Charitable institutions

Around 1425 Constança Rodrigues de Almeida, wife of the discoverer João Gonçalves Zarco, founded the chapel of St Catherine (Santa Catarina) (see that entry), and ‘beside it, says Frutuoso, she built many houses to shelter women of good life, poor mercieiras (almswomen: poor women kept on alms in return for serving a chapel), to whom she left alms so that they should always take care to clean and serve that house (the chapel), as is still the custom today’. Dr Rodrigues de Azevedo comments on these words as follows: ‘The Mercearia de Santa Catharina.... was a kind of hospice (hospício), where poor women of good morals lived on alms and were responsible for keeping the saint’s chapel clean. Both have been preserved to the present day. They are the property of the Count of Castello-Melhor’.

We can add nothing to what has been transcribed above, and we also do not know whether Constança de Almeida’s foundation really survived until 1873, although doubtless with a purpose different from that of the original institution. What we can now affirm is that the institution disappeared long ago and that the houses and the chapel passed to other owners. This was certainly the first charitable institution in Madeira, and it lasted some four and a half centuries.

Around the middle of the 15th century João Gonçalves Zarco donated some land beside the chapel of St Paul (São Paulo) for the foundation of a hospital, which was built at the people’s expense around 1469. It was the second charitable institution the archipelago had. This hospital remained there only a few years before it was moved to the parish (freguesia) of Santa Maria Maior (‘St Mary Major’) and placed in the care of the confraternity of the Misericórdia (Holy House of Mercy, a lay charitable brotherhood), which was then founded in this city and later established itself in the towns of Machico, Santa Cruz, Calheta and Porto Santo. We shall deal more fully with the hospital, which later moved to the building it occupies today, and with the Misericórdias of Funchal and of the towns in the article Misericórdias. We have already devoted a separate article in this Elucidário to the hospital of São Lázaro, whose foundation dates from the beginning of the 16th century. The mental hospital, the Manicómio Câmara Pestana, will be dealt with elsewhere in this work.

In the last quarter of the 15th century Gonçalo Aires founded the chapel of São Bartolomeu (St Bartholomew) and, attached to it, a hospice (albergaria) intended for poor clergy, but it seems that it never came to be used for the purpose for which it was founded. (See the article Gonçalo Aires.)

On the recolhimento (religious retreat house for women) of Bom Jesus, which also had, and still retains, the character of a charitable institution, we have already said all that is necessary in the entry devoted to it in its proper place. Something will also be said, at the appropriate point in this work, about the Recolhimento das Órfãs, founded in 1725.

In the entry asylums (Asilos) we dealt at some length with these houses of charity, both those now extinct and those that still exist, and we refer the reader to it.

To the fine charitable institution known as the Princess Maria Amélia Hospice (Hospício da Princesa Dona Maria Amélia) we have already devoted a detailed entry, in which we also referred to the Orphanage attached to it.

Although constituted as associations, the Association for the Protection of the Poor (Associação Protectora dos Pobres), the Associação Protectora dos Estudantes Pobres, the Assistência a Crianças Fracas and the Auxílio Maternal are true charitable institutions; we have already referred to them elsewhere.