Malacca: gateway to the Japan mission

Malacca, at the tip of the Malay peninsula opposite Sumatra, had been held by the Portuguese since Afonso de Albuquerque took it from its Muslim rulers.¹²It was the meeting place of the trade of the western Indian Ocean with China, Japan, the Moluccas and the Philippines, and it lay about 500 leagues from Goa.¹⁴¹⁵Many ships sailed from the port to China and Japan every year, and its residents had the closest dealings with those countries.¹⁶Its people were mainly Malays, many of whom had become Christians and lived on friendly terms with the Portuguese.¹⁷For the Jesuits it became the last stop on the road from India to Japan, and the post office of the Japan mission.¹⁶¹⁸¹⁹

Francis Xavier (ザビエル) first reached Malacca on September 25, 1545, and there lived at the hospital, preached on Sundays and taught children their prayers every day.³⁴He began the custom of a man walking the streets at nightfall with a lantern and a bell, calling for prayers for the souls in purgatory and for those in mortal sin.²⁰²¹Back from the Moluccas in July 1547, he waited four months for a ship to India.²²²³In December 1547 a Portuguese named Álvares brought him a Japanese man, Anjirō (アンジロー), in the hermitage of Nossa Senhora do Monte.²⁴As the Japanese later recalled, "and we found him in a church of Our Lady performing a wedding, and he delivered me to him" (translated).²⁴The little hilltop chapel, built in 1521, was given to the Jesuits by Bishop João de Albuquerque in 1549 and was later renamed St Paul's by the Dutch.²⁴²⁵The town's vicar, Afonso Martins, had earlier refused to baptise Anjirō.²⁶Leaving late in 1547, Xavier promised the leading citizens two Jesuits, and in 1548 he sent Fr Francisco Pérez and Brother Roque de Oliveira, who opened schools and founded the Jesuit college.²⁷²⁸²⁹

Xavier's party of six reached Malacca on May 31, 1549 on its way to Japan, and on landing he received letters from Portuguese merchants already there.⁵⁶The captain of the fortress, Dom Pedro da Silva, a son of Vasco da Gama, found them a ship within two days.³⁰³¹No Portuguese vessel was willing to sail, so he chartered the junk of a Chinese merchant nicknamed the Ladrão, Avan, who signed a guarantee to carry them to Japan on pain of losing his wife and property.³²³³The captain also gave thirty bahar of the best pepper for the mission and presents worth 200 cruzados for the king of Japan, and Xavier wrote that no one in India had helped him so much.³³³²³⁰On the night of June 23, 1549, in the chapel of Our Lady of the Mount, he wrote a rule of life for the novice João Bravo, dated "on the point of sailing for Japan" (translated).³⁴³⁵He embarked in the junk at sunset the next day.³⁵He left behind a school run by Brother Roque de Oliveira, whose boys learned reading, writing and Latin grammar, served Mass and sang litanies in procession.³⁶Before leaving, he made the port the relay station for the mission's mail: letters from Rome and Portugal were to be copied there and sent on to Japan by several ships, with Fr Francisco Pérez in charge.¹⁸³⁷³⁸

Avan's junk returned to Malacca on April 2, 1550, bringing Xavier's first letters from Kagoshima (鹿児島) and four Japanese men, two of them former Buddhist monks.⁷⁸⁹The pirate himself had died a pagan in Japan the previous autumn.⁸Dom Pedro da Silva hoisted the royal standard, fired a salute and led a procession to Our Lady of the Mount in thanksgiving.³⁹⁴⁰The four visitors were instructed by Fr Pérez and baptised on Ascension Day, May 15, 1550, with the captain as godfather; three went home to Japan and one went on to Goa.⁹⁷Xavier had asked that such visitors be lodged in the houses of rich Portuguese, so that they would confirm the good report of the Portuguese that had drawn them there.⁴¹⁴²From then on the priest said a Mass every Friday for the priests and Christians of Japan, and he kept it up for thirty years.⁴³⁹No ship could sail from the port to Japan in 1550 or 1551: in 1551 the vessel ready to leave was burnt during a siege that lasted from June 5 to September 16, leaving the Jesuits in Japan cut off from India.⁴⁴⁴⁵During the siege Fr Pérez fixed to a tree the crucifix his superior had given him on leaving for Japan, and prayed.⁴⁶

Xavier passed through Malacca for the last time between May and July 1552, on his way to China after his years in Japan.¹⁰¹¹He found the city stricken by pestilence, and went from house to house under a straw hat begging shelter for the sick.¹¹⁴⁷The captain of the sea, Dom Álvaro de Ataíde, blocked his embassy to China by seizing the rudder of Diogo Pereira's ship, the Santa Cruz.¹⁰⁴⁸For the first time the missionary made public his papal powers as apostolic nuncio, and the vicar João Soares solemnly excommunicated the captain.⁴⁹⁵⁰Before sailing he beat the dust of the city from his shoes on a rock by the shore, and he later ordered Fr Pérez to withdraw the Society from it.⁵¹⁵²²⁵On March 22, 1553 the Santa Cruz returned to Malacca carrying Xavier's body.⁵³⁵⁴With no Jesuits in the city, the nobility, the vicar and the clergy carried it in procession to Our Lady of the Mount, and the plague then raging is said to have ceased.⁵⁵⁵⁶⁵⁷It was buried without a coffin, in a grave too short for it.⁵⁶⁵⁸In August 1553 Fr João de Beira, Diogo Pereira and a few others opened the grave secretly at night and found the body incorrupt, and Pereira had a coffin made lined with damask.⁵³⁵⁸The body was then taken on to Cochin.⁵⁷

Malacca remained a stage on the long voyage between Europe and Japan.¹²¹³The young Japanese envoys of the Tenshō embassy reached it on January 27, 1583, and were lodged for eight days with the Jesuit fathers before sailing on to India.¹²¹⁷On their way home they stayed twelve days at the Jesuit college there, before a twenty-nine-day voyage to Macao.¹³King Sebastian of Portugal granted Fr Alessandro Valignano (ヴァリニャーノ) a college for Japan endowed with 1,000 scudi a year from the royal treasury of Malacca, but wars with Aceh meant that not a coin was ever drawn.⁵⁹Ships from China and Japan raised new cases of conscience in the port, and in 1562 a Jesuit there asked for a theologian to settle them.⁶⁰