This August, the “Entail of the Month” initiative is featuring the Caniço Estate, established on Madeira on August 31st 1499 by Álvaro de Ornelas and Constança de Mendonça. Álvaro de Ornelas was the homonymous son of Álvaro de Ornelas, the Great, the first of the same name and founded the family branch who arrived in Madeira within the context of the increasingly frequent navigation of the waters off the Atlantic coast and the new prominence this conferred on the islands. In conjunction with his wife, by joint will, he established the Caniço estate and with the farm of this same name where the couple lived at its centre. This bond would remain in their descendants through to the twentieth century, throughout 14 uninterrupted generations, with this evolution allowing us to trace the political, economic and social history of the island while also reflecting the emerging Portuguese expansionist and colonising strategy in the North Atlantic.

Indeed, throughout over four centuries, the Caniço lineage entailment remained one of the most influential on Madeira Island and constantly expanding. The concentration of properties in the family became so prominent that in the mid-19th century, the Ornelas Vasconcelos were managing 22 properties. Two months before the 19 May 1863 law came into force, which stipulated the definitive abolition of entailment bonds, the 14th and last heir annexed and merged all the properties belonging to the family into a single bond under the same ownership. This was passed on to his son who, in 1927, ordered the construction on a promontory at the tip of Garajau, the Caniço Christ the King, thus perpetuating, in the midst of the First Republic, the testimony to his own life and the legacy of his forefathers.

To find out more details about this entail, go to this page with all the Entail of the Month information. Here, you may also find out about the other entails made available in the meantime, at: https://www.vinculum.fcsh.unl.pt/entail-of-the-month

You can also contribute to this initiative by making suggestions for future entails of the month and any details you may be able to provide. To this end, please contact the project at: vinculum@fcsh.unl.pt.

The VINCULUM project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Professor of NOVA FCSH and researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies, awarded the first ERC Consolidator Grant to a Portuguese researcher in the field of History.