November 11, 1634: a day of infamy
and glory. The train of martyrs led up Martyrs’ Hill was extraordinarily long.
Two Dominican Friars on horseback, their hands tied behind their backs and hoops
around their necks, led the procession; sixty-nine other Christians formed
their train. The sixty-nine lay Catholics were destined for beheading or
burning at the stake; the two priests would be hung upside-down in torture-pits
to meet a slower, more excruciating sort of death.
On the flat stretch of earth atop the
steep slope called Nishi-zaka, all the martyrs found their allotted spots
prepared, arrayed inside a stockade built to keep out the milling onlookers. Here
were the chopping-blocks from which severed heads would drop to earth, here the
stakes against which human forms would squirm and writhe, emitting groans and
screams and squeals if the torturers could have their way; and then there were
those two pits with the gallows built over them, the stone counterweights
readied with ropes to hold the priests dangling by their ankles head-down in
the dark, horrid, filth-strewn pits. No sunshine would peek in once the wooden
lids were closed tight around those two human waists—no natural sun, at least.
And yet the darkness failed to do its
work: neither man called out for respite, neither gave the hoped-for signal
that, after all, this unexampled agony, this horror, this test too terrible for
merest human mettle to endure, had done its work. The slightest groan could
suffice, some word that could be twisted to the tyrant’s purpose, a supposed
sign of apostasy, of surrender to his evil will. Instead the two Christian
heroes endured their agonies unflinching, surrendering their flesh and lives
and souls to the God to whom they had consecrated these in their youth.
Friar Thomas Nishi was the first to die:
so weakened by privations and tortures was his flesh that his soul escaped Heavenward
within a day; it would take a week for Friar Giacinto Giordano Ansalone to
follow his friend home. These two, the only Dominican Friars left in Japan, had
been arrested on the fourth of August, the feast day of their Order’s patron
saint. With what warm embraces he must have welcomed them home.
Yet more such fearless preachers would
come.
Copyright
© 2015 by Luke O’Hara
Kirishtan.com
