The Soul Instructed in Christian Doctrine and Life, Volume One

Manuscript Borg.tonch.13, “Alma Instruida na Doutrina e vida Christão pello Padre Mestre Manoel Fernandes da Companhia de Jesu, Tomo Primeiro” (The soul instructed in Christian doctrine and life, Volume One), is a devotional work widely read in eighteenth-century Portugal, written in 1688 by Father Manuel Fernandes, SJ, chaplain to King Pedro III of Portugal, and copied by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. It carries no date or place of copying, though 1810 is likely on the evidence of the two manuscripts that follow it. Its table of contents is in Vietnamese while the text is entirely in Portuguese. It runs to 584 pages in eight main sections, or “documentos”. Each section carries accounts of miracles and passages drawn from scripture and the lives of the saints, used to illuminate Catholic doctrine. The book treats the immortality of the human soul; God's creation of humanity to love him; the great works of the angels; the miracles of the apostles; the reward God grants those who preach the faith to others; the Cross as the supreme sign of the faith; the meaning of each phrase of the Lord's Prayer and the miracles associated with it; the meaning of the Ave Maria and of the Salve Regina; and a range of separate topics — the Holy Name of God, purgatory, heaven, hell, the fourteen works of mercy, prayer, grace, humility, wisdom, diligence, obedience, mortification, almsgiving, fasting and processions. The Alma Instruida appears to be the model for the “Gương Truyện” that Father Bỉnh compiled later. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the Catholic devotional works then popular among ordinary readers in Portugal.