St Francis in Funchal (convent)

The Franciscan friars first settled in modest lodgings with a small adjoining chapel, which they built on the spot where the chapel of São João (‘St John’) now stands, on the right bank of the stream of the same name. They remained there for some years until, around 1459, they abandoned the site and left for mainland Portugal, where they established a community at Xabregas, on the outskirts of Lisbon. (See Seraphic Order).

Around 1476 the Franciscan Friar Rodrigo de Arruda arrived in Funchal with some companions. They occupied the hospice of São João and organised a small religious community there, under a brief granted by Pope Sixtus IV in 1476. Taking advantage of the goodwill of the inhabitants of the town (vila), Friar Rodrigo set about building a convent in the centre of the settlement, on land belonging to Clara Esteves, who in her will had entailed it in favour of her kinsman João do Porto. In exchange, the friars gave up their hospice of São João and also undertook to celebrate an annual sung Mass on All Saints’ Day. All this was authorised by the Infanta Dona Beatriz, as guardian of her son Diogo, Duke of Viseu, Grand Master of the Order of Christ (Ordem de Cristo), to which this island belonged. ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) states that the reason for the move was ‘because the place was deserted and in it a friar, at the prompting of the Devil, who always weaves such webs, hanged himself, these friars established a house below, in the town of Funchal, on grounds and lands opposite Santa Catarina, beyond the stream, where now (1590) stands one of the finest houses of this order that the Province has in Portugal; which convent is of the Observance, as sumptuous as it is cool, in which there are always nearly fifty friars, very learned, religious men of virtue and example, as much as can be found in the world’.

Clara Esteves was not the foundress of this convent, as some have wrongly supposed, for she had already died by the date of its foundation. It was the first administrator (administrador do concelho, government-appointed head of the municipality) of the entail she had established who made the exchange with the Franciscans, and he too contributed nothing whatever to the foundation. The true founders of this monastic house, modest in its origins and only later an important friary, were Luís Álvares da Costa and his son Álvaro da Costa, in the year 1473. This is shown by the inscription in Gothic letters on their tombstone, which was removed in 1865 to the Angústias cemetery (see that entry), where it still lies today. On this gravestone one reads: Here lies Luís Álvares da Costa, who founded this house in the year 1473, and his son Francisco Álvares da Costa, first magistrate (ouvidor) and overseer of the royal treasury (vedor da fazenda) in these islands of Madeira.

The land that had belonged to Clara Esteves was enlarged by a large kitchen garden which Maria de Atouguia, the founder’s granddaughter, had left to the Franciscan friars in her will.

The convent originally had a small church, which was later enlarged and rebuilt. The rebuilt church was consecrated on 4 March 1554 by the Spanish bishop Dom Sancho Truxillo, who had come to exercise episcopal functions temporarily on this island. Around 1578 the convent and church underwent further major repairs and new additions, when the Franciscan Friar Diogo Nabo was guardian. It is to this period that the following words of Frutuoso refer: ‘... it has a very splendid church... in which there are eight very rich chapels and... large convent grounds... ’.

Although this church was not small, it was considered too cramped for the religious life of the community, which had grown considerably, for the great numbers of the faithful and also for the building of new mausoleums and private tombs. It was therefore demolished in 1780, and a new and spacious church was raised on the same site.

The church was a large building of fine and solid construction, whose interior had not yet been entirely finished. It had stood for only three-quarters of a century when the demolition hammer brought it to the ground, and it was still in an excellent state of preservation, apart from the damage that the weather and the neglect it had suffered since 1834 would inevitably have caused.

Its preservation was imperative. If there was no need to use it for worship, it ought to have been given over to our art museum. Small provincial towns, far inferior to ours in population and in importance of every kind, have one. Modest, certainly, but it would have been the little museum of an island lost in the middle of the ocean. Countless objects that could and should have been displayed there have gone astray and been lost. The church of São Francisco was, as is well known, the true pantheon of a large number of the most distinguished and ancient families of this archipelago. Almost all of them had their burial vaults and mausoleums there, some of them of rich and beautiful marble. Today it fills us with real astonishment, and with a legitimate indignation, that the representatives of those families, and therefore the owners of those sarcophagi, allowed the destruction of what should have been, for them, a sacred necropolis.

The convent, which was old and badly dilapidated, and the church attached to it served as a hospital, a prison, a barracks, a court and an asylum. By decree of 7 November 1844 they were granted to the Municipal Council of Funchal (Câmara Municipal do Funchal) for the construction of a building to house the law courts. At the time, not even an attempt was made to carry out this idea.

In 1864 the Funchal Council resolved to hold a competition for the design and estimate of a building to accommodate the courts of justice, the municipal offices, and the administration and tax office of the municipality (concelho). It chose the convent grounds of São Francisco as the most suitable site for its construction.

The laying of the foundation stone of the new town hall was an occasion of the greatest solemnity. On 11 March 1866 a splendid procession left the Cathedral (Sé Catedral), headed by Dom Patrício Xavier de Moura, the diocesan prelate, and joined by the Municipal Council, the senior authorities of the district, public officials and other official bodies. All made their way to the convent grounds of São Francisco, where, before an enormous crowd, the cornerstone was laid of the building, whose construction would never rise above its foundations. Besides coins of the day, a metal plaque was placed in the cornerstone, engraved with the following inscription: Senatus Funchalensis Hanc Sibi Curam Suis Sumptibus Aedificavit Qua in Eademn et Jus Dicatur Hunc Lapidem in Hujus Optatissimi Operis Auspicium D. Patritius Xavier de Moura regnante Ludovic. I Die Quinto Idus Martius Anno MDCCCLXVI Adstante Eodem Senatu et omnibus Provinciae Magistra Magnae Civium Corona Deum Rite Precatus (The Senate of Funchal built this house for itself at its own expense, in which justice might also be administered. Dom Patrício Xavier de Moura, in the reign of Luís I, on the fifth day before the Ides of March in the year 1866, in the presence of the same Senate and all the magistrates of the province and a great crowd of citizens, having duly prayed to God, laid this stone as an auspice of this most desired work)

Posuit.

The church and the convent were demolished. The people of Madeira did not look kindly on the razing of the church, and at times the political parties exploited this, waving it as a political banner against their opponents.

As we have already said, and as everyone knows, the planned town hall never rose above its foundations, and several contos de réis (conto: one million réis) were buried there to no purpose.

The council house could have been built, standing near the church, and the church too could have been preserved to serve as a Catholic place of worship or as a museum, for there was ample room for these and yet other buildings.

As is well known, the former convent and church of São Francisco occupied the ground that today forms the Jardim Municipal (‘municipal garden’), the streets Rua Hermenegildo Capelo, Rua Serpa Pinto and Rua Conselheiro José Silvestre Ribeiro, and the space on which the Teatro Manuel de Arriaga (‘Manuel de Arriaga Theatre’) stands. The streets flanking the Jardim Municipal, with the exception of Rua de São Francisco, were built after the suppression of the religious orders, that is, after 1834.