Inspiration and Institution in Catholic Missionary Martyrdom Accounts: Japan and New France, 1617–49

Abstract

This article focuses on the martyrdoms of the French Jesuit Antoine Daniel in New France and the Spanish friars Alonso Navarrete and Hernando Ayala in Japan. Drawing upon the accounts written by the missionaries Paul Ragueneau and Jacinto Orfanel, it shows how they adapted apostolic teaching and the Tridentine vision of the priesthood to interpret the acts of their brethren as sources of inspiration and models of renewed institutional identity. It argues that martyrdom was viewed as a pastoral responsibility in the missions to New France and Japan. Martyrs were portrayed as divinely inspired to lay down their lives for their communities, while the act of martyrdom was viewed as a literal, semi-liturgical sacrifice imbued with the sacramentality of the priesthood. Martyrdom was perceived both to fulfil an urgent pastoral need within communities and to model the apostolic vision of the Roman Catholic Church.