Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
R. A. H. Robinson
345
346 Journal of Contemporary History
while in 1918 the first diocesan synod since 1761 was held in Braga;
it was followed by the first National Eucharistic Congress in 1925 and
the Portuguese Plenary Council in 1926. There was also renewed
interest in liturgy and ecclesiastical studies. The intensification of
popular devotion was evidence of a general revival and this came to
focus increasingly on the controversial appearances of Our Lady of
the Rosary near Fatima in 1917. Although the ecclesiastical authorities
and educated Catholics were initially sceptical, popular belief in the
visions led the new Bishop of Leiria to announce the possibility of a
miracle in 1922. The official Republican response was to attempt to
ban pilgrimages to Fatima, while one unofficial answer was to dynamite
the chapel at Cova da fria: both, as could be expected, proved
singularly counter-productive and the cult continued to grow. In 1930
the Church officially permitted the cult and declared the visions
'worthy of credence.'2 8
One of the key indices of the extent of the religious revival lay in the
recruitment of clergy, and episcopal exhortations rightly stressed the
need for higher clerical standards, catechizing and vocations. Between
1911 and 1918 the number of seminaries was legally reduced to five,
but in most dioceses semi-clandestine arrangements allowed a measure
of continuity. Republican actions seem to have been responsible for
an initial loss of seminarists: the Episcopal Seminary of Oporto found
its first-year intake more than halved between 1910 and 1915 (from 42
to 15).29 The ecclesiastical authorities were faced by the problems of
finding new buildings and funds; the latter was always a worry despite
the faithful's contributions and the use of the proceeds from the
Pontifical Indulgences, because most seminarists were too poor to
help towards their own maintenance. It was in the early 1920s that the
seminaries really got under way again and this meant that there was
lost ground to be recovered. Given the length of time necessary to
train priests, there was bound to be a time-lag before the revival bore
fruit; in the meantime the average age of the priesthood would rise, with
the attendant difficulties of sickness and mortality: in 1930 three-
quarters of the priests in the Patriarchate of Lisbon were over fifty.30
These factors left out of account the unforeseeable, such as the world
influenza epidemic of 1918 which carried off 24 clergy in the diocese
of Braganza alone - around one-seventh of the total number.31
Rudimentary statistics for the period circa 1910-40 reflect the
crisis and continuing insufficiency of numbers. The number of
ordinations in the diocese of Oporto was 256 in the decade 1899-
1909, 159 from 1910 to 1918, and 128 from 1919 to 1930. With
360 Journal of Contemporary History
its 287 ordinations, Oporto was the premier diocese in the years
1910-30, followed by Braga (273) and Coimbra (117); the least
productive as could be expected, were Beja (2), the Algarve (13)
and Evora (14).32 The total number of ordinations for the period
1910-30 was equivalent to between a quarter and a third of the total
number of clergy on the mainland (3,765 in 1932). The 1930s
were in part a decade of stagnation: in 1932, some 2,556 of the 3,857
parishes on the mainland had a priest, whereas the figure for 1940
was 2,576 out of 3,861 parishes. However, the number of seminarists
rose in the same period from 2,551 to 3,263. The figures suggest
that the dioceses best provided with clergy, apart from Funchal and
Angra do Heroismo, were Portalegre, Leiria, Oporto and Braga, while
by far the worst were Beja and Evora, followed by the Algarve and
Braganza.33 There are indications that the overall quality of the clergy
somewhat improved, as did that of the bishops.
In general, it may be said that Portugal shared in the Western
European Catholic revival of the early twentieth century. Whether
the anticlerical measures of 1910-11 stimulated revival through
adversity or merely interrupted an established trend by bringing
temporary dislocation is a difficult question to answer, but it may
be noted that contemporaries - clerical and anticlerical alike -
generally favoured the former interpretation, while the encourage-
ment of the Orders was absent after 1910. There was a reinvigoration
of ecclesiastical life and increased devotion, particularly among women
and the rural population in northern areas. As in France, juridical
separation proved in many ways beneficial to the life of the Church.
As in France too, the social significance of religious revival would seem
to have resided mainly in the spiritual reconquest of important
sections of the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The reconversion of a
considerable part of the elite meant sweeping changes in official
attitudes to religion.
However, it would seem that relative success did not prove an al-
together unmixed blessing. The changes in institutions led to some
complacency among Portuguese Catholics about the state of religion
in their country. Little progress was made in regard to the re-
Christianization of the south or the urban working class. In 1951
a luminary of the CADC wondered whether the religious state of the
nation had not been better fifty years before, while in the mid-1950s
one priest concerned with the shortcomings of the Catholic press com-
plained: 'Portuguese Catholics do not have Catholic minds and
characters . . . Our Catholics share the bourgeois sentiments of the
Robinson: The Catholic Revival in Portugal, 1900-1930 361
NOTES