After a Portuguese missionary arrived in Vietnam in 1533, an imperial edict forbade Christianity in the country. It was not until 1615 that the Jesuits were able to establish a permanent mission, and 1627 until another mission was issued. In 1630, Father Alexander de Rhodes, who had baptized over 6,700 Vietnamese, was expelled from the land. In that same year, the first Christian martyr was beheaded. Father Rhodes returned to Vietnam in 1645, but was quickly banished once more. He then went to France, where the Paris Seminary for Foreign Missions was founded. Priests arrived in Vietnam, and the faith grew. 

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Several groups of martyrs, also called the Martyrs of Annam, were slain for their faith in Vietnam from 1798 to 1861. Of those, sixty-four were martyred and received beatification in 1900. Those who died in a second group, between 1859 and 1861, were beatified in 1909. In 1833, all Christians were ordered to renounce the faith, and to trample crucifixes underfoot. That edict started a persecution of great intensity that was to last for half a century. The bishop, priests, and Europeans were given "a hundred wounds," disemboweled, beaten, and slain in many other grisly fashions. For a brief period in 1841 the persecution abated as France threatened to intervene with warships. However, in 1848, prices were placed on the heads of the missionaries by a new emperor. Two priests, Father Augustin Schoffier and Father Bonnard, were beheaded as a result. In 1855, the persecution raged, and the following year wholesale massacres began. Thousands of Vietnamese Christians were martyred, as well as four bish­ops and twenty-eight Dominicans. It is estimated that between 1857 and 1862, 115 native priests, 100 Vietnamese nuns, and more than 5,000 of the faithful were martyred. Convents, churches, and schools were razed, and Catholics were dispossessed of their lands and exiled from their own regions to starve in wilderness areas.

The martyrdoms ended with the Peace of 1862, brought about by the surrendering of Saigon and other regions to France and the payment of indemnities to France and Spain.

The Vatican estimates the number of Vietnamese martyrs at between 130,000 and 300,000. John Paul II decided to canonize those whose names are known and unknown, giving them a single feast day. On June 19,1988 Pope John Paul II canonized 117 Martyrs of Vietnam.