The “Entail of the Month” initiative presents this month the Chapel of Our Lady of Ajuda and the Piornais Estate. The entail benefits, first of all, from the existence of a monograph based on a vast and laborious archival work – documents from the Juízo de Resíduos and Capelas do Funchal (Arquivo Regional e Biblioteca Pública da Madeira), among which the accounts of administration, of difficult reading, stand out; documents from the Arquivo Diocesano do Funchal; several others, allowing the construction of working tools published in the book, which also includes the transcription of several unpublished ones. Then, in terms of historical interpretation, it allows us to bring up themes such as the entailment in the Atlantic space and its role in the colonization of territories quickly transformed into profitable societies – with profit being one of the substrates of the foundation, evident, among other things, in the luxury of the ornaments of the chapel; how this civil colonization was accompanied by the establishment of ecclesiastical circumscriptions, whose growth depended a lot on the lay founders and patrons of the temples; the means by which the general economic vicissitudes affected these institutions; the complex family relationships, sometimes of solidarity, sometimes of rivalry; and, in a final moment after the extinction of the entails, the existence of a desire for continuity, enshrined in the transmission of property by the last morgado, António João da Silva Bettencourt Favila, who died in 1876, childless, and whose will, of 1874, can be considered almost a perfect exponent of the long duration of the entailment mentality.

To find out more about this entail, visit the page with all the information on this Entail of the Month. You can 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 participate in this initiative by leaving your suggestion for future entails of the month and other information about entails you may have. To do so, 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 at NOVA FCSH and researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies, recipient of the first ever History Consolidator Grant awarded by the ERC to a Portuguese researcher.