Convent of Caloura: A Portuguese Religious Complex in the Azores

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History

The Convent of Caloura is a sixteenth-century Portuguese religious complex in Água de Pau, Portugal, on São Miguel in the Azores. It developed around a chapel and hermitage dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Conceição, later becoming a religious shelter known as the recolhimento, a house for religious retreat and community life. Its history is closely connected with the 1522 disaster at Vila Franca, the foundation of religious houses elsewhere on São Miguel, and the devotion to Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres.

Origins and the Caloura community

Around 1440, the hermit Joanne Anes built a small chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Conceição at the site. By 1522, another chapel under the same dedication stood in the sheltered Caloura, or Cabaços, Valley. The valley escaped the earthquake and landslide that devastated Vila Franca do Campo that year.

After the disaster, several devout women remained at the hermitage instead of returning to the estate of Jorge de Mota. The council of Vila Franca and settlers from Água de Pau built them a small residence. Two of the women adopted the names Maria de Jesus and Maria dos Anjos and began preaching, while other women later joined the community.

Rui Gonçalves da Câmara, the island’s third captain-donatário, supported the religious house. A captain-donatário was an appointed or hereditary official responsible for administering part of Portugal’s Atlantic island territories. Rui Gonçalves da Câmara obtained a papal bull, a formal document issued by the pope, and permission to establish a monastery. He became the house’s patron with his wife, D. Filipa Coutinho, and later moved with his family to the area, where he commissioned public works nearby.

Relocation to Vila Franca and Ponta Delgada

On 16 July 1533, a papal determination provided for a monastery dedicated to Santo André in Vila Franca do Campo for forty nuns. Many of them came from the Vale de Cabaços community. On 23 April 1540, the nuns and staff left the Caloura refuge to establish the Monastery of Nossa Senhora da Esperança in Ponta Delgada.

The departing community took with it the image of Senhor Santo Cristo, a Catholic devotional image of Christ associated with the Ecce Homo theme, in which Christ is shown before his crucifixion. Pope Paul III had given the image to two sisters who travelled to Rome to seek authorization for the Ponta Delgada monastery. The move was also linked to the vulnerability of Caloura to attacks by pirates and privateers.

Água de Pau had been elevated to town status by King Manuel I in 1515. Its territory was described as half a league of land and was detached from Vila Franca. This change formed part of the local setting in which the early religious communities developed.

Return of the hermits

After the women’s relocation, the site remained deserted apart from brief hermit occupation until 1632. Earthquakes and fires struck Furnas on 2 September 1630, and the hermits of Nossa Senhora da Consolação moved from Furnas to Caloura. On 20 November, D. João Pimenta de Abreu, Bishop of Angra and the Azores, authorized them to build residences beside the existing hermitage.

By 1633, the hermits had formed a community of brothers and two priests. On 17 November, the Blessed Sacrament rescued from the Furnas fires was placed on the altar of Nossa Senhora da Conceição. Images of Nossa Senhora da Conceição and Nossa Senhora da Consolação, brought from Furnas, were placed beside it. The remains of Father Diogo da Madre de Deus were buried in the chancel, the enclosed sanctuary area at the eastern end of a church, in the following year. They were later transferred to a stone box beside the altar. An image of Nossa Senhora das Dores stood in the presbytery by 1635.

Expansion in the seventeenth century

In 1650, Father Manuel da Anunciação ordered five tombs to be opened in the presbytery, including his own. After his death on 17 February 1651, his bones were moved to the altar credenza in the following year. João Roiz Vitória financed improvements in 1659, including bunks, gratings, a silver monstrance, and ornaments. A monstrance is a liturgical vessel used to display the consecrated Eucharistic host.

In September 1664, D. Manuel Luís Baltazar da Câmara, first Count of Ribeira Grande and eighth captain-donatário of São Miguel, ordered extensive work. This included alterations to Father Assunção’s cell, an extension of the sacristy, a high choir, four additional cells, dormitories, and an oratory with a crucifix. He also improved the housing of the Blessed Sacrament. On 8 September 1664, the image of Nossa Senhora da Consolação was transferred from Furnas to the chapel’s left lateral altar.

A visitation by Dr. Manuel Álvares Cabral in 1665 led to the restoration of the older dormitories. The community then contained ten hermits, six of them priests, and could hold a maximum of thirteen members. In 1674, Bishop Lourenço de Castro ordered further remodelling and expressed concern about the shortage of priests.

Artistic commissions and institutional life

In December 1684, the sculptor Jean Fauger, also called João Faugero, built a stone niche within the grounds. In 1688, he made a new white-marble image of the Virgin for the principal niche, together with columns, pedestals, angels, cherubs, and other images. He died in 1693 before completing the altar for Nossa Senhora da Consolação.

Captain Bartlomeu de Frias Coutinho arranged for three rooms to be built in the western dormitory in 1688. During his residence, he improved the road to the chapel and undertook other works. His testament of 1696 left his books and money to the shelter, including funds for a silver censer and chains.

In 1704, Fathers Ministro and João de Passos obtained permission for students to live at the shelter while continuing their studies and practising Latin. Bishop D. António Vieira Leitão visited in 1707, established masses for Nossa Senhora da Consolação, endowed them with four moios of wheat from Água de Pau, and introduced statutes based on those created at Furnas in 1619.

After the 1707 visitation, the eastern dormitories and cells deteriorated and needed support. Later works included new glazed ceramic tiles, or azulejos, in 1725, a doorway in the oblique corridor beside the chapel in 1731, and a washroom in 1733. In 1737, the nave received new tiles, while the cistern, dormitory, kitchen, and workshops were rebuilt. Adriano da Silva left further bequests to the shelter in 1760. In 1779, Father Pedro Paulo de Vasconcelos ordered figurative panels to be installed above the central panel of the triumphal arch.

Secularization and later preservation

A decree of 17 May 1832 closed the Caloura shelter and secularized its church. Its possessions and property entered the national treasury, the hermits were expelled, and the chapel was placed under the supervision of the local authority of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos in Água de Pau. An inventory listed silverware, liturgical vessels, panels, images, crowns, an image of Christ, cabinets, and a small bell.

Plans made in 1837 to turn the complex into a lazaretto, an isolation facility for people or goods suspected of carrying contagious disease, were not implemented. Between 1846 and 1853, local authorities debated the custody, transfer, or reuse of the furnishings, images, and stone slabs, including their possible use in the cemetery.

On 6 June 1854, the hermitage, shelter, and surrounding property were sold to António Manuel de Medeiros da Costa Canto e Albuquerque, second Baron and first Viscount of Laranjeiras. Ownership later passed to his son António d’Albuquerque, and then to his daughter D. Cecília de Medeiros Albuquerque Jácome Corrêa and her husband, Thomaz Ivens Jácome Corrêa.

The complex became partly abandoned during the twentieth century. Deteriorated spaces made restoration difficult, so the presbytery and interior were rebuilt. This work was completed in 1940 by Guilherme Porfírio Cabral and the carpenter António Feliciano de Melo. New tiles were installed in the northern part of the buildings around 1946, followed by carpentry, plastering, painting, masonry, nave repairs, and electrical work during the 1970s and in 1979.

On 10 June 2008, the Regional Government of the Azores classified the Convent of Caloura as a Property of Public Interest. The designation recognized the complex as the original focus of celebrations associated with Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres. The chapel was dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Conceição but became commonly known as the chapel of Nossa Senhora das Dores. Its earlier calendar included celebrations of Nossa Senhora da Consolação on 8 September and Nossa Senhora da Conceição on 8 December. As devotion to Nossa Senhora da Conceição became associated with the parish of Água de Pau, its processions and celebrations moved there, and the Caloura hermitage subsequently celebrated Nossa Senhora das Dores on the third Sunday of September.

Remains

The convent and chapel occupy rocks beside the sea in the Caloura, or Cabaços, Valley on the southern coast of Lagoa. The buildings stand above sea cliffs, beside a public avenue and pedestrian walkway, and adapt to the sloping terrain. The complex has an irregular U-shaped plan, with an open area to the west and the church on the northern side. Its connected spaces have tiled roofs, white plastered and painted walls, and grey stone elements that define corners, frames, and other architectural details.

Church and chapel

Exterior architecture

The rectangular church contains a nave and presbytery flanked by lateral corridors, with the sacristy to the left of the altar. Its principal facade faces west. Tuscan pilasters, pyramidal pinnacles on parallel-elliptical plinths, friezes, cornices, lateral volutes, and a vegetal-shaped frontispiece frame the elevation, which is crowned by a rectangular Latin cross.

The central niche has a semicircular conch-shell form, a decorated side frame, a rectangular border, and an inverted fleur-de-lis motif. The first basalt image placed in it was later sold to Jesuit priests and installed in a house at Fajã de Cima. The two-storey facade has a framed doorway on the lower level and three rectangular windows above. The central window is larger, with vertical friezes, false corbels, a frieze, and a cornice.

A true bell tower rises on the northern side, while a second structure on the south is a false bell tower rendered and painted to imitate stonework. Three doorways enter the building: a large central entrance and two lateral entrances beneath the towers. The doorway beneath the false belfry is recessed and topped by a rectangular oculus. Beneath the true belfry, a lattice door is set flush with the facade.

Interior decoration

The chapel interior is lined with patterned azulejos, glazed ceramic tiles used for wall decoration and narrative or geometric surfaces. The stone spans are painted to resemble marble. Two built-in confessionals have red-painted doors, gold decoration, shell-shaped faux-marble interiors, and gilded details.

The high choir has a balustrade painted blue and red. Dark wooden lattice screens the sub-choir, whose orange-painted surface carries gilded acanthus and a cartouche showing a flaming heart pierced by arrows. A large baptismal font with a circular base stands to the right of the altar. To the left is a rectangular pulpit supported by two brackets. Its decoration includes a diamond-shaped anthemion surrounded by lanceolate forms, while the carved canopy rises to the roof cornice and contains a dove of the Holy Spirit within a circular cartouche.

A lattice balustrade separates the presbytery from the nave. The triumphal arch bears red-painted foliage, a crown, and two lateral gold-leaf retables, ornamental structures associated with an altar and designed to hold images or other decoration. Doors beside them lead into the lateral corridors. Rounded wooden beams support the nave roof line and carry plant-like friezes and cartouches, including a large central cartouche with marine symbols and inscriptions.

The presbytery and altarpiece use polychrome red and gold tilework. The altarpiece stands within a rectangular framework of six columns decorated with birds and small fish. Their high plinths contain acanthus and shell ornament, while Corinthian capitals rise into ornamental bands following the arches and converge around a pelican cartouche. Crockets mark the angles, and a rounded arch opens to a gallery decorated with acanthus. Red-painted interior panels shelter a three-tiered throne with acanthus ornament and angels above.

The raised gallery or rostrum is enclosed with tiles depicting the Descent from the Cross. The faceted sacristy contains hybrid bearded figures, and its doorway is decorated with an image of Christ the Redeemer. The marble altar has a parallelepiped form and a diamond-shaped cross. Its covered wooden structure is plastered and painted red, with panels carrying gilded acanthus, flowers, and raised gold decoration.

Painted doors in the presbytery lead to the sacristy and archive room. The small sacristy has white walls and a painted chest with a backrest decorated with floral motifs and drapery. The archive room contains a two-part painted wardrobe and a rectangular fixed basin, or lavabo, between pillars. The basin has an ashlar arch, a double frieze, a convex base, a faucet, floral decoration, and pinnacles.

Shelter house

Plan and internal circulation

The shelter house, or recolhimento, is an irregular U-shaped, two-storey building with a wing running parallel to the church. Grey stone forms its friezes, corners, and frames. On the eastern facade, a cornice and rectilinear detailing surround the larger ground-floor doorway and windows.

Inside, white-plastered rooms are arranged around several dependencies, a northern corridor, a southern chapel corridor, and further corridors opening toward the gardens. Two niches occupy the eastern corridor. One stands between the archive doorway and the staircase, while the other follows the last room on the opposite side. The southern end contains the largest room, probably the former grand visitors’ house. At the western end of the eastern corridor, a doorway and windows open toward the exterior and the property’s annexes. A staircase from the garden leads to a balcony and additional spaces above the corridor.

Kitchen and service areas

The entrance and concierge areas connect through arches and doorways to the kitchen and other dependencies, including a cellar and dining room. The pantry has an arched entrance, a monolithic stone table, and a spring supplied by the old cistern. The kitchen contains a sink, a stone table, and a long wooden shelf beneath a chimney.

A long wine cellar occupies a space formed by six arches. Beside the kitchen are a washing room, a small washroom, and two showers intended for summer use. These rooms preserve the service arrangement of the shelter as an inhabited religious complex.

Courtyards, gardens, and chapel approach

The chapel courtyard lies below the roadway and walkway and is reached by a short planted staircase. Low walls capped with stonework enclose the space, while three rows of paving slabs form geometric designs. Two gates close the western side, and the northern area includes a garage built over a functioning bulwark.

The western courtyard has an iron gate flanked by tile panels, including one with a heart motif, and a small fountain topped with tile decoration. Another gate northeast of the hermitage follows the roadway and is surmounted by a cross dated 1731. Much of the courtyard is planted as a garden and contains two pools filled with fish.

Hermitage interior

The chapel is commonly called the chapel of Nossa Senhora das Dores although its dedication is Nossa Senhora da Conceição. Its facade is flanked by two low bell towers, each carrying one bell, and the front niche contains an image of Nossa Senhora da Conceição.

The Baroque interior, belonging to the richly ornamented European style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, contains several phases of tilework. Blue-and-yellow tiles on a white ground may date from the seventeenth century, while later panels use blue painting on a white ground. A tile panel in the hermitage bears the date 1725. The presbytery contains decorated retables and several images of angels.

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