Madalena do Mar (parish)

This parish on the south-west coast of Madeira lies below the parish (freguesia) of Canhas. It is bounded to the east by the locality of Anjos (‘angels’), in that same parish, and to the west by the parish of Arco da Calheta (‘arc of Calheta’).

It is conjectured that its original name was Madalesia or Santa Maria Madalena, and that the words ‘do Mar’ (of the sea) were added later because it is washed by the ocean – and perhaps still more to distinguish it from the locality and chapel of Santa Maria Madalena in the parish of Porto Moniz (‘Moniz’s harbour’), when that place became the centre of a well-known and much-frequented pilgrimage. The hypothesis is not entirely without foundation, and there are other examples that support it. The name by which it is generally known today, even in official documents, is Madalena do Mar, although the people, with their tendency to simplify language, also call it simply Madalena.

The parish grew out of a settled estate (fazenda povoada) that existed there from the earliest days of colonisation, with a chantry (capela) whose patron saint was, as is stated somewhere, Santa Maria Madalena; it is also claimed that the original chapel was dedicated to St Catherine. On this origin, several old books of noble lineages contain what is summarised in the notes to the Saudades, in the following terms: ‘... Henry the German, a legendary figure of the earliest days of the colonisation of this island of Madeira. It was said of him that he was a Polish prince, and that after Władysław III lost the battle of Varna against Murad II in 1444 he vowed to wander the earth and was dubbed a knight of St Catherine of Mount Sinai. When he came to the island of Madeira, João Gonçalves Zarco granted him, at the spot later called Madalena do Mar, a large tract of land as a sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation), by a charter confirmed by Prince Henry the Navigator on 29 April 1457 and by Afonso V on 18 May of the same year. Henry the German did indeed found a large settled estate there, with a chapel dedicated to Santa Maria Madalena, from which the place took its name. He married Senhorinha Anes, and met a disastrous death, crushed by a landslide (quebrada) that fell from Cabo Girão onto the boat in which he was travelling from the city of Funchal to Madalena. His widow later married João Rodrigues de Freitas. Even now there is, above the town of Ponta do Sol (‘point of the sun’), the Fajã do Alemão, which the people corruptly call “do limão”.’

We may therefore regard the Pole Henry the German as the original founder of this settlement, and it was also he who had the first chapel built there. Senhorinha Alves, widow of Henry the German, married secondly João Rodrigues de Freitas, a fidalgo (nobleman of the lesser nobility) from the Algarve. Together they instituted an entailed estate (morgadio), seated in the said chapel, whose present representatives are the Viscounts of Geraz do Lima. A son of the founder, also named João Rodrigues de Freitas, declares in his will, made in 1520, that he was the founder of the chapel of Santa Maria Madalena, which must therefore have been built before that year. We must infer from this that Henry the German built the original chapel and that João Rodrigues de Freitas later rebuilt it, or founded the chapel of Santa Maria Madalena anew, since it was common at that time for people who had merely rebuilt churches and chapels, or carried out notable repairs to them, to be described as their founders.

Before this place became an independent parish, it had its own chaplains. In 1538 they were granted the right to administer the sacraments to the inhabitants of the village (lugar, settlement rank below a town), and in 1539 the right to build a baptismal font, at the request of the patron of the chapel, then João Rodrigues, whom we believe to have been its founder or a close descendant of his.

This parish was separated from that of Ponta do Sol and made an independent parish by Bishop Dom Jerónimo Barreto on 1 February 1582, its first parish priest being Father João Leandro Afonso. The royal decree (alvará régio) of 22 September 1587 set the parish priest’s annual salary at 20,000 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis). The royal decree of 10 September of the following year increased it by half a moio (dry measure of grain, 60 alqueires) of wheat and a quarter of wine. Two years later, by a royal decree of 15 November, this stipend became 16,000 réis in cash, one moio of wheat and one pipa (wine cask and measure, c. 400–500 litres) of wine, and it was raised by 3,000 réis a year by the royal decree of 9 December 1611. We know of another royal decree, dated 28 July 1649, which set the parish priest’s annual salary at 19,000 réis in cash, one and a half moios of wheat and one and a quarter pipas of wine.

The text of Gaspar Frutuoso, written in 1590, contains the following references to this parish: ‘. . . Magdalena, a thing so singular and noble for the chapel of this saint which the inhabitants built there, where much profit is gathered from sugar.’ Elsewhere in the Saudades we read: ‘Half a league from the town of Ponta do Sol, along the sea, lies the parish of Magdalena, of up to thirty households (fogos, literally ‘hearths’). It has a sugar mill (engenho) which belonged to one Manuel Dias, and a fine estate of good land under canes, and much fresh water. In this parish there is a chapel of Our Lady of the Angels (Nossa Senhora dos Anjos) which, though small, is a rich house, with a small altarpiece, fresh and well adorned; beside it is a cool spring beneath some boulders, among sugar-cane plantations of very handsome canes.’ (See Anjos 1-71). This locality of Anjos now belongs to the parish of Canhas and was once part of the parish of Ponta do Sol; we do not know whether it may perhaps have belonged to the parish of Madalena, as Gaspar Frutuoso states.

In this parish stood the chapel of Santa Quitéria (St Quiteria), of which today only a heap of rubble remains. It was built at the behest of Father João da Silva Alves.

The soil of this place is remarkably fertile, and from the very first years of colonisation it was farmed extensively. Sugar cane was grown on a large scale, a sugar mill was soon set up to make sugar, and the place became an important centre of sugar production. Even today its land is very fertile for the so-called rich crops, and its production of bananas for export is also notable.

According to the 1920 census, this parish (freguesia) had 1,093 inhabitants, scattered across the localities of Passo, Vargem, Lombo, Banda de Além, Palmeira, Torreão, Ribeira da Madalena, Moledos, Achada and Rua.

It has an official boys’ school, founded in 1882, and a mobile mixed school, which has been running since 1919 (1921).

The parish is irrigated by the levadas (irrigation channels) of the Ribeira da Madalena and of the Nateiro, and by the Levada Nova (‘new channel’).

The physician and surgeon António Policarpo dos Passos Sousa, who for many years served as secretary of the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) of Ponta do Sol, was a native of the parish of Madalena do Mar. According to the testimony of his fellow students and contemporaries, he was a man of extraordinary talent, which an untimely death and other special circumstances prevented from shining with the brilliance that might have been wished. He cultivated poetry with distinction, leaving several compositions that were highly regarded in their day.

Father António João de Lessa, who died in Brazil, where he achieved distinction, was also a native of this parish (see that entry).

The Ribeira da Madalena flows into the sea on the coast of this parish. In 1932, where it crosses the parish of Canhas, its left bank suffered a great landslide, which caused enormous damage and largely blocked the bed of the stream. This event contributed greatly to what happened on 30 December 1939, when, swollen by the heavy winter rains that fell at that time, the stream rose to the most frightening proportions. It swept away several dozen dwellings in its path, killed a number of people and caused incalculable damage, making it one of the greatest calamities caused by floods on this island.