*B 21? 336 
 
Him 
 
 

 Saint Francis Xavier 
 
 id Japan 
 
 C. REVILLE, S. J. 
 Editor of America 
 
 1919 
 
Saint Francis Xavier 
 
 Vpostle of India and Japan 
 
 By JOHN C. REVILLE, S. J. 
 
 Associate Editor of America 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE AMERICA PR! 
 
 1919 
 
JtotpHmt potent: 
 
 Joseph us H. Rockwell, SJ. 
 Praepositus Prov. Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis 
 
 Nttjtl obatat: 
 
 Jmpnmatur : 
 
 Nfo-iEfrnrari : 
 
 Arthurus J. Scanlan, S.T.D. 
 
 Censor Librorum 
 
 Joseph us F. Mooney 
 
 die 26, Februaril, 1919 
 
 Administrator 
 
 Copyright, 1919 - 
 By 
 THE AMERICA PRESS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I — On the Hills of Navarre (1506- 
 1625) 1 
 
 Chapter II — In the Halls of Sainti; Barbe 
 (1525-1529) 8 
 
 Chapter III — A Battle* for a Soul (1529-1534) 15 
 
 Chapter IV — From the Seine to the Tiber 
 and the Tagus (1534-1541) 22 
 
 Chapter V — With the Galleons of Portugal 
 (1541-1542) 28 
 
 Chapter VI — In the Venice of India (1542). 34 
 
 Chapter VII — Storm-Swept Capes and Isles 
 of Palm (1542-1549) 42 
 
 Chapter VIII — In the Land of the Rising 
 Sun ( 1549-1552) 61 
 
 Chapter IX — The Locked Gate and the Open- 
 ing Portals (1552) 74 
 
 4CG203 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This sketch of the life and character of the Apostle 
 of India and Japan, closely follows the standard lives 
 of the great missionary, that especially of Father A. 
 Brou, S.J., the monumental " Saint Frangols Xavier," 
 which combines in an admirable degree the qualities of 
 romantic interest and scholarly research. To Father 
 Brou, the writer has closely adhered, for with his 
 predecessors, Cros and Michel, this most authoritative 
 of all the historians of St. Francis Xavier has said all 
 that need be known of the " giant " of the missions. 
 But other volumes have been consulted, the " Monu- 
 menta Xaveriana" the " Life find Letters " of the Saint 
 by Father J. H. Coleridge, SJ. ; the earlier biographies, 
 the one by Bartoli especially, which is a little given to 
 exaggeration, still manages to thrill its readers with 
 its epic ring; Bouhours , life, known to English readers 
 through Dryden; the fine sketch in dear old Alban 
 Butler's " Lives of the Saints " ; the one in the first 
 volume of the " Varones Ilustres de la Compahia de 
 Jesus/' and Father Martindale's review of Xavier's 
 career in the first section of his studies of Jesuit 
 Saints, entitled "In God's Army." No writer dealing 
 with the Saints can neglect the processes of their 
 beatification and canonization : in the case of Xavier, 
 these have been faithfully consulted and followed. 
 
 Xavier was a herald of the Cross. This book lays 
 claim neither to originality, scholarship nor research. 
 It asks but one privilege. No matter how narrow a 
 circle, it would like to be the herald of the virtues of 
 this truly great man, one of the noblest heroes and 
 Saints of the Church of God. 
 
 J. C. K. 
 
St. Francis Xavier 
 
 I n kPXEB I 
 On the Hills of Navarre 
 
 (1506-1525) 
 
 IN the beginning of the sixteenth century, at the 
 dawn of that epoch when Spain was to become 
 the first power in the world, an old feudal castle 
 might be seen on the southern slope^of the western 
 Pyrenees, keeping watch like a faithful sentinel over 
 the highway that led from Upper Navarre into the 
 1 domain of Aragon. With its moat, over 
 which the drawbridge swung from its heavy chains, 
 with its wall of defense crenelated and loop- 
 holed, its four weather-beaten towers clasping in 
 their arms the home of the master, the castle 
 looked like a battle-scarred warrior on duty for 
 country and king. Over the castle itself mountain 
 and hill flung their shadows. Not far from its walls 
 ran the stream that divided Upper Navarre from 
 -on. At a short distance was the royal villa 
 of Soz, where Ferdinand the Catholic was born. 
 A few miles away under the marble pavement of the 
 monastery of Leyre, the old Kings of Navarre, " after 
 life's fitful fever " slept the sleep that knows no wak- 
 ing, and the good monks came to pray for the repose 
 heir souls. Away to the north-west frowned the 
 ramparts of Pampeluna and almost due west was the 
 little town of Sangiiessa, then famous for its monas- 
 teries and its sch< 
 
 In this old h picturesque surround- 
 
 . on the Tm Holy Week, the seventh of 
 
 i was horn t<> Dona Maria de Azpil- 
 
 ife of Don John de Jassu, Counselor to the 
 
 John d'Albret, and Lord of Xavier and Ydocin. 
 
2 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 The boy received in Baptism the name of Francis. 
 Catholics throughout the world venerate him as the 
 greatest of missionaries and apostles since the days 
 of Peter and Paul and their brethren, and call him St. 
 Francis Xavier. He was born a few weeks before 
 Columbus, the great Pathfinder, and the Discoverer of 
 the New World, died in poverty at Valladolid, as if 
 God wished that the man who bore the light of the 
 Gospel to the West should not end his earthly career 
 before a child was given to Spain who should bear the 
 message of the Cross to the remote and pagan East. 
 
 The family, in which Francis $e Jassu y Xavier 
 was the sixth child, belonged to the nobility of Na- 
 varre. It had given, on the father's side, to the ser- 
 vice of Church, country and King, magistrates of 
 irreproachable honor, learned doctors, fighting men 
 also, who, with the finest qualities of Basque, Na- 
 varrese and Spanish blood mingling in their veins, 
 were never known to turn back from a fight or betray 
 their duty. Dona Maria de Azpilcueta, the mother 
 of Francis, was a soldier's (laughter and could trace 
 back her lineage through a long pedigree of feudal 
 lords, to Duke Eridon Aznar, the common ancestor of 
 the Kings of Aragon and Navarre. 
 
 But in their fortress home of Xavier, Don John de 
 Jassu and Doiia Maria de Azpilcueta seldom thought 
 or spoke of their ancestral honors. They knew how- 
 little these honors enhanced their genuine worth, and 
 realized that it was not in them, but in themselves, in 
 their own virtues, in their own lift- and conduct that 
 they must look for their true merit and greatness. 
 
 From all that we can gather from the scanty rec- 
 ords of the childhood and boyhood of Francis, the 
 life in the grim stronghold of his race, must have 
 been one of rugged simplicity, surrounded by an 
 atmosphere of profound faith, the faith of Catholic 
 Spain in its days of glory, of loyalty to ( rod and King, 
 
ST, FRANCIS XAVIER 3 
 
 of the tenderest union between the lords and ma 
 
 and their children. There IS no country 
 in the world where children are treated with such I 
 
 n Spain. And with his brothers Michael 
 
 and John, and his Maria, Anna and Magdalena, 
 
 ome years, hut to whom he was de- 
 
 ;ly attached, the us of the future apostle 
 
 must have been ideally happy. 
 
 For the castle <>t* Xavier sheltered a truly Christian 
 
 family. The influence of the grave Don John de Jassu 
 
 and of the gentle Maria de Azpilcueta ; the example of 
 
 the fair Magdalena, who gave up her position as 
 
 in-waiting to Isabella the Catholic and became 
 
 a Poor Clare, of his sister Maria, who was to edify 
 
 the Abbey of Santa Engracia at Pampeluna by her 
 
 virtues; the priestly life and the learning of his cousin. 
 
 Doctor Don Martin de Azpilcueta, one of the most 
 
 eminent canonists of Spain ; the lessons of another 
 
 stly relative, Don Michael de Azpilcueta; the piety 
 
 and affection of his maternal aunt, Dofia Violanta, 
 
 who to the manners of a high-born Spanish matron 
 
 joined the virtues of a recluse, were slowly molding 
 
 the character of the boy. The household in which he 
 
 lived was the cradle of those heroic virtues which 
 
 later on he was to practise. The seed was planted in 
 
 those early years which produced such splendid har- 
 
 in India and Japan. 
 
 While the example of that Christian household was 
 
 molding his character, the ancestral memories and the 
 
 picturesque nature around him were helping in the 
 
 The hoy could roam through the castle and 
 
 with wondering eves upon the tapestries which 
 
 hung on it> walls, with their pictures of the deeds 
 
 : ii- ances inst the Moors, or the legends 
 
 of the Saints, or the Life of Christ. ( ►ften, no doubt, 
 
 he loitered in the armory where hung the lance and 
 
 id of the knights of a bygone age. or knelt with 
 
4 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 the faith of his young and pure heart before the 
 miraculous Crucifix which ever since the thirteenth 
 century had been preserved in the castle. Every room 
 in the old fortress had its tale, every stone and turret 
 whispered its legend of strife and war. 
 
 Out beyond the ramparts were the hills and moun- 
 tains of Navarre and they called to the son of their 
 hardy mountaineer stock. Time and again Francis 
 scaled their cliffs to track the rabbit amid the winter 
 snows, to harry the eagle's nest, to ramble with his 
 Basque playfellows by the bank of the stream that 
 brawled down the hillside, or to plunge on a drowsy 
 summer's day into the cool waters of some mountain 
 lake. We know from his own admission that he loved 
 athletic sports. Later on he humbly confessed that 
 he had taken some pride in his prowess as a runner. 
 In his misguided zeal and spirit of mortification he 
 cruelly chastised himself for what he called his youth- 
 ful vanity. The confession, however, throws not a 
 little light on the character of Francis. We have un- 
 fortunately but scant details as to his early years. 
 We know that he lived the life of the children around 
 him. We can readily picture him, as one of his biog- 
 raphers has done, intelligent, docile, singularly at- 
 tractive in speech, form and manners, a lively boy, 
 fond of exercise, skilful at running and jumping, a 
 splendid hand at a game of pelota, the national sport, 
 and not a little eager for the victory and the prize, and 
 in childhood, as in youth, with an instinctive love of 
 that virtue of purity which he preserved, we are told, 
 unsullied to the grave. 
 
 We can imagine the frame of the picture. We can- 
 not supply the details. Documents on this point are 
 so far missing. Of the First Communion of Francis 
 Kavier, one of the most fervent lovers of the Sacra 
 nient of the Altar, we know nothing. No details 
 are given us of his early education, of his first intro- 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 5 
 
 duction to the world of books and science and those 
 
 scholastic pursuits in which later on, at Paris, he 
 
 ■ shine. Don John de Jassu and Doha Maria 
 
 >ubt taught him his letters. Bui was it at Pampe- 
 
 luna, was it at Sangiiessa that he received the further 
 rudiments of learning? It is impossible 1 One 
 
 thing, however, is certain. The faith, the piety, the 
 fed simplicity of his father's house, his father's 
 integrity, his mother's gentleness and piety, 
 the daily Mass, the example of his beloved Magda- 
 ■hanging the splendors of a court for the pov- 
 erty of the brides of Christ, were the best teachers 
 of the bov Francis. Such lessons are the best train- 
 ers of youth. No masters can take their place. 
 
 Sorrow came to complete the work. On the fif- 
 teenth of June, 1515, the father of our Saint saw 
 the rights of the old Kings of Navarre transferred 
 to the Sovereigns of Spain, and the little realm of 
 which he was one of the staunchest defenders officially 
 annexed to the territory of the Spanish monarch. It 
 a blow for the heart of that stern lover of justice, 
 Don John de Jassu, which he did not long survive. 
 lie died broken-hearted on the sixteenth of October 
 the same year, dints orphaned of his father, 
 Francis was to feel what was perhaps a still more cruel 
 For when in an effort to restore to the throne 
 their former eigns, the Navarrese raised the 
 
 standard of revoll and a devoted band held out against 
 a Spanish troop in Azpilcueta, his mother's ancestral 
 home, that stern monk statesman. Cardinal Ximenes, 
 red the fortresses of Navarre i<» be leveled to the 
 pilcueta was among the first to fall. The 
 le of Xavier could not Ion- escape. So all that 
 military value to the stronghold was destroyed. 
 The rampari dismantled, the iron-spiked gate 
 
 of the drawbridge thrown down, three of the towers 
 were demolished. All that remained of the fortress 
 
6 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 was the house proper. Even that, through plunder 
 and neglect, was shorn of nearly all its rugged splen- 
 dor. Francis was eleven years old when the romance 
 and story of the House of Xavier seemed thus about 
 to close with this tragic end. The loneliness of his 
 mother, widowed of the support of the prudent hus- 
 band, the misfortunes which befell his brothers, 
 Michael and John, who still fought for the rights of 
 their deposed sovereigns, their exile from the halls 
 of their fathers, the poverty and suffering of his 
 family an;d kindred, borne by all with Spanish and 
 Christian fortitude, made a deep impression on the 
 boy's heart. They taught him already, no doubt, a 
 lesson he was soon to learn in a more lasting and abid- 
 ing form from the lips of a countryman in Paris, that 
 earthly grandeur is but vanity and dross. They made 
 him realize that, no matter what were his own ambi- 
 tions, he had now but one duty. He must help to 
 rebuild the shattered fortunes of his house. He must 
 help Dona Maria de Azpilcueta, the mother he ten- 
 derly loved, and become her prop and stay. When 
 his brothers returnqd from the turmoil of civil war to 
 I astle Xavier, Francis was in his eighteenth year. 
 In 1525 we find him acting as agent for his mother 
 in some real-estate transaction, and among the wit- 
 nesses to the deed we find a carpenter and a black- 
 smith. Francis was not ashamed of the commonest 
 tasks when duty pointed the way. In better times the 
 chatelaine of Xavier would have hired a notary for 
 the transaction. 
 
 The day, however, was coming when he must choose 
 his vocation in life. His brothers pointed out the career 
 of arms. His father's record on the bench and in the 
 magistracy led him to dream of civil honors in the 
 ice of his country. But in spile of war and rumors 
 of war and hopes of civic rewards, Francis had ever in 
 his heart dreamt of the glory with which philosophy 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIEE 7 
 
 n their on a mornin 
 
 tembcr, I -il to his mother and 
 
 home, neither of which he was ever again 
 
 \t the g of the COSQ he knelt for his 
 
 lie then mounted his sure-footed 
 
 Spanish mule and. not without a tear as he gazed for 
 
 the last time on his mother's face, hut with heart un- 
 
 his purpose and his eyes to the north. A 
 
 rut later he had disappeared behind a shoulder of 
 
 the hills. He was on his way to Paris to complete his 
 
 lies in what was then the greatest university in the 
 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 In the Halls of Sainte Barbe 
 
 (1525-1529) 
 
 WHEN Xavier reached Paris in the fall of 1525, 
 its university had lost much of its former glory, 
 but it could still claim that it surpassed all its 
 sister universities. Between 3000 and 4000 students 
 crowded its halls. The students' quarter was on the 
 left bank of the Seine, between the river and the old 
 walls of King Philip Augustus. It was a labyrinth of 
 lodging-houses and taverns and bookstalls, of schools 
 and churches and hospitals, of cookshops and tennis 
 courts and burying grounds and gardens and jails. The 
 students formed a world apart from the life of the city. 
 They had their own laws and courts, their own police 
 and bailiffs, all kept busy trying to keep pace among 
 the quarrelsome citizens of this miniature republic. 
 For, as they were divided into " nations " arbitrarily 
 selected, such as France, Picardy, Normandy, Ger- 
 many, brawls Were incessant, brawls which sometimes 
 wound up in a mimic civil war. Then the city guard 
 had to be called out, pikes were leveled, rapiers drawn, 
 the arquebus smoked and thundered down the dingy 
 alleys, and a guard or freshman lay wounded or dead 
 on the cobbled highway. 
 
 The teaching, to which formerly a vast public assem- 
 bled in open spaces, had now retired to the privacy of 
 about fifty " colleges " or "halls," grouped together, 
 and linked by galleries, cloisters or hidden byways. 
 There were various degrees among the pupils. There 
 were bursars, who received tuition and everything else 
 free; " cameristes," who were boarded gratis but bad 
 to provide their own food, and " cameristes portion 
 nistes," who paid for tuition and board. Xavier was 
 registered among these last. He hired for his service 
 one of his fellow-students of the class known as " mar 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER 9 
 
 tinets," who paid their way through college by attend- 
 on their companions. The man was a \a\ar 
 id, who proved to be an unfit associate 
 the high-minded Maria de Azpilcueta. The 
 
 name of the now student was enrolled among thos< 
 
 ' rench " Nation." Francis had i<>v classmates lads 
 from France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, with a sprinkling 
 ouths from Egypt, Armenia and Persia. The col- 
 lege hech Sainte Barbi, then frequented 
 I nun Portugal and Spain. The Rector of 
 the University was a Portuguese, James de Govea, a 
 man of upright life, a theologian of unusual gifts, stern, 
 impulsive, but generous and willing to aeknowledge 
 that he could be mistaken and sincere enough to try 
 and repair a blunder. He had besides the gift of the 
 true teacher. He knew how to arouse enthusiasm in 
 the hearts of his pupils. 
 
 The first scholastic year which Francis passed at 
 the university (1525-1526) was spent in completing 
 his literary studies. If the motley student-body by 
 their lack of discipline, their unruly and at times 
 riotous manners, their freedom, or rather, license, of 
 ch, the coars of their pleasures, presented 
 
 no little danger to the new freshman, not a little 
 peril was also to be found in some, even of the pro- 
 ne were infected with the pagan spirit 
 which followed the revival of learning known as the 
 Ren; That movement in its better elements 
 
 found encouragement from the Church. Among its 
 ' eminent re bishops, 
 
 •nals and pope-. Popes like Nicholas V, Pius II 
 ■ it their patronage. Unfortunatelv 
 some of the mo ed men of the Renaissance 
 
 up a pagan code of morals, 
 and lived more like cultured pa| Athens and 
 
 Rome than followers of the Cross. Though funda- 
 mentally firm in the dogmas and t< s of the 
 
to ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 Church, the University of Paris had among its pro- 
 fessors and its pupils men of little or no belief in the 
 supernatural or the Divine mission of the^Church, 
 men of the lowest standards of personal conduct and 
 life. 
 
 At the same time Lutheranism had crossed the 
 Rhine and infected the schools of Paris. It was not 
 as yet powerful enough to make allies of the French 
 monarch s or to undermine the traditional and still 
 deeply cherished beliefs of the French people. But 
 it had set up its tortuous propaganda, and was working 
 in the dark. Against these evil influences Xavier had 
 to be on guard. Besides these, the young man's am- 
 bitions, the passions of a warm-blooded son of the 
 South, were stirring in his soul. It would be to 
 paint a false picture of the future apostle to repre- 
 sent him as free from the temptations, even the 
 coarsest, that beset the path of youth. The Saints 
 do not rise to the heights of virtue because they do 
 not feel in their hearts the stirring of the sinful in- 
 clinations of humanity, but because they rise superior 
 through watchfulness, mortification and self-control 
 to the allurements of sin, and especially of pride and 
 sensuality. 
 
 The young Navarrese was exposed to great dangers. 
 He was practically friendless and alone in the Siren 
 City whose alluring call has enticed so many to their 
 ruin. From the sanctuary of his ancestral home he 
 had brought to Paris a sturdy frame, an athlete's 
 strength, and, by the grace of God and the protection 
 of that Heavenly Queen to whom his mother had 
 taught him to pray, a pure heart. As at Xavier, he 
 excelled as a runner and athlete' at the University. 
 His manners were fascinating, a fact witnessed to at 
 every stage of his life. To know him was to love 
 him. He was generous with his purse, and, though a 
 poor scholar, had probably a little more to spend than 
 
FRANCIS X WIKk n 
 
 the lean and unscrupulous undergraduates who 
 
 crowded the fifty halls of learning clustered round 
 Sainte-J.arbe. There was much drinking and gam- 
 bling and carousing. ( hie master- at least was not 
 ashamed to lead his pupils to the worst excesses in 
 which honor and health, and the last threadbare rem- 
 nants of decency and self-respect, were thrown away. 
 
 We know from a statement made in India by Fran- 
 cis and found in the " Sclectac Indiarum Epistolae," 
 that it was only by a special protection of God that 
 he was saved from physical and spiritual ruin. Time 
 and again temptation was purposely flung in his way. 
 But in the ancestral casa, Maria de Azpilcueta, his 
 mother, and in her cloister, that beloved sister, Mag- 
 dalena, were praying for him. Xavier was saved. He 
 shrank in horror at the degradation which he wit- 
 nessed, but by which he was never tainted, and when 
 the unfaithful master died a victim to his excesses. 
 Providence sent him, in the person of a Spanish pro- 
 fessor at the University, John de Pena, a friend whose 
 prudence and piety won the heart of the young stu- 
 dent. Xavier was then in his twenty-second year. 
 
 In the fall of 1526, Francis, having finished his 
 literary studies, had begun the course of philosophy. 
 In the Lent of 1529 he must have gone up for his ex- 
 amination, the one technically known as " determi- 
 nance." lie met the ordeal successfully. Henceforth 
 he could style himself a bachelor of arts and had the 
 right to teach certain elementary branches. In 1530 
 he was a Licentiate of Philosophy. The diploma he 
 then received gave him the right to teach' the arts, 
 sciences and philosophy at Paris and at any other place 
 of his choosing. A last formality had to be gone 
 through. The new master had to receive his master's 
 cap. We do not know the precise date when Xavier 
 had the honor conferred upon him. But we know that 
 1 after undergoing the examination for his Licen- 
 
T2 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 tiate's degree, Master Francis Xavier was admitted as 
 a professor of philosophy in one of the university 
 colleges, that of Dormans-Beauvais. 
 
 We like to picture the Saints eminent in all things, 
 endowed with every gift of mind, heart and soul. But 
 Go;d cioes not always thus dower even His best friends. 
 He gives them the qualities they need for their work, 
 and these in generous measure. Other gifts He may 
 bestow or withdraw. That Xavier had intellectual 
 endowments beyond the ordinary, his course at the 
 university goes far to show. But his letters and the 
 few notes we have from his pen do not give any 
 striking evidence of literary or artistic skill. He was 
 too busy about great enterprises, too earnest about 
 the salvation of souls to pay much attention to the 
 artifices of style. But that he was a keen logician, a 
 splendid debater — that he could confute the ablest of 
 the sophists among the Brahmins and the Bonzes of the 
 East, is evident from every testimony left to us by 
 eye-witnesses and contemporaries of his missionary 
 days in India and Japan. The missionary was mightily 
 assisted in the defense of the mysteries he taught 
 by the lessons of that Catholic philosophy which he 
 learnt and afterwards imparted in the University of 
 Paris. Of the teaching of Xavier we know little. Yet 
 it is evident that the heart of the young doctor was set 
 on making his name and winning his laurels. But only 
 faint echoes of the fame he won have come down to 
 us. But it was not as a searcher after truth, as a stu- 
 dent of abstruse problems that God had marked out 
 his career. He was to be essentially a man of action, 
 a doer of deeds. 
 
 God was slowly preparing him for the task. When 
 in 1530 Xavier went up for his Licentiate's degree, 
 Pierre le Fevre, his room-mate and fellow-student at 
 Sainte-Barbe, was facing the same test. To the casual 
 observer it would seem as if chance alone had thrown 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 13 
 
 tliese two men together. But God, who was watching 
 over the young teacher, had sent Pierre le Fevre to 
 be his angel guardian and friend. Pierre was the 
 
 son of a poor Savoyard peasant. As a child he had 
 watched on the slopes of the Alps over his father's 
 flock. From childhood he had shown a character 
 
 [ordinarily gentle and winsome, an intellect of 
 rare penetration, a piety of the most solid yet attractive 
 kind. In a moment of special inspiration he had made 
 a vow of chastity while following the trail of his sheep 
 on the rocky hillside. The purity of his soul shone 
 on his face. At Paris as in his native hamlet he in- 
 spired respect and love, lie radiated goodness and 
 holim 
 
 The Savoyard peasant, keen of intellect, distin- 
 guished already as a Greek scholar and for his knowl- 
 edge of Aristotle, was the friend needed by the young 
 Xavarrese hidalgo. One of those strong and tender 
 friendships sprang up between them such as the Saints 
 know, which was to bind them with cords which 
 death alone was to sever. In his admirable " Memo- 
 rial," a brief record of his spiritual experiences, Le 
 Fevre blesses the hour when he had for a master John 
 de Pefia and for a friend and companion, Master 
 Francis Xavier, And Xavier, far away from the 
 friend of his university days, will take him for his 
 protector on his journeys in the East, and when he 
 learns of his death will pray to the blessed soul 
 Pierre le Fevre. 
 
 In July, 1529, a courier came to Xavier from his 
 native hills. Maria de Azpilcueta had gone to receive 
 her reward for a life of singular fidelity to the highest 
 ideals of a Christian mother and wife. Xavier had 
 been tenderly devoted to his mother. He mourned 
 her loss. But another messenger sent especially for 
 Xavier's soul had also come from Spain. For in the 
 
 ruary of [528 a Spanish scholar, swarthy of fea- 
 
i 4 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 lures, with a slight limp, meanly clad, but evidently 
 of gentle birth, reserved of speech, but with a flash 
 in his eyes that told of a high purpose and an indom- 
 itable will, had registered as an extern at the College 
 de Montaigu. The name then entered on the college 
 roster was to become famous in the history of the 
 world and of the Church of God. The stranger had 
 been a courtier, a poet, a friend of princes, a gay 
 cavalier. Dreams of ambition and of love had come 
 to him. He had loved the world. The world had 
 flattered him and thrown him its laurels. The laurels 
 had soon faded, even the laurels of the soldier and 
 the hero. On the walls of Pampeluna, which he had 
 gallantly but vainly tried to save, he had fallen 
 grievously wounded. God had smitten him down as 
 of old he had done to Paul on the road to Damascus. 
 It was Don Ignatius de Loyola, the soldier-pilgrim, 
 the author of the " Spiritual Exercises/' the Founder 
 of the Society of Jesus, the instrument chosen by 
 Providence to win over the soul of Xavier finally and 
 unreservedly to the service of God. 
 
 On the opening of schools in 1529, Le Fevre tells 
 us in his " Memorial," Ignatius was quartered at 
 Sainte-Barbe and shared the room of Xavier and his 
 friend. In His own sweet designs God was beginning 
 to waylay the soul of the Navarrese gentleman. For 
 it does not seem that at first Xavier was much attracted 
 to the rather shabby student, although he was forced 
 to acknowledge that the newxomer thoroughly under- 
 stood the world and its ways. But all those who lived 
 with- Ignatius unanimously tell us that it was well- 
 nigh impossible to resist the fascination of his speech 
 and manners, his relentless logic, his calm yet fiery 
 soul, his practical sense, his knightly enthusiasm, his 
 extraordinary sanctity. 
 
CHAPTER HI 
 
 \ Battle for a Soul 
 
 A RANGE duel then took place between [gna- 
 tius and Xavier, a hat tic for a soul. There are 
 dramas like such a contest. Did [gnatius 
 
 clearly what was at stake? Did he realize that 
 
 ier left to his worldly views meant a great soul 
 
 1 k)d, thousands of souls lost to Christ? By 
 
 Divine inspiration, did he realize that the soul 
 
 ivarrese doctor absolutely dedicated to Christ, 
 
 meant the lessons of the Gospel carried to India and 
 
 Hi and the East? We cannot tell. But he felt 
 
 that the soul of Xavier was worth fighting for. He 
 
 must win and conquer it. And slowly the battle was 
 
 g won. With that keen and practical psycho- 
 
 al insight which was one of his greatest gifts, 
 
 1 the character of his companion. Xavier 
 
 above the coarser temptations of youth. But he 
 
 ambitious. He dreamt of success and fame. 
 
 atius had himself felt the stings of ambition, 
 
 " that last infirmity of noble mind." The hollowness 
 
 arth's baubles he had tested. But he saw that 
 
 there was an ambition whose dreams would not de- 
 
 e, whose pursuit would not debase, and whose re- 
 
 tisfy the heart of its votary. If men 
 
 I he ambitious for the perishable things of earth. 
 
 why should they not labor for the things of eternity? 
 
 The ambitious dreams of Xavier therefore must not 
 
 ; they must he directed to substance and 
 
 lity. 
 
 tomist that he was. Ignatius applied the 
 
 scalpel of truth very gently at first to the spiritual 
 
 wounds of his compai rancis was not averse to 
 
 found plenty of occasions from the 
 
 ccognize his 
 
 15 
 
16 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 merit. Francis was ever free with his purse; his 
 generosity soon emptied it. Ignatius, poor himself 
 but not without some rich and generous friends, man- 
 aged to help his fellow-student so delicately and with 
 such tact that Francis could not refuse to accept 
 his alms. Ignatius later on seized the occasion to 
 remind him that wealth and honors were fleeting, that 
 there was something nobler in life than to grasp at 
 shadows and to seek for that which cannot satisfy 
 the soul. Then, with that (deep conviction which was 
 the fruit of his own grasp of the realities of time 
 and eternity, he spoke the one golden sentence which 
 has all of time and eternity in its narrow compass and 
 which was to change the heart of his listener : " For 
 what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, 
 and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what ex- 
 change shall a man give for his soul ? " Simple words, 
 commonplace at first to the young Navarrese. So little 
 then did Xavier heed them that when in 1531 Ignatius 
 was most insistent in repeating them, the scion of the 
 Jassus was busy in having his titles of nobility verified. 
 Yet the words had, little by little, sunk into the 
 heart of the promising university professor. Again 
 and again they came to his mind. They began to 
 sound like a great bell in his soul. He could not shake* 
 off their salutary spell. Ignatius was praying, watch- 
 ing, warding off every possible danger from this 
 chosen soul which he felt had been entrusted to him. 
 A skilled duelist, he was slowly beating down his op- 
 ponent's guard. He gently warned Xavier against the 
 danger of certain heretical teachings then in vogue in 
 the university, for in 1531 Calvin was at the College 
 de Fortet, almost next door to Sainte-Barbe, and men 
 whose orthodoxy was not above suspicion, like Nich- 
 olas Kop and Maturin Cordier, had about that time 
 passed at Sainte-liarbe itself. The danger was not 
 an imaginary one, for we find Xavier (" Monumenta 
 
FR VNCIS XAVIER 17 
 
 riana," \ thanking God that through M 
 
 tius he had been saved from it. And while 
 praying, Magdalena, the belov* 
 
 and the companion of Xavier's boyhood, now AW 
 of tl ndia, after a life of sanctity, 
 
 rom an illness in which every nerve 
 d with pain. One of her nuns had been seized 
 with a mortal sickness. The Abbess asked to die in 
 1. She sacrified her life, it was said, for 
 Xavier's soul. The sacrifice must have weighed h< 
 ily in the scales of God, Magdalena died Januarx 
 
 In that year Don Ignatius de Loyola, the 
 -(tidier of Pampeluna, won. the noblest, perhaps, of his 
 1 »attle-. Converted at last by that one magic pip 
 which ever sounded in his ear, " For what doth it profit 
 ? " Xavier surrendered at last and gave him- 
 self entirely, unreservedly to Ignatius and to God. 
 
 When in the beginning of [534 Pierre le Fevre, 
 
 who before leaving the world had gone to receive his 
 
 father's blessing, returned to Paris, he found Francis 
 
 a changed man. lie understood the miracle of grace 
 
 h had been wrought. It was so complete that 
 
 both he and Ignatius had now to check the ardors 
 
 of the new convert. In his works of penance, in his 
 
 vigils and in h . in his zeal and humility, 
 
 going almost to extremes. He wished 
 
 there and then to give tip his j hair and 
 
 rom the world. Ignatius hade him wait. He 
 
 had other plans which he wished that he and his 
 
 nds should slowly and deliberately mature. 
 
 they went about the halls of the unive tudy- 
 
 • Ignatius, coaching and lecturing, 
 
 and Xavier. But their 
 
 hearts were set on higher things. Though they wisely 
 
 10 them hey could not entirely 
 
 under the bushel the light of their example and 
 
 holiness. Ignatius and his friends gradually saw a 
 
i8 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 little band of followers join their company. They 
 were Nicholas Bobadilla, James Laynez, Alphonsus 
 Salmeron, Spaniards, and Simon Rodriguez, a Portu- 
 guese, all university men, Laynez and Salmeron, the 
 latter of whom was only 18, men of extraordinary tal- 
 ents, who as theologians were destined to play an im- 
 portant part at the Council of Trent and in the Cath- 
 olic movement against the Reformation. 
 
 To these chosen souls Ignatius disclosed his plans. 
 Perhaps even in his mind they were not as yet en- 
 tirely clear. The idea of founding a new Religious 
 Order does not seem at first to have presented itself 
 very definitely to the mind of the soldier of Pampe- 
 luna. He wished first of all their personal sancti- 
 flcation and then would urge them to labor for 
 the salvation and perfection of their neighbor. He 
 laid before them the principles of the Christian and 
 the spiritual life. In that life God was to be su- 
 preme. He was to be loved and served above all 
 things. For man was created to know, love and 
 serve God and thus save his soul. Created objects 
 were given to man as stepping stones to ascend to 
 God. They were to be used to help man in the fur- 
 therance of the service of God. Man should use them 
 when they helped him for that end ; he should abstain 
 from their use when they hindered him in the prose- 
 cution of that end. Men were to detach themselves 
 from inordinate love of created objects. They were 
 not to set their hearts on riches, or honors, on place or 
 fame, or pleasure. What did reason, what did Reve- 
 lation say? That was the only standard. They were 
 to look to one thing alone: what is it that furthers 
 God's purpose in life, what is it that hinders it, and 
 act accord ingly. 
 
 The men who listened to Ignatius could not escape 
 the relentless logic of such a principle. Bill they 
 saw that it had its grandeur, and that, rightly under- 
 
FRANCIS XAVIEK 19 
 
 ractical application to life gave to life 
 and life's purposes true dignity and worth, brought 
 • d happiness into the soul. The companions 
 of Ignatius were trained in logic and every branch 
 hilosophy. They sought for a loophole of escape 
 from the iron ring of those premises and conclu- 
 5, which they had heard before, but never so 
 ■ly realized. There was none. Then Ignatius laid 
 re them the nature, the punishments, the hid- 
 of sin. He described the fall of the Angels, 
 unlocked the gates of hell. In a wonderful series of 
 pictures he sketched the life, the death, the resurrec- 
 of Christ. He pointed to Him as their Captain, 
 their King, their Model and Guide. He depicted the 
 trials, the hardships of the Kingdom of Christ, showed 
 them two standards, the standard of Christ and tin- 
 standard of Satan. He laid bare the wiles of the 
 arch-enemy of mankind, showed them Christ the Lord 
 of Glory embracing poverty, contempt, suffering and 
 death to save fallen man. He told them what they 
 already knew, that enemies were making inroads on 
 the Kingdom of Christ. In Europe there was revolt 
 In Asia and across the western seas there 
 were millions to whom its standard and its lessons 
 had never been borne. Might they not become by 
 their poverty, their contempt of the false maxims of 
 rid, their lives of mortification, their zeal, 
 while extending the Kingdom of Christ in their own 
 Is, the instrument- to enlarge its borders in the 
 round them? For that they must deny them- 
 he Cross, conquer their passions, rule 
 and mortify their hearts, be other Chi : 
 
 \avier must have list such a program! 
 
 It was the plan, so simple, E 
 
 faultless of the book Ignatius had written in 
 
 after his conversion. That book, 
 many souls to 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 God as it contains letters. It opened to Xavier vistas 
 he had never dreamt of. He. would yet do great things, 
 but not for self. There was, then a field for his am- 
 bitions in which he might without fear give them full 
 play. There were kingdoms to conquer, there was 
 a stupendous battle to be waged, a prize to be won. 
 His heart caught the flame and the enthusiasm of his 
 master. Away now dreams of earthly success and 
 pomp and human love ! Depart visions of power and 
 triumph ! Welcome pang and poverty and suffering, 
 and loneliness and shame and heart-agony and death, 
 for souls, for Christ! 
 
 Ignatius easily won his companions to his plan. 
 They were first to make together the three ordinary 
 vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, with a spe- 
 cial vow of obedience to the Pope. They were then 
 to go to Venice and try to make a pilgrimage thence 
 to Jerusalem, and if within a reasonable time they 
 found this part of the program impracticable, they 
 were to go to Rome and place themselves at the dis- 
 position of the Sovereign Pontiff. Meanwhile they 
 were to continue their scholastic duties at the 
 university. 
 
 On August 15, 1534, an historic scene took place in 
 the crypt of the Church of Notre Dame de Mont- 
 mart re, on the spot where legend tells us St. Denis 
 suffered martyrdom for the Faith. The ceremony was 
 a simple one, but it was destined to be productive of 
 far-reaching and long-enduring results. Le Fevre, who 
 had been ordained priest a few months before, tells 
 us a part at least of the story : 
 
 In that same year, on the Feast of the Assumption oi the 
 Most Blessed Virgin, all those among us who then shared 
 the designs of Ignatius, and who had already made the Spirit- 
 ual Exercises, except Master Xavier, who had not yet made 
 them, went to Notre Dame de Montmartre, and there we 
 took a vow to serve God, and to start on the appointed day 
 for Jerusalem, and to abandon kinsfolk and everything else 
 
 * 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER 21 
 
 ntied 
 
 the r< our return from the Holy Land, 
 
 If ourselv. the obedi< the Roman Pontiff. 
 
 at this fir-t meeting were [gnatius, 
 
 ivier, then I blaster Bobadilla, 
 
 Master Laynez, Master Salmeron, Master Simon Rodriguez. 
 
 From an account left us b) the last-named, Simon 
 Rodriguez, we learn that Le Fevre said the M 
 Before giving the Holy Eucharist to his companions 
 the Sacred Host in his hands and turned to- 
 ts them. 'Then/' says Rodriguez, "with their 
 rts fixed on God, kneeling on the pavement of the 
 chapel, all, without leaving their places, pronounced 
 their VOWS in a clear voice ><> as to he heard by all, 
 then they communicated." Le Fevre then returned 
 to the altar, pronpunced his vows like the others and 
 communicated. When all was over, adds Rodriguez, 
 they went to the fountain of St. Denis to Spend the 
 there. The memories of the simple but noble 
 mony and of the holy joys he then experienced 
 left a life-long impression on the heart of Xavier. 
 
 A few days after he began the Spiritual Exercises. 
 He entered upon them as a convert to grace. He 
 came from his thirty days of solitude and communings 
 with God a hero and a saint. Two years more 
 
 i in the lecture hall. Me then made a last sacri- 
 
 I resigned a canon r\ to which he had been 
 
 tive province. The time was at hand 
 
 when he and his companions were to start on their 
 
 piou> < ' to be in Venice in the 
 
 Jane In the November of the preceding 
 
 yea- '11 to the halls he loved and 
 
 who will haunt him in the Far East. He 
 
 in his thirtieth \ 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 From the Seine to the Tiber and the Tagus 
 
 (1534-1541) 
 
 WAR had broken out between Francis I and 
 Charles V. For Xavier and his Spanish com- 
 panions the journey would be under any cir- 
 cumstance a painful one, for they were traveling like 
 poor scholars, on foot, with scanty provisions and 
 without protection. They decided, in order to avoid 
 the armies of France and the Emperor, to pass through 
 the neutral territories of Alsace-Lorraine, the Rhine- 
 land and the Tyrol. Simon Rodriguez has left us a 
 brief account of this journey. For fifty days they 
 struggled through lonely villages, amidst the rain, the 
 snows and ice of winter, their beads slung like a 
 baldric over their shoulders, reciting the rosary and 
 the Psalms, speaking to the poor they met, and among 
 themselves, of God and His love, and of holy things. 
 Sometimes children, old men and women ran out to 
 kiss their hands and their rosaries. At other times they 
 were rudely spoken to or ridiculed. They trudged on, 
 however, God, says Rodriguez, visibly protecting theta. 
 Xavier was serving his apprenticeship for the hard- 
 ships to come. On January 8, 1537, they were in Venice 
 of the hundred isles. Ignatius was awaiting them. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief divided his forces. He 
 had but a handful of men under his command. These 
 were to work for souls, for the poor, the outcast, the 
 sinner. Le Fevre and Xavier were assigned to the 
 hospital of the incurables. Xavier's soul now began 
 to reveal its true nobility. The proujd Navarrese had 
 little Italian and even the children laughed at his 
 blunders. But he spoke to them of God, of I lis Blessed 
 Mother, of sin and its punishments, of the Passion of 
 Christ, of the splendors of Holy Mass. He had been 
 dainty in his tastes. 1 le now swept out the hospital 
 
 22 
 
FRANCIS XAVIEK 23 
 
 ed the sores and the ulcers of the 
 
 tendance upon a poor leper such 
 
 Mi) as would cause US horror and dlS§ 
 did not I of faith discern in them the sublin 
 
 charity and the Divine folly of self-abasement and 
 
 But Venice was only a training-camp for his 
 
 soldiers. Ignatius hade them strike their tents, no 
 
 difficult task, for they slept at times under the open 
 
 sky. He and his companions remembered their vow: 
 
 must go to Rome and kneel at the feet of the 
 
 ir o\ Christ. In the spring of [537 they were in 
 
 Eternal City. As at Venice they had scarcely 
 
 ed at the splendors of the city of the Doges, so 
 
 Rome they closed their eves to the grandeur and 
 
 the pomp of the City of the Seven Hills. They had 
 
 not come as artists or dilettanti, but as apostles, cate- 
 
 chists, the servants of the poor. Pope Paul III re- 
 
 ed them kindly, heard them discuss question 
 philosophy and theology, frankly expressed his ad- 
 miration for their talents, blessed their undertaking, 
 them full authorization to pass over to Jerusalem, 
 but 1 nous doubts as to the success of this 
 
 intended pilgrimage. The Pope was right, for Venice 
 ; ir point of declaring war against the Turks 
 and thus blocking the sea-. Ignatius bade them return 
 ;<> Venice. In May of that same year they were hack 
 on the al times on the 
 
 \avier had dreamt that he carried an 
 ;n on his shoulders and that it was a heavy bur 
 
 : tell how heavy it was. But Xavier's 
 I 
 In that m\ - bowed Xavier, dii 
 
 what the future had in >r him. 
 
 n the shoulders of 
 
 St. John the 
 ►rdained priest. Some time after. 
 
24 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 he said his first Mass at Vicenza. At the altar, when 
 he held his God in his trembling hands, he could not 
 restrain the tears of joy that welled up from the 
 depths of his soul. His face seemed radiant with the 
 light of another world. So transformed did his whole 
 person appear, that according to Tursellini, his biog- 
 rapher, the assistants, joining their tears to his, could 
 not but feel, not only that he believed in the presence 
 of his Lord in his hands, but that he contemplated with 
 his very eyes the hidden reality of the sacred mystery. 
 -In India, in Japan, on the decks of the merchant-ship 
 and the man-of-war, in the hovels of the poor, the 
 Holy Mass will ever be for him the source of his 
 strength, the reward of his toil. At night after the 
 day's hardships and sufTering, he will often rest his 
 head on the steps of the altar at the feet of his Sacra- 
 mental God. 
 
 Now a priest, Xavier throws himself with all the 
 ardor of his soul into the work of preaching, hearing 
 confessions, visiting the sick and the prisoners. In 
 spite of his robust health he falls sick at Bassano. But 
 Rodriguez- tells us that St. Jerome, a Saint dear to 
 Xavier and a patron of his house, came to his aid, 
 cured him, and told him that he would soon be at 
 Bologna and greatly suffer there. Winter came and 
 the words of the heavenly visitor were verified. 
 Bologna listened with admiration to the preaching of 
 this new apostle whose broken Italian was sprinkled 
 with bits of Spanish and French, but the eloquence of 
 whose words and the angelic beauty of whose life no 
 one could resist. On the streets, in the courtyards of 
 the university, in church, jail and chapel, throngs 
 gathered to hear him. Crowds flocked to see him say 
 Mass, during which he fell at times into an ecstasy of 
 adoration and love. Again he fell seriously ill, but in 
 spite of his deadly weakness, he continued his labors. 
 As the year had passed without the chance of the ful- 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 25 
 
 hlmcni of the vow to go to Jerusalem, under orders 
 from his father and captain Ignatius. Xavier returned 
 to Koine. It was about Easter time, [538. 
 
 Again the same apostolic labors, the same works of 
 indefatigable charity and zeal. And as Ignatius was 
 now definitely organizing the Society of Jesus and 
 giving the final draft to its constitutions, Xavier was 
 long with his Chief and his brethren in friendly con- 
 clave to settle all things for the greater glory of God 
 and the good of souls. The Sovereign Pontiff soon 
 after approved the Society of Jesus thus admitting it 
 into the official family of those great Orders which 
 under such glorious leaders as Dominic, Benedict and 
 Francis, had done wonderful things for the good of 
 humanity and the glory of the Church. 
 
 But Ignatius had been in conference with others 
 les his brethren. He had been visited by Don 
 Pedro de Mascarenhas, Ambassador to Rome of John 
 III. King of Portugal, who had made a startling re- 
 quest to him in the name of his royal master. The 
 request had been borne also to Pope Paul HI. The 
 King of Portugal was anxious to carry on the work 
 of Vasco de Gama and Albuquerque for the evangel- 
 ization of the vast Portuguese colonies in the East. 
 There were millions in (ioa, along the western shores 
 of India, in the Spice Islands, in Malacca, in Ceylon, 
 who had never heard of Christ and His Gospel. The 
 Ik-Ids were white for the harvest. Whole nations 
 weir sunk in the darkness and degradation of pagan- 
 ism. There were blind eyes trying to pierce the dark- 
 e -hackled hands stretched forth for 
 a deliverer. Priests, apostle needed. Would 
 
 [gnatius give King John the laborers for the harvest? 
 
 It was an appeal which the heart of Ignatius could 
 understand. ( iod was opening up a held for his zeal 
 which he had ever been anxious to till. He would 
 detail one or two of his sons to go to India. He laid 
 
26 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 the plan before the Pope. It was heartily commended 
 and approved. Rodriguez and Bobadilla would be 
 detached for this glorious service. Quickly Rodriguez, 
 who eventually did not sail for the Portuguese domin- 
 ions in the East, started for Lisbon. But Bobadilla fell 
 dangerously ill. A substitute must be found. Ignatius 
 prayed, never so fervently, never so bravely. He fore- 
 saw the coming blow. He knew he would have to 
 sacrifice his beloved Xavier. He summoned that dear 
 friend. The plan was laid before him. Would he go? 
 Xavier understood. It was his dream coming true. It 
 was the call of God. Gaily, brave Spanish cavalier and 
 knight of the Cross that he w T as, the words flashed to 
 his smiling lips in the old Spanish tongue : " Pues, sus, 
 heme aqui J ": Forward! Here I am. 
 
 The next day, March 16, 1540, for the last time 
 Xavier knelt at the feet of his master and friend to 
 receive his parting blessing. They were never to see 
 each other again, but their souls were linked together 
 like the souls of David and Jonathan. Literally almost 
 without purse or scrip, Xavier set out for Portugal in 
 the suite of Mascarenhas, denying himself the comforts 
 and conveniences which the ambassador vainly tried to 
 make him share with his company. The journey car- 
 ried him to the shrine of Our Lady of Loretto, then 
 through Bologna where he was hailed as a saint by his 
 old friends, who would scarcely let him go, on by 
 Modena and Parma, through the Piedmontese terri- 
 tory, over the Alps and Pyrenees, down finally through 
 the Spanish provinces. Towards the middle of June 
 he was in the city by the Tagus. He had to wait in 
 Lisbon until the spring of the following year for the 
 departure of the India fleet. He prepared for the day 
 for which he longed by penance and prayer, by preach- 
 ing to the king and court, by the same life of penance, 
 charity, zeal, which he had led in Bologna and in 
 Koine. Shortly before he sailed, Paul HI by a special 
 
FRANCIS KAVIER 
 
 ; nominated him his Apostolic Nuncio with all the 
 
 • f that office. Master Francis 
 
 fficial envoy to David, King of 
 
 Ethiopia, to the lords and m the isles of the 
 
 Red Sea. to the nations of the East. There was one 
 title he prized still more. He was to he the messenger 
 Ivation and the herald of the 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 With the Galleons of Portugal 
 
 (1541-1542) 
 
 ON the morning of the seventh of April, 1541, 
 five Portuguese ships, half men-of-war, half 
 transports, burly of girth, blunt-nosed, lumber- 
 ing of motion, were swinging at anchor in the harbor 
 of Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus. There was 
 noise on shore, bustle aboard the ships. The crowd 
 gathered on the docks, friends of the crews of the 
 departing fleet, relatives, mothers, wives, waving a last 
 farewell to their loved ones, could hear the grinding 
 of the anchor chains, the creaking of the yardarms, 
 the flapping of the sails. Here and there the muzzle 
 of a gun frowning through a port-hole, told the on- 
 lookers that the King's ships might have to give battle 
 to the pirates of the eastern seas before they reached 
 their goal. For almost fifty years the people of Lisbon 
 had witnessed the sailing of the India fleet. They 
 never saw it without emotion. For it told them of the 
 days when their daring navigators, Diaz, Vasco de 
 Gama and Albuquerque, set out as rivals almost of 
 Columbus, for the discovery of new lands. It re- 
 minded them also of the hardships and the trials which 
 their countrymen, their sons, their husbands, their 
 wives and daughters had to undergo to build up their 
 great Indian empire. 
 
 For an instant a solemn silence wraps the rolling 
 galleons. The cheering and the farewells have died 
 down on shore. There is a puff of smoke, the flash of 
 a gun, from the " Santiago/' the flagship. Bronzed 
 figures are seen straining at the capstan and the 
 anchor chains. Don Martin de Sousa, Admiral of 
 King John III, orders the royal pennant to be unfurled. 
 It is the signal of the new governor-general of the 
 Portuguese Empire in the East to put to sea. For 
 
 28 
 
FRANCIS XAVIEK 29 
 
 ef instant sailors, soldiers, adventurers, mer- 
 chant, gentleman, slave, admiral and cabin-hoy tnm 
 the little chapel of ( )ur Lady in Belen, 
 and murmur a prayer. No Portuguese seaman then 
 dared to leave the shores of the Tagus, without asking 
 for the protection of the Star of the Sea. 
 
 Ma ncis Kavier was on the flagship with the 
 
 ernor. The morning of the departure, tradi- 
 
 S us, a movable pulpit had been dragged from 
 
 ( >ur Lady's chapel in Belen, and Xavier had preached 
 
 to the assembled crews of the fleet and their friends. 
 
 It was the last time that the voice of Xavier was to be 
 
 1 in bar Shortly after he had boarded the 
 
 lb- would in his humility and spirit of 
 
 :ice have chosen another vessel. But he was going 
 
 to India as the Nuncio of the Pope, and John III had 
 
 red that he should sail in the immediate company 
 
 of the n» nor. lie was to have a special cabin 
 
 1 out for him, and was to eat at the admiral's 
 
 table. The cabin he ed, but he soon turned it 
 
 into itaJ for the sick, the food he distributed 
 
 among the crew and the passengers. He slept on the 
 
 deck or in some dingy corner of the hold, his head 
 
 propped on a coil of rope. Before darkness had 
 
 mantled the waters through which the five ships were 
 
 shor their way, the admiral, passengers and 
 
 1 that a saint was sailing with them to 
 
 the [ndi( 
 
 For the immediate objects of 1 that virtue 
 
 which is th< rtic one of his career as an 
 
 had the ngers of the 
 
 11 v the thousand souls that 
 ith him on the "Santiago." It was at first 
 ial. The Portuguese colonies 
 enturer, the ambitious official, 
 the merchant a quickly and not too scrup- 
 
 ulously made fortune of noble but broken-down 
 
30 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 families anxious to repair their losses, escaped con- 
 victs, pardoned criminals anxious or at least willing to 
 hide their record at Malacca or Goa, men tired of the 
 drab life of home, and drawn to foreign and still only 
 partially known countries by the sheer love of adven- 
 ture, knights errant of the counting house and the 
 camp ready for any enterprise that smacked of ro- 
 mance and danger. Not all these men were wholly 
 corrupt or degraded, but they were careless of speech, 
 of lax morals, quarrelsome, ready at the least provo- 
 cation to whip out their daggers and swords. But they 
 were also amenable to sentiments of honor and fair 
 play. In spite of years of neglect of the duties of 
 their religion, they had the deep faith of their race. 
 They did not turn hypocrites, because they had turned 
 away from God. They did not try to cloak their sins 
 under lying names. They feared the justice of that 
 God whom they had recklessly offended, they dreaded 
 the torments of hell about whose existence they raised 
 no puerile and ridiculous objections. They were not 
 so hardened as not to melt in tears of genuine sorrow 
 at the story of the Passion of their Redeemer dying 
 for them on the Cross. They were capable of high 
 resolve, of heroic penance for their follies and their 
 sins. They had the vices of adventurers, but they 
 could at times practise the virtues of soldiers of the 
 Cross. 
 
 Amid this motley crew Xavier appeared like an 
 Angel of God. He lived among them. From their 
 coarse fare he took his food. He mingled in their 
 games, listened to their tales of adventure, sat down 
 with them at cards, stifling by his presence and the 
 inborn dignity of his every word and look, the blas- 
 phemy or the doubtful jest which too often leaped to 
 their lips. He watched over their sick, and with his 
 own hands smoothed the brow of the fever-stricken. 
 His zeal, his charity knew no bounds. On Sundays 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 31 
 
 s during the long journey he said Mass 
 for the admiral and his crew. As the galleons 
 ploughed the southern seas, past Madeira, Cape Verde, 
 ra Leone and dipped their bulging girth into the 
 es that beat upon the coast of Guinea, his voice 
 mingled with the music of the basso-toned organ of 
 the sea. With simplest eloquence he could raise their 
 hearts to Him whose pathway is on the deep and who 
 leads the billows of the ocean as easily as the shepherd 
 of their native hills, crook in hand, could guide his 
 sheep. At set of sun, when at one stride came the 
 dark in those southern latitudes, and stars, which 
 Xavier had never seen, lit their beacon fires in the 
 heavens, the " Salve Regina " was sung to the strains 
 they had learned in the vales of Estremadura, or on 
 the hills around which the Tagus or the Mondego 
 twined the ribbon of their silver stream. 
 
 The galleons that sped to the Indies had once been 
 called infernos of misery, crime and sin, floating hos- 
 pitals of physical and moral wretchedness. Not so 
 the " Santiago " now. Martin de Sousa saw what a 
 gift God had sent him in Francis. He gave him every 
 opportunity to attend to the physical and spiritual 
 needs of his men. Xavier heard confessions, put an 
 end to the hatred and brawls so frequent among the 
 unruly element aboard, encouraged the terrified women 
 and the children, who were accompanying their hus- 
 bands and fathers to the East, when the lumbering 
 ships were buffeted by the billows of an ocean whipped 
 to fury by a tropic storm, or when becalmed for 
 
 lis limp and dead, decks 
 afire under a en and children, 
 
 officers and c -tood still, as idle as 
 
 painted - 
 
 last the wind rose, the galleons lifted to the 
 
 round the Cape of Storms. 
 
 ne of the great passages of the world's literature, 
 
32 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 the prince of Portuguese writers, Luis de Camoens, 
 has described in his " Lusiads " the terrible monster 
 which appeared to Vasco de Gama, when for the first 
 time he rounded the Cape of Good Hope on his way 
 to India. 
 
 As the ships of the great explorer reached the cape, 
 the guardian deity of its shores and waters, huge of 
 size like another Colossus of Rhodes, grim and hideous 
 of aspect, rose amidst the murk of darkness and storm, 
 and towering over the galleons, with a voice that 
 struck terror into every heart and boomed over the 
 uproar of the waves, threatened shipwreck, ruin and 
 death to the daring mortals who had been rash enough 
 to invade his empire. 
 
 No such monster appeared to Xavier and his com- 
 panions on the " Santiago." But as the apostle 
 thought, when he rounded the southern limits of 
 Africa, of the dangers, the trials he was going to face 
 in India, his iron will and his apostolic spirit might 
 well have been cowed and daunted by these terrors 
 far more real than the fabulous Adamastor sum- 
 moned from the deep by the genius of Camoens. But 
 undaunted by bodily suffering through months of sea- 
 sickness, speeding more rapidly in desire towards the 
 goal of his journey, than the slow-moving galleons 
 could carry him, upborne by his zeal, his love of Christ 
 and souls, praying at morn and eve for a sight of the 
 promised shore, Francis sped on. The fleet had left 
 Lisbon at the beginning of April, 1541. In the be- 
 ginning of September, after six months of one of the 
 most painful journeys ever experienced by the India 
 fleet, after rounding the Cape and swinging north- 
 wards the squadron reached Mozambique, then known 
 as the graveyard of Portugal. Here crews and ships 
 tarried until the mid-winter of the. following year. 
 Xavier, whose strength was not equal to his zeal, fell 
 sick and was carried to the hospital. But when the 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER 
 fleet sail the Saint dragged himself 
 
 ■:1am." the ship to which 1 now 
 
 gned. Pointing almost due north the fleet made 
 nda, a little north of the present Moml 
 
 and staved there for a few days. The ships then 
 headed for the island of the entrance of 
 
 the Red Sea, where they again tarried some time and 
 finally after sailing almost due east, dropped anchor 
 in sight of Goa, the capital of Portuguese India. It 
 
 h of May, [542. They had left Lis 
 thirteen months before. From the deck of the 
 " Coulam " Xavier could survey the kingdom he had 
 come to conquer. The fringes of that kingdom that 
 stretched along the coast had been won partly at least 
 to a nominal allegiance to the Gospel. But to the 
 north and south, and eastward lay an unknown, mys- 
 OUntry with its still more mysterious peoples, 
 with their strange castes, their splendid temples, their 
 hideous worship and idols, their Rajahs decked in 
 pearl and gold, their Brahmins, their vices, their u 
 ranee of the true God. The fields were white for the 
 harvest. The laborer was at hand to garner the 
 shea\ 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 In the Venice of India 
 
 (1542) 
 
 IN one of the numerous letters which the Apostle 
 of India has left us, and in which he has so art- 
 lessly laid bare the secrets of his soul, he tells us 
 that when he arrived at Goa he found it peopled with 
 Christians. The city, which later times called the 
 Golden, and not without exaggeration compared to 
 Venice, was fair to behold, he writes. He marveled 
 at its monasteries, its cathedral, its hospitals and 
 churches, and thanked God that in the midst of so 
 many unbelievers he found such striking evidences of 
 piety and faith. 
 
 Ten years after his landing in Goa, Xavier was to 
 close his heroic career of apostle and his unparal- 
 leled series of victories and conquests for the Faith on 
 a lonely island off the China coast, for ten years 
 only his hands would be able to hold up the torch of 
 truth, for, giant though he was, they would not be able 
 to bear any longer the titanic burden which his zeal 
 and his charity would place upon them. But while- the 
 torch burned in his hands it was to light a continent 
 with its imperishable flame. From Goa the light was 
 to spread to Calicut, to Travancore, to the capes and 
 the headlands of the southernmost extremities of India. 
 Malacca, the Spice Islands, the isles of far Japan 
 would behold its < beams. Scarcely had the Saint 
 touched the shores of India and knelt to kiss the soil 
 he was to win for the King whom Master Ignatius 
 had made him know so well and love so tenderly, than 
 he longed to begin his work of herald and apostle of 
 Christ. 
 
 All the Saints are sealed with one common sign, 
 their supereminent love of God. It is to that they 
 owe their sanctity. That is the secret of their great- 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 35 
 
 ness, the corner stone on which they rear the edifice 
 heir ho 1 The apostolic career of Francis 
 
 proves at every step, from the moment he took to 
 heart the lesson he learnt from Ignatius, to the days 
 of his labors in the capital of Portuguese India, at 
 Cape Comorin, in the Island of the Moor, in the cities 
 of Japan, to his death at the gates of China, that he 
 loved God with a deep, tender, passionate ardor. His 
 motto and his battle-cry, his song of triumph, his 
 thanksgiving hymn, was the short aspiration, like that 
 of a burning seraph: "0 Sanctissirna Trinitas" O 
 Triir t Holy. But to this he added another 
 
 which gives us an insight into his own special char- 
 acteristic and virtue :"Da mihi animas" /Give me souls! 
 He thirsted for souls. He longed to extend the bor- 
 of the Kingdom of Christ. And souls were per- 
 ishing at Goa, on the Fishery Coast, in the Moluccas, 
 souls for which Christ, his King, his God had shed 
 His blood, the souls of Portuguese captains and mer- 
 chants, of rich and poor, of bond and free. He must 
 save them. Through him they must be delivered from 
 the thraldom of sin, from their vices, their ignorance 
 and degradation. Perhaps he knew that his span of 
 life was measured, that he had but a few swiftly pass- 
 S in which to labor and suffer for the accom- 
 plishment of his heroic dream. " To the field then," he 
 in his heart. " soldier of Christ, for the night 
 cometh when no man can work !" 
 
 Xavier mad tor his camp.: 
 
 in tl ting in his humility that he was 
 
 'olic Nuncio of Paul III, 
 he made it 1 kneel at the feet of the 
 
 pious Bishop of ( n d'Albuquerque, and humbly 
 
 ask him for the facull r his 
 
 : ons in his vast diocese. 'I re only too 
 
 willingly granted by the prelate who welcomed him 
 
36 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 to the ranks of his few and none too zealous clergy. 
 Xavier without delay began his labors. 
 
 In the Venice of the East he found an immense field 
 open to his zeal. If Goa did not resemble the Venice 
 of the Adriatic in all its splendors, it imitated but too 
 closely the vices of the City of the Doges in its worst 
 days. In its outer form of worship, in its military 
 and civic heads, the city was nominally Christian. But 
 Mussulmans from Gujerat and Ormuz, Arabs, Per- 
 sians, Turks, Kaffirs and Moors, black and copper- 
 colored merchants and slave dealers from the isles of 
 the archipelago and lands still further east, swarmed 
 in the bazaars, the streets, on the docks and in the 
 counting-houses, bringing from their effeminating 
 climate and their degrading religion almost all the 
 vices to which men can succumb. Attracted to India 
 by the glitter of gold, by the thirst of pleasure, by the 
 comparative ease with which they could evade the 
 restraints of the moral law and the hand of justice, 
 Portuguese officials, seamen, tradesmen lived in a 
 frightful contempt of the laws of God and man. Those 
 who could afford it lived like Turkish lords surrounded 
 with their harems ; the others, with a few exceptions, 
 ignored the laws of Christian marriage and openly 
 led a life of sin. Women were degraded, those of the 
 inferior races were enslaved to the will and the 
 passions of their masters ; the few white Portuguese 
 senoras, pampered into a life of luxury, where they 
 lost nearly all the virtues of their once sturdy race. 
 Slaves were sold on the very steps of the cathedral. 
 The Bishop had time and again bravely spoken against 
 all these evils, which the best men in the colony knew 
 would sooner or later bring on its ruin. In vain. The 
 civil authorities had appealed to Portugal. But Lisbon 
 and the King and justice were thousands of miles 
 across the ocean, and the royal galleons lumbered 
 slowly with the plea and the answer. Too often 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 d judges connived with the wrongdoer. 
 
 they spoke- in startling words, in the 
 
 in which Francis died, in [552, the judges of Goa 
 
 r to the King that there was no more justice in 
 
 India; none in the viceroy, Alton ironha, none 
 
 among those whose duty it was to see it done. They 
 
 reminded his Majesty of the murder of the King of 
 
 lam and of the King of Pyllor, of that of the King 
 
 of Ceylon done to death for the sake of his gold. 
 
 They told him that the Moors had lost all faith in 
 
 their honor and their word. They closed with the 
 
 pathetic appeal ; Help us or we perish ! 
 
 If religion was not openly flouted it had not gone 
 very deeply into the hearts of the people. There was 
 a profusion of outward ceremony and pomp, of sing- 
 and proo but little of the inward spirit of 
 
 I iospel. Throughout the whole colony only two 
 or three zealous and gifted priests made it their duty 
 to preach regularly ; in the remote garrisons and | 
 
 is said only at rare intervals during the year. 
 
 the Portuguese settlers went to church, but they 
 
 turned the church into a bazaar, and though at the 
 
 ■nil moment of the Consecration they stopped their 
 
 ip and rose to point with their hands to the Sacred 
 
 Host and exclaim " ( ) Merciful God," they showed 
 
 on the whole but little of that living faith which is 
 
 the proudest possession of a Catholic people. And 
 
 their religious indifference passed into every sphere 
 
 of life. The fin; re in a deplorable condition, 
 
 s were rotting at the wharves, the warehoi 
 
 empty and the st( tined for the colony 
 
 either through I led or the embezzlement of 
 
 offici :hed Goa deplete filed, and famine 
 
 dked at the 1" a city that might have 
 
 e of the richest in the world. This does not 
 
 mak< t picture and we should like to 
 
 ivier himself and his brethren, 
 
38 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 together with his contemporaries who were bold 
 enough to expose the real state of things, who give 
 us its details. 
 
 Goa then and the Indian colonies of Portugal were 
 the field suited to Xavier's labor and zeal. He knew 
 that the work before him was God's work and that it 
 must be done with the weapons of prayer, humility 
 and mortification. He might have taken his humble 
 lodging with John d'Albuquerque, or one of his friends. 
 He chose the hospital. The time he could spare from 
 the work of preaching and catechizing, hearing con- 
 fessions, he spent at the bedside of the sick, and when 
 night came on sultry, heavy and boisterous with half- 
 barbaric mirth, he retired to the church and spent long 
 hours in prayer before the Tabernacle. Only when 
 outworn nature forced him, would he lie down upon 
 his miserable pallet or frequently, as we said, stretch 
 reverently his wearied head on the altar steps, even in 
 his sleep, his heart watching with the tireless Watcher 
 of the Tabernacle. Kind and loving friends would 
 gladly have received him at their tables. He gently 
 refused their hospitality and begged his food at some 
 poor man's door or took it as an alms from the fare of 
 the sick ward. When a sinner refused to listen to his 
 words, and was deaf to arguments and appeals drawn 
 from the terrors of hell or the sacred memories of 
 the Passion of Christ, Xavier seized his scourge and 
 beat his bared shoulders until the blood ran, to soften 
 that hardened heart. 
 
 A few days after he landed, Goa began to realize 
 that a saint had come to India. There is no need to 
 call upon the miracles which his biographers tell us 
 took place at his command or in his behalf, to find out 
 the secret of the success which soon crowned his 
 labors. His life was a living miracle of charity, of 
 patience, of angelic purity, of zeal, of abnegation and 
 heroic self-forgetfulness and self-control. Goa, so long 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 39 
 
 indifferent, was galvanized out of its slumber. With 
 his practical insight into the needs of the people, 
 
 aw that if passion played no small part in the 
 life of Goa it was to ignorance that many of the evils 
 of the city were due. Tic began then by training the 
 children. A little bell in hand he set out through the 
 streets and squares of the city, down the alleys and 
 
 and at the doors of the rich and by the hovels 
 of the poor, and to its sound, he gathered his audience 
 ng with that winning voice which few could resist, 
 " Faithful Christians, friends of Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, send your sons and daughters, your slaves, men 
 and women to the Christian Doctrine, for the love of 
 
 \nc\ the children came in swarms drawn by the 
 witching music of this Pied Piper of Goa, in his old 
 ; ng his hymns and luring them all by his 
 music and his gentleness. In the church he taught 
 them the " Our Father," the " Hail Mary," the acts 
 of faith, hope, charity and contrition, the Creed, the 
 " Hail Holy Queen," told them of Our Lord and His 
 Mother, explained the Sacraments, made them under- 
 stand the nature and the punishments of sin, and above 
 all told the poor little slave and the outcast, of the 
 goodness of God and the Kingdom to which even they 
 were the her 1 the Doctor of the University of 
 
 Paris left aside all the pretense and learning and 
 the schools and spoke to his audience in 
 a langua >uld all understand, one made 
 
 up of P( trange compound of the dia- 
 
 lect used by Hindu and Moor, and the " pidgin " 
 patois of the motley The pious John d'Albu- 
 
 querque was delighted with the work and ordered that 
 similar catechetical instructions should he given in all 
 the churches of ( or generous in speak- 
 
 ing of the ready response that was made to his efforts, 
 writes of the affection and good will shown him in 
 
40 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 the undertaking and humbly blesses God for the happy 
 results of his labors. 
 
 But if Xavier could be all gentleness and love to the 
 poor children in their ignorance, he could be stern to 
 the hardened sinner. When he entered the homes of 
 the rich merchant or official or the soldier of adven- 
 ture, and was brought into contact with vices that 
 sapped the social and religious life of Goa by the very 
 foundations, he knew in his apostolic frankness, how 
 with a threat or a stinging word of reproach, to un- 
 mask the hidden shame of men who dared call them- 
 selves followers of the Cross and were living like 
 corrupt pagan rajahs. Bonds of iniquity long fastened 
 were broken and something like honor and chastity 
 returned at last to hearths from which they had long 
 been exiled. If under the care and the influence of 
 Xavier during his first visit and his succeeding ones, 
 Goa did not become a new Thebais, still a moral trans- 
 formation took place. Odious abuses disappeared, the 
 more than Oriental luxury and effeminacy which had 
 been rampant dared no longer parade themselves open- 
 ly at least, family life was healed at its very source, 
 the Sacraments won back hundreds who had long neg- 
 lected them. Xavier humbly thanked God for his 
 success, and if Goa never forgot the "Santo Padre," he 
 in turn ever remained deeply attached to the people 
 among whom he had first cast the seed of the Gospel 
 in India. During the four months which Xavier 
 passed at Goa after his arrival from Europe, he famil- 
 iarized himself with the conditions and the needs of 
 the field which he was to till. To Master Ignatius he 
 wrote frequently in a series of letters which though 
 devoid of art and what bookmen might call literary 
 charm, are nevertheless the revelation of a great soul 
 and an admirable picture of the trials and difficulties 
 which he had to face. In these letters he told of his 
 dreams and his plans. They were the dreams of a 
 
ST. FRAN WlKk 41 
 
 giant 11 for him but an ol 
 
 niche point of vantage from which 
 
 he might the held he had to win. He must 
 
 friendly people and its comparative shelter 
 
 and ease. He was not merely a herald, a missioner of 
 Christ. He was a pioneer of the Gospel. As superior 
 and captain of the little hand of devoted men who 
 would follow in his steps he must set out and blaze 
 the way. In a letter to [gnatius and his brethren at 
 the end of September, he announced that he was on 
 the point of sailing southward to the Fishery Coast 
 and Cape Comorin. A few days after he set sail and 
 began that apostolic journey which forms one of the 
 most romantic episodes in the history of the Church. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Storm-Swept Capes and Isles of Palm 
 
 (1542-1549) 
 
 WHEN Xavier set out for the Cape Gomorin 
 mission he was in the vigor of manhood ; he 
 was in his thirty-sixth year. It is difficult to 
 describe his outward appearance, for no authentic 
 portrait has been left of him. From what two of his 
 earlier biographers, Tursellini and Lucena, tell us, he 
 seems to have been above the average height, sturdy 
 of build, in complexion fair. The features were well- 
 proportioned, the forehead was broad, the eyes were 
 brown, the hair and beard naturally black, but early in 
 his missionary career they had turned white under 
 the strain of his labors. He was graceful, but simple 
 and unaffected in all his gestures and movements, and 
 carried with him an air of authority and power which 
 few could resist. By birth a Basque and of noble 
 stock, he ever kept a certain dignity which blended 
 admirably with his priestly character and a childlike 
 humility which he ever displayed in the most difficult 
 occasions. He was in spite of this Basque gravity 
 and the air of a hidalgo which accompanied him, one 
 of the most human, one of the gayest and brightest of 
 the Saints. He went about the world winning souls 
 and kingdoms, facing storms at sea and treachery on 
 land with a song in his heart. He had the enthusiasm 
 of the great discoverers of Spain and Portugal, the 
 initiative and the daring of his own Basque country- 
 men who were among the first to pursue the whale 
 amid the tumbling ice-floes of the Northern seas, and 
 who gave to civilization Sebastian Del Cario, the cap- 
 tain who brought Magellan's ships round the world, 
 and Legazpi, the first to colonize the Philippine 
 Islands. When the interests of God were at stake he 
 could not be moved from his purpose. His respectful 
 
 42 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 43 
 
 but fearless letters to John III of Portugal, his last 
 days in which he had to struggle against the jealousy 
 and the injustices of Don Alvaro d'Ataide, the Gov- 
 ernor of Malacca, show of what heroic stuff he was 
 made. But he was all gentleness to the poor, the slave, 
 the children, and these loved him. He had the art of 
 making friends. Among these were Peter Le Fevre, 
 the Savoyard shepherd lad, his hrother in Christ, 
 Master Ignatius, to whom he frequently wrote on his 
 knees, sea captains, seamen, men of such sanctity as 
 Bishop d'Albuquerque, and his Vicar-General Michael 
 Vaz, merchant-princes like Diogo Pereira and Peter 
 Velho. He was quick to decide but not hasty, and as 
 prompt to execute. His plans were vast. They em- 
 braced the world. He was the Alexander and the 
 Caesar of the missions. He had the wide horizons of 
 the first, the lightning rapidity in his offensive of the 
 second. To these he added that personal love of the 
 Cross of Christ and of souls which lifts him far above 
 the Greek hero and the Roman conqueror and makes 
 him almost the peer of the Apostle of the Gentiles. 
 
 In the autumn then of 1542 Xavier set sail for the 
 southern extremity of India. From Goa to Cape 
 Comorin it is more than 600 miles. Thirteen times 
 during the ten years of his labors in the East he 
 makes that journey, more than 8,000 miles, and that 
 is but a fraction of the immense distances he will 
 cover during his short apostolate. When we see Fran- 
 cis in Malacca, 1,600 miles away from Ceylon, where 
 he was a short time before, in the Moluccas almost 
 two thousand miles further east, then see him sailing 
 back and forth over these dangerous seas, finally 
 ploring that mysterious land of Japan, then coming 
 back to Malacca and setting out on a of spirit- 
 
 ual discovery of the immense Chinese Empire, we find 
 no difficulty in believing the computation made by 
 some of his biographers that this hero of the Gospel 
 
44 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 must have traveled during the entire course of his mis- 
 sions a distance of 75,000 miles, or in round numbers, a 
 distance equivalent to a voyage three times round the 
 globe. Not with all the modern appliances and com- 
 forts of our great transatlantic ships, but in the slow, 
 cramped and unsanitary vessels of Portugal or the 
 unseaworthy craft of the daring merchants or free- 
 booters that thridded the waters of the Indian archi- 
 pelago, suffering from almost constant seasickness, for 
 he was a poor sailor, by reef-bound coasts and shoals 
 and rocks still poorly charted, under skies that rained 
 down pestilence and disease from their leaden dome. 
 Here is a story of knightly daring, a romance of the 
 sea that must kindle to admiration the heart of the 
 dullest and coldest. Like the great Apostle he could 
 truly say that he had been tried : "In journey ings often, 
 in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from 
 my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in 
 the city, in perils of the wilderness, in perils of the 
 sea, in perils from false brethren. In labor and pain- 
 fulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in 
 fastings often, in cold and nakedness." 
 
 Sailing then down the whole length of the Malabar 
 coast, and that of Travancore, Xavier passed the Sal- 
 sette Islands, Mangalore, then Calicut and Cochin and 
 landed probably close to the low and sandy shores of 
 Cape Comorin the extreme southern point of India. 
 He then turned northeast and by slow and painful 
 journeys on foot went the whole length of the Fishery 
 Coast until he reached Tuticorin, which he was to 
 make his headquarters. At Goa the Saint had of 
 course come in contact with the paganism of India. 
 m Now he was to see it here in some of its most re- 
 \pulsive forms. 
 
 On that coast that turns northeast from Cape 
 Comorin dwelt the Paravas or Paravers. They were 
 expert pearl divers and renowned throughout the East. 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER 45 
 
 They were a rather hardy and simple people and at one 
 time had d some tincture of Christianity, but 
 
 had relapsed from want of priests into their former 
 paganism. Their caste was not of the humblest and 
 they were laborious and thrifty. But the absurdities 
 and the degradations of Hindu mythology were going 
 to destroy them entirely, 'if some remedy were not 
 brought to their sad condition. For whatever may be 
 alleged of the higher teaching and hidden doctrines of 
 Hinduism, even Brahmanism, the popular forms of 
 re repulsive, and when not repulsive, gro- 
 tesque. Vishnu with his never-ending transformations 
 into the foulest shapes, Shiva with his shameless 
 passions, Kali the godcJess that clamored for human 
 sacrifices, the many-headed and many-armed gods and 
 goddesses whose hideous forms grinned from the tem- 
 ples and altars where the most degrading rites 
 practised, could only terrify and degrade the people 
 among whom they were found. The tyrannies of caste 
 separating men from one another as with a wall of 
 iron, added to spiritual blindness a social degradation 
 which made them almost forget that they were men. 
 The condition of woman was beyond words to de- 
 intolerable; that of the widow especially, for- 
 len to marry a second time, no matter what her age 
 at her husband's death, was one described by com- 
 petent authors as a living hell. Frequently the widow, 
 
 daily in the u Bung herself as a doomed 
 
 victim on the funeral pyre of her husband. It is not 
 too much to say that in that land of darkness and 
 death Satan ruled as master. He had his worshipers 
 and his rites. The Paravas among whom Francis 
 came to work had perhaps not all these vices, for they 
 
 l to have reached a somewhat higher level than 
 their nei. but their nei rs, were 
 
 known to be devil-worshipr 
 
 ick and forth from Tuticorin. now a town of 
 
46 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 30,000 inhabitants and an important point of com- 
 munication between India and Ceylon, but in the days 
 of our missionary, a mere collection of the huts of 
 four or five thousand pearl fishers, Xavier made his 
 way to reach the Paravas scattered up and down the 
 coast. From the life and the letters of the apostle it 
 would be easy to compile a missionary manual of the 
 qualities which a herald of the Gospel should possess. 
 Xavier wanted him fearless in the presence of evil 
 and the evil-doer, independent of the views and preju- 
 dices of the world and the great, filled with zeal for 
 the salvation of souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ, 
 prudent in his dealings with secular and religious 
 authorities, for which he always showed the greatest 
 reverence, prudent also in the lessons and the duties 
 to be imposed on recent converts and men and women 
 living in the world. He bade a group of sailors who 
 wished to stop a game of cards when they saw the 
 " Santo Padre " approaching, to keep on, for they 
 were not, he said, obliged to live like monks. He 
 insisted on obedience, for a missionary, in order to 
 instil respect of authority in others, must himself give 
 the example of submission; on mortification and abne- 
 gation and a holy contempt for the comforts of life, 
 for the missionary was a soldier and must be of sterner 
 mold. 
 
 In drawing up this picture Xaxier was painting his 
 own character, such as it was manifesting itself at 
 Tuticorin and along the Fishery Coast, such as it was 
 soon to be at Travancore. Practical as always, the 
 Saint set himself to learn the language of the tribes 
 with whom he was dealing. It is historically impos- 
 sible to deny that he enjoyed the gift of tongues, in 
 various forms. In the Bull of Canonization of the 
 Saint issued in T623 by Pope Urban VIII, the fact is 
 solemnly affirmed. And the declaration was made after 
 most minute investigations, which took place either 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 47 
 
 then or at the two previous processes of beatification. 
 Thus Gaspanl Secheira Abreu swore that he had 
 heard Francis preaching in Japan in Portuguese and 
 that the Japanese understood him. In 1556 at trie 
 first process Antonio Pereira, a Portuguese gentleman, 
 testified that no matter where the Santo Padre 
 wont, he needed only a few days in order to learn the 
 language. This happened, he says, on the Malabar 
 coast, at Malacca and in Japan. Pereira knew whereof 
 he spoke, for he was acquainted with the tongues there 
 in use and affirmed that he had spoken to Francis in 
 Malay. But these miracles were probably not so 
 numerous as some of the biographers of the Saint 
 have made them. They are not at all necessary to his 
 tity, which came not from these external graces 
 which God gives and withholds at pleasure, but from 
 his splendid correspondence with God's grace. But it 
 would be uncritical and un-Catholic to deny them. 
 They are too well supported and we can rely on the 
 solemn affirmation of Gregory XV, who, after all, 
 is but the interpreter of the facts which were laid 
 before him and decided on their merits, as critically 
 and as judiciously, as would be done in any tribunal 
 or court of justice in the world. Just as the Bull of 
 Urban VIII attributes to Francis the gift of tongues, 
 so it affirms, on the oath of contemporaries, that sev- 
 eral times, Xavier by the power of God, who thus 
 wished to give prestige to the work of his servant, 
 called the dead back to II: 
 
 In spite of his gift of miracles and of the gift of 
 tongues, Xa\ not think himself dispensed from 
 
 the duty of personal labor and endeavor in his work. 
 While among the Paravas, he learned Tamil, gathered 
 a few helpers around him and translated into Tamil 
 an abridgment of Christian doctrine and a few in- 
 structions for the needs of his people. Among them 
 the Santo Padre soon became something like a superior 
 
48 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 being. With his old methods of catechizing, his famil- 
 iar instructions, his hold on the children, he began to 
 work marvels. If the picture his early biographers 
 draw of his labors be true, he must have formed the 
 villages of the pearl fishers into something like a little 
 republic, well-ordered, peaceful and happy. Their 
 social organization was of the most primitive. He 
 dealt with them as with good-natured children, had 
 them policed by bailiffs of his own choosing, ap- 
 pointed catechists, settled family troubles, did not im- 
 pose upon them unnecessary burdens, but saw to it 
 that the fundamental truths of Christianity were 
 understood and that they lived in accordance with the 
 promises of their Baptism. 
 
 In September, 1542, Xavier had left Goa. The 
 next month found him at Tuticorin, but only as a 
 surveyor or a general looking out for some strategic 
 point for the future campaign. He spends a little 
 over a year there. He reminds us of the generals of 
 the great war who one day are up in Flanders, 
 the next on the heights of the Meuse, or the crests of 
 Verdun, wherever the crisis of the flaming battle-line 
 calls them. He is soon back at general headquarters 
 at Goa, where he finds the College of the Holy Faith, 
 in which he had left his heart, for it was training the 
 missionaries of the future, well attended and flourish- 
 ing. In the January of 1544 he is on his way south 
 again at Cochin, and the following month he is once 
 more laboring among his beloved Paravas. It seems 
 now almost impossible to follow the Saint. He is the 
 Napoleon of the missions, and the man of Austerlitz, 
 of Marengo and the great campaigns of Italy, is not 
 more rapid and sure in his movements than Xavier 
 in his spiritual campaign. You can take a map of 
 southern India, draw a line from Cochin on the west- 
 ern coast, down past the strands of Travancore, around 
 Cape Comorin, up the Fishery Coast to Tuticorin, 
 
FRAN WIEB 49 
 
 and say: Here at Punicale and Manapar, at Livare, 
 at Yirandapatanao, at Alendale and Tritchendur, 
 ier preached and prayed and wrought for souls. 
 While working among the Paravas around Cape 
 Comorin in the summer of 1544 Xavier showed that 
 he was not only willing to work and pray for his 
 people, but, if need be, he would, like the Good 
 Shepherd, have laid down his life for his flock. The 
 King of Travancore on the southwestern coast of the 
 peninsula, was at war with the neighboring prince- 
 lings of Madura to the north. At their service the 
 Lords of Madura had a mercenary cavalry called the 
 Yadagars, or as we find the name in the older biog- 
 raphers, the Badages. They were a warlike race, 
 fierce of aspect, reckless and cruel. Mounted on swift 
 Arab horses they carried desolation and terror down 
 to the very Cape. In the midst of the panic which at 
 their approach had spread through every hamlet of 
 the Paravas, Xavier had been the guide and the con- 
 soler of his flock. He had been journeying north. 
 As soon as he heard of the inroad, with his usual 
 decision, he turned southward to meet the danger. 
 When the Badages swept upon the defenseless hamlet 
 which they had marked out for pillage and destruction, 
 Xavier on beholding the spears and the scimitars of 
 the marauders, knelt for a moment in prayer, then, 
 crucifix in hand, calmly went forth to meet them. The 
 lonely figure, the authority of the gesture and the 
 command which bade them halt, the power stamped 
 on his face, the brief but majestic words he spoke, 
 something more than earthly power that beamed from 
 his whole person, inspired a sudden terror into the 
 hearts of the wild tribesmen of the North. They 
 wheeled their horses in their tr; 
 
 ication in e6i6, three 
 
 witnesses testified to the fact. And it 1 sur- 
 
 equent legends invested the incident 
 
50 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 with romantic glamour and supernatural details. But a 
 great fact long remained in the memories and the 
 heart of the Paravas : the Santo Padre had saved them 
 from the fierce Vadagars and to do so had risked his 
 own life. It was the history of the Church renewing 
 on the shores of India the wonders that had once 
 taken place on the banks of the Mincio, when Pope 
 Leo went forth from Rome to face Attila and his Huns 
 and turned them from the plunder and the ruin of 
 the Eternal City. 
 
 Can we wonder then that the Rajah of Travancore, 
 to whose ears the news of the heroism of the apostle 
 must have been speedily carried, soon welcomed him 
 to his dominions? We find Xavier there at the end 
 of 1544. And though Brahmanism exercised an in- 
 fluence in Travancore scarcely equaled in the whole 
 of India, still Xavier found that coast, for which he 
 ever kept the most tender regard, one of the most 
 fertile fields cultivated by him. In one month, he 
 tells us, he baptized as many as 10,000 persons. The 
 Licentiate, John Vaz, who accompanied him on his 
 journey, writes that Francis completely gained the 
 heart of the Rajah, who gave his people full permission 
 to embrace Christianitv, and ordered them to obey the 
 " Balea Padre," the " Great Father," the " King's 
 Brother " as they would himself, that Francis built 
 as many as forty-four or forty-five churches along the 
 coast, and that often in that flat countryside, followed 
 by as many as 6,000 people, the missionary would 
 climb a tree and preach to them. God was blessing 
 his servant's labors. 
 
 While Francis was reproducing by his zeal the 
 wonders of the career of the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
 the Christians of the Island of Manar on the northern 
 shores of Ceylon were glorifying the Church by the 
 heroism of their martyrs. The Manarese had heard 
 of his preaching among the Paravas and had begged 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 51 
 
 him to ch them the religion of Christ. 
 
 sent them a 
 nati\ • who, by following the methods of his 
 
 master, and helped , saw his labors 
 
 with abundant fruits. Here 
 
 ee emerging the dark and sii 
 jigure of one of those petty tyrants of the 
 common in Indian history, the Rajah of Jafnapatam, 
 a small principality on the northern shores of Ceylon. 
 The rajah was shifty, cruel and treacherous. Murder 
 had given him the throne, treachery, double-dealing 
 with his subjects and the Portuguese, kept the scepter 
 in his hands. lie could flatter the Christians if the 
 power and the guns of Portugal were behind them. 
 He hated them weak or strong. For a moment he 
 thought the Manarese out of reach of the protecting 
 arm of the Governor of India. He invaded their 
 peaceful villages, offered them life at the price of 
 apostasy from the Faith into which they bad just been 
 baptized. They refused and the newly-born Church 
 saw several martyrs added to the roll-call of her 
 heroes. But a few months before, the men, the chil- 
 dren, the women who laid down their lives for that 
 Faith which they had learnt only indirectly from the 
 Santo Padre, had never heard of the Gospel or its 
 lessons: now they were its martyrs. Their story 
 makes one of the most beautiful in the history of the 
 Church; in Xavier's crown, it forms one of the 
 brightest gems. But Xavier could not stand idly by 
 and see the Manarese exterminated by the Cingalese 
 Dt So we find him at Negapatam on the eastern 
 - watching the course of events in Manar and in 
 Jafnapatam, for the Portuguese were now endeavor- 
 ing to protect the victims of the rajah's fury, and 
 were supporting the claims of another ruler to the 
 throne of the tyrant. That Xavier approved and sup- 
 ported this armed intervention, there can be little 
 
52 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 doubt. There can be just as little doubt that he was 
 perfectly justified in doing so. He was championing 
 the rights of the Rajah's subjects and trying to save 
 the islanders from destruction. Those who have pre- 
 tended to see in his acts throughout the tragedy noth- 
 ing but a piece of political trickery by which he tried 
 to further the temporal sway of the Portuguese Gov- , 
 eminent, little understand the man and the high ideals 
 that actuated him. He tried to save Manar by the 
 only means available, an appeal to the Portuguese 
 guns. If the attempt ultimately failed through the 
 cupidity and trickery of the Portuguese officials them- 
 selves, Xavier cannot be blamed. The failure fully to 
 throw open the gates of Ceylon to the heralds of the 
 Gospel was nevertheless a blow to the heart of the 
 Apostle. But God was trying His faithful servant. 
 Success so far had followed in his steps. He must 
 now feel that God after all is the Master, and that 
 though the husbandman may toil and water the field, 
 it is God who gives the increase. Xavier had too well 
 learnt the lesson in his long hours of prayer ; he 
 humbled himself under the cruel disappointment. He 
 found the remedy in solitude and prayer. 
 
 North of Negapatam at a short distance was the 
 little town of San Thome de Meliapor, where, legend 
 said, rested the hallowed remains of the first 
 Apostle of the Indies, St. Thomas. There was a 
 priest, a church, a fervent community of Christians 
 there. In the spring of 1545 Francis went for what 
 may be termed his only period of comparative rest, 
 to the little colony. He spent four peaceful months 
 there, peaceful in spite of the trials he experienced, 
 for he was greatly tempted, we know, from his own 
 words ; tempted, no doubt, by discouragement and 
 by that disillusionment which comes to all great men 
 when they see their noblest efforts thwarted, their 
 most painful sacrifices for the good of others ren- 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIEK 
 
 and the coward 
 
 oi nun. er. It loved him. 
 
 him. It was the one lit- 
 I murmuring waters and cooling 
 shade in the midst of the burning wastes he had still 
 all the dangers and trials which he had 
 alre.'i I. When he left it, he blessed the hos- 
 
 le people and their hospitable homes, and fore- 
 told their future greatness. The words of the 
 Santo Padre were fulfilled to the letter. Only twenty- 
 s after, San Thome was one of the most flour- 
 ishing cities on Portugal's highways of the sea, and 
 its people one of the richest and happiest. 
 
 And where was the indefatigable missionary going 
 now ? He had seen the gates of Ceylon closed against 
 him. The hand of God now opened still wider the 
 portals of the East. He had sailed past many a 
 storm-swept cape and rocky headland. He was now 
 on his wa\ to Malacca and the Spice Islands. 
 
 The Moluccas and Spice Islands form that group 
 of islands lying on both sides of the equator between 
 the Celebes and New Guinea on the south and the 
 Philippines and the Timor Archipelago on the north. 
 Their extent in area is about 22,000 square miles, 
 produced the pepper and nutmeg trees, and the 
 far-famed spices which give them their name. The 
 two years and a half which were spent by Xavier in 
 this labyrinth of sea and land w r ere among the most 
 astounding, perhaps, of his life. Never did his dar- 
 ing, his con in God, his zeal for the sou 1 
 brethren, his charity, his influence on the mind 
 Hers and children and sinners, his 
 wini ess charm show themselves in a 
 whiter and purer light. At the end of these two 
 
 vs Father Coleridge in hi 
 Letters of St. Francis Xavier " : 
 
54 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 His name filled the whole Eastern Archipelago as that uf a 
 great saint and apostle of God, gifted with the most mar- 
 velous miraculous powers, and ... it seemed only nat- 
 ural to look forward for him to still grander achievements. 
 In those days of ever fresh energy and wonder, when islands 
 and countries, which had before loomed like shadows upon 
 the bordering mist between the realms of knowledge and 
 imagination, were daily coming forth into the light, in all their 
 fair beauty and mythical richness, as the mariners and mer- 
 chants of Portugal and Spain pushed their venturesome prows 
 further and further into a mysterious and seemingly limitless 
 world, a man had at last appeared in the East who would go 
 for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, wherever he could 
 find a ship to take him, who feared nothing but that he might 
 himself begin to fear, and who seemed to wield an imperial 
 sway alike over the powers of nature and the hearts of his 
 fellowmen. 
 
 Xavier reached Malacca at the end of September. 
 1545. Malacca, now superseded in importance by 
 Singapore, was then at the height of its commercial 
 and military importance. Thirty years before, it had 
 been conquered by the Portuguese, who had strongly 
 fortified it. It was the port of Siam and Pegu, the 
 meeting place and the exchange mart for the two 
 great divisions of the Eastern world, Arabia, Persia 
 and India on the one hand ; China, Japan, the Mo- 
 luccas and the Philippines on {he other. It was more 
 cosmopolitan than Goa ; had, if anything, statelier 
 buildings. Contemporary writers of Francis were loud 
 in their praise of its soft but luxurious climate, the 
 happy mixture of sea mists and fresh breezes which 
 temper the naturally sultry atmosphere, and even 
 under torrid skies, " keep the land clothed with the 
 verdure of perpetual spring." The vices which Fran- 
 cis found at Goa he met with again at Malacca, but 
 intensified, if possible, by still greater temptations. 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 55 
 
 But it was Portuguese through and through, and with 
 the faith of a still deeply religious people, it gave him 
 a royal welcome. His fame had sped across the 
 Gulf of Bengal and the whole town had gathered at 
 
 locks when the ship that bore him dropped anchor. 
 
 hers held up their babies in their arms that he 
 might bless them, and the process of beatification of 
 16 1 6 states that, although the Saint had never seen the 
 children, he called them all by their correct names 
 when he laid his hand upon their heads. One of the 
 Saint's first duties was to pay his respects to the 
 " captain " or commandant of the town, a soldier tried, 
 Garcia de Sa, and to expose to him the object he 
 had in view, the journey to the distant Moluccas. The 
 commandant had anticipated to some extent his de- 
 sires and had dispatched a ship to Celebes with a 
 priest and several Portuguese laymen to help in the 
 conversion of the natives. 
 
 Francis was not to remain long at Malacca. But 
 he immediately began the spiritual regeneration of 
 the city. It needed it as badly as Goa. It is unneces- 
 sary to describe either its Oriental vices or the means 
 which the Saint used to conquer them. Never did 
 he realize so much the need of prayer and penance as 
 now. There were vices in this emporium of the East 
 which only fasting and prayer could down. To win 
 the favor of Heaven he fasted long and rigorously, 
 at one time spending two days without eating. The 
 sultry nights he spent in prayer. The brothers Pereira 
 watched him by night and afterwards stated that they 
 1 him on his knees before his crucifix, his 
 'ied in tears and his face burning like that 
 of a sernph with a light of another world. The altar, 
 the confessional, the bedside of the sick, the bar- 
 racks of the soldiers, the prisons, the houses behind 
 whose walls there were so many tragedies of sin and 
 misery, these were the scenes of his labors -by day. 
 
56 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 If he did not entirely transform the city into the pat- 
 tern of a Christian commonwealth, he greatly im- 
 proved it. But there were unfortunately, even among 
 those who were the appointed guardians of the flock, 
 wolves in sheep's clothing. Such men can thwart or 
 undo the work and the labors even of a giant like 
 Xavier. But they did not do so in vain. In some mys- 
 terious way God inflicted the most signal punishment 
 on those who opposed His Saint, and their punish- 
 ment became a warning and a household tale through- 
 out the East. 
 
 But Malacca was not then to detain him long. The 
 Isles of the Sea were calling for the man of God. 
 It is almost impossible to follow him now. On New 
 Year's day, 1546, he sailed for Amboina, just west of 
 New Guinea. It is 2000 miles from Malacca and 
 the voyage was to last a month and a half. He was 
 to sail almost uncharted lanes of commerce, through 
 treacherous channels and by sunken reefs, facing the 
 sudden storms, the torrid heat of these southern seas, 
 his companions rude seamen or pagan Lascars, his 
 food the coarsest of the fare of the crew, exposed 
 to the attacks of Chinese and Malay pirates, at the 
 mercy of his guides. He lands on desolate shores, 
 where he finds at times signs of the Faith brought by 
 the Portuguese traders, but for the most part among 
 the traders and soldiers and seamen only a memory of 
 the religion they professed, and among the natives, a 
 brood of Papuan and Malay blood, all the vices of 
 the East. Thrice is he shipwrecked. He finds another 
 bark and continues his journey. Neither sickness, 
 treachery, neither the heat nor the fevers of the reek- 
 ing marshlands or the jungle can turn him back. As 
 he clamored for souls, so by the seashore after the 
 day's toil, undaunted and daring, he sends forth his 
 sublimely defiant challenge to God: "Mas, Mass,": 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 57 
 
 More, Lord, in* il, more labor, more 
 
 fori; 
 
 He rid enough at Amboina, he will in- 
 
 to fill out the n in the northern Moluccas at 
 
 . Tidor, Moretai, Riao, the Islands of the 
 The work was enough to daunt a giant. The 
 land itself offered images of horror that might 
 r the heart of the bravest; the pirates and wreck- 
 that lurked in every cove, the volcanoes almost 
 antly in eruption, the mud-geysers and fountains, 
 iir thick with the whirling ashes and surcharged 
 with volcanic vapors, the tangled darkness of the 
 jungle, creeping with deadly reptiles and beasts of 
 prey, the vices of settlers and natives alike made the 
 place resemble a living hell. But what mattered it? 
 There were souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ 
 living in darkness and in sin. Xavier must save them, 
 he must bring them the good tidings. He laughed at 
 the storms and the shipwreck, at the pirate and the 
 beast of the jungle; he recked not of lurking fever 
 and imminent death. He tells us that he was never 
 happier than on the journey to the Moluccas. He 
 would even change their name and said they should be 
 called the Islands of Hope in God. When in April, 
 -, he left Maluco to return to Malacca, the scene 
 that took place at the dock reminds us of that scene 
 in the Acts of the Apostles in which St. Paul bade 
 farewell to the people of Ephesus, who went down 
 to the ship with him and "fell upon his neck and ki 
 him, being grieved most of all for the word that he 
 that they should see his face no more." To 
 avoid the parting scene with the people he so tenderly 
 love< r tried to slip away during the night. 
 
 In vain, even then the harbor and the streets \ 
 crowded with his children, who tried to hold him back. 
 They hung around him, clung to his tried to 
 
 bar the way. The slav< the sinners 
 
58 ST. FRANCIS XAVlSR 
 
 whom he had converted to God were weeping bitterly. 
 The Saint blessed them, asking them to be faithful 
 to their promises, solemnly made to him; asking the 
 priests to continue the catechism he had introduced. 
 The heart of Xavier could not but feel the parting. 
 But God was calling. He had never faltered at His 
 summons. He went aboard and a few moments after 
 he was on his way to Malacca. It was midsummer 
 when he reached the term of his long journey. Ma- 
 lacca needed him, for it was soon after attacked by 
 the pirates of Acheen. From the little Portuguese 
 squadron which had put to sea no tidings had been 
 heard for some time. On December 4, Francis, who 
 was preaching to a vast throng, suddenly stopped in 
 his sermon, and his whole person transformed, his eyes 
 lit with a strange fire and seeming to follow the inci- 
 dents of a drama, exclaimed that the Portuguese 
 ships had met the enemy and were victorious and 
 that the fleet would soon return. A few days after, 
 the ships anchored off shore, bearing the scars of bat- 
 tle, but also flying the flags of victory. Minute 
 investigations soon brought out the fact that the vic- 
 tory had taken place at the very moment when Francis 
 had announced it from the pulpit. The prophecy and 
 its startling fulfilment soon spread over the East, 
 adding still more, if that were possible, to the fame of 
 the Saint. 
 
 In the year and a half that follows we find the in- 
 defatigable missionary now at Cochin, then among 
 his beloved Paravas of the Fishery Coast, penetrat- 
 ing into the interior of the Island of Ceylon to en- 
 deavor to bring the Rajah of Kandy to embrace the 
 Faith ; at Goa, at Bacaim, in the north, where he con- 
 fers with the governor, the gallant John de Castro, 
 on the projects he entertained for the conversion of 
 the Cingalese. On June 6, 1548, he knelt at the death- 
 bed of this dauntless fighter and irreproachable ad- 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 59 
 
 ministrator, one of the finest figures in the history 
 
 Portuguese India. John de Castro had won im- 
 
 turels at the siege of Diu, and the victory 
 
 which only a few months before, December, 1547, he 
 
 ver the Sultan of Bidjapour, at the very 
 
 1, had carried his name to the remotest 
 
 islet of the Indian seas. 
 
 John de Castro was not only a scholar, a scientist, 
 an explorer, a great soldier, an incorruptible judge; 
 he had the soul of a crusader, the faith and piety of 
 a true follower of the Cross. He had the noblest 
 views for the glory of Portugal and the good of hu- 
 manity in the East. But if we can believe the his- 
 torian of Portuguese India, Faria y Sousa, though 
 not yet fifty, he died broken-hearted because the mal- 
 ice and treachery of sordid souls would not let him 
 apply the remedies to the evils which he saw were ruin- 
 ing the colonies. The ill-success of the Portuguese ex- 
 pedition sent to secure a hold on Aden, the key to 
 Egypt and the Red Sea, hastened the old soldier's end. 
 A few months before his death, he had received from 
 Portugal his letters patent as Viceroy. Only three 
 governors before him had been given such honors. 
 Before he died, John de Castro summoned the Bishop 
 of Goa, the civil authorities, the Franciscan, Fray 
 Antonio de Casal, and Father Master Francis. Feel- 
 ing that earth and its honors were flitting away, and 
 that he was going to appear before the King of Kings, 
 in whose presence his honors would be of little avail, 
 he renounced his title of Viceroy. Then on the Holy 
 Gospels he solemnly swore that he had never misap- 
 propriated the funds of the State, never received 
 presents while in office, and that because his troops 
 and officials had not been paid in time he had spent his 
 own personal fortune in the service of the King. He 
 added that he was so poor that he could not pay for 
 the food ordered him by the doctors. He then forgot 
 
60 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 the world, and, thinking only of his soul and of God, 
 prepared for eternity. He died in the arms of Francis. 
 He was only forty-eight years old. He was buried in 
 the Franciscan Church, wrapped in his tertiary's habit, 
 under which could be seen the white folds of the 
 mantle of the Knights of the Order of Christ. When 
 they made the inventory of his worldly goods, they 
 found only three coins of insignificant value, a dis- 
 cipline stained with his blood and a bit of that mus- 
 tache which at the siege of Diu he had sent as security 
 to the bankers of Goa for the funds he needed and 
 which were offered without hesitation. John de Castro 
 was of epic proportions. It is not surprising that his 
 countryman, Luis de Camoens, should have called 
 him " Castro the Strong " and immortalized his name 
 in his " Lusiads." 
 
 In May, 1549, Xavier was again at Malacca. He 
 was preparing for one of his most daring and most 
 glorious campaigns. 
 
( HAPTER VIII 
 In the Land of the Rising Sun 
 
 (1549-1552) 
 
 EN today ises a wonderful fascina- 
 
 n over the Western mind. Its sudden rise 
 within a half century from the position of an 
 
 :ic empire kept aloof from the interests of the rest 
 of the worlcLto the rank of a first-class power, whose 
 representatives have taken their seats at the Peace Con- 
 gress with the envoys of the United States of America 
 and the oldest governments in the world ; the victory of 
 its armies a few years ago over the Colossus of North- 
 ern Europe, its strange religions, the undeniable virtues 
 of its people marred by defects just as palpable, the 
 
 erious seclusion in which their Mikado lives, the 
 beauty of its islands, its pagodas and gardens, its 
 
 resque customs where the old and the new so 
 strangely blend, the adaptability of its people, essen- 
 tially Eastern, and yet so eager to mold itself to West- 
 ern ideals and ways, its quick intelligence, its progres- 
 
 spirit, can easily explain the spell which " The 
 Land of the Rising Sun " still weaves about us. If 
 such is the case now, what must have been that fas- 
 cination in the days of Xavier? Nippon was then a 
 practically unknown land. In the thirteenth century 
 the : r Marco Polo had brought news of 
 
 Zipango, as he called the island empire, to Italy, but 
 lie had not personally visited it. A Portuguese mer- 
 chant, Mendes Pinto, as well as some Portuguese 
 sailors, had either voluntarily landed at one of the 
 southern islands or been driven ashore by a storm 
 about [542. Others had probably visited some of the 
 ports, but if they had landed, had not gone beyond 
 the limits of the towns. So it is to Francis 
 that e practically all our first knowledge of 
 
 Japan, its religion and its people. 
 
 61 
 
62 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 In one of his journeys to Malacca Xavier had 
 met a young Japanese named Yajiro, a fugitive from 
 justice. Either in a quarrel or in one of the feuds 
 then raging in the country, Yajiro had killed a rival, 
 and to escape the vengeance of the murdered man's 
 relatives or the arm of the law, had taken refuge on 
 board a Portuguese ship and had been smuggled to 
 Malacca. With the exile, tortured in conscience for 
 his crime, and who had picked up a little Portuguese, 
 the apostle had long and earnest talks both about his 
 soul and his country. He had him subsequently sent 
 to the College of the Holy Faith in Goa, where he 
 was instructed in the Christian religion and baptized. 
 Yajiro was intelligent, knew the history of his coun- 
 try, was evidently a man of some social standing, for 
 two servants had escaped with him, and was anxious, 
 now that he had the. gift of faith, that his countrymen 
 should share his happiness, and that by aiding in bring- 
 ing the light of the truth to their knowledge, he might 
 in some measure atone for his crime. 
 
 Xavier, like St. Paul, wisely kept in his missionary 
 career to the great trade-routes and the crossroads 
 of the sea, where he might easily catch a ship and like 
 a good general visit in person the spots which he 
 deemed of strategic importance in his offensive. He 
 was also, like all good missionaries, a keen observer 
 of men and things, and extremely inquisitive. Much 
 of his time he spent on the decks of ships of all kinds, 
 from the galleon of Portugal to the Malay junk. He 
 had sailed so often to Goa from Comorin and Malacca 
 that he might perhaps have piloted his own bark from 
 those remote waters, their reefs and shoals, straight 
 for the islands that guard the entrance to the harbor 
 of the capital of India. From captain, pilot, cabin- 
 boy and grizzled veteran he must have learned of 
 many strange lands. What stories he must have 
 heard as the ship that bore him from Malacca to 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 63 
 
 Amboina, or Tcrnate, les of palm or coral reefs, 
 
 over sapphire seas shimmering under the splendors 
 of the noonday sun, or silvered by the rays of the low- 
 hung southern moon! What shopman's tales were 
 poured into his too willing ears as the craft rocked 
 to the ocean's lullaby, of romance and daring, of piracy 
 and war, of men that sailed from the banks of the 
 idego and the castled heights of Viseu, in their 
 beloved Portugal, now shipwrecked and lying without 
 Christian burial on the shores of that fabled land of 
 Nippon, over there, under the beams of the rising sun ! 
 >m these men and from Yajiro, Xavier gathered 
 many details. From Yajiro he heard of the religion, 
 the government, the customs, the high intelligence, 
 the inquisitive spirit of the Japanese people. As Xavier 
 listened, vast horizons opened before him. Here was a 
 civilized State, a kingdom with a regulated polity, a 
 people eager to learn. Merchants had tried to enter 
 its territory for the sake of material gain. He would 
 endeavor to penetrate its seclusion to bring it the truth. 
 Here was a kingdom to be won. His cry had ever 
 been since he began his apostolic work: " Da miJii ani- 
 mas": Give me souls. The souls of his unknown 
 Japanese brethren were calling him now. He must 
 go to Japan, enter its harbors and towns, face its sages 
 and kings, preach Christ and His Cross. Francis 
 had preached to the humble Paravas and the untu- 
 tored islanders of Maluco and Tidor. He had left 
 behind him brave hearts to continue the work. God 
 chose him now to be a vessel of election to carry His 
 name before Gentiles and kings. 
 
 On the Feast of St. John the Baptist, June 
 1549, Xavier set sail from Malacca to Japan. The 
 journey covered at least 3,000 miles. With Xavier was 
 a little band of followers, among whom were his Jesuit 
 brethren, Cosmo de Torres and John Fernandez. 
 Yajiro also accompanied the Saint. The craft that 
 
64 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 bore the apostle was a lumbering Chinese junk in 
 command of a Chinese freebooter or pirate, and the 
 expedition on which the pagan rover now engaged was 
 in all probability the only honest one on which he, 
 his ship and his crew had ever embarked. Francis has 
 left an account of the nine weeks' journey, and it is 
 as brave a piece of sea-tale as was ever set down 
 in a ship's log. The treachery, the fears, the avarice 
 of the Chinese captain almost halted or wrecked the 
 expedition, but Xavier had recommended the journey 
 to God. He never faltered. By prayers, cajolery 
 and threats he at last induced the pirate to keep his 
 word. His control of the heart and will of his fellows 
 never appeared so striking. The shores of the Island 
 of Kiushiu were at last in sight, and the junk dropped 
 anchor in the deep, land-locked Bay of Kagoshima, on 
 the fifteenth of August, a day dear to his heart, for it 
 recalled the happy hours when, side by side with Igna- 
 tius, he had pronounced his vows at Montmartre and 
 received his God from the newly anointed hands of 
 the beloved Peter le Fevre. Their spirits were with 
 him now, Ignatius following him from Rome, Peter 
 guarding him from Heaven. 
 
 Our apostle had shown throughout his work in 
 India and the Moluccas how well equipped he was to 
 deal with the motley nations he evangelized. In deal- 
 ing with them he had mainly to struggle against the 
 arguments of passion, although he had occasionally 
 to face the objections of the Brahmins and their fol- 
 lowers. But the intellectual level he had met among 
 the Pearl Fishers and the Malays could not be com- 
 pared with the minds of the alert and subtle Shintoists 
 and Buddhists of the Land of the Rising Sun. But 
 he faced the test admirably. It was not in vain that 
 he had spent such long years over his Aristotle and 
 his St. Thomas. We know that in logic, in argument, 
 in keenness of intellectual perception, in readiness of 
 
ST. FRAN WlKk 
 
 retort, in the with which 1 ered the most 
 
 object* the J a] scholars and 
 
 than a match for the best whom 
 
 they put forth against the \ho preached 
 
 such a strange doctrine. During the more than two 
 lich he spent in Japan, at Firando, now Ili- 
 rado, to the northwest of Kagoshima, on that mem- 
 orable voyage to Miyako, the present Kioto, which 
 proved such a disappointment to his zeal, and in the 
 kingdom of Bungo he held his own against the skill 
 and the sophistries of all, to the amazement even of 
 his companions, already familiarized with his powers. 
 On the trip with Yajiro from Malacca to Kiushiu, 
 Xavier, with whom the gift of tongues was but tran- 
 sitory, and who knew that God wished him to use 
 his natural gifts to the utmost for His glory, had 
 studied Japanese, and when he landed in the country, 
 able, with the help of Yajiro and a few converts, 
 to make an abstract of the catechism and the main 
 articles of the Catholic Faith, together with the prin- 
 cipal prayers recited not only by the Japanese whom 
 he won, but the very prayers which Xavier himself 
 had recited as a child and which were daily said by 
 Pope, peasant and priest in the Old World and in the 
 
 It is evident from the letters of Xavier that the 
 inhabitants of Kiushiu, the Satsumas especially, made 
 a deep impression upon him. He noted the chivalrous 
 murai, their skill and pride in arms, 
 their loyalty to their chiefs. These were qualities 
 which made appeal to the Navarrese hidalgo. 
 
 In spite of their vices, the Japanese had in them the 
 
 >uld only he vitalized 
 
 he principles of the Gospel, what men he would 
 
 make of them! He spared n He had one of 
 
 the ! r a missionary. 
 
 he was in sympathy with his flock. Though in his 
 
66 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 letters to his brethren, he exposed in a few bold 
 words what he thought of the license, the trickery, the 
 hidden vices of the bonzes, and the pride of the people, 
 he loved the children of Nippon with a deep affection 
 and called them his delight. In India he had fished 
 with the net, an old Jesuit biographer of his writes ; 
 in Japan he had to be satisfied with the rod and line. 
 Conversions were made slowly. But the converts 
 were of the sturdiest kind. The little band which on 
 his departure from Kagoshima he left behind him did 
 not see a European for more than ten years. When 
 the white man came again he found the disciples of the 
 apostle faithful to the lessons they had heard from 
 Father Francis and still reciting the prayers and sing- 
 ing the hymns he had taught them. And when, more 
 than three centuries after his death and more than 
 two centuries after the departure of the last priest, 
 Catholic missionaries returned to Japan, they found 
 that the Faith, apparently overwhelmed by the crim- 
 son billows of persecution, still lived in the hearts 
 of thousands, and the heroic Father Petitjean, the 
 second Founder of the Japanese Missions, saw the 
 descendants of those whom Xavier, his companions 
 and successors, had won to Christ, kneeling before 
 him, and faithful in spite of years of suffering and 
 blood, to the doctrine which Xavier had taught them. 
 The history of the Catholic Church, in spite of all its 
 heroisms, can give but few examples of similar cour- 
 age and constancy. 
 
 At Kagoshima the actual harvest of Xavier was 
 small. But the place proved a training camp for him. 
 There he learnt his people, their language, their 
 manners and their ways. At Firando, further north, 
 where we find him in the autumn of 1550, he thrusts 
 his sickle with undiminished ardor into the ripe grain 
 of fields already white for the harvest. In a few days 
 he had baptized a hundred of its citizens. The daimyo, 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 6; 
 
 or petty lord who ruled the city under the supreme 
 power of the Shogun or Generalissimo, who in turn, 
 and, nominally at least, recognized the figure - head 
 Mikado, received him and his companions cordially. 
 
 so blessed Xavier's efforts that a few Portuguese 
 merchants whom he found at Kagoshima were allowed 
 
 uild a little chapel, where the newly made converts 
 came to worship. The heart of the apostle must have 
 thrilled with joy as he beheld that devoted little band. 
 Already he dreamt of greater conquests, of a wider 
 
 ter for his zeal. He had heard of Miyako, now 
 
 to, then the imperial city and the capital of the 
 country. With the audacity of the Saints and the 
 spirit of adventure which we admire in the great ex- 
 plorers of his time, who sought for new routes on land 
 and sea and crossed oceans to seek out the El Do- 
 rados of their dreams, he decided to go to the Secret 
 e Shogun and Mikado in their very palaces, 
 and preach the Cross. 
 
 Miyako was 300 miles from Yamaguchi on the main 
 island of Nippon. From a worldly point of view 
 the mere idea of going there seemed folly. But never 
 was Xavier bolder, never more confident in God. 
 
 er did the flame of his apostolic zeal leap to a 
 brighter gleam. He showed in India and the Moluccas 
 of what splendid fiber he was made. But now he 
 is the Knight Errant of the Cross. He goes forth on 
 this daring expedition with two companions, Juan 
 andez and the Japanese Bernard. Save for the 
 coins which Bernard is carrying in his wallet, 
 the few crusts of bread and the handful of rice, ab- 
 solutely necessary to keep body and soul together ; a 
 few books such as the Breviary and Missal which 
 Francis carries on his shoulders with the portable 
 altar, a coarse blanket for the night's rest, they are 
 penniless and helpless. Autumn had set in when 
 they left Yamaguchi, to which they crossed by the 
 
68 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 narrow strait of Shimonoseki. Roads are almost im- 
 passable.' The snows soon hide them from the way- 
 farers. Frozen streams bar their path. The sleet 
 dashes its iron barbs against their faces. Winds 
 sweeping from the hills buffet their miserably clad 
 forms. Their progress can be marked by crimson 
 stains on the snow. Where do they find shelter? 
 In some hollow of the road, or in some poor man's 
 hut, or under the lea of a protecting pagoda. But 
 dauntless is the heart of the apostle, and he kindles 
 the flame of a holy enthusiasm in the heart of his 
 companions. Prayer ever sustains him. And daily 
 the great Sacrifice of the Mass brings down from 
 Heaven the Atoning Victim and Xavier lifts up the 
 white Host over the snow-covered fields. 
 
 He meets with few friendly faces on the journey. 
 The two-sworded Samurai rides past him with a look 
 of mingled pity and scorn ; the bonze and the laborer 
 or the merchant openly ridicule the traveler in his 
 threadbare cloak. Civil war was raging, and time 
 and again Xavier and his companions faced death 
 at the hands of the marauders straggling over the 
 countryside. But he kept on. Nothing could hold 
 him back. Cold, hunger, poverty, loneliness, pang 
 of body and soul, all these he counted as dross for 
 the love of his Lord and Master whose law he had 
 come to preach. His enthusiasm was never chilled, 
 his ardor was never quenched ; his purpose never 
 stayed, his feet never halted or stumbled on that long 
 journey to the gates of the imperial city. 
 
 At the end of January, 1551, Xavier beheld the 
 walls of Miyako. The sight must have been disap- 
 pointing even to Francis, whose eyes cared little for 
 the glories of earth. The walls had crumbled, the 
 palaces of the Shogun and the Mikado had lost their 
 splendor, the city bristled with signs of war. Civil 
 strife had divided it into factions, and frequently 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 69 
 
 sounded to the dash of the rival 
 
 - of the Ilosokawas and the Miyoshis. But 
 unterrified. lie hacj come to Miyako to 
 
 the king, the emperor we would now call him — 
 of the present Mikado. In reality there 
 two rulers, the Mikado the rightful but helpless 
 emperor, then an old and feeble man, and the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the armies, or Shogun, a boy of 
 fifteen, the tool and victim of the powerful daimyos, 
 or feudal lords then tyrannizing over the country. 
 
 Xavier remained eleven days in Miyako. They 
 were the most painful perhaps of his long and labor- 
 ious life, more crowded with suffering and humiliation 
 than any even of the years that he had spent in 
 India and the Spice Islands. For eleven days he 
 tried to see Shogun or Mikado, waiting at the palace 
 gates in the cold, rain and snow, the object of the 
 scorn and derision, sometimes the ill-treatment of 
 the throng that hung at the doors of the two 
 
 erious potentates. He tried to gain admittance 
 
 prayer and appeal, by the offering of such 
 slender presents as his poverty could afford. Hints 
 were given him that for a sum far exceeding what 
 he then had or could possibly hope to raise, he 
 might be admitted to the royal presence. He waited, 
 clung like a beggar before the portals, eating out 
 his heart in vain and empty longings, again and again 
 turned away by the guards and the people; again and 
 
 n returning to seek an entrance, in order that 
 the prince might hear of the Gospel, of Christ, of 
 of his duty to God and his own people, and 
 give permission to have the name of the true God 
 the Japanese. Xavier is the apostle of 
 action above all things. Now he is the model of 
 patience and humility. I pointment must have 
 
 been painful to 1 galling to his pride. For if 
 
 he was the humble follower of Ignatius, he was also 
 
70 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 a Spanish hidalgo, and his haughty spirit must have 
 keenly felt the humiliation. It was God's will that 
 the future glories of the Church of Miyako should 
 have their beginning not in the success of the Saint, 
 but in his sufferings. 
 
 Miyako was closed to him. He lost no time in 
 vain regrets or attempts which he now felt to be 
 futile. If the Shogun and the Mikado thrust him 
 aside, the daimyos of the south would receive him. 
 He returns then in midwinter over the same roads 
 he had traveled a few weeks ago, and after a short 
 stay at Firando, where he leaves Cosmo de Torres to 
 carry on the good work, he returns to Yamaguchi. 
 He has learned, however, that the Japanese despise 
 the outward forms of poverty. So he changes his 
 threadbare cassock for a better one, and, remembering 
 the letters he bears from the King of Portugal, the 
 Governor of India and the Bishop of Goa, he brings 
 into play his quality and titles of ambassador, and with 
 a few European trinkets as gifts from Portugal, a 
 three-barreled arquebus, a pair of spectacles, a few 
 mirrors, a clock that struck the hours, journeys once 
 more northward to Yamaguchi. The daimyo wel- 
 comes him, accepts the presents and gives him his 
 protection. Here at last converts are made, not in 
 any great number, but enough to console the apostle 
 for his labors and sufferings. The bonzes flock to 
 hear him and dispute with him. Against the funda- 
 mental dogmas of the Faith they bring their most 
 subtle objections. Creation, the existence of God, 
 His nature, His attributes, were in turn attacked 
 by them and defended by Xavier. And the seal of 
 suffering and persecution was not to be wanting. 
 Twice, according to the process of beatification, he 
 was attacked by the bonzes and cruelly beaten, twice, 
 was on the point of being put to death when a furious 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 71 
 
 storm of wind, lightning and rain saved him from the 
 hands of his enemies. 
 
 God was with His servant, because the heart of 
 Xavier lived in God and for God. If Xavier con- 
 1 to wear a better cassock and to appear with 
 vremony at the Court of the lord of Yama- 
 guchi and later, of the daimyo of Bungo, one of the 
 provinces of Kiushiu, situated at its northern 
 emity, that was merely for the eye of the Jap- 
 an d to close any avenue from which ridicule 
 might be cast upon his mission and his work. But 
 imself, lie laid down a rule of the sternest asceti- 
 and mortification from which he never departed. 
 fasts, vigils and mortifications never ceased. It 
 a marvel that he was able to continue his labors, 
 for he gave his body no rest. At Yamaguchi 
 all through his labors in Japan, he ate the coarse fare 
 of the poorest, the rice and the vegetables common 
 among the people. We know from the Japanese 
 Bernard, his faithful companion, that the apostle spent 
 many hours of the night in prayer. Even in his sleep 
 his heart was watching and his lips unconsciously mur- 
 mured the Holy Name. Bernard later on testified 
 that with his own eyes he had seen the Saint lay his 
 hands upon the deaf, the paralytic and the dumb, and 
 that he had healed them ; that he had often heard 
 him answering in a single sentence several totally 
 rent objections which the Japanese brought 
 nst the mysteries of the Faith. It is no wonder, 
 then, that, as the old companion of Xavier tells us, 
 the Japanese looked upon Francis as a man come 
 n from Heaven and superior to the rest of mor- 
 
 vier's tour of inspection of the advanced trenches 
 of his far-flung battle-line in the East was drawing 
 to a close. India, he felt, needed him, and already 
 from the depths of that immense empire of China 
 
72 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 he heard mystic voices calling and asking that it also 
 should behold the light, which he had brought to Japan. 
 In the autumn of 1551 Xavier, after his visit to the 
 friendly daimyo of Bungo, bade farewell to the Land 
 of the Rising Sun. No European has ever loved it 
 so well as he. Not one of the great men of the land 
 of the Mikado ever entertained for it the dreams 
 of glory which visited the mind and heart of Xavier 
 as he stood before the men of Firando and Kago- 
 shima and thought of all that its chivalrous Samurais, 
 its sturdy and frugal race might do, if the Faith that 
 was his might leaven the whole nation. He had not 
 done all that he had dreamed of accomplishing for 
 Nippon. In all probability he had not made more 
 than 2,000 converts, a thousand of these, perhaps, at 
 Yamaguchi. But these are the founders of the glo- 
 rious Church of Japan, the forerunners of these 
 Martyr Saints, Paul Miki, James Kisai, John de Goto 
 and their companions, noble matrons, lisping children, 
 Samurai and humble toiler, who on the fiery hills 
 of Nagasaki and in the frightful sulphur pits of Ungen 
 gladly laid down their lives for the Faith which Fran- 
 cis had brought to their fathers. 
 
 On leaving his beloved Japanese, Francis made them 
 a parting gift. He gave them that faithful com- 
 panion and friend, that indefatigable worker, the good 
 brother John Fernandez, whose eloquence and argu- 
 mentative powers, heightened by gentleness and pa- 
 tience, won the admiration and love of all. In speak- 
 ing of him, Father Cosmo de Torres, another of the 
 Saint's faithful co-laborers, said that if it was from 
 the lips of Xavier that Japan had received the Faith, 
 it was Brother John who preserved that Faith when 
 the great apostle departed for India. 
 
 Toward the middle of March, 1552, after a journey 
 during which, in the midst of one of these typhoons 
 which sweep over the eastern seas, he foretold the 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 73 
 
 irn to the ship of the dory which had broken 
 
 its G ur of the crew into the 
 
 >m. Xavier reached Goa. Ignatius 
 
 1 him his letters patent nominating him 
 
 Provincial oi the Ind as now in a very 
 
 >e the alter ego, the representative of 
 
 Ignatius for all the Jesuit missionaries in India, from 
 
 uz in the north, where Caspar Baertz was 
 
 doing wonders for the Faith, to Cape Comorin in the 
 
 south, and thence to Malacca, the Moluccas and Japan. 
 
 Domestic occupied him for a short time. He 
 
 n a great discoverer and pathfinder, he was 
 
 equally great as an organizer. At the end of May he 
 
 for another great adventure 
 for the Kingdom and the King. But even to the Saints 
 the ways of God are hidden. Xavier thought of an- 
 other empire to he won. God was going to end and 
 n the labors of His stalwart soldier. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Locked Gate and the Opening Portals 
 
 (1552) 
 
 SHIPMASTERS and pilots, merchants and sea- 
 men had always been numbered among Xavier's 
 best friends. Every shipboy that sailed from 
 Goa to Malacca or Tidor must at some time or other 
 have met the Saint. To live with him for a few weeks 
 on the deck of a light fuste or coasting vessel or 
 caraque was to love him. To see him calm the storm 
 or turn the sea brine into fresh water by the sign 
 of the Cross, to hear him pray for the souls in mortal 
 sin while the ship was battered by the onslaught of the 
 ocean's mad artillery, or praise God for the wonders 
 of the deep and the ever-renewed mysteries of the 
 dawn and sunset and starlight, was to reverence him 
 like an angel and prophet of God. To kneel at his 
 feet and pour the secret of their lives, their sins, into 
 his priestly heart was to rise strengthened to grip 
 with sterner hold the rudder of life's bark and to 
 steer straight for the true haven whither all men 
 must sail. His cheering words clearly outlined the 
 chart of life, pointed out the beacons of safety and 
 the shoals of danger. The rudest could not but rev- 
 erence him, and felt that he was almost more than 
 man, a seraph burning with the purest love of God, 
 and lent to them as a brother and a friend. 
 
 Among the merchants whom Xavier counted among 
 his friends was a Portuguese, Diogo Pereira. God 
 had blessed this gallant gentleman with wealth, for- 
 tune, success. His ships had paid toll in almost every 
 harbor in the East. His " Santa Croce," " the Holy 
 Cross," was as stout a bark and as successful in its 
 ventures as any of the galleons that hoisted sail on 
 the nine and seven seas. Diogo's purse and home had 
 ever been open to Xavier. For under the garb of 
 
 74 
 
FRANCIS XAVIER 75 
 
 the merchant, Pereira had the views of a whole-hearted 
 
 stian, a true patriot and not a little of the spirit 
 
 in ambassador of Christ. Xavier knew him well 
 
 and loved him. The love of the Apostle for the 
 
 uguese merchant is proof enough of Pereira'^ 
 
 genuine worth and goodness. 
 
 On his return from Japan, as Xavier was sailing 
 off the Chinese coast, near that island of Sancian 
 destined to be so closely associated with his name, he 
 recognized the " Santa Croce " riding at anchor off 
 shore. A few moments after he was clasping the mer- 
 chant prince in his arms. On the journey back to India 
 the merchant of the wares and stuffs and perishable 
 goods of earth, and the merchant of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven and the treasures of eternity, spoke long and 
 often of the things dearest to their hearts. Pereira, 
 of the most venturesome of the captains of in- 
 dustry of his day, had endeavored to trade directly 
 with China. He knew that it was folly to attempt 
 nter its barred gates, for death had been decreed 
 for any Portuguese who dared set foot upon its soil. 
 But from Sancian and the neighboring islands some 
 kind of barter had been on between the mer- 
 
 chants of Canton and the Portuguese. Pereira's 
 S to enter the forbidden empire was shared 
 It seemed even to be a silent rebuke to 
 him. Pereira was but a merchant for the perishable 
 things of time. He was a merchant of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. He must be as brave. He must, he 
 will attempt as much as he. The idea of the mis 
 to China already in germ in the mind of Xavier dur- 
 his journey to Japan was matured in the course 
 of long and earnest conversations with his friend. 
 
 , still full of his experiences in Japan and 
 longing to see his work continued tin con- 
 
 vinced that the interests of the Japanese mission de- 
 manded that the Gospel should be preached in China. 
 
76 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 The only means, he concluded, by which the Faith 
 might penetrate into that vast empire, was to organize 
 an embassy. The Viceroy, Alphonso de Noronha, would 
 provide for the costly gifts it would be necessary 
 to present to the Chinese princes, Pereira would be 
 the bearer and the ambassador, and Francis would 
 accompany him. Great dreams came to Xavier as 
 the plan was unfolded, and if Pereira thought of the 
 precious cargoes he would ferry back and forth in 
 his adventurous cruise, and the doubloons he would 
 reap, he did not forget that he was trying also to 
 bring the light of his own Faith to the benighted 
 inhabitants of the empire so far closed to Europeans. 
 But Francis, poorer after ten years in the golden 
 East than the poorest of his Paravas; Francis, whose 
 bed was the coil of rope by the rudder of the " Santa 
 Croce," or a few palm leaves in the hut of his pearl 
 fishers, or an humble cell in the College of the Holy 
 Faith at Goa; Francis, the Nuncio of Pope Paul f II, 
 who ate the coarse food of the coolies of Malacca, 
 what cared he for all the gold of Ormuz or of Ind? 
 What recked his royal heart for the treasures of Gol- 
 conda, the wealth of the pearl-decked Rajahs of 
 Kandy and Travancore, or the fabulous riches of man- 
 darins and princes of Canton and Peking? He had 
 but one ambition, he looked for the fulfilment of but 
 one dream. He was tortured with one passion; he 
 wanted souls. And on the " Santa Croce " as the 
 brave ship loosened its wings to the breeze and carved 
 its way to the soft seethings of the southern seas, 
 Xavier rested his hands on the shoulder of the Portu- 
 guese merchant and repeated again and again: 
 " Friend Diogo, what doth it profit a man if he gain 
 the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? 
 Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul ? " And 
 over against that Island of Sancian, which they had 
 just left behind, Xavier knew that men were bartering 
 
FRAN WIKk 77 
 
 souls in the vast Chii lpire for the 
 
 hable things of time, and no one to bring them 
 the light, no \ i them the truth! 
 
 Toward the end of December, 1551, Xavier v 
 
 tlacca, the pivot, so to say, of his move- 
 A flying visit to Cochin and 
 the end of his journeys on his ea 
 lit. By the end of May, [552, he is once more 
 Jalacca, ready for his last and surely his most 
 age. In the half year he spends in India, 
 luties as Provincial absorb all his attention. Some 
 entiment, no doubt, told him that his days were 
 numbered, and that he must provide for the material 
 and spiritual welfare of the vast territory committed 
 by Master Ignatius to his care. Never did Xavier's 
 brethren and subjects welcome him more lovingly. 
 id the grace and the charm of his personality 
 winsome. Fathers Valignamo and Mel- 
 cliior Nunez, writing to their Jesuit brethren in Eu- 
 rope, can scarcely restrain their enthusiasm and ad- 
 miration as they describe the affection, the zeal, the 
 charity, the gaiety, the almost boyish enthusiasm of 
 the apostle as he speaks to them of God, and His 
 Bles- her and the Society of Jesus and Master 
 
 Ignatius. Ignatius and his Society have had bitter 
 eneir it Xavier loved both with all the 
 
 rdor of his great heart. That love alor 
 upremely eloquent refutation of their slandei 
 Go eral that he w;<. 
 
 1 eld of battle over which his soldiers are 
 fighting, strengthens his outposts in the Molu 
 
 rves at Goa and Cochin, shifts his 
 men from one point of the threatened field to an- 
 Othei hem their last marching and ' 
 
 [n I the China \ 
 
 in that empil 
 
 . will ad 
 
78 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 Vice-Provincial. On his departure from what had 
 long been his headquarters in the East, the Saint 
 kneels at the feet of Gaspar and renews his vows of 
 obedience, although the Vice-Provincial loudly but 
 lovingly protests, and the community can scarcely 
 restrain their tears and sobs as they witness this 
 supreme act of humility and self-abasement, and real- 
 ize that their Father is going on a long, long journey 
 and they will see him no more. On the Holy Thurs- 
 day of 1552, after adoring his Lord in the reposi- 
 tory of the College Church, Francis went aboard 
 the ship that was to carry him to Malacca. Groa would 
 never behold him living again. But it was to receive 
 his hallowed remains in great triumph and glory, and 
 there, though dead, he speaketh still. 
 
 Shortly after Xavier's arrival at Malacca, at the 
 end of May, the " Santa Croce," en route from Singa- 
 pore, hove in sight with Pereira on board. The Vice- 
 roy, Alphonso de Noronha, had welcomed the project 
 of the merchant and the missionary for the expedi- 
 tion to China, and had forwarded to Pereira the 
 letters of credit he needed for the journey and at the 
 same time his credentials as ambassador. Xavier 
 on his part had letters from the Bishop of Goa to the 
 " King of China." Noronha moreover had placed 
 one of the King's ships at the disposal of the little 
 embassy. So far, all was well. 
 
 A great disappointment, however, was awaiting 
 Francis. He had foretold it, for he had said several 
 times that he would meet with great difficulties at 
 Malacca. But even he did not know with what malice 
 and obstinacy his plans were to be thwarted. So far 
 in his missions, hard as they were, he had suffered, 
 not so much from the malice of man, as from the 
 inherent difficulties in the work. At Miyako, it is 
 true, he had faced failure, but it had come from 
 pagans. Now the disappointment and the heart-pang 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 79 
 
 were to come from one of his own people, from one 
 whose duty it was to help him, one whom he had 
 called friend, from a man who bore the most illustrious 
 name in India, Alvaro d'Ataide, the son of the great 
 Vasco &2 Gama, and then captain of the port, and com- 
 mandant of Malacca. 
 
 With Alvaro d'Ataide and Pedro cle Silva, his 
 brother, who had just been relieved of his duties of 
 captain and commandant at the Straits, Francis had 
 always been on friendly terms. With Pedro his rela- 
 tions do not seem to have altered. What was the 
 cause of Alvaro's sudden change of mind? The his- 
 torians of Xavier, after everything has been sifted, 
 seem to agree that disappointed ambition and jeal- 
 ousy caused the commandant to block Pereira and 
 Xavier in their embassy. Alvaro, as far as can be 
 gathered from contemporary writers, was envious of 
 the good fortune of Pereira and would not brook to 
 see a common trader suddenly lifted to the position 
 of ambassador to the court of Pekin. Perhaps Alvaro 
 had also cast a longing glance on the more material 
 profits of the adventure and regretted that Pereira 
 should exclusively enjoy them. Whatever may have 
 been the motives of the commandant, his heartless op- 
 position to the plans of Xavier and his friend un- 
 doubtedly wrecked their high hopes. God was thus 
 purifying His missionary. Xavier had suffered keenly 
 at his failure in Miyako, but the pangs he now felt, 
 as we can easily gather from his letters, were those 
 of a real martyrdom. Many jewels decked his crown ; 
 the gem of sorrow, of blighted hopes and shattered 
 dreams was lacking. The Angel of Suffering placed it 
 there during the days of his last stay at Malacca. 
 Like his Master and King, Xavier wore his crown 
 of thorns. It was a friend of former days that placed 
 it on his brow. 
 
 Hardly had Pereira landed from the " Santa Croce " 
 
So ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 than Alvaro cTAtaide put the embargo on his ship, 
 had its rudder seized and put under guard near his own 
 house. The act meant open war between Xavier and 
 the commandant, for it clearly showed that Alvaro 
 would exert all his power to stop the expedition. 
 It was something very like treason on the part of 
 the governor. Pedro de Silva, the commandant's 
 brother, tried to make Alvaro listen to the voice of 
 reason and honor. D'Ataide turned a deaf ear to these 
 pleadings of friendship and brotherly love. Bernar- 
 dino de Sousa, a gallant and honorable soldier, dis- 
 tinguished for his services in the Moluccas, tried 
 also to appease him. His prayers were useless. At 
 one time it looked as if there was going to be blood- 
 shed, for Pereira's crew threatened to seize the rudder 
 by force. Xavier, with a single word, prevented the 
 affray. God would know how to take care of His 
 own and do justice. 
 
 If Xavier was one of the gentlest of men, he was 
 also absolutely fearless. He had faced the Vadagars, 
 he was never known to quail before shipwreck or 
 storm or death. He had taken his life in his hands 
 when he went to Japan. He did not quail now. 
 Alvaro d'Ataide was doing an open wrong to the 
 King and to God< He was blocking the path of an 
 envoy of the Viceroy of the Indies, he was holding 
 back an envoy of the King of Heaven to the pagans. 
 He was false to his oath as a gentleman and a knight, 
 false to the memory of his great father, Vasco de 
 Gama. Xavier had tried every means possible in 
 order to conciliate him and soften that hard heart. 
 He had failed. 
 
 There was one last resort. Reluctant as he was to 
 apply this remedy, the Saint felt that in conscience 
 there was no other path to follow. He was the 
 Apostolic Nuncio of the Sovereign Pontiff Pope Paul 
 III. In his humility he had well-nigh forgotten it. 
 
FRAN WTEB 81 
 
 main 
 
 el to the 
 
 ich an « 
 ck him in the fulfilment of I 
 
 - then ii throughout Chris- 
 
 r's hand 
 
 tl and bless. 1 Ie 
 lift them now to strike. And not in r 
 
 spirit of pett . but 
 
 in tl rod, the blow 
 
 heard the sentence o mmu- 
 
 with rage and broke out into a torrent of 
 
 He then ordered the em- 
 ted, put a crew of bis own choos- 
 mmanded Pereira 
 
 Santa Croce " to 
 
 were be so minded, 
 
 il with I 
 
 the midst of tin Xavier thought not 
 
 elf, but of Pereira and d'Ataide. He had 
 
 ruin- id, his merchant friend, for Diogo had put 
 
 to fit out the ship and enter 
 
 a manner worthy of an envoy of the Viceroy 
 
 was not the man to spare expense 
 
 or h few thousand doubloons. Neither 
 
 yal merchant " given to useless wailings 
 
 With chivalrous generosity, he gave 
 
 hat on the " Santa Croce" Xavier should lack 
 
 no honor or comfort or aid that it was still in his 
 
 e him. As a reward Xavier promised 
 
 d that neither he nor his children or any 
 
 r be in suffering or want, a prophecy 
 
 which was fulfilled to the letter. 
 
 ina Xavier must go. He must bid fare- 
 well to the friend whose ship had been his home, 
 a, to all he held dear. No man 
 
82 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 ever had a tenderer or more loving heart than Father 
 Francis. As he passed the church only at a stone's 
 throw from the governor's house, he said in a broken 
 voice : " Don Alvaro will see me no more. I shall 
 meet him at the tribunal of God." Then, lifting his 
 arms in the form of a cross, he prayed for his perse- 
 cutor. His prayer was choked with the sobs of a man 
 whose heart was breaking. He then knelt on the 
 ground, and remained silent for a moment. He then 
 rose, took off his shoes, shook off the dust as he struck 
 them against a post, and in the midst of an appalling 
 silence walked down to the dock and went aboard the 
 " Santa Croce." In the history of Portuguese India 
 there is perhaps no other such a dramatic scene. 
 It was thus that of old the insulted and indignant 
 prophets of Israel left the cities that would not listen 
 to the Word of God. 
 
 To. the dreadful summons made to Alvaro d'Ataide, 
 Xavier added the words : " God spare and save his 
 soul." That prayer was heard. Not long after this 
 terrible scene, Alvaro returned in disgrace to Portugal, 
 ruined in honor, in name, in health, in fortune. He 
 died miserable and poor, but repentant. He had 
 wrecked the plans of a conqueror and a saint; 
 Xavier's loving prayer for his persecutor's soul un- 
 doubtedly brought him back to God. That was his 
 only revenge. 
 
 After a brief stay at Singapore, the " Santa Croce " 
 brought Xavier and the two companions who stayed 
 with him to the end, a Malabar, and the Chinese 
 Antonio, to the island of Sancian, a little west of 
 Hong Kong and within sight of the Chinese coast. 
 Canton was but a few miles away. He was within 
 sight of the Promised Land. Its gates were locked 
 and would not open, but the portals to a fairer king- 
 dom would soon be unbarred. Sancian, indented 
 with many little bays and inlets, is a rocky and barren 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 83 
 
 spot, and was then untenanted of man, save for the 
 Portuguese traders who came ashore from their ships 
 
 which they burned on their 
 
 Jancian Xa\ i< some Por- 
 
 !(1 among then old Ei [m 
 
 iost in his heart and 
 
 IS brought forward. Will they help him to land 
 
 that coast of China s throw 
 
 r, the plan 
 
 le. It w \ Portuguese to enter 
 
 table land. Sonic had tried it. They had 
 
 and either immediately put to death or 
 
 e now undergoing the most frightful tortures in 
 
 lized how truth- 
 fully they spoke. But he must go. The land of his 
 
 ins is before him! It lures him on as a magi 
 Yet the dream does not interfere with the realities 
 i^ostolic life. For the last time he catechizes, 
 k on the ships, in the huts on the island, 
 quarrels, and at tin nd of his course 
 
 ne zealous priest, the same staunch and loving 
 frien has ever been. There is even a purer 
 
 flame of light and love and tenderness as the lamp of 
 life is flickering away under the chilling breath 
 
 of disappointment, of vain and empty long- 
 ing. Or le the sails of the Portuguese ships 
 fade on the horizon, image to the Saint of his vanish- 
 ing dreams of a kingdom conquered for Christ, but 
 there is a flash of sunshine as they dip beneath the 
 horizon's rim, sure presage of the light of another 
 world, to cheer him with its beam. 
 
 September and October came and went. The gates 
 
 1 barred. Then the hopes of the Saint revived. 
 
 had met a Chinese trader, and with him entered 
 
 upon a sublimely daring bargain. For a sum that 
 
 would have made the Chinese trader rich for life he 
 
84 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 induced him to land him alone at night from his junk 
 on the shore of China. And then, ah, God would do 
 the rest, for was he not in His hands? He that 
 watches the sparrow's flight and gives food to the 
 ravens of the air when their young ones cry for meat, 
 He that overshadowed the holy youths with the wings 
 of archangels in the Babylonian fires, and bade the 
 hungry lions crouch lamb-like at Daniel's feet, He 
 that had guarded him amid the swirling waters and 
 the wrath of men, would hold him with the strength 
 of His everlasting arms and protect him now. " In 
 the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost," he will not fear or falter. 
 
 Mid^November came and with it the appointed time 
 for the Canton trader to take Xavier to his goal. 
 From the shore the Saint watched the wide expanse 
 jf waters; the Chinese junk had not appeared. A 
 few days more he waited, scanning the horizon, every 
 ripple of the waves. Save for the " Santa Croce " at 
 anchor a few cables away, no ship, no sail. Man had 
 failed him. He had now to depend on God alone. 
 The gates of China were barred; slowly the portals 
 of Heaven were being unfolded before him. 
 
 Ten years of titanic labors had at last exhausted 
 Xavier's robust frame. The dramatic conflict he 
 had gone through at Malacca, the disappointment he 
 now felt, the shattering of his dreams for the spiritual 
 conquest of the Chinese Empire, the sight of the prize 
 eluding his pursuing grasp, the solitude and actual 
 destitution to which he was now reduced, robbed him 
 of the last remnants of his strength. He • felt that 
 he must die. It was God's will. The King was sum- 
 moning him from the strife of battle to lay down 
 his arms. 
 
 Soon after his last hopes for the coming of the 
 Chinese trader had disappeared, Xavier, already faint 
 and sick, had to leave the shelter of the " Santa 
 
W'IKk 85 
 
 the rolling of th< ned him 
 
 ith which he had I 
 
 »re he must 
 
 iidlv Portuguese 
 
 an to a hut, 
 
 Iter. 
 It faced the that land which he came to « 
 
 It la fort. 
 
 laithful unto her ad. The few era 
 
 which 1 g the next few days had to be 
 
 the P01 still left on the island, 
 
 fering from hunger and want. 
 
 ' >nly two C 1 with Xavier -the 
 
 Chinese, Antonio, and Christopher, the Malabar Indian. 
 
 mainly from the simple recital of the devoted 
 
 learn the details of the last days of 
 
 On thai stretched on a coarse pallet on 
 
 the ground, in absolute poverty. r lay dying, 
 
 ith him to pronounce a last absolu- 
 tion, to strengthen him for his journey with the Body 
 and anoint him with Holy Oils. But the 
 arms of his crucifix, hung up before him by Antonio, 
 seemed to shelter him within their lovirig grasp and 
 on to him. His friends were gone. He saw the 
 ita Crcce " riding to the swell of the waves. 
 Whei that dear friend Pereira, where Ignatius 
 
 and Simon I her John Fernandez, 
 
 his frier Where that beloved Brother 
 
 Pierre 1- j? Surely they were watching and 
 
 for him now, for his soul, like the soul of 
 g and the souls of all those whom the King 
 wants to pur - in sore distress ony. It 
 
 holy will that he should so suffer. For 
 he lightning and the storm strike the loftiest nioun- 
 
86 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 tain peaks, so, God tries the hearts of those who draw 
 nearest to Him. 
 
 Now and again, Antonio tells us, the mind of the 
 Saint seemed to wander. But even then his heart 
 was with God. Even then he prayed and exclaimed : 
 " Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me " ; " Mother 
 of God, remember me." The Holy Name came in- 
 cessantly to his lips, and the dying soldier of Christ 
 remembered that he was but a sinful man and fer- 
 vently repeated the prayer, " Do Thou have mercy on 
 my sins." At times Antonio, who understood most 
 of the languages commonly used by Xavier, heard 
 him pray and murmur in an unknown tongue. The 
 old Basque tongue, undoubtedly, the one in which 
 Xavier had recited his prayers at Maria d'Azpilcueta's 
 knees in the dear home on the hills of Navarre. And 
 his mother's face and the face of his father and of 
 that sainted Magdalena, now in heaven, were bending 
 over him. In a flash, the flash that comes to dying 
 men and reveals to them the most hidden pages of 
 their life's record, Francis saw the castle of Xavier, the 
 halls of Sainte Barbe, the Lady chapel at Montmartre, 
 where he had pronounced the vows his lips were 
 framing now, poverty, chastity, obedience, the altar 
 at Vicenza where he had said his first Mass, Goa, the 
 Fishery Coast where he taught the poor to love Christ, 
 the palm-groves of San Thome, the cities of Japan, 
 and last, the great empire he had tried to enter. 
 
 And as lifting his eyes he the saw the curving shores 
 of the Promised yet forbidden Land, he blessed God 
 for all His goodness, and with all his old enthusiasm 
 and faith, all his love and unfaltering hope, ex- 
 claimed : " In Thee I have hoped ; I shall not be con- 
 founded forever. " A prophecy marked his last davs. 
 The Malabar was standing by his bedside. Xaxier 
 fixed his glance steadily and sadly upon him. That 
 glance had often read the secrets of the heart. It 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 87 
 
 now read the tutu "Wretched man!" he ex- 
 
 claimed. The import of the Saint's words remained 
 for some time obscure. After th, the Malabar, 
 
 forgetting his ni 1 a lif< 
 
 ; in a vulgar brawl. 
 
 Th< On November 27, 
 
 an hour or t the faithful I 
 
 nese in his his master's bed, be 
 
 it murmur. 
 his eyes to the crucifix. The wind came through the 
 crevices in tl of the hut, the sea rose slightly, 
 
 the black hull of the " Santa Croce " careened a little 
 to the he the lapping of the waters creep- 
 
 ing Up the shingle of th< faintly pulsed in the 
 
 of the dying Saint. Antonio bent over Xavier, 
 gently twined the unresisting fingers round the blessed 
 symbol of faith, charity and hope, and knelt 
 to re blessing. Francis lifted his eyes to 
 
 Heaven, then bent his head. His soul had gone to 
 God! 
 
 Death does not close the career of the Saints. On 
 their transfer from Sanchian and Malacca to their 
 final resting place at Goa, the hallowed remains of 
 the apostle met such a triumph as the East had sel- 
 dom witnessed. All India knelt to do them reverence. 
 Though dead, he seemed as one who still lived 
 among them. That body which Xavier had ever 
 shielded with angelic chastity had not been tainted 
 the corruption of the grave. He looked like one 
 that slumbered and the blood seemed to be coursing 
 through his frame. 
 
 The crowning glory came when on the twelfth of 
 March, 162. solemnly enrolled among 
 
 the Saints by Gregory XV. He was canonized to- 
 gether with his master and friend, Ignatius Loyola. 
 They had been united in labor and love, they were not 
 to be separated in glory. And every year, the twelfth 
 
88 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 of March, anniversary of the day when the Church 
 officially recognized Xavier as one of the holiest among 
 her children, sees millions of her Faithful close that 
 Novena of Grace made in his honor and which is in- 
 variably crowned with extraordinary favors. 
 
 The old capital of India so dear to Xavier has lost 
 nearly all its former glory. Goa is a city of memories 
 and ruins. Its streets are deserted and overgrown 
 with grass. The docks, once crowded with the fleets 
 of the East, have been beaten down by sand and 
 sea. A petty official rules over a mere handful of 
 European traders and natives in the city where men 
 like John de Castro governed an empire. But in Goa 
 Xavier rests. The presence of his hallowed remains, 
 still untainted by corruption, fully compensates for 
 the glories she has lost. On the days which recall 
 the memory of the apostle, to his Church and shrine 
 of Bom Jesus, thousands come to do him reverence. 
 All India, all the East, sends her representatives, 
 Cingalese and Paravas, men of Travancore, the chil- 
 dren of that Japan which he so tenderly loved. On 
 those days Goa seems to regain out of the dim past 
 something of her olden splendor. 
 
 If in Goa Xavier still lives, he also lives and ener- 
 gizes in the Catholic Church. Few Saints are so 
 popular as he. He is adventure and romance, epic 
 and fairy tale ennobled and sanctified. In him the 
 labors and zeal of the apostle are blended with perfect 
 union with God. His long journeys, the perils he 
 encountered from the elements and the wickedness 
 of man, his zeal and enthusiasm, his unworldliness, 
 his loyalty to the King he had chosen, his knightly 
 daring, his gaiety and lovableness, his miracles, the 
 sorrows he bore without a murmur, the enemies he 
 made, the friends he won, the lightning-like rapidity 
 of his conquests, the fruits of his preaching in the 
 hearts of Flindu, Malay, Japanese and European, the 
 
8g 
 
 i his 
 . her 
 • her children. 
 
 ' and to 
 
 all their 
 
 i >f them- 
 
 only the ;. but to 
 
 n which he pi 
 his life and virtues, in the 
 
 proof of 
 which he carried to the 
 
 led with all the 
 I in humanity. His work 
 I instrument, the work of man, as such 
 ibject to Not all of 
 
 it has survived. "Many of the Churches founded by 
 themselves and their successors in P; 
 i and northern Africa, are no more. Some 
 of the missions which Xavier founded in India as 
 n the Moluccas have practically disappeared, 
 ruin of that splendid work can be readily 
 
 The fall of the Portuguese power, the natural 
 ctor of the Catholic missions; the transfer of 
 those vast regions to the Protestant 
 England and Holland, Mussulman perse- 
 >n of the most cruel nature, the lack of mission- 
 account for the partial disappearance, 
 and in Travancore, 
 ith of thousands. The seed cast by 
 him into the soil of Japan 1 r been trampled 
 
 :er his departure more than 400,- 
 000 Chri- found in the islands, and y< 
 
 mining persecuti 
 in the hi urch could not blot out the 
 
90 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 
 
 Faith which he had taught in success at Yamaguchi, 
 in disappointment and tears at Miyako. 
 
 In the Catholic Church, and this is one of his 
 greatest titles to glory, Xavier is the apostle of the 
 heroic virtues, of contempt for the prizes of earth, 
 of enthusiasm, of burning love of his Crucified King, 
 of a love as ardent for the souls which Christ re- 
 deemed. He is a voice and a trumpet that summons 
 to high endeavor and chivalrous emprise. Where he 
 trod, and inspired by his example, others were proud 
 to follow. He is the captain, the guide of the white- 
 robed army of the Priests of the Foreign Missions 
 like Theophane Vanard, of the Sons of Francis, 
 Dominic and Ignatius, like John de Britto, his suc- 
 cessor in India, and Charles Spinola, his imitator in 
 Japan, who carried the Cross further even than he 
 could venture, and who for their Faith gladly laid 
 down their lives. Following the trail which Francis 
 had pointed out but which he was not allowed to 
 blaze, and crowning his dreams with unexpected 
 splendors, his Jesuit brothers Ricci and Verbiest lift 
 the Cross over the royal palace of Pekin and are re- 
 ceived as priests and ambassadors in that vast empire 
 at whose barred doors he died. With Xavier's 
 strength, zeal and romantic daring in their hearts, 
 Marquette preaches Christ amid the smoke of Indian 
 campfires, and after discovering the great river, dies 
 almost alone in the solitude of the forest, while Jogues 
 and Brebeuf bury themselves in the Canadian wilder- 
 ness amid the wigwams of their fiercest enemies and 
 stain the snows with their martyrs' blood, and far to 
 the South other brethren of his preach the Gospel 
 to the tribes of the Amazon and the Parana, and, 
 recalling the pastoral scenes of olden Arcady, with 
 the Gospel as their Constitution, build the sylvan 
 republics of the Indian Reductions of Paraguay. 
 
 The work of heroes of the Faith like Xavier can 
 
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER 91 
 
 never die, To reward them for th< e-souled 
 
 I, God constantly revives their vir 
 in tl their work with 
 
 something of His own strength and immortality. 
 
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