Macao's Church of Saint Paul

Macao's Church of Saint Paul

by Cesar Guillen Nunez

HK University Press, HK$250

Probably the most visited and most photographed tourist sight in Macau, the ruins of St Paul's Collegiate Church remain one of the city's least understood features, at least in the popular imagination.

Generations of credulous tourists have been told by guides - who should know better - that the ruins are the remains of the old cathedral. But the building was never anything of the kind. Macao's Church of Saint Paul: A Glimmer of the Baroque in China, by Cesar Guillen Nunez, a Panama-born art historian, curator and long-time Macau resident, does much to explain the structure's original function and its hidden complexities.

For starters, Macau's Jesuit 16th-century college, of which St Paul's formed an integral component, had surprisingly little to do with the attempted introduction of Roman Catholicism into China during that period - but was connected to the extensive Jesuit missionary presence in Japan. From the late 1540s to 1641, when Japan was closed to Portuguese traders and priests in favour of more secular Dutch merchants, the country experienced an explosion of western religious influence, which is generally described by scholars as 'Japan's Christian Century'. Macau's Jesuit College played a vital part in that process.