The Project of Recovery and Musealization of the St. Paul Ruins (Macao)
Manuel Vicente*
This report originates in a multidisciplinary project (Which includes racludes architects, archaeologists, engineers and an art historian) which aims at treating and preserving the Ruins of St. Paul, in Macao. This monumental ensemble constitutes the remainings of the once wealthy College of God’s Mother, which belonged to the Company of Jesus and was then the starting point of Missionaries headed towards the Far East. The ruins we referred to are the last remainings of this religious foundation and consist of the remarkable facade of the College Church (built in devotion to the Assumption of the Virgin) the monumental stairway in front of the church and the surroundings, which were formerly occupied by both church and college (burnt down in 1835)and are now in part gardens. The treatment and recovery involved not only the cleaning of the facade - a true symbol of both the city of Macao and the Portuguese presente in the Far East - but also archaeological excavations within the area of the former temple,aiming at the musealization of the whole.
Scientific bibliography on the so called St. Paul Ruins amounts already to quite a few hundreds of pages, which have been written in the last four or five decades by the most prominent Macao historians, among others, who tried to determine the date and several phases of the construction of the College of God’s Mother in Macao (better known as St. Paul’s College). They have also tried to ascertain the history of the institution and its relationship with the surrounding community, with Far East trade and Missionary institutions in both China and Japan.
For instante, the sequente of wooden and mud-walled Jesuitic churches that were built in Mao between 1565 and 1603 seems nowadays sufficiently clarified: first they were erected next to St. Anthony and then in the place of the present ruins. However, the overlay of the buildings was not clear enough, and neither was its eventual simultaneity in different places, nor there was enough rigorous documentation on the authorship of the burnt Church of the Assumption of the Virgin. There had been published several descriptions of the Church’s inside and of the College itself, but the opportunity had not yet come to conciliate the data included in those descriptions (especially those in the Apparatos by Father Montanha, which, in its turn, had absorbed the data of the Carta Annua of 1603 by Father Fenão Guerreiro) with the achaeological remainings or even with iconographic elements and thus solved the problems which might eventually arise.
Known were also the obituaries concerning both religious and laymen buried in the church and there were even details on the location of their tombs (very helpful in the task of conjectural reconstitution of the temple); still, these indications had not been confronted with their archaeological evidence nor with the numerous informative details that archaeology can put at our service.
These archaeological excavations, performed by our team, show a square at foundation levei that may be the foundations of one of the former churches built in the same place; nevertheless, we are led to believe instead that they constitute part of the group of walls Father Montanha refers to, and that were meant to sustain or support the platform on which the College rested. These walls were executed in the beginnings of the 1590’s and may in any case have served as foundation to the successive buildings that have been erected in the same place. There is still left to us to discover whether they have been bulit as a mete support to the walls of the new church, which was built between 1602 and 1603 and sponsored by generous donations made by Macao c itizens: 3120 ‘pardaus de reales’.
In 1603 the Holy Sacrament was solemny moved in procession from the old Church (actually theschool room that had been serving provisionally as church) to the new church, whose plainimetry and volumetric characteristics we will analyse further ahead.
The granite church facade would only be concluded a few decades later, approximately between 1637 and 1840, according to reports made by several foreign visitors (like for instance the Englishman Peter Mundy). On January 26th 1835 the Church and the College were destroyed by an intense fire, which spared only the facade and some of the walls of the Church and College (on whose kitchens the fire had started). Some drawings by Georges Chinnery (published by several authors, among which J. M. Braga and Robin Hutcheon and others located by our team at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) show that the walls of the church main chapel and the sacristy as well as the Church’s own ones were still standing. However, when the decision was taken to turn the ruins into a provisionally cemetery, a morgue was temporarily held at the Church Main Chapel as the church walls were cut so that graves could be installed, The works were concluded in 1837; however, they were posteri-ously undone after the building of the St. Michael cemetery, to which the graves were transferred. In spite of several reconstruction projects, announced since 1901, the whole had been kept practically unchanged until the beginning of our own activity, having been submitted to minor works only that lead to the maintenance of both surroundings and the interior square of the Church.
The Author of the Church plans: Father Cario Spinola
The Jesuitic Father Cario Spinola is traditionally accepted to be the author of the church which was built between 1602 and 1603, However, since no author has published any docu-ment that could prove such authorship, it is still a mystery. ‘Although Father Spinola was a great Jesuit anda great Missionary, there is no proof that he has anything to cio with the plans of St. Paul’s Church or its facade’ (The Church of St, Paul in Macao, sep de Studia, 1979, p. 20). It is indeed strange that no historian could have been able to confirm the traditional at-tribution of authorship that we can find in Father Spinola’s own biography (1564-1622), written by the also Jesuit Fabio Ambroslo Spinola (a fellow countryman and relative). The title of the biography is as follows: Vita dei P. Cario Spinola della Compagnia Giesu morto per la Santa Fede. We have found this first edition in the Vatican Library and selected the passage, which, six years only after the death of Spinola attributes undoubtedly to him the authorship of the new church of the Company of Jesus in Macao.
The passage, we referred to follows so closely the description of the fire and damages it had caused (corresponding exactly to the description done by father Guerreiro) that we are left with no doubts as to the correctness of the attribution done in it. The author not only proves to be well acquainted with documentation sent to him by other Jesuits but he also shows that he has thoroughly looked for information on the life of Father Spinola. In fact his biography follows very closely each fundamental step of Spinola’s passionate existence, from his birth in Genon (1584) to his excruciating martyrdom in Nagasaki’s Holy Hill (10th September 1822) glancing over the awakening of his devotion, his studies, his acceptance of the holy vows and bis journeys to the Far East (the first took him to the Brazil and the Antillas; the second to the Japan, after staying in Macao for a short while as procurator of the Province of Japan) and over bis missionary effort.
(Cario Spinola’s biography was published on several occasions in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and translated into Latin and French, and, since the 1638 Rome edition, it has eventually been added with the beatl effigi anda carceris delineatle done by Spinola himself and brought from Japan to Genoa by Father Sebastião Vieira, procurator of that province in Macao.) We have consulted the 1671 edition in the National Library in Paris, with some expectations as lar as the effigy of Spinola was concem, but the figure proved once again to be more of a devotional image than an actual portrait. However, the image is not lar from what we believe to be the portrait of Father Spinola as is sculptured in the facade of St. Paul ruins. On the other hand, the drawing of the Omura prison has confirmed Spinola’s reputation as a ‘drawer’ which is another argument in favour of the documented attribution we here propose.
The subsisting facade reproduces Italian-like models of the late 16th century. St Charles Borromeus, in Antwerp; Good Jesus of the Velha Goa, St. Paul of Diu or the Evora Carthusian. This shows a good knowledge of the composition schemes of the second mannerism, with a strong accent on pictoriality. It should be mentioned that the facade is very clearly shaped in the way of an altar-piece, as far as the organization of both horizontal and vertical rows is concerned, and also due to the iconographic density of the ornamentation.
This iconographic program covers almost all the spaces that were left empty by the architectonical structure (in the four upper rows) and reveals a great knowledge of contemporary devotional engravings or even of emblematic literature that, from the late 15th cantury onwards, began to serve as help to image makers in their compositions. To summarize, the combination of an architectural/altar-piece-like structure of the facade (which reveals a strong, sophisti-cated erudition) with an iconographic program with intentions of cathecism (where we can find both images of catholic tradition and oriental symbology melted together) seems to prove that St. Paul Church originates from an initial proposition of Spinola that has been progressively enriched (although not betrayed) by immedists posterity, i.e., by the Portuguese, Italian or Oriental Jesuits that have led the works until their proper conclusion.
However, it is the facade itself that gives us the last and more decisive argument in favour of our own hypothesis: on the west corner of the facade, as the third horizontal row begins, we find the effigy of a Jesuitic priest sculptured in stone, between two gargoyles and precisely in the sequence of the foundation tombstone. It is framed by an edicola similar in every detail to the ones that frame other symbols of the same row.
This representation can only refer to the effigy of Spinola, the Church architect, here remembered and paid tribute to by his fellowmen Jesuits after his tragic martyrdom in Japan in 1822. This is not an isolated occurrence: Since the beginning of the 16th century we can find buildings in Italy and Portugal that bear the effigy of their master-architects - as a kind of signature. In this case, the ‘signature’ was placed in the church after the death of the architect, surrounded by an aura of holyness and therefore located in the facade area that corresponded to divine glory, in the Christian tradition, martrys were blessed with eternal forgiveness, since they had sacrificed their lives defending the Faith. The squalid appearance of the figure, the beard and the Jesuitic clothing (which can also be found in the beatl effigies we have already referred to) are obvious references to the imprisonment and the hunger to which Father Spinola and his companions were submitted shortly before bis execution by the fire on Nagasaky Hill -which is the last image that is left from the Martyr, in bis turn a life example worthy of representation among the panoply of signs of the Triumphant Church that constitute the symbolic organization of the facade. Since the accomplishment of the facade cannot be very accurately determined in chronological terms (it is nevertheless certain that it dates from after the death of Spinola) it is not very difficult to believe that this sculptured image might have been included in a lateral position (headed westwards) as a signature, a posthumous homage to a companion that had projected and planned the temple but had not been able to see it finished.
Planimatric characterization of the Church and the College
One of the main problems we were confronted with lay in the conjectural reconstitution of the Church and the College of God’s Mother, since this line of research had never been explored by historiography before, if we exclude the several very detailed descriptions of the buildings. The answer may be that recovery, revaluation and musealization of the place had not come yet into question. All that had been done consisted of very brief information on dimensious and general appearance of the interior space: three naves, three chapels and two altars. There was no mention to the fact that this was a solution strange to the Jesuitic national tradition, composed of a single nave with intercommunicating side-chapels, inscribed transept and high-chapel of low depth. Based on the research we have carried out, we have tried to put forward a conjectural reconstitution of the Church that agrees with available written documentation, with ancient iconography and cartography relating to the building and with archaeological evidence that has been brought to tight until this moment.
The Carta Annua (1603) and the Apparatos by Father Montanha are the essential sources that help in clarifying the planimetry adopted by the church ‘drawer’. In them we find specifications of the three naves, the dimensions of the body of the church and high-chapel and descriptions of the college itself. Some problems have arisen after the confrontation of these data with archaeological evidence, for instance, the dimensions attributed to the width of the naves and the high-chapel are coincident with the archaeological remainings of the building (which allowed us to identity the used span as being 23 cm long - the so called Goa Span, longer than the geometric span or the common span - about 22 cm long) but they diverge from the naves length if we measure it from the facade. If it is measured from the arch of triumph, as it is more natural, we would be given the beginning of the high-choir, which, according to documentation, should be much deeper, corresponding at least to one of the nave’s division. The space in the high-choir cuts the usual height of the naves and opens towards them with brick arches, whose remainings have been brought out in the open; we can therefore understand that in all the church descriptions (bearing in mind the considerable lenght of the naves) there are references to four columns on each side, defining thus four divisions (anda fifth one hidden by the high-choir), to which it had to be added the space of the transept. From this latter, apart from the triumph arch (which, along with the side chapels ‘were the first ever to be bulir in China’) come forward the arches of two side altars, in front of the side naves (the one of the Holy Ghost and the one of St Michael, with its thrones of the relics) and defining the transept braces, the side chapels devoted to Jesus and to the 11 Thousand Virgins.
We have, thus, a latin cross plan, with a very deep high-chapel - a perfect basilical scheme, and therefore of high prestige within the Christian tradition. Although it is strange to Portuguese Jesuitic tradition, the latin cross plan with three naves and protuberant transept has been used by the Company of Jesus in several other countries. In the Portuguese colonies of the 16th century we have examples of latin cross plans, even though they have only one nave and side altars (Bom Jesus de Velha Goa and the Church of the Haly Ghost Mergao).
There have been some doubts as to the execution of the house of Goa in terms of planimatry. In the plans of its ground floor (now in the National Library of Paris) we can read the following: “lugar para la yglesia la qual hasta ahora no estamos/determinados se ha de ser de una sola nave o de tres naves/mas para todo ha lugar’ (project received in Rome, in 1588). As we have seen, the first solution was chosen, although it bears a protuberant transept. The choices and solutions we have defined at the Church of the College of God’s Mother find their equivalence in Jesuitic architecture exemplified in several countries in Europe and the rest of the world.
Besides having recently confirmed through archaeological research the depth of the side chapels - which formed the protuberant transept - we have enough evidence to confirm our hypothesis both in written and visual documentation on the original planimetry of the whole. Both the Carta Annua and Montanha’s report (a visible copy of the first) allude to the fact that the ceiling in the high-chapel and in the two chapels at the sides are covered with tine woods from Japan, which are here called foniquim which already indicates a space deep enough to be covered by a wooden ceiling. Thus, since between these chapels and the high-chapel there are side altars (visible in the unpublished drawings by Chinnery we have looked into in London), their location as a kind of transept arms was inevitable even before their archaeological confirmation. On the other hand, an early 19th century painting in the Hong-Kong Museum shows clearly the side protuberance of the chapels, also confirmed by 17th century cartography, more accurate than those of posterior rimes.
Next to Jesus Chapel - and opening towards the side nave - was founded in 1692 a Chapel, devoted to St Francis Xavier, whose remainings were recently brought in the open. In the conjectural reconstitution, in order to measure the depth of the side chapels, we have adopted the measure we have found on the ground, which is not very different from the standard measure defined for the nave divisions (a definition based on archaeological investigation): 32 spans. We have calculated the volumetry of the Church from the dimensions indicated in the written documents, in the marks of the roof laying in the interior part of the facade and in Chinnery’s drawings w.e referred to. This, of course, means that, contrarily to what is pretended by come cartographic representations of the late 18th century (of local origin) the body of the Church was considerably smaller than the facade, which is justified in the following terms: “the walls” measure in height about fifty spans, because of the typhoons they were not buil t higher, they are mud-walls’. (Father Montanha).
It is still left to say that St. Paul’s lesson, given its monumentality and its importance within Macao’s urban context, has influenced deeply the consciousness of the town, causing several reproductions to appear: St. Domingos facade, St. Francis stairway (now non-existent) and the planimetry of St. Augustin and St. Domingos. By visiting these two churches we can form an idea of what the disappeared interior of St. Paul’s would Iook like, despite the obvious differences in materiais, dimensions and even in solutions adopted to solve particular problems that have arisen while articulating the different elements.
The composition of the facade
We have had occasion to underline the fact that the facade, more than a sermon - in fact, this is not at all the type of discoursive structure it evokes - is a true retable in stone. Com-posed of four horizontal and nine veritical rows. As a retabular ‘machine’ it does not only organize its significant elements according to the discoursive logic of a painted or sculptured retable, but it also possesses the thickness and the characteristic ‘secret passages’ in two of its niches, apart from the statues that occupy them. As it assumes the role of scenery/facade, monumentalizing the sacro-monte (the great altar on which the stairway ends) and subalternizing the mole of the College, this construction has equally assured very important functional organizations such as the terrace and the bell-tower, and the high-choir (which exceeds to the three upper balconies corresponding to the three doors). As retable/scenary, the facade ful-filled its ritual functions in the numerous liturgies that look place in the Church square, bringing to the outside the celebration of the divine message, which was usually performed in the most holy sanctuary in the interior of the temple: the high-altar.
The horizontal rows form volumetric groups of two: the two lower ones occupy ali the width of the facade, drawing a large rectangle; the two upper ones, on the contrary, tend towards a tringular shape, reinforced by the crowning front and melting progressively with the sky (through the pinnacles and the curved lines of the side pediments). In terms of sculptoric density, the two sectors are equally distinct: in the two lower rows there is a predominance of geometric elements andof statues, with a strong presence of architectonic structures (columns, niches and several types of framings); in the upper rows the iconographic density increases, neglecting the architectonical elements which almost disappear when they are not framed by monumental sculpture (like the representation of the immaculate Virgin, breaking twice through the comice).
The structure of these two clearly different sectors of the facade seems to correspond to two different leveis of accomplishment of the divine work: the upper sector depicts the Triumphant Church in Heaven; the lower sector represents the Church on Earth with its Saints, and this temple, seen as the Fortress of Faith. This evolution explains the progressive metting with the air and with the sky illustrated by the upper sector (triangular) of the facade, which contrasts with the apparent solidity of the quadrangular sector.
From the reading of the tive floors inthe Sacred hierarchy, we can find, in the good old scholastic way:
TRlUMPHANT CHURCH
Pediment: Gift of Grace by the Holy Chost
4th row: Christ Saviour of the World
3nd row: Triumph of the Virgin of the Assumption, Mother of God, immaculate, Mediator between God and Men
CHURCH ON EARTH
2nd row: Glorification of the Company of Jesus
1st row: This College/This Church as Houses of God-Fortresses of Faith
Stylistic characterization: Meeting point of Cultures
This facade must be considered one of the master-pieces of late Mannerism, for its formal organization (‘free’ succession of the classic orders in height, fragilization of the sides which converge into a vertical central axis) and for its iconographic program, of clear counter-reformation influence. There is little here that may announce the Barroque: the columns do not support anything, their presence serves as ornaments and symbols in an architecture that plays with ‘empty’ and ‘full’ in a more pictorial and even sculptural logic. Only in the densification of ornament can we detect a foreboding of the ‘horror vacui’. The perfect division between the elements of composition and its strong link to painting (and even stronger with engraving) associate this monument with the aesthetics of late Mannerism.
However, we can find in its execution elements of cultural miscigenation, which were deliberately searched by the Jesuits. This miscigenation happens both on a plastic and a symbolic level: the hydra body is a Chinese dragon; the gargoyles are Chinese lions that symbolize strength and courage (that is how we can understand the framing of the effigy of Cario Spinola), the monumental sculpture in stone that represents the human figure reveals the oriental traces of models and artists: the adoption of oriental flora in the translation of the symbology of philomorphic elements (the China Rose, for instance, the chrysanthemums or lychees).
On the contrary, the bronze statues, melted almost certainly in Bocarro’s workshops (although the melting marks mentioned by some sources could not be found) follow very closely the European Statuary of the time within the canons that had been established by the Jesuits. There are very similar examples in Portugal or in Brazil, not in bronze, but mostly in wood, ordered from Lisbon or existing in the College, which may have served as models for the melt-ed statues, which was possible due to the very advanced technique of Bocarro’s workshop.
* Femando António Baptista Pereira, J.L. Carrilho da Graça, M. Graça Dias, J.D. Santa Rita and A. Cavaleiro Paixão are co-authors.
