UnIVErSIt y oF CALIFornIA PrESS
Berkeley Los Angeles LondonCatholic Vietnam
A Church from Empire to Nation
Charles Keith
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of
the Philip E. Lilienthal Asian Studies Endowment Fund of the
University of California Press Foundation, which was
established by a major gift from Sally Lilienthal.
Catholic Vietnam
From IndoChInA to VIEtnAm:
rEVoLUtIon And WAr In A GLobAL PErSPECtIVE
Edited by Fredrik Logevall and Christopher E. Goscha
1. Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam, by mark
Atwood Lawrence
2. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954, by Pierre brocheux and daniel hémery
3. Vietnam 1946: How the War Began, by Stein tønnesson
4. Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina, by Eric t.
Jennings
5. Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation, by Charles Keith
UnIVErSIt y oF CALIFornIA PrESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
Catholic Vietnam
A Church from Empire to Nation
Charles Keith
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university
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University of California Press
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University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2012 by The regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Keith, Charles, 1977–.
Catholic Vietnam : a church from empire to nation / Charles Keith.
p. cm.
originally presented as the author’s thesis (Ph. d.)—yale University,
2008.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-520-27247-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-520-95382-6
(ebook)
1. Catholic Church—Vietnam—history. 2. Vietnam—Church
history. I. title.
bx1650.a7k45 2012
282'.597—dc23 2012021916
manufactured in the United States of America
Portions of chapters 3 and 5 appeared in Charles Keith, “Annam Uplifted:
The First Vietnamese bishops and the birth of a national Church, 1919–
1945,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 128–71, and
are used here by permission of the University of California Press.
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible
and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on
rolland Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified,
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For my family, here and gone
Contents
| List of Illustrations Acknowledgments | viii ix |
| Foreword | xiii |
1. A Church between the nguyễn and the French 18
2. A Colonial Church divided 55
3. The birth of a national Church 88
4. Vietnamese Catholic tradition on trial 118
5. A national Church Experienced 147
6. The Culture and Politics of Vietnamese Catholic nationalism 177
7. A national Church in revolution and War 208
Epilogue. A national Church divided 242
Notes 249
Bibliography 289
Index 305
viii
Illustrations
1. Three priests arrested for anti-French activities, 1909 2
2. Church in rural tonkin, ca. 1890 31
3. The execution of Pierre borie, november 24, 1838 45
4. tomb to Vietnamese martyrs, tonkin, ca. 1900 64
5. Statue of Pigneau de béhaine and Prince nguyễn Phúc Cảnh, ca. 1905 66
6. nguyễn hữu bài 99
7. broadside of Pope Pius XI and the first two Vietnamese bishops, ca. 1935 110
8. Scene from the first Vietnamese adaptation of the Passion of Christ, 1913 137
9. drawing from Vietnamese Catholic youth bulletin, 1935 158
10. Postcard of the cathedral at Phát diệm and the tomb of trần Lục (Père Six),
ca. 1933 168
11. young Catholic Workers brochure, 1939 199
12. bishop Lê hữu từ inspecting his troops, 1952 217
13. Catholic refugees from bùi Chu awaiting transport to the south, 1954 244
14. ngô Đình diệm and ngô Đình Thục, 1961 246
ix
Acknowled gments
This book has taken me a long time to write, and I owe many people and institutions a great deal of thanks for their help along the way. I began this project during
my time at yale University, where John merriman and ben Kiernan helped me
learn how to think about the intersections between European history and Southeast Asian history that this book explores. I would not be where I am today without their ongoing guidance and friendship. Jay Winter was not only a formative
intellectual influence during this time; I also have him to thank for this book’s
title. Quang Phu Van has done more than anyone to teach me Vietnamese, and I,
like many others, benefited greatly from his efforts to build a Vietnamese studies
community at yale. my wonderful fellow graduate students at yale—far too many
to thank individually here—were a constant source of inspiration and support.
Special thanks to George r. trumbull IV for his help and friendship since the very
beginning, and to haydon Cherry for good conversations and good times on three
continents.
The knowledge, advice, and support of scholars of Vietnam and of French colonialism contributed enormously to this book. my deepest thanks to mitch Aso,
Jennifer boittin, Pascal bourdeaux, trang Cao, Joshua Cole, J. P. daughton, naomi
davidson, George dutton, Christina Firpo, Elizabeth Foster, henri Francq, Gilles
de Gantès, Christoph Giebel, Chi ha, Alec holcombe, Eric Jennings, mark Lawrence, Christian Lentz, Jim Le Seuer, Pamela mcElwee, Ed miller, michael montesano, Cindy nguyen, Lien-hang nguyen, martina nguyen, nguyen nguyet Cam,
Lorraine Paterson, Jason Picard, helen Pho, Paul Sager, Gerard Sasges, hue-tam
ho tai, Keith taylor, michele Thompson, nhung tuyet tran, tuong Vu, Chris
Wheeler, owen White, John Whitmore, and Peter Zinoman for their help over
x Acknowledgments
the years. A few other people deserve special thanks. I am particularly grateful
to Claire trần Thị Liên and Peter hansen, both for their groundbreaking work
on twentieth-century Vietnamese Catholic history and for sharing with me their
knowledge and ideas about our mutual research interest for many years. Shawn
mchale kindly served as a reader for the dissertation on which this book is based.
Christopher Goscha read the entire manuscript and offered crucial comments and
encouragement, as he has done for so many people in the field of Vietnamese studies. Finally, thanks to bradley davis for our occasionally meandering and irreverent but always memorable conversations about Vietnamese history, all too many
of them at our favorite bia hơi on dã tượng Street in hanoi, now a casualty of the
inexorable march of history (it is now a branch of Vietcom bank).
This book would not exist without the generous financial support of many institutions. I am particularly grateful to the blakemore-Freeman Foundation for
allowing me to spend 2004–5 studying Vietnamese in hanoi and ho Chi minh
City, and to the Fulbright-hays program and the Social Science research Council
for the funding that allowed me to carry out the bulk of the research for this book.
At yale, my thanks to the department of history, the Council on Southeast Asian
Studies, the macmillan Center, and International Security Studies for grants allowing me to study Vietnamese at the Southeast Asian Summer Studies Institute
and to carry out early research, and to the mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation for its
support during the year I wrote my dissertation. At michigan State University, the
department of history and the College of Social Science provided essential support during later stages of the research and writing.
my research for this book has taken me to many wonderful archives and libraries. In Vietnam, I would especially like to thank the Viện Việt nam học và Khoa
học Phát triển for sponsoring my visas to study Vietnamese and for facilitating
introductions to the institutions where I worked. my thanks to the directors and
staffs of the national Archives Center I in hanoi and Center II in ho Chi minh
City, the national Library of Vietnam in hanoi, and the General Sciences Library
in ho Chi minh City for access to their collections. The Institute of religion and
the Ecole Française d’Extrême-orient in hanoi are wonderful places to work and
to meet other scholars, and I would like to thank their directors, Đỗ Quang hưng
and Andrew hardy, for welcoming me. I would also like to thank the former archbishop of hanoi, Joseph ngô Quang Kiệt, and the archbishop of ho Chi minh
City, Cardinal Jean-baptiste Phạm minh mẫn, for graciously receiving me during
my visits to both archdioceses. In France, I owe a great deal of thanks to the late
Père Gérard moussay of the Société des missions Etrangères de Paris for granting
me access to the society’s private archives and library, and to brigitte Appavou for
helping me navigate the collections. I would also like to thank the directors and
staffs of the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, the archives of the Société de SaintSulpice, the archives of the ministère des Affaires Etrangères, the archives of the
Acknowledgments xi
Service historique de l’Armée de la terre, the bibliothèque de l’Institut Catholique
de Paris, the bibliothèque de documentation Internationale Contemporaine, the
bibliothèque nationale de France, and (in Italy) the Archivio Storico della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli.
my colleagues at michigan State University have welcomed me since my arrival
in East Lansing, and they helped this book continue to grow until the very end.
Thanks in particular to david bailey, Liam brockey, Pero dagbovie, Walter hawthorne, Leslie moch, Ed murphy, Ethan Segal, Lewis Siegelbaum, Aminda Smith,
ben Smith, michael Stamm, and John Waller. I am fortunate that this book found
a home with the University of California Press, which has long been a strong supporter of scholarship in the field of Vietnamese studies, and I am especially lucky
to have worked with niels hooper and his outstanding editorial staff. Thanks to
the two anonymous referees of the manuscript for their excellent comments. Finally, special thanks to Christopher Goscha and Fredrik Logevall, coeditors of the
series in which this book appears, for their support of this project.
In retrospect, I think that I first began to consider becoming a historian in the
classroom of matthew ostoyich, my history teacher in the eleventh and twelfth
grades, whose example I will always remember. The history department at Cornell University was a wonderful place to learn the discipline as an undergraduate:
thanks to daniel baugh, Stuart blumin, and John Weiss for being such wonderful
teachers. Friends from all walks of life have helped me to focus on this book, or to
forget about it for a little while, when finishing it seemed beyond me. Thanks to
bob berstein, mat blackman, matt bruntel, Ken Cunningham, Cyrus dhalla, Jake
Kramer, Peter Lallas, Jake Lundberg, naresh manjanath, tom Pepinsky, Johanna
ransmeier, Aaron rester, noah Smith, Joe Spinelli, Jeremy taylor, and especially
matthew mozian for nearly three decades of true friendship. Landon Carter
Schmitt, we all miss you.
Even after writing so much, I am unable to find the words to thank my family
and my wonderful in-laws. I always have been and always will be standing on your
shoulders. I have been especially blessed to know my four grandparents well into
my adult life. Knowing them has allowed me experience my own history in a way
that many people never have the chance to do, and I will forever be grateful for the
gift. And, most important of all, I give all of my love to helen and to our daughter
Clara, who are the beginning of my everything.
xiii
Foreword
Scholarship on the history of Catholicism in Vietnam has experienced a renewal
since the end of the Cold War and the social and economic transformations of the
market reform era in Vietnam. over the last two decades, a growing number of
scholars have provided nuanced accounts of Catholicism from its arrival in Vietnam in the seventeenth century to the present day. missing in this new historiography, however, has been one very important period, arguably the most important
one, namely the transition during the colonial period from a foreign-administered
mission to an independent national Church. With his new book Catholic Vietnam,
Charles Keith fills in this gap and in so doing provides us with a brilliant analysis
of the sociocultural and political nature of this transformation and its complex
consequences. he also provides us with powerful insights into modern Vietnamese history.
drawing upon an impressive array of colonial, missionary, Vatican, and especially Vietnamese sources, Keith demonstrates the extent to which colonial rule
created increasingly fractious relationships among Vietnamese Catholics, European missionaries, and French officials. At the same time, he situates his analysis
within the social, economic, and cultural changes occurring inside Vietnam affecting relationships among Vietnamese Catholics and non-Catholics. If historians
have paid close attention to the famous uprisings crushed by the French at yên
bái and nghệ An in 1930–31, Keith is the first to draw our attention to the significance of the ordination of the first Vietnamese bishop, nguyễn bá tòng, in 1933.
In the wake of World War II, the ordination of another famous bishop, Lê hữu
từ, and his early support of hồ Chí minh left no doubt that much had changed
among Vietnamese Catholics since the late nineteenth century. by the end of the
xiv Foreword
Indochina War, Vietnamese—not Europeans—ran the dioceses of hanoi, bắc
ninh, Vinh, hải Phòng, and Saigon. The dynamics of the colonial period, including its violent endgame, generated this religious decolonization.
but Keith goes further. he shows, for example, how colonialism created new
transnational linkages, which Vietnamese Catholics could turn to their advantage.
In a fascinating connection, he analyzes how the Vatican’s post–World War I efforts to build up national Churches in the non-Western world allowed indigenous
religious elites to rethink their relations with European missionaries and the colonial powers. The changing nature of international Catholicism also provided Vietnamese Catholics with contacts as well as institutional, canonical, and modern
means for imagining and building Catholic Vietnam.
In this landmark study, Charles Keith provides us with the first full-length account of Vietnamese Catholicism during the colonial period. It is with immense
pleasure and gratitude that we welcome this book to our series. Specialists as well
as general readers will find much of interest in this deeply researched, multidisciplinary, and beautifully crafted book. They might even walk away thinking a
bit differently not only about the complexity of Vietnamese Catholicism, but also
about Vietnam itself.
Christopher Goscha
Fredrik Logevall
1
Introduction
hands bound, necks yoked, three Vietnamese Catholic priests stand surrounded
by police, eyes averted, waiting to be photographed (fig. 1). They have just emerged
from 33 rue Lagrandière, the central prison of Saigon. After the picture is taken,
they embark with their minders onto a waiting steamship. Their destination is the
notorious French prison on Poulo Condore, an island off the coast of Cochinchina.
on the day this picture was taken, october 18, 1909, French colonial authorities had just convicted the three priests of numerous crimes. For more than a year,
nguyễn Thần Đồng, nguyễn Văn tường, and Đậu Quang Lĩnh had operated in
their home province of nghệ An as agents of Đông du (Go East), a movement
led by the revolutionary intellectual Phan bội Châu. Its purpose was to recruit
Vietnamese students to study in Japan and make them the foundation of an organization to unite anticolonial forces and overthrow French rule. The three priests
entered Đông du’s networks through mai Lão bạng, a fellow priest, before he left
for Japan in 1906. Under the cover of ministering across Catholic parishes in nghệ
An, the priests collected money, distributed tracts, and recruited supporters for
Đông du. In their travels, they reportedly carried with them a photograph of mai
Lão bạng with Phan bội Châu and Cường Để, a prince of the defeated nguyễn
dynasty who hoped to return from exile in Japan to assume the throne at the head
of an independent Vietnam, as well as letters from Vietnamese clergy calling on
Catholics to fight against French rule. one of them read, “nowadays the nation is
lost, the Lord (Jesus) is no longer protected, the Church is also in danger. to protect the Lord, we must maintain the nation, we must fight the French. . . . Christian followers should contribute by any means, labour or property, in the struggle
against the French, so as to show patriotism and love of the Lord.”1
2 Introduction
news of these activities soon spread to missionaries and colonial officials, both
of whom began to watch the priests closely. In may 1909, a missionary caught
the priests with incriminating documents and informed French officials, and in
mid-June the priests were placed on trial in the provincial capital of Vinh. They
initially denied involvement, but the documents found in their quarters and the
testimony of fellow priests and lay Catholics, obtained through interrogation over
the month since their arrest, ultimately led them to confess. The three priests were
sentenced to nine years imprisonment and hard labor. They remained in Vinh
until early September, when they were sent south on their journey to Poulo Condore. mai Lão bạng, convicted in absentia two months earlier, avoided arrest until
1914, when he was arrested in hong Kong and sent to join his three compatriots.
mai Lão bạng, nguyễn Thần Đồng, and Đậu Quang Lĩnh were not released until
1918. nguyễn Văn tường died in prison.2
Figure 1. Three priests arrested for anti-French activities, 1909. Société des missions
Etrangères de Paris.
Introduction 3
during the colonial era, French officials, missionaries, and Vietnamese Catholics lived through changes and conflicts like these that ended European religious
and political authority over Vietnamese Catholic life and transformed the place of
the Church in Vietnamese society and politics. That is the focus of this study. It
demonstrates how French colonial rule allowed for the transformation of Catholic
missions in Vietnam into broad and powerful economic and institutional structures in which race defined ecclesiastical and cultural prestige, control of resources,
and institutional authority. This, along with colonial rule itself, created a culture of
religious life in which relationships between Vietnamese Catholics and European
missionaries were less equal and more fractious than ever before. however, the
colonial era also created unprecedented ties between Vietnam and the transnational institutions and culture of global Catholicism, as Vatican reforms to create
an independent national Church helped Vietnamese Catholics to reimagine and
redefine their relationships to both missionary Catholicism and to colonial rule
itself. much like the myriad revolutionary ideologies and struggles in the name of
the Vietnamese nation, this revolution in Vietnamese Catholic life was ultimately
ambiguous, even contradictory: it established the foundations for an independent
national Church in Vietnam, but it also polarized the place of this new Church in
postcolonial politics and society and produced deep divisions between Vietnamese Catholics themselves.
PASt And PrESEnt
When the French finally arrested Phan bội Châu in 1925, they organized a spectacular trial in hanoi during which prosecutors presented the aging revolutionary’s life as a public parable of the immorality and futility of opposition to France’s
civilizing mission. but in the case of the three priests who had supported Phan bội
Châu, missionaries and colonial officials did their best to downplay, or even hide,
the details of the affair to Catholic communities and the broader public; if it had
not been for the efforts of a few left-wing newspapers eager to criticize the Church,
the affair likely would not have seen the light of day.3 This was because the affair
raised troubling questions about French relationships with a Catholic community that missionaries and colonial officials had long thought of, and represented
as, loyal subjects. Colonial officials worried that to make an example of the three
Đông du priests would further strain relations with missionaries and Vietnamese
Catholics, many of whom were now critical of colonial rule after a generation of
political repression and economic exploitation by an often ardently secular French
republican regime. For their part, missionaries knew that the political acts of the
priests were inseparable from the tensions that had emerged between European
and Vietnamese Catholics over that same generation, when missionary expansion
limited Vietnamese autonomy in both the spiritual and worldly aspects of their
4 Introduction
Church like never before. As such, missionaries worried that making an example
of the priests would make them martyrs, dead indictments of the missionary enterprise. Unlike in the case of Phan bội Châu, the story of the priests had no value
as a missionary or colonial morality play. It could only raise questions about the
myth of a Catholic community in Vietnam united across races and predisposed by
faith to welcome French tutelage.
The deep tensions and divisions in Catholic life in colonial Vietnam were
apparent, even glaringly evident, to ordinary peasants, the Vietnamese clergy,
missionaries, colonial officials, and Church authorities in rome at the time. nevertheless, the myth of a culturally foreign and procolonial/antinational Church
continues to loom large in public and scholarly understandings of Vietnamese
Catholic history. This myth has its roots in the era of the nguyễn unification and
the French conquest, a time when Catholics were at the very center of profound
political and social upheaval in Vietnam. to be sure, theological, social, and political conflict had regularly surrounded Catholicism since the religion first arrived
in the two Vietnamese kingdoms, Đàng trong and Đàng ngoài, in the sixteenth
century. many Vietnamese rulers worried that a monotheistic religion would
cause discord in a religiously plural society, were concerned that Catholic proscriptions against ancestral worship undermined the foundations of the Confucian political order, and worried about the social authority, scientific knowledge,
and international connections of foreign missionaries. Thus Vietnamese rulers at
times, and especially in times of discord or conflict, issued edicts calling for the
destruction of Church property and the imprisonment or execution of Catholics.
official and popular attitudes toward the religion, however, were far more often
benign. This was largely because by the end of the eighteenth century Catholicism
had become a well-established part of the spiritual and social landscape, especially
in the northern kingdom of Đàng ngoài, and its appeal had grown beyond the
socially and economically marginalized and reached other parts of Vietnamese
society, including even some ruling families.4 official tolerance and social normalization was possible because virtually all Vietnamese Catholics and missionaries
in the early modern era did not question the legitimacy of the Vietnamese political
order. Indeed, Confucian conceptions of social hierarchies and relationships were
the base for Catholic understandings of the essential sovereignty of Vietnamese
emperors.5
Catholicism’s place in Vietnamese society and politics deteriorated rapidly after
the unification of the two Vietnamese kingdoms under the nguyễn prince nguyễn
Phúc Ánh, who in 1802 defeated an uprising led by the tây Sơn brothers that had
overthrown the ruling dynasties in both kingdoms, and established his rule as
the Gia Long emperor over all Vietnamese territories. Gia Long remained tolerant of Catholicism, thanks in large part to his growing ties while in exile during
the tây Sơn era to French Catholic bishops, who hoped to create more favorable
Introduction 5
conditions for Catholicism by supporting the exiled prince. most famous was
Pigneau de béhaine, who appealed for French military intervention on behalf of
the prince, and when it did not arrive rallied his own small army that fought alongside the prince’s forces. despite favorable beginnings, tolerance quickly vanished
under Gia Long’s successor, minh mạng, who sought to transform the new kingdom into a regional imperial power by means of a restructuring and modernization of the imperial bureaucracy, agricultural expansion, military conquests, and
a revitalization of the ideological and ritual aspects of Confucian imperial rule.
In doing so, minh mạng sought to bring a range of groups on the kingdom’s geographic and cultural margins, Catholic and other, under greater control during the
1820s and 1830s.
two related but distinct external developments rapidly made Catholicism the
primary concern of minh mạng and his successors to the nguyễn throne. The
first was the rapid growth of the presence in Vietnam of the Société des missions
Etrangères de Paris, or mEP, in the mid-nineteenth century, a moment of extraordinary growth in global French missionary activity. This expanded the resources
and reach of missions precisely when the nguyễn sought to expand the control
of the imperial buraucracy and military over the kingdom’s populations. This in
turn led many Catholics to resist the challenge that they felt nguyễn rule posed to
their spiritual and social autonomy, which they did through bribery of officials and
participation in anti-nguyễn uprisings. This then led the nguyễn court to levy increasingly harsher proscriptions against the religion and its adherents. The second
external development was the growing presence of the French navy in Asia, which
during the 1840s began to exercise gunboat diplomacy regularly to protect French
missionaries from growing nguyễn repression. This only confirmed nguyễn fears
that Catholics were a potential conduit for external influence in Vietnam, and the
court’s repression of Catholics intensified.
during the 1850s, as the rise of british power in Asia and the growth of an
industrial economy led the French to consider more direct intervention in the
region, missionaries played an important role in convincing the French emperor,
napoleon III, to attack the nguyễn kingdom in 1858. The war that followed resulted in the French conquest of lower Cochinchina in 1862, France’s first foothold
in the nguyễn kingdom. Although official nguyễn repression of Catholics sharply
declined after the conquest of Cochinchina, primarily with the hope of negotiating
a retrocession of lost territories, the relations between Catholics and other parts of
Vietnamese society largely broke down, leading to a wave of communitarian violence in the years after the conquest. For reasons ranging from self-preservation to
vengeance, some missionaries and Vietnamese Catholics lent significant support
to Francis Garnier’s failed invasion of tonkin in 1873 and 1874, as well as during
France’s war with the nguyễn and the Qing Empire in China from 1883 to 1885 that
led to French protectorates over Annam and tonkin, the remainder of the nguyễn
6 Introduction
kingdom. during the final collapse of nguyễn rule in the 1880s, tens of thousands
of Catholics died in another terrible wave of communitarian violence.
The complex position of the Catholic Church in Vietnamese society and politics during the transition from nguyễn to French rule has dominated writings on
Vietnamese Catholicism since that time. nguyễn annals, edicts, and memorials, as
well as most writings by Vietnamese officials and literati about Catholicism from
the nineteenth century, reflect the political and ideological position of a class of
people who stood to lose enormously from French colonial rule. In these writings,
Catholicism is typically described as a heretical religion (tả đạo) and its followers as deeply subversive, if not traitorous, and inherently external to what was
a largely elite, state-centered view of what it meant to be Vietnamese. In sharp
contrast, mEP histories and biographies from the colonial era describe Catholics
as martyrs, victims of a “pagan” regime and society who were guilty of nothing
more than a wish to worship their faith. mEP writings, of course, reflect an equally
clear and urgent agenda. during the French conquest, missionaries used writings
not only to bear witness to Vietnamese Catholic suffering but also to court financial support from French Catholics and diplomatic and military support from
French officials. mEP histories and biographies thus echoed Vietnamese writings
from this era in their view that there existed elemental and unbridgeable differences between Catholics and the rest of Vietnamese society, and that it was natural
for Vietnamese Catholics to desire and support French tutelage.6 Ironically, mEP
writings later in the century expressed the same view but with a very different
purpose: to defend Catholic missions in their conflicts with the colonial state at a
time when the rise of the secular Third republic worsened Church-state relations
in France and its empire.7
As Christopher Goscha has shown, the expansion of colonial rule created new
networks, mobilities, and imaginaries that led more and more Vietnamese to think
of and meaningfully experience “Annam,” or “Vietnam,” as a cultural and material reality.8 one important part of this change was a body of new French historical scholarship, whose Western model of national history helped to form many
foundational narratives of “Vietnamese” history. many Vietnamese were heavily
influenced by these ideas, and they also began to conceive of their past in national terms, albeit in different ways and for different ends. Indeed, French rule led
to intense introspection among anticolonial intellectuals, who sought historical
and cultural explanations to understand and to change the current state of what
they increasingly thought of as a nation. Phan bội Châu, perhaps because of his
close ties to Catholics such as mai Lão bạng and the Cochinchinese landowner
and intellectual Gilbert trần tránh Chiếu, was one of the first Vietnamese after
the conquest era to question prevailing views of Catholics as culturally separate
and procolonial. In his 1905 Viẹt Nam vong quốc sử (history of the loss of Vietnam), Châu did not deny the collaboration of some Vietnamese Catholics with the
French, but he blamed it on missionaries for exploiting religion for political ends
Introduction 7
and on anti-Catholic elements in Vietnam for allowing anti-Catholicism to divide
the nation. Châu, in mark mcLeod’s words, thus “sought to emphasize those features of the Vietnamese that were more profound than mere religious preferences,
such as membership in a unique ‘race’ (giong noi), the fraternal affection felt by
those who shared common origins and upbringing (cung de, cung nuoi), and particularly a common exploitation by French colonialism.”9 Châu’s views, of course,
were just as political as those of the nguyễn and the French: his assumption that
a Vietnamese nation united by a shared political objective was a historical and
cultural fact left no room for the multiple, often bitterly opposed visions of the
Vietnamese nation that would emerge during the long, terrible transition from
colonial rule.
modern historiography on Vietnamese Catholicism, written in the shadow of
the highly politicized role of the Catholic Church during the wars of decolonization in Vietnam, has done little to complicate this nation-centered binary of
exclusion and inclusion. during the First Indochina War from 1946 to 1954, the
enthusiasm of Vietnamese Catholics for independence evolved into widespread
opposition to the communist-led movement at the head of both the revolutionary regime of the democratic republic of Vietnam (drV) in tonkin and Annam
and the anti-French resistance in Cochinchina. After the defeat of the French and
the great power partition of Vietnam at the Geneva Conference in 1954, about
two-thirds of northern Vietnam’s roughly eight hundred thousand Catholics left
the heartland of Vietnamese Catholicism for the southern republic of Vietnam
(rVn) in a mass exodus that came to be known as the northern migration (bắc
di cư). Those who remained in the drV experienced regular, often severe restrictions and repression from the communist state. during the Second Indochina
War, or the “Vietnam War,” from 1954 to 1975, many Catholics strongly supported
southern regimes, most notably that of ngô Đình diệm, the first president of the
rVn and part of an illustrious Catholic family. The relationship between Catholics
and the state was tense after the communist victory in 1975 and remains so today,
thanks to issues such as Vatican diplomacy, émigré politics, parochial education,
and land rights.
The victory of Vietnamese communists and their allies in the wars of decolonization, and the widespread political opposition to communism in the Vietnamese
Catholic community in the modern era, has shaped most contemporary understandings of Vietnamese Catholic history. The outcome of the Second Indochina
War did much to normalize the drV’s claims to sovereignty over the rVn before
1975, and the 1975 “reunification” of Vietnam, as historically and culturally selfevident events. This in turn helped to normalize a particular and highly ideological genealogy of Vietnamese nationalism that views communism as inheriting the
mantle of the many movements of resistance to foreign invasion in Vietnamese
history, and thus as the sole legitimate voice of modern Vietnamese nationalism.
Western historians, whose criticisms of the American war effort led many to write
8 Introduction
from this perspective, wrote little about Vietnamese Catholicism during the Vietnam War. however, a few influential studies, based on published mEP texts and
French archival documents from the 1860s and 1870s in Cochinchina, a time of
brief but close cooperation between missionaries and naval officials, have done
much to support the view of Vietnamese Catholics as a uniformly procolonial, and
by extension antinational, community in Western scholarship.10
modern Vietnamese-language historiography, especially on politically charged
subjects, has long borne the weighty imprint of the legitimating narratives and priorities of the communist party-state. As Patricia Pelley argues about the ongoing
project of imagining and consolidating an acceptable and useful vision of national
history, “representations of the national past had to correspond with the political
and intellectual exigencies of postrevolutionary and postcolonial times, and these
were constantly in flux.”11 because of this, Vietnamese historians have had difficulties in their treatment of many historical subjects: national origins, “Chinese” legacies, ethnic minorities, popular culture, and regionalism, among others. however,
their treatment of Catholics is particularly Janus-faced. on one hand, the political need to claim that all parts of Vietnamese society supported the communist
revolution has produced a historiographical imperative to find evidence of Phan
bội Châu’s claim of Catholic national belonging. This not only has led canonical
marxist historians such as trần Văn Giàu and trần huy Liệu to sidestep subjects
like the role of the Church during the French conquest, the bắc di cư, and Catholic anticommunism, but it has also meant a regular effort since 1945 to valorize
politically laudable Catholics such as the Đông du priests, often described as the
“three patriot priests” (ba vị linh mục yêu nước) in modern Vietnamese-language
historiography.
national histories need enemies, however, and Catholics have also played an
outsized role as antinational fifth columnists in much modern Vietnamese historiography. In this work, conquest-era conceptions of Catholics provide a powerful
geneaology for modern critics of Catholic politics during decolonization and reunification, who interpret the anticommunism of many Catholics as simply a new
version of their nineteenth-century French connection. The result is a seamless
narrative of Catholicism as a culturally external, politically subversive presence
in the national community from the distant past to the present day. drawing on
marxist understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism,
much of this historiography views the missionary presence in Vietnamese kingdoms as far back as the seventeenth century as evidence of later French colonial
ambitions in Vietnam.12 This scholarship writes away nguyễn-era communitarian
violence as an a priori defense of the nation against colonialism, and it views the
regimes in the rVn, which many Catholics supported, as puppets of America’s
neocolonial ambitions. This historiography is also careful to laud Catholics such
as the three Đông du priests as a way to hold out the possibility for reconciliation
between Catholics and “the nation.” however, idealized renderings of “patriotic”
Introduction 9
Catholics in these works usually implicitly underscore the yawning gap between
most of their coreligionists and the understandings of Vietnamese national identity that dominate this scholarship. one good example of this was a conference on
Vietnamese Catholic history in ho Chi minh City in 1988, held in context of the
Vatican’s controversial canonization of 117 missionary and Vietnamese martyrs,
many of whom appear in modern historiography as traitors and spies. Although
one of the seventeen essays in the resulting volume lionizes “the contribution of
Vietnamese Catholics to the construction and defense of the nation,” others pillory
Vietnamese Catholics as imperialist lackeys.13
Since the First Indochina War, a small number of Vietnamese Catholics and
missionaries have written histories of their religious community in a contradictory but equally political light. Although some confessional historiography laid
important foundations for the modern social and religious history of Vietnamese
Catholicism, much of it reduces the subject to a litany of persecutions and martyrdoms with explicit parallels to the history of the early Christians. In histories
by Catholic scholars such as Phan Phát huồn, the precolonial era often becomes a
story of anti-Catholic edicts, imprisonments, and executions that, ironically, often
unintentionally evokes nguyễn imperial historiography. This history also often
avoids difficult questions about the Church’s role in the French conquest or its
relationship to the French colonial regime, focusing instead on the anticlericalism
of many colonial administrators as well as simmering popular anti-Catholicism.
The strongest words in these works are reserved, of course, for communism, cast
as an oppressive force, intolerant of the many legitimate anticolonial and nationalist voices that did not share the party’s vision for the nation. In these narratives,
Catholics such as the three Đông du priests appear not as supporters of the communist party’s political values but as embodiments of the Vietnamese Catholic
nationalism that communism oppressed during and after the First and Second
Indochina Wars.14
Since the 1990s, changing conditions for research have produced a body of
scholarship that has begun to move the historiography on Vietnamese Catholicism away from past polemics. one major reason for this was the opening in the
early 1990s of the archives of the Société des missions Etrangères de Paris to scholars outside the Church. Combining mEP archives with dynastic chronicles and a
range of early modern materials, scholars such as nola Cooke, Alain Forest, and
nhung tuyet tran have written the first nonconfessional social and cultural histories of Vietnamese Catholicism before the nineteenth century, and Laurent burel
and Jacob ramsay have begun to meaningfully explore the relations between the
Church, the nguyễn state, and Vietnamese society in the nineteenth century.15 In
Vietnam, during the ongoing emergence of the discrete conceptual and methodological field of religious studies (tôn giáo học), embodied by the founding of the
journal Nghiên Cứu Tôn Giáo (religious research) in 1999, nguyễn Quang hưng
has led a more tempered reevaluation of the nineteenth century, and nguyễn hồng
10 Introduction
dương has written the first serious social and economic studies of Catholic village life.16 James P. daughton has recently shown how metropolitan Church-state
conflicts made relationships between missionaries and colonial officials complex
and often antagonistic.17 Finally, important recent studies by Claire trần Thị Liên
and Peter hansen explore the range of contexts, from political to theological, that
shaped Vietnamese Catholic experience during the First Indochina War and the
bắc di cư.18 however, there remains no comprehensive study of what is arguably
the most critical question in the modern history of Vietnamese Catholicism: the
transition from missionary authority to an independent national Church, which
paralleled the rise and fall of colonial rule, and the cultural and political nature
and consequences of this transformation.
Scholars such as david marr, hue-tam ho tai, and Alexander Woodside have
explored the relationships between the political, economic, and ideological structures of French colonial rule and social and cultural transformations in Vietnam,
as well as the lasting legacies of this in the postcolonial era. however, scholars attempting to understand the Vietnamese experience of the global process often labeled “colonial modernity” have left religion largely underexplored. This is because,
as Anne hansen argues in her recent study of buddhism in colonial Cambodia,
religions “cross national and regional borders, they involve translation of texts and
ideas across linguistic boundaries, and they are not secular, as modern political
discourses of the nation supposedly are.” As she concludes, “the re-enchantment
of our understanding of the colonial world in Southeast Asia may be necessary if
we are to understand the diverse ways in which people have experienced the shift
to modern ways of thinking and being.”19 This study of “Catholic modernity” in
Vietnam draws from a broad body of literature that approaches the questions of
power and hegemony in missionary encounters in terms of both culture and political economy.20 It therefore considers Catholic missions in Vietnam as “colonial”
institutions in a broad sense, but it does so emphatically not to participate in the
conflation of political critique and historiography that has long surrounded Vietnamese Catholic history—what Frederick Cooper has described as “the politics
of naming.”21 If anything, the focus of this study is Catholic “decolonization” in
Vietnam, a process in which—to again borrow Cooper’s words—“ideologies of
imperial inclusion and differentiation were challenged by people acting within the
ideological and political structures of empire, as well as by people who tried to
defend or create a political space wholly outside.”22
StrUCtUrE
In many ways, the life stories of the Đông du priests parallel how this work approaches its subject. Đồng, tường, and Lĩnh, who were born between 1852 and
1870, grew up in a time of transformation and upheaval in Vietnamese Catholic
Introduction 11
life. From the 1850s until the 1880s, the missionary presence in Vietnam roughly
tripled. From the 1880s until their arrest in 1909, it roughly tripled again. The
expansion of missionary authority in Vietnam had great consequences for Vietnamese Catholics and their place in society. As youths, the priests experienced
violence, displacement, and the destruction of Catholic communities at the hands
of nguyễn officials and non-Catholics, which led some of their coreligionists to
support French military campaigns against nguyễn authority. The second half of
their lives before their arrest was equally transformative, as the rise of French colonial rule allowed for an influx of manpower and resources to help rebuild and extend Catholic missions. Although the extension and consolidation of French rule
did offer Catholics some opportunities, whether by facilitating or directly supporting a rebuilding of religious life or giving Catholics positions in the nascent colonial regime, ordinary Catholics, most of whom had nothing to do with the rise of
French rule, paid a heavy price for the ties between missions and colonial authorities. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of Catholic religious and social structures
in the precolonial era and then explores the nature of mission expansion, which
began in the mid-nineteenth century and continued throughout the colonial era.
It ends with an exploration of the relationship between Catholic missions, the rise
of French colonial rule, and the changing place of Catholicism in Vietnamese politics and society during the nineteenth century.
on the surface, the lives of Đồng, tường, and Lĩnh in the early colonial era
were much better than they had been before. In addition to benefiting from greater
physical safety, they studied in better seminaries than had the previous generation of Vietnamese priests. meanwhile, the children they ministered to had greater
access to catechism and lay education, and many new churches were springing
up around them. but not all was well in their religious community on the eve of
their decision to join an anti-French movement. Problems started with the bishop,
whose inability to manage personnel and money led him to move clergy arbitrarily
from place to place, to assign multiple clergy to the same congregations, leaving
others unstaffed, and to calculate budgets so poorly that seminaries ran out of
money to buy food one month into the term, forcing the mission to sell valuable
land to make up the deficit. The behavior of some missionaries was also scandalous. one reportedly took a wife and had children (and not only with his wife),
which was a source of great amusement to non-Catholics, who poked their heads
into the church when he baptized babies to comment that the babies looked like
him. many of the priests’ parishioners complained about being under the authority of a missionary of such dubious moral character.23 yet they, and the priests
themselves, were now more firmly under missionary authority than ever before.
While the three priests all held important positions, missionaries determined their
duties and access to resources, just as they by and large controlled the mission’s
budgets and relations with political authorities. The priests also lived in a religious
12 Introduction
community in which most missionaries now lived and ate apart from the local
clergy, and in which racial difference shaped the most basic aspects of daily life.
And the relationship of missions with both the colonial state and local society
remained difficult. The rise of political anticlericalism in France during the 1880s
intensified conflicts over the disparate agendas of Church and state in the colony,
while the many long-standing patterns of communitarian conflict in local society
did not disappear with colonial rule. These changes are the focus of chapter 2,
which is organized around three ongoing sources of conflict in Catholic life during
the early colonial era: communitarian relations, tensions between Catholic missions and the colonial state, and fraying relations in Catholic life itself.
For colonial officials and missionaries both, the involvement of Đồng, tường,
and Lĩnh in revolutionary activities embodied the critical state of many Catholic
missions at the turn of the century. The three priests were not, in fact, outliers:
many other priests in nghệ An and nearby provinces were also linked to Phan bội
Châu, and missionaries reported widespread support for the three priests among
ordinary Catholics.24 The opposition of some Vietnamese Catholics to political
authority was not a new phenomenon, but during the colonial era many came
to evince equally great opposition to missionaries themselves, and they began to
appeal to the Vatican to address their myriad criticisms of European religious authority. on April 1, 1910, a group of Catholic notables from nghệ An wrote directly
to Pope Pius X bemoaning the “bad spirit” of many missionaries and the “scandalous discord” in the mission, especially the decision of a few missionaries to turn in
Đồng, tường, and Lĩnh, “for us an enormous dishonor and an immense tragedy
for the faith.”25 The growing links between Vietnamese Catholic life and rome
are the subject of chapter 3, which focuses on the consequences in Vietnam of a
global campaign during the 1920s and 1930s to lay foundations for independent
national Churches across European colonial empires. rome’s reforms aimed to
form a better-educated and more self-sufficient clergy and laity in non-European
Churches in order to forge closer, more direct ties between these Churches and the
Vatican. These reforms were a response both to an ebbing missionary presence,
which had been dealt a severe blow by the First World War and changing European religiosity, as well as to tensions between local Catholics, missionaries, and
colonial authorities that plagued Catholic missions in Vietnam and throughout
the world. by the 1930s in Vietnam, rome’s reforms had laid the foundations for an
independent Church and contributed to the growth of a new culture in Catholic
life that was as exhilarating for Vietnamese Catholics as it was threatening for missionaries and colonial officials.
Đồng and Lĩnh were released from Poulo Condore in 1918 as part of an amnesty to honor Vietnam’s sacrifices for France during the First World War. however, they were forbidden to return to nghệ An and were instead sent to Saigon,
where they served as parish priests. There they encountered what was, in many
Introduction 13
respects, a different country, a place where Catholics spoke a virtually unintelligible Vietnamese and practiced their faith in very different ways. however,
what was an exile for Đồng and Lĩnh was, by the interwar years, an increasingly
central part of Vietnamese Catholic experience. Indeed, the Vatican’s reforms to
create the infrastructure for a national Church, as well as the economic, administrative, and cultural transformations of French rule, helped to create new and
powerful connections not only between Catholics from different parts of Vietnam
but also between Vietnamese Catholics and the global Catholic world. however,
the emerging experience of a national religious community did not make relationships between Catholics and other parts of Vietnamese society less complex;
powerful communitarian identity and new ties to global Church networks often
reinforced boundaries, real and imagined, between Catholics and others. These
changes are the focus of chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 explores how the emergence of
a system to write spoken Vietnamese by means of the Western alphabet (quốc ngữ)
made the printed word a part of mass Catholic experience and changed Catholic understandings of self and society. Chapter 5 examines how experiences such
as migration, economic change, urbanization, pilgrimage, and festivals made the
“imagined” religious community an increasingly tangible and central part of Vietnamese Catholic life.
The memory of the Đông du priests did not disappear, despite the best efforts
of Church officials and French authorities. missionaries arriving in nghệ An in
the 1930s reported that the story was an important part of local Catholic memory
at a moment when the Great depression and growing colonial repression were
bringing more Vietnamese away from reform and toward resistance. of the three
priests, only nguyễn Thần Đồng ever returned to nghệ An. It was in 1944, in the
midst of war and famine, and he was an old man with his revolutionary past well
behind him. but his native village of nhân hòa had not forgotten him, and villagers held huge celebrations to honor his return. Present to welcome Đồng was
nguyễn bá tòng, whom Đồng had known in Saigon, and whose ordination as the
first Vietnamese bishop in 1933 was an enormous symbolic turn away from missionary authority.26 tòng’s presence at Đồng’s homecoming celebration embodies
the close ties between religious reforms and the nationalist sentiment that had
emerged in Catholic life in the generation since Đồng’s arrest and exile. Indeed,
the emergence of a national Church also helped to make Vietnamese Catholics
enthusiastic about the idea of an independent nation, and during the interwar
years it brought them into global Catholic politics in a way that would shape their
perspectives and choices in the revolutionary era. The strong link between religion
and new political identities, however, also brought Catholics into conflict with visions of Vietnamese nationalism that continued to see Catholicism as a cultural or
political outlier, or even an opponent. Chapter 6 explores how Vietnamese Catholics came to understand and debate the idea of nationalism, how new essentialist
14 Introduction
ideas about “national culture” made religion a source of conflict in debates about
Vietnamese nationalism, and how the rise of Social Catholicism and anticommunism shaped the relationship of Vietnamese Catholics to emerging revolutionary
politics.
nguyễn Thần Đồng died just two months after his return to nghệ An, nine
months before hồ Chí minh’s proclamation of independence on September 2,
1945, realized the ambitions of the movement he had joined decades earlier. Chapter 7 examines the place of the Catholic Church in Vietnam’s transition from colony to separate and opposing nationhoods. The First Indochina War, fought from
1946 until 1954 between the French and varying Vietnamese political factions, hastened the pace of Vatican institutional reforms, as the break from colonial rule led
to a rapid extension of the Vietnamese Church hierarchy and a transfer of most
Church institutions entirely to Vietnamese direction. As full-scale war erupted,
new print organs and associational networks became crucial for circulating information and opinions as well as for Catholic community defense and mobilization.
And as the broad but tenuous nationalist consensus fragmented, religion came
to play a greater role in the political choices of Vietnamese Catholics: the Vatican’s role in Catholic life strengthened anticommunist voices and supported the
activities of Catholics such as the ngô family, while left-wing Catholic ideas kept
many Catholics in resistance networks even as Vietnamese communists cemented
their ties to the global communist bloc. The end of this study, the 1954 partition of
Vietnam and the bắc di cư, marks a new era in Vietnamese Catholic history, when
a newly independent Church now confronted the challenges of mass migration,
civil war, reunification, and relations with communist authorities as it sought to
shape its postcolonial future.
In his study of narratives of Chinese national history, Prasenjit duara observes,
“national history secures for the contested and contingent nation the false unity of
a self-same, national subject evolving through time. . . . It allows the nation-state
to see itself as a unique form of community which finds its place in the oppositions
between tradition and modernity, hierarchy and equality, empire and nation.”27
however, duara argues that although all national narratives by necessity “appropriate dispersed histories according to present needs,” the act of appropriation inevitably becomes a source of their tensions and shortfalls.28 In other words, the
claims of other, competing histories never disappear but instead reemerge during
historical or historiographical transitions. This study is written more than a generation after the end of the Second Indochina War, at a time when the turn toward a
market economy, the tensions of one-party rule, widespread and rapid social mobility, religious revival, and other forces are pushing the revolutionary era further
into Vietnam’s past. Accordingly, the field of Vietnamese studies is turning away
from the powerful national narrative of Vietnamese history and instead treating
the nation as—to use duara’s words—“the site where different representations of
Introduction 15
the nation contest and negotiate with each other.”29 Few subjects have as much
potential to contribute to this project as Vietnamese Catholic history, and doing
so was certainly my intention. however, I hope and believe that this effort to write
a more meaningful history of Catholicism in modern Vietnam has not resulted in
a Catholic narrative of Vietnamese national history. If anything, I hope that the
portrait of change and conflict in Catholicism in Vietnam that emerges in these
pages serves to provincialize the “nation” as a category of analysis in the writing of
Vietnamese history.
SoUrCES And tErmInoLo Gy
This work rests on three main bodies of sources. The records of the French colonial
and protectorate administrations in Vietnam, held in Aix-en-Provence, hanoi,
and ho Chi minh City, include documentation that ranges from the ministry of
Colonies to municipal administrations. despite its well-known limitations, this
material sheds light on a wide range of issues: Church-state relations; the economic, legal, and political standing of Catholic missions; Catholic schools, institutions of social welfare, and associations; communitarian relations; surveillance of
Catholic individuals, groups, and press organs; and others. The French Foreign
ministry archives in Paris reveal the details of the deeply contentious relationship
between French colonial officials and the Vatican surrounding Church reforms
in the interwar era. Although scholars have made good use of French colonial
documentation to study the Church’s role in the conquest, early French rule in
Cochinchina, and Church-state relations before the First World War, the bulk of
these materials in this study are cited for the first time.
The second body of sources, Church documentation, primarily includes the
records of the Société des missions Etrangères de Paris and of the Vatican’s mission organ, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as well as those
of smaller Catholic orders. As scholars have begun to demonstrate for the early
modern era, mEP documents, primarily letters from bishops and missionaries
as well as annual reports from individual missions, are an invaluable source for
the social and religious history of Catholicism in Vietnam, especially the organization of local mission life as well as relations between Vietnamese Catholics
and missionaries. only one other scholar, the Catholic historian Etienne Võ Đức
hạnh, has made systematic use of mEP materials for the colonial era, and he has
done so only up to 1903. missionary documentation on particular incidents or
local affairs is often by a single author, unlike French colonial records, which typically include perspectives and testimonials from multiple layers of the French administration, from Vietnamese officials, from missionaries, and sometimes even
from Vietnamese Catholics, all in the same dossier. The limits of mEP materials
make Vatican documents, again used almost entirely for the first time here, all the
16 Introduction
more invaluable. Propaganda Fide’s archives include detailed records of mission
finances; reports of Vatican envoys; documents from the Apostolic delegation in
Indochina, the Vatican’s first direct representative in Vietnam; and, most importantly, scores of letters from Vietnamese Catholics to officials in rome and even to
the pope about the difficult conditions in their missions, their poor relations with
missionaries, and their aspirations for an independent Church.
The third and perhaps most valuable set of sources for this study is the extensive and almost wholly unexplored body of Catholic religious bulletins, journals,
newspapers, and pamphlet literature in quốc ngữ, written mostly during the 1920s
and 1930s. despite Alexander Woodside’s 1976 call for scholars to explore the “archival treasurehouse of Vietnamese journalism,” I still had to cut open the pages
of many newspapers and pamphlets when I read them in the Vietnamese national
Library for the first time since these copies were deposited when the library’s collections were still the colonial dépôt légal.30 These materials include theological, liturgical, and paraliturgical texts; writings on Catholic morality and ethics; Church
histories; popular religious fiction in the form of novels, stories, poems, and plays;
journalistic accounts of issues, events, or individuals; school primers and pedagogical manuals; and many other documents, again largely used for the first time
here. This study also makes significant use of historical studies by Vietnamese
Catholics both inside and outside Vietnam, many of them published locally and
unconsidered in Western scholarship.
Several terms for Catholic officials and administrative designations require
explanation. The smallest unit of Vietnamese Catholic life, họ, best translated in
English as “subparish,” is usually translated as “congrégation” in French. I use “congregation” here despite the important differences between this form of community
and the one usually associated with the English term. The formal term for a Catholic mission was a vicariate (vicariat) and not a diocese (diocèse) or bishopric (évê-
ché), giáo phận or địa phận in Vietnamese; the latter two refer to an ecclesiastical
territory that, unlike a vicariate, is formally integrated into the Church hierarchy.
Similarly, the head of a mission was an apostolic vicar (vicaire apostolique) and not
a bishop (évêque, giám mục). however, French and Vietnamese sources most commonly use the terms “diocese” and “bishop.” In hopes of clarity and consistency, I
use the term “mission” and will refer to their heads as “bishops.” beginning in 1924,
missions were formally designated by the name of the mission seat instead of by
their French name (for example, Saigon and not Cochinchine occidentale). because the mission seat more clearly situates these territories geographically, I refer
to missions as such for the entire colonial era within the text, although I preserve
the original titles of documents in citations. Vietnamese Catholics virtually always
took a Christian name, but many of the documents I came across do not include
them. For this reason I have decided to omit Christian names altogether, even
(and with apologies) if most of the people who are the focus of this study would
Introduction 17
probably have preferred otherwise. I also omit diacritics if they are unknown to
me. I render into English the names of places that are well known to English readers (hanoi, Saigon, etc.) and use diacritics when possible for other geographic
references. Unless noted otherwise, translations are my own.
Those who study this place and time face vexing problems of nomenclature.
The modern nation-state of Vietnam did not exist before 1945, so my use of this
word is usually anachronistic. I use it anyway because, in my mind, the alternatives all pose greater problems. “Indochina” included the French protectorates of
Cambodia and Laos, neither of which is a focus of this study. I avoid “Annam,” the
most common collective term for the three Vietnamese parts of Indochina during
the colonial era, for several reasons. First, there was never a single state named
“Annam” that governed the territories of modern-day Vietnam; there were critical differences between the discrete regimes that governed the northern region
of tonkin, the southern region of Cochinchina, and the central region of Annam
(the use of this term at the time to refer to both the central region and all three
regions is another point of confusion). Although “Annam” was certainly a powerful cultural idea during the colonial era, it never held the normative legal status
that would oblige the use of the term in a historical study. moreover, not only was
“Annam” considered pejorative by some, but many Vietnamese during the colonial
period simply did not identify as part of a community that spanned contemporary
Vietnam’s borders. In short, the problem is to find a term to refer to a bureaucratic
regime and cultural identity that, during the colonial era, was in the process of
becoming. If we accept that the origins of postcolonial Vietnamese regimes and
identities have their roots in the colonial era, we need a language to describe them
before 1945, but, precisely because they were contingent and deeply contested,
there is no single term that will work in all circumstances. I therefore use the word
“Vietnam” simply as shorthand to describe the three Vietnamese regions of French
Indochina, and the phrase “Vietnamese Catholics” to indicate the study’s focus on
those Catholics who identified as or were categorized as ethnic Vietnamese (kinh,
itself admittedly a problematic category). In doing so, I do not mean to suggest
that the modern nation of Vietnam or the identities that it has generated existed in
the same form during the colonial era.
18
1
A Church between the nguyễn
and the French
At the end of the Sino-French War, the beginning of French control over all Vietnamese territories, about seven hundred thousand Catholics made up roughly 6
to 7 percent of Vietnam’s population. About three-quarters lived in the red river
delta in tonkin, modern-day northern Vietnam and the historical heartland of
Vietnamese Catholicism. most of these lived in a small area spanning the modern
provinces of nam Định, ninh bình, and hải dương and in the ancient capital of
hanoi. In the central region of Annam, most of the roughly one hundred thousand
Catholics lived in the provinces of nghệ An and Thừa Thiên near the city of Vinh
and the royal capital of huế. In the French colony of Cochinchina, most of the
roughly one hundred thousand Catholics lived in and around the growing urban
center of Saigon, in provinces around the city along the coast, and in the coastal
plains near Qui nhơn, with fewer in the western mekong delta near Cambodia.1
There were also small communities in non-kinh regions to the west and north of
nam Định and Thanh hóa and around Kontum in the central highlands. however, missionaries did not encounter most people in upland areas until the midnineteenth century or later, and geography, low population density, and language
differences made it difficult to evangelize in these regions. Even by the 1930s, nonkinh peoples were probably no more than thirty thousand of a Catholic population
that by then was well over a million.
Who were these Catholics? In his study of Catholic missions in tonkin until the
late eighteenth century, Alain Forest argues that a number of factors made it possible for the growth of what is still one of the most significant Christian minorities
in Asia. The sixteenth-century civil wars in the kingdom of Đại Việt, which produced a dynastic split and widespread social unrest, weakened the authority of the
between the Nguyễn and the French 19
fifteenth-century neo-Confucian Lê restoration and led to new forms of popular
buddhism. Forest argues not only that this made tonkin’s population receptive to
a new form of belief, but that Catholicism may even have seemed
a synthesis that reconciled in itself the elements of tonkin’s principal traditional religious expressions . . . by assuring a peaceful future for all departed souls regardless
of how they died, by appearing to revitalize the buddhist message of future bliss
through faith in the mercy of the saviors, by proclaiming the existence of a powerful protective entity in the present, and by advocating, as a means of satisfying the
expectations of happiness and salvation, rules of conduct similar to the major commands of the Confucian ethics.2
Whether this is a plausible explanation or not, it is clear that many in tonkin
quickly came to believe that Catholicism had considerable power to affect the
spirit world and to cure the sick or the possessed. Forest notes that missionaries before the mid-eighteenth century were nearly unanimous in their belief that
“it was healing or hope of healing sickness that constituted the principal vectors
of conversion.”3 Catholic sacred objects such as holy water, medals, sacramentals, images, rosaries, medals, and statues, in nola Cooke’s words, “won a reputation for magical efficacy. regarded as powerful healing and protective charms,
they quickly became highly desirable spiritual prophylactics for Christians and
non-Christians alike.”4 Although social and political barriers to conversion were
meaningful enough for Forest to view Catholicism in this era as a “site of ‘formalized dissidence’” to “the literati/peasant dyptich,” he does not believe that its message of protection and promise of eternal happiness appealed only to outcasts.5
Indeed, he notes the religion’s considerable success among social figures such as
soldiers, fishermen, boatmen, artisans, sorcerers, healers, and women, suggesting
that some degree of freedom from corporate social structures is as important as
dispossession in understanding the new faith’s appeal.6 Equally important was the
adaptation of Catholicism to local practices such as collective prayers, processions,
theatrical representations, group readings, and other forms of popular piety that
made the new religion more familiar and accessible.7 by the 1780s there were as
many as 350,000 to 400,000 Catholics in tonkin.8 Especially for the precolonial
era, it is crucial to understand that many of the people whom missionaries counted
as “Catholics” viewed the religion as but one part of a broader spirit world with
which they were in constant interaction.
Forest’s study has no equal for Cochinchina, where Catholicism was not nearly
as successful as it was in tonkin: in the 1780s there were but ten to fifteen thousand
Catholics in the region.9 In part, this is simply due to the smaller and less dense
population, which posed real challenges to evangelization. In the seventeenth century, Cochinchina also became a site of bitter internecine struggles between the
mEP and Jesuits, which both alienated some believers and radicalized the behavior
20 chapter 1
of others toward competing communities and belief systems. As Cooke argues,
these conflicts “contained the seeds of changes that would help define Christian
life in the Cochinchina mission until 1750, when all foreign missionaries were expelled and a violent persecution thinned Christian ranks.”10 by the 1820s, however,
a more lenient official stance toward the religion under the emperor Gia Long
had brought the Catholic population of Cochinchina to about eighty thousand.11
An English visitor to Saigon at this time noted a church in the center of Chợ Lớn,
Pigneau de béhaine’s impressive tomb near the Gia Định citadel, and a missionary
strolling the streets “with a red face caused by wine.”12
At first glance, population statistics do not suggest meaningful growth in the
Vietnamese Catholic population in the nineteenth century. tonkin’s missions grew
from roughly 350,000 in the 1780s to 460,000 in the 1890s, while Cochinchina’s
did not appreciably change (it was about eighty thousand in the 1820s and roughly
the same in the 1890s).13 however, the nineteenth century was, of course, a time
of widespread and severe repression of Catholicism in Vietnam, both official and
popular, which not only strongly discouraged conversions but also led to as many
as one hundred thousand Catholic deaths across the nguyễn kingdom. how, then,
to explain the continued growth of the religion in this context? Although further
research on the subject is sorely needed, the best explanation is likely the administrative expansion and financial strength of Catholic missions in a time when the
consolidation of nguyễn rule and the wars with France led to widespread social
unrest, hardship, and dislocation. Forest notes that tonkin’s missions survived almost entirely thanks to local resources until the mid-eighteenth century; it was “a
community of mutual aid more than a community of assistance.”14 Thereafter, and
especially in the nineteenth century, organizational reforms and a rise in money
and manpower from Europe made Catholic missions, in Jacob ramsay’s words,
“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.”15 It is important to
underscore here that the prosperity and unity of Catholic missions were not only
appealing as a social safeguard, but they also seemed to many to be a manifestation
of the religion’s virtue and spiritual potency.
Available statistical evidence, though admittedly thin and problematic, suggests
that the colonial era brought relative demographic stability to Catholic life after a
history of fluctuation. mission statistics from 1939 place the Catholic population
at roughly one and a half million, about twice what it was in the 1890s.16 Philippe
Langlet calculates that Vietnam’s population grew from between nine and ten and
a half million in the 1860s to between twenty and twenty-five million in 1945.17 This
suggests, tentatively, that over nearly four generations, the number of Catholics
grew at a rate that was roughly equal to population growth in general and did so in
between the Nguyễn and the French 21
a way that did not meaningfully alter their geographic distribution.18 This should
not suggest that communitarian identity was fixed or stable: people, families, and
entire communities continued to join and leave the Church for many reasons, and
some missions experienced more success than others. but the Catholic population
simply did not fluctuate like it had in the past. Indeed, although many missions
often reported more than ten thousand annual baptisms of “pagans” (païens), virtually all of these came at the time of death (in articulo mortis), a common practice
intended to save souls that nevertheless did little to bolster mission ranks on earth.
The reasons for flattening conversion rates during the colonial era must remain
speculative here. missionaries often blamed lingering anti-Catholicism and anticlerical colonial policies, both of which were clearly a factor, but they also admitted ruefully that anti-French feelings made it much harder to achieve conversions
than in the past. Although missions prospered during the colonial era, it is also
possible that, especially in tonkin, their relative influence declined after the rise
of French rule in light of the collapse of political authority and widespread social
hardship in this region in the late nguyễn era. Finally, internal conflicts in Catholic life that resulted from the surge in the missionary presence, as well as powerful new physical and cultural boundaries between Catholics and others from the
conquest era, also limited conversions.19
by the late nineteenth century, most Catholics in tonkin and northern Annam
lived in so-called “Catholic villages” (làng đạo, làng giáo) set apart from other villages (làng lương).20 Catholic villages had their roots in the powerfully corporate
nature of villages in these regions, which made conversion of extended social
networks more likely than in Cochinchina and offered a communal foundation
to maintain conversions. Catholic villages were crucial for community defense
in times of violence, which helped cluster Catholics in these regions even more
closely together by the beginning of French rule. Although the resultant barriers
were considerable, these were never worlds entirely unto themselves: interactions
between làng đạo and làng lương, especially in the densely populated red river
delta, were a regular part of life during the colonial era. Few làng đạo were in fact
entirely Catholic, and even Catholics in Annam and tonkin at times lived in villages where they were a minority. Although Catholics often lived in a specific part
of these villages and avoided some village rituals, they were often well integrated
into local life.
Catholic community structures were quite different in lower Annam and Cochinchina. during the first two centuries of evangelization in these regions, fluid
social structures and low population density made conversions in Cochinchina
fewer and less communally based than they were in Annam or tonkin. At the
time of the nguyễn defeat of the tây Sơn in 1802, far fewer Catholics in Cochinchina lived in tightly clustered socioreligious units than in Annam or tonkin.
minh mạng’s first edicts against Catholics in the 1830s were applied most strictly
22 chapter 1
in Cochinchina, a frontier region where tensions between the nguyễn state and
local society were high.21 This first meant that many Catholic population centers
were further dispersed, not concentrated. however, continued violence in the two
decades preceding the French invasion helped concentrate many Catholics around
large towns such as Saigon, where many Catholics from southern provinces fled
in the 1850s and early 1860s. by the early colonial era, decades of violence and a
pro-Catholic French military regime in Cochinchina had largely eroded communitarian coexistence and had begun to concentrate Catholics together more than
in the past. Still, religious geography below central Annam differed in basic ways
from further north throughout the colonial era.
The basic religious unit in Catholic life in Vietnam was the congregation (họ).
A parish (xứ đạo / giáo xứ) contained a number of congregations, and a district
(hạt) a number of parishes. A mission (giáo phận or địa phận), the largest unit
of religious life, contained a number of districts. The practical nature of these
designations varied widely. A congregation in tonkin and northern Annam was
most often within a single village; further south, it could be many small groups of
Catholics spread out over a number of villages.22 In other words, religious and social structures did not always overlap. This was also true of parishes and districts,
administrative designations within missions that, in practice, varied significantly
based on the number of clergy available to minister to them. There were only
three missions in Vietnam before the mid-nineteenth century. The area north of
the Gianh river, near huế, was divided into West tonkin (tonkin occidental or
tây Đàng ngoài), which included areas west of hanoi south through the modern
province of nghệ An and was administered by the mEP (hội Thừa Sai Paris); and
East tonkin (tonkin oriental or Đông Đàng ngoài), which included the coastal
provinces of the red river delta and fell under Spanish dominicans (dòng Đa
minh) from the Province of the most holy rosary of the Philippines (Provincia
del Santísimo rosario de Filipinas). Areas south of huế were the Cochinchina
mission (Cochinchine or Đàng trong), which was administered by the mEP. The
number of missions grew in the colonial era; there were eight by the 1880s, eleven
by 1902, and sixteen by the end of French rule, all spanning progressively smaller
territories.
Catechists or lay ministers (thầy giảng) and sisters were on the lowest rung of
the religious hierarchy. They assisted the clergy in their ministries and directed
religious instruction and ritual life in communities without a permanent priest or
missionary. A variety of different catechists had a wide range of responsibilities:
thầy xứ handled the day-to-day issues of village life; thầy cai worked with children
and youth; thầy giáo were responsible for religious education and ministry; and
thầy quản were supervisors.23 Catechists (all of whom were men) and sisters could
be virtually any age. “First-class” catechists received formal ecclesiastical training,
took a vow of celibacy, traveled with the clergy or alone to minister to Catholics,
between the Nguyễn and the French 23
and often became candidates for the priesthood. “Second-class” catechists were
lay Catholics whose age, status, wealth, or knowledge gave them authority as religious leaders (giáo trưởng); their communities often viewed them less as “catechists” than as teachers or notables. Sisters, whose responsibilities lay principally
in education and caring for the sick and elderly, lived communally. many were part
of the Lovers of the holy Cross (dòng mến Thánh Gía), the first Catholic order
founded in Vietnam, founded in 1670 by Pierre Lambert de la motte. As nhung
tuyet tran has shown, “by entering the sisterhood, many poor women combined
their resources in a community that afforded them housing, mutual aid, and educational opportunities unavailable to women of most class backgrounds in that
era.” This “afforded these women mobility that they would not have had within
the structures of family life” through a “self-reliant alternative world that called
upon practical worldly knowledge, spiritual devotion, and a relatively egalitarian
environment.”24
While catechists and religious sisters were typically responsible to a few congregations at most, the ministries of the local clergy (linh mục) and missionaries
(nhà truyền giáo) spanned parish and district. Although missionaries and priests
had very different roles in Catholic life by the colonial era, this was not nearly
as pronounced for much of the Church’s history in Vietnam. both administered
sacraments of initiation (holy Eucharist, confirmation, and baptism), healing
(penance and reconciliation, extreme unction), and vocation (marriage). The only
sacrament that local priests could not administer was holy orders, the ordination
of a candidate for the priesthood, which was carried out by bishops, who were
all European until 1933. missionaries also heard confessions and performed marriages throughout missions, while local priests in theory only did so in their parish. because there were never enough priests or missionaries for all congregations
to have one permanently, both often traveled between congregations or parishes.
Another main responsibility of the local clergy and missionaries was obtaining
conversions. by the colonial era, however, stagnating conversion rates made this
much more difficult: as an observer from rome noted in 1924, “the conversion of
pagans demands from bishops considerable expenses, and from missionaries a
solicitude discouraged by nothing. . . . [t]his ministry is extremely difficult and
exhausting; it is small consolation that this explains the quasi-indifference of missionaries and the clergy, who prefer to absorb themselves with the care of Christians, which gives them more consolations and less fatigue.”25 As such, catechists
bore much of the brunt of these efforts before the colonial era, and even more
during it, when they took place at all.
The most important responsibility of priests and missionaries was to train catechists and candidates for the priesthood. over time, the different structures of
Catholic life in tonkin and northern Annam versus lower Annam and Cochinchina produced two very different systems for forming priests and catechists.
24 chapter 1
In the densely populated Catholic regions of tonkin and northern Annam, new
clergy were typically formed communally in an institution known as the house of
God (maison de dieu or nhà Đức Chúa trời). Although communal formation of
the clergy varied between missions, its basic outline was the same: missionaries,
priests, and notables chose talented youth, usually around the age of nine or ten,
to live communally with the parish clergy and catechists, usually in the presbytery, where they began to learn to read and write and to study religion, as well
as to serve the clergy and the community. most continued to the probatorium,
often linked to a seminary, until they were deemed ready to continue into formal
training as a priest.26 others went to schools for catechists or continued to serve
the house of God as auxiliaries. Although communal formation existed in some
Catholic communities further south, members of the clergy in lower Annam and
Cochinchina were usually formed in smaller groups, often by a single priest or
missionary, as they had been in tonkin before the mid-eighteenth century.27 In
both places, candidates for the clergy tended to come principally from families
that had been Catholic for generations, as the clergy often viewed recent converts
as less reliable. A few candidates also studied at the mEP’s seminary for Asian missions (in Siam until 1767, in hà tiên and India from 1767 until 1808, and in Penang thereafter). In all regions, becoming part of the clergy could take a very long
time. Especially after mission expansion in the nineteenth century, catechists and
candidates for the priesthood often spent long periods as auxiliaries to priests and
missionaries. This meant that most were not ordained until they were thirty-five
to forty years old, and many were even older.28
despite regular prosecutions and expulsions, most missionaries were well acculturated to local society in precolonial times. nola Cooke notes that even in the
early nineteenth century, European missionaries in Vietnam “inhabited a mental
universe containing several features not dissimilar from that of contemporaneous Asians,” notably their belief “that the supernatural realm intimately interpenetrated the physical and human worlds, and that occult powers intervened in
human affairs in ways that could be influenced by human action.”29 missionaries
dressed like Vietnamese, took Vietnamese names, and lived and ate communally
with priests and catechists, and they were also less apt to exhibit the doctrinal
rigidity and disdain for other forms of local belief than they would later on. Partly
because of this, many missionaries had a social standing similar to monks, mediums, sorcerers, or other figures believed to have power over the spirit world, not
least because they were a source of devotional objects that many people believed
had spiritual power. many also received the status and respect accorded to elders
that was central to most Vietnamese conceptions of social order, and many lived in
a manner that seemed to embody the message of practical morality and respect for
all souls that many Vietnamese, not all of them Catholic, found compelling about
Catholicism. In some places, nonbelievers saw missionary martyrs as having died
between the Nguyễn and the French 25
virtuous or unjust deaths, worshipped them as local tutelary spirits, and prized
their remains, even the grass or soil that had soaked up their blood.30
relative parity between priests and missionaries, and the acculturation of Europeans in local society, did not remove race as a marker of difference in Catholic
life, but it was much less clear than during the colonial era. before the eighteenth
century, most missionaries in Vietnam exhibited what Forest describes as “indifference to difference,” which translated into remarkable egalitarianism in Catholic
life. Local priests were not de facto coadjutors or auxiliaries, the same terms of address were applied to missionaries and local priests, and local priests played equal
roles in communal ceremonies and in seminary life, all of which reflected a real
belief in the equality of human beings in the face of the universality of the Christian message in an era before the rise of nationalism and biological racism.31 Forest
notes a gradual change over the eighteenth century as missions fell more squarely
under mEP control; by the early nineteenth century, dismissive and skeptical attitudes toward local priests were widespread among missionaries.32
however, three factors prevented racial difference from playing the determinative role in Catholic life that it would during the colonial era. First, missionaries
were visibly foreign, very vulnerable to anti-Catholic edicts and activities, and thus
often dependent on local Catholics for their presence in the country and at times
their very survival. Second, before the 1840s missionaries did not have nearly the
resources at their disposal that their successors would control; they often did not
even receive their meager annual stipend, which made them dependent on sporadic gifts from Europe and the charity of local Catholics.33 And third, and most
important, there simply were never nearly as many missionaries in Vietnam before
the colonial era as there were during it. Just over one hundred mEP missionaries
spent time in Vietnam during the entire seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.34
There were fewer than ten mEP missionaries in all of Cochinchina in 1820.35 Even
as late as 1868, after a generation of considerable mission expansion, there were
only sixty-eight mEP missionaries in all of Vietnam.36 but while European authority in Catholic life was not nearly as palpable before the colonial era, it was
nevertheless clearly embodied in the bishops (giám mục), the heads of Catholic
missions, who in Vietnam were all European until 1933. The principal responsibility of bishops was to manage personnel and budgets and to act as primary liaisons
between the mission and royal authorities. Although bishops were enormously
significant, they were often removed from day-to-day life outside the mission seat.
The relative proximity and population density of Catholic communities in
tonkin and in northern Annam gave the clergy a much more stable and influential
presence there. Indeed, in most Catholic communities in these regions, the main
structures of civil life in the village were often inseparable from religious ones. For
example, virtually all villages in these regions had a council of notables, an association of elites responsible for managing the village’s relations with state officials,
26 chapter 1
adjudicating disputes, administering communal funds and lands, and managing
other affairs. In làng đạo, the members of the council of notables often mirrored
closely or were identical to the members of parish councils, bodies of prominent
lay Catholics under the authority of the clergy who served as moral examples for
the village and helped the clergy to organize ritual life. because religious and civil
elites in Catholic villages were often the same people, their responsibilities were
often inseparable.37 In practice, this gave the clergy enormous influence over civic
life. many làng đạo in tonkin and northern Annam did not have a đình, the communal house where non-Catholic Vietnamese worshipped tutelary spirits and
gathered collectively. In its place, of course, was the church.
This overlap between religious and civil authority in majority Catholic villages,
common in Catholic communities in tonkin and northern Annam, was largely
absent further south. Since many Catholics in lower Annam and Cochinchina
lived in mixed villages where often they were a minority, church institutions and
Catholic festivals were less often at the center of communal life. This also meant
that the clergy did not have the same influence on selecting village notables, and
thus it was quite rare for Catholics in Cochinchina to dominate social, economic,
and political life in a village as they did in northern Annam and tonkin. Even
when many Catholics in lower Annam and Cochinchina clustered more closely
together after the mid-nineteenth century, the fact that many did so at the edge of
expanding urban centers meant that within a generation the dynamics of urban life
brought these communities into much more regular contact with non-Catholics
than was the case in rural Annam and tonkin.
Alongside these very different relationships between civil and religious authority were very different regimes for land use and organization. reflecting the deeply
entrenched system of communal lands in tonkin and northern Annam, a part of
common village lands in these regions was devoted to spiritual life supporting the
đình, worship of tutelary spirits, as well as monks, mediums, sorcerers, and other
such figures. In villages with a Catholic population, a portion of these lands was
regularly set aside to support the church and other religious buildings as well as
the clergy. most Catholics also set aside a portion of common lands attributed
to them to help support education and mutual aid in their religious community.
other common lands were devoted to Catholic cemeteries, which were usually set
apart from non-Catholic burial areas. Thus the larger the Catholic population of a
village, the more village common land went to support their community. This did
not necessarily mean that Catholics were materially worse off in villages in which
they formed a smaller minority, due to variations in village size and land arability.
The smaller proportion of common lands in lower Annam and Cochinchina, however, did mean that communal resources were less tied to religious life. In these
regions, land used for churches or other institutions or to support the ritual and
social lives of Catholics was much more often owned individually or owned collectively by a congregation rather than owned collectively by the village.
between the Nguyễn and the French 27
Systems for organizing and distributing the material resources of the religious
community also differed in basic ways between regions. In tonkin and northern
Annam, the parish council and the house of God usually collected and administered revenues from common village lands, tithes, mass intentions, and other
sources of local revenue. These funds were meant for the upkeep of the Church,
and they were used for a variety of functions ranging from village festivals to the
construction and repair of buildings. Extra funds often went to a similar parish
institution known as the common house (nhà chung) and redistributed to congregations in need. This also often applied to the financial support that priests
received from congregations, which was often collected and managed collectively
at the parish level. As the missions’ administrative and institutional presence grew
in the nineteenth century, communal resources were more often redistributed at
the mission level, usually because the construction or repair of churches, seminaries, and social welfare institutions required more resources than a congregation
or parish could provide. mEP missionaries in both tonkin and northern Annam
were also bound to sign a communal contract that ceded their annual stipend (viatique) to the mission. no such system existed in lower Annam and Cochinchina.
In those regions, resources generated within a parish and even a congregation,
including stipends for priests, usually stayed there almost in their entirety, and
missionaries did not sign a communal contract. however, missions in all regions
administered funds from external sources, primarily from French organizations
or the Vatican. The practical difference between these systems was less significant
before the colonial period than during it, when colonial political and legal regimes
allowed both for more external support for missions and for missions to acquire
large amounts of land that generated significant income.
The varying degrees to which the Church shaped civic affairs and controlled
resources also shaped lay Catholic associational life. It is difficult to generalize
about this in regional terms. In his study of the parish near huế where he lived for
more than fifty years, the mEP missionary and scholar Léopold Cadière described
how Catholics participated in social life through informal structures based on
age and gender. Adult men built and repaired new Church buildings, dug graves,
made coffins, and performed other such communal tasks, as well as ensured that
their families participated in ritual life. boys and girls under twenty years of age
sang and chanted parts of the mass and shared the responsibility of decorating the
church and other parts of the village on festival days. older youth were also often
expected to help with the ritual and social lives of younger children, both inside
and outside the family. The elderly, due to their physical condition, and women
over twenty, because of their family responsibilities, had the smallest formal role.38
Formal Catholic village associations existed in villages whether Catholics were a
majority or a minority. nguyễn hồng dương estimates that about twenty main
forms of Catholic association existed around the turn of the twentieth century,
although village customs and regional differences produced variations in their
28 chapter 1
organization and function. These had various purposes, from organizing religious
education and saying prayers for the dead to bringing youth into social and ritual
life.39
despite basic commonalities among villages, social geography greatly affected
Catholic associational life. much collective life in Vietnamese villages was historically centered around associations that organized mutual aid when members of
the community built or repaired a house, held a wedding or funeral, had financial
troubles, or suffered from a drought, flood, or other natural disaster. In areas where
Catholics were a minority, they regularly crossed communitarian boundaries in
their associational life. In làng đạo, however, mutual aid groups were much more
likely to fall along communitarian lines. nguyễn hồng dương has pointed out
that this also applies to the more secretive forms of mutual aid associations known
as giáp, which in làng đạo tended to exclude non-Catholics but which elsewhere
were often religiously mixed. however, dương also notes that missionaries in the
early colonial era called for the organization of all-Catholic giáp even in mixed
villages as a way to better protect Catholics from a population that missionaries
perceived as implacably hostile, thereby eroding existing forms of communitarian
coexistence.40 Finally, it is important to note that the widespread movement of
Catholic populations during the nineteenth century meant that many structures
organizing Catholic life at the dawn of the colonial era had recent histories, even if
they represented long-standing forms of social and religious practice.
thE EXPAnSIon oF mISSIonAry
CAthoLICISm In VIEtnAm
European missionary activity, most of it French, grew throughout the world during the nineteenth century. The French missionary revival in this era was part
of an effort to resurrect spirituality after the French revolution. beginning with
the Catholic revival of the restoration era (1815–30), missionaries began to follow
French explorers and traders into Asia, Africa, and the middle East. The main engines for this were the Association for the Propagation of the Faith (oeuvre de la
Propagation de la Foi, or oPF), founded in 1822 to support missionary work, and
the Association of the holy Childhood (oeuvre Pontificale de la Sainte-Enfance),
devoted to the baptism and social welfare of children. organizations such as these
used innovative fund-raising techniques to draw support from broad parts of
French society, and new publications allowed people to read about the effects of
their gifts and perhaps to contemplate becoming a missionary or a nun themselves. The revitalized modern missionary movement was enormously successful.
The oPF raised twenty-three thousand French francs in the first year of its existence, and it supported no more than ten foreign missions in the 1820s. by the late
1880s, the oPF was raising nearly seven million francs each year, which supported
between the Nguyễn and the French 29
almost four hundred missions across the world.41 From the sixty-eight mEP missionaries in Vietnam in 1868, just after the French conquest of Cochinchina, there
were nearly four hundred a generation later.
For these missionaries, arriving in Vietnam was the end of a process that often
lasted more than a decade. most French missionaries came from rural areas in
regions such as Alsace, brittany, and the midi that had retained a high degree of
religiosity despite the expansion of the state and of secular thought.42 becoming a
missionary required being ordained as priest, which began with minor seminary
around the age of twelve. Those who continued entered major seminary, where
they continued their studies in Latin, theology, moral philosophy, and other subjects. After being ordained, those who wished to become missionaries entered a
seminary devoted to the purpose, like the mEP’s seminary on the rue du bac in
Paris, often for as little as a year, after which they were sent to a mission. Even after
centuries of evangelizing across the world, the mEP in the late nineteenth century
still did not give candidates much training in the languages, cultures, and spiritual
practices of the places they would be sent.
The French conquest of Vietnam allowed for a safer, more regular transition
as new missionaries arrived and began to learn the formal responsibilities of their
position. most missionaries spent their first year in established Catholic communities, where local priests instructed them in Vietnamese and senior missionaries
began to teach them the many skills they would need to administer Catholic life
and to evangelize among local populations. After this, most were assigned to a
transitional post in a stable area. Those who did not show the talent and fortitude
for more difficult work remained in these positions, went to a city to minister to
the French population, or were given positions teaching in a seminary or a school.
Those who did were sent to areas where the mission hoped to expand, areas that
were often far from a population center and other missionaries and whose residents were often ambivalent at best about a missionary’s presence. missionaries
usually took up a position at the center of their new districts in order to facilitate
regular pastoral tours and the supervision of the local clergy.43
From 1840 until the first cession of Vietnamese territories to France in 1862,
the growing corps of missionaries in Vietnam brought with it nearly three million
French francs from oPF coffers. nola Cooke estimates that even if only a third
of this money was spent in Vietnam (as opposed to on imported religious goods,
travel costs for missionaries, and the like), it would still represent roughly seven
hundred thousand quan, roughly equivalent to the fortune of between twentyfive and forty of the wealthiest landholders in the kingdom.44 before French rule,
the rapidly growing wealth of missions had extremely mixed consequences for
Catholics. An explosion in mission funds undoubtedly helped missions to recover
quickly from minh mạng’s edicts, to draw converts, and to ensure their safety
through the bribery of local officials. however, it also helped to destabilize nguyễn
30 chapter 1
rule by encouraging greater degrees of official corruption, and it ultimately helped
make missions greater targets of official repression and popular violence. but
funds from France and rome continued to flow into Vietnam in large amounts,
and after the end of the Sino-French War, missionaries used these funds to put into
motion a broad expansion of not only evangelization but also education and social
welfare in ways that would have been impossible a generation earlier.
Perhaps the most visible and emblematic sign of this were the many new
churches that began to dot the Vietnamese landscape in the late nineteenth century. For the most part, churches in Vietnam before the late nineteenth century
were small and made out of straw or wood (fig. 2). These modest structures often
clashed with the image of a church that missionaries brought with them from
France; one missionary’s description of “an old and awful shack, covered in straw
and open to the winds,” was typical.45 descriptions such as these both reflected
an aesthetic judgment and ignored the practical reasons for such construction,
as churches were often built so that they could easily be taken down and hidden
in case of an emergency.46 That said, it was true that a great number of churches
destroyed in communitarian violence had been poorly rebuilt. missionaries regularly observed that many were too small to house those who came to worship, a
problem that some congregations solved by having several small churches. Some
were converted đình or pagodas, and some Catholics even held mass in buildings still used for other forms of worship, which missionaries found totally unacceptable. For this reason, missionaries made the construction of stone neo-Gothic
churches a high priority despite the expense. From 1875 to 1933 the number of
churches in Vietnam grew from 906 to 4,578; well over half could hold more than
four hundred people.47 most iconic were the enormous cathedrals in the centers
of hanoi and Saigon, both completed in the 1880s. Some reflected other styles,
most famously the Phát diệm cathedral in tonkin, described by the novelist Graham Greene as “more buddhist than Christian.”48 The colonial era was the first
time many Catholic churches in Vietnam had a bell, which missionaries brought
with them or had sent from France. both the completion of a church and the arrival of a bell were often occasions for celebrations that drew Catholics from far
away. but in hard times, the importance that missionaries and notables placed on
building grand churches could also inspire resentment from Catholics in desperate situations.
If these new churches were symbols of the end of an era of violence, other new
Catholic institutions were signs of the social agenda and ambitions of missionaries. In the 1890s missionaries began to found orphanages, hospitals, dispensaries,
leper colonies, and houses for the elderly and the terminally ill, all of which were
rare under nguyễn rule. The mEP ceded the direction of many of these institutions to other parties, including the colonial state, which took over the mission’s
hôpital indigène in hanoi, which was founded in 1895 and became part of the
between the Nguyễn and the French 31
colonial public health system after 1904. however, more institutions came under
the direction of other Catholic orders. The most influential was the Sisters of Saint
Paul of Chartres (dòng nữ tu Thánh Phaolô), which focused on education and
child welfare. In 1860 the order came to Saigon, where its members administered
mEP-founded institutions and founded more orphanages, day nurseries, and dispensaries in the city and nearby areas. In the 1880s the order spread into tonkin,
where it began to assume charge of the nascent network of social welfare institutions in Catholic areas.49 Although administration and finances remained under
the control of French nuns, Vietnamese made up almost all of the labor force in
most such establishments. These nuns belonged to both the Sisters of Saint Paul of
Chartres, which accepted Vietnamese novices, and the Lovers of the holy Cross.
during the first generation of French rule, Catholic social welfare and public health institutions in Vietnam grew rapidly. In 1892, mEP missions contained
forty-four orphanages and day nurseries with almost four thousand children; by
1922, eighty-five of them housed almost eleven thousand children. during the
same period the number of dispensaries and pharmacies climbed from fifty-six to
seventy-two, and the number of hospitals increased from thirteen to forty-nine,
many of which had more than ten thousand annual visits. Catholic social welfare
and public health institutions numbered over nine hundred in 1918.50 Although
most were built in or near large Catholic communities, their services were not
limited to Catholics. In fact, quite the opposite was true. For many Catholics,
Figure 2. Church in rural tonkin, ca. 1890. From Léon Girod, Dix ans
de Haut-Tonkin, 2nd ed. (tours: Alfred mame et fils, 1899), 183.
32 chapter 1
evangelization and charity were inseparable, and they hoped that institutions such
as these would attract conversions. Catholic education and ritual life was a part
of the experience of most who passed through a Catholic hospital, orphanage,
or leper colony, even if these efforts to convert often bore little fruit. Children
in orphanages and day nurseries were baptized and adopted into Catholic families whenever possible. during their time in the orphanage or nursery, children
learned the catechism and participated in prayer. Patients in Catholic hospitals
were also often baptized, most often in articulo mortis, although accepting baptism
or religious education was not formally a precondition for treatment.
The colonial era also saw enormous growth in both clerical and lay Catholic
education. despite growing mission budgets after the 1840s, political and social
unrest made it difficult to construct permanent seminaries. Seminarians, already
highly susceptible to violence during much of the nineteenth century, also studied
under difficult material conditions. In 1898 the head of the seminary in Kẻ Sở
in tonkin remembered that a water buffalo stable served as the seminary during
the 1860s. After years spent building a new seminary out of straw and bamboo,
humidity, floods, and wood ants quickly destroyed it.51 Such conditions placed a
heavy physical burden on seminarians already expected to devote many years to
their studies, and many did not last. In 1883 the superior of hoàng nguyên seminary in nghệ An compared the seminary to a hospital, noting that of the 170 students that he had known in his ten years there, forty had died and many others had
been forced to leave due to illness.52 As violence receded, rebuilding and improving seminaries became a top priority. by the early years of the twentieth century,
all missions had at least a minor seminary, and there were major seminaries in
most. most of them were now built out of stone or brick. but even if the buildings
were new, the curricula reflected the training that candidates for the priesthood
had received for a long time. during the six years of minor seminary, candidates
studied doctrine, theology, and Latin, as well as history, geography, natural science, and music. major seminary, which lasted four more years, involved more
advanced study of dogma and ethics, as well as further study in Latin and classical
Chinese. In addition to seminaries, the early colonial period also brought new
schools for catechist training, as well as schools to train women who assisted in
education and social work.
The colonial period also saw substantial growth in lay Catholic education. mEP
statistics show that from 1887 to 1920, schools in mEP missions climbed from 651
to 2,010 and the number of students in these schools increased from 15,382 to
84,032.53 In all Catholic missions in Vietnam from 1916 to 1922, the number of
Catholic schools increased from 2,505 to 2,904, and the students enrolled in these
schools grew from 88,074 to 104,229.54 After this meteoric expansion, however, the
numbers began to contract by the late 1920s, primarily due to a decrease in funds
available to missions but also because of the spread of colonial schools. Still, in
between the Nguyễn and the French 33
1933 there remained 83,172 students in 1,839 lay Catholic schools in Vietnam.55 This
meant that for a great part of the colonial era, Catholic missions administered an
educational network that rivaled the colonial state’s own in size and scope, if not
in resources.56
In practice, Catholic “primary schools” included much more than actual
schools in which students studied in a building dedicated to that purpose, most
of which emerged only during the colonial era. In these schools, which were primarily in parish seats, catechists who were trained as teachers, and sometimes
priests or missionaries as well, led instruction in reading and writing in characters and romanized Vietnamese (quốc ngữ), as well as basic mathematics. Some
also taught practical skills such as how to draft contracts or appeals to political
authorities and even basic land surveying.57 These schools likely counted for at
most a third of what mission statistics identify as “primary schools,” which also included instruction in Catholic orphanages and catechism, where children did little
other than learn prayers and bible stories. however, because curricula and the
level of instruction varied widely according to the instructor, it is likely that much
catechesis may have been just as productive from an educational standpoint as
some formal primary schools. It is unclear to what extent non-Catholics studied in
Catholic primary schools, but some certainly did: far fewer, however, participated
in catechesis simply for educational reasons. missionaries were quick to insist that
their schools were not only forums for proselytizing, but religion was part of the
education of all those who studied in a Catholic school. trần Thị Liên points out
that whether in primary schools or catechesis, Catholic education was remarkably
equal. not only did many schools have a roughly equal number of boys and girls
as students, but Catholic women, mostly from religious orders, played a much
greater role as instructors than they did in other village schools.58
Quite apart from these was the small but influential network of Catholic upper
primary schools. These included the famous Collège d’Adran and Institut taberd
in Saigon, the Ecole Pellerin in huế, and the Lycée Puginier in hanoi. Courses at
these schools, taught in both French and Vietnamese to French, Vietnamese, and
métis students, included most subjects included in French secondary education—
history, philosophy, literature, math, the physical and biological sciences, and
some religious education—although the diploma was not equivalent to the baccalauréat. during the colonial era, most elite Catholic schools for boys were under
the direction of the brothers of Christian Schools (Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes
or dòng Sư huynh Lasan), an educational order that arrived in Vietnam just after
the French conquest. The Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres ran similar schools for
girls such as the Ecole Saint Paul in Saigon, the Ecole Jeanne d’Arc in huế, and
the Ecole Sainte marie in hanoi. Although Catholic institutions had a central role
in elite education during the colonial era, it is important not to overstate their
influence. taberd, Pellerin, and Puginier enrolled far fewer students than colonial
34 chapter 1
upper primary schools.59 moreover, many students in these schools—at times
more than half—were not Catholic.60
Supporting, quite literally, all of these new churches, schools, hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages, and leper colonies were large new tracts of Catholic land.
The distinctions within the complex category of “Catholic land” are important.
Catholic missions did not have legal ownership of lands belonging to individual
Catholics or common lands belonging to a parish or a congregation. Although
missionaries, as district heads, had some power to dictate how resources from
common lands or individual Catholic contributions should be used, even the most
intrusive did not intervene too directly in local systems for sustaining the clergy,
education, mutual aid, and other collective practices that were in place long before
most missionaries came to the districts they led. however, to avoid some taxes,
missions did register some newly acquired land as the collective property of a congregation under the control of a priest or notable, which meant that some lands
that were not legally “mission lands” in practice remained under mission control.
but by and large, with the exception of property owned by a few politically powerful Catholic landholders, land owned by individual Catholics or congregations did
not suddenly increase after the French conquest.
The same cannot be said for mission-owned lands themselves. Along with growing revenues from Europe, which remained the principal revenue stream in most
mission budgets throughout the colonial era, the expansion and maintenance of
Catholic institutions for education and social welfare would have been impossible
without the large acquisitions of land that French rule allowed missions to make.
here, too, the category of “mission lands” requires complication. Some new mission lands were used to build churches, chapels, presbyteries, schools, hospitals,
dispensaries, and other institutions. These lands thus did not generate revenue. In
fact, the regular upkeep of physical facilities required considerable expenditure.
most missions offset these costs in several ways. one was through colonial tax
exemptions, which mission lands that did not generate revenues often received.
Another way they offset costs was through local labor. Especially in rural areas, it
was common for a Catholic school, hospital, or orphanage to have attached to it
small tracts of land, farmed by local supporters of the Church, to help support its
activities. much of this labor fell to Catholic personnel and able-bodied members
of the community. Small children and the sick typically did not work, although
older children and the least infirm often did. In essence, this type of land operated
much like common village land did, and it served a similar purpose. It rarely produced revenues above subsistence levels, and the institutions to which such lands
were attached often needed supplemental financial support to operate. These lands
did generate revenues if missions sold them, which they sometimes did to address
a deficit or when land prices were high. The latter was not uncommon in cities,
where land values rose considerably during the colonial era.
between the Nguyễn and the French 35
other “mission lands” were devoted to generating revenue. Primarily rural
lands that were farmed by both Catholics and non-Catholics under rent or sharecropping agreements, these lands were devoted to the production and sale of commodities such as rice, salt, or timber, although the hanoi and the Saigon missions
also earned some money from renting mission-owned buildings. Although the
sale of products from common lands to support religious life and community
was not a missionary innovation, it is undeniable that the French conquest gave
Catholic missions an unprecedented opportunity to increase their local capital. It
is also clear that because missionaries and bishops often set the terms of rent or
sharecropping agreements and decided how their proceeds would be used, these
lands were a principal source of the growing European control over many aspects
of Catholic life in the colonial era. The amount of revenue that mission lands generated—indeed, even how much land missions owned—is a crucial issue, but it
is very difficult to ascertain. Even colonial officials were often unable to provide
a rough estimate of mission holdings well after the consolidation of the French
bureaucracy. This was so primarily for two reasons: missions often registered their
land acquisitions in the name of an individual missionary to facilitate transactions
and ensure a more favorable tax status, and provincial officials resisted efforts to
assess mission lands out of fear of social unrest.61 The declared value of these lands
in 1939 was 5.2 million piasters, but this reported figure is probably too low and it
does not reveal annual revenues.62
Few things in the history of Catholicism in Vietnam are as polemical as the
issue of mission lands in the colonial era. Critics of missions often charged that
missionaries controlled vast territories, hoarded boundless riches, and let Catholics live off the fat of other people’s work. In 1924, a young hồ Chí minh railed
against the “bribery, fraud, and coercion” of mission land practices, their ties to
international capital, their legal protectors in the colonial administration, and the
burdens they imposed on peasants through rents and in-kind payments.63 missionaries, on the other hand, bemoaned the abject povery of their communities
and constantly appealed for donations to bring their missions back from the brink
of disaster. The categorical differences in these positions are not only ideological
but also regional and historical. A systematic assessment of mission lands and
their returns during the colonial era is beyond this study, but even a brief survey
of mission finances reveals the enormous variance between missions and over
time.64
In general, missions in Cochinchina and lower Annam drew a greater part of
their annual revenues from land not only because land in these regions was more
arable, but also because the French conquest allowed missions to purchase land at
rock-bottom prices or simply to be given huge swaths of “uninhabited” land in the
1860s and 1870s. As an apostolic envoy describing the Saigon mission in 1923 put
it, the result was “lands, cultivated by missionaries, that have acquired a value that
36 chapter 1
can reach a thousand times the price of purchase.”65 The Qui nhơn mission also
benefited, if not nearly as much as Saigon. For both missions, in some years revenues generated by new lands made up the majority of their budgets, which allowed
them to build facilities that other missions could not afford. however, a more decentralized system of resource sharing in Catholic communities in Cochinchina
meant that new wealth affected only some parishes, while others remained quite
poor. In Annam and tonkin, denser populations, common land regimes, and the
mixed legal system made mission land acquisitions much smaller than in Cochinchina, even if some missions—notably the hanoi mission—undoubtedly benefited. by the French conquest of tonkin in the 1880s, some colonial officials were
also quite hostile to missions buying land and tried to prevent it. In missions in
northern Annam and tonkin, revenues from land rarely made up more than 10 to
20 percent of annual budgets, and often it was less for missions in regions where
land was less arable. most missions thus depended on sources other than local
lands for a large portion—usually 60 to 90 percent—of their annual revenues.
External revenues from France and rome, local revenues from land and other
enterprises, private contributions, and the interest these funds generated were thus
the principal sources of mission income. Contrary to popular assumption then
and now, direct financial support from the colonial administration was a marginal
part of mission budgets. Virtually all such assistance went to support the small
number of elite Catholic schools that trained colonial administrators, as well as
to a few large welfare and public health institutions in cities. In short, colonial
officials did not financially support Catholic missions per se as much as they supported Catholic educational and public health institutions that colonial officials
felt were necessary to supplement their own often-skeletal infrastructure. That
said, although direct financial assistance from the colonial administration was
quite small, the widespread sale and cession of lands just after the French conquest
and tax exemptions remained an important part of the foundation for mission
institutional expansion in the colonial era.
For all the capital that missions generated or brought in from external sources,
the new institutional network they built and managed was also very expensive.
The principal expenses for missions were personnel (notably missionaries, whose
annual stipend could be as much as thirty times that of a local priest), the construction and maintenance of churches and other buildings, and the operating
costs of schools, seminaries, and other institutions. The overall strength of mission
finances varied from place to place, but, generally speaking, the period from the
1890s through the 1920s was one of financial strength for missions. In this era, the
strength of mission organizations in Europe and the growth of local landholdings
increased revenue to an extent that allowed for a remarkable degree of institutional expansion. but because of the expenses of such projects, even the richest
missions rarely ended a year with a large surplus, and some ended the year with a
between the Nguyễn and the French 37
shortfall even in strong economic times. These missions usually received extra aid
from the oPF or rome, or they took out a private loan.
mission budgets changed in the late colonial era in several respects. Contributions from French sources decreased after 1922, when Propaganda Fide assumed
control of both the oPF and Sainte-Enfance. Although rome made up the difference for much of the 1920s, external revenues tended to level off during this decade. As this came at a time of ongoing expansion and reform of educational and
social welfare infrastructure (much of this urged or even decreed by rome), most
missions had fewer surpluses than they did before the First World War. The global
strength of the Indochinese piaster during the 1920s was a double-edged sword
for missions. Although it increased the value of mission agricultural products, it
decreased the value of European contributions, which came in French francs. The
missions, like most other enterprises in Indochina, were crushed by the depression
of the 1930s. First, the crisis wiped out the price of products on which all missions
depended to a certain degree. missions in Cochinchina were hit particularly hard:
in 1934, the bishop of Saigon estimated that the value of the mission’s lands was just
one-third of what it had been three years before.66 Second, support from the Vatican and other European sources also collapsed: also in 1934, the bishop of hanoi
noted that the funds his mission received from Propaganda Fide were 40 percent
of what they had been four years earlier.67 many missions in the 1930s experienced
serious deficits. The crisis in mission finances not only scaled back institutional
growth in the late colonial era, but it also became an important argument in favor
of a transition to local clergy, which helped to offset a major line item from mission budgets.
mISSIonArIES And thE rISE oF FrEnCh
C oLonIALISm In VIEtnAm
In 1841, the director of the mEP seminary in Paris wrote a letter to the French king
Louis Philippe about the difficult position of French missionaries in the nguyễn
kingdom since minh mạng’s edicts against Catholics in 1833. he spared no details, recounting stories of missionaries being strangled, decapitated, and hacked
to pieces. Appealing to the king’s “interest in the progress of religion and civilization,” he urged Louis Philippe to “employ the proper means to protect them from
these unjust vexations.”68 In 1843, the king authorized French naval divisions, already in Asia to protect French economic interests in the wake of the First opium
War (1839–42), to protect missionaries from anti-Christian activity sweeping the
region. Thereafter, French naval officers began to include religious freedom for
missionaries and Vietnamese Catholics as part of their growing demands on the
nguyễn court to end limits on French commercial activity in the kingdom. In
march 1847, a French ship under the command of Admiral rigault de Genouilly
38 chapter 1
entered Đà nẵng harbor. The nguyễn court deployed warships in response, which
the French then sank. It was the first direct military act by a Western power in
Vietnam.
The bombardment at Đà nẵng was the first of many intersections between
missionary activities and the extension of French military and political influence
from the 1840s until 1884, when the peace treaty ending the Sino-French War gave
France de jure control over the three regions of Vietnam. For many missionaries
who came to Vietnam in this era, the Church’s revival as a force in French society
and politics was inseparable from France’s growth as an imperial power; the missionary quest to convert now seemed part of the mission civilisatrice, or “civilizing mission,” driving French colonial expansion. The nineteenth century thus was
a time when many missionaries came to believe not only that Catholicism was
superior to other faiths, but also that France was superior to other nations. most
important, many came to believe that political and military intervention in the affairs of other nations was a legitimate means to achieve spiritual ends.
but even during the strongest moments of missionary nationalism, the civilizing missions of Church and state were never one and the same. Unlike most
explorers, traders, geographers, businessmen, and politicians, missionaries understood the idea of French civilization as involving religion as much as race. to
most missionaries, religious difference was as important as the perceived biological differences between Europeans and the rest of the world. They believed that the
“savagery” of non-Europeans could largely be transformed through conversion,
and that Europe’s status as the torchbearer of world civilization depended on it remaining the center of Catholic civilization.69 And especially later in the nineteenth
century, it seemed to many missionaries that the secular French Third republic
was doing its best to remove religion from public life both in France and abroad.
As the bishop of Saigon wrote to the pope in 1895, “European civilization is rapidly
invading the world, and changing or erasing the morals and social and religious
customs of indigenous people. The Christian religion is the unique remedy, the
only means capable of saving these people, of protecting them against corruption
and decadence, of raising them to a more perfect intellectual and moral level, and
of forming them in a well-ordered society.”70 The bishop’s words captured the feeling of many missionaries that French colonization was as much of a threat as a
boon to the missionary enterprise.
The era from the 1830s to the conquest of Cochinchina, however, was a time
of strong ties between Church and state in France, most notably during the July
monarchy (1830–48) and the Second Empire (1852–70). It was also an era when
growing industrialization and competition with britain led many French business
and political elites to believe in the need to expand French influence in Asia. It
was, finally, a time when missionary expansion and the new ideological and bureaucratic imperatives of the nguyễn state collided and erupted into open conflict,
between the Nguyễn and the French 39
as Catholic involvement in anti-nguyễn movements resulted in widespread antiCatholic edicts and violence. together, this led to what Pierre brocheux and daniel
hémery describe as “an inextinguishable conflict . . . between the imperial power,
the dynasty, and the missions.”71 The conflict lasted the better part of a half century,
during which it would change in important ways: as brocheux and hémery note,
“undoubtedly, it is necessary to avoid a mechanical identification of the Church
with colonial imperialism. The missionaries working in dai nam were in fact far
more reserved than has generally been admitted regarding the French expansion
after 1870. but earlier this was hardly the case.”72 Indeed, in the 1840s and 1850s
mEP missionaries reponded to worsening conditions for Catholics in Vietnam
with an active campaign for French intervention that became an important force
behind France’s conquest of Cochinchina.
The French revolution of 1848 placed a hold on France’s growing naval presence in Asia, and it was not until the early 1850s that missionary appeals to end
anti-Catholic violence came to overlap with the idea of commercial expansion in
the minds of French policy makers. Just after the consolidation of the pro-Catholic
Second Empire in 1852, eight French bishops in Asia wrote to the new French
head of state, napoleon III, to demand an intervention against the nguyễn. In
1857, after another attempt to address religious and commercial issues through
diplomacy ended with another bombardment of Đà nẵng, two mEP bishops renewed their appeal, and a Lazarist missionary named Abbé huc met in person
with napoleon III to do the same. These appeals were controversial within the
mEP; dominique Lefèbvre, bishop of West Cochinchina, had just denounced the
involvement of some of his colleagues in French politics, and some missionaries
were concerned that intervention would worsen the plight of local Catholics.73 napoleon III was concerned about missionary safety, primarily because he was well
aware of the importance of Catholic political support to his rule. The bishop of
north Cochinchina, François Pellerin, made the connection explicit in a meeting
with napoleon III, as well as during an intense publicity campaign that involved a
sermon at notre dame and editorials in the pro-Catholic paper L’Univers, whose
editor wrote a book arguing that it was vital to France’s national interest to protect
missionaries in Asia.74 Pellerin’s entreaties were a major factor in napoleon III’s decision to authorize the French navy to intervene against the nguyễn, which he did
against the opinion of several advisors. In August 1858, accompanied by a small
force of Spanish troops and the triumphant Pellerin, the French fleet once again
entered Đà nẵng harbor.
The next four years of war, which ended with a peace treaty ceding three provinces in Cochinchina to France, were an early example of the tensions that would
arise between colonial and missionary agendas. The attack of Đà nẵng was a failure; Franco-Spanish forces failed to arouse local support or to make headway inland. This led to a spat between the French admiral de Genouilly and Pellerin, who
40 chapter 1
had assured French officers that local populations, under the yoke of the nguyễn,
would welcome the French as liberators.75 Pellerin, for his part, was furious at de
Genouilly’s decision to turn south after the failed attack on Đà nẵng instead of
moving northward into the Catholic heartland of tonkin. relations between the
missionary and naval officers grew so bad that Pellerin was forced to leave the
expedition for the mEP seminary in Penang, where he died in 1862.76 The FrancoSpanish invasion of Cochinchina was far more successful thanks to the Europeans’
technological advantage, an effective blockade to limit rice flows to central Vietnam, and a rebellion in tonkin that weakened nguyễn military efforts.77 Although
the role of Vietnamese Catholic populations in the Franco-Spanish conquest of
1862 is debated, it is clear that missionaries did not have a determinative role in
recruiting or coordinating local support for French forces, Catholic or otherwise.
Indeed, there were but four missionaries in the Saigon mission in 1858 and twelve
in 1862, most of whom had fled there for protection.78
In July of 1862, a peace treaty between the French, the Spanish, and the nguyễn
ceded Gia Định (Saigon), mỹ Tho, and biên hòa provinces to France, granted
freedom of worship for Catholics, and enabled the free movement of missionaries
throughout the nguyễn kingdom. French naval influence extended further into
Cochinchina with the annexation of the thinly populated provinces of Vĩnh Long,
Châu Đốc, and hà tiên in 1867. during the “rule of the admirals” era in Cochinchina before the establishment of a civil administration in 1879, missionaries and
naval authorities had closer ties than at any time under French civil authority.
most naval officers were strongly pro-Catholic, and the minister of colonies Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat believed that France should facilitate Christianization
in Cochinchina as a political strategy.79 moreover, the navy had no educational or
social welfare institutions, and cooperation with missionaries to this end seemed
logical. For much of the 1860s, the French naval administration paid the salaries
of missionaries and some Vietnamese priests and catechists and teachers in parish
schools; it supported the upkeep of the Saigon seminary and churches in the region, both existing and new; and it supported new Catholic orphanages, hospitals,
dispensaries, and leper colonies. most important for naval authorities were the
Collège d’Adran and the Institut taberd, which trained many of the first Vietnamese interpreters and colonial administrators.80
Frictions grew quickly even in this moment of close missionary-colonial cooperation. The 1862 treaty deeply disappointed many missionaries, as it prevented
them from owning land or preaching in public anywhere outside the three French
provinces and it did not put an end to what they saw as overly severe surveillance,
taxation, and censuses in the nguyễn kingdom.81 “If our religion is annihilated
in this country,” wrote an mEP bishop at the time, “it will be due more to foreign interventions than to the natural hatred of the indigenous government.”82 The
French navy’s immediate need for local personnel was another issue, as French
between the Nguyễn and the French 41
officials induced many of the best priests and catechists to leave the mission to
work as interpreters and officials. missionaries were also critical of the morality
of French officials; one bemoaned the “Protestant, apostate, masonic senior commander” he lived under and complained that French officers spent Sundays chasing local women instead of going to church.83 Educational cooperation also frayed
quickly: in 1872, a missionary named Lizé protested that a French school in mỹ
Tho, one of a growing number in the colony, taught no Catholic content and that
its director lived with an unmarried concubine.84 naval officials in turn criticized
mission schools for not teaching French, which many naval officials advocated. In
1881, the Colonial Council ended an annual general subsidy of 174,000 francs for
mEP schools in the Saigon mission. This did not end colonial support for mission
schools, but from that point on subsidies were tied to particular schools and activities.85 And as the French presence in Cochinchina grew, more officials came to feel
that privileging a small religious minority would harm French influence.
As brocheux and hémery suggest, the relationship between missionaries and
French officials became more ambiguous as France’s influence spread north into
the Catholic heartland of tonkin. In 1873, a young captain named Francis Garnier
invaded tonkin in an attempt to extend French economic interests. The invasion
was largely a local initiative of officials in Cochinchina, most notably the French
admiral dupré, who sought to counter nguyễn calls for the retrocession of Cochinchina by extending French influence closer to the mercantile holy grail of China.
Catholic issues played a very different role in the Garnier invasion than they had
in the invasion of Cochinchina. The invasion was unpopular with a French population recovering from a devastating defeat to Prussia in 1871 and largely uninterested in colonial adventures, and the Catholic press in France made little effort to
turn it into a cause célèbre. Unlike many naval officials in the 1850s, Garnier and
dupré cared little about the situation of missionaries and Vietnamese Catholics,
although the captain and the admiral used the prospect of Catholic support to
try to sell the invasion to skeptical superiors in Paris.86 Garnier and dupré also
dangled the idea of religious liberty to sell the invasion to French missionaries in
tonkin. This brought them a number of allies among mEP missionaries, notably
Paul-François Puginier, bishop of hanoi, who urged them to invade and pledged
local support.87 Puginier remained an active supporter of French action in tonkin
until his death in 1892, especially in the 1870s, when he was a principal source
of information and local support for French economic expeditions and Garnier’s
invasion, and he remains the most famous symbol of missionary-colonial cooperation during the conquest era. however, it is crucial to understand Puginier’s
efforts to help French influence spread less as a desire for a form of colonial rule
that did not yet exist (indeed, that he never lived to see) than as a means to protect
and extend Catholic communities in an era of widespread repression and violence
against them.
42 chapter 1
As had been the case in the 1850s, Puginier and other supporters of Garnier’s
invasion were not representative of all missionary opinion. Even within the mEP,
some rank-and-file missionaries expressed concerns that French action in tonkin
would only further antagonize the court and local populations.88 Spanish dominicans, who headed the most populous mission in tonkin, were especially critical
of the idea and tried hard to prevent it. Spanish missionaries were less apt to view
French imperialism as in the interest of Catholic missions and were more likely to
view Puginier’s actions as transgressing the boundaries separating the sacred from
the political. Spanish missionaries also explained their refusal to support the invasion with a different interpretation of the local situation: while Puginier focused
on the widespread official and popular violence against Catholics from 1858 to 1862
to encourage the invasions, Spanish missionaries focused instead on the real efforts of nguyễn officials, after signing the 1862 peace treaty, to end violence against
Catholics and reestablish a modus vivendi with the missions.89 missionary opposition, such as it was, was inconsequential: Garnier invaded with a small force and
quickly gained superficial control of much of the red river delta, but his shortlived adventure ended with his head lopped off in a battle outside hanoi’s citadel.
The march 15, 1874, peace treaty ending this conflict, negotiated by French officials who opposed the invasion, recognized French control of Cochinchina, gave
France broader trading rights and a diplomatic presence in Annam and tonkin,
and reaffirmed freedom of worship for Catholics and freedom of movement for
missionaries, even if there were few means of enforcing the Catholic clauses of
the treaty. This became clear right away, as a wave of reprisals against Catholics
killed thousands. Puginier appealed repeatedly for French help, but to no avail.
missionaries and Vietnamese Catholics apparently referred to Paul Philastre, the
lieutenant sent to tonkin to repair diplomatic relations after the Garnier fiasco
who refused to intervene, as Phi La tồ, or Pontius Pilate.90
missionaries played a similarly limited role in the origins of the Sino-French
War, which ended with French protectorates in Annam and tonkin. The roots of
the war lay in the colonial policy of the French republicans who came to power in
1879, who saw overseas expansion as a path to national renewal after the calamity
of the Franco-Prussian War. After 1879, French cabinets pushed the nguyễn court
for broader economic rights in Annam and tonkin, and French forces began to
carry out operations in the red river delta to protect commercial traffic from banditry. The decision of French commander henri rivière to attack the hanoi citadel
in April 1882 led the nguyễn to seek support from the Qing court in China, which
sought to resist further European influence on its borders. In the face of French
military pressure, the nguyễn court agreed to a French protectorate over Annam
and tonkin in August 1883. however, the French continued to fight Qing forces
alongside nguyễn loyalists and a range of other groups until August 1885, when
the Qing recognized the French protectorate and what was left of the Vietnamese
between the Nguyễn and the French 43
resistance retreated into the mountains. much like with the Garnier invasion, missionary support or opposition was an insignificant factor in the decision to go to
war. by the 1880s, the political climate in France was becoming increasingly anticlerical, and the French politicians and members of the public who clamored for
military escalation cared little about the condition of missionaries or Vietnamese
Catholics, which, after a wave of violence after the 1874 treaty had subsided, was
actually much better in Annam and tonkin than it had been for decades.91 moreover, because the war raised critical questions about Franco-Chinese diplomacy,
the role of the legislature in military affairs, and even the nature of France’s accelerating colonial expansion, it became one of the most prominent political issues in
France and left little room for missionary politicking.
missionaries thus were not important factors in the French decision to intervene in tonkin. They were more consequential once these invasions began, mostly
by serving as recruiters of local support, but Catholic support did not determine
the outcome of either conflict. Catholic aid, whether in the form of providing
supplies and intelligence or acting as interpreters and soldiers, was certainly important to Garnier’s military success, fleeting as it was, but most contemporary accounts suggest that Catholics were a minority of those who fought nguyễn forces
alongside the French (not necessarily “for” the French), and that only a few thousand Catholics out of hundreds of thousands in tonkin actually took up arms.92
moreover, the French had a difficult time channeling long-standing political and
social tensions in tonkin, and they came to see a reliance on local forces as harmful to their political and military aims.93 This was one reason henri rivière initially
refused to associate with Catholic forces in the red river delta at the outset of
the Sino-French War. “I have never advised mgr. Puginier to compromise himself
for us,” he wrote, “first because it would cause difficulties; and then, for his own
sake, because the Government of the republic would not fail to let him down . . .
so it is best that they compromise themselves as little as possible for us.”94 For
their part, memories of the Garnier fiasco meant that, in Charles Fourniau’s words,
“Catholic actions were feeble, and Puginier much more discreet” during rivière’s
initial forays around the red river delta.95 however, after Qing forces entered
the conflict, French forces again drew support from some Catholic communities,
many of whom were already mobilized to defend themselves from another wave
of violence that followed the nguyễn court’s capitulation in August 1883.96 As they
had during Garnier’s invasion, some Catholics worked for French forces as coolies, interpreters, and auxiliary fighters, and others provided intelligence.97 Also
as during Garnier’s invasion, local support for the French was neither exclusively
Catholic, nor was it without costs for the French, as in some cases they were forced
to dedicate forces to rearguard positions to defend Catholics.98
In sum, the roles of missionaries in the French conquest of Vietnam and their
responses to it varied tremendously. Some missionaries were among the most
44 chapter 1
ardent supporters of French intervention in Vietnam. This reflected a potent fusion of attitudes about colonial expansion common in late nineteenth-century Europe with missionaries’ personal experiences of years of communitarian violence.
Indeed, some missionaries criticized France for intervening too gradually and for
agreeing to diplomatic arrangements that missionaries felt left Catholics overly
vulnerable to official repression and popular violence. but many missionaries criticized French intervention for different reasons. Spanish missionaries were unaffected by the nationalism that drove many of their mEP counterparts, and many
saw French intervention as a threat to Catholic life. others, French and Spanish
both, had a much better understanding of the local situation and believed that
France’s intervention would radicalize huế’s policies and popular attitudes toward
Catholics, as indeed it did. Finally, many missionaries were becoming concerned
about the secular turn in French politics, and many began to question what form
of “civilization” the Third republic aspired to bring to Vietnam. by the 1880s, missionaries in Cochinchina had firsthand experience of the realities of the mission
civilisatrice, and many did not like what they saw. many of their counterparts in
Annam and tonkin would express similar reservations as the Third republic consolidated its rule in these regions at the turn of the century.
VIEtnAmESE CAthoLICS And thE rISE oF FrEnCh
C oLonIALISm In VIEtnAm
The ascension of the minh mạng emperor to the nguyễn throne in 1820 was a
watershed event in the relationship of Catholics to political authority, as the emperor’s efforts to modernize the imperial bureaucracy and expand nguyễn authority over marginal territories and populations brought him into direct conflict with
Catholic missions. minh mạng’s repression of Catholics was initially but one of a
range of policies meant to increase nguyễn authority over rival groups. The emperor was well aware early on of the power of Western technology and was worried about the rise of European influence in Asia, but his early policies toward
Catholics reflected less a fear of colonial conquest than a concern that the growing
resources in and organization of Catholic life augmented the religion’s threat to the
ideological and institutional consolidation of his regime. his earliest edicts against
Catholicism during the 1820s are thus best seen as a response to the rapid growth
of Catholic missions in Cochinchina, where minh mạng’s own civilizing mission
encountered widespread resistance.99 In 1833, this resistance coalesced and evolved
into a rebellion led by Lê Văn Khôi, a military officer and the adopted son of the
recently deceased Lê Văn duyệt, the powerful viceroy of Gia Định who had good
relations with Catholics. The rebellion, which lasted two years, brought together a
range of minh mạng’s opponents, including Catholics, former convicts who had
lost their status when banished to Cochinchina but now risked regaining it, and
between the Nguyễn and the French 45
Chinese and other ethnic minorities. An mEP missionary, Joseph marchand, participated in the rebellion, but his involvement seems to have been largely incidental.100 The rebellion, which coincided with minh mạng’s growing efforts to observe
and collect information about Western activities in Asia, nevertheless cemented
the link between foreign influence and internal resistance in official thinking. It
also led to a widespread campaign to force Catholics to recant their beliefs and to
imprison or execute priests and missionaries, a campaign that ravaged Catholic
missions until 1841 (fig. 3).
minh mạng’s campaigns against Catholics in the late 1830s, which were often
blunted by the silence and inaction of local officials and populations, reveal a very
different dynamic between Catholics and local society than the one that existed
during and after the French intervention. This should not be taken to mean that
communitarian relations were free of conflict: indeed, the significant bribes that
some missions offered in exchange for protection was probably the greatest incentive for local officials not to report Catholics. nevertheless, a range of other factors
muted official repression. Some officials worried that prosecuting Catholics would
upset local economic and social relations, and some worried that enforcing capital
Figure 3. The execution of
Pierre borie, november 24, 1838
(artist and date unknown). borie
was beatified as a martyr on
may 27, 1900, and canonized a
saint on June 19, 1988. missions
Etrangères de Paris, Salle
des martyrs.
46 chapter 1
punishment would leave them vulnerable to retribution from the victim’s spirit.
This forced minh mạng to carry out an extensive campaign of supervision and
coercion of local officials to achieve what was at best a partial enforcement of the
edicts.101
The 1839 opium War was a stark reminder to the nguyễn of rising Western
influence in the region, but it was not until the 1840s that Catholicism and fear of
colonial intervention began to coincide in the mind of minh mạng’s successor, the
Thiệu trị emperor. French gunboat diplomacy toward the nguyễn kingdom grew
in the 1840s, as French ships seeking economic influence in Asia now intervened
regularly to secure the release of captured missionaries. The French raids at Đà
nẵng in 1847 ended Thiệu trị’s more relaxed policies toward Catholics, and his
successor the tự Đức emperor, who came to power shortly thereafter, issued in the
late 1840s and early 1850s a new wave of edicts against Catholics, including the first
extensive effort to root out Catholics from the imperial bureaucracy.102 Although
tự Đức had more concrete reasons than minh mạng ever did to view Catholics
as a potential pillar of support for foreign invasion, his policies toward them were
also a reaction to deteriorating political and economic conditions in the kingdom.
Indeed, tự Đức’s accession set off a wave of factional rivalries within the court,
which limited the new emperor’s ability to respond to a cholera epidemic, famine,
and growing disorder and resistance in distant regions, all of which drastically
lowered rice production and tax revenues.103
The French attack of Đà nẵng in 1858 and the invasion of Cochinchina in 1859
led to broad and terrible communitarian violence across the nguyễn kingdom.
Unlike in tonkin after Garnier’s invasion, violence against Catholics in Cochinchina was not a response to widespread Catholic support for the invading forces.
most historians, in fact, note the conspicuous absence of Catholic participation in
the Franco-Spanish invasion, although some do claim that Catholics descended
from tonkin to fight at Đà nẵng in 1858.104 nevertheless, the invasion not only
redoubled official edicts against Catholics, but it also ended the tolerance of local
officials, and Catholics became targets of widespread denunciation, arrest, internment, and violence, leading many to flee to remote regions or French-controlled
areas such as Saigon, mỹ Tho, and bà rịa. As nguyễn forces fled the French advance, some massacred Catholics; again, this reflected less an elemental hatred of
the religion than a policy, albeit one applied categorically across diverse communities, of eliminating possible sources of local support. At biên hòa in early 1862,
nguyễn forces torched camps where Catholics were interned; similar incidents in
other towns left thousands dead.105
As the French consolidated their rule in Cochinchina, some Catholics became
strong supporters of the new regime. Perhaps most famous were Pétrus trương
Vĩnh Ký and Paulus huỳnh tịnh Của. Ký and Của, born three years apart in
the mekong delta at the height of minh mạng’s edicts, were brilliant students as
between the Nguyễn and the French 47
youths and went to study at the mEP seminary in Penang, where Ký achieved fluency in more than a dozen languages. both worked for the French after the invasion, Ký as an interpreter and Của as a district chief (đốc phủ sứ), before beginning
careers as intellectuals, Ký as a professor and Của as editor of the first Vietnamese
newspaper, Gia Định Báo. both Ký and Của made enormous contributions to the
development of quốc ngữ through their massive output of articles, translations,
textbooks, and primers, as well as their studies on grammar and linguistics. Their
contributions to modern Vietnamese culture were such that, over time, they have
undergone a considerable revalorization in public history and memory.106 That
said, it is undeniable that both men were sympathetic to the new colonial regime
and that their work was important in helping to train new administrators and for
the diffusion of colonial propaganda.
two other men embody the kinds of opportunities that the new regime offered and that some Catholics pursued. of those Vietnamese who joined Frenchcontrolled military forces, the best-known Catholic is trần bá Lộc, whose
biographer saw his career as a sergeant and colonial official as a response to his
family’s difficulties during the violence of the 1850s.107 Lộc later became infamous
for his repression of resistance movements in tonkin. Among the Catholics who
profited from land redistribution in Cochinchina, the best-known was Lê Phát
Đạt, whose ties to the French resulted in an enormous land concession in the mekong delta. his son Lê Phát An used his wealth to support the Church in Cochinchina throughout the colonial period. Đạt’s secretary, a poor Catholic from
Gò Công named nguyễn hữu hào, later married Đạt’s daughter; their daughter,
nguyễn hữu Thị Lan, would be better known as nam Phương, the last empress
of Vietnam. Apart from famous figures such as these, there were priests and catechists among those who worked as interpreters and administrators after the invasion of Cochinchina.108
but other Catholics responded quite differently to the French conquest of Cochinchina. most famous among them was nguyễn trường tộ. tộ was born in
nghệ An in either 1827 or 1830. he received a classical education by studying with
retired officials and degree holders, but he could not participate in imperial examinations because he was Catholic, and he continued his education with the bishop
of his mission, Jean-denis Gauthier. After the French invasion of Đằ nãng, tộ and
Gauthier fled to hong Kong and Penang to avoid communitarian violence, only
returning in 1861. tộ was an advocate of a reform program for the nguyễn dynasty
that blended Confucian ideas of the state with Western-style legal, administrative,
and technical modernization, a program he outlined in fifteen petitions to the
nguyễn court from 1863 until his death in 1871. These received enough attention
for tự Đức to send tộ on an 1867 diplomatic mission to France, although few of
his reforms were ever put into practice. Although Catholicism was undoubtedly a
factor in tộ’s exposure and openness to Western ideas, this did not translate into a
48 chapter 1
pro-French politics. Even while working as an interpreter for French forces, tộ remained in contact with nguyễn officials about French military planning, and one
of his last acts was to recommend an offensive against French forces in Cochinchina after France’s 1871 defeat by Prussia.109
A similar response came from the influential Vietnamese priest Đặng Đức
tuấn. tuấn, born in 1806 in bình Định province, came from a family of scholars
and officeholders; he took the examinations but he did not attain a degree. Like
tộ, tuấn studied in Penang, and he became a teacher and a scholar of Catholic literature while preparing for the priesthood. he avoided execution in the late 1850s
by serving as an interpreter to the nguyễn court. despite his religion, he objected
to the French invasion, describing it as an act of material self-interest—even while
acknowledging that he would have been compelled to support an invasion by the
Vatican. tuấn was a member of the nguyễn delegation under Phan Thanh Giản
that negotiated the terms of the 1862 peace treaty with France. Afterward, he wrote
several reflections about how the nguyễn court could best defend itself against
France, arguing that anti-Catholicism was socially and politically divisive and favored the rise of French influence. tuấn supported the nguyễn court until his
death in 1874.110
The diverse trajectories of people such as these suggest the difficulties of generalizing about Catholic responses to the rise of French influence in Cochinchina
in the 1850s and 1860s. The well-known biographies of these elite men reveal their
responses to the changes of this era, but it is much more difficult to draw a similar portrait of ordinary Vietnamese Catholics, for whom the invasion of Cochinchina and the rise of colonial rule were often devastating. For most, the French
invasion meant an end to any working relations with local officials and communities, stigmatization, displacement, internment, and often death. many did not
return to their villages after the fighting had ended and instead set upon the task
of rebuilding their lives in new places where unfamiliarity made social stereotypes
more potent. Although French rule mostly ended direct violence against Catholics in Cochinchina and the new regime did support Catholic life in a number
of ways, it was nevertheless a form of foreign rule enforced through oppressive
means. In 1863, one missionary admitted to French officials that “there are certain racial antipathies—quite natural in a conquered people—and which even the
Christian, even certain of our priests, still feel.”111 Some Catholics who had entered
into French service quit soon afterward.112
Although France did not have a permanent presence in Annam and tonkin
until the 1880s, the rise of French rule in Cochinchina had an enormous effect
on Catholics in regions further north. The French invasion not only led to another wave of edicts against Catholics in what now remained of the nguyễn kingdom, but it also led many groups, Catholic and other, to assert or intensify their
grievances against nguyễn rule. much of this “resistance” was little more than an
between the Nguyễn and the French 49
expression of discontent at a worsening economic and security situation. Some,
however, was explicitly political, notably a series of revolts by forces loyal to the Lê
dynasty, overthrown by the tây Sơn a century before, who were still widespread
in tonkin. many Lê loyalists saw the French invasion as their moment to overthrow nguyễn rule and restore the ancient dynasty, and they led a series of revolts
after 1858. A Catholic, Lê duy Phụng, led the most important of these in the early
1860s: twenty thousand soldiers under his command controlled Quảng yên, hải
dương, and nam Định provinces for several years. Lê loyalists were far from the
pro-French agents they have been often made out to be. Phụng did have some
contact with the French (he worked for them as a translator during the attack on
Đà nẵng), but his political ambitions made them wary and they refused to support
his fight against the nguyễn. Without French support Phụng had little chance,
and his rebellion was over by 1864.113 nevertheless, the importance of Catholics
to Phụng’s insurrection was a potent reminder to nguyễn officials that, unlike in
Cochinchina, Catholics in tonkin were a large and organized minority that had
become very critical of nguyễn rule if not openly resistant to it. In tonkin before
1862, this combination of fraying nguyễn rule, Catholic participation in resistance
movements, and the absence of French-controlled areas for Catholics to flee led to
some of the most extensive violence of the conquest era. Laurent burel estimates
that as many as fifty thousand Catholics may have died in tonkin and Annam
between 1857 and 1862; significant regional variance in the violence suggests that
established patterns of local communitarian relations were an important factor in
determining the extent of the violence.114
The 1862 peace treaty, which included a range of protections for Catholics,
brought a considerable shift in relations between the nguyễn government, Catholics, and local populations in Annam and tonkin. After the 1862 treaty, the nguyễn
court largely ended its support for the resistance in Cochinchina and began to
discourage violence against Catholics. This major shift in policy likely did not signify a radical change in the mindset of tự Đức; it was a necessary shift made with
the hope of preventing further French incursions into the nguyễn kingdom and
negotiating the retrocession of Cochinchina, and it is quite likely that some actions against Catholics continued to receive the unofficial support of high-ranking
imperial officials. That said, the nguyễn court after 1862 regularly refused petitions
from local officials requesting that Catholics be arrested or executed, and it regularly punished officials who transgressed the terms of the 1862 treaty.115 opposing
views on Catholic issues in the wake of the French conquest were a major reason
for growing tensions between the nguyễn court and many imperial officials and
notables (often referred to as the Văn Thân, or “scholar-gentry”) and their supporters. In 1864, the candidates for imperial examinations led protests calling for
the execution of Catholics; in 1866, tự Đức put down an armed uprising against
his rule led by critics of the court’s policies toward Catholics and the French; and
50 chapter 1
in 1868, the news of the French conquest of Western Cochinchina led to a flare of
violence against Catholics in communities across Annam and tonkin.116 After the
French conquest of Cochinchina, therefore, tự Đức faced opposition in Annam
and tonkin not only from most Catholics, supporters of the Lê restoration, and
various bandit armies in the tonkin-China borderlands, but he now also faced it
from a growing core of the court’s presumed supporters.
The support that some Catholics in tonkin offered to Francis Garnier’s 1873
invasion must be understood largely as a reaction to the deterioration of communitarian relations and the growth of widespread violence against Catholic communities in the region since 1858. to the extent that Catholic support for Garnier was
political, it reflected as much a tradition of support for a Lê restoration as a hope
for the French conquest of tonkin, which French officials did not seriously consider until after 1879. The intemperate and ill-considered enthusiasm of some mEP
missionaries likely made some Catholics believe that Garnier’s skeletal force of two
hundred was but a precursor to a French invasion; “in not holding back their flock,
whom they had kept for so long in the hope of deliverance by France,” Charles
Fourniau writes, missionaries played a large part in “brutally aggravating the crisis
that had wracked tonkin for a quarter century.”117 For many Catholics, however,
the driving force to participate was probably far more elemental than politics; in
the words of one French officer, “they saw our arrival as marking the hour for revenge and reprisals” for fifteen years of repression, violence, and death.118 In some
cases, missionaries reported that Catholic militias in French-controlled areas attacked defenseless villages: “the wounded were martyred and burned alive, the
pagodas destroyed.”119
Garnier’s short-lived invasion further radicalized the new dynamic between
the nguyễn court, Catholics, and the scholar-gentry movement in tonkin that
had grown after the 1862 treaty. As French and nguyễn officials negotiated the
terms of the 1874 treaty, which was a diplomatic disaster for the nguyễn despite
Garnier’s defeat, critics of the court among the scholar-gentry led a widespread insurrection in lowland tonkin and Upper Annam, primarily in nghệ An, hà tĩnh,
Thanh hóa, and nam Định provinces. The insurrection opposed both tự Đức’s
rule as well as groups seen as having sided with the French during Garnier’s invasion. Catholics were the main targets of the violence. The degree to which violence
against Catholics at this time was spontaneous or coordinated is not entirely clear.
Although most acts clearly happened independently of one another, the breadth
of the violence suggests some degree of planning from the leaders of the insurrection.120 Villages were burned, churches destroyed, and Catholics beheaded,
drowned, or burned to death in a wave of violence until late 1874 that killed several
thousand.121 The nguyễn court moved decisively to suppress the scholar-gentry
rebellion and to end violence against Catholics in order to reestablish its authority, even going so far as to recruit Catholic support in nghệ An, a region where
between the Nguyễn and the French 51
Catholics had not supported Garnier but nevertheless the location of some of the
worst violence.122
In many ways, the position of Catholics after the violence was over was stronger
than it had been in decades. The 1874 treaty affirmed freedom of worship for Catholics and freedom of movement for missionaries, and the nguyễn court continued
by and large to enforce it, again to avoid diplomatic conflict with the French. The
mEP’s presence grew quickly at this time; forty-six missionaries arrived in tonkin
just between 1879 and 1884, and they brought resources to reconstruct communal
life and to expand mission landholdings and social welfare institutions.123 missionaries also used legal protections in the 1874 peace treaty to try to improve the status
of Catholics; they obtained indemnities to cover the recent loss or destruction of
Catholic property, while others claimed tax-free “corporate” status for Catholic
communities. From an 1876 edict that criticized the practice, it is also clear that
missionaries used the treaty to justify intervention in legal cases involving Catholics and to attempt to bypass bureaucratic procedures to demand an audience with
senior officials. The growing material and political power of the Catholic missions
were an important reason for rising conversions in tonkin after 1874.124 It was also
politically devastating for the nguyễn court; it was the principal factor in eroding
allegiance to the dynasty among low-level officials, whose anger toward Catholics
continued to grow.125 French officials, most of whom at this point sought nothing
more than the proper administration of the 1874 treaty, worried that communitarian tensions might harm French economic interests in tonkin; some, in an act of
remarkable hypocrisy, criticized missionaries for flouting nguyễn sovereignty.126
The Sino-French War and the collapse of nguyễn rule in Annam and tonkin
was the final episode in the communitarian polarization of the nguyễn era. As
news spread of rivière’s April 1882 attack on the hanoi citadel, violence against
Catholics broke out in the red river delta, and it worsened after the fall of the
citadels at nam Định and Sơn tây in 1883. The nguyễn court could no longer
effectively intervene against violence, but after 1874 Catholic communities were
much better equipped to organize community defense, and they did so in large
numbers. beginning in 1884, some Catholics also served French forces as interpreters, porters, and irregular forces as well as by providing intelligence, as they
had during Garnier’s invasion. Unlike during Garnier’s invasion, however, much
Catholic mobilization during the Sino-French War was also defensive: by 1884,
even Puginier was rejecting French requests for Catholic support in order to better
organize community defense.127
Perhaps no figure better exemplifies the upheavals of Catholic life in tonkin
from the conquest of Cochinchina to the Sino-French War than the priest trần
Lục, better known as Père Six in French or cụ Sáu in Vietnamese. best known
for building the famous cathedral at Phát diệm, Lục was born in 1825 in ninh
bình. As a young priest he fled to Lạng Sơn in 1858 to avoid the wave of violence
52 chapter 1
that swept tonkin after the French attack on Đà nẵng. he returned to the red
river delta in 1862, first to Thanh hóa and then to Phát diệm, where his ties to
Puginier helped him avoid the fate of many Catholics in less protected areas. The
relative stability and strength of Catholic life in tonkin from late 1874 until the
Sino-French War was clear in Lục’s region, where a high concentration of Catholics meant more missionaries, bigger budgets, and greater influence.128 Lục worked
as an interpreter for Garnier’s forces in 1873 and for rivière’s in 1882, and he also
led a force against the remnants of the scholar-gentry uprising in the late 1880s.
Lục received the French Legion of honor and reaped its benefits, receiving permission from French officials to clear a wide area of lands to cultivate to benefit
his mission. by the 1890s, he had extensive authority over Vietnamese officials in
his district.129
The career trajectories of two other men demonstrate how the rise of French
influence in Annam and tonkin could serve as a path to power for Catholics who
aligned themselves with the French, much as it did in Cochinchina. Vũ Quang
nhạ and trần Đình Lượng, born in 1847 and 1850 in nam Định and Thái bình,
respectively, were among the very few Catholics who managed to obtain positions
as officials in this era, nhạ as a village head (lý trưởng) and Lượng as a minor
official (viên chức nhỏ). both experienced a rapid rise in the bureaucracy in the
1880s due to their roles in helping nguyễn military forces maintain order in their
districts during the French invasion and their ties to powerful pro-French allies
in the court—nhạ, in particular, through his connection to the minister nguyễn
hữu Độ. From 1883 to 1889, nhạ moved up ten grades within the nguyễn bureaucracy, becoming governor of bắc ninh in 1896. Lượng experienced an even more
impressive ascendancy, climbing an astonishing fifteen grades between 1884 and
1895 to become governor of Quảng yên. of course, nhạ’s and Lượng’s careers do
not suggest a direct correlation between religion and political ascendancy in the
era of the French conquest: most officials with similar trajectories were not Catholic. however, their careers do illustrate how alignment with the so-called “party
of peace” helped to bring some elite Catholics to power in the early protectorate
period.130
For ordinary Catholics, however, the rise of French influence in Annam and
tonkin left them only with upended lives and uncertain futures in a society where
many now viewed them with suspicion, if not outright hatred. After tự Đức’s
death in July 1883, the power within the nguyễn court began to shift toward partisans of resistance as capitulation to France became likely. In July 1885, as Qing
forces were withdrawing, the regent tôn Thất Thuyết led an attack on the French
garrison at huế and escaped with the young emperor hàm nghi into the mountains. Thuyết called for a general uprising and for all of the kingdom’s Catholics to
be killed. The resistance, led by imperial officials and supported by broad swaths
of the population, was known as the “Save the King” movement (Cần Vương). It
between the Nguyễn and the French 53
continued throughout the country for years, although material disadvantages and
poor coordination doomed it to failure.
In Annam, a region where the French had virtually no presence and where
Catholics had never collaborated with French forces, almost forty thousand Catholics, a third of all Catholics in the region, were massacred from July to September
1885 during one of the worst paroxysms of communitarian violence in Vietnamese
history. twenty-five thousand were killed in Quảng ngãi and bình Định, and eight
thousand in Quảng trị. most of the survivors tried to flee to the French garrison at
Qui nhơn but many did not survive; those who did lived for months, even years,
on a thin strip of sandy land on the coast outside Qui nhơn, hearing news of
massacres, destroyed churches, and dispersed communities from the refugees who
trickled in. Communities that withstood the violence organized armed resistance;
this limited casualties in some areas and inspired some of the most vivid resistance
narratives in Vietnamese Catholic history. In trà Kiệu in Quảng nam, Catholics
withstood a three-week seige to achieve an improbable victory in September 1885.
For this they thanked the Virgin mary, who had inspired the young to fight while
the old stayed behind and prayed. Catholic accounts claim that Cần Vương leaders reported seeing a lady in white on the top of the church, and that thousands of
children in red and white appeared out of nowhere to join the Catholic counterattack. Catholics reported other sightings of mary at trà Kiệu in the late 1880s, and
in 1898 they built a chapel to mary at the site that later became a pilgrimage site.131
Some Catholics worked directly with French forces during campaigns against the
Cần Vương: they “participated in terrifying reprisals against the intellectual elite
and rebel peasants and provided many coolies to the expeditionary corps,” burning villages and destroying pagodas.132 but by 1885, even self-defense came at a
cost: in Charles Fourniau’s words, “it was only by fighting that Catholics escaped
death, but in doing so they became auxiliaries of the occupying forces and only
further isolated themselves.”133
The terrible massacres of 1885 were a tragic but apt coda to the enormous
changes in Catholic life since the 1830s, a half century in which nguyễn imperial
rule, missionary expansion, and the rise of French influence radicalized communitarian relations and drew new and powerful lines between Catholics and the rest
of society. The consolidation of French rule in the 1890s brought the violence to a
halt, and it gave Catholics more religious freedom than they had enjoyed since the
1830s, perhaps even ever. but Catholic relationships to political authority and local
society would in many ways remain just as complex. The new physical and cultural
barriers between Catholics and others meant that the wounds of communitarian strife healed slowly, if at all. As French priorities shifted from pacification to
administration, and as a secular turn in French politics carried over into colonial
policy, competition and tensions grew between Catholic missions and the new
political authorities in Vietnam. but perhaps the greatest fractures were growing
54 chapter 1
within Catholic life itself. The French conquest led to a wave of new missionaries
to Vietnam from the 1880s until the First World War. Their presence transformed
the structures and culture of religious life and drove deep fissures between members of a shared faith whose differences, by the early twentieth century, had never
been more apparent.
55
2
A Colonial Church divided
In december 1909, a petition from forty-five Catholics from Công Khế in hà
Đông province came to the attention of a local French official. “In the past, our
hamlet was rich,” it read; “after becoming Catholic, we were forced to undertake
heavy burdens. Pagodas and sacred objects belonging to individuals and to the village were taken away to benefit the Church. . . . during the harvest we were forced
to work in the fields. . . . because of such intolerable things, our resources are enormously diminished. We now feel that it was a mistake to have let ourselves be influenced . . . to follow this religion. . . . today, we ask to leave the Catholic religion
to once again become buddhist.” The official told a local missionary, who angrily
responded that it was in fact village Catholics who had been mistreated for years.
he suggested that anti-Catholic village notables had forced people to sign the petition. nevertheless, the French official wrote a circular that promised to examine
the petition’s claims. Under pressure from the local bishop, the official later issued
another circular affirming that the French administration would take mistreatment of Catholics equally seriously. Privately, however, he speculated that claims
of anti-Catholicism in Công Khế were false since he had never heard about it.1
This incident aptly captures the complex place of Catholicism in early colonial
Vietnam. Although the missionary may have exaggerated antagonism toward Catholicism in Công Khế, such antagonism remained rife in the first few decades
after the French conquest. The new physical and social barriers in communitarian relations heightened popular perceptions of Catholicism as a “Western faith”
(đạo phương Tây) as well as Catholic fears of official repression and popular antagonism, a dynamic that, even after the end of violence, continued in a range of
material, legal, and cultural conflicts between Catholics, Vietnamese and French
56 chapter 2
officials, and local populations. The friction between a missionary and a French
official over the incidents in Công Khế also illustrate growing clashes in this era
between Catholic and republican visions of the mission civilisatrice in Vietnam, as
the rise of French rule at a time of powerful political anticlericalism produced regular and often intense conflict between missionaries and French officials. Finally,
the petition’s claims—whether true or not—and the interventions of a missionary
and his bishop in the administrative and judicial processes surrounding the Công
Khế affair illustrate the growing influence of European religious authorities on
Catholic life and on the relations between Vietnamese Catholics, political authority, and local society in this era, making missionaries more dominant than ever in
a Church that now was in many ways as stratified as colonial society itself.
C ommUnItArIAn C onFLICt In
thE EArLy C oLonIAL Er A
The communitarian conflicts of the nguyễn era did not end with the establishment of French rule. Low-level communitarian violence continued for nearly fifteen years after the end of the Sino-French War, largely between Catholics and
various “rebel” groups that continued to challenge French authority. missionary
witnesses to confiscation or destruction of property, kidnapping, and fatal violence against Catholics usually interpreted such acts as rooted in a religious hatred now inseparable from a hatred of French rule. “Whether we like it or not,”
wrote the bishop of Vinh in 1895, “among the pagans, Catholic is synonymous with
friend of the French, and whoever embraces the religion is regarded as an enemy.”2
While missionaries regularly described Catholics as persecuted but stalwart
friends of France to gain official favor, it is certainly true that in the chaos of the
conquest and its aftermath, some violence knew no boundaries and followed no
logic. however, religion was clearly a factor. missionaries reported the destruction
of churches and presbyteries as well as violence toward priests and catechists, acts
that are difficult to interpret as purely material ones. many also noted that older
Catholic communities experienced less violence than newer ones, suggesting a
perception that recent converts to Catholicism had taken advantage of missionary
influence for their personal gain. Indeed, even missionaries acknowledged that a
good number of the wave of converts in tonkin in the early 1890s were probably
seeking protection or privilege from the new ruling authorities.3 many missionaries also observed that Spanish missions experienced less violence than mEP ones,
suggesting that the neutrality or hostility of many Spanish missionaries toward the
French invasion may have affected communitarian relations in dominican areas.4
Although the violence began to wane in the mid-1890s, missionaries continued
to report widespread acts against Catholics for years after. “In the past two years,”
A Colonial Church Divided 57
wrote the bishop of Vinh in 1898, “I don’t think that there is a single group of pagans that has not been the object of calumnious accusations almost immediately
after their request to convert. . . . When an accusation is not enough to obtain
their goal, the pagans mount a second, a third, and so forth until they achieve
the condemnation or the defection of those who, from that point on, they treat as
implacable enemies.”5 reports of “calumnious accusations” included intimidation,
shunning, shaming, public protests, forced apostasies, hexes by sorcerers or other
people with magical potency, theft, vandalism, refusal to lend money or do business, resistance to new religious buildings, and physical violence, often fatal. In
1891, a missionary near huế reported that villagers resisted the presence of a cross
and refused to allow Catholics to say their prayers.6 Another typical missionary
report from 1889 noted that when a local priest and people gathered in a home to
pray, a large and hostile crowd surrounded them, tied up and beat the priest and
the owner of the house, stole their money, and dispersed the people. The missionary approached the local official, who “simply said that these were terrible people
who, in converting, were oppressing their fellow citizens; by the way, he added, we
are in the process of arresting others who have had relations with them.”7
As this account suggests, missionaries believed that when there was popular
antagonism, official antagonism lay behind it. missionaries reserved their deepest
invective for “mandarins,” a term used to refer to the village notables and imperial officials who, in Annam and tonkin, continued to make up a large part of
the state bureaucracy even after the French conquest. The protectorate treaties left
large parts of the imperial state in Annam and tonkin intact, and until the late
1890s, the skeletal French administration grafted onto it focused largely on pacification. Although local officials did not have anything remotely close to a free hand,
French authorities usually avoided involvement in affairs that did not pose a direct
political or military threat. From the viewpoint of many missionaries, many local
officials “thought themselves back in the beautiful days of minh-mang.”8 Indeed,
missionaries believed that although officials could not foment or direct violence as
they once had, they continued to persecute Catholics through official denunciations, groundless arrests and incarcerations, biased legal judgments, and confiscation of property. one described the situation around Vinh in 1897 as follows:
“our enemies have it easy! Under the smallest pretext, accusations rain on our
neophytes. We’re revisiting every little aspect of the past; old affairs, dealt with
for twenty and thirty years, are again brought before the tribunal and eagerly accepted. We cannot do anything without risking being dragged in front of authority
whose representatives, after all that we have done for France, see us as enemies.”9
It is not hard to believe missionary claims that some, and perhaps even many,
nguyễn officials continued to view Catholicism as deviant and subversive, and
other sources confirm this. Some anti-Catholic proclamations from Vietnamese
58 chapter 2
officials made their way to French officials.10 Even in the 1920s, some Vietnamese
officials advocated more strictly applying the nguyễn penal code to control Catholic life more closely.11
Although it is hard to question the existence of widespread communitarian antagonisms in the early colonial era, they were much more complex than missionary sources usually suggest. during the violence that lingered into the mid-1890s,
the relative material prosperity of certain missions, and not Catholicism per se,
likely made them a target. Kidnapping for ransom was widespread at this time,
and missionaries often mobilized important sums to free captured priests or notables.12 because some Catholics continued to work with the French military during
the ongoing pacification, some attacks were simply meant to intimidate or eliminate sources of intelligence and manpower. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, some
missionaries also went on veritable shopping sprees, usually in hong Kong, to buy
weapons for Catholic communities with which to defend themselves.13 Ironically,
these arms themselves became a reason for “rebel” attention.
because missionaries tended to explain antagonism as indicative of an elemental anti-Catholicism, they largely ignored the ways in which they were a major part
of the problem. of course, many missionaries were not overly intrusive or idealistic in their proselytizing. measured, dialogic arguments were common to most
Catholic apologetic texts on buddhism, Confucianism, and ancestral worship.
many missionaries were also circumspect about potential converts. In his treatise
on district administration, an mEP missionary named harmond warned against
conversions by “thieves, opium smokers, drunks, all people who are and will remain incorrigible,” former members of the nguyễn bureaucracy, and “strangers”
who he felt usually only wanted temporary support as they passed through a region.14 many missionaries refused to accept conversions if they viewed them as
taking place under false pretenses.15
That said, missionary behavior in the early colonial era could be extremely
damaging to communitarian relations. many of the new missionaries who flooded
into Vietnam in the 1890s were unfamiliar with local beliefs and expected quick
success, and many saw attempts to prevent conversion everywhere they looked.
“Pagan ceremonies,” wrote a missionary in 1894, “happen next to our churches, in
the midst of a great mass of people, with much ostentation and din. These processions, these festivals, these comedies, are far from profitable to our saintly religion;
they keep our poor pagans in the cult of idols, and they do great damage to some
of our Christians, who don’t always have enough of a spirit of faith to abstain.”16 Especially in light of recent violence, many missionaries believed that they were involved in a ceaseless fight against an inexorable enemy. As one wrote in 1908, “we
missionaries must accept as an ineluctable law of our destiny to provoke conflicts
around us, whereas as messengers of peace, our principal desire is to avoid them.”17
Another wrote of “declaring war on the sorcerers and superstitions,” noting that
A Colonial Church Divided 59
“the struggle will be long.”18 In short, many missionaries felt that communitarian
conflict was inescapable and perhaps even desirable. In this light, it is not surprising that many of their tactics provoked resentment among people who were often
already decidedly tepid about Catholicism. And given the growing number of missionaries and their far greater freedom of movement, these tactics had increasingly
widespread consequences.
Examples abound of the intemperance of missionary behavior in the early colonial era. one missionary fired a gun into a crowded pagoda in his district; four
years later, he was accused of violating a burial ground.19 Another missionary reported going from house to house to knock down sacred objects from altars and
throw them in a river.20 In one incident in 1889, after much of a village in nghệ An
had converted to Catholicism, a missionary burned down two pagodas and confiscated non-Catholic sacred objects. The villagers who had not converted began to
rebuild the pagodas, and some went to the missionary and took back their sacred
objects by force. The missionary, clearly confident that he had acted properly, filed
a complaint with French officials accusing the villagers of theft, but he lost and had
to return the objects and pay an indemnity.21 In a 1923 case from hà nam province
with echoes of poetic justice, a missionary’s ceaseless proselytizing so angered one
man that he burned down the missionary’s house in protest.22 most missionaries
did not try to burn down temples or pagodas, but many did buy them from villages to convert them into churches. many readily admitted that penury and not
piety had prompted the villagers’ “decision” to sell, but this did not change these
missionaries’ decisions to buy.23
because missionaries viewed mandarins as implacable opponents of the missions, they regularly challenged their authority. In the 1880s in nghệ An, missionaries appealed to French authorities to remove several mandarins from their
positions.24 When this did not work (and it usually did not), missionaries tried
other things. Some campaigned French officials to limit mandarins’ access to
Catholic corvée labor and census data.25 Still others found more creative ways to
challenge local authority. In 1923, one missionary sought conversions in hòa bình
province by means of a colorful procession with drums and banners. one local
Vietnamese official arrested some members of the procession, arguing that it had
attracted people under false pretenses by imitating ritual forms usually reserved
for an official touring his area of jurisdiction. Privately, the official also speculated
that some villagers had been offered money to show up.26 Although relations between Catholic communities and local officials undoubtedly were often poor, what
missionaries saw as elemental hatred of Catholics was, in some cases, simply officials trying to do their jobs. one wrote to the French resident in hà Đông in 1902
to complain that a priest was blocking routine inquiries about local services, and
that the priest’s village refused to carry out mandated road repairs and was sheltering a Catholic suspected of a crime.27
60 chapter 2
As the last case suggests, the judicial realm was by far the biggest source of
problems between missionaries and Vietnamese officials. The protectorate treaties
granted Catholic communities broad protection that, in the legal realm, gave làng
đạo considerable autonomy to adjudicate civil conflicts and punish minor infractions internally. by the late nineteenth century, this produced a complex parallel
judicial hierarchy in Catholic areas in Annam and tonkin, starting with conciliation efforts between the heads of families, moving up to notables at the level of
the congregation, parish, and district, and then finally into the realm of clerical
authority (priests, missionaries, and finally the bishop) if conflicts remained unresolved.28 This inevitably led to conflict with civil authorities, most often in two
scenarios: in the tugs-of-war of authority that ambiguous cases generated, and in
legal conflicts between Catholics and non-Catholics. The former situation meant
two things, missionaries and mandarins squabbling over jurisdiction and precedence, while the latter brought missionaries—materially and politically powerful
people—directly into the judicial realm of the state, often with the goal of defending Catholics regardless of the facts of the case. because the relations between clerical authorities and local officials were so often fraught, priests and missionaries
regularly tried to hide and resolve cases that clearly fell outside of their authority
(such as murder)29 to avoid judgments that they felt would be unfair and to protect
the image of the mission with local authorities. This judicial morass helped to keep
precolonial antagonisms very much alive.
Although the growing network of Catholic schools and institutions of social
welfare in Vietnam undoubtedly brought relief to many non-Catholics, these institutions could also cause some serious problems. This was particularly true of
orphanages. Until roughly the First World War, colonial social services for “abandoned” children were largely the domain of French nuns from the Sisters of Saint
Paul of Chartres. nuns claimed only to accept children either abandoned or brought
to them by eager parents, while critics of the Church alleged a vast operation in
kidnapping and child trafficking to find converts.30 Although the latter charge was
certainly hyperbolic, at times nuns did intervene to remove children from what
they saw as morally insalubrious environments, and some of their wards were only
there because their desperate parents had no other choice.31 Church officials also
resisted the removal of children from their care. A 1901 mEP administrative manual for the Saigon mission reveals that Sainte-Enfance funds recompensed people
who left their children at Catholic orphanages, and it urged nuns and missionaries
to demand reimbursement of the cost of housing and food—a virtually impossible
demand—if people attempted to reclaim their children.32
Although missionaries were often at the center of communitarian conflicts in
the early colonial era, some local priests also used their newfound security and
missionary influence as a license to behave badly. missionaries tended to dismiss
popular or official complaints about the local clergy as anti-Catholic, but colonial
A Colonial Church Divided 61
archives contain far too many protests about them to ignore. In 1899, the notables
of a village in Phú Thọ accused a local priest of promising to use missionary influence with colonial authorities to lower village taxes. In exchange, they had to cede
a pagoda and sacred objects. Six years later, their taxes unchanged, the notables
complained to colonial officials.33 In another case from 1912, non-Catholics near
nam Định protested that local priests too often rendered justice instead of local
officials; this case concerned the theft of a cauldron and some pork.34 And in 1899,
a priest in hà nam was reportedly so tyrannical that the better part of a Catholic
parish deconverted.35 Although missionaries virtually always defended the local
clergy in public disputes, privately they sometimes acknowledged that the clergy
were to blame. In 1904, after villagers near Phát diệm complained to French officials about a local catechist, the local bishop admitted privately that the catechist
had indeed committed “slightly imprudent acts,” unspecified, but they were serious enough that the bishop stripped him of his duties.36
one of the most regular sites of communitarian disputes in the early colonial
era was land, particularly in the densely populated red river delta. In religiously
mixed villages in this region, some common lands devoted to support ritual life
were typically set aside for Catholic use. When there was not enough ritual land to
support two ritual communities, certain villages even allotted Catholics a portion
of common lands usually allocated to individuals or families in need. over time,
some of these communities began to treat a portion of village lands as inalienable
Catholic land under a separate legal designation (giáo diền or đạo diền). Although
this practice suggests that allotting common land among communitarian groups
could take place amicably, it is also important to note the possibility of coercion,
especially in the presence of a missionary. Indeed, in tonkin much of this apparently took place after the 1874 peace treaty, at a time when missionaries used new
legal protections for Catholics and the precarious position of the nguyễn court to
obtain indemnities and other concessions.37 Some missionaries at times confiscated land during the colonial era; in 1904 in yên bái, one reportedly seized rice
lands from non-Catholics to build houses for dispossessed Catholics.38
The slowing growth of the Catholic population in parts of tonkin around the
turn of the century led to widespread land conflicts. In some areas, this was due to
slowing conversions; in others, such as around nam Định, it was due to the recent
mass deaths and the outmigration of some remaining Catholics.39 Whatever the
reason, in some villages declining Catholic populations led to a wave of conflicts
over whether Catholic lands were temporary cessions now subject to redistribution based on the number of Catholics in the village, or whether they belonged
to the Catholic community in perpetuity. This often-unclear distinction led to
real problems. In 1906 in a village in hà Đông in which the Catholic population
had declined from twenty-four to five, a conflict emerged over whether three mẫu
(3,600 square meters) of land used by Catholics should be reapportioned to reflect
62 chapter 2
their current presence in the village. The local missionary claimed that all three
mẫu should remain Catholic in perpetuity, but the provincial governor argued that
only one mẫu deserved this designation and that the rest should be reapportioned.
he also noted that in recent years, part of these lands had been cultivated not
by villagers but “by the mission”; this could have meant Catholics cultivating the
land for the benefit of the mission or non-Catholics working under sharecropping
agreements. The case reached the French resident in hà Đông, who could only
suggest lamely that the lands be divided in a manner satisfactory to both parties.40
A 1909 case from the village of Ô mể in hà nam raised similar issues. A generation earlier a wave of conversions had led to twenty-two of thirty-six mẫu of
ritual land granted to the then-dominant Catholic population in the village. At
that time, the village set aside four mẫu as Catholic land in perpetuity. but after a
wave of deconversions in 1905, there were so few Catholics that if all twenty-two
mẫu could legally be reapportioned, most of the four mẫu of perpetual Catholic
land would be. This is what village notables argued and attempted to carry out,
but Catholic villagers protested to local officials. According to an account of the
case by the bishop of hanoi, local Catholics continued to use the land while the
case was being judged. one day some locals, “excited by anger and wine,” beat up
the local priest and tied him to a tree. to the disappointment of the bishop and
local Catholics, officials judging the case not only ruled that all twenty-two mẫu
should be reapportioned, but they interpreted the priest’s actions as provocation
and declined to punish his aggressors.41 These two cases illustrate the problem of
communitarian identity in customary and legal negotiations over land. because
Catholic lands were often in the ambiguous category of common ritual land in origin but “perpetual” Catholic land in recent historical practice, they were a source
of conflict as communitarian identification changed. Legal conflicts over land use
intensified distrust between Catholics and local officials: not only did they give
missionaries ample opportunity to complain to colonial authorities, which could
leave local officials in a difficult position, but they also gave local officials opportunities to dispossess Catholics of land.
For Catholics, however, perhaps the most powerful element of communitarian conflict in the early colonial era was the remembrance of things past. In 1900,
1906, and 1909, the Vatican beatified ninety-two Catholics who had died in communitarian violence in the nineteenth century. Sixteen of them were missionaries (seven mEP and nine Spanish dominican), but seventy-six were Vietnamese,
the first ever to receive such an honor. twenty-five more were beatified in 1951,
and Pope John Paul II canonized all 117 in 1988. For missionaries and Vietnamese
Catholics alike, the beatifications were the ultimate recognition of the experience
and lived memory of communitarian violence. Catholics had long venerated those
killed in religious violence, treating their relics as sacred objects and making the
A Colonial Church Divided 63
martyrs (thánh tử đạo, a term widely used before formal beatification) figures of
devotion. For example, Philippe Phan Văn minh, one of the Catholics beatified in
1900, was killed in Vĩnh Long in 1854. After his death, missionaries gathered testimonies and documents about minh’s death, including his letters, to send to rome
as part of a request for beatification. These accounts and oral histories, which were
passed on for decades, became the basis of a biography of minh published in 1902.42
The beatifications revived memories of communitarian violence and gave martyrs a new presence in Vietnamese Catholic life. This began even before the beatifications, as preparing a case could take years. First, relics needed to be unearthed,
and in some cases found, and then positively identified and conserved. Evidence
supporting the case for beatification next needed to be collected. This meant gathering testimonies taken at the time of the death and from living witnesses of the
event. The bishop of hanoi described how extensive the process could be: “For
years we have transcribed the acts of a group of forty-five servants of God. but
it is hard work, for it requires making multiple copies of eight thousand pages by
hand.”43 Thereafter, missionaries, priests, and notables debated whether a particular case was strong enough to be sent to rome. Finally, a missionary or a bishop set
off with testimony and relics in hand to present the case in person.
Catholics celebrated the beatifications annually throughout Vietnam, from
hanoi and Saigon to small villages. bishops proclaimed a triduum, three days of
prayer that involved “in the early hours of the morning, communion masses; in the
morning, chanted mass with deacons and subdeacons, sermon of the Gospel. Afternoon, solemn vespers of the martyrs. In the evening, a Celebration of the holy
Sacrament, preceded by a second Panegyric in honor of the blessed. Their relics
were exposed on brilliantly illuminated credences day and night.”44 Pastoral letters
with the schedule of the celebrations included brief biographies of the martyrs
and accounts of their deaths. before 1925, martyrs were often honored alongside
Joan of Arc, usually around may 8, when she lifted the siege of orléans, or may 30,
her saint’s day. but in 1925, the newly appointed apostolic delegate to Indochina
decreed the first Sunday in September as a national day of mourning for Vietnam’s
martyrs. Whenever the celebrations were held, missionaries noted higher levels of
participation in ritual life than at nearly any other point during the year.
beatification made martyrs a prominent part of the daily life of Catholics in
other ways. because beatification often involved exhumation, many martyrs were
reburied in new, more prominent tombs (fig. 4). The bishop of Vinh described the
new tombs in his mission as “recalling the little chapels of the French countryside,”
with entryways and altars built out of stone and relics encased in a stone coffin
behind the altar.45 befitting their importance, the tombs were often prominently
located in the cemetery, or near or inside the church or seminary. The bishop of
huế noted that some villages began naming local mutual aid associations after
64 chapter 2
martyrs.46 And as mission printing presses catered to the growing body of literate
Vietnamese Catholics, martyr histories and biographies became a staple of households and schools, making history out of the communitarian violence that, by the
late colonial era, few could personally remember.
In 1928, an article in Sacerdos Indosinensis, a journal devoted to supporting
the local clergy, published a text for priests about how best to act in an encounter
with local officials. It recalled the role of nguyễn officials in communitarian violence and urged readers to be wary of their recent peaceful attitude. The author
urged priests to remind hostile officials that Catholics believed in separating the
worldly and the spiritual realms, that Catholic priests did not involve themselves
in politics, and that lay Catholics lived in ways that benefited all Vietnamese. This
suggests at least that Catholic fears about the attitudes of local populations and
officials persisted long after the French had reduced nguyễn rule to a shell of its
former self. however, the author also suggested that priests emphasize the fact that
Catholicism was not a “Western import” but rather in and of all nations.47 This, a
common defense against claims of colonial complicity, also reflected a new reality
in mission-state relations at the turn of the century, when growing clashes between
Catholics and French authorities in Vietnam had begun to fray the close political
and cultural ties that had emerged during the conquest era.
Figure 4. tomb to Vietnamese
martyrs, tonkin, ca. 1900. From
J. b. Piolet, S.J., Les missions
catholiques françaises au XIXe
siècle, vol. 2, Abyssinie, Inde,
Indochine (Paris: Armand Colin,
[1901–]1903), 481.
A Colonial Church Divided 65
CAthoLIC mISSIonS And C oLonIAL StAtE
In A rEPUbLICAn EmPIrE
on march 10, 1901, a crowd gathered in front of Saigon’s cathedral to unveil a
statue of Pigneau de béhaine, the mEP bishop who had helped Prince nguyễn
Phúc Ánh defeat tây Sơn forces in 1802 (fig. 5). on that day, the French tricolor
and patriotic music honored a Catholic bishop in a ceremony that was nonetheless explicitly republican in character, and colonial officials and missionaries both
saluted “this man of large and fertile ideas who wanted that, in this Far East, the
name of Frenchmen be synonymous with progress, civilization, and true liberty.”48
by casting de béhaine as a part of the expansion of French colonialism in Vietnam, the statue evoked, in James P. daughton’s words, “a bridge between France
and its colonial peoples, between a love of nation and a love of God, and even
between republican civilizing ideals and the goals of Christian charity.”49 but not
all were happy with the statue’s symbolic implications. Indeed, even the proposal
of the statue had led Camille Pâris, a postal administrator and a prominent critic
of Catholic missions, to accuse de béhaine of making Vietnamese hate the French.
ten years later, former governor-general Jean de Lanessan wrote of de béhaine and
his fellow missionaries that “it was the ‘conquering and sovereign cross’ that they
see in their dreams, not France extending its influence in the Far East.”50
The conflict over the statue of Pigneau de béhaine is an apt marker of the complex place of Catholic missions in a colony of the secular Third republic. The
statue itself represented a belief, widespread among many missionaries and French
officials throughout the colonial era, that Catholic missions and colonial rule were
complementary parts of a single French endeavor to bring the benefits of Western
civilization to the less fortunate. As daughton argues, “by reveling in the rhetoric
of imperialism, with its promises of civilizing savages and remaking the world in a
distinctly French image, republican officials and Catholic missionaries smoothed
over the great differences of traditions, ideals, and goals that separated them.”51
however, “the divisive nature of colonialism, with its concerns over budgets and
disagreements about policies, meant that, in practice, missionaries and officials
more often agreed to ignore each other than arrive at any real consensus.”52 Indeed,
powerful ideological differences and competition for influence over the Vietnamese population meant that Catholic missions and the colonial state could often be
each other’s most bitter rivals.
monuments to the union of the Catholic and colonial civilizing missions dotted the landscape of Vietnam. one regular object of such efforts was the Jesuit
missionary Alexander de rhodes, who first came to Vietnam in 1627 and is regularly credited with inventing quốc ngữ. For many missionaries, de rhodes was an
ideal origin myth to tie Vietnamese Catholicism to specifically French origins and
thereby to claim that Catholic missions were essential partners in colonization. on
66 chapter 2
march 19, 1927, the three-hundredth anniversary of de rhodes’s arrival, missions
throughout Vietnam organized ceremonies to celebrate him and invited French
officials to share in the celebrations. The inaugural issue of Sacerdos Indosinensis, the first journal for Vietnamese priests, was published that day to honor de
rhodes’s contributions not only to Vietnamese Catholicism but also to France.53
many outside the missions also saw de rhodes as an early acolyte of colonial influence. The general and scholar Auguste bonifacy wrote that de rhodes, “in serving religion, helped science and civilization progress” and had given France “the
most important role in the Indochinese peninsula.”54 In 1941, a Franco-Vietnamese
committee used state funds to honor de rhodes with a pagoda in hanoi and a
stele incised with a narrative of his life and career. In a speech at the unveiling, one
French official described de rhodes as devoted to “the intellectual union of White
and yellow people” and “the spiritual union of orient and occident.”55
martyrs were another regular focus of narratives of the missionary-colonial
union. on the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the missionary martyr
Théophane Vénard, killed in tonkin in 1861, a large and solemn ceremony cast his
life as an ultimate sacrifice not only for his faith, but also for France’s glory in Vietnam. A missionary named menne told the story of Vénard’s death: “Théophane
Figure 5. Statue of Pigneau
de béhaine and Prince nguyễn
Phúc Cảnh, ca. 1905. From
Missions Catholiques,
April 11, 1902, 183.
A Colonial Church Divided 67
received the first blow. It was only an attempt; the skin was barely broken. The
second strike, better placed, separated the head almost entirely and overturned at
the same time the martyr and the pyre. The executioner, seeing his saber chipped,
took another one and completed his task, after which he grabbed the head by the
ear and held it up to show to the presiding lieutenant colonel.” Vénard’s last words
before the fatal blow of the sword were “If Annam kills me, I will with joy shed my
blood for it.” menne seized upon this last phrase to describe what he saw as the
true meaning of Vénard’s sacrifice. “by the word and by example, and by all the
means that evoke patriotism and faith,” he wrote, “let us love together this dear
Annam by giving her the true Father, Son, and holy Ghost, who make France ‘the
most beautiful kingdom after the kingdom of heaven,’ and who will be no less generous for . . . the Protectorate and our colony in the Far East, which the beneficent
intercession of the blessed Théophane Vénard will always watch over.”56
other cultural projects allowed metropolitan audiences to celebrate missionary
contributions to empire. during the planning of the 1931 colonial exposition in
Vincennes, influential priests and pro-Catholic industrialists and intellectuals lobbied to fund a pavilion to Catholic missions in the French empire. In addition to a
flood of statistics and photos touting the contributions of mission schools, hospitals, and charitable institutions to colonial rule, it included a church where visitors
could attend mass. The grounds also included a bell tower, which was flanked on
all sides by statues representing “the four great human races” (white, black, Asian,
and Latin) and topped with a luminous cross that shone over the exposition. The
exposition hall also contained a crypt to honor the sacrifices of martyrs. For some,
the exposition thus became an occasion to reflect on what one observer called
“the missionary epic,” a story of spiritual conquest inseparable from the spread of
France overseas.57
Individual Vietnamese Catholics also became symbols of Franco-Vietnamese
cultural and political cooperation. Perhaps the best example was trương Vĩnh Ký.
on december 6, 1937, the centennial of Ký’s birth, all colonial schools spent time
teaching about him. on the same day, the governor of Cochinchina, the bishop
of Saigon, and hundreds of guests attended a ceremony at Ký’s birthplace in bến
tre province. Several speeches echoed the words of the local parish priest, who
described Ký as “the premier partisan of Franco-Annamite rapprochement.” “In
evoking the memory of Pétrus Ký,” said one French official, “may we not think
of all those with whom he collaborated, and for whom he was often a friend and
confidant—sailors, soldiers, administrators, merchants, priests, and all who wrote
the first magnificent pages of the history of France in Asia.”58 At a speech at the
royal Palace in huế, the intellectual nguyễn tiến Lãng argued that Ký’s “Western”
faith drove his “respect of authority and order” and drove his quest for “a revitalized Annam where a Franco-Annamite culture that was a synthesis of common
ideals could flourish.”59 The priest trần Lục (Père Six), who had close ties to French
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authority during the conquest of tonkin, was another regular symbol of FrancoVietnamese cooperation. As Armand olichon, the head of the Union missionnaire du Clergé de France, wrote in 1941, “At the moment when colonial problems
are so present, it is useful to meditate on the lessons of the life of P. Six. If it is true
that the politics of the future, in all civilized nations, is a politics of association,
how could it not be in our interest to invoke and make use of collaborators as valuable as the priest of Phat diem?”60
representations such as these, although idealized and often hyperbolic, nevertheless illustrate the real ties between Catholic missions and French rule in Vietnam. Indeed, despite frictions between mission and French authorities that were
present from the beginning, many missionaries and some Vietnamese Catholics
continued to consider France a savior throughout the colonial era. French officials
rewarded the devotion of some of these Catholics with the Legion of honor, the
highest honor of the republic. Although few French officials ever took the risk of
defending Catholic missions too passionately, a mixture of sympathy and pragmatism made most of them generally accepting of their presence. high-level colonial officials tended to favor long-term relationships over a particular source
of friction. bishops, who were concerned with defending mission influence in a
time of growing state power, were similarly apt to turn the other cheek. missions
undoubtedly benefited from a few vocal official supporters, such as Ernest outrey,
deputy to Cochinchina in the French national Assembly from 1911 to 1936 and a
stalwart defender of the missions in his communications with colonial officials, in
the press, and even in the Chamber of deputies in Paris. moments of pride or crisis such as national holidays, the outbreak of World War I, the assassination of the
French president Paul doumer (a former governor-general), or the rural uprisings
in 1930–31 also strengthened relations, as did the masses, public ceremonies, and
social functions that were a regular part of colonial life.
Although the enormous expansion of the missionary presence at the end of the
nineteenth century would have been unimaginable without colonization, Catholic
educational, social, and medical institutions also undoubtedly helped colonization function. Accordingly, colonial officials continued to support some of these
institutions well after the growth of the colonial state’s own infrastructure. most
notable of these were the Catholic upper primary schools, important gateways into
the world of the colonial elite. In 1893, the bishop of Saigon wrote with satisfaction about students at the Institut taberd, who “easily passed their exams and then
obtained places in the administration or in business.”61 more modest dispensaries,
orphanages, and leper colonies also received some support, although often for different reasons: one French official estimated that “missionaries ran these facilities
ten times more cheaply than the colony could” and that “even if the administration
could afford to replace missionary workers with lay ones, ‘particularly repulsive’
jobs . . . would be hard to fill.”62 missions received other material benefits from
A Colonial Church Divided 69
colonial authorities. books, bells, statues, amulets, rosaries, chalices, communion
wine, and other imports often received tax exemptions. missionaries sometimes
received reduced fares on state-run trains or passenger ships.63 In times of flooding
or famine, colonial officials sometimes facilitated subventions for disaster relief
and granted concessions from state-owned land.
to focus too closely on connections such as these, however, obscures the many
things that not only separated Catholic missions and the colonial state but also put
the two very much at odds with one another. one of the earliest examples of this
after the French conquest came in 1888, when a French adventurer named Charlesdavid de mayréna proclaimed himself king of the Sedang, an ethnic minority in
the central highlands. mayréna was briefly a concern for colonial officials when he
threatened to turn to britain or Germany if France did not recognize his authority, but his money soon ran out and he left “his people” for another adventure,
dying soon after in malaysia. Although mayréna’s kingdom was short-lived, it had
lasting consequences for mission-state relations. missionaries served mayréna as
guides and interpreters, and despite their claim that they believed mayréna acted
with official sanction, many French officials felt that the mEP had used mayréna
to resist the spread of colonial influence in the region. missionaries, for their part,
felt that French claims about improving security and economic development were
only cover for an effort to expel the mEP from the region. The mayréna affair, one
of the earliest causes célèbres in colonial Indochina, prompted a flurry of antimission articles in the colonial press and led to a more systemic assessment by the new
administration of missionary influence in remote areas.64
As this episode suggests, the competition between mission building and state
building after the consolidation of French rule quickly superseded the ties between colonial officials and missionaries forged in their common struggle against
the nguyễn court. Although French officials had once welcomed missionary activism, which had helped weaken the nguyễn and had provided France with intelligence and manpower during the wars of conquest, missionaries now caused
problems by alienating Vietnamese Catholics with their growing presence and
heavy-handedness, by dragging colonial officials into judicial conflicts, and by
resisting French economic and political expansion. As French officials exerted
more control over land, this too became a problem, usually when French officials
refused to approve the sale of land or ruled against Catholics in a dispute. For example, one missionary protested the French seizure of a plot of land belonging to a
corrupt village mayor on the grounds that the mayor had already sold the mission
a portion of the lands.65 Colonial officials, to their displeasure, continued to have
to intervene to protect missionaries, as in 1926, when French officials had to protect two missionaries in Cao bằng after they reportedly razed a local mayor’s house
and tore out his sugarcane plants in an effort to collect on a debt.66 Some conflicts
grew over the most mundane issues. In 1924, a missionary became embroiled with
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French officials over, of all things, the angle of a turn in a road that the colonial
state had built through one Catholic village—the missionary deemed it too dangerous.67 Elsewhere, French officials refused a request to build a church because it
would be too close to a new airfield.68
Just as many French officials in the early colonial era saw missions as a challenge to their authority, many missionaries criticized French rule. This had been
true even in the 1860s and 1870s in Cochinchina, the era of closest cooperation
between missions and French officials, and relations quickly worsened after their
common enemies had been vanquished. missionaries were devastated at French
indifference to the last and worst wave of violence during the Sino-French War,
when public disinterest in anguished missionary appeals for intervention stood in
stark contrast to the support for Catholics during the French invasion of Cochinchina a generation earlier. but missionaries reserved their greatest anger for the
military and naval officials who had done little to stop violence against Catholics
in 1885, when about forty thousand Catholics were killed. Although missionaries
often overstated what the French could have done to prevent these deaths, military and naval officials were at times either unwilling to intervene or plainly unsympathetic. General de Courcy, despite being a staunch Catholic himself, stated
that Vietnamese Catholics “had considered themselves to be the masters of the
country after the fall of hue, and thus had put pagan villages in a terrible position”; his seizure of the bình Định citadel was the only French action during the
summer of 1885 in an area where tens of thousands of Catholics died.69 In 1886,
the French disarmed some Catholic parishes before their safety had been assured,
which missionaries protested.70 And in the 1890s, ongoing missionary efforts to
arm Catholics annoyed French officials trying to limit the flow of weapons into
the country.71
missionaries were also furious at the French decision to keep many nguyễn officials—many of whom had sanctioned or even organized violence against Catholics during the conquest—in power in Annam and tonkin. This was true even
of Paul-François Puginier, the most stalwart missionary defender of French rule.
In 1890, Puginier enjoined prominent French Catholics to urge colonial officials
to further dismantle the nguyễn state apparatus. Puginier, like virtually all missionaries, believed that mandarins were abusive of their power, unwilling to curb
violence, and biased in their administration of justice. Puginier also believed that
French officials, inexperienced, ignorant of local life, and unwilling to become involved in local conflicts, allowed abuses by mandarins to continue unchecked.72
Puginier was right that many French officials tended to see religion as a simple
issue of personal preference and were often reluctant to intervene in communitarian conflicts. however, since many Catholics interpreted unfavorable judgments
from local officials or friction with nearby communities as anti-Catholic acts, they
often concluded that colonial “inaction” was a form of complicity. And, beginning
A Colonial Church Divided 71
in the 1890s, ideological shifts in French politics and society seemed to confirm
missionaries’ worst fears. As the bishop of Saigon wrote in 1893, “French Christians, far from preaching the excellence of their religion, are the first to denigrate
it, to make fun of it, and even at times to impede those who teach it and observe
it faithfully.”73
The bishop’s comment reveals another powerful element in mission-state conflicts in colonial Vietnam. James P. daughton has shown how in the generation
before World War I, growing Church-state conflicts in France profoundly shaped
interactions between missions and colonial administrations throughout the French
empire. The republicans who came to power in France during the 1880s thought of
the Catholic Church as, in ralph Gibson’s words, “a State within a State,” a bastion
of superstition, ignorance and intolerance, a leadership that accepted no authority
other than God, and an institution that intruded on the work of the government.74
From then until about World War I, a bitter political struggle between Church and
state ultimately limited the Church’s role in public education, required religious
associations to be authorized by the state, ended state subventions of the Church,
and made Church property into state property.75 many of the French officials and
colons streaming into Vietnam in the late nineteenth century saw Catholic missions as a moral and institutional threat to the republic’s colony. As a result, for
many Catholics in Vietnam during this era, the greatest threat to their religion
seemed to be France itself.
Calls to limit the Church’s influence in Vietnam began to grow in the 1890s.
many came from the growing network of masonic lodges, whose ranks included
many colonial officials who filled the pages of newspapers such as Le Courrier
d’Haiphong, L’Indépendance Tonkinoise, and Le Mékong, whose publishers and
editors were masons, with articles criticizing Catholic missions. much like in
France, anticlerical critiques of Catholic missions in Vietnam ranged from fair
and measured criticisms to conspiracy theories often meant as little other than
provocation. most began with the premise that missionaries were agents of the
Vatican with at best divided loyalties to France. Their tepid or false patriotism,
combined with their zeal and intolerance, made them a force for discord with no
regard for political or social stability, men who would murder, torture, enslave,
and kidnap to advance their cause. missionaries, so such criticisms went, obstructed economic development in the colony, enriched themselves on local labor,
and used their power to force conversions and subvert French influence. Camille
Pâris spoke for many when he described Catholic schools as a tool for missions to
keep “the Annamite in ignorance and the French in error” and “to infinitely retard
the moral junction of these two peoples, which can only be accomplished outside
of all religion.”76 Although anticlericalism and colonial policy were far from one
and the same, many French officials did believe that colonial rule should not depend on missionary institutions. many also felt, often with reason and without
72 chapter 2
any anticlerical animus, that missionaries could have destabilizing effects in local
communities.
Apart from a generally dim fin-de-siècle view of the Catholic Church, anticlerical voices expressed numerous specific concerns about missions. Perhaps the biggest was that the missions were not fully French, which to many seemed to mock
missionary claims to be acting in France’s interest. As Camille Pâris wrote, “whomever they are and wherever they come from, they are all devoted only to rome.”77
Few officials were this categorical, but many remained suspicious that foreigners
might use the cover of Catholic missions to increase their own nation’s influence
in a French colony. The biggest concern were Spanish dominicans, who made up
about a fifth of all missionaries in Vietnam and administered bùi Chu, Vietnam’s
most populated mission, until it came under Vietnamese direction in 1935. many
French officials resented the widespread Spanish missionary opposition to the
French conquest. Spanish missions were also likely the largest non-French foreign
landholders in colonial Vietnam—in nam Định province alone Spanish missions
owned more than eleven hundred mẫu of land—and the ambiguous legal status of
Spanish properties made many officials uneasy.78 Spanish missionaries were well
aware that national difference was a source of distrust, and many tried to blur the
gap between themselves and the French. In 1914, the bishop of bùi Chu waged a
personal campaign to receive the Legion of honor, which elicited mixed responses
from French officials.79
The bishop was not simply being vain, for good relations with French officials
helped stem fallout from the regular incidents that often arose in Spanish missions. Some Spanish missionaries continued to denounce the French conquest in
the Spanish-language press in Europe and the Philippines well into the twentieth century.80 In the 1890s and 1900s, the French also worried about ties between
Catholics in dominican missions and hoàng hoa Thám, also known as Đề Thám,
a powerful anti-French leader in northeastern tonkin until his death in 1913. Thám
was known to help the poor, and apparently he was very popular among Catholics around bắc ninh for helping pay for new churches and buying water buffalos
for poor families.81 The Spanish bishop of bắc ninh had long-standing ties to Đề
Thám and served as an intermediary between him and the French for about a decade. Đề Thám was the de facto political authority in parts of northeastern tonkin
for almost twenty years after the end of the Sino-French War, and for Spanish missionaries in that region to have taken an ardent stand against him would have been
difficult. That reality aside, some French officials did not see it that way.82
A medly of more minor spats clouded Franco-Spanish relations throughout
the colonial era. For example, in 1897 a Vietnamese priest near nam Định refused to perform a burial mass for a French solider, which colonial officials blamed
on Spanish influence.83 during World War I, a French official in Phúc yên province complained that Spanish missionaries subverted efforts to raise Vietnamese
A Colonial Church Divided 73
volunteers by urging villagers to hide healthy, of-age males and to present old
and infirm candidates who would be rejected.84 In 1923, a French official in nam
Định complained that Spanish missionaries ignored the Fête Jeanne d’Arc and its
masses to war dead, military parades, and political ceremonies.85 And a year later,
in a village near nam Định on Easter Sunday, a huge crowd of Catholics rushed
out of mass as French officials drove by, threw rocks at their car, climbed all over
it, smashed the windshield, and yelled anti-French epithets. This was the latest in a
series of similar acts dating back years in which Catholics had thrown rocks at tax
collectors and members of the garde indigène and otherwise ignored or mocked
French authority. French officials blamed Father Casado, a Spanish missionary
in the region. For these officials, Casado typified a newer generation of Spanish
missionaries who had not lived through nguyễn-era communitarian violence and
were ungrateful for the stability of France rule. That it did not occur to them to
question whether one missionary could have orchestrated years of resistance demonstrates the degree to which they saw Spanish missionaries as subversive.86
Franco-Spanish relations were particularly bad in hải Phòng, tonkin’s secondlargest city, which was under Spanish ecclesiastical authority. Some colonial officials and French Catholics had long envisioned replacing Spanish missionaries
in hải Phòng with French ones, and the issue heated up after the death of the
Spanish bishop of hải Phòng in 1929. At that point, a group called the Committee
of French Catholics of haiphong campaigned rome to name a French bishop to
correct the “subordinate, inferior, precarious, and intolerable” situation of French
Catholics in the city. The apostolic delegate’s response left no doubt as to rome’s
feelings on the matter: “I recommend instantly to French Catholics charity, acceptance, and above all silence in the press.”87 Just after the new bishop (Spanish
again) was ordained, he gave a sermon recalling martyred Spanish missionaries,
“unprotected by the French flag,” that the governor-general saw as “a response to
the wish of some of the French faithful to obtain a French bishop for the parish of
haiphong.”88 The committee’s appeals were to no avail: Church authority in the city
remained Spanish until a transfer to Vietnamese authority in 1953.
At times, colonial officials worried that the mEP itself might facilitate foreign
influence. during World War I, fear of German infiltration into Vietnam was high
after German agents helped finance attacks by Phan bội Châu’s Vietnam restoration League on French military posts in tonkin.89 This made French officials
concerned about basile Lanter, an mEP missionary from Alsace-Lorraine. Lanter’s
parents were born French citizens, but Germany’s defeat of France in 1871 made
Lanter, born in 1885, a German national. Lanter drew official scrutiny in 1915 when
he resisted leaving his post for an assignment in a colonial hospital. French officials found his attitude “unfortunate and even suspect” and held him even after a
review of his activities turned up “no letters with foreign stamps” or anything else
suspicious.90 In october 1915, the governor-general sent Lanter to Cù Lao Giêng
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in the mekong delta, where he and two other missionaries spent most of the war
under military supervision. Lanter was not released until July 1918. In January
1919, Lanter wrote French officials “to state that no one has ever been able to reproach me for an utterance, a written word, a gesture contrary to my attachment
and devotion to France.” he asked only for reimbursement of his lost stipend and
expenses, the large sum of 660 piasters.91 despite having been cleared, the hapless
Lanter was still forced to foot the bill for his nearly three-year internment.
Colonial officials worried even more about the character and motivations of the
rank-and-file Vietnamese clergy, most of whom seemed quite far from idealized
paragons of devotion like trương Vĩnh Ký. by the 1890s, many French officials
viewed the Vietnamese clergy through the double lenses of race and republicanism: not only were they Vietnamese, and thus potentially resentful of colonial influence (as well as, in their mind, naturally irrational, dissimulative, and lazy),
but they also privileged Catholics to the detriment of social order. As one French
official wrote, “The Catholic population . . . feels itself to be independent and protected in every situation, even the most detestable, by their priests, and they only
recognize their authority.”92 distrust of the local clergy, and not Catholic favoritism, was the main reason French officials tried to avoid measures that might upset
Catholics. For example, during the debate whether to apply the 1901 and 1904 Association Laws and the 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State to Vietnam,
many officials shared the sentiment of the French resident in hà Đông that “the
discontent that the 1905 law would provoke among Catholics . . . would inevitably
be exploited by interested parties and foreigners. . . . Sentiments of defiance, hatred, and revolt are quickly aroused in an impressionable population whose credulous souls are easily accessible.”93
The rise of anticlericalism in colonial politics angered many missionaries, who
saw criticisms of Catholic missions as morally debase and unpatriotic. Even in
the 1880s, French Catholic newspapers used mass Catholic deaths in Vietnam as
fodder for their criticisms of the newly elected republican government by claiming that “the deaths of the ‘true Christians’ of Vietnam laid bare the Jewish and
masonic roots of the republic.”94 This kind of sentiment grew in Catholic life in
Vietnam around the turn of the century, the most intense moment in the metropolitan Church-state wars, when it seemed like the calls from Freemasons to
expel Catholic missions might carry the day. Critics of missions, it must be noted,
also reserved healthy amounts of invective for colonial officials who they felt too
often caved in to mission influence. but despite sincere efforts by many colonial
officials to maintain working relationships with missionaries, many Catholics still
saw the expansion of republican colonialism as inherently anticlerical. And in the
first decade of the twentieth century, which saw a reduction in official support
for Catholic institutions, the highly publicized removal of a few missionaries and
nuns from colonial hospitals and schools, and the arrival in Vietnam of secular
A Colonial Church Divided 75
educational associations like the Alliance Française and the mission Laïque, doom
seemed imminent.95
Anticlericalism aside, many missionaries were also shocked by what colonial
rule meant in practice. missionaries regularly criticized the French monopolies on
alcohol, salt, and opium that were among the most profitable—and, for Vietnamese, the most onerous—of the state’s many enterprises. As one missionary wrote in
1905, “The time has passed when, living from a primitive industry, a job that did
not earn much, the Annamite did not know real misery. . . . The French occupation has put an end to this idyll. . . . one cannot live today on the nothing that was
enough to live on in the past; everywhere people now claim to have nothing left
with which to live.”96 In 1901, a Spanish missionary defended a local priest accused
of instigating resistance to the salt monopoly, arguing that the price that the state
paid to salt producers was too low.97 during the Christmas season in 1906, L’Avenir
du Tonkin printed a cartoon titled “our gifts for the year” that pictured Vietnamese porters struggling under the weight of boxes labeled “customs,” “monopolies,”
“taxes,” “lies,” and “expediencies,” all weighed down by a masonic pentagram.98
The colonial state’s expanding fiscal infrastructure also hit home in more direct
ways; in 1908, the governor-general made applicable a metropolitan law that levied
a 4 percent tax on the revenues of all religious congregations, which took a chunk
out of mission agricultural revenues.99 missionaries also criticized colonial prisons, where they often ministered. In an account of a visit to the notorious island
prison of Poulo Condore, one missionary noted with shock that seventy or eighty
inmates shared one room, and that many were forced to sleep on the floor.100 Jeanbaptiste dronet, a missionary in hanoi, visited Catholics in city prisons for nearly
fifty years. In 1911, dronet wrote of terrible conditions in hanoi prisons, and he expressed hope that the French might ensure more humane treatment.101 many years
and many wrenching visits later, dronet wearily admitted that things were not any
better. “never in my life,” he wrote, “have I seen as many executions as I have this
year.”102 In the aftermath of the rural revolts in 1931, another missionary begged for
the release of seven supposedly innocent people—none of them Catholic—to no
avail.103
missionaries also blamed the colonial state for not doing more to fight poverty.
most missionaries routinely expressed acute desperation at their lack of resources,
especially during the many failed harvests, famines, cholera epidemics, floods, and
typhoons that plagued rural areas. tales of privation were standard fare in missionary journals, and it is important to take them with a grain of salt. but missionaries were more likely than other Europeans to witness devastating rural poverty,
and many were horrified. missionaries reported seeing people starved to death or
drowned in floods lying on the side of the road, and they heard stories of survivors
forced to sell their children for lack of food. Poverty also forced many Catholics to
leave their parishes—often permanently—in search of work. As the bishop of Vinh
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wrote in 1916, “cholera and famine have taken thousands of Christians this year.
I am hearing of parishes that have lost more than 10 percent of their population.
And we’re not near the end!”104 The missionary Victor Aubert wrote in 1938 that
his parish in hà Đông was a living graveyard of “ambulatory corpses and walking
skeletons . . . most of whom haven’t eaten in two or three days,” and he blamed the
fact that “social assistance in this country is still deeply flawed.”105
The place of Catholic missions in Vietnam was never as hotly debated as it was
in the roughly fifteen years before the First World War. Thereafter, the shrinking
missionary presence and their weakening financial clout not only gave the colonial
state an unquestioned primacy in the lives of most Vietnamese, but it also led to
a wave of Vatican reforms to nationalize the Vietnamese Church that gave wary
missionaries and colonial officials a common ground that had not existed since the
era of naval rule in Cochinchina. That said, mission and state never returned to
the close ties of the conquest era. Even during the First World War, a time of broad
unity on religious issues in France, a range of things complicated mission-state relations. Like basil Lanter had done, many missionaries argued that they could best
serve France by staying in Vietnam and pursuing their vocation. The war years
were very difficult in tonkin; terrible floods in 1915 led to failed harvests and epidemics, and missionaries criticized state refusal for aid simply because France was
at war. missionaries also worried that the thousands of Vietnamese Catholics who
had gone to France to fight and work would become victims of the secular threats
of metropolitan society. For their part, most colonial officials found requests for
deferments, attempts to protect Catholics from service, and criticisms of the state
at a time of war to be unpatriotic and even seditious.106
Even as metropolitan Church-state conflicts of the fin de siècle receded into
memory, the colonial context remained a fertile breeding ground for disagreement. In the interwar years, new religious movements were a particularly sensitive issue. most notable was Protestantism, which by the 1920s had trickled into
Vietnam via the American Christian and missionary Alliance (CmA).107 Catholic missionaries feared losing converts at a time when conversions had become
scarce, and they responded to Protestantism’s arrival with an alarmism that greatly
overstated its modest gains. French officials, for their part, worried that American
influence in a French colony might follow Protestant missionaries, whose oftenstrong criticisms of French colonial rule did little to assuage official anxiety. For
much of the 1920s, the Sûreté closely followed the meetings, publications, and
movements of American missionaries.
Shared concerns, however, did not prevent Protestantism from becoming a
wedge issue between missions and French officials. The protectorate treaties gave
Catholics the sole right to proselytize outside Cochinchina and French concessions in Annam and tonkin, but Protestant missionaries essentially ignored this,
spread into rural areas in Annam and tonkin, and presented French officials
A Colonial Church Divided 77
with a fait accompli. Spirited critiques in the pages of the mEP-owned L’Avenir
du Tonkin and lobbying by prominent Catholics were no match for the American
diplomats and influential French Protestants who defended Protestant missions.
The most important—and, for Catholics, the most galling—defense of Protestants
came from leftist associations such as the League of the rights of man, which argued in forums from local newspapers to the Chamber of deputies in France that
any attempt to restrict Protestants (and later Cao Đài, another Catholic concern)
reeked of a retrograde, royalist pro-Catholicism. And in a place where Catholics
were a small and polarizing minority, France, in the words of one colonial official,
“could not defend and consecrate an argument . . . that made Catholicism a state
religion in a French protectorate.”108 For many Catholics, the colonial administration’s decision not to ban Protestantism and Cao Đài—if it was a decision at all—
reinforced a familiar and unwelcome link between state authority and threatening
religious activity.109
Education, the locus classicus of Church-state wars in France, was perhaps the
most important site of mission-state conflicts in the interwar era. Although a lack
of colonial schools largely protected Catholic schools during the high point of
political anticlericalism, they had not emerged unscathed. In 1901, the Colonial
Council ended a subsidy to the Saigon mission because the bishop had publicly
questioned whether it made sense to teach Vietnamese to speak French, and the
outcry at the bishop’s remarks forced him to defend the role of mission schools in
the colony.110 Conflicts such as these grew after the creation of the department of
Public Education in 1917. As they did in France, missionaries opposed schools that
did not make Catholicism part of the curriculum—laïcité, far from being neutral, seemed an engine of godlessness. many Vietnamese Catholics opposed such
schools too: in 1929 one wrote in Sacerdos Indosinensis that when French teachers
spoke about Jesus they criticized him, and that rousseau, Voltaire, hugo, and Zola
dominated the classroom. The author even went so far as to blame a rise in juvenile
crime and suicide on colonial schools.111 but not all Vietnamese Catholics opposed
new colonial schools: one, writing in the Catholic newspaper Trung Hòa Nhật Báo
in 1925, praised colonial officials for their investments in education.112 one missionary who complained to the supervisor of Trung Hòa Nhật Báo was sure that
colonial officials had forced the article into the paper,113 but it was not unusual to
see this view from some Vietnamese Catholics in the 1920s.
other concerns amplified the perceived ideological and spiritual threat of new
colonial schools. Facilities were a perennial problem for Catholic schools, which
were often destroyed by a storm or flood, and charity was rarely enough to fix them:
one colonial inspector described Catholic schools in Phát diệm as “installed in a
lamentable manner,” with “children exposed to the elements.”114 Lack of funds led
some Catholic schools to charge a fee to help cover the cost of materials, facilities,
and the teacher’s salary, a fee that many families could not afford. The high prestige
78 chapter 2
of other forms of private education was also a challenge to Catholic schools.115 As
if such challenges were not enough, the rise of a colonial educational system subjected Catholic schools to more inspections, and instructors had to send regular
reports to the state, keep student registers, and request permission to open new
schools. hostile local officials began to use these new regulations as ammunition
in their spats with missionaries. After the mEP reached an arrangement with a
Swiss Catholic order to head the first Catholic secondary school in Vietnam, the
director of public education objected to foreigners—even the Swiss—teaching in
schools that would offer the baccalauréat, arguing that they were unqualified, but
his main objection seems to have been a Catholic school offering the baccalauréat
at all.116
For Catholic educators, however, the most serious new regulation was that all
private school teachers needed a brevet d’études to teach, which most did not have.
missions responded quickly. In 1924, the brothers of Christian Schools founded
the Ecole Saint Thomas Aquin in nam Định, which was meant to help Catholic
primary school teachers obtain the brevet d’études. but it was difficult to bring most
of the priests, catechists, and nuns who taught in primary schools to this level. As
a result, many Catholic schools continued to operate without certified teachers. In
1931, the director of public education, a man involved in nearly constant bickering
with mission officials, compared publications for the Colonial Exposition in Vincennes to provincial records and discovered that missions had declared less than
half of the Catholic schools that they claimed actually existed. he also noticed that
many seminarians took the exam for the brevet d’études even though seminaries
were not authorized to train teachers.117 When colonial officials such as this one
accused missions of noncompliance, missionaries demanded exemption on the
grounds that their schools were socially useful. Such spats could stretch out over
years.
one case in particular illustrates the durability of conflicts over schools and
how this came act as a site for broader tensions between missions and colonial
officials. Paul-marie ramond, bishop of hưng hóa from 1895 until 1938, had a
poor relationship with most of the officials with whom he crossed paths in his long
career. Six years into his tenure, officials began to complain that local Catholics
used the bishop’s influence to subvert local justice; during World War I, ramond
reportedly pressured non-Catholics to recruit more men as a way to protect Catholics from military service.118 ramond protested all such charges, insisting that
they rested on anti-Catholic views. After the implementation of regulations on
private schools in the mid-1920s, French provincial officials decided not to remove
catechists from teaching posts in local Catholic schools; ramond still insisted that
they simply be granted brevet d’études outright. The officials did not appreciate
ramond’s rejection of their olive branch and dismissed his request, which he continued to resubmit well into the 1930s.119 Also, as ramond proudly reported to his
A Colonial Church Divided 79
superior, he simply stopped declaring new schools.120 In all of the many confrontations that flared up over schools, ramond blamed the petty attitude of colonial
officials as a sign of all that had gone wrong with French colonization in Vietnam,
even blaming Vietnam’s anticolonial movements on French restrictions on Catholic education.121 French officials, in turn, saw the bishop’s appeals as typical of missionary zeal and obstructionism.122 As far in space and time as this was from the
Church-state wars in France, it still had much the same ring.
thE LImIt S And EXCESSES oF
mISSIonAry CAthoLICISm
In February 1906, the bishop of hanoi wrote a worried letter to rome about the
mood in his mission. “despite the inherent flaws in human nature,” he wrote,
even more common in the relations between men of different nationalities and temperaments, spiritual union until very recently had always existed among us. but with
the establishment of the French protectorate in tonkin, we have entered into a sort
of crisis of transition, in which the infiltration of modern ideas on one hand, and
the examples of a certain number of Europeans on the other, have had a regrettable
influence on the spirit of our indigenous priests and catechists. The attitude toward
missionaries has neither the deference nor the cordiality of the past. . . . before, the
presence of the district head was received with pleasure, and was even desired by the
natives. but now, with the new ideas just mentioned, a few of them are brought to
view the missionary as an unwelcome observer, or even an intruder.123
The bishop was correct that French rule led some Vietnamese Catholics to resent
the presence of French missionaries, and he was also correct that the ruptures
of French rule led many Vietnamese—Catholics and other—to question longstanding social norms and forms of authority. however, the bishop failed to realize, or to acknowledge, that many of the problems in missions were also internal.
The institutional expansion of missions in Vietnam that had begun in the 1830s
accelerated rapidly after the French conquest, which reduced Vietnamese Catholic autonomy in important ways. moreover, although the flood of missionaries
streaming into Vietnam often disagreed with French officials about the role of
missions in colonization, many did share basic assumptions about European superiority characteristic of the era. These rapid changes in mission organization
and culture over two generations produced a real crisis in Catholic life in Vietnam
around the turn of the century.
The explosion in the number of missionaries was the most basic problem. In
1868, there were only sixty-four mEP missionaries in Vietnam.124 by 1892, there
were 218.125 by 1904, there were 387.126 The number of Spanish missionaries also
grew with French rule, but not nearly as much: there were roughly twenty in 1862,
80 chapter 2
thirty-four in 1896, and sixty-seven in 1922.127 In short, in about forty years, the
mEP presence in Vietnam roughly sextupled, and its administrative and institutional arms expanded accordingly. Even within the mEP, this produced powerful
tensions. many senior missionaries at the turn of the century had been in Vietnam
since the 1870s, they vividly recalled the hardships of the nguyễn era, and they
saw their new colleagues as presumptuous and ignorant. In 1907, mEP bishops
wrote a collective letter complaining that new missionaries did not respect mission culture: “what pain to see young colleagues just off of the boat . . . judging,
criticizing men and things based on their impressions of the moment! What even
greater pain if just afterward, for frivolous reasons, we see them demand a transfer
or refuse their assigned post, threatening to leave the mission or return to France
if we do not bend ourselves to their wishes.” The bishops bemoaned that many
new missionaries treated the mEP as “a republic of sorts, in which the last one to
arrive regards oneself as the equal of the most senior,” and they worried that this
would make a terrible impression in Vietnam, where hierarchy based on age was a
fundamental part of social relations.128
A more serious problem was that many of the new missionaries could not fulfill the considerable demands of their vocation. many held important supervisory
positions in a rapidly expanding mission bureaucracy, and many could not handle
the demands of the job. Language was a major problem. because virtually none of
the local clergy spoke French, new missionaries needed to achieve an appreciable
fluency in Vietnamese during a yearlong apprenticeship. This was rarely enough
to prepare them to run a district, seminary, or hospital. In 1920, the bishop of Saigon noted that many missionaries left because they could not learn Vietnamese.129
Those who stayed, as another bishop noted, “barely reach the level of indigenous
priests, despite the fact that they are supposed to be capable of directing and instructing them.” This meant that “their relations with the indigenous clergy have
become difficult, and their influence on the clergy basically nil.”130
The new generation of missionaries came from a wealthier, more modernized
France than their predecessors, and some expected lifestyles that taxed mission
budgets and hurt its image. missionaries in the colonial era requested return trips
to France more often than did their predecessors, trips that new steamship routes
between France and Vietnam facilitated.131 Some were not willing to accept posts
in remote areas where they would have little contact with Europeans: one regularly fraternized with French officials, to his bishop’s displeasure.132 Some took
what their bishops saw as too many trips that lasted too long to mission sanatoriums. one demanded wooden floors in his house and spent months arguing with
his bishop about it.133 In 1908, a missionary named Patuel built himself a huge
house with mission funds without permission. When his bishop refused to reimburse him for all of the expenses, Patuel led a fund-raising campaign among local
Catholics to make up the balance and refused to tell his bishop how much money
A Colonial Church Divided 81
he raised. relations disintegrated so far that Patuel reportedly became the inside
source for an article in an anticlerical newspaper. once the house was built, however, the mEP put its involuntary investment to work, publishing a photo of it in
Missions Catholiques.134
The early colonial era seemed an economic wild west for enterprising Frenchmen, and some missionaries devoted large parts of their time and zeal to something other than saving souls. one missionary, to ameliorate his family’s financial
troubles, loaned mEP funds with interest to a colon trying to start a business.135
Another bought land in yên bái with personal funds, against mEP regulations,
and set up a private enterprise harvesting rice and timber using local Catholics
as labor. Even if he did compensate local Catholics fairly, they likely thought that
the profits, as they did in other missions, went back into the community and not,
to use his bishop’s words, into the missionary’s “bank account or suitcase.”136 For
fifteen years, one mEP missionary not only sold rice and timber, but he also raised
pigs to sell as cured hams (hundreds annually!) and he acted as a middleman between heads of enterprises and local labor.137 In 1932, Vietnamese priests accused
the bishop of Saigon of forcibly relocating Catholic families in order to build apartments to rent for the mission’s benefit.138 Some missionaries were less creative, simply embezzling funds or stealing money from the mEP or their colleagues.139
many missionaries did not deal well with daily life in Vietnam or with their
vows. Some leaned on alcohol or opium to cope with the solitude.140 Some fought
mental illness: one became obsessed with building a perpetual motion machine
and stayed up day and night working on it until his bishop sent him back to France
for psychiatric care.141 Some broke their vow of chastity, nearly always with Vietnamese women in their parish. In the case of Legrand de la Liraye (author of Notes
historique sur la nation Annamite and a vocal supporter of the pretender Lê duy
Phụng in the 1860s), his bishop blamed “too assiduously frequenting Europeans,
and having a sort of predilection for Europeans with suspect morals.”142 It is clear
that newfound authority allowed some missionaries to act on temptation: one
mEP missionary allegedly seduced the wives of people who worked for him and
threatened to kill one of their husbands. After he was forced to leave the mEP, the
missionary fulfilled his bishop’s dim view of colonial officials by going to work as
a customs officer.143
As visible and embarrassing as poor missionary behavior was, it was not the
root cause of the problem. to begin with, unprecedented strength in numbers and
new freedom of movement invigorated the missionary effort to ensure conformity
and orthodoxy in Catholic life. In 1900 and 1912, synods in Kẻ Sặt and Kẻ Sở near
hanoi affirmed strict guidelines for implementation of the sacraments and the
regulation of daily lives of lay Catholics based on the resolutions of the 1803 synod
in “Sutchen” (Szechwan) in south China. These ranged from new strictures on the
conditions for taking communion, giving confession, and receiving absolution;
82 chapter 2
stricter forms of penance; restrictions on diet, work, speech, and other social and
familial behavior; prohibitions on the use of local symbols or objects in ritual contexts; and calls to eradicate “superstitious” practices.144 Although the Cochinchina
mission had implemented these in the 1841 synod in Gò Thị, the larger tonkin
missions had not, because at the time their bishops “viewed the Sutchen Synod’s
recommendations as dated and obsolete.”145 but two generations later, missionaries
fanned out into tonkin with marching orders of reform and orthodoxy that challenged, more directly than ever before, how the majority of Vietnam’s Catholics
lived their faith.
missionaries in this era attempted to “correct” a wide range of daily activities.
In the realm of marriage, missionaries reported campaigns against cohabitation
before marriage, the marriage of girls below a certain age, polygamy, divorce (most
often in the case of infertility), mixed marriages, marriages within families, “secret” marriages not officiated by a priest, and remarriage before a certain period of
mourning.146 In burial ceremonies, they tried to prevent “excessive” spending on
feasts or offerings, elegies to the dead, the use of a geomancer to determine a fortuitous burial spot, and the participation of Catholics in non-Catholic burials (and
vice versa).147 missionaries forbade Catholics in mixed villages from participating
in feasts honoring ancestors or tutelary spirits and from attending dramatic performances celebrating “the pagan cult” or other village festivals. Although many
missionaries tried hard to incorporate local practices into Catholic ritual and daily
life in ways they deemed acceptable, this was often not enough to prevent disruptions in Catholic community life and communitarian relations.148 missionaries
also fought to limit gambling and opium use. This expanded oversight was particularly significant in the Catholic heartland of coastal tonkin, where hundreds
of thousands of Catholics lived in a relatively small and safe area well suited to
permanent missionary posts and frequent district tours.
The expanded missionary presence was also disruptive in more material ways.
As noted, missionary intervention in administration and justice often adversely affected relations with local officials, and missionary behavior toward non-Catholics
often worsened relations with nearby villages or within mixed villages. rapidly
shifting administrative boundaries in missions at times combined Catholic congregations that had poor relations with each other.149 Simply receiving a missionary
during a district tour was a weighty material commitment, as it involved feeding
and lodging him and often hosting a feast. districts that missionaries headed were
now much smaller, which gave them much more influence over who became a
catechist or a priest, membership of village councils, and how income from common village lands was used. missionaries also controlled most of the revenues
from expanded European contributions and huge swaths of new mission lands,
and what they prioritized, often with good intentions, was often not what circumstances called for. during a visit to bùi Chu in 1923, an apostolic envoy noted that
A Colonial Church Divided 83
“the churches are too beautiful . . . the presbyteries of the dominican fathers are
often sumptuous and often have an worldly character that is unsuitable for men
of the cloth. . . . The abuse is more regrettable because these houses and churches
are built at the expense of Christians, most of whom only eat once a day. . . . The
French in hanoi say that the missionaries cut the Annamites in four to make beautiful churches.”150
one particularly disliked missionary practice was forcing converts to sign bond
arrangements under which they agreed to pay an indemnity if they left the religion. These began in mEP missions no earlier than the 1840s, and at least by the
1890s, Spanish dominicans did the same.151 As missionaries grew in numbers and
authority, such arrangements became more common and more easily enforced.
missionaries first adopted the practice in hopes of protecting resources from “false
converts” seeking only material aid, and many did not recognize the degree to
which it was coercive. In 1909, one mEP missionary even filed a number of these
contracts with a French official when their signatories left the mission with the
hope that colonial officials would help enforce them. These contracts called for
signatories to pay three cents for each day that they had “been Catholic” to compensate the mEP for the cost of their education and ministry. The officials refused
to enforce the contracts, feeling that they presented “a sort of barrier to freedom
of conscience, for an indemnity of three cents per day gives, after one year, a fine
of $10.95, and a native who after four years of catechism wants to abandon the
Catholic faith would hesitate in fear of having to pay forty-some piasters, a considerable sum.”152 Vietnamese clearly resented the practice: in 1899, a French official
noted that a group of people who wished to leave their mission asked him for a
written authorization that they could present to supersede the mission contract,
which the French official refused to do in order to maintain good relations with
missionaries.153 because most colonial officials avoided intervening in situations
such as these, it is likely that some people simply paid or “remained Catholic” out
of an inability to do so.
Perhaps the most significant effect of the arrival of so many new missionaries
was the reduced role of the local clergy. not all the local clergy were saints, and
sometimes problems arose when missionaries tried to prevent them from doing
things such as buying cheap rice and reselling it at a profit, lending money at exorbitant rates, or using the offerings of the laity to dubious ends.154 more often,
however, the arrival of a missionary meant that the local clergy, who were used
to a greater degree of autonomy, were thrust into the role of auxiliaries with less
influence over ritual practice, spiritual life, and communal resources than they had
enjoyed before. missionaries, often with the best intentions, often reassigned adept
local priests to another parish in need of experienced clerical authority, but many
did not want to leave their parishes of origin. Some of these departing priests took
cherished votive objects with them, which only further upset local Catholics.155
84 chapter 2
missionaries replaced priests and catechists as principal instructors in the house of
God and in seminary. They exercised more oversight over how priests used funds
from mass intentions sent from France and rome. more missionaries meant that
priests now rarely had the final word in conflicts that remained within Catholic
judicial structures. The rise of French as a bureaucratic language also increasingly
made missionaries de facto Catholic representatives in conflicts with authorities, a
role they played much less often before the colonial era.
new missionary self-perceptions and attitudes made their growing presence
even more divisive. Although building independent Churches outside Europe had
long been the stated goal of the missionary vocation, in the nineteenth century
many missionary organizations strove above all else to augment their own presence. often this was because, in an era of broad colonial expansion grounded in
ideas of biological racism, missionaries viewed local clergy in a much more inferior light than they had in the past. “The indigenous clergy,” wrote the bishop
of Saigon in 1906, “is obedient, respectful, easy to direct; he diligently fills the
functions of his ministry and preaches and catechizes carefully . . . but alas! They
are not yet stripped of the defaults of their race. They are vain, not always honest,
and if a few are devoted to saving souls, it is not the majority. Finally, of their own
admission, they are and will remain for a long time incapable of self-direction. The
day that the mission passes under their administration will be the end of our religion in the mission.”156 “none among them,” wrote the bishop of Qui nhơn, “has
enough breadth of vision, prestige, humility, abnegation, energy, or spirit to maintain subordination, concord, integrity of faith, discipline, and morality in their
ranks or their congregations.”157 nola Cooke notes how in the mid-nineteenth century, mEP journals began to represent missionaries through “manly self-portraits
of pious fortitude and European superiority that inflated missionary virtues and
projected all weakness onto a piteous or contemptible Vietnamese other.”158 This
meant, in Jacob ramsay’s words, that “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 possibility of local
priests wholly adopting the mEP worldview.”159
A new sense of racial difference and hierarchy meant an increasingly stratified culture in mission life. In 1853 and 1858, responding to campaigns from the
mEP leadership, Propaganda Fide issued two directives affirming the missionary
right of precedence (droit de préséance) in mEP missions.160 In theory, the right of
precedence was to be observed in two formal contexts, in official administrative
reunions and in communal dining. but, during the colonial era, many missionaries also stopped living communally with the local clergy in the presbytery or the
house of God in favor of living in private houses. Annual retreats for missionaries
and local clergy were now often held separately, and the latter had very little formal
input in directing increasingly bureaucratized missions. Priests and catechists who
traveled with missionaries on pastoral visits often doubled as domestics, cooking,
A Colonial Church Divided 85
doing laundry, polishing boots, and even washing the feet of their missionary
supervisors. In many missions, even the oldest and most respected Vietnamese
priests were expected to stand whenever a missionary entered the room.161
Perhaps the most fundamental marker of a new mission culture was language.
Although the origins of the convention are hard to date precisely, an apostolic
envoy to Vietnam in 1922 noted that in “the era of the persecutions,” missionaries, regardless of age, began increasingly to be addressed with the kinship term
cố (great-grandfather or advisor), while the local clergy were referred to as cha
(father) or, in the case of the oldest and most respected, cụ (also great-grandfather,
but a term signifying a slightly lower status).162 In turn, the local clergy referred
to themselves as con (child) regardless of their age when speaking with a missionary. by the end of the nineteenth century, changing missionary demographics
made this change even more jarring. At the height of the missionary revival, missionary organizations successfully portrayed the vocation as a heroic and glorious
undertaking in a way that appealed to many French youth. According to mEP
statistics, the average age of the 325 mEP missionaries in Vietnam in 1900 was only
thirty-eight.163 because bishops and senior missionaries held high-level positions
or were often restricted to cities for health reasons, the missionaries who had the
most contact with the Catholic population were virtually always younger than the
priests they supervised, who in most missions were rarely younger than their midforties.164 notables and village elders were often older.
Changing missionary self-perceptions led many to adopt certain forms of paternalist discipline that, in their minds, were necessary to help Catholic communities function. When, in 1920, the bishop of Saigon wrote to a new missionary
about to assume his first post, he explained that “the best way to be accepted by
your subordinates” is “to be good, while also having a firmness that shows them
that goodness and weakness are two completely different things.”165 In practice,
“firmness” meant things such as corporal punishment, which missionaries regularly employed. In 1900, during a visit to a Catholic village in ninh bình, a French
official found what he described as “torture instruments,” including mallets and
rattan poles, on a rack in the presbytery. When he wrote to the mission about this,
the bishop denied that missionaries used such things excessively, but he acknowledged that corporal punishment was a standard way of enforcing discipline.166 Another French official confirmed both the practice and the missionary sentiment
behind it. “relations between missionaries and Catholics are those of ‘a father with
his children,’” wrote the official; he noted that a missionary was surprised when
a Vietnamese complained about the practice, since in the missionary’s mind “this
method of punishment is employed by parents, masters, and superiors upon children, disciples, and subjects.”167
Corporal punishment was certainly not unique to missionaries; the local clergy
made use of it as well, and it was also common in non-Catholic life. however, some
missionaries went beyond the boundaries of acceptability. one named maillard
86 chapter 2
reportedly inflicted five hundred blows with a rattan pole on a catechist in one
session, far beyond common practice or what Vietnamese law allowed. When rebuked by his bishop, maillard responded that as a district chief and a European it
was his right to treat a Vietnamese subordinate however he saw fit, and he threatened to leave his district for a monastery if he was punished.168 This kind of abusive
behavior had consequences. In 1908, an mEP missionary wrote to French officials
accusing a seminarian of stealing two hundred piasters for the reconstruction of
churches in his district and running away. A month later, he wrote again to say
that the real culprit had been found and that the seminarian had returned. he had
run away, the missionary noted, because he was afraid of being caned.169 And for
those priests for whom corporal punishment did not work, missionaries had other
solutions. In 1901, the bishop of Saigon noted, “it is to remedy the weaknesses of
certain of our priests that . . . I have deemed it necessary to build an asylum of correction [asile de correction] ad tempus for a few and a residence in perpetuum for
two or three most certainly.”170
numerous cases of open conflict between missionaries and local priests testify to how far their relations had degenerated by the early twentieth century. The
best-documented case is the Vinh mission, where fallout from the arrest of the
Đông du priests further poisoned an already terrible atmosphere; in december
1909, 262 priests and catechists wrote a letter to rome in support of the besieged
bishop Pineau, whose removal missionaries had demanded for years, as a form of
protest against their missionary supervisors.171 The bishop of hanoi noted regretfully that because tonkin’s missions were closely tied, they “will inevitably feel
the aftershocks of the misfortunes that menace this mission.”172 “did you know,”
bemoaned the bishop of Phát diệm in 1909, “that there is currently in Indochina
a mission led by our society in which the indigenous clergy is trying its best to
get rid of French missionaries? did you know that in this vicariate . . . priests are
considering leaving the ministry and returning to their families rather than put
up with the treatments they receive at the hands of missionaries?”173 one bishop,
when investigating claims that a missionary near Qui nhơn had sexual relations
with several young girls, uncovered a plot by a local priest, “inspired by hatred and
vengeance,” to enjoin the girls to make up the accusations to force the missionary
out of the parish.174 resignations, protests, and slander were far from the worst of
it. one defrocked local priest reportedly tried to poison the bishops of nam Định
and hải Phòng in the 1920s.175 And in 1922, a local priest reportedly killed a missionary who had tied him up and whipped him.176
“today things have changed,” bemoaned the bishop of Vinh in 1903. “It is rare
that we see, as in the past, entire villages asking to embrace our holy faith. In many
places, missionaries are only able to glean a few converts; in other places, their role
is only to preserve what has already been achieved.”177 The many missionaries who
experienced stagnating conversions or even “apostasies” in their districts around
A Colonial Church Divided 87
the turn of the century blamed ongoing hostility from the local population and the
rise of secular colonial rule for the problems in Catholic life. but some Vietnamese Catholics told a different story: “Under the pretext that they are religious, the
missionaries repress us. They demand our complete submission. They are placed
in charge of the richest parishes. two or three priests are necessary to carry out
their orders . . . even though they do not adequately speak Annamite and do not
yet know customs well enough to attend to affairs. They are all chiefs and all powers are centralized in them.”178 Thus reads one of the dozens of letters that Vietnamese Catholic priests and notables wrote in the early 1920s about the sweeping
changes of the previous generation, when the growing size, presence, and power
of missions and changing attitudes of European religious authorities transformed
Catholic life in Vietnam. however, what it perhaps most telling about the letter is
its recipient—henri Lécroart, sent by the Vatican to Indochina in 1922 as one of
many official apostolic envoys sent around the world to take stock of what Church
authorities saw as worrisome conditions in Catholic missions worldwide. during
the 1920s, rome’s efforts to address these conditions began a transition to independent national Churches that echoed broader political and cultural debates of
the late colonial era. The idea of a Church free from missionary influence, as exciting for Vietnamese Catholics as it was unthinkable for missionaries, raised deeper
questions about race relations, European rule, and the specter of independence
that would shape Catholic life in Vietnam over the following generation.
88
3
The birth of a national Church
In the tiny village of Saint-Loup-sur-Thouet in the deux-Sèvres in France, there
stands an unusual church honoring the village’s most celebrated son. Théophane
Vénard left for Vietnam in 1852, and he died in tonkin in 1861 during a wave
of communitarian violence following the French invasion of Cochinchina. The
church in Saint-Loup, built in his honor, was meant to be a glorious cathedral,
and its sanctuary and apse indeed tower over the rolling fields of Poitou. but the
sanctuary and altar are all there is. In the years after construction began in the
1880s, wars and hard times made it hard to raise money, especially at a time when
the Church had begun to mean a little less to the people of Saint-Loup than it once
had. The people of Saint-Loup, forced to stop building, closed off the church with
immense windows. A statue of Vénard stands outside the unfinished structure,
honoring the missionary’s unfinished life and ministry.
The story of the church in Saint-Loup-sur-Thouet is much like that of the
Church that Théophane Vénard hoped to build on the other side of the world.
Vénard left for Vietnam during a missionary revival that brought the European
presence in Vietnamese Catholic life to its highest point. by the early twentieth
century, there was about one missionary for every two Vietnamese priests, reflecting three generations during which the increase in the number of European
missionaries outpaced the increase in local clergy and during which the responsibilities and power of each group grew increasingly different. but by the August
revolution in 1945 there were roughly six Vietnamese priests for each missionary, and in 1960, during the Second Vatican Council, rome transformed all missions in Vietnam into formal dioceses, thus establishing the formal structure of a
Vietnamese Catholic Church that would soon become totally independent from
The Birth of a National Church 89
missionary authority. The emergence of a national Church in Vietnam during the
interwar years had roots in a generation of decline for missionary Catholicism that
seemed hard to imagine at the turn of the century. during the two decades after
the First World War, waning European religiosity and the growing tensions surrounding missionary authority in Catholic life outside of Europe led the Vatican
toward an ambitious program of reforms meant to turn over the leadership of
Churches in European empires to the local clergy. In Vietnam, this came during
a tumultuous time of cultural and political flux brought about by colonial rule,
a changing social order, and the rise of new ideas and new values. For many in
this generation of Vietnamese Catholics, their rise to power in their own Church
became the principal foundation for their experience of and participation in the
cultural and political transformations of the era.
thE dECLInE oF mISSIonAry CAthoLICISm And
thE QUEStIon oF A nAtIonAL ChUrCh
“Practically speaking, we do not love one another. . . . Profound differences in temperament explain this lack of affection but do not excuse it. on one side like on the
other, we are not forgiving, and, at bottom, whatever might be said, there is a real
precedence of race.”1 These were the frank words of one French bishop to henri
Lécroart, an apostolic envoy sent to observe and report on the state of Catholic
missions in Indochina. Lécroart spent nearly a year in Vietnam over 1922 and 1923,
and some of what he saw there inspired him. “nothing,” he wrote about his visit to
bùi Chu, “can convey the idea of the love of these Christians, of their enthusiasm
and devotion for the holy pontiff. The receptions that I received in this vicariat
were unforgettable. Crowds of ten thousand Christians acclaiming the pope, crying, beating their hands . . . this was the amazing spectacle that I witnessed.” but
not all was well in bùi Chu. Lécroart reported that inadequate seminaries produced ineffective priests, that resources were limited and poorly allocated, and that
mission authorities often had bad relations with French authorities. What most
concerned Lécroat, however, was that missionaries “impose themselves from their
arrival in an authoritarian manner that elicits distrust,” and he noted separation
and inequality in eating and living arrangements and in most daily interactions.2
This was not the case in all missions: Lécroart noted that the relative prosperity of
Cochinchina meant fewer problems with resources and budgets, and he saw that
in some missions—most notably in huế—the relations between missionaries and
the local clergy were quite good. but to varying degrees in every mission he visited, Lécroart saw inequality and ill will that he felt posed a real threat.
Lécroart spent at least as much time talking with the local clergy as he spent
with missionaries, and Vietnamese priests took advantage of the apostolic envoy’s
visit to express complaints that missionary superiors had long ignored. In Phát
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diệm, a Vietnamese professor of Latin in the minor seminary gave a public talk on
the “miserable condition” of the local clergy, and students complained about the
lack of food, their poor training, and the ill treatment they received at the hands
of missionaries.3 In Qui nhơn, Vietnamese priests complained about being forced
to refer to missionaries as cố, regardless of their age, when even aged and venerated Vietnamese priests only received the lesser honorific cụ.4 Lécroart heard similar complaints in every mission, and after he left, letters from Vietnamese priests
poured in to Propaganda Fide by the dozens. In one, Vietnamese priests drew an
explicit parallel between the situation in their missions and the political situation
in their country. “Pagans,” the priests wrote,” see “a spirit of oppression of some by
others in religion like in politics. . . . Seeing French missionaries oppress us in religion like other French do in politics, they then consider our religion as imperfect
and human. They distrust it and turn their backs on it.”5
Lécroart’s observations—indeed, his very presence in Vietnam—reflected a real
concern among many leaders at the Vatican about the state of the Catholic world
in the aftermath of the First World War. The place of the Church in the world
changed in important ways in the late nineteenth century, when the emergence of
secular nation-states in Europe and the rise of universal education, literacy, and
mass politics began to seriously challenge religion as a source of identity. Although
the Church was far from in universal retreat, its temporal authority had been
transformed and limited in real ways. broadly speaking, the effects on the Vatican were twofold. First, ultramontanism, an ideology and organizational model
based on the idea of a centralized Church with a powerful pope, was growing in
importance, and rome was beginning to reassert its influence over the liturgical
and devotional lives of national Churches, which were now increasingly under
state rule. Ultramontanism was in part a conservative reaction to the growth of
liberal politics in Europe, but it was also a result of institutional changes, born out
of a perceived need to modernize the Church, which allowed the Vatican to communicate more directly with Churches worldwide and to play a more active role
in them. Ultramontanism was not only an elite reaction: it reflected the attitudes
of millions of ordinary Catholics, who responded to unsettling social change in
their nations by identifying more strongly with the Vatican as a source of social
and political authority. This can be seen in the growth of rome as a pilgrimage site,
as well as the growing importance of the pope in the daily lives of Catholics; Pius
IX, who reigned from 1846 to 1878, was the first pope to have his image regularly
displayed in the homes of European Catholics alongside local and national icons.6
The Vatican’s second major response to the rise of secular states was to expand
the influence of Propaganda Fide, the Vatican’s organ for supporting and overseeing missionary activity, over Catholic missions worldwide. This had begun
during the papacy of Gregory XVI (1831–46), but the process was slow until
the papacy of Leo XIII (1878–1903), when the Vatican became concerned that
The Birth of a National Church 91
missionary organizations such as the mEP were too closely tied not only to national Church hierarchies but also to colonial regimes. Growing involvement in
missions, in many ways a logical extension of ultramontanism, also reflected the
real belief of many Vatican elite that the Church’s future might be outside Europe.
In this light, Vatican authorities were uneasy about the state of many Catholic
missions. Colonization had undoubtedly allowed evangelizing in more parts of
African and Asia than had ever been possible before, but missionaries swept up by
the fervor of imperialism had forged ties to colonial regimes in ways that many at
the Vatican felt threatened the Church’s future outside Europe. In the nineteenth
century, this unease did not yet reflect the moral critique of colonial rule that
came from Vatican after World War I; Leo XIII’s encyclicals in the 1890s criticizing capitalism left colonialism entirely unmentioned. The unease was nevertheless
real, and rome began to take active steps to place missions more directly under
its control.
The early stages of the Vatican’s movement to reform Catholic missions put
into motion the transition to national Churches across the globe that culminated
in Vatican II. In the eyes of rome, the most pressing problem was the inability or
unwillingness of many missions to form and sustain a critical mass of local clergy.
Leo XIII addressed this problem in his 1893 encyclical Ad Extremas (On Seminaries for Native Clergy), which called for more local clergy, more and better seminaries, and local representation in mission hierarchies, which was almost nonexistent
at the time. The Vatican also instituted the first formal hierarchies in missions in
Asia, establishing formal dioceses under Vatican authority in India in 1886 and in
Japan in 1891. The Vatican also began to name apostolic delegates, papal representatives to a nation with which the Vatican has no formal diplomatic relations, to
missions throughout European colonial empires. Propaganda Fide also began to
more systematically collect information and statistics about missions, primarily
through annual reports and questionnaires, which allowed for a greater degree of
scrutiny over mission activities. Finally, Propaganda Fide began to centralize the
powerful European fund-raising organs supporting missionary work, especially
the oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, by increasing the clerical presence in what
had been largely lay organizations and regulating how funds were spent. These
reforms, partial before the 1920s, began the process of centralizing and standardizing mission governance that would continue to a greater degree in the interwar
era.7
The First World War was a watershed moment in the Vatican’s policy toward
Catholic missions. For Pope benedict XV, who became pope just four weeks after
the war began, the war seemed a tragic consequence of the Church’s waning place
in European life, as Catholic nations ignored the Vatican’s appeals for peace and
millions of lay Catholics rallied under their national flags. The war also radicalized
European politics in a way that seemed to put the Church’s future at risk. The 1917
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russian revolution was largely hostile to Christianity, and the spread of communism in European politics after the war raised the specter of Soviet anticlericalism moving west. The war was not all bad for the Church; the pope’s remarkable
diplomacy and relief efforts increased the prestige of the papacy in the eyes of
many European leaders, and the rise of communism began to realign the political
activities of the Vatican with large swaths of the laity under benedict XV’s successor Pius XI, who reigned from 1922 to 1939. but in confirming the primacy and destructive power of the nation-state and mass politics, the war dealt a terrible blow
to the Vatican’s conception of European civilization that radically altered rome’s
understanding of its place in the world.8
For benedict XV and other Vatican officials taking stock at the end of the war,
the status of Catholic missions was an immediate concern. most were in a much
worse state in 1918 than they had been four years earlier. mass mobilization devastated many missionary societies, and the hardships of war slowed donations
from Europe to support missionary work. This was the case in Vietnam, where the
war’s effects were profound even if few missionaries from the country died in the
trenches. many of the dozens of missionaries who left Vietnam to fight in France
did not return, for reasons of family, injury, or mental health. Some were forced
to leave their missions to attend to others left by departed missionaries or to staff
vacated positions in colonial hospitals and other institutions. because the mEP
accepted almost no new seminarians during the war, few new missionaries went
to Vietnam in the early 1920s. It was also harder for the mEP to attract seminarians after the war; recruitment to both the secular clergy (priests) and the regular
clergy (religious orders) declined in France in the 1920s.9 And missionaries who
did return to Vietnam were often wounded, physically or otherwise. In 1922, the
bishop of Vinh noted that one missionary “could have continued to render service
for a number of years, if he was like everyone else. but given his condition and the
turn of his spirit, it is one thousand times better that he return to France.”10 The
war’s effects were thus immediate and palpable. “The old missionaries are dying,
the young are mobilized,” wrote Victor Quinton, later bishop of Saigon, in August
1919. “If this continues, before long I’ll be alone with the indigenous priests.”11
Quinton’s comment revealed another growing concern: age. youth and inexperience had been a problem during the mEP’s expansion, but a generation later
the missionaries having too much experience was becoming a problem. In 1900,
the average age of the 325 mEP missionaries in Vietnam was thirty-eight; in 1927,
there were seventy-nine fewer missionaries and their average age was over fiftyone.12 old age made it harder for missionaries to cover the distances between
parishes, and it made them more susceptible to sickness and exhaustion. during
the 1920s and 1930s, missionaries increasingly retreated from active roles as district heads and took positions in cities or as teachers in seminaries. As damien
Grangeon, bishop of Qui nhơn, wrote in 1923, “according to the official total of
The Birth of a National Church 93
our clergy, East Cochinchina appears as the best formed of our missions: fifty-five
missionaries . . . for 66,000 faithful and 2,500,000 pagans: it’s practically luxury,
relatively speaking . . . but of this elevated number, we must take away, without
even counting an average of three who are regularly absent for reasons of health,
eight more who seem unable—or unwilling—to come back . . . a ninth . . . away
indefinitely, and five who are already retired.”13 he closed with a plea for more missionaries, but the mEP now had fewer to send.
money, a perennial issue, also became a bigger problem after the war. As the
missionary movement declined in France, so did donations to missionary organizations. For the mEP, this put the cost of supporting a missionary into sharper
relief; although the solution to problems in a mission had always been to send for
more missionaries, this now created as many problems as it solved. In 1926, the
head of the mEP noted that a large part of the society’s allocations to missions
in Vietnam was spent on travel to and from the region.14 And once a missionary
was in Vietnam, the cost of supporting him was much greater than the cost of
supporting a local priest or catechist. Financial statements for the hanoi mission
for 1928–29 show that the mEP spent 91,550 piasters to support just thirty-two
missionaries (on average, 2,861 piasters per missionary), but only 26,200 piasters
to support 131 local priests (191 piasters per priest).15 Catechists were even cheaper,
as a bishop noted: “A catechist, thanks be to God!, does not cost us four hundred
francs per month, not even one-tenth that, but it’s still a problem for us to make
ends meet at the end of the year.”16 The Great depression of the 1930s was a huge
blow as well, as it slowed revenues from France and rome and brought down the
value of mission agricultural products.
In the eyes of the Vatican, therefore, Catholic missions in Vietnam and around
the world faced a crisis at the end of the war. Local Churches outside Europe remained institutionally underdeveloped even after a century of missionary revival.
The explosion of imperial activity in the late nineteenth century drew some missionaries into cooperation with colonial rule that did real damage to the Church:
in the words of Claude Prudhomme, “even while some missionaries courageously
served as a recourse and protection from colonial abuses, others manifested a
widespread complaisance for a domination with little respect for individuals”
in a way that affected their roles as religious authorities and hurt relations with
local populations.17 Finally, a precipitous decline in missionary recruitment and
resources risked leaving Churches outside Europe unprepared to face the future. It
was in response to this crisis that benedict XV and Pius XI issued two revolutionary papal proclamations on Catholic missions, which some historians identify as
nothing less than the beginning of Catholic decolonization.18
benedict XV’s 1919 apostolic letter Maximum Illud (On the Propagation of the
Faith Throughout the World), the first explicit statement of rome’s postwar vision for the global Church, marked a decisive change in the relationship between
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rome, missions, and colonial regimes. The pope was clear that he saw ties between
missionaries and colonial regimes as un-Christian:
It would be a tragedy indeed if an apostolic man were to spend himself in attempts
to increase and exalt the prestige of the native land he once left behind him. . . .
[S]uppose it becomes clear that he is involved in worldly schemes of some kind,
and that, instead of devoting himself exclusively to the work of the apostolate, he
is serving the interests of his homeland. . . . [S]uch a situation could easily give rise
to the conviction that the Christian religion is the national religion of some foreign
people and that anyone converted to it is abandoning his loyalty to his own people
and submitting to the pretensions and dominations of a foreign power.
benedict XV criticized missionaries who “displayed more zeal for the profit of
some particular nation than for the growth of the kingdom of God” and accused
some of twisting evangelization into a form of spiritual and cultural colonialism.
“We can hardly commend a man,” he wrote, “who takes the section of the Lord’s
vineyard that has been allotted to him for cultivation, and proceeds to treat it as
a piece of private property.” benedict XV felt that the Church was insufficiently
responsive to local cultures and bemoaned that most missionaries knew just “a
smattering” of local languages, calling for more linguistic and cultural training.
but Maximum Illud did more than simply reaffirm missionary supranationalism. Indeed, benedict XV made it clear that the only way to develop the Church
outside Europe was to expand the ranks and roles of local clergy. only “the local
priest, one with his people by birth, by nature, by his sympathies and his aspirations,” the pope claimed, is “effective in appealing to their mentality and thus attracting them to the faith.” difficulties arose not because the “native priest” was
inferior to the missionary but because he had been “trained merely to perform
the humbler tasks of the ministry.” Indeed, the most visionary aspect of Maximum
Illud was that it imagined the end of missionary Catholicism: “Wherever the local
clergy exist in sufficient numbers, and are suitably trained and worthy of their
holy vocation,” the pope wrote, “there you can justly assume that the work of the
missionary has been successful and that the Church has laid her foundations well.”
The missionary should then leave, “leaving the harvest to be reaped by others.”19
benedict XV passed away three years after issuing Maximum Illud, but Pius XI
reaffirmed its principles in his 1926 encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae. Pius XI also focused on the problems of the relegation of local clergy to auxiliary roles, limited
missionary knowledge of local languages and cultures, and the ruinous effects of
the war. In light of the politically restive climate in many colonies, he also anticipated that imperial collapse might make missionary work impossible: “Let us suppose . . . that either because of the fortunes of war, or because of certain political
happenings in a mission field, the ruling government is changed in that territory
and that the new government decrees or requests that the missionaries of a certain
The Birth of a National Church 95
nationality be expelled.” Pius XI noted that this might occur not only because of
imperial rivalry, but also because of revolution: “Let us suppose . . . that the inhabitants of a particular territory . . . desiring to become free and independent, should
drive away from their country the governor, the soldiers, the missionaries of the
foreign nation to whose rule they are subject. . . . Everyone can see what great
harm would accrue to the Church in that land . . . unless a native clergy had been
spread beforehand.”
Like Maximum Illud, Rerum Ecclesiae directly questioned the racial inequalities
that had grown in missions during the nineteenth century: “Anyone who looks
upon these natives as members of an inferior race or as men of low mentality
makes a grievous mistake. Experience over a long period of time has proven that
the inhabitants of those remote regions of the East and of the South frequently are
not inferior to us at all, and are capable of holding their own with us, even in mental ability. If one discovers an extreme lack of ability to understand among those
who live in the very heart of certain barbarous countries, this is largely due to the
conditions under which they exist.” Pius XI emphasized that, unlike in colonial
regimes, there must be no separation between Europeans and others within the
Church: “These priests have been admitted to the same priesthood that the missionaries possess . . . for it is they who will one day govern the churches and Catholic communities founded by your sweat and labor. Therefore, there should exist
no discrimination of any kind between . . . missionaries or natives, there must be
no line of demarcation marking one off from the other.”20
benedict XV and Pius XI put these ideas into practice with widespread reforms
to mission policy and administration. one such reform was to use papal institutions to coordinate the expansion into missions of Catholic societies and orders
focused on developing self-sustaining Churches. In Vietnam these included the
Congregation of the holy redeemer, or redemptorists (dòng Chúa Cứu Thế),
who came from Canada and became active around hanoi and huế. other important new orders were the French Société de Saint-Sulpice, or Sulpicians, who
came to run tonkin’s first central seminary, and the Société des Auxiliares des missions (SAm), a belgian order committed to forming national Churches in Asia.
Although there were few SAm missionaries in Vietnam before the 1940s, their
networks were important to Vietnamese Catholic nationalists in Europe after 1945.
The postwar years also saw the arrival or expansion of many contemplative orders
that diversified and internationalized the European presence in Vietnamese Catholic life, even if often they did not work actively to develop a local Church. These
included the benedictines (dòng biển Đức), Cistercians (dòng Xitô Thánh Gia),
Franciscans (dòng Phanxicô), and Carmelites (dòng Cát minh ).
As Propaganda Fide’s administrative presence in missionary life grew, other
reforms gave rome more control over mission finances. one important change
was rome’s decision in 1922 to place the oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi under
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Vatican control. before then, rome had chosen where new missions would be
founded and entrusted them to missionary societies, but Lyon by and large controlled the allocation of the funds that the oPF raised. The oPF essentially had
been a national organization since its creation in 1822. Even in the 1890s, French
donations accounted for about two-thirds of all donations to the oPF. but this
began to change: in 1913, French donations made up about a third of worldwide
gifts, and by 1922, they comprised only a quarter.21 Propaganda Fide’s decision
was thus less a power play than a necessary measure; as one article about the
transfer put it, “The august pontiff thought that Catholics from foreign countries
would offer much more opulent liberalities to the Propagation of the Faith if they
were rid of the obligation of sending them through France.”22 This nevertheless
prompted such discontent among French Catholics that a representative of Propaganda Fide had to formally respond to accusations that rome had made the
transfer to favor German missionary groups.23 Although the transfer of the oPF
did not lead to major changes in mission budgets, it gave Propaganda Fide more
authority over the mEP at a time when the two were beginning to clash over mission policy.
Leading these important changes was a new group of Vatican elite firmly committed to developing national Churches in Asia and Africa. Perhaps the most important was Cardinal Willem marinus van rossum, a dutch redemptorist, who
as prefect of Propaganda Fide from 1918 to 1933 laid the foundations for rome’s
postwar mission reforms. his successor, Pietro Fumasoni biondi, shared a commitment to developing national Churches, and he began to do so in Japan after
being named its first apostolic delegate in 1919. In 1922, benedict XV also named
Celso Costantini as the first apostolic delegate to China, and his activities on behalf of the local clergy quickly drew him into conflict with European missionaries
there. After he left China in 1933, Costantini became secretary of Propaganda Fide
under Fumasoni biondi. These men played powerful roles in reshaping Catholic
Churches in Asia after the war.
Emboldened by papal blessing, proponents of mission reform were vocal after
the war, when they made the issue of building national Churches more visible.
much of this was accomplished through the missionary press. rome directed the
oPF journal Missions Catholiques more closely after 1922, and it began to give
more narrative depth to the one-dimensional image of the loyal, subservient native priest that had filled its pages in the past. newer, more progressive journals
such as Bulletin des Missions and Revue des Missions were also enthusiastic about
building local Churches, and at times they openly criticized the mEP’s efforts to
develop the local clergy. In 1925, Le Revue Catholique des Idées et des Faits criticized
the “overdeveloped instinct of authority” of mEP missionaries in Pondicherry in
India, “French if possible, white in all cases,” which feared above all else “an Indian,
priest or lay, on equal footing as a Frenchman.”24 And through Fides, a Vatican
The Birth of a National Church 97
news agency created in 1927, rome began to spread its own vision for the Catholic
world further than ever before.
The new policies and culture in rome represented a substantial break from
practices in many missions, and Propaganda Fide and the leadership of missionary societies worked hard to convert their members to the changes now upon
them. In the 1920s, van rossum was in close contact with the head of the mEP,
Jean de Guébriant, and de Guébriant made reform a regular focus of his letters
to the society. In one letter published shortly after Rerum Ecclesiae, de Guébriant
argued that the mEP’s role had now become “to remove the last inequalities that
still subsist because of the racial difference between missionaries and indigenous
priests” and “to cede way to the indigenous clergy in each mission.” missionaries, he wrote, “should no longer envision cessions of new territories to European
missions” and “must at all costs avoid the impression that the pope’s instructions
on any of the points concerning the training of the indigenous clergy are a dead
letter.” he emphasized that this “has been the program of the society since its beginnings,” and that the new policies “echoed the most ancient and authentic traditions of our society.”25 This letter was typical of efforts by Propaganda Fide and the
leadership of missionary societies like the mEP to represent reforms not as a break
from recent history, which they decidedly were, but as the purpose of the missionary enterprise since its beginnings.
The postwar push to develop a national Church in Vietnam certainly had the
support of some in the mEP. Jean-baptiste roux, head of the major seminary at
An ninh, wrote some of the most extended accounts of the lives and deaths of
Vietnamese martyrs, as well as profiles of the local clergy for French missionary
journals. In a 1930 talk entitled “The Annamite Indigenous Clergy,” delivered to
retired missionaries in Vichy, roux presented changes in Catholic life in Vietnam
as the happy fruit of missionary labors.26 The missionary scholar Léopold Cadière
was perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson for a self-directing local Church. In
a 1929 article, Cadière evoked an idealized view of Catholicism in Vietnam in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an age when “there was . . . between Europeans and natives a certain equality of thought and feeling that eliminated any
untimely and unjust racial pride.” Cadière felt that missionaries and Vietnamese
priests had once been considered equals but that this perspective had been lost
over time. tellingly, Cadière blamed this on the “spirit of conquest” that “imbued
all Europeans, even missionaries,” one based on “the intimate conviction that
white people were superior to people of color,” which had led many Europeans
to “think too much of themselves, to the detriment of the people with whom they
lived.” Cadière concluded that racial difference, the basis of many of the hierarchies in Catholic life in Vietnam, was a byproduct of history rather than a reflection of biological inequality and that it should no longer be relevant. “People are
the same everywhere,” he wrote, “and everywhere they are driven by the same
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passions, some for the good, some for the bad. From the point of view where we
need to place ourselves, there are no races, there are only individuals.”27
but despite the authority of Propaganda Fide and some support from within
the mEP, putting Maximum Illud and Rerum Ecclesiae into practice in Vietnam
was a long, difficult, and divisive process. Vatican reforms in the interwar years
created direct ties between rome and Vietnam that did not pass through any missionary organizations, led to a broader seminary network with more modern and
rigorous curricula, and gave Vietnamese representation in their own Church hierarchy. This put Vietnamese priests into positions of power in the Church that
they had not held in living memory, at times ever. The growing scrutiny of racial
hierarchies in religious life raised troubling ecclesiastical questions for missionaries, and equally troubling political questions for French officials. In short, by the
late colonial period, changes in Catholic life in Vietnam had produced a Church
whose structures and relationship to mission and colonial authorities were vastly
different than they were a generation before.
romAn rEFormS And thE FoUndAtIonS
oF A nAtIonAL ChUrCh
In August 1922, a Vietnamese Catholic named nguyễn hữu bài went to rome to
meet the pope (fig. 6). born in Quảng trị in 1863, bài went to study at the mEP
seminary in Penang when he was ten. he returned to Vietnam in 1884 to work as
an interpreter in tonkin, served as provincial governor (bố chính) in Thanh hóa
and then as part of the emperor’s mission in Saigon, and then worked as a representative of the court on a mission to France in 1902. Afterward bài returned to huế
and to a court in turmoil. In 1907, the French declared the emperor Thành Thái
insane and exiled him to the island of réunion. This marked total French control
over the Vietnamese monarchy, which deeply affected those who had fought to
preserve the sacred nature of the office. This included bài and his fellow Catholic
and friend ngô Đình Khả, minister of rites, grand chamberlain, and the father of
nine, including ngô Đình Thục, who would later became the third Vietnamese
bishop, and ngô Đình diệm, the future president of the republic of Vietnam. A
well-known proverb from the period demonstrates how people recognized and
admired their devotion to the monarchy: “to dethrone the king you must get rid
of Khả; to open the king’s tomb you must get rid of bài.”28
In 1908, bài became part of the privy council (cơ mật viện), the advisory council
to the Vietnamese emperor and a powerful political force in the protectorate of
Annam. Thereafter, his positions as minister of public works and minister of the
interior and finance on the cơ mật viện made him an important figure in politics
and a crucial intermediary between the mEP and French officials. In 1915 bài was
named an officer in the French Legion of honor, and in 1916 he led an inquiry
The Birth of a National Church 99
into the resistance of some Vietnamese soldiers from near huế destined for the
trenches, personally recommending several executions.29 bài regularly exerted his
influence on behalf of the huế mission and political allies, most famously the ambitious ngô brothers, to whom he became a surrogate father after Khả’s death in
1918. bài was powerful enough to ensure that his patronage networks remained
largely autonomous, which caused the resentment of some French officials.30
bài’s opportunity to meet the pope came when he was part of a Vietnamese delegation that traveled to France with the emperor Khải Định in the summer of 1922.
After his time in France, bài went to rome to make four requests of Propaganda
Fide: the standardization of Vietnamese prayer manuals and catechisms, the creation of uniform texts for seminaries, a Vietnamese Church hierarchy with local
bishops, and a national day of celebration and mourning for Vietnamese martyrs.31 on August 7, 1922, bài was granted an audience with van rossum and Pope
Pius XI. An mEP missionary in attendance reported that bài, “a little emotional
at first, quickly regained his assurance and outlined, à la oriental, that is to say a
little lengthily perhaps, ideas and desires that he had exposed to your Grandeur.”32
After returning to Vietnam, bài met with the bishop of hanoi, who worried that
bài risked making colonial authorities think that he was “pursuing a nationalist aim . . . to the detriment of the protectorate.”33 The bishop was correct: a 1924
Figure 6. nguyễn hữu bài
(date unknown). Société des
missions Etrangères de Paris.
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Sûreté report noted that “bài’s intrigues would have nothing, in and of themselves,
very dangerous about them, if they were only to satisfy his pride, but they serve the
ends of the prefect of the Sacrée Congrégation van rossum,” who “passes through
Catholics as a way to be hostile to France.”34 The report also cited at length one
of de Guébriant’s speeches in which he argued that “it is time to regard as being
imminent, if not immediate, the changeover which, by progressive stages . . . will
result in the substitution of a normal complement of native—or, if you prefer,
national—clergy, for the missionary establishment.”35
not long after nguyễn hữu bài’s return from rome, the apostolic envoy henri
Lécroart ended his travels with a reunion of all of Vietnam’s bishops. There he
presented his conclusions and presided over a discussion of a number of reforms
to develop the local clergy and strengthen Vietnam’s ties to rome. Lécroart called
on the bishops to modernize education, especially seminaries, and to expand the
print sphere in quốc ngữ to improve literacy. The bishops largely supported this
and agreed to explore the standardization of prayer manuals, catechisms, and
seminary texts. more controversially, however, he also recommended that each
mission send elite students to the Collegium Urbanum, Propaganda Fide’s seminary to train missionaries, as well as the creation of an apostolic delegation to
Indochina, which would be the first link between Vietnam and rome that did not
pass through a missionary organization. Finally, he strongly urged the bishops to
renounce the droit de préséance that had become such a sore point in the everyday
life of many missions.36
At the time of Lécroart’s visit, the seminary system that he observed was already
much better developed than it had been in the precolonial era. Some mEP seminaries had begun to recognize the need for better-trained priests, whether out of
a modernizing impulse or from simple necessity. In 1917, the bishop of Phát diệm
made French a subject of study in the major seminary in Phúc nhạc for the first
time.37 And a lack of missionaries had already put some Vietnamese in positions
of authority in seminaries by the time of Lécroart’s visit: in 1920, the bishop of huế
noted that he would soon name a Vietnamese priest as codirector of the major
seminary in his mission for the first time.38 Lécroart urged missionaries to choose
seminarians with as good an education as possible before entering seminary, to
expand the teaching of French, and to teach quốc ngữ instead of characters. Lécroart also recommended that the course of study in minor seminaries increase from
six to eight years, and that seminaries adopt stricter standards for hygiene and
facilities.
one of Lécroart’s more contentious recommendations was the creation of a
central seminary in tonkin to give top seminarians an education comparable to
one they could receive in Europe. The Society of Saint-Sulpice, a teaching order,
would take charge of instruction. Although some in the mEP supported the seminary, it elicited growing opposition as it came closer to reality. Even de Guébriant,
The Birth of a National Church 101
who generally supported Propaganda Fide’s reforms, was worried about the cost,
and he argued that missions could simply send elite seminarians to Penang, Paris,
or rome. A few bishops were more vocal in their criticisms, both out of a fear of
losing control over seminarians and a belief that these seminarians would not be
able to meet the higher standards. The bishop of Vinh argued that most seminarians possessed only “medium” intelligence and that to uproot the local clergy from
their milieu could only have deleterious effects. he also opposed priests from his
mission studying in far-off tonkin, where “native priests and catechists have a
very poor spirit.” “If our seminarians must study in this region,” he wrote, “it will
not be long before they are contaminated, and once they return to us, their manner and their conversations will spoil our native priests and catechists.” The result
would be that missionaries would “no longer be masters of our houses of God.”39
despite such opposition, however, work began on the new seminary in hanoi in
1929, and the following year in nam Định the construction of a central seminary
for Spanish-led missions began.
The central seminaries were an important change in many respects. The Society
of Saint-Sulpice was new to Vietnam, and its priests came to the country with attitudes that were different from those of most mEP missionaries. In his journal of
his trip from Saigon to hanoi in 1929, the cofounder of the hanoi seminary, Léon
Paliard, observed the widespread practice of corporal punishment, noting that it
“seems a bit barbarous.” Paliard also noted meeting nguyễn hữu bài, whom he
described as “a nationalist, but the right kind of nationalist.”40 but beyond the attitudes of the superiors, the most important effect of the new seminaries was the
education they offered. They brought students from around tonkin under one
roof—the inaugural class of the hanoi seminary in 1933 included seminarians
from hanoi, Phát diệm, Vinh, hưng hóa, and Thanh hóa—to study at a much
higher level than they could at other seminaries. Paliard described the curriculum
as “much the same as at seminaries in France, the only difference being that there
is a nap from one to two o’clock in the afternoon, and that the courses are taught in
Vietnamese, Latin, and French.”41
by the late colonial era, curriculum reforms had changed the educational experience of Vietnamese seminarians considerably. In 1941, most minor and major
seminaries used new publications in quốc ngũ from the previous two decades, including many texts that were written or translated by major figures in the burgeoning intellectual and cultural life of the era. These included translations of molière,
dumas, and La Fontaine by nguyễn Văn Vĩnh, poems by Lương Văn Can, nguyễn
Đình Chiểu, and nguyễn du (despite being forbidden in some missions), and
works on history, philosophy, and culture by trần trọng Kim, Đào duy Anh, Phan
Kế binh, and Phạm Quỳnh (despite the objections of some Catholics to these authors). Curricula also reflected developments in Catholic intellectual life in Vietnam, most notably in the form of new texts on theology and on the study of quốc
102 chapter 3
ngữ by the priest and prominent intellectual hồ ngọc Cẩn, named the second
Vietnamese bishop in 1935.42
Lécroart’s recommendations to expand the Vietnamese Catholic print sphere
also had an important effect on the development of the local clergy. Sacerdos Indosinensis, the first journal to support Vietnamese priests and catechists in their
vocation, was first published in 1927. based in huế, the journal was initially under
the direction of Léopold Cadière, but it had significant input from the local clergy:
two of its earliest editors were hồ ngọc Cẩn and ngô Đình Thục, both of whom
later became bishops. The journal, trilingual but mostly in quốc ngữ, had a circulation over one thousand copies per month across Vietnam, close enough to the
number of Vietnamese priests at the time to make it a reasonable assumption that
virtually all Vietnamese priests read it at least semiregularly. Sacerdos Indosinensis
addressed both the sacred and worldly elements of the priesthood in a way that no
Vietnamese Catholic publication had done before. It contained an unprecedented
breadth of content, including Vietnamese translations of papal encyclicals, other
ecclesiastical documents, and various Catholic publications in other languages,
explanations and commentary on biblical passages, columns on topics ranging
from teaching a particular reading to explaining a Catholic holiday, explanations
of specific issues of doctrine or ritual, pedagogical lessons for priests teaching in
seminaries or schools, essays on Catholic history, explorations of the challenges of
contemporary ministry, reviews of recently published books, and more.
Vatican reforms also led to a growing number of Vietnamese Catholic priests
studying abroad. Vietnamese Catholics had done so for centuries, mostly at the
mEP’s seminary in Ayudhya (until 1767) and Penang (after 1807). during a visit
to Penang in 1924, Lécroart expressed concerns that the seminary’s curriculum
was out of date and that the instruction was too rigid.43 by 1928 Propaganda Fide
implemented a series of reforms to modernize the seminary, including an entrance
exam and a curriculum that included history, mathematics, modern languages,
geography, zoology, and botany.44 but the most significant reform in this realm
was the decision to send some Vietnamese to study at the Collegium Urbanum
in rome. Van rossum raised this possibility with the mEP almost immediately
after he arrived at Propaganda Fide in 1914, and he continued to press: in 1919, an
mEP representative in rome wrote, “until now I always responded ‘after the war,’
and now that the war is over I don’t know how to respond.”45 Van rossum was sufficiently insistent despite the mEP’s opposition to the idea, and six Vietnamese left
Vietnam for rome in the summer of 1919, prompting the procure to note, “Let’s
hope they don’t pick up any more on the way!”46 during the rest of the colonial
period, several dozen would follow.
of all the students given this opportunity, the most notable was ngô Đình Thục,
second son of ngô Đình Khả, who had died a year before Thục’s departure. Eugène
Allys, the bishop of Thục’s mission of huế, was a close friend of Khả’s and nguyễn
The Birth of a National Church 103
hữu bài’s, and when Thục left for rome, Allys expressed high hopes for a young
man whom he felt “would do us honor even among the elites who study at the
roman colleges. . . . other than Latin, he speaks French correctly, and possesses
intellectual qualities . . . capable of rendering his presence pleasant and agreeable.”
Allys nevertheless worried that “despite his qualities and the exceptional advantages that he might take from a prolonged stay in the eternal city, I wonder what
benefit the missions would gain from this completely de-classed subject.”47 Allys
was right that this experience was unlike any other that Thục and his compatriots had experienced. They received a world-class education in theology, scripture,
ethics, history, philosophy, sociology, math, and physics. Thục was the best of the
Vietnamese students in his class, receiving the highest honors in four subjects and
the second highest in three, including choir. he received doctorates in theology
and religious law, becoming the first Vietnamese to receive either degree. Like
many of his classmates, Thục held elite positions when he returned to Vietnam in
1929: he served as a teacher at the minor seminary in An ninh, then as the codirector of the first Vietnamese Catholic secondary school La Providence, and finally as
the third Vietnamese bishop, of Vĩnh Long, in 1938.
Although curriculum reform, journals for priests, and sending seminarians
abroad drew little attention from colonial officials, this was decidedly not the case
with Lécroart’s campaign to name an apostolic delegate to Indochina. In theory
the position of apostolic delegate was a purely religious one, but in the early twentieth century the Vatican began to use it as a way to counterbalance the influence of colonial officials over missionaries. Celso Costantini, apostolic delegate
in China since 1922, particularly concerned French officials. Costantini saw missions as a barrier to the growth of the Church in Asia. missionaries, he felt, “have
founded missions, but they have not founded the Church. They confuse the two.”48
rome had clashed with the French government over China policy since the 1880s,
when Propaganda Fide’s negotiations with the Qing court to allow more missionaries ran headlong into the Third republic’s desire to keep the missionary presence
in China as French as possible, and Costantini’s activities in China reignited old
tensions.49 he refused to have French foreign ministers introduce him to Chinese
officials when he arrived in beijing, he refused to be housed by foreign legations,
and in 1928 he opposed the French government’s donation to found a Catholic
university in the country. his opposition spearheaded an outcry about the donation from Chinese Catholic university students, forcing the French to withdraw
their support.50 by 1926, Costantini had also helped bring about the ordination of
six Chinese bishops, the first since 1685.
Celso Costantini and nguyễn hữu bài made French colonial officials defensive about the idea of an apostolic delegate to Indochina. rome first nominated
Lécroart, which relieved French officials, who were happy to see a Frenchman in
line for the position, but Lécroart declined the post. The Vatican then bowed to
104 chapter 3
growing pressure from mussolini’s government to place Italians in diplomatic positions within the Church, and it named Costantino Aiuti, an Italian priest working in China, as the first apostolic delegate to Indochina on may 20, 1925.51 For
French officials distrustful of foreign missionaries, Aiuti was a real concern. As
the minister of foreign affairs wrote, “how could we not be shocked to see introduced in Indochina, a French colony, an Italian apostolic delegate, who will conduct himself as master of French apostolic vicars?”52 French diplomats feared that
the Italian apostolic delegate might help extend fascist influence within the French
empire, a fear that the appearance of a few Italian fascist associations in Indochina
heightened.53 Aiuti thus raised the specter of European rivalries extending into the
French empire. “If we accept this precedent,” wrote the minister of foreign affairs,
“by what right could we protest if it is subsequently decided to extend this regime
into north Africa, and then tunisia?”54
The location of the apostolic delegate’s residence was an immediate point of
contention. having failed to prevent the creation of the position, French officials
tried to make the best of it; France’s ambassador to the Vatican suggested that,
if Aiuti were in hanoi, he might help to fix the strained relations between colonial officials and Spanish missionaries.55 nguyễn hữu bài, however, had other
plans. by donating a parcel of land in huế, ensuring the support of Lê Phát An, the
wealthy Catholic landholder from Saigon, and guaranteeing the eventual transfer
of the property to the Vatican, bài convinced rome to place the apostolic delegate’s
seat in huế, where it remained despite French attempts to wrangle a transfer from
later, more pliant apostolic delegates.56 The distance of the apostolic delegate’s residence from the centers of French power irked French officials: “The choice that
mgr. Aiuti has made of hué, capital of imperial Annam and the seat of the court,
instead of the French capitals of hanoi or Saigon, confirms the Vatican’s ‘politique
indigène.’”57
nguyễn hữu bài’s efforts to establish the apostolic delegation resulted in a
prestigious honorific from rome and concluded a triumphant campaign that
began with his meeting with the pope in 1922. It also ensured that his conflicts
with French officials remained permanent. The low point came three years before
bài’s death, when French officials countered bài’s influence in the cơ mật viện by
engineering a coup of sorts, which forced out bài and several of his allies in favor
of more pliant ministers. Problems between bài and French officials had come to
a head around the young new emperor bảo Đại, whom both bài and French officials sought to influence to their own advantage. bảo Đại named bài’s protégé
ngô Đình diệm minister of finance in his new cabinet, but diệm quickly resigned,
frustrated by his lack of influence and the emperor’s subservience to French officials. bài and the ngôs fought back when bảo Đại tried to marry a wealthy Cochinchinese Catholic named nguyễn hữu Thị Lan in 1934. Although French officials
approved of the marriage, rome refused to sanction it because bảo Đại was not
The Birth of a National Church 105
Catholic. Sensing an opportunity, bài and diệm loudly protested the “scandalous”
marriage. The apostolic delegate negotiated a compromise; the couple agreed to a
civil ceremony, and rome agreed not to excommunicate nguyễn hữu Thị Lan’s
family.58 For bài, who died in 1935, this was the last episode in a failed relationship with the French; for diệm, it was an early episode in a relationship that was a
failure from the beginning.
Costantino Aiuti died suddenly in 1928. After that, French officials tried hard to
ensure that future apostolic delegates would be French. Vatican officials huffily denied the implication that French officials could influence papal appointments, but
the next two apostolic delegates to Indochina, Colomban dreyer (1928–36) and
Antonin drapier (1936–51) were indeed French; it was not until 1951 that a nonFrench national (John dooley of Ireland) rose to the position. dreyer and drapier
were both careful about maintaining good relations with the mEP and French
officials. As a result, links between these apostolic delegates and the Vietnamese
Catholic community were weaker than they were under Aiuti. dreyer and drapier
both had unremarkable tenures as apostolic delegates until the August revolution
thrust drapier into the tense diplomacy surrounding Catholic issues in Vietnam
in and after 1945.
but of all the Vatican reforms, none was more controversial than allowing a
Vietnamese bishop. “Why,” had Pius XI asked in Rerum Ecclesiae, “should the native clergy be forbidden . . . to govern their own people?” This question seemed
especially appropriate for Asia, where the Church hierarchy had been comprised
almost entirely of Europeans since the arrival of Christianity in the region. In
China, with one exception (Luo-Wen Zao, ordained in 1685), all bishops were European until 1926; the first Filipino bishop was ordained only in 1906. Political
conflict festered throughout colonial empires in the 1920s, and rome was aware
of the damage that had been done to the Church by being unprepared for the end
of colonial empires in Latin America. Propaganda Fide thus made local bishops
a central part of postwar reforms. Aiuti avoided publicly campaigning for a Vietnamese bishop, but he quickly raised the issue in private. In 1926, he spoke with
the bishop of Saigon about taking land from the Qui nhơn and Saigon missions to
create a Vietnamese diocese in Phan Thiết.59 before forming the first Vietnamese
diocese in Phát diệm in 1933, Aiuti and dreyer spoke with the mEP about a possible Vietnamese diocese in Vinh, Phú Thọ / Sơn tây, and mỹ Tho.
Although most mEP bishops opposed the change, the society’s leadership felt
that it was better to work with the Vatican to shape the process than to resist and
create ill will. As de Guébriant wrote in 1930, “We can no longer object. . . . It would
be to our advantage, for the missions as well as the society, to take the initiative on
our part.”60 de Guébriant’s goal was to convince rome that the mEP supported the
change, thereby giving the society a degree of input in a decision that he viewed as
inevitable. but many mEP bishops were, in fact, deeply resistant to the idea. These
106 chapter 3
men had become missionaries at a time when few questioned racial divisions in
Catholic life in Vietnam, and their objections were often as paternalistic as they
were practical. The bishop of Saigon saw it as “without any advantage to the glory
of God or the salvation of souls to raise at this point the question of indigenous
missions in Indochina.”61 When the apostolic delegate raised the possibility of a
Vietnamese diocese in Vĩnh Long or mỹ Tho, the bishop again resisted. This time,
in addition to claiming that the plan did not serve the glory of God, he noted that
creating such a diocese would remove valuable agricultural lands in the mekong
delta from his control, and he informed colonial officials of the proposal.62 racial
views seem to have been one reason for his opposition; he routinely referred to
Vietnamese as “savages” in his letters. but even bishops such as Andréa Eloy of
Vinh, who had good relations with local clergy, opposed the change. When dreyer
proposed forming a Vietnamese diocese from part of the Vinh mission, Eloy opposed it because a lack of resources and inadequate education for Vietnamese
priests would make a Vietnamese diocese “not viable.”63
despite mEP reluctance, a vocal element of global missionary opinion began to
support Propaganda Fide’s call for this change. In April 1928, the governor-general
noted an article in Bulletin Catholique Indochinois that outlined “all of the legal and
factual arguments in favor of the institution of an indigenous episcopate.”64 And
in the April 1931 issue of the American edition of Missions Catholiques, an article
titled “The Church in French Indo-China” argued, in the words of an indignant de
Guébriant, that the local clergy in Vietnam “are victims of an outrageous injustice,
and that new bishops of their race would have been named by the dozens if the
French government did not present its opposition, with the complicity of missionaries.”65 de Guébriant pointed out to one of his American counterparts that
although this was patently false, it could have dangerous effects among a clergy
that until now had remained “perfectly submissive and disciplined.”66 Although
de Guébriant may have been optimistic about the journal’s circulation, the article
certainly did not pull any punches: “Unless Catholicism becomes thoroughly native in Indo-China in the near future,” it read, “the worst disaster may well be
looked for.”67
French officials were understandably leery of seeing a Vietnamese in such an
important position, but they could do little to prevent it. The stakes involved in
a long, public confrontation with the Vatican were appreciable, and the grounds
upon which French officials could oppose the ordination of a Vietnamese bishop
were shaky at best. The French were also keenly aware how poorly public opinion
in Vietnam would reflect on opponents of the change. As the governor-general
Pierre Pasquier wrote, “As far as Catholic and non-Catholic Annamite opinion . . .
it contemplates with unguarded satisfaction the attitude taken for a few years
by the Vatican in the face of the Asian problem. The opposition press . . . controlled by Annamites on the left or extreme left, has commented favorably on the
The Birth of a National Church 107
nomination of Chinese bishops and has not missed comparing the ‘broad views’
of the Vatican to the ‘narrow spirit’ of the colonial administration.”68 Among the
vocal non-Catholic supporters of a Vietnamese bishop were bùi Quang Chiêu and
nguyễn Phan Long, prominent members of the Constitutionalist Party.
In short, although colonial officials were opposed to a Vietnamese bishop, ultimately their influence over rome was weak and the public relations problem
of opposition was large. As the French ambassador to the Vatican wrote in 1933,
“We would have difficulty making understood to the Vatican our opposition to
the elevation of one of our colonial subjects to ecclesiastical honors and Episcopal
functions. We present ourselves voluntarily as the most liberal of colonizers; the
expressions ‘indigenous politics’ and ‘politics of association’ come from us. how
could we justify finding this method bad just because it is the Vatican that is applying it?”69 but while colonial officials offered little public opposition to Vietnamese
bishops, they did actively try to influence the process. After the ordination of the
second Vietnamese bishop, hồ ngọc Cẩn, in 1935, Governor-General rené robin
wrote Apostolic delegate dreyer, “This question has particular political importance in the protectorates and in the missions. I therefore believe that the colonial
administration . . . should be called to give their opinion, first for all creation of
indigenous vicariates, then on the persons called to this episcopate.”70 French officials were especially resistant to the formation of a Vietnamese diocese in Cochinchina, a formal colony.71 And official opposition to ngô Đình Thục’s ordination
was greater than it was for his predecessors, principally because of his close ties to
nguyễn hữu bài.
Although rome largely ignored objections from the mEP and colonial officials
about its plans for a Vietnamese Church hierarchy, it was careful about soliciting
opinions from within the mEP on where the first Vietnamese diocese should be.
Aiuti and dreyer respected the advice of the mEP leadership about which Catholic
communities could best support a Vietnamese bishop, and most of the leadership made a sincere effort to identify the mission where the experiment might be
most likely to succeed. In the early 1930s, a consensus grew that the best place was
Phát diệm, one of the oldest Catholic communities in Vietnam. Phát diệm was a
logical choice for many reasons. Catholics would make up a full 25 percent of the
population of the new diocese, and the Catholic population was concentrated in a
small area and was almost entirely ethnic Vietnamese, making the diocese easier
to administer. The new diocese would also have a large number of catechists—its
boundaries represented less than half of the old Phát diệm mission but contained
about 80 percent of its catechists.72 The attitude of the mEP bishop of Phát diệm
was also important: as de Guébriant wrote, “mgr. marcou of all of our bishops has
envisioned for the longest time these inevitable evolutions.”73
Pope Pius XI ordained Jean-baptiste nguyễn bá tòng the first Vietnamese
bishop in Saint Peter’s basilica on June 11, 1933, alongside an Indian bishop and
108 chapter 3
three Chinese bishops.74 Paul Vàng, secretary to the bishop of Saigon and three
other Vietnamese priests, accompanied tòng to rome, a journey that led them
through Singapore, djibouti, Colombo, Port Said, and France, and through Lebanon and the holy Land of Palestine on their return. It was a trip of a lifetime, one
that few Vietnamese had ever taken. Everything left a deep impression on Vàng,
but the Vatican left him the most awed. Vàng did the best he could to describe
the treasures of the basilica, the beauty of the bishops’ red robes, the clarity of the
joyous sounds made by the silver trumpets, the perfect voices singing the Kyrie,
the Gloria, the Sanctus, the Credo, the Agnus dei, the deep peace of the moments
of silent prayer, the solemnity of tòng’s entry on a throne to ascend to the highest
position any Vietnamese had ever achieved in the holy Church. Vàng was aware of
the limits of his words. “The things I have recounted here,” he wrote, “are a thousand leagues from reality. The grandeur and majesty of this place is such that no
pen can capture it. one can only see it to understand. If a person is blessed to be
able to go see it just once, until his death that person will not forget it.”75
Excitement mounted in Vietnam as tòng neared home. Thousands of Catholics
waited in the rain to welcome him in Saigon.76 Thousands more greeted tòng as he
traveled northward to nha trang, Qui nhơn, huế (where he met with bảo Đại),
Vinh, Thanh hóa, and the Catholic enclaves of bùi Chu and his new diocese of
Phát diệm. tòng concluded his journey in hanoi. It was a Friday at around three
o’clock in the afternoon when the bells of the cathedral began to ring to announce
the bishop’s arrival. It was a school holiday, and many children were among the
thousands waiting to greet the bishop, swarming in snow-white costumes with red
crosses on their sleeves, wearing conical hats, and waving flags and banners with
the bishop’s picture. others waited too, including French officials, mandarins in
full costume with their chests covered with decorations, and luminaries of commerce and industry. tòng’s speech of thanks, wildly applauded, was followed by a
sermon at the cathedral three days later. It was the first time that a Vietnamese had
preached in the cathedral since its construction in 1886.
In his public addresses in hanoi, in many ways the culmination of his ordination, tòng made it clear that his ordination was just one sign of an ongoing rebirth
in Vietnamese Catholic life. “Let us salute the future of the Church in Annam,” he
said. “While this celebration is about the past . . . it is mostly about the future,” he
continued. tòng saluted missionaries who had “stayed on the battlefield, even in
moments of the greatest danger, many of who had mixed their blood with those
of their Christians,” and he asked those worshipping alongside him to ensure that
“our prayers, on this memorable day, cross without effort the boundaries of earthly
life and penetrate their tombs, bringing to those who we call dead but are actually
the truly living, the testament of our friendship, stronger than death!” The new
bishop, however, was in hanoi not to remember but to renew. tòng recalled the
schools and seminaries that he had seen throughout Vietnam, the excitement of
The Birth of a National Church 109
the people who had greeted him, and the “spirit of faith, of abnegation, of peace,
and of zeal” of the many Vietnamese priests he had met. “It is by the work that we
know the artist,” he wrote, “and the work is superb, immense, magnificent.” For
tòng, the greatness of the Church in Vietnam was not the sacrifices of its past, but
it was in the faith all around him.77
mISSIonArIES, thE VIEtnAmESE CLErGy, And thE
FIGht oVEr A nAtIonAL ChUrCh
The ordination of a Vietnamese bishop, followed by another just two years later,
was intoxicating for Vietnamese priests. Upon the ordination of the second Vietnamese bishop, hồ ngọc Cẩn, in 1935, one Catholic writer offered his perspective
on the rise of his countrymen in his Church that illustrates how profoundly the
change affected some Vietnamese Catholics:
In the past, our country received and endured various movements of Westernization
to guide us on the road to progress; whether materially or intellectually, we wished
in all aspects to evolve like Westerners, and more precisely, to urge Vietnamese to
rise to the same level as the French. now we see Vietnamese—not only one from
the south several years ago, but now another from the center—who have risen to
the position of bishop, an important position that in the past in our country was
a title that only Europeans held, which proves that Vietnamese are not inferior to
Westerners.78
Another observer was so enthusiastic as to suggest that the ordinations had made
tòng and Cẩn physically almost indistinguishable from the Europeans who had
held the position before them. Like many French bishops, Cẩn wore a long white
beard; because of this, the observer claimed, “when he wears the bishop’s clothes,
it’s easy for people to mistake him for a Western bishop!” tòng, beardless, was
nevertheless often mistaken for an Italian bishop, according to the author (fig. 7).79
Vatican reforms generated enormous excitement among the Vietnamese clergy
and an equal level of concern among most mEP missionaries. In this climate, the
reforms generated real tensions from the beginning. As Costantino Aiuti was about
to arrive in hanoi for the first time in 1925, Vietnamese priests prepared a formal
welcome ceremony, but their bishop forbade it, telling them “it was very delicate
and would likely be misinterpreted.”80 This refusal came at a particularly difficult
moment in the relations between the mEP and the local clergy in hanoi, the result
of incidents following a theft of fifteen hundred piasters from two missionaries
named Chalve and marchand. The two missionaries suspected that a catechist was
involved, and they used their contacts with the Sûreté to carry out an inquiry that,
as mEP officials later admitted, included torturing the catechist for information.
In a letter to Lécroart, the catechist nguyễn Đình Cử told of long-standing menial
110 chapter 3
service to Chalve and, in great detail, of being “horribly tortured and insulted like
an animal” at the hands of the Sûreté. once released, Cử reportedly went to his
bishop for justice (after he spent a month in bed to heal), but he was told never to
speak of the incident and ordered to return to work for Chalve. When Cử refused,
the bishop removed his name from the register of catechists.81 It was only when
Cử was called as a witness to another crime that his story came out in court, a
story that the left-wing press did not fail to publicize. After a press campaign that
included a cartoon published in L’Argus Indochinois titled “Who Loves Well Punishes Well,” which depicted a missionary smoking a cigar while overseeing a Sûreté
interrogation, the missionaries and Cử were called to give statements. Chalve and
marchand were fined a small sum, which Cử received as an indemnity. The two
missionaries later became convinced of Cử’s innocence, and the mEP accepted
their apologies and left them in their posts. This sordid story bred a terrible atmosphere in hanoi: “All of the indigenous clergy,” wrote de Guébriant, “have taken
Figure 7. broadside
of Pope Pius XI and the
first two Vietnamese
bishops, ca. 1935. Société
des missions Etrangères
de Paris.
The Birth of a National Church 111
the side of the tortured catechist.”82 missionaries in hanoi reported a wave of accusations, many of them confirmed in letters to Propaganda Fide, of missionary
dalliances, abuses, and profiteering, although some accusations, such as the story
of a missionary who seduced young non-Christian girls and paid them for sexual
favors with votive objects, were likely false.83
When Propaganda Fide learned that the two missionaries were still in hanoi,
the prefect demanded their recall from Vietnam. de Guébriant strongly resisted,
arguing that expelling two “honorably known” Frenchmen at a moment when “all
of the Far East is menaced by a xenophobic effervescence” would confirm the suspicions of French officials that anti-French elements in Propaganda Fide were attempting to influence colonial politics. de Guébriant also noted that it would have
a terrible effect on the local clergy; “all of the undisciplined elements, ambitious,
brought to xenophobia, will triumph without reserve and will form, with others
more numerous, a disruptive element that will create endless difficulties, even for
the apostolic delegate. . . . It will be division and hatred where union and trust
once reigned.”84 The prefect eventually decided not to expel Chalve and marchand
from Vietnam, which put the mEP a bit more at ease but only added to tensions
between the local clergy and missionaries in hanoi.
Controversies surrounded Costantino Aiuti throughout his tenure in Vietnam,
from november 1925 until his sudden death on June 29, 1928. during that time
Aiuti received very different coverage in the missionary and Vietnamese presses.
While newspapers like the mEP-owned L’Avenir du Tonkin published only his pastoral letters and brief accounts of his major appearances, Vietnamese newspapers
published long accounts of his many visits around the countryside, often devoting
many pages to one day’s activities. For example, the Saigon Catholic newspaper
Nam Kỳ Địa Phận regularly published accounts of Aiuti’s tours around the huế
mission. one told of his visit with nguyễn hữu bài to the seminary in An ninh
where he participated in class and met with villagers; the newspaper published a
poem that Vietnamese priests had written in his honor.85 In another, hồ ngọc Cẩn
reported that Aiuti insisted on meeting every teacher at every school he visited, he
complimented Vietnamese priests on their Latin and their French, and he praised
missionaries who chose not to eat separately from their Vietnamese colleagues.86
When Aiuti died, rumors reportedly circulated among some Vietnamese that
French priests had poisoned him.87 Vietnamese priests even wrote letters to rome
complaining that Aiuti had been disrespectfully interred: “They placed in his casket rotten ornaments worth nothing.”88
much like the creation of an apostolic delegation, sending Vietnamese seminarians to rome caused problems from the beginning. The seminarians and their
superiors rarely wrote back to their missions, which rankled French bishops: “After
all, they haven’t ceased to belong to their missions!” wrote one in 1922.89 In 1925,
the bishop of hanoi noted with some surprise that one of his seminarians had been
112 chapter 3
ordained in rome and had not bothered to write with the news.90 new surroundings and independence from missionary supervision strongly marked Vietnamese
who went abroad. A young ngô Đình Thục thought of rome as a “Catholic League
of nations,” a place of “spiritual concord where the Gospel spilled into the hearts
and minds of people from different nations, of different habits, and who spoke
different languages, had different customs, were different in every way, but who
still lived in love and harmony.”91 Although he lodged at the mEP’s procure and received his pocket money from the society, Thục studied and socialized with Catholics from around the world. he became an active part of seminary life, founding
several student groups, one of which was involved in a presentation in front of the
pope. From rome, Thục began to become influential in the Vietnamese Church.
In 1922, he organized nguyễn hữu bài’s visit to campaign for Church reforms, and
he later campaigned for Vatican support for the first Catholic secondary school in
Vietnam, founded in 1933. not coincidentally, he became codirector of the school
when it opened.
Some seminarians expressed their newfound independence more directly than
Thục did. In 1929, a student named trị from Cù Lao Giêng in the mekong delta
wrote to his bishop about what he felt was a lack of support from the mission
for his studies. trị’s letter, shockingly direct in light of the differences between
a French bishop and a Vietnamese seminarian, closed with “I am not the slave
of the mission or of any bishop; I have but one goal: to be a disciple of Christ
[discipulus Christi] in order to become a priest [alter Christus].” The bishop saw
this as a sign of “a deranged mind or an inadmissible character and mentality,”
and he demanded trị’s return.92 The leadership of the college not only refused to
send tri back, but it ordained him in 1933. When he heard the news, the bishop
begged Propaganda Fide to send trị to another mission, since his attitude toward
missionaries would be unwelcome “when nationalism is causing us so many problems.”93 In 1927, the bishop of Phát diệm noted that a seminary student named
San was causing difficulties after his return from rome, where he had begged to
stay when the bishop sent for him to return to the mission.94 In 1934, the bishop
removed San from his post at the major seminary in Phát diệm because of “deviant conduct to the extent that it became necessary to send him elsewhere to avoid
a large scandal.”95 For some students, time in rome directly shaped their political
attitudes and activities a generation later. In 1925, Gendreau noted that Phạm bá
trực, a student from hanoi who was among the first six Vietnamese students sent
to rome, criticized the mission so often that “it seems as if his mentality is turning
to a barely respectable nationalism.”96 trực returned to hanoi in 1929 after almost
ten years in rome; during the First Indochina War, he would become perhaps the
most vocal and influential clerical supporter of the communist-led democratic
republic of Vietnam. news from rome sparked envy among those Vietnamese
seminarians stuck at home: as Lécroart reported, “a few photographs of Annamite
The Birth of a National Church 113
seminarians studying . . . in rome have circulated around the country. They show
these young men with cigarettes in their mouths and glasses in their hand in a
fairly liberal manner.”97
Similar tensions grew at the mEP seminary in Penang as a new generation of
students swelled its ranks after World War I. In January 1934, an mEP representative in rome wrote to a missionary teaching in Penang noting that students had
complained about punishments at the hands of professors. The letter outlining
their complaints, signed “the community,” was worrisome. “The spirit of bolshevism that is in the air,” wrote the missionary, “has manifested itself in Chung King
and hanoi and could very easily have been introduced to Penang by a few confused souls.”98 discontent did not subside, and in march the seminary leadership
attempted to ease tensions by impressing upon the students that they had a right
to complain directly to rome. The mEP representative was shocked that “orientals” would have the temerity to do such a thing when “in France, and other
Western countries, it would never occur to students to protest to the Vatican,”
and he worried that missionaries “would be covered in discredit . . . without sufficient reason.” This seemed “proof of the impregnated spirit of bolshevism that
animates the students.”99 Even studying in France under the closer supervision of
the mEP could be similarly transformative. The priests bửu dưỡng and Cao Văn
Luận, both of whom went to France to study in the late 1930s, vocally supported
independence after 1945, and Luận later became one of ngô Đình diệm’s closest
advisors during his presidency.
Vietnamese priests educated abroad in the 1920s and 1930s remained a small,
elite group, and it is important not to assume that the rank-and-file clergy in Vietnamese seminaries had the same sort of experiences. but it is clear that rome’s
reforms resonated with ordinary seminarians, whose studies were much different
from those of their predecessors just a decade before. In 1913, the missionary J. b.
roux noted that students in the seminary in huế were beginning to pronounce
Latin “à la romaine,” writing to a colleague that “this pronunciation is much more
agreeable to hear and more flowing . . . more rational, there is no doubt.” nevertheless, roux also noted that not all missionaries were happy about the “romanized” Latin spoken by seminary students, so much so that the bishop had been
forced to adopt a publicly neutral position on the issue.100
Catholic seminaries in the late colonial era were often sites of conflict between
missionaries and Vietnamese Catholics. The most famous disaffected seminarian
was trần tử bình, later a revolutionary and a general in the People’s Army of
Vietnam. In his 1964 memoir The Red Earth, bình wrote that the missionary at the
seminary in hoàng nguyên “enjoyed himself like a prince. his meals meant the
table filled with an abundance of meat and fish, more than he could possibly eat.
night after night he could not get to sleep without a woman. . . . he had a special
talent for castigating people in all tones of voice, from the obscene to the discreet,
114 chapter 3
from the cruel to the caustic.”101 bình and two other students were expelled from
the seminary in 1926 when they wore black bands to mourn the death of Phan
Chu trinh, whose funeral promoted similar demonstrations around Vietnam. Although bình’s portrait of seminaries is purposefully polemical, missionary sources
do reveal a tense atmosphere. In a memoir of his forty-six years in Phát diệm and
Thanh hóa, Constant Poncet remembered 1926 as a restive year in Phúc nhạc, a
time when “a feverish movement of insubordination, affecting especially the three
highest classes,” erupted in the seminary. “despite the general practice of daily
communion,” wrote Poncet, “piety, good spirit, and discipline had diminished.”
The seminary was dismissed for a month and twelve students expelled; six more
chose not to return when it reopened.102 And in march 1931, at the height of the
nghệ tĩnh uprising, missionaries reported a plot to “rebel” against superiors in
the seminary, which resulted in fourteen expulsions.103
Conflicts did not end once seminarians became priests. In many ways, the
shrinking, aging missionary population made day-to-day conflict less common
than it had been a generation before, especially in rural areas. Indeed, the declining missionary population increasingly left bishops no other choice but to place
Vietnamese priests at the head of districts. As the bishop of Phát diệm noted,
“This will make the indigenous clergy very happy, especially if we take this opportunity to diminish the distance in social relations, still too great in my opinion,
that persists between European missionaries and indigenous priests.”104 however,
in contexts where priests and missionaries continued to interact closely, conflicts
often intensified. In 1928, Propaganda Fide called on the brothers of Christian
Schools to promote more Vietnamese within the order and the educational establishments it ran. despite the fact that some local clergy held the baccalauréat while
many missionaries did not, French members of the order expressed opposition
to local priests holding equal positions; this led some to appeal to France to send
brothers with better qualifications to prevent this from happening. by the 1930s, in
many chapters relations between French and Vietnamese brothers were strained
to the breaking point. This was particularly visible in huế. In 1933, the order took
charge of instruction at the Catholic secondary school La Providence, with ngô
Đình Thục and a missionary at its head. Vietnamese brothers teaching at huế’s
upper primary school Pellerin—where they outnumbered French brothers six to
one—saw La Providence as a mandate to give Pellerin an equally important role
in developing the Vietnamese Catholic elite. They began to campaign the order’s
leadership in Paris to offer secondary courses at Pellerin, which French brothers
saw as a power play on the part of the local clergy to take control of the school.
The local clergy won out: Pellerin began to offer courses at the secondary level in
1938.105
many of the Vatican’s reforms were formally affirmed at the first general council of bishops for all of Indochina, held in hanoi in 1934. drawing theological
The Birth of a National Church 115
authority from Christ’s mandate to the apostles to sanctify, teach, and rule, general councils adapt the strictures and structures of Catholicism to changing conditions facing Catholic communities through decrees and decisions considered to be
Church law. The 1934 council was a departure in many ways. It was the first to span
tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina; past councils (most recently in 1900 and 1912)
had been regional. It was also the first council in which Vietnamese priests formally participated. This did not sit well with some missionaries excluded in their
favor, one of whom asked his bishop “if it had been useful, even politically beneficial, to invite two indigenous priests to the Council of hanoi without inviting
a single missionary.”106 The formal decisions of the council, which was organized
into five committees, confirmed new standards on admission, curricula, student
life, and governance in seminaries; set new limits on the ability of individual members of the clergy to select candidates for the priesthood as well as limited the time
that candidates could live and study with one priest or missionary; established
regulations on standardizing mass and festival calendars across missions; and, for
the first time, granted the local clergy permission to hear confessions of other local
clergy not from their missions. The overall tone of the council was perhaps best
expressed in a directive that called on missionaries “not to discriminate or differentiate between cố Tây and cụ Ta, because all are a part of the Church family.”107
many Vietnamese priests had long resented this linguistic distinction; in the
early 1920s, henri Lécroart observed that younger priests in some missions were
already refusing to abide by it.108 Lécroart (out of sincere belief) and mEP bishops
(largely out of concern for race relations in their missions) had urged missionaries
to abandon the droit de préséance of their own accord, but many resisted: Lécroart
noted that during his visit to hanoi, priests and missionaries had eaten at common
tables, but that the missionaries again enforced separation after his departure.109
but by the 1930s, what had been a form of protest among some members of the
local clergy had, after a decade of reforms, become a Church-wide debate about
differences between missionaries and the Vietnamese clergy. one example was an
article in Sacerdos Indosinensis about how changes in spoken Vietnamese should
affect translations of the Gospels. The article attempted to address the growing
belief that the pronouns used in existing translations of the Gospels (tao, mày,
bay, nó) were “vulgar” and that they should be replaced with more polite formal
pronouns (ông, bà, con, thầy, cha, tôi, and the like).110 The conversation continued
in print for months in 1938 and early 1939, and it drew responses that touched
upon ongoing debates about forms of address in religious life. The debate eventually drew a response from no less than the newly ordained bishop hồ ngọc Cẩn,
who wrote that Vietnamese priests and missionaries, regardless of age, should call
each other cha and should refer to themselves as tôi, except in situations requiring extreme politeness, when con was acceptable. Cẩn argued that priests, when
talking with a bishop, should refer to themselves as con, with the exception of the
116 chapter 3
oldest priests, for whom tôi was acceptable. bishops, in turn, should call priests
cha or thầy. most important, Cẩn argued that Vietnamese priests should not automatically refer to themselves in the diminutive when talking with a missionary,
and that young missionaries should refer to themselves as con when speaking to
an older priest.111
The rapid growth of this kind of sentiment—it is impossible to imagine this
issue being debated in the Catholic press in the early 1920s—illustrates how, in
many ways, rome’s reforms had begun to replace missionaries with Vietnamese
priests in a manner that the mEP had never been able or willing to carry out. Perhaps the best example of this was the changing nature of Catholic missions in nonkinh areas. most missionaries had little sustained contact with “ethnic minorities”
in what is today Vietnam until the later part of the nineteenth century.112 This began
to change during the colonial era, notably in mountainous areas of northwestern
tonkin, which the mEP designated in 1895 as the hưng hoá mission, and the
central highlands, the mountainous area from north of Saigon to Quảng nam. The
central highlands were part of the Qui nhơn mission until 1932, when the mEP
created a separate Kontum mission. French dominicans arrived around Lạng Sơn
and Cao bằng around the turn of the century; this region became an apostolic prefecture in 1902 and a mission in 1919.113 Evangelization among upland groups faced
real challenges. With a few exceptions, missionaries never had enough resources
or manpower to establish a lasting presence in areas such as these, where, unlike in
lowland areas, Catholicism was an almost totally foreign presence.
but while Catholicism’s spread in non-kinh regions clearly had its roots in these
missionary contacts, it grew in many of these regions only after missionary work
in Vietnam had declined until it was a shadow of its past. In many ways, then,
Catholicism’s spread into these areas was the first time the Vietnamese clergy became missionaries, foreigners bearing a new faith to people they considered to
be inferior in many ways. Indeed, Vietnamese Catholics often expressed views of
non-kinh peoples that closely echoed missionary views of the Vietnamese. In the
Vietnamese Catholic newspaper Lời Thăm in may 1922, an unnamed author described Kontum as a “mọi” province (Vietnamese for “savage,” and a generic term
for non-kinh peoples during the colonial period), full of people with “vulgar” eating habits, clothing, and behavior who were “far from our Annam.” The author
noted with shock that men wore loincloths and women wore blankets and that
people did not use chopsticks and never cooked rice in advance of a meal, all of
which he saw as signs of a “wild mentality” and lack of education.114 A similar text,
Mở Đạo Kon-Tum, a history of the Church in the region written in 1933, is heavy
with the language of the Catholic civilizing mission.115 one missionary noted that
Vietnamese priests who returned home after years in the highlands “would raise
their arms to the sky, crying with tears in their eyes, ‘oh Annam!,’” which he saw
The Birth of a National Church 117
as “quite normal for all who know what an exile of several years in the middle of a
wild forest demands.”116
In short, as Catholics began to evangelize further into non-kinh areas, Vietnamese priests found themselves as missionaries encountering cultures and languages
different from their own. This required that they be trained specifically as missionaries, which mEP authorities began to do in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1927, the mEP
missionary martial Jannin noted that he hoped to form a Vietnamese missionary
society called Ad barbaros (toward the barbarians) to help compensate for the
lack of mEP missionaries in the central highlands, and that he had received encouragement from fellow bishops and from the apostolic delegate.117 Jannin made
this an early priority after he became bishop of Kontum in 1932. by 1935, he noted
that a probatorium to train Vietnamese priests as missionaries was now complete
and that work would soon begin on a seminary. by 1938, eighty Vietnamese priests
had come to Kontum to begin careers as missionaries on Vietnam’s new frontier.118
during the generation after the First World War, the waning missionary presence and Vatican reforms had thus transformed the socioreligious roles of the
Vietnamese clergy. most Vietnamese priests ordained in the late colonial era had
attended a formal seminary, often far from their village, rather than studied under
missionaries or priests in their parish, as was the long-standing practice. Some
studied overseas, in Penang, France, or rome. Virtually all received a systematic
education in a broad range of subjects, many of them not religious. most important, they came of age in a Church in which the presumption and practice of inequality between European missionaries and Vietnamese priests that had been so
central to Catholic life in Vietnam for generations was quickly disappearing. As
transformational as Vatican reforms in clerical life were, however, they were but
one part of a broader process of contact with the global Catholic world in the interwar era that affected all parts of Vietnamese Catholic society. Perhaps the clearest sign of this was the world of print, which, as it became a bigger part of the lives
of ordinary Vietnamese Catholics, helped to lay the foundations for an imagined
religious community that was at once national and global.
118
4
Vietnamese Catholic
tradition on trial
ngô tử hạ was born poor in ninh bình province, not far from the majestic cathedral at Phát diệm, in 1882. hạ was intelligent enough to obtain some schooling,
and he eventually left his village for hanoi, one hundred kilometers and a world
away, where he found work as a low-level administrator in the growing French
bureaucracy. he saved carefully until he had enough to purchase a small piece
of property. by his thirties, hạ had become wealthy enough to go into business
for himself. however, he avoided more conventional paths to wealth in favor of
a growing new industry—the world of print. In 1915, hạ founded a printing press
that became one of hanoi’s more successful and longest lasting, printing everything from colonial decrees to short stories. The printing business made him a
wealthy man. by 1945 he was one of the most influential men in hanoi, and he became a member of hồ Chí minh’s first government and an intermediary between
democratic republic of Vietnam officials and the Catholic communities in his
home region. his press printed the first paper money of the revolutionary state.
ngô tử hạ rose to wealth and power by channeling one of the most dynamic
forces in Vietnamese society during his lifetime. As david marr and others have
shown, the rapid rise of romanized Vietnamese (quốc ngữ) in the early twentieth
century, both as a bureaucratic tool and as a vehicle for social reform and modernization, contributed to a rise in literacy and made print a principal medium for
the cultural transformations of the colonial era. This revolution in consciousness,
by exposing Vietnamese to an unprecedented range of new ideas about self and
society, was critical to both the growing sense of national community and the new
forms of opposition to French rule that emerged in the late colonial era. however,
as the diverse and often deeply opposed efforts to understanding the social changes
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 119
and political challenges of the time suggest, these revolutions in consciousness
were both multiple and transnational at their core, as intellectual currents from
Europe, the United States, China, Japan, and many other places shaped Vietnamese movements from literary modernism to communism in very different ways. In
Vietnamese Catholic life, the spread of the printed word meant growing exchange
with the global Catholic world. Priests and catechists increasingly drew from a
worldwide network of theological texts and ideas in their training and vocation,
and new genres from novels to news briefs helped lay Catholics to think of and
experience their faith in relationship to the cultural changes swirling around them.
PrInt In CAthoLIC LIFE bEForE thE t WEntIEth
CEntUry: FoUndAtIonS And tr AnSFormAtIonS
Vietnamese Catholicism had been a site of vibrant intellectual and literary activity
since the seventeenth century. This was partly due to missionaries, who were important producers and disseminators of knowledge. The best known of these missionaries was Alexander de rhodes, a Jesuit from Avignon who arrived in Đàng
trong in 1624 and spent most of the next two decades in both Vietnamese kingdoms. de rhodes came to Đại Việt at a time when the Society of Jesus was preparing for what it hoped would be a major expansion in the country. Language was, as
always, a challenge; as de rhodes wrote, “when I arrived in Cochinchina and when
I heard the natives, especially the women, speak, I had the impression of hearing
the twittering of birds, and I despaired of ever being able to learn it.”1 Jesuits began
studying spoken Vietnamese upon their arrival, but many did not know classical
Chinese or chữ nôm, the demotic script to write vernacular Vietnamese. Without
a recognizable medium to help transcribe the language they were trying to learn,
Jesuits began to develop one using the roman alphabet. This process began well
before de rhodes arrived, but in the absence of most of the manuscripts on which
de rhodes based his work, it is not clear to what extent he “invented” what later
became known as quốc ngữ (national script) or simply organized and systematized work by his predecessors.2 In either case, de rhodes’s labors produced the
first known published works in the medium, a Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary and a catechism, both published in 1651.3
The Catholic origins of the script that would become ubiquitous in modern
Vietnam obscures, even caricatures, the complex cultural world of precolonial
Catholic life, when quốc ngữ was often marginal in a world dominated by nôm
and classical Chinese. Indeed, for all the attention de rhodes has received, perhaps
a better window into seventeenth-century Vietnamese Catholic intellectual life is
another Jesuit, Geronimo maiorica, who arrived in Cochinchina with de rhodes.
maiorica spent most of his career in nghệ An, where he produced a large body of
work in nôm on saints, Gospel stories, the sacraments, and practical morality; he
120 chapter 4
might have written plays and poetry as well. maiorica’s work reflected his belief
that textual diffusion could help build a better-administered and more orthodox
Church in tonkin: more importantly, his work illustrates the importance of the
printed word, predominantly in nôm, in the lives and ministries of the local clergy
and elite in seventeenth-century Vietnamese Catholic life. Indeed, maiorica had
the help of at least one catechist and probably several when composing his works,
many of which drew from extant nôm texts.4
From the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the growth of Catholic missions and an expanding state bureaucracy brought important changes to
Vietnamese Catholic textual and literary life. mission expansion made literacy an
increasingly important part of the education of the clergy, as they translated a
growing body of religious texts and either composed or copied the correspondence of increasingly bureaucratized missions (which, thanks to the often precarious status of missionaries in the kingdom, they frequently also had to transport
from place to place). With mission expansion, a knowledge of Latin became more
important for the clergy, who needed to read and translate Catholic texts written
outside Vietnam; by the late eighteenth century, the study of Latin was a regular
part of the education of most priests in tonkin.5 Especially in the nineteenth century, the Vietnamese clergy received more systematic training in classical Chinese
to prepare them to function in the interactions between Catholic communities
and the expanding nguyễn bureaucracy. by the 1840s, many missions employed
scholars to train seminarians in classical Chinese, although they carefully screened
teaching materials to prevent the seminarians from being seduced by “superstitious” ideas.6 Quốc ngữ also came to have a greater role in Vietnamese Catholic life
beginning in the late eighteenth century. Catholic devotional texts and literature
existed in quốc ngữ since the seventeenth century, but the script’s rise in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was probably due to growing missionary support for the script as a medium to train clergy and catechists, proselytize,
and administer missions as they grew.7 The script’s growing place in Catholic life
is reflected in a number of works from this era, notably Pigneau de béhaine’s 1772
manuscript for a Latin–quốc ngữ dictionary as well as manuscripts by Philipê de
rosario bỉnh, the first Vietnamese Jesuit priest, who spent much of his adult life
in Lisbon. bỉnh’s dictionaries, works on linguistics, religious histories, and biographies are the best example of the important role of quốc ngữ in Catholic life by the
early nineteenth century.8
The growing importance of quốc ngữ in Catholic life by no means ensured its
dominant status in the late colonial era. Indeed, even in the second half of the
nineteenth century, some prominent Catholic intellectuals remained equivocal
about the medium. In his 1867 petition to the nguyễn court on language reform,
nguyễn trường tộ argued that one of the most serious challenges facing Vietnamese society was low literacy and the lack of a standardized writing system.
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 121
to correct this, he proposed what was basically a method for writing nôm that
standardized relationships between characters and the syllables they represented,
a system he believed would help ordinary people learn to read. John deFrancis
and trương bửu Lâm point out that tộ’s arguments are startling for their lack
of any mention of quốc ngữ, which tộ, as a Catholic, surely knew. Although tộ
possibly avoided discussing quốc ngữ because of its association with the French,
who had by then begun to use it in their administration in Cochinchina, his belief
that characters could be the basis of a national writing system remains significant
in light of his position as a Catholic and a modernizing intellectual.9 Although it
would be precipitous to claim that tộ’s position was representative of “Catholic”
thought, he is as good an example as any to illustrate that the eventual rise of quốc
ngữ in Catholic life was due less to its Catholic origins than to the colonial policies
and the modernist agendas that led to its rise in Vietnamese society as a whole.
despite the vibrant place of the printed word in Catholic intellectual life, it still
had a marginal place in the daily lives of most lay Catholics before the twentieth century. Catholic worship was primarily oral, with prayers, songs, and stories
transmitted through homilies during mass or in catechism classes. Indeed, the
extent to which lay Catholics memorized such things often astonished missionaries.10 texts circulated primarily among the clergy and elites. There is evidence that
the rise of quốc ngữ in Catholic life during the early nineteenth century did affect
popular literacy: Jacob ramsay notes that at this time, public examinations in the
catechism requiring reading knowledge began to be held in Cochinchina.11 however, it remains likely that most lay Catholics in the late nineteenth century had at
best a highly restricted literacy, able to recognize some characters or words or to
write their names on a contract but not to read or write at a high level.12 Constant
Poncet, a missionary based in Phát diệm, estimated that in the early twentieth
century, nine out of ten men and virtually all women in his district could not
read.13 Indeed, in a time and place in which few Vietnamese, Catholic or otherwise,
had access to formal education, access to literacy and specialized knowledge was
one important reason talented lay Catholics joined the priesthood.14
The growth of the printed word in Catholic life during the colonial era was gradual and partial; in many respects, print was still a marginal presence in the lives
of many Catholics well into the twentieth century. but, beginning in the 1860s, a
series of changes established the foundation for what would become, by the 1930s,
a broader and much more vibrant print sphere in Catholic life. Perhaps the most
significant development was new technology. before the 1860s, most texts from
mEP “print houses” (imprimerie/nhà in) were created using one of two methods:
they were either copied by hand or printed with woodblocks, although some missions may have successfully smuggled in small European printing presses by the
1840s.15 This changed with the creation of the first two central mEP print houses,
in Kẻ Sở (near hanoi) in 1869 and in tân Định (in Saigon) in 1874, both of which
122 chapter 4
were equipped with mechanical presses. two more were later founded, in Qui
nhơn in 1904 and in Phát diệm in 1912. The new mEP presses helped make quốc
ngữ dominant in Catholic life by the early twentieth century, as it was more easily
printed than characters.
Apart from technology, the political situation in Vietnam during the last third
of the nineteenth century had important consequences for Catholic print life. The
French conquest of Cochinchina and growing diplomatic pressure on the nguyễn
court in Annam and tonkin made it easier for Catholics not only to print texts,
but also to import them; accordingly, more texts printed at mEP presses in hong
Kong, Pondicherry, and Paris began to enter into Vietnam. In Cochinchina, the
French abolished the imperial examinations as the basis for service in the state
bureaucracy and began to promote quốc ngữ as a tool of administration. This was
a boon for the mEP press in tân Định, which published a number of works, especially quốc ngữ primers, used to train new colonial administrators. The French
also placed Catholic proponents of the script in positions of power. most notable
were trương Vĩnh Ký and huỳnh tịnh Của, who through their role in the first
quốc ngữ newspaper Gia Định Báo and as authors, translators, or compilers of
dozens of quốc ngữ texts, had enormous influence on the spread of the new script.
tonkin and Annam, where most Catholics lived, were very different, as the preservation of large parts of the nguyễn bureaucracy helped preserve the importance
of characters in cultural life. The rise of quốc ngữ was thus much slower there,
and mEP presses in tonkin continued to print Catholic texts in nôm and classical
Chinese into the early twentieth century.
The rise of French influence also brought about immediate and consequential
changes in the nature and role of missionary texts. new freedom of missionary
movement and the steadily increasing amount of missionary manpower, along
with new print technologies, facilitated the production and dissemination of missionary scholarship. Some realms of inquiry, particularly language and linguistics,
were long-standing areas of missionary expertise: indeed, one of the most important dictionaries during the early period of French rule was Jean-Louis taberd’s
1838 work, republished in 1877. other mEP missionaries, notably Legrand de la
Liraye (1868), marie-Antoine-Louis Caspar (1877), and Jean-François-marie Gé-
nibrel (1898), compiled influential dictionaries. Still others wrote grammars and
conversation manuals, such as denis Jourdain’s Grammaire annamite (1872) as well
as henri-François bon and Jean-baptiste dronet’s Manuel de conversation francotonkinois (1889). not only did French rule facilitate the creation of works such as
these, but the finished products became active tools in support of it, whether or
not they were intended as such, by helping new administrators learn Vietnamese
and transmitting the new lingua franca of French to the Vietnamese elite.
other missionary scholarship contributed to the growing body of colonial
knowledge. many missionary “ethnographies,” ranging from serious anthropology
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 123
to travel narratives, were published during the early colonial era, and for decades
they remained the best (and often the only) works on the belief systems and cultural practices of Vietnamese and other ethnic groups. missionaries had observed
and written about such things for centuries, but this work reflected the more scientific curricula that shaped the formation of missionaries of this generation, as
well as the intellectual frameworks of the colonially complicit anthropology of the
era. The most influential of these missionary scholars was Léopold Cadière, whose
ethnographic texts on beliefs and social practices in family and village life shaped
new conceptions of “Vietnamese religion” as a cultural system.16 missionary ethnography on upland areas, where missionaries were often the only Europeans
present, was particularly influential on French knowledge of these regions. The
most notable of these authors was François-marie Savina, who during his nearly
forty years in the hưng hóa region produced dictionaries and lexicons on a range
of languages, as well as ethnographic texts and histories.17 missionaries such as
Cadière and Savina worked with the Ecole Française d’Extrême-orient (EFEo),
and their work appeared in colonial journals such as the Bulletin de l’Ecole Fran-
çaise d’Extrême-Orient, the Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hué, and the Bulletin de la
Société des Etudes Indochinoises.18
Few missionary participant-observation narratives were considered serious
scholarship at the time, but that did not make them less influential. From the 1880s
until the First World War, much of the increasingly literate French population
learned about the nation’s growing colonial empire through missionary journals
such as Annales de la Propagation de la Foi and Missions Catholiques, which told
stories of far-off places, exotic peoples, and missionary heroes risking life and limb
to bring spirituality and French civilization to dark places. While missionary journals were part of an intense effort to redefine the public image of apostolic work in
an age of secularization and imperial expansion, they also reflected the nationalist and racial sensibilities of missionaries who saw themselves as doing not only
God’s work, but also France’s, and they had an enormous effect on popular understandings of the French civilizing mission.19 Similar were the many new missionary histories published from the 1880s to the 1920s, notably by the mEP historian
Adrien Launay. Written in the golden age of popular nationalist histories, these
works did much to normalize basic colonial-era ideas such as the existence of an
“Annamese” nation since prehistory, timeless and unbridgeable divisions between
Catholics and the rest of “Annamese” society, and the patriotism of missionaries
and their instrumental role in the rise of French rule.20
French accounts of Catholic martyrs, which told stories of the deaths of missionaries in a way that suggested that they had lived and died as much for France
as for God, were particularly influential in this respect. one example was the pamphlet Patriotes et martyrs en Chine et au Tonkin, published in 1901 by the Société
de Saint Augustin, an organization that raised money for missionary work. The
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pamphlet, a potent fusion of missionary and nationalist rhetoric, presented martyrdom and French nationalism as indistinguishable. In its account of the conquest of tonkin, “missionaries became captains, and Christians soldiers,” and the
conquest succeeded because “France, profoundly moved by the death of its children, swore to avenge them.” In such texts, salvation and military triumph were
inseparable: “Victory and deliverance!” were followed by “a prayer for the dead”
and “a word of pardon for the enemy.”21 As Launay wrote of Catholics who had
died in tonkin, “if they had to die, better to die with weapons in their hands.”22
As important as the printed word was in linking missionary work to the production of colonial knowledge and mythologies, it is important not to overstate
the connection. of the many hundreds of mEP missionaries in Vietnam during
the colonial era, few wrote anything, let alone anything of note. mEP authorities were often hostile to missionaries who published, seeing the activity as detrimental to proselytizing and a form of unnecessary collaboration with secular
authorities. Léopold Cadière, for one, experienced hostility to his participation in
conferences and his membership in scholarly organizations such as the EFEo and
the Association des Amis du Vieux hué, and he even received mandated revisions
to his submissions to missionary journals to make them seem more fervent and
less scientific. “It would have been easier,” Cadière once remarked, “had I been a
Jesuit.”23 As the number of missionaries declined and colonial institutions grew
after the First World War, missionary scholarly production made up a smaller part
of a body of knowledge that was now also produced by Vietnamese with training
in French disciplinary techniques.
Print, of course, could also often become a battleground between French officials and missionaries. Freemasons and other anticlerical voices most often made
themselves heard in the pages of left-wing newspapers, while missionaries and
their supporters responded in kind in the mEP-owned daily L’Avenir du Tonkin.
newspapers brought news from the metropole, which in the fin de siècle often reenergized and intensified local disputes. missions also used their growing capacity
to print pamphlets and books as a way to rebut or attack their critics, like the mEP
missionary Jean Guerlach’s response to the anticlerical clarion Camille Pâris.24 Although the colonial administration rarely censored Catholic publications, a few
cases of censorship were enough for missionaries to see an official bias. In 1917,
French officials charged the editor of L’Avenir du Tonkin with publishing a confidential telegram regarding “diverse questions of a military nature, notably regarding the deployment of troops to France.” he was fined two hundred francs and
sentenced to eight days in jail.25 In 1927, the socialist governor-general Alexandre
Varenne objected to the paper’s support for the right-wing Catholic movement
Action Française and pressured the mEP to remove the editor.26 The paper also
lost a governmental subvention in 1937 because of an editorial referring to France’s
minister of foreign affairs Aristide briand as a “brute” for saying that maintaining
diplomatic relations with the Vatican was worthless.27
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 125
of course, the most significant effects of new print technologies and new conditions for textual production were on Vietnamese Catholics themselves. The early
twentieth century was the epicenter of a veritable revolution in Vietnamese linguistic life. French officials, who were initially circumspect about displacing characters as the principal writing system in the nguyễn bureaucracy in Annam and
tonkin, had begun to more forcefully support quốc ngữ as a tool for administration and education in the protectorates.28 Although few French officials believed
that the French language would ever become universal in Vietnam, its rise as a
language of politics and culture was nevertheless rapid and consequential. Perhaps
most importantly, many Vietnamese intellectuals now believed that French rule
and Japan’s 1905 victory over russia suggested the need for Vietnam to embrace
a particular kind of modernization to emerge from subjugation. despite the stillprofound cultural presence of nôm and classical Chinese, the 1920s was a time
when an increasing number of Vietnamese came to question the value of characters and to support quốc ngữ as a vehicle for mass literacy. The challenge of French
and especially quốc ngữ to demotic scripts, and the transformation of print into a
more democratic medium, led to widespread and often heated linguistic debates
in late colonial Vietnam. For Catholic communities, their particular historical relationship to the new script did not make its opportunities or its challenges any
less complex.
A nEW SCrIPt And nEW dEbAtES
missionaries had the clearest position in the language debates of the colonial era.
Although some missionaries did have deep knowledge of both classical Chinese
and nôm, most opposed the use of demotic scripts in the realm of politics or culture. This had not always been the case, and it likely had much to do with the perceived ties between “Confucian” learning and nguyễn anti-Catholicism that were
particularly powerful after the communitarian violence of the nineteenth century.
missionaries, even in the mEP, were also surprisingly resistant to teaching French.
before the 1890s, most of them quite correctly believed that teaching French in
Annam and tonkin would have exposed Catholics to greater danger from nguyễn
officials or local populations.29 Thereafter, missionaries often opposed teaching
French out of a fear that it would facilitate the spread of secular ideas, or out of
a simple pragmatism that many French officials in the early colonial era did not
have. This had political consequences, as missionary reluctance to teach French
provided fodder for anticlerical critics.30 Catholic seminaries in tonkin did not
teach French until well into the colonial era, and some seminarians were not even
allowed to read French in their spare time.31 It was not until the 1920s, when French
had become an important language of government and culture, that seminaries in
tonkin regularly taught French, and some Spanish dominicans resisted doing so
even later. however, in Cochinchina, where French was essential decades before
126 chapter 4
it was in tonkin, as well as in the mEP seminary in Penang and elite lay Catholic
schools, missionaries taught French since the middle of the nineteenth century.
French and demotic scripts both had a role, albeit a limited one, in Vietnamese
Catholic intellectual life during the late colonial era. nearly all of the few Vietnamese Catholics who wrote in French were elite and urban, and they were often educated in France or at a top colonial school. one good example is Lê Văn Đức, who
was born in 1887 in mỹ Tho. The son of a wealthy landowner whose wife was a relative of the empress nam Phương, Đức attended the Lycée taberd and then went
to France to continue his studies. When he returned, he used his family’s wealth to
build schools in the mekong delta, travel in Europe, and pursue a writing career.
Đức’s novels, plays, travelogues, and newspaper articles, many in French, made
him well known in Saigon’s literary circles. A similar figure was nguyễn hữu mỹ,
who was from a wealthy family in bến tre, a graduate of the Institut taberd, an
administrator, and author of a number of works in French, including a travelogue,
plays, and biographies. mỹ also founded and edited La Croix d’Indochine, the only
Vietnamese Catholic newspaper in French during the colonial period not formally
under mission direction.
A very small number of elite Vietnamese priests also wrote in French. most notable was the first Vietnamese bishop nguyễn bá tòng, whose many years as secretary to the bishop of Saigon left him remarkably fluent in French. during the years
after his ordination, tòng gave a series of major lectures, almost all written and
delivered in French, that were published in major newspapers and as pamphlets
or books (but often with accompanying quốc ngữ translations). These lectures,
most of them reflections about the role of the Catholic faith in the modern world,
revealed tòng’s belief that the “special relationship” between France and Vietnam
needed to continue at a time when many were beginning to question it, a position
that few who rose in the Vietnamese Church hierarchy after him held.32 Given the
politically sensitive nature of tòng’s ascension, it is not surprising that the Vatican
and the mEP chose someone who not only held such views but could also express
them in very good French.
People such as Đức, mỹ, and tòng were outliers in a Vietnamese Catholic intellectual life in which French was peripheral. French simply was not very important
for most of the Vietnamese clergy, who almost never ministered to the French
population. In Cochinchina, where French had a much bigger presence in intellectual life than it did in hanoi, the Catholic population was relatively small, and
lay Catholics had a smaller presence in the French-language sphere there as the
language spread beyond the work of trương Vĩnh Ký and huỳnh tịnh Của. Some
Vietnamese did write for the mEP-owned L’Avenir du Tonkin, a French-language
newspaper, but most of its pages were filled with articles by missionaries or the
French press. Indeed, a vibrant industry either summarizing Catholic works written in French or translating them into quốc ngữ is evidence of French’s limited
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 127
reach into Vietnamese Catholic life. of course, more Catholics read French than
actually wrote in it. many seminarians read theological works in French by the
late colonial era, most Catholic quốc ngữ newspapers included some content in
French, and mission presses also published works in French with print runs and
subject matter suggesting that they reached a broader audience than French Catholics alone. Still, French played a relatively minor role in the lives of even literate
Vietnamese Catholics.
Unlike missionaries, a few Vietnamese Catholics remained vocal advocates of
classical Chinese and nôm even as they declined in the late colonial era. Although
some of them made fairly abstract literary arguments about the lack of style and
sense of etymology in quốc ngữ,33 most felt the need to address why character
study was important for Catholics. In 1927, a priest from huế named J. b. hân criticized the lack of character study in seminaries and Catholic primary schools. hân
argued that because characters were still crucial in many parts of society, Catholics
lacked the intellectual and cultural literacy necessary to achieve status and respect
from other parts of society. he also argued that, much like a mandarin, an effective
priest must be able to mediate between social groups to ensure mutual good feelings, assess competing claims, and address and resolve wrongs. Therefore, a lack
of knowledge of classical Chinese and nôm prevented the clergy from protecting
their communities in debates over religion or in conflicts with local officials.34
other Catholic advocates of characters were socially conservative priests and
intellectuals who equated characters with the forms of learning and social structures they saw as under siege from science, freethinking, and modernity. The most
influential Catholic advocate of character education during the colonial era was
nguyễn Văn Thích, a priest, prominent seminary teacher (and later the head of the
Ecole Pellerin), author of numerous works on theology and morality, and head of
the newspaper Vì Chúa, which was published in huế after 1936. Thích wrote several manuals for character study, and Vì Chúa was one of the few Catholic newspapers that contained a column to help readers learn classical Chinese.35 mindful
of the mixed feelings that many Catholics had for characters, conservatives such
as Thích regularly distinguished between the “useful” aspects of traditional learning and those parts of precolonial Vietnamese society that, as Catholics, they were
happy to see disappear. Thích’s support for characters was also a result of his background. born into a non-Catholic elite family—his father was prefect (tri phủ) of
bình Định province and later the minister of foreign affairs in the cơ mật viện—
Thích was one of a small number of Catholic converts among the scholar-gentry
during the colonial era, and thus one of increasingly few with an education in
characters, which he had studied with his father as a child.36
Although few Catholic writers opposed quốc ngữ per se, a number expressed
deep unease about the effect of rising literacy on morality, social roles, and family structures. In his 1930 Ethical Questions Today, nguyễn Văn Thích blamed
128 chapter 4
materialism (vật chất chủ nghĩa) and freethinking (tự do lý tưởng) for tensions
between parents and children, husbands and wives, and superiors and subordinates.37 other Catholics wrote morality primers and ethical texts with a similarly
conservative bent that went through many editions; one of the most influential
was Simon Chính, whose primer Filial Piety, one of many on similar topics, went
through at least five editions.38 Thinkers such as these often expressed concern
about the new cultural climate of the interwar period: one typical article bemoaned that too many new stories were immoral, too many new novels were licentious, and too many new songs were rude.39 This led some Catholics to argue
that literary production must be closely controlled.40 others took softer positions;
one, arguing for the literary value of truyện Kiều, argued that only its “dangerous
places” merited scrutiny.41 others defended the censorship of colonial authorities,
whose unease about the printed word often matched their own.42 others were
more proactive, suggesting “good” books in newspaper columns.43 Print was not
the only focus; some predicted dire effects from the new technology of the cinema,
echoing the misgivings of some European Catholics in gloomy articles about the
“decadent” films of mae West and marlene dietrich.44
most Catholics, however, were enthusiastic about the potential of the new
medium. mEP presses continued to benefit from the spread of print culture, expanding in the 1920s to become a major presence in publishing. mission presses
eventually came to publish a wide range of texts that were not explicitly Catholic,
perhaps a reason why the presses were increasingly referred to with less clearly
Catholic names such as “Imprimerie de Qui nhơn.” Quốc ngữ primers continued
to be among their most popular offerings; two published in Qui nhơn reportedly
reached a combined circulation of almost four hundred thousand between 1920
and 1936.45 Alongside the mission presses arose two important Catholic presses
not directed by Church authorities. Along with ngô tử hạ’s press in hanoi, the
nguyễn Văn Viết press in Saigon began publishing in the early years of the quốc
ngữ boom. both tapped the colonial state for new business, printing circulars,
training manuals, and primers as well as catering to the growing taste for popular
fiction. They were also the most prominent printers of Catholic texts after mission
presses; they published bylaws, reports, and rosters of Catholic associations and
translations of Catholic texts, as well as novels, short stories, and plays by Catholic
authors.
The growth of the Catholic publishing industry indicates the widespread popularity of quốc ngữ in Catholic life. missionaries were active proponents of the
script; Léopold Cadière, who was part of a 1902 commission about French language policy, wrote an influential article that outlined the script’s rise and weighed
proposals for reform and standardization.46 As the script came to interest more
people, most missionaries remained vocal advocates. one example was Gustave
hue, whose serialized article “new Quốc ngữ” was translated into quốc ngữ in
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 129
several Catholic newspapers. hue’s article illustrates a common missionary reason
and strategy for supporting the script. At a moment when many saw extraordinary potential in quốc ngữ, missionaries were quick to cast their predecessors as
the script’s indefatigable preservers in dark times: “All should be astounded,” hue
wrote, “that such a simple method was kept in a hole for centuries, and that it
required missionary ingenuity to bring it out, and at what cost!”47 This kind of
enthusiasm was less politically risky during the 1920s, when French officials had
formalized a policy of primary education based in quốc ngữ.
Like missionaries, most Vietnamese Catholics who were interested in language
issues were enthusiastic supporters of quốc ngữ. most Catholic newspapers published favorable editorials, instructional columns, serialized primers, and essays on
proposals for reform and standardization of the script. Given the enthusiasm for
quốc ngữ in many parts of Vietnamese intellectual life by the late 1920s, Catholics
did not always have religious reasons, or make religious arguments, for supporting the script. huỳnh Phúc yên, editor of the newspaper Công Giáo Đồng Thinh,
took the common position that quốc ngữ, unlike characters, was a truly “national”
script that best captured “Annamese” intellect, customs, and morality.48 hồ ngọc
Cẩn argued that the medium was capable of articulating the wide range of forms of
expression in literary and colloquial Vietnamese.49 other Catholics saw quốc ngữ
as an opportunity to spread literacy in rural areas and to underprivileged parts
of the population, also a common argument in favor of the script.50 but religious
identity did inform some Catholic support. Proselytizing and conversion were a
central reason for Catholic arguments for spreading literacy.51 one priest saw the
script as an opportunity to give Catholic writings a more meaningful presence in
national literature (văn chương Nam).52 And hồ ngọc Cẩn supported the script as
a bromide against the influence of “Chinese books” (sách Tàu) because of the antiCatholicism of some writers.53
Unlike conservative Catholics such as nguyễn Văn Thích and Simon Chính,
Catholic proponents of quốc ngữ often argued that the expansion of the printed
word was a good thing for both their religious community and for society. many
were proud that a Catholic innovation was helping Vietnamese literature flourish.54 others saw the printed word as an opportunity for moral improvement and
self-cultivation.55 Although few Catholics were universally enthusiastic about all
new forms of literature, many felt that readers were capable of making proper literary choices.56 As such, some argued that even partial censorship was an unacceptable affront to the vision of a writer.57 The authors of one particular article making
this case, which appeared in the student newspaper of the Ecole Pellerin in huế,
may very well have experienced this firsthand shortly thereafter: in may 1937, six
months after the article appeared, the newspaper published the first part of what
was advertised as a multipart article on socialist theory. That was the last issue of
the newspaper to appear.
130 chapter 4
As this incident suggests, the rise of quốc ngữ and increases in literacy meant
that an increasing number of Catholics read things that had little to nothing to
do with their faith. however, it is clear that structures of religious life did create
boundaries between Catholic texts and others. In cities, for example, it is unclear
to what extent general bookstores or book peddlers sold Catholic texts, or if Catholic bookshops (which were often connected to a church) carried nonreligious
texts. boundaries were likely firmer in rural areas, where the printed word circulated less to begin with, because of the correspondingly greater opportunity of the
clergy to control what lay Catholics read. Indeed, religious authorities often felt
that many forms of popular literature, even classics of Vietnamese literature, were
deleterious to faith and morality. Some bishops even tried to ban truyện Kiều
from their missions.58 but as the range and volume of printed material spread,
boundaries such as these began to fade. It is very difficult to generalize about the
contexts in which this took place, or to do much more than guess at what kinds
of texts Catholics read and to what degree. however, the many debates over what
Catholics could and should read, the moral and social responsibility of writers,
free speech versus censorship, and similar issues suggest that changes in print culture were an important part of changing worldviews.
In late colonial Vietnam, two of the most intense issues debated in the print
sphere were the questions of generation and gender. The youth of this era came
of age in a radically different society than that of their parents; as a result, in
hue-tam ho tai’s words, they “no longer possessed a sense of rootedness and
had fallen prey to a deep spiritual malaise” about “the ambiguous lessons of the
past, the weight of conflicting values and expectations under which they labored,
the political and cultural choices open to them, and the models they could emulate.”59 As many long-standing norms and forms of generational authority came
under scrutiny, so too did many assumptions about gender roles within families
and women’s place in society. As a result, debates about youth and women became
powerful metaphors and sites of debate for broader questions about the cultural
and political experiments of the era.
Catholic debates about the questions of youth and women deserve far more
attention than offered here. nevertheless, even a brief glimpse at these debates
reveals the real and often profound differences emerging in Catholic life about
what these changes represented. For many Catholics, “youth” represented all that
seemed to be going wrong in Vietnamese society: the erosion of traditional social
structures, the lure of Westernization, and the absence of Catholic morality in society. one typical article compared “youth in the past” with “youth today,” finding
the former moral, respectful, and studious and the latter dissolute, irreverent, and
wayward.60 In another article, a writer bemoaned that the “atheism” and “materialism” of modern life made it less likely that Vietnamese youth might convert to
Catholicism.61 In a similar vein, many Catholic writings on the question of women
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 131
worried that social change threatened women’s “traditional” roles as keepers of
hearth and home; in the words of one priest, women’s rights (nữ quyền) should
be “to preserve their dignity and righteousness” and “respect their status.”62 This
was a mainstream position that certain concerns particular to Catholics, such as
particularly negative views of divorce, further reinforced.63
yet a growing number of Catholics were excited about the new roles of youth
and women in Vietnamese society. youth movements were a widespread part of
Catholic life in the 1930s, as global associations to mobilize Catholic youth and
workers began to spread in Vietnam. These groups’ pamphlets or journals were especially vocal in touting youth’s potential to renew Church and nation. Wrote one
journalist in the inaugural issue of Hy Vọng (hope), a journal for Catholic youth,
“The nation [tổ quốc] wants its youth to have a good future, it wants them to know
how to help one another at home, in the nation, and among mankind. If youth
are not the hope of the family and the nation, who is?”64 Although priests and
community leaders often expressed concern about youth movements in general,
new forms of specifically Catholic youth associations at least partially alleviated
these concerns. And while Catholic intellectual life was usually far from the most
progressive elements of women’s movements in the colonial era, the latter did have
their effect. most of the first women to write in the Catholic press did so about
women’s issues, and they often expressed strong if carefully worded positions on
the need to reconsider gender roles and boundaries in Catholic life.65 others wrote
increasingly of the need for things such as women’s education or greater equality
between the sexes.66
These debates over youth and women are but one example of the close ties
between the printed word and cultural change in Vietnamese Catholic life. during the late colonial era, new Catholic readers had a much wider range of printed
material at their disposal than ever before. books, now cheaper, made the printed
word a more central part of ritual practice than it had been in the past, and they
linked ritual cultures in Vietnamese Catholic life more closely to one another and
to global Catholicism. The growing number of lay Catholics with a formal education learned new subjects through primers written for confessional schools by
missionaries and priests, and they learned Catholic history and morality through
myriad new Catholic histories, novels, and plays. Perhaps most importantly, the
rise of periodicals brought Catholics into broader cultural spheres and debates,
and it made them more aware of events and communities beyond their own.
CAthoLIC b o oKS: nEW rEAdErS And nEW GEnrES
“It is of great importance that the priest should combine his daily meditation with
the constant reading of pious books, especially the inspired books,” wrote Pope
Pius X in his 1908 apostolic exhortation Haerent Animo. The document, translated
132 chapter 4
and published in quốc ngữ a year later,67 is an emblematic expression of Pius X’s effort to use the printed word, increasingly in local vernaculars, to “protect” Catholics, especially priests, from modernist influences through widespread and often
strict interventions into theological inquiry. It was a long way from rome to Vietnam, however: even in 1923, as the apostolic envoy henri Lécroart noted, “there
exist Annamite books edited in hong Kong, Kẻ Sở, Saigon, and by the dominican
Fathers . . . not in total conformity with the general directions of rome. . . . These
books are nearly incontrollable by rome because there exist no Latin or French
translations.”68 nevertheless, the growth of print and more direct connections between Vietnam and the Catholic world did put into motion liturgical and theological reforms and standardizations in Vietnam that would culminate in the era of the
Second Vatican Council. Any attempt to assess this from a theological perspective
would require a separate study, but even a brief survey of quốc ngữ theological
and devotional texts suggests important changes in the largest part of the Catholic
print sphere during the late colonial era.69
Priests, still much more actively engaged with the printed word than most lay
Catholics were, encountered an unprecedented number and range of texts in the
early twentieth century. These included quốc ngữ translations of works on theology and ethics, canon law, guides to administering the sacraments, contemplative
and ascetic works, catechisms and other teaching texts, and more. Some were quốc
ngữ versions of older nôm texts, but most were direct translations into quốc ngữ
of works in French or Spanish from the late nineteenth century or later. Although
some were written by missionaries in Vietnam, almost always with the help of
local clergy and catechists, more were not composed in, for, or about the particular theological contexts in which they were now put to use. Indeed, although
seminary reforms in the 1920s and 1930s would later produce Vietnamese priests
who wrote actively about theological matters, relatively few did so before the 1950s
(the bishop hồ ngọc Cẩn is one notable exception). As such, this growing body of
European texts played a particularly central role in the formation and ministries of
the Vietnamese clergy. Perhaps the most emblematic of these new quốc ngữ texts
was the first complete translation of the roman Catechism (Sách bổn roma), published in 1901–2 and intended to replace other instuctional texts deemed less rigorous or doctrinally imperfect. The spread of print not only brought new works into
the hands of the clergy, but it also reduced adaptations and localizations that often
accompanied the practice of copying texts by hand. Finally, it eventually meant a
local clergy largely cut off from knowledge of classical Chinese and nôm, and a
greater influence for more recent works.
The role of the printed word in the ritual lives of lay Catholics also underwent a
major shift in the colonial era. Especially by the 1930s, the sheer number of manuals in quốc ngữ for prayer and mediation, books of Gospel stories, saints’ lives,
calendars, and other works for lay Catholics illustrates the extent to which texts
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 133
had become a central part of paraliturgical worship in Vietnam. The use of the
printed word to strengthen lay religiosity was another goal of global Catholic liturgical movements in this era, and rising literacy in Vietnam and a booming mEP
press industry in Asia (the mEP’s Imprimerie nazareth in hong Kong, founded
in the late nineteenth century, published texts and translations in dozens of languages) facilitated the spread of devotional texts. The colonial era was thus clearly
the point of origin of growing standardization in ritual practices in Vietnamese
Catholic life that intensified after the creation of the Vietnamese Church hierarchy
in 1960, but how and in what ways requires further study. one marker of this shift
was the first complete translation of the old testament and the Gospels from the
Latin Vulgate into quốc ngữ, overseen by the mEP missionary Albert Schlicklin
and published from 1913 to 1916, which was likely the principal source for compilations of bible verses or readings from the Gospels published thereafter. nontextual
elements of worship, such as the widespread importation and incorporation of
canticles in French and Latin rewritten with Vietnamese words, also underwent
similar changes.70 yet such changes remained at best partial: many quốc ngữ works
for lay worship and study remained particular to individual missions in the colonial era, reflecting the strength of discrete ritual cultures that differed substantially
between regions and between mEP and dominican missions.
The expansion of quốc ngữ also broadened the scope of many preexisting
genres of Vietnamese Catholic literature. one important example of this is martyr
histories, which existed not only as narratives, but also in verse, plays, biographies,
and other forms. These had existed in Catholic life for centuries; one of the earliest,
about the death of the sister of a priest, dates from the 1700s.71 however, the genre
became more widespread in Vietnamese Catholic life during the colonial era, as
the recent wave of violence and the formal beatifications of the turn of the century gave martyrs a more important place in Catholic life. The rise of the printed
word was also crucial in this process. many new martyr histories were translations
of French texts, in which the racial and cultural presumptions of the genre were
evident even in relative space given to missionary martyrs and the Vietnamese
who died with them: one 1909 text devoted more than two hundred pages to the
martyrdoms of two missionaries and just over one hundred to four Vietnamese
martyred with them.72 A 1900 history of twenty-two Vietnamese martyrs stated
that since missionaries “had been so courageous to act as if Catholicism was not
banned,” they “made us follow our faith more strongly every day.”73 Vietnamese
Catholics in these texts appear largely as loyal and faithful followers of the missionaries who hover, like angels, throughout the narratives.
Alongside these translations, however, was a wave of new martyr stories by
Vietnamese authors. Although some continued to be written in traditional narratives or verse forms, others were in the more modern forms of drama or serialized
newspaper columns. An example of the latter was “martyrologium Annamaticum,”
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published in Sacerdos Indosinensis, which told the story of all Vietnamese martyrs
in order to help priests inspire their congregations. And although it is very hard to
make claims about how readers understood these martyr texts, their authors articulated a distinctly contemporary message and sensibility. Indeed, many linked
the sufferings of martyrs to ongoing changes in Vietnamese Catholicism that, for
many, foretold a bright future for their Church. “Sanguis martyrum, semen Christianorum” (“The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians”), a famous phrase
of the early Christian leader tertullian, became a refrain in many of these texts,
giving redemptive value to the sacrifices of religious forefathers. “nam Định was
the most bloody and martyred area of all Indochina,” read one newspaper article,
“and now it is the part of Indochina where our religion is the most prosperous.
The holy See just founded a Vietnamese diocese there, and the diocese has almost two hundred priests and seven hundred catechists guiding three hundred
and fifty thousand faithful!”74 moreover, Catholicism’s past and future in Vietnam
both began to be described in terms of a national religious community. “When we
look at the calendar of all the dioceses,” read one article, “we see that every year,
in every place in all three regions [tam kỳ], there are masses celebrating those who
were martyred on the soil of the nation of Việt [nước Việt].”75 Another read, “The
Church in Vietnam, just like Churches in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, all
have the honor of holiness and the glory of martyrdom . . . that helps brings the
light of Christ to their fellow countrymen.”76
The rise of quốc ngữ not only meant important changes to theological, devotional, and other genres long extant in Vietnamese Catholic life, but it also meant
enormous expansion in new forms of knowledge, as well as experimentation in,
or discarding of, established forms. For many Vietnamese Catholics, the growing
network of primary schools was an important site for transmitting and learning
new ideas. Although Catholic schools in the early colonial era focused heavily
on religious instruction, by the 1920s some Catholic pedagogues began to call
for more comprehensive, modernized curricula to better prepare students for a
changing world.77 one popular Catholic pedagogical text, cowritten by nguyễn bá
tòng and the mEP missionary Adolphe Cransac, prescribed new techniques for
teachers, such as creating and following a lesson plan, demonstrating flexibility in
dealing with a range of ability levels, acquiring proper equipment such as blackboards and clocks, teaching by asking questions rather than by rote, and focusing
on the broader range of subjects now taught in Catholic schools, which included
math and science along with reading and writing. As a Catholic primer, however,
it also recommended teaching students how to write the names of things in the
church before moving on to food and clothing, and it urged teachers to record
the date of a student’s baptism along with names, grades, and other personal information.78 newer primers certainly were not always progressive; one for girls
recommended teaching them first the ten Commandments, then the four “great
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 135
dangers” of modern society (drinking, gambling, opium smoking, and sensual
love), followed by directives to live life as a faithful and obedient mother, wife, and
daughter. Primers like these are a reminder that going to school for the first time
also exposed Catholic children to rigid conceptions of gender that were often far
from their lived experience.79
Priests and missionaries also produced a remarkable range of new texts for use
in Catholic schools. The mEP missionary François Chaize, for example, wrote
primers on botany, zoology, and anatomy, and his colleague Jean Vuillard wrote
several on the physical sciences.80 The priest hồ ngọc Cẩn wrote several mathematics primers.81 one of the more colorful Catholic authors in this realm was
the priest Lê Công Đắc, who wrote primers on hygiene and the natural sciences,
as well as manuals for studying French and what was probably one of the earliest
manuals written by a Vietnamese for studying English.82 Đắc was also a shameless
self-promoter, sending copies of his books to luminaries, including the emperor
bảo Đại, and publishing their polite if surprised thank-you notes in a volume of
his “correspondence.”83 Primers such as these illustrate the engagement and enthusiasm of Catholic educators in this era for new ways of thinking about human life
and the natural environment.
The late colonial era was a time of widespread experimentation in literary life,
as contact with new forms of fiction, poetry, and drama changed how Vietnamese
writers conceived of and articulated these genres. Arguably the first Vietnamese
short story inspired by Western models is Truyện Thầy Lazarô Phiền (The story of
Lazaro Phiền), written in 1887 by the Catholic nguyễn trọng Quản, the son-in-law
of trương Vĩnh Ký. Quản was one of the first Vietnamese to study at the famous
Lycée d’Alger in Algeria. After his return, he became principal of a primary school
and part of Saigon’s art and literary world. The story is about a young Catholic
deceived by a jealous admirer of his wife’s to believe that the wife is having an
affair with his best friend. he kills his wife and friends, but later he learns of the
deception. Wracked with guilt, he becomes a priest, but he still fails to find peace.
Stricken by a fatal disease, he confesses his crimes to a fellow passenger on a ship
to Cap-Saint-Jacques, where he is going to die. The story, as John Schafer and The
Uyen point out, illustrates several conventions that were new to Vietnamese fiction: the work is in the first person, told from the perspective of the passenger who
hears the confession, and it is written in an everyday style. Although it was not
received enthusiastically when it was first published, the story was influential on
early Cochinchinese novelists like hồ biểu Chánh.84
Probably the most celebrated Vietnamese Catholic literary figure during the
colonial era was the poet nguyễn trọng trí, better known as hàn mặc tử. tử was
born in Quảng bình in 1912, but he moved often due to his father’s work as a translator and customs official. tử’s father died in 1926, the year tử began his studies
at the Ecole Pellerin in huế. tử earned a scholarship to study in Paris from the
136 chapter 4
Association of Study in the West (hội như tây du học, founded by nguyễn hữu
bài), but his visa was rejected because of his correspondence with Phân bội Châu,
even though it was almost entirely literary. tử went instead to Qui nhơn, where he
found work conducting cadastral surveys for the government, but he soon left the
job and moved to Saigon to become a journalist. There he directed the literary portions of the journals Saigon and Công Luận Văn Chương (Literary opinions) and
contributed to publications such as Đông Dương Tạp Chí (Indochina review) and
Tân Thời (new times). tử left Saigon in 1936 for Qui nhơn, where over the next
several years he would write the bulk of his poetry. Soon after his arrival in Qui
nhơn, tử noticed the first signs of leprosy. he fought the disease for years with the
help of the sisters of Saint Francis of Assisi, who ran a leper colony in nearby Qui
hòa, but he died on november 22, 1940, at the age of twenty-eight.
tử’s poetry was central to the new Poetry movement (Phong trào Thơ mới),
generally regarded as beginning with the publication of Phan Khôi’s poem Tình
Gìa (Elderly love) in 1932. The movement called for a rejection of traditional poetry for experimentation with new forms of rhyme, meter, and metaphor, and it
reflected the deeply romantic, melancholic tone characteristic of that moment in
Vietnamese literary life. tử’s work had many influences, but his Catholic faith had
a central place in his poetic inspiration. Võ Long tê, among others, has argued that
tử’s poetry was rooted in an aesthetic of transcendence whose central problem
was the harmonious synthesis of faith and the creative impulse. tê illustrates the
place of divine love, marian devotion, and other elements of Catholic mysticism
in tử’s poetry, concluding that tử’s genius was “adapting the possibilities of the
Vietnamese language to the exigencies of Catholic inspiration.” by “harnessing
the sentiment of revolt born out of suffering,” tử “raised himself to the level of
the Grace that shaped his creative quest for beauty and eternal bliss.”85
Along with trương Vĩnh Ký and huỳnh tịnh Của, nguyễn trọng Quản and
hàn mặc tử are among the few Catholic authors of the colonial era whose works
are considered canonical by the standards of contemporary Vietnamese literature.
yet the literary trajectories of some lesser-known figures suggest, perhaps, the
need for a closer focus on the place of Catholics in colonial-era literary life. one
such figure is Đỗ Đình Thạch, better known as Đỗ Đình, born in 1907 in Sơn tây.
Đình’s family members, who were not Catholic, were influential. his father, for
example, was tri phủ in the province. This gave Đình the chance to study in France,
where he studied literature, philosophy, and religion and came to know, among
others, André Gide and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Đình reportedly decided to convert during his journey home in 1932 after reading Jacques maritain’s Degrees of
Knowledge, one of the most influential works of twentieth-century neo-Thomist
philosophy, and he was baptized just after he landed in hải Phòng. Đình wrote in
both Vietnamese and in French about literature and religion in journals such as
Nam Phong, Đông Dương Tạp Chí, and Cahiers de la jeunesse, the latter founded
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 137
by the Catholic writer Cung Giũ nguyên, whose 1956 work Le fils de la baleine
(The son of the whale) is one of the best-known works of Vietnamese francophone
literature. Đình was the first to translate Gide into Vietnamese, and he also translated works by the poet and dramatist Paul Claudel. Đình joined the French army
in 1939, and he remained in France until 1960, when he returned to teach in huế.86
Although most literate Catholics did not move in these kinds of circles, they did
produce a vibrant body of mainstream fiction, religious and otherwise. Among the
most popular forms of Catholic fiction during the colonial era were plays, which
in the early twentieth century began to reflect the influence of Western dramatic
forms. Possibly the best known of these was nguyễn bá tòng’s version of the Passion of Christ (Tuồng Thương Khó), written in 1912. tòng was inspired to write a
Vietnamese version of the Passion by the ongoing revival of the play in Germany
and France.87 The play’s first performance, at Saigon’s major seminary in 1913 on
the fiftieth anniversary of its founding, was by all accounts a huge success: even the
leftist L’Opinion reported that “the theater had been constructed with the latest improvements in staging science,” that “the luxury of the costumes happily matched
the rare strength of the interpretation,” and that four thousand had come to see the
play, many of them not Catholic (fig. 8).88 As the Passion’s success suggests, plays
Figure 8. Scene from the first Vietnamese adaptation of the Passion of Christ, 1913.
Société des missions Etrangères de Paris.
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were popular in colonial-era Catholic life not only because Catholic Vietnamese
writers and translators had an enormous body of work to draw from, but also
because the spectacle of the genre was a powerful way to reinforce and spread
religious messages.
Probably the most prolific Catholic playwright of the colonial period was the
man who played Jesus in the first performance of the Passion, Lê Văn Đức. In 1926,
Đức revised tòng’s version of the Passion into a longer production, with songs, for
an extensive run over the next decade. Đức’s own Catholic dramas included Joan
of Arc (1924), The Young Saint of Nazareth (1925), and The Voice of God Calls Joan
of Arc (1929), all a part of bon Théâtre moderne, a thriving Catholic theater series
in Saigon in the 1920s and 1930s. yet Đức’s career in popular fiction far surpassed
his accomplishments as a playwright. In addition to producing his aforementioned
travel narratives, Đức wrote a number of comic plays and short stories about modern life, focusing on scenarios such as country bumpkins joining the army or the
son of an uptight mandarin getting married. he also wrote swashbuckling adventure stories, including a novel about a search for buried treasure.89 A similar if less
prolific and popular figure was Đinh Văn Sắt, who wrote several plays for bon
Théâtre moderne. Like Đức, Sắt wrote comic plays, one of which was about people
who get drunk and say stupid things.90 And the priest Lê Công Đắc also wrote
religious and comic plays. one of the latter poked fun at a group of women who,
inspired by movements in women’s athletics, tried unsuccessfully to walk from
hanoi to hải Phòng and back. Đắc’s play drew the ire of the tự Lực Văn Đoàn,
who skewered him in the pages of Phong Hóa.91
modern novels with Catholic themes also began to appear in the late colonial
era. one was the 1932 The Criminal, subtitled “a psychological novel.”92 A clear
knockoff of The Story of Lazaro Phiền, it tells the story of a man named trần nghĩa
as he recounted it to a priest just before his death. trần nghĩa, born Phan Thái, is
the son of a rich landowner in Quảng ngãi. Pious and a good student, he leaves
Quảng ngãi to enter the Ecole Pellerin, but tragedy strikes when his parents die
in quick succession. In his anguish, he is pressured into selling his family’s land
and falls into a downward spiral, eating and drinking to excess and leading shady
financial dealings that lose his friends a lot of money. Instead of paying his friends
back, Phan Thái changes his name and goes into hiding at a buddhist pagoda,
but he leaves one evening with the pagoda’s silver, goes to nha trang, changes his
name again, and gets a job working for a man named La Galoze. one day, when
La Galoze’s family is in Saigon, Phan Thái kills him, steals his money, and flees.
In the years that follow, the once-pious man moves around Vietnam, stealing and
changing his name, until he gets married and establishes himself in Saigon as a
businessman named trần nghĩa. however, he ultimately decides to confess and is
taken to prison. Another merchant, a Catholic, sees trần nghĩa’s plight and gives
an impassioned speech urging him to return to his lost faith. After the speech,
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 139
trần nghĩa returns to Catholicism and lives out the rest of his days in peace. The
novel ends with his funeral.
Children’s literature with Catholic themes also began to appear during this period. one interesting work in this genre is the 1931 novel Wandering Siblings. The
story starts in bình Định province, where the two children, maria and André, live
with their poor but virtuous Catholic parents. one day, their mother does not return from the market, leaving their father in dire straits. The family moves to bình
Thuận to look for work. on the way, the children see a car for the first time, as well
as the astonishing sight of Vietnamese in Western clothing. on the journey, their
boat capsizes and the children are separated from their father. Their subsequent
adventures lead them up and down the coast from hải Phòng to Saigon, and even
briefly into Cambodia and Laos. Throughout, missionaries, priests, fellow believers, and the strength of their faith come to their aid in crucial moments before a
kind and wealthy Catholic adopts them. When the reader leaves maria and André,
the young boy is doing well in his studies and his older sister has just entered a
convent.93
thE rISE oF CAthoLIC nEWSPAPErS
of all the new forms and genres that emerged in colonial-era Catholic life, perhaps the most significant was periodical literature. The first quốc ngữ periodical,
Gia Định Báo, was founded in 1865 as a vehicle for official colonial pronouncements, and there were still only a handful in existence at the turn of the century.
After World War I, however, the number and variety of periodicals in Vietnam
exploded. The periodical sphere captures the exuberant, increasingly democratic,
fleeting, and heavily censored nature of print life in the late colonial era. Affordable
and in tune with issues of the day, periodicals popped up everywhere, often only
to die out quickly due to censorship or a lack of funds or readers. but those that
survived became the most widespread forms of print media in colonial Vietnam.
by the late 1930s, the nine best-circulated quốc ngữ periodicals had a circulation
of more than eighty thousand per month, and they likely reached far more people
through the multiple readership of single issues or public readings of articles for
those who could not read.94
The first Vietnamese Catholic periodical, Nam Kỳ Địa Phận (literally “diocese
of the south,” but usually translated as “Semaine religieuse,” or “religious weekly”)
was first published in 1908. by 1945, there were more than twenty such periodicals.
Like so many changes in Catholic life in the colonial era, the spread of Catholic
newspapers had roots in missionary initiatives but took on a life of its own. The
initial impulse to form Nam Kỳ Địa Phận came from missionaries who were eager
to shield Catholics from the revolutionary wave sweeping across Vietnam in 1908.
That year, the bishop of Saigon wrote, “the peoples of all Asian races seem to want
140 chapter 4
to make a common cause against the foreign European dominator. This is a new
phase of history opening for Asia . . . the hated cry of ‘down with Christians’ replaced with ‘down with Europeans.’” The bishop reported seeing pamphlets calling
on Catholics to join the anticolonial fight, and he sought to fight fire with fire: “As a
new means of propaganda,” he wrote, “we propose . . . to publish, in Vietnamese, a
religious weekly so as to give to our Catholics the advice appropriate to any given
circumstance, to help them to know one another and to group together so as to
better use their strength to the benefit of their spiritual and temporal interests.”95
This logic inspired many of the early Catholic quốc ngữ periodicals, which all
required missionary permission and oversight to operate. In 1921, an mEP missionary requested permission to found a quốc ngữ periodical, Lời Thăm, in Qui
nhơn. The resident in Annam, the future governor-general Pierre Pasquier, noted
that the periodical hoped “to bring back to a more loyalist sentiment certain indigenous priests who have acquired considerable authority over their entourage,
and who display too much independence vis-à-vis their French religious superiors, much like toward French authorities in general.”96 Three years later, on the
recommendation of the apostolic envoy, mEP authorities founded the first quốc
ngữ Catholic periodical in tonkin, Trung Hòa Nhật Báo, to “warn its readers
against . . . bad shepherds [mauvais bergers].”97 This sort of thinking was not only
a response to the religious and political situation in Vietnam, but it also reflected
a concerted effort at the highest levels of the Church to contend with the growing
popular press by both encouraging “good” Catholic periodicals and suppressing
more progressive ones.98
not surprisingly, Vietnamese who became involved in the nascent Catholic
periodical world had more complex motivations. to be sure, some did share the
perspectives of their missionary superiors. The priest Lucas Lý, a frequent contributor to Sacerdos Indosinensis, argued that periodicals were essential not only to
mobilize lay Catholics to do more for their Church, but also to shield them from
the wave of “atheism, materialism, communism, anticlericalism, all of the rash and
foolish heterodoxies” in the world that made it ever-harder to obtain conversions.99
nguyễn Cang Thường argued that periodicals were necessary to preserve Catholic
morality among the faithful, to spread the word among the unconverted, to act as
organs of influence to protect Catholic interests, and to defend the Church in the
debates of Cochinchina’s vibrant print sphere, which included frequent criticisms
of missions or of Catholicism in general.100 nguyễn hưng Thi, whose many years
in Europe gave his thought a distinctly ultramontane tone, argued that periodicals
should help make lay Catholics more aware of papal thought.101 “Think positively
about newspapers,” wrote a priest in Sacerdos Indosinensis, “think of them as ours,
as our hands, make sacrifices for them, help them, campaign for them, and you
will see results that are glorious for our Catholic family and for our God.”102
other Catholics, however, thought of periodicals more as a means to overcome
tensions and misunderstandings that often shaped Catholic relations with other
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 141
parts of society. In 1927, hồ ngọc Cẩn wrote that the new biweekly newspaper in
Saigon, Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, would help communication across communitarian
lines.103 Similarly, nguyễn bá Chính, the first Vietnamese editor of Trung Hòa Nhật
Báo, hoped that the newspaper might “make disappear ill-grounded doubts about
Catholics who are, in various ways, written off as traitors in this nation.”104 Such
writers felt that it was essential to cultivate a non-Catholic readership. “Should
non-Catholics read ‘Catholic Voice’?” asked the writer of one editorial in Công
Giáo Đồng Thinh. This writer hoped that the newspaper would help non-Catholics
learn much about Catholic life, belief, and thought, thereby helping society regain
a proper equilibrium by having one of its major religions represented as such in
public for the first time.105
These largely opposite viewpoints—periodicals as bulwark, or as bridge—aptly
captures the two main kinds of periodicals in the Catholic quốc ngữ press during the colonial era. Nam Kỳ Địa Phận and Lời Thăm, founded with close mEP
involvement, were more religious bulletins than newspapers. They contained in
large part content such as bible stories, serialized morality primers, Catholic histories and fiction, essays on religious life, necrologies of priests and other prominent
Catholics, and news from the Catholic world, as well as some from French Catholic periodicals and official colonial organs. These publications, especially Nam Kỳ
Địa Phận, were enormously influential despite their largely religious focus, offering Catholics a broad range of the growing theological, intellectual, and literary
output of Catholic writers at a price that was much more affordable than other
media. religious bulletins were by far the most frequently consumed form of print
in Vietnamese Catholic life in the colonial era; while books and pamphlets were
usually printed in runs of a few hundred to two thousand, runs of weekly or biweekly periodicals were from one to four thousand copies, while monthly ones
could run from five hundred to two thousand. In the 1930s, a decade when roughly
fifteen different Catholic newspapers or journals circulated, tens of thousands of
issues of Catholic periodicals circulated per month, and they were regularly read
aloud in groups or passed on to others. The model of Nam Kỳ Địa Phận remained
dominant during the colonial era: of the more than twenty Catholic periodicals
published between 1908 and 1954, only a few deviated from it in significant ways.
of these, the most important were the aforementioned Trung Hòa Nhật Báo,
published in hanoi from 1923 until 1945, and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, published
in Saigon from 1927 until 1937. reflecting the belief of their respective editors that
Catholic newspapers should serve as a link between Catholics and other parts of
society, these publications followed the model of the modern newspapers springing up in Vietnam in this era. Unlike religious bulletins, these periodicals actively
reported on and discussed the news of the day, both in briefs and in longer editorials. They reflected a real engagement with many of the issues debated by literate
Vietnamese in this era, such as the challenges of Western education, science, and
morality, women and the changing nature of family, poverty and other problems in
142 chapter 4
rural areas, class and race relations, national customs and culture, and new forms
of literature and poetry. Trung Hòa Nhật Báo was especially influential. Published
in hanoi, it was easily obtained by most Catholics in tonkin and it had an important presence in a print sphere in hanoi that remained relatively limited until the
1930s. two years after its foundation, Trung Hòa Nhật Báo was circulating four
thousand copies per month throughout Vietnam.106
Founded in Saigon three years after Trung Hòa Nhật Báo, Công Giáo Đồng
Thinh followed the model of a Catholic newspaper engaged with social issues and
debates. In a letter to its readership in an early issue, the editor Đoàn Kim hương
described the newspaper as “a social organ” (cơ quan xã hội ta). hương wrote that
since life was a ceaseless struggle for economic and social improvement, the newspaper’s purpose was to “struggle for citizens to live in security and good health,
struggle for Vietnam’s progress, struggle for an ever-better future, struggle for an
era of cultural growth, struggle for prosperity in the countryside.” This vision was
clearly influenced by Trung Hòa Nhật Báo; he noted, “in the south and the center . . . this is the only newspaper that both brings the news of the day and discusses
the place of the Church in our land,” while “other regions of Annam and other
nations have had this for a long time.” hương saw his newspaper as devoted to
the public interest and welcomed his readers’ participation, although he accepted
responsibility for “the things I will say and do.”107 by the late 1920s, the reporting
in Công Giáo Đồng Thinh and its contributions to social, cultural, and political
debates made the newspaper an active part of Saigon’s vibrant print sphere.
These two publications were a substantial departure for Catholic periodicals,
and they did not go unobserved by missionaries and colonial officials. mEP influence over Trung Hòa Nhật Báo was initially limited: as the bishop of hanoi noted
in 1925, “I barely read the articles at all, having not enough time or enough knowledge of the new modernized language.” he also noted that while “the journal does
not receive any subvention . . . this hasn’t affected its success in the market. It is
surveillance that is lacking . . . regrettable in light of efforts to remedy the problem.”108 but this had apparently changed by the 1930s: nguyễn bá Chính, editor of
Trung Hòa Nhật Báo since its creation, left it in 1932 because missionary influence
now seemed too great. “Among the missionaries,” he wrote, “there are some who
do not adequately understand the political situation in this country and who have
consequently transformed this Trung Hòa into a purely religious journal.”109 Công
Giáo Đồng Thinh benefited from freer press laws in Cochinchina, but the political activities of some of its leadership drew attention. In 1928, huỳnh Phúc yên,
one of the editors, announced in its pages that he would found a group called the
Party of the Vietnamese Progressive youth, focusing on improving the condition
of coolies, rickshaw drivers, and other members of Saigon’s underclass through
propaganda, organizing, boycotts, and even violence. yên published articles by
the journalist diệp Văn Kỳ calling for a training program and savings bank for
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 143
poor residents of Saigon, which got him forced off the editorial board.110 by the late
1920s, the Sûreté was censoring articles from both papers.111
The character of these periodicals again raises the question of communitarian
boundaries in colonial-era intellectual life. to what extent did non-Catholics contribute to Trung Hòa Nhật Báo and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, or Catholics to nonCatholic periodicals? Lack of biographical information for most contributors to
newspapers and their frequent use of pen names make this hard to answer. Several
factors suggest that religious identities did shape the careers of Catholics writing
in periodicals. Priests, important contributors to Catholic periodicals, likely had
little opportunity or interest in publishing in the non-Catholic press. many lay
Catholic writers likely attended Catholic schools, whose networks probably led
them toward Catholic periodicals, and the relatively broad, open editorial policies
of Trung Hòa Nhật Báo and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh likely made it less necessary
for Catholic writers engaged in contemporary issues to seek other opportunities.
The experiences of Catholics active in non-Catholic periodicals likely varied
enormously. one of the most influential intellectuals in Cochinchina at the turn of
the century was a Catholic, Gilbert trần Chánh Chiếu, a graduate of the Collège
d’Adran, a wealthy landowner in rạch Giá, and a French citizen. Chiếu’s interest in
reforming the economy and administration in Cochinchina led him to the editorship of two influential non-Catholic quốc ngữ newspapers, Nông Cổ Mín Đàm and
Lục Tỉnh Tân Văn, where he published articles criticizing colonial rule. In 1907, his
son, who was studying in hong Kong, met Phan bội Châu and sent his writings
to his father, who came to hong Kong to meet Châu. Upon returning to Saigon,
Chiếu began to help organize the journeys of students to Japan and used hotels he
owned in mỹ Tho and Saigon to give cover to anticolonial activists. Chiếu was arrested in october 1908, but his prominence and his French citizenship made him
hard to convict; ultimately, he was acquitted of all charges.112 but while involvement in non-Catholic newspapers helped hone the nationalism of Catholics like
Chiếu, it could also be a reminder of communitarian boundaries. The writer Vũ
bằng remembered a Catholic colleague at Tiểu Thuyết Thứ Bảy who, unlike his
colleagues, was uncomfortable responding in print to a letter from missionaries
criticizing one of their stories.113
Pressures from missionary superiors and French authorities clearly affected
Trung Hòa Nhật Báo and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, as did competition from the
other periodicals sprouting up in the 1930s. The circulation of the former dipped
from four thousand in 1927 to just fifteen hundred a decade later, where it stayed
until it ceased publication in 1945.114 by 1937, the latter was out of business. others, however, emerged to fill the void. two of the most significant were conservative, but they were so in different ways. one was Vì Chúa (For God), published
in huế under the direction of nguyễn Văn Thích. Vì Chúa was the most culturally conservative Vietnamese Catholic periodical; it regularly bemoaned activism
144 chapter 4
among youth, workers, and women, new technologies, and just about anything
else remotely new. Vì Chúa was nevertheless remarkably learned and rigorous, and
recent scholars have credited it with the first extended discussions in Vietnamese
about many influential Western thinkers.115
The other newspaper, La Croix d’Indochine (later renamed L’Aube Nouvelle),
was the only major French-language Catholic periodical in Vietnam not under
missionary direction. Its editor was the official and author nguyễn hữu mỹ. The
newspaper’s origins lie in a humorous story. While an official in Cochinchina in
the 1930s, mỹ became embroiled in a corruption scandal when he bought an apartment building in bến tre and used his authority to have the old town market
torn down and a new one built next to his property, raising its value considerably.
Citizens complained to French authorities, who agreed to close the new market.
mỹ was forced to sell his apartment building at a loss, a situation that was compounded by unpaid back taxes. mỹ’s abuses apparently were not limited to real
estate: at a dinner honoring Lê Văn Đức in 1942, ngô Đình Thục told one French
official that mỹ “was a veritable demon. not happy with the innumerable concubines that he kept, he chased after the nuns working in the home for the elderly,
trying to sleep with the youngest, to such an extent that they were forced to barricade themselves in at night to escape his attempts. truly, he is a strange sort of
Catholic.”116 mỹ’s indiscretions forced him to leave his job for Saigon, where he
started the newspaper. La Croix d’Indochine was not at all culturally conservative
like Vì Chúa, but it was virulently politically rightist, attacking anyone on the left,
which in the Popular Front era included the colonial government. but like many
writers in Trung Hòa Nhật Báo and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, mỹ too sought freedom of speech from missionary-led publications, which he saw as “insufficiently
combative.” “We need another organ,” mỹ wrote, “that touches the government
and draws the intellectual classes, that reflects without hesitation the opinion of
the Indochinese Catholic world, which has become sufficiently important to insert
its voice into the concert of public opinion.”117
Even in the early 1930s, however, newspapers remained by and large forums
for the clergy and educated, urban Catholics, despite their efforts to the contrary.
one article in Công Gíao Đồng Thinh from 1930 expressed concern about the reading habits of ordinary Catholics. “When we go into Catholic homes in the countryside, on most tables we see little other than a calendar. . . . A few houses also
have a prayer manual [cuốn Ê-Vang], a book from Bonne Presse, and a few copies
of Nam Kỳ Địa Phận, Lời Thăm, and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh.” moreover, those
Catholics who were reading were not necessarily reading “good” things: the author
worriedly observed popular fiction in Catholic homes, and he observed that few
Catholic youth even knew of the existence of Catholic newspapers.118 This was an
even greater concern after the rural upheavals of 1930 and 1931, a specter of a new
kind of mass politics that made many Catholics uneasy. For this author and others,
Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial 145
the new social difficulties and political tensions of the 1930s made it necessary to
use print to assert the Church’s relevance in challenging times, much like, as one
Vietnamese priest argued, the French Church had done in the nineteenth century.119 This view was not unique—most Vietnamese Catholics who thought this
way were influenced by the Vatican’s ongoing attempt to raise literacy and revive
Catholic associational life as a means to stave off the lure of leftist politics.
The 1930s thus witnessed a considerable expansion of the Catholic periodical
sphere in two principal ways. Some new publications were a departure less in their
content than in their social and geographic reach. Particularly significant were the
dominican monthly Đa Minh Bán Nguyệt, published in nam Định from 1939 to
1943, and the redemptorist monthly Đức Bà Hằng Cứu Giúp, published in hanoi
from 1937 to 1954 but widely distributed in and around huế, where the redemptorists were also active. These periodicals, which were similar to Nam Kỳ Địa Phận
in content, were more widely distributed in rural communities in Annam and
tonkin than any of the Catholic quốc ngữ periodicals of the 1920s.120 In 1938, just a
year after its founding, Đức Bà Hằng Cứu Giúp had a larger circulation than any of
the major publications that dominated the Catholic quốc ngữ print sphere during
the 1920s.121 These, alongside new mEP periodicals based outside hanoi or Saigon
(like Đường Ngay in Vinh), helped extend the printed word into rural areas. but
other new periodicals—notably those tied to new associations for Catholic youth
and workers emerging in the 1930s—reflected important changes in the organization of Catholic life. most were published monthly, they were rarely more than a
dozen pages long, and they cost little. Their content ranged from Catholic history,
essays on morality, and bible stories to jokes, puzzles, games, songs, and world
Catholic news, as well as reports on the activities of sister associations in Vietnam,
including news about the formation of new chapters and the initiation of new
members. In the 1930s several general youth magazines emerged, such as Hy Vọng
(hope), published in hải Phòng from 1937 to 1944, and Bạn Thiếu Niên (Friend of
youth), published in Phát diệm from 1937 to 1939. Some Catholic newspapers also
published special inserts for youth.
Although these new Catholic periodicals were primarily religious bulletins or
specific to religious associations, the activist, participatory ethic in global Catholic life in the 1930s transformed these genres. Increasingly, authors and editors of
new Catholic periodicals tried to answer the question that nguyễn Đình hiến
had posed in a popular pamphlet from 1930: “Is Catholicism useful?”122 Although
Trung Hòa Nhật Báo and Công Giáo Đồng Thinh had faded or disappeared altogether, the periodicals that remained and the new ones that emerged to take their
place moved closer to filling their editorial role. Indeed, although most issues of
Nam Kỳ Địa Phận from the 1910s were filled with essays on morality, personal behavior, bible stories, and the like, by the late 1930s articles about political systems
and ideologies, Catholic youth mobilization, and the changing nature of work and
146 chapter 4
family appeared as well. much of this, of course, reflected the changing priorities of what was now a more diverse group of contributors, which was as likely to
include literate youth as clergy or urban intellectuals. This was, unsurprisingly,
particularly true of the periodicals of youth, worker, and rural associations, which
contained much original content by members addressing issues such as rural poverty, the effect of industrial work on individuals, and class relations. new sources
for content also helped to broaden the focus of religious bulletins. Whereas older
Catholic quốc ngữ periodicals drew much of their nonoriginal content from colonial newspapers, mEP journals, and French Catholic publications, by the 1930s
Catholic quốc ngữ print organs increasingly drew from international Catholic
press organs such as Bulletin des Missions, published in belgium. Bulletin des Missions was much more progressive than mEP publications, regularly publishing
articles that drew the ire of mEP missionaries and colonial officials. Quốc ngữ
periodicals also drew content from Propaganda Fide’s press bureau Fides, created
in 1927, which made social issues in the Catholic world and the development of
independent local Churches an important focus of its editorial mission.
by the late 1930s, the place of the printed word in Vietnamese Catholic life
was utterly different than it had been two generations before. In the 1860s and
1870s, the printed word was largely the privilege of elite Catholics and the clergy,
who read a body of work that was largely theological or devotional in nature. by
the 1930s, literacy was rising steadily among ordinary Catholics, who could read
about events far beyond the borders of their village, and in genres far beyond the
world of worship and ritual. Indeed, even the smallest mission bulletins now offered general national news in sections like “news from near and Far” (tin tức
Gần Xa) and global news in sections like “World Affairs” (Thế Giới Thời Sự). The
same was true for Catholic news, which appeared in sections such as “In All dioceses” (trong Các Địa Phận) that reported news from Vietnam next to news
about places as far-flung as russia, mexico, and the United States. Print, however,
was only one of many ways in which Vietnamese Catholic horizons broadened in
the late colonial era. As colonial economic structures and global Catholic institutions and cultural currents penetrated further into Vietnamese Catholic life, new
forms of mobility, association, pilgrimage, and mass ritual experience began to
make both nation and world an increasingly central part of Vietnamese Catholic
consciousness.
147
5
A national Church Experienced
on July 22, 1939, three young Vietnamese Catholics boarded a ship in hải Phòng
for rome. Along with Catholic youth from more than forty other countries, they
were going to represent their nation at the first-ever worldwide gathering of
young Catholic Workers, a global association meant to mobilize young Catholics to meet the challenges of industrial work and economic depression.1 young
Catholic Workers had grown steadily in Vietnam since the early 1930s, and by
the time the three youths left for rome, chapters existed in many cities and in the
Catholic heartlands of Phát diệm and bùi Chu. Since 1936, chapters of this and
other youth associations from throughout Vietnam had gathered three times for
national conferences. The first, in 1936 in nam Định, drew between five and six
thousand people, so many that the Pontifical high mass on the first evening was
held outside the city in fields known as the bảy mẫu, where thousands of Catholics
had died in the 1880s. The event was structured around meetings for students,
workers, and rural youth to discuss progress in their own associations, but all
marched together, waving their flags, in the procession of the blessed Sacrament.2
Some participants remembered it not only as a spiritual experience but also as a
moment that broke down social boundaries and regional differences. For one, the
event showed that “Catholics belong to all social classes, all provinces and places
from south to north.”3 Another hoped that the event would inspire Catholic unity
not only in religious life but also in culture and politics.4
For Vietnamese Catholics like these, as for many others in the colonial era, the
new experience of a national religious community was inseparable from growing
ties to global Catholicism. In the first half of the twentieth century, Vietnamese
Catholics developed a more present and powerful sense of religious community
148 chapter 5
that stretched beyond parish, mission, or region. new economic and bureaucratic
structures in the colonial era produced waves of migration and urbanization that
brought Catholics into new communities, while the infrastructural expansion of
roads, trains, and steamships brought Catholics from across Vietnam into forms
of pilgrimage that had once been local or regional. This growing sense of national
religious community was also a product of currents in global Catholicism, which
brought new forms of association and festivals to Vietnamese Catholic life that
linked this nascent national Church more closely to worldwide Catholic institutional networks and cultures. by the late colonial era, Vietnamese Catholic experiences were both more national and more global than ever before.
mIGr AtIon, UrbAnIZ AtIon, And nEW
CAthoLIC C ommUnItIES
Though the Catholic village (làng đạo) is often caricatured as a closed world, Catholic migration was, in fact, widespread during the colonial era. People migrated
temporarily and permanently, out of necessity and desire, to find work, to flee
poverty and natural disasters, or simply to build a new life. The colonial economy
provided opportunities for people to move, and at times forced them to, and infrastructural changes like new roads, trains, and steamships made it easier to travel
far away. migration in this place and time is difficult for historians to grasp: the
colonial state had limited control over it, and missionary observers of it usually left
only impressionistic accounts. In the colonial era, people who came and went—or
who came and never returned—left few traces, and Catholics were no exception.
nevertheless, it is clear that for Catholics, Church networks shaped migration in
important ways.
missionary networks and periodic state repression meant that Vietnamese
Catholic migration existed long before the colonial era, and these networks continued to be important during French rule. For example, Vietnamese Catholics
migrated to nearby Siam as early as the seventeenth century, when mEP missionaries brought hundreds of families to help buttress the mission there. Siam was a
common destination for Catholics escaping nguyễn repression in the first half of
the nineteenth century, and some came as Siamese prisoners of war during conflicts with Vietnam in the 1830s and 1840s.5 during a wave of violence against
Catholics in central Vietnam in the 1750s, many left for the relative tolerance of
Cochinchina.6
during the colonial era, labor replaced repression as the primary reason why
Catholics left one place for another. most migration at this time was from tonkin
and Annam to Cochinchina, but in the early years of French rule missionaries
observed the opposite. In 1893, the bishop of Saigon noted that a missionary in
hanoi had met “a colony of two hundred Saigonese Catholics, for the most part
A National Church Experienced 149
employees of the government. And how many more are dispersed in the residencies of Annam and tonkin, without any way of knowing!”7 These Catholics were
part of the migration of French-trained bureaucrats from Cochinchina, where colonial schools were more developed, to posts in tonkin and Annam. The French
also sent Vietnamese to staff positions in Laos and Cambodia, Catholics among
them: when the Cambodian king norodom established the new capital of Phnom
Penh in 1867, he designated a portion of land to support the small Vietnamese
Catholic community in the city, whose members were almost certainly there as
bureaucrats working for the French.8 And the Sino-French War also brought Catholics north as soldiers, interpreters, or laborers employed by the French.
during the colonial era, however, most Catholic migration was from densely
populated and poor tonkin to Cochinchina, where, as one Catholic newspaper
put it, “the land is plentiful and the people scarce.”9 missionaries wrote of the allure of the south for poor Catholics: to some around Qui nhơn in the 1910s, Cochinchina was a place where “work pays better, life is bigger, and good fortune is
easier to find.” Ironically, many of these people migrated to end chronic migration,
in this case the “six months of nomadic life, often year after year,” forced by the
chronic poverty of the region.10 missionaries observed that, like Catholic bureaucrats, poorer migrants often sought out Catholic communities in new and unfamiliar places, but they did not always do so. As one missionary noted, “Among
these migrants, some do not fall into a milieu that is dangerous for their soul. As
they enter into evangelized lands, they find themselves under the care of pastors
who love them and take care of them as well as we do.” “but others,” he noted,
“are lost, either because they go to regions with no Christians, or because they
don’t present themselves to priests in their new home!”11 Another observed that
many took work in places far from other Catholics, a reason to keep their religion
private or even to abandon it entirely.12 For the bishop of huế, this was enough of
a concern to suggest creating a “migrant service” to “keep a list of migrants from
the diocese, point them out to the local priest, give them opportune information
and appropriate counsel, and help maintain religious practice by means of correspondence, tracts, brochures, etc.”13 This seems to have been unsuccessful: five
years later, the next bishop regretfully noted the news of a community far away,
made up almost entirely of Catholics originally from huế, “75 percent of whom no
longer fulfill their duties.”14
Although seasonal or permanent migration due to work or poverty also existed
long before the colonial period, new economic structures clearly accentuated this.
one missionary noted that an agricultural project rerouting some tributaries of
the red river had put 1,400 Catholic fisherman in so desperate a situation that
the mission helped relocate hundreds of them to other Catholic communities further north.15 Plantations and large land concessions, most in Cochinchina, began
to spread at the turn of the twentieth century, and poor Catholics from tonkin
150 chapter 5
succumbed to their lure and false promises much like many others. In 1912, the
bishop of huế noted that “poor people had let themselves be tricked. . . . It is in the
hundreds that they have left, after signing a three-year contract, and most of them,
according to letters from Saigon, will certainly not see the end of it. Information
sent from these plantations has made known the sad situation of these migrants,
which will without a doubt be enough to stop this disastrous exodus.”16 Some
heard and heeded the warnings. In 1928, several hundred Chinese Catholics who
had fled Swatow in southern China for Saigon decided not to work on a plantation
because of what they had heard in Chợ Lớn about the horrors of plantation labor.17
Some went anyway, perhaps out of a sense of adventure. trần tử bình, expelled
from seminary in 1926 for publicly mourning the death of Phan Chu trinh, went
to work on plantations in Cochinchina even though he spoke French, a skill that
could have gotten him much better work.18
Some Catholics migrated for these “jobs” thanks to missionary efforts. In the
early twentieth century, the bishop of Saigon urged Catholics from the Vinh region to come work on previously uncultivated mission lands, and others came
from bùi Chu to the Đà Lạt region in the 1920s.19 In 1930, the Spanish bishop of
bùi Chu recruited more than two thousand Catholics from his mission to work
for a plantation on the island of Phú Quốc, off the coast of Cochinchina. he believed that collective migration and resettlement would allow Catholics to stay together and thus would help them to “keep the faith, practice the religion, and save
their souls.” The plantation owners, eager for the labor, agreed to build a church, a
presbytery, and a school.20 Similarly, in 1942, the mEP missionary André Vacquier
helped to organize the migration of one thousand Catholic families from bùi Chu
to work on a plantation belonging to the French Société Indochinoise des Plantations d’hévéas, also with the hope of keeping a religious community intact.21 In
1926, an American traveler in tonkin observed a transplanted Catholic community working at the Campha mines.22 In cases like these, the logic of preserving
religious communities led missionaries to facilitate mass transfers to some of the
colony’s worst work environments.
Colonial labor networks also brought many Vietnamese Catholics to France.
The largest single wave of Vietnamese migration to France during the colonial
era was during World War I, when roughly one hundred thousand men from
Southeast Asia, most from Vietnam, went to France as soldiers or laborers.23 For
many Vietnamese Catholics, a trip to France was a form of religious pilgrimage.
The bishop of hanoi received letters from Vietnamese Catholics marveling at the
number and grandeur of French churches, and they noted how touched French
Catholics were to see an “Annamite” praying with them.24 Some French dioceses
organized ceremonies to thank the Vietnamese for their help in the war, and others honored those who had died.25 Some Vietnamese Catholics had the chance
to visit some places they had heard and read about all of their lives. Lourdes, of
A National Church Experienced 151
course, was a major destination: one group of forty-three Vietnamese Catholics
came from toulouse and brought some non-Catholics with them.26 many missionaries hoped that non-Catholics like these who came to France would see the
Church in all its glory and decide to convert. This was rarely the case, but enough
missionaries mention it to suggest that it did occur.27
Vietnamese Catholics often had a difficult time in France. Apart from the traumas of war, most Vietnamese soldiers and workers experienced spartan lodging,
received insufficient food and medical care, lacked adequate clothing to combat
the harsh winters, and lived and worked side by side with people from all over the
world in situations that could lead to ethnic and cultural tensions.28 A missionary
named raynaud noted that some Catholics as young as fifteen went to France, as
did men in their sixties who had managed to substitute themselves for their sons,
whose presence at home was more important for their families.29 Like many missionaries, raynaud believed that Vietnamese Catholics were naïve and susceptible
to nefarious influences if left unsupervised. he thus noted with concern the activities of secular associations like the mission Laïque Française, which “gave three
francs every Sunday to the Annamites who attended its classes,” where they were
told “that religions have caused all of the wars that have devastated the globe over
centuries.”30 he also reported that missionaries had difficulty visiting wounded
or sick Vietnamese Catholics in hospitals.31 raynaud also bemoaned the French
government’s decision to build pagodas for Vietnamese soldiers and workers and
to allow monks to live there. As he noted with disgust, a “French chief of the group
did not hesitate to come prostrate himself in front of a grimacing statue of buddha, at the head of the workers in his group, who couldn’t contain an overwhelming urge to laugh.”32 Without taking missionary worries like these entirely at face
value, it is not difficult to believe that many Vietnamese Catholics experienced a
very different France from the one they had imagined. And although they left only
faint traces, Vietnamese Catholics ended up all over the French empire. Enough
went to the new hebrides, for example, that a missionary there studied Vietnamese and even spent six months in tonkin to learn to better minister to them. he
received a mixed reception: some reportedly trusted him enough to give him large
sums of money to take back to their families, but others hid from him because they
had taken a new wife after leaving a family behind.33
because so few Vietnamese Catholic migrants left any accounts, it is difficult
to generalize about their experiences. From the small body of Catholic travel accounts, it is clear that even other regions of Vietnam, and the Catholics who lived
there, could at first seem very foreign even to elite, cosmopolitan Catholics. In his
diary of a trip to tonkin in 1876, trương Vĩnh Ký observed differences between
tonkin and his native Cochinchina that ranged from the names for certain Catholic rituals to church architecture. In a private letter to a French official after his return, Ký also wrote in highly critical terms of the enmity between missionaries and
152 chapter 5
local priests and the poisonous nature of communitarian relations, both of which
he saw as far worse than in his own region.34 In the 1920s, regional differences
also struck a young nguyễn hữu mỹ during his trip to tonkin. mỹ was especially
surprised that the French priest at the hanoi cathedral did not allow Vietnamese
to attend the 8:30 a.m. mass. “In Saigon,” he wrote, “we don’t make any distinction
in church between Christians, whatever the color of their skin.”35
For other Catholics, however, the experience of travel helped to create broader
conceptions of community. The writer Lê Văn Đức came to understand “Annam”
during the trips he took beyond Annam’s borders, which he recounted in travelogues about his trips throughout Europe and Asia. As Christopher Goscha points
out, new bureaucratic requirements such as visas, passports, and border crossings
reinforced Westernized conceptions of travel with national and Indochinese conceptions at their core.36 In Siam, Đức met a woman who “spoke Thai, dressed Thai,
wore her hair like a Thai . . . but when we spoke I knew she was Annamese.”37 In
Europe, Đức thought constantly about how his trip helped him to understand Annam’s “national character,” which, like many educated Vietnamese elite of the era,
he ceaselessly belittled. “For us, children of Annam,” he wrote, “where streams of
water are everywhere, near all of our houses, we have a difficult time understanding the need for bathrooms: but in Europe, where it is civilized, it is very different,
and these are quite useful.” In brussels, Đức told a ticket agent that “there exists in
a small corner of the world a country called Annam . . . and the kind agent, seeing
my saffron-colored skin, asked me if Annam was in China or Japan . . . poor us!”38
Few Catholics could jet around the globe like Đức, who was extremely wealthy, but
trips abroad were common enough for wealthy Cochinchinese for Đức to write
a manual on how best to travel in France, a work that included train timetables,
banking advice, tipping norms, rental properties, and where to buy nước mắm in
Paris.39
Đức’s travel narratives, which were popular enough to be translated and reprinted many times, are just one example of the role of the printed word in broadening conceptions of community for even those Vietnamese Catholics who never
left home. As Catholic newspapers spread, articles in their pages about the cultural aspects of the new political and administrative reality of Indochina reached a
broader audience. readers of Nam Kỳ Địa Phận, for example, could learn “A Song
about Indochina’s Geography” that taught them the names of provinces, bordering
nations, major cities, and other points of political geography about the three kỳ
of Annam, Cambodia, and Laos,40 or about why people spoke Vietnamese differently and how best to understand people from different regions. readers of Trung
Hòa Nhật Báo read articles that likened regional differences to differences between
members of “the Indochinese family” (gia đὶnh Đông Dương).41 It is important not
to draw a meaningful equivalence between migration and imagination: moreover,
far from everyone read, and not everybody who did cared about far-off places. but
A National Church Experienced 153
during the colonial era, an increasing number of Catholics had a friend or a relative who went away if they themselves did not. Those who did not read were more
likely to have a literate son or daughter, priest, or catechist, who might have read
them portions of a passed-on newspaper at home or in church. And for some of
these people, this broadened conceptions of community in real ways.
nowhere did migration create new forms of Catholic community more clearly
than in Vietnam’s growing cities. This was especially true in Saigon, which was
a principal destination for southern Catholics fleeing communitarian violence.
refugees streamed into the city from rural areas during the French conquest of
Cochinchina; at the end of the Sino-French War, Catholics from the devastated
provinces of Quảng ngãi and bình Định came seeking food, protection, and work.
Catholics continued to come to Saigon from all parts of the colony as it grew as
a commercial center, most settling in the old parish of Chợ Quán, in the small
mixed parish in Chợ Lớn, or just past what was then the city’s northern boundary,
between the citadel and the Thị nghè bridge, in what would become the parish of
tân Định. by 1897, the bishop reported that in a population of thirty-eight thousand in Saigon, an astonishing twelve thousand were Catholic.42 The population
flows out of rural missions were so great that one missionary bemoaned the loss of
important manpower for mission-owned lands.43 Although hanoi’s small Catholic
community actually grew between the Garnier invasion and the Sino-French War,
many of these new arrivals fled during the black Flag attacks in 1883. however, the
end of the war brought these and other Catholics back to hanoi as it grew as a political and commercial center.44 In short, most Catholics in both cities had recently
come from elsewhere.
As Catholics came to cities and joined parishes or formed new ones, they
adapted forms of association and mutual aid to their new lives. In Saigon, Catholic mutual aid associations in tân Định, Cầu Kho, Chợ Quán, and Thị nghè had
hundreds of members from diverse social milieus. The mutual Aid Association
of Catholic Employees in tân Định, for example, drew mostly from the growing middle class of functionaries, industrialists, and landowners; applicants could
be rejected “by reason of their ignorance of French, which would render them
incapable of understanding the reports or usefully following debate.”45 but the Association of the Sacred heart of Jesus had members who worked as cooks, police
officers, or domestics.46 Some of these associations included Catholics from other
parishes in Saigon; the Association of the Sacred heart of Jesus, for example, represented more than a dozen different parishes. Some even began to reach outside
Saigon; the mutual Aid Association of Cầu Kho had delegates in mỹ Tho and
other towns in the mekong delta, and by 1935, the mutual aid association in tân
Định had members from throughout Vietnam and even from Cambodia.47 Few
Catholic associations had mixed memberships. most cities had a French Catholic
Circle restricted to French members, and associations like the Catholic Union of
154 chapter 5
young hanoians, the Saigon Association of French Catholic youth, and the Catholic Union of naval officers organized French Catholics along social and professional lines.
Although the form and function of these associations were similar to those
of other mutual aid societies, their religious nature was clear. The Association of
Souls of Purgatory, for example, allowed Catholics from Vinh and bên Thuy to collectively pay for funerals and masses for the souls of their dead, and the association
ensured a mass for members and their families if they lost their jobs.48 members
of most associations had to attend confession and receive communion; many forbade not only opium smokers and gamblers but also those who had been divorced.
Some meetings began and ended with a recital of a psalm. new associations linked
students who had attended Catholic schools: the Association of Former Students
of the brothers of tonkin, for example, supported members who needed financial
assistance and in some cases paid school fees for their children.49 In a different
spirit, a Catholic association in tonkin urged Catholics to attend colonial schools,
which some favored but others bitterly opposed.50 Some urban Catholic associations patronized the arts. The Association Sainte Cécile in Kiến An, for example,
aimed to “develop musical taste, in particular religious chants.”51 Theater was also
a focus. Associations like Sainte marie and notre dame du rosaire staged plays
whose proceeds went to charity, and in Saigon, Catholic associations put on plays
from the popular Catholic theater series bon Théâtre moderne about the lives of
saints, marian apparitions, or other Catholic historical or moral dramas.
mutual aid societies linked Catholics to social networks that integrated them
into the religious and social life of the parish and the city. Especially later in the
colonial era, they also began to reflect growing links to the global Church. one
example was the Association de Saint Vincent de Paul, founded in France in 1833
by the French lawyer, professor at the Sorbonne, and Catholic thinker Frédéric
ozanam, whose writings were influential in Vietnamese Catholic intellectual circles. Its purpose was poor relief, and from its foundation in Vietnam in 1933, its
members carried out charitable work throughout tonkin and used member contributions as mutual aid to support one another in case of need. by 1943, chapters
existed in hanoi, nam Định, bùi Chu, Phát diệm, hải Phòng, huế, and other
places; members gathered in hải Phòng in may 1943 to mark ten years of charitable work in tonkin.52 The hanoi chapter had some prominent members, like
the printer ngô tử hạ and nguyễn huy Lai, a prominent lawyer and later vice
president of the republic of Vietnam.
Perhaps the most emblematic new Catholic associations in Vietnam were the
Circles of Catholic Social Studies, first formed in 1928 in nam Định. These associations grew rapidly in late nineteenth-century Europe, at a time when the Church
was attempting to understand and react to the growth of industrial capitalism and
mass politics. The purpose of the associations was to organize for lay Catholics
A National Church Experienced 155
conferences and discussion groups that focused on social and economic issues
in the modern world. The nam Định Circle, like its European counterparts, publicly disavowed any interest in politics, but it worried the colonial administration
enough that it carried out surveillance of the group for more than two years.53
during its first year, members of the circle held a conference and discussion group
once a month. topics ranged from the Church’s recent progress in places around
the world to contemporary issues of proselytizing and the problem of work and
capital. The circle built a library in nam Định where Catholics could read or borrow books. Although its members had to be over the age of eighteen, another purpose of the circle was to help the Church retain young believers who were coming
of age in a rapidly changing world. After the formation of the circle, its library and
hall began to serve as a meeting place for youth groups in the mission.54 Circles
of Catholic Social Studies spread during the 1930s. Perhaps the most significant
chapter was founded in hanoi by nguyễn huy Lai, who organized an influential
conference in 1937 to discuss changes in the nature of work and family.
The spread of global Catholic forms of association in Vietnamese cities during the 1920s presaged broader transformations in Vietnamese Catholic associational life during the 1930s and after. As the severity of the Great depression
stretched long-standing forms of mutual aid to their breaking point, Vietnamese
Catholic leaders sought new solutions to mobilize their communities in collective action. Increasingly, they came to look toward global Catholic movements
for a solution. The Church movement known as Catholic Action (Công Giáo tiến
hành) emerged in Europe in the late nineteenth century as a way to organize lay
Catholics and prevent them from being drawn too deep into mass politics. Its goal
was to form associations to organize parts of society—notably workers, youth, and
women—with little formal representation in the Church in a way that remained
under the Church’s control. A revived, extended Catholic Action was a central part
of the agenda of Pope Pius XI (1922–39), who saw the new political currents of the
1930s as a threat to the Church. by the 1930s, new associations for lay Catholics had
emerged around Europe linking the Church more directly to social life and the
workplace.55 As these associations spread in Vietnam, they brought lay Catholics
into a new associational culture that transcended village, region, and even nation.
CAthoLIC ACtIon And thE mobILIZ AtIon
oF thE VIEtnAmESE CAthoLIC L AIt y
The formal arrival of Catholic Action in Vietnam was the 1934 general church
council in hanoi, at which the apostolic delegate transmitted a message from Pius
XI urging Catholics to speak of and spread Catholic Action among the faithful.
however, many of the foundations of Catholic Action had long existed in Vietnam. by the 1920s, Catholic newspapers in Vietnam regularly included articles
156 chapter 5
about the principles of Catholic Action and its expansion worldwide, and some
Catholic Action associations had existed in Vietnam for years.56 but in the 1930s,
the global expansion of Catholic Action meant that new associations emerging in
Vietnamese Catholic life were virtually all chapters of international associations,
most founded in recent decades. In light of their origins, it is not surprising that
many of these associations were brought to Vietnam by a new generation of missionaries who saw the principle of an active, participatory laity as a basic premise of their vocation. Indeed, Catholic Action was of interest to new missionaries
worldwide in the 1930s, many of whom saw it as a powerful moral engine and
potential solution to the crisis in missionary recruitment in Europe. In Vietnam,
several of the missionaries who helped spread Catholic Action later had an important influence in Vietnamese Catholic politics.
but the spread of Catholic Action was far from only a missionary initiative.
Though nominally supervised by missionaries, most new associations in Vietnam
were formed and led by local priests. most of them learned about Catholic Action
in the print sphere, where it was a regular focus. In 1934–35, for example, Nam Kỳ
Địa Phận published articles about things like the expansion of Vietnamese Catholic newspapers and their social role, the changing role of women in Catholic society, the potential of youth to help develop Catholic charity and social activism, and
how Catholic Action might affect the Church’s place in politics. As Catholic Action
associations began to publish their own newspapers and journals, the amount of
printed material on Catholic Action in Vietnamese grew. by the 1940s, full-length
works on Catholic Action existed in Vietnamese translation: people could read
texts like Gabriel Palau’s Le catholique d’action, a turn-of-the-century work of social theology influential on Catholic Action or manuals by Vietnamese priests on
how to apply Catholic Action to Vietnam.57
Vietnamese priests and missionaries tended to think differently about Catholic Action. Although both shared the hope that Catholic Action could increase
conversions and bolster the ranks of the clergy, Vietnamese priests saw Catholic
Action first and foremost as a means to solve the problems that their parishes
faced, especially during the depression. Indeed, despite their international origins
and forms, these new associations were successful because they were rooted in
local communities and served the needs of people who lived there. As an article
in the newspaper Nam Thanh Công Giáo (Catholic youth) explained, “In a garden of one hundred flowers, there are one hundred different natures, one hundred different essences, but all are beautiful, all smell good. . . . All lay bare the
grace of God. Catholic youth organizations are as such. If each organization has
its own unique character, how are they all to be unified as one? Three common
purposes: study (khảo cứu), virtues (tứ đức), and action (hành động).”58 Catholic
associations brought together boys and girls aged six to eighteen, and sometimes
older. Their activities ranged from worship, contemplation, and proselytizing to
A National Church Experienced 157
physical exercise, outdoor activities, games, and charity work. members were expected to attend weekly meetings, annual conferences, and other activities. most
associations had some sort of a recreation hall for study and activities, often on
the grounds of a church or attached to a parish house. youth associations also
organized bonfires, hikes, camping trips, and even retreats into the parish house
or rectory for days of contemplation and prayer. Special retreats brought together
the heads of many different associations for Catholic youth. one in Chí hòa near
Saigon in April 1944 began with reveille at 5 a.m., followed by physical education,
mass, breakfast, and individual associational meetings. The afternoon was spent
studying hygiene, outdoor education, and first aid, with songs and games mixed
in. After dinner came free time, study hour, evening prayers, and bed at 10:30.59
Although they focused on social and community life, associations for Catholic
youth made strict religious demands of their members. They were asked to pray
regularly: members of Catholic youth, for example, were asked to say every day
one our Father, Ave maria, and Gloria for the health of their association and for
the conversion of sinners and nonbelievers. members of nearly all youth associations were required to attend mass, often in uniform, to regularly take communion
and undergo confession, and to participate in processions and religious festivals
in their missions. Associations held requiem masses for deceased members and
attended funerals and weddings as a group, where they often presented a gift or
a bouquet of flowers on behalf of the association. Proselytizing was another important activity of most Catholic youth associations; their members regularly accompanied members of the clergy seeking conversions and handing out religious
tracts.
Although they were strongly rooted in local communities, Catholic Action’s
ideological and institutional elements gave these associations enough common
ground to make it possible to consider their collective activity as a movement
(phong trào), as many observers did.60 Group cohesion was cultivated by methods
as basic as uniforms. Each member of Catholic youth (Jeunesse Catholique, or
Công Giáo nam Thanh; fig. 9) wore a medallion of nickel and silver in the form
of a heart, mounted on a cross, displaying the letters “C.G.n.t.,” on the left side
of the chest. Catholic boy Scouts all wore the same handkerchief knotted around
the neck, and the Catholic youth group Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls had shirts
embroidered with their logos, a heart mounted on a cross for boys, a dove for girls.
This visual unity reflected an organizational model that integrated groups at the
parish level into national and international organizations. Chapters were similar
in size; few had more than forty to fifty members before being split into multiple
chapters. Catholic youth associations were all headed by a chaplain (cha tuyên uý)
responsible for the group’s spiritual well-being. The chaplain, sometimes a missionary, was usually a priest or notable. Associations also designated a lay leader
(đoàn trưởng / hội trưởng) to organize group activities and lead by example. Some
158 chapter 5
larger chapters had a board comprised of prominent Catholics from the community, some of whom could also gain the status of honorary member or benefactor
by making gifts to help support the group.
In the diverse milieu of Catholic youth associations, several achieved national
scope. one was Catholic boy Scouts (hướng Đạo Công Giáo), first founded in
Vietnam in 1926 at the Lycée Albert Sarraut in Saigon. by the mid-1930s, it had
chapters throughout the country. The Catholic Action leader trần Văn Thao described the boy Scouts as a “school of instruction” (trường huấn luyện) to teach the
values of family, truthfulness, thrift, and reverence and to bring Catholic youth to
serve their Church.61 Service took many forms, such as the Catholic scout troop
in hanoi’s decision to “adopt” the Eglise des martyrs and help keep the grounds
clean.62 Some Catholic scout troops also took young Catholics on trips to other
parts of Vietnam. In 1932, a hanoi troop traveled to huế, stopping along the way
to participate in receptions, games, and camping with other troops.63 Scouts also
traveled to annual congresses that drew youth from across different regions. Those
who could not go read about them in the group’s journal, Hướng Đạo Công Giáo,
which contained news of other Catholic scout groups around Vietnam, as well as
lessons on nature, camping tips, rules for outdoor games, and campfire songs.
Figure 9. drawing from Vietnamese
Catholic youth bulletin, 1935. From Nam
Thanh Công Giáo 9 (december 1935).
A National Church Experienced 159
Another national Catholic youth association was Eucharistic Crusade (nghĩa
binh Thánh Thể), first founded in the mid-nineteenth century in France. two
Sulpician priests, Léon Paliard (head of the hanoi seminary) and Paul Uzureau,
first brought Eucharistic Crusade to Vietnam, founding the first of several hanoi
chapters in 1929. The group quickly spread to huế (1931), Saigon (1932), Phát diệm
(1932), Thanh hóa (1933), and other cities. membership in chapters of Eucharistic
Crusade grew steadily, and by the early 1940s sixteen cities had more than one
hundred chapters with thousands of members.64 Eucharistic Crusade focused
more closely on organized religious practice and activity than did Catholic boy
Scouts, organizing bible study and assisting in charitable activity and proselytizing. Its monthly journal, Nghĩa Binh Thánh Thể Tạp Chí, was the most widely
circulated Vietnamese Catholic youth publication, reaching print runs of over
three thousand in the 1930s. Each month, along with bible lessons and articles on
Catholic history, the journal published columns about the pope’s activities, news
about other chapters, and letters from readers across Vietnam, as well as sponsoring essay contests and facilitating pen pal exchanges. The bishop nguyễn bá tòng
was thrilled because the publication would allow Eucharistic Crusade groups to
communicate with one another, and he urged those who could buy the journal to
lend it to those who could not.65
In Cochinchina, a similar new association was Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls
(Coeurs Vaillants, Âmes Vaillantes, or hùng tâm dũng Chí). Like Eucharistic
Crusade, it served to instill Catholic values through participation in the religious
life of the community.66 The group organized morality instruction, catechism, lessons in French and quốc ngữ, and games, and it quickly became a central part of
the religious life of Catholic parishes in the city, singing on Sundays and at weddings, funerals, and holidays and participating in daily masses. First founded in
Saigon the early 1940s, Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls quickly became one of the
most active Catholic associations in Cochinchina. Communities across the region
began forming chapters, and the group recruited as its head the well-known writer
Lê Văn Đức. during the 1940s, chapters of Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls began to
meet in larger gatherings, where members from throughout Cochinchina worshiped, participated in games and athletics, and listened to prominent Catholics
urge them to become involved in their communities.67
The oldest members of groups like Catholic boy Scouts, Eucharistic Crusade,
and Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls were usually no older than sixteen. Thereafter,
many became junior members of other youth associations, becoming full members at eighteen. These associations, broadly grouped under the umbrella of Catholic youth (Jeunesse Catholique, or Thanh niên Công Giáo), had members into
their twenties. The first Vietnamese chapter of a Catholic youth association was
formed in Saigon in 1908. The movement spread in the 1920s to tonkin; by 1928,
there were chapters in hanoi, nam Định, and hải dương, and by 1936, chapters
160 chapter 5
existed in Phát diệm and hải Phòng, founded respectively by the bishop nguyễn
bá tòng and the intellectual nguyễn mạnh hà, later minister of the economy in
hồ Chí minh’s first government. And in the late 1930s, chapters of young Catholic Workers (Thanh niên Lao Động Công Giáo), rural Catholic youth (Thanh
niên Thôn Quê Công Giáo), and Agricultural Catholic youth (Thanh niên nông
nghiệp Công Giáo) began to emerge. The epicenter of this activity was bùi Chu,
which had the first chapters of many Catholic Action associations, formed under
hồ ngọc Cẩn, bùi Chu’s first Vietnamese bishop.
because chapters of Catholic youth drew from an older demographic than
other youth associations, their members were more involved in community life.
Catholic youth associations visited hospitals, orphanages, and leprosariums to
cheer up children and the sick by singing or putting on skits. Catholic youth chapters also often helped rebuild churches, schools, and homes that were old or had
been damaged by storms or floods. Catholic youth associations also sponsored
theatrical evenings and movie screenings. In 1939, an official of the Sûreté noted
that young Catholic Workers of nam Định performed plays titled “two Unemployed men” and “That’s Life” for more than two hundred people. not all movies
and plays that Catholic groups proposed passed colonial censors; in 1940, colonial
officials rejected a request by the hanoi chapter of Catholic youth to show a film,
but they did allow the group to show Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.68
Chapters of young Catholic Workers also began to extend their activities into
the world of work. young Catholic Workers proselytized at factories and organized work parties for laborers in need of assistance.69 heads of young Catholic
Workers also acted as spokespersons for members in conflicts over pay or working conditions: in one case, the chaplain of young Catholic Workers in nam Định
wrote the owner of a factory pointing out that the price of rice had gone from
twenty-five piasters to forty-two piasters per kilogram since the last pay raise and
urged him to raise wages by 20 percent.70 youth group publications also shed light
on the growing world of industrial work. readers of the youth journal Nam Thanh
Công Giáo learned of the Great depression’s influence on labor in articles like
“Unemployed” and gained a window into factory life through articles like “With
the Workers.”
For many Vietnamese Catholics, Catholic Action’s emphasis on social utility
and social organization seemed ideal to address problems in rural areas. For many
observers of Catholic life in the countryside, rural communities were plagued
by “poor customs” (tệ tục) such as low literacy and poor hygiene that they felt
was their duty to change.71 In the 1930s, new associations such as rural Catholic youth and Agricultural Catholic youth urged young Catholics to “see, judge,
and act” not only by spreading the Catholic faith but also by using the Church
as a “school for life” to teach reading and writing, new agricultural techniques,
and hygiene in rural areas.72 Chapters of these associations regularly took trips to
A National Church Experienced 161
remote parishes, which often meant getting up in the middle of the night to begin
traveling. once they arrived, the priest or notable would introduce the group to
the village, after which members went to eat with local families. Throughout the
day, members helped villagers fix or build houses, planted or cultivated rice, participated in games like soccer with youth, distributed reading material, and gave
lessons. Chapters also attended formation ceremonies of new chapters and helped
them begin their work.73
Proponents of Catholic Action also urged more association among women, if
often only to better train them in what many felt to be women’s proper roles as
homemakers and mothers. nevertheless, Catholic Action did influence ongoing
debates about the role of women in Catholic life. Proponents of Catholic Action
recognized that women often made up for the lack of formal schooling for children, and they noted how important “traditional feminine characteristics” such
as altruism were to associative life.74 but only one major lay Catholic association
uniquely for women seems to have existed in Vietnam during the colonial era:
the Association of Children of the holy mother (hội Con Đức mẹ), founded in
Saigon in 1932 to give girls a religious education and to prepare them to teach
and proselytize.75 but many associations for Catholic youth did include women.
Eucharistic Crusade and Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls were both coeducational,
and although they were separated into chapters by sex, their members often participated in activities together. Women’s chapters of youth associations are more
difficult to document; they were fewer in number and had less contact with other
chapters than did their brother organizations.
Finally, Catholic Action was a central engine in expanding formal church associations in Cochinchina, the center of Vietnamese Catholicism after 1954 but
home to only 20 percent of Vietnamese Catholics in the colonial era, most of them
in Saigon and outlying areas. one of the most important figures in the spread
of Catholic youth and worker associations in Cochinchina was ngô Đình Thục,
bishop of Vĩnh Long after 1938. before Thục became bishop, Vĩnh Long was part
of the Saigon mission, which was wealthy because of its rice lands. however, his
new diocese, which included not only Vĩnh Long but also trà Vinh, bến tre, and
part of Cần Thơ, had fewer resources and was only 5 percent Catholic. As Thục
wrote in his 1939 pastoral letter, “We lack people and resources. . . . We don’t yet
have a common foundation like a Latin school . . . an administrative office for the
diocese, a common hall for priests, a sanitarium for elderly priests, a principal
cathedral, an official residence for the bishop, etc.”76 Thục closed his first pastoral
letter with a strong assertion of the laity’s role in expanding the Church, calling it
the duty of the faithful to work to spread the word. The pressing need to develop
the new diocese led Thục toward Catholic Action to help develop the laity’s role
in the expansion of Catholic works, and he drew heavily on new associations during the early years of his bishopric. This laid the foundations for an associational
162 chapter 5
network that would play an important social and political role in the republic of
Vietnam from the 1950s through 1975.
nAtIonALIZInG PILGrImAGE
As migration, urbanization, and new associations broadened Catholic economic
and associational connections beyond villages and parishes, more sacred elements
of religious experience such as pilgrimage experienced similar changes. In the
nineteenth century in Europe, new modes of transportation and communication
transformed long-standing forms of Catholic pilgrimage into mass events that
mirrored the theatrical and festival sides of mass politics.77 Alongside this, the
spread of the printed word allowed Catholics to experience pilgrimages through
newspapers, commemorative texts, travelogues, and photographs, making the national and global context a more present part of daily religious life. This was also
true in Vietnam. before the colonial era, Catholic pilgrimages to sacred sites were
closely tied to particular locales, and they did little to connect Catholics from different parts of the kingdom, much less Vietnam and rome. but the roads, railways,
and newspapers of the colonial era made one Catholic pilgrimage, for the first
time, truly “Vietnamese.”
The earliest known extensive accounts of the apparition of the Virgin mary in
La Vang forest in Quảng trị province, most dating from roughly a century after
the event, claim that mary first appeared in La Vang in or around 1798 to Catholics
from the nearby village of Cổ Vưu seeking safety from communitarian violence
sparked by a tây Sơn–era anti-Catholic edict.78 She appeared under a banyan tree
(cây đa), where locals who gathered things in the forest often took rest and where
Catholics prayed to mary to protect them from wild animals and sickness. one
missionary account relates the following popular account of the appearance:
one night, so it is told among the people . . . a woman of ravishing beauty appeared
to them; she was dressed in white and surrounded by light; two charming children,
each carrying a flaming torch, were close to her. The woman passed several times in
front of the entranced Christians (her feet touched the ground as if to possess it), and
then she stopped, and in a soft voice, she pronounced words that all the world heard
and that tradition has piously preserved: “my children, what you have asked of me,
I give to you, and from here on those who come here to pray for me, I will answer
your prayers.”79
many accounts from this time also state that before mary disappeared, she showed
the people how to brew banyan leaves to make a tea that would cure them from
illness. When the violence abated, Catholics left a small shrine to the Virgin at the
site.
The history of La Vang in the decades after the apparition is relatively obscure.
trần Quang Chu, author of the most detailed history of La Vang, notes that Jean
A National Church Experienced 163
Labartette, the bishop of Cochinchina from 1784 until 1823, did not mention La
Vang in letters to mEP officials in Paris. Chu argues that this suggests either that
worship of the site was so local as to escape the bishop’s attention or that the traditions and ritual practices surrounding the apparition were considered too heterodox to relate to mEP authorities.80 but several things suggest the spiritual potency
of the site. one of the most famous legends about La Vang, which Chu dates from
the minh mạng era, tells of nearby villagers who built a pagoda at the site of the
apparition. After a ceremony celebrating the new pagoda, officials from the villages went home and dreamt that buddha asked them to remove statues of him
from the site to honor the powerful Christian goddess who lived there. When
they returned to the pagoda the next day, its altars and statues had been knocked
over. After setting them up again, they returned home, had the same dream, and
returned to again find the altars and statues knocked over. They then offered the
pagoda to local Catholics, who built the first chapel at the site.81 oral histories also
suggest growing belief in this era that the site was a place of miraculous curative
power.82 Chu also points to mary’s place in prison testimonies of local martyrs as
well local mutual aid groups named after mary as evidence of its importance.83
more suggestive evidence of La Vang’s importance exists for later in the century. Chu claims that in 1866, the missionary Sohier, active in the region since the
1840s, attempted to purchase the site on behalf of the mEP to build a seminary, a
convent of the Lovers of the holy Cross (dòng mến Thánh Gía), a rest home for
priests, and an orphanage, but that opposition from local residents forced him to
abandon the plan. Chu also notes that the first organized pilgrimages to the site
began to take place in the 1860s under the direction of a priest from Cổ Vưu; the
pilgrims reportedly worshiped under the banyan tree where mary was believed to
have appeared and brought back its leaves to help cure the sick. over time, Catholics from nearby villages began joining the pilgrims. but in 1885, the violence that
had first led local Catholics to seek shelter in La Vang forest erupted once again,
when Văn Thân and Cần Vương partisans swept through Quảng trị and many
Catholics in the region were killed or dispersed. many Catholic histories of La
Vang recount that when Văn Thân partisans arrived, all houses at the site were
burned down but the chapel remained untouched for fear of divine retribution.
The next day, a local man burned down the chapel. When the Văn Thân partisans
heard this, they returned and killed the man and his family to appease the spirit.84
La Vang’s transformation into a regional and national pilgrimage site began in
the early colonial era. Around 1885, the bishop of huế sponsored the rebuilding
of a church at La Vang, a project that was completed over the next fifteen years
thanks to labor and donations from local Catholics. to celebrate, he organized a
great festival (đại hội) at La Vang on August 8, 1901. because colonial roads and
trains were for the most part still not built, pilgrims came by foot or sampan to
worship at the new church, to gaze at the statue of mary unveiled at the festival,
and to drink curative tea. one pilgrim remembered that people lined up for three
164 chapter 5
kilometers to pass through the church.85 The pilgrimage’s success led the bishop
to proclaim that it would be held every three years, with smaller celebrations held
annually. In years after the first great festival, pilgrimages to La Vang continued
to grow. by the early 1920s, mission authorities had made the festivals three-day
events and built yet another church, this one designed by the head of the EFEo
Parmentier and built with contributions from as far away as Cambodia, for those
pilgrims who could not fit into the existing church and had to sit under a hangar
put up for the occasion.86 by the fifth festival in 1913, one missionary estimated that
well over ten thousand people were attending; by 1932, another estimated twentyfive thousand in attendance.87
The extraordinary expansion of the pilgrimage to La Vang was due to several
factors. by the first festival in 1901, the end of communitarian violence allowed
Catholics the freest movement in a generation. The first few festivals, which remained regional, were probably the first opportunity for many Catholics in the
region to visit a place that they had probably heard about for a long time. The
beatification of the first Vietnamese martyrs made the turn of the century a time
of widespread celebration in Vietnamese Catholic life, which likely helped to make
the early festivals a success. Growing mission networks were also crucial; missionaries, who as district heads covered more territory and visited more communities
than did local priests, spread much of the news and information about early festivals.88 Another reason was patronage. The most important supporter of La Vang
festivals was nguyễn hữu bài, who reportedly participated in every pilgrimage
between 1907 and his death in 1935. Though he was often the most prominent
person there, he “approached the holy mother like a dutiful child, like an ordinary
person, a pilgrim among pilgrims, adoring and modest.”89 bài not only supported
the festivals with his wealth, but he also arranged the visits of French officials, the
apostolic envoy henri Lécroart and apostolic delegates, and even the emperors
Khải Định and bảo Đại. La Vang became a national pilgrimage in the era of the extremely popular first Vietnamese bishops, who regularly appeared at the festivals.
however, the most important reasons for the increasingly national character of
the La Vang pilgrimage were new modes of travel, communication, and publicity.
In 1913, the future bishop hồ ngọc Cẩn wrote an article in Nam Kỳ Địa Phận giving directions to pilgrims coming to La Vang on the newly built colonial railway.
Cẩn told them where to get off (Quảng trị), what roads to take to get to Cổ Vưu
(the starting point of the pilgrimage), what sights to see along the way (memorials
to local Catholics killed in 1885), what to prepare for (how far they would walk and
how long it would take given the hilly terrain), who to ask for help if needed (the
local priest), songs and poems that pilgrims chant, and other essential information
(remember to buy your ticket home when you first arrive in Quảng trị!).90 People
who traveled by train to La Vang often did so as part of an excursion organized by
their home parish.91 As more people came, extra trains ran from huế and Đà nẵng
A National Church Experienced 165
to Quảng trị, many with extra cars to handle the influx of pilgrims. A passenger
in one such train described it as a church of sorts, full of praying, chanting, and
singing.92 In the 1920s, trains began to bring pilgrims from hundreds of kilometers
away, many of whom took days to make the trip and met Catholics from diverse
regions along the way. In 1923, a priest came from Saigon with a letter of introduction from his superior, who had studied in nearby An ninh; this helped him
connect with local priests, who took him to visit the local seminary and a nearby
monastery and to meet nguyễn hữu bài.93 And for pilgrims on a northbound
train from Saigon, coming everywhere from the southern mekong delta to the
mountains outside huế, the journey to the 1938 festival was a time to compare
experiences of faith and community.94
to understand why tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics traveled for
days at considerable expense to worship at La Vang, it is also essential to understand how print made La Vang an important event for Catholic communities in
far-off places. Announcements of the festivals appeared in the earliest Catholic
newspapers and religious bulletins: as the 1913 announcement read, “People from
everywhere have heard of our holy mother of La Vang . . . all near and far are
joyful. Faithful nearby, make essential preparations; faithful from afar, prepare
your luggage.”95 newspapers also informed potential pilgrims of cancellations due
to cholera epidemics or flooding and provided details about travel and lodging.
of course, accounts of La Vang’s miracles were likely what made many Catholics
choose to make the pilgrimage in the first place. one such account told of a man
who, at the urging of ngô Đình Khả, went to La Vang to pray that he and his wife,
separated by work, might be together again; his family was reunited in huế soon
after.96 other accounts told of La Vang’s curative effects or of conversions of people
who witnessed the pilgrimage. but perhaps the most compelling stories were those
that described the excitement of the journey, the encounters with people from
distant places, and the sense of fellowship of the pilgrimage experience. For those
not able to make the trip to La Vang themselves, articles such as these—almost
certainly recounted in sermons and at meetings of Catholic associations—helped
make the pilgrimage a shared experience for many Catholics across Vietnam.
many elements of how Catholics experienced La Vang during the colonial era,
from train travel, hotels, sightseeing, and the role of newspaper accounts as de
facto guidebooks, illustrate the blurred boundaries between religious pilgrimage
and another growing experience in this era: tourism. Indeed, going on a pilgrimage was often a form of taking a vacation. As infrastructure and print gave more
Catholics the desire and the means to visit distant places, many chose to visit religious sites. one popular destination was the celebrated cathedral at Phát diệm.
The contents of one guidebook to the area, much of which would have been familiar to local Catholics, suggest that it was meant for visitors from far away; it
tells the history of the famous cathedral and the man who built it, the priest trần
166 chapter 5
Lục, and it also includes architectural descriptions of the church and other buildings. The book also provides mundane but essential travel information, including
the distance between Phát diệm and the nearest train stop in ninh bình, that the
road was passable by automobile, and that the church could be reached by steampowered boat from nam Định but only by paddleboat from ninh bình.97
Perhaps the most popular form of pilgrimage-cum-tourism in the late colonial era was attending celebrations surrounding the rise of the first Vietnamese
bishops, whose ascendancy was crucial to new understandings of religious community. Indeed, the bishops were national figures simply for the transformations
they represented in Church life: every Vietnamese Catholic had experienced the
kinds of racial hierarchies in religious community that the bishops’ rise directly
challenged. The bishops also had national representative authority for reasons of
geography. Four of the first five bishops represented dioceses far from where they
were born: nguyễn bá tòng (from bà rịa in the mekong delta), hồ ngọc Cẩn,
and Lê hữu từ (from Quảng trị in Annam) led dioceses in tonkin, while ngô
Đình Thục (also from Quảng trị) headed a diocese in Cochinchina. Although this
was a calculated decision by mEP and Vatican authorities to build bridges across
regions in an emerging national Church, it was not assured of success: Alexandre
marcou, whom nguyễn bá tòng succeeded in Phát diệm, even worried about
whether local Catholics would be able to understand tòng’s southern dialect, a
concern at a time when many Vietnamese were rarely exposed to dialects from
other regions.98 As minor as this might seem, it reflected a real worry about the
reception of such a change in communities for whom religious identity was still
closely tied to locality. tòng and his supporters tried to forestall such concerns:
after learning of his nomination, tòng wrote a public letter to Saigon’s Catholics
proclaiming that “just as inside and outside the nation we are one Church, south
and north are one unified nation.”99 After tòng’s departure, his supporters led a
public relations campaign arguing that his ordination was a step forward for all
Catholics across Vietnam. one example was a 1934 pamphlet by the journalist
nguyễn hửu Lượng, in which he argued that tòng’s ordination was a sign that
the “national spirit” (tinh thần quốc gia) of Vietnamese Catholics, stunted by the
nguyễn era, was again beginning to flower.100
Any concerns about how the Catholic public across Vietnam would receive
tòng soon vanished. during the journey to and from rome for the ordination,
which included stops at holy sites throughout Europe and the middle East and
lasted almost six months, tòng’s secretary, Paul Vàng, wrote impressions of the
journey and mailed them to Saigon, which were then published in Nam Kỳ Địa
Phận. At the end of the trip, the mission Press issued a collection of these accounts
that included a biography of the new bishop, some of tòng’s public letters, a series
of photographs from the journey, and articles about tòng’s ordination.101 Thanks in
part to these accounts, excitement grew as tòng neared home. Thousands waited
A National Church Experienced 167
in the rain to welcome tòng back to Saigon.102 many more read about his homecoming, and as tòng journeyed north to his new diocese, they flocked to see him.
tòng spent almost four weeks traveling from Saigon to hanoi, and bishops and
missionaries, colonial and Vietnamese officials, and priests and the Catholic faithful came, often from far away, to see him and hear his words of welcome. typically
tòng would arrive by car to his destination, where Church and provincial officials
waited to welcome him, and he gave a speech of thanks for the honor, in French if
colonial officials were there, and then in Vietnamese. he would then go to the local
church, mount the altar, and pronounce a benediction, often repeating the process
at other nearby churches. A choir was often waiting to sing a hymn or a song written for the occasion. tòng also visited rectories, seminaries, schools, religious orders, monasteries, and memorials, where more waited to welcome him, honoring
him with gifts and almost always with another song or poem. These kinds of visits,
which tòng made almost daily as he moved up the coast, drew hundreds—sometimes thousands—of visitors and received extensive coverage in the press.
Journalists covering tòng’s travels described his ordination as important for
all Catholics in Vietnam. one wrote that from the day tòng left for rome, “all the
faithful in the three regions, from south to north, waited for him eagerly day and
night, awaiting the good news, making even nonbelievers enthusiastic.”103 tòng’s
predecessor noted, “There is not a village where it is not known that there is now
an Annamite bishop in the land of Annam.”104 to many observers, tòng was quite
simply miraculous. Journalists, who paid close attention to the ordinary people
who came to witness tòng’s passage, estimated that the crowds numbered in the
thousands, and they noticed that even modest houses were festively decorated
with flags and paper lanterns and that many people were buying photographs and
postcards with tòng’s likeness from hawkers (fig. 10). one shop in Saigon named
modern Photo made the ordination an occasion to sell photos of tòng in sizes
ranging from four by six centimeters to fifty by sixty centimeters (“orders from
far away will be asked to pay a surcharge”).105 Poems from the pens of children,
seminarians, and priests described the ordination as a national event. “All places
in the three regions [kỳ] glorify you, from south to north every home’s wishes are
fulfilled,” read one.106 Another poem written by huế priests noted that tòng, who
was from Saigon and the head of a diocese in tonkin, would also represent the
central region because “we are still the children of Lạc and the grandchildren of
hồng.”107 tòng’s responses to poems and letters such as these also often appeared
in print, and he usually took the opportunity to repeat what he had written to Saigon’s priests before his departure for rome: “Just as inside and outside the nation
we are one Church, south and north are one unified nation. . . . All people in all
places throughout the nation must be as one heart.”108
The national tone of tòng’s ordination remained evident in celebrations of
the event years later. The June 1938 issue of the youth journal Bạn Thiếu Niên
168 chapter 5
described the event as “a day when the honor of Vietnamese was clear before the
world; it was a day that made the world know our name, listen to our voice, when
before it was still obscured or dismissed.” For this author, tòng had “opened the
road to progress for youth” and had “put into their minds hope, self respect, and
independence.”109 on the tenth anniversary of the ordination, priests in Phát diệm
celebrated the anniversary as a day that joined the Vietnamese Catholic Church
to the mythic past of the Việt people. “For the first time,” they wrote, “the Lạc
mother saw one of her children put on the golden crown, take hold of the jade
staff, and go with fanfare from Europe through all the lands of the Việt, from south
to north, before planting deep roots and giving protective shade to the diocese of
Phát diệm.”110 hồ ngọc Cẩn, the second Vietnamese bishop, remembered June 11,
1933, as the day when the nation’s messiah had arrived, writing, “1933 was the year
Figure 10. Postcard
of the cathedral at Phát
diệm and the tomb of
trần Lục (Père Six), with
inset of nguyễn bá tòng,
ca. 1933.
A National Church Experienced 169
our beloved father received the cross of bishop and came to suffer with us, and
for us.”111
Unlike tòng, hồ ngọc Cẩn did not go to rome when he was ordained on June
29, 1935. Instead, Pope Pius XI sent the bull confirming his selection to Phủ Cam,
where thousands of Catholics who had been unable to go to rome for tòng’s ordination now descended. They came from tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, and the
central highlands, European missionaries and bishops joining priests, nuns, the
elite, and ordinary people. Đoàn Kim hương, editor of Công Giáo Đồng Thinh,
decided to go because Cẩn was beloved by Saigon’s Catholics, despite never having
lived there, for his many contributions to Saigon’s Catholic newspapers, and he
wanted to express the community’s thanks. much like pilgrims from Cochinchina
to La Vang, hương left Saigon five days before the ordination, took the train to
nha trang, and continued by bus. June being the rainy season, the bus frequently
got stuck on the unpaved roads, and several times he spent an entire day to travel
one hundred kilometers. At night he stayed at Catholic schools and religious orders, where he met more Catholics who were going to the same place.112 tòng,
of course, was there too, but Cẩn, whose French was not fluent like tòng’s, gave
speeches and replied to toasts in Vietnamese.113
Cẩn followed tòng’s precedent of postconfirmation travels throughout Vietnam. French officials wanted to introduce him in a center of colonial power, and
they invited him to hanoi just after the ordination. Throngs came to see him as
he passed through bùi Chu on the way north, and in hanoi the highest-ranking
French officials received him. This time Cẩn thanked his hosts in French.114 Cẩn
traveled south thereafter. Although he did not go all the way to Saigon, he made
a return trip to huế to visit his native region and to attend the funeral of nguyễn
hữu bài, whose efforts a decade earlier had helped to make a Vietnamese bishop
possible. Afterward Cẩn returned north through Vinh and nam Định, stopping,
as tòng had done, to visit churches, seminaries, schools, and religious orders. Cẩn
arrived in bùi Chu with a parade of fifteen cars, and a phalanx of Spanish dominican priests waited to welcome the new bishop to the biggest mission in Vietnam,
representing more than a quarter of a million Catholics.115
The 1938 ordination of the third Vietnamese bishop, ngô Đình Thục—an event
that was equally publicized and well attended—also celebrated his famous family. The setting of the ordination itself, Phủ Cam, was suffused with the memory
of Thục’s father, Khả, and his surrogate father, nguyễn hữu bài. Indeed, bài had
largely funded the construction of the church in which Thục was ordained. In his
speech, Thục evoked Job, whom God had tempted with endless trials, when he remembered his father’s failure to prevent French officials from exiling the emperor
Thành Thái. Like Job, Khả “had lost everything—dignity, fortune, health during
the good fight for Christ; but God has rewarded him in his family . . . his sons
and his daughters by their proud devotion to the Catholic faith and their absolute
170 chapter 5
fidelity to the Annamite homeland.”116 Accounts of the event also evoked Khả and
bài’s contributions to Vietnamese Catholic life. one wrote that Khả’s role in forming the Quốc học (the famous “national school” in huế) and bài’s push to send
Catholic students abroad to study made these two men among the first to “concern
themselves with the education of skilled individuals today, of a new culture and
new era.”117 Similarly, a Saigon Catholic newspaper wrote of Khả, “In an era when
the Annamite elite, represented by mandarins, was hostile to modern progress . . .
Khả had the courage to take on the difficult task of . . . mediating between the prejudices of the mandarins and the need for modern progress.”118 newspapers printed
photographs of bài visiting Vietnamese students in rome, Thục among them, during his visit there in 1922. Some of bài’s poems were even read at the inauguration.
The bishops continued to travel widely after their ordinations, and the excitement they generated at times worried French officials. tòng and Cẩn’s dioceses
bordered each other, and they regularly traveled together to visit Catholic schools
and seminaries. In 1935, Vietnamese Catholics in hải Phòng arranged to have the
two bishops visit. organizers of the visit, among them the wealthy printer ngô tử
hạ, purposefully invited the Vietnamese bishops at a moment when the Spanish
bishop of hải Phòng was absent and unable to represent European ecclesiastical authority at the event. Colonial officials, already sensitive about their relations
with Catholics in hải Phòng after years of tensions with Spanish missionaries,
tried to postpone the ceremony, which the mayor of hải Phòng saw as an event
“that seems to me to respond to a goal foreign to religion,” also noting that it was
“hard to see in this manifestation a purely confessional gesture.” For the mayor,
this proved that Vietnamese Catholics in hải Phòng “are working with an overt
spirit of independence” and that missionaries in hải Phòng “have lost a great deal
of their authority.” Colonial officials pressured the bishops and Pedro muñaggori,
the departing bishop of buì Chu, until the event was canceled.119
despite the qualms of French officials, the new bishops nevertheless continued to travel widely. Thục, who was much younger than tòng or Cẩn, traveled
throughout Cochinchina and came to tonkin frequently despite the distance.
during one such trip in 1940 for the ordination of Phan Đình Phùng as assistant
bishop to tòng, Thục took the opportunity to travel with Cẩn around bùi Chu.
Like Cẩn, Thục was not from tonkin, and one observer of their travels noted that
before their ordinations, Catholics in bùi Chu and other parts of the country were
“far, only close to one another in our habits, our sacred mission to spread the
Gospel, our duty to open the nation of God. . . . Apart from that we were not close,
not linked like we are today.” For this writer, the bishops’ presence and authority
were why the writer could speak of “bùi-huế-Vĩnh” as one entity. “If we are the
children of bishop hồ,” students sang, “we are the nephews of bishop ngô. . . .
We see clearly that center south north three regions are linked. The huế diocese is like a tall tree, with two branches protecting all of north and south.” Thục
A National Church Experienced 171
responded by quoting Saint Augustine: “Quam bonum et quam jucundum frates
habitare in unum” (how good and pleasant for brothers to live in unity), a phrase
usually chanted in a monastery to express the unity of the brotherhood of monks
but here invoked with a different meaning. during their visit to a school, its superior welcomed the guests, saying, “our lords of the three lands of Indochina that
Providence has reunited in tonkin.” Thục’s visit was a special honor, for bùi Chu’s
Catholics knew him as “a renowned bishop who draws from the languages of all
four corners of the earth, from Europe to Asia, from rome to An-nam.”120
Thục’s rise to the bishopric was an important event in his family’s political trajectory, and his ordination and travels provided months of significant visibility for
him and his brothers. historians know relatively little about the activities of diệm
and nhu during the second half of the 1930s. diệm was living in huế and was still
involved in court politics, but he had held no official position since leaving bảo
Đại’s cabinet in 1933, and nhu was studying in France until sometime in 1938.121
For diệm, nhu, and the other ngô brothers, Thục’s ordination and travels were
an occasion for significant public exposure right before World War II, when diệm
began to broaden his nationalist activities. As Thục traveled, his brothers often
came with him, and when newspapers wrote about Thục, they also wrote about
his family. Thục’s most extensive trip in his first months as bishop was through
the mekong delta. Thục’s brothers, Khôi, diệm, and Luyện, and Khôi’s son huấn
accompanied him for large parts of his travels in Cochinchina. They went with
him to receptions at Saigon’s churches and seminaries, they met with prominent
Catholic priests and intellectuals, and they followed him outside the city to be
welcomed by Catholics in the mekong delta.122 At the time of Thục’s ordination,
Nam Kỳ Địa Phận celebrated nhu’s graduation from the Ecole de Chartres and it
published articles about the accomplishments and prestige of the whole family,
member by member.123 ngô Đình Thục’s ordination was a family affair.
IntErnAtIonAL FEStIVALS In VIEtnAmESE
CAthoLIC LIFE
In the late colonial era, the arrival to Vietnam of global forms of Catholic festival
and worship were perhaps the most visible and spectacular evidence of the growing ties between Vietnam and global Catholicism. Perhaps the most emblematic
were Papal days, celebrated throughout the world on the anniversary of the ordination of the current pope. The first Papal day celebrated in Vietnam was the last
Sunday in october 1929, the fiftieth anniversary of Pius XI’s ordination as priest. A
delegation of Vietnamese Catholic notables had hoped to travel to rome bearing
the homage and aspirations of Vietnamese Catholics, but they had to abandon the
idea. Instead, Catholics throughout Vietnam carried out good works and said rosaries in honor of the pope. missionaries noted that churches were just as full as on
172 chapter 5
the most important holidays, and that Catholic donations were remarkable. one
missionary, writing from a highland minority area, wrote, “our Catholic moys,
despite their penury and their lack of natural generosity, astonished their priest
when they gave him thirty-five piasters, a huge sum for them.” Collections on the
first Papal day reached fifteen thousand piasters.124
Papal day celebrations were one sign of the pope’s growing presence in Vietnamese Catholic life in the 1920s and 1930s. This era saw the first book-length
biographies of the pope in Vietnamese, some of them translated from other languages and others written directly in quốc ngữ.125 one of the latter, by Phạm Quang
hàm, who had studied in rome, shows how some Vietnamese Catholics linked
Pius XI to many of the advances made by Vietnamese Catholics in their Church.
In the introduction, ngô tử hạ wrote, “We must know the history of the pope
like we know the history of our own parents.” hàm portrayed Pius XI as an enlightened figure bravely bringing the Church into the modern world; he dedicated
long parts of his text to the growth of local Church hierarchies in China, Japan,
and Vietnam, as well as to the pope’s efforts to bring students to rome from Asia,
to establish more seminaries in the Catholic world outside Europe, and to spread
Catholic Action.126 Catholic newspapers published histories of the papacy as well
as full texts of papal encyclicals and extensive coverage of papal successions. These
articles often included pictures of the pope, making the 1920s likely the first time
that the pontiff was recognizable to many Vietnamese Catholics. Papal speeches
or pronouncements were published separately as pamphlets. new technology also
brought the pope to Vietnam in person, so to speak: in 1927, missionaries screened
a film about Pius XI called “The Pope at Church” on a large screen outside the
hanoi cathedral.127
As pilgrimages to La Vang became a part of national religious life, more Vietnamese Catholics also came to perceive their marianism in a global context. not
surprisingly, Lourdes was the best-known marian apparition outside Vietnam.
Pilgrimages to Lourdes exploded during the nineteenth century, and many missionaries found Vietnamese Catholics receptive to stories about Lourdes. one
noted that missionaries distributed holy water and erected altars and shrines to
our Lady of Lourdes in churches, seminaries, and caves. In 1902, a benefactor
even paid for the construction of an exact replica of the Lourdes cave near the
seminary at Kẻ Sở. missionaries believed that Lourdes was an important reason
for conversions; they reported that Vietnamese Catholics who prayed at these
shrines believed in the curative power of water taken from them and that many
Catholic villages had statues or images of bernadette of Lourdes. In 1884, Pierremarie Gendreau, later bishop of hanoi, reportedly overcame a deathly illness by
drinking holy water from Lourdes; ten years later, he supposedly survived an assassination attempt in hanoi by reciting a prayer to mary just as his assailant fired.
Another well-known story was of the wealthy Saigon Catholic Lê Phát An, who
A National Church Experienced 173
was sick enough in 1908 to receive last rites before he was cured by the timely arrival of holy water from Lourdes.128
The mystique of Lourdes spread with these stories. Vietnamese soldiers and
workers in France who went to Lourdes wrote to missionaries relating what they
had seen, and their letters appeared in missionary periodicals.129 Lourdes’ popularity also grew with translations of texts about Lourdes into quốc ngữ, which
were often used in seminaries and primary schools for study.130 A play in the bon
Théâtre moderne series imagined bernadette’s experience of witnessing mary.131 Lê
Văn Đức also wrote a history of the miraculous apparitions, serialized in Nam Kỳ
Địa Phận.132 nguyễn bá tòng wrote to the Catholic faithful from Lourdes during
his ordination travels, and he made Lourdes the focus of one of his popular conferences.133 Vietnamese Catholics also marveled at other worldwide marian apparitions. Those at Fátima in Portugal, in 1917, were of particular interest. Nam Kỳ Địa
Phận translated and serialized a work by the French priest and journalist Georges
ramboux about Fátima in 1932, and in 1944 the mission Press published excerpts
from devotional literature on the apparitions.134
As Papal days and worldwide marian apparitions became a part of Catholic life
in Vietnam, Catholics also began to participate in other global forms of devotional
activity. Eucharistic Congresses, for example, which began to be held regularly in
the late nineteenth century, first in France and then worldwide, were organized to
deepen devotion to the Eucharist by gathering Catholic communities together in
holy Communion and the Sacrifice of the mass. The first Eucharistic Congress
took place in France in 1881; the first International Eucharistic Congress outside
Europe was in Jerusalem in 1891; and by the 1930s they had been held on all five
major continents. In 1914, International Eucharistic Congresses started to adopt
formal themes that reflected the Catholic Church’s changing place in the world,
such as “The Eucharist and the Social reign of Jesus Christ” (1914), “The Eucharist
in Africa’s testimony” (1930), and “The Eucharistic Apostolate in the missions”
(1937).135 Vietnamese Catholic newspapers began to publish serialized accounts of
these events in the 1920s. These typically gave readers a history of the Catholic
Church in the nation where the congress was being held, related narratives that
led readers through the processions, described the stadia and other monumental venues where the events took place, and introduced the famous cardinals and
bishops who were speaking, all of which gave readers a sense of what it was like
to participate in a mass gathering of Catholics the likes of which had not yet been
seen in Vietnam.
At the reunion of bishops convoked by the apostolic delegate Constantino Aiuti
at tam Đảo in 1926, the assembled outlined a plan to hold first regional and then
national Eucharistic Congresses “to give Christians an idea of the force of religion,
intensify Christian life, and develop devotion toward the holy Eucharist,” as well
to try to win over nonbelievers by this mass spectacle of piety.136 The first regional
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Eucharistic Congress for tonkin was at Phát diệm in April 1928. tellingly, it was
at first intended only for Phát diệm; it received little publicity, and no formal trips
of Catholics from outside missions were organized. news nevertheless spread
quickly, and twenty thousand faithful attended the opening mass. morning and
evening masses were held over the three days, and assemblies for groups such as
women and youth were held in nearby parishes. The faithful continued to stream
in, and sixty thousand people participated in the closing mass and heard the pope’s
best wishes read from a telegram.137
The next Eucharistic Congress was in 1931 in hanoi, and this time it represented
both Annam and tonkin. half the bishops of Vietnam were there, as was the apostolic delegate, who began the congress with a blessing and allocution on the
mystery of the Eucharist at the cathedral. The streets were packed with as many as
one hundred thousand people from outside hanoi, from as far away as the central
highlands. The procession of the holy Sacrament was a panoply of regional costumes, homemade musical instruments, and banners of the hundreds of different
parishes, religious orders, schools, associations, and other groups that had come
to participate and poured onto the streets of hanoi. Léopold Cadière described it
as follows:
It was a running river of humanity, flowing slowly, calmly, majestically between two
banks . . . some black, some white, some pink, some blue, some red, some green,
some yellow, some violet, brilliant and faded shades, fervent and placid gatherings, sculptures, lacquer, gold; flowers, crowns . . . the laughing children, the ardent
youth, the majestic elderly; orphans; notables; the most important mandarins of the
land . . . tambourines, cymbals, castanets that one struck while dancing: canticles,
songs, prayers. All of this in an impeccable order with gravity, with majesty, all the
sounds melted together as in an overwhelming silence.
Thousands of French Catholics also participated in the 1931 Eucharistic Congress,
many more than had participated in Phát diệm three years earlier. This led one
missionary to observe without irony that the French and Vietnamese “had communed in the same faith and same love” despite participating in separate masses
and communions.138
The last Eucharistic Congress during the colonial period was in Saigon in 1935.
In addition to renewing faith and mobilizing the laity to participate in the life of
the Church, the congress also celebrated the centenary of the death of the mEP
martyr Joseph marchand, who had died with several catechists during the Lê Văn
Khôi rebellion one hundred years before. The 1935 congress was much like the others, involving masses in the city’s many churches, conferences for youth, sermons
and speeches on aspects of Catholic belief and the Church’s works, and a massive
procession of the blessed Sacrament to finish the event. once again, it drew more
than one hundred thousand people. What struck the governor of Cochinchina
A National Church Experienced 175
was how modern the event was; “allocution and prayers came to the faithful by
speakers that functioned perfectly, marrying the progress of modern radio with
public rites in conditions that pleased the masses.” As in 1928 and 1931, Catholics
from throughout Vietnam came to Saigon for the occasion. “The stores,” wrote
the governor, were “filled with villagers attracted like moths to the lights. . . . The
poorest were able, thanks to the mild weather, to sleep under the stars.” Even the
dismissive governor granted that the event was a partial success, describing it as
“Lourdes without the enthusiasm.”139
The significance of the Eucharistic Congresses of 1928, 1931, and 1935 went beyond the experience of those who attended. newspapers were filled with articles
about these events, as they were for the ordinations of Vietnamese bishops or
pilgrimages to La Vang. Sermons by bishops at the congresses were published as
pamphlets and sold in their respective missions. one by Valentin herrgott, bishop
of Phnom Penh, placed readers in the setting in which the sermon was given,
describing the number of people packed into the church and their emotional reactions.140 one Joseph trúc used the 1931 congress as the theme of a pamphlet urging
readers to look beyond the magnificence of these events to recognize the lessons
they offered about faith.141 other texts focused on the history of these festivals, integrating the three Eucharistic Congresses of Vietnam into the story of the worldwide Eucharistic Congress movement.142
The integration did not remain symbolic for long. In 1937, a delegation of Vietnamese Catholics participated for the first time in an International Eucharistic
Congress, held that year in manila. The delegation of about forty people included
nguyễn bá tòng, hồ ngọc Cẩn, ngô Đình Thục, and many other priests and
prominent lay Catholics (including ngô tử hạ) from throughout Vietnam, as
well as a few missionaries. A journal, written by an unidentified delegate and later
published, describes how momentous the trip was.143 before leaving for the Philippines, the first members of the delegation traveled south by steamer from huế to
Saigon, where they visited the church at Chợ Quán, the campus of the Lovers of
the holy Cross, and the mission Press. After two days the delegation traveled back
to hải Phòng, where the members of the delegation from tonkin came aboard.
The steamer then set off for manila. As the author recalls, during the five-day trip
to the Philippines the Vietnamese delegates had lengthy discussions about the diverse places in Vietnam from which they came and how their faith bound them
together: “People asked each other about customs and daily life in each region versus another. . . . Though it is said that our ways of life and habits are different and
not compatible . . . it is clear we share a common historical heritage [gia tài]. . . .
We have received one another and become more deeply attached than we were in
the past because we are part of one Church and share one God.”144
The delegation arrived in manila on February 2 and stayed for five days, during
which the Vietnamese participated in the festivities while soaking up manila. For
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many in the delegation it was their first time outside Vietnam, and they compared
everything to home, from the style of the Philippine churches to the products in
markets. but as interesting as manila was, the congress was the main attraction.
The size and diversity of the event was breathtaking; the author marveled that, for
the first time, he and his companions were “celebrating tết with the world” (ăn Tết
với giới), and it inspired the author to pray to God to bless the people of Vietnam
with the spirit of faith and solidarity he felt: “Please God, grant to all the Vietnamese people the ability to know God better every day, so that the whole of our nation
can quickly become one, joined in following one God.145 For the delegation, the
height of the event was hồ ngọc Cẩn’s speech to the conference.146 The trip was big
news in Vietnamese Catholic life: chapters of Eucharistic Crusade spent months
raising money to support the delegation,147 and newspapers published detailed
coverage of the event and the full text of Cẩn’s speech.
The three youths who left hải Phòng in 1939 to represent Vietnam in rome
came of age in an era during which conceptions of the nation and the Catholic
world became an increasingly important part of Catholic life in Vietnam. Such
broader conceptions of community were, of course, also a growing reality for many
other parts of Vietnamese society in the late colonial era, as growing horizons led
to myriad new understandings of self and society. For many Vietnamese, this was
a profoundly political process, as the growing bureaucratic and cultural reality of
“the nation” led Vietnamese to debate its meaning and question its relationship to
colonial rule. For many, understandings of nationalism were global at their core,
as international movements from communism to buddhist renovation shaped
how people understood and argued about politics, and Catholics too perceived
and participated in new discursive and political arenas as members of a global
community. For Catholics, their religious community’s difficult past in Vietnam
made emerging debates about the cultural, historical, and political elements of
nationhood especially complex, offering opportunities to transcend historical and
cultural conflicts but also new ways to intensify them.
177
6
The Culture and Politics of
Vietnamese Catholic nationalism
ngô Đình Thục was ordained bishop on may 4, 1938. In his speech, his first thanks
went to rome, his “spiritual and intellectual homeland,” and especially to Pope
Pius XI and the head of Propaganda Fide for acting as “guides of my first steps
in the Episcopal path.” When Thục thanked the mEP, still a powerful presence
in Vietnamese Catholic life, he described the society as a loyal servant of rome
whose time had passed: having built “with their sweat and fertilized with their
blood” a Vietnamese Church, the mEP now offered it “to the Vatican with all the
pride of their apostle’s heart.”1 he repeated this theme in his first pastoral letter,
which made it clear that Vietnamese priests would take charge in the new diocese,
since their “holiness, intellect, and education are in no way inferior to that of European missionaries.” because the pope “loves, respects, and trusts Vietnamese to
the extent of trusting several hundred thousand souls in the hands of a Vietnamese
bishop,” Thục wrote, “this diocese is a diocese of rome. . . . to disobey that is to
disobey the Vatican itself.”2 Thục’s explicit view on the meaning of his ascension
elicited different responses. Some missionaries were apparently so unhappy with
Thục’s ordination that they refused to serve under him in the new diocese.3 on the
other hand, as one Sûreté official noted, “The ordination was received very favorably in nationalist and Caodaist milieus,” which intensified the growing suspicions
of French officials about the ngô family’s politics.4
Thục’s ordination, just two years before World War II thrust Vietnam into the
global currents of decolonization, illustrates the complex relationship between
new ideas of nationhood emerging in the late colonial era and the political identities these inspired. For many Vietnamese Catholics, the turn away from missionary authority meant transcending Catholicism’s difficult past in Vietnam and its
178 chapter 6
ties to France, and it helped them begin to imagine a new future for their Church
in a nation free from colonialism. At the same time, however, growing conceptions
of “Vietnam” as a single cultural and historical community and the rise of leftist anticolonial movements often hostile toward Catholicism began to challenge
Catholic claims to national belonging. because many Vietnamese Catholics had
an ambiguous relationship to new ideas about Vietnamese nationalism, they regularly looked to the global Catholic world as they defined new political identities
in the late colonial era. These international connections continued to highlight
Catholicism’s status as a minority religion in new and potent ways in Vietnam.
however, they also created disparate, even opposed conceptions of Vietnamese
Catholic nationalism, as ideologies and movements ranging from Social Catholicism to anticommunism came to shape political choices during the era of imperial
collapse and decolonization.
CAthoLICS And thE QUEStIon
oF nAtIonAL bELonGInG
For many Vietnamese Catholics in the late colonial era, their place in the national
community was self-evident, even natural. Increasingly widespread conceptions
of an ethnic (dân tộc) or racial (chủng tộc) community allowed Catholics to claim
national belonging while sidestepping the question of religion. This kind of thinking relied heavily on two related if different ideas central to intellectual life in the
late colonial era. The first was the idea of discrete “Eastern” and “Western” civilizations and races, and the second was the new perception of difference between the
Vietnamese, Lao, and Cambodian parts of Indochina, as well as between kinh and
ethnic “minorities.”5 Such ideas were at the center of Catholic claims of national
belonging that made no reference to religion at all. In one typical article in the
Catholic journal Đa Minh Bán Nguyệt, one Vân trình defined “nation” (nước) as
“the earth [đất] cultivated by our fathers, the boundless lands, the mountains and
rivers,” where there lived “a great family of people of a common race [nòi giống],
customs [phong tục], discipline [kỷ luật], history [lịch sử], etc.”6 “Pray to God,”
wrote huỳnh Phúc yên, editor of Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, “to be faithful to the
people [quốc dân], to have a heart for one’s race, to have a loving spirit: may the
three regions of north, center, and south be as one.”7
most Catholics thinking about national community, however, felt a need to address how their minority status and their ties to the global Church affected their
belonging in the nation. As was the case in Europe, many saw the two allegiances
as perfectly compatible. In a typical article titled “how do Catholics Think about
the Idea of homeland [quê hương]?” one writer argued that the Church was concerned solely with spiritual matters and did not distinguish between Catholics of
different ethnicities or national backgrounds. This meant that it was not a divisive
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 179
presence in nations, and in turn that the devotion of Catholics to their nation
should not be questioned. In a sign of the times, the author pointedly called on
missionaries to acknowledge that Vietnamese Catholics had duties to their homeland as well as to their religious community.8 Another writer made the case that
being Vietnamese and Catholic were different duties that did not contradict one
another, offering as proof the many Catholics who served the nation in all levels of
public life.9 “The nation is now passing through a crucial period,” wrote one Catholic in 1938. “movements in women’s liberation, education, sport, youth, workers,
and ordinary people as well as new political parties are now linking people across
the nation [đất nước Việt Nam]. . . . I ask you, should we Catholics be involved and
help, or work against it? This needs no response, as everyone clearly knows: we
should of course be involved, and enthusiastically.”10
however, for those writers who were well informed about Catholic thinking
about the question of boundaries between ecclesiastical and civil power, the issue
was more complex. For one Catholic writer, the nation (quốc gia) was nothing
more than the laws and institutions that governed daily life and protected things
such as property and freedom of worship. Accordingly, he saw national identity
less as a cultural common ground than as a duty of the citizenry to comply with
civil obligations such as paying taxes and serving in the military.11 he made this
point through an analysis of Leo XIII’s 1885 encyclical Immortalie Dei, a canonical statement of this view; Paul tạo made the same point using Pius XI’s 1922
encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei.12 Such views of the nation rested on the position in
Catholic political thought that civil governments, necessarily autonomous in some
respects, should ultimately be shaped by the will of God as expressed by Church
authority. most Catholics who argued for a role for Catholic morality in state affairs were fairly sanguine about religious affiliations in Vietnam, and most did little
more than explore the ideas of Catholic thinkers on this question.13 but some were
more enthusiastic. The priest Lê Thiện bá wrote that because love for one’s fellow
man was at the heart of patriotism, only Catholic nations could be truly patriotic.14
And the priest trần Văn Chính, in a 1933 pamphlet titled “Vietnamese! People
Who Love the nation!” saw calls for national and cultural renewal as an opportunity for mass conversion.15 Such enthusiasm at times produced strange rumors,
such as one in 1936 that the aged revolutionary Phan bội Châu was considering
converting to Catholicism.16
Catholics also perceived their fraught place in national histories as another obstacle to claims of national belonging, which they addressed in a variety of ways.
Echoing the story of Job, one argument was that past hardships had only made
Catholics more devoted to the nation. one writer argued that Catholic patriotism
had not weakened despite communitarian conflict, and that now, “if there be a
worthy cause, we ask that we go before all others to the battle lines to sacrifice
ourselves because we are Vietnamese!” Arguments such as these depended on a
180 chapter 6
historical narrative denying that Catholics deserved any blame for their conflicts
with a nguyễn court described as irrational, violent, and vindictive; for this author,
“whatever kings tried, Catholics kept a pure heart.”17 Such arguments went hand in
hand with arguments that linked periods of communitarian violence to national
weakness. one example was the Catholic school primer Sử ký nước Annam kể tặt,
in its sixth edition by 1930. The primer, in many ways a typical history of emperors
and dynasties, focused almost entirely on communitarian issues during its discussion of the minh mạng and tự Đức reigns, arguing that anti-Catholicism was why
the nation not only lost its own “protectorate” (quyền bảo hộ) over Cambodia but
was itself lost (lại thêm mất nước).18
Some histories such as these were written explicitly to help ordinary Catholics combat what many saw as misleading or false versions of national history. A
priest named Vũ Đăng Khoa, in his 1933 pamphlet “believers: Things you Should
Know,” provided an explanation of protectorate treaties with France (reprinted in
quốc ngữ, French, and Chinese) to help Catholics counter what he saw as popular misunderstandings about this era. “When the people [lương dân] understand
these falsehoods,” he wrote, “they will behave better toward us; there will no longer be the common belief that Catholics led us into difficulty.” Khoa argued that
clauses granting Catholic freedom of worship and missionaries the right to proselytize were not forced upon tự Đức by the French but instead reflected a change
in the emperor’s attitude toward Catholics. he also argued that Catholics were
not the principal reason for the nguyễn court losing power, emphasizing instead
non-Catholics who had sided with the French. Khoa also attributed Catholicism’s
presence in Vietnam not to colonialism but to the fact that it had always been a
“just religion” (tôn giáo chí công), and he argued that the collaboration of some
Catholics during the French conquest was a political decision at a difficult moment rather than an inherent inclination toward Western rule.19
Famous Catholics lionized in colonial and missionary histories were another
focus. For example, in 1925 a journalist named Vũ tiên tiến wrote an article
titled “Who Invented Quốc ngữ?” questioning the origin myth of the national
script. tiến bemoaned the fact that Alexander de rhodes was acknowledged as
the inventor of quốc ngữ despite the fact that evidence for this rested largely on
de rhodes’s own account. tiến questioned whether de rhodes could have mastered learning multiple languages, regional variations, colloquialisms, and the like,
skills that were obviously necessary to acquire in order to develop a written system
for vernacular Vietnamese. he next proposed an explanation that he claimed was
common in Catholic oral histories: the credit for quốc ngữ should go not to de
rhodes, but to the Vietnamese priests who accompanied de rhodes during his
travels. Although de rhodes’s history does refer to the invaluable assistance these
priests gave to the missionaries, he does not give them credit for helping develop
the romanized script. to tiến this was “such a pity! These priests have been lost
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 181
to history, and all we know is their names.” In closing, tiến called for people to
resurrect the memory of these priests to allow Vietnamese Catholics to appreciate
the contributions of their own countrymen to the formation of what had become
a pillar of Vietnamese cultural life.20
Another object of revisionism was trần Lục (Père Six), whose ties to French
authorities in the 1870s and 1880s had earned him the status of a paragon of colonial cooperation, but whose life had a different meaning for Vietnamese Catholics writing about him in the 1930s. to nguyễn Văn Thích, writing in 1937, Lục’s
accomplishments, notably the construction of the magnificent cathedral at Phát
diệm, meant that “the people of the invaded nation could show that they lacked
nothing that Western Catholics had.”21 Joseph trần, the author of one of the earliest biographies of Lục in Vietnamese, wrote, “The help that he offered the French
and their Vietnamese supporters was extensive, but that is something that I cannot
explain.”22 to a young priest named hoàng Quỳnh, Lục had acted as he did only to
protect his religion in a time of persecution, and he had used diplomacy because
force was not possible: he was “a man with a special gift who was undoubtedly a
patriot . . . who shows that the relationship of the principles of Catholicism to the
nation is clear.” In many ways, Quỳnh’s arguments reflected the vision of history
imagined in Maximum Illud and Rerum Ecclesiae. he wrote that since missionaries came to Asia, “in the work of proselytizing, the formation of indigenous priests
has always been most important to the undertaking.” now, “we see Chinese, and
Japanese . . . rise and take the helm of dioceses. our turn is next, and we will also
see this honor.” In Quỳnh’s version of Lục’s life, the priest’s ties to colonial rule were
unimportant: in his efforts to build a national Church, Lục had been “patriotic
toward the nation.”23
Although Catholics like Lục were particularly tricky to rehabilitate, others were
less so. trương Vĩnh Ký, the intellectual who had played a central role in the spread
of quốc ngứ in the early colonial era, was a common subject of popular biographies that took a very different approach to understanding his life and legacies
than did French colonial hagiographies. In a 1927 biography of Ký, Đặng Thúc
Liêng, a scholar who spent time in jail for participating in the duy tân hội, wrote
that despite Ký’s diplomatic role in the era of the French conquest, he “still had a
patriotic soul,” and he argued that Ký’s decision not to request French citizenship
was a patriotic act of self-assertion and an example that other Vietnamese should
consider.24 Liêng was not Catholic; his generous reading of Ký was perhaps a result
of his close ties to Gilbert trần Chánh Chiếu, a Catholic and prominent associate
of Phan bội Châu. The editor and literary critic Lê Thanh, who was also not Catholic, expressed a similar view of Ký in his 1943 work Trương Vĩnh Ký: Biên Khảo.
rather than emphasizing Ký’s political collaboration and ties to colonial institutions, Thanh presented Ký as a founder of a modern national culture whose career
“started a revolution in knowledge” that became the foundation for an ongoing
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cultural revival in Vietnam.25 This reading ultimately had a political conclusion: Ký
had “shaken hands with the French for the good of the nation.”26 Interpretations
of Ký as a collaborator dominated scholarship written in the democratic republic
of Vietnam after 1954, but Thanh’s reading of Ký anticipated a similar one in the
republic of Vietnam as well as Ký’s rehabilitation in contemporary Vietnamese
scholarship.27
Another Catholic figure that underwent historical reassessment in the late
colonial era was nguyễn trường tộ, the Catholic with perhaps the most impeccable political credentials in modern Vietnamese historiography. This was not always the case: nguyễn histories pilloried tộ for his role in colonial-era diplomacy
and his petitions calling on the court to adopt Western ideas and techniques as a
path to self-strengthening.28 tộ’s communications with Vietnamese officials about
French military intentions while working for the French made him a much less
obvious candidate for colonial valorization, and he did not enjoy a place in the
colonial pantheon of Vietnamese Catholic exemplars as did trần Lục and trương
Vĩnh Ký. Some pro-French voices did attempt to cast him in such a manner; the
journal Nam Phong ran a series of articles about tộ in 1927 that included passages
of tộ’s petitions, but not the parts that might be “inconvenient to the French.”29 tộ’s
status changed dramatically with nguyễn Lân’s 1941 biography, the longest study of
tộ to that point. Lân placed tộ alongside reformist intellectuals Fukuzawa yukichi
and Kang youwei as one of the three great modernizers of nineteenth-century
Asia, arguing that tộ should serve as a model for contemporary Vietnamese youth
to learn how to use their Western learning in service of the nation.30 In the same
year, dương Quảng hàm included some of tộ’s writings in his Việt Nam văn học
sử yếu, which would become a central text in the project to create a national literary canon. nationalist readings of tộ carried over into democratic republic of
Vietnam historiography, which gives tộ a sympathetic, if still critical, reading.
As Vietnamese Catholics contemplated the nature of the national community
and their historical and cultural place in it, they inevitably came to read about,
learn about, and discuss its explicitly political aspects. As it did in many other
parts of Vietnamese society, Catholic thinking about the concept of “politics”
(chính trị / chánh trị) underwent seismic changes during the late colonial era.
Long-established concepts of political authority retained powerful cultural currency even in the last decades of colonial rule, and many Catholic writers trying to
explain the concept of politics to their readers in the 1930s did so through metaphors of social relationships and family structures. Increasingly, however, Catholics in this era were coming to associate “politics” not only with the concept of an
ideology (tư tưởng) or “ism” (chủ nghĩa) but also with participation in a sphere of
competing political ideas. many missionaries and priests saw ideology as a rival to
religion and had reservations about lay Catholics becoming involved in politics.31
but this had done little to prevent European Catholics from becoming politically
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 183
active, which politically engaged Vietnamese Catholics did not fail to notice: the
journalist nguyễn hưng Thi argued for greater Vietnamese Catholic participation
in politics by means of a list of Europe’s Catholic political luminaries.32 meaningful
legal political activity was, of course, rare under colonial rule, although there were
Catholics active in the vibrant world of Saigon politics. however, many Catholics
in the late colonial era were thinking and writing about political ideas and movements, both inside and outside Vietnam, that were coming to shape their political
consciousness.
one of these was Đoàn Kim hương, editor of Công Giáo Đồng Thinh, who
devoted much of his time in 1931 and 1932 to a long work comparing socialism and
capitalism. hương began writing it at a time when economic collapse was radicalizing politics in Vietnam and globally. hương’s position was mixed: he criticized
collectivist models of society and politics for the limits that he felt they placed on
individual property and expression, but he was just as critical of the excesses of
market capitalism, exploring possibilities for worker autonomy and how the state
might regulate economic activity to ensure social justice. more importantly, his
frame of reference for thinking about politics drew from beyond Vietnam’s borders, notably from Catholic thought about a “third way” between socialism and
capitalism.33 hương’s work demonstrates how during an era in which ideas about
national community were growing, many Catholics came to draw ideas about nationhood and nationalism from a position of membership in a global religious
community. And as some of these ideas about national community grew increasingly integralist and essentialist, Catholics came to face, or at least to perceive, new
barriers to national belonging.
rELIGIon And thE ProbLEm
oF “nAtIonAL CULtUrE”
There was no arena for these barriers more potent than religion, and in particular
new ideas about “Vietnamese” religion that implicitly, and at times explicitly, excluded Catholicism from cultural understandings of the nation. one emblematic
example of this was a memorial to Vietnamese who had died for France during
the Great War.34 The memorial was a communal house (đình) that had been built
in Saigon, transported to France for a colonial exhibition in marseille in 1906, and
moved to the Jardin Colonial in nogent-sur-marne near Paris for another exhibition a year later. In 1917, Le Souvenir Indochinois, an association with chapters
in both France and Vietnam, bought the building and converted it into a buddhist temple to serve as a memorial to Vietnam’s sacrifices for France during the
Great War. resplendent with altars, bells, flags, vases, and other votive objects,
the temple sacralized wartime sacrifice in a mixture of buddhism, Confucianism,
taoism, and ancestral worship that many French and Vietnamese were coming to
184 chapter 6
see as a unified, coherent belief system that represented Vietnam’s “national” religion.35 Le Souvenir Indochinois built memorials such as these throughout France
and Vietnam. In his speech at the site of one memorial in Cần Thơ, the president
of Le Souvenir Indochinois spoke in explicitly essentialist terms: “We are in a land
where the cult of the dead is the base of all faiths,” he said. “The cult of ancestors is
a duty sanctioned by religious law: none who dare to ignore it would avoid public
indignity and suspicion.”36
missionaries and Vietnamese Catholics had fought and died in the Great War,
and their brethren did not appreciate the nature of the memorials. “never,” wrote
one missionary, “would a disciple of Christ support an undertaking that imposed,
on his tomb, prayers to buddha.” When he learned of the memorial, the bishop of
hanoi suggested that the church at nogent become a memorial to Catholics. As a
compromise, Le Souvenir Indochinois erected a small stele on the grounds of the
memorial to honor Catholics and arranged for a mass at the headquarters of the
mEP. The governor-general assured the bishop that future ceremonies at nogentsur-marne would include mass at a nearby church. Several years later, however,
the first ceremony under the socialist governor-general Albert Sarraut took place
without it. one missionary, shocked by the “superstitious, pagan” character of the
ceremony, protested to mEP authorities. “The numerous martyrs, dead on the
earth of Annam,” he wrote, “remind us that we must be suspicious of the erroneous judgments of the unfaithful, even when they are cloaked in officaldom.”37
The temple at nogent-sur-marne was one example of an amalgam of colonial
cultural projects and an ongoing exploration of the question of Vietnamese “national essence” that was characteristic of this era. one response to the sociocultural transformations of this time was a call for a “return” to perceived Vietnamese
cultural orthodoxy, especially a revival of social hierarchies and a greater role
for “traditional” morality in public life. most who argued for such a return saw
the “three religions” concept (tam giáo) articulated in the temple at nogent-surmarne as the base of Vietnamese national religion. Although such thinkers made
claims to the distant past, their ideas were modern, highly idealized, and selective,
drawing from European thinkers such as hegel, Charles maurras, henri bergson,
and herbert Spencer as well as Vietnamese intellectual traditions. The conservative politics of some (though not all) of these thinkers had a strong appeal for
colonial officials engaged in mobilizing a particular vision of Vietnamese history
and culture as a tool of rule. Indeed, French visions of “Annam” emerged alongside Indochina’s rise as a political and cultural reality, finding voice in the colonial
state’s expositions, museums, monuments, school curricula, and scholarship. The
genealogy of ideas about national religion and culture was thus a shared one: colonial thinkers drew heavily on ideas not explicitly “colonial” in origin, while colonial cultural projects were a central influence upon Vietnamese understandings of
national culture at that time and thereafter.
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 185
The colonial school system was one of the earliest sites of conflict between
Catholics and proponents of these ideas. In the 1920s and 1930s, colonial pedagogues began to turn away from ambitious ideas about education as a vehicle
for social transformation toward conservative ideas that viewed colonialism as
a tutelary relationship between the dynamic and technological “West” and the
passive and philosophical “East.” As the colonial educational system expanded,
classrooms became a means to inculcate a new generation of Vietnamese elite with
the agendas of colonial rule by framing them in what administrators and pedagogues viewed as a Vietnamese socio-moral frame of reference.38 When crafting
the school curricula, colonial pedagogues drew heavily on the ideas of Vietnamese
neo-traditionalist thinkers. one was Phạm Quỳnh, editor of the French-funded
journal Nam Phong (Southern wind) and one of the most prominent figures in
Vietnamese intellectual life during the 1920s and 1930s. Quỳnh’s answer to social
malaise was to achieve a balance between Western modernity and Vietnam’s national essence, which he saw as, in hue-tam ho tai’s words, “a vaguely defined
blend of Vietnamese literature, Confucian morality, family institutions, and modestly progressive education in the Vietnamese vernacular rather than in Chinese
or French.”39 Quỳnh became imperial minister of education in 1932. Another influence was trần trọng Kim, who began his career as a teacher and later became
an inspector of colonial schools. Kim’s 1920 work Việt Nam sử lược (An outline of
Vietnamese history) assured him a central place in neo-traditional intellectual circles, a place that was reinforced with the first volume of his Nho giáo (Confucianism), which was published in 1929. trần trọng Kim, like Phạm Quỳnh, believed
that Confucian morality was at the core of Vietnam’s national essence (a phrase
both used often), and both men linked what they viewed as civilizational decline
to a flagging of the nation’s Confucian spirit.40
during the 1920s and 1930s, the department of Public Education commissioned trần trọng Kim and other neo-traditionalist intellectuals to write school
primers. In their depiction of Vietnamese culture, the authors of these primers
deployed simplified characterizations of Confucian familial and social hierarchies
as metaphors for the Franco-Vietnamese colonial relationship, and they focused
on ancestral worship (thờ cúng tổ tiên) as the core of “the Vietnamese family.”
Although colonial primers tended to focus primarily on Confucianism and ancestral worship, buddhist principles such as karma, nonaction, and the five relationships were also present.41 This was increasingly true in the 1930s, when the colonial
school system began to incorporate some pagoda schools, often in an effort to
raise enrollment among ethnic Khmer in the mekong delta who resisted having
their children instructed in Vietnamese.42 Although the number of students enrolled in colonial schools remained small even at its height, these ideas—touted in
the pages of newspapers such as Nam Phong and a strong influence on writings on
morality and ethics—had a central place in intellectual and cultural life.
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The second major site of conflict between Catholics and supporters of neotraditionalist conceptions of national culture was colonial state support for a
loosely defined movement often identified as the buddhist revival (Chấn hưng
Phật Giáo). What is usually referred to as “the” buddhist revival, however, was in
fact a range of responses to what some saw as a decline in Vietnamese buddhism.
In general, buddhist revival intellectuals called for the reassertion and dissemination of scriptural orthodoxy through the growing medium of print, as well as for
a more widespread institutional base to help combat popular “deviation.” not all
buddhist revivalists enjoyed colonial patronage; the Sûreté watched some monks
quite closely, and “the movement” saw wide regional variation and internal disagreement. That aside, most such intellectuals advanced a mythlogized idea of, in
Elise deVido’s words, a “primordial, timeless ‘buddhism’ and ‘buddhist experience’ in Vietnam, imprinted upon the soul of a unified generic Vietnamese ‘race’
for centuries,” to argue that “to revive buddhism is to revive the Vietnamese ‘race’s’
national soul.”43 Although the concerns of these intellectuals were different from
those of people like Phạm Quỳnh and trần trọng Kim, the boundaries between
the buddhist revival and other neo-traditional voices were blurry. trần trọng
Kim, for example, was active in the hanoi Phật Giáo hội (buddhist Association),
while trần Văn Giáp, a prominent scholar of buddhism, was also a Confucian
scholar and wrote a book comparing the two traditions.44
Colonial state support for conservative buddhist intellectuals grew as the
depression and rural revolts intensified state support for Vietnamese voices that
emphasized social order. This reflected a concern among many French administrators that anticolonial activity had religious elements. In a conference in Saigon
in 1932 entitled “The Influence of religious and Philosophical Ideas on the Political and Social Life of the Annamite People,” a French military officer named Le
maître argued that the recent rural uprisings were a product of the psychological
effects of popular religion, which caused Vietnamese to “live in the unreal, the indeterminate. Everything is like it is in a dream.”45 Like many other French officials,
Le maître was most concerned about the emergence of the millenarian sect Cao
Đài and its claim that colonial rule was a punishment for those who did not follow it. Colonial state support for certain Vietnamese religious groups grew under
Governor-General Pierre Pasquier (1928–34), who felt that a proper understanding of religion was central to ruling Vietnam. “Customs and laws,” wrote Pasquier,
“are not enough to understand and explain the mentality of these people; we must
also know their folklore, their legends, their religious superstitions, all excellent
means to discover little by little the soul of the people we administer.”46
Colonial patronage of the buddhist revival was particularly strong in tonkin,
the heartland of Vietnamese Catholicism, where the leading buddhist revival intellectuals did not have what the colonial state saw as problematic political inclinations or connections. French officials in tonkin sponsored the formation and
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 187
activities of a number of buddhist associations, whose projects included organizing conferences, building libraries, and preserving temples in disrepair, as well as
providing charity and disaster relief and offering free public classes and the like.
The colonial state also granted buddhist associations an unusual freedom of activity in rural areas, something few formal associations enjoyed, and these groups
seem to have used it at times to target specifically Catholic areas. In 1937 French
officials in ninh bình noted that, when forming one of its subcommittees, a local
buddhist association chose, of all places, the hamlet of Kim Sơn, whose residents
were virtually all Catholic, and it had held a conference at a pagoda in the largely
Catholic area of Phúc nhạc—on Easter weekend no less.47 In the same mission,
the bishop reported state-sanctioned campaigns to distribute buddhist tracts and
images in upland areas.48 ties between some buddhist revival intellectuals and
colonial officials were clear enough to worry the former; in 1936, one wrote that
“letting the functionaries and the agents of authority involve themselves as active
members of the buddhist association could make our countrymen believe that the
association was the government’s initiative.”49
At least in tonkin, the 1920s and 1930s also saw a shift in how French officials
viewed and dealt with low-level communitarian conflicts: although they had long
tried to avoid intervening in what they viewed as “matters of conscience,” at this
time a concern with “authentic culture” began to enter into their calculus. In a
case from hà Đông in 1928, a Catholic funeral procession tried to pass through a
hamlet, but residents objected to the presence of the corpse of someone not born
there. Villagers prevented the procession’s passage, which led one missionary to
complain to local authorities that the villagers were suppressing the Catholics’ religious beliefs. In his decision favoring the non-Catholics, a local official wrote,
“Their beliefs, which are politically necessary for us to respect, would be upset
by the passage of this corpse by their village.”50 The bishop of hanoi protested,
arguing that the procession had to pass through the hamlet in order to involve
all village Catholics in the ceremony. he mocked the villagers’ fears, saying that
such beliefs “rarely resist the offer of a few piasters . . . the prospect of the worst
calamities can fade quickly in front of a large meal,” and he noted that the ruling
“generated considerable resentment and provoked serious turmoil among the Catholics of the region. . . . In this moment Catholics are overly excited and some are
even speaking of reprisals against the buddhists.”51 not only was this not enough
to reverse the decision, but the French resident added insult to injury by urging
the bishop to contribute to an expiatory ceremony to restore goodwill. After the
bishop refused to do so because it would be “favoring a pagan cult,” the official
paid for the ceremony himself.
In a similar case from 1937, municipal authorities in hanoi decided to move a
Catholic cemetery from near the train station, not only because “it gives a morbid
air to the journey,” but also because in the cemetery “all the dead are reinterred in
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the same enclosure without distinction of race.”52 The proposed site for the new
cemetery abutted a temple to the cult of the trưng sisters, mythic Vietnamese
resisters of the Chinese. A Vietnamese municipal official protested that this was
a “national temple” and that the memory of the trưng sisters was “as respected
as that of Saint Genevive, Joan of Arc, and Jeanne hachette, heroines to whom
the French, without distinction of religion, have raised statues, and to whom the
secular government itself pays annual homage.”53 When French officials chose a
new site, a local resident protested that its close proximity to a taoist temple and
pagoda honoring the legendary marriage of the scholar tú Uyên and the angel
Giáng Kiều “would risk rendering the area impure,” and that “without the protection of the Genie we would lose all peace and prosperity.” At that point, the resident in tonkin noted “the grave political danger that the realization of this project
would present,” citing “a profound emotion in the Annamite people for objects of
a sacred character.”54 The mayor of hanoi agreed, arguing that “buddhists consider Catholics as vulgar usurpers and blame them for all troubles.”55 Some local
Catholics apparently agreed that the project was not worth stoking up conflict,
which missionaries hotly contested. The cemetery ended up in hà Đông outside
the city limits.
because ideas about national culture and essence so often evoked some mixture
of Confucianism, buddhism, ancestral worship, and local spirit cults, they had
a powerful effect on Catholic anxieties about cultural marginalization that complicated their relationships with both colonial officials and other communitarian
groups. Although it is no surprise that Catholics fought with the French administration over schools, it is ironic that one of the most potent Catholic concerns
about colonial education was that it was not godless enough. In 1919, Vietnam’s
bishops protested to the governor-general that the principles and rituals of ancestral worship taught in colonial schools came “not from the respect, the memory,
the filial piety due a family forebearer among all civilized peoples, but the religious
cult as it is practiced by non-Catholic Annamites, whose principle is in direct
and irreducible opposition to the essential principles of Christian religion.” All
Vietnamese, argued the bishops, had the right to equal treatment, and to force
Catholics to study morals contrary to their faith would give them a “social inferiority” and would represent a “capitulation of conscience.” The bishops warned
that religious unrest might result from privileging certain faiths over others, but it
fell on deaf ears: the governor-general replied that the principles of ancestral worship taught were moral, not religious, and that parallels existed between them and
Catholic forms of remembrance. he took no action.56
tensions grew as colonial schools spread into Catholic communities. In 1923,
the bishop of Phát diệm protested new colonial schools in the mission, which
he argued were unnecessary because Catholic schools already existed there. he
protested even more after hearing reports that teachers in colonial schools, “in
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 189
all likelihood to amuse buddhist students, ridiculed the most sacred rites of
Catholicism, or obliged their Catholic students to participate in pagan ceremonies.” “Public primary schools today,” he wrote, “are really confessional schools
for those who do not profess the Catholic faith.”57 A French official in ninh bình
apologized, but he replied that although Catholic schools could “complement the
administration’s efforts . . . the enterprise of moral education that is at the base
of our politique indigène” was not open for debate.58 In response, the bishop forbade Catholics from attending colonial schools, and he refused absolution and
communion to those students who did, as well as their families. “he declared,”
wrote the frustrated French official, “that canonical law and the instructions of the
pope formally forbid Catholic students from attending non-Catholic schools” and
that “‘divine’ laws take precedence over human laws.” Even after colonial officials
placed a Catholic at the head of one colonial school in the area, the bishop did
not relent. The official responded by forbidding that budgets of local councils be
used to support Catholic schools. years later, the impasse was still not resolved:
on a tour of the province in 1928, a French official reported that “orders given by
the mission in 1923 have in general been followed by Catholics, except in regions
where confessional schools had neither intermediate or advanced levels.” more
worrisome was that the bishop “is doing his best to slow or prevent the creation of
communal schools in large villages that already have a private confessional school”
by trying “to obtain the rejection of projects to create communal schools that had
already been accepted by administrative councils in diverse villages with Catholic
populations.”59
The bishop’s campaign was unusual, but his antipathy was not. Colonial curricula and support for non-Catholic religious activity together became one of the
most powerful Catholic disaffections with colonial rule. many saw this as a newer,
more pernicious manifestation of anticlericalism: as the bishop of hanoi wrote in
1936, “neo-buddhists and Freemasons, apparently in concert . . . are working hard
to intensify their propaganda among mandarins and the cultivated classes.”60 This
meant that conversion to Catholicism “has barely advanced, and may even have
become more difficult,” since “the educational politics of the government ignores
Catholic schools . . . but supports buddhist education.”61 missionaries and other
pro-Catholic voices filled the pages of the Catholic press with attacks on colonial
schools; one campaign in L’Avenir du Tonkin in 1934 lasted for months.62 And missionaries responded to the idea that buddhism and Confucianism were “national”
religions with forceful apologetic writings, some of which descended to little more
than screeds. Even a missionary like Gustave hue, a scholar with a deep knowledge of Asian history and literature, was not above writing articles titled “Confucianism: Perverse religion,” although he did so using a pseudonym.63 Elsewhere,
hue argued that the Chinese had imposed Confucianism on Vietnam during centuries of domination, perhaps as a way for him to take a swipe at neo-Confucian
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thinkers for their own links to colonial rule.64 And colonial officials, of course,
regularly added grist to the mill. At the Colonial Exposition in 1931, a former inspector of schools reported that “the government of Indochina recognized a real
value in the ancient belief systems of buddhism and Confucianism. . . . As far as
Christianity, experience has shown that we cannot count on it as a moralizing
agent in Indochina.65
The effect of all of this on ordinary Vietnamese Catholics is difficult to gauge.
Evidence of communitarian tension, both intellectual and everyday, should certainly not be taken as a sign of ceaseless, unmitigated strife; moreover, ordinary
Catholics almost certainly did not understand communitarian conflict in terms
of national culture in the same way that priests and intellectuals did. but evidence
does exist to suggest that communitarian tensions remained a deep part of Catholic experience and consciousness. one of the most spectacular examples involves
marie-Catherine dien, a nun of the order the Lovers of the holy Cross in Phát
diệm who was reportedly possessed by the devil. In 1924, numerous witnesses
reported marie-Catherine’s unbelievable traumas: invisible fists struck her, objects
flew at her and at those who tried to shield her, and unseen forces dragged her
from her bed in the middle of the night amid a cacophony of sourceless sound.
Snakes, buffalo, and dogs spoke to her as she passed. other nuns became possessed; they climbed large trees, jumped meters in the air, spoke in tongues foreign
to them, ran away, lit fires, killed animals, attempted suicide, and forgot it all when
lucidity returned.
While investigating, a missionary named Louis de Cooman discovered what
many in the convent believed to be the cause of the possessions. A young man
from marie-Catherine’s home village, in love with her and unable to accept her
decision to give herself to the Church, went to a pagoda to ask local spirits to help
him obtain marie-Catherine’s hand in marriage. This, the nuns believed, inspired
Satan to try to draw marie-Catherine away from her faith. Witnesses testified to
de Cooman that nuns ran away while possessed and resisted returning to the convent, seeking shelter instead in a nearby pagoda, and marie-Catherine herself said
that the devil had told her “someone came four times to the pagoda to pray to me
to make you return to the world. I will not let you go so long as you remain in this
convent.” de Cooman reported to the bishop, who called for an exorcism. Seances
began in november 1924, during which the possessed nuns fled in terror at the
sight of a priest and had to be restrained, convulsing and slamming their heads
into the floor during exorcism rituals. After months of exorcisms punctuated by
several new waves of possessions, peace finally returned.66
marie-Catherine dien’s possession was certainly an unusual event, and the nature of her religious commitment probably made her lived experience of the spiritual world all the more present and powerful. but other, less spectacular evidence
also shows how religion remained a powerful marker of difference for Catholics,
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 191
even generations after the end of communitarian conflict. This was especially true
for priests. “Annamites still accuse priests of taking out the eyes of little children
to make medicine,” wrote the priest Jacques Cẩn in 1927. “Catholicism is officially
mistrusted, which is never questioned, and people only have admiration for a
buddhism whose own most faithful partisans call degenerate or for a Confucianism that is out of touch with the masses.”67 In the 1920s and 1930s, a rise in literacy
and reforms in seminary education exposed more rank-and-file priests to exegetical and apologetic texts that characterized interreligious relations in starker terms
than the experience of day-to-day life, a shift reinforced by the new physical and
cultural barriers between làng đạo and làng lương. In a final exam for priests at the
major seminary in hanoi in 1939, the principal question was “What are the reasons the people [đồng bào bên lương] have not yet converted?” Students were first
asked to respond to the following questions: “do buddhism and Confucianism
hinder people from converting? how? A lot or a little?” The next set of questions
asked students to counter popular beliefs about Catholicism as a heterodox faith
(tả đạo), as well as to respond to the claims that it was “the religion that lost our
country” and that “following Catholicism is following the West.”68
The obvious importance of belief systems such as Confucianism and buddhism
to Vietnamese culture made it difficult to dismiss the idea of “national religion”
out of hand, which led to some interesting Catholic responses. one was to historicize “Vietnamese” religions to highlight their “non-Vietnamese” origins. history
helped Catholics make arguments such as one priest’s point, “If you want us to
follow a religion from our country, I must think that our people can’t follow any
faith, because our people have never been able to invent a religion. buddhism was
imported from India and Confucianism from China. didn’t you know that?”69
Catholics questioned the arguments of buddhist scholars about when buddhism
had arrived in Vietnam and how deeply in society it penetrated, and they argued
that buddhism was not a lost Vietnamese past but a bhramanic one.70 Catholics
also used history to discount the idea that theirs was a Western religion (đạo
phương Tây): one priest argued that the true “nation” of Catholicism’s origin was
the biblical nation of Israel—for this author, part of Asia—and that the customs
of Israel and Annam were so closely related that they could be said “to be of the
same body.”71
Another response, especially among urban, educated Catholics influenced by
Western ideas, was to echo social darwinist arguments about Asian decline to
argue that Vietnam’s dominant belief systems were “superstitions” out of step with
modern times. A 1927 article about “the harm of superstitious customs” such as
expiatory rituals, burning money, and fortune-telling noted that “this is a time of
civilization and progress; we must thus study to get rid of these frivolous superstitions.”72 In a 1933 article about buddhism, the priest Joseph Kiểu argued that “the
superstitions of that faith don’t value anything above anything else” and they “see
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all earthly things as a tie to suffering. Is this ideal compatible with our times of
progress?” Kiểu argued that buddhism cultivated an attitude toward life that was
inherently unmodern. “buddhism,” he wrote, “is not compatible with people who
work or with people who think.”73 Although many Vietnamese Catholic writers
acknowledged Confucianism’s influence on Vietnamese Catholicism, even conservatives argued that it was no longer tenable as a mode of social organization.
nguyễn Văn Thích argued in 1930 that although Confucianism might be the “natural morality” of Vietnam, it “has met obstacles that have buried it, and it is likely
that no one will easily be able to find the old way again.”74 And in his popular public conferences, nguyễn bá tòng pointed to the failure of what he called Vietnam’s
“traditional religions,” portraying Confucianism as “insufficient to satisfy the aspirations of the rising generation,”75 buddhism as fatally flawed by the many “gaps
and imperfections” of what he saw as an equivocal moral system,76 and ancestral
worship as having “fallen into disarray.”77
Arguments about the irrelevance of Vietnam’s other religions were perhaps the
only ones for Catholics to make in the face of claims about cultural authenticity
that they could not possibly win. however, they also clearly reflected the attitudes
and experiences of many Vietnamese Catholics at a time when a powerful message
of change and progress in the Catholic world shaped their outlook on religious
issues. In light of the politically charged process of Church reform in Vietnam, it
is not surprising that ongoing transformations in the Catholic world also became
a main source for the new political identities in Vietnamese Catholic life as the
depression, the Second World War and their aftermaths radically altered the relationship between European nations and their colonial empires. The remainder of
this chapter focuses on the influence of two global Catholic ideologies and movements on Vietnamese Catholic nationalism: Social Catholicism, which brought
many Catholics into contact with leftist political spheres and ideas for the first
time, and anticommunism, which drew many others toward the form of nationalism that would ultimately define the place of most Catholics in revolutionary
politics.
thE nEW VIEtnAmESE CAthoLIC PoLItICS:
So CIAL CAthoLICISm
The rank realities of poverty in Vietnamese society were central to most of the
new political identities of the colonial era, and Catholics were no exception. The
terrible deprivation in many parts of Vietnamese society prompted many missionaries to criticize colonial rule, and as the Vietnamese print sphere grew, Vietnamese Catholic observers too wrote about the awful living and working conditions
experienced by so many. one frequent focus was the effect of colonial taxation.
Although many Catholic writers agreed that some taxation might be necessary, the
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 193
reality caused terrible hardships for the poor.78 Articles on monopolies were even
more explicitly critical of colonial fiscal policies.79 The effects of financial hardship,
such as the difficulty of renting a house for the urban working classes, were also
a focus.80 others linked critiques of taxes to other disaffections: the author of one
article titled “Atheism” bemoaned not only that “parents have lost the flexibility to
decide how to educate their children,” but also that “they must now pay taxes to
official education.”81
before the 1930s, Vietnamese Catholics writing about poverty tended to believe that solutions to economic problems lay in more virtuous behavior, which
they suggested the poor could learn from the clergy and social elites. In articles
such as “now, People must Save” and “Finances and Freedom,” Catholic writers
argued that economic salvation lay in more disciplined personal behavior.82 Calls
for charity and a stronger sense of personal obligation were also common.83 Some
Catholic writers admonished rich readers that true happiness resulted not from
accumulating wealth but from helping the less fortunate.84 Some Catholic writers
evinced a naïve faith in colonial institutions, arguing, despite the weight of taxes
and monopolies, that the solution was a greater Vietnamese presence in the colonial state’s “representative” bodies.85
Although these writings reflected a moralistic approach to economic problems,
they were not “traditional.” Vietnamese Catholics writing about economic issues
in the colonial era regularly discussed nineteenth-century French Catholic thinkers like Frédéric ozanam, Louis Veuillot, and Comte de montalembert, who had
helped bring the French Catholic Church to engage with the challenge of mass
politics, education, and industrial capitalism. Vietnamese Catholic newspapers
published reviews or syntheses of European Catholic works. nguyễn hưng Thi’s
regular column “books one Should read” touched on current Catholic ideas and
debates from French Catholic newspapers like La Croix, as well as on influential
Catholic socioeconomic thinkers like Saint-Simon and Passy.
The Great depression had an enormous effect on how Catholics across the
world thought about the problem of poverty. While economic catastrophe pushed
many European Catholics to right-wing movements, it also revitalized the Social
Catholicism of the 1880s and 1890s, best captured by Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical
Rerum Novarum. In it, Leo XIII noted the enormous changes that industrial capitalism had brought to society: new relationships between man and technology,
the growth of the working class, and new disparities of wealth. he argued that
charity was no longer enough to help the poor, and that the state, guided by Catholic morality, must intervene by regulating working conditions, improving wages,
permitting strikes, and allowing workers to form unions and other associations.
Rerum Novarum was neither the first nor the most radical Catholic statement on
industrial capitalism, but it gave greater voice to a movement that had been active
since the 1870s.86 The Social Catholicism that grew in Europe in the late nineteenth
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century was thus the first to apply Catholic moral teachings as a critique of capitalism per se. The result was a vision of a “third way” between capitalism and socialism that defended private property but asserted a moral right to protection against
economic exploitation.
Rerum Novarum reflected the Church’s growing engagement with the social
problems of industrial capitalism in Europe. however, despite Leo XIII’s interest
in building local Churches in European missions, the encyclical was not meant as
a critique of the capitalist foundations of empire. but in the economic depression
and political repression of the 1930s, the tradition of Rerum Novarum strongly
appealed to many Vietnamese Catholics, some of whom used it to question or
criticize French rule. The encyclical was barely discussed in Vietnamese Catholic
life before the 1930s, but by 1934 it and Maximum Illud were the only two papal
proclamations included in the formal proceedings of the general church council
of Indochina. Vietnamese Catholics began writing about Rerum Novarum in the
1930s, and it was known well enough to be an object of public celebration. on the
encyclical’s fiftieth anniversary, in 1941, young Catholic Workers organized a celebration in hải Phòng.87
The sudden ascendance of Rerum Novarum reflects the new interest in European left-wing Catholic political thought and activity in late colonial Vietnam.
The main vehicle for this was Catholic Action associations, which mobilized Vietnamese Catholics in search for solutions to social and economic ills. Although
the Vatican had intended Catholic Action to be apolitical in Europe, it brought
new voices into Catholic politics and allowed them to develop social and political
programs outside the influence of the old Catholic right. In late colonial Vietnam,
Catholic Action helped to spread a vision of Social Catholicism that transformed
Vietnamese Catholic ideas about poverty into broader critiques of an extractive
colonial economy and an unequal colonial society. by prompting new debates
about working conditions in factories, poverty in rural areas, the potential of
youth as engines of social change, and many other issues, Catholic Action brought
many Vietnamese Catholics into debates that would be central to political life in
the revolutionary era.
Although Europeans played a far smaller role in Vietnamese Catholic life in the
1930s than they had a generation before, several progressive missionaries played a
very important role in the transmission of Social Catholic political ideas to Vietnam. one such missionary was André Vacquier, who arrived in Saigon in october
1930, at a moment when the city was embroiled in widespread labor unrest. he
spent his time from then until his death in 1945 organizing and mobilizing Catholic youth and workers, primarily in nam Định. Vacquier was the driving force
behind the first Catholic youth Congress in Vietnam, in october 1936, an event
that gathered youth, peasants, urban workers, and Catholic urban professionals to
discuss the economic challenges faced by Vietnamese Catholics. The congress was
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 195
an occasion for intense debate about social questions, and Vacquier himself was
not totally at ease with the passions it put on display. “The Catholic youth movement could become very dangerous if the priests do not direct it carefully or pay
it enough attention,” he wrote to one of his superiors in december 1936. “We must
above all insist that this is a vehicle for religious salvation and conquest,” wrote
Vacquier, so that youth would not “under the pretext of Catholic Action . . . engage
in nationalism or internationalism!”88
yet even Vacquier was drawn into the charged politics of Popular Front–era
Vietnam. by 1937, parts of nam Định had become veritable factory cities, far
enough from most laborers’ homes to require them to live around the factories
where they worked during the week. It was a hard assignment for a missionary. As
Vacquier wrote, “The workers, even the Catholics, are extremely suspicious. Communism has completely gone to their heads!” one of Vacquier’s first acts was to
ask his mother and friends to send him a statue of “Jésus-ouvrier” to place above
the altar of his church.89 In April 1937, workers in nam Định went on strike, and
the French owner of the factory prevailed on Vacquier to lead the negotiations. “I
accepted,” he wrote, “on the condition that he address legitimate grievances. to
think that half the workers here earn eight sous each day, and the day is twelve
hours. There is abuse here!”90 In nam Định, Vacquier helped build houses for laborers who had come from the countryside to work, as well as a recreation hall,
library, and dispensary. by 1939, he was convinced that the hardship that he saw
in nam Định would have consequences. In an article titled “The Church in Indochina and the Problem of Work,” Vacquier bemoaned the growing alienation of
nam Định’s workers. “machinism,” he wrote, “has created new and infinitely more
onerous working conditions; suppression of family work structures, mass work
details, working at night, enslavement of man to his machine, etc.”91 Vacquier was
so worried about the spread of communism that by the late 1930s he was working
to spread the Catholic youth and Catholic Workers associations about which he
had expressed concern just a few years before.
Perhaps the missionary who had the greatest impact on postcolonial politics,
however, was Fernand Parrel. Like Vacquier, Parrel arrived in Saigon in 1930.
While Vacquier went north, Parrel stayed in Saigon to teach in a seminary. Like
many missionaries of his generation, Parrel felt that the Church had declined in
Europe because it had drifted away from workers and peasants. “It is certain that
the modern working masses, often raised outside all religious practice, their spirits
imbibed with laic sophisms or subversive theories, have escaped us and escape us
still,” he wrote in 1934. “The godless school, formidable weapon that our enemies
have never let go, has done its work . . . for it has produced the de-Christianization
of the worker and peasant milieu, a milieu so dear to the heart of our Lord, because
he himself was humble, small, and obscure, and he especially loves those who
resemble him.”92 Parrel began to work to correct this problem, founding chapters
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of Catholic boy Scouts, maritime Catholic youth, and the Association of Saint
Vincent de Paul in Saigon during the 1930s.
As important as he was to the spread of Catholic Action, Parrel was most important as a conduit for personalism (chủ nghĩa nhân vị), a form of Catholic social
thought then rising in popularity in Europe. Emmanuel mounier, the central figure of personalism, was important in French Social Catholic circles in the 1930s,
primarily through his journal Esprit (Spirit), founded in 1932. Personalism was
mounier’s attempt to find an antidote to industrial capitalism, which he felt alienated individuals from each other, and to communism, which he felt suppressed
personal identity and spirituality. mounier’s solution focused on the development
of the person through social forms and state policies that balanced the material
and spiritual needs of human beings.93 It is unclear when Parrel first encountered
mounier’s thought, for he came to Vietnam at the beginning of mounier’s turn
toward personalism. It is possible that he first encountered it between September
1935 and october 1936, when pneumonia and bronchitis forced Parrel to return to
France. It is also likely that personalist writings came to circulate in Catholic circles in Saigon. Although most of Parrel’s activities before 1945 reflected the more
general influence of Catholic Action, his interest in personalism would later have
an important influence on the politics of the ngô family. Parrel’s closest contact
in the ngô family would eventually be ngô Đình nhu, but it is unclear if the two
met before 1945. however, Parrel did meet Thục in 1938 during Thục’s first visit to
Saigon as bishop of Vĩnh Long.94
Elite, urban Vietnamese Catholics, well aware of new currents in Catholic political thought in Europe, were the most important conduits for the arrival of Social
Catholic ideas into Vietnam. A few had direct experience with European Social
Catholic milieus, which clearly had a powerful effect on them. In 1933, while a student in France, a young ngô Đình nhu helped to organize a group called Indochinese Social Action to address the “economic crisis, political crisis, and even moral
and religious crisis” plaguing Indochina. The group hoped to use “the light of the
Catholic Church” to help answer the important questions of the day: “how to resolve conflicts between workers and their bosses? . . . What is the homeland [patrie], the nation, the state? Patriotism, nationalism, internationalism, bolshevism,
what do these words mean? What are the boundaries and the limits of individual
liberties (freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom
of association)? What is the right of colonization?” Although it drew explicitly
on Catholic social thought, the group also sought non-Catholic members who,
“despite their different religious convictions, agree with our social ideas.”95 The
group organized conferences and study circles and published newsletters for the
Vietnamese émigré community in Paris before its members returned to Vietnam.
In August 1938 and April 1939, one member of Indochinese Social Action,
the lawyer nguyễn huy Lai, organized Catholic “social days” (journées sociales)
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 197
in hanoi. These events, re-creations of similar events in interwar Catholic life in
Europe, focused on how modern life was changing work and family. Speakers included the printer ngô tử hạ, the apostolic delegate Antonin drapier, Catholic
academics, and socially active missionaries like André Vacquier. The first conference featured the lectures “Capitalism and marxism,” “Collaboration of Work and
Capital,” and “Christian Social doctrine and the Question of Work,” and the second
focused on how the changing face of economic life in Vietnam affected families.
Participants considered economic problems in terms of capital and class conflict,
and their solutions prescribed morally guided interventions in free-market economies. hundreds attended the conferences, and press coverage reached throughout
the country.96 Fernand Parrel organized similar events in Saigon in 1937; the four
Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul focused on how to evangelize among the
poor, teach poor children, and help the unemployed find work.97
Catholic social days were one example of a shift in Vietnamese Catholic debates
about economic questions from a focus on moral responses to an emphasis on social and political ones. Indeed, the very idea of “economy” (kinh tế), a concept fairly
uncommon in Vietnamese Catholic writings before the 1930s, received increasing
attention over the decade. “What is the economy?” asked nguyễn hưng Thi in
a 1933 article.98 Thi playfully answered his own question with a series of rhymes
describing Vietnam’s economy, “kinh tế là lồng cồng, kinh tế là lổng chổng” (the
economy is cumbersome, the economy is in disorder), but most Vietnamese Catholics took the question very seriously. In a 1937 article titled “The Question of the
Economy,” the priest Lucas Lý sought to counteract the view, apparently spread by
“communists,” that the Church was heedless of or helpless to fight Vietnam’s social
problems. In his article, Lý synthesized the main arguments of Principles of Social
Economy, a 1929 work by the belgian Jesuit Valère Fallon, professor at the Collège
Philosophique in Louvain and an influential thinker on social economy, eugenics,
and population. Articles such as Lý’s were common in Vietnamese Catholic publications in this era. Although their opinions and prescriptions differed, all began
with the premise that the economy was a problem not only of morality but also of
society, and that it needed to be approached scientifically and politically.
on a popular level, Catholic Action brought Social Catholic critiques of capitalism into the local vernacular and acted as a mechanism for social action. Catholic
Action associations not only facilitated unprecedented levels of contact between
Catholics from far-off places, but they also gave the laity a remarkable degree of
autonomy. Although priests were nominally at the head of these associations, their
most active leaders were lay Catholics who tended to deemphasize elite leadership
and hierarchy for a more democratic ethic of mass organization and mobilization. one young Catholic Workers brochure titled “A Call to Workers” argued that
workers must be given control over decisions regarding their rights and workplace
and that workers must not depend on priests, intellectuals, bosses, or the state
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but only on themselves.99 Catholic Action associations also placed an emphasis
on youth as an agent of change in a way that concerned many colonial officials,
and even some Vietnamese Catholics.100 The democratic, even antielitist, thrust
of Catholic Action in Vietnam is captured by the idea of the “militant” (chiến sĩ),
the ideal Catholic Action leader, a regular focus of Catholic Action journals and
pamphlets in the 1930s. A militant could be from any background; he was often a
priest, but he could just as easily be a worker or a youth. The militant was leader
of family, Church, and society, as well as a product of these communities. to be
a successful militant required not only morality, innovation, and talent but also
the ability to embody the strength and spirit of the community. It also meant a
commitment to organizing group study, facilitating social cooperation, obtaining
knowledge of local agriculture and industry, and raising literacy.
At times it also meant becoming involved in politics. Like many European
Catholics in the 1930s, some leaders of Catholic Action in Vietnam began to look
beyond Social Catholicism, with its formal restrictions against political activity,
and to look toward socialism. As trần Văn Thao, a lay leader of Catholic Action,
wrote, “Socialism has carefully researched these issues. . . . We too must learn to
apply social principles to economic phenomena, because one cannot have formal
economic structures that are not rooted in social structures.”101 While communism
was widely criticized in Vietnamese Catholic intellectual life during the 1930s,
Catholic Action began to bring some Vietnamese Catholics to view mainstream
socialism as a solution to the ills of industrial capitalism (fig. 11). This was especially true during the Popular Front years, when a range of leftist platforms won
appreciable degrees of public support in Vietnam. The author of one 1936 article
titled “The Church on Social Theory” argued that although the Church and the
political left were still far apart on issues of spirituality, their economic and social
aspects were compatible. The author discussed the rapprochement of the Church
and some parts of the European left, and he argued that current Catholic perspectives on the question of equality and the role of the state in the economy shared
much with the left.102
Apart from socialism, Catholic Action associations and activity in the 1930s
also helped introduce the idea of Christian trade unionism, later a force in the republic of Vietnam. by the 1920s, Christian trade unions and Christian democratic
parties were powerful in Germany, holland, belgium, Italy, and France. during
the second half of the 1930s, articles on Christian trade unionism in Europe began
to appear in Vietnamese Catholic newspapers. trade unionism was a prominent
issue in the Popular Front period, as new labor laws gave Vietnamese greater freedom to join certain approved trade unions. by the late 1930s, some Vietnamese
Catholics began to imagine the future integration of Vietnamese into the principal French Christian trade union, the Confédération Française des travailleurs
Chrétiens (CFtC). The author of one article argued that despite the existence of
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workers associations, Christian trade unions were now necessary in Vietnam to
counter growing illegal political activity: “Since it is difficult to legally form these
unions, Communists are already [covertly] organizing such organizations [xã
đoàn]. . . . not having these organizations yet is a considerable disadvantage and
loss for the Church.” he urged people to appeal to clerical and political authorities to form a CFtC umbrella organization in Vietnam.103 Although this did not
happen until the late 1940s, it was a decade earlier that the idea of Christian trade
unions as a vehicle for political action began to take hold.
Although it is difficult to gauge the extent to which Vietnamese Catholics participated in organized left-wing political activity before 1945, they certainly did.
Some did so by going abroad. Perhaps the most significant of these was nguyễn
mạnh hà, who at a young age went to France, where he completed his studies and
married the daughter of the prominent French communist Georges marrane. hà
returned to Vietnam in 1938, obtained a post in hải Phòng, and helped to found
Catholic Action associations throughout tonkin, later becoming economic minister in hồ Chí minh’s new government. two of hà’s collaborators in hải Phòng
drew the attention of the Sûreté: one, a man named tran Van tinh, allegedly had
contacts with communist cadres who had studied in russia. The other was the
Figure 11. young Catholic
Workers brochure, “tiếng gọi lao
động” (A call to workers), 1939.
200 chapter 6
aforementioned trần Văn Thao, a teacher at the Ecole michelet and the author of
many articles and books on Catholic Action and Social Catholicism, who was accused of having contact with “communist sympathizers.”104 And these sorts of activities were seemingly becoming more common among some ordinary Catholics.
In 1937, André Vacquier wrote to the director of the mEP about the atmosphere
among Catholic workers in nam Định. “The strikes have come, our Catholics have
little social formation; many have affiliated themselves with revolutionaries. . . .
Catholic workers have systematically refused to organize themselves and to listen
to my calls for prudence.” Fearing reprisals for his efforts to draw Catholics away
from revolutionaries, Vacquier felt it necessary to replace the straw and wood
buildings he had built with brick houses with tiled roofs because of the likelihood
of arson.105
thE nEW VIEtnAmESE CAthoLIC PoLItICS:
AntIC ommUnISm
As Social Catholic ideas brought more Vietnamese Catholics into political critiques of colonial capitalism, there was emerging in Vietnamese Catholic life
another political identity that would ultimately define the relationship of most
Catholics to revolutionary politics. much like Social Catholicism, Vietnamese
Catholic anticommunism was a modern, transnational phenomenon. between the
world wars, many Vietnamese Catholics became aware of conflicts between Catholics and leftist movements around the world. These conflicts gave a worrisome
legibility to anticolonial activity in Vietnam by fitting periodic clashes between
these movements and Vietnamese Catholics into broader narratives of conflict.
but in most cases Catholic anticommunism had no accompanying call for accommodation with the colonial regime. Indeed, anticommunism sharpened Catholic
criticisms of French colonialism, both by identifying French secularism as the root
of radical mass politics and by focusing on how the oppressive nature of colonial
rule had birthed and sustained communism in Vietnam.
Without being deterministic about anticommunism as a Catholic political position, it is undeniable that basic elements and strands of Catholic life and thought
predisposed many Vietnamese Catholics to oppose communism. The most obvious was the basic opposition of many Catholics to atheism (chủ nghĩa vô thần) as a
philosophy or as a principle of social and political organization. because Catholics
had long criticized the colonial state’s perceived atheism, the links between French
rule and Vietnamese communism seem self-evident to many Catholics. For one
author writing in 1929, global anti-Catholic violence led by “revolutionary parties” (đảng cách mạng) and “masons” (phè bí mật) could be traced to the French
revolution and its godless prophets, rousseau (rú Sấu) and Voltaire (Võ tế), both
taught in French schools in Vietnam.106 After the rural revolts of 1930–31, such
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 201
criticisms grew stronger. In 1930, the head of the mEP Jean de Guébriant wrote,
“Anticlericalism . . . has been for Communism . . . a veritable cultural hotbed.” “by
eliminating or, more accurately, considerably limiting the efforts of our priests,” he
wrote, “we have given free reign to what must be called an occidental ideology. . . .
The philosophy of 1789 has had terrible consequences throughout many of our
overseas possessions.”107 to many Catholics, communism thus seemed a tragic but
unsurprising outcome of French republicanism taken to its inevitable extreme.
other Catholics linked the rise of Vietnamese communism to oppressive French
colonial policies. In his article “Communism and Catholicism in Indochina,” the
missionary François Chaize blamed French policies for the nghệ tĩnh uprisings in
1930 and 1931. Chaize pointed to the property tax, “already too onerous for provinces where the land is poor” but which had still “more than doubled in recent
years,” as well as to the forest tax, a problem “in and of itself as well as its method
of application.” Also problematic was the salt tax, “very high if one considers what
the salt seller receives, and the object of public reprobation for a long time.” The
administration’s policy of requiring Vietnamese between the ages of eighteen and
sixty to carry an identification card, obtainable from the government at a cost of
three piasters, only added insult to injury. “Let us admit it,” wrote Chaize, “it is
difficult for the poor natives to resist arguments for the equal division of property;
it is also difficult for them to resist the words of people so eloquent and so knowledgeable, who for the most part are coming from government schools.”108
Perhaps the most important source of Vietnamese anticommunism, however,
was the worldwide conflicts between Christianity and marxism-Leninism. Anticommunist ideas, rare in Vietnamese Catholic life before the late 1920s, reflected
the relative level of the Vatican’s concern about communism. Although the russian revolution generated a flurry of anti-Christian activity in the Soviet Union,
the early years of the new Economic Policy (1921–28) were relatively calm despite
the Soviet state’s limits on religious activity.109 As a result, communism was just
one among many concerns in the upper echelons of the Church, and little Catholic
anticommunist literature trickled into Vietnam, where actual communist activity was almost nonexistent. The relatively small body of Catholic print media in
Vietnam during 1920s also contributed to this. before 1927, Vietnam had but three
major Catholic periodicals. L’Avenir du Tonkin’s anticommunism focused primarily on French politics, while Nam Kỳ Địa Phận and Trung Hòa Nhật Báo carried
little news from outside Vietnam during their early years. It thus must be emphasized here that Catholicism was neither the first nor the most fervent source of
anticommunism in colonial Vietnam: some colonial officials and conservative intellectuals worried about communism almost a decade before it became a regular
focus in Catholic life.110
The name nguyễn Ái Quốc, an early pseudonym of hồ Chí minh’s, seems to
have first appeared in Vietnamese Catholic writings in the 1927 pamphlet “The
202 chapter 6
Problem of Communism,” by nguyễn Văn Thích. The pamphlet was the first comprehensive critique of communism by a Vietnamese Catholic. tellingly, it focused
very little on Vietnam itself. Although Vietnamese radicalism was vibrant in the
1920s, an organized communist movement was little more than a gleam in the
eyes of the Vietnamese revolutionary youth League, the first group to outline
a marxist-Leninist vision of anticolonial revolution for Vietnam. Accordingly,
Thích’s treatment of nguyễn Ái Quốc’s activities filled only two of the work’s forty
pages. he instead focused on communism’s intellectual origins and its rise around
the world, including an exposé of its “yoke” in the Soviet Union and an account of
the rise of communist parties in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. his account was
peppered with statistics (some very dubious) culled from both the Vatican and
French Catholic sources.111
Thích’s pamphlet reflected the extent to which Vietnamese Catholic anticommunism emerged out of growing connections between Vietnamese Catholics and
the Catholic world. It is significant that “The Problem of Communism” was published in the same year as the creation of Fides, an international Catholic news service that the Vatican hoped to use to fight the flames of mass politics. translations
from both Fides and French Catholic news sources exposed Vietnamese Catholics
to news from the global Catholic world to an unprecedented extent. In the late
1920s, the news was increasingly bad. At the Sixth Comintern Congress in the
summer of 1928, member parties adopted a platform reflecting a belief that capitalism was at the brink of collapse and that the final struggle against imperialism
had arrived. The Sixth International set off a seven-year period in which communist alliances with socialists, anarchists, and other leftists were rejected for a more
militant line. The Sixth International concerned Catholic observers in Vietnam, as
did conflicts like the Cristero rebellion in mexico (1926–29), a Catholic resistance
movement against the mexican revolutionary government in which hundreds of
thousands died and whose effects lasted well into the 1930s.
In Vietnam, the expansion of the printed word exposed an increasing number
of Vietnamese Catholics to accounts of worldwide clashes between the Church and
the left. In particular, the biweekly Công Giáo Đồng Thinh published articles about
politics to an extent yet unseen in a Catholic publication in Vietnam. despite the
newspaper’s progressive politics, it was strongly anticommunist. The first article
about communism in its pages, titled “Is our nation headed in the direction of
Communism?” criticized communism not for its attacks on the traditional order
or hierarchy of Vietnamese society but for its potential to turn Vietnamese society
away from progress toward a new version of its feudal past. The author argued that
communism would exert more control than the nguyễn dynasty or the French
over the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Vietnamese, and it called on people to
resist communism in the name of the idea that every Vietnamese could and should
“be at the head of their own wishes and in control of their property.” The author
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 203
did not espouse traditional social hierarchies, and he insisted that inequalities between rich and poor in Vietnam required attention. however, he called on readers
to avoid communist “extremism,” arguing that it “has never at any time been in
agreement with our civilization.”112 Perspectives like this one did not view communism as a reason to oppose modernity or progress; they invoked modernity and
progress as reasons to oppose communism. While Vietnamese Catholic critiques
of communism would continue to vary, all shared a sense that the rise of communism called for more sustained engagement with the social problems that made
communism attractive to so many. Even “The Problem of Communism,” written
by a conservative voice in Vietnamese Catholic life, argued that one important way
to combat communism was through a revitalized Social Catholicism.
beginning in the late 1920s, Công Giáo Đồng Thinh published a regular stream
of anticommunist articles, virtually all focusing on global conflicts. two articles
about communism appeared on the front page on April 29, 1927. In “bolshevism,”
the author criticized the Soviet Union not only for its attack on the family but also
for preventing freedom of thought and limiting the growth of capital and industry. It also warned readers to heed the example of the Soviet Union and to resist
communism.113 Another article, “Persecution in mexico,” presented a detailed account of the Church’s difficulties under the ruling mexican government, ending
by wondering what pious mexican Catholics could have done to deserve these
difficulties.114 Articles such as these dotted the paper’s pages for much of the late
1920s. Some came from non-Catholic press organs; one article translated from the
Revue des deux mondes focused on the rise in the number of abandoned children
in the Soviet Union during the early years of Stalin’s rule.115
Along with Vatican and French press accounts about communism in the Soviet
Union, firsthand accounts about communism in China also began to appear in
Catholic newspapers in Vietnam around 1930. For example, the June 1930 issue
of Bulletin Catholique Indochinois was devoted to a story titled “A month with the
Communists,” written by a missionary held in captivity by communists in China.
The account was a riveting sensationalist story of persecution with clear parallels
to martyr narratives; it told of communists who took pleasure in blasphemy, sadistic torture, and the desecration of churches and statues of Jesus. French officials
heard similar stories from one Père robert, a missionary in China who in 1930
gave a vivid account of communism’s rise in China to the Franco-Asian Chamber
of Commerce in Paris.116
In early 1930, in reaction to the growing economic crisis in Europe and ongoing
colonial abuses, communist cadres began to organize mass strikes among workers
at factories and plantations. many Catholic observers began to fear that the global
movement they had heard about for years was now growing more powerful in
Vietnam. one February 1930 article grimly reported the assassination of a communist cadre by other cadres even after the French had released him, implying
204 chapter 6
that the French never would have released him had he not betrayed his fellow
communists during his interrogation. The newspaper reproduced a public letter
from communist leaders published in an illegal communist publication stating as
much.117 Weeks later the newspaper alarmingly reported the spread of communist
propaganda in the mekong delta and blamed it for growing labor conflicts.118
on may 2, 1931, a day after International Workers’ day, a group of people identified in Catholic accounts as “communists” killed a Vietnamese priest named Pierre
Khang in his village of tràng Đình, near Vinh. may 1931 was the last, most violent
throes of a wave of revolutionary activity and armed struggle in nghệ An and hạ
tĩnh provinces that had begun in mid-1930. The killing of Father Khang was one
of a number of acts of violence directed at religious figures and property, most of
them not Catholic; pagodas were burned or destroyed, and communal halls were
taken over for political indoctrination.119 Catholic accounts reported that Father
Khang’s village had been threatened for some time and that he had written to
the bishop several times for help. on may 2, a group of men came to tràng Đình
and asked to speak with the priest. As Father Khang approached, one man took
out a pistol and shot the priest, wounding him. Villagers immediately jumped on
the shooter while others chased his companions, who escaped. Shortly after, the
sound of drums from a nearby village warned villagers that danger was imminent.
Father Khang led the villagers in saying an act of contrition and gave them absolution, after which they all took refuge in the church as communists poured into
the village. The invaders broke down the church doors, destroyed the altar and the
sacristy, set fire to the building, and threatened to kill all the villagers if the priest,
who was hidden on the roof, did not show himself. As Father Khang descended,
several communists bearing spears killed him. Villagers, several of whom were
also killed while trying to flee, were forbidden to leave the village or to pray and
told that they would be killed if they did not join the communist party. They even
forbade a proper burial for Father Khang, enveloping his body, charred by the fire,
in banana leaves and straw and burying him at the foot of the mountain behind
the presbytery.
For Vietnamese Catholics, the widespread accounts of Father Khang’s death
made real the stories of communist “atrocities” that they had heard about for years.
Father Khang’s death was the focus of Catholic publications in Vietnam for weeks,
and the stories even spread into the international Catholic press. Like the accounts
of the trials and tribulations of missionaries in China, accounts of Father Khang’s
death clearly echoed stories of Vietnamese martyrdoms. Father Khang’s obituary
was the story of a Catholic who had sacrificed himself bravely so that others might
live. “here I am, look no further, kill me if you want, but spare the Christians,”
Father Khang had reportedly said as he descended from the roof of the church
toward his death. The closing line of the obituary made it clear how the global
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 205
context now acted as a frame of reference for Father Khang’s martyrdom. “It’s unnecessary to comment, for these events speak for themselves: we see that the communists in Annam respect religion as much as do those in russia.”120
The nghệ tĩnh Soviet movement ended under brutal French repression in late
summer 1931. The period between 1931 and the arrival of the Popular Front to
Vietnam in 1936 was a low point for Vietnamese communism: countless activists
were killed or incarcerated, and there was little communist activity outside French
prisons. but 1930–31 had given communism a permanent presence in Vietnamese
Catholic life and politics. Even a year later, Father Khang’s death was still a story.
one may 1932 account told of the search for his remains, buried by his killers during the attack on tràng Đình; they were discovered, blessed, and given a Christian
reburial in January 1932.121 Some Catholics were a little less sanguine than others about what 1930–31 might mean. Andréa Eloy, bishop of Vinh, wrote exuberantly to a fellow missionary that “if the revolutionary movement is aborted, it is
Catholics we have to thank. . . . The French recognize that Catholics conducted
themselves well, but they do not dare mention that it is thanks to them that the
revolutionary movement was a fiasco.”122
but 1930–31 also led many Catholics to fear that they would be particular targets of future communist activity. François Chaize’s 1932 article “Communism and
Catholicism in Indochina” reproduced the text of an open letter from communist cadres to all Vietnamese Catholic priests. It stated that the party “was not of
any given faith” and “had always defended Catholicism,” but it accused priests of
neglecting their Christian duty to protect the oppressed, arguing that the communist party’s humanitarian thinking was “the same as Christ’s.” Chaize admitted
that some Catholics had been drawn to the nghệ tĩnh movement, again blaming
“godless” schools and oppressive tax policies. he closed with an ominous forecast
of things to come “if Providence does not come to our aid.”123 Công Giáo Đồng
Thinh continued unabated its stream of articles about communism in the Soviet
Union, China, mexico, India, Spain, and elsewhere, taking every opportunity to
note growing international opposition to Stalinism. one article did so through a
story of the return of the French communist Jacques doriot to the anticommunist
fold, an unfortunate choice given that doriot’s rejection of Stalinism turned him
into a virulent fascist.124
Vietnamese Catholic anticommunism entered a new phase during the era of
the Popular Front (1936–39), which began in 1935 with the Seventh Comintern
Congress’s endorsement of a program of communist unity with antifascist forces.
In France, a Popular Front government led by Léon blum was elected in may 1936.
In Indochina, this meant freer press and association laws, the release of thousands
of political prisoners, and an increase in legal communist activities such as reading
societies, mutual aid associations, and cooperatives. Although the Popular Front
206 chapter 6
period did not end ideological and regional divisions in Vietnamese communism,
the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) benefited considerably from public exposure during this period.125
The Popular Front period brought Vietnamese Catholic anticommunism to
new heights. Catholic anticommunism continued to be most visible in Cochinchina, which is not surprising given the greater freedom of the press and political association there. Although Công Giáo Đồng Thinh folded in 1937, the new
newspapers Vì Chúa and La Croix d’Indochine took up the crusade. Vì Chúa was
often myopically fervent about many issues, but anticommunist critiques in its
pages remained relatively informed expositions and criticisms of socialist and
communist views about religion. one article from 1938 titled “Communism and
Society” discussed the ideas of not only marx and Lenin, but also thinkers like
Georges Sorel, henri de man, and Jules Guesde, who were shaping leftist thought
and politics in Europe.126 Catholic responses to communism were also discussed.
during the Popular Front period, one of the most significant was Pius XI’s march
1939 encyclical Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism), which reaffirmed
rome’s opposition to communism in light of communitarian violence in the Spanish Civil War. Divini Redemptoris provoked much commentary among Vietnamese Catholics, and the entire July 1937 issue of Sacerdos Indosinensis was devoted
to the encyclical.
La Croix d’Indochine was perhaps the most significant new anticommunist
voice in the newspaper wars of the Popular Front era. It was bar none the most
politically vocal Catholic newspaper in colonial Vietnam; at times, it seemed as
if its sole purpose was to be incendiary. The newspaper’s editor, nguyễn hữu
mỹ, plunged headlong into the politics of Saigon in the late 1930s, becoming the
secretary-general of a political party, the Parti démocrate Indochinois. mỹ and
his newspaper were both virulently anticommunist, and although this was in no
way a uniform political position in Catholic life, it was central to Saigon’s Catholic
property-owning bourgeoisie. mỹ described his new party’s purpose as “realizing
the fraternal union of people without distinction of class or ethnic origin” and
its program as “to create a coherent doctrine respecting property and the law.”127
Communism’s attack on property was far and away mỹ’s biggest fear; indeed, he
rarely thought about its attacks on religion. Even mỹ’s critiques of other religions
barely veiled his class position. one editorial, for example, was titled “religious
mysticism Is Still habitually Exploited by Professional revolutionaries to Agitate
the Imbecilic masses.”128 mỹ sought to convince his readers that Cochinchina was
a land of self-sufficient and happy small property holders who would reject communism out of hand because they knew and respected the idea of property, and he
attacked anyone who questioned his viewpoint.
In the late 1930s this included quite a lot of people, and mỹ spilled much ink
in his vituperative attacks against many of Cochinchina’s political elite. he was, of
Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism 207
course, most critical of the legal communist activity in Saigon, much of it under
the banner of the La Lutte alliance of trotskyists and Stalinists. mỹ, who claimed to
have survived a communist assassination attempt, was incensed by what he felt to
be the complacency of the property-holding elite in Cochinchina in the face of the
growing communist threat, and he increasingly came to use the word “bourgeois”
as an epithet.129 “In the face of the failings of the bourgeois classes, who don’t dare
enter into the electoral struggle, I throw myself into the battle against the reds,
to uphold my fidelity to my principles,” wrote mỹ in an editorial announcing his
entry into municipal elections. mỹ quickly withdrew and threw his support to
another candidate, but that did not prevent the election of three La Lutte candidates. mỹ scorned the moderate nationalist politicians in dialogue with La Lutte,
many of whom participated in an Indochinese Congress in 1937 that was under the
control of the Stalinist-trotskyist alliance. For example, mỹ filled the pages of La
Croix d’Indochine with screeds against the Constitutionalist Party leaders nguyễn
Phan Long and bùi Quang Chiêu, whom he pilloried as out-of-touch careerists.
mỹ’s politics reflected the extent to which the Popular Front confirmed the
connections between French metropolitan politics, colonial policy, and the rise
in Vietnamese communist activity for many Catholics. mỹ excoriated the Popular
Front government for harping on issues like the forty-hour week, which he saw as
“contrary to the habits of the natives in imposing an absurd law upon them and
generating, as a consequence, new discontent. . . . Is internal peace possible with
the socialo-communist exigencies of the Popular Front?”130 many other Catholics
echoed mỹ’s attitudes toward the Popular Front. As the missionary Victor Aubert
wrote to a colleague, “The news from France is not happy. Where are we headed
with this sad Popular Front government? The bad press and the cinema inject
trouble and error into all intelligence, weaken all wills, and corrupt all hearts. Ah!
Where are the Christians of days past?”131 more tellingly, the now large body of religious bulletins increasingly transformed Vietnamese Catholic anticommunism
from a concern of Church authorities and a small, educated urban class into a reality of everyday life. In these publications, stories of Christian-communist clashes
worldwide began to take on a greater moral urgency. Pared down from efforts to
understand or explain doctrine, history, or politics, blurbs about priests killed in
Spain or Church property confiscated in the Soviet Union now became stories of
oppressor and oppressed. Popes appeared more often in these publications, especially around the anticommunist encyclical Divini Redemptoris in 1937 and the
ordination of Pius XII in 1939. Their presence, both through images or translated
proclamations, added to the increasingly existential tone of a conflict painted in
terms not of politics but of good against evil and right against wrong.
208
7
A national Church
in revolution and War
Father hoàng Quỳnh of Phát diệm was thirty-nine years old when France surrendered to the Axis powers in June 1940. Seven years earlier, the ordination of
nguyễn bá tòng inspired Quỳnh, himself recently ordained, to write a history
of his Church that saw the first Vietnamese bishop as a realization of centuries of
evolution toward religious independence.1 Like many of his fellow priests of this
era, Quỳnh believed in Catholic Action’s potential to help the laity to shape its own
Church, and he became a chaplain for Catholic youth groups in addition to working as an instructor in Phát diệm’s minor seminary. When the Japanese army occupied Vietnam during World War II, Quỳnh organized communities to share and
protect their resources. In the chaos of the war’s end, with myriad international
powers competing with local groups to shape Vietnam’s political future, Quỳnh
led Catholics in taking up arms against both occupying troops and opposing
Vietnamese political forces. during the war between France and the democratic
republic of Vietnam from 1946 until 1954, Quỳnh became a leader of Catholic
militias in the struggle of the dioceses of Phát diệm and bùi Chu to remain autonomous from both colonialist and communist ambitions. After the victory of
the drV and the partition of Vietnam in 1954, Quỳnh led much of his diocese to
the newly formed republic of Vietnam, soon to be headed by his Catholic compatriot ngô Đình diệm, alongside hundreds of thousands of northern Catholics.
Quỳnh soon became a vocal, iconoclastic political figure in the rVn—a fervent
anticommunist, a voice for communitarian dialogue, a critic of corruption, an advocate of a progressive program of agrarian reform and nationalized industry, and
a supporter of rural cooperatives and labor unions. he remained in Saigon after
1975 and was arrested thereafter, officially for his role in the resistance to the drV
Revolution and War 209
during the 1940s and 1950s. he died in Chí hòa prison in early 1977, by most accounts from beatings and torture.
hoàng Quỳnh’s life, though it was certainly atypical, nevertheless captures the
transformative effect of decolonization and the cold war on the lives of Vietnamese
Catholics. The growth of a national Church in many ways mirrored the political
changes of the colonial era, and the desire of Vietnamese Catholics for religious independence and to transcend their community’s difficult past made them enthusiastic supporters of Vietnamese independence in 1945. however, in part because
of the powerful institutional and ideological ties between the nascent Vietnamese
Church and the global Catholic world, the relations of many Vietnamese Catholics
with the revolutionary government and many resistance groups were tense from
the start. As the Cold War and internal power struggles polarized the conflict between the French and the drV and among the various Vietnamese groups vying
to shape their nation’s future, political strife and the upheavals of war divided and
displaced Catholic communities, leaving a nascent national Church with an uncertain future in a divided Vietnam at the war’s end.
VIChy rULE And JAPAnESE o C CUPAtIon
World War II led to a sea change in the French colonial empire. As Eric Jennings
has shown, the Vichy revolution that ended the Third republic also represented
“the last spasm of essentialist French colonialism—a form of colonialism steeped
in social-darwinist determinism and rooted in a reductionist, organic understanding of other, usually ‘primitive,’ societies and ‘races.’”2 Vichy’s revolutionary
vision for the French empire led to a policy based on “wholesale invention and
production of ‘authentic folklore,’ the introduction of hardline colonial practices,
and an overriding rhetoric of imperial unity.”3 This shaped colonial nationalisms,
Vietnamese and other, by helping to distill and disseminate a cultural and historical vision of colonial nationhood and by repressing more moderate elements in
French colonial policy. of course, a new colonial regime was not the only wartime
change. Japan, seeking to block supply lines to China, to obtain resources for its
war effort, and to lay a cornerstone of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,
entered northern Vietnam in September 1940 and controlled the rest of the country by 1941, leaving only in August 1945. The occupation, coupled with wartime
shortages, price increases, and crop failures, devastated Vietnam, particularly the
Catholic heartland of tonkin, where between one and two million people died in
a famine in 1944–45.
In France, a return to idealized “traditional” Catholic values was central to Vichy’s vision of the French patrie. While Catholicism was much less pronounced in
Vichy’s colonial policy, some Catholics in Vietnam still saw salvation in the new
regime. This was especially true of French missionaries, who like many French
210 chapter 7
Catholics rejoiced at what Vichy seemed to bring. Fernand Parrel remembered
that most of his compatriots supported the Vichy administration and had little
love for Charles de Gaulle.4 missionaries contributed to Vichy propaganda organs
like the biweekly Indochine and reprinted articles from pro-Vichy French Catholic
newspapers such as La Croix in L’Avenir du Tonkin and parish bulletins. Some
Vietnamese Catholics, at least at first, were also captivated by the cult of maréchal
Philippe Pétain, the beloved World War I general at the head of the Vichy state,
whose proverbs peppered the pages of Vietnamese Catholic newspapers and
whose portrait hung on the façade of Saigon’s cathedral.
missionary support for Vichy reflected long-standing French political and cultural wars, which drew in some Vietnamese Catholics. nguyễn hữu mỹ, the editor
of La Croix d’Indochine (renamed L’Aube Nouvelle during the Vichy era), blamed
“Freemasonry and international Jewry” for Vietnam’s recent difficulties.5 many
Vietnamese Catholics were initially enthusiastic about Vichy because of the new
regime’s programs of association and physical education for youth, which were
central to Vichy’s vision of an invigorated, morally regenerated society and an important part of Catholic life in Vietnam since the early 1930s. The cult of Pétain
was clear in groups such as the Catholic boy Scouts, which had strong connections
to non-Catholic youth networks and whose programs, unlike those of many other
Catholic youth and labor associations, exuded no whiff of left-wing politics. Some
of Vichy’s own youth programs had Catholic aspects, such as notre-dame de ba
Vi, a camp for teenagers north of hanoi that “interwove the cults of Pétain, of
youth and vigor, and Catholicism” in “a curious amalgam of colonial hill stations
and medieval monasteries.”6 Vichy officials also used Catholic projects to affirm a
vision of “traditional” Vietnamese womanhood: in dalat, Sister durand of the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres ran state-supported enterprises for Vietnamese and
Eurasian girls that included orphanages, schools, camps, and training centers.7
yet much like in France, Vichy’s support among Catholics in Vietnam, partial to begin with, waned quickly. The Vichy regime’s obsession with “authentic”
culture, which often translated into strong support for Confucian and buddhist
intellectuals and associations, was a particular problem. Indeed, the Vichy era saw
a revival of official colonial support for neo-traditionalist thinkers after a lull in
the Popular Front era. Those Vietnamese who thought about national culture in
essentialist terms found Pétainism’s nostalgia very appealing, which Vichy officials
did not fail to cultivate even while recognizing the dangerous potential of even
reactionary nationalism.8 As a result, even if many missionaries and conservative Vietnamese Catholics did prefer Pétainism to republicanism, they remained
uneasy about Vichy’s integralist ideas. by 1943, even Vì Chúa, the Catholic newspaper most receptive to socially conservative visions of Vietnamese “tradition,”
was again publishing critiques of Confucianism and buddhism.9 And missionaries
during the Vichy era continued to protest state support for activity that they saw as
Revolution and War 211
idolatrous, as in the 1941 case of a Father massard, who refused to participate in a
ceremony honoring the emperor Gia Long at a pagoda in yên bái.10
Although a number of Catholics were enthusiastic about Vichy’s youth initiatives, tensions grew even over these. Anne raffin notes that Catholic authorities
“feared the creation of a single overarching statist youth project that could dictate
procedures and goals and draw members away from them.”11 Some missionaries
also criticized the “scandalous private life” of the head of Vichy’s youth and sports
initiatives.12 The opposing principles and priorities of Church and state youth
movements were clear in a series of conflicts between Vichy authorities and missionaries in hải Phòng in 1942. one mEP missionary complained that Catholic
youth who participated in state-run groups and camps were kept so busy with
required activities that they did not have the time to study. Even worse, they were
also missing mass. And the Spanish bishop complained that the outfits required
of young Catholic girls who participated in gymnastics classes in state-run groups
were so scandalous that they undermined the very morality they were meant to
impart.13
A more important point than squabbles like these, however, was that the Catholic youth activity that exploded in the Vichy era actually had little to do with the
new regime’s ideology or initiatives. Catholic Action networks were in place and
growing many years before Vichy’s national revolution came to Vietnam, and
their appeal was often far from—if not opposed to—Vichy’s image of the colonial
relationship. Catholic Action associations spread during World War II not because
of Vichy support, but rather because they were crucial to Catholic community life
at a time of terrible deprivation and uncertainty. relief for the poor and refugees
was a major concern in Catholic life from the earliest part of the occupation; the
bishop of hanoi formed an association to ensure the safety of displaced Catholics
in the event of the evacuation of the city due to the arrival of the Japanese.14 The
first chapter of Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls in Vietnam was founded in occupied Saigon to help youth whose studies had been derailed by the destruction or
confiscation of school buildings, missing teachers, or impassable roads; the group
quickly spread throughout the mekong delta.15 but the epicenter of Catholic youth
activity in the Vichy era was Phát diệm and bùi Chu, both now under the direction of Vietnamese bishops. both nguyễn bá tòng and hồ ngọc Cẩn were strong
proponents of Catholic Action as a means for community organization and mobilization, and chapters of associations like young Catholic Workers and rural
Catholic youth spread quickly between 1941 and 1944 with little support from the
Vichy administration.16
Although new Catholic youth associations received little scrutiny from Vichy
authorities with more pressing concerns, many of them continued to draw more
from the global Social Catholicism of the depression era rather than from Vichy’s
folkish brand. And many figures in Catholic Action circles came from left-wing
212 chapter 7
backgrounds and were suspicious of, if not outright hostile to, Vichy. For example,
hundreds of members of Catholic Action associations in tonkin gathered in hải
Phòng in march 1942 seeking solutions to the increasingly desperate conditions
in their city. one of the speakers was nguyễn mạnh hà, son-in-law of the French
communist Georges marrane. In his speech, hà described the republican youth
in Spain in the recent civil war against Franco as heroes who “happily sacrificed
their lives for a worthy ideal,” telling in light of the Franco regime’s ties to Vichy.17
hạ’s Catholic Action networks were an important reason he was named head of
economic services in the city in 1943. In 1944, he helped ameliorate a drastic food
shortage by creating popular restaurants that sold rice that was already cooked as
a means of countering hoarding and speculation, which made him a well-known
and popular figure in the city on the eve of independence.18 This was also very
likely a reason why hạ was tapped as minister of the economy in hồ Chí minh’s
first government.
As important as Catholic youth associations were as political organs after 1945,
few Catholics were active in organized political activity during the Vichy era. one
notable exception was the ngô family. by 1943, ngô Đình diệm had made contact
with Cường Để, the aspirant to the nguyễn throne in exile in Japan, and he formed
a political party, the Association for the restoration of Great Vietnam (Đại Việt
Phục hưng hội), dominated by his Catholic allies from around huế. The French
arrested many of its members, and diệm only escaped arrest through Japanese
intervention.19 ngô Đình nhu, home from his training as an archivist in France,
also traveled with his elder brother ngô Đình Thục, the new bishop of Vĩnh Long,
during the latter’s pastoral tours in tonkin, suggestive given nhu’s later political
activities in the region under the banner of Christian trade unionism.20 tellingly,
even the most influential Vietnamese Catholics such as nguyễn Đệ, an official in
the banque d’Indochine, and the lawyer nguyễn huy Lai, whose support for bảo
Đại would later draw both men into what the emperor himself bitterly referred to
as “the French solution,” were not close to Vichy officials.
Indeed, whatever their politics, many Catholics had difficult relationships with
the occupying forces. one problem was that in Japan’s search for Vietnamese allies, it often ended up supporting religious movements, notably Cao Đài, that
many Catholics found threatening.21 As david marr notes, “Generally speaking,
the Japanese found more friends among Vietnamese religious organizations (excluding the Catholics) than among the secular political parties or publishing coteries.”22 Although both Cao Đài and Catholic nationalists such as the ngôs tended
to support Cường Để, some Catholics railed at Japanese support for other religious
groups. one vocal critic was nguyễn hữu mỹ, who despite his admiration for
Vichy’s national revolution ceaselessly attacked Cao Đài in a series of articles he
titled “Against the Fifth Column.” In these articles he went so far as to criticize
the group for not removing the swastika, “the emblem of our enemies,” from its
Revolution and War 213
iconography, despite its significantly longer history as a buddhist symbol.23 mỹ’s
campaign, which ended only when Vichy officials censored his columns, shows
how even strongly pro-Vichy Catholics could be ambivalent about the regime’s
allies. In another example, Vichy authorities censored an article in Sacerdos Indosinensis titled “German Catholics under the Third reich” that criticized nazi
policies toward Catholics.24
The Japanese occupation also caused significant material hardships for Catholic communities. Thanks to decades of financial support from Europe, seminaries,
presbyteries, and other Catholic buildings were often solidly built out of stone:
after 1940, this meant that Japanese military authorities often commandeered
them for military use. In the case of the seminary in Lạng Sơn, taken over in 1943,
an attack by American planes from southern China caused massive damage.25 In
Thanh hóa in 1940, military exigencies led French officials not to renew a lease on
land that had been granted to the mission forty years before, displacing five hundred Catholics as a result.26 Catholic institutions in cities, and notably in hanoi,
were often evacuated or closed for long periods. retreats for missionaries and the
local clergy were often cancelled, as were multiple Great Festivals in La Vang—
only one took place between 1938 and 1955. And, of course, Catholics, at least half
of whom lived in the red river delta, were devastated by the famine of 1944–45.
“Everywhere,” wrote the bishop of hanoi in February 1945, “we see people in sordid rags, half naked, in a glacial cold. . . . hundreds die every day of hunger and
cold. And it is only the beginning.”27
CAthoLICS And thE End oF FrEnCh Ind o ChInA
on march 9, 1945, a Japanese coup overthrew the Vichy administration and ended
nearly eighty years of French rule over Indochina. Annam and tonkin became
independent in April 1945; the emperor bảo Đại and a hastily assembled cabinet
headed by the intellectual trần trọng Kim, after ngô Đình diệm turned down
bảo Đại’s offer of the position, assumed nominal political authority over the new
state, the Empire of Vietnam, although Japanese troops remained in the country. Cochinchina and several major cities, initially in limbo, were incorporated
that summer. The new state was virtually powerless to face the near-total absence
of political authority after the coup, and other forces mobilized to fill the void.
Vietnamese communists, having decided during the war to prioritize national
liberation over social revolution, had begun in 1941 to recruit a broad coalition
of political forces under an umbrella organization, the Việt nam Độc Lập Đồng
minh hội (League for the Independence of Vietnam), or Việt minh. by 1945, the
Việt minh was the most organized and best supplied of all resistance movements,
in part thanks to its American backers, and it had the broadest appeal. After the
Japanese surrender in mid-August, Empire of Vietnam officials in all three regions
214 chapter 7
of Vietnam ceded power to the Việt minh, whether voluntarily or by force. bảo
Đại abdicated on August 25. on September 2, the national day of mourning for
Vietnamese Catholic martyrs, hồ Chí minh proclaimed the democratic republic of Vietnam in hanoi. Although clouds would quickly gather quickly over the
euphoria of independence, this remained a transcendent moment for Vietnamese
Catholics. In her extraordinary research on Catholics during the First Indochina
War, trần Thị Liên shows how “this violent explosion of nationalist sentiment,
this quasi-visceral desire of Catholic Vietnamese to take part in the movement of
national independence, is explained by their desire to put an end to the accusation
of ‘traitors to the nation.’ Accused of having adhered to a foreign religion perceived
as dangerous by the Confucian state, and blamed for the loss of national independence, many Catholics threw themselves into the movement, seeking to put an end
to the discredit that weighed upon them.”28
The Japanese coup in march unleashed a flood of anti-French sentiment in
Vietnamese Catholic communities that only intensified after September 2. reflecting the fraught nature of race relations in Catholic life and widespread Vietnamese
support for an independent national Church, missionaries were a principal focus
of Catholic anger. “Since the events of march 9,” wrote the bishop of hanoi in September 1945, “more and more, we have become suspects in the eyes of so-called
patriots. . . . Annam to the Annamites and the Church of Indochina to the clergy
of Indochina, that is the slogan of the day.”29 This caught most missionaries by
surprise, and most of them attributed it to the political crisis and to the naïveté
of Vietnamese Catholics rather than to deeper transitions or tensions in Catholic
life. As the bishop of hanoi wrote in october, “The wave of xenophobia raised by
the ultranationalist campaign following the French defeat in march 1945 quickly
cast suspicion on the apostles of the Gospel. Accused of serving the imperialist
cause and of creating obstacles to national aspirations, missionaries have become
undesirables and troublemakers, if not enemies of the nation. . . . It has been the
cruelest ordeal to see a too-great number of young Catholics and even priests
and seminarians renounce their fathers in the faith.”30 but French officials, longstanding critics of the missionary presence, were more perceptive. “This sentiment
of religious independence that is the order of the day in Vietnam is already quite
old,” wrote the commander of the Free French Forces in China in november 1945.
“It has manifested itself at various moments among Catholic youth and the clergy,
and its allure is now even greater in light of recent events.”31
In all three regions, the sentiment for religious independence in 1945 and 1946
was perhaps most evident in Catholic youth and workers’ associations, the locus
of left-wing Catholic ideas in the late colonial era. In nam Định, relations between
Phạm Đình Khiêm, a Catholic youth leader and later a well-known Catholic author in the rVn, and André Vacquier, the missionary leader of many Catholic
Action associations, were at a breaking point by April. According to Vacquier,
Revolution and War 215
Khiêm had forced him to cede control of the Catholic journal Youth (Thanh Niên),
which Khiêm then used to criticize missionaries and to urge Catholics to become
politically involved. by may, Vacquier reported almost universal antagonism to
missionaries in Catholic youth circles.32 Also that may, Lưu ngọc Văn, a leader
of rural Catholic youth, demanded that the bishop of hanoi place youth associations entirely under Vietnamese direction.33 bishops and missionaries tried to ban
or dissolve many Catholic Action associations after the coup, but to no avail. In
parts of tonkin, youth and workers associations formed Catholic self-defense (tự
vệ) groups after the coup. In Phát diệm, hoàng Quỳnh led a maquis that stole or
bought weapons, raided French and Japanese forces, and wrote and distributed
political tracts.34 Catholic youth leaders in hanoi worked for the Việt minh’s rise
to power in hanoi in August, organizing rallies and working in the information
bureau.35 And on September 2, when the bishop of hanoi ordered members of
young Catholic Workers to remove a banner on the cathedral reading “Annam to
the Annamese, the Church of Annam to the Annamite clergy,” one replied, “It is
not the moment to obey, but to save the nation. If the bishop wants to take it down,
he can do it himself.”36
Seminaries were another locus of nationalist and antimissionary sentiment in
the heady days of 1945. In August in nghệ An, a delegation of Catholic youth
from the seminary in Xã Đoài demanded that the French superior cede control
of mission property and transfer all local missionaries to Vinh.37 on September
2, most of the students in hanoi’s major seminary joined the celebrations in the
streets, disobeying orders from their superiors. Sensing the mood, the head of the
seminary replaced a French sign for the seminary with one in Latin.38 Seminarians
in Thanh hóa also demonstrated in September, and some catechists organized a
self-defense militia.39 In hoàng nguyên, missionaries reported that months after
independence, seminarians ignored directives from missionary superiors and that
most spent their time reading newspapers, debating politics, composing patriotic
songs, and making drV flags, banners, and signs. “In the refectory,” wrote the
bishop of hanoi, “conversations centered on the cruelty of the French, of missionaries. . . . There were reflections of this sort: ‘All the missionaries must leave, but
with the apostolic delegate being French, that’s not likely; if mgr. Aiuti were delegate, they would all leave.’”40 one missionary described the seminaries in tonkin
at this time as “boxes of hatred.”41
Vietnamese priests, who had long resented much about their missionary superiors, were equally fervent about religious and national independence. “From the
month of July 1945,” trần Thị Liên writes, “the Vietnamese clergy had a clear tendency to separate themselves from their European hierarchy.”42 In tonkin, where
the relations between priests and missionaries were historically the worst, the local
clergy was the most militant and violent. French missionaries were often barred
from entering churches or saying mass, and in some cases they were chased from
216 chapter 7
their missions before drV authorities or the Japanese could remove them.43 This
was not true everywhere: in some regions, notably around huế and in parts of
Cochinchina, enthusiasm for an independent Church was not accompanied by antimissionary sentiment, even when any visible ties to Europeans posed a real risk.
but in trần Thị Liên’s words, “on the question of the autonomy of the Vietnamese
Church, the Vietnamese clergy was unanimous and knew itself to be supported
discretely by the foreign clergy (not French).”44
on September 23, the Vietnamese bishops, now four, wrote a public letter to
Pope Pius XII.45 on november 4, they signed another letter to “the Christians of
the world and the people of the United States and Great britain.” The letters affirmed the bishops’ support for national independence and called on the Church
and the peoples of the world to respect the will of the Vietnamese people. The
letters, broadcast over drV radio and distributed as tracts throughout Vietnam
and in France, were at least partly intended as a diplomatic olive branch extended
to the officials of the new government, some of whom undoubtedly concerned
Church officials. however, the letters remained sincere and uncoerced expressions
of support for national and religious independence, although the four leaders of
the nascent Vietnamese Church thought about independence in different ways.
nguyễn bá tòng and hồ ngọc Cẩn, the eldest (both would die within four years),
were the least political, and their support for national independence came primarily from their support for a national Church, which tòng embodied perhaps more
than anyone. Thục, whose vocal nationalism led many French authorities to consider him an active supporter of the Việt minh, was wary early on of communist
influence within the drV and the resistance in Cochinchina, largely because of
the murder of his eldest brother, Khôi, the governor of Quảng nam province, by
Việt minh agents in September 1945.
The fourth bishop, Lê hữu từ, demonstrates how powerfully the events of 1945
affected Vietnamese clergy with no history of political involvement and how those
events brought the clergy to support the revolutionary government. từ, born in
1896 in Quảng trị, had unremarkable origins for someone who would become
such a critical political figure during the First Indochina War (fig. 12). từ spent
much of the 1930s cloistered in the Cistercian monastery in Phước Sơn, where he
entered in 1928 just after his ordination. In 1936, he was charged with founding and
heading a new monastery in Châu Sơn in ninh bình, the position he held when he
was tapped as nguyễn bá tòng’s successor. As trần Thị Liên notes, “When he was
nominated, ecclesiastical authorities were probably very far from thinking that he
would play such a political role.” how, then, to explain his immediate and militant nationalism? For Liên, từ “felt himself invested with a mission from God. . . .
having entered into the monastery at a young age, he left at the age of forty-nine
for a highly symbolic post: the vicariate of Phát diệm. . . . If God had taken him
from the convent at a moment of such historic importance for the Vietnamese . . .
Revolution and War 217
it was because he had been chosen to carry out deeds for the Vietnamese Church
in line with roman declarations on national Churches.”46 beginning just after his
ordination, từ developed a dialogue with hồ Chí minh to try to build a modus
vivendi between Catholics and the drV that would last into the late 1940s. he
would remain resolutely anticolonial even after his relations with drV officials
broke down and he turned to closer association with the French-backed bảo Đại
government later in the war.
With widespread nationalist sentiment permeating the Church’s Vietnamese
leadership, the rank-and-file clergy, its associational networks, and its seminaries,
there were few barriers to lay Catholics to celebrate independence. And celebrate
they did. huge rallies of Catholics in support of the new government took place
across the country, including forty thousand people in hanoi, thirty thousand in
Vinh, and twenty thousand in huế (the latter received a public blessing from the
Catholic empress nam Phương). In nam Định, missionaries hid statues of French
saints to prevent them from being destroyed during a Catholic demonstration.47
Catholic newspapers and religious bulletins, now without missionary supervision,
Figure 12. bishop Lê hữu từ inspecting his troops, 1952. howard
Sochurek / time & Life Pictures Collection / Getty Images.
218 chapter 7
published articles with titles like “The Spirit of Independence.”48 In the pages of
Catholic newspapers in 1945, the figure of the martyr, for so long a Vietnamese
Catholic symbol of alienation and persecution, now embodied the sacrifices that
Vietnamese Catholics were prepared to make for the new nation. “Even if all of
you readers cannot attain the bliss of the martyrs . . . you can at the very least imitate their indomitable courage,” read an article in a youth magazine in September
1945.49 Publications from this moment also told stories of anticolonial Catholics
from around the world that had dedicated their lives to both Church and nation.
one tract from 1945, “Catholic hero and Patriot,” recounted the life of daniel
o’Connell, known as “The Liberator” for his struggle with the british for Irish
Catholic rights.50 Catholics throughout Annam and tonkin aided or led efforts to
detain missionaries and expel them from rural areas. Some Catholics were even
implicated in missionary deaths, including that of André Vacquier, the Catholic
Action leader in nam Định, in September 1945.51
Aside from laying bare the tensions that had plagued Catholic life in Vietnam
for decades, the march coup and the proclamation of independence also highlighted the essential differences between most missionaries and the Church’s
global leadership. Indeed, although virtually all mEP missionaries viewed France
as the only legitimate authority in Vietnam, the same was not true for rome.52
For a generation, authorities at Propaganda Fide had worked to develop national
Churches outside Europe in preparation for the end of empire they were now witnessing. As such, although the Vatican remained publicly neutral in 1945 and 1946,
its activities amounted to de facto recognition of Vietnamese independence while
it used diplomacy to try to influence the drV and to ensure Catholic safety and
religious freedom. As the apostolic delegate Antonin drapier wrote to the bishop
of hanoi in June 1945, “I see absolutely nothing to say about the desire of young
Annamites to see the independence of their nation. It is a desire that not only has
nothing reprehensible about it in and of itself, but that can and must receive the
charity of Catholics. In consequence, I do not see that we can forbid them from
working by all honest means for this independence so long as the laws of charity are observed.”53 drapier’s actions in 1945 and 1946 drew French ire, especially
his attempt to mediate Franco-drV negotiations and to facilitate communication
between the drV and rome, the details of which hanoi published.54 however,
there was no doubt that Church officials hoped that the new government could
somehow remain a monarchy and that they were concerned about the ideology
of some drV officials and the active—and at times violent—political discourse of
some Vietnamese Catholics. by late 1945, therefore, the Vatican’s position had set it
apart from French officials and most of the missionary community, but also from
many Vietnamese Catholics.55
The Vietnamese Catholic desire for religious independence was clear to drV
officials, who in the months after independence made great efforts to equate
Revolution and War 219
missionary Catholicism with French colonialism and to assure Catholics that
the revolutionary state supported freedom of religion and a national Church.
“missionaries, French and Spanish,” read one tract, “return to us the Vietnamese
Church; follow the example of the apostles. remember that for eighty years you
used religion to serve colonial interests; this is absolutely contrary to the justice
and the charity that Christ taught us.” “After more than four hundred years of
evangelization,” read another tract, “the Vietnamese Church is not yet autonomous; it remains at the mercy of a horde of foreign priests . . . even while there are
very many Vietnamese priests, and a great number of them are highly qualified
to direct the Vietnamese Church.” one even cited Rerum Ecclesiae.56 Although
drV propaganda reflected a mechanistic view of missionaries as colonial agents,
it also showed a keen awareness of tensions in the Vietnamese Church. And the
drV’s appeals to Vietnamese Catholics, an often marginal social group with a
complex past, are perhaps the clearest example of the push for national unity that
dominated drV political strategy in this period. In hanoi in late 1945, officials allowed huge ceremonies in front of the cathedral and let Catholics broadcast from
the government’s radio post; hồ Chí minh even addressed a personal message
to Catholics on Christmas day. drV propaganda at this time evinced no antiCatholicism per se, but it simply expressed criticism of European influence in the
Vietnamese Church. Internal drV documents at this time were consistent with
this position, strongly condemning missionaries and worrying that some priests
might privilege ecclesiastical authorities over temporal ones. Still, the documents
demonstrated that drV officials remained optimistic that Catholics would rally to
the national cause and argued that it was important to protect religious freedom
so long as it did not challenge political authority.57
The enthusiasm of Vietnamese Catholics for independence, and the efforts of
drV officials to recruit their support, brought a number of them into the revolutionary government and resistance networks. In January 1946, hồ Chí minh
named nguyễn mạnh hà, the lawyer and youth leader, as minister of the economy.
hà, with his friend and fellow Catholic nguyễn Đệ, was part of the drV delegation to the failed negotiations at Fontainebleu in July 1946. hồ also named ngô
tử hạ, the Catholic publisher, as president of the national Assembly. hạ was later
an important intermediary in drV negotiations with Catholic leaders in the red
river delta. but the drV did not appeal only to secular Catholic elites such as
these. In october 1945, Lê hữu tư, the new bishop of Phát diệm, accepted hồ’s
invitation to serve as supreme counselor to the government. revolutionary luminaries like hồ, Võ nguyên Giáp, Phạm Văn Đồng, and trần huy Liệu were present
at his ordination. Among the rank-and-file clergy in the north, the most visible
supporter of the drV was Phạm bá trực, whose path to revolutionary politics had
begun when he went to study in rome in the 1920s. In 1946, trực was named to a
permanent bureau of the national Assembly.58
220 chapter 7
Unlike in Annam and tonkin, to become active in revolutionary politics in
Cochinchina after September 1945 was to risk imprisonment or death at the hands
of French troops, who overthrew the revolutionary government three weeks after
it came to power. nevertheless, some Catholics did just that. As it did in tonkin,
in Cochinchina the Việt minh appealed strongly to some well-educated Catholic intellectuals such as the brothers Phạm ngọc Thuần and Phạm ngọc Thảo,
whose father was an official in the French colonial administration. In 1943, Thuần
joined Thanh niên tiền Phong, a Japanese-sanctioned youth group under communist control. In August 1945, his brother and Thái Văn Lung, another Catholic,
joined him. The three joined the maquis after the French coup in September. Lung
became head of Thanh niên tiền Phong in Cochinchina before his death at the
hands of French torturers in July 1946. Thảo went north in 1946, where he studied
at a drV military school. he would later return to the south and become one of
the greatest of all drV spies, enjoying the close confidence of the ngô family while
helping to sabotage the Strategic hamlet Program. Thuần became vice-president
of the Committee for resistance and Administration for Cochinchina. The bestknown members of the clergy in the southern resistance were three brothers,
nguyễn bá Luật, nguyễn bá Kính, and nguyễn bá Sang, who after the march
coup wrote articles urging Catholics to join anti-French movements and worked
to resurrect youth associations that the bishop of Saigon had dissolved. by 1946,
they were advisors to the Việt minh’s Committee for resistance and Administration. Arrested by the French in July, not for the last time, they were released after
widespread public outcry and immediately rejoined the resistance. Although most
of the clergy in the resistance originally came from Saigon and occupied the most
important posts held by Catholics, priests from provinces throughout the delta
began in 1946 to teach courses and write tracts to recruit Catholics, and to serve as
chaplains for Catholics in new resistance units.59
Finally, the international Catholic networks that would become so crucial to
Vietnamese Catholic politics during the First Indochina War quickly became
evident in 1945. In France, the priests bửu dưỡng (a direct descendant of minh
mạng) and Cao Văn Luận were the most influential early advocates of Vietnamese
independence. In the late 1930s, both had gone to study in France, where they
became active in Vietnamese émigré life, dưỡng in Lyon and Anger and Luận
in Paris. both served as chaplains for Vietnamese workers and soldiers who had
come to France at the beginning of the Second World War, giving them an audience in front of whom they could, in the words of the Sûreté official who followed
their activities, “exalt the patriotism of Vietnamese combatants and . . . offer them
as examples to their brothers in exile, who are invited to prepare themselves for
the struggle.”60 They protested the French use of priests’ testimonies to criticize
the drV and the resistance, and they organized conferences, wrote articles, and
distributed tracts.61 during the course of the First Indochina War, probably the
Revolution and War 221
most influential pro-drV Catholic in France was Phạm huy Thông, a member of
the French Communist Party and an intermediary between Vietnamese Catholic
groups and pro-drV associations. And soon after his ordination as bishop, Lê
hữu từ named a representative to rome, one Lucas huy (who apparently adopted
the title “monseigneur,” even though he was far from a bishop), whose role was
to share information with rome that had not passed through the filter of French
censors or diplomats, as well as to try to shape the nominations of Vietnamese
bishops. French officials reported that several priests studying at the Collegium
Urbanum served the same role for ngô Đình Thục until his politics became more
closely aligned with từ’s in the late 1940s.62
A nAtIonAL ChUrCh UndEr FIrE
Independence brought no peace to Vietnam. From its beginnings, the drV faced
not only the challenge of competing nationalist forces and occupying Chinese and
british troops, but also the resurgent colonial ambitions of the new French Fourth
republic. French troops, rearmed by the british in September 1945 in Saigon,
overthrew the revolutionary government in Cochinchina just weeks after hồ Chí
minh’s declaration. As Cochinchina spiraled into guerilla war, Chinese pressure
helped bring French and drV officials to an agreement, signed on march 6, 1946.
According to the agreement, France recognized Vietnam as a free state and agreed
to a popular referendum to determine the relationship between tonkin, Annam,
and Cochinchina. France, however, still claimed Vietnam as part of the Indochinese Federation and the French Union. Further negotiations in dalat and in
Fontainebleu did not resolve this issue, and French authorities in Saigon pursued
an increasingly hard line toward the drV, especially after the withdrawal of Chinese troops in September, even as some metropolitan officials sought to negotiate.
drV officials, optimistic after the march agreement, became less so as the summer
progressed. tensions rose as French forces returned to Annam and tonkin, and
France’s november bombing of hải Phòng after a customs conflict—which was
meant to spark an armed drV response and provide a casus belli—heightened
the anger of drV officials and made them less willing to negotiate. on december
19, 1946, drV forces attacked French soldiers in hanoi just as the ascension of a
socialist government in France heightened the possibility for peace. The First Indochina War, the beginning of thirty years of devastation in Vietnam, had begun.63
French forces quickly retook most major cities, and over the next two years they
expanded into other strategically important areas, while the armed forces of the
drV, and much of the population, retreated into passive resistance or guerilla war.
The First Indochina War, which radicalized Vietnamese politics and turned a
colonial war into a Cold War battleground, ultimately would not prevent Vietnamese Catholics from transcending their religion’s complex past in Vietnam, as
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many had hoped so fervently in 1945. It was, however, the final and most critical
step in the transfer of religious authority from Europeans to Vietnamese that had
begun in earnest with the Vatican reforms of the 1920s. For many in rome, World
War II was the darkest possible sign that a morally and materially devastated Europe could no longer sustain missionary work as it once had. As Joseph masson,
author of the 1944 work Toward the Indigenous Church, wrote, “do we seriously
think that Europe, ravaged by wars, divided by hatreds, that Europe, where faith
is declining in more than one country, is capable of indefinitely increasing its missionary effort?”64 Indeed, the war and the Japanese occupation of Indochina made
it uncertain whether France would ever again rule Vietnam, and this intensified
the efforts of Church authorities to prepare for a separation from missionary authority. In march 1941, the bishop of hanoi wrote to rome, in an about-face from
the dominant mEP opinion, to say, “In the face of the menace weighing on French
Indochina, I have urged the other apostolic vicars to prepare capable local priests
eventually to take over the government of the missions.” Authorities at Propaganda
Fide agreed, and they urged the bishop to prepare as quickly as possible for a transition. “We hope for an amelioration of the situation,” wrote the secretary, “but it
is prudent to foresee the worst and to prepare for it in time.” Later that year, each
bishop identified the priest best suited to take charge of his mission and agreed to
begin to prepare the priest for that event.65
Such preparations were necessary, for the Japanese coup made most missionary
activity difficult, if not impossible. The Japanese forced many missionaries to leave
their parishes and interned them in orders, convents, and seminaries in major
cities. The Việt minh, and in some cases Vietnamese Catholics themselves, forced
most of those who remained to join the others by early 1946. For most of the war,
missionary activity was severely limited in most of the country, even in regions
under French control. most missionaries could not circulate freely in cities until
mid-1947. Few ventured even into suburban zones until later than that, although
conditions in areas near Saigon were better than those around northern cities.
by 1948, schools, seminaries, and social welfare institutions had begun to function again in some cities, but wartime challenges, like the need for missionaries
to serve as chaplains and perform refugee relief work, as well as the requisitioning
of church buildings for military purposes, posed new demands. In some cities
initially controlled by the drV, many Church buildings (as well as many other
edifices) were destroyed to make things more difficult for French forces when they
returned. A few missionaries operated in contested military areas, but most could
not leave French outposts without an escort, and evacuations were frequent, making contact with Catholics difficult.66
The fate of a handful of missionaries in 1945 was the clearest indication that
much of the Vietnamese population no longer tolerated their presence. In August and September 1945, five mEP missionaries were killed, one each in hanoi,
Revolution and War 223
nam Định, and Saigon and two in hà nam. Several others were interrogated and
tortured. Although these deaths would later become a part of martyr narratives
in which communists replaced the nguyễn as persecutors, it is highly unlikely
that the upper drV leadership was to blame. Indeed, apart from intense antimissionary propaganda, drV officials treated most missionaries with suspicion but
circumspection throughout the war. Thirty-three missionaries from Vinh, Thanh
hóa, and huế, including two bishops and the scholar Léopold Cadière, received
some of the harshest treatment. In 1945, they were interned in the presbytery in
Vinh for periods ranging from six to eight years, during which they were allowed
to send a message to colleagues or family only once. They spent most of their days
praying, gardening, or studying and were occasionally allowed to recite mass. The
few missionaries in drV-controlled areas who enjoyed some freedom of movement were Spanish dominicans. In general, the lack of violence against missionaries in drV areas stemmed from the ongoing efforts of drV officials to obtain
Catholic support for the new government, as well as a fear of the consequences
that a missionary death could bring.67
The events of 1945 and the spread of war left the administration of religious
life almost entirely in the hands of the Vietnamese clergy, with the exception of
cities under French control. Generally speaking, religious life was most affected
in areas where the French and the drV vied for control of resources and the support of populations. Catholics, like many others, often tried to flee such areas;
most left for French-controlled cities or the Catholic autonomous zone of Phát
diệm / bùi Chu instead of drV areas, but not all did so. Catholics who stayed
often abandoned more remote congregations for the relative safety of a parish seat.
Churches, seminaries, and schools were often destroyed in fighting or bombing,
and both armies commandeered labor and resources and pressured populations
not to support their opponents. by the middle of the war, there was widespread
forced conscription into both drV and Franco-Vietnamese forces. As a result, in
addition to trying to preserve religious life in the face of such challenges, the clergy
and religious leaders also had to focus on organizing community defense, which
was widespread in Catholic life during the war. Community defense in central and
north Vietnam often emerged around preexisting groups of congregations or parishes, and until about 1952 it was intended to protect Catholics from French forces,
whose behavior even missionaries regularly decried, as often as from the drV’s
armed forces or other militias.68
For most of the war, religious life in drV areas was affected less than it was in
areas of active military conflict. Individual acts of requisition and violence against
Catholics, as against the missionaries, began in August and September 1945 and
continued throughout the war. but trần Thị Liên shows that although Catholic
experience varied widely based on the composition of local drV committees,
communitarian relations, and other factors, requisitions of labor and property,
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drV propaganda campaigns, and limits on movement and association did not
affect Catholics more than the rest of the population until about 1952. most priests
and catechists could pursue their ministries, and mass and other rituals often took
place unmolested. Perhaps most disruptive was the lack of contact between mission seats, which were often in cities under French control, and rural parishes,
which were usually controlled by the drV, although some clergy were able to cross
military zones. but even if local officials were tolerant, priests faced enormous
challenges in drV areas. not only did the war pose a challenge to their daily ministries, but it also forced them to defend and distribute communal resources and
to navigate their community’s relations with a new political authority with little to
no assistance or protection from mission authorities.69 Although this must remain
speculative, a priest’s ability to manage these challenges was likely crucial in determining the degree of his influence over lay Catholics in his parish during this time.
by forcing most missionaries into urban areas, cutting off many parishes from
mission seats, and expanding the role and responsibility of local priests, the war
confirmed for rome the need to continue a transition to Vietnamese authority.
When hồ Chí minh declared Vietnamese independence in September 1945, there
were still twelve European-led missions and only three Vietnamese dioceses, in
Phát diệm, bùi Chu, and Vĩnh Long. Lê hữu từ’s ordination, the first in independent Vietnam, was also the first to take place without a European present. during
the war, an increasing number of missions became Vietnamese dioceses, including
hanoi and bắc ninh in 1950, Vinh in 1951, hải Phòng in 1953, and finally Saigon in
1955. The ordinations seemed to parallel the war—a Church, like a colony, slipping
away from France. France’s ambassador to the Vatican felt that the ordinations had
the effect of “weakening a moral and cultural position” that was “our right and our
duty to defend at all costs,” and he and other French officials lobbied to keep Europeans at the head of missions.70 Propaganda Fide’s decision to continue the transition was not only a way to address the uncertain position of missionaries, it also
continued a generation of reforms meant to address tensions between missionaries and local Catholics and to secure the Church’s future in Vietnam. but like many
reforms, the elevation of Vietnamese to the position of bishop did not go entirely
as rome had hoped. many Vatican officials worried about Lê hữu từ’s militant
nationalism and made sure that bishops ordained after him were more moderate.71
The critical role of Vietnamese bishops in politics is but one example of how
interwar reforms in religious life shaped the Catholic experience of the First Indochina War. For example, it was apparent in 1945 that the printed word had become
important enough in Catholic life that competing political forces distributed tracts
and pamphlets widely, even in rural areas where a generation before, perhaps one
in ten people could read. Although rome was far from the main reason for growing Vietnamese Catholic literacy, its campaign for a broader network of better
primary schools undoubtedly helped. Perhaps a more direct legacy of Vatican
Revolution and War 225
reforms was Catholic newspapers, which rome had pushed for beginning in the
early 1920s and in some cases forced mission authorities to allow. many major
colonial-era Catholic newspapers closed just after the Japanese coup: Trung Hòa
Nhật Báo, Nam Kỳ Địa Phận, Vì Chúa, and others closed their doors during the
summer of 1945, never to reopen. In their place were new ones whose purpose
was to help Catholics make sense of the tumultuous political transition. In Phát
diệm after the coup, hoàng Quỳnh founded the newspaper Sống (Live) as part of
his propaganda campaign.72 Several papers that closed during World War II began
publishing again in 1945 with a very different tone. The dominican religious bulletin Đa Minh Bán Nguyệt, which ceased publication in September 1943, reopened
two years later with a full-throated call for allegiance with the Việt minh. As Catholics grew more wary of the Việt minh, they used newspapers to express their concerns. most notable was Hồn Công Giáo (The Catholic soul) published in hanoi
from october 1945 until december 1946 by a former Catholic boy Scout leader,
which contained articles about the incompatibility of Christianity and communism and reports of clashes between the Việt minh and Catholics throughout the
country. Later, Đạo Binh Đức Mẹ (Legion of mary), founded in 1952 in hanoi, was
a vehicle for anticommunist, antiroyalist Catholic politics until the end of the war.
but perhaps the most significant legacy of Vatican reforms on Catholic life and
politics during the First Indochina War was Catholic Action. In 1946, the Catholic
youth leader Phạm Đình Khiêm wrote what was probably the first full-length history in Vietnamese of the Catholic Church’s social activities (hành động xã hội)
from its beginnings to the present. he focused much of the book on Catholic institutions in Vietnam, which he argued were essential for helping drV officials
build a new society.73 Aside from its obvious political purpose, Khiêm’s work reflected how essential the Church’s social infrastructure, which expanded greatly
during the colonial era, had become in a moment of revolution and war. Priests
and community leaders leaned heavily on schools and seminaries, which continued to operate in most drV areas, to organize Catholic life and resources and
to serve as shelters for Catholic refugees. many Catholic medical and social welfare institutions also continued to operate, and there was even some cooperation
between Catholic and drV efforts in this realm.74 Catholic Action associations,
whose networks crossed parishes and regions, were even more important. As the
enthusiasm of 1945 died down, Catholic Action associations among youth and
workers became less pro-drV or pro–Việt minh but no less political, and the
drV responded with campaigns to influence, infiltrate, or neutralize them. The
result was, in many ways, a struggle between the Church and the new government
in Vietnam to integrate Catholics into one national network that went further than
ever before.
In many respects, the struggle began at the ordination of Lê hữu từ, when Võ
nguyên Giáp and Phạm Văn Đồng requested từ’s support for a new association,
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Vietnamese Catholics for the Salvation of the nation (Việt nam Công Giáo Cứu
Quốc), an explicitly political and military organ that they hoped would help link
Catholics across Vietnam in support of (and under the control of) the drV. Although từ then supported the drV, he and Catholic leaders like nguyễn mạnh
hà worried that the association would lack autonomy and that Catholics in
European-led missions would have a hard time joining. In response, từ founded
another new national association, the Vietnamese Catholic League (Liên Đoàn
Công Giáo Việt nam), under the banner of Catholic Action, officially to better
organize the activities of other Catholic Action groups and better coordinate the
Church’s efforts in activities such as poor and refugee relief, and implicitly to provide a bulwark against drV influence in Catholic life. drV authorities were dismayed, but ongoing efforts to recruit Catholic support forced them to recognize
the group.75 With the existence of an independent Catholic association sanctioned
by Church authorities, the drV association drew support from only the most
militant Catholics. but the Catholic League’s relationship to Church authority was
unclear. Catholic Action was formally apolitical, and while rome often ignored
or even encouraged certain kinds of political activity in its name, many at Propaganda Fide were deeply concerned with từ’s support for the drV. In may 1946,
the apostolic delegate drapier recognized the Catholic League, but he insisted that
it remain strictly apolitical, which some Vietnamese Catholic elite, actively trying
to create space for political autonomy or opposition in the new nation, deeply
resented.76 And drV officials, of course, also quickly sought to countermand the
association’s potential in the political arena.
From an early moment, very different regional political dynamics challenged
the Catholic League’s mission to organize Vietnamese Catholics into a single nationwide organization. The league was formed in haste, and its president, nguyễn
mạnh hà, had enormous responsibilities as minister of the economy and as a participant in diplomatic negotiations in Fontainebleu. In the north during hà’s time
in France, communists and nationalists competed for influence over the league’s
governing bodies, while hà sought to prevent the organization from being drawn
into politics at all. từ’s recognition of a group of politically active hanoi Catholics
as the northern committee (bắc bộ) was a blow to hà’s efforts. The situation was
similar in Cochinchina, but with a different result. because few Catholics in the
south were well organized or politically active unless they were involved in the
resistance, it was Việt minh partisans who first approached Thục and the bishop
of Saigon, Jean Cassaigne, for permission to form a southern committee of the
league. They were unsuccessful—Cassaigne feared angering French authorities,
while Thục feared communist influence in the Việt minh—but these Catholics
nevertheless made unofficial chapters of the league a platform for organizing, and
they began to use them to recruit Catholics to the anti-French cause. The politicization of the league’s northern and southern committees alarmed drapier, who
Revolution and War 227
mobilized loyal priests to exert greater control over the league’s committee in and
around huế. This in turn alienated many ngô family partisans, who had hoped
that the Catholic League might be a boon to their efforts to develop noncommunist opposition to the drV in Annam. drapier dissolved the Catholic League in
december 1946, but it continued to exist in practice. Soon after, bowing to pressure from rome, drapier again tried to form chapters not controlled by political
groups.77
The fate of the Catholic League prefaced the divisions in Vietnamese Catholic
life and politics that emerged during the First Indochina War. Vietnamese Catholics had many reasons to think of themselves as a national religious community
when their new nation went to war in 1946. Since the 1920s, Vietnamese had seen
their countrymen rise to the top of their Church’s hierarchy, they had immigrated
and become part of Catholic communities in other regions and abroad, they had
attended festivals and pilgrimages with other Catholics from around the nation,
and they had come to experience their religion in the context of powerful new
ethnic and political identities. After the war began, Vietnamese assumed more
control over religious life than they had since before the arrival of colonial rule.
but the First Indochina War also brought the deep divisions in Vietnamese politics
increasingly to the fore. Internal power struggles, the quest for social revolution,
and the exigencies of war radicalized the drV leadership and complicated the new
state’s relationship with many Catholics, and disagreements also grew among those
Catholics who sought alternatives to the Việt minh resistance in Cochinchina. yet
Vietnamese Catholic commitment to religious and national independence was
not dampened even as the euphoria of 1945 faded. In david marr’s words, “many
Catholics became alienated from ‘the revolution,’ yet very few returned to fullfledged cooperation with the French.”78
dIVISIonS GroW, 194 6–195 0
Enthusiasm for the drV and the Việt minh resistance were far from universal in
Catholic life even in the heady days of 1945. In Annam and tonkin, this came primarily from the chaos of the political transition to drV rule. The Việt minh’s rise
to power made significant material demands on Catholics, as it did on all parts of
the population. Church buildings were often occupied, and food and money were
solicited or seized. Acts of violence against individual Catholics or their property were few in Annam and tonkin in 1945, and they were more likely the result of individual political or personal conflicts, or simply brigandage or looting,
than official anti-Catholicism, although some Catholics may have been targets of
particularly militant Việt minh cells, especially when they resisted the incarceration or expulsion of a missionary. however, many Catholics, like other members
of the population, likely felt that some property destruction or requisition was
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inevitable, and widespread Catholic enthusiasm for independence certainly suggests that much Catholic material support for the Việt minh in 1945 was willing,
not coerced. There is some evidence that land, at the center of many communitarian conflicts since the nineteenth century, became a source of tension again after
the Japanese coup. In hà nam, villagers demanded the return of land they claimed
their ancestors had been forced to sell to Catholics in the 1870s, and in ninh bình,
non-Catholics claimed over one thousand hectares that the mission had long controlled.79 but during the first months of drV rule in Annam and tonkin, official
and popular anti-Catholicism were largely absent, and violence against Catholics
was virtually nonexistent.
The French overthrow of the revolutionary government in Cochinchina in
September 1945 created a very different dynamic between Catholics and Vietnamese political movements in that region. trần Thị Liên argues that the French
coup in Cochinchina not only limited the Việt minh’s ability to campaign for
Catholic support, as the drV state did actively in Annam and tonkin in the fall
of 1945, but it also led the Việt minh immediately into a guerilla war, which led
to greater demands on the population and less tolerance for political dissent.80
Indeed, the diverse nature of the southern resistance and the lack of a revolutionary state apparatus in Cochinchina made it harder for communists to effectively
eliminate competing forces, as they would in drV areas by late 1946. This led to
a festering and violent political sectarianism in many parts of the mekong delta
as resistance groups competed to gain control of territory and popular support,
which led to a higher incidence of violence against Catholics and their property
in Cochinchina in 1945 and early 1946.81 because Cao Đài and hòa hảo militias
were a powerful force in the resistance in Cochinchina, some of this violence had
a strongly communitarian character.82 moreover, the fact that relations between
missionaries and the local clergy were better in Cochinchina than they were in
northern Annam and tonkin, and the fact that Catholics were much more integrated into the population than elsewhere in Vietnam, made it less likely that
tensions within religious life would become a source for anti-French sentiment.
The Catholic population of Cochinchina also did not have a vocal, forceful advocate of independence at the top of the Church hierarchy like Lê hữu từ. ngô
Đình Thục, well known as a nationalist, was nevertheless in the delicate position
of navigating the French occupation while maintaining working relations with the
myriad southern political forces with whom his brothers were in dialogue. In such
a position, he did his best to remain politically circumspect until well into 1947.83
Finally, Catholics in Cochinchina, unlike those in Annam and tonkin, did not
have the option of participating in a clearly nationalist but clearly independent
Church organization, as the Catholic League in Cochinchina was controlled by
pro–Việt minh Catholics from the outset. In short, the Catholic population in
Cochinchina was not mobilized by a revolutionary government or by its Church
Revolution and War 229
leadership, was under pressure from French forces, and faced a much higher risk
of violence as a consequence of political activity. As such, it exhibited far greater
degrees of attentisme in 1945 and 1946.
In drV-controlled areas, Catholic attitudes toward the new state underwent a
marked shift between late 1945 and mid-1946. In 1945, opposition to the drV was
largely limited to two parts of Catholic society. The first were elite, Francophile,
socially conservative Catholics, a group that included people such as nguyễn huy
Lai, a lawyer and later an official in the Associated State of Vietnam (ASV) and
rVn, who flirted with Social Catholic ideas in the 1930s but quickly turned to
a pro-French position after 1945. The second were those members of the clergy,
often older, who did not reject French religious (and often political) tutelage. however, in the nine months after independence, if not sooner, the attitudes of most of
the clergy and lay Catholics in Annam and tonkin toward the drV became more
subdued, if not hostile, even if their enthusiasm for independence remained undiminished. That a shift took place more or less en masse may be partly explained by
the strongly corporate nature of Catholic communities and the extent of clerical
influence in Catholic life in these regions, but why did the shift take place at all?
It was likely in part a reaction to the drV’s difficulty in functioning effectively as
a state in some areas, especially in light of the widespread material hardships, the
continuation of colonial-era taxes, and strong pressures to volunteer resources and
labor.84 The drV’s scorched-earth campaigns, which grew as French troops returned to Annam and tonkin during the summer of 1946, also worsened the state’s
relations with some parts of the population, Catholic and otherwise.
The principal source for growing Catholic opposition to the drV, however, was
clearly political. In 1945, in trần Thị Liên’s words, “the Việt minh . . . presented
itself not as a party, but as a front for national liberation, which Catholics supported.”85 yet from the moment of the Japanese coup, the communist leadership
of the Việt minh faced widespread if disparate opposition in the north from a
range of nationalist forces, notably the Vietnamese nationalist Party (Việt nam
Quốc dân Đảng), the nationalist Party of Great Vietnam (Đại Việt Quốc dân
Đảng), and the revolutionary League of Vietnam (Việt nam Cách mạng Đồng
minh hội), many of which received support and protection from the occupying
Chinese nationalist forces. The year 1946 was a time of violent political sectarianism in northern Vietnam, during which communists used propaganda, violence,
and the drV state apparatus to effectively silence nationalist opposition.86 Fran-
çois Guillemot has documented the extensive Catholic participation in the myriad
nationalist forces operating in northern Vietnam before mid-1946; the Việt nam
Quốc dân Đảng even had its own organization, Quốc Gia Công Giáo (nationalist
Catholics), to recruit and organize Catholics.87 In addition to repressing nationalist groups to which many Catholics belonged, communist forces increasingly in
control of the drV also began to seek greater control over the Catholic League and
230 chapter 7
Catholic Action youth and worker associations, and they almost certainly rigged
legislative elections in ninh bình and nam Định in an attempt to tighten political
control over the important Catholic minority in anticipation of war with France.88
When the war began in december 1946, northern Catholics were thus caught between two powerful but unappealing forces: a French attempt to retake Vietnam,
which virtually all Catholics strongly opposed, and an increasingly autocratic
and antagonistic drV government, which was exerting growing control over the
Church hierarchy and institutions as well as over oppositional political forces.
The communist power play in the drV 1946 led the northern Catholic leadership to seek greater autonomy from the revolutionary government. From 1947
until late 1949, the adjoining dioceses of Phát diệm and bùi Chu, which contained
nearly half of Vietnamese Catholics, were the only areas in central and northern
Vietnam not under drV or French control. much of this was due to Lê hữu từ’s
commitment to preserving both Vietnamese independence and Catholic autonomy from the drV communist leadership. Thefts, arrests, armed conflicts, and assassinations plagued relations between drV forces and Catholics in these regions
as early as late 1946, as did the noncommunist political forces streaming into the
Catholic zones for protection, but the onset of war made it absolutely essential
for the drV leadership to prevent an alliance between Catholics and the French.
This gave Catholic leaders room to build what was, in essence, a separate state in
the region of Phát diệm and bùi Chu. Catholics used seminaries, schools, and
associations as a foundation to gather intelligence, arms, and recruits and to organize political education and rallies. The Catholic autonomous zone had a standing
army, a widespread intelligence network, a service for information and propaganda, and even its own newspapers and radio station. despite regular conflicts
between drV forces and Catholic militias throughout 1947 and 1948, the Catholic
refusal to carry out the state’s scorched-earth policy, and từ’s periodic diplomatic
engagement with the French, it was only in late 1948, when drV influence in the
region had grown and official policy was radicalizing, that từ began to consider
alternatives to accommodation with the drV. but a French military operation in
Phát diệm and bùi Chu in october 1949 again stoked the anger of Catholic leaders, and the lack of credible noncommunist political alternatives meant that even
in early 1950, Lê hữu từ still held out hope of a working alliance with the revolutionary government.89
Internal documents and propaganda from both sides of the increasingly
fraught relationship between the drV and Catholics in northern Vietnam before
1949 suggest that ideology took a backseat to questions of relative autonomy and
influence during the first half of the war. most drV officials, even communists,
continued to view Catholic opposition as a result not of religion in and of itself but
of the highly organized, hierarchical structure of the Church, which in their minds
allowed European religious authorities and their acolytes to undermine a national
Revolution and War 231
government that drV officials believed most Catholics would otherwise support. drV strategy with respect to Catholics thus continued to focus on separating Vietnamese Catholics from European influence, using allies among the local
clergy to assure lay Catholics of the state’s committment to religious freedom, and
increasing participation in state-sanctioned Catholic organizations.90 It was not
until 1949 that growing radicalism among the drV leadership began to translate
into more explicit anti-Catholicism, and it was still later when this had meaningful effects in drV-controlled areas. meanwhile, although the growing anticommunism in Vietnamese Catholic discourse continued to be inflected by questions
of theory and doctrine, the primary focus of newspapers like Hồn Công Giáo was
communist control over the political sphere and institutional life in the drV. The
global context, much as it was in the colonial era, was a factor: anticommunism at
the Vatican, extremely powerful in the late 1940s and after, was less pronounced
during the years immediately after the end of the Second World War, and it had a
minor effect on Vietnamese Catholic perceptions of the drV before 1949.
The situation in Cochinchina during the first half of the war was, again, quite
different. Indeed, more and more Catholics seem to have become involved in resistance activities as the war in the mekong delta continued. Indeed, by early 1948,
some French officials estimated that fully half of Catholics in Cochinchina were
involved with or favored the resistance against the French.91 Further research on
this subject is sorely needed, but it is clear that the simple fact of the French occupation is not enough to explain the rapid growth of Catholic support for the southern resistance, especially since so few Catholics in Cochinchina supported the Việt
minh in 1945 and early 1946. The growing appeal of the Việt minh for Catholics in
the mekong delta in the early part of the war probably had much to do with the
front’s ability to effectively organize under the banner of the Catholic League. by
late 1947, more than one hundred chapters reportedly rallied seventy-five thousand
Catholics in Cochinchina to create and distribute propaganda, organize and lead
political instruction, gather intelligence, solicit supplies, and recruit new members.92 League networks were very strong in the greater Saigon area, where Catholic mutual aid groups and associations offered a ready framework for the league’s
efforts to support resistance activities. Perhaps more important, however, were the
fluctuating political alliances that characterized the early period of the resistance
in Cochinchina, which kept the Việt minh, noncommunist nationalist forces, and
the religious sects in active dialogue with one another well into the war, unlike in
the center and the north. The nature of socioreligious organization may also have
facilitated growing Catholic resistance: the diffuse nature of Catholic social geography and the lesser presence of the clergy in the lives of ordinary Catholics both
likely limited the influence of Church authorities over political choices. Indeed,
French intelligence noted a correlation with clerical influence where Catholic opposition to the Việt minh existed in rural Cochinchina.93 It is important to note,
232 chapter 7
however, that Catholic supporters of the Việt minh in Cochinchina were likely no
more than 10 percent of Vietnam’s total Catholic population.
The political climate in southern Catholic life was evident in the French failure
to make Catholics a core anti–Việt minh ally. The mobile Unions of Christian
defense (Unités mobiles de défense de la Chrétienté, or UmdCs) in Cochinchina
were the initiative of a métis colonel in the French army named Jean Leroy. Leroy,
from outside mỹ Tho, formed the first UmdCs largely to increase his personal influence in this part of the mekong delta. Why Leroy chose Catholics as a potential
base is not clear: although he attended Catholic schools, by all accounts he was not
an active Catholic, and the political affinities of most Catholics in Cochinchina
at that time offered little reason to think that they might be productively organized as an anti–Việt minh force. however, the French army saw the UmdCs as
a nominally autonomous form of anticommunist resistance that would be politically useful but still easily controlled. UmdCs certainly did attract some Catholic
anti–Việt minh partisans in the mỹ Tho / bến tre region, and some, most notably
huỳnh Công hậu, tried to use the UmdCs as a path to political power in Saigon.
however, although a few UmdCs were actual auto-defense groups with close ties
to individual Catholic communities, more of them were, in trần Thị Liên’s words,
“a Catholic façade” for mobile, highly armed paramilitary units whose leaders and
most members were not Catholic, that spent little time defending Catholic communities, and that sometimes even forced Catholic conscriptions to preserve a
semblance of their public purpose.94 Church officials and most Catholic nationalists eventually disavowed them, and local Catholics tended to join them only when
their alternatives were unsatisfactory.95
The first few years of the First Indochina War were politically and militarily
inconclusive. Although the drV and Việt minh enjoyed a huge advantage in domestic politics, a lack of international allies weakened their diplomatic position.
France, on the other hand, was unsuccessful in its search for credible allies among
Vietnam’s noncommunist political groups, and volatile French domestic politics
continued to separate supporters of negotiation with the drV from advocates of
further military intervention. This, as well as a resilient and resourceful Vietnamese war effort, largely neutralized France’s material advantages, limiting French
gains to major cities and some heavily populated areas in the river deltas and along
the coast. The failure to force the drV to a political solution brought the French
to more actively seek Vietnamese political allies, most notably the former emperor
bảo Đại. bảo Đại left Vietnam in 1947 for hong Kong, where he met with French
officials and a range of noncommunist Vietnamese nationalists, both of whom
hoped to use his considerable visibility as a political asset. Under pressure from the
military stalemate and the growing likelihood of a communist victory in China,
and in search of American support for their war effort, the French, in a June 1948
agreement, conceded the union of Cochinchina with Annam and tonkin in an
Revolution and War 233
“independent” Vietnam under bảo Đại but still within a French Union. The state
that emerged out of this agreement, the Associated State of Vietnam (ASV), formalized in mid-1949, made a claim to all Vietnamese territory, as did the drV.
The emergence of new noncommunist political forces after the repression of
nationalist forces in the drV in 1946 would shape the political choices of most
Vietnamese Catholics for the rest of the war. In general, the few explicitly “proFrench” Vietnamese Catholics before 1950 reflected two different positions.
nguyễn mạnh hà, for one, saw the French resistance against nazi Germany as a
model for Catholic-communist collaboration that he hoped might come to be in
Vietnam, and he and other left-wing Catholic intellectuals positioned themselves
as intermediaries in a dialogue with a waning chance of success after Franco-drV
talks collapsed in may 1947. Although this quickly worsened hà’s relationship with
drV officials, many French military officials so hated the “pro-French” hà’s politics that he and his family had to flee hanoi for hải Phòng under the protection
of French security forces.96 hà, expelled from Việt nam by the French general
Jean de Lattre de tassigny in 1951, continued his quest for a peace settlement in
progressive Catholic circles in France. After the war ended, hà returned briefly to
hanoi to help formalize the status of the Church under drV rule, and his efforts
appear to have been an important reason the communist leadership did not create
an official state Church, independent from rome, like the Chinese Communist
Party did in China.97
While left-wing Catholics such as hà continued to hope for a coalition government in the drV and a diplomatic solution to the conflict, a small number
of Catholic political elite began to gravitate toward bảo Đại. The most notable
was Phan Văn Giáo, a wealthy huế pharmacist, who from 1947 until 1949 was an
important intermediary between the French and bảo Đại and contributed large
amounts of money to the emperor’s political efforts. other early Catholic supporters of bảo Đại were nguyễn Đệ and nguyễn huy Lai, both of whom had
rejected the drV at an early moment. All three men would play important roles
in the ASV government after 1950.98 but in trần Thị Liên’s words, “these Catholics
who participated in power did so as individuals and did not represent at all the
political position of their coreligionists.”99 Indeed, Catholic support for bảo Đại
was noticeably tepid despite active French efforts to recruit them under the ASV
banner.100 Lê hữu từ made contact with bảo Đại in 1947 in hong Kong, but he was
disappointed at the emperor’s ongoing inability to work with Vietnamese nationalists, and France’s destructive war effort intensified the anti-French feelings of the
Catholic population in central and northern Vietnam even as they increasingly
opposed the drV.101 The ASV did have some early support from anti–Việt minh
Catholics in Cochinchina, notably those involved in the UmdCs.102
ngô Đình diệm and his brothers, the overwhelming political choice of Vietnamese Catholics by the end of the First Indochina War, spent the first half of the
234 chapter 7
conflict in considerable political flux. The years 1945 and 1946 were a difficult time
for the ngôs, beginning with what Ed miller has described as diệm’s “colossal miscalculation” in rejecting bảo Đại’s offer to become premier of the Empire of Vietnam after the Japanese coup.103 Khôi, the eldest of the brothers, was assassinated by
Việt minh cadres in September; the French occupation of Cochinchina gave Thục
little room to use his position as bishop of Vĩnh Long to political ends; and nhu
was the head of the archives and library of Indochina in hanoi. diệm was detained
shortly after the August revolution, and in early 1946 he was brought to hanoi,
where he was offered a position in a Việt minh unity government. he rejected the
position, although not for the ideological reasons he would later claim. In fact,
he was not given as much control as he desired over Việt minh security policy,
and he spent most of 1946 outside Vietnam.104 With the ngô brothers themselves
largely neutralized, it was their Catholic partisans around huế who began to move
away from a royalist position of support for Cường Để to develop new political
networks. In 1945 and 1946, the most important figure in this effort was trần Văn
Lý, who organized his coreligionists through chapters of the Catholic League. ngô
Đình Khôi’s widow (who was also nguyễn hữu bài’s daughter) was a major financial contributor to this effort. Some ngô partisans in other regions also began to
organize. In 1946 Việt minh security forces noted the emergence of a new political
party in the nghệ An / hạ tĩnh region, the Đảng bình dân (Popular Party), which
was comprised of remnants of diệm’s restoration Party, various youth organizations, and Caodaists.105
diệm’s activities in 1947 focused on organizing anti–drV/Việt minh forces,
which were weakened and dispersed after the communist crackdown in 1946, into
a unified and viable political movement under a new organization called the Vietnam national Alliance (Việt nam Quốc Gia Liên hiệp). diệm’s main ally in this
effort was nguyễn tôn hoàn, a southern Catholic and founding member of the
Đại Việt party. Like many of his fellow nationalists, diệm recognized that bảo
Đại, then in hong Kong receiving overtures from Vietnamese nationalists and the
French, was the only political figure recognizable enough to lead a nationwide opposition movement. diệm was thus not opposed to a monarchical solution; indeed,
he actively sought one into 1948, albeit one in which Vietnam would be unambiguously independent from France. As Ed miller points out, diệm also pressed bảo
Đại to accept an essentially republican model of government in which the emperor
had to consult with an assembly before accepting a French proposal.106 The effort
to partner with bảo Đại failed in mid-1948, when the emperor accepted a series of
French terms that laid the foundation for the ASV, terms that diệm found unacceptable. When nguyễn tôn hoàn and several other nationalists decided to back
the ASV, diệm broke with them.107
The fluidity of diệm’s political quest in the early part of the war meant that
during his negotiations with bảo Đại, he was also in contact with the Việt minh
Revolution and War 235
in Cochinchina, where he believed noncommunists made up the majority of the
resistance. Pro-Việt minh Catholics mainly rejected diệm’s overtures—the priest
nguyễn bá Luật described diệm as carrying out “the orders of the colonialist and
reactionary French”108—but he was respected enough that he almost convinced
nguyễn bình, the Việt minh’s top commander in the south, to defect. At the same
time, diệm launched a full-fledged effort to build an independent political base
in Cochinchina. his main engine for this was a political party based in Catholic
youth and workers’ associations, the Social Catholic Party (Đảng Xã hội Công
Giáo), and two new Catholic newspapers, Ý Dân (The ideas of the people) and
Hoạt Động (Action).109 diêm’s brothers were crucial to his expanding efforts in
the south in 1948. Thục’s position as bishop helped diệm establish credibility with
clerical networks, and the Vĩnh Long diocese was an important refuge for noncommunist resistance forces. nhu, who had left hanoi for huế in 1947, came to
Saigon in 1948 to organize for diệm among non-Catholic nationalist forces. Cẩn,
the youngest, remained in huế to shore up Catholic support there, and even ngô
Đình Luyện, then in France, sought contacts among émigrés.110
From C oLonIAL WAr to C oLd WAr: 195 0–195 4
The Chinese communist victory in 1949 transformed the First Indochina War into
a Cold War battleground. The creation of the People’s republic of China gave the
drV a powerful ally; the PrC recognized the drV in 1950, and the USSr did
so just after. The PrC also linked the drV to the global communist block, and
Chinese supplies and advisors began streaming across the border. This vastly increased the drV’s military capabilities, which was a severe blow to the French war
effort. The changing international situation, the slow, partial nature of domestic
revolutionary change to that point, and the creation of the ASV all led the drV
leadership toward a more militantly marxist political ideology and tactics in and
after 1949. to communism’s opponents, the creation of the PrC epitomized an
increasingly worrisome global situation, as former colonies across the world pursued political paths that American and Western European policymakers feared
would jeopardize their national interests. Although some in the American State
department opposed France’s effort to return to Indochina and recognized the
weaknesses of the ASV, diplomatic pressure from France and britain won the day,
and America began to help pay for France’s war.111 The Vatican, especially concerned about the condition of Asian Churches, also quickly shifted from neutrality
to support for noncommunist political movements after 1949. Global politics also
sharpened the attitudes of Vietnamese anticommunists, who began cutting their
remaining ties to the drV and the Việt minh.
Pope Pius XII’s 1951 encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis (On Communism in
China) captured the Vatican’s increasingly vocal anticommunism since the spread
236 chapter 7
of Soviet influence in Europe and the victory of the PrC. but while growing trepidation about global communism undoubtedly informed rome’s decision to recognize the ASV in march 1950, this was less an affirmation of support for France’s
colonial ambitions in Vietnam than simply a recognition that there were no other
meaningful alternatives to the drV. rome continued to develop a Vietnamese
Church despite French diplomatic pressure, replacing French with Vietnamese at
the heads of dioceses and in 1951 naming John dooley, an Irish priest, the first
non-French apostolic delegate since Costantino Aiuti. rome was aware that many
Vietnamese Catholics were dissatisfied with the ASV, thanks in no small part to
the efforts of some ngô family partisans in rome, and it did not at first establish
diplomatic relations with or send a papal nuncio to the new state. This dismayed
French officials, who intensified their efforts to convince rome that the war was
an important part of the global war against communism. It was only in 1952 that
rome’s position shifted to full-fledged support of the ASV, mostly because more
Vietnamese Catholics by then supported the new state.
The Vatican’s recognition of the ASV was not the main reason for the growth of
Vietnamese Catholic support for bảo Đại after 1950. by the end of 1950, a long trip
he had taken in Europe, which had included an audience with the pope, as well as
a drV military offensive had made Lê hữu từ more realistic about the situation
in Phát diệm and bùi Chu. however, he and the new bishop of bùi Chu, Phạm
ngọc Chi, continued to resist the integration of the region into the ASV, pursuing
a similar policy toward the new state as they had toward the drV, leveraging their
region’s strategic importance to try to preserve its autonomy. từ accepted ASV
aid, but he continued to make vocal proclamations in favor of independence in
the first half of 1951 and to seek contact with anti-ASV Catholics in other parts of
Vietnam. The August 1951 integration of Catholic paramilitary units with FrancoVietnamese forces was largely forced by a more robust French military policy to
combat a drV offensive—a “rallying” of Catholics to the ASV that, although it did
reflect real shifts in the political position of Catholic leaders since the earlier part
of the war, nevertheless belied the continued resistance of many in Phát diệm and
bùi Chu to this solution. however, it also seems that some priests and influential
lay Catholics, including hoàng Quỳnh, were not as opposed to the ASV as từ was,
and he may have felt some internal pressure to align more firmly with it.112
Although it was primarily military conditions that led the leadership of Catholic autonomous zones into more direct engagement with the ASV and FrancoVietnamese forces in 1951, they were also well aware that the experience of
Catholics under drV rule was taking a turn for the worse. The drV’s turn toward
a more overt marxism in its propaganda and policies resulted in intensified indoctrination and less tolerance of opposition or dissent among the population. both
French and drV sources reveal that intensified political education (and the closing of parochial schools and other Catholic institutions that often came with it)
Revolution and War 237
heightened the confrontations between drV officials and Catholics, particularly
priests, in many areas that had experienced relatively little conflict before 1950.113
however, drV propaganda well into 1951 continued to focus more on mobilizing
Catholics than demonizing them, even as it turned away from praising rome for
forming national Churches toward excoriating it as an imperialist cabal, and most
Catholic ritual, associational, and institutional activities continued to bear about
the same level of state control as other groups. This was partly due to the continuing ambiguity in Phát diệm and bùi Chu, where leaders continued to express
anti-ASV and anti-French sentiment, as well as to the drV’s need for manpower
and material from all parts of society for the war effort. And in some regions, drV
political education and propaganda toward Catholics continued to gain Catholic converts even at a time when the exuberance of 1945 had become a distant
memory for most.114
A pastoral letter dated november 9, 1951, signed by fifteen of Vietnam’s bishops,
was the definitive break between rome, the Vietnamese Church hierarchy, and the
drV. The letter enjoined all Vietnamese Catholics to remember that “there exists
the most complete opposition between the Catholic Church and Communism, to
such an extent that the holy Father has declared that it is absolutely impossible to
be at the same time a Catholic and a Communist . . . but not only is it forbidden
to join the Communist Party; you must not co-operate with it or do anything that
in some way might bring the Communist Party to power.”115 Although drV officials and propaganda (and many historians since) presented the letter as a sign
of Vatican control over Vietnamese Catholic life and politics, it almost certainly
would not have been written against the wishes of the Vietnamese bishops, especially từ. Why, then, was it written? by the end of 1951, two things had shifted
Vietnam’s bishops toward open confrontation with the drV. The first was the military situation in Phát diệm and bùi Chu, particularly a major drV offensive during the summer of 1951, which confirmed that the autonomy that the Catholic zone
had enjoyed since 1945 would soon come to an end. The other was the worsening
situation of Catholic life in drV areas. Although a close focus on or manipulation
of individual incidents or rumors may have made the situation out to be more
dire than it was, stories of incidents such as the January 1951 trial and execution
of Phạm Thuyên, a priest in the Vinh diocese, apparently spread quickly in Phát
diệm and bùi Chu.116 Although từ and Phạm ngọc Chi, if not the other bishops,
remained skeptical of the ASV, growing drV military efforts and ideological radicalism made it virtually impossible for Church leaders to continue to engage with
the revolutionary government.
Thanks to the new visibility of marxist-Leninist ideology in drV policy and
the renewal of rome’s prewar campaigns against the extreme left, anticommunism
was more widespread in Vietnamese Catholic life in late 1951 than it had ever been
before. nevertheless, the pastoral letter’s implication of a single Catholic position
238 chapter 7
in Vietnam’s political conflicts belied a complex situation, especially outside the
main military theater in the north. In Cochinchina, ngô Đình Thục and ngô Đình
nhu continued to make Catholics a base for their widening efforts on behalf of
their brother, who had left Vietnam in 1950 to campaign abroad for support for his
opposition to the ASV. many Catholics still supported the southern resistance, but
with the Vatican and the Vietnamese Church hierarchy now unequivocal about
their political position, pressure grew on resistance Catholics. Some priests were
forbidden by their bishops to say mass, and leaflets rained from the sky with portraits of Pius XII and Apostolic delegate John dooley and their respective anticommunist proclamations, as well as stories of Catholics forced to apostasy or
murdered.117 one priest involved in the resistance remembered reading the news
of his own death on one such leaflet.118 of course, pressure also came from Việt
minh partisans, who became more hostile to Catholics after the 1951 pastoral letter. Things were especially difficult for the few Catholic supporters of the drV,
who endured the suspicion of the government (and at times worse) as well as the
widespread enmity of the Catholic population, the vast majority of which actively
opposed the drV by the early 1950s.119 nevertheless, some soldiered on: Phạm
bá trực continued to write tracts appealing to Catholics to support the drV and
recounting stories of resistance Catholics in other regions.120
The 1951 pastoral letter, which to the Vietnamese communist leadership confirmed the a priori anticommunism of all Catholics, was also a breaking point in
drV policy. In and after 1952, Catholics in drV-controlled areas, especially those
in Liên Khu IV (roughly nghệ An, hạ tĩnh, and Thanh hóa), faced grim conditions. The clergy had virtually no freedom of movement, most of the remaining
Catholic presses were closed, and Catholic freedom to associate was further restricted. beginning in 1952, land reforms resulted in the confiscation and redistribution of large tracts of Catholic land. At this time, one of the most fervently
ideological moments in drV history, many Catholics were imprisoned and even
executed for “crimes” such as those for which thirty-four members of the Catholic
League in Vinh were sentenced in 1952: “membership in a reactionary body” and
“causing a spirit of opposing the Government and the resistance and spreading
secret propaganda amongst their flock.”121 Some Catholic resistance to the drV,
however, was far from imagined. In the spring of 1952, Catholics in nghệ An organized an armed revolt that required an entire division of drV troops to put down.
What followed was, in the words of a missionary who had heard accounts from
Catholic refugees, “a monstrous trial, meticulously prepared . . . on the model of
the famous trials of moscow.” Chaplains and leaders of Catholic Action were tried
before a people’s tribunal and crowds that drV newspapers estimated contained
thirty thousand people. Three were condemned to death, and most of the others were sentenced to political reeducation for as long as twenty-five years. refugees reported that drV officials praised the trial as a model for local action and
Revolution and War 239
that, in the following weeks, local populations wantonly arrested and tortured
Catholics.122
The arrival of the Cold War in Indochina put ngô Đình diệm and his supporters in a very difficult position. The newly created ASV poached some of diệm’s
allies, and the recognition of the ASV by the Americans and the british seemed to
marginalize him in debates over Vietnam’s political future more than ever before.
It was at this moment, however, when diệm began to turn away from political
triangulation toward a more explicitly ideological vision for an independent Vietnam. In a June 16, 1949, statement rejecting the ASV, diệm argued, “The present
struggle is not only a battle for the political independence of the Fatherland, but
also a social revolution [cách mạng xã hội] to restore independence to the peasants
and workers of Vietnam. In order that each and every person in Vietnam can have
sufficient means to live in a manner befitting the dignity of a man who is truly
free, I advocate social reforms that are sweeping and bold, with the condition that
the dignity of man will always be respected and will be free to flourish.”123 Social
Catholicism had shaped diệm’s political initiatives before then, but the 1949 statement was the clearest link yet between diệm and personalism, whose attempt to
balance social revolution and the value of the person would shape his political
philosophy as president of the rVn.
The traces of personalism in diệm’s 1949 address reveal the continuing importance of diệm’s brothers to his political ambitions. In 1949, nhu and the mEP missionary Fernand Parrel formed a personalist study group in dalat, which became
a base to spread personalism through seminars and conferences throughout Vietnam, as well as in print.124 Foretelling the limited resonance of diệm’s political philosophy with the South Vietnamese population, nhu’s efforts did not transform
the ngô family brand of personalism into anything approaching a mass movement. nhu’s ongoing campaigns to maintain and expand diệm’s political base,
however, were much more consequential, leading to the 1953 formation of a political organization, the revolutionary Personalist Workers Party (Cần Lao nhân
Vị Cách mạng Đảng), which was crucial to the ngôs’ power in South Vietnam.
The ngôs’ most important alliance under the banner of the Cần Lao was with
trần Quốc bửu, Vietnam’s most influential labor organizer, who helped expand
the ngôs’ base outside Catholic circles. Perhaps the ngô family’s most consequential political organizing at this time was by ngô Đình Cẩn, who founded Cần Lao
cells among junior officers of the ASV’s newly formed military force, the Vietnam
national Army, and among ASV administrators.125
but with the recognition of the drV and ASV by opposing sides on the Cold
War stage, ngô Đình diệm came to realize that his path to power in Vietnam lay
overseas. As his brothers navigated the fracas of Vietnamese politics on his behalf,
diệm set out in August 1950 on a four-year trip during which he would forge
political collections fateful for Vietnam’s future. As Ed miller has shown, when
240 chapter 7
diệm left he had no plans more specific than trying to garner support from foreign
governments. The first few months of diệm’s trip were largely a failure; his attempt
to revive his relationship with Cường Để in Japan and his appeals to French and
ASV officials in Paris came to little, and he came off poorly in his earliest contacts
with the State department. In Japan, however, diệm forged a crucial relationship
with Wesley Fishel, a political scientist with close ties to some of the Asian political leaders at the center of his research. In december 1950, diệm returned to the
United States. over the next several years, Fishel helped diệm gain an audience
with prominent American politicians, academics, journalists, and judges, and he
obtained diệm a position as a consultant at Fishel’s home institution of michigan State College (now michigan State University). Fishel and diệm proposed a
series of technical assistance projects for Vietnam that in 1955 would become the
michigan State University Group, a USAId program that provided America’s first
substantial aid to the rVn. diệm also benefited from Thục’s Vatican contacts to
arrange meetings with prominent American Catholics such as Cardinal Francis
Spellman, as well as to spend time in Catholic seminaries. As miller argues, diệm’s
eclectic body of supporters reveals the complexity of his political vision and the
acuity of his self-fashioning: his anticommunism and Catholicism appealed to
conservatives, but his belief in American technical and disciplinary modernization as a tool for development attracted more liberal patrons.126 A few years later,
the new friendships and partnerships that diệm developed in America became
a vocal constituency that helped tip the American government toward full-scale
support of his regime.
In mid-1953, diệm and his brothers sensed an opening as the political tide in
Indochina began to turn. As the war dragged on, bảo Đại’s gradualist approach to
independence began to frustrate an increasing number of his allies. With diệm
overseas, nhu took the lead in organizing a Unity Congress, formed of various anticommunist groups, in September in Saigon. The congress quickly disintegrated
into bickering, but it also revealed widespread and deep dissatisfaction with the
ASV’s head of state. bảo Đại, also overseas, followed quickly with his own national
Congress a month later, which backfired: the participants rejected bảo Đại’s policy
of seeking independence through a French Union. desperately in need of credible
political allies, especially when the news broke in Saigon of the siege of the French
base at Điện biên Phủ in march 1954 and the upcoming talks on Indochina to be
held in Geneva, bảo Đại reestablished contact with diệm, dismissed the unpopular premier nguyễn Văn tâm, and agreed to the creation of a new national assembly. In may 1954, the defeat of the French at Điện biên Phủ sounded the death
knell for French Indochina. bảo Đại named diệm prime minister of the ASV a few
days later. Under the Geneva Accords, which the delegation of the ASV did not
sign, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned into two zones, separated at the seventeenth parallel. The drV would govern in the north, the ASV in the south. Free
Revolution and War 241
movement of the population was to be allowed between the zones, with a general
election scheduled for July 1956 to determine the country’s political future. diệm’s
rise to power was far from assured when he returned to the chaos of Saigon in June
1954. bảo Đại and other ASV officials deeply distrusted him, and the bình Xuyên
bandit army, the Cao Đài and hòa hảo sects, the Vietnamese national Army, and,
of course, the Việt minh all challenged the authority of the ASV itself. but over the
following fifteen months, in one of his most adept acts of political maneuvering,
diệm, with the help of the American CIA, successfully pushed back his challengers. on october 23, 1955, in a referendum to determine the political future of the
southern zone, diệm and his political machine controlled the election, overthrew
bảo Đại, and established a new state, the republic of Vietnam, with diệm as president. For the first time ever, a Catholic was head of state in Vietnam.
242
Epilogue
A national Church divided
In late 1954, a book titled A History of Persecutions in Vietnam appeared in stores
in the chaos of post-Geneva Saigon. The author, a Catholic named trần minh tiết,
lost thirteen family members during the First Indochina War. he fled his home in
central Vietnam as part of a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Catholics
from north to south from mid-1954 until late 1955. For tiết, as for many of his fellow refugees, the trauma of war and displacement echoed the martyr stories that
he had heard in church sermons and had read about in school as a child. “Like
during the reigns of minh-mang, Thieu-tri, and tu-duc,” wrote tiết, “the current
era of ho Chi minh has brought to our Church under a more hypocritical form
just as much blood and fire as the tragic years of last century.” In the book’s final
chapter, tiết told stories about murdered priests, interned missionaries, pillaged
churches, burned schools, and faithful that were displaced during the recent war,
which, for him, revealed the truth about the regime he had just fled: “Catholics,
who make up 10 percent of the population and are one of the most vibrant elements of the nation,” he wrote, are “martyred and pillaged by Vietminh communists.”1 tiết’s modern martyr story soon had an international audience. most
Catholic refugees who left north Vietnam did so on American ships under the
Passage to Freedom program, and American journalists and Catholics assisting in
the operation transformed the exodus into a Cold War story of Christianity and
freedom fighting the evils of godless communism.2
As tiết fled south, an observer named hoàng Linh, sent by drV officials to
interview refugees gathering in Phát diệm in preparation for departure, wrote his
own impressions of the bắc di cư. For Linh, “the truth in Phát diệm” (the title he
chose for his pamphlet on the subject) was that Catholic fears of persecution and
A National Church Divided 243
martyrdom were the result of a propaganda campaign waged by “the criminals of
the ngô Đình diệm gang, American henchmen, and French reactionaries” trying to undermine Vietnam’s national revolution. Linh’s characterization of ordinary Catholics, less militant, was still patronizing: propaganda had “mesmerized
and confused our comrades to emigrate south,” whether through promises of free
land and water buffalo or threats that they would lose their souls if they did not
leave.3 Similarly, communist revolutionaries thinking about contemporary events
in terms of a national past saw the tensions between many Catholics and the drV
as part of a long historical struggle between “the nation” and “foreign” elements. In
1952, the revolutionary intellectual nguyễn Văn nguyễn argued, “French colonialists used the belief of our Catholic compatriots in God, who were led by priests
to accept the machine of colonial rule, giving it more strength in repressing and
exploiting the people.”4 This idea would soon find fertile ground in revolutionary
historiography and in drV criticisms of rVn regimes led by the Catholics ngô
Đình diệm and nguyễn Văn Thiệu, and it remains a powerful trope in Churchstate relations and an important part of popular conceptions of Catholicism in
contemporary Vietnam.
Catholics who were part of the bắc di cư, however, had reasons for leaving
and experiences afterward that defy such easy explanations. Few were, as Linh’s
pamphlet claimed, simple instruments of foreign propaganda. As the head of CIA
psywar efforts in north Vietnam Edward Landsdale himself said, “People don’t
just pull up their roots and transplant themselves because of slogans. They honestly feared what might happen to them, and their emotion was strong enough to
overcome their attachment to their land, their homes, and their ancestral graves.
So the initiative was very much theirs—and we mainly made the transportation
possible.”5 For the foreign observers who sympathized with the departing Catholics, or instrumentalized them for political purposes, the bắc di cư were leaving for
one very simple reason: to preserve their religious freedom. These observers were
at least partially correct, for many refugees understood their recent experience of
drV repression in the context of the history of the Catholic faith in general and
their Church in particular. As Peter hansen notes, the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt was a scriptural theme that shaped the decisions and experiences
of the bắc di cư. This was especially powerful in light of the memory of the communitarian violence of the 1880s, which some of the oldest Catholics in the bắc di
cư had experienced firsthand. As hansen notes, “For many Catholics, flight in the
face of the perceived threat of persecution was a preconditioned and eminently
sensible mode of conduct, and it was hardly one that they needed to learn from
outsiders” (fig. 13).6
however, it is not enough simply to leave it at that. Above all, this study has attempted to argue that to “be Catholic” in colonial-era Vietnam was, like all other
religious identities, a relationship between a transcendent system of belief and
244 Epilogue
the political, social, economic, and cultural currents of a time and place. As such,
although spirituality clearly shaped the decisions of many Catholics to leave the
drV, other material reasons and experiences were often just as important, if not
more so. Some Catholics, especially those who had direct connections to the ASV
or other noncommunist nationalist movements, feared reprisals for political and
military opposition to the new state. others worried about poor economic conditions in the north, especially in light of the famine in 1944 and 1945, and many
feared that drV economic policies, especially land redistribution, would make
the economic situation even worse. Some simply saw American ships as an opportunity to move to a region whose economic opportunities had long appealed to
northern Vietnamese, Catholic and other. Still others felt that ngô Đình diệm best
represented their political values, many for reasons that left religion entirely aside.
Figure 13. Catholic refugees from bùi Chu awaiting transport to the south, 1954.
© ECPAd / rEnE, Adrian / FrAnCE.
A National Church Divided 245
hansen argues that the single greatest factor behind Catholic decisions to migrate
was the role of community leaders, in this case the parish clergy: people left in
large numbers when priests told them to do so, and they stayed in large numbers
when priests either heeded the instructions of the apostolic delegate and the new
Vietnamese archbishop of hanoi, or simply bowed to the will of the community.7
For Catholics who chose to leave, the logistical capacity of Church structures created stronger, more direct ties across parishes than in other communities that extended beyond village and neighborhood and allowed Catholics to mobilize in
greater numbers.8 In short, although “religion” was undoubtedly a crucial reason
why so many more Catholics left the drV than did other members of the population, it was neither an exclusive reason nor a unitary one. Thus, while the bắc di cư
reflects, and in some ways affirms, the broader collective conception of religious
community that emerged in the colonial era, it also illustrates the varied identities
and experiences that would continue to shape the lives and choices of Vietnamese
Catholics after the end of French rule.
much like the refugees who streamed south in 1954 and 1955, the regime that
took them in had a more complex relationship to the Church hierarchy and Catholic communities than drV officials and many historians since have affirmed.
“Are ngô Đình diệm’s Policies Catholic?” asked one of his defenders rhetorically
in the title of a 1956 pamphlet that denied the charges.9 Catholic thought and networks were clearly crucial to diệm’s rise and rule, but it is essential to place them
in the proper contexts. The central role of central and northern Catholics in diệm’s
regime, both in the government and in the army, must be understood in light of
his long-standing political networks and allies and not simply in terms of a shared
faith.10 Indeed, diệm often privileged political considerations over religious ones,
which led to regular conflict between his family and the Vatican. This began as
early as 1949, when diệm pressured rome to replace the French apostolic delegate
with a Vietnamese priest, and it intensified after rome recognized the ASV despite
diệm benefiting from Catholic connections during his time in America. Problems
came to a head in 1955, when diệm opposed the Vatican’s choice of nguyễn Van
hiển as the bishop of Saigon because diệm preferred his own brother Thục for
the position (fig. 14). Eight years later, the new bishop of Saigon appealed to diệm
for religious tolerance as the ngôs cracked down on an oppositional movement
centered in buddhist communities in and around huế, a campaign that ultimately
helped bring down the diệm regime. notwithstanding powerful images of shuttered pagodas and monks in chains, the diệm regime’s conflicts with buddhists
also cannot be explained simply by “sanctimony and religious bigotry,” as a recent
study claims.11 Indeed, rhetoric of essential religious and cultural differences belied the broad range of diplomatic and domestic currents, as well as the struggles
within the regime and even within the ngô family itself, that shaped politics in the
republic of Vietnam during diệm’s rule.
246 Epilogue
Catholic politics and society in the republic of Vietnam are as difficult to characterize as the place of Catholic ideas and institutions in ngô Đình diệm’s rise and
rule. many Catholics looked to ngô Đình diệm as a savior in 1955, but political
divisions in Catholic life reemerged as opposition to the regime grew. Just after the
Geneva conference, influential Catholics such as nguyễn mạnh hà were among
the first to advocate negotiating with the drV for a gradual and peaceful reunification through a national unity government.12 Advocates of Social Catholic solutions
to problems in southern society who expressed themselves at conferences and in
journals such as Đại Học and Sống Đạo at times explicitly criticized diệm’s abuses
and the growing American presence in the south.13 Even some of diệm’s staunchest anticommunist allies in the Catholic community such as hoàng Quỳnh, who
had led the bắc di cư south from Phát diệm, came to criticize the corruption in
rVn regimes. Quỳnh later also became a prominent advocate for interreligious
dialogue, partnering with some of the buddhist leaders who had helped to bring
about diệm’s downfall. As hansen notes, although diệm vocally courted northern
Catholics, his government was unequipped to deal with the flood of refugees. As
a result, even the bắc di cư Catholics, initially among diệm’s strongest supporters,
resented many of his resettlement policies. Indeed, in the later stages of refugee resettlement in 1956 and 1957, rVn officials moved many bắc di cư from settlements
Figure 14. ngô Đình
diệm and ngô Đình
Thục, 1961. Wilbur E.
Garrett / national
Geographic Image
Collection / Getty Images.
A National Church Divided 247
of their choosing and placed them, for economic and strategic reasons, in remote
areas in the central highlands or in areas of the mekong delta that some Catholics
felt were too close to hòa hảo and Cao Đài communities.14
Perhaps the deepest fractures in Catholic life in the rVn, however, were between bắc di cư and southern Catholics. during the colonial era, Catholics
throughout Vietnam experienced the growth of a national Church in meaningful
ways: through the erosion of racial hierarchies in religious life, Vietnamese control over Church institutions, higher standards in clerical and lay education, mass
literacy, stronger ties between Vietnam and the global Catholic world, and more.
but until war and partition, far fewer were ever forced to confront real differences
between regional religious cultures, and almost none had to do so under such
difficult conditions. northern Catholics maintained devotional practices particular to their region and even to their parishes, and they worshiped different saints
and martyrs than did southern Catholics. northern priests also had very different
training and very different roles in parish life than did priests in the south. many
bắc di cư communities re-created the close communal structures of làng đạo upon
arrival in the south, even naming their settlements after their former parishes,
out of fear of or disdain for southern life and, for many, out of the hope that they
would soon return home. And of course, explicitly religious differences were not
the only reason for the tensions: bắc di cư Catholics placed huge demands on
southern Catholic educational and social welfare institutions, made demands on
land, labor, and commerce, and incurred the enmity of many non-Catholic southerners toward Catholics in general. Although bắc di cư priests had ceded formal
authority to the southern hierarchy by 1957, the integration of a huge number of
Catholics from a very different regional and ecclesiastical culture was a slow, often
tense process that brought profound and still-ongoing changes to the Church in
the south, the epicenter of Vietnamese Catholicism after 1954.15
Charles tilly has described “identity” as “an actor’s experience of a category,
tie, role, network, group, or organization, coupled with a public representation of
that experience; the public representation often takes the form of a shared story, a
narrative.”16 Independence, the First Indochina War, partition, and migration revealed that the powerful idea and experience of a national Church that grew during the colonial era captures what the sociologist mark Granovetter has called “the
strength of weak ties.”17 Indeed, although colonialism and missionary Catholicism,
and reactions to them, created real and meaningful connections between Vietnamese Catholics, it was only the limited nature of many of these connections that
allowed people to imagine and experience “Church,” much like “nation,” with one
another without fully confronting their real differences. The year 1945 and its aftermath forced all Vietnamese Catholics to confront gaps between individual and
community experiences and the broader meanings ascribed to these experiences
in idealized representations of Church and nation. This is not to deny identity as a
248 Epilogue
historical phenomenon, only to historicize it: the fragmented, fractured nature of
Vietnamese Catholic experiences during the era of decolonization aptly captures
Stuart hall’s understanding of identities as “points of temporary attachments to
the subject positions which discursive practices construct for us.”18 This notwithstanding, ongoing conflicts between Church and state in contemporary Vietnam
have not only helped to perpetuate a simplistic and pejorative narrative about Catholicism’s relationship to colonialism, but they have also helped sustain a narrative of Catholic history after 1954 that does little to explain the place of the Catholic
Church in postcolonial Vietnamese society and politics.
There is no better example of this than the vexed subject of the hundreds of
thousands of Catholics who did not leave north Vietnam in 1954—more, in fact,
than the number who did leave.19 Why did so many Catholics remain? Clearly,
many wanted to leave but could not. In many cases, drV military and administrative officials did not allow Catholics to go, and some Catholics in rural inland regions tried to leave but could not reach departure points in time.20 much like many
who left, some stayed for reasons entirely apart from religion or politics: an attachment to ancestral land, a desire to protect their property, fear of the unknown, ill
health, or other reasons. It is clear that many who did stay had an experience far
from what drV publications have to say about happy Catholics working to build
a new socialist society.21 drV officials deeply distrusted the Church’s powerful organization and the anticommunism of its leadership, and they were well aware
that many lay Catholics who remained in the north had actively resisted the drV
during the war. Some, in fact, continued to do so thereafter: a 1956 Catholic uprising in Quỳnh Lưu district in nghệ An required military intervention in order to
be put down.22 Catholic life in the drV was often very difficult. Church associations and institutions had little freedom, priests were closely watched, and contact
between bishops and the Vatican was extremely limited.23 The most difficult time
in Church-state relations was the land reform campaign, which probably affected
Catholics as much as any other group in northern society apart from large landholders. That said, narratives of unabated misery and persecution based in large
part on the testimony and memories of refugees and the most extreme criticisms
of Catholics in drV propaganda are hardly more illuminating. between the two
lies the history of a large part of the Vietnamese Catholic community who remained in the drV despite an opportunity and good reasons to leave. how did
religion shape their decision to support the revolutionary government, or why did
they do so despite their religion? Were their real hardships and sacrifices enough
for them to lose faith in communism, or did some of them continue to find meaning in its attempt to remake Vietnamese society? If we have no easy answers to
questions like these, it is because the broader question of the place of Vietnamese
Catholics in the revolutionary transformations of their nation’s modern history
remains very much an open one.
249
Notes
IntrodUCtIon
1. Quoted in trần mỹ-Vân, A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan: Prince Cường Để (1882–
1951) (new york: routledge, 2005), 49.
2. The most detailed account of the incident is nicole-Louis henard, “Un épisode ignoré
de l’histoire du protectorat de l’Annam en 1909,” Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’ExtrêmeOrient 75 (1986): 215–48. The romanized names of the three priests vary across accounts;
these are the most common.
3. Ibid., 238.
4. An excellent summary of Catholicism in Vietnam before the nineteenth century is in
George dutton, The Tây Sơn Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam
(honolulu: University of hawai‘i Press, 2006), 176–96.
5. Antoine trần Văn toàn, “La doctrine des ‘trois pères’: Un effort d’inculturation du
christianisme au Vietnam,” Mission 9, no. 1 (2002): 89–104.
6. Jacob ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early
Nineteenth-Century Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 3–4.
7. Introduction to James P. daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and
the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (new york: oxford University Press, 2006).
8. Christopher Goscha. Vietnam or Indochina? Contesting Conceptions of Space in
Vietnamese Nationalism, 1887–1954 (Copenhagen: nIAS books, 1995). As Goscha adeptly
shows, an “Indochinese” space was in many ways just as powerful a reality as “Annam” or
“Vietnam” were throughout the colonial era. This was, in my view, less true for Vietnamese
Catholics, perhaps because of the very limited reach of their religion outside “Vietnamese”
Indochina.
9. mark mcLeod, “nationalism and religion in Vietnam: Phan boi Chau and the Catholic Question,” International History Review 14, no. 4 (november 1992): 661–80.
10. Cao huy Thuần, Les missionnaires et la politique coloniale française au Vietnam
(1857–1914) (new haven, Ct: yale Council on Southeast Asian Studies Lạc Việt Series,
1990), originally completed as a Ph.d. dissertation at the University of Paris in 1969, and
250 Notes to Introduction
nicole-dominique Lê, Les missions-étrangères et la pénétration française au Viêt-Nam
(Paris: mouton, 1975).
11. Patricia Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past (durham,
nC: duke University Press, 2002), 235.
12. A recent such argument is in nguyễn Văn Kiệm, Sự du nhập của đạo thiên chúa
giáo vào Việt Nam từ thế kỷ XVII đến thế kỷ XIX (hanoi: hội Khoa học Lịch Sử Việt nam,
2001).
13. Một số vấn đề lịch sử đạo thiên chúa trong lịch sử dân tộc Việt Nam (ho Chi minh
City: Viện Khoa học Xã hội và ban tôn Giáo Thành Phố hồ Chí minh, 1988).
14. See Phan Phát huồn, Việt Nam giáo sử (Saigon: Cứu Thế tùng Thư, 1962), 2 vols.,
and his History of the Catholic Church in Vietnam (Long beach, CA: Cứu Thế tùng Thư,
2000), vol. 1.
15. nola Cooke, “Early nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and others in the
Pages of the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no.
2 (June 2004): 261–85, and “Strange brew: Global, regional and Local Factors behind the
1690 Prohibition of Christian Practice in nguyễn Cochinchina,” Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies 39, no. 3 (october 2008): 383–409; Alain Forest, Les missionnaires français au Tonkin
et au Siam (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles): Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un total échec
(Paris: L’harmattan, 1998), 3 volumes; nhung tuyet tran, “Les Amantes de la Croix: An
Early modern Lay Vietnamese Sisterhood,” in Le Viet Nam au feminine, ed. Gisèle bousquet
and nora taylor (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005), 51–66; Laurent burel, Le contact protocolonial franco-vietnamien en centre et nord Vietnam (1856–1883) (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses
Universitaires de Septentrion, 2000); ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs.
16. nguyễn Quang hưng, Công giáo Việt Nam thời kỳ triều Nguyễn, 1802–1883 (hanoi:
nhà Xuất bản tôn Giáo, 2007); nguyễn hồng dương, Làng công giáo Lưu Phương (Ninh
Bình) từ năm 1829 đến năm 1945 (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội, 1997).
17. daughton, An Empire Divided.
18. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance
(1945–1954): entre la reconquête coloniale et la résistance communiste,” Ph.d. diss., Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 1996; Peter hansen, “The Virgin heads South: northern
Catholic refugees in South Vietnam, 1954–1964,” Ph.d. diss., melbourne College of divinity, 2008.
19. Anne hansen, How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia (honolulu: University of hawai‘i Press, 2007), 6.
20. See, notably, Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution. Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991).
21. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 26.
22. Ibid., 24.
23. on conflicts in the Vinh mission at this time, see the many letters from missionaries
to mEP authorities from 1906 to 1909 in Correspondance Louis Pineau, mEP.
24. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens et le mouvement moderniste: quelques
éléments de réflexion sur la question de modernité fin XIXe–début XXe siècle,” in Vietnam:
Notes to Chapter 1 251
le moment moderniste, ed. Gilles de Gantès and nguyen Phuong ngoc (Aix-en-Provence:
Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2009).
25. Petition from Catholic notables in the Vinh mission to Pope Pius X, April 1, 1910,
nS 503, CEP.
26. Cao Vĩnh Phan, Lịch sủ giáo phận Vinh (San Jose, CA: Papyrus Press, 1996).
27. Prasenjit duara, Rescuing History From The Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 4.
28. Ibid., 5.
29. Ibid., 8.
30. Alexander Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam (boston:
houghton mifflin, 1976), x.
ChAPtEr 1
1. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam (Calgary: Veritas, 1998), 3: 523, 529, 544,
555–57.
2. Alain Forest, Les missionnaires français au Tonkin et au Siam (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles).
Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un total échec (Paris: L’harmattan, 1998), 3: 307–8.
3. Ibid., 3: 294.
4. nola Cooke, “Early nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and others in the
Pages of the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no.
2 (June 2004): 276.
5. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 317.
6. Ibid., 3: 149–51.
7. Antoine trần Văn toàn, “L’innovation bloquée ou le bon usage de la paraliturgie
dans le catholicisme vietnamien,” in L’espace missionnaire: lieu d’innovations et de rencontres
interculturelles, ed. Gilles routhier and Frédéric Laugrand (Paris: Karthala, 2002), 97–114.
8. George dutton, The Tây Sơn Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century
Vietnam (honolulu: University of hawai‘i Press, 2006), 179.
9. Ibid.
10. nola Cooke, “Strange brew: Global, regional and Local Factors behind the 1690
Prohibition of Christian Practice in nguyễn Cochinchina,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39, no. 3 (october 2008): 408.
11. Jacob ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early
Nineteenth-Century Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 28.
12. John White, A Voyage to Cochin China [1824] (Kuala Lumpur: oxford University
Press, 1972), cited in Choi byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng
(1820–1841): Central Policies and Local Response (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Southeast
Asia Program Publications, 2004), 60.
13. dutton, Tây Sơn Uprising, 179; ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 28.
14. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 187.
15. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 98. ramsay’s argument is for Cochinchina, but he
notes that yoshiharu tsuboi observes the same connection between economic hardship and
Catholic conversion in nghệ An in this era.
252 Notes to Chapter 1
16. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam, 3: 30, 33, 37, 41, 63, 74, 100, 101, 111, 118,
139, 175, 179, 196.
17. Philippe Langlet, “histoire du peuplement,” in Population et développement au Viêtnam, ed. Patrick Gubry (Paris: Karthala-Ceped, 2000), 29–59.
18. magali barbieri has strongly questioned this degree of population growth in colonial
Vietnam in “health and mortality in Early 20th Century Vietnam: A demographer’s Perspective,” an unpublished paper presented at the 2005 Social Science history Association
meeting, Los Angeles, California, november 3–6, 2005. however, it is probably the case that
mission statistics for the colonial era are also significantly inflated.
19. Samuel Popkin argues that the missions’ institutional and organizational model, and
not colonial favoritism, led to widespread conversions during the colonial era. I agree that
missions often grew despite official efforts and not because of them, but Popkin offers no
evidence that growth of the Catholic population was anything other than demographic.
Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam
(berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 188–93.
20. The best overview of làng đạo is nguyễn hồng dương, “Làng công giáo và một số
vấn đề đặt ra trong công tác quản lý,” in Kinh nghiệm tổ chức quản lý nông thôn Việt Nam
trong lịch sử, ed. Phan Đại doãn and nguyễn Quang ngọc (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Chính trị
Quốc Gia, 1994), 284–321.
21. Choi byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng, 86–87.
22. nguyễn hồng dương, “tìm hiểu tổ chức xứ, họ đạo công giáo nam bộ (đến đầu thế
kỷ XX),” Nghiên Cứu Tôn Giáo 3 (2002): 34–43.
23. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam, 3: 142.
24. nhung tuyet tran, “Les Amantes de la Croix: An Early modern Lay Vietnamese
Sisterhood,” in Le Viet Nam au feminine, ed. Gisèle bousquet and nora taylor (Paris: Les
Indes Savantes, 2005), 51.
25. henri Lécroart, “Visite apostolique des missions d’Indochine: rapport général,”
January 10, 1924, nS 800, CEP.
26. many missions did not have a probatorium until well into the colonial era. The purpose in creating them was to better segregate novices at different stages of their training, as
well as to break the inertia and stagnation that often resulted from too many years of living
in the same community.
27. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 106.
28. J. b. Piolet, ed., Les missions catholiques françaises au XIXe siècle (Paris: Armand
Colin, [1901]–1903), 2: 486. For Spanish dominican missions, annual reports for the missions of Central tonkin, East tonkin, and north tonkin from 1893 to 1911, which include
the age of every local priest, show the average age of priests as ranging from forty-six to
fifty-one. See nS, CEP, rubrica 129 (Indo Cina) for those years.
29. Cooke, “Early nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and others,” 276.
30. Ibid., 280.
31. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 18–25.
32. Ibid., 3: 58–66; ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 29.
33. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 101–4.
Notes to Chapter 1 253
34. This number is calculated from missionary biographies in the society’s repertory
of members. Répertoire des membres de la société des missions étrangères, 1659–2004 (Paris:
Archives des missions Etrangères, 2004).
35. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 26.
36. “Statistiques comparées des missionnaires européens et prêtres indigènes en 1868 et
1928,” Mission Catholiques, July 1928.
37. In fact, committees of lay Catholic notables were often referred to using the same
terminology as councils of notables: ban hàng xứ, hàng phủ xứ or hội đồng xứ in tonkin, ban
chức việc or ban chức sở in parishes roughly from Vinh to Qui nhơn, and hội đồng quy chức
or ban quy chức in parishes in Cochinchina. The heads of these lay committees likewise
shared the titles of civil notables: trùm (chief), câu (deputy chief), and biện (secretaries),
for example. on the organization and responsibilities of councils of notables in Catholic
village life in the north, see mai duc Vinh, “La participation des notables de chrétientés
vietnamiennes aux ministères des prêtres: 1533–1953,” Ph.d. diss., Pontifical University of
Saint Thomas Aquinas, rome, 1977.
38. Léopold Cadière, “organisation et fonctionnement d’une chrétienté vietnamienne,”
BSMEP, April, may, July, August, and october 1955.
39. nguyễn hồng dương, “hội đoàn công giáo—lịch sử và hiện tại,” Nghiên Cứu Tôn
Giáo 4 (2003): 44–51.
40. nguyễn hồng dương, Làng công giáo Lưu Phương (Ninh Bình) từ năm 1829 đến
năm 1945 (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội, 1997).
41. James P. daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of
French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (new york: oxford University Press, 2006), 38.
42. See ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London: routledge, 1989).
43. For a more extended description of the formation of mEP missionaries in the early
colonial period, see Jean michaud, ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on
the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880–1930 (Leiden: brill, 2007), chapter 4.
44. Cooke, “Early nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and others,” 274.
45. Father Schlotterbeck, “Fondation d’une nouvelle paroisse,” Missions Catholiques,
July 11, 1902.
46. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 177.
47. Alain Guillemin, “L’Architecture religieuse au Viêt nam sous la colonisation:
modèles stylistiques européens et apports autochtones,” in Missionnaires chrétiens: Asie et
Pacifique, XIXe–XXe siècle, ed. Françoise douaire-marsaudon, Alain Guillemin, and Chantal Zheng (Paris: Autrement, 2008), 255–71.
48. Graham Greene, The Quiet American (new york: Penguin, 1977), 62.
49. Jean Vaudon, Les filles de Saint-Paul en Indo-Chine (Chartres: Procure des Soeurs
de Saint-Paul, 1931).
50. Citing mEP statistics, Patrice morlat counts 117 Catholic hospitals, 483 dispensaries,
and 338 orphanages in 1918. Patrice morlat, Indochine années vingt: Le rendez-vous manqué
(1918–1928) (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005), 146.
51. “Informations diverses—tonkin occidental,” Missions Catholiques, January 14, 1898.
52. “Informations diverses—tong-King,” Missions Catholiques, August 17, 1883.
254 Notes to Chapter 1
53. Etienne Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le
Viêt-Nam de 1887 à 1903 (bern: Peter Lang, 2001), 3: 360–73.
54. Fm IC nF 1475 (1), Anom.
55. Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, Guide des missions catholiques (Paris: L’oeuvre
Pontificale de la Propagation de la Foi, 1936), 3: 118.
56. Available statistics vary, but most suggest that the colonial school system served a
little more than one hundred thousand students at its height. See Pascale bézançon, Une
colonisation éducatrice? L’expérience indochinoise, 1862–1945 (Paris: L’harmattan, 1996).
57. Claire trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens et le mouvement moderniste:
quelques éléments de réflexion sur la question de modernité fin XIXe–début XXe siècle,”
in Vietnam—le moment moderniste (1905–1908), ed. Gilles de Gantès and nguyen Phuong
ngoc (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2009), 177–96.
58. Ibid.
59. taberd, the largest of the Catholic upper primary schools, had around twelve hundred students in 1926. See Annual report of Saigon, 1926, Correspondance dumortier,
mEP. Puginier had only 327 students in 1913 (nineteen years after it opened in 1894), and
the Ecole Pellerin had only seventy-five in 1906 (two years after it opened in 1904). See the
annual reports for hanoi and huế for those years, mEP.
60. taberd, for example, reported 532 Catholic students out of 1,159 in 1926. Annual
report of Saigon, 1926, mEP.
61. The most comprehensive attempt was in 1906. See rSt nF 2235, Anom.
62. marcel Caratini and Philippe Grandjean, Le statut des missions en Indochine (hanoi:
Imprimerie d’Extrême-orient, 194-?), 92. This figure includes the Cambodge mission,
much of whose lands were in western Cochinchina.
63. hồ Chí minh, “report on the national and Colonial Questions,” in Walden bello,
Ho Chi Minh: Down with Colonialism! (London: Verso, 2007), 27–36.
64. Annual financial statements for most missions between 1892 and 1934 are in the
archives of Propaganda Fide in rome, nuovo Serie, organized by year.
65. henri Lécroart, “Visite Apostolique du Vicariat de Cochinchine occidental confié
aux missions Etrangères de Paris, 18 Avril—19 mai 1923,” december 4, 1923, nS 804, CEP.
66. See “Prospectus Status missionis” for the Saigon mission from 1932 to 1934, nS 1129,
CEP.
67. Annual report of the hanoi mission to Propaganda Fide, 1934, nS 1127, CEP.
68. The full text of the letter is in Georges taboulet, La geste française en Indochine
(Paris: Adrien maisonneuve, 1956), 1: 348–49.
69. daughton, An Empire Divided, 42–43.
70. bishop of West Cochinchina to Pope Leo XIII, September 7, 1895, nS 72, CEP.
71. Pierre brocheux and daniel hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–
1954 (berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 18.
72. Ibid., 20.
73. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 145.
74. Patrick tuck, French Catholic Missionaries and the Politics of Imperialism in Vietnam, 1857–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987), 39. The work in question is
Eugène Veuillot, La Cochinchine et le Tonquin (Paris: Amyot, 1859).
Notes to Chapter 1 255
75. Quoted in Cao huy Thuần, Les missionnaires et la politique coloniale française au
Vietnam (1857–1914) (new haven, Ct: yale Council on Southeast Asian Studies Lạc Việt
Series, 1990), 30.
76. on Pellerin’s disagreements with de Genouilly, see ibid., 54–57.
77. mark mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, 1862–1874 (Westport, Ct: Praeger, 1991), chapter 3.
78. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 166.
79. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 81.
80. Ibid., 88–90.
81. Ibid., 58.
82. Charles Fourniau, Vietnam: Domination colonial et résistance nationale, 1858–1914
(Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2002), 124.
83. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 84.
84. Ibid., 107–8.
85. Ibid., 116.
86. Ibid., 127.
87. mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, 109–11.
88. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam, 2: 590.
89. mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, 112.
90. Etienne Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et
le Viêt-Nam de 1870 à 1886 (bern: Peter Lang, 1992), 1: 95.
91. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 178.
92. mark mcLeod dismisses these contemporary accounts, most of them by missionaries, as unreliable, arguing that they attempt to exculpate Catholics from rebellious acts by
suggesting widespread opposition to nguyễn rule. but mcLeod’s argument, which ignores
entirely Lê loyalists and other opposition movements to nguyễn rule in tonkin at this time,
is unconvincing.
93. mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, 118–22.
94. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 203.
95. Fourniau, Vietnam, 305.
96. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 201.
97. Ibid.
98. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1870 à 1886, 1: 522.
99. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 58–64.
100. Ibid., 53–57.
101. Ibid., chapter 6.
102. Ibid., 135–38.
103. Fourniau, Vietnam, 232.
104. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 145; mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French
Intervention, 45.
105. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 156–57.
106. See Thế kỷ XXI nhìn về Trương Vĩnh Ký (ho Chi minh City: nhà Xuất bản trẻ và
tạp Chí Xưa nay, 2002).
256 Notes to Chapter 2
107. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, epilogue.
108. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 81.
109. mark mcLeod, “nguyen truong to: A Catholic reformer at Emperor tu duc’s
Court,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1994): 313–31.
110. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1851 à 1870 (Leiden: E. J. brill, 1969), 1: 250–55.
111. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 85–86.
112. GGI 12185, Anom.
113. mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, 50–51.
114. Fourniau, Vietnam, 125.
115. mcLeod, The Vietnamese Response to French Intervention, chapter 5.
116. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1851 à 1870, 1: 382–92.
117. Fourniau, Vietnam, 262.
118. Ibid., 259.
119. Ibid., 263
120. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 175.
121. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1870 à 1886, 1: 205–51.
122. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 176.
123. burel, Le contact protocolonial franco-vietnamien en centre et nord Vietnam (1856–
1883) (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2000), 389–407.
124. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 188.
125. yoshiharu tsuboi, L’Empire vietnamien face à la France et à la Chine, 1847–1885
(Paris: L’harmattan, 1987), 247–51.
126. tuck, French Catholic Missionaries, 178.
127. burel, Le contact protocolonial, 461.
128. nguyễn hồng dương, Làng công giáo Lưu Phương, chapter 1.
129. See Emmanuel Poisson, Mandarins et subalternes au nord du Viêt Nam: Une bureaucratie à l’épreuve (1820–1918) (Paris: maisonneuve & Larose, 2004), 145–46.
130. Ibid., 107–8.
131. Peter Phan, Vietnamese-American Catholics (mahwah, nJ: Paulist Press, 2005),
114–16.
132. brocheux and hémery, Indochina, 59.
133. Charles Fourniau, Annam-Tonkin, 1885–1896: Lettrés et paysans vietnamiens face à
la conquête coloniale (Paris: L’harmattan, 1989), 54.
ChAPtEr 2
1. The petition and relevant correspondence are in rShd 2822, ttLt I.
2. Annual report of South tonkin, 1895. mEP.
3. Etienne Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le
Viêt-Nam de 1887 à 1903 (bern: Peter Lang, 2001), 1: 166.
4. Ibid., 2: 609–47.
Notes to Chapter 2 257
5. Annual report of South tonkin, 1898, mEP.
6. Annual report of north Cochinchina, 1891, mEP.
7. Annual report of north Cochinchina, 1889, mEP.
8. Annual report of north Cochinchina, 1897, mEP.
9. Annual report of South tonkin, 1897, mEP.
10. rShd 2830, ttLt I.
11. rSt 72148, ttLt I.
12. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 617.
13. Ibid., 1: 33, 35, 252–58.
14. Ibid., 3: 308–9.
15. Ibid., 3: 153–54.
16. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1894, mEP.
17. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1908, mEP.
18. Annual report of East Cochinchina, 1914, mEP.
19. marcou to de Guébriant, July 4, 1905, 712A, mEP.
20. Annual report of East Cochinchina, 1893, mEP.
21. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 198–99.
22. rSt 55329, ttLt I.
23. Annual report of East Cochinchina, 1889, mEP.
24. James P. daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of
French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (new york: oxford University Press, 2006), 68.
25. Ibid., 67.
26. rSt AF 56759, Anom.
27. rShd 2828, ttLt I.
28. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 121–35.
29. GGI 22555, Anom.
30. daughton, An Empire Divided, 92.
31. See Christina Firpo, “‘The durability of the Empire’: race, Empire and ‘Abandoned’
Children in Colonial Vietnam, 1870–1956,” Ph.d. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 2007, chapter 2.
32. Projet de coutumier pour la mission de Saigon (hong Kong: missions Etrangères de
Paris, 1901).
33. rSPt 958, ttLt I.
34. GGI 19145, Anom.
35. rSt 20167, ttLt I.
36. Annual report of maritime tonkin, 1904, mEP.
37. bishop of West tonkin to rS hà nam, September 15, 1909, rSt 46801, ttLt I.
38. rSt AF 4268, Anom.
39. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam (Calgary: Veritas, 1998), 2: 513.
40. rShd 2822, ttLt I.
41. bishop of hanoi to rS hà nam, September 15, 1909, rSt 46801, ttLt I.
258 Notes to Chapter 2
42. Jacob ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Catholic Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008),
126–27.
43. Annual report of West tonkin, 1909, mEP.
44. Annual report of West tonkin, 1910, mEP.
45. Eloy to Garnier, december 21, 1915, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
46. Allys to “bien cher confrère,” September 12, 1918, Correspondance Allys, mEP.
47. Philippe ba, “hội viên chức ngoại nghe giảng cùng cãi lẽ đạo,” Sacerdos Indosinensis,
April 15, 1928.
48. daughton, An Empire Divided, 104.
49. Ibid., 102.
50. Cited in James P. daughton, “recasting Pigneau de béhaine: missionaries and the
Politics of French Colonial history, 1894–1914,” in Việt Nam: Borderless Histories, ed. Anthony reid and nhung tuyet tran (madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 312.
51. daughton, An Empire Divided, 261.
52. Ibid.
53. Léopold Cadière and Joseph Kiểu, “historica,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, march 19, 1927.
54. Auguste bonifacy, Les débuts du christianisme en Annam des origines au commencement du XVIIIème siècle (hanoi: Imprimerie tonkinoise, 192-?).
55. “L’Amiral Jean dECoUX, Gouverneur Général, inaugure la stèle du r. P. de rhodes,”
Indochine, June 12, 1941.
56. r. P. menne, Centenaire de la naissance du bienheureux Théophane Vénard, prêtre
martyr de la SMEP, panégyrique prononcé par le RP Menne, dominicain, en l’Église Cathé-
drale de Hanoi, le 24 novembre 1929 (hải Phòng: Imprimerie I.d.o.h.G., 1930).
57. “En marge de l’exposition coloniale: l’épopée des missionnaires,” L’Avenir du Tonkin,
September 16, 17, and 18, 1931.
58. See various newspaper clippings in GoUCoCh IIA.45/173 (17), ttLt II.
59. nguyễn tiến Lãng, Pétrus Truong Vinh Ky, lettré et apôtre franco-annamite (huế:
buy huy tin, 1939), 19, 21.
60. Armand olichon, Le Père Six, curé de Phat Diem, vice-roi en Annam (Paris: bloud
et Gay, 1941), 9, 133.
61. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1893, mEP.
62. daughton, An Empire Divided, 108.
63. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 927.
64. For a detailed account of the mayréna affair, see daughton, An Empire Divided,
chapter 2.
65. rSt 54954, ttLt I.
66. rSt AF 56762, Anom.
67. Eloy to “Vénéré monseigneur,” november 26, 1924, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
68. rSA 3161, ttLt II.
69. Charles Fourniau, Annam-Tonkin 1885–1896: Lettrés et paysans vietnamiens face à la
conquête coloniale (Paris: L’harmattan, 1989), 52–53.
70. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 19.
Notes to Chapter 2 259
71. Ibid., 1: 252–58.
72. Ibid., 3: 101–13.
73. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1893, mEP.
74. ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London: routledge, 1989), 133.
75. maurice Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The Separation Issue in
France (London: macmillan, 1974).
76. Camille Pâris, Missionnaires d’Asie: l’oeuvre néfaste des congrégations, le protectorat
des chrétiens (Paris: Imprimerie Le Papier, 1903), 92.
77. Ibid., 17.
78. rSnd 2834, ttLt I.
79. rSnd 1137, ttLt I.
80. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 796.
81. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam, 3: 113.
82. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 604–9.
83. GGI 6029, Anom.
84. rSt 56751, ttLt I.
85. deputy Special Commissioner to Chief of the Sûreté in tonkin to mayor of nam
Định, June 2, 1923, rSt 72157, ttLt I.
86. GGI 50849, Anom.
87. President of the Committee of French Catholics of haiphong to GGI, october 29,
1929, CPC 41, mAE.
88. GGI to minister of Colonies, december 16, 1930, rSt 72150, ttLt I.
89. Christopher Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese
Revolution, 1885–1954 (richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999), 43.
90. rSt to GGI, october 1, 1915, rSt 20872, ttLt I.
91. basile Lanter to rSt, January 22, 1919, rSt 20872, ttLt I.
92. rSnd to rSt, may 10, 1924, rSt 72157, ttLt I.
93. rShd to rSt, August 24, 1906, rShd 2821, ttLt I.
94. daughton, An Empire Divided, 64.
95. Ibid., chapter 3.
96. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1905, mEP.
97. GGI 8738, Anom.
98. “nos étrennes pour 1907 par le nha que,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, december 19, 1906.
99. Annual report of West tonkin, 1908, mEP.
100. “rapport du Père delignon à monseigneur mossard sur sa visite aux trois Pères
Annamites exilés à Poulo Condore,” n.d, Correspondance delignon, mEP.
101. Jean-baptiste dronet, “notes sur la prison civile de hanoi,” ASMEP, July–August
1911.
102. Jean-baptiste dronet to “Soeur marie baptiste,” december 29, 1920, Correspondance dronet, mEP.
103. rSt nF 1813, Anom.
104. Eloy to “très vénéré père,” July 6, 1916, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
260 Notes to Chapter 2
105. Aubert to “bien chere yvonne,” march 9, 1938, Correspondance Aubert, mEP.
106. See Charles Keith, “A Colonial Sacred Union? Church, State, and the Great War in
Colonial Vietnam,” in In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Making of the Modern
World, ed. James P. daughton and owen White (new york: oxford University Press, 2012).
107. on the rise of American Protestant missionary activity in Vietnam, see Phu hoang
Le, “A Short history of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam, 1911–1965,” Ph.d. diss., new
york University, 1972.
108. rSA to GGI, April 15, 1929, rSA 4140, ttLt II.
109. For a more extended treatment of the place of Protestantism and Cao Đài in
mission-state relations, see Charles Keith, “Protestantism and the Politics of religion in
Colonial Vietnam,” French Colonial History 13 (2012): 141–71.
110. daughton, An Empire Divided, 104–6.
111. Linh mục Phát diệm, “những nỗi gian nan bởi phi giáo học đường,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, August and September 1929.
112. “Việc học ngày nay,” THNB, September 15, 1925.
113. marcou to Lebourdais, october 15, 1925, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
114. GGI to minister of Colonies, november 2, 1924, GGI 51566, Anom.
115. Gendreau to Prefect of Propaganda Fide, August 31, 1912, 711 C, mEP.
116. director of Public Education to GGI, december 19, 1927, GGI 51570, Anom.
117. GGI 51580, Anom.
118. rSt 56739, ttLt I; rSPt to rSt, may 28, 1917, rSt 56755, ttLt I.
119. GGI 51583, Anom.
120. ramond to de Guébriant, April 16, 1930, Correspondance ramond, mEP.
121. rSt 81672, ttLt I.
122. rSt to GGI, december 9, 1935, rSt 74900, ttLt I.
123. Gendreau to Prefect of Propaganda Fide, February 24, 1906, nS 503, CEP.
124. “Statistiques comparées des missionnaires européens et prêtres indigènes en 1868
et 1928,” Missions Catholiques, July 1928, 312.
125. “Les missions Catholiques en Indochine,” Sûreté report, october 1, 1924, Fm IC nF
1475 (1), Anom.
126. GGI 15793, Anom.
127. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam, 2: 484; Annual reports for Central tonkin, East tonkin, and north tonkin for 1896, nS 96 and 117, CEP; “Les missions
Catholiques en Indochine.”
128. “réponse des vicaires apostoliques à la circulaire du Séminaire de Paris du 25 juillet, 1907,” 712A, mEP.
129. Quinton to Ferrières, July 21, 1920, Correspondance Quinton, mEP.
130. marcou to de Guébriant, may 10, 1906, 712A, mEP.
131. marcou to mollard, July 20, 1909, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
132. Andréa Eloy, “note au sujet du père Kerbaol,” may 28, 1934, Correspondance Eloy,
mEP.
133. Eloy to de Guébriant, February 17, 1919, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
134. marcou to de Guébriant, August 28, 1918, Correspondance marcou, mEP. The picture of the house is in “dans les montagnes du moyen mékong,” Missions Catholiques, January 1917.
Notes to Chapter 2 261
135. marcou to de Guébriant, August 12, 1908, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
136. ramond to blondel, June 25, 1929, Correspondance ramond, mEP.
137. Eloy, “note au sujet du P. Kerbaol,” may 28, 1934, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
138. Letter from Saigon priests to Propaganda Fide, march 1, 1932, nS 1129, CEP.
139. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 446–47.
140. Allys to de Guébriant, may 11, 1918, Correspondance Allys, mEP.
141. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 451.
142. Ibid., 1: 447.
143. Ibid., 1: 451.
144. on these synods, see Josef metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina, 1625–1934 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1984).
145. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 94.
146. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 719–21.
147. Ibid., 2: 719
148. Ibid., 1: 77–104.
149. Ibid., 1: 118.
150. “Visite apostolique du vicariat du tonkin Central confié aux r.r.P.P. dominicains
Espagnoles de la Province du t.S. rosaire (manille), 29 décembre 1922–janvier 1923,” october 8, 1923, nS 802, CEP.
151. Jacob ramsay dates the practice to this era. Personal communication, may 5, 2011.
on bond arrangements in Spanish missions, see rSt nF 2380, Anom.
152. rSt 54965, ttLt I.
153. rS hà nam to rSt, June 7, 1899, rSt 20167, ttLt I.
154. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 688.
155. Ibid., 1: 66–67.
156. bishop of Saigon Caspar to Prefect of Propaganda Fide Giotti, october 9, 1906, nS
404, CEP.
157. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 2: 773.
158. nola Cooke, “Early nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and others in the
Pages of the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no.
2 (June 2004): 271.
159. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 126.
160. The campaign seems to have come from the leadership of mEP missions in India.
See Adrien Launay, Histoire des missions de l’Inde: Pondichéry, Maïssour, Coïmbatour (Paris:
Ancienne maison Charles douniol, 1898), 4: 93–108. The apostolic visitor to Indochina
in 1922 confirmed that the letters applied to Indochina as well. See “réunion plénière de
nn.SS. les Vicaires Apostoliques de l’Indochine française et du Siam sous la présidence de
monseigneur henri Lécroart, Visiteur Apostolique de l’Indochine, à Saigon, le 20 juin 1923,”
nS 800, CEP.
161. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam, 3: 146.
262 Notes to Chapter 3
162. henri Lécroart, rapport de la Visite Apostolique du Vicariat de Cochinchine orientale confié aux missions Etrangères de Paris (du 26 mars au 18 avril, avec interruption
pour la Visite de Kontum [missions des bahnars] du 9 au 14 avril), november 17, 1923, nS
804, CEP. The difference between cố and cụ is slight. The former was used to designate
someone with a son who was a mandarin, but cụ was reserved for only the most venerable
and respected Vietnamese priests.
163. Les Amis des missions, Les missions catholiques françaises en 1900 et 1928 (Paris:
Editions Spes, 1929), 8.
164. The average age of the local clergy for individual missions in individual years can
be calculated from most annual reports in nS, CEP.
165. Quinton to Ferrières, April 27, 1920, Correspondance Quinton, mEP.
166. rSt AF 20277, Anom.
167. rS hà nam to rSt, June 7, 1899, rSt 20167, ttLt I.
168. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 449.
169. Glouton to rShd, march 13 1908, and April 12, 1908, rShd 2825, ttLt I.
170. bishop of Saigon to Prefect of Propaganda Fide, September 30, 1901, nS 213, CEP.
171. The letter is in nS 503, CEP.
172. “rapport secret adressé à la S. Congrégation de la Propagande,” August 9, 1909, nS
503, CEP.
173. marcou to mollard, July 20, 1909, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
174. Võ Đức hạnh, La place du catholicisme dans les relations entre la France et le ViêtNam de 1887 à 1903, 1: 451–54.
175. “Visite apostolique du tonkin Septentrional confié aux r.r.P.P. dominicains de la
province de Saint rosaire (manille), 17–29 novembre 1922,” october 23, 1923, nS 802, CEP.
176. See The hung, “L’église catholique et la colonisation française,” in “Les Catholiques
et le mouvement national,” Etudes vietnamiennes 53 (1978): 53. This source, a product of the
ministry of Culture of the Socialist republic of Vietnam, is polemical and possibly unreliable. however, it is partially confirmed by mEP sources, which note Grandmaire’s death as
taking place in 1922 (at the relatively young age of forty-nine) without mentioning the cause
of death, unusual for mEP necrologies.
177. Annual report of South tonkin, 1903, mEP.
178. Priests in bùi Chu to Apostolic Visitor henri Lécroart, n.d., nS 802, CEP.
ChAPtEr 3
1. henri Lécroart, “Visite apostolique des missions d’Indochine: rapport général,” January 10, 1924, nS 800, CEP.
2. henri Lécroart, “Visite apostolique du vicariat du tonkin Central confié aux r.r.P.P
dominicains Espagnoles de la Province du t. S. rosaire (manille), 29 décembre 1922–20
janvier 1923,” october 8, 1923, nS 802, CEP.
3. henri Lécroart, “Visite Apostolique du Vicariat du tonkin maritime confié aux
Prêtres des missions Etrangères de Paris (du 19 janvier au 12 février—dans l’intervalle,
réunion à Phat diem des Vicaires Apostoliques du tonkin du 4 au 10 Février),” n.d., nS
803, CEP.
Notes to Chapter 3 263
4. henri Lécroart, “Visite Apostolique du Vicariat de Cochinchine orientale confié aux
Prêtres des missions Etrangères de Paris (du 26 mars au 18 avril, avec interruption pour la
Visite de Kontum [missions des bahnars] du 9 au 14 avril),” november 17, 1923, nS 804,
CEP.
5. Letter from local priests in Qui nhơn mission to apostolic delegate, december 15,
1926, nS 896b, CEP.
6. Frank Atkin and nicholas tallett, Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European
Catholicism since 1750 (oxford: oxford University Press, 2003), 129–42.
7. See Claude Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878–
1903): centralisation romaine et défis culturels (rome: Ecole Française de rome, 1994).
8. Atkin and tallett, Priests, Prelates and People, 196–203.
9. ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London: routledge,
1989), chapters 2 and 3.
10. Eloy to “vénéré monseigneur,” november 30, 1922, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
11. Quinton to Garnier, August 25, 1919, Correspondance Quinton, mEP.
12. These statistics are from Les Amis des missions, Les missions catholiques françaises
en 1900 et 1928 (Paris: Editions Spes, 1928).
13. Grangeon to “monseigneur,” may 8, 1923, Correspondance Grangeon, mEP.
14. de Guébriant to Père robert, June 1928 (otherwise undated), Correspondance de
Guébriant, mEP.
15. See financial statements for the hanoi mission, 1928–29, Correspondance Gendreau,
mEP.
16. marcou to “bien cher monseigneur,” october 24, 1921, Correspondance marcou,
mEP.
17. Claude Prudhomme, Missions chrétiennes et colonisation, XVIe–XXe siècle (Paris:
Cerf, 2004), 91.
18. John Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace
(London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999), 203.
19. The full text of Maximum Illud is in Thomas J. m. burke, S.J., Catholic Missions: Four
Great Missionary Encyclicals, Incidental Papers of the Institute of mission Studies, no. 1
(new york: Fordham University Press, 1957).
20. The full text of Rerum Ecclesiae is in ibid.
21. For the oPF’s fund-raising statistics from 1887 to 1913, see James P. daughton, An
Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914
(new york: oxford University Press, 2006), 267–68. For statistics from 1919 to 1922, see
“L’oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi à rome,” Missions Catholiques, April 6, 1923.
22. “L’oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi à rome,” Missions Catholiques, April 6, 1923.
23. “L’oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi à rome—une réponse nécessaire,” Missions
Catholiques, August 3, 1923.
24. “Swami, Padre et Sahib,” Le Revue Catholique des Idées et des Faits, december 25,
1925.
25. de Guébriant to mEP bishops and missionaries, march 26, 1926, Correspondance
de Guébriant, mEP.
26. Jean-baptiste roux, “Le clergé indigène annamite,” unpublished speech given August 2, 1930, Correspondance roux, mEP.
264 Notes to Chapter 3
27. Léopold Cadière, “Le clergé indigène de l’Indo-Chine française,” Missions
Catholiques, december 1929.
28. “Phế vua không Khả, đào mả không bài.” For biographical information on nguyễn
hữu bài, see Lê ngọc bích, Từ điển nhân vật công giáo Việt Nam, thế kỷ XVIII–XIX–XX
(n.p., 2006), 105–10.
29. Allys to de Guébriant, may 18, 1916, Correspondance Allys, mEP.
30. A number of French officials accused bài of graft and corruption, although such accusations may have reflected resentment of bài’s considerable political autonomy. See nola
Cooke, “Colonial Political myth and the Problem of the other: French and Vietnamese in
the Protectorate of Annam,” Ph.d. diss., Australia national University, 1991, 237–39.
31. “réunion plénère de nn.SS. les Vicaires Apostoliques de l’Indochine française
et du Siam sous la présidence de monseigneur henri Lécroart, Visiteur Apostolique de
l’Indochine, à Saigon, le 20 juin 1923,” nS 800, CEP.
32. [Illegible] to de Guébriant, August 22, 1922, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
33. Gendreau to de Guébriant, december 18, 1922, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
34. “Les missions Catholiques en Indochine,” Sûreté report, october 1, 1924, Fm IC nF
1475 (1), Anom.
35. Patrick tuck, French Catholic Missionaries and the Politics of Imperialism in Vietnam,
1857–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987), 304.
36. “réunion plénère de nn.SS. les Vicaires Apostoliques de l’Indochine française et
du Siam.”
37. Constant Poncet, “mémoires d’une seule génération: mgr. marcou & mgr. deCooman, m.E.P., 1901–1960,” 30, mEP.
38. Allys to “bien cher directeur,” may 31, 1920, Correspondance Allys, mEP.
39. Eloy to “Vénéré monseigneur,” January 23, 1929, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
40. Journal of Léon Paliard, SULP.
41. Léon Paliard, “Saint Sulpice missionnaire, fondation du seminaire S. Sulpice de
hanoi,” november 28, 1956 (unpublished manuscript), SULP.
42. For a detailed description of seminary curricula, see “Chương trình học tiếng nam
đang thi hành trong một chủng viện,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, July 15 and August 15, 1941.
43. Pagès to de Guébriant, march 26, 1925, Correspondance Justin Pagès, mEP.
44. For a description of the new curriculum, see van rossum to de Guébriant, may 12,
1928, 258 b, mEP.
45. Garnier to de Guébriant, January 12, 1919, 243 A, mEP.
46. Garnier to de Guébriant, november 18, 1919, 243 A, mEP.
47. Allys to Garnier, may 22, 1919, Correspondance Allys, mEP.
48. Quoted and translated in Arnulf Camps, “Celso Costantini, Apostolic delegate in
China, 1922–1933,” in Arnulf Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History (Leiden: brill, 2000),
171.
49. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII, 465–84, 499–511.
50. See Camps, “Celso Costantini, Apostolic delegate in China.”
51. minister of Foreign Affairs to French Ambassador to the Vatican, June 20, 1925, CPC
17, mAE.
52. Ibid.
Notes to Chapter 3 265
53. French Ambassador to the Vatican to minister of Foreign Affairs, december 26, 1928,
CPC 17, mAE. more than six hundred such organizations existed in Europe and throughout colonial empires by 1928, several in French Indochina. See GoUCoCh IIA.45/321 (11),
ttLt II.
54. French Ambassador to the Vatican to minister of Foreign Affairs, december 26,
1925, CPC 17, mAE.
55. French Ambassador to the Vatican to minister of Foreign Affairs, June 16, 1925, CPC
17, mAE.
56. “Visite de mgr. dreyer, délégué Apostolique,” January 2, 1929, CPC 17, mAE.
57. GGI to minister of Colonies, April 24, 1928, CPC 17, mAE.
58. bruce Lockhart, The End of the Vietnamese Monarchy (new haven, Ct: Council on
Southeast Asia Studies, yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1993).
59. dumortier to de Guébriant, november 16, 1926, Correspondance dumortier, mEP.
60. de Guébriant to Gendreau, June 4, 1930, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
61. boulanger to de Guébriant, march 14, 1926, 53 (A–b), mEP.
62. See dumortier to de Guébriant, november 16, 1926, August 8, 1934, September 15,
1934, october 13, 1934, and April 8, 1935, Correspondance dumortier, mEP; French Ambassador to the Vatican to minister of Foreign Affairs, december 4, 1934, CPC 41, mAE.
63. Eloy to Garnier, december 3, 1935, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
64. GGI to minister of Colonies, April 24, 1928, CPC 17, mAE. The article is “Pour
L’Action Catholique,” Bulletin Catholique Indochinois, march 1928.
65. de Guébriant to Fumasoni-biondi (undated, written in April 1931), Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
66. de Guébriant to bishop Quinn, April 25, 1931, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
67. Ibid.
68. GGI to minister of Colonies, April 24, 1928, CPC 17, mAE.
69. French Ambassador to the Vatican to minister of Foreign Affairs, February 20, 1933,
CPC 41, mAE.
70. GGI to Apostolic delegate dreyer, may 7, 1936, GGI 65541, Anom.
71. “note succincte sur la création d’un évêché annamite à mytho” (undated, but
likely written in mid-1934), CPC 41, mAE.
72. marcou to de Guébriant, June 8, 1930, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
73. de Guébriant to Gendreau, June 4, 1930, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
74. one good biographical source for nguyễn bá tòng is “tiểu sử Đức cha Jean-baptiste
nguyễn bá tòng,” in Paul Vàng, Nguyễn Bá Tòng, Giám mục tiên khởi Việt Nam, cuộc hành
trình Roma (Saigon: Imprimerie de la mission, 1934).
75. Ibid., 76.
76. “Saigon fait une belle reception à mgr. tonG,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, november 4,
1933.
77. “S.E. Jean-baptiste tòng à hanoi” and “S.E. monseigneur tòng a prêché dimanche
19 novembre 1933 à l’église cathédrale de hanoi,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, november 17 and 20,
1933.
78. Phêro nghĩa [Lê Thiện bá], “Cái tin Cha dominique hồ ngọc Cẩn lên ngôi đã gấy
nên nhiều mối cảm tình,” NKĐP, may 23, 1935.
266 Notes to Chapter 3
79. “Đệ nhị Việt nam giám mục,” CGĐT, may 9, 1935.
80. Gendreau to de Guébriant, november 13, 1925, Correspondance Gendreau, mEP.
81. nguyễn Đình Cử to Lécroart, december 29, 1922, nS 802, CEP.
82. de Guébriant to Gendreau, April 24, 1925, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
83. nS 802, CEP has copious documentation on this affair.
84. de Guébriant to van rossum, march 28, 1925, Correspondance de Guébriant, mEP.
85. Ph. L.t.b., “Đức khâm sứ Constantino Aiuti đến viện nhà trường An ninh,” NKĐP,
march 13, 1926.
86. hồ ngọc Cẩn, “Đức khâm sứ tòa thánh viếng địa phận huế,” NKĐP, April 8, 1926.
87. The hung, “L’église catholique et la colonisation française,” Etudes Vietnamiennes 53,
1978. The author of this highly politicized text does not cite a source, and I have found no
other reference to these rumors.
88. “Indigènes de Saigon” to Propaganda Fide, June 17, 1930, nS 999, CEP.
89. Grandgeon to Garnier, october 8, 1922, Correspondance Grandgeon, mEP.
90. Gendreau to “bien cher confrère,” June 22, 1925, Correspondance Gendreau, mEP.
91. ngô Đình Thục, “nhớ cuộc du học ở La mã,” THNB, February 12 and 14, 1938.
92. herrgott to de Guébriant, october 4, 1929, Correspondance herrgott, mEP.
93. herrgott to Garnier, march 23, 1934, Correspondance herrgott, mEP.
94. marcou to Garnier, July 17, 1927, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
95. marcou to de Guébriant, August 21, 1934, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
96. Gendreau to “bien cher confrère,” June 22, 1925, Correspondance Gendreau, mEP.
97. henri Lécroart, “Visite Apostolique de Vicariat du tonkin maritime,” n.d., nS 803,
CEP.
98. Garnier to Père rouhan, January 16, 1934, Correspondance Garnier, mEP.
99. Garnier to Père rouhan, march 30, 1934, Correspondance Garnier, mEP.
100. J. b. roux to “bien cher père,” march 7, 1913, Correspondance roux, mEP.
101. trần tử bình, The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber
Plantation (Athens: ohio University monographs in International Studies, Southeast Asia
Series, no. 66, 1985), 1–2.
102. Poncet, “mémoires d’une seule génération,” 44–45.
103. Chaize to dreyer, march 18, 1931, nS 996, CEP.
104. marcou to Prefect of Propaganda Fide, december 8, 1919, nS 662, CEP.
105. See Francis nyan, “Fils d’Annam! Si Vous Voulez Être heureux, Aimez La France!
‘Franco-Vietnamese Collaboration’ among the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes in Indochina,
1900–1940,” m.A. thesis, national University of Singapore, 2008.
106. Séminel to dumortier, november 10, 1934, Correspondance Séminel, mEP.
107. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giáo ở Việt Nam (Calgary: Veritas, 1998), 3: 156–57. The
most detailed treatment of the council is Josef metzler, Die Synoden in Indochina: 1625–1934
(Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1984), 299–379.
108. Visite Apostolique du Vicariat de Cochinchine orientale confié aux missions
Etrangères de Paris (du 26 mars au 18 avril, avec interruption pour la visite de Kontum
[missions des bahnars] du 9 au 14 avril),” november 17, 1923, nS 804, CEP.
109. “Visite Apostolique du Vicariat du tonkin occidental (hanoi) confié aux missions
Etrangères de Paris (15–29 décembre 1922),” october 17, 1923, nS 802, CEP.
Notes to Chapter 4 267
110. “hỏi ý kiến các độc gỉa về bộ chữ đại từ dụng trong sách phúc âm ta,” Sacerdos
Indosinensis, november 15, 1938.
111. Cẩn’s letter is in the July 15, 1939, issue of Sacerdos Indosinensis.
112. See Đỗ hữu nghiêm, “Giáo hội và các đồng bào thiểu số ở Việt nam,” in 40 năm
thành lập hàng giáo phẩm công giáo Việt Nam, ed. nguyễn Đăng trúc (reichstett, France:
Định hướng tùng Thư, 2000), 27–108.
113. on the French dominican mission, see Luc Garcia, Quand les missionnaires rencontraient les Vietnamiens (1920–1960) (Paris: Karthala, 2008), 37–46.
114. “tỉnh mọi,” Lời Thăm, may 1922.
115. P. ban and S. Thiệt, Mở đạo Kon-Tum (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de la mission, 1933).
Although the authors have Vietnamese names, it is not possible to ascertain conclusively
that they were Vietnamese, since missionaries often took Vietnamese names and occasionally published under them. however, they are described as “cha,” and not “cố,” which makes
it more likely that they were local clergy.
116. r. P. Solvignon, “En route pour Kontum,” in “Consécration épiscopale de mgr. Jannin,” printed brochure from 1932, Correspondance Jannin, mEP.
117. Jannin to de Guébriant, november 30, 1927, Correspondance Jannin, mEP.
118. “L’Ecole apostolique de Kontum pour l’évangélisation des pays moïs,” L’Aube Nouvelle, June 6, 1943.
ChAPtEr 4
1. John deFrancis, Colonialism and Language Policy in Vietnam (The hague: mouton,
1977), 52.
2. See roland Jacques, Portuguese Pioneers of Vietnamese Linguistics (bangkok: White
Lotus Press, 2002).
3. on de rhodes, see Peter Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (maryknoll, ny: orbis books, 1998).
4. on maiorica’s life and work, see brian ostrowski, “The nôm Works of Geronimo
maiorica, S.J. (1589–1656) and Their Christology,” Ph.d. diss., Cornell University, 2006.
5. Alain Forest, Les missionnaires français au Tonkin et au Siam (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles).
Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un total échec (Paris: L’harmattan, 1998), 3: 125–26.
6. Jacob ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early
Nineteenth-Century Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 132–33.
7. Ibid., 128.
8. on Philipê bỉnh, see Lê ngọc bích, Nhân vật công giáo Việt Nam thế kỷ XVIII–XIX–
XX (n.p., 2006), 365–82.
9. deFrancis, Colonialism and Language Policy in Vietnam, 102–5.
10. Forest, Les missionnaires français, 3: 152.
11. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 31–32.
12. Shawn mchale, Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the
Making of Modern Vietnam (honolulu: University of hawai‘i Press, 2004), 14.
13. r. P. Poncet, “mission d’une seule generation: mgr. marcou & mgr. deCooman,
m.E.P., 1901–1960,” 12, mEP.
268 Notes to Chapter 4
14. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 33.
15. Ibid., 128.
16. Laurent dartigues, L’Orientalisme français en pays d’Annam, 1862–1939: Essai sur
l’idée française du Viêt Nam (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005), chapter 6.
17. See Jean michaud, ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the
Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880–1930 (Leiden: brill, 2007), chapter 8.
18. L. Escalère, “La collaboration des missionnaires catholiques aux travaux de l’école
française d’extrême-orient,” BSMEP, July, August, September, and october 1936.
19. James P. daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of
French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (new york: oxford University Press, 2006), chapter 1.
20. ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 4.
21. Société de Saint Augustin, Patriotes et martyrs en Chine et au Tonkin (Paris: desclée,
de brouwer et Cie, 1901).
22. Adrien Launay, Société des missions étrangères pendant la guerre du Tonkin (Paris:
Librairie de l’oeuvre de Saint-Paul, 1886).
23. Quoted in dartigues, L’Orientalisme français en pays d’Annam, 252.
24. J. b. Guerlach, “L’Oeuvre néfaste”: Les missionnaires en Indo-Chine (Saigon: Imprimerie Commerciale, 1906).
25. GGI to minister of Colonies, April 30, 1917, GGI 47370, Anom.
26. Gendreau to marc dandolo, december 10, 1927, Correspondance Gendreau, mEP.
27. Fm IC nF 963, Anom.
28. deFrancis, Colonialism and Language Policy in Vietnam, 181–87.
29. “Souvenirs Franco-tonkinois (1879–1886),” Missions Catholiques, April 27, 1900.
30. daughton, An Empire Divided, 104–6.
31. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hội công giạo ở Việt Nam (Calgary: Veritas, 1998), 3: 144.
32. See notably nguyễn bá tòng, Deux conférences: Apparitions et miracles de Lourdes,
Gesta Dei per Francos (hanoi: Imprimerie ngô tử hạ, 1938).
33. hậu học, “Quốc ngữ là gươm hai lưỡi,” CGĐT, october 14, 1927.
34. J. b. hân, “Đời bây giờ chữ nho có nên học chẳng?,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, April 15,
1927, June 15, 1927, and october 15, 1927.
35. nguyễn Văn Thích, Tiện huế Hán thư (huế: Imprimerie dac Lap, 1930).
36. on Thích, see Lê ngọc bích, Nhân vật công giáo Việt Nam, 511–20.
37. nguyễn Văn Thích, Vấn đề luân lý ngày nay (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn,
1930).
38. Simon Chính, Hiếu kinh cha mẹ (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhon, 1932).
39. Cư Sỹ, “Coi sử ký và hạnh thánh,” ĐMBN, december 1, 1939.
40. Thượng Phân, “Phải nên kiểm duyệt sách quốc ngữ,” THNB, october 15, 1924.
41. Sahara, “Văn chương công giáo với truyện Kiều,” ĐMBN, June 15, 1942.
42. Phêrô nghĩa [Lê Thiện bá], “người bút được tự do,” NKĐP, January 31, 1935.
43. Đông bích [nguyễn hưng Thi], “Cuốn sách nên đọc,” THNB, September 24, 1929.
44. See “Ai muốn đóng xi nê ma?,” Vì Chúa, march 15, 1938, and minh Châu, “Cái hại ci
nê,” ĐMBN, January 1, 1940.
45. david marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945 (berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 176. Unfortunately, marr fails to footnote this extraordinary figure.
| Notes to Chapter 4 46. deFrancis, Colonialism and Language Policy in Vietnam, 151. | 269 |
december 3, 1928.
48. Focyane [huỳnh Phúc yên], “Phải dạy thêm tiếng Annam ở các lớp học trên nữa,”
CGĐT, September 22, 1927.
49. hồ ngọc Cẩn, “tiếng Annam ta,” CGĐT, december 2, 1927.
50. h. L., “Làm thế nào cho trẻ nữ nhà quê đều biết quốc ngữ,” THNB, october 10, 1931.
51. “Chữ quốc ngữ với thôn quê,” ĐMBN, march 1, 1941.
52. nguyễn Định tường, “Vị linh mục với tiếng nam,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, november 15, 1939.
53. hồ ngọc Cẩn, Thận chung truy viễn (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de la mission, 1923).
54. “nhà đạo công giáo với sự tiến bộ quốc văn,” THNB, September 20, 1941.
55. P. huân, “nên viết văn,” ĐMBN, January 15, 1940.
56. d. L., “Phải biết lựa sách mà đọc,” NKĐP, march 12, 1936.
57. bủi tuân, “Ảnh hưởng của những ánh văn chương trụy lạc,” Le messager de l’Ecole
Pellerin, october 1936.
58. Sahara, “Văn chương công giáo với truyện Kiều,” ĐMBN, June 15, 1942.
59. hue-tam ho tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge, mA: harvard University Press, 1992), 5.
60. hy Liễn, “Con trẻ ngày trước và con trẻ ngày nay,” THNB, march 17, 19, and 22, 1927.
61. nguyễn Văn Giao, “Vấn đề công giáo đối với thanh niên Việt nam ngày nay,” CGĐT,
march 31 and April 3, 7, 10, 17, 21, 24, and 28, 1936.
62. nguyễn Cang Thường, “nữ quyền,” NKĐP, october 13, 1932.
63. hy Liễn, “Vợ chồng có nên ly dị không?,” THNB, August 10, 12, and 19, 1926.
64. “hy Vọng!,” Hy Vọng, december 1937.
65. one example is Võ Thị Khuê tiên, “mục đích học vấn của bạn thanh niên nữ giới,”
THNB, march 4, 1925.
66. Đ. x. V., “Con gái nhà quê có phải cho đi học không?,” THNB, october 25, 1930;
Focyane [huỳnh Phúc yên], “nam nữ bình quyền,” CGĐT, September 30, 1927.
67. Lời Đức thánh Piô X: khuyên các thầy cả mọi nơi (hong Kong: Imprimerie de la
mission, 1909).
68. “Visite apostolique du vicariat du tonkin maritime confié aux prêtres des missions
Etrangères de Paris (19 janvier au 12 février—dans l’intervalle, réunion à Phat diem des
Vicaires Apostoliques du tonkin du 4 au 10 février),” n.d., nS 803, CEP.
69. The following analysis was conducted based on a bibliography of all Catholic quốc
ngữ texts preserved in the collections of the French national library, the EFEo library in
Paris, the mEP’s Asia Library, and several other collections in Paris. Although it is by no
means complete, it is by far the most comprehensive such bibliography in existence. See
trần Anh dũng, Sơ thảo thư mục công giáo Việt Nam (Paris: trần Anh dũng, 1992).
70. Antoine trần Văn toàn, “Catholiques vietnamiens en France ou le retour de
l’inculturé,” in Chrétiens d’outre-mer en Europe: Un autre visage de l’immigration, ed. marc
Spindler and Annie Lenoble-bart (Paris: Karthala, 2000), 155.
71. This work is Inê tử đạo, published as an appendix to taberd’s 1838 lexicon. See ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs, 127.
270 Notes to Chapter 4
72. Truyện sáu đấng tử vì đạo (Kẻ Sở: Imprimerie de la mission, 1909).
73. Sách kể tắt truyện hai mươi hai đấng thánh tử vì đạo mà tòa thánh mới phong chức
(Kẻ Sở: Imprimerie de la mission, 1900), II–III.
74. “Sanguis martyrum, semen Christianorum,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, november 15,
1935.
75. “Lễ kính các đấng chân phúc tử vì đạo trong cả Đông dương,” ĐMBN, September
1, 1942.
76. G. h., “Lễ các thánh tử vĩ đạo nước Annam,” THNB, September 4, 1926.
77. Đông bích [nguyễn hưng Thi], “Việc học ngày nay,” THNB, September 15, 1925.
78. Adolphe Cransac and nguyễn bá tòng, Lược biên cách thức dạy học (Saigon: Imprimerie de la mission, 1924).
79. nguyễn Quang minh, Phong hóa tân biên phụ huấn nữ ca (Saigon: nguyễn Văn
Viết, 1931).
80. François Chaize, Địa cao vạn vật luật, published in four volumes from 1918 to 1921;
Jean Félix Vuillard, Phép bác vật, published in four volumes from 1922 to 1927.
81. hồ ngọc Cẩn, Toán học sơ pháp (hong Kong: Imprimerie de la mission, 1916), and
Trường học toán pháp (hong Kong: Imprimerie de la mission, 1919).
82. Lê Công Đắc and hồ Khắc tuần, Cách trí (hanoi: trung bắc tân Văn, 1937), and
Vệ sinh (hanoi: trung bắc tân Văn, 1937); Sơ học yếu lược sử ký vấn đáp (hanoi: nhà In Lê
Cưởng, 1935); Lê Công Đắc, L’Anglais au baccalauréat et l’anglais de Hong-Kong, modèles de
versions, thèmes, compositions (hanoi: trung bắc tân Văn, 1937).
83. do manh Quat, La correspondance de P. Le Cong Dac (hanoi: trung bắc tân Văn,
1936).
84. John Schafer and The Uyen, “The novel Emerges in Cochinchina,” Journal of Asian
Studies 52, no. 4 (november 1993): 854–84.
85. Võ Long tê, L’Expérience poétique et l’itinéraire spirituel de Hàn Mặc Tử (Paris:
Đường mới, 1985).
86. on Đỗ Đình, see Lê ngọc bích, Nhân vật công giáo Việt Nam, 175–84. on his relationship with Gide, see Lộc Phương Thủy, André Gide, đời văn và tác phẩm (hanoi: nhà
Xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội, 2002). Thanks to Peter Zinoman for directing me to the latter
source.
87. nguyễn bá tòng, Tuồng thương khó (Saigon: Imprimerie de la mission, 1912).
88. “Le drame de la passion à Saigon,” Missions Catholiques, march 19, 1915.
89. Lê Văn Đức, Bốn nói lối (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1925); Điền lính (Qui
nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1924); Công tử bột đi cưới vợ (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de
Qui nhơn, 1930); Tìm của báu (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1930).
90. Đinh Văn Sát, Hoàn kim huyết (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1925); Một
cha khác mẹ (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1925); Rượu (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de
Qui nhơn, 1932).
91. Lê Công Đắc, Đại hài kịch tiểu thư đi bộ (hanoi: Đông tây, 1931). Thanks to martina
nguyen for making me aware of Đắc’s spats with Phong Hóa.
92. nguyễn Đình, Người tội ác (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1932).
93. Pièrre Lục, Hai chị em lưu lạc (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1931).
94. marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 47.
Notes to Chapter 4 271
95. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1908, mEP.
96. rSA to GGI, december 14, 1921, GGI 65411, Anom.
97. Gustave Lebourdais, “Programme du trung hoa,” n.d. (received at mEP seminary
in Paris, August 28, 1923), Correspondance Lebourdais, mEP.
98. nicholas Atkins and Frank tallett, Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 (oxford: oxford University Press, 2003), 163.
99. Lucas Lý, “Sao mà báo quán công giáo mở hội vạn quốc?,” Sacerdos Indosinensis,
February 15, 1931.
100. nguyễn Cang Thường, “báo chí công giáo và các nhà viết báo chí công giáo,”
CGĐT, november 11, november 27, and december 4, 1930.
101. Đông bích [nguyễn hưng Thi], “người công giáo với báo công giáo,” THNB, April
14, 1936.
102. Pierre Vũ Lai, “Vị linh mục đối với báo chí công giáo,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, June
15, 1940.
103. hồ ngọc Cẩn, “Công giáo đồng thinh nghĩa là gì?,” CGĐT, november 16, 1927.
104. nguyễn bá Chính to director of the cabinet of the governor-general, January 12,
1932, GGI 65410, Anom.
105. Cẩm Sơn, “người không theo đạo thiên chúa có nên đọc báo Công Giáo Đồng
Thinh không?,” CGĐT, november 17, 1927.
106. Sûreté annual report for July 1927 to June 1928, n.d., GGI 65470, Anom.
107. Đoàn Kim hương, “Kính lời cùng qúi hữu với chư vị sẽ đọc tờ ‘Công Giáo Đồng
Thinh,’” CGĐT, September 16, 1927.
108. Gendreau to de Guébriant, november 18, 1925, Correspondance Gendreau, mEP.
109. nguyễn bá Chính to director of the cabinet of the governor-general, January 12,
1932, GGI 65410, Anom.
110. See Philippe Peycam, “Intellectuals and Political Commitment in Vietnam: The
Emergence of a Public Sphere in Colonial Saigon (1916–1928),” Ph.d. diss., University of
London, School of oriental and African Studies, 1992, 121.
111. GGI 65413 and GGI 65414, Anom.
112. Pierre brocheux, “note sur Gilbert Chiêu (1867–1919), citoyen français et patriote
vietnamien,” Approches Asie 11 (1975): 72–81.
113. Vũ bằng, Bốn mươi năm nói láo (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Lao Động, 2008), 182–83.
114. rSt nF 4632, Anom.
115. nguyễn Quang hưng, “Ảnh hưởng của tư tưởng triét học Kitô giáo tới Việt nam
nửa đầu thế kỉ XX (qua khảo cứu báo Vì Chúa),” Nghiên Cứu Tôn Giáo 10 (2007): 25–32.
116. GoUCoCh III.60/n02 (3), ttLt II.
117. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “notre raison d’être, notre programme et notre but,” La Croix
d’Indochine, January 5, 1936.
118. nguyễn Cang Thường, “báo chí công giáo và các nhà viết báo chí công giáo,” CGĐT,
november 20, november 27, and december 4, 1930.
119. Lucas Lý, “bức gương nhiệt thành đối với báo chương công giáo,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, April 15, 1930.
120. This can be assessed through new subscriber lists, which the periodicals regularly
published.
272 Notes to Chapter 5
121. See circulation statistics for Catholic publications in Sacerdos Indosinensis, march
15, 1939.
122. nguyễn Đình hiến, Công giáo ích gì không? (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn,
1930).
ChAPtEr 5
1. “ba đại biểu thanh niên lao động Việt nam đã xuống tầu di rome,” THNB, July 29,
1939.
2. The november 1936 issue of Nam Thanh Công Giáo is devoted almost entirely to the
conference.
3. Lưu Thanh, “Cảm tưởng đối với cuộc hội họp của các thanh niên công giáo,” NKĐP,
november 26, 1936.
4. Lucas Lý, “Cảm tưỏng về hội nghị thanh niên công giáo bắc Kỳ,” NTCG, november
1936.
5. See Christopher Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885–1954 (richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999), 14–16, 38–39, 70–71, 325–26.
6. Choi byung Wook, Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mạng (1820–1841):
Central Policies and Local Response (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program
Publications, 2004), 30.
7. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1893, mEP.
8. Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945 (honolulu: University of hawai‘i Press, 2007), 56.
9. t. P., “di dân đi đâu?,” THNB, September 10, 1924.
10. Annual report of East Cochinchina, 1912, mEP.
11. Annual report of South tonkin, 1911, mEP.
12. Annual report of hưng hóa, 1937, mEP.
13. Annual report of huế, 1934, mEP.
14. Annual report of huế, 1939, mEP.
15. Annual report of hanoi, 1938, mEP.
16. Annual report of north Cochinchina, 1912, mEP.
17. “La Vie catholique en Indochine: Chinois catholiques de Swatow en Cochinchine,”
Bulletin Catholique Indochinois, may 1928.
18. Andrew hardy, Red Hills: Migrants and the State in the Highlands of Vietnam (Singapore: nIAS Press, 2005), 101. The point is originally david marr’s.
19. Peter hansen, “bắc Đi Cư: Catholic refugees from the north of Vietnam, and Their
role in the Southern republic,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 185.
20. Annual report of Phnom Penh, 1930, mEP.
21. rSt nF 6311, Anom.
22. harry Franck, East of Siam: Ramblings in the Five Divisions of French Indo-China
(new york: The Century Co., 1926), 229.
23. Kimloan hill, “Strangers in a Foreign Land: Vietnamese Soldiers and Workers
in France during World War I,” in Việt Nam: Borderless Histories, ed. Anthony reid and
nhung tuyet tran (madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 256–89.
Notes to Chapter 5 273
24. “Les Chrétiens tonkinois en France: Lettre de mgr. Gendreau,” ASMEP, January–
February 1919.
25. “Les Annamites à l’évêché de Fréjus,” ASMEP, march–April 1917; “Les Annamites
catholiques en France,” ASMEP, January–February 1918.
26. Emile raynaud, “Les Annamites à Lourdes,” ASMEP, July–August 1916.
27. raynaud offered the numbers of nine hundred baptisms in articulo mortis and
two hundred adult baptisms. See raynaud, “Les Annamites en France pendant la guerre,”
ASMEP, november–december 1921.
28. hill, “Strangers in a Foreign Land,” 273–75.
29. raynaud, “Les Annamites en France pendant la guerre.”
30. Ibid., 127.
31. Ibid., 130.
32. Ibid., 126.
33. L. durand-Vagnon to Cardinal Prefect, n.d. (probably from 1933), nS 1125, CEP.
34. trương Vĩnh Ký, Voyage to Tonking in the Year Ất Hợi (1876), trans. P .J. honey
(London: School of oriental and African Studies, 1982).
35. nguyễn hữu mỹ, Le Tonkin pittoresque: souvenirs et impressions de voyage (Saigon:
Imprimerie nguyễn Văn Viết, 1925), 111.
36. Christopher Goscha, “récits de voyage viêtnamiens et prise de conscience indochinoise (c. 1920–1945),” in Récits de voyages des asiatiques: Genres, mentalités, conception
de l’espace, ed. Claudine Salmon (Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-orient, 1996), 253–79.
37. Lê Văn Đức, Du lịch bên Xiêm (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1926), 49.
38. Lê Văn Đức, A travers l’Allemagne, la Belgique et l’Angleterre: Impressions de voyage
d’un Annamite (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1924), 159.
39. Lê Văn Đức, Cách đi Tây (Saigon: duc Luu Phuong, 1931).
40. “Đông Pháp địa dư ca,” NKĐP, August 25 and September 15, 1932.
41. Đông bích [nguyễn hưng Thi], “nam bắc lại tranh nhau,” THNB, August 28, 1934.
42. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1897, mEP.
43. Annual report of West Cochinchina, 1896, mEP.
44. André masson, The Transformation of Hanoi, 1873–1888, trans. Jack A. yaeger (madison, WI: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1987), chapter 4.
45. GoUCoCh IIA.45/281 (6), ttLt II.
46. Mutuelle chrétienne Saigon, association du sacré-coeur de Jésus, liste des associés, 1929
(Saigon: Xưa nay, 1929).
47. Association mutuelle catholique de Cau Kho: liste des membres (Saigon: Imprimerie
nguyễn Văn Viết, 1935).
48. Hội các đăng linh hồn nơi lửa luyện tội thành phố Vinh—Bên Thuy (Vinh: Imprimerie du nord Annam, 1935).
49. mh 2908, ttLt I.
50. rSt 8154, ttLt I.
51. rSt 79834, ttLt I.
52. ngô tử hạ, “Việc hội thánh Vixentê Đông dương với việc cứu thế xã hội,” THNB,
June 19 and 26 and July 8, 1943.
53. rSt 79734, ttLt I.
274 Notes to Chapter 5
54. “reportages de l’intérieur: Inauguration du Cercle des Etudes Catholiques de nam
dinh,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, may 21, 1929.
55. Kay Chadwick and Kevin Passmore, eds., Catholicism, Politics and Society in
Twentieth-Century France (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2000).
56. “L’Action catholique en Indochine,” Missions Catholiques, June 1934.
57. Gabriel Palau, S.J., Cuốn binh thư, trans. Phạm Xuân huyên (nam Định: Ích Thư
Xuất bản Cục, 1942). one example of the latter is Cùng các vị tuyên uý, làm thế nào để thiết
lập Công Giáo Tiến Hành ở mỗi xứ (hanoi: Imprimerie trung hòa, 1940).
58. “Cùng các đấng và chư qúi vị hỏi về việc lập Công Giáo nam Thanh các nơi,” NTCG,
January 1936.
59. “trại huấn luyện đoàn trưởng thanh niên công giáo Chí hòa,” NKĐP, April 12, 1944.
60. For example, one regular column in Nam Kỳ Địa Phận about the activities of various Catholic youth groups in Cochinchina was titled “The Catholic youth movement”
(Phong trào thanh niên công giáo).
61. trần Văn Thao, Hướng đạo với hội thánh công giáo (hanoi: Editions la croix scoute,
1940).
62. “Le Scoutisme en Indochine: la grande excursion en baie d’halong,” L’Avenir du
Tonkin, January 7, 1932.
63. “Le Scoutisme en Indochine: les leçons d’un grand voyage,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, July
26, 1932.
64. Statistics are sketchy, but the hanoi chapters together had 3,500 members as early as
1934, with 1,500 in neighboring Phát diệm, and groups in bùi Chu were reported to have by
far the greatest membership in Vietnam (see “ngỏ mấy lời cùng nghĩa binh bắc Kỳ,” NBTT,
may–June, 1934). From this it can reasonably be estimated that the total membership of
Eucharistic Crusade in Vietnam was well over ten thousand, and perhaps more, by the end
of the 1930s.
65. nguyễn bá tòng to the editor of NBTT, September–october 1934.
66. See Phong trào Hùng Tâm và Dũng Chí (huế: Imprimerie ngô tử hạ, 1942) and
the August 1943 edition of Sacerdos Indosinensis, both devoted entirely to the new organization.
67. “một ngày vui chưa từng thấy: thanh niên công giáo họp bạn tại Lái Thiêu,” NKĐP,
may 5, 1943.
68. mh 3178, ttLt I. The rejected film is noted as Sympathie Inachevée (Unfinished
sympathy), but I could find no film with such a name. It could be mistakenly referring to the
popular 1933 drama Symphonie Inachevée, about Schubert’s unfinished eighth symphony,
but any reasons for rejecting this film remain inscrutable to me.
69. “Thanh niên lao động,” NTCG, February 1936.
70. “Công giáo thanh niên lao động,” NTCG, december 1936 and January 1937.
71. “những tệ tục ở thôn quê,” Hy Vọng, September 1939.
72. See trần Đức Uông, Thanh niên nông nghiệp, chủ thuyết và huấn luyện (nam Định:
Editions de la J.A.C., 1939).
73. J. A. Sự, “Thanh niên nông nghiệp công giáo,” THNB, July 8, 1939.
74. Loan tùng, “Phụ nữ đối với việc Công Giáo tiến hành,” NKĐP, April 1, 1937.
75. Giáo hội công giáo Việt Nam niên giám 2005 (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản tôn Giáo, 2005),
434–35.
Notes to Chapter 5 275
76. ngô Đình Thục, “Thơ chung Đức cha Phêrô ngô Đình Thục giám mục địa phận
Vỉnh Long, mùa chay cả năm 1939,” NKĐP, march 23 and 30 and April 6, 1939.
77. ruth harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (new york: Viking, 1999).
78. Contemporary scholarship on the history of La Vang is based primarily on a relatively small number of accounts dating from the early twentieth century, many of which
seem to be based on songs, poems, and oral histories collected from elderly Catholics at the
first great festival (đại hội) at the site in 1901. These make up the first known major work
about La Vang in print, La Vang sự tích vãn. trần Quang Chu, Hành hương La Vang (n.p.,
Kỷ niệm Đại hội La Vang 26, 2005), 1: 67–71.
79. J. b. roux, “Le Pèlerinage de notre-dame de La Vang,” ASMEP, may–June 1935, 113.
80. trần Quang Chu, Hành hương La Vang, 1: 203–8.
81. The earliest evidence for this story that Chu cites is the 1901 La Vang sự tích vãn.
Ibid., 1: 208–13.
82. Ibid., 1: 217–20.
83. Ibid., 1: 221–25.
84. Ibid., 1: 237–38.
85. trần Văn trang, Tự tích tôn kính Đức mẹ La Vang (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de la
mission, 1923), 17.
86. trần Quang Chu, Hành hương La Vang, 2: 53.
87. “Cochinchine Septentrionale,” Missions Catholiques, April 1914, cited in trần Quang
Chu, Hành hương La Vang, 1: 323; J. b. roux, “Le pèlerinage de notre-dame de La Vang,”
ASMEP, may–June 1933, 121.
88. trần Văn trang, Tự tích tôn kính Đức mẹ La Vang, 15–16.
89. trần Quang Chu, Hành hương La Vang, 2: 103.
90. ngô Ký Váng [hồ ngọc Cẩn], “Đi viếng nhà thờ Đức mẹ ở La Vang,” NKĐP, may 16,
1912, in trần Quang Chu, Hành hương La Vang, 1: 301–7.
91. For an account of one such trip, see “tường thuật cuộc du lịch của đoàn giáo hữu
nam Kỳ đi dự lễ tam nhựt đại hội Đức bà La Vang,” NKĐP, September 15, 1938.
92. “trên chuyến xe lửa hành hương La Vang 1917,” NKĐP, october 4, 1917, in trần
Quang Chu, Hành hương La Vang, 2: 10–11.
93. J. b. hướng, “Đi viếng cung thánh Đức mẹ La Vang,” NKĐP, march 8, 1923, in ibid.,
2: 34–41.
94. J. huế, “Đi kiệu minh nien tại La Vang,” NKĐP, February 17, 1938.
95. “Thông báo kiệu đại hội La Vang 5 (1913),” NKĐP, July 3, 1913, in trần Quang Chu,
Hành hương La Vang, 1: 307–9.
96. “Ơn lạ Đức mẹ nhà thờ La Vang,” NKĐP, August 31, 1913, in ibid., 1: 347–52.
97. nguyễn Văn Thích, Dạo chơi Phát Diệm, tòa giám mục tiên khởi Việt Nam (Qui
nhơn: Imprimerie Qui nhơn, 1937).
98. bùi Đức Sinh, Giáo hôi cong giáo ở Viêt Nam (Calgary: Veritas, 1998), 3: 133.
99. nguyễn bá tòng, “Thơ Đức cha J. b. tòng gởi cho đức giám mục và các cha địa phận
Sài Gòn, 4 mars 1933,” NKĐP, march 16, 1933.
100. nguyễn hửu Lượng, Đức thầy Jean-Baptiste Tòng, gíam mục địa phận Phát Diệm
(Saigon: nhà In Xưa nay, 1934), 12.
101. Paul Vàng, Nguyễn Bá Tòng, giám mục tiên khởi Việt Nam, cuộc hành trình Roma
(Saigon: Imprimerie de la mission, 1934).
276 Notes to Chapter 5
102. “Saigon fait une belle reception à mgr. tonG,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, november 4,
1933.
103. “Địa phận Sài Gòn đã nghinh tiếp Đức cha J. b. tòng tiên khởi giám mục bổn quốc
một cách rất long trọng,” NKĐP, november 2, 1933.
104. marcou to de Guébriant, november 22, 1933, Correspondance marcou, mEP.
105. See the supplement to Nam Kỳ Địa Phận for 1933.
106. “Kỉnh tặng Đức cha J. b. tòng,” NKĐP, February 16, 1933.
107. “bài các cha huế mừng Đức cha J. b. tòng,” NKĐP, november 23, 1933.
108. “Đức cha J. b. nguyễn bá tòng đắp từ cho các linh mục bổn quốc ở huế,” NKĐP,
march 2, 1933.
109. “Bạn Thiếu Niên với ngày kỷ niệm thụ phong của Đức giám mục Gioan baotixita,”
BTN, June 1938.
110. “bài chúc từ các cha Phát diệm đọc mừng Đức cha nguyễn bá tòng,” ĐMBN, July
1, 1943.
111. hồ ngọc Cẩn, “Kỷ niệm ngày Đức cha nguyễn bá tòng thụ phong giám mục chẵn
4 năm,” THNB, June 17, 1937.
112. Đoàn Kim hương, “Đi xem lễ phong chức đệ nhị Việt nam giám mục,” CGĐT, July
11, 18, and 25, 1935.
113. Phêro nghĩa [Lê Thiện bá], “Cuộc lễ phong chức Đức cha dominico hồ ngọc
Cẩn,” NKĐP, July 18, 1935.
114. “L’arrivée de mgr. ho ngoc Can au tonkin,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, August 6, 1935.
115. nguyễn Thanh hương, “Cuộc nghênh tiếp Đức cha hồ ngọc Cẩn khi ra bùi Chu,”
THNB, August 8, 1935.
116. “Đi chầu lễ tấn phong đức tiên khởi giám mục Vĩnh Long tại kinh đô huế,” NKĐP,
may 19, 1938.
117. “những người trồng người,” Vì Chúa, June 10, 1938.
118. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “Les bons arbres produisent de bons fruits,” La Croix d’Indochine,
June 4, 1938.
119. mayor of hải Phòng to rSt, november 2, 1935, rSt nF 6925, Anom.
120. “bùi Chu tiếp rước Đức cha Lemasle và ngô Đình Thục,” ĐMBN, January 1, 1941.
121. I have not found a newspaper account of Thục’s ordination in may 1938 mentioning
nhu’s presence, but nhu held a position in the national Library and Archives in hanoi by
the end of that year.
122. “Đức cha Phêro ngô Đình Thục vào nam,” NKĐP, June 30 and July 7, 1938.
123. “Ông ngô dinh nhu đậu bằng cổ tự học,” NKĐP, February 24, 1938; “trong gương
ngô Đình,” NKĐP, July 14, 1938.
124. “Une Journée du Pape en Indochine,” BSMEP, may 1930.
125. rené Fontenelle, Đức giáo hoàng Phiô XI, trans. Đoàn Kim hương (Saigon: nguyen
Văn Viết et fils, 1933).
126. Phạm Quang hàm, Tiểu sử Đức giáo hoàng Phiô XI (hanoi: Imprimerie ngô tử
hạ, 1937).
127. rSt 44965, ttLt I.
128. P. m. Compagnon, Le culte de Notre Dame de Lourdes dans la société des missions
étrangères de Paris (Paris: Pierre téqui, 1910).
Notes to Chapter 6 277
129. See, for example, “Annamites catholiques à Lourdes,” Missions Catholiques, december 20, 1918.
130. “note sur le culte de nd de Lourdes dans la mission du tonkin occidental,” April
21, 1908, 711C, mEP.
131. mme Suzanne trần Thị Phước, Đức bà hiện ra tại Lourdes (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie
de la mission, 1927).
132. Lê Văn Đức, “Sự lạ lùng cả thể ở thánh Lourdes bên nước Pháp,” NKĐP, march 3,
10, and 17, 1938.
133. “nouvelles,” NKĐP, August 1, 1936; nguyễn bá tòng, Deux conférences: Apparitions
et miracles de Lourdes, Gesta Dei per Francos (hanoi: Imprimerie ngô tử hạ, 1938).
134. An Phang, “Đức mẹ hiện ra ở Fatima, nước buttughê,” published in Nam Kỳ Địa
Phận from January to April 1932; Tôn kính Đức bà môi khôi Fatima (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie
de la mission, 1944).
135. See Thomas m. Schwertner, o.P., The Eucharistic Renaissance, or, The International
Eucharistic Congresses (new york: macmillan, 1926).
136. Compte rendu de la réunion des Evêques du groupe du Tonkin tenue au Tam Dao,
le 8–16 septembre 1926 sous la présence de S.E. Monseigneur Aiuti (hanoi: trung hòa Thiên
ban, 1926).
137. “Le Congrès eucharistique de Phat diem,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, June 18, 1928
(supplement).
138. Léon Paliard, “Le Congrès eucharistique de hanoi,” Missions Catholiques, december 1932.
139. Governor of Cochinchina to GGI, december 18, 1935, rSt nF 2348, Anom.
140. Bài giảng cho qưới chức các họ của Đức cha Valentin Herrgott, giám mục địa phận
Nam Vang, dấu tích để nhớ cuộc hội nghị thánh thể tại Saigon (Saigon: Imprimerie Việt
nam, 1935).
141. Joseph trúc, Bài diễn văn về cuộc đại hội thánh thể Hanoi 1931 (nam Định: Imprimerie nam Việt, 1931).
142. See Hội nghị thánh thể (Saigon: Imprimerie Việt nam, 1935).
143. Hành trình Phi Luật Tân (đoàn đại biểu do các cha địa phận Hanoi cử đi) (nam
Định: Ích Thư Xuất bản Cục, 1937). Although the author is not identified, the inclusion of
many pictures taken either by ngô tử hạ or a priest named hương Kỳ suggests that one of
the two may be the author.
144. Ibid., 15.
145. Ibid., 56.
146. hồ ngộc Cẩn, “bài diễn thuyết hồ ngộc Cẩn tại manila,” NKĐP, April 8, 1937.
147. NBTT, January–February 1937.
ChAPtEr 6
1. The full text of the speech is in NKĐP, may 19, 1938.
2. ngô Đình Thục, “Thơ chung trong dịp thiết lập địa phận Vĩnh Long,” NKĐP, march
23 and 30 and April 6, 1939.
3. Several clipped newspaper articles to this effect are in GGI 65541, Anom.
278 Notes to Chapter 6
4. “notice sur monseigneur nGo-dInh-thUC,” January 1946, ConSPoL 125,
Anom.
5. For example, see “nước ai-Lao (Laos),” NKĐP, August 11, 1932; and L. K. h., “Vấn đề
quan hệ đến chủng tộc nước ta,” THNB, January 11 and 13, 1927.
6. Vân trình, “Thế nào là aí quốc?,” ĐMBN, may 1, 1942.
7. Focyane [huỳnh Phúc yên], “Cái chủ nghĩa quốc gia của chúng ta,” CGĐT, november 10, 1927.
8. “người công giáo tưởng nghĩ về hai tiếng ‘quê hương’ thế nào?,” CGĐT, January 4,
1930.
9. Vân Vân, “Việt nam và công giáo,” CGĐT, June 8, 1933.
10. Thanh Lưu, “người công giáo trong xã hội Việt nam,” THNB, october 29, 1938.
11. biên tu, “nghĩa vụ dân đối với quốc gia, và quốc gia bảo vệ quyền lợi nhân dân,”
NKĐP, August 11, 18, and 25 and September 1, 8, and 22, 1932.
12. biên tu, “Có quyền phải biết dùng quyền, không có quyền phải biết phục quyền là
thể nào?,” NKĐP, october 28, november 3, 17, and 24, and december 8 and 22, 1932; Paul
tạo, “Quốc gia tư tưởng uư liệt,” NKĐP, August 31, September 14, and october 19, 1939.
13. nghiêm Gia, “Luân lý vững bền là nền xã hội,” CGĐT, march 24, 1932.
14. Phêro nghĩa [Lê Thiện bá], “Thế nào là aí quốc?,” NKĐP, october 26, 1939.
15. trần Văn Chính, Người Việt Nam! Người yêu nước Nam! (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de
Qui nhơn, 1933).
16. Sào nam tử, “Cụ Phân bội Châu sắp theo đạo thiên chúa?,” CGĐT, december 10,
1936.
17. C. t., “người công giáo đối với hai chữ aí quốc,” NKĐP, december 19, 1935.
18. E. Quyển [Guillaume Clément masson], Sử ký nước Annam kể tặt (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1930), 6th ed.
19. Vũ Đăng Khoa, Giáo lương: điều nên biết (Thanh hoá: Imprimeur Louis de Cooman,
1933).
20. Vũ tiên tiến, “Ai là ông tổ chữ quốc ngữ?,” THNB, January 7, 1925.
21. nguyễn Văn Thích, Dạo chơi Phát Diệm, tòa giám mục tiên khởi Việt Nam (Qui
nhơn: Imprimerie Qui nhơn, 1937), 25.
22. Joseph trần, Lịch sử cụ Sáu (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de la mission, 1930), 6.
23. P. Quỳnh, “Câu truyện ba thế kỷ: từ cụ hiền đến Đức cha tòng,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, September 15, 1933.
24. Đặng Thúc Liêng, Trương Vĩnh Ký hành trạng (Saigon: nhà In Xưa nay, 1927).
25. Lê Thanh, Trương Vĩnh Ký: biên khảo, in Nghiên cứu và phê bình văn học (hanoi:
nhà Xuất bàn hội nhà Văn, 2002), 244.
26. Ibid., 271.
27. on the different scholarly interpretations of Ký in the democratic republic of Vietnam and the republic of Vietnam, see milton osborne, “truong Vinh Ky and Phan Thanh
Gian: The Problem of a nationalist Interpretation of 19th Century Vietnamese history,”
Journal of Asian Studies 30, no. 1 (november 1970): 81–93. on reassessments of Ký in contemporary Vietnam, see Thế kỷ XXI nhìn về Trương Vĩnh Ký (ho Chi minh City: nhà Xuất
bản trẻ và tạp Chí Xưa nay, 2002).
28. mark mcLeod, “nguyen truong to: A Catholic reformer at Emperor tu-duc’s
Court,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (September 1994): 315.
Notes to Chapter 6 279
29. trương bá Cần, Nguyễn Trường Tộ: con người và di thảo (ho Chi minh City: nhà
Xuất bản Thành Phố hồ Chí minh, 2002), 10.
30. nguyễn Lân, Nguyễn Trường Tộ: Người Việt Nam sắng suốt nhất ở thời kỳ rối ren
nhất trong lịch sử Việt Nam (huế: Viễn Đệ, 1941). The comparison to Fukuzawa yukichi and
Kang youwei first appeared in a 1933 Nam Phong article by nguyễn trọng Thuật, an activist
in the Việt nam Quốc dân Đảng.
31. See, for example, “Lo việc chánh trị,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, January 15, 1938.
32. Đông bích [nguyễn hưng Thi], “người công giáo với việc chính trị,” THNB, August
24, 1935.
33. Đoàn Kim hương, “Vấn đề xã hội chủ nghĩa và cá nhân tư sản,” serialized in CGĐT
from october 1931 through march 1932.
34. Eric Jennings, “remembering ‘other’ Losses: The temple du Souvenir Indochinois
of nogent-sur-marne,” History and Memory 15, no. 1 (January 2003): 5–48.
35. The genealogy of this idea, essential to understanding the emergence of the idea
of national culture in Vietnam, remains poorly understood. on French ideas about Vietnamese religion, see Laurent dartigues, L’Orientalisme français au pays d’Annam, 1862–1939:
Essai sur l’idée française du Viêt Nam (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005), 98–106. The use of
the conceptual category of “religion” to describe these practices was contested then and
remains so now. Some intellectuals used the term and others did not; some Catholics understood these belief systems as religions (tôn giáo), while others criticized them for being
atheistic (vô đạo).
36. GGI to minister of Colonies, June 24, 1920, GoUCoCh IIb.55/063, ttLt II.
37. Paul Jaricot, “note sur la cérémonie à nogent-sur-marne, 18 octobre 1925,” 053 (A–
b), mEP.
38. See herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945
(Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1992), chapter 3.
39. hue-tam ho tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge, mA: harvard University Press, 1992), 50.
40. Shawn mchale, Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the
Making of Modern Vietnam (honolulu: University of hawai‘i Press, 2004), 77–83.
41. david marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945 (berkeley University of California Press, 1981), 73–77, 88–93.
42. Pascale bezançon, Une colonisation éducatrice? L’experience indochinoise (1862–1945)
(Paris: l’harmattan, 2002), 175–81.
43. Elise deVido, “buddhism for This World”: The buddhist revival in Vietnam, 1920–
1951, and Its Legacy,” in Modernity and Re-Enchantment: Religion in Post-Revolutionary
Vietnam, ed. Philip taylor (Lanham, md: Lexington books, 2007), 274–75.
44. trần Văn Giáp, Đạo lý phật giáo với đạo lý nho giáo ở nước ta (hanoi: Phật Giáo
hội, 1935).
45. marcel-Jules Albert-Paul Lemaître, Religions, cultes, rites, et superstitions en terre
d’Annam. Influence de l’idée religieuse et de l’idée philosophique sur la vie politique et sociale
du peuple annamite. Conférence faite aux officiers de la garnison de Saïgon, le 17 septembre
1932 (Saigon: nguyễn Văn Của, 1932), 2.
46. Paul boudet, Pierre Pasquier, Indochinois (Saigon: Editions d’Extrême Asie, 1929),
60, 72.
280 Notes to Chapter 6
47. resident in ninh bình to rSt, december 18, 1937, rSt 79784, ttLt I.
48. Annual report of Phát diệm, 1932, mEP.
49. dean of the monks of the buddhist Church of tonkin to rSt, April 4, 1936, rSt
79784, ttLt I.
50. President of the provincial tribunal to Victor Aubert, october 8, 1928, rSt 56764,
ttLt I.
51. Pierre-marie Gendreau to rSt, november 22, 1928, rSt 56764, ttLt I.
52. Administrator of civil services of hanoi to director of the “Volonté Indochinoise,”
november 28, 1937, mh 3715, ttLt I.
53. President of the chamber of the representatives of the people Phạm huy Lục to the
administrator of civil services of the City of hanoi, n.d., mh 3715, ttLt I.
54. GGI to rSt, december 26, 1940, mh 3715, ttLt I.
55. mayor of hanoi to rSt, September 17, 1937, mh 3715, ttLt I.
56. French bishops in tonkin to GGI, February 20, 1919; GGI to director of public education, may 24, 1919, GGI 51222, Anom.
57. “mgr. marcou, rapport sur les doléances des catholiques du tonkin et plus spécialement du huyên de Kim Son au sujet des écoles d’instruction élémentaire,” January 13, 1923,
GGI 51566, Anom.
58. rSt to marcou, november 24, 1923, rSt 13918, ttLt I.
59. Administrator third class Forsan to rSt, September 13, 1928, rSt 73396, ttLt I.
60. Annual report of hanoi, 1936, mEP.
61. Pierre Charles, “La conversion des bouddhistes,” Missions Catholiques, June 1933.
62. “Encore le bouddhisme dans les écoles,” may 14, 1934; “Le bouddhisme en Annam,”
June 9, 1934; “Ecole bouddhistes?,” June 30, 1934.
63. tây dương [Gustave hue], “religion perverse,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, march 14,
1933.
64. nghiêm Gia Ký [Gustave hue], Phục phật xích độc: hội phật giáo tiến hành (hưng
hoá: Imprimeur P. m. ramond, 1935), 11.
65. “Les Catholiques d’Indochine: une lettre de mgr. de Guébriant,” ASMEP, July–
August 1931.
66. Louis de Cooman’s Le diable au couvent et Mère Marie-Catherine Dien (Paris: nouvelles Editions Latines, 1962), based on his notes and marie-Catherine’s own letters, is the
most detailed account of these events.
67. Jacques Cẩn, “Pour l’Action Catholique,” Bulletin Catholique Indochinois, march
1928.
68. “một cuộc điều tra rất hữu ích cho công cuộc truyền giáo ở cỏi đất Việt nam,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, november 15, 1939.
69. “Giải đáp về thiên chúa giáo,” Hy Vọng, october–november 1938.
70. Verax, “brahmanisme et bouddhisme,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, June 8, 1934; Agat, “Le
bouddhisme en Annam,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, June 9, 1934.
71. “Annam và do Thái,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, August 15, 1939.
72. P. m, “Cái tồn hại về tục mê tín,” THNB, April 2 and 5, 1927; Phêrô nghĩa [Lê Thiện
bá], “Annam còn lắm mê tín,” CGĐT, march 2, 1928.
73. Joseph Kiểu, “người Annam đối với đạo thích ca,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, november
15, 1933.
Notes to Chapter 6 281
74. nguyễn Văn Thích, Vấn đề luân lý ngày nay (Quinhon: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn,
1931), 17.
75. nguyễn bá tòng, Le messianisme: conférence donnée par Mgr. J. B. Tòng en l’église
paroissiale de Nam Dinh, 22 décembre 1936 (nam Định: nhà Xuất bản Công Giáo nam
Thanh, 1936), 1.
76. nguyễn bá tòng, Deux conférences de S.E. Mgr. J. B. Tòng: En quête de la vérité,
Evangélisation de l’Indochine depuis ses débuts (nam Định: ngo Viet Vien, 1941), 18.
77. nguyễn bá tòng, Tiến bộ của sự sống / Le progrès de la vie (nam Định: nhà Xuất bản
Công Giáo nam Thanh, 1935), 14.
78. For example, hy Liễu, “Cái quan niệm đối với việc sưu thuế,” THNB, June 27, 1925,
and C. Đ. n., “Đục khoét của dân trong vụ sưu thuế,” THNB, August 5, 1926.
79. hy Liễu, “một cái họa lớn cho dân quê,” THNB, January 22, 1929.
80. Cổ Sơn, “bọn lao động với vấn đề thuế nhà cửa,” THNB, April 15 and 18, 1925.
81. Công minh, “Chủ nghĩa vô đạo,” CGĐT, January 1, 1929.
82. Phạm Văn bá, “Lúc nầy ta phải tiết kiệm một chút,” NKĐP, April 13, 1933; P. h., “Lý
tài và tự do,” THNB, September 11, 1926.
83. h. b. h., “bổn phận loại người,” THNB, July 8, 1926; hy Liễu, “ta nên thương giúp
kẻ bần cùng,” THNB, April 9, 1927.
84. Phêrô nghĩa [Lê Thiện bá], “một đều hậu hoạn cho các nhà giàu,” NKĐP, July 14,
1932.
85. P. h., “một tin mừng cho nông dân xứ ta,” THNB, July 29, 1925.
86. See Paul misner, Social Catholicism in Europe from the Onset of Industrialization to
the First World War (new york: Crossroad, 1991).
87. on this event, see the supplement to Hy Vọng, december 1941.
88. Vacquier to “Excellence,” december 11, 1936, Correspondance Vacquier, mEP.
89. Vacquier to his mother, march 26, 1937, quoted in “La vie du Père André Vacquier
(1906–1945), carnet de sa mère Antoinette Vacquier,” n.d., Correspondance Vacquier, mEP.
90. Vacquier to his mother, April 30, 1937, quoted in ibid., Correspondance Vacquier,
mEP.
91. André Vacquier, “L’église d’Indochine devant le problème d’ouvrier,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, June 15, 1939.
92. Fernand Parrel, “L’apostolat laïque,” Bulletin de Sainte Jeanne d’Arc, march 1934.
93. on mounier, see Gérard Lurol, Emmanuel Mounier (Paris: l’harmattan, 2000).
94. “Đức cha ngô Đình Thục vào nam,” NKĐP, June 30, 1938.
95. “Qu’est-ce que l’Action Sociale Indochinoise?,” January 1, 1934, nS 1125, CEP.
96. The proceedings of the conferences are Le capital et le travail—compte rendu in extenso des conférences données aux journées sociales et aux réunions d’études (hanoi: trung
hòa, 1938) and La famille annamite et la personnalité humaine—compte rendu in extenso des
leçons données au journées sociales (hanoi: trung hòa, 1939).
97. Annual report of Saigon, 1937, mEP.
98. Đông bích [nguyễn hưng Thi], “Kinh tế cái gì?,” THNB, January 17, 1933.
99. Tiếng gọi lao động (hanoi: Imprimeur François Chaize, 1939).
100. “những cái nguy của phong trào thanh niên công giáo Việt nam,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, January 15, 1942. The Sûreté watched some Catholic youth organizations closely,
carrying out background checks on their leaders and surveying their activities.
282 Notes to Chapter 6
101. trần Văn Thao, Thanh niên chiến sĩ công gíao (hải Phòng: nhà In tổng Cục
t.
n.C.G. Địa Phận hải Phòng, 1940).
102. “hội thánh đối với xã hội thuyết,” Sacerdos Indosinensis, September 1936.
103. “Về sự nhập vào tổng đoàn lao động (CGt),” Sacerdos Indosinensis, June 15, 1937.
104. rSt 79721, ttLt I.
105. André Vacquier, “note sur les oeuvres ouvrières,” n.d. (probably from 1937), Correspondance Vacquier, mEP.
106. Linh mục Phát diệm, “những nỗi gian nan bởi phi giáo học đường,” Sacerdos
Indosinensis, August and September 1929.
107. Jean de Guébriant, “note,” Bulletin Catholique Indochinois, April 1930.
108. François Chaize, “Communisme et catholicisme en Indochine,” Missions
Catholiques, december 1932.
109. nathaniel david, A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy (boulder, Co: Westview, 1995).
110. For example, Nam Phong published a series of articles criticizing the bolshevik
revolution even as events there were still unfolding, and French officials and colons made
regular use of anticommunism as a political tactic in the early 1920s. my thanks to Peter
Zinoman for this point. This challenges david marr’s argument that official colonial anticommunism “took a leaf from the Catholic book.” marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 86.
111. nguyễn Văn Thích, Vấn đề cộng sản (Qui nhơn: Imprimerie de Qui nhơn, 1927).
112. Focyane [huỳnh Phúc yên], “nước nam ta có duy hướng về vấn đề cộng sản
chăng?,” CGĐT, September 30, 1927.
113. nga học dịch Thuật, “Cộng sản nga,” CGĐT, April 29, 1927.
114. Th. Đệ nhị, “bắt đạo bên mexique,” CGĐT, April 29, 1927.
115. Công minh, “Ở xứ Xô Viết cộng sản,” CGĐT, February 22, 23, and 27, 1929.
116. “La Chine communiste vue par le Père robert,” L’Avenir du Tonkin, August 11, 1930.
117. “Đảng cộng sản ngoài bắc Kỳ,” CGĐT, February 20, 1930.
118. “Phong trào cộng sản đã lên đến nam Kỳ chăng?,” CGĐT, march 3, 1930.
119. huỳnh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945 (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1982), 155.
120. “Vụ cha Phêrô Khang coi xứ tràng Đình bị cộng sản giết ngày hai maiô 1931,”
thnb, may 28, 1931. The same obituary also appeared in Công Giáo Đồng Thinh on June 18,
193, in L’Avenir du Tonkin in the supplement to the July 1 issue, and in Missions Catholiques
in August 1931.
121. “tìm đặng xác Cha Phêrô Khang,” NKĐP, may 12, 1932.
122. Andréa Eloy to Paul Gros, February 18, 1932, Correspondance Eloy, mEP.
123. François Chaize, “Communisme et catholicisme en Indochine,” Missions
Catholiques, december 1932.
124. Paul ng. C. Thường, “một người cộng sản trở lại,” CGĐT, September 17, 1936.
125. See huỳnh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, 189–231.
126. “Chủ nghĩa cộng sản và xã hội,” Vì Chúa, February 25, 1938.
127. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “Le parti démocrate indochinois est venu à son heure,” La Croix
d’Indochine, April 3, 1937.
Notes to Chapter 7 283
128. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “La mystique religieuse est toujours habilement exploitée par
des révolutionnaires professionnels pour soulever la masse imbécile,” La Croix d’Indochine,
december 4, 1937.
129. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “La présence de michel my dans le Parti démocrate inquiète les
communistes parce que le directeur est l’adversaire irréductible des suppôts de moscou,” La
Croix d’Indochine, April 10, 1937.
130. Cruxindo [nguyễn hữu mỹ], “Parlons encore des 40 heures,” La Croix d’Indochine,
February 26, 1938.
131. Victor Aubert to “bien cher frère,” october 19, 1936, Correspondance Aubert, mEP.
ChAPtEr 7
1. P. Quỳnh, “Câu truyện ba thế kỷ: từ cụ hiền đến Đức cha tòng,” Sacerdos Indosinensis,
September 15, 1933.
2. Eric Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1.
3. Ibid., 225–25.
4. Ibid., 157.
5. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “Contre la 5ème colonne,” articles in La Croix d’Indochine throughout June 1940.
6. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics, 195.
7. Anne raffin, Youth Mobilization in Vichy Indochina and Its Legacies, 1940–1970 (Lanham, md: Lexington books, 2005), 159–60.
8. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics, 151–61.
9. hương trai, “Đạo khổng và đạo phật (ý kiến của một nhà nho học),” Vì Chúa,
January–February 1943.
10. rSt nF 5962, Anom.
11. raffin, Youth Mobilization in Vichy Indochina and Its Legacies, 96.
12. Ibid., 178 n. 13.
13. rSt nF 6128, Anom.
14. rSt nF 3953, Anom.
15. “Un petit historique du mouvement C.V. & A.V. Jeanne d’Arc à Cholon,” hCF
166/504, Anom.
16. This was especially true in bùi Chu. See Phan Phát huồn, Việt Nam giáo sử (Saigon:
Cứu Thế tùng Thư, 1962), 2: 264–78.
17. “tin tôn giáo,” Hy Vọng, April 1942.
18. trần Thị Lien, “Les catholiques et la république democratique du Việt nam: une approche biographique,” in Naissance d’un état-parti: le Viêt Nam depuis 1945, ed. Christopher
E. Goscha and benoît de tréglodé (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2004), 261 n. 21.
19. Edward miller, “Vision, Power and Agency: The Ascent of ngô Đình diệm,” Journal
of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no. 3 (october 2004): 436.
20. “bùi Chu tiếp rước Đức cha Lemasle và ngô Đình Thục,” ĐMBN, January 1, 1941.
21. See trần mỹ-Vân, “Japan and Vietnam’s Caodaists: A Wartime relationship (1939–
45),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (1996): 179–93.
284 Notes to Chapter 7
22. david marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995), 83.
23. nguyễn hữu mỹ, “Pourquoi tolère-t-on que la Croix gammée, emblème de nos
ennemis, s’étale encore sur l’Indochine possession française?,” L’Aube Nouvelle, may 5, 1940.
24. “revue de la presse Annamite, 5–15 novembre,” GGI 65415, Anom.
25. Luc Garcia, Quand les missionnaires rencontraient les Vietnamiens (1920–1960)
(Paris: Karthala, 2008), 137.
26. Cm 476, Anom.
27. François Chaize to “bien cher père Procureur,” February 11, 1945, Correspondance
Chaize, mEP.
28. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques et la république democratique du Việt nam,” 256.
29. François Chaize to P. Gros, September 12, 1945, Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
30. François Chaize, “Suite à mon rapport de juillet 1945,” october 1, 1945, Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
31. Commander of French forces in China, “Incidence du mouvement nationaliste sur
la communauté catholique en Indochine,” november 7, 1945, Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
32. For Vacquier’s correspondence to mEP authorities after the Japanese coup, see Correspondance Vacquier, mEP.
33. Lưu ngọc Văn to François Chaize, may 6, 1945, Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
34. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance
(1945–1954): entre la reconquête coloniale et la résistance communiste,” Ph.d. diss., Institut
d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 1996, 53.
35. marr, Vietnam 1945, 459, 485.
36. François Chaize, “Attitude du Groupe de Jeunesse Professionnelle Catholique de la
paroisse de la cathédrale de hanoï depuis les évènements du 9 mars 1945,” n.d., Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
37. Garcia, Quand les missionnaires rencontraient les Vietnamiens, 153–57.
38. Léon Paliard, “Séminaire Saint-Sulpice de hanoi,” unpublished memoir, may 12,
1956, 2–3, SULP.
39. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 76.
40. François Chaize, “Attitude d’une partie du clergé annamite depuis les évènements
de mars 1945,” Correspondance François Chaize, mEP.
41. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 53.
42. Ibid., 49.
43. Ibid., 125.
44. Ibid., 101.
45. one of the four, Lê hữu từ, was technically not yet bishop on September 23, but he
had been formally named as nguyễn bá tòng’s successor in Phát diệm.
46. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
44–45.
47. Ibid., 75.
48. “tinh thần độc lập,” ĐMBN, September 15, 1945.
49. “Cầu cho nước Việt nam trở lại đạo thật,” NBTT, September–october 1945.
50. Gương aí quốc công giáo (nam Định: Thanh niên tùng Thư, 1945).
Notes to Chapter 7 285
51. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 125.
52. Ibid., 131–37, 289–99.
53. Apostolic delegate to François Chaize, June 7, 1945, Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
54. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 143.
55. Ibid., 138–50.
56. François Chaize to “bien cher Père Procureur et Ami,” April 21, 1946, Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
57. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
155–57.
58. Ibid., 97–98.
59. Ibid., 98–101, 257–64.
60. Quoted in ibid., 101.
61. Ibid., 78–79, 101–2.
62. Ibid., 302–3.
63. Stein tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
64. Joseph masson, S.J., Vers l’église indigène: catholicisme ou nationalisme? (brussels:
Presse de belgique, 1944), 22.
65. François Chaize to S.C. de la Propagande, march 7, 1941; S.C. de la Propagande to
François Chaize, June 5, 1941; Apostolic delegate to François Chaize, december 17, 1941,
Correspondance Chaize, mEP.
66. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
281–85, 448–50, 554–55.
67. Ibid., 285–88, 556–58.
68. Ibid., 270–76, 436–42, 545–50.
69. Ibid., 276–80, 442–47.
70. French Ambassador to the Vatican to minister of Foreign Affairs, February 21, 1950,
Fm IC AFFPoL 481, Anom.
71. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 459.
72. Ibid., 53.
73. Phạm Đình Khiêm, Hành động xã hội của giáo hội qua các thời đại và ở Việt Nam
(Phát diệm: An Phong, 1950), 2nd ed.
74. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
276–80.
75. The most detailed account of the formation of competing national Catholic associations is Đoàn Độc Thư, Giám mục Lê Hữu Từ và Phát Diệm: những năm tranh đấu hào hùng
(Saigon: Sử Liệu hiện Đại, 1973), 38–84.
76. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 80.
77. Ibid., 80–90, 234–46, 300–302.
78. marr, Vietnam 1945, 550.
79. Ibid., 144.
80. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 78.
81. documentation on confiscation of Catholic property and sectarian violence in Cochinchina in late 1945 is in Fm IC nF 1297, Anom.
286 Notes to Chapter 7
82. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
212.
83. Ibid., 204–9.
84. See david marr, “beyond high Politics: State Formation in northern Vietnam,
1945–1946,” in Naissance d’un état-parti, 25–60.
85. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,” 74.
86. See François Guillemot, “Au coeur de la fracture vietnamienne: l’élimination de
l’opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans le nord du Vietnam (1945–1946),” in Naissance d’un état-parti, 175–216.
87. See François Guillemot, Dai Viêt, indépendance et revolution au Viêt-Nam: L’échec
de la troisième voie (1938–1955) (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2012). Thanks to Alec holcombe
for the latter point.
88. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
96–97.
89. Ibid., 166–91.
90. Ibid., 153–57.
91. Ibid., 244.
92. Ibid., 234.
93. Ibid., 228.
94. Ibid., 344.
95. Ibid., 336–49, 480–98.
96. Ibid., 224–28.
97. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques et la république démocratique du Việt nam,” 261.
98. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
230–33.
99. Ibid., 377.
100. Ibid., 331–33.
101. Ibid., 228.
102. Ibid.
103. miller, “Vision, Power and Agency,” 437.
104. Ibid., 438.
105. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
109.
106. miller, “Vision, Power and Agency,” 439.
107. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
193–96.
108. Ibid., 197.
109. Ibid., 196–203, 221–24.
110. Ibid., 204–11.
111. mark Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to
War in Vietnam (berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
112. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
383–99, 480–90.
113. Quang toàn and nguyễn hoài, Những hoạt động bọn phẩn động đội lốt thiên chúa
giáo trong thời kỳ kháng chiến (1945–1954) (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Khoa học, 1965).
Notes to Epilogue 287
114. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
505–8.
115. Quoted in Peter hansen, “The Virgin heads South: northern Catholic refugees in
South Vietnam, 1954–1964,” Ph.d. diss., melbourne College of divinity, 2008, 97.
116. Ibid., 92–93.
117. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
540.
118. tran tam tinh, Dieu et césar: Les catholiques dans l’histoire du Vietnam (Paris: Sudestasie, 1978), 180–81.
119. Ibid., 184.
120. one example is Phạm bá trực, Kính chúa yêu nước (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Quân
Đội nhân dân, 1954).
121. hansen, “The Virgin heads South,” 92–93.
122. trần Thị Liên, “Les catholiques vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance,”
550–53.
123. Quoted in miller, “Vision, Power and Agency,” 440.
124. See, for example, “Cuộc phỏng vấn Cha Parrel” and “Văn phòng xã hội” in the
october 11, 1952, and January 10, 1953, issues of Đạo Binh Đức Mẹ.
125. on the activities of nhu and Cần between 1949 and 1953, see Ed miller, “Limitless Impossibilities: ngo dinh diem, the Americans, and the Politics of nation building,
1954–1963,” unpublished manuscript, chapter 1.
126. See miller, “Vision, Power and Agency,” 444–45.
EPILo GUE
1. trần minh tiết, Histoire des persécutions au Viêt-Nam (Paris: notre dame de la trinité, 1955), 255. In the introduction to the French edition, tiết notes the publication of the
Vietnamese edition in Saigon in december 1954, but I have not been able to locate a copy
of this edition.
2. on American press coverage of Passage to Freedom, see Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia,
1950–1957 (durham, nC: duke University Press, 2004), chapter 4.
3. hoàng Linh, Sự thật ở Phát Diệm (hanoi: nhà Xuất bản Sự Thật, 1954), 11
4. nguyễn Van nguyễn, “Thái độ chúng ta đối với các tôn giáo,” Nghiên Cứư 4 (1952), reprinted in Đào Duy Anh Nguyễn Văn Nguyễn bàn về tôn giáo, ed. Đỗ Quang hưng (hanoi:
nhà Xuất bản Chính trị—hành Chính, 2008), 141.
5. Quoted in Peter hansen, “bắc Đi Cư: Catholic refugees from the north of Vietnam,
and Their role in the Southern republic, 1954–1959,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4, no. 3
(Fall 2009): 183.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 187–92.
8. Peter hansen, “The Virgin heads South: northern Catholic refugees in South Vietnam, 1954–1964,” Ph.d. diss., melbourne College of divinity, 2008, 133.
9. Võ hữu hạnh, Chánh sách Ngô Đình Diệm có phải là ‘chánh sách công giáo trị’ không?
(Saigon: tài Liệu nhận Xết và nghiên Cứu triết Lý học, 1956).
288 Notes to Epilogue
10. The best assessment of the role of Catholics in the diệm regime is nguyễn Quang
hưng, Katholizismus in Vietnam von 1954 bis 1975 (berlin: Logos Verlag, 2003), 217–78.
11. Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in
Vietnam, 1950–1953 (Lanham, md: rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 91.
12. Claire trần Thị Liên, “Aux origines de la troisième force: nguyên manh hà et la solution neutraliste pour le Sud Vietnam (1954–1962),” in L’Indochine entre les deux accords de
Genève (1954–1962): L’échec de la paix?, ed. Christopher Goscha and Karin Laplante (Paris:
Les Indes Savantes, 2010), 347–71.
13. one example of these arguments is a volume from a 1963 conference on the subject
of “Catholic conscience and social equality.” See Lý Chánh trung, Lương tâm công giáo và
công bằng xã hội (Saigon: nam Sơn, 1963).
14. hansen, “bắc Đi Cư,” 197
15. See hansen, “The Virgin Goes South.”
16. Cited in Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History
(berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 69. The quote comes from chapter 3, “Identity,” which Cooper cowrote with rogers brubaker.
17. mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78,
no. 6 (may 1973): 1360–80.
18. Stuart hall, “Who needs ‘Identity’?,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart hall
and Paul duGay (London: Sage, 1996), 6. my thanks to Kitty Lam for the useful juxtaposition of tilly’s and hall’s formulations of identity.
19. hansen, “The Virgin Goes South,” 117.
20. hansen, “bắc Đi Cư,” 181.
21. most of these were published through the national Union of Patriotic and PeaceLoving Catholics (Uỷ ban Liên Lạc những người Công Giáo yêu tổ Quốc yêu hòa bình),
the state-controlled national Catholic association.
22. nguyễn Quang hưng, Katholizismus in Vietnam, 203–4.
23. Stephen denney, “The Catholic Church in Vietnam,” Catholicism and Politics in
Communist Societies, ed. Pedro ramet (durham, nC: duke University Press, 1990), 270–95.
289
BIBLIO GRAPHY
ArChIVAL SoUrCES
Abbreviations used in the notes are given in square brackets.
Vietnam
trung tâm Lữu trữ I (Vietnam national Archives, Center 1), hanoi [ttLt I]
Fonds de la mairie de hanoï [mh]
Fonds de la résidence de hà Đông [rShd]
Fonds de la résidence de nam Định [rSnd]
Fonds de la résidence de Phú Thọ [rSPt]
Fonds de la résidence Supérieure au tonkin [rSt]
Fonds du Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine [GGI]
trung tâm Lữu trữ II (Vietnam national Archives, Center 2), ho Chi minh City
[ttLt II]
Fonds de la résidence Supérieure en Annam [rSA] (now held in Vietnam national
Archives, Center 4, in Đà Lạt)
Fonds du Gouvernement de la Cochinchine [GoUCoCh]
France
Archives de la Société de Saint-Sulpice, Paris [SULP]
Léon Paliard, Correspondence and Journal
Archives du ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris [mAE]
Correspondance Politique et Commerciale, 1918–1940 [CPC], vols. 17 and 41: mémoires et
documents Asie, Affaires religieuses
290 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence [Anom]
Fonds Locaux
Cabinet du haut Commissariat de France à Saigon [hCI]
Cabinet militaire [Cm]
Conseiller Politique [ConSPoL]
Fonds de la résidence Supérieure au tonkin, Ancien Fonds [rSt AF]
Fonds de la résidence Supérieure au tonkin, nouveau Fonds [rSt nF]
Fonds du Gouvernement Général de l’Indochine [GGI]
Fonds Ministériels [FM]
direction des Affaires Politiques, 1920–1954 [AFFPoL]
Indochine, nouveau Fonds [IC nF]
Archives of the Société des missions Etrangères de Paris, Paris [mEP]
Administrative Documents
053 (A–b): Conseil Central de la SmEP à rome (1922–1932)
177 (A–C): Père Sy et l’Indochine Française
243 (A): rome: Procure, 1906–1925
258 (A–b): rome: décrets, 1906–1928
710C: tonkin méridional, 1911–1920
711b: haut tonkin, 1911–1919
711C: tonkin occidental, 1906–1919
712A: tonkin maritime, 1902–1919
757 (2): Cochinchine occidentale, 1901–1912
757 (3): Cochinchine occidentale, 1913–1919
761 (1): Cochinchine Septentrionale, 1904–1919
Correspondence
Allys, Eugène-marie
Aubert, Victor
boulanger, Louis
brisson, Théodule
Cadière, Léopold
Cassaigne, Jean
Chabanon, Alexandre
Chaize, François
dalaine, Louis marie Joseph
de Guébriant, Jean
delignon, Urbain Anselme
dépaulis, Joseph
dronet, Jean-baptiste
dumortier, Isidore-marie
Eloy, Andréa Léon
Garnier, Eugène
Gendreau, Pierre-marie
Grangeon, damien
herrgott, Valentin
hue, Gustave
Jannin, martial
Lebourdais, Grégoire Louis
Lemasle, François Arsèle
maheu, Paul-André
marcou, Jean-Pierre Alexandre
mossard, Lucien Emile
Pagès, Justin
Perreaux, Emile Albert
Pineau, Louis
Quinton, Victor Charles
BIBLIOGRAPHY 291
bibliothèque de documentation Internationale Contemporaine, nanterre
[bdIC]
Fonds de la Ligue des droits de l’homme [Ldh]
Italy
Archivio Storico, Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli, rome
[CEP], nuovo Serie, 1892–1934 [nS]
1893–1922
rubrica 129 (Indo Cina)
1922–1934
rubrica 17 (Indo Cina): Sottorubrica 1 (Affari Comuni), Sottorubrica 2 (delegazione
Apostolica)
rubrica 19 (tonkino e Laos): Sottorubrica 1 (Affari Comuni), Sottorubrica 2 (tonkino
orientale), Sottorubrica 3 (tonkino occidentale), Sottorubrico 4 (tonkino
meridionale), Sottorubrico 5 (tonkino Centrale), Sottorubrico 6 (tonkino
Septentrional), Sottorubrico 7 (tonkino marittimo), Sottorubrica 8 (tonkino Superior),
Sottorubrico 9 (Langson e Cao bang)
rubrica 20 (Annam, Cocincina a Cambogia): Sottorubrica 2 (Cocincina Septentrionale),
Sottorubrico 3 (Cocincina orientale), Sottorubrico 4 (Cocincina occidentale),
Sottorubrica 5 (Cambogia)
PUbLIShEd bULLEtInS, JoUrnALS, And nEWSPAPErS
Vietnamese
Bạn Thiếu Niên [BTN]
Công Giáo Đồng Thinh [CGĐT]
Công Giáo và Dân Tộc
Đa Minh Bán Nguyệt [ĐMBN]
Đức Mẹ Hàng Cứu Giúp
Hồn Công Giáo
Hồn Thanh Niên / L’Ame de la Jeunesse
Hướng Đạo Công Giáo
Hy Vọng
Lịch Địa Phận Qui Nhơn
Liên Đòan Công Giáo
Lời Thăm
Nam Kỳ Địa Phận [NKĐP]
Nam Thanh Công Giáo [NTCG]
Nghĩa Binh Thánh Thể Tạp Chí [NBTT]
ramond, Paul-marie
roux, Antoine Jean-baptiste
Séminel, robert
tardieu, Auguste-marie
Vacquier, André
Vuillard, Félix
292 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sacerdos Indosinensis
Thánh Thể Báo
Trung Hòa Nhật Báo [THNB; although this was renamed Trung Hòa Báo in 1939, I use the
same abbreviation for all years]
Vì Chúa
French
Almanach Populaire Catholique
Annales de la Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris [ASMEP]
L’Avenir du Tonkin
Bulletin Catholique Indochinois
Bulletin de la Société des Mission Etrangères de Paris [BSMEP]
Bulletin de Sainte Jeanne d’Arc
Bulletin des Missions
Bulletin Paroissial de Dalat
Bulletin Paroissial de Hanoi
Bulletin Paroissial de l’Eglise Protestante Française du Tonkin et du Nord Annam
Congrégation des Petits-Frères de Saint Joseph de Qui Nhon
La Croix d’Indochine / L’Aube Nouvelle
L’Europe Nouvelle
Indochine
Indochine Sud-Est Asiatique
Le Messager de l’Ecole Pellerin
Les Missions Catholiques
Pages Catholiques / Annam-Tonkin
Revue Indochinoise
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305
Index
Ad Apostolorum Principis (On Communism in
China) (1951), 235–36
Ad Extremas (On Seminaries for Native Clergy)
(1893), 91
Aiuti, Costantino: controversy over appointment, 103–4, 109–11; death of, 105, 111;
support for Vietnamese bishop, 107; Vietnamese Catholic enthusiasm for, 109–11, 215
Allys, Eugène, 102–3
Anticlericalism: and Catholic land acquisition,
36; and the Catholic press, 124; and Catholic
schools, 77–79, 188–89; and conversions to
Catholicism, 21; and critiques of Catholic
missions, 71–74
Anticommunism, Vietnamese Catholic,
200–207, 231, 237
Apostolic delegates: in Asia, 91; in China, 96,
103; in Indochina, 103–5. See also individual
apostolic delegates
Association for the Propagation of the Faith
(oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi), 28, 29,
37, 91, 95–96
Association of the holy Childhood (oeuvre
Pontificale de la Sainte-Enfance), 28, 37, 60
Associations, Vietnamese Catholic: before colonial period, 27–28; during colonial period,
153–62, 194–95, 197–98, 210–12, 214–15,
225–27, 235; newspapers of, 145, 156, 158–59,
160, 167–68. See also individual associations
Atheism, Vietnamese Catholic critiques of, 130,
140, 200–201
L’Aube Nouvelle (newspaper). See La Croix
d’Indochine
Aubert, Victor, 76, 207
August revolution (1945): Catholic activities and
attitudes during, 215–21
L’Avenir du Tonkin (newspaper), 75, 77, 111, 124,
126, 189, 201, 210
bảo Đại: Catholic support for, 212, 236; conflicts
with the ngô family, 104–5, 187, 213, 234, 240;
meeting with nguyễn bả tòng (1933), 108;
political activities during August revolution
and First Indochina War, 214, 232–34, 240;
presence at La Vang festival, 164
bắc di cư (northern migration), 7, 242–48
béhaine, Pigneau de, 5, 20, 65–66, 120
benedict XV, Pope, 91–96
bỉnh, Philipê de rosario, 120
bishops, Vietnamese: activities during August
revolution and First Indochina War, 216–17,
219, 221, 224; debate over, 105–7; ordinations
of, 107–9, 169–70, 177, 219; public enthusiasm
for, 108, 166–70; travels and other activities
during colonial era, 107–9, 159–60, 164, 169–
71, 175–76, 211. See also individual bishops
brothers of Christian Schools (dòng Sư huỳnh
Lasan), 33, 78, 114
Vietnamese terms are alphabetized according to the standards for that language. Thus, d and Đ are
treated as separate letters, as are the different versions of adapted vowels (such as o, ơ, ô). Words are listed
in the following tone order: unmarked, high rising, low falling, low rising, high broken, and low broken.
Tone order in the initial syllable takes precedence over the second syllable: for example, Đào duy Anh
precedes Đạo binh Đức mẹ.
306 Index
buddhism: Catholic critiques of, 191–92; colonial
state support for, 151, 185–87, 189–90, 210
bùi Chu: apostolic envoy’s visit to, 89; Catholic
Action in, 147, 154, 160, 211; during First
Indochina War, 230, 236–37; emigration
from, 150; Spanish dominicans in, 72, 82–83;
Vietnamese bishops’ travels in, 169, 170–71
bùi Quang Chiêu, 107, 207
Bulletin Catholique Indochinois (journal), 106,
203
Bulletin des Missions (journal), 96, 146
bửu dưỡng, 113, 220
Cadière, Léopold: attitude towards interwar
mission reforms, 97–98; internment during
First Indochina War, 223; involvement in
quốc ngữ reforms, 128; involvement with
Sacerdos Indosinensis, 102; writings of, 27,
123, 124, 174
Cao Đài, 77, 186, 212–13, 228, 241
Cao Văn Luận, 113, 220
Cassaigne, Jean, 226
Catechists: education of, 23–24, 119; organization
and responsibilities, 22–23, 33, 84–85
Cathedrals and churches: Vietnamese Catholic,
30, 82–83, 108, 152, 165–66, 181, 210, 215, 219
Catholic Action (Công Giáo tiến hành), 155–62,
194–200, 211–12, 215, 225–27
Catholic boy Scouts (hướng Đạo Công Giáo),
157–59, 210
Catholic youth (association), 157, 159–60, 211,
214–15
Cần Lao nhân Vị Cách mạnh Đảng. See revolutionary Personalist Workers Party
Cần Vương (Save the King movement), 52–53,
163
Chaize, François, 135, 201, 205
Chasseloup-Laubat, Prosper de, 40
Chính, Simon, 128–29
Christian and missionary Alliance, 76
Christian trade unionism, 198–99, 212
Chữ nôm, 119–22, 125–27, 132
Cochinchina: Catholic Action in, 159, 161–62;
Catholic migration to, 148–51, 153, 242–48;
Catholics during August revolution and
First Indochina War in, 216, 220, 226,
228–29, 231; Catholic socioreligious organization in, 21–22, 24, 25–27, 35–36, 89; French
naval rule in, 40–41; missionary support
for French conquest of, 39–40; precolonial
Catholic life in, 19–20, 44–45, 82; Vietnamese
Catholics during and after French conquest
of, 46–50
Collegium Urbanum (rome): debate over sending Vietnamese to, 102; Vietnamese Catholic
experiences at, 102–3, 111–13
Communism: in First Indochina War, 229–31,
235–39; in interwar Europe, 91–92, 201, 202,
236; in interwar Vietnam, 201–7. See also
Anticommunism, Vietnamese Catholic
Communitarian relations: before French
conquest, 4, 24–25, 26, 28; during August
revolution and First Indochina War, 228,
238–39; during French conquest, 22, 42,
45–47, 48–54; during French rule, 28, 55–64,
183–92; in the republic of Vietnam, 245
Confucianism: Catholic perceptions of, 4, 58,
125, 189–92; as part of Vietnamese “national
religion,” 185–86, 210
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.
See Propaganda Fide
Công Giáo Đồng Thinh (newspaper), 129, 141–44,
178, 202–3, 205, 206
Công Giáo tiến hành. See Catholic Action
Contemplative orders, 95
Conversion to Catholicism: and land conflicts,
62–63; reasons and strategies for, 18–21, 32,
51, 58, 59; slowing during colonial era, 21, 23,
61, 86–87
Costantini, Celso, 96, 103
La Croix d’Indochine (L’Aube Nouvelle) (newspaper), 126, 144, 206–7, 210
Cung Gĩu nguyên, 137
Cường Để, 1, 212, 234, 240
dalat, 210, 239
democratic republic of Vietnam (drV): appeals
towards Vietnamese Catholics, 218–19,
225–26; Catholic opposition to, 227–31;
Catholic support for, 215–19, 248; restrictions
of and violence against Catholics, 223–24,
229–31, 236–37, 238–39, 248
dispensaries. See health and social welfare
establishments
Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism)
(1937), 206, 207
dominicans, Spanish. See missionaries, Spanish
dòng Chúa Cứu Thế. See redemptorists
dòng mến Thánh Giá. See Lovers of the holy
Cross
dòng Sư huỳnh Lasan. See brothers of Christian
Schools
Index 307
dooley, John, 105, 236, 238
drapier, Antonin, 105, 197, 218, 226–27
dreyer, Colomban, 105, 106, 107
drV. See democratic republic of Vietnam
Đa Minh Bán Nguyệt (newspaper), 145, 178, 225
Đà nẵng, French attacks on, 38, 39–40, 46, 47,
49
Đào duy Anh, 101
Đạo Binh Đức Mẹ (newspaper), 225
Đặng Đức tuấn, 48
Đặng Thúc Liêng, 181
Đậu Quang Lĩnh, 1–2
Đề Thám (hoàng hoa Thám), 72
Đinh Văn Sát, 138
Đoàn Kim hương, 142, 169, 183
Đỗ Đình, 136–37
Đông du: Catholic memory of, 13; Catholic
participation in, 1–4; effect on mission life,
86
Eloy, Andréa, 106, 205
Ethnic minority groups and regions, 18, 69,
116–17, 123, 172
Eucharistic Congresses, 173–76
Eucharistic Crusade (association), 159, 161, 176
Exposition, Colonial (Vincennes, 1931), 67, 78,
190
Fátima, Portugal: marian apparitions at, 173
Fides, 96–97, 146, 202
Financial organization of Catholic life in Vietnam, 26–27, 28–30, 34–37, 93, 95–96
First Indochina War (1946–1954): daily Catholic
life during, 223–24, 230, 236–37, 238–39;
effect on transition to a national Catholic
Church, 221–27; Vietnamese Catholic politics
during, 214–21, 225–41, 248
First World War: Church-state conflicts during,
72–74, 76; commemoration of Indochina’s
contribution to, 183–84; effect on Catholic
Church in Europe, 91–92; effect on Catholic
life in Vietnam, 37, 92–93; recruitment of
Catholics for, 72–73, 78, 98–99; Vietnamese
Catholics in France during, 150–51
Fishel, Wesley, 240
Franco-Spanish invasion of Cochinchina
(1858–1862): Catholic involvement in, 39–41,
46
Freemasons, 71, 74, 75, 124
Fumasoni-biondi, Pietro, 96
Garnier, Francis, invasion of tonkin (1873–1874):
missionary role in, 41–42; Vietnamese
Catholic role in, 43, 50–51, 52
Gendreau, Pierre-marie, 112, 172
General Church Council of Indochina (1934),
114–15, 155, 194
Génouilly, rigault de, 37, 39
Gia Long (nguyễn Phúc Ánh), 4–5, 20, 65, 211
Great depression: effect on mission finances, 37,
93; effect on Vietnamese Catholic politics,
193–95
Gregory XVI, Pope, 90
Guébriant, Jean de, 97, 100–101, 105, 106, 107,
110–11, 201
hải Phòng: Catholic Action in, 145, 154, 160,
194, 212; Franco-Spanish tensions in, 73, 211;
Vietnamese bishops 1935 visit to, 170
hàn mặc tử (nguyễn trọng trí), 135–36
hanoi: cathedral, 30, 108–9, 152; Catholic Action
associations in, 154–55, 158, 159, 160, 196–97,
215; Catholic activities in 1945 in, 215, 217, 219,
225; Catholic institutions in, 30, 33, 100–101;
Catholic migration to, 148–49, 153; Catholic
newspapers in (see L’Avenir du Tonkin; Trung
Hòa Nhật Báo); communitarian conflict in,
187–88; conflicts between Vietnamese and
European Catholics in, 109–11; Eucharistic
Congress in (1931), 174; mission finances in,
93; nguyễn bá tòng arrival and speech in,
108–9
health and social welfare establishments, 30–32,
34, 40, 60, 68, 160, 225
historiography on Vietnamese Catholicism:
communist, 8–9; confessional, 6, 9; dynastic,
6; recent evolutions in, 9–10
hòa hảo, 228, 241, 247
hoàng hoa Thám. See Đề Thám
hoàng Quỳnh, 181, 208–9, 215, 236, 246
Hoạt Động (newspaper), 235
hospitals. See health and social welfare
establishments
house of God (nhà Đức Chúa trời), 24, 27, 84,
101
hồ biẻu Chánh, 135
hồ Chí minh (nguyễn Ái Quốc), 35, 201–2, 217,
219
hồ ngọc Cẩn: activities as bishop, 160, 170,
175–76, 211, 216; attitude towards quốc ngữ,
129; involvement with Sacerdos Indosinensis,
102; ordination and reactions to it, 107, 109,
308 Index
hồ ngọc Cẩn (continued)
169; writings, 101–2, 111, 115–16, 132, 135, 141,
164, 168–69
Hồn Công Giáo (newspaper), 225, 231
hue, Gustave, 128–29, 189–90
huế: apostolic delegate’s official residence in,
104; Catholic Action in, 154, 158, 159, Catholic newspapers in, 102, 127, 129, 143–44; First
Indochina War and Catholic politics in,
212, 216, 217, 227, 234, 235; race relations in
Catholic life in, 89, 114
huỳnh Công hậu, 232
huỳnh Phúc yên, 129, 142, 178
huỳnh tịnh Của, Paulus, 46–47, 122, 136
hướng Đạo Công Giáo. See Catholic boy
Scouts
Imprimeries de la mission. See mission presses
Japanese coup (march 9, 1945) and aftermath,
213–21
Japanese occupation. See Vichy period in
Indochina
Jesuits. See Society of Jesus
Judicial conflicts, 59–62, 83, 188–89
Khải Định, 99, 164
Khang, Pierre, 204–5
Land: Catholic organization and use, 26, 34–37;
Church-state conflicts over, 69, 72; communitarian conflicts over, 61–62, 187–88, 228
Lanessan, Jean de, 65
La Providence (First Catholic secondary school
in Vietnam), 103, 114
Latin, 29, 32, 101, 111, 113, 119, 120, 133, 215
La Vang, 162–65, 213
Làng đạo (Catholic villages), 21, 26, 28, 60, 148,
247
League of the rights of man (Ligue des droits
de l’homme), 77
Lécroart, henri, 87, 89–90, 100, 102, 103, 112–13,
115, 132, 164
Lefèbvre, dominique, 39
Legrand de la Liraye, Théophile marie, 81
Leo XIII, Pope, 90–91, 179, 193–94
Leper colonies. See health and social welfare
establishments
Leroy, Jean, 232
Lê Công Đắc, 135, 138
Lê duy Phụng, 49, 81
Lê hữu từ, 166, 216–17, 219, 221, 224, 225–26,
228, 230, 233, 236, 237
Lê Phát An, 47, 104, 172–73
Lê Phát Đạt, 47
Lê Thanh, 181–82
Lê Văn Đức, 126, 138, 144, 152, 159, 173
Lê Văn Khôi rebellion (1833–1835), 44–45, 174
Liên Đoàn Công Giáo Việt nam. See Vietnamese
Catholic League
Ligue des droits de l’homme. See League of the
rights of man
Literacy, Catholic, 120–21
Louis Philippe, French king, 37
Lourdes, 150–51, 172–73
Lovers of the holy Cross (dòng mến Thánh
Giá), 23, 31, 163, 175, 190
Lời Thăm (newspaper), 116, 140, 141, 144
Lương Văn Can, 101
mai Lão bạng, 1–2, 6
maiorica, Geronimo, 119–20
manila, Eucharistic Congress in (1937), 175–76
marchand, Joseph, 45, 174
marcou, Jean-Pierre Alexandre, 107, 166
martyrs, missionary and Vietnamese Catholic:
1900, 1906, and 1909 beatifications of, 62–64;
1988 canonizations of, 9; relics of, 24–25, 63;
Spanish, 73; as symbols of colonial mission
civilisatrice, 66–67; written accounts of martyrdoms, 63, 64, 123–24, 133–34, 218, 223
Maximum Illud (On the Propagation of the Faith
Throughout the World) (1919), 93–95, 98, 181,
194
mayrena, Charles-david de, 69
mEP. See Société des missions Etrangères de
Paris
migration and travel, Catholic, 148–153. See also
bắc di cư; tourism, Vietnamese Catholic
minh mạng, 5, 21–22, 29, 37, 44–46, 220
missionaries, French: attitudes towards nonCatholic religions, 58–59, 183–84, 188–90;
authority over Vietnamese Catholic life,
11–12, 28–37, 79–87; in colonial Vietnamese
society, 58–62; conflicts with and criticism
of French authorities, 38, 39–41, 42, 69–79,
124, 183–89, 200–201; conflicts with nguyễn
authorities during colonial era, 57–62, 70;
cooperation with French naval and colonial
authorities, 37, 38–40, 41–43, 65–69, 209–210,
218; declining presence in Vietnamese
Catholic life, 88–93; economic activities of,
Index 309
81; education of, 29; numbers of in Vietnam,
25, 29, 40, 51, 79, 85, 88; in precolonial
Vietnamese society, 24–25; racial views of,
25, 84–86, 96, 97–98, 106; relationships with
Vietnamese clergy, 25, 80, 83–87, 89–90,
109–16, 214–16; religious responsibilities of,
23, 29, 82, 92; violence against, 37, 66–67, 88,
218, 222–23
missionaries, Spanish: attitudes during French
conquest, 42, 56, 72; numbers of in Vietnam,
79–80; relations with French missionaries, 72–73; relations with French naval and
colonial officials, 72–73; relations with Vietnamese Catholics, 72–73, 75, 82–83
missionary writings, 6, 122–24
mission presses (imprimeries de la mission),
121–22, 128
Missions Catholiques (journal), 81, 96, 106, 123
mobile Unions of Christian defense (Unités
mobiles de défense de la Chrétienté), 232
nam Định: 1936 young Catholic Workers conference in, 147, 194–95; Catholic Action in,
154–55, 159, 160; Catholic newspapers in, 145;
Church-state conflicts in, 61, 72–73; Ecole
Saint Thomas Aquin in, 78; martyrdoms in,
134; Spanish landownership in, 72; Vietnamese Catholic politics in, 200, 214–15, 217. See
also bùi Chu
Nam Kỳ Địa Phận (newspaper), 111, 139–40, 141,
145, 152, 156, 164, 166, 171, 173, 201, 225
nam Phương, empress (nguyễn hữu Thị Lan),
47, 104–5, 126
napoleon III, 5, 39
nation, Vietnamese Catholic understandings
of, 178–83
nationalists (non-communist), Vietnamese,
229–30, 232–35, 239–41. See also bảo Đại;
ngô Đình diệm
national religion, Vietnamese Catholic conceptions and critiques of, 183–92
newspapers, Catholic, 139–46. See also individual newspapers
nghệ tĩnh uprising (1930–1931), 114, 201, 204–5
ngô Đình Cẩn, 235, 239
ngô Đình diệm: activities during First Indochina War; 233–35, 239–41; activities during
Japanese occupation, 212; allies of, 113, 234,
239–40; conflicts with bảo Đại, 104–5, 213,
234; influence of Social Catholicism and
personalism on, 196, 239; and nguyễn hữu
bài, 98, 104–5; as president of the republic
of Vietnam, 245–47; travels with ngô Đình
Thục during 1930s, 171
ngô Đình Khả, 98–99, 102, 165, 169–70
ngô Đình Khôi, 171, 216, 234
ngô Đình Luyện, 171, 235
ngô Đình nhu, 171, 196, 212, 234, 235, 238, 239,
240
ngô Đình Thục: activities during August
revolution and First Indochina War, 216,
221, 226, 228, 234, 235, 238, 240; as bishop
of Vĩnh Long before 1945, 161–62, 170–71,
175, 196, 212; experiences studying in rome,
102–3, 112; as head of secondary school La
Providence, 114; involvement with Sacerdos
Indosinensis, 102; and nguyễn hữu bài, 98,
107; ordination of, 107, 169–70, 177
ngô tử hạ, 118, 128, 154, 170, 172, 175, 197, 219
nguyễn Aí Quốc. See hồ Chí minh
nguyễn bá Luật, 220, 235
nguyễn bá Kính, 220
nguyễn bá Sang, 220
nguyễn bá tòng: activities as bishop, 170, 175;
attitudes towards France, 126; conferences,
lectures, and writings, 126, 134, 137–38, 173,
192; ordination, 107–9; reactions to ordination, 166–69, 208; support for Catholic
Action, 159–60, 211
nguyễn bình, 235
nguyễn du, 101. See also truyện Kiều
nguyễn dynasty: actions and attitudes towards
Catholics, 4–6, 20–22, 40, 42, 44–46, 49–51
nguyễn Đệ, 212, 219, 233
nguyễn Đình Chiểu, 101
nguyễn huy Lai, 154, 155, 196, 212, 229, 233
nguyễn hưng Thi, 140, 183, 193, 197
nguyễn hữu bài: 1922 trip to rome, 99–100,
112; conflicts with French administration,
99–100, 103, 104–5, 107; early career, 98–99;
involvement with apostolic delegation, 103–5,
111; relationship to the ngô family, 98, 102–3,
104–5, 107, 112, 169–70, 234; support for
Catholic public life, 136, 164, 165, 169–70
nguyễn hữu mỹ, 126, 144, 152, 206–7, 210, 212–13
nguyễn hữu Thị Lan. See nam Phương,
empress
nguyễn mạnh hà, 160, 199, 212, 219, 226, 233,
246
nguyễn Phan Long, 107, 207
nguyễn Phúc Ánh. See Gia Long
nguyễn Phúc Cảnh, 66
310 Index
nguyễn Thần Đồng, 1–2, 13, 14
nguyễn tiến Lãng, 67
nguyễn tôn hoàn, 234
nguyễn trọng Quản, 135, 136
nguyễn trọng trí. See hàn mặc tử
nguyễn trường tộ, 47–48, 120–21, 182
nguyễn Văn nguyễn, 243
nguyễn Văn Thích, 127–28, 143, 181, 192, 202
nguyễn Văn Thiệu, 243
nguyễn Văn tường, 1–2
nguyễn Văn Viết, 128
nguyễn Văn Vĩnh, 101
northern migration. See bắc di cư
oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi. See Association for the Propagation of the Faith
oeuvre Pontificale de la Sainte-Enfance. See
Association of the holy Childhood
opium War, First (1839–1842), 37, 46
orphanages. See health and social welfare
establishments
outrey, Ernest, 68
ozanam, Frédéric, 154, 193
Paliard, Léon, 101, 159
Papal days, 171–72
Pâris, Camille, 65, 71, 72, 124
Parrel, Fernand, 195–96, 197, 210, 239
Pasquier, Pierre, 106, 140, 186
Pellerin, François, 39–40
Penang, mEP seminary in, 24, 40, 47, 48, 98, 101,
102, 113, 126
Père Six. See trần Lục
Personalism, 196, 239
Phạm bá trực, 112, 219, 238
Phạm Đình Khiêm, 214–15, 225
Phạm huy Thông, 221
Phạm ngọc Chi, 236, 237
Phạm ngọc Thảo, 220
Phạm ngọc Thuần, 220
Phạm Quỳnh, 101, 185, 186
Phạm Văn Đồng, 219, 225
Phan bội Châu, 1, 3, 4, 6–7, 8, 12, 73, 136, 143, 179
Phan Kế binh, 101
Phan Văn Giáo, 233
Phát diệm: cathedral, 30, 51, 165–66, 168, 181;
Catholic Action in, 145, 147, 154, 159, 160,
211; Catholic refugees from, 242; Catholic
seminaries and schools in, 77, 100, 112,
188–89; during First Indochina War, 223, 230,
236, 237, 242; during Japanese coup, 215, 225;
Eucharistic Congress in (1928), 174; mission
press in, 122; trần Lục influence in, 51–52;
Vietnamese diocese in; 105, 107, 168
Philastre, Paul, 42
Pilgrimage, Vietnamese Catholic, 162–71
Pius IX, Pope, 90
Pius X, Pope, 12, 131–32
Pius XI, Pope, 92–95, 99, 105, 107, 110, 155, 169,
171, 172, 177, 179, 206
Pius XII, Pope, 207, 216, 235–36
Popular Front, 144, 195, 198, 205–7
Population statistics, Vietnamese Catholic, 18–21
Priests, Vietnamese Catholic: education of,
23–24, 100–103; influence over Catholic
civic life, 26; perceptions of ethnic minority
groups, 116–17; relationships with European missionaries, 24–25, 80, 83–87, 89–90,
109–16, 214–16; responsibilities, 23, 114,
116–17, 223; role in communitarian conflict,
60–61, 191
Pronouns and kinship terms: debates and conflicts over, 85, 90, 115–16
Propaganda Fide: French suspicions of, 100, 111;
growing influence over the administration of
Catholic missions, 90–91, 95–96, 97; support
for Asian bishops, 105
Protestantism, 41, 76–77
Puginier, Paul-François, 41–42, 43, 51, 52, 70
Qui nhơn: 1932 division of, 116; Catholic
newspapers in, 140; mission land acquisition
in, 36; mission press in, 122, 128; refugees in
(1885), 53
Quốc ngữ: Catholic critics of, 127; Catholic educational texts in, 134–35; Catholic influence
on expansion of, 47, 122; Catholic literature
in, 135–39; Catholic newspapers in, 139–46,
225; Catholic origins of, 65, 119, 180–81; Catholic supporters of, 128–29; effect on liturgical
and theological change, 132–33; expansion in
Catholic life, 120–21, 122, 125–29; instruction
in Catholic primary schools, 33; instruction
in seminaries, 100, 101–2
Quỳnh Lưu uprising (1956), 248
ramond, Paul-marie, 78–79
redemptorists (dòng Chúa Cứu Thế), 95, 96, 145
republic of Vietnam (rVn): Catholic politics
in, 242–48
Rerum Ecclesiae (1926), 94–95, 97, 98, 105, 181,
219
Index 311
Rerum Novarum (1891), 193–94
revolutionary Personalist Workers Party (Cần
Lao nhân Vị Cách mạnh Đảng), 239
Revue Catholique des Idées et des Faits (journal),
96
Revue des Missions (journal), 96
rhodes, Alexander de, 65–66, 119, 180–81
rivière, henri, 42–43, 51, 52
robin, rené, 107
rossum, Cardinal Willem marinus van, 96, 97,
99, 100, 102
roux, Jean-baptiste, 97, 113
rVn. See republic of Vietnam
Sacerdos Indosinensis (journal), 64, 66, 77, 102,
115, 134, 140, 206, 213
Sacred objects, Catholic, 19, 69, 83
Saigon: cathedral, 30, 65, 210; Catholic Action in,
158, 159, 161, 196, 197, 211, 220, 231; Catholic
associational life in, 153–54; Catholic lands
and property in, 35–36, 37, 81, 105; Catholic
migration to and from, 22, 46, 148–49, 153;
Catholic newspapers in (see Công Giáo Đồng
Thinh; La Croix d’Indochine; Nam Kỳ Địa
Phận); Catholic orders in, 31, 60; Catholic
presses in, 121, 128; Catholic schools in, 33,
41, 68; Eucharistic Congress in (1935), 174–75
Saint Thomas Aquin, Ecole (nam Định), 78
Save the King movement. See Cần Vương
Scholar-Gentry movement. See Văn Thân
Schools, Catholic primary: anticlerical critiques
of, 71; conflicts with colonial officials over,
41, 77–79, 185, 188–89; during First Indochina War, 225, 230, 236; education in, 33–34;
expansion of, 32–33; primers for, 134–35, 180
Schools, Catholic upper primary (Collège
d’Adran, Ecole Pellerin, Institut taberd,
Lycée Puginier), 33–34, 40, 68, 114, 129
Second Empire, French (1852–1870), 38, 39
Second Indochina War (1954–1975): and historiography of Vietnamese Catholicism, 7–9, 14;
Vietnamese Catholics during, 246–48
Second Vatican Council, 88, 91, 132
Seminaries, Vietnamese Catholic: during French
conquest, 32; education in, 32, 78, 100, 102;
Franco-Vietnamese conflicts in, 90, 113–14,
215; interwar reform of, 100–102. See also
Penang, mEP seminary in
Sino-French War (1883–1885): missionary
involvement in, 42–43, Vietnamese Catholic
experience of and involvement in, 43, 51–53
Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres (dòng nữ tu
Thánh Phaolô), 31, 33, 60, 210
Social Catholicism, 192–200
Socialism, Vietnamese Catholic support for, 198
Société de Saint-Sulpice, 95, 100, 101, 159
Société des missions Etrangères de Paris:
conflicts with other Catholic orders, 19–20;
declining presence in Vietnam of, 88–93;
effects of the First World War on, 92;
expanding presence in Vietnam of, 28–37, 51,
79–87; internal debates and conflicts in, 39,
42, 80, 97–98, 100–101, 105–6. See also missionaries, French
Society of Jesus (Jesuits), 19–20, 119, 120, 124
Sống (newspaper), 225
Synods (1900 and 1912), 81–82
tây Sơn uprising, 4, 49, 65, 162
Thái Văn Lung, 220
Thành Thái, 98, 169
Thiệu trị, 46
Third republic, French (1870–1940), 6, 38, 42,
44, 65, 71
tonkin: Catholic Action in, 154–55, 158–60;
Catholic migration to, 148–49; Catholics during August revolution and First
Indochina War in, 214–15, 217–18, 223–24,
229–30, 236–37, 238, 242; Catholic socioreligious organization in, 21–22, 24, 25–27;
communitarian conflict in, 61–62, 187–88,
228; missionary support for French conquest
of, 41–43; precolonial Catholic life in, 18–19;
Vietnamese Catholics during French conquest of, 50–53
tourism, Vietnamese Catholic, 165–66
trà Kiệu, 53
trần bá Lộc, 47
trần Đình Lượng, 52
trần huy Liệu, 8, 219
trần Lục (Père Six), 51–52, 67–68, 168, 181
trần minh tiết, 242
trần Quốc bửu, 239
trần tránh Chiếu, Gilbert, 6, 143
trần trọng Kim, 101, 185, 186, 213
trần tử bình, 113–14, 150
trần Văn Giàu, 8
trần Văn Lý, 234
trần Văn Thao, 158, 198, 200
Trung Hòa Nhật Báo (newspaper), 77, 140,
141–45, 152, 201, 225
Truyện Kiều (The Story of Kiều), 128, 130
312 Index
Truyện Thầy Lazarô Phiền (The Story of Lazarô
Phiền), 135, 138
trương Vĩnh Ký, Pétrus, 46–47, 67, 74, 122, 126,
135, 136, 151–52, 181–82
Tuồng Thương Khó (The Passion of Christ),
137–38
tự Đức, 46, 47, 49–50, 52, 180
tự Lục Văn Đoàn, 138
Ultramontanism, 90–91
Unités mobiles de défense de la Chrétienté. See
mobile Unions of Christian defense
Vacquier, André, 150, 194–95, 197, 200, 214–15,
218
Valiant hearts, Valiant Souls (association), 157,
159, 161, 211
Vàng, Paul, 108, 166
Văn Thân (Scholar-Gentry movement), 49–51,
163
Vatican: diplomacy during First Indochina War,
218, 235–36, 237, 240, 245; interwar mission
reforms of, 90–97, 100–107
Vatican II. See Second Vatican Council
Vénard, Théophane, 66–67, 88
Vì Chúa (newspaper), 127, 143–44, 206, 210, 225
Vichy period in Indochina (Japanese occupation): Catholic experiences of, 209–13
Việt minh (Việt nam Độc Lập Đồng minh hội):
Catholic support for in Cochinchina, 231–32;
Catholic support for in tonkin, 215
Việt nam Công Giáo Cứu Quốc. See Vietnamese
Catholics for the Salvation of the nation
Việt nam Độc Lập Đồng minh hội. See Việt
minh
Vietnamese Catholic League (Liên Đoàn Công
Giáo Việt nam) (association), 226–27, 231
Vietnamese Catholics for the Salvation of the
nation (Việt nam Công Giáo Cứu Quốc)
(association), 226
Vietnam War. See Second Indochina War
Võ nguyên Giáp, 219, 225
Vũ Quang nhạ, 52
Women, Catholic debates over, 130–31, 161
Ý Dân (newspaper), 235
young Catholic Workers, 147, 160, 194, 197, 199,
211, 215
youth, Catholic debates over, 130–31
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