English
Church of the Assumption of Our Lady or Saint Paul’s
Macao, Macau, China
Religious Architecture
When the Jesuits arrived at Macau they built the small churches of Saint Lazarus and Saint Anthony with thatched structures, but the Chinese burnt them down. Their first residence, documented in 1565, was according to Father Organtino merely composed of “some small, single-storey houses” that had partitions so conversations could be heard through the wall.
Father Montanha left a very synthetic report in which he says that they were made of “straw, like all the houses in Macau” and “as the Chinese set fire to them so that they could plunder them [...] the residents reacted and built a wooden church with a tiled roof ”. It seems that this took place around 1582. Despite being poor, it stood out from other buildings to the point that the Guangzhou mandarins complained, but everything was resolved amicably. It had a porch, altar, pul- pit, choir and even an organ; during the Holy Week festivities the body of the church was covered with black cloths that had the last moments of Christ’s life painted on them. The adornments used at Easter were basically rich cloth from China and Flanders.
Father Miguel Ruggieri, who erected a catechumenate and a chapel dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours solely for the Chinese, arrived in Macau in 1579. As the visitor Alessandro Valignano witnessed in 1580, the Jes- uits in Macau had a residence that had been finished the year before, where they lived in the professed house manner and which had ten lodgings and the necessary “offices” that could accommodate up to ten priests. The church had been ready for some time but had to be rebuilt because its plan was inadequate.
We can conclude that at a certain moment the Jesuits decided to abandon their original residence and move to a higher area where they erected the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, annexed to the Mother of God College.
According to Father Montanha, the Loyal Senate and the richest residents contributed to the new construction, for which an artificial platform had to be built. A fire destroyed the church and a great part of the college in 1601 as the rammed-earth walls did not withstand the high temperatures. The priests then decided to build more solid constructions.
The church was designed by Father Carlo Spinola, who was in Macau in 1601-1602, when documents and the laying of the first stone confirmed the beginning of the new temple. VIRGINI MAGNAE MATRI CIVITAS MACAENSIS LIBENS POSVIT AN 1602 is inscribed on the foundation stone. The new temple’s consecration took place on Christmas Eve 1603 and Father-Visitor Alessandro Valignano celebrated the first Mass after the transfer of the Holy Sacrament from the old church.
Carlo Spinola departed for Japan before the end of the work. The façade that we can admire and which is practically the only part of the church left was built later, from 1636. The initial project probably also included the small yard in front of the façade and the monumental stairway that leads up to it.
A fire almost completely destroyed the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, the Mother of God College and the contiguous premises on 25 January 1835 and only the façade, the side walls and foundations of some annexes on the right, near the Monte fortress, were left standing. Thanks to archaeological campaigns, we now know more about the structure of the church than we have learned from old documents.
Two drawings by George Chinnery give us an idea of what the interior was like and there are detailed descriptions from when the building was intact. The most important is the Notícia da Igreja deste Colégio de Macau, a manuscript of the Overseas Historical Archive. The church was composed of three naves and three chapels in the apse. It was about 39 metres in length, 20 in width and the lateral walls were 12.5 metres high. There were two altars in the crossing, one dedicated to Jesus and the other to the Eleven Thousand Virgins. Between the latter and the arch of the chancel was the altar of the Holy Ghost, which faced that of Saint Michael. They were all in chased white stone.
The ceiling attracted the most attention of whoever entered the church and it was what most eschewed European tradition, as it was packed with imagery and ornamental elements executed by Chinese artists. There were some paintings, both European and made by Japanese artists, on the walls and altars, namely by Jacob Niva, a disciple of the Italian Giovanni Nicolló, who worked in the seminaries and residences in Japan. The exotic baroque main retable, incorporating typical Chinese elements, can be seen in Chinnery’s drawings.
It is the church’s façade, however, which fascinates, due to the superimposition of the sculptures and reliefs of Chinese execution on an architectural scheme that is redolent of the lessons of the author of treatises and classical architect Jacopo Barozio da Vignola, to which were added metal statues alluding to the main build- ers of the Society of Jesus’ saintly fame. The façade of the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady is what is generally called a retable-façade, which was the fashion and expression of the Catholic world during the classical period.
The use of independent columns with correct superimposition of the canonical orders, beginning with the Ionic in the lower row, is because the church is dedicated to a female saint. Corinthian columns make up the second row while the two upper rows are of a composite order. This repetition can be justified by the fact that both series of columns of this type are much smaller than the others and are all included in the high body in the huge, monumental pediment at the top.
Iconographically, the front is divided into four horizontal sections and nine vertical. The two lower horizontal sections occupy the whole of the façade, while the two upper ones get smaller as they get farther from the ground due to the need to conform with the triangular top section. There are geometric elements and large statues in the two lower sections combining with architectural structures, while the iconography comes to the fore in the upper sections in detriment to the architectural elements. These two ensembles correspond to the Triumphant Church above and the Militant Church below. The complexity of the programme and the number of elements is extraordinary and a great deal of time is required to fully decipher them.
In the part reserved for the Triumphant Church we find the Concession of Grace to the Holy Ghost on the frontispiece; Christ the Redeemer Saviour of the World on the fourth storey; and the Triumph of Our Lady of the Assumption, the Immaculate Mother of God. In the Militant Church part is the glorification of the Society of Jesus on the second storey; and the clear allusion that the college and the church were like ‘Houses of God’ and ‘Fortresses of Faith’. The carving of the sculptures in relief was done by Chinese artists from a scheme that had to be well thought out by a true theologian. The bronze statutes were cast by Manuel Tavares Bocarro, who was in Macau from 1625. They were initially gilt and had their hands and faces painted red.
Due to the style chosen and the strength of the iconographic programme, this is one of the best examples of architecture of the Reformist Church that resulted from the Council of Trent. The marks of art with classical roots are completely superfluous, though they have their aesthetic and symbolic value. It is here, maybe more than in any other monument in the world that Orient and Occident meet in one building.
The government of the Marquis of Pombal ordered the churches and colleges belonging to the Society of Jesus to be handed over to the Macau authorities in 1760. Parts of the residential premises, including various workshops and the extremely precious library, were destroyed in 1788. Several attempts were made during the first years of the 19th century to set up barracks in the remaining spaces of the extinct college. A fire broke out on the night of 26-27 January 1835 that reduced of what still remained of the once-prosperous, monumental church and its annexes to ashes. Quite recent archaeological work has made clear the possibility of setting up a museum in the space (> Museum of the Saint Paul’s Ruins)
