The canonization of 120 martyred Chinese and European Catholics on 1 October 2000, a date reportedly selected on account of its being the feast of St Thérèse de Lisieux (1873–97), the patron saint of Catholic foreign missions, provoked a hostile reaction in China. The Chinese government argued that the canonizations were an insult to national pride, because 1 October is also National Day, China's celebration of the founding of the People's Republic. The official press launched calumnious tirades against the foreign missionaries – who were “notorious for their crimes” – and their Chinese “accomplices and henchmen”.
In China's Saints, Anthony Clark explores the lives and circumstances of the deaths of some of these “martyr saints”. Although a considerable body of literature exists in continental European languages, “too little has been said in English sources specifically about Catholic activities in China, and even less about the martyrs who are part of that history” (p. 27). That is to say, in the English-speaking world, the history of Christianity in China has usually been understood as a Protestant endeavour of British and North American missionaries and linguistically challenged American and British scholars have largely ignored Catholicism, a substantial part of the Christian presence in China.
In chapter 1 of China's Saints, Clark helpfully explains the meaning of martyrdom in the Christian religion. It was understood as “the voluntary endurance or acceptance of death on account of one's faith”. Dying as a means of witness was to hasten the believer's “entrance into heaven and encounter the beatific vision”. Such Western notions of martyrdom, sainthood and the afterlife were absent from the prevailing beliefs of Chinese mainstream culture. On the contrary, as Clark's insightful account shows, most Chinese have been taught that life is preferable to death, for nothing good awaits one in the afterlife. He argues, therefore, that “the traditional Chinese imagination of what occurs at death and beyond must be kept in mind as we discuss the Chinese Christians who welcomed martyrdom despite the customary disdain for dying held in their native culture” (p. 11).
The author starts his detailed narration of martyrdom in China with the Spanish Dominican “protomartyr” Francisco Fernández de Capillas (1607–48), who was put to death during the troubled times of the Ming–Qing transition. One hundred years later, a persecution of foreign missionaries engaged in clandestine missionary work in Fujian province culminated in the execution by the Chinese authorities of the Dominican friar Pedro Sanz y Jordá (1680–1747) and four of his companions.
The most violent massacres of Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries occurred, however, during the Boxer Uprising in the summer of 1900. Clark's principal focus is on the events at Zhujiahe, in the Jesuit mission of Southeast Zhili. In this village two French priests and between two and three thousand indigenous Catholics perished. Although they were given the opportunity to apostatize and live, they preferred to die and “enter heaven”. Clark concludes, therefore, that “this massacre was centered more on religious enmity than political antagonism” (p. 100). Equally traumatic were the martyrdoms at Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province. Here the controversial governor Yuxian had several Franciscan missionaries as well as seven European women religious publicly beheaded. From the accumulated hagiographical material, Clark has produced several detailed biographical sketches of the foreign priests, including their social background, their performance as missionaries, the often gruesome manner of their martyrdom, and – most importantly – miracles attributed to them after their demise.
A careful examination of the various persecutions reveals the darker side of human behaviour. In some places, ordinary people, whether motivated by opportunism or an irrational fear of the “Other”, often delighted in gratuitously maltreating the hapless martyrs. In this connection, it should be noted that especially during the nineteenth century the belief was fostered that foreign priests engaged, among other things, in sorcery as well as sexual improprieties. In 2000 the Mainland Chinese media revived these lurid nineteenth-century tales, accusing some of the newly canonized martyrs of “unforgivable crimes against the Chinese people”. In particular, a most extraordinary attack was launched against the Italian missionary Alberico Crescitelli (1863–1900), who was accused of “lecherous seduction and rape”. Having carefully examined the historical evidence, Clark concludes that these “contrived” allegations “do not bear the scrutiny of historical records” (p. 169).
The author's discussion of the contextual background to the portraits of the “martyr saints” is somewhat disjointed and superficial. It would seem that he cannot quite bring himself to discuss the missionaries' contribution to the antiforeignism that emerged in the course of the nineteenth century. He alludes to the British opium trade and the first Opium War as the basic causes of all subsequent missionary troubles, but fails to mention how some Catholic missionaries aggressively took advantage of the Beijing Convention of 1860 and the French religious protectorate. More problematic is the assertion that the first Franciscans of the modern era arrived in China in 1782, which ignores the presence of Spanish Friars Minor since the 1630s and Bishop Bernardino Della Chiesa (1644–1721) and his Italian Franciscans since the last years of the seventeenth century. Johannes Schreck's surname was sometimes Latinized as Terrentius; hence his name was not Johannes Terrenz Schreck. The entire province of Zhili was not entrusted to French Jesuits in 1856, but only the south-eastern part. On p. 103 there seems to be some confusion about the arrival of the Zhu family.
Still, this English-language portrayal of some of China's Catholic saints, the discussion of martyrdom in the Chinese context and the processes involved in preparing martyrs for beatification and canonization will appeal to the general reader. That this book targets a wider readership is indicated by the author's decision to Anglicize the given names of continental European missionaries as well as by his use of the colloquial term “nuns” instead of the canonically more accurate term “sisters” for the martyred Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.
