Cristóvão Ferreira

Ferreira was buried on the grave site of his son-in-law Sugimoto Chūkei's family.

Ferreira (1580–1650) as a language mediator during the interrogation of the Dutch captured in Nambu in 1643 (engraving from 1669)

Cristóvão Ferreira , born around 1580 in Torres Vedras ( Portugal ); died around 1650 in Nagasaki (Japan) was a missionary of the Societas Jesu , who fell away from Christianity after torture and was repatriated as Sawano Chūan ( 沢 野 忠 庵 ).

Training and trip to the Far East

Cristóvão Ferreira was born to Domingos Ferreira and Maria Lourenço in a small village near Lisbon . Nothing is known about his childhood. In 1596 he joined the Society of Jesus in Coimbra . After the mandatory two-year novitiate, he took the first oaths in 1598 and began studying at the local university.

On April 4, 1600 he embarked as a member of a group of twenty under Father Pedro de Almeida for Goa , the base of the Society in India. The following year he moved to Macau , where he continued his theological studies at the Collegium Madre de Deus. In 1608 he was finally ordained a priest.

As a missionary in Japan

On May 16, 1609, Ferreira sailed on a Portuguese merchant ship from Macau to Nagasaki . At that time it was the most important Jesuit base in Japan. After his arrival on June 29th, he first devoted himself to language learning in the Arima seminar led by Mattheus de Couros. But the sovereign Arima Harunobu ( 有 馬 晴 信 ), a longtime patron of the mission, fell victim to the anti-Christian policies of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1612 , and the priests were forced to withdraw from this region.

After the initial success of the Japan mission initiated by Francisco de Xavier in 1549, it came under increasing pressure towards the end of the century. Since 1587, the rulers repeatedly issued anti-Christian edicts, initially mostly as an ad-hoc reaction to certain incidents. They were also initially implemented without any particular emphasis. However, with the establishment of the rule of the Tokugawa family under Ieyasu, a more and more systematic policy of curbing Christian influences developed, which in 1639 finally came with the expulsion of all Spaniards and Portuguese, the ban on Christianity and the reduction of foreign relations (closing policy) Form won.

Ferreira's activity was therefore bad from the start. 1614-1615 he worked in Kyoto , where he cared for the Christians of the region at great risk. In October 1617 he was ordered to Nagasaki to assist the new Provincial Mattheus de Couros as secretary. Due to a serious illness, he was hardly able to meet his obligations. Ferreira wrote a report on the martyrs of the previous year and the annual report for 1618. At the end of 1618 he also had to manage the company's finances. In 1621 Francisco Pacheco was finally appointed provincial, and Ferreira was free for new assignments. For the next four years he lived mostly in Osaka .

After Pacheco died at the stake together with eight other Jesuits in 1625, Ferreira was again ordered to Nagasaki to serve as Secretary Couros, Pacheco's successor. Many of the accounts of the martyrdom of missionaries and Japanese believers in the following years came from his pen.

Apostasy from Christianity

In July 1632 Mattheus de Couros, who lived hidden in a village in Ōmura , died . Sebastião Vieira took over his post, but was captured the following year, so that Ferreira took his place in July 1632.

In March 1633, the central government in Edo installed two governors for the city of Nagasaki, which was directly subordinate to them, with the task of exterminating local Christianity. A systematic search for missionaries and Japanese Christians began. A number of Jesuits, Franciscans, and local believers died in July and August. A second group followed at the beginning of October. Among the group arrested on October 18 was Ferreira and the head of the Dominican mission, Antonio de Souza, as well as Nakaura Julian, who had traveled through Europe to Rome with three companions and a priest at a young age.

Like Nakaura Julian, who had become a priest after his return, the tightly bound Ferreira was hung up by the feet, the ears pierced and the head put through a wooden lid into a hole ( anazuri 穴 吊 り ). Nakaura suffered an excruciating death. Ferreira gave up after five hours and renounced Christianity. He was first brought to Edo and in all probability brought before the Reich Inspector Inoue Masashige , who was entrusted with the eradication of Christianity and the internal security of the country. He was then sent to Nagasaki and registered as a believer in the Kōdai Temple ( Kōdai-ji ). He spent the rest of his life under the name Sawano Chūan. Inoue had him assigned to a house in which he lived with the widow of an executed Chinese merchant.

So far, only glorifying reports of the martyrdom of Christians have come from Japan. Ferreira's apostasy was a tremendous blow to Catholic Europe. That a missionary in whom great hopes had been placed for many years had fallen away from the faith was only accepted after repeated research.

In the service of the government

As a “fallen padre” ( korobi bateren 転 び 伴 天 連 ), Sawano Chūan was of great propaganda value for those in power. At the same time, the authorities now had a highly educated informant available. Ferreira aka Sawano received annual living allowances and continued to translate confiscated written materials and factotums of Inoues and the Nagasaki governors.

After the trading post of the Dutch East India Company was relocated from Hirado to Nagasaki in 1641 , it appears several times in the service diary in 1648 under the name "Siovan" to inquire about the effects of certain medicines on behalf of Inoue or to receive medicine deliveries to take. When the Dutch ship Breskens launched a boat in the Bay of Nambu on its way back from an expedition to the north in 1643 to take in fresh water, its crew was arrested for illegal landing and brought to Edo. Until the identity of the group was clearly established by the head of the Dutch trading office, Jan van Elserak, a series of interrogations were carried out in which Sawano served as an interpreter. This process was described by Arnoldus Montanus using Dutch sources and adorned with an imaginative picture.

Probably also on behalf of the Reich inspector Inoue, who was extremely interested in western science and technology, Sawano wrote a "Critical Declaration of Heaven and Earth" ( Kenkon Bensetsu 乾坤 弁 説 ). The Japanese text, written in Latin letters, was read out by the interpreter Nishi Kichibē (also Kichibyōe) and converted into a commented Japanese text by the Confucian Mukai Genshō , who lives in Nagasaki .

In view of his poor medical knowledge, the influence that some authors suspect on Japanese medicine is extremely questionable, especially since the Dutch had trained surgeons in their Dejima branch since 1641 and, with the arrival of Caspar Schamberger, aroused the strong interest of Inoue and other high-ranking personalities, which led to one led permanent medical exchange.

The Kōdai Temple at Nagasaki recorded his death on the 11th day of the 10th month in the 3rd year of Keian, according to the Western calendar on November 4th, 1650. Two days later the Dutch heard of his death.

Interpretations for posterity

The apostasy of Ferreira did not leave contemporary and later authors alone. In the 20th century it was primarily the Japanese writer Endō Shūsaku who revived general interest in this figure in his novel “Silence” ( Chinmoku , 1966). The work, which won the Tanizaki Prize, was filmed in 1971 by Shinoda Masahiro and in 2016 by Martin Scorsese. Ferreira also appears in the black and white film "Christ in Bronze" ( Seidō no Kirisuto ) shot by Minoru Shibuya in 1955 .

literature

• Papinot, Edmond: Ferreira (Christopher) In: Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan. Reprinted by Tuttle, 1972 edition of 1910 edition. ISBN 0-8048-0996-8 .
• Cieslik, Hubert: The Case of Christovao Ferreira . In: Monumenta Nipponica, No. 29, pp. 1-54 (1973).
• Hiraoka, Ryuji: The Transmission of Western Cosmology to Sixteenth Century Japan . In: Luis Saraiva and Catherine Jami (eds.): The Jesuits, the Padroado and East Asian Science (1552–1773): History of Mathematical Sciences - Portugal and East Asia III. Singapore: World Scientific, 2008, pp. 81-98.
• Hiraoka, Ryuji: Clavius ​​and His Astronomical Data during the 'Christian Century' in Japan . In: Historia scientiarum. Second series: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan , Vol. 18 (3), 2009, p. 213-236. ( Digitized version )
• Michel, Wolfgang: Travels of the Dutch East India Company in the Japanese archipelago . In: Lutz Walter (ed.): Japan - seen through the eyes of the West. Prestel-Verlag: München / New York, 1994, pp. 31-39. ( Digitized version )
• Pacheco, Diego: The Founding of the Port of Nagasaki and its Cession to the Society of Jesus . In: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 25, No. 3/4 (1970), pp. 303-323

References and comments

1. ↑ Cieslik (1974), p. 1
2. ↑ Cieslik (1974), p. 2
3. ↑ Cieslik (1974), p. 4
4. ↑ Cieslik (1974), p. 5
5. ↑ Cieslik (1974), pp. 8f.
6. ↑ Cieslik (1974), p. 9
7. ↑ Cieslik (1974), pp. 13f.
8. ↑ Cieslik (1974), p. 24
9. ↑ Cieslik (1974), pp. 14-22
10. ↑ Dagregister Dejima, 12.71648, 07/26/1648, 09/25/1648
11. ↑ Michel (1994)
12. ↑ Hiraoka (2008), ditto (2009)
13. ↑ Screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1656.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Sawano is the family name, Chūan the first name.