This Week in History recalls memorable and decisive events and personalities of the past.
27th July 1549 – The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier’s ship reaches Japan
Among them was a 28-year-old Basque student, Francis Xavier. Xavier’s family were nobles in the mostly Basque kingdom of Navarre in what is today northern Spain and southern France.
When Xavier was a child his family had helped resist an invasion of the kingdom by the crowns of Aragon and Castile (who would later unite to form Spain).
The Navarrese lost their war and Xavier’s family was harshly punished, with most of their property being expropriated and their opportunities vastly curtailed.
Xavier was then sent to Paris to be educated and, it was hoped, open more opportunities for himself. While there, he and his roommates were convinced to become priests, and after qualifying to teach philosophy in 1530, Xavier joined his friends in forming their planned new holy order. By 1537 he had become a priest.
In 1539, Xavier and his friends finally formed their holy order, The Society of Jesus (The Jesuit order). The next year this new order was given the Pope’s blessing and was officially formed.
In 1540, the king of Portugal asked the new order to supply him with missionaries to travel to Portugal’s newly acquired African and Asian territories and preach Christianity, as the king believed that many of the Portuguese in his far-flung outposts were converting to local customs and religions and drifting away from the Church.
The leader of the Jesuits appointed two of their members to help the king of Portugal. When one of them fell sick at the last minute, Xavier was selected as his replacement and so set off for the East.
On 7 April 1541, Xavier set out from Lisbon with two other Jesuits and an appointment as a Papal diplomat to the Far East. He arrived first in Portuguese Mozambique, where he stayed for a few months, then set out for the Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of India, arriving there just over a year after leaving Portugal.
There he initially focused on educating the children of local Portuguese settlers and converting local Indians to Christianity. Over the next three years he preached and converted people along India’s southern coast and established around 40 churches in India. He was not especially successful, as the local Brahmin caste Hindu priests of India stifled most of his efforts at conversion.
In 1545, Xavier set out for Malacca, a Portuguese-controlled area in what is today Malaysia. Using Malacca as his base of operations, he travelled several times to the Maluku islands in modern-day eastern Indonesia, where he worked to convert inhabitant of the local states, such as Ternate sultanate, to Christianity.
In December of 1547, Xavier met a Japanese man named Anjirō, who had heard of Xavier while living in Japan. After being charged with murder, Anjirō had fled Japan and sought out Xavier. Anjirō told Xavier about Japan, its people and culture.
Captivated, Xavier asked Anjirō if the Japanese would become Christians. Anjirō replied that they would be hesitant to do so, but he thought they could be won over. During this time Anjirō converted to Christianity, becoming the first Japanese Christian.
Xavier decided to set out for Japan, arriving in the Japanese Islands on 27 July 1549.
Japan had only recently been contacted by Europe, with the Portuguese arriving in the region six years earlier, the first Europeans to do so. They would revolutionise Japanese warfare by introducing the matchlock arquebus.
Xavier was accompanied in Japan by Anjirō and two other Japanese men, who were to act as his guides and translators. He also carried gifts for the Japanese emperor, with whom he sought a meeting, eager to introduce himself as the Papal envoy and, with any luck, convert the emperor to Christianity (which would have been difficult, given that the Japanese emperor claims descent from a Shinto Sun deity, a claim from which the ruler draws much legitimacy).
Xavier was welcomed by the local warlords in Japan (Japan was experiencing a period of chaotic civil war at the time, which allowed many local lords, called daimyos, to rule as petty kings). These daimyos gave him hospitality and allowed him to preach, but he was unable to meet with the Japanese emperor.
His efforts at preaching were stunted by his lack of knowledge of Japanese and he was forced to try preaching by reading out Japanese translations of Christian religious material. He also relied on using artworks depicting Mary and Jesus as a means of teaching biblical stories. At first local Buddhist monks were friendly to him, mistaking him for a fellow Buddhist, but became hostile once they realised he was a religious rival.
The Jesuit conversion strategy was to focus on powerful local rulers, believing that if they could convert them, they would then sway their subjects to Christianity. With the Portuguese being the main source of firearms into the country, Xavier and the Jesuits were able to win local lords over with promises of greater trade links if they became Catholics.
Xavier wrote that he was very fond of the Japanese, seeing in them many similarities with the people of Europe and believing that they would be able to be won over to Christianity given enough time and persistence.
While the Jesuits initially tried to impress the Japanese with their ascetic lifestyle and vows of poverty, they found these concepts had little purchase in Japanese culture, and so switched gears to adopt a more extravagant and flashy form of Christianity in the hopes this would win more converts.
In time, the Christian communities which Xavier established in Japan would become quite significant and play an important role in the following decades of civil war in Japan.
The Japanese authorities slowly turned against Christianity, in part due to a Spanish captain lying to the Japanese that the Jesuits were there to lay the groundwork for an invasion. And so, in 1587, the Japanese warlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, took to banning Christianity for the first time, and carried out crucifixions of Christians across Japan.
Persecution of Christians continued off and on for the next few decades, until it was permanently banned in 1614 and Japan was closed off to the outside world. Some Japanese Catholics continued to practise the religion in secret for the next two centuries, until in the mid-1800s the religion was unbanned after pressure from Europe and America during the forced reopening of Japan.
As for Xavier, in 1551, he left Japan for India, stopping in China and Indonesia on the way.
While in China he was asked to mediate on behalf of some Portuguese sailors by speaking to the Emperor of China.
He carried on to India, but set out to return to China in 1552 in hopes of meeting the Chinese emperor and, as the Papal envoy, negotiating the liberation of the Portuguese held captive there.
On the way to the Chinese mainland, however, Xavier came down with a fever and died on 3 December 1552.
In 1662, Francis Xavier was canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church and proclaimed the patron saint of Catholic missions.
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