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THE HISTORICAL CENTER
SOUTH OF THE POINT CLOSEST TO AFRICA, the coast slips west, receding to break at a deep bay. There, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Salvador was established as the first capital of Brazil, the first transatlantic episcopate of the archbishopric of Lisbon. Portuguese mariners had already sailed around Africa to India and crossed the black ocean to kneel on the Brazilian shore. The wish for wealth was the wind behind them. Now Salvador, rising like Lisbon above the sea, would be a port for commerce, exporting the yield of the land â first brazilwood, the source of red dye that gave the country its name, then sugar, then tobacco, then cacao â while importing enslaved Africans to work the plantations of the fertile interior. Their descendants made Salvador the most African of Brazilian cities.
The capital shifted to Rio de Janeiro, far to the south, in the eighteenth century, but Salvador remains the largest city of the Northeast, the capital of the vast state of Bahia. A city of maybe three million, Salvador da Bahia spreads north and south of the old city along the Bay of All Saints, running down to the windy beaches of the Atlantic.
Encysted in the metropolis, the old city, called by its people Pelourinho or the Centro HistĂłrico, is a precious assembly of colonial architecture, a destination for tourists, a center for the maintenance and development of black consciousness, a place of constant drumming, of African snacks and weak beer, a market for art. Pelourinho, lifted to catch the sweet sea breeze, occupies two hills and the dip between them. The southern hill carries along its crest a long double plaza. The Cathedral stands above the bay at one end, the church dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi stands at the other.
Stand there; the church of the passionate saint, the Igreja de SĂŁo Francisco, presents you a face of composed rationality: a bilaterally symmetrical unit, at once double (each half mirroring the other) and triple (a nave flanked by towers). Geometric ornament, obeying the Ruskinian rule of order, reinforces the formal logic, tracing the edges of the whole and its parts. Curves surge and coil in opposition above the windows, achieving climax in the spirals that curl back and sweep up to join at the cross above the saintâs statue.
The same rational pattern governs the facade of the Cathedral, built for the Jesuits a generation earlier. It also shapes the faces of the other churches in Pelourinho (as well as most of those in Brazil and many in Portugal that share their historical era). But there is an exception. To the left of the Church of Saint Francis, and also under construction during the first decade of the eighteenth century, the Church of the Third Order, the Franciscan lay brotherhood, exhibits a facade more Spanish than Portuguese, a facade so richly carved and encrusted with figurative decoration that it beguiles the eye, distracting attention from the undergrid of symmetry that the other churches raise clearly to the surface.
Return to the Church of Saint Francis and come in. The rigorous symmetry of the facade continues to control the interior, its form and ornament, but cross the entry bay beneath the loft and before you the chapels along the nave, the lateral altars, and the high altar in its deep recess burst with an exuberance of carved wood and gold leaf, a gilt, glittery, bubbling abundance in which details â the lush foliage and chubby cherubs â are lost and a golden frame is shaped for the polychromed images of saints. Female saints line on the left, male on the right. Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Our Lady of the Conception, stands in front on the left, Santo AntĂŽnio on the right. Between them, SĂŁo Francisco embraces the Christ of the Crucifix above the altar in the middle, precisely on axis with the front door. That door opens on the midline of the facade that rises through another statue of the saint to the cross at the crest. Internally and externally, in plan and elevation, the line of the center binds it all into union.
Back inside, the golden glow of the deep interior contrasts with the cool sheen of the blue-and-white tiles revetted to the walls of the entry bay. They tell the life of Saint Francis, their people dressed in the fashion of the place and time of their creation, Lisbon in 1737. Comparable tiles carry Biblical scenes along the corridor by the sacristy. In the convent to the right of the church, around the courtyard of the cloister, tiles painted for meditation evoke virtues and wealth, lifeâs course and inevitable end.
Church of SĂŁo Francisco, 2016
Azulejos is the Portuguese for the tiles, technically like Italian maiolica, and when JosĂ© Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Laureate, generously took his readers on a journey around his country, he paused to praise the azulejos that brightened ecclesiastic interiors. In Lisbon, calling the museum for azulejos a precious place, Saramago said that to understand azulejos is to understand what it means to be Portuguese. He didnât expand, but a guess would be that azulejos reveal a character both sophisticated and earthy, combining painting based on Renaissance principles with the workerâs muddy labor. Nor did Saramago mention what moved us most when we were in Lisbon in 2013: the SantâAnna shop in a grim industrial neighborhood where, working to commissions from churches, a master named Maria da Graça designs and paints suites of azulejos with sacred scenes in blue and white. The old traditions are long in the passing.
View toward the high altar. Church of SĂŁo Francisco, 2014
Saint Francis receives his mission. Azulejos, Church of SĂŁo Francisco, 2014
October fourth is the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, and on that day in 2014 the crowd â more black than white, more poor than rich â came early. During the week before, a small image of the saint stood on a barrow for carrying in a corridor to the side. Today a life-sized statue stands left of the aisle that runs down the center of the nave. Some on entering, women most often, touch the stigmata on the saintâs bare feet, pray, then pose beside him to have their photos snapped.
The church is full, every seat taken, men standing in the aisles to the side, and things begin with an invitation for all Franciscos and Franciscas to come forward. They do, and the congregation sings Happy Birthday, shouting âViva SĂŁo Franciscoâ at the end. In a pleasant, familiar manner, the priest tells the story of the saintâs life, how he was born rich in Italy, renounced wealth, preached to the poor, and founded the Franciscan Order and the Third Order for his lay followers; for us, we are told, he is a holy guide and the Pai da Ecologia, the Father of Ecology. Now the brothers enter, blessing the people, left and right, accompanied by the bishop who delivers a sterner sermon on the life of the saint, and everyone joins in song, requesting Saint Francis to intercede on behalf of the sick, the youth of the Northeast, and world peace.
An hour has passed. At the end of the service, the Franciscan brothers leave the church and turn right, leading the procession with a cross, a replica of the Crucifix in the chapel of San Damiano where Francis knelt to be told by the crucified Christ that he should restore the house of God. The event, pictured on the azulejos of the entry bay in his church in Salvador, set Francis on the life of poverty and service that ended with his death in 1226. Behind the cross, the procession pauses at the gate of the Church of the Third Order, gathers the image of the saint, now standing amid flowers on the shoulders of four strong men, and with a brass band following and the congregation trailing after, makes the first of the left turns in its counterclockwise march.
SĂŁo Francisco, 2014
At the gate of the Church of the Third Order
The procession for SĂŁo Francisco returns from the Cathedral
Behind the cross, his people bring SĂŁo Francisco home, 2014
The band behind the saint is playing the triumphant Battle Hymn of the Republic â Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord â when the procession emerges from a dark back street and enters the broad plaza of the Terreiro de Jesus, the Church of the Third Order of SĂŁo Domingos on their left, the Church of SĂŁo Pedro dos ClĂ©rigos on their right, and proceeds to the Cathedral. There they stop in respect, then turn left again and enter the narrow plaza of the Cruzeiro de SĂŁo Francisco, coming jubilantly home to the church of the saint.
Another hour has passed. The statue carried on the procession, now looking backward, is taken down the aisle and placed beneath the image of Saint Anthony, the saintâs Portuguese friend and follower. The statue faces the people. In chorus they respond, Saint Francis is here, three times, Saint Francis is here.
Precious objects from the altar are wrapped and boxed, the candles are snuffed, the priest has gone. A few linger in thought by the processional image, touching it softy, praying silently, stiffening to have their pictures taken.
A community in motion on the festa of Saint Francis, the procession circled the plazas, marking out the territory of the southern hill of the Centro HistĂłrico. From that ridge, streets roll down and converge at another open space, the wide Largo do Pelourinho that narrows as it submits to the hillâs steep descent. The Largo makes a place for squads of drummers to practice, for politicians to stir the throng, for tourists to rest from bewilderment. They might be from France or Argentina, they could be elderly African Americans on tour, but they are mostly Brazilians from the south, Rio or SĂŁo Paulo, for whom Bahia fills a slot in their national v...
