The collection

Mario Marega was born in Gorizia in Italy’s northeastern region of Fruili on September 30, 1902. After completing his secondary education in Vienna during World War I and undergoing religious training, he studied at the Valsalice Salesian High School in Turin. In 1924, he entered the Faculty of Theology at the Salesian Pontifical University, where he was ordained as a priest in 1927 and graduated in 1928 with a doctorate in theology. In October 1929, he left the port of Venice, traveling via Kobe to arrive in Miyazaki, Japan, on December 16, where he taught at a seminary. In December 1931, he moved to the Ōita Church, where he published books in Japanese, including Shinkō no konpon (The Fundamentals of Faith; 1993) and Katorikku wa kotaeru (Catholics Respond), Volumes I and II (1933, 1934). In 1933, he was involved in the establishment of Kaisei Kindergarten (Ōita City), and in April 1935, he became the priest in charge of the Ōita Church. In addition to his missionary and didactic work, in 1938, Marega published an Italian translation of the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters), presented to Pope Pius XI by Father Cimatti in the same year. He also collected and studied old documents related to Christians, culminating in the publication of Bungo Kirishitan Shiryō (Historical Documents Regarding Bungo Christians) in 1942. Moreover, he sought to discover historical Christian sites, and the results of these activities were reported in local and Catholic newspapers. On July 16, 1945, during World War II, Ōita Church was burned down in an air raid, but Marega’s collection of old documents had already been forwarded to Miyazaki the year before and were thus undamaged. When Italy surrendered at the end of July, the Catholic priests were taken into custody and sent to Tochigi Onsen in Kumamoto Prefecture. Immediately after the war, Marega worked on Zoku Bungo Kirishitan Shiryō, a second volume of historical documents related to Christians in Bungo, published in 1946. In 1947, Marega returned to Italy, evangelizing in Palermo, Sicily, at which time he held an exhibition of Japanese historical documents. The following year, he had an audience with Pope Pius XII. In 1948, he was ordered to return to Japan; he traveled to Tokyo via the United States and was assigned to the Ōita Church. He moved to the Himon’ya Church in Tokyo around 1949 and became a teacher at the Salesio Seminary in Chōfu in 1950 and at the Salesian Junior College in 1951. In 1953, he donated the drafts that he had used to publish his collections of historical documents along with other materials to the Vatican Library. From 1953 to 1958, he worked at the Usuki Church in Ōita Prefecture and returned to Himon’ya, Tokyo, in 1959. In 1963, he became a full-time professor at Seibi Gakuen College in Akabane, Tokyo, which was administered by Salesian nuns, where he continued his research on Christianity, Buddhism, and philosophy in Japan. During this period, he published Ochiboshū (in Italian, “Oci-bo-sciu”) in 1961 and Kirishitan Eiyū Tachi (in Italian, “Japanese Christian Heroes”) in 1968. In March 1962, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic at the Italian Embassy in Tokyo. He also sought to engage with other scholars, participating in events such as the International Conference of Eastern Studies.

He returned to Italy in 1974 and passed away in Brescia, Lombardy, on January 30, 1978.

As the set of documents that Marega acquired from Usuki Domain’s Office of Religious Affairs in the 1930s constitutes the majority of the collection, and that Marega’s manuscripts, memos, and correspondence are also related to these documents, let us turn our attention to this origin, the Office of Religious Affairs. Naotaka Fukuhara, who served the Toyotomi clan, arrived in Usuki, Amabe District, Bungo Province (present-day Usuki City, Ōita Prefecture) after Ōtomo Yoshitoshi (son of Ōtomo Sōrin) was dismissed and stripped of his status. Then, Fukuhara was transferred to Funai in Bungo (present-day Ōita City), and Ōta Kazuyoshi entered the domain with land to the value of 65,000 koku.

After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Inaba Sadamichi, who had switched sides from the Western Army to the Eastern Army, moved in from Gujō Hachiman in Minō Province with land equivalent to 50,000 koku. Inaba was a feudal lord who was not a hereditary vassal of the Tokugawa family. The domain was ruled by successive generations of the Inaba family until the end of the Edo period (1968), namely, Sadamichi, Norimichi, Kazumichi, Nobumichi, Kagemichi, Tomomichi, Tsunemichi, Masamichi, Yasumichi, Hiromichi, Terumichi, Takamichi, Chikamichi, Akimichi, and Hisamichi. The family ruled over 97 villages in Amabe District, 39 in Ōita District, and 143 villages in Ōno District, all of which were located in Bungo Province. From 1634, the Usuki Domain tightened its control over Christians by carrying out religious inquisitions, requiring individuals to submit oaths to prove that they were not Christian, and organizing residents into groups of five households. Even after this, however, underground Christians were still discovered in Bungo Province. In 1665, Usuki Domain appointed three individuals—Takamiya, Okabe, and Itō—as “religion magistrates” (shūmon bugyō) and developed a system for carrying out fumi-e, managing descendants of Christians, and conducting religious inquisitions under a three-man system, which persisted until the final years of the Edo period. In 1689, these religious magistrates received a stipend of 20 hyō (bales of rice) and they were assigned two subordinates. There are also some documents from the Edo period that were purchased from Hallelujah Bookstore in Ōita City and other places.