Portuguese colonial occupation and settlement from the sixteenth century onwards included a significant dimension of religious dissemination: a primary example is the imposition of Iberian Roman Catholic sacred forms at sites throughout peninsular Macao, China. Through early occupation and sustained commercial activity with local peoples, colonised Portuguese regions in Macao experienced aggressive assertion of Catholic religious dominance. In Macao, Portuguese military commanders, colonial governors, and missionary orders established Roman Catholic churches, chapels, and shrines — with their attendant Iberian religious modes — overlooking sites occupied by indigenous Chinese temples and shrines, or Buddhist sites.
This paper surveys the extant physical evidence for Roman Catholic competitive domination of selected Chinese religious sites within Macao during the period of Portuguese maritime expansion into East Asia. It follows the framework of “Antagonistic Tolerance” first conceived by anthropologist Dr. Robert Hayden (University of Pittsburgh) in order to explore Portuguese motives and methods for the co-optive establishment of “new” sacred spaces, as well as long-term implications of the syncretism of indigenous and Roman Catholic religious practices at those sites. In addition to primary and secondary source research carried out in Portugal and former colonised Portuguese spaces, this article draws on comparative data and images collected while conducting site fieldwork in Macao during 2019 and 2020.