity. One work that was directed their way is the Kirishitan kokoroe sho (hereafter Kokoroe), which is highly similar to the Dochirina in many passages. But unlike the Dochirina, the Kokoroe goes into some detail regarding penance. Following its description of the various states of the afterlife, the Kokoroe explains that baptism and the sacrament of penance are able to absolve (the guilt) and remit (the temporal penalty) sins. After an explanation of indulgences, which the Dochirina does not emphasize, the Kokoroe goes on to explain how mortal sins incur an eternal penalty (i.e. the penalty of hell). It then reminds the reader that first two parts of the sacrament of penance, specifically interior contrition and then external confession, can remove the eternal penalty. Unlike the Dochirina, the Kokoroe offers instruction on how to repay the temporal penalty that accompanies sin. For this it says there are three ways. The first is to do the penance (beina; this is ex opere operato satisfaction) enjoined at the time of confession; the second is to do good deeds and charity (zenjizenkon; this is ex opere operantis satisfaction); and the third is to suffer in purgatory. Of the three ways, purgatory is the one where the person has no choice in how they suffer; they simply suffer according to divine justice. Indulgences can help reduce the severity of purgatory through forgiveness of the temporal penalty. But the penalty enjoined during confession, the punishment is less than that of purgatory, and when one dies, the temporal penalty is altogether forgiven. The Kokoroe goes on to point out that doing such good deeds as 9 Cerqueira, Manuale, 89 and 77. For standard penances, “Canons Concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of Penance” in Session 14 Canon 13 of the Council of Trent states: “If anyone says that, for temporal punishment for sins, no satisfaction at all is made to God, through the merits of Christ, by the sufferings imposed by God and patiently borne; or by the penances enjoined by a priest; or, further, by those voluntarily undertaken such as fasts, prayers, almsgiving or other additional works of devotion; and consequently that the best penance is only a new life; let him be anathema.” Tanner, Decrees, Volume II, 713. 441 “fasting, discipline, charity, and prayer,” or gaining an indulgence, one can accomplish 10 compensation for any the penalties that await in purgatory. And it notes that such penitential activities are even more effective as satisfaction if done in church, in front of 11 the altar, or during a particular feast like Lent or Advent. This was, in effect, recommending pious acts as way of making up for any unknown but still accrued temporal penalties. Other devotional works for the laity likewise emphasized the connections between repentance, satisfaction, and penitential activities—particularly fasting and disciplina. One of these was the Gopashion no kannen (Meditations on the Passion 12) from 1607. Part of a larger work entitled “Supiritsuaru shugyo no tame ni erabi atsumuru shiyukuwan no manearu” (A Manual of Meditations Chosen and Collected with Regard to Spiritual Exercises 13), the Gopashion is essentially a synthesis of Jesus’ Passion from the four Gospels. As such, it emphasizes the very real suffering of the crucifixion and the salvation of humanity on the Cross. This forms the basis for its discussion on satisfaction. The very beginning of the Gopashion not only connects the suffering of Christ with penitential activity but also the earning of merit. The text then notes that “we of little 10 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 188-189. The compound zenjizenkon 善事善根 is rare, even for the period. 11 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 204-205. 12 Patrick Schwemmer has usefully provided a linguistic analysis and a translation of an unpublished text, “Some Dialogues on some Instruments of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” that emphasizes meditation on the suffering of Christ. The text is contained in a folio known as “Barreto’s Japanese Miscellany,” which Schwemmer explains as “a 382-folio manuscript in the hand of Manoel Barreto, S.J. (c.1564–1620), containing a variety of basic Catholic texts—gospel readings for the entire church year, miracle stories, devotional meditations, and saints’ lives—handwritten with a quill pen on Japanese paper, in a leather binding whose markings match those of one known to originate in Goa. Its body text is in Japanese, with titles, marginalia, cross references, and indices in Portuguese, Latin, and Japanese, all using the Roman alphabet. Barreto’s dedication dates it to 1591, one year after his arrival in Japan, so it would seem to have been an expedited production and a first harvest of the fruits of ten years of Alessandro Valignano’s systematic exchanges of language and culture.” Patrick Schwemmer, “My Child Deus: Grammar versus Theology in a Japanese Christian Devotional of 1591” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1 (2014) 465-482. 13 See Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database entry and Johannes Laures, Kirishitan Bunko = 吉利支丹文庫 : A Manual of Books and Documents on the Early Christian Missions in Japan… Monumenta Nipponica Monographs, No. 5 (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1957), 73-76. We know that such a text was in circulation earlier than 1607 (from at least 1596) due to a reference by Fróis concerning a certain text of the passion narrative. In fact, an earlier manuscript, identical in text, has been dated from as early as 1591. These texts about the passion of Jesus were being produced and read within fifty years of the start of the mission. 442 merit” (kuriki naki warera) can improve ourselves by contemplating the suffering of Jesus and rectifying our behavior. Keeping in mind the “pain and humiliation” of Jesus, the Gopashion declares that meditating on the passion yields some very real spiritual benefits: Much merit [tokugi] comes from meditating on the Passion, more than from much prayer, fasting, and disciplina, therefore meditating on the Passion with devotion a little each day will yield much merit (toku) [or benefits] as the Church doctors have stated. This passage essentially states that by meditating on the suffering of Jesus, who, by dying on the Cross, gained infinite merit for the salvation of humanity, one can gain greater merit for oneself. By suffering meditatively and emotionally along with Christ, one can obtain even more than one could by experiencing self-inflicted suffering or ascetic practices like disciplina. This “interior” suffering and empathy for the Passion sort of taps into the cosmic merit that Jesus won. The Gopashion then goes on to state that “the more you work for this by means of devotion you ought to gain more merit [toku, here glossed as rieki/riyaku] through the grace of God. And the more days of ascetic practice [shugyō] 14 you accrue, the more merit [ku] you will lay up and this merit [toku] ought to deepen.” 14 Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 227-228. The Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on Blessings notes the following: “Blessings are not sacraments; they are not of Divine institution; they do not confer sanctifying grace; and they do not produce their effects in virtue of the rite itself, or ex opere operato. They are sacramentals and, as such, they produce the following specific effects: 1.Excitation of pious emotions and affections of the heart and, by means of these, remission of venial sin and of the temporal punishment due to it; 2. freedom from power of evil spirits; 3. preservation and restoration of bodily health. 4. various other benefits, temporal or spiritual.” http://www1000.newadvent.org/cathen/02599b.htm. The words tokugi and toku can have several different meanings. The gloss of the edited text in Ebisawa notes that this phrase is placing emphasis on a person’s interior faith more than exterior faith through deeds and ascetic practices. Typically defined, toku can mean “virtue,” but it also states the meaning of “merit” as in the Buddhist term “kudoku.” The word “tokugi” can also have the meaning of “kudoku” (merit) or “rieki/riyaku” (i.e. benefits or to save). The Vocabvlario da Lingoa lists the word tocuguiô as “works of merit, or benefits.” Given the context of the passage, namely the juxtaposition of the words “toku” and “tokugi” with devotional and penitential activities associated with the earning of merit, I have translated the passage with this definition of the word. In this way, meditating on the Passion (i.e. the suffering that Jesus paid as satisfaction/merit for humanity’s sins), one can accrue merit that will offset the temporal penalties that will be waiting in purgatory. For an alternate translation, see Shin: “Contemplating on the Passion yields ample virtues, therefore if you take a moment every day and devote your faith to the practice of contemplation on the Passion, you will get much more ample benefits than the practices of many prayers, fasts, and flagellations, as many great theologians said.” See Shin, “The Passion and Flagellation,” 20. The Vocabvlario da Lingoa translates toku (tocqua) as: “first, the retribution of works that one made in this life, or in another life, or at birth as the gentiles imagine.” This corresponds to the Buddhist notion of karmic merit. Shin’s translation ignores how suffering is the basis for satisfaction, just as the suffering of Christ was the basis for redeeming man, and almost relegates it to mere virtue and temporal benefits. 443 Two other texts that recommend some type of penitential practice or suffering for the making of satisfaction are the Iruman kokoroe no koto (hereafter Iruman kokoroe) and the Japanese translation of Luis de Granada’s (1504-1588) Guía de pecadores (The Sinner’s Guide). The Iruman kokoroe is thought to be comprised of notes taken from lectures led by European Jesuits on theology and praxis (possibly delivered by Valignano himself) and represents the teachings that foreign advocates transmitted to native advocates for use in the community. Though fragmentary—the text was famously discovered hidden in a byōbu screen that had made its way to Europe—the Iruman kokoroe addresses penitential practice as a form of satisfaction. After explaining the two other components of the sacrament of penance, that is contrition and confession, the text discusses briefly the third component of satisfaction, which it calls “Toga ni ataru Remição” or “the Remission of Sins.” Drawing a real-life parallel with which people would have been familiar, the Iruman kokoroe likens the subjugation of the body to a horse that has to be tamed with whip and bit. In order to do this, the Iruman kokoroe recommends two common forms of penance. To tame the body, it recommends disciplina (corresponding to the whip, or muchi) and fasting (corresponding to the bit, kutsuwa). With these, as well as other “penitence” and “mortifications,” one is able to “break” oneself in like a horse. This explanation specifically connects the remission of the 15 temporal penalties of sin (satisfaction) with the usual practices of fasting and disciplina. Devotional texts actually used by the educated laity also emphasized the connection between the performance of satisfaction, the gaining of merit, and an individual’s state in purgatory. One was the Giya do pekadoru, a translation of the highly influential Guía de pecadores (The Sinner’s Guide) by the Dominican Luis de Granada. Translated by the Japanese Jesuit padre Martinho Hara (c. 1570-1629), an adept linguist and one of the four Kyushuan boys Valignano had sent to Europe, the Giya was printed at the mission press. Diogo de Mesquita (1533-1614), who informed the Jesuit General of 16 the printing, thought it was going to be “most useful for the Christians.” Lay leaders 15 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 271-272. 16 A near contemporary English translation entitles the work as “The Sinner’s Guide, containing a full and ample exhortation to the pursuit of virtue; with instructions and directions how to become virtuous.” Hara probably had help with the translation the Spanish Jesuit Pedro Ramón who had translated the Compendium into Japanese. Regarding the printing of another of de Granada’s translated works, the Libro de Fide, the 444 used the Giya not only as a devotional (i.e. a devotional text) but also as a tool for teaching less spiritually advanced members of the community. For example, a certain “noblewoman” in Hizen (noblewoman meaning she was from a warrior house) taught the Giya to several students as devotional literature in 1605. As Guerreiro relates, she “read to the women that served her, who were many, some things of Christian doctrine or the Guia de pecadores, with which they benefited much in virtue and in knowledge of the 17 things of God.” As devotional literature, the Giya instructs lay Christians on why and how they should practice Christian virtue and details the “the benefits that one can derive from living a virtuous life.” It also explains how to “counteract the seven capital sins of 18 pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth.” Besides exhorting readers to the cultivation of Christian virtues, which would have resulted in merit, the Giya reminds them to confess and do penance for their sins in this life instead of in purgatory. One of the first sections to deal with this is a chapter entitled “The Tenth Reason to be Virtuous: The Fourth of the Last Things, which is Hell.” Though this chapter is primarily a warning against falling into hell through sin, it also discusses purgatory. The chapter begins by underscoring that, apart from limbo and purgatory, there is no middle ground between the two extremes of heaven and hell. It then explains God’s judgment upon sins and cites the fearsome penalties of hell for the contumacious, while pointing out that God’s divine power also encompasses mercy, with which sinners can be saved. The Giya then presents readers with a choice: one can either Jesuit Diogo de Mesquita referred to the success of the Giya: “[the Libro de Fide] will be most useful for the Christians, just as is the Guia de pecadores, which we printed some years back and of which I sent you a copy.” From Mesquita to the Jesuit General Acquaviva, March 18 1612. Quoted in Diego Pacheco, “Diogo de Mesquita, S.J. and the Jesuit Mission Press,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 26 (January, 1971): 440. Also noting the linguistic skill of Martinho Hara, Mesquita writes: [Fathers Martin and Julian] are both working with edification and fruit, and particularly Father Martin; as he is the best interpreter we have in Japan, he does excellent work translating spiritual books into the language and script of Japan. He translated the Guia de Pecadores, which I sent you, and other books. He recently finished the Libro de Fide of Fray Luis de Granada, and a short while ago we completed printing the first part of it in their characters; th this is very much appreciated by the Japanese.” Mesquita to Acquaviva, from Nagasaki, October 6 , 1613. Quoted in Pacheco, “Diogo de Mesquita,” 441-442. Pacheco cites from ARSI Jap-Sin 36, 27v. 17 Quoted from Guerreiro, Relação Anual II, 230. See also Ward, Women Religious Leaders, 236-237. 18 For an overview of the Giya and an extremely helpful linguistic analysis of the Japanese translation, see William J. Farge, The Japanese Translations of the Mission Press, 1590-1614: De Imitatione Christi and Guía de Pecadores, Studies in the History of Missions, V. 22 (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 2013), 75-118, quote from summary on p. 75 445 accumulate treasure (i.e. merit) or sins (like demerit). Piling up merit ensures heaven while piling up sins ensures perdition. Much of this chapter of the Giya would have seemed familiar to Buddhists. The accumulation of sins is portrayed in a similar manner as the accumulation of negative karma (demerit). It also uses Buddhist terminology to convey the point. As the Giya states: Anger [shin] stores up [chiku] just like wanting to store up human treasure, for 19 evil people, by means of sins piling up each day, they store up God’s wrath. Here “anger” is rendered as the word shin, which was used for the Sanskrit Buddhist term “pratigha.” This Sanskrit term signifies ill will to sentient beings as well as other 20 negative thoughts. Instead of receiving a negative rebirth as a result of the cosmic natural law of karma, the Christian sinner, by accumulating demerit in the form of sins, obtains eternal penalty as a result of divine justice. Both Buddhist karma and Christian divine justice were considered inviolable in principle, but only divine justice was actually moveable by repentance. In Buddhism, karma was cosmological law; it could not be pleaded with or moved by compassion. Rather, to offset negative karma, a person had to produce good karma (or merit). Divine justice, on the other hand, could be moved to mercy by the repentant actions of the sinner. This is an important distinction because the Giya then reminds its readers that he penalties of hell are eternal, but there is a way to escape them in this life through penitence (moving divine justice to mercy). The text then advises that it is better to perform a little penance (as the result of confession) in this life through ascetic practice rather than being forced to undergo the suffering of hell eternally where there is no opportunity for repentance. The message is clear: suffering a little now 19 Satoru Obara, ed., Giyadopekadoru, Kirishitan Kenkyū Volume 38 (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 2001), 94. Shin 瞋was used for the Buddhist term “pratigha,” signifying ill will to sentient beings as well as other negative thoughts. For chiku (“stores up”) the kanji used here is 畜 but could be 蓄 instead. The chapter title is: 善に勧まずして叶はざる十番目の道理なる四ツの終わりなるいんへるのの事. 20 According to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, pratigha is defined as the following: “In Sanskrit, ‘aversion,’ ‘hostility,’ or ‘repulsion,’ one of the primary mental afflictions and closely synonymous with ‘ill will.’” Buswell and Lopez, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. 446 (through mortification and prayer) will be of great profit (daitoku/taitoku) and help one to 21 avoid eternal suffering in hell. Though the Giya’s emphasis, like the Spanish original, is on hell, the same advice would be applicable to the suffering in purgatory. The reader would likely know that whatever suffering one might perform in this world, either as a result of imposed penance or voluntary penance, would either reduce or eliminate later suffering in purgatory. Moreover, those acts would be of profit as merit whether they were needed to reduce future suffering or not. Elsewhere, the Giya makes similar recommendations. In an earlier chapter on virtue and the Judgment, it reminds the reader of the fates of Dives and Lazarus from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 16:19-31) in which the rich man (Dives), who dined sumptuously, thirsted for a drop of water in the afterlife. In contrast, Lazarus, the poor beggar covered in sores, enjoyed Abraham’s Bosom (i.e. Limbus Patrum as part of Sheol, Hades). The Giya’s recommendation on how to avoid the fate of Dives is to perform a little mortification now, specifically fasting and disciplina, to avoid eternal (one might 22 read purgatorial here) suffering after death. This offsetting of the eternal balance in the here and now is likewise emphasized in a chapter exhorting the reader not to postpone repentance and penance. Referencing St. John Climacus (579-649), a famed monastic who lived on Mt. Sinai, the Giya reminds the reader that if “making satisfaction [toga okuri] for the sins of today is difficult” how 23 hard will it be to compensate for a lifetime of sins? The next section of the chapter, which aims to dissuade people from waiting until their deathbed to repent, emphasizes that it is better to undertake penance in this world rather than after death. Making use of the Pseudo-Augustine text De vera et falsa poenitentia (On true and false penitence), the Giya warns that “the suffering in this life is nothing compared with the suffering in 21 Obara, Giya, 97-98. The Giya here uses daitoku/taitoku 大徳, which meant grande proveito or “great profit.” Given the spiritual nature of the Giya, “great profit” no doubt means satisfaction or merit. This section of the Giya is a condensed version of the original, Herminio de Paz Castaño, ed. Fray Luis de Granada Obras Completas Tomo VI Guía de Pecadores (Texto definitivo) (Madrid: Fundaión Universitaria Española Dominicos de Andalucía, 1995), 119. 22 Obara, Giya, 78. Luke 16:19-31. The Spanish casts eternal separation from God as “eternal penance,” though this is technically not correct in terms of satisfaction. The eternal penance is eternal self-separation from God, which is its own punishment. Paz Castaño, Obras Completas VI, 96-97. 23 Obara, Giya, 216. Paz Castaño, Obras Completas VI, 273. 447 purgatory.” For this reason, the Giya says, it is dangerous to delay repentance until the 24 end of life. The Giya not only warns the reader that putting off confession could lead to the eternal penalty, in other words, but that putting off satisfaction will lead to much more suffering in purgatory than is imaginable in this physical world. One of the last sections exhorting the reader to penance in the here and now comes in a chapter on remedies for the sin of sloth. Such recommendations fit well with a call to penance since the sin of sloth consists of both physical and spiritual torpidity. Here the Giya not only recommends performing satisfaction for one’s sins but also the gaining of merit to achieve a better afterlife. It states, “…by means of suffering in the present, we plead to escape the suffering [kugen; a Buddhist term] of the next. Even though the hardships that we undergo [in this life] are light, they are very of great merit and consequently the reception of grace.” In other words, the eternal reward far outweighs the little suffering that we have to undergo (voluntarily or involuntarily) in the present life. The overall message is: “pile up merit” and “accumulate virtue” before the end of your 25 life. Following the Giya’s advice here, let us now turn to how Japanese-language texts taught the laity to gain merit from God. Merit in the Catechetical and Devotional Works Though not always explicitly stated, the Christian concept of merit and a kind of demerit (sin) was a primary motivation for the penitential and devotional activities of the Japanese Church. This type of reward and punishment based upon specific actions, deeds, or thoughts would have been familiar to the Japanese since Buddhism operates on a system of karmic merit. What distinguishes these two “merit” systems is that the Christian concept of merit is not based upon a natural cosmic order, but rather refers to reward given freely by God based upon meritorious actions and thoughts. Pious, charitable, and devotional works, all can generate merit, while sins accrue punishment through divine justice consisting of eternal and temporal penalties. Nevertheless, the 24 Obara, Giya, 219. Compare with the Spanish, Paz Castaño, Obras Completas, 278. 25 Obara, Giya, 291. Paz Castaño, Obras Completas VI, 402-403. 448 overall concept of an individual performing certain actions of self-inflicted suffering or charity towards others in order to gain a better afterlife was a common element in 26 Christianity and Buddhism. Unlike the Buddhist tradition of merit as a kind of natural and cosmological law, Catholic doctrine states that all merit with which humanity can earn salvation stems from Jesus’ willful suffering and death on the Cross. Such a concept was familiar (though different) in Pure Land Buddhism, as the Bodhisattva Amida was thought to have made an original or “primal” vow (hongan) from which all merit and “salvation” flowed. In the medieval period, many Buddhists thought that the present age was far too degenerate (the age of the Mappō) for people to achieve any real merit. Humans could not merit escape from the samsaric cycle on their own, so a more worthy and karmically positive being had to aid release. In Catholicism, acts required by penance to avoid temporal punishment in purgatory also become acts of merit and vice versa; the effects produced from acts of satisfaction or acts of merit are essentially doing double duty. When we consider the popularity of penitential practices within the Japanese Church, like fasting, prayer, disciplina, devotional meditations, and various mortifications, we can then understand them as having two goals: 1. To avoid more intense suffering in purgatory by paying a little satisfaction on earth; and 2. To accrue merit so the reward from God will be all the greater after death. As a result, we should not think of penitential acts as acts of self- punishment but as attempts by individual Japanese Christians to care for their own future dead selves while they are still able. This, again, was not an innovation of Christianity but 26 As Aquinas reasons in Question 21 “The Consequences of Human Actions by Reason of their Goodness and Malice” of the Summa Theologiae: Article 3. Whether a human action is meritorious or demeritorious in so far as it is good or evil? It is therefore evident that a good or evil action deserves praise or blame, in so far as it is in the power of the will: that it is right or sinful, according as it is ordained to the end; and that its merit or demerit depends on the recompense for justice or injustice towards another. In Article 4, he discusses God as the source of all supernatural merit and demerit: “Now God is the governor and ruler of the whole universe, as stated in the I:103:5: and especially of rational creatures. Consequently it is evident that human actions acquire merit or demerit in reference to Him: else it would follow that human actions are no business of God’s.” Quoted in the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2021.htm. Question 114 deals with merit in its full theological import. First part of the Second Part (Prima Secundae Partis). A good modern overview of merit can be found in a paper by Ferrer Smither, “The Function of Merit in Christian Morality,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, 16 (October, 2012): 69-79. See p. 72 for a nice summation of various council rulings and the like concerning merit. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ctsa/article/view/2517/2138. 449 rather an already incipient expectation within Japanese religiosity as first introduced by Buddhism. Although there is no way to know exactly what was in the minds of lay Japanese Christians, there must have been some simple equivalences being made between the Buddhist and Christian concepts of merit and performing satisfaction for sins. Catechetical texts use Buddhist terminology to refer to merit, with kuriki being one of the most common, and frequently refer to the “storing up of merit.” This would have been familiar to the Japanese as Buddhism permits the accumulation of karmic merit as well. The one key difference is that Christian merit does not operate as a natural law but is a reward from a personal God. Both punishment and reward come from a just but merciful God who could be persuaded, via penitential, devotional, and charitable activity, to relent in any eternal or temporal penalties of sin after death. In karmic merit, there is no persuading since it is something akin to a law of nature. A figure such as Amida could certainly “save” a person out of abundant compassion and merit, but there was no pleading with the natural law of karma. In Christianity, God was both the source of merit and punishment but could be pleaded with on the part of the penitent and appeased through the making of satisfaction. The similarities between karmic merit and Christian merit can be seen in such texts as the The Iruman kokoroe. This text connects the payment of satisfaction, the performance of penitential activities, and the gaining of merit to be applied after death. In doing so, the Iruman kokoroe moves penitential and devotional practices beyond their use as forms of satisfaction and establishes that they produce spiritual rewards akin to karmic merit. After the explanation of the sacrament of penance, the remission of sins, and mortification, the text notes that certain acts of mortification, such as sackcloth and hair shirts (here “disciplinas cilicius”), cold, heat, hunger, and thirst yield a variety of benefits. First, they are forms of ex opere operantis satisfaction (i.e. “by reason of the agent”). Second, they incur grace (karasa) since they are, in a sense, physical requests for merit (kuriki) from God. Third, by means of this grace, mortifications also yield virtues as they strengthen the spirit (supihiritsu) and empower the individual to resist temptation from 27 the enemy (Satan). 27 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 274-275. 450 Here, the Iruman Kokoroe explains that voluntary penitential practices in the form of self-mortification not only strengthen the interior disposition of the person to resist temptation, but also have actual benefits after death as part of the Church Suffering. These benefits would be the remission of temporal penalties scheduled for purgatory and obtaining merit from God. The last two, if we recall, are not separate, but simultaneous. Any voluntary penitential act gains merit and satisfies temporal punishment at the same time. Though the Iruman kokoroe was derived from lecture notes for Japanese irmãos, it is reasonable to think that they would have imparted this kind of knowledge to the Japanese Christian community in general through their pastoral care and preaching activities. Thus knowledge of the double benefits (satisfaction and merit) of voluntary penance and mortification would have likely been a part of the motives behind the laity’s performance of such activities as disciplina, fasting, and prayer. Obtaining merit would have been one of the most attractive features for engaging Catholic praxis, especially if recommended by a native advocate. Merit is also the operative concept in suffrages and indulgences, both in terms of remitting satisfaction for one’s future dead self and for one’s dead relatives. These are, if we recall, one of the mechanisms that Japanese-language catechetical materials promote for the expiation of temporal penalty in lieu of purgatory. Though the intricate theology behind suffrages and indulgences mattered little to ordinary Japanese Christians who made use of them, some of the catechetical materials do take pains to explain that the ultimate source of the merit for these indulgences is Jesus’ own suffering and death on 28 the Cross. This mattered on the ground mostly because it framed the sacrifice of the mass as a means by which a person could obtain merit for themselves or for their dead loved ones. Going to mass was not just an obligation, then, but a mechanism by which one could gain merit. Indulgences were a sort of byproduct of this eternal sacrifice, as 28 Merit, as an outcome of voluntary suffering (in some cases, like illness, involuntary), is explained in some of the Japanese-language catechetical materials as originating from Jesus’ own suffering in the Passion and his death as a sacrificial victim for humanity’s eternal penalty. This explanation is standard Catholic sacrificial theology in that the ultimate source of merit was Jesus’ own voluntary suffering and death; this was needed to atone for the eternal penalty that humans, as a result of their fractured nature in original sin, justly deserve. Through his Passion and death, Jesus created a source of inexhaustible merit due to his God-man nature upon which humans can add by their own actions. 451 they represented the specific ways in which merit could travel freely from the living to the dead. A number of the Japanese-language catechetical texts refer to Jesus’ generation of merit on the cosmic level when discussing the Passion and Crucifixion. For example, the Kokoroe links penitential activity, the origin of merit in Jesus’ sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the mass. In explaining how the mass itself generates merit for those who participate, the text notes that the merit people are able to produce themselves—through ascetic practice, for example—is only of a limited kind. The mass, however, produces merit for those participating in it that has “no measure” (hakari naki go-kuriki)—because, as the text explains, the sacrifice of the mass is rooted in the sufferings of the Passion, which itself is the source of all merit. As a result going to mass with “true contrition, deep devotion, and respectful adoration” has more merit than other activities, such as 29 pilgrimages, “performing disciplina with metal chains once a year, and fasting.” Of course, going to mass did not negate the desire to perform penitential activity; rather, for Japanese Christians, it was an additional powerful source of merit with which they could achieve a better afterlife. Just because one could access the inexhaustible merit at mass did not mean that one could not or should not acquire merit and perform satisfaction by one’s own volition. People sinned continuously and thus continuously accrued temporal penalties. Penitential acts outside of the mass were a way to help stem 29 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 202-203. I interpret the phrase “遠国より渡らせられ、らうまのせるされんまで[ゆき]” or (ongoku yori wataraserare roma [Roma] no serusaren [Jerusalem] made” as “pilgrimage.” See note in the text. Other texts that make reference to the merit that Christ won for all with the passion include the Konchirisan no riyaku, the Giya, and the Compendium. The Compendium, for example, explains that the merit that Christ won on the cross enables the forgiveness of our sins. Obara, Konpendiumu II, 204-205. in Latin see Kirishitan Bunko, Compendium Catholicae Veritatis, 274v-275 and 328-329. Likewise, the Compendium states that by the merit of confession, the eternal penalty is remitted. Obara, Konpendiumu III, 42. The Konchirisan reminds the penitent reader that God’s mercy is “deep without limit” and that the “extensive merit of the blood of Jesus that has flowed out” can forgive (yurusu) and extinguish (nusuru) sins. The Konchirisan no riyaku reminds its reader, at the very end of the text, that Jesus’ merit, which he obtained by the shedding of his blood, is the source of forgiveness of sins. Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 367-368; 380. The text here does not refer to “merit” explicitly but rather “go-chi no go-kidoku” which is literally “the miracle of [Christ’s] blood.” The editors rightly gloss that this means the “merit” (go-kudoku) that Christ won with the suffering of his passion. The supplement to the Cerqueira, Manuale also explains that by means of Christ’s suffering and death in the passion, he has achieved the merit that enables the forgiveness of sins. (Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 189-190, Toshiaki Kōso, ed., Kirishitanban “Sakaramenta teiyō furoku” eiin honji gendaigobun to kaisetsu (Tokyo: Yūshōdō, 2010), (for the Eucharist), 53; 121; (for baptism), 45; 117. Merit and demerit are also discussed in the Japanese addition of De Anima in Obara, Konpendiumu I, 227- 228. See also Shinzo Kawamura, Sengoku shūkyō shakai=shisōshi: Kirishitan jirei kara no kōsatsu (Tokyo: Chisen Shokan, 2011), 165; 139-140. 452 30 this accumulation of demerit and its consequent suffering in purgatory. And, just as in Buddhism, no amount of merit was too much; one was never certain what the spiritual tally would be at the end of life, and it was best to have an excess of merit rather than a dearth. Passages from two of the most popular devotional works also illustrate the importance of the connection between Christ’s acquisition of merit through his suffering and Japanese Christian desire to acquire it through their own suffering. In fact, the Japanese Christian concern for merit is so overwhelming that it even prompted the translator of the Kontemushisumunji (Contempus Mundi, the Japanese translation of Thomas A Kempis’s Imitation of Christ) to change certain parts of the text to reflect this interest. The Kontemushisumunji states this in its opening pages: If you wish to escape darkness of heart and acquire the true light, learn from the merits and character of Christ. With Christ’s words I exhort you. Therefore, we should make meditation on the meritorious deeds [italics mine] of Christ our highest study. The passage therefore places emphasis on acquiring merit through good deeds and piety like the source of all merit, Christ. This would have meant the suffering of the Passion, the event which all penitential acts in some form or another imitated. Farge points out that the Japanese translator (possibly Martinho Hara) changed the original text from “meditate on the life of Christ” (Latin version) to “meditate on the meritorious deeds and sufferings” (Japanese version). Likewise, the translator changed the original of “his 31 [Christ’s] life and ways” (Latin) to “the merits and character of Christ” (Japanese). Naturally, the translator’s changes would have resonated better with Japanese Christians due to their interest in merit generation. 30 The Iruman kokoro no koto connects acquisition of merit with the performance of penance. See Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 275. 31 The above is quoted in Farge, The Jesuit Mission Press, 27-28. Original in Satoru Obara, ed., Kontemutsusu munji (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 2002), 15. Farge has rendered行跡 orかうせき (kōseki or gocǒxeqi) Chriʃtono gocǒxeqi (kōseki) as “meritorious deeds.” This reflects the Vocabvlario da Lingoa’s definition of “cǒxeqi” as: “vida, ou obras dalguem, particularmente exemplo mao, ou bem q hum deixa depois de morso.” This is more than the modern definition of “behavior” (gyōseki). Perhaps 行跡 (kōseki) is supposed to be 功績 in the original text. 453 The Giya, another translation where the original text has been altered to emphasize the accumulation of merit, emphasizes all merit is the result of the grace of God, having been won through Christ’s merit on the Cross: God’s compassion (muen) means that if you did not receive the merits of grace (garasa no go-kuriki), and were to depend only on your own effort, you could not gain the merit required to attain the happiness (keraku) of heaven. Nevertheless, it must be said that if good men as well as bad are equally blessed with the beauty of creation on this earth, how great will be the blessings (go-on) of heaven for the good! If so many good things [of this earth] are given to those who do not merit it, how great will be the reward (go-hōsha) of those who accumulate merit! If [earthly] blessings given gratuitously are so great, what will be the reward of those who serve [God]! If then God’s mercy (muen) is so great towards those who do not recognize his blessings (go-on), how incalculable will be the happiness (keraku) of those who recognize God’s gifts placed before their eyes! [I:77]. As a Japanese-language addition to the original text of the Guía, this passage, as Farge explains, indicates that “the translator of Giya do pekadoru also encourages the reader not to rely on his or her own efforts but stresses how important it is to serve God and 32 accumulate merit.” Farge also points out that the language of this passage would have likewise been familiar to the Japanese reader since some of the terminology and style is 33 similar to that found in the Tannishō, a compilation of the teachings of Shinran (1173- 1263). As recorded by one of his disciples, the Tannishō emphasizes the saving grace of Amida in much the same way that the Giya identifies saving grace with Christ’s death on the Cross. In a most basic sense, Christ is an analogous figure to Amida Buddha in the sense that any sort of merit to salvation is dependent upon takriki (“other power”). According to the Christian perspective, nothing a person could do on their own, such as 32 The above is quoted in Farge, The Japanese Mission Press, 90-91. Obara, Giya, 84-85. See the original Spanish in Paz Castaño, Obras Completas VI, 103. 33 For example, the Shinran is remembered as teaching: “I, Shinran, have never even once uttered the nembutsu for the sake of my father and mother. The reason is that all beings have been fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, in the timeless process of birth-and-death. When I attain buddhahood in the next birth, each and everyone will be saved. If it were a good accomplished by my own powers, then I could transfer the accumulated merits of nembutsu to save my father and mother. But since such is not the case, when we become free from self-power and quickly attain the enlightenment of the Pure Land, we will save those bound closest to us through transcendental powers, no matter how deeply they are immersed in the karmic sufferings of the six realms and four modes of birth.” Unno interprets other power “not as an absolute being, a miracle worker, or something separate from ourselves.” Taitetsu Unno, Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic (Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 1996), 8; 50. However, there were undoubtedly monotheistic-like elements in Mahayana Budddhism and Jōdo Shinshū itself during the medieval period, and many ordinary people would have certainly interpreted Amida to be a savior-like figure. In any case, jiriki is seen as a delusion that, in the end, achieves no result. 454 penance or devotions, could merit salvation. But the self-sacrifice of the God-man enabled the door to be opened through which one could aid their own salvation through means of satisfaction and the accumulation of merit. In this sense, Christianity employed on a basic level both the tariki (“other power”) and the jiriki (“self power”) aspects of Buddhist soteriology. This would have been extremely appealing because one could rely on a higher power (Christ, Deus) while having a great deal of agency in one’s own salvation. The connection between kuriki and salvation runs counter to the idea argued by Higashibaba that such devotional and penitential practices, like disciplina, were mainly to gain earthly blessings or some kind of vague “mysterious powers.” Such acts, Higashibaba implies, were performed in order to obtain “superhuman power” or “miracles” akin to what the shugenja (yamabushi) possessed. To be sure, penitential activities within Catholicism both in Japan and Europe at the time were seen as bestowing this-worldly benefits, such as healing or relief from drought. This-worldly benefits and merit were not necessarily incompatible, but merit for the afterlife, both in Christianity and in Buddhism, was ideally the more important of the two. In connecting individual merit with the cosmic merit of Christ, the Giya emphasizes that individual merit is not merely about gaining some of “mysterious power,” as Higashibaba has 34 argued, but gaining spiritual merit which ultimately aides one’s quest for salvation. So far we have established that many of the catechetical and devotional materials printed by the missionaries emphasized the need to compensate God for one’s sins (satisfaction or toga okuri). The texts clearly teach the concept of purgatory as a state (part of the underworld) where one has to make satisfaction for the temporal penalties that remained after death. They do this in ways that were already intelligible to Japanese religiosity, namely thorough the concept of merit and demerit. Though technically 34 Higashibaba, Christianity, 122-123. For another example of how spiritual merit was emphasized over any sort of earthly or material benefits, see Schwemmer’s analysis “Barreto’s Passion Ballad” in Patrick Schwemmer, “Samurai, Jesuits, Puppets, and Bards: The End(s) of the Kōwaka Ballad, Volume Two: Ballad Discourse in Jesuit Mission Literature in Japanese” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2015), 89-90. Schwemmer points out that 果報 kahō or “fruition” could either mean spiritual or earthly success but that Jesus, in the “Passion Ballad,” offers “a direct critique of this lexical identification of moral and material values, pulling them apart by elevating weak above strong on the basis of otherworldly values.” He notes that this is essentially what the disenfranchised lords of Kyushu would have liked hearing after their loss of independence and power to the new national hegemons. 455 members of the living church (the Church Militant), Japanese Christians were, in effect, performing actions that would aid themselves in the Church Suffering. Christ, who enabled all merit through suffering and death, became a person to imitate for Japanese Christians. By meditating on Christ’s suffering and engaging in suffering themselves, such as in disciplina and fasting, they too could acquire merit. Merit, as we explained earlier, simultaneously accrued during works of satisfaction as this was also thought to be pleasing to God and would bestow reward in the afterlife. These activities, though confined to the community of the living, are directly connected with the community of the future dead. In the next section, we will discuss a much less abstract connection to the community of the dead, namely how the living were able to care for them through such mechanisms as suffrages, indulgences, memorial masses, and transfers of merit. Taking Care of the Dead in the Kyushu Church Unlike the living, it was thought that the dead in purgatory could not change their condition after death through their own actions. They must endure the purgation of divine justice as long as necessary, suffering for the unpaid temporal penalties that they have accrued throughout their lifetime. Since the time for exercising their free will was over, the dead could not acquire any sort of merit on their own accord or make any willful satisfaction. They were, in a sense, spiritually immobile, incapable of quickening their eventual realization of the Beatific Vision. Instead, the dead in purgatory had to rely upon the transfer of merit from the living. This was not unlike the concept of ekō (merit transfer) in Japanese Buddhism, where individuals, after death, frequently needed extra karmic help from the living. The transfer of Christian merit to the dead was not reward (meritum) in the sense that it is for the living but rather recompense for the dead’s temporal punishment that has been generously donated to them. Such donations of merit accorded with Buddhist concepts of the transfer of merit because individuals, by their own acts and volition, could actually help the dead. Even though all merit ultimately came from Christ (tariki), the merit transferred to purgatory by suffrages, indulgences, and other acts of charity came from the acts of the living (jiriki). 456 This combination of Christian tariki and jiriki was appealing to people because it fused two opposing poles in Buddhism. Sects such as Tendai, Shingon, and Zen all focused more on jiriki. But in the age of the mappō, only the spiritual adept, such as monks, could spend the many years training and meditating to achieve nirvana in this life and release themselves from rebirth after death. The sects that emphasized tariki, particularly Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū, had no need of any type of jiriki because obtaining enlightenment during the mappō was an impossibility anyways; only by trusting in the saving power of Amida could one actually be saved from the samsaric cycle. Jōdo Shinshū in particular had no use for merit-making for one’s self or merit transference for the dead. As George Tanabe Jr. explains: Any deliberate effort to secure one’s salvation is an expression of lack of faith in Amida’s power to guarantee birth in the Pure Land, whether immediately (sokutoku) in this life or, at the latest, at the point of death. The dead do not need ritual help, or, more accurately, Amida does not require human assistance. This is the rationale for Shinran saying that he never recited the nenbutsu for the repose of his deceased parents and that his dead body, as [Mariko Namba] Walter notes, should be put in the Kamo River for the fish to eat. There were funerals of course in Jōdo Shinshū as later patriarchs attempted to justify them in response to criticism, but the practice remained controversial throughout the 35 medieval period. The main point here is that Christian merit-making and merit transference gave Japanese Christians a sense of trusting in an “other power” and a measure of influence in the realm of purgatory by their own power. To this end, two merit-based mechanisms within church praxis enabled ordinary Christians on Kyushu to care for their dead, namely the mass and indulgences. As mentioned previously, Japanese-language catechetical and devotional materials portrayed the mass as the most efficacious way to gain merit. The mass was thought to hold such enormous benefit because it was a reenactment of Christ’s Passion and sacrifice with which he obtained inexhaustible merit. Merit from the mass, unlike individual performance of satisfaction on its own (without an indulgence), could be 35 George J. Tanabe, Jr., “The Orthodox Heresy of Buddhist Funerals,” in Jaqueline I. Stone and Mariko Namba Walter, eds., Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism, (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2008), 338. For a much more nuanced view on Shinran and merit transference on the cosmic level, see Terakawa Shunshō’s essay “Shinran and Rennyo: Comparing Their Views of Birth in the Pure Land” in Mark L. Blum and Shin’ya Yasutomi, eds., Rennyo and the Roots of Modern Japanese Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 137-149. 457 transferred from the living through the mass itself due to the concept of the Treasury of Merit. The mass, as a reenactment of the sacrifice of the Passion, generated merit for all, both living and dead. This merit, because it was cosmically created, could help the dead with satisfaction in purgatory. Moreover, the mass itself was also the best supplicatory prayer for specific intentions, such as a memorial mass for a specific person or the souls in purgatory in general, and transferred merit to them by means of suffrage (per modum suffragii). Indeed, the dead, as a whole, are generally remembered and prayed for at all masses, both then and today. On Kyushu, this was a fundamental teaching communicated to advocates and educated converts. It would then be explained to the general Christian population. For example, the Dochirina, which has a focus on the laity, explicitly presents the mass as a nexus between the living and the dead: Disciple: What is the mass (miisa)? Master: It is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which we offer up to God the Father as sacrifice for both the dead [in purgatory] and the living. After this brief explanation, the Master says that the mass is a time for contemplation (kuhannen or kannen) on “the Lord’s Passion.” Then, after a discussion about the mass as a sacrifice for humanity’s sins, the disciple asks about the purpose of the mass. The Master replies that it serves three purposes: 1. To offer up thanks for blessings; 2. To offer up compensation (tsukunuhi, modern Japanese: tsugunai) for our sins; and 3. To petition in order to receive more blessings. The merit generated at the mass is related to all three, and the disciple, who is a stand-in for all Japanese Christians or potential converts, asks to what end this benefits people: Disciple: What kind of merit [toku] does the sacrifice of the mass bestow upon people? Master: For people living in the world, it is without measure. Also, for souls in purgatory, it is a thing of great help [tayori]. Accordingly, for both the living and 36 the dead, offering and worshipping at mass acquires great merit [kuriki]. 36 Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 56 for the 1592 edition. See Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 237-238 for the 1592 Rōmaji edition and 64 for the 1600 Rōmaji edition. According to the Vocabvlario da Lingoa, tayori means “help” (“Ajuda, ou cosa que serue, presta…”). The Vocabvlario da Lingoa defines kudoku (cudocu) as “mericimentos” or “merit.” In addition, I believe that toku here means merit (i.e. reward from God) because the teacher, in response to the disciple’s question about what toku does that mass give, refers to it being a help for those in purgatory. If toku here simply meant virtue or even earthly benefits, it could not be applied to souls in purgatory as both in catholic theology only apply to the living. Therefore in this 458 Here we have explicit reference to how the mass, as the reenactment of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice, connects both the living and the dead in one communal ritual. Going to mass and participating in it as a prayer and sacrifice, Japanese Christians could not only help their own future state in the afterlife but also that of their deceased family and friends. Going to mass for Japanese Christians, then, was not just some weekly obligation imposed upon them by the church, but a powerful means to reduce satisfaction in purgatory for themselves and the souls already there. The Dochirina, the early seventeenth-century text, Go miisa no ogamiyau narabi ni kannen no koto (On Meditations and Praying at the Mass) specifically mentions the souls of purgatory as benefiting from the sacrifice. This text, which seems to have been written by an anonymous Japanese Christian at the end of the Keichō era (1596-1615) not only provides an explanation of the mass but also emphasizes the importance of the sacrament of the Eucharist as a source of merit. The text encourages Christians (likely during a time of persecution) to contemplate the host and the eternal life that it begets. One important passage emphasizes the sharing of the dead in the sacrifice during that part of the mass when the Eucharist is split in three (the so-called Fraction Rite or Fractio panis): First, for the glory of the blessed of heaven [i.e. the saints]. Second, for an increase of grace for those of the Church present [i.e. the Church Militant at the mass, the living]. Third, for the relaxation [of suffering] for the souls in purgatory 37 [the Church Suffering]. By including the souls in purgatory at this high point of the sacrifice, the text is saying that the breaking of the host, which is a physical act symbolic of the breaking of Christ’s instance, toku must mean “merit.” Ebisawa notes that toku (徳) is the same as 得, meaning “riyaku” (利益 sometimes pronounced as “rieki” in secular usage) or “benefits.” Such benefits would obviously be spiritual in nature when applied to the dead. See, Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 38. The terms toku (徳) and kudoku (功徳) are interrelated, slightly different, and incredibly complex. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism in its entry on guṇa (the Sanskrit for kudoku) contrasts kudoku (“spiritual virtue” or “meritorious quality” with actual merit (punya) in that merit. It notes that merit generating activities such as “building monasteries, erecting [stupas], making images of the Buddha, transcribing sūtras, and chanting all help generate merit that can lead to better quality of life in this and other existences but will not in themselves produce spiritual virtue (guṇa) that will be sufficient to bring about liberation from the cycle of rebirth.” 37 In Satoru Obara, ed., Kirishitan no Orasho (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 2005), 113. See also the Kirishitan Kokoroe Sho in Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 212 for a similar explanation. 459 body on the Cross, benefits all members of the Communion of Saints. Just as the God- man had been broken and won inexhaustible merit for humanity, so too does the breaking of the host impart merit upon all present, the dead included (in the form of lessening 38 owed satisfaction). In addition, the text assures the reader that wherever the mass is celebrated, Christians will receive benefit from the mass after they have died. Thus, the souls in purgatory will benefit from the mass throughout all time on Earth, so long as it is being celebrated by Christians somewhere in the world. This would have been especially comforting during times of persecution against Christians when local celebration of the mass was infrequent at best. The mass, the Go miisa explains, was a way for Japanese Christians to take care not only of themselves now and their future states the afterlife, but also their dead relatives and coreligionists. In addition to promoting the mass as a suffrage for the dead, catechetical and devotional works promoted indulgences as a means by which the living could take care of their dead (to be discussed below). Indulgences were also touted as ways for the living to remit their own satisfaction due in purgatory. The first texts we might examine related to indulgences are the 1592 and 1600 editions of the Dochirina. While they do not make explicit references to indulgences themselves, they explain the theological reasoning behind them by noting that the entire church can share in and transfer merit from good 38 The Kontemutsusu munji also mentions that receiving the body of Christ enables redemption and partakes of all his merit. Obara, Kontemutsusu munji, 185. For a summary of the background of the text see Obara, Kirishitan no orahso, 268-269. As part of the Eucharistic celebration, the priest breaks the host into several pieces not only signifying the breaking of Jesus’ body as sacrifice but also the sharing of that sacrifice among the entire cosmological Church. Representing the Church Suffering in this manner goes back to at least the thirteenth century when Aquinas ruminated on the meaning behind the “fraction rite. By the end of the sixteenth century, such symbolism would have been commonplace however. See the Summa, Tertia Pars, Question 83: The rite of this sacrament; Article 5. Whether the actions performed in celebrating this sacrament are becoming? Aquinas reasons, “Division of Host into three. Reply to Objection 8. As Pope Sergius says, and it is to be found in the Decretals (De Consecr., dist. ii), “the Lord's body is threefold; the part offered and put into the chalice signifies Christ's risen body,” namely, Christ Himself, and the Blessed Virgin, and the other saints, if there be any, who are already in glory with their bodies. “The part consumed denotes those still walking upon earth,” because while living upon earth they are united together by this sacrament; and are bruised by the passions, just as the bread eaten is bruised by the teeth. “The part reserved on the altar till the close of the mass, is His body hidden in the sepulchre, because the bodies of the saints will be in their graves until the end of the world”: though their souls are either in purgatory, or in heaven. However, this rite of reserving one part on the altar till the close of the mass is no longer observed, on account of the danger; nevertheless, the same meaning of the parts continues, which some persons have expressed in verse, thus: “The host being rent—What is dipped, means the blest; What is dry, means the living; What is kept, those at rest.” Others, however, say that the part put into the chalice denotes those still living in this world [,] while the part kept outside the chalice denotes those fully blessed both in soul and body; while the part consumed means the others.” Quoted in the Catholic Encyclopedia here: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4083.htm#article5. 460 deeds (zenjizengyōtō no kuriki). Without naming it as such, the text effectively explains the concept of the Treasury of Merit. The 1600 edition of the Dochirina has a slightly lengthier explanation than the 1592 edition—presumably done so for clarification—so this is the explanation of the Treasury of Merit that we will analyze. The explanation of the sharing of merit occurs in chapter six of the Dochirina, which is entitled “The Creed and Articles of Faith” (Kuredo narabini hiidezu no aruchigo no koto). It begins with the disciple asking the master about the “circulation [of merit].” The Master then answers by giving the following example: just as blood circulates within one body, so too does the faith (fides), sacrament (Eucharist), and merit from good deeds flow through the one body of the Church. The Dochirina then breaks this down by stating that the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory are conjoined with the church (of the living) and therefore the aforementioned suffrages and merit can be circulated (tsūyō) between them. The Master then tells the Disciple that, for this reason, the prayers and merit (go-kuriki) of the saints can be directed towards us (this is essentially describing the intercession of the saints). Furthermore, any prayers of the living and the merit from 39 funerals of the deceased can be offered up to God for the benefit of souls in purgatory. Here we have a clear statement about how Christian merit works and how it might be of benefit for the dead. Such a principle of merit transfer in order to help the state of the dead in the afterlife was, as we have made clear, very familiar to Japanese through the Buddhist concept of ekō (merit-transfer). The two systems were, of course, different— one enabled by karmic law and the other by Jesus’ sacrifice, the merit of the saints, and the unity of the cosmic Church—but the notion that one could help a dead person in the afterlife by transferring “merit” was the same on a basic and practical level. The Treasury of Merit, for this is what the Dochirina is teaching if not by name, also enables the use of indulgences for the living and for the dead. Again, this type of mechanism would have been familiar to the Japanese as it had Buddhist counterparts, such as giving alms, 40 copying a sutra, or offering incense. 39 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 48-49. For the 1592 edition, see Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 127 and Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 46. 40 As Stephen G. Covell notes in an essay on modern-day practices of buying posthumous Buddhist names: “In the early modern period, posthumous precept names could play a meaningful role in the lives of parishioners because they were thought to be efficacious devices for ensuring postmortem salvation, 461 Although the Dochirina only teaches about merit transfer and suffrages for the dead, the Kirishitan kokoroe sho does explain the concept of the indulgence. The first mention of indulgences in the Kokoroe follows an explanation of the Treasury of Merit, but it also follows immediately after the instruction that one must be “truly contrite” for one’s sins and go to confession in order to be forgiven (absolution rather than remission). This serves to stave off the idea that the Treasury of Merit is able to forgive sins in totality (i.e. the eternal penalty of sin) rather than simply remitting temporal punishment. The text then explains that by means of indulgences, which come in the form of a Jubilee, contas, images, cordon belts [korudon no obi, that is the cords that mendicants used as belts], or revering a painting [of Jesus or the saints].” With such an indulgence, one can obtain remission of temporal penalty due upon death for the sins one has committed up to that point in life. All this is made possible by the “holy church’s spiritual help” (santawikeresha no supiritsuaru go tasuke). So the reader does not become confused as to exactly what is being remitted by an indulgence, the Kokoroe then reminds them that there are two penalties to sinning: one is the culpa or eternal penalty (kurusuba i.e., kurupa], which is the “evil” part of sin; the other part is the penalty (peina) which is recompense (punishment, mukui) demanded by God’s divine justice. It then states that the punishment incurred by sin has a limit (meaning that it is distinct from the eternal penalty of the culpa) and can be remitted by an indulgence. Again, as if to underscore that an indulgence does not remit the culpa, the Kokoroe finally reminds the reader that the eternal penalty (culpa) can only be first forgiven by baptism and then by contrition and confession during the sacrament of penance. The Kokore makes a reference to baptism here because it was the one-time sacrament that both absolved the eternal penalty of all sins committed up to that point as well as the temporal penalties carried with them. After baptism, the only way to absolve the eternal penalty was through the sacrament of 41 penance. whether understood as birth in a pure land, rescue from rebirth in a hell, or otherwise.” Stephen G. Covell, “The Price of Naming the Dead: Posthumous Precept Names and Critiques of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism” in Jaqueline I. Stone and Mariko Namba Walter, eds., Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism, (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 304. 41 Ebisawa, Ide, and Hisashi, Kyōrisho, 187-188. 462 Following another section on how to make satisfaction for the temporal penalty of sin on this earth (discussed earlier), the Kokoroe then offers more detailed information about indulgences, namely the differences in the kinds of indulgences that the pope may issue. It first states that when an indulgence is given by the pope, it can be in the form of a Jubilee or a plenary indulgence (insurusensha he[re]nariyo), or that of a plenissima indulgence (hereniishima). It notes specifically that while these are essentially the same, the Jubilee and plenary indulgence have some differences. The plenary indulgence remits all temporal punishment a person owes. The Jubilee does this as well, but also applies to reserved cases (kasoseruhaado). This meant that certain “reserved” sins could not be 42 heard by any confessor except the bishop or some other stipulated authority. Such remission occurs as a result of turning one’s heart (ficcauru) from evil deeds to good deeds, such as the ones that the pope has stipulated in the indulgence. This is in direct contrast to many modern-day popular notions about indulgences: namely, that one could simply buy them to have sins or purgatorial suffering forgiven. Here, the Kokoroe makes clear that indulgences (as correctly applied) need to be accompanied by contrition and the performance of some salutary work. Theologically, indulgences were never supposed to be a quid pro quo type of arrangement, but they had become so in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth century as famously denounced by Martin Luther. The explanation about not being able to “buy” indulgences probably served two purposes. The first was simply to keep the practice in line with their reform in Europe. The second was probably to differentiate Christian indulgences from Buddhist “indulgences.” The Jesuits writers 43 frequently criticized Buddhist monks for offering “indulgences” for money. As a catechetical work for the laity, the Kokoroe and its explanation of indulgences only needed to provide basic explanations. Presumably any Japanese Christian who wanted to gain an indulgence would have had recourse to an advocate or community member who could explain orally the distinctions among indulgences, the 42 The Catholic Encyclopedia defines reserved cases as: “A term used for sins whose absolution is not within the power of every confessor, but is reserved to himself by the superior of the confessor, or only specially granted to some other confessor by that superior. To reserve a case is then to refuse jurisdiction for the absolution of a certain sin.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12785a.htm Such “reserved” sins were considered particularly grievous, such as in the case of heresy. 43 For the definition of ficcauru, see Vocabvlario da Lingoa, which gives the definition of “to refrain from evil, or to turn the bad heart into good” 463 manner in which they could be obtained, and their application to the dead in purgatory. On a practical level, these differences probably mattered very little. All that a person needed to know was that performing certain actions would help themselves or others in the afterlife. Still, native and foreign advocates needed at-hand explanations in Japanese of how indulgences worked in order to facilitate their usage among the laity. For this, they could rely on their training in the Jesuit seminary where detailed explanations on indulgences could be given orally or textually in Japanese. The Compendium, both in its Latin and Japanese versions, has a fuller and lengthier explication of indulgences for the advocates who studied the text. It also contains much more theological information on how indulgences enabled the remission of temporal penalties in purgatory for either the living or the dead. The Japanese edition contains several pages over the course of two chapters devoted to explaining what 44 indulgences are as well as the various ways in which they could be given. Since most of the foreign advocates who could read Latin would have needed less instruction on the intricacies of indulgences, the Japanese version of the Compendium would have been most significant. This is where Japanese advocates would have turned for detailed explanations of indulgences; and it is these advocates, after all, who would have been most capable of disseminating this information to the laity. The Japanese discussion of indulgences in the Compendium offers a full explanation of how they relate not only to the concept of merit within the church (referred to as both kuriki and meritum), but also to the payment of satisfaction for the temporal penalty of sin, both here and now and in purgatory. Like the Kokoroe, the Compendium takes pains to explain that indulgences do not forgive the culpa (eternal penalty of sin that result from the separation of the grace from God) but only remit the temporal penalty. When the culpa is forgiven as part of the indulgence, it is because the indulgence is conditional upon contrition and confession, meaning that the sacrament of penance must be honored for the indulgence to be effective. In other words, the text clearly states that the indulgence, in lieu of performing penance, only removes the 44 In Kirishitan Bunko Library, Compendium, 280v-283. Also in the printed Japanese version, Obara, Konpendiumu III, 42-49. See also the Latin facsimile, Chapter 8: Quid sit indulgentiam and Chapter 9: De modis quibus conceditur indulgentia in Kirishitan Bunko Library, Compendium 336v-339v and 450-455 respectively. 464 temporal penalty of sin. The culpa can only be removed by confession, and the indulgence has absolutely no effect without it. After explaining how indulgences work, the Compendium then details the various ways in which indulgences can be applied. It also details the different types of indulgence—plenary indulgences, partial indulgences (indulgentia temporalis), and quarantines (quarentena)—and notes the specific amounts of time (compensation) that 45 each could remit in purgatory. The Compendium then explains that the pope and the Concilio General represent the primary authorities who issue indulgences. It also notes that the papal legate (pappa no legato) could bestow indulgences to various realms (kuniguni) and that bishops, within their own sees, could likewise issue them. This meant that indulgences could be issued by the Church more locally (such as Macao or Manila, if the Papal Legate happened to be there) and did not have to come directly from Rome. The Compendium goes on to note that the various indulgences issued by the pope or general council do not have a time limit, while the ones issued by the legate or bishop do. Despite the limitations attached to indulgences issued by either a legate or a bishop, they would have been extremely helpful to Christians in Japan since those issued by the pope would take more than a year to reach them. The most important part of the Compendium’s explanation of indulgences, for our purposes here, is that it states that they can be applied towards the dead in purgatory. The opening section reads: “it is an article of faith that indulgences are merit [toku] that can be applied to both living people [not another living person] and the souls in purgatory.” For living people, the operative principle is “per modum abolutatis & potestatis.” For souls in purgatory, the operative principle is “per modum suffragii” (“by way of suffrage”). Since the indulgence for the dead is a suffrage, it could then be directed toward a soul or the souls in purgatory. Underscoring this, the text reminds the reader that souls in purgatory can receive things (koto) from the Church and that “there is no doubt” that indulgences are things “of benefit for those living now and for souls in purgatory.” Using a real-world example to explain how suffrages work, the Compendium draws a 45 The Catholic Encyclopedia defines qurantines as: “an expression frequently used in the grants of indulgences, and signifies a strict ecclesiastical penance of forty days, performed according to the practice of the early Church. Hence an indulgence of seven quarantines, for instance, implies the remission of as much temporal punishment as would be blotted out by the corresponding amount of ecclesiastical penance.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12593a.htm 465 parallel to the friends of a prisoner begging for mercy and release on that person’s behalf. In this way, the Church can offer up indulgences to God on behalf of souls in purgatory in order that some of their temporal penalty might be forgiven. The final section deals with rules concerning indulgences. First, it points out, 46 people in a state of mortal sin cannot request indulgences. Second, it notes that the people conferring the indulgence must direct it for the sake of the glory of God and the 47 merit of the church. For example, the intention of an indulgence by a Christian must not be directed towards a non-Christian (gentile; zencho) since it would “have no effect.” Third, in order to request an indulgence, it reminds readers that a good deed (zenji) has to be done. This good deed could be prayer, fasting, or the like. The implication here is that indulgences involve compensation and obtaining merit through a good deed not just 48 outright purchase. Since the text was directed towards educated Japanese advocates, namely clergy and irmãos, the Japanese Compendium provides the sort of knowledge of indulgences and the rules surrounding their issuance that would have been communicated by them to the laity. Given the lay concern with preparing one’s self for death and caring for the dead, native advocates would not have failed to emphasize the efficacy of 49 indulgences. One actual indulgence in Japanese that comes down to us is the document known as the Orasho no kuriki or “the Merit of Prayer.” This document is a translation of an indulgence that was likely issued by Pope Innocent IX (r. 1591) to Alonso Sánchez (1547-1593), an Ambassador of the Holy Apostolic See and one of the first Jesuits to arrive in the Philippines. The Japanese translation of the original indulgence is part of a cache of documents known as the Yaso kyō sosho collection (“Library of Christian Teachings”). These documents had been found among the Christians in Urakami (part of Nagasaki) and confiscated by the Tokugawa Bakufu in the Kansei era (1787-1801), long 46 This would preclude the modern-day popular idea of the buying of indulgences simply as “forgiveness of sins” i.e. the culpa as well as the penalty). 47 Here, toku; in the Latin text of the Compendium it is utilitatem, Kirishitan Bunko Library, Compendium, 456/339v. Irregular pagination. 48 無 or Nasu = in Vocabvlario da Lingoa = O não aver. Por não aver nembum remedio. 49 Obara, Konpendiumu III, 48-49. 466 after the proscription of Christianity in the early half of the seventeenth century. Apparently this indulgence had only been preserved there and was not in circulation among the hidden Christians in either Hirado or Ikitsuki. The original, which had been kept in both the Sakitsu church on Amakusa and the Ōura Basilica of the Twenty-six 50 Holy Martyrs of Japan at different times before the war, has now been lost. Although Pope Innocent IX issued the indulgences to the Philippines, whoever translated it into Japanese certainly had the mind that it could be applicable to Christians in Japan. Not only were the Philippines in close proximity—other bulls refer to both locations—but Sánchez was a Jesuit himself and extending it to Japan was likely within his authority as “Ambassador to the Holy Apostolic See, in the name of all the states of the Philippine Islands.” The indulgence seems to be a kind of “Apostolic Indulgence” which had its origins in 1587 when Pope Sixtus V (r. 1585-1590) attached indulgences to ancient coins found within the structure of the Lateran Basilica during some renovations. These indulgences were specifically attached to sacramentals, like medals, crosses, and rosaries. Typically the pontiff, or someone under his authority, would bless the objects, 51 thereby making them indulgenced. As such, the Orasho no kuriki indulgences would 50 See Obara, Kirishitan no Orasho, 271 for a general background to the document. Some authorities claim it was issued by Pope Gregory XIV. Oka Mihoko provides more information in Mihoko Oka, “Shokuyū e no inori: Maria jūgogengi to 「 orasho no kuriki 」” , Bungaku, Vol. 13, No. 5, (2012), 40-41. As Oka correctly points out, the Orasho no kuriki seems to be derived from the Spanish form of a Bull issued to Sanchez in 1591 by Innocent IX. The Spanish-language indulgence is preserved in Francisco Colin, Labor Evangelica, Ministerios Apostolicos De Los Obreros De La Compania De Jesus, Fundacion, Y Progressos De Su Provincia En Las Islas Filipinas, 272-277 of the 1663 edition. It can also be found in the 1900 critical edition Pablo Pastells, ed., Labor Evangelica… volume 1, (Barcelona: Imprenta y Litografía de Henrich y Compañía, 1900), 489-497. For information regarding the Yasokyō sōsho collection, see Yuko Shimizu, “Urakami ichiban kuzure niokeru Nagasaki bugyōjo no Kirishitan kyōsho ruishūshu o megutte ‘Yasokyososho’ to kankei to Urakami sonmin jikoishiki” (“Revisiting the Yasokyososho [sic] and Christian self-consciousness based on the ‘confiscation’ of Christian books during the Urakami Ichiban Kuzure” in Meijigakuin daigaku Kirisutokyō kenkyūkyo (The Bulletin of Institute For Christian Studies Meiji Gakuin University) (2014): 131-160. See also Laures, Kirishitan Bunko, 107-108. Additional information on indulgences in the Philippines, Japan, and China at the time can be found in Diego Aduarte, De la Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de Filipinas, Iapon, Y China de la Sagrada Orden de Predicadores, Volume 1 (Zaragça: Domingo Gascon, 1693), 436; 454. Higashibaba gives the contents of the Kirshitan no Orasho and a brief analysis here, Ikuo Higashibaba, “Christian Prayer in Tokugawa Japan,” Tenri Journal of Religion 34 (March 2006): 107-117. However, Higashibaba sees Christian prayer as a way of gaining “mysterious power” (kuriki) with which they could mainly solve earthly problems rather than accruing merit for the afterlife. Again, prayer for both spiritual and worldly benefits, such as to make it rain in a time of drought, were by no means mutually exclusive. Nor was this a unique feature of Japanese Christianity. 51 See the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on “Apostolic Indulgences:” www.newadvent.org/cathen/07788a.htm 467 have been extremely easy to obtain and no doubt would have been popular enough among Christians that they would have been preserved well into the Tokugawa period. The Orasho no kuriki begins by stating that it had been issued by Gregory XIV (r. 1590-1591) in 1591—likely erroneously—to Sánchez in the Philippines and that one could gain merit from “contas [rosaries], images, veronicas, crosses, agnus deis, and relics” (Go kuriki no shitai). To gain the indulgence, all one had to do was to venerate one of the stipulated objects upon waking and say some simple prayers or engage in “chant.” For example, one could say the Benedictissima Sancta Trinita, the Ave Maria, the Salve Regina with the objects to gain a partial indulgence of one-half of all temporal penalty in purgatory remitted. Other stipulations included going to confession and going to mass. A few of the indulgences are also plenary indulgences, giving full remission of temporal penalty. What is most significant for us here is that some of the various indulgences could also be applied to souls in purgatory rather than to the one performing the requirements for the indulgence. For example, one of the indulgences states that whoever prayed the Salve Regina of the Virgin Mary, the Ave Maria, and the Pater Noster, as well as praying for the “Christianity” of the Indies could obtain a partial indulgence for either themselves or for “transfer” [wekau meaning: the Buddhist term ekō] to one soul [in purgatory.]” Another, which required the person seeking the indulgence to go to confession, mass, and receive the Eucharist, would provide a plenary indulgence that could also be applied to a “soul” in purgatory. A plenary indulgence, in effect, would release that soul from purgatory altogether since it remitted all temporal punishment. A Japanese Christian could therefore release all the souls of their loved ones from any possibility of purgatory so long as they undertook the obligations of the indulgence. What remains unclear, however, is whether this indulgence could only be received once or, like some modern day indulgences, only once per day. Still, even obtaining the indulgence once for a dead loved one would have been a powerful way to care for them in the afterlife. Receiving such an indulgence for a soul in purgatory could remit all temporal punishment for any number of souls, but receiving it more than once and applying it to oneself could remit all temporal punishment since the last indulgence. As a result, one could sort of stay ahead of the purgatorial game, only having to make minimal 468 satisfaction after death. Many of these kinds of indulgences would have been easy to fulfill, especially the ones requiring simplistic prayers and the use of sacramentals. As we discussed earlier, sacramentals in and of themselves were quite popular among Japanese Christians and would have been readily available to any who wanted them. Saying the standard prayers was also very easy. Christians would have recited the prayers from memory or, failing that, from prayer lists written in Japanese, such as those in the Orashiyo zassan dankan (A Fragment of Various Prayers). Among the various prayers included in that document are the Ave Maria, a prayer for forgiveness of sins, the Pater Noster, the Salve Regina, the Credo, the Gloria, and a nightly prayer. Thus fulfilling 52 these indulgences would have been quite easy for any who wanted to do so. The Orhasho’s preservation among the Kakure Christians into the nineteenth century, as recorded by Fr. Bernard Petitjean (1829-1884), is a testament to the usefulness of the indulgence. No doubt, this was in part a result of its applicability not only to the living, but also to the dead. In addition, the ease with which one could obtain the indulgence likely contributed to its preservation. One did not need to go to confession or attend mass. Rather, all that the indulgence required was some simple prayers and the use of small sacramentals which could easily be hidden. Both requirements could easily be fulfilled even under persecution. In fact, Petitjean had the impression that the Japanese Christians had an intense adherence to sacred objects and that they closely associated 53 them with indulgences. Given the popularity of sacramentals during the mission period and their use in mission-issued indulgences, it seems that the association between the two was strong enough to survive underground until the modern period. The use of sacramentals, such as rosary beads (contas) or medals, as a means to obtain indulgences was extremely common in Europe at this time. Such indulgenced 52 Obara, Krishitan Orasho, 235-242. Some of the prayers are also contained in the Dochirina. For a brief overview of the Mito documents, see Laures, Kirishitan Bunko, 111-112. Mito-han was one of the so-called Go-sanke “Three Houses” or branch houses of the Tokugawa Bakufu. It makes sense that this domain would have retained confiscated documents after Christianity had been prohibited. See also Orasho no hon’yaku in Obara, Kirishitan no Orasho, 55-98, for an extensive set of prayers in Japanese as printed by the mission press.) See also Orasho Dankan, from the 1590s, in Obara, Kirishitan no Orasho, 39-45. The Orashiyo zassan dankan was also found in some confiscated documents held in Mito Domain (Mitohan bosshū Bunshorui). 53 Oka, Shokuyū, 41. 469 objects were not really a feature of medieval Catholicism; but, with the Protestant challenge against both indulgences and sacred objects, the Catholic Church innovatively redoubled emphasis on both by combining the two practices. As Elizabeth Tingle has explained: The majority of indulgences, whether gained at jubilees or on pilgrimages, by confraternities or in parishes, were immaterial acquisitions—essentially metaphysical constructs. Their numbers and contest were recorded spiritually by the divine accountant of sin and grace, its result invisible and intangible. Yet while the grace conceded was incorporeal, there was a strong physical element to indulgence use. Place was important, for indulgence was frequently linked to locus, whether shrine, church or altar. Images and relics were seen, venerated and touched, in the process of gaining pardons. Across the Counter Reformation period, ‘things’ came to carry and transmit indulgences as well. Medals, beads, rosaries and crosses could act as physical, portable vectors of pardons for their 54 owners. The popes of the Catholic Reformation issued a wide-variety of indulgenced objects, with their popularity increasing dramatically after the 1580s. Tingle explains that there were several kinds of indulgenced objects: 1. Sacramentals like medals, beads, rosaries, images that had been blessed by the pontiff; 2. By touching a sacramental to one that had an indulgence in the same manner as a contact relic; 3. Symbolic garments, such as scapulars or the Franciscan cord (cordon); 4. Small pictures, such as those of the infant Jesus or Mary; 5. written words, such as invocations of the Holy Name or tablets of the 55 Christogram IHS. Given the wide variety of indulgenced objects, especially taking into 54 Elizabeth Tingle, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France, 1520-1720 (New York: Routledge, 2016), 135. Tingle also reminds us: “From the late sixteenth century, there was a huge traffic in indulgenced objects all over Catholic Europe which added to the vast repertoire blessed objects and shrine souvenirs with a powerful new category of artefact. Objects carrying indulgences became almost ubiquitous features of early modern Catholicism. The substance of the artefact was imbued with divine power, easily accessible and ever present. They were vectors and symbols of the direct relationship between the person, the Church and the Divine presence, for they channeled piety directly to God and gave grace directly to the penitent, creating ‘a meeting point between he devotee and heaven.’ Effectively, the owners possessed a quasi-relic. The ability to draw down grace made divine power accessible and immediately to hand.” Quote on p. 154. 55 Tingle, Indulgences after Luther, 144-147. We also have reference to indulgenced objects in China, as stated in Guerreiro, Relação Anual, Tomo Segundo, 106: “hearing the practice of indulgences that are gained through blessed contas, the padres gave to him one that had a plenary indulgence for each time that he might convert someone to our holy faith…” Guerreiro also relates an episode where a Christian bushi asked for contas in conjunction with an indulgence. The Christian asked the padre for a conta of Bohemia, a relic, or even an image. After the padre complied, the letter relates that the man “very much esteemed the conta that I gave to him, with three or four brief chapters of indulgences that are easily gained.” Guerreiro, Relação Anual I, 121-122. 470 account how easy it would be to create a “contact” object with an indulgence, it would reason that many could have found their way to Kyushu. More research needs to be done on this subject, but we have some evidence of indulgenced objects in Japan. We know that many sacramentals were sent to India and 56 then on to Japan, specifically by requests of the Jesuits there. The Orasho no kuriki presumes such use of indulgenced objects as contas, rosaries, and cordons, whether they were actually indulgenced or not. From the archaeological record, we have a fair number of medals that could have been indulgenced in Rome. For example, a number of medals depicting Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola have been unearthed. These could potentially be indulgenced medals, since medals of saints were frequently indulgenced upon their canonization, such as when Xavier and Ignatius were canonized in 1622 by 57 Gregory XV. One particular medal, unearthed in Osaka, is particularly interesting as it depicts Pope Clement VIII on the front with the words “PON MAX VII 1600” and the Holy Door of St. Peter’s on the back with the words “IVSTI INTRABANT PER EAM” referring to entering the basilica. The medal commemorates the Jubilee year of 1500, when pilgrims to Rome could enter through this door to gain an indulgence. The medal 58 itself is certainly a good candidate for having been an indulgenced item. One indulgenced medal had been preserved in Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki (prior to the bombing). On one side it depicted Gregory XIV. On the other, it had a depiction of the Holy Spirit descending as a dove on Jesus and Mary. This medal apparently had been kept for centuries by an Urakami Christian family. The medal itself was minted by Cardinal Paul Sfondrati, and some ten thousand of them were sent to the Philippines with 59 indulgences attached. 56 See Valignano’s letter, Indica XVI, 508. Valignano to Acquaviva from Macao, December 15 1593. 57 Medals of the so-called “Five Saints” who were canonized in 1622 were distributed en masse in Europe. Some 180,000 of these medals were given out in Rome alone. Tingle, Indulgences after Luther, 150. 58 I have thus far chosen not to explore Jubilees, which offered remission of temporal penalties, for sake of expediency. It will be a topic of future research. For more details on the medal, see Koichi Gotō, Kirishitan Ibutsu, 282. 59 For a reproduction of this medal (#48) and two others found on the spot of the prison. Irregular pagination. Tokihide Nagayama, Collection of Historical Materials Connected with the Roman Catholic Religion in Japan / Kirishitan shiryō shū (Nagasaki, Fujiki Hakuei-sha, 1926). For info on the medal itself, as struck in Rome, see Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, from 471 Visual and textual items, such as holy images, could have also been indulgenced with some frequency. One of the earliest western images in Japan, a depiction of the Virgin Mary and Child, was an indulgenced image. The image had been at the seminary in Ariya and has a Latin inscription of an indulgence issued by Pope Alexander VI in 60 1494. Given the number and variety of Catholic images and retables imported to Japan, starting with Xavier’s image of Mary, many were likely indulgenced, particularly if they were made via the printing press. Some Japanese Christians had possession of relatively ornate images and crosses, such as a retable-like image of the Crucifixion that had been 61 held by a Christian family at Imamura in Chikugo. Many images and other works of art were sent from Rome to Japan due to high demand. But attempts to supply them went awry, as clerics in India and China appropriated many of them, and few were left for Japanese Christians. Religious images were in such high demand that the Jesuits had requested plates with which to print more 62 than 50,000 images so that each Christian home would have one. Eventually images St. Peter to Pius IX, Volume 1 Part Second, trans. Rev. Dr. Neligan (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1869), 880, no. 3. This medal is well-worn, indicating that it had been handled extensively during prayer over the centuries. Another medal is held in Sendaiji (near Osaka) by Tōdō Akira. See Gotō, Kirishitan ibutsu, 282, #13 04. The front is inscribed with “GREGORIUS XIV PONT MAX AN I” and the reverse with “IN GRAM PHILIPPINARVM ROMAE AN 1591.” 60 Calvin L. French, Shiba Kōkan: Artist, Innovator, and Pioneer in the Westernization of Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1974), 179, note 1. A reproduction is Okamoto, The Namban Art of Japan, 47, plate 31. A very useful overview of indulgenced images in late medieval Europe, particularly Marian indulgences, indulgences accompanied by images of purgatory, and those of the mass of St. Gregory, see Kathryn M. Rudy, Rubrics, Images, and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Sometimes, indulgenced images were contained in prayer books like the Contempus Mundi. Such indulgenced images were popular in England prior to the Reformation. Once Catholicism fell out of favor, Protestants crossed out the indulgences in an attempt to do away with this appealing element of Catholic praxis. See Martha W. Driver, The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: The British Library, 2004), 204-214. 61 Nagayama, Collection, #47. 62 Okamoto, Namban Art, 97. Thomas Worcester, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 380. Fróis’s request comes from the annual letter of 1584. Fróis writes, “As we need more than 50,000 pictures for all the Christian households in Japan, we all be of your paternity that you may send some brother to Japan with some ready-made plates, materials, and instruments so that we can start printing pictures here to be distributed among our flock. The images what would be most useful at this moment are: one of the Savior with the world in his hand, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, Christ praying in the Dark, images of Our Lady, and the Adoration of the Infant Christ by the Magi, as well as some images of the saints the size of one sheet of paper, and also a lot of paper, for the Christians here would be greatly consoled with such images.” Quoted in Hesselink, Dream of Christian 472 were produced not only by the Jesuit printing press, but also by a school for western painting that the missionaries established on Kyushu. Even books could be indulgenced. Satow reports a Japanese-language (Rōmaji) copy of the Contemptus Mundi printed in 1596 with an inscription, in Japanese, stating that whosoever should read a chapter of the 63 book would receive a partial indulgence of ten years. Such a book would certainly have been shared among family members and even other members of the community as a never-ending source of indulgences. Regardless of whether a sacramental was truly indulgenced, it likely mattered little on the ground so long as either the spiritual authorities (foreign or native) said that it was or the laity believed it was. For example, the Orasho no kuriki implies that any sort of sacramental would do. Additional indulgenced objects could automatically be created by touching ordinary sacramentals to an indulgenced one. In this way, “indulgenced” objects could have been far more accessible than ones that were truly indulgenced in Rome or some other locale. Besides the Orasho, we know of a number of other indulgences issued by the pope or other ecclesiastical authorities that might have been applicable to Japanese Christians provided they were promulgated in Japan. Promulgating territory-wide indulgences was common practice for the popes of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries. A perusal of the collected papal bulls of the era reveals that popes frequently issued indulgences to specific territories, many of them missionary zones, and 64 to specific groups such as confraternities. An early example of a territory-wide indulgence bestowed upon the Japanese Christians comes from Pope Pius V (r. 1566- Nagasaki, 118. Fróis’s letter to Acquaviva is dated December 13, 1584 and can be found in Jap-Sin 9 II, 329. 63 Ernest Mason Satow, The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan. 1591-1610 (Privately Printed, 1888), 30. See also the entry in the Laures database: https://digital-archives.sophia.ac.jp/laures-kirishitan-bunko/view/kirishitan_bunko/JL-1596-KB16-16-12. Satow thinks that this note was written by the convert who owned the book. If true, the indulgence could have been given orally and then simply written down in the book. Satow translates the note as “…merit gained by Pope Sixtus in Anno Domini 1585, at the earnest request of the fathers of the society in Japan; whoever shall read a single chapter of this book shall on each occasion receive ten years; Indulgences. Hail Beatissima Maria.” 64 See any number of bulls in Magnum bullarium Romanum: bullarum privilegiorum ac diplomatum Romanorum Pontificum amplissima collection, Volumes 4-5 (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964-1966; reprint of 1733-1762). 473 1572) in 1567. The Jesuits, in Japan, had apparently asked for such an indulgence to be issued, thus prompting the papacy to promulgate one in a brief (breve) not only for Japan but for other mission territories such as Ethiopia, India, the Moluccas (Maluchi), China, 65 and Brazil. Pope Clement VIII (r. 1592-1605) later issued an indulgence to be promulgated by the Franciscans in Japan in conjunction with the translation of a relic to 66 the East. Yet another, dating to 1616, was issued to the Japanese Church by Paul V (r. 1605-1621) in response to the intense persecution that the church had been suffering 67 there at the time. We know that the Japanese received this indulgence in 1620, since the Mission Superior, Padre Matheus de Couros (1569-1632), had it translated for the entire 68 church throughout Japan. While there does not seem to have been any direct stipulation in these indulgences that they could be applied to the dead, most indulgences, almost as a matter of course, could be directed this way due to the interconnectedness of the Communion of Saints. So we can safely assume that many lay Christians would have used them in such a manner. We do have some documentation in greater detail concerning indulgences in Japan and their usefulness for taking care of the dead specifically. However, most of this documentation comes from the later years of the mission when there were sufficient numbers of dead Japanese Christians to merit their usage and is related to confraternities rather than the entire Japanese Church. One document that attests to the popularity of indulgences in Japan is a request by the Jesuit Vice Provincial Francisco Pacheco (1568- 1626) to the Jesuit General. In the document below, he also referencing some indulgences 65 Louis Delplace, Synopsis Actorum S. Sedis in causa Societatis Iesu, 1540-1605 (Florientiae: Ex Typographia a SS. Conceptione Raphael Ricci, 1887), 49. 66 Delplace, Synopis Actorum, 60-62, has a transcription of the brief. See also Carla Tronu, “The Rivalry between the Society of Jesus and the Mendicant Orders in Early Modern Nagasaki,” Agora: Journal of International Center for Religious Studies (12) (2015): 30. 67 Delplace, Synopsis Actorum, 78. 68 Higashibaba, Christianity, 121. The text is also in Nagasakiken-shi Henshū Iinkai, ed., Nagasakiken shi: Taigai Kōshō hen (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1986), 126-127. 474 that had been promulgated by the pope some time earlier for the recently instituted 69 Confraria de Nossa Senhora da Proteiçao. He writes: [We ask to obtain in particular] a Bulla for our Confraria de Nossa Senhora da Proteiçao, which in Japan they call On mamori no Santa Maria, the feast day that the Senhor Bishop Dom Luís instituted on the first day of the Japanese New Year: through which the Virgin on the first day of the year might take under her protection this Christendom [this feast was moveable so as to correspond with New Year’s]. Since in those days of the New Year, the Japanese are not given over to many devotions, because they engage in visits, banquets, and drinks, the Indulgences and Jubilee of this day are able to be gained on the day of the Assumption of Our Lady, the day on which the Saint Xavier came to Japan. And because it has been two years that the notice of Your Paternity announcing the Bull of Indulgences for our confraternities reached us, until now we do not have here such Bull, nor a copy of it… Pacheco then goes on to state that if they are unable to receive the actual Bull, then the Superior of the Mission may be able to institute in the Confraria de Nossa Senhora da Proteiçao and other confraternitites the indulgences that it contained. The main reason for this second petition, he states, is because the mendicants are more popular with their confraternities and indulgences. Pacheco drives the point home by closing his request with a simple matter-of-fact observation: “And if Your Paternity does not help with Bulls and many Indulgences, we will become excluded.” Padre Jeronimo Rodrigues (1567-1628), in a similar request to António 70 Mascarenhas, wanted to expand indulgences for the confrarias in Japan. One of the reasons for such a request was the rivalry between the Jesuits and Mendicant orders in the 71 mission field that had started in the 1590s. When the Dominicans and Franciscans arrived in Japan (1592 and 1594 respectively), they infringed upon the Jesuit missionary monopoly. Among the causes of tension were different proselytization methods, such as 69 MHJ I, 945. From Japan September 22, 1623. See also Ward, Women, 342. Hesselink points out that the feast On mamori no Santa Maria or “Saint Mary Who Protects Us” was new in Japan. “On this day, the Bishop of Japan had been in the habit of performing a solemn ritual to call upon the Virgin to protect the Christians. This allowed Japanese Christians to celebrate a Christian feast on the same day as their gentile bretheren did.” Hesselink, Dream of Christian Nagasaki, 145. Evidently, according to Pachecho, the new feast day could not lure away Japanese Christians from engaging in the typical New Year’s festivities. 70 Jap-Sin 16 I, 301v. See also Rodrigues to the Jesuit General Acquavia, March 20, 1616 in Jap-Sin 16 I, 306. See also Jap-Sin 59, 165-173v. Rodrigues to Mascarenha, from Macao, Jan. 10, 1618 which references indulgences that had been asked for. Discussed below. 71 For an overview of this contest between the orders, see Tronu, Rivalry. 475 emphasis on converting the poor and the lowest of Japanese society. The Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits all worked on Kyushu, but many of Franciscans worked on Honshu as well. One source of tension between the Jesuits and the Mendicants was over just who could be in a confraternity. Jesuit confraternities aimed at committed Christians whereas some of the Mendicant confraternities were aimed more at “sinners,” including 72 those who had apostatized. In addition, indulgences were just one of the many issues that fueled the fires of mutual antagonism between the orders, as Japanese Christians thought the confrarias instituted by the Mendicants offered better indulgences than their Jesuit-instituted counterparts: ….[the religious], in order to attract the people to their confrarias claim that ours do not give indulgences as they give theirs, it seems to us convenient for the Supreme Pontiff to be asked for some for the four confrarias that in Japan are particular to the Company. First, to those of Jesus, because we are the religious of the Company of Jesus. The second to the Assumption of Our Lady because on this day which the padre mestre Francisco arrived in Japan, the first Apostle of the nation. The third of our blessed padre Ignatius…The Fourth of the blessed padre mestre Francisco to 73 whom the Japanese are so devoted. Earlier, in March of 1602, lay members of the Nagasaki Misericordia themselves wrote to the Jesuit General with a similar request for indulgences. This one, however, was signed by some of the leading members of the Misericordia, in both Rōmaji and Japanese script: …we ask V.P [Your Paternity]....[that] you obtain for us, from his holiness all the privileges, graces, and indulgences, conceded to the misericordia of the aforementioned kingdom, and in particular on the day of our feast of the Visitation of Our Lady obtain for us a Jubilee for our brothers [confrades]… And in order that the banner of our confrarias with which we go out to bury the dead might be held in greater veneration and esteem, we desire that V.P. obtain for us from his holiness some indulgence for the souls of the dead for whose burial we go out. And we also ask to obtain for us from his holiness that as in Portugal no other confrarias is consented to use our banner for burial… 72 Ward, Women, 341-342. Mendicant confraternities also allowed for the mixing of men and women as they did in Europe. 73 Transcribed in Olivera e Costa, “The Brotherhoods,” 80, n. 35. Original found in Jap-Sin 22, 259v-260. A confraria devoted to Ignatius, with the appropriate indulgences, was also set up by 1625 in the Gotō Islands despite the ban on Christianity, as stated by Rodrigues in the annual letter of 1624. Dated March 28, 1625 by João Rodrigues Giram. From Macao. Jap-Sin 60, 344v-345. 476 We ask V.P. to attain from His Holiness for this Misericordia of Nagasaki, we also ask that they be conceded to the Misericordia of Miyako, and more 74 afterwards they are instituted in whatever other part of Japan Clearly indulgences were so important to the Japanese laity that the Jesuits were losing business—so to speak—to the friars who could offer better mechanisms with which to reduce time in purgatory. Olivera e Costa calls this competition over indulgences an “absurd quarrel,” but it was anything but. At stake for the Japanese laity was the intensity and duration of suffering that they and their loved ones would experience after death. Since such concerns about the afterlife were clearly important even before the arrival of Christianity, as we have discussed, and it is no surprise that lay demand for indulgences would drive the Jesuits to petition Rome for better and more specific ones. Though framed here as a competition between mendicants and Jesuits over indulgences, this same scenario applied to Christianity vis-à-vis Buddhism. If indulgences were not offered, people would turn to the bonzes to satisfy their need to take care of the dead. Though the foreign advocates were more than happy to offer indulgences to the Japanese since they were part of Catholic praxis, the Japanese themselves drove the demand for their issuances due to concern about the afterlife. There is some evidence that these kinds of requests for indulgences were actually fulfilled for Japan. In a letter from October of 1612, the Bishop of Japan, Luís Cerqueira, states that he had received, sometime earlier, five Apostolic briefs (breves) concerning indulgences that the pope had conceded to the confrarias and churches of Japan. Apparently, they were not as extensive as he had hoped (meaning not as extensive as the Japanese had hoped), but nevertheless they were much esteemed and, in the end, he “was 75 made very satisfied with them.” Desire for confraternity-related indulgences no doubt originated from the lay leaders (i.e. the most prominent Christians) within the group and likely reflected the ordinary rank and file. For example, a letter by the 104 lay leaders 74 Jap-Sin 33, 69. March 10, 1602. See the transcription in Oliveira e Costa, “O Cristianismo”, in the Anexo No. 3, 604-605 of the pdf. The dissertation is available from Universidade Nova de Lisboa's online repository at: https://run.unl.pt/handle/10362/3571?locale=en 75 Jap-Sin 15 II, 166. Dated October 10 1612 from Nagasaki to António Mascarenhas (d. 1648). 477 (kumi no oya) of the Rosario Brotherhood in Nagasaki indicate that “the people” found them to be useful and an impetus for moral and behavioral change: Through their teachings [the people of Nagasaki] have been able to learn what it takes to be saved, and a number of indulgences were set aside for the special use of these brotherhoods, from which treasures the people gained strength and courage and were heartened in their worship of Holy Mary Mother of Christ. Countless people have changed their behavior and way of life because of the 76 teachings of this brotherhood. The signatories of this document were exemplary Christians but they had the most intimate knowledge of what Brotherhood’s members desired and what was important to the “people” in general. Although we occasionally find requests for indulgences in some of the Jesuit correspondence, our best evidence for their use by Japanese Christians comes to us from documents related to the various confraternities. These are either rules for confraternity members or documents written by Japanese members themselves, both of which provide some insight into the applicability of indulgences to devotional life and the spiritual concerns of the most ardent Christians. In several of these documents, we find a concern not only for the remission of temporal penalty through indulgences, but also the remission of temporal penalty for the dead. In fact, remitting temporal punishment after death was one of the main motivating factors for joining a confraternity. Some indulgences were specific to certain confraternities, so joining such a group would have given a person greater and more frequent access to indulgences. In addition, one could rely on the regular suffrages of all the living members for release from the fires of purgation. One such confraternity was the Dominican-sponsored Confraternity of the Rosary (Rozario no kumi). A leading Christian of the group explained that receiving merit and gaining indulgences was part of the reason why he and seventeen other members had joined the group: Human salvation in the afterlife ultimately depends on one’s strong faith and observance of the law…Joining this fraternity will greatly help us correct our bad habits and observe the law; it is further a good way to receive [merit (kuriki) from 76 Quoted from Reinier H. Hesselink, “104 Voices from Christian Nagasaki: Document of the Rosario Brotherhood of Nagasaki with the Signatures of Its Members (February 1622): An Analysis and Translation,” Monumenta Nipponica 70, No. 2 (2015): 269. 478 God] from Deus through the mediation of the divine mother and furthermore to 77 receive indulgences. Again, we must emphasize that even though “receiving merit” and “receiving indulgences” do not specifically mention their applicability to the dead, both merit and indulgences gained in the Rozario no kumi almost certainly could be applied to them. In order to see how indulgences enabled confraternities to care for their dead members in a very real way, we must look to their rules and regulations. A number of these regulations have survived, and we can learn much from them about the spiritual life of their members and how they supported and cared for one another across in both life and death. According to the rules of one Jesuit confraternity (found in the Biblioteca Casanatense), one of the main obligations for the confraternity’s members was to use indulgences and transfer merit for the benefit of the dead: 10. Whenever a member of the kumi should die, each person should say a rosary [literally: prayer of contas, which is a regular suffrage] and should the Japanese 78 contas have an indulgence, they ought to transfer [ekō] to the dead person. Here we can see a combination of a regular suffrage for a soul in purgatory (the saying of the rosary) and the application of an indulgence through the interconnectedness of the Communion of Saints. The attachment of an indulgence to a sacramental (in this case a rosary) likewise recalls the Orasho no kuriki’s emphasis on indulgenced sacramental and sacred objects. This very same document also lists eight articles of indulgences, most of which would have been fairly simple for confraternity members to fulfill. These indulgences at first seem to be only applicable to the living as there is no mention of their application to the dead. And they seem to focus on gaining remission of temporal penalty by the living. For example, one partial indulgence simply involved praying fifteen Pater Nosters and fifteen Ave Marias for those who had fallen into mortal sin. Another easy-to-obtain 77 th th th Dated from the 7 year of Genna 元和 on the 10 day of the 11 month. Quoted in Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan, 122. I have changed Highashibaba’s translation of “meritorious power (kuriki) from Deus” to “merit (kuriki) from God” because I believe this more accurately reflects the meaning. A transcription of the document is in Kiichi Matsuda, Nanban Shiryō no kenkyū (Tokyo: Kazama Shobō, 1981), 1168. The original document can be found in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. The document notes that kuriki could be obtained not just for austerities but for suffrages and acts of mercy. 78 In addition, the rules state that members should say five Pater Nosters and five Ave Marias for souls in purgatory. Matsuda, Nanban, 1148-1149. 479 plenary indulgence was to go to confession by a padre and pray while meditating on the Passion of Jesus. A more difficult requirement was to convert a non-Christian and then get them to go to confession. As a result, this indulgence carried a higher “reward,” namely a plenary indulgence that acted as a Jubilee would. This was the most powerful kind of indulgence and meant that even the penalties of a reserved case of sin (like 79 apostasy) could be remitted following ordinary confession. Other indulgences could be obtained by visiting the sick or praying for ignorant people (guchinaru mono; referring to 80 a Buddhist term meaning “delusion”). The only indulgence that seems to apply specifically to the dead is going to confession and praying a terço of a rosary for Christian prosperity (hanjyō) in order to “summon” a soul from purgatory. Indulgences such as these were extremely important to confraternity members since they offered an additional mechanism—that is besides satisfaction, acts of merit, and suffrages—through which they could affect their own post mortem fate in purgatory, that of their fellow confraternity members, and that of Christians, members of the confraternity or not, who were already dead. Besides the aforementioned indulgences, there are, within the published material of the Jesuit archives and the Biblioteca da Ajuda materials, numerous references to indulgences applicable in Japan. Many of these also contain specific indulgences that the living could apply to the dead. In their requests to the Jesuit General for better indulgences, the Jesuits asked for a few that could be specifically applied to the dead. Two such requests read: 6. Each time whosoever of the confraternity confesses; receives communion, and hears mass, praying before confession, receiving communion, and mass [and says] a corona of Our Lady for the conversion of Japan, and the peace of the Catholic Church gains a plenary indulgence, and is able to apply it to a soul in purgatory. 9. On the station days (dia estações) of Rome, in whatever time of year, the same indulgence is gained for the living as well as the dead for saying it in a church, or, 79 Matsuda, Nanban, 1147-1151. See also Highashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan, 121. It is interesting that one of the indulgences specifies that one has to go to a padre for confession, perhaps indicating that this was not always the norm. This would likely be happening in areas that were not well- staffed. 80 The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism equates the Sanskrit moha with the Japanese “chi.” The dictionary defines it as: “‘delusion,’ ‘confusion,’ ‘benightedness,’ ‘foolishness;’ as a synonym of ‘ignorance’ moha denotes a fundamental confusion concerning the true character of the conception of a person and the phenomenal world and is thus an affliction and cause of future suffering.” 480 in the case where there is not one, in their house before an image that they have, or in the place where they come together for the confrarias, five Pater Nosters and five Ave Marias in reverence of the most holy blood of our Lord JESUS Christ spilled in his most holy passion. This last indulgence, which was supposed to be somewhat difficult to obtain in Europe, could be easily had in Japan. In Europe, people had to travel to Rome on pilgrimage and visit specific churches on specific days. But in Japan, one could just pray in one’s own house before a sacred image (no matter how crude) in order to obtain the spiritual benefit. Such an indulgence would have been exceptionally popular given that one could literally rescue a soul from purgatory with it. In total, the Jesuits requested some eighteen indulgences. Out of these, only two of them specifically mention applicability to the dead. However, the last item in the list of requests asks that all of the aforementioned indulgences be made applicable to the dead: 19: To ask finally his holiness that all of the above mentioned graces and 81 indulgences be applicable to the souls of purgatory. Altogether, these indulgences would have been very effective mechanisms with which the living members of the Jesuit confraternities could take care of their own temporal penalties as well as those of their dead, confraternity members or not. Many of the requested indulgences would have been simple to fulfill, particularly ones that involved partial indulgences. If carried out for the dead, actions for partial indulgences could be carried out repeatedly—each taking so much time off of purgatory for the soul—thus constituting a continuous bond that tied the living to the dead. Plenary indulgences would have paid all the temporal penalty for a soul in purgatory, thereby releasing it into heaven, but a partial indulgence done many times would have, in effect, a constant reminder of the tie between one individual member of the Church Militant and one individual member of the Church Suffering. One indulgence even aims to have the living go out and convert a non-Christian for the sake of a soul in purgatory. Fascinatingly, this 81 Jap-Sin 22, 260-261. Jap-Sin 21 II contains a document that refers to indulgences conceded by the pontiffs Adrian VI (Hadrian; r. 1522-1523) and Gregory XIII (r. 1572-1585). Several of these had to do specifically with taking care of the dead and were related to blessed beads (contas) like in the Orasho no kuriki. For example, one indulgence indicates that one can help a soul in purgatory by adoration of the cross or that one could apply a jubilee indulgence to the dad by praying three Pater Nosters and Ave Marias on the day of the Most Holy Trinity. See Jap-Sin 21 II, 304-304v. 481 would have effectively made a dead person the impetus for adding a living member to the Church Militant. The 1618 rules of the Confraria de Nossa da Assunsão in Nagasaki also specify that certain indulgences can be gained by its members. Only a few of them, however, are specifically mentioned as being applicable to the dead: 3. On the day on which occurs the feast of the confrarias, or if it will be on the same day of the Assumption, or on another day where the feast is not able to be on the same day, they gain a plenary indulgence by confessing, or with the purpose of making confession of their sins…the same is gained on the day of the Assumption of Our Lady those who live or are in parts where there is no church. On the same day praying one such takes a soul from purgatory. 4. Those who hear a mass that is said each month for the living and the dead gain such and that those in that time pray one such take a soul from the flames of purgatory. Other indulgences with which the confraternity members could release a soul from purgatory included saying the Corona of Our Lady of Consolation (also known as the Augustinian rosary) or a terço of the rosary specifically for the dead. The confraternity members could also gain indulgences for the dead on the anniversaries of a person’s death, even if there was no padre present. In addition, they could free souls from “the flames of purgatory” by praying in cemeteries that contained the tombs of Christians or 82 by having masses said for the souls of the dead. Besides indulgences such as these, which were specific to confraternities, there were also indulgences issued by the popes more generally that were attached to various sacramentals. These indulgences would have been similar to the ones mentioned in the Orasho no kuriki in that they were attached to the pious use of sacred objects such as rosaries and images. For example, Pope Gregory XV (r. 1621-1623) in 1622 issued indulgences attached to “coronas, rosaries, images, crosses, blessed medals…” 82 E das Indulgências que para ella se pedem a Sua Santidade feito tudo pello Padre Jeronimo Rodrigues Viceprovincial que foi de Japão, em Macao aos 10 de Janeiro de 1618. The title of another section in the rules is: “Capitulos e cousas que se apontão pera se enestarem a ellos as Indulg(as.) que se pedem a Sua S(de.) pera Confraria de nossa Senhora d Assumpção nos reinos de Iapão.” This last section is dated th December, 20 , 1617. Kawamura, unfortunately, did not include the section on the confraria’s indulgences when he transcribed their rules and regulations, so the original Portuguese text can only be found in archival form. Kawamura, Kirishitan Seito, 422-430 and Kawamura, Making Christian Lay Communities, 422-432. There is, however, a Japanese translation of this section in the Kirishitan Kenkyū series. 482 commemorating the canonization of saints Isidore the Laborer, Ignatius Loyola, Francis 83 Xavier, Teresa of Ávila, and Philip Neri. The popularity of these medals in Europe was immense. Apparently the papacy issued some 180,000 of these indulgenced medals to 84 pilgrims in Rome during the Jubilee year of 1625. Other popes who attached indulgences to objects include Urban VIII (r. 1623-1644), Gregory XV in 1622, Paul V in 85 1607, and Leo XI in 1605. It is unclear if these indulgences were actually communicated to Japan but they are recorded in the Ajuda copies of the now-lost Jesuit archives at Macau that detail internal administrative matters. More investigation is required, but they may have been circulated much like the Orasho no kuriki. Nevertheless, some indulgences like those mentioned above did make their way to Jesuits in Japan. We know from a letter written by the bishop of Japan in 1612 in Nagasaki that 86 indulgences were getting through to Japan. And, according to one of the annual letters by Rodrigues, indulgences were issued for a confraria devoted to Ignatius that was set up 87 on the Gotō Islands in 1625 (in spite of the ban on Christianity). Aside from manuscripts that indicate indulgences being sent to Japan, there are only a few references to their reception or use in the published primary materials of the mission. The Cartas contain references to what the Jesuits took as Buddhist indulgences but they do not refer to making use of indulgences themselves. Perhaps it was a matter of course, though the published letters only go up to the late 1580s and there is much more information about indulgences in the archives. Even though it does not come from Kyushu, there is one reference to the enthusiastic reception of both a papal Jubilee and its indulgences in a letter by the superior of the “Kami” region (the area around Miyako), Francisco Pacheco, in 1621: The Christians took with much fervor the Jubilee that His Holiness conceded in the year [1]617, and arrived in Japan in [1]620; and they were happy and consoled 83 Ajuda 49-V-5, 467. 84 Elizabeth C. Tingle, Indulgences After Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France, 1520-1720, (New York: Routledge, 2016), 150. 85 Ajuda 49-V-5, 467v, 480; Ajuda 49-V-7, 11-12; 13. 86 Jap-Sin 15 II, 166. 87 See the annual letter, dated March 28, 1625 by João Rodrigues Giram. From Macao. Jap-Sin 60, 344v- 345. 483 with the Indulgence, and the letter from His Holiness, which they esteemed much, and they had translated much in order to read many times in the assembly of their 88 Confrarias. There may be additional reference to the reception of indulgences such as the one referred to by Pacheco, but more research into the manuscript sources is required. Although there are not many references to indulgences in the Cartas, the Manuale does make reference to them as part of the administration of the sacrament of penance. The relevant passages occur in the Latin text (but not in the Japanese supplement) for certain forms of absolution in the sacrament. Here, the Manuale provides two specific forms of conceding a plenary indulgence for confession: one for the case of ordinary confession and one for that of a penitent near death for whom confession, the viaticum, and the sacrament of the anointing of the sick is given. Both forms state, “I concede to you by the authority given to me, and to you the conceded plenary indulgence, in the name of the Father and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit [while making the sign of the cross]. Amen.” The form recited for a penitent in danger of death also states, “If the present danger of death (God favoring) passes, this indulgence will be to you reserved for 89 the true moment of death [pro vero mortis articulo].” The significance of this passage is that the Manuale, even though it is a text that simply provides the forms of the sacraments and explains them, presumes that plenary indulgences can be obtained by the Japanese laity from their confessor. In reality, obtaining the indulgences was likely even less formal, with the person seeking the indulgence simply fulfilling the stipulations and trusting that the appropriate temporal penalty in purgatory would be remitted. Nevertheless, the Manuale offers textual evidence that such indulgences could be given out in such a simple scenario as that of confession. In addition to the section on the administration of the sacrament of penance, the Manuale refers to the concession of indulgences in one part of its forms on the administration of the Eucharist: 88 Pacheco to the General, from Japan (Kami) dated January 14 1621. MHJ, 891. For a Japanese-language version see Nagasakiken-shi Henshū Iinkai, Nagasakiken shi, 126-127. 89 Cerqueira, Manuale, 91. Compare with Manuale Valentinum of 1592, 75-76 and the Manuale Salmanticae of 1585, 69-70. 484 Whosoever has accompanied [taken] the most holy body of Christ and has done a work of mercy, visiting the sick: likewise has gained an indulgence of one hundred days those: who specifically have lit candles two hundred days. Pope Gregory XIII. Concedes to the Confraternities of the Most Holy Sacrament, and to those faithful in Christ, either men or women, who accompanied the Most Holy Sacrament, when it has been taken to the sick, and to those who are hindered, to the sound of a small bell [paruae campana] pray aloud on their knees one time the Lord’s Prayer [orationem Dominicam], and pray for the sick, each time this is done, one hundred days Indulgence. Also the Bishop for him, who accompanies 90 the most holy sacrament, concedes forty days indulgence. Again, the text presumes the conceding of indulgences to the laity for a variety of purposes, in this case taking the sacrament of the Eucharist to the sick and the infirm. What is most interesting about this part of the Manuale is that it stipulates the form of the indulgence in the vernacular as well (as does the 1795 Rituale). Immediately following the Latin form of the indulgence, the Manuale states, “Idem ſermone vulgari” and gives a Japanese versions of it in rōmaji with several non-Japanese words interspersed (namely Indulgencia, bispo, sacramento, Deus, Pater Noster, confrarias, and papa). That the vernacular should be included underscores the importance of the indulgence for the laity, as the bishop of Japan wanted to ensure that whosoever received it heard the indulgence in their native Japanese tongue. In other words, the penitent would unambiguously know the amount of temporal penalty remitted. The Japanese part lists the following remission of penalties: “nifiacu nichino Indulgencia” (200 days), “xijǔnichino Indulgenciauo” (40 91 days), and “fiacunichino Indulgenciauo” (100 days). 90 Cerqueira, Manuale, 123-124. This indulgence is not unique to the Manuale, but the last line concerning an additional indulgence from the Bishop seems to in the Japanese Manuale only. No doubt this was to provide extra incentive for undertaking this good work. For example, a 1745 version of the Ritual Romanum includes it as part of its appendix, stating that it was “Ex Manuali Toletano” or “from the Manual Toledano” (Manuale Toletanum) which had its origin in its namesake of Toledo in 1494. This version does not have a line indicating that the bishop will also concede forty days indulgence. Like the Japanese Manuale, this manual included some translations the local vernacular. A later example comes from the Latin and Spanish 1846 edition of the Manual Romano Toledano y Yucateco Para la Administracion de los Santos Sacramento por el R. P. Fray Joaquin Ruz, 50. The Manuale ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae Ministrada (Salamanca 1585) from which much of the Japanese Manuale was derived, has the indulgence in Latin only. More research is required to determine if this indulgence had been translated into any other vernacular besides Castilian prior to its translation into Japanese. For an overview of how the Japanese Manuale relates to other manuals, specifically the Toledano version of 1583 and the Salamanca version of 1585, see López-Gay, La Liturgia, 272-295. Unfortunately, I have not been able to track down the Manuale Toledano of 1583. 91 Cerqueira, Manuale, 126-132. For a comparison of the Japanese Manuale and the Toledano version, See López-Gay, Liturgia, 285. This part is one of the few Japanese sections in the entire Latin text of the 485 One final reference to the concession of indulgences in the Manuale can be found in the order for visits to parishes by the bishop. In a brief mention of indulgences, the Manuale states that the bishop is to promulgate them during his visitations, some having 92 been “given by the Pontiff.” Presumably, the indulgences received from Rome, like the ones discussed earlier, would have been publicly proclaimed by the bishop of Japan. In all likelihood, however, the task would have been delegated to both foreign and native advocates—as the translation of Innocent IX’s indulgences in the Orasho no kuriki were, according to Pacheco, so that they could be read far and wide throughout the whole country. The use of indulgences by Japanese Christians was so popular and well known that some anti-Christian propagandists sought to undermine them in their attacks on the religion. For example, the apostate padre, Christovão Ferreira, deftly ridiculed them in his 1636 anti-Christian tract Deceit Disclosed (Kengiroku). Ferreira, as someone who was likely involved directly in the concession of indulgences, knew that they were an important element of Japanese Christianity and needed to be attacked. Rather than undermining the two concepts behind indulgences, satisfaction and merit, Ferreira used the standard European critique that they were bought to have sins forgiven. George Elison has usefully translated Ferreira’s critique: And there are still other unheard-of things! To mention one: in order to gather in money the pappa sometimes issues a writ of cruzada. And, moreover, those who do not possess a bulla (this is a license from the pappa) cannot gain any merit [kuriki] from the contas (rosary) or attain remission of sins through the jubileo (that is to say, grand remission) or be absolved of the caso reservado (this is the withholding of remission at certain times). Once one possesses the bulla, however, one need but request the aforementioned merit; or, upon saying confissan (that is to say, repentance and contrition) to any Bateren, one can obtain remission of any caso reservado (deep offence), not to speak of the usual sins! But for those who apply for a bulla there is a list of prices. Is this not avaricious trafficking with the afterlife? The pappa, as lord over the afterlife, selling Manuale, thus indicating its importance for all padres instead of being relegated to the Japanese-language supplement. As part of the Latin text, the Japanese in rōmaji was certainly meant for a European advocate (the next page gives forms for visiting the sick in Latin, Japanese, and Portuguese). It also gives the form for administering the Eucharist to the sick in Japanese and Portuguese, stating one in case the sick is a Japanese person and if one if the sick is a Portuguese person. 92 Cerqueira, Manuale, 391; 393. 486 licenses—how about that? Deluding the people, selling the afterlife for gold and 93 silver, is not what he was meant to do! Protestants in Europe, who ridiculed indulgences as an evil practice of popery, would have wholeheartedly approved of this line of reasoning. Indeed, this was not unlike the Jesuits’ own criticism of Buddhist monks for claiming to be able to rescue people from 94 hell by selling “amulets.” But, as we have seen, there is no mention of purchasing indulgences in the Japanese documentation. All that was required to obtain them were specific acts of charity (to the community, not the padres) or prayer. No money should have changed hands in the concession of an indulgence. Given that the Jesuits criticized the Buddhists for selling “indulgences” and the ease with which people could fulfill indulgences, there was likely no reason to “sell” them. Doing so would go against the mission’s overall goal of self-sufficiency (the reason for involvement in the silk trade in the first place) as the foreign Jesuits thought that monetizing any aspect of Christianity would be detrimental to the enterprise. Even though indulgences were not actually “for sale” on Kyushu, Ferreira’s attack on indulgences was important nonetheless as an attempt to reframe the entire system of satisfaction behind them. He pursues this line of attack so that non-Christian Japanese, who were unfamiliar with how indulgences were connected to satisfaction, merit, and care for the dead, would see it simply as a quid pro quo arrangement designed to drum up money for the evil bateren. This would have been an effective strategy since it undermined one of the main features of the Communion of Saints, namely the free flow of merit between all three states of the Church. By making indulgences into a monetary transaction, he attempted to undercut the actual praxis of the indulgence, namely the performance of penitential, devotional, or charitable activity. What this means is that 93 Quoted in Ellison, Deus Destroyed, 308. For the original text of the Kengiroku, see Ashio Masamune, ed., Myōtei Mondō, Ha Deusu, Kengiroku (Nagasaki Machi, Tokyofu: Nihonkotenzenshūkankōkai, 1930), 15-16. The book can be accessed online from the National Diet Library here: http://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1111933?itemId=info%3Andljp%2Fpid%2F1111933&__lang=en 94 Fróis writes in his Tratado: “Free of charge, we give others rosaries that have been blessed as well as relics from saints; the bonzes sell for a very good sum of money a great number and variety of amulets in the form of a written piece of paper.” Quoted in Danford, Gill, and Reff, The First European Description, 105-106. Gill’s fellow editors have wisely toned down his personal biases on the subject for this volume. See also Robin D. Gill, Topsy-Turvy 1585: A Translation and Explication of Luis Frois S.J.’s Tratado (Treatise) Listing 611 Ways Europeans & Japanese Are Contrary (Key Biscayne: Paraverse Press, 2004), 275-276, 296-298. 487 Ferreira was eliminating the jiriki component of indulgence, which was an important underlying similarity between Christian and Buddhist notions of merit transfer. Caring for the dead through Ferreira’s polemical version of the indulgence required nothing of the individual Christian apart from payment of money. We must also keep in mind that the former padre was not writing for Japanese Christians trying to convince them of the uselessness of their ways. Rather, his audience was non-Christian Japanese who needed an explanation as to why the Christian practice was purely ridiculous. If Ferreira could undermine the Church’s ability to care for the dead, he would undermine a very attractive feature of Japanese Christianity for those on the outside looking in. As shown above, it appears that indulgences were seemingly plentiful on Kyushu; one could gain plenary indulgences (for oneself or the dead) on consecutive days. Partial indulgences could also be gained multiple times a day. However, the fires of purgatory burned long and hot, and the living continually amassed temporal penalties due to humanity’s inherently sinful nature. One could never have enough indulgences (just as one could never have enough good karma) because the actual temporal penalty to be paid was, from humanity’s perspective, indefinite and only known to the mind of God in perfect divine justice. In this way, the unknown temporal penalties after death mirrored karmic retribution, where one could never be sure if one had accumulated enough merit to avoid the endless kalpas of hell or some other suffering existence. Whatever suffering karmic retribution bestowed, it was perfect in its justice as a natural and cosmological law from which there was no escape. If divine justice seemed unbending, then the law of karma was equally or perhaps even more inflexible as a person could not bargain with it or appeal to it for any sort of mercy whatsoever. But souls in purgatory were already in a state of definite temporal penalty (just unknown to the living) as they could not amass any more sin nor help themselves through satisfaction or merit. The only option for them, aside from enduring the purgatorial fires, was to receive help from the living through which their temporal penalty could steadily or all at once be remitted. Only the living could appeal to God’s mercy plead to him on behalf of the dead, giving up their own satisfaction to repay the penalty of another. This was the direct connection, between living and dead that indulgences maintained and strengthened. They gave Japanese Christians a very real sense of accomplishment for 488 having helped a soul in purgatory, even if the immediate effects were not tangible or known to the person bestowing the indulgence. All they could do, just as when Buddhists transferred merit, was trust in the Treasury of Merit that their offerings would have some sort of charitable effect on the suffering soul. If indulgences did not seem enough to maintain connections with the dead as special mechanisms, the living could still help them on their own and with greater frequency through the performance of individual suffrages. Although indulgences were particularly efficacious for remitting satisfaction in purgatory, they were, when applied to the dead, essentially a special form of suffrage. If we recall, suffrages were essentially acts and prayers that the living performed on behalf of the dead. Indulgences had stipulations—one had to do something at a certain time or place in order for it to be effective or one had to be in a state of non-attachment to sin— but suffrages could be performed almost anywhere and by anyone. No matter where they were or in what situation they found themselves, the living could engage in prayer, perform acts of charity, or engage in acts of piety. All that was required was the will of the living party to be concerned about and then act on behalf of the dead person suffering in purgatory. In the Japanese church, suffrages therefore strengthened the connection between the living and the dead as often as the living chose to care about their deceased love ones. Only two kinds of suffrages required a specific time or place, namely, suffrages associated with funerals and suffrages in the form of masses for the dead. These could only be performed once (for funeral suffrages, during or shortly after burial) and by a certain person (for a memorial mass, a clergy member). But for the most part, suffrages, even masses for the dead and funerals, were within reach of everyone and did not require a special bull or proclamation by the bishop as an indulgence usually did. As such, suffrages were the main way in which the living cared for the dead, and were the primary mechanism that linked the two components of the universal church together in symbiosis; for whoever took care of the dead out of charity also took care of themselves and the living community around them, as these suffrages were pleasing to God and gained merit as a result. Both Christian funerals and memorial masses were very popular on Kyushu, no doubt because Buddhism offered similar types of mechanisms with which they could 489 take care of the dead. If we recall from Chapter VI, the Buddhist laity could avail themselves of all types of mechanisms with which to help the dead. These included, tsuizen rites, specific memorial rites, and the copying of sutras. To compete with these important Buddhist mechanisms, Japanese Christianity had to offer its own in the form of suffrages. This allowed Japanese Christians a high degree of personal agency in helping their dead instead of simply relying up the Church or an indulgence to do so. We should begin our discussion on suffrages for the dead on Kyushu with what was thought to be the most efficacious suffrage of all: the mass. This sacrificial rite, which was celebrated by the living, also incorporated the dead as it was offered on part of the entire cosmic church in the form of the Communion of Saints. The mass, as the reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice at Golgotha, was also the source of all merit and therefore the source of all suffrages. In addition, masses were public and therefore brought more recognition to and reminders of the dead members of the Christian community. All ordinary masses prayed for the dead—a practice that continues today in the so-called “General Intercession”—but masses for a specific dead person highlighted that person’s plight in purgatory and provided both the family and the community an opportunity to partake in aiding them in the afterlife. These masses also brought comfort to the living in general because they could be assured that their coreligionists would do the same for them when they died, particularly in the case of the confraternities. Since Kyushu, and specifically Nagasaki, had the greatest number of members in confraternities, masses as suffrages to care for the dead were much more common there than anywhere else in Japan. As a result, the relationship between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead was strongest in Kyushu, representing a more complete manifestation of the Christianization process. Although members of confraternities and the rest of the laity sought masses to take care of there dead, it was a practice that the Jesuits had encouraged both in Japan and other areas of missionary activity. Masses for the dead in Europe, by the sixteenth century, were a particularly important part of the Catholic way of taking care of the dead. The use of masses as suffrages, both for oneself posthumously or for loved ones, was very popular in the Iberian Churches of the early modern period. Carlos Eirei, in his analysis of such masses in sixteenth-century Madrid, has shown that masses bequeathed in the wills of the dead 490 95 “skyrocketed” in the 1590s. As missionaries from Portugal and Spain spread out across the globe, they brought with them this European enthusiasm for the mass as a suffrage to the various cultures they sought to convert. Mostly comprised of Portuguese, the Jesuits in India fostered the strong Iberian tradition of using the mass as a suffrage for souls in purgatory. Frequently these masses had special indulgences or were conducted on “privileged altars,” thereby increasing their efficacy. Both before and after the beginning of the mission to Japan, the Jesuits in India frequently requested and obtained specific indulgences for releasing souls from purgatory through suffrage masses. In the critical editions of the India documents, there are a great many references to the Jesuits saying masses for souls in purgatory or “commending the 96 souls in purgatory” (encomendar, i.e. to pray for them). For example, when performing catechesis, some Jesuits would go about town with youths praying “for the souls who 97 were in the fire of purgatory and those who were in mortal sin.” Francisco Cabral, some ten years before he arrived in Japan, wrote to Juan Alfonso de Polanco (1517-1576), secretary to the General and founding member of the Jesuits, for an indulgence that allowed the Jesuits “in these parts” to release a souls from purgatory by saying a mass for 98 that person. Use of masses to remit the temporal penalties completely for a soul in purgatory remained a concern for Jesuits in India well into the 1590s and beyond. In 1596, the Procurator in Rome, Padre Manuel da Viega, petitioned the General Acquaviva for the concession that fifty Jesuit padres be able to release souls from purgatory by 99 virtue of the mass as a suffrage. One Jesuit who was particularly concerned with souls in purgatory and using suffrages to remit their temporal penalties was Francis Xavier. As in so many other aspects of the mission to Japan, Xavier set the tone for Jesuits there, and it is thus 95 See his chapter “Planning for the Soul’s Journey” in Carlos Eirie, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 168-231. 96 See Indica I, 562; Indica II, 334 for early examples. 97 Indica II, 261. Gaspar Barzaeus to Ignatius Loyola, from Goa, December 16 1551. 98 Indica IV, 756. Cabral to Polanco, from Goa, Dec. 2 1560. 99 Indica XVI, 678. Veiga to Acquaviva, Rome, 1596. 491 worthwhile to examine his attitude concerning suffrages, particularly the mass. Xavier’s concern with how the living took care of the dead was readily apparent upon his arrival in Goa and was something that remained with him throughout all his missionary travels. Prompted by a suggestion from the Governor of Goa in September of 1542, Xavier asked Ignatius for a “privileged altar” at the college in Goa “so that all those who celebrate Mass for a deceased on the said altar may free a soul from purgatory, the same as they 100 would if they said it on one of the privileged altars in Rome.” In effect, Xavier was asking for all masses said on that altar to have a plenary indulgence attached to them rather than just an ordinary suffrage. He noted that the clergy of the college should do so without charge or temporal reward, thereby making certain that masses for the dead would not become a source of income for the missionaries as the had typically become for priests in Europe. From this request, it is clear that Xavier wanted to use the indulgenced suffrage of the mass, that is the charity of taking care of the dead, to increase the spiritual fervor of the living Church in Goa (both Portuguese and Indian converts). The remainder of the request reveals his intentions (all italics are in text): ...and the one who has the Mass said should confess and receive Communion at it, for it is most reasonable that one who procures the freeing of a soul from purgatory should first free his own soul from hell; and His Holiness should grant those who say a Mass on the said altar without charge, etc., a spiritual reward, either a plenary or some other indulgence that His Holiness sends; and this, so that priests out of love for a spiritual reward will be pleased to say Mass without charge, and for the love of God, and without any hope of a temporal reward. His Lordship [the Governor] says that he greatly wishes to obtain this grace for the college under these conditions, since it will thus be a source of great devotion and will be rightly esteemed, as it certainly should be. While Xavier should not be given all the credit for establishing the connection between suffrages for the dead and spiritual conversion, as the Governor seems to have been the one who conceived of the idea, he is the one who spread this idea throughout India, the Moluccas, and, by way of his Jesuit successors, to Japan. The Church in the college was completed in 1543, and the privileged altar was finally granted in 1549. Pope Paul III (r. 100 Costelloe, Letters, 54. EXI, 134-135. Xavier to Ignatius, from Goa, September 20 1542. The Portuguese Governor of India at the time was Martim Affonso de Sousa (c. 1500-1564; governor 1542-1545). 492 1534-1549) eventually granted the plenary indulgence in a brief for Xavier stating “…by 101 mode of suffrage souls are likewise freed from the penalty of purgatory...” Xavier frequently mentions performing suffrages for the souls in purgatory elsewhere in his correspondence. Like other Jesuits, he frequently “recommended” souls in purgatory. For example, he testifies that in the Moluccas, he “saw to it that every evening the souls in purgatory were recommended on the squares, and then all those who were living in mortal sin.” Such suffrages, in Xavier’s mind, strengthened the bond between the living and the dead. Underscoring how important this was to the laity, he notes that “the people of the city” (Ternate, present-day North Maluku, Indonesia) designated a member of the local confraternity to pray for the souls in purgatory and remind the living of repentance: In order to do this the people of the city designated a man who, dressed in the habit of the Misericordia, went every evening through the squares with a lantern in one hand and a bell in the other. From time to time he would stop and in a loud voice recommend the souls of the faithful Christians in purgatory. After this, according to the same instruction, he would recommend the souls of all those who were persevering in mortal sins without seeking to overcome them, about whom it could well be said: Let them be deleted from the book of the living and not be inscribed amongst the just 102[Ps. 68:29]. Xavier apparently passed on this habit to the missionaries who continued his work. Roque de Oliveira encouraged the boys of the city to go out like “friars” in a procession whenever a Christian would die and chant the litanies for the benefit of the deceased. They would then carry the body, all the while praying for the person, to the place of burial. Such care for the dead was publicly visible to the entire community, Christian or 101 Costelloe, Letters, 54, note 6, and Monumenta Xaveriana: Ex Autographis vel ex Antiquioribus Exemplis Collecta, Volume 2 (Matriti: Typis Gabrielis Lopez del Honro, 1912), 132-133. 102 Costelloe, Letters, 174. EXI, 385. Xavier to his companions in Rome, From Cochin, January 20 1548. Regarding this confraternity, see Schurhammer, Xavier III, 152-154. A misericordia had been founded by Antonio Galvão, captain of the city, for the “mestizo children of the Portuguese and to those of the native Christians.” The misericordia had been neglected by a certain Ruy Vaz who was in charge of it. Thus, Xavier's promotion of the suffrages for the souls in purgatory was a way to re-edify the confraternity. There was also a confraternity of the sacrament. Xavier started praying for souls in purgatory publicly like this in Moluco as early as 1546. See EXI, 332 and Costelloe, Letters, 137. Xavier to his companions in Europe from Amboina, May 10th, 1546. 493 103 not, and no doubt made an impression. Xavier also used indulgences as a lure to get people, namely the Portuguese in India, to go to confession. In 1545, he wrote to João III, King of Portugal, asking him to obtain indulgences from the pope for anywhere “inhabited by the Portuguese in India” and on the feast days of “the chapels in the place where they live.” He wanted these to be plenary indulgences, which would be obtained upon confession and communion. He notes his reasoning, “For I would have Your 104 Highness know that the number of those going to confession is very small.” In directing his attention toward the already Catholic Portuguese, Xavier was essentially using the promise of the remittance of temporal penalties to lure people into getting their eternal penalties absolved via the sacrament of penance. Later in Japan, the Jesuits would employ a similar tactic among the recently converted Japanese Buddhists likewise emphasized the perils of hell as a realm of suffering. Though Xavier did not have enough time in Japan to establish any practices concerning care for the dead, he nevertheless imparted this concern to later Jesuits there since they had to pass through the missionary zone of India. There, all Japan-bound missionaries witnessed a precedent for how a full-fledged mission might care for the dead. They saw how to help the recently converted maintain contact with their dead through suffrages and masses for the dead. Future missionaries also recognized that the many confraternities in India were one of the most powerful mechanisms with which new Christians could care for one another in the afterlife. Suffrages, prayers, masses, or other pious works devoted to the soul of a dead person, were introduced fairly early in the mission. The foreign advocates led Japanese converts to this, in part, because it was already part and parcel of Catholic culture of the time and had been a feature of the mission in India. But more significantly, they recognized that Buddhism offered various mechanisms with people cared for the dead. Xavier, in his limited knowledge, recognized as much, frequently complaining that the bonzes claimed they could rescue people from “hell” (Gehenna). Later missionaries, even after promotion of suffrages and adoption by Japanese Christians, were aware that 103 Costelloe, Letters, 275. EXII, 132-133. Xavier to Padres Paulo, Antonio Gomes, and Baltasar Gago, nd from Malacca, June 20-22 , 1549. Roque de Oliveira (born c. 1523) left the society not long after in 1553. 104 Costelloe, Letters, 113. Probably from Cochin, Jan. 20 or Jan. 27 1545. 494 Buddhists knew how to care for their dead. For example, Baltasar Gago, in his description of the “sects of Japan,” stated that the bonzes of Amida “prayed to him for the finados 105souls of their dead [ ].” It must have been clear to the missionaries that if they were going to have any success at all they would have to promote suffrages, Christian funerals, and the merit of the mass for helping the dead. The simplest and most ancient method of suffrage adopted by the Christian community was prayer for the dead. Specialized individual prayers were not needed, as the standard Ave Marias and Pater Nosters were used frequently for the deceased. Even in transliterated and imperfectly memorized Latin, the prayers would have retained their effect in the Japanese mind since Buddhist chants, some of which were transliterated 106 Sanskrit, remained unintelligible to many common people. Prayer for the dead could be offered at any time, but there were several occasions when it was most appropriate or deemed most effective. One such occasion was after mass, as the parishioners were about to depart the church. Fróis, in a letter from Miyako in 1574, records that in the Go-kinai region near the capital, the following custom had been introduced: that the Christians “would say in the Church at the end of the mass, three Pater Nosters and three Ave Marias in a loud voice for the conversion of Japan, the state of the Catholic Church, and the souls of purgatory.” Though Fróis mentions that the practice was in the region of the capital, the practice of prayer for the dead after mass had been started some twenty years earlier on the island of Hirado. López Gay notes that it had been established “little by 107 little” throughout the rest of the mission from there. Besides Fróis’s letter from Miyako, we also have one from Usuki in 1576 in which he mentions prayers being said at the end of mass in conjunction with the catechesis of newer Christians. Though he does not say specifically what these prayers were for, they included “the litanies” which were one of the prayer sequences used 105 MHJ III, 601. Gago to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Goa, December 10, 1562. Moriwaki notes Fernádez’s letter where he says the Japanese like to pray for their dead, p. 137 106 The unintelligibility of some Buddhist language even extended to funeral sermons, as Bodiford points out: “The paradoxical Zen language of most Sōtō funeral sermons, especially when presented in the form of Chinese verse, was probably largely unintelligible to most laypeople.” Bodiford, Soto Zen, 202. 107 See López-Gay, Liturgia, 131-132 for his analysis and the quote by Fróis. He is quoting a letter from th Fróis to the Superior Cabral from Sakai. Dated May 5 , 1574. Found in Jap-Sin 7 II, 239. 495 108 frequently said for funeral rites and other occasions. Alexandre Valeregio (not to be confused with Alessandro Valignano), describing his time in Japan from 1568, also describes communal prayer for the dead at other opportune times. Valeregio states that following a “banquet” for Christians sponsored by Dom Luís, in “Vochica” (Ojika) in the Gotō Islands, “we all returned to the church, where already there was a tumba [a kind of litter used to carry the dead] arranged with many lit candles, and all being present we 109 prayed the vespers of the dead with as much solemnity as possible.” Though led by the padres, such prayers for the dead were certainly organized and prompted by the ordinary laity or communal leaders like Dom Luís. In addition, whenever one of the laity died, ordinary Christians would have been the first to start organizing funerals and the various suffrages accompanying them. Suffrages at Funerals, All Souls’ Day on Kyushu, and Caring for the Dead in Confraternities One of the most appropriate times to offer prayer for the soul of a dead Christian was during that person’s funeral rites. Though we have addressed the importance of funerals for the Christian community previously, we need to call special attention to the suffrages that accompanied them, since these were the first acts through which the living could help the newly departed in purgatory. Again, the easiest and simplest suffrages were prayers, but prayers offered specifically as part of the funeral and procession. Ave Marias and Pater Nosters, as all-purpose prayers that everyone knew, would be used as a matter of course. Baltasar Gago, in his general description of funerals from 1555, records that the litanies were read and that the Christians responded with the standard but short 110 “ora pro nobis” (pray for us). Later, in 1577, Fróis mentions that a group of Christians 108 Cartas , 365v. Fróis, from Usuki in Bungo, August 20 1576. 109 Cartas, 333v. Valeregio to the Jesuits in Portugal, from India, 1572. For a biographical sketch of Valeregio, see Fróis II, 70, note 1. He is also known as Alexandre Valla and was born in Reggio Emilia in Italy, hence his altered name. 110 MHJ II, 559. Gago to Jesuits in India and Portugal, from Hirado, September 23 1555. 496 accompanied him during a burial and that they returned to the church in Usuki “after the 111 Ave Marias.” Elsewhere, in describing the funeral of Dom Francisco in 1587, Fróis states that the funeral party said “some responses and ordinary prayers,” which certainly 112 included Ave Marias and Pater Nosters. There existed more elaborate suffrages, too, as described below, but for prominent and ordinary Christians alike, regular prayers were the most common. Participation by the Christian community on such occasions as funerals could amount to a significant number of suffrages for the deceased, which would also mean a significant amount of help for the soul in purgatory. For the funeral of Ambrosio of Yamaguchi in 1554, Cosme de Torres states that “more than 200 Christians, both men and women” accompanied him for the burial. All of these would have likely been saying some simple prayers for Ambrosio, thus helping him all the more in the afterlife. If this funeral was the same one recounted by Duarte da Silva, some 3000 people, many of them non-Christians, came out to watch the procession. It was doubtless an impressive sight to witness hundreds of Christians praying for the soul of one of their flock. Torres also notes that the funeral was conducted with great solemnity. Melchior, a Japanese youth who had been baptized by Xavier, assisted Torres during the funeral and was likely the one who 113 directed the group in their suffrages. More elaborate suffrages for the dead can be found in the Manuale, which prescribed the official form for funeral rites. The Manuale states that the office of the dead and other suffrages for the dead should not be performed in a perfunctory way, but 114 rather diligently and carefully in keeping with the decrees of Trent. The Manuale contains nearly seventy pages of funerary instructions, covering the entire Christian community from lay adults, to padres, to small children—and detailing the rites conducted in the church and at the cemetery. The prayers included the standard “Et 111 Fróis II, 491. The burial was apparently attended by many from the Christian community because Fróis returned to find that “thirty or 40 gentile men” had been ransacking the church for valuables in their absence! 112 Fróis IV, 387. 113 MHJ II, 460. Torres to the Jesuits in Bungo, from Yamaguchi, October, 1554. Duarte da Silva to the Jesuits in India, from Bungo, September 10 1555 in MHJ II, 530. See also López-Gay, La Liturgia, 222. 114 Cerqueira, Manuale, 235. 497 clamor meus ad te veniat” (and let my cry come unto thee) and others. One such series of responses is: ℣. And lead us not into temptation. ℟. But deliver us from evil. ℣. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. ℟. And let perpetual light shine upon him. ℣. From the gates of hell. ℟. Deliver his soul, O Lord. ℣. May he rest in peace. ℟. Amen. ℣. O Lord, hear my prayer. ℟. And let my cry come unto thee. ℣. The Lord be with you. ℟. And with thy spirit. 115 Let us pray. According to the form, the versicle (℣.) would have been said by the padre, and the response (℟.) would have been said by the people. A Japanese lay leader or brother, someone like the aforementioned Melchior, would have likely led the responses, perhaps even teaching people the responses in transliterated Latin. The responses were short enough for this to be possible, and, in any case, a garbled pronunciation of the Latin likely would have been deemed effective enough as a suffrage; the intent behind the prayer being more significant than its exact wording or pronunciation. The Manuale also includes the “order of making absolution,” which was conducted after a funeral mass. Performed over the body before burials, this was one last suffrage for the soul of the departed. This part of the funeral was not meant to give absolution of sins for the deceased—only confession during their lifetime could do that— but rather was a formal prayer imploring God for remission of temporal penalty in purgatory on behalf of the dead person. There are several different versions of the prayers, one for recitation on the day of death and over the body and a second for recitation at a memorial service after burial near the gravesite. The prayer over the body on the day of death reads: Absolve, O Lord, we entreat thee, the soul of thy servant, or thy handmaid, N. [name of the deceased], that being dead to the world he may live for thee. And by thine all merciful goodness blot out fully whatever sins he committed in his life 115 Cerqueira, Manuale, 267. The translation is taken from Weller, Roman Ritual, Vol. II, 32-33, where the Latin is the same as that in the Manuale. 498 through human frailty. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, & c. [et cetera]. ℟. 116 Amen. The absolution also used sacramentals that, in a way, acted as suffrages for the dead. The Manuale calls for the use of a lit candelabra, a thurible (also known as a censer, the instrument that contains burning incense), crucifixes, and holy water with an aspergillum for sprinkling it. While sacramentals such as these were not technically suffrages, they were used in the funeral rite to provide some benefit to the soul of the dead person. As such, they were usually accompanied by prayer (a true suffrage) and were thought to be of benefit not only to the soul of the person but also to the body with which it was eventually to be reunited at the “general resurrection” (when all the dead rise from their graves for the Last Judgment). Of these sacramentals, perhaps the most important was holy water since it had been used during funerals since ancient times and was easily accessible to Japanese Christians, among whom it was extremely popular. We see the use of holy water as a kind of suffrage fairly early on, as mentioned by Gago in 1555. Describing a typical funeral on Hirado, he notes specifically the use of holy water carried by a Christian youth during the funeral procession. This would have been sprinkled not only on the corpse, but 117 also on the gravesite. Such usage continued throughout the early decades of the mission and beyond Kyushu, thus indicating that it was standard practice. Describing the funeral rites of Hosokawa Gracia in 1600, with information derived from the annual reports, Guerreiro states that those conducting the funeral “said the customary responses above the tumba with the ceremonies of the holy water and incense, with which the office 118 was concluded.” The sprinkling of holy water, accompanied by prayers, was a simple yet significant physical manifestation of the living’s ability to help the dead in purgatory. As the Cistercian Henrich Theiler has explained about the use of holy water at funeral rites in general (pre-Vatican II), the sacramental has both symbolic and spiritual effects. 116 Cerqueira, Manuale, 283. The English translation is taken from Well, Roman Ritual Vol. II, 52-53. The Latin is the same in Weller as in the Manuale. 117 MHJ I, 559. The “manner of burial” is described in some detail here. 118 Guerreiro, Relação Anual, Vol. I, 217. Also quoted in López-Gay, La Liturgia, 232. 499 Firstly, it symbolizes the prayers of the living church that the “souls of the departed may be expiated [gain remission of temporal penalty] and sanctified for the great day of judgment.” Secondly, holy water was thought to “refresh the souls in purgatory and lessen their sufferings.” Thirdly, holy water effects sanctification of the body for the Resurrection at the end of time, thereby making the corruptible body “more worthy” for the soul with which it will be reunited. And finally, the holy water is sprinkled over and 119 near the place of burial “to keep from [it] any influence of Satan.” Given the affinity that Japanese Christians held for holy water to aid them in this life, it is easy to understand that they would have a similar affinity for its use in death to help the departed. Suffrages at funerals and burials did not necessarily need a padre or a brother to perform them, as lay people could freely offer up suffrages. In fact, lay leaders would have been the primary directors of these suffrages. We know that books concerning Christian burial were in circulation among the community at large in Japan, so members who could read likely performed a full range of extensive suffrages comparable to a 120 funeral led by a Jesuit. Given the popularity of sacramentals, lay leaders would also have had access to them for use as suffrages during funerals. The Obediencias references a number of sacramentals for use in all burials. Holy water was an important one. Others include candles (presumably blessed candles) and even chōchin (paper lanterns). Crucifixes are also thought to have been used throughout the rite, particularly in the procession. Other sacramentals that could be used by the Christians themselves in the processions included “contas, nominas, strings for cords (like the Franciscan cordons), and things of devotion given to Christians for burials.” For All Souls’ Day, other acts 119 Heinrich Theiler, Holy Water and its Significance for Catholics, translated by J.F. Lang (New York: Pustet & Co., 1909), 43-44. Though Theiler is writing from a modern, pre-Vatican II perspective, his explanation of the use of holy water is entirely consistent with its application in Japan and in the past history of the Church. Theiler poignantly explains the use of holy water: “As the dew refreshes the flowers that have been exposed to the rays of the sun, so holy water, the heavenly dew, conjoined with prayer, refreshes the souls in purgatory and lessens their sufferings. Dives, suffering in hell, asked in vain that Abraham but dip a finger into water and cool his parching tongue. His wish was not granted. Hell is barred by the justice of God so that no mercy can enter there. In purgatory, however, mercy still has an entrance. Holy Church, our Mother, dips her blessing hand into the sanctified water to sooth the burning pains of the suffering souls.” 120 Cartas, 339v. Fróis, in a letter from 1573, states that one Christian leader named Constantino had a book with which he “declared the Ten Commandments, preached to the Gentiles, buried the dead, and baptized the children…” Fróis to Cabral from Miyako, April 20 1573. 500 were prescribed, such as the sprinkling of holy water and the wafting of incense to 121 perfume the body or grave. Contas, or rosaries, would have been used as tools for prayer and as sacramentals unto themselves, and were sometimes interred with the deceased. Archaeological excavations in Funai, for example, have revealed that contas 122 were frequently placed in the graves of Christians, often alongside crucifixes and th medals. One gravesite in Tokyo from around the turn of the 17 century contained such 123 sacramentals as an image of Francis Xavier, medals, and glass rosary beads (contas). By placing such sacramentals in their graves, the living likely thought that they were burying something of the sacred with the corpse that would be of spiritual aid in the afterlife in general or in the “general resurrection.” The Church considered the mass to be the most efficacious suffrage for the dead outside of indulgences. The requiem mass, which was part of the funeral rite, was the first suffrage of this kind to be offered for the dead. However, like Buddhist memorial services, Japanese Christians also held anniversary masses for their dead in order to help that person in the afterlife. Masses for the dead could be said at any time—indeed perpetual masses were extremely common for the very wealthy in Europe and in the Americas at the time—but the Manuale only specifies a few times when the absolution of the dead might be conducted. These were in cases of a “private mass,” which was on the anniversary of the death or some other opportune time. In those cases the absolution 124 would be conducted for three nights. These kinds of anniversary masses were supposed to be conducted at the tomb, grave, or some other suitable location, namely a church or private chapel. Anniversary masses or even the regular masses for the dead could be 125 simple affairs, or quite elaborate ones. Some of the most notable anniversary masses were those said for Dom Francisco (Ōtomo Yoshishige). According to Dom Francisco’s 121 Ajuda 49-V-56, 32. 122 Contas were found in the grave of a young person at site numbered ST130. See, Kirishitan ibutsu, 65- 66. 123 Usukishi Kyōiku Iinkai, Shimofuji chiku kirishitan bochi, (Usuki-shi, 2016), 101-102; 119-121. 124 Cerqueira, Manuale, 283. 125 An example outside of Kyushu is the first anniversary of the death of Gracia Hosokawa. Her anniversary was “celebrated with special solemnity…” See López-Gay, Liturgia, 231. 501 confessor, the Jesuit Francisco Laguna, the daimyo’s wife had him say thirty-three 126 memorial masses “in the private oratory inside the Ōtomo residence.” Apart from the Manuale and Jesuit description of funerals, the Obediencias, which were first set down by Valignano in 1592 and then revised by Pasio in 1612, reveal a bit more about both suffrages and sacramentals used to care for the dead. Chapters 17- 20 of this extensive document deal exclusively with the norms that missionaries should follow for burial, the celebration of All Souls’ Day, and the performance of masses for 127 the dead. Chapter 19 (18 in some versions), which concerns the burial and office of the dead, lists several specific suffrages and sacramentals to be used during the rite. The main directive is simply to employ the “prayers of the Baptisterio” (meaning the Rituale or the Manuale). For other suffrages, a number of specific prayers were said by the funeral procession or “all the people.” When those who perform the burial do not know how to read (presumably from the Manuale or some other such book), the Obediencias states that “three Pater Nosters and three Ave Marias [should be said] in a loud voice with all the people.” In such a case, the irmãos and the catechists (dōjuku) were to use the shorter form of burial. Such simple prayers indicate that in these instances there was little clerical oversight, by either Europeans or Japanese padres. Yet, since all the Christians would have known these prayers, they would have been able to make at least some suffrages for the dead person. Funerals and memorial masses also provided the opportunity to perform another suffrage of the dead: almsgiving. As one of the traditional suffrages, alms offered on behalf of a dead person’s soul were essentially acts of merit and charity that were 126 th This information is taken from Carla Tronu Montané, “The Jesuit Accommodation Method in 16 and th 17 Century Japan” in José Martínez Millán, Henar Pizarro Llorente, and Esther Jiménez Pablo, eds. Los Jesuitas Religión, Política, y Educación: (Siglos XVI-XVIII), Volume III, (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2012), 1636. Tronu Montané speculates that the specific number of thirty-three is reference to the Lotus Sutra’s depiction of Kannon manifesting in thirty-three forms, which, she says, means Francisco assimilated Mary with Kannon. As evidence for this, she cites that Dom Francisco asked for a rosary with thirty-three beads during his sickness. However, Tronu Montané ignores that a Catholic thirty-three beaded rosary was in use during the sixteenth century (the so-called Camaldolese Crown of Our Lord Rosary). This rosary was thought to have been developed in Italy and therefore could have easily made its way to Japan. It consisted of “thirty-three Our Fathers (representing the thirty-three years of the life of Christ) and five Hail Marys (typifying the five wounds of Christ).” See the entry for rosary in Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Volume X (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1911), 92. 127 See Schütte, Valignano’s Mission II, 209-213, for brief references. 502 intended to benefit the living (the poor) and the dead person’s soul. In Japan, this custom piggy-backed upon the Buddhist practice of giving funeral feasts, as well as that of donating money to Buddhist monks for the performance of their own funeral rites. This was a matter of some controversy for the Jesuits (not for the Japanese laity) as funeral rites and suffrages were supposed to be free (in theory, if not in practice) for the community and the dead. For alms which the laity wanted to give the padres themselves, a compromise was arranged where the donation would be given to the poor instead. This would be an act of charity on behalf of the dead, offered as a suffrage to help them in 128 purgatory. In Chapter 10, the Obediencias prescribes exactly what kinds of alms should be accepted as suffrages for funerals. These alms were not offered in the form of money but rather in kind—rice being the most typical offering. Still, the Jesuits needed a dispensation from the Jesuit General in order for these alms to be used in liturgical services, such as wine used for mass. If the alms happened to be actual money, this was to be given to lay leaders for distribution among the poor rather than to the Jesuits themselves. Suffrages for the death of a Jesuit or lay leader were more elaborate and 129 extensive, befitting their status as leaders of the Christian communtiy. But regardless of a Christian’s status within the community, they could certainly expect a respectable funeral and the spirtual aid of their still-living coreligionists to help them in the afterlife. Indeed, no matter their station in life, they could also receive the aid of the entire Church Militant the world over for all time on the feast of All Souls’ day. This important feast day would be celebrated with much solemnity and enthusiasm in Japan as well. Beyond the regular suffrages that might accompany a funeral or memorial mass was the observation of All Souls’ Day on November 2 by the entire community. This feast day, along with All Saints’ Day on November 1, connected the living, the dead, and the saints through the liturgical calendar over a two-day period. All Saints’ Day is the commemoration of those Christians in heaven capable of interceding on behalf of the living and the dead, while All Souls’ Day commemorates the dead in purgatory. In fact, 128 For more information, see López-Gay, La Liturgia, 210-212. 129 Ajuda 49-IV-56, 32. For a detailed discussion these potentially “do ut des” type of donations, see López- Gay, La Liturgia, 209-216. 503 these liturgical feast days mirror the progression of dead Christian souls into heaven. The martyrs and saints obtained heaven first (represented liturgically on November 1) and the souls in purgatory “follow” them into heaven (represented liturgically on November 2) after purification. Thus, even the liturgical calendar reinforced the notion that souls in purgatory were assured entry into heaven…just a day late (metaphorically). Observing this occasion with mass and suffrages not only aided the community’s recently departed but also every soul in purgatory as part of the universal Church Suffering. In addition, when they themselves died, they were assured that they too, in purgatory, would be prayed for on a yearly basis by all Christians wherever they happened to be. Just as one could never have enough karmic merit in Buddhism (the exact tally was never known), Christians, in Japan and elsewhere, could never have enough help from the living to aid them in purgatory. All Souls’ Day (frequently referred to as Dia de Finados in the Portuguese sources) was celebrated as part of the liturgical calendar in Japan. The Manuale has it listed in its attached calendar as “the Commemoration of all the faithful dead.” And the liturgical calendar, with All Souls’ Day observed, was not for the missionaries alone. The Jesuit mission press printed such calendars in Japanese for free as early as 1592 and 130 distributed them to the laity. Handwritten copies of the calendar also circulated, and some were even carefully handed down among Christians in hiding during the Tokugawa regime. Naojirō Murakami discovered one such calendar purported to have been made by a certain Domingo Ikusuke in 1787. That the calendar was outdated, and seems to have coincided with the liturgical year of 1634, suggests that it had been recycled by the Kakure Christian community. Its importance here is that it specifically contains an entry for All Souls’ Day, which was written down as “moromoro no hito tomurahi” (“memorial for many people”) on the twelfth day of the ninth month. Murakami suggests that 131 “crypto-Christians” used this calendar for more than 150 years. Interestingly, Kakure 130 The Kirishitan Bunko cites the 1592 annual letter as stating that Christians in Kyoto “very well remembered the calendar and now at their request, order has been given to have it printed in the Japanese language.” If the calendar was distributed in Kyoto, it was certainly well-known in Kyushu. See entry for Church calendar. For details on the liturgical calendar and various feast days (aside from All Souls’ Day), see López-Gay, La Liturgia, 45-71. 131 See Naojirō Murakami “An Old Church Calendar in Japanese” Monumenta Nipponica 5 No.1 (Jan. 1942): 219-224. 504 Christians did keep a version of All Souls’ Day, along with the Buddhist “All Souls’ 132 festival” known as Obon, that they called Otogabarai. Turnbull thinks Otogaborai is essentially a remnant of All Souls’ Day from the early part of the sixteenth century. If true, All Souls’ was clearly important enough to have been carefully maintained throughout the centuries of persecution, indicating just how well received it was during the missionary period on Kyushu. As the principal feast of the Church Suffering, All Souls’ Day on Kyushu was celebrated with as much solemnity as local conditions allowed, depending upon the size of the community and the availability of clerical staff. This feast day was instituted relatively early in the mission, no doubt to provide a Christian alternative to the Obon festival. One of the first references comes to us from a letter by Baltasar Gago in 1555 from Hirado. According to Gago, he himself dedicated the entire month of November to honoring and praying for the dead. Likely starting on November 1 with All Saints’ Day, Gago held a mass each day for the dead. He also led a procession out to the cemetery accompanied by many Christians who said the “response for the dead” along with a “tumba” (actually a catafalque, that is a platform used to support a coffin) that had four “thick candles” on it. Gago did not not only use this time to lead suffrages for the dead, but to sermonize the living on their fate in the afterlife with topics such as “death, hell, 133 and things of this nature.” Gaspar Vilela, writing some two years later, again from Hirado, records the same subjects of preaching, namely the “four novissemos” or “four ends” (the Novíssimos; that is death, judgment, heaven, and hell), beginning on All Souls’ Day. He also says “on that day we made great solemnity for the dead until eight days before Christmas” (Natal). This was done, he states explicitly, to draw the Christians away from the “vomit of their error” because the “gentiles” make “many 134 idolatries for their dead.” The Padre Visitor Alessandro Valignano, writing in his 132 See the Kakure calendar reproduced in Turnbull, Kakure, 139. It has Otogabarai (recently dead) as being on the ninth month and thirteenth day. Turnbull, Kakure, 198-199. 133 MHJ II, 558. Gago to the Jesuits of India and Portugal, from Hirado, September 23, 1555. Cartas 39v. 134 MHJ II, 682-683. Cartas, 54v. Vilela to the Jesuits in Portugal, from Hirado, October 29, 1557. Vilela uses the word “vomito,” which, as Ruiz-de-Medina points out, is a reference to 2 Peter 22 and Proverbs 26:11. 2 Peter states, “It has happened to them according to the true proverb, ‘The dog turns back to its own vomit,’ and, ‘The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.’” This is an interesting quote because it stems 505 Principio, also viewed the establishment of All Souls’ Day in the early decades of the mission as an important means for the Japanese to understand better the immortality of 135 their souls. The padre Alexandre Valeregio (not Alessandro Valignano) provides us with an excellent account of how All Souls’ Day was commemorated in the Gotō Islands around the year 1570. What is most interesting about his account is that we have a full description of the involvement of the Christian community, from the highest to the lowest, in a funeral service for the remains of some anonymous Christians who had died there and were buried on the beach at some point. Such a service indicates that, as coreligionists, the living Christians of the island of Vochica (Ojika) performed suffrages for unknown dead Christians because they were part of the same community (the Church) that transcended the realms of the living and the dead. Valeregio, leading the Christians in the burial and the All Souls’ service, would not have failed to remind the community that both the funeral and the day on which it occurred helped the dead Christians who were surely in purgatory: Another day which was All Soul’s Day [dia dos ſinados] all gathered in the church where already they had been ordered to come, the bones of some Christian foreigners [from outside Ojika presumably], who died here many years ago, who were buried on the beach, and put in a tumba. We took in procession to bury them in the field, with such good order that the gentiles were amazed, many having hurried to this spectacle. The funeral rites finished, and preaching we returned in procession to the church where Dom Luís had ordered a meal prepared for all. This such affected the gentiles that we heard some say to some others, not being able to leave off such a holy thing, the men proclaimed that such honor was made to the bones of the dead whom they did not know, and so moved many came to 136 hear preaching. Fróis’s depictions of All Souls’ Day in Nagasaki in 1583 also relates the solemnity with which the Christian community celebrated the feast. Fróis specifically mentions that alms, in the form of food, clothing, and money for the souls of the dead, were collected by the mordomos (jihiyaku, lay leaders in the confraternity) and given to the poor. There from ancient Jewish wisdom literature and has been applied to different “Gentile” contexts. There is no ambiguity in what Vilela thought of Japanese Buddhist practices to aid the dead. 135 Quoted in López-Gay, La Liturgia, 234. 136 Cartas, 333v-334. 506 was also a feast for the community, “funerals” (sahimentos), a procession with a cross, and the sprinkling of the tombs of the dead by both the Padre Vice-Provincial and the Padre Superior of Nagasaki, António Lopes. The sprinkling was accompanied by prayers and responses, according to Fróis, and the “the Christians were extraordinary consoled and glad in the Lord.” Fróis also mentions that non-Christians from the surrounding areas came to see the “mode of proceeding” of the Christian commemoration of the dead and that some took the opportunity to learn more about Christianity or even undergo 137 baptism. Recognizing the importance of All Souls’ Day and the affinity that the Japanese had for taking care of their dead, Valignano included specific instructions for its celebration in the Obediencias. Also adopted by Pasio, the rules ensured that All Souls’ Day was always celebrated with the utmost solemnity possible: The day of the Commemoration of the Dead is celebrated with all solemnity with a sung mass [High Mass] if able, especially in the principal houses; in the small residences with a missa rezada [low mass], with some manner of catafalque [a túmulo]. And in all the churches there will be preaching to the purpose of the day. In the principal churches, the office is sung [of the dead]...ending the mass, there is to be a procession to the cemetery with the Padre saying the Miserere [Psalm 51] or the De Profundis [Psalm 129], and arriving at the cemetery the Padre will say the prayers that are in the Baptisterio [the Manuale], and he will go sprinkling the tombs of the dead, and afterwards with the censer, finally he will make all the people recite three Pater Noseters and three Ave Marias in a loud voice for the souls of the dead. In the places where it is not convenient to go in procession from our house to the cemetery, they will be summoned to it and in it do the aforementioned; in the great houses, if it is convenient, finishing the mass they 138 will in the church do the stations contained in the Baptisterio. The “stations” referred to at the end of the passage likely meant the “the Stations of the Cross.” These could have been performed in the larger churches and, on All Souls’ Day, might have merited an indulgence for the dead. Additional prayers, as can be found in the Manuale, were said specifically on All Souls’ Day as well as during private memorial 139 masses and over the corpse before or after burial. 137 Fróis IV, 6 138 Quoted in López-Gay, La Liturgia, 240. Also in Papels, 1387. 139 One such prayer is: “O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of thy servants and handmaids forgiveness of all their sins. And by our loving entreaties let them obtain the 507 The feast day of the dead continued to be celebrated with much solemnity despite the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1614. Rodrigues, in the annual letter of 1615, relates that the houses in the area around Nagasaki continued to celebrate All Souls’ Day in a spectacular manner. He states that the community undertook suffrages for the dead with a most beautiful catafalque with many lights and much almsgiving to the poor. The finale of the celebration was the usual procession to the cemetery with many lit torches in order 140 to pray for those members of the community interred there. That this celebration of All Souls’ Day in 1615 took place after the expulsion of the Jesuits the previous year indicates that the feast was an extremely important part of the liturgical calendar regardless of the presence of European missionaries. Judging not only from the Obediencias but also the enthusiasm with which Japanese Christians on Kyushu celebrated All Souls’ Day, it is clear that this was the most important day for the community as a whole to care for the dead. While Christians might expect their family members or church community to make suffrages in death for their souls in purgatory, the feast of All Souls’ ensured that the entire Church, both on Kyushu and the world-over, would pray for them. And if this were not sufficient reassurance, individuals could join a confraternity that offered a further guarantee that they would be aided in the afterlife. In the next section, we will examine how these religious organizations cared for the dead through works of mercy that also earned them merit. Beyond performing suffrages and gaining indulgences individually for souls in purgatory, Japanese Christians could join confraternities to maintain connections to and take care of the dead. Joining a confraternity had a sort of double benefit: 1. People could perform suffrages communally, thereby compounding their effects for the intended souls in purgatory; 2. They could gain merit for themselves and for the group collectively by performing suffrages; and 3. They were ensured upon their death that the living members of the confraternity would perform suffrages for their own souls. As discussed earlier, confraternities undertook a variety of important functions for the Japanese Christian pardon they have ever longed for. Thou Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. ℟. Amen.” The English translation of the same Latin found in the Manuale is from Weller, Roman Ritual II, 61. The original Latin can be found in the Manuale, 281-282. 140 Quoted in López-Gay, La Liturgia, 234 no. 118. 508 community, but none was more important or visible than their responsibility to take care of the dead both by arranging funerals, providing suffrages, and gaining indulgences for the departed. Even though Japanese Christians took up confraternities with great enthusiasm— in some cases forming them on their own initiative—the formal rules and regulations of many were modeled after those in Portugal, India, and Macau. As Moriwaki has pointed out, the rules governing burial for the Misericordias on Kyushu were, in large part, derived from the regulations of similar confraternities in Lisbon and Macau. These were, of course, adapted to Japanese sensibilities regarding funerary customs, within guidelines 141 set by their parent societies. If we look at the rules (compromissos or “obligations”) concerning suffrages of two Misericordias in the Portuguese territories in Asia, we can see distinct similarities to the Japanese on Kyushu—suggesting that the latter wholeheartedly embraced the Portuguese-derived compromissos on their own accord. The 1595 Compromisso of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Irmandade in Goa contained various stipulations regarding how the brotherhood should bury the dead and take care of souls in purgatory. Chapter 22 stipulates the following rules for funerals: that the deaths be announced; that the brotherhood come together and participate in the funeral process; that “all are obliged to pray for the soul of the dead, four times the Pater Noster and Ave Maria…;” that masses are to be said for the individual; and that prayers 142 are to be offered in the brotherhood’s chapels and/or above the tomb of the deceased. The Misericordia of Goa also instructed the brothers to take care of the souls in purgatory more generally. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, at nightfall, four brothers were to go about the city reminding the population of the souls in purgatory. Each company would then say a common prayer, such as a Pater Noster or Ave Maria, to 143 remind everyone to pray for the souls in purgatory and those in mortal sin. 141 Yuki Moriwaki, “Kirishitan no sōgi no engen: Porutogaru no mizerikorudiani okeru sōgi,” Jōchi Shigaku, 58 (2013): 99-127. 142 Isabel Leonor da Silva Diaz de Seabra, ed., O Compromisso da Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Irmandade de Goa do Ano de 1595 (Macau: Universidade de Macau, 2005), 51-52. 143 Leonor da Silva Diaz de Seabra, Compromisso de Goa, 63. The 1627 Compromisso of the Misericorida is similar in terms of having suffrages for its members and the souls in purgatory. 509 The Misericordia in Macau likewise continued the practice of praying for souls in purgatory by going out in the streets of the city and saying the very same prayers that the Goa Misericordia used. The Macau Misericordia also had similar protocols for burying its members, with each brother praying for the soul of the departed, saying responses above the tomb, and participating in a mass said for the soul in the church of the 144 Misericordia. Like the Goa and Macau Misericordias, one of the most important functions of confraternities on Kyushu was burying the dead and taking care of its members’ souls in purgatory. In terms of burial, the Japanese confraternities functioned very much like lay Buddhist societies. As Kawamura Shinzō has shown, Christian confraternities shared many structures with Buddhist lay organizations, such as the Jōdo Shinshū dōjo, particularly when it came to works of mercy and burying the dead. Even lay leaders known as kebōzu (“hair priests”), as opposed to monks, were in charge of burying the dead and conducting actual funerals when needed for a given community. Kawamura points out that the kebōzu of the Jōdo Shinshū sect were alternately known as kambō (“lay leader”), which is precisely the term for individuals within Christian communities placed in charge of burying the dead (among other duties). The earlier jihiyaku (“Brothers of Mercy”), who the kambō replaced within the community, had the important responsibility of burying the dead. Though not explicitly stated, providing suffrages for the funerals was certainly part of this duty since the kambō’s role was not limited to the 145 logistics of interment but included the accompanying suffrages. A number of confraternities on Kyushu emphasized burying the dead and praying for souls as key activities. One early confraternity, the Misericordia of Bungo, established in either 1554 or 1555, “gave high importance to conducting funerals and to burials of the dead poor.” The members would also raise funds for funerals. Other early confraternities that emphasized the burial of the dead included one in Hirado, organized by Vilela, and another in Nagasaki, as well as others formed outside of Kyushu, such as the one started by Organtino Gencchi-Soldo in Takatsuki (near Osaka). All of the confraternities formed 144 Isabel Leonor da Silva Diaz de Seabra, ed., O compromisso da Misericórdia de Macau de 1627: Edição de Leonor Diaz de Seabra ; Introdução de Ivo Carneiro de Sousa (Macau: Universidade de Macau, 2003), 101-103. 145 Kawamura, “Making Christian Lay Communities,” 316; 332-338. 510 in Japan considered burial a charitable enterprise, and this meant not only taking care of a person’s body after death but also taking care of their soul with accompanying 146 suffrages. The care with which Christians in general and confraternities in particular buried their dead—even the poorest members of the community—attracted many people. Beyond this, non-Christians attracted to the burial practices knew that, in addition to taking care of their bodily remains, the Christian community would take care of them spiritually after death. This was a powerful physical and spiritual reason to join the community. For example, the rules of all confraternities usually contained some stipulation that its members would mobilize upon the death of one of its own and pray for that person’s soul. We can get a better idea of just how committed the various confraternities were to making suffrages for the dead by examining their regulations. We have already analyzed the rules of one such confraternity (the Confraría de Nossa Senhora Assunsão) as they pertained to the gaining of indulgences, but we have not yet noted just what kinds of other suffrages they might have provided to their members. If indulgences were suffrages to be obtained on special occasions, then regular everyday suffrages were the means by which the confraternity cared more continuously for their dead. Aside from rules related to indulgences, the confraternity stipulated eight others that had to do with taking care of the dead. These rules do not only prescribe what to do when one of the members dies, but also dictate the manner of burial and the handling of souls in purgatory. As recorded by the Vice-provincial Padre Jeronimo Rodrigues (1567–1628) in 1618, the relevant rules are as follows: Capítulo 1 10. …Item to accompany the dead in their burial, and to exercise ourselves in other works of mercy, and charity… 12. At the beginning of each month a mass will be said for the living and the dead of the Cumi Universal, and at the end of the mass a response will be said for the dead above the tumulo that is used in the time of the Mass with the cross and with lit candles: if it is not an altar [possibly indulgenced] of Our Lady in the time of the Mass, an image of her will be put on the altar. 146 Kawamura, “Making Christian Lay Communities,” 125; 142-154, with quote on p. 147. 511 13. Each one of those who belongs to a Cumi Universal will pray each month a corona or a terço of the Rosary for the dead of that Cumi. And when someone dies each one of his own Cumi Major will pray for him (that one) a corona or terço of the Rosary. And those of his own Cumi Menor will accompany him in burial. And in the case the dead is one of the leaders [oyas; literally “parent”]… Capítulo 3 5. When someone is dying [the Mordomos or Oyas] advise then the Sōdai or the Sollicitador who serves in those things, in order that they might advise to the rest of the confraria that they pray for the dead and that they are obligated to conform to the orders of the confraria, and that they accompany in burial those of his own Cumi Menor. Capítulo 5 2. [The sōdai or sollicitador being] advised of the death of some brother will advise then all those of the Cumi, in order that they might make for him the obligated suffrages, and in order that they accompany him in burial those of his Cumi Menor… Capítulo 6 3… [the jifiyacu or official of works of mercy] will after the death of a sick person procure those things for the burial and will make that burial be decent, and that they make for him the things for his soul. 4. The same care they would have when someone dies in virtue [iustiça] namely [scilicet], that he confesses and prepares for a good death, calling the padre to him 147 and that he bury him, he will also procure… These rules were, in effect, the minimum suffrages that the Confraría de Nossa Senhora Assunsão (Confraternity of Our Lady of the Assumption) would undertake for its members. It is likely, of course, that individual members would perform or offer up other suffrages, particularly in terms of merit. Some confraternities stipulated, in fact, that the merit earned by one of its members be transferred to all of its members. The compounding effect of this type of collective merit would be immense, and would have likely been thought to be applicable to the dead as well. The saying of a mass each month for both the living and the dead served to remind confraternity members that the communities of the living and the dead were essentially one. The now living members of 147 Kawamura, Kirishitan Shinto, 422-430. 512 the confraternity would, in time, become its dead members. Therefore, by praying for the dead, the living were always reminded to be virtuous as they would soon befall the fate of their dead fellow members. We might think of it as having the effect of the memento mori plaque in the famous ossuary chapel of Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins in Rome. This plaque, which is surrounded by thousands of bones of dead monks states: “What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be.” The Confraría de Nossa Senhora Assunsão was not the only confraternity to make sure that their rules made provision for the care of the dead. The rules of the Confraternity of Santa Maria (referred to as “konfurariya no hitobito kokoroerarubeki no koto”) also ensured that suffrages would be performed for their dead. A few of the rules specifically make reference to taking care of the souls of the dead. For example, one rule states that when a member dies, there should always be a funeral ceremony; and during this ceremony, the group’s members are each to say 50 prayers in sets of 3, meaning the Rosary, for the soul of the dead person. There should be a mass for them as well, the rule stipulates, with the merit generated to be passing to the dead person for their satisfaction in purgatory. As Kawamura notes, the suffrages acted on the principle of shared merit and would help the soul. Members would have considered the merit generated by the confraternity to be a significant amount since it included the suffrages of some 500 people in the Cumi Major. Another rule (1.5.3) states that as soon as a person dies, group members should be mobilized in order to pray for that person’s soul. One member would 148 inform the rest and that a funeral for the deceased needed to be held. Confraternities in Japan were not limited to the Jesuits. Mendicants also set up their own confraternities, such as the Confraternity of the Rosary formed by the Dominican Diego Collado (1589-1641). The confraternity’s rules include several specific provisions for care for the dead. For example, Rule 10 states that when a person dies, 148 Kawamura Shinzō has usefully transcribed and explained this document from a copy found in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. Kawamura, Kirishitan Shinto, 334; 352-353. These also appear, without interlaced commentary however, in Joseph Schütte, “Futatsu no komonjo ni arawaretaru Nihonshoki Kirishitan jidai ni okeru ‘Santamariya no onkumi’ no soshiki ni tsuite,” trans. Takeo Yanagiya Kirishitan Kenkyū 2 (1944), 135-146. The rules are sometimes referred to as “zesusu no kumi no reigara shu” or “The Regula of the Confraternity of Jesus” ぜすすの組のれいがら須. 513 they should be prayed for and indulgences should be obtained for them as well as merit 149 be transferred to them. We must remember that confrarias such as these, with their well-programmed system of suffrages, were not the norm for all areas of Kyushu, or other places outside the major Christian centers of Nagasaki and Bungo. However, there was an alternative: namely, having funeral duties carried out by a leading Christian. An early type of lay leader was the jihiyaku or “brother of mercy.” Among his other duties, such as baptizing children, the jihiyaku’s most important activity was arranging funerals within the smaller Christian communities and attending to the dying. Because it was not always possible to obtain a padre or an irmão in the more hard-to-reach areas, the jihiyaku played an extremely important role in events like the death of a Christian villager. The kambō, or lay catechist, likewise was instrumental in attending to the dying and conducting funerals. Kawamura notes that these types of lay leaders also guided informal confraternity-like 150 groups in areas that did not have formally established ones. We find an early example of the importance of the jihiyaku in a letter from Gaspar Vilela following his expulsion from Hirado. Describing how the laity took over leadership roles, Vilela explains: In time past in Hirado, when they expelled me from there, I ordained seven deacons, seven men who might take care in the place of the padre, of all the Sundays to work to gather the Christians in the church, to bury the dead, giving them the name Gifiyáquxa [jihiyaku], which means brothers of the misericordia, and this custom was introduced in all the places that have Christians and each 151 year there are seven [chosen]. Out of these seven, two at a time would be on duty for a period of two months. After that, the jihiyaku would rotate. This clearly kept the position from becoming permanent, and each jihiyaku would have to be chosen by the padre and the community based upon their spiritual qualifications and reliability. This also meant that knowledge of how to perform 149 Naojirō Murakami, “Kirishitan Kenkyū no kaiko,” Kirishitan Kenkyū 1 (1942), 11. 150 As Kawamura has observed, “the most important task of jihiyaku was burying the dead.” Kawamura, “Making Christian Lay Communities,” 338. Kawamura hypothesizes that the role of the jihiyaku eventually turned into that of the kambō in the 1570s. Kawamura, “Making Christian Lay Communities,” 165-187. 151 Cartas, 318v-319, also quoted in Japanese in Kawamura, Kirishitan Shinto, 122. Gaspar Vilela from Goa, October 20, 1571. 514 burials and suffrages was distributed among the laity, with many more than just seven knowing how to care for bodies and souls of dead Christians. Among the jihiyaku’s numerous responsibilities was that whenever someone died they had to inform the padre (when possible) so he could come to the location and conduct a funeral. They would also help dig the grave and bury the body. Thus lay leaders in the Christian community were also empowered with performing suffrages and burials. Given their roles as lay leaders of these kinds of informal groups, the jihiyaku and later the kambō certainly led suffrages during burials and in memory of the dead thereafter. They might not have been able to conduct a mass for the individual’s soul, but they could certainly lead the very simple prayers and organize charitable activities to transfer merit to that person in purgatory. In fact, the missionaries prepared a text for burying the dead and conducting suffrages in case there was no padre or brother available to conduct the service. According to a letter by Francesco Pasio from 1594, “a book in Japanese characters was printed which contains the manner of burying the dead with the 152 prayers to be said.” These prayers were likely the same prayers, perhaps translated or transliterated, that the Manuale prescribed for funerals. One final question that might be asked concerning care for the Christian dead is how did non-Christians care for the spirits of their Christian family members or neighbors? After all, no matter their religion in life, the spirits of the dead clearly needed some form of help in the afterlife. This is a topic for future research, but I would like to provide one significant example of just such a scenario. There exist to this day two monuments in Shimabara and on Amakusa memorializing the dead who were massacred at the end of the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638. Most, if not all the so-called “rebels,” were Christian peasants, whose rebellion is now generally acknowledged as a revolt against local tyranny and harsh economic conditions. Upon defeating the peasants, the Tokugawa forces beheaded some 37,000 of them, piling up a third of the heads in a massive mound reminiscent of the many nose-mounds formed from Hideyoshi’s Korean campaigns. Given the violent nature of their deaths, the subsequent administrator of Amakusa, Suzuki Shigenari (1588-1653; younger brother of the anti-Christian propagandist), felt compelled to erect some sort of memorial for the “repose of the souls” 152 Quoted in Laures, Kirishitan Bunko, 89. 515 of all the Christians killed. To be sure, this was an attempt to pacify the tens of thousands of potential restless spirits so that they would not suffer in the afterlife—and, even more importantly, would not cause harm to the living. Whatever the motive, the memorials clearly represent attempts to quell the spirits of the dead, and, as such, transcended 153 religious partisanship as an act of mercy on the part of the victors. Irrespective of religion in life, merit mattered to virtually all Japanese in death. Suffering in the afterlife was a reality for almost everyone, either Buddhist or Christian, and one needed the help of the living in order avoid the worst aspects of it. Even adherents of Jōdo Shinshū, who saw no use for merit transference to the dead, relied upon the vast merit that Amida had gained for the salvation of all those who truly trusted (shinjin) in the nembutsu. The Church on Kyushu offered effective means for alleviating that suffering after death. For Christian converts, the Church offered better means at alleviating suffering in the afterlife than Buddhism. If it did not, there would be no reason to become a Christian at all. The “praxis of purgatory” offered living Christians a very real means to prepare for their own death and care for those already dead. Christianity’s success on Kyushu, then, had as much to do with the dead as it did with the living. Merit, Fumi-e, and Martyrdom To end our case study on the Church Suffering and prepare to transition to the Church Triumphant, we should undertake a brief examination of how merit and purgatory might have factored in the decision of many Christians to die as martyrs rather than apostatize. This will be a topic for further research, but we can make a few interesting observations about how Japanese Christian ideas of merit might have factored into individual decisions to give up the faith, either genuinely or as a ruse for self preservation, or become martyrs. According to long-standing Catholic tradition, martyrs automatically became saints in the Church Triumphant. In the latter days of the mission, foreign and native advocates alike encouraged the laity under persecution to resist apostasy and die as martyrs if necessary. A number of texts, such as the life of the saints 153 For a reproduction of the two memorials and the mound of heads, see Nagayama, Collection, #87-89. 516 (Sanctos no gosagvueo no vchi nvqigaqi) and the so-called Maruchiru no Michi (Way of Martyrdom), circulated among Japanese Christians, reminding them of the rewards of martyrdom and the consequences of apostasy. In a chapter on the denial of Deus, the Maruchiru no michi warns that those who apostatize that they will forfeit all of the merit acquired through disciplina and fasting. It is far better to suffer a little in this world (i.e. to experience the pain of martyrdom), it informs readers, than to suffer immensely in the next life in hell with the demons for all eternity. For those faced with persecution, the choice was grim. Either die as a martyr or face hell and lose all satisfaction and merit gained up to that point. The sin of apostasy could be forgiven, but all previous efforts to mitigate suffering in purgatory were completely wasted. Beyond its threats about the fires of hell for apostates, however, the Maruchiru no michi also offers positive incentives to potential martyrs related to purgatory and merit. In later sections, it states that martyrs will have all of their suffering in purgatory completely pardoned. And, underscoring this, it also states that all martyrs will escape both hell (eternal penalty) and purgatory (all 154 temporary penalties) by entering directly into paradise. Though by no means the only explanation of the choice made by so many Japanese Christians, the Maruchiru no michi reveals two impetuses that might have driven them to martyrdom—as opposed to going underground or even recanting the faith. The church on Kyushu took for granted that there would be suffering after death, and much of its spiritual practice was directed to alleviating that suffering in purgatory. Presented with a choice of either compounding that suffering or eliminating it entirely, many Christians chose the latter because they believed that the agonies of purgatory were a spiritual truth. This concept was not far off from what Buddhism had taught since any form of rebirth involved suffering. Japanese Christians did not choose martyrdom to 154 Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 335; 353; 359. Haruko Nawata Ward notes that this text was originally called the Mirror of Martyrdom (Martyrio no cagami), which had been found among the Yasokyō sōsho (Christian writings) confiscated by the inquisitors in Nagasaki at the end of the eighteenth century. “Translating Christian Martyrdom in Buddhist Japan in the Early Modern Jesuit Mission” in Terpstra, ed., Global Reformations, 33-51. Also “Trent and Tales of all these Saints Travelling East: Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the Jesuit Japan Mission” in Wim François and Violet Soen, eds., The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545-1700) Volume 3: Between Artists and Adventurers (Göttingen Vandenhoeck et Ruprecht, 2018), 237 note 15. For more information, see Cieslik’s explanation in Ebisawa, Kirishitansho, 623-626. For a brief overview of Japanese Christian literature that highlighted martyrdom, see Arimichi Ebisawa, Kirishitan Nanban bungaku nyūmon (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1991), 199- 211. 517 attain moksha (release from rebirth), but rather to eliminate all suffering in purgatory by immediately entering into paradise. People died for their merit and believed that it would unify them with God. This avoidance of temporal penalty in purgatory might also explain why so many Japanese Christians refused to step on the fumi-e as a sign of disavowment of Christianity. Not only would stepping on the fumi-e amount to a spiritual failure in their eyes, it would constitute a failure of praxis given the importance of holy images to merit accumulation and the gaining of indulgences in the church. If we recall Fr. Bernard Petitjean’s ninteenth-century observation that Japanese Christians associated sacramentals (images included) with indulgences, we can see how the fumi-e might have acted as a sort of anti-indulgence. If Japanese Christians could reduce temporal penalties in purgatory and accumulate merit by venerating images, then it stands to reason that, by showing a sign of contempt for these (i.e. stepping on fumi-e) images, they might accrue such immense demerit that the act would result in intense suffering in purgatory. Inquisitors, such as the infamous Inoue Chikugo no kami Masashige (1585-1661), knew that the fumi-e was an effective means of rooting out Christians. As he relates in the Kirishito-ki (Records of Christians), which is essentially an inquisitorial manual for his successor Hōjō Awa no Kami Ujinaga (d. 1670), the prospect of stepping on the fumi-e produced a visible reaction in some people: Old wives and women when made to tread upon the image (fumie) of Deus get agitated and red in the face; they cast off their headdress; their breath comes in rough gasps; sweat pours from them. And, according to the individual, there are 155 reportedly women who venerate the fumie, but in a way to remain unobserved. As a sacred image, the fumie clearly prompted reverence in a great many Christians, so much so that many women in particular risked a horrible death to venerate it. Although only some images were actually indulgenced, the Orasho no kuriki makes it clear that any image could function as an indulgenced image if very simple instructions were carried out. If this association had been internalized through decades of praxis, then we can easily see why so many would have been averse to stepping on a sacred image. And if the same image could prevent suffering in purgatory, how much suffering in purgatory 155 Quoted in Elison, Deus Destroyed, 204. A recent overview of fumi-e is Hiroaki Yasutaka, Fumie o funda Kirishitan (Tokyo-to Bunkyō-ku: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2018), 16-19; 253-262. 518 might it impart if one were to do something as loathsome as stepping on it? More research on this potential connection between the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant is needed, but the choice between eliminating or accumulating suffering in purgatory must have weighed heavily on all those faced with martyrdom. One of the main features of the Christianization process in the premodern period is that the new religion, when it entered a given culture, had to find some way not only to facilitate connections with the dead, but also to establish mechanisms through which the living could care for them. In Kyushu, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christianity succeeded in both respects. Japanese there had certain expectations about death: people would suffer in the afterlife (rebirth), individuals could take steps to mitigate their own suffering in the afterlife, and living people could help alleviate the suffering of the dead. The Jesuits who came to Kyushu shared many of these basic expectations, though they held different conceptions of the nature, mechanics, and source for the soteriological goal. For Japanese who became Christians, Buddhism had already preconditioned them to make use of Christian mechanisms for preparing for death and for taking care of the dead. This was important to the Christianization process because death needed to be incorporated into the Christian worldview. The living could not be Christian without having some ways to maintain contact with and affect the realm of the dead. One of the most important ways in which Japanese on Kyushu prepared for their own entrance into the community of the dead was through the enthusiastic adoption of the sacrament of penance. A key element to this was the promotion and teaching of how to make satisfaction in order to repay the temporal penalties of sin. As we saw earlier, the Japanese took up penitential practices with much enthusiasm and intensity. The idea that one could perform certain “good” acts, some of which involved austerities and mortification as a way of countering other “bad” ones was already present in the Buddhist concept of accruing merit and demerit. The Catholic teaching on satisfaction was not, in a basic sense, that much different than the Japanese Buddhist teaching on merit and demerit. Simply put, as we have discussed, both religions preached that a person could directly affect the state of their own afterlife with individual efforts in this life. And both established the viability of suffering in the here and now in order to avoid involuntary and more intense suffering after death. 519 Yet, because there existed an omnipotent and omniscient deity in the Catholic context, Christian satisfaction and merit were not the result of cause and effect as karma was; rather they direct interactions with a merciful God. All satisfaction was compensation to God for sin and all merit was reward from God for good works or pious devotions. God’s judgment over the soul weighed upon the minds of the Japanese Christians, and divine justice would mete out punishment and reward perfectly. Catechetical materials like the Dochirina, as well as oral preaching, taught the Catholic concepts of eternal penalty (culpa) and eternal reward in terms of hell and heaven respectively. They also stressed that God was merciful and that this divine justice could be altered in this life. All of the catechetical materials stated that through internal contrition and the act of confession one could be forgiven the eternal penalty, avoid hell, and enter the path to heaven. In addition to the practice of making satisfaction, the Christian concept of merit allowed Japanese Christians to improve their lot in the afterlife by doing good deeds or partaking in devotional or ascetic activity. Satisfaction was imposed by God via the padre during confession and was not voluntary. But actions to gain merit were completely voluntary, and the catechesis of the mission provided examples of how one could gain it. Alms, other forms of charity, prayer, disciplina, and the like all allowed an individual to earn a better reward from God in heaven or even to offset future temporal penalties in purgatory. Moreover, people learned this aspect of the “praxis of purgatory” from one another in the community by example. As such, gaining satisfaction and merit was not so much theoretical, as presented in the catechetical materials, but a lived experience. This meant that purgatory was a very real and immediate state, an afterlife that was always close at hand and one for which a person should always prepare. Perhaps most importantly, the Treasury of Merit enabled people not only to make satisfaction and gain merit individually, but also corporately. Joining a confraria allowed individuals to share merit (similar to the concept of ekō in Buddhism) and improve their future together. Japanese Christians enthusiastically embraced this concept as praxis in the form of indulgences, which, at a basic level, was essentially ekō on a cosmic scale. Like Christians the world over and in other times and places, desire for indulgences in 520 Kyushu represented efforts to avoid suffering in the next life even if it was not eternal in nature. But merit was more than just about the individual as it also enabled the living community to maintain contact and affect the community of the dead. Merit permitted the key concept of the suffrage, which, in effect, acted as payment of the temporal penalty that a dead person undergoes in purgatory. A living person could either make satisfaction for themselves or for the dead who could no longer do so. Japanese Christians again enthusiastically embraced the concept and practice of the Catholic suffrage. Both individually and communally, the living on Kyushu could take care of their dead through a variety of mechanisms: prayers, masses, funeral rites, and indulgences. They also knew they could enlist the entire Church Militant and the Church Triumphant on such feasts, mainly on All Souls’ Day when the dead were officially commemorated in the liturgical year. Concern for the dead prompted the living into pious actions that would benefit both the community of the living and the community of the dead. Before ending this section, we should note that we have, in theory, been discussing the interactions of the Christian living with the Christian dead. The Jesuits to my knowledge would not have broken with their own orthodoxy by saying explicitly that non-Christians could be helped in the afterlife. Those who were in hell (Gehenna) were there permanently, and, in the eyes of the Jesuits, you had a greater chance at purgatory and thus salvation if you were a Christian rather than a non-Christian. Still, there seems to have been some room for the salvation of certain non-Christians, such as the ancestors of Christians who were good people but just happened to be born before knowing about Jesus. An early piece of evidence that Japanese Christians applied their suffrages to non- Christians can be found in a 1560 letter by Melchor Nunes Barreto (1520-1571) to the Jesuit General Deigo Laynez (Laínez). In it, Nunes Barreto has to respond to some questions over praxis in Japan, namely certain practices allowed by Mission Superior Cosme de Torres. In the process of answering these, he reveals that Japanese Christians offered suffrages for their non-Christian ancestors: The second is that [the padres in Japan] permit the Christians to pray and offer [alms] for the souls of their parents and grandparents who died as gentiles, and this because the bonzes persuade the Japanese that they will take their ancestors out of hell with the money that they give to them. The padres, in order that the 521 Christians do not go to the false idolatry of the bonzes, allow them the 156 superstition. Though Nunes Barreto is providing justification for suffrages to be performed for non- Christians, according to Ruíz de Medina, preventing the suffrages would hardly have been an option. As we saw in Chapter One, the relaxation of orthopraxy was an important part of the Christianization process, and Cosme de Torres was clearly relaxing standard Catholic praxis in this instance. Such relaxations occurred during the Christianization of Europe itself, so it should come as no surprise that they also happened in Japan. To the Jesuits, such suffrages for non-Christians did not go to waste; they might not have had effect on those in hell, but the merit generated for the living Japanese Christians in making these suffrages would be of benefit to their own personal quest for a better afterlife. Nunes Barreto’s letter is more important for another reason: it reveals that Japanese Christian converts, of their own accord, became attracted to Christian suffrages as a means to take care of their dead, whether the deceased were Christian or not. The implication of Nunes Barreto’s revelation is that Japanese Christians, despite the existence of a Christian community of the dead during later years of the mission, likely still engaged in suffrages for whomever they wished to help in the afterlife. Prayers, suffrages, indulgences, and acts of merit could all be offered up for dead non-Christians. If Japanese Christians continued to use suffrages to help the non-Christian dead, then quite a large number of the deceased, as a community, would have been affected by the Christianization process in the hearts and hopes of the Christians who made suffrages on this earth for them. The foreign Jesuits might have seen this as pious “superstition” and tolerated it in order to make converts. But for lay Japanese Christians, the Catholic Church’s mechanisms for alleviating suffering in the next life they could not fail to make use of them for Christian and non-Christian dead alike. 156 MHJ III, 261-262, MHJ, 42, and quoted in Spanish in López-Gay, Liturgia, 210. Nunes Barreto to Laínez from Cochin, January 15 1560. The letter asking Nunes Bareto about some of the practices in India, of which Japan was part, has apparently been lost. See Indica IV, 252. 522 PART FOUR: THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT 523 INTRODUCTION TO THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT The final state of the Church in the Communion of Saints is the Church Triumphant. This is the Church in heaven to which all other members of the Church, living and dead, aspire. Both the Church Militant and the Church Suffering are the “temporal” (non-permanent) states that aid this ultimate goal. Entry into the Church Militant through baptism enabled people to begin their struggle against sin, evil, and “death” effectively by availing themselves of the “life-giving” sacraments of the Church. Their success or failure in this struggle was thought to determine what happens to them after death. For those who were successful, ordinarily entry into the Church Suffering was the most realistic hope. There they would be purified and helped along to reach the Church Triumphant. The only “guaranteed” members of the Church Triumphant were thought to be the saints (recognized by beatification and canonization) and the martyrs who consciously forsook the earthly life for the heavenly realm. For Catholics of the premodern period, it was thought that a person immediately went to heaven if they suffered martyrdom. Because it is the final and ultimate state of the Communion of Saints, not much can be said about it here except to pursue the ecclesiological metaphor to its conclusion by explaining how the Church Triumphant helped the living. Due to the interconnectivity of the Communion of Saints, the Church Triumphant was thought to help the living via “intercessions.” These intercessions were essentially special pleading to God by the saints in order to help the living on earth or the dead in purgatory. Since the saints were with God in heave, their intercessory prayers were thought to be particularly efficacious. As a result, living members could petition the saints to plead on their behalf for a variety of spiritual and this-worldly needs. This “cult of the saints” was extremely popular and prevalent throughout the premodern period and was taken up with great enthusiasm by many different cultures in different times. In addition to intercessory prayers, the saints were thought to help the living through the physical remains (relics) that they left behind on earth. Because their souls were thought to be in heaven, their corporal remains were thought to connect the earthly 524 to the divine. This position was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent: “the holy bodies of the blessed martyrs and others who live with Christ, in that they were living members of Christ and a temple of the holy Spirit, due to be raised by him to eternal and glorified life, are to be venerated by the faithful, and that through them many blessings are given to us 1 by God…” As things that could be seen, touched, and moved, relics were important physical manifestations of the divine on earth. In our metaphor of the Communion of Saints, the Church Triumphant represents the ultimate end: Japanese entry into the heavenly Church. This part, though corresponding to the “Tension” aspect of the Christianization process, is not about Japanese martyrdom and the creation of Japanese saints. Rather, it recontextualizes the “tension” of previous saints, embodied by their relics, in the Kyushuan setting. This part explains how the relics of past foreign martyrs and saints made their way to Kyushu and became venerated as objects and sacrality by its people. As will be made clear in the following two chapters, Christian relics served to sacralize the earth wherever they went, providing localized spots connected directly to heaven via the body part or object associated with a saint. Chapter IX explores how relics in both Christianity and Buddhism were important means for sacralizing the physical landscapes of the countries to which they spread. It first examines how relics were “translated” out of Christianity’s original holy sites to areas in the Roman Empire and beyond, where they helped to create localized connections to the Church in heaven. The chapter then how relics in Buddhism; the first universal religion and first to produce relics, aided the spread of the religion from India across East Asia. Relics were important in expanding Buddhism’s sacred landscape into China and Japan, both of which became Buddhist countries in their own right. Finally, the chapter ends with an examination of how relics in Christianity moved east. India, as the main base of operation of the Jesuits, became the farthest extension east of the Christian sacred landscape and a waypoint for translation of relics to Japan. Chapter X examines the translation of Christian relics to Japan and the importance that lay Christians afforded them. Though relics were kept in churches, they were extremely popular among the laity as relicarios (small locket reliquaries). With personal 1 Tanner, Decrees, 775. 525 reliquaries, many Japanese Christians had access to a localized and personal connection to the sacred and the church in heaven. Though “tension” would produce native Japanese martyrs and relics, the widespread reception of old martyrs (born out of past “tension”) was actually the first manifestation of the Church Triumphant on Kyushu. Ultimately, a native Church Triumphant only emerged on Kyushu through the eradication of Christianity. Thus, it is an ironic epithet since “Triumphant,” which connotes some kind of victory, manifested in near defeat. In ecclesiological terms, however, the Japanese Church Triumphant represents the full inclusion of Kyushu into the Communion of Saints and the Christianization process. Japanese martyrs and their relics joined the relics of the past martyrs and their relics from vastly different cultures and times. Thus, in the history of the transnational and transtemporal institution of the Church, the Japanese, despite the small numbers of Catholics today, are fully included in it. 526 CHAPTER X THE TRANSLATION OF RELICS AND THE CREATION OF NEW AND INDIGENOUS SACRED LANDSCAPES Because our Buddha did not remain [in the world] for much time, desiring the welfare of the world, and thinking, “My Dispensation has not been spread everywhere. Taking the relics measuring even a mustard seed from me when I have passed away in parinirvāṇa, making relic shrines in the places where people dwell, and enshrining the relics in caskets, the many beings who make offering will enjoy the happiness of the divine world, the brahmā world, and the human world,” he thus made a resolution for the dispersal of the relics. Which relics of my Dear Lord were not scattered? - The Sinhala Thūpavaṃsa 1 (The History of the Buddha’s Relic Shrine, Sri Lankan text, c. 1300 CE) Inspired by the work of Tansen Sen on how China became a Buddhist realm in its own right through the creation of native Buddhist sites, Part Four examines how such a process occurred in Kyushu with the creation of a new and mobile Christian religious landscape via relics. Since this part serves as a full case study and is therefore somewhat lengthy, it is convenient to summarize the argument here and leave the explication of its finer points to the sections below. First, we will cover how Christian relics and their translations played an important role in sacralizing an overwhelmingly pagan religious landscape in both the Roman Empire and in some non-Roman societies throughout late- antiquity, the middle ages, and the early modern period. We will then examine how Buddhist relics functioned in the spread of that religion across East Asia and how they served as loci of sacrality for new religious sites. Having established that Buddhist relics were an important precedent for the introduction of Christian relics into Japan, we will then examine how those relics began to make their way to Japan via the farthest outpost of the Christian sacred landscape at the time: India. And finally, we will undertake a 1 Stephen C. Berkwitz, The History of the Buddha’s Relic Shrine: A Translation of the Sinhala Thūpavaṃsa (Oxford University Press, 2007), 119. 527 study of just how relics in Kyushu operated as mobile points of sacrality that, in the absence of a fully-established Christian landscape, allowed individual Japanese Christians to create their own wherever they went. An important feature of the world-historical process of Christianization was the alteration of native religious landscapes to include new sites of Christian sacrality. Though this occurred by many different means, such as the building of a monastery or the co-option of a native sacred site, one of the most common methods was through the translation of relics—translation in this case meaning the transfer of a relic to a new location. Christianity, as it spread from Judea through the Roman Empire and to territories beyond, created its own sacred sites within the preexisting pagan sacred landscape. In Europe, this lead to a nearly complete recession of the pagan sacred landscape over the course of a millennium, while in other locations, such as the New World, non-Christian sites continue to thrive to this very day. The initial site from which all Christian physical sacrality radiated was Jerusalem, the location from which relics of the Passion were first distributed throughout the known world. Other sacred sites beyond Judea emerged over time and were mainly associated with the tombs of holy people and martyrs. For example, parts of the city of Rome itself became sacred to Christianity as a whole by virtue of the presence of the relics of both Peter (the Vatican) and Paul (the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls). Likewise, the city of Tours in Gaul became a major regional sacred site during the early medieval period since it possessed the relics of St. Martin. Relics in locations such as these offered direct access to the divine via the physical remains of the saints. These most holy people were, as Peter Brown has called them, “the very special dead;” that is members of the Christian community who enjoyed the eternal beatific vision of God in Heaven. While their immaterial souls were in communion with God, their body parts remained on Earth to function as physical manifestations of and links to the invisible and collective Church Triumphant (i.e. all the saints in Heaven). First enshrined at their original locations and then translated to other sites, the remains of the “very special dead” helped to create new Christian sites on previously pagan religious landscapes. This process continued beyond the Mediterranean world to such locations as Ireland and the New World where relics operated within the specific contexts of the preexisting religiosity. 528 The use of relics in the creation of new sacred sites was not limited to Christianity however. Buddhism, whose tradition of venerating relics had long predated that of Christianity, made use of body parts and other contact relics to create its own sacred sites in India and beyond. The first relics, ostensibly those of the historical Buddha, were enshrined and venerated in stupas (pagodas) throughout India and in other countries to which the religion spread. This, of course, included China. Since India, and not China, was the homeland of the Buddha, China needed physical means to “Buddhicize” its religious landscape. Monks, on pilgrimage to India, frequently obtained relics there and brought them back for veneration at Buddhist sites within China. In time, China created 2 its own Buddhist relics to which monks, such as those from Japan, made pilgrimages. Like their Chinese counterparts centuries earlier, Japanese monks too obtained relics, both of the historical Buddha and of other Chinese holy men, on pilgrimage. They then brought thousands of relics back to Japan in order to sacralize further their own Buddhist sites, such as temples. By the sixteenth century, there existed many thousands of relics in Japan of varying types, thus making the archipelago, like China, a sacred Buddhist realm in its own right. As Christianity spread to new lands during the sixteenth century, the missionaries charged with proselytization brought with them numerous relics from the Holy Land and Europe to create new Christian sacred sites where there previously had been none. One of these lands was India, which, according to ancient and local tradition, already possessed the relics of the Apostle Thomas. His relics made India an outpost of Christian sacred geography, albeit one that was on the fringes of Christendom to which few pilgrims, if any, made their way. The Jesuits who missionized the region supplemented Thomas’s relics by translating numerous relics from Europe to India for local veneration in churches. India’s status as an outpost of the Christian sacred landscape was further cemented when Francis Xavier, one of the Jesuits’ own, died off the coast of China. Dug up and then brought back to Goa for veneration, Xavier’s body became the premier relic of the Eastern part of the Padroado. With the region sacralized by both ancient and new relics, India was both an important waypoint and creation site for relics in their 2 Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003). This is the aforementioned argument that has inspired this chapter. 529 translation further East to the new mission fields of China and Japan. As China served as an extension of the Buddhist realm for Japan, so too did India serve as an outpost of Christian sacred geography from which relics could be translated to Kyushu. For Christians on Kyushu, the process of creating new sacred sites with relics was both a continuation of and a departure from how it occurred in other instances of Christianization. Since the island had no Christian presence prior to the arrival of the Jesuits, relics needed to be translated there in order to create a native Christian landscape. To this end, Jesuit missionaries used India as the farthest outpost of the Christian sacred landscape to import relics for veneration in Japan. Many of these included first-class relics, such as relics of the Passion or the actual body parts of a saint. Upon importation, the first-class relics, according to the fragmentary documentation that we have, were stored in churches for the most part and acted as points of sacrality for the local community. All this was rather normal for how Christian sacred sites might emerge. However, what differentiates the creation of a native Christian sacred landscape in Kyushu from other historical instances is the popularity and widespread distribution of personal relics in the form of relicarios among the Christian population. These objects, which were a kind of locket that contained either a first-class relic, contact relics, or third class relics (an object or piece of cloth that had been touched to a first-class relic), were given to the population at large to act as personal and immediately accessible points of sacrality. Christians on Kyushu used these kinds of relics for a wide variety of purposes, namely exorcism, healing, and protection from harm. And, for the most part, they used relics completely autonomously. While churches and their enshrined relics dotted the physical and religious landscape of Kyushu, a deeper sacralization of the religious landscape occurred individually through the widespread possession of relicarios. With this kind of portable reliquary, Christians had access to the sacred wherever they went regardless of distance to an actual church or some other physical sacred site. 530 Early Christian Relics and the Transformation of the Pagan Landscape “The holy wood of the Cross bears witness, seen among us to this day, and from this place now almost filling the whole world, by means of those who in faith take portions from it.” 3 -Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, 348 CE. In 326, Helena Augusta (c. 248–c. 328), Empress and the mother of the emperor Constantine, embarked upon a journey to the most holy site of her religion: Jerusalem. A somewhat recent convert (if we are to believe Eusebius), Helena traveled at the head of an imperial and Christian retinue in order to inspect the Eastern provinces and to “enquire about the wondrous land.” This was still rather remarkable, since Constantine had only legalized the Christian religion some thirteen years before with the Edict of Milan and the vast majority of the population was still thoroughly pagan. Despite the legalization of Christianity, the landscape through which Helena traveled would have reminded the Christian Empress of the strength and vitality of traditional (pagan) Roman and Greek religion. Spectacular temples still held sway in the cities, and other pagan sites still dotted the countryside as localized and minor points of sacrality. As one scholar has put it, “A rd visitor to the Roman world at the end of the 3 century would have been overwhelmed by the presence of temples, altars, and images of gods and goddesses. Whether in town or the countryside, shrines consecrated to the gods were ubiquitous…Statues of gods and goddesses, adorned with garlands and fragrant with the offerings of incense, were to be found in numerous parts of the cities: they embellished not only temples, but crossroads, 4 theaters, baths, and forums.” Almost quite literally, wherever Helena might have looked during her travels eastward, she would have seen pagan sacrality dominating and embedded within the physical landscape. 3 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture X, found in Schaff and Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7, 63. Also quoted in. Mitchell and Young, Cambridge, 5. 4 Béatrice Caseau “Sacred Landscapes” in G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, eds., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 23-24. 531 As she neared Jerusalem, the religious landscape would still not have changed all that much. The Christian presence was still minor and had only recently emerged from going underground during the devastating persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian (244- 311). Spectacular and public churches, such as the later Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, were still centuries from being constructed, and the religion’s sacred sites were just starting to emerge out from under their pagan counterparts. This was true even for Jerusalem, where some of the most sacred sites in both Christianity and Judaism had, until only a year before, been physically buried underneath pagan religious structures. The most sacred site for Jews, the location of the Second Temple’s Holy of Holies, had lain for centuries in a state of utter desecration; a Roman temple to Jupiter Capitolinus had stood upon the site, thereby sacralizing the location in pagan terms and desacralizing it for the Jews. The two holiest sites for Christians, the site of the Crucifixion (Golgotha) and the site of the Resurrection (Jesus’ tomb), had not fared much better. According to Jerome (c. 347-420), a temple to Venus had occupied Golgotha while a temple to Jupiter (installed by the Emperor Hadrian) literally buried Jesus’ tomb beneath mounds of earth that had been polluted by pagan sacrifices. Jerome, who lived in the Holy Land and was well acquainted with its sites, describes the desecration as follows: From the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine — a period of about one hundred and eighty years — the spot which had witnessed the resurrection was occupied by a figure of Jupiter; while on the rock where the cross had stood, a marble statue of Venus was set up by the heathen and became an object of worship. The original persecutors, indeed, supposed that by polluting our holy places they would deprive us of our faith in the passion and in the resurrection. Even my own Bethlehem, as it now is, that most venerable spot in the whole world of which the psalmist sings: "the truth has sprung out of the earth," was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, that is of Adonis; and in the very cave where the infant Christ had uttered His earliest cry lamentation was made for the 5 paramour of Venus. 5 Jerome, Letter LVIII, to Paulinus of Nola, c. 395 CE. Found in Schaff and Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6, St. Jerome, Select Letters and Works, 120. This is from the 1912 edition. Eusebius offers somewhat contradictory information regarding which site had the temple to Venus over it but he confirms that the Roman sites were attempts to prevent Christians from accessing the sacrality of these sites, mainly Jesus’ tomb: “It was this very cave of the Saviour that some godless and wicked people had planned to make invisible to mankind, thinking in their stupidity that they could in this way hide the truth. Indeed with a great expenditure of effort they brought earth from somewhere outside and covered up the whole place, then leveled it, paved it, and so hid the divine cave somewhere down beneath a great quantity of soil. Then as though they had everything finished, above the ground they constructed a terrible and truly genuine tomb, one for souls, dead idols, and built a gloomy sanctuary to the impure demon of Aphrodite; then they offered foul sacrifices there upon defiled and polluted altars. They reckoned there was 532 That Romans would first desecrate Jewish and Christian sites and then sacralize them according to their own religious sensibilities was completely consistent with pagan belief and practice. Sites upon the religious landscape, in the Roman world-view, could be sacralized or desecrated at will. The former involved actions that dedicated the site to a divine being, where humanity and the gods could interact. Desacralization involved 6 returning something that belonged to the sacred realm to the realm of the profane. That Jews and Christians would likewise desecrate Roman sites and then sacralize them according to their own traditions was likewise consistent with this understanding of the religious landscape. As Jerome noted, the most sacred site in Christianity had been completely desecrated by the Romans. Constantine, immediately after the Council of Nicaea (325), had begun to rectify this situation. At the behest of the Bishop of Jerusalem, the emperor tore down the temple to Jupiter that marked the site of the Second Temple. For Jesus’ tomb, the emperor had grander plans. After removing the Roman desecration above the site—he was essentially desacralizing it in the pagan context—Constantine began construction on what would later be known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For 7 Jesus’ tomb, Constantine likewise had to remove the Roman desecration. Although Constantine himself was not present in Jerusalem to oversee the Christian resacralization of these sites, his mother Helena Augusta was. As part of her imperial duties in touring the East, she oversaw progress on the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as well as other churches on the holy sites of Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives. She also bestowed upon them splendid gifts for ornamentation one way alone and no other to bring their desires to realization, and that was to bury the Saviour’s cave under such foul pollutions.” Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart George Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 132. Drijvers presents a convincing argument that Jerome, stating that two separate pagan shrines or temples occupied the locations, is the more correct of the two. Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 88-89. 6 Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar, Late Antiquity, 21-22. 7 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 133. “At a word of command those contrivances of fraud were demolished from top to bottom, and the houses of error were dismantled and destroyed along with their idols and demons. His efforts did not stop there, but the Emperor gave further orders that all the rubble of stones and timbers from the demolitions should be taken and dumped a long way from the site. This command also was soon effected. But not even this progress was by itself enough, but under divine inspiration once more the Emperor gave instructions that the site should be excavated to a great depth and the pavement should be carried away with the rubble a long distance outside, because it was stained with demonic bloodshed.” 533 directly from the imperial treasury. These basilicas, namely the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the Nativity, became pilgrimage destinations for the pious from all across the empire. Like Helena, who Eusebius says “accorded suitable adoration to the footsteps of the Saviour,” others wanted to see the site sanctified by the presence 8 and blood of the man-God himself. Though Jerusalem lay in a complete backwater at a far corner of the known world, it was, for Christians, from sites within that city that the salvation of the world proceeded. That Constantine ordered the destruction and desacralization of the Roman-era temples covering the holy ground thought to have been originally sacralized by Jesus is historical fact. This is significant in and of itself and worthy of exploration as part of the Christianization process. But for our purposes here we do well to consider the legend of Helena the pilgrim and her discovery of the True Cross as a means to view how the incipient sacralization of the Holy Land would later, using the words of Cyril of Jerusalem, “fill the entire world" via the translation of holy relics. Though relics of the saints were said to have been preserved from the first century and thus predate the finding of the True Cross as relics, I wish to focus briefly on Helena’s legendary finding of the True Cross as a starting point for our discussion because it was a relic of the Passion; this event made all other relics possible and directly linked a fixed place on Earth (Jerusalem) with the Godhead through the physical and contact relics of Jesus. Helena, in her legendary discovery of the Passion relics, is thus a metaphor for the historical distribution 9 of that original sanctity to every place the Christian religion would spread. As mentioned above, Helena did historically participate in the sacralization and Christianization of sites in Palestine. But it is her legend as a pilgrim who, divinely inspired in dreams, goes to Jerusalem “to make an enquiry among its inhabitants to find 8 Eusebius notes she had direction over the treasury. Two of the most famous pilgrims are the anonymous “Pilgrim of Bordeaux” and the Spanish pilgrim Egeria, both in the fourth century, not long after Helena’s journey east. Both left accounts of their journeys and describe some of the holy sites that they visited. Drijvers points out that Helena did not come to Palestine as a humble pilgrim but as an Augusta with several different motivations that took her to other places besides Jerusalem. Drijvers, Helena, 65-72. That she should want to see the holy sites out of personal piety while overseeing progression the Churches—she would have been there anyways—is not mutually exclusive with her strictly imperial motivations. 9 Using Helena as a starting point for a discussion of the importance of relics in the Christianization process has been inspired by Frances M. Young’s use of Helena’s finding of the True Cross as a “prelude” for the discussion of the historical Jesus in the Mitchell and Young, Cambridge History of Christianity , 1-8. 534 10 out the place where the sacred body of Christ had hung on the Cross.” According to a number of sources, such as Rufinus (c.345–411) who we have just quoted, Helena was divinely guided to Golgotha. Once there, she (not Constantine) tore down the Venus- shrine, dug beneath the profaned ground, and discovered not only the True Cross, but also a number of other relics. These included the two crosses upon which the thieves hung, the nails which had pierced Jesus’ hands and feet, and the Titulus Crucis (the inscription that Pilate had written above Jesus’ thorn-crowned head stating that he was king of the Jews in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek). The authenticity and sacrality of these relics, particularly that of the True Cross, was demonstrated when one of them cured a prominent noblewoman afflicted with a mortal disease. Departing from Rufinus, we find in Socrates Scholasticus, how Helena subsequently divided up the relics of the Passion, leaving only part in Jerusalem. This legendary act begins the distribution of the Passion relics throughout the entire world: There she left a portion of the cross, enclosed in a silver case, as a memorial to those who might wish to see it: the other part she sent to the emperor, who being persuaded that the city would be perfectly secure where that relic should be preserved, privately enclosed it in his own statue, which stands on a large column of porphyry in the forum called Constantine's at Constantinople. I have written this from report indeed; but almost all the inhabitants of Constantinople affirm that it is true. Moreover the nails with which Christ's hands were fastened to the cross (for his mother having found these also in the sepulchre had sent them) Constantine took and had made into bridle-bits and a helmet, which he used in his 11 military expeditions. Though some of the relics of the Passion ended up in the newly founded imperial and Christian capital of Constantinople, several relics associated with Helena’s “pilgrimage” found their way to Rome and were installed in her personal chapel there. This site, now known as Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem), contains, according to tradition, the following relics, some of which were brought by Helena: fragments of the True Cross; one of the nails of the Crucifixion; fragments of the Grotto of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulchre; the finger bone of St. Thomas; a fragment 10 Rufinus, Historia Ecclesia X, found in Drijvers, Helena, 79. Tyrannius Rufinus translated Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesia and then continued it down to his own day. 11 Socrates Scholasticas, Ecclesiastical History in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 2. trans. A.C. Zenos (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890), 21. 535 of the cross of the Good Thief (Luke 23:39); thorns from the Crown of Thorns; and part of the Titulus Crucis 12. In addition, Helena is said to have deposited actual earth from 13 Jerusalem itself in the floor of the subterranean chapel. That Helena and any visitor to her chapel could see and perhaps touch physical relics of Jesus and the holy earth of Jerusalem itself brought them that much closer to experiencing the divine and eventual 14 eternal life. For all intents and purposes, the Helena of legend had brought the sacrality of Jerusalem and the physical remains of the Resurrected Christ to Rome. These relics only bolstered the city’s reputation for sacrality as it was already considered the resting place of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Taken together, these relics secured Rome as the second-most important site on the emerging Christian landscape. To be sure, some relics had gone to Constantinople, as the new imperial Capital, but Rome was still the cultural and now spiritual head of the reunified empire. So far, we have been dealing with the legendary translations of Passion relics under the auspices of Helena. However, the parceling out of the sacrality of Jerusalem through the True Cross did actually take place and, to some extent, acts as a precedent for the widespread translation of other relics all throughout late antiquity and the middle ages. There exist several sources from the fourth century outside of the Helena legend that indicate that wood from the True Cross had been discovered, venerated, and distributed. Recalling the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter, we note that Cyril, 12 This is according to the church’s own website. http://www.santacroceroma.it/en/features-3/reliquie.html 13 Nearby this chapel are the Lateran Palace and the Pontifical Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs, which is said to house the very marble stairs that Jesus climbed in order to be judged by Pontius Pilate. These stairs, the so- called Scala Pilati (Stairs of Pilate), are also thought to have caught Jesus’ blood following the scourging at the pillar. The stairs also said to have been brought to Rome by Helena Augusta. The Lateran Palace also holds relics of the Passion, such as the porphyry upon which Romans soldiers are said to have cast lots for Jesus’ garment. Many other relics of the Passion exist, including the Holy Sponge, the Holy Lance (the Lance of Longinus), the Holy Shroud, the Veil of Veronica, and the Sudarium of Oviedo (said to be the bloodstained head cloth of Jesus). For a good overview of Passion relics see Joan Carroll Cruz, Relics What They Are and Why They Matter (Tan Books & Pub, 2015) and Charles J. Wall, Relics from the Crucifixion: Where They Went and How They Got There (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2016). Reprint and minor revision of the 1910 edition. Both are non-scholarly works but accurately describe the traditions associated with the aforementioned relics. 14 Francs M. Young notes, “Christian belief in Helena’s time meant receiving immortality through physical contact with the material realities that had been transformed and sanctified by the presence of the divine. Even the cross had its talismanic power because it was a sign of immortality, a trophy of the victory over death gained in time past when the son of the one and only God had sojourned on earth.” Mitchell and Young, Cambridge History, 7. 536 bishop of Jerusalem, confirmed that pieces of the Cross were being distributed to the pious far and wide, so much so that they were “almost filling the whole world.” John Chrysostom (c. 349-407), archbishop of Constantinople, stated in 387 that both men and women sought pieces of the Cross for personal use, encasing the splinters in golden lockets and wearing them as pieces of jewelry. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 395), bishop of his namesake, also testifies that individuals wore relics of the Cross. For one, he noted that his dead sister Macrina (c. 330-379), an abbess in Cappadocia, wore a fragment of the True Cross in an iron ring that acted as a personal reliquary. The desire for individual bits of this relic was so intense that some people resorted to dubious means to acquire them. According to the pilgrim Egeria, who visited in the Holy Land in the 380s, someone even tried to bite off a piece of the Cross during its regular veneration in 15 Jerusalem. Apparently, pieces of the Cross were also enshrined in far-flung locations, such as in Africa. An inscription for it reads, “A piece of the wood of the Cross, from the 16 Land of Promise, where Christ was born.” Still, not everyone could go to Jerusalem, nor could every location possess a relic of the Christ. If the True Cross was a means by which the sacrality of the man-God could be parceled out, there existed many contact points in other physical remains that joined “Heaven and Earth.” These were the bodily remnants and tombs of the saints, especially those martyrs whose souls, by bearing witness unto death, enjoyed the Beatific Vision of God as the Church Triumphant. For example, the inscription on the tomb of St. Martin of Tours in the still-Christianizing region of Gaul read: “Here lies Martin the bishop, of holy memory, whose soul is in the hand of God; but he is fully here, present and made plain in miracles of every kind.” As Peter Brown has emphasized in his seminal work, The Cult of the Saints, the tombs of these men and women ("the very special dead”) eventually became “centers of the ecclesiastical life of their regions.” Many were the foundation for 17 altars, upon which the central rite of the church, the sacrifice of the mass, was enacted. 15 Drijvers presents this convincing evidence as to the discovery of wood thought to be the Cross. Drijvers, Helena, 86-93. 16 Quoted Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 89. 17 This paragraph is drawn from a reading of Brown’s chapter “The Holy and the Grave,” especially pp. 10- 11; 3-4. The inscription from the tomb of St. Martin is quoted on p. 4. My summary does not do justice to 537 As with relics of the Passion, not every site could posses the tomb of a saint nor could everyone access the sacrality contained within his or her holy corpse. But just as relics of the Passion could be translated from Jerusalem in order to sacralize new sites, so too could the saints and martyrs, either in their entirety or in bits and pieces of body parts, be translated to other locations. Like the tombs of the saints, relics were thought to contain the actual presence (praesentia) of the saint themselves; whoever came into contact with that mortal remain also came into contact with the invisible spirit of that holy person in Heaven. As Brown explains: …the fullness of the invisible person could be present at a mere fragment of his physical remains and even at objects, such as the brandea of Saint Peter, that had merely made contact with these remains. As a result, the Christian world came to be covered with tiny fragments of original relics and with “contact relics” held, as in the case of Saint Peter, to be as full of his praesentia as any physical remains. Translation—the movement of relic to people—and not pilgrimages—the movement of people to relics—hold the center of the stage in late-antique and 18 early –medieval piety. One no longer had to journey to the tomb of Saint Peter nor undertake a long and expensive pilgrimage like Helena had done to access the sacrality of Jesus and the saints. In other words, there could now be many more localized sacred sites at which Christians could perform personal devotions, seek healing, or petition for some type of spiritual or physical benefits. Even if many relics, such as the bits of the True Cross and the brandea of Saint Peter, went out into the landscape via diffusion, there were concentrated efforts by the leading churchmen of the age to Christianize the sacred landscape around them through the translation of relics. Of these, some of the most important were Bishops Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-297), Paulinus, and Gregory of Tours (c. 538-594). Though by no means the complexity of his arguments nor his inspired explanations regarding the rise of the tomb-altar as inversing the pagan distaste for the physical remains of dead human beings. 18 Brown, Cult of the Saints, 88. As Brown also states: “Wherever Christianity went in the early Middle Ages, it brought with it the “presence” of the saints. Whether this was unimaginably far to the north, in Scotland, where local craftsmen attempted to copy, in their “altar tombs,” the shape of the high-ridged sarcophagi of late-Roman Gaul; or on the edge of the desert, where Rome, Persia, and the Arab world met at the shrine of Saint Sergius at Resafa...or even further to the east, among the Nestorian Christians of Iraq, Iran, and central Asia, late-antique Christianity, as it impinged on the outside world, was shrines and relics.” Brown, Cult of the Saints, 12. 538 the only bishops who employed relics in sacralizing churches in still-Christianizing territories or distributing them outside of the immediate region, we can use these individuals as examples of the larger trend that predominated late-antiquity as Christianity moved into new and non-Roman cultures. The first of these bishops, Ambrose, is usually given credit as being the initiator of translating relics. Ambrose was instrumental in not only setting a precedent for the sacralization of churches with the relics of martyrs, but also for facilitating their diffusion into new territories. The key event in the development of Ambrose’s deployment of relics from martyrs occurred in 386 when the bishop was just about to consecrate a grand new basilica (the Basilica Ambrosiana) but lacked relics of local martyrs with which to sacralize it. In order to sacralize it to the satisfaction of his congregation, Ambrose found the remains of some supposed martyrs, dug up their remains, and enshrined their relics in 19 the new church. That Ambrose should have discovered some relics for translation into his new church was not atypical for the times. Shrines and even altars could be erected (sometimes without Church direction) near where a martyr had been killed or where their 20 supposed burial place might have been. Moreover, Ambrose himself actively distributed relics to lands where there were few martyrs. One such distribution was he gave 19 Taken from Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 15-18. See his chapter “The Incorruptible Flesh of the Martyrs” for just how much this inverted Roman and Greek notions of the lower nature of the human body when compared with the mind/soul. The original story can be found in the Vita Sancti Ambrosii by Paulinus. 20 For example, the Council of Carthage in 419 stated: “Item, it seemed good that the altars which have been set up here and there, in fields and by the wayside as Memories of Martyrs, in which no body nor reliques of martyrs can be proved to have been laid up, should be overturned by the bishops who rule over such places, if such a thing can be done. But should this be impossible on account of the popular tumult it would arouse, the people should none the less be admonished not to frequent such places… For altars which have been erected anywhere on account of dreams or inane quasi-revelations of certain people, should be in every way disapproved of.” Henry R. Percival, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Father of the Christian Church. Second Series. Vol. XIV: The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church: Their Canons and Dogmatic Decrees, together with the Canons of all the Local Synods which have Received Ecumenical Acceptance, (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1900), 82. For a discussion of the emergence of martyr-shrines in north Africa and Augustine’s developments on the matter, see Shira L. Lander, Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 101-106. Lander notes how Augustine, in a 405 sermon, preached that God had “consecrated” the site where St. Cyprian’s “holy” body rested. Lander further notes that this was a Christian use of a Roman term reserved for civic structures and temples and that “the Mappalian cemetery church which housed Cyprian’s tomb was in-and-of-itself sacred.” Quote on p. 105. 539 Victricius, the fourth-century bishop of Rouen (northern Gaul), remnants of some thirteen 21 saints in order to consecrate his new cathedral. Ambrose might have set the precedent for consecrating churches with relics and sending them out to other locations, but other high-profile bishops during the early Middle Ages, such as Gregory of Tours and Pope Gregory the Great, replicated the practices for still-Christianizing regions. Christianity had existed in Gaul since the third century, but the region was anything but Christianized by the time Gregory of Tours took up his bishopric in the sixth century. Clovis, leader of the Merovingians, had only been baptized in 508, and much of the country, as recorded by Gregory in his History of the Franks, remained rooted in paganism or held heterodox Christian beliefs. The process of Christianizing the region was long and slow-going, with its full completion only occurring during the reign of Charlemagne in the ninth century. As any reader of the Gregory’s History knows, some segments of the general population and the ruling class of Gaul were Christian in name only. Gregory, as bishop of the premier city in Gaul during the middle of this process, was somewhat of an intermediary figure whose job it was not merely to uphold the longstanding tradition of the Christianity in Gaul but also to take steps to Christianize the region further. One of the major ways in which he did this was to promote the premier relic of his city, the body of St. Martin, but also to uphold the cult of relics in general in Gaul by collecting relics and using them to consecrate churches throughout his see. First and foremost, Gregory elevated the site of his own bishopric as the preeminent sacred site in Gaul, noting that his cathedral literally rested upon the tomb of St. Martin. Both Gregory’s History of the Franks and his Life of St. Martin contain numerous accounts of miracles that the saint had apparently effected for the local population. This, of course, made Tours one of the most important religious sites in all of Gaul and, especially later, a major pilgrimage destination. Besides promoting the tomb of St. Martin, Gregory took pains to collect relics from abroad and install them in his churches in order to create additional loci of sacrality within the see. For example, his deacon, Agiulf, returned from Rome carrying a cache of 21 Petersen, The Dialogues of Gregory, 122. 540 22 relics obtained on Gregory’s orders. These relics were put to good use in sacralizing his churches, as Gregory himself describes: I had a baptistery built adjacent to the church [Saint Martin’s church], and there I placed the relics of Saint John and Saint Sergius the martyr. In the old baptistery I put the relics of Saint Benignus the martyr. In many other places in Tours and its immediate neighbourhood I dedicated churches and oratories, and these I enriched 23 with relics of the saints. It would be too long to give you a complete list. Most of these relics, such as those of Sergius from Syria, were from outside of the region and had been translated to Gaul. As Gregory explicitly mentions, these relics “enriched” the holy places of Gaul by virtue of their presence; Gaul itself was relatively lacking in sacred remains compared with Rome and the East since there had not been many martyrs during the Roman persecution. Highlighting the role of Gregory of Tours in rectifying this situation, Heinzelmann has observed, “where his Episcopal activity is concerned, Gregory’s supreme interest lay in the multiplication and development of holy places 24 mainly by a generous distribution of saints’ relics.” If there were no martyrs to sacralize new sites, then the martyrs could simply be imported. Gregory of Tours’s contemporary, Pope Gregory the Great, mirrored this penchant for collecting and distributing relics. Perhaps most famously, Gregory the Great gave some relics to the missionary Augustine (died c. 604, not to be confused with Augustine of Hippo) to aid in the rechristianization of Britain. For example, we know that Gregory sent Augustine relics of the pope and martyr Sixtus II in order to replace some 22 Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin Books, 1974), 543; X.1. Gregory also describes Agiulf’s journey to the tombs of Rome in his Liber Vitae Patrum (Life of the Fathers). See Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers, trans. Edward James, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 56-57. 23 Gregory of Tours, History, 602; X.31. Gregory also describes how he used a contact relic to consecrate an altar in his Life of the Fathers, 59. In fact, collecting relics was something of a family pastime for Gregory; both his father and mother wearing personal reliquaries with the ashes and other remnants of unnamed saints and martyrs for personal protection and piety. See Book in Honor of the Martyrs, Chapter 83. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/gregory-mirac.asp 24 For a fairly complete list of Gregory’s installation of relics see Heinzelmann’s essay “Gregory of Tours: The Elements of a Biography” in Alexander C. Murray ed., A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 28-30. The translation of relics also figured into the conquest and forcible conversion of Saxony following Charlemagne’s invasions of the territories. Writers of hagiographical translation stories depict the Saxon population as becoming fully converted to Christianity once relics, having been demonstrated to be miraculously efficacious, were translated to their lands. See Ingrid Rembold, Conquest and Christianization: Saxony and the Carolingian World, 772-888 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 200-201; 240-242. 541 questionable relics (they were said to have been of a martyr also named Sixtus) that had remained objects of veneration from the old Roman church in Britain prior to the Anglo- Saxon invasions starting in the fifth century. A few of these martyr-cults had survived, the most notable being St. Alban’s tomb (thought to be at Verulamium by Bede). Apparently, by the time of Augustine’s mission, the Christian minority still held these places (and presumably the body-relics contained within) in high regard. Gregory the Great thought it entirely appropriate to employ translated relics in the rechristianization of the population, particularly in the creation of new Christian sacred sites upon the pagan landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. A letter from Gregory to the missionary Mellitus (d. 624) reveals the connection between the desacralization of pagan sites and their subsequent sacralization as Christian sites: It is clear that the shrines of idols (“fana idolorum”) in that land should not be destroyed, but rather that the idols that are in them should be. Let holy water be prepared and sprinkled in these shrines, and altars constructed, and relics deposited, because, as long as these shrines are well built, it is necessary that they 25 should be transformed from the cult of demons to the service of the true God. Later popes, such as Vitalian, would follow Gregory’s precedent for translating relics to the British Isles as they became increasingly Christianized. With the reestablishment of contact with Rome via Augustine’s mission also came access to continental martyrs. Native churchmen, particularly the founders of monasteries, sought relics (many looked to Gaul) in order to consecrate their abbeys. Over the following three centuries, native saints also came to sanctify and consecrate churches and shrines as they proliferated throughout the country. Many of these saints, such as Cuthbert (c. 634-687) and Etheldreda (c. 636- 679, also known as Æthelthrythh), were either buried in a church or 26 translated into one from their original resting place. 25 Gregory the Great, Epistle 11.56. Quoted in George Demacopoulos, “Gregory the Great and the Pagan Shrines of Kent” Journal of Late Antiquity 1 no. 2 (2008): 366-367. 26 For a good overview, see the first two chapters of David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), particularly 23-39. Bishop Wilfird sought relics in Rome in order to consecrate churches in Britain. The Life of Wilfrid states: “[Wilfrid] spent several days going round the shrines of the saints to pray there; he also obtained from chosen men a great many holy relics, for the edification of the churches of Britain, writing down what each of the relics was and to which saint it belonged; and many other possessions he acquired which it is tedious to enumerate now, for the adornment of the house of God, in accordance with his custom.” Quote originally found in Eddius Stephanus, The Life 542 Relics were also important for sanctifying or consecrating religious sites in nearby Ireland during the Christianization of that country. This has been studied by Karen Eileen Overbey and Niamh Wycherley. Overbey’s study is extraordinarily comprehensive in scope and covers all aspects of relics and reliquaries throughout the medieval period and beyond in Ireland. Stressing the landscape-altering aspects of relics, she explains: “This earliest relic veneration [the arrival of relics of Peter and Paul in 431] establishes already a devotional topography in Ireland: the Bodies of the early martyrs, made portable through partition and distribution, brought Irish Christians into contact with apostolic 27 space, collapsing both geographical distance and chronological time.” Wycherley’s somewhat more recent monograph challenges the once prevalent view that relics were 28 less important in Ireland than they were on the continent. In fact, indigenous sacred sites were so enduring that the nascent church there (as in many other societies) sought to Christianize them by co-opting their sacred power for the new religion by establishing its own sites upon or near them. As Wycherley states it: “The Church, thus, set about 29 reshaping the landscape in a Christian way but with continuity from the pagan past.” Still, distinctly Christian sites began to emerge in Ireland (even if they were in conjunction with pagan ones) and, like the Christianizing areas on the continent, relics played a significant role in their development. One indication is that there may have been a native Irish type of altar-tomb in the form of a leacht though more archaeology needs to be done. The leacht were “open-air, altar-like, rectangular drystone constructions,” and may have been situated upon some sort of human remains. In addition, there is some evidence that altars themselves in early Irish Christianity contained some type of relics similar to those on the continent. Beyond this, relics were clearly important in consecrating sites and altars in Ireland by the seventh to eighth centuries as indicated by of Bishop Wilfrid, trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 67. Partial quote also in Rollason, Saints, 24. 27 Karen Eileen Overbey, Sacral Geographies: Saints, Shrines and Territory in Medieval Ireland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 1. 28 Niamh Wycherley, The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland (Turnhout: Brepols 2015), 9. She states, “Nevertheless, it has been argued that Ireland was slow to adopt relics, in particular that Irish Christians were not as concerned with venerating bodily remains as their late Roman and Frankish contemporaries.” 29 See her section on “the Irish Context,” 31-36, with the quote on p. 35. 543 the Hibernensis (an seventh- or eighth- century Irish collection of canon law from the continent): A Synod: the blood of martyrs consecrates the place, not the place the blood…A Synod: Bishop Ovius says: No-one can pollute the relics of those, whose souls nourished with the vision of God forget worldly things. Truly the souls of the martyrs cry out under the altar of God saying: Avenge our blood, etc. Relics were also important in the consecration of Irish churches, which in and of 30 themselves were sacred sites because they housed relics in portable shrines. Like other Christianizing societies, the translation of relics featured prominently in the Christianization of the sacred landscape in Ireland. Translations occurred within Ireland itself and from the continent to Ireland with relics of the saints that originated in the Mediterranean world. Within Ireland, the bones of the priest Bruscus were dug up (at the prompting of his ghost) and translated to his monastery. As for relics from the continent, a number were said to have come from Rome. Patrick was said to have brought with him relics of Peter and Paul, some of which he gifted to one of the bishops he ordained. Some portable reliquaries (like the later relicarios) could contain brandea, or, in the case of one that has been studied by scholars, a part of the True Cross and a bone 31 fragment of Paul. Relic veneration might not have occurred on the same level as it had in the Roman world, but the sacred objects did play a role in “altaring,” so to speak, the Irish religious landscape to a more Christian orientation. As any student of medieval Europe or the history of Christianity in the West knows, relic veneration only intensified between the Christianization of various “European” peoples of late-Antiquity and the transplantation of the religion to new lands in the sixteenth century. It should be sufficient to say that relics hold a key place in the piety of the Middle Ages and reached such gross proportions in the later part of the age that the Reformers, particularly John Calvin, put them squarely in their crosshairs for their most vitriolic and prescient attacks on Roman “Popery.” Though we jump over these medieval centuries, we should take a moment to highlight one key development regarding relics during this time, namely the decrees of the Second Ecumenical Council 30 The preceding information is taken from her chapter “Leachta, Sepulcri, and the Role of Relics in Church Consecration,” 101-127. The quote from the Hibernensis can be found on p. 110. 31 Wycherley, Ireland, 115; 120-21. 544 of Nicaea in 787. The seven ecumenical councils, of which this was the last, involved both the East and the West and are held as legitimate to this day. They thus represented decisions by the bishops the world over to be held regardless of rite or future theological schism. So their decrees on relics still hold true. We bring this development up now because its pronouncements regarding the consecration of churches with relics affected all future expansions of Roman Christianity such as those into the New World and into South and East Asia. Canon Seven of the Second Council of Nicaea reads: If a church has been consecrated without the installation of holy relics, it is necessary to make good the defect …Therefore we decree that in venerable churches consecrated without relics of the holy martyrs, the installation of relics should take place along with the usual prayers. And if in future any bishop is found out consecrating a church without relics, let him be deposed as someone who has flouted the ecclesiastical 32 traditions. This decree, which carried authority all throughout the Christian world, essentially formalized the practice of consecrating churches with relics and ensured that the practice would continue for the remainder of the medieval period. But in the wake of attacks on many Roman Catholic practices during the Reformation, the Council of Trent decided to reaffirm the appropriateness of venerating relics while cautioning against the abuses that 33 had been taking place in centuries prior. The consecration of churches with relics thus endured. These two pronouncements regarding relics, not to mention deep-seated practice, all but ensured that the cult of the relics and saints would be carried wherever sixteenth century missionaries might take them to Christianize native religious landscapes. The altering of the religious landscape in the New World amongst the Nahuas and the Incas is an enormously complex topic for many reasons, not the least of which is the 32 Tanner, Decrees Vol. 1, 143-144. 33 Session 25 of the Council of Trent (1563) reads: And they should teach that the holy bodies of the blessed martyrs and others who live with Christ, in that they were living members of Christ and a temple of the holy Spirit, due to be raised by him to eternal and glorified life, are to be venerated by the faithful, and that through them many blessings are given to us by God: and hence that those are altogether to be condemned, as holy church has formerly condemned them and now condemns them again, who assert that no veneration or honour is owed to the relics of the saints, or that it is futile for people to honour them and other sacred memorials, and that they rehearse the memory of the saints in vain when seeking to gain their help. Tanner, Decrees. Vol. 2, 775. 545 forceful imposition of Christianity by Spanish colonial forces and churchmen. Christianity in the New World certainly co-opted native sacred sites through temple- conversion, much as it had in Europe—for example, the Mexico City Cathedral is built upon the sacred area of the Aztec Templo Mayor—but we cannot examine that vast and interesting topic here. Since our concern is relics, it is important to note that the New World, as with other places that Christianity reached, they played an important role in altering the religious landscape, though this naturally occurred differently and with a varying degrees of importance to those engaging Christianization. Because the New World generally lacked martyrs of its own (much like India and Ireland), it was even more necessary for churchmen to import relics from the Old World to establish new sacred Christian sites that could become loci for veneration. One method was to translate body parts of the saints. “Bone relics” were particularly popular for translation to the New World, even taking precedence over the importation of sacred images and sculptures. Among these, relics of the Apostles and early martyrs were highly prized, as well as now-standard relics like fragments of the True Cross or the head of one of St. 34 Ursula’s companions. Like the translation of relics to Asia, translations to the New World (first to Mexico) were prompted by churchmen and religious orders; and it was they who venerated them to a greater degree than the slowly Christianizing native population. Of their requests, particularly that of the bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1468-1548) in 1527, “hundreds, if not thousands” of relics began to be translated to New Spain. Among the most prolific relic translators were the Jesuits, who, according to Weckmann, collected some 215 relics in a space of under thirty years. In one shipment, which involved a shipwreck and some pilfering by coastal thieves, the remaining relics made their way into Jesuit hands and consisted of “eleven relics of the apostles…and the four evangelists, fifty-seven relics of sainted martyrs, fourteen of Doctors of the Church, twenty-four of holy confessors, and twenty-seven of female saints, as well as part of the mantle of Saint Joseph, a fragment of the Virgin’s veil, Saint Francis Xavier’s shroud, and the entire 34 For details, see Luis Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, trans. Frances M. López-Morillas (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 254-255. There are also many references to the relics of the True Cross in the Jesuit documentation as found in Monumenta Mexicana, 10 Volumes. 546 35 bodies of Saints Zen and Ponciano.” So how were these relics utilized in the New World? First and foremost, many were venerated with much devotion by the orders that translated them. In this sense, they provided loci of sacrality for the foreign advocates of Christianity. In addition, many 36 were publicly displayed in all sorts of settings, such as cathedrals and chapels. As with other mission zones, the Jesuits used relics to put on spectacular displays and processions for the local congregations. As Antonio Rubial García points out, the Jesuits celebrated the reception of many saint relics in 1578 (as mentioned above) with massive festivities that included indigenous elements, all of which served as a great consecration of the land. This included a procession of eighteen highly ornate reliquaries, all sorts of banners and arches, a performance of the liturgical drama El triunfo de los santos, and indigenous dances that used the Aztec image of an eagle eating a snake. Other elements included a young woman and man dressed in the native costumes of Mexico and Peru respectively. Rubial García sums up the festival, noting the connection between the relics and the sacralization of the landscape: “The celebration gave the Jesuits great prestige just six years after their arrival in Mexico. For the inhabitants of New Spain, those relics converted their land into a sacred and sanctified space and above all associated them with their most beloved emblems.” Besides sanctifying the land around which they were enshrined, the relics also protected the community from misfortune. Later, in the eighteenth century, relics were so popular amongst the population that Jesuits, following the suppression of their order, acted as brokers on the behalf of families wishing to obtain 37 their own relics for use in “domestic chapels.” These translated relics served their purpose for the time being and only initially sanctified the land in a Christian sense until Mexico itself could produce its own relics on 35 Weckmann, Medieval Heritage, 257. Weckmann also provides a sampling of the many relics sent from Europe. Taylor notes that the relics came with authentication papers but these were lost. The Jesuits then requested from Rome “new authentications and relics—214 in all—which arrived safely in late 1577 or early 1578.” William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 363. 36 Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders, 372. 37 Antonio Rubial García, “Icons of Devotion: The Appropriation and Use of Saints in New Spain” trans. Martin Austin Nesvig, Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, ed. Martin Austin Nesvig (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2006), 48-49. 547 its own terms. Taylor, in his study of relics in New Spain, suggests that bone relics eventually gave way during the seventeenth century to other types of relics, namely image relics, as wholly native Christian loci of sacrality that drew veneration from the colonial population. This represents a departure from the emphasis on corporeal relics that had been commonplace in the Old World. Nevertheless, this does show the importance of relics in sacralizing the landscape of the New World. Since there were relatively few martyrs in New Spain—as well as a “dearth of choice Old World relics”— image relics and shrines (such as that of the Virgin of Guadalupe) constituted an 38 indigenous manifestation of creating a sacred landscape in a Christian mode. Relics also played an important role in the Christian sacralization of the other great New World civilization, that of the Andean peoples. Though we can only hint at the complexities here, we must observe that, like Mexico, many relics were translated to Peru 39 and its surrounding territories. Perhaps more than other societies into which Christianity transplanted itself, the landscape of Andean civilization had a greater degree of sacrality to it, especially with the prevalence of what is known as huacas. Initially translated by missionaries as meaning “idol,” huacas literally meant “sacred thing” and refer to anything from a spectacular natural formation to something of “monstrous proportions.” Thus the actual physical landscape in the Andes was and still is quite literally sacred, and people could interact with it informally or through formal shrines like the “Cusco ceque 40 system” that flourished in the sixteenth century. In the colonial efforts to Christianize the population, these shrines and their immanent sacrality were prime targets for destruction of the so-called idol-extirpators. Having destroyed the shrines and huacas, colonial churchmen hoped to change the sacrality of those locations to a Christian orientation by placing sacred objects or relics in their environs. 38 Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders, 383-384. 39 Some of these relics included fragments of the True Cross, a thorn from the Crown, relics of St. Thomas, and many others. The Jesuits in Peru also translated relics of their own, specifically St. Borgia (the Fourth Jesuit General), St. Aloysius de Gonzaga, and some writings of St. IgnatiusSee Claudia Brosseder, The Power of Huacas: Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 284; 329, note 58. Brosseder notes that a list of relics can be found in the Annual Letter of 1609. 40 See Brian S. Bauer, The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: the Cusco Ceque System (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 1-5 for a brief overview. 548 To this end, missionaries, particularly the Jesuits, realized that sacred objects like relics were absolutely necessary to the Andean world-view. However, they thought about their translations in strictly Christian terms. On one hand, relics were thought to exorcize demons from the landscapes (i.e. the huacas). On the other hand, they were expected to supplant native religious objects of sacrality with Christian ones. Crosses, especially fragments of the True Cross, were deemed particularly useful for exorcising the landscape. For example, the reception of the True Cross at Lima (translated from Pope Urban VIII) occurred on the very same day that the city’s bishops sent out extirpators to 41 search for and destroy indigenous idols. Symbolically, this meant that an object of true sacrality was now in place to exorcize and supplant native sacred sites and objects. The landscape was, then, being refashioned to include a new Christian locus of sacred power intended to draw veneration from the local population. Aside from the exorcistic functions of the translated relics, the Creole population of the Andes actually did take up their veneration with some enthusiasm. Contact relics, especially those of Ignatius, such as pieces of his handwriting, were much in demand for healing. Creoles, during the canonization of Satin Martin de Pores, flocked to create brandea and other third-class relics from his body. By 1661, the Jesuit college (San Pablo) in Lima contained “some one hundred bones of saints or fragments of holy places.” Space does not permit us to discuss further just how the relics might have been received by the indigenous population other than the Creole, but we can safely say that relics did play a part in altering the religious landscape of the Andes with Christian sites 42 based in part upon relics. Through our brief survey of how relics played a role in creating sacred Christian loci of sacrality upon native religious landscapes, we should remember there were no two 41 Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1750 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 146-147. 42 Information for this paragraph is taken from Brosseder, Power of the Huacas, 143-152. Brosseder underscores the variety of relics: “Their collection included pieces of the True Cross, a star from the roof of the house of Loreto, and a large number of bones belonging to San Simón, San Ignacio de Loyola, San Francisco Xavier, San Urso, Francisco Suarez, Francisco de Borja, three apostles, and ‘holy’ people from Peru like Juan de of Ávila and Alonso Rodríguez.” She also notes, “Other relics, the larger pieces, were exhibited in the churches of Lima, Cuzco, and Ayacucho. Inventories of Jesuit churches (for example, the Colegio de la Transfiguración in Cuzco) show that they were literally crowded with these holy objects.” The footnote quotes are on p. 150. 549 situations exactly alike. Just as each historical instance of Christianization was unique, so too were no situations exactly the same regarding the translation of relics and their use in sacralizing sites. In the interest of doing world history here, we have greatly simplified the complexities of each case. Nevertheless, we have followed a strand that leads us to at least one commonality: that relics provided for and often produced new loci of sacrality that came to be venerated by all the different peoples engaging the Christianization process. In the next section, we will see that the veneration of relics was by no means solely a Christian phenomenon. Buddhism, that other great missionary religion, likewise employed relics in altering native religious landscapes—and did so, indeed, for centuries before the birth of Jesus. The Buddhist Precedent: The Emergence of Relics in India and the Sacralization of China Any discussion of Buddhist relics in Japan and their relationship to the importance and popularity of Christian relics in Kyushu must survey, however briefly, the ways in which human remains were powerful spiritual objects in both India and China. It was from these two cultures that Japan inherited a millennia-long tradition of venerating ashes, body parts, and other sacred objects that had some association with either the Buddha himself, a Bodhisattva, or some other holy individual. Furthermore, surveying relic veneration in India and China gives us greater insight into how these objects facilitated Japan’s emergence as a fully Buddhist realm, complete with its own repositories of holy remains. This, of course, sets a precedent for the introduction of similar relics through Christianity to the island of Kyushu. The practice of relic veneration and distribution in Buddhism can be traced back through tradition to one particular time and place: the physical death, or parinirvāṇa, of the historical Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama in northern India. While the relics of some twenty-four previous Buddhas would be found and venerated later—these were Buddhas who had expounded the dharma over many earlier ages and eons—nothing could supersede the immediacy and sacral potency of Siddhārtha Gautama’s dead body. Siddhārtha was, after all, the Tathāgata and the one who made the dharma known for the 550 present age. Just as he was “thus come” into this life, he was now “thus gone” in death 43 like the other Buddhas, save his mortal remains. The importance of the corpse as a sort of material remainder of the “thus gone one” was not lost on his disciples, and it is reported that they began venerating (pūjā) it almost immediately. Apparently, as the body was lying in state for about a week, numerous disciples and followers made a variety of 44 offerings to it and performed acts of devotion. Once cremated, nothing of the Buddha’s body remained aside from some bones (there is some latitude of interpretation as to whether or not even these remained) and śarīra, which were jewel-like beads of some numinous and crystalline substance. According to some texts, the relics were collected by one group of disciples and taken back to their city whereupon other factions began to vie for a share of the body parts. Ultimately through compromise, ten shares are divided out, and relics of Buddha’s body thus went out into the world as did the dharma itself to spread to many different lands. Eventually those in possession of these relics built stupas to house them. These included one in each of the eight countries to which the relics had gone out, one for the agreed upon arbitrator of the division, the brahmin Droṇa, and one upon the embers of the 45 cremation site. Besides the initial non-descript “śarīra” relics of the Buddha, other relics included various teeth (e.g. the right-eyetooth) and bones, such as his finger bone and his breastbone. Moreover, there existed relics of the still-living Buddha, meaning body parts or things with which he had contact or had used (in Sanskrit, known as pāribhogika relics). These included such bodily effusions as his hair (of which there were said to be some 800,000 to 900,000), his nail clippings, and, perhaps most unusually, the Buddha’s snot and excrement. Contact relics, which were objects that the Buddha had used or touched, also proliferated widely. These relics not only included such holy objects as the 43 See the entry for Tathāgata in the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism for more information on the term. The dictionary states, “In Sanskrit and Pāli, lit. “one who has thus come/gone,” and generally translated into English as the “thus gone one.” Altogether, it is one of the most interesting and evocative titles used to describe the Buddha. 44 John S. Strong, Relics of the Buddha (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 110-116. For his discussion, Strong relies upon the Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta. 45 Strong, Relics, 117-122. 551 Buddha’s alms bowl, robe, staff, and belt, but also much more mundane items like the Buddha’s toothpicks. There also existed kinds of trace relics, such as the Buddha’s 46 footprints or shadow image, that indicated he had visited a particular place. Surely a Chinese equivalent of John Calvin—if there had been one—would have claimed that there were enough relics of the Buddha to fill the cargo hold of one of Zheng He’s treasure ships. The aforementioned relics played an important role in the spread of Buddhism in India and beyond due to the fact that they were highly portable objects of sacrality. Unlike sacred sites, which are permanent (typically), relics could be disseminated wherever missionaries choose to take their religions. If the Buddha had not actually gone to a certain location to preach, a relic of his physical body could act as an adequate substitute and be translated there. This had a significant effect during missionization: rather than having a person travel to a far away sacred place (the act of pilgrimage), translating a relic actually brought that same sacrality to people wherever they might be. In this sense, relics literally sacralized the landscape of new territory into which a religion, such as Buddhism, spread by creating new sacred sites much more accessible to any given population. For example, early Buddhists in Sri Lanka might not have been able to visit the actual bodhi tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment in Bodghaya (where the tree still exists today), but a branch from that tree could certainly be 47 translated to Sri Lanka as a relic in substitution of the original site. In the early spread of Buddhism, the use of relics to sacralize new non-Buddhist realms occurred most famously under the Buddhist king Ashoka (Aśoka) (c. 268-232 BCE). A ruler of the Maurya Empire in the third century BCE, Ashoka is said to have been overwhelmed with all the death and destruction he caused during his rise to power as a non-Buddhist king. Having a conversion upon the throne, Ashoka became a most ardent agent of Buddhicization, attempting to spread the dharma both within his lands and in foreign kingdoms. To achieve this end, Ashoka is said to have collected the remaining relics of the Buddha, disseminated them far and wide, and then constructed 46 Strong, Relics, 71-97. See his index for a concise list of various relics on p. 287. 47 For transplantations of the bodhi tree, see Strong, Relics, 152-157. 552 some 84,000 stupas to enshrine the holy objects in their new locales. Underscoring the importance of Ashoka’s relic distribution, Strong has noted that “Aśoka opt[ed] to ‘centripetalize’ the relics, to distribute them outward in a way that allows them to exist locally, while at the same time emphasizing their ongoing ties to the center, their ultimate 48 unity and interconnection.” In other words, the relics literally expanded the Buddhist world through their interconnected and inherent sacrality. The Aśokāvadāna (Legend of King Ashoka) makes the king’s intentions for the relic distributions clear, which was namely to establish focal points of Buddhist sacrality through which people would come to the dharma: Then Aśoka had eighty-four thousand boxes made of gold, silver, cat’s eye, and crystal, and in them were placed the relics. Also, eighty-four thousand urns and eighty-four thousand inscription plates were prepared. All this was given to the yakṣas for distribution in the [eighty-four thousand] dharmarājikās he ordered built throughout the earth as far as the surrounding ocean, in the small, great, and middle-sized towns, wherever there was a [population of] one hundred thousands 49 [persons]. Whatever the actual historical scale of Ashoka’s stupa-building, he was nevertheless seen as sacralizing far more places throughout the known world than might have otherwise been the case if the relics were just allowed to diffuse on their own. Nothing so dramatic happened under one ruler or churchman in the Christian tradition, but the intended effect was the same in that relics ended up being distributed far and wide in order to provide localized sacred sites for immediate devotion. Though Ashoka’s collection and distribution of relics is rooted in legend, not historical fact, the centripetal spread of Buddhist relics that was said to have occurred under his auspices became the origin-story for many relics found later in Buddhist 50 China. The spread, or translation, of these relics from a Buddhist country to a non- Buddhist one was of particular importance for the acquisition of Buddhist relics for 48 Strong Relics, 143. See also John S. Strong, The Legend of King Aśoka: A Study and Translation of the Aśokāvadāna (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983),109-119. The authorship and date of this is still unknown, but it was probably composed around the second century CE. Strong, Legend, 26-27. 49 Strong, Legend, 219-220. 50 Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries also received some of Ashoka’s relics and are of interest, but they are not our direct concern here. Sri Lanka in particular was a Buddhist realm were relic veneration was extremely widespread. 553 Japan. The original source of Buddhist relics, India, was very far away from Japan, so many relics had to come from an intermediary Buddhist country, most commonly China. Indeed, the India-China-Japan transmission of Buddhist relics served as a precedent for the translation and creation of Christian relics in Japan in the sixteenth century—though the movement of the latter obviously followed a different course, the Holy Land-Europe- India-Japan. As such, it behooves us to take a closer look at not only the relationship between the spread of Buddhism to China and the spread of relics there, but also how relics came to sacralize the entire country as a Buddhist realm through their enshrinement at certain sites. The importation into and the use of relics in China is interesting and significant in its own right. But for our purposes here it is mainly important for establishing a precedent not only for the importation, veneration, and creation of both Buddhist and Christian relics in Japan, but also the subsequent sacralization of the Japanese (or, more specifically, Kyushuan) landscape in the vein of those two foreign religions. To this end, it is worth examining in brief detail Tansen Sen’s argument that Buddhist relics were an 51 important factor in changing, quite literally, the Chinese religious and sacred landscape. Sen argues that as Buddhism took ever-greater hold in China, its clergy, who were visited by Indian monks and sometimes took pilgrimages to India itself, developed a “borderland complex” in relation to that country. China, which was domestically thought to be the center of the civilized world, was nothing more than an outer realm in Buddhist geography and cosmography; India, not China, had been the homeland of the Buddha and it was where he had first propounded the dharma. This was made all the more real to Chinese clerics during pilgrimages to India, since all the sacred sites (such as the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya) were within its borders. Anxious over their country’s second-rate status in Buddhist sacred geography, Chinese monks and rulers sought to make China a Buddhist realm with as much authenticity as India by translating sacred objects, particularly relics, and creating their own Buddhist sites. The sacralization of China as a Buddhist realm eventually came to fruition especially since the religion lost much influence in India during the succeeding centuries. 51 Sen’s work is basically the inspiration behind this entire section on relics and has enabled me to think about Christian relics on Kyushu in ways that I would not have been able to otherwise. His monograph is a masterwork of world history. 554 As relics were installed and created in China, other sacred sites emerged, such as the home of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī on Mt. Wutai under the empress Wu (r. 690-705). Because of China’s newly emergent status as a Buddhist realm, of which relics and indigenous sacred sites were proof positive, Buddhists from other countries, most notably India, came to the land on their very own pilgrimages, thus reversing the “borderland 52 complex.” The creation of a new Buddhist realm closer to home, especially in the wake of Buddhism’s decline in India, enabled monks in other peripheral Buddhist countries, most notably Korea and Japan, to make pilgrimages to the sacred sites in China and even acquire relics housed within its borders for translation back home. In China, veneration of the Buddha’s relics was part and parcel of the introduction of Buddhism itself. To demonstrate this early relationship, John Kieschnick, in his discussion of the importance of sacred Buddhist objects to the development of Chinese material culture, points to several legendary accounts, archaeological discoveries, and historically recorded instances of the acquisition and veneration of foreign relics. One of the first references to Buddhist relics in China comes from a somewhat legendary account from the fourth or fifth century concerning the missionary activity of the famed Kang Senghui, a Sogdian monk from Vietnam. The story, as it goes, has Kang proving the spiritual viability and efficacy of Buddhism to a local ruler, a certain Sun Quan, by producing relics (śarīra) out of thin air. Convinced by this supernatural and sudden appearance of the śarīra (shèlì), Sun Quan subsequently built a stupa to house the newly manifested relics as well as a proper monastery for an emerging sangha. There are, however, also more historically verifiable instances of early relic translation to and veneration in China. For these, Kieschnick points to two murals in a tomb from the late- Han Dynasty (206 BCE- 220 CE) depicting “a group of globular objects on a plate” with 53 the accompanying characters for shèlì, the transliteration of śarīra. Still, relics in the early period of Chinese Buddhism were relatively rare and did not come to be widely venerated at enshrined sites until China could acquire more of them. 52 Sen sums this up nicely on pp. 6-13 and explores it more fully in his chapter, “The Emergence of China as a Central Buddhist Realm,” Sen, Buddhism, 55-101. 53 The above is taken from Kieschnick, Material Culture, 31-32. 555 Because India was the home of the Buddha, Chinese monks naturally made their way there in order to visit the sacred sites associated with him. Indian Buddhism had yet to fully decline, and pilgrim monks still had much to see and learn from their Indian coreligionists. Once in India, Chinese pilgrim monks frequently searched for new and authentic Buddhist teachings that had either been rare or totally unknown at home. In addition to searching for Sanskrit texts, many pilgrim monks sought relics of the Buddha for translation back to China. Though some of these had undoubtedly been transmitted further east before, as we have noted, China, by the sixth century CE, still lacked an 54 authentic physical presence of the Buddha simply because he had never set foot there. Other, more proximate Buddhist realms, such as the island of Sri Lanka, had already resolved this issue and were awash in both texts and relics. China, being somewhat distant and rather inaccessible due to natural geographic barriers, was at a distinct disadvantage to receiving the inherited teachings of the Buddha and as his physical remains. Therefore, it was only by going to look for authentic relics of the Buddha in India that the true physical presence of the Buddha could be translated to China. Many of these Chinese “search and acquire” missions, as we might call them, occurred during the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) Dynasties just as Buddhism was gaining an ever greater foothold in the country’s religious culture. One such mission was that of the pilgrim monk Xuanzang (600-664), who is perhaps the most prodigious translator of texts and relics from India to China. While on pilgrimage in India, Xuanzang had venerated many sacred sites thought to be in possession of relics. These included several stupas in Nagarāhāra reputed to have been built by Ashoka that contained the 55 Buddha’s parietal bone, skull bone, eye, robe, and staff. However, Xuanzang had been 54 Occasionally, Indian monks brought relics to China as part of their missionary activity, though these seem to have been relatively infrequent. For example, one Indian monk in 581 apparently gave Sui Wendi, the future emperor, a bag of relics to worship. See Strong’s chapter “Buddhist Relics in Comparative Perspective” in David Germano and Kevin Trainor, eds., Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 39. 55 The biography of Xuanzang provides some detail: “There was another stupa containing a piece of a skull bone in the shape of a lotus leaf. Here was also a Buddha’s eye relic, as large as an apple, with a brilliant light that shone out of the casket. Here, too, was the Buddha’s saṃghāti robe, made of the finest felt. There was also preserved the Buddha’s religious staff with pewter rings, of which the handle was made of sandalwood. The Master paid homage to all these objects with sad memories and reverence, and then offered fifty golden coins and one thousand silver coins, together with four gorgeous pennants, two pieces of brocade, and two suits of religious robes. After scattering various kinds of flowers, he took his leave and 556 no mere observer. Upon returning to the capital of Chang’an, Xuanzang displayed “one hundred fifty grains of the Tathāgata’s [the Buddha’s] relic bone,” numerous precious and sacred images (including one of the Buddha’s shadow), and some 657 Sanskrit texts 56 that had to be carried by twenty horses. Other monks who traveled to India and brought back relics included Wang Xuance (seventh century C.E.), who brought back the Buddha’s parietal bone; Yijing (635–713), who obtained some 300 grains of śarīra; Wukong (731- 812), who brought back a tooth given to him by his Indian master; and Jiye ( in India 966-976), who presented various relics to the emperor following a ten-year (966-976) stay in India. Sometimes monks were so desperate for relics they would undertake criminal acts. One seventh-century monk, a certain Mingyuan, tried to steal a 57 famous tooth relic while on pilgrimage in Sri Lanka. Chinese rulers also occasionally received relics as gifts from Indian missionaries. Such was the case when the Sui emperor, in 582, distributed relics he had received from an Indian monk to all thirty 58 prefectures within his realm. These gifts seem to be relatively few in comparison with the “search and acquire” missions undertaken by Chinese pilgrim monks. Besides acquiring authentic Indian relics, China, as it increasingly became a Buddhist country, started producing its own relics. Native relic-production occurred in several different ways. First of all, real Buddha-relics could be discovered as having been present on Chinese soil all along. Usually these ancient relics were attributed to Ashoka’s widespread distribution centuries earlier. As a result, they were considered authentic went out.” See Rongxi Li, A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1995), 54-55. Xuanzang apparently had doubt about some of the relics that he saw. When expressing incredulity about the size of some bone relics with his companion, Jayasena, a beam of multicolored light emitted from the stupa and entered the relics under discussion, thereby dazzling the monks into belief and veneration. Li, Master, 128-129. 56 Li, Master, 173-175. 57 Later Kublai Kahn would send an expeditionary force to Sri Lanka with the expressed purpose of capturing the relic, along with portions Buddha’s bowl and hair clippings. The famous admiral Zheng He also sought to take the tooth relic when he landed in Sri Lanka in 1405. See K.M. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 86-87. See also Tansen Sen, India, China, and the World: A Connected History (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 151. 58 The above list of pilgrim monks and their relics comes from Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion: An Exploration of the Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600-1200 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 41-44, and Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 33. 557 Buddha relics. Secondly, relics, mostly śarīra could manifest themselves quite literally out of thin air as a result of pious activity, such as intense meditation, or in ashes of cremated monks. Though they were new relics, they had manifested in China and were therefore authentic indigenous relics. And lastly, pious individuals could actually create relics through a variety of means such as enshrining sutras or turning the dead bodies of holy individuals into mummies for veneration. The discovery of Buddha relics already present within China seems to have begun in the fourth century as Chinese Buddhists of this period undertook archaeological excavations of old structures to determine if Buddhism had in fact existed in China long ago. At least nineteen sites confirmed that it had, indicating that parts of China had actually been parts of Ashoka’s ancient kingdom. Occasionally, these excavations found what were thought to be authentic Indian relics. One such case was that of the monk Huida (fourth century CE) who found one of Ashoka’s ancient stupas containing three Buddha relics, which included his hair and fingernails, underneath a pagoda in Jiankang, 59 the capital of the Eastern Jin (317-419 CE). Later, there were even discovered relics thought to be those previous Buddhas who had reached enlightenment on their own without the dharma (the so-called pratyekabuddhas), thus predating both the historical Siddhā 60rtha Gautama and King Ashoka’s stupa-building efforts. Altogether, these discovered relics served to demonstrate that China had been sacralized by relics before and was therefore a Buddhist realm in its own right. Another way in which China created its own Buddhist relics was through spontaneous generation. Mostly consisting of śarīra, these relics came into existence through the cremation of especially holy Chinese monks or by appearing quite literally out of thin air. Kieschnick points to several stories in which the ashes and bones of pious monks produced śarīra, such as when the bones of the monk Mucha produced hundreds of grains of śarīra in the ninth century. The crystalline beads could also appear as a result of intense pious activity such as meditation. In the year 744, some 3,070 śarīra appeared 59 For this information and a list of rediscovered sites, see Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: the Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: Brill, 1959), 277-280. Also, Sen, Buddhism, 68. 60 Kieschnick, Material Culture, 34-35; and Edwin O. Reischauer, Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law (New York: Ronald Press Company, 1955), 235. Kieschnick even points out that a Chinese parrot produced some śarīra because it could repeat the name of the Buddha. 558 in response to the performance of the Lotus samādhi ceremony by a certain monk named 61 Chujin. As Faure explains the phenomenon of spontaneously appearing relics, “śarīra were said to have appeared in the hands, in the mouth, between the eyebrows, in the hair, or in the clothes of fervent believers. They even appeared at the tip of a brush, from the 62 characters of a sūtra, or between the eyebrows of a Buddhist statue.” Though these relics were undoubtedly of lesser spiritual importance than a body part of the Buddha that had come from India, they were completely native relics whose very manifestation indicated that China had become truly a Buddhist realm. And just like Indian relics, Chinese-produced śarīra could be enshrined into pagodas and form local sacred sites upon the religious landscape. The spontaneous appearance of śarīra was certainly a rare occurrence, but pious individuals could willfully create various kinds of other relics that would also sacralize a particular location. Monks and even laymen could create so-called “Dharma-relics” by making miniature stupas or pagodas infused with the bits of sacred texts (usually sutras or dhāraṇī) or their ashes. The idea that sutras could be relics themselves was supported by the theory of Trikāya which held that the Buddha had three bodies one of which was called the dharmakāya. Essentially, the dharma, as written in a sutra, is a manifestation of the Buddha’s actual body (one of the Trikāya) and acted like a relic in much the same manner as a relic of his physical body. Typically, relics and sutras were venerated together, but, according to Indian precedent (as famously mentioned by Xuanzang), sutras themselves could act as a relic. Pious individuals in China also created dharma- relics for enshrinement. For example, one could, as the Empress Wu (602-705) was fond of doing, set up a pagoda or pillar containing or inscribed with a sutra or a dhāraṇī text. The resulting structure would literally be a reliquary for those venerating it, a designation 63 sometimes bolstered by having an actual physical relic in it. 61 Faure, Bernard, “Relics and Flesh Bodies: The Creation of Ch’an Pilgrimage Sites” in Susan Nanquin and Chün-fang Yü, eds., Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 166. 62 Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 139. Faure gives additional examples here. 63 Liu, Silk and Religion, 43. Also, Jinhua Chen, “Śarīra and Scepter. Empress Wu’s Political Use of Buddhist Relics” in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (25) Nos. 1-2 (2002): 35; 559 Once enshrined in a pagoda or temple, what did these relics do besides functioning as objects worthy of veneration? In both India and China, relics had a number of supranatural powers that revealed to people their inherent sacrality. First among these was that the acquisition or veneration of relics could generate karma for the pious, thus aiding them to escape the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra). One method of generating merit was 64 to make offerings (pūjā), such as flowers or incense, before the relic. Other times, one merely had to look at the relics, such as when the famous Guangzhai relics were translated to the capital of Chang’an in 678. The official Heba Zheng (d. after 678), Prefect of Luzhou, related that “by even taking one look at them or even hearing one word about them, people would have their “three types of karma” (sanye purified forever. By gazing at and worshipping them, people would get rid of the “six types of 65 impurities” (liuchen) once and for all.” Secondly, relics could effect the miraculous. One common miracle was the spectacular emanation of light that frequently dazzled and awed those who venerated the relic. Other times they could produce spontaneous healing, such as in the case of an illness, injury or some other type of ailment. Relics had such healing properties that some people even ingested them as a form of supernatural medicine. Sometimes relics could enable children to be born to those who could not bear them. On occasion, they could even alter natural phenomena. Such was the case of the relic-mummy of the tenth-century monk Wenyan who was venerated in the seventeenth 66 century as being able to assist in rainmaking rituals. 103-104; and Jinhua Chen, Philosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643-712) (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 204. 64 Stephen C. Berkwitz nicely sums up how venerating relics could produce merit: “The benefits thought to come from venerating relics are not the result of any intervention on the part of the Buddha, but rather are taken to be the results of the well‐intentioned, well‐performed act itself through the impersonal karmic workings of cause and effect. In other words, the Buddhist theory of karma (Pāli: kamma) affirms that certain wholesome actions will inevitably produce good effects sometime in the future. The unripened consequences of good karma are also known as “merit,” which constitutes one of the desired ends to which many Buddhist practitioners aspire when venerating relics.” Berkwitz, History, 14-15. Khenpo Sodargye (1962-), a modern Tibetan master, encourages the veneration of relics for gaining merit by circumambulating stupas. See his work, Khenpo Sodargye, Three Methods of Merit Accumulation, trans. by the Wisdom and Compassion Translation Center (Bodhi Institute of Compassion and Wisdom USA, 2013), 14-26. 65 Jinhua Chen, Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship: Tanqian in Sui Buddhism and Politics (Kyoto: Scuola italiana di studi sull’Asia Orientale, 2002), 123-124. 66 Taken from Kieschnick, Material Culture, 34-35, 49, 50. 560 One particular function that is especially pertinent to our study is that relics could 67 consecrate a site or structure, namely the stupa created to house the object itself. Relics for this purpose could be any of the aforementioned kinds of relics, but the most common ones were those from the Buddha, of human origin, a few śarīra, or even passages of scriptures. In fact, śarīra were particularly important early on for establishing new sacred sites. As Faure has put it, “like the “dividing of incense” in modern Chinese religion [citation omitted], the “dividing of the śarīra” ensured—willy-nilly perhaps—the 68 multiplication of new cultic centers.” The importation of foreign relics and the creation of native Chinese relics was, if we recall Tansen Sen’s argument outlined earlier, a major factor in sacralizing China as an authentic and independent Buddhist realm. Relics were often the sacred focus of particular sites or the cultic centers that possessed them, giving such locations their spiritual cache that drew in both the local population and pilgrims from other areas. Two rulers, Emperor Sui Wendi (541-604) and Empress Wu Zhao (624-705), both undertook extensive relic distribution campaigns that ultimately refashioned the Chinese religious landscape. The importance of Indian relics in the sacralization of China as a Buddhist realm is most apparent in Wendi’s distribution. As the founder of the short-lived but pivotal Sui Dynasty (581-618), Wendi had reunified the country politically following several centuries of division and warfare. Typically, his relic distribution campaign has been interpreted as a means for culturally unifying the Chinese society and legitimizing his newly founded regime. However, as Chen Jinhua has noted, the campaigns “also spread 69 some profound and time-honored Buddhist practices to every corner of the empire.” One of these practices was, of course, relic veneration. China, with its apogee of Buddhism still to come in the Tang Dynasty, still maintained contact with India as both Chinese and Indian monks traveled between the two countries. Since there had yet to be widespread native relic production, Wendi would come to use relics purported to be of Indian origin in his distribution to all the provinces. The importance of Wendi’s relics 67 Kieschnick, Material Culture, 30-31. 68 Nanqin and Yü, Pilgrims, 179. 69 Chen, Monks and Monarchs, 5. 561 being from India is underscored in one of the official histories of the relic distribution, Wang Shao’s (d. ca 610) Sheli Ganying Ji (Account of the Stimulus and Responses Related to the Relics): When the August Emperor was still a “submerged dragon”, a Bramanic (i.e. Indian) śramaṇa paid him a visit in his residence, leaving him a bag of relics, saying, “As you, Dānapati, have good intentions [towards Buddhism], I leave these for you to worship.” After the monk left, [the future emperor] vainly tried to find him. Later, the emperor and śramaṇa Tanqian each counted the relics many times by putting them on the palms of their hands. Each time they arrived at a different number and could not determine the true quantity. Tanqian said, “I heard from a brahman that the dharma-body is beyond measure and cannot be calculated by any means in the human world.” [The Emperor] then had a “seven jewel box” 70 made to keep them (i.e. relics). Regardless of whether or not these relics were actually from India, those recording the incident certainly portrayed them as such. In any case, Wendi made the most of these relics by distributing them across his realm with the expressed purpose of establishing pagodas and temples to house them. Following elaborate rituals and encasements in ornate vase reliquaries, Wendi sent them out “to be enshrined in the pagodas simultaneously in all thirty prefectures at noon on the fifteenth day of the tenth month [of th that year] (November 15 , 601).” The campaign was an astounding success, and people apparently emptied the cities to venerate the relics, receive teaching in the dharma, and witness miracles, such as emanations of light, coming from the objects themselves. Underscoring how the relics would literally sacralize the land, the śramaṇas charged with their enshrinement read to the people the so-called “repentance-text” (chanhui wen) which, in effect, sacralized the people in these locales by enabling them to receive the bodhisattva precepts: Emperor so and so, the Buddha’s disciple with the bodhisattva-precepts, reverently reports to all the Buddhas, all the dharmas and all the worthy and saintly monks in the “Ten Directions” (shifang ) and of the “Three Time Periods” (sanshi; i.e. the past, present and the future worlds): Thanks to the blessing of the Three Jewels, We, your disciple, have become the ruler and father of all the common people. Intending to obtain bodhi along with all the commoners, now We hope to spread the relics to the [thirty] prefectures, where pagodas are to be 70 This quote is from Wang Shao’s (d. ca 610) Sheli Ganying Ji (Account of the Stimulus and Responses Related to the Relics) in Chen, Monks and Monarchs, 89-90. I have removed some of the Chinese characters and pinyin that appears in Chen’s translation. 562 erected to enshrine them, so that all the people can cultivate good karma and obtain the wondrous fruits altogether…. In the lecture, we see Wendi connecting not only the people to the inherent sacrality of the relics, but also the entire Buddhist cosmology that would now be present in physical form in a locally accessible temple. But perhaps the most explicit example of making the land sacred through the relics was the request that all the beneficent entities in Buddhism descend to the location where the relic had been installed: We pray that all the Buddhas who permanently reside in the “Ten Directions,” the profound dharma-treasures as contained in the “Twelve Divisions of the Canon” (shierbu jing), all the deities, bodhisattvas, and all the worthies and saints, will demonstrate their compassion by accepting my invitation and descending on this “plot of Enlightenment” (daochang; Skt. bodhimaṇḍa) to bear witness to the repentance that We, your disciple, perform on behalf of all sentient beings. What is key here is that the relics are the material focal point for the daochang of an entire region. This term, initially referring to the exact spot where the Buddha gained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, represented the “axis mundi—the liminal site 71 between the divine and profane realms.” As a result of the invitation for the all the Buddhas and deities to descend on the newly constructed pagoda, the repentance of the people through the Bodhisattva precepts, and the very presence of the Buddha himself in the form of his relics, the land to which Wendi distribute the relics literally became sacred. The other ruler who was instrumental in the transformation of China into a truly Buddhist realm by sacralizing the landscape was the Tang Empress Wu Zhao. Like Wendi, Empress Wu was personally devoted to the cause of Buddhism and had a strong affinity for relic veneration in particular. For example, when the famous finger-bone relic of the Buddha at Famen Temple was brought to Luoyang in 705 to aid her failing health, Empress Wu “stayed close to the relic with her whole body and heart” and “fell 71 The term daochang also “began to be used to designate a “ritual precinct,” viz., a site where such critical Buddhist rituals as ordinations were held, and by the seventh century came to be commonly used as the equivalent of “monastery" (si)." See the entry for bodhimaṇḍa in Buswell and Lopez, Dictionary of Buddhism. 563 72 prostrate with uttermost piety” before it. Though personally devoted to relics, Empress Wu made sure to acquire many thousands of relics and have them distributed across the realm. In contrast to the distribution campaigns of Wendi, whose relics were ostensibly derived from an Indian source, Empress Wu’s relics were primarily natively Chinese. These relics either spontaneously appeared or had been excavated from the Chinese soil. In 678 a mysterious “soothsayer” advised her to begin an excavation in the city of Yifeng, one that ultimately yielded a coffer with more than ten thousand śarīra. Empress Wu had Guangzhai Temple (and later the Tower of the ‘Seven Jewels" or Qibaotai) built upon the sacred site and then distributed the many relics throughout the capitals and 73 prefectures with each of them receiving some forty-nine grains each. Underscoring the divine nature of the discovery and then Empress Wu’s goals for distributing the relics, ten Buddhist monks under the direction of Xue Huaiyi (d. 695) wrote the following document: Originally, the Divine August One made the grad vow that she was to build eight million and forty thousand treasure-pagodas [to enshrine] relics. Thus, to spread the relics obtained in the Guangzhai Quarter to the four continents is to demonstrate the correspondence [between the actuality and the prophecy of] spreading the relics to the eight directions simultaneously. The distribution of these relics was not done through human efforts, but was accomplished together with the divine power in the eight directions. This is to display the efficacy [of the prophecy] that those who protect and maintain the True Law will harvest a large 74 number of relics. Unlike King Ashoka and Wendi, the two monarchs Empress Wu sought to emulate, she did not build many new pagodas to enshrine relics, choosing instead to house them in 75 existing ones. 72 Eugene Wang, “Of the True Body: The Buddha’s Relics and Corporeal Transformation in Tang Imperial Culture” in Wu Hung and Katherine E. Tsiang, eds., Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 90. For the extent of Empress Wu’s devotion to the Famen relics, see Chen, Monks and Monarchs, 118-121. 73 Chen, Monks and Monarchs, 122. 74 The document, Dayun jing Shenhuang shouji yishu (Commentary on the Meaning of the Prophecy about the Divine August One [i.e. Wu Zhao] in the Dayun jing) is quoted in Chen, Monks and Monarchs, 127. 75 Chen, Monks and Monarchs, 137-140. She did build a few, such as the Qibaotai “treasure-tower” and a pagoda at Songshan in 700. 564 One way in which Empress Wu sought to sacralize the Chinese religious landscape that her predecessors did not was to promote so-called dharma-relics. She did this primarily by sponsoring four Chinese translations of the Buddhoṣṇīṣa vijaya dhāraṇī sūtra. This text reveals that a pillar with the Uṣṇīṣavijaya dhāraṇī upon it would essentially be a “pagoda of the relic of the Buddha’s whole body,” and that both the creator of the pillar and those venerating would receive numerous benefits. As Jinhua Chen explains, “given that the dhāraṇī was considered a crystallization of the Buddha’s teachings, the dhāraṇī -pillars with relics were actually constructed and worshipped as pagodas for both the physical and spiritual relics of the Buddha. This dhāraṇī sutra became very popular in China, as is attested by the vast numbers of Uṣṇīṣavijaya dhāraṇī 76 pillars found all across medieval China.” The creation of such dharma-relics in China would also be taken up with much enthusiasm in Japan (as detailed below) after Buddhism came to that country. Thus, a practice that originated in India, then translated to China by monks such as Xuanzang who had witnessed it in that country, finally spread to other countries that sought to become Buddhist in their own right. Authentic Indian relics were less of a concern after China became a Buddhist realm; and native relic production, via archaeological discovery or spontaneous manifestation of śarīra, was able to compensate for the lack of supply. Though physical relics always held greater sacral cache and were by their very nature more important, dharma-relics were rather good substitutes since the entire body of the Buddha was thought to have been present in the dharma. Additionally, as Strong has pointed out, authentic physical relics might have been increasingly difficult to obtain, therefore creating a “supply and demand" problem. By simply putting a sutra or dhāraṇī text in a miniature stupa, China had a “virtually unlimited supply of ‘relics'” at their 77 disposal. Relics derived from Chinese holy men, such as mummies, were also used as spiritual foci to strengthen the reputations of cultic centers. This was primarily useful in 76 Chen, “Śarīra and Scepter,” 103-104. Chen also points to another text, Wugou jingguang tuoluoni jing, that gives scriptural approval to the enshrinement of dharma-relics, namely placing dhāraṇī texts in stupas as if they were physical relics of the Buddha. See also pp.112-114. 77 Germano and Trainor, Embodying the Dharma, 38. 565 sacralizing monasteries, which could attract pilgrims from near and far. Bernard Faure explains this process in reference to Chan monasteries: On the one hand, the cult of relics and mummies, while allowing the popularization of Ch’an [Chan Buddhism], implied a humanization of the sacred, a kind of demythologization that often went against local beliefs in cosmic or divine mediators. Mediators became idealized men, Ch’an masters whose power was manifest in and through the relics. This evolution, characterized by the replacement of mythical adhesions by human dominations, set up a new “sacred topography,” a new network of pilgrimage anchored in sacred sites such as stupas. Chief among Chan sacred sites that possessed such relics were the monasteries on Mt. Song (Songshan) in present-day Henan province, and, perhaps most importantly, Caoxi (Ts’ao-ch’I) in present-day Guangdong. In Caoxi, the monastery of Nanhua (Nanhua Si) (monastery of Southern China) possessed the mummified “flesh body” of the sixth Chan patriarch Huineng (d. 713) himself, as well as a number of his contact relics such as his robe and bowl. Because of these relics and the mummies of two other eminent monks, both of whom were from the early modern period, Dan Tian (Tan-t’ien, d. 1614) and Hanshan Deqing (1546-1623), Nanhua naturally became a major cultic center for Chan in China. Such was the monastery’s renown as a sacred site that pilgrims, both domestic and international, came to study and venerate the relics there. Even the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was most definitely not a pilgrim, made the trek to see the monastery during one of his sojourns. Moreover, Nanhua was a sacred site from which relics could be transferred. Occasionally, pilgrims even acquired relics from Nanhua to bring back to their home countries. Some śarīra of Huineng and that of five of his predecessors even made their way to Kamakura via the Sōtō lineage. The demand for these relics even inspired thievery in at least one instance in 722, when a Korean monk on pilgrimage alledgedly 78 tried to steal the patriarch’s head and bring it back to his homeland. Much as the translation of relics resulted in the creation of China as a Buddhist realm, in line with Tansen Sen’s argumentation, the same process was repeated in Japan over the course of a thousand years prior to the arrival of Christianity. Like China before it, Japan needed relics in order to sacralize its landscape as a proper Buddhist realm. The 78 Nanqin and Yü, Pilgrims, 165-180. Quote on p. 178. Episode of the head thief on p. 175. Faure, in mentioning Ricci’s visit, refers to Gallagher, China in the 16th Century, 222-223. For more information on “flesh-bodies,” see Faure, Rhetoric, 155-156. 566 enormous distance to India—some 2,800 miles as the crow flies from Fukuoka to Bodhgaya—prevented the Japanese from making pilgrimage there. Instead, China, already an abundant source for relics by the middle of the Tang Dynasty, offered itself up as a completely acceptable alternative. In fact, as we will see, some Japanese monks were even able to obtain relics that were purportedly of Indic origin and bring them back to Japan. Moreover, Japan, like China, would also create its own relics and distribute them to various sites throughout the country. Relics and the Sacralization of Japan as a Buddhist Realm A total of five thousand relics were counted; of these three thousand belonged to Saidaiji. One thousand of these relics were given to Ninshō [Eison’s disciple]. Approximately one hundred other relics were divided appropriately and distributed to others who wanted them. The more than nine hundred relics that remain have been installed in five containers placed in an iron pagoda. -Eison (Hokkeji shari engi) (Account of the Relics at Hokkeji 79) Having examined how relics played an important role in the “Buddhicization” of the Chinese religious landscape, we must examine how the religion similarly altered the Japanese one. The introduction of Buddhism to Japan was complex, and this section only attempts to give a brief overview of how Japanese monks and nuns created, translated, and venerated relics as they related to the emergence of new Buddhist sacred sites in the country. The main purpose of this section, in fact, is to explore the process of translating Buddhist relics in Japan insofar as this paralleled the translation of Christian relics to Kyushu. Of course there are many differences between the two cases, but the translation of many thousands of Buddhist relics to Japan to make it into a Buddhist country in its own right set an important precedent for the translation of various types of Christian relics. Japanese veneration of bits of bones, body parts, contact relics, and mysteriously ethereal substances eventually served Christianity well when missionaries from that 79 Quoted in Paul Groner, “Eison’s Religious Activities,” in Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, eds., Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 127. 567 religion sought to introduce similar sacred objects for the purpose of establishing their own local Kyushuan sacred landscape. Because Buddhism was a foreign religion to Japan, any initial relics, especially those belonging to the Buddha, had to be translated to the islands. Curiously, however, the first recorded Buddhist relic in Japan seems to have been created spontaneously. According to the Nihon Shoki (Nihongi), the first relic appeared in 584 during a celebration of a Buddhist vegetarian meal by three nuns and a representative of the official Soga no Umako (d. 626), who later erected one of the first Buddhist temples in Japan. Having spontaneously appeared, the relic, after some experimentation, proved to be indestructible. The experience led Umako to construct a stupa to house the relic, thus initiating pagodas as sacred sites upon the Japanese religious landscape. Eventually this stupa met destruction at the hands of an imperial faction that opposed the foreign religion, which they considered dangerous. According to the tenth-century text the Sanbōe (Illustrations of the Three Jewels), however, this wanton act of destruction caused an outbreak of smallpox which left the people “[feeling] as if their flesh were being 80 burned and flayed.” The temple was subsequently reconstructed. Foreign Buddhist relics were ultimately translated to Japan when political opposition to the religion died down. The first Buddha relics evidently came as a gift from Paekche upon the ascension of Emperor Sushun (r. 587-592), whereupon his successor, Empress Suiko (r. 592-628) had them enshrined in a stupa at Hōkōji temple (in Kyoto). Other relics followed from Korea, another land that had achieved some status as a Buddhist realm in the translation of relics from India across the continent. Now that the foreign religion had state sponsorship, Buddhist relics came to be acquired, enshrined, 80 This account was taken from Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 59, but originally recorded in the Nihon Shoki. The Sanbōe records the event as follows: “Another time, a stone image of Maitreya was brought from Paekche. The prime minister, Lord Soga Umako, took charge of it, and he built a temple in the eastern quarter of his mansion to house it, and he worshiped it. He placed three nuns in the temple to care for the image. The prime minister built a pagoda in the temple. The prince said, “A pagoda is supposed to hold a relic of the Buddha. Perhaps a relic of Tathāgata Sākyamuni will appear here.” So Umako prayed, and a relic of the Buddha was found lying upon the offertory rice. It was put into a jar of lapis lazuli, which was placed upon an altar, and they worshiped it.” In Edward Kamens, The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tamenori's Sanboe (Ann Arbor Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1988), 175. Relics appearing spontaneously indicated a “hemorrhage of the sacred” and had been recorded in Japan, at least, as having occurred back in India as a precedent. The tenth patriarch, Parsva (copy transliteration) had thirty-seven sarira appear as a result of intense meditation. Faure, Visions, 162-163. 568 and distributed throughout the land under imperial auspices. Influential monarchs, such as Prince Shōtoku (574-622), Emperor Shōmu (r. 724-749), and Empress Kōken (also known as Shōtoku; r. 749-58 and 764-70) fostered relic veneration and the Buddhist sacralization of Japan by creating cultic sites centered on the enshrinement of relics. Shōmu, in particular, fostered stupa construction throughout Japan in its provincial 81 temples (kokubunji). The number of relics (and therefore the sacrality of Japan as a Buddhist realm) increased dramatically as Japanese monks began pilgrimage to China with greater frequency from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. Among the most important were Kūkai (774-835) and Ennin (c.793-864), both of whom promoted relic veneration within their respective sects. Kūkai translated some eighty relics and numerous other sacred objects (some of which included contact relics), such as kāṣāya robes and offering bowls. A few these apparently had excellent provenance and had supposedly come from India 82 via the transmission of the patriarchs. Ennin, by comparison, brought back relatively few actual relics. Nevertheless, he was an important figure in the translation of relics to Japan due to his position as abbot of the famed and highly influential Enryaku-ji temple atop Mt. Hiei. It was to this location that Ennin translated some three grains from Bodhisattvas, two grains of a pratyekabuddha (a so-called “lone Buddha”), and several 83 other kinds of relics. Ennin also enacted an important relic-veneration service atop the mountain that would continue beyond his death and allow people in the capital nearby access to their sacrality. According to Minamoto Tamenori’s (941-1011) Sanbōe: “[Ennin] returned to Japan in the fourth year of the Jōwa era [847] and he brought many relics of the Buddha with him. In the second year of the Jōgan era [860] he conducted this service for the first time, and made provision for its continued observance in the Sūjiin.” 81 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 58-60. Shōtoku himself even had an experience during which relics materialized out of nothing into his hands as a result of his piety. 82 Fabio Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 73. See also Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 61. 83 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 400, note 64, and Faure, Visions, 164. 569 The “service” was actually the so-called “The Relics Service,” in which the monks and 84 laypersons venerated the relics brought from China. A number of other monks, though lacking the enormous historical stature of Kūkai and Ennin, were responsible for translating vast number of relics to Japan. The monk Engyō (799-852), who returned to Japan in 839, brought with him many Buddhist 85 artifacts including some 3,000 relics. The monk Ryōsen, who studied at Mt. Wutai, is said to have translated some 2,700 relics (according to one source) back to Japan for the retired emperor Saga (r. 809-823) as repayment for a large amount of gold the ex- 86 monarch had sent him. Several other monks also brought back relics of the Buddha himself. Gishin (781-833) somehow managed to get one of the teeth of the Buddha that Xuanzang himself had acquired in 645 while in India. The monk Shunjō (1167-1227), after a twelve-year pilgrimage in China that ended in 1209, brought back with him three śarīra of the Buddha, one grain of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (J: Fugen Bosatsu), 87 and three grains from the holy man Ruan. The Shingon monk Eun (798-869) returned with a Buddha relic after his travels, and Chōnen (938-1016), a monk from Tōdaiji, came 88 back with one in 987. Besides Japanese pilgrims, Chinese missionaries helped to translate relics to Japan. For example, the Risshū monk Jianzhen (688-763, also known as Ganjin in Japanese) brought some thirty śarīra to Japan in the eighth century when he 89 founded the temple complex of Tōshōdaiji in Nara. Of the few Indian monks that were said to have visited Japan, at least one, a certain Hodo, is credited with bringing a 90 Buddha-relic to Satsuma in the seventh century. 84 Edward Kamens, The Three Jewels, 302-304. 85 Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 73. 86 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 62 and Reischauer, Ennin’s Diary, 262. 87 Faure, Visions, 165. 88 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 62 and 265. 89 Faure, Visions, 163. 90 Upendra Thakur, India and Japan: a Study in Interaction During 5th Cent.-14th Cent. A.D. (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1992), 48. 570 The actual provenance of these relics matters little for our purposes. But since they were, in effect, authentic physical manifestations of the Buddha in Japan, the lineage was often very important for those who venerated the relics and had translated them back to Japan. For example, Ennin, on his pilgrimage to China, was immensely interested in 91 the provenance of the relics he encountered there. It is likely he knew the provenance of the relics he brought back to Japan. Similarly, Kūkai explained the provenance of relics and other sacred objects he brought from China. In his Catalogue, he writes: The eight types of items listed above were originally brought by the Acharya Vajrabodhi from southern India and were handed down to ‘the great broad wisdom ācārya’ [i.e. Amoghavajra]. Amoghavajra then handed them to the ācārya of Qinglongsi’ [Huiguo]. Huiguo in turn passed them to Kūkai. They are the visible proof of instruction in the secret teachings and the transmission of the 92 dharma, the refuge of all sentient beings. Eison, in his account of the relics at Hokkeji, likewise took interest in the lineages of 93 relics of his day, tracing them back to installation by Ganjin or Kūkai. Such pains were taken because, as Fabio Rambelli has pointed out, relics indicated the authenticity of the 94 teaching and practice of the temple or location that possessed them. In other words, relics were tangible and accessible objects that validated a particular holy teaching by their sheer sacred materiality. Temples, from which the dharma emanated, were thus not only holy by virtue of their teaching, but by the physical remains of the patriarchs, the Bodhisattvas, and even the Buddha himself. Religious institutions were not the only entities that made use of Buddhist relics to sacralize the spiritual landscape of Japan. The imperial government, as a result of having sponsored the voyages of many pilgrim-monks to China, had easy access to 91 Reischauer, Ennin’s Diary, 302. 92 Quotation is from Cynthea J. Bogel, With a Single Glance Buddhist Icon and Early Mikkyō Vision (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 130. 93 Paul Groner, “Eison’s Religious Activities,” in Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, eds. Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 127. 94 The importance of authenticity for relics is nicely summed up by Rambelli: “In this sense, all objects brought back from China to Japan in the process of the transmission of the Dharma, or handed down from master to disciple, gifts from emperors, aristocrats, and so on, all share to a certain extent the status of the relic as embodiments of authenticity—not just “authenticity” in general, but the authenticity and truth of a specific religious tradition, lineage, and practice.” Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 62. 571 translated relics and frequently distributed them across the country to shore up their own authority and legitimacy. Here, the research of Brian Ruppert is particularly revelatory since he demonstrates how relics figured into patronage systems and protective measures by both state and religious institutions. Once the imperial government had acquired enough relics from true Buddhist lands, it began, in the late ninth century and up to the thirteenth, to offer relics to major temples and shrines throughout Japan (kokubunji temples). The first recorded instance of the imperial distribution of relics occurred in 831. The government made an offering of some “500 grains of Buddha relics” to the temples of Northern Kyushu. These grains, as Ruppert notes, might have been the very same śarīra 95 that the monk Ryōsen sent to the government during his stay at Mt. Wutai. If this was thought to be true at the time, then the government was quite literally sacralizing temples in Northern Kyushu with the physical remains of the historical Buddha. Though the first recorded offering was made to temples, the government soon offered relics to major shrines in regular fashion, usually after the accession of a new emperor. Known as the ichidai ichido busshari hōken, or the “Buddha Relics Offering,” the rituals effected the transfer of grain relics, usually housed in exquisite reliquaries (shari-tō) to some fifty shrines. These offerings, as Ruppert argues, were meant to “incorporate the body of the Buddha into the highest levels of the imperial cult…” while creating an interdependent relationship that would employ the “apotropaic powers of 96 Buddhism” in the court’s favor. However, on another level, the imperial distribution of relics in a centripetal manner quickened the Buddhist sacralization of the islands more so than it could have under the auspices of a few monks translating them from China. Indeed, as Ruppert notes, the distribution of relics to shrines effectively created a “synthesis of kami worship (jingi sūhai) and Buddhism focused on the power of the 95 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 65. Ruppert notes that the reason for the offering is not given, but it must have been a votive offering. This author wonders if the militarily strategic location of Northern Kyushu did not have something to do with it. The Buddha’s presence in the form of his relics might have been meant to ward off any potential threats from the continent. Kōbō himself was based out of Kannonji temple at Dazaifu, which was the government’s regional headquarters for western Japan. 96 Quotes taken from Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 46-48, information of paragraph taken from the chapter “Buddha Relics as Imperial Treasures,” 43-101. 572 97 emperor…” These newly installed relics significantly altered the religious landscape, as previously indigenous shrines devoted solely to kami worship (jingi shinkō, something we refer to today as Shintō) became jingōji, or “temple-shrines” where prayers were offered on behalf of the Kami by a Buddhist prelate. The jingōji were not common in the eighth century but were widespread by the medieval era, likely in no small part due to the 98 relic distributions. Most of the recipients of these relics offerings were, of course, in the provinces around the capital, but several in Kyushu also received them, namely the Munakata and Sumiyoshi shrines in Chikuzen, the Kōra shrine in Chikugo, and the Aso 99 Shrine in Higo. If śarīra or other physical remains of the Buddha were not to be had for widespread distribution, the government could use dharma-relics to sacralize the landscape and make it more Buddhist. In fact, the very first widespread distribution of relics by the government involved sutras rather than physical remains, no doubt because these could be created at will. The Emperor Shōmu (r. 724-49), in the mid-eighth century, mandated that seven-story pagodas be built throughout the provinces (at each of the kokubunji temples), with each housing dharma-relics made from sutras. Two of the sutras (the Golden Light Scripture of Victorious Kings and the Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Wonderful Law) were thought to protect the nation in their relic form. One copy of the sutras had an especially sacral quality to it since the emperor himself had personally copied it. The Empress Shōtoku (r. 749-58, 764-70), on an even grander scale, sought to build a million stupas on miniature scale for equal distribution to ten major temples in the environs surrounding the capital cities of Nara and Naniwa. It does not seem likely that her goal was actually met, though it is reasonable to assume that “several 100 hundred thousands” were completed. 97 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 48. 98 Ruppert’s glossary is particularly helpful in this matter. Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 340. 99 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 55. 100 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 60. For a fuller treatment, see Peter Kornicki’s article, “ Hyakumantō Darani and the Origins of Printing in Eighth-century Japan” International Journal of Asian Studies (9) no. 1 (2012): 43–70. Quote on p. 56. Kornicki also sees a direct connection between Shōtoku and Empress Wu. If this is the case, then the lineage of stupa-building monarchs would be thus: Ashoka inspires the foreign monarch Wendi; Wendi inspires Empress Wu; and Empress Wu inspires the foreign monarch Shōtoku. 573 Distribution of relics and dharma-relics did not abate when warrior government (the bakufu) emerged in the thirteenth century. Both the Kamakura and the Ashikaga regimes continued relic distributions in order to establish patronage systems and harness Buddhism’s protective powers. This latter function was particularly important for warding off foreign threats. The Hōjō family sponsored relic veneration at major temples around Kamakura, and, as noted earlier, the third shogun, Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192- 1219) acquired a tooth relic from the monk Eisai (also known as Yōsai) in 1212 after his 101 return to Japan from China. Besides acquiring and venerating relics, the shogunates promoted the further sacralization of Japan as a Buddhist realm by sponsoring major relic distributions in direct imitation of King Ashoka. Yoritomo himself, in 1197, set about constructing 84,000 reliquaries throughout the provinces. This massive project was apparently an effort to pacify the souls of all those who had died in the wars that led up to the establishment of his warrior government. In 1225, Hōjō Yasutoki (1183-1242) ordered 84,000 stone reliquaries to be built for those who had been executed in the Jōkyū War (1221). The sponsoring of reliquary creation occurred several more times under the Kamakura regime, with the last occurring in 1260. However, the Ashikaga took up the mantle of King Ashoka during their sponsorship of the so-called rishō-tō, or “reliquaries [of the Buddha] that benefit sentient beings.” The first Ashikaga shogun, Takauji (1305- 1358) and his brother, Tadayoshi (1306-1352), took the initiative to have rishō-tō built in conjunction with the creation of ankokuji temples (“pacification of the realm temples”) throughout all the provinces. This too was done to pacify their war dead and was directly inspired by the stupa-building of Ashoka. The project was also supposed to result in some 68 full-scale provincial pagodas. The Ashikaga continued to distribute relics throughout their regime, with the last one occurred in 1489 with the last two shoguns, Ashikaga 102 Yoshimasa (1436-1490) and Ashikaga Yoshihisa (1465-1489). 101 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 234-235. 102 Ruppert provides a translation of the order. Note the conscious attempt to imitate Ashoka, who likewise sacralized India and other realms as repentance for all the killing that had carried him to power: “Therefore, we search here for the ancient tracks of As’oka, constructing 84,000 jeweled stūpas, and believing [in the promise of] the benefits of wealth [i.e. wealth derived from the merit of ritual], copy the Hōkyōin dhāraṇī in all the sites of spiritual power in the provinces [throughout the realm].” Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 237- 238; 240; 255; 456, note 66. 574 Besides playing an important role in transforming Japan into a Buddhist realm in its own right, the governmental distribution of relics and stupa construction enabled the apotropaic power of those relics to be exerted on both the national and local level. For example, relics formed an important part of the Shingon Latter Seven-Day Rite (go- shichinichi mishiho). Started by Kūkai in 835 and continued well into the Ashikaga period, the rite heavily involved the worship (and distribution) of relics for the “regeneration of the body of the emperor” and the protection and prosperity of the 103 state. The apotropaic power of the relics was not limited to use by the state. Both clerics and laypeople also had access to the power of relics through public veneration (shari-e). The first shari-e, as mentioned earlier, occurred when Ennin initiated the public worship of relics on Mt. Hiei in the ninth century, though women could not attend due to 104 prohibitions forbidding them access to the mountain’s slopes. Eventually the abbot Ryōgen (912-985) moved the ceremony to the capital so that women and those who could 105 not climb the mountain might receive merit from the shari-e. Yet, ultimately, both genders had access to and participated frequently in relic worship. For women, this was particularly true among the upper classes, as female members of the Fujiwara family sponsored relic worship for protection in childbirth and the benefit of their lineages. Describing the popularity of the Mt. Hiei service and its extension to men and women beyond the confines of the mountain in the eleventh century, the Konjaku Monogatari Shū relates: After that, the abbot of the mountain [Hiei] said, “It is extremely lamentable that the [relic] assembly does not [include] worship by any of the women of the capital. We brought the relics down [from Hiei] to the Hōkō’in chapel for worship, monks, laity, men, and women from throughout the capital prostrated themselves in worship and wailed without limit…It is said that after that [relic assembly], the relics were also passed for worship to the emperor and imperial 106 consorts before being returned to the mountain [Hiei]. 103 See Ruppert’s chapter on this rite, Jewel in the Ashes, 102-141, with summaries of it on pp. 102-103, 330-331. 104 Faure, Visions, 165 and Kamens, The Three Jewels, 303-304. 105 Paul Groner, Ryōgen and Mount Hiei Japanese Tendai in the Tenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), 208-209. 106 Quoted in Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 195. For information on the participation of women in relic worship see his chapter on the subject, 192-229) Relic veneration on the part of the laity was even present in literature. The Nō play “Shari” by the famous playwright Zeami portrays both an itinerant cleric and a 575 So what types of individual benefits could result from relic veneration such as that described in the Konjaku Monogatari Shū? In Japan, the powers of relics were manifold. Foremost, they were sacred remains or objects that were powerful instruments for achieving Buddhahood. Sometimes their power was absolute, while other times, as Bernard Faure notes, a relic’s effectiveness depended upon “the faith and karma of the 107 faithful, along with their reactivation by appropriate ritual.” For example, relics could be used as foci for meditation, and the relics themselves could even be produced spontaneously by meditation sessions. Also, since a relic indicated the actual physical presence of the Buddha, veneration of the relic was literally veneration of the Buddha himself. Another function of relics was that they could literally be wielded by clerics if they were put into sacred objects and implements like a vajra (kongōsho). For example, several “Ritual Implements” in Kūkai’s “Catalogue of Newly Imported Sūtras and other Items” (806) lists several objects that had chambers or holes for the placement of relics. These included a vajra pestle, a bell, a samaya pestle [wand with single pointed ends] and vajra. Apparently the addition of relics to these already sacred implements was believed 108 to increase their power. Besides aiding the pious in achieving enlightenment, relics also produced some important spiritual and worldly benefits for both clerics and laypersons. These included “the modification of karma, increase of good fortune, protection by good deities, easy childbirth for women, and, finally, assurance that one would become a Buddha.” As in China, they could even produce physical changes in the natural world and aid harvests. 109 Some relics, when accompanied by the proper rituals, were said to have produced rain. According to a work by Ōe no Chikamichi (d. 1151) known as the Issai sharira shū (Comprehensive collection on relics), relics could provide many “This-Worldly Benefits” villager (who is actually the demon Sokushikki.) came to pay reverence to a tooth relic of the Buddha on a day that just happened to start the relic’s public veneration. See John S. Strong and Sarah M. Strong, “A Tooth Relic of the Buddha in Japan: An Essay on the Sennyū-ji Tradition and a Translation of Zeami’s Nō Play “Shari,” Japanese Religions, 20, No. 1 (1995): 1-33. 107 Faure, Visions, 161. 108 Bogel, With a Single Glance, 127-128. 109 Faure, Visions, 161. 576 (Genze riyaku) including: “Averting illness among the people;” “Elimination of Sin;” and 110 “Subjugation of Demons through Offerings to Relics.” Some relics could even be used to construct so-called “wish-fulfilling jewels,” described as looking like “large chicken 111 eggs of greenish hue and are said to emit light at night.” Known as Nyoi hōju, this kind of object was, as Brian Ruppert describes them, “a gem that reputedly spews forth treasures, clothing, food, and other objects in accordance with the wishes of its 112 possessor.” Likewise, relics were placed inside statues as a necessary means to “animate” the 113 image—that is make it “a replica of the Buddha” For example when the Great Buddha at Tōdaiji underwent restoration in the late twelfth century, the monk Chōgen (1121- 1206) placed relics inside the giant statue as part of its “opening of the eyes” (kaigen) ceremony. This action effectively fused the two bodies of the Buddha, namely the “nirmāṇakāya” (magical transmutation body) and the “saṃbhogakāya” (communal 114 enjoyment body).” Relics could also be used to sacralize particular locations and temples once Japan had already become a Buddhist realm. Keizan (1268-1325), a founder of the Sōtō Zen Sect in Japan, enhanced the reputation of his first main temple Yōkōji (in present-day Ishikawa Prefecture) by enshrining numerous relics in a mausoleum at a shrine called Gorōhō (Five Masters’ Peak). These relics included fragments of bones from Dōgen and Gikai, some śarīra, Gikai’s succession certificate, and even a sutra that the monk Ejō had copied in his own blood. William M. Bodiford explains the importance of this enshrinement: “These relics animated Gorōhō with the physical and spiritual presence of ancestral lineage that linked Japanese Sōtō to China. According to Keizan, 115 this mausoleum was to be revered by monks at all Sōtō temples.” In other words, the 110 Ruppert Jewel in the Ashes, 169; 172-173. 111 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 171. 112 Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes, 363. 113 Faure, Visions, 248. 114 Bogel, With a Single Glance, 53-53; and Faure, Visions, 248-249. 115 See Bodiford, Sōtō Zen, 96-97. 577 massive reliquary was a sacred site not only for those nearby, but for everyone in the Sōtō network all across Japan. As in China, the corpses of eminent monks came to be revered in the form of mummies. This practice in Japan, however, seems to have lasted for a much shorter duration than it had on the continent. A few did exist, such as the mummies of the Shingon master Kōchi Hōin and the Tendai master Zōga (917-1003). A more widespread practice was “animating” statues of eminent monks. More than just a realistic icon of a virtuous teacher, these statues were made literal doubles of the man since they contained some of his relics. Ashes from the master’s cremation or hair clippings were often used, as in the case with Ikkyū Sōjun (1394-1481). In one case, that of Keizan, we even have the eminent monk “animating” a statue while still alive, though not his own statue. Thinking himself to have been born thanks to the graces of Kannon, Keizan deposited hair clippings preserved from his own newborn head into a statue of Kannon. To this he 116 added his actual umbilical cord, which his mother had also apparently saved. In summation, relics in Buddhism were important material objects that not only provided an immediate locus of sacrality for spiritual and material benefits (karma, healing), but could also aid in the “Buddhicization” of lands where the dharma had not yet been spread. After achieving parinirvana, the Buddha was no longer accessible aside from his mortal remains. These naturally became venerated objects early on and, as such, possessed enormous spiritual cache. King Ashoka, in attempting to spread the dharma as widely as possible, used them to sacralize both his kingdom and lands beyond. Both Chinese monarchs and pilgrim monks translated relics from India to the “Middle Kingdom.” This was, as Tansen Sen has argued, in order to overcome the fact that China was a non-Buddhist realm on the periphery of the religion’s geographic and cosmographic orientation rather than at its center. Once China became a Buddhist realm with its own sacred sites, it could serve as the central Buddhist realm for all other realms. Its many monasteries now possessed both Indian and indigenous relics, and Mt. Wutai was now literally the abode of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. Soon even other realms on the periphery of Buddhist cosmography, such as Korea and Japan, could look to China for authentic transmission of both the dharma and the physical remains of the Buddha. 116 Faure, Visions, 169-173; and 39 for Kannon and Keizan. 578 In Japan, a similar process of “Buddhicizing” the landscape occurred, with relics playing an important role in making Japan a Buddhist realm unto itself. Relics obtained on pilgrimage to China served to promote Buddhism throughout the country and sacralize the landscape in a Buddhist context. Once installed in prime locations, such as Mt. Hiei, and throughout the rest of the country in its kokubunji, the relics served clerical, lay, and state interests. These included protecting the state from calamity and invasion, the acquisition of personal merit, and even paths of healing. Not to be reliant upon the continent for relics, Japan soon began producing its own. Relics were sometimes spontaneously created due to pious activity, but more common was the creation of relics out sutras (dharma-relics) or mortal remains of a particularly holy monk or patriarch. Thus, like China, Japan became a Buddhist realm in its own right, possessing not only the physical presence of the Buddha but also the spiritual capacity for producing its own relics to further cement the dharma. With the advent of Christianity in Kyushu, relics from that tradition would likewise prove to be an important conduit for the Christianization of both the sacred and physical landscape of the island. In order to see fully how relic translation to Kyushu extended the Christian sacred geography to include Japan, we must first examine how India acted as an outpost of that geography by connecting the main source of relics (Europe and the Holy Land) with missions further East. The Extension of the Christian Sacred Landscape to India Before examining the translation of Christian relics to and from Kyushu and their role in creating a sacred Christian landscape there, we must first discuss the presence and use of relics in Portuguese India. Because it was the first major stop in the Eastern Padroado and the seat of Portuguese colonial power in Asia, relics moving between Europe and Japan necessarily had to travel through the main city of Goa. The colony was also a suitable location for the preservation of precious relics, as the Portuguese military power could render them secure and Goa’s large band of clerics, namely Jesuits, could properly attend to their care and veneration. Moreover, Portuguese India, by the latter 579 half of the sixteenth century, possessed the two most important relics of the region, namely the bones of St. Thomas the Apostle and the body of Francis Xavier. Additional relics, mostly from Europe and the Holy Land, also made their way to India through translation. These non-native relics created other new sacred sites on the religious landscape and became focal points unto themselves for veneration by local Christians. When taken altogether, these relics made India a localized outpost of Christian sacred geography between the East and the West. It was from this outpost that relics from Europe, the Holy Land, and India itself could be translated to Japan and China, thus creating even greater extensions of the Christian sacred geography. In this way, India functioned much in the same manner as China had for the extension of the Buddhist sacred landscape. The act of translating relics to and from this “outpost” at Goa was thus a first step in the extension of Christian sacred geography eastward until the time when local holy men and women and martyrs (both native and foreign) could produce indigenous sacred sites on their own. Even if these translated relics were not enshrined in a permanent location, they could still function as a kind of “mobile sacred site” that enabled those who came into contact with the relics to experience that sacrality through a physical medium that transcended time and place. The relics in India could be distributed eastwards or westwards, and from them additional relics (contact relics) could also be created. The relic par excellence in India at the time, that of the body of St. Thomas the Apostle (d. first century CE), has a long and complicated history steeped in legend. Some other traditions, extending as far back as Eusebius of Caesaria (c. 260-339), claimed that the Apostle Bartholomew (d. first century CE) also missionized India; but these traditions 117 are far less well-attested than those that speak of Thomas. In any case, Bartholomew’s supposed tombs or relics do not figure much at all in the veneration of relics in 117 From Eusebius, “[Pantaenus] is said to have shown such warm-hearted enthusiasm for the divine word that he was appointed to preach the gospel of Christ to the peoples of the East, and traveled as far as India…it is stated that he went as far as India, where he appears to have found that Matthew’s gospel had arrived before him and was in the hands of some there who had come to know Christ. Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them and had left behind Matthew’s account in the actual Hebrew characters, and it was preserved till the time of Pantaenus’ mission.” The History of the Church, 156-157. Pantaenus (second century) was a Sicilian pagan convert and was a notable teacher in Alexandria where he taught Clement and Alexander of Jerusalem, two incredibly important theologians and bishops. See 401-402 for brief biographical information on Pantaenus.) (quote about Bart. Also found in Gillman and Klimkeit, Christians in Asia, 165.). 580 Portuguese India. Though we lack any sort of evidence from the Apostolic Age, numerous ancient authorities and the late second to mid third century Syriac “Doctrine of the Apostles” attest to the fact that Thomas evangelized territories in the East, including 118 Parthia, Mesopotamia, and India. That Thomas went to India cannot be proven with any certainty, but such movement was certainly possible given the extensive, preexisting trade networks between the East and Roman occupied Palestine. In fact, as Gillman and Kilmkeit propose, “it may be rather a case in which the historian is challenged to prove that Thomas (and/or Bartholomew) did not act as founders [of the Church in India] 119 instead of being satisfied by irrefutable evidence that they did.” In addition, Christian communities in southern India certainly had well-established churches at the beginning of the sixteenth century that had probably been in existence since at least the end of the second century. The descendents of these Christians, who are called St. Thomas Christians, believe with certainty that their founder was the Apostle Thomas to this 120 day. The provenance of Thomas’s tomb in India, and therefore his relics, is much more dubious and complicated. However, that should not prevent us from acknowledging the immense historical import of Christians being there—and of Portuguese later identifying it as a site worthy of veneration. The tomb itself and its use as a source of relics predates Portuguese arrival by several centuries with a few traditions dating back even further. Some of the earliest accounts, such as that of Gregory of Tours (c. 538-594), have the Thomas relics being translated to Edessa. It seems the most enduring tradition, both among the St. Thomas Christians and the Europeans, was that Thomas’s tomb is in Mylapore on the Coromandel Coast. The widespread belief (in Europe at least) that the tomb existed seems to go back several centuries with a possible reference to it in the 118 Other authorities include Heracleon, Origen, Eusebius, Gregory of Nazianus, and Jerome. See Ian Gillman and Hans-Joachin Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500 (London: Routledge, 1999), 161-162, which uses the summary of W. R. Philipps. 119 Gillman and Klimkeit, Christians in Asia, 159. 120 Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to AD 1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 48-50, and Gillman and Klimkeit, Christians in Asia, 166-167. Neill provides a very useful summary of evidence of “probability in various degrees” as to the factual connection of Thomas with southern India. 581 121 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (of all places) from 883. The most famous reference to it, however, comes several centuries later from Marco Polo (1254-1324) who during his travels in 1293 described it as being located in “Maabar” (the Coromandel Coast). He noted: The body of St. Thomas lies in the province of Maabar in a little town. There are few inhabitants, and merchants do not visit the place; for there is nothing in the way of merchandise that could be got from it, and it is a very out-of-the-way spot. But it is a great place of pilgrimage both for Christians and for Saracens. For I assure you that the Saracens of this country have great faith in him and declare that he was a Saracen and a great prophet and call him avariun, that is to say 122 “holy man.” Other Europeans attesting to the tomb being in India include the traveler Nicolo Conti (d. 123 1469), John of Montecovino (1247–1328), and Odoric of Pordenone (1286–1331). Regardless of whether or not the relics of Thomas actually rested in India, these accounts indicate that the country had long been thought of as one of the farthest extensions of Christian geography. Portuguese involvement with the tomb began early in the sixteenth century and is much better documented. There were several expeditions to find the tomb, with the first being an exploration of the coasts and sea routes to Southeast Asia by Viceroy Francisco de Almeida (1505-1509). The “first official discovery” occurred in 1517, when Portuguese merchants, at the behest of some Armenian merchants in the region, visited the tomb on pilgrimage. A subsequent “official expedition” arrived in Mylapore in 1521 and was documented by eye-witness and historian Gaspar Correa (1492- c. 1561). Reconstruction of the dilapidated St. Thomas Chapel soon commenced, and an excavation of the Apostle’s body occurred in 1523. 121 It reads: “Sigehelm and Aethelstand took alms to Rome, and also to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew in India, that King Alfred had promised when they besieged the force in London…quoted in Gillman and Klimkeit, Christians in Asia, 172. There is also reference of wood from the cross in that year. 122 Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. R.E. Latham (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 274. 123 John of Montecovino mentions spending time at the “Church of St. Thomas the Apostle” where he buried one of his companions. And Odoric of Pordenone (1286–1331) writes “And in this realm is laid the body of the Blessed Thomas the Apostle. His church is filled with idols and beside it are some fifteen houses of the Nestorians; that is to say Christians, but vile and pestilent heretics.” Adolphus E. Medlycott, Bishop of Tricomia’s India and the Apostle Thomas: An Inquiry with Critical Analysis of the Acta Thomae (London; David Nutt, 57-59 Long Acre, 1905), 92. Medlycott has a thorough examination of these accounts, some with the original Latin. 582 The bones themselves were buried under several layers in a grave clearly of some sort of importance given its size and depth. Described as “muito gastada” (very deteriorated), they were removed to a small wooden box, then put in a “Chinese coffer,” 124 and finally placed in two larger chests in 1530. Freshly dug up, the bones of the Apostle enabled the newly founded Portuguese colony of São Thomé de Meliapor, which it would be subsequently called, to become a pilgrimage site of some importance amongst travelers East. In fact, as Ines Županov has argued, the relics of the Apostle were a “determining factor for the Portuguese to choose this place [as a mercantile colony] from 125 among others on the Coromandel Coast.” Besides the bones, there were several other relics and sites in Mylapore associated with the Apostle. These included: the original wood of the church (Thomas himself was said to have carved the structure out of a single tree trunk); the remains of the spear that was said to have mortally wounded Thomas; sand from around the tomb; the cave in which he lived; and, perhaps most spectacularly of all, the footprints and knee prints of the Apostle embedded in rock. In addition, there was blood (presumably Thomas’s) that remained petrified upon a stone slab that also revealed the imprint of a cross and several stone crosses, one of which sweated blood from time to time. Other remnants include a spring that the Apostle had opened in the earth with his staff and various other ancient 126 stone crosses. Whether or not the traditions about Thomas’s relics were verifiably true, they were believed at the time and suggested a direct link between India and the Twelve Apostles. That this connection was only one degree removed from Christ himself made India into a significant outpost on the Christian sacred landscape. India, in the sixteenth century, would further cement its importance as an outpost of the Christian sacred landscape with the translation of relics from a contemporary holy man and future saint (in 1624): those of Francis Xavier. The “Apostle to the Orient” had actually died far from India on the desolate island of Shangchuan (also Sancian) while waiting to gain permission to enter China for missionization. Placed in a Chinese “fitted 124 Schurhammer, Xavier II, 575-577. 125 Županov, Missionary Tropics, 106-107. 126 Županov, Missionary Tropics, 103-109. Županov states that today the relics have fallen out of favor, and one of the bones is encased in a “cheap reliquary.” 583 box” filled with fresh lime to aid decomposition, Xavier’s corpse, dressed in his priestly vestments, entered the sandy ground of Shangchuan shortly after his expiration on the night of December 2 or 3 of 1552. The grave was marked by a pile of stones and a crucifix so that later Jesuits might identify the location. Xavier’s first translation occurred in 1553 since Shangchuan was quite desolate and was deemed an unworthy resting place for such a revered holy man. The next location would be Malacca, the nearest center of Portuguese military and ecclesiastical authority. Xavier, however, would only be there for five months. During that time, he received full honors from the colony’s populace, including a procession worthy of the relics of a saint that had yet to be officially 127 declared. This botched interment eventually came to be regarded as less than satisfactory to his Jesuit brothers (after all, Xavier was one of the founders of the order), and his main body was translated a second and final time to the seat of the Padroado in India, the city of Goa. There Xavier, at last, received an interment worthy of his energies and sanctity with a solemn ceremony and procession during Holy Week of 1554. In Goa, the body of Xavier remained, or was considered to remain, “incorruptible,” and became the primary relic and a major object of world-wide veneration for centuries to come. Still relevant today, Xavier’s body was last exhibited in 2014 December amid much fanfare 128 and festivity. With the presence and formal enshrinement of these relics, India not only became an outpost of sacred Christian geography but also a location for relic production from which more these sacred objects could make their way to Europe or farther east. This is evident from the numerous distribution of the relics themselves in fragment form or the potentially limitless production of “contact” relics, which, though secondary relics, carried the sacrality of the original object. Among the first pieces of evidence for India as 127 The interment was actually botched, with Xavier not even having been placed in an appropriately sized coffin. Instead, he was folded up to fit into a grave that was “too short”, thus causing damage to the corpse—more would come later. Gupta states that the burial “lacked religiosity” in part since no Jesuits were there to receive him. Valignano later called it “an act of disgrace.” See Pamila Gupta, The Relic State: St Francis Xavier and the Politics of Ritual in Portuguese India (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 47. 128 Gupta’s critical history of Xavier’s relic contains everything you ever wanted to know about the saint’s relics. See her chapter “Incorruption (1554)” for full details on the translation and veneration of Xavier’s relics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gupta, Relic State, 27-77. 584 a site for relic production is Marco Polo’s testament of the tomb of the Apostle in the thirteenth century: Let me tell you a marvelous thing about this burial-place. You must know that the Christians who go there on pilgrimage take some of the earth from the place where the saintly body died and carry it back to their own country. Then, when anyone falls sick of a quartan or tertian ague or some such fever, they give him a little of this earth to drink. No sooner has he drunk than he is cured. The remedy 129 never fails. And you should know that the earth is of a red colour. During the Portuguese era, Jesuits oversaw the production of crucifixes and rosaries 130 carved from the wood which Thomas himself had originally used for his church. One of these crucifixes was apparently sent to Ignatius in Rome as one of the first acts of translating Eastern relics to Europe. Fragments of the Apostle’s actual bones were also distributed both in India and farther afield to consecrate new churches or form loci of devotion at established ones. Goa, on the other side of the subcontinent, came into possession of one bone under the 131 direction of the Bishop of Cochin, Fray André de Santa Maria (1588-1615). Some 132 other bones were distributed to churches in both Goa and Cochin. Some were used specifically to create new sacred sites in India as foundational relics for churches. The Viceroy, Dom Constantino de Bragança (1558-1561), apparently used some of the bones to consecrate a new church to St. Thomas in Goa in 1559, thus creating a new sacred site there. Likewise, the Bishop of Cochin took half of the relics there presumably to consecrate his new see. According to a report from 1561,“they took from there the relics of the Saint [Thomas], and that which had been requested by the Bishop of Cochin, for his bishopric, and to put them in another new church that Don Constantino was now building in Goa for the very same Apostle [i.e. the church was dedicated to St. 133 Thomas].” In Goa, at least, these translated relics were also put on display in 129 Polo, Travels, 274-275. 130 Schurhammer II, 562; Indica II, 584. 131 Schurhammer, II, 577. See letter from Gaspar Barzaeus to Ignatius from Goa, Jan. 12 1555. 132 Županov, Missionary, 105. 133 Relation of Padres Francisci Henriques and Andreae de Carvalho of September 1561. Indica V, 181. 585 processions. Aside from the bones, a piece of the spear that had supposedly killed 134 Thomas was also sent out to Bassein (present-day Vasai). The distribution of the Thomasian relics was not limited to churchmen however. The site had long been used as a source of relic acquisition by the Thomas Christians and continued to be used as such after the arrival of the Portuguese. The famous explorer and cousin of Magellan, Duarte Barbosa (c. 1480-1521), described how local Christians used the tomb of the Apostle as a source of contact relics in situ: “The Christians of India still go there as pilgrims, and carry away thence as relics some little pellets of earth of the 135 tomb of this blessed apostle.” After the completion of the new church, Frey André de Santa Maria put some of the earth from the tombs in a large chest under the church’s altar 136 from which locals took it for remedies. Though other relics would come to India, these distributions to churchmen and the laity alike represent the beginnings of India’s role as a site of relic production on the fringes of Christian sacred geography. India also served as a site of distribution and production for relics of Francis Xavier once his body arrived there. Xaverian relic production began promptly after his 137 death on Shangchuan. Settlers there were said to have taken pieces of his cassock just prior to burial “as precious relics.” Even a slice of his knee had been taken—in order to test if the body was incorruptible—though it may not have been venerated as an actual 138 relic just yet. In Malacca, the pillow and silk cloth that had covered Xavier’s face were 139 found to be stained with blood that was still moist. Regarding this relic, B. Nunes Barreto, in a letter to Ignatius from Malacca in 1554, states that he actually saw it in the 134 Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado a Jesu Christo pelos Padres da Companhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa, Primeyra Parte (Lisboa, 1710), 252-254. One of the Ursuline heads is also mentioned on p. 145. 135 Duarte Barbosa, A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Henry E. J. Stanley (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1866), 176. Also quoted Gillman and Klimkeit, Christians in Asia, 176. 136 Schurhammer, Xavier II, 563. 137 Sousa, Oriente Conquistado, 614-615 ; 627-630. 138 Gupta, Relic State, 42. 139 Liam Matthew Brockey, “The Cruelest Honor: The Relics of Francis Xavier in Early-Modern Asia,” The Catholic Historical Review (101) No. 1 (2015): 47. The original testament is in MX II, 202. 586 140 city of Goa. Other relics kept in Goa for veneration besides that of his body included a lock of his hair, his rosary beads, and vestments. Some of these ended up being translated 141 to Europe. This new and “native” relic of India proved exceptionally popular with both the Jesuits and the laity in India. During the mass veneration that accompanied Xavier’s enshrinement in Goa, the crowd was said to have “almost broke the rails of the church” to get at the future saint and kiss his feet. Those venerating the body even sought to take some of Xavier’s sacrality home with them for personal access. Many of the laity were able to produce their own contact relics by “[touching] their beads and other things against the body of the blessed padre.” Apparently, the eyewitness Barreto became concerned that “every one would have taken a piece [of the body] as a relic such was the 142 great fervor of the people.” As Brockey has pointed out, such a concern was not unfounded. Later, when Xavier’s body had been put on another public display, a woman bit off one of his toes so that she might take a bit of his bodily relics home with her. The foot bled from this fresh wound as if Xavier had still been alive, much to the amazement of all. (The bitten foot and its missing toe can still be seen to this day. Another woman, a certain Violante Ferreira, managed to keep in her possession a piece of Xavier’s flesh, which, according to her, produced blood. She had been charged with cleaning Xavier's surplice (later taken to Japan) from which she scraped off bloodstains with a knife to preserve in a reliquary. Apparently members of the lay community also tried to take some of the surplice home with them. Gonçalves, as assistant to the provincial officer, noted that the “surplice was folded and placed into a silk bag for its protection since when many 143 of the devotees kissed it, they would also bite it with their teeth.” The most significant distribution of Xavier’s relics, and the one that marked India as a true outpost of Christian sacred geography, was the amputation of Xavier’s right 140 Indica III, 122. 141 Brockey, “Cruelest,” 54. A list of relics sent to Europe can be found in Georg Schurhamer, Varia (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1965). 142 Quoted in Brockey, “Cruelest,” 49. Aires Brandão (c. 1529-1563) confirms Barreto’s account of the throngs of people creating contact relics with their rosaries. 143 Brockey, “Cruelest,” 49-56. Schurhammer, Varia, 464. Goncalves, Oriente Conquistado, 453-54. 587 arm. The dismemberment occurred at the request of Pope Paul V (r. 1605-1621) in 1614 so that it could be sent back to Rome. However, it was just the portion of his right arm from the elbow to the hand (his baptizing arm). The rest of his baptizing arm was sent not to the West, but further east in 1619. One piece went to the college in Cochin, one piece to the college in Malacca, and one piece to Macau. This last bone fragment ended up in Japan for a short time before it was brought back to the city where it was thought to 144 protect the coast from typhoons. Some of Xavier’s internal organs were also subsequently sent to Europe in the 1630s and distributed there for placement in Jesuit 145 novitiates and colleges there. Eventually, Xavier’s relics would travel even farther, eventually going to lands which he did not know existed. In 2012, his baptizing arm, on loan from the Gesu in Rome, landed in Sydney, Australia for a three-month tour. Francis 146 would have no doubt tried to go there had he known of the great continent. Though the relics of Thomas were the relics par excellence of India—he after all had been an Apostle—they eventually ceded their place of importance to Xavier’s relics. This is no doubt due to the dubious historicity of the Thomasian relics, while those of Xavier are certainly “authentic” according to the more modern notions of the word. This is not only seen in the greater production and distribution of the Xaverian relics, but also the importance with which Indian Catholics venerated the saint in the last several centuries. Thomas may have been Christianity’s supposed founder in India, but Xavier and his relics were more immediate and could not be called into question in terms of their historicity. The presence of these relics, however, did not stop the Jesuits from importing a whole slew of relics from both Europe and the Holy Land with which they could further sacralize the Indian landscape. 144 Brockey, “Cruelest,” 57. Sousa, Oriente Conquistado, 686. See also P. Bruce, “A Relic of St. Francis Xavier,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 23 (Jan. 1983), 204-207. 145 Brockey, “Cruelest,” 58 and Schurhammer, Varia, 348-349. 146 Describing the importance of Xavier to the creation of a sacred landscape in Australia, Bishop Peter Comensoli stated “‘When we were a missionary country, St. Francis was – along with St. Therese of the Child Jesus – our co-patron…Many cathedrals, churches and schools are named after him and he continues to inspire us as a tremendous example of a missionary and evangelizer and he intercedes for our nation every day.’” “Relic of St. Francis Xavier arrives in Australia” Article by David Kerr for Catholic News Agency, 18 September 2012. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/relic-of-st-francis-xavier-arrives- in-australia 588 Although the arrival of Xavier’s relics technically constitutes a translation, the enshrinement of his body constitutes more of a homecoming and celebration of a kind of holy “native” son. A translation in the purest sense would be the acquisition of a foreign holy relic then enshrined to constitute a new point in the sacred geography of a specific locale. The relic, in theory, would have had no connection to its new homeland apart from having been brought there for the express purpose of sacralization, protection, and veneration. Such was the case for a number of relics that were translated from Europe to India in order to increase the spiritual cache of Christendom there. These relics acted in conjunction with the “native” relics of St. Thomas and Francis Xavier to further establish India as a sacred outpost on the extremity of the Christian world. Some of these translated relics were retranslated further east to Malacca, Macau, and Japan to sacralize the landscapes there. Fortunately for the Jesuits, there was no proscription on sending sacred objects, 147 such as relics and sacramentals, to and from India. As a result, the translation of relics to India began almost immediately following the establishment of a Jesuit presence there in the 1540s. One of the first references to translations in the Jesuit correspondence comes from a 1547 letter from Ioannes de Polanco in Rome to Padre Nicolao Lancillotto in Goa indicating that the translation of relics to the East had been approved by Pope Paul III (r. 1534-1549). As Wicki notes, the translation of relics was important because “in India, which was a new Christian region, there were few holy relics. The translation of 148 relics from one part to another by ecclesiastical authority ought to be permitted.” Perhaps the most important of the relics eventually translated to India was the head of St. Gerasina, one of the 11,000 virgin martyrs who accompanied St. Ursula in her own martyrdom. The head itself seems to have been one of several that Peter Fabre obtained 149 personally in Cologne (the center for Ursula’s cult) and then transported to Portugal. The head relic was ultimately carried to India aboard the não the Galega (also called the 147 Charles J. Borges, The Economics of the Goa Jesuits, 1542-1759: An Explanation of Their Rise and Fall (New Delhi: Concept Pub. Co, 1994), 63-64. 148 See Indica I, 207 and Wicki’s footnote. 149 Jaime Ferreiro Alemparte, La Leyenda de las once mil vírgenes. Sus reliquias, culto e iconografía (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1991), 169. The likely depository would have been the rich Jesuit church of São Roque. 589 Nossa Senhora da Conceição) in 1548 by Padre Antonio Gomes and would be the focus of much clerical and lay devotion in Goa. Describing the translation to King João III, Ioannes de Alburque, Bishop of Goa, writes: The head of one of the eleven thousand Virgins was brought to this see and then as it had been transported from the ship, which was on a Sunday, the fourteenth day of October; and from this see Sunday in the afternoon it was taken with a solemn procession, where already the whole college of the see and all the clergy of the city and the friars of St. Francis and St. Dominic and all the students of the College of the Santa Fee and all the Padres of the Society of Jesus who were there and the Governor and myself; and it was put in its place in the aforementioned 150 college... According to Padre Do Vale, the head began showing its sacrality and miraculous powers on the journey to India. Wielded on board by Gomes, the head was thought to have been responsible for saving the Galega from being crushed upon the reefs off the coast of 151 Mozambique. In terms of further connecting India to wider Christendom, the translation of one head of the 11,000 Virgin martyrs was rather appropriate. Perhaps more so than any other relic (the True Cross might be the exception), the relics of St. Ursula and her many companions were venerated in countless locations throughout the Christian world due, in part, to their sheer number. As Scott B. Montgomery has noted, “…to enumerate all fragments of these saints would be tantamount to counting to infinity, for the collected relics of the Holy Virgins would not even fit inside an ark made of all the fragments of the True Cross.” Centered in Cologne, the cult of the Virgins was extremely widespread and varied. As Montgomery contends, the “ossific” core of the cult enabled other loci of the cult to maintain both certain continuities, namely in visual representation, and local 152 variations. The same might be said of the spread of the cult’s relics in general. Relics that purportedly came from particular times and places during the Christianization of Europe now found themselves at the center of devotion in places as varied as Japan and 150 Indica I, 303. See also Županov, Missionary Tropics, 119. Padre Luis Fróis also happened to be on this ship. 151 Indica I, 430, 575. And Županov, Missionary Tropics, 118. 152 Scott B. Montgomery, St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne: Relics, Reliquaries and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Late Medieval Europe (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), 5. 590 the New World. Each one of these loci had ties to the center in Cologne but also 153 celebrated the cult in its own way and circumstances. To channel devotion to the head of Gerasina in Goa, Gaspar Barzeus astutely created a confraternity in the name of St. Ursula and her companions in 1549. Based out of St. Paul’s, the confraternity provided care for the relic and even encouraged conversions through baptism, presumably in the presence of the relic. This was the case 154 in 1560 when some 200 people were baptized on Ursula’s feast day. The first member was a figure no less than D. Afonso de Noronha V, Viceroy (1550-1554), whose entrance into the newly created confraternity prompted some 500 people to join. At the same time, the relic was placed in a silver monstrance for veneration, and an altar in the church, complete with a beautiful retable in oils, was installed. Following this further installation, the relic was displayed day and night in the church. While on display and venerated by the confraternity, the head produced four or five miracles that were “very evident.” Just three years later, the confraternity numbered an incredible 2,000 members. It even attracted the attention of Rome, which praised the confraternity for helping with the spiritual life of the city. A women’s confraternity devoted to Ursula and her companions was also established. And, by 1575, confraternities devoted to Ursula and her virgins 153 Once installed in Goa, the head relic seems to have become the most venerated translated relic in India, with St. Ursula’s feast day being celebrated with a solemn procession and much veneration. Arriving in Goa on October 9, 1548, St. Geracina’s head was officially translated briefly from the ship to the cathedral five days later in an utmost solemn procession that involved Jesuits, Dominicans, the secular authorities, and both the foreign and native Christian population of the city. After a special mass there, the relic was finally translated to the College of St. Paul where it would, for the most part, remain. The translation was remarkably well timed since the feast day for St. Ursula and her companions was on October 21, and the relic had just arrived in Goa. This meant that the outpost could celebrate in unison with every other locale throughout Christendom that possessed a relic of Ursula and her companions. Unlike Thomas’s or Xavier’s relics, the celebration of that feast day with an actual relic (and all subsequent feast days) physically and temporally linked Goa via the sacrality of a physical remain to the wider, universal Church. Veneration of the head proved to be so popular that a second procession and veneration occurred a week later on October 28. Barzaeus notes that “there was so much devotion, that until now there is affection to it, that many came to make offerings to the head.” In addition to these kinds of venerations, the head also figured prominently in the baptism of non-Christians. For example, on Ursula’s feast day in 1560, a mass baptism of some two hundred “Gentiles” took pace in the presence of the head. See Indica IV, 294, 683, 729, 732, for just a few of the many references. See Schurhammer III, 535, for some clarification regarding supposed controversy amongst the various ecclesiastical factions during the translation process. Barzaeus to the Society in Coimbra from Goa, in Indica I, 395-396. Barzeus arrived in India just ahead of the Galega (set sail from Lisbon March 17), even though his ship, the São Pedro, departed with the Galega. 154 Indica IV, 683, Luis Fróis to Ex. Comm. Sociis Lusitanis, from Goa, Nov. 13, 1560. See also, Osswald, 606. 591 155 could be found throughout the East. The confraternity was still extremely popular later in the century, and apparently much devotion was shown to the “three heads” as late as 156 1593. Aside from the head relic of St. Gerasina, at least two other significant relics related to St. Ursula were translated to Goa in the latter half of the sixteenth century. These were also head relics; one supposedly being that of the apocryphal St. Boniface— thought to be the “Captain of the Virginal Army,” not the medieval missionary to 157 Germany—and the other being the head of an unidentified companion of Ursula. Cochin also had apparently received relics associated with St. Ursula. These were said to 158 be the objects of much devotion by native women converts. Although the head of St. Gerasina became the most important relic in India, there were a great many other relics of varying significance and prestige translated to the Portuguese colony. Taken together, however, the collective translation of these relics was a significant attempt to alter the spiritual landscape of India. The multitude of relics created a multitude of sites to which local or regional veneration could be directed. Unfortunately, many of these relics received less attention by Jesuit writers than we would like. This is, in part, due to the ubiquity of relics in the mission zones. In their letters, there are many references to “reliquias,” but frequently they do not go beyond this description to state exactly what had been translated from Europe. Such was the case when Padre Iacobus Mirón asked Ignatius to send “some relics” to India in 1554 because 159 the “people have much devotion to them.” In these cases, both contemporary and later 155 Indica II, 475-478; Ferreiro Alemparte, La Leyenda,169-171; Maria Cristina Osswald, “The Society of Jesus and the diffusion of the cult and iconography of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins in the Portuguese Empire during the second half of the 16th century,” A Companhia de Jesus na Península Ibérica no sécs. XVI e XVII espiritualidade e cultura (Porto: 2005): 601-609. 156 Indica XVI, 418. For Gaspar Vilela and Head of St. Ursula, see Gonçalves II, 98. 157 Cristina Osswald, “Jesuit Art in Goa Between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano” in Stefan C.A. Halikowski Smith ed., Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 282. Boniface is mentioned in a 1578 letter, which can be found in Indica XI, 338. 158 Ferreiro Alemparte, La Leyenda, 173; Indica VI, 172. P. Amator Correra to the Society in Portugal and Europe, from Cochin, Jan. 20, 1564. 159 Indica, III, 58. Iacobus Mirón to Ignatius, 1554. See also, p. 97. 592 Jesuit historians of the Estado India sometimes provide details in addition to the letters themselves. For example, Ribera, when recounting how relics were used to calm a tempest during a voyage, mentions that the mariners made petitions to the “most blessed Mother and the 11,000 Virgins, and of those saints [both men and women] whose holy relics he took with us, and hung down some of them into the sea with an Agnus Dei, and saying litanies before the aforementioned relics, asking our Lord that he might save us 160 from that danger.” Didacus do Soveral mentions the veneration of some unnamed relics during the voyage to Goa, only stating that “on the day of very solemn festivals, where a crucifix is raised up, and sometimes they raise up relics of many saints set in a 161 small box with great solemnity...” Describing the devotion that many unnamed relics elicited in Goa, Eduardo Leitão wrote, “on the Feasts of the Circumcision and the conversion of Saint Paul [both in January], which are days in which plenary indulgences are given in our church, about a thousand persons take communion, and on the day of the conversion of Saint Paul, and to increase the jubilee a great a great reliquary of many and much venerated relics, which this year was made here, more than fifteen thousand people 162 come from vesper to vesper to visit our church...” Fortunately, we do have some named relics. Among the most important and most frequently discussed were fragments of wood from the True Cross; that is the cross that Jesus was crucified upon. An early reference is made to some fragments of it in 1554 by Didacus do Soveral, who recalled that it had been necessary to “cast many relics of the 163 wood [from the Cross] tied to a string into the sea” in order to quell a storm. Fróis relates how other pieces of the Cross arrived in India in 1559 with Gonçalo de Sylveira (1526-1561) and were divvied up along with some other unnamed relics: There is on a chain of thin iron five or six reliquaries which were taken from the kingdom that are much esteemed, called an Irmão who came from Cape Comorin [present-day Kanyakumari] and gave all of them to us; and a Padre a retable very new in which he had particular devotion; and there remained still a great reliquary 160 Indica VI, 534, P. B. de Ribera to Alphonso de Zarate, from Goa, October/November, 1565. 161 Indica III, 110, Letter to Society in Portugal, from Goa, Nov. 5 1554. 162 Indica VIII, 325. P. Eduardus Leitão to Ex. Comm. Sociis Provinciae Lusitaniae from Goa, Nov. 16 1570. 163 Indica III, 111. 593 of two hands in length, in the manner of a retable, in which there were many diverse relics and a piece of the wood [of the True Cross]; covered in a pane of glass and the other smaller. In opening the bars, which they began in August for the embarkations for sailing, ordered a great one for the college in Cochin, which I believe to be the best pieces of relics that now have come to India, through 164 Irmão Francisco Duram. Sylveira later gave up his relics for distribution to another church, this one in Cochin. Padre Durão (Duram) ended up being the recipient of the relics, of which a piece of the True Cross was the most important. The fragment was suitably installed in the collegiate church that already bore the name of the relic, that is the Church of the Holy Cross, on the feast day of the Holy Cross on Sept. 14 of 1559. The translation drew much devotion from the people and, in combination with the church’s recent promotion to the cathedral of the Diocese of Cochin via a bull from Paul IV in 1558, created a new and significant site in the sacred geography of India. According to Durão, there was an increase in 165 devotion to relics as a result of the installation of the wood of the holy cross. Despite the many relics of the True Cross in existence, the demand for them in India was not always satisfied. On at least one occasion, in 1567, requests for pieces of 166 the Cross from Rome were denied by Pope Pius V himself. But this brief hold on distribution from Europe did not stop additional pieces being sent to the subcontinent throughout the latter half of the sixteenth century. For example, Bernardo Ferrario had permission from the fourth Jesuit General Everard Mercurian, (1514-1580) to take a piece of the Cross and a thorn from the Crown with him to India on his voyage. The Cross relic can still be seen in India today; a monstrance with the relic can be found in the 164 Indica IV, 277-278. Fróis to the Society in Europe, from Goa, before November 12 1559. 165 Indica IV, 358-359, with the quote on p. 359. One cannot help but wonder if the translation of the cross relic was in celebration of the promotion of the church to a cathedral. Sylveira necessarily had to give up his relics when he went to Africa in 1560 since it was a much less secure location for a relic as important as that of the Holy Cross. The bull promoting the Church of the Holy Cross was issued in Feb. 1558 and likely reached India in 1559. What better way to christen the church as a cathedral than with a relic installed on its own feast day, both of which gave the church its name. See also Županov, who provides a brief overview of cross fragments in India, Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 458-459. Even the Jesuit residence in Vaipikotta managed to have a relic of the cross to venerate. In at least one case there was it was used to exorcize a local demoniac. Indica XVII, 407. 166 Indica VII, 315 594 167 Museum of Christian Art housed in the Convent of Santa Monica in Goa. In India, as elsewhere in places throughout the world that possessed relics associated with the Crucifixion, the True Cross was brought out on feast days associated with Christ himself or his death. For example in Goa, which had at least two pieces of the Cross by 1572, the relic was frequently used in grand procession for “Santissimo Sacramento” (Corpus 168 Christi). Later, pieces of the True Cross could be found in at least three locations in India: Goa, Salveste, and Cochin, all of which now possessed a little piece of wood that had been made sacred at Golgotha (Calvary). These pieces of wood were thought to be the instrument of death through which Christ’s blood had sanctified the world. In relic form, so too would the remnants of the Cross sanctify the locations in India that possessed them. Other crucifixion relics translated to India included pieces of the Crown of Thorns. One thorn was already on its way to India in 1561, as Franciscus de Pina relates that it was used, along with a piece of the Holy Cross, in a procession on the feast day of the Holy Spirit during the long voyage to Goa. The Cross relic had been dipped into the 169 sea as protection against a storm that the ship encountered as it rounded the Cape. Another, more formal translation of a thorn and piece of the cross began in 1575 when the fourth Jesuit General Everard Mercurian (1514–1580) gave permission to a certain Bernardino Ferrario (1537–1584) to transport the two relics from the Jesuit relic 170 storehouse of São Roque to their churches in India. This piece of the crown would later be asked for by the professed house in Goa in 1588 since they had not one “reliquia” nor 167 Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 459-461, includes a photo of the monstrance. Permission to carry the relic to India can be found in Indica IX, 627-628. 168 Indica VIII, 585. 169 Indica V, 216-219. 170 Indica IX, 627-628; 630. Other thorns were in Mexico around this time in 1576, see Mexica I, 522 and 599. The church of São Roque was well known for its relic collection. Some of the earliest relics from Jesuit churches in Portugal ended up in São Roque. One of these is a piece of the crown of thorns held in a reliquary that was hung from the leaves of a silver tree. The church also had a reliquary of the crib of Jesus. See Vassallo e Silva, Nuno, “Art in the Service of God: The Decorative Arts of Portugal” in John W. O’Malley et. al., Jesuits II, Cultures, Sciences, and Arts, 1540-1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 197-199. 595 171 “relicario” erstwhile the college had many. The decision turned out for the worst as the 172 thorn was later stolen from the professed house in 1594 along with some other relics. The many other relics transported to India for localized sites of devotion received less attention than the heads of St. Ursula’s companions, the wood of the True Cross, and thorns from the Crown. Nevertheless, there are a few scattered references in letters to just what these lesser relics were. In one instance, we even have a letter from the Jesuit General himself, Claudio Acquaviva (1543-1615), attesting to the authenticity of some of 173 the more minor relics that were sent to India. As Ines Županov points out, relics helped to implant in India “a sense of a long Christian apostolic past.” This was, of course, not only true for the major relics like the Cross, but also for lesser relics, such as pieces of martyrs and popes. Some of these included “Anicetus, Zafrinius, Cornelius, Sotherus, Priscus, Celsus, St. Lawrence, St. Louis, and numerous others…” all of which enabled 174 “Portuguese Asia [to be] planted with the seeds of Christian history.” Though Županov has cast these in terms of “Christian history,” the relics, when taken together, further sacralized the landscape beyond the major relics. Each of them acted as additional points of sacrality to which the population could focus their devotions. Many were combined together in larger reliquaries or were given their own chapel on the side of the church were the faithful could be in their presence. Though there does not appear to be a complete list of the relics translated to Goa, there is at least a partial one for Salsete Island (present-day Mumbai). In his História Religiosos da Companhia de Jesus… Padre Sebastião Gonçalves (c. 1555-1619) gives us a good account of the relics at the college there, though this institution was nowhere near as large or important as that in Goa. He lists the following relics: A cross of silver of two hands and a half in length with these relics: of the Holy Wood, of St. Sebastian, of Saint Stephen, of Saint Petronila, of Saint Philip, of Saint Augustine, of the 11,000 Virgins, of Saint Zeno, of Saint Mark, of Saint 171 Indica XV, 45. Memorial of Fr. Pedro Martins S.J., Provincial, with the Answers of Fr. Claudio Acquaviva S.J. General, from Goa, Nov. 1588. Received in Rome, Aug. 1590. 172 Indica XV, 45. Memorial of Fr. Pedro Martins S.J., Provincial, with the Answers of Fr. Claudio Acquaviva S.J. General, from Goa, Nov. 1588. Received in Rome, Aug. 1590. See also Indica, XVI, 807. 173 Indica, XV, 520. 174 Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 463. She points out the original sources as well, with them being, Indica XVI, 298 (from the 1593 annual letter by Francisco Cabral), 608; Indica XV, 520. 596 Blaise, of Saint Andrew, of St. Silvestre, the Theban Saints [the Theban Legion or the 6,666 Martyrs of Agaunum], of Saint Symphorosa, of St. Bonaventure, of St. Jerome and of St. Paul. An arm of silver with a great relic of the 11,000 Virgins; a golden reliquary of three hands in length with a great relic of St. Fridolin, the abbot, at the top; a head that the Padre Provincial Manoel da Veiga gave, and another great relic in an arm, the names of those saints who are written in the 175 book of life. The list is rather incredible, not only for its detail but for the number of relics held in a region that was considerably smaller than Goa. Some must have been used in procession while some presumably remained installed in ornate reliquaries in the churches. Hair relics of the Virgin Mary, for example, were sent to India in 1586 and 1588 where they later became objects of devotion and piety. By the 1590s, there were already reports of the hair relics generating alms from the population with a major procession occurring in 176 Goa in 1593. Other relics that received less attention in the letters included the 177 reliquary bust of St. Margaret of Antioch (209-304). Just because the missionaries did not write about these relics frequently and in much detail does not mean that they were considered to be of little value. This much is evident after the apparent theft of some ten relics, as previously mentioned. Valuing them as points of sacrality for the professed house, Irmão Diogo Guerreiro requested several relics of Sam Lourenço, São Luis, and one of the 11,000 Virgins to replace the ones that had been stolen. There were six relics 175 Gonçalves III, 102. The full title of the work is História dos Religiosos da Companhia de Jesus e do Que Fizeram com a Divina Graça na Conversão dos Infieis a Nossa Sancta Fee Catholica nos Reynos e Provincias da India Orienta. Some of these saints also ended up in other Portuguese territories. For example, Sanctos Thebanos ended up in Brazil as well. See Fernao Cardim, Narrativa epistolar de uma viagem e missao jesuitica pela Bahia Jlheos, Porto Seguro, Pernambuco, Espirito Santo Rio de Janeiro, ... desde o anno de 1583 ao de 1590, (Lisbon: Ministro Collegio da Companhia em Evora, etc. etc, 1847), 102. 176 Maria Cristina Osswald, “Goa and Jesuit Cult Iconography before 1622,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Anno LXXIV, Fasc. 147 (Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2005), 157-158. See also Gupta, Relic State, 54. For the procession and alms related to the Marian relic, see Indica XVI, 298; 307- 308; 430. 177 I have not seen reference to this relic in the letters, but it can be found in the Museum of Christian Art in Goa. It is dated to the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. See Krass in Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 394 for a photo of the reliquary. 597 he could not replace specifically since they did not even have names attached to their 178 reliquaries. In other words were unidentifiable. Nevertheless, they needed replacement. Although Goa undoubtedly had the most translated relics in the East, it seems that the authorities there rarely retranslated them to mission zones beyond the India subcontinent. No doubt this was because they became important as loci of veneration in their own right in India. Also, Europe had a plethora of relics from which to distribute, so any diminution of Goa’s relics was unnecessary. As a result, missionaries in even more far-flung locales petitioned Rome to have relics sent their way. For example, missionaries in the Moluccas repeatedly asked Rome for relics despite the existence of many relics in India. Among the many requests that Goa was unable or unwilling to satisfy were petitions for more heads of St. Ursula and her companions (one was supposed to go to the Moluccas but was apparently lost in India), a piece of the Holy Cross, and relics of the Jesuits Aloysius [Luís] de Gonzaga (1568-1591) and a certain Bernardo Golnaga. A letter from Claudio Acquaviva to Angelo Armono in Manila in 1612 indicates they were able to send part of the True Cross but nothing of the “Beatos” except a piece of clothing (a 179 contact relic) of our “Beato Padre.” A piece of the Cross later made its way to Makassar (Indonesia) as a padre there indicated that the Muslim ruler wanted to use the cross and an image from the tomb of St. Anthony (of Padua) against his enemies in 180 battle. That Goa might keep its translated relics close is not that unusual in the history of relic translation, as these were prestigious sacral items of martyrs or objects from other, older sacred locations in the Christian realm. However, as a sacred site in its own right through the production of native relics (i.e. Thomas, Xavier, and various Jesuit or 178 Indica XVI, 807. In a letter to Acquaviva on Nov. 12 1594. Even more relics seem to have been translated to Goa following the discovery of the Roman Catacombs in the later sixteenth century. One of these, the martyr B. Constâncio, was put on public display. See Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 454 and Gabriel de Saldanha, História de Goa: Política e Arqueológica, vol. 2 (Nova Goa: Coelho, 1926; reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1990), 259. 179 See Malucensia II, 465, 513, 574, 576 and Malucensia III, 233, 404. 180 Hubert Jacobs, ed., The Jesuit Makasar Documents (1615-1682) (Roma: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1988), 142-143. This is not as farfetched as it might seem. After all, Jesus was a revered figure in Islam and the cross, though not an instrument of his death since, in some views, it only looked like he was crucified, could have some appeal. There are varying Muslim interpretations of the crucifixion, with some stating it did not happen at all. 598 Mendicant martyrs), Goa could and did translate these relics from Indian soil to other locations. Some of these other “native” relics also found their way to locations outside of India. After five Jesuits were killed in Salsete in 1583 while building a church on the site of a former temple, their martyred bodies were installed in the Church of Our Lady of the Snows on the island. The arm of one martyr, Acquaviva’s nephew, was amputated and sent to Rome. Another went to the Jesuit College in Naples. Apparently, various towns in 181 Italy and Portugal requested the body of one of the other martyrs, Francisco Aranha. A later martyr of India, St. João de Brito (1647-1693) also became a source of relics (locally at least) despite his body never being found. Red sand at the location of his death was thought to have been stained so by his blood. The sand was, and apparently still can 182 be, taken as a relic for the faithful near the church in the city of Oryur. In addition, relics of the “six hundred” Tamil martyrs that had been killed in 1545 in Mannar (off of 183 the coast of Sri Lanka) were also sought after and revered. With the further establishment of India as an outpost on the Christian landscape, the realm itself became an important source for relic production and distribution for the other mission zones under its jurisdiction. Just as relics arriving in Goa had been divvied up among the various domestic churches and dioceses to sacralize the geography of those locales, so too would India provide the means for sacralizing emerging points further afield on potentially Christian landscapes. Any relic traveling farther east, such as the heads of the 11,000 Virgins or pieces of the True Cross, would have to pass through the city of Goa. Likewise, India’s native relics, such as the house that St. Thomas built or the body of Xavier, were sources from which relics could be produced and sent east. India’s native relics and its numerous translated ones also likely served as a source for the 181 Osswald, “Goa and Jesuit Cult,” 167-168. 182 Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 468. Osswald, “Goa and Jesuit Cult,” 167-168. Other “native” relics also found their way to Rome. After five Jesuits were killed in Salsete in 1583, (they were building a church on the site of a former temple and thus martyred), their bodies were installed in the Church of Our Lady of the Snows on the island. The arm of one martyr, Acquaviva’s nephew, was amputated and sent to Rome. Another went to the Jesuit College in Naples. Apparently, various towns in Italy and Portugal requested the body of one of the other martyrs, Francisco Aranha. A later martyr of India, St. João de Brito (1647-1693) also became a source of relics (locally at least) despite his body never being found. Red sand at the location of his death was thought to have been stained so by his blood. The sand was, and apparently still can be, taken as a relic for the faithful near the church in the city of Oryur. 183 Gonçalves II, 13-15. 599 potentially limitless production of third-class relics. All of these could be translated to the farthest mission zone where no Christian presence had apparently been felt. In those lands, the native religious landscape stood dominant; and the Christian relics that could be had in or via India were one of the most important tools with which missionaries could change that. 600 CHAPTER XI THE TRANSLATION OF RELICS TO KYUSHU AND THE IMPORTANCE OF RELICARIOS IN CREATING A NATIVE CHRISTIAN LANDSCAPE The translation of Christian relics to Japan and their subsequent creation there proceeded in a different manner than it had in India. This should be of little surprise since each historical instance of the Christianization process is unique. However, the manner in which relics sacralized the Japanese landscape varied rather significantly. While relics from Christianity’s ancient past and locations (i.e. the Holy Land) were translated to Kyushu in some quantity to act as local foci for devotion and consecration (altars), the sacralization of the landscape happened in a much more piecemeal fashion, or, as we will see, in an individual fashion. India, which already had a pre-Portuguese sacred site (the tomb of St. Thomas) established, after the Portuguese arrival, several locations (Goa, Salsete, Cochin) in possession of numerous translated relics. It was from these focal points, namely churches, tombs, and sites of martyrdom, that sacrality radiated outward throughout the region. Relics at these sites pulled Christians to them through veneration in the form of processions, feast days, confrarias, and personal devotion in church. Simultaneously, the relics begat the creation and distribution of second-class (and sometimes first-class) relics in a centrifugal direction out into the population (e.g. distribution of Xaverian relics, brandea etc.). In Japan, the sacralization of the landscape for the Christian population on Kyushu occurred mostly via diffuse personalized points of sacrality rather than through specific and permanent holy sites for pilgrimage. Relics from Europe were translated to Kyushu where they were enshrined, venerated, or used in altars. Relics at churches were very likely important for Japanese Christians, but, unfortunately, we do not have sources that describe the veneration of relics at churches. Since there are not many references to the veneration of relics in churches, however, we have to assume that they played a 601 relatively low-key role in creating sacred points. Rather, Japanese demand for individual relics created a much more diffuse sacralized landscape, one that was mostly centered upon their person through the possession and wearing of relicarios or reliquias. These unnamed translated relics went out into the Christian (and sometimes non-Christian) population at large, while more focused sites, such as churches, operated in the background. Even when clear-cut sacred sites were created in Japan through martyrdom, intense persecution in the Tokugawa period discouraged enshrinement or veneration at the actual site. Instead, Christians took relics (which frequently included bodily material) with them for personal devotion through a now-sacred object that was always immediate to their person. This is not to say that sacred sites could not emerge; “the Holy Mountain” (site of the 26 Martyrs) overlooking Nagasaki is one such site in Kyushu today. However, the intense persecution and near complete eradication of Christianity interrupted that process to such an extent that the sites could never emerge adequately until modern times. Thus, the sacralization of the landscape through relics in Kyushu was very much a 1 process interrupted. In the Jesuit sources, reliquias referred to the relics themselves or larger reliquaries in which they were kept; and relicarios referred to small personal reliquaries sometimes in the form of a locket. This distinction is particularly important for the following reasons: 1. The Jesuit themselves were not very clear in delineating the difference between these two objects other than by the use of their specific term. Because reliquias were inside relicarios, the two were closely related. As a result, it is easy to assume that they were essentially the same thing. 2: English-language scholarship usually lumps the two terms together under “relics,” which, although it is not inaccurate, fails to reveal the subtle difference between them. And 3: Relicarios are frequently lumped together, both in the Jesuit letters and in present scholarship, with other sacred objects, 2 mostly sacramentals, such as Agnus Dei, contas, and medals. 1 On one hand some level of persecution and instances of martyrdom are necessary for the creation of native sacred sites and relics. The religion, however, must survive so that these places and bodies could be collected, venerated, and displayed openly. Such was, obviously, not the case for Japan. 2 A Portuguese-English dictionary, published in the early nineteenth century, gives the following definition: Relicário, s. m. a case to keep reliques in, a shrine for reliques; a reliquary, in which the reliques of a saint are kept. Relíquias s. f. pl. the remains of the bodies or clothes of saints; also reliques, or remainders of any thing; see Sobejos. (Lat.).” Anthony Vieyra and J. P. Aillaud, A Dictionary of the Portuguese and English 602 Japanese scholarship is helpful in delineating the differences between relicarios and sacramentals in the Jesuit sources since Japanese, through its use of characters, can denote a specific meaning. For the example, in the scholarship of Gotō Kōichi and Matsuda Kiichi, relicarios are referred to as both “rerikario” and “seiibutsu ire.” The latter literally means “container for relics.” In Gotō’s work, the seiibutsu ire are carefully 3 differentiated from sacramentals, such as contas, rosaries, crucifixes, and medals. There are some commonalities between the two types of objects in terms of usage and veneration, but reliquias and relicarios are most decidedly different than sacramentals since they are or contain actual relics, i.e. the earthly remains or remainders of the saints who, beyond the temporal and material realms, are actually in the direct communion with God via his presence forever (the Church Triumphant). Making contact with a sacramental such as a crucifix or a holy image does not and did not mark a direct connection to the heavenly sphere through an earthly remainder. Defining reliquias is relatively straightforward since these objects were simply relics or the containers that housed them. Reliquias could be unadorned in their natural state (like a bone) or encased in a more formal reliquary (such as in a monstrance). For example, the head of St. Gerasina in Goa was frequently described as a reliquia and contained within an elaborate and exquisite silver casing. In general, reliquias were the more important and substantial relics, such as the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, and the body or a sizeable body part of a saint. They could also be some kind of object, like cloth (brandea) that had been sanctified through their personal use or proximity to saintly 4 corpses (such as the sand from the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle). The Jesuits also sometimes used the word “reliquias” to refer to sacred objects of the religions they sought Languages, in Two Parts; Portuguese and English. 2 vols. (London: Printed for F. Wingrave…, 1813). A early eighteenth century Portuguese-language dictionary gives this definition: “A box, or other thing, in which relics are preserved.” D. Raphael. Bluteau, Vocabulario Portuguez, e Latino, 10 vols (Lisboa Occidental: Officina de Pascoal da Sylva, 1712-1728). 3 See Nishikawa, Junkyō and Gotō, Kirishitan Ibutsu. 4 Brandea might be defined as “…any piece of cloth which has been placed in physical contact with a holy relic, and which has gained sanctity by association. This means that textiles given to a saint or shrine as gifts, and not originally worn by, or accompanying, a dead saint, might themselves become relics of that saint. Such textiles might be intrinsically valuable as, for example, donated vestments placed among the relics of St Cuthbert…or they might be quite humble objects.” Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Brandea”, in: Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward, eds., Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles (Leiden: Brill, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2213-2139_emdt_SIM_000743 603 to displace in the mission zones. For example, Jesuits in Japan would refer to amulets such Omamori and O-fuda, as well as Buddhist relics as “reliquias.” Likewise, in the New World, the Jesuits and other clergymen would also refer to huacas, mummies, and 5 sacred other objects as “reliquias.” Our other term, relicario, is a bit more elusive and nuanced. A useful and full definition can be found Martha Egan’s study on relicarios of the Spanish and Colonial period, from the Americas to the Philippines: The relicario was a small pendant that sometimes contained actual relics of the saints—bits of bone or tooth or a scrap of cloth [brandea]—but for the most part 6 the reliquary designation was symbolic. The only caveat to this definition for our study of them in Kyushu is that Egan is drawing upon the totality of the relicario tradition in colonial world, which obviously changed over time. In general, relicarios in Japan were personal lockets or small containers that likely, though perhaps not always, housed some kind of small relic. These could include so-called “first class” relics (i.e. a small fragment of a saint’s body). Relicarios could also contain so-called “contact” relics. This latter designation could apply to “second class” relics (i.e. objects that a saint had used while alive) or “third class” relics (i.e. tertiary objects that had made “contact” with a first or second class relic, such as a saint’s tomb, and had become imbued with sacrality). Since the Jesuits almost never describe these objects—perhaps because of their ubiquity both in Japan and in other Christian lands— we can only make educated guesses as to what kind of relics were inside. If a relicario contained an actual relic, it was very likely far less substantial than one found in a reliquia. The relics inside a relicario could be nothing more than a small fragment of some kind of material, such as a bone scraping or a piece of cloth. If many of the 5 Claudia Brosseder, The Power of Huacas: Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 330, no. 79 and Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 77-78. 6 Martha Egan, Relicarios: Devotional Miniatures from the Americas (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1993), 2. In her glossary, Egan defines a relicario (Sp. or Pt.): Container for the safekeeping of relics. In the Americas and the Philippines the term is used colloquially to refer to lockets containing sacred imagery, relics of the saints, and personal mementos. The locket generally consists of a circular, square, oval or hexagonal frame generally smaller than 10 cm in diameter, in silver, gold, or mixed metal with a ring at the top for suspension. The imagery within is safeguarded behind glass that affords viewing of one or both sides of the locket. In the Andes relicarios are sometimes simply called medallones—medallions— while in Mesoamerica the term guardapelos—a locket specifically for the safekeeping of a lock of hair—is often used interchangeably with relicario.” Quote on p. 116. 604 relicarios did in fact contain nothing more than tertiary contact relics, then their ubiquity can be easily explained since they could be produced at will in response to demand by Japanese Christians. Though many relicarios in the Iberian colonial world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were simply lockets containing sacred imagery of a saint rather than an actual relic, this does not seem to be the case for relicarios in use on Kyushu. The few that have been found through archaeological excavation almost certainly contained some kind of relic since they are small (less than 2 cm in their dimensions) metallic oval lockets engraved with sacred imagery, designed to keep their contents hidden. If designed to display an image, like the relicarios from the colonial period in the Americas, the Kyushu relicarios surely would not have kept the sacred image hidden. The provenance of the relics contained in the relicarios was not stated in the Jesuit letters. In the Iberian world, the contents of a relicario were usually identified on a small piece of paper called a filacteria (Sp.). There may have been something similar in use on Kyushu, but I have yet to find any reference to such identifying markers. As far as I know, there have been no filacteria found with relicarios, no doubt because the paper would not have survived the ages buried underground. In comparison with some of the very durable sacramentals, such as medals, there have been relatively few relicarios found in archaeological excavations on Kyushu. This might simply reflect the ease with which sacramentals could be produced and obtained. Sacramentals, such as crosses and medals, were mass produced and shipped to Japan. Relics, as body parts or contact objects, were inherently imbued with sacrality of the saints since they were in heaven experiencing God directly. They therefore could not be as easily created to meet demand by Japanese Christians. The only relics that could be “created” were the so-called “third class relics.” These were objects, such as strips of cloth, that had been touched to a body part of a saint (first class relic) or an object that a saint had used during their lifetime (second class relic). Given the many references to relics and relicarios in the Jesuit letters, it is clear that they were important to Japanese Christians. It is therefore surprising that scholars have paid little attention to these important objects. When scholars do mention relics, they only do so in passing and make no attempt to connect their importance in Japan with the importance of relics in other 605 7 instances of Christianization. To my knowledge, there has yet to be a full study of relics and relicarios in Japan, let alone their significance in constructing the Christian spiritual landscape in Kyushu. The Translation of Christian Relics from Europe and India to Kyushu The very first relics translated to Japan were those carried by Francis Xavier himself in August of 1549. Some of these would only be in Japan temporarily and would leave once Xavier had departed in 1551. Others he left behind to be venerated by the first Japanese Christian communities. Unfortunately, Xavier did not give a comprehensive list of everything he took with him and he makes no special mention of possessing any types of relics. So, in this case, we have to rely upon the testament of others to document what kind of sacred objects Xavier brought. In addition, we must also consider the contact relics that Xavier unwittingly created while on Kyushu—namely his sacramentals. While they were not relics in and of themselves, Xavier’s reputation as a holy man, his unofficial veneration after his death in 1552, and “official” canonization in 1622 made these quotidian objects actual relics by virtue of his use of them. According to Xavier’s brethren in India, the very first Christian relic translated to Kyushu was a small bone belonging to the Apostle Thomas. This fragment had been found in a “reliquario” that had hung about Xavier’s neck at the time of his death. Besides the bone inside, inspectors found the signature of Ignatius, preserved on a scrap of paper from a letter Xavier had received, and the formula of Xavier’s own vows and profession (to the Society), which he had written in his own hand. Hearing about Xavier’s relicario, it seems, his brethren were anxious to find out what exactly it contained: The padres and irmãos, talking about that great treasure that Padre Mestre Melchior had, they asked him that they might want to open it in order to know what relics or spiritual arms that had armed that man of God, when he committed himself to China in order to declare the evangelical law. And consulting all that it would be good to be refreshed with that consolation, the relicario of copper was opened, and which contained only three things. The first was a small bone of the 7 For an example studies that only make passing reference to relics, see Gōto, Higashibaba, and Ward. Gōto’s study is highly illuminating for archaeological remains of sacred objects. But he mainly covers other sacramentals, namely medals and crucifixes, with very little concerning relicarios. 606 glorious apostle Saint Thomas, to whom the Padre had much particular devotion. The second was the signature or name of our Padre Micer Ignatius of holy memory [d. 1556], which seemed to be cut from the head of some letter that he had sent to him from Rome signed by his own hand; and the third was a form of 8 his vows and profession, which in the relicario was written in his same letter… These last two items, at the time when Xavier had placed them in his relicario, were not actual relics since they were products of still living men. But, upon Xavier’s own death in 1552 and Ignatius’s death in 1556, they “unofficially” became contact relics since it was generally considered that the two now enjoyed perfect communion with God in heaven. Later, the relics became “official” after the two men were canonized. If we purposefully adopt a skeptical attitude toward the above account, we might see it as nothing more than an attempt to link Xavier with the first Apostle of the East, Thomas, in order strengthen the case for his quick canonization. However, we must remember that it was entirely possible for Xavier to have taken a personal relic of Thomas to Japan given the tradition of taking such relics from Thomas’s shrine. Not only were relics of Thomas available for veneration and personal acquisition, Xavier himself had a strong personal devotion to the Apostle, no doubt because he saw himself as 9 following in the Apostle’s footprints by spreading the Gospel to Asia. Moreover, what makes Xavier’s possession of a Thomasian relic especially plausible is that we know he actually visited the Thomas shrine prior to his missionary endeavors farther east. Given Xavier’s stature as a founding member of the Jesuits and his personal connections at the shrine, it is likely that he would have had no trouble obtaining a small relic for personal use in a relicario. 8 Indica IV, 407-408. Fróis to the Jesuits in Europe, from Goa on Nov. 19 1559. See also Wicki, Gonçalves I, 181-182. 9 See EX II, 643 and Instructions. Xavier himself does provide proof for the case that his relicario contained his vows and the signature of Ignatius. In a 1546 letter he writes, “So that I may never forget you and ever have a special remembrance of you, I would have you know, dearest brothers, that for my own consolation I have cut your names from the letters which you have written to me with your own hands so that I may constantly carry them with me together with the vow of profession which I made because of the consolations which I receive from them.” Costelloe, Letters, 141-142; EX I 330. As for the relic of St. Thomas, Xavier did spend several months in São Thome in the church of the Apostle., to whom he was known to have a special devotion. See Schurhammer, Xavier II, 590-593. For example, he added Thomas’s name to the Confeitor: “I, a sinner who have wandered far astray, confess to the Lord God and to St. Mary and to St. Michael, the angel, and to St. John the Baptist, and to St. Peter and to St. Paul and to St. Thomas…” Costelloe, Letters, 204; EX I, 451. 607 Though Xavier took the Thomas relic with him when he left Japan, the fact that he carried it to the country at all is significant because it was a precedent for how relics could be used on the missionary enterprise. As one of the founding members of the Jesuits and being known for his personal sanctity, Xavier was the most esteemed spiritual authority in the East both in life and in memory after death. He was the prime example for all other Jesuits in the missions East, and many would try to emulate him. If Xavier found it appropriate to wear the Thomasian relic as both a form of spiritual arms and an individual mobile point of sacrality, then other missionaries could use relics in the same manner. In addition, by describing the opening of Xavier’s relicario, Fróis gives us a clue as to what the Jesuits generally thought about these objects and for what purposes they might be used in Kyushu. He notes that the Jesuits had fully expected to find “treasure” (i.e. relics) inside Xavier’s locket and that these objects conferred spiritual benefit upon him in missionization. Thus, when Fróis makes his numerous references to relicarios in Kyushu, both in his history and in his correspondence, it is reasonable to conclude that he and the other Jesuits in Japan also expected actual relics to be found inside these objects. To sum up the knowledge gained from Fróis’s 1559 letter, we can see the following assumptions that the Jesuits had about relicarios upon their introduction to the people of Kyushu: 1. That relicarios necessarily contained relics and not just images as they later did in the colonial period and in other parts of the Iberian empires; 2. That relicarios were “spiritual arms” that would aid padres in the declaring (denunciar) the Gospel in foreign lands (such as China); 3. That they were made of metal, frequently copper, and had to be formally opened as opposed to just being viewed (as in the case of an image or piece of religious jewelry); 4. That in addition to first class relics, such as bones, contact relics could also be placed inside relicarios. This last point is particularly important because it explains how it was that vast quantities of relicarios could be given out to the laity in Japan to satisfy their constant desire for the objects. Bones and body parts might eventually run out from a relic source, but contact relics could be created upon demand for specific acts of distribution. If Xavier sought to sanctify and protect his own person with a relic of St. Thomas, the padre also sought to sanctify and protect the land he was missionizing. To this end, Xavier appears to have left a tiny fragment of the True Cross in Japan—and, 608 unbeknownst to him at the time, of course—he had also created contact relics. Both of these kinds of relics were said later to have acted as local foci for devotion, veneration, and miracles to those entrusted with them. The most important thing about Xavier’s supposed translation of the True Cross is that he did not set it up in a church for local devotion or give it to Cosme de Torres for safekeeping. Rather, he gave it to a local Christian family in Satsuma, entrusting it to their leader, Miguel of Ichiki. This family apparently preserved and venerated the relic for decades as we learn from later writers who actually talked with descendants of the 10 family and saw the relic. Quoting the Annual letter of 1605 by João Rodrigues Giram, Gonçalves relates: The Padre [Francisco Paiso] vistited the Christians at a place by the name of Cavanabe [Kawanabe], three leagues from the city of Cangoxima [Kagoshima]. In this place there was found some things of B.P.M. Francisco and his memory, to which place they say it was that the Padre spent some 20 days preaching. Among those who the Blessed Padre baptized there, was a man, the lord of the house where he was received as a guest, whose name was Miguel, and in payment for such good hospitality he gave to him a little of the wood of the cross, two rosaries of beads and a jar of porcelain with a measure of holy water, which he had sealed with wax with a cross in the middle and inside there was water...and the jar the Christians had put it in a box of wood and which was well-guarded. This Miguel, taught by the Blessed Padre, baptized a son of his being of the age of ten years, who also went by the name Miguel, who would now be sixty-seven years. It was with this Miguel that the Padre [Francisco Pasio] encountered this time and had told all this to him... And also this Miguel had a sister [named Mari] who was older, who was sixty-six years old, baptized by padre Master Francisco, who was living in the kingdom of Fiunga [Hyūga] and had preserved herself a Christian for all these years, in the middle of such Gentiledom, with his relics and the Wood of 11 the Cross, which the Blessed Padre gave to her.” Schurhammer, culling his information from a few other sources, such as Almeida’s 1562 letter, summarizes the relic cache as follows: 10 The translation of a bit of the Holy Cross is somewhat dubious, however, since we learn of it from later writers who apparently encountered it decades later in the guardianship of a local Christian family from Satsuma. López Gay mentions that Xavier left a piece of the True Cross in Kagoshima but he does not direct us to a source. López Gay, El Catecumenado, 219. 11 Wicki, Gonçalves I, 323-325. Rodrigues’s letter can also be found in Guerreiro, Relação Anual II, 242. A manuscript copy can be found in Ajuda 49-IV-51, 154. 609 [Xavier] further left them with a porcelain vase with holy water and some articles of devotion such as rosaries, medals, Agnus Dei, and a small relic of the Cross, and also a silk canopy and silk antependium. The mistress of the castle received in her turn from him a small silk purse to wear as a reliquary about her neck. For lack of other relics, this contained along with other prayers the Litany of Saints, 12 the Creed, and names of Jesus and Mary, all written by Xavier’s own hand.” Here we learn that Xavier actually translated a relic to Japan, ostensibly a relic of the Passion itself, and created the very first relicario there in Ichiki (near present-day Kagoshima city). Other items apparently given to Miguel and his family included an altarpiece depicting Mary and a discipline (small whip for self-flagellation). Jesuits who wrote about these items later also considered them to be relics. Besides the cross, what else did Xavier employ to create the first Japanese relicario? According to several sources, including a letter from Almeida in 1562 at which time he actually visited Ichiki/Satsuma, Xavier used a variety of sacred objects and sacramentals. At the time of the relicario’s creation, only the True Cross fragment would have made the above mentioned silk pouch an actual relicario, and touching the other objects to it would have made them third class relics. But with Xavier’s death, the rest of the actual objects became contact relics in themselves, thus making it even more of a numinous cache. Among the objects left at Ichiki were a copy of a book that he and Anjirō had written in Japanese; other Japanese writings that included various prayers, the Litany of the Saints, the Seven Penitential Psalms, a calendar of feast days, and the baptismal formula and instructions on how to perform it. All of these could be considered contact relics, in theory if not in practice. We know that some of the other Xaverian objects became revered by the small Christian community in Satsuma. According to Almeida, Xavier had given the laywoman (the wife of Miguel) he met in Ichiki “a nomina to put around her neck, writings in the hand of the padre, with some litanies.” He had also left a disciplina (a small whip used in self-flagellation), for which they had much esteem. These articles, she had apparently reported to Almeida, cured the sick and 13 effected miracles. 12 Schurhammer, Xavier IV, 127-128. Rodrigues mentions how Xavier gave “muitas reliquias” to these individuals in his unpublished Historia, found in Ajuda 49-IV-51, 154. For a brief history of these relics, see Schurhammer’s footnotes. 13 MHJ III, 546, Almeida to the Jesuits in Europe, from Yokoseura, Oct. 25 1562. 610 Whether or not the Japanese in possession of these objects thought them to be relics is a little more difficult to discern, but we have another letter from Rodrigues, this time the Annual letter of 1608, which was based on information given to him by a Japanese priest who had visited Miguel’s sister in the waning days of the mission. The following is taken from Guerreiro’s publication of that information: The Padre then asked her for the relicario that she had, in order to see it, and, taking in his hand, found in a little purse of cotton cloth, already very old, and in it a relic wrapped up in paper, which, when he opened it, found written in our letters “Lignum Crucis” [Wood of the Cross] with her relic; and, opening more the aforementioned paper, found a piece of black wax wrapped in cotton, which ought to be an “Agnus Dei,” and a veronica of tin, which on one part was Our 14 Lady of Conception [i.e. Mary], and on the other a Crucifix with rays... As the above letter and others make clear, Jesuits missionaries overwhelmingly endorsed having relics out in the population at large and even outside of the purview of any sort of missionary oversight. These included both first class relics (a piece of the Cross) and second class relics (Xavier’s contact relics). So regardless if the fragment of the True Cross was actually present in Ichiki, the fact that it is mentioned by later Jesuit writers and cited as evidence in Xavier’s canonization process is nothing short of an endorsement by the order for translating bits of relics to Kyushu and having them used as both personal loci of sacrality and for general spiritual protection. Unlike documentation related to the ensconced relics in Goa or elsewhere, we have testimony that tacitly acknowledges the use of relics as local and individual points of sacralization out in the population at large. Beyond Xavier’s initial translation of relics to Kyushu, a variety of other relics eventually made their way to Japan. These were either major relics, such as another piece of the True Cross, or other relics of less significance. For the major relics, there is usually some documentation surrounding their transport, such as a request from one of the missionaries or a confirmation that the relics had in fact been received. These will be explored in detail below. But even in these cases, the information provided is rather scant and merely makes passing reference to the relic in question. For lesser relics, many were undoubtedly part of the annual nao’s cargo. For example, one of the first references we have to the translation of additional lesser relics is from an inventory of cargo for the 14 Guerreiro, Relação Anual III, 170-171. 611 1554 expedition organized by Padre Melchior Nunez Barreto (c. 1520-1571). This list included two pieces of wood from the house thought to have been built by St. Thomas in India. The first relic was a crucifix of “medium size” that had been fashioned out of the holy wood. The second was just a fragment of wood, encased in a different crucifix that 15 acted as a miniature reliquary. Apart from this inventory, there is frequently little specific information to be had for lesser relics, and their transport as cargo aboard the naos almost seems to have been a matter of course. If there are references to these relics, they are typically just referred to as “reliquias” without mentioning their exact nature or composition. Although we usually lack documentation regarding the exact nature of the “reliquias” that seem to have been part of the normal cargo of the annual nao, we might consider them as being necessary supplies for the missionary endeavor. Like their brethren in other missionary zones, the Jesuits in Kyushu frequently requested that relics be sent to them in small part due to their enormous popularity amongst Japanese Christians. Usually, such requests were not specific, and, in theory, the relics could have been first class relics, contact relics, or third class relics such as brandea. For example, Cabral, mission superior of Japan from 1570-1580, asked the General in Rome, Francis Borgia (1565-1572), to “send to them there some blessed beads and relics in quantity that 16 are able to be distributed, at least, to those most important.” Since Cabral did not request any specific relics, it seems that any sort of relics would do, likely because they would simply be distributed amongst the population rather than being venerated in a church. Similarly, Valignano, writing on behalf of the Japan mission from Malacca in 1567 (perhaps in response to a request from Cabral), also requested “relics” from Borgia: Since the Japanese, according to my information, are much inclined to the things of God: to beads, relics, and indulgences, and with these things they are moved much, by the love of God, if it seems good to your Paternity to send to me some beads and relics, even if they are very small, for them, and the indulgence that your Paternity administered on July 3, by the love of God, grant to me, and for the other Padre, for the penitents who confess with us together. And the indulgence of saving a soul, with each mass, also, by the love God, concede for the three, 15 See MHJ II, 480-481. Also in Indica III, 197-205. Inventories for other ships might exist in the archives, but I have yet to access them and see if there are any references to other relics being transported as cargo. 16 López Gay, El Catecumenado, 221. He is quoting ARSI Jap-Sin 7, I, 166. I have yet to track this letter down. 612 because with this the Japanese have more affection for the things of God, and more expectation and attention when we talk with them, and so they will be more 17 ready in order to imprint more the word of God in them. What is notable in this quote, aside from Valignano’s early enthusiasm about relics for the Japan mission (a position that we will see him change later), is that the request for the translation of European relics is being ultimately driven by ordinary Japanese Christians in Kyushu. Relics such as those of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns were the most significant but these would likely be installed in churches or given to important laymen. For distribution of relics to the laity, any relic or contact relic would do since there is no evidence that the Japanese preferred one kind of relic over another. Apparently they desired relics enough to compel the missionaries there to request their superiors to send more. Obviously, this went all the way up the chain of command, from Japanese “neophyte” laymen to the missionaries to the mission Superior to the Visitor of the Indies and then finally to the Jesuit General or even the Pope himself. Even as late as 1599, after Valignano’s attempted crackdown on the distribution of relics, we find other requests for relics from Europe. Gil de la Mata, who had brought relics and indulgences from Rome in 1596 on papal orders, wrote to Rome from Nagasaki asking for more 18 “relics” and Agnus Deis. For the most part, both Rome and the Society of Jesus were happy to oblige the missionaries and frequently did their best to supply relics for translation. There are a few scattered references describing the translation of specific relics or relic stashes making their way to India for further distribution. For example, a letter from the Provincial of India, Ruy Vincente, to the Jesuit General Mercurian confirms the receipt in Cochin of one of the heads of the 11,000 companions of St. Ursula so that it could be sent onwards 17 Indica VII, 348, dated Nov. 9 1567. For other requests of relics by various personages throughout Europe, see Monumenta Borgia V. In one case, Philip II, King of Spain, donates a piece of the True Cross to the Jesuits. Occasionally, requests from missionaries seem to have been denied for whatever reason, as was the case with Padre Ioanne Baptista de Ribera when Pope Pius V did not grant him a piece of the True Cross in 1567. See Indica VII, 315. To other padres they were granted, as in the case of P. Ioannes Rodriguez in Cochin who thanks P. Dr. Christophoro Rodriguez in Rome for the relics he received. Indica VII, 676. 18 Letter to Padre João Alvarez, Asistente de Portugal. From Japan, Feb. 5 1599. Transcribed in Giuseppe Marino, “Breve recorrido en la postrimería del jesuita Gil de la Mata en la misión de Japón (siglo XVI): las últimas cuatro cartas inéditas desde Lisboa y Nagasaki” Estudios Eclesiásticos, vol. 89, no. 350 (July- September 2014), 529. 613 19 to Japan (“para Japón”). While the mission church was undoubtedly happy to receive such a relic as the head, there does not seem to be much reference to it after being sent. Another reference to the translation of European relics from the Jesuits can be found in a letter from Valignano to Acquaviva, the fifth General, in 1584: Also I give much thanks to V.P. for the relics [Saints Abundius (d. 469) and Abundantia (d. 804)] that you sent and they are being sent to Japan, making for them great reliquaries for the churches in order that they are held in devout 20 veneration… In Goa, in 1584, these two relics had gone on procession from the ship and through the 21 city before going on to Japan. Unfortunately, like the translation of the head of the Ursuline companion, not much is said about these relics in the Jesuit letters once they arrive in Kyushu. Rome, for the most part, cooperated in sending relics. The Jesuits both in Japan and Europe considered them necessary to the missionary enterprise. They not only served to sacralize churches but would also provide divine aid to the missionary enterprise as a whole. As a result, they received support for relic translation from the highest levels of the Church. The Papacy was usually willing to send relics, provided that they had enough to spare. Gregory XIII (r. 1572-1585) issued a Bull in 1577 recognizing that the churches in the Portuguese overseas territories (including Japan) had few relics. In it he conceded “license for receiving through himself [the Portuguese Procurator of Missions in India, Martino da Sylva] or through a deputy and the transferring of some relics.” In addition, 22 Gregory gave indulgences to those who venerated the relics. Like Gregory XIII, 19 Indica XII, 193. Ruy Vicente to Mercurian, Jan. 3 1581. 20 Indica XIII, 594, from Cochin, Dec. 12 1584, after Valignano’s first visit to Japan. See also, p. 527. 21 Indica XIII, 527. Concerning these relics, Gregory XII gave them to the Jesuits in 1583 not long after their discovery in the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian (two ancient Greek saints) in the old Roman forum. That translation occurred with a procession of some 800 Jesuit pupils and culminated in the relics being placed beneath the high altar of the Jesuit mother church, the Gesù. The relics went from a church that dated back to the imperial era, to the consecrated focal point of all Jesuit activity, and then out to the mission in Kyushu. See Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes, Vol. 20, ed. Ralph Francis Kerr (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner & Co., LTD., 1930), 579-580. Along with the bodies of Abundius and Abundantia, the relics of Pope Felix II (an anti-pope), Saints Marcus and Marcellianus, and Saint Tranquillinus. See Gonçalves, I, 103 and, for a modern account, see Pier Luigi Tucci, The Temple of Peace in Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 801. 22 Delplace, Synopsis, 84. 614 Clement VIII (r. 1592-1605; 1536-1605) granted similar privileges to Japan in 1595 by 23 empowering Padre Gil de la Mata to carry them East. Unfortunately, the bulls do not describe exactly what relics were to be translated to Japan, but they do indicate that they were used to form local sacred foci for specific spiritual benefits, namely indulgences. Additional indulgences and relics were given out by Pope Leo XI (r. 1605, he died after 24 only one month) at the petition of the procurator of the province of New Spain. These kinds of privileges for the Eastern missions were not limited to the Jesuits. Clement VII also issued bulls in 1608 to the Franciscans permitting that order to collect relics in Europe and send them to the Philippines and “kingdom of Japan.” From there, on their 25 own authority, Franciscans sent some of the relics to Japan. On occasion, Rome was not able to accommodate the missionaries in the East. Such was the case when Pius V denied the Indian Provincial Juan Bautista de Ribera a piece of the True Cross in 1567. Apparently, the papacy was running low on this particular relic and could not translate 26 any more of it. Besides the head of one of St. Ursula’s companions and parts of Saints Abundius and Abundantia, at least two other specific relics made their way from Europe to Kyushu: the True Cross (in numerous fragments) and a thorn from the Holy Crown. Unlike Xavier’s supposed translation of the True Cross, the translation of these relics from the Passion is much less dubious. That these relics were received in Japan should not surprise us given their ubiquity of not only in Europe, but also in both the Estado India and the 27 New World; pieces of the Cross and the Thorns were literally everywhere. 23 Delplace, Synopsis, 189-190. A similar bull was issued again by Clement VIII to Japan in 1596, see Ibid., 197-198. Also, López Gay, El Catecumenado, 221. 24 Ajuda, 49-V-7, 11-12. 25 Carla Tronu, “Sacred Space,” 207-208. See Leo Magino, Pontifica Nipponica: Le relazioni tra la Santa Sede e il Giappone attraverso I documenti pontifici, Parte Prima (secc. XVI-XVIII) (Romae: Officium Libri Catholici, 1947), 59-60. 26 Indica VII, 315. Pius V to Ioanne Baptista de Ribera from Rome, October 10 1567. 27 As noted earlier these relics did make their way to the East. Alessandro Valla (a different person than Alessandro Valignano) mentions that on his voyage in 1575, the Jesuit party brought with them “many things […] in addition to those ordered, good books, altar ornaments, agni Dei, blessed Ave Marias, and good relics, richly adorned, especially the crown of thorns and the cross both of which cost me only for workmanship a hundred scudi.” Indica IX, 630. Valla to Mercurian, from Lisbon, March 15 1575. Valignano confirms that relics of the True Cross and a thorn that Mercurian (V.P.) had sent for the college 615 Nevertheless, references to these relics in the Jesuit letters from Japan and contemporary histories are relatively few and far between. When they are mentioned, they are referenced in an almost casual manner as if the reader should take it for granted that the relics would be present in the mission. This only lends credence to the translations, given that both the writer and reader would not likely have thought it to be a truly incredulous event. For example, in Fróis’s letter to Cabral dated October, 1578, Fróis casually mentions the displaying of a True Cross relic in his own personal relicario at the request of the son of Ōtomo Yoshishige (Dom Francisco): He [Dom Francisco’s son] asked me about the relicario of his father, if it was true that Your Reverence had gave him a small piece of the wood of the cross, and that he was hoping not to be deprived [defraudada] of his desire, he asked that he might by the way of Your Reverence to ask of the Padre Visitor [Valignano] and that he would like to know the effects that the Christians are helped by the relics, 28 especially of this one, which was so rare and great. Recounting the same meeting in another letter from the same month, Fróis relates: After the prince arrived at our house, after dining, I showed him an image that he desired to see, with which he was much glad, more than I can say, and called all those who came with him in order that they might see, later he called me to him separately, and he said to me that was he was desiring much to know which rare thing it was, that I might show to him a relic that I had of the wood of the Cross, which Your Reverence gave to me, him being well instructed and in great veneration and observance that the Christians have to it, I took it in a small coffer of silver and put in a bag of satin, and he left the fidalgos with which he was and concluded himself with me, and he kneeled, with his hands raised, and I showed the relic to him, and he asked me that he I might put the small coffer to his head, saying to me that he had happiness in departing for war having first adored such a relic, and truly he was desiring much to ask for it, and to take it to his neck, but because he had not yet received Holy Baptism, and for this reason it was not good, but after he was baptized he might take it and meanwhile I should guard 29 it… If we connect the dots, it appears that the True Cross relic mentioned in the possession of Dom Francisco was among the relics that Gregory XIII had sent to Japan through his bull of Goa and Cochin had been received. Indica X, 1028. See also Ines G. Županov, “Relics Management” in Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 460. 28 Cartas, 429-429v. From Usuki to Cabral in Fiuga [Hyuga], dated October, 1578. See also, Cartas, 431v. 29 Cartas, 431v-432. Fróis to Cabral. Also dated October 1578. 616 in 1577. These had apparently been distributed to the Christian daimyo rather than installed in churches. What is also remarkable about this whole episode is that we have reference to a kind of thank-you from the daimyo to Gregory for sending him the little bit of Cross. Received by Gregory during the Tenshō mission in the 1580s, the thank-you note was not written by Dom Francisco himself. Rather, someone else (likely a Japanese irmão), wrote the note on his behalf, as was normal for diplomatic correspondences of the time. Written in Japanese, the letter was translated into Italian and read before the pope by the papal secretary during the initial presentation of the mission in Rome. Dated January 11, 1582, Yoshishige addressed the pope and thanked him for the relics that he 30 had received. The embassy presented translations of the other two Christian daimyo, Dom Bartholomew and Dom Protasio, but neither mentions, requests, nor provides 31 thanks for relics. While in Rome, and indeed, all throughout Europe, the Tenshō embassy had full exposure to how the Cult of the Saints operated and how a fully Christianized society venerated relics. They visited many relic collections, not the least of them the reliquary chapel of Juan de Borgia, son of the Duke of Gandía (in eastern Spain), St. Francis Borgia. This elder Borgia had strong ties to the Jesuits as he was their third General from 1565 to 1572. (perhaps the family’s own interest in relic collection drove Borgia’s dissemination of relics throughout both Europe and the foreign Jesuit mission territories.) Borja [Borgia] therefore took us into his chapel, which we can justly call a treasure of sacred relics. There he showed us twenty-eight heads of saints in containers of silver and gold, and six arms preserved in the same way, one of them an arm of St[.] Mary Magdalen; one of the thorns from the crown of Christ the Lord, kept in a precious box, and finally a cross two and half palms long, in which relics of the 30 Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part Three (London, Printed by William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625), 322. Also quoted in Cooper, Mission, 89. Cooper notes that the early English translation is “reasonably accurate.” He also notes that the style of the letter makes it “obvious that they had not been composed by the daimyo themselves.” See note 6 on p. 224-225. The Jap-Sin copy of the letter specifically thanks him for the “relicario” that the Pope sent him and that he “put it about his head.” Jap- Sin 33, p. 2-3 in the Kirishitan Bunko’s facsimile of this volume. The letter presents Dom Francisco as desiring to visit the Holy Places that the mission boys were touring and saying that he would have “kissed his holy [the Pope’s] feet, and set them on his head...” However, wars had detained him so that he had to send his nephew in his stead. Nevertheless, despite his absence, he had to send his nephew in his stead. Nevertheless, despite his absence, he “thankes him for the Relikes sent him, & c.” 31 Luís Fróis, La Première Ambassade du Japon en Europe, 1582-1592, eds., J.A. Abranches Pinto, Yoshitomo Okamoto, and Henri Bernard (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1942), 90-92. Commentary is in French, but Fróis’s original text is in Portuguese. 617 twelve Apostles were inserted in remarkable manner, and many other most precious works of this kind. This spectacle seemed to us so very much remarkable 32 that no other private house of any noble did we see its like. Most, if not all, of these relics ended in the Jesuit church of São Roque in 1588 to which 33 they were donated. Relics were a prominent feature of the embassy’s itinerary, and the boys seemingly encountered them from the outset of their journey. In India, on the voyage out to Europe, they were entertained by the Viceroy, Francisco Mascarenhas (gov. 1581- 1584), who received them “cheerfully and kindly.” Moreover, he presented them each a relicario by “generously fasten[ing] round the neck of each of us a gold chain with a 34 skillfully made repository for a sacred relic.” Besides these personal relicarios, the embassy itself received many gifts in Europe, some being holy relics. Ostensibly, they were meant for translation to Kyushu. Following their presentation to the new Pope Sixtus V (Gregory had died while the embassy was still in Europe), the Pontiff gave them 35 vestments and relics for the churches in Japan in 1585. While there is no list of these relics, the mission may have received at least one thorn from the Crown to take back to Japan. This can be inferred by a reference to it in relation to the voyage of the São Felipe, 32 Massarella and Moran, Japanese Travellers, 245. See Cooper, Mission, 67-68, for other tours of relics made by the embassy. 33 See José Adriano de Freita Carvalho, “Os recebimentos de relíquias em S. Roque (Lisboa 1588) e em Santa Cruz (Coimbra 1595): relíquias e espiritualidade: e alguma ideologia,” Via spiritus (8) (2001), 151- 154. For a detailed investigation into the relic treasures of São Roque, see William Telfer, The Treasure of São Roque: A Sidelight on the Counter-Reformatoin (London, 1932). 34 Massarella and Moran, Japanese Travellers, 80. Though Valignano is ultimately the author of this text and did not accompany the embassy, to Europe, this part, at least, is accurate. Padre Edvardus de Sande, in a 1583 letter to Acquaviva from Goa confirms the gift of relicarios: “Forão estes meninos recibidos do Conde Viso-Rei, com muito armor lançando a cada hum sua cadea d’ouro, com seus reliquarios ao pescoso, e assi do Arcebispo, e toda a cidade se alegrou muito de os ver.” In Indica XII, 899. The bishop mentioned was P. Vincentius da Fonseca. De Sande also contributed to the De Missione. Authorship of this document cannot be attributed to any one person. It had multiple contributors, with Valignano being a kind of editor- in-chief. The text is also based upon journals that the boys were made to keep diligently, though it is unclear as to just how much of the journals made it into the final texts since they have been lost. Fróis’s account preserves some of the journals but scholars are not sure in what form. See, Massarella and Moran, Japanese Travellers, 20-23. Of note, the nao the São Felipe was actually captured on the way back by none other than Sir Francis Drake. The relic must not have been on board then. See the note in Cooper, Mission, 234-235. 35 Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes, Vol. 21, ed. by Ralph Francis Kerr (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner & Co., LTD., 1932), 179. 618 the não upon which the boys sailed back East, but it is not stated that it was in the embassy’s explicit possession. The De Missione relates, through the dialogue of Michael, relates the story of how the relic saved the ship during distress: The fathers, therefore, and the passengers, decided to entrust themselves more earnestly to God for deliverance. To put this resolution into practice with more ardent piety prayers of entreaty arose all over the ship, and an altar was set up, and that most precious thorn, from the crown placed on the head of Christ our 36 Saviour, was brought out and displayed in the place of greatest honour. The relics acquired by the embassy, perhaps including the thorn, evidently made their way back to Kyushu where Miguel (Chijiwa Seizaemon Miguel 1569-c. 1633), the representative of Ōmura and Arima, hoped they would protect the Japanese Christian community during times of persecution. He later wrote a letter to Acquaviva stating that he hoped the relics given to them in Europe, the ones that had provided protection for 37 them during their travels home, would be used to grant indulgences. Concerning the translation of relics from this mission, little information appears in the Jesuit letters except for an unusually descriptive chapter in Fróis’s Historia detailing the reception of a piece of the Holy Cross by Dom Protasio in Arima. Valignano, having rejoined the embassy en route, arrived in Nagasaki on July 18, 1590. He then planned to go to Arima with the four boys so that Dom Protasio could receive with great festivity the wood of the Cross that Sixtus V had sent. However, the Visitor, having learned of Hideyoshi’s anti-Christian edicts of 1587 whilst in Macao a year after the fact, decided to delay the ceremony because it seemed imprudent to perform in light of the hegemon’s recent attitude. Dom Protasio countered that the timing was opportune since Hideyoshi was off fighting in the extreme east of the country against the Odawara Hōjō. Valignano almost gave in, but news concerning Hideyoshi’s victory against the clan quickly brought 38 about a change of mind. It was decided that they would conduct the translation after 36 Massarella and Moran, Japanese Travellers, 405. 37 The letter can be found in the ARSI, but here is referenced from Massarella and Moran, Japanese Travellers, 440, note 1. 38 Fróis V, 189. While Valignano waited two years in Macao, he participated in the composition of the De Missione Legatorum Japonensium. Cieslik has Valignano arriving in Nagasaki on July 21 and states that he was ill for an entire month there and indisposed. Dates vary as to arrival of the mission, with the 18, 21, and 22 all proposed. Valignano’s audience with Hideyoshi occurred in late February of 1591. One wonders if he risked taking the Cross to Miyako. See Hubert Cieslki’s article, “Alessandro Valignano: Pioneer in 619 Valignano returned from Miyako, no doubt so that he could test the deep and stormy waters that were Hideyoshi. When the Cross did finally arrive in Arima, it was supposed to be received publicly in front of all Dom Protasio’s vassals and the realm’s Christians in attendance, all with the utmost solemnity and festivity. However, deciding it was more prudent to have a relatively low-key affair for fear of angering Hideyoshi, it was decided to conduct the translation with a certain reserved solemnity; the ceremony would happen inside the church rather than following a grand procession as was customary in Europe in such cases. Still, there was a significant amount of public display. Dom Protasio called all of his principal vassals to the church of Arima, which was sufficiently grand for the occasion. The reception started with a solemn mass administered by the Visitor, with the four envoys dressed in the finery that they had received in Europe. The wood of the Cross, which “His Holiness was not accustomed to give otherwise to kings and lords very great” remained on the altar with Dom Protasio on his knees before it. Then: the padre rose up and saying some of the first prayers, taking the Ceremonial Romano [the Roman Ceremony], the first book, and with reverence the holy wood, which was put in a cross of gold enamel, above of which was a crucifix, then put it on a chain of gold. And showing Dom Protasio, he made a new prostration lying down, and adored the holy cross; and the Padre put it above his head; and making to kiss it, he placed it to his neck with these pious words: Accipe lignum sancta cruces, etc. [Accept the wood of the Holy Cross] which he took from the same Ceremonial Romano. All four ambassadors then congratulated Dom Protasio, and he thanked them for the work they did on the journey and bringing to him such honorable presents as those sent by the Pontiff. A banquet followed. Concerning the fate of the cross in Dom Protasio’s hands, Fróis writes, “And he ordered then to make a small case of gold [caixinha de ouro] in which he might cover [cuberto] the crucifix, saying that it seemed to him irreverent to take it to view… Because, as the Japanese are.. they do not uncover them unless when Adaptation,” part of the series: Early Missionaries in Japan 5 hosted by Sophia University (Jesuits of Japan, 2005) which can be found online at: http://pweb.cc.sophia.ac.jp/britto/xavier/cieslik/ciejmj05.pdf. The “All about Francis Xavier” site is a wonderful relic itself…from 1999. Boxer relates that by 1590, it was perfectly clear that Hideyoshi had no intention of enforcing his anti-Christian edicts. See the Boxer, Great Ship, 54. 620 they adore them. And saying that he trembled to take a thing so holy to his neck, him being such a sinner.” This apparently was not the only translation of the True Cross that Valignano made in Japan, as Fróis states, though does not elaborate upon, a similar episode in Ōmura. All he writes is: “Later, almost with the same solemnity, the Padre Visitor went to Ōmura to give it to Dom Sancho the holy wood and rapier that His Holiness gave through Dom Miguel to his father Dom Bartholomew, who received it with no less 39 demonstration of contentment. Besides the relics of the True Cross and, possibly, a thorn from the Crown, a few other named relics are recorded as being present in Kyushu. These included the head of a companion of St. Ursula, wood from the Church at São Thomé, wood from the Holy House of Loreto (a house that was thought to be that of the Virgin Mary that had been 40 miraculously transported to Italy). Other relics included stones from the Holy Land and Cavalry itself, a relic of St. Blaise (d. 316), contact relics of Xavier and Ignatius, and some kind of relics from Saints Abundius and Abundantius. Padre Melchior Barreto Nunes is said to have taken Xavier’s outer vestment (the one in which he was buried on 41 Shangchuan Island) to Japan as a relic. In addition, there were also “bones of saints” (unnamed), cloth relics (either contact relics or third class relics, including brandea), and 42 other similar items like the aforementioned wood relics. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much documentation readily available or in detail on the translation of these 39 Fróis V, 334-338. 40 Wood from the House thought to have been built by St. Thomas in India arrived in Kyushu relatively early. One piece of it was in the form of a crucifix of “medium size.” Another was a piece of the wood which was contained in a crucifix acting as a relicario. See MHJ II, 480-481. The two are listed in a rare inventory of baggage going from Goa to Japan on the expedition of 1554. Also in Indica III, 197-205. 41 See Gupta, Relic State. Gupta, “'Signs of Wonder’ The Postmortem Travels of Francis Xavier in the Indian Ocean World” in Shanti Moorthy and Ashraf Jamal eds., Indian Ocean Studies: Cultural, Social, and Political Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2010), 208. The original source is Wicki, Gonçalves I, 423. 42 This list is composed from a few sources. Tōyō Bunko’s copy of MS 17620 found in Madrid Bibleoteca Nacional, 1379. Found in the Papels Varios Relativos a Portugal box. This is a later copy of Valignano’s list from the 1580 and 1581 Consultations, to be discussed below. That information is found in Schütte, Mission Principles Part II, 247. Reference to St. Blaise can be found in Fróis V, 162 and Jap-Sin 51, 132v. For reference to an Ignatius relic that healed someone, see Jap-Sin 60 343v from the 1624 annual letter of João Rodrigues Giram from Macao. 621 relics. For example, two letters by Pedro Gomes (1533/1555-1600) and Luis Fróis mention that one of the heads of the 11,000 companions of St. Ursula arrived in Kyushu in 1582. This was most likely the head mentioned by Ruy Vincente as having arrived in India in 1581 for translation to Japan. Pedro Gomes, who carried the relic aboard a Chinese junk from Macao to the Takaku Peninsula (Arima), describes how the relic aided their journey across the East China Sea, but makes no mention of its enshrinement or veneration in Kyushu. Fróis is no better in this regard, preferring instead to describe the powers of the relic during Gomes’s voyage rather than its use in Japan. There is also the possibility that the relic made its way back to Macao, though I have yet to find any 43 information regarding its final resting place. Even though the aforementioned relics were present on Kyushu, to what extent did Japanese Christians connect relics with the actual Saints in the Church Triumphant? In short, they would have likely known the major saints, such as the Apostles or the Virgin Mary, as well as the significance of the Passion relics such as the wood of the True Cross. As recent research by Haruko Nawata Ward has shown, Japanese Christians were well-informed about the saints and were particularly devoted to their cult. Though much of this religious education occurred in conversation with catechists, the missionaries, and each other, Japanese Christians also learned about the saints through devotional and hagiographical texts. Ward notes, “...two texts of Kirishitan [Christian] hagiography, Stories of the Saints and Meditation on the Rosary, show that the hagiographers consistently taught that the cross, images, and relics of the saints were essential symbols of goPasssion (Christ’s passion [sic]), and that martyrdom is the ultimate path for the followers of Christ and the saints.” Even if they did not learn in books about the companions of St. Ursula or some of the other saints whose relics populated Kyushu, the missionaries would have explained that they were relics of saints similar to the ones with whom they were familiar. The translated relics of the Passion would have been immediately understood, as this was a critical part of the catechesis in Japan and something they would have been intimately familiar with from images and devotional literature. Christians would have recognized the Cross from images depicting 43 Fróis III, 286-289. Cartas II, 82v-83; 89v. Pedro Gomes from Macao, December, 1582 and the 1583 Annual Letter by Fróis to the Padre General, January 2 1584. 622 the Passion, such as a retable, and the popular Go-Passion text, which narrated the 44 Crucifixion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Japanese Christians might not have known who some of the more obscure saints were, such as St. Blaise, from reading such hagiographical and devotional materials, but they would have been able to recognize that the relic belonged to a saint and what a saint actually was. They would have also been able to recognize that these were sacred objects not only by how the Jesuits venerated them, but also by their spiritual efficacy and innate sacrality as we will detail below. To sum up this section, Kyushu, like other places in the expanding Christian geography, had its fair share of translated relics. The substantial ones included relics of the Passion, such as pieces of the True Cross and bits from the Crown of Thorns, as well as entire body parts of saints, such as the head of St. Ursula or part of Xavier’s baptizing arm. Some of the translated relics were also contact relics, such as wood from the Church at São Thomé. Both first class relics and contact relics would have been intelligible to Japanese Christians due to the presence of similar kinds of relics (śarīra and contact relics) in Buddhism. Not only that, missionaries and other Japanese Christians would have explained these objects to the newly converted or just plain curious. Though I have yet to come across any detailed explanation of relics, this must have occurred, as these objects were distributed and venerated in churches by both the clergy and the laity alike. A great number of third class relics must have also been translated to Japan in the cargo of the annual nao, even if we do not have explicit documentation of this. Missionaries, such as Cabral, merely sent requests for “reliquias,” and third class relics would have been the most obvious and easily accessible forms of relic for widespread distribution in Kyushu. These third class relics could often be nothing more than a piece of cloth or some other material that had been touched to a first class relic. As a result, either India or Europe could have produced these for the mission in large quantities. In this regard, India could either be a way station for translating first class and contact relics or a production center for third class relics. Having established that numerous relics were 44 Ward, Haruko Nawata, “Kirishitan Veneration of the Saints: Jesuit and Dutch Witnesses” in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Robert A. Maryks, and R. Po-chia Hsia eds., Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas, (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 45-72, with the quote on p. 50. Ward's mention of “Stories of the Saints” is referring to the 1591 text Sanctos no gosagveo no vchi nvqigaqi (Excerpts from the Acts of the Saints). Meditations on the Rosary and Passion are part of a larger work, Spiritval xugvio no tameni… 623 likely translated to Kyushu from Europe via the outpost of India, we will now examine just how these sacred objects functioned in the religious landscape. While the Jesuit letters do not provide us with much information as to exactly where each of the major relics were kept, they would have obviously been kept in churches to act as local points of sacrality. Once translated and installed, the relics would not only have sanctified the churches but prompted veneration form both the clergy and the laity. As noted previously, a few of the major relics, such as fragments of the True Cross, were held by certain members of the laity were sometimes kept in private devotional reliquaries or chapels. But many others, such as the head of St. Gerasina, would have been enshrined in reliquaries at the major churches in Funai and Nagasaki. These would have likely been enshrined in side chapels, as was typical of the period, where the faithful could venerate them without interfering with the main part of the church. Besides side chapels, relics could have also been enshrined in stand-alone chapels, of which there were quite a few, or in chapels connected to a hospital or 45 cemetery. In these types of structures, the relic would have been the main object of sacrality to which private devotions could be made. In spite of the dearth of specific information, the Jesuits did leave us a few clues suggesting that some churches at least held splendid reliquaries that would have been filled with relics both large and small. Indeed, a few reliquaries in Kyushu seem to have been rather substantial. When evacuating valuable items to the fort of Kiyota, for example, the missionaries and those helping them had to leave a reliquary behind. Relating the incident, Fróis writes, “And as we had to take each time such a small thing, we used up much time, and up to the great gold relicario of wood, very beautiful that had been made in China, we were not able to take, so it was necessary to take the relics and leave them there in Funai with other many things of quality…[como erão tantem buyoens 46 etc.] In Miyako, Fróis writes of having a “box full of relics” that the Christians there 47 venerated as part of the celebrations for the feast day of the Presentation of Mary. 45 Missionaries used the word “chapel” to refer to either a small church where mass was not celebrated regularly or was mainly used for devotional practices. Tronu, Sacred Space, 44. 46 Fróis IV, 313. 47 Cartas, 308. Fróis to the Rector of the College in Goa, from Miyako, May 25 1571. 624 Relics in Kyushu churches were, of course, considered to be highly valuable possessions. For example, when a church in Usuki was threatened with destruction in 1577, the padres made plans for some of the relics to be secreted away in part by a servant: Of the ornaments and all the vestments [fato todo] of the church, it did not seem decent to the padre that anything outside of the chalices, the box [custodia] of relics and many things of silver that serve the divine cult on the altar, and dividing these into small boxes, we asked a servant, who was here, that he might save one box of them in his house secretly and after our death to deliver them to Padre Ioão 48 Bautista, who resided in Funai seven leagues from Usuki. Though the Jesuits do not describe the boxes in which the relics were kept in much detail, they were likely rather ornate and decorated in the Japanese style with lacquer, mother of pearl, and perhaps even precious stones. One could easily envision a so-called Nanban coffer, such as the one held by the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, holding relics in Japan. These kinds of coffers were originally produced in Japan to serve the Church there but were also exported. The coffer in Madrid contains relics, as the 49 aforementioned “custodias” did during the Japan mission. As noted before, chapels might have also been a location for the enshrinement and veneration of relics even if we lack direct evidence of their presence. If we look to the Jesuit church of the Madre de Deus in Macao, we see a precedent upon which the Jesuits might have modeled their own chapels in Japan. The church of the Madre de Deus was recorded as having a number of sanctuaries and altars containing relics, namely the Sanctuary of the Altar of St. Miguel and the Sanctuary of the Altar of the Holy Spirit. A list of the names of the saints whose relics were present is also provided, divided into 50 those that had papal authentication and those without bulls or authentication. Actual 48 Cartas, 380v. Fróis’s own letter from Usuki to the Jesuits in Portugal, dated June 5 1577. 49 Teresa Canepa, “Namban Lacquer for the Portuguese and Spanish Missionaries,” Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies, 18-19 (2009): 256-258; see p. 280 and p. 290 for some wonderful photos of “Namban” reliquaries in Europe. For some boxes held in Japan, see Nishikawa, Junkyō, 44. For an overview and a good number of photos of reliquary boxes made in Japan, India, and Asia in general, see Ana García Sanz’s chapter “Relicarios de Oriente” in Marina Alfonso Mola and Carlos Martinez Shaw, eds. Oriente en Palacio: Tesoros Asiáticos en las Colecciones Reales Españolas: Catalogo Editado con Motivo de la Exposición Celebrada en el Palacio Real de Madrid, Marzo-Mayo de 2003 (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2003), 129-141. 50 Schütte, Introductio, 299-300. 625 relics that the church of the Madre de Deus possessed included: two pieces of the True Cross, a piece of the sponge from the Passion, part of a bone of St. Joseph, a hair from the Virgin Mary, a bone fragment of St. Lawrence, three heads of the 11,000 Virgins, as well as “many more relics of martyrs,” including three heads of the Japanese martyrs 51 Paulo, João, and Diogo. Though we do not have a list of relics in Kyushu during the time of the mission comparable to the church in Goa, we do have an inventory of items listed as being in the possession of the Bishop of Japan, D. Diogo Correia Valente, S.J. (bishop from 1618 to 1633), upon his death in exile at Macao. The inventory does list several relics, among them the bones and heads of Japanese martyrs. It is dated November of 1633 (I have only listed relevant items): Inventory that was made of the things found upon the death of Senhor D. Diogo th Vaalente Bishop of Japan, on the 11 of November of 1633, being present are Padre João Marques Moreira, Padre João Baptista Bonelli Proe(or.) da Prov(a.) de Japão da Comp(a.) de JESUS, Irmão Belchior Ribeiro of the same Company, as well as Valentim Noqueira, Melchior da Costa, and Manoel de Lima, who were actually in the house of the Senhor Bishop when he died. Two columns of silver with his relics he left for the College Two pyramids of silver with two great relics he left to the College Two reliquaries in two boxes de Maquie de Japao Various big relics, and small of the Saints. Two heads of two martyrs of Japan, and half of another, three big bones, two 52 small bones, and a cross. One notable entry is that there were “various large and small relics of the Saints.” These could be almost anything, ranging from body parts to third-class relics like brandea. This was not uncommon in both Europe and Asia at the time. For example, one can even see a reliquary with relics of unnamed saints at the Basilica of Bom Jesus in old Goa to this 51 César Guillén-Nuñez, Macao’s Church of Saint Paul: A Glimmer of the Baroque in China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 115-116. Guillén-Nuñez suggests that pieces of the cross in Macao and in Goa would have “created a powerful spiritual bond between the two Jesuit institutions.” This connection could be extended to Japan as Jesuits there had the same relic. The church of Madre de Deus also came to possess part of the baptizing arm of Xavier (first in 1618-1619 and then again after 1635), which, it is said, was powerful for warding off typhoons. 52 Ajuda 49-V-11, 117v-146v. 626 53 day. There were literally so many relics in the East that the ecclesiastical authorities could not or did not deem it important enough to trace the provenance of each one. In addition to the churches, it seems that the Jesuit colleges in Kyushu also served as depositories for relics. According to Schütte, there is a manuscript in the Arquivio Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon that details an inventory of relics (Elenchus Reliquiarum) from 1747 housed at the College in Macao. It apparently includes a list of relics that had once been housed at the college in Funai and had been translated to Macao during the persecution of the seventeenth century. These relics included the “signatures of Xavier, and 19 boxes of relics of Japanese martyrs, four ordinary religious (O.S.A., 54 O.P. O.F.M., S.J.) and saeculars [laity], men women, and children.” This, of course, will require verification in the future. Besides having actual reliquaries, every church in Japan likely contained relics as part of their sacrificial altars. According to longstanding Church practice, every altar had (and still has), as its consecrating source, at least one relic placed inside a cavity (known 55 as the sepulcrum) within the altar stone and then sealed. This would have been true for the time of the Jesuit mission as well, since sacralizing altars and churches with relics became the norm ever since the Second Council of Nicaea in the eighth century as mentioned earlier. As noted by Wicki, the Jesuits in Japan also had the privilege to say 56 mass on portable altars. Presumably, these, too, would have contained some type of 53 See Županov’s photo in Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 452. 54 Schütte, Introductio, 304. 55 Concerning the consecration of an altar-stone, see the Catholic Encyclopedia entries for “Consecration” and "Altar Stone.” It notes that “ the cavity for the relics is made on the top of the stone, usually near its front edge. It may be in the center of the stone, but never on its front edge (Cong. Sac. Rit., 13 June, 1899). Relics of two martyrs with three grains of incense, are placed immediately (i.e. without a reliquary) in its cavity, which is closed with a small slab of natural stone fitting exactly upon the opening. The Cong Sac. Rit (16 Feb., 1906) declared that for valid consecration it suffices to have enclosed the cavity the relics of one martyr. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04276a.htmand and http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01351d.htm 56 Fróis II, 501. See also Indica XI, 628. Saying mass on portable altars went against the norms of Session XXII of the Council of Trent. That session states, “They must not allow this holy sacrifice to be celebrated by any secular or religious priests whatever in private houses, and wholly outside a church or the oratories dedicated exclusively to divine worship, which are to be designated and vested by the bishops…” Tanner, Decrees, 736-737. The Provincial of Portugal, Diego Mirón, made a request to the second General Diego Laínez for an exemption from the prohibition of portable altars. He stated that in lands such as India, 627 relic for consecration if the padre had access to one. Beyond that, they would have likely contained a so-called “super-altar”—i.e. a small square of stone that had already been 57 consecrated by a bishop. Such altars were used in medieval Europe and also in mission zones. For example, two English (Northumbrian) missionaries, both named Hewald (d. around 692 as martyrs), working in Old Saxony used “a consecrated board instead of an altar” to celebrate mass. Early portable altars such as this one probably did not contain relics, but later ones did, such as the portable relics made by the German monk and th goldsmith Roger of Helmarshausen (12 century). Lasko, in a study of these altars, notes that “later when the need for altars to contain relics became widely accepted, their function tended to be combined with that of a reliquary. Both of Roger’s portable altars 58 served that dual function.” Thus, by the twelfth century, at least, we find relics in portable altars. Though we do not have descriptions of the portable altars used in Kyushu, we have reference to them in other contemporaneous mission zones, such as North America, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. One missionary, who worked in what is now Vietnam, François Pallu (1626–1684), described the ideal portable altar: …they should be of good size, not too large or small. It does not matter if they are of marble, slate or hard stone, the best value must be chosen; they must all be set in wood and covered all over in twill or a very strong fabric, with a cross on the 59 cloth on the side where the stone will have been consecrated. The reference to the consecrated stone is, no doubt, a reference to the altar cavity where the consecrating relic would have been kept. Though we do not have direct evidence for the presence of relics in portable altars in Japan, we can infer that they must have contained some type of relic in accordance with normal Catholic praxis. Portable altars Brazil, and other lands, not having portable altars would be a “great inconvenience.” October, 1564. Indica VI, 803. 57 Cyril E. Pocknee., The Christian Altar in History and Today (London: A.R. Mowbray, 1963), 43. 58 Peter Lasko, “Roger of Helmarshausen, Author and Craftsman: Life, Sources of Style, and Iconography” in Colum Hourihane ed., Objects, Images, and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 185-186. Original reference for the Hewalds can be found in McClure, Collins, The Ecclesiastical History, 250. 59 François Pallu to M. Fermanel, Balassor [in northeastern India], 20 December 1672. Quoted in Tara Alberts, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 138. 628 were in effect, by virtue of the relics contained within them, moveable loci of sacrality. Not only did they contain a bit of the Church Triumphant, portable altars made any given space holy enough to bear the sacral weight of the true presence of God in the form of the Eucharist. This was particularly useful for the Jesuits in Kyushu and other mission zones where they would have to travel about to celebrate mass. In addition, they could leave these altars in a trusted location. For example, Baltasar Gago describes a kind of portable altar that was kept not in a church but in the house of a prominent Christian during the 60 early missionizing of Kutami. This was not too unusual, as portable altars (sometimes called super-altars) could be kept in private oratories so long as they had the appropriate 61 permission from the pope or local bishop. If first class relics (body parts) could not be obtained to consecrate an altar, there did exist other methods for making an altar worthy of bearing the sacrifice of the mass. Brandea or other third class relics were suitable for the consecration of the altar from a very early date, though this soon gave way to the use of actual body parts in the altar or under it if the altar had been built over the tomb of a saint. In medieval Britain, where there was a shortage of relics in the ninth century, the Synod of Chelsea (816) determined that churches (and presumably the altars contained within in them) could be consecrated with the Host and Blood rather than a relic. Sometimes even fragments of the Gospels 62 were used. Additionally, in early modern England, relics were not regarded as essential elements in a consecrated altar. In other cases, such as in Germany from the same period, merely inserting a Host into the altar was acceptable. Sometimes, as in France during the 63 sixteenth century, merely saying prayers over the altar was sufficient. 60 MHJ III, 181-182. Gago to the Jesuits in India, from Funai, Nov. 1 1559. 61 See Cyril E. Pocknee, The Christian Altar in History and Today (London: A.R. Mowbray, 1963), 43-45, for a brief overview of portable altars. 62 Catholic Encyclopedia entry for History of the Christian Altar in the subsection “Consecration” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01362a.htm 63 Pocknee, The Christian Altar, 40-41. The Synod of Chelsea stated: “Postea Eucharistia, quae ab Episcopo per eodem ministerium consecratur, cum aliis reliquiis conditur in capsela, ac servetur in eadem basilica. Et si alii reliquias intimare non potest, tamen hoc maxime proficere potest, quia Corpus et Sanguis est Domini nostri Jesu Christi.” Quoted in Arthur W. Haddan, William Stubbs, and David Wilkins, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869), 580. 629 If relics were not available in Kyushu for the consecration of altars, it seems that the padres used other means to make them holy. So far, I have only found one instance of altar consecration in the Jesuit correspondence, one that seemingly did not use relics for sacralization. In 1562, Cosme de Torres ordered Luis Almeida and a Japanese Christian to make “five churches with altars” in the area of Funai. Fróis adds to Almeida’s letter mentioning exactly how these altars were constructed, saying that “he left them in each 64 altar a blessed bead and the written regiment and the altars were well adorned.” It seems that in this case, in the absence of any relics on hand, it was acceptable to use a sacramental for the consecration of the altars. However, there is the possibility that Fróis here was referring to beads (contas) that were actually relics. In a 1566 letter, some four years after the consecration of the altars took place, Fróis mentions that Japanese Christians requested relics, one of them being “beads of wood of Saint Thomas” (cuenta del palo de sancto Thome 65). If this were the case, then these kinds of portable altars would have been theoretically consecrated with a contact relic of St. Thomas rather than a sacramental. Although some churches contained caches of relics stored in ornate reliquaries and some did not, in theory, there were relics inside each altar that made the entire church building holy and thus a sacred point on the religious landscape for Japanese Christians. We must keep in mind that the church building in and of itself was not necessarily the sacralizing factor, but rather the altar, where the holy sacrifice of the mass took place. As Pocknee cautions, it is “well to remember that the temple [church] exists for the altar and not the altar for the temple. Consequently the church should be built round the Lord’s 66 Table [the altar] and planned accordingly.” In other words, it is the altar, having been sacralized by the relics placed within, that makes a church a sacred location. The ultimate source of this sacrality is the saint whose relics are contained within the church since their spiritual form exist in the Church Triumphant and eternally enjoy the beatific vision of the Godhead. Their relics, as physical conduits to this spiritual communion with God, 64 MHJ III , 539. Almeida to the Jesuits in Europe, from Yokoseura, October 25 1562. Fróis I, 209. 65 Cartas 1575, 248v. Fróis to the Padre Minister of the College of Goa, from Sakai, Jan. 25 1566. Cartas, 212, has this dated as Jan. 24 66 Pocknee, The Christian Altar, 15. 630 bleed this sacrality over into the material world for the living members of the Church to encounter. In addition, churches had even greater levels of sacrality if they contained numerous relics besides those contained in an altar. Exquisite reliquaries offered access to sacrality for the faithful. In this sense, churches also pulled people as a locus of sacrality for veneration of the relics and making petitions to them for some cause or another. As noted before, some Japanese churches contained boxes and other types of reliquaries that were amongst the most important possessions of these sacred sites. Whenever there was danger to a church, these were or should have been the first things spirited away to safety. Although churches, with their altar-relics and ornate reliquaries, sacralized the religious landscape in Kyushu as physical buildings, Japanese Christians had an additional way to access the sacrality of the Church Triumphant with personal relics and relicarios. We will investigate the importance of these objects in the next section. The Distribution of Relics and Relicarios to the Laity Individual relics and relicarios were highly sought out by Japanese Christians and were freely distributed by the missionaries during the first few decades. Both Torres and Cabral, as Mission Superiors, fostered devotion to personal relics among the population at large. However, the Visitor Valignano, in a later attempt to instill more reverence for relics, relicarios, and other sacramentals, tried to put a stop to satisfying this spiritual need of the native laity during the Consultations of 1580 and 1581 (discussed below). The Visitor seems to have made little effect in practical terms since individual relics and relicarios are still mentioned in both the Cartas and Fróis’s Historia after the 1580s. In fact, their frequency in the sources seems to increase as devotion to and use of these sacred objects became even more important during times of persecution in the seventeenth century. In fact, in some cases, the possession of a relicario during this 631 period was proof-positive that one was a Christian and could be trusted as a coreligionist 67 and member of the community. Aside from Xavier’s manufacture of the first relicario in Satsuma, we have little detailed information about the introduction, distribution, and popularity of individualized relics in Kyushu during the first few decades of the mission. The initial introduction of relics and relicarios seems to have been occurred at the same time as the introduction of 68 sacramentals, namely Agnus dei, beads (contas), and crucifixes. Cosme de Torres, whose philosophy and theology concerning missionization was similar to those of his friend Xavier, seems to have played an instrumental part in this process. One of the first references to the distribution of relics was when Torres freely gave “reliquias” in Maguem (Yamagchui): “In Maguem there were still some relics that the padre Cosme de Torres gave to them [the poor Christians], and four years have passed since he gave them, 69 and still now they preserve them.” This distribution seems to have followed preaching, so Torres’s apparent goal was to teach at least some level of doctrine but also bestow the practical benefits of Christianity by means of the relics. Given that the mission was still in its first decade, these relics would likely have been some type of third class relic. If Torres possessed a first class relic such as Xavier did, of course, he could make third class relics at will and freely distribute them amongst the population. 67 The wearing of a relicario thus seems to have been different from the wearing of a rosario, which was so in fashion that even Hideyoshi sported one at one point. Sansom relates, “European dress became so common that on casually meeting a crowd of courtiers it was difficult to say at once whether they were Portuguese or Japanese. To imitate the Portuguese some of the more ardent votaries of fashion even went so far as to commit the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria to memory. Reliquaries and rosaries were eagerly bought—as much as ten or twelve scudi being paid for a rosary—while all the lords, Hideyoshi and his nephew the Regent included, went about with crucifixes and reliquaries hanging from their necks—a tribute not to piety but to fashion.” He cites Gnecchi’s letter from Kyoto. This was part of the “Portuguese craze” among the Japanese in the capital following Valignano’s dazzling arrival in 1591. James Murdoch with Isoh Yamagata, History of Japan During the Century of Early Foreign Intercourse 1542-1651 (Kobe: Published at the Office of the “Chronicle,” 1903), 272. See also Hall, Cambridge History, 363. Hideyoshi’s earlier edicts called for the confiscation of rosary and relics. Making of an Enterprise, 63. See also Elison, in George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century (Honolulu: The University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1981), 79. 68 Cartas, 29v. Letter by P. Aires Brandrão to the Jesuits in Coimbra from Goa, December 23 1554. 69 Cartas, 64 Gago to Brothers in India, from Japan, dated November 1 1559. See also MHJ III, 183. The critical edition of the letter refers to Maguem as “Mageche,” which transliterates much easier into Yamaguchi. I have yet to see Yamaguchi in this way elsewhere. Gago himself mentions dipping relics in the sea, Dec. 10, 1562. See Cartas 96v, and MHJ III, 589. Gago’s use of a relic to quell a tempest is confirmed independently by a Portuguese laymen who was aboard the ship in a letter to Padre Francisco Perez. Cartas, 151. 632 There are many references to the distribution of “reliquias” and “relicarios” throughout the Jesuit letters and Fróis’s Historia. Unfortunately, the writers of these documents never go into detail as to exactly what these relics were or how the Jesuits obtained them. Frequently, they just mention that “reliquias” were given out to the Christians or that a certain “reliquias” was given to a certain person. Sometimes these were for specific reasons, such as protection in battle. For example, Fróis was mentioned as having given “some relics” to Dom Giõ (also known as Dom Jiaõ or Shirakura 70 Shinsukedono), a Christian warrior of Shimabara. According to Almeida, the Christians in the Gotō Islands asked him to “[give] to them some relics, or some gospel [likely written fragments] or written prayers, so that in war they would not happen upon some danger.” Lacking relics, Almeida had to improvise: “I responded to them, in place of relics, they could make the sign of the Cross, and the name of JESUS and Mary, in which 71 all work they could invoke, and they would need nothing more: all were consoled…” Fróis later reports in a 1577 letter that relics became increasingly popular among the Christians in Bungo. He states, “The appetite for relics, the desire for blessed beads, among the Christians before was moderate, but now it has become immense, the more I 72 give them.” If this was true for Kyushu, it was also true for the Christians of Miyako. Both Gaspar Coelho and Lourenço Mexia confirm that the laity there had an immense 73 appetite for relics. Along with individual relics, the Jesuits also distributed relicarios to the general population. As mentioned before, relicarios were a kind of personal locket that contained some type of relic and acted as a personal reliquary for the wearer. We know from the few that have come down to us, as shown by Gotō, that they were typically made of metal and that some of them were produced in Asia. The artwork on them emphasizes the 70 Cartas, 160v. Letter from Almeida and Fróis to the brothers of the society, written in Fukuda on the road to Miyako, Oct. 25 1565. 71 Cartas, 222, Almeida to the Brothers of the Society, from the Island of Shiki, Oct. 20 1566. 72 Cartas, 385v. Fróis to the Padres and Brothers of the Society in Portugal, from Usuki, June 5 1577. 73 Christians of Miyako had “great devotion to relics, images, and blessed beads…” See, Cartas II, 31. Gaspar Coelho to the Padre General from Nagasaki, February 15, 1582. Lourenço Mexia also confirms that the Christians of Miyako wanted access to relics. See his letter to Migeul de Sousa, Rector of the College at Coimbra, from Macao, Jan. 6 1584 in Cartas II, 126. 633 crucifixion with the outer faces depicting the Cross, the Holy Nails, and the Titulus Crucis. One also depicts Golgotha (from the Aramaic, meaning skull) by actually placing a skull at the base of the Cross. The reverse side of one relicario has the monogram for Mary with a lily. Others could be made of cloth, with a small window to view the relic. These kinds might not have contained a body part as a relic but rather brandea. Another held in the Sendai City Museum consists of a metallic oval frame in which there was a 74 globular metal pendant that contained a relic of a martyr. Though not as widespread amongst the population as sacramentals, such as medals, beads, and Agnus Deis, relicarios were desired and highly regarded by those who wore them. Archaeological excavations have confirmed the relative rarity of the 75 relicarios, with many more crucifixes, medals, and beads being found than these items. This was likely a result of sacramentals being much easier to produce since a relicario should have contained some type of actual relic. Nevertheless, we do find accounts of the Jesuits giving them out to the population at large. Like relics, the distribution of relicarios usually occurred in conjunction with the distribution of sacramentals. In one case, a relicario figured into the conversion Dom Paulo (Shiga Chikatsugu, 1566-1660) in 1585. Fróis relates how Dom Paulo asked Padre Pedro Gomes for some relics and blessed beads, telling him that he was not a new Christian but had known the church for some seven years. To demonstrate this, Dom Paulo showed the padre a rosary that Dom Francisco had secretly given him when he knew that he was a Christian. In response: The padre gave to him a relicario of those which came from Goa of copper gild, because there was no better one in the house, and he was unable to contain his joy from which it gave him. Also the Padre Rector [Pedro Ramón, 1550-1611] of the house approved to give to him a registro [a picture of a saint] of paper put in 76 wood with frames. There are many other relatively detailed accounts of specific individuals receiving relicarios, but most of these involved prominent individuals, such as the lords themselves 74 Gotō, Kirishitan Ibutsu, 324 and Nishikawa, Junkyō, 62-63; 216. 75 Gotō presents data for some 120 medals, 76 bead fragments, and 48 crucifixes. In comparison, there are only 3 examples of relicarios. Gotō, Kirishitan Ibutsu, 268-324. 76 Cartas II, 141v-142. Fróis to the Padre General, from Nagasaki, Aug. 20 1585. Also Fróis IV, 151. 634 77 or their relatives, rather than the common laity. However, there is some indication that these sacred objects were highly desired by ordinary Japanese Christians as early as the first few decades of the mission. In one case from 1564, Fróis records that people from Takushima (an island very near Hirado) made their own relicarios in order to hold bits of an Agnus Dei: As these people are very curious to inquire and search for all the means by which they are able to help their salvation, the major difficulty that we have with them, is that they ask for blessed beads, beads for praying [rosaries], veronicas, and some relics…. Trazer.. a small box of Agnus Dei, which I had taken from Goa, in order to share with the irmãos: and being importuned by an old Christian noblewoman, a native of Hakata, that I might share with her some of these relics and that I give her a small one of these Agnus Dei. Being known to the other Christians, as is the custom among them, that what one does to one must be done to all, so from Hirado, as well as the other islands, they came each day in boats full of men and women, to ask us that we might give them some of those relics of love as they call them [the Agnus Dei]. The brother [Juan Fernández] gave them a lecture about the Agnus Dei, in order that they would esteem them more, and after we shared with them: so that it was necessary to make such parts to satisfy more than a thousand and five hundred Christians, and almost all, according to their own ability, made for them their relicarios of copper, tin, brass, or silver with JESUS on one side, a crown of thorns, and three nails at the foot, and a cross on 78 the other. Although this passage recounts the distribution of Agnus Deis, it nevertheless demonstrates the popularity of relicarios amongst the ordinary residents of Kyushu. Should we accuse Fróis of exaggerating lay demand for such objects, we must keep in mind that later Jesuit leadership sought to curb such distributions (discussed below). The passage also indicates that people constructed their own containers and lockets in order to keep sacred objects. Though not technically a relic, the Agnus Dei was treated as such by the Japanese in this instance. Fróis mentions that these Agnus Deis had originated from Goa, which means that they may or may not have been created under the auspices of the Pope. The Jesuits did receive boxes full of these from Rome, but there is the possibility that the Agnus Deis were created in Goa and could have been contact relics rather than merely a sacramental. In the past, Agnus Deis were created with the mixture of ashes 77 Fróis V, 330. 78 Cartas 1575, 173; Cartas, 147; Fróis I, 357. There are minor variations between the three versions. Fróis to the Society in India, from the Port of Hirado, Oct. 3 1564. 635 from martyrs or having been touched to the tomb of a saint, thereby making them contact 79 relics. Containers for Agnus Deis in Europe could be quite elaborate with such designs 80 and ornamentation that would have been more suitable for reliquaries. Apparently the use of relicarios by Japanese Christians was so widespread that it even caught the eye of Hideyoshi following his invasion of Kyushu in 1587. Among the many edicts he issued to curb the spread of Christianity amongst the Japanese was one that specifically forbade the wearing of relicarios and sacramentals. According to Fróis, the edict is as follows: “5. Item [Likewise], that beads for praying are to be taken away 81 from Christians and relicarios that they carry on their chest.” Fróis reports that some lords took Hideyoshi’s proscriptions very seriously. He cites a letter from the “lord of Hirado” (Matsuura Shigenobu, 1549-1614) to Dom Geronimo (Koteda Yasukazu, b. 1553, also Jerónimo), in which Shigenobu advised Geronimo that his vassals should not display flags with crosses on their ships, “nor your Christians take beads nor relicarios to 82 their necks…” This edict seems to have been ignored by Christians and their lords in areas that were out of the way and under less direct supervision of the hegemon. Fróis reports that in Shimabara, in 1587, “the Christians here had not been prohibited from 83 taking neither beads, relicarios.” Eventually Hideyoshi changed his mind about the proscription of relicarios and other Christian paraphernalia once the “Portuguese Craze” had taken over the capital in the 1590s. According to a 1595 letter by Gnecchi-Soldo Organtino (1530–1609), people sported relicarios for fashion: 79 Pope Zosimus (r. 417-418) had ashes of the martyrs added to the wax disks for distribution. This would have made the Agnus Dei an actual relic. For a brief overview of Agnus Deis, see Sergio Bertelli, The King's Body: Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 128-138. 80 John Cherry, “Containers for Agnus Deis” in Christopher Entwistle, ed., Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in Byzantine and Medieval Art and Archaeology, Presented to David Buckton (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2003), 171-183. 81 Fróis IV, 418. Cartas II, 209. The pagination in this edition of the Cartas is wrong, as 209 is repeated twice. Fróis’s letter is grouped with the 1586 annual letter for some reason. For a contemporary engraving (1585) depicting how the Agnus Deis were mass produced in Rome by the Pope, see Herbert Thurston S.J., The Holy Year of Jubilee: An Account of the History and Ceremonial of the Roman Jubilee (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1900), 254. 82 Fróis IV, 420-421. 83 Fróis IV, 470. 636 Theie are muche delighted with theire behavioure, and manner of apparailinge, and especiallie with theire wearinge of theire beades, or reliquiaries aboute theire neckes or at theire girdles, so that manie of them theie procured of the Portingalles, & woulde not sticke to geve 10 or 12 Crownes for a paire of e common beades, to weare aboute theire neckes, y [the] like accoumpte doe theie make also of theire Crosses and Agnus Dei, whiche nowe theie gett theire owne workmen to make for them, and doe weare them in all partes of the Cuntrie, bothe t in Nangoia, and here also in Meaco, the whole Nobilitie doth so take them upp, y [that] theie are worne commonlie, even from the Kinge himselfe, and the new 84 Quabocondona, his Nephew, unto the meaner sorte of the nobilitie. The non-Christians in the capital clearly wore the relicarios for fashion; and, if they actually contained any sort of relic at all, it would have been a third class relic. Even this seems unlikely, however, since it was likely the lockets that were prized and not the sacred object within them. Japanese Christians, on the other hand, wore relicarios as personal loci of sacrality so that they could access it wherever they might be on the religious landscape.. As personal loci of sacrality, individual relics and relicarios bestowed a number of spiritual and physical benefits upon their possessors. Japanese Christians used relics to do the following: to exorcize harmful spirits; to heal people or to be healed of sort of physical malady; and to gain some sort of protection from harm, particularly protection during battle. In many ways, the use of relics in these ways is an inverse of the interaction between the Church Militant and the Church Suffering as explored in the previous section. In this case, it was the Church Triumphant (the saints in Heaven), that is the holy dead, who helped the living to overcome spiritual and physical difficulties in this world. What is remarkable in Kyushu is that although this kind of aid from the saints could and did happen in churches, exorcism and healing frequently occurred outside of churches and amongst laypeople due to the portability and widespread distribution of relics. Furthermore, it often occurred beyond Jesuit oversight, with incidents of exorcism or healing only being reported to the padres by the Japanese participants sometime later. Because the spiritual or physical benefits of personal relics were bestowed upon the laity in a variety of ways, we will only cover a few examples for each. 84 MS Japan 3, 2v. (The Coppie of a Letter written from a Fa: Organtine, one of the Societie of the name of Jhs, to the Fa: generall of the same Societie from Meaco in JAPONIA. 1595). 637 Aside from using relics for personal devotion, Japanese Christians frequently used them during exorcisms as a potent means to man-handle harmful and possessing spirits. To this end, they were not unlike other non-Europeans in other Jesuit missionary zones 85 who used relics for spirit manipulation. Within the Jesuits letters, we see numerous instances of “reliquias” or “relicarios” playing an important role in this regard. They seem to have been used in the practice from a relatively early period in the mission, one 86 of the first being described by Padre Antonio Lopez in 1577. One of the more interesting use of a relicario can be found in Padre Gaspar Coelho’s Annual Letter of 1582. Describing some of the exorcisms that occurred near the Jesuit residence in Yu (in Bungo) during the year, Coelho writes: “By means of relics and holy water, some 87 Christians cured ten or twelve demoniacs, with a Christian being among one of them…” What is significant about this statement is that Coelho indicates, rather matter-of-factly, that it was the laity and not the padres or irmãos that performed the exorcisms. In addition, his observation that only one of the demoniacs was a Christian clearly implies that the rest were non-Christians. This means that individual Japanese Christians or teams of Christians, using relics, were providing exorcism as a spiritual service to their non- Christian neighbors and relatives. By the 1590s, it seems to have been widely known that Christian relics were extremely potent in helping people battle malevolent and possessing spirits. Fróis, in his chapter for 1591-1592, simply states: …many demoniacs (of which there are always a good amount in Japan because of the power that the devil has over this Gentiledom) are free by means of some relics, exorcisms and prayers, which the sometimes the padres make or sometimes the Christians make, and they are moved to know the virtue of our holy law and 88 are converted and made Christians.” 85 We also note briefly here, that the use of relics for exorcism was not limited to Japan. In several cases from other mission zones in East Asia, namely China and Southeast Asia, relics were also a popular tool for controlling malevolent spirits. For example, the Annual Letter from China for 1635 notes that many demoniacs had been cured by “relics of our Saints with holy water, and with the most holy names of Jesus and Mary…” Ajuda 49-V-11, 281v. Fragments of the True Cross were used in exorcisms amongst the Tokienese. See Alberts, Conflict and Conversion, 119. 86 Cartas, 409. Antonio Lopez from the residence in Hondo, 1577. 87 Cartas II , 29v. Gaspar Coelho to the Padre General, from Nagasaki, Feb. 15 1582. 88 Fróis V, 392. 638 Elsewhere, Fróis relates a number of exorcisms that involved relics. In fact, by the 1590s, it seems to have been widely known that Christian relics were extremely potent in helping people against malevolent and possessing spirits. As mentioned before, Lucas of Takata (some two leagues from Funai) was described as a “Christian, [who] had great remedies against demoniacs” and as having frequently used his own relicarios in performing exorcisms. Fróis provides us with an account demonstrating just how relicarios might have been shared in the Japanese community to resolve the problem of possession. Apparently a non-Christian bushi household of a certain “Camodono” in Bungo had been suffering from a case of possession. One of the members had heard about the exorcist Lucas of Takata, so they asked one of the Christian relatives, André, to see if Lucas could provide some sort of remedy. Fróis describes the use of the relicario as follows: They both went there [André and Lucas] and Lucas gave him a relicario, saying to André to put it to the neck of his ill sister and to say prayers for her. And going out to the house, the gentile [Camodono] asked that he might try the relic on a young woman who was possessed, to which he then put the relicario to her neck and she began to take notice of it and became well. Seeing the effectiveness of the relicario, “Camodono” and his wife decided to become Christian. After learning the prayers of the Catechism from Lucas, they “burned all the Buddhas and false nominas that they had.” Apparently, they deemed the Christian relicario much more effective than the Buddhist sacred objects in their possession. They also “became so devoted to the relicario that no more did they wish to be apart from it, and according to the manner that happened before [the previous exorcism] he put it on the other possessed young woman…” The second young woman became free of the 89 demon, and apparently all “increased greatly in the faith.” Besides Lucas of Takata, there were also other Japanese Christians, laymen and Jesuits, who used relics in exorcisms. For example, we noted that the irmão Damião frequently used relicarios in his 90 role as exorcist. Leão, a Japanese Christian from Notsu also used a relicario and various other relics to perform exorcisms. In one of Leão’s exorcisms, it was reported that a 89 Fróis V, 405. 90 Fróis V, 132-135; Ward, Women Religious Leaders, 160. 639 91 demon “had fear” of the Christian relics. Occasionally, the Jesuit padres themselves also employed relics to banish spirits from people. One early case occurred in 1558 when a padre in Amakusa used a relicario and some holy water to free an older woman from a 92 demon. Another case is related in the Annual Letter of 1609 when a padre used a 93 relicario during an exorcism of a woman in Bungo. This case came from the later decades of the mission and is a testament the enduring use of relics to combat spiritual possession. While we do not have too much information regarding what kind of relics that were used for exorcisms, it stands to reason that the most readily available would have been third-class relics or brandea. All of these relics would have been portable, so they could not have been major relics like the head of the St. Gerasina. In a couple of cases of exorcism, we do see some named relics, with wood from the True Cross being one of the most popular and effective. In the Annual Letter of 1600, there is mention of pieces of wood from both the True Cross and the Holy House at Loreto being used in an 94 exorcism; and the Annual Letter of 1611 states that another piece of the True Cross was 95 used in Kōri. One of the most curious references is to a certain “relicarios de contas” 96 being used in at least one exorcism in 1589. While these could be just ordinary blessed beads (which would make them a sacramental), it is also possible that this referred specifically to beads made out of “the wood of St. Thomas.” This would mean that the beads were in fact contact relics of St. Thomas, taken from the house that he supposedly built in India. Besides exorcism, Japanese Christians used the portable sacrality in relics for healing of various infirmities. While miraculous healing could and did occur in churches since they were sacred sites, the healing that a relic bestowed could be taken to different 91 Cartas II, 28. Gaspar Coelho to the Padre General, from Nagasaki, Feb. 15 1582. 92 Fróis V, 60. 93 Jap-Sin 56, 210v. 94 Ajuda 49-IV-59; 12v. 95 Jap-Sin 57, 177v. 96 Fróis V, 133. 640 locations, thus making Christians themselves a kind of sacred locus for those in need. There are many cases of healing, and we only need to highlight a few of them to underscore our point. In cases of healing, relics also supplemented the sacramentals (which were much more plentiful and easily accessible) that Japanese Christians could use for healing. As mentioned earlier, one of the first relicarios in Japan was the disciplina whip left in Satsuma by Francis Xavier. Technically not a relic until after his death—the possessors of the object likely did not know this—the disciplina was nevertheless used by the family as means to heal their sick. One of the first contemporaneous references to relics being used in healing the sick comes to us in a letter from 1564 in which Fróis mentions that Japanese Christians have a special devotion to 97 holy water and sacred relics for their sick. As more Christians obtained more relics, the frequency of healing associated with them almost certainly increased. The practice was particularly prevalent throughout the later decades of the mission. Fróis, relating events of 1589, describes several incidents of healing through relics. In one case, in Arie (on the Shimabara Peninsula), many “noble women” came to the church screaming and weeping in the belief that one of their relatives had died. The Padre there took “a relicario and holy water” to the house of the supposedly dead woman, where he found her with her eyes closed and not breathing. Failing to revive her by calling her name several times, the padre said some prayers and put the relicario to her throat. After telling her to “adore [the] holy relics,” the woman’s eyes opened and she began crying. The sick woman then took the relicario from the hands of the padre and put it to her head, adoring the relics inside three times. According to Fróis, she said to the people present (most of whom were likely Christians), “through 98 the virtue of these holy relics, as you have seen, Our Lord wanted to restore me to life.” In another case, also in Arie, a padre cured a woman with a throat injury by means of “a relicario in which there was a relic of St. Blaise…” The woman was said to have adored the holy relics three times and put them about the place of the sores, and then in 97 Cartas, 147v. Fróis to the Brothers of the Society in India, from the port of Hirado, Oct. 3 1564. 98 Fróis V, 161-162. 641 99 the presence of all began to speak. Another incident is recorded in 1583 in which a young woman had not been eating for many years. When she was extremely weak, the padre was called and, after putting some relics to her neck, she became well and regained 100 her health. In some cases, Japanese Christians lent out their relics to their non- Christian neighbors for the purposes of healing. Fróis records one such instance in 1584 in Bungo: “One Christian gave a sick gentile a small piece of wood of St. Thomas, in 101 order that he might shave part of it off and drink it in a little bit of water.” Drinking water with a piece of wood from the St. Thomas house seems to have been particularly widespread and an effective treatment for fevers. This practice appears to have started relatively early on, with one of the first incidents being reported in 1569 by an unidentified Portuguese man who was likely a merchant. According to this individual, the Christian daimyo Dom Bartholomew was at a banquet with a padre and told the clergyman that “one of his gentile daughters, who [had been] sick with chills and fevers, and that he had given to her a drink of water of the wood of St. Thomas and that later she recovered…” Later, a child of Dom Sancho (Ōmura Yoshiaki, 1568- 1615) was also having chills and fevers. The padre, having heard from Dom Bartholomew about the wood of St. Thomas, suggested the same treatment. That child, like Dom Bartholomew’s, 102 was also healed. What is particularly interesting about this case is that the use of the relic seems to have originated from a Japanese layperson (Dom Bartholomew) and was then transmitted via the padre to another Japanese layperson. A similar case occurred in 1582, as Fróis relates: “there was here another Christian who happened to have a bead of wood of St. Thomas in which he had great faith and devotion, so that the sick that were brought to him were helped, he cured them, putting the bead in a porcelain of water and giving it to her to drink, they became well…he gave to [a woman gravely ill with fevers] a drink of water with the bead, and she rapidly recovered.” This same Christian also had a “bead of the Pope” (blessed by the Pope) that he used to cure some “ten people of various 99 Fróis V, 161-162. 100 Fróis IV, 25. See also Fróis, IV, 23, for another case, this time in Kusu in Bungo. 101 Fróis IV, 84. 102 Cartas, 286. Letter from a Portuguese man whose name is not known to the Brothers and Padres of the Society in Portugal, from Japan, Aug. 15 1569. 642 infirmities” only giving to them “a drink with the sign of the cross upon the water and in 103 which he put the aforementioned blessed bead.” Both of these happened in Ōmura, which indicates that drinking water with the bead in it might have been especially popular there or had originated among its laity. In addition to the wood of St. Thomas, other named relics were also used by Christians to heal people. Though there are instances of miraculous healing in the Cartas and in Fróis’s Historia through the 1590s, there seems to have been more occurrences in the later decades of the mission. One of the most popular relics for healing during this time were relics of Ignatius. Many of these instances predate the official beatification of Ignatius in 1601 and his canonization as a saint in 1622, but the Jesuits no doubt promoted him as an unofficial saint following his death in 1556, much as they had Xavier. For example there are many reports in the 1604 Annual Letter that describe the 104 padres using relics of Ignatius to heal the sick. Seeing that relics were popular for healing, the missionaries likely decided to introduce relics of their own saint for similar purposes. In these cases, the Jesuits might have been specifically trying to drum up miracles as evidence for Ignatius’s canonization; but, given how we’ve seen similar relics being used by both the padres and the Japanese Christians, it is easy to believe that the Jesuits actually used Ignatian relics, contact relics, or third-class relics to heal people. Still other more traditional relics held their appeal. Padre Francisco Perez relates an episode in 1588 in Arie where a relic of St. Blaise (one seems to still have been in 105 Kyushu) healed a woman suffering from a throat injury caused by a fishbone. In this case, the St. Blaise relic was still enshrined in a church in Arie, but was taken to the woman’s house in a time of emergency. Likewise, wood from the True Cross was still being used to heal as late as 1613, as demonstrated by the case of a boy in Bungo 103 Cartas II, 53. Fróis, Annual Letter of 1582, to the Padre General, from Kuchinotsu, Oct. 31 1582. 104 João Rodrigues Giram and António Baião, ed., Carta Anua de Vice-Província do Japão do ano de 1604 (Coimbra: Impr. da Universidade, 1932), 19, 29, 52, and 55. In one case, an image of Ignatius effected healing, see p. 39. An image of him also effected an exorcism. See p. 73. 105 Jap-Sin 51, 132v-133. Copy of a letter from Padre Francisco Perez concerning edifying things that happened in Arie. Part of the Annual Letter of 1589. 643 suffering from a particularly bad abscess. After the application of the relic to his neck, the 106 boy was said to have recovered rapidly. In addition to healing, Japanese Christian also sought relicarios in order to protect themselves in battle. These kinds of requests are not as numerous as those for exorcism or healing, but several exist, mostly in Fróis’s Historia. The belief that relics could protect one in battle seems to have started rather early in the mission, with one of the first recorded instances being in 1566. Almeida, during his visit to Hirado, noted that Christians there sought relics from him before going into war (this actually could have been a pirate raid). He said that Christians, in boats, “came to ask of me, petitioning me, that they might have some relics or some gospel, or written prayers, so that in war they would not befall some danger. I responded that in place of relics, they might make the 107 sign of the cross and the names of JESUS and Mary…” What is notable here is that Almeida presents the episode as if the Christians had come out of nowhere to ask him for these things, thus indicating they deemed the sacrality of the relics to be protective in battle on their own accord. Also worthy of mention, is that relics seem to have been the most prized of sacred objects and that Almeida, having none, had to suggest some lesser alternative that still might achieve the same effect. Even if the idea of asking for protective relics in battle originated amongst the Japanese laity, the padres sometimes actively encouraged their use in this regard. For example, Fróis records that in 1584 the Vice-Provincial visited Dom Protasio (Arima Harunobu, 1567-1612) in Arima in order to give him a special relic that had come from Pope Gregory XIII himself. Fróis relates the episode: And because the time for war was already drawing near, he determined, in order to animate him [Dom Protasio], to give to him one of the best relicarios of gold and enamel, that the Holy Pontiff Gregory XIII had sent in order to have given to the principal Christian lords of these parts…” After the appropriate ceremonies in a church full of people—Fróis makes special mention that the Japanese would have wanted this---the Padre Belchior de Moura (1545-1616) then declared to him “the mysteries of that relic” and the esteem that he ought to have for 106 Jap-Sin 57, 273v. Written by Sebastian Vileila from Nagasaki, March 16 1614. Annual Letter of 1613. 107 Cartas, 222. Almeida to the Brothers of the Society, from the island of Shiki, Oct. 20 1566. Also in Fróis II, 144 and Gonçalves, III, 191-192. 644 it, principally because it was sent from the Most Holy Pontiff, Vicar of Christ Our Lord. Then the padre put it around Dom Protasio’s neck with a chain made of gold, with apparently much consolation. Fróis’s Historia, also reports that Dom Protasio was on his knees during the ceremony with his hands held upwards towards the altar. The ceremony and the translation of the relic seems to have had a profound effect on all those in attendance, since all the noblemen and noblewomen were “greatly contented” with the proceedings. Dom Protasio seems to have been moved as well, since he reportedly told the padre that “with the faith that he had in these holy relics, he was hoping that the Lord Our God would give him good victory in war…” Following the ceremonies, the padres were occupied until the tenth hour of the night with hearing confessions and distributing communion for the “Christian noblemen, servants, and vassals of Dom Protasio.” Fróis also notes that “some of them came to ask for blessed beads and others for some manner 108 of relicarios with which they might be armed.” That Japanese Christians, particularly Christian warriors, should ask for relics for war should not surprise us. The relics, after all, were mobile points of sacrality that could be taken (usually in a relicario) wherever that spiritual power was needed. This would have been particularly useful, of course, on a battlefield. In our other cases of exorcism and healing, Christians could have access to churches where these same activities also occurred. Finding themselves far from a church or pressed for time, however—such as in the case nearing death or immobile due to illness—the local sacrality that a relic afforded could serve Japanese Christians well. Occasionally possessed individuals would also resist being taken to a church for exorcism. Furthermore, with many relicarios distributed among the population, Japanese Christians did not have to wait for a padre or Japanese brother to be officially dispatched in order to receive aid. In many cases, Japanese Christians wielded the sacrality of the relics completely autonomously and without the need of oversight from either a padre or irmão. That the Jesuits approved of this practice—at least until the arrival of Valignano—is fascinating in and of itself. 108 Fróis IV, 45-46. Also Cartas II, 112v-113. I have combined the sources here since there are some details that are in one but not the other. For more information on the battle for which they were getting ready, see Masaharu Yoshinaga, Kyushu no Kirishitan Daimyo (Fukuoka: Kaichōsha, 2004), 195-201. The Arima allied with the Shimazu in order to repulse the advances of their mutual enemy, Ryūzōji Takanobu (1530 – 1584). Takanobu was killed at in the battle of Okitanawate. 645 Relics served an important function for Japanese Christians: they could access Christian sacrality and the aid of the Saints wherever they went, thus creating an ever shifting sacred landscape that existed alongside more formal sites, such as churches. Sacramentals, likewise, enabled ordinary Christians to access and wield the sacred, but to a lesser extent. Relics, with their connection to the Church Triumphant or even Jesus himself, were considered most desirable and potent by Japanese Christians, but the widespread distribution of sacred remains and sacred objects disturbed some in the Jesuit ranks. Alessandro Valignano, in particular, believed that relics in Japan were handled with a certain vacuity and thus not properly revered. In the next section, we will examine the Padre Visitor’s attempts, accordingly, to quash the distribution of relics and limit access to these sacred objects to the churches or even to the padres themselves. The Problem of Relic Distribution at the Jesuit Consultations of 1580 and 1581 While the early mission leaders (Xavier, Torres, Fróis, and Cabral) responded to the Japanese demand for relics by freely distributing them as individualized loci of sacrality, the Padre Visitor Valignano who attempted to quash this Japanese-driven missionization tactic by advocating stricter ecclesiastical control of sacred objects. This matters greatly to our discussion of relics in Kyushu precisely because Japanese Christians thought relics and relicarios to be extremely important aspects of their religion. It also matters greatly in how we assess Valignano’s approach vis-à-vis the Christianization process in other societies and times. Much has been made of Valignano’s missionary strategy of “accommodation,” but little attention has been paid to the fact this particular tactic was meant, first and foremost, to curb a wholly native and appropriate feature of Japanese Christianity. Valignano seems to have believed that he should make Japanese Christianity conform more wholly with the European (and Tridentine) vision of Catholicism and how it should be practiced. In some respects, this signals a transformation of Valignano’s earlier belief, during his residency in India, that sacred objects could and should be distributed to individuals. However, as is well-known, the Visitor became disenchanted with the supposedly poor quality (according to his 646 standards) of Japanese Christianity upon his first arrival there in 1579. During the Consultation of 1580, he laid down new regulations that sought to limit who could receive relics and, overall, limit the distribution of sacred objects of all kinds including sacramentals. The new rules would be kept officially well into the seventeenth century. But, as we have seen, the sheer number of references to the personalized use of relics in the Christian population at large seems to indicate that it had a somewhat minimal effect. Indeed, Japanese interest in individualized relics remained so strong and critical to their faith that it culminated in native relic production and preservation during martyrdoms. As we have discussed above, it is apparent that Valignano was in no way initially opposed to the translation of relics to mission territories, nor the use of sacred objects among native Christians. He had approved of using the True Cross and a thorn from the Crown in Cochin. He had even asked European authorities (the Jesuit General) for relics 109 and sacramentals, going so far as to facilitate their shipment East. Fróis, in his Historia, even states that upon his arrival in Sakai (at least), Valignano was initially 110 pleased with how some Christians were devoted to relics and sacramentals. Also, as we saw earlier, Valignano solemnly translated the True Cross and gave it to two important Christian daimyo, though this was ultimately in line with his 1580 vision for the limited distribution of relics to worthy and elite Christians: The Padre Visitor visited that college [Cochin] this year with the other parts of Malabar with consolation… He was received in Cochin by all the city with much love, and because that city is called Holy Cross (Sancta Crux) the Padre gave it a small reliquary [relicario] that in Spain they gave him, in which was a piece of wood of the true and Holy Cross. They received it with such demonstrations of love and happiness, that they it to our house with a solemn procession with all the clergy and nobles, men and women, of that city. A mass was sung in our church and there was a sermon on the purpose of the holy cross, which was finished with the mass, they took with all solemnity the relicario to the major church and there remains in all that city much affection to aforementioned Padre for this 111 demonstration of love. 109 Schütte, Valignano I, 116, and Indica X, 877-878. The thorn is mentioned in Valignano’s letter, See Indica IX, 627, 630, 636. The Cross is mentioned in Indica IX, 627-628. 110 Fróis III, 248. 111 For Valignano’s participation in the translation of relics in India see Indica X, 476. P. Gomes Vaz to Mercurian, General, from Goa. Dated Jan. 20 1576. 647 In a letter to Mercurian, Valiganno also seems rather pleased that he had received some sacramentals from Europe, namely “40 big and beautiful Agnus Dei” sent by his “sister,” the abbess of Santa Clara. In the same letter, he also confirms the reception of a pieces of the Holy Cross and a thorn. Though he approved the translation of these types sacramentals and the relics of the Passion, Valignano was disapproving of the money 112 spent on the ornate reliquaries to hold these objects. Upon reaching Japan and seeing just how many Christians had access to relics and sacramentals, apparently using them with less reverence than he had expected, Valignano decided to curb the practice and institute more formal regarding the veneration of relics. Valignano’s first attempt at formulating new rules concerning the distribution of relics and other sacred objects occurred at the Bungo Consultation of 1580, only one year after he had arrived in Japan. This consultation was a precursor to the more authoritative consultation that took place in Nagasaki in December of 1581 and was attended by all the Jesuits. One of the things that Valignano wanted to correct in Japan was the seemingly improper use of relics by both the European padres and Japanese Christians. The problem is summed up rather nicely by Schütte, though he clearly does not think the issue was of any real importance to the mission: …the Bungo consultors turned to a final question, one of little moment in itself but deserving attention because of the reasons which were brought forward. In its deeper connotation, it [the problem] could be entitled: Educating to proper respect for sacred things. In other words, doubts were entertained as to the propriety of indiscriminately distributing certain objects of devotion among Christians not yet very deeply rooted in the faith. These were relics ex ossibus and others, such as wood of the Holy House of Loreto or of São Thomé, objects from the holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere, and finally Agnus Deis and blessed beads. All were agreed that greater reserve should be exercised in distributing these pious objects so as to prevent their misuse or at least depreciation of their spiritual value. The results of the Bungo Consultation in relation to relics and relicarios can be enumerated for the sake of brevity: 1. Relics ex ossibus (from the bones, i.e. body parts) are to be kept in reliquaries (likely opposed to individual relicarios) 112 Županov, “Relics Management,” in Göttler and Mochizuki, Nomadic Object, 460. See Indica X, 1027- 1028. From Malacca, Nov. 20 1577. 648 2.Relics ex ossibus were only to be given to padres and irmãos. (This would have mostly been European Jesuits, thus depriving Japanese of all corporal relics save the few Japanese irmãos.) 3. Lesser relics could be “lent” to women during childbirth and to the sick. (This would have presumably to a trusted Christian) 4. Care had to be taken when refusing distribution of a relic to an important person whose honor could be insulted. 5. If men of rank had the appropriate reverence for the relic, it might be given out. (There were few of these, with the clear exceptions noted above. Still it might be impossible to refuse given the free distribution of relics that occurred prior to the arrival of Valignano). 6. Concerning relics not ex ossibus, like wood from Loreto or São Thomé, there were two views: refuse, like ex ossibus relics so that the Mission Superior or regional superior could give them out. This would have been to have a counter for Buddhist sacred objects for the purposes of missionization. As Schütte describes it, the proposed position on relics of the Bungo Consultation was leading Valignano, apparently with missionary approval, to make use of relics to “bring about an improvement in moral conduct;” individual missionaries would serve as intermediaries (using the Japanese concept of the tori-awashi) with the Superior alone determining the circumstances for actual distribution. The effect would be to enact the Japanese cultural standard of using middlemen to quell a Japanese-driven feature of Christianity in Kyushu. With this preliminary consultation decided, Valignano signed off 113 on the document with a rather matter-of-fact, “And so the matter stands. Alessandro.” Even if Valignano’s plan was met with support among those missionaries in Bungo, as Schütte states, it seems as though they would have likely had little choice in the matter given his high rank as Visitor and thus a direct extension of the Jesuit General himself. Regardless of any support (there were factions at the consultations on other matters. For example Cabral and a few others attempted to oppose Valignano on some matters.) The alteration of the policy concerning relics was rather a stunning about-face only to be superseded by the general Consultation of 1581. This consultation had more weight than the Bungo consultation, which was, in effect, merely a precursor, and Valignano further tightened control over relics and sacred objects. 113 Schütte, Valignano II, 46-48. 649 The last item on the consultation’s agenda was Question 21, that of “Relics, Agnus Deis, Blessed Beads.” Schütte describes the question as being “in and of itself of little significance” and that it “was brought to the fore by Valignano.” Reiterating his concern that relics, “not only in Japan but also throughout India,” were being disrespected through their apparent indiscriminate distribution, Valignano wanted to correct the matter once and for all. Many of the points listed above for the Bungo Consultation still stood, with the following additions (my enumeration): 1.While ex ossibus relics were not to be given to laymen, the ex vestimentis sanctorum relics and other contact relics, like the wood, could be given, but only in exceptional cases and as a rare occurrence. 2. Padres and irmãos should relinquish all ex ossibus relics to their superior aside form the ones they had for their own devotion. They were to be encased in a reliquary, in a church, or on the altar. [relics were technically not to be on the altar, at least today, for veneration by the faithful] 3. No one must give such relics to the dōjuku or servants (both all Japanese) in the house. 4. Only the Superior could give such relics to men of rank, and then only in exceptional cases. They were not to be kept on his person (like a relicario) but in a suitable reliquary that had to already be in place. They could not be given wrapped up in paper. Not only did Valignano put these new rules into effect, he took further measures to ensure strict control of relics. The Padre Visitor’s annoyance, as Schütte points out, can be felt in his words: As regards Point 1, with a view to checking prevailing abuses in the matter of relics, Agnus Deis, and beads, not only in Japan but also throughout India, I feel bound in conscience to implore (supplico) the Holy Father and our Father General to lend their aid in the matter. People coming to these parts should not be allowed to bring so many relics, Agnus Deis, and beads with them, nor should so many of these objects be sent out to them as has been the case heretofore. Such action serves only to undermine the respect due to them, and leads to all those unfortunate results that people speak about. I would be glad if relics were reduced to a minimum everywhere and if superiors and prelates were instructed to keep them in reliquaries in their churches where they could be venerated with the proper respect. As things are, they are being distributed among people of both sexes all too readily. With regard to Agnus Deis and beads, one might be more liberal; but even with these one can observe the scant regard being paid them 650 owing to the number sent out. Hence I beg Father General, as regards our own order, to take measures to redress the situation. Besides attempting to stop the great outflow of relics from Europe as a response to Japanese and Indian demand for them, Valignano also proposed that missionaries try to recall all relics previously distributed to the native Christian community at large. As Schütte sums up Valignano’s thoughts on this matter: Further, Valignano urged superiors to recall relics ex ossibus which were in the possession of private individuals, even dōjuku and servants, as far as this could be done without offense; and if some of the relics were left to their possessors, these latter should be people of good clean lives. Other relics, however, could be distributed by regional superiors as well as by the Japanese [The Japan] 114 superior. These two final instructions constituted a rather stunning reversal of course that sought to deny personal relics to all Japanese Christians but the secular elite, who also had to demonstrate the appropriate spiritual disposition. Though Valignano cites the Primitive Church and early missionaries as exerting strict control over the distribution of relics and the careful guarding of relics in their possession, this was not historical reality. On Kyushu, the new policy on relics was intended to transform the sacred Christian landscape. Instead of promoting the proliferation of sacred loci by conferring religious authority on anyone in the possession of a relicario or relic, the new policy strove to circumscribe sacrality to churches. The churches, under Jesuit control for the most part, would now be prominent with individualized loci of sacrality that centered on persons would all but be eliminated—even to the extent of limiting sacramentals. This was to turn a centrifugal extension of the sacrality of the Church Triumphant (through relics) into a centripetal force promoting veneration of those saints in specific and consolidated loci at churches. Moreover, it sought to take relics and sacramentals out of the hands of Japanese lay Christians and put them in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities (European or Japanese). Valignano’s Obedencias, which reflect the consultations, were “on the books” so to speak as late as 1612 in one of their later reiterations with the Valignano’s successor 114 Schütte, Valignano II, 246-249. 651 115 Padre Visitor, Francisco Paiso. As López-Gay notes, “The Obediâncas were juridical 116 and pastoral norms which served as guidelines for activities of the mission.” However, Valignano’s official pronouncement on the matter of relics seems to have had minimal actual effect. A we have seen, there are many examples of the proliferation, use of, and veneration of individual relics and relicarios in the Jesuit letters and Fróis’s Historia after the Consultation of 1581. In fact, there are many references in which the Jesuits themselves, both European and Japanese, provided access to relics. It seems, then, that despite Valignano’s best intentions to reshape this aspect of Japanese Christianity into a more European form—that is to make sure relics were properly revered and handled—he failed for the most part as result of the demands of Japanese Christians themselves. Though this requires further investigation into the archives for materials after the 1590s, preliminary evidence from those sources indicates that the use of relics as personal loci of sacrality increased as the mission underwent intense persecution. We might speculate here, that with their churches gone and most of the clergy having been expelled, relics were a tangible source of sacrality that would have been otherwise missing to those Japanese Christians suffering under the oppressive shadow of persecution. If we adopt a world-historical lens to analyze the translation of relics to Kyushu during the Jesuit mission, it should come as no surprise that they played an important role in the Christianization process there. Relics, as we have seen, were critical in the historical spread of both Christianity and Buddhism. In both religions, they acted as portable loci of sacrality that could be established wherever missionaries might wish to take them. Deposited in sacred sites such as churches and pagodas they were, by definition, fixed locations to which the individual had to make pilgrimage. Even a cursory list of sacred sites is long for both religions: Bodh Gaya in Northeast India; Jerusalem in a far-flung corner of the Roman Empire; Mt. Wutai in Shanxi where the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī was thought to abode; the tomb of St. Peter under the high altar of the Vatican; Mt. Hiei where thousands of śarīra were held; or Goa where the 115 See Extracto das obediencias do Visitadores feitos para os Padres das Residéncias e mais Padres dde Japam, pello P.F. Pasio, 1365. Pagination refers to the facsimile copy in the Tōyō Bunko Library, which is different from the original held in the National Library of Madrid. The Tōyō Bunko copy is that of MS 17620. 116 Jesús López-Gay, “Father Francesco Pasio (1554-1612) and his Ideas about the Sacerdotal Training of the Japanese,” Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies 3, (2001): 34. 652 incorruptible body of Xavier lay for veneration by the faithful. However, not everyone could journey to a sacred site, in some cases thousands of miles away, to reap the benefits of their sacrality. How could missionaries and monks bring the fixed sacrality of these locations to new lands where there was no Christian or Buddhist presence? Of course translating relics from sacred sites provided a solution to this problem. Not only could relics bring the inherent sacrality of a particular location to a foreign land, but they could also be used to make sacred a location that had no physical ties to the religion being imported. A piece of the Bodhi tree could provide Sri Lanka with a physical remnant of the Buddha's enlightenment, thus making up for the fact that he never physically taught the Dharma there. Bringing a piece of the True Cross to Constantinople likewise extended spatially the earthly ministry of Jesus and provided Romans there a direct connection to the Crucifixion. New sacred sites could be created in lands very far away simply by possessing one of these physical remnants, thereby altering the native religious landscaped of the missionized country. Buddhism was the first religion to make use of relics in this manner. Venerated by his followers, the relics of the Buddha were collected and then distributed to many locations over centuries, most notably by Ashoka, so the Buddhist realm of the present age could extend beyond Northern India. Monks from China brought Buddhist relics back home in order to sacralize their own native religious landscape. As Tansen Sen has argued, the collection of Indian relics and the subsequent production of native Chinese relics transformed the Middle Kingdom into a Buddhist country in its own right, thereby obviating the need to look to India. This former outpost of the Buddhist realm had become a central Buddhist realm in its own right via the transformation, in part, of its native religious landscape into a Buddhist one. Japanese monks, on pilgrimage to China, likewise obtained relics there to sacralize their own country and make Japan itself into a Buddhist realm. The religious landscape there literally transformed over the centuries to include a great number of pagodas and temples, many of which possessed relics from pious monks, cosmic Bodhisattvas, and the Buddha himself. Though operating under completely different theological underpinnings, a similar process occurred with Christianly. The sacrality of Jerusalem, which had its origins in the physical presence of Jesus, radiated outward through the empire thanks to the legendary 653 distribution of Passion relics by the Empress Helena. Still, there were only so many relics of the earthly Jesus that not every important location could have one. The next best source of relics, the bodies of and objects associated with the saints provided adequate substitutes to sacralize the pagan landscapes into which Christianity spread during Late Antiquity. These saints, whose souls were in Heaven as part of the Church Triumphant, left in their physical remains a direct connection to God since they enjoyed communion with him in body and spirit. The divine was present wherever their bodies lay, and it was upon their relics that sacred sites, such as altars, shrines, and whole churches would be built. In moving these bodies, or body parts in many cases, the sacrality of the saint could be transported anywhere to make sacred lands where there had been no Christian presence before. Like China in the expansion of Buddhist sacred geography, India became the farthest outpost of Christian sacred geography from which relics could be distributed to the East. Possessing the bones of St. Thomas, India had already been sacralized by a figure no less than an Apostle. Still, the Jesuit missionaries translated a very great many relics to India to act as loci of veneration. With the production of its own relic, those of St. Xavier, and it use as a way station for the translation of relics from Europe and the Holy Land, India became an important location from which missionaries and ordinary Japanese on Kyushu could obtain relics. Though the Japanese on Kyushu inherited over a millennium of Christian tradition in which relics were used to create sacred sites upon a non-Christian landscape, circumstances there made this part of the Christianization process somewhat unique. Churches could and did hold relics for veneration, as we know that the Jesuits translated many relics to Kyushu such as fragments of the True Cross and the body parts of saints. Unfortunately, we do not have as much documentation as we would like to have on the relics contained in the churches. What documentation we have about relics, as has been made clear, is numerous references to Japanese voraciousness for both “reliquias” and “relicarios.” It was through these two physical media that the establishment of sacred Christian sites upon the native Japanese religious landscape occurred. Since actual churches and shrines were few and far between, the possession of an individual relic carried in a relicarios locket gave each person a mobile point of sacrality wherever they 654 went. Thus, for the greater part, the establishment of new sacred Christian sites on Kyushu consisted of individual Christians themselves. They might not have recourse to churches all of the time, but they had recourse to the Church Triumphant on their person or within in the community at all times. And use this sacrality they did. As we recall, relicarios were not only for personal devotion or outward displays of Christian identity and piety, they contained real links to the divine that could aid the Christian community in a very real ways. Individual Christians used them for exorcisms, healing, and to protect themselves in battle. If a person had a problem, such as a possessing spirit, an individual layperson with a relic could bring Christian sacrality to that person rather than taking them to a church. No formal site was required. Of course, Christianity did establish visible artifices upon the actual landscape of Kyushu, particularly in Nagasaki with its towering churches. But, as we have seen, a church without a relic in the Catholic tradition is, in essence, a hollow shell since there is nothing physical within that has a direct link to the resurrected Jesus by way of the Church Triumphant. More research needs to be done on the later period of the mission, but we can see that when persecution was in full force, relics remained an important facet of Japanese Christianity on Kyushu when the churches were shuttered and Christians had to meet in private. In this sense, the Christian landscape still existed, just underground and personalized rather than in public and institutionalized with buildings. As one element of the world-historical process of Christianization, the transformation of native religious landscapes to include Christian sacred sites was an important one. Relics often played a critical role in this element, though they did so to varying degrees based upon the circumstances off the time and setting. Still, because of the Catholic mandate to include relics in altars, any emergent Christian landscape with a church would necessarily include them. In this sense, the Church Militant on Earth was directly connected by place and object to the Church Triumphant which, as a kind of spiritual collective, transcended any notions of time, space, and culture. The linkage of Heaven and Earth at these locations qualitatively changed the religious landscape for the local Christian population. Kyushu need not have been fully or permanently Christianized for its residents to have participated in this transformation of the religious landscape. 655 What is important for historical analysis of the mission and has hitherto been little acknowledged is that Kyushuans participated in this important aspect of Christianization at all. 656 CHAPTER XII CONCLUSION At the beginning of his highly influential study of the Jesuit mission to Japan, George Elison (Jurgis Elisonas) states that there were only superficial similarities between how Christianity spread to “alien world[s]” in the ancient Mediterranean and how it spread to Japan in the sixteenth century. This was, he tells us, due to the lack of common ground between Catholic Christianity and Buddhism: …it is undoubtedly true that concepts at the root of Christianity were more foreign to the Japanese civilization than they had been to a cultural sphere already suffused with the spread of Near Eastern religious thought and possessing philosophical preconceptions which were amenable to Christianity. In Japan the conditioning factors were lacking; the points of resemblance with Buddhism were ephemeral and delusory; the first missionaries had no foundations to build on. And beyond the problem of preconditions lay that of the religion’s own character. The messengers of the gospel looked back upon an uninterrupted tradition of a millennium and a half. And yet what they preached was in many respects not the 1 same as the faith of the apostles. Elison is correct on one count: that sixteenth-century Catholicism was not the “same as the faith of the apostles.” Still, it was no less adaptable to “alien world[s]” than the so- called primitive church had been during the great expansion into the Gentile Roman Empire. There had been no easy entry into the Gentile world, and the first Jewish Christians had to make significant adaptations in both praxis and message for the Gentile audience. For its transplantation to sixteenth-century Japan, early modern Catholicism was no less adaptable than ancient Christianity. It was not, as Elison believes, a “clearcut [sic] faith, without any compromise.” Rather, sixteenth-century Catholicism was highly adaptable and able to build upon several key foundations that Buddhism had laid in Japan 2 over the course of a millennium. 1 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 13. 2 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 28-29. 657 As the preceding case studies have made clear, Catholicism established itself in Japan upon at least three important foundations: 1. The ability to deal with harmful spirits; 2. Preparing for death and taking care of the dead in the afterlife; and 3. The use of relics to “sacralize” the landscape. All of these Japanese foundations had been put in place by Buddhism or were strengthened by Buddhism. Buddhism had given the Japanese a means for effecting a positive afterlife, and relics, both those imported or created in Japan, turned the country into a Buddhist realm via the sacralization of the landscape. Moreover, Buddhist methods of exorcism supplemented native forms for controlling harmful spirits and countering spirit possession. Buddhism, like Christianity, was extraordinarily adaptable to the “alien worlds” of both China and Japan. It altered native cultures and was, in turn, altered by them. Likewise, Christianity, throughout its long history of spreading to new peoples, adapted to and was adapted by native cultures. In Japan, in the sixteenth century, the two world-historical threads of Buddhist and Christian adaptability converged on Kyushu where they intertwined in the Japanese Church. Japanese Catholicism, as shaped by the Japanese themselves, was able to meet many of the incipient religious needs that Buddhism fulfilled. If it could not, Christianity would not have had the success it did. Elison also notes that “it was an illusion to believe that Christianity, with the human means at its disposal, could vanquish a religion which was so many-sided in its 3 foundations in Japan, and which had so much helped to shape the country’s culture.” Illusory, indeed, but not in the way Elison thinks. The very notion that Christianity, as a one-dimensional religion, needed to “vanquish” a many-sided religion is itself illusory. Rather, Catholicism of the sixteenth century was itself many-sided and could frequently 4 adapt to foreign cultures. Orthodoxy might be a “demanding mistress,” but orthopraxy was not. Catholicism (and Christianity in its long history) could and frequently did modify its praxis to new situations and contexts while remaining firm on specific points 3 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 29. 4 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 9. Orthodoxy itself was not always uniform either. As William Christian Jr. has shown, there could be a great deal of variation of “orthodox” belief in the local setting that differed from “official” Church teachings of the time. See William A. Christian, Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 3-4. 658 of orthodoxy. One good case in point is the relaxation of penance for manslaughter in seventh-century Anglo-Saxon England. The prohibition of killing could not be altered, but the penalties associated with such an act could easily be changed. In the Japanese situation, similarly, we have seen that Catholic marriage as a sacrament could not be altered, but that its praxis could be modified to meet Japanese notions of marriage (excluding divorce for Christians). In general, Catholicism in the sixteenth century was like a twenty-sided die that could be turned to meet a wide variety of cultures. Sometimes this adaptation was imperfect. Yet even imperfect adaptations went a long way toward transplanting the religion to new peoples and cultures. Although some scholars have referred to the transplantation of Christianity to new societies in the early modern period as “glocalization,” this dissertation shows that the 5 process actually ran much deeper. The term glocalization, which combines “global” or “globalization” and “local” or “localization,” was originally coined to describe the phenomenon of adapting commercial products meant for the global market to local and 6 specific cultural sensibilities. For example, video games produced in Japan and then exported globally have often been localized with modifications in language and graphics to suit consumers in different countries and cultures. One of the main problems with describing the Jesuit mission to Japan as a case of glocalization is that it places too much emphasis on adaptability and accommodation, whether by Japanese converts or the missionaries themselves, as a novel process limited to sixteenth-century Catholicism. This denies the long history of Christianity adapting to new cultures while presupposing a movement towards actual globalization during the modern period. When viewed world- historically, the emergence of a Japanese Catholicism was the product of a long and compounding development that occurred over many centuries and contained the input of 5 A relatively early example is Dorothea M. Filus, “Globalization and Religion: Some Aspects of the Gobalization and Glocalization fo Christianity Among the Kakure Kirishitan in Japan” in SEIJO CGS Working Paper Series No. 1 (Tokyo: Center for Glocal Studies, Seijo University, 2009). For an example outside of early modern Japan, see Barbara Watson Andaya, “Glocalization and the Marketing of Christianity in Early Modern Southeast Asia” in Religions 8, No. 1, 2017. 6 For an overview of the term, see Roland Robertson’s chapter “Glocalization: Time-space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity” in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, eds., Global Modernities (London: SAGE Publications, 1995), 35-41. 659 many different peoples and cultures. It was not simply a case of European Christianity being tweaked to fit the Japanese market. As scholars of ancient Christianity have long realized, there was no permanent, authentic, and monolithic “Christianity” that could simply be localized. Despite what clergy might have thought at the time, there was no original “product” that could be tweaked slightly to fit a new market. The religion itself, as it emerged from first-century Judea, was constantly evolving, developing, and adapting as it crossed new and unfamiliar cultural frontiers. The Christianity that entered Germanic societies of Central Europe was not the same Jewish-Christianity that had entered the larger Gentile Roman Empire. Similarly, the Japanese Christianity that emerged in the sixteenth century was not simply a glocalization of some kind of monolithic Counter Reformation-era Catholicism. Instead, Japanese Christianity was but one manifestation of a much larger and complex world-historical process that began with Christian religion itself and its movement out of the Jewish context. The only “monolithic” feature about Christianity in the world-historical sense is its malleability. Additionally, the Jesuits’ “glocalization” of Catholicism in Japan is frequently upheld by scholars wishing to contrast to the supposedly “non-accommodative” methods of other Catholic orders in the early modern period, namely the mendicants in the New World. For many scholars of the Japan mission, this is almost a point of pride. For example, as Ward notes, the Jesuits “developed a unique mission, experimenting with their method of persuasion and accommodation, rather than the more common forced 7 conversions of the conquistadores.” Such a view neglects the many adaptations present in New World Catholicism and the flexibility of many of the early mendicants. Certainly, the Jesuits in Japan had a different “way of proceeding” than the mendicants in the New World. This was, in large part, due to cultural differences and the specific challenges they faced in Japan. For one, the Jesuits were at the mercy of the individual daimyo and, once reunification occurred, were completely subjected to the authority of Toyotomi and Tokugawa regimes. The Jesuits in the New World, having the backing of the colonial secular arm, could be just as heavy-handed as the mendicants at times. But the fundamentals of missionization, such as working with native advocates, flexibility in 7 Ward, Women, 4. 660 praxis, learning the language of the people, and working with indigenous to find the right methods of persuasion, were similar between the mendicants in the New World and the Jesuits in Japan. Positing a dichotomy between the accommodative Jesuit in Asia and the non- accommodative mendicant in the New World, as some scholars have done, overlooks indigenous agency in the New World as well. The dichotomy ignores all of the many ways in which indigenous peoples in the Americas shaped their own Catholicism, much as others, including the Japanese, had done in a wide variety of times and places. They did this in spite of “the more common forced conversions of the conquistadores,” not because of them. Moreover, many of the early mendicants in sixteenth-century were extraordinarily flexible in how they taught Nahuas. Catholicism in the New World was never simply the product of a “conquest,” but of a careful negotiation on the part of indigenous people to bring new religious ideas into their own spiritual worldview. And the New World was hardly alone in this. Surely, no scholar of Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Germany, or other Jesuits missions would say that Christianity, whether it be “Iberian,” “European,” or “Mediterranean,” was simply transplanted to the non-Christian population without modification or input by Christian converts of that culture. In other words, when considering the “glocalization” policy of the Jesuits in the long history of Christianity, the mission to Japan was unremarkable and shares much in common with other instances of Christianization. Native input has remained an essential elements of the spread of Christianity ever since the religion first stepped out of its Jewish context. Since the Japanese on Kyushu participated in a world-historical process of Christianization, we should call into question the recent and increasingly frequent use of the term “Kirishitan” in English-language scholarship to refer to Japanese Christians. The term Kirishitan came into use during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a transliteration of the Portuguese Christão (Christian). Outside of this context, the term is widely and rightly used in Japanese-language scholarship because it differentiates between the Catholic Christians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Kirishitan) and Christians of all denominations (Kirisuto kyōto) in the modern period. Thus, in Japanese-language scholarship, Kirishitan is simply a historical designation. It is not, as some have stated in English-language scholarship, a different type of Christianity or a 661 completely syncretic religion. Such a historical designation is both convenient and appropriate in Japanese since the two-hundred year proscription of Christianity by the Tokugawa separated the first Japanese Christians from modern Christians. In other words, Kirishitan in the Japanese-language is merely shorthand for Japanese Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. In English-language scholarship on Japanese Christians of the mission period, the term Kirishitan is being used instead of “Japanese Christian.” Justifications for using this term, either implicit or explicit, vary, though most aim to highlight the utter uniqueness of the so-called Kirishitan convert or the Kirishitan religion. For example, Higashibaba calls for use of the term to show the distinctiveness of the Japanese Christian vis-à-vis other Christians: …what developed on the popular level was in fact a Japanese Christianity that incorporated traits of the popular religious culture of Japan and came to constitute a segment of Japanese religion. We may draw an analogy between this transformation of Christianity in Japan and that of Buddhism in Japan. As Buddhism became popular by becoming “Japanese Buddhism,” so also Christianity became popular by becoming “Japanese Christianity.” We may properly label its adherents “Kirishitans” to better underscore their 8 distinctiveness. If we follow this line of reasoning, then we should also rethink our use of the term “Japanese Buddhist” so we can differentiate the unique characteristics of Buddhism in its Japanese adaptations. At best, using the term Kirishitan has created some very awkward book titles and language: Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (which is actually about the totally unique Kirishitan religion) or Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549-1650 9 (which is actually about “Kirishitan women”). This amounts to Japanese Christians being “Christian,” but so utterly distinguishable from other “Christians” that they deserve special terminology in English. Such special terminology could just as easily be applied to other Christians in different times and 8 Higashibaba, Christianity, xvi. 9 For example, Higashibaba says: “This study examines [various] aspects of Kirishitan faith and practice by following their historical development. Christianity was a new religion in sixteenth-century Japan.” Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan, xxi. 662 places. When discussing Nahua Christians of the colonial period in English-language scholarship, should we call them “Cristianos?” Were they followers of the 10 “Christianoyotl” religion? The same line of reasoning might even be applied to “European” Christians or Christians of Late Antiquity. Should Greek-speaking and Latin- speaking Christians of the Roman Empire be referred to as “Christianous” and 11 “Christiani” respectively? All of these Christians most definitely had their own unique characteristics and were very different from the sixteenth-century “European” Christians with whom the so-called Kirishitan are compared. At worst, use of the term constitutes an “othering” that divorces Japanese Christians from the rest of Christians the world over and throughout history. It confines Japanese Christians to utter distinctiveness, essentially stating that they were not really “Christians” but members of the totally unique “Kirishitan religion.” Some scholars, like Higashibaba, use the term Kirishitan to state that Japanese Christianity was nothing more than syncretism: …we may say that within the Kirishitan tradition—perhaps as in any religious tradition in Japanese history—a syncretistic type of faith continued to exist. And that type of faith persisted as a significant characteristic of the Kirishitan 12 tradition. Typically, this is in contrast to “Europeans,” who had the only true understanding of Christianity both in terms of praxis and doctrine. As Higashibaba also notes: 10 For Nahuatl renditions of the word “Christian” and “Christianity” see the entries in the Online Nahuatl Dictionary, edited by Stephanie Wood. https://nahuatl.uoregon.edu/content/cristiano-cristiana Cristiano could also simply refer to a European person. https://nahuatl.uoregon.edu/content/christianoyotl The term “Cristiano” can be found in Alonso de Molin’s Aquí comienza un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana (Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 58r, from 1555). http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/aqui-comienca-sic-un-vocabulario-en-la-lengua-castellana-y- mexicana--0/html/b57fb040-44ba-4c1e-a8df-cc7ac25b4c11_118.html 11 Act 11:26 is the first recorded use of the word “Christian” or “Christianous.” For the Latin use of “Christiani” see Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 2. 12 Higashibaba, Christianity, 48. 663 It is clear that the missionaries did not produce full-fledged European-style Christians in Japan because there were a variety of Kirishitan expressions of faith 13 that do not fit the ideal model of “Christian” conversion. Other scholars have followed this line of thinking to state that Japanese Christians could not really have been “Christians” like others since they understood the religion on their own terms and in their own context. For example, Ward has described the emergence of “a new Kirishitan religion” that was a product of European Catholicism and Buddhism. Leuchtenberger, in her exploration of anti-Christian propaganda, notes that we can never really know what Japanese Christians thought about their religion or how much authentic Christianity they actually absorbed. This difference in thinking between European and Japanese versions of Christianity, which seems so apparent on the surface, is what makes 14 the Japanese “Kirishitan” so different from other “Christians.” The problem here is that scholars are essentially exoticizing Japanese Christians vis-à-vis other Christians and forgetting that many different peoples (including “Europeans”) added their own native elements to the development of Christianity. As this dissertation has made clear, Japanese Christians were Christian in every sense of the word. To use the term Kirishitan to differentiate between Japanese Catholics of the sixteenth century and “full-fledged European-style Christians” is to attack a straw man that should not be set up in the first place. Nobody has ever proposed that Japanese Christians were just like those in Europe as Higashibaba has suggested. Moreover, to say that Japanese Catholicism was a counter to the “homogeneity” of sixteenth-century Catholicism is equally problematic. Even within Europe there were a great many cultural variations, with each society creating its own distinct Catholicism. Indeed, as William A. Christian Jr. has shown in his seminal work, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, 13 In a recent essay on Japanese martyrdom, Ward notes: “The missionaries were animated by the Catholic Reformation to drive reform, purify, and convert. As they encountered and worked with their Japanese converts and associates, all of whom were former Buddhists, a new Kirishitan religion emerged. More specifically, this article analyses the construction of this new Kirishitan religious and theological identity through the lends of gender, focusing on how it represented in Kirishitan translations of stories of the female martyr saints.” Ward, “Translating Christian Martyrdom,” in Terpstra, Global Reformations, 33. 14 “Nobody knows how much the Japanese converts really understood about the Christianity they were taught, so the term “Kirishitan” is used to refer to what was understood as Christians/Christianity by the Japanese, though it could have been quite different from what the Western Christians thought of themselves and their religion. That gap between what the missionaries represented and taught and what was understood by the Japanese only widens with time [Leuchtenberger means the Kakure Christians here], so the term Kirishitan is a shifting one.” Leuchtenberger, Conquering Demons, 1, note 2. 664 there existed much variation even in staunchly Catholic kingdoms. New types of Catholicism were being created in the Americas and in other locales. Japanese Catholicism, then, was just one element in the overall vibrancy of early modern Catholicism. In fact, every culture that encountered Christianity before and since formed its own “unique” version of the religion. When considered as part of the long history of Christianity, Japanese input into the religion, whether it was Buddhist influences or the merging of European and Japanese musical traditions, was nothing new at all. The fact that Japanese Christians adapted Christianity to their own cultural and religious sensibilities actually makes them similar to many others who adopted the religion throughout world history. Each culture has its own version of Christianity and each adds vibrancy to the religion as a whole. Instead of highlighting the uniqueness of Japanese Christianity vis-à-vis “European” Christianity, as is done too often, perhaps we simply need to acknowledge that “Christianity” can and does include Japanese manifestations of it. The last topic I would like to address in this conclusion is the world-historical process of Christianization itself. Though this dissertation has primarily concerned itself with Kyushu, it has also proposed ways in which the general phenomenon of Christianization transcended locality and temporality. Secular rulers who encountered Christianity, either through missionaries or some other means, had to decide whether to support it or reject it. Foreign advocates worked with native advocates to translate both the language and concepts of the religion into new contexts. Sometimes native words could be used to explain Christian concepts, while at other times entirely new vocabulary had to be created through neologisms or transliterations. As new native Christian communities grew, they developed ways of defining themselves, some totally new and some a continuation of what had come before. Festivals, rituals, and ways of caring for the dead all took on additional and sometimes entirely new meanings for Christian converts. These are just a few of the ways in which the Christianization process transcended specific contexts and constituted a world-historical process. What this means for the field of world history is that “Christianization” should be a method of analysis for both researching and teaching how Christianity spread across 665 cultures. For researchers, this dissertation offers a paradigm to assess more localized transplantations of Christianity in view of larger world-historical patterns. The world- historical process of Christianization, as I have outlined it, is not meant to replace specific frameworks of analysis proper to each individual field. Rather, it is meant to be used as a “gateway” to help connect localized studies of Christianization in a particular time and place to others. In other words, the world-historical process of Christianization helps to reframe how we think about disparate peoples, across time and space, who engaged in Christianization. For teachers of world history, the world-historical process of Christianization offers a new framework with which to make comparisons, connections, and thematic analyses. For example, a world history course that focuses on the premodern period might devote one or two class sessions to “Christianization” in which the larger issues of transplanting the religion to foreign cultures is explored. Such broad topics as modernization, imperialism, colonialism, global trade, the Silk Road, and environmental change are already staples of world history courses at the college level. There is no reason that “Christianization” could not be a similarly broad topic that demonstrates one major aspect of the global human story. Of course, such a pedagogical unit should not stop with Christianization, but also include “Buddhicization” and “Islamicization.” These topics would certainly be just as interesting as Christianization. Moreover, they promise to reveal new connections in how we think about the many different peoples who engaged Buddhism and Islam in many different times and places. Finally, it is hoped that the world-historical dimensions of the Jesuit mission and Japanese Christianity will find their way into Japanese history textbooks. All too often, Japanese Christianity is seen as a sort of interlude or side note to the main story of Japanese reunification and the march towards modernization. Even textbooks that aim to emphasize Japan in world history frequently devote little attention to the world-historical dimensions of Japanese Christianity. When they do, they usually just note the number of 15 converts, the connections to Europe, and the introduction of firearms. This is not a call 15 For example, see Huffman, Japan in World History, 57. Cullen only discusses Christianity in relation to trade and the Tokugawa’s proscription of the religion. Walker’s treatment of Japanese Christianity is mostly perfunctory but takes a rather negative approach to the foreign Jesuit missionaries themselves. Walker, Japan, 134-141. Jansen, in his magisterial The Making of Modern Japan, places Japanese 666 to overemphasize Japanese Christianity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or to inflate its impact, but rather to highlight its importance as just one way the Japanese engaged a larger world history. There are many more ways we can think about Japan being connected to larger world-historical phenomena so long as historians, both of Japan and of world history, are willing to shift their perspectives and frames of reference. Kyushu’s full engagement of the Christianization process, as this dissertation has shown, helps to reveal how the Japanese were central players in the global human story. Christianity within the context of “foreign relations” and, like many other authors, is mostly interested in its connection to diplomacy and trade. Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). 667 APPENDIX CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS For common Japanese place names and terms, such as Kyushu, Tokyo, Kyoto, etc., I have dispensed with the appropriate macrons. For other, less common names and words, I have retained the macrons. The city of Kyoto was frequently referred to as Miyako during the period, and I frequently make reference to it by that name. In general, I follow Japanese name order, with the surname being followed by the personal name. However, for Japanese authors writing in English, I have kept personal names first with the surname following. For bibliographic entries in the notes, Japanese names are personal name first followed by the surname to avoid confusion. Scholars frequently leave the Portuguese term “irmão” without italics, and I have followed their lead since the term “padre” is also frequently without italics in English-language publications. Ajuda Jesuítas na Ásia Collection at the Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon Cartas 1575 Cartas que los Padres y Hermanos de la Comañia de Iesus, que andand en los Reynos de Iapon escrivieron a los de la misma Compañia, desde el año de mil y quinientos y quarenta y nueve, hasta el de mil y quinientos y setenta y uno. Alcala: Juan Iniguez de Lequerica, 1575. Cartas/Cartas II Cartas que os Padres e Irmãos da Companhia de Jesus escreverão dos Reynos de Iapão e China aos da mesma Companhia da India e Europa, desdo anno de 1549 ate o de 1580. 2 vols. Evora, 1598. Ebisawa, Kirishitansho Ebisawa Arimichi, H. Cieslik, Doi Tadao, and Ōtsuka Mitsunobu, eds. Kirishitansho; haiyasho. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970. EX I-II Schurhammer, Georg and José Wicki, eds. Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii, Aliaque Eius Scripta. 2 vols. Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1944-1945. Fróis I-V Fróis, Luis. Historia de Japam. Edited by José Wicki. 5 Vols. Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, 1976-1984. 668 Indica I-XVIII Wicki, Joseph, ed. Documenta Indica. 18 vols. Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1948-1988. Jap-Sin Japonica Sinica Collection at the ARSI (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome) MHJ Schütte, Joseph Franz, ed. Monumenta Historica Japoniae I: Textus Catalogorum Japoniae aliaeque de Personis Domibusque S.J. in Japonia, Informationes et Relationes. 1549-1654. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1975. MHJ II Ruiz de Medina, Juan G., ed. Documentos Del Japon: 1547-1557. Monumenta Historica Japoniae II. Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu, 137. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1990. MHJ III Ruiz de Medina, Juan G., ed. Documentos Del Japon: 1558-1562. Monumenta Historica Japoniae III. Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu, 148. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1995. Xavier I-IV Schurhammer, Georg. Francis Xavier: His Life, His times. 4 vols. Translated by M. Joseph Costelloe. Rome: The Jesuit Historical Institute, 1973-1982. Valignano I Schütte, Josef Franz. Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan Volume I: From His Appointment as Visitor until His First Departure from Japan (1573-1582) Part I: The Problem (1573-1580). Translated by John J. Coyne S.J. St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980. Valignano II Schütte, Josef Franz. Valignano's Mission Principles for Japan Volume I: From His Appointment as Visitor until His First Departure from Japan (1573-1582) Part II: The Solution (1580-1582). Translated by John J. Coyne, S.J. 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Core yo vo itoi, Iesu Christono gocoxeqivo manabi tatematçuru michivo voxiyuru qio. Nippon Iesusno Companhia no Collegio nite Superiores no goguegivo motte corevo fanni firaqu mono nari. Toqini goxuxxeno nenqi. 1596. https://digital-archives.sophia.ac.jp/laures-kirishitan-bunko/view/kirishitan_bunko/JL- 1596-KB16-16-12 Medieval Sourcebook: Gregory of Tours (539-594): Eight Books of Miracles: Selections Fordham University. Book in Honor of the Martyrs, Chapter 83. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/gregory-mirac.asp Molina, Alonso de. Aquí comienza un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana, 1555. Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. “cristiano” http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/aqui-comienca-sic-un-vocabulario-en-la- lengua-castellana-y-mexicana--0/html/b57fb040-44ba-4c1e-a8df- cc7ac25b4c11_118.html Nakagawa Sō and Nakamura Shunsuke. “Chijiwa Migeru, shinkō suteteinakatta? 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