Espírito Santo (festivities)

The great festivities once held on Whit Sunday (the Sunday of the Espírito Santo, the Holy Spirit) have been much reduced. Nevertheless, in many parishes (freguesias) they still retain a certain splendour: the impérios are showily decorated, and after the religious ceremonies a meal and a complete suit of clothes are given to twelve poor people. If the gifts of the faithful for the festivities have been plentiful, other poor people also receive alms, often in the form of cotton cloth, chintz, etc. Each parish has a committee, always appointed in agreement with the parish priest, whose task is to raise the means needed to hold the festivities of the Espírito Santo.

The committee we have mentioned can be recognised, when on duty, by the red capes of its members, one of whom carries the crown, another the sceptre, another the flag and a fourth the processional banner. A few players of the machete (small Madeiran four-stringed guitar) and the viola (Portuguese wire-strung folk guitar) accompany the committee, and it is often joined by several girls dressed in a special way, who are called saloias. The men and girls sing religious hymns in the houses they enter to ask for alms, and it is not unusual for the committee members to finish their day’s work somewhat drunk, owing to the generous way in which the faithful of the parish usually receive them.

In the impérios of former times there was always an emperor, or divine emperor, who was crowned on Trinity Sunday. This figure, however, disappeared throughout the island about forty years ago, although the crown still features in the festivities of the Espírito Santo. The emperor was the man who had carried the sceptre the previous year, and after his election it was the custom, at least in certain places, for those present to address to him the following quatrain, which had its own music:

In some parishes it is the custom for the organisers of the festivities to send tickets to the wealthier or more prominent people of the locality. If they accept and pay for them, they have the right to distribute them afterwards to the poor under their protection, so that these may receive alms on the day of the Império or after it has taken place.

Many gifts in kind obtained by the committees we have spoken of are usually sold or raffled, so that the proceeds can go towards the expenses of the império and the festivities. The carrying of the bread and produce to the site of the império is a ceremony that in some places has a certain splendour, and on the day of the festival it is customary for the celebrant to bless the bread for the meal that is served to the poor shortly afterwards.

In the Fastos Açoreanos of Mr José de Torres we read the following on the subject of the festivities of the Holy Spirit (Espírito Santo): ‘No one is a better custodian of good things than the common people, just as no one is more inclined to corrupt or distort many things that were excellent in their beginnings. There is no institution that does not tend to be corrupted by abuse. So it was with the brotherhoods known as those of the Holy Spirit, and with the public festivities they promote, once they passed into the hands of the people.’

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Severe famines in the German states led one of the emperors of the dynasty, Otto, to lay the foundations of this institution as a bank formed from alms to relieve the poor in years of want. From the divinity they invoked and from the ruler who had taken the initiative arose the religious festivities which the imperial confraternity (confraria) dedicated to the worship of the Holy Spirit at this season of the year. This devotion and custom spread from there through the states of Christian Europe, whose kings led the work, civilising and humanitarian in its way, until the people usurped their privilege and seized the pious institution...

The festivities of the Holy Spirit, although far less showy in Madeira than in the Azores, still have a certain splendour in some parishes. The people never refuse their mite for these festivities, in which, alongside the edifying splendour of the religious ceremonies, there appear the impérios and the bodos (communal meals), from which the poor of the locality always benefit.

In the 18th century, as we read in the Breve e verdadeira demonstração dos princípios e progressos do governo que João Antonio de Pereira fez na Ilha da Madeira, impérios were held ‘in every street of the city’, with ‘gluttony and drunkenness’. Today, however, such festivities take place only near the parish churches, and they have largely lost the carnivalesque and at times rather unseemly character they showed in other periods.