One of Macau’s most prominent landmarks is the church at the southern end of the small peninsula. Standing atop the prominent hill, the church of Our Lady of Penha of France, contrasts with the giant casinos which have come in recent years to dominate, even to overwhelm, most of the rest of the ancient territory. Even Monte Fort is dwarfed by them. Not so Penha church. While so many of the buildings of the Portuguese heritage of Macau are ancient, with most of the World Heritage sites dating from the early seventeenth century, Penha church is relatively recent, having been built in 1935.
Capela de Nossa Senhora da Penha, built in 1935. A painting by Vicente Pacia, 1937. J.M. Braga collection, National Library of Australia
However, its history goes back much further than this. A century earlier, in 1837, the Bishop of Macau built an out-of-town summer residence on this fine site which catches the sea breezes. Next to it was a church, which served as the bishop’s chapel. The Bishop of Macau continued to occupy his palace, which was located next to the Sé cathedral.
The new summer residence was not the first building on this magnificent site. More than two centuries before that, a small hermitage stood there. It was built as a result of a promise made by a group of terrified merchants and seamen who in 1620 were being hunted down by a Dutch ship, bigger and faster than theirs, and no doubt more heavily armed. In their dire predicament these eighteen men vowed that if Our Lady the Virgin of Penha da França would rescue them, they would give one percent of the value of their cargo to build a hermitage in Macau where her image could be honoured.
The details of what happened make fascinating reading. An original account of this voyage and the merchants’ solemn vow has survived to our own times, while most other early records of Macau have been lost through four centuries of neglect, a tropical climate and attacks by mould and insects. This account was first printed in a newspaper O Macaista Imparcial in 1836, and then again in the Boletim Eclesiastico da diocese de Macau in 1937.[1] It was here that it came to the notice of the English scholar Charles Boxer, then a British Army officer in Hong Kong. He was an able linguist, with a good knowledge of Portuguese, Dutch and Japanese. He became a close friend of Jack Braga, then a teacher and businessman in Macau. After World War II, Boxer was appointed to the ‘Camões Chair of Portuguese’ at London University, the only such chair in the English-speaking world. He received several honorary doctorates, including the first such degree awarded by the University of Macau. He wrote many books and articles on the history of the Portuguese Empire, and the story of the hermitage of Our Lady the Virgin of Penha da França appears in one of his most important books, The Great Ship from Amacon.[2]
16th century Portuguese lateen-rigged caravels. These were the ships in which the Portuguese ruled the eastern seas throughout the sixteenth century.
17th century square-rigged Dutch ship.
Fast and powerful, they swept the Portuguese from the seas in the seventeenth century, but lateen rigged ships could sail closer to the wind
These illustrations are conjectural. Both vessels were armed, as all ships had to be in those perilous times, but this Dutch vessel, with twelve cannon, is more heavily armed.
Boxer provided a few footnotes, which are reproduced here, but no other commentary. In particular, he does not speculate on the nature of the Portuguese vessel, which he calls a ‘pinnace’. This is generally thought of as a small vessel used in ports and coastal waters, not on long sea voyages such as the voyage from Macau to Japan, a distance of 2,000 km. It can only have been a caravel, perhaps a small one, but not a little coastal boat. It was certainly not the great nao, the annual ‘black ship’ which carried the bulk of trade with Japan.
Nor does he pass comment on the promise these terrified men made. They promised one percent of the value of the cargo. They would have been well aware of the tithe – the tax paid to the church amounting to one tenth of each person’s income every year. This tax was levied throughout Christendom for many centuries, and was based on the Mosaic Law set out in several places in the Old Testament. One tenth of one tenth seems niggardly for men in such a desperate situation.
By 1620, the Portuguese merchants were well aware of the superior ships of the Dutch, who were systematically wiping out the Portuguese wherever they could. Only in Macau, two years later, did the Dutch fail to dislodge the Portuguese. In the account that follows, the unnamed writer, perhaps Captain Jorge da Silva himself, acknowledges that the Dutch ship was more ‘nimble’ than his own. For several hours on that fateful date, the Portuguese sailors, their vessel under the lee (downwind) of the Dutch ship, watched doom approaching, until the enemy actually drew alongside.
What happened next? The writer of this letter does not explain, nor did Boxer make any comment. All we are told is that ‘we were forthwith helped by Our Lady, because we escaped from the enemy under their very bows’. A change of wind may have assisted the Portuguese vessel, able to sail closer to the wind than its Dutch adversary. Read this account for yourself and see what you think.
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‘On the 28th day of the month of July of the year 1620, while the pinnace São Bartolomeu, Captain Jorge da Silva, was on her voyage to Japan, at five o'clock in the morning we found ourselves under the lee of a Dutch ship. Shortly afterwards three other ships of our company hove in sight, and Captain Jorge da Silva immediately ordered the pinnace to be cleared for action, and forthwith ordered the master-gunner to fire a shot as a signal to the other three ships. As soon as the shot was fired, the enemy hoisted a square flag and made towards the other ships; as two of them were nimbler, they took to flight at once. The enemy seeing this, and realising that he could not catch up with them, tacked towards us and pursued us relentlessly. As our ship was not very nimble, he got within cannon-shot of us, and then fired three shots which passed over our ship, as they had fired high in order to disable our rigging.
In this manner we fled before the enemy, although we saw we had no fair chance of outsailing him. We crowded on all sail in this danger, but the wind, which was very strong, carried away our fore-yard. When this happened, the enemy soon got close alongside us, and fired more shots, and waved us amain with a towel to strike our mainsail which we were carrying. Seeing ourselves at this moment in such deadly peril, and with no other recourse but for all of us to die (as we had already resolved) by blowing up our ship, we turned to beg Our Lady the Virgin of Penha da França[3] to help us and become our intermediary with her Blessed Son, that she would save us and help us against our enemies.
All of us unitedly and unanimously promising her that we would give one percent of all our own goods, as well as those of our associates, in the cargo which the ship São Bartolomeu was taking to Japan, in order to make an independent hermitage for Our Lady, in which her image could be enshrined in the city of Macao.[4] No sooner had this gift been promised, than we were forthwith helped by Our Lady, because we escaped from the enemy under their very bows. And as we are all happy to give one percent of all our own goods in the pinnace, and feel confident that all our associates will likewise approve of this promise, we give her, and are happy to give her, this gift in order to build the hermitage.[5]
If it should so happen that the hermitage is not built, we declare that this promise will be null and void. And as regards the contributions to be paid, we hereby elect to collect them, Bernardo Fragozo,[6] Fernão d’Arias, João Taveira and João Pacheco. And as we are pleased and satisfied with the above, we sign here at the foot of this, and in the latitude of the island of Formosa, on the 28th of the month of July 1620.
Signed: Jorge da Silva, Fernão d’Arias de Moraes, Bartolomeu Fragozo, António Gonçalvez d’Araujo, João Taveira, Manoel Fernandes Ferrão, Luis da Fonseca, Manoel Gomes, João Cazado Viana, António Correio, Francisco Pereira, Jacome Francisco de Paiva, António d’Almeida, João Pacheco, Francisco Lobo Guerreiro, António Pinto d’Oliveira, Jorge Carvalho, João Cavalim da Fonseca.’
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The Penha Hermitage about 1830.
A drawing by George Chinnery, from the Geographical Society of Lisbon
Further details of the voyage are unknown, but the men did honour their promise. The hermitage was built in 1622, and became the residence of a small group of Augustinians. It was never a large monastery. Only the Jesuits had a substantial presence in Macau, but they were expelled in 1762 as part of the Portuguese government’s attack on the Jesuit Order. They were allowed to return in 1862 to conduct St Joseph’s College, which they had built in 1730, but they were again expelled in 1870. In 1834, more than two centuries after the hermitage was built, the Catholic Orders were struggling to maintain a presence in Macau. The Augustinians had four monks, the Dominicans three and the Capuchins three, who were in charge of 37 nuns.[7]
The Penha Chapel about 1837, soon after it was rebuilt following the destruction of the original building by a typhoon in September 1831. A drawing by George Chinnery, from the collection of Toyo Bunko.
That year, the Augustinians were also expelled, as a result of a civil war in Portugal between conservative and liberal factions. That brought to an end the hermitage established by the merchants delivered from the jaws of death more than two centuries before.
[1] Translated from the documents transcribed in the ‘Memoria sobre ermida da Penha de França’ (‘Memorial on the hermitage of Penha of France’), first printed in the Macaista Imparcial Vol. 1, no. 33 (29 September 1836), pp. 131-134, and reprinted with notes and annotations in the Boletim Eclesiastico da diocese de Macau, May 1937, pp. 816-822.
[2] C.R. Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon: Annals of Macao and the old Japan trade, 1555-1640, Centro de Estudos Histόricos Ultramarinos, Lisbon, 1959, pp. 314-315.
[3] A very popular invocation of the Virgin with Portuguese sailors at this period.
[4] The hermitage was duly built and the first mass celebrated there in April 1623.
[5] The habit of making such vows in an emergency was one of long-standing among Portuguese sea-farers. It was legislated for in the Regimentos or standing-instructions issued to the pursers of all outward-bound East-Indiamen. Cf. ‘The naval and colonial papers of Dom António de Ataide’, in the Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. V (1951), p. 36.
[6] His name is given as Bartolomeu Fragozo in the list of signatures below and in the other documents annexed to this ‘Memoria’.
[7] These were the figures given by an American Protestant missionary, Elijah Bridgman, in the Chinese Repository, vol. 3, no. 7, November 1834, p. 299.