Macao and the Jesuits : a reading through the prism of history

Abstract

Matteo Ricci used to offer “prisms” to his Chinese friends, literati and officials, who marvelled at the beautiful colours that were hidden in the pure light. Similarly, this paper would like to use history to get a closer look at the development of Macao: from a fishing village that it was to a city that has been of world stage importance. The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuits are known in the Catholic Church, has been from its early beginnings in the 1540s quite influential in this regard. It was due first to the establishment of caritative and social service institutions like the Casa de Misericordia, still extant, and hospitals. But the College of Saint Paul, operative in the city for 168 years (1594-1762) until the suppression of the Society in Macao (effective world-wide in 1773) extended its influence beyond the city walls inside China and farther afield. During these years, 665 young Jesuits completed their formation in the College. Their majority was not Portuguese but coming from sixteen or so different European and East Asian countries. After the suppression of the Jesuits, the college lost its academic and intercultural vocation. The essentials of this historical phase will first be narrated and then the light will shift into some less glorious colours: inquisitive questions will have to be asked. For instance, how the warrantor, so to say, of the Portuguese ‘Padroado’ of the Christian Missions, the Marquis of Pombal, Minister of Portugal, has so swiftly destroyed what the ‘Padroado’ had helped to foster for 268 years (since the Tordesillas Treaty in 1494)? Reflections will finally be proposed on the risks involved in too closely mixing inter-cultural values with the struggle for political influence and economic affluence. On the stage of history, the Jesuits and Macao must have learned some lessons.