Juízo dos hospitais, capelas, albergarias e confrarias da cidade de Lisboa e seu termo (1493-1564)

Chronological span

The establishment of a tribunal over the hospitals, chantries, hostels, and confraternities in the city of Lisbon and its district resulted from a royal commission granted to the Lisbon schoolmaster and canon Estêvão Martins, first identified in early 1493, at the culmination of an institutional evolution with roots in the reforms of the kingdom’s pious institutions carried out by the kings of Portugal from Duarte to Manuel I¹. In close connection with his “provedoria”, Estêvão Martins was supported in this judicial function, from at least 1498, by a group of “deputised” desembargadores, i.e. expressly commissioned for this purpose by the monarch².

His death in 1506 and the nomination of his successor contributed to the reconfiguration of the court, and the new provedor Rui Lopes dealt with the cases presented in the court on his own. According to the king, this situation was to be temporary, until the appointment of letrados to handle the court’s cases together with the aforementioned provedor. It was not until 1510 that King Manuel restored the collective judgement of the suits presented before the court. The collective configuration of this court remained in operation at least until the death of the king in 1521³.

The abolition of this court was decreed in a warrant (alvará) of 4 December 1564⁴.

Normative documents (main)

Miscellaneous legislation on the composition and attributions of the members of the court (1496-1520), which is scattered among various collections due to the lack of an archive belonging to that institution⁵;
Regimento das capelas e dos hospitais, albergarias e confrarias de Lisboa e do seu termo, in a letter addressed to the provedor Estêvão Martins and to the present and future provedores, dated 14th January 1504⁶;
Regimento do Juiz dos Feitos das Misericórdia e Hospital de Todos-os-Santosof 18 December 1565, which contains a clause prohibiting this official from taking account and having knowledge of the processes and relative to the chantries of the city of Lisbon and its district, later integrated into the Ordenações Filipinas⁷.

Competences

Due to their judicial functions, the attributions of the magistrates of the Juízo dos hospitais, capelas, albergarias e confrarias da cidade de Lisboa e seu termo were not to be confused with the competences of an administrative nature belonging to the provedores of the hospitals and chantries, even if the two institutions were sometimes united in the same individual (see heading Provedoria of the hospitals, chantries, hostels, and confraternities of the city of Lisbon and its district, subheading “Competences”).

The court had the following powers:

To judge cases concerning chantries, hospitals, hostels, and confraternities founded in the city and the district of Lisbon; assets alienated from chantries, morgadios, wills, and pious obligations; properties, including the chantries annexed to the Hospital de Todos os Santos¹²; residuary estates and execution of wills in the city and district of Lisbon¹³.
To authorise the drawing up of lease (locação) contracts (which had been the subject of its rulings)¹⁴;
To audit the accounts of the suspended administrators of the chantries attached to the Hospital de Todos os Santos¹⁵.

Institutional organisation and the roles of its agents with regard to entails

Institutional organisation

The magistracy of the court, alternating between individual (judge) or collective (judge and “deputy” desembargadores) configurations, headed a body of officials tasked with the day-to-day running of the institution, made up of a solicitor, a porter, and scribes²³.

The roles of its agents

The juiz dos hospitais, capelas, albergarias e confrarias de Lisboa e seu termo
The competences of this magistrate were focused on the following activities:

Judging the cases related to chantries and pious institutions in the city of Lisbon and its district, namely patrimonial claims related to the referred institutions²⁴.
Participating in the commission responsible for fixing the lease rates of the respective property lease contracts²⁵.

The «deputy» desembargadores
The duties of the desembargadores commissioned by the king (in 1498-1506 and from 1510 onwards) were not different from those of the judge of the hospitals, chantries, hostels, and confraternities of Lisbon and its district, as both were part of the court which judged the cases concerning the chantries and pious institutions of the city of Lisbon and its district.

The warrant (alvará) of 4 December 1564 shows that, at that time, the desembargadores had previously “specialised” in judging cases concerning residuary estates and the execution of wills in the city and district of Lisbon²⁶.

Porter (porteiro) of the chantries
The hospital porter was responsible for proclaiming in public the assets of chantries and pious institutions in the city of Lisbon and its district that were available for rent, a competence expressed in the documentation, from 1494 onwards, and which remained during the reign of King Manuel I²⁷.

Scribe (escrivão) of the chantries
It was the duty of this clerk to keep the records of the leasehold and tenancy agreements drawn up in the hearings of the provedor and judge Estêvão Martins, without reference to any special order from the king, in documents produced after 1494²⁸. The office of the scribe of the “hospitals and chantries” remained throughout the reign of King Manuel I in the hands of Martim de Castro, which perhaps limited the contribution of other scribes to sustain the bureaucracy of the aforementioned court²⁹.

Relations with other institutions with regard to entails

The warrant (alvará) abolishing this court reveals that the magistracy of judge of the chantries, hospitals, hostels, and confraternities of Lisbon and its district was then “annexed” to the office of ouvidor (judge) of the Hospital de Todos os Santos, following its assumption by officials of that hospital, within the scope of a practice attested since the end of the reign of King João and that of his successor³⁰.

The jurisdiction of the Juízo dos Hospitais e Capelas was exercised without the right to appeal during the mandate of Estêvão Martins between 1493 and 1506. It is important to stress that this autonomy did not go unchallenged by the central courts, judging by the royal edicts forbidding the judges of the Casa da Suplicação and Casa do Cível (1499), as well as the regedor of the Casa do Cível (1501), to interfere in the cases sentenced by the members of the court³¹. From 1506 onwards, the decisions of the court were subject to appeal to the Casa da Suplicação, until King Manuel reintroduced new “deputy” desembargadores in 1510, who started to judge cases without appeal to the Casa da Suplicação³². The impossibility of appeal was still in force at the time of the abolition of the aforementioned court³³.