Fonseca (Dr José Maria Martiniano da)

Anyone moderately versed in the history of our country knows that on 7 May 1829 ten men, victims of the intolerance of the Miguelite (supporter of the absolutist King Miguel) government, were executed in the Praça Nova of the city of Porto. Among them was the Madeiran Dr José Maria Martiniano da Fonseca, as we have already mentioned in the article devoted to Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) José Ferreira Pestana.

We know little of the life of Dr Martiniano da Fonseca, and had it not been for his tragic death, his name might well have remained entirely unknown to us. He was born in the parish (freguesia) of the Sé in this city on 16 October 1794, the son of José Maria da Fonseca, inspector-general of Agriculture, and of Dona Ricarda Umbelina Spinosa. He graduated in law from the University of Coimbra (Universidade de Coimbra) and practised as a lawyer in Funchal.

A revolutionary junta had been formed in the city of Porto to fight the Miguelite usurpation, and the governor and captain-general of Madeira, José Lúcio Travassos Valdez, wished to join the movement it had launched and to communicate with it directly. For this he needed a capable and wholly trustworthy person who could fully carry out the important and dangerous mission he was about to entrust to him. The choice fell on Dr José Maria da Fonseca, who left Funchal aboard an American ship on 30 June 1829 and entered Porto on the 13th of the following month, by which time the government of Miguel I had already been recognised in that city. The position of the Madeiran governor’s emissary was critical. When he tried to approach the high court judge (desembargador) Caldeira Velez, secretary of the revolutionary Junta, he was arrested on suspicion and taken to the prisons of the High Court of Appeal (Relação). A search of his lodgings and the papers found there, which were the correspondence of Travassos Valdez, turned those suspicions into certainty.

Dr José Martiniano da Fonseca was now irretrievably lost. After nine months in prison he was tried together with other defendants, and on 9 April 1829 sentence was pronounced, condemning ten of them to the ultimate penalty and others to various punishments. The iniquitous and revolting sentence was carried out on 7 May of that year. Two gallows were erected in the square of the Praça Nova, and there the ten defendants suffered capital punishment, Dr José Martiniano da Fonseca being the eighth to climb the steps of the gallows. To carry out the sentence in full, the victims’ heads were cut off and placed at various points in the city. That of Dr Fonseca was exposed for three days at São João da Foz, and on 12 May the brotherhood of the Misericórdia (the charitable Holy House of Mercy) took it to its chapel and had it buried there together with the mortal remains of the other defendants sacrificed to the ferocity of the Miguelite (supporter of the absolutist King Miguel) government. Seven years later, on 6 February 1836, the ashes of those victims were exhumed; they were all gathered into an urn and reburied in the church of the Misericórdia, awaiting the opportunity of a more fitting and appropriate tomb. It was in 1875 that an elegant mausoleum was raised in the Prado do Repouso (‘meadow of rest’) Cemetery, within the precinct belonging to the Misericórdia of Porto, to hold the mortal remains of the men executed on 7 May 1829 and of two more who suffered the same penalty on 9 October of the same year. The translation of the last remains of these victims, who became known as the Twelve Martyrs of the Fatherland, was marked by an unusual and most brilliant grandeur. A funeral procession was formed in which thousands of people and the entire Porto garrison took part, making it one of the most splendid and significant processions ever organised in the country, as may be seen in the pamphlet Memória Descriptiva da trasladação das ossadas dos Doze Martyres da Pátria, published in 1878.