History

FOUNDATION AND CONSOLIDATION [1560-1910]

The year 1560 — the probable date of the foundation of the Misericórdia de Mesão Frio — is not documented in the invaluable Archives of this charity institution; however, the strength of oral tradition, which has traveled a long way to us for more than four centuries, tells us that it was in that year that André da Fonseca — a nobleman of the Royal House — and Dona Verónica de Mesquita, his second woman, founded an Ospital in Fundo de Vila [Mesão Frio], to accommodate the needy.

But the most prestigious figure in the consolidation of Mesão Frio's Misericórdia was undoubtedly the nobleman António de Azeredo e Vasconcellos, when, after the definitive return of the East Indies [Damão and Diu], at the end of the 16th century, he established this Santa Casa as universal heir to all its vast and important possessions.

António de Azeredo e Vasconcellos and his wife Maria de Mesquita [daughter of the founders…], having no children, had a chapel built in 1595 with the “arms” of Azeredos in the church of S. Nicolau in the town of Mesão Frio, chapel a who gave the invocation of the Child Jesus and Innocent Martyrs, to which they linked all their assets, whose income would be applied to the conservation of the Hospital da Misericórdia, which they reformed, appointing the Mesa da Misericórdia of Mesão Frio as administrator of that link, which, by deed of June 16, 1602, made by the notary Baltasar Borges, accepted the referred administration.

The first Statutes [Compromise] of the Misericórdia of Mesão Frio were drawn up in 1630, but there is no written memory of them, suspecting that they disappeared — like so many other valuable manuscripts — in the maelstrom of the fire set by Loison's troops in the hospital's basses of the Santa Casa where the Archive was located.

The Institution Book, started in 1602, and the Book of Tombo (Registration), started eight decades later, were recently classified as «Units of Exceptional Value» by the Ministry of Culture, and are part of the Santa Casa Historical Archive da Misericórdia de Mesão Frio comprising 264 books, 41 folders, 86 packs, 44 notebooks, 152 notebooks, a box and 1 pad, installed in the institution's administrative services and inventoried by Manuel Silva Gonçalves and Paulo Mesquita Guimarães, from the Vila District Archive Real.

For more than two hundred years — after the institution by António de Azeredo and Vasconcellos — the Misericórdia de Mesão Frio became a powerful brotherhood, with important and numerous heritage assets that stretched from the former municipality of Penaguião to the extinct municipality of Bem- To live [today Marco de Canavases], enjoying important income from them that were converted into capital loaned to the «interest of law».

Despite all its patrimonial grandeur, largely due to the negligence of some administrative tables, after the 2nd French invasion [May 1809], the Misericórdia of Mesão Frio went into decline and, throughout the 19th century, it went through long periods economic instability, in which financial disruption and its extinction will be, cyclically, threatened.

Presiding as Ombudsman at administrative tables has always been an “honor never paid”, this rare social privilege having been exclusive to the noblest people in the houses of Mesão Frio or its surroundings. In the long list of Misericórdia Providers of Mesão Frio, there are, in the majority, holders of noble houses, capitães-mores and even abbots with a noble rib; however, the Azeredo Pintos family — coming from the noble Casa de Penalva de Ancede and the Casa da Picota, in Mesão Frio, and collateral descendants of the founder António de Azeredo and Vasconcellos — occupied the most important, for more than three centuries. positions in the ministry and chaplaincy of the Misericórdia of this village.

Throughout its history, this charitable institution was the creditor of continued donations that helped to economically support the daily administration of its Hospital: André da Fonseca, António de Azeredo and Vasconcellos, Rui Borges Pinto and Mrs. Briolanja Soares, in the 16th century, or the surgeon João Félix da Fonseca, and the nobleman-provider Manuel de Moura Coutinho [of the Casa de Entráguas, in Santa Marinha do Zêzere], in the following century, were among the most important benefactors in the first two hundred years of its existence. More recently, in the 19th century, the capitalist José Caetano de Carvalho; the extravagant Dr. António Vicente de Sequeira; the visionary Baron of Castelo de Paiva; the “Brazilian” Domingos Pinto da Silva; the baroness of Fornelos [the most important owner, in the municipality of Mesão Frio, in the last quarter of that century]; the Count of Samodães; Mrs. Maria do Espírito Santo Carvalho; Francisco de Sampaio Moreira, and so many, so many forgotten ones — are Figures of great Benefactors of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Mesão Frio, whose names were indelibly engraved in the Minutes of this centenary institution.

B. Vieira de Oliveira