A History of Apostolic Missionaries in the Kingdom of An Nam

Manuscript Borg.tonch.10 — “Indice deste livro da Vida os Missionarios Apostólicos do Reyno de Tunkim” (Index of the apostolic missionaries of the kingdom of Tonkin) and “Indice 6 Padres e 10 Catquistas e familias da Companhia Martyrir São duas Historias” (Index of six fathers, ten catechists and members of the Society martyred, with their lives) — is a collection of biographies of the foreign Jesuit missionaries who came to preach in Vietnam, copied by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. It carries no date of copying, runs to 319 pages and falls into two main parts. It is entirely in Portuguese. From the introductory note on Father Jerónimo Maiorica at the head of the book, Father Bỉnh appears to have copied these lives from a source in the Jesuit archives in Rome bearing the imprint date 1776. The first part gives brief lives of some thirty-three Jesuit missionaries, foreign and Vietnamese, from Father Alexandre de Rhodes to those martyred in 1737, recording each subject's year of birth, birthplace and career, together with any works they composed. The second part gives the lives and martyrdoms of six Jesuit priests martyred in Vietnam: Fathers Francesco Maria Bucharelli, Giovanni Battista Messari, Bartolomeu Alvares, Manuel de Abreu, Vicente da Cunha and Johann Kaspar Kratz. It also contains the accounts of ten Vietnamese catechists and lay people martyred in 1723 at Đồng Mơ, Thăng Long. That these lives are given in such detail and set apart from the main text suggests the material was used in the cause for their canonisation. An appendix records correspondence between the Superior and the martyrs during their imprisonment, and what followed their sentences. This is certainly a source Father Bỉnh drew on for manuscript Borg.tonch.1. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the careers of the foreign missionaries who came to Vietnam from 1615 through the period of the martyrdoms.