Shimabara and the Christians of Takaku
Shimabara (島原) was the castle town of the lord of Arima (有馬), Matsukura Shigemasa (松倉重政), called Bungodono in the Christian accounts.Arie (有家) was the flower of the Christians of his lands of Takaku (高来).When Bungodono's first edict came from Edo, the governors of Shimabara were told to let no subject live except as an idolater.
1622
On November 1, 1622, Fr Pietro Paolo Navarro wrote his last letter from Shimabara.He said he was waiting without ceasing for "the hour of dying burned alive for Jesus Christ" (translated).He was burned with the Jesuit Brother Pedro Onizuka, whose father Magoiemon was among the martyrs of 1627.
1626
On Christmas Eve, 1625, the governor Tanga Mondo had six women brought to the castle.Among them were Susanna and the wives of Mancio and Matthias, two men who had sheltered the priests.She was 32 and came from a noble old Christian family of Hakata (博多).She was stripped, mocked, led by a rope through the town and tied by her hair to a tree.The other five gave way, though she urged them to stand.One of her maids claimed Susanna's three-year-old daughter as her own to save the child, but the mother insisted on the truth.The little girl was tied naked across her mother's legs while snow fell.Susanna stood eight hours bound to the tree.
Monica, wife of John Naisen, began to undress when ordered, saying she would not lose her soul for shame of the body.Before taking Fr Giovanni Battista Zola into his house, he had asked his wife whether she was willing to die with him.
In the Shimabara prison the hosts ate black rice, gave part of it daily to the poor, fasted three days a week and struck a plate as a bell for prayer three times a day.Mancio Araki, sick and swollen since January, died there at midnight after July 8, 1626, while his companions sang psalms.The others were chosen to die: John Tanaka, Peter, John Naisen, their wives Catherine, Susanna and Monica, Monica's son Louis and Matthias, with the dead man's body.They sang litanies and psalms on the crossing to Nagasaki (長崎).On the order of an official named Mizuno, the governors of Takaku sent them there for execution on July 12, three weeks after the priests they had sheltered were burned on June 20.
1627
In 1627 the lord turned on his own lands of Takaku, beginning with Fukae (深江), a league and a half from Shimabara.There Thomas Sochin, aged 68, a former host of the Jesuits who practised medicine as a work of charity, stood firm with his son John Indo Impey.They and other Christians of Fukae were taken to Shimabara.The old man was stretched on a bar over hot coals and turned until his skin split, and his son took his place.Their ears were cut off and crosses branded on their foreheads.On February 11, 1627, Thomas had four fingers cut off and was thrown into the sea with a stone at his neck.
On February 21, 1627, the prisoners were led to a moat of the citadel.Sixteen were to have their fingers cut off and be drowned with a stone round the neck.Banners read: "By the way of the waters these servants of the devil will go to the fire of hell" (translated).Among those condemned that day were Paul Sukeemon of Arie, aged 70, and Maria Pirez, aged 88, who walked on foot though she was usually carried.Twenty survivors were stripped, branded and had four to six fingers cut off, and patches on their clothes marked them as beggars whom no one might lodge on pain of death.Released within the Arima lands, the maimed confessors slept outside a hut rather than bring persecution on anyone who sheltered them.The tortures at Unzen (雲仙) from 1627 to 1632 have their own page.
In March the lord turned on Christian women.Madeleine of Arie, raised from childhood in the Jesuit church there, knocked away the register of apostates, saying God forbid that her name be written among the devil's slaves.On March 26, Friday in Passion week, she was taken out to sea and told to apostatize or throw herself in.She would do neither, and was pushed in.Hauled up and plunged again and again, she sang the psalm Laudate Dominum, and then was drowned with a stone at her neck.
Her husband Leonard, a young man of bad habits, had been jailed on a false charge of theft.In prison he was converted by Paul Uchibori, prayed three hours a day and served the confessors whose fingers had been cut off.It is said that he saw his dead wife surrounded by light, kneeling in prayer.Cleared of the theft, he was kept in prison as a Christian, and his fingers were smashed one by one with a hammer.He was beheaded with one stroke on December 13, 1627.By one count, the lord's slaughter in Takaku that year came to fifty martyrs.
1628
In 1628 Christians exiled from Nagasaki were brought to Shimabara, and many signed as apostates rather than face the tortures.Among the steadfast was Orsola, who had once sold herself as a slave for nine years to buy food and medicine for her sick husband, John Magosuchi.When he urged her to flee, she answered that no human strength could overcome the torments, but by divine grace she too could stand.Beaten and left in the sun in the enclosure at Shimabara, she collapsed while cooking for her companions.The president sent her back into the sun, where she died within hours.Her body was burned and the ashes thrown into the sea.Her husband died under torture on the mountain on October 2, and his ashes, too, were thrown into the sea.
1630
Arie, so fervent in 1627, was the lord's next target.On May 19, 1630, its Christians were taken to the bonze's house, and of 280 only 50 persevered.Sixty torturers from Shimabara drilled their sides with spinning bamboo, burned them with hot irons and spared not even nursing babies.The fifty were then taken to the castle town.
The lord sentenced four men to a horrible death that would not stop even if they apostatized, because they had sheltered the priests.Three more were added: Claire, aged 80, the widow Maria and Denis, a helper of the Fathers.On May 24 the seven were led out with placards on their backs.Each sat in a pit, tied to a short post and crossbar, his neck held between two boards.The back of the neck was cut with an iron saw, and the cut was then worked with a blunt bamboo saw, day after day, with salt thrown into the wound.
Thomas Kichibyoe had been placed in charge of the Arie Christians by the Fathers.Paul Nagata, 83, had six hundred Christians in his care.Leonard Sakuzaemon had been listed as an apostate after officers forced his hand to make a mark on a paper, and for disowning it his right arm was sawn.Five of the seven gave way on the fifth and sixth days, and Paul Nagata on the last night.Thomas alone held out to the end, and the lord himself said: "if in the whole empire a man was worthy to be called valiant, it was that one" (translated).He was beheaded on the evening of May 31, 1630.Paul Nagata, Leonard and John Gonzaemon took back their apostasy and died confessing Christ.Claire died of her wounds.
At Koga, Michael Shozaburo, aged 24, stood firm while six others gave way.His neck was sawn each day from May 27 to 31 until he died.When his father weakened, the young man cried out that he no longer had a father.The lord then had nine apostates, once pillars of the community, put to death for fear they would return to the faith, and six of them died repentant.
1633
In late August 1633 a group of Christians who had sheltered missionaries was burned alive at Shimabara.Ignatius Kiemon died with his wife Regina and his sons Francis Kuranojo, Gaspar Honzaburo and Balthasar Gorofacou.Gaspar Yoshichiro died with his wife Marie and their son, and with them were Michael Sampei and Paul Shokichiro.In the same days the Jesuit Fr Antonio Giannone and Brother John Kidera died in the pit at Shimabara.
A Church shaken
A Jesuit history of the time said that after the slaughter of 1627 the once glorious Christianity of Arima and Shimabara was left like buildings after an earthquake, partly ruined, partly still standing and ready to fall.Thomas Kichibyoe, who kept rooms in his house for missionaries, had baptized newborns, catechized and reconciled apostates while the Fathers were away.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Paul Sukeemon of Arie. Profillet's list dates his drowning February 27, 1627, while his narrative gives February 21.
- Leonard Matsuda Denzo. Profillet gives his age as 44;Bartoli gives 34.Anesaki spells the name Masuda.
- Maria who died in prison on February 22, 1630. Profillet calls her Marie of "Gonga";Anesaki reads Maria of Kaga.
- Seven on crosses in pits. Charlevoix and a Dutch account given by Marnas describe fifty Christians paraded at Shimabara and seven sawn with canes for five days; no fact dates this event exactly, so it is left out of the story.
- The 1630 dates. Profillet and Bartoli say the seven were led out on May 24;Anesaki's chronology gives May 23 to 31.
- Numbers at Arie in 1630. 280 or 282.
- Name of Thomas of Arie. Shibyoe or Kichibyoe.
- The burning of August 27, 1633. eleven in Anesaki, thirteen in Delplace, and "three sons and five others" with Ignatius in Bartoli.Bartoli puts the burning a few days after Fr Giannone's death, while Anesaki and Delplace put it the day before.