Martyrs of Vietnam

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martyrdom of Jean-Charles Cornay 1837
Martyrdom of Pierre Dumoulin-Borie 1838

As martyrs of Vietnam (vietn. Các thánh tử đạo Việt Nam ) or St. Andreas Dung-Lac and Companions ( Anrê Dũng-Lạc và Các bạn tử đạo ), former martyrs of Indochina or martyrs of Tonkin , Annam and Cochinchina , will be 117 denotes Catholic Christians who were executed in the Vietnamese Empire between 1745 and 1862 for their beliefs or who died as a result of their imprisonment. Most of them are victims of the persecution of Christians by the Nguyễn emperors Minh Mạng (r. 1820–41) and Tự Đức (r. 1847–83). They are venerated as martyrs and saints by the Roman Catholic Church . Their common day of remembrance is November 24th .

In total, an estimated 130,000 people fell victim to Christian persecution and pogroms in the course of Vietnamese history.

background

The first Christian missionaries arrived in Vietnam in the 16th century. They were Portuguese, but they were soon replaced by the Spanish and French. The ruling Trịnh and Nguyễn lords were fundamentally opposed to the new religion. Some rulers occasionally persecuted and executed Christians, but in general Christianity did not play a politically significant role in the country until the late 18th century.

Since the first Nguyễn emperor Gia Long (r. 1802-1820) came to power with the support of the French priest Pierre Pigneau de Behaine , he tolerated the Christian mission during his reign. As a result, the Christian population rose sharply.

Gia Long's son and successor Minh Mạng, however, saw Christianity as a great danger to the Confucian state; in addition, he viewed the Christian missionaries - not without good reason - as a preliminary stage of European colonization. Under his rule, Vietnam was sealed off from abroad and Christianity was banned and brutally persecuted. Vietnamese Christians who showed their faith publicly were at risk of death, as were European missionaries who entered the country illegally. His successor Thiệu Trị (r. 1841–47) limited himself mostly to the imprisonment of the missionaries, but under his son Tự Đức there was another bloody high phase of the persecution of Christians. Several thousand people are believed to have been killed within a few years. The French finally took the execution of two Spanish missionaries in 1857 as an opportunity to take military action against Vietnam and to conquer the southern third of the country as part of the Cochinchina campaign . Tự Đức was also forced to tolerate Christianity in the Treaty of Saigon .

The 117 Martyrs

The 117 martyrs were beatified in four phases :

On June 19 In 1988, Pope John Paul II. The common canonization .

Six of the martyrs fell victim to the persecution of Christians by the Trịnh Lords, 58 died during the reign of Minh Mạng, three during the reign of Thiệu Trị and 50 during the reign of Tự Đứcs. There are 8 bishops, 50 priests and 59 lay people . 11 martyrs were Spanish (6 bishops and 5 Dominican priests), 10 were French (2 bishops and 8 priests of the Paris Mission ), 96 were Vietnamese (including 37 priests).

The execution was carried out in 75 cases by beheading, in 22 cases by strangling, six times by burning alive, five times by cutting off parts of the body in pieces ; nine other people died in captivity.

The 117 martyrs include:

This does not include the "protomartyr of Vietnam" Andreas von Phú Yên , as he has not (yet) been canonized.

Web links

Commons : Vietnamese Martyrs  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files