Twenty-Six Martyrs
The twenty-six martyrs were Japanese and Western Christians crucified at Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki on 5 February 1597. The twenty-six were ordered executed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536/7–1598), Japan's paramount leader at the time, in response to developments surrounding the stranding of the Spanish galleon San Felipe the previous autumn off the island of Shikoku. Hideyoshi, who had long exhibited an erratic policy toward Christianity in Japan, had first banned the religion in 1587 but had not strictly enforced this proscription directed against the Jesuits. Originally, he also welcomed the Franciscans when they began their missionary work in the country in the 1590s, but when a pilot aboard the San Felipe boasted that Franciscan friars had in the past served as a vanguard of Spanish invasion forces in foreign territories, Hideyoshi moved quickly against the Franciscans in Japan.
In December 1596, six Western Franciscans from the Kyoto/Osaka area, fifteen Japanese followers of the Franciscan mission, and three Japanese Jesuits were arrested, tried, and condemned to death. The twenty-four were marched overland from Kyoto to Nagasaki for crucifixion. Two Japanese who followed the prisoners to look after their needs were also included among those executed. The deaths of the six foreign missionaries marked the first time that Westerners were executed in Japan for their faith.
The twenty-six were beatified by Pope Urban VIII in 1627 and canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1862. Three years later, to commemorate the martyrdom, French Catholic missionaries built Oura Church facing Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki. A memorial to the martyrs was built at Nishizaka on the centennial of their canonization. In 1981 Pope John Paul II visited the memorial and paid tribute to the martyrs.
Further Reading
Fujita, Neil S. (1991) Japan's Encounter with Christianity: The
Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan. New York: Paulist Press.
Yuki, Diego R. (1979) The Martyrs' Hill Nagasaki. Nagasaki,
Japan: Twenty-six Martyrs Museum.
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