Miscellaneous Writings on Catholic Devotional Practices

Manuscript Borg.tonch.11 bears no title, being a book in which Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO, set down a range of devotional, catechetical and pious material. It is written in Portuguese, Latin and Vietnamese, the first two in the opening part and Vietnamese throughout the remainder. It runs to 266 pages. The first part concerns the liturgy of the Tridentine Mass, opening with a musical setting of the celebrated sequence “Stabat Mater Dolorosa” used at the Mass of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. There follow the Latin prayers for that Mass, for the blessing of palms and the liturgy of Palm Sunday, for the days of Holy Week, and for Easter Sunday. The second part, in Vietnamese, records Catholic devotional practices and instructs the reader in the rites of the Tridentine Mass: first the good works Father Bỉnh urges the faithful to perform in honour of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, then a novena to St Joseph. On the rites themselves, Father Bỉnh sets out how a priest is to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, to bless objects at solemn feasts, and to celebrate the consecration, the Requiem Mass and Masses celebrated by a bishop. An appendix carries the account of the martyrs of 1723 at Thăng Long. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the devotional practice and liturgical language of Vietnamese Catholics at the end of the eighteenth century.