Martyrs of Maokou and Guizhou

Martyrs of Maokou and Guizhou

 

Saint Paul Chen

Three catechists, known as the Martyrs of Maokou (in the province of Guizhou) were killed on January 28, 1858, by order of the officials in Maokou[citation needed]:

1. Jerome Lu Tingmei

2. Laurence Wang Bing

3. Agatha Lin

All three had been called on to renounce the Christian religion and having refused to do so were condemned to be beheaded.

In Guizhou, two seminarians and two lay people, one of whom was a farmer, the other a widow who worked as a cook in the seminary, suffered martyrdom together on July 29, 1861. They are known as the Martyrs of Qingyanzhen (Guizhou):

1. Joseph Zhang Wenlan, seminarian

2. Paul Chen Changpin]], seminarian

3. John Baptist Luo Tingyin]], layman

4. Martha Wang Luo Mande]], laywoman

In the following year, on February 18 and 19, 1862, another five people gave their life for Christ. They are known as the Martyrs of Guizhou.

1. Jean-Pierre Néel, a priest of the Paris Foreign Missions Society,

2. Martin Wu Xuesheng, lay catechist,

3. John Zhang Tianshen, lay catechist,

4. John Chen Xianheng, lay catechist,

5. Lucy Yi Zhenmei, lay catechist.

19th-century social and political developments

In June 1840, Qing China was forced to open to open the borders and afforded multiple concessions to European Christian missions after the First Opium War, including allowing the Chinese to follow the Catholic religion and restoring the property confiscated in 1724.[3] The 1844 treaty also allowed for missionaries to come to China, provided if they come to the treaty ports opened to Europeans.

The subsequent Taiping Rebellion significantly worsened the image of Christianity in China. Hong Xiuquan, the rebel leader, claimed to be a Christian and brother of Jesus who received a special mission from God to fight evil and usher in a period of peace. Hong and his followers achieved considerable success in taking control of a large territory, and destroyed many Buddhist and Taoist shrines, temples to local divinities and opposed Chinese folk religion.[3] The rebellion was one of the bloodiest armed conflict in human history, accounting for an estimated amount of 20-30 million deaths. As missionary activities became increasingly associated with European imperialism, violence against missionaries arose.[3]

In 1856, the death of missionary Augustus Chapedelaine trigged a French military expedition during the Second Opium War, which China lost. The resulting Treaty of Tientsin, granted Christian missionaries the freedom of movement throughout China and the right to land ownership.[3]

As missionaries started to build churches or schools in offensive locations like old temples or near official buildings, tensions with the local Chinese population arose. The missionaries also abolished indigenous Chinese Catholic institutions that had survived the imperial ban.[3] In some regions, Catholic missionaries started "quarantining" new Chinese converts from the hostile social environment as they see the mission as "enclaves of Christianity in an alien world". The separation sparked conspiracy theories about the Christians and eventually accumulated in a the massacre of 60 people in a Catholic orphanage.[3] In comparison, Protestant missions were less secretive and treated more favorably by the authorities.[3]

Chinese literati and gentry produced a pamphlet attacking Christian beliefs as socially subversive and irrational. Incendiary handbills and fliers distributed to crowds were also produced, and were linked to outbreaks of violence against Christians. Sometimes, no such official incitement was needed in order to provoke the populace to attack Christians. For example, among the Hakka people in southeastern China, Christian missionaries frequently flouted village customs that were linked with local religions, including refusal to take part in communal prayers for rain (and because the missionaries benefitted from the rain, it was argued that they had to do their part in the prayers) and refusing to contribute funds to operas for Chinese gods (these same gods honoured in these village operas were the same spirits that the Boxers called to invoke in themselves, during the later rebellion).[3]

Catholic missions offered protection to those who came to them, including criminals, fugitives from the law, and rebels against the government; this also led to hostile attitudes developing against the missions by the government.[3]

Boxer Rebellion

And so passed an era of expansion in the Christian missions, with the exception of the period in which they were struck by the uprising by the "Society for Justice and Harmony" (commonly known as the "Boxers"). This occurred at the beginning of the 20th century and caused the shedding of the blood of many Christians.

It is known[citation needed] that mingled in this rebellion were all the secret societies and the accumulated and repressed hatred against foreigners in the last decades of the 19th century, because of the political and social changes following the Second Opium War and the imposition of the so-called unequal treaties on China by the Western Powers.

Very different, however, was the motive for the persecution of the missionaries, even though they were of European nationalities. Their slaughter was brought about solely on religious grounds. They were killed for the same reason as the Chinese faithful who had become Christians. Reliable historical documents provide evidence of the anti-Christian hatred which spurred the Boxers to massacre the missionaries and the Christians of the area who had adhered to their teaching. In this regard, an edict[citation needed] was issued on July 1, 1900, which, in substance, said that the time of good relations with European missionaries and their Christians was now past: that the former must be repatriated at once and the faithful forced to apostatize, on penalty of death.

Following the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, China was further subject to Western spheres of influence, which in turn led to a booming conversion period in the following decades. The Chinese developed respect for the moral level that Christians maintained in their hospital and schools.[3] The continuing association between Western imperialism in China and missionary efforts nevertheless continued to fuel hostilities against missions and Christianity in China. All missions were banned in China by the new communist regime after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, and officially continue to be legally outlawed to the present.