The meanings of awnings and columns at the Lisbon Corpus Christi procession (1717-1777)

O significado dos toldos e colunas da procissão de Corpus Christi em Lisboa (1717-1777)

Abstract:

The article explores the meanings of the awnings and columns at the Lisbon Corpus Christi procession during the reigns of D. John V and D. José I. Frequently used in Europe since the sixteenth century, awnings and columns became systematically employed with the support of the Portuguese Crown and other agents. Our discussion is based on the idea that both awnings and columns were sacred symbols of the procession’s reform during the eighteenth century. We analyse the discussions of the time over the form and material composition of these awnings, along with their conservation, use, political and financial burden for the Municipal Council, Crown, and artisans. We also discuss the reform of the procession, which excluded traditional and popular practices and introduced those material elements, making the presentation more solemn. Our analysis of this eighteenth-century reform focuses on the trajectory of some of the agents involved in the process.

Keywords:
Corpus Christi; Awnings; Material religion

Resumo:

O artigo explora os significados dos toldos e colunas na procissão de Corpus Christi de Lisboa durante os reinados de dom João V e dom José I. Frequentemente usados na Europa desde o século XVI, toldos e colunas tornaram-se sistematicamente utilizados com o suporte da Coroa portuguesa e outros agentes. A discussão parte da ideia de que os toldos, com as colunas, eram símbolos sagrados da reforma da procissão durante o século XVIII. Objetiva-se analisar os debates ocorridos no período sobre a forma e a composição material dos toldos, assim como sua conservação, uso, peso político e financeiro para a Câmara Municipal, a Coroa e os artesãos. Este artigo também discute a reforma da procissão, que excluía práticas tradicionais e populares e introduzia aqueles elementos materiais, tornando a performance mais solene. A análise focaliza a trajetória de alguns agentes envolvidos no processo.

Palavras-chaves:
Corpus Christi; Toldos; Religião material

Our purpose is to explore the meanings of awnings and columns at the Lisbon Corpus Christi procession from 1717 onwards. They can be found in Europe since the sixteenth century (Bernardi, 2000), and they were systematically employed in Lisbon with the support of the Crown and other agents. The use of ephemeral architecture can be detected in other cities of the Portuguese monarchy, such as Porto, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia (Flexor, 1974, p. 24; Santos, 2005, p. 143; Santos, 2022).

The relationship between the Corpus Christi feast and artisans under Portuguese monarchy during the reigns of D. John V (1706-1750) and D. José I (1750-1777) is a subject that requires further investigation. Corpus Christi was a public religious ritual associated with the Eucharist¹ and was one of the most important feasts in the Portuguese world. It was updated by the Catholic Church and by the monarchy during the eighteenth century in a process of reforming the Eucharistic feast.

Our discussion here is based on the idea that the awnings, along with the columns, were sacred symbols of the procession’s reform during the eighteenth century (Santos, 2019, 2022). In this article, we will consider discussions about material religion, including questions of power, practices, and materiality as fertile ground for the study of religion in early modern history. Our understanding of these issues places special emphasis on the notion of “creed”, historically associated with Protestantism. As opposed to Catholicism, Protestantism presented itself as the modern religion par excellence, which valued interiority, meaning and conscience. New interpretations demonstrate the weight of Max Weber’s reading, among others, in constructing this perspective to investigate religion. They seek to valorise religious material culture even in the study of Protestantism (Meyer, Houtman, 2019, p. 81-113; Menezes, Toniol, 2021).

We shall explore the meanings of the awnings, a subject which appears in 38 of the 118 documents found concerning the procession during the reigns of D. João V and D. José I in an extensive document compilation undertaken by Fernando Oliveira (Oliveira, 1882-1911), who worked at the Municipal Archive of Lisbon. In addition, we will also take into consideration some additional manuscripts not selected by Oliveira.

The Corpus Christi feast and procession were coordinated by various authorities: the bishopric, the monarchy, the city councils, and the confraternities. In early modern Portugal, the city councils were some of the main authorities coordinating the procession, taking decisions over each of its spatial and temporal aspects. These aspects included deciding which streets the procession would pass through, which ornamentation would be used, and what the schedule would be. Furthermore, the city councils decided on the programme, who would participate and who would carry the poles of the canopy (Oliveira, 1885, v. 11, p. 192-193, 195-196; Gonçalves, 1985; Santos, 2005).

Although our focus is on the alterations made to the Corpus Christi procession during the eighteenth century, attention must be given to important changes which took place in the early modern era, such as the ones introduced by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and the Catholic enlightenment (Santos, 2022). These alterations provoked, among other things, the substitution of dances, inventions,² and other antiquities, with awnings, columns and worship (which tended towards the exclusive veneration of the Holy Sacrament). To identify the excluded elements, such as dances, litters (andores), and figurative characters, we need to consider the local context. However, it should be stressed that a general change of direction, following a particular timeline, was ongoing in Lisbon and other cities of the Portuguese monarchy. These changes were Ars-related modifications, that is, they involved artisans who were traditionally given financial support, work, and garments for the cortege. For this reason, the changes made to the procession cannot be considered merely aesthetic. Instead, we argue that they must be understood from a political and religious perspective. In short, the objective of the procession’s reform was to make Corpus Christi more “solemn” and “decent” and to turn the congregation more disciplined. This goal, articulated in the sixteenth century, would be updated in the eighteenth century with the support of clerical and lay authorities (Santos, 2022; Schilling, 2006).

The concept of decency was associated with the “doctrine of decorum”, with which it shares an etymon, decens, meaning “that which is appropriate”. In historiography, this concept has been interpreted through a moral outlook, focussing on the development whereby profane and impure elements were banned from religious art at a time when appropriateness and decorum in religious affairs held broader meanings. This historiography has established that “decorum” was adopted from classical texts and developed by several Catholic authors to legitimise public worship. One of the movement’s main figures was Carlos Borromeo, whose work adapted the precepts established by the Council of Trent to create a religious architecture (Bastos, 2009).

Raphael Bluteau, a well-known etymologist, states that the term toldo (awnings in Portuguese) originated from tholos,

which in Vitruvio is sometimes taken for Zimborio and in other Authors as the upper part of the vaults of the Temples on which the Gentiles hung the vows that they consecrated to their false Numes, or finally Tolus the ceiling of a round chapel; and with these three meanings, this word Toldo has some similarity with Tholus, because it is a kind of cloth ceiling, or it is vaulted sails, with which ships are covered, or streets, squares, and other public places, on the occasion of festivals, spectacles (Bluteau, 1721, v. 8, p. 202).³

We intend to interpret this translation, which connects the cloth ceilings that were used to cover streets, squares and public buildings in Lisbon’s feast with Roman antiquity, by exploring some clues and notable figures: Bluteau, who was a pupil of Guarino Guarini and who guided Fillipo Juvarra, considered the creator of the memorable procession of 1719; the references to St. Peter’s Square by Bernini; and the trajectories of João Frederico Ludovice, who was a kind of scenographer of the Corpus Christi from 1717 onward, and Vieira Lusitano, who made drawings of Corpus Domini in Rome.

We will also focus on some characters connected with the history of the Corpus Christi procession in Lisbon, especially with the material objects, such as the awnings and columns. Some of them are well-known, others remain anonymous. We can shed some light on them, as in the case of Lucas Nicolau Tavares da Silva, who occupied the position of steward of the procession colonnade (almoxarife da fábrica da colunata de Corpus Christi) and others, such as his scribe; the carpenter master of the procession and his scribe; and a councilman responsible for the awnings and columns in each mandate. Each of these positions was created by the Municipal Council exclusively for the Corpus Christi procession during the period.

One word about Vitruvio, quoted by Bluteau: his was the only book on architecture that survived from Classical Antiquity. Consequently, from the Renaissance onwards and throughout early modern history, architects relied on his work for instructions on ancient Roman construction. Vitruvio suggested that a firm direction be taken by the architect so that things run on time, for example, for a meeting. He gave other examples such as “the seats for the audience and the awning drawn over them, and whatever, in accordance with the customs of the stage, are provided by machinery to please the eye of the people” (Vitruvius, [s.d.]).

According to the art historian Giuseppina Raggi, it was Filippo Juvarra (1678-1736) who idealised the transformation of western Lisbon into a new capital of the Portuguese overseas Empire and the seat of the patriarch. He was the Primo Architetto Civile of Victor Amadeus II, the king of Sicily. By means of the diplomatic negotiation of Rodrigo Anes de Sá Almeida e Meneses, the Marquis de Fontes,⁴ Juvarra received permission to work in Portugal for a limited period at the demand of D. John V. He worked frenetically for six months, from January to July 1719, negotiated with and attended to the Portuguese king, created alternative locations for the complex patriarchal palace and brought with him around two hundred skilled Italian craftsmen for the king’s project.

Juvarra, according to Raggi, elaborated the ephemeral architecture for the Corpus Christi of 1719 and accomplished the urbanistic transformation of western Lisbon, particularly the two colonnades prepared for Rossio and Ribeira Square, and the staircase of the patriarchal building. However, he could not stay in Lisbon for very long. Because of this, using an Italian pattern of work relationships, he chose an architect to assist him when he had to leave Portugal. The chosen one was João Frederico Ludovice (1673-1752), a German goldsmith, who is represented as a secondary character in the author’s narrative of the history of the urban reform and the procession of 1719 (Raggi, 2014).

We argue that Juvarra and Ludovice had different roles. John Friedrich Ludwig, born in Schwäbisch Hall, in Swabia, became João Frederico Ludovice, adopting a Latin name in Italy. He converted from Lutheranism to the Catholic faith and became a Portuguese citizen. He was designated as responsible for the “form and direction” of the western Lisbon’s procession awnings of 1719 by D. John V (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 221). This memorable procession of Lisbon would become a model for the Corpus Christi procession in other cities of the realm and overseas.

By the time Ludovice was given this position, he had already attained to several important credentials. In 1697, after leaving the army, he had gone to Rome as a goldsmith. There, he had been contracted by the Jesuits and worked in the Church of the Gesù on the image of Saint Ignacio de Loyola and other religious ornaments. During this Italian period, he adopted a new name and renounced the family faith. We do not know about his religious identity, but his public position perhaps indicates that by converting he adapted to local society. This choice was probably the result of his first marriage to Kiara A. Morelli, a shoemaker’s daughter.

Ludovice’s inventory of assets (1752), ordered by Anna Maria Ludovici Verney, his second wife, provides us with several pieces of information about his life. He had one son from the first marriage and six from the second. His library reveals some of the references he used in his work. There are eighty-six items listed in his library, treating subjects such as architecture, painting, and metal casting, among other things. Most books and prints were Italian and focused on Rome. Among the books, for instance, there is one on the precepts of the art of painting by Leonardo da Vinci, one on iconology by Cesare Ripa and The Vatican Temple by Carlo Fontana, the papal architect whose lectures Ludovice probably attended during his stay in Rome (Smith, 1936, p. 284). It is important to note the presence of Vitruvio’s work in the library - one book and some other “translations” by the author -, as well as a book detailing several different ceremonies that took place in Rome. Among the prints there are thirty-four of Roman antiquities that display triumphal arches, twenty-one of temples and squares in Rome and a book of prints showing some examples of the attire of American people.⁵

The first reference in our selected body of documents from Oliveira’s collection dates to September 1717, when D. John V ordered the use of awnings for the next year’s procession. Ahead of this, a letter from the State Secretary to the Municipal Council informed the council on the direction the procession’s reform would take: the inhabitants had to be clean and decorate their houses and streets. The artisans were required to give up their traditional contributions to the procession, such as the giants, the serpent, the dragon, the floats and the dances; in addition, the Moors, who used to be positioned next to St. Jorge, were excluded from the procession (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 193). The canopy was to be substituted with a richly decorated one. In short, the procession should be more solemn and the congregation more disciplined.

In 1717, Lisbon’s Municipal Council was divided in two: eastern and western Lisbon. The Royal Chapel had been elevated to patriarchal status by Pope Clement XI, by means of the bull In Supremo Apostolatus Solio of November 7, 1716. From 1717 to 1740, the ancient part of the city, with the ancient cathedral, became part of the Archbishopric of Eastern Lisbon, including the Patriarchal Chapel belonging to “New Lisbon”, the boundary line being the ancient walls of the city (Clemente 2000, p. 93-113). The division of the city implied the existence of two processions, both adopting the awnings administered by Ludovice. However, the main bulk of investments was made for the western Lisbon procession (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 317).

Ludovice kept his position probably until his death, working for D. John V and his son, D. José I. During the first reign, he participated in other important Crown projects such as the construction of the Palace-Convent of Mafra, for which he became not only the architect, but was instrumental in helping to create new artistic models and a school of arts. D. José I confirmed him as the Chief Architect of the Realm (Arquiteto-mor do Reino), a position which was accompanied by the pay and rank of infantry brigadier. This was just one title that he received amongst other awards during his life.

The third person worth of mentioning is Francisco Vieira de Mattos (1699-1783), known as Vieira Lusitano. He had accompanied Marquis de Fontes’s diplomatic committee to Rome as a young boy. The Marquis contributed for Vieira Lusitano’s education and encouraged his talent for the arts. During his first stay in Rome (1712-1718) he studied with Benedetto Lutti (1666-1724) and Francisco Trevisani (1656-1746). Besides this, he was able to participate in a small court of artists, poets, architects, and musicians with the support of his patron.

Vieira Lusitano was responsible for the drawings of the Roman Corpus Domini, which served as a model for the same procession in Lisbon 1719. It was Marquis de Abrantes who sent the drawings to the Portuguese king (Raggi, 2020, p. 111). Although these drawings have been lost, we were able to analyse them by referring to Vieira Lusitano’s description in his poetic autobiography called O insigne pintor (1780). This work is of especial relevance since autobiographies of early modern artisans in the Portuguese Catholic world are rarely thematised in historiography (Santos, 2021).

Vieira Lusitano recounts the king’s demand for the drawings of Roman Corpus Domini, the creative process, the material used and so on. In his description, the awnings and the ornaments simultaneously announce the arrival of the procession, and its treatment in poetry. Thus, he was able to capture the sacred in motion.⁶ The history of Vieira Lusitano is the history of an artisan who became a designer, an academic and a royal painter under a patron’s support.

The Historia critico-chronologica, a kind of panegyric narrative of the Lisbon procession of June 8, 1719, authored by Ignacio Barbosa Machado, contains a rich testimony of the king’s aims for the procession organised by the Municipal Council:

If the Romans came to Lisbon, and saw a single part of that plausible day, they would lose their pride […] because at the Head of the World they spent many years raising arches and pyramids. But in West Lisbon machines were made in four weeks, that serving for a few hours, will deserve the applause of many centuries (Machado, 1759, p. 141).⁷

This part of the book describes the ephemeral architecture organized at the main points of western Lisbon - the Rossio and Ribeira Squares. For Machado, the Romans from imperial times would abandon their pride if they could see the Holy Sacramental Triumph accomplished by the Portuguese. From his perspective, the king had used the memory of Antiquity to surpass the Romans in a short period of time.

The model of Rome was evoked not only in this eulogy, but also in other documents, such as in the Italian sources dating from the period of the preparation of the 1719 procession. According to these sources, the procession had to “follow the Roman tradition”, had to be “similar to the Roman one” or “surpass the magnificence of Rome” (Raggi, 2020, p. 277).

The Roman references were not only those of Imperial Rome but of Rome as the centre of Christianity, particularly with respect to the awnings and colonnades for Corpus Domini at Saint Peter’s Square, accomplished by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He clearly had the religion and its rituals in mind when he shaped them: “Covered passageways of some kind were needed for processions and in particular for the solemn ceremonies on the day of Corpus Domini; they were also necessary as protection against sun and rain, for pedestrians as well as for coaches” (Wittkower, 2013, v. 1, p. 125-29).

Similar considerations were made by Bernini for the oval form of the square and its colonnades. He compared them “to the motherly arms of the Church which embrace Catholics to reinforce their belief, heretics to re-unite with the Church, and agnostics to enlighten them with the true faith” (Wittkower, 2013, v. 1, p. 127). This illustrates how Bernini worked with the art of persuasion.

The painting Processione del Corpus Domini in Piazza S. Pietro al tempo di Innocenzo X by an anonymous author in the Museo di Roma shows a Corpus Christi procession at St. Peter’s, c.1650, with the awnings deployed in a manner that is like Bernini’s later colonnade.⁸

As already indicated, 38 documents out of the 118 in Oliveira’s collection deal with the awnings. Since it is not possible to analyse them in detail here, we will present an overview, selecting some of them that reveal the importance of the awnings as sacred symbols. These documents produced by the Lisbon Municipal Council are of many different kinds: letters, municipal seats, royal edicts, royal consultations, worker’s petitions, and municipal budgets.

The first document on the awnings, which falls within the selected period, dates from 1717 and the last from 1764. After the order of D. John V, which made the use of the awnings mandatory, the next document is a letter from the East Lisbon Council’s scribe to the Secretary of State which deals with the heights for the awning masts, and their cost - an omnipresent subject from then on. In this letter, the scribe describes the council’s inability to cover for the expenses and informs that local inhabitants should contribute with private capital, expressing concern over how they might receive such an order (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 233).

In the following year (1718), a royal consultation sent by the Eastern City Council carries on with the matters mentioned in the first document. Within this consultation, the testimony by the councilman Chrispim Mascarenhas de Figueiredo is particularly interesting, giving details about the mast heights for the awnings, the materials to be used for covering the streets through which the procession would pass, and where the artisans lived. He also reinforces the awnings’ religious and political significance for king D. John V. According to him, the mast heights should not extend the roofs, but also not be so low as to prevent residents from watching the procession from their upper windows or to prevent the passage of “crosses, banners, and the canopy”. Regarding the material composition of the awning, it should not be of white canvas, which could easily get dirty, but of dyed crimson, blue or green, sewn together with sail threads, tied with ropes and strong eyelets etc. The councilman expresses that “the work ordered by the Crown is to be very decent, with all devotion and greatness to His Majesty and in veneration of the Blessed Sacrament”.⁹

A greater volume of documents was produced between 1719 and 1721 due to the preparation for the 1719 procession and its consequences. In June of that year, Lucas Nicolau Tavares da Silva, a city commissioner (vedor das obras da cidade) requested the king give him the position of steward of the procession colonnade, receiving a salary of seventy thousand réis (70$000) and a subsistence allowance of fifty thousand réis (50$000) after the work would have been completed.¹⁰ Through the municipal sources collected by Oliveira and some manuscripts from the Municipal Archive of Lisbon and the National Archive of Lisbon, it was possible for us to make the connection between this position and the introduction of awnings and columns associated with the trajectory of Lucas Nicolau.¹¹ He was born in Lisbon, probably in 1690. For two years (1707-1709) he acted as chamberlain, receiving housing support, a portion of barley per day and a clothing allowance each year. This position seems to have been related with his filiation. In January 1714, we encounter him again in the documentation, this time as city commissioner asking for an extra gala payment (propina de gala) for a royal feast for the infant’s birth. However, he did not receive the grant - the justification given was that his position did not belong to a chamber body; that is, reasons of protocol related to the governing hierarchy. In October of the same year, he renounced the position of scribe (escrivão dos feitos da Fazenda da Repartição da India, Mina e tratos de Guine), a position that entailed recording the deeds of the monarchy’s treasury and which he had been bestowed since 1708 with imperial scope due to his marriage to Dona Maria Magdalena Trigueiros, a granddaughter of the ex-owner. He had to renounce the last position by royal decree, as it was prohibited to hold both positions simultaneously; thus, he chose the office of city commissioner.

In 1719, a petition was issued to create the position of procession colonnade scribe, with a subsistence allowance of forty thousand réis (40$000) for the man who was already the scribe of the city commissioner. This proposition was approved to the value of fifty percent (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 333). In 1720, another petition by the Western Council reached the king. In this petition, Lucas Nicolau argued that it was hard to control the storage of several awning pieces in different warehouses, he explained how he had suffered at the time of setting up the awnings and how he had done his work competently during the year, and thus would deserve an increase from seventy thousand to one hundred and fifty réis (70$000 to 150$000) as steward of the procession colonnade. He received only one hundred thousand réis (100$000) (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 425-427).

Lucas Nicolau occupied the position of steward of the procession colonnade until his death in 1751. He worked with his son, Miguel Nuno da Silva Azeredo Coutinho, who took over the position as Lucas Nicolau fell ill, arguing that he had been apprentice to his father and that this was in accordance with the custom of inherited service in the Municipal Council. There were also other individuals connected in some way with the awnings and the columns, whose services were registered in the municipal sources after 1726 and in a book created specifically to note all the work that had been done on them (Oliveira, 1903, v. 12, p. 68). These sources allow us to identify those unnamed people whose contributions were important to fully understand our main object.

Our initial research on Corpus Christi contained little information on the awnings, but during the research, their importance as a strong sacred symbol which materialized the procession’s reformation in eighteenth-century Portugal became evident.¹² One of the elements that first drew our attention to the awning as religious object in the procession was its cost, a reoccurring subject in the sources.

There are several municipal documents that deal with the cost of the awnings and the columns, not only during the procession’s preparation, but mainly after 1719. The discussion became frequent in May, but after 1719 the burden became greater because of the considerable debt and pressure experienced by the artisans and artists who had not received payment for work done for the 1719 procession. The first document about the cost is a letter indicating that the Municipal Council had to pay for it, that a new tax had to be established and that Ludovice’s plan for the procession would be ready soon (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 317). From this point on, all the documents in our corpus deal with the subject of cost. Discussion of the debt owed to the workers began in 1720 and reoccurred at several later dates.¹³ The situation got progressively worse, with debts incurred for the 1719 procession and due to the annual cost of the ritual. There is a letter dated 25 May 1735, from the council’s scribe to the state secretary mentioning a petition from a master carpenter who was complaining about not receiving payment for the work of putting up the awnings and the columns, and also a petition from artisans who were refusing to work without payment. Two days after this letter these workers went on strike. From 1718, work on the procession was put up for auction to those who gave the lowest bid for the services, but they were repeatedly left unpaid (Oliveira, 1903, v. 13, p. 75; v. 11, p. 253-256).

The richest source of information is offered by the royal consultations, through which we gain access to some of the discussions about the awnings and the columns. Different views were expressed in a debate between the king, the councillors, and the artisan representatives. It is important to highlight here that in some cities in Portugal - Lisbon, Porto, Évora and Coimbra - the craftsmen had the prerogative to participate in the Municipal Council through a “tribune of the people” (juiz do povo), a people’s scribe (escrivão do povo) and two or four master attorneys (procuradores dos mesteres). They were members of an institution called the House of Twenty-Four (Casa dos Vinte e Quatro).

There are only few studies on the Casa dos Vinte e Quatro and its representatives. The most detailed work focuses on the juiz do povo (Bernstein, 1989). According to Bernstein, “he was the chief officer of the guilds, annually elected both as representative to the local city council, and as a chairman of the town’s existing guilds.” In short, he was the “voice of the people”, “the Lord Mayor of Lisbon”, “the tribune of the people and his 24 guilds” and “one of the ancestors of Portuguese liberalism” (Bernstein 1989, p. ix-xii, 22). In my perspective, Bernstein exaggerates the significance of this office because in the eighteenth century, the role was more ritual than political. The juiz do povo shared the position with the procuradores de mesteres in the ordinary sessions of the council. These officials were both concerned with economic and civic affairs, topics that affected the artisans of the city. The artisans’ group was excluded from voting on other important matters, sitting on benches outside the central space, unlike the councillors, who sat in high-backed chairs at the council meetings. This group was a corporate representation of certain artisans in Portugal under the Old Regime, and they occasionally questioned their unequal status (Cardim, 2021, p. 176-181).

The consultation of 19 May 1719 is one example of how the cost of the procession awnings was dealt with by the city authorities. There were different views on the subject, which I will briefly present, indicating the interventions: 1) the Municipal Council proposed to raise funds through a tax on wine and salt consumed by the inhabitants of the city; 2) one councillor and three master attorneys proposed the same tax as the Municipal Council, but establish the tax for a limited period; and 3) another councillor proposed to charge a percentage tax on the residents of the city and its surroundings; 4) the city attorney questioned the tax because funding resources were used for salaries, interest payments and city construction work; 5) another master attorney proposed to exempt the poor from the tax because a tax on wine and meat was against the commonwealth; that is, it was not easy to collect, and it particularly targeted farmers and cattle breeders (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 319-324).

Some royal consultations indicate how the awnings were the subject of controversy and the fact that they represented a burden on the budget. The city council’s budget for Lisbon in 1724 is a good indicator of the financial burden. The council spent five million six hundred thousand réis (5:600$000) to put up the awnings and the columns and to decorate the buildings and streets on the procession route, and they spent six million seven hundred fifty thousand réis (6:750$000) annually on the repair and construction of pavements, repairs to fountains, and other maintenance. They spent 9.66% of the councils’ total revenue just to put up the awnings and colonnades in that year (Oliveira, 1903, v. 12, p. 96-99).

There is another consultation dated 23 December 1738 sent from the city council to the King about Corpus Christi. It is not relevant to go into the details for the purpose of this article, but this consultation provides some information concerning the cost. It quotes a previous royal edict which ordered the introduction of new licenses at the next procession, thereby provoking a discussion between the councillors and the other representatives. Some of them described the usual problems of the city and the burden of the procession, including the need to put up the awnings each year. What followed was an intense discussion about how the taxes were to be used. This is the one document found so far which presents a detailed budget for both processions (Western and Eastern Lisbon).

The revenue from new licenses in 1738 was four million nine hundred and ninety-seven thousand one hundred and twelve réis (4:997$112) and the cost of the procession in the same year was four million three hundred and sixty-six five hundred and eighteen réis (4:366$518); nevertheless, the royal decision was that the license revenue must be used to cover other costs, too. The budget indicates the rich variety of materials and services that were used for the procession: to put up and remove the awnings; to carry out the masts; to supply the brims and half of the canvas for the canopy of the awnings; to place the medals on the columns and in the council’s buildings; to supply the wood for the colonnade, the trestle and the scaffolding in addition to supplying the sand; espadana leaves and rosemary for the streets where the procession passed by; as well as the wax etc. (Oliveira, 1903, v. 13, p. 401-412). All these items are material elements through which the Eucharistic manifestation took place (Meyer, Houtman, 2019; Kessel, 2020).

There is other data which indicates the importance of the awnings and columns, such as the discussion, in 1739, on warehouses to keep the columns and awnings safe for the following year or to move them if the roofs and walls of the warehouses were not sound (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 318); the concern expressed about these items one week after the earthquake of 1755, among other things. The royal edict of 8 November 1755 determined that what could be salvaged should be checked and that the items be transferred to the convents (Oliveira, 1908, v. 16, p. 163). These material concerns arose at a time when the artisans were demanding that the city “give burial to the dead and preserve the living from the contagion that threatens them with the corruption of the same dead bodies” caused by the earthquake (Oliveira, 1908, v. 16, p. 161).

In 1764, the reunited council sent a consultation to the king about the colonnades and the awnings; this consultation can be found in the last of the selected sources. Considering that D. John V’s work was lost, the council organized temporary awnings to cover the streets “so that the memory of such a sumptuous monument would not be lost”. The council also asked for D. José I to eliminate the awnings and abolish all offices related to them, transferring the responsibility to the “holy patriarchal church”. The consultation addressed to the King argued that the Municipal Council was in ruins after 1755 (Oliveira, 1911, v. 17, p. 5-6). This source reinforces the scope of the changes that occurred during the reign of D. José I when compared to the previous king’s reign.

The consultation also informs us about the reorganization of relations between the monarchy and the Catholic Church; however, we must caution against certain interpretations which identify the reign of D. José I and his valido, the Marquis of Pombal, as an era of secularism, after the reign of the highly religious D. John V. Rather, the ritual of Corpus Christi was kept alive and the reconstruction of the city after the earthquake required new routes and new managers for the procession. As a result, some artisans had the opportunity not only to survive, but also to maintain their power in the late years of the Portuguese Old Regime (Cruz, 2018).

Final considerations

We have explored in this article how the awnings and columns of the eighteenth-century Corpus Christi procession became a strong sacred symbol. Pagan objects were transformed into Catholic ones, mobilizing different groups, protecting people from rain and sun, ornamenting the routes and reconnecting the city to the transcendent.

References

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• 1
  Various interpretations of the Eucharistic sacrament have been advanced by Christians, especially since the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century (Muir, 1997, p. 171-175). In the Catholic Church, the Eucharistic sacrament is understood as a “real presence”, and the faithful are called to respond gratefully to the gift through Eucharistic services (Sartore, Triacca, 1992, p. 395-415).
• 2
  “Inventions” is a term that emerges quite often in sources and is widely used in this period: it is meant to signify giants and other figurative characters and objects.
• 3
  The document in its original language, reads: “que em Vitruvio se toma às vezes por Zimbório, & em outros Autores pela parte superior das abóbodas dos Templos, em que penduravam os Gentios os votos, que eles consagravam aos seus falsos Numes, ou finalmente Tolus [é] o teto de uma capela redonda; & com esses três significados esta palavra Toldo tem alguma semelhança com Tolo, porque é uma espécie de teto de pano, ou velas abobadadas, com as quais os navios são cobertos, ou ruas, praças, & outros lugares públicos, por ocasião de festivais, espetáculos.” The passages quoted in Portuguese in this article have had their spelling updated, keeping the capitalization, lower case and punctuation as in the originals. The English version of the quotes was made by the author.
• 4
  The authors comment on the relative lack of information about Rodrigo Anes de Sá Almeida e Meneses, but they contribute to it. He received several nobiliary titles - 7th Count of Penaguião, 3rd Marquis of Fontes and 1st Marquis of Abrantes - the last after the embassy to Rome (1716) (Quintão, Almada, 2024, p. 3-5).
• 5
  Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Inventário dos bens do brigadeiro João Frederico Ludovici. Available at: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=4218614. Accessed on: 4 Jan. 2024; (Vale, 2016, p. 513-517). I transcribed the inventory, except for the library, which has been published by Vale (2016?).
• 6
  According to the Portuguese Episcopal norms “procession is a public prayer to God made by an assembly of the common faithful inclined towards a certain order which goes from one sacred place to another. It is so old in the Catholic Church that some authors assign it to the period of the Apostles.” Constituições synodaes do Bispado do Porto. 1690. Porto: Joseph Ferreyra. Livro 3, Tit. 2, p. 243. Available at: https://archive.org/details/constituicoessyn00cath/page/242/mode/2up. Accessed on: 17 May 2024. Constituições Synodaes do Arcebispado de Lisboa. 1656. Lisboa: Officina de Paulo Craesbeeck. Available at: https://docvirt.com/docreader.net/DocReader.aspx?bib=bibliotecaruibarbosa&id= 5485501342127&pagfis=20311. Accessed on: 17 May 2024. Constituições primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia. 1707, 1853. São Paulo: Typografia 2 de dezembro. The document in its original language, reads: “Procissão é uma oração pública feita a Deus pór um comum Ajuntamento de fiéis, disposto com certa ordem que vai de um lugar Sagrado, é tão antigo o uso delas na Igreja Católica, que Alguns Autores atribuem sua origem ao tempo dos Apóstolos”.
• 7
  The document in original language, reads: “Devemos crer persuadimos, que se os Romanos viessem a Lisboa, e vissem uma só parte daquele plausível dia, perderiam a soberba […] porque na Cabeça do Mundo gastarão largos anos para levantar arcos, e pirâmides. Mas em Lisboa Ocidental se fabricaram máquinas em quatro semanas, que servindo em poucas horas, merecerão o aplauso de muitos séculos”.
• 8
  Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pal_Braschi_-_processione_del_Corpusdomini_in_p_za_s_Pietro_al_tempo_di_Innocenzo_X_(ignoto,_1650_c.ca)_P1090643.jpg Accessed on: 11 Jan. 2025.
• 9
  The document in original language, reads: “sendo esta obra que V. Majestade ordena se faça, muito decente e toda da devoção e grandeza de V. Majestade, em veneração do Santíssimo Sacramento, deve ser feita” (Oliveira, 1901, v. 11, p. 253-256).
• 10
  The value notations used in the article are those from the source and common at the time.
• 11
  Lucas Nicolau is mentioned in three printed documents by Oliveira (1901) and I was able to reconstruct his trajectory through six more of the following manuscript sources: (ANTT), Registo Geral de Mercês, Mercês de D. João V, liv. 1, f. 125; ANTT, Registo Geral de Mercês, Mercês de D. João V, liv. 2, f. 137; Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa (AML-AH), Chancelaria Régia, Livro 1º de consultas e decretos de D. João V do Senado Ocidental, f. 228 a 230; AML-AH, Chancelaria Régia, Livro 9º de consultas e decretos de D. João V do Senado Ocidental, f. 43 a 44v; AML-AH, Chancelaria Régia, Livro 12º de consultas e decretos de D. João V do Senado Ocidental, doc. 24, f. 59 a 59v; AML-AH, Chancelaria Régia, Livro 2º de consultas, decretos e avisos de D. José I, f. 95 a 104v.
• 12
  Godoy analyses the omnipresence of bricks in the case of Our Lady of Aparecida Church located in Guaratinguetá (Brazil) by using references of material religion (Meyer, 2019, p. 92). The artist who remodelled the church from 2000 to 2016 used the same material as in the original building. He reused bricks for the internal walls of the building because the bricks were, according to him, neo-Romanesque. For Gogoy, this cladding and the omnipresence of bricks in the social life of the temple are linked to the Romanisation project of the Brazilian Church: “The bricks are its materialisation” (Godoy, 2021, p. 67).

• **
  This study is a part of the post-doctoral project at UFBa, “The Corpus Christi feast, the cities and the craftsmen in the Portuguese Monarchy (1706-1777)”, which received a CNPq grant between June 2022 and March 2023.

• 13
  In the Oliveira collection, the number of documents relating to the debt to workers was two in 1720, four in 1721, and three in 1733, 1735, 1736 and 1738. This does not include documents relating to debt owed to general creditors.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 Mar 2025
• Date of issue
  2025

History

• Received
  19 June 2024
• Accepted
  22 Aug 2024