amily, and entered the Society at Nola, while his uncle
cardinal Spinola was bishop of that city. Out of zeal and a desire of
martyrdom, he begged to be sent on the Japanese mission. He arrived
there in 1602; labored many years in that mission, gained many to
Christ, by his mildness, and lived in great austerity, for his usual
food was only a little rice and {361} herbs. He suffered four years a
most cruel imprisonment, during which, in burning fevers, he was not
able to obtain of his keepers a drop of cold water out of meals: yet he
wrote from his dungeon: "Father, how sweet and delightful is it to
suffer for Jesus Christ! I have learned this better by experience than I
am able to express, especially since we are in these dungeons where we
fast continually. The strength of my body fails me, but my joy increases
as I see death draw nearer. O what a happiness for me, if next Easter I
shall sing the heavenly Alleluia in the company of the blessed!" In a
long letter to his cousin Maximilian Spinola, he said: "O, if you had
tasted the delights with which God tills the souls of those who serve
him, and suffer for him, how would you contemn all that the world can
promise! I now begin to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, since for his
love I am in prison, where I suffer much. But I assure you, that when I
am fainting with hunger, God hath fortified me by his sweet
consolations, so that I have looked upon myself as well recompensed for
his service. And though I were yet to pass many years in prison, the
time would appear short, through the extreme desire which I feel of
suffering for him, who even here so well repays our labors. Besides
other sickness, I have been afflicted with a continual fever a hundred
days without any remedies or proper nourishment. All this time my heart
was so full of joy, that it seemed to me too narrow to contain it. I
have never felt any equal to it, and I thought myself at the gates of
paradise." His joy was excessive at the news that he was condemned to be
burnt alive, and he never ceased to thank God for so great a mercy, of
which he owned himself unworthy. He was conducted from his last prison
at Omura to Nangasaqui, where fifty martyrs suffered together on a hill
within sight of that city-nine Jesuits, four Franciscans, and six
Dominicans, the rest seculars: twenty-five were burned, the rest
beheaded. The twenty-five stakes were fixed all in a row, and the
martyrs tied to them. Fire was set to the end