In one and the same household, four people were raised by the kings to the rank of phúc thần — a beneficent spirit, a protector venerated in the temple. A father, two of his sons, and the wife of one of them. They are honoured at đền Gôi Vị, in Sơn Hòa (Hương Sơn, Hà Tĩnh).
This page and its four sub-pages are drawn from the documents in the site's library, first among them the proceedings of the academic conference “Hoàng giáp Đinh Nho Hoàn — Thân thế và sự nghiệp” in their Vietnamese version: thirty-one papers, six of them on Phan Thị Viên and one on đền Gôi Vị itself.
Ⅰ
What a phúc thần is
A phúc thần (福神) is a canonised ancestor: a person whose merits the court officially recognises after death, and whom it authorises to be venerated as a protecting spirit. The recognition is an act of state — a decree, a title, often cult lands and a temple — not a private devotion.
It differs from a thành hoàng, the tutelary genie of a village, attached to a place rather than to a lineage. The four honoured here are phúc thần of the Đinh Nho lineage.
The glossary on the site's Genealogy page gives the same definition: “phúc thần = tutelary deity (canonised ancestor)”.
Ⅱ
The four
One conference paper states it in a sentence: “The household of Đinh Nho Công numbers three — father and sons: Đinh Nho Công, Đinh Nho Hoàn, Đinh Nho Côn — and a daughter-in-law, Phan Thị Viên, wife of Đinh Nho Hoàn, whom the royal court honoured as danh thần and phúc thần.”
Đinh Nho Côn — the sixth son, founder of the Thanh Liên branch.
The praise of the licentiate Đinh Nho Quang (14th generation), long quoted on this site, holds in one line: “Above, they protect the country; below, they shelter the people. One house, four tutelary deities — what glory!”
Ⅲ
Đền Gôi Vị
The temple stands in the former village of Gôi Vị, Yên Ấp canton — today hamlet 5 of Sơn Hòa commune, Hương Sơn district, Hà Tĩnh province. It bears several names: đền Gôi, đền Gôi Mỹ, and đền Bà Tiết, after the woman for whom it was raised.
It was founded for Phan Thị Viên: the Lê court ordered the village to build her a temple and granted twenty mẫu of cult ricefields. By the custom of the day, because she was a second wife, her father-in-law Đinh Nho Công and her husband Đinh Nho Hoàn were enshrined alongside her. The temple also venerates the distant ancestor Đinh Điền.
The paper by the Hà Tĩnh provincial museum describes it: over 1,000 m² enclosed, a complete ensemble — gate, enclosing wall, tắc môn, side wings, hạ điện and thượng điện — in a markedly Lê style, with woodcarving the author judges among the finest in the region. The temple holds two stone elephants, a stone khánh and three stelae bound to the life of Đinh Nho Hoàn.
The gilded board bearing the three characters “Tiết Phụ Môn” is today kept in the Đinh Nho clan's ancestral house at Gôi Mỹ village.
The temple served far beyond worship: activists met there to prepare the August 1945 seizure of power, and it long housed the people's committee of Sơn Hòa commune. It is listed as a provincial historical and cultural monument. The same paper reported, at the time of writing, a building seriously decayed for want of upkeep.
Ⅳ
What the sources do not settle
The conference does not hide its disagreements, and an entire paper — by Đinh Nho Quỳ — is given over to the questions still open about Đinh Nho Hoàn's death. The pages that follow flag them where they arise rather than choosing in silence.
The date of Đinh Nho Hoàn's death: the 27th or 28th of the twelfth lunar month of the year Ất Mùi. That year is 1715, but this twelfth month falls in January 1716 — hence the two years one reads depending on the source, neither of them wrong.
The place of that death: before or after Yên Kinh (Beijing)? The annals say only “died on the road”, without saying outward or homeward.
Phan Thị Viên's age at death: about 21 according to the Hà Tĩnh museum paper, 19 according to Đinh Tú Anh (2023).
Đinh Nho Công's provincial post: Tham chính of Sơn Tây per the Đại Việt sử ký bản kỷ tục biên cited at the conference, of Sơn Nam per another paper.