Materials for Madeiran History

The most important and abundant repository of information and records bearing on the history of this archipelago is the archive of the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal). It holds a great many extremely valuable documents, above all from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and it is much to be regretted that almost all of them remain unpublished, except for those that Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo published in his learned annotations to the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra). Referring to this archive in the article ‘Madeira’ of the Diccionario Universal Português Illustrado, this distinguished teacher and lawyer says the following:

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The richest is that of the Municipal Council of Funchal, which has a well-compiled index in two large folio volumes entitled Indice Allphabetico dos tombos do Senado da Camara do Funchal, the work of António José de Jesus Lamedo (see that entry), doorkeeper and bookkeeper of the same Council, which runs up to 1794. This index is fundamental to the study of island history – not only Madeiran but also Azorean and Cape Verdean – and indeed of overseas history in general. The obscure author of this article has many times asked the said Council, in vain, to publish this precious and little-known manuscript, and he now takes the opportunity to repeat the request to the same Council and to make it to the government, to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon and to the worthy Geographical Society’.

The publication of the index compiled by Lamedo would no doubt be a valuable service to scholars and researchers of Madeiran history. The administrative bodies of this archipelago, however, ought to undertake a more complete work: the full publication of the oldest volumes of the Funchal Council archive, of many documents held in other archives, and also of various manuscripts in the hands of private individuals, some of which we shall mention in this article. Following the example of the Azoreans, we in Madeira should long ago have thought of publishing a journal of an essentially regional character, in which every item that could be gathered as indispensable material for the history of our archipelago would be recorded. Twelve thick volumes of the Archivo dos Açores were published between 1878 and 1894; publication resumed in 1906 and still continues, under the direction of the illustrious Azorean Colonel Francisco Afonso de Chaves. We should have done as much, if Madeirans had a clearer understanding of the value and usefulness of work of this kind.

Of the other municipal councils of the archipelago, that of Machico has the richest and most valuable archive, because it was the seat of a captaincy which, in the early days of colonisation, rivalled that of Funchal in importance and prosperity and, according to some, even surpassed it. The first volume of this archive is missing. According to Dr Rodrigues Azevedo it was the most precious, and after being officially requested many years ago by the civil government it never returned to where it came from. It has surely been lost for ever, for it could not be found in that department when the Machico Council reclaimed it, despite the efforts made to that end. The Municipal Council of Calheta (‘small cove’) also held important documents, among which there would certainly have been the record of the decree raising this place to the status of town (vila), whose exact date is unknown. However, a flood there around the middle of the 18th century completely destroyed the whole archive, and so the most precious materials for the history of that town and municipality were lost. We have not had the opportunity to examine the archives of the Councils of Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’) and Ponta do Sol (‘point of the sun’), but we are told that they contain documents worth consulting, of interest not only to the history of those places but to that of the whole archipelago. The archive of the Captaincy of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) and of its parish must also have been valuable, but the various pirate raids on that island, which more than once set fire to the council house and the parish church, completely destroyed all the documents there. The Anais of that municipality (concelho) record that the Council’s books were destroyed at the beginning of the 17th century and those of the parish archive in 1690.

The archive of the Civil Government of this district is also important and rich in documents of the 18th and 19th centuries. It seems to be a vein still little explored, and the annotator of the Saudades already cited said of it: ‘Some years ago it lay in a heap in an attic of the civil government building (Governo Civil) itself; the author of this article went there twice and, picking up some documents at random, saw that they dated from the reign of Maria I and concerned measures of importance for Madeiran history. Besides this old archive, the secretariat of the said government holds some register books from the mid-18th century, books in perfect condition, containing copies and extracts of interesting documents, of some of which the author of this article also obtained transcripts’.

The archive that lay in a heap in an attic, when the Civil Government department was still housed on the north floor of the customs house building, is undoubtedly the same one, or a considerable part of it, that the secretary-general Curado de Campos removed to the beach some thirty years ago. There he made an auto-da-fé of it, destroying in a few minutes many hundreds of documents that must have been of great interest to the history of our archipelago!

The archive of the episcopal chamber of this diocese ought to be very important, not only for the history of this bishopric but also for the history of our Church overseas. Funchal was the seat of our first overseas bishopric and also of our first archbishopric, which had four suffragan dioceses and whose jurisdiction extended as far as the Far East. Valuable documents must certainly have been archived there, but a fire in the bishop's palace (Paço Episcopal) in the third or last quarter of the 17th century destroyed them entirely.

Dr Azevedo described the archive of the cathedral chapter (Cabido) of Funchal Cathedral (the Sé) (Sé do Funchal) as rich, but today it has been stripped of its oldest and most important documents. Some twenty years ago a senior official of the Torre do Tombo (national archives) (Torre do Tombo) removed them to that institution on the orders of the central government. There they lie in a mare magnum of thousands of codices and loose documents, with no order or cataloguing whatsoever, and today it is absolutely impossible to consult them. It would have been better had they remained in the archive of the Cathedral (Sé Catedral), where they had been carefully kept for several hundred years.

The archives of the Military Command (Comando Militar) and of the customs house are worth consulting, although they lack the importance of those above and are confined to very narrow aspects of Madeiran history.

The old Crown Revenue Office (Provedoria) dated from the 15th century and, together with the customs house, formed a single department. Almost all matters concerning the supervision of taxes, the collection of many public levies and revenues, the creation of various posts and the appointment of officials, etc., passed through it. This department held a large and valuable register of thousands of documents, especially royal decrees and orders issued by the government in mainland Portugal. Today it would be a precious source of sound and authentic information on the public administration of this archipelago, and it is greatly to be regretted that it has been lost altogether. We know of it from the folio volume, which still exists, entitled Índex Geral do Registo da antiga Provedoria da Real Fazenda... desde o anno de 1419 até o de 1775, da extinção da mesma Provedoria. It shows that the register comprised twenty-four volumes of general records, besides the volumes of Titulos Reaes, Ordens do Erário and others. Reading this Index, which is useful and still provides quite valuable material for the history of this island, shows us the importance of that register and the irreparable gap its disappearance leaves today. The old Crown Revenue Office was replaced by the Royal Treasury Board (Junta da Real Fazenda), and of its archive Dr Azevedo reports that it ‘was some years ago, and we believe still is, in deplorable neglect; it was kept in a hovel, from which many arrobas of papers went astray’. Is this the archive of the old Crown Revenue Office referred to above? And where was it kept? We know nothing on the matter.

Also lost, or at least their fate is unknown to us, are the books of the Court of Residues and Chantries (Juízo dos Resíduos e Capelas). They contained the records of the old entails (instituições vinculares) with their pious obligations, the foundation of chantries (capelas), descriptions of the entailed lands (terras vinculadas), etc. All this would surely have made an abundant and most interesting store of information on a very important aspect of our history, especially as roughly two-thirds of the land of Madeira belonged to the countless entails and entailed estates that existed here.

The Anais do Municipio, which ought to be mentioned here, have already been dealt with in a separate article of this Elucidário. Likewise, under the title Arquivo da Marinha e Ultramar, we gave a detailed account of the precious collection of countless documents sent from Madeira to the government in mainland Portugal over a period of roughly two centuries.

Outside the public archives, the following manuscripts deserve special mention here as very valuable sources for the history of this archipelago:

The first is an 18th-century manuscript by an anonymous author, found among the papers of the late bishop of this diocese, Dom Patrício Xavier de Moura. It contains interesting information on the discovery, the early colonisation, the first donataries, etc., and ends with a detailed account of the descendants of João Gonçalves Zarco. The second, which dates from the beginning of the 19th century, was kept in the former secretariat of the seminary of this diocese. It deals chiefly with the creation of the diocese and of the various parishes, naming the enactments that established them, the stipends of the parish priests, ecclesiastical salaries, etc. It was one of the most valuable sources used by Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo in writing note XIX of ‘Longing for the Homeland’. The third, which we have already mentioned, was the work that supplied the most data for the preparation of the previous one, and the annotator of Gaspar Frutuoso seems not to have known of it. The fourth deals briefly with the bishops of this diocese and at considerable length with the episcopal administration of the prelate Dom João do Nascimento, who died in 1753; the information in this manuscript ends in that year. The fifth came from the pen of the learned priest Father António Gomes Neto and was written around the middle of the 19th century. It holds interesting information of an ecclesiastical nature, and also contains much information on the customs house, the creation of various public offices, etc., with valuable comments, though not always acceptable ones, shaped by the political ideas the author professed. It seems to us to be a different work from those cited in the notes to ‘Longing for the Homeland’. All these manuscripts were published in large part in the former Heraldo da Madeira, thanks to the efforts of one of the authors of this Elucidário, who was then an editor of that newspaper. However, not only did the proofreading leave much to be desired, with many errors and slips, above all in dates and personal names, that need correcting, but there are also great gaps and shortcomings in the transcriptions made there, in the division of the material, etc. All this calls for a new and more careful publication, to which some explanatory notes on the text should be added.

The sixth and last manuscript is the work of Henrique Henriques de Noronha, of which the Diccionario Bibliographico says the following: ‘Manuscript in folio of 225 leaves, with an additional Appendix of 34 leaves. This autograph manuscript, said to be a complete work of Madeiran History, was bought some years ago in Lisbon, by weight, by a person who keeps it in his possession.’ Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo refers several times to Henriques de Noronha’s study. At first he supposed it to be the same as the work we have listed above as number 2, but later he stated that the two manuscripts were entirely different; and finally, in the article in the Diccionario Universal Português Illustrado, he again maintained that the Memorias sobre a criação e augmento do Estado Eclesiastico and Noronha’s Memórias... are one and the same work. Some years ago the distinguished researcher and our fellow Madeiran Dr Jordão de Freitas told us that he had had occasion to examine Henrique Henriques’s manuscript in Lisbon. We have just been informed that Dr Manuel Monteiro Velho Arruda, who lives in Vila Franca do Campo on the island of São Miguel, owns this much-vaunted historical work and will shortly publish it; that will be the moment for all the doubts raised about it to be entirely dispelled. Among the old writings that have been lost altogether, special mention is due to the one cited in no. 2 of the newspaper Flor do Oceano, of the year 1834: ‘The second most important work of which we have knowledge is the one entitled Memorias authenticas e curiosas da ilha da Madeira, a manuscript in seven large folio volumes, composed by Father Manuel Carlos de Vasconcellos, beneficed cleric (beneficiado) of the parish of Nossa Senhora do Calhau. This interesting collection passed, so we are told, together with Canon Leite’s pamphlet, into the hands of Father J. L. de N., and contains interesting documents relating to the island, from its discovery up to the period when the British troops under the command of Marshal Beresford took possession of it.’ It seems to us that the initials J. L. N. are meant to designate the canon and archdeacon of Funchal Cathedral (the Sé), José Luís de Nóbrega, who died around the middle of the 19th century. Another writing that has likewise gone astray is the one mentioned in the already cited article ‘Madeira’ in the Diccionario Universal Português, in the following terms: ‘The same happened with the manuscript of a historical and statistical work on the island of Madeira by the ill-fated and talented Madeiran writer Januário Justiniano de Nóbrega, for which he was paid from the funds of the Council of Funchal, to which it therefore belongs: the writer of these lines possesses fragments of the draft of the work and the authentic document of the payment order for its price.’

The Madeiran books of nobility also provide some information that may be of interest to the history of the archipelago, but we shall deal with them in a separate article.

Of the printed works, by far the most important and valuable is the well-known work of Dr Gaspar Frutuoso, which Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo enriched with the learned annotations he added to it, turning it into a truly monumental work. It will be the subject of an article at the appropriate place in this Elucidário.

It is worth mentioning here that the Historical Archive of Madeira (Arquivo Histórico da Madeira) was created in July 1931. The following year it was provisionally housed in one of the rooms of the palace of the District General Council (Junta Geral do Distrito), where the various departments of the Diocesan Seminary operate today (1940). In 1933 the Historical Archive was transferred to the Palácio de São Pedro (‘St Peter’), where it is now permanently established, answering technically and administratively to the Directorate-General of Archives and Libraries (Direcção Geral dos Arquivos e Bibliotecas). Several thousand codices and documents scattered among various archives and public offices have been incorporated into it, making it the richest and most valuable repository of material for the history of this archipelago. It directs the important publication Arquivo Histórico da Madeira (‘Historical Archive of Madeira’), of which six volumes have already appeared; it contains valuable material and most interesting information, and has today become indispensable to researchers of Madeiran history. It is regrettable that publication has not begun of the index of the documents in the municipal archive compiled by António José de Lamedo, to which we refer above. This publication has long been desired, and as early as 1873 the illustrious commentator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ considered it absolutely essential that it be carried out without delay.

Prominent among this valuable documentation are the precious holdings of the Funchal municipal archive, referred to above, of which a brief but interesting catalogue or inventory, well worth consulting by scholars, can be found in the six published volumes of the Arquivo Histórico da Madeira. It hardly needs saying that the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo, the richest, most abundant and most select collection of manuscripts in our country, also holds a vast and valuable body of documents concerning every subject that may be of interest to the Madeira archipelago. This precious seam remains almost entirely unexplored, and there is not yet even a brief inventory of the documents relating to this island that might guide any scholar wishing to undertake particular historical research. Meanwhile, we note here an article published in the Diário da Madeira of 21 December 1933, which gives a detailed account of many collections of documents of great use to researchers. No less useful is a reading of the articles in the aforementioned volumes of the Arquivo Histórico da Madeira on the manuscripts in the Torre do Tombo (national archives) relating to the affairs of the Madeiran archipelago.

We should record here the welcome news that a manuscript copy of the Memórias of Henrique Henriques de Noronha, referred to above, exists in the Municipal Library. It was taken from the original, which is kept in the Public Library (Biblioteca Pública de Ponta Delgada) of the city of Ponta Delgada.