Note (return) — Chapter XI · - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY

The quarrels between the Franciscans and Jesuits,16 however, were probably more harmful to Christianity than were the whispers of the Protestant Englishmen or Hollanders. In 1610, the wrath of the government was especially aroused against the bateren, as the people called the padres, by their open and persistent violation of Japanese law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles had been sent to work the mines, Iyéyasŭ believed he had obtained documentary proof in the Japanese language, of what he had long suspected—the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject state.17 Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo Shōgun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January 27, 1614,18 in which the foreign priests were branded as triple enemies—of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in this state paper, Iyéyasŭ shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native priests and catechists, were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of combustibles to Macao.