Juye Incident

The Juye Incident (Chinese: or ; pinyin: or , German: Juye Vorfall) refers to the killing of two German Catholic missionaries, Richard Henle (b. 21 July 1863 at Stetten near Haigerloch) and Franz-Xavier Nies (b. 11 June 1859 at Rehringhausen, Olpe, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paderborn), of the Society of the Divine Word, in Juye County Shandong Province, China in the night of the 1st to the 2nd of November 1897 (All Saints' Day to All Souls' Day). A third missionary, Georg Maria Stenz, survived the attack.

The mission compound where the incident took place was located in Zhang Jia Village (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: , spelled "Tshantyachuang" in writings by Georg M. Stenz), about 10 km northeast of the town of Juye and about 25 km northwest of the city of Jining. Georg M. Stenz was the priest stationed in Zhang Jia Village and the other two missionaries, Henle and Nies, had come to visit him. Stenz describes the events of the incident as follows: Before they went to bed shortly before midnight, the missionaries had practiced the Requiem Mass (Miseremini mei) for the following All Souls' Day. Stenz had given his room to his guests for the night and had moved into a vacant porter's room himself. Believing the area to be quiet, the missionaries did not take any precautions and Stenz left the door to his room unlocked. A band of twenty to thirty armed men broke into the mission compound shortly after the missionaries had gone to bed. They broke the door to the room where Henle and Nies were staying and killed the two missionaries. Both victims were found to have suffered numerous wounds from stabbing and both were dead shortly before midnight. The attackers searched for Stenz, but could not find him. They retreated when the local Chinese Christians arrived at the scene to help. It is not certain who committed the killings, but it is most commonly assumed that the attack was launched by members of the Big Swords Society. Stenz blamed the attack on the warden of a neighboring village (Cao Jia Zhuang, spelled "Tsaotyachuang" by Stenz and located about 10 km to the south of Zhang Jia Village) and believed that the attack was rooted in a dispute between the warden and comparatively wealthy relatives who had converted to Christianity and had therefore refused to pay for local temple feasts.

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