Corpo Santo (Capela do)

It is one of the oldest chapels in this diocese and one of the few constructions from the 15th century that still remain among us, although over time it has undergone profound modifications. It was built by the devotion of the mariners and dedicated to their patron saint, São Pedro Gonçalves Telmo, more commonly known by the name of Corpo Santo. The worship of this chapel is maintained by the fishing class of Funchal, and it was the headquarters of a kind of relief society intended to assist the mariners in their illness or disability. It is unknown whether this brotherhood with its charitable character is still maintained among its members. We will transcribe what we found on this subject in the Diccionario Universal Portuguez Illustrado, which is truly interesting: “confrarias... there are two notable ones because they date back to the times of the primitive settlement of the archipelago and because they form true associations of mutual aid; they are the brotherhood of Corpo Santo, with its Manueline chapel at the eastern end of Funchal, and that of S. Pedro Telmo, in the place of Camara de Lobos; both are of mariners and manifestly derive from the famous commitment of the Algarve mariners, and as these are linked, in a religious form, with the nautical institutions of the time of D. Diniz. The commitments of the two aforementioned Madeiran brotherhoods, of which we have a copy, are, like the Algarve one, precious documents for the history, obscure but glorious, not of its princes or its created navigators, but of the pilots and sailors, of the men of the sea properly speaking, who had a not insignificant share in the discoveries“.