According to Wikipedia, the Vatican estimates the number of Vietnamese martyrs at between 130,000 and 300,000. They include European missionaries from the early 16th century onwards, but the majority of them seem to be victims of official persecution in the 19th century.
The tortures to which these individuals were subjected are considered by the Vatican to be among the worst in the history of Christian martyrdom. Limbs were hacked off joint by joint, flesh was torn away with red hot tongs, and drugs were used to induce recantations. Christians were branded on the face with the words "tả đạo" (literally "sinister (or false) religion"), and families and villages that subscribed to Christianity were obliterated.
Portuguese Jesuit priests first came to Vietnam in 1533. Christianity was soon outlawed, and the Jesuits had to minister in secret until 1615, when they were allowed to build a permanent mission.
The earliest martyrs of whom there is substantial documentation are the Spanish Dominicans Francisco Gil de Federich and Alonzo Lenziana, who came to Vietnam around 1580. In 1773 two more Dominicans were beheaded. Hyacint Casteneda was a Spaniard, who had evangelised in the Philippines and China for several years before being deported to Vietnam, where he was imprisoned for three years. There he was joined by Vincent Liêm, the first Indo–Chinese Dominican to be martyred, who had ministered to his countrymen for fourteen years before he was beheaded. In 1798, John Dat and Emmanuel Triêu became the first Vietnamese–born diocesan priests to be martyred.
During the first twenty years of the 19th century Christianity made steady progress in Vietnam, but this was dramatically interrupted by the persecutions under the Annamite emperors Minh–Mạng (1820–40) and Tu Dúc (1847–83). From 1832 Minh–Mạng excluded all foreign missionaries and ordered Vietnamese Christians to renounce Christianity by trampling on the crucifix. Those who refused to do so were executed. Meanwhile churches were destroyed and the teaching of Christianity was forbidden.
The Spanish Dominican bishops Ignatius Delgado and Dominic Henares, each of whom had worked in Vietnam for 50 years, were again arrested. Delgado, aged 76, was subjected to public mockery in a cage, and died of hunger, thirst, and exposure before he could be beheaded.
A total of one hundred and seventeen named individuals were beatified on three occasions between 1900 and 1909, and a fourth in 1951 (by Pope Pius XII). John Paul II decided to canonise all of the martyrs, known and unknown, and gave them a singe feast day: 24 November.
The Vietnamese martyrs are often referred to as "Andrew Dũng–Lạc and Companions". Born Trần An Dũng in 1795, Andrew Dũng–Lạc grew up Catholic and took the name Andrew at his baptism (Anrê Dũng). He was ordained a priest in 1823, at a time when the Church was welcome in Vietnam, and is credited with many conversions to Christianity.
When the persecutions under Minh Mạng began, Andrew Dũng changed his name to Lạc to avoid capture (and so is memorialised as Andrew Dũng–Lạc – Anrê Dũng–Lạc). Following his first arrest, his parishioners raised money to free him. He moved to another area of Vietnam and continued his ministry, but was soon arrested again, along with another priest, Father Peter Thi. After brutal treatment by their guards, they were executed on 21 December 1839.
Although I have no axe to grind on this subject, I was surprised to find that the Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam doesn't mention Andrew Dũng–Lạc and Companions. My sources for this article are not just Wikipedia but also Saints Resource, Den Katolske Kirke (the website of the Catholic Church in Norway) and a blog named Unam Sanctam.
© Haydn Thompson 2019