Angústias (cemetery)

In 1662 Diogo da Costa Quintal founded, on land belonging to his entailed estate (morgadio), the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows (Nossa Senhora das Angústias), which gave its name to the street that ran close by and also to the surrounding locality (sítio). We cannot say today with certainty whether the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows that stands on the quinta (country estate) of the same name (Quinta Lambert) is a reconstruction of the old chapel of the same dedication, nor whether the entailed property of Diogo da Costa Quintal perhaps lay there. We are, however, inclined to think so. It was in this locality of Angústias that the bishop of this diocese, Dom Joaquim de Meneses e Ataíde, while president (provedor) of the Holy House of Mercy (Santa Casa da Misericórdia), to which he rendered the most distinguished services, had a small cemetery built in 1818. It was intended exclusively for the burial of the bodies of those who died in the Hospital of St Elizabeth of Portugal, and stood on land belonging to João de Carvalhal, who had given it free of charge for this purpose. When a law prohibited burials in churches, the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal) obtained from the Holy House of Mercy the transfer of the small Angústias cemetery and asked João de Carvalhal, by then a count, to sell the adjoining land so that the cemetery could be enlarged. This nobleman promptly and generously offered the municipality all the land that might be needed for the planned enlargement, and informed the Council of this in a letter dated 8 July 1836.

Work on building the new cemetery began at once and was completed in May 1838. On 8 July of that year the cemetery was solemnly blessed by 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, in a ceremony of the greatest splendour and solemnity. The chapel was built some years later. The work of construction and decoration was completed in November 1844, and the chapel was blessed on 15 December of that year by the diocesan bishop, Dom José Xavier de Cerveira e Sousa.

The cemetery’s paths were laid out later and in successive stages, the most recent having been made only a few years ago. The oldest, planned from the outset, is the one that runs round the whole cemetery alongside the boundary walls, with the exception of the central walk, which belongs to the original construction. The wooden door that closes the inner entrance of the cemetery came from the Convent of São Francisco (St Francis of Assisi).

The church of this convent was the true necropolis of the old Madeiran nobility. Many families had their family vaults there, some of them of fine and costly marble. When the convent and church were demolished in 1865 so that a building intended as the town hall could be put up on the site, the tombstone covering the mortal remains of the founder was removed from inside the church and placed in the Angústias cemetery, and many bones exhumed during that demolition were laid beneath it. In the centre of the tombstone this epitaph was written: ‘Vault of the bones exhumed from the former convent and church of São Francisco (to which the original inscription refers), transferred on 2 May 1865.’ The original inscription carved around the edge of the stone reads: ‘Here lies Lois Álvares da Costa, who founded this house in the year 1473, and his son Francisco Álvares da Costa, first ouvidor and overseer of the royal treasury (vedor da fazenda) in these islands of Madeira.’ There are many private vaults and mausoleums in this cemetery, the most prominent being the one belonging to the Carvalhal family. When a man took his own life in this city on 4 March 1877, the episcopal authority – at that time the prelate Dom Manuel Agostinho Barreto, who had arrived in Funchal and taken over the government of the diocese only a few days earlier – refused him church burial. Despite the prelate’s ruling, the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) ordered the suicide to be buried in the section reserved for Catholics, whereupon the diocesan bishop placed the cemetery under interdict by a warrant (provisão) of 16 March 1877. The prelate addressed the matter with remarkable boldness from the pulpit of the Cathedral (Sé Catedral) in a vehement sermon that became memorable. The affair was taken up by the press, which discussed it at length, each paper according to its own opinions. On this subject an interesting pamphlet entitled A Sepultura Eclesiástica e os Suicidas, written by Dr Cassiano Neves, was published in Porto; its chief aim was to rebut the claims of the newspaper A Lei (‘The Law’), then published in Funchal.

The Angústias cemetery holds the mortal remains of many distinguished Madeirans and also of others born outside Madeira, among whom we may mention Marceliano Ribeiro de Mendonça, Dean António Joaquim Gonçalves de Andrade, Dr António da Luz Pita, José António Monteiro Teixeira, the Count of Canavial, the Viscountess of Nogueiras, the Count and Countess of Carvalhal, Bishop Dom Manuel Agostinho Barreto, Canon Dr Augusto Frederico Castilho, etc., etc.

Within the grounds of this cemetery a fine monument was recently erected to commemorate the barbarous attack by German submarines, which bombarded the city of Funchal. It is dedicated in a very special way to perpetuating the memory of the dozens of victims of German ferocity who rest there, and whom a happy and pious initiative did not wish future generations to forget. On 3 December 1917, the first anniversary of that sorrowful and tragic event, the monument was unveiled after a religious service in the Cathedral. The ceremony was particularly splendid, and several speakers gave eloquent and patriotic speeches on the tribute about to be paid to those poor victims of German barbarity. The monument, which stands to the right of the cemetery entrance, is the work of the chisel of the prize-winning sculptor Francisco Franco and owes its existence to the praiseworthy initiative of the banker Henrique Vieira de Castro. He not only opened the subscription to pay for it with a generous donativo (nominally a ‘gift’ to the Crown; a compulsory war levy), but also promoted all the work from the start of construction to its final unveiling. The tomb-monument, which was entrusted to the care and upkeep of the Funchal Municipal Council, cost approximately two contos de réis (conto: one million réis) (see Bombardment of Funchal).