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The local persecutions in Kyushu, for example, would seem to have been natural consequences of the intolerance of the Jesuits in the days of their power, when converted daimyo burned Buddhist temples and massacred Buddhist priests; and these persecutions were most pitiless in those very districts such as Bungo, Omura, and Higo where the native religion had been most fiercely persecuted at Jesuit instigation.
Hirado continued to be frequented by Portuguese merchantmen, and news of the value of their trade induced Sumitada, feudatory of Omura, to invite the Jesuits in Bungo to his fief, offering them a free port for ten years, an extensive tract of land, a residence for the missionaries, and other privileges.
On one occasion, at a fire in the village of Omura, adjoining Yokahama, the charms and their supporters were actually licked by the flames from the house opposite to that on which they were fixed, whose thatched roof was pulled off while in a state of rampant ignition by fire-coolies, who with bare hands, and no other protection than their saturated clothing, fought with the actual fire.
Leave the strangers in peace". Some of the most powerful princes espoused the Christian religion, and about the year 1584, a mission, consisting of two young Japanese noblemen, attended by two counsellors of less rank, was sent to Rome by the subordinate kings of Bungo and Arima, and the Prince of Omura, in testimony of the devotion of those rulers.
It consisted of four young men, representing the fiefs of Arima, Omura, and Bungo, and it is related that at Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome they were received with an elaborate show of dazzling magnificence, so that they carried back to their island home a vivid impression of the might and wealth of Western countries.
Practically the whole population became converts under the pressure of these edicts, and it is thus seen that Christianity owed much of its success in Kyushu to methods which recall Islam and the Inquisition. Another illustration of this is furnished by the Arima fief, which adjoined that of Omura where Sumitada ruled.
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