The story of the Chinese martyrs, lay people and religious, is told through the lives of the many European missionaries from the 18th to the early 20th centuries who came to China to build and grow Catholic communities.
Pope John Paul II gathered the martyrs together in a single feast, canonising 120 of them at a Mass on 1 October 2000. He called them universal models of ‘courage and integrity’. The official feast day is 9 July, but many dioceses and individual parishes mark the day at other times during July.
They wished to open the culture to Christ, a task of centuries.
The Catholic missionaries and mission were at different times encouraged, tolerated and banned by the emperor of the day. Trade, for example, and the exchange of knowledge between China and the European kingdoms was welcomed. In the 17th century, the Jesuit mission to China under Matteo Ricci and others tried to reach the Chinese rulers and intelligentsia and to communicate Christian faith in their own language and culture. They also brought a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics and astronomy that they shared with their Chinese peers. They wished to open the culture to Christ, a task of centuries.
Other Christian missionaries and authorities rejected this attempt to find common ground with the intellectual class in favour of direct preaching of the Gospel to the people. They had little respect for Chinese culture and rituals.
Some Chinese emperors saw Christianity as an alien religion, subversive of Chinese culture. They also looked on European missionaries as agents of their foreign kings. They saw both the missions and the missionaries as a threat, not as a gift. Many emperors passed laws forbidding Christian missionaries. Their reach, however, was limited by constant rebellions that allowed missionaries to come in quietly.
Many Chinese Christians were killed in times of revolt against the Chinese emperors. The first of the Chinese martyrs was Francisco Fernandez de Capillas, a Spanish Dominican priest, killed by the invading Manchurian forces in 1647.
Other martyrs were missionaries killed for disobeying imperial laws introduced under the Qing Dynasty in the areas under its control. Under a later emperor in the mid-18th century, Bishop Peter Sanz and four Dominican priests were killed.
In the early 19th century, under a reforming emperor who wished to strengthen traditional Chinese customs, Christian missionaries and Christians were again banned. Many who refused to recant their faith were martyred. They included catechists Peter Wu and Zhang Dapeng and three others, four Chinese priests, Bishop Gabriel Dufresse of the Missions Etrangères de Paris, and priests from the Franciscan and Vincentian congregations.
These martyrs are an example of courage and integrity for all of us and do honour to the noble Chinese people.
The principal periods of the persecution of Christians, however, were times of civil uprising by Chinese movements, and particularly the Taiping Rebellion in 1850–60 and the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. In the Opium Wars of the 1830s and 1860s, China tried to eliminate the import of opium by British and European traders. The war ended in defeat by English warships, the opening of China to foreign trade, and the alienation of Chinese land. In the settlement, missionaries were allowed to work freely in China. The defeat also alienated Chinese people and led younger Chinese and Chinese peasants to identify missionaries with colonisation and humiliation.
This hostility to missionaries was also intensified by the Taiping rebellion, whose leader, Hong Xiuquan, had read a Christian tract and believed himself to be the brother of Jesus. Some 20 million people are believed to have died in the ten years of war.
In the Boxer uprising in 1899, involving peasants resentful of European and Christian influence, many Jesuits and Salesians were among the thousands of Catholics killed who are remembered in the feast of the Chinese Martyrs. Many other Christians also died, including 200 members of the Russian Orthodox Church and members of Protestant churches.
After canonising the 120 martyrs—87 native Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries killed between 1648 and 1930—Pope John Paul II acknowledged the political issues surrounding his decision, which included intense criticism from the Chinese government of the day.
If mistakes were made in the missionary effort, we ask forgiveness.
He said the martyrs had lived during complex and difficult periods of Chinese history, but the occasion of their canonisation was not the moment to ‘form judgments’ on those historical periods. ‘The Church intends only to recognise that these martyrs are an example of courage and integrity for all of us and do honour to the noble Chinese people,’ he said.
Speaking to Chinese pilgrims after the canonisation Mass, Pope John Paul II stressed that it was not an attempt to legitimise the colonial policies of past eras, saying ‘if mistakes were made in the missionary effort, we ask forgiveness.’
Banner image: A painting by Li Chien-yi depicting the Chinese martyrs. (CNS photo from UCAN.)
