Água de Pena (parish)

On 2 July 1419, according to the most probable date, João Gonçalves Zarco landed on the beaches of Machico. At nightfall he withdrew to the ships, so as to continue exploring the unknown coast the following day.

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And on the next day,’ says Gaspar Frutuoso, ‘sailing further along, always keeping close to the land, they found in a cool valley and pleasant meadow a brook of water that flowed out into the sea with great freshness. He sent some men there, and those who went found another spring, which issued from beneath a large, ancient and smooth boulder, and was so precious and cold that he ordered another vessel to be filled with it to take to the Infante; and he gave this landing place the name (because of what he found in it) of Porto do Seixo (‘pebble harbour’), as it is called today’. This small landing place belonged to the lands that made up the future parish of Água de Pena. It was the second parish (freguesia) on which the discoverers set foot when they put in at this island, then unknown. Porto do Seixo has gone down in the history of the discovery as the first spot visited by the discoverers on the second day of their exploration along the coast.

We do not know the origin of the name of this parish, and various hypotheses have been put forward to explain it. Some have claimed that the original name was Água de Penha and not Pena, a name that would have come from water springing from a crag or living cliff, Penha being corrupted to Pena over time. To justify this explanation conclusively, there would have to be, somewhere within the area of the parish, a spring issuing from the rock, and this, it seems to us, is not the case there. It is certain, however, that in an old nobiliary (book of noble genealogies) we read that the name ‘derives from a crystalline spring of continuous flow in the sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) of Henrique Teixeira, who held extensive lands to the west of the town of Machico’. Is this the Seixo spring or another that has since disappeared? It is not easy to tell today. It may be presumed that there was some locality (sítio) or village (lugar, settlement rank below a town) there called Água de Pena from the earliest days of colonisation, and that this gave rise to the name of the parish. In some old documents the name is found spelt Água de Pena.

The illustrious annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) states that Henrique Teixeira, second son of Tristão Vaz Teixeira, one of the discoverers of Madeira and first captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of Machico, held sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) lands in Água de Pena. Of him Gaspar Frutuoso says that ‘he was much given to agriculture and through this inclination became very rich, and he ennobled the town of Machico with many sugar mills as well as cane fields, cattle and grain, and upland commons (montados) which he had cleared and put to use’. We have seen in an old book of lineages that Hirão Teixeira, grandson of Henrique Teixeira, made his residence in Água de Pena; he died in 1551 and was buried in the chapel of Conceição (‘Conception’) in Machico.

It is probable that these Teixeiras were the first settlers, or at least among the earliest colonists, of Água de Pena, many years before it was constituted as a parish. The parish was created around 1560, making it one of the oldest of Madeira’s small parishes. Perhaps it originated in a settled estate (fazenda povoada), as happened with so many others that became the nucleus of future and important parishes. Some of these estates had small chapels, which became the seats of the parishes then created. With regard to Água de Pena, we can state nothing positive on this point.

Whether in a chapel already standing there or in a small church built at the time, the new parish began to function in 1561. Its first pastor was Father Tomé Gomes, who was followed in succession by the parish priests Manuel de Carvalho, João Ferreira Baptista, Pedro Ferreira, António do Canto, Pedro Gonçalves Ciebra, Manuel da Silva Boim, Duarte Mendes, Dr Estevão Lomelino de Vasconcelos, etc. The original annual stipend (côngrua) was raised in 1572 to 9,000 réis (the Portuguese money of account before 1911; 1,000 réis = 1 mil-réis, 1,000,000 réis = 1 conto), and increased by 3,000 réis by royal decree (alvará) of 14 December 1588. The royal decree of 5 February 1592 raised the stipend to an annual salary of 19,000 réis in cash, plus 1 moio (dry measure of grain, 60 alqueires) and one pipa (wine cask and measure, c. 400–500 litres) of wine.

The general index of the books of the former Crown Revenue Office (Provedoria) of this archipelago shows that an order of the Council of the Treasury (Conselho da Fazenda) of 13 March 1694 authorised an expenditure of 651,000 réis ‘to put the masonry and carpentry work of the new church up for auction’. The same index records another order of the said Council, dated 2 April 1745, ‘for the work on the new church to be put up for auction at the price of 4,000,000, or at any lower bid (branch (lanço, ramal)) there may be, since the move that is intended is to a more convenient and less windy spot’. Only 50 years separate the two orders, and it is not very likely that within half a century the church would have needed to be rebuilt. We presume that the order of 1694 was never carried out. We are confirmed in this conjecture by the Anais de Machico, written around the middle of the 19th century, which say that about a hundred years earlier, that is, around 1745, a church was built anew in Água de Pena because the first had collapsed. The 4,000,000 réis were allocated to this construction, and the new church was built on a site somewhat removed from the first, which then stood at the far end of the glebe (passal).

The fabric fund of this church received 3,000 réis a year under the royal decree of 22 March 1574, to which a further 1,000 réis a year was added by the royal decree of 15 June 1598.

While the vicar capitular (administrator of the vacant diocese elected by the chapter) and governor of the diocese (governador do bispado, administering the see in the bishop's absence) António Alfredo de Santa Catarina Braga was staying at Santo da Serra (‘the saint of the uplands’), he issued from there a warrant (provisão), dated 13 June 1836, abolishing the parish (freguesia) of Água de Pena and creating that of Santo – or rather, annexing the former to the curacy (curato) of Santo da Serra and making the latter the seat of the new parish, under the name of the parish of Santo da Serra e Água de Pena. Santo da Serra was a subsidiary curacy of the parish of Machico, created in 1813, but its curate did not normally reside there. With the annexation of the parish of Água de Pena to the curacy of Santo da Serra, the latter became the seat of the parish, and the parish priest took up permanent residence there. The measure taken so arbitrarily by the vicar capitular António Alfredo did not last long. By the law (carta de lei) of 24 July 1848 this parish was restored once more. It lost the locality (sítio) of Achada do Barro (‘clay plateau’) from its former area, which remained part of Santo da Serra, but it gained the localities of Torre and Ventrecha, which had belonged to the parish of Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’).

The locality of Bemposta (see that entry) was the seat of an entailed estate (morgadio) dating from the first quarter of the 16th century. João Afonso Escudeiro, a man of noble descent, came from mainland Portugal to Madeira around 1450 and held sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) lands in Água de Pena. There, by his will made on 21 June 1512, the year of his death, he founded the entail (morgado) of Bemposta, as well as that of São Lázaro in Santa Cruz. His daughter and heiress Catarina Anes Escudeiro, the first administrator of this entailed estate (vínculo), married Lopo Franco de Monção. From this marriage was born João Franco, who succeeded to the entailed estate and died without issue, so that the administration of the Bemposta entail passed to a nephew of his named Diogo Lopes Tavares. Squeezed between the parishes of Santa Cruz and Machico, the parish is bounded to the north by the latter and by that of Santo da Serra, to the south by that of Santa Cruz, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean and to the west by the parishes of Santa Cruz and Santo da Serra. It forms part of the municipalities of Santa Cruz and Machico: the inhabited localities of Torre and Ventrecha belong to the former, and those of Bemposta, Lombo, Logarinho, Igreja and Queimada to the latter. Its patron saint is the Roman virgin and martyr St Beatrice, and its parish church stands in the locality called Igreja. Besides this church, it has the chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Sagrado Coração de Jesus) in the locality of Cardiais (‘thistle patches’), founded in 1907 by Canon Henrique Modesto de Betencourt, and that of Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro (Our Lady of Perpetual Help), built by Francisco de Freitas Correia in 1924 in the locality of Queimada. The post box and the telephone booth are in the locality of Igreja, where the parish cemetery is also found. The towns of Santa Cruz and Machico lie about eight kilometres apart, and the most central part of the parish of Água de Pena is roughly equidistant from those two towns and some 20 kilometres from the city of Funchal. It belongs to the judicial district (comarca) of Santa Cruz and, as stated above, to the municipality of that name and to that of Machico. Since a fair stretch of it is washed by the sea, it is served by a small landing place with a beach of rounded pebbles known as the Calhau do Seixo (‘pebble shore of the flint’), at the mouth of the stream of the same name. The land of this parish is watered by the Levada do Juncal and the Levada Nova do Furado (‘new channel of the tunnel’), which rise in the north of the island, and also by the Levada do Moinho da Serra, which rises in the parish of Santa Cruz, the Levada Nova (‘new channel’), which draws from the Machico stream, and the Levada do Logarinho, whose flow starts in the locality of the same name within this parish. Some have asserted that the illustrious Madeiran João Fernandes Vieira, who distinguished himself so notably in Brazil in the war against the Dutch, was born in this parish. However, according to investigations made there some years ago, his baptismal record is not to be found in the parish archive. Today it seems established that he was born in the parish of Faial, as will be explained more fully later. A native of the parish of Água de Pena is Canon Francisco Fulgêncio de Andrade, a doctor of the Pontifical University of Rome and currently a professor at the seminary of this city.