They used to celebrate Christmas in Ayutthaya

‘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.’

St Joseph's Church. The access ramp for the disabled is a modern touch.

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.

The dead centre of the Church of Saint Petro

The Portuguese desire was to break the Arab monopoly on the spice trade. They were fervent missionaries and Duarte de Coelho, the third Portuguese envoy to Ayutthaya, hung a wooden crucifix in the city streets so Thai citizens could see how Jesus Christ had died for all men. Obviously this didn’t have much influence on the thinking of the average Thai.

The Siamese kings were not fazed by the attempts of the Europeans to convert their subjects to Christianity. A Father Peter of Lisbon wrote, in 1589, ‘I have preached diverse times among these heathen people, but being obstinate they say, that as their fathers believed so they will continue to believe: for if their fathers went to the devil so will they.’  The insistence on monogamy and refusal to permit divorce were among key factors in the failure of Christian evangelism.

While some of the laws of old Ayutthaya were considered unusual by European standards (death by tiger for example), the one on divorce was highly enlightened: ‘If a husband and wife have a physical or mental distaste for one another and desire to be divorced, let it be as they wish; for they two have no further blessing in their union, and therefore should not be compelled to live together.’

The Dutch church of St Joseph’s, some call it a cathedral, looks out of place in its faded yellow colours and clock-tower look. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) set up an outpost in Ayutthaya in 1608 and it ran until the Burmese conquered the city 159 years later. After helping the Thais against the rebel state of Pattani in the mid-1630s, the VOC was given land south of Ayutthaya and it is here where the church of St Joseph’s stands. The original mission was destroyed by the Burmese. Some of the original foundations can be seen near the river.

©Duncan Stearn