Story
A priest who crossed the world twice
Cosme de Torres was born in 1510 at Valencia, in Spain.He taught Latin, was ordained priest in 1534, and then, by the account of Xavier's biographer Georg Schurhammer, felt "an unaccountable desire" to cross the ocean.He went to New Spain (Mexico), and in 1542 sailed with Ruy López de Villalobos on his voyage across the Pacific to the Moluccas.At Amboina (Ambon) in 1546 he met . Schurhammer writes that at the sight of Xavier "an inner voice at once told him that he would find peace of heart in following Francis," but he said nothing, sailed to India and took a parish in .In 1548 he entered the Society of Jesus there.
Xavier had already chosen him for Japan. The French Jesuit historian Charlevoix says Xavier saw in him "one of the greatest minds and most learned men of his age," with qualities very fit for a mission he was already planning, and set him to instruct again the three Japanese catechumens at Goa so that he might learn their language and manners.In January 1549 the first of them, Paul of the Holy Faith (), made the Spiritual Exercises under Torres's direction.On Palm Sunday 1549 the party left Goa: Xavier, Torres, the brother , the three Japanese and two servants.On 15 August 1549, the feast of the Assumption, they .
Left behind, on purpose
Through the winter at Torres studied Japanese with Xavier and Fernández.When Xavier set out for the capital in October 1550, he left Torres at with the new Christians and with the gifts and Mass vessels he had brought for "the king of Japan."In 1551, when Xavier went to Bungo at the invitation of its young lord Ōtomo Yoshishige (later ), he called Torres to to take his place.Before leaving Japan he sent Torres and Fernández three hundred cruzados for a house and a church in that city.
Schurhammer preserves one exchange from those months. Xavier, he writes, was prepared to go to any length to adapt himself to Japanese usages so long as the law of God allowed it: "If something is not a sin, then it is better not to change it," he said one day to Father Torres.Torres made the principle his own. The Japanese encyclopedia Nipponica says that he came to know Japanese customs, temperament and food well, and that this, joined to his gentle character, bore fruit in the mission.
Yamaguchi: fire, refuge and a sung Mass
Within weeks of Xavier's departure for Bungo, Yamaguchi was in revolt. The rebel Sue Harukata rose against the lord Ōuchi Yoshitaka, who took his own life; the city was sacked, and the two missionaries were hunted through the streets.A letter from Torres reached Xavier in Bungo with the news. Schurhammer, following it, says Torres and Fernández found refuge with a pagan nobleman, Naitō, first in a monastery he owned and then in his own house, and that no Christian of Yamaguchi lost his life.Charlevoix tells it as the protection of a noble lady who, "pagan as she was," honoured the two missionaries and made the monks answerable for their safety.
The new lord, Ōuchi Yoshinaga, was a younger brother of Ōtomo of Bungo, and he was well disposed.On the 28th day of the eighth month of Tenbun 21 (16 September 1552) he granted Torres a licence to found a "temple," the ruined Daidōji, as a house for the "monks who have come from the western lands"; the document survives in the archives of the Portuguese foreign ministry.That Christmas the small community sang Mass. A Jesuit brother wrote two years later: "On the day of the Nativity we sang Mass, not with good voices, but the Christians heard it with great joy."Yamaguchi still remembers it as the first Christmas celebrated in Japan.
Torres also argued. Charlevoix tells of two learned monks who came from the capital to oppose the foreign teachers, and who disputed with him in the streets of Yamaguchi. One day, as Torres was preaching and cited St Paul, one of them asked who this Paul was. Torres told the story of the apostle's life. At the end the monk said to his companion that as they had joined together to fight this religion, they must now go together to preach it: "I will take the name of Paul; you take that of Barnabas." Both knelt before Torres and were baptized on the spot.
Superior of a scattered Church
As superior of the mission after Xavier, Torres guided and supported the missionaries who came after him and built churches.When new missionaries arrived from India, they came to confer with him at Yamaguchi, and Charlevoix says they agreed together, with the leading Christians, to care for the poor of the whole city, Christian or not, to found hospitals, and to give the distribution of alms to respected lay believers.After the fall of the Sue, Torres moved to Bungo, where Ōtomo protected the mission at .
From Funai he sent his men out. When an old monk of Mount Hiei, the great monastic mountain above , wrote asking to be taught the new religion, and pleaded that only his age kept him from coming himself, Torres sent him a summary of Christian doctrine he had written "with all possible care," and in 1559 sent with the young Japanese brother to the capital.The old man had died before they arrived, but his successor told them he had died believing all the articles Torres had sent him.Vilela went on to Kyoto, and the Church of the capital began.
Ōmura and Arima
In 1562 the lord of Ōmura, , offered the Portuguese the harbour of Yokoseura, free of dues, with land around it and a house for the missionaries, and wrote to Torres.Torres went there himself.In the spring of 1563, our page on Sumitada tells, Torres gave the lord the best meal the Jesuits could prepare and led him to an altar adorned as if for a feast day, with a painting of Our Lady; not long afterwards he baptized Sumitada with the retainers who had come with him.
That July three new missionaries landed at Yokoseura, among them . Fróis later wrote that there were then only two priests in all Japan, Torres at Yokoseura and Vilela in Kyoto, and that Torres, old and sick, wept for joy and said he could die in peace now that God had sent new workers.
Danger came within months. Sumitada's enemies plotted to begin their revolt by killing Torres, and sent a Christian gentleman to bring him to Ōmura to baptize the lord's wife. Charlevoix says Torres said Mass to set out, and during his thanksgiving felt strongly moved to write to Sumitada first and wait for an answer. The messenger rode back alone and was cut down on the road, and by then the rebels had set fire to the lord's palace and the town.Yokoseura was burned too, and its Christians scattered.Torres took refuge on the island of Takashima, where he went on baptizing.
The last journey
The heavy work wore him down.By 1570 he could hardly stand. Charlevoix, who calls him "the second founder of the Church of Japan," says he was still founding churches and that "he died working."A new superior, Francisco Cabral, came out from India, and Torres handed the mission over to him.He died soon after at Shiki, on the island of Amakusa, on 2 October 1570 by Charlevoix's reckoning.The Kodansha dictionary gives the third day of the ninth month of Genki 1, which by the national observatory's calendar tables was 12 October; 2 October was the 23rd day of the eighth month (Disputed).
Charlevoix's eulogy is warm. Torres, he says, was the most lovable of men; his gentleness had made him friends of everyone he knew, even among those who did not share his faith, and learned men he had never met kept up a correspondence with him by letter.All those he baptized wanted to take his name. He used to say that Yamaguchi had been a paradise for him because he had never been there a moment without suffering. By nature, Charlevoix admits, he was "a little melancholic," and might have been very hard had grace not softened him; God rewarded him with the gift of tears and a high gift of contemplation.Ōmura Sumitada, who honoured him as a father, was deeply moved by the news of his death.Every Christian wanted something that had been his.
Fernández, his companion from the first day, has the last word in Charlevoix's account through Torres's own mouth: if Japan owed it to Xavier that it had received the faith, Torres used to say, it owed it to Fernández that it had not lost it after the saint's departure.The Kodansha biographical dictionary reckons that he baptized some thirty thousand people, Ōmura Sumitada among them.