Saint Michael Hồ Đình Hy

A leading court official, forty-nine years old, who had held the post of Thái Bộc Tự Khanh (minister in charge of the royal finances and ceremonies) and had enjoyed the warm favor of two emperors, Minh Mạng and Thiệu Trị, had now been stripped of his court robes. His arms were tied behind his back, a heavy cangue was around his neck, and iron chains were on his legs. In front of him walked soldiers carrying a wooden board bearing the death sentence; behind him came a train of war elephants and hundreds of armed soldiers with drawn swords and spears. The escort left through the Hiển Nhân Gate of the Imperial City and passed along the great streets of the capital to the An Hòa bridge.

The people of Huế packed both sides of the road, many of them weeping for the honest, kindly high official who for so long had helped so many in need. But the official walked with an unusually calm and dignified bearing. His face shone with peace. He looked at his children and the faithful weeping by the roadside, nodded slightly and smiled to comfort them.

The steadfast high official who went up to the scaffold was Michael Hồ Đình Hy, the highest-ranking court official among the one hundred seventeen Vietnamese Martyr Saints. He showed the whole court and people that a Christian can be a mandarin of integrity, serving his king and helping his country with all his heart, while at the same time keeping complete loyalty to God, the King above all kings.

Growing up, he mastered Chinese classical literature, passed the examinations and entered the service of the Nguyễn court. It was no easy path for someone from a Catholic family: the examinations under the Nguyễn required mastery of the Confucian classics, and many scholars of the time still looked on Catholic families with suspicion. With outstanding administrative talent and absolute integrity, he quickly won the trust of Emperor Minh Mạng and rose through many important posts: he was put in charge of the royal silk-weaving works, served as a financial inspector, and gradually rose to the post of Thái Bộc Tự Khanh, a mandarin of the third rank, on a par with a deputy minister or minister of the time. He was one of very few high officials free to enter the inner palace to discuss great affairs of state with the emperor.

He married a devout Catholic woman named Maria Teresa Đoàn Thị Nguyện, from the village of Phủ Cam, and they had five children: three sons and two daughters. The family of the high official Hồ Đình Hy was a model home: though they lived in a splendid capital rife with bribery, he always kept his household simple and honest and never touched a dishonest coin. Whenever drought or flood struck, he used his salary to open his granaries to the poor, Christian or not. People throughout the capital region respectfully called him “the honest mandarin”.

It took great courage: here was a high official of the third rank who rode each day in a decorated palanquin under a purple parasol into the imperial palace to discuss affairs of state, yet in the evening knelt in the parish church, humbly teaching catechism to poor children, settling quarrels in the Catholic neighborhood and running its works of charity. He used his own official residence as a secret refuge for the Paris missionaries, priests and seminarians. He used his influence and his own money to stand surety for and free hundreds of poor faithful who had been arrested and imprisoned. Bishop Pellerin (Đức cha Huy) and the missionary priests regarded him as the strongest pillar of the Church in the capital.

On February 10, 1857, the emperor ordered soldiers to burst into his residence without warning and arrest the mandarin Hồ Đình Hy together with his eldest son. He was stripped of all his ranks, all his property was confiscated, and he was thrown into the Trấn Phủ, the most notoriously brutal military prison in the capital. In the Trấn Phủ prison the judges — many of them former colleagues at court who envied his integrity — tormented him with the cruelest punishments: he was flogged with thorny bamboo rods that tore his flesh; forced to kneel on piles of sharp thorns; and they even clamped red-hot iron pincers onto his flesh until it smoked and burned.

But more painful than the physical blows were the judges’ vicious schemes: they drugged him and asked cunning questions while he was dazed, to force him to sign confessions revealing the hiding places of the bishops and priests. When he came to and realized how he had been tricked, he beat his breast, wept bitterly, fell to his knees, tore up the confessions and declared before the mandarins:

“I admit only that I myself follow the Religion and will die for the Religion! I will never denounce anyone to harm my innocent brothers and sisters!”

Faced with such firmness, the mandarins could only petition Emperor Tự Đức to carry out the death sentence. Emperor Tự Đức approved the sentence of beheading with his own brush.

On the afternoon of May 22, 1857, the death sentence was carried out. The escort passed through the main streets of Huế. When they reached the An Hòa market, where the execution ground had been set up by the bridge, the supervising mandarin came up once more and urged him:

“Your Excellency, just say one word renouncing the religion, and I will at once petition the emperor to spare your life and restore your rank!”