The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

days without any remedies or proper nourishment. All this time my heart
was so full of joy, that it seemed to me too narrow to contain it. I
have never felt any equal to it, and I thought myself at the gates of
paradise." His joy was excessive at the news that he was condemned to be
burnt alive, and he never ceased to thank God for so great a mercy, of
which he owned himself unworthy. He was conducted from his last prison
at Omura to Nangasaqui, where fifty martyrs suffered together on a hill
within sight of that city-nine Jesuits, four Franciscans, and six
Dominicans, the rest seculars: twenty-five were burned, the rest
beheaded. The twenty-five stakes were fixed all in a row, and the
martyrs tied to them. Fire was set to the end of the pile of wood
twenty-five feet from the martyrs, and gradually approached them, two
hours before it reached them. F. Spinola stood unmoved, with his eyes
lifted up towards heaven, till the cords which tied him being burnt, he
fell into the flames, and was consumed, on the 2d of September, in 1622,
being fifty-eight years old. Many others, especially Jesuits, suffered
variously, being either burnt at slow fires, crucified, beheaded, or
thrown into a burning mountain, or hung with their heads downward in
pits, which cruel torment usually put an end to their lives in three or
four days. In 1639, the Portuguese and all other Europeans, except the
Dutch, were forbid to enter Japan, even for trade; the very ambassadors
which the Portuguese sent thither were beheaded. In 1642, five Jesuits
landed secretly in Japan, but were soon discovered, and after cruel
tortures were hung in pits till they expired. Thus hath Japan encouraged
the church militant, and filled the triumphant with glorious martyrs:
though only the first-mentioned have as yet been publicly declared such
by the holy See, who are mentioned in the new edition of the Roman
Martyrology published by Benedict XIV. in 1749.
{362}
APPENDIX
ON
THE MARTYRS OF CHINA.
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THE devil set all his engines to work, that he might detain in his
captivity those great nations, which, by the inscrutable judgments of
God, lay yet buried in the night of infidelity, and by their vicious
habits and prejudices had almost extinguished the law written in their
breast by their Creator. The pure light of the gospel sufficed to dispel
the dark clouds of idolatry by its own brightness; but the passions of
men were not to be subdued but by the omnipotent hand of Him who
promised that his holy faith and salvation should be propagated
throughout all nations. All the machinations of hell were not able to