I posted about the deadly Japanese persecution of Christians in the thirty years or so after 1614, and how this violence effectively destroyed organized Christianity in that nation. In 2014, we are commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the worst of the persecution.
In describing Japanese acts against the Christians, I am not of course denying that contemporary Christians could be just as brutal in their way. Coincidentally, 1614 also marks the culmination of Spain’s expulsion of its Moriscos, former Muslims who had accepted conversion to Christianity. In Germany, meanwhile, the same year saw anti-Jewish riots. Intolerance, obviously, was the prerogative of no one faith.
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