Colegiadas

In some parishes, in addition to the clergy assigned to the parish service, there was a chapter composed of a small number of clergymen who recited the divine office in common and performed other worship functions. The collegiate churches were established in the most important and densely populated parishes, which, like the chapters of the Cathedral Sees, gave greater splendor to the worship and constituted valuable assistants for all the religious services of the parishes. There were collegiate churches in this diocese in the parishes of Santa Maria Maior, S. Pedro, Camara de Lôbos, Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol, Calheta, Porto Santo, Santa Cruz, and Machico. In the churches of the last two, the choir seats for the recitation of the divine offices are still preserved near the high altar. They were created in the second half of the 16th century, with the exception of those in Ribeira Brava, Machico, and Santa Cruz, which are older, the latter two having six beneficiaries. They generally consisted of the parish priest, the curate, three or four beneficiaries, a preacher, and a treasurer, some of them having a smaller staff. Each one had its own regulations governing the performance of the functions entrusted to it. All the collegiate churches in Madeira were abolished before 1834.