This stamp issue is part of the first volume of the work Breve Viagem pela Arquitetura Religiosa em Portugal (A Brief Journey through Religious Architecture in Portugal). In a constant balance between memory and surprise, this brief journey focuses on architecture, as the name indicates, but simultaneously holds an ongoing dialogue with the historical context of each monument. This is not a comprehensive compilation of emblematic monuments – of which there are so many! – but rather an excursion with unmissable stops at key moments of history.
We have undoubtedly lost count of all the temples that have not survived to the present day, that linger only in the memory. Few duly proven traces remain of the synagogues and mosques that were once scattered through the territory from north to south. Abandoned, destroyed or re-purposed, some have been turned into places of worship or private housing. This had already happened with Roman temples and Paleo-Christian basilicas, confirming the old maxim that history is written by the winners.
There are also countless Christian temples that have been devoured by the vortex of time. However, many of the oldest churches, as well as the monasteries to which they were often linked, remain standing today, when everything, or almost everything, around them has changed. As poles around which urban development and populations would cluster, these religious houses played an important role in the settlement of people and land ordnance.
They resisted the passage of the centuries, the battles, invasions, fires and earthquakes. They withstood the construction of railways, streets, highways, tunnels and viaducts that tore through the territory and shortened the distance between once remote regions. They stood firm through the exponential growth of cities, the factories and buildings, ever increasing in number and height, which grew up around them. Some isolated, some part of larger religious complexes, each of these buildings conveys a living and dynamic legacy that inspires new readings every day.
Built in bygone times by men who could not write, the Dolmen-Chapel of São Dinis, in Pavia, is one of these places that has spanned the centuries as a sacred space, having been converted into a Catholic temple during the seventeenth century, a time when popular devotion prevailed.
The granite structure of an ancient temple erected in honour of Carnus, the Lusitanian divinity worshipped during the Roman empire, is still clearly visible today in the chancel of the Church of Santana do Campo, in Arraiolos, built during the fifteenth century.
A few miles from Dume, in Braga, the Chapel of São Frutuoso de Montélios, one of the oldest documented Christian buildings in the Minho region, was built at the behest of the Bishop of Dume to shelter his tomb. At the time of its construction, this small pantheon backed onto the monastery of São Salvador, itself built at the order of São Frutuoso, for a small religious community to be installed there. The monastery was demolished in the fifteenth century.
With a complex history that has become somewhat clouded over time, the Mozarabic Church of São Pedro de Lourosa (municipality of Oliveira do Hospital) reveals a wide range of influences – Asturian- -Leonese, Islamic and Mozarabic – all of them dating from before the year 1000. Having undergone multiple interventions over the centuries, some of which were controversial, this basilica temple is thought to have been (re)erected in 912, according to the date inscribed on a stone plaque on its exterior. In a small border village, once the important Roman city of Egitânia which, between the fifth and sixth centuries, under the tutelage of the Swabians, was elevated to become the seat of the bishopric, we find the Cathedral of Idanha-a-Velha. Successive campaigns of work carried out over the centuries deepened the mystery surrounding this building, which the Knights Templar, who reached Idanha in the 12th century, referred to as a mosque.
In the valley of the river Varosa, the Monastery of São João de Tarouca was the first Cistercian motherhouse in Portugal. Its history dates back to 1140, when King Afonso Henriques granted a "carta de couto" (a charter granting certain privileges, including rights to land) to the Benedictine community who built a hermitage there in the late 11th century. This community, like many others scattered through the (re) conquered territories, would join the Order of Cistercians.
Cristina Cordeiro
Author of the book
Breve Viagem pela
Arquitetura Religiosa em Portugal
(A Brief Journey through Religious Architecture in Portugal)
