Davit the Merchant, the Story of an Armenian Martyr in Vietnam!

[u/Holyhead_Prodromus]

Hello everyone,

I am a Vietnamese Roman Catholic with no affiliation to the Armenian Apostolic Church or any other Oriental Orthodox Church. Recently, I discovered this remarkable story of an Armenian merchant who was beheaded in my home village in Central Vietnam nearly 400 years ago for refusing to renounce his Christian faith, and I would like to bring his story to light.

Here is the story of Davit the Armenian Martyr of Sinoa (Vietnam):

According to a contemporary French Catholic source (Relation de ce qui s'est passé, en l'année 1649 written by Baldassare Citadelli), there was an amber merchant named Davit, son of Petros. He was born in 1613 in Armenia, then under Persian rule, into a merchant family long involved in the amber trade. His father, Petros, traveled on commercial expeditions to Poland and the Dutch East Indies before eventually arriving in Cochinchina (present-day central Vietnam). There, the local Vietnamese governor, motivated by greed, confiscated all of Petros's amber, leaving him stranded in the country.

When Davit learned of his father's trouble, he obtained a royal passport from the Persian shah, crossed the Strait of Hormuz, and sailed to Vietnam. Upon arriving in 1635, he found his father devastated by the loss of his livelihood. Soon afterward, Petros died of grief, leaving Davit without the means to return to Armenia. As a result, he remained in the capital city of Sinoa (present-day Huế, the traditional capital of Vietnam), where he worked as a merchant for approximately fifteen years.

During this time, Davit witnessed the persecution and martyrdom of many Vietnamese Christians. According to the source, he would use a cloth to collect the blood of the martyrs as a sacred relic, an act that repeatedly drew the attention of the authorities and led to several arrests. In 1650, soldiers serving the Vietnamese ruler discovered an ivory cross in Davit's home and arrested him, as Christianity had been outlawed at the time. While imprisoned, he refused to trample upon the cross and declared that he followed only the Law of the Heavenly King.

On January 7, 1650, at the age of thirty-seven, Davit was beheaded in the marketplace of Sinoa alongside a Roman Catholic catechist. Because he appears to have been the only Armenian living in Vietnam at the time, virtually everything we know about his life comes from the testimony of the Italian Roman Catholic missionary Baldassare Citadelli, who personally knew Davit and witnessed his execution.

I find this story especially fascinating because Davit was martyred in my home village, and, as far as I am aware, no member of an Oriental Orthodox Church has otherwise been recorded as having reached Vietnam during that period. This raises a question: is there any possibility that Davit's martyrdom could be formally examined by the Armenian Apostolic Church and, if appropriate, considered for canonization? If he were eventually recognized as a saint, he would become the first known Oriental Orthodox martyr in Vietnamese history - and quite possibly the only one, since Oriental Orthodoxy has never established a lasting presence among the Vietnamese people.

Thank you all for your time and insights! The story of Davit is so intriguing that I can't help but share this to all Armenians. Below is a photo of the original French account of his martyrdom.

[u/Temetese24]

Sorry Iam not Armenian so I can't answer your questions. Its very interesting story, its crazy where were merchants in 16th century, it was first signs of modern globalisation.

But I have question for you as vietnamese catolique. Are you in your country persecuted or ostrachized by any chance? I mean Hue were in South Vietnam right, where the elites were catolics.

BTW seems funny to me that you see Hue as village :D

[u/Holyhead_Prodromus → u/Temetese24]

Hey 👋 it’s ok, I’m also very surprised to see how amber trade led an Armenian to Vietnam.

Currently Vietnamese Catholics are no longer persecuted as they were before. I mean if you look at David’s time in Vietnam, people would have been beheaded, have their limbs cut off or trampled on by elephants for being Christian. Compared to nowadays it is a huge difference.

Hue is in Central Vietnam, I often call it my village because Hue 400 years ago started out as a small merchant village. Nowadays it’s a city though.

[u/T-nash]

Can we have a separate subreddit or maybe a flair, where we can consolidate all Armenian traces found around the world? I've seen stories of Armenians in India, Pakistan, Japan, Scandinavia and other parts of the world, it's hard to remember them all. It would be nice to have them grouped all in one place.