Ayutthaya And Its Christian Past

[PattayaOneTeam]

Ayutthaya and its Christian past

'I am never tired of admiring this very large city on an island surrounded by a river three times the size of the Seine, full of French, English, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, and Siamese vessels and an uncountable number of barges, and gilded galleys with 60 oarsmen…But something still more admirable is that on both sides of this island are the quarters or villages inhabited by the different nationalities… I have never seen anything finer, though with the exception of the [gilded] pagodas everything is of natural simplicity.'

So wrote the 41-year-old Frenchman Abbe de Choisy, in 1685, about Ayutthaya, then one of the great cities of Asia. While Thailand has played host to many strange and unusual characters down through the centuries, de Choisy, a cleric and member of the French diplomatic mission in Ayutthaya, ranks among the weirdest. His mother brought him up as a girl and he embraced a transvestite lifestyle, which included seducing young girls, until struck down by a serious illness. After recovering, he renounced his former life of debauchery in favour of religious and diplomatic pursuits.

The first European traders to come to Ayutthaya were the Portuguese, in 1511, being impressed enough to call it the Venice of the East (an appellation applied to Bangkok a couple of centuries later). The Portuguese language became the lingua franca of trade through most of Asia during much of the 16th century. To Asians, the Portuguese were known as feringhi (from which it's not hard to see the modern Thai word farang being a derivative) and were highly regarded as mercenaries. Among their key trading goods were arms and ammunition, which the Thais used to good effect against the Burmese soon after.

The Thais permitted the Portuguese to establish a settlement in 1540, outside the city walls in the south, and the remains of this can be seen today. The restored Church of Saint Petro, which was originally run by the Dominicans, dominates what is left of the settlement. At its peak there were upwards of 300 Portuguese nationals, many coming from Goa in India, living in Ayutthaya. The base of the church was discovered in 1985 and also uncovered were the remains of about 200 people in what was assumed to be the local cemetery. Go inside the church and the skeletons are on open display, with one of their number encased in glass for a closer inspection. [more…]

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-- Pattaya One 2010-12-31

[Xangsamhua]

The first Christian clergy sent to minister in Ayudhya were two Catholic priests, both Portuguese Dominicans, and they arrived in 1567 with the task of ministering to the Catholic community already resident in the city. The Father Peter referred to in the article may have preached to the Siamese in the 1580s, but that was not his primary role. The task of preaching to the local people was given to the French missionaries sent from Rome by Propaganda Fide, a Vatican institution, in the 1600s.

The Christian churches have never had more than token success in conversion of the ethnic Siamese. The French missioners realized quite early that it was a waste of time and resources and were further discouraged by the reduction in their rights following the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 (not to be confused with the English one of the same date). Catholic evangelization efforts were henceforth concentrated on the building of churches for the non-Siamese communities, such as Annamite and Cambodian Catholic refugees and the Sino-Thai communities, and the provision of education, health and welfare services, a feature of Catholic mission activity generally throughout the world from the 17th century on. The Protestant churches, especially the Presbyterians, maintained their efforts to convert the locals until quite recently, notably in Chiangmai with the arrival of Dr and Mrs McGilvary in 1868 (they were the only Western residents of the city at that time), but the great Presbyterian missionaries such as Dr Dan Beach Bradley and Dr Samuel McFarland, who spent their adult lifetimes in Siam, focused on areas such as medicine, education, printing and publishing, and advice to the reigning monarchs and senior government officials. They were well regarded by Kings Rama IV and V (in McFarland's case), but were warned not to mix Christian proselytism with their development work. Bishop Pallegoix, the Apostolic Vicar during most of Rama IV's reign, enjoyed a special friendship with the king and taught him Latin in exchange for learning Pali.

I don't have data on the ethnic composition of the Protestant communities in Thailand, but for Roman Catholics it is very clear that the Catholic community of about 300,000 is largely non-ethnic Siamese - predominantly Chinese, Vietnamese (especially in the Northeast), mountain people and Karen. The dioceses with the highest percentages of Catholics are those with the highest percentages of Chinese (Bangkok), Vietnamese (Thare-Nongseng and Chantaburi) and mountain folk (Chiangmai) in the total population of their regions.

I note that some of the dates and detail I have provided differ from the Wikipedia article Roman Catholicism in Thailand. So be it. My sources for the history are Chumsriphan, Surachai. "A Brief History of the Catholic Church in Thailand" at http://www.sspxasia.com/Newsletters/2002/Oct-Dec/Catholic_Church_in_Thailand.htm . Fr Surachai was an advisor to Cardinal Meechai at the time I retrieved his article (2007). My main source for the Protestant missions is Dr Herb Swanson, a Presbyterian missionary in the Northern provinces for many years. See http://herbswanson.c...rd/herd1997.php .

Edited December 31, 2010 by Xangsamhua