Account of the Twenty-Six Crucified at Nagasaki

Fróis was a Portuguese Jesuit who, according to the editors of the Acta Sanctorum, spent thirty-four years in Japan and died at Nagasaki in July 1597, five months after the events. In his dedicatory letter to the Jesuit general he says that he will tell only what he had from trustworthy people, members of the Society and laymen, who were present at Kyoto, where the arrests began, and at Nagasaki, where the sentence was carried out. Two Jesuit priests, he says, were allowed inside the ring of guards at the place of execution.

He describes the Japanese form of cross, to which the condemned were bound with ropes and iron rings and on which they were killed by lance thrusts, and he lists the twenty-six in order: the six Franciscans in the middle, ten Japanese on one side and ten on the other, the three members of his own Society among them. His is a Jesuit account, written when the Jesuits and the newly arrived Franciscans were at odds over the mission, and it gives most space to the three Jesuits. It presents all twenty-six as martyrs and records their deaths as a victory.