St. Paul's College, Macau

St. Paul's College of Macau (Portuguese: Colégio de São Paulo; Chinese: 聖保祿學院), also known as College of Madre de Deus (Mater Dei in Latin), was a university founded in 1594 in Macau by Jesuits at the service of the Portuguese under the Padroado treaty. It claimed the title of the first Western university in East Asia.

St. Paul's College was founded by Alessandro Valignano in 1594 by upgrading the previous Madre de Deus School, as a stopover to prepare Jesuit missionaries traveling east. Its academic program came to include core disciplines such as theology, philosophy, and mathematics, geography, astronomy, and Latin, Portuguese and Chinese, including also a school of music and arts. It had immense influence on the learning of Eastern languages and culture, housing the first western sinologists Matteo Ricci, Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Ferdinand Verbiest, among many famous scholars of the time.

The College was the base for Jesuit missionaries travelling to China, Japan and East Asia, and its activity coincided with a thrifty Macau-Nagasaki trade until 1645. After a revolt blamed on religious influence, Japan expelled the Portuguese and banned Catholicism, and the college became then a shelter for fleeing Christian priests. Part of its teaching was transferred to the Seminário de São Jose in 1728 where the teaching of theology, philosophy and religious studies continues to this day (after a 28-year break between 1968 & 1996) as part on University of Saint Joseph's Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy. In 1996 the formation of IIUM (renamed the University of Saint Joseph in 2006) marked the formal resumption of a 400-year tradition.

Jesuits abandoned the site in 1762 when they were expelled by the Portuguese authorities, during the suppression of the Society of Jesus. The buildings were destroyed in a fire in 1835. In 2005, the ruins of St. Paul's – notably the facade of the Madre de Deus Church – were officially enlisted as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site – Historic Centre of Macau.