Two groups of martyrs, 14 centuries apart

September 10 is not an especially good day.

On September 10 in the year 257, nine enslaved bishops, including two named Felix, were worked to death in a marble quarry. This was in Northern Africa, in the Roman province known as Numidia. It’s said they received a letter of support from Saint Cyprian, himself in exile and beheaded a year later, and that’s about all I was able to find out.

Exactly 1,365 years later and about 6,500 miles away, 50 Christians were martyred in Nagasaki, under the harsh rule of Tokugawa Hidetada. The group included a Spanish priest whose voyage to Japan had taken him six years, during which time he survived numerous shipwrecks and fights with pirates, as well as a number of Japanese converts who had already endured four years in outdoor prisons like bird cages before they were burned alive.

Do you think they all met, later?