The Birth of a Martyr: The Metamorphosis of Hosokawa Tama Gracia

Hosokawa Tama Gracia perished in 1600 under mysterious circumstances. She was a noblewoman married to a powerful daimyo, the daughter of a traitor, and a Kirishitan convert during the "Christian Century" in Japan. In life, she was both dutifully subservient and tenaciously bold. In death,...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cole, A. Louise (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc. 2021
In: The sixteenth century journal
Year: 2021, Volume: 52, Issue: 4, Pages: 857-880
IxTheo Classification:KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance
KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history
KBM Asia
KCD Hagiography; saints
KDB Roman Catholic Church
RJ Mission; missiology
Further subjects:B Hosokawa, Garasha, 1563-1600
B Catholic Identity
B Daimyo
B Japan
B Samurai
B Christian women martyrs
B Japanese history
B MARTYRDOM in Christianity
Description
Summary:Hosokawa Tama Gracia perished in 1600 under mysterious circumstances. She was a noblewoman married to a powerful daimyo, the daughter of a traitor, and a Kirishitan convert during the "Christian Century" in Japan. In life, she was both dutifully subservient and tenaciously bold. In death, she was fodder for propaganda, and in the hands of both European and Japanese writers, her life story was rewritten for specific narrative purposes. The most striking of these artistic transformations is her depiction as a Christian martyr in the late seventeenth-century Latin Jesuit drama Mulier fortis (The Valiant Woman). The drama Mulier fortis, as an amalgam of traditional Western conventions and exotic Oriental imagery, demonstrates an attempt by European Catholics to weave foreign individuals, like Hosokawa Tama Gracia, into the suprahistorical and even supracultural narrative structure of martyrdom in order to construct a global Catholic identity and reinforce the universality of Catholic belief.
ISSN:2326-0726
Contains:Enthalten in: The sixteenth century journal