Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin Missalette

Manuscript Borg.tonch.19 bears no title, but may provisionally be called “Sách lễ Missa Việt-Bồ-La” (A Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin missal). It is a liturgical book for the Tridentine Mass compiled by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. The year of completion is unknown. It runs to 148 pages in two main parts, the first in Portuguese and Latin, the second in Vietnamese and Latin. The first part gives the order of the Tridentine Mass, each Latin line followed by a Portuguese rendering beneath: the prayers said while vesting, the Asperges, and the prayers of the offertory, of the Mass of the faithful and of the dismissal. The second part covers the same ground but lacks Vietnamese renderings of the vesting prayers and the Asperges. Set into the middle of it is a long passage explaining the role of patron saints and listing patrons for every kind of illness, trade and office. The volume closes with the form of absolution for priests, in Latin and Vietnamese. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the liturgical practice of Vietnamese Catholics at the end of the eighteenth century.