A Book Exhorting the Faithful to Attend Mass

Manuscript Borg.tonch.17, “Sách khuyên bổn đạo xem lễ Missa” (A book urging the faithful to attend Mass), is a Catholic devotional work translated from Portuguese into Vietnamese by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh. It is written entirely in chữ Nôm and was completed in 1818 in Lisbon. It falls into three main parts across some 304 pages. The first gathers miracles and stories illustrating the dignity of the Mass. The second sets out the benefits to the soul of attending it. The third lists the harms of neglecting it. For all that it is a book about attending Mass, Father Bỉnh's discursive manner means it contains far more than eucharistic miracles: there are popular miracles, episodes from the lives of the saints, from the Old and New Testaments, from the history of Annam and of China, and much else that bears no relation to the Mass but was set down because it was edifying or catechetical. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the Catholic devotional works and saints' lives current in Vietnam and Portugal at the end of the eighteenth century.