1840 - Jean Gabriel Perboyre

September 11, 1840

Wuchang, Hubei

Jean Gabriel Perboyre.

One of eight children born into the peasant family of Pierre and Marie Perboyre at Le Puech in southern France, Jean Gabriel followed in the footsteps of his brother Louis by attending seminary. He entered the Congregation of the Mission of Saint Vincent on Christmas Day, 1818, at the tender age of 16. Perboyre was finally ordained a Catholic priest in 1825, becoming Professor of Theology at Saint Flour. One report said,

“His great sanctity and marvellous success induced his superiors, in 1832, to appoint him sub-director of the novitiate in Paris. He continued in this office until 1835, when he had sought and begged and prayed for, permission to go to China, there to preach, to suffer, and to die.”[1]

Perboyre had expected to go to China immediately, but the Mission delayed the young Frenchman’s request due to his poor health. When Perboyre’s brother Louis died while serving as a missionary in China, Jean Gabriel was asked to replace him. In March 1835 he sailed to China, completing basic language study in Macau in June 1836. During this time he took a Chinese name, Dong Wenxue. He then travelled to his appointed work in Hubei Province, first hiding away on a simple boat to Hunan, then making his way disguised as a native on foot for six months until he finally arrived in Hubei in January 1838.

A widespread persecution of Christians broke out in 1839 after Britain attacked China. Despite the risks Perboyre continued to operate openly. In September 1839 he celebrated Mass with a congregation of more than 1,000 Catholics. During one meeting a believer rushed in and announced that soldiers were coming to arrest the missionary. Perboyre was in two minds whether he should flee or stay with his flock, but after all the Chinese fled he slipped into a nearby bamboo grove and obscured himself from the soldiers’ view as they looted and burned the church. The next day the French missionary hid in a nearby forest along with three Chinese servants, but a false believer named Zhong Laosan betrayed their location. The soldiers

“immediately surrounded the forest and like ferocious beasts ran in all directions to find their prey. Two of them at length found the servant of God and his three companions, who seeing the superiority of their numbers, flight being impossible, wished at first to repulse the aggressors by force. [Perboyre], remembering that Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane would not permit Peter to use his sword, forbade also his devoted and brave servant to use violence…. All the Christians hidden in this forest fell into the hands of the enemy.”[2]

Perboyre was severely beaten and stripped of all his clothes by the ruffians. He was then dragged by the hair into the town where he appeared before the local magistrate. An eyewitness later testified,

“It was a pitiful sight to see him with no clothes but a shirt and a pair of ragged pants, a chain around his neck, and his hands tied behind his back, surrounded by soldiers, who pulled him by the ears and hair to make him look at the magistrate, before whom he was kneeling.”[3]

Perboyre was arrested and tried on September 16, 1839, and afterwards was hung by his thumbs and flogged with bamboo rods.

Over the coming weeks Jean Gabriel Perboyre was questioned by one magistrate after the other in different towns throughout the region. On one occasion a local Catholic girl who had been arrested, Anna Gao, was brought in and the missionary was falsely accused of having had sexual relations with her. The fierce indignation by which Perboyre denied these charges were of such intensity that the magistrate ordered the girl be removed and they were too afraid to utter the dirty accusation again.

On another occasion Perboyre was offered a last chance of escape. All he had to do was place his foot on a stone cross and he would be released. He proclaimed, “I have never disgraced the Cross of Christ in my life, and never will I bring dishonour to it now.”[4] The incensed magistrate ordered Perboyre’s face struck forty times with a leather belt for his act of insolence. By the end his appearance was horribly disfigured.

The faithful missionary may have been beaten and bruised, but his integrity and witness remained intact. He was sent for trial to the city of Wuchang, along with about a dozen Chinese believers who had remained true to the faith. For nine long months Perboyre remained in a filthy prison cell, his feet fastened in a wooden vice that was attached to the wall. The consequence of this treatment was that Perboyre “lost part of his foot through putrefaction and one of his fingers withered entirely away.”[5]

Still, the Chinese officials tried to force the Frenchman to give up his faith. During one interrogation they forced him to kneel on broken pottery for four hours, until his feet and legs were cut and the floor covered with blood. The most difficult experience for Perboyre was yet to come. The magistrate brought in the dozen Chinese Catholics who had been under arrest and subjected to similar torture. The cruel magistrate

“ordered these Christians to spit in the martyr’s face, to curse him, to strike him, and told one of them to tear out his hair; he found five who had the cowardice to apostatise. These unhappy creatures obeyed the impious orders of the magistrate, vomiting out against the servant of God outrageous words, which they accompanied with cruel treatment…. The other Christians remained firm in their faith, rendering a glorious testimony to religion. As to the servant of God, he bore without complaining the insults of these unhappy renegades; he felt them more sensibly as they came from his children and brothers in the faith.”[6]

A sketch of Jean Gabriel Perboyre in prison. His godly countenance won him the respect of the guards and other prisoners.

Many more vicious tortures were inflicted on the battered body of Jean Gabriel Perboyre, too numerous to list here. The following account of his appearance just before death is sufficient for us to imagine the kind of savage treatment he was subjected to:

“His face was swollen to a prodigious size; his flesh was so bruised and torn by the rod and scourge that it hung in shreds around his body; enormous pieces had been torn off; all his limbs were but one wound; he no longer possessed the appearance of a man; he resembled his Divine Saviour…. In fact, the body of the generous confessor had been bruised and broken in pieces; but sustained by the all-powerful virtue of Jesus Christ, he had endured all these torments with a serenity which beamed in his glance and upon his bruised and disfigured countenance, and showed that he esteemed himself happy to suffer for God.”[7]

Finally, on September 11, 1840, the Frenchman’s sufferings came to an end when he was marched to the outskirts of Wuchang City and tied to a cross on a hill known as Red mountain. A large crowd of onlookers watched as Perboyre was strangled with a rope. An eyewitness reported,

“His hands were thrust behind him and tied to a crosspiece of wood; both his feet were bent backwards, so that he was suspended in a kneeling posture and raised about four or five spans above the ground…. The confessor of the faith would be strangled; after the first vigorous tightening of the rope, the executioner slackened it, so as to give the martyr time to come to himself and realize his sufferings; then tightened it again, and stopped. It was the third jerk that proved fatal; but, as the body still retained some signs of life, a soldier approached and, having given him a severe kick in the stomach, Perboyre gave up his soul to God.”[8]

A sketch depicting Perboyre’s death on a cross.

The Catholic Encyclopedia summed up Perboyre’s martyrdom in this way:

“The events leading to his death bear a striking resemblance to the Passion and Death of Christ. A neophyte, like another Judas, betrayed Jean Gabriel for thirty ounces of silver. He was stripped of his garments and clothed with rags, bound, and dragged from tribunal to tribunal. At each trial, he was treated inhumanly, tortured both in body and in soul. Finally, he was taken to Wuchang, and after unparalleled tortures, was condemned to death…with seven criminals. The holy priest was strangled to death on a cross.”[9]

Perboyre’s body was buried by the local Christians at the same place François Clet had been killed twenty years earlier. The magistrate of Gucheng, who had cruelly tortured Perboyre, was removed from office shortly after and hanged himself in despair. The viceroy who had overseen many of the worst brutalities inflicted on the missionary was later sent into lifelong exile on account of the evil he had committed while in office.

1. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IX, online edition at www.newadvent.org
2. Montgesty, Two Vincentian Martyrs, 222-223.
3. Montgesty, Two Vincentian Martyrs, 223.
4. Hagspiel, Along the Mission Trail, Vol. 4, 356.
5. Montgesty, Two Vincentian Martyrs, 232.
6. Montgesty, Two Vincentian Martyrs, 237.
7. Montgesty, Two Vincentian Martyrs, 248-249.
8. Montgesty, Two Vincentian Martyrs, 254.
9. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IX, online edition at www.newadvent.org