1870 - Vincent Ou

1870 - Vincent Ou

June 21, 1870

Tianjin

Vincent Ou.

Vincent Ou hailed from the southern Chinese city of Nanhai in steamy Guangdong Province. Born in September 1821, his mother at the time was a Catholic but his father was still an idolater. Two of Vincent’s maternal uncles were priests, and they succeeded in converting the whole family to Christ. Despite growing up in such an environment, Vincent did not experience a genuine faith in Jesus Christ until he was 14. He had been hesitant to follow Jesus at that time because to do so in China meant imprisonment, torture, and death. Despite the threat of persecution, Vincent and his father courageously helped missionaries enter China from Macau, and engaged in many Christian activities that were outlawed at the time.

After Vincent’s baptism in 1835 the priests encouraged him to enter a seminary to enlarge his understanding of God. He went to Macau and soon became the “most fervent and the most laborious of the students.”[1] John Gabriel Perboyre, who was martyred in Hubei Province in 1840, visited the Macau Seminary while Vincent Ou was a student and was greatly impressed. He reported, “Simplicity and piety, modesty and gentleness, humility and charity, have created a terrestrial paradise, which one must have seen to be able to realize. Our young Chinese give us the greatest hopes for the missions.”[2]

After graduating, Vincent Ou became a priest in 1842. The following year he found himself thousands of miles away at the opposite end of the nation, accompanying a missionary into Inner Mongolia. Ou remained there, teaching at a seminary and also pursued his own theological studies. It was said of Vincent Out:

“This fervent novice was asked to go far from his country and his family; to sacrifice all, after the example of his masters, and go to the distant regions of the north to spread, amidst many dangers, the vivifying light of the Gospel. He was likewise asked to expose himself, like his father, to the terrible penalties carried out towards all those who introduced foreigners into the empire…. But nothing weakened his courage.”[3]

Finding himself in the northern city of Tianjin at the start of the summer of 1870, Vincent Ou was caught up in the anti-foreign sentiment of the day and was spitefully choked to death and then cut to pieces during the Tianjin massacre.

© This article is an extract from Paul Hattaway's epic 656-page China’s Book of Martyrs, which profiles more than 1,000 Christian martyrs in China since AD 845, accompanied by over 500 photos. You can order this or many other China books and e-books here.

1. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 45.
2. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 45.
3. Herbert, The First Martyrs of the Holy Childhood, 46.

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