Ex-Votos
ANTÓNIO ARAÚJO
Words
VASCO CÉLIO
Photography
Looking back at us
In the summer of 1736, date unknown, the beneficiary Manuel Antunes, native of Barbacena, left home on his mule. On his way from Portas da Esquina to Horta dos Passarinhos, he came across a steep and stony slope, where his mule took fright for reasons unsure. Time and again, the cleric fell to the ground. Badly hurt and in great distress, he pleaded with the heavens, which came to his aid. In keeping with his promise, he had the crude cross in the fields of Torre das Arcas repaired.
The place of the said promise soon became famous for being miraculous, its name recognised beyond the border, across Spain, in Extremadura, Castile and even Andalusia. Then came the pilgrimage, which endures to this day. After, the Senhor Jesus da Piedade de Elvas chapel was built, a task entrusted to the architect José Francisco de Abreu. On 11th August 1753, D. Baltazar de Faria Villas Boas e Sampaio laid the first stone of the new, neoclassical and baroque-style church, during a solemn ceremony attended by civil, military and primarily ecclesiastical dignitaries. Construction was completed in 1779, three years after the demise of Father Manuel Antunes, without whom (almost) none of this would have happened.
Nearby was Poço do Cancão, a delectable mixture of the sacred and profane, which, being some distance from the town, was a meeting place for unrecommendable folk of low standing. Not far away was the Cruz dos Álamos, also known as the Cruz Onde Mataram a Moça (Cross Where They Killed the Girl), which alludes to a very old misdeed, the murder of a girl on her way to Varche. This episode dates back to the 15th century at least, more precisely to 1454, and is mentioned in documents from 1521, 1536 and 1599. Another cross, the Cruz do Corcovado, at the site of the Sete Cruzes, marked the killing of Mem Rodrigues in 1636, which was narrated by Camilo in a story suitably entitled “A Cruz do Corcovado”. There are other cases: somewhere between Herdade das Espadas and Ribeira do Cêto, Cruz das Espadas marked, or recalled, the place where Afonso Garro Vilalobos de Botafogo was murdered in 1738. Bloody terrain, no doubt. Also a place of conflicts, such as the famous aspergillum, which set the dean of the Elvas Chapter against the town’s bishop. For years, the former refused to give the latter the instrument used to sprinkle holy water. On the dean’s death, his nephew prolonged the dispute, which was one of protocol and politics (Church politics, of course), and only settled at great cost.
However, it is also worth remembering that confrontation and struggle are not the only elements of Elvas memory. An example of more harmonious times occurred in 1729, on the banks of the Caia, when princesses were exchanged through marriage. Dom José, prince of Brazil and future king of Portugal, wed Dona Mariana Vitória de Áustria; and Dom Fernando, prince of the Asturias, wed Dona Maria Bárbara, infanta of Portugal. The common people undoubtedly viewed such events from quite a distance, their immediate concerns being more earthly affairs, like the plague of locusts that mercilessly devastated the fields of Elvas and all their crops in May 1756, just one year after the terrible earthquake.
It was much like this, perhaps with less detail, that Elvas scholar Eurico Gama, who died in 1977, told the story of the ex-votos of Senhor Jesus da Piedade. The oldest example dates back to 1737, painted not long after Father Manuel Antunes’s fall and subsequent promise. Ex-voto, according to what was promised, Leite de Vasconcelos teaches us in As Religiões da Lusitânia. He adds that, around Alandroal, on a knoll located in São Miguel da Mota, gravestones, altar stones, marble plaques were found, all containing ex-votos dedicated to the cult of Endovelicus, the Celtic god of medicine. It seems that the ancients decorated their temples with pictures they called tabullae votivae, hence the expression “ex-voto”, a term that was more common and simpler, which explains its quick adoption. Some prefer other, denser, more elaborate expressions, such as “thanksgiving panels”, which indicate no request, only gratitude or payment given - a promise kept, a favour granted. Not by chance does the anthropologist João de Pina Cabral mention “payment of the saint” in his study of Minho’s ex-votos. According to the art historian Robert C. Smith, they were the best Portuguese approximation of the 18th-century English paintings called conversation pieces, which featured portraits of couples or groups engaged in gentle conversation, the height of civility. It is true that these naïve, ingenuous and folk paintings are parts of a conversation, or various: the believer’s conversation is with God, but also with us, telling us that they spoke to the Almighty, and he answered their prayers. As such, it involves three parties: one who asks and gives thanks for the cure, or blessing granted; the divine, silent although present; and us, witnesses, observing everything. Enchanted, amazed.
Over the centuries, the devotion of the people of Elvas has filled the Nosso Senhor Jesus da Piedade Chapel with images, transforming it into what folk called, with faith and purpose, the “House of Miracles”. Walls covered with ex-votos, crammed to the rafters. Thousands of them staring at us, amidst an enormous, deafening sound of old voices of the many dead.
To understand the importance of what occurs within, there is a short, dense booklet that the art historian Georges Didi-Huberman wrote on ex-votos, in which he discusses what he calls the “votive contract” between Man and the divine. The origins of such an agreement date back to the Upper Palaeolithic, back to the hands painted on cave walls and other places of worship. They flourished in Greek, Etruscan and Roman times, and later in various regions of medieval Christianity, from Cyprus to Bavaria, from Italy to the Iberian Peninsula. Huberman describes them as organic and vulgar, as well as aesthetically mediocre, although this does not eliminate what is essential: their resistance to any perceptible form of evolution; what we might call “progress”. The forms of representation, particularly anatomical ones, have remained unchanged for centuries.
In the Middle Ages, around 84% of ex-votos were made of wax. In his essay, Didi-Huberman attaches many wax images, almost all from Portugal. We find them everywhere: at Senhora da Saúde Church, in Lisbon; in a shop selling religious articles near the Clérigos Church, in Porto; piled up in bundles in one of the rooms of the Nosso Senhor Jesus da Piedade Chapel in Elvas. Arms and legs, eyes and breasts, large and small intestines, kidneys or bladders, stomachs and prostates (the latter being much sought after), a range of viscera, in addition to unisex heads or inexpressive children with swollen bellies. Less common are tractors and agricultural tools for good harvests, miniature cars (to pass driving tests), hefty books (to pass exams). All made of butter-coloured wax.
De Santo Aleixo à cidade
Eu me despus ao caminho
Ó Senhor da Piedade
Aqui tens o meu filhinho
Foi em soldado à Guiné
Numa revolta tamanha
Pedi-te Que tinha fé
Voltou à minha companha
Feliz da mãe que beijou
O filhinho que regressa
O seu retrato te dou
Foi esta a minha promessa
That said, these are not the objects that deserve the greatest attention in Elvas. That honour should be reserved entirely for the votive paintings and their writings, not to mention the very pious ex-votos made of cork or embroidered silk, among other natural materials. On wooden boards or paper (the latter in a poor state), the ex-votos keep pace with the daily life of an entire region, from the French invasions to nowadays. Employing their customary wickedness, the Napoleonic armies gutted sacred paintings, removing the figures of Christ or the Virgin. Besides this, there is a precious inventory, both tragic and naive: the bedridden sick, whose clothing or bedroom décor betrays their social class, disasters with farming or draft animals, work accidents, cross-border smuggling. The First World War is also there, abundantly represented pictorially, devoutly and, most of all, emotionally. It would be difficult to find such a vivid and human archive of what was and is the soul of a people, its pains, anguish and heartfelt hopes. Extraordinary.
The words are noteworthy, albeit written in simple language, replete with spelling mistakes. Ballads of the war in Africa, for example:
I set off from Santo Aleixo
On my way to town
Oh, Merciful Lord
Here is my son.
He went to Guinea as a soldier
In such a revolt
I asked you, as I had faith
He returned to me.
Happy is the mother
Who kissed the returning son
I give you his portrait
This was my promise.
There are rooms and rooms lined with photographs of uniformed soldiers, with messages like this. They watch us from every wall, top to bottom, and even from the ceiling. One of the most recent ex-votos, perhaps the most recent, is quintessentially contemporary, a wordless image of a dramatic road accident.
The Senhor Jesus da Piedade Sanctuary in Elvas is not the only church in the country with ex-votos. Far from it. We can find them the length and breadth of Portugal: many in Braga, of course, and various in Viana do Alentejo, in Senhora de Aires; in Passos da Graça and Senhora da Penha de França, in Lisbon; in São Gonçalo de Amarante and São Torcato in Guimarães. Let us not forget the Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Resgate, Aldeia das Freiras, in the municipality of Pedrógão Grande. Experts say that there are important nuclei of ex-votos in the Mother Church of Matosinhos, in Bom Jesus do Monte, in Braga; in the Church of Misericórdia of Póvoa do Varzim; in the Sanctuaries of Our Lady of Abadia, in Amares, in Douro; in Senhora do Carmo, in Azaruja, in Évora; in Senhora de Aires, in Viana do Alentejo; in Ermida do Calvário, in Redondo; in the Church of Atalaia, in Montijo. They are also found in museums, dotted around the country: the National Museum of Ancient Art and National Museum of Archaeology, in Lisbon; the José Régio House Musuem, Vila do Conde; the Antonino Museum in Faro, and various museums in Porto.
The most remarkable and amazing thing is that, in some places in the world, they still paint and make ex-votos: those from Mexico, for example, are reminiscent of Frida Kahlo’s paintings, the harshness of illness, the spontaneity of the brushwork. They say – can you imagine! – that votive scenes existed in pre-Columbian times, although the current Mexican form of ex-votos was introduced by the Spanish. In the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, there are many hundreds, perhaps thousands, and the adjoining museum has around 2,000 examples (to give you an idea, the collection in Elvas contains around 6,000 items, and counting). Fact or fiction, some say that Hernán Cortés had a picture painted to give thanks for surviving a scorpion sting. Nowadays, there are even ex-votos giving thanks for the invention of Viagra...
For many years, it was thought that the oldest reference to a Portuguese ex-voto featured in Lourenço Dinis’s will. Originally made in 1310, and now stored in the Torre do Tombo archive, it determined that two figures of beasts and two wax images - one that looked like Dinis, the other resembling Afonso Sanches - should be placed by the patron saint of Santarém. More recently, according to Vita de Sancti Geraldi (Life of St. Gerard), the oldest allusion to Portuguese ex-votos dates back to the first half of the 12th century. This means that our first ex-votos are as old as Portugal itself, somehow meshing with the foundation of the nation, in a synthesis or collective design that was political, but also religious. The oldest in existence is said to date back to 1550, which was discovered at the Quinta de Argemil farm, in the municipality of Barcelos.
There are many ex-votos throughout Portugal, forming unique, incredible and unrepeatable heritage that urgently needs to be preserved. Nobody asked them to exist. Now there are thousands of them, looking back at us, pleading with us to save them. Essentially, holding us accountable for what we do for them.
A different version of this text was originally published in Diário de Notícias on 23/9/2018. 