Jerome de Angelis


Jerome de Angelis was an Italian Jesuit missionary to Japan. He was beatified in 1867.

Life

He was born Girolamo degli Angeli at Castro-Giovanni, Sicily.
He studied law in Palermo before entering the Society of Jesus at Messina in 1586. He was assigned to the Japanese mission but was captured en roue by English pirates and wound up in Spain.
He set out again in 1599 with Charles Spinola and three others, bound for the College in Goa, to complete his studies in anticipation of ordination.
Degli Angelis arrived in Nagasaki in 1602 and worked in the area of what is now Tokyo. He remained there after the publication of the edict expelling all Christian missionaries from the country in 1614.
In 1618, The first European on Hokkaido, he was the first missionary to reach Yezo and the Ainu people. De Angelis, after making many converts to Christianity, seeing that his neophytes were cruelly persecuted because of his presence among them and his preaching, gave himself up to the authorities in 1623. Condemned to death, he underwent public execution by fire.