Market and Chapel of St Sebastian

The square that the people commonly call ‘do Chafariz’ (of the Fountain) used to bear the name of São Sebastião, and a few years ago received from the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) its new name of Largo do Comércio. Before the square was laid out with the area it keeps today, a narrow street ran there. It was the continuation of Rua do Aljube (‘bishop’s prison’) and was also called Rua de São Sebastião. Between Rua de São Francisco and the building of the Misericórdia (Holy House of Mercy, a lay charitable brotherhood) (see Jardim Pequeno) stood a public fountain commonly known as ‘the Fonte’ (‘spring’). Its basins were requisitioned by the Council in 1838 for use in the present public fountain of Largo do Comércio, which was built in 1827.

The name of São Sebastião comes from the small chapel with this dedication that once stood there. It was one of the oldest on this island, but not the oldest of all, as the illustrious annotator of the Saudades seems to believe. We have already referred to this point in the article Parishes, and we shall deal with it at greater length in the article devoted to the chapel of St Catherine (Santa Catarina).

We do not know whether it was because this had been one of the oldest chapels in Madeira or because of a particular devotion that the people of Funchal held for its patron saint or protector, but it is certain that the inhabitants of the town (vila), and later of the city, always felt the deepest and most respectful veneration for the little church. After four centuries, however, on the morning of 22 January 1803, the old chapel was unexpectedly found demolished. The governor and captain-general Dom José Manuel da Câmara had ordered it razed the night before, without the knowledge of the city’s inhabitants. The Governor had ordered the Council, which administered the chapel, to demolish it in a curious document dated 15 January of that year, first published in the newspaper A Flôr do Oceano in 1840. The reason given there for pulling down the little church and two houses adjoining it was the construction of a market, on the pretext that no other site was better suited to that purpose. The Senate (senado, the municipal council) was unwilling to take responsibility for so violent a measure, which it knew beforehand would provoke popular fury, and did not carry out the Governor’s order. He then wasted no time in having the chapel destroyed.

Astonishment and indignation were universal, but the Governor’s threats and the measures he had shrewdly and cautiously taken in advance managed to avert trouble and prevent the violence that everyone expected. Only the diocesan prelate, Dom Luís Rodrigues Vilares, protested against the demolition of the chapel without his prior authorisation; but that was all that came of the storm that had so justifiably been feared.

The people, however, did not forget their chapel, nor their wish to raise it again. Nineteen years pass. There is great commotion in the city and lively enthusiasm reigns among its inhabitants. The city adheres to the revolution that had broken out in Porto in August 1820, and the liberal principles it had come to establish in the country are publicly and solemnly proclaimed. Although we can find no full explanation for it, the truth is that the people, having just demonstrated enthusiastically for the ideas preached by the Porto revolution, went to the square of São Sebastião, by then turned into a market, and destroyed the work of Dom José Manuel da Câmara. They carried there all the surviving materials of the old chapel, and others they could lay hands on, and demanded the immediate rebuilding of the chapel razed in January 1803. Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo relates that the governor and captain-general of the time, Sebastião Xavier Botelho, a descendant of the highest nobility of Portugal and a distinguished man of letters, also went there carrying a basket of stones for the rebuilding of the chapel that one of his predecessors had ordered demolished.

A contemporary document states that the demolition of the stalls of the São Sebastião market began at 4 p.m. on 1 February 1821 and that by 5 o’clock everything had been levelled; during the night a great deal of dressed stone (cantaria), stone and timber intended for the chapel was brought in. On the 7th the breaking of stone for the chapel began, ‘all of which was done amid much riot and clamour from the people, which struck fear into all the officials’, and within a few days the rebuilding was carried out, although it was never actually completed.

On 21 February 1826 the Council asked the Governor and Captain-General to order the ‘removal of the chapel of São Sebastião . . . since this building is no more than a hovel, which, most indecently, is serving as a receptacle for filth and obscenity’. On the 28th of the same month and year it renewed the request, adding that the said chapel should be moved to another place ‘more in the service of God and of His Imperial and Royal Majesty’. By January 1827 the chapel of São Sebastião had already been demolished.

By July 1827 the public fountain in the square of São Sebastião already existed, but only later was it given its elegant marble obelisk, from which four spouts of water pour into a circular tank (irrigation reservoir), also of marble, reached by a flight of steps that is likewise circular. It is the most imposing fountain structure we possess on this island.

The old market for greens and vegetables disappeared long ago, and the same square is at present (1921) the place where a kind of footwear characteristic of Madeira is sold. Made of goatskin and much worn by the common people of the rural parishes, it is chiefly produced in the parishes of the municipality (concelho) of Câmara de Lobos (‘seals’ den’).

Before the chapel was destroyed in 1803, the images of Our Lady, St Eligius and St Sebastian were carried in procession from it to the church of São Tiago (St James the Greater). This ceremony took place on 20 January of that year, attended by the clergy of the parishes of the Sé (Funchal Cathedral), São Pedro and Santa Maria Maior do Calhau, by the Franciscan community, by the nobility and by the people, the latter represented by the House of the Twenty-Four (Casa dos Vinte e Quatro, assembly of the craft guilds). The work of levelling the ground and building the stalls took little time, and the market was opened on 18 June 1803.