Church of the Monastery of Jesus of Setúbal: A Manueline Convent Church in Portugal
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Portugal
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Portuguese
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page13 sections
History
The Church of the Monastery of Jesus of Setúbal is a late Gothic and early Manueline church in Setúbal, Portugal, founded around 1490 for Franciscan nuns of the Order of Saint Clare. The Order of Saint Clare, also known as the Poor Clares, was the contemplative female branch of the Franciscan movement, whose rules emphasized enclosure from the outside community. The church and monastery were established beyond Setúbal’s walls by Justa Rodrigues Pereira, a noblewoman of the Portuguese royal court and wet nurse to the future King Manuel I.
Foundation and royal patronage
After 1491, King John II and Queen Eleanor of Viseu supported the foundation. Construction was directed by Diogo de Boitaca, a prominent architect active in Portugal during the transition from late Gothic architecture to the Manueline style. Manueline was the Portuguese late Gothic style that developed during the reign of Manuel I and incorporated maritime, vegetal, heraldic, and rope-like decoration.
The first plan provided for thirteen nuns. After Manuel I became king in 1495, he ordered the monastery to be enlarged for thirty-three nuns and required a church that would express the spirit of the new reign. Most of the church was built during the 1490s, although work continued into the early sixteenth century. Manuel I paid Boitaca an annual sum for his work on the church, continuing the royal support begun under John II.
The nuns were living in the monastery by 1496. The enclosed complex was designed to support its community economically. Its members cultivated gardens and fields, worked on a farm, and maintained workshops that produced food, clothing, and household goods. The nave later received stone vaulting instead of the wooden ceiling originally planned. The rebuilding of the apse around 1510 has traditionally been connected with an order from Manuel I, although that attribution remains contested.
Expansion and religious community
During the first half of the sixteenth century, Jorge de Lencastre, an illegitimate son of John II and master of the Order of Santiago, donated land south of the monastery. The Order of Santiago combined religious obligations with military and administrative functions. The donated area became Jesus Square, and Lencastre commissioned a cross in honour of Jesus Christ, the monastery’s patron. The cross was moved to the centre of the square in the nineteenth century.
Justa Rodrigues Pereira and members of her family were buried in the church crypt beneath the main chapel. The upper choir allowed the Poor Clare nuns to attend daily Mass while remaining separate from Setúbal’s population, as required by the rules of their order. The monastery’s chronicles also referred to numerous small chapels in addition to the church and upper choir, several of which were later demolished during the conversion of the complex into a hospital.
Damage, hospital use, and museum history
The church and monastery suffered severe damage in the earthquake of 1755. Earthquakes in 1531, 1858, 1909, and 1969 caused lesser damage. Repairs followed the 1755 disaster, while the original façade, portal, and large windows were retained. After religious orders were abolished in Portugal in 1888, the monastery ceased to function as a convent.
Major alterations in 1893 converted the former convent into the Hospital do Espírito Santo. The dormitory and infirmary became hospital wards, while small ground-floor chapels were demolished to make offices for doctors. The hospital was later replaced by the new São Bernardo Hospital. On 5 February 1961, the former monastery became the Setúbal City Museum after the museum moved there from Setúbal Town Hall. The church now serves as a parish church, and the adjoining former convent houses the Museu de Jesus.
In 1992, the monastery was designated a Portuguese national monument for its heritage value. In 2013, Europa Nostra included it among the seven most endangered monuments in Europe.
Remains
The surviving church combines a rectangular nave with a polygonal apse at the east end. The apse rises higher than the nave, while a modest bell tower stands on the western side of the south-facing façade. Stepped buttresses support the outer walls and the vaults of both the nave and apse. Each buttress carries a gargoyle and a twisted pinnacle, and the upper walls are finished with decorative crenellations.
Façade and entrance
South portal
The central south portal is prominent but unfinished. Several archivolts, mouldings that follow the curves of the arches, contain empty niches. Its tympanum carries two letter A forms inserted into an O, while a central mullion, a vertical divider, separates the entrance into two smaller twin-arched openings. The façade also retains a large mullioned window with late Gothic tracery on the south side of the apse.
Hall church interior
The interior is relatively narrow and consists of a central nave flanked by two side aisles of equal height. This arrangement produces a unified hall-church effect. Pointed arches and cross-vaulting define the interior, while the side aisles have semi-barrel vaults. Six large twisted pillars support the nave. Each is formed from three intertwined subcolumns made of breccia, a coarse stone composed of broken rock fragments, from the Serra da Arrábida. Their rope-like spiral form is a characteristic Manueline motif.
Main chapel
The square main chapel is covered by an elaborate late Gothic star-ribbed vault. Its intersecting ribs form a star-like pattern and include decorative bosses, ornamental nodes at the meeting points or ends of the ribs. Some ribs are shaped as twisted ropes. The main altar and pulpit date from the eighteenth century. The apse walls carry seventeenth-century blue-and-white azulejos, glazed ceramic tiles, arranged in geometric patterns. The side walls have tile panels from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, with scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary set within colourful borders. Sixteenth-century green-and-white geometric tiles also decorate the main chapel.
Choir and convent spaces
Upper choir
The upper choir was the enclosed place from which the Poor Clare nuns attended Mass. Its walls and columns are covered with azulejos. The room contains an old wooden altar with gilded elements, icons, and dozens of seventeenth-century reliquary busts. A reliquary is a container made to hold or display a relic, and these busts contain relics associated with saints.
Chapter house and inner courtyard
António Rodrigues, the royal architect, built the chapter house in 1582. A chapter house was the room where members of a religious community met for administrative business and communal reading. The chapter house and upper choir are identified as the only two rooms to have survived without alteration, while the monastery’s inner courtyard and these spaces retain their original appearance.
Painted altarpiece and museum collections
Around 1520, Manuel I presented the church with a painted altarpiece of fourteen panels attributed to Jorge Afonso, one of Portugal’s principal Renaissance artists. The altarpiece was removed from the apse in the eighteenth century and is now held in the museum collection. The museum in the former convent also contains Portuguese Primitive and Flemish paintings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, later Portuguese paintings, archaeological finds from the local area, historical coins, old documents, and books. These collections provide material for interpreting the former monastery and its changing use.
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