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    S. Martinho, together with Carapinha (which was constituted as curate in the beginning of the seventeenth century) was part of the landlord of Pombeiro da Beira. By the end of the eighteenth century, it retained the secular link with the parish of Pombeiro da Beira “porque ali [ia] sempre tomar quinhão nas assemblêas eleitoraes” [… because it was always taking part in the electoral assemblies.]

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    By the end of the fifteenth century  Sanguinheda, together with a land parcel now impossible to determine, was separated from the landlord of Pombeiro and Simão da Cunha, third son of the fifth grantee of Pombeiro, instituted a morgadio there which, by will dated October 27, 1535, was left to his sister D.a Inês da Cunha. Despite the landlord being at Pombeiro the ownership was transferred to the lords of Melo.

       

    Sanguinheda, now a small village, was the center of the communal functions – the place where the town hall was and where the local judge, council members and county and court clerks were. However, the church had been built out of the village at a remote location of difficult access, to be near the center of the ecclesiastical circumscription. It stood on the backside of the hill where S. Martinho is now located, in the forest, near the old Road of Beira. It was then called S. Martinho da Sanguinheda.

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    At the early seventeenth century, the church moved to a small hamlet called Póvoa, which was then named S. Martinho da Cortiça. In a parish record dated 1758 the local pastor describes the change of the church’s location as follows [for the exact written statement please consult the Portuguese version of this webpage]: For the church to be more easily accessible to all parishioners it was moved from the county of Sanguinheda to that of Pombeiro, to a hill between Cortiça and Venda Cimeira and at the roadside it stood for many years, but because it was exposed to robberies of which many suffered, and went into ruins, the disgusted parishioners though of moving it to Póvoa, where it stays since the year 1618, and while it was not plowed expiated the Sacrament in the chapel of Santo Amaro da Cortiça. It is the place of Póvoa, a pleasant site although with a somewhat steep terrain for it is on the base of a hill called The Fat Head, summoned by two valleys with vineyards, orchards and woods.

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     On August 4, 1832, during the civil war between liberals and absolutists, a column of 20 carriages of the “hunchbacks” (absolutists) heading to the north of the country arrived in Ponte da Mucela and in the following day stopped at Eira do Forno, near Cortiça. 

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     A violent fight started with the “speckled” (liberals) and the load of gunpowder exploded near Catraia dos Poços, but far from the houses.

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    This regional incident lead the absolutists to start persecutions, burnings (Cortiça was burned), imprisonments and shootings, and became known as the “queima da pólvora” (burning of gunpowder).

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     After the land’s ownership fell in possession of the Castelos-Brancos after D.a Maria de Briteiros became the ninth landlord of Pombeiro upon his brother’s death and remarried with D. António de Castelo-Branco, the area fell in a pronounced decay because the family payed little attention to the administration of the House of Pombeiro. Only second-rank personalities settled there, as was the case of D. Nuno de Castelo-Branco who was a bastard son, as we conclude from his will being in favor of strangers: due to his condition, he was condemned to live and die in the distant mountains of Beira. He was a consanguine of D. António de Castelo-Branco da Cunha, then eleventh landlord of Pombeiro.

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    It was this D. Nuno, pastor of the parish, who passed away on September 11, 1642, that was responsible for the edification of today’s temple, in the period from his appointment to the parish in 1617 and the blessing of the building on May 28, 1624. He marked the temple, which has S. Martinho (bishop) as patron, with the Cunha’s family coat of arms (with the blade of the wedges on the left) both at the main entrance and the cross arch, and the lion of the Castelos-Brancos family at the chapel’s door on the left of the building and on the pulpit.

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   The former temple was not demolished and for some years it was used for burials, but was left to progressive abandonment and was eventually rendered useless.

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     The present-day church is an ample temple built using regional earthenware from the underground near Sanguinheda, with a strong two-body tower from the centerline to the right flank. Limestone from the Coimbra zone, certainly prepared in the workshops of that city, was used in the triumphal arch and on the doors of the two chapels adjacent to the church’s nave.

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      The church’s very simple frontage is adorned with the coat of arms of the Cunha family and a niche with a figure of S. Martinho, sculpted by the legendary António Gomes “criado de João de Ruão” which, together with those of the Saints Águeda and Luzia should belong to the altar of the old church. It is known that on May 16, 1582 the parish pastor António Fernandes de Oliveira ordered that disciple of that master of Coimbra’s renaissance the making of an altarpiece for the chancel, to be delivered until All Saints day. The altar was to measure fifteen feet high and twelve feet wide, with S. Martinho occupying the place of honor and, in smaller houses, Saint Luzia and Saint Águeda.

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      The church’s nave is ceiled by a vault of masonry in the apse and wood planks in the remaining parts. Two chapels open to the sides showing skewed pilasters decorated with then common geometric motifs, which are also repeated on the right side of the triumphal arch.

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   The main altarpiece and the torsal columns and arches of similar type, as well as the figure of S. Martinho [“… admirably sculpted and intricately stewed”] are from the seventeenth century. The parts   collateral to the cross and the side chapels are from the eighteenth century and show two columns, a high headboard with the image of a radiant sun, and ornate shells.

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   The front of the main altar is covered with a beautiful panel made of fifteenth-century Sevillian tiles.

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   The bells in the tower are believed to have been brought from Coimbra, where they were believed to have been at use elsewhere. One has the inscriptions S. M. da Cortiça, 1881. Joaquim Amaro da Fonseca, whereas the other has an inscribed image of the Virgin with Child as well as the sayings lvis · gomes · de olivv[ei]ra · me fes · lxa · I·02·       

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     As mentioned before, Sanguinheda was separated from the landlord of Pombeiro at the end of the fifteenth century. The old chapel was transformed to such an extent in 1922 that even its orientation changed, and nothing of the old temple was preserved. This radical rebuilding was due to salt infiltrations of the masonry’s stones. The chapel is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary.

   The image in Manueline style from the early sixteenth century and sculpted in limestone, representing Virgin with Child placing a rosary crown on the head of a kneeling female figure, is also worthwhile mentioning. Like the old chapel, it dates back to the time of the grantee Simão da Cunha.

     When Cortiça was set afire in the context of the aforementioned “burning of the gunpowder” incident, its chapel was damaged. It was rebuilt around 1880-1885 and the current altarpiece was assembled using carvings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The image of the oracle Santo Amaro, made in clay and dated from the eighteenth century is accompanied by another of Lady of Conception, made in stone, from the sixteenth century.

   In Mucelão the visitor can find the chapel of Our Lady of the Incarnation, of uncharacteristic style, which is the house of a small limestone sculpture of virgin and Child dated from the fifteenth century.

   The chapel of Pombeiras has a front porch with a stone sculpture of the oracle São Nicolau (bishop) with children in a sile, as was common in sculptures dating from the sixteenth century.

   On November 19, 1708, the visitant of the church of Paradela of Cordova ordered a chapel to be built on the land ceded by José Cortés, a local landowner, to serve Sobreira, which was then called Estrada. The chapel of Our Lady of the Snows would have to be common to the two parishes, Paradela and S. Martinho, which both share the place. However, the temple’s door once faced the opposite side.

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        The small altarpiece, dated from the eighteenth century, was transferred before the mid-twentieth century, to the present factory and the sculpture of the oracle, representing the Virgin with Child, dates from the end of the fifteenth century.

 

        Scattered over the parish are some houses bearing coats of arms which are worthwhile mentioning. One of these is located near Cortiça’s chapel. It was built in the second half of the eighteenth century and once belonged to the Cunha family of Pombeiro.

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       In addition, the building shows one of the two old facades and an angle balcony set in a strong molded basin. The façade has a portal topped by a curved pediment where the coat of arms arms of the Cunhas of Pombeiro is inscribed with the wedges on the right and the escutcheons on the left.

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        Another notable house is that of the Correia de Aguiar family located in Sobreira, still in the parish of S. Martinho da Cortiça. It has a rectangular opening with curved lintel door, boasting a coat of arms from the early nineteenth century. The coat of arms in French style, carved in limestone with a concave head, shows in I he arms of the Correia family, in the II the arms of the Rodrigues family, in the III the arms of the Vale family and in the IV the arms of the Nogueira family. To this is added two arms placed side by side with the flattened hand of carnation passed with a band. The gridded helmet is shown in profile, turned to the right.

   In 1298 Pero Salgado, treasurer of King D. Dinis, ordered the beginning of the construction of a bridge between the banks of the Alva river at Ponte da Mucela (Bridge of the Mucela). Francisco Brandão mentions that in his time the inscription reminding the event to future generations was still in place.

   The bridge has four arches, two larger ones over the river and two smaller ones on the riverbank to the village’s side. The first large arch, lying on the riverbank on the side of Coimbra, was demolished during the Third French Invasion to cut off the retreat of the French troops.

   In spite of the intense traffic that flowed over it the bridge continued to serve its purpose, with only small repair works to widen the roadway over the bridge’s deck. More recently, after the traffic has been diverted, the Enlighted Institute of road Infrastructures (Portugal) decided to widen it and covered its medieval stone cutlery with concrete and “beautiful” yellow railings. This was a work worthy of responsible individuals, highly concerned with the preservation of the national architectural heritage, which must be understood as a symbol of identity and common memory.

   The bridge was a landmark, which conveyed the people of Arganil a sense of identity because, if I may say so, I was the gateway of the County’s border; it helped us to interpret the history of Mankind, of the people, and in this particular case of the Country itself.

    We must value the preservation of our centuries-old heritage, because it forms the root of our cultural identity. Only the preservation of this identity will grant our individuality, especially against a Europe which, whether we like it or not, will ultimately lead to a certain degree of massification, or in our case even to a true colonization.

      Social groups evolve over time, and during this slow process, there are stages of inflection and change. It is precisely at these critical periods that we are in greater need of ensuring the persistence of the symbols of the collective identity of each population, keeping in mind that the more recent of these symbols must be brought together with the older ones, and that we currently live times of accelerated transformation.

Bibliographic orientations: Beyond my two studies, Concelho de Arganil: história e arte, Arganil, Edição da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Arganil, 1983 e Arganil, Lisboa, Presença, 1996, I also used Vergílio CORREIA; A. Nogueira GONÇALVES, Inventário artístico de Portugal. Distrito de Coimbra, Lisboa, Academia Nacional de Belas Artes, 1952, p. 19-21 e de António Manuel de Melo FERNANDES, Pedras de armas do concelho de Arganil [Polycopied].

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Regina Anacleto