Events

The Loreto Church (Lisbon) was founded by the Italian community at the beginning of the 16th century. Also known as the Italians Church, it was free from the jurisdiction of the Lisbon Patriarchate, depending directly on the Pope and, in the Portuguese capital, on the Apostolic Nuncio. Destroyed by the fire that broke out after the 1755 earthquake, apart from the archive and the sacristy, at the end of the 1750s the church resumed celebrations in the sacristy, solemnly commemorating the most important festivities of the liturgical calendar. From the old documents, a certain void stands out in the solemn ceremonies until the year 1773: only after this date, major ceremonies were resumed in great force, in which events of a political nature were also commemorated (election or death of a pontiff or a member of the Royal House). In this presentation, I will explain the reasons for this void, certainly caused in part by the consequences of the earthquake of 1755, but mainly by the turbulent political moment, with tensions between Rome and Lisbon, in which relations between the two states were interrupted. In addition to the Archive of the Church of Loreto, for this research I also consulted the archive of the Irmandade de Santa Cecília and several publications. It would be important to extend the investigation to other archives as well, especially the archive of the Church of Santo António dos Portugueses, in Rome, to find out if the tensions between Rome and Lisbon also had repercussions on the Portuguese church in the Pontifical City.