Category Archives: Events

Green­leaf Vis­it­ing Scholar Rady Roldan-Figueroa presents, “Span­ish Accounts of Chris­t­ian Mar­tyr­dom in Toku­gawa Japan, c. 1597-c. 1945: Ideational Rep­re­sen­ta­tions and their Cir­cu­la­tion in Spain, the Philip­pines, and New Spain,” Wednes­day, June 12 at noon in the Waters Room, first floor of Zim­mer­man Library. Refresh­ments will be served.

This project traces the lit­er­ary rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Chris­t­ian mar­tyr­dom in 17th cen­tury Japan as it was artic­u­lated, dis­sem­i­nated and pub­lished in Spain and its colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries, espe­cially the Philip­pines and New Spain. The Chris­t­ian Cen­tury of Japan (1548– c.1650) coin­cided with the even­tual uni­fi­ca­tion of the coun­try under the Toku­gawa dynasty, which defined the Edo period of Japan’s his­tory (1603–1867). Until 1614, Chris­tian­ity flour­ished through­out the realm. Jesuits long were the exclu­sive Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary agents in the coun­try since the arrival of Fran­cis Xavier (1506–1552) at the port of Kagoshima in 1549. They were joined in the last decade of the 16th cen­tury by Span­ish men­di­cants trav­el­ing from Manila.

In 1614, Toku­gawa Ieyasu pro­scribed Chris­tian­ity and ordered the expul­sion of Euro­pean reli­gious per­son­nel. Con­se­quently, an unprece­dented per­se­cu­tion against Chris­tians was unleashed through­out the coun­try. In response, the mis­sion­ary orders pro­duced a body of reli­gious lit­er­a­ture, in the form of hagio­graph­i­cal and mar­ty­ro­log­i­cal works, cen­tered on the fate of Euro­pean mis­sion­ar­ies and their Japan­ese con­verts. The lit­er­a­ture was also intended to advance the inter­ests of the mis­sion­ary orders in the Span­ish court, as well as in periph­eral cen­ters of power within the Span­ish empire. Reli­gious orders not only had to earn the sup­port of Madrid, but also the patron­age of polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial elites in Mex­ico City and Manila.

In this con­text, print proved a fruit­ful means of advanc­ing the inter­ests of each reli­gion, and the accounts of mar­tyrs proved to be a mov­ing topic. Inter­est­ingly, this body of reli­gious lit­er­a­ture engen­dered a sec­ondary cor­pus made up of devo­tional works pro­duced well beyond the 17th cen­tury and even beyond the colo­nial period of New Spain.

The pre­sen­ta­tion focuses on rare printed items found in the spe­cial col­lec­tion of the Cen­ter for South­west Research that illu­mi­nate this inter­est­ing chap­ter of reli­gious ideational history.

Rady Roldán-Figueroa (Th.D., Boston Uni­ver­sity) is assis­tant pro­fes­sor of the His­tory of Chris­tian­ity at Boston Uni­ver­sity School of The­ol­ogy. He is the author of The Ascetic Spir­i­tu­al­ity of Juan de Avila (1499–1569) (Brill, 2010), and co-editor of Explor­ing Chris­t­ian Her­itage — A Reader in His­tory and The­ol­ogy (Bay­lor Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012). His arti­cles have appeared in the Six­teenth Cen­tury Jour­nal, Archiv für Reformationgeschichte/Archive for Ref­or­ma­tion His­tory, The Sev­en­teenth Cen­tury, and His­tory of Euro­pean Ideas, among others.