CESPEDES, THE CHRISTIAN CHAPLAIN.
The aspect of affairs had now changed from that of a triumphal march
through Corea into China and to Peking, to long and tedious camp life,
with uncertain fortunes in the field, which promised a long stay in the
peninsula. Konishi had now breathing time and space for reflection.
Being an ardent Christian—after the faith and practice of the
Portuguese Jesuits—he wished for himself and his fellow-believers the
presence and ministrations of one of the European friars to act as
chaplain. He therefore sent, probably when at or near Fusan, a message
to the superior of the Mission in Japan, asking for a priest.
Toward the end of 1593, the Vice-Provençal of the Company of the
Jesuits despatched Father Gregorio de Cespedes and a Japanese convert
named “Foucan Eion” to the army in Chō-sen. They left Japan and spent
the winter in Tsushima, the domain of Yoshitoshi, one of the Christian
lords then in the field. Early in the spring of 1594 they reached
Corea, arriving at Camp Comangai (most probably a name given by the
Japanese after the famous hero Kumagayé), at which Konishi made his
headquarters. The two holy men immediately began their labors among the
Japanese armies. They went from castle to castle, and from camp to
camp, preaching to the pagan soldiers, and administering the rite of
baptism to all who professed the faith, or signed themselves with the
cross. They administered the sacraments to the Christian Japanese,
comforted and prayed with the sick, reformed abuses, assisted the
wounded, and shrived the dying. New converts were made and old ones
strengthened. Dying in a foreign land, of fever or of wounds, the soul
of the Japanese man-at-arms was comforted with words of hope from the
lips of the foreign priest. Held before his glazing eyes gleamed the
crucifix, on which appeared the image of the world’s Redeemer. The
home-sick warrior, pining for wife and babe, was told of the “House not
made with hands.”
The two brethren seem to have been very popular among the Japanese
soldiers. Perhaps they already dreamed of planting the faith in Corea,
when, suddenly, their work was arrested at its height by Kato, whose
jealousy of Konishi was only equalled by his fanatical zeal for the
Buddhist faith. Being in Japan he denounced the foreign priest to
Taikō, declaring that these zealous endeavors to propagate the
Christian faith only concealed a vast conspiracy against himself and
the power of the mikado. At this time Taikō was dealing with the
Jesuits in Japan, and endeavoring to rid the country of their presence
by shipping them off to China. He fully believed that they were
political as well as religious emissaries, and that their aim was at
temporal power. These suspicions, as every student of Japan knows, were
more than well founded.
Besides accusing Cespedes, Kato insinuated that Konishi himself was
leading the conspiracy. The cry of chō-téki (rebel, or enemy of the
mikado) in Japan is enough to blacken the character of the bravest man
and greatest favorite. Treason against the mikado being the supreme
crime, Konishi found it necessary to return to Kiōto, present himself
before Taikō, and cleanse his reputation even from suspicion. This the
lull in the active operations, occasioned by the negotiations of Chin
Ikei, enabled him to do.
Immediately sending back the priest, he shortly afterward crossed the
straits, and, meeting Taikō, succeeded in fully ingratiating himself
and allaying all suspicion.
The wife of Konishi had also embraced the Christian faith, her baptized
name being Marie. To her, while in camp, he had sent two Corean lads,
both of whom were of rank and gentle blood, the elder being called in
the letters of the Jesuits “secretary to the Corean king.” He was the
son of a brave captain in the army, and was thirteen years old. The
lady, Marie, touched by their misfortune, kept the younger to be
educated in the faith under her own direction, and sent the elder to
the Jesuit seminary in Kiōto. Of this young man’s career we catch some
glimpses from the letters of the missionaries. At the college he was a
favorite, by reason of his good character, gentle manners, and fine
mind. Professing the faith, he was baptized in 1603, taking the name of
Vincent. He began his religious work by instructing and catechising
Japanese and his numerous fellow Coreans at Nagasaki. When about
thirty-three years old, the Jesuits, wishing to establish a mission in
Corea, proposed to send him to his native land as missionary; but not
being able, on account of the persecution then raging in Japan, he was
chosen by the Father Provençal to go to Peking, communicate with the
Jesuits there, and enter Corea from China. At Peking he remained four
years, being unable to enter his own country by reason of the Manchius,
who then held control of the northern provinces of Manchuria and were
advancing on Peking, to set on the throne that family which is still
the ruling dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. Vincent was recalled to Japan
in 1620, where, in the persecutions under Iyémitsŭ, the third Tokugawa
shō-gun, he fell a victim to his fidelity, and was martyrized in 1625,
at the age of about forty-four.
Warned of the dangers of patronizing the now proscribed religion, there
was no farther return of zeal on Konishi’s part, or that of the other
Christian princes, and no farther opportunity was given to plant the
seeds of the faith in the desolated land.
Of the large numbers of Corean prisoners sent over to Japan, from time
to time, many of those living in the places occupied by the
missionaries became Christians. Many more were sold as slaves to the
Portuguese. In Nagasaki, of the three hundred or more living there,
most of them were converted and baptized. They easily learned the
Japanese language so as to need no interpreter at the confessional—a
fact which goes to prove the close affinity of the two languages.
Others, of gentle blood and scholarly attainments, rose to positions of
honor and eminence under the government, or in the households of the
daimiōs. Many Corean lads were adopted by the returned soldiers or kept
as servants. When the bloody persecutions broke out, by which many
thousand Japanese found death in the hundred forms of torture which
hate and malice invented, the Corean converts remained steadfast to
their new-found faith, and suffered martyrdom with fortitude equal to
that of their Japanese brethren. But, by the army in Corea, or by
Cespedes, no seed of Christianity was planted or trace of it left, and
its introduction was postponed by Providence until two centuries later.