Manuscript Borg.tonch.6, “Truyện ông thánh Phanchicô Xavier” (The Life of St Francis Xavier), is a life of St Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Society of Jesus and its first missionary to the Far East, composed by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. It is written throughout in Vietnamese in chữ Quốc ngữ and was completed in 1818 in Lisbon, Portugal. It proceeds chronologically, from the Xavier family of Navarre to the saint's death and the miracles he worked for the faithful, and takes in the history of the Jesuit mission in the Far East. It runs to 590 pages in 62 sections. It opens with Xavier's birth in Navarre and his studies in Paris, where he met St Ignatius of Loyola and joined him in founding the Society of Jesus on Montmartre outside the city. When the king of Portugal asked for missionaries to be sent to India, Xavier was despatched as papal nuncio for Pope Paul III. The book recounts the miracles and good works he performed in India and his plans for the mission in Southeast Asia; his reform of the lives of the Portuguese sailors in the colony of Malacca; his voyage on to preach in Japan; and finally his death on the island of Shangchuan off Guangdong. It closes with further miracles worked for the faithful, devotional passages, and the history of the Jesuit mission in China, Đàng Trong and Đàng Ngoài. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on middle-period Vietnamese through the life of the Jesuit St Francis Xavier.
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.