History of An Nam: Volume Two, Concerning Đàng Trong

Manuscript Borg.tonch.2, “Truyện nước Annam: Quyển thứ hai nói sự Đàng Trong” (A History of Annam: Book Two, on Đàng Trong), is the second part of “Truyện nước Annam Đàng Ngoài chí Đàng Trong” by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. It is written throughout in Vietnamese in chữ Quốc ngữ and was completed in 1822 in Lisbon, Portugal. Like its companion volume, it is a chronicle of Catholic evangelisation, here in central and southern Vietnam. It runs to 703 pages in 74 sections. It opens with the founding of Đàng Trong, which Father Bỉnh describes as originally part of Annam until Nguyễn Hoàng established his own domain with the Gianh river as its boundary, giving rise to the line of the Nguyễn lords. The book then recounts how Catholicism reached Đàng Trong in 1615 — before it reached the north — through the Jesuit missionaries Francesco Buzomi and Diogo de Carvalho. Most of the remaining sections concern the successive edicts against the faith issued by the Nguyễn lords and the people of Đàng Trong martyred under them: the catechist Anrê Trẻ (Andrew of Phú Yên), Vietnam's first martyr, at Dinh Chiêm; the catechist João Kết Long, a convert who left a substantial body of chữ Nôm writing now lost; and groups martyred together. The biographical sections follow the conventions of Catholic hagiography, dwelling on each subject's death, often without a surname or any account of their life before arrest, while recording their baptismal name with care. Toward the end Father Bỉnh describes the Nguyễn defeat of the Tây Sơn and Gia Long's accession as emperor in 1802, and — drawing on missionary reports in the Gazette de Lisboa — gives figures for the number of the faithful in Đàng Trong at that date. The final section recounts Minh Mạng's accession in 1820. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the history of Catholicism in central and southern Vietnam between 1615 and 1822.