ABSTRACT

After he had done this, Sōrin sent a long message to Padre Francisco Cabral, asking him to “make this woman, whom he was with, a Kirishitan.”3 Sōrin requested him to send Irmão João de Torres, “who was Japanese and had been in the Jesuit house from his youth and well instructed in the things of our Catholic faith.” Irmão João went immediately to Sōrin’s new residence. While the padres at the Jesuit house

prayed hard, Irmão João preached and taught according to the Japanese book of catechism every evening. When the catechetical sessions were completed, Sōrin asked for a baptism for his “new wife” and her daughter, who was married to his son Chikamori. Sensing that Sōrin was hesitant about his own baptism, the padre replied:

It is an easy thing to go there as Your Highness has ordered, and I will do so. But I suggest first that since you are a gentile and she is a Kirishitan, in order for her to be your legitimate wife, it is necessary for Your Highness to have a deliberate resolution and firm proposition to stay with her till death. For the law of God, as you have heard, must be fulfilled and exacted in all. This implies that if you should become a Kirishitan in near future, you would not be able to live with the first wife “sine maxima contumelia Salvatoris.” The way in which you acquired her had annulled the bond of the true marriage between you many years ago.4