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The study of Catholic churches in Macau is of significant importance for both architectural heritage conservation and the transmission of cultural values. As religious structures, these churches serve as tangible representations of religious ideology and spiritual essence, thereby embodying the core principles of cultural expression. This paper aims to critically examine the Catholic churches of Macau, exploring their intrinsic values through an architectural research framework that emphasizes three key morphological elements: spatial characteristics, stylistic features, and structural composition. By contextualizing the historical background and architectural attributes, this study sheds light on the multifaceted significance of Catholic church construction in modern Macau, while offering a comprehensive analysis of the intersection, fusion, and coexistence of Eastern and Western cultural influences in this unique locale. Through this investigation, the paper uncovers a range of compelling cultural phenomena, providing insights that may serve as valuable reference points for future practices in architectural heritage conservation in Macau.

This is a biography of Cardinal John Tong of Hong Kong, which charts his experiences through the Second World War, his time as a seminarian in Macau, and his studies in Rome during the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which represented a pivotal moment in modern Catholic Church history

Scholarly analyses of the Misericórdias first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, but it was Charles Boxer who first examined them on a par with the other institutions of local power that he judged to be fundamental in the Portuguese Empire, the Câmaras (municipal councils). Boxer considered both institutions to be the keys for understanding the local dynamics of power and government. As mentioned in the introduction to the present volume, he drew primarily on printed sources to present a comparative overview of local institutions in four cities of the Portuguese empire: Macau, Goa, Bahia, and Luanda. ough his analysis centered on the role played by the Câmaras in imperial administration, Boxer considered the Misericórdias as their twin.1 More recently, in the 1990s, scholars have analyzed the Misericórdias at the level of the Portuguese empire. ese examinations stressed the differences among the confraternities found across the empire, while recognizing their common religious and administrative principles.2 As should be expected, local conditions provide much of the explanation for this diversity. Important factors included the ethnic makeup of the population, the ways in which the Portuguese related to the indigenous or imported populations, and the organization of the local economy. Significantly, however, a given area’s relationship with the metropolis affected the different procedures and social habits of its local Misericórdia. And as the essay by J.S.A. Elisonas in this volume reveals, this Portuguese model of charity was not limited by the bounds of empire and left its mark on forms of confraternal piety in cities such as Nagasaki and Kyoto.

The levels of civic engagement in terms of social services and civic activism in the Catholic churches of Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei, and Shanghai are very different. While the former three churches have a higher level of social services, Shanghai does not. Hong Kong has a higher level of civic activism than the other three dioceses. This paper explains the similarities and differences among these cities by using an analytical model of political, cultural, and individual opportunity structures. Our findings and analysis are derived from a collaborative research project on the Catholic Church’s civic engagement in the four cities using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In a time of rapid political, economic, and social transformation in China, religion is beginning to play an increasingly important role. Our study sheds light on what roles Catholicism or other religions might play in this process, and it has important implications for church-state relations in greater China.

For three centuries, the former Portuguese colony of Macau served as the gateway into mainland China and the locale for the development of an Asian Catholic culture that encompassed distinctive musical practices and styles. Macau and Catholic Music Across the Sino-Western Divide draws extensively upon historical documents in Chinese and Portuguese for a polylingual approach to Catholic sacred music. Jen-yen Chen follows this music from the sixteenth century through the twentieth by reading literary accounts of sound, primary source documents, and musical notation to examine the impacts of linguistic, political, and cultural divides and the ways sounds have traveled across these divides. Chen covers Chinese responses to Western sounds in Macau and southern China, illuminating the strategies for the use of sounds and musicking adopted by Jesuit missionaries; and the complexities of identity formation negotiated by Macau Catholics who confront exceptionalist historical discourses of Chinese or Portuguese “greatness.” Drawing from sound studies and musicological methods, Chen argues that Chinese descriptions of Catholic sounds in Macau, including the ringing of church bells, the playing of the organ, and choral singing, illuminate spatial, sonic, and ideological mobilities that reconfigure Chinese and European identities. Macau and Catholic Music Across the Sino-Western Divide also extends to contemporary times to explore how present day members of Macau’s Catholic community position themselves in relation to the historical narratives often told about their city, cultivating a rich individuality of identity that refuses conformity to fixed notions of Asianness or Westernness.

This is a late sixteenth- to early eighteenth-century Portuguese colonial administrative miscellany, comprising a composite dossier of diplomatic correspondence, military reports, ecclesiastical appointments, fiscal records, judicial proceedings, and ceremonial accounts originating primarily from Lisbon, Goa, Angola, Brazil, and the Iberian Peninsula. Dated between c. 1504 and 1713 (O.S./N.S.), the document features entries referencing key figures including the Archbishop of Lisbon Dom Diogo de Sousa, the Archbishop of Braga Dom João de Sá, the Viceroy of India, the Marquis of Minas, the Count of Galveias, the Duke of Savoy, Philip II and Philip V of Spain, the Emperor Charles VI, the Duke of Lorraine, and numerous colonial administrators, bishops, and military officers across the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch spheres. Geographically, it encompasses locations such as Lisbon, Santarém, Braga, Alcântra, Carca, Nájera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Turin, Cadiz, the Algarve, the Rhineland, Frankfurt am Main, Copenhagen, Hormuz, Ormuz, Recife, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Macau, Xiamen, and multiple sites in West and Central Africa including Luanda, Benguela, and Huíla. The text documents military campaigns, naval operations, sieges, troop movements, and intelligence on enemy forces; ecclesiastical governance, episcopal vacancies, excommunications, and liturgical ceremonies; colonial administration, land disputes, forced labour, manumission acts, and fiscal arrangements; treaty negotiations, diplomatic missions, and inter-imperial rivalries; and socio-religious practices, including syncretic invocations, ceremonial pageantry, and legal-judicial procedures. It exhibits extensive orthographic variation, multilingual code-switching (Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, Kimbundu, Kikongo, Arabic, Persian), and scribal abbreviations typical of early modern Iberian imperial record-keeping.

This abstract describes a multi-page diplomatic correspondence collection comprising letters, memoranda, and official dispatches dated between 1764 and 1766, primarily originating from London and addressed to Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Count of Oeiras (later Marquis of Pombal), chief minister of Portugal. The principal author is Martim de Melo e Castro, Portuguese envoy in London, whose letters detail urgent diplomatic negotiations concerning perceived Spanish and French military threats to Portugal’s European territories and colonial possessions in Brazil, particularly following troop movements along the Iberian frontier and violations of Article 21 of the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Key themes include requests for British military assistance—including twelve thousand muskets, artillery, tents, and cavalry support—negotiations over the outstanding £70,000 sterling subsidy from the 1762 Anglo-Portuguese agreement, disputes concerning grain embargoes and road repairs near the frontier, and intelligence exchanges regarding troop deployments in Trás-os-Montes, Minho, and Beira. The collection also contains extensive correspondence involving Prince Charles of Mecklenburg concerning his service in the Portuguese army, stipend entitlements, regimental command, and diplomatic interventions by the British royal family, alongside ancillary material on merchant grievances, colonial administration in Nova Scotia and Goa, and financial arrangements involving the Portuguese Treasury, the Tower of London, and the National Library of Lisbon, where the document is held.

Libro digitalizado

This archival document is a late 19th- or early 20th-century transcription—held at the Public Library and District Archive of Évora—of a Jesuit administrative and historical manuscript originally compiled in Macau, likely during the 17th century. It records the succession of Superiors, Provincials, Vice-Provincials, and Apostolic Visitors governing the Jesuit Province of Japan and China, as well as related missions in Macau, Cochinchina, Tonkin, Hainan, Fujian, Cambodia, Laos, Siam, and Shiab. The text details canonical procedures for appointment—including ‘viás’ (electoral successions), papal briefs, patents (*patentes*), and dispensations granted by Popes Innocent X and Alexander VII—as well as jurisdictional transitions, such as the formal separation of the Province of Japan and China from the Indian Provinces of Goa and Malabar in 1611. Key figures include Francis Xavier, Alessandro Valignano, Matteo Ricci, Nicolò Longobardo, Valentim Carvalho, Francisco da Veiga, and Alexandre de Rhodes; principal locations encompass Macau, Nagasaki, Funai, Kyoto, Beijing, Canton, Zhaoqing, Hainan, Tonkin, and Cochinchina. The document also chronicles foundational events, missionary strategies, political constraints, persecutions, shipwrecks, and administrative adaptations under colonial and East Asian imperial regimes, serving as a primary source for the institutional history of the Society of Jesus in East Asia.

This article treats the familiar triad “Gold, God, and Glory” as a heuristic to track how commercial, missionary, and reputational aims were configure...

D. Sinibaldo de Mas o ministro espanhol que inventou o iberismo e que queria comprar Macau para vender à China

In the mid 19th century the Spanish diplomat Sinibaldo de Más, after spending a period in the territory of Macao where he formulated his theories about the Iberian Peninsula, wrote a book which is considered to be a decisive contribution for the diffusion of the Iberian issue. This work that supported a peaceful union between Portugal and Spain under a common monarchy, was published five times in Spain and three times in Portugal. Latino Coelho and Carlos José Caldeira played an important role in the co-ordination of the Portuguese editions of the Ibéria, as well as in the organisation of other activities promoting the association of the two Iberian States, events in which Sinibaldo de Más was also involved.

This is a scholarly transcription of a 1712 historical document: *A Sincere and True Account of the Lawful Defence of the Royal Prerogatives and Privileges of the Crown of Portugal in the City of Macau*, composed by Dr Dom Félix Leal de Castro in Macau on 4 February 1712 and printed in Xiangshan. The text constitutes a formal rebuttal to an anonymous 1712 Augustinian account concerning ecclesiastical jurisdictional conflicts arising from the presence in Macau of Cardinal Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch and Apostolic Legate to China. It details the protracted dispute (1705–1712) between Portuguese civil and ecclesiastical authorities—including the Bishop and Captain-General of Macau, the Viceroy of Portuguese India, and the Primate Archbishop—over the Patriarch’s claim to exercise jurisdiction in Macau without presenting papal bulls formally ratified by the Royal Council of Portugal (*Conselho Ultramarino*) or obtaining prior royal consent. Central figures include the Patriarch; Captain-General Diogo de Lino Teixeira and his successor Francisco de Mello e Castro; Bishop of Macau; Vicar General of the diocese; Prior Fray Constantino del Espíritu Santo of the Augustinian Convent; and Provincial Father Francisco Pinto of the Society of Jesus. The document records key events: the Patriarch’s 1705 arrival and restricted activities in Macau; the 1707 council of the Three Estates affirming royal prerogatives (*regalias da Coroa*); the imposition and subsequent modification of the Patriarch’s custody; the 1708–1710 expulsions and arrests of religious loyal to the Patriarch—including Augustinians and Dominicans—and the renewal of prohibitions against their convents; the 1709 royal decrees (*cédulas*) confirming the Crown’s position; the Patriarch’s death in June 1710; and the 1712 handover of the Augustinian Convent to secular clergy. All assertions are grounded in archival instruments, official correspondence, canonical procedure, and juridical reasoning rooted in the Portuguese *regalia* and papal privileges granted to the Crown.