lists published in Europe; the favour and wealth of the Portuguese were
assiduously used; and, as we gather from the letters sent to Europe,
a great deal of trickery was employed in order to make the ignorant
natives believe that the Jesuits could work miracles and control
devils. Coloured lights were cunningly placed at times so as to shine
on their statues and altars and create a belief in miracles.
Missionaries from India penetrated Ceylon and Thibet, but they were
expelled after a few years. The Chinese mission continued to prosper,
and by 1620 claimed to have made a hundred thousand converts. One of
the missionaries, Adam Schall, an expert in mathematics and mechanics,
was employed by the Emperor to correct the Chinese calendar, make
guns for his army, and construct fortifications. He received in
return permission for his colleagues to preach throughout the Empire,
and hundreds of churches were built. Presently, however, the rival
Dominican missionaries reported to Rome that the Jesuits owed their
success to a scandalous compromise with the native religion. There
is no doubt that the Christianity they set before the Chinese was a
very different creed from that which Xavier had intended to bring.
They did not obtrude the crucifix on the notice of their converts, and
they looked leniently on the worship of ancestors and the veneration
for Kung-fu-tse. When the Dominicans and Franciscans insisted on the
drastic purity of the faith, and characterised the pagan moralist with
all the vigour of mediæval intolerance, the Jesuits persuaded the
Chinese to expel them, and a spirited struggle, which will engage us at
a later stage, took place in regard to their "Chinese rites."
The Japanese mission, on the other hand, was totally extinguished under
the generalship of Vitelleschi. For a time after 1616 the new Emperor
Xogun was indifferent to the labours of the Jesuits, who entered the
country in disguise, and the converts were once more gathered into the
Church. It is said that they numbered 400,000, and the record of the
persecutions which followed shows that at least a large proportion of
them were fervent and convinced Christians. In 1617, however, Xogun
ordered all missionaries to leave the country, and a long and bloody
persecution set in. The English and Dutch merchants had now supplanted
the Portuguese, and they fed the animosity of the Emperor. Large
numbers of the Jesuits and their followers were brutally tortured and
executed; yet with signal heroism they continued to enter the land and
lay down their lives for their work. But the fierce persecution was
sustained by Xogun II. and his son, and by the time of the death of
Vitelleschi, Christianity was extinct in Japan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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