Japanese Mission

JAPAN, 1982, the 4th centenary of the 1582 boys' delegation to the West, Scott 1508

In 1582 Japan sent a boys' delegation to the West, the stamp showing a 16th century ship such as they might have sailed on. The mission — to the courts of Philip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII — was conceived by Alessandro Valignano, head of the Jesuits' mission in Asia, to introduce the Japanese to Europeans and win support for the Jesuit mission in Japan. The four were students in the Jesuit seminary in Arima. The boys were received as nobles in Europe and sent back with many gifts. The Pope gave the Jesuits a gift too: the sole right to preach in Japan. But upon their return to Japan, they found that the military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi had issued an edict of expulsion against the Jesuits in 1587.

  
JAPAN, 1951, 1969 and 1981, Scott 535, 1017, 1464

Twenty-six Christians were martyred in 1597 under the Taiko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ruler of Japan, among them three Jesuits: St. Paul Miki (1564-1597), St. John Soan de Goto (1578-1597), and St. James Kisai (1533-1597). They were beatified in 1627, and canonized in 1862. The place in Nagasaki where they were killed was declared an official pilgrimage site by the Pope Pius XII in 1950. The church on these stamps, the oldest wooden Gothic church in Japan, is commonly called Oura Tenshudo, but the official name is Nihon Niju-roku Seijin Junkyosha Tenshu-do (Church of the Heavenly Father for the Twenty-six Martyred Japanese Saints). A monument was erected there on the centenary of their canonization. More

North American Martyrs

VATICAN CITY, 1986, Journeys of Pope John Paul II, Scott C81

In 1984 Pope John Paul II visited Canada. Scott tells us that the crosses to his left are the "five crosses of the Jesuit martyrs." The Canadian or North American Martyrs were Jesuit Fathers Jean de Brebeuf, Antoine Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier and Noel Chabanel — the five who died on what is now Canadian soil in the region of Midland, Ontario — together with Jesuit Father Isaac Jogues and two donnés or lay volunteer workers, Rene Goupil and Jean de La Lande, who died in what is today the United States, in the region of Auriesville, New York. Rene Goupil, however, once a surgeon, had entered a Jesuit novitate in 1639 in Paris, but had to withdraw because he had become deaf.

Father Joseph Liesganig, SJ
(1719-1799)

AUSTRIA, 1967, a land survey monument from 1762, Scott 803
The monument bears the Latin inscription:
"At the behest of Their Majesties Franz and Maria Theresa
Joseph Liesganig, SJ, measured three degrees of arc of the meridian of Vienna
and erected this column at the north end of the baseline in 1762."

Joseph Liesganig was born in Graz in 1719, died in Lvív, Ukraine in 1799. Liesganig, a mathematician, geographer and geodesist, was director of the Observatory at the University of Vienna from 1756 to 1773. In 1759 he was commissioned by Maria Theresa, at suggestions from Boscovich, to survey the arc of meridian between Vienna and Brün. One purpose was to correct the maps of Austria. The greater purpose was a more accurate map of the world. The Jesuits with missions and observatories around the world had contributed greatly to this enterprise. In the attempt to determine the length of a degree of longitude, the Jesuits took a very prominent part: Boscovich and Maire in the Papal States, Christian Mayer in the Palatinate, Beccaria and Canonica in Italy, others in Abyssinia, South America, China, and the Philippines, and of course, Liesganig in Austria.

Paso del Molino, Montevideo, Uruguay
& Fr. Cosme Agulló, SJ
(1710-1772)

URUGUAY, 1998, the 250th anniversary of Paso del Molino, Scott 1774

This stamp celebrates the foundational event in 1748 that began the area of Montevideo called Paso del Molino (Mill's Crossing). That event was the building of a flour mill by Jesuit priest Cosme Agulló, the superior of the Jesuits in Montevideo and founder in 1745 of the Estancia of Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados, also called La Calera . The Cabildo of Montevideo had approved in December of l747 the Jesuit's request to put up the mill and ceded him land for it on the Miguelete River. Until then, the flour used in San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo came from Buenos Aires. Agulló taught the small farm owners in the area how to raise wheat for the mill, and the community known as Paso del Molino grew centered around the mill. By 1870 the Jesuit had long been expelled and expanding city of Montevideo had engulfed the community. It has now become a most important neighborhood of Montevideo. The Gran Hotel del Paso del Molino, seen on the stamp, played a major role in this later development of the area. More

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