AT the patio of the Naga Metropolitan Cathedral is a relatively unknown saint, his statue even made more obscure by its stark and crude simplicity. On the puerta mayor of the same cathedral can be found a bas-relief of the same person. He is San Pedro Bautista, the Franciscan friar who was assigned in the Philippines in the 16th century before he was sent to Japan as an emissary of the Spanish colonial government in 1593.
In Japan, Pedro Bautista would be one of the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki.
I am holding right now a book with the title, The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki, written by Diego Yuuki, SJ. I got this copy of the book when I was fortunate to attend the beatification of the 188 Martyrs of Japan in 2008. This is an interesting footnote to Japan and the Philippines: Japan who never had the appellation “Christian country” affixed to its name has more martyrs than the Philippines.
In the book, the compelling drama began when the governor of Manila, Gomez Pérez de Marinas sent ambassadors to Japan in the person of Franciscan friars. These missionaries remained in Japan and began putting up hospital for the poor and leprosaria, just like what the Franciscans did in the Philippines. All of them had to face the temperamental and moody (as reflected in the writings of the Jesuits and Franciscans) Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the shogun.
Pedro Bautista, according to Yuuki, “was the commissioner of the friars and the ambassador of the viceroy of the Philippines,” who was “a man of much sincerity, incapable of deceit, and was unable to understand what was hidden in Hideyoshi’s heart.”
In October 1596, a shipwreck happened involving a galleon. The book describes this event: “The San Felipe sank within sight of the poor, and the sea water poured into the ship, flooding the hold and damaging the valuable cargo. Part of the goods fell into the sea, while the rest was transported ashore in Japanese boats. The enormous mountain of silks and brocades piled up on the shore amazed the local inhabitants, for they had never before seen such treasures.”
The days that followed became a series of negotiations and goodwill as regards the release of cargoes to the Spanish crew. At the center of these mediations were the Franciscans, headed by Pedro Bautista who could measure his knowledge of Japanese language having heard confessions of the natives in their language.
There were other actors in this theatre: the daimyo or feudal lords, the village authorities, the monks, the other Europeans like the Portuguese, and the other missionaries to include the Jesuits. No one ever thought that all this would lead to the persecution of Christians and the martyrdom of hundreds of missionaries and those who converted to this “foreign” religion.
Amid the debates and doubts, the question about the presence of Christian missionaries in Kyoto and neighboring places, resurfaced. What was their mission? Hideyoshi once more contemplated the issue. Were they here to convert natives into the new religion or were they forces out to usurp his authorities. It is said that during this period, the shogun turned wary of the increasing number of Christian feudal lords, Takayama Ukon, the one who travelled to Paco Manila, having been singled out.
On December 7, 1596, Taiko Sama, as Hideyoshi was called, ordered all Christians be put in prison. The next day, “the soldiers of Hideyoshi surrounded the Franciscan church and residence in Kyoto, and the friars remained under guard in their own house.”
It was the next year that the shedding of the martyrs’ blood took place: “It had snowed during the night and now the snow was melting under the feet of the capital’s citizens, gathered to witness an unusual sight. Having decided to finish with the prisoners, Hideyoshi wanted to make their execution a public punishment. His orders were brutal—that their noses and ears should be cut off, and thus mutilated, they should process through the streets of the principal cities.” A Japanese who sympathized with the missionaries agreed to a mitigation of the punishment—“only the lobe of the left ear would be cut.”
Then they made their long journey to Nagasaki, on foot and sometimes on horses. At a certain point, Pedro Bautista was able to write a letter to Manila requesting that the debt they owed a Christian be paid. In the same dispatch, he expressed his farewell.
It was on the hill above Nagasaki that the martyrs were designated to be crucified. It was the fifth of February (February 6 is Pedro Bautista’s feast day in Naga) when they arrived at their death place. Despite the prohibition, the Christians were described as having gathered in very large numbers.
The martyrs would die from the lances: “With a loud cry they [Hideyoshi’s men] raised their arms and two lances crossed within the chest of the martyr; sometimes the tips of the lances emerged from his shoulders. Death was almost instantaneous. If the double lunge was not sufficient, they thrust their lances through the victim’s neck.”
San Pedro Bautista was the last to die: “He remained unmoving even when the lances entered his chest. His blood flowed freely, but he appeared to be still living, and rumors would spread that he had not died.”
The martyr, in fact lives on in The Book of Pedro Bautista, written by a medical practitioner, Mary Jane Guazon Uy, who meditates on science, sorcery and dermatology in the city. In a review of the book by the late Sylvia Mayuga, the author is quoted as saying: “Few Filipinos know San Pedro Bautista, a saint who once walked our land. I just had to bring him back to life in fiction.”
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