Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam 9780804779548

Citation preview

Mandarins and Martyrs

Mandarins and Martyrs The Church a n d the Ngu y e n Dy n a s t y i n E a r ly N i n eteen th-Cen t u ry Vietna m

Jacob Ramsay

S ta n f or d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s S ta n f or d , C a l i f or n i a 2008

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2008 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ramsay, Jacob.   Mandarins and martyrs : the Church and the Nguyen dynasty in early nineteenthcentury Vietnam / Jacob Ramsay.    p. cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-8047-5651-8 (cloth : alk. paper)   1. Vietnam—History—Nguyên dynasty, 1802–1945. 2. Anti-Catholicism— Vietnam—History—19th century. 3. Persecution—Vietnam—History—19th century. 4. Catholic Church—Missions—Vietnam—History—19th century. 5. Missions, French—Vietnam—History—19th century. I. Title. DS556.8.R36 2008 275.97081—dc22

2007047227

Typeset by inari in 11/14 Garamond Premier Pro Publication assistance for this book was provided by the Australian Academy of the Humanities

To the memory of Patti and Shirley

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Maps

xi

Introduction

1



1.

Restoration and the Mission

14



2.

The Rise of Nguyễn Anti-Catholicism

42



3.

Persecution

68



4.

Mission Revival

92



5.

Priests and Mandarins

115



6.

Invasion

139

Epilogue

167

Abbreviations

173

Notes

175

Bibliography

201

Index

209

Acknowledgments

In the tradition of acknowledging first my debts to my teachers, I am deeply grateful to Craig Reynolds, my supervisor, who guided my research since I was an undergraduate. He never ceased to show great patience, providing much needed inspiration as the idea for the following history took shape and developed into this book. I will always remember the family dinners in the Reynolds household, not to mention the long lunches discussing his books and that generation of teachers in the field that played a big part in his own work. Equally, I thank David Marr for his long-term interest in my research and work. His legendary knowledge of Vietnam is the source of numerous insights in this study. Although I did not meet Nola Cooke until early in the second year of my doctoral candidature, it is to her that I owe the focus of this work, precolonial Catholicism in Cochinchina. I am indebted to Nola for her support and generosity, but above all for her endless enthusiasm for this topic. Moreover, this book is indebted to Nola’s work on the Nguyễn dynasty. I would like also to thank other colleagues, whose work I greatly admire, who read chapters and offered advice through their comments and clarifications. In particular, I wish to thank Li Tana, who helped with several key translations as well as suggesting references and interpretations at key moments. Philip Taylor’s endless store of fresh insights into Vietnamese religiosity provided inspiration at unexpected moments throughout my writing. I appreciated Philip’s unique way of drawing attention to ideas and events that seemed at first glance less than important, casting new light into the darker corners. I would also like to thank Tim Winter, who read various drafts: his advice was invaluable in getting the manuscript over several hurdles in the final stages. I wish also to express my gratitude to Bruce Lockhart, George Dutton, Peter Zinoman, and Anthony Reid for their extensive comments on the dissertation on which this book is based. I would also like to thank the Faculty of Asian Studies, the Australian



acknowledgments

­ ational University, where I wrote my dissertation. Apart from sponsoring N my scholarship and funding my fieldwork to Vietnam and France, the faculty also provided me with endless teaching opportunities—my special thanks to Aat Vervoorn. This work would not have been possible without the Missions Étrangères de Paris so generously opening its private archive to outside researchers—my special thanks to Fr. Gerard Moussay and Brigitte Appavou. I am also grateful to the Asia Research Institute, National University Singapore, where I spent eighteen months preparing the final manuscript. Friends who read drafts and provided much needed moral support and encouragement over many years deserve more thanks than my acknowledgments allow. I am deeply grateful to Julius Bautista, Brett Bowden, Greg Evon, Mark Frost, Martin Jones, Francis Lim, Brian Martin, Nguyen Thanh Liem, Pham Thu Thuy, Phil Radford, and Ben Shepherd. I would like to offer my special thanks to Shirley Ramli for helping to nudge this work to the finish line. Finally, I would like to offer my deepest thanks to the Australian Academy of the Humanities for their generous support in bringing this work to publication. Canberra, 2007

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Map 1:  The Provinces of Vietnam from the mid-1830s

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Map 2:  The Vicariates of Cochinchina

Introduction

This book is about the rise of anti-Catholic violence in early nineteenth-century Vietnam and the profound social and political changes it created in the decades preceding French colonial rule. From the first years of the century, sweeping political reforms under the Nguyễn dynasty led to profound shifts in Vietnamese society. One organization that experienced the full force of these changes and in turn played a catalytic role in the unfolding political turmoil preceding the French invasion in 1858 was the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), a French mission society. Offering only a very narrow view of these overlapping developments and their repercussions, scholarship on mid-nineteenth-century Vietnam has generally concentrated on mission Catholicism, both its doctrine and organization, as a destabilizing force within Vietnamese culture and politics. Indeed, most studies focus narrowly on the years of upheaval bridging the Franco- Spanish invasion of 1858 to 1862, analyzing local tensions according to the imperial conquest and mid-century East Asian geopolitics.1 As a consequence, analyses have overlooked the complex local situation that first gave rise to ten





introduction

sions ­between Catholics and mainstream Vietnamese and later evolved into bitter sectarian division. Drawing together the different experiences of Vietnamese Catholics, French missionaries, as well as Nguyễn mandarins at different levels of the bureaucracy, this study examines Catholicism’s role in mid-century Vietnamese society and politics. According to prevailing conceptions, the anti-Catholic repression arose to a large degree from deep suspicions over cultural differences and Catholicism’s incompatibility with “traditional” ways. Catholicism, a foreign doctrine, it has been argued, conflicted with local customs and lifeways, and wherever it spread tore at the fabric of society, polarizing communities and eroding traditional authority.2 However, such views of local social relations ignore the impetus of cultural change in the shaping of perceptions and beliefs. In early Nguyễn Vietnam the foundations of official antipathy were neither purely ideological nor political. Moreover, the efforts to destroy the mission presence and force Catholics to recant were increasingly disproportionate to and inconsistent with the threat posed by this community. Indeed, contrary to common perceptions of precolonial Vietnam, Catholics did not live beyond the margins of society. For much of the three to four decades preceding colonization, Catholics in many areas of the kingdom represented a relatively well-assimilated community, and negotiation and accommodation with non-converts were more often than not the norm.

Controversial Heritage Modern scholarship has approached Vietnam’s Catholic heritage from different perspectives, but undoubtedly the most controversial debates have centered on the at times ambiguous role of French missionaries in the diplomatic and political machinations that led to the French invasion of 1858. Written in Paris at the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, Cao Huy Thuân’s incisive—and controversial—dissertation, for example, focused on missionaries such as Mgr. François Pellerin, who vigorously lobbied the court of Napoleon III from the early 1850s for a military intervention in Vietnam to rescue local Catholics from the fiercely anti-Catholic king Tự Đức.3 Similarly, writing a generation later, Nguyễn Văn Kiệm, a Hanoi-based historian of Catholicism in Vietnam from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, lambasted the lineage of fifth­columnist missionary agitators, all of whom he asserted had a piecemeal role in



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destabilizing the Nguyễn dynasty and helping pave the way for the French invasion. Kiệm cites the renowned Bishop Pigneau de Béhaine—an MEP missionary seen in some quarters as having been instrumental in the establishment of the Nguyễn dynasty in 1802—as a particularly cunning “political conspirator” (mưu toan chính trị) whose machinations played a part in longer term French imperial designs.4 There is substance to the accusation that a number of late 1840s and 1850s missionaries played a crucial role in the political petitioning in France that led to invasion. But this is not the whole story. If the criticism directed at some missionaries has been in part warranted, the treatment of Catholics in contrast has been harsh and callous. For while French missionaries have been reviled as agents of imperialism, Vietnamese Catholics have been denigrated as traitors, collaborators, and French surrogates. A notable example is Đỗ Quang Hưng’s unforgiving appraisal of the Catholic church’s controversial Vietnamese heritage, which passed off the Nguyễn court’s hostility and episodes of mass violence—such as the execution of some 4,800 Catholics in Nam Định province in 1861—as a regrettable but justified response to a moment when the Nguyễn state faced a great “threat to national security.”5 Such black-andwhite explanations characterize the dominant historical view of relations between Catholics and non-Catholics. But far from drawing on a solid foundation to demonstrate that Catholics posed an overwhelming threat to the kingdom’s independence and the dynasty, these assertions are based largely on very limited and selective documentary evidence. Until the opening of the MEP private archive in the early 1990s, research on the mission’s role in nineteenth-century Vietnam was dependent on a mere handful of official mission sources—the published extracts of missionary correspondence found in official mission historiography on the period. The two mission historians to whom many modern studies—Vietnamese and Western—owe a great debt for these extracts are Fathers Louis-Eugène Louvet and Adrien Launay. Their combined works, which include general histories of entire missions and biographies of French missionaries and local martyrs, published between the 1880s and early 1920s, represent much more than simply the official chronicle of the mission’s endeavors.6 Rich in detail and insights into grassroots Vietnamese life and politics, Louvet’s and Launay’s collected works subsequently became the staple source in studies seeking either to demonstrate or to counter charges of Catholics’ culpability. But viewing Vietnam through the late-nineteenth-century Catholic worldview, their works suffer



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from a peculiarly fundamental misrepresentation of sectarian tensions that can only be understood by explaining the social context in which they wrote. Born in the decades of ascendant French nationalism and raised in a period coinciding with the first colonial incursions in Vietnam, Louvet (1838–1900) and Launay (1853–1927) first traveled to Cochinchina—southern Vietnam— in 1863 and 1877, respectively. Their arrival in the new colony coincided with the first waves of mass violence that followed the invasion, and this unquestionably loomed large in their perceptions of Catholic and non-Catholic relations and in their writings. Following the establishment of the French colonial beachhead in Cochinchina in 1862, the resettlement of Catholic refugees from elsewhere in Vietnam around Saigon and the reorganization of power relations in the region under French rule provided the basis for political differentiation between Catholics and non-converts, which consolidated over time into sharp divisions. The religious-based violence of these decades, where not only Nguyễn officials but also the royalist scholar gentry and peasants participated in the massacres of Catholics, had no precedent in the precolonial era.7 Nevertheless, Louvet and Launay’s studies, narrated against the backdrop of boiling internecine hatred, depict a timeless and irreparable animosity between Catholics and “pagans.” More than any other residual impression, this perspective of division and Catholics’ social marginalization has remained a dominant feature in modern Vietnamese historiography. Postcolonial studies by Vietnamese scholars since 1954 have approached the task of explaining anti-Catholicism from a very different set of political sensitivities. With the exception of several notable pro-Catholic works—by Fr. Phan Phát Huồn in the former Republic of (South) Vietnam, and Fr. Étienne Võ Đức Hạnh, who wrote in Paris in the 1960s8—scholarship has overwhelmingly taken a critical and highly politicized view of local Catholics and the mission. Initially, due to political sensitivities, official socialist historiography produced in postindependence Hanoi portrayed Catholics as valued members of the newly independent nation. Far from being marginalized within the new political setting, the newly powerful Vietnamese Workers Party (the Communist Party after 1976) co-opted the northern Catholic community into the Socialist-Leninist agenda as part of a wider drive to neutralize social divisions. The process of reconstruction after nearly a decade of conflict with the French—beginning straight after World War II—necessitated a politically pragmatic approach as the state sought to reduce the threat of internal instability from minority groups potentially hostile to the new regime.



introduction



Nevertheless, Catholics faced considerable scrutiny in north Vietnam for their political role in the recent colonial past. In his landmark chronicle of the French invasion, official historian to the new regime Trần Văn Giàu emphasized the unity with which all sections of society, all religions, and members of all ethnic groups, resisted the French invaders.9 In rewriting Vietnam’s history in the early postcolonial era from a strictly Marxist and Vietnamese nationalist framework, Giàu and others sought to divorce the portrayal of Vietnamese identity from the ambiguity and complications of religious affiliation. As such, the church’s activities were described within a strict discourse that narrowly focused on its role in contributing to national reunification and reconstruction. In this way the Vietnamese church’s activities could be compatible with the Party-state’s nation-building agenda. But this approval early in the independence era represented a truce rather than unqualified acceptance. Subsequently, the church’s heritage faced highly varying degrees of scrutiny and criticism according to changing intellectual moods reflecting nation building, conflict, and the post1975 reconstruction.10 Undoubtedly the most contentious shift in perceptions of Vietnam’s Catholic heritage occurred with Pope John Paul II’s mass canonization in 1988 of 117 martyrs from various persecutions in Vietnam. Against the backdrop of ongoing Cold War tensions, not to mention John Paul II’s support for Poland’s Solidarity movement, the canonization—one of the largest in Vatican history—was understandably interpreted by Hanoi as an openly hostile provocation. Many of these martyrs, the first of which died as far back as the seventeenth century, had been officially viewed as rebels and criminals. Father Joseph Marchand, for example, was convicted by the court of Minh Mạng in 1835 for his involvement in a secessionist rebellion in Gia Định—modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. And while the majority of the martyrs were Vietnamese, twenty-one were missionaries, including eleven Spaniards and ten French. In all, 111 of the group were executed or died after 1833—in the tumultuous decades preceding the French invasion of Indochina and the end of Vietnamese independence.11 The Vatican’s mass canonization sparked a wave of controversy in the Vietnamese scholarly community. But more important it placed the question of Catholic history squarely on the table for historical researchers. If earlier works produced by Hanoi had been too cautious or restrained in regard to discord between Catholics and non-converts, after 1988 scholars wasted no time in reevaluating the contribution of Catholics to the nineteenth-century upheavals. This reversal, which also occurred against the backdrop of the great



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uncertainties created by the sudden collapse in 1989 of Vietnam’s most important economic sponsor and political ally, the Soviet Union, is made all the more interesting for coinciding with the rehabilitation at this time of the Nguyễn dynasty in official scholarship. Where once scholars derided the dynasty and its “feudal” social structures as “reactionary” and as much of an enemy to the “masses” as French imperialism,12 more sympathetic voices began to cast the Nguyễn dynasty in a new and somewhat sympathetic light, emphasizing its legitimacy and downplaying the systemic failures that dogged its efforts to deal with the French invasion.13 In effect, criticism of the church’s nineteenth-century legacy dovetailed with the state’s reappraisal of its dynastic predecessor. The conjunction between such reappraisals reveals the significance of historiography in the ongoing narration of Vietnamese history and official views on Vietnamese identity.14 Precisely because of this tangled web of politicized representations a new appraisal of social change and especially religious relations in dynastic Vietnam is needed. The bloody record of religious violence in the nineteenth century was not an inevitable consequence of the incompatibility of Catholic beliefs with local lifeways or entirely attributable to the intrigues of missionary fifth- columnists. Nor can French colonial rule, as the catalyst for Vietnam’s violent transition to the modern era, be held solely responsible for igniting religious tensions. Offering a fresh interpretation of events, this book draws on the rich archive of personal mission correspondence and the Nguyễn dynastic chronicles to illuminate the local dimensions of the rise of anti-Catholicism.

The Context of Change: The Mission in Cochinchina From the early 1820s, two distantly related developments dovetailed to give rise to the surge of anti-Catholic sentiment. Under emperor Minh Mạng (r. 1820– 40), Huế embarked on a series of bureaucratic and social reforms designed to enable the Nguyễn to consolidate its rule in areas of Vietnam it had never governed before, the north of Tonkin or Đàng Ngoại, and in areas it sought to govern with greater direct control, especially the far south in the Mekong Delta and the countryside surrounding Gia Ðịnh, modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. Coinciding with these endeavors, the Missions Étrangères in Vietnam enjoyed an unprece-



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dented rise in support in France and elsewhere in Europe on the back of increasingly well-coordinated print and publicity. After decades of stagnation brought about by the French Revolution and exacerbated by Napoleon’s reign, the MEP’s fortunes turned after 1815, leading to a resurgence in its activities in the Far East, especially in Vietnam. Mission work there was aided by the inflow of secure funds from Europe and an unprecedented interconnectivity with church organizations back in France. More than any other development early in the century, this conjunction was to have a precipitous role in reshaping Vietnamese society and establishing community divisions on the eve of colonial rule. The Nguyễn dynasty was the first—and last—to rule over all modern Vietnamese-speaking territories. Yet the correlation between this remarkable political achievement and the profound and ongoing effects of territorial unification under the Nguyễn in 1802 on social and cultural identities in Vietnam has only recently received the attention it deserves. Following on from the groundbreaking works of Nola Cooke, Li Tana, and Choi Byung Wook, this study con­ centrates on Cochinchina–Đàng Trong, the southern half of Vietnam, and especially the region surrounding modern-day Ho Chi Minh City, known as Gia Định—which included the township of Gia Định—or by the mid­- nineteenth century as the Six Provinces (lục tỉnh), of which Saigon became the French capital.15 Apart from seeking to capitalize on the findings of these studies, there are other good reasons to focus on Cochinchina to explore the rise of Nguyễn anti-Catholicism. The turmoil that engulfed Vietnamese Catholics in the nineteenth century unfolded in two overlapping contexts: the contestation over religion and cultural diversity, and the process of political and territorial integration. And nowhere in Vietnam are the broader repercussions of these two more readily visible over the course of the century than in the dramatic changes that took place in the far south. I focus on this region because it was here that the MEP first gained privileged access to the upper levels of the Nguyễn regime in the last decades of the eighteenth century, in what was essentially a symbiotic relationship. And Cochinchina–Đàng Trong was also the first region to fall under French rule decades later in the 1860s. But far from seeking to set southern experiences of political and social change apart from the rest of the kingdom, this book also covers events in other areas of the kingdom, notably during the anti-Catholic campaign in the late 1830s. Against the backdrop of Nguyễn political expansion and the MEP’s rising fortunes, this study begins by exploring grassroots experiences of the consolidation



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of Nguyễn rule in the reigns of its first two rulers, Gia Long (r. 1802–19) and Minh Mạng (r. 1820–40). Chapter 1 provides background on the developments within the Nguyễn state and the MEP organization in the early decades of the century. Where once Nguyễn rule in Cochinchina had been characterized by social and cultural fluidity in religious identities—a situation that continued well into the 1810s under King Gia Long—the reign of the second Nguyễn king, Minh Mạng, from 1820 brought rapid change. Responding to the dangers of regionalism, Minh Mạng instigated sweeping reforms from the 1820s. By creating new opportunities in education and in opening paths of advancement in the bureaucracy, the dynasty sought to dismantle regionally focused affiliations in society.16 But its success was far from uniform; in fact it created as many divisions as it sought to obliterate. As part of these centralizing efforts, the court adopted an oppressive stance on religious heterodoxy in particular. For the MEP, which had only just started to recover, these developments gathered momentum at a fateful point. Not only did the 1820s see an influx of a sizeable wave of young missionaries to the Cochinchina mission centered in Gia Định, also in this period the MEP gained for the first time sole authority over the local ecclesiastic hierarchy in the southern half of the kingdom and was able to apply a more rigorous indoctrination of converts than had been possible in earlier decades. Under Minh Mạng, the Nguyễn dynasty was transformed into an imperial power, extending Vietnamese rule at its height in the 1830s deep into Cambodian and Lao territory. The transformation also entailed a fundamental change in the way the dynasty related to minority religious and ethnic groups within the kingdom. Huế sought to reorganize the kingdom’s sites of worship and spiritual power to strengthen the new capital’s authority. Dangerously for the mission, the new court also increased scrutiny of religious communities that did not accord with Nguyễn doctrinal sensibilities. As Chapter 2 shows, the court became increasingly wary of the growing influence of the mission in grassroots society and concerned for the challenges it posed to Huế’s imperial vision. To curb the mission’s expansion, the court issued its first anti-Catholic proscription edict in January 1833. However, the proscription coincided with the rise of anti-Huế sentiment within southern society, which exploded in May in a secessionist rebellion. The presence of an MEP missionary, Fr. Joseph Marchand, in the rebellion raised the specter of mission subterfuge and provided the justification for a campaign of persecution. Chapter 3 examines the impact of the anti-Catholic repression in the late



introduction



1830s. In the aftermath of Lê Văn Khôi’s secessionist rebellion, the court intensified its efforts to destroy the local church and the mission. But despite the rigorous approach to bureaucratic reform in earlier years, and its increased attempts to exert greater control at the district and village level, the campaign’s results were far from successful. Resistance in village society to the more brutal aspects of the proscription frustrated Huế’s efforts to crack down on the church. During this period the development of a black economy, in which Catholic communities avoided the harsh penalties of the proscription by bribing local officials, greatly complicated relations with authorities. Increasingly frustrated by the spread of such arrangements, the court imposed greater penalties and offered ever greater rewards for the capture of missionaries and priests. In the end, far from heralding the precipitous decline of the church, the late 1830s campaign only marginally weakened the missionary presence; at the same time it undermined trust within the bureaucracy and in official relations with grassroots society. These developments not only draw attention to the potential rivalry between the Nguyễn court and the MEP, which was consolidating its position in grassroots society, they also reveal the changing conditions of greater interconnectivity between societies in Asia and Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the 1840s, as Chapters 4 and 5 show, the dynamics of nineteenth-century globalization enabled the increased presence of European imperial powers in Southeast Asia for political and economic conquest. Advances in communications and transport had increased public awareness in Europe of societies and cultures in the Far East, and had given rise to new contingencies in cross-cultural relations. This can be seen clearly in the new possibilities created by greater interaction between the French mission on the ground in Vietnam and Catholic communities in France. The MEP’s exploitation of print capitalism by mid-century, to cite a prominent example, saw the publication and dissemination throughout Europe of the correspondence of priests from missions around the world in prominent Catholic journals such as the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. In effect, the MEP came to regulate perceptions of Vietnamese society and Nguyễn oppression for French audiences in the decades before the very first French imperial encounter, the naval bombardment of Đà Nẵng in 1847.17 The popularity of the Annals led to a huge rise in subscriptions to the journal between the early 1820s and the late 1830s, which was no doubt fueled by the dramatic stories of persecution in places such as Vietnam and China. As

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subscriptions increased, funds and donations flooded into the Annals and subsequently its principal affiliate, the MEP, which for the first time in its history was able to lavish its missions with a steady flow—thanks to safer and more frequent shipping to Asia—of finances for its activities. In places like Vietnam where religious oppression had forced the mission and Catholics underground, these funds played a major role in alleviating official sanctions: they provided much needed cash to bribe officials for safety from the threat of arrest, or to remove Catholics from strife and extortion. Over time, such arrangements drew Catholics, their non-convert neighbors, and local officials into tighter circles of dependence. More important, they created what can only be described as a black economy of bribery and extortion that provided Catholics with a degree of protection but gave rise to one of the most destabilizing dynamics to affect the Nguyễn dynasty’s political economy. By fueling the greed of low-level officials, mission funds undermined the foundations of integrity among village and district officials on the periphery of central rule. Aware of this degradation, the court attempted but ultimately failed to sanction corruption. In the end, as a consequence, frustration at the inconsistent treatment of Catholics—and more generally the deterioration of uniform ­action—throughout the bureaucracy heightened the panic of senior officials when the dynasty faced its greatest crises in the 1850s, making extreme action the only attractive option. Apart from exploring themes specific to mid-century Vietnam, this book also seeks to contribute new understanding to the background of inter- religious hostility in nineteenth-century Asia. The situation in Nguyễn Vietnam represents just one example of wider transitions elsewhere in the region where peripheral communities such as Catholics became central to the attentions of multiple political centers and a battleground for the imposition of competing ideological visions. Pulled in different directions, by the Catholic church in France and the Nguyễn state in Huế, Vietnamese Catholics were forced to renegotiate and reinterpret their position, both in local social settings and in relation to the state and official authorities. In the process, new patterns in community behavior emerged, local notions of the duality of religious affiliation and political loyalty within society shifted irrevocably, and the means by which people and communities asserted their identity acquired new forms of expression. In brief, the historicization of religious violence and social change is crucial for a more nuanced perspective on the dramatic shifts in the region’s political and social identities.



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11

Sources While official perspectives from the court can tell us much about imperial attitudes and shifts within official circles, such insights must be complemented by considering, as Ralph Smith noted on mid-nineteenth-century Vietnamese dynastic politics, the realities of “the relationship between government and society.”18 Despite the heavy hand of central rule as the chief protagonist in state-society relations, village society’s resistance to the implementation of official policies demands attention. In short, in studying early Nguyễn Vietnam we need to be attuned to “the political and social realities of the period rather than of the Confucian ideal.”19 For no matter how rigorously Huế sought to extend its reach below canton level into the village, local interests and needs more often than not prevailed. The compliance of low-level officials with local power- holders and community elders was an enduring feature of grassroots society. However near or far from Huế, individual officials, as we will see, continued to act after calculating a balance between personal interests, official responsibilities, and the desire to promote local social harmony. It is in light of this tension between state views and local lifeways that I explore the rise of Nguyễn hostility to Catholicism. This study draws on the experiences of those directly involved in the era’s broad shifts, Catholics and non-converts, missionaries and mandarins. And to tell their stories I draw on two principal sources: the personal correspondence of French missionaries based in Cochinchina and modern Vietnamese translations of several of the Nguyễn dynastic chronicles. Each of these offers its own invaluable insights into change in the nineteenth century, and likewise each suffers from particular prejudices that can hinder our understanding of events. The Nguyễn dynasty Veritable Records, which I use extensively in this study, for the 1830s Minh Mạng era, for example, were not published until 1866—two decades after the events they record, and only four short years after the 1862 Treaty of Saigon, which ceded three Vietnamese provinces to French rule. On the other hand, missionary depictions of events, although contemporaneous, are often imbued with European prejudices and are sometimes distorted by a zealous Catholic worldview. Moreover, the cultural context in which a Nguyễn official dictated a memorial to the throne and an MEP priest drafted a private letter to a friend or family member in France derived from two very different worldviews. Indeed, it is hard to imagine two more dissimilar mental universes than those inhabited by

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missionaries and mandarins in the mid-nineteenth century. But perspectives do not necessarily alter facts, or at least undo experiences of events. And many events, such as the issue of proscription edicts, arrests, and interactions between missionaries and officials, as well as executions described by missionaries in their letters to France, are also reported, often in detail, in the Nguyễn chronicles. Despite the obvious ideological differences that would have informed a mandarin or a missionary in his description of an event, there is nonetheless some compatibility between these sources that allows ample evidence for corroboration. Like most historians of Vietnam looking at this period, I am in the first instance dependent on the official chronicles of the Nguyễn dynasty, many of which have been translated from classical Chinese into modern Vietnamese— quốc ngữ—since the 1960s. In particular, I draw on the Nguyễn Veritable Rec­ ords (Đại Nam Thực Lục) and the Nguyễn selected biographies (Đại Nam Liệt Truyện) of prominent officials, members of the royal family, and other notables deemed pertinent to the course of the dynasty’s history. Such works have been used with great success in several important studies, most notably Alexander Woodside’s groundbreaking analysis of the Nguyễn bureaucracy and Philippe Langlet’s exhaustive study of Nguyễn elite culture and state historiography.20 But undoubtedly the most important source for my work is the volumes of private, unpublished correspondence in the archive of the Missions Étrangères in Paris. As this archive was only opened for public research recently, around fifteen years ago, it is a great privilege to have had the opportunity to explore its materials and provide a new interpretation of the events in which missionaries and Catholics were involved. For a long time, only published and edited versions of this correspondence had been available to non-mission researchers. It is therefore one aim of this book to utilize these rarely used materials in a manner that will shed new light on the personalities and experiences of their authors. The MEP archive is not solely composed of mission correspondence. In the dense volumes, and indeed within the narratives of letters, are numerous extracts and quotes of Vietnamese Catholics, priests, non-converts, and Nguyễn authorities. In most cases these have been rendered in French, but sometimes extracts appear in vernacular Vietnamese. These offer fascinating insights into encounters between missionaries, priests, and mandarins, such as the intriguing exchange in 1844 between Mgr. Dominique Léfèbvre and the prominent southern governor and general Nguyễn Tri Phương on Catholic healing and medicine. The inevitable question arises, however, of whether we can rely on the memory and integrity of the missionary authors in their reporting of others’ experiences and dialogues.



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13

I attempt at every opportunity to corroborate events, conversations, and the sentiments of communities with other available evidence. It is, nevertheless, illuminating to read these records against the grain for what they can reveal to us of shifting mission attitudes. We are also spared the danger of overreliance on missionary narratives by the abundance in the archive of French translations of important Nguyễn court documents; these include extant versions of proscription edicts and internal legal papers and judgments issued against Catholics in certain infamous cases. More than the official chronicles, these records offer crucial insights into bureaucratic workings and attitudes from the period. Finally, in seeking to link perceptions of events using French and Vietnamese sources, contrasting experiences of change, and exploring the unique perceptions of missionaries and mandarins, this study seeks to broaden the use of combining indigenous and “foreign” perspectives in the reconstructing of the Vietnamese past. Despite their vastly different social and religious sensibilities, mandarins and missionaries had much more in common than is immediately obvious. Throughout the years of anti-Catholic hostility, we see time and again officials acting to maintain order between Catholics and non-converts in their bailiwicks and, perhaps out of compassion, seeking to limit the impact of some of the harshest measures of the proscription. Of course, many mandarins were unswerving in their oppression of the religion. But the overwhelming experience is of stability and respect for human life. Similarly, missionaries regularly, where feasible, sought to open and maintain channels of communication with officials. Despite loathing the actions of particularly hostile mandarins, most missionaries tried to create the means for negotiation to ensure a modicum of safety from threat for congregations. Above all, the most insightful aspect of missionary and official experiences is the potential they hold for illuminating the circulation and integration of “foreign” culture within the local social landscape. After living for years and sometimes decades in Vietnam, missionaries became as much a part of the local world as their neighbors and confreres. Their insights into local lifeways provide an important prism through which we might better understand the local world and especially the dramatic changes ushered in by French colonial rule.

one

Restoration and the Mission

Inaugurated in 1802, the Nguyễn dynasty marked a watershed in Vietnamese history by ushering in an era of transformation and upheaval. After three devastating decades of civil war and nearly two centuries of hostility between the Nguyễn and their northern rivals, the Lê dynasty and Trịnh lords in Thăng Long (Hanoi), the Nguyễn seized control of both the northern region of Tonkin (Ðàng Ngoại) and the southern region of Cochinchina (Ðàng Trong). It was from the south that the Nguyễn family first rose as a political force in the seventeenth century to become the first dynasty to unite and govern all Vietnamese-speaking territories from the mountains bordering China, south to the watery plains of the Mekong Delta. The rise of the Nguyễn against this backdrop of upheaval is testament to its power as an emerging political force over successive generations. Moreover, the Nguyễn ascendancy at this point foreshadowed a revolution in rule that set in motion profound changes to society and laid the foundations for the modern Vietnamese state. The history of the Nguyễn ascendancy is as dramatic as it is remarkable. To understand the rise of the Nguyễn it is helpful to explore the political changes of 14



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the nineteenth century.1 Gia Long, the man who rose in 1802 to rule all Vietnamese lands from Huế, was descended—albeit tenuously—from a long line of rulers whose family had its roots in the region of Thanh Hóa (south of modernday Hanoi) and made its name through supporting the victorious Lê Lợi, who led the successful rebellion to expel Ming Chinese rule in the early fifteenth century. Although the Nguyễn originated from the northern region, their heartland had until this time been on the periphery of Thăng Long rule: it had largely been left uncorrupted by Ming efforts to form a power base loyal to the foreign overlords during the brief occupation between 1407 and 1428, and escaped the influence of the struggle of Lê Thánh Tông (r. 1460–97) to promote Confucian culture during his consolidation of the kingdom. This played an important role in shaping the character of prominent Nguyễn leaders, among whom Nguyễn Kim stands as a prominent example. At the start of the sixteenth century, political intrigues and bloodshed engulfed Thăng Long, creating the instability that opened the way for the Ming overlord’s earlier Vietnamese supporters, the Mạc clan, to usurp control of the kingdom in 1527. Nguyễn Kim, along with allies from the Trịnh clan—who also originated from the Thanh Hóa–Nghệ An ­region—spearheaded the struggle to restore the Lê. From the western capital of Tây Ðô, in Thanh Hóa, their forces fought for decades against the Mạc and were finally victorious in 1592. But if Nguyễn Kim, before his death in 1545, expected his clan’s illustrious rise under a victorious, restored Lê dynasty, his aspirations were hopelessly thwarted. Over the long decades of the restoration struggle, the Trịnh strengthened their power while the Nguyễn, although providing prominent generals, were gradually marginalized. But this marginalization was anything but straightforward. To avoid a direct clash with his Trịnh rivals, Nguyễn Hoàng—Nguyễn Kim’s second son—obtained through careful influence command of the far southern protectorate of Thuận-Hóa in 1558. This region, which had only come under Vietnamese influence in the previous two hundred years, roughly encompassed the modern-day provinces of Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị, and Thừa Thiên. It was an area that had been acquired through a series of campaigns against the declining Cham kingdoms, which once ruled the greater part of the Vietnamese coastline. Although far from being a territory devoid of human settlement, it presented enormous opportunities for the expansion of the Vietnamese sphere. Indeed, by sending Nguyễn Hoàng to govern this region—and extending his authority to encompass Quảng Nam in 1572—the Trịnh relegated a political rival to a distant frontier. And in so doing they provided the land and conditions

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for the establishment of a far greater political threat, the establishment of a rival kingdom. In 1593, Nguyễn Hoàng returned to Thăng Long for one last time, where he was engaged in a military campaign to drive residual Mạc supporters from the Red River Delta: then, in 1600 he returned to the south for good, dying there in 1613. Seven years later, his successor, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyến, made the break with the north that soured relations between the southern Nguyễn base and the north. From the end of the sixteenth century, the Trịnh effectively governed the north as lords (chúa) under the nominal leadership of the Lê emperor. Resentful of the Trịnh’s ascendancy in Thăng Long politics, in 1620 Phúc Nguyến severed ties with the north by refusing to submit taxes to the capital. This defiance provided the Trịnh with the grounds for a punitive expedition in 1627, which sparked a conflict that raged intermittently for the rest of the century. The struggle took on the dimensions of a civil war and despite the shared history and cultural commonalities, it set in motion a rupture that led to the establishment of two increasingly different polities and societies over the following one hundred and fifty years. Although the Nguyễn did not formally declare their independence from the Lê state until 1744, in seceding from northern rule, the Nguyễn lords not only founded a renegade state, independent of Trịnh interference, they also created the cultural and social conditions that gave rise to what Keith Taylor has aptly described as “a new version of Vietnamese.”2 Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Vietnamese settlement expanded south along the central coast into the kingdom of Champa, and deep into the Khmer-dominated Mekong Delta, Nguyễn rule followed. This in part explains how, from their base in the south, the Nguyễn developed early on an outward perspective in trade and culture, which was not only pragmatic—given the challenges of this new environment—but also crucial for Nguyễn prosperity and survival in the face of repeated northern attempts to rein in the south. Huế not only looked south to the expanding frontier for resources, it also developed relations further afield in Southeast Asia and expanding European networks. Such ties drew the Nguyễn into larger spheres, and boosted Cochinchina’s profile as a trading center and political power.3 Nguyễn rule was open to new opportunities offered by foreign trade, technical expertise, and religions, not to mention diplomatic alliances.4 Central to continued expansion was the sustained settlement of Vietnamese among indigenous and Khmer populations in the far south, particularly in the vast expanses of the Mekong Delta, usually



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known at the time as Gia Ðịnh. Yet, while rapid territorial growth provided the Nguyễn with an impressive kingdom, it also created new challenges and distortions to the exercise of authority and placed greater demands on the state. In particular, the inability of the formal bureaucratic apparatus to administer effectively the regions hundreds of miles south of Huế in the end gave rise to competing social and political interests within Nguyễn Cochinchina. From the 1760s, the preceding decades of spectacular territorial expansion and growth caught up with Huế and posed challenges that the Nguyễn failed to counter. Above all, a downturn in foreign trade led to rapid economic deterioration. A palace revolt in Huế after the death of the eighth Nguyễn ruler, Võ Vương (r. 1738–65), saw the new regent exacerbate matters beyond control by levying ever higher taxes on the already overburdened population.5 Already at a breaking point by its tenuous hold over a bureaucratically stretched kingdom, the court undermined itself further as it squeezed the population for revenue, driving some areas across the countryside to the brink of collapse. In 1772, a group of brothers from the hamlet of Tây Sơn in Bình Định prefecture led an insurrection whose fierceness rapidly gathered momentum. With a wide support base of Chinese migrants, minority groups from the highlands, and disgruntled Vietnamese, the Tây Sơn brothers engineered a series of humiliating victories that opened the way for the Nguyễn’s most hated rivals, the Trịnh, to invade Huế in 1775, ending the 150-year-old deadlock between the two. Broken by the humiliating defeat, surviving members of the Nguyễn clan fled south to Gia Ðịnh where they were subjected to one final tragedy. There, in 1777, the Tây Sơn sacked Gia Định town (modern-day Ho Chi Minh City), killed the last king, Ðịnh Vương, and mercilessly massacred the remaining members of the royal family— men, women and children—who had failed or were unable to flee in the heat of the attack.6 A not too distant Nguyễn descendant did survive, however, and escaped to pursue an uncertain future in exile. In the following two decades this survivor, Nguyễn Ánh, the third son of King Võ Vương’s second son and the only surviving member of the Nguyễn royal family, forged a new center of power under perilous conditions in Gia Định.7 But the ascendancy of this distant prince was anything but assured. For years Nguyễn Ánh faced great uncertainty, hiding with his small entourage on Phú Quốc Island in the Gulf of Siam. After several disastrous attempts at establishing his base in Gia Định town—the Tây Sơn sacked the town four times between 1779 and 1783—he returned for good in 1788. In the following years, drawing on the support of

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an entourage that helped him maintain alliances with other Southeast Asian princes and generals, as well as French naval officers and missionaries of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), Nguyễn Ánh slowly forced the Tây Sơn into retreat. From 1798 to 1802, in successive military victories his forces recaptured Huế, then destroyed the Tây Sơn base near Bình Định, and finally took the northern capital with minimal opposition and bloodshed. In 1802, under the reign name of Gia Long—a conflation of the names of Vietnam’s two capitals, Gia Ðịnh (Saigon) and Thăng Long (Hanoi)—the new king established his capital in Huế, uniting the two halves of the country to form the last Vietnamese imperial state. Against this backdrop of shifting political fortunes, territorial expansion, and internecine feuding, the Catholic mission first established a foothold in Cochinchina in the early seventeenth century. Thereafter it slowly insinuated itself in local society to build not only a modestly influential religious community but also the political base to make it an actor in elite circles. In fact, Nguyễn fortunes cannot be fully appreciated without exploring the mission’s own rise—and the covenant of convenience the two developed.

The Mission in Cochinchina The early explorations and proselytizing of Jesuit missionaries sprang from new trading centers such as Goa in India and Macao in southern China in the 1500s, and supported the establishment of nascent churches in Japan, the Philippines, and China. From these centers Spanish and Portuguese missionaries visited Vietnam as early as the mid-sixteenth century and made modest inroads in some isolated settlements.8 But it was not until the Avignonese Jesuit priest Alexander de Rhodes, who visited both Cochinchina and Tonkin between the 1620s and 1640s, returned to France that the impetus to establish a solid ecclesiastic hierarchy in Vietnam—after decades of resistance from the Portuguese—gained support from Rome. De Rhodes’s labors came to fruition in 1658 with the issue of papal orders that established two vicariates for Vietnam—an ecclesiastic unit similar to a diocese, but reserved for “pagan” lands outside European Christendom—Cocinensis, or Cochinchina, and Tunkinensis, or Tonkin, territories that corresponded exactly with the political division separating Nguyễn Cochin­ china and Lê-ruled Tonkin. And from the beginning, mission activity in these two vicariates followed different—although not isolated—paths. By the end of



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the seventeenth century, owing to the success of conversions, Tonkin was subdivided into two vicariates: East Tonkin, covering the coastal Red River Delta provinces and administered by Spanish Dominicans; and West Tonkin, stretching from west of Hanoi south to modern Hà Tĩnh, and administered by the newly established French Society of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP). West Tonkin had a population of around 180,000 Catholics by the early nineteenth century; estimates are not available for the Dominican areas.9 The Catholic expansion in Cochinchina faced vastly different conditions. In this area of variable Vietnamese settlement—denser in the long-settled north and sparse in the far south especially—conversion had occurred in no less a spectacular fashion but, by the early 1800s, the local church numbered no more than a modest, although not insignificant, sixty thousand.10 One of the greatest hindrances to the spread of Catholicism through the Cochinchina vicariate from the late seventeenth century was the bitter rivalry between the principal mission organizations competing for the support of local congregations. The Cochin­ china and Tonkin vicariates were specifically established to fall under the responsibility of the MEP. Founded by Mgr. Pierre Lambert de La Motte and Mgr. François Pallu in Paris in 1858, the society placed itself under the direct authority of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide), an organization founded in Rome in 1622 with the aim of centralizing mission activity and curbing the power of the orders under the sponsorship of the Spanish and Portuguese. Although Rome appointed Lambert de La Motte (1624–79) the first apostolic vicar of Cochinchina—a position that made him the titular bishop of the local church and leader of all missionaries in the region—from his arrival in the vicariate the MEP’s primacy was bitterly contested by missionaries of the longer established regular orders, particularly the Jesuits, who had been operating in Asia for over a century and in Vietnam for nearly fifty years. From the late seventeenth century, the intensification of mission rivalries combined with the arrival of more Franciscan and Jesuit priests in Huế nearly led to the complete disappearance of the MEP in Cochin­china. By the 1740s MEP missionaries were restricted to administering the sparsely populated coastal plains from south of Bình Định to Phú Yên, Khánh Hòa, and the Kingdom of Champa (Panduranga).11 Although the MEP continued to face marginalization in the 1740s, a combination of events in Cochinchina and in Rome in the mid-century set in motion a fateful reversal of the MEP’s decline, ultimately transforming its fortunes in the kingdom. In 1750 King Võ Vương launched a crackdown on the religion and

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the mission presence in which he expelled all foreign missionaries from Cochin­ china. This was followed shortly thereafter by the Vatican’s temporary dissolution of the Jesuit order, following the decades-long Rites Controversy in Chinese missions. Then in the mid-1770s the Tây Sơn rebellion ended most church activity in the south, forcing all missionaries to flee. Yet, despite the upheaval the MEP maintained a foothold in Cambodia (at the time part of the Cochinchina vicariate) and Siam, enabling it to take advantage of the mission vacuum left by the Jesuit retreat. Under the leadership of Mgr. Pierre Pigneaux (1741–99) from 1774, the MEP built close ties with Nguyễn Ánh and his exiled entourage in Bangkok and the islands in the Gulf of Siam.12 After decades of bitter rivalry with the Jesuit and Franciscan orders over primacy in the vicariate in the mideighteenth century, this fateful relationship launched the MEP to unprecedented prominence in Nguyễn elite circles. So successful had Pigneaux been in grafting MEP fortunes on to those of the Nguyễn that in 1786 Nguyễn Ánh entrusted his son, Prince Cảnh, to the apostolic vicar for a lengthy sea voyage to France in the hope of winning military support and finance from Versailles. Although the treaty secured in 1789 between Nguyễn Ánh and the soon-to-be-deposed Louis XVI was effectively stillborn— the French never honored it—the long voyage provided Pigneaux with a considerable period in which to tutor and influence Prince Cảnh. On their return to Gia Định in 1792, after six years abroad, Cảnh outraged Nguyễn Ánh’s circle when, at his inauguration as crown prince, he initially refused to kowtow to the Nguyễn ancestral shrine. Pigneaux died in 1799, as did Prince Cảnh unexpectedly two years later. Nevertheless, the prince’s actions poisoned the minds of many in elite circles toward the mission and sowed the seeds of antipathy that would not emerge until nearly a generation later. In the meantime, owing to the years of loyal support during the struggle against the Tây Sơn, King Gia Long granted the mission unprecedented freedom for its activities and guaranteed unlimited protection to Catholics—protection that lasted only a few years after the end of his reign. When Nguyễn Ánh established his capital in Huế in 1802, he inherited a kingdom where regional tensions and networks of power had been destroyed during the Tây Sơn rebellion in the 1770s. Years of feuding, between the Nguyễn and the Trịnh, and the eruption of the Tây Sơn rebellion in Binh Ðịnh, had gone a long way to entrench key differences between communities in the different regions; and as centrally organized rule, in the north as in the south, disintegrated, it gave way to smaller units of locally powerful leaders.



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Despite the Nguyễn success of 1802, the far southern region of Gia Ðịnh, which had served as Gia Long’s base in the 1780s and 1790s, was still very much a frontier region, with Vietnamese in a minority in most provinces, and the state’s presence was weak and contested. Despite the new Nguyễn dynasty’s roots in late-eighteenth-century Gia Định, the south entered the nineteenth century as a peripheral region where communities and local authorities persisted in the patterns that had characterized this area for decades before the remnant Nguyễn had reestablished their base here.13

Gia Dinh: Place and Society In 1802 Gia Ðịnh was a vast, sparsely populated frontier of Vietnamese rule and settlement. It stretched from the densely forested hills of Ðồng Nai in the northeast (modern-day Ðồng Nai and Bà Rịa provinces) to the watery plains of the Mekong Delta to the south and west to the dusty expanses bordering Cambodia. From the Saigon River to the numerous mouths of the two great Mekong arms, water carved the territory into innumerable difficult-to-traverse segments. Allusions to the divergence of parochial Gia Ðịnh patterns from the emerging imperial aspirations of the newly reinaugurated capital in Huế can be seen in Trịnh Hoài Đức’s encyclopedic Geography of Gia Định (Gia Định Thành Thông Chí), which, probably composed late in the 1810s, was presented to Minh Mạng in 1820.14 Born in 1765 into a distinguished family of scholars of Chinese-Fukien heritage, Đức was raised in Gia Định, entering the bureaucracy shortly after Nguyễn Ánh recaptured the region from the Tây Sơn in 1788. A talented scholar, Đức rose steadily over the years to attain the presidency of the Board of the Interior (Lại bộ) in 1813. Several years later, in 1816, he was appointed assistant viceroy (hiệp tổng trấn) of Gia Định, and it is probable while in this post he composed the Geography.15 This contemporary perspective on politics and society presents a revealing view of the southern landscape that can help orient our understanding of the region in this period. The Geography offers a wealth of local knowledge on social customs, dialects, sites of ritual and spiritual power, and administrative divisions. It is suffused with parochial sentiments: full of praise for Gia Định’s power, for instance, it lacks any references to the primacy of the restored capital, Huế. One particular passage stands out for the way it encapsulates the region’s frontier sensibilities and the seemingly precarious position of Vietnamese

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rule on this cultural and social crossroads. In the final section of his work, Đức turns to the location of the region’s principal manmade landmarks: citadels, pagodas and shrines, markets, canals, bridges and highways. Writing according to well-established literary traditions for such geographies, focusing on hierarchy, propriety and order, Đức turns to the most awesome structure in the region, Phiên An citadel in Gia Định town. The citadel is used to make war on the enemy and protect the people; it needs to be raised high and [rooted] in the depths, taking precautions against the unexpected. . . . Gia Định is the firmest protectorate (trấn) in the south, with mountains and rivers over a thousand leagues. [The landscape] is a natural barrier [to our enemies] and a great advantage [to us]. As a shield defending the country, it is also at a strategic position to control Siam, the different Lao peoples, and the Malays (Cha Va), as well as see to the collection of taxes and deal with the government of the Cambodians and mountain barbarians. . . . The official buildings of [Gia Định] Trấn must be made magnificent in order to project [our] majesty to foreign peoples and the granaries must be sufficiently full so as to consolidate the foundations [of our rule].16

Ðức’s perspective is also indicative of the frontier attitudes of the Gia Định regional elite. As with his contemporaries who administered this land, Đức looked west to the “barbarian” territory as a region of expansion for Gia Định’s future prosperity. His comments exude a cultural arrogance, but at the same time they are shaded with a sense of vulnerability and exposure on this southern frontier. This was a harsh land, far removed from the Nguyễn ancestral districts and the centers of high culture like Thăng Long and Huế. Basic survival, in a land where Vietnamese settlers were a minority, and settlement itself, competed on a daily basis with the elements and the dangers of wilderness and overrode the need for cultural niceties. Thus, Đức remarked how in Vĩnh Thanh although there are “many crocodiles and ferocious tigers . . . the people here are used to them and are not frightened, young children and women can all wield a scythe or sickle to harvest rice and stop tigers.”17 No doubt longing for the high culture of faraway courts—in Huế or even Beijing—where men read philosophy and discussed politics, he comments with undisguised regret that while in Biên Hòa—neighboring Gia Định town— “literature is prized above all else,” in outlying bailiwicks, such as Hà Tiên on the Gulf of Siam, only very “few people are educated.”18 Instead, what most attracts Đức’s attention is the intermingling of “kinh,” or ethnic Vietnamese, among the region’s indigenous and Khmer populations: to Đức Gia Định was



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a land where the social and cultural distinctions were blurred and the regard for culture and literature were hardly a priority. Departing from the citadel in the same passage, Đức’s narrative takes us to the countryside outside Gia Định where he explores other sites of authority and sketches the grassroots order. When one sees pagodas and temples, tall and splendid, then one knows the spirits and deities are celebrated [and glorious]. Wherever one sees villages and hamlets with markets and streets, there is prosperity and one knows the populace is rich. Where there are bridges, canals, and roads, there is good order and propriety, and one knows the territory is secured and will endure. By guarding against danger, virtue will accrue; inside and outside there will be tranquility.19

This harmonious, indeed poetic, description of the local world and its organization around vibrant sites of community activity beautifully encapsulates the elite sensitivities of a senior mandarin. As Đức suggests, temples and pagodas represented the wealth of spirit forces to the population who benefited directly from their benevolence. Markets, chợ, served community needs in food and local commerce, and acted as a gateway to goods from distant centers. They also served a crucial role in the official world as an arena for the announcement of administrative decrees when, from time to time, the canton or district mandarin visited. Finally, essential to effective governance in this sparsely settled region, roads, bridges, and canals enabled communications, the movement of militia and soldiers, and the collection of taxes by officials. As an official’s perspective on the region’s geography and people, submitted to the throne for the court’s consumption, Ðức’s Geography projects the harmony of his own mental organization over the local setting. His description, while providing a graphic model, does little justice to the complicated realities on the ground. Roads, temples, and markets served multiple purposes, official and unofficial. Pagodas and temples dotted the countryside, but not all neatly conformed to official views on religious and ritual culture; among the shrines to officially recognized spirits were Khmer and Chinese altars, as well as Christian churches and oratories. The ordered chaos of the market not only supplied locals with food, it also attracted entertainers, wandering hawkers, fortunetellers, and spirit mediums; and more than any other public arena, the market was a focal point for the spread of gossip and potentially seditious rumors. The disparity between official views, such as Đức’s, and the reality on the ground throws into relief the far less visible cultural milieu and social

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s­ etting of early nineteenth-century Gia Ðịnh. Such a focus not only yields further insight into the region’s various communities, particularly Catholics and the mission, but also helps explain the subtle ways authority and central power interacted with grassroots society. Hue-Tam Ho Tai sums up Gia Định’s social diversity richly—society in Gia Định consisted of “marginal elements: economic migrants lured by the promise of riches, political refugees fleeing turmoil or persecution, and social misfits from South China or the more established but also more crowded and restrictive societies of northern and central Vietnam.”20 Gia Ðịnh was a region where the challenges of sparse settlement and political isolation held immense promise. As Tai observes, the greatest challenge in the south was also the greatest social leveler. Unlike the rigid village life in the densely populated north—the Red River Delta in particular—community life in Gia Định was characterized by the “almost total absence of institutional mechanisms at the village level.” Northern village communities were strictly organized and had little room for upward mobility within the social hierarchy, while the lack of open land made it virtually impossible for groups dissatisfied with their lowly station to move to a neighboring area and establish a new settlement. Community life revolved around the activities of “a host of organizations with overlapping memberships and fairly well-defined responsibilities, such as the village council, the religious council, block associations, mutual-help societies, guilds and kinship groups.”21 While such organizations existed in Gia Định, settlers and migrants did not suffer to the same degree the restrictions arising from dense population and limited natural resources. Settlement, on the whole, was, in contrast, more fluid. And while such fluidity offered opportunities for those willing and strong enough to withstand the hardships, it carried with it every day the risk of disaster. In early nineteenth-century Gia Định, community life was “in the embryonic stage, and [its] development was constantly thwarted by outbreaks of unrest and other calamities.”22 An organization that spread in Gia Ðịnh and elsewhere in Cochinchina against this backdrop of fluid settlement and derived much of its following from the unique sociocultural conditions in the south, not to mention the lack of rigid social institutions and hierarchies, was the Catholic mission. Like other community organizations, for example folk Buddhist sects that proliferated throughout the history of Vietnamese settlement here, mission Catholicism offered a social structure and belief system that accorded well with the privations and challenges of frontier life. It not only offered an alternative vision for spiritual



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salvation within one’s lifetime and the promise of eternal peace after death, it also provided a rigid and coherent social organization with various means to rise within the social hierarchy. Yet, Catholicism did not arrive or spread in a cultural vacuum. Rather, it offered a relatively attractive alternative, and it is in this context that we need to understand the unique position the mission had come to occupy by the early decades of the century.

The Rise of the Missions Étrangères Although a small presence relative to the size of the general population, by the early nineteenth century the Catholic church had been a feature of the local setting for over two hundred years, at least eight generations. Conversion to the religion and day-to-day adherence rarely signified that a family or community lived beyond the bounds of local society. Indeed, given the sparseness of Vietnamese settlement in Cochinchina, and the need for settlers sharing similar backgrounds to band together, it would have been impossible for Catholics to avoid contact in their daily affairs, work, village obligations, and acquaintances, with nonconverts. Apart from belonging to a unique religious community, Catholics concurrently belonged to villages and had to deal with everyday matters. Or, to frame the overlap of religious and social lives more broadly, although members of a truly global church, converts more immediately were also subjects of their local communities, hamlets, and family clans. It is in this dual context, with an acute awareness of the challenges of importing the Christian message to such a complex cultural setting, that missionaries established the church in Vietnam and continued to conduct their work at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1800, the mission was, to say the least, in very poor shape. Several Catholic communities in Cochinchina had grown to several hundred in population over the preceding century and a half, and in some villages Catholics were a majority.23 Some of the region’s oldest congregations, or chrétientés, established as early as the seventeenth century, were found around Huế: these included Dương Sơn and trading towns along the central coast like Đinh Cát and Như Lý in Quảng Trị province. But, for the most part, especially in large areas of the far south, Catholics lived normally in tiny communities, scattered across the countryside. Spanish Franciscan priests are believed to have founded several Mekong congregations in the late sixteenth century among newly settled Vietnamese migrants.24 These included Cái Mơn, Long An, and Mặc Bắc,

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all of which had been established along busy trading routes. Although mission work in Gia Định dated back to the seventeenth century, the church’s expansion was given a major boost in the late eighteenth century by the Tây Sơn rebellion. Perhaps the largest single settlement occurred after Catholics from Huế fled to avoid conflict and to find refuge in the far south. During this time small and relatively isolated centers were founded in places like Tân Triều near Biên Hoà and Thị Rịa (Bà Rịa) east of Saigon near the coast.25 Elsewhere, and in general, Catholics were dispersed widely and in varying concentrations; many isolated congregations had no more than a dozen or fewer members. At the beginning of the century, the vicariate administration was focused on the small, predominantly Catholic village of Lái Thiêu, some eight miles north of Gia Định citadel. This village was founded in around 1774 in the wake of the Tây Sơn rebellion.26 It was here that missionaries arriving in the mission first stayed, to acclimatize, learn Vietnamese, and generally grow accustomed to the dramatically different way of life in Vietnam. Moreover, it was from Lái Thiêu that the greater part of the Cochinchina vicariate, which stretched from the coastal town of Đồng Hói, in present-day Quảng Bình province, south to the kingdom of Cambodia, was organized and from where the mission coordinated its pastoral work. Fr. Jean-Claude Grillet, writing in 1805, summarizes the church structure in the far south and gives us an idea of the mission’s reach and the specific challenges of administering the vicariate’s Catholics. Lower Cochinchina encompasses 4 provinces, Tam Lach, Dong Nai, Ba Ria, Binh Thuan. In the first province, Tam Lach, there are 84 parishes that have around . . . 12,000 Christians (Xtiens). In the second, which is Dong nai, 18 to 20 [parishes], which have nearly 6 to 7,000 Xtiens. In the third, Ba Ria, 6 parishes and in the 4th, Binh Thuan, there are as many as 1,000 to 1,200 [Christians]. This makes for the two provinces 2,000 and some hundreds [of Christians] and for the entire area of lower Cochinchina around 21,000. Yet . . . there are only 2 to 3 European priests, two Spanish Franciscans and our servants with one or two recently ordained Cochinchinese and three older ones. Judge [for yourself] what a dearth (disette) this poor mission suffers.27

A little over a decade later, in the early 1820s, the mission’s fortunes had improved little. The mission had fewer than ten missionaries, including several Franciscans and six priests of the MEP. While the Franciscans belonged to the regular orders, which fell outside the direct control of the central supervision of the Congregation of the Faith (Congregatio Fide) in Rome, the MEP’s secular or diocesan priests—priests dedicated solely to pastoral duties within the diocesan



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structure, in contrast to religious priests, such as Franciscans and Jesuits, whose work might be specifically vocational, for example, teaching or scholarship— ­belonged to a more rigid hierarchy. Yet in Cochinchina in the early decades of the century there were simply too few missionaries from either camp to cover the entire vicariate or maintain even an effective presence in the areas where Catholics were most concentrated. In order to cope with the administration of such a vast region with such a thinly dispersed following, the vicariate was divided into a number of loosely demarcated districts. The number of districts often depended on how many missionaries were available and healthy enough to undertake the arduous work of journeying between congregations. In 1831, Fr. Joseph Marchand described the challenging situation. Departing from Lái Thiêu in early 1831, he traveled through the Mekong Delta from Định Từơng (Mỹ Thọ) to Vĩnh Long, then to Châu Đốc, and then on to Phnom Penh. This “district,” which “from one extremity to the other took a month to travel,” encompassed “seven thousand Christians in 25 chrétientés [congregations].”28 The lengthy pastoral visit undertaken in 1828 by Mgr. Jean-Louis Taberd, Cochinchina’s apostolic vicar from 1824 to his death in 1840, was possibly one of the longest of the period. This journey, covering nearly the entire length of the vicariate, offers a good example of the demands of such pastoral trips. Departing from Huế at the end of June, after having been called to the capital by a special edict, Taberd first traveled by boat to Phú Yên where he continued south by foot, reaching Lái Thiêu three months later in September, in terrible physical shape after the grueling trek. During his journey, Taberd passed through numerous small Catholic communities that had not seen a priest—local or foreign—in decades. He also spent a few days in the remnant Cham kingdom of Panduranga, which also contained a number of Vietnamese Catholics. On his travels, he discovered some communities had not been visited by an apostolic vicar for eighty years, nearly four generations, and most had not received one of the most important Catholic initiation rites, the sacrament of confirmation. Yet these communities had nevertheless persisted with Catholic practice unattended for years—although they had probably lapsed into less orthodox ways.29 This particular problem was not surprising considering the wide dispersion and isolation of many congregations. The smallest unit of the vicariate, the chrétienté or congregation, represented a small community of believers, often living within villages and hamlets of mixed religious observance.30 Because converts and Christian families, some of which had been with the church for

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several ­ generations, were such a small proportion of the population, at between one and three percent—or roughly 80,000 for the entire Cochinchina vicariate by the end of the 1820s—congregations were often spread around several mixed religion hamlets. Rigidly structured, congregations in some ways resembled other traditional social associations and institutions in Vietnam. Community heads supervised the congregation between visits by local priests or missionaries, and along with lay religious leaders or catechists took immediate responsibility for the spiritual well-being of newly baptized members as well as more proficient practitioners of the religion. While community heads maintained order in day-to-day affairs, lay religious leaders or catechists, most of whom were elderly Catholics, led new members in prayers, baptized children, supervised marriage ceremonies, and administered last rites to the dying. On their pastoral visits, missionaries would, where necessary, confirm the administration of these sacraments. Most larger congregations had a church, or at the least many Catholics lived within walking distance of one. In fact, prior to 1832, as Fr. Gilles Delamotte noted, the Cochinchina vicariate had over two hundred churches dotted throughout the vicariate.31 It is possible, however, that many of these churches were little more than oratories—a small, makeshift hut. In the absence of a specific oratory set aside for religious ceremonies, congregations gathered in the house of a village notable. A central feature of administration in the vicariate was the careful recording of the number of sacraments administered in each community—confession, communion, baptism, confirmation, and extreme unction. Although it was an onerous task, the mission submitted these catalogs to the vicariate archives to be documented in regular reports to Rome. In the 1820s, such details had the simple function of indicating church attendance, and more generally they contributed to records of congregation growth. Later, in the 1840s and 1850s, sacrament catalogs became a central feature of mission administration and were used for much more than internal administration. As Chapter 4 discusses, the transmission of statistics on baptisms was a crucial aspect in the appeal for funding back in France for mission work in places like Vietnam. The backbone of the mission, and the very reason for its presence, was the establishment and cultivation of the local priesthood. Indeed, the founding instructions handed to the MEP in the 1650s by the Congregation of the Faith specified the principal goal to be the establishment of self-sustaining church hierarchies in their appointed missions. In fact this instruction was of paramount importance: “to instruct . . . to prepare for the priesthood . . . and pro-



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mote to Holy Orders the greatest number of young men endowed with desirable aptitude.” It was also incumbent on the mission’s leaders to identify in time worthy candidates for promotion to the episcopate.32 While the founding fathers of the MEP in the 1650s, Mgr. Lambert de La Motte and Mgr. Pallu, were acutely aware of the congregation’s orders and sought conscientiously to implement them in the first MEP vicariates of Tonkin and Cochinchina, their successors were far less zealous. For much of its three-century history in Vietnam, the MEP tended to doubt local priests’ abilities, which blunted the impetus for missionaries and apostolic vicars to indigenize the local church. Doubts arose from suspicions about local clergy’s lack of doctrinal rigor and concern that if left unsupervised, quality within the clerical ranks would deteriorate quickly into religious popularism. Unfortunately, there is very little information available and few references in the mission archives or private correspondence to shed light on local priests and their experiences during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The absence of biographic records makes it impossible to identify personal histories or family backgrounds beyond priests’ association with the mission, and there is virtually no explanatory material even on in-mission training. This shortfall in the archives changes in later decades when clergy became even more crucial to the mission’s survival during the Nguyễn court’s repression of the church. All the same, several incidents in the early 1820s reveal the uneven and sometimes volatile relationship between missionaries and their local confreres. At a glance, it is easy to get the impression that MEP missionaries had little regard for the commitment and abilities of the local priesthood. For example, explaining his pastoral duties in late 1824, Taberd begged the MEP to send more missionaries to the vicariate in order to respond to what he considered a catastrophic deterioration of discipline within the mission. Taberd’s predecessor, Mgr. Jean Labartette, had confided to him shortly before his death in 1823 about a situation in an unnamed area where priests, at least in Labartette’s eyes, were “worthy of damnation for the scandals” in which they were involved. “Nearly all of them,” Labartette had claimed, “are engaged in filth ( fécaillerie), having nothing better to do than take a woman.”33 Such a state of affairs was not only potentially damaging to the mission’s reputation and standing in France and Rome, it had the potential to damage irreparably relations within the vicariate between missionaries and local followers. This is how Taberd bemoaned the situation to the MEP directors in France: “Europeans are obliged to take the reins [of the mission], but on the other hand when one needs to do his duty, we’re made to ap-

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pear as those who oppress them. We have at the moment three at the Collège [Lái Thiêu] who do nothing and two or three others who merit suspension.”34 He added this was without mentioning Father Pierre Thật, the only local priest to achieve prominence—or rather infamy—in the mission in the 1820s for having sold out his confreres by deserting the church and renouncing the faith to win favor at Huế. Thật’s apostasy was no simple affair. Some time before Labartette’s death a wealthy old Catholic by the name of Ông Thuận had bequeathed the mission some fields in Quỳ Nhơn, in modern Bình Định. When Thật apostatized, he denounced the illegal holdings to local authorities, who swiftly confiscated them.35 After entering royal service he was given a military rank as a company commander (ông đội), but his rise to glory was short lived. According to Taberd, he quickly fell from favor for an unknown misdemeanor, was stripped of his rank and sentenced to eighty blows of the rod. Thật apparently managed to escape this final punishment and instead was sent on a mission to Singapore for royal business. On the voyage disaster struck, however, and the defrocked Thật apparently perished at sea.36 Pierre Thật was quite obviously mercenary and an exceptional case. Far from proving that the local clergy were all unscrupulous, treacherous, lazy, and lecherous, Taberd’s criticisms suggest more banal problems dogged the local priesthood. In 1825, the vicariate had only eight active local priests—many of whom would have been elderly—an almost ineffectual number given the vast area the priesthood was supposed to cover regularly.37 For the preceding two decades, limited resources had all but crippled the mission, preventing it from supporting a small priesthood or from training a large number of students from whom to select the best candidates. For all the shortcomings of the local clergy, however, it was the mission’s inability to ensure adequate training that led to the shortfall in numbers. Moreover, Taberd’s comments from the mid-1820s are mostly indicative of his generation’s attitudes; this new wave of missionaries found fault and a lack of fervor wherever they looked in the mission. Ironically, at no other time in the Cochinchina mission’s history had the political conditions been freer, yet the mission itself had rarely been more poorly represented and its influence so feeble. Starved of resources and administered by hypercritical supervisors, the vicariate had difficulty attracting, let alone supporting, quality seminarians. The main reason for this shortfall was directly related to the wider problem stemming from the MEP’s own fortunes back in France over the preceding three decades. While MEP missionaries in Gia Định enjoyed an unprecedented prominence from the 1790s, the dramatic events in France in the same



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decade nearly destroyed the Society of the MEP. An attack by Revolutionaries on the home seminary in Paris forced its members to flee to London and Rome, where they partially resumed their mandate. The upheaval not only brought a sharp drop in the flow of financial support for overseas missions, it also resulted in a precipitous decline in the training of new missionaries. Well into the Napoleonic era only a handful of new missionaries were sent to Asia to replace the elderly, ill, or deceased priests who had served since the late 1780s. In fact, of the ten missionaries whom Mgr. Pigneaux had brought back with him from France, only one had survived the 1790s. The fall of Napoleon in 1815 came therefore at a momentous time for the MEP in Cochinchina. From this point, the arrival of over a dozen French missionaries in the 1820s, many of whom had only been ordained months before their departure, represented the largest single wave of arrivals in decades. This group initiated some of the most profound changes within the mission structure and administration since its inception. All born after 1790, and thus with some personal experience of the social and political upheaval which followed in the years after the Revolution and in its wake in the Napoleonic reign, they brought to bear new attitudes on and approaches to mission work.38 Yet most had little ecclesiastic experience let alone an understanding of the hardships that awaited them as missionaries in Vietnam. Joseph Marchand (1803–35), for example, was twenty-five years old when he departed France less than three weeks after his ordination in April 1829.39 The arrival of fresh blood reinvigorated the mission, as seen with the increased attention from the 1820s to imposing and ensuring doctrinal conformity in congregations. This was achieved in the first instance through missionaries making a more rigorous distinction between fervent and lapsed Catholics. But the greatest effect may have occurred through what appears to have been a relatively novel strategy: publicly staged examinations in the catechism. Fr. François Régéreau provides a fascinating account of this practice in early 1828, in regard to local children. The exam is undertaken with the utmost display in order to encourage competition among the children. . . . With the administration of the chrétienté nearly at an end we set aside a day to examine the children on the catechism. All the catechists join in and the fathers and mothers spare nothing to help with the ceremony. In the middle of the Church a small altar is raised where two catechists call for two boys or two girls to each take a card. On this card is written this or that part of the catechism; consequently the children must know all of the

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catechism. . . . Then the two children greet and then one quizzes while the other responds. For those who make no mistake, I give rosary beads and a medal, or a catechism or an image from France; for those who make one mistake, I give them rosary beads or two medals; those who make two mistakes, one medal only. . . . Those who responded [the best] receive the prize.

This colorful ceremony, which was normally followed by a procession of the participants and usually a small feast, alerts us to a number of valuable details of local church life.40 The method of the exam strongly suggests a degree of literacy within the local population. Whether the catechism texts were composed in chữ nôm or romanized script, quốc ngữ, is unclear, but with young girls participating in the game and reportedly able to read the questions and answers, quốc ngữ seems more likely. Apart from revealing the tightly organized world of local church life, Régéreau’s anecdote highlights the fact that adherence to the religion was an active process, which the MEP sought tirelessly to strengthen. It not only required constant religious observance but also participation in church and community life. Once neophytes were baptized, the mission constantly urged them to reaffirm their faith through attending Mass and attending to the confession, or through participating in such doctrinal activities as described by Régéreau. Such endeavors went a long way to ensure doctrinal rigor among congregations and played an important role in shaping community attitudes. Over the long term, Régéreau’s generation completely changed the mission’s internal culture and possibly did more for internal church strength in Vietnam than did any other generation. The early 1820s’ revival also had a crucial role in helping the MEP assume full control over the vicariate administration with the local church. The death in 1823 of Mgr. Jean Labartette, the apostolic vicar, not only saw the passing of his generation of missionaries—Labartette had been in the region since 1774—it occasioned a dispute over his replacement that finally brought the by then century-old rivalry between the MEP and regular orders to a precipitous conclusion.41 The senior cleric in the vicariate, and perhaps the obvious choice to succeed him, was the Franciscan Fr. Joseph, but he had not been appointed the vicariate coadjutor, or auxiliary bishop. His elevation was openly and fiercely rejected by Fr. Taberd—a relatively recent arrival to the vicariate—and other MEP missionaries who protested to Rome of the Franciscan’s neglect of his pastoral duties; indeed they circulated rumors that Joseph had fathered a child with a local nun.42 Months passed as the exchange of letters and petitions traveled between Lái Thiêu, Paris, and Rome, but in 1827 the MEP’s re-



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quest for sole authority over the vicariate was finally granted. Taberd, the senior MEP member, was accordingly named its new apostolic vicar, the titular Bishop of Isauropolis, and Fr. Joseph was forced to leave the vicariate under a cloud of disgrace.43 For the first time in the history of the vicariate a single mission organization assumed full responsibility over the local church. Rome’s endorsement delivered the MEP primacy and it once and for all resolved a long-running impasse on the administration of pastoral duties. From the late 1820s the MEP was able to apply a uniform doctrinal orthodoxy and discipline over all Catholic congregations and exercise greater control over the local clergy. Although this development only affected a small portion of the general population, it gave new weight to the MEP’s role in society and, in turn, its agency in events that unfolded during the 1830s. Owing to the arrival of missionaries, and the attainment of sole responsibility over the ecclesiastic hierarchy, by the end of the 1820s the mission under the MEP had experienced a complete reversal in its fortunes. In 1833, the vicariate supported some seventeen local priests, along with eight missionaries, some fifteen “theologians” on stipends, all preparing for ordination, and, in addition, thirteen, presumably teenage, students studying Latin.44 But rather than viewing this result solely as a consequence of the arrival of more missionaries and greater uniformity in the mission hierarchy, we need to ask what features and aspirations motivated young men to join the priesthood. The absence of personal testimonies makes such a question difficult to answer, but we might begin by suggesting that association with the mission opened a new world of advancement and self-fulfillment. The education the mission offered did not rival local, officially sanctioned studies in administrative Chinese, or the normal channels of personal advance in the mandarinate. Yet it undoubtedly offered similar marks of distinction, such as status and prestige, even if only within the Catholic community. At the same time, the mission offered literacy and direct access to specialist ritual knowledge, a significant factor considering how valued religious ritual was and how few men in this period were literate or had access to Confucian learning, especially in the far south. While the mission offered unique advantages, the mission itself could not have operated without the support of its seminarians and students. Duties such as the translation of doctrinal texts or papal letters into vernacular Vietnamese, and, closer to home, Nguyễn court documents, were essential to the smooth functioning of the church. French missionaries depended on literate Christians for numerous other tasks, from copying letters for dissemination throughout

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the vicariate, to the risky job of conveying such correspondence within the kingdom and to mission centers abroad in Macao, Penang, and Singapore. Communication played a crucial role in the maintenance of the church’s networks. The increased attention to doctrinal rigor, the rise in numbers of local clergy, and missionaries’ increased pastoral presence throughout the vicariate highlight the MEP imperative to maintain and enliven the fervor of local Catholics. Such matters also draw attention to just how diverse the local church population was. Contrary to the widely held clichés in modern scholarship, Vietnamese Catholics were not always on the margins of society, poor peasants, vagrants, or “rice-bowl Christians” who looked to the mission for the alleviation of hardship. Without delving into this issue in detail here, obviously personal convictions, not poverty, played the most important role in individual Catholic identity. What the mission recognized as acceptable Catholic behavior, rigid adherence to doctrine, exemplary conduct, and submission to priestly authority, did not always accord with local attitudes. For example, after arriving in Gia Định in mid-1830 Marchand complained bitterly that on the voyage from Macao on a Chinese junk he had been placed in a cabin with the ship’s “devil,” that is an altar to a guardian spirit, a privilege organized especially by the captain in honor of his special passenger. Yet the captain was, as Marchand noted, “a baptized pagan” and clearly saw no conflict in his maintaining a shrine and associating with Christians.45 This conflict most definitely contravened Catholic doctrine. Yet many locals, perhaps like this ship’s captain, identified themselves as good Christians and held strong convictions about their faith even if they could not always, or did not in some important respect, adhere to church teachings. Chief among this group were Catholics in the Nguyễn bureaucracy and the army. As several examples in later chapters will demonstrate, high-status community figures willingly placed their lives and fortunes at risk for the sake of their beliefs. Some of these might have been “good” Catholics according to church teaching. Others, such as salaried mandarins, had to find a compromise between their religious obligations and their official duties.

The Minh Mang Reign: Revolution in the Nguyen State The first two decades of Nguyễn rule under Gia Long were devoted to reconstruction after the decades of civil war against the Tây Sơn rebels. The great achievement of unifying the north and south stands as ample testimony to



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Gia Long’s prowess as a leader. No less significant, however, was his moderation as a king in holding the fractious kingdom together in relative harmony until his death in 1819, and his success in laying the foundations of central rule from Huế. The Gia Long reign was nevertheless one of political respite and did not see any major reforms in governance. In contrast, the Minh Mạng reign defined a new era of change. Only twenty-nine when he ascended the throne, Minh Mạng possessed an astute political mind and an impressive will, qualities that not only enabled him to consolidate his father’s legacy but also ensure Vietnam’s rise—however briefly—as one of the main imperial powers on mainland Southeast Asia in the first half of the century. Driven by a fierce pragmatism, Minh Mạng focused on three agendas from the commencement of his reign: bureaucratic reform and centralization, cultural homogenization, and territorial expansion. He pursued each through a variety of measures that set in motion processes of integration that lasted well beyond the end of his reign in January 1841. Despite Gia Long’s achievements, Minh Mạng inherited a kingdom deeply divided by historical antagonisms between the two main regions, Cochinchina and Tonkin, which over the preceding centuries had also developed two distinct cultural heritages. But although Minh Mạng controlled the two regions from Huế, the process of centralization nevertheless hinged on the destruction of the political networks that had become entrenched in each region. Nowhere else did the challenge of these networks pose a more serious problem than in the land of the dynasty’s apotheosis in the 1790s, Gia Định. Indeed, at the advent of the dynasty in 1802 Huế treated Gia Định very differently from other regions in terms of its integration in the wider political context in the kingdom. Although divided into five prefectures since the 1780s—Biên Hòa, Gia Định, Vĩnh Thành, Định Tường, and Hà Tiên—this region was not organized into a single military administrative unit, Gia Định Thành,46 or Gia Định Citadel, until 1808, thus allowing the established networks of power to continue to calcify. Complementing this favoritism, Huế under Gia Long also selected its most senior office-holders from the Gia Định elite. Owing to a lack of classically trained scholars loyal to the Nguyễn and the need to reward officers and supporters who had fought against the Tây Sơn rebels, most senior appointees in this early period were military men with close ties to Gia Long from the 1780s and 1790s in the far south. An example was Lê Văn Duyệt, the longest serving and most controversial viceroy of Gia Định, who governed the region briefly in 1812 and then for over a decade from the early 1820s.47 Lê Văn Duyệt’s position in Gia Định ensured Nguyễn control over the

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region, but the expediency of this appointment enabled parochial interests set in place in the 1780s and 1790s to continue well into the new dynasty. Even after Gia Long’s death in 1819 Gia Định remained firmly in the grip of regional interests, largely unchecked by Huế, and potentially at risk of seceding.48 For Minh Mạng, Huế’s tenuous control over the Gia Định elite obviously threatened the consolidation of Nguyễn rule. Just as reform in the north had the potential to aggravate fresh wounds among residual Lê supporters still resentful of the Nguyễn ascendancy, in the south political change had the potential to isolate friends and turn allies into enemies. In order to avoid the perils of directly confronting southern interests, Minh Mạng shrewdly initiated institutional reforms from the center. The first and perhaps most farsighted of these came in 1821 with the reinstitution of the civil examination system on a regular triennial cycle, and a year later the reestablishment of a metropolitan round to award the prized doctoral degree (tiến sĩ) to the kingdom’s most outstanding scholars. The reinstitution was probably intended to have an immediate effect in two areas. Foremost, it sent a strong message to literati from the north, a group that had been excluded from positions of authority and personal advancement for much of the Gia Long reign, that the new government was inclusive and sought to enfranchise old rivals from all regions of the kingdom. Furthermore, it provided new impetus for the spread of a central education system.49 Together, these two factors laid the foundations for the rise within a generation of a substantial pool of lettered gentry whose talents were to become integral to the success of the most ambitious reforms in the bureaucracy. The renewed emphasis on Confucian learning encapsulated Minh Mạng’s reform agenda. For much of the 1820s, Minh Mạng had sought to erode the entrenched order that favored personal appointments—mostly men with military credentials from the Gia Định elite—by selecting where possible lettered men with civil qualifications.50 In this sense the emphasis on scholarly ability foreshadowed another significant milestone of his reign: the transformation of the kingdom’s structure of indirectly governed military prefectures and thành or “citadels”—which effectively represented viceroyalties—into directly governed provinces. Having patiently presided over modest changes to internal order within the bureaucracy in Huế during the 1820s, Minh Mạng waited until a decade into his reign to launch the provincial reforms. The northern half of the kingdom was selected first for this experiment, and in late 1831 Minh Mạng issued a lengthy decree that dismantled all the military departments (doanh) and military prefectures (trấn) from Quảng Bình north and replaced them with



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provinces (tỉnh) over which directly appointed governors-general (tổng đốc), one to every two provinces, and governors (tuấn phủ), to every other province, ruled.51 Under the provincial structure, a descending hierarchy of smaller territorial jurisdictions was organized: these included the prefecture (phủ), the district (huyện), the canton (tổng), and the village (xã).52 Minh Mạng possibly chose the north first to warn Gia Ðịnh that such changes were imminent in the south. But if he was concerned that he would have to delay the task to wait for the weakening of southern interests, then he must have been pleased a year later with the death of Gia Định’s longest serving viceroy, Lê Văn Duyệt. Because of Duyệt’s prominence in the region, his death created the much-needed vacuum to allow the momentous changes about to take place.53 For most of the 1820s Lê Văn Duyệt had governed Gia Ðịnh in an ambiguous autonomy, in terms of his authority to arrange bureaucratic appointments, organize military forces, and oversee regional economic activity and external relations with Cambodia and Siam. Although a loyal servant of the Nguyễn dynasty, and directly responsible to the throne, Lê Văn Duyệt nonetheless had gathered a substantial amount of power to his own office. As a consequence, the viceroy not only maintained a highly parochial, internally focused polity, he also stymied all moves by Minh Mạng to introduce an element of central representation within the Gia Ðịnh ruling elite.54 From the perspective of Minh Mạng, Duyệt’s death in mid-1832 could not have occurred at a better time, and in October Minh Mạng issued the expected decree to reorganize all prefectures from Quảng Nam south into provinces: from the southern military prefectures were formed the six provinces of Gia Định, Biên Hòa, Định Tường, Vĩnh Long, An Giang, and Hà Tiên.55 The provincial reorganization was only one aspect of the transformations of the Minh Mạng reign that gave rise to what was nothing less than a subtle revolution in the political and social world of the dynasty. Indeed, bureaucratic reform was complemented with a series of other strategic transformations. Just as bureaucratic order provided the foundation for the administration of the kingdom, attention to key sites of ritual power projected the mandate and legitimacy of the dynasty. Such reforms were intended to touch all facets of political life ranging from the region’s spiritual geography to the state historiography as well as the social behavior of subjects at the lowest levels of society. This process reached its peak in the early 1830s and, corresponding with the bureaucratic reforms, constitutes a key feature of Nguyễn rule, the attempt to consolidate dynastic primacy through vigorous cultural homogenization.

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Minh Mạng was certainly not the first or only king to pay attention to the ordering of ritual and religious sites throughout the kingdom. Beginning with Gia Long in 1802, successive Nguyễn kings commissioned temple restorations and constructions to propitiate ancestral spirits and warriors who had died in the anti–Tây Sơn campaigns and invigorate the kingdom’s spiritual life. This process, which took place over several decades, ultimately saw the establishment through the Gia Long and Minh Mạng reigns of a hierarchy of temples and sites of spiritual power, organized by rank and location: long-deceased ancestors had precedence over more recently identified spirits, and sites of worship were organized according to their location, with their proximity to Huế, or the Nguyễn home province of Thanh Hóa, as the defining reference point. Each supernatural force had a prescribed place, rank, and title defined by court historians and the Board of Rites (Lễ bộ). The spiritual hierarchy, a Nguyễn pantheon, represented a symbolic order corresponding with the bureaucratic topography of the kingdom. Shrines in the capital dedicated to the worship of the state and dynastic protector had a parallel representation at the provincial level through shrines to the assembled spirits (hội đồng miếu).56 Below this, usually at the prefecture or district level, altars to the tutelary spirits of walls and moats (thành hoàng miếu) symbolized a spiritual authority parallel to that represented by officials in the temporal bureaucracy. These altars included those devoted to other spirits representing productive forces in the kingdom, including the spirits of the soil and harvest (xã tắc miếu) and the spirits of agriculture (thần nông).57 Such meticulous ordering of spirit forces, from the familial and local, right through to abstract reproductive forces, was rooted in Nguyễn pragmatism. The sanctioned order aimed to concentrate spirit forces for the benefit of the dynasty, so although hierarchical it was also eclectic. The spirits of deceased Nguyễn family ancestors and supporters dominated the hierarchy, but the system also included famous Confucian scholars and Buddhist deities, village tutelary spirits, indigenous Cham spirits, and elemental forces. Apart from propitiating and honoring an array of spirits, temple works and the ordering of spirit forces had a pragmatic function embodied in the dual objective of creating harmony between the temporal and supernatural, and of focusing these forces of the realm on a single center of authority.58 Meticulous ordering enhanced the Nguyễn presence throughout the region and was an ongoing reminder of the dynasty’s mandate and vitality. No site of worship, religious community, or congregation was exempt from the court’s scrutiny. Minh Mạng in particular demanded of his mandarins the same



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assiduous attention to ritual affairs in their jurisdictions as was demanded in other civil and administrative matters. For instance, reporting in late August of 1838 from his post as the provincial governor of Gia Ðịnh, Hoàng Quýnh alerted the throne to the need to change the statue symbolizing the province’s tutelary spirit to a votary tablet (bài vị). As Minh Mạng memorialized the matter: The worship [of this] statue is derived from Buddhist [practices]; it is not the practice of earlier times. From earlier times to now, shrines from the capital to the outlying provinces all housed spirit tablets. Why then does the tutelary spirit shrine [of Gia Ðịnh] alone have a wooden statue? It is because the province’s previous governor acted wantonly and of his own free will; for a long time [his subordinates] went along with him, and no one spoke against this, even though the statue is not appropriate. Not only is it covered in gold and its royal robes are those of a king, but it is offered the adornments of a tutelary spirit. This is beyond deceit, and completely contrary to [the appropriate] rites! Make preparations to take this statue and inter it, then change to a votary tablet to conform with official observance.59

It is possible that Minh Mạng had the long-time viceroy of Gia Ðịnh, Lê Văn Duyệt, who was disgraced posthumously in 1832, in mind in his censure of the previous “head mandarin.” But he could equally have had in mind the Gia Ðịnh elite, who flouted Huế’s orders to continue worshipping this idol after Minh Mạng’s court had promulgated new protocols. What this memorial highlights is the intolerance for the presence of heterodox symbols within the official ritual cosmology. The concept of “rites” (lễ) had an absolute value, the application of which defined and underpinned Nguyễn legitimacy and its mandate to rule; naturally the court took for granted that its interpretation of rites derived from the “orthodox way” (chính đạo), as prescribed by Confucian learning. Yet, while the Nguyễn conceived its mandate over the spiritual and temporal world in absolute terms—as we see in the case of the wooden Buddhist statue—cracks sometimes appeared in the official edifice, revealing glaring inconsistencies between official and unofficial practices outside the capital. If the bureaucratic and ritual organization were the building blocks and material symbols of the Nguyễn empire, official literature and histories were the mortar that held the edifice together. The integration of Cochinchina and Tonkin from 1802 required careful attention to the bitterness of the recent past, not to mention a degree of cultural eclecticism. Despite insulting northern sensitivities to the previous decades of upheaval and the deposing of the Lê dynasty in 1788, Huế treated the Gia Long investiture as a restoration (trung hưng). Rather

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than regarding 1802 as the inauguration of a new dynasty, the Nguyễn foundation myth constructed a narrative of the preceding two centuries that emphasized dynastic legitimacy from the 1558 arrival of the “dynastic founder,” Nguyễn Hoàng (1525–1613), in the south, and dynastic continuity from the pre–Tây Sơn rebellion era (1774–99) to the Gia Long era. This vision is summed up in Nola Cooke’s translation of Gia Long’s 1806 acceptance of his imperial title. The sainted kings of earlier generations put all their efforts into creating a fortune and labored strenuously to lay its foundations. For over two hundred years these saints and sages succeeded one another, their merits and virtue clearly shown. [But] suddenly Heaven’s mysterious designs [became as] black as night, and the country was fated to decline. I was still young when I encountered this sorrow and [had to] flee to different places. Then in Gia Ðịnh I mounted and defended the royal throne [and] worried over the heritage. . . . Relying on the great spirit authority of the royal ancestral temples of the kingdom and the efforts and strength of leading generals, [we] were able to kill the enemy, take back the inheritance [and] extend its borders, [all] helping me to achieve great merit.60

The restoration narrative, as shown by Cooke, explained the Tây Sơn rebellion as an episode of supernatural tribulation. By enduring it, Nguyễn Ánh—Gia Long—proved himself a worthy successor to the nine generations of “spirituallypotent royal Nguyễn ancestors,”61 whose support had enabled him to defeat the usurpers, the Tây Sơn. In short, his victory was a proclamation of Nguyễn legitimacy and an affirmation of the dynasty’s divine mandate. If the Gia Long reign can be characterized by the leitmotif of restoration, the underlying concern of the Minh Mạng reign was the cultural integration of the diverse and dissonant communities throughout the kingdom. To counter the threat of Lê hostility and to consolidate its cultural hegemony, this reign not only launched an ambitious bureaucratic reform, but also endeavored to order and homogenize cultural life down to the lowest levels of society. Apart from his rigorous approach to literary culture and ritual organization, Minh Mạng sought to reshape grassroots society through a subtle policy of “education and cultivation” (giáo hóa).62 Combining the need to encourage widespread participation of men from all regions in the growing bureaucracy, the policy not only promoted Confucian education, what it termed chính học, or “orthodox studies,” but also sought to have village-level society conform to Huê’s vision of culturally orthodox social organization and moral behavior.63 Underlying Minh Mạng’s promotion of education and cultivation was the



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aim to encourage and elicit greater loyalty to the dynasty at the lowest level of society. This entailed not only an awareness of the spiritual mandate of the Nguyễn but also of Huế as a universal authority. From the early years of the Gia Long reign, Huế initiated bureaucratic and cultural reforms to strengthen its control over peripheral regions such as Gia Định. Such endeavors represented far more than an attempt to consolidate the kingdom’s political organization—they signified a shift in Nguyễn conceptions of governance from one characterized by its decades of rule in Cochinchina and then at the end of the eighteenth century in the frontier region of Gia Định, to an imperial vision. At no other time in the preceding two centuries had a Vietnamese ruler, from either Tonkin or Cochinchina, had the resources or ability to wage such an aggressive and effective war over cultural production and social organization. Although in theory the provincial reorganization enabled Huế to rule uniformly from capital to village, and cultural assimilation helped it channel its influence across different regions, the reality at the grassroots was very different. The point of contact between Nguyễn officialdom and the local world of village life was constantly defined by negotiation and compromise and sometimes conflict. In short, no matter how rigorously Huế sought to extend its reach below canton level into the village, local interests and needs more often than not prevailed. More broadly, the Nguyễn reforms heralded a revolution in Vietnamese political life. It was cumulative in the sense that it occurred over two decades, with one particularly intense period between 1830 to 1833. And it did not represent a complete break with the past, but an ambiguous reshaping of contemporary structures: the Nguyễn created new governing institutions from older existing ones and legitimized them by invoking their association with classical Chinese models or by linking them to the Nguyễn foundation myth of dynastic restoration. Moreover, it was a revolution because it brought about profound changes in the way communities in different parts of the kingdom viewed and came to understand their position and relationship to Huế, a relatively new center of dynastic power. It also gave rise to completely new ways for peripheral communities to relate to other regions in the kingdom and the dynastic capital.

two

The Rise of Nguyễn Anti-Catholicism

After decades of tolerance under Gia Long, a small incident set in motion changes that unraveled the long-observed covenant between the Nguyễn and the church. In late 1830, the predominantly Christian village of Dương Sơn, located a few miles to the north of Huế citadel, became embroiled in a land dispute with its neighbor, Cổ Lão.1 Father François Jaccard, who had been based in Huế under court orders as an official translator since 1827, reported that for reasons clouded by tensions, some villagers from Cổ Lão had staged a “laying-down protest” (nằm vị): they blocked two sides of the disputed fields with their bodies. Testifying to the incident’s significance, these events were recorded in detail in the Vermilion Records, Minh Mạng’s personal archive of annotated chronicles on day-to-day events around the kingdom. In our jurisdiction there is Cổ Lão village in Đông Lâm canton in Quảng Điền district. Three of its retired village chiefs, Hoàng Tăng Đạo, Phạm Hữu Đoan, and Phan Văn Chất, have laid the accusation that the boundary of their village’s public lands squeezes the boundary of the fields of Dương Sơn village. On the fourteenth day of the seventh month of this year [August 1830] the vil42



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lage chief of Dương Sơn village, Trần Văn Tài, who has Christian habits and in sum does not respect the law, on his own authority led the village’s soldiers and people to that spot, where they built up with earth a new path which violates [Cổ Lão] village’s old graves. Moreover they took the stone tablet markers [of the fields and] moved them to another place. . . . [A retired village chief of Cổ Lão] led his village men en masse to a brawl [wherein] his village soldiers and people were wounded. . . . They protested to the district, which decided that their village was the one that should be curbed. They renewed their outcry [at this] and it reached the prefecture.2

Although Dương Sơn was exonerated at the district level, this matter made its way in the following months upward through the prefectural offices to the kingdom’s chief judicial arbiter in the Board of Punishments (Hình bộ). In June 1832, after the case had been reviewed, the board ruled against Dương Sơn and sentenced the village’s Catholics to some punishments. The official chronicle of the event begins by claiming that Dương Sơn village’s long adherence to the “religion of Jesus,” đạo Gia-Tô, and in particular its “mesmerizing” effect (mê hoặc) on followers, was the source of the disturbance. The entry also cited François Jaccard—Phan Văn Kinh—as a chief protagonist, claiming ambiguously that his active role in the community had played a part in generating the dispute.3 According to the case documents obtained by the mission’s local go-betweens, the Board of Punishments tribunal led by Phan Bá Đạt found Dương Sơn guilty of attacking Cổ Lão without pretext and of illegally seizing land. Consequently, as a preliminary measure the village church was demolished and some seventy-three villagers were arrested and placed in stocks and chains.4 Leniency was shown to the guilty parties, who were exhorted to renounce the religion by walking over a wooden cross, but all apparently refused and consequently harsh sentences followed. The presiding official sentenced the village’s two elders, Phạm Văn Khoa and Trần Văn Tài, the village head (lý trưởng), to death. While Tài’s sentence was commuted to lengthy exile in Trần Ninh, to the west of Nghệ An, in presentday Laos, Khoa enjoyed no such mercy and was executed by strangulation.5 In turn, the men of the village were conscripted into the royal army and sent to frontier divisions and the women were dispersed, probably as servants, to help populate frontier military settlements (đồn điền). Trần Văn Sơn, an army officer from the village, and thirteen soldiers were sentenced to a month wearing cangues and one hundred strokes of the rod, and sent as common soldiers to the provinces of Quảng Ngãi and Thanh Hóa.6

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It is difficult not to see the crackdown on Dương Sơn in 1832 as a pretext for the widening of official anti-Catholic hostility. Although facing a seemingly minor dispute, the court responded in a way that draws attention to some of the crucial elements underpinning the revolution in the kingdom’s political culture at this juncture. The attack not only coincided with the changes in regional rule and the provincial reforms, it also preceded the court’s moves to enforce changes in religious observance throughout the kingdom. Indeed, the attack epitomized Huế’s key political objective in the early 1830s: the extension of central authority on social matters down to the village level. But the timing and the range of motives behind the heavy-handed punishment of Dương Sơn are not clear at first glance. The attack did not immediately foreshadow the outbreak of more widespread hostility toward Catholicism. As we will see, it took the coincidence of several other events for anti-Catholic sentiment to escalate.

Early Tensions The rise of Nguyễn anti-Catholicism in the 1820s was certainly not the first instance in which official antagonism toward the religion and the mission coincided with crucial political changes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Nguyễn were pragmatic about Catholicism. From the early decades of political autonomy from the north—after 1627—the Nguyễn allowed missionaries into the country because they provided a crucial link with European trade networks in Southeast Asia for the acquisition, for example, of cannons from Macao. And as Li Tana explains, the Nguyễn had no qualms employing missionaries—only Jesuits—at court in official roles as astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians.7 However, open sponsorship of specialized mission expertise did not ensure the protection of mission interests and local congregations outside court. In fact, throughout the early centuries of the mission in Cochinchina, sanctioned antiCatholic violence was more closely associated with contemporaneous political circumstances than in the north. The first execution of a Vietnamese Catholic occurred under the rule of Chúa Thượng in 1644. During the long reign of his successor, Chúa Hiền (1648–87), sixty-eight Catholics were executed.8 Open tolerance returned briefly under the reign of Chúa Nghĩa (1687–91), and the religion flourished in some sections of the upper levels of Nguyễn society. The eruption of a feud between Jesuits and MEP missionaries over which organization had ecclesiastic authority in the vicariate



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stretched royal patience to the breaking point. Internecine rivalry between these two mission societies for popular support in local congregations spilled out into the public and in a couple of incidents degenerated into carnivalesque mischief that offended the ruling family; one instance ended with Catholics publicly ridiculing the state’s Buddhist symbols. Infuriated by the madness, Chúa Nghĩa issued an edict banning the religion in 1690. As Cooke has illustrated, the proscription, which did not claim any victims, was issued on the banal grounds of ending the disturbance to public order caused by the feuding.9 Shortly after Chúa Nghĩa’s death in 1691, however, the specter of persecution returned under Minh Vương (1691–1725), a fervent Buddhist and religious reformist. His reign saw the worst anti-Catholic violence in Cochinchina in the mission’s history. A persecution in 1698, which lasted until 1704, was very much ideologically motivated by what Minh Vương perceived as the potential marginalization of state Buddhism through the continued spread of Christianity. All the churches in the Huế area and surrounding provinces were destroyed, missionaries were incarcerated, and all Christians were ordered to recant publicly. Four of the thirteen missionaries captured in the ensuing searches died in prison, of poor treatment and starvation. Apart from eighty-five Christians sentenced to execution or imprisonment—most died after being forced to choose between apostasy or starvation in prison—hundreds are believed to have perished elsewhere in the kingdom as a result of hardship and hostility.10 Minh Vương declared a further ban against the religion in the early 1720s, but his court’s measures were hardly as severe as in the 1698–1704 period. The 1698–1704 persecution represented the best example of an ideologically motivated repression under the early Nguyễn, given that it also coincided with Minh Vương’s efforts to revitalize and promote Buddhism as an official religion within the kingdom. In earlier times, as Cooke has argued, the grounds for repression had more to do with the Nguyễn state’s quest for internal security in an era when it still faced potential attack from the Trịnh in the north. A persecution in 1644, for example, arose against the backdrop of major hostilities with the Trịnh in 1642–43. And the 1660s’ persecution began after a seven-year Nguyễn offensive against the north had been rebuffed. By the late 1690s, however, the most crucial element of Minh Vương’s hostility to the religion was the sensitive issue of demonstrating obedience to the throne. Cooke argues that the key element linking this persecution with those of the mid-seventeenth century and later hostilities in the nineteenth century was the intolerance of Christian subjects’ refusal to unreservedly submit to the Nguyễn ruler’s authority. This

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i­ nterpretation explains why Minh Vương persisted in his anti-Christian campaign for so long, as well as provides an important point of comparison for understanding Nguyễn attitudes during the 1830s’ persecution under Minh Mạng.11 The religion was forced to maintain a low profile for the duration of Minh Vương’s reign but revived somewhat in the late 1720s and 1730s. The final proscription of the early Nguyễn regime in Cochinchina occurred under Võ Vương (r. 1738–65) in 1750, after nearly two decades of relative official tolerance. The grounds for Võ Vương’s sudden change of heart are not entirely clear but as the MEP historian Louvet suggests, the ban coincided with the visit of the French East Indies Company’s representative, Pierre Poivre, whose abrasive behavior and forceful lobbying for greater trade concessions caused some irritation at court. And as Catherine Marin explains, Poivre piqued court anger by kidnapping a personal favorite of Võ Vương’s at the time, a local interpreter named Michel.12 The proscription led to the expulsion of missionaries in Cochinchina and the arrest and punishment of numerous Christians. This attack was, however, far less brutal than earlier hostilities and did not claim any lives. The ban stayed in place for the following two decades during which the Nguyễn court, mired in an economic downward spiral and slowly losing its grip over its elongated territory, fell victim to rebellion in Bình Định at the beginning of the 1770s. Although early Nguyễn attitudes toward Catholicism lacked the deepseated Confucian skepticism found in the Lê-Trịnh north, southern hostility had an ideological grounding of its own. Nguyễn rulers—unlike the more isolationist Trịnh—generally had a far stronger appreciation of the benefits of employing foreign missionaries, but this did not mean that Catholic doctrine escaped intense scrutiny in elite circles. Nguyễn courts over successive generations accommodated opposing factions of officials with more liberal views toward religious practice and men with sharply orthodox values, whether inclined toward Buddhist or Confucian doctrine. Regardless of the perceived threat Christianity posed to religious observance, the key issue of contention was the power the religion had in influencing a subject’s obedience and loyalty to the throne. Nguyễn rule was generally pragmatic, and this is why the Nguyễn could accommodate the religion for their own purposes. But in the solipsistic worldview that characterized Nguyễn kingship, particularly with regard to an individual subject’s obligations, there was simply no place for a rival authority over spiritual affairs within the state. In a setting where religious and ritual power was thought to influence the wider political order, the



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issue of how religiosity altered one’s relationship to the state was bound to resurface time and again as a point of contention. The rise of official hostility in the early nineteenth century emerged against this backdrop of ever-changing sensitivities—sensitivities that ranged from pragmatic tolerance to suspicion tinged with xenophobia. Earlier, during the tumultuous decades of the Tây Sơn rebellion in the 1770s and 1780s, a MEP missionary, Mgr. Pierre Pigneaux, led a complete reversal of the church’s fortunes in the south by closely supporting the remnant Nguyễn elite in its resistance to the rebellion. While Pigneaux’s overall contribution to the Nguyễn victory over the Tây Sơn has been disputed, his closeness to Nguyễn Ánh—Gia Long—reaped enormous benefits and ensured the ongoing protection and official tolerance of the religion through the early decades of the nineteenth century. But beneath the surface, distrust grew of Catholic practices and the religion’s potential in the long term to dim the brilliance of the ruler’s authority. As in earlier generations, anti-Catholic hostility fueled by the elite always found an official voice regardless of the monarch’s attempts to impose tolerance. From the earliest days of the Gia Long reign, missionaries in Huế reported regularly, although perhaps with some exaggeration if not paranoia, on the growing antipathy among officials toward the mission. In 1803, only one year into the Gia Long reign and only three years after an extravagant funeral for Pigneaux, Mgr. Labartette highlighted what must have been going through most missionaries’ minds: that the new court only continued to tolerate the religion for purely political reasons. In comments that suggest how superficial religious tolerance was in this climate, he claimed: There is no love at all for our Holy Religion, he [king Gia Long] acts in this way, but for political reasons rather than out of gratitude. . . . We asked of him a public edict in favor of our Holy Religion and he promised such an edict, which didn’t come at all. The Devil does all he can to prevent the King, who promised it to us lest he offend us, giving us nothing; but he also fears offending his mandarins to whom he is generous.13

Soon thereafter, in April 1805, Grillet—an MEP missionary in Champa and Khánh Hòa—reported with incredulity that permission had been refused to build new churches.14 And a year later Labartette noted to his superiors in Paris that at the drafting of the new legal code for the kingdom, there had been deliberation over whether the religion should be proscribed.

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The King ordered a new Code of Laws for the Kingdom and the mandarins worked on it for a long time and with all their strength; after they finished, they presented it to the King who made corrections on all that did not please him. After which the Mandarins said to the King that the code contains everything, but lacks only one Article . . . on the Christian religion, and that it is important to examine whether or not it must be abolished or permitted. . . . Our enemies believed that they had found the perfect chance to make use of all their machinations. Some pointed out to the King that we are dangerous people in the Kingdom, and that it is necessary to expel us; and others said that it was scandalous to allow a foreign religion in the Kingdom.

Out of careful consideration of the dynasty’s position and its indebtedness to the mission and converts who had supported him, “the King listened to all at times with sangfroid, and at others with approval and appreciation for what they were telling him.” Anti-Catholic officials sought to introduce the policy by stealth: noting how the Law Code itself would never be publicized, they suggested inserting the article against the religion all the same.15 Such reports continued throughout the Gia Long years, from time to time raising mission anxieties to new levels. Yet expressions of hostility probably signified more the simmering grudges of individual and factional attitudes within court circles—perhaps of those officials who specifically remembered Prince Cảnh’s refusal to bow before the Nguyễn ancestral altar in the early 1790s—than widespread or systematic antipathy. The MEP still enjoyed the protection of the king and prominent figures such as Viceroy Lê Văn Duyệt.

Rebellion In Gia Định, this situation changed dramatically in the early 1820s. At first, the court did not move openly against the religion, although Minh Mạng threatened to expel all Europeans, missionaries, and French advisors such as Jean Chaigneau, who had been attached to Gia Long’s council since the 1790s.16 In some areas apparently hostility was allowed, and possibly encouraged. In the late 1820s mandarins frequently acted beyond the orders of the court against congregations. Mgr. Taberd, for example, reported in 1826 that officials regularly harassed converts and clergy in Quảng Nam without legal authority.17 In 1826 and 1828, “secret” edicts issued by a group of hostile officials allegedly circulated through some central provinces. In late 1830 another such secret edict, or what



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was most probably illicit correspondence between officials of an anti-Christian faction, caused widespread strife. According to Taberd, it was first passed around Ðính Cát in Quảng Trị, where it led to the destruction of six churches. The attack spread to Quảng Nam and as far south as Bình Thuận.18 In Gia Định Viceroy Lê Văn Duyệt ensured the continued protection of mission interests and was not afraid of voicing his concerns openly in court circles on the mistreatment of the mission. Duyệt, a native of Gia Định and one of Gia Long’s most esteemed generals, had been a notable supporter of Pigneaux during the 1790s and had long treated the mission favorably.19 While anti-Christian hostility grew in some sections of the mandarinate in the 1820s, Duyệt openly interceded in disputes on behalf of the mission. The most prominent example occurred in 1828 after Minh Mạng ordered all foreign clergy in the kingdom to travel to the capital to submit to royal service.20 Of the ten missionaries in Vietnam at the time, only three from Gia Định made the trip, Mgr. Taberd, François Gagelin, and Fr. Odorico. Believing in the transparency of the court’s intentions for these missionaries—they were called to work as translators—Duyệt had insisted that these three depart.21 However, suspicious of court designs, not a single missionary from Tonkin responded to the request. Their suspicions were justified; the conditions of the edict were soon apparent, as the court ranked the three at the lowly level of seventh-grade mandarins (thất phẩm)—in stark contrast to the prominence accorded to Pigneaux and more recently to Chaigneau— and strictly forbade them from leaving the capital to “teach students or spread the religion.”22 What had appeared ostensibly as recruitment for translation duties turned into arrest and detainment. But in a demonstration of his support for the mission, Lê Văn Duyệt traveled personally to Huế in mid-1828 to secure Taberd’s and Gagelin’s release. An undertaking omitted from the dynastic rec­ ords, this gesture echoed growing tensions between Duyệt and Huế over the viceroy’s personal influence and his close ties with the mission.23 In the early 1830s Taberd continued to petition Duyệt directly for intercession in the illicit targeting of Catholics outside Gia Định, notably after authorities in Quy Nhơn had imprisoned eight Catholics in 1831.24 In this case a district magistrate ordered the congregation head to recant by walking over a wooden cross. Refusing to do so, he was sentenced to exile. Yet, because the official knew that no orders had been issued for such action, the sentence was reduced to a number of strokes of the rod and a period of imprisonment.25 At Taberd’s request, Duyệt intervened to secure their release by paying off the official with several silver taels.26 In fact, Duyệt’s repeated intervention on behalf of the mission

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demonstrates the sway he held as a regional power holder. It also suggests the value he placed on maintaining firm ties with the mission, and here we see a dangerous conflict of personal views and interests between Gia Định’s viceroy and Minh Mạng. As a Gia Định–era general, Duyệt understood the value of a broadbased entourage of allies to bolster his personal authority. But above all, Duyệt, a close ally and friend of Nguyễn Ánh, remembered with immense gratitude the mission’s support of the Gia Định regime during its darkest years in the 1780s. However, by 1832 Duyệt—at seventy years of age—was no longer the vigorous general of the Gia Định era and in August he died after a short illness. Since the mission was a major beneficiary of Duyệt’s patronage, its fate was tied to Duyệt’s, and his death heralded the end of the mission’s good fortune. The exaggeration of the relatively minor land dispute in Dương Sơn and the harsh collective punishment of the village in 1832, were symbolic of the political transformations taking place in the kingdom at the time. Huế shifted from attempting to contain the mission presence, a position seriously compromised by Viceroy Duyệt’s open support for missionaries in Gia Định, to actively seeking its destruction. Shortly after Duyệt’s death, Huế moved swiftly to reorganize Gia Định into provinces, bringing an end to the entrenched parochial order there. First and foremost, the court elevated selected officials to executive positions throughout the newly created provinces in Gia Định, known from this point in official sources as the “Six Provinces” (lục tỉnh), in order to neutralize Duyệt’s allies and replace his protégés. Nguyễn Văn Quê, appointed by Minh Mạng to the post of Gia Định military advisor in 1831, was promoted to governor-general of Gia Định and Biên Hòa provinces. And Bạch Xuân Nguyên, until then the Thừa Thiên prefect, was selected as the administrator (bố chính) of Gia Định province.27 Before being sent to Gia Định, Bạch Xuân Nguyên had probably supervised the investigation of Dương Sơn village’s Catholics. Coinciding with this development, in January 1833 the court issued its first kingdom-wide proscription of Catholicism.28 The appointments of Bạch Xuân Nguyên and Nguyễn Văn Quê were explicitly political—to neutralize and dismantle Duyệt’s power base. One of the first tasks assigned to these officials was the preparation of a report of the viceroy’s misdeeds during his last years of service. The order, which uncovered numerous transgressions, resulted in Duyệt being sentenced posthumously to a series of penalties to bring down the greatest disgrace on his memory. In a terrible affront to the viceroy’s legacy, Duyệt’s tomb was bound in chains and, according to Taberd, beaten eighty times with a heavy rod. The accusations against Duyệt’s leadership



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varied and, according to Taberd, were largely exaggerated.29 They went beyond the personal and symbolized an attack on the viceroy’s powerbase and personal relations in Gia Định. Under Duyệt’s rule, many communities enjoyed special privileges and protection from Huế. Prominent among these were the convict groups resettled in Gia Định from the early 1800s, Chinese merchants, and northern immigrants.30 Gia Định’s Catholic community, which by conservative estimates numbered at least 20,000, also benefited enormously from Duyệt’s rule. For these communities, the January 1833 edict brought immediate disaster.31 The edict’s arrival in the south brought all mission activity to a sharp halt. Within weeks, virtually all churches throughout the vicariate—from Quảng Bình south to the Gia Định area—were either dismantled or destroyed. Students at the Lái Thiêu seminary dispersed for fear of arrest, and missionaries sought shelter out of sight of officials and the public gaze. By February–March, the majority of missionaries, including Régéreau, Vialle, Taberd, and Cuenot, had fled west to Cambodia and Siam in anticipation of a bloody repression. In some areas anti-Catholic violence broke out immediately. In Nha Trang and Bình Thuận, for example, officials moved swiftly to arrest lay leaders, including catechists and congregation leaders, threatening them with decapitation if they did not publicly renounce the religion. Most submitted out of fear, but those who refused were beaten and physically forced to recant. In another example, apostates in Bình Thuận were taken to pagodas and made to bow before the altar as final proof of their apostasy.32 This series of events—Duyệt’s death, the provincial reforms, the elevation of Huế men to Gia Định’s chief positions, and the first proscription—stirred enormous resentment among a whole range of communities and gave rise to one of the most devastating rebellions of the period. Motivated by the rise in hostilities, Catholics joined the ranks of a small rebel force led by Duyệt’s chief retainer and adopted son, Lê Văn Khôi. In early July 1833, drawing on the combined forces of Chinese, northern criminals, and allied officials within the Nguyễn bureaucracy, Khôi led an armed party to Gia Định town and with little resistance captured the citadel.33 Most of the surrounding provinces, Biên Hoà, Định Tường, and Vĩnh Long, fell in quick succession, often with the collaboration of local district officials. With only limited time to consolidate his control, Khôi rallied willing local officials to his side. The administration of the region was reorganized and new ministries established. Khôi elevated Catholic leaders to positions of authority and issued an edict allowing churches to reopen. An army was formed among the soldiers garrisoned in

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the citadel, as well as prisoners and remnants of Duyệt’s own personal army, the Left Division (tà quân), which he had led since the 1790s.34 Khôi followed the example of Nguyễn Ánh in the 1780s by attempting to recruit mission support for the rebellion. Shortly after seizing the citadel, he dispatched small deputations, consisting of local congregation heads, across the region in an attempt to gather support from native Catholics and missionaries. One deputation crossed west to Phnom Penh (Nam Vang) and attempted to entice Régéreau, who had fled in mid-1833 with over two hundred Catholic refugees, to return to Gia Định. A second group, headed by Vietnamese priests, departed for Siam to recruit Mgr. Taberd, who had fled in early 1833 at the first sign of danger. This deputation, numbering nineteen, according to Régéreau, ended in disaster in Hà Tiên. Betrayed to the port governor, the group was arrested and taken to Châu Đốc, a busy Mekong River town on the frontier with Cambodia, where they were tortured and later executed.35 This disastrous luck delivered a parcel of letters into the hands of local officials, correspondence that apparently included a personal request from Khôi to the Siamese king for military support.36 A third deputation, sent to the lower Mekong congregation of Mặc Bắc, Vĩnh Long province, did succeed in attracting the support of one of the three remaining missionaries in the vicariate. For the preceding year Joseph Marchand had been convalescing after suffering from a lengthy illness, but isolated from his confreres he was easily persuaded to travel to Gia Định citadel.37 It was here that Khôi met with Marchand and delegated to him pastoral responsibilities over the surrounding Catholic communities, a position that ultimately implicated him in the rebellion. From this point, around July to August 1833, events spiraled out of control in Gia Định. After several confrontations with Nguyễn forces, the rebel army was forced to retreat to the security of the citadel.38 At the beginning of September 1835, after a siege lasting nearly two years, a final assault by the royal army forced the rebels to capitulate. According to Nguyễn records, some 1,278 people—men, women and children—were taken captive, all of whom were rounded up and taken outside of the town where they were executed and buried in a mass grave.39 A more gruesome fate awaited the remnant’s leaders, including Joseph Marchand, who were placed in bamboo cages and dispatched to Huế.40 Arriving at the capital in mid-October, the rebels were interrogated and tortured before being sentenced to death. Less than a month later they were led to the predominantly Christian village of Thợ Đức, within sight of the capital, and across the Perfume River from Thiên Mụ pagoda,



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for execution. As rebels, these leaders were sentenced to “death by slicing” (xử lăng trí): executioners took turns in gouging and carving large chunks of flesh from the body before dismembering the limbs and finally beheading the victim. As a method, death by slicing was the most extreme form of execution and was reserved for rebels and traitors. It had a largely symbolic role in ceremonially fragmenting the criminal’s body in order to render the deceased’s spirit unable to reconstitute its parts in the afterlife. In such a state the spirit, it was believed, would for the rest of eternity be unable to take care of itself. After this horrific ordeal, Marchand’s and the others’ bodily remains were carried through several nearby villages and then thrown into the sea, inflicting a final insult on their souls. To ensure the widest impact, royal provision ordered that the severed heads of the leaders be paraded and displayed throughout the provinces in the north as a dire warning to Catholics and would-be rebels.41

Joseph Marchand: Soldier of Misfortune Few missionaries have provoked as much controversy in the debate on precolonial Vietnam as Joseph Marchand. Marchand was captured after being found in a ditch—in a pathetic attempt to hide from royal soldiers at the fall of Gia Định citadel in 1835—and his presence among the rebels raises countless embarrassing questions about mission interference in local politics. Given the extraordinary circumstances, the potential for misunderstanding is obvious. In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, and the devastation of the mission and church throughout the kingdom, the mission was left floundering for answers as to how its fortunes could have turned so sour. Missionaries, such as Fr. Gilles Delamotte, reported the devastation with shock and attempted to explain based on secondhand accounts what had happened. According to Delamotte’s letter on the affair, dated December 1835, only weeks after the Thợ Đức executions, Marchand had been coerced in early 1833 to join the rebels after being tricked to travel from Mặc Bắc to Gia Định. Once he had agreed to undertake the journey, there was no escape. Ever since, mission historiography has portrayed Marchand as an innocent victim of circumstance.42 Marchand’s status as a victim subsequently saw him elevated to the status of a martyr in 1900 and canonized in 1988, along with over twenty other French missionaries, many of whom were executed in the 1830s to 1850s. While mission perspectives have cast Marchand as a victim of Nguyễn excess, others have been far more inflammatory. Historians from the colonial era, from

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Schreiner to Sylvestre, described him as an active, albeit naïve, participant in the rebellion.43 More recently, postcolonial Vietnamese scholars, such as Nguyễn Phan Quang and Nguyễn Văn Kiệm, placed the cleric and mission ambitions at the very center of the revolt.44 Describing Marchand as a clandestine agent of French and Catholic mission imperialism, the Hanoi historian Nguyễn Phan Quang, in his 1974 article, rejected the official mission thesis to describe the missionary’s presence in terms of a slowly unfolding imperialist conspiracy.45 Quang emphasized Marchand’s youth, his “zealousness” and “enthusiasm” for the mission’s cause. Moreover, he added, Marchand was the “principal figure” of the rebellion’s “ringleaders.”46 Although highly controversial, these allegations, as Jean Chesneaux observed nearly fifty years ago, have had much to do with efforts to highlight “opportune precedents” in the precolonial period to explain later French imperial endeavors.47 The portrayal of Marchand as a hostage to rebel interests or as a political agitator has long focused attention on mission interference in Vietnamese politics and consequently has diverted consideration away from the local dimensions of the rebellion. Despite the controversial circumstances of his presence in Gia Định citadel, it appears most likely that Marchand played an insignificant and incidental role in the revolt. In short, Marchand was more of a naïve, accidental rebel than a calculating protagonist as he has been portrayed in some circles. Still only thirty years of age in 1833, he had only been in the vicariate for two years, and for much of this time had been ill with a fever—which was so often the fate of newly arrived missionaries—whose symptoms would appear consistent with a modern understanding of encephalitis.48 Marchand traveled to Chợ Quán in mid-1833 on the persuasion of a local priest, but it is telling that he had even remained in the vicariate at all, months after his confreres had fled west to Cambodia and Siam in fear for their lives. Not only lacking in experience in local affairs, he was probably still suffering from the effects of prolonged illness. The most compelling evidence of Marchand’s predicament comes from his final letter, of September 1834, written in Gia Định citadel. Until recently, only a printed version of this letter had been available, in Louvet’s history of the Cochin­ china mission and Georges Taboulet’s documentary history.49 On reading the original, it is obvious that the published reproduction had been carefully edited to iron out the confusing and somewhat embarrassing details. In the narrative of the original we are confronted with the experiences of a terrified and erratic author, obviously ill and undoubtedly deeply depressed by the traumatic events of the preceding months. Marchand is almost incoherent in his explanation of the



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rebels’ political designs and he jumps from one topic to the next, giving the impression that he was too unwell to have been of much use to their plans. Instead, his letter suggests he himself was used by the leaders for their purposes.50 But before looking into the letter in greater detail, another important clue to understanding Marchand’s involvement can be found in several “prophecies,” or what were probably little more than popular rumors, reportedly circulating through the south in 1833. According to Régéreau, then hiding in Phnom Penh, one “prophecy,” no less than millenarian in vision, claimed that “when the Elephant’s teeth”—supposedly a local expression for “Europeans”—came to dominate the region “all will be delivered from their long servitude and cruel slavery and will live in happiness.”51 The source of this proclamation is difficult to determine, but its message echoes another noted by Marchand in a letter dated September 1833, shortly after the rebels had fled to the protection of the citadel. Marchand wrote, “the Annamite prophets say that there will come a time when they will persecute the Religion of Jesus Christ and they will seek to destroy it, but there will rise a certain man who will embrace the Religion and reign over all in peace.”52 To Marchand it was clear that this “certain man” was none other than Lê Văn Khôi. Also around this time, according to Marchand, other rumors, supposedly circulated by “sorcerers,” reported that he—Marchand—possessed special powers enabling him to evade capture. Among these, as he recounted, were an ability to “walk on water, cause division, steal, make myself invisible” and to attend the court’s “secret grand council,” Minh Mạng’s special cabinet of state.53 These extraordinary prophecies and rumors hardly reflected the political realities of the situation in which Marchand was involved. Khôi never undertook to convert as he had supposedly promised—he died of illness at the height of the siege in January 1834—and his allowing Catholics to rebuild churches was hardly an altruistic concession.54 Instead, it is the perception of these prophecies that is most significant. On one level, their message may have encapsulated popular hopes and anxieties in the face of devastation and upheaval. On another, their doubtful authenticity strongly suggests their fabrication, by local Catholics or by the rebels, in order to inspire mission support for the rebellion. While the latter explanation seems more likely, the prophecies and rumors nonetheless draw attention to how symbols of authority and power, in such an ambiguous and fluid environment, could be used and manipulated in novel ways. Marchand’s last letter exposes for us the culturally sensitive subversion of Catholicism in this context.55

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Until now only published reproductions of this letter have been used in mission histories to either present an uncontroversial picture of the missionary or scandalize his presence.56 The sanctioned version, which appeared in Louvet’s history of the Cochinchina mission (1885) and was reprinted in Taboulet’s documentary history (1955), largely reflects the content of the original, for example outlining Marchand’s dealings with Khôi and his knowledge that an envoy had been sent to Siam to win foreign military support. But it is a cut-down version, sanitized to support the narrative that presented Marchand as an innocent victim. The original, in sharp contrast, is, as we have noted, poorly worded, and Marchand’s panic in having been caught up in events beyond his influence is palpable. He begins gloomily by stating he had already sent more than ten letters to Taberd, suggesting that he had not received any news or correspondence from his confreres since the beginning of the siege a year earlier. Locked in the citadel, in his words, as a “soldier of the rebels,” he reported the presence of some three to four thousand “Bắc Thuận,” northern criminals. He provides an optimistic account of his relations with the “grand mandarins,” Khôi’s officials, claiming that most had rejected “superstitious practices” and had asked to “embrace the religion.” In fact, a royal pretender in the entourage, reputed by Marchand to be a “blood relation of the king”—whom he names simply as đức ông (venerable sir)— had also attended a mass with the leaders.57 After the ceremony, the entourage bowed “six or seven times” before the altar and requested Marchand do the same. From the flow of events recounted in the following paragraphs of the letter, we can assume that a dispute took place between the Marchand and the leaders over the use and abuse of Catholic sacramental objects and religious symbols. According to Marchand, the mandarins requested to be shown how to make or copy the design of “cớ [military standards], resembling those of Constantine.” Here he seems to be referring to the “Labarum” monogram, the ancient Romanic symbol of the Catholic faith, which shows a letter “X” overlaying the letter “P” (the first two Greek letters, chi and rho, of “Christ”). The symbol was adapted by Emperor Constantine after seeing a vision at sunset on the eve of the battle for Milvian Bridge near Rome in 312 ce, the showdown that won him complete control over the Roman empire. This event is widely seen as marking Constantine’s conversion, if only partial, to Christianity. Marchand claimed he refused to offer the design and noted that it had been Phước—the priest who persuaded him to travel to Chợ Quán in the first place—who had informed the leaders of the monogram. He tells us in a jumbled manner that the officials wanted to use the design to rally “divine provi-



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dence” in their favor, and threatened that if the Labarum did not work “all would turn to the disadvantage of the religion.” Perhaps like Constantine’s “pagan” forces fifteen hundred years earlier, Fr. Phước and the rebels thought the symbol’s talismanic power would deliver them victory. Later in the letter Marchand reports on a further dispute regarding the unorthodox use of his Catholic sacramental objects by the rebels. Beginning with a reference to widespread violence against Catholics, he refers back to his arrival at the citadel, noting that his Mass paraphernalia were confiscated from him.58 Those who took these objects—it is unclear who—also “dance with the [sacramental] ornaments of his Grace [Bishop Taberd], and of M. Cuenot.” The signifi­ cance is not wholly clear but could suggest that his objects were taken by force for their perceived inherent spiritual powers. Indeed, it is worth speculating that the ensemble of religious symbolism and authority Marchand embodied probably represented one among a number of other spiritual mediators through which the rebels sought influence. Marchand’s symbolic role in the rebellion had far-reaching repercussions for the mission. He was not the only missionary to remain in the vicariate at this time, however. Throughout 1833 Jaccard continued to work under close supervision as a translator at court, Delamotte moved around clandestinely in the capital prefectures, and Fr. Bringol administered congregations in the central provinces of Phú Yên and Bình Định.59 One other missionary, François Gagelin, remained in Bình Định province. Faced with great uncertainty, Gagelin surrendered himself to district authorities in Bong Sơn in April 1833, after hiding some months among hinterland communities in the province. Mission historiography claims the cleric decided to surrender after hearing that neighboring congregations had been repeatedly harassed in the search for his whereabouts. It is possible that Gagelin thought that he might escape recriminations and also take pressure off local Catholics. Rather, officials took the cleric to the provincial capital of Quy Nhơn where he was held for several months before being moved to Huế in August.60 Unfortunately for Gagelin, the move coincided with the first news reaching court of the presence of a foreign missionary among the rebels occupying Gia Định citadel.61 A month later, in mid-October, Gagelin became the first missionary to be executed in Vietnam in over half a century—the last execution of a missionary had occurred over fifty years earlier at the hands of the Tây Sơn.62 In the end, Marchand’s presence in the rebellion brought the mission presence to the forefront of court attention, and vindicating Minh Mạng’s initial hostility toward the mission, it was used to expand the anti-Catholic repression.

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Nguyen Anti-Catholicism If any doubts about targeting the mission and Catholics had lingered at court after the issue of the January 1833 proscription edict, they quickly dissipated after the news of Marchand’s involvement in the rebellion. His actions, however innocent they may have been in his eyes or those of his confreres, intensified suspicions of mission activities and provided the casus belli for an all-out campaign against the religion. In the aftermath of the rebellion, the court, beginning in 1836, issued increasingly severe proscription edicts. It went to extreme lengths to destroy the local church and mission presence by ordering sweeping search expeditions throughout the northern and central provinces in 1838 and 1839 to trap missionaries, capture priests, and systematically force Catholics to publicly recant. The repression and search campaigns, which peaked during the last years of the Minh Mạng reign, continued virtually uninterrupted until the French admiralty forced King Tự Đức to promulgate an amnesty in 1862 after a series of brutal massacres earlier that year. Although Marchand’s ambiguous involvement in the Gia Ðịnh rebellion was ample provocation for a repression, questions remain as to how and why official Nguyễn attitudes toward the mission deteriorated so rapidly under Minh Mạng in the 1820s. Only one generation after the mission had played a key role in establishing the Nguyễn dynasty in 1802 and attained a privileged position in some elite circles, the dramatic shift from open tolerance under Gia Long to open hostility under Minh Mạng cannot be easily reduced to a single cause. Only very limited attention has been given to this issue and by no means have the arguments been balanced. Generally, scholars have only briefly touched on the rise of antiCatholic sentiment as a background development in the train of events that provided the pretext for French intervention in the 1840s and the 1858 invasion. As a result, explanations have generally relied on zero-sum judgments that focus on the myth of Catholicism’s incompatibility with traditional culture.63 The argument that Minh Mạng targeted the religion because it challenged “Confucian” values and sensibilities has been a particularly recurrent and influential one. This interpretation of Nguyễn anti-Catholicism emerged more or less out of a widely accepted but slightly misleading thesis that portrays the nineteenth century as the apogee of Confucianism in Vietnamese history, and the Nguyễn dynasty as the most rigorous promoter of Confucian-Sinic cultural and political philosophy and bureaucratic structures.64 As recent studies have shown, if the Nguyễn bureaucracy—particularly under the Minh Mạng reign—



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a­ ppeared Confucian, the realities of Nguyễn statecraft and political culture were far removed from the orthodoxies of the Confucian canon. The private Buddhist proclivities of Nguyễn kings—Gia Long’s personal expressions, Minh Mạng’s private observance, and Thiệu Trị’s open adherence—stand as but one reminder that the nature of Nguyễn rule must not be confused for the façade presented by official historiography.65 The unique ideological dilemmas faced by the Nguyễn in the early decades of its consolidation demand greater scrutiny. For although the Nguyễn anti-Catholic juggernaut emerged in the 1830s as a key force driving court politics, other dilemmas posed far greater challenges to the political landscape. The Nguyễn dynasty, only thirty years old in 1832, was the first to rule the length of Vietnamese territory as we know it in the modern period. Although a generation had passed since the integration of Tonkin, Minh Mạng faced enormous bitterness from large sections of the north that remained loyal to the deposed Lê dynasty. This community, which experienced the 1802 inauguration as a defeated political force, viewed the Nguyễn as usurpers and bitterly rejected the new dynasty’s claims to legitimacy based on a restoration. As explained in detail by Langlet in his in-depth study of Nguyễn historiography, remnant Lê supporters and surviving members of the ancien régime posed a series of political and social risks to the Nguyễn ascendancy. Generally, the Lê supporters resented the Nguyễn dynasts, whom they considered intellectually and culturally inferior. After nearly two centuries of separate rule, the Nguyễn—although not entirely isolated—differed substantially from their more intellectually rigorous and conservative northern counterparts. Depleted by decades of warfare and isolated from more established centers of study—in north Vietnam and China— the level of intellectual talent in the pro-Nguyễn camp was at the beginning of the nineteenth century very poor. In contrast, scholarship had continued to flourish under the Lê throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This disparity in intellectual life posed enormous dangers to the Nguyễn, which sought to build its legitimacy on the historically complicated claims to a dynastic restoration and in turn use this claim to eclipse the legacy of nearly four centuries of Lê rule in the north. To deal with these challenges the court tightly controlled intellectual and literary production in the north, limiting the sources for education and scholarly interaction. One consequence was that scholars preparing for the triennial examinations, for example, were only permitted to study selected texts that did not challenge Nguyễn cultural sensitivities and particularly the restoration legend.

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On these grounds only certain Lê-era texts were permitted for dissemination; many Lê dynasty historiographies were completely banned. A prudent measure politically, such severe restrictions and censorship endangered the kingdom’s intellectual capital. As with the Lê and the neighboring Chinese court, the Nguyễn system of government depended on its officials’ ability to interpret historical rec­ ords to find precedents to be used to underpin decisions on contemporary affairs. Historiography also furnished detail on the rites and protocols of state that were essential to healthy function of the political order and keeping the business of government in harmony with the divine order. But by the 1830s, the dynasty had not had the chance to produce its own histories of previous eras let alone the contemporary period. The Nguyễn countered this challenge by resorting to ancient histories and classics from China, which, although foreign, were relatively less controversial than histories from the Lê period. Underlying this decision, as demonstrated by Langlet, was the pragmatic concern to circumvent intellectual dissent. Thus, “the preference for Chinese books,” Langlet notes, “was not the result of contempt for national history, but rather due to the difficulty to evoke it without recalling that the advent of the Nguyễn dynasty was based on a contested legitimacy.” Moreover, Chinese literature presented its own substantial benefits. It presented a vast, readily available canon of doctrine that could be adapted to contemporary governance, and crucially it was widely valued by all scholars throughout the kingdom.66 Minh Mạng’s aim to neutralize the Lê heritage played as much if not more of a role in the promotion of Confucian culture as the utility of Chinese literature and philosophy presented for his government during the period. At stake for the Nguyễn was not the spread of “Confucianism” per se but rather the primacy of central rule, and the dynasty’s own ideological orthodoxy and interpretation of Confucian literature over other, rival versions. It is in this regard that the vilification of Catholicism, as Langlet has suggested, needs to be understood. AntiCatholic sentiment did not emerge simply as a consequence of cultural incompatibility or as a backlash against Catholicism’s banning of certain “Confucian” practices, such as ancestor worship. Rather, it emerged within the wider context of Minh Mạng’s aim to destroy—as articulated by Langlet—all alternative “ideological bases of political contestation” within the kingdom.67 In the context of major bureaucratic reform and mounting regional fractiousness, the potential for tension over the primacy of Nguyễn orthodoxy presented a dangerous ideological impasse. Minh Mạng had a firm conception of governance



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and state ideology and an acute vision for what doctrinal and cultural material could be accommodated, as well as what should be rejected or destroyed. To allow the proliferation of pro-Lê scholarship, for example, and potential anti-Nguyễn dissidents posed a danger to political stability. In this sense, the early attempts to ban the entry of missionaries into the kingdom, restrict their contacts with local congregations, and then blame them for the eruption of tensions at Dương Sơn village, reflect the Nguyễn court’s first tentative step in uprooting Catholicism. Limiting mission influence—in contrast to neutralizing Lê dissidence—at the lowest levels of society was another complicated challenge with enormous risks. Huế recognized the mission’s prominence in Gia Định’s power networks, notably its close ties with Lê Văn Duyệt, as part of the general threat southern parochialism posed to the primacy of the capital. Since the 1820s, Minh Mạng had sought to weaken the links between the mission and the Gia Ðịnh regime, by, for example, ordering missionaries to the capital in 1826 and issuing edicts forbidding the entry of foreigners into the kingdom. Moreover, the court increasingly recognized the mission’s unique position in grassroots society—seen clearly in the Dương Sơn incident—as a threat to royal authority. Despite the rhetoric of the 1832 edict, which blamed the religion for its “mesmerizing” influence on Dương Sơn’s Catholics, what is clear in the court’s response to the village dispute was its concern over enforcing its authority at the grassroots level and countering the potential threat of the mission’s influence. Yet, in reality, the Vietnamese church represented a relatively contained and insignificant community among a number of competing religious and political interests in the early nineteenth century. At between one to three percent of the total population,68 Catholics posed no realistic threat to the Nguyễn state and the political status quo. The focus on Catholicism—which intensified with the news of Marchand’s involvement in the rebellion—therefore raises critical questions about the notion of the religion as a threat. It is impossible to make a full account of the internal court debates and the arguments to rationalize the anti-Catholic stance. The published court records present only a very brief—and one-dimensional —chronicle of the decisions that led to the complete proscription of all mission and church activity in 1836. However, other aspects of Minh Mạng’s reform agenda provide insights into the attitudes and anxieties at the court. The early steps to limit mission activity need to be placed, for example, in the wider context of the court’s goal to create uniformity in religious practice throughout the kingdom and concentrate all ritual activity. From 1802, Huế had moved steadily to reconfigure the bureaucratic and religious landscape by sub-

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duing all rival political and religious identities. The most intensive period of this transformation occurred, as Tạ Chí Đại Trường has argued, between 1831 and 1833.69 Not exempt on account of their “indigenous” roots, the kingdom’s innumerable Buddhist sects were also required to submit to Huế and gain approval for their activities.70 The main obstacle to central rule, and an enduring obstacle for much of the century, was the court’s difficulty in asserting authority uniformly down to the lowest levels of society throughout the kingdom. Underlying Minh Mạng’s reforms was the aim to shift loyalties at the local level away from parochial interests. While the Gia Long and early Minh Mạng reigns were largely successful in imposing a Huế-centric vision, a number of features of early nineteenth-century society continued to impede uniform administration from capital to prefecture, from district to village. By employing a range of bureaucratic and cultural strategies, Huế sought to consolidate its control over peripheral regions in a transformation that also involved a reordering of the kingdom’s spiritual geography and local cultural and social practices. In his study of Minh Mạng’s centralizing policies, Choi Byung Wook focuses on intellectual integration as a key feature that led to the refocus of Gia Định attitudes from a regional and parochial outlook to one defined by a loyalty to central authority. The success of this process depended on carefully controlled policies central to which was giáo hóa, or “education and cultivation.” The policy, which in brief entailed the promotion of education and morality instruction, aimed to foster a uniform cultural identity among subjects from different regions according to what the court considered to be orthodox and “cultivated.” More than just an abstract concept, giáo hóa was a civilizing strategy intended to homogenize social and cultural practice from public morals to literary education. At an institutional level, it entailed the establishment of schools, from village to prefectural level, and was administered throughout the provinces by court-appointed officials, most of whom were recent graduates. In short, giáo hóa involved the regulation and enforcement of Huế’s vision of individual and community behavior.71 The most significant statement on giáo hóa came in 1834, at the height of the Lê Văn Khôi rebellion, with the publication of the Ten Articles (Thánh dụ Huấn đich Thập điều). The code was the first such example for the Nguyễn dynasty and remained unsurpassed by other edicts on morality produced by later reigns. A copy of the Ten Articles was disseminated to every village, where local literati and teachers were instructed to lecture to communities regularly on the principles of



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the edict.72 As a morality text the Ten Articles set down rules on an array of social practices, advancing an orthodox vision of order and harmony through obedience and self-cultivation.73 As Langlet has illustrated, orthodoxy was promoted through the use of metaphors from classical Chinese literature and philosophy. For example, each of the Ten Articles ends with a reference to a proverb from classical texts by Mencius or Confucius. Several of the articles refer to filial piety (hiếu) and respect for elders (đễ), emphasizing Confucian views on social order and obligations. Moreover, much of the text of the edict refers to cultural or intellectual figures from ancient China, notably Nghiêu and Thuấn (the ancient Chinese sages Yao and Shun) and Khổng and Mạnh (Confucius and Mencius), giving the impression, as Langlet notes, that the “reigning dynasty was a continuation from saintly civilizations of Chinese antiquity.”74 The articles also warned subjects about their religious observance. Article four, for example, which encouraged frugality, warned subjects not to overindulge in expensive Buddhist ceremonies. However, Buddhism as a heterodox practice is not denounced as a dangerous doctrine.75 In contrast, in article seven, “revere orthodox studies” (sung chính học), Catholicism, đạo Gia-Tô, is denounced as a “perverse religion” (tả đạo), as “superstitious” (di đoan) and without reason (vô lý). It is not the specifics of Catholic doctrine that are the target of this article, and herein lies a critical clue to understanding Nguyễn enmity. The spread of an illicit doctrine, not ritual observance, was the ultimate concern of the article and, I believe, the greatest issue at stake for the court in this period. This article begins by emphasizing the importance of Confucian studies. The teachings of the ancient sages—Nghiêu and Thuấn, and Khổng and Mạnh—are praised as “orthodox studies” (chính học), in contrast with the “perverse religion” and superstition, which “deceive and seduce” (lừa dố cám dỗ). It then cites the “religion of Jesus” as being “the most irrational” of these practices. Men and women who followed the religion committed wrongdoings, and followers, it added, were responsible for the “disintegration of social order, [and] the deterioration of cultivation (giáo hóa).”76 The message of this attack concentrates on the responsibility of teaching doctrine. The article continues: “among the people, not a single person should not study, and not a single day [should be] without learning.” But only students of “verse, literature, and letters” (thi, thư, tự), the edict dictated, understood “righteousness and lawfulness” (nghĩa lý); “as for soldiers, peasants [and] artisans, it is not that they need to study and be literate.”77 The context of the passage, I believe, demonstrates that Minh Mạng was concerned not so much for who had access

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to education, as Woodside suggested, but to whom education might be entrusted.78 Only scholars of literary traditions and philosophy who conformed with the court’s views on morality and social order, and not missionaries— teachers of the “perverse religion”—held this authority. The timing of this edict—it was issued in July 1834—is interesting in that its drafting may have coincided with the news of Marchand’s involvement in the rebellion, which arrived in Huế around August 1833. The specific reference to Christianity and the implicit attack on missionaries might not have found its way into the edict if Marchand had not become involved. Regardless, the edict focuses our attention on what the court perceived as the greatest danger posed by the religion: the presence of foreign religious practitioners who circulated a doctrine that was not only—and not simply—considered anathema to sanctioned ways, but as threatening to undermine the court’s own ordained teachers. Furthermore, the reference to the “perverse religion of Jesus” in this edict might at first glance seem unremarkable. But that Catholic beliefs and mission activities are the only specific sources of instability cited and, moreover, declared antithetical to court values, in what is otherwise a very general code on popular morality is highly symbolic. It is a strong indication of just how far anti-Catholic sentiment had come to shape political sensitivities. By casting the religion as a danger to public morality and social stability, the edict identified Catholicism as a direct and imminent threat to giáo hóa. And by portraying mission teaching and learning as “perverse,” it targeted mission Catholicism as a challenge to one of the central pillars of Minh Mạng’s bureaucratic reforms, the promotion of Nguyễn orthodox values.

Catholicism as Poison While Nguyễn bureaucratism faced obvious dangers in allowing the unbridled circulation and operation of an organization with the potential to rival its own policies, there can be little doubt that large sections of the mandarinate also intuitively distrusted the religion for its values and ideology. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Christianity had had a sustained history in Vietnam for nearly two hundred years, but its main support base was still outside elite society. The established, dominant intellectual and religious communities, such as the Confucian scholars and the numerous Buddhist sects, generally saw the mission as promoting suspect rituals and beliefs and there-



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fore as dangerous. As we have seen, anti-Catholic sentiment and hostility was not an entrenched feature in Nguyễn elite society, but rather was linked to contemporary political contingencies. Whenever military threats mounted, or Nguyễn rulers lost control of the economy, the mission became a target. Only once, under Minh Vương in 1698, did the issue of ideology specifically give rise to a persecution. The key difference between the two persecutions, however, can be attributed to each ruler’s distinct ideas on governance. While Minh Vương’s hostility to the religion was motivated by his aim to reinstate Buddhism as the predominant religion within ruling society, Minh Mạng’s strategy was very much within the broader context of constructing and consolidating a state ideology, informed by Confucian literature, to be imposed over a recently unified kingdom still prone to rebellion and secession. The available sources offering court perceptions of Christianity in the Minh Mạng period make it difficult to understand fully the prejudices and culturally motivated suspicions that inflamed official animosities. A cursory reading of anti-Catholic memorials and edicts in the Nguyễn chronicles leaves the impression that perceptions of the religion were based largely on popular rumor and long-standing misconceptions, many of which we can assume had been generated since the first missionary arrivals in the seventeenth century or had arrived via Chinese texts grappling with how to deal with the religion over the same period. The proscription edicts of January 1833 and early 1836 are excellent examples of this official rhetoric. Within these texts we can see the court outlining its own fundamental views on social order and harmony. Christianity, or “the religion of Jesus”— đạo Gia-Tô—was a “perverse religion” (tả đạo) that “mesmerized” (mê hoặc) followers and led subjects to resist royal orders to recant. Such refusal went beyond a mild display of subversion; in the Nguyễn conception of a subject’s obligations, refusal was tantamount to rebellion or treason. As stated in the January 1833 edict, Christians’ refused to honor local spirits (kính thần minh) or worship their ancestors (thờ tiên tổ) were omissions that made the religion “contrary to the principal way (chính đạo),” that is, the court’s views on orthodox beliefs and practices.79 Such distinctions illustrate the court’s endeavors to draw a line between sanctioned, orthodox ways—chính đạo—and forbidden, heterodoxy or the “perverse religions,” tả đạo. The distinction between Nguyễn orthodoxy and Catholicism needs to be further explained in the context of wider Nguyễn aims to homogenize official discourse as well as religious and ritual observance. From 1833, Huế increasingly focused on Catholicism as an abhorrent feature of the cultural landscape. A

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­ emorial on Catholic involvement in the Lê Văn Khôi rebellion focused on m Catholic practice as a seditious threat. On two occasions, it reported, a spy (thám tử), who was also a Catholic, by the name of Hồ Văn Chiến had been sent into the citadel to negotiate with Khôi to end the rebellion, and now court suspicion swirled over his activities. A pattern had begun to develop whereby the rebels in the citadel appeared to anticipate the attacks launched by the besieging Nguyễn army. Although Minh Mạng conceded that preventing people outside the citadel from secretly providing news to those under siege would be impossible, he noted other factors endangered the situation. Fueling the rumors, Minh Mạng reported that “food peddlers selling cakes and fish meat at the market, some of whom are women who follow the religion of Jesus, secretly sprinkle poison (thuốc độc) in [the food].”80 The danger of such subtle attacks exceeded merely making royal soldiers ill and unfit to fight. Rather, the real danger lay with the effects such poison had on soldiers as loyal subjects. The theme of the powerful and seditious dangers of ingesting medicine or poison created by Catholics was elucidated repeatedly in the period’s anti-Catholic edicts, most notably the edict issued in early 1836 by Phan Bá Đạt. In the edict, Đạt reiterated Huế’s position on Catholicism, reporting that the dangers of the religion and its illegality had been published many times over, and ample opportunity had been provided for followers to recant. But the religion could not be easily defeated, he noted, because as a “perverse religion (tả giáo) of the West it intoxicates (làm say đắm) people’s hearts.”81 Of most serious concern, foreign practitioners held sway over common subjects that threatened the very order and stability of the dynasty. Recent troubles had vindicated these concerns; Đạt cited the involvement of Marchand (Mã Song) in the Gia Định rebellion. Marchand’s involvement is clearly important in the edict, but receiving most attention is the condemnation of Catholic rituals and practices. Citing a rumor peddled throughout the region, Đạt reported that Marchand, as with all missionaries and priests, preyed on the innocent and gullible for sinister ritual purposes. When a follower was close to death, the missionary would take the believer’s eyes to grind them down with herbs to be used in special medicines (thầy thuốc nước hắn). Such perverse practices commenced from the moment a subject converted to the religion, which, Đạt claimed, began with an elaborate process of deception. Leaders of the religion [missionaries] place a man and a woman together in a house with a wall separating the two. After some time when their passions are



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roused, they are killed and their remains are ground together. This is dissolved in water, from which a cake is made. When missionaries traveled to spread the religion, they give the cake to people to eat, and in this manner people are mesmerized (mê đạo) and cannot leave [the religion].

Phan Bá Đạt’s observations on the religion arose from the court’s fury in the aftermath of the Gia Định rebellion. To Đạt what made Catholicism such a dangerous and insidious religion was the power missionaries and priests commanded over their followers after converts had ingested the Eucharist. A stark example of the dangers—as perceived by the court—can be seen in the disturbing example of an elderly woman’s self-sacrifice near the royal capital in 1837. Minh Mạng recalled with contempt the resolve of an elderly woman of Dương Xuân village (neighboring Huế) who, having refused to recant, demanded to be executed. Threatened with trampling by elephants and beheading, she had doggedly resisted orders to renounce the religion and insisted on receiving the punishment, no doubt to the great distress of the mandarin in charge. Despite the harshness of the Minh Mạng repression, the execution of elderly women would still have been beyond the pale for most local officials, for whom execution was normally reserved for common, male criminals. For Minh Mạng, this case was “confirmation that the religion of the lord of heaven (đạo thiên chúa) was so completely mesmerizing.”82 These examples illustrate the evolution of official thinking as expounded in the edict on Marchand. They encapsulate four themes underpinning officials views on the dangers posed by the mission and the religion: the religion was an agent of rebellion and disorder, with the potential to excite adherents to reject their obligations to the throne; Catholic ritual practice, notably the administration of the sacraments, had an essentially contaminating effect on the individual; mission activity, while operating behind its thin veil of religious propriety, in fact promoted social depravity; and, finally, Catholic views and doctrine on social obligations (the honoring of ancestors) were contrary to Confucian orthodoxy. From this point the conception of Catholicism crystallized into a singular message, one that portrayed the religion as seditious.

three

Persecution

Beginning in 1836 the “great persecution,” as it is referred to in mission historiography, saw the most intense repression of Catholics and missionaries in over a century and launched the worst religious violence seen in Vietnam to that point.1 Between 1836 and 1841, the height of the repression under Minh Mạng, Vatican archival records report over one hundred and thirty priests, missionaries, and lay church leaders were executed. The number of converts who perished in this period, however, was almost certainly much higher.2 Yet, despite violence, including numerous public executions, and the intensity of the searches throughout the kingdom, the repression had only a mixed success. While the court sought to capitalize on Marchand’s execution in late 1835 to stir the mandarinate into action, the next arrest of a missionary did not occur until September 1837, nearly two years later.3 And although the court sought to prevent further missionaries from arriving clandestinely in the kingdom, at least five French priests entered via the Tonkin mission over this period.4 A number of high-profile arrests of missionaries in mid-1838 certainly gives the impression that the campaign was successful. But two of these vic68



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tims, Mgrs. Ignacious Delagado and Dominic Henares, Spanish Dominicans based in the East Tonkin vicariate, were septuagenarians who had been in the region and known to local officials for nearly four decades.5 Their capture came as easy pickings in a brutal and undiscriminating campaign of village searches in Nam Định and Hưng Yên provinces. Nevertheless, the late 1830s’ anti-Catholic campaign had devastating consequences for the local church and brought the mission to the brink of collapse. It also set in motion changes at the grassroots that would have destabilizing repercussions for Nguyễn rule. Although the court promulgated strict edicts and had the bureaucratic apparatus to coordinate a kingdom-wide campaign against the religion, the chain of authority linking Huế to distant provinces and down to the districts was by the end of the 1830s still limited and in a state of transition. Only a decade after the reinstitution of the examination system and several short years after the provincial reforms, parochial interests continued to frustrate the court’s enforcement of its vision of central rule down to the village. The footdragging and petty bribery of some officials in the lower and middle levels of the mandarinate not only exposed cracks in the centralizing process, they gave rise to other bureaucratic challenges. Apart from contributing to the emergence of a “black economy” in which congregations bought security from the threat of arrest, forced apostasy, and violence, a dangerous cycle of rivalry over promotions and rewards underlined official efforts to capture missionaries and local priests. Despite the relative insignificance of church activity politically—in terms of the mission’s potential to undermine the Nguyễn state—perhaps more than any other challenge in the period, enforcing anti-Catholic edicts left the deepest impression on the evolution of official views.

The Anti-Catholic Campaign With officials in the south preoccupied with the secessionist rebellion, the campaign against the mission was well underway in the north from early 1833. At that time prefectural and district officials randomly set up blockades around some congregations to undertake searches and force villagers to recant and reveal the whereabouts of missionaries.6 Up until 1836 village heads were simply required to submit statements to local mandarins, usually at the canton or district level, reporting that Catholics in their bailiwicks had publicly recanted. The process of verifying whether communities were complying with the anti-Catholic

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edicts in forcing Catholics to recant was usually negotiated between a visiting official and the local village head.7 After 1836, testing increased in frequency and stringency. A visiting official could force all villagers to line up and one by one walk over a cross; and if the community was suspected of harboring a missionary, militia blocked off all paths leading into the village and performed a more rigorous search.8 The capture of a missionary, or even the discovery of religious objects—a small crucifix or a devotional medal—had the potential to implicate the whole community and bring punishment to all.9 But despite the court’s knowledge of the location of many Catholic villages and the numerous well-known concentrations of Catholic communities—particularly in Nam Định and around Huế—the campaign was inconsistent in its early stages. Fr. Pierre Jeanne, for example, who disembarked in East Tonkin in early 1836, claimed the local mandarin of Kẻ Đại in Nam Định province was notified of his illegal arrival but had—Jeanne guessed—simply neglected to act on the tip-off. A canton or district official, on the other hand, did apparently act on the arrival and to evade the unwanted attention of the official a “bought deception,” a bribe, was used to resolve the matter.10 “For some ligatures [of copper cash],” Jeanne noted, “the pagans are not greedy and are forthcoming with their lies.”11 Like many of his colleagues, he avoided arrest and the village that helped him was spared from a search. For many other congregations, similar arrangements between village heads and local mandarins were common. The negotiation of safety from the threat of punishment through bribery and extortion throws light on what became a deeply entrenched and widely accepted arrangement between village communities and their local officials. Arriving in Tonkin in mid-1836, Fr. Jean-Jacques Candalh summed up the situation: If the mandarins wanted to capture us they would succeed, but they receive no profit at all, and they would lose their lives for not having arrested us at our arrival. They search above all for local priests of the country, and allow themselves to be given money to release them. You already have knowledge of the last edict that condemns to death all European missionaries that are arrested as well as the mandarins of the province where they are captured or disembarked. It is this clause that saves us, the good Lord allowed Minh Mạng to add this impolitic clause.12

The claim that provincial mandarins faced execution was probably an exaggeration, but the disincentive for local authorities to arrest and report was evident. After all, the situation afforded the possibility for mandarins to profit from the



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compromised position of Catholics. Indeed, the complicity of local officials undoubtedly played a crucial role in saving priests and missionaries from arrest and execution. In the first place, missionaries could not have disembarked on the coast without local help. Some missionaries, such as Fr. Pierre Jeanne, acknowledged the limited assistance offered by locals, noting that “Christians are very timid and not without reason, because it [will mean] their life if a missionary is captured in their house.” Families and whole villages risked disastrous consequences if found harboring missionaries and consequently most were hesitant to offer their services. Nonetheless, some locals continued to act as guides and helped missionaries disembark, while others provided shelter in their homes and contributed information on routes to safer villages. This support would not have been possible, however, without some district mandarins ignoring continued mission activity and, in turn, neglecting to fully implement the proscription. Such neglect can be explained by the fragile socioeconomic balance in the villages in the dynastic era. In a subsistence economy where personal or family wealth was limited and often measured in field ownership, the threat of punishment at the hands of an overbearing district magistrate—whether for a criminal offence or for the failure to comply with bureaucratic measures—could have devastating consequences for a family, not just in the short term but for successive generations. Despite the inherent power imbalance in official relations with grassroots society, it was in the interest of officials and village notables to maintain harmony in their jurisdictions, and most genuinely aimed to do so by applying force only as a last resort. In the end maintaining harmony depended on the circumstances on the ground and the unique views and attitudes of the mandarin. In the north, the impasse afforded the mission a relatively high degree of protection for an extended period. Thus, between 1835 and 1837 some seven MEP missionaries entered Vietnam via the Red River Delta provinces, later dispersing to other regions of Vietnam.13 However, the mission’s good fortune was not destined to last and in June 1837 a series of developments effectively ended the relatively relaxed arrangements providing some safety for missionaries and priests. According to Mgr. Pierre Retord, the apostolic vicar of West Tonkin, an unusual incident involving an infamous local pirate led to the first major arrest since Joseph Marchand’s capture and execution in 1835. Pursued by provincial militia up the various canals and waterways in the Red River Delta, the “pirate” took refuge in the Catholic community of “Bau-nô” in Sơn Tây province. Perhaps thinking he might have his sentence reduced or commuted, the pirate denounced the community for harboring a French

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missionary, Fr. Jean-Charles Cornay, to authorities.14 Interestingly, the denunciation was initially ignored but the pirate eventually managed to gain the attention of Sơn Tây’s governor-general by reporting that the village was planning an insurrection. The provincial office responded immediately and mobilized militia to search the village. Shortly after, Cornay was captured and taken away. The Nguyễn chronicles confirm the story, noting Cornay, “Cao Lăng Ni,” arrested in Phủ Ninh district, Sơn Tây, had colluded with local rebels. The memorial recording the arrest and the prosecution went even further by declaring that the missionary had elevated himself to “general” and had assumed of his own accord leadership over the insurgents.15 After interrogation he was sentenced to death by slicing, the same gruesome method employed on Marchand. But in a twist perhaps reflecting local official sentiment against such extreme measures, the supervising mandarin altered the sentence at the last minute and Cornay was instead decapitated, after which his body was dismembered.16 Cornay’s capture and execution marked a turning point in the repression. From late 1837, the Nguyễn dynastic records reveal that Huế became increasingly frustrated with the lack of success of officials in distant provinces. There can be little doubt that informants and spies relayed to senior mandarins reports of continued mission activity and the circulation of missionaries through the countryside. As the court came to realize what was happening it sought to increase pressure throughout the bureaucracy. The perfect opportunity for a crackdown presented itself in early 1838. The shipwreck of a Chinese junk sailing from Macao with supplies and correspondence for the Tonkin missions led to the most severe, sweeping searches in the Red River Delta provinces.17 According to Fr. Gilles Delamotte, the ship was seen drifting close to the coast around Nam Ðịnh without sails—apparently the result of piracy. Wrecking off shore, the vessel spilled its cargo that scattered with the tide’s help up and down the coast. Catholics living nearby apparently tried to salvage the numerous objects, including religious ornaments, communion wine, and flour, but they failed to retrieve a bundle of letters, which in the end fell into the hands of local officials.18 According to Père Andre, a local priest in the Cochinchina mission, the governor of Nam Định reported the incident to Huế; but a significant time elapsed between the retrieval of the letters, December 1837 or January 1838, and the initiation of searches in Nam Định’s Christian villages, in the following June and July. Given the heightened hostility, it is hard to account for the delayed response. “Ông nam,” a Catholic, offered an explanation based on a private conversation—the details of which are not elaborated in Delamotte’s letter—with



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the “principal mandarin” of “Qui Nhơn,” the provincial capital of Bình Định province. Following the retrieval of the letters in Nam Định, the governor apparently conferred with his two deputies on whether to act on the tip-off and search for missionaries hiding in his jurisdiction. Fearful of court anger over the affair, one of his deputies allegedly “kept his silence” at the suggestion, while the other rightly observed that the searches might “expose them as being at fault” for not having prevented the arrival of missionaries. Deliberately contravening wellpublicized edicts issued only months earlier, the governor-general decided to ignore the illegal arrival.19 Other sources must have alerted the court about the letters and the shipwreck, because as the Veritable Records show, Nam Định’s provincial executives were rebuked in a memorial dated May 1838. The censure refers to the failure of Governor-General Trịnh Quang Khanh and his deputy, the chief prefect, or governor (tuần phủ), of neighboring Hưng Yên, Hà Thúc Lương, to capture missionaries known to be hiding in Catholic communities along the coast. As punishment Khanh was reduced to the lowly grade of level eight (tam phẩm), putting him effectively outside the functioning bureaucratic hierarchy—officials could still serve in the mandarinate despite the demotion—and demoted to the post of governor (tuần phủ).20 Thúc Lương suffered a reduction to the fourth grade (tứ phẩm) and was posted, somewhat humiliatingly, as a lowly granary supervisor (chức lương đạo) in Bắc Ninh province. To repair the situation, and no doubt to set an example to the rest of the mandarinate, Minh Mạng ordered Lê Văn Đức, the Sơn Tây governor responsible for Cornay’s arrest in 1837, to replace Khanh, and Doãn Uẩn, a senior official in the Board of Punishments, to replace Lương.21 The reshuffle of these senior posts was to prove fateful for local Christians. Lê Văn Đức took immediate advantage of the situation by initiating a sweeping military campaign across Nam Định and Hưng Yên. Between May and July 1838 he captured three Spanish Dominicans, including two apostolic vicars, Mgr. Dominic Henares and Mgr. Ignacious Delgado, as well as several local priests.22 As could be expected, Đức’s spectacular arrests won him accolades at court and a series of promotions and rewards. In late 1838 and early 1839, Đức achieved the highly prestigious position of minister of the Board of Works and Board of Appointments (Thượng Thư Công bộ, Lại bộ), along with membership in the Royal Academy (Quốc tử giám), responsible for tutoring children of the royal family and the sons of senior mandarins, and in the court Secret Council (Cơ mật viện)— Minh Mạng’s secret cabinet of state.23 In other words, by early 1839 Ðức had reached the heart of Nguyễn power and basked in the king’s demonstrated regard

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for him. While other factors undoubtedly contributed to Đức’s rise through the bureaucracy at this juncture in his career, it seems highly likely that the post-1837 promotions and appointments were directly linked to these successful campaigns. Minh Mạng could not have done more to underscore the importance he placed on the anti-Catholic campaign. Lê Văn Đức’s rise at this point was highly symbolic, but he was not the only party to benefit from the capture of missionaries. From this period we see the showering of rewards on local military officers, peasants, and officials for their contribution. For the capture of Mgr. Ignacious Delgado in Cần Lao village, Nam Định province, for example, Lê Ngọc Thế, a military officer (Quản cơ), received 20 taels of silver and was promoted one grade in the military hierarchy. His company of soldiers received 30 taels, and villagers who had alerted authorities to the cleric’s presence were rewarded with 50.24 Around the same time, Nguyễn Liêm, acting district officer in Kim Sơn, Ninh Bình province, captured Joseph Fernandez, and a local priest, Nguyễn Bá Tuần. Generous rewards followed. Nguyễn Liêm was promoted from temporary to permanent district magistrate (tri huyện); provincial officials involved in the arrests, Bùi Mậu Tiên and Trần Văn Trung, were advanced one grade in the civil hierarchy; and the peasants who denounced the two clerics received 100 taels of silver between them, while a district clerk (nha lại) received 50 ligatures (quan) of copper cash.25 Less than a month later, in early June, Lê Văn Dũng, a military officer, arrested Mgr. Dominic Henares (Du-minh-cô) at Hà Lan village, also in Giao Thủy district. The villagers who denounced the ageing apostolic vicar received 70 taels of silver, and the soldiers 30. Elsewhere at this time, Hà Thúc Lương, the disgraced governor of Hưng Yên, revived his career in July 1838 by orchestrating the capture of a priest, Đặng Đình Viên, after a search through Yên Dũng district, Bắc Ninh province. His soldiers received 400 quan, and Thúc Lương was returned to his post in Hưng Yên.26 A year later, in 1839, Trịnh Quang Khanh also rescued his career with the capture of two priests, Đinh Viết Dụ and Nguyễn Văn Xuyên. The villagers responsible for denouncing these priests received a reward of 600 quan.27 By contemporary standards even the most meager of these rewards represented a fortune. For example, Lê Ngọc Thế, as a lowly militia officer (Quản cơ) would have received an annual salary of around 120 ligatures of copper cash. This would have bought around two and a half taels or around 96 grams of silver.28 His reward of 20 taels exceeded the salary of the highest paid men at court, Minh Mạng’s closest advisors, who annually received the equivalent of around



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15 taels of silver.29 At the lower end of the scale, even the reward of 50 ligatures received by the district clerk involved in denouncing Fr. Fernandez was hardly insignificant. This clerk probably held a position without an official salary, thus his reward, which equaled the annual salary of a district magistrate, represented a considerable windfall that would have raised his status and wealth in his community. In the northern agrarian economy, where commoners and perhaps even district officials would not often have come into contact with silver as a currency, such sums in silver and copper cash would have had a lasting effect. The court’s largesse in bestowing rewards and promotions as a cornerstone in its strategy to destroy the mission left its mark. However, we must not assume that such prominent and repetitive references to captures, rewards, and promotions automatically indicate that the anti-Catholic campaign was a widespread success. In late August 1838, despite the success in arresting Henares, Delgado, and Fernandez, Lê Văn Đức, then the governor-general of Nam Định and Hưng Yên, submitted a memorial reporting on an investigation within his jurisdiction. He found the diligence of local officials seriously lacking and several were punished for their incompetence.30 In mid-1839, Minh Mạng recalled Đặng Văn Thiêm, the governor-general of Hà Nội–Bắc Ninh provinces, in order to scrutinize him on his progress. In a royal audience, Minh Mạng inquired directly: “Have followers of the religion of Gia-Tô in Bắc Kỳ reformed and renounced the religion?” to which Thiêm could only meekly respond that people had followed the religion for a long time, thus results could only occur gradually.31 In light of Trịnh Quang Khanh’s earlier treatment, royal tolerance of this admission is astounding. A month later, frustrated that a missionary by the name of “Dê-du-Ny-mô” had evaded capture for so long, Minh Mạng suspected collusion between Catholics and officials. After all, he railed, how could people mistake the appearance of foreigners, with their “high noses and bushy beards”? He ordered provincial officials throughout the north to organize secretly for either a younger family member or employee to go covertly from village to village masquerading as a Catholic to search for Dê-du-Ny-mô and spy on local officials. Complacent officials were to be given no quarter if found aiding foreigners.32 The use of officials’ family members and retainers to spy on low-level mandarins indicates the extent of the court’s frustration at the limited success of the campaign. Significantly, it also exposes Huế’s acknowledgment of the gulf in relations with jurisdictions at the time. Huế’s open suspicion of inaction in the districts demonstrated deep concern over irregularities in the exercise of authority.

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Loyal and dutiful mandarins such as Lê Văn Đức and Đặng Văn Thiêm were instrumental in having moved sub-prefectural offices to action, and large rewards provided financial incentives beyond the dreams of ordinary officials, peasants, soldiers, and militia officers. However, the need to order the circulation of spies indicates frustration at the inconsistencies at the lowest levels of the bureaucracy. This order represented an indirect admission that the implementation of edicts in districts and villages still relied greatly on the compliance of low-level officials.

The Jaccard Affair While the successes in Nam Định and Hưng Yên of mid-1838 thrust men like Lê Văn Đức and Đặng Văn Thiêm into unrivaled prominence in court circles, failure to act—as seen in the case of Trịnh Quang Khanh and Hà Thúc Lương— could lead to a humiliatingly swift fall from grace. The disparity in the court’s treatment of these officials highlights the importance it placed on destroying the mission. The disparity also draws attention to the emergence of several dilemmas influencing the court’s endeavors. The most remarkable feature of policy at this time was the establishment of a link between financial incentives and career advancement with the capture of missionaries. The association was extremely useful in motivating officials in distant provinces and persuading district mandarins to comply with the proscription edict. But the promise of riches and spectacular promotions was not without adverse consequences. A series of arrests around Huế, also in July and August 1838, illustrates such dangers and the emergence of an unusual pattern of behavior within the bureaucracy. The affair surrounding Fr. François Jaccard, who arrived in the vicariate around 1824 and had been held captive at Huế since 1832, illuminates all the ambiguities in play in Minh Mạng’s system of promotions and punishments; it also lays bare numerous issues that gave rise to internal bureaucratic instabilities from the 1830s. Having served at Huế since 1827—when Minh Mạng sent orders for all missionaries to travel to the capital—Jaccard was perhaps the court’s most prized foreigner and prisoner. Although the full extent of his role remains unclear, Jaccard himself reported that despite his harsh treatment he still played a key role in providing translations of foreign language materials brought into the country. Also, he was assigned to teach “European letters” to specially selected students from court.33 A prisoner nonetheless, Jaccard had been moved from one highland prison post in Ai Lão to another in Cam



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Lộ, in Quảng Trị prefecture, which must have been grueling and highly unsettling. Although his services were highly valued, Huế seemed unresolved and uncommitted on whether to keep the missionary indefinitely. Keeping him under close surveillance, officials guarding Jaccard suspected the missionary continued to maintain and cultivate strong contacts with Catholics in the surrounding districts. In early 1838, after suspicious officials in Quảng Trị and Quảng Bình provinces linked Jaccard to continued mission activity near Huế, an investigation was launched by one of the chief court censors—a position comparable to a prosecutor—Bùi Quỹ. A native of Hưng Yên province, north of the Red River Delta, Bùi Quỹ had won the prestigious doctoral title in 1829. After beginning his career as a prefect (tri phủ), he had risen swiftly through the bureaucracy to reach a much-coveted executive posting in a province neighboring the capital, and a senior position on one of the six administrative boards by 1837. His stellar rise through the ranks, as a northerner, was typical of Minh Mạng’s encouragement of educated officials through his personal involvement in appointments. In later decades, Quỹ would have further direct dealings with Catholics, and would show considerable moderation toward them at the height of the Franco-Spanish invasion in 1858 and 1859; but on this occasion his involvement in Jaccard’s execution nearly stalled his career prematurely. Arriving at Cam Lộ on March 7, Quỹ briefly interrogated Jaccard, who subsequently smuggled out a rough transcription of their conversations and details of events in a letter dated March 18.34 Jaccard noted that before Quỹ arrived, he had received numerous visits from interrogators attempting to determine the extent of his contacts with local clergy hiding in the provinces. Bùi Quỹ’s task was to settle the matter once and for all. In the interrogation he demanded the missionary declare all his attempts to communicate with the church outside his prison and reveal all his contacts. Jaccard unsurprisingly denied ongoing connections with outsiders, frustrating Quỹ, who then demanded the cleric renounce the religion—the priest declared his preference to face execution instead. According to Jaccard, his brashness and lack of deference toward Quỹ visibly offended and angered his interrogator. A report of the exchange was sent to Huế the following morning, on March 9, and several days later a messenger returned with orders to place Jaccard under even stricter surveillance. Unsatisfied with the inquiries, however, provincial authorities in Quảng Trị and Quảng Bình launched a campaign of searches through the region.35 From early May to late July, a small army of soldiers, elephants, and horses led by Quảng Trị’s governor, Trần Hiển Doãn, swept through these

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provinces, searching villages still known to include Catholic congregations, and made a series of arrests.36 The details of these searches and the ensuing proceedings are described in five special documents obtained clandestinely by the mission from the Board of Punishments. The documents held in the MEP archive are titled generally the “Official Papers of the Judgment of Jaccard”; they range from a tribunal decree dated mid-June 1838, to the final execution sentences handed down to Jaccard and other captives, dated early September 1838.37 Remarkably, the documents, which were translated from administrative Chinese into French by Fr. Gilles Delamotte, were obtained by Simon Hòa, an elderly Catholic lay leader from Như Lỳ village in Quảng Trị, who had paid a prefectural scribe to copy them. This dangerous task, which could easily have resulted in the scribe’s arrest and execution, apparently took months to complete, because, as Hòa explained, they “only dared to write two or three lines per day.”38 The “Official Papers” are a crucial source because they not only shed light on the searches they also offer fascinating clues on the repercussions for several senior mandarins arising from Jaccard’s trial and incrimination. During the searches in Di Loan village—which had one of the oldest chrétientés in the central region—and another neighboring chrétienté, Yên Ninh, militia recovered numerous objects, including a crucifix, “a picture, a piece of paper on which was written European letters,” as well as books and other foreign objects. Probably only the personal items of poor villagers, these objects were treated as evidence of Jaccard’s ongoing deep involvement in the mission’s activity in the provinces around the capital. Further interrogations were ordered in late June and early July of several locals including two elderly men—who were possibly identified as community or congregation lay leaders—called Văn Bao, aged fifty-nine, and Hữu Sách, aged sixty-four, both natives of Di Loan village.39 Undoubtedly under duress, the two captives revealed that a local priest, “Chiêu,” had visited the village in March with a “foreign leader of the religion” who was known widely by the name of “Cao.”40 According to the “Official Papers,” Văn Bao told officials—probably under torture— that Fr. Chiêu had also visited Jaccard at Cam Lộ on several occasions, each time secretly smuggling books and other materials to the foreigner.41 For the provincial officials involved in the investigation, these revelations confirmed beyond doubt that Jaccard continued to hold sway over regional congregations and therefore posed a potentially subversive threat.42 At this point identifying individual missionaries emerges as a crucial issue in the investigation. Apart from casting a shadow of suspicion over Jaccard, the



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capture of another missionary, whom the “Official Papers” identifies simply by the Vietnamese name “Cao” (“tall”), along with two priests, Vũ Đăng Khoa and Nguyễn Điểm, in the town of Bố Trách, Quảng Bình province, exposes a tragicomic case of mistaken identity. In the court records this particular captive is cited by name as “Bố-di-du-mô-linh,” which is clearly a transliteration of the name Pierre Borie-Dumoulin.43 The question of names is significant, and herein lies the controversy surrounding the searches and Jaccard’s subsequent execution. According to the translator’s annotations in the “Official Papers,” when Trần Hiển Doãn launched his sweeping searches in Quảng Trị province in May, Minh Mạng had already been informed of the presence of another missionary— Fr. Jean-Jacques Candalh, known as “Cao”—who had been freely moving around congregations in neighboring Quảng Bình province. Fearful of suffering recriminations for not capturing the missionary known to be in Quảng Bình, Trần Hiển Doãn sought to pass off his only captive, Fr. Borie-Dumoulin, as “Cao.” Local Catholics caught up in the searches gladly went along with the deception in order to end the search for the real target, Candalh, who had been forewarned and had fled west into the densely forested hills in order to evade capture—sadly for him, however, he died, reportedly of starvation, several weeks later, at the end of July.44 No doubt seeking to obscure the difficulty in which he placed himself over the failures to capture two missionaries, Trần Hiển Doãn drew attention instead to Jaccard’s ongoing influence in the area.45 The ruse worked initially, but it had devastating consequences for Doãn. In the wake of the searches, the interrogations, and trials, harsh sentences followed. Several captives, including Văn Bao, Hữu Sách, and Fr. Thomas Thiên, were executed by strangulation on September 21, 1838, in the village of Gian Biêu, Quảng Trị province. Borie-Dumoulin, Vũ Đăng Khoa, and Nguyễn Điểm were beheaded—according to reports it took seven attempts for the executioner to completely decapitate Borie-Dumoulin—over two months later, on November 24, near Ðồng Hới citadel. Neither the “Official Papers” nor the Nguyễn official chronicles reveal whether the king sanctioned Jaccard’s execution with the first group in late September, although it is hard to imagine such an event occurring without approval at the highest level. Whatever the case, it is almost certain that the decision later came to be regarded in upper court circles as a grave error. Jaccard’s execution at this time was not simply excessive and unnecessary, it potentially undercut the court’s struggle to stay informed of abreast of events in the region between China and the rest of Southeast Asia. Against the backdrop of mounting geopolitical

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tensions between Great Britain and the Qing dynasty over the opium trade in southern China—whose provinces neighbored the Vietnamese kingdom— the loss of the court’s chief European linguist seriously compromised Huế’s ability to monitor stories and reports of the growing rivalry and, crucially, to interpret to court advisors British and European motives. Indeed, as annotations in the “Official Papers” explain after Jaccard’s execution, “the King no longer had anyone to interpret in French, English or Portuguese, and greatly regretting this he complained angrily to his mandarins.”46 Nguyễn rulers from the late seventeenth century had always retained European missionaries for special services at court, as linguists, astronomers, and physicians, even during periods of anti-Catholic animosity. By executing Jaccard, Huế not only broke with a long and well-established tradition for Nguyễn kings, but also severed its last remaining link with regional European networks and essentially destroyed one of the very few effective diplomatic channels available in the period. Without exaggerating the significance of the Jaccard affair, it is worth speculating that the absence of a missionary at court to explain foreignlanguage material, or act as a middleman to smooth out the cultural misunderstandings common in diplomatic negotiations, seriously impeded Huế’s ability after the 1840s to deal with the increased French military presence on its doorstep. The removal of the last foreign interpreter at court made the Nguyễn less capable and arguably more skittish in their future dealings with French envoys. The broader repercussions within the bureaucracy of the Jaccard affair are difficult to decipher, but some details of the consequences suffered by several mandarins can still be gleaned from the “Official Papers.” These documents shed some light on the career fortunes of the principal officials involved in the investigations, and from the series of demotions and censures meted out in the wake of the execution we might deduce that great pains were taken to limit the retribution meted out to officials guilty of involvement. Below the provincial executive in Quảng Trị and Quảng Bình, low-level officials who had been deemed negligent for allowing missionaries to continue to circulate in their jurisdictions suffered the severest penalties. In Quảng Bình province, the district mandarin of Minh Tinh, Trần Văn Chu, and a canton chief (tổng mục), Nguyễn Tất Điều, were both sentenced to 100 blows of the rod. They were removed from their duties, and ordered to surrender their academic qualifications and bureaucratic status. The prefect of Triệu Phong, Nguyễn Quãng, also found guilty of neglecting his duties, was sentenced to 90 blows of the rod, and reduced three grades in office, but he managed to hold onto his post.47



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The fate of those at higher levels was more complicated. If men like Trần Hiển Doãn and Bùi Quỹ expected accolades for their achievements, they were shocked by the treatment that followed the affair. Doãn, above all, appears to have suffered the worst fate. In its first judgment, made in June 1838, the Board of Punishments tribunal—composed of Nguyễn Công Hoán, Lê Đăng Doanh, and Bùi Quỹ— commended Doãn for launching the searches and netting the missionaries and priests. It exonerated him for not making the arrests earlier, at the first round of searches, and according to the documents rewarded him with an honorary title.48 His arrests and promotion probably should have been recorded in the dynastic chronicles, as had been the case with the arrests in Nam Định in the same year. However, except for a couple of insignificant references, Doãn, who more than anyone else had been responsible for the investigations in Quảng Trị and for gathering the evidence to incriminate Jaccard, slipped almost without a trace into obscurity.49 Although initially praised, he was dismissed from the bureaucracy in late 1838—almost immediately after Jaccard’s execution in September. Based on the records, an interpretation of his dismissal cannot be conclusive, but the circumstances raise suspicions. In the final translated document, dated September 1838, Doãn is referred to in passing as Quảng Trị’s administrator (bố chính).50 This is confirmed by a contemporary entry in the chronicles, which further states that Doãn had just returned from a trip to Gia Định, where he had found his mother ill and needing care.51 Then around December, a damning entry records Doãn’s dismissal on the charge of having abused his position. Whilst on his visit south, it claimed, instead of caring for his mother Doãn had taken an unauthorized break from his duties in order to marry. Moreover, he had abused his official status by displaying the flag of a royal official (cờ bài khâm sai) at his house. Reflecting bitterly on these actions, Minh Mạng recalled how he had personally advanced Doãn from his position in a prefectural office, thinking him of good character. But angry at those who had enjoyed special promotions under his cultivation, Minh Mạng now saw officials like Doãn as susceptible to fault and “detestable.”52 A similar although far less dramatic fate befell Bùi Quỹ, who escaped a humiliating dismissal but nevertheless suffered a minor setback to his career for several years.53 In the penultimate document, dated early September 1838, Quỹ is cited as having received a reduction by two grades in his position as Quảng Bình administrator, apparently a punishment for not having seen to the capture of missionaries earlier.54 Then, in late December, at the same time Doãn was removed, Quỹ was relieved of his duties in Quảng Trị and recalled to the capital.55

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Until this point he had held a dual posting as an administrator of Quảng Trị and deputy vice-minister (thị lang) in the Board of Punishments. The move signified a slight demotion from a relatively influential dual position to one under closer scrutiny at court. The setback was temporary, but his fall stands in contrast to the high-profile accolades bestowed earlier on Lê Văn Đức.56 A brief note by Fr. Charles Jeantet, an MEP missionary in Tonkin, adds additional tantalizing detail to our knowledge of the repercussions. Commenting on the searches and execution, Jeantet wrote that Jaccard’s “judge” had been arrested for incriminating the missionary and was “condemned shortly after to occupy the [same] place of this generous martyr in the cells of Ai Lao.” It is unclear who exactly this official might have been as the Nguyễn chronicles are silent on the matter. It is just possible, although unlikely, that it was Bùi Quỹ, even though he was involved closely in Jaccard’s trial. Although not a “judge,” Trần Hiển Doãn seems to be the most likely victim.57 We get a further sense of the strife over the affair at court from Mgr. Étienne Cuenot, the coadjutor of Cochin­ china, who reported on early attempts to recover from Jaccard’s loss. Cuenot wrote that searches throughout the country for interpreters had been useless and therefore the king had resorted to sending spies abroad “to Manila, Macao, Canton, Batavia, Singapore, etc.” to gather intelligence. He added that these “spies” were often disgraced mandarins who were sent as envoys or had to stay abroad “for 1, 2 or 3 years,” to whom “grace is promised on their return if he [the king] is content with their service.”58 Thus, the anti-Catholic campaign had profound consequences for careers. If success could bring acclaim and speedy promotion, hesitation and neglect brought humiliating demotion or, for officials below the prefectural level, harsh punishment. Moreover, as the Jaccard affair demonstrates, the pressure to make arrests could present unforeseen hazards to personal advancement. Yet the most critical feature of the anti-Catholic campaign, in terms of the widest implications for relationships between the bureaucracy and society, as I discuss in the next section, was the changes it brought to village-level relations between officials and communities in the negotiation of safety from violence.

Negotiating Catholic Resistance In 1839, an unusual case concerning two soldiers, Phạm Viết Huy and Bùi Đức Thể, both Nam Định Catholics, further concentrated the court’s attention in



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the campaign and sparked a controversy in the enforcement of anti-Catholic measures. The case, which in many ways echoed the infamous Dương Sơn affair nearly a decade earlier, arose after Huy and Thể refused to publicly recant in line with orders for all soldiers to demonstrate their rejection of the religion. It illustrates several issues pertaining to court-society relations at the height of the repression and heralds additional, highly intrusive measures against the religion at the village level. Several documents, obtained by mission go-betweens and translated by missionaries, record the case.59 The most insightful among them is a copy of the petition presented by Huy and Thể to the court that recounts the affair from the beginning. It records that the two came under suspicion during the searches across Nam Định and Hưng Yên in 1838 and were ordered to walk over a cross to recant. They refused, protesting that their adherence to the religion was a demonstration of filial piety, noting that Catholicism was the religion of their “ancestors.” It is worth noting that by the 1830s, Catholicism had been practiced in the kingdom for over two centuries, or nearly eight generations. Although not made clear by either Huy or Thể, these two men may very well have been born into families of several generations of Catholic heritage. Such grounds provided a powerful defense for the refusal to recant, and from their point of view, their defiance was not in complete disregard of their family and social obligations. One passage stands out for its elucidation of their personal conviction as Catholics and their sensitivity to their obligations as subjects. We both thought and reflected that those who are faithful subjects are also grateful children; also children who are grateful to their parents are also the faithful subjects of the King, because faithfulness and filial piety are the two fundamental principals of human society. This is why when we are in the army we must be true to our duties, and if we are at our father’s house we must always love, respect and serve our parents. When we are in the camp, then we participate in all that might be regarded as military; if we must be sent to battle against the enemy, then we must march in the front lines and fight bravely. . . . But to walk over the cross, we certainly dare not obey this order.60

The account continues by recounting how the prefectural mandarin adjudicating their case in Nam Định dismissed their appeals and ordered several other soldiers to physically drag the two over a cross to enforce their apostasy. Afterward they were released and awarded ten ligatures of copper cash each as compensation. The recompense was unwelcome and, remarkably, both Huy and Thể

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decided to appeal to higher authorities and traveled with their own funds all the way to Huế to deliver a petition personally. Unsurprisingly, their requests for mediation were not well received by the Board of Punishments, and they were arrested. In June, after what must have been some serious deliberation over the matter, Minh Mạng approved a sentence edict to resolve not only this special case but also to prevent the possibility of other Catholics invoking their family heritage as an excuse to defy the proscription. Citing Confucius, Minh Mạng agreed that respect and honor for parents’ beliefs was essential to filial piety and that a son should follow the religion of his ancestors. However, drawing on the famous philosopher Chu Hy, he countered: “if a religion [the way: đạo] is not contrary to the reasonable [that is, Confucian] way (đạo lý), then the people need not change, but if it is contrary to the reasonable way then they may wait for three years after the parents’ death and then change.”61 To Minh Mạng the obligation to recant was clear: as a perverse practice, Catholicism fell into this latter category and therefore warranted renunciation. Minh Mạng added further moral gravity by arguing that “if born to a father who works as a thief, should one let oneself be punished and beheaded too?” The “perverse religion of Jesus,” he continued, was beyond the pale in the morality it taught, but more dangerously its notions of filial piety were highly suspect: People still possess common sense and good instinct. However, [followers of Gia-Tô] do not consider their father as their father. They treat the Westerners [missionaries] as father. They do not worship their ancestors (thờ tổ) as ancestors; instead they worship the religion of the West just like an ancestor. And they do not know to honor and worship their spirits (thần) when it is appropriate to worship ancestors. How can they call this filial piety?62

The memorial finishes by adding that not to leave the religion of Jesus was against the law and ordered the immediate punishment of Huy and Thể. Shortly after, in mid-June, the two were executed. Their bodies were cut in half in an extremely violent display and their corpses were thrown into the sea. Summing up the horror of the fate of these two, Minh Mạng observed sardonically in the final notes of the memorial that Huy and Thể could hardly be seen as demonstrating their “filial piety” to their parents and ancestors as “fish and shrimp food.”63 The extraordinary conclusion to this case is testament to the extreme irritation it must have caused the court. The arrival of two soldiers from one end of the kingdom to personally contest the proscription by invoking a compelling argu-



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ment based on well-established cultural mores undoubtedly generated consternation. Like the case involving Dương Sơn’s Catholics nearly a decade earlier, at stake here was the principal of obedience and the bonds of obligation linking a subject to the king. The affair is all the more significant because it appears to have coincided with an ambitious new policy on the organization of village ritual practice. In September 1839, only several months after Huy’s and Thể’s execution, the court issued an edict ordering the construction of what might best be described as an altar to the state cult (miếu thờ Thành-hòang) in every village. The provision was ostensibly part of a kingdom-wide expansion of the ritual hierarchy to complement the thirty-one provincial shrines (Hội đồng miếu) dedicated to the tutelary spirits recognized by the Nguyễn court. These spirits, which, the edict recorded, “prevent misfortune,” provided a crucial service to all; thus all villages were ordered to construct an altar to house the local spirit recognized with a diploma issued by Huế.64 Above all, the measure highlights the increased penetration of Nguyễn rule down to the lowest levels of society. By obliging all subjects throughout the kingdom to obey a single set of prescribed rites, Huế made possibly its most effective incursion into village society and ensured to a degree the uniform observance of its own religious beliefs. The court’s enforcement of village altars, which at first glance does not appear related to the Catholic repression, possibly came in response to Huy and Thể’s petition. Although the edict does not specifically cite Catholicism, given the timing of its promulgation and its impact on village religious observance, this measure seems to me to have been intended as an indirect attack on Catholic society. On one level it complemented the culturally homogenizing vision embodied within the Ten Articles by adding another dimension to the demonstration of obedience to Huế. The court undoubtedly understood perfectly well that observance of the state cult and ancestor worship was anathema to Catholic doctrine and had long been proscribed by the mission. This measure therefore required a compromise of beliefs that could enable officials to distinguish obedient subjects from committed Catholics. Thus, immediately after it was issued, missionaries in Nam Định reported that officials of ritual ceremonies (chủ tế) had been ordered to travel from village to village to instruct on the new rites, or in Retord’s words, the “superstitious practices.”65 Court orders also explicitly required local mandarins regularly check that individual households were participating in the offerings.66 Over the following decades, the construction of state cult shrines and the

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issue of participation in prescribed ritual observance became a point of conflict, particularly between Catholic and non-Catholic villagers. The shrines not only required special observance but also cost villages considerable resources for their upkeep, outlays to which Catholics refused to contribute.67 In the short term, therefore, from the late 1830s, the implementation of such demands on villagelevel religious practice—not to mention the searches—had a profound effect on community cohesion, in particular in the economics of village politics. The rise of bribery, long a feature of relations between formal authority and village society, in conjunction with the anti-Catholic campaign, added another dimension to local politics. An observation from one missionary, Fr. Pierre Duclos, that “[village] heads are all despots and that the people wail with fear before the magistrate,” highlights the commonly held view of the connection between official status and power at the local level. His further remark that “with gold bars murder and theft blossom among honest people,” points to the commonality of bribery as an arrangement in legal affairs and underscores the negotiable nature of justice in grassroots society.68 In the early stages of the Catholic repression bribery proved a highly effective means for villages to avoid complying with court edicts. But as the repression gathered momentum, the grounds for negotiation shifted dramatically and placed congregations in an increasingly compromised position. The offer of rewards and promotions—or, alternatively, demotions for failure to act—shifted the balance of relations between local officials and Catholics. One area where these pressures had a great impact was in the undermining of personal status. Traditionally, in a criminal case before a magistrate the threat of official punishment might be mitigated by family members privately petitioning the official. Good family ties, age, or personal status might serve as grounds for alleviation. However, leading up to Delamotte’s arrest in late 1839, we see in the case of Simon Hòa (Phan Đac Hòa)—one of Delamotte’s local minders—in Như Lý near Huế, that basic social arrangements were shattered by the repression. Simon Hòa’s biography holds numerous insights into Catholic experiences in this period. At around sixty-five years of age (born in 1775?), Hòa, with seven children, was a highly distinguished member of his community, given his age and the fact that he was known as a doctor, or medicin. Mission reports record that he had converted at a young age “with his mother and one or two of his sisters” after his father, a “senior mandarin,” died (possibly during the Tây Sơn rebellion). Made destitute by his death, Simon’s mother left their home—simply “the city” in the text, but possibly Huế—and with nowhere to go, the family



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sought refuge at Như Lý, a Catholic majority village. The family soon converted, opening to the young Simon a mission education, which he apparently embraced with the intent of entering the priesthood. But for reasons attributed to the political upheaval in the late eighteenth century, he left his studies and “returned to the world.” Yet he continued to work for much of his life as a catechist—a lay leader—in his home region.69 At the height of the anti-Catholic campaign, in late 1839, royal soldiers visited Hòa’s village to arrest Delamotte, whom Hòa had been helping to shelter for most of the preceding decade. They questioned Hòa and another village notable, Phê, on Delamotte’s whereabouts, to which they admitted they knew, but refused to divulge. The two were promptly taken to Huế for interrogation. Writing from prison in late October 1939, Hòa recounted the events leading to his arrest. One issue that attracted official scrutiny was Như Lý’s failure to erect a village altar. According to Hòa, he and the village head, Duyên, had come under considerable pressure from their co-villagers—many of whom would have been Catholic—to comply with the edict. In response, the two attempted to stave off requests by browbeating fellow villagers with “every sort of condescension” to silence their dissent. In the end, however, a spy alerted prefectural authorities in Quảng Trị, which in turn brought the soldiers to Như Lý to search for Delamotte and enforce the edict on altars.70 Left to languish without Hòa’s essential support, Delamotte himself fell prey to opportunistic villagers who captured the missionary in March 1840. It is unclear why, but Delamotte was not executed immediately; he died in prison in October of malnourishment and illness. Simon Hòa, in contrast, was led before the executioner in December. According to Dominique Léfèbvre’s account, Hòa faced death bravely, and rebuffed the presiding official’s deference on account of his advanced age and promise of a stay of execution if Hòa would recant.71 That Hòa was able to fend off threats from low-level officials and fellow villagers is testament to his authority and standing as a respected community elder. His execution no doubt caused serious reflection in the neighboring communities over the brutality of the anti-Catholic repression. At the very least, Hòa’s treatment would have challenged commonly held notions of respect for status and obligations toward the elderly. Another example further demonstrates the law-and-order problems generated by the repression, notably the prospects for common criminals to profit from the Catholics’ compromised position. In late 1839, Étienne Cuenot—­acting apostolic vicar in Cochinchina—reported how four “wicked fellows” had ­visited

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the community of Phước Lâm, in Quảng Ngãi province, close to where he was based, and claiming to be on official business had threatened to denounce the village. After lengthy negotiations, the four managed to extort 130 ligatures of cash from the village heads. The news quickly reached the provincial governor, Hồ Hựu, through his nephew, a Catholic. Incensed by the abuse, in particular by their having claimed to be acting on his orders, Hồ Hựu issued a warrant for their arrest and sent out a party to capture them. Soon thereafter the governor’s soldiers chanced upon the thieves, who were caught smoking opium—­obtained no doubt with their ill-gotten gains.72 The governor was uncompromising in his treatment—most probably on account of their fraud—and had two of them immediately executed. After the event, several catechists from Phước Lâm visited the governor’s office to express their gratitude for intervening on the community’s behalf. It is unclear whether they offered Hồ Hựu a gift or merely wanted to express their thanks, but if they expected a warm reception they were rudely reminded of the compromised status of Catholics. In an indication of the increasingly hostile environment that had spread through many districts and villages across the country, and that had given rise to such merciless extortion by bandits and petty criminals, Governor Hồ Hựu issued a warning. He urged the catechists to “guard your money”: give it to no one, it is useless. To those among you who have decided to die for the religion, prepare yourselves. At the least leave what you have with your wives and children, instead of losing it as a gift to the mandarins. As for those who do not have the courage to die, they must conform to the orders of the king. I can no longer do anything to save you: I will, however, [from now] resort to restraint.73

Far from extending a generous hand to Catholics, the governor had intervened out of pragmatism. He undoubtedly saw dangerous implications for local law and order should opportunistic banditry have been allowed to spread unchecked. All the same, as he made clear to his visitors, direct intervention was no longer feasible. Indeed, the Veritable Records show that Hồ Hựu was removed from office and heavily demoted less than six months later, allegedly for incompetence, but possibly as punishment for intervening on behalf of his nephew’s coreligionists.74 As seen with the examples of Phạm Viết Huy and Bùi Đức Thể and of Simon Hòa, many officials viewed the use of violence to punish disobedient Catholics as highly dangerous, with the potential to push deteriorating community cohe-



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sion down a perilous and irreversible path. On one level, the threat of violence represented a preliminary tool of coercion and, but as one Catholic observed, mandarins would resort to “all kinds of torture to force” defiant Catholics to recant.75 Execution was avoided and only used as a last resort. This compromise suggests that most officials recognized the potential for extreme displays to effect a favorable result. It also suggests that officials were conscious that public ­violence could fuel enormous resentment among spectators who were sympathetic to the victim. Moreover, resorting to capital punishment, authorities not only destroyed a life, and in turn plunged the rest of the family into destitution, they risked undermining the fundamental bonds that held communities ­together —the regard for status, mutual respect, and personal obligation. As the examples involving Simon Hòa and Phước Lâm village demonstrate, officials more often than not sought compromise to resolve Catholic defiance. The most astounding illustration of the need for such a balance of interests can be seen in spectators’ responses at public executions of Catholics. Executions were often described in missionary accounts as something approaching a festival, in which non-Catholics and Catholics competed with each other for small samples of the victim’s blood, absorbed in a cloth, or wiped off grass, in a shared belief of its healing properties. Mgr. Pierre Retord’s description of onlookers descending on the victim—on this occasion Cornay in Sơn Tây—provides a colorful illustration of the spectacle of the public execution. After the executioners had removed the missionary’s head and finished at the scene, Retord reported, “the curious crowd” waited while several Catholics, a doctor, and a military officer wandered over to the execution site to collect the “scraps of flesh which had been scattered here and there.”76 A nun from a neighboring congregation, ready with specially prepared cloth, also approached tentatively to soak up blood from Cornay’s clothes. At this signal the crowd, without distinction between Christians or pagans, rushed to collect some drops of this [Cornay’s] precious blood. The nun scolded the pagans; they asked for grace to be allowed to take some. Shortly after, they began to squeeze the scraps of flesh to extract [the] remaining blood and also scoured the surrounding earth where it had spilled in abundance.77

According to Retord, people used the blood in some cases to make special “charms against the devil” and/or as a medicine for their sick children.78 But at a more general level, such responses to the gruesome spectacle of execution, repeated throughout the kingdom at Catholic executions in the 1830s and

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1840s, symbolized a dangerous subversion of the execution process. The key aspect creating ambiguity stemmed from the fact that the court, like the mission, viewed and treated an execution as much as an act of violence against the victim’s spirit as against his body. While the mission treated victims of the campaign as martyrs and great exemplars of faith, and the violence of execution as completely expiating the victim of his sins, the court viewed execution as an everlasting punishment. As in the ceremonial execution of Joseph Marchand in 1835 and the brutal treatment of Huy and Thể, the pain inflicted was intended to continue to damage the victim in his afterlife. But if the violence to thieves and murderers was deemed as just and therefore unremarkable, the execution of Catholics, especially priests and missionaries, appears to have caused sincere doubts among many mandarins. Mission records in this period are replete with examples of mandarins displaying reservations about the employment of capital punishment against Catholics for their refusal to recant. In some cases, perhaps indicating a conflict of conscience, mandarins supervising executions feared their role in the execution would attract some kind of retribution from the victim’s spirit. Before the execution of Father Viên, a local priest in West Tonkin in 1838, for example, the mandarin loudly apologized to the victim in front of the attending crowd for carrying out his duty: “We know that you are not deserving of death, and we would wish to have the power to save you, but the king’s orders do not permit us to do so. Pardon us then, though we are obliged to take away your life, and do not impute to us this crime.”79 While the mission source reporting this unusual event focused on the injustice of the situation, as the last phrase suggests, the mandarin himself had pragmatic concerns on his mind. Other officials reportedly made burnt offerings at hastily erected shrines to appease the spirits of those executed to deflect any retribution. As in the case of the execution of Borie-Dumoulin, Khoa, and Điểm in 1838, officials quietly gave permission for locals to propitiate their spirits. The image of these figures being treated as potent symbols is described by Fr. Masson: Last year when Mgr. Borie and Frs. Diem and Khoa consummated their glorious martyrdom, we were unable to retrieve their bodies. The mandarin had buried them in the same place as their execution. From this time I’ve hazarded to take some steps and I’ve also paid out plenty of useless expenses for the purpose of exhuming these precious relics and to give them a more suitable sepulcher. I will have to hurry myself all the more to achieve this duty, as already the



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nearby pagans, having come to regard our martyrs as tutelary spirits, burn paper on their graves in their honor and render to them a superstitious cult.80

Responses like this not only demonstrate a divergence of opinion between Huế’s efforts and the juridical realities at the grassroots, they also draw attention to major differences between official and unofficial perceptions of Catholicism within the mandarinate. In fact, officials within the royal citadel also speculated and subversively mused about the anti-Catholic campaign. According to Catholic sources connected to the rumor mill at court, scandalous reports attributed Minh Mạng’s untimely death in 1841 to the years of repression and execution of missionaries. One rumor suggested that the spirits of executed Catholic “­Masters”—French missionaries—entered Minh Mạng’s body during his delirium “dealing him the blow of death.”81 Perhaps a sign of nervousness in official circles, such rumors might be explained as doubts over the morality, indeed the effectiveness, of the violent repression of the preceding decade. Minh Mạng’s death in January 1841, after twenty years on the throne, ended one of the most intensive periods of reform and change in Vietnamese history. His reign not only led to the consolidation of central rule, but through a series of military campaigns it extended Huế’s control over much of Cambodia and Laos to achieve the largest territory governed by a Vietnamese monarch. More than any other ruler in the nineteenth century, Minh Mạng was responsible for molding the parochial and factious regions of the kingdom into a coherent whole. The accession of Thiệu Trị in 1841, however, saw the beginning of a gradual erosion of these achievements. From the outset of the reign, external threats presented new dangers to the dynasty. In late 1841, the recrudescence of Khmer resistance against Nguyễn rule in Cambodia, and renewed hostility with Siam, forced the Nguyễn army into an increasingly defensive position in the far south, marking the commencement of a protracted frontier war that flared intermittently over the following two decades and that led to a complete withdrawal in 1847. In southern China, British attacks on Canton in 1840 over the opium trade not only damaged the Qing dynasty’s prestige in the region, it raised fears, especially in Huế, of intensified European aggression.

four

Mission Revival

After nearly a decade of brutal repression, in 1841 the Vietnamese church and mission was on the brink of collapse. Since the 1832 sentencing of Dương Sơn’s seventy Catholics, the repression had torn apart many communities across the country. Hundreds of Catholics had been imprisoned or exiled, and at least one hundred—along with local priests and missionaries—had been executed for refusing to recant. Compounding the effects of the repression, the state had taken increasingly brutal measures to enforce its edicts on religious practice down to the village level. Fearful of court reprisals, many Catholic villages, like their nonCatholic neighbors, complied with the edict to erect village altars to honor the tutelary spirits assigned by Huế, and began to undertake regular offerings. Caught in a choice between survival and resistance to Huế’s authority, many Catholic communities strived to conceal their connections with the mission and carry on with church activities out of sight of local officials. The mission itself faced perhaps the darkest years of its history in Vietnam. Forced into hiding, the French mission hierarchy depended for much of the 1830s on local priests with the mission administration, coordinating activities 92



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from isolation. This situation, although essential to the survival of the mission, drained resources and was a dangerous burden on the local church. In hiding, missionaries succumbed to a variety of tribulations that in turn could compound the threat to local congregations. Father Jeanne, relegated to the remote village of Cái Mơn in the Mekong Delta, spent nearly three years in almost hermit-like isolation from his confreres. The only missionary to have traveled all the way to the far south since the end of the Gia Ðịnh rebellion in 1835, after only two years there he fell gravely ill. So bad was his condition, Duclos explained in January 1842, that Jeanne, suffering from delirium, “sang incessantly.” Since Jeanne was in constant need of help and given to erratic behavior on account of his fever, local Catholics worried that he “risked compromising the whole mission.”1 For other missionaries, the repression brought unrelenting misery. From 1833 Bringol had evaded capture by hiding like a hermit in caves in Quảng Ngãi and Bình Định. In 1841, pitifully unwell and no longer able to sustain himself, he was captured by a group of thugs who released him only after extorting a hefty bribe from the missionary’s helpers. He died at the end of the year, probably of despair and hunger, just as Candalh had done in 1838 in upland Quảng Trị. Under such gloomy circumstances, Minh Mạng’s death in January 1841 came as a welcome respite, even though some missionaries feared his successor, Thiệu Trị, would only intensify the repression.2 Yet the commencement of the new reign saw an immediate suspension of several of Minh Mạng’s policies, notably the Catholic repression, which lasted until at least 1842. While the cessation of conflict did not last, a hiatus in the first year of the Thiệu Trị reign provided the mission with a chance to regroup, assess the damage to the local church, and formulate a plan to rebuild.

The Go Thi Synod: Cuenot’s Legacy The year 1841 marks a turning point in the Cochinchina mission’s fortunes after the trials of the Minh Mạng repression. Following news of Mgr. Taberd’s death in September 1840—Taberd had fled Cochinchina just prior to the Lê Văn Khôi rebellion in 1833 and had never deigned to return—the mantel of responsibility for the Cochinchina vicariate passed to his energetic junior, Étienne Cuenot. One of the first to return to the vicariate after 1835, Cuenot had been the de facto apostolic vicar ever since and had provided sturdy direction for the mission despite the constant threat of arrest. His accession to the post of apostolic vicar no

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doubt boosted fading morale in the local hierarchy—which formally had been leaderless for much of the preceding decade—and it also provided new impetus for a revival of the mission’s administration. Cuenot’s elevation at this point was fortuitous on several accounts, most notably for the rigor he brought to the near moribund mission, but also for the methods he employed, which might be explained by his background. Born at the beginning of the Napoleonic era, Cuenot infused in his approach many of the more modern, nationalist views of his post-Revolution generation.3 Taking advantage of the respite in hostilities that lasted throughout 1841 and up to Thiệu Trị’s investiture—which took place under the supervision of a Qing envoy in Hanoi in March 1842—Cuenot organized a synod council to gather the local clergy and lay down new measures to revive the mission. Having experienced firsthand the trials of the repression under Minh Mạng, Cuenot sought to strengthen the MEP’s internal governance and to help insulate the wider church community against anti-Catholic hostility. He understood that the violence of the previous decade had sapped the mission’s capacity and resources. Yet he also recognized that the mission maintained some advantages. Local priests could still travel through the vicariate, although cautiously, to administer congregations and, moreover, a modest network of lay leaders and couriers could still disseminate mission correspondence, communications, and funds between communities. It was on the expansion of this network and the tightening of bonds between congregations that the mission turned to consolidate its presence. The basis for the Gò Thị Synod was the implementation of a series of “Chapters” propounded at the “Synod of Sutchuen” (Szechwan) in southern China in 1803. Impressed by the decisions on hierarchy and organization made there, the Propaganda Fide ordered somewhat belatedly in 1832 that the decisions should be applied to all vicariates in East Asia.4 The instructions did not reach the Cochinchina vicariate, owing most likely to the dangerous situation there, until 1839. They had arrived earlier in the north, in the mid-1830s, where the respective apostolic vicars of East Tonkin, the Spanish Dominican Mgr. Delgado, and West Tonkin, Mgr. Havard of the MEP, dismissed much of the council’s advice, claiming that many of the articles, such as longer periods of instruction in Latin for local priests, had long been implemented in their own vicariates.5 Whereas Delgado and Havard viewed the Sutchuen Synod’s recommendations as dated and obsolete, Cuenot in contrast treated the document as an opportunity to reform the Cochinchina mission and galvanize the clergy.6 The Cochinchina synod was held in August 1841, and significantly thirteen



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out of the vicariate’s thirty local priests attended while only two other missionaries, Léfèbvre and Fr. Jean Claude Miche, traveled to the gathering.7 Such high attendance of the vicariate’s clergy and the three most senior missionaries at a single location bordered on folly in light of the recent years of repression—if local officials had chanced upon this meeting it would almost certainly have led to the mission’s annihilation. Nevertheless, the invitation of such a large group of local clergy, all from different areas of the vicariate—eight from the central provinces, two from north of Huế, and three from Gia Định—suggests a concerted attempt to involve a representative delegation. Over a week, the attendees responded to the chapters set on diverse topics, ranging from new rules for the instruction of local priests to the administration of the sacraments and the indoctrination of neophytes. Each chapter contained a series of articles on adjustments and refinements for the implementation of new measures according to the unique social setting. For example, chapter 4, on the Eucharist, ordered that women should be made to wear a cloth over their faces. To that point women normally received the sacrament using their long hair as a veil. Orthodoxy now required more covering. In chapter 5, on the conduct of the Mass, the first article forbade the ceremony to be held in the presence of carvings and pictures of four of the revered animals of Vietnamese folklore, the dragon, lion, tortoise, and eagle. These symbols were obviously still widely present in Catholic communities, in households on walls and furniture, and outdoors as statues and on tombs. This chapter also reminded priests that Mass should only be conducted in dark hours, at least no later than three hours before dawn during a time of repression.8 These measures hint at the detail and rigor in discussions at the synod. In turn, they highlight the increasingly strict discipline under which local Catholics came as the MEP sought to consolidate its grip over the vicariate. This was confirmed not only in the proscription of local animist symbols, but in the enforcement of puritanical views on families. Notably, the sixth chapter, on penance, established severe restrictions regarding confessions. One of its articles required priests to pressure adults with the threat of withholding absolution, to ensure adherence to guidelines regarding children—not allowing children to sleep in the same bed as parents, preventing boys and girls from sleeping in the same room, dressing children decently, forbidding swearing and obscene sayings, and forbidding children to be around itinerants, hawkers, vendors, or in places frequented by comedians or soldiers. The chapter also held that reciting the Rosary prayer was no longer a sufficient form of penance—thus suggesting

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this was long the main reparation administered—and listed a series of alternatives including visiting the sick, cutting back temporarily on smoking tobacco or chewing betel, and restricting oneself for a time to eating only rice with salt.9 The reality of the implementation of these measures may have been far different from their spirit, but the underlying message of doctrinal purity through social control indicates a new forcefulness. The stringent guidelines adopted at the council effectively set the Cochinchina mission on a new course. Responding to the previous decades of loose administration, hindered by MEP competition with Franciscans and the 1830s’ repression, Gò Thị not only called for more orthodox Catholic practices, it established a new modus operandi for the hierarchy of relationships linking missionaries to congregations. The most noticeable evidence of this shift can be seen in the implementation of one of the key resolutions arising from the council, more rigorous catechizing of neophytes, or new converts. One of the first matters to be discussed at the synod, the process of preparing neophytes for baptism, was extended to forty days for normal cases and up to a year for the uneducated, the mentally infirm, servants, and slaves.10 The purpose of this distinction was clearly to ensure the earnestness of neophytes and ward off potentially less-than-genuine converts: for example, fugitives seeking mission protection, those seeking personal gain by marrying other converts, or those wishing to convert for the heterodox belief in Catholicism’s supposed healing powers. As a concession, the chapter added that it was no longer necessary for catechumens—students studying the catechism in preparation for baptism—to learn by rote an endless number of prayers. Instead the duty fell to catechist instructors and priests to ensure doctrinal lessons were comprehensive and focused on orthodox Catholic practice. Several letters from the early 1840s provide the first details of indoctrination from the period, highlighting what was an intensive and exceedingly costly process. Father Marie Fontaine, based with Cuenot at Gò Thị, provided a detailed description of local conversion in his February 1843 report.11 As a first step messengers went out to “pagan” villages to search for those willing to be instructed and convert. “Every day,” he wrote, “messengers returned to His Grace [Cuenot] . . . to report their success,” in turn paving the way for a local priest to visit and encourage visited villagers to accept instruction. According to Miche, potential converts were next graded according to age and ability and “billeted to the homes of Christians [to which] catechists would attend” for their instruction.12 Catechists, lay leaders who had received some doctrinal education, taught the rudiments of the religion, staying “the whole day, not returning to their re-



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spective residence until the cover of darkness,” probably to avoid arousing the suspicions of non-Catholic neighbors. As part of this arrangement generous houses providing the haven were also “obliged to undertake great expense to provide subsistence for everyone during the period of instruction.”13 Through October 1842, Fontaine claimed, the principal “retreat” for instruction in Gò Thị supported up to fifty catechumens learning the fundamentals of the religion. Normally, the mission had “30 to 50 pagans [new catechumens] at a time . . . lodged, fed, [and] instructed.” So lavish and well organized was the retreat that the mission had people “solely occupied with cooking rice and preparing food” for all.14 Then, after thirty to forty days of intensive instruction, the process culminated in a baptism ceremony: “those who had been sufficiently instructed and know the Christian prayers taught them by the Christians . . . we admit . . . to holy Baptism which the Father of their district administers to them. . . . Each neophyte at the solemn [occasion] of Baptism receives a white habit that they keep for their usage . . . [and receives] a medal and rosary, etc.”15 It is difficult to imagine how new converts would have felt about the “white habits” to be worn at their baptism, especially since white was traditionally reserved for funeral attire. But such gifts, the rosary and medals, laden with spiritual significance, surely secured the loyalty of new converts, for whom such exotic symbols would have been a rarity. The mission further ensured the continued rise of conversion rates by encouraging catechists and new converts to invite other family members to seek instruction. Thus the most “fervent” converts were selected to undertake to “find 3 or 4 other pagans” each to introduce to the congregation. The success of this tactic is suggested by the jump in adult baptisms and registered catechumens after 1842. According to Fontaine, in the four provinces neighboring his base—Bình Định, Quảng Ngãi, Quảng Nam, and Khánh Hòa—the mission had undertaken “854 baptisms” over the preceding year, 714 of which were in Bình Định alone.16 This rate, an astounding jump considering the prevailing sanctions on the religion, exceeded that of the 1830s and 1820s by up to eight times.17 In 1843, the number doubled to over sixteen hundred adult baptisms, all of whom presumably would have submitted to an intense indoctrination similar to that described by Fontaine.18 Cuenot’s new administration inaugurated at the Gò Thị Synod was a success to say the least. Apart from concentrating the resources of the demoralized local clergy, Cuenot’s introduction of orthodox and doctrinally laden rules for congregations marked a crucial turning point in how the mission related to the local

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church. Far from repelling converts with the new ultra-conservative demands, the mission attracted new members. The spectacular rise in conversions throughout the 1840s raises questions as to what made the church so attractive at this point. Above, I explained this rise in the context of greater mission resources and funding; but other factors, such as changes in local attitudes, played a no less significant role. In 1841, the commencement of a new reign not only saw a reevaluation of court policies—notably the anti-Catholic campaign—it likely heralded in popular belief a clean break from the Minh Mạng period in which the new monarch would determine the tenor of rule. The start of Thiệu Trị’s reign saw, for example, an immediate revival of Buddhism at court. A devout Buddhist, Thiệu Trị ordered elaborate mourning rites for his father’s funeral.19 But a broader shift in society appears to have taken hold, as Miche reported excitedly in late 1841: “Everywhere there is talk of conversion, and often they are conversions which astound. . . . People who have resisted [conversion] . . . in peaceful times, people who would never think of becoming Christians when they were able without danger, reveal themselves and demand baptism at the moment of peril.”20 When Miche wrote, in December 1841, the violence of previous years had barely subsided; his reference to peaceful times seems to be little more than nostalgia for the pre-1833 period. Yet at the end of 1841, without Thiệu Trị promulgating a clearly stated edict outlawing the religion, many probably associated the new reign with a more lenient attitude, and believed that Catholicism was no longer forbidden. Broader socioeconomic changes, not to mention the spread of poverty, as Yoshiharu Tsuboi has suggested, gripped Vietnam at the beginning of the 1840s and no doubt played into sentiment toward conversion. The economic and political turmoil of earlier decades, particularly the slow demographic recovery after the devastation caused by the Tây Sơn rebellion, compounded by the failure of the Gia Long and Minh Mạng reigns to redress widespread poverty and unrelenting taxation, had given rise over successive generations to a class of itinerants who, displaced from their meager landholdings, had consequently been disenfranchised from the security of village life.21 Mission-funded communities, especially in the far south of Cochinchina, must have appeared to such itinerants as an oasis of modest stability, both social and economic, in a country where the threat of devastation through drought, plague, or disease was ever present. Conversion not only promised membership in a tightly organized, self-supporting community, it enfranchised the destitute and most desperate.22 Citing Nghệ An province as an example, Tsuboi suggests a connection in this regard between



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high rates of Catholic conversion and economic hardship.23 Although conjecture, the idea has some value considering the growing funds reaching the mission from the late 1830s. However, mission sources do not readily reveal the socioeconomic status of converts in the period, part of the reason being simply that severe poverty was so widespread as to be the norm. Moreover, different regions enjoyed high rates of conversion for reasons other than purely economic or communal incentive. Based in the sparsely populated settler region of the Mekong Delta, Léfèbvre explained additional reasons for the sharp rise in conversions by drawing our attention to demographic shifts. In 1843, he received a request by twenty Cambodians for instruction in one of the districts he administered. Before long, he reported hearing—possibly through a local priest—of a village of six hundred people in the same canton who wanted “to come and settle in the area where I am living in order to receive the necessary instruction.”24 Such high numbers— essentially whole villages—suggests a number of possibilities. Foremost, this was a highly dynamic region of settlement, trade, and commerce, conflict between Vietnamese migrants and Khmer, and religious diversity. In Cochinchina, it might be suggested, the mission’s rigid religious practices provided an alternative way of life in a region where isolation from political centers forced communities to seek security and protection through whatever means were available.

Modernization in the Mission: Sacraments, Finances, and Propaganda The Gò Thị Synod also coincided with deeper changes in the mission’s administration, notably a modernization of record-keeping and more concerted attempts to strengthen lines of communication with church organizations in France. In earlier decades, missionaries kept records of weekly and monthly affairs that the vicar apostolic summarized in the form of a vicariate annual report, a long letter outlining in narrative the main events of the year including all the important issues facing the mission. These letters normally included information on local communities and politics, stories of conversions, and reports of unusual occurrences, often accompanied by a brief table of the total number of sacraments—confessions, communion, confirmations, and so on— administered for the entire vicariate. Beginning in 1841, these rambling reports were replaced by tabled catalogs with lists and figures of expenses and

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point-form descriptions of mission activities as well as sacraments admin­ istered by province. The change to a degree can be attributed to Cuenot’s ­consolidation efforts and his more rigorous approach to mission administration. But Cuenot’s reforms must be viewed against the backdrop of religious and political change back in France, where the demand for detailed descriptions of mission activity originated. Reemerging in 1815 after the tumult of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic regime, the Catholic church in France underwent dramatic change to reassert its position within French politics and society. Leading the charge was not the remnant clerical hierarchy, which had been compromised by Napoleon’s muzzling of the church, but rather Catholic intellectuals who, imbued with the profound changes in French national consciousness, advocated reform of the church’s role in society. Ironically, such figures as Felicité de Lammenais, a priest and prominent public intellectual who, because of his radical views, had a long-running dispute with Pope Gregory XVI in the 1830s, advocated change in the church in reaction to the ascendancy of liberal politics in the French parliament. In so doing, however, they contributed in no small extent to the church’s transformation into a more socially conscious institution that, in its own way, eventually came to play an influential role in France’s political economy. Driving these changes from the 1820s was the emergence in public discourse of a greater awareness of the social repercussions of the previous decades of social unrest and industrialization, which in turn underpinned calls for the church to involve itself in delivering charity to the poor and disenfranchised.25 From this period, charitable work, often initiated by lay church members, came to replace the politically motivated greed mongering that had characterized the Second Estate under the ancien régime, allowing the church to reinvent itself and regain its superiority.26 A prominent and highly successful example of this transformation was Frédéric Ozanam’s Society for Saint Vincent-de-Paul established in 1833, which in time was a model for a variety of other specialized Catholic charitable organizations. Despite its modest beginnings in the Parisian slums, Ozanam’s society grew within a decade to become a coordinated, politically active, diversely funded, interregional and later international organization.27 A distinctive feature was the involvement of secular patrons in its administration and the attention to raising funds in new ways, notably through subscriptions. The MEP directly benefited from the paradigm shift reshaping church activity at the time, specifically through the proliferation of pro-Catholic print



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media. As explored by Cooke, the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith— founded by the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in 1822—became over a very short period a powerful vehicle for propagandizing the MEP’s works in faraway missions such as Vietnam for popular consumption in France.28 Emulating earlier Protestant and Jesuit missionary correspondence, the Annals enjoyed unprecedented success both in terms of its wide readership and the funds it managed to raise through subscriptions.29 The Annals’ success lay in its accessibility underpinned by the sheer appeal of missionaries’ dramatic stories, which in the case of Vietnam focused almost entirely on the persecution. As early as the mid-1830s, a generation before the French invasion of Cochin­ china, published correspondence had an important impact on French Catholic perceptions of Vietnam—which were almost entirely dominated by the violence of the Minh Mạng reign. Stories of martyrdom and unflinching displays of faith in the face of the tyrannical Nguyễn court had a dramatic, if not sensational, impact on French Catholic attitudes. It is possible, for example, to draw a direct connection between the rising prominence of the Annals and an increase in the recruitment of young men as missionaries.30 In later years, missionaries cited executions in Vietnam as inspiration for wanting to serve in the region. For example, Jean Venard claimed news of Jean-Charles Cornay’s execution in 1837 in Sơn Tây attracted him to the priesthood as a child.31 The most striking indication of the Annals’ impact in Catholic society, both in terms of the audience size and support, can be seen in the steady rise of subscriptions and donations. As highlighted by Cooke, so successful was the Annals in attracting members, who paid only 5 centimes per week (or 2fr60 annually), that from meager receipts of 23,000 francs in 1822–23, the society’s funds from subscriptions rose more than tenfold by 1827, reaching 255,000 francs.32 Still more impressive increases in subscriptions occurred during the 1830s. In 1835, the society received over half a million francs; this jumped to just under one million in 1837, and a year later to one million three hundred thousand francs—an increase of nearly 150 percent in just three years. Apart from reflecting a growing public consciousness in French society in the period and the Annals’ popularity, the dramatic increase was almost certainly linked to the reporting of persecutions. Thus, the significant surges in subscription receipts coincided with articles appearing in 1836 on Marchand’s execution, for example. Correspondence, which reported the execution of several missionaries in Vietnam in 1837 and 1838, also likely stimulated subscription increases in following years, as seen for example in 1840 when receipts soared to nearly two-and-half million francs.33

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Focused on the religious dimensions of mission work, Catholic popular media in 1830s France had a normative effect on public perceptions of mission activities abroad. It played a central role in the creation of public awareness of Catholic persecution in places like Nguyễn Vietnam. The implications for Cochinchina were twofold: the greater involvement of French Catholics in funding mission activity immediately boosted Cuenot’s coffers; and, over the longer term, the constant exposure of Catholics in France to the violent reprisals against Catholics in Vietnam and French missionaries fed into popular political sentiment. Unlike his predecessor, Cuenot was attuned to the connection between the popularity of Catholic journals in France and mission fortunes in Vietnam, and exploited the situation to its full potential. Another organization, the Association for the Holy Childhood (Société pour le Sainte Enfance), funded a particularly important niche in the Cochinchina mission’s economy by the late 1840s. The Holy Childhood—founded in Lyon in 1843—much like the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, drew the lion’s share of its resources from subscriptions. But the Holy Childhood encouraged membership—at 60 centimes per year—among Catholic children, which it funneled to its three core functions: ensuring the baptism of dying children, particularly “pagans”; sponsoring health and education for children; and, assisting in the adoption of orphaned children into Christian families.34 The last had particular success in Vietnam where the mission established orphanages and purchased the children of poverty-stricken parents. The practice of purchasing children at a bond occurred usually during famines or after the cholera epidemics that frequently swept through and killed many.35 Otherwise, missionaries often persuaded non-Catholic families to have their dying children baptized—at a cost, according to Cuenot, of four children for a franc—the symbolic imperative of saving the child’s soul.36 The first reference to funds received from the Holy Childhood in Cochinchina appears in Cuenot’s 1847 annual report for the East Cochinchina vicariate, only three years after the association’s inauguration. Cuenot reported the receipt in 1846 of four thousand francs from the Holy Childhood, which he used to “purchase” an unknown number of orphans and to baptize dying children.37 At this early stage of the association’s activities, Cuenot was unable to account precisely for all funds, the bulk of which was most likely absorbed by other mission expenses. The expansion of charitable activities signified the strengthening of the bond between the vicariate in Vietnam and public understanding in France of mission work. The basis of this bond was the increased citation of statistics in mission an-



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nual reports. In 1841, for example, the mission baptized 1,881 dying “infidel” children, in contrast to over 3,000 children of Catholic parents.38 This figure jumped remarkably in 1843 to 8,273 dying “infidel” children to 2,599 Catholic children.39 For 1847 in East Cochinchina, the figure stood at 5,863 “dying children” against 1,778 “children of Christians.”40 All grist for annual reports to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Holy Childhood, these statistics provided edifying news for the pages of the Annals and emphasized the mission’s vigor under dangerous circumstances. It did not matter that the mortality rate of “dying infidel children” baptized by the mission remained high— ­Cuenot’s 1843 report noted that of 2,565 dying children baptized only 534 survived41—the principal aim was to save souls. Miche articulated his confreres’ sentiments: “It is thus you who populate Heaven with these innocent creatures who would be expelled if you had not come to open their way. Thanks to you, these children have become friends of God, and their acknowledgment by you assures their protection.”42 To complement the new efficiency in mission management, Cuenot implemented other measures to help boost the mission’s visibility, both to the local church in Cochinchina and back in Europe. A particularly novel step involved the collection of records and accounts on the arrest, punishment, and executions of local Catholics. After the Gò Thị Synod, Cuenot appointed local “commissioners” to create a catalog of the experiences of victims of the “persecution” the purpose of which was to provide edifying material for “circular letters” to be disseminated to all priests and congregations in the vicariate.43 Although these stories were neatly recorded in Latin and accompanied annual reports sent to the Vatican, they also had enormous propaganda value within the Vietnamese mission. Translated into quốc ngữ, romanized Vietnamese, the stories served as examples for instruction and inspiration. For example, concentrating on the reign of the Nguyễn king Võ Vương (1738–65), in an 1844 letter in quốc ngữ Cuenot related the acts of thầy Tủng, or “Teacher Tủng,” who was executed in 1750 during a brief anti-Catholic repression.44 Circulated to different congregations and read aloud by the local priest as a lesson, these stories must have had a profound influence on the imaginations of Catholics, many of whom would have experienced, or suffered, the hardships of the repression first hand. Fontaine pointed out that such stories provided many with a “great cause of consolation and encouragement” as Catholics became increasingly isolated from their non-Catholic neighbors and fellow villagers.45 It may also be that the stories had a more subtle effect in nurturing a community-wide consciousness of persecution and difference.

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At the same time accounts sent to Europe and published in Catholic journals, such as the Annals, had a no less significant impact over the long term on French Catholic society. Along with the “Relations” of missionaries, stories of Vietnamese experiences were instrumental in shaping European perceptions of Catholicism in Asia. Personal accounts of violence presented Vietnamese Catholics in a way similar to early church Christians of the Roman empire. Apart from promoting the view that Christianity would triumph in Asia as it had in Rome, the superimposition of Roman church narratives made exotic Asian Christians more recognizable to French and European audiences. As in Cuenot’s letter in late 1839, such appeals for a transcultural solidarity were invoked as a compelling call to alms: “The names of these intrepid soldiers of Jesus Christ bring too much honor to the Annamite Church to not cite them to their brothers in Europe.”46

The New Mission Before the 1840s missions like Cochinchina normally received an allocation, a “viaticum” or “food for a journey,” of 500 francs per annum per missionary, which arrived, if secure shipping permitted, each year.47 Mission expenditure, which was generally very low, was decentralized and disbursed to individual missionaries according to their needs. Although the absence of clear archival records makes it difficult to locate when the first changes occurred in allocations and funding levels, Cuenot’s 1844 to 1845 report reveals an important shift in the disbursement of such funds.48 This document, which reports details of finances, not only reveals the unprecedentedly high levels of funds that had started to flow from Europe from around the time Cuenot was appointed apostolic vicar, it also reveals a wide variety of activities in the mission previously not mentioned in annual reports. The 1844–45 expense report outlined a budget of nearly 45,000 francs—the equivalent roughly of 22,000 ligatures of copper cash or over 1,000 silver taels— which could have purchased enough rice, around 10,000 measures (phương), to feed an army.49 Having received the allocation in 1844, Cuenot divided the sum and distributed 15,000 francs to the newly established vicariate of West Cochin­ china—which Cuenot received orders to create in 1844 to cover the provinces from Biên Hòa to Cambodia—retaining 30,000 for East Cochinchina.50 For 1845, Cuenot drew on the princely sum of 11,000 francs for his episcopal see in



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Quy Nhơn, his clergy, and “other people attached to the mission,” presumably his clerks, aids, and couriers.51 Two thousand francs paid for the travel expenses of missionaries arriving and departing the mission. He had directed 1,500 francs to the mission’s “establishments,” for example, the vicariate’s Latin college in Gò Thị. The outlay of such extraordinary funds accounts for the mission’s ability to support the sharp growth in conversions in the early 1840s. It is with the final two expenses, however, that we see the extent to which mission involvement in society had increased in response to the anti-Catholic campaign. The first sum, “for the special needs of the vicariate,” at 9,230 francs, represented the second largest expense of 1844–45. According to Cuenot’s report, the vicariate had delivered: safety to old and new Christians; to the first [old Christians] to remove them from vexation and superstition and provide them with necessary instruction; to the second [new Christians] to aid them and settle them in the midst of Christians, etc. [to pay for] the maintenance of catechumens during their instruction, the redemption of some of their children or parents, etc.52

As demonstrated in the breadth of expenses covered by mission expenditure, financial resources were increasingly directed to buying security for Catholics, either through bribery or through resettlement. From the early 1840s, Cuenot’s mission reports record ever-increasing amounts being directed to what he ambiguously termed “special expenses,” or the “special needs” of the mission. These expenses, which cost the mission around a third of its budget in some years and threw the 1846 to 1847 accounts into a 17,000 franc deficit, included a raft of unpleasant transactions.53 The “special needs” included not only the cost of assisting converts to resettle, but also the cost of maintaining Catholics in prison or in exile, and increasingly in paying off local officials and bandits taking advantage of Catholics. The record also noted an expense of 6,000 francs for maintaining “our prisoners”—that is, imprisoned or exiled Catholics—numbering some fifty-five at the time of Cuenot’s report, who were being held at “different points of the vicariate.”54 The financial records for November 1846 to November 1847 present a careful breakdown and offer insights into other activities.55 In 1847, for example, the East Cochinchina mission maintained forty-five exiles and prisoners at a cost of 1,600 francs. This expense, which provided food and assistance, equaled twenty taels (according to official records)—an amount similar to that received by Lê Ngọc Thế for his capture of Ignacious Delgado in Cần Lao village in 1838. For

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the village searches carried out through the region in 1847, described by Cuenot as “the crisis,” he spent 7,500 francs. This amount, equal to around 94 taels, was probably distributed to numerous congregations in East and West Cochinchina to soften the impact of official inquiries made to capture missionaries or have Catholics publicly recant. It would easily have paid the annual salaries of nearly one hundred district magistrates (tri huyện).56 In short, such lavish funds would have more than rivaled the annual incomes of low-level officials, such as canton heads, and middle-level officials, magistrates and prefects, and, in turn, neutralized the rewards offered by the court for the capture of missionaries and local priests. If we consider that each month a lowly soldier received around one ligature of cash and one measure of rice—the equivalent of a ligature of cash—and the greater population earned not much more, the mission must have presented an attractive target to many.57 Just as the system of financial rewards for the capture of missionaries under Minh Mạng broadened the scope for corruption within the bureaucracy, the arrival of increased mission funds intensified the danger of extortion beyond expectations under Thiệu Trị. While the mission had greater funds at its disposal, it still had to compete with the rewards offered by the court. Léfèbvre’s translation of the royal edict announcing the arrest of two missionaries, Berneux and Galy, in 1841 details the range of monetary rewards distributed and draws attention to the range of beneficiaries. The first major arrest of the new reign, the capture of these two missionaries, earned Nam Định’s governor Trịnh Quang Khanh a boost to his career and “a gold ring, a precious stone and a piece of gold.” Substantial rewards also flowed to others involved. According to dynastic records, the court set aside 1,000 ligatures of cash for the arrests.58 It noted that the provincial prefect in charge at the time should have been punished for failing to act earlier, but conceded that as he was new to the province he should be excused. He too was awarded a gold ring. The court ordered that to all the “inferior mandarins, [and] all those who have contributed to the capture, soldiers and people, [in] following the orders of the Saintly King, will go 1,000 ligatures (quan) from the public treasury for their recompense [to be] shared by each according to merit and justice.” Furthermore, the two officials principally responsible for the capture received “ten ounces of silver [ten taels] each, for their pains and to encourage others to follow their example.”59 The distribution of rewards to low-level officials and villagers in such instances is unfortunately less clear. Léfèbvre’s translation revealed that mandarins higher in the bureaucratic hierarchy received royal gifts and won status, but not necessar-



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ily financial reward. Senior mandarins distributed cash and silver rewards to their subordinates, who in turn would have doled out these sums to soldiers and peasants. It is highly likely that those lower in the chain of influence and authority received only a fraction of what was set aside, while senior officials customarily horded the larger portion for themselves. A less obvious effect of this system of rewards was the erosion of trust in mixed communities as neighbors denounced each other for cash. The most telling result of this in the 1840s was the splintering of mixed villages. In the search for security from violence and relief from the repression, individual Catholics, and in some cases whole congregations, sought isolated locations away from mixed villages or at least on the margins of Vietnamese formal rule. The move to isolated settlements in the 1830s and 1840s was not a new trend. Earlier, in the late eighteenth century, Catholics from around Huế established settlements such as Tân Triều and Lái Thiêu to escape the upheaval of the Tây Sơn rebellion.60 As Nguyễn Hồng Dương has observed, geography, patterns of settlement, and transitory village ties in the far south enabled Catholics to establish secluded settlements. These southern congregations differed in size and in the rigidity of their social organization from the well-established, corporate “Catholic village” of Tonkin.61 Southern Catholics congregated in hamlets that over time grew into villages and merged in peaceful periods with non-Catholic communities. But from the 1840s, these isolated, breakaway settlements became increasingly common in some areas in Cochinchina.62 Although it is difficult to estimate the number of these communities, short congregation monographs by French missionaries writing under the safety of French colonial rule in the early twentieth century contain several examples.63 Tha La, northwest of Saigon in present-day Tây Ninh province, was established in 1836, according to Père Victor Quinton. A core group of thirty sought the isolation of the west Biên Hòa hinterland to escape court retribution after the Lê Văn Khôi rebellion. Several of the settlers reportedly had “pagan wives,” and over the course of twenty-seven years—to 1863—the community grew substantially, to 299 people.64 Similarly, a single family established Cầu Ngang, southwest of Trà Vinh in the Mekong Delta, around 1840. Isolated among the swampy tidal canals of what is today Trà Vinh province, the self-declared congregation attracted Catholics from other long-established and well-known Mekong centers, including neighboring Cái Mơn, Cái Nhưm, and Bãi Xan. Despite the dangers, the settlement managed to build a thatch church—probably well away from any thoroughfare—shortly after 1840.65

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The shift to all-Catholic villages coincided with the increased dangers faced by Catholics living in mixed villages, but other desperate experiences also forced Catholics to seek refuge elsewhere. As seen in the annual reports, the mission diverted large sums of funding to pay for the release of Catholics from what was known as “debt-bondage.” This arrangement may have referred to indentured service or slavery, a common practice in the period. However, under these circumstances, I believe, the arrangement appears to have been a simple bond—and by implication thinly veiled extortion—between Catholics and their neighbors based on an exchange of property in return for safety from the threat of being denounced to the local mandarin.66

Mission Encounters The rise in mission funds in the wake of the Gò Thị Synod paved the way for Cuenot’s carefully engineered revival of his vicariate. But as we have seen, it perversely also brought the mission into closer contact with the Nguyễn bureaucracy. No matter how hard Cuenot sought to create a buffer between the mission and Huế’s anti-Catholic measures, the steady degradation of grassroots relations between Catholics and their non-Catholic neighbors was matched by the rise of exploitative arrangements. Furthermore, the repression raised the mission’s profile as an outlawed and increasingly unfamiliar subcommunity to officials—at least compared to the relationship between missionaries and officials like Lê Văn Duyệt in calmer years before 1833. In 1844, based in the Mekong Delta congregation of Cái Mơn—in presentday Ben Trễ—Léfèbvre escaped arrest for months despite several local mandarins apparently knowing of his presence.67 The peace was broken at the beginning of October when officials from Trà Vinh prefecture swooped on the congregation, arresting Léfèbvre, a local priest, and three of the lay congregation leaders. The local militia ransacked the village, attacking peasants and looting houses. One of his servants, Léfèbvre reported, was so badly beaten that he died shortly after the raid.68 The attack had several ramifications. For the officials involved, there was the imminent threat of demotion for failing to make the arrests earlier. Indeed, the local prefect immediately sought to shift the risk to his position by launching criminal proceedings against his own subordinates, those who had made the arrests in the first place. On the receiving end of the ordeal, the congregation faced dispersal and



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the village heads serious punishment. Here mission funds played an indispensable role. Not only did Léfèbvre use what funds he had at hand to ensure gentle treatment for himself and a local doctor (and student), Phước, who was also caught in the raid—at a cost of “200 ligatures” (worth four taels of silver) for himself and “two bars of silver” for Phước—but he also ensured the worst excesses were not visited on the entire village. Although the militia ­ almost completely destroyed the village during the raid and subsequent investigations, officials later allowed the remaining members to reestablish a settlement at the cost of 30 silver taels.69 Léfèbvre composed a detailed account of his capture and interrogation, providing us with one of the most illuminating insights into official perspectives of the mission. After being taken to Vĩnh Long, the apostolic vicar was presented before the “grand mandarin,” whom I believe was the acting provincial governorgeneral, and later accomplished general, Nguyễn Tri Phương.70 Léfèbvre diligently recorded a series of encounters with Phương, including snippets of conversation, to provide a highly reliable source for discerning official attitudes and biases. His record highlights some of the less impressive actions and failings of his catechists during their interrogation. Normally, if he had intended composing a record for publication one can assume that the depiction of events would have been quite different. Instead, the letter was addressed to Cuenot—hence its containing large sections of quốc ngữ transcriptions without French translations—and is an open history of events, shorn of dramatic missionary rhetoric. Most striking in Léfèbvre’s encounters with Phương is the governor’s relaxed and highly inquisitive demeanor. On their first meeting, Phương was overcome with curiosity, asking the vicar his age, and closely inspecting his long beard and foreign face. He noted disbelievingly that a man of only thirty-five years— Phương was around forty-five—could achieve the status of a thầy, a teacher or master, which outside the Catholic context might refer to a doctor. He treated Léfèbvre with unusual hospitality, offering him a cigar, food, and a place to sleep in his own residence. In turn Léfèbvre was appropriately mannered, addressing the governor as ông, the polite form of address for superior officials. But apart from the small talk, Phương’s curiosity draws attention to a central predisposition among Vietnamese to the healing features of Catholicism. Ever since Catholicism was first introduced to Vietnam in the sixteenth century, it was popularly perceived as a healing religion. The whole repertoire of Catholic practices, from baptism, to the Eucharist and Extreme Unction, corresponded to and reinforced local views on the immanence of spiritual powers. In

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popular belief, illness, for example, was associated with the presence of a malevolent spirit rather than any pathology. The repertoire of Catholic rituals was seen as a method to divine the presence of a spirit and a remedy for its expulsion.71 In Léfèbvre’s times, the court’s vilification of the religion was based on attacking this reputation. Underscoring an inverse view of its healing agency, official perspectives claimed that Catholic ritual misled believers. Not only was Catholic doctrine suspect, but so were its rituals, which were attacked for their perceived ability to “mesmerize,” mê, people. Phương’s candid preoccupation with various religious objects gathered with Léfèbvre at his arrest is surprising. For example, the governor opened a bottle of the vicar’s specially blessed holy oil and sticking his finger into the jar raised it to his nose to smell. Phưong demanded to know what it was and Léfèbvre responded it was “ordinary oil,” to which the governor countered: “but what is its virtue?” The governor seized on a small bottle of quinine, and this time interrogated a canton head (tổng) by the name of Lợi as to its effectiveness. He also demanded to know whether the missionary had any other medicines. Then, turning to some leftover jars of flour and of wine—most of which the soldiers had apparently drunk—he sought clarification as to whether these were not thuốc mê, or what might be translated as “medicine used for mesmerizing.” Léfèbvre indignantly responded that such an idea was nothing less than “atrocious slander invented by enemies of the religion,” at which Phương provocatively retorted: “but don’t you steal the eyes of dead children in order to make medicine?”72 Léfèbvre wrote this letter as a captive, thus his discussions with Phương are best understood as inflated presentations of his attempt to dispel the myths and prejudices that had become so dangerous for the mission and were apparently widely held within the mandarinate. Yet, it seems, the governor’s opinions were entrenched and evidently not so malicious as Léfèbvre seems to portray them. It is curious that the governor should have bothered to be so hospitable, granting Léfèbvre so much latitude and time in the first place. This letter gives the impression that Léfèbvre missed the whole point of his special treatment by Phương, the essence of which is captured in a late exchange shortly before the narrative turns to other issues. In an attempt to enlighten the governor on the “truths” of the religion, at one point the apostolic vicar delivered a lengthy lecture to Phương who, according to Léfèbvre, listened attentively to his every word. After the monologue, the governor apparently responded that the apostolic vicar’s comments were true and reasonable. But, he then added, perhaps sarcastically, that listening to the vicar’s speech, the words “had gone into his heart,” and he had



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“nearly been mesmerized.”73 Such a spontaneous response, not at all hinting at Léfèbvre’s embellishment, might suggest Phương’s near lack of interest in the missionary’s homily. Rather, it seems to refer back to his curiosity in the missionary’s religious objects and Léfèbvre as a spectacle in his own right. More generally, the encounter draws attention to a critical feature of Nguyễn suspicions about Catholicism: the Sisyphean task of policing the sensibilities of individual mandarins far from court. After nearly two decades of Minh Mạng’s attempt to regularize the bureaucracy and stamp his version of Confucian orthodoxy in the minds of all officials, Governor Phương’s behavior would have been considered bordering on heresy among his more conscientious colleagues. Entertaining a missionary and seeking out medicines in the missionary’s belongings for their rumored healing properties not only demonstrated Phương’s willingness to dabble in heterodox beliefs, it betrayed his lack of seriousness in implementing the anti-Catholic measures. Such openness was a reflection of the wide gulf between official perspectives contained in court edicts and the more locally inclined views of mandarins in the provinces. If Phương subscribed completely to court concerns about the dangers of the religion, tasting the leftover Mass wine ought to have been an unimaginable flirtation. Instead, Phương’s response to the opportunity before him to engage Léfèbvre is as strong an indication as any that the prevailing official view of Catholicism was dangerously out of step with popular conceptions, as the court must have been aware. In late December, after two months of interrogation in Vĩnh Long, an edict arrived ordering that Léfèbvre, Phước, and the three lay leaders be placed in irons and sent to Huế. Also, thanks to this edict the mandarins involved in the raids received a second, official reward for the captures. According to Léfèbvre, the military officer in charge of the raid, Nguyễn Văn Phương, received two coins specially minted during the Minh Mạng reign.74 The district magistrate of Trà Vinh, Bùi Hữu Nghĩa, a prominent local scholar who in the 1860s would lead a fierce resistance against French forces, also received one.75 A further 100 ligatures of cash were distributed to the 130 soldiers involved in the raid. Interestingly, Léfèbvre noted, several officials were concerned that their having extorted money and received rewards would be reported by him once he reached Huế. They “made numerous excuses and several honorable visits” to him before his departure in which, Léfèbvre noted, “their hypocrisy was too visibly the principle.” The mandarins, he observed, “feared singularly that we would reveal their embezzlement at the royal city.”76 After a lengthy overland journey, the party guarding Léfèbvre reached Huế in March 1845. Fortunately for Léfèbvre, he smuggled

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a letter out of prison and alerted French naval forces in the region of his predicament. In June, a French naval envoy arrived at Đà Nẵng and secured his release. Illicit arrangements, bribery, and extortion, afforded congregations considerable security from official sanctions. In fact, by the mid-1840s such arrangements underpinned relationships between congregations and officials and had become an entrenched feature of accommodation. Despite the danger of overexploitation, or extortion by spiteful neighbors, criminals, and opportunists, such illicit agreements offered Catholics protection from the threat of searches and enabled them to resist conforming to court edicts on the observance of state cults. Security often equated with anonymity; communities continued to pay taxes but increasingly lived in settlements apart from non-Catholic villages. However, the threat of punitive searches always loomed. Catholics lived on the margins of the Nguyễn state, but not beyond its reach.

Imperial Collision From the mid-1840s French naval activity in Southeast Asia led to increased diplomatic interference in Vietnam on behalf of the mission. The first of such instances occurred after Cuenot launched an unsuccessful attempt in 1841 to establish a congregation among the upland communities to the west of Phú Yên province. Seeking to benefit from the fairly well established trade route linking Vietnamese lowland areas with the “Laotians” further west, Cuenot sought to build a base among the people known as the Đê, a move that had the potential to open the way for the establishment of a permanent base beyond Huế’s rule.77 Unluckily for Cuenot, the small party he dispatched to the highlands—Miche, ­Duclos, and some Vietnamese translators and porters—ended in disaster after the group was apprehended by a band of Vietnamese militia who had been tipped off by merchants trading in the uplands.78 The group was marched in cangues to Phú Yên for questioning and then sent to Huế for a more thorough interrogation.79 In Huế, Duclos and Miche smuggled a letter out of prison, which was eventually delivered to Monsieur Barrot, the French consul general in Manila.80 After detailing the torture they faced after their capture, the letter repeated the complaint delivered to Phú Yên’s magistrate that they had been arrested “outside Annamite territory . . . and on free land.” Such a claim, aimed at the newly established French diplomatic presence, had the desired impact. In late 1843, a corvette, l’Heroïne, captained by Favin-Levêque, arrived in Đà Nẵng harbor to



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negotiate the release of Duclos and Miche as well as three others from the Tonkin missions.81 According to the dynastic records, the court pardoned and released the five on the grounds of their ignorance of the proscription.82 This intervention had unforeseen repercussions. For France, the dispatch of ships to Đà Nẵng to secure the release of missionaries crystallized from the mid1840s into a policy of what the government considered justified intervention. Following the rise of the Second Empire under Napoleon III in 1848, the church in France gained considerable political influence in Paris and in the 1850s used the violence in Vietnam to lobby for further military pressure on Huế. For Huế, the French attacks in the 1840s only confirmed for Thiệu Trị and his successor, Tự Đức, the warnings of Minh Mạng about the dangers of the mission and, moreover, the notion that the mission threat was indistinguishable from the spreading threat of European military influence in East Asia. If we focus on the repercussions at the grassroots, it is from the 1840s that we see the French state’s embryonic imperial aspirations in the Far East dovetail with the subtle and unpredictable inefficiencies of the Nguyễn bureaucracy—namely the inability of the court to control the exploitation of Catholics by mandarins and opportunists and the spiraling instability that this could cause in local society. The arrival in June 1845 of the French corvette l’Alcemène in Đà Nẵng to secure Léfèbvre’s release no doubt confirmed the court’s worst fears.83 The apostolic vicar was repatriated to Singapore and within a year attempted to reenter the south. Both Duclos and Léfèbvre were intercepted in June 1846 on the Saigon River after failing to bribe a customs mandarin.84 Disaster followed, not only for the two missionaries—Duclos died in prison several weeks later—but for the newly formed West Cochinchina vicariate. As Miche reported in a letter from February 1847, the boat on which the two were traveling was impounded and the mission’s annual allocation was lost.85 Shortly thereafter, following a pattern of externally provoked recriminations, the court launched a campaign of searches throughout Biên Hòa to arrest family members of Matthêu Gẫm, the captain of the ship that conveyed the two missionaries from Singapore. Based in Biên Hòa, Miche reported in February 1847 that “all mandarins, lowly and high, prefects, sub-prefects, canton-chiefs, village chiefs view with greed the Xtientés [congregations] in their jurisdiction.”86 A renewed drive to have all villages conform to royal edicts on ancestor worship and shrines provided grounds for exploitation. As Miche reported: “The insatiable greediness of small village chiefs exploits this endeavor (mise) magnificently. House visits are made from one end of the province to the next, and no chrétienté has been exempt from vexation.

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Nevertheless the majority have been left intact from all acts of superstition, in return for a pecuniary transaction.”87 But not all were exempt from unrelenting exploitation. Larger events in early 1847 dragged the mission into a series of disasters. In April 1847, after French ships destroyed fortifications in Đà Nẵng, adding to the already maligned status of Catholics, rumor spread through the military and in official circles that the defeat at Đà Nẵng had been the fault of a treacherous Vietnamese naval captain, allegedly a Catholic. According to Miche, the accusation heightened the vilification of Catholics and renewed sanctioned violence against congregations.88 In response to the French attack, the court ordered a new wave of searches throughout the region. Officials not only searched villages but as a test ordered Catholic communities to erect shrines as ordered in an edict issued under Minh Mạng. The majority of villages were left intact and not affected by the searches thanks to the use of mission funds. Yet the exploitation became increasingly insatiable. Miche claimed a congregation that had “bought its liberty from a subprefect for the sum of 600 francs, was visited three days later by the same sub-prefect and forced to erect an altar to ancestors,” that is a state cult shrine. Another village was visited “up to three times by a canton head, and each time paid out a contribution.” He was also aware of a household that had dispensed the equivalent of 1,000 francs, around 12 taels of silver, to avoid “the communal disaster of the village,” but which nevertheless was forced by the extortionists to suffer the same fate as the rest of the community.89 A similar campaign swept through Phú Yên province in late 1846. At first, instead of ordering officials to make village-to-village searches, the governor-general ordered all village heads to report centrally on the status of their respective communities. One missionary, Alexis Barbier, claimed that when officials resorted to village and house-to-house searches in the province, instead of attempting to pay off district magistrates and canton officials, some communities simply dispersed while many villagers fled west into the mountains. Those who remained were searched, and as a test, ordered to erect shrines to the state cult.90 Against this backdrop of increasingly volatile relations between Christians and non-converts, and between French imperial interests and the Nguyễn, the mission entered its most perilous years. If Cuenot had been successful in insulating congregations throughout his mission from the worst of the repression, he could not have foreseen the volatility in court-society relations that the black economy of bribery came to fuel. Cuenot’s measures were in many respects ideally designed for the low-intensity anti-Catholic hostility of the early years of the Thiệu Trị reign.

five

Priests and Mandarins

Marred by palace intrigues, Tự Đức’s accession in 1848—following Thiệu Trị’s death in November 1847—presaged grave instability in the kingdom.1 Led by the court’s most senior and most powerful official of the period, Trương Đăng Quế, a faction of regents supervised the transition, guiding the young king—who was barely nineteen at the time—to power over his older brother, Hồng Bảo, the obvious heir.2 To many living around the capital, the unusual circumstances of the succession were associated with a number of ensuing catastrophes. Shortly after Tự Đức’s investiture by a Chinese embassy in September 1849—the first to be staged in Huế, as all previous investitures were performed in Hanoi—a cholera epidemic swept across the kingdom. As it spread, devastating whole communities, the ever churning rumor mill linked its onset to the departure of the Chinese embassy in October 1849, casting doubt on the mandate of the new emperor. A famine exacerbated the dynasty’s and the kingdom’s worst epidemic in thirty years. And compounding the catalog of disasters, banditry and piracy spread in the north and south—regions distant from the capital.3

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The volatility of the early Tự Đức reign was as much a consequence of the longer-term changes at court—powerful officials acting on their own views on how best to ensure a smooth transition after Thiệu Trị’s untimely death—as it was of the preceding French naval aggression. To be sure, these two currents flowed into each other. At court, the succession led by the Trương Đăng Quế faction represented the culmination of nearly a generation of selectivity in senior official appointments at court and in the bureaucracy. A beneficiary himself of Nguyễn favoritism for supporters and families from areas neighboring Huế,4 Quế had presided over the palace examinations during the 1840s and had overseen the disproportionate rise of graduates from the traditional Đàng Trong provinces—Quảng Bình south—at the expense of candidates from the north.5 And this bias in favor of the south extended to appointments within the uppermost, court-based positions in the bureaucracy and led to the gradual disenfranchisement of northerners. Quế played a considerable part in the distortions in the distribution of power that possibly account for the widespread discontent and rumors about the misfortunes that followed Tự Đức’s accession.6 Furthermore, as seen in the preceding chapter, Cuenot’s mission reforms, which helped the church to counter the hostile conditions in Vietnam, reaped immediate dividends in conversions and the expansion of church influence in the vicariate. But these reforms also had troubling undercurrents, in particular in feeding corruption at the local level involving congregations, officials, and criminals. Dovetailing with these developments, the increased reporting of the repression back in France raised the public awareness of Catholics’ hardships in Vietnam, and in turn boosted pressure for a military response to force Huế to lessen its hostility toward the mission. With Huế facing the crisis of an untimely succession, the coincidence of the repression and French naval intervention could not have come at a worse time. For despite succeeding in forging ahead with transforming the bureaucracy, the dangers of regionalism were still evident. Moreover, Huế’s failure to destroy the mission only magnified its inability to exercise its authority down to the lowest levels of the bureaucracy. With the court embroiled in palace intrigues and the complications of defending the kingdom against French aggression, the local church continued its slow evolution as an alternative community increasingly on the margins of mainstream society. Building on earlier discussion of Cuenot’s strengthening of the mission in the south, this chapter explores the impact of these developments for Catholics.



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Belief and Rule on the Frontier In the first years of the Tự Đức reign, the circulation and spread of heterodox practices was of serious concern in the administration of key areas in the provinces, especially on the southwest frontier with Cambodia. To counter this, in what appears to have been an attempt to reinvigorate the centralization process, senior ministers Nguyễn Đăng Giai, Tôn Thất Bật, and Nguyễn Văn Chấn wrote a code of thirteen decrees to rein in communities on the kingdom’s unruly margins.7 An indication of the court’s ongoing priorities, the tenth decree pushed the Minh Mạng–era measure “regarding the granting of status to spirits” (Về việc phong tặng các thần kỳ), which exhorted villages to comply with the honoring of spirits—whether of the “walls and moats” type or specially recognized powerful spirits (thần hiệu đích xác)—unless formal court recognition had not yet been granted. Seeking to strengthen the bonds between the capital and the provinces, the decree reminded low-level officials of their obligation to obey and enforce state-sanctioned observances.8 Following its promulgation, the court issued a flood of spirit certifications. According to Langlet, some thirteen thousand certifications were issued during the Tự Đức reign (1848–83), of which 8,556 were declared for villages from Quảng Trị province north, 1,766 alone for the small capital province of Thừa Thiên, and 2,747 for villages from Quảng Nam south.9 Of note, the decree also referred to the urgency of inhibiting further mission activity. Decree twelve, “regarding the proscription of the religion of Jesus” (Về điều cấm đạo Gia-Tô), outlined new and severe measures.10 First, for the capture of a foreign “leader of the religion,” it offered the unprecedented reward of 300 taels of silver, a tenfold increase in rewards granted under Minh Mạng and Thiệu Trị. This inflation of rewards, suggestive of a bidding war between the court and the mission for control of the grassroots, partially confirms Huế’s knowledge that increasing mission funds had reduced the court’s ability to enforce the antiCatholic measures. Furthermore, missionaries were no longer to be released as they had been under the milder Thiệu Trị; as soon as interrogation had taken place, mission captives were to be executed and their remains discarded at sea. As for local priests and converts, the court took an even more aggressive approach. Since the early days of the proscription in the 1830s, Catholics’ demands to be executed had posed a problem to officials aiming to set an example of disobedient Catholics without fueling perceptions of injustice. In the late 1830s and throughout the 1840s, the court had executed dozens of priests but far from hav-

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ing the desired effect of deterring people from joining the religion, the executions had, as we have noted, attracted large crowds of onlookers eager to souvenir the victim’s blood, even gathering up drops that had fallen on the grass. Possibly because most onlookers considered the execution of Catholics as excessive, the belief that followers embodied a powerful spiritual resolve became ever more persistent in popular sentiment. As more and more Catholics, particularly priests, quietly refused to recant and willingly faced execution, the court recognized the subversive potential of such humble displays of defiance and sought to neutralize the mission’s power to mobilize what it might have considered as public sympathy. At their arrest and trial, priests and defiant converts were to be exhorted to recant. For those who refused, and local priests who demanded to be executed, the decree ordered each to be tattooed on the face with the characters of the religion, Gia Tô.11 Afterwards convicts were to be internally exiled by being settled among mainstream—“registered subjects,” sổ dân—communities, who presumably were expected to keep an eye on apostates. The court’s preoccupation with Catholicism’s subversiveness is also evident in a memorial appearing in late 1848 on missionaries in Cambodia. In December, Hà Tiên’s governor, Nguyễn Bá Nghi, reported that the king of Cambodia, Ang Duong (Ong Giun), had been harboring missionaries and assisting their entry into the Six Provinces. In response, the Secret Council (Cơ mật viện) ordered that all senior provincial officials in the south undertake searches to record all “villages and hamlets” with Catholics or that had hidden a “leader of the religion.”12 Although it was concerned with the porous Cambodian frontier, the memorial was chiefly directed at the continued infiltration of proscribed practices into the kingdom. Less than two years earlier, in 1846, the arrest of Mgr. Léfèbvre and the execution of Lê Văn Gẫm, the ship captain who had transported the missionary to Gia Định, had provoked the court’s anger at local links with missionaries and, more seriously, at Catholics’ participation in the mission’s interregional networks. The court understood that the mission threat was located outside the kingdom, in Macao, Cambodia and, a little farther abroad, in Penang. In fact, shortly before his death in November 1847, according to Miche, Thiệu Trị had ordered officials and interpreters on four ships to travel to Singapore and Malacca to gather intelligence on French intentions, and to make a trip to Penang, where the MEP’s regional seminary was based.13 For Huế, the mission’s continued penetration at the weakest points on the frontiers was a constant reminder of its failures. That the mission could so easily enter the country not only threw into relief



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the uneven implementation of the centralization reforms, it demonstrated the court’s inability to maintain control over culture and religious practice.

Leadership in the Mission Restricted by the punitive measures of the Minh Mạng and Thiệu Trị antiCatholic campaigns, the mission in the mid-1840s had become wholly dependent on local communities for survival. Missionaries needed local intermediaries to conduct negotiations between communities and authorities; they depended on local priests for the lion’s share of pastoral work; and restricted to isolated villages, they relied on priests and lay leaders for personal safety and daily sustenance. This dependency thus coincided with major administrative adjustments in the mission, notably the division of the Cochinchina mission into smaller vicariates. The first major change occurred in 1845 with the creation of East and West Cochinchina. This was followed in 1850 with the creation of two further divisions, one encompassing Cambodia and Laos, and the other North Cochinchina.14 These extra divisions, it was hoped, would both help the MEP capitalize on the new enthusiasm and funding opportunities flowing from Europe and enable it to share the responsibility for the administration of the local church. Instead of having one apostolic vicar responsible for a vast territory, several mutually supporting centers could lessen the damage in the event of the death or capture of a senior missionary. The changes to mission affairs necessitated by the repression and Cuenot’s reforms had wide-ranging consequences, not least of which was the diminished role of French missionaries in the daily affairs of church districts. The gradual division of the vicariates into smaller units fitted Cuenot’s aim of expanding the local clergy and shifting the hardships of administering congregations dispersed over a wide area to the local church organization itself. Thus, where once missionaries had almost complete control over numerous congregations, from the 1840s lay leaders and priests assumed far greater authority; from this period, power relations between missionaries and priests shifted in favor of the local clergy. For the first time in the history of the mission, local priests held positions of authority— even if the missionaries were themselves loathe to admit this—roughly parallel to their French confreres. While this authority would not last into the colonial regime in the 1860s, at the time it established new terms of understanding between local priests and missionaries, and it also provided a variety of new opportunities. In contrast to earlier decades, mission practice now tended toward maintaining

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fewer missionaries in established congregations. For much of the 1850s, for example, only two missionaries, Borelle and Léfèbvre, administered the West Cochinchina Vicariate. Shortly after the subdivisions, and illustrating the shifting grounds of relations within the mission hierarchy, Miche warned that the mission risked becoming a victim of its own success and arrogant about the local clergy’s ascendancy: The indigenous clergy multiplies before our eyes in a number of missions, above all in that of Cochinchina; you will find before long more subjects that have no need for the missions that have no other resource than European priests. In the missions, Europeans will not only be of no use since they are unable to attend to administration, but they would be a burden, because they expose the xtientés [congregations], where they are, to affronts.15

Too much mission interference in community affairs risked endangering congregations, which over the preceding decade had become increasingly self- sufficient. The dimensions of this problem were particularly apparent in the behavior of some inexperienced missionaries in the far south. Ever articulate in his recollections of internal mission affairs, Miche described how two newly arrived clerics, Frs. Bouillevaux and Cordier, upset communities in which they were initially based by coming and going as they pleased without considering the danger to their hosts. The more experienced Borelle, based in the large Vĩnh Long congregation of Cái Mơn, had written to Miche about the impact of these strained relationships. He reported that “neither domestic nor Mass servants” would stay with Bouillevaux because he behaved in such a “severe”—read perhaps “rude”—manner toward them; and Cordier was apparently no better.16 Cuenot’s reforms had brought immediate dividends in terms of rates of conversions and in security for congregations fearing official harassment. But each of these achievements, resulting from the consolidation of the Vietnamese priesthood, necessarily shifted mission authority to local priests and lay leaders, or “catechists.” And while the changes benefited missionaries, if men like Bouillevaux assumed that the established pecking order would naturally prevail they were, as we will see, sorely mistaken. The rise in responsibilities of catechists from the 1840s—documented in mission catalogs—alerts us to greater complexity within the mission and Catholic society. It also draws attention to the stratification of authority and influence as informal, localized social structures took precedence in congregations. In his comprehensive study of mission history in northern Vietnam, Alain



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Forest suggests that the organization of a catechist corps in Tonkin derived from Jesuit experiences in Japan in which priests, following Buddhist models, employed dojuku, or “novices,” to undertake lay instruction. As in earlier decades in Tonkin, missionaries graded catechists in 1840s’ Cochinchina into different classes according to seniority and responsibilities, as enumerated in Léfèbvre’s annual catalog for 1850.17 The first class, he reported, “are young men . . . capable of instructing catechumens, children and ignorant (uneducated) Christians.” The mission employed these lay leaders, numbering twelve for West Cochin­china in 1850, to travel “from one end [of the vicariate] to the other to where they can be of most use.” A second, more general class consisted of “fathers of families who have some influence in their Chrétienté [congregation].” The role of these catechists was broad: “to see to good order, to settle differences, to preside over gatherings and marriages performed in the absence of a priest, to procure the relief of the sacraments for the ill and to be present in their last hour; in a word to replace a priest as far as their circumstances permit them.” Léfèbvre added that there were in total around 300 in this class of catechists, of which he counted, disparagingly, only 78 as being of “some use.”18 These leaders represented a localized model of Catholic leadership, attuned to the pragmatic side of maintaining the church organization—assuming a variety of responsibilities and roles within communities. In fact, the term “catechist” does not appear to have a close equivalent in vernacular Vietnamese. To denote catechists, the Nguyễn chronicles, perhaps borrowing a contemporary expression from Qing China, refer generally to giáo trưởng, or “leaders of teaching.”19 But in congregations, the most common term of address would have been the respectful thầy, which may be translated as “master” or “teacher.” As we see in Borelle’s reports on his congregations in the Mekong Delta, local church leaders were not called “catechists”; instead they held titles reflecting village structures of authority, such as ông trùm, “village head,” or ông câu or cả, “elderly notable.”20 Although Léfèbvre referred to the formal roles of catechists according to their grades, communities viewed teachers and ecumenical leaders according to preexisting cultural models. The execution of Simon Hòa, the elderly doctor of Dương Sơn village near Huế in 1840, demonstrates the flexibility of roles in church leadership. A prominent doctor, respected village elder, and scholar, Hòa was also involved in instructing neophytes.21 Yet leadership entailed a variety of aspects; alongside his skills as a physician or “doctor,” Hòa’s wealth also played an important role in his standing and influence. In contrast, congregation heads in the Mekong Delta

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may have hailed from a small class of landed gentry with regional ties and probably good commercial connections.22 In an example of a Catholic’s largesse in 1839, Jeanne reported how a “disagreement with a chrétienté chief” in the Mekong Delta had arisen after a presumably well-to-do Catholic elder had built him a “large house.” The situation flared when Jeanne, attempting to eschew the trappings of wealth as stipulated by his Society—and no doubt fearful of attracting the opprobrium of his confreres—refused his benefactor’s generosity.23 In a similar case, shortly before his arrest with Philippe Minh in 1853 “Ông trùm Lựu”—Joseph Lựu—the congregation head of Mặc Bắc, Vĩnh Long province, had donated land for the construction of a chapel, a nhà phước, or “house for the faithful.”24 In his account of Lựu’s execution, Borelle claimed that the notable was well respected not only by his Catholic neighbors but also by non-Catholics, both “Annamite or Cambodian.” Lựu helped his neighbors when their fields were flooded, and when he “did not have the strength [to act himself], gave advice to the property owner” on all manner of matters. It was because of his generosity, Borelle added, that Lựu had “amassed a fortune.”25 Similarly, Lê Văn Phụng— Emmanuel Phụng—a “grand Catechist,” won prestige in the mixed Catholic and non-Catholic community of Đầu Nước because of his largesse. Borelle described him as an elderly man of sixty-three, with a “large family and [who] enjoyed an honest fortune.”26 As a leader, Phụng put his money to good use for the mission, building a church, which stood in full view “to all eyes on the [Mekong] river,” a “convent for the daughters of Mary,” and a college. Sadly, we know about these donations through Phụng’s lengthy execution sentence published after his execution, in 1860.27 The scope of responsibilities and social roles illustrated by these examples demonstrates the centrality of local perceptions of status, something the mission might not have encouraged but directly benefited from all the same. Of the diverse elements dominating the role of “catechist,” one’s age, personal wealth, and medical or healing skills were paramount. Literary knowledge could also boost one’s reputation. As Léfèbvre noted, the key distinction between “first” and “second class” catechists was the devotion to ecclesiastic duties, including studying Latin and theology. “First class” catechists, young men who had had some education at one of the mission’s colleges, were expected to remain celibate and to accompany missionaries or local priests on pastoral visits. It was from this cohort that the mission selected candidates for the priesthood who, increasingly from the early 1840s, were sent overseas for training at the far safer environs of the Collège Générale in Penang.



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Before 1841 most students studied within the vicariate, at either the seminary in Lái Thiêu near Biên Hòa, or in Như Lý outside Huế. Some seminarians had enjoyed the privilege of traveling abroad, a benefit of having fled the vicariate with French missionaries after 1832. But after the Gò Thị Synod and Cuenot’s reforms, the mission strove to send students abroad to a safer environment to finish their theological studies. The Collège, established in the late seventeenth century in Ayudyha in Siam by the founding vicar apostolic of the region, Mgr. Lambert de la Motte, had trained seminarians from throughout the region, including Siam, Tonkin, Cochinchina, and southern China. Having fled Siam after the fall of Ayudyha in 1767, the Collège moved to Hà Tiên and then to India, before the MEP reestablished it in Penang in 1808.28 However, it was not until the 1830s, with the inflow of extra funding from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, that the college had the capacity to accept large numbers of regional seminarians. On average each vicariate in the region funded the travel and expenses of four to six students to Penang annually, or around ten to twelve students from the Cochinchina region.29 From the early 1840s on, the program achieved huge success. Compared to 1835, when, according to Régéreau’s annual report, there were only nineteen local priests for the whole of Cochinchina, Champa, and Cambodia, by 1847 East Cochinchina alone maintained twenty-one local clergy while West Cochinchina had eleven, for a total of thirty-two.30 The significance of this rise is apparent when placed in the context of the corresponding rise in conversions, which stood at over 500 neophytes per annum throughout the 1840s.31 As we saw in the preceding chapter, the rise of conversions came as a result of intensive instruction. But the role of lay leaders and local clergy as teachers and scholars must also be recognized. In fact, in the absence of a large French missionary presence in society, the rising conversion rate suggests local priests and catechists had great appeal as spiritual leaders. The biography of Philippe Phan Văn Minh, published in 1902 on the occasion of his beatification, reveals several clues on the attractiveness of the priesthood as a path of advancement for young Catholic men. Born in 1815 to Catholic parents in the large congregation of Cái Mơn, Vĩnh Long province, Minh was raised during the generally tolerant Gia Long and early Minh Mạng reigns.32 At that time, diverse religious communities flourished in Cochin­ china and, from the mid-1820s, foreign clergy made regular pastoral visits to the region’s numerous congregations. It was on such a visit to Cái Mơn in 1828 that Minh, recently orphaned and only around thirteen years old, requested

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to be taken into the care of Mgr. Taberd.33 Minh, who had apparently shown potential in his schooling in Chinese characters, was accepted as a mission novice and returned with the cleric to the seminary at Lái Thiêu.34 By this stage court hostility to the mission had led to the proscription of Catholicism. In 1833 Taberd ordered the Lái Thiêu College to disperse and then, along with a number of other French missionaries, fled Vietnam. Minh and several other students accompanied the group to Penang, where they continued their studies at the Collège Générale. In the mid-1830s, in his early twenties, Minh was identified as a talented linguist and traveled to Pondicherry to assist Taberd with the publication of a Latin-Vietnamese dictio­ nary.35 Then in 1840, when Taberd died, Minh returned to Penang. After the division of the Cochinchina vicariate in late 1845, he was recalled to join the growing ranks of the local clergy; he returned to Vietnam after over a decade’s absence, having come of age outside of Vietnam and in the mission’s care. In 1846, at thirty-one years of age, he was ordained by Cuenot and assigned responsibility for several communities in the Mekong Delta. Over the following years Minh traveled widely through the delta, administering the growing number of congregations scattered from Thâu Râu (present-day Cầu Ngang) at the Cung Hầu mouth of the Mekong, to Đầu Nước, on Cù Lao Giêng Island in the upper Mekong close to the modern-day Cambodian border. Minh continued administering congregations in the region until February 1853, when he was arrested in Mặc Bắc. Falling victim to a villager’s desperate attempt to earn a reward for denouncing a priest, Minh was taken away and eventually executed with the congregation head, Joseph Lựu, in mid-1854.36 Minh was a gifted scholar in vernacular characters (chữ nôm) and a competent student of Latin, precisely the sort of qualities that enhanced and elevated more generally the clergy’s reputation. The attractiveness of his vocation is evident in the rise of a number of students recorded in Cuenot’s annual reports. In 1845, for example, Cuenot noted three colleges in East Cochinchina—one near Huế, one in Quảng Nam province, and the third at Gò Thị—supporting around thirty students, twelve of whom were attached as minor clerics to missionaries. The report added that no fewer than sixty-four students were currently in Pe­ nang.37 By 1847 the number of students at the Collège Générale had risen to seventy-two.38 Léfèbvre’s reports, although less detailed than Cuenot’s for this period, recorded two colleges in West Cochinchina—one in Thị Nghè near Saigon and the other in Cái Mơn—and a total of forty students within the mission in 1852.39 Relatively proportionate to the size of Cochinchina’s Catholic com-



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munity, these figures paled by comparison to those of the Tonkin missions. For instance, Retord reported in 1847 that the combined missions in the north fielded some ninety-one local priests, and three hundred students of Latin dispersed among six local colleges.40 Penang was more than a refuge or a finishing school for mission students, it was a unique gathering point where men from all over Asia—from Vietnam, Siam, southern China, Korea, Cambodia, and India—lived and studied together. And as such the MEP had a longer-term view for what it hoped to achieve by bringing members of different churches from around the region. An observation from the 1847 annual Lettre Commune, sent to apostolic vicars throughout the region, reflected the MEP’s aspirations. It is the experience that these young men, shaped and disciplined by Europeans, far from their land of birth, little by little lose the taint (rouille) of their national prejudices, the sphere of their ideas broaden, and they easily adopt our ideas and views. Returning to their land after robust study, they will be able, after some years of experience, to fill an important post, be it in the exercise of the ministry, [or] in the direction of local seminaries.41

Along with hoping to ensure ideological orthodoxy throughout the ranks of the local clergy, the MEP also aimed to mold a generation of culturally likeminded men, loyal to French Catholic ideals. The training of large numbers of Vietnamese seminarians in Penang undoubtedly had broader implications. For example, the gathering of young men from different regions of Vietnam—and elsewhere in Asia—in itself is significant, and suggests that the experience played some part in the promotion of community consciousness among Vietnamese Catholics. Moreover, the flow through Penang of literate men from a variety of different regions, well before the modern era of mass education and communication, raises interesting questions about the types of changes such interaction might have had on the vernacular. Mid-nineteenth century Vietnamese was riven with dialectical differences. While developments in the Vietnamese language through the Penang seminary would have been modest in the 1840s and 1850s, they arguably laid the foundation for interregional linguistic endeavors in later generations. From the 1840s, for the first time, training included instruction in the French language. This development hints at the slow convergence of the designs of both French imperialism and the MEP to gain a foothold in the Far East over the decade. But the establishment of self-sufficient local churches that could interact

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fluently with the MEP in Paris was probably the most likely intent. Yet the creation of a self-sufficient clergy, led by indigenous bishops acting independently of Paris, was just as unlikely in the racially conscious nineteenth-century Catholic church as was the probability of local priests wholly adopting the MEP worldview. Certainly some Penang-trained clergy did adopt MEP and European views; but the range of experiences available at Penang was diverse. As I discuss later, although some MEP graduates later worked within the French colonial regime, others turned their backs on the mission and put their knowledge of European ideas to the service of the dynasty. There is of course little value in contrasting the number of Penang graduates and Latin students supported by the mission with the thousands of young men vying for entry into the Nguyễn bureaucracy. In fact, such a comparison would only confirm the overwhelming preference for official channels of advancement. Yet, while the mandarinate was apparently the most tangible road to personal prestige, authority, and status, in the 1840s and 1850s it was by no means the only path. Moreover, given the political discrimination against certain communities and religious groups, the Nguyễn bureaucracy and education system represented the dominant, but not the most attractive, path for some at the time. That young Vietnamese men like Philippe Minh were prepared to seek out and, where necessary, compete for an illicit educational path involving travel to a foreign land far from family for at least seven years and requiring the study of the classical language of a foreign culture, is a testament to their dedication. Indeed, the motivations of men like Minh prompt us to take a different approach to the cultural assumptions of young men pursuing a career in the priesthood.

The Martyrdom of Philippe Minh Shortly after Minh’s execution in Vĩnh Long in 1854, Borelle and Léfèbvre collected accounts of the event and details of his life and family for an official account to support an application for his beatification. In addition, they drew on personal letters written by Minh from prison shortly before his execution. First, Borelle and Léfèbvre composed lengthy “Relations”—accounts—in French and Latin and sent these to the MEP in Paris for publication in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith.42 The publication of another account, in quốc ngữ, in 1902 by Father Matthêu Đức, a Saigon priest, alerts us to the proliferation of a little-studied genre of Catholic literature. A reference in the



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foreword to letters written by Minh whilst in prison provides important details for the story’s transmission from the 1850s to the colonial period.43 Đức explained that shortly after the first edition of the story—published in 1900— he came across a version of a poem “The Story of the Martyr Father Minh,” Truyện Cha Minh Tử Đạo, which an elderly gentleman, “Ông chính Hòa,” had recorded at some point in earlier decades. It was to Hòa that Minh apparently addressed his letters from prison, the same letters apparently used by Borelle and Léfèbvre.44 Unfortunately, Đức did not reproduce Hòa’s copy of the story in his 1902 edition, but it is certain that this version was dated from the precolonial period and may have been composed in verse. Matthêu Đức’s reference to Hòa’s text suggests an underexplored genealogy of precolonial Catholic literature. To begin with, it is worth briefly revisiting Minh’s involvement in the preparation of Mgr. Taberd’s Latin and Vietnamese lexicon, Dictionarium latino-anamiticum, first published in Singapore in 1838. Along with this project, which was itself a lightly edited reproduction of Pigneaux’ handwritten manuscript for a Latin-Vietnamese lexicon, collated in 1772, Minh appears to have made some contribution to several others produced by the cleric, including a geographic note on Cochinchina.45 But it is in the dictionary annex that we find what may have been Minh’s most important input, the introductory stanzas of the story of an earlier victim of anti-Catholic hostilities, the “Martyrdom of Agnes,” Inê Tử Đạo.46 This poem recounts the arrest and death by starvation in prison of Agnes, the sister of a priest from Diên-Ninh prefecture, the administrative precursor for Khánh Hòa province. According to Võ Long Tê, it was composed in the period in which the events took place, the Minh Vương (r. 1691–1725) persecution of 1700.47 In the dictionary annex, the poem appeared in four languages, English, French, Latin, and romanized Vietnamese (Tiếng An Nam), and while it was not the oldest version, it was certainly the first to be published, and possibly the first Vietnamese poem to appear in European typeset.48 Tê attributed the French and Latin translations to Mgr. Taberd, but I believe Philippe Minh’s abilities as a native speaker would have been indispensable. The appearance of the poem in a published dictionary at this juncture is significant not simply due to the novelty of the endeavor, but because it represented a new stage in the development of romanized Vietnamese. Indeed, it draws attention to two issues: the development of quốc ngữ as a language for mission communication, and the position and cultural import of Catholic devotional poetry in the vernacular literature. The history of the spread of quốc ngữ, both for the mission and for the colonial project, deserves greater consideration. As

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Nguyễn Văn Trung has suggested, it is a mistake to consider figures such as Paulus Huình-Tịnh Của, author of the first comprehensive Vietnamese dictionary in the colonial era, or the prolific pedagogue Petrus Trương Vĩnh Kỳ, as “pioneers” of the script.49 Following from Trung’s and Tê’s studies in the 1960s and 1970s, it is evident the script flourished in Catholic circles from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in a variety of formats: poems, histories, hagiographies, and personal correspondence.50 To be sure, the 1840s appears to have marked a watershed in the expansion of the script’s usage. In the late 1830s and 1840s, the increase in funds from Europe boosted the promotion of quốc ngữ as a medium for instruction, propaganda, and communication. Driving this must have been the resurgence of interest created by Taberd’s dictionary. The publication of this dictionary, over sixty years after its compilation by Mgr. Pigneaux, demonstrates the new emphasis on strengthening the mission’s communications networks to counter the effects of the persecution. Judging from the small sample available in the MEP archival volumes for the 1840s, most material in quốc ngữ was produced by hand and copied for dissemination. Missionaries, local priests, and clerks used the script widely to copy catechisms, to compose pastoral reports, and to convey stories of martyrs.51 By the late 1840s and 1850s, however, the use of quốc ngữ appears to have expanded significantly. Cuenot’s annual administrative reports for 1847 and 1848 indicate that the mission placed a high priority on publishing and that the means were available for the wide dissemination of material. In 1847, the apostolic vicar reported expenses of 1,425 francs (roughly 838 ligatures of cash, or 17 taels of silver) for “the printing house” (imprimerie), although the figure also included the purchase of “paper and some books from Macao.” The account also recorded that some 600 francs had been used for “correspondence and missionary journeys” within the kingdom, expenses that would have helped with the dissemination of printed material by either priests or couriers employed by the mission.52 Cuenot recorded similar figures in his 1848 report, noting the use of 1,000 francs “for the maintenance of the printing house, the purchase of paper, [and] the distribution of books.”53 For a mission serving a population of some 50,000 Catholics spread across nine provinces, these were substantial sums.54 The combined amounts represent a practical investment in materials in a short period. They also strongly suggest—although it is difficult to confirm—the purchase around this time of a small and certainly portable European printing press, which could have been easily smuggled into the mission by Chinese merchants with whom missionaries had close contacts. With



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or without a European printing press, Cuenot would have had local printing skills and methods at his disposal. Cuenot was not alone in his efforts. Although the annual reports for Léfèbvre’s vicariate of West Cochinchina do not refer to printing in this period, it is probable that Cuenot’s activities provided material for the mission in the southern Six Provinces as well. In the MEP vicariate of West Tonkin, Mgr. Retord had much greater resources at his disposal and the scope of his operations provides an indication of the mission’s capabilities during the period. Writing in 1850, Retord, who also had an “imprimerie,”55 described the regular dissemination of “pastoral letters” throughout the vicariate, which he used to announce the publication of matters ranging from recently issued indulgences by the Pope to news from different parts of the vicariate and probably other parts of the kingdom. Significantly, his medium of choice was quốc ngữ.56 The proliferation of Catholic literature before 1860 suggests the term quốc ngữ, which may be translated as “national language,” itself needs to be historicized. For much of the first three centuries after the French Jesuit Alexander de Rhodes transcribed the vernacular in Latin letters, romanized Vietnamese was more familiarly known to missionaries, and perhaps Vietnamese students, as “Annamite,” tiếng An Nam, or, in a reference to the hybrid symbolization of the language, as “annamitico-latin.”57 One of the first appearances of the term quốc ngữ was in the title of Mgr. Pigneaux’ 1774 Catholic catechism, Thánh giáo lí quốc ngữ, or “Holy doctrine in quốc ngữ,” suggesting that, at least for Catholic native readers, the term was already widely used.58 As a term, quốc ngữ has too easily been used as a general referent for romanized texts across the precolonial and colonial eras without much investigation into its conception as a “national” language script of a specific language community in a geographically defined territory. The sources indicate, however, that the concept of a “national language” was first propounded in Catholic devotional literature well before the colonial era. By 1840, quốc ngữ—or latin-annamite—as a medium and as a concept for local communication across Vietnam had been evolving for nearly two centuries; it was not a new development in mission or Vietnamese literary history. In attempting to understand Catholic literature of the 1840s, we must avoid the trap of viewing “propaganda” solely as a platform for mission dogma. Instead, this genre should be seen in the context of indigenous literary cultures flourishing at the time. As Nguyễn Văn Trung has argued, a variety of works published in the early colonial era, ranging from religious poems, histories, and plays to folk operas, had their roots in the precolonial period. The production of

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these texts may be traced by the unique idiomatic expressions used from different periods and regions.59 Indeed, the Martyrdom of Agnes was one of many panegyric poems. An anthology of similar verse, published by the mission printing house in the late nineteenth century, provides a sample of the literature, much of which was composed before 1860. One poem, “Bõ Gioang Tử Đạo,” or “The Martyrdom of Grandfather Jean,” for example, tells the story of an elderly Catholic arrested during the 1750 persecution in Cochinchina, under Võ Vương (r. 1738–65).60 Another poem, entitled “Cố Phan Vãn,” or “Verse on Master Phan,” recounts the travails of the MEP missionary François Jaccard (Phan) at the court of Minh Mạng and his execution in 1839.61 The anthology also contains a lengthy verse discussion of the religious milieu of the south titled “Hàm Oan Chi Từ,” which may be translated as “Discourse on Injustices Suffered.” The poem begins with a history of anti-Catholic hostilities under the Tây Sơn before moving on, in the final section, to discuss Confucianism (đạo Nho), Buddhism (đạo Phật), and the worship of the Buddhist goddess Quan âm.62 Although further research is needed to gain a comprehensive picture of how widespread the Catholic discourse in chữ nôm and quốc ngữ was in precolonial society, the structure and language of these poems hold some clues to allow us to make some preliminary comments on their production. As with the Martyrdom of Agnes, these texts were composed in six-eight meter (lục-bát), the most common poetic convention in Vietnamese verse, and would almost certainly have demanded the intimate linguistic knowledge of a native speaker. In fact, much of this material was probably first composed in demotic script, and then possibly transmitted orally among congregations before being transcribed in romanized form. Young seminarians in Penang, such as Minh, and the battery of candidates studying in the three mission colleges in Cochinchina, I suggest, would have very likely played a major role in recording, publishing, and disseminating such stories in the 1840s. The strongest evidence to support this claim can be found in a mission report in the mid-1860s. Lauding the arrival of a printing press in his congregation of Thủ Dầu Một north of Saigon in 1866, Father Sorel explained that he aimed to use the machine not simply to print mission books but to “counterbalance, as much as possible, the publication of some more or less unsound (malsaines) Annamite brochures” that were circulating in the then recently established French language schools. In his opinion, it was “our defrocked thầy (teachers: catechists)” who were responsible for disseminating small “booklets in Annamite characters.” Defrocked priests reportedly distributed the texts, translated into Latin, to



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French-run schools, which clearly angered missionaries like Sorel. In response the governor had ordered the production of “20 to 30 stories (histoires) where the details are true to life (naturelles),” possibly to counter the effects of what may have been either satirical or morally wayward—at least to the mission—folk stories.63 The full picture of this tantalizing propaganda war is unfortunately not provided in Sorel’s letter, but the implications seem more or less clear. Neither the mission nor the colonial government had full control over vernacular printing in the region. That disavowed Catholic lay leaders could challenge the new regime using methods first developed by the mission not only suggests that local Catholic discourse was well established by the 1860s, but it also highlights the ongoing—and somewhat mischievous—competition between rivals for control over followers and subjects in religious and political loyalties.

Literature and Politics Cuenot’s and Retord’s struggle to promote local mission literature in quốc ngữ and chữ nôm combined two interconnected currents. The increased numbers of the Cochinchina mission’s students sent to Penang for seminary training contributed to the growth of an intellectually distinct generation of young Vietnamese men. And concurrently, the growth of the local clergy coincided with the development of ties between Catholic intellectuals and other Vietnamese intellectuals. A prominent example of this generation was Nguyễn Trường Tộ. Born into a Catholic family in Nghệ An province in the late 1820s, the son of a scholar, Tộ studied classical Chinese and probably chữ nôm. As a well-born Catholic, he also received a mission education in quốc ngữ and Latin, which, under the tutelage of the MEP missionary Jean-Denis Gauthier in the late 1840s, led to his studying at Penang.64 In the early 1860s, Tộ suddenly broke with the mission—most probably in rejection of the mission’s perceived close ties with French rule—and entered service at Tự Đức’s court. Here he wrote extensively on the need for the Nguyễn bureaucracy to modernize and reform in order to face the French imperialist threat. In short, Tộ’s background and achievements demonstrate how the penetration of mission institutions at the local level affected subtle yet far-reaching changes throughout the rest of society.65 Another example of local Catholic activists was Đặng Đức Tuấn, who also contributed widely in his later years to both Catholic literature and debates on reform within Vietnam. Born in 1806 in Bình Định province, Đặng Đức

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Tuấn was raised in a prestigious scholarly family whose members had supported Gia Long’s cause at the turn of the century.66 His great-grandfather, Đặng Đức Siêu, served as the rites minister (Thượng Thư Lễ bộ) in the 1810s. And his grandfather, Đặng Đức Thiêm, held a variety of senior appointments from the 1830s but, for reasons not noted, was dismissed from high office in 1850.67 Unfortunately, little is known about Đặng Đức Tuấn’s father, Đặng Đức Lành, beyond the fact that he was a retired scholar (ẩn sĩ) and teacher in the family’s home district of Bồng Sơn. Đặng Đức Tuấn was himself a capable student and in the regional exams held at Bình Định in 1825 just failed to achieve the lesser regional degree (tú tài) owing to a minor error in an examination composition. Following this disappointment, Tuấn retreated to his home district, where he taught along with his older brother, Hóa.68 At some point early in the Thiệu Trị reign, Cuenot made enquiries in the districts surrounding Gò Thị for a classical scholar willing to teach administrative Chinese within the mission, an early attempt to provide seminarians with a classical instruction. A lay leader approached Đặng Đức Tuấn with the proposal, who agreed and shortly after traveled to Gia Định where, with the assistance of the mission, he departed for Penang. Over the following years, Tuấn taught seminarians and probably also missionaries. Significantly, during his stay he accepted the offer to study for the priesthood, and when he returned to Bình Định early in the 1850s he received ordination and assumed clerical duties.69 Throughout the unstable years of the 1850s, Tuấn worked closely with Cuenot. Although little is known of his life during this time, the vast array of his works compiled by Lam Giang and Võ Ngọc Nhã demonstrate that he was a prolific proponent of local Catholic literature. His abilities as a scholar, both in Chinese and vernacular Vietnamese, and linguist ultimately rescued him from suffering the same fate as many other priests in this period. In 1862, he was captured by the district magistrate of Mộ Đức in the north of Bình Định and narrowly escaped execution by being called to the court as an interpreter. Following the defeat of pro-Nguyễn forces around Saigon and the military stalemate of 1862, Tuấn accompanied Lâm Duy Thiếp and Phanh Thanh Giản as a translator and advisor in the negotiations with the French admiralty over the carving up of the southern Six Provinces in response to French demands. As we saw with Philippe Minh, belonging to a Catholic community certainly did not preclude access to traditional forms of education, in Chinese or chữ nôm. In fact, by the end of the 1840s both Cuenot and Retord employed classical scholars to instruct mission students. The main problem, as described by ­Cuenot,



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was that these “masters” used “superstitious books,” Confucian manuals and literature, that conflicted with mission doctrine. To overcome this problem, Cuenot advocated training a new generation of students in administrative Chinese who could in the future train others without such literature. The project required the employment of a “master of letters,” estimated at an annual cost of 150 francs, or around 230 ligatures of copper cash.70 Thus, with 1,000 francs Cuenot calculated he could maintain a teacher and fourteen students on a stipend of 60 francs each. Students were to receive three years’ training and afterward would be expected to teach in other schools in the vicariate.71 Retord implemented a similar program in Tonkin in 1847, although on a much larger scale.72 Reporting on the progress of his project in 1854, he wrote that along with some fifty Latinists, he also had forty students of Chinese.73 For the Tonkin vicariates, education in characters also involved participating in literary discussions with non-Catholics. Thus, a year later Mgr. Diaz, based in the Dominican vicariate of Tonkin Central, which covered the Red River Delta provinces of Nam Định and Hưng Yên, wrote that he had recently facilitated a competition among “pagan” and Catholic scholars on “different matters of the Religion [Catholicism].” According to Diaz, such was the attraction of the contest that some five students of a local teacher of letters had participated, with the winners receiving “books on the Religion” in Chinese.74 Cuenot and Léfèbvre unfortunately did not record similar events in the southern vicariates, but the contest demonstrates the flexibility and willingness with which missionaries and scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic, interacted with each other. Needless to say, scholarly work critical of the mission probably dominated in mid-century literary circles. Aside from royal edicts and memorials, a long text by the prominent southern scholar Nguyễn Đình Chiểu (1822–88) provides insight into the worldview of pro-Nguyễn scholars of the 1850s who were critical of Catholicism. Chiểu was only seven years younger than Philippe Minh, but he experienced the changes of the 1820s and 1830s from a very different perspective. A native of Tân Bình prefecture, neighboring Gia Định town, his father had been a clerk for Lê Văn Duyệt.75 However, Chiểu was not destined for a career in the bureaucracy himself. Forced to abandon his aspirations after being struck by blindness in his late twenties, Chiểu returned to his family home where he retired to a life of writing. It was here, some time in the early 1850s, that, according to Phan Văn Hùm, he composed Dương Từ - Hà Mậu.76 Written in chữ nôm, this long poem tells the story of two men, Dương, a Buddhist, and Mậu, a Catholic, and focuses on the misleading beliefs promoted by each of their religions. In

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the story, the two visit heaven and hell with the assistance of a magician in search of the truth behind their beliefs. Instead of finding Christ or Buddha, the two only discover monks and priests suffering in hell as punishment for having misled their followers.77 Chiểu was undoubtedly aware of both Buddhist and Catholic printing in his region. Of significance in the poem is Chiểu’s close association of Catholicism and Buddhism, both of which he described as superstitious (dị đoan), and their sharp contrast with Confucian orthodoxy (đạo Nho). In some of his first comments on Catholicism in Dương Từ - Hà Mậu, he refers to a sentence—“Tế sanh hoạt mạng,” or “How to live life”—that he claimed appeared in a book used to “enter the religion” (đầu đạo). This is most likely a reference to the Catholic catechism, which was produced in Chinese, quốc ngữ, and chữ nôm. It is impossible to know how widely disseminated handwritten copies of the demotic script or quốc ngữ versions of the catechism were in society, but I believe they would have been among the most prolifically duplicated texts in the early 1800s. They would have enjoyed even wider production from the late 1840s owing to Cuenot and Retord’s efforts. In fact, the catechism may have been one of the most commonly read doctrinal tracts among all Vietnamese readers in either demotic script or quốc ngữ. It is through texts such as this that the majority of Confucian literati and Nguyễn officials would have learned about the fundamentals of Catholic doctrine. Even if Nguyễn Đình Chiểu’s Dương Từ - Hà Mậu was not part of a wider debate among scholars on superstitious practices and, by extension, Confucian orthodoxy, it hardly emerged from an intellectual vacuum. Other clues to a discourse on Catholicism may be found in mission correspondence. Of note, Sơn Tây’s governor-general Nguyễn Đăng Giai was, to the regret of his colleagues in the Official History Office (Quốc Sử Quan), guilty of questionable ideological leanings. Born into a distinguished political family from Quảng Bình, Giai had an illustrious career spanning three reigns—he died in late 1854.78 Although Giai was a loyal official, mission correspondence from Mgr. Retord reveals he was a devout Buddhist with pragmatic views of Catholicism.79 In a letter from 1852, Retord reported on a flourishing indirect correspondence between himself and Giai in which they debated Catholicism. It was Giai who canvassed at court moderate alternatives to persecuting Catholics to deal with the religion’s spread, according to Retord. For instance, he suggested sectioning off Catholic congregations from the wider population— forcing all Catholics to move to designated areas where they could practice



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their religion in peace—while banning any additional subjects from converting.80 Such was their relationship that in 1853 Giai, in a move reminiscent of relationships in previous generations with Catholic missionaries, accepted medicine supposedly prepared by Retord. He even permitted a Vietnamese priest to baptize one of his dying sons.81 Far from suggesting Giai was pro-Catholic—or even on the verge of converting—the relationship, one of administrative and personal discretion, reflected Giai’s flexibility on spiritual matters. It is against such behavior that Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, a man of comparatively limited life experience and no administrative background, would have leveled Dương Từ - Hà Mậu. Indeed, apart from polemicizing Catholicism and Buddhism, Chiểu expressed views that may have been part of a general debate among scholars and officials on popular religion and public morality, since the poem not only reflects hostility toward Catholicism and Buddhism but advocates a singular, narrow view of the moral authority of Confucianism. This may imply some intellectual discord throughout the kingdom on the style of Confucian orthodoxy promoted by the dynasty.

Catholicism in the Mandarinate Dương Từ - Hà Mậu is significant not simply for its politically charged views, but also because its publication coincided with the first outings of Catholics serving within the Nguyễn bureaucracy. It is difficult to understand why Christian officials largely appear to have escaped scrutiny and punishment under Minh Mạng and Thiệu Trị in the early years of his reign—at least they are not mentioned in the official records—given the animosity toward the wider Catholic population. Growing frustration, even paranoia, at the seeming failure of the anti-Catholic campaign, may have prompted a change. It is also possible officials close to the throne feared the damage that might be done to the integrity of the bureaucracy if they systematically rooted out every official, high and low, for religious heterodoxy. Then again, Huế had probably discretely singled out Christian officials since the early 1830s, though without subjecting them to the same violence as commoners and priests. The punishment of Catholics at this time highlights a number of factors— most notably, that they were probably fairly widely dispersed within the bureaucracy. Whatever shifts in Nguyễn bureaucratic culture may have been underway, the acknowledgement of the presence of Catholic mandarins might indicate

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f­ actional struggles at the court between anti-Catholic officials and sympathetic voices opposed to the harsh proscription. We know that the Catholic presence was not so small within the bureaucracy as to be negligible and that some officials did convert. The Spanish Dominican Fr. Hermosilla from Bắc Ninh province, for instance, reported in 1857 on his recent successes in baptizing “a number of officials,” one of which may have been as high-ranking as a prefect.82 Such reports are rare and unfortunately do not offer any indication of the number of low-level Christian officials, clerks in district offices, and canton chiefs. Unlike other sections of society, officials faced the greatest challenge in maintaining a balance between observing their beliefs and upholding their duties. The church made sharp distinctions between faithful Catholics, who obeyed doctrinal discipline and avoided “superstitious practices,” other followers whom the church loosely termed “baptized pagans,” and a third group who had received baptism but did not fully conform to regulations. Regardless, to be a faithful Catholic as the church defined it clashed with the requirements of holding office within the bureaucracy. As seen in the Nguyễn Repertoire of Institutions and Regulations (Khâm Định Đại Nam Hội Điển Sự Lệ), the court required officials recognized within the hierarchy—district magistrates (huyện) and above—to perform and observe several rituals, some daily, others monthly, or annually, as part of their official duties. For example, regulations that accompanied Minh Mạng’s Ten Articles edict in 1834 required local and district officials to prostrate themselves before a copy of the edict in front of gathered villagers.83 Failure or refusal to comply with obligations such as this amounted to a subversive rejection of the institutions of the dynasty, not to mention an affront to royal authority. In short, it would have been impossible for a devout Catholic mandarin to maintain his faith while fulfilling all the ritual requirements of his office. Nevertheless, personal compromise of one’s religious beliefs in carrying out official duties must have been relatively widespread, as suggested by the case of Hồ Đình Hy, whose biography was recorded by Fr. Joseph Sohier. The son of Catholic parents from Như Lâm village in the capital province of Thừa Thiên, Hy entered the Board of Works (Công bộ) in the seventh year of the Minh Mạng reign, 1827. He served a total of thirty-one years, attaining the third grade in the bureaucratic hierarchy, which Sohier inflated to just below that of a governor-general (tổng đốc). Although a senior official with a distinguished career, Hy warranted only two references in the dynastic chronicles. The first, in 1846 under Thiệu Trị, records his position as the overseer of the royal cita-



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del’s Board of Works administration (Đốc công Nội vụ phủ). His memorial to the court at the beginning of the year reported a shortage in embroiderers in the court’s service and called for more to be trained in order to keep up with royal demands.84 In an 1856 memorial he was noted as a chief director of one of the six courts (Thái bộc tự khanh), a post in the lower echelon of the third grade.85 Any subsequent positions Hồ Đình Hy may have held are not included in the chronicles, undoubtedly, as we shall see, because of how he died. Nonetheless, he was a member of the Nguyễn political elite and his promotion to this level would have required Tự Đức’s personal approval. How Hồ Đình Hy survived so long and rose so high in the court hierarchy raises some tantalizing questions as to the personal compromises he would have had to have made, and the degree of complicity of his colleagues and immediate masters. All the same, Hy’s charade did not last. The disastrous Montigny mission of September 1856—which ended in the bombardment of Đà Nẵng harbor—spurred Huế to purge Catholics from the bureaucracy. And two months later, in November, following a denunciation, Hồ Đình Hy and several other Catholics living in the royal citadel were arrested. Tried and found guilty by the royal censorate (viện Đô sát) of “secretly following the religion of Gia-Tô,” Hy was decapitated the following May.86 According to Sohier, four other mandarins of indeterminate position were also arrested around that time.87 The full extent of the recriminations against Catholic officials is unknown. But providing some detail, Fr. Herrengt reported a total of twenty-two other Catholics—whose status or official ranks is unknown—were tattooed on their cheeks and exiled to the north. Furthermore, it was noted at Hy’s trial that he had sent one of his sons to study in Penang for over seven years. This is itself notable considering Hy’s own privileged position, and raises the obvious question as to why he would have chosen this path over the bureaucracy for his son. Perhaps realizing how tentative his own position was, Hy might have seen little future for his children and therefore guided his son to a safer path, in faraway Penang.88 The circumstances of Hy’s arrest and execution alert us to the harshness— and inconsistencies—of Nguyễn policies in the period. From the late 1840s, heightened fears at court of a French attack led to calls for greater attention to weeding Catholics out of the bureaucracy. Thus, in the late 1840s and early 1850s we see a proliferation of anti-Catholic edicts under Tự Đức.89 The most serious and wide-reaching measures, issued according to Borelle in a mid-1854 edict, ordered that all sections of Catholic society—not just common subjects—recant, while offering a period of amnesty for each class. Suspected Catholic officials

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were given one month to renounce the religion, soldiers three months, and common subjects six months.90 Officials at all levels, from district magistrates to provincial executives, faced severe punishments, including fines, demotions, and corporal punishment, for failing to arrest people in their jurisdictions or communities who harbored Catholics and missionaries. The principle articles of this edict were repeated in orders issued by Huế in 1859.91 Hy’s arrest was similar to the fate of an earlier Catholic official, Trần Ngọc Dao. In the aftermath of the Lapierre attack on Đà Nẵng in April 1847, accusations and denunciations turned the bureaucracy inside out. First, within weeks of the bombardment, Dao, a Sơn Tây prefect, was denounced by Nguyễn Đăng Giai.92 Then several months later, in October, accusations surfaced that a sergeant (suất đội), Vũ Văn Điển, had been responsible for inviting the disaster by giving away crucial intelligence to the French. The accusation implied he too was a Catholic.93 Similarly, Hồ Đình Hy was denounced as a traitor (mưu phản quốc) only one month after the Montigny attack in September 1856.94 These officials may very well have been turncoats, but it seems more likely that the court’s response in each of these instances represented a vengeful knee-jerk reaction designed to shock and intimidate officials throughout the kingdom. Scapegoating is certainly understandable given the anxiety over the bombardments. Yet, that the court could so swiftly single out Catholic officials for punishment suggests they were relatively easily identifiable among their peers. In fact, the memorial reporting Vũ Văn Điển and Trần Ngọc Dao’s actions, a reminder that all officials needed to comply with the proscription of Catholicism, notes in passing that among the population people of the “type (hạng) of these two officials were many.”95 External political factors appear to have played the decisive role in initiating aggressive purges at key times. However, it is significant that Catholic officials even managed to flourish at the heart of the kingdom against the political backdrop of the proscription. At the very least, it demonstrates that Nguyễn anti-Catholicism was inconsistent over time, and with regard to official action, never total in its implementation. As Alain Forest has suggested for society in pre-nineteenth century Tonkin, the number of Christian officials in the bureaucracy probably reflected the proportion of Catholics in the wider community.96

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By the mid-1850s anti-Catholicism had been a feature of Vietnamese life for over a generation—widely publicized in numerous edicts, displayed through violent public executions, and enforced through a repertoire of bureaucratic measures. Large sections of the mandarinate and court viewed Catholicism as a grave threat to the stability of the dynasty. The memory of the Lê Văn Khôi rebellion in the early 1830s and the French naval raid at Đà Nẵng in 1847 had vindicated their suspicions and in turn underpinned the recriminations. Yet, while the court projected hostility, this was not necessarily true of other levels of society. Below the reach of central authority, in the provinces and at the lower levels of the bureaucracy, many pragmatic officials who preferred accommodation over conflict sought harmony in their districts and quietly continued to tolerate local congregations and their activities. Although congregations could not practice openly, they could avoid the court’s harshest edicts through careful arrangements, with a bribe or by invoking family connections. Nonetheless, suspicion remained rife throughout grassroots society. Many mainstream communities with no personal knowledge or experience of Catholics undoubtedly associated

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Catholicism with dangerous religious beliefs, “perverse” practices, and sedition. At the end of 1858, the onset of the Franco-Spanish invasion pushed these concerns to the fore of court-society relations. Focused on the turmoil and destruction caused by the invasion, scholarship on late 1850s Vietnam has examined the military and political prelude to the French colonial era. But comparatively little is known of the transformation in community relations in the prelude to colonial rule. Local responses to the invasion, and the upheaval in relations between Catholics and non-Catholics, have generally been treated as secondary to the repercussions for imperial politics. This is clearest in discussions of whether Catholics supported the French invaders. Milton Osborne’s study of the early years of French rule in Cochinchina claimed there is no evidence that Vietnamese Catholics supported the French forces. In a similar vein, although his motivations were quite different, Trần Văn Giàu noted that “experience in Đà Nẵng and Nam Kỳ demonstrated that not many Catholics followed the Westerners in attacking the homeland.” Similarly, David Marr, in his groundbreaking studies of the early colonial era, concurred that Catholic support “was not forthcoming.” Breaking with these views, more recently Mark McLeod has argued that “Tonkinese Catholics” not only joined the Franco-Spanish forces but were formed into detachments that trained and fought at Đà Nẵng and in the south. This claim still remains largely unsubstantiated by primary evidence—either French or Vietnamese. Yet other studies have depicted Catholics as collaborators in a wide variety of treacherous activities, from passive resistance to the Nguyễn forces to simple support in the form of offering food and directions to invading detachments.1 All the same, the focus on potential Catholic betrayal oversimplifies political responses. In effect, by raising the question of Catholic support for the invaders, studies risk making an a priori judgment that Catholics’ loyalties were suspect. Tarring all Catholics with the same traitor’s brush, such views offer little room for analysis of identity, community motivations, or responses to the turmoil. A major problem in the scholarship is the application of modern notions of political identity to Nguyễn Vietnamese society, particularly in regard to the reductionism implicit in defining Catholics as traitorous.2 Most studies portray identity as static over time and across different regions, and suggest that religious affiliation and political loyalty were inextricably connected. Most disturbing, in the quest to ascribe blame for the invasion, most studies have completely overlooked the impact of the previous decades of court antipathy and demonization, and the trauma caused by the rounding up



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of whole communities of Catholics and their internment in camps, not to mention the massacres in the aftermath of the French invasion. This chapter paints a very different picture of social and political tensions on the eve of the Franco-Spanish invasion. While not denying that Catholics were involved in the upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century or that, in the worsening persecution of the later 1850s, they did not sometimes seek potential gain and not simple survival and protection in aligning themselves with their missionary patrons or the invading forces, this chapter argues that local loyalties and regional realities played a much greater role in events than has been recognized. Missionary sources suggest, for example, that Catholic uprisings in northern Vietnam had more to do with long-term economic degradation and widespread famine than with religious tensions alone. Recounting Mgr. Retord’s description of events, Herrengt reported that “the people, whether Christian or pagan are dying of starvation; there is burning and pillaging [and] the mandarins vex [the population] with an unaccustomed fury. The prisons are overflowing with prisoners, some because of the religion [Catholicism] and others because of rebellion; among this latter group the larger number are pagans, but there are also some Christians.”3 In fact, for much of the 1850s tensions in the north, principally among remnant Lê supporters, generated perpetual unrest. When the Franco-Spanish forces landed in 1858, they arrived in a kingdom that was already suffering internal strife. The invasion provided the political catalyst for many groups with grievances against the Nguyễn dynasty to capitalize on the instability and challenge the status quo. In mainstream society, moreover, the invasion undercut the grounds for accommodation and compromise that had previously allowed special arrangements to smooth many of the tensions between congregations and local officials.

Generational Change in the Mission The strong gains in the West Cochinchina vicariate in the 1850s reveal both the success of the preceding decade’s mission reform and the pressures for change from within the clergy. For much of the 1850s the vicariate’s records portray an impressive picture of growth. The violent years of persecution and proscription had not stayed the spread of the religion. Instead, they appear to have spurred its growth. In the far south, after the devastation of the cholera epidemic from 1849 to 1851, the Catholic population recovered and in the early 1850s gained as many as 1,000 new converts per year. In January 1853, Léfèbvre claimed that

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the population of the West Cochinchina Vicariate, covering the Six Provinces, numbered 27,000; five years later he reported the figure had risen to 32,000.4 While many of the neophytes would have been the teenage children of Catholic parents and people who sought baptism on their deathbed, the rise is still significant in the view of the ongoing hostilities. The steady rise in conversions can very probably be attributed in large part to the stability created by congregations’ robust structures in the face of the socioeconomic uncertainties of the late Thiệu Trị and early Tự Đức reigns. There was a widespread search for stability during this time, as seen in both the mission’s success and the emergence of folk Buddhist movements. Most notable of these movements was the Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương (Mysterious Fragrance of the Precious Mountain) sect, which also established settlements in the Mekong Delta west to Cambodia in 1849. Like the Catholic mission, this movement offered Vietnamese, still a minority in this Khmer-dominated region, comprehensive mechanisms of community support.5 The attractiveness of these two different religions is clearest in the two defining features they shared: the availability of membership to all sections of society, and the requirement of strict adherence to religious guidelines in a rigidly structured community. Catholicism and folk Buddhism accepted all, from criminals and soldiers to wealthy merchants and the educated. Despite their inclusiveness, they both demanded a rejection of the worldly and of old ways. Exclusivity in doctrine provided a culture that bound congregations tightly together and offered a sense of security from the tumultuous world around them. While the mission’s reforms provided the framework for better coordination of its activities, the growth in the Catholic population in the Six Provinces can be attributed largely to the work of the local clergy. In 1858, they consisted of twenty priests, four deacons, and over thirty trained catechists.6 During the 1850s, only four missionaries administered the vicariate: Léfèbvre, based in Thị Nghè on the outskirts of Gia Định town; Borelle, in the isolated chrétienté of Cái Mơn; Pernot, hidden in Đầu Nước in the Mekong Delta; and Guillou, patiently seeking converts at the recently established mission among the Stiêng people on the Cambodian frontier. The high ratio of local clergy to missionaries reflected progress in the long-term aim of placing greater responsibility in the hands of local leaders—a course followed after the Gò Thị Synod in 1841. Overall, the shift was crucial, given the greater ease with which local clergy circulated through the region and the lesser risk they posed to the communities they visited. Reform in the Cochinchina mission had not simply created more doctrin-



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ally disciplined, self-contained congregations, it had delivered greater authority and influence to local leaders and the indigenous priesthood. This shift in authority enabled greater local autonomy from the French-controlled mission hierarchy. It also created tensions and conflicts. Unfortunately absent from the mission archives for this period are the administrative records for the East Cochinchina Vicariate administered by Mgr. Cuenot. This absence is significant as Cuenot had been instrumental in the changes outlined at Gò Thị in 1841. Far from indicating a decline of the mission, the Gò Thị Synod reflected a shift in relationships in which local priests exercised greater authority over newly arrived missionaries. This shift is seen with the experiences of Charles Arnoux (1825–64), a young missionary who arrived in the vicariate in 1851. Writing from outside the vicariate, in Singapore in April 1857, he reported to the MEP directors in Paris the sensational news of Cuenot’s erratic behavior.7 Arnoux claimed not only that Cuenot had become “severe in the breadth of excess in following his interests or ideas of the moment,” but that he increasingly threatened with excommunication anyone who acted or spoke against him. The young missionary spared no details, claiming that the apostolic vicar preferred the advice of locals to that of his confreres, even though the locals were wont, as he asserted, to “lie, mislead [and] flatter him.” Cuenot not only treated younger missionaries with contempt but also reportedly abused local priests and converts as well. According to another accusation, the apostolic vicar also used the threat of excommunication to blackmail “Christians from whom he took fields or money in an unjust and most cruel manner.”8 It is unclear what motivated Arnoux to complain of Cuenot’s behavior in such terms, but the overall situation indicates above all a breakdown of relations between young missionaries and the veteran apostolic vicar. In 1857, Cuenot had been in the vicariate for over two decades and had led a dramatic change in the church organization. He was not especially old at fifty-five, but prolonged hardship had undoubtedly affected his health. Arnoux’ comments strongly suggest Cuenot’s mental balance had deteriorated, an observation echoed two years later in 1859 by Jean Roy—another newly arrived missionary—who claimed Cuenot suffered “an illness that has totally overwhelmed his senses.”9 Regardless, Cuenot would not have been the first apostolic vicar to treat new arrivals with contempt when, as alluded to by both Roy and Arnoux, intergenerational tensions between the apostolic vicar and more recent arrivals were rife. A full generation of evangelical expansion and frenzied anti-Nguyễn, pro-martyr propaganda in the French church separated Cuenot from Roy, who was born in 1831—the year

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Cuenot arrived in Cochinchina. But it is almost certain that the apostolic vicar insisted young missionaries conform to his style of administration, which in turn enhanced the role and prestige of local priests and caused tensions. The apostolic vicar had lived among local Catholics for nearly thirty years, virtually his entire adult life. If he remained French at heart, Cuenot undoubtedly also cherished the friendships and personal ties with locals he had developed over long years living in Bình Định. In contrast, new, young missionaries had been raised during the Catholic church’s political resurgence in France in the late 1830s and 1840s, and trained in an atmosphere of triumphalist nationalism in the early 1850s under Napoleon III. They viewed the non-Catholic Asian world from a very different perspective. Not only had several decades of nationalist thought led to progressively racist views of non-European societies, but from the late 1850s the rise of church support for French imperialism (particularly where it benefited the missions) had broadened conceptions of what the role of mission should be in ways that would have been unthinkable several decades earlier. Catholic publications on Vietnam in the months leading up to the invasion in 1858 illustrate this development. The Jesuit publication released in 1858, Mission de la Cochinchine et du Tonkin, described the escalation of violence against Catholics under “Tu-Duc.”10 In a figurative call to arms, the tome ends with an exhortation: “Could these examples of Christian magnanimity [martyrdom] rouse the faith and inflame courage among the Catholics of Europe; could they also give rise in some hearts to the desire to go to the help of these desolated Churches . . . to combat [and] share their triumphs?”11 In the same year, the MEP produced its own work, Voyage dans l’Indochine, written by Bouillevaux, a missionary who traveled through the Cochinchina and Cambodia missions in the late 1840s and early 1850s.12 Full of condescending descriptions of local Catholics, this travelogue emphasizes the civilizational gulf between European and Vietnamese society. In a passage, Bouillevaux mockingly described how a Catholic literatus boasted that Vietnam had no rival in the “military sciences.” The missionary’s “incredulity” apparently irritated the scholar, “animating his patriotic fervor,”13 A work with a similar title, La Cochinchine et le Tonquin, published by Eugène Veuillot in early 1859, soon after the French naval expedition against Vietnam, advanced a connection between France’s national interest and its moral imperative to act on behalf of “Christian civilization.”14 A prominent Catholic journalist of the era, Veuillot emphasized the need for France’s “moral superiority” in Asia to ensure the safety of Catholics and offset British supremacy.15



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These and similar works, which openly promoted close associations between French imperialism and mission expansion, reflected the nineteenth-century shift in church attitudes that coincided with resurgent French nationalism. Whereas missionaries of the 1820s eschewed politics, men such as Mgr. Pellerin, who lobbied directly at the court of Napoleon III for military intervention in Vietnam, saw no conflict between spiritual and political interests. In contrast, Cuenot’s generation, while modernizing in spirit, disdained the MEP’s closer engagement with the state, as seen earlier in the decade with Léfèbvre’s response to reforms initiated after a corruption scandal rocked the MEP organization in Paris. Léfèbvre had no qualms about denouncing confreres who had been guilty of “breathing the pestilential air of French politics.”16 It is unclear to whom Léfèbvre is referring, but it is almost certain that he had missionaries such as Pellerin in his sights—men who were more interested in glorifying the mission name than ensuring the well-being of Catholics. New arrivals to the mission in the late 1850s may not have been directly involved in the MEP’s political lobbying in Paris, but their writings suggest they shared the nationalistic and racist views expressed in contemporary French politics. Although it is a gross oversimplification to suggest that all missionaries shared similar views, this distinction between the generations is important. Central to Cuenot’s reforms of 1841 had been the transfer of greater responsibility and authority to the local priesthood, and by the mid-1850s his plan had achieved great success. But by then the result was not received favorably by many younger missionaries who saw themselves as inherently superior, both ecclesiastically and racially. The conflict of views between generations inevitably affected local mission activity and relationships. Against the background of an impending French assault, it magnified tensions, and not only between French missionaries. The awkward situation Arnoux described was minor compared to that experienced by Herrengt, whose extraordinary confrontation with a local priest indicates how differences had started to gnaw away at the stability of the East Cochinchina mission. Writing in early 1859, Herrengt described in a letter how the local priest retired to his apartment one evening, where for the following half hour he read from a lecture (soliloque) in annamitico-latin [quốc ngữ] about the hypocrites who come here to preach the religion, who call the warships of their country to come and massacre thousands of Annamites, [and] who rejoice when they hear that many have been killed; who are well-versed in talking about war but who know not how to speak of anything else.17

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It is interesting that the local priest, Khoa, had apparently been reading from a written document, not simply delivering an oral diatribe, thus raising the question as to the authorship of this seemingly anti-French lecture. Apparently it was most likely written by either Khoa or another priest, suggesting such views may have circulated among local clergy. When the missionary did not respond to the attack clearly directed at him, Khoa continued baiting. He switched his attack to reading a lesson from the book of “Christian perfection” (sách trọn lành)—a text used to teach neophytes—on the punishments (khốn nạn) “that await those who do not know how to strongly repress all their wicked inclinations (các tính mê rất xấu).” The message of the “lesson” did not fail to infuriate Herrengt. The next day tensions escalated out of control when Khoa started smashing bottles of Mass wine at the presbytery kitchen. Herrengt arrived near the scene to see Khoa wielding a large chopping knife, threatening all who crossed his path. The priest hurled insults at Herrengt, who kept a respectable distance and called Phước, another priest, to help defuse the rampage. Khoa ranted uncontrollably and demanded the mission’s dogs to be brought to him, promising greater violence if ignored.18 Eventually a dog was brought out—Herrengt noted, strangely, the animal was “of European race”—and to their horror Khoa seized it and “furiously” hacked its head off, breaking the chopping knife in his exertion. The priest then dumped the dog’s corpse at Herrengt’s door.19 Shocked by the display, and undoubtedly fearful for his life, the missionary sought safety elsewhere with the help of a lay leader. The cause of this remarkable episode is not clear in Herrengt’s recollection of events, but according to the missionary the outburst and the violence were premeditated. Herrengt suggested in his final remarks in the letter that the confrontation arose from long-simmering tensions within the mission caused by Cuenot’s style of governance. The apostolic vicar, he noted, followed a policy of “divide and rule” within the mission; he “humbles the missionaries in sight of the indigenes so that they [the missionaries] will be unable to move without creating dissension with them [local priests], and in this way he controls one and the other completely under his scepter.”20 Cuenot’s increasingly unpredictable behavior, and his personal style of administration, combined with the greater authority enjoyed by the local clergy, increasingly placed newly arrived missionaries in a difficult position. As Herrengt’s own personal analysis shows, new missionaries believed, whether true or not, that the longterm reforms in favor of local priests had led to an unofficial demotion of foreign missionaries in the running of the vicariate.



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Herrengt’s confrontation with Khoa may have been unusually extreme, but nevertheless it undermines the illusion that the mission enjoyed uncritical popular support among Catholic communities and unquestioned control over them. It also challenges the view that local congregations viewed Catholicism specifically as a French religion.21 Khoa’s comments indicate an awareness of a genuine distinction between French interests and the tenets of the religion. The confrontation may have been a purely personal matter between Khoa and Herrengt, but given the tense situation and the disdain other missionaries expressed for Cuenot and local priests in East Cochinchina, I believe such tensions were not likely to have been rare.

Denunciations Missionaries had every reason to fear confrontations, whether with non- Catholics or with their own congregations. The risk of denunciation to a nearby mandarin posed one of the most feared hazards for all associated with the mission. For over two decades the threat of capture—for missionaries and local clergy—had been lessened by careful arrangements with local officials through local middleman with the help of regular payments. But the balance between a mandarin’s bought accommodation of a cleric in his jurisdiction and increased bureaucratic pressure from above to unearth foreign and local priests became more and more unpredictable toward the end of the 1850s. As the situation became more volatile, the threat of denunciation increased. In the case of Mặc Bắc congregation in early 1853, for example, the actions of an absconded Catholic soldier originally from nearby Cái Nhưm—located next to Cái Mơn village—led to the capture and execution of two highly respected church members. Burdened with heavy gambling debts, the soldier, “bếp Nhẫn” (first-class soldier Nhẫn), sought to borrow money from the congregation. Unsuccessful in his attempts to win the sympathy of a visiting priest by the name of Father Lựu, he conspired with two others from the village and traveled to Vĩnh Long to report the priest’s presence to officials.22 The militia soon arrived to search the village, capturing another priest, Philippe Minh, and arresting the elderly congregation head, Joseph Lựu. In the late 1850s, such incidents increased as a number of communities and Catholics were denounced to prefectural authorities in anonymous letters. In late 1857, Léfèbvre’s Collège at Thị Nghè near Saigon was apparently denounced numerous times by letters delivered anonymously to the prefect’s office at Tân

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Bình. On one occasion, a soldier intercepted one of the letters and took it to the congregation head in return for a small bribe. The identity of the complainant was, unfortunately, not revealed.23 More letters continued to be sent to authorities and eventually in late 1858 officials conducted searches to capture Léfèbvre. In response, the Collège dispersed, with all students fleeing to an isolated location in Biên Hòa province.24 Although the details of these denunciations remained a mystery to missionaries, suspicion often pointed to disgruntled or angry Catholics or apostates, as in one of the most famous instances of the times. Eight months before his confrontation with Father Khoa, Herrengt reported that an unknown village official, a chức việc, of a congregation had betrayed mission activities near Huế in an “anonymous letter” to officials in the capital. According to Herrengt, the “Judas” named “all the Christians in the capital with an interest in the mission, and accused several mandarins of allowing themselves to gain from the money of Christians.”25 In the recriminations that followed, several mandarins were demoted and some fifty Catholics were arrested. This denunciation led to the arrest and execution of Hồ Đình Hy, the senior Board of Works official in charge of royal embroidery. In a related incident, Sohier, then hiding in Di Loan in Quảng Trị, was also denounced.26 From mid-1858, as the political situation shifted from relative calm to uncertainty, local-level official tolerance for and accommodation of missionaries and priests evaporated. As late as 1858 many Catholics could still live in relative safety in mixed communities in far southern Vietnam. However, this changed dramatically after the Franco-Spanish assault on Đà Nẵng in September. Officials then launched several raids on congregations throughout the region. Borelle, in Cái Mơn, Vĩnh Long province, reported his community suffered a serious attack by the district mandarin resulting in the arrest and punishment of four people: two nuns, a village head, and a young man.27 An even more devastating event occurred in the first week of January 1859 at Đầu Nước on Cù Lao Giêng Island, upriver from Sa Đéc. In his description of the attack, composed a week after the event, Jean Pernot explained how the upheaval caused by the French invasion drove a wedge between Catholics and non-Catholics.28 Pernot had lived in the region for over five years and administered numerous congregations around the Cambodian frontier area without encountering much danger from local authorities. The congregation in which he was based, Đầu Nước, comprised around 450 converts and was surrounded by a larger, nonCatholic population that, according to Pernot’s estimate, numbered some 3,000. But far from living in fear of arrest and repression, Đầu Nước’s Catholics en-



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joyed their non-Catholic neighbors’ relative tolerance. Nonetheless, this accommodation was not without its dangers. For much of 1858, as Pernot began his account, a small “band of brigands” from the village had attempted several times to break into his house and on one occasion had gone so far as to poison his dogs. Frustrated in their attempts, the “brigands” then attempted to rouse the attention of local officials to Pernot’s presence. At first they made the mistake of petitioning the prefect of Châu Đốc, who responded to their accusations by sentencing two of the three captured to a public beating. According to reports, the prefect openly doubted their honesty, noting that it would be impossible for a Westerner to stay in a “province inundated a quarter of the year and where mosquitoes are in such great number.”29 Beaten but not defeated, the group persisted and approached village- and canton-level officials from whom they expected a better reception. They managed to rouse the nearby canton chief to search the village in the middle of the night. Emboldened, they petitioned the highest local official, the district mandarin, who unsuccessfully searched the congregation. On both occasions Pernot escaped capture with minimal fuss. In fact his boasting about his good fortune during these early searches suggests local officials ignored his presence. Our weakness appears all the same to be our strength, and for us a reason for our safety, because Đầu Nước is a small Xtienté [congregation] of 450 inhabitants enclosed amidst a pagan village of more than 3,000 souls, and in general this small Xtienté is thus lost among the pagans, not stirred by the suspicions and the fears of the mandarins unlike certain large chrétientés that form villages inscribed on the state registers (rôle de l’état) and in which the heads are all Christians.30

In late 1858, as the conflict escalated in Đà Nẵng, the court issued new measures to root out Catholics from their relative isolation. More customs mandarins, for example, appeared on the Mekong, and in the provinces officials deployed small groups of militia with wooden crosses to summarily force suspected Catholics to recant. It was at this point that Pernot’s band of serial harassers worked out how to make a claim on which officials had no choice but to act. They reported that the missionary had stored a cache of rifles and weapons that would be issued to local Catholics, they averred, at the right moment for an uprising to support the French invaders. The accusation was bogus, but no official could dare ignore it. Late in the night of January 7 some three hundred militia and officers swooped down on the village. Moments before the attack a neighbor

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rushed to Pernot’s residence and warned him of the danger. He escaped to the safety of nearby rice fields where he watched disaster unfold in what had to this point been a relatively peaceful community. Soldiers attacked by throwing firecrackers into Catholics’ doorways. Then, storming in with swords drawn, they turned each house inside out in search of religious objects, such as books and medals, in order to incriminate the household. According to Pernot, they singled out the houses of the family of the congregation’s elderly catechist, Emmanuel Lê Văn Phụng, on account of the wealth available for looting. The goods taken from Emmanuel Phụng’s house alone are surprising: “silver, ligatures [of copper cash], silk were among the least of the objects carried off, they also snatched from the women their bracelets and their gold earrings (boucles).”31 Apart from deflating the illusion that only the poor and itinerants joined the religion, the sample of expensive goods noted by Pernot also demonstrates the wealth some Catholics clearly enjoyed. Over the past decade Phụng had been a major contributor to the mission, funding the construction of a college and providing a house for religious ceremonies. He appears to have been a link between the community and authorities in the negotiation of safety from searches and in persuading local officials to turn a blind eye to the “religious contraband” in the village—that is visiting missionaries.32 The soldiers arrested Emmanuel Phụng, his sons, and a brother, along with a newly ordained priest, Pierre Nguyễn Văn Quí, placing them all in chains and stocks.33 Officials also rounded up thirty more villagers, probably mostly men, and marched them to Châu Đốc. As for the failure to capture Pernot, the mandarins in charge of the raid claimed that the Westerner had simply “physically disappeared.”34 In the following days, Pernot was spirited away by servants to another congregation, but the people of Đầu Nước continued to suffer. The ties that had bound Catholics and non-Catholics for so long began to unravel, with the trauma of the raid splitting the community in two. Pernot reported that immediately before the attack some Catholics had entrusted their precious belongings to nonCatholic neighbors with whom they were “on good terms.” Afterward, however, many of these neighbors simply refused to return the items to their rightful owners.35 At the Châu Đốc prefectural lock-up a large number of Catholics recanted, but eleven refused and subsequently nine were sent into exile. Officials executed the remaining two, Father Pierre Quí and Emmanuel Phụng, at the end of July 1859. Although the prefectural officials assiduously carried out the edicts proscribing the religion, they ignored the more recent laws that stipulated the bodies of priests be dismembered and thrown into the sea, permitting the devastated



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congregation to reclaim them for burial. A funeral and wake were held over a day and night, and, in a sign of how local belief surrounding the executions had come to influence popular religiosity, the priest who had taken charge of the district made a “large distribution of cotton soaked with [Quí’s] blood to satisfy,” in Borelle’s words, “the pious eagerness (avidité) of the faithful.”36 In this episode we see how the uncertainties of the period dragged relatively calm communities into a mire of confusion and distrust. Until this point most far-southern congregations had cohabited with mainstream communities with little conflict. In fact, as Pernot highlighted, living among non-Catholics paradoxically afforded a higher degree of security from the threat of official interference than living in all-Catholic settlements. Congregations also continued to take advantage of private arrangements with local officials, even as high as district and prefectural mandarins. Authorities administering socially and culturally mixed populations far away from the capital, as in frontier Châu Đốc, preferred compromise and accommodation to obedience to divisive court orders, and struggled to promote cohesion in a region that faced the constant threat of ethnic violence. The French invasion also brought to the surface other long-simmering tensions. In 1859 an uprising broke out among Cham and Khmer communities in the An Giang province border region; by the end of that year it was spreading out of control.37 Provoked by the French invasion at Đà Nẵng, the deteriorating political situation had dire consequences for grassroots society. As anxiety spread throughout the kingdom, denunciations increased in frequency and the margin for compromise and accommodation narrowed. Indeed, the Đầu Nước raid is reminiscent of the eruption of violence in the aftermath of the 1847 naval attack on Đà Nẵng. But in contrast to the late 1840s, the French invasion in 1858 created unprecedented and irreversible social division.

Invasion: Rule and Alternative Responses In early February 1859, several weeks after the attack on Đầu Nước, a squadron of French corvettes sailed up the Soai Rạp River to Saigon where, following a four-day battle, they crushed the defending garrison. The result was chaos and, as Pernot reported, widespread “confusion and inexpressible disorder” as people fled the area surrounding the town.38 Huế responded bitterly to the defeat, orchestrating a wide-reaching repression of Catholics in the far

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south. In a memorial dated May 1859, Vĩnh Long’s provincial magistrate, Lê Đình Đức, claimed that many Catholics had assisted the French, taken advantage of non-Catholics, and spied for the invaders.39 In response, the court issued an edict ordering a general containment. The different measures applied provide insight into both the distinctions the court drew between Catholics at this point and the descent into violence that followed. The court ordered that all who had gone to the aid of the Westerners be rounded up with their parents, wives, and children and be imprisoned. People who had not yet rallied to the French were to be prevented from doing so at all costs. However, in an admission that not all Catholics posed a real danger, the edict added that well-behaved community leaders should be secretly detained— perhaps suggesting they should be spied on—to stop them from traveling around the region or reaching the enemy camp, but that the elderly, the young, and women who were living peacefully and observing the law (giữ phép) were to be left alone. Those who caused a hindrance or appeared to be waiting eagerly for the invaders were to be moved to villages where no Catholics lived.40 The chaos caused by the invasion made a comprehensive campaign of searches and arrests impossible. Faced with widespread devastation, the court resorted to pragmatic measures to maintain its grip. This edict’s noting that some Catholics lived peacefully and observed the law (yên phận giữ phép) is the first such admission in the dynastic chronicles of which I am aware.41 For over two decades, official documents had promoted the view that followers of the religion became mesmerized (mê hoặc), and thus irrational, by its practices. The qualified suggestion that Catholics might uphold the law was unprecedented and, significantly, is reiterated in later lines with the ordering of provincial officials to maintain vigilance over Catholics who observe the laws and whose “hearts had not changed” (sinh lòng).42 Finally, the edict ends by distinguishing methods of confinement according to the proximity of Catholic communities to the invading forces. Those living far from the enemy’s control, were to be placed under house arrest.43 But Catholics living in villages neighboring French control—which applied to Biên Hòa and around Định Từơng (Mỹ Tho)—were to be moved to other villages, presumably among non-Catholics. This latter measure laid the grounds for the large-scale, forced resettlement of Catholics in the Biên Hòa and Bà Rịa area in makeshift camps. Then, in October, the court ordered prefectural officials to take a census of all Catholics in their districts, which was to include their land holdings and other assets.44 This directive was expanded with the provision to round up and incar-



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cerate all male Catholics. Herrengt provides a detailed report of the repercussions.45 In January 1860, he noted, officials had arrested all the principal members of each congregation in Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, and Phú Yên. Officials obliged all villages to prepare a census of Catholic families and their “servants, goods and property,” something that further demonstrated that not all Catholics lived on the margins of society. Soon thereafter, district mandarins visited each Catholic community to force all men from the age of sixteen to recant. Herrengt claims that “here and there only 2 or 3 were weak.” Nevertheless, many villages suffered enormously from the measures. Defiant community leaders who refused to recant faced arrest and imprisonment. Placing enormous strain on the broader population, officials dispersed some prisoners “one by one in pagan villages,” while others ended up as exiles in the highland frontier citadels. Meanwhile, the measures left many congregations vulnerable to attack by bandits. Herrengt reported that in many communities “only some men remain, those who are not strong, or those men omitted from the census, [thus] women and children are left without protection from the vexation of pagans.”46 Despite the turmoil in Đà Nẵng and Gia Định, officials in some areas still preferred to maintain harmony in their jurisdictions by negotiating with congregations. A prominent example occurred in Bình Định province under the governorship of Bùi Quỹ. Again according to Herrengt, at the time of the drive to round up congregation heads, officials in Bình Định arrested only forty. And instead of forcing these men to recant, Governor Quỹ apparently sought to negotiate a course of action with the group to help fend off the French invasion. Assembling these prisoners in early January, the governor presented two proposals: one, as recorded by Herrengt, was that they use their influence to lead a group of local Catholics “to Tourane (Đà Nẵng) to fight and drive out the French”; the second was that several of the group should attempt to “surrender themselves to the [French] ships and expose to them the critical situation of Christians, and beg them to put an end [to the attack] and withdraw.”47 Governor Quỹ decided that the second option was the more appropriate and delegated a group of five for the undertaking, even going so far as to dispatch a courier to Huế to inform the court of his proposal. It is almost certain that all those involved or who heard of this proposal doubted its practicability. Herrengt was skeptical and interpreted the plan as an attempt to simply single out the most prominent community leaders in the province for further punishment. He therefore approached a local official for his opinion. The official, who may have been a Catholic, suggested the proposal was

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a humane measure intended to stall “for time and to delay executing” the harsh anti-Catholic edicts. For his pains, Herrengt reported, Governor Quỹ suffered a severe reprimand and a suspension of his salary for a year as punishment for his “moderation in the execution of the new edict.”48 The coincidence of Bùi Quỹ’s appointment at Bình Định and his “moderate” treatment of Catholics is remarkable. Under Minh Mạng, Bùi Quỹ had enjoyed a stellar rise in the bureaucracy among a number of handpicked graduates from the Red River Delta provinces. At the height of the anti-Catholic campaign of the late 1830s, he had held prestigious posts as a chief lawmaker and magistrate at Huế in the Board of Punishments (Hình bộ). However, late in the reign his career suffered a setback that, court documents secretly copied by a mission sympathizer suggest, most likely was a consequence of his involvement in the sentencing and execution of François Jaccard in 1838. By 1860 Quỹ was a senior and highly experienced official. His punishment for being involved in Jaccard’s execution more than two decades earlier may have softened his attitude toward Catholics, or lessened his enthusiasm for implementing repressive measures, especially if they conflicted with his own views of what was appropriate for a lawmaker. But it is also likely that another issue plaguing the central provinces played a decisive role. For much of 1859, as the Franco-Spanish attack stalled at Đà Nẵng, the French navy’s dominance of coastal shipping had aggravated a dangerous shortage in rice in the prefectures around Huế. The shortage also afflicted Bình Định province, which had suffered a serious drought in 1858.49 Perhaps concerned for the devastation famine would cause to his province, Quỹ may have attempted to avoid fully implementing the new edicts in order to reduce the risk of instability. In most areas, however, the invasion had exhausted whatever goodwill and receptiveness to compromise had lingered from more peaceful times. Moreover, for many mandarins the way events soon culminated precluded any further negotiation. The moderation in Bình Định under Governor Quỹ in early 1860 ended abruptly with his death in April 1861, when he was replaced by Nguyễn Đức Hựu.50 Up to this point the situation in Bình Định and the neighboring provinces had become increasingly unstable. In early March, following the defeat of Nguyễn forces around Saigon, retreating soldiers clogged the main routes leading north.51 In mid-July, the appearance off the coast of a convoy of ten French warships sparked a wave of fear throughout the province and, as Herrengt noted, anxious rumors swirled regarding their final destination. A second attack on the metropolitan provinces exacerbated concerns. The belief spread “that they were returning to Tourane [Đà Nẵng] harbor, [and] that some [ships] had already ar-



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rived at the mouth of the river leading to the capital.”52 To Herrengt the anxiety this caused was palpable—such rumors had a powerful effect on officials and communities and did much to fuel alarm. Coinciding with this development, and Bùi Quỹ’s death, Nguyễn Đức Hựu’s appointment saw the full implementation of the court’s draconian measures in the province. When he arrived in Bình Định, Hựu apparently was surprised that the edicts had not been fully implemented.53 A veteran official openly hostile to the mission, he had been previously based in Quảng Nam and had firsthand experience of the devastation around Đà Nẵng caused by the French invasion. In the following eighteen months, Governor Hựu led a ferocious campaign that completely broke the back of the mission in the province and all but decimated the Catholic population. Writing from Saigon over a year later, in January 1862, Herrengt reported in a letter on Mgr. Cuenot’s capture and death in prison there in November.54 At the end of October, a raid on Cuenot’s holy see of Gò Thị had forced the elderly apostolic vicar to flee to nearby rice fields. After three days of hiding he decided, perhaps from hunger or sheer desperation, to surrender to the militia. He was carried in a small bamboo cage to the provincial capital where he was interrogated. Soon after his arrival, however, he fell ill with dysentery. He died a day before the order for his execution arrived from Huế.55 In the wake of Cuenot’s arrest there followed a general terrorization of the Catholic population. Of the twenty-two priests present in the vicariate at the time Cuenot fled in August 1861, Herrengt reported that thirteen had been captured, two had disappeared without a trace, six remained relatively safe in the highlands mission to the west, and a single priest had managed to escape to safety in the south. Furthermore, he reported bleakly, officials had interned the province’s more than 250 Latin students and nuns and the rest of its 13,000 Catholics. All had been tattooed with the characters tả đạo, perverse religion, on their faces. The whole population was then apparently dispersed to non-Catholics villages: “by fraction proportionate to the importance of the village and enclosed in miserable hangars around which were piled all sorts of combustible materials in order to burn the prisoners [alive] when the day came.”56 It is unclear when exactly the “right day” was to be, but by the time Herrengt wrote this letter he had received reports that two villages had set their camps alight to relieve themselves of the “corvée duty” of being responsible for the Catholics’ custody. From this point, for over a year, the archival records offer few details of events in Bình Định province. The absence of missionaries in the area or priests to act as informants must leave us to guess at the magnitude of the chaos.

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The Bien Hoa Massacres, January 1862 Undoubtedly the greatest catastrophe of the invasion was the spread of famine throughout the Six Provinces from early 1860. Once a vocal advocate of a military intervention in the region, Borelle, who was based in Cái Mơn, now scorned the French admiralty’s failure to deal a decisive blow. Living at the center of a usually bustling crossroads of commerce, he reported that the French presence—which had not moved any great distance from Saigon into the countryside—had prevented the transport of goods, particularly “into provinces that do not have rice fields.” Borelle was probably referring to the more watery areas of the western delta where little land had yet been cleared for rice cultivation. By early 1860, he claimed thousands had died of starvation. Horrified by the tragedy, he reported that “there are entire provinces where poor people as well as the rich are reduced to consuming the grass of the fields and tree roots.” Making matters worse, as in Bình Định, officials had over the months confiscated the boats of Catholics throughout the region, effectively preventing many from making a living. Officials continued to confine congregations to detention within their villages. In most the headmen had been arrested and taken to prefectural centers where they were then relocated for surveillance in “pagan villages.” Less than two months later, in July, Borelle himself died, probably of starvation, sharing the fate of many others around him.57 As in Bình Định, this period saw the end of moderation and accommodation among low-level officials of Catholics in their jurisdictions. At this point reports arrived at the French garrison in Saigon that nearly four hundred Catholics had been interned in makeshift prisons in nearby districts. Over several months officials had progressively rounded up large communities and had interned them among non-Catholic communities. Although few Catholics were interned in early 1860, by the end of 1861 the number had apparently ballooned. Reports reached Saigon in October 1861 that in Phúc Tuy prefecture, an area encompassing a number of old congregations, some two thousand Catholic men, women, and children had been detained in camps built hastily from wood and other materials taken from locals’ dismantled houses. One of the camps, at Phước Lễ, held only men, while the other three, at Long Kiên, Long Điền, and Phước Thọ, held “women, children, the elderly and the infirm.” Mission reports note that the news of this development came from a “pagan canton chief” who was appalled at the conditions and had appealed to the French commander, Admiral



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Charner, to intervene. According to Gauthier, detainees had started to die of “hunger and misery” and disease.58 Then late in the year Admiral Bonard launched a campaign to destroy resistance in Biên Hòa and, after a short thrust into the province in early December, the French captured the citadel and advanced to take the rest of the province by mid-January. Governor Nguyễn Đức Hựu fled the area with the remaining Nguyễn forces, taking refuge farther south in Phúc Tuy prefecture.59 Before fleeing he ordered the torching of the Catholic internment camps. Léfèbvre provided the earliest account of the catastrophe. Writing a week after the first massacre at Phước Lễ prison in Bà Rịa, the apostolic vicar relied on reports from refugee Catholics—many of whom had been injured in the reprisals—as well as accounts from French officers. Léfèbvre’s letter is not addressed to a particular audience and unlike later, polished accounts written for the Annals, it presents a frank report of events. It is highly emotive; Léfèbvre had had close contact with these communities for over fifteen years and his anguish at their massacre is palpable. As French forces advanced to within sight of Bà Rịa around January 7, Léfèbvre wrote, officials leading royal forces ordered soldiers to set fire to the buildings. When French forces arrived on the scene they found a mess of “cinders, scraps of half-roasted human flesh and an immense mass of corpses and burnt bones.”60 According to Herrengt, one of the survivors, a sixteen-year-old girl, escaped the blaze by hiding in a tree for several days.61 Léfèbvre sent a priest to the area to catalog the damage. He counted 232 bodies at one camp; and only 26 men who had escaped, several with “light injuries.” Later research by Jules Errard, an MEP missionary, placed the total killed at this camp alone at 248. In the other three camps, a total of 149 were killed.62 There was also a smaller massacre around this time in the neighboring province of Định Từơng, in Bà Giong congregation.63 The prevailing explanation for the mass violence of the invasion period in modern scholarship has generally referred to longstanding divisions between Catholics and non-Catholics. In particular, Nicole-Dominique Lê has argued that both Catholics’ physical isolation and their separate settlement from mainstream villages played a major role.64 But as shown earlier, not all southern Catholics lived in closed villages away from mainstream society. With few exceptions— Cái Mơn, Mặc Bắc, and several hamlets in Biên Hòa—the majority of congregations shared the same settlements as non-Catholics. Moreover, community relations, until the French invasion, had been characterized by accommodation and compromise. In fact, a close look at the court’s conceptions of

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Catholics refutes the view that Huế uniformly viewed Catholics as French surrogates. As expounded by Minh Mạng in the late 1830s, Huế conceived Catholics as followers of a “perverse religion” (tả đạo). In this view, they were not criminals but redeemable subjects who had been “mesmerized,” mê, had lost their human reason (vô lý), and needed to be restored to the “orthodox way” (chính đạo) in order for them to return to the customs and morals (phong hóa) of the kingdom. It was Catholics’ refusal to recant, which amounted to subversion, that made them criminals.65 Yet a pardon always awaited those who recanted and returned to the orthodox way. In the 1840s, Thiệu Trị echoed this position, and made an astute distinction between types of followers. “There are individuals,” Thiệu Trị declared, “who follow the religion and have been dulled (u mê) and are not conscious (không tỉnh), and are resolved to punishment, [and then there are] those who on the outside follow [the religion] but internally do not follow, but have not yet honestly shown repentance.”66 Shortly before his death in November 1847, he reiterated this difference but noted that not only had common people (tiểu dân) been mesmerized, so too had some officials (quan chức).67 During the Franco-Spanish invasion at Đà Nẵng in 1858, Tự Đức recognized that some Catholics posed less of a threat than others.68 Nuanced perspectives like this at court were reflected in attitudes elsewhere in the bureaucracy, among regional authorities, and in local society. These views highlight the fact that, although the Nguyễn looked on Catholics with contempt, Christian disobedience of the antiCatholic edicts did not preclude their identification with the local order. Even when the collapse of law and order seemed imminent, the court continued to treat Catholics as criminals, not as religious renegades or French affiliates. Thus, in the early stages of the French invasion officials detained a few members of the community, incarcerating larger numbers only as conflict intensified. We must not assume that the sole motivation for violence was a general ideological hatred of Catholics. On one hand, despite the decimation of Catholics in Biên Hòa province, estimates of the vicariate’s population in the mid-1860s show that overall the mission in the far south remained relatively intact. Taking into consideration the steady rise in conversions in the three provinces ceded to the French after the Treaty of Saigon in mid-1862, the size of the Catholic population in the Six Provinces in 1866 rested at around the same level as before 1862.69 Far from suggesting the mortality rate caused by the famine and invasion hostilities was insignificant, the evidence is that the mass violence in this region was not as devastating as elsewhere, notably in the north of the kingdom, where



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many thousands of Catholics disappeared. Furthermore, the events of Biên Hòa do not appear to have been replicated elsewhere in the Six Provinces. For example, according to a monograph on Bãi Xan—a congregation neighboring Cái Mơn, near Vĩnh Long town—written in 1912 by Father Bellocq, Vĩnh Long, an area also with a high concentration of Catholics, suffered relatively little violence during the period 1860 to 1862. Although officials rounded up and incarcerated the province’s Catholic notables and community heads, some communities managed to remain in hiding for months, thus averting a disaster.70 If the accuracy of Bellocq’s 1912 account can be questioned because of the decades separating him from the events he described, the absence of any contemporary missionary’s report, indeed the silence of missionaries on events in this province, nevertheless strongly suggests it escaped the worst of the oppression. Several examples of official interactions with Catholics from the period add color to our understanding of what others have described as a black-and-white conflict. In late February 1861 the defeat of Nguyễn forces at Chí Hòa north of Saigon precipitated the slow retreat of Nguyễn forces from the region. We learn from Mgr. Gauthier that Nguyễn Tri Phương, the field marshal commanding the defending army, accepted the services of Catholic physicians to treat his battle wounds. Reporting back to the apostolic vicar, the médicins chretiens verified Phương’s poor state, noting that his forearm had “fallen into putrefaction” and the limb was “at the point of detaching.” The Nguyễn chronicles note that Phương was retired to Bình Thuận for special treatment from physicians— separate from the Christians—sent by Tự Đức.71 The unusual circumstances of Phương’s treatment are in part made clearer by a similar episode a little later in the same year. In September, a disturbing report forced Tự Đức to demote and dismiss Quảng Bình’s governor (tuần phủ), Nguyễn Văn Ứng, and his financial administrator (bố chính), Tạ Hữu Khuê, for not fully implementing the Catholic proscription. According to the memorial, the offenders had allowed two Catholics, Chưởng and Nhị, to travel freely through the province, in exchange for medicines for themselves and their families.72 These examples appear at first incongruous in light of the tumultuous political situation, but this is largely because of distortions in the historical record arising from the notion that religious affiliation in nineteenth-century Vietnam was indistinguishable from political identity. To a large extent officials adhered to Nguyễn orthodoxy in their religious and spiritual attitudes. Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, for example, undoubtedly sincerely believed religious practice was a defining feature of cultural identity and political loyalty, and

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that Catholics thus threatened the social order. But his views did not represent those of the majority. For Field Marshal Phương, Governor Ứng, and Financial Administrator Khuê, in contrast, the realities of everyday life and different personal beliefs overrode—but did not necessarily supersede—official loyalties. Just as such high-ranking officials found it expedient to employ, and felt no qualms about using, Catholic physicians, compromise was a normal feature of local-level relations. Court views informed community perceptions, but they did not preclude accommodation. Apart from highlighting differences between court orthodoxy and local views, the examples suggest that differences in convictions and the zealousness of officials may have played a large part in the mass violence of late 1861 and 1862. The most reasonable explanation for the mass violence in Biên Hòa in January 1862 centers on the desperation of Nguyễn commanders in their retreat from the region. It seems that at this stage of the fighting, officials resorted to destroying potential bases of support for the invaders; Catholics were an obvious target. In 1861 and early 1862, as the Nguyễn army retreated from Biên Hòa, it concentrated its fury on neighboring Catholic communities in Phúc Tuy prefecture. But if this accounts for the violence in Biên Hòa, it raises questions as to why massacres were not repeated throughout the Six Provinces. Adding to my argument that military expediency was the key reason for the mass violence is the fact that the Catholic community in northern Vietnam suffered disproportionately greater bloodshed during this period. In mid-1862, the dynastic chronicles recorded Nam Định’s governor-general, Nguyễn Đình Tân—who had previously shown some tolerance of Catholics—had beheaded more than 4,800 Catholics over the past several months.73 His reason for this slaughter was to prevent Catholics from joining rebels (giặc) who sought to take advantage of the instability in the region. In fact, an earlier report to the throne, dated January 1862, noted that Catholics had been rounded up and thrown into jail and then liquidated along with murderers, thieves, and even adulterers (gian phu).74 Court treatment of Catholics in the north needs to be understood in the broader context of civil unrest, and the greatest threat to law and order at the time was the unchecked spread of banditry and spot-fire uprisings. Finally, an additional factor in the savagery in Biên Hòa was the individual predisposition of certain officials. While Field Marshal Phương thought it appropriate, for instance, to enlist the service of Catholic physicians, the retreating governor linked to the Biên Hòa massacres, Nguyễn Đức Hoan, a man with a far different political pedigree, thought differently. His personal views on Catholics



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may have been a major reason why the savagery was far more pronounced in Biên Hòa than elsewhere in the Six Provinces. The lives of these two officials were markedly different. To begin with, Phương, born near Huế, entered the Nguyễn bureaucracy early in the Minh Mạng reign through his personal connections.75 Although noting carefully that he lacked an academic qualification, his biography describes his rise first as a civil officer and later as a general. If practical military prowess defined Phương’s later career credentials, academic merit underpinned Nguyễn Đức Hoan’s from the very beginning. Hoan, a native of Quảng Trị, achieved the prestigious doctoral degree (tiến sĩ) in 1835 and enjoyed promotion based on his civil abilities. He was undoubtedly well educated and well versed in the intellectual and ideological views of the court during the 1820s and 1830s.76 Thus, whereas Phương felt no conflict in having a lengthy conversation with a missionary—Léfèbvre in 1844—or accepting treatment from Catholic physicians, Hoan was hardly likely, as one of the first tiến sĩ from his province, to entertain such unorthodoxy. Although the loyalty of the two officials to Huế is beyond question, Phương’s flexibility stands in stark contrast to the violence carried out under Hoan’s orders. The confusion caused by the unfolding invasion drama led to the massacres in Biên Hòa, not a deep-seated hatred of Catholics. Mainstream antipathy toward Catholics developed gradually as the invasion dragged the whole region into turmoil. At first, widespread famine wreaked untold damage to large areas. Concurrently, the pressures exerted on the wider community by the dispersal and internment of Catholics undoubtedly exacerbated tensions. Then, as the French swept into Biên Hòa province in early 1862, the retreating army laid waste to the camps holding imprisoned Catholics. The breakdown of order makes minorities especially vulnerable to attack. Catholics’ ties with missionaries, whose compatriots were terrorizing Gia Định, makes it remarkable that more local Catholics were not killed during this period.

The Mission in 1863 The violence in Biên Hòa marked a shift in relations at the local level that would have repercussions for southern Vietnamese society for decades to come. After years of negotiation and relative tolerance between congregations and authorities, Catholics and non-converts, the recriminations caused by the Franco-Spanish ­invasion resulted in irreparable divisions. From this point on, village-level society

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became more noticeably divided along lines of religious difference between Catholics and non-converts. At the same time, the French consolidation in Saigon led to a substantive reconfiguration of power relations throughout the Six Provinces, thoroughly corrupting precolonial arrangements. French rule not only imposed a foreign political structure, it also forced a reordering of community loyalties and economic interests. Such important developments deserve their own study; here I can only highlight several changes in the early colonial period that anticipated later developments. In particular, the advent of French rule precipitated a renegotiation of community interests that reshaped patterns of settlement and altered relations between Catholics and non-Catholics. One of the most revealing developments in the early months of the invasion was the mass arrival of Vietnamese Catholics in Saigon in the weeks following the invasion. In early 1859, after the fall of Gia Định citadel, Léfèbvre took the first opportunity to make his way to the security offered by the Franco-Spanish forces in Saigon. Following him, some 2,000 refugees flooded into the deserted town, and 3,000 more arrived shortly thereafter.77 While Léfèbvre claimed they were all Catholics from outlying regions, it is more likely the 5,000 refugees were a mixture of Catholics and non-Catholics in search of a safe-haven and food. Nonetheless, many would have been Catholics and their arrival led to a demographic shift in the region. The admiralty permitted refugees to take up residence in abandoned houses and, in a sign of moves that gave impetus to new patterns of settlement, Léfèbvre recorded the disbursement of 576 francs to purchase fields for Catholics settling around the town.78 Writing in 1866 as the vicariate’s recently appointed apostolic vicar (Léfèbvre had retired in late 1864), Mgr. Miche provided a detailed account of the fluid setting in which Vietnamese lived around Saigon in the mid-1860s. When they [the French] arrived here [in late 1859], fear created a void [of people] around them. The whole population took flight [from Saigon]. But because it was necessary to have a well-stocked market—otherwise officers and soldiers would be reduced to rations—Christians were attracted to return little by little where they were distributed land and established themselves. Vexed, persecuted, tracked down everywhere by the Annamite army . . . a large number took refuge around the French in order to escape the iron and fire of the enemy. Since then they have formed 8 to 10 new chrétientés [congregations] of considerable [size] near Saigon, at Biên Hòa, Mỹ Thọ, and Ba Ria. . . . Today, now that peace reigns everywhere and there is no longer any need for these Christians, they take and resell the land that was initially given them, under the pretext that they do not have the title deeds to attest that they are [the true] proprietors. Too poor to mount



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competition against European or Chinese businessmen, they are forced to demolish their houses without any indemnity and pitch their tents elsewhere.79

These areas, Biên Hòa, Mỹ Thọ, and Bà Rịa, remained and grew as centers of Catholic settlement throughout the nineteenth century. Miche’s description demonstrates that while colonial policies manipulated and disadvantaged all sections of local society regardless of religious affiliation, Catholics nonetheless massed into specific areas. Adding to this demographic shift around Saigon were, as missionaries in midto late-1861 proudly announced, slight increases in conversions. For example, Fr. Puginier claimed in August that he had overseen the tuition of a hundred catechumens, whom he had baptized, and was now catechizing another group. The large majority of them, he wrote, came from a “completely pagan village” in which the “three grand chiefs” had recently converted. He expected the whole community of seven hundred to convert before long. However, by 1874, the Catholic population of French Cochinchina had only grown to over forty thousand.80 The rise in conversions over this period was modest. Clearly, colonial rule did not deliver the expected Catholicization of the region as some missionaries had hoped. However, it did increase opportunities for Catholics. Specifically, it created a widespread belief in Vietnamese society that being a member the church led to social and political mobility within the colonial regime. French rule provided new and different opportunities, and for the first time Catholics enjoyed an advantage in asserting their religious and political needs. The story of Paulus Thu, a local priest, shows how the new opportunities led to significant readjustments in local power relations. Coming from one of the MEP’s Tonkin vicariates—his exact origins are unclear—Thu arrived in the Cochinchina mission shortly after the invasion with several other local clergy and missionaries fleeing the court reprisals throughout the kingdom. Full biographic details are lacking on this young priest, but he himself noted that before traveling to Cochinchina he had been in Hong Kong. It is here that he may have studied French.81 Arriving in Saigon in early 1861, he was immediately put to work as an interpreter with the advancing French forces. Over the following year, Thu traveled widely throughout Biên Hòa and Định Tường accompanying the advancing Franco-Spanish forces. In one of his earliest letters, from March 1861, available in the Cochinchina Vicariate archive, Thu wrote to his confreres in Saigon of conditions at the fort of Chí Hòa, northwest of Saigon, soon after the great battle there in February.82 A month after conflict ended he reported on a

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variety of strategic and political matters: Cambodians attacking and pillaging Vietnamese villages in Tây Ninh prefecture on the border, the outbreak of cholera and colic in the Franco-Spanish garrison, and the like.83 Under the sponsorship of the admiralty, Thu helped establish a French school for interpreters, where he also taught briefly in early 1862.84 Thu’s story highlights the opportunities available to young men, principally priests, who had traveled abroad, either to Penang, Macao, or Hong Kong, had studied French, and had a Western education. As Patrick Tuck notes, in the early years of the colonial regime, many priests, in whom the mission had invested so much effort to train, flocked instead to French service as linguists, teachers, and interpreters.85 Access to education presented the first among a number of opportunities for locals to participate in the new regime and, as Puginier indicated, it was one that benefited those living within Saigon town. In this regard he noted: “All those from Saigon are received gratis, those from the interior are also admitted on paying funds, above all the children of village heads, Christians or pagans.”86 The outlying countryside also underwent political and social change. Military advances into the provinces were inevitably followed by a change in authority, as Thu described after French successes around Mỹ Thọ and in Định Tường province. After the fall of Cái Bè fort in October, French officers headed the area and were seconded by a local dignitary who had, only months before, led rebels in attacking neighboring congregations. Local Catholics, having had their livestock confiscated and houses destroyed, fled to Mỹ Thọ town or Saigon. As a former rebel, the official had the “confidence of [neither] Christians or pagans,” Thu reported.87 It is difficult to estimate how many Catholics fled to the French-controlled enclaves during this time; but it is likely the numbers were large. The growing Catholic presence combined with the emerging political setting under French rule led to a complete reconfiguration of power relations in society and inflamed local antagonisms. A complaint lodged in May 1863 by Commandant Brière de l’Île, the chief administrator of Tây Ninh at the western reaches of French Cochinchina, throws into sharp relief a number of issues in Catholic and non-Catholic relations. De l’Île reported a minor abuse of authority by the Catholic district magistrate of Bình Long, Trần Văn Ca.88 Taking advantage of the new political situation, and perhaps out to impress his French masters, Ca had ordered canton officials and village heads under his jurisdiction to attend a religious ceremony at his official residence. Sympathizing with the magistrate’s intentions, De l’Île nevertheless admonished him for using his position with “imprudence.”



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In effect, he [Ca] used his authority to oblige pagans to come and attend a religious ceremony in a residence that is intended not for the celebration of Mass, but for undertaking the administration of the people and to give them justice. . . . Would the Huyen (magistrate) be pleased if he learned of pagan mandarins forcing mayors (village heads) and Christian Tongs (canton chiefs) to attend ceremonies to the Boudah?89

This example of what De l’Île considered institutional abuse shows how power relations in society had been fundamentally reversed. In the decades of antiCatholic repression under the Huế, the state sought to impose unwanted religions observances on unwilling Catholics. Now, under the French, the new colonial state was in a position to impose Catholicism. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether Trần Văn Ca had only recently been appointed as magistrate and if he had been a Catholic prior to colonization or was a recent convert. In any case, the official rebuke was not directed solely at him. Addressing the intended audience oddly in the third person, the letter appears to have been sent to Léfèbvre rather than directly to Ca. It is clearly a veiled criticism of the mission. The Commandant would like it to be understood that the Huyen Ca is within himself two people, first a Christian who strives by prayer to enter Heaven, second the Huyen who strives in this world to administer the people following the rules of justice and in the Civilizing way marked for him by the high administration of the French. Missionaries on the contrary have only a single matter to tend to, to reach Heaven while making the truth of Christianity known to pagans. But they only employ persuasion, because Christ forbids violence.

That De l’Île should refer to mission activities in his commentary on Ca’s conflict of interest suggests his concern for the authority and personal influence of missionaries among not only Catholics in general but also low-level officials in particular throughout the region. The commandant observed that Ca’s behavior endangered social cohesion. But at stake in this case was not solely the conflict of religious practices. Unlike precolonial Vietnamese concepts of political behavior, the increasingly secular worldview of the post-Revolutionary French state—even under Napoleon III—conceived a distinct separation between one’s religious beliefs and one’s duties and rights as a citizen. While a French citizen owed allegiance to the emperor, his or her religious beliefs theoretically were unconnected with the realm of politics. This feature of colonial ideology is brought into focus by De l’Île’s admonition of Trần Văn Ca in 1863. The imposition of this model of social

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order led to unusual and unexpected distortions in a society unfamiliar with such categorical and ideological distinctions. From the mid-1860s the distinctions the colonial regime drew between Catholics and non-Catholics made preexisting difference more concrete. Thus, instead of engendering neutrality, colonial rule precipitated the essentialization of political identities, effectively marking Catholics as a distinct group in southern society. Indicative of the emergence of tensions between the colonial state and the Catholic mission, this example also draws our attention to the expansion of MEP influence in Cochinchina. As the French consolidated their position in Saigon from 1860 to 1862, missionaries throughout the kingdom fled to this safe haven to escape the recriminations occurring elsewhere. In 1862, Léfèbvre reported the presence of twelve missionaries in the vicariate, up from only four in 1858.90 Most of these, however, had fled the violence raging in other parts of Vietnam. This figure rose to twenty-three in 1865, and doubled again by the mid1870s.91 Between 1861 and 1866 some seventeen missionaries arrived in the mission, the single largest wave in the mission’s history.92 In contrast, the local clergy returned to the pre-invasion level of over twenty in 1866 to remain equal to the number of foreign clergy, at over forty, for the rest of the century.93 The rise in the number of foreign clergy signified nothing less than an attempt to saturate the region—initially the three provinces ceded in the 1862 treaty—with mission influence. The new arrivals effectively and emphatically reversed the indigenization of church leadership initiated by Cuenot and Léfèbvre, putting back for another sixty years the consecration of the first Vietnamese bishop, John Baptist Nguyễn Bá Tòng, in 1933.

Epilogue

The advent of French rule in Cochinchina not only ended Nguyễn rule in the Six Provinces by 1867, it precipitated a profound reconfiguration of social relations at the local level throughout the kingdom. Facing the full brunt of this change, Catholic society was itself transformed by the upheaval. For the preceding three decades, the prevailing pattern of community relations between Catholics and officials, and Catholics and mainstream neighbors, had been one of negotiation and accommodation, and except for the periods following the French naval incursions at Đà Nẵng (in 1847 and 1856), Catholic communities largely lived in relative security, just beyond the threat of the Nguyễn bureaucracy. The invasion ended this tenuous balance. The Franco-Spanish assault unleashed panic throughout the bureaucracy and acting on orders to contain and imprison Catholics, for the first time since the beginning of the proscription in 1833 officials implemented anti-Catholic measures to their full extent, rounding up whole congregations in some provinces and in the end executing several thousands. But it must be emphasized that these measures were not carried out until

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the political situation reached its lowest point with the French opening a second invasion front in Saigon, in late 1859. In the aftermath of the French consolidation around Saigon, the distortions caused by the reconfiguration of power in the far south, not to mention the demographic and cultural dislocation that accompanied it, remolded social structures and reshaped attitudes among Catholics and non-Catholics. From 1860, Catholics settled in increasing numbers in a ring around the towns, especially the prominent centers of Mỹ Thọ, Biên Hòa, and Bà Rịa. Although Catholics were among the first to enjoy the protection and benefits of the colonial regime, these came at a heavy cost. Many French-trained priests enjoyed prominence as translators, but at the same time Catholic communities in outlying areas suffered from a dramatic deterioration in social relations with their non-convert neighbors. As Catholics became identified with the new regime, their relations with their mainstream neighbors, which had once been flexible, became increasingly rigid and distant. Many Catholics obviously benefited from the new setting. Among them were the collaborateurs—as described by Milton Osborne—which included men like the military officer Trần Bá Lộc, the linguist and administrator Paulus Huỳnh Tịnh Của, and Petrus Trương Vĩnh Kỳ, a professor and advisor.1 Whether traitors or merely opportunists, such figures were the chief beneficiaries of French rule. But in stigmatizing them as traitors we risk reducing their adherence to Catholicism as the fundamental determinant of their political affiliation. Not all at this time claimed benefit through their ties with the mission and not all Catholics rallied to support the French. In the 1862 meeting between the Nguyễn envoy and French representatives convened to negotiate a treaty to end the conflict and begin the carving up of the Six Provinces, the Nguyễn plenipotentiary Phan Thanh Giản—as highlighted by Osborne in his study of early French rule—reacted with disgust at the sight of several Vietnamese accompanying the French party. Giản’s anger subsided, however, after it was revealed that these men were Christians—the implication being that they had already “passed outside the pale.”2 But also attending this tense meeting—on the Nguyễn side—was Đặng Đức Tuấn, a priest who had remained loyal to the dynasty despite beginning his career in the service of the church. As discussed in Chapter 5, Tuấn was from an illustrious family of Nguyễn court ministers and scholars; he was also a Penang college graduate who had served the mission through the dark years of the 1850s and enjoyed a close friendship with Mgr. Cuenot. While a staunch Catholic, Tuấn was nonetheless



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a thoroughgoing Confucian scholar. This combination clearly caused him little conflict of conscience. Thus despite Tuấn’s support for Huế until his death in 1874, his writings reveal him to have been uncompromisingly loyal to both Confucian learning and Catholic doctrine.3 While large sections of non-Catholic society undoubtedly thought of Catholics in terms of their association with the mission, and through it the French, the events that had so profoundly reshaped southern society in the preceding three decades now made it impossible to determine political loyalty solely according to religious affiliation. Religious affiliation almost always entails a negotiation of moral beliefs with practical needs according to the limitations of the contemporary sociopolitical setting.4 In early nineteenth-century southern Vietnam, identification with Catholicism alone did not determine the full dimensions of a believer’s moral or political convictions. Other social forces played a role, as we have seen, in the decisions and compromises that determined how believers lived their lives. Indeed, as Robert Hefner explains in his discussion of the dynamics of religious conversion, the process of self-identification is not “innate or wholly socially determined but develops from ongoing and deeply contingent social-psychological interactions.”5 For Catholics, as with the rest of Vietnamese society and the Nguyễn mandarinate, the French invasion was a world-changing event and as such it elicited a whole spectrum of responses. Apart from recognizing the personal advantages and benefits afforded by colonial rule, we need to account for the sociocultural continuities from the dynastic era. And in order to make sense of these responses we need, as this book has argued, to acknowledge the sometimes less than obvious changes in social relations from earlier decades. Perhaps no other example illustrates this better than the fascinating biography of Trần Bá Lộc, one of the most successful military officials of the early French colonial regime.6 A native of Đầu Nước congregation, on Vietnam’s southwest frontier with Cambodia, Lộc was born in 1839 into a Catholic family with a distinguished heritage. While he achieved fame only from the 1860s, first as a colonial district official and later as a decorated military campaigner during the 1880s, his story begins with his father, Trần Bá Phước, a migrant from central Vietnam. Phước left his home village in Quảng Bình for Gia Định apparently after a family dispute in 1826. Educated and a holder of the lesser regional tú tài degree, Phước found no difficulty in finding employment as a teacher for the children of an official in Vĩnh Long. After meeting Nguyễn Văn Thắng, a regional deputy commander (phó quan cơ) and Catholic, in 1829, Phước moved

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to Đầu Nước to teach Thắng’s children. Over the years the relationship strengthened, with Thắng offering Phước his daughter, Nguyễn Thị Ở, in marriage. In early 1831, around the time Joseph Marchand made his first pastoral visit up the Mekong from Mặc Bắc to Phnom Penh, the two married in the local church oratory, a month after Phước’s baptism in the neighboring Christian congregation of Chà Và. Phước’s baptism shortly before his marriage in 1831 is notable for a variety of reasons. Phước was invited to live in Đầu Nước not because he was out of luck, an itinerant, or desperate for help, nor did he necessarily seek membership in this community purely for personal advantage. He was a valued scholar with a talent and skill worthy of respect. His conversion was probably at the request of Nguyễn Văn Thắng, who himself was probably a newly converted Catholic. The choice to convert may not have been completely voluntary, but given Phước’s status as a teacher and the open-armed welcome he received by the Đầu Nước congregation, it appears clear that his entering the religion was tantamount to his assuming a place, a status, and an identity within this community. In short, in the context of his migration south, Phước’s conversion to Catholicism symbolized nothing less than his personal integration in an unfamiliar, sparsely settled frontier world. Trần Bá Lộc, the eldest of three sons, was born in 1839 at the height of the Minh Mạng repression. His biographer Georges Dürrwell recounts that he was raised according to a laborious regimen of study and family chores. He also notes that Lộc distinguished himself from a young age as having an “energetic spirit.” It was in these formative years in the 1840s and early 1850s that Lộc studied within the mission. He not only lived in a village frequented by priests and probably also French missionaries, but for a year, according to Dürrwell, he studied at the secret mission college then at Cái Nhưm (Cái Mơn) under the direction of Father Borelle. Although little is known of Lộc’s life in the 1840s and early 1850s, we can safely assume that his family faced many of the same upheavals as Catholics in other areas of the kingdom during this period. From the mid-1850s, however, when Lộc was a teenager, the turmoil caused by French incursions and invasion led to a dramatic turn in the family’s fortunes. In January 1859, as tolerance for Catholics among low-level officials evaporated, Châu Đốc’s prefect ordered a punitive search of the Đầu Nước congregation in the hope of capturing Pernot, who had been hiding in the village for several years.7 In the ensuing attack, the militia arrested some thirty-seven Catholics, notably the village head and chief catechist Emmanuel Phụng (Lộc’s godfather), several of his brothers, and Father Pierre Quí. Among the captives was also Lộc’s father. In his account



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of the attack, Pernot notes in passing the defiance of a “catechist who has been a Christian only since his marriage,” a commendation which possibly refers to Phước.8 In any case, Lộc’s father refused to recant and appears to have been among the nine tattooed on each cheek and exiled to Bình Định. He was not released until the end of 1862. After experiencing the trauma of his father’s arrest and exile, we can only imagine the wild sense of injustice, among other emotions, that the twenty-yearold Lộc must have felt. The humiliating arrest, branding, and exile of his father—a degree holder and respected community leader—undoubtedly stirred enormous resentment. Adding to his difficulties, as the eldest son, the protection of his natal family now fell squarely on the newly married Lộc. With his own children and future to consider and like many other southern Catholic families and congregations at the time, Lộc sought the protection of the French encampment at Mỹ Thọ. There he joined the newly raised French-controlled militia in which, according to Dürrwell, he soon reached the rank of a sergeant (đội) after several battles against withdrawing Nguyễn forces.9 Without recounting here his longer career, Lộc enjoyed an almost unmatched career with the French administration after his fortuitous promotion to district official of Cái Bè, near Mỹ Thọ, in 1865. From the late 1860s he distinguished himself as a capable administrator and military commander. Later his brutal campaigns against anti-colonial resistance in Phú Yên and Bình Định provinces—the scene of Catholic massacres during the abortive Cần Vương anti-French uprising in late 1885—brought him great criticism in some quarters. Regardless, on his return to Saigon in early 1886 he was awarded the honorary—but farcical—title of Tổng Đốc de ThuậnKhánh, governor-general of Bình Thuận and Khánh Hòa.10 Lộc epitomized his generation’s experiences of the upheaval in the decades preceding colonization, and it is in this context that we must view the motivations of those like him who rallied to the French. The hot-blooded pursuit of vengeance for injustices and the fear of greater anti-Catholic recriminations should the French invasion have failed were undoubtedly factors motivating Lộc and many others in 1859. Such experiences certainly do not excuse Lộc’s brutality in Bình Định—the site of his father’s exile—two decades later, although they do go a long way toward explaining it. By the same token, the almost genocidal anti-Catholic violence in Nam Định, Quảng Trị, and Bình Định in the 1880s cannot be seen as absolving the horrors caused by the early French regime. Rather, personal and community motivations driving the mass violence of this period were evidence of the rapid deterioration in relations between Catholics and non-converts.

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All the same, Lộc’s immediate support for the French was not emulated uniformly throughout Catholic society. Not all sought personal advantage, and not all who sought opportunities with the French were Catholic. At the very least, his experiences throw light onto the range of personal motivations and responses to the precipitous events of the era: the struggle for compromise in a hostile setting, the search for opportunity and self-fulfilment despite political limitations, and the desperate effort to ensure security and prosperity for one’s family, community, and village.

Abbreviations

AMEP APF ĐNTL HĐSL LT MMCY



Archives des Missions Étrangères de Paris Annales de la Propagation de la Foi Đại Nam Thực Lục Khâm Định Đại Nam Hội Điển Sự Lệ Đại Nam Liệt Truyện Minh Mệnh Chính Yếu

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Notes

Introduction 1.  See, for example, McLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention; and Nguyen Thi Thanh, “The French Conquest of Cochinchina.” 2.  See in particular Nicole-Dominique Lê, Les Missions-Étrangères. 3.  Cao Huy Thuan, Les missionnaires et la politique coloniale. 4.  Nguyễn Văn Kiệm, Sự du nhập của đạo Thiên Chúa gíao vào Việt Nam, p. 134. 5.  Đỗ Quang Hưng, Một Số Vấn Đề Lịch Sử Thiên Chúa Giáo ở Việt Nam, p. 45. 6.  Launay, Histoire générale de la Société des Missions Étrangères; Launay, Les missionaries français au Tonkin; Launay, Mgr Retord et le Tonkin catholique; Launay, Les 35 vénérables serviteurs de Dieu; Launay, Histoire de la mission de Cochinchine; and Launay, Histoire de la mission du Tonkin. 7.  See, for example, Jabouille’s history of Catholic massacres led by the scholar gentry in Quảng Trị province in 1885, “Une page de l’histoire du Guang-Tri, Septembre 1885,” Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hué 4 (1923), pp. 395–426. 8.  Phan Phát Huồn, Việt Nam Giáo Sử; Võ Đức Hạnh, La place du Catho­ licisme. 9.  Trần Văn Giàu, Chống Xâm Lăng, pp. 119, 575. 10.  Ramsay, “Miracles and Myths.” 11.  See the following Vatican website link for a full list of the martyrs: www .vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_19880619_martiri_vietnam_ fr.html, accessed March 2006. 12.  For example, in Trần Văn Giàu, Chống Xâm Lăng. 13.  Lockhart, “Re-assessing the Nguyễn Dynasty.” 14.  Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam, p. 234. 15.  See, for example, Cooke, “Regionalism and the Nature of Nguyen Rule,” and “Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others”; Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina; and Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng. 16.  For further discussion see Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng, chap. 3. 17.  Cooke, “Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others.”



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18.  Smith, “Politics and Society in Viet-Nam during the Early Nguyen Period,” p. 153. 19.  Ibid. 20.  Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model; Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam. Chapter 1 1.  For this discussion I draw on Cooke, “Regionalism and the Nature of Nguyen Rule”; Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina; and Keith W. Taylor, “Nguyen Hoang and the Beginning of Vietnam’s Southward Expansion.” 2.  Keith Taylor, “Nguyen Hoang and the Beginning of Vietnam’s Southward Expansion,” p. 64. 3.  For further exploration of the historical roots of Nguyễn Đàng Trong, see ibid.; see also Cooke, “Regionalism and the Nature of Nguyen Rule.” 4.  Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina, pp. 34–35. 5.  Ibid., pp. 144–48. 6.  The rebellion also brought about the end of the Trịnh regency in Thăng Long (Hanoi) in 1786 and unseated the Lê dynasty. The defeat of a Qing army sent in 1788 to Thăng Long ostensibly to restore the Lê opened the way for the Tây Sơn to claim the exclusive mandate to rule over the northern and southern halves of Vietnam. 7.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng, pp. 25–26. 8.  See Nguyễn Chí Bền, Địa Chí Bến Tre, pp. 553–55. Some mission researchers have suggested that Portuguese Dominicans from Malacca evangelized in the Mekong as early as the late sixteenth century. For discussion of Alexander de Rhodes, see Forest, Les missionaires français, vol. 1, pp. 38–46. 9.  Guillame Masson reported the population of West Tonkin at around 200,000 in 1825 (extract dated June 28, 1825, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi [hereafter APF] vol. 10 [1826–27], pp. 185–86). 10.  See Jean-Louis Taberd, APF vol. 1 (1822–25), p. 9. 11.  Marin, Le rôle des missionaires français en Cochinchine, pp. 64–65; see also Cooke, “Early Catholicism in Cochinchina,” p. 9. 12.  I hereafter refer to Pigneaux, according to Mantienne’s findings on the bishop’s name. Mantienne, Monseigneur Pigneau de Béhaine. 13.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under Minh Mạng, chap. 2. 14.  Trịnh Hoài Đức, Gia Định Thành Thông Chí. 15.  Quốc Sử Quán Triếu Nguyễn, Đại Nam Chính Biên Liệt Truyện (Selected Biographies of the Great South Principal Era) (hereafter referred to as LT), vol. 2, pp. 198–205. 16.  Ibid., p. 175. 17.  Ibid. 18.  Ibid., pp. 150–51. 19.  Trịnh Hoài Đức, Gia Định Thành Thông Chí, p. 175.



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20.  Tai, Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam, p. 9. 21.  Ibid., p. 10. 22.  Ibid. It is in this context that the Buu Son Ky Huong folk-Buddhist sect—one of the most prominent and enduring sects to the present-day in Vietnam—first appeared in 1849, after the outbreak of the worst cholera epidemic of the nineteenth century decimated large areas in the south. 23.  In Tonkin, especially in the coastal districts of Nam Định, substantial rates of conversion throughout the seventeenth century saw to the rise of numerous all-Catholic villages. 24.  See Nguyễn Chí Bền, Địa Chí Bến Tre, pp. 553–55. 25.  Sơn Nam, Đất Gia Định Xưa, p. 54. 26.  Nguyễn Văn Quí, “Sưu Tập Những Họ Đạo Cổ Xưa Tây Đàng Trong,” p. 253. This manuscript can be found in the library of Saint Joseph’s Seminary, in Ho Chi Minh City. 27.  Jean Claude Grillet, Archives des Missions Étrangères de Paris (hereafter AMEP) 747, 28/07/1805, p. 7 9. 28.  Marchand, ibid. 1251, 13/06/1832 [copy], pp. 47–48. 29.  Jean-Louis Taberd, ibid. 747, 25/2/1829, pp. 1029–33. 30.  Alan Sweeten offers the useful translation “congregation,” but this term fails to capture the evangelical optimism of the French concept of a “chrétienté” as a small Christendom. Hence, I use the French word chrétienté, which evokes the vision of mission zeal and church expansion. Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China, p. 199n24. 31.  Gilles Joseph Delamotte, AMEP 748, 10/2/1833, pp. 126–30. 32.  See Forest, Les missionaires français, vol. 1, p. 67. 33.  Taberd, AMEP 747, 9/02/1825, pp. 915–18. 34.  Ibid. 35.  Ibid.; Jean Chaigneau also notes the event in 1823; Chaigneau, “Lettre XXX,” Bulletin des Amis de Vieux Hué [BAVH] vol. 13, (Oct.–Dec. 1926), pp. 443–45; see also Taberd, AMEP 747, 18/03/1826, pp. 939–41. 36.  Taberd, AMEP 747, 18/03/1826, pp. 939–41. 37.  Ibid., 16/06/1825, pp. 927–32. 38.  Initially this included Auguste Thomassin (b. 1794), who arrived in 1819, but died in 1824 after a lengthy illness; Jean-Louis Taberd (1794–1840) and FrançoisIsidore Gagelin (1799–1833), both of whom arrived in 1821; and François Régéreau (1797–1842) and François Jaccard (1799–1838), who arrived in 1825. Shortly after, MEP numbers were consolidated with the arrival of six more missionaries: François Bringol (d. 1841) in 1827, Etienne Cuenot (1802–61) in 1829, Joseph Marchand (1803– 35) in 1830, Gilles-Joseph-Louis Delamotte (1799–1840) and Jean-Pierre Mialon (1801–32) in 1831, and François Vialle (1804–38) in 1832. 39.  For a summary of his biographical data, visit the “recherche” link on the MEP website: www.archives.mepasie.org. 40.  Régéreau, AMEP 747, 24/3/1828, pp. 1015–18.

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41.  Until this time, only two non-MEP missionaries had governed as vicars a­ postolic, Pérez (a Portuguese métis), consecrated in 1691, and Alexandre de Alexandris (Italian), consecrated in 1727. See Société Jesuite, Mission de la Cochinchine (Paris, 1858), p. 398. 42.  On the scandal involving Joseph’s fathering a child, see Taberd’s letters for 1826 and 1827 in particular (AMEP 747, 1/3/1826, pp. 955–58). On accusations that the Franciscans neglected their pastoral duties, see ibid., 25/2/1829, pp. 1029–35. Before Joseph’s expulsion in 1828, the mission administration was divided among the MEP and the Franciscans. Parts of Đồng Nai and Gia Định and the Mekong Delta fell under the jurisdiction of the MEP, whereas the Franciscans covered Christian communities from Bình Thuận north. 43.  Father Joseph was ordered to depart the mission in 1826. Taberd was anointed in Bangkok in May 1830. 44.  François Régéreau, AMEP 748, 1/03/1834 [copy], p. 259. The Collège de St. Joseph, as it was also known, was founded by Bishop Pigneaux in the 1780s with the permission of Nguyen Anh. Marchand notes that he—and his colleagues at the Collège—spent on average eight to nine hours a day in lessons, both receiving instruction in Vietnamese and teaching Latin. Marchand, ibid. 1251, 4/06/1830 p. 42. 45.  Marchand, ibid. 1251, 4/06/1830, pp. 33–42. 46.  Gia Định Thành Tổng Trấn. 47.  Duyệt held the position briefly in 1812–13, but during the 1810s held different high-level posts within the government of the Trấn. Mostly at that time he was on active military duty, I believe. 48.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under Minh Mạng, chap. 2. 49.  Cooke, “Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Confucianization in Historical Perspective,” p. 307. 50.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under Minh Mạng, pp. 87–90. 51.  See Đại Nam Thực Lục (Chính Biên) [The Veritable Records of the Great South (Principal Era), hereafter ÐNTL] (Hanoi: NXB Khoa Học Xã Hội, Viện Sử Học), vol. 10, pp. 351–64. Though appointment was open to civil or military officers, the position of tổng đốc was part of the civil mandarinal hierarchy. A handful of other officials—typically including a financial administrator (bố chính), a chief magistrate (án sát), and a military commander (lãnh bình), and sometimes a governor (tuần phủ) for smaller provinces—administered provincial affairs. Below the executive provincial level, central rule was represented by a descending hierarchy of prefects (tri phủ), district magistrates (tri huyện), and canton chiefs (tổng). For a full description of the reorganization, see Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, pp. 141–52. 52.  Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, p. 143. 53.  ÐNTL vol. 11, p. 140. 54.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under Minh Mạng, pp. 60–80. 55.  ÐNTL vol. 11, pp. 201–17. The kingdom of Panduranga was also integrated and made subordinate to the Bình Thuận provincial hierarchy (ibid., pp. 197–219). 56.  Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam, pp. 84–85.



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57.  Ibid., p. 87. 58.  Cooke, “The Myth of Restoration,” pp. 271–72. 59.  ÐNTL vol. 20 (1838), p. 208. 60.  Cooke, “The Myth of Restoration,” p. 273. 61.  Ibid. 62.  Ibid., p. 271. 63.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under Minh Mạng, chap. 4. Chapter 2 1.  Dương Sơn is still situated less than ten kilometers north of the Royal citadel in Huế, amidst a sea of paddy fields. 2.  Alexander Woodside’s translation from Nguyễn Triều Châu Bản [Vermillion Records of the Nguyễn Dynasty], Minh Mạng II: 9–10 (1830), microfilm roll F 1603, in Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, pp. 155–56. 3.  ÐNTL vol. 11, p. 84. 4.  Other members of the tribunal included “Cản” and “Phan,” but the full names of these figures are difficult to identify. See Taberd, AMEP 748 (mid-1832, no date visible), pp. 105–12. 5.  ÐNTL vol. 11, p. 84. 6.  Delamotte, AMEP 748, 10/2/1833, p. 126. 7.  Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina, pp. 72–73. 8.  Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse, vol. 1, pp. 214–45. 9.  Cooke, “Sad Disagreements,” p. 23. 10.  Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse, vol. 1, p. 339. 11.  Cooke, “Expectations and Transactions.” 12.  Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse, vol. 1, p. 363; Marin, Le rôle des missionaires français, pp. 97–99. 13.  Jean Labartette, AMEP 747, 17/9/1803, pp. 57–60. 14.  Jean Claude Grillet, ibid., 25/4/1805, pp. 195–214. 15.  Labartette, ibid., 16/4/1806, p. 273. 16.  Chaigneau, “Lettre XXV,” Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hué 13, no. 4 (Oct.– Dec 1926), pp. 435–36. 17.  See for example, Taberd, AMEP 747, 18/3/1826, pp. 939–41. 18.  Régéreau, ibid., 24/3/1828, p. 1017. Taberd, ibid. 748, 6/6/1831, pp. 1–7, tells that Catholics in Đinh Cát, Quảng Trị province, were aware of a covert edict against Christians. See also Taberd, ibid., 28/7/1831, p. 17. 19.  LT vol. 2, p. 396. 20.  A year earlier, the two court advisors from the Nguyễn Ánh period, Chaigneau and Vannier, had returned to France. 21.  See the excerpt from Taberd’s letter dated Feb. 28, 1828, APF vol. 4 (1830–31), pp. 359–60.

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22.  ĐNTL vol. 8, 1826–27, p. 283. There are several interesting disparities between Taberd’s account and the court’s. First, the records state the three were awarded the title of seventh-grade officials (thất phẩm); Taberd claims they were made mandarins of the “premier class.” Taboulet, La geste française en Indochine, vol. 1, pp. 326–27. 23.  Taberd, AMEP 747, pp. 1029–35. François Jaccard was sent to Huế to replace Taberd. 24.  Taberd claims one had died, but this is contrary to Régéreau’s letter dated June 21, 1831. 25.  Régéreau, ibid., 21/6/1831, pp. 27–29. Régéreau claims the king had not issued an edict calling for the persecution of Christians because he feared a rebellion in Tonkin, “where there are many Christians.” 26.  Taberd, ibid., 3/1832, pp. 105–12. 27.  ĐNTL vol. 10, p. 179. Before this Bạch Xuân Nguyên held the post of adjunct prefect (phủ thừa). See also, ibid. vol. 9, p. 188, and vol. 10, p. 164. 28.  Ibid. vol. 11, p. 84, pp. 235–36. 29.  Taberd, AMEP 748, 20/12/1832, pp. 89–96. 30.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng, pp. 66–69; Li Tana, Nguyễn Cochinchina, p. 33 31.  Delamotte, AMEP 748, 10/2/1833, pp. 126–30. 32.  Régéreau, ibid., 1/3/1834 [copy], pp. 257–84; and Vialle, ibid. [date unknown, 1833?], pp. 117–19. 33.  Day 18, month 5 of year 14 Minh Mạng, according to LT vol. 4, p. 476. Régéreau notes the same date “17th or 18th of the 5th month 1833, or the beginning of July.” Régéreau, AMEP 748, 1/3/1834, pp. 257–84. 34.  Régéreau, AMEP 748, 1/3/1834, pp. 263–66. 35.  Ibid., pp. 267–69. 36.  In September 1833 Taberd organized for Paulus Thạng, a local cleric, to be sent to Hà Tiên to gather any local priests and students he could find and return word of events in the region. Thạng wrote to Taberd informing him of the tragedy met by the deputation. He wrote that a number of letters, reportedly from Marchand and students of Taberd’s, were intercepted when the deputation was betrayed in Hà Tiên. Thạng’s letter to Taberd, dated September 23, 1833, appears as a translated (from romanized Vietnamese, quốc ngữ) transcription in Taberd, ibid., 21/1/1834, pp. 237–40. 37.  Unfortunately a full name and further details on this priest are not revealed by the archive. 38.  Jaccard estimates only around two hundred Christians were given shelter in the citadel. AMEP 748, 12/10/1833, pp. 143–44. 39.  ĐNTL vol. 16, 1835, p. 48; LT vol. 4, p. 497. 40.  Lưu Tín (Bôn Bang), Nguyến Văn Chắm (Trăm), Lê Bá Minh (Minh), Đỗ Văn Dự (Du), and Khôi’s son, Lê Văn Viên. Marchand is noted as Phú Hoài Nhơn. ĐNTL vol. 17, 1835, p. 51. 41.  APF vol. 9 (1836), pp. 573–89.



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42.  Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse; and Launay, Histoire générale de la Société des Missions Étrangères, vol. 2, pp. 564–73. 43.  Schreiner, Les institutions annamites, vol. 1, pp. 196–97; Sylvestre, “L’insurrection de Gia-Dinh.” 44.  Nguyễn Phan Quang, “Vần đề cố Du (Marchand).” This article is included in his recent book, Nguyễn Phan Quang, Cuộc khởi binh Lê Văn Khôi, p. 177. Nguyễn Văn Kiệm, Sự du nhập của đạo Thiên Chúa gíao vào Việt Nam. 45.  Nguyễn Phan Quang, Cuộc khởi binh Lê Văn Khôi, p. 177. 46.  “Xông xáo, hăm hở,” “người chủ trì nhóm cầm đầu.” Nguyễn Phan Quang, “Vần đề cố Du (Marchand),” pp. 53, 67. 47.  Chesneaux, Contribution a l’ histoire de la nation vietnamienne, p. 92. 48.  At twenty-six years of age, Joseph Marchand (1803–35) was one of the youngest missionaries to be sent to the region, departing France for Cochinchina only weeks after his ordination in 1829. In a letter to his parents in 1832, he mentions that he had been ill for much of 1831. This is confirmed by Taberd, who notes in late 1831 that Marchand was still weak and unable to undertake full duties. Taberd, AMEP 748, 20/12/1832, p. 93. 49.  Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse, vol. 2, pp. 83–84; and Taboulet, La geste française en Indochine, vol. 1, p. 332. 50.  Marchand, AMEP 1251, 24/7/1834, pp. 53–55. 51.  Régéreau, ibid. 748, 1/3/1834, pp. 259–60. 52.  “Reget in pace populum.” Ibid., p. 271. 53.  Marchand, “27 May 1833,” letter extract from Régéreau, ibid., 1/3/1834 [copy], pp. 260–61. 54.  Ibid. 55.  Marchand, ibid. 1251, 24/7/1834, pp. 53–55. 56.  The most easily accessed reproduction appears in Georges Taboulet’s documentary history of the French involvement in Indochina. Taboulet, La geste française, vol. 1, p. 332, is a reproduction from Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse, vol. 2, pp. 83–84. 57.  Marchand provides only the title of this figure, đức ông, or “venerable sir.” This might be the duke Ứng Hòa, a member of Prince Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh’s lineage. 58.  He wrote: “They took me [i.e., captured me], (all very well saying rước [welcome]) with my breviary and my rosary, my Gospel and my Crucifix, so that I am obliged to use the ornaments of Felicity [P. Phước] to celebrate [Mass with].” In the original: “on m’a pris, (soit disant rước) avec mon breviaire et mon chapelet, mon evangile et mon crucifix, en sorte que je suis obligé de me servir des ornamens de la félicité pour célébrer.” 59.  Jaccard, AMEP 748, 12/10/1833, pp. 143–44; Delamotte, ibid., 10/2/1833 [copy], pp. 126–28. 60.  Launay, Histoire générale de la Société des Missions Étrangères, vol. 2, p. 547. See also Jaccard, AMEP 748, 12/10/1833, pp. 143–44. 61.  ĐNTL vol. 13, 1833, p. 55. This entry is dated September, but it is possible the court had earlier notice. 62.  The Veritable Records note that a Tây Hoài Hoá, Gagelin’s name in the Records, had been traveling secretly through Quảng Ngãi, Bình Định, and Quảng Yên (Phú Yên).

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ĐNTL vol. 13, 1833, p. 196. Father Hyacinthe Castenada, a Spanish Dominican, was decapitated in 1773, and an Italian Jesuit, Nuntius de Horta, died in prison in 1778. 63.  See Ramsay, “Miracles and Myths.” 64.  See Cooke, “Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Confucianization,” pp. 270–71. 65.  Ibid., p. 273. 66.  Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam, pp. 131–33, 135, 144. 67.  Ibid., p. 250. 68.  Contemporary estimates place the total Catholic population at around 300,000. The population of the kingdom was, following 1840s Nguyễn censuses of registered males, approximately 14 million. 69.  Tạ Chí Đại Trường, Thần, Người và Đất Việt, pp. 238–39. See also Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam, pp. 86–89. 70.  In 1833 the court called all Buddhist sect leaders to Huế to be registered and issued with diplomas (ĐNTL vol. 13, p. 34). See also, Nguyễn Lang, Việt Nam Phật Giáo Sử Luận, vol. 2, pp. 309–10. 71.  Choi Byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng, chap. 4. 72.  Khâm Định Đại Nam Hội Điển Sự Lệ [The Imperial Repertoire of Institutions and Regulations, hereafter HĐSL], book 100 (vol. 7), pp. 130–39. 73.  Briefly, the first of the articles was “Respect human relationships” (đôn nhân luận), which referred to the order of family hierarchy and the correct rapport between officials and the king. The second, “Guard the purity of the heart” (chính tâm thuật), outlined the four virtues of humanity (nhân), duty (nghĩa), propriety (lễ), and wisdom (trí), and advocated social harmony through self-cultivation. Diligence in one’s labors was the underlying theme of the third article, “Be devoted to your vocation” (vụ bản nghiệp), which also outlined social order by class, notably scholar (sĩ), peasant (nông), artisan (công), and merchant (thương). The fourth, “Respect frugality” (thường tiết kiệm), encouraged thrift in financial matters, warning against expensive ceremonies to worship spirits and the Buddha, and against smoking opium and gambling. In the fifth, subjects are exhorted to “Enrich moral customs” (hậu phong tục), and follow the righteous path. Article six, “Teach your children” (huấn tử đệ), encouraged instructing infants early in the four virtues. The seventh, “Revere orthodox studies” (sùng chính học), exhorted students to follow the teachings of works the court considered orthodox” The avoidance of lust and sexual immorality is extolled in article eight, “Abstain from obscenity” (giới dâm nặc). Number nine demanded subjects “Uphold the laws of the kingdom” (thận pháp thủ). And, article ten encouraged people to “Commit further good deeds” (quảng thiện hạnh). The Ten Articles can be found in three sources: ĐNTL vol. 15, pp. 5–13; HĐSL, book 100 (vol. 7), pp. 130–39; and, Minh Mệnh Chính Yếu [Essential Canon of the Minh Mạng Reign, hereafter MMCY], vol. 3 (q. XIII), p. 264. 74.  See Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam, p. 143. Other features in the edict alert us to the contemporary social, political, and religious setting. For example, the inclusion of a “soldier” vocation (nghề nghiệp) in article three provides a striking view of Nguyễn perceptions of social hierarchy. This local alteration, a noticeable divergence from the classical Chinese order—literati, peasant, artisan,



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and merchant—distinguishes Nguyễn orthodoxy on order and obligation. It is striking that Minh Mạng, in article seven, listed soldiers before peasants in this hierarchy. Other articles, notably five and ten, also proclaim this order, addressing subjects in the succession of “literati, the educated (thứ), the military (quân), and all people (nhân các người).” (According to the modern quốc ngữ translation). 75.  Ibid., p. 143. 76.  ĐNTL vol. 15, pp. 9–10. 77.  Ibid. The sentence begins with “há,” which can be translated as “not at all.” I would like to thank Li Tana for clarifying this translation. Personal communication, Feb. 23, 2004. 78.  Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, p. 190. 79.  ĐNTL vol. 11, p. 235. 80.  Ibid., vol. 13, p. 181. 81.  Phan Bá Đạt, a rising official in the Board of Punishments, had also been involved in the trial of Dương Sơn village in 1831. Ibid., vol. 17, pp. 243–44. 82.  Ibid., vol. 19, p. 250. chapter 3 1.  While figures for Europeans executed are well recorded, the number of locals is less well known. A contemporary source that offers a fairly comprehensive table of executions is De Montézon and Estève, Mission de la Cochinchine et du Tonkin. 2.  See Metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina, p. 124n12. 3.  See ĐNTL vol. 11, pp. 224–25; APF vol. 11 (1838–39), pp. 224–61; Launay, Histoire générale des Missions Étrangères, pp. 64–65. 4.  In mid-1835, Vialle and Cuenot arrived in the north from Macao. Three new clergy, Pierre Jeanne, Dominique Léfèbvre, and Jean-Jacques Candalh, followed in early 1836. Taberd’s inability to return saw to Cuenot’s automatic elevation to the position of coadjutor of the vicariate, the titular assistant to the vicar apostolic. Cuenot was anointed the bishop of Metellopolis by Taberd on May 5, 1835, in Singapore, before his return to Vietnam. 5.  According to Delamotte, letter extract dated Jan. 3, 1839, APF vol. 11 (1838–39), p. 562. 6.  See Retord, letter extract April 16, 1836, ibid. vol. 10 (1837–38), pp. 294–99. 7.  Ibid. 8.  Cuenot, AMEP 748, 27/6/1838, pp. 883–85; Jeanne, ibid., 11/7/1838, pp. 897–98. 9.  Jeanne, ibid., pp. 609–11. 10.  Ibid., 6/2/1836, pp. 551–54. 11.  Ibid. 12.  Léfèbvre, ibid., 10/3/1836, pp. 581–85; Candalh, ibid., 15/7/1836, p. 644. 13.  Five of these were destined for the Cochinchina vicariate: Étienne Cuenot,

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François Vialle, Jean-Jacques Candalh, Pierre Jeanne, and Dominique Léfèbvre. Two priests, Charles Simonin and Jean Gauthier, remained in the West Tonkin vicariate. 14.  Launay, Histoire générale des Missions Étrangères, vol. 3, p. 31. Cornay was arrested in “Bao-nô” village in Hưng Hóa province, neighboring Hà Nội. 15.  ĐNTL vol. 29 (1837), p. 224. 16.  The execution took place on September 20, 1837. Marette, APF vol. 11 (1838– 39), pp. 256–58. 17.  In December 1837 two local priests from Tonkin, Gregorius Đức and Joannes Trung, reported a ship carrying goods and several clergy from Macao fell prey to pirates, leading to the loss of all on board. Gregorius Đức and Joannes Trung, AMEP 748, 16/12/1837, pp. 785–86. 18.  Delamotte, letter extract dated Jan. 3, 1839, in APF vol. 11 (1838–39), p. 564. Several letters from 1838 and 1839 report a shipwreck and letters falling into the hands of mandarins. The capture followed a three year period in which, as Delamotte explained in 1839, “shipwreck, pirates, thieves and Annamite henchmen” had prevented any letters or goods from being carried to the mission. The shipwreck referred to by Delamotte appears to be the same as that reported by two local priests, Gregorius Đức and Joannes Trung, in their December 1837 letter. The debris included “European” effects such as “books, pictures, crucifixes, medals, rosary beads” and other items. 19.  Extract in Taberd, AMEP 748, 22/10/1838, p. 965. 20.  The demotion in the hierarchy was symbolic, and Khanh remained effectively within the bureaucracy. 21.  ĐNTL vol. 20, p. 120. Trịnh Quang Khanh’s responsibilities as governor­general (tổng đốc) covered the neighboring province of Hưng Yên. Similarly, as chief prefect of Hưng Yên, Hà Thúc Lương was a member of Quang Khanh’s provincial government. 22.  Ibid., pp. 119–22, 143–44. 23.  LT vol. 3, p. 358. 24.  ĐNTL vol. 20, pp. 121–22. One tael was equal to approximately 33 grams. 25.  Ibid., pp. 73, 143–44. One quan or ligature held 60 pieces of copper cash. 26.  Ibid., p. 171. 27.  Ibid., vol. 21, p. 221. 28.  I take Ngọc Thế’s rank of Quản cơ as being at 4A (chính tứ phẩm) in the Nguyễn bureaucratic hierarchy. Before the salary reforms of 1840, an officer of this rank received annually 60 ligatures of cash (quan tiền) and 60 measures of rice (phương gạo). A measure of rice equaled a ligature of cash. For this exchange I use two mission sources. The first from 1830 states 1 bar silver = 14 Sp. piastres = 72–75 francs. I assume “1 bar of silver” equaled a one ounce tael. See Havard, APF vol. 5 (1830), p. 345. In 1849, Cuenot cited “30 bars of silver” equaled “(around 2500 fr.),” thus 1 bar of silver = 83 francs. Again I assume “1 bar of silver” equaled a one ounce tael. See Cuenot, AMEP 750, 21/2/1849, no. 40. From these two sources I estimate the exchange for the mid-1840s at approximately 1 tael = 80 francs = 45 ligatures (quan) of cash.



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29.  Advisors of the civil rank of Chính nhất, or 1A, who received annually 600 cash ligatures and 600 measures of rice. Nguyễn salary details are listed in ĐNTL vol. 21, pp. 263–65. Nguyễn Minh Tường’s excellent study offers extensive tables of occupations, bureaucratic ranks, and salaries; Nguyễn Minh Tường, Cải Cách Hành Chính Dưới Triều Minh Mệnh. 30.  ĐNTL vol. 20, p. 182. 31.  Ibid., vol. 21, pp. 117–18. 32.  Ibid., pp. 124–26. 33.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Cochinchine le 21 7bre 1838,” in AMEP 748, pp. 919. 34.  Jaccard, ibid., 18/3/1838, pp. 809–11. 35.  Candalh, ibid., 29/4/1838, pp. 833–34. 36.  Delamotte, ibid., 3/1/1839, pp. 1027–28. 37.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Cochin­ chine le 21 7bre 1838,” in AMEP 748, pp. 911–40. According to attached footnotes, the documents were translated into French by Delamotte and a local assistant based in the Thừa Thiên chrétienté of Như Ly. 38.  Simon Hòa, “letter dated kỷ hợi, 9th month [1839, October],” in Cuenot, AMEP 749, 9/8/1843, pp. 873–74. 39.  I date the interrogation at around June or July, after the first searches uncovered books and objects, and the interrogations of locals. See “Pieces Officielles,” ninth day, sixth month (late July), AMEP 748, pp. 932–35. The “Official Papers” note that Văn Bao was born in the year “Cãnh Tý,” 1780; Hữu Sách was born in the year “Ất Mùi.” Unfortunately, no other biographic details are available on these two men. 40.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Cochin­ chine le 21 7bre 1838,” in AMEP 748, pp. 915–16. The “Pieces” are inconsistent with the diacritics for these names. I therefore refer to these figures according to how their names appear in the French documents. 41.  Ibid., p. 933. 42.  According to the detailed notes attached to the documents. Ibid., pp. 936–40. 43.  Ibid.; see also ĐNTL vol. 20, p. 163. 44.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Co­ chin­chine le 21 7bre 1838,” in AMEP 748, pp. 936–37; Jeanne, ibid., 5/7/1839, pp. 1129–32. 45.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Cochinchine le 21 7bre 1838,” in AMEP 748, p. 927. 46.  Ibid., p. 938. 47.  Ibid., p. 922. 48.  It is not possible to translate the title accurately from the source, and the matter is not recorded in the dynastic chronicles. 49.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Cochin­ chine le 21 7bre 1838,” in ibid., p. 927. No comments are made on Nguyễn Huy Chuẩn, who was a member of the tribunal.

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50.  Ibid., p. 911. 51.  ĐNTL vol. 20, p. 204. 52.  Ibid., p. 254. 53.  According to a letter from Jeantet, APF (1841), p. 276, another mandarin, Hà Quyen, a chief in the royal secretariat (Nọi Các) died shortly after the trials. LT confirms 1840, circumstances unknown. But the letter also notes that the other judge involved in the trial ended up in exile in Ai Lão—this could be either Nguyễn Huy Chuẩn, Trần Hiển Doãn, or Bùi Quy. 54.  “Pieces Officielles du Procès, et Jugement de M. Jaccard, martyrise en Cochin­ chine le 21 7bre 1838,” in AMEP 748, p. 911. The late September judgment noted, however, that Bùi Quỹ had been capable of revealing the faults of his subordinate officials, but guilty of denying his own. He was given three months to redeem himself and capture the priest “Chiêu,” who had evaded capture earlier in the year. Ibid., p. 925. 55.  ĐNTL vol. 20, p. 254. Later in the month he was promoted a position in the Punishments cabinet; ibid., p. 272. 56.  Ibid., p. 254; LT vol. 4, p. 102. 57.  Jeantet, APF vol. 8 (1841), p. 276. 58.  Cuenot, letter extract dated 6/05/1839, copied by Régéreau, in AMEP 748, 15/12/1839, p. 1215. 59.  The circumstances of the translation are, however, unclear. The document is ­titled “Placets présenté par deux soldats Chretiens au Roi Minh Mang” and contains several articles including a translation of the letter sent by Phạm Viết Huy and Bùi Đức Thể (dated Minh Mạng year twenty, sixteenth day, fourth month, or late May 1839), and the sentence edict outlining the Board of Punishment’s judgment of the two (dated late June 1839); see AMEP 748, pp. 1181–95. 60.  Ibid., p. 1182. 61.  Ibid., p. 1191. The matter is also recorded in some detail in the Nguyễn chronicles, ĐNTL vol. 21, pp. 101–2. 62.  ĐNTL vol. 21, pp. 101–2. 63.  Ibid. 64.  MMCY III, p. 215. This type of shrine, dedicated to the spirits of “walls and moats,” essentially represented a symbol of authority in the spiritual realm parallel to temporal bureaucratic rule. See Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam, p. 87. 65.  Retord, APF vol. 13 (1841), pp. 263–75. 66.  Ibid., vol. 14 (1842), pp. 19–37. 67.  Marti, ibid., vol. 17 (1845), pp. 351–52. 68.  Duclos, AMEP 749, 12/1/1842, pp. 297–300. 69.  Cuenot, ibid., pp. 873–74 70.  Ibid. 71.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 749, pp. 29–40. 72.  According to dynastic records for 1838 and 1840, Hồ Hựu was governor of Quảng Ngãi and Quảng Nam for this period. ĐNTL vol. 20, pp. 85, 192; ibid., vol. 22, p. 47.



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73.  Cuenot, APF vol. 12 (1840), pp. 556–59. 74.  ĐNTL vol. 22, p. 54. 75.  APF vol. 12 (1840), p. 561. 76.  Retord, “Relation de martyre de Cornay,” ibid. vol. 11 (1838–39), p. 259. 77.  Ibid. 78.  Ibid.; see also Retord, ibid. vol. 11 (1840), p. 523. 79.  Retord, “Relation de martyre de Cornay,” ibid. vol. 11 (1838–39). 80.  Masson, letter extract dated Dec. 28, 1839, ibid. vol. 15 (1843), p. 278. Also see Cooke, “Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others.” 81.  Noting these, Léfèbvre reported that the king’s illness initially “had not appeared serious, [with] him experiencing only palpitations in his bowels.” But during the illness Minh Mạng had had a dream where “three barbarians or savages appeared by his left side” (Retord, “Relation de martyre de Cornay,” APF vol. 11 (1838–39) chapter 4 1.  Duclos, AMEP 749,12/01/1842 [copy], p. 299. 2.  Léfèbvre, ibid., 25/5/1841, pp. 35–36. 3.  For the official mission biography, see Launay, Les 35 vénérable serviteurs de Dieu. For a summary of his biographical data, visit the “recherche” link on the MEP website: www.archives.mepasie.org. 4.  Metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina, p. 127. 5.  Ibid., pp. 128–29. 6.  Ibid., p. 130. 7.  A full list of attendees is attached to the synod documents, “Synodus Vicariatus Cocinensis, Cambodiensis et Ciampensis habita im Provinciâ Bình Định anno 1841,” AMEP 749, pp. 71–99. 8.  Metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina, pp. 138–39, and for the original text in Latin “Synodus Vicariatus Cocinensis,” AMEP 749, pp. 71–99. 9.  Metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina, pp. 141–43; cf. “Synodus Vicariatus Cocinensis,” AMEP 749, pp. 88–91. 10.  Metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina, p. 135. 11.  Fontaine probably authored the letter, given the date and location of its writing, Qui Nhơn. Fontaine [?], AMEP 749, 9/2/1843, pp. 839–41. 12.  Miche, ibid., 26/12/1841, pp. 249–50. 13.  Ibid. 14.  Fontaine, ibid., 9/2/1843, pp. 839–41. 15.  Ibid. 16.  Ibid., p. 842. 17.  In 1826, adult baptisms numbered 106 (ibid. 747, p. 1010), and in 1828 numbered 136 (ibid., p. 1013). In 1831 the number rose to 287 (ibid., p. 1105), then in 1838 dropped to 113 (ibid. 748, p. 1007).

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18.  Cuenot, “Vicariatus Cocincinae: Administratio Sacramentorum decursu Anni 1843,” ibid. 749, p. 923. 19.  See, for example, the elaborate mourning rites described at the onset of his reign in early 1841; ĐNTL vol. 22, pp. 30–36. See also Cooke, “The Myth of Restoration,” pp. 288–89. Nola Cooke, personal communication, Dec. 10, 2003. 20.  Miche, AMEP 749, 26/12/1841, p. 250. 21.  Tsuboi, “Le rôle des missionaries au Viêt-nam,” p. 140. 22.  Ibid., p. 142. 23.  Ibid. 24.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 749, 29/01/1844, pp. 963–64. 25.  Charle, Histoire social de la France au XIXe siècle, chap. 2. 26.  Cholvy, La religion en France, p. 44. 27.  Ibid. 28.  Cooke, “Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others.” 29.  The Nouvelles Lettres Édifiantes were published from 1808 in Lyon, but as a precursor to the Annals did not reach the same audience. See Cooke, “Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others,” p. 263. By 1845 the Annals had 145,000 subscribers. Cholvy, La religion en France, pp. 31–32. 30.  From 1660 to 1822 one hundred and sixty-two missionaries departed the MEP seminary for foreign missions. This same figure was achieved within three decades of the 1822 inauguration of the Annals. Guennou, Missions Étrangères de Paris, p. 241. In Cochinchina, twelve missionaries were dispatched between 1821 and 1832, significantly more than the four that arrived between 1792 and 1815. See also, Cholvy, La religion en France, p. 33. 31.  APF vol. 34 (1864), p. 137. 32.  Cooke, “Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others.” 33.  Ibid. 34.  Launay, Histoire générale des Missions Étrangères, pp. 124–26. 35.  Duclos, AMEP 749, 17/01/1842, no. 61. 36.  Cuenot, “Etat des recettes et dépenses, 1848,” ibid. 750, no. 40. 37.  Cuenot, “Etats des recettes et dépenses éffectués depuis le 1er Novembre 1846 jusqu’à 1er Novembre 1847,” ibid., no. 34. 38.  Cuenot, ibid. 749, 10/08/1842, p. 811. 39.  Ibid., p. 913; also, 749, p. 975. 40.  The reference in the catalog does not specify whether these were “infidel” children. However, the figure appears immediately below “infants of Christians,” thus suggesting the distinction. In Cuenot, “Etats des recettes et dépenses éffectués depuis le 1er Novembre 1846 jusqu’à 1er Novembre 1847,” ibid. 750, no. 34. 41.  Cuenot, “1843,” ibid. 749, p. 976. 42.  AFP vol. 17 (1845), p. 445. 43.  Duclos, AMEP 749, 17/01/1842, pp. 57–61. 44.  Cuenot, ibid., 22/02/1844, pp. 997–1000. 45.  Fontaine, ibid., 9/02/1843, p. 839.



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46.  Cuenot, letter extract dated Nov. 28, 1839, APF vol. 12 (1840), p. 559. 47.  According to notes in the “Journal of Occurrences,” Chinese Repository, 8, no. 7 (Nov. 1839), p. 333. 48.  Cuenot, “Etats des recettes et des dépenses éffectués pour l’année 1845,” AMEP 750, no. 9. 49.  This calculation is based on an average of provincial rice prices for the Six Provinces in the mid-1840s from Nguyễn Thế Anh, “Quelques aspects économiques et sociaux,” p. 9. 50.  In 1844, the Vatican ordered the division of the vicariate in two: East Cochinchina (Cocinensis Orientalis) and West Cochinchina (Cocinensis Occidentalis). East Cochinchina covered the provinces from Quảng Bình south to Bình Thuận; the congregations from Biên Hòa to Hà Tiên and the Kingdom of Cambodia fell under the administration of West Cochinchina. 51.  Cuenot’s account also lays bare divisions within the mission hierarchy, between the missionaries and the local priesthood. For his coadjutor and the six missionaries in his service, Cuenot set aside 6,000 francs. In stark contrast, the vicariate’s twenty-one local priests received a total of only 1,000 francs. 52.  Cuenot, “Etats des recettes et des dépenses éffectués pour l’année 1845,” AMEP 750, no. 9 53.  Cuenot, “1844–45,” ibid., and “1846–47,” no. 32. 54.  Cuenot, “1846–47,” ibid. 750, no. 32. 55.  Cuenot, “Etats des recettes et dépenses éffectués depuis le 1er Novembre 1846 jusqu’à 1er Novembre 1847,” ibid. 750, no. 34. 56.  ĐNTL vol. 21, p. 264. 57.  Nguyễn Thế Anh, “Quelques aspects économiques et sociaux,” p. 8. 58.  ĐNTL vol. 23 (1841), pp. 185–86. 59.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 749, 25/05/1841, pp. 28–30. 60.  See Nguyễn Văn Quí, “Sưu Tập Những Họ Đạo Cổ Xưa Tây Đàng Trong.” 61.  Nguyễn Hồng Dương, “Làng Công Gíao,” p. 290. See also Lê Văn Khuê, Thiên Chúa Gíao Tại Đồng Bằng Nam Bộ trong Các Thế Kỷ XVII và XVIII. 62.  For discussion on the development of all Catholic villages in Vietnam, see Nguyễn Hồng Dương, “Làng Công Gíao,” pp. 284–317. 63.  These monographs are photocopied and presented—and some translated into Vietnamese—in a manuscript by Lê-ô Nguyễn Văn Quí, “Sưu Tập Những Họ Đạo Cổ Xưa Tây Đàng Trong.” The manuscript is in the library of St Joseph Seminary Saigon. As a compilation of different archival material, it is unlikely that the volume can be found elsewhere. I believe the archival material was selected from the archepiscopal office of the bishop of Saigon on Phan Định Phung St., in Ho Chi Minh City. 64.  Victor-Charles Quinton, “Monographie de la Chrétienté de Tha La” dated Dec. 18, 1910, photocopied version in Nguyễn Văn Quí, “Sưu Tập Những Họ Đạo Cổ Xưa Tây Đàng Trong,” pp. 307–19. 65.  In 1846, the church was reportedly sacked and razed by local Khmer no doubt angry at the insatiable expansion of Vietnamese settlement. The passage on Cầu Ngang

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is a Vietnamese translation of a history by Amans Benoit, an MEP missionary stationed in the vicariate between 1889 and 1912. It seems certain that Benoit’s history would have been based on oral recollection by locals Catholics in the 1890s. 66.  Cuenot, “1843–44,” AMEP 750, no. 9, and “1846–47,” no. 32; see also Léfèbvre, ibid. 748, 22/11/1844, p. 1016. 67.  Léfèbvre, ibid. 749, 29/1/1844, p. 961. 68.  Ibid., pp. 1001–16. 69.  Ibid. 70.  Discovering who the Vĩnh Long governor-general was at this point is somewhat tricky. Nguyễn Tri Phương is referred to as the Vĩnh Long–Định Tường tổng đốc at the beginning of 1844 (ĐNTL vol. 25, p. 48), but his official biography records that he assumed governor duties of An Giang and Hà Tiên in mid-1844 (LT vol. 3, p. 431; see also ĐNTL vol. 25, p. 121). Then in a memorial dated January 1845—several months after Léfèbvre’s capture—Nguyễn Tri Phương is referred to as the provisional governor (nguyên thự tổng đốc) of Vĩnh Long–Định Tường (ĐNTL vol. 25, p. 220). It appears that as this was a relatively sparsely populated region the bureaucratic hierarchy was limited. From the early 1840s Nguyễn Tri Phương perhaps acted as the tổng đốc for not only An Giang and Hà Tiên but also for neighboring Vĩnh Long and Định Tường. Léfèbvre’s capture also coincided with Phương’s campaign’s across the region to “pacify” Khmer insurgents. 71.  For further discussion see, Nola Cooke, “Missionary Praxis and Christianity as a Popular Healing Religion in Seventeenth-Century Nguyen Cochinchina,” unpublished manuscript. 72.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 749, 22/11/1844, pp. 1001–16. 73.  As recorded in Léfèbvre’s letter: “sự ấy nghe cg~ đặng; nghe thì nò thâm vào long, chg tôi cg~ đã gần mê.” Ibid. 74.  Special coins minted during the Minh Mạng reign, “ngân tiền Phi Long hạng lớn” (“Ascending Dragon coin, high value”). ĐNTL vol. 25, p. 173. 75.  See Bảo Định Giang, Bùi Hữu Nghĩa. 76.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 749, 8/3/1845, p. 1111. 77.  This expedition, the first by missionaries in the nineteenth century, followed numerous failed attempts at mission establishment in the highlands in the eighteenth century. In late 1839, Cuenot reported a successful reconnaissance by local clergy into the “mountains that separate Cochinchina from Cambodia and Laos” (Cuenot, ibid. 748, 13/09/1839 [copy], pp. 1167–68). This report demonstrates a fair understanding of the area’s social geography. His attention now turned specifically to the Đê people, a group who neighbored the Chu Rai and were ruled by the “Fire king”—known in Vietnamese dynastic records as Hỏa xá—who annually sent “an ambassador” to the neighboring Vietnamese provincial capital of Phú Yên. See, for example, ĐNTL vol. 23, p. 145. 78.  Duclos, AMEP 749, 17/01/1842, p. 61. 79.  Ibid., 29/05/1842, pp. 357–362. 80.  Miche and Duclos, ibid., 18/05/1842, pp. 329–32. 81.  Given that it may have taken months for the May 1842 letter by Duclos and



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Miche to have left Vietnam, the February 1843 expedition from Macao was probably launched within weeks of the notice arriving. The other three included: Galy and Berneux, who were captured in Phuc Nhac chrétienté, Nam Định, by Trịnh Quang Khanh, April 1841; and Charrier, who was captured in Bâu No, Sơn Tây province, in October 1841. 82.  ĐNTL vol. 24 (1842–43), p. 288. 83.  Georges Taboulet, La geste française en Indochine, pp. 365–66. 84.  Miche, AMEP 755, 2/2/1847, no. 18. 85.  Ibid. 86.  Following his rescue by the French navy in 1843, Miche returned to Cochin­ china in February 1845, where he assumed duties in the south. 87.  Miche, AMEP 755, 27/12/1847, no. 31. 88.  Ibid. 89.  Ibid., 2/2/1847, no. 18. 90.  Barbier, ibid., 1/11/1847, no. 27. chapter 5 1.  The reign of a king began on the first day of the lunar new year. In this case, Thiệu Trị died on November 4, 1847, and Prince Hồng Nhậm ascended the throne on December 20, but his reign did not begin until February 5, 1848. 2.  For an in-depth examination of the succession and the ensuing intrigues, see Bùi Quang Tung, “La Succession de Thiệu-Trị.” 3.  Retord, letter extract dated May 2, 1850, APF vol. 23 (1851), pp. 270, 278. 4.  Quế was born in Quảng Ngãi, but his ancestors were from Hà Tĩnh. See his entry in LT vol. 3, p. 392. 5.  See Cooke, “Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Confucianization in Historical Perspective,” p. 311; and Cooke, “Southern Regionalism and the Composition of the Nguyen Ruling Elite,” p. 220 6.  Cooke, “Southern Regionalism and the Composition of the Nguyen Ruling Elite,” p. 222. Officials attempted to rectify the examination bias in the early Tự Đức reign. However, as Cooke has suggested, the long-term discrimination might explain the loss of interest among northern scholars in the metropolitan exams, particularly those with a proud scholarly heritage. Cooke, “Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Confucianization in Historical Perspective,” pp. 311–12. 7.  ĐNTL vol. 27, pp. 109–2. 8.  MMCY III, p. 215. 9.  Langlet, L’Ancienne historiographie d’ état au Vietnam, p. 86. 10.  ĐNTL vol. 27, p. 111. 11.  The decree does not explicitly state that “Gia Tô” should be tattooed, but the context makes it clear that these were the required characters. 12.  ĐNTL vol. 27, p. 144.

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13.  However, the mission was aborted shortly after news reached Gia Định— where the ships had assembled—of the king’s death. Miche, AMEP 755, 27/12/1847, no. 31. Unfortunately, this mission is not recorded in the Veritable Records. 14.  The Cambodia vicariate was carved from the southernmost and western areas of West Cochinchina. North Cochinchina covered the three northern metropolitan provinces from Huế to Quảng Bình. 15.  Miche, AMEP 755, 23/06/1851, no. 59. 16.  Ibid. 17.  Forest, Les missionaires français, vol. 3, chap. 29, and pp. 127–28. 18.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 755, no. 54. 19.  ĐNTL vol. 20, p. 120. 20.  Borelle, AMEP 755, 21/07/1853, no. 75; ibid., 26/07/1855, no. 88; and, ibid., 22/10/1855, no. 90. 21.  See Simon Hòa, Cuenot “Translation of the letter of Doctor Simon Hòa (October 1839),” ibid. 749, pp. 873–74. 22.  The possibility of regional differences in catechist status may be confirmed with further research. Briefly, Galy, an MEP missionary in the Tonkin, provides a glimpse of local perceptions and suggests a model of leadership closely resembling the corporate leadership of northern villages. Describing the conditions of a congregation in his district, he reported on elderly “catechists” reminiscing on earlier lay leaders. With little respect for the current generation, contemporary leaders looked back at the forbears as “men of consummate wisdom and prudence, [who] were feared and respected like little kings.” Galy, letter extract dated Jan. 15, 1852, in APF vol. 25 (1853), p. 30. 23.  Jeanne, AMEP 748, 4/07/1839, pp. 1125–28. 24.  See Borelle, ibid. 755, 21/07/1853, no. 75; and, Matthêu Đức, Hạnh Cha MINH và Lái Gẫm Tử đạo, pp. 19–20. 25.  Borelle, extract dated Aug. 27, 1855, APF vol. 29 (1857), pp. 215–20. 26.  Borelle, AMEP 755, no. 181 (written in 1860). 27.  According to Borelle’s translation, the sentence accused Phụng “of being a sectarian of the perverse religion. . . . [He] had in [his] possession books of the religion and objects of the cult. . . . [He] had built a church and there gathered people for prophesying and praying, he had dared to offer safety to a master of the religion. . . . He refuses obstinately to renounce the religion. As a consequence we declare that Lê Văn Phụng is a rebel, which the law orders that he be strangled without remission.” Ibid. 28.  Guennou, Missions Étrangères de Paris, p. 159. 29.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 755, 1855, no. 83. 30.  Régéreau, “Vicariat Apostolique de la Cochinchine, Cambodge et Ciampa 1835,” ibid. 748, p. 537; Cuenot, “Vicariat Apostolique de Cochinchin Orientale, 1847,” ibid. 750, no. 34; and, Léfèbvre, “Catalogus Sacramentorum in Vicariatu Apostolica Cochinchine Orientalis, 1847,” ibid. 755, no. 35. 31.  Cuenot, “Vicariatus Cocincina, Cambodia et Ciampa in anno Domini 1843,” ibid. 749, p. 975; Cuenot, “Vicariatus Cocincina, Cambodia, Administratio Sacra-



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mentorum 1844,” ibid., 20/05/1845, p. 1054; Cuenot, “Vicariatus Cocincina, Cambodia, Administratio Sacramentorum 1845,” ibid., 01/1846, p. 1145. 32.  One of the most telling features of the times in Minh’s biography is the high infant mortality rate in his family. The twelfth child of fourteen, Minh was one of seven children who survived past the age of twenty. Minh’s parents, Đominicô Phan Văn Đức, a congregation notable (câu họ) and therefore probably a catechist, and Annà Tiếu, died when he was young. Matthêu Đức, Hạnh Cha MINH và Lái Gẫm Tử đạo, pp. 4–5. 33.  Known in the text as Đức Cha Tứ. 34.  The biography notes chữ nho, which may be translated as classical letters, or Confucian studies, referring specifically to administrative Chinese. But it is certain that Minh also studied chữ nôm, the demotic Vietnamese script used widely at the time in local literature. 35.  Taberd, Dictionarium latino-anamiticum (Serampore [Singapore], 1838). 36.  Matthêu Đức, Hạnh Cha MINH và Lái Gẫm Tử đạo, pp. 19–20. 37.  Cuenot, “Cochinchine Orientale, 1845,” AMEP 750, no. 9. 38.  Ibid., no. 34. 39.  Léfèbvre, “Cochinchine Occidentale, 1852,” ibid. 755, no. 71. 40.  Retord, letter extract dated May 7, 1847, APF vol. 22 (1849), pp. 164–65. 41.  Lettre Commune for 1847. See Guennou, Missions Étrangères de Paris, p. 255. 42.  Léfèbvre, “Relation du Martyre de Philippe Minh, Prêtre de la Cochinchine Occidentale,” AMEP 755, no. 74. Published in 1854, APF vol. 24 (1854), pp. 138–43. 43.  Matthêu Đức, Hạnh Cha MINH và Lái Gẫm Tử đạo. 44.  Ibid., pp. 5–6. 45.  Taberd, Dictionarium latino-anamiticum; Taberd, “Note on the Geography of Cochin China.” 46.  Taberd, “Note on the Geography of Cochin China”; Taberd, Dictionarium latino-anamiticum, pp. 110–11. 47.  Diên-Ninh prefecture (phủ) was changed to Diên-Khánh in 1742. See Đại Nam Nhất Thống Chí [The Complete Geography of Đại Nam] (Saigon, 1964), vols. 10–11; cf. Võ Long Tê, “Inê Tử-Đạo Vãn ou Le Martyre d’Agnès,” p. 318. 48.  Võ Long Tê, “Inê Tử-Đạo Vãn ou Le Martyre d’Agnès,” pp. 311–12. 49.  Nguyễn Văn Trung, Chữ Văn Quốc Ngữ, pp. 5–6, 121; Huình-Tịnh Paulus Của, Đại Nam Quấc Âm Tự Vị. 50.  See also, Bỉnh, Sách Sổ Sang Chép Các Việc của Philiphê Bỉnh. 51.  Examples include a quốc ngữ translation of Delamotte’s defense declaration at court during his trial (Delamotte, AMEP 749, 20/12/1842, pp. 621–23); a letter by Petrus Diệu (ibid. [1842], pp. 541–42); and, by Cuenot, what appears to be a gazette for the congregations in his vicariate, which includes a brief history of the Võ Vương persecution in the eighteenth century (Cuenot, ibid., 22/02/1844, pp. 997–1000). 52.  Cuenot, “Cochinchine Orientale, 1847,” ibid. 750, no. 34. 53.  Cuenot, “Cochinchine Orientale, 1848,” ibid., no. 40.

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54.  These amounts represented just over 4 percent of the annual allocations sent from France in 1847 and 1848 for both Cochinchina vicariates. The 1847 allocation for Cochinchina was 32,510 fr, and for 1848, 25,950 fr. See Cooke, “Early NineteenthCentury Vietnamese Catholics and Others.” 55.  Retord, letter extract dated April 2, 1858, APF vol. 31 (1859), p. 35. 56.  Retord, letter extract dated May 2, 1850, ibid. vol. 23 (1851), p. 272. 57.  See de Rhodes, Dictionarium Annnamiticum Lusitanum. See also Herrengt, AMEP 750, 14/01/1859 [copy], no. 100. 58.  Alexander de Rhodes produced the first latin-annamite catechism in the midseventeenth century, but the version used by MEP missionaries in the nineteenth century was that composed by Mgr. Pigneaux in 1774. To the best of my knowledge no revised versions were produced in the early nineteenth century. Pigneaux, AMEP 1095. For further information on the early production of this work, see Mantienne, Monseigneur Pigneau de Béhaine, pp. 65–72. 59.  Nguyễn Văn Trung, “Một Vài Biểu Hiện Văn Hóa Của Ki Tô Giáo Nhận Thấy ở Vùng Sài Gòn Gia Định,” p. 8. 60.  Vãn và Tuồng, pp. 424–36. The first edition of this anthology may have been published in the 1870s. 61.  “Cố Bề Trên Phan Tử Đạo,” ibid., pp. 437–71. 62.  “Hàm Oan Chi Từ,” ibid., pp. 556–76. 63.  Sorel, AMEP 755, 29/07/1866, no. 575. 64.  See McLeod, “Nguyen Truong To,” pp. 314–15; cf. Trương Ba Can, Nguyễn Trương Tô, pp. 21–23. 65.  McLeod, “Nguyen Truong To,” pp. 320–21. 66.  Lam Giang and Võ Ngọc Nhã, Đặng Đức Tuấn. 67.  For Đặng Đức Siêu, see ĐNTL vol. 14, p. 161; and LT vol. 2, pp. 185–90. Lam Giang and Võ Ngọc Nhã also cite several works by the senior official, including Ván Tế Thượng Sư Bá Đa Lộc, a verse panegyric of the French missionary Pigneaux (Đặng Đức Tuấn, p. 12). For Đặng Đức Thiêm, see ĐNTL vol. 27, p. 216. The biography spells this name as “Chiêm” (Lam Giang and Võ Ngọc Nhã, Đặng Đức Tuấn, p. 10). He was appointed provincial financial administrator (bố chính) of the metropolitan province of Quảng Ngãi during the late Minh Mạng reign (ĐNTL vol. 19, p. 180). Under Thiệu Trị, he served as governor-general of Hải Dương–Quảng Yên provinces from 1843 (ibid. vol. 24, p. 422) and Nghệ An–Hà Tĩnh from 1846 (ibid. vol. 26, p. 162). 68.  Lam Giang and Võ Ngọc Nhã, Đặng Đức Tuấn, p. 12. 69.  Ibid., pp. 13–15. 70.  According to an 1847 rate of exchange, 1 silver tael was equivalent to 110 fr, or 175 ligatures of copper cash. APF vol. 21 (1849), p. 168. 71.  Cuenot, AMEP 750, 14/02/1848, no. 33. 72.  Retord, APF vol. 21 (849), pp. 164–74. 73.  Retord, letter extract dated October 1854, ibid. vol. 28 (1856), p. 108. 74.  Diaz, letter extract dated May 2, 1855, ibid. vol. 29 (1857), p. 64. 75.  Ibid., p. 10.



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76.  Ibid., pp. 12–13. 77.  Đồ Chiểu, Dương Từ Hà Mậu. 78.  LT vol. 4, pp. 237–50. 79.  Retord, letter extract dated May 25, 1851, APF vol. 24 (1852), p. 30. 80.  Retord, letter extract dated May 5, 1852, ibid. vol. 25 (1853), pp. 90–95. 81.  Retord, letter extract dated April 22, 1853, ibid. vol. 28 (1855), pp. 25–29. 82.  Hermosilla, letter extract dated April 19, 1857, ibid. vol. 30 (1858), pp. 278–79. 83.  See Chapter 2. See also HĐSL VII, p. 132. 84.  ĐNTL vol. 26, p. 21. 85.  Ibid., vol. 28, p. 284. And see Khâm Định Đại Nam Hội Điển Sự Lệ, vol. 2, p. 22. 86.  Herrengt identified Hồ Đình Hy as “thới bộc,” reflecting a regional pronunciation of “thái bộc,” high vestiary to the king. AMEP 750, 20/06/1857, no. 88; see also Herrengt, ibid., 15/04/1858, no. 95. 87.  Sohier, letter extract dated Dec. 15, 1857, APF vol. 30 (1858), pp. 369–92. 88.  Herrengt, AMEP 750, no. 88 89.  ĐNTL vol. 27, pp. 108–12. 90.  Borelle, AMEP 755, 1/02/1855, no. 84. 91.  ĐNTL vol. 28, pp. 60–61. For 1859, see ibid. vol. 29, p. 91. 92.  Ibid., vol. 26, p. 277. 93.  Ibid., p. 385. 94.  Ibid., vol. 28, p. 284. 95.  Ibid., vol. 26, p. 385. 96.  Forest, Les missionaires français, vol. 3, p. 151. chapter 6 1.  Osborne, The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia, pp. 32–33; Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, p. 27; McLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, p. 45. The view is also subscribed to by Nguyễn Văn Kiệm, in “Chính Sách Đối Với Thiên Chúa Giáo,” 2, p. 39; Nguyen Thi Thanh, “The French Conquest of Cochinchina,” p. 183. 2.  Nicole-Dominique Lê, Les Missions-Étrangères, pp. 175–76. 3.  Herrengt, AMEP 750, 15/04/1858, no. 95. 4.  Léfèbvre, ibid. 755, 24/01/1853, no. 71; and Léfèbvre, “Vicariat apostolique de la Cochinchine Occidentale, 1858,” ibid., no. 124. 5.  See Tai, Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam, pp. 2–43; Đinh Văn Hạnh, Đạo Tứ Ân Hiếu Nghĩa, pp. 45–68; Đỗ Thiên, Vietnamese Supernaturalism, pp. 139–40; and, most recently, Taylor, “Apocalypse Now?” 6.  Léfèbvre, “Vicariat apostolique de la Cochinchine Occidentale, 1858,” AMEP 750 (no date; January 1859?), no. 124. 7.  Arnoux, ibid., 15/04/1857, no. 84. 8.  Ibid. 9.  Roy, ibid., 1/11/1859, no. 101.

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10.  The “introduction,” signed by De Montézon and Estève of the Compagnie de Jésus, is dated May 23, 1858. Given the title page of the book is dated “1858,” I believe the book would have been published shortly after May. De Montézon and Estève, Mission de la Cochinchine et du Tonkin. 11.  Ibid. 12.  Bouillevaux, Voyage dans l’Indochine. 13.  Ibid. p. 46. 14.  Veuillot, La Cochinchine et le Tonquin. Veuillot’s introduction is dated Dec. 31, 1858; I reckon this book would have been published shortly after. 15.  Ibid., p. ii. 16.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 755, 26/02/1852. 17.  Herrengt, ibid. 750, 14/01/1859 [copy], no. 100. 18.  Here a note in the text remarks that the “dogs were of European race.” 19.  In Herrengt’s translation Khoa yelled “go with your master, you belong to the cố [master]” (“đi với chủ mầy, mầy là của cố!”). 20.  Ibid. 21.  See for example, Tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, p. 82. 22.  Matthêu Đức, Hạnh Cha MINH và Lái Gẫm Tử đạo, pp. 19–20. 23.  The story is recounted in a letter from Borelle, AMEP 755, 3/09/1857, no. 110. 24.  Léfèbvre, “Vicariate Apostolique de la Cochinchine Occidentale, 1858,” ibid., no. 124. 25.  Herrengt, ibid. 750, 15/04/1858, no. 95. 26.  Ibid. 27.  Borelle, letter extract dated Jan. 15, 1859, APF vol. 31 (1859). 28.  Pernot, AMEP 755, 29/01/1859, no. 128. 29.  Ibid. 30.  Ibid. 31.  Ibid. 32.  Borelle, ibid., no. 181 (written in 1860). 33.  Unfortunately, few biographic details are available on this priest. He was probably in his early thirties—he had only recently been ordained—and had studied at Penang. 34.  Pernot, ibid. 755, 29/01/1859, no. 128. 35.  Ibid. 36.  Borelle, ibid., no. 181. (The account is, unfortunately, undated, but appears to have been composed in early 1860.) 37.  Miche, ibid. 765, 25/11/1858, no. 42. See also, ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 97. 38.  Pernot, AMEP 755, 22/03/1859, no. 132. 39.  ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 35. 40.  Ibid., pp. 35–36. 41.  Ibid. 42.  Ibid. 43.  Ibid., p. 36 44.  Ibid., p. 75.



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45.  Bùi Quỹ assumed the prestigious post of governor of Bình Định and Phú Yên after the death of Phạm Khôi in mid-1859 (ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 53; see also LT vol. 4, p. 105). The Veritable Records note Bùi Ngọc Quỹ as the provisional governor, Hộ đốc, of both Phú Yên and Bình Định (ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 105), but his entry in the Official Biographies records that he served from 1859, Tự Đức year twelve, as governor, “tuần phủ hộ lý tổng đốc,” a position that may be translated as “governor assisting the governor-general” (LT vol. 4, p. 103). 46.  LT vol. 4, p. 103. 47.  Ibid. 48.  Ibid. 49.  ĐNTL vol. 29, pp. 74, 105. 50.  See ibid., p. 202; LT vol. 4, p. 103; and Herrengt, AMEP 750, 19/07/1861, no. 121. 51.  Herrengt, AMEP 750, 3/04/1861, no. 118. 52.  Ibid., 19/07/1861, no. 121. 53.  Ibid. 54.  Ibid., 31/01/1862 [copy], no. 241. 55.  The capture is recorded in the Nguyễn chronicles complete with a list of the rewards offered to the captors. ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 245. 56.  Herrengt, AMEP 750, 31/01/1862 [copy], no. 241. 57.  Borelle, ibid. 755, 7/03/1860, no. 152. 58.  Gauthier, ibid. 755, 23/10/1861, no. 218. 59.  ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 256. 60.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 755, 15/01/1862, no. 234. 61.  Herrengt, ibid., 27/12/1861, no. 225. 62.  According to a list of those who were killed, compiled by Errard and titled “Bản Danh Sách 400 Giáo-Hữu Chết Thiêu Trong Ngục,” reproduced in Nguyễn Văn Quí, “Sưu Tập Những Họ Đạo Cổ Xưa Tây Đàng Trong,” pp. 153–203. 63.  For more on the massacres, see Võ Đức Hạnh, La place du Catholicisme, vol. 1, pp. 366–71. 64.  Nicole-Dominique Lê, Les Missions-Étrangères, pp. 83–84. See also, Võ Đức Hạnh, La place du Catholicisme, vol. 1, pp. 276–92. 65.  See, for example, Minh Mạng’s lengthy 1839 memorials where he describes the religion as contrary to acceptable orthodoxy. ĐNTL vol. 21, pp. 100–104, 177–80. 66.  Ibid., vol. 26, p. 276. 67.  Ibid., p. 385. 68.  Ibid., vol. 29, pp. 35–36. 69.  A report to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in 1866 recorded the population at 33,939 (AFP vol. 38, p. 279), whereas Léfèbvre in 1862 estimated the “prewar” population to be 32,000 (Léfèbvre, AMEP 755, [no date], no. 292). 70.  Bellocq, “Monographie de la Chrétienté de Bãi Xan,” photocopy in Nguyễn Văn Quí, “Sưu Tập Những Họ Đạo Cổ Xưa Tây Đàng Trong,” pp. 206–8. 71.  ĐNTL vol. 29, p. 216. 72.  Ibid., pp. 236–37.

198

notes to epilogue

73.  Ibid., p. 318. 74.  Ibid., p. 274. 75.  LT vol. 3, p. 427. 76.  His family ties in Quảng Trị probably also contributed to his prospects. LT vol. 4, pp. 71–72. 77.  Léfèbvre, AMEP 755, 16/03/1860, p. 153. 78.  Ibid. 79.  Miche, ibid., 24/01/1866, no. 527. 80.  Puginier, ibid., 9/08/1861, no. 210. See Tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, p. 316. 81.  Paul Thu, AMEP 755, 25/04/1861, no. 197. 82.  Instead of “Chí Hòa,” Thu wrote “Thí Hòa.” 83.  Paul Thu, AMEP 755, 25/03/1861, no. 194. 84.  Ibid., 28/01/1862, no. 240. 85.  Tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, pp. 81–82. See also Barrou, AMEP 755, 3/03/1860, no. 151. 86.  Puginier, AMEP 755, 9/08/1861, no. 210. 87.  Paul Thu, ibid., 20/10/1861, no. 217. 88.  Bình Long district was roughly situated between Saigon and Tây Ninh town and was bordered by the Saigon River to the east and the Vàm Cỏ to the west; see Langlet and Quach Thanh Tâm, Atlas historique des six provinces du sud du Vietnam, p. 23. On the abuse of authority, see Commandant Brière de l’Île, AMEP 755, 13/05/1863, no. 314. 89.  AMEP 755, 13/05/1863, no. 314. 90.  Léfèbvre, “Vicariate apostolique de la Cochinchine Occidentale année 1862,” ibid. (no date; Jan. 1863?), no. 292. 91.  See APF vol. 38 (1866), p. 279. 92.  See the biographic details listed under the MEP archive website under the “recherché” link, www.archivmep.org.fr. 93.  Ibid.; see also, Tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, pp. 319–20. Epilogue 1.  Osborne, The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia. 2.  Ibid., p. 68 3.  For further discussion, see Lam Giang and Võ Ngọc Nhã, Đặng Đức Tuấn. See also Võ Đức Hạnh, La place du Catholicisme, vol. 1, pp. 250–-61. 4.  Hefner, “Introduction,” p. 26. 5.  Ibid. 6.  The following account is taken from a biography written by a close colleague, Georges Dürrwell, shortly after Trần Bá Lộc’s death, in October 1899. Despite several inaccuracies in minor details—which I highlight—this narrative offers invaluable insights into one of the most decorated Catholics within the colonial administration. Dürrwell, “Trần Bá Lộc.”



notes to epilogue

199

7.  Dürrwell’s narrative at this point errs in recounting the dates of events (ibid., pp. 35–36). He notes that the attack on the village occurred around when Lộc was sixteen—1856. The raid that led to the capture of Emmanuel Phụng, as described in detail by Pernot, took place in January 1859 (Pernot, AMEP 755, 29/01/1859, no. 128). See also, Borelle, ibid., no. 181 (written in 1860). 8.  Pernot, AMEP 755, 29/01/1859, no. 128. 9.  Dürrwell, “Trần Bá Lộc”, pp. 38–39. 10.  Ibid., p. 49.

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Index

Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, 9, 101, 126 Anti-Catholic campaign, 69–76, 82, 87, 91, 98, 135, 154; edicts, 8, 45, 47, 48, 49, 58, 61, 62, 66–67, 98, 137–38, 179n18, 180n25; identifying Catholics, 85; non-compliance with, 87, 111, 112, 113–14, 150–51; following French invasion, 152, 158; moderation of by mandarins, 88, 154–55 Apostolic vicar. See Mission organization Apostasy. See Forced apostasy Bắc Thuận, 56 Bạch Xuân Nguyên, 50, 180n27 Bouillevaux, Charles-Emile, 120, 144 Brière de l’Île, Commandant of Tây Ninh, 164 Bribery and extortion, 10, 69–70, 86–87 105; protection for Catholics, 86, 112, 114 Bùi Đức Thể, 82, 88, 186n59 Bùi Hữu Nghĩa, 111 Bùi Quỹ: career, 77, 81; role in anti-Catholic campaign, 77,82, 153, 186n53–54, 196n45; as governor of Bình Định, 153–55 Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương, 142, 177n22 Black economy. See Bribery and extortion Candalh, Jean-Jacques: on bribing mandarins, 70; in hiding, 79; death, 93, 183n4 Conversion process, 96–98. See also Mission Education Catechism, 134; exam on text, 31–32. See also Conversion process Catechists. See Local church hierarchy Catholicism in Vietnam: attitudes of followers, 34; attraction of priesthood,



33, 123–26; churches, 28; congregations, 25–27, 162; history in southern Vietnam, 18–20; differences between spread in north and south, 19; in Nguyễn bureaucracy, 135–38; in French colonial bureaucracy, 164–65 Catholic physicians (medicines chretiens), 159–60 Cornay, Jean-Charles, 72, 73, 89, 101, 184n14 Cái Mơn, 25, 93, 107, 108, 120, 123, 142, 147, 148, 156, 157, 159, 170. Cái Nhưm, 170 Chợ Quán, 54, 56 chrétienté, 25. See also Catholicism in Vietnam: congregations Cơ mật viện (Secret Council), 73, 118 Cochinchina mission, 18–21. See also Catholicism in Vietnam Collège Générale, Penang, 122–23, 124, 125 Cuenot, Étienne, 51, 82, 87–88, 93–96, 112, 183n4; revival of mission, 97–98; literature, 132–34; conflict within mission, 143–46; attitude to new missionaries, 145; local priests, 143, 189n51; mission in Central Highlands, 112, 190n77; death, 155. See also Gò Thị Synod, Mission Administration Đặng Đức Lành, 132 Đặng Đức Siêu, 132, 194n67 Đặng Đức Thiêm, 132, 194n67 Đặng Đức Tuấn, 131–32, 168 Đàng Ngoại, 6 Đàng Trong, 7, 116 Delgado, Ignacious, 73–75, 94, 105 de Lammenais, Felicité, 100

209

210

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đạo Gia-Tô. See Catholicism in Vietnam đạo Hòa-lan. See Catholicism in Vietnam Delamotte, Gilles-Joseph, 28, 53, 57, 72– 73, 184n18; arrest and death, 86–87 Dương Sơn, 25, 50, 179n1; dispute with neighboring village, 42–44; role in anti-Catholic campaign, 50, 61 Dương Xuân, 67 Forced Apostasy, 45, 51, 69, 83, 137–38 Gia Long (Nguyễn Ánh): early years, 15, 17–18, 20, 21, 40, 47; state-building efforts, 34–35, 38, 39–40, 41, 62, 98; tolerance of Catholicism and the mission, 47–48, 58; death, 35 giáo hóa. See Minh Mạng: education reforms and moral campaign giáo trưởng. See Local church hierarchy Gia Định, 7, 17; place and society, 21–25, 51; parochialism and elites, 35–36; administrative reorganization, 36–37, 41; rebellion, 48–53; citadel, 22, 53, 57, 162; impact of centralization on society, 62; change to ‘Six Provinces’, 50 Gò Thị Synod, 93–99; chapters and doctrine, 95–96 Henares, Dominic, 69, 73, 74, 75 Herrengt, Charles, 145–47 Hồ Đình Hy, 136–38 Hồ Hựu, 88, 186n72 Hồng Nhậm. See Tự Đức Huỳnh Tịnh Của, Paulus, 128 Jaccard, François, 42–43, 130, 177n38; role at court, 57, 79–80; trial and execution, 76–78; implications of execution in mandarinate, 80–82, 154 Jeanne, Pierre, 70 Jeantet, Charles, 82, 186n53 Lái Thiêu, 26, 27, 30, 51, 123; founding, 107 Launay, Adrien, 3, 4 Lê Đăng Doanh, 81 Léfèbvre, Dominique, 12, 95, 99, 108–9;

encounter with Nguyễn Tri Phương, 109–11; opposition to MEP ties with French state, 145 Lê Văn Đức, 73–76. See also AntiCatholic Campaign Lê Văn Duyệt, 35–36, 37, 39; support for the mission, 48–50; role in southern elite, 51, 61, 178n47; death, 50. See also Lê Văn Khôi Lê Văn Gẫm, 118 Lê Văn Khôi, 51; leadership of Gia Định rebellion, 9, 51–52; support for mission, 52, 55, 56; death, 55. See also Lê Văn Duyệt, Joseph Marchand, Gia Định: rebellion Lê Văn Phụng (Emmanuel Phụng), 122, 150, 192n27. See also Local church hierarchy Local church hierarchy, 29–31, 120–22 Louvet, Louis-Eugène, 3–4 Mặc Bắc, 25, 122, 124, 147, 170. See also Joseph Marchand Marchand, Joseph, 5, 9, 34, 170, 180n36, 181n48; in mission administration, 27; illness, 52; role in Lê Văn Khôi rebellion, 52, 53–56; execution, 53, 90; final letter, 54–57; depiction in French mission histories, 53–54; prophecies, 55; depiction in Nguyễn records, 66–67 Martyrdom of Agnes, 127 Massacres of Catholics, 4, 58; in Biên Hòa, 156–61 Minh Mạng: anti-Catholic campaign, 48– 49, 68, 73–76, 93; centralisation reforms, 36–37; consolidation of kingdom and imperialism, 35–36; organization of ritual and religion, 36–39; on literature and historiography, 39–40, 59–61; morality campaign (giao hoa), 40, 62– 64; attitude toward Catholicism in Vietnam, 58–60, 63, 67, 84, 158; promotion of officials, 77; anger with officials, 76, 81; on Catholic doctrine and filial piety, 84–85; death, 91 Minh Vương, 45; opposition to Catholicism, 45–46, 65

Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), 3, 7, 30–31; history missions in Asia, 19, 28– 29, 31; relations with Nguyễn dynasty, 7, 20, 44–47, 47–48; relations with other missions in Vietnam, 32–33; role in rise of French imperialism, 125–26, 144–45; links between mission and France, 100– 101; vicariates, 18–19, 119, 193n54 Mission administration: annual reports, 99, 103, 104–5; administrative records, 100–101, 105–7; baptisms and conversions, 96–97; vicariate divisions, 119 Mission education, 33, 96–97, 122–23, 126; in administrative Chinese, 131–33; French rule, 164 Mission finances: for printing and propaganda, 128–29; finances for teaching, 102, 133; for security, 69, 86, 98–99, 105, 112 Mission literature, 129–31 Nguyễn Ánh. See Gia Long Nguyễn Công Hoán, 81 Nguyễn Đăng Giai, 134–35 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, 133, 135 Nguyễn Tri Phương, 109, 161 190n70; injuries, 159 Nguyễn Trương Tộ, 131 Paulus Thu, 163–64 Pernot, Jean, 142, 148, 170; on attack on Đầu Nước, 149–50 Persecution. See Anti-Catholic campaign, Minh Mạng Phan Bá Đạt, 43, 183n81; proscription edict, 66–67 Phan Thanh Giản, 132 Phan Văn Minh, Philippe, 123–24; hagiography, 126 Phiên An citadel. See Gia Định Phan Văn Kinh. See Louis Jaccard Pigneau de Béhaine, 176n12. See Pierre Pigneaux Pigneaux, Pierre, 12, 20, 30–31, 176n12; reversal of MEP’s fortunes in Vietnam, 47; relations with Gia Long, 47;

index

211

relations with Lê Văn Duyệt, 49; Vietnamese dictionary, 127, 129, 194n58 Pierre Thật, 30 Puginier, Paul-François, 163 Quinton, Victor, 107, 189n63–n64 quốc ngữ, 127–29 Régéreau, François, 31–32, 51, 52, 177n38; and Joseph Marchand, 55 Restoration (Trung hưng), 39–40, 41, 59 Retord, Pierre, 71, 89; Tonkin mission, 129; promotion of literature, 132–34; ties with mandarins, 134–35. See also Nguyễn Đăng Giai Simon Hòa (Phan Đac Hòa), 78, 86–87, 121–22; execution, 87. See also Local church hierarchy Six Provinces (lục tỉnh), 50. See also Gia Định Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 101–3, 123 Sohier, Joseph, 136, 148 Synod of Sutchuen. See Gò Thị Synod Taberd, Jean-Louis, 32–33, 180n36; pastoral visit through Cochinchina, 27; views on local priests, 29, 30, 178n42; relations with Lê Văn Duyệt, 49–51; Philippe Minh, 123–24; Vietnamese lexicon, 127– 28; in Bangkok, 183n4; death, 93 Ten Articles, (Thập điều), 62–63, 85, 136, 182n73 Thiệu Trị, 91; anti-Catholic campaign, 93, 98, 106, 113, 117–18; religious beliefs, 59, 98; views on Catholics, 158; succession, 94; death, 116, 191n1 Thợ Đức. See Joseph Marchand Trần Bá Lộc, 168–70, 198n6 Trần Hiển Doãn, 79, 81 Trần Văn Giàu, 5, 140 Trịnh Hoài Đức, 21. See also Gia Định: place and society Trịnh Quang Khanh, 73, 74, 75, 106, 184n21

212

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Trương Đăng Quế, 115–16 Trương Vĩnh Kỳ, Petrus, 128 Tự Đức, 2, 58, 113, 191n6; accession, 115; early reign, 116; anti-Catholic campaign, 117, 137–38, 159; attitude to Catholics, 158

Venard, Jean, 101 Veuillot, Eugène, 144 Viaticum. See Mission administration: finances Võ Vương, 17, 19–20, 46