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Jesuit slave trade

A short description of the Jesuit compound at Morisaki in Nagasaki in the 1580s, during the time of the year that the Portuguese carrack was at anchor, also illustrates how central the role of the Jesuits was to the whole trade:

When the carrack arrives in Nagasaki, they (the padres) transfer its whole cargo, not just their own but also the merchandise belonging to others, and bring it to their convent, so that the Jesuit compound of Nagasaki is like the Customs House of Sevilla, where all the merchandise that comes from the Indies is registered. There are so many different things, and such a variety of contracts and agreements is entered into here, not only for the merchandise of the carrack but also for the slaves who are shipped in the same vessel, the one as well as the other passing through their hands, that I do not know if there would be more in the Vendution House of Sevilla.12

Jesuit involvement in the slave trade went all the way back to the leadership of Cosme de Torrès. In a Jesuit handbook, dating from 1570, on how to handle problems arising from confessions, Japanese girls “robbed from their fathers and mothers and brought as slaves to Macao are on record as having complained that the Superior had issued the licenses legalizing their sale. The writer of the handbook, taking the position of the haves against the have-nots, concludes that the true merits of such allegations can only be decided in Japan, and that therefore “in dubiis” these sales must be considered “legal”:13

On the other hand, it should also be noted that it was the same Cosme de Torrès who issued the Jesuit request to King Dom Sebastião to put a stop to the slave trade by the Portuguese in Japan. This prohibition was actually proclaimed on 20 September 1570,-4 although the Portuguese merchants routinely ignored it for another 17 years. It stands to reason, then, that it paid for a Portuguese merchant to have good relations with the padres.