Parishes - Vinculum Information System Guide

Chronological span

The creation of parishes in the Portuguese rural and urban areas resulted from a process of territorial organization whose beginnings can be traced to the fifth century. After the rupturing of the Visigothic ecclesiastical fabric, between the eighth and twelfth centuries, caused by the Muslim invasion and settlement, the advance of the “Christian reconquest” to the south (twelfth-thirteenth centuries) made it possible to re-establish old parishes or to create new ones as the prelates of the restored dioceses defined the fiscal framework imposed on the faithful for the maintenance of the clergy, and the set of rights and obligations of the latter. As the parochial bounds in this period were still relatively fluid, the need to clearly establish the contributors to the ecclesiastical exactions led to the delimitation of the kingdom’s parochial territories between the second half of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Portuguese parish network remained very stable in terms of the number of jurisdictions and their geography between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries¹. The parishes have been maintained until the present time².

Normative documents (main)

Since the medieval period, the holders of parishes have been subordinate to the bishop to whom they owe fidelity and obedience³. Their obligations and competences are governed by the same norms which regulate, at the level of the diocese, the activities and the roles of the other ecclesiastical institutions under episcopal jurisdiction (synodal constitutions, statutes on ecclesiastical auditórios, and statutes on visitations) (see the respective list under the heading Diocese tab, subheading “Relations with other institutions with regard to entails”)⁴.

Competences

General

The parishes were intended to provide a religious framework for the faithful living within their bounds, providing the necessary liturgical, pastoral, and sacramental services by delegation from the ordinary over a defined territory and under the responsibility of a cleric, which implied, in material terms, the existence of a baptismal font and a cemetery⁷.

On entails

The parish churches and suffragan hermitages were important spaces for funeral chapels administered by lay people or by confraternities which had their respective headquarters there (see the heading “Confraternities” on the latter). The relations that their parish priests and beneficiaries maintained with these chantries revolved mainly around the fulfilment of the respective liturgical obligations, expressed in the conditions imposed by the foundation documents and by diocesan regulations, namely at the time of the canonical visitation carried out by the bishop or his representative⁸.

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

Institutional organisation

The parish churches were generally served by a parish priest, who could have various designations (abbot, vicar, and parish priest, among others)¹⁷. Those parishes with sufficient income had a group of beneficed clerics organised into a collegiate body, which was composed of a dignity, designated as a prior, rector, or vicar, and a group of raçoeiros (prebendaries)¹⁸.

The roles of its agents

Parish priest and beneficed clerics (in the case of the collegiate churches)
The intervention of the parish priest or members of the collegiate church in the administration of the chantries founded in the parish church focused above all on the issue of fulfilling the pious legacies. For instance, the fifteenth-century visitations of the collegiate of Santiago de Óbidos refer to the obligation of the respective priors and raçoeiros to have the masses celebrated for the chantries founded in the referred church, as well as to annually send to the archbishop the name of the chaplains and administrators, as well as the income from the funeral chapels located in the churches under their custody¹⁹. Their attributions at this level could also be expressed in the respective founding documents: in the 1498 visitation it is mentioned that the founder of a chantry, located in Peral, had stipulated that it should be visited by the prior and the raçoeiros of the church in question²⁰.

The various diocesan constitutions drafted in the seventeenth century contain provisions on the responsibility of the parish priests to have the documents belonging to the church written up and preserved, particularly those relating to the founding documents of the entails based therein. To this end, all those in possession of papers belonging to the church (scriveners, notaries, scribes, executors, and heirs) had 15 days to show them to the parish priest²¹, so that the latter could order a set of three registers:

The constitutions of the diocese of Portalegre, dated 1632, determined that the parish priest of the parish church was responsible, within six months, for keeping a book in which to record all liturgical celebrations of a votive nature²²;
The constitutions of Portalegre (1632), Lisbon (1656), Lamego (1683), Guarda (1686), and Porto (1690) ordered the parish priests to prepare, within one month, another book to record the verbas of the establishment of chantries, donations, testaments, or last wills²³;
With the exception of the case of Lamego, all the other constitutions mentioned in the previous paragraph urged the parish priest to keep a numbered notebook of the annual perpetual expenses at the church, as well as the names of the administrators of the chantries, the owners of the morgados, and the assets attached to cover the liturgical expenses established therein. In addition, in the latter case, the notebook would also have to contain the names of the leaseholders (foreiros) and the rental conditions of the assets attached to the said chantries and morgados. These records would have to be shown to the visitators at the time of each visitation of the church²⁴.

Relations with other institutions with regard to entails

The members of the clergy assigned to parish church service had the obligation of informing the diocesan authorities (bishop and the visitator, during the visitation) of the identity of the administrators and the fulfilment of the pious duties assigned to the chantries located in their churches, which implied a relationship with the respective chaplains and administrators (see above, under the heading “Institutional organisation and the roles of its agents”)²⁵.