1900 - Catholic Martyrs in Beijing

June - August 1900

Catholic Martyrs in Beijing

Beijing

Jules Garrigues, Maurice Doré, and Pascal d’Addosio.

In Beijing the Catholics had large cathedrals located in each of the quarters of the city. During the month of June, 1900, the 60-year-old Lazarist missionary Jules Garrigues was one of many Christians burned to death inside his church, the East Cathedral. The missionaries had instructed the Chinese brothers to ring the church bell continuously if the Boxers arrived at the gate, to alert the Christians. When a mob started to set the building on fire, “the bellman took his place and rang the alarm with might. The fire caught the tower and crept to the floor beneath his feet; but still he kept the big bell pealing. Then the floor gave way and he and the bell went down together into the flame-wrapped ruin.”[I]

The West Cathedral was also burned to the ground, resulting in the death of 38-year-old French priest Maurice Charles Pascal Doré. Latourette notes, “The Xitang had been given to the flames, and, although the priests and sisters and some of the Chinese Christians had been brought into the legations by a rescue party, others of the refugees still in the church were massacred or, attempting to escape, were thrown back into the blazing building.”[II] Similarly, the South Cathedral was destroyed and “many Christians killed in it and its compound.”[III]

The Catholics at the North Cathedral adopted a very different strategy. They decided to stay inside the church and defend themselves against the Boxers. Bishop Favier

“gathered about him a group of his clergy, foreign assistants, and Chinese Christians, about thirty-four hundred in all—more than half of them women and children from the schools and orphanages—and with the aid of a handful of French marines held the Boxers at bay for two entire months—from June 14th until the relief by the Allies on August 16th. The firing was often heavy, five mines were planted and exploded under the devoted band, food ran short, and over four hundred of the besieged perished, but the survivors valiantly held out, and at times drove back the attackers by sorties.”[IV]

Favier later documented the remarkable experience in a published diary of the siege.[V]

Joseph Fan, Paul Chen (above);

Joseph Planche, Jules–André Brun (below)

The 64-year-old priest Pascal d’Addosio left the French Legation and was caught by the Boxers and cut to pieces. Another priest, 37-year-old Antoine-Claude Chavanne was wounded by a bullet during the siege of the legation, and died on July 26th from smallpox that had broken out in the crowded vermin-infested place. The list of Catholic priests killed in Beijing during the month of August includes Andreas Li, Joseph Fan, Paul Chen, and two French missionaries from the Marist Brothers: 28-year-old Joseph Planche and the 37-year-old Jules-André Brun.

I Mateer, Siege Days, 88.
II Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China, 508.
III Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China, 508.
IV Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China, 508-509.
V See Favier, The Heart of Pekin.