[
    {
        "id": 204534,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1963",
        "page_number": 15,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "10\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nLet us first go to the top of Monte Fort and view this historic spot where so many foreigners lived their eastern lives and not a few found eternal rest. From the Fort we can see practically the whole of the peninsula and the city of Macao. To the east, beyond the Guia lighthouse, stretches the South China Sea, studded by the Ladrone Islands of which the two nearest - Taipa and Coloane form part of this overseas Province of Portugal. Between these islands and the peninsula lie the Macao Roads and the Outer Harbour. To the west can be seen the narrow neck of land with its barrier gate which bars access to the large delta island of Heung Shan and to the mainland of China. Separating the main portion of this island from the city of Macao, is the Inner Harbour whose two lines of junks, Communist and Macanese, are separated only by the narrow fairway used by the larger sea-going junks, launches and the Hong Kong ferries. Just below us as we view this busy scene, stands, stately and calm, the façade of all that remains of the Jesuit Church of St. Paul, commenced in the sixteenth century, completed in the seventeenth and destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century,\n\nBehind it, almost at the harbour's edge, is a low wooded hill whose trees shelter the Camoens Grotto and on whose lower slopes nestle the Camoens Gardens and the neighbouring cemetery.\n\nIt is but a short walk from the Fort to the cemetery and gardens, access to both of which is gained from a small grassed and treed square the Praça Luis de Camões. On the extreme right as we enter this square, is a high stucco wall pierced by a most unimpressive gateway over which is mounted a small tablet; on which is carved:\n\nPROTESTANT CHURCH\n\nAND\n\nOLD CEMETERY\n\n(EAST INDIA COMPANY 1814)\n\nThis inscription poses a number of questions, a characteristic which, as you will find out later, it shares with many of the inscriptions in the cemetery itself; in fact it is the attempt to solve these problems that supplies much of the fascination and the interest of this cemetery. What was the British East India\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215406,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 183,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "132\n\nof the façade as part of broader surveys on the church of St. Paul's or the architecture of the Jesuits in China and, regretfully, not much new has been added to this particular question.\n\nIn order to make clearer certain developments related to the façade of St. Paul's, a limited number of churches and altarpieces in Spain and in Portuguese India will be discussed. But because of limitations of time, any detailed references to the ground plans, elevations, and dimensions of St. Paul's or any of these structures or buildings will be left out. It is mainly the façades of buildings as they relate to the main topic that are of greater importance here. Besides these analogies, I will further explore some relevant questions on the development of Jesuit buildings in India first expressed in an article written several years ago.\n\nThe Church of St. Paul's, Macao\n\nWhat once was the Jesuit Church of Madre de Deus, or St. Paul's, is today merely a church front, some 70 feet high, with narrow sections of aisle-walls holding it up at either side at the back. This seventeenth-century ruin is the only remnant of a catastrophic 1835 fire, which destroyed the entire complex of educational and residential buildings of which it was part (Fig. 1).\n\nThe impression that it makes today, when it is mainly admired as a relic of a bygone age, is quite different from that which it made to visitors over three and a half centuries ago. At that time, the church stood in full visible splendour on a hill near the city walls, facing the Portuguese city below and the open sea beyond. Ironically, a fire in November of 1600 had destroyed a previous church, which led to the construction of the church of Madre de Deus, the one that in time became the most splendid Christian temple in a transitional Early Baroque style ever to have been built in China. Seventeenth-century visitors marvelled at what was then the new church of a university college, started two years after the November fire and at the time only recently completed with the addition of a brand new façade.\n\nThis added structure was an amazing showcase of artistic and social co-operation. Artists of East and West had created it. The Portuguese rectors had supported it. The wealthy citizens of Macao had financed it.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215407,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 184,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "133\n\nit, following social precedents with roots in the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages in Europe.\n\nThe testimony of the English merchant, Peter Mundy, today well known to historians of Macao, is a good example of the effect that this novel façade produced. He had actually arrived as one of the English factors in the fleet of Captain John Weddel, which first entered Macao waters on the fifth of July 1637. In fact, Peter Mundy formed part of a party that was allowed by the Portuguese to disembark in Macao on the twenty-eighth of the month, with a missive from Charles I of England to the Captain-General of the city.\n\nOn the very day of landing he and the others went to visit the College of St. Paul's and its church at the invitation of the Jesuit fathers. Mundy waxes lyrical about the splendours of the façade and the church claiming that, 'there is a New Faire Frontispiece to the said Church with a spacious ascent to it by many steppes; the 2 last things mentioned of hewen stone.'5\n\nOne cannot help wondering if Peter Mundy's admiration of the frontispiece was not equally due to the fact that he had before his eyes an impressive retable-façade, something that in all likelihood he has never seen before.\n\nRetable-Façades\n\nBefore continuing, it may be necessary to briefly make clear some basic facts about retable-façades. What are they? When did they acquire this rather peculiar name? As already briefly mentioned a retable is a kind of Iberian wooden altarpiece, one that was often elaborately carved. One could argue that altarpiece-façade is just as accurate a term as the invented phrase retable-façade; but for a number of sensible reasons on which it is not necessary to comment here contemporary art historians have opted for the latter. In certain formal and functional aspects they are not unlike medieval English reredos, although there are important differences.\n\nThe history of what one could call their discovery as types is quite recent. It was mainly during the last century that specialists began noticing groups of unusual church façades in Spain and Latin America",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215417,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 194,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "143\n\nexploit for the decoration of the façades of some of their Indian churches of the last third of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the next. The theme would later be adapted to the more ornate decoration of the façades of the churches of their Casa Professa in Velha Goa and of the Jesuit College in Diu.\n\nMinor Basilica of Bom Jesus and the Diu Collegiate Church\n\nNot only the Bom Jesús, but, as we shall see, the façades of the collegiate churches in Diu and of Madre de Deus in Macao point to a further stylistic development of the architecture of the Society of Jesus in Asia.\n\nIt could be argued that the façade decoration of the three mentioned buildings reveals a transitional phase, one in which a Late Mannerist decorative idiom is elaborated to the utmost. Moreover, in the Church of Madre de Deus in Macao this idiom already heralds the Baroque style.\n\nIn India even before Jules Simão's appointment as chief of the cathedral works the Jesuits had begun work on what was to be their finest building project in India. This was their Casa Professa, or Profess House, begun in 1583-85, whose cloisters were also designed by Simão (Figs. 9,10).\n\nToday the church of the Profess House, originally dedicated to the Child Jesus, is better known as the Minor Basilica of Bom Jesus. It was started on the 24 November 1594 to the plans of G.B. Cairatti, an Italian architect from Milan, and completed about twelve years later. Perhaps its chief attraction today is the so-called incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier and its magnificent 1690s funerary monument by Giovanbattista Foggini.17\n\nThe design of the front of the Bom Jesús, if not of its ground plan, indicates that the architect followed the general lines of the façade of St. Paul as reconstructed by M. Chicó (Fig. 9). There is the same division into three storeys and three bays, plus attic and pediment joined to the storeys below by gracefully curved brackets. Not only the façade but the whole building is crowned by numerous Herreresque spheres on bases placed as accents to the line of rising unifying pilasters. The Arch",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215419,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 196,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "145\n\nThe Façade of São Paulo, Macao\n\nThese novel trends in Jesuit architecture in India occurring at about the turn of the century may have reached their apogee in the church of their new college in Macao, opened to the public on Christmas day, 1603 (Figs. 1, 13).\n\nHowever, amongst other important differences with churches in India, here there is no Arch of Triumph as such; there is not even an entrance arch, but straightforward lintel-and-post doorways. Could the reason for its absence be that Portugal never did conquer Macao? This is an attractive conjecture, although a more likely explanation is that the architect or designer of the façade of St. Paul's was simply following St. Charles Borromeo's recommendations to architects concerning the façades of ecclesiastical buildings. In his influential Instructions of 1572, Charles Borromeo recommends the use of lintel and post for entrances of Christian churches instead of the arch, which he considered a pagan structure18. Be that as it may, the idea that the façade of Madre de Deus represents a symbolic arch of triumph of sorts, although one not based directly on an Arch of Triumph but on some other structure, should not be discarded altogether.\n\nApparently, seventeenth-century visitors, many of whom had seen the churches of the Jesuits in Goa, did not find the lack of arches too unusual. What they do imply in their chronicles is that this façade was something particularly surprising within the architecture of the Society of Jesus, not only in Asia but elsewhere. The way they reacted not only to the magnificent interior of the church but also to its façade is significant. In the case of the latter, were they looking at something not merely visually striking but also quite novel? As already surmised at the start of this paper, were they in fact looking at the first retable-façade in China?\n\nThis is not as improbable as it may seem. Today, once certain historical and art-historical associations are made, the surviving façade of the church recalls the outburst of altarpiece construction that took place in the Iberian Peninsula and its overseas colonies from the last decades of the sixteenth century.\n\nUntil the Portuguese revolt of 1640 and the restoration of the House",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215420,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 197,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "146\n\nof Bragança, Philip IV of Spain ruled Portugal as Philip III during the construction of the façade. Before him two other Philips had reigned over Spain and Portugal, beginning with Philip II, crowned Philip I of Portugal in 1580. Throughout most of this highly controversial historical period very large altarpieces in a classical style were being built in Spain and Portugal. The prime instance of late sixteenth-century classical altarpieces of huge dimensions is the massive main retable of the church of the Escorial.\n\nIt is rather frustrating that no known contemporary source actually establishes any sort of comparison between the frontispiece of St. Paul and these retables. Even in our days specialists have ignored the connection. The reason may be that the façade of St. Paul does not conform to known examples of retable-façades. Even in the largest surviving examples the actual retable configuration is contained within the elevation by various means, such as the large buttresses found in Santa Maria A Grande in Pontevedra. They indicate to the viewer that this is a simulated stone altarpiece cleverly applied to the front of the building for his or her admiration and astonishment. At St. Paul's there is no containment, no similar signalling to the beholder that its designer intended a metaphorical retable. Here the altarpiece simile seems to extend to the whole of the church's front. This fact would certainly make this façade unique, but would not necessarily exclude it from classification as a retable-façade.\n\nGiven the lack of primary sources that would justify such a classification one must largely rely on the visual evidence. The following section shows how an analysis of the façade's structure and of its iconography can lead to reasonable conclusions supporting this hypothesis.\n\nArtists and Dates of Construction\n\nWho the architect and artists of the surviving frontispiece were and when they built it is a question that has eluded scholars due to a lack of contemporary sources. These sources plainly state that the architect of the church was the Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola and one can surmise that he drafted the design of the elevation, but no one really knows. Spinola died a martyr's death in 1622, before the construction of the façade.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215429,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 206,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "155\n\nimpressions and variations of this image circulated at the time in Europe; 26 the Jesuit fathers had actually been instrumental in introducing similar prints to the East. Apart from prints, Charles Boxer, amongst others, has remarked how the Portuguese had carried retablos with them to Japan.27 It therefore seems equally plausible that related altarpieces might have been present in the minds of the artists of the façade.\n\nBesides the mentioned attributes, the unknown programmer of the decoration also incorporated themes from St John's Book of Revelation 12.1 and 12.3 (John 12.2 was by now conveniently glossed over in artistic representations of the theme), as well as from other sources.\n\nSuch a sophisticated and theological knowledge of Marian themes reveals the mind of a programmer ingenious enough to merit a few words. Although the identity of its author is unknown, Carlo Spinola, the architect of Madre de Deus and the artist Giovanni Nicolao, director of the art school in Japan, come immediately to mind. But I think one should also consider Dom Diogo Correa Valente as another possible candidate for authorship, mainly on account of the contents of his library in the College of St. Paul.28\n\nThe Jesuit Diogo Valente was the learned but controversial Bishop of Japan resident at the College of São Paulo from 1619 to 1624, years when the façade was probably being redesigned and its construction begun. In 1624 Dom Diogo had to leave for Goa in a hurry under the shadow of the violent quarrels that agitated Macao because members of his own order had apparently partisanly elected him as Bishop of the city. But he returned again as Bishop in 1630 and so remained until his death three years later. When he was buried in the chancel of the church of Madre de Deus the decoration of the frontispiece must have been in progress. However, this is a question that can only be settled by future research.\n\nSymbolic Meaning\n\nThe interpretation of symbols relating to Mary (and the other images) is a fascinating but complex subject that cannot be discussed in detail here. However, it is worth considering some of those adorning the façade to get a sense of their poetic and mystical quality.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215432,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 209,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "158\n\nThe prolific use of symbols for the decoration of the façade and the mystical poetry thus created is typical of the way images were used in the decoration of carved wooden retables. It is a topic that could be elaborated at great length, although unfortunately it is not possible here.\n\nConclusion\n\nIn this talk I have endeavoured to elucidate my main contention concerning the façade of St. Paul's by pointing out the way certain of its principal features relate to retables, such as the uniquely decorative nature of its classical supports and the strongly Eucharistic connotations of its decoration.\n\nThis fact connects it to Spanish retable-façades, a kind of structure not typically Portuguese but also appearing in Portuguese architecture at this time. Moreover, two significant artistic developments in Jesuit architecture in Portuguese India could be said to prefigure the originality of the façade of St. Paul's. Firstly, there is some evidence of incipient retable-façades decorating a few of the churches of the Society of Jesus in India in which the Arch of Triumph is used as principal decorative motif. Although not possible here, Secondly, at the turn of the century the Jesuits in India were willing to admit the use of a more elaborate artistic idiom for the façades of their churches, in contrast to the plain styles preferred in the Iberian Peninsula during the latter half of the sixteenth century.\n\nHopefully my extended inquiry has provided convincing answers to the intriguing similarities I believe exist between the unusual features seen in the façade of St. Paul's and those more characteristic of a retable-façade, even if the façade discussed remains an elusive artistic work sui generis.\n\nNOTES\n\nGuillén-Nuñez, César, “The Relationship of the Façade of the Jesuit Collegiate Church of Madre de Deus, Macao, to Retable-Façades”, M.Phil. Thesis, University College London, 1997. Guillén-Nuñez, C., Macau (Images of Asia), Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1984, pp. 52-3.\n\n2 Vid. Rafael Moreira, “As Formas Artísticas”, in História dos Portugueses no",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215434,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 211,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "160\n\nM. Hugo-Brunt, \"An Architectural Survey of the Jesuit Seminary Church of St. Paul's, Macao\", Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 1, No.2, July 1954, University of Hong Kong, pp.1-21. J.B. Bury, \"A Jesuit Façade in China\", The Architectural Review, VI. CXXIV, No. 743, London, Dec. 1958, pp. 412-3.\n\n\"Macao's St. Paul”, in Actas do III Colóquio Internacional de Estudos Luso-Brasileiros, II, Lisbon, 1960, pp. 30-6. A version of the latter, first delivered in 1957, is found in J.B. Bury, \"A Igreja de São Paulo”, Arquitectura e Arte no Brasil Colonial, São Paulo, 1991, pp. 154-61. With few exceptions Chinese gazetteers of the Ming and Ching Dynasties seem to have ignored the façade altogether.\n\n3 Guillen-Núñez, Cesar, \"Some observations on the architecture of the Jesuits in the Orient\", in St. Paul's Ruins. A Monument towards the Future, (bilingual Portuguese-English exh. catalogue, directed by F.A. Baptista Pereira), Lisbon-Macau, September-December, 1994, pp.49-53. Unfortunately, in this catalogue part of the original English text is corrupted by numerous typographical errors. There is however an excellent Portuguese translation, although a few lines of the original have been misinterpreted.\n\n+ For the dimensions of St. Paul's façade vid. Hugo-Brunt, op. cit., p. 9. plates 2-10, and plate 13.\n\n5 The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667, Hakluyt Soc., London, 1919, III, Part I, pp. 162-3.\n\n6\n\nReynaldo dos Santos, Historia da Arte em Portugal, III, pp. 34-6. R.C. Smith, The Art of Portugal, p. 86.\n\nThe literature on Spanish and Portuguese retable-façades is extensive but often only found piecemeal in more general works on Spanish and Portuguese architecture. Two pioneering researchers were B. Bevan, History of Spanish Architecture, London, 1938, p. 135; and G. Kubler, in Kubler and Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and their American Dominions, 1500-1800, Penguin Books, 1959, p. 1. It should be noted that in the latter San Gregorio's façade is wrongly described as that of the chapel, rather than the College of San Gregorio.\n\nThe following is a selected sample of other important writing on these structures. A. Rodriguez G. de Ceballos, La Iglesia y el Convento de San Esteban de Salamanca, Salamanca, 1987. F.Checa, Pintura y Escultura del Renacimiento",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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