Article

Churches

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Churches

The Church of St. Paul in Malacca stands as the most extensively documented ecclesiastical structure in the Society’s published literature, its history spanning from the Portuguese conquest of 1511 to the Dutch appropriation of 1641 and beyond. The building, perched on the hill that once crowned the Malay royal palace, served successively as a military chapel, a Jesuit mission church, a Protestant place of worship, and finally a ruin whose surviving shell became a site of archaeological and architectural debate. Two articles published in the same issue of the JMBRAS in 1934—one a rebuttal by Father R. Cardon, the other a historical reconstruction by Father Schurhammer, S.J.—together constitute the most concentrated treatment of a single church in the Society’s journal, and they illuminate not only the building’s own history but also the broader patterns of Christian institutional presence in the Malay Peninsula during the early modern period. [1, pp. 38–39] [2, pp. 40–43]

Origins and Architectural Development

The church’s origins are inseparable from the Portuguese military establishment at Malacca. Albuquerque erected the original chapel, dedicated to Nossa Senhora do Monte (Our Lady of the Annunciation), in 1511 alongside the fortress, and a retable was requested from the King of Portugal as early as that year. [2, p. 40] The chapel served a dual function: as a place of worship for the garrison and as a navigational landmark for vessels entering the strait. [2, p. 40] The site was deliberately chosen on the hill of the former Malay royal palace, and Schurhammer argues that the underground caves visible in the surviving structure may be remnants of that palace, a hypothesis consistent with Gaspar Correia’s description of Malaccan houses built “half buried in the ground.” [2, p. 43]

The chapel was transferred to the Jesuits by the Bishop of Goa between 1548 and 1549. [2, p. 41] By 1566 it was described as “very ancient” and “falling into ruins,” prompting a full reconstruction under Rector Fr. Christovao da Costa. [2, p. 41] The new church measured 110 palmos long, 46 broad, and 39.5 high—approximately 24.2 metres by 10.1 metres by 8.7 metres. [2, p. 41] The roof was completed in 1568, and the tower was finished by 1590, when Bishop Martinez reported that “the Church and tower have been finished.” [2, p. 42]

The architectural character of the rebuilt church has been the subject of specific scholarly dispute. Cardon, in rebutting claims by Mr. Macdonald that the nave was merely a refectory, pointed to its high windows, a gable end with a great door, and a circular window replacing a rose window as features characteristic of a Catholic church of the period, comparable to contemporary Moroccan examples. [1, p. 38] He further argued that the military style of the choir and sacristy tower reflected the strategic importance of the hill rather than indicating the oldest part of the building. [1, p. 38]

Institutional Life and the Jesuit College

The church was never an isolated structure but the nucleus of a growing Jesuit college. In the 1570s, Visitor Valignano oversaw a major rebuilding programme that produced what contemporaries called “one of the best Colleges in the whole of India.” [2, p. 41] The college comprised eight rooms with a verandah commanding a view of sea and land. [2, p. 41] The church itself served as a waystation for Jesuits travelling to the Moluccas, Japan, and China, anchoring it within the broader network of the Society’s Asian missions. [2, p. 41]

The tropical climate imposed a relentless burden of maintenance. By 1598, the records indicate that fifty slaves and a Brother were employed solely for continual repairs, as “the wood here does not last longer than ten years.” [2, p. 42] This detail, drawn from Jesuit correspondence, underscores the material vulnerability of timber construction in the region and the extraordinary labour required to sustain even a single ecclesiastical complex.

The church also became a site of significant hagiographic activity. Cardon, correcting Macdonald’s account of St. Francis Xavier’s exhumation in 1552, quoted Bartoli and Maffei to show that the procedure was motivated by personal attachment and the desire to convey the body to Goa, rather than simply to place it in a magnificent coffin. [1, p. 39] This episode, while specific to one saint, illustrates the way the church functioned as a node in the devotional and administrative life of the Jesuit province.

Dutch Conquest and Aftermath

The Dutch conquest of Malacca in 1641 brought an abrupt end to the church’s Catholic function. The building was converted for Protestant use, and the college site was incorporated into the Dutch fortress. [2, p. 42] By 1730, a Jesuit correspondent in Lisbon reported that “hardly anything left but the pillars” remained of the original complex. [2, p. 42] The building thus passed from a site of active worship to a ruin, its remaining shell preserved by accident rather than by any deliberate act of conservation.

The question of what exactly survived, and what the surviving fragments represented, became a matter of scholarly contention in the early twentieth century. Cardon’s 1934 article is, in substance, a point-by-point rebuttal of thirteen assertions made by Mr. Macdonald regarding the church’s origins, naming, and subsequent history. [1, p. 38] Among the corrections Cardon offered was the dating of the Franciscan church at Bukit China, which he established was not built until 1581, not 1533 as Macdonald had claimed. [1, p. 39] This correction, while concerning a different building, is significant because it demonstrates that the broader ecclesiastical landscape of Portuguese Malacca was still being actively reconstructed and contested by scholars in the 1930s.

The most concrete resolution of the building’s physical history came through excavation. Cardon documented the 1925 and 1930 excavations carried out by Baker, Father Francois, and Major Bone, which confirmed the original floor level of the church. [1, p. 39] These excavations provided the empirical basis against which the architectural arguments of Cardon and Macdonald could be tested, and they represent the point at which the study of the church shifted from purely documentary to a combination of archival and archaeological method.

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on the Church of St. Paul is concentrated in a single issue of the JMBRAS (12(2), 1934), where the two articles by Cardon and Schurhammer appear in immediate succession. [1, pp. 38–39] [2, pp. 40–43] This proximity is not accidental: the two pieces are complementary in method and purpose. Schurhammer’s article is a historical reconstruction, drawing on a dense series of primary-source letters—Jesuit correspondence to the General, annual letters of the Goa province, and Portuguese chronicles—many drawn from the Jesuit archives in Goa. [2, pp. 40–43] As a Jesuit writing in 1934, Schurhammer had direct access to the Society’s internal archives, giving him a source base unavailable to secular historians of the period. [2, p. 43] His narrative is grounded in the testimony of Fernão Lopes de Castanheda and Gaspar Correia to establish the topographical relationship between the church, the old royal palace, and the great Mosque. [2, p. 43]

Cardon’s article, by contrast, is a corrective and a defence. It addresses the specific claims of a named interlocutor and proceeds by refutation, correcting errors on the church’s origins, naming, and subsequent history. [1, p. 38] The two articles together illustrate a pattern common in the Society’s journal: a broad historical survey followed by a narrower, more polemical intervention that tests the survey’s conclusions against specific architectural and documentary evidence.

The records reveal a clear shift in the priorities of scholarship on the church over the period covered. The earlier phase, represented by Schurhammer’s reliance on Jesuit correspondence and Portuguese chronicles, is fundamentally documentary and institutional in character, concerned with establishing dates, dimensions, and the sequence of construction and reconstruction. The later phase, represented by Cardon’s engagement with Macdonald’s claims and the documentation of the 1925 and 1930 excavations, introduces an architectural and archaeological dimension, testing the documentary record against the physical remains. [1, p. 39] This shift from the archive to the ground is itself a significant development in the study of Malaccan ecclesiastical history, and it is recorded here in the Society’s pages with a precision that reflects the seriousness with which the contributors treated the building’s material evidence.

The limits of the record should be noted. The two articles concern a single church in a single city, and while they touch on the broader context of Portuguese and Dutch colonial activity, they do not extend to a survey of Christian churches elsewhere in the Malay Peninsula or in Borneo. The Franciscan church at Bukit China is mentioned only in passing, as a point of correction. [1, p. 39] No other ecclesiastical structure in the region is treated in comparable depth in the available records. The Church of St. Paul thus stands, in the Society’s published literature, as a case study of particular richness rather than as one example in a wider typology.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. R. Cardon (1934). The Portuguese Church of St. Paul JMBRAS 12(2): 38–39.
  2. Schurhammer (1934). The Church of St. Paul, Malacca JMBRAS 12(2): 40–43. Read on JSTOR