Freemasonry

According to Dr José de Arriaga in his Historia da revolução portuguesa de 1820, the island of Madeira was one of the first places in Portugal where Freemasonry (Maçonaria) found a particularly favourable welcome. By 1770 there was already a Masonic lodge in Madeira, whose members included Aires de Ornelas Frasão, Francisco de Alincourt and Bartolomeu Andrieux, as can be seen from an official letter sent by the Governor, João António de Sá Pereira, to the Marquis of Pombal on 3 December of that year. On 14 April 1792 the Governor, Dom Diogo Forjaz Coutinho, complained to Martinho de Melo e Castro that the Frenchman João José de Orquiny had established a Masonic lodge on this island, most of whose members belonged to the nobility and the clergy.

Frasão, Alincourt and Andrieux were arrested as Freemasons in 1770 on the Governor’s orders, and the first was sent to Lisbon. A Madeiran document shows, however, that the Marquis of Pombal not only ordered the release of the second of these Masons but also restored him to his post of engineer sergeant-major (sargento-mor engenheiro, a field-officer rank equivalent to major), which suggests that the same happened to the other two prisoners.

As for the Frenchman Orquiny, he was a grand commander of the Grand Orient of France, and he secured an appointment from the government of Maria I to study the Madeiran flora and its therapeutic value. He arrived in Madeira in 1789, but his first concern was to transplant the French Masonic institutions to this island. In this he succeeded easily, but he was less fortunate in Lisbon, where he went in 1792: there the police discovered his designs, imprisoned him in the cells of the Inquisition and later expelled him abroad. The Madeiran Masons suffered a great persecution in 1792. As soon as Bishop Dom José da Costa Torres learned that a Masonic lodge had been formed in Funchal, and that its members included the juiz de fora (crown-appointed judge from outside the district), the corregedor (royal district magistrate), several clergymen, many sons of noble houses, men of letters, etc., he urged the Inquisitor General, says Dr José de Arriaga, ‘to publish a public notice (edital) against the Freemasons, inviting the citizens of the island to denounce before the Inquisition all those whom they knew to belong to the accursed sect, which had a pact with Satan and was excommunicated. The notice was not long in coming and appeared that year. There was general panic, because a large part of the island already belonged to Freemasonry, and the notice was indeed going to cause grave disturbances within families and give rise to disastrous events.’

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The arrests followed immediately,’ the same author continues. ‘The vicar general, the judge of residues and the visitor (visitador, ecclesiastical inspector) of the bishopric were dismissed from their posts and suspended from preaching and hearing confession, though they could still say Mass. Many vicars were arrested in their parishes and put on trial; others were suspended from preaching and hearing confession outside their jurisdiction. The chaplains of Funchal Cathedral (Sé) were removed from their chaplaincies, the curates from their curacies, and many clergymen were suspended from preaching and hearing confession throughout the bishopric, being branded with heresy and incurring excommunication.

Many Masons, among them various military officers and public officials, fled Madeira at that time. Some of them went with their families to the United States, where they were well received.

The Government, considering the persecution of the Masons impolitic, put an end to it, and on 23 June 1792 a pardon reached the island for all members of secret societies, on condition that they abjured the heresies of which they were accused. The bishop refused to reinstate the priests he had dismissed or suspended, but they appealed to the Crown, which upheld their appeal.

The Madeiran poet Francisco Álvares de Nóbrega and the dean of Funchal Cathedral (the Sé) (Sé do Funchal), João Francisco Lopes Rocha, suffered greatly during this persecution. The latter wrote a letter to the minister José de Seabra da Silva, dated 16 October 1793, in which he complained bitterly that the Bishop was keeping him suspended from the exercise of his priestly offices and from the corresponding stipends, in open violation of Portuguese law and of the express instructions of the Queen’s government. This letter, published many years later in volume III of the Campeão Portuguez in London, is an important document for the study of Masonic institutions in Madeira.

Four years after the persecution, on 22 June 1796, Bishop Dom José da Costa Torres was transferred to the bishopric of Elvas. A manuscript of the period, cited by Dr Azevedo, says that he ‘left (the island of Madeira) on the night of 6 October 1796, without taking leave of anyone, not even of the Most Holy Sacrament; and to this day the reason for this studied embarkation by night, and by back ways, is unknown’. Dom Diogo Pereira Forjaz Coutinho ceased to be captain-general (capitão-general, military governor of Madeira) of the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) only on his death, on 30 March 1798.

Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, in the article ‘Madeira’ published in the Diccionario Universal Portuguez, states that everything suggests the Masonic impulse on this island was of French origin. If the Marquis of Pombal, and later the ministers of Maria I, chose not to oppose it openly, it was because they saw in it a means of counterbalancing the all-absorbing dominance of the British merchants. If that was indeed the aim of these ministers, however, it failed. The British occupation, and the protection later given by various individuals of the same nationality to the Madeiran liberals, created among the latter a British party which, as the same learned investigator says, dissolved only little by little, as a result of the fall of the government of Miguel I in 1834.

Freemasonry was reorganised while Madeira was occupied by British troops (1801 to 1802 and 1807 to 1814). The founding of the Unido lodge probably dates from that period; from it sprang the Constância and Fidelidade lodges, established during the liberal period. Agostinho de Ornelas was the first Worshipful Master of this lodge, and it seems that both it and its offshoots were subordinate to the Grand Orient of Lisbon, or at least worked in agreement with it, for as long as the country was governed by liberal institutions.

The special judicial commission (alçada) that the absolutist government sent to Madeira in 1823 dispersed the masons and sentenced many of them to penal exile (degredo). Yet as early as 1825 there was here a secret society known as the Jardineiros (Gardeners), organised by graduates and students of the University. An old document shows that in 1824 the masons met at the house of the Englishman Gran, who was also a freemason.

The Masonic constitution was printed at the press of O Patriota Funchalense (‘The Funchal Patriot’) in January 1823. Prominent among the masons condemned by the special judicial commission that came to Madeira that year were Dr Nicolau Caetano Pita, editor of that newspaper; Dr Francisco de Assis Saldanha, juiz de fora (crown-appointed judge from outside the district); Father Gregório Nazianzeno Medina e Vasconcelos; and Father Tomé João Pestana Homem de El-Rei, vicar of Campanário.

Freemasonry, says Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo in the Diccionario Universal Portugues, re-emerged strongly in 1826, led by João do Carvalhal. But the political events of 1828 decimated and dispersed Madeiran Freemasonry, just as, for identical causes, that of mainland Portugal had been. These were the special judicial commission that came to Madeira that year; the indictment of 216 and the imprisonment of 101 liberals and masons; the penal exile and imprisonment to which they were sentenced; the emigration and homicide (homisio) of those not imprisoned; the terror of the scaffolds on which so many Portuguese were put to death; and finally the five years of bloodthirsty despotism under the government of Miguel I.

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When liberal institutions were established in Madeira on 5 June 1834, few masons remained here. It is recorded, however, that even so two lodges arose, but by then far removed from the old spirit of Masonic unity: not true lodges, but factional clubs, which were therefore soon absorbed by the party clubs proper. Foremost among them all was the celebrated Club do Carmo, where the now deceased Madeiran political leaders of the generation preceding the one that entered active life around 1846 and 1847 won their first spurs.

In 1843 there was no Masonic lodge in Madeira, and matters remained so until 11 March 1872. On that day a group of men with no involvement in politics, led by the retired lieutenant-colonel José Paulo Vieira, set up the Liberdade chapter lodge in Funchal, whose first Worshipful Master was the said lieutenant-colonel.

On 16 April 1873 the Trabalho lodge was set up in Funchal, followed by the União Liberal lodge on 23 May 1877 and the Cinco de Junho (‘Fifth of June’) lodge on 13 April 1878. These three lodges merged shortly after 1880, however, and from then on there was a single lodge, named Trabalho, which was short-lived.

In 1872 Madeiran Freemasonry set up a printing press, on which it published first the Madeira Liberal and then O Oriente do Funchal (‘The Funchal Orient’), the latter paper being a continuation of the former. If the lodges ‘had not been abandoned’, Dr Azevedo wrote in 1882, ‘abandoned by those who had the imperative duty of giving them counsel, direction and strength, they would today be the glory of Portuguese Freemasonry’. Besides the Liberdade chapter lodge, of which we spoke above, there are today (1921) in Funchal the Trabalho lodge, the Grémio 5 de Outubro, the Britannic Lodge and the Pátria Portuguesa lodge. The first of these Masonic associations was founded in June 1901, the second on 13 October 1911, the third on 29 December 1913 and the last on 12 January 1916. The Revolução e Progresso lodge, founded in 1899, lasted only 6 or 7 months. The Britânica lodge, created, we believe, in June 1908, was replaced by the Britannic Lodge, whose members are almost all English and answer to the Grand Lodge of England.

Such, in brief, has been the history of Madeiran Freemasonry from the founding of the first lodge, towards the end of the third quarter of the 18th century, to the present day (1921). Its aims being identical to those of Portuguese Freemasonry, one of the articles of its programme is to put advanced principles into practice. For this reason it had to endure great persecution and humiliation before winning the freedoms it has long enjoyed on our island.