On this date in 1629, Spanish Dominican Louis Bertran was burned at Omura, Japan for evangelizing, along with two Japanese-born converts known as Mancius of the Holy Cross and Peter of the Holy Mother of God.
Bearing the Gospel to the far-flung corners of the globe was sort of the family business: Bertran’s more famous relative and namesake, Louis Bertran(d), ministered to the New World so tirelessly that he’s been unofficially known as the Apostle of South America.
For two generations by this point, Christianity had struggled under intensifying official persecution — the shogunate deeply suspicious of the infiltration of western clerics who so often it seemed from Japan’s neighbors to bring along with them some patron king’s overweening navy.
Just a few years on from these martyrdoms, Japan closed itself to outside interference altogether. (More or less.)
On this day..
- 1869: Katkeena and John Anayitzaschist, Glyphs and Gallows
- 1948: Ruth Closius-Neudeck
- 1566: Agnes Waterhouse, the first witchcraft execution in England
- 1598: Lucas, waterboarded Guale
- 1741: Not Sarah Hughson, "stubborn deportment"
- 1938: Janis Berzins, Soviet military intelligence chief
- 1879: Kate Webster, of the Barnes Mystery
- 1969: Joseph Blösche, Der SS-Mann
- 1947: Three Jewish terrorists and two British hostages
- 1936: Aboune Petros, Ethiopian bishop
- 1600: The Pappenheimer Family
- 1747: Alexander Blackwell, who left them smiling