Note 1 — The Conquest of Mindanao

Marcelo Francisco Mastrilli was born at Naples September 14 (Crétineau-Joly says September 4), 1603, and entered upon his novitiate March 25, 1618. In obedience to the command of an apparition of St. Francis Xavier which he believed he had seen (that saint also miraculously curing him of a dangerous wound), he asked for the missions of Japan. He left for his field in 1635, arriving at Manila on July 3 of the following year. At the request of Corcuera, Mastrilli accompanied him in the expedition against Mindanao; soon after the governor’s triumphant return therefrom, Mastrilli went to Japan, where he was almost immediately imprisoned and tortured—finally (October 17, 1637) being beheaded at Nagasaki. See Murillo Velarde’s Hist. Philipinas, fol. 81, and Crétineau-Joly’s Hist. Comp. de Jésus, iii, pp. 161–163; the latter says that Mastrilli went to Japan to attempt the reclamation of the apostate Christoval Ferreira (Vol. XXIV, p. 230 and note 91), and that martyrdom there seemed to him and other Jesuits a sort of expiation for Ferreira’s sin.