[
    {
        "id": 209967,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 226,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "204\n\nA RELIC OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER\n\nP. BRUCE\n\nIn a small cool church in Macau, separated by a few hundred yards of muddy water from China, rests a unique relic of St Francis Xavier.*\n\nAlmost 20 years ago 100,000 people in 15 days filed past the small piece of bone housed in an ornate silver monstrance when it was taken to America from its usual resting place in Macau. Now the relic is back in a tiny church on Coloane Island. Ten years ago the building was in a run-down condition, having been used as a chapel for soldiers from Mozambique serving in the Portuguese Army. Then Father Mario C. Acquistapace arrived on the scene. A sprightly figure now probably in his seventies, he had the church restored. Today its exterior is washed in pale yellow with windows and woodwork picked out in light blue. He has an outgoing personality that runs to a hug when he finds a visitor is a Christian.\n\nMacau, the first permanent Western settlement on the coast of China, across the silt-laden waters of the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong, despite wars, upheavals and revolutions, remains curiously Mediterranean. The Portuguese built their first houses there in 1557, having camped briefly at Liampo and Sanchuang (St John's) Islands.\n\nFrancisco de Xavier, called by Pope Urban VIII the \"apostle of the Indies\", was born into a noble and wealthy family and in 1529 he made the acquaintance of St Ignatius Loyola who was then studying at Paris. Impressed by his teachings, Xavier became one of the original seven men to take the first vows of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, in 1534.\n\nWhen John III, King of Portugal, asked the Pope to send a mission to his Indian possessions, two Jesuits were selected, one of whom was Xavier. He set sail in 1541 and after a voyage of more than a year arrived in Goa, India, where he carried out missionary work. From there he journeyed to Ceylon, or Sri Lanka...\n\n* See plates 12-14.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209968,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 227,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "205\n\nLanka, and then to Malacca where he converted a Japanese resident. The two set out to convert Japan and they landed at Kagoshima in 1549. Such was their success that 400,000 converts are said to have been made.\n\nWhen he understood that the Japanese had long considered China the source of wisdom and knowledge, Xavier made up his mind to bring the Christian message to that vast country. After failing to persuade the Governor General of Goa to send an embassy to China so that he might accompany it and thus evade the laws against foreigners entering the Imperial Empire, the missionary decided to proceed privately.\n\nHe joined a group of merchants and in 1552 reached the small Portuguese settlement on Sanchuang Island, south of what was later to become Macau. However, he was stricken with fever and the merchants, fearing official reprisals, refused to take him to Canton. Undaunted, Xavier intended to carry on by junk; but his fever worsened and, in a miserable hut on the shore, on December 3, 1552, he died.\n\nA colleague recorded:\n\n\"I went at once to the ship to obtain vestments and all else necessary for the burial ... some of those on the ship returned with me and we made a wooden coffin in which we placed the body clothed in priestly vestments. It was very cold; so most of them stayed aboard, and there were only four of us at the burial, a Portuguese, two slaves and a Chinese.\"\n\nToday relics of the saint can be seen in three places. His body lies in an ornate shrine in Goa and it is exhibited to pilgrims at intervals of several years. The saint's right arm up to the elbow was removed in 1614 and was sent to Rome where it has been venerated in the Jesuit Church of Gesu for more than 300 years.\n\nThe sole remaining relic is the fragment of bone in the tiny Macau church.\n\nIn 1619 three bones from the elbow to the shoulder of the right arm were extracted at Goa. One was sent to Cochin, now Southern Vietnam, another went to Malacca and the third went to Macau. By this time the Portuguese empire was faltering and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    }
]