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A Vietnamese Moses
A Vietnamese Moses
Philiph B nh and t he Geographies of Early Modern Catholicism
George E. Dutton
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
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University of California Press
Oakland, California
2017 by George E. Dutton
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses .
Suggested citation: Dutton, George E. Philiph B nh and the Geographies of Early Modern Catholicism. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. doi: http://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dutton, George Edson, author.
Title: A Vietnamese Moses : Philiph B nh and the geographies of early modern Catholicism / George E. Dutton.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035712 (print) | LCCN 2016036930 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520293434 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520966697 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: B nh, Philiph, 1759-1833. | CatholicsVie tnam Biography. | Catholic Church VietnamHistory18th century. | Catholic Church VietnamHistory19th century. | VietnamChurch history 18th century. | VietnamChurch history19th century.
Classification: LCC BX4705.B5195 D88 2017 (print) | LCC BX47 05.B5195 (ebook) | DDC 282.092 [B] dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035712
Manufactured in the United States of America
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For Jessie, Talia, and Miranda
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The seeds of this project were planted in a conversation with David Marr at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institutes 1990 Vietnamese Studies Conference at Cornell. I mentioned that I was interested in working on the Ty Sn uprising as a possible dissertation project, and he suggested I take a look at a book by a Vietnamese author who had lived through the Ty Sn era and might offer some insights. I went to the Cornell Library to check out the book, the 1968 photoreproduction of Bnhs Sch s , and almost immediately recoiled. The cramped but fairly neat handwriting stumped me, a first-year learner of Vietnamese, and as I skimmed through the volumes more than six hundred pages there seemed little chance that I would be able to decipher it, much less use it for my work. Then, nine years later, I found myself in the Vatican Libraries, holding a copy of the original in my hands. Now I could read it, and its many companions, and while it proved of only limited use for my Ty Sn project, I knew that I would have to come back to Bnh and his notebooks. This book is the result.
Over the more than a quarter century that has passed between the planting of the seed and the flowering of this book, Ive accrued numerous debts to many people in the field of Vietnamese history and beyond who have shaped my scholarship and my career. Some have heard my presentations on Bnh at conferences and colloquia at various venues: the Association for Asian Studies in Honolulu, Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California Irvine, Seattle University, the University of California Riverside, the University of California Berkeley, and my home institution, the University of California Los Angeles. Many others have heard my succinct and, at times, less than succinct summaries of Bnhs life after asking, So what project are you working on? Im grateful for everyones willingness to listen to a story that still fascinates me after years of living with it. While Ill surely leave out some names (for which I apologize), I want to thank my friends and colleagues whove listened and offered suggestions or advice, starting with two very generous colleagues who read the manuscript for the University of California Press. Barbara Watson Andaya and Charles Keith both agreed to read the manuscript and did so with great care, each providing encouraging but useful critical suggestions, many of which were incorporated into the revised book. I am in debt to both of them for their enormous assistance. Hue-Tam Ho Tai invited me to a workshop on Vietnamese biography that was very useful to my thinking about Bnhs life and later helped me puzzle over language in Bnhs poetry. Roland Jacques answered several e-mail queries with helpful suggestions, as did Liam Brockey when I puzzled over aspects of Bnhs story in Lisbon. Nhung Tran allowed me to use her important collection of Bnhs writings in photo and microfilm form, a resource of immeasurable benefit. Raul Mximo da Silva sent me numerous articles and files that helped in the final stages of the project, particularly as I translated some of Bnhs travel poetry. On my first visit to Lisbon in 2006, Francisco Contente Domingues discussed the Oratorian order with me and confirmed the location of Bnhs residence. Over the years, my friend and office neighbor Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo listened to each of my new discoveries about Bnh as I worked my way through his texts and was the first to suggest that his story would make a great movie. Her friendship and support have been invaluable. Among the many people in the fields of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian studies who have listened to my telling of Bnhs story and offered insights and suggestions are Peter Zinoman, Mark Bradley, Thongchai Winichakul, Alexander Woodside, Keith Taylor, Anthony Reid, Charles Wheeler, Michael Cullinane, Michele Thompson, Erik Harms, Ben Kiernan, Anh Tran, Judith Henchey, Hazel Hahn, Geoff Robinson, Philippe Papin, Jayne Werner, Olga Dror, Wynn Wilcox, Brian Ostrowski, and Shawn McHale. I am particularly grateful to John Whitmore, who, knowing I was working on Bnh, sent me a copy of the 1968 reprinting of his Sch s notebook, which became a resource and talisman as I came to the end of the project. I also owe a special debt to V ng Lun, who served as my guide and local contact when I traveled to Bnhs home region of Vnh Bo. He made the trip a success, contributing greatly to the final book.
I want also to offer my appreciation to the staff members of the institutions at which I carried out the research for this work: first, to the librarians at the Vatican Library, for allowing me access to their incomparable collections and allowing me to use Bnhs original works, and also to the archivists at the Torre de Tombo National Archives in Lisbon, who put up with my atrocious Portuguese while retrieving countless boxes of materials pertaining to the religious house in which Bnh had lived for many years. The UCLA Interlibrary Loan office procured a wide range of materials, including the full microfilm set of Bnhs notebooks, copies of which have undergirded my research for the past decade. And although my research at the Archives of the Missions trangres de Paris was conducted primarily for an earlier project, the notes and materials I collected there were extremely useful for this book, so it seems appropriate once again to acknowledge the assistance of the late Father Grard Moussay and his extremely helpful assistant Brigitte Appavou.
