Câmara de Lobos (parish)

When the discoverers of Madeira, leaving their ships at anchor in the bay of Machico, began to explore the coast, they reached on the first day the point of the shore to which they later gave the name Câmara de Lobos (‘seals’ den’). This is what Gaspar Frutuoso says on the matter, word for word:

“

As João Gonçalves continued his discovery in the manner described above, going in his ship’s boats with his company, they saw between two headlands a mighty and great stream flowing into the sea. Some young men from Lagos asked leave to go ashore and see the stream, which seemed wide and pleasant. The captain stayed in the boat with the others and had them put ashore by the boat of Álvaro Afonso. Once on land, they attempted to cross the stream by swimming; but it was swollen with water and ran to the sea with such force and fury that they fell into the current and the stream carried them away. They would have been in grave danger had the captain not shouted from the sea to the boat of Álvaro Afonso, in which they had gone and which was at the shore with its men, telling them to hurry to the young men’s aid. At his cries the young men were rescued and freed from the danger of the water, which pleased the captain, for he held them dear. And from this came the name by which it is called to this day, Ribeira dos Socorridos [the Stream of the Rescued], which seemed worse to those young men close at hand than it had first seemed to them from afar.',

‘From here they went further on until they came upon a slender cliff, like a low point, which runs far out into the sea; and between this cliff and another lies an arm of calm sea, where nature has made a great cave, like a chamber of stone and living rock. Here they went in with the boats and found so many sea wolves that it was a wonder; and it was no small refreshment and pastime for the men, for they killed many of them and had great pleasure and merriment in the slaughter. For this reason Captain João Gonçalves named this cove Câmara de Lobos [Chamber of Wolves], from which he took his surname, as it was the last part he discovered on this round and journey that he made; and from this place he took his arms, which the King gave him on his return to the kingdom, as I shall relate further on.’

To the statement in the Saudades that they attempted to cross the stream by swimming, Dr Álvaro de Azevedo very judiciously observes:

“

The Ribeira dos Socorridos cannot be crossed by swimming, because in summer it has too little water, and when it is full, in the winter storms, it is so violent and carries so many and such large stones that no one would dare to face its current, and anyone who tried would die there. In the season to which the text refers, this stream could have been forded. Might the autograph, then, have the word nado (vado, in the Latin manner) for vau? [TN: nado means ‘swimming’; vau and Latin vadum mean ‘ford’.]

One cannot but accept the explanation of this learned annotator, which seems to be the only true one.

The origin of the name of this parish, on which all the old chronicles agree, lies in the encounter with the seals, or sea wolves, as Frutuoso relates in the words transcribed above.

When João Gonçalves Zarco, having settled in Funchal, undertook a fresh exploration of the lands of his captaincy, he came to a small rise overlooking the bay of Câmara de Lobos. There he marked out the foundation of a church dedicated to the Holy Spirit, which he had built at his own expense.

The parish (freguesia) of Câmara de Lobos is one of the oldest on this island, and its creation dates back to the beginning of the second quarter of the 15th century, around 1430. The seat of the new parish was the chapel of Espírito Santo (Holy Spirit), and it was later transferred to the church of St Sebastian. Around 1720 the chapel founded by Zargo, which was then in an advanced state of ruin, was rebuilt, and in 1908 major repairs were carried out there, as well as on the small house adjoining it. Although perhaps nothing now remains of the original building, this chapel is nonetheless a small historic monument for the municipality (concelho) and parish of Câmara de Lobos. It recalls the name of the discoverer of Madeira, who had it built, and it was also the seat where the parish was established at the time of its creation. We do not know when the church of St Sebastian was built, nor when the seat of the parish was transferred to it. We believe, however, that we are not far from the truth in stating that both took place at the beginning of the 16th century, and that in the last quarter of the following century the church was enlarged and the bell tower built. Around the middle of the 18th century very important works were carried out on the same church by order of the Council of the Treasury (Conselho da Fazenda), which on this occasion contributed 291,000 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis) towards a bell of 24 arrobas and 620,000 réis for vestments.

The parish priest originally received an annual stipend (côngrua) of 3,300 réis in cash, 4 moios of wheat and 2 pipas of wine. Under the royal decree (alvará) of 8 May 1591 this became 11,000 réis in cash, 4 moios of wheat and 2 pipas of wine, a salary that in the course of time received further and larger increases. We have been unable to obtain any information about the first priests who performed parish duties there, but we know that in the period from 1570 to 1680 the parish priests of Câmara de Lobos were Fathers Manuel Rodrigues, Belchior Drumond, Diogo Nunes, Gaspar Luís, Francisco de Aguiar, Pero Ferreira, Luís da Cunha, António de Novais Ferreira, Bernardino Teles de Meneses, Pedro do Rego Machado, José Pinheiro Taveira and Inácio Alves de Carvalho.

By a royal letter (carta régia) of King Sebastian dated 5 November 1576, the bishop of this diocese, Dom Jerónimo Barreto, was authorised to create a curacy (curato) in the parish church of Câmara de Lobos. At first it was a confirmed post, but by a royal decree of 26 February 1577 it became removable ‘because it is expedient to the service of God’. It carried an annual stipend of 18,000 réis, with the obligation of serving as a beneficed cleric (beneficiado) of the collegiate church.

The parish of Câmara de Lobos was the seat of one of the nine collegiate churches (see that entry) in this diocese, all of which were abolished shortly before 1834. The collegiate church of this parish was created in the third quarter of the 16th century and had, besides the vicar and the assistant priest (coadjutor), three beneficed clerics, a treasurer and a preacher. In 1676 the three posts of beneficed clerics were abolished, and their revenues were assigned to fund the vicarage of Serra de Água and the curacies of Estreito de Câmara de Lobos and Arco da Calheta, which were created in the same year.

Câmara de Lobos was one of the first places in Madeira to be put under cultivation immediately after the discovery. Many people from mainland Portugal, the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), settled there, raised families and founded large lines of descendants. Several people of noble origin held extensive lands by sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) and founded their entails and entailed estates there. Among them we may mention João Afonso (see that entry), a companion of Zarco, and João Caldeira the Elder, who gave his name to the locality still called Caldeira (‘cauldron’) today. Later João Salviati (see that entry), the founder of the Florença family, also held sesmaria grants there, as did João Saraiva, who gave his name to the locality that still bears his surname; Brás Gil de Faria, who had lands on the right bank of the Ribeira da Caixa (‘box stream’); Diogo Lopes da Estacada, who owned much land in the locality of Torre (‘tower’) that passed to the Correia family; and also Álvaro Figueira, among others. When we deal specifically with the chapels of this diocese, we shall name the founders of the many that existed in this parish, almost all of which were entailed foundations (instituição vincular, a morgado or capela) and the seats of various entailed estates.

It was perhaps the parish in Madeira with the greatest number of chapels. Those of São Bernardino, Espírito Santo, Nossa Senhora da Boa Hora, Jesus-Maria-José, Our Lady of Nazaré, Our Lady of Prayers, Our Lady of the Good Death, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, São Francisco, Our Lady of Pity, Nossa Senhora da Fátima and Nossa Senhora das Dores in the cemetery still exist today, while those of Our Lady of Bethlehem, São João and São Cândido, and others besides, have disappeared.

This parish was once home to the convent of Franciscan nuns of St Bernardino (São Bernardino). What remains is the old church, completely restored a few years ago, and some outbuildings, which housed a Minor Diocesan Seminary in the academic years from 1831 to 1833. It was then closed and incorporated into the Seminary of the Encarnação (Seminário da Encarnação; Incarnation).

On 4 March 1929, near the mouth of the Ribeira do Vigário, a great landslide fell into the sea. As the waves drew back, they violently swept away twenty people who were in the bed of the stream, and they lost their lives there.

Natives of this parish included Henrique Henriques de Noronha, genealogist (1667–1730); João Pedro de Freitas Pereira Drumond, lawyer and journalist (1760–1825); Francisco da Silva Barradas, lawyer and writer (1835–....); Father Dr José Gonçalves de Aguiar, theologian (1831–1895); and Joaquim Pestana, poet (1840–1909).

The convent of São Bernardino, to which we shall devote a separate article, stood in this parish. In it lived, in an eminent degree of holiness, the Franciscan friar Friar Pedro da Guarda, known as the Holy Servant of God, of whom we shall speak at greater length in the proper place.

This parish is one of the most important fishing centres in the archipelago, with some hundreds of people engaged in the arduous work of fishing. A considerable number of them live in a small quarter commonly known as Ilhéu, in sanitary conditions that leave much to be desired. Nevertheless, it is said that during the cholera epidemic of 1856 the disease never reached Ilhéu, which led the parish priest of the time to remark that the epidemic could not contend with the lack of cleanliness and hygiene in that quarter. Worship in the chapel of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception was maintained by the fishermen, and an old set of statutes (compromisso) of their confraternity contained certain clauses on the assistance to be given to its members in sickness and infirmity, amounting to a kind of mutual aid, which was highly praiseworthy.

If Madeira produces the most precious and celebrated wine in the world, it is in Câmara de Lobos that the vineyards supplying the raw material for that wine are found. It is one of the areas of the island where the land is best used for farming, and viticulture stands out above all other crops. The particular qualities of the soil, the climate, the good exposure and the shelter from the winds certainly contribute greatly to the wine of this parish being generally regarded as superior to that of the island’s other parishes, and to its fetching a more rewarding price on the market.

The mining engineer Eugenio Ackermann, in his book entitled L’ile de Madère considerée au point de vue scientifique et economique, published in 1910, states that he found in the locality of Ribeira da Alforra in this parish an iron ore of some importance, of which he made a summary analysis and to which he devotes several pages. Although E. Ackermann does not enjoy great scientific standing, what he says on this subject in the said work is nonetheless of interest.

The porous basalt that lends itself to working by the stonemason, known here as cantaria rija (hard dressed stone of vesicular basalt), is plentiful in some parts of this parish. It is widely quarried to make jambs, lintels and sills for doors and windows, stair treads, cornerstones, etc., which are extensively used in Madeiran buildings and houses.

The most notable localities of this parish are: Vila, Ilhéu, Espírito Santo e Calçada, Palmeira e Voltas, Pé do Pico, Serrado da Adega, Torre, Aldeia, Quinta do Leme, Saraiva, Jesus-Maria-José, Ribeiro Leal, Lourencinha, Panasqueira, Fajã, Caminho Grande e Preces, Ribeira da Caixa, Heras, Garachico, Nogueira, Caminho Grande e Ribeiro da Alforra, Pedregal, Ribeiro da Alforra e Fonte do Garcia, Rancho, Caldeira, Cruz da Caldeira e Facho and Fontainhas do Mar.

The parish of Câmara de Lobos is bounded to the north by the parish of Estreito de Câmara de Lobos, to the south by the ocean, to the east by the parishes of São Martinho and Santo António, and to the west by the parish of Quinta Grande.

Four main levadas (irrigation channels) water this parish: the Levada das Preces, the Levada do Castanheiro and the Levada da Serra, which rise in Estreito de Câmara de Lobos, and the Levada Nova, which has its source in Curral das Freiras.

This parish has more than 9,000 inhabitants, although the last census (that of 1911) records only 7,810. Despite this population, it has only two state schools, one for each sex. The parish is linked to the city of Funchal by the best road on the island, a little over 9 kilometres long.

The poet Joaquim Pestana, whom we shall discuss elsewhere, was born in this parish.