of the Empire which they believed to be menaced, and the foreign priests equally resolved to discharge what they held to be their duty to God. This contest lasted for nearly thirty years, the missionaries displaying intrepid devotion, and many of the converts a remarkable constancy. At its most flourishing period (before the persecution of 1597), Christianity in Japan numbered 300,000 converts. One Japanese record tells us that no fewer than 200,000 persons were "punished" for the crime of Christianity. "Punished," however, evidently cannot mean "executed;" for the Jesuit Father Cardim's list of martyrs gives only between 1,400 and 1,500 victims. It is plain, from the missionary records themselves, that the Japanese authorities were far from eager to proceed to extremities. Even at the last moment those converts who consented to abandon their belief were spared, and such few ecclesiastics as apostatised were granted a decent maintenance. But the heroic persistence of the great majority forced the government's hand, and (once the suppression of Christianity had been decided on in principle) left them no choice in the matter. Two irreconcilable ideals were at stake: each side was fighting for what it held most sacred. Hence the application and the endurance on Japanese soil of tortures no less fiendish than those with which Spanish and Portuguese rulers had extinguished heresy in their own dominions. The Japanese government emerged victorious from this deadly duel; but its victory was achieved only by the cessation of intercourse with the outside world, and the all but total isolation of the Empire.
Nevertheless, the Church of Japan was not forgotten. The Jesuit Father Sidotti and others, nothing daunted, disembarked on the Japanese coast at intervals during the eighteenth century, but were at once cast into prison. In 1846 the Pope nominated a bishop and several missionaries, who took up their station in the neighbouring Luchu Islands, and entered Japan on the signing of the treaties of 1858. These men had the joy, in 1865, to discover several Christian communities round about Nagasaki, surviving the ruin of the church of their forefathers over two
