Manuscript Borg.tonch.9, “Sách Gương Truyện: Quyển thứ hai” (The Book of Exemplary Tales: Book Two), is a Catholic devotional work compiled by Father Philiphê do Rosario Nguyễn Văn Bỉnh, CO. It is the second part of the “Gương Truyện”, translated from Portuguese into Vietnamese, and its contents are entirely in Vietnamese. It was completed in 1815 in Lisbon, Portugal. It runs to 427 pages in three main parts, each subdivided into shorter sections gathering stories from scripture, saints' lives and popular miracles on the relevant theme. The first part treats the Ten Commandments in ten corresponding sections. The second teaches through stories bearing on the five precepts of the Church. The last treats the “Tứ Mạt”, the Four Last Things, a major theme of devotional writing in the early period of Catholicism in Vietnam. The final 150 pages or so form a separate work, “Sách truyện các đời Đức thánh Phapha trị thánh Igreja” — a chronicle of the reigns of the popes — which Father Bỉnh completed in 1814, again entirely in Vietnamese. It is probably a translation of what later became manuscript Borg.tonch.20. It contains a table of the popes from St Peter to Leo XII, followed by an account of the major changes in the Church under each pontificate and the great miracles of each period. This manuscript offers scholars of Vietnamese studies further material on the Catholic devotional works and well-known saints' lives circulating in Vietnam at the end of the eighteenth century.
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.