_Religious Faith Three Centuries ago—Zeal of the Portuguese
Conquerors—Antonio Galvano—Missionary Seminaries at Ternate and
Goa—Order of the Jesuits—Francis Xavier—His Mission to India—His
Mission to Japan—His Companion, Cosme de Torres—The Philippine
Islands—A. D. 1542-1550._
Three centuries ago the religious faith of Europe was much more
energetic and active than at present. With all imaginative minds, even
those of the highest order, the popular belief had at that time all
the force of undoubted reality. Michael Angelo and Raphael embodied it
in marble and colors; and it is difficult to say which impulse was the
stronger with the Portuguese and Spanish adventurers of that age,—the
fierce thirst for gold and glory, which they felt as we feel it now, or
passionate desire for the propagation of their religious faith, such
indeed as is still talked about, and feebly exhibited in action, but in
which the great bulk of the community, especially the more cultivated
part of it, takes at present either no interest, or a very slight one.
The Portuguese adventurers in the East, wherever they went, were
accompanied by friars, mostly Franciscans, and the building of
magnificent churches was one of the first things attended to.
Of all these adventurers, few, if indeed a single one, have left so
respectable a character as Antonio Galvano, already mentioned, governor
of the Moluccas from 1536 to 1540, which islands, from a state of
violent hostility to the Portuguese, and rebellion against them, he
brought back to quiet and willing submission. Not less distinguished
for piety than for valor and disinterestedness, Galvano made every
effort to diffuse among the natives of the Oriental archipelago a
knowledge of the Catholic faith; and with that view he established at
Ternate, seat of the Portuguese government of the Moluccas, a seminary
for the education of boys of superior abilities, to be collected from
various nations, who, upon arriving at maturity, might preach the
gospel, each in his own country,—an institution which the Council of
Trent not long after warmly approved.
By the efforts of Galvano and others a similar seminary, sometimes
called “Paul’s,” and sometimes “Of the Holy Faith,” had been erected at
Goa, lately made the seat of an Indian bishopric; and it was at this
seminary, endowed and enriched by the spoils of many heathen temples,
that the Japanese Anjirō was placed by Xavier for his education. The
name which he adopted at his baptism, Paul of the Holy Faith, was, as
it thus appears, taken from the seminary at which he had been educated.
But the efforts hitherto made in India on behalf of the Catholic faith,
if earnest, had been desultory. The establishment of the order of
Jesuits in 1540 laid the foundation for a systematic attack upon the
religious systems of the East, and an attempt at a spiritual revolution
there, neither less vigorous nor less pertinacious than that which,
for the forty years preceding, had been carried on by the new-comers
from the West against political, commercial, and social institutions of
those countries.
The leader in this enterprise was Francis Aspilcota, surnamed
Xavier, one of the seven associates of whom the infant Society of
Jesus, destined soon to become so powerful and so famous, originally
consisted. He was born in 1506, in Navarre, at the foot of the
Pyrenees, the youngest son of a noble and numerous family, of whom the
younger members, and he among the rest, bore the surname of Xavier. Not
inclining to the profession of arms embraced by the rest of the family,
after preliminary studies at home he went to Paris, and was first a
student at the College of St. Barbe, and afterwards, at the age of
twenty-two, professor of philosophy in that of Beauvais. It was in this
latter station that he first became acquainted with Ignatius Loyola,
who, fifteen years older than Xavier, had come to Paris to pursue, as
preparatory to a course of theology, those rudimentary studies which
had not been thought necessary for the military destination of his
earlier days. This remarkable Spaniard, whose military career had been
cut short by a wound which made him a cripple, had already been for
years a religious devotee; and having been from his youth thoroughly
impregnated with the current ideas of romantic chivalry, he was already
turning in his mind the formation of a new monastic order, which
should carry into religion the spirit of the romances. Xavier, with
whom he lived at Paris on intimate terms,—they slept, indeed, in the
same bed,—was one of Loyola’s first disciples; and on the day of the
Assumption, August 16, 1534, they two, with five others, of whom three
or four were still students, in a subterranean chapel of the church of
the abbey of Montmartre, united at a celebration of mass by Le Fèvre,
who was already a priest, and in the consecration of themselves by
a solemn vow to religious duties. This rudimentary order included,
along with Loyola and Xavier, three other Spaniards, Lainez, Salmaron,
and Boabdilla, Rodriguez, a Portuguese, and Le Fèvre, a Savoyard,—all
afterwards distinguished. A mission to Jerusalem, which Loyola had
already visited, was at that time their leading idea.
[Illustration: ST. FRANCIS XAVIER
One of the Earliest Missionaries to Japan]
Loyola then returned home, the others remaining at Paris; but with
an agreement to meet at Venice before the close of the year 1536, at
which meeting three more were added to their number. A scheme of the
order was subsequently drawn up, which, besides the vows of chastity
and poverty, and of absolute obedience, as to God, to a general of
the order, to be elected for life, included, instead of the mission
to Jerusalem, which the war with the Turks made impracticable, a vow
to go wherever the Pope might send them for the salvation of souls.
To procure the sanction of the Pope, Loyola, with Lainez and Le
Fèvre, spent several years at Rome. The scheme, having been referred
to a commission, was approved by Paul III., by a bull, bearing date
September 27, 1540, in which the name of “Clerks of the Society of
Jesus” was bestowed upon the order, which was limited, however, to
sixty members. Loyola was elected, early in 1541, the first general;
and by a subsequent bull of Julian III., dated March 15, 1543, the
society was allowed to increase its members indefinitely. Its object
was the maintenance of the absolute authority of the church as
personified in the Pope, not only by resisting the rebellion against
it, then lately set on foot by Luther in Germany, but by extending the
domination of the Pope into all parts of the world. To guard against
the corruptions of preceding orders, the members were not to accept
of any church preferment, except by the positive command of the Pope,
nor of any fees for religious services; nor could the houses of the
professed and the coadjutors (the two highest ranks of the order) have
any endowments, though the colleges and novitiates might.
That which gave the Jesuits their first success was their introduction
of good works, acts of charity and humanity, a care for the salvation
of others as well as their own, into the first class of duties.
Instead of being bound, like the other Catholic orders, to a peculiar
garb and the stated repetition of formal prayers and ceremonies, they
wore the ordinary clerical dress, and their time was to be divided
between mental prayers and good works, of which the education of
youth, the direction of consciences, and the comfort and care of the
poor and sick, were the principal. In this latter service novices, or
probationers, who must be at least fourteen years of age, of sound
body, of good abilities and fair character, were to be tried for two
years. From the novitiate, after taking the vows, the neophytes passed
into the colleges, to which also were attached schools for lay pupils.
From the colleges they might be admitted coadjutors and professed,
which latter class must have studied theology for four years. These
two latter ranks were to live in professed houses, which, unlike the
colleges and novitiates, could have no property, but must be supported
by alms. The coadjutors were of two classes: those admitted to holy
orders, from which class the rectors of the colleges were appointed;
and the lay coadjutors, furnishing cooks, stewards, agents, and the
business men generally of the society. The professed and the coadjutors
must renounce all claim to hereditary succession, not for themselves
only, but for the society also. There were, however, a class of lay
coadjutors who simply took the vows, yet continued to enjoy their
property and lived in the world.
What added to the efficiency of the order was its strict military
organization. It had nothing about it of the republican cast of the
other Catholic orders, in which rotation in office occurred, chapters
were frequent, and many points were decided by a majority of votes. The
general of the Jesuits, chosen for life by a select congregation, had
absolute authority, as had also, under him, each in his sphere, the
provincials, the vice-provincials, the superiors of professed houses,
and the rectors of colleges, all of whom the general might appoint
and remove at pleasure. The general received monthly reports from the
provincials and vice-provincials, quarterly ones from the superiors
of professed houses and rectors of colleges, and half-yearly ones
from every professed member. Every member was bound to report to his
immediate superior his own misconduct or that of any of his companions.
John III, of Portugal, though very desirous of sending out a competent
supply of spiritual laborers to his dominions in the East, could hardly
find the means for it at home. There was but a single university—that
of Coimbra—in all Portugal, and that not much frequented. John, it is
true, had exerted himself in behalf of that institution, by inviting
professors not only from Spain, but from Germany and Italy; but as
yet the few Portuguese who devoted themselves to study sought their
education for the most part at Complutum or Salamanca, and some of them
at Paris. In this dearth of Portuguese laborers, having heard some
rumor of the new order of the Jesuits, John charged his ambassador at
Rome to request the founder, Ignatius, to send him for service in India
not less than six members of it. Loyola, who had other schemes on foot,
could spare only two, one of whom, Rodriguez, the original Portuguese
of the order, remained behind in Portugal to organize the society
there, where he established at Coimbra the first Jesuit college.
The other was Xavier, to whom, as a test of his obedience,—though,
the order being as yet not formally authorized, Loyola had no legal
authority over him,—the command for his departure was communicated only
the day beforehand, leaving him scarcely time before setting out upon
so distant a journey to say farewell to his friends, and to get the
rents mended in his tattered and threadbare cloak. He was indeed able
to get ready the easier, not having, like our modern missionaries, the
incumbrance or the comfort of a wife and children, and no baggage to
impede his movements beyond his prayer-book and the clothes on his back.
Arriving at Lisbon, he waited on the king, but immediately upon
leaving the palace proceeded, as was his wont, to the public hospital,
devoting all his time, till the ships were ready, to the care and
consolation of the sick and dying. While here he received from the
Pope the appointment of apostolic nuncio for India, with full powers.
Of all the offers made to him of an outfit for the voyage he would for
a long time accept of nothing; but at last, lest he should seem too
obstinate, he consented to receive some coarse cloaks, to be used in
passing the Cape of Good Hope, one for himself, and one for each of
the two companions who were to accompany him; likewise a few books, of
which he understood there was a great scarcity in India. To the offer
pressed upon him of the service of a boy to attend to his daily wants
during the voyage, he replied, “While I have hands and feet of my own I
shall need no servant.” The matter being still urged, with the remark
that it was unfitting for a man in his position to be openly seen among
the crowd of sailors and passengers washing his clothes or cooking
his daily food, “You see,” he answered, “to what a pass this art of
preserving one’s dignity has brought the commonwealth of Christendom!
For my part, there is no office, however humble, which, provided there
be no sin in it, I cannot upon occasion perform.” This was a specimen
of his whole conduct throughout the voyage, which commenced April 7,
1541, giving rise to a remark of the captain of the fleet that it was
even harder to make Xavier accept anything than it was to get rid of
other men’s importunities.
All this self-sacrifice, accompanied as it was by a most careful
attention to the wants of others, was not without its reward. It gave
Xavier—not to mention his subsequent canonization—an immense reputation
with his fellow-voyagers, and a great influence over them, which he
did not fail to exercise. Already, amid all this early austerity,
the principles of Jesuitism were fully developed. Xavier addressed
everybody, even the most notorious profligates, with mild familiarity,
no severity in his face, no harshness in his words. He even volunteered
himself as a sociable companion, and thus acquired an influence all
the greater because it was hardly perceived by those who submitted to
it, so that he was generally said by those who knew him best to have
accomplished much more by his familiar conversation than even by his
public preaching,—of the effects of which, however, very extraordinary
stories were told.
He arrived at Goa in May, 1542, and, taking lodgings at a hospital,
entered at once with great zeal on the duties of his office as Pope’s
nuncio, provincial in India of the order of Jesuits, and apostolical
missionary, professing, however, entire submission to the bishop of
Goa. Passing through the streets, bell in hand, he called the children,
women, and servants to be catechised, and to help the memory and
catch the ear he put the catechism into rhyme. But it was not merely
to the Christian population that he confined his labors. He had to
encounter the scornful fanaticism of the Mahometans, who, setting out
from Arabia, had preceded the Portuguese by centuries in commercial
and military visits to the coasts of India and the eastern islands,
and who had in many places largely diffused their religion. He had to
meet the insolent bigotry of the twice-born Brahmins, who, through the
system of castes, held society fast bound, helpless and stationary,
in the fetters of an all-pervading superstition. Jewish scoffers were
also to be met. In fact, all sects seemed to be brought together in
southern India, including even an ancient form of Christianity, a
remnant of the followers of Zoroaster, from Persia, and in Ceylon,
Buddhists. After a year’s stay at Goa, Xavier proceeded to the southern
point of Hindustan, about Cape Comorin, the pearl-fishers of which
region had, for the sake of Portuguese protection, professed the
Christian religion, of which, however, they knew nothing but the name.
Having preached for a year or more in this district, he passed to the
neighboring territories of the Coromandel coast, where there already
existed the remains, before referred to, of an ancient Christianity,
originally propagated, it seems probable, by Nestorian missionaries
of the fifth or sixth century, but which the Portuguese insisted upon
ascribing to St. Thomas, the apostle, about whose life and labors in
the East a whole volume of fables was, between them and the native
Christians, speedily manufactured.
Incapable of staying long in one place, from India Xavier soon
proceeded to Malacca, where he arrived towards the close of 1545, and
whence the next Spring he set out on a missionary journey through the
Moluccas. It was on his return from this last expedition that he first
met with the Japanese Anjirō, at Malacca,—as related, after Pinto, in
the preceding chapter,—with whom he arrived at Goa in March, 1548. The
Japanese were placed, as has been mentioned, in the seminary of St.
Paul; and so delighted was Xavier with their progress and fervor, as to
resolve to undertake, after visiting his churches at Cape Comorin, a
new mission to Japan.
We have seen the account given by Pinto of the origin of the
acquaintance between Xavier and Anjirō. The biographers of the saint
and the Jesuit historians of the Japanese mission embellish this story
by the addition of several romantic particulars. Anjirō, they tell us,
had long been troubled with remorse of conscience, for which he could
find no remedy, and which he only aggravated in the attempt to cure
it by retiring for a time to a Japanese monastery of bonzes. Having
made the acquaintance of some of the earliest Portuguese adventurers
to Japan, he consulted them as to this malady, one of whom, by name
Alvares Vaz, having heard the fame of Xavier, strongly advised the
inquiring Japanese to seek his assistance. Anjirō was much inclined
to do so; but the danger and distance of the voyage deterred him,
till, having killed a man in a rencontre, the fear of arrest drove him
to embark on the first vessel he could find, which happened to be a
Portuguese ship bound for Malacca, and commanded by George Alvarez, a
great admirer of Xavier’s. The good example and edifying discourse of
this pious sea-captain brought Anjirō to the determination to become a
Catholic; but being disappointed in finding Xavier as he had expected,
or, according to other accounts, being refused baptism by the vicar
of the bishop of Goa resident at Malacca, he thought no more but of
returning home again, and with that object, not meeting with any ship
bound direct for Japan, he embarked for Chincheo, in China. Thence he
sailed for home; but a terrible storm drove him back to the port he
had left, reviving also his almost forgotten resolution to become a
Catholic, in which he was the more confirmed by happening to find in
the harbor his old Portuguese friend, Alvares Vaz, in command of a
ship on her way back to India. Yielding to the persuasions of this old
friend, Anjirō sailed in his ship for Malacca; and, on landing there,
the very first person whom he met was George Alvarez, who immediately
took him to Xavier. These accounts also give him two Japanese
servants, both of whom are stated to have accompanied him to Goa, and
to have been baptized, one by the name of John, the other by that of
Anthony. And this last part of the story is confirmed by a letter of
Xavier’s, dated July, 1549, and written from Malacca on his way to
Japan, in which letter he gives an interesting, and at the same time
characteristic, account of his converts, very much in substance, and
even in expression, like what we may read in the very latest missionary
reports.
“No sooner,” he writes, “had they been cleansed by the waters of
baptism, than the divine goodness shed upon them such delight, and
brought them to such a sense of God’s beneficence towards them,
that through pious and spiritual joy they melted into tears. In all
the virtues they made such a progress as to afford us a pleasant
and useful subject of conversation. They also learned to read and
write, and diligently attended at the appointed seasons of prayer.
When inquired of by me what subject of contemplation affected them
most, they answered, the sufferings of our Lord; and, therefore, to
this contemplation they chiefly applied themselves. They studied
also the articles of faith, the means of redemption, and the other
Christian mysteries. To my frequent inquiries what religious rites
they found profited them the most, they always answered, confession
and communion; adding, also, that they did not see how any reasonable
man could hesitate to assent to and obey the requirements of Christian
discipline. Paul of the Holy Faith, one of the number, I once heard
bursting out, with sighs, into these exclamations: ‘O miserable
Japanese! who adore as deities the very things which God has made for
your service!’And when I asked him to what he referred, he answered,
‘Because they worship the sun and the moon, things made to serve those
who know the Lord Jesus; for to what other end are they made, except to
illuminate both day and night, in order that men may employ that light
in the worship and to the glory of God and his Son?’”
He mentions, in the same letter, that the voyage to Japan was so
dangerous, that not more than two vessels out of three were expected
to arrive there in safety. He even seems to have had some temptations
to abandon the enterprise; but in spite of numerous obstacles put
in his way, as he will have it, by the great adversary of mankind,
he determined to persevere, especially as letters from Japan gave
encouraging information of the desire there for Christian instruction,
on the part of a prince of the country who had been much impressed
by the efficacy of the sign of the cross, as employed by certain
Portuguese merchants, in driving the evil spirits from a haunted house.
Another letter of Xavier’s, written from Kagoshima, in Japan, and dated
in November, 1549, about three months after his arrival, gives an
account of his voyage thither.
Taking with him the three Japanese, Cosme de Torres, a priest, and Jean
Fernandes, a brother of the society,—of which, besides several who had
joined it in India, some ten or twelve members had followed Xavier
from Portugal, and had been distributed in various services,—he sailed
in the ship of Chinese merchants, who had agreed with the Portuguese
commander at Malacca to carry him to Japan. As Pinto tells the story,
this merchant was a corsair, and so notorious a one as to go by the
name of the Robber. Xavier says nothing of that, but complains of the
levity and vacillation natural to barbarians, which made the captain
linger at the islands where he touched, at the risk of losing the
monsoon and being obliged to winter in China. Xavier was also greatly
shocked at the assiduous worship paid by the mariners to an idol which
they had on board, and before which they burnt candles and odoriferous
wood, seeking oracles from it as to the result of the voyage. “What
were our feelings, and what we suffered, you can well imagine,” he
exclaims, “at the thought that this demon should be consulted as to the
whole course of our journey.”
After touching at Canton the Chinese captain, instead of sailing thence
to Japan, as he had promised, followed the coast north toward Chincheo;
but hearing, when he approached that port, that it was blockaded by a
corsair, he put off in self-defence for Japan, and arrived safe in the
port of Kagoshima.
Anjirō, or Paul as he was now called, was well received by his
relations, and forty days were spent by Xavier in laborious application
to the rudiments of the language, and by Paul in translating into
Japanese the ten commandments, and other parts of the Christian faith,
which Xavier determined, so he writes, to have printed as soon as
possible, especially as most of the Japanese could read. Anjirō also
devoted himself to exhortations and arguments among his relations
and friends, and soon made converts of his wife and daughter, and
many besides, of both sexes. An interview was had with the king of
Satsuma,—in which province Kagoshima was situated,—and he presently
issued an edict allowing his subjects to embrace the new faith. This
beginning seemed promising; but Xavier already anticipated a violent
opposition so soon as his object came to be fully understood. He drew
consolation, however, from the spiritual benefits enjoyed by himself,
“since in these remote regions,” so he wrote, “amid the impious
worshippers of demons, so very far removed from almost every mortal
aid and consolation, we almost of necessity, as it were, forget and
lose ourselves in God, which hardly can happen in a Christian land,
where the love of parents and country, intimacies, friendship and
affinities, and helps at hand both for body and mind, intervene, as it
were, between man and God, to the forgetfulness of the latter.” And
what tended to confirm this spiritual state of mind was the entire
freedom in Japan “from those delights which elsewhere stimulate the
flesh and break down the strength of mind and body. The Japanese,” he
wrote, “rear no animals for food. Sometimes they eat fish;—they have a
moderate supply of rice and wheat; but they live, for the most part,
on vegetables and fruits; and yet they attain to such a good old age,
as clearly to show how little nature, elsewhere so insatiable, really
demands.”
Anjirō himself wrote at the same time a short letter to the brethren at
Goa, but it adds nothing to the information contained in Xavier’s.
The following account, which Cosme de Torres,[24] a Spaniard by birth,
Xavier’s principal assistant, and his successor at the head of the
mission, gives of himself in a letter written from Goa to the society
in Europe, just before setting out, shows, like other cases to be
mentioned hereafter, that it was by no means merely from the class
of students that the order of the Jesuits was at its commencement
recruited.
Though always inclined, so Cosme writes, to religion, yet many things
and various desires for a long time distracted him. In the year 1538,
in search he knew not of what, he sailed from Spain to the Canaries,
whence he visited the West Indies and the continent of New Spain,
where he passed four years in the greatest abundance, and satiety
even, of this world’s goods. But desiring something greater and more
solid, in 1542 he embarked on board a fleet of six ships, fitted out by
Mendosa, the viceroy of New Spain, to explore and occupy the islands of
the Pacific, discovered by Magellan in 1521. Standing westward, on the
fifty-fifth day they fell in, so Cosme writes, with a numerous cluster
of very small, low islands, of which the inhabitants lived on fish
and the leaves of trees. Ten days after they saw a beautiful island,
covered with palms, but the wind prevented their landing. In another
ten or twelve days the ships reached the great island of Mindanao, two
hundred leagues in circumference, but with few inhabitants. Sailing
thence to the south they discovered a small island abounding in meat
and rice; but having, during half a year’s residence, lost four hundred
men in contests with the natives, who used poisoned arrows, they sailed
to the Moluccas, where they remained about two years, till it was
finally resolved, not having the means to get back to New Spain, to
apply to the Portuguese governor to forward them to Goa. At Amboina,
Cosme met with Xavier, whose conversation revived his religious
inclinations; and, proceeding to Goa, he was ordained a priest by the
bishop there, who placed him in charge of a cure. But he found no peace
of mind till he betook himself to the college of St. Paul (which seems
by this time to have passed into the hands of the Jesuits), being the
more confirmed in his resolution to join the order, by the return of
Xavier to Goa, whose invitation to accompany him to Japan he joyfully
accepted, and where he continued for twenty years to labor as a
missionary.
Cosme, in his letter above quoted, says nothing of any hostile
collision of the Spanish ships, in which he reached the East, with the
Portuguese; but it appears, from Galvano’s account of this expedition,
that such collision did take place. He also gives, as the reason why
the Spaniards did not land on Mindanao, the opposition they experienced
from some of the princes of it, who, by his own recent efforts, had
been converted to Catholicism; and who, owing their obedience to
him, would by no means incur his displeasure by entertaining these
interloping Spaniards.
One of the Spanish ships was sent back to New Spain with news of
their success thus far. This ship passed among the northern islands
of the group, which seem now first to have received the name of the
_Philippines_. Another fleet sailed from Seville, in the year 1544, to
coöperate with Rui Lopes; but none of the ships succeeded in passing
the Straits of Magellan, except one small bark, which ran up the coast
to Peru. The Spaniards made no further attempts in the East till the
expiration of ten years or more, when the Philippines were finally
colonized—an event not without its influence upon the affairs of Japan.