History
Little is known of the first settlers, although settlement may have occurred around 1510, and increased after the 1522 earthquake that destroyed Vila Franca do Campo. Friar Montalverne indicated that the peoples of the area, thinking it to be Judgment Day, were admonished by the clergy to seek the blessing of Our Lady of the Rosary. thus beginning the regions devotion to this image of the Virgin.
The first temple constructed in Lomba da Maia to serve the public, was the Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário (Portuguese: Igreja da Nossa Senhora do Rosário), a small chapel completed by the local clergy in 1867. But, this chapel was insufficient to serve the growing needs: a church was begun in 1868 and its construction was supported by donations from the local communities. Although construction slowed, its completion was made possible by Father Manuel Moniz Medeiros and master José Fidalgo, who invested most of their earnings to its completion. Lomba da Maia, for a long time remained an enclave of the nearby parish of Maia. With the completion of the church, to the invocation of Sant'Ana, there was a move to elevate the village to parish: a fact that occurred several years later.
At the end of the 16th Century, Gaspar Frutuoso referred to the settlement briefly as: "Lomba da Maia part of the sunrise escarpment with Grotinha da Fonte and the sunset escarpment with Grota da Cruz". The chronicler, still, referred to the small chapel of Nossa Senhora do Rosário on Lomba Grande. Similarly, Francisco Afonso de Chaves e Melo wrote of the settlers of Lomba da Maia in the following terms: "after Porto Formoso is the locality of Maia, civil parish of Espírito Santo. This location is the best situated on the island and is likely to become a villa. There exists in this parish two clergy, whom are annexed to the Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário da Lomba and Nossa Senhora da Alegria in Furnas."
Between 1707 and 1760, the parish of Furnas was integrated into Lomba da Maia.
The parish was finally elevated to the status of civil parish in 1908.
Read more about this topic: Lomba Da Maia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)