The Old Protestant Cemetery (; pt, Cemitério Protestante) is a cemetery in
Santo António
Santo António (Portuguese for Saint Anthony), also known as Santo António do Príncipe, is the main settlement of the island of Príncipe in São Tomé and Príncipe. It lies on the north east coast. It is the capital of the Autonomous Regio ...
,
Macau,
China. It was established by the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
in 1821 in
Portuguese Macau in response to a lack of burial sites for Protestants in the
Roman Catholic Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
colony
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
.
It is the last resting place of the artist
George Chinnery
George Chinnery (; 5 January 1774 – 30 May 1852) was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China.
Early life
Chinnery was born in London, where he studied at the Royal Academy Schools. ...
, missionaries
Robert Morrison and
Samuel Dyer
Samuel Dyer (台約爾, 20 February 1804 – 24 October 1843) was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China in the Congregationalist tradition who worked among the Chinese in Malaysia. He arrived in Penang in 1827. Dyer, his wife M ...
(his wife
Maria
Maria may refer to:
People
* Mary, mother of Jesus
* Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages
Place names Extraterrestrial
* 170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877
*Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, d ...
is buried at the
Old Protestant Cemetery in Penang), Royal Navy captain Henry John Spencer-Churchill (son of the
5th Duke of Marlborough and great-great-grand-uncle of
Winston Churchill) and US Naval Lieutenant Joseph Harod Adams (grandson of the second president of the United States,
John Adams, and nephew of the sixth,
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States S ...
).
Humphrey Fleming Senhouse
Captain Sir Humphrey Fleming Senhouse (29 June 1781 – 13 June 1841) was a British Royal Navy officer. He served in the Napoleonic Wars, War of 1812, and First Anglo-Chinese War. In China, he was the senior naval officer of the British fleet f ...
, a
captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
in the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
, is also buried here, as is
John Robert Morrison, son of Robert Morrison, who was appointed as Acting
Colonial Secretary of
Hong Kong but died eight days later in Macau from fever.
William Napier, 9th Lord Napier was buried in the cemetery but his body was subsequently exhumed and reburied in Scotland. Another grave is that of
Anders Ljungstedt
Anders Ljungstedt (; 23 March 1759 – 10 November 1835) was a Swedish merchant and historian.
Early career
Ljungstedt was born to a poor family in Linköping and attended Uppsala University for a time, but was forced to withdraw for lack of fu ...
, a prosperous Swedish businessman, interpreter and historian.
In 2005, the cemetery was officially enlisted as part of the
UNESCO World Heritage Site ''
Historic Center of Macau
The Historic Centre of Macao, pt, Centro Histórico de Macau, , is a collection of over twenty locations that witness the unique assimilation and co-existence of Chinese and Portuguese cultures in Macau, a former Portuguese colony. It represents ...
''.
History
Macau was considered by the Portuguese to be sacred
Roman Catholic ground and the authorities barred the burial of Protestant within its city walls, whilst on the other side of the
barrier gate the Chinese were equally as intolerant of the burial of foreigners in its soil. This left the
Protestant community of British, American and Northern European traders with the only option of a secret night-time burial in the land between the city walls and the barrier gate, and the risk of confrontation with Chinese should they be discovered, or worse, desecration of the grave once they had gone.
The matter was finally resolved in 1821 after the death of Robert Morrison's wife, Mary, when the local committee of the East India Company voted to purchase a plot of land and resolve its legal status with the Portuguese such that the burial of Protestants would be permitted there. Later, the East India Company allowed burial of all foreigners, and several graves were moved from other locations outside the city walls into the cemetery, explaining why some graves are dated before its founding in 1821. Nationals of Britain, the United States of America, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Germany are buried there.
The cemetery was closed in 1858, after which the cemetery began to be referred to as the "Old" Protestant Cemetery.
250px, Morrison Chapel
Adjoining the cemetery is the
Morrison Chapel, named in honour of Robert Morrison.
See also
*
List of cemeteries in Macau
*
St Michael Macau - Chapel and Cemetery (Cemitério S Miguel Arcanjo) – Catholic 1854–
*
Religion in Macau
Religion in Macau is represented predominantly by Buddhism and Chinese folk religions. During the period in which the city was under Portuguese rule (1557–1999) the Catholic Church became one of the dominant faiths, but nowadays it has gr ...
References
*
Ride, Lindsay & Ride, May, ''An East India Company Cemetery: Protestant Burials in Macau''
* Ride, Lindsay, ''The Old Protestant Cemetery in Macau''
*
Coates, Austin, ''A Macau Narrative''
Further reading
*Robert Morrison, A Master Builder; Marshall Broomhall; China Inland Mission 1925
*The Memoir of Samuel Dyer: Sixteen Years Missionary to the Chinese by Evan Davies, John Snow, London, 1846
External links
*
Morrison Chapel Website(some information is out of date – see link below)
Report on the appointment of a new clergy-in-charge at the Morrison Chapel
{{coord, 22, 11, 59.63, N, 113, 32, 24.71, E, type:landmark, display=title
Historic Centre of Macau
Tourist attractions in Macau
Macau Peninsula
Christianity in Macau
Anglican cemeteries in Asia
Lutheran cemeteries
Protestant Reformed cemeteries
World Heritage Sites in China
Cemeteries in Macau
1821 establishments in China
1821 establishments in the Portuguese Empire
19th-century establishments in Macau