[MANUSCRIT] Memorias sobre [la vida y muerte de] XXVII venerables siervos de Dios, que en los años mil ochociontos [sic] treinta y ocho, treinta y nueve y cuarenta murieron por la Religion catolica en el Vicariato Apostolico, del Tun Kin Oriental

Contemporary manuscript copy of the important unpublished memoir written in Tonkin in 1841 by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Martí (1811–1852), devoted to the lives and martyrdom of twenty-seven Servants of God who died between 1838 and 1840 during the anti-Christian persecutions carried out under the reign of Emperor Minh Mạng.

Small quarto (15 × 19.8 cm). 6 unnumbered leaves, 2 blank leaves, 117 numbered leaves with a few pagination errors. Calligraphic title enclosed within a double rule and ornamented with a pen-drawn flourish. Neatly copied throughout in highly legible black ink on thin paper. The introduction contains at least one interlinear correction, apparently in the same hand as the main text. The present manuscript may correspond to the copy recorded by Palau y Dulcet as comprising "250 pages", a description compatible with its present collation.

Library stamp on the opening leaf reading Colegio de Santo Tomás, almost certainly that of the College of Santo Tomás in Manila, the principal house of the Dominican Province of the Holy Rosary and the training centre for missionaries destined for Tonkin. The stamp records the manuscript's long preservation within Dominican collections. Small marginal tear to the opening leaf; endpapers lightly toned.

Fine full mottled calf binding by Victorio Arias y López Izquierdo (Madrid, 1856-1935), spine with five raised bands gilt with decorative rolls and fillets, black calf lettering-piece, boards framed with a double blind rule, marbled endpapers. Although executed several decades after the manuscript itself, the binding can be dated between the opening of Arias's workshop in 1885 and his death in 1935.

Written only a few months after the events it records, this memoir is among the earliest surviving accounts of the major anti-Christian persecutions launched under Emperor Minh Mạng. Beyond its value as a martyrology, it offers first-hand observations on Vietnamese society, its customs, judicial institutions, and the imperial government's policy towards Catholic missions and Western powers. It also sheds valuable light on the relationships between the imperial administration, local authorities, and Christian communities.

When composing this work, Domingo Martí was still a missionary in the then undivided Apostolic Vicariate of Eastern Tonkin. He would not be appointed titular Bishop of Tricomia until 1847, later becoming Vicar Apostolic of Central Tonkin following the reorganisation of the vicariates in 1848–1849. His account was compiled from eyewitness testimony and diocesan archives assembled immediately after the persecutions. Among the twenty-seven martyrs whose biographies he records are Ignatius Delgado, Bishop of Melipotamos and Apostolic Vicar of Eastern Tonkin, who died in captivity on 12 July 1838, and Domingo Henares, beheaded on 25 June of the same year. The dates and circumstances reported by Martí broadly agree with those accepted by modern hagiographical scholarship. These martyrs were included among the sixty-four Vietnamese martyrs beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 27 May 1900 and were later incorporated into the group of the 117 Martyrs of Vietnam canonised by Pope John Paul II on 19 June 1988.

Combining the immediacy of a contemporary eyewitness record with the historical value of an unpublished missionary manuscript, this remarkable document is an important source for the history of Catholic missions, the persecutions under Minh Mạng, and nineteenth-century Vietnam, further distinguished by its early Dominican provenance and its fine state of preservation.