eached in that empire thirty-three years: John Alcober, forty-two
years old, who had spent eighteen years in that mission: and Francis
Diaz, thirty-three years old, of which he had employed nine in the same
vineyard. During their imprisonment, a report that their lives would be
spared, filled them not with joy, but with grief, to the great
admiration of the infidels, as pope Benedict XIV. mentions in his
discourse to the consistory of cardinals, on their death, delivered in
1752: in which he qualifies them crowned, but not declared martyrs:
_martyres consummatos, nondum martyres vindicatos_. In the same
persecution, two Jesuits, F. Joseph of Attemis, an Italian, and F.
Antony Joseph Heuriquez, a Portuguese, were apprehended in December,
1747, and tortured several times, to compel them to renounce their
religion. They were at length condemned to death by the mandarins, and
the sentence, according to custom, being sent to the emperor, was
confirmed by him, and the two priests were strangled in prison on the
12th of September, 1748. On these martyrs see F. Touron, Hommes
Illustres de l'Ordre de S. Domin., t. 6, and the letters of the Jesuit
missionaries. On the history of China, F. Du Halde's Description of
China, in four vols. fol. Mullerus de Chataia, Navarrete, Tratados
Historicos de la China, an. 1676. Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses des
Missionaires, vols. 27, 28. Jackson's Chronology, &c.

In Tonquin, a kingdom southwest of China, in which the king and
mandarins follow the Chinese religion, though various sects of idolatry
and superstition reign among the people, a persecution was raised
against the Christians in 1713. In this storm one hundred and fifty
churches were demolished, many converts were beaten with a hammer on
their knees, and tortured various other ways; and two Spanish missionary
priests of the order of St. Dominick suffered martyrdom for the faith,
F. Francis Gil de Federich, and F. Matthew Alfonso Leziniana. F. Gil
arrived there in 1735, and found above twenty thousand Christians in the
west of the kingdom, who had been baptized by priests of his order. This
vineyard he began assiduously to cultivate; but was apprehended by a
neighboring Bonza, in 1737, and condemned to die the year following. The
Touquinese usually execute condemned persons only in the last moon of
the year, and a rejoicing or other accidents often cause much longer
delays. The confessor was often allowed the liberty of saying mass in