English
Church of Our Lady of Pity
Divar, Goa, India
Religious Architecture
In his Legends of India Gaspar Correia tells that when a very ill Afonso de Albuquerque was returning from Hormuz to Goa, upon being advised on 27 December 1515 that Our Lady of Divar at the Goa bar entrance was on the horizon “he got up from bed and was helped to the chamber door, leaning against it with his shoulder; he bent down when he saw the house of Our Lady, raised his hands and prayed, then went back to bed”. He died a short time later. Even today all those who enter through the Mandovi bar or travel up its shore can see Our Lady of Divar a long way off, standing white and alone on top of the island’s only hill, with the faraway profile of the Ghats bluish in the haze. In 1517 it was a small hermitage, founded shortly beforehand by Captain Rui Dias de Silveira. It was rebuilt and dedicated to Our Lady of Pity in 1625 and given its current form between 1699 and 1724. Along with Saint Anne’s of Talaulim, whose history is closely related, it is one of the most important churches in Goa, in India’s Catholic architecture and in the Portuguese language world. In a small book published in 1902, the Divar native Cipriano da Cunha Gomes describes the rivalry between the designers of the churches of Our Lady of Pity and Saint Anne. Father António João de Frias (1664-1727) became quite well-known in Goa and Portugal for reasons which have nothing to do with architecture: he was the author of Aureola dos Indios & Nobiliaria Bracmane [Glory of the Indians & Brahmin Nobility], a book published in Lisbon in 1702 which praised the Brahmins in general and the Catholic Brahmins in particular. Note that the person in charge of work on Saint Anne’s of Talaulim was a Brahmin priest, Francisco do Rego, also the author of an unpublished treatise praising that caste. Cipriano da Cunha Gomes’s story of the two priestdesigners’ rivalry, whether real or imagined, nevertheless obliges a comparison between the two churches. The plan of the Church of Pity is different from Saint Anne’s. The architect chose a layout with a great deal of prestige in European tradition but seldom used in Goa: the single-naved church with side chapels intercommunicating through passages opened in the partition walls (recalling the Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace in Old Goa). This arrangement may have been chosen not due to the predecessors’ prestige but because Father Frias (if he really was the designer) compared the simple niches of Saint Anne’s with the load-bearing system in the Cathedral, where the walls separating the side chapels added to the three naves are a true abutment system. Also different from Saint Anne’s, the designer of the Church of Pity did without the clerestory and the church has just one gallery running from both sides over the side chapels. This is where the project’s true tour de force is located: these galleries are high, very broad and resemble truly palatial loggias and are endowed with elegant arcades turned toward the nave which let in an ample amount of light. The breathing space facilitated by the galleries and arches is not the only effect imposed by the plan’s architect. The nave type is also different from Talaulim: the Church of Pity is a broad hall and not a tunnelchurch, all the more so because its vault system is more similar to the one used by the Franciscans in Old Goa than to the Jesuits’ system in Margao. Indeed, the Divar church’s nave is covered by five groin vaults with penetrations between arches, square and slightly lower down – one in the crossing, two in the chancel. The arches descend sharply over the nave space, underscoring its lateral broadness. The breadth of the side chapels and galleries above them allowed the architect to disguise the church’s lateral abutments, inserting them inside a box of traditional type. Outside, the church appears to be a two-storey building with windows crowned by triangular pediments. The interior ornamental articulation is more capricious than at Saint Anne’s and even more sculptural. The architect chose pseudo-Solomonic columns as an architectural element to use in both the lower and upper orders, along with composite capitals with long palm leaves and the Ionic cornice and frieze traditional in Goa since the mid-17th century. The main façade faces west toward the mouth of the Mandovi. It is a copy of the façade of the Jesuit church in Margao, but with the ornamental articulation used in the interior.