Spiritual joy in the face of death: compound emotions in texts and images of the martyrs of the Japan Mission

The ‘eager martyrdom’ of the victims of the early modern persecution of Christians in Japan became a recurring topos of reports recounting their last moments. As news of their martyrdom spread, the 26 Christians crucified in Nagasaki in 1597 during the first great Christian martyrdom in Japan became widely known. Pictorial renderings of these martyrs, who were beatified in 1627, direct attention to their emotional states by adopting visual strategies predicated on the perception of the mystical experiences of Francis, Ignatius and Francis Xavier, the respective founders and first saints of theFranciscan order and the Society of Jesus.