The election as provincial of father Fray Domingo Gonçalez, and the
state of the province
On the sixteenth of April in this year 1633, the fathers of the
province assembled in Manila to elect a superior. Their minds were in
such agreement that without difficulty they unanimously elected, on the
first ballot, father Fray Domingo Gonçalez, prior of the same convent,
not one vote being lacking for the election but his own. He was very
acceptable to the estates, both secular and ecclesiastical, of this
region, as have been all of the other provincials; since the electors
have always exhibited great zeal for the good of the order, and have
made their choice without considering personal predilections. In
general, the election has not previously been discussed, so that
the provincial is elected before anyone suspects who he is. Often a
person is elected with regard to whom no one imagined any such thing,
so that the city is not a little edified. He who was elected at that
time was in España a student at the college of San Gregorio, where
he was for many years a teacher of theology. After filling all the
offices of the order, he became commissary of the Holy Office in these
islands--as he still is, with which we must bring to an end all that
may be said with regard to him.
The provincial and the definitors found nothing to occupy themselves
with in the reformation of the province. Advice was received of a
new ordinance of the chapter-general held in Roma in 1629, in which
permission is given to the provinces to discontinue the intermediate
chapter as being the source of much expense and trouble to all
the order--and, in this province, of much interference with the
systematic instruction of the Indians in our charge, many of whom
are entirely without ministers during the whole time spent in coming
to these intermediate chapters. In their place were very prudently
substituted the councils, which, being reduced to a much smaller
number of religious, the picked men of the province, are almost
as useful and much less expensive, and are not followed by the bad
results spoken of. This permission was accepted, and the precedent
has since been followed.
In this year the order was extended so far throughout these kingdoms
that it had never before reached such limits. Although the number of
the religious of this province is very small, they have taken up a
jurisdiction so extended and so large that, even though many hundreds
and even thousands of companions were to come to their aid, they
would have enough to provide all these with labor, without needing to
seek for or even to accept anything else, all of them being occupied
with that which has already been acquired and gained. For the lack
of ministers, the Indians are still untaught, and remain in their
heathen state; while if they had ministers they would embrace and
follow the law of God, as those have admitted and professed it who
by the favor of heaven have been able to obtain ministers.
[The persecution in Japon was still increasing in intensity and
cruelty. The authorities of Japon now offered a reward of a thousand
taes (which amount to almost as many ducados of Castilla) to anyone
who would reveal the place of hiding of a minister, in addition to full
pardon for all offenses previously committed. Besides this, a new and
dreadful method of execution was devised for the Christians, inasmuch
as their crime was regarded as so vile that the ordinary methods of
execution--decapitation, or burning alive over a slow fire--should
not be used as a punishment for them. The condemned Christians were
hung, head downward, in a pit, in such a manner that they could not
move their bodies, and that the blood ran out of their mouths, noses,
eyes, and ears until they bled to death in horrible torment. [58] In
this way father Fray Domingo de Erquicia was martyred. Father Fray
Jacobo de Sancta Maria, [59] a Japanese by nation, who had assumed
the habit in our convent of Manila, August 15, 1624, was martyred in
this year. He had returned to Japon in 1632. He went by way of the
islands of the Lequios; and the champan in which he traveled with some
Japanese fathers of the Society encountered storms, and was cast upon
the shores of Coria. The sufferings of this voyage were such that his
hair turned gray. At the end of five months he reached Satzuma, where
he labored for about three months. His father, who was a Christian,
was tortured by water until he revealed the place where his son was
hidden; and on the seventeenth of August father Fray Jacobo died,
after three days of torture, by the method of hanging described. In
this year two preachers of our order made their way to Japon. One was
the glorious martyr, father Fray Jacobo; the other was a Sicilian,
a very thorough master of the Chinese language, who was called Fray
Jordan de San Estevan. He had assumed the habit in Sicilia, after
having studied arts and theology in Aragon and Castilla. He barely
escaped capture immediately on his arrival; and the whole crew of
Chinese who had been hired to bring him were executed for the crime
of bringing a priest into the kingdom.
In this year, thirty-three, the cruel old emperor died; and in the
commotions which followed it seemed as if all parties turned their
hands against the Christians. Many other martyrs of other orders
were executed at this time. Among them were Father Manuel Borges,
of the Society of Jesus; fathers Fray Melchor and Fray Martin,
Augustinian Recollects--Spaniards, who were caught before they learned
the language; father Fray Jacobo Antoni, a Roman, of the Society of
Jesus; fathers Fray Benito Fernandez (a Portuguese) and Fray Francisco
de Gracia, of the Order of St. Augustine; and a Japanese father of
the Society named Pablo Saito, who had accompanied father Fray Jacobo
from Manila. In this year father Fray Thomas de San Jacintho reported
that thirteen religious were captured in Nangasaqui, besides two of
the Order of St. Francis who were prisoners in Usaca. Besides these,
there were Fathers Antonio de Sousa and Juan Mateos, and Father
Christoval Ferreyra, all Portuguese Jesuits; father Fray Lucas del
Espiritu Sancto, a father of our order; besides many Japanese, both
lay and religious.
Father Fray Lucas del Espiritu Sancto was a son of the convent of
Sancto Domingo at Benavente. An account is given of his labors in the
chapter dealing with the year thirty-one. From his prison he wrote
an account of his labors and travels in Japon, in which he told how
he had gone through the most distant parts of the empire from east
to west. Most of these fathers and many of their companions were
tortured while in prison, and father Fray Lucas wrote a long letter
describing their imprisonment and torture. In this letter he makes the
following statement: that if he should die on the day of St. Luke,
he would be exactly thirty-nine years of age; that he assumed the
habit in 1610 in the convent of Sancto Domingo at Benabente, whence
he went to study at Trianos and hence to Valladolid, coming to the
Philippinas in 1617, and being assigned to duty in Nueva Segovia. He
reached Japon in 1623. His letter is dated October 16, 1633, and
two days later he was put to the torture of the hanging described,
being respited for a time and afterward executed.]