十七世紀初耶穌會傳教士羅德（Alexandre de Rhodes）在越南的傳教活動與其影響

Abstract

According to Vietnam’s historical records, Catholicism introduced into Vietnam at the early 16th century but did not achieve many results. Only at the early 17th century when the Jesuit missionaries entered Vietnam for their mission, it had some improvements. Among those Jesuits missionaries, Alexandre de Rhodes was considered as the most outstanding one. Born in a noble family, at 18 years old, he became a member of Jesuit with hope to be a missionary to the Far East. At the first time he put his feet in Vietnam in 1624, and the last leave was in 1645. In these twenty years, he arrived at Vietnam （both South and North） many times; he lived there in nearly 8 years and played an important role in Vietnam’s historical Church development as well as the Vietnam modern history. During nearly three years in the North, he had baptized more than 6700 people, and, before leaving, he founded the first local congregation in order to let the Vietnamese missionaries transfer directly to the other Vietnamese. From 1640 to 1645, he had repeatedly returned to the south for missionaries in the name of a trade representative of Portugal. In 1645, before leaving the south under the Nguyen Lord 's deportation, he also established a local congregation and witness the first Vietnamese as a Martyr. After leaving Vietnam back to Rome, he requested the Pope to establish an official missionary area and sent bishops to Vietnam. In addition, he published books related to history and language of Vietnam. Because he was the first one using Latin letters to write the language of Vietnam in his books, Vietnamese scholars have considered him as the father of Vietnam’s Romanized writing. Rhodes’s efforts for Vietnam was probably derived from his wanted to let the Vietnamese easily accept the Catholicism; in other words, Rhodes try to inculturate the Catholicism into Vietnamese culture.