Santa Isabella
The Santa Isabella was the vessel that carried the three young Portuguese priests—Sebastian Rodrigues, Francisco Garrpe, and Juan de Santa Marta—from Lisbon to Goa in 1638, setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to their capture, torture, and apostasy in Japan. The ship's grueling journey around Africa, beset by storms, disease, and near-shipwreck, serves as a microcosm of the entire missionary enterprise: a noble aspiration battered by relentless, indifferent forces. The Santa Isabella is not merely a means of transport; it is the first concrete embodiment of the vast distance—geographical, cultural, and spiritual—that separates the priests' European certainties from the Japanese reality that will ultimately defeat them.
Voyage and Ordeal
The Santa Isabella sailed from the River Tagus on March 25, 1638, to a salvo of guns from the fortress of Belem, carrying the three missionaries who had received a blessing from the Bishop, Joao Dasco. The journey was catastrophic from the start. Three days after departure, a terrible storm struck off the West coast of Africa. On April 2nd they reached Porto Santo, then Madeira, and on the 6th the Canary Islands, where ceaseless rain fell from a windless sky. The heat became unbearable, and disease broke out; on the Santa Isabella alone, more than one hundred victims lay moaning on the deck and in the bunks below. Rodrigues and his companions, together with the crew, hastened to tend the sick and help bleed them. On July 25th, the feast of Saint James, the ship at last rounded the Cape of Good Hope, but a violent wind arose, breaking the mast and crashing it onto the deck. The sick and the priests were summoned to rescue the foresail, but scarcely had they succeeded when the ship ran onto a rock. Only the help of other ships prevented the Santa Isabella from sinking. After the storm, the wind calmed again, the sail lay lifeless, and the sick lay like dead men on the deck under the glaring sun. These mishaps prolonged the journey so that food and water became scarce, but on October 9th, 1638, the Santa Isabella finally reached its destination: Goa.
Symbolic Significance
The Santa Isabella's ordeal is not merely a historical detail; it is a symbolic prefiguration of the entire mission. The ship's battering by storms, the outbreak of disease, and the near-sinking mirror the spiritual and physical trials that await the priests in Japan. The ship's journey is a passage through a world of suffering, a kind of purgatory that tests the missionaries' resolve before they even reach the field of their labor. The ship itself becomes a vessel of fate, carrying the men inexorably toward a destiny that will strip them of their faith, their identity, and their lives. The contrast between the ship's initial grandeur—the salvo of guns, the blessing of the Bishop—and its subsequent degradation—the broken mast, the sick and dying, the desperate bailing of water—foreshadows the fall of the priests themselves, who begin their mission with high ideals and end as apostates, their faith shattered by the 'swamp' of Japan.
Contrast with Later Missionary Experience
The Santa Isabella's journey also establishes a stark contrast between the heroic age of missionary work and the brutal reality of the 1630s. The ship's passage recalls the voyages of earlier missionaries like Francis Xavier, who had sailed the same seas with hope and success. But the Santa Isabella's journey is marked by a sense of doom. The ship's near-shipwreck, the disease, and the scarcity of food are omens of the persecution that awaits. The ship itself, a product of Portuguese maritime power, becomes a symbol of the European presence in Asia that is about to be violently expelled. The Santa Isabella is the last link to the world the priests have left behind; once they disembark in Japan, they enter a world where their ship, their language, and their faith are all forbidden. The ship's journey is thus a passage from the known to the unknown, from safety to danger, from the light of European Christendom to the darkness of the Japanese 'swamp'.
