Manuscript Borg.tonch.5, “Truyện ông thánh Ignacio de Loyola” (The Life of St Ignatius of Loyola), is a life of St Ignatius of Loyola, founder and first Superior General of the Society of Jesus, composed by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. It is written throughout in Vietnamese in chữ Quốc ngữ and was completed in 1819 in Lisbon, Portugal. It proceeds chronologically, from the Loyola family of the Basque country to the saint's death and the miracles he worked for the faithful, and on to the Society's revival after its suppression. It runs to 723 pages in 55 sections. It opens with Ignatius's birth in the Basque country into a noble house. It then recounts the shot that shattered his leg during the defence of Pamplona and the conversion that followed, in which he renounced the world for religious life; his preaching and studies in Paris; and the companions he found there with whom he founded the Society. At Rome the founders petitioned Pope Paul III in 1540 and were granted approval for the order. Accounts of miracles are interwoven throughout, underscoring the Society's importance in the history of the Church. Most of the later sections set out Ignatius's virtues, making the book a devotional work for the faithful to read and imitate. It closes with his death and the miracles worked after it, together with several appended sections on the state of the Society nearer Father Bỉnh's own time. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on middle-period Vietnamese through the life of the Jesuit St Ignatius of Loyola.
The original is held by the Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). The images are copyright the Library and are loaded directly from the Vatican Digital Library (DigiVatLib); Digitizing Việt Nam presents this manuscript by permission of the Vatican Digital Library.