From Laino to Japan
Pietro Paolo Navarro was an Italian Jesuit priest who worked in Japan for more than thirty years and was burned alive for the faith at Shimabara (島原) on November 1, 1622.He was born at Laino, a small Italian town, around 1560.At eighteen he was received into the Society of Jesus by Fr Claudio Acquaviva, then Provincial of Naples.He went to the Indies in 1584 while still a student and was ordained there.
The young priest reached Japan in the 1580s.He sailed from Macau on the ship of the captain-major Domenico Montero, who for his own interest put in at Hirado (平戸) instead of Nagasaki (長崎).The islanders rowed out to ask whether a Jesuit was aboard and welcomed him with processions, singing the Christian Doctrine.
After only five months of language study the newcomer began his work.He became one of the best European speakers of Japanese, preaching without preparation and writing books in the language.One account calls him "the best tongue among the foreigners" (translated).
Iyo, Yamaguchi and Bungo
Navarro was the first missionary to enter the province of Iyo (伊予) on Shikoku (四国), and in six months he laid the foundations of one of the most numerous and noble churches in Japan.Taicosama's edict of 1587 forced him out, and he was confined to Nagasaki.During that persecution he also worked in Arima (有馬) and Ōmura (大村).
He then spent four years at Yamaguchi (山口), at the church founded by Xavier, converting many people from the provinces of Nagato (長門) and Suō (周防).Afterwards the lord Mori (毛利) destroyed the church the Jesuit had restored and sent him into exile.In 1601 he made his four vows at Nagasaki.Bungo (豊後) became his longest field of work.
Eight years in hiding
In 1614 the persecution under Daifusama drove Pietro Paolo Navarro out of Bungo, but he later returned to work there in secret.For eight years he went about disguised as a poor farmer, a woodcutter or a servant, living among the poor and crossing the mountains by night.At sixty, the priest crossed high mountains to reach Hyūga (日向), and in those years his catechist sometimes had to push and pull him along.He went barefoot or in straw sandals and wrote that he had never known such hunger, thirst and cold.In one short period he travelled three times to Kokura (小倉) in Buzen (豊前) and twice to Bungo, by night.
One November he and his catechist Damian spent ten days and nights in a dripping clay cave, living on black rice and salted sardines.Even there Navarro sang the Magnificat.
In his last years the missionary was sent from Bungo to Arima as superior of the Jesuits and all their missions there, a post also called rector of Takaku (高来).
Captured at Christmas 1621
Pietro Paolo Navarro was captured near Arima on December 27, 1621, after keeping Christmas with the Christians of Hachirao (八良尾).He had come to the hamlet in Advent to make the Spiritual Exercises, after visits to Kazusa (加津佐) and Obama (小浜).The Christians he planned to visit next asked him to wait, because they feared their lord's spies.That lord was Matsukura Shigemasa (松倉重政), lord of Shimabara and the new lord of Arima, whom the letters call Bungodono.
After saying the three Christmas Masses, Navarro set out by night with guides, found no boat and took the public road.On a bright night a servant of the lord recognised the foreign priest and seized him by the robe.Pedro Onizuka Sandayu, an eighteen-year-old companion, grabbed the man's arm and begged to be killed in place of the Father.The arrest displeased Matsukura, who had recently boasted to the shogun that no religious were in his lands.
For about twenty days the prisoner was held in a pagan's house at Arima, where his host and the host's wife grew drawn to the faith.He was then taken under guard to Shimabara, and on the way the commander of the escort, a lapsed Christian, resolved to return to Christ.
A prison that became a church
At Shimabara the lord did not put Navarro in the public prison but entrusted him to nine Christians, four of that town and five of Arima.As one account puts it, "he was confided to the care of nine Christians, whose lives would have been forfeit in the event of his escape\".He lived in the house of Andrés Magoyemon, a close friend of the lord.There the priest said Mass every day in a small chapel, and the house became a church for Christians and a school of the faith for pagans.The faithful came from as far as Nagasaki and Bungo, and Fr Giovanni Battista Zola, a fellow Jesuit, visited him often.
Matsukura was gentle by nature and anxious to keep the trade with the Philippines and Macau.He kept the arrest quiet and asked the court to let him send the priest away on his own ships, but received no reply.
One evening the lord called him to the castle, seated him as an equal and asked why God does not save all people if all are His creatures.The Jesuit answered that God would not force anyone, because forced service would be the service of slaves.He said he had spent thirty-six years in Japan, was now sixty-two, and wished only to die in Japan among his Japanese.He also gave the lord an apology for Christianity, which the secretary read aloud.When the reading reached the chapter answering the charge that Christians plotted to invade Japan, Matsukura pointed to the Christian-held Philippines as proof.The prisoner replied that the islands belonged to another crown, and that at Macau, Malacca, Cochin and Goa the Portuguese lived at peace with the native kings.
During about ten months of captivity Navarro wore a hair shirt and worked at night on Maria Deipara Thronus Dei, a book on the Mother of God by his former novice master, Fr Pietro Antonio Spinelli.With the Provincial's permission, he also received his helpers Dionisio Fujishima and Pedro Onizuka into the Society of Jesus.
The sentence
The sentence of death for Pietro Paolo Navarro and his three companions reached Shimabara from the court at Edo (江戸) in late October 1622.Angered that missionaries kept multiplying, the shogun had ordered all of them burned.Matsukura was grieved but carried out the order himself, and he would not let Gonroku (権六), the Nagasaki governor, proceed against the priest.
Navarro was a close friend of Fr Camillo Costanzo, a fellow Italian Jesuit, and the two spoke of martyrdom whenever they met.His friend, arrested about four months after him, wrote from prison that he might die first, and so it happened.On October 17, 1622, the prisoner wrote that he hoped for a sentence "like that of the martyr Carlos and the martyr Camilo" (translated).The first was Carlo Spinola, and the second his friend.
Three Japanese companions shared the sentence.Dionisio Fujishima came from a well-born family of Arima, had been exiled several times for the faith, and served as Navarro's catechist.Pedro Onizuka Sandayu, aged eighteen, was the son of an elder of Hachirao who sheltered the Fathers, and he refused the lord's repeated urging to give up the faith, even in appearance only.Clemente Kyūemon, a married man of Arima with children, was not a Jesuit but a guide for visiting priests, and he too refused to give way.
All Saints' Day at Shimabara
Pietro Paolo Navarro was burned alive at Shimabara on November 1, 1622, the feast of All Saints, with Dionisio Fujishima, Pedro Onizuka Sandayu and Clemente Kyūemon.At dawn the priest said Mass in tears, gave Communion to his three companions and, by leave of the Provincial, received the vows of the two new Brothers.
At about ten in the morning a young nobleman read the sentence: burning alive, for staying in Japan to preach the Christian law against the shogun's laws.Navarro answered that he was glad to seal with his blood "that faith which for six-and-thirty years he had been preaching to the Japanese\".He added that he had no complaint against the shogun, and the lord wept on hearing his words.
Escorted by fifty musketeers, the four walked to their deaths singing the litanies, the priest in his Jesuit habit with a rosary on his breast.The place of execution was a small point of land south of the town, where four wooden posts stood under arches of cane.Matsukura let Christians attend but told them not to cry out the names of Jesus and Mary, fearing that Gonroku's officer would report how many believers there were in Takaku.He also ordered the wood piled close so that the deaths would be quick.
The priest bowed to the stakes, knelt before his own, and went on preaching even after he was tied.The lord came in person and gave the signal.A strong wind drove the flames onto Navarro and burned away his cloak to show a hair shirt, and he soon fell on his side calling on Jesus and Mary.The bodies were left on display for three days, burned again, and the ashes were thrown into the sea.
Christians bought back the martyr's rosary and belt as relics, and his prison house became a place of pilgrimage.Fr Zola, who had heard his last general confession, called him a holy martyr and a great worker.He is number 131 in the martyrology of Japan, and later Catholic writers call him Blessed Paulo Navarro.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Birth. most sources give Laino and the year 1560, with Boero and Bartoli adding December, but Hesselink gives 1563; Profillet, Charlevoix, Solier and Pagès place Laino in Calabria, while Boero and Bartoli place it in Basilicata.
- Entry into the Society. most sources say he became a Jesuit at eighteen, but Charlevoix gives forty-eight.
- Arrival in Japan. Boero, Charlevoix, Solier and Hesselink give 1586, and Bartoli has him at work from the start of that year, while Profillet and Pagès give 1588; Profillet also dates his ordination to 1586. His own count of thirty-six years in Japan by 1622 fits 1586.
- Years in Bungo and as superior. Profillet and Pagès say twelve years in Bungo, Boero says twenty; Bartoli says he had been superior at Arima almost four years, Solier says three and a half years at Takaku.
- Age at death. he told the lord he was sixty-two, as Boero also says; Solier elsewhere gives sixty-four and Boero's 1862 list gives sixty.
- The capture. Pagès dates it to December 27, 1621, and Solier to late December 1621; Bartoli's account places the journey in December 1622 and the planned visit on New Year's Day 1623, which cannot be right since the martyrdom was in November 1622. Navarro's letter puts the arrest two hours before midnight, Bartoli at ten at night, Solier at two in the morning.
- The captor. Navarro's letter and most sources speak of a servant of the lord; Bartoli names him as Tachenaga Sciogirò, an apostate youth who spied for the bounty on priests; Caddell calls him a heathen soldier. Navarro's letter mentions two guides, while Bartoli names Pedro, Dionisio and Clemente as his guides.
- Days at Arima before the transfer to Shimabara. twenty in most accounts, twenty-one in Bartoli.
- Arrival of the sentence. Boero and Bartoli give October 27, 1622, Charlevoix October 23 and Solier October 28.
- Length of imprisonment. about ten months in Zola's letter and Bartoli, nine or ten months in Profillet, nearly a year in Charlevoix.
- Place of execution. most accounts place it on a point of land south of Shimabara; Boero (1869) describes a hill west of the town.
- The book on Spinelli. Charlevoix, Solier, Pagès and Sotwell (as reported by Satow) speak of a Japanese translation, and Bartoli of an abridgement; the manuscript Schütte found in Rome in 1941 was a Latin compendium, not a Japanese translation. Satow notes that Sotwell does not say Navarro's works were printed.
- The apology. Bartoli and Solier say it was written at the start of the persecution, while Profillet says it was written in prison at the lord's request (a point flagged as uncertain); Profillet and Pagès both describe it as answering Dutch charges against the faith.
- The companions. Dionisio's age is thirty-eight in most accounts but thirty-one in Boero's 1862 list; his birthplace is given as Takaku, as Aitzu (a castle of Arima), or as Hachirao, and Pedro's as Hachirao or Shimabara. Pedro's father is called Paulo Onizuka by Boero and Magaìemon Paolo by Bartoli, who elsewhere calls Pedro the son of the 1627 Unzen martyr Magoiemon.
- Clemente. Bartoli and Boero describe him as a married man of forty-eight, but Caddell calls him a boy catechist and calls the two Brothers "Jesuit fathers"; a catalogue in Boero calls Clemente the servant of Fr Costanzo and the Brothers "priests", which the text itself contradicts, and Profillet also calls him Costanzo's servant as well as Navarro's guide.
- Last morning. Profillet says more than twenty Christians heard his last sermon, Bartoli about twenty and Solier twenty-six; Damian had served him ten years according to Profillet and Solier, thirteen according to Bartoli.