The paintings of three Chinese martyrs in a monastery chapel

 On All Hallow’s Eve, we are taking a short look at the paintings of three early Chinese martyrs that adorned the monastery chapel of the Little Brothers of St. Johnthe Baptist in Anguo. These pictures illustrate the emphasis that Fr. Vincent Lebbe, the community’s founder, put on inculturation in all aspects of their monastic life, including the artwork in the chapel.

Saint Joseph Yuan Zaide ( 袁在德) hailed from Sichuan and was converted as a young man by St. Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse, Vicar Apostolic of Sichuan. In 1794, he was ordained to the priesthood and went on to serve as a missionary in the eastern part of the province. During a time of persecution, Fr. Yuan publicly reprimanded an adulterous woman for her lifestyle. To take revenge, the woman denounced the priest to the local authorities. Refusing to renounce his faith, Saint Joseph Yuan was executed by strangulation in Chengdu on 24 June 1817.

I assume he is depicted as a farmer with a hoe since he frequently hid out in farms during his missionary activities.

Saint Paul Liu Hanzou (保祿·劉翰佐), born in 1778, also hailed from Sichuan and was a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. The future martyr came from a fervent Catholic family. As he grew up in poverty, he had to work from a young age and did not receive any schooling. By the time Paul entered the seminary, he was already 24 and especially struggled with Latin. His professors decided to let him finish his studies in Chinese. He was ordained at age 35 and had to carry out much of his pastoral work clandestinely as a result of the same persecution Saint Joseph Yuan was caught up in. Before a great liturgical feast, Father Liu asked a recently converted carpenter to build a canopy for the altar. A disagreement ensued and the carpenter took revenge on the priest by denouncing him. Saint Paul’s fortitude during the trial enraged the presiding mandarin, who ordered to have him scourged–a scourge is also depicted to his right. The martyr endured a harsh imprisonment for five months before also being strangled to death publicly in Chengdu on 13 February 1818.

Saint Lawrence Ba Xiaoman (白小滿) was a layman from Guizhou in southwestern China. He migrated to neighboring Guangxi to find work, where he met Saint Auguste Chapdelaine in the mid-1850s, subsequently converting and becoming a close follower of the missionary. When Father Chapdelaine was sentenced to death, Lawrence spoke out against it, and therefore was flogged and beheaded on 25 February 1856. At his public execution, he exhorted his wife to keep the Ten Commandments and to teach the faith to their daughter.

The saints’ depiction as laborers with tools was likely deliberate: the Little Brothers lived an austere live among the farming communities of northern China and performed ordinary manual labor.

(All pictures from the collection of Whitworth University)