The Macao Embassy of 1640: sixty-one martyrs at Nagasaki

In 1639 the shogunate forbade the Portuguese of Macao to sail to Japan, because of the Christian religion.¹²The Dutch had spread the rumour that the city had a part in the rising at Arima (有馬), the Shimabara (島原) rebellion.¹⁵¹⁶On March 13, 1640 the city's assembly voted to send four ambassadors with 6,000 taels to prove Portuguese innocence.¹⁶They were Luís Pais Pacheco, Rodrigo Sanches de Paredes, Gonçalo Monteiro de Carvalho and Simão Vaz de Paiva, older men and among the most honoured citizens.¹⁵¹⁷¹⁸Their task was to tell the shogun's government that Macao had no part in the rising and had sent no religious to Japan for years, and to ask for the trade to be restored.¹⁵¹⁷¹⁹The ship carried no cargo, and no one was allowed aboard without a certificate of confession.¹⁸²⁰Before it sailed, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in all the city's churches.¹⁸

The embassy left Macao in late June 1640 with more than seventy people of many nations aboard, and after a storm reached Nagasaki (長崎) on July 6.³⁴⁵The ambassadors anchored opposite the hill of the martyrs and declared themselves envoys to the shogun, not merchants, with a letter for the governor Baba Saburozaemon (馬場三郎左衛門).²¹⁵Officials removed the rudder, sails and guns, towed the ship into the inner harbour, and held the whole company on Dejima (出島), the island enclosure built for the Portuguese, under guards from Ōmura (大村).²²¹⁸²³The governor's courier reached the court in eleven days instead of the usual month.²³⁶The shogun had been heard to say that the Christian faith was mixed with European goods and sailed with them to infect the empire.²⁴On the night of August 1 two senior officials from Edo (江戸), one of them Kagazume Tadazumi (加々爪忠澄), reached the port, bringing "with them a number of executioners equal to the number of the Europeans."²⁴¹⁸²⁵

On August 2 the whole company was summoned before the governor and the officials from the capital, with armed soldiers all around.⁶⁷⁸As an affront, the four ambassadors were made to sit on the bare ground, without even the mats given to inferiors.⁶They argued that the shogun's edict concerned trade, not embassies, appealed to the law of nations, and invited the officials to search their ship for a single thread of silk.⁸²⁶The officials answered that the ban had been imposed because of the Christian law, and that Macao's letters asked for trade without promising to stop bringing or supporting missionaries.²⁶²⁰The sentence, signed in late July by the seven councillors of state, called the embassy "nothing but a pure lie".²⁷²⁸²⁶It ordered the ship burned and the ambassadors and their companions killed, but the lowest of the crew spared and sent home, and it warned that any Portuguese who landed later would be killed.²⁸¹As they were bound, Pacheco asked by what right ambassadors, sacred among all nations, could be seized, and Paredes made an interpreter witness that they were condemned as Christians and for no other cause.²⁹Thirteen men were chosen to live: the clerk João Delgado, the surgeon Domingos de Quadros, a sailor, the Chinese boatswain, and nine Chinese or Indian sailors drawn by lot.³⁰³¹

That night the prisoners refused food and prayed, and when one of them freed another's hands with his teeth, they bared their shoulders and scourged themselves with the ropes that had bound them.⁹¹⁰Even the slaves and servants encouraged their masters, and Paredes preached until he lost his voice.¹⁰⁹At five in the morning on August 3, 1640 the sentence was read again.³²³³The thirteen to be spared wore white banners on their backs, while the condemned wore banners with the sentence written in Japanese.³⁴³²An interpreter offered life, by the shogun's special leave, to anyone who would "fall", the local word for apostasy, and young men were also offered money, but all refused.³⁵³⁶³²Simão Vaz de Paiva, who had been sad to die for his city's trade, now rejoiced that they would die freely for Christ.³⁵The soldier Bento de Lima Cardoso, aged nineteen, joked that he would fall only when his headless body fell to the ground.³⁷³²A Chinese youth named Francis said that if he had fifty lives he would gladly give them all for Christ.³⁸¹¹An African slave wavered at the offer of life and money, but another African beside him urged him to wipe out their past sins with his blood, and he held firm.³⁹⁴⁰Even the apostate interpreter Antonio Carvalho wept and urged the prisoners in Portuguese not to deny Christ.¹¹⁴¹

About seven o'clock the procession left the prison: a crier with the sentence, soldiers, the four ambassadors in their cloaks with their hands tied, then the others barefoot, each led on a rope by his own executioner.¹¹¹²The whole town turned out in silence, and the townspeople, apostate as they were, set jars of water and cups at their doors.¹²³⁴The condemned were allowed to preach to the crowds on the way.⁴²Ambassador Gonçalo Monteiro de Carvalho asked the survivors to make it known at Macao that he died for Christ.⁴³¹²The ship's master Manuel Álvares preached to the end, and placed his sixteen-year-old servant Manuel before him so as to see him die first.⁴⁴⁴⁵Paredes asked an interpreter three times whether he was truly condemned for the faith, and on hearing yes said he died most content.⁴⁶On the hill the heads fell together, each by its own executioner, except those of the four ambassadors, who were beheaded by one man, Carvalho first and Pacheco last, with three strokes.⁴⁵⁴⁴In all sixty-one Christians died, from old men to Antonio, a Chinese boy of eight who had been baptised in Macao a few days before sailing.⁴⁴³⁹³¹They were Portuguese, Spaniards, Chinese, Bengalis, Malays, Africans and men of Malabar, Java, Timor and the Philippines, and many were slaves or servants.¹³⁴⁷⁴⁴

The bodies were not used for sword testing as was usual, and a soldier who stole an ambassador's shoes was made to put them back.¹³¹⁴The survivors were made to watch the ship burned with its guns, its provisions, and gold and silver worth eight thousand ducats.¹³¹⁴The governor told them: "Let them think no more of us; just as if we were no longer in the world."³⁶The heads were fixed on boards in three rows on the hill, and a tablet warned that anyone coming from Portugal would die, even the king or the God of the Christians.⁴⁸³⁶⁴⁹The thirteen refused passage on a Dutch ship and set out in a small, weak boat, which broke seven rudders in three typhoons but reached Macao on September 20, 1640.⁵⁰⁵¹⁵²The families of the dead put on rich clothes and lit their houses, and the city celebrated that its earthly ambassadors had become ambassadors to heaven.⁵³⁵²The senate later granted stipends to the widow and sons of Rodrigo Sanches de Paredes, and the administrator of the diocese, Fr Bento de Cristo, drew up an inquiry into the martyrdoms and sent it to Rome.⁵⁴⁵⁵A Spanish account of the martyrdom of the four ambassadors was printed in Manila in 1641.⁵⁶