Story
On a hot day in the spring of 1569 a Portuguese priest stood on a drawbridge in . Around him thousands of men were building a palace for the new Shogun. At the end of the bridge sat the man who had ordered it, Oda Nobunaga, and he had already refused once to see the foreigner. Now he told the priest to rise from his bow and to cover his head against the sun, and he began to ask questions.
The priest was . The questions were simple: how old he was, how long he had studied, how long he had been in Japan, whether he hoped to see his country again. Then came a harder one. If the Japanese did not become Christians, would he go back to India? Fróis answered that if there were only one Christian left in Japan he would stay to teach him and strengthen him in the faith.That answer, and the friendship it began, shaped the life of the Church in the capital for the next thirteen years.
A lord from Owari
Nobunaga was born in 1534, the son of Oda Nobuhide, a lord in Owari province. He had united Owari by 1559, and in 1560 he defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto at Okehazama. In 1567 he took the castle of Inokuchi in Mino, renamed the town Gifu and made it his base.In October 1568, at the request of Ashikaga Yoshiaki, he marched on Kyoto, scattered the Miyoshi within days and set Yoshiaki up as Shogun.
For the small Catholic community of Kyoto this was a rescue. In 1565 the Shogun Yoshiteru had been murdered, and in the turmoil the missionaries were driven from the city. Fróis spent almost four years in exile at Sakai, sheltered by the Christian merchant Diogo Hibiya. He did not waste them. He studied the language, translated the Sunday Gospels into Japanese, wrote an explanation of the Ten Commandments, and baptized about three hundred people in a poor little house.
The drawbridge and the patents
The way back came through Wada Koremasa, the governor Nobunaga appointed for Kyoto. Cieslik calls him a friend of the missionaries who intended in time to become a Christian himself. Thanks to Wada, Fróis returned to Kyoto in March 1569, and Wada presented him to Nobunaga.Cieslik says the first audience was so reserved that the enemies of the mission took heart, but that at the second, at the building site of the Shogun's palace among six or seven thousand workers, Nobunaga talked with Fróis for two full hours.
Murdoch, writing in 1903 from Fróis's letters, tells the scene at length. Fróis told Nobunaga that the missionaries had no house in Kyoto "because of the bonzes who have driven us out of those we had." In Murdoch's reading, this showed that the foreign priests and Nobunaga had one thing in common: an enemy.Fróis then asked for a public debate with the most learned monks in the land, offering to be punished as an impostor if he lost. Nobunaga turned to his courtiers and said that only a great country could produce such a great mind. He sent Fróis on a tour of the palace works.
Shortly afterwards the mission received letters patent from both the Shogun and Nobunaga, and the Church in Kyoto not only resumed its work but gained privileges.
The sword at Myōkakuji
The truce with the monks did not last a season. The Nichiren monk Asayama Nichijō, a favourite of Nobunaga's, worked to have the priest expelled. On 20 April 1569, at the Myōkakuji temple, Nobunaga had Fróis and the Japanese Jesuit brother dispute with Nichijō in his presence.The argument came round to the human soul. Nichijō seized Nobunaga's sword and went for Lourenço, crying that he would kill "your disciple" and then they could show him the soul. Nobunaga broke up the debate.By Fróis's account, preserved in his History, Nobunaga told the monk that monks should defend their law with reasons, not weapons.Nichijō later brought about Wada's fall, but against Fróis he was powerless.
Gifu and the church of the Assumption
Fróis came to know Nobunaga well. Cooper, a Jesuit historian, writes that he chatted with the warlord for hours in Japanese and was shown round his castles by Nobunaga himself.Fróis's account of Gifu begins with a disclaimer: "At this point I wish I were a skilled architect or had the gift of describing places well, because I sincerely assure you that of all the places and houses I have seen in Portugal, India and Japan, there has been nothing to compare with this as regards luxury, wealth and cleanliness."Cooper notes why such friendship was possible in an age of treachery. The Westerners had no armies in Japan, so a ruler could talk with them freely without fearing them.
At the end of 1570 Fróis was joined by the Italian Jesuit Gnecchi Soldo. When Wada was killed in battle in 1571, Fróis sent Lourenço to Nobunaga, who was then attacking the warrior monks of Mount Hiei, and Nobunaga again promised his protection.The new superior, Francisco Cabral, came up to the capital on visitation and was presented to Nobunaga by Fróis.
In 1573 Yoshiaki turned against Nobunaga, and fighting burned much of the city. The church and most Christian houses were spared.When the capital was rebuilt, the missionaries decided that it deserved a real church. 's old building, bought in 1560, had three split beams out of four. Organtino and the Christian nobles, above all Dario Takayama, drew up the plan, and Organtino ran the works.
Nobunaga's favour mattered at every step. He had taken control of timber and carpenters for his own palace, but the governor, Murai Sadakatsu, obtained a special permit, sent workmen and even gave money. Neighbours objected that a three storey church would look down into their houses and gardens. They complained to the governor, and even went to Gifu to complain to Nobunaga in person, without success. When Murai sent a thousand men to raise the great beams, the neighbours changed their minds and lent a hand themselves.The church was dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, in memory of 's arrival in Japan on that feast in 1549. Kyoto called it Nanbanji, "the temple of the Southern Barbarians".Organtino visited Nobunaga often, and each visit strengthened the friendship.
Azuchi
In 1576 Nobunaga began a new castle town at Azuchi on Lake Biwa. Fróis, who knew it well, wrote that Nobunaga's palace and castle there "as regards architecture, strength, wealth and grandeur may well be compared with the greatest buildings of Europe."At Pentecost 1580 Nobunaga himself gave Organtino ground at Azuchi for a seminary, and building began the same year.Among its first pupils was a boy from the capital named Paulo Miki.
In March 1581 the Jesuit Visitor, , came to the capital with Fróis as his interpreter. They arrived in time for the great festivities Nobunaga staged to celebrate his victories.Nobunaga received Valignano in solemn audience in Kyoto and then several times at Azuchi. He invited him to court festivities, singled him out for honours and gave him a famous folding screen of Azuchi.Cieslik writes that Valignano's "impressive figure, his broad culture, and the gracious bearing he had as a son of the Italian Renaissance" seem to have impressed Nobunaga, and that the honours were heralded across the provinces and raised the Church's standing everywhere.The screen went to Rome with the and was presented to Pope in 1585. No trace of it has been found since.
Protector, not convert
Nobunaga was no Christian, and he was ruthless. He burned Enryakuji on Mount Hiei in 1571 and Makinoodera in 1581. He killed many Kōya monks and burned the Zen abbot Kaisen Jōki in 1582. He met the Ikkō leagues with campaigns of massacre. In 1579 he had the Jōdo and Nichiren schools debate at Azuchi, then ruled against the Nichiren side and suppressed it.The encyclopedias describe a man who put political power above every religious body. He was nominally of the Zen school, but some called him an atheist.
His motives for protecting the missionaries are read in different ways. Wakita Osamu, in the Nipponica encyclopedia, gives two: interest in European culture, and a counterweight to the Ikkō leagues. Iwasawa Yoshihiko, in the Heibonsha encyclopedia, adds that Nobunaga used the missionaries to move the Christian lords and to keep the Buddhist clergy in check.Cieslik notes the other side of the friendship: Fróis had learned in exile how much the mission depended on the goodwill of the powerful, so he visited Nobunaga often and brought him gifts from India and Europe.Iwasawa also credits the missionaries with reports that "grasped Nobunaga's character accurately".
Whatever his reasons, the effect is plain in the record. Under his protection the Church in the capital worshipped openly, built the first church of its own design in Kyoto and opened a seminary in his own new city. Cieslik writes that although Nobunaga "carried on a remorseless campaign against the fortified monasteries and the warrior-bonzes, he remained favorable to Christianity up to the time of his death."
Honnōji
That death came on the second day of the sixth month of Tenshō 10, which was 21 June 1582 in the Julian calendar.Nobunaga was staying at the Honnōji temple in Kyoto when his general Akechi Mitsuhide turned on him. Nobunaga died in the attack.The Honnōji of that day stood close to the Jesuit church. Fróis mentions the monks of Honnōji as neighbours of the church who once plotted against the missionaries' Buddhist tutor.Azuchi castle, which Fróis had compared with the buildings of Europe, was destroyed in the same year.The seminary moved to Takatsuki, the domain of the Christian lord .
Four months earlier, in February 1582, four Japanese boys had sailed from for Rome carrying Nobunaga's screen. They were still at , waiting for a ship, when he died.When they returned in 1590, the country they came home to belonged to , and Hideyoshi had already in 1587.
The Church in Japan remembered Nobunaga as a protector, not a son. He never asked for baptism, and the record gives no sign that he wanted it. But a priest who would have stayed for a single Christian found a ruler who let him stay, and in those thirteen years the Kyoto mission put down roots.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Date of the Nanbanji. Cieslik's Fróis article says the building was finished by the feast of the Assumption 1575, when Organtino said the first Mass in it.Cieslik's Organtino article says the first High Mass was at Christmas 1576 and the church was dedicated on 15 August 1577.Same author, two dates. Disputed; check Fróis's History or the Jesuit letters before giving one year.
- Nobunaga's religion. Nipponica: of the Zen school, but "said to be like an atheist".Unverified as a personal belief; given as an encyclopedia's characterisation.
- Year of Cabral's audience. Cieslik's Fróis article puts Cabral's visit in the year after his 1570 arrival, and the Organtino article in the year of Wada's death (1571), with Nobunaga then at Gifu.Murdoch says Cabral was entertained at Gifu in 1572.Disputed.