Magdalene of Nagasaki
Magdalene of Nagasaki was a Japanese Christian who served as a translator and catechist for the Augustine Recollect missionaries. She became a tertiary of the Order of Augustinian Recollects.
Life
Born in 1611 near Nagasaki, Magdalene was the daughter of a Christian couple martyred about 1620. With the arrival of the Augustinian Order in 1623, Magdalene served as an interpreter for the friars Francis of Jesus Terrero and Vincent of Saint Anthony Simoens. In 1625, she became a tertiary of the Order of Augustinian Recollects.Magdalene taught catechism to the young, sought alms for the poor, and encouraged the people in times of persecution. In 1632, the two Augustinian friars, who had been her spiritual counselors, were burned alive. After the martyrdom of her counselors, she apprenticed herself to two other Augustinians, Melchior of Saint Augustine and Martin of Saint Nicholas. When these two friars were also put to death, she turned to Giordano Ansaloni de San Esteban, a Dominican. In 1629, she sought refuge with other Christians in the hills of Nagasaki, where she baptized the young and visited the sick.
Tortured and drowned
Seeing so many apostatize, some time later, attired in her Augustinian habit, Magdalene turned herself into the authorities and declared herself a follower of Jesus. At age 23, she died on October 15, 1634, after thirteen days of torture, suffocated to death and suspended upside down in a pit of offal on a gibbet. In the end, the pit was filled with water and she drowned.After death, her body was cremated and her ashes scattered in Nagasaki Bay.