Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/427

415 MARTYRDOM OF MISSIONARIES. 415 to the missionaries, was poisoned by a prince of his family, a fanatic Mahometan. The usurper, enraged at the zeal shown by the Franciscans in extirpating, not only idolatry, but the Islamism that he himself professed, now enjoined all Christians, under pain of death, to re- nounce Jesus Christ, and become Mussulmans. The Christians, however, with the missionaries at their head, had the honour and courage formally to refuse obe- dience to the tyrant, and took no notice of his menaces. They publicly professed their faith, and continued to celebrate as before the ceremonies of their religion ; and the usurper being informed of this noble and holy re- bellion, gave orders that the means of seduction should first be tried, with respect to both the missionaries and their converts, but that, should these fail, the Christians should be pitilessly exterminated. Those who deter- mined to remain inflexible in the faith had to endure all the tortures that the most savage tyranny could invent. A public and formal proposal of abjuration was made to the missionaries ; and on their refusal they were all seven chained together, and given up to the fury of the Mussulman mob, which, urged on by the authorities, stopped at no atrocity. They began by abuse, then they struck the missionaries on the head and with whips and sticks, — then they stabbed at them, and finally cut off their noses and ears ; and when they found that neither opprobrium nor torment could shake the constancy of these valiant apostles, whose voices rose high amidst their tortures to glorify Jesus Christ, to preach the Gospel, and to utter anathemas on Ma- homet and the Koran, — they struck their heads off. This was in the month of June 1342 ; and the populace afterwards attacked the convent of the Franciscans, pil-