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The Martyr Saints of China, or Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, are saints of the Roman Catholic Church. The 87 Chinese Catholics and 33 Western missionaries, from the mid-17th century to 1930, were martyred because of their ministry and, in some cases, for their refusal to apostatize. Many died in the Boxer Rebellion, in which xenophobic peasants slaughtered 30,000 Chinese converts to Christianity along with missionaries and other foreigners. In the ordinary form of the Latin Rite they are remembered with an optional memorial on July 9. ==The 17th and 18th centuries== On January 15, 1648, the Manchus, having invaded the region of Fujian and shown themselves hostile to the Christian religion, killed Saint Francisco Fernández de Capillas, a Dominican priest aged 40.〔(Martyrs of China (1) – Canonized Martyrs († 1648–1930) )〕 After having imprisoned and tortured him, they beheaded him while he recited with others the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Father de Capillas has since been recognised by the Holy See as the protomartyr of China. After the first wave of missionary activities in China during the late Ming to early Qing dynasties, the Qing government officially banned Catholicism (Protestantism was considered outlawed by the same decree, as it was linked to Catholicism) in 1724 and lumped it together with other 'perverse sects and sinister doctrines' in Chinese folk religion.〔David Lindenfeld. Indigenous Encounters with Christian Missionaries in China and West Africa, 1800–1920: A Comparative Study. Journal of World History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (September 2005), pp. 327–369〕 While Catholicism continued to exist and increase many-fold in areas beyond the government's control (Sichuan notably), and many Chinese Christians fled the persecution to go to ports cities in Guangdong or to Indonesia, where many translations of Christian works into Chinese occurred during this period, there were also many brave missionaries that broke the law and secretly entered the forbidden mainland territory.〔 They eluded Chinese patrol boats on the rivers and coasts, however, some of them were caught and put to death. Towards the middle of the 18th century five Spanish missionaries, who had carried out their activity between 1715–1747, were put to death as a result of a new wave of persecution that started in 1729 and broke out again in 1746. This was in the epoch of the Yongzheng Emperor and of his successor, the Qianlong Emperor. Saint Peter Sanz, O.P., Bishop, was martyred on 26 May 1747, in Fuzhou. All four of the following were killed on 28 October 1748: 1. Saint Francis Serrano, O.P., Vicar Apostolic and Bishop-elect 2. Saint Joachim Royo, O.P., Priest 3. Saint John Alcober, O.P., Priest 4. Saint Francis Diaz, O.P., Priest. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Martyr Saints of China」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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