Order of Christ

The Order of the Templars had rendered the most distinguished services in the formation and consolidation of the Portuguese nation, and afterwards in the struggles that had to be waged against the Moors and the Castilians. It passed on to its successor the same enthusiastic ardour and the same heroic self-sacrifice in defence of the homeland, and in that successor the monarchs always found their best and most powerful ally in extending our dominions and in the greatness and prosperity of our country.

Prince Henry the Navigator was the first Portuguese prince to assume the mastership (mestrado) of the Order of Christ (Ordem de Cristo), and it is said that he sought in that powerful body the principal support for carrying out the grand enterprise he had conceived. Diogo Lopes de Sousa, his predecessor in the mastership of the Order, had left it highly prosperous and surrounded by the greatest prestige and influence, which suited remarkably well the projects that the prince would attempt to carry out.

It was a rich and powerful order. Its members, full of faith and daring, eager for the spread and triumph of their religious ideals, hungry for adventure and irresistibly drawn to the mysterious and the unknown, could no longer be contained within the narrow limits of the mainland frontiers. They went to Ceuta in 1415, in a first and fruitful attempt, and would later go to the ends of the earth.

Prince Henry could not have found more active and devoted collaborators anywhere else. There is no doubt that the material resources at the Order’s disposal and the battle-hardened, heroic phalanx of its members, all bound by religious vows, were the principal factor in the accomplishment of his gigantic work.

The prince, and above all the highest-ranking members of the Order, did not forget the services rendered, and demanded spiritual and religious supremacy in the new dominions won from the seas and the continents. The monarchs made various grants to the Order of Christ, giving it superintendence over religious services, which it exercised chiefly through the priests it counted among its members.

The royal letter (carta régia) by which King Duarte granted the Madeira archipelago in spiritual matters ‘for ever’ to the Order of Christ is dated 26 September 1433. We have already dealt with this subject, albeit briefly, in the article Donations (vol. I, p. 368), and we refer the reader there. That article shows how the Order soon lost its predominance and the privileges it enjoyed, chiefly because the mastership of the Order was incorporated into the Crown (royal letter of 27 April 1497) and because the diocese of Funchal was created (papal bull of 12 June 1514).

It is not easy today to determine precisely how far the privileges and rights enjoyed by the Order extended in this archipelago. Besides its oversight of spiritual and religious matters, it collected certain taxes and levied charges on certain revenues. Of these we have only a vague knowledge, and we lack the material for a sound and detailed assessment of the subject.

In spiritual matters, the religious leadership of the Order, which was vested above all in the Vicar of Tomar (vigário de Tomar, head of the Order of Christ's spiritual jurisdiction overseas), always sought to maintain its supremacy in this archipelago. It sent priests to carry out ecclesiastical duties here and to oversee all religious services.

Father António Cordeiro says ‘that João Gonçalves Zarco, as soon as he had founded the town of Funchal and saw that it still had no secular priests with parish jurisdiction, wrote to Prince Henry the Navigator asking him to send some; and the Prince, as master of the Order of Christ, ordered Dom Friar Pedro Vaz, then prior (title of the parish priest) of Tomar, to remedy that want; and the said Prior at once sent to Madeira a priest with the title of vicar and others with the title of beneficiaries; and in the same manner he provided the town of Machico with others of the like kind’. João Garcia, vicar of Machico, was a knight of Christ and came to this island by order of his Order, overseeing religious services in the captaincy of Machico (Capitania de Machico) in the second quarter of the 15th century. The name of the churchman who may then have directed ecclesiastical affairs in the captaincy of Funchal is not known. Nuno Cao, a senior member of the Order, came to this island in the last quarter of the 15th century to take supreme charge of religious affairs in the captaincy of Funchal, and perhaps in the whole archipelago; in 1514 he became the first dean of our Funchal Cathedral (Sé). In 1508 the Order of Christ sent to this island Bishop Dom João Lobo, whom we have already discussed on p. 277 of the 2nd volume of this work. In 1514 this diocese was created, and Dom Diogo Pinheiro, Vicar of Tomar, was appointed to it; the Order of Christ thus lost the spiritual supremacy it had enjoyed in this archipelago.

Elsewhere (vol. I, p. 225) we have given a detailed account of the Campo do Duque (‘duke’s field’), which belonged to the grand mastership of the Order of Christ. It kept that name because its Grand Masters were the Duke of Viseu, Prince Henry the Navigator; Duke Ferdinand, the Infante Ferdinand; the Dukes of Viseu Dom João and Diogo, Duke of Viseu; and the Duke of Beja, Manuel I, later king.

It was these dukes and Grand Masters who, through their representatives, exercised the rights belonging to the Order in this archipelago, and it seems that they collected for themselves the various taxes whose usufruct belonged to the Order. They owned the Campo do Duque and made several grants on it for the building of the municipal fold of the municipality (concelho), the Council house and the Cathedral (Sé Catedral). It is not known whether they owned any other land. It was the Order that brought about the creation of the customs house of this city, intended especially for collecting the duties levied on the export of sugar. It was the Infanta Dona Beatriz, as guardian of her young son Diogo, the Grand Master, who sent Luís de Atouguia to this island to set up those customs services.

As we have already said, we cannot establish precisely the extent of the temporal privileges the Order enjoyed in this archipelago. It seems, however, that they were far from small, to judge by the list of commanderies that Dr Rodrigues de Azevedo transcribes from the Definições e Estatutos of the Order in one of the notes to the Saudades:

“

The commandery of the tithes of fish and the small tithes (meunças) of the captaincy of Machico and the island of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’).

Forty moios of grain, that is to say, twenty of wheat and twenty of barley, which are granted with the Habit, on the island of Porto Santo.

The commandery of the tithes of all the grain revenues of the island of Madeira and of those of the Azores.

The commandery of the tithes of fish and small tithes of the captaincy of Machico and the island of Porto Santo, at thirty-five thousand réis (the Portuguese money of account before 1911; 1,000 réis = 1 mil-réis, 1,000,000 réis = 1 conto) in the year 1555.

The commandery of forty moios of mixed grain of the island of Porto Santo, at sixty-four thousand réis in the year 1545.

The commandery of the tithes yielded by the grain mills of the island of Madeira and the islands of the Azores, at one hundred and forty thousand réis in the year 1600.’

When the Grand Master Manuel I, Duke of Beja, succeeded John II on the throne, the principal rights and privileges that the powerful Order enjoyed on this island passed to the monarch, completing a process already begun by the kings before him. The Order of Christ was not entirely stripped of some of the dues it collected here, but once this archipelago had become crown domain (realengo), the rights and exemptions it enjoyed were reduced to very limited proportions.