The Japanese Martyrs

In the age of exploration, Catholic missionaries fanned out across the world, meeting with extraordinary success but also extraordinary opposition: nowhere more so than in Japan, where the fast-growing Catholic community was brutally suppressed in the early seventeenth century. This lecture will explore how this bloody crisis shaped myths of Japanese cruelty and cults of Catholic sanctity in Europe, while also precipitating the 250-year 'closing' of Japan and the intense piety of a small re...