Editing Boxer Rebellion (section)

== Massacre of missionaries and Chinese Christians ==
[[File:Chinese Martirs.jpg|thumb|Chinese martyrs of the [[Eastern Orthodox Church]] as depicted in an [[icon]] commissioned in 1990]]
A total of 136 Protestant missionaries, 53 children, 47 Catholic priests and nuns, 30,000 Chinese Catholics, 2,000 Chinese Protestants, and 200–400 of the 700 Russian Orthodox Christians in Beijing are estimated to have been killed during the uprising. The Protestant dead were collectively termed the [[China Martyrs of 1900]].{{sfnp|Thompson|2009|p=184}}

Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic missionaries and their Chinese parishioners were massacred throughout northern China, some by Boxers and others by government troops and authorities. After the declaration of war on Western powers in June 1900, Yuxian, who had been named governor of Shanxi in March of that year, implemented a brutal anti-foreign and anti-Christian policy. On 9 July, reports circulated that he had executed forty-four foreigners (including women and children) from missionary families whom he had invited to the provincial capital [[Taiyuan]] under the promise to protect them.{{sfnp|Cohen|1997|p=51}}{{sfnp|Esherick|1987|pp=190–191}} Although the purported eyewitness accounts have recently been questioned as improbable, this event became a notorious symbol of Chinese anger, known as the [[Taiyuan massacre]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Thompson |first=Roger R. |title=The Boxers, China, and the World |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2007 |editor-last=Bickers |editor-first=Robert A. |editor-link=Robert Bickers |location=Lanham, MD |pages=65–92 |chapter=Reporting the Taiyuan Massacre: Culture and Politics in the China War of 1900 |editor-last2=Tiedemann |editor-first2=R. G. |editor-link2=R. G. Tiedemann}} Points out that the widely circulated accounts were by people who could not have seen the events, and that these accounts closely followed (often word for word) well-known earlier martyr literature.</ref>

The England-based [[Baptist Missionary Society]] opened its mission in Shanxi in 1877. In 1900, all its missionaries there were killed, along with all 120 converts.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tiedemann |first=R. G. |author-link=R. G. Tiedemann |title=Reference Guide to Christian Missionary Societies in China: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century |year=2009 |page=125}}</ref> By the summer's end, more foreigners and as many as 2,000 Chinese Christians had been put to death in the province. Journalist and historical writer Nat Brandt has called the massacre of Christians in Shanxi "the greatest single tragedy in the history of Christian evangelicalism".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brandt |first=Nat |url=https://archive.org/details/massacreinshansi00bran |title=Massacre in Shansi |publisher=Syracuse University Press |year=1994 |page=xiii |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Some 222 Russian–Chinese martyrs, including [[Metrophanes, Chi Sung|Chi Sung as St. Metrophanes]], were locally canonised as [[New Martyrs]] on 22 April 1902, after [[Archimandrite]] Innocent (Fugurovsky), head of the Russian Orthodox Mission in China, solicited the [[Most Holy Synod]] to perpetuate their memory. This was the first local canonisation for more than two centuries.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Trubachev |first=Andronik |date=30 September 2015 |script-title=ru:Канонизация святых в Русской Православной Церкви – 5. Канонизация святых в 1894–1917 гг. |trans-title=Canonization of Saints by the Russian Orthodox Church – 5. Canonization of Saints from 1894–1917 |url=http://azbyka.ru/tserkov/svyatye/trubachev_kanonizatsiya_svyatyh_07-all.shtml |publisher=ABC of Faith |language=ru}}</ref>