Poor Souls (chapels)

In the angle formed halfway along the street that runs from the Convent of St Clare (Santa Clara) to the site where the convent of Our Lady of Ransom (Nossa Senhora das Mercês) once stood, a small and unusual chapel opens into the living rock. It is known as the Capela or Capelinha das Almas. That mass of basalt probably offered a hollow, or there may even have been a small grotto or cave there, which gave rise to the idea of building the chapel. Local tradition, however, tells a legend which, it seems to us, has also been used to explain similar buildings in other places and localities. It is said that a man sought a safe hiding place in a dense cane field that grew there, intending to murder a bitter enemy who was in the habit of passing that way at late hours. Night after night, and on successive days, he failed to carry out his wicked plan, because the intended victim always passed by in the company of other people. In the end the would-be killer resolved to abandon the idea that had obsessed him for so many days. When the man thus spared from his enemy’s savage fury later learned of the planned murder, he saw in it a clear miracle, since he had always passed that spot alone and entirely unaccompanied. He attributed his escape from becoming the innocent victim of that attack to the intervention of the souls in purgatory, to whom he had the most fervent devotion. From this arose the idea of building the chapel on the very spot where he believed the miracle had taken place. Major A. A. Sarmento used the subject of this legend for one of the chapters of his book Migalhas, introducing variants and episodes better suited to a romanticised treatment of the scene.

What we know for certain is that Roque José de Araujo, a native of Viana de Caminha who had lived in Funchal for many years, had the small chapel built in 1781. He dedicated it to the souls in purgatory and gave it the name of Almas Pobres (Poor Souls). As was customary, it was inspected by the competent ecclesiastical authority, and the corresponding record (auto) contains the following words: ‘... it measures from the door to the altar six palmos in depth and span, and in width nine palmos of span, and the length of the altar is the whole of it without a credence, the height is proportionate, covered with a vault. . and situated beneath the cliff and to all appearances sound’.

To provide for the upkeep of worship and the maintenance of the chapel, Roque José de Araujo granted it, by a public deed of 25 August 1781, a perpetual annual pension of five thousand réis, charged on a property he owned in Beco do Gongorra (‘Gongorra’s alley’), at Ponte Nova (‘new bridge’).

The chapel was blessed by the vicar of the parish (freguesia) of São Pedro, Francisco Xavier da Cunha, on [day missing] December 1783.

There was also a chapel called Almas Pobres in the parish of Santa Maria Maior (‘St Mary Major’), founded by Gonçalo Diniz da Silva around 1470. It no longer exists, and we do not know where it had been built.