¹ Alfonso Navarrete Benito was born on 21 September 1571 in Logroño, Spain. A Dominican missionary priest originally based in the Philippines, Navarrete arrived in Japan in August 1611. He remained after the edict of expulsion in 1614 and was made vicar provincial in 1615. For these biographical details, see Cummins, J. S. and Boxer, Charles, The Dominican Mission in Japan (1602–1622) and Lope de Vega (Rome, 1963), 71Google Scholar; de Medina, Juan G. Ruiz, El martirologio del Japón, 1558–1873 (Rome, 1999)Google Scholar.

² Hernando Ayala (also Hernando de San José) was born in 1575 near Toledo, Spain. He entered the Augustinian order in 1593 and made his profession on 19 May 1594. He was chosen to go to the college of the order at the university of Alcalá de Henares. As a missionary, Ayala arrived in Japan in 1605. He founded an Augustinian monastery in Nagasaki in 1612 and was nominated as its prior. Ayala remained in Japan after the edict of expulsion in 1614. For a detailed biography and account of his martyrdom, see Hartmann, Arnulf, The Augustinians in Seventeenth-Century Japan (Marylake, ON, 1965), 43–73Google Scholar.

³ For a recent overview of the Catholic mission to Japan, see Ucerler, M. Antoni J., ‘The Christian Missions in Japan in the Early Modern Period’, in Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions (Leiden, 2018), 303–43Google Scholar. The standard works in English on the development of anti-Christian policy and the mission to Japan remain Elison, George, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA, 1973)Google Scholar; Boxer, Charles R., The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (Lisbon, 1951)Google Scholar.

⁴ Prior to 1614 there had been sporadic episodes of anti-Christian violence, of which the most famous is the martyrdom of twenty-six Christians in Nagasaki in 1597. For a recent analysis of this episode, see Hélène Vu Thanh, ‘The Glorious Martyrdom of the Cross: The Franciscans and The Japanese Persecutions of 1597’, Culture & History Digital Journal 6 (2017) [online journal]), at: <https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2017.005>, accessed 19 May 2020; eadem, Devenir japonais. La Mission jésuite au Japon (1549–1614) (Paris, 2016). Also see Rady Roldán-Figueroa, ‘Father Luis Piñeiro S.J., the Tridentine Economy of Relics and the Defense of the Jesuit Missionary Enterprise in Tokugawa Japan’, ARG 101 (2010), 209–32; Timon Screech, ‘The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period’, Japan Review 24 (2012), 3–40.

⁵ The Franciscan Pedro de la Asunción (b. c.1570) and the Jesuit João Baptista Machado de Távora (b. c.1580) were executed in Omura on 22 May 1617.

⁶ Tanaka is introduced in the account as a Dojuku (a term used in the Japan mission to refer to a type of lay catechist and preacher) to the martyred Jesuit João Baptista Machado de Távora; Tanaka was captured with João Baptista Machado on the Goto Islands but was not executed with him in May 1617. Tanaka's actions, including at the moment of his death, are not reported in detail in Orfanel's account which focuses principally on Navarrete and Ayala. Tanaka is referred to as ‘blessed Leon’, and from the time he is brought to be executed with Navarrete and Ayala is presented (albeit fleetingly) as a willing evangelist alongside the missionaries. For example, Tanaka was recorded as mirroring the actions of Navarrete and Ayala in his treatment of his executioners (‘y el bendito Leon con sus dos verdugos’): Jacinto Orfanel and Diego Collado, Historia eclesiástica de los sucesos de la Christiandad de Japón, desde el año de 1602 (Madrid, 1633), 78r. However, his actions are not given the same narrative weight or symbolism, given the focus of Orfanel's account: Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 77v–78r, 79r–v.

⁷ Antoine Daniel was born on 27 May 1601 in Dieppe, France. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen on 1 October 1621, later studied theology at Clermont College in Paris, and was ordained in 1631. He crossed the Atlantic in the spring of 1632, joined the mission to the Huron in 1634 and began work the following year. In 1647, he was assigned to the village of Teanaostaiaë (also Teanaustayé): Tylenda, Joseph N., Jesuit Saints & Martyrs (Chicago, IL, 1998), 200–1Google Scholar; Pouliot, Léon, ‘Daniel, Antoine’, in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 1: 1000–1700 (Toronto, ON, and Laval, QC, 2003; first publ. 1966)Google Scholar, online at: <http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/daniel_antoine_1E.html>, accessed 19 May 2020.

⁸ New France was a vast territory claimed by the French Crown which stretched from north-eastern Canada down to what is now the mid-western United States of America. This article uses the historical names ‘Huron’ and ‘Iroquois’ to retain a clear connection to the source material. For a substantive account of the Huron and their history, see Bruce G. Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Montreal, QC, 1976). For a recent overview of the mission in New France, see Dominique Deslandres, ‘New France’, in Hsia, ed., Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, 124–47; Dominique Deslandres, Croire et faire croire. Les Missions françaises au XVII^e siècle (1600–1650) (Paris, 2003).

⁹ For an account of the Iroquois and their history, see Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992).

¹⁰ Jacinto Orfanel (also Pedro Orfanell Prades) was himself executed a few years later, during the ‘Great Martyrdom’ of Nagasaki on 10 September 1622: Orfanel and Collado, Historia. I am grateful to Fernando Cervantes and Diego Navarro-Tapia for their advice and assistance with my translations. I have modernized the original spelling for clarity.

¹¹ Cummins and Boxer, Dominican Mission; Hartmann, Augustinians. For full references, see nn. 2 and 3 above.

¹² Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791, 73 vols (Cleveland, OH, 1896–1901; hereafter: JR). For a more recent transcription of the original texts, see Lucien Campeau, ed., Monumenta Novæ Franciæ, 9 vols (Rome, 1967–2003).

¹³ For a recent analysis of these ‘North American Martyrs’, see Anderson, Emma, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs (Cambridge, MA, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While martyrdom was not the focus of his work, Takao Abé has usefully compared the evangelization strategies and methods of the missions to New France and Japan in The Jesuit Mission to New France: A New Interpretation in the Light of the earlier Jesuit Experience in Japan (Leiden, 2011); idem, ‘What Determined the Content of Missionary Reports? The Jesuit Relations Compared with the Iberian Jesuit Accounts’, French Colonial History 3 (2003), 69–83.

¹⁴ 1 Cor. 13: 13; Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco, CA, 2012; first publ. Munich, 1986).

¹⁵ The literature on this subject is vast, but key authorities include Frend, W. H. C., Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar; Baumeister, Theofried, Die Anfänge der Theologie des Martyriums (Münster, 1980)Google Scholar; von Campenhausen, Hans, Die Idee des Martyriums in der alten Kirche (Göttingen, 1936)Google Scholar; Bowersock, G. W., Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more recently, Moss, Candida R., Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven, CT, 2012)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Tertullian actually wrote: ‘The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed’: Apology 55 (ANF 3: 50).

¹⁷ St Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) first suggested that God provided two ‘crowns’ of martyrdom, ‘white’ for the physical and spiritual suffering of confessors, and ‘crimson’ for bloodshed: see Cyprian, Ep. 10.5 (CSEL 3: 494–5); Clare Stancliffe, ‘Red, White and Blue Martyrdom’, in Dorothy Whitelock, Rosamond McKitterick and David Dumville, eds, Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge, 1982), 21–46, at 32. For a helpful general introduction to the rich Christian tradition of martyrdom and its development over time, see Diana Wood, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH 30 (Oxford, 1993); also Danna Piroyansky, ‘Thus may a man be a martyr’: The Notion, Language and Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval England’, in Thomas S. Freeman and Thomas F. Mayer, eds, Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c.1400–1700 (Woodbridge, 2007), 70–87.

¹⁸ For a comprehensive approach to Christian martyrdom in this context, see Brad S. Gregory's seminal Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 6; also Susannah Brietz Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005). For a detailed analysis of Catholic martyrs in Tudor England, see Anne Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community 1535–1603 (Aldershot, 2002).

¹⁹ Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 252.

²⁰ Boxer, Christian Century, 448; Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2005; first publ. 1998), 208. More recent studies tend to cite higher estimates, including some 4,000 martyrs, from a baptized Kirishitan population of between 200,000 and 300,000 in the period 1614–40; for these figures, see Haruko Nawata Ward, ‘Women Martyrs in Passion and Paradise’, World Christianity 3 (2010), 47–66, at 52–3.

²¹ Ucerler, ‘Christian Missions in Japan’, 334; Liam Brockey, ‘Books of Martyrs: Example and Imitation in Europe and Japan, 1597–1650’, Catholic Historical Review 103 (2017), 207–23, at 210.

²² Simon Ditchfield has argued for a ‘decentering’ of Eurocentric perceptions of the Christian world and a reorientation of our historical frames of reference: ‘De-centering the Catholic Reformation: Papacy and Peoples in the Early Modern World’, ARG 101 (2010), 186–208, at 191, 187.

²³ These themes appear in other contexts, for example the letters and writings of the English Cardinal William Allen, especially An apologie and true declaration of the institution and endeuours of tvvo English colleges [Rheims, 1581]; see also Rhiannon Teather, ‘Traitors, Invaders and Glorious Martyrs: Attitudes toward the Execution of Catholics in England, Japan, Paraguay and New France (c.1580–1650)’ (PhD dissertation; University of Bristol, 2019), 153–81.

²⁴ Camilla Russell, ‘“Imagining the “Indies”: Italian Jesuit Petitions for the Overseas Missions at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century’, in Massimo Donattini, Giuseppe Marcocci and Stefania Pastore, eds, L'Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi. Per Andriano Prosperi, vol. 2 (Pisa, 2011), 179–89, at 182.

²⁵ A play loosely based on the story of Alonso Navarrete was penned by Lope de Vega: Cummins and Boxer, Dominican Mission, 28–46, 60–70; see also Carmen Hsu, ‘Martyrdom, Conversion and Monarchy in Los primeros mártires del Japón (1621)’, in Julia Weitbrecht, Werner Röcke and Ruth von Bernuth, eds, Zwischen Ereignis und Erzählung. Konversion als Medium der Selbstbeschreibung in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit in (Berlin, 2016), 217–34. On Jesuit martyrological culture, see Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge, 2008), 81–3, 120–7; Liam Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 7, 227–32; Ines G. Županov, Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India (16th–17th Centuries) (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005), 147–71.

²⁶ Luke Clossey, The Early-Modern Jesuit Missions as a Global Movement, UC Berkeley: UC World History Workshop, Working Papers (2005), online at: <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0h45m0jw>, last accessed 3 January 2021; Simon Ditchfield, ‘Martyrs on the Move: Relics as Vindicators of Local Diversity in the Tridentine Church’, in Wood, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, 283–94. Many relics were sourced from the Roman catacombs, as well as the ‘Golden Chamber’ of Cologne which contained those of St Ursula and her 11,000 Companions. The cult of the latter was spread around the world by the Jesuits in the 1540s; for a detailed account, see Hermann Crombach, Vita et martyrium S. Ursvlæ et sociarum undecim millium virginum, 2 vols (Cologne, 1647). For recent analysis, see 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, 2010); Jaime Ferreiro Alemparte, La leyenda de las once mil vírgenes. Sus reliquias, culto e iconografía (Murcia, 1991); Simon Ditchfield, ‘St Ursula and her 11,000 Companions: A Global Microhistory of the making of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion’, in Wietse de Boer, Vincenzo Lavenia and Giuseppe Marcocci, eds, La ghianda e la quercia. Saggi per Adriano Prosperi (Rome, 2019), 125–34.

²⁷ Mathias Tanner, Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans, in Europa, Africa, Asia, et America contra gentiles, Mahometanos, Judæos, Hæreticos, impios, pro Deo, fide, ecclesia, pietate (Prague, 1675), especially 278–81, 531–3, for accounts of the martyrs featured in this article.

²⁸ For a recent brief discussion of this work and its place in Jesuit martyrological discourse, see Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, ‘Mission Frontiers: A Reflection on Catholic Missions in the Early Modern World’, in Alison Forrestal and Seán Alexander Smith, eds, The Frontiers of Mission: Perspectives on Early Modern Missionary Catholicism (Leiden, 2016), 180–93, at 182–5.

²⁹ Teather, ‘Traitors, Invaders and Glorious Martyrs’, abstract. For an analysis of the martyrological views of the early Jesuits, see also Girolamo Imbruglia, ‘“Ad militandum”: Sacrifice and the Jesuit Mode of Proceeding’, in Vincenzo Lavenia et al., eds, Compel People to come in: Violence and Catholic Conversion in the Non-European World (Rome, 2018), 29–48.

³⁰ Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 105–11 (quotation at 109).

³¹ Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, ed. and trans. Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady (New York, 1982), 17–20; Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Simon Tugwell, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ, 1982), 1–47.

³² John W. O'Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 66–7.

³³ Andrew Redden, ‘Not-So-Good Shepherds: Reluctant Jesuit Martyrs on the Seventeenth-Century Chilean Frontier’, in Forrestal and Smith, eds, Frontiers of Mission, 90–114, at 98–9.

³⁴ Ibid. 99.

³⁵ Catherine Ballériaux, Missionary Strategies in the New World, 1610–1690: An Intellectual History (New York, 2016), 12; Clossey, Salvation and Globalization, 246; The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Ecumenical Council of Trent, ed. and trans. James J. Waterworth (London, 1848), 35.

³⁶ Redden, ‘Not-So-Good Shepherds’, 100.

³⁷ Matt. 16: 18–19; John W. O'Malley, Trent: What happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 19–20.

³⁸ Ibid. 20–1.

³⁹ Michael Mullett, The Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Reformation in Early Modern Europe (London, 1984), 16–22.

⁴⁰ ‘Ya vuestras Reverendísimas ven como esta Cristiandad se va acabando poco a poco, y así es menester dar buen ejemplo a estos Cristianos … Yo voy a Omura a confesar, y consolar aquellos Cristianos, porque ahora es buen tiempo, pues con la sangre fresca de los Mártires estarán más animados’: Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 70v.

⁴¹ ‘[A]unque yo estaba determinado de no decir ninguna razón de las que nos movieron a ir (porque la principal que a mí me movió fue la obediencia que digo tengo dada en este caso) pero quiero dar una, y es, que algunos Cristianos habían murmurado que los Padres les persuadían a ellos que fuesen Mártires, y ellos huían las ocasiones’: ibid. 72r.

⁴² Prior to 1617, six Europeans (four Spaniards and two missionaries from Mexico and India) had been numbered among the twenty-six martyrs of Nagasaki in 1597.

⁴³ Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 72r, 79r.

⁴⁴ Luke 22: 24–30.

⁴⁵ ‘[C]omo ovejas en medio de los lobos’: Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 72v.

⁴⁶ ‘[E]ra el sentimiento y llanto grandísimo, semejante al de Los Cristianos de Epheso, cuando san Pablo se despidió dellos caminando al martirio, y diciéndoles, que no le habían de ver mas’: Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 76r.

⁴⁷ Paul Ragueneau to General Vincent Caraffa, 1 March 1649, in JR, 33: 261.

⁴⁸ Ibid. 263.

⁴⁹ Ragueneau, ‘Relation of 1648–9’, in JR, 34: 91; on the importance of ‘good shepherd’ imagery as applied to priests after the Council of Trent, see Richard Atherton, ‘The Catholic Priesthood: From Trent to Vatican II and beyond’ (PhD thesis, Durham University, 1996), especially 29; available at Durham E-Theses Online: <http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5269/>, accessed 20 December 2020.

⁵⁰ Geoffrey Preston, The Faces of the Church: Meditations on a Mystery and its Images (Edinburgh, 1997), 239.

⁵¹ Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 78v.

⁵² ‘[L]a qual el hizo, y luego les pusieron en orden para sacrifico, al Padre fray Alonso en medio, y a los dos lado sus santos compañeros, y los tres hincados de rodillas’: ibid.

⁵³ Hartmann, Augustinians, 70.

⁵⁴ Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL, 2015), 3.

⁵⁵ For details, see Cummins and Boxer, Dominican Mission, 32 and n. 43.

⁵⁶ ‘[E]stimamos la vida sobre todas las cosas, y el perderla ahora de nuestra voluntad es, porque por este camino esperamos alcanzar los bienes eternos’: Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 78v–79r.

⁵⁷ ‘[Y] hecho así, de un golpe le cortaron la cabeza, con que entró triunfante en el cielo’: ibid. 79r.

⁵⁸ ‘El Padre fray Alonso tenía en una mano una Cruz, y en la otra el Rosario, y candela, y desde el principio había estado muy recogido en una profunda contemplación, y en levantando el la mano, levanto el verdugo la catana, y errando el golpe del pescuezo, se le dio tan terrible en la cabeza, que se la partió desde el colodrillo hasta las orejas; del cual, aunque cayó en tierra, levanto los ojos al cielo, como quien esta orando’: ibid. 79r.

⁵⁹ On this confraternity, see 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 (2015), 237–83; João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, ‘The Brotherhoods (Confrarias) and Lay Support for the Early Christian Church in Japan’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34 (2007), 67–84.

⁶⁰ JR, 34: 93.

⁶¹ JR, 33: 263.

⁶² A Chapelle ardente was an elaborate wooden structure decorated with many candles and coats of arms, which was frequently the focal point at a funeral. It also had the liturgical function of being the site where the deceased was granted absolution: Minou Schraven, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration (Farnham, 2014), 1–2, 264.

⁶³ JR, 34: 97; Robert Kolb, ‘God's Gift of Martyrdom: The Early Reformation Understanding of Dying for the Faith’, ChH 64 (1995), 399–411.

⁶⁴ Le Jeune, ‘Relation, 1639’, in JR, 17: 13.

⁶⁵ JR, 34: 97.

⁶⁶ O'Malley, Trent, 243–4; Erik R. Seeman, Death in the New World: Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1492–1800 (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), 114.

⁶⁷ ‘Sus mismos matadores también con ser renegados bañaron los pañizuelos, y muchos papeles en la sangre bendita; y cortándoles de los hábitos, lo guardaron todo por grandes reliquias, diciendo, que por ellas algún día se habían de convertir al Señor’: Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 79v.

⁶⁸ ‘[Y] de Nangasaqui fueron muchas embarcaciones con garfios, y redes a procurar sacar los cuerpos, que les duro muchos días’: ibid. For a discussion of the importance of relics in Jesuit narratives, see Roldán-Figueroa, ‘Father Luis Piñeiro’, 209–32.

⁶⁹ Tanaka, who was martyred alongside Navarrete and Ayala, was also given a sea burial but this act was not afforded the same symbolism, which focused specifically on the martyrdom of the priesthood in Japan and the relationship between religious orders: see Orfanel and Collado, Historia, 79v.

⁷⁰ Ibid. 80r.

⁷¹ ‘Muertos los Mártires abrieron los ataúdes de los otros dos Mártires primeros, que (como queda dicho) había traído, y pusieron el cuerpo del bendito P. fray Alonso Navarrete con el del bendito Padre Juan Bautista, y el del Padre fray Hernando con el del Padre fray Pedro de la Asunción; y amarrando a los ataúdes muchas piedras los arrojaron en la mar, donde parece que el Señor quiso hacer una estrecha hermandad entre estas cuatro Religiones’: ibid. 79v.