フランシスコ会のグレゴリオ十三世小勅書廃止運動(下)

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In half a century after the Jesuits opened the Japan mission in 1549, there were various changes in the situations both within and outside of Japan, and they had a great influence on the mission work in Japan. The most momentous event was that the Spanish influence reached the Philippines via Mexico and Peru etc. and established a firm foothold in Manila in the 1570's. Now the rivalry between the Jesuits patronized by the Portuguese Crown and the friars patronized by the Spanish Crown developed in the Extreme Orient. This ecclesiastical rivalry was agitated by a political and economic Luso-Spanish rivalry. In 1580 Spain and Portugal were united in a dual monarchy under the scepter of King Felipe 11. One of the conditions of this union was that the two colonial empires should continue to be separately administered and be completely independent of each other as hitherto. Moreover, the privileges of the Portuguese padroado or religious patronage in the Orient were recognized by the Spanish monarch. But the Spanish Conquistadores and Frailes did not display the same comlacent attitude to the great claims of the Luso-Jesuits as their King. Soon after the consolidation of the Spanish conquest of Luzon in 1575, the mendicant orders made several attempts to evangelize China. These attempts, however, all ended in failure in view of the Chinese intransigence. It was, therefore, only natural for P. Alessandro Valignano, great Italian Visitador of Jesuits in India, to expect that the Spaniards would switch their efforts from China to Japan. In fact, the reports of a few stray friars who had reached Japan specially created the strong passion for evangelizing Japan in the mendicants of the Philippines in those days. To forestall the inevitable untoward cnsequence of the entrance of the Spanish friars into Japan, P. Valignano required a papal bull ordering the existing Jesuit monopoly in the Japan mission field to continue, and this request was speedily granted by the promulgation of the brief by Pope Gregory XIII on January 28, 1585, in which the entrance of all religious but Jesuits into Japan was forbiddened under pain of excommunication. Far from being cooled down in their apostoric passion for the Japan mission by the publication of this brief, the mendicants' rivalry against the Jesuits was fanned. They first actually dared to open mission work in Japan, and secondly started a strong movement for the revocation of the brief. In 1595, the Franciscans in the Philippines began to develope this movement with particular strength, under the influence of a request of their colleagues in Japan. The Franciscans availed themselves of the diplomatic negociations begun in 1591 between Japan and the Philippines to open the Japan mission, and the Franciscan Comisario Fr. Pedro Bautista came to Japan with his three companions in 1593. In the following year, other three Franciscan missionaries took part in the mission work of Japan. Those friars took the apparent friendliness of Hideyoshi at its face value and started their evangelical labour openly with a contemptuous look at the warnings of the Jesuits who had been behaving very cautiously not to irritate the dictator after the promulgation of his edict of banishment in 1587. The embarrased Jesuits required the Franciscans to leave Japan on the ground of the said brief of Pope Gregory XIII. The religious of the Franciscan Order in Japan, therefore, considered this brief the greatest obstacle against their Japan mission, and asked their superiors in Manila to gain a revocation of this for the following two reasons : namely, first the prospects of the Japan mission by the Franciscans should be very bright under the protection of Hideyoshi; secondly the recidence of the Franciscans in Japan as guards against the Japanese intention of invading the Philippines should be important for the peace of the Islands. Influenced by this request, the Franciscan superiors in Manila dispatched P. Francisco de Montilla to Europe with several letters of the Franciscan Provincial and the Governador in the Philippines addressed to Spanish King, the Consejo de las Indias and Pope, in the capacity of a Procurador in the Courts of Madrid and Rome with the object of pressing for a revocation of the papal prief of 1585. This Franciscan movement met with a strong opposition on the part of the Jesuits. They demanded that the Japan mission field should be continuously reserved as a Jesuit monopoly with the sphere of the Portuguese padroado. As aforesaid, in 1580 the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united in the person of Felipe 11, who pleged himself to recognize the individuality of Portugal and promised to maintain the rights and liberties of the Portuguese people. As he had to soothe his new vassals, he could not accede generally to the request of the Fraciscan Order in difiance of the Luso-Jesuit opposition. King Felipe 11, therefore, showed the Pope a compromise plan favourable to the Jesuits. According to the directions of the King, Pope Clement VIII promulgated a brief on December 12, 1600, whereby the mendicant orders were indeed allowed to proceed to Japan, but only by way of Lisbon and Portuguese India, and furthermore those friars already in Japan were ordered to leave forthwith and return to Manila.

著者

高瀬弘一郎
慶應義塾大学

フランシスコ会のグレゴリオ十三世小勅書廃止運動(下)

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