Arco de São Jorge (parish)

This small parish lies between the parishes (freguesias) of São Jorge (‘St George’) and Boaventura (‘good fortune’), about six kilometres from the parish church of the former and roughly two from the parish church of the latter.

The shape of the hills that surround it is explanation enough of the name it still bears. It belonged to the parish of São Jorge from the latter’s creation in 1517 until it was separated from it in 1676, and so it quite naturally took the name of Arco de São Jorge (‘arc of São Jorge’), which is much older than the date of its creation.

One of the first settlers of Madeira was Pedro Gomes Galdo, who held extensive lands by sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) in São Jorge and Boaventura, and it may be presumed that these included the land that later formed the parish of Arco de São Jorge. We cannot know when Arco began to be settled or when the clearing of its land began, but it seems to us that this would have been towards the end of the 15th century or in the first quarter of the 16th, and long before the creation of the parish of São Jorge.

On the spot now occupied by the locality (sítio) of Casais (‘hamlets’) there once stood a small chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pity (Nossa Senhora da Piedade). The year of its foundation is unknown, but we presume that it must date from the third or last quarter of the 16th century. It had its own chaplain, who performed the religious services there under the authority of the vicar of São Jorge. It was this chapel that served as the seat of the new parish, created by the diocesan prelate Dom António Teles da Silva under the authority granted by the royal decree (alvará régio) of Peter II of 28 December 1676.

Long before the parish was created, the chapel of Our Lady of Pity was already in a lamentable state of repair and threatening imminent ruin. Only ten years after the parish seat had been installed there, Bishop Dom Estêvão Brioso de Figueiredo, who visited it in person, ordered that the immediate construction of a new church be requested, because of the cramped dimensions of the small chapel, which he considered unfit to serve as the parish church. It was only half a century later, by order of the Council of the Exchequer (Conselho de Fazenda) of 18 January 1740, that the building of the new church was ordered. It was blessed on 19 March 1744 by the vicar of the time, Father Manuel da Costa.

We know that Fathers João Batista and José de Andrade were chaplains of the chapel of Our Lady of Pity before the parish was created, the latter priest being the first to serve there as parish priest. He was succeeded, as curates of souls, by Fathers Francisco da Costa, Francisco Manuel Pereira, Bartolomeu Marques Caldeira, Joaquim Baptista Catanho, Bernardo Ribeiro, etc.

This small parish is perhaps the most fertile in the whole of the north of the island. It produces every kind of crop, and its land is especially well suited to growing sugar cane. Its output would be greater, however, were it not short of irrigation water: a considerable part of its land is cultivated only with cereals and vegetables, and even then is left at the mercy of the rains. To remedy these drawbacks, it is essential to build a levada (irrigation channel) which, drawing its water at the locality (sítio) of Falca in the parish of Boaventura, would irrigate much land in this parish and also in Arco de São Jorge. The surveys and plans were drawn up more than thirty years ago, when the works were estimated at about thirty contos (one million réis) de réis. In the legislative session of 1890 the deputy Canon Feliciano João Teixeira championed this important improvement in the national parliament, but work never began, and the construction of the levada remained no more than a plan.

The fertility of the soil in this parish goes hand in hand with its healthiness and the mildness of its climate. The mortality rate is low, and there have been epidemics on this island, such as the cholera of 1856, that never reached it. The climate is among the gentlest and most temperate of the whole north coast; high mountains shelter the settlement from the harsh, biting winds of winter. This does not, however, rule out the appearance in this parish of common illnesses and even epidemic diseases, as happens everywhere. Thus we know that in 1768 a disease of an epidemic character raged there and claimed many victims. On that occasion the surgeon of the parish of Boaventura, António Rodrigues Seabra, rendered outstanding services, and the fabric fund of the parish church contributed substantial donations to combat the epidemic. In 1849, too, a disease then classified as diarrhoea broke out in this parish, killing many people, while countless individuals fell ill. The civil governor of the district at the time, the public-spirited Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) José Silvestre Ribeiro, went there in person, accompanied by two physicians and the necessary means to treat the sick, and the disease died out within a short time. (See Epocha Administrativa, vol. 2, p. 506 ff.)

The principal localities (sítios) of this parish are Igreja, Casais, Lagoa, Poços, Arco Pequeno and Quebrada. The last owes its name to the great landslide (quebrada) that came down there more than two centuries ago, when a great deal of land broke away, chiefly from Arco Pequeno, and gave rise to that locality. Such events are common in Madeira: the parish of Jardim do Mar (‘garden by the sea’), part of the parish of Paul, the locality of Lugar de Baixo (‘lower place’) and others besides were formed in the same way. At the Quebrada of Arco de São Jorge, however, a most singular circumstance occurred which deserves special mention. We have found several references to it, for instance in the Noticias Mineralogicas da Ilha da Madeira by Dr Pereira Drumond, published in 1818 in the Investigador Portuguez, and in other Portuguese and foreign authors, and these references tally perfectly with local tradition, which still preserves the account of the event intact. Interesting details of this extraordinary occurrence are found in a letter discovered in 1848 in the Public Library of Lisbon (Biblioteca Pública de Lisboa) by General António Pedro de Azevedo, of which some years ago a Funchal newspaper published the curious extract that we reproduce below (see Verdade, no. 944): ‘I send Your Honour this news because it is a marvellous event. Behind the island, at Arco de São Jorge, the greater part of which is an estate of my entail (morgado), the ground had for many years been split open by a great fissure. The land being very steep, with the heavy winter rains of this year, at midnight on Easter Day the earth slid in great quantity into the sea for about half a légua, pushing the boulders and shoals before it so gently that the houses, trees and vine trellises remained standing. In one house two casks of wine on their supports (canteiro, natural ageing of the wine in casks on wooden supports, without artificial heating) did not overturn, a beehive on a stone slab did not fall, and a hen sitting on her eggs, tied to the foot of a fig tree – all were found there with no change and no disturbance of the ground. It formed an island in the sea of some twenty moios of sowing land, which is joining up with this one. It made a beach with two fine harbours, which that part needed, for being a shoal nothing could be shipped there. Where the land slid away there remained a hollow, with a sheer cliff above and below a fajã (strip of flat land at the foot of a cliff) of excellent new land reaching down to join the part in the sea, where before there had been a very high cliff dropping to the sea. And it slid without a crash and without being felt, except by one man who, seeing it moving in the night, was struck by a seizure; it went like a boat being launched into the sea running over its slipway timbers. And the marvel is that for some days before, along the whole width of the land that slid, the tide neither rose nor fell for three days, and the sea lay as if dead, while on either side it ebbed and flowed with the usual waves of the northern sea.’

This took place in the year 1689, and if it occurred on Easter Sunday, as the letter states, it must have been on 20 April of that year.

The most distinguished son of this parish was António Gil Gomes, whom we shall discuss at greater length in the appropriate place. Also a native of the parish was António Januário Moderno, born on 25 February 1789, the son of Captain João Rodrigues Moderno and Dona Antónia da Incarnação Moderno. He was superintendent (provedor) of Machico, which then included the municipality (concelho) of Sant’Ana, and held other public offices. In his day he was famous throughout the island, not only for the gallant and hospitable way in which he received guests at his house in Arco, but above all for the herculean strength with which he was endowed; the many remarkable feats of strength and daring he performed made him feared and respected. In London, where he lived as a political exile, he also became known among his compatriots for his courage and the might of his arm. He died in Funchal on 11 October 1864. His son was Dr António Januário Moderno, who graduated in medicine from a foreign university and practised with great success and skill in the United States of America, where he made a large fortune. He too was a native of the parish of Arco de São Jorge. He spent almost his entire life away from Madeira, but died in this city some thirty years ago, shortly after returning to his native land. He had earned a reputation as a man of exceptional talent and an eminent physician. He died in Funchal, aged 67, on 11 February 1885.

The distinguished priest António Alexandrino de Vasconcelos was born in the parish of Boaventura in 1791, but lived for more than forty consecutive years in Arco de São Jorge, where he died in 1884. He was vicar general of the bishopric and held other important posts. In 1834 he accompanied the prelate Dom Francisco José Rodrigues de Andrade when the latter was forced into exile and set out for Italy. He was a churchman of remarkable intelligence and learning, and was regarded as a great authority on the various branches of Catholic liturgy.

The patron saint of this parish was Our Lady of Pity until 1744, when it became St Joseph, at the time the new church was built. By the papal briefs of 24 and 26 August 1784 the altar of the chancel was declared a privileged altar, and a plenary indulgence was granted, to be gained on the feast of St Joseph. We have found somewhere the curious information that the holder of the entail (morgado) Francisco Aurélio da Câmara Leme charged the third of his estate with a perpetual obligation to supply the oil needed to light the Blessed Sacrament in the church of Arco de São Jorge. His son and heir, the holder of the entail Francisco António da Câmara Leme, ratified and took on this obligation by a public deed executed on 18 February 1766, the charge falling ‘on the quinta (country estate) before Santo Amaro’.

Among the rural parishes of this island outside the municipal seats, Arco de São Jorge was until a few years ago the one with the lowest rate of illiteracy, which, as is well known, is so deeply and lamentably rooted here. This is owed to the zeal with which some parish priests provided primary teaching there. Special mention is due to Father Isílio Joaquim Vares, in the second quarter of the 19th century, and later to Fathers Emílio Marques da Silva, Francisco Manuel de Sousa, Francisco António de Abreu and Casimiro Augusto de Freitas. On 16 January 1886 the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) of Sant’Ana founded an official boys’ school in Arco de São Jorge, which has rendered valuable service there. Some years later this school was turned into a mixed school.

This parish belongs to the municipality of Sant’Ana and the judicial district (comarca) of São Vicente, whose seats lie about twelve and a half kilometres away. It is some forty-one kilometres from Funchal by the Poiso road, and thirty-seven by way of Curral das Freiras and Boaventura. Its population is 167 inhabitants. We cannot fail to mention that this parish was the birthplace of the celebrated popular troubadour Manuel Gonçalves, known as Manuel Feiticeiro, who died a few years ago. He travelled the whole island singing his naive poetic compositions, much loved by the crowds, who listened to him eagerly and enraptured and bought the dozens of pamphlets in which he collected and printed his countless, faulty songs.