Confession, Cosmopolitanism, and Catholic Identity in Early Modern Vietnam, 1625-1800

Colloquium featuring Nhung Tuyet Tran (University of Toronto)

Friday, November 16, 2018
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
243 Royce Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

In 1686, four Vietnamese Christians boarded an English East India Company boat near Hanoi, and traveled to Siam, where they hoped to deliver a letter to Catholic leaders in Rome, asking for more support for their pastoral needs. After failing to receive the support of the French apostolic mission, two returned home, while the other two stayed—the elder, Diny, befriended the Greek explorer cum Siamese Official, Constantine Phaulkon, and the younger, Mighê, studied theology, rhetoric, and grammar alongside a transnational group of young men from Cochinchina, Java, Kerala, Pagan, and Siam at the French seminary in Ayuthaya.  Within a year, the two, with another young studen—Anton—departed Siam where they gave testimony in front of Pere la Chaise, one of the most important theologians of the times, and the most Christian King, Louis XIV.  They traveled overland to the Azur Coast, where they boarded a ship to the port at Cittavecchia, outside of Rome. In the Holy City, the three Vietnamese Christians were granted a private audience with Pope Innocent XI, to whom they bowed and kissed his feet three times. During his lifetime, Mighê narrated the story about his travels at least four times—each time with new ellisions and embellishments. Mighe’s tellings, when read against the large body of writings from Vietnamese believers from 1625-1800, give clues to how Vietnamese Christians imagined themselves and their faith in the global Catholic Church.

Nhung Tuyet Tran is associate professor of history and director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Familial Properties: Gender, State, & Society in Early Modern Vietnam (University of Hawai’I Press, 2018) & co-editor of Việt Nam: Borderless Histories (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).  She is currently working on two books: a cultural history of Vietnamese Catholicism and an intellectual history of the idea of property in early modern Vietnam.

For more information please contact:

Nguyet Tong

cseas@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Canadian Studies Program, Department of History