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The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 32, 1640 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century. cover

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 32, 1640 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century.

Chapter 19: Chapter VIII The capture of the holy martyrs
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About This Book

This volume concludes a Dominican provincial history that chronicles missionary work in the Philippine archipelago and adjacent regions. It traces the lives and labors of several friars, describing conversions, reported miracles and visions, emergency baptisms amid epidemics, internal elections and administrative matters, and the physical and spiritual hardships of mission life. It records escalating persecutions in Japan, orders for clergy expulsion, clandestine ministry, and many instances of suffering and martyrdom. The text is accompanied by editorial annotations, bibliographical notes, and facsimiles of maps and signatures that help anchor the narrative in contemporaneous documentary sources.

Chapter VIII

The capture of the holy martyrs

[The two fathers set out, traveling slowly, encouraging the Christians and recovering some of those who had recanted. The number of those who came to be confessed was very great, and the religious heard their confessions at the risk of their lives. The fathers rejoiced to lay aside their secular garments; and the Christians who saw them in religious habits were greatly delighted. Five persecutors came to arrest the fathers, who received them with great joy and gave them presents. Father Fray Alonso wrote a letter to the tono, informing him that the fathers had come to give him an opportunity to repent of his great sin in martyring the fathers who had been executed, and to deliver him from the pains of hell. Some Japanese boldly offered themselves for martyrdom. The Christian inhabitants of the city showed the greatest devotion to the fathers, crowding about them and offering themselves for martyrdom with them; and they showed the greatest grief at the thought that the fathers were to be taken from them by death. The tono of Omura was in the greatest grief and perplexity, feeling that there would fall on him the obligation to martyr Christians after Christians who would come to offer themselves in his kingdom. He finally determined to take their lives, but with the greatest secrecy, in order to prevent an uprising in the city. The fathers were accordingly taken to a desolate island named Usuxima; and in spite of the efforts of the heathen to keep the place secret, they were followed by a great number of Christians, who confessed to them.]