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The saints

Sts. Paul Miki and Companions

Twenty-six Christians on a hill above Nagasaki, and the joy that astonished the crowd.

Feast: 6 February · died 5 February 1597 · Reformation and missions · Nagasaki, Japan

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The Twenty-Six Martyrs Monument on Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki: a stone stairway and garden beneath the memorial.

Nesnad, 2022. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

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Nagasaki, 5 February 1597

The first bloody persecution of Christians in Japan begins in 1597.1

On 5 February, twenty-six Christians, six of them Franciscan missionaries, are crucified at Nagasaki.1

The people who came to watch did not see what they expected.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers them as martyrs of Japan.

01Sts. Paul Miki and Companions

Joy on the hill

The pagans who watched the martyrdom were struck by the joy of the martyrs and the courage with which they met death.1

Persecution went on for decades, and a missionary wrote that fifty crosses multiplied a hundredfold would not have been enough for all who longed for martyrdom.1

The Twenty-Six Martyrs Monument on Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki: a stone stairway and garden beneath the memorial.
The Twenty-Six Martyrs Monument and Museum on Nishizaka Hill, Nagasaki. Nesnad, 2022. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Live it this week

Choose joy on a bad day

The crowd at Nagasaki expected despair and saw joy. On your worst day this week, choose one deliberate act of joy: thank someone, hum a hymn, laugh at yourself, and offer the day to God.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “Japanese Martyrs”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.