“_To him who ought to be adored and who holds the place of the King of Heaven, the great and most holy Pope_. “Full of confidence in the grace of the supreme and almighty God, I write, with all possible submission, to your Holiness. The Lord, who governs heaven and earth, who holds under his empire the sun and all the celestial host, has made his light to shine upon one who was plunged in ignorance and buried in deep darkness. It is more than thirty years since this sovereign Master of nature, displaying all the treasures of his pity in favor of the inhabitants of these countries, sent thither the fathers of the Company of Jesus, who have sowed the seed of the divine Word in these kingdoms of Japan; and he has pleased, in his infinite bounty, to cause a part of it to fall into my heart: singular mercy, for which I think myself indebted, most holy Father of all the faithful, as well to the prayers and merits of your Holiness as to those of many others. If the wars which I have had to sustain, my old age, and my infirmities had not prevented me, I should myself have visited the holy places where you dwell, to render in person the obedience which I owe you. I would have devotedly kissed the feet of your Holiness, I would have placed them on my head, and would have besought you to make with your sacred hand the august sign of the cross on my heart. Constrained, by the reasons I have mentioned, to deprive myself of a consolation so sweet, I did design to send in my place Jerome, son of the king of Fiunga [Hyūga], and my grandson; but as he was too far distant from my court, and as the father-visitor could not delay his departure, I have substituted for him Mancio, his cousin and my great-nephew. “I shall be infinitely obliged if your Holiness, holding upon earth the place of God himself, shall continue to shed your favor upon me, upon all Christians, and especially upon this little portion of the flock committed to your care. I have received from the hand of the father-visitor the reliquary with which your Holiness honored me, and I have placed it on my head with much respect. I have no words in which to express the gratitude with which I am penetrated for a gift so precious. I will add no more, as the father-visitor and my ambassador will more fully inform your Holiness as to all that regards my person and my realm. I truly adore you, most holy Father, and I write this to you trembling with respectful fear. The 11th day of January, in the year of our Lord 1582. “FRANCIS, King of Bungo, “prostrate at the foot of your Holiness.”