The Vietnamese martyrs Father Andrew Dung-Lac and his 116 companions

Summary:

Vietnam's first contacts with Christianity date back to the 16th century, when the Portuguese explored the region, and then increased in the following century with the arrival of Dominican, Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries. It was a French priest of the Society of Jesus, Alexandre de Rhodes, who built the first church in Hanoi in 1627, transcribed the Vietnamese language into the Latin alphabet and opened a school to train catechists. His work was crowned with success and many inhabitants of Vietnam converted.

But in 1644, the country had to mourn its first martyr, the young Andrew of Phú Yên, aged just 18, known as the "Protomartyr of Vietnam". Until French colonisation, the centuries that followed were filled with persecution, bloodshed and martyrdom, with rare periods of tolerance when rulers who were themselves Christians interrupted the terrible litany of those who died for their faith.

The motivations of the Vietnamese emperors varied, but most often it was the accusation of breaking with the cult of their ancestors and following an "unorthodox religion" that predominated. The "perverse ideas" that faith in Jesus would introduce (such as the condemnation of polygamy) were rejected. The fact remains that, in all cases, the emperors and mandarins were constant in their hatred of the Christian faith, perceived as a Western import, and in their condemnation of their subjects who had grown to love Jesus Christ. It was only when France intervened - and this was one of the official reasons for the protectorate and then colonisation - that the local authorities stopped the mass martyrdom of evangelists and their converts.

Among the victims were eight bishops, a large number of priests and a huge number of lay Christians of both sexes, from all walks of life and of all ages, all of whom preferred to suffer exile, imprisonment, torture and, ultimately death, rather than trample on the cross and fail in their Christian faith.

The Catholic Church has chosen to commemorate and pray to them in a joint celebration honouring 117 martyrs put to death between 1745 and 1862 in Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina. These 117 people - those whose ordeals appeared the cruellest - were chosen and raised to the altars by Rome, in four series of beatifications: 64 in 1900, by Pope Leo XIII; 8 in 1906, then 20 in 1909, by Saint Pius X; finally 25 in 1951, by Pius XII. Finally, they were all canonised as a group in 1988 by Saint John Paul II.

Among these saints were 11 Spanish Dominicans, 10 Frenchmen from the Paris Foreign Missions, and 96 Vietnamese, including 37 priests and 59 lay people, one of whom was a woman. At the place of their execution, a royal edict, placed next to each martyr, specified the method of torture: 75 were sentenced to beheading; 22 to strangulation; 6 were burnt alive; 5 were quartered; and 9 died in prison as a result of torture.

The twentieth century itself produced its share of martyrs, this time because of Communist ideology, as Cardinal Thuan testified, in France and around the world, when he was condemned to exile.

Going further:

• Saint Andrew Dung-Lac: The Remarkable Life and Legacy of Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and his Companion Martyrs by Jonathan V. Terrell, Independently published (November 20, 2023)

More information:

• Marie Oury-Guy, Le Vietnam, des martyrs et des saints, Le Sarment, 1998.
• Speech by John Paul II to French pilgrims for the canonisation of the 117 martyrs in 1988.
• P. Truong Ba Cân, Histoire du développement du catholicisme vietnamien, Hô Chi Minh-Ville, 1992.
• Catherine Marin, Le Rôle des missionnaires français en Cochinchine aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Églises d'Asie, 1999.
• The Aleteia article: " Les martyrs du Vietnam: comment ils ont suivi le Christ jusqu'au bout ".