Prophets

In the year 1533 there lived on Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) a certain Fernando or Fernão Nunes, nicknamed o Bravo (‘the Fierce’), who had a seventeen-year-old niece named Felipa Nunes, paralysed for some years. This Fernão Nunes sought to pass himself off as a prophet. One night he came down from the hills where he lived and entered the town (vila) ‘to see his niece, ringing a little bell, says Frutuoso, and on reaching the place where she was, he told her that the Holy Spirit had sent him to her, so that both might preach to the people of that island and tell them their sins..... And that Philipa Nunes answered him that the Holy Spirit had revealed to her that he was coming in that manner’.

A great many people gathered to find out what was happening, and, as Frutuoso relates, Fernão Nunes pointed out to each of them the sins they had committed. For this reason the pair were readily believed, not only by the ignorant common people but also by the judges, councillors (vereadores) and leading men of the island. Some days later, at the orders of the prophets Fernando and Felipa, the people went in procession, with the vicar and clergy, to the chapel of Our Lady of Grace (Nossa Senhora da Graça). There Fernão Nunes said such things ‘that all went about confused, and astonished, and disconsolate, without eating; the women threw into the sea all their face paints, without regard for their precious garments, but rather took off the poor ones they wore, and remained in their shifts, as if doing penance, eating but little, and standing on their feet.’

One day, while this Fernão Nunes was preaching, ‘many publicly confessed grave and abominable sins that they had committed’. When a certain João Calaça, a notary, dared to pray from a book during the sermon, the prophet declared that ‘he who was praying had the devil in his body’, and at once many men fell upon Calaça and killed him. The prophet ordered the dead man to be carried to the chapel of São Sebastião (St Sebastian) and left there, because he would rise again within three days.

The population was so blinded and frightened by what the prophet said that no one looked after their estates and business, and ‘the most highborn and noble women, says Frutuoso, went to the church in their shifts, before their husbands, with large wicker baskets.... full of drained curds, cheeses and bread, and other food, for those who were in the church night and day listening to the prophet’s preaching to eat’. ‘One night the prophet Fernando was in the house of the prophetess Philippa Nunes, where there were many people, honourable women and men, all barefoot and on their knees, among them one Rodrigo Alves, a very honourable and rich man, and his wife, and Manuel de Crasto and his wife, and many other persons and noble women. Before them all, he went up to Rodrigo Alves’s wife and put his tongue in her mouth, saying to her husband: “Does it grieve you, Rodrigo?” And he answered him: “God knows.” And then he made him kneel before him and gave him two slaps. And he told Manuel de Crasto to go and fetch bread and wine for those who were there to eat. He went and brought a sack of bread and a barrel of wine, which they all ate and drank. After eating he ordered Manuel de Crasto and his wife to undress, which they did at once, remaining in their shifts, with no one looking at them or paying heed to it, as if it were the state of innocence; and thus half-naked he ordered them to go to Sancto Spirito, and said that from there they would go to Paradise. And they went unclothed, though it was winter, in February, and so they stayed in the said chapel of the Spirito Sancto until just before dawn, when they then went home, and not to Glory, as the prophet had said.’

The Prophet set men and women to threshing in a barley field, and it is asserted that the clergy, in the confession during Mass, said: ‘St Peter, St Paul and the Blessed Prophet Fernando’, and named him thus in the introit and prayers.

When word reached Madeira of the extraordinary events taking place on Porto Santo, the corregedor (royal district magistrate) João de Afonseca set out for that island with two clerks (escrivães). He had the two prophets arrested and sent to the gaol at Machico. The vicar and clergy were also arrested for having taken Fernão Nunes’s deceptions seriously, as were the prophet’s town crier and doorkeeper, one Francisco Fernandes, a Castilian.

The judicial inquiry (devassa) conducted by the corregedor lasted until 10 March 1533. For eighteen days the people of Porto Santo had been subject to the influence and follies of the prophet Fernando, who was the son of an honourable man named Bartolomeu Nunes, living in the locality of Farrobo (‘carob tree’), on the north side of that island.

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As soon as the prisoners were brought to the town of Machico, relates Frutuoso, Philipa Nunes, who had previously pretended not to eat, at once ate hastily, saying that she knew nothing of what they told her she had done. The corregedor sent them both as prisoners to the King, with the inquiry, which the clerk Henrique Coelho carried and delivered to His Highness, who regarded it as a great service. Under it the prophets were sentenced both to stand at the door of the Cathedral of Évora on a stairway, each with a paper mitre bearing letters that read: Prophet of Porto Santo, and each with a lighted candle in hand while the Mass of terce was said, she clothed and he naked from the waist up; and they were then to be released, since it was the work of the Devil. And as to the death of João Calaça, no proceedings were to be taken against anyone, as these too were works of the Devil, who had blinded them all. And the King fined all the inhabitants of the Island of Porto Santo, for believing the said superstitions of the false prophets, two hundred cruzados for a public work on the said island, namely the Judges, Councillors and persons of the governance of the island ten cruzados each, and the rest of the people according to their estate; and these two hundred cruzados were paid. And while the clerk Henrique Coelho was on the said island, they were collected and handed to Estevão Calaça, a resident there, to be spent on things needful to the land, as the King commanded. The clerics were condemned to penalties and punishments by Antonio Machado, who was then in Portugal, Provisor of the See of Funchal, since it was vacant... Of the prophet Fernando some say that he went mad or feigned madness, the better to free himself; others, that he died a prisoner in the Limoeiro; others, that after being sentenced and doing penance he went on pilgrimage to foreign lands, doing penance; and in the end he never again went to the island, nor appeared, nor was seen. But the prophetess married and lived in Portugal, without ever returning to Porto Santo, where she had done things far from holy.','cells','cells

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Some, on account of this deed, would mock the inhabitants of the island of Porto Santo, who bear no blame for their forebears; but even if they did, it is not the office of a humane Christian man to mock the faults of others, for he may fall into similar ones; for the cord that is twisted often untwists; and whoever has a roof of glass should not throw stones at another’s roof.

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From the book Diocese do Funchal, recently published, we extract the following passages: The ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) dwell at length on the strange case that occurred in 1533 on the neighbouring island of Porto Santo, in which Fernão Bravo and Filipa Nunes, uncle and niece, common folk without any education, set themselves up as ‘prophets’. They revealed the hidden acts and deepest secrets of many people with such power of suggestion that even the island’s own clergy came to believe them and to attend the ‘sermons’ that these ‘seers’ preached to a crowd gripped by fear and the greatest wonder. The extraordinary event caused a considerable sensation and even had wide repercussions in mainland Portugal. It was the Franciscan friar and celebrated preacher Friar Gaspar Gato who, going to that island and making contact with the ‘prophets’, exposed the whole cunning fraud of these deranged people, who were brought as prisoners to Madeira and tried and sentenced. The clergy of Porto Santo suffered the consequences of their extreme credulity, being likewise arrested and severely punished by the competent ecclesiastical authority, the governor of the diocese (governador do bispado, administering the see in the bishop’s absence), the diocese being then vacant through the death of the prelate Dom Diogo Pinheiro.