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The Pursuit of Martyrdom in the Catholic Church in Korea before 1866

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2009

ANDREW FINCH
ANDREW FINCH
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6 Gale Rigg House, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 0BA; e-mail: digital_hakase@yahoo.co.uk
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Abstract

The first century of the Catholic Church in Korea was characterised by recurrent and often severe persecutions. Consequently a cult of martyrs developed from early in the Church's history. Wider Catholic concepts relating to martyrdom and spirituality, in particular belief in a corrupting world and the significance of martyrdom in offering a means of release, set individuals on the path of martyrdom. They were then informed and encouraged by the development of the cult itself, and the solidarity and support of the Christian community. However, Korean Christians also carried with them Confucian and Buddhist concepts concerning the nature of virtue, asceticism, world-renunciation and self-sacrifice, and they subscribed to a set of social values which saw kinship ties and posthumous reputation as paramount. In the area of martyrdom these indigenous concepts and values complemented and reinforced those derived from Catholicism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 95 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 M. B. Jansen, The making of modern Japan, Cambridge, Ma 2000, 69; Takemichi Hara, ‘Korea, China, and western barbarians: diplomacy in early nineteenth-century Korea’, Modern Asian Studies xxxii (1998), 391–3.

2 Hara, ‘Korea’, 419.

3 M. Deuchler, The Confucian transformation of Korea: a study of society and ideology, Cambridge, Ma 1992, 12f., 302, 377 n. 25; S. J. Palmer, Korea and Christianity: the problem of identification with tradition, Seoul 1986, 43–5.

4 R. E. Buswell, ‘Buddhism in Korea’, in J. M. Kitagawa and M. D. Cumming (eds), Buddhism and Asian history: religion, history, and culture: readings from the encyclopaedia of religion, London–New York 1989, 156; Deuchler, Confucian transformation, 27, 107–11, 126–8, 286f.; J. H. Grayson, Korea: a religious history, London 2002, 104, 112, 120–3, 137–9.

5 J. Ching, ‘East Asian religions’, in W. G. Oxtoby (ed.), World religions: eastern traditions, Toronto 1996, 392; Grayson, Korea, 101f.

6 Grayson, Korea, 131, and ‘The importance of the study of Korean religions and their role in inter-religious dialogue’, Korea Journal xxviii (1988), 23; JaHyun Kim Haboush and M. Deuchler, ‘Introduction’, in JaHyun Kim Haboush and M. Deuchler (eds), Culture and state in late Chosŏn Korea, Cambridge, Ma 1999, 3, 5, 10; JaHyun Kim Haboush, ‘Constructing the center: the ritual controversy and the search for a new identity in seventeenth-century Korea’, in Kim Haboush and Deuchler, Culture and state, 51, 67–70; S. Lone and G. McCormack, Korea since 1850, Melbourne–New York 1993, 2. See also Jansen, Modern Japan, 71, for the comments of the Korean envoy, Sin Yu-han, on the lack of formal public reverence for Confucius in Tokugawa Japan.

7 D. L. Baker, ‘Tasan's world: Korea on the eve of a monotheistic revolution’ (unpubl. typescript), 2. I am grateful to Dr Baker for providing me with a copy of this paper and for allowing me to cite from it. See also Grayson, Korea, 156–8; Woo-keun Han, The history of Korea, trans. Kyung-shik Lee, Seoul 1970, 252, 298, 300–8, 312f.; Takashi Hatada, A history of Korea, trans. W. W. Smith, Jr, and B. H. Hazard, Santa Barbara 1969, 75–84, 97; Ki-Baik Lee, A new history of Korea, trans. E. W. Wagner and E. J. Schultz, Seoul 1984, 220–3, 232f., 247f., 250f.; and Lone and McCormack, Korea, 7f.

8 Baker, ‘Tasan's world’, 2f.

9 Ibid. 5–9, and idem, ‘A different thread: orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and Catholicism in a Confucian world’, in Kim Haboush and Deuchler, Culture and state, 212, 215f.

10 Idem, ‘Tasan's world’, 4, and ‘A Confucian confronts Catholicism: truth collides with morality in eighteenth century Korea’, Korean Studies Forum vi (1979–80), 16.

11 Many of the earliest converts to Christianity were disciples of the Confucian philosopher Yi Ik, who had stressed the need for personal moral cultivation: Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 6. Ch'oe Ch'ang Hūb, his wife, and ‘many other’ catechumens received baptism during the ‘time of cholera’. This was probably in 1822: C. Dallet, Histoire de l'église de Corée, précédee d'une introduction sur l'histoire, les institutions, la langue, les moeurs et coutumes coréenes: avec carte et planches, Paris 1874, repr. Seoul 1975, ii. 223f.

12 Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 3, 5f.

13 Idem, ‘The martyrdom of Paul Yun: western religion and eastern ritual in eighteenth-century Korea’, Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society liv (1979), 37–43; A. Choi, L'Érection du premier vicariate et les origins du catholicisme en Corée, 1592–1837, Schöneck-Beckenreid 1961, 17–24, 39f.; J. H. Grayson, Early Buddhism and Christianity in Korea: a study in the emplantation of religion, Leiden 1985, 72–4.

14 Grayson, Early Buddhism, 75–7. The names of the Sinyu and other persecutions are those of the lunar calendar years in which the persecutions occurred.

15 Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 7–9; Kwang Cho, ‘The Chosŏn's government's measures against Catholicism’, trans. Mi-hwa Ch'oe, in Chai-shin Yu (ed.), The founding of Catholic tradition in Korea, Mississauga 1996, 110–12; Kang-nam Oh, ‘Sagehood and metanoia: the Confucian-Christian encounter in Korea’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion lxi (1993), 305–7.

16 Choi, Érection, 65, 71.

17 Ibid. 66–8, 76, 81, 85f.; Dallet, Histoire, ii. 97–9, 227.

18 Grayson, Early Buddhism, 78–81, and Korea, 79–81; Han, History, 348.

19 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 171, 193, 198f.

20 Ibid. ii. 139f.

21 Mission de Seoul, Documents relatifs aux martyrs de Corée de 1839 et 1846, Hong Kong 1924, 3, 7f.; Sŭngjŏngwŏn Ilgi (Diary of the royal secretariat), Seoul 1975, cxvii. 917, 945, 952.

22 Martyrs de Corée de 1839 et 1846, 1f.; Ilgi, cxvii. 917. The Chinese phrase, ‘mi ran sui feng’, translated as ‘ils suivent le vent’, conveys the sense of following a trend or a fancy. I am grateful to Kejun Yan of the Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, for explaining the meaning of this phrase.

23 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 248f., 323–9. Sixty-three of the Kihae martyrs were women, as were four of the martyrs of 1846. This demonstrates the significance of women within the Korean Church, both in terms of their numbers – perhaps two-thirds of the laity – and the important roles they undertook within the underground Church: G. Ledyard, ‘Kollumba Kang Wansuk, an early Catholic activist and martyr’, in R. S. Buswell and T. S. Lee (eds), Christianity in Korea, Honolulu 2005, 40; Masahito Sawa, Mikan: Chōsen Kirisutokyōshi (A history of Korean Christianity; unfinished work), Tokyo 1991, 60. It also illustrates the effect of changes in the attitudes of the authorities to female criminality and the association of Catholicism with treason. At least until 1801 yangban women were formally immune from the attention of the courts and the police except in cases of treason: Deuchler, Confucian transformation, 265f., 280; Ledyard, ‘Kollumba’, 40.

24 P. Destombes, Au Pays du matin calme: les martyrs de 1866, Paris 1968, 43.

25 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 163f. On 30 April 1839 forty Christians were condemned to death, but the royal council postponed the sentence and reapplied torture. By 9 May thirty-five of the original forty still remained steadfast, and they were joined by five new prisoners. On 24 May five of these forty Christians were executed, together with four women who had been held in prison since 1836: ibid. ii. 146, 148, 151. A female catechumen was released on the grounds that her name was not Christian: ibid. ii. 144.

26 Ibid. i, p. x; ii. 132–54, 203f. For a detailed analysis of the sources used by Dallet see Sog-u Ch'oe, Han' guk Kyohaesa ŭi Tamku (An inquiry into Korean Church history), Seoul, 333–43. The journal was continued, and slightly modified, after Bishop Imbert's arrest by Fr Maubant until he surrendered himself in September 1839: APF xvi (1844), 150.

27 Martyrs de Corée de 1839 et 1846; Mission de Seoul, Documents relatifs aux Martyrs de Corée de 1866, Hong Kong 1925.

28 Dallet, Histoire, i. 339; ii. 203, 236.

29 Ibid. ii. 141, 224.

30 Ibid. ii. 164, 169.

31 Ibid. i.119; ii. 235–8.

32 R. Gibson, A social history of French Catholicism: 1789–1914, London 1989, 19–24; Kyong-suk Min, Catholic socio-religious survey of Korea, I: Findings of content analysis, the spiritual ethos of Korean Catholicism, Seoul 1971, i. 34f.

33 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 137, 140, 152, 191f., 196, 198, 201, 203f., 209, 212, 216.

34 Ibid. ii. 136.

35 Ibid. ii. 140.

36 Ibid. ii. 327–9.

37 Ibid. ii. 132, 250.

38 Ibid. ii. 182; APF xiii (1841), 164.

39 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 162–4, 200.

40 Ibid. ii. 161.

41 Ibid. ii. 158.

42 Ok-hŭi Kim, ‘Les Femmes dans l'histoire du catholicisme en Corée’, Revue de Corée xvi (1984), 86f. Six were explicitly described as having made the decision to guard their virginity (Dallet, Histoire, ii. 147, 159, 187, 190, 212, 225), while the others were virgins at the time of their deaths (ibid. ii. 150, 152, 158, 173, 188, 192, 229). Of these, Barbe Yi and Agathe Yi were fourteen and sixteen years old respectively, and so of a legal age for marriage: Deuchler, Confucian transformation, 241.

43 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 151, 156, 186, 197, 215f., 227, 230, 250.

44 Ibid. ii. 95.

45 Ibid. ii. 160, 168, 186f.; Grayson, Korea, 144.

46 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 170, 205, 229; Chang-seok Kim, Lives of 103 martyr saints of Korea, Seoul 1984, 81.

47 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 156, 232f.

48 Lone and McCormack, Korea, 3f.

49 Min, Catholic survey, i. 81–4.

50 Lone and McCormack, Korea, 4f.

51 Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 30; Ching, ‘East Asian religions’, 393, and Confucianism and Christianity: a comparative study, Tokyo 1977, 9f.

52 Analects 15:8, cited in Ching, Confucianism, 87.

53 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 132, 134, 136, 141, 157; Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 6.

54 Ching, ‘East Asian religions’, 392f.

55 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 138, 144, 212.

56 Martyrs de Corée de 1839 et 1846, 6; Dallet, Histoire, ii. 150, 198. The couples were at ibid. ii. 136f., 164, 204, 214, 226, 231, 235.

57 Children: Dallet, Histoire, ii. 138, 190f., 198, 211, 218–20, 227. The filialism of several of the martyrs was noted: ii. 162, 165, 190, 204, 208, 220f. Siblings: ii. 147, 150, 158, 173, 207, 225, 234, 249f.

58 Ibid. ii. 139, 195, 234, 251.

59 Ibid. ii. 142f., 139, 158f., 162, 189f., 216, 218, 221.

60 Ibid. ii. 229. Dallet has ‘père’, but it is clear from a later reference (ii. 246) that ‘frère is meant.

61 Ibid. ii. 141, 193, 218, 225f., 250f.

62 Ibid. ii. 188.

63 Ibid. ii. 140f, 145, 148, 168f., 193f., 205, 218f.

64 Yŏng-ho Ch'oe, ‘Private academies and the state in late Chosŏn Korea’, in Kim Haboush and Deuchler, Culture and state, 25, 31.

65 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 136, 141, 143; Deuchler, Confucian transformation, 257f.

66 The magistrate told Cho Hae-sŏng that all his goods would be returned to him if he apostatised, and in another case orders were given for the possessions of apostates to be restored. Chŏng Kuk-bo was ‘seduced by the insidious words’ of the magistrate: Dallet, Histoire, ii. 146, 149, 193.

67 Martyrs de Corée de 1839 et 1846, 6; Dallet, Histoire, ii. 134.

68 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 193, 203f.

69 Choi, Érection, 32; Grayson, Early Buddhism, 82.

70 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 140. Caprias surrendered himself to the Roman authorities.

71 Ibid. ii. 162; WXXXX, Les Martyrs de l'extrême orient, or les 94 serviteurs de Dieu, mis à mort pour la foi en Corée, en Cochin Chine, au Tong-King et en Chine, Paris 1859, 86 n. 1.

72 Dallet, Histoire, i. 340; ii. 326; WXXXX, Les Martyrs, 59.

73 Dallet, Histoire, i. 103, 136.

74 Kim, ‘Les Femmes’, 74; Dallet, Histoire, i. 304.

75 APF xi (1839), 353; Dallet, Histoire, i. 326.

76 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 235–8.

77 Ibid. ii. 148.

78 Ibid. ii. 95.

79 Ibid. ii. 157, 202. Fr Maubant wrote that Kim Yŏ-sang was ‘noble by origin, illegitimate, born of a concubine’: Archives des Missions Étrangères, dlxxvii. 586. This marks him out as a member of the sŏja, the secondary sons of nobles who formed a distinct class excluded from political power, and who were often drawn to new ideas such as Christianity: Palmer, Korea and Christianity, 45f.

80 Dallet, Histoire, i. 339; ii. 236.

81 Baker, ‘Different thread’, 224f.; Grayson, Korea, 132.

82 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 322.

83 Deuchler, Confucian transformation, 7, 292, 295; Palmer, Korea and Christianity, 43; WXXXX, Les Martyrs, 88; Dallet, Histoire, ii. 221.

84 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 326.

85 Ibid. ii. 235.

86 Ibid. ii. 199, 208, 251.

87 Ibid. ii. 328.

88 Ibid. ii. 165, 189.

89 Ibid. i. 336.

90 APF xi (1839), 351; xvi (1844), 160; Dallet, Histoire, ii. 203f., 205.

91 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 172.

92 Ibid. i. 304, 313; ii. 64, 151, 162, 185, 205, 249; Missions Étrangères, History of the Churches of India, Burma, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, Cambodia, Annam, China, Tibet, Corea and Japan, entrusted to the Society of the ‘Missions Étrangères’, Hong Kong 1896, 101; APF xvi (1844), 160, 164. In the case of Song In-wŏn, Bishop Daveluy wrote, ‘Son nom est resté célèbre parmi les chrétiens de cette province [Chŏnju], qui parlent encore de lui avec veneration’: Dallet, Histoire, ii. 209.

93 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 132, 205.

94 Ibid. ii. 201, 228, 247.

95 Ibid. ii. 149f., 197f.

96 Ibid. ii. 215f., 230.

97 Ibid. ii. 164, 187, 208.

98 Ilgi, cxvii. 942; Dallet, Histoire, ii. 202.

99 D. Riddle, The martyrs: a study in social control, Chicago 1931, 2, 4f., 6f.

100 Ibid. 21–7, 30–4, 38, 41–7, 55, 69.

101 Ibid. 72, 77–97, 99f.

102 R. Stark, The rise of Christianity: a sociologist reconsiders history, Princeton 1996, 165–7. For Riddle's identification of masochistic tendencies amongst the martyrs see Martyrs, 64–9.

103 Stark, Christianity, 177.

104 Ibid. 179–84.

105 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 154, 246, 249f. This was the Kihae Ilgi (Diary of the year Kihae).

106 Dallet, Histoire, ii. 135, 157, 165f., 231, 233f. Ordinary Christians were said soon to have realised that Kim Yŏ-sang was interested only in arresting important members of the community, and so they ceased to flee on his appearance: ibid. ii. 202. The Sinyu persecution of 1801 to a large extent had involved the political elimination of the Christian members of a particular court faction: Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 7f.; Hara, ‘Korea’, 394.

107 Baker, ‘A Confucian’, 6, and ‘Different thread’, 210–12; Ching, Confucianism, 87.

108 Wŏn-sun Yi, ‘The Sirhak scholars’ perspective of Sŏhak in the late Chosŏn society’, trans. Yun-sŏng Kim, in Chai-shin Yu, Catholic tradition, 54f., 57–9, 61–3. Chŏng Ha-sang, in his defence of Catholicism, the Sang Chaesang-sŏ (A letter to the state council), sought to make common ground with Confucianism by portraying Buddhism as irrational and superstitious: Baker, ‘Different thread’, 226.

109 Grayson, Korea, 137–9.

110 P. Harvey, An introduction to Buddhism: teachings, history and precepts, Cambridge 1990, 203. This tradition, however, appears most pronounced within Vietnamese Buddhism and the examples generally cited are those of the self-immolation of Buddhist monks protesting against the Diem regime in 1963: R. C. Amore and J. Ching, ‘The Buddhist tradition’, in Oxtoby, World religions: eastern traditions, 329–31; F. Fitzgerald, Fire in the lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, New York 1972, 129–34.

111 Amore and Ching, ‘Buddhist tradition’, 274–6; Grayson, Korea, 139; Harvey, Buddhism, 152f., 187–9.