Saint Guillaume Courtet

Guillaume Courtet, O.P. (1589–1637) was a French Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and missionary. One of the first Frenchman to have visited Japan, he died as a martyr by beheading in Nagasaki at the hands of the Tokugawa Shogunate on Michaelmas Day 1637 after three days continuous torture. He was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1987 as one of the 16 Martyrs of Japan. He is celebrated annually on the September 28th as one of the 16 and on November 6th as one of the Thomasian Martyrs. Guillaume Courtet was born in 1589 or 1590 the little town of Sérignan (just inland from the coast on the Gulf of Lion) in Languedoc in the Kingdom of France, under the ecclesiastical administration of the Diocese of Béziers. He was one of at least four children of Jehan Courtet and Barbe Malaure. There is uncertainty about his birth date because the parish baptism register for that year does not survive. Local tradition holds a site in the Rue des Salanquiers as his birthplace. He grew up in a chaotic political climate, 8 years before the Edict of Nantes, during the last years of the French Wars of Religion. His early life was also ruptured by bereavement at age 12 when his mother died. His family, however, were fairly prosperous and prominent burghers, his father’s name is recorded in civic documents as holding the role of "second consul" in local government, and Guillaume enjoyed a first rate education. He was clearly regarded as a responsible young man as he was recorded as a godparent of a child of seigneurial rank at the age of just 13. His first formal education was overseen by the Collage of Canons at the church of Our Lady of Grace in Sérignan. Sometime around his mothers death he began studies at the Jesuit school in Béziers, now Lycée Henri-IV, where he received a solid humanist education.