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81-579: The Vatican estimates the number of Vietnamese martyrs at between 130,000 and 300,000. John Paul II decided to canonize both those whose names are known and unknown, giving them a single feast day. The Vietnamese Martyrs fall into several groupings: those of the Dominican and Jesuit missionary era of the 18th century and those killed in the politically inspired persecutions of the 19th century. A representative sample of only 117 martyrs—including 96 Vietnamese, 11 Spanish Dominicans, and ten French members of

162-429: A Catholic lay leader then came to the governor to offer their gratitude (thus perhaps exposing what the governor had done), the governor told him that those who had come to die for their religion should now prepare themselves and leave something for their wives and children; when news of the whole episode came out, the governor was removed from office for incompetence. Many officials preferred to avoid execution because of

243-528: A central topic in Salvador Elizondo 's Farabeuf , where the procedure is carried out by the protagonist. Agustina Bazterrica mentioned the torture in her book Tender is the Flesh , as the method used by the sister of the protagonist to make the meat served at the memorial party fresh and tasty. The Chinese idiom "千刀萬剮" qiāndāo wànguǎ is also a reference to linchi . A scene of Lingchi appeared in

324-465: A demoted governor attempting to win back his place did so successfully by capturing the priest Father Dang Dinh Vien in Yen Dung, Bac Ninh province. (Vien was executed). In 1839, the same official captured two more priests: Father Dinh Viet Du and Father Nguyen Van Xuyen (also both executed). In Nhu Ly near Hue, an elderly Catholic doctor named Simon Hoa was captured and executed. He had been sheltering

405-606: A man termed the ' Rousseau of China', and a major advocate of intellectual and government reform in the 1890s". Although officially outlawed by the government of the Qing dynasty in 1905, lingchi became a widespread Western symbol of the Chinese penal system from the 1910s on, and in Zhao Erfeng 's administration. Three sets of photographs shot by French soldiers in 1904–05 were the basis for later mythification. The abolition

486-480: A man who was merely killed while intoxicated, prohibited veneration of the man, and most significantly decreed that "you shall not therefore presume to honor him in the future; for, even if miracles were worked through him, it is not lawful for you to venerate him as a saint without the authority of the Catholic Church." Theologians disagree as to the full import of the decretal of Pope Alexander III : either

567-482: A missionary named Charles Delamotte, whom the villagers had pleaded with him to send away. The village was also supposed to erect a shrine for the state-cult, which the doctor also opposed. His status and age protected him from being arrested until 1840 when he was put on trial, and the judge pleaded (due to his status in Vietnamese society as both an elder and a doctor) with him to publicly recant; when he refused, he

648-526: A more general attitude opposed to "cruel and unusual" punishments (such as the exposure of the head) that the Tang dynasty had not included in the canonic table of the Five Punishments , which defined the legal ways of punishing crime. Hence the abolitionist trend is deeply ingrained in the Chinese legal tradition, rather than being purely derived from Western influences. Under later emperors, lingchi

729-494: A new law was instituted, in which case the Pope then for the first time reserved the right of beatification to himself, or an existing law was confirmed. However, the procedure initiated by the decretal of Pope Alexander III was confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III issued on the occasion of the canonization of Cunigunde of Luxembourg in 1200. The bull of Pope Innocent III resulted in increasingly elaborate inquiries to

810-514: A photograph that obsessed the philosopher Georges Bataille , in which a Chinese criminal, while being chopped up and slowly flayed by executioners, rolls his eyes heavenwards in transcendent bliss." Bataille wrote about lingchi in L'expérience intérieure (1943) and in Le coupable (1944). He included five pictures in his The Tears of Eros (1961; translated into English and published by City Lights in 1989). Naked City 's album Leng Tch'e

891-417: A punishment whose cruelty has been extraordinarily misrepresented ... The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an example of barbarian cruelty; but it is not cruel, and need not excite our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after." According to apocryphal lore, lingchi began when the torturer, wielding an extremely sharp knife, began by cutting out the eyes, rendering

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972-610: A saint were authoritative, in the strict sense, only for the diocese or ecclesiastical province for which they were issued, but with the spread of the fame of a saint, were often accepted elsewhere also. In the Catholic Church , both in the Latin and the constituent Eastern churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that

1053-463: A shipwrecked vessel bound for Macao. Quang Tri and Quang Binh officials captured several priests along with the French missionary Bishop Pierre Dumoulin-Borie in 1838 (who was executed). The court translator, Francois Jaccard, a Catholic who had been kept as a prisoner for years and was extremely valuable to the court, was executed in late 1838; the official who was tasked with this execution, however,

1134-516: A simplification of the procedures. The Apostolic constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister of Pope John Paul II of 25 January 1983 and the norms issued by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 7 February 1983 to implement the constitution in dioceses, continued the simplification of the process initiated by Pope Paul VI . Contrary to popular belief, the reforms did not eliminate

1215-525: A thousand cuts ", was a form of torture and execution used in China from around the 10th century until the early 20th century. It was also used in Vietnam and Korea . In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially heinous, such as treason. Even after

1296-653: Is about this form of torture. The tenth song on Taylor Swift 's seventh album, Lover , is entitled "Death By A Thousand Cuts" and compares the singer's heartbreak to this punishment. The "death by a thousand cuts" with reference to China is mentioned in Amy Tan 's novel The Joy Luck Club , and Robert van Gulik 's Judge Dee novels. The 1905 photos are mentioned in Thomas Harris ' novel Hannibal , in Julio Cortázar 's novel Hopscotch and are also

1377-423: Is no need to have a miracle attributed to the saint to allow their canonization. According to the rules Pope Benedict XIV ( regnat 17 August 1740 – 3 May 1758) instituted, there are three conditions for an equipollent canonization: (1) existence of an ancient cultus of the person, (2) a general and constant attestation to the virtues or martyrdom of the person by credible historians, and (3) uninterrupted fame of

1458-479: Is not necessarily added to the General Roman Calendar or local calendars as an "obligatory" feast; parish churches may be erected in their honor; and the faithful may freely celebrate and honor the saint. Although recognition of sainthood by the Pope does not directly concern a fact of Divine revelation , nonetheless it must be "definitively held" by the faithful as infallible pursuant to, at

1539-472: Is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint , specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of saints, or authorized list of that communion's recognized saints. Canonization is a papal declaration that the Catholic faithful may venerate a particular deceased member of

1620-740: The Apostolic See concerning canonizations. Because the decretal of Pope Alexander III did not end all controversy and some bishops did not obey it in so far as it regarded beatification, the right of which they had certainly possessed hitherto, Pope Urban VIII issued the Apostolic letter Caelestis Hierusalem cives of 5 July 1634 that exclusively reserved to the Apostolic See both its immemorial right of canonization and that of beatification . He further regulated both of these acts by issuing his Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum on 12 March 1642. In his De Servorum Dei beatificatione et de Beatorum canonizatione of five volumes

1701-492: The Lê Văn Khôi revolt . During the rebellion, a young French missionary priest, Joseph Marchand , was sick and residing in the rebel citadel of Gia Dinh. In October 1833, an officer of the emperor reported to the court that a foreign Christian religious leader was present in the citadel. This news was used to justify the edicts against Catholicism and led to the first executions of missionaries in over 40 years. The first executed

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1782-682: The Mass contains only the names of apostles and martyrs, along with that of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, since 1962, that of Saint Joseph her spouse. By the fourth century, however, " confessors "—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word and life—began to be venerated publicly. Examples of such people are Saint Hilarion and Saint Ephrem the Syrian in the East, and Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of Poitiers in

1863-532: The Ming dynasty there were records of 3,000 incisions. It is described as a fast process lasting no longer than 4 or 5 minutes. The coup de grâce was all the more certain when the family could afford a bribe to have a stab to the heart inflicted first. Some emperors ordered three days of cutting while others may have ordered specific tortures before the execution, or a longer execution. For example, records showed that during Yuan Chonghuan 's execution, Yuan

1944-596: The Paris Foreign Missions Society (Missions Etrangères de Paris (MEP))—were beatified on four separate occasions: 64 by Pope Leo XIII on May 27, 1900; eight by Pope Pius X on May 20, 1906; 20 by Pope Pius X on May 2, 1909; and 25 by Pope Pius XII on April 29, 1951. All 117 of these Vietnamese Martyrs were canonized on June 19, 1988. A young Vietnamese Martyr, Andrew of Phú Yên , was beatified in March 2000, by Pope John Paul II. Christians at

2025-526: The Pope : "The last case of canonization by a metropolitan is said to have been that of St. Gaultier , or Gaucher, [A]bbot of Pontoise, by the Archbishop of Rouen. A decree of Pope Alexander III [in] 1170 gave the prerogative to the [P]ope thenceforth, so far as the Western Church was concerned." In a decretal of 1173, Pope Alexander III reprimanded some bishops for permitting veneration of

2106-531: The Song dynasty under Emperor Renzong and Emperor Shenzong . Another early proposal for abolishing lingchi was submitted by Lu You (1125–1210) in a memorandum to the imperial court of the Southern Song dynasty . Lu You there stated, "When the muscles of the flesh are already taken away, the breath of life is not yet cut off, liver and heart are still connected, seeing and hearing still exist. It affects

2187-1357: The United Methodist Church has formally declared individuals martyrs , including Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in 2008) and Martin Luther King Jr. (in 2012). Various terms are used for canonization by the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches : канонизация ("canonization") or прославление (" glorification ", in the Russian Orthodox Church ), კანონიზაცია ( kanonizats’ia , Georgian Orthodox Church ), канонизација ( Serbian Orthodox Church ), canonizare ( Romanian Orthodox Church ), and Канонизация ( Bulgarian Orthodox Church ). Additional terms are used for canonization by other autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches: αγιοκατάταξη ( Katharevousa : ἁγιοκατάταξις ) agiokatataxi/agiokatataxis , "ranking among saints" ( Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , Church of Cyprus , Church of Greece ), kanonizim ( Albanian Orthodox Church ), kanonizacja ( Polish Orthodox Church ), and kanonizace/kanonizácia ( Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church ). The Orthodox Church in America , an Eastern Orthodox Church partly recognized as autocephalous, uses

2268-585: The cultus universal, because he alone can rule the universal Catholic Church . Abuses, however, crept into this discipline, due as well to indiscretions of popular fervor as to the negligence of some bishops in inquiring into the lives of those whom they permitted to be honoured as saints. In the Medieval West, the Apostolic See was asked to intervene in the question of canonizations so as to ensure more authoritative decisions. The canonization of Saint Udalric, Bishop of Augsburg by Pope John XV in 993

2349-477: The sensationalised Western myth and the Chinese reality was noted by Westerners as early as 1895. That year, Australian traveller and later representative of the government of the Republic of China George Ernest Morrison , who claimed to have witnessed an execution by slicing, wrote that " lingchi [was] commonly, and quite wrongly, translated as 'death by slicing into 10,000 pieces' – a truly awful description of

2430-473: The 1966 film The Sand Pebbles . Inspired by the 1905 photos, Chinese artist Chen Chieh-jen created a 25-minute, 2002 video called Lingchi – Echoes of a Historical Photograph , which has generated some controversy. The 2007 film The Warlords , which is loosely based on historical events during the Taiping Rebellion , ended with one of its main characters executed by Lingchi. Lingchi is shown as

2511-546: The Christians could receive promotion or other rewards. Lower officials or younger family members of officials were sometimes tasked with secretly going through villages to report on hidden missionaries or Catholics who had not apostatized. The first missionary arrested during this (and later executed) was the priest Jean-Charles Cornay in 1837. A military campaign was conducted in Nam Dinh after letters were discovered in

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2592-465: The West. Their names were inserted in the diptychs , the lists of saints explicitly venerated in the liturgy , and their tombs were honoured in like manner as those of the martyrs. Since the witness of their lives was not as unequivocal as that of the martyrs, they were venerated publicly only with the approval by the local bishop . This process is often referred to as "local canonization". This approval

2673-524: The abolition of lingchi . Lingchi remained in the Qing dynasty 's code of laws for persons convicted of high treason and other serious crimes, but the punishment was abolished as a result of the 1905 revision of the Chinese penal code by Shen Jiaben. The first Western photographs of lingchi were taken in 1890 by William Arthur Curtis of Kentucky in Canton. French soldiers stationed in Beijing had

2754-493: The arms, legs, and chest leading to amputation of limbs, followed by decapitation or a stab to the heart. If the crime was less serious or the executioner merciful, the first cut would be to the throat causing death; subsequent cuts served solely to dismember the corpse. Art historian James Elkins argues that extant photos of the execution clearly show that the "death by division" (as it was termed by German criminologist Robert Heindl ) involved some degree of dismemberment while

2835-616: The authorities. The bishop Dominic Henares was found in Giao Thuy district of Nam Dinh (later executed); the villagers and soldiers that participated in his arrest were also greatly rewarded (about 3 kg of silver distributed). The priest, Father Joseph Fernandez, and a local priest, Nguyen Ba Tuan, were captured in Kim Song, Nam Dinh; the provincial officials were promoted, the peasants who turned them over were given about 3 kg of silver and other rewards were distributed. In July 1838,

2916-434: The body are considered unfilial practices. Lingchi therefore contravenes the demands of filial piety. In addition, to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be "whole" in spiritual life after death. This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners. Lingchi could be used for the torture and execution of a person, or applied as an act of humiliation after death. It

2997-651: The candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that they are worthy to be recognized as a saint. The Church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that they may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the Church, including in the Litany of the Saints . In the Catholic Church, canonization is a decree that allows universal veneration of

3078-490: The church. Popes began making such decrees in the tenth century. Up to that point, the local bishops governed the veneration of holy men and women within their own dioceses; and there may have been, for any particular saint, no formal decree at all. In subsequent centuries, the procedures became increasingly regularized and the Popes began restricting to themselves the right to declare someone a Catholic saint. In contemporary usage,

3159-447: The claims of those who were said to have died for the faith. All the circumstances accompanying the martyrdom were to be inquired into; the faith of those who suffered, and the motives that animated them were to be rigorously examined, in order to prevent the recognition of undeserving persons. Evidence was sought from the court records of the trials or from people who had been present at the trials. Augustine of Hippo (died 430) tells of

3240-444: The condemned incapable of seeing the remainder of the torture and, presumably, adding considerably to the psychological terror of the procedure. Successive relatively minor cuts chopped off ears, nose, tongue, fingers, toes and genitals preceding cuts that removed large portions of flesh from more sizable parts, e.g., thighs and shoulders. The entire process was said to last three days, and to total 3,600 cuts. The heavily carved bodies of

3321-503: The condemned prisoner to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law, and therefore most likely varied. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death. According to the Confucian principle of filial piety , to alter one's body or to cut

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3402-586: The converts; therefore, after his arrest, the officials then began wide searches and cracked down on the Catholic communities in their jurisdictions. The amount of money that the French mission societies were able to raise made the missionaries a lucrative target for officials that wanted cash, which could even surpass what the imperial court was offering in rewards. This created a cycle of extortion and bribery which lasted for years. Those whose names are known are listed below: Canonization Canonization

3483-606: The deceased were then put on a parade for a show in the public. Some victims were reportedly given doses of opium to alleviate suffering. John Morris Roberts , in Twentieth Century: The History of the World, 1901 to 2000 (2000), writes "the traditional punishment of death by slicing ... became part of the western image of Chinese backwardness as the 'death of a thousand cuts'." Roberts then notes that slicing "was ordered, in fact, for K'ang Yu-Wei ,

3564-473: The eminent canonist Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), who later became Pope Benedict XIV , elaborated on the procedural norms of Pope Urban VIII 's Apostolic letter Caelestis Hierusalem cives of 1634 and Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum of 1642, and on the conventional practice of the time. His work published from 1734 to 1738 governed the proceedings until 1917. The article " Beatification and canonization process in 1914 " describes

3645-431: The following process: Canonization is a statement of the Church that the person certainly enjoys the beatific vision of Heaven . The title of "Saint" ( Latin : Sanctus or Sancta ) is then proper, reflecting that the saint is a refulgence of the holiness ( sanctitas ) of God himself, which alone comes from God's gift. The saint is assigned a feast day which may be celebrated anywhere in the universal Church, although it

3726-442: The harmony of nature, it is injurious to a benevolent government, and does not befit a generation of wise men." Lu You's elaborate argument against lingchi was dutifully copied and transmitted by generations of scholars, among them influential jurists of all dynasties, until the late Qing dynasty reformist Shen Jiaben (1840–1913) included it in his 1905 memorandum that obtained the abolition. This anti- lingchi trend coincided with

3807-554: The least, the Universal Magisterium of the Church , because it is a truth related to revelation by historical necessity. Popes have several times permitted to the universal Church, without executing the ordinary judicial process of canonization described above, the veneration as a saint, the " cultus " of one long venerated as such locally. This act of a Pope is denominated "equipollent" or "equivalent canonization" and "confirmation of cultus ". In such cases, there

3888-561: The mouth of someone dying in agony, thus hastening the moment of decease." At the very least, such tales were deemed credible to Western observers such as Morrison. Lingchi existed under the earliest emperors, although similar but less cruel tortures were often prescribed instead. Under the reign of Qin Er Shi , the second emperor of the Qin dynasty , various tortures were used to punish officials. The arbitrary, cruel, and short-lived Liu Ziye

3969-562: The office of the Promoter of the Faith (Latin: Promotor Fidei ), popularly known as the Devil's advocate , whose office is to question the material presented in favor of canonization. The reforms were intended to reduce the adversarial nature of the process. In November 2012 Pope Benedict XVI appointed Monsignor Carmello Pellegrino as Promoter of the Faith. Candidates for canonization undergo

4050-543: The opportunity to photograph three different lingchi executions in 1904 and 1905: Accounts of lingchi or the extant photographs have inspired or referenced in numerous artistic, literary, and cinematic media: Susan Sontag mentions the 1905 case in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). One reviewer wrote that though Sontag includes no photographs in her book – a volume about photography – "she does tantalisingly describe

4131-678: The person as a worker of miracles. The majority of Protestant denominations do not formally recognize saints because the Bible uses the term in a way that suggests all Christians are saints. However, some denominations do, as shown below. The Church of England , the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion , canonized Charles I as a saint, in the Convocations of Canterbury and York of 1660. The General Conference of

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4212-563: The practice was outlawed, the concept itself has still appeared across many types of media. The word was used to describe the prolonging of a person's agony when the person is being killed. One theory suggests that it grew to be a specific torture technique. An alternative theory suggests that the term originated from the Khitan language , as the penal meaning of the word emerged during the Khitan Liao dynasty . The process involved tying

4293-411: The procedure which was followed in his day for the recognition of a martyr. The bishop of the diocese in which the martyrdom took place set up a canonical process for conducting the inquiry with the utmost severity. The acts of the process were sent either to the metropolitan or primate , who carefully examined the cause, and, after consultation with the suffragan bishops, declared whether the deceased

4374-542: The procedures followed until the promulgation of the Codex of 1917. The substance of De Servorum Dei beatifιcatione et de Beatorum canonizatione was incorporated into the Codex Iuris Canonici ( Code of Canon Law ) of 1917, which governed until the promulgation of the revised Codex Iuris Canonici in 1983 by Pope John Paul II . Prior to promulgation of the revised Codex in 1983, Pope Paul VI initiated

4455-544: The regular way to perform this penalty was not specified in detail in the penal code. Lingchi was also known in Vietnam, notably being used as the method of execution of the French missionary Joseph Marchand , in 1835, as part of the repression following the unsuccessful Lê Văn Khôi revolt . An 1858 account by Harper's Weekly claimed the martyr Auguste Chapdelaine was also killed by lingchi but in China; in reality he

4536-406: The saint. For permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed. For several centuries the bishops , or in some places only the primates and patriarchs , could grant martyrs and confessors public ecclesiastical honor; such honor, however, was always decreed only for the local territory of which the grantors had jurisdiction. Only acceptance of the cultus by the Pope made

4617-532: The state cult. The missionary Father Pierre Duclos (quoted above) died in prison in after being captured on the Saigon river in June 1846. The boat he was traveling in, unfortunately contained the money that was set for the annual bribes of various officials (up to 1/3 of the annual donated French mission budget for Cochinchina was officially allocated to 'special needs') in order to prevent more arrests and persecutions of

4698-477: The subject was living. Elkins also argues that, contrary to the apocryphal version of "death by a thousand cuts", the actual process could not have lasted long. The condemned individual is not likely to have remained conscious and aware (even if still alive) after one or two severe wounds, so the entire process could not have included more than a "few dozen" wounds. In the Yuan dynasty , 100 cuts were inflicted but by

4779-603: The term " glorification " for the official recognition of a person as a saint. Within the Armenian Apostolic Church , part of Oriental Orthodoxy , there had been discussions since the 1980s about canonizing the victims of the Armenian genocide . On 23 April 2015, all of the victims of the genocide were canonized. Lingchi Lingchi ( IPA : [lǐŋ.ʈʂʰɨ̌] , Chinese : 凌遲 ), usually translated " slow slicing " or " death by

4860-645: The term is understood to refer to the act by which any Christian church declares that a person who has died is a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the list of recognized saints, called the "canon". In the Roman Martyrology, the following entry is given for the Penitent Thief : "At Jerusalem, the commemoration of the good Thief, who confessed Christ on the cross, and deserved to hear from Him these words: 'This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.' The Roman Rite 's Canon of

4941-527: The threat that they would report the villages and missionaries to the authorities. The missionary Father Pierre Duclos said: with gold bars murder and theft blossom among honest people. The court became more aware of the problem of the failure to enforce the laws and applied greater pressure on its officials to act; officials who failed to act or those tho who were seen to be acting too slowly were demoted or removed from office (and sometimes were given severe corporal punishment), while those who attacked and killed

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5022-405: The threat to social order and harmony it represented, and resorted to use of threats or torture in order to force Catholics to recant. Many villagers were executed alongside priests according to mission reports. The emperor died in 1841, and this offered respite for Catholics. However, some persecution still continued after the new emperor took office. Catholic villages were forced to build shrines to

5103-460: The time were branded on the face with the words "tả đạo" ( 左 道 , lit. "unorthodox religion") and families and villages which subscribed to Christianity were obliterated. The letters and example of Théophane Vénard inspired the young Saint Thérèse of Lisieux to volunteer for the Carmelite nunnery at Hanoi, though she ultimately contracted tuberculosis and could not go. In 1865 Vénard's body

5184-487: The villagers to line up one by one to trample on a cross, and if a community was suspected of harboring a missionary, militia could block off the village gates and perform a rigorous search; if a missionary was found, collective punishment could be meted out to the entire community. Missionaries and Catholic communities were able to escape punishment through bribery of officials on occasion; they were also sometimes victims of extortion attempts by people who demanded money under

5265-468: The virtues and miracles of persons proposed for public veneration should be examined in councils, more specifically in general councils. Pope Urban II , Pope Calixtus II , and Pope Eugene III conformed to this discipline. Hugh de Boves , Archbishop of Rouen , canonized Walter of Pontoise , or St. Gaultier, in 1153, the final saint in Western Europe to be canonized by an authority other than

5346-444: Was almost immediately dismissed. A priest, Father Ignatius Delgado, was captured in the village of Can Lao ( Nam Định Province ), put in a cage on public display for ridicule and abuse, and died of hunger and exposure while waiting for execution; [1] the officer and soldiers that captured him were greatly rewarded (about 3 kg of silver was distributed out to all of them), as were the villagers that had helped to turn him over to

5427-607: Was apt to kill innocent officials by lingchi . Gao Yang killed only six people by this method, and An Lushan killed only one man. Lingchi was known in the Five Dynasties period (907–960 CE); but, in one of the earliest such acts, Shi Jingtang abolished it. Other rulers continued to use it. The method was prescribed in the Liao dynasty law codes, and was sometimes used. Emperor Tianzuo often executed people in this way during his rule. It became more widely used in

5508-469: Was beaten to death. As Western countries moved to abolish similar punishments, some Westerners began to focus attention on the methods of execution used in China. As early as 1866, the time when Britain itself moved to abolish the practise of hanging, drawing, and quartering from the British legal system, Thomas Francis Wade , then serving with the British diplomatic mission in China, unsuccessfully urged

5589-544: Was devastated during the Tây Sơn rebellion in the late 18th century. During the turmoil, the missions revived, however, as a result of cooperation between the French Vicar Apostolic Pigneaux de Behaine and Nguyen Anh. After Nguyen's victory in 1802, he was grateful for the assistance received and ensured protection for missionary activities. However, only a few years into the new emperor's reign, there

5670-535: Was growing antipathy among officials against Catholicism and missionaries reported that it was purely for political reasons that their presence was tolerated. Tolerance continued until the death of the emperor and the new emperor, Minh Mang , succeeding to the throne in 1820. Converts began to be harassed by local governments without official edicts in the late 1820s. In 1831, the emperor passed new laws on regulations for religious groupings in Viet Nam, and Catholicism

5751-418: Was heard shouting for half a day before his death. The flesh of the victims may also have been sold as medicine. As an official punishment, death by slicing may also have involved slicing the bones, cremation, and scattering of the deceased's ashes. The Western perception of lingchi has often differed considerably from actual practice, and some misconceptions persist to the present. The distinction between

5832-409: Was immediately enforced, and definite: no official sentences of lingchi were performed in China after April 1905. Regarding the use of opium, as related in the introduction to Morrison's book, Meyrick Hewlett insisted that "most Chinese people sentenced to death were given large quantities of opium before execution, and Morrison avers that a charitable person would be permitted to push opium into

5913-428: Was meted out for major offences such as high treason , mass murder , patricide / matricide , or the murder of one's master or employer. (English: petty treason ). However, emperors used it to threaten people and sometimes ordered it for minor offences or for family members of their enemies. While it is difficult to obtain accurate details of how the executions took place, they generally consisted of cuts to

5994-408: Was named Francois Gagelin . Marchand was eventually captured and executed as a "rebel leader" in 1835; he was put to death by " slow slicing ". Further repressive measures were introduced in the wake of this episode in 1836. Before 1836, village heads had only to report to local mandarins about how their subjects had recanted Catholicism. However, after 1836, officials could visit villages and force all

6075-563: Was publicly executed. A peculiar episode occurred in late 1839, when a village in Quảng Ngãi province called Phuoc Lam was victimized by four men who extorted cash from the villagers under threat of reporting the Christian presence to the authorities. The governor of the province had a Catholic nephew who told him about what happened, and the governor then found the four men (caught smoking opium) and had two executed as well as two exiled. When

6156-471: Was required even for veneration of a reputed martyr. In his history of the Donatist heresy, Saint Optatus recounts that at Carthage a Catholic matron, named Lucilla, incurred the censures of the Church for having kissed the relics of a reputed martyr whose claims to martyrdom had not been juridically proved. And Saint Cyprian (died 258) recommended that the utmost diligence be observed in investigating

6237-546: Was reserved for only the most heinous acts, such as treason, a charge often dubious or false, as exemplified by the deaths of Liu Jin , a Ming dynasty eunuch, and Yuan Chonghuan , a Ming dynasty general. In 1542, lingchi was inflicted on a group of palace women who had attempted to assassinate the Jiajing Emperor . The bodies of the women were then displayed in public. Reports from Qing dynasty jurists such as Shen Jiaben show that executioners' customs varied, as

6318-520: Was the first undoubted example of papal canonization of a saint from outside of Rome being declared worthy of liturgical veneration for the entire church. Thereafter, recourse to the judgment of the Pope occurred more frequently. Toward the end of the 11th century, the Popes began asserting their exclusive right to authorize the veneration of a saint against the older rights of bishops to do so for their dioceses and regions. Popes therefore decreed that

6399-516: Was then officially prohibited. In 1832, the first act occurred in a largely Catholic village near Hue , with the entire community being incarcerated and sent into exile in Cambodia. In January 1833, a new kingdom-wide edict was passed calling on Vietnamese subjects to reject the religion of Jesus and required suspected Catholics to demonstrate their renunciation by walking on a wooden cross. Actual violence against Catholics, however, did not occur until

6480-1052: Was transferred to his Congregation's church in Paris, but his head remains in Vietnam. There are several Catholic parishes in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere dedicated to the Martyrs of Vietnam (Holy Martyrs of Vietnam Parishes), one of the largest of which is located in Arlington, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Others can be found in Houston and Austin, Texas , Denver , Seattle , San Antonio , Arlington, Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; and Norcross, Georgia. There are also churches named after individual saints, such as St. Philippe Minh Church in Saint Boniface, Manitoba . The Catholic Church in Vietnam

6561-402: Was worthy of the name of "martyr" and public veneration. Though not "canonizations" in the narrow sense, acts of formal recognition, such as the erection of an altar over the saint's tomb or transferring the saint's relics to a church, were preceded by formal inquiries into the sanctity of the person's life and the miracles attributed to that person's intercession. Such acts of recognition of

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