Archbishopric of Funchal / Arcebispado do Funchal

Everyone knows that our Cathedral had the honor of being a Metropolitan See and that it was the seat of an archbishopric. However, it had an ephemeral duration. Created in 1533, it was already extinct in 1551. Our ever-growing colonial and maritime expansion since the beginning of the 15th century and the settlement and exploration of the discovered lands first determined the establishment of the bishopric of Funchal in 1514, and twenty years later the creation of the dioceses of Angra, Cape Verde, São Tomé, and Goa. Before these last bishoprics were created, the idea of establishing an archdiocese that would be the seat of an ecclesiastical province, with sufragan dioceses that might be created, emerged. Funchal, for having been the first bishopric established outside the Portuguese mainland, was chosen as the seat of the new archdiocese, comprising the aforementioned dioceses of Angra, Cape Verde, São Tomé, and Goa. The Archbishop of Funchal extended his spiritual jurisdiction from the Madeira archipelago to the ends of the East. We do not know the date of the bull creating the archbishopric. In the Portuguese Diplomatic Corps, we find the Consistorial Bulls of January 31 and February 11, 1533, the first being the communication to King João III of the establishment of the archdiocese and the second being the appointment of the first archbishop, who was D. Martinho de Portugal. The bull creating the archdiocese is not mentioned, but as the consistorial bulls of the fact generally had the date of the creation itself, we will not be far from the truth by affirming that the archdiocese was established by a bull of January 31, 1533, and that D. Martinho de Portugal was appointed archbishop by a bull of February 11 of the same year. Just six years after the establishment of the archdiocese, it was, by a bull of July 8, 1539, deprived of its four suffragan bishoprics, which passed to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Lisbon. The first and only Archbishop of Funchal, D. Martinho de Portugal, died in 1547, but the archbishopric was not filled, being extinguished in 1551, four years after his death, by the bull Super universis. The circumstances surrounding the creation, dismemberment, and subsequent extinction of the archbishopric lead us to share the opinion of Dr. Alvaro de Azevedo, when he affirms that the elevation of the bishopric of Funchal to an archdiocese was a personal favor from King João III to a close relative and friend, and perhaps a reward for the services that D. Martinho de Portugal rendered to the monarch as his ambassador in Rome. D. Martinho de Portugal, by divine commiseration, Archbishop of Funchal, Primate of the Indies and of all the new lands discovered and to be discovered, was how the new archbishop styled himself in the documents he issued in the exercise of his office. The four "masses" that are still carried by clergymen in our Cathedral on great solemnities, preceding the prelate, constitute the only vestige left among us of the existence of the archdiocese. These "masses" symbolized the four suffragan bishoprics that belonged to the archbishopric of Funchal. After the archdiocese was extinguished, Funchal returned to the simple condition of a bishopric, and to the jurisdiction exercised in the Madeira archipelago was added the castle of Arguim, on the coast of Senegal, which years later ceased to belong to this diocese. We will deal with Archbishop D. Martinho de Portugal in a separate article. The above-mentioned bull of July 8, 1539, which is of great interest to the ecclesiastical history of Madeira, was fully translated into Portuguese and published in several issues of the newspaper O Correio do Funchal in March 1898.