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.[52] In this way father Fray Domingo de Erquicia was martyred. Father Fray Jacobo de Sancta Maria,[53] 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.]
Chapter XLVI
The holy Fray Jacintho de Esquivel or De el Rosario, martyred on the way to Japon; and his holy life.
[To the six or seven holy martyrs of our sacred order—Fray Domingo de Erquicia,[54] Fray Lucas del Espiritu Sancto, Fray Jacobo de Santa Maria, and three or four lay brothers, should be added another who, though he did not die in Japon, died on the journey thither, at the hands of traitorous heathen. This was father Fray Jacintho de Esquivel. He was a Basque by nation, noble in lineage and nobler in virtue. He assumed the habit in the convent of San Domingo of the city of Victoria. While he was a novice I happened, in returning from the chapter-general in Paris in 1611, where I was definitor for this province, to rest in his convent for a week; and at that time he conceived the desire to come to this province. He was sent to the famous college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, and distinguished himself in his studies, becoming a teacher of arts when still very young. In Manila he was appointed as lecturer in theology in the college of Sancto Thomas; and in this position he did not take advantage of the dispensations allowed, but rigorously observed the severe rules of the province. While he was teaching theology he studied the Japanese language, under the teaching of father Fray Jacobo de Sancta Maria. With his aid he printed, at the expense of the college, a Japanese-Spanish vocabulary—a large book, which required very great resolution and labor. As a result of abstinence, he had lost the sense of taste. He dressed poorly and roughly, and his modesty and chastity were such that he once said that he had never looked a woman in the face. In order to make his way to Japon he went to the island of Hermosa. On the very night of the arrival of father Fray Jacintho occurred a heavy storm, which overthrew a small convent of ours with its church, which had been erected in the Parian of the Chinese. The other fathers attributed this to the wrath of the devil because of the coming of the father; but he rejoiced that materials were provided for building a church in Taparri, for which the ruins of these buildings might be used. This village of Taparri was populated by the worst tribe in the whole island; for they were all pirates, who committed as much robbery and murder on the sea as they could. It was less than a legua from the presidio of San Salvador, and strict orders had been issued that no one should go there without permission, and that those who went should always go in company and armed. The father asked permission to go and build a church in that village, where he soon learned a few of the words. When the Indians asked him where his wife and sons and land were, he answered that the religious had none, to which they replied that he was a great liar. At another time, when he told them of the resurrection of the dead, they called him mad. Afterward, when they came to have a great deal of affection for him and offered him several marriages, and saw that he would not accept them, or even admit a woman into his house, they began to believe in him. He afterward set about building a church in another village on the same coast, nearer the presidio, and named Camaurri. He established peace between the two villages though they had always been enemies before. He was afterward sent to Tanchuy. He lived a life of great mortification, and labored strenuously to learn the language of this country. In a few months he succeeded, and made a grammar and a very copious vocabulary. Being sent back from Tangchuy to Sant Salvador, he obeyed most readily, and his labors were attended with great results. He exposed himself to dangers by sea and by land, and preached to Spaniards as well as to Indians. He established in the island of Hermosa the holy Confraternity of La Misericordia. The good cavalier Don Juan de Alcaraso gave four thousand pesos for the purpose; and father Fray Jacintho gave two thousand, which he had received in alms. He also established a school for the bright Chinese and Japanese children, and those of other nations in that country, where they might be taught the matters of our faith, and where those who are capable of them might learn Latin, the liberal arts, and theology. He hoped thus to train up children who might carry the faith into China and Japon. He finally embarked for Japon in a Chinese vessel, with a Franciscan; and after they had been at sea for a few days the Chinese, unwilling to wait and put them ashore in Japon, killed them and took their noses and ears to the judges in Nangasaqui, who paid them liberally.]