CHAPTER IV
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.
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.