Tomar and Its People on the Relationship Between Local People and Their Heritage

Uppsal a U niversity log otype

SAMINT-HDU 21 011 Degree project 30 credits June 2021

Tomar and its People On the relationship between local people and their heritage

Ana Alice Bento Ribeiro Hidalgo de Lacerda

Sust ain able D estination s D evelopment

Sustainable Destinations Development

Uppsal a U niversity log otype Tomar and its People

Ana Alice Bento Ribeiro Hidalgo de Lacerda

Abstract Heritage has been defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages, or buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance”. In plain words, it is what defines a cultural expression and allows this cultural expression to survive, reproduce and thrive like a living organism. The aim of this thesis is to study and analyse how the locals in Tomar perceive their heritage, and how they present it to outsiders. After conducting an ethnographic survey based on informal interviews with locals, both professionally involved with heritage and uninvolved professionally with heritage, it was possible to conclude that Tomar is a case of living heritage, as it is a place where the intangible heritage is kept mostly by the locals despite the lack of assistance of the governing authorities, and the locals have no say on the governing authorities’ management decisions affecting tangible heritage.

Faculty of Sci ence and Technol ogy, U ppsal a U niversity. Place of publication Visby. Supervisor: Erro! A origem d a ref erên cia n ão foi enco ntrad a., Subject

Faculty of Science and Technology Uppsala University, Place of publication Visby

Subject reader: Camilla Asplund Ingemark Examiner: Anette Oxenswärdh

Table of Contents Table of Figures ...... 1 Introduction ...... 3 Methods/Theory ...... 18 Results ...... 21 Discussion ...... 48 References: ...... 52 Appendices ...... 57

Table of Figures Figure 1- View of the Castelo dos Templários from the Old City ...... 4 Figure 2 - Nabão River, Tomar ...... 5 Figure 3- Templar Rotunda in the Convent of Christ ...... 7 Figure 4 - 12th century blueprint of the Holy Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem, present day Israel ..... 8 Figure 5 - Blueprint of the Convento de Cristo with chronological changes labeled by colors...... 8 Figure 6 - Interior of the Charola dos Templários ...... 9 Figure 7 - Cortejo dos Rapazes ...... 16 Figure 8 - Church and Belfry of Santa Maria dos Olivais ...... 22 Figure 9 - Scallop Shell on the Belfry access door ...... 23 Figure 10 - Interior of St. Maria dos Olivais church...... 23 Figure 11 - Taboleiro on display at St John Baptist Church ...... 25 Figure 13 - The last Templar stone in the floor of Santa Maria dos Olivais...... 26 Figure 15 - Portugal's first 3d Painting representing the scene at Golgotha ...... 27 Figure 16 - Church of São João Baptista ...... 29 Figure 17 - Main altar, dedicated to St John the Baptist ...... 30 Figure 18 - Chapel of the Sacred Heart ...... 31 Figure 19 - Chapel of the Eucharist ...... 32 Figure 20- Facade of Tomar's Synagogue and Museum Abraão Zacuto around 2016 ...... 34 Figure 21 - Interior of Tomar's Synagogue and Museum Abraão Zacuto around 2016 ...... 35 Figure 22 - Tomar's Synagogue and Museum Abraão Zacuto around 2021 ...... 36 Figure 23 - Old Rua da Judiaria (Jewish Quarter Street), then renamed Rua Nova (New Street) and currently Rua Joaquim Jacinto, where the Synagogue is located ...... 37 Figure 24 - St Iria Convent seen from Ponte Velha ...... 39 Figure 25 - Location traditionally held as Iria's murder site ...... 40 Figure 27 - Outside of the chapel of St Iria...... 41 Figure 26 - Interior of the chapel of St Iria ...... 41 1

Figure 28 - Aerial View of the convent, with its area marked in red ...... 42 Figure 29 - Valle Funerary Chapel featuring the Calvary carved in Pedra de Ançã by João de Ruão ...... 42 Figure 30 - Details of the main altar at the chapel of St Iria ...... 43 Figure 31 - Quinta de S. Ana a Guerreira, also known as Quinta do Valle ...... 44 Figure 32 - Typical street in Tomar's old city ...... 45 Figure 33 - Tomar's Old Town seen from across the Ponte Velha ...... 46 Figure 34 - Current Façade of Café Paraiso, pre-pandemic...... 47

Introduction Myths smuggle in what, in the realm of reason alone, would be confiscated at the border. ~ Robert Mullen

Heritage has been defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages, or buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance”. In plain words, it is what defines a cultural expression and allows this cultural expression to survive, reproduce and thrive like a living organism.

The aim of this thesis is to study and analyse how the locals in Tomar perceive their heritage, and how they present it to outsiders.

Tomar is a heritage-rich city, with a heritagescape that is indissociable from the city itself as most of its heritage places are in highly central locations which are part of the locals’ daily lives as daily places of religious worship and meeting points. At the same time, the most widely known part of Tomar’s heritagescape is also the most marginalized, both physically as in the matter of the local’s own mindscape.

Figure 1- View of the Castelo dos Templários from the Why have I chosen this subject? Old City We live in a time in which local cultures are being eroded. With the increase of both speed and usage of global communications, ideas and cultural traits from all across the world are permeating other cultures and replacing key cultural elements as media replaces the role of the parents in child-rearing and knowledge transmission. This is due to the increase of living expenses and the necessity of both parents to have full-time jobs which leave limited daily time for them to have an active role in the children’s education, effectively cutting down chains of knowledge transmission and allows for the hybridization and erosion of cultures, often replacing these cultural elements with others of foreign origin (American). Whilst “a degree of hybridization in all cultures can be assumed” (Kraidy, 2002), due to cultural exchanges since ancient times, the process has been quickened with the dawn of television, and then severely accelerated with the dawn of the internet. This leads to stark cultural divergences between one

generation and the next, which impacts the way the newer generations perceive both the tangible and intangible heritage of their hometowns. Whilst for the Portuguese citizen born during the Autocratic rule of Salazar, the Portuguese cultural heritage represents national pride and accomplishment of the national culture, and cultural heritage was appreciated, valued, and used as part of the state propaganda of “national pride”, for the urbanized younger generations, intangible heritage is an abstract term belonging in the news when something is presented to UNESCO, and tangible heritage are merely monuments, usually converted into museums and thus removed from the local culture by “artificial” means of conservation. This generational/cultural divide provides the backdrop to my research question.

Why have I chosen Tomar? Tomar is a medieval city in the central region of Portugal, known internationally mostly due to the “Festa dos Tabuleiros” (Festival of the Trays), and for being the place of the Convent of Christ, one of Portugal’s longest listed UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but rich in tangible and intangible heritage that is little known to the general audience since the most marketed location is the Convent itself, which draws aficionados of Templar History from all around the world due to its unique history as the extant building which was the longest under control of the Templar Order.

Tomar is situated on the shores of River Nabão, in the most fertile area of continental Portugal, the Ribatejo, also known nowadays for its wheat and cornfields stretching all over the plains, and the polemics surrounding the traditional bullfights which are a staple of the cultural landscape of the region.

Due to its non-central location, it doesn’t suffer the same social strains that other better-known locations in Portugal, such as Lisbon and Porto do, thanks to heavy influx of tourism and migration fluxes of people. Being more sheltered from this type of social strains, but yet having a moderate exposure to tourism and migration fluxes, Tomar is still a place where the locals outnumber the non-locals during tourism’s low seasons, despite being a heritage-rich location, turning it into the perfect location to conduct this research. Another pressing point Figure 2 - Nabão River, Tomar

is that the outsider’s mindscape (Johansson, 2009) of Tomar and the local’s mindscape of the city are mismatched: For an outsider, Tomar is reduced to the Convent of Christ, and the rest of the city is just a backdrop to the Convent, whilst for the locals, this may not be the case, which is what I hope to be able to prove with this study.

Another reason why I’ve chosen Tomar is the lack of linguistic and cultural barrier as I’ve inhabited the city for a few months previously and thus am familiar with the local culture and language, and my background in Anthropology enables me to conduct the ethnographic research needed to conduct this study with a relative ease despite the pandemic.

History of the City of Tomar In order to give a background on the heritagescape (Gardner, 2004), we need to become acquainted with the locality’s historical background. Heritagescapes and history are inherently interlaced, to the point that mentioning the word sphere of the first always conjures up images of the past for the Western mind by playing an “important and significant role in the development of individual and group identity” (Gardner, 2004).

The location nowadays known as Tomar is estimated to have been occupied first during the 1st-2nd centuries BCE times, by the so-called “Civilization of the Oppidum”, a branch of the Celtic peoples who according to some theories, were originally from the area in question (Koch, 2013), and that was distinguishable from other Celtic peoples by being the first European civilization which built fortified cities. By that time, Tomar was known as Sellium, a fortified city situated in a mountainous area near the Nabão river, which supplied water for the farming activities near the walls. Its description as an Oppidum by Roman sources shows how the settlement was important at that time as an administrative center. Its importance continued throughout Roman and later Visigoth times (Garcia. 2004) although by that time, Sellium had being renamed Selio and its importance had shifted from administration to trading, due to its strategic control of the Nabão as the local most important waterway. This position caused Selio to be targeted by the Moors on their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula with the weakening of the Visigoth Kingdoms which had succeeded the Roman Empire. With the Moorish takeover, Selio was again renamed, this time to the word Thamara, the translation of which means either “from the sweet waters” – a reference to the waters of the river Nabão – or “sweet date”, a fruit which was cultivated in the area, brought with them by the area’s new occupants. Under the new rulership, Thamara ceased to be a relevant trade center, becoming a mostly agricultural town in which a number of innovations in that field were first implemented, such as water wheels and the first citrus crops north of the Tagus (Tejo) river. During the

Reconquista, a period in which the surviving Christian Visigoths that had been pushed by the Moors into the mountainous region of the Asturias/Pyrenees, organized an army under Pelagius of Asturia and started reclaiming the lost territories. The Reconquista is considered to have started with the Covadonga Battle in 722 CE and finishing entirely in 1492 with the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada. Thamara would return to Christian hands in 1159 through the efforts of King D. Afonso Henriques and D. Gualdim Pais, and would then be given as a fiefdom to the Knights Templar under the condition that the Order would use that strategic point to defend the then blooming Kingdom from incoming raids by the Moorish armies.

D. Gualdim Pais (1118 – 13 October 1195), was the then local Grandmaster of the Templar Order. The offer of the fiefdom allowed for the Knights Templar, a military-monastic order founded during the Crusades in Jerusalem, present-day Israel, to accomplish their military purpose without having to displace their army all the way from Braga where the Order had their headquarters in the Cardinal See, to the newly established borders of the Kingdom (Loução, 2000). Thamara was then renamed Thomar and the first stone was cast to make what became the Convento de Cristo (Christ’s Convent) and the Church of Santa Maria do Olival (Saint Mary of the Olive Grove), which were essentially the Templar’s citadel in Tomar and the new headquarters of the Order (Paraschi, 1990). The attribution of a feudal charter (Foral) to the settlement occurred in 1162, raising it to township and allowing the realization of the weekly market there, attesting to the rise in population in little less than ten years.

The then Castilo de Thomar played a vital part defending the borders of the blooming kingdom against Figure 3- Templar Rotunda in the Convent of Christ Moorish assaults, culminating with the defense against the armies of Moroccan caliph Abu Yusuf al-Mansur in 1190 who had successfully taken several strongholds south of the Nabão. D. Gualdim Pais (as a 72-year-old 6

knight) lead his crusader-monks against the armies which were vastly outnumbering them and managed to hold the town in Christian hands in an ensuing bloody battle that lead to the nearest castle gate being christened “Portão do Sangue”, or “Bloody Gate” in English. The most ancient parts of the Convento de Cristo date from this period, namely the “Rotunda dos Templários”, a round chapel built mimicking the Byzantine Aedicule of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem (Loução, 2000). This structure is mainly comprised of a round room with a row of columns making a circular structure in the center, where an altar now stands, and served as the monks’ private oratory before the reconstruction

ordered by D. Henrique the Navigator, after the Figure 4 - 12th century blueprint of the Holy Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem, present day Israel lantern in the dome was struck by lightning and destroyed; after that, it became the main church of the complex (Pereira, 2009). The peculiar architecture of this Chapel has drawn great speculation from Templar Myth hunters/theorists as the resting place of the Holy Grail after its theoretical retrieval post-Crusades (Futthark, 2004). They claim the Holy Grail or another important relic to be housed under the center of the Charola due to the former placement of an altar in the center of the construction, an altar which, according to Canon Law, was necessary to have relics either underneath or within the stone slab comprising the top of the altar to be allowed to be utilized in

Figure 5 - Blueprint of the Convento de Cristo with chronological changes religious services. This original altar is labeled by colors. assumed to have been lost in the abovementioned incident, and replaced by another which was lost during the Liberal Revolutions in the late 19th century with the expulsion of the religious orders and with the convent being turned into a military barracks. This was the fate befalling most religious convents in Portugal after that time until its recognition as heritage (Loução, 2009).

With the extinction of the Poor Knights of Christ, also known as the Knights Templar in 1314 at the command of Pope Clement V, King Dinis negotiated the transfer of Tomar and its adjacent territories to the recently created Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ with Pope Clement V’s successor, Pope John XXII, alongside with the new order’s canonical recognition. The Order was recognized and its headquarters set in Castro Marim (1319) a small village near Faro in the south of Portugal, but it returned to the Convent in Tomar in 1356 and took possession of the former Templar estates.

It was during this period that the cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit made its way to Tomar via Alenquer, and with it, the Festa dos Tabuleiros (a celebration that is now attempting recognition as UNESCO Intangible Heritage), which I will discuss later on.

Popular legend credits the Queen Saint Isabel, spouse of King Dinis in having brought the Cult into Portugal, together with the Franciscan Order, of which she was part as a Tertiary. The Order was given lands by the Crown to establish a monastery in Alenquer, about 100km away from Tomar, and this town was the stage for the first bodo – the name derived from bouphonia, a Greek pagan religious feast on which an ox would be slain and its meat served to the poor, which later become one of the central events of the Culto. (Montez, 2007) The cult would become a staple of the region’s culture, being protected by the Order of Christ and even spread to the Figure 6 - Interior of the Charola dos Templários overseas colonies and being carried with Portuguese emigrants to places as distant as Hawaii and California. To this day one can still observe a more historically “preserved” version of the original cultus in Azores and some towns neighboring Tomar.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, the so-called Age of Discoveries – Descobrimentos in Portuguese – in which Portugal and Spain had the hegemonic growth in exploration and

colonization, overseas catholic missions of Portuguese origin would be under the Prior of Santa Maria do Olival, the official headquarters of the Templar Order in Portugal and then of the Order of Christ, which was directly under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope and the Holy See, contrary to the regular dioceses, which were under control of the local Cardinals-Patriarchs and thus being raised to the status of Cathedral and being known as a Mother Church. This was attested by a papal bull by Pope Nicholas V in 1454 and later by Pope Calistus III in 1456, and in practice meant that during the Descobrimentos, the Order’s cross would be painted on the exploring ship’s sails and the Catholic missions overseas would be under Tomar’s administration. This lasted until 1514. It also meant a shift in traditional monastic organization: Instead of the Master and Grandmaster being elected by the monks (like it was in other knightly-monastic orders), the Grandmaster was nominated by the Pope, and the Master (Lay Master or Governor) would be chosen by the King. It was this mechanism that lead to Prince Henry the Navigator (1344-1460) being chosen as Lay Master of the Order of Christ and use the order’s wealth to fund his dream of maritime exploration.

This same Mother Church served as the Funerary Church of the Templar Order at first, then to the Order of Christ, and even to this day, it is possible to visit the tombs of both D. Gualdim Pais and Lourenço Martins, a lay Master of the Order in Portugal, two of the only three that were not defiled by the Inquisition in the 16th century.

The Expulsion of the Jews from Castille in 1492 and the previous protection given to the Jews by the Templar Order and then the Order of Christ made Tomar a haven for Jewish refugees, who saw the established community and the recently built, sizable synagogue as a welcoming sight. This brought an increase in population, with craftsmen and merchants that revitalized the city’s commercial landscape and played a vital role in the commercial routes to Africa at that time. Local folklore still retains the tale on how Abraham Zacuto (1452 – c. 1515), on his way to King John II’s court, would have stayed at Tomar where he would’ve been received by the Prince, who is said to have been fascinated by his astronomical tables which purportedly lead to them being applied as the standard navigational aids during the Descobertas. This legend remains in the city in plain sight as the ancient synagogue, now a museum, bears as its official name Abraão Zacuto Museum.

Soon after, King Manuel I started suffering increasing pressures and threats of open war in case he would not expel the Jews as well, as the expulsion of the Jews and the instauration of the Inquisition in Portugal were part of the wedding agreement between the Portuguese and the Spanish Crowns. Manuel wedded Isabel de Aragão, daughter of the so-called “Catholic Kings” of Spain, Fernando II and Isabel I de Aragão, known for their religious pietism. Pressured by both Aragonese and

Castilian, he wrote to Pope Leo X requesting the Holy Office of the Inquisition to be installed in Portugal in 1515.

This led to an Edict to be enacted forbidding the Jews from leaving the country and accepting them as nominally Catholics after twenty years, which was hoped to prevent the hit that the Kingdom’s economy would take with the expulsion of experienced artisans and merchants, something that had happened in the neighboring kingdoms in modern-day Spain. Unfortunately, with the de facto institution of the Inquisition with D. João III, an Inquisition Court was established in the city and the whole Jewish quarter was either forced to flee or prosecuted in Autos-de-Fé. At the same time, the Order of Christ was demilitarized and turned into a strictly conventual order, losing its influence. Most of its centuries-old archives ended up in the hands of the Reverend Inquisitor Father Frei António de Lisboa, who ordered the burning of the conventual archives and the desecration of all remains buried in Santa Maria do Olival. The Inquisition also persecuted those who took part in the cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit due to that cult’s association with doctrines that had been labeled as heretical in the 11th century.

After the institution of the Inquisition, the Order’s impact on the City was severely hampered. No longer could they maintain the status quo to keep a social balance in Tomar, and deprived of their own heritage, records, and military authority, they had become little more than one more cloistered monastic community that practically eclipsed itself from the City’s History until its dissolution in 1834. As for the city itself, it would be the stage on which the Courts would accept D. Filipe II of Spain as King after the war of succession, effectively unifying the Iberian Peninsula under one rule, but after that, its political and historical relevance dwindled, resurfacing briefly under the rule of D. Maria I, with the establishment of the textile factory belonging to Jácome Ratton, a French- Portuguese industrialist who later was made an honorific Knight of the Order of Christ, despite the Order’s opposition to his textile factory in the city. He established what would be the city’s main industry until very recent times, and his role during the Napoleonic Invasions caused him to be exiled to Ilha Terçeira in the Azores, but he managed to have his sentence served in Paris (Mahul, 1821). His diary, entitled Recordaçoens de Jacome Ratton sobre ocurrencias do seu tempo em Portugal de Maio de 1747 Setembro de 1810, were published in London three years after his passing. These provide one of the few reports of the destruction of Lisbon in 1755 due to an earthquake, which is nowadays estimated to have been about 8.5-9 Mw; it was the first earthquake studied scientifically, leading to the birth of both modern seismology and earthquake engineering.

During the same period of time, Tomar became relevant as well when it staged a rebellion against the invading French armies and was liberated by a Luso-British army lead by Commander Wellington.

In 1834, the Order was dissolved alongside all other religious orders in Portugal with the instauration of the Liberalism, a politico-philosophical current which defends State and Church separation. It was applied in a rather violent way in Portugal in the aftermath of a period of political instability brought upon a succession crisis and the abolition of the Absolutist Rule in Portugal, and the Convent was turned into a military barracks ending almost a thousand years of influence in the region. Afterward, Tomar resurfaces on the waters of history only twice: Once as being the first village raised to the rank of City in the Santarém District in 1844, and later on as the birthplace of Portugal’s first Worker’s Union in 1914 (Oliveira, 1973).

Having reviewed the history of the city of Tomar, it is fundamental to take a glance at the history of the Order which brought the town’s most remembered history, namely, of the Templar Order and later, of the Order of Christ.

History of the Templar Order and the Order of Christ The Order of the Poor Knights of Christ was founded in 1118 in Jerusalem by Hughes de Payens, Godfrey de Saint-Omer, Payens de Montdider, Archambaud de Saint Amand, André de Montbard (who would succeed de Payens as Grandmaster), Hugues de Champagne, Fulk V, the count of Anjou and the Cistercian Priests, Rossal and Gondemar, the latter has been held in folklore to be of Portuguese origin. Some 16th, 17th, and 18th-century historians also list Pedro Arnaldo da Rocha as one of the founders, based upon the few leftover medieval documents from Tomar and Braga.

Having been given an old construction in the location known as Temple Mount, there’s still debate to this day if the Knight’s headquarters in Jerusalem were located in the Al Aqsa Mosque or in Solomon’s Stables (known as the Marwani Mosque since 1996) as no archaeological surveys are allowed in the area by the Islamic Waqf. This location gave to the new-founded order the nickname of “Knights Templar”, or the “Knights of the Temple of Solomon”.

The order’s main goal was to protect the pilgrim road from Jaffa to Caesarea and to do so, they would mix two of the classic archetypes of medieval society: the Knight and the Monk. St Bernard of Clairvaux enabled this mix of both secularism and religiosity by drafting out a specialized rule which was later used as a base for all military-monastic orders that were founded during this period, namely the Teutonic, Hospitaller, Lazarite, and of the Holy Sepulcher. This rule contemplated an additional vow of defense of the pilgrims, apart from the three evangelical councils (poverty, 11

chastity, and obedience), to the point that their sigil depicts two knights riding the same horse, illustrating poverty to the point that not all knights would have a horse and thus would have to share one to ride to war.

Due to their collective lifestyle devoted to discipline, alongside collective training, they were the closest to an elite force in their heyday, acting as shock troops in battle and being known for being “lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself towards His friends." They were also being praised by Cardinal Jacques de Vitry (1160/70–1240), a contemporary of the order, for their religious fervor to the point of rejecting apostasy in return for freedom when captured. (Charpentier, 1967)

Soon after their official recognition in 1128, the order became a favorite for donations, starting with papal benefits and the donation of the full inheritance of King Alfonso I of Aragon The Warrior (1104-1134), who split his inheritance in half: one part was donated to the Knights Hospitaller and the other half to the Knights Templar (donations that were subsequently disputed by the local nobility and effectively split the kingdom in half). Of key notice in the context of my thesis is the donations made by D. Teresa de Leão, mother of D. Afonso Henriques (1143-1185), Portugal’s first king, in 1126 of the village of Fonte Arcada and in 1127 of the Castle of Soure under the condition that they would defend the Mondego River Line from Islamic assault. This donation was part of an attempt at repopulating the town of Soure, a 10th-century village that had been abandoned in 1116 after a Muslim assault, during which the population fled to the major city of Coimbra leaving the town in flames to delay their pursuers. This castle – now largely in ruins – would be the second Templar headquarters in Portugal after Fonte Arcada (Penafiel), who would later lose it in 1144 under another Muslim offensive in which most of the town’s population was made prisoner and taken to Santarém. This city was later conquered with strong Templar assistance in March 1147 in an event that would make the birth of Portugal’s first “native” military order, the Military Order of St Michael of the Wing. It was named as such due to an alleged miracle that took place in the night of the conquest, with the archangel’s sword-bearing arm making a milagrous appearance over the battle and instigating the outnumbered crusaders to continue the battle. In 1159–60, the Order would receive Tomar as a fiefdom and would establish itself there until its official extinction in 1312. By then, the Order had already grown in financial power and influence, having effectively been divided in two major blocs: the Militia – the combatant knight-monks, and Malitia – the lay people associated to the order that would not engage in combat, but would assist with managing the Order’s by now vast properties and what was the prototype of a banking system that enabled 12

pilgrims to the Holy Land to give monetary sums to the order, receiving bills of exchange that they could trade for the same amount originally given in any Templar House, and a network of lines of credit and financial assets.

Whilst originally the primary aim of the Order was to protect and safe keep pilgrims and pilgrim roads in the Holy Land, prolonged stay in the Outremer lead to the rise of respect by Islamic culture and erudition both in the Christian States in the Holy Land and in Europe thanks to their understanding of common grounds between both cultures. ( Azevedo, 2006) These two factors would later lead to the Order’s bloody dissolution in 1311–12.

1187 marked the loss of Jerusalem, and with it, the beginning of the decline of the Knights Templar, who relocated their Stronghold to Acre, which in turn was lost in 1291. By 1302, the Templars had been chased out of Cyprus alongside all remaining crusaders, and their holdings were now limited to Europe. Fears arose that the Order would attempt to conquer their own State in Europe, like the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes and the Knights Teutonic had done in Prussia, allied to the large debts incurred by the King of France due to loans taken from the order to finance the war against England. In early 1305, Pope Clement V invited both the Grand Master Fulk de Villaret of the Knights Hospitaller and Grand Master Jacques de Molay from the Templar Order to persuade them to merge both orders, something both refused staunchly as both orders had not only different Rules but also different aims: whilst the Templars were aimed at defending the pilgrims, the Hospitallers were aimed at caring for their bodily needs such as shelter and medical assistance. On Friday, 13th October of the same year, all French Templars would be arrested, forced to confess crimes ranging from heresy to corruption, homosexual practices, fraud, and financial misconduct under torture, followed by a papal bull in 1307 ordering the rest of Christendom to do the same and to give all of the Order’s assets to the Knights Hospitaller. Only in Portugal and Spain would the Order be spared thanks to a treaty signed between D. Dinis and D. Fernando IV de Castille that allowed the monarchs to secure an exception and claim the wealth for the respective Crowns. This allowed for the creation of the Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which was vital to the city of Tomar and whose story we have already reviewed, and the Order of Montesa in Aragon (Cerdà i Ballester, 2014); these two orders absorbed the Peninsular members of the Knights Templar and part of their wealth, effectively allowing the Order to survive a few centuries more by dividing it and renaming it.

The Cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit and The Festa dos Tabuleiros Surprisingly, considering the longstanding influence of the Order in the region, the fragment of intangible heritage which puts Tomar on the radar of tourists these days is not of Templar origin, but rather Franciscan.

The Festa dos Tabuleiros, a celebration that takes place every four years is known for its out-of-the- ordinary displays of items around town and the streets being covered in paper flowers. It is also one of the last manifestations of the Culto do Império do Divino Espírito Santo – cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit in English – still existing in the world after the celebrations and the beliefs behind them were considered heretical and persecuted everywhere else, having only been kept in the Portuguese Diaspora thanks to the protection, and to a certain degree, spread given by the Order of Christ.

The Cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit derives from the Joachimite eschatology, a set of prophecies made by the theologian and apocalyptic thinker Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202), who separated history in Three Eras: the Era of the Father – idealized to be between the times of the Old Testament until the Advent of Christ; the Era of the Son – which would be between the Advent and 1260, corresponding to the New Testament; and the Era of the Holy Spirit – an era of utopia in which the Church would be replaced by an “Order of the Just”, replacing secular governance by monastic governance and eliminating the church hierarchy. The world would be covered in universal love, and all non-Christians would convert to Christianity and mankind would live in perfect egalitarianism. Predominant in the Fraticelli faction of the Franciscan Order, these beliefs were imported alongside the order by Queen Isabel into Portugal as mentioned above. In 1256, Pope Alexander IV condemned the Fraticelli and the Joachimite prophecies and set the Inquisition to hunt for their adepts, who in Portugal were protected by the Order of Christ. In its heyday, the cult would spread from Alenquer to Sintra, Lisboa, Coimbra, and Tomar, and from Lisboa, it would be exported to the Azores, where it would flourish and maintain itself down to the 21st century, and Madeira, Brazil, California, and Hawaii on which it either vanished as the populations were unable to keep the traditions and social cohesion or they were assimilated into the locals.

Regardless, the Cult of the Holy Spirit shaped much of the national identity for over seven hundred years as the original Joachimite doctrines merged with the Sebastianist belief, a form of messianism adapted to the Portuguese situation in the late 16th century, which declared that the Portuguese King D. Sebastião, who disappeared in battle in 1578 would return in a misty morning in order to renovate the Portuguese Empire and lead the world into the Messianic Age. This belief itself was

derived from the Trovas by the shoemaker and prophet Gonçalo Bandarra (1500–1556), whose interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures spoke of the rise of the “Encoberto” (Shrouded in English), a messianic figure that through the later interpretation of D. João de Castro and Father António Vieira (1608–1697) was related to the king who would restore the lost independence of Portugal, and afterward, evolved into the figure that would save the country from poverty and assimilation. Sebastianism and the Joachimite Doctrines merged, creating the Portuguese blend of the Cult of the Holy Spirit which due to the protection and instigation by the Order of Christ, survived the Inquisition’s attempt to blot it out of existence.

Nowadays, the cult is still celebrated in Tomar and outskirts, Coimbra, the Azores, and some pockets of the Lusitanian Diaspora in America. Of key note are the celebrations of Carregueiros, near Tomar and the Azorean celebrations, which still retain the brunt of the original traditions.

The traditional celebration would start on Easter Sunday, finishing on Pentecost Sunday, and would consist of several parts, namely:

• The Procession of the Crowns – In which the Crowns representing the Holy Spirit would be brought to the church. In Tomar, this became the Procession of the Trays itself, as the Crowns are set over the trays. Popular local belief assigns them to be representations of the gifts of each family for the reconstruction of the Temple of Solomon.

• The Coronation of the Emperor – A young man is crowned, representing the Divine Emperor, being invested with the scepter of the position, topped by the Dove of the Holy Spirit.

• The Bodo – A ceremony in which traditional foodstuffs are blessed and shared by the participants. Takes place on the seventh Sunday after Easter. Figure 7 - Cortejo dos Rapazes

• The Esmola or Pêza – A portion of beef, bread, and a special wine called Vinho de Cheiro are given to the participants and the neediest families.

• The Briança or “Chegada dos Bois do Espírito Santo” – A procession with cattle that would later be slaughtered to supply meat for the Bodo, Esmola, and the Função. 15

• The Função – a traditional feast which has been adopted by the tourist industry in the Azores and remained as a family-only ceremony in Tomar.

Most of the continental celebrations of the Cult have changed, parts of the ritual being forgotten over time or altered due to modern sensitivities. For instance, in Tomar, the Coronation was removed from the whole ceremony after the Implementation of the Republic as it was dangerous for participants due to the repression against the monarchists. The date of the parades has also shifted along the centuries in Tomar. Most of the ceremonies described above have also disappeared, being replaced by more processions as knowledge on how to do the original rituals were lost and people made up others to replace what had been lost. That is the origin of the Procession of the Boys, in which children carry children-sized Tabuleiros (see image above) and the Procession of the Mordomo, which came to replace the procession of the Coronation and the numerous processions that were supposed to be done between Easter and the Seventh Sunday after Easter. In Tomar, the Esmola or Pêza was also shifted to the day after the main procession instead of taking place at the end of it and the Bodo disappeared.

Impacts of Tourism in the Heritagescape of Tomar To quote Skeates and McDavid, who in turn were quoting Gardner, heritagescape can be defined as a methodology or a concept “in order to gauge to what extent historic sites and landscapes are connected to (or marginalized from) their surroundings, and to understand how individuals, and especially indigenous or local people, value and identify with those places and spaces, even if they do not ‘own’ them as property” (Skeates and McDavid, 2012). This methodology does not comprise the case of intangible heritage such as folk tales and folk knowledge, but for the purposes of this research, I also classify that as heritagescape. After all, the scope of this program is sustainability, and part of sustainability is holistically treating every case.

For Tomar people, the Templar History and the celebrations of the Empire of the Divine Holy Spirit are part of what defines them as Nabantinos, and it was taken for granted that these traditions existed. They were to be passed from parents to children, hoping that the Divine King would come and reward them for their steadfastness in keeping his memory and that one day, the Knights in White Mantles would return from Outremer lead by King D. Sebastião and retake their convent and their wealth and lead the townsfolk into the Third Age or the 5th Empire, in which the New Era would spread from Tomar to the rest of the world and mankind would live in peace.

There is a corpus of legends associated with both pieces of heritage I presented as context, but sadly, the current state of the pandemic that we live in prevents data to be collected on this, and that

corpus serves as a binding agent connecting the people and the heritage. UNESCO may have designated the Templar buildings as heritage, but the intangible associations to it are kept only by the townsfolk, who in recent years have been making a push for UNESCO to recognize the second half of the puzzle as Intangible Heritage as well in hopes that the future generations will still have access to it.

Immigration, lack of jobs, rising real estate prices, and low salaries have been driving the townsfolk away and diminishing the population, and since the Festa dos Tabuleiros has become a tourist attraction, marketed by travel agencies and excursion organizers, it is becoming more and more an “exclusive for tourists”, pushing the population out and cutting them off from their heritage. They in turn either let go of it or seek to attend the celebrations of the neighboring villages that still celebrate them.

As in most of Portugal, tourism in Tomar is done in a “wild” manner, having little or no regulations surrounding it. As of 2017, the only regulation enforced about tourism in the local community was that auto-rickshaw drivers needed a city hall permit in addition to a driver’s license to work in the municipality. Two main attractions draw crowds, namely, the Knights Templar Festival (which draws crowds to visit the Convent) and The Festa dos Tabuleiros, which brings thousands of people to the city, effectively isolating the community from their celebration and turning it from a ritual to a mere performance as its meaning has been watered down by constant modifications. The “touristification” of the ceremony led to the abandonment of certain aesthetic motifs that were considered essential. Genuine flowers used in the decorations were switched to paper and in certain cases, plastic flowers, partial replacement of the Doves of the Holy Spirit that were supposed to be on top of the trays by crosses, following the pattern of the Order of Christ in order to create an “artificial” aesthetic that didn’t exist before, as there were no standard decorations on what each tray could carry. The literature provided to tourists in most cases decontextualizes the ceremonies from their origin and meaning and is often the only source of information for the new arrivals to the town who wish to integrate with the locals, corrupting the knowledge and connections by perpetuating misinformation. Whilst the Celebration Committee (usually comprised by townsfolk) attempts to cling on to the past, the recent introduction of representatives from the tourist industry into the committee has led to decisions being taken that are not benefiting the population and are contributing to “cultural erosion” and gentrification of the festivities to the point that the locals themselves are abandoning their own celebration to join in celebrations in neighboring towns and villages, in search for the authenticity that their own celebration is now seen to lack.

Methods/Theory To start this section of my thesis, I would like to approach the ethical issues surrounding this research.

Whilst the ethical way of conducting research and approaching the subjects of our inquiries in a research setting is often to present ourselves as a researcher, to be clear on what will we use the data we gather for, issues of confidentiality and such, during my previous field research in Portugal, I found that culturally, the presence of a person perceived as “authority” during a questionnaire of any form, leads to the subject consciously or unconsciously handing out misinformation to the research. If an investigator presents him or herself as such, the replies will not be impartial and will compromise the entire investigation. This leads to one of the basic dilemmas of social sciences: Should we deceive our would-be informants to receive information that conforms to the demands of informed consent or do we want to receive accurate information? Should we, under these circumstances, conceal our identity as researchers whilst gathering data? Are we performing an act of intellectual dishonesty if we, to acquire data in a culture in which people are naturally distrustful of figures of authority, do not disclose our identity as a researcher?

To address this issue, and to protect the identity of our “informants” as we denominate subjects who provide information for research in the fields of Anthropology and Sociology, I choose to divide my group of informants into two groups: One comprised of people connected to institutional and governmental organizations which took part in a few meetings to answer my questions, and one comprised of a random sample of people approached on the street for casual conversation. As all the conversations were taken under casual circumstances, only first names were recorded, and in the case of institutional personnel and when required, the names were changed to protect the individuals from any possible repercussions due to their personal opinions.

A group of questions was attributed to each of the informant groups: For the Institutional Personnel group, a set of structured questions was presented and the answers recorded, whilst for the non- institutional Personnel, question pointers were drafted to be included in the casual conversation and the most relevant data was noted down for later processing. Or so was planned, as later, during the interviews, the questions for institutional workers became mostly included in the conversations organically, avoiding the creation of an environment where the informants felt like they had to answer a certain way.

To quote Skeates and McDavid, who in turn were quoting Gardner, heritagescape can be defined as a methodology or a concept “to gauge to what extent historic sites and landscapes are connected to 18

(or marginalized from) their surroundings, and to understand how individuals, and especially indigenous or local people, value and identify with those places and spaces, even if they do not ‘own’ them as property” (Skeates and McDavid, 2012). The original methodology by Gardner does not comprise the case of intangible heritage such as folk tales and folk knowledge, but for purposes of this research, I also classify that as heritagescape, in the sense that a local culture’s collective mindscape, shaped partially by the local intangible heritage, is also part of heritagescape. After all, the scope of this program is sustainability, and part of sustainability is holistically treating every case, requiring sometimes the expansion of previously existing concepts and methodologies. A deeper search for a version of Gardner’s methodology that includes intangible heritage yielded no results, hence my statement above considering an expansion of the definition of heritagescape to make it compatible with the notion of living heritage (Rajapakse, 2018) which applies to heritage locations still used and inhabited by local or acculturated residents.

To prepare for the interviews and decide which landmarks I would be visiting and interviewing the groundskeepers, I procured a map of Tomar and marked a few landmarks in the center of the old city, namely landmarks that would be fairly well known to locals, and in some cases still active as places of worship that I was aware of, but not overly known to tourists, with one sole exception: The Synagogue of Tomar. Places of worship are well known to serve as communal focal points and in countries that are culturally religious by nature, such as is the case of Spain and Portugal, it is common to see places of worship to be living heritage and part of the collective heritagescrape. Locals most likely grew up having their life events marked on such buildings, from their naming ceremonies, weddings to their funerals, the heritage place being a constant figure in the backdrop of their lives.

Basing my choices on previous knowledge I have of the location, as I did reside in Tomar for a few months in the past, I limited my places to visit due to time constraints as the pandemic guidelines at the time of the ethnographic research had a mandatory curfew in place.

I did not choose St Iria at first as I believed it to be closed to the public, but once I was in the field, it became part of the list since, as I mentioned before, it fit the criteria of location choice. I contacted a former colleague of mine from my bachelor’s degree studies since I was aware of his residence in the area and arranged for a meeting at a place which, due to its long history and being regarded as an institution by the locals, has served as a collective meeting point since 1911. Thus it is also part of the collective heritagescape but the remainder of the non-institutional related interviews were not planned as per previous experience of fieldwork in Portugal, the element of the

unpredictable aids in gathering genuine data by not giving the time for informants to prepare to reply to questions that may arise and avoiding pre-prepared responses which allow a greater degree of information distortion. I carefully set up a group of questions drafted to perceive the connections between the population and the local heritage in general, and the more specific case of their roles as guardians of living heritage in a time in which the conservationist paradigm in the country is confining heritage to museums. Of the locations I have chosen overall, Santa Maria dos Olivais, S. João Baptista, Sinagoga de Tomar, Café Paraíso, and Igreja de St. Iria, only the first and the last were marginalized by the local community: Santa Maria dos Olivais, despite being a 10th-century construction, is situated in what is seen as the “New Town”, away from most of the remainder of the heritage locations in Tomar, and since the municipal graveyard – a heritage location in itself, having been used since the church’s construction which I did not visit due to time constraints – tends to be visited only by mourners during non-service hours, and Igreja de St. Iria, being private property and having been closed to the public for over fifty years, was merely the object of curiosity and mostly remembered due to being the church dedicated to the city’s patron saint next to the alleged place of her martyrdom.

Results As stated before, Tomar is a small city. Its historical center is focused on the left bank of the Rio Nabão, which inspired the Visigoth name of the city, Nabância, and the name attributed to its residents, Nabantinos.

It was early in the morning when the car parked next to the unusually separate bell tower of Santa Maria dos Figure 8 - Church and Belfry of Santa Maria dos Olivais Olivais, a templar church built in its somewhat present form around the 10th century, on a hilltop overviewing the glistening waters of the Nabão. A nineteenth-century bridge baptized “Ponte do Flechedo” crossed the calm waters, built over the ruins of a medieval bridge set there by the Knights Templar which got the name from the arrow factory set by its side in the town’s military past.

I had never been there before, in that area of the city and since the focus of my thesis research was to be more directed to work with people unaffiliated with the UNESCO World Heritage Site, to which many pages have already been devoted, Santa Maria dos Olivais, built before the Convento and frequently ignored by visitors due to its location on the more recently settled side of the Nabão, seemed like an appropriate place to start.

According to what I would find out later in the conversation, this church started its days as a temple to the Dark Virgin Mother, consort of the deity Endovelicus, a pagan fertility deity from the Celts and Iberians who inhabited Tomar in the days previous to the Roman conquest. With the Romans, it was dedicated to Ceres, a farming and harvest deity and then with the Visigoths, a small Benedictine hermitage was built over Ceres’ temple. When Gualdim Pais arrived in Tomar, the

hermitage was a ruin, which the Templars were happy to turn into their mother church in the form of a modest, single-nave church, which would be amplified under D. Manuel's rule to a three-nave church, in the wake of the Inquisition's desecration of the Templar burial grounds, building the side chapels devoted to several saints, and a hostel for the pilgrims that went to Santiago de Compostela by the Caminho Português. On the surrounding complex that was gradually appearing around it, functioned the religious bureaucracy responsible for sending priests to the overseas colonies and newly discovered lands during the Age of Discovery, and an unknown number of small, medieval chapels that survived

Figure 9 - Scallop Shell on the Belfry access door until the mid-20th century, on which the old complex was entirely demolished apart from the three-nave church and separate belltower, and dug to lower the ground in order to create a garden around the church.

The belfry itself attests to the eras that passed by it. Originally, it served as a Roman watch tower, being given a higher level in the Middle Ages by the Knights' Templar around the time in which the Benedictine hermitage ruins were turned into the church we can visit today, and then given its top floor and bells in the fifteenth century, around the time in which it served as both bell tower and the admission center for pilgrims to the hostel as attested by the scallop shells carved in its doorway and which easily go unnoticed unless a local points it out.

Going down a flight of stairs and turning my back to the tower, I enter the church and am instantly surprised that, despite the depth of the stairs, there is still a larger flight of stairs deeper into the hill. The light inside pours in from the main altar's Gothic condensed Rayonnant windows, reminiscent of Paris' Saint Chapelle, Figure 10 - Interior of St. Maria dos Olivais church. The raised structure on the and the small rose window above, left side of the church next to the painting is actually the staircase to a side door which is at the level of the church’s current lateral entrance at ground level

decorated with a five-pointed star. On the right side of stairs, on a small desk behind a nearly empty information board, was a small desk with a gentleman seated behind, fidgeting with his smartphone in the deserted church. After visiting the church and taking a few pictures, I neared the table and called the gentleman’s attention. As an institutional officer, I identified myself as a master’s student from Uppsala University investigating for my master’s thesis and asked if he could reply to a few questions.

“Madam, I’d like to answer your questions, but I am merely the groundskeeper, not a historian,” he replied politely. “Please do not worry, my questions are about your personal views, not the institutional view, that information I can get from the Tourist’s office,” I replied with a friendly smile. As I later found out, using this approach allowed me to be able to both conduct an investigation with informed consent and receive trustworthy data, the fact I was there as an informal representative from a foreign university with little to no impact on the city, and going for personal approaches with what can be seen as the bottom of the hierarchy in heritage management in Tomar, rather than letting things flow “naturally”, asking them questions as just about any tourist would turned out to be an excellent way of breaking the tension and allowing for workable data to flow.

“Good, good. I wouldn’t be able to answer otherwise, I’m not a spokesman. I’m António, by the way.” He presented himself.

“Are you a natural from the city of Tomar?” I asked, after having asked for his consent that I took notes.

“No, no…I’m from Africa. Moved here in 1975 with the decolonization war because my mother is from here and never left again. I practically grew here and the Nabão courses through my veins.” He laughed, answering my next question before I asked it.

“How long have you been working here? As in on the monuments?”

“For about four years. My training is not in this field, but I’ve always been passionate about History so this felt nice and right.”

“What do you think of the history and the traditions of the city?”

“I think Tomar still has a lot that hasn’t dissolved, like other parts of the country. I went to Lisboa a few years ago for the Santos Populares like I used to go when we came from Africa. It was a disgrace; the Television took over everything and now the population lost control of their celebrations, which now are Figure 11 - Taboleiro on display at St John Baptist Church only for the Televisions and the Tourists, and you pay a ticket for the privilege to see the Marchas1. We at least can still make our Festa dos Tabuleiros, and the Festa de Santa Iria, our town’s Patron Saint. It’s on the twentieth of October, make sure to return for it, it’s worth the trip from Lisbon, I promise! It used to be a Feira, spawning three weeks and where you could find anything for sale, from farming implement to horses and mules, but nowadays it’s just those carnival rides and a very, very small fair that lasts about a week. We still have a large procession like in the olden days, and fireworks by the Sluice gate. These things are important, you know? They help us sticking together even though most of us work in Torres Novas, or even in Lisboa, or moved elsewhere. I only started participating a few years ago in the Festa dos Tabuleiros though….I carry one of the Tabuleiros, although traditionally only the women would carry them, it has to be as tall as I am. But I am as part of this town as any other Nabantino or Nabantina!”

“Could you please tell me which are city hall’s politics towards heritage in general? And what would you change if you had the option to?”

1 Traditional dances associated with the popular saints – St Anthony, St John and St Peter, in Lisbon, Porto and surrounding towns. 24

“Well, they do try to do something…..but between the politicians, the favors, giving jobs to the boys, the whole patronage system that plagues us and the ever- shrinking money for Culture means that the few well-intentioned people won’t be able to do squat whilst all we can do is pray that they manage to keep the little we have in presentable shape. There’s little funds, even less information presented to

the general audience….only people Figure 12 - Stone slab placed at an odd positioning, which is alleged to be the entrance to the tunnel system leading to the Templar Castle. The keeping this knowledge are amateurs like Orange arrow serves to mark the visitor’s route during the Pandemic to avoid groups of people crossing each other. me and the folks at the Gabinete de Curiosidades Facebook group. They listed this church at the European Templar Route, but the information they have from us is a stub with little more than our Wikipedia article, which is minuscule. The City Hall can do more, the information is out there, people are willing to share it for free. All they have to do is to get a few people on the terrain, collect it, and post it where everyone can read it!”

“Do you feel that your work has an impact on the local heritage?” “Honestly, I don’t, not that much. All I do is to keep the place vandal-free, but we live in a small town and one which is thankfully a quiet one. But it’s always fun when a guy from Brazil barges in as if he Figure 13 - The last Templar stone in the floor of Santa Maria owns the place, followed by a bunch of tourists in dos Olivais. Notice the faded Templar cross in the stonework white capes and starts demanding for me to show him the tunnel that leads this church to the Templar Castle across the river as if the tunnel isn’t just a legend. They see that odd big stone there and think that when I tell them there is no tunnel, that I’m lying. This whole town lives off Templar Tourism, and because of the occultists and pseudo- revivalist orders, it gets hard and harder to get decent information to put on the posters. You’re

investigating it, I’m sure you stumbled upon that problem.” The gentleman sighed “Come, I’ll show you more.”

I followed António to the farthest corner in the north of the church, where he pointed to a single stone on the floor. “See this? This is the only remaining piece of stone from the original templar flooring. This church’s floor has been removed over six times that we know of. But this is not told on any official info panel, and thus, the conspiracy theorists still think there’s a tunnel, and that the Templars are still buried under our feet. And then you have the ones that point it as the place where the Holy Grail is hidden! And then there’s the annual Templar week, which is basically a Medieval Week in which all the pseudo-Templars come to the street in uniform, but of actual Templar material…you have the setting and that’s it. It’s a sham and people know it, only tourists fall for that. Come, before we part, there’s a little titbit of History I want to share with you, at least like this I try to fight the misinformation we have going on in here.” António strode again to the front of the church and pointed at a free-standing 16th-century crucifix on a stand. “See that cross? It wasn’t freestanding back in the day. Now, look at that painting over Figure 14 - Freestanding there. It’s lacking Cross at the main altar something, isn’t it? So, a while ago, a priest got appointed to this church. Since it’s a Templar church, it has no cross on the altar, since you venerate the Risen Christ. But the Priest didn’t know or cared about that, so he ordered the cross to be taken out of the painting, which was Portugal’s first 3d painting, its bottom hacked into a free stand and placed on the altar. See what lack of information does?” he laughed. I thanked the man for all the information and left Figure 15 - Portugal's first 3d Painting representing the scene at Golgotha....whose cross was removed and turn into the Freestanding the church, stepping into the sun. Cross.

My next stop was at the St John the Baptist Church, a 15th-century church built in Manueline style, featuring some notable details such as a functioning 16th-century clock on the tower, and a flamboyant Gothic-styled portal. Classified as National Monument since 1910, this church is the fulcral point of the Festa dos Tabuleiros. It is also one of the cases in which heritage has to be managed by a partnership between the Portuguese State and the Catholic Church.

I got at the door at 14:25, unaware that the church was not open from 8 Am to 8 Pm as customary in Portugal. Looking at the door I find a notice stating that the church would Figure 16 - Church of São João Baptista open at 14:30 sharp. I think to myself that perhaps I should move on and proceed to interview a non-institutional informant instead when I hear the creaking of the door. A young gentleman opened it from the inside and darted away into a room adjacent to one of the church naves. I follow the gentleman, trying to figure out where he went since I knew that the sacristy was located on the left side of the building and he had disappeared to the right side. That’s when a beam of light crossing an open door catches my attention. A young lady was sitting in a chair in front of a simple desk, chatting lowly with the gentleman I saw hurrying away. “Excuse me..” I call, attracting his attention. “May I help you?” He smiles at me. I quickly presented myself as previously and ask if I can ask him a few questions.

“I’d be more than glad to answer them, but I will be on a bit of a juggle here if it’s alright with you, else perhaps you’d like to wait a bit,” he replied.

“I’m okay with the juggling,” I replied with a smile, as he leads us to the sacristy, a small, moist room with walls lined with dark armoires, liturgical vestments, and two dehumidifiers loudly working at full power. Looking at the walls, it was visible there was water damage, but also a few of the unfortunate frescoes – that had been chalked over by renovations in the 19th century as attested by a commemorative plaque in the wall – had been freed from the chalk by the moisture.

“I’m sorry for the noise, this church has a bit of a moisture problem.” The man smiled.

“I can see that…” I replied, following his lead, and sitting at the large, 18th-century table that occupied the center of the room, surrounded by ten chairs. “It can’t be good for the frescoes.”

“Thank God, those will be taken care of soon enough. We’re going to finally start renovations this year. After six years of waiting!” He replied before we

Figure 17 - Main altar, dedicated to St John the Baptist tackled the questions.

David was quick to present himself as the Parochial Secretary and proud of having moved to Tomar from Lisbon following the love of his life as in a fairy tale. Working at the Parish for about a year and a half, he moved in two months before the Festa dos Tabuleiros, about two years ago. The timing of his arrival caused a great impact on him, serving as a figurative immersion crash course on the local culture. “You need to live it to believe it. Someone who stays here through something like this won’t come out untouched. Tomar is one of those places that you either love or hate, but most likely will love. We breathe History, we breathe Heritage here. Portugal could be all like this if we had some help from the authorities. When we look deep enough, we see that all cultures are based on the local religion. Religion gives us the building blocks for our culture, for our society.

You can’t have heritage without religion to explain its roots or at least how heritage modified itself to the present day from the pagan times. Look at the Festa dos Tabuleiros. It started as a pagan rite and then was Christianized to become an element of unity. And yet, look at the television. They advertise the start of Ramadan, but nobody says a word about the start of Lent or Chanukah. The base of our culture is Jewish-Christian, and we’re in a lay country, meaning the state is not ruled by religion, but its members are at least culturally Jewish-Catholic. All religions should have their holidays announced, not just one. It’s in small details like this that our authorities seem to want to undermine our own heritage and reduce it to furniture.”

“Could you please tell me which are the parish’s politics towards heritage in general?” I asked.

“Respect. Everything has to go through the hierarchy. We are not just keeping stones and art. Our church is a living organism. It may have a stone building and priceless artifacts inside, but it is also living people and many different wills. It needs to function through a hierarchy and official channels, despite the inertia things have beyond the Parish itself. Six years ago, we made a requirement to the Bishopric See to have a conservation intervention done. The Bishopric requested financial aid from the city hall, who in turn told us that there was no money for the intervention but passed the requirement ahead and ahead until it reached the European Union, which okayed it last year. Whilst the Holy See has only Figure 18 - Chapel of the Sacred Heart three-four tiers of working bureaucracy, the Government has over forty. A larger government has larger inertia to move and take decisions, which makes every single tiny process take an eternity.

When things are left between people, things move, but once you involve S. Bento2, nothing will be done in a reasonable timeframe, which means endangered heritage will be gone by the time something is done about it. Just look at Santiago de Compostela! Their regional government fast tracks everything related to culture and restoration, and that is why they managed to get both funding and licenses to restore the entire cathedral in less than five years, right on time for the Xacobeo3. Have you ever gone there?”

“Yes, a few years ago. Whilst they were restoring the main entrance. In fact, this thesis was supposed to be about Santiago, but with the Pandemic, I had to adjust things. I hope to be able to return there when things get a little better….but back to the subject…What would you do to change things if you could?” I asked.

“I’d prioritize culture and restoration. The government is spending money on things just for show and tell, doing ruinous businesses to benefit some, and leaving basic needs unattended. Why build Europe’s largest network of highways when the heart of our culture is either falling apart or being reduced to a mockery of itself for the amusement of the foreigners who come here as if we were a gigantic theme park. We need more than just the people’s good will to have things done, we need clear and actual laws, laws that are clear for everyone to understand and that are designed for now and applied now, not designed thirty years ago to be applied in a time in which the situation and the paradigm have changed. We need that the restoration processes take less than six years before implementation, else, there will be a lot more things that will be lost.”

Figure 19 - Chapel of the Eucharist

2 The Portuguese parliament, known as S. Bento (Saint Benedict) since the building used to be a Benedictine convent before the Liberalist Wars and the expulsion of all religious orders from the country, after which all religious properties were taken over by the state and normally converted either into hospitals or military barracks. 3 Jubilee years are those on which St James's Day (25 July) falls on a Sunday. These years repeat over periods of 6-5-6- 11 years. 30

“One final question: Do you feel that your work has an impact on the local heritage?”

“Yes. Do you know what are the most important things about a church? It is not the Liturgical Art or even its place as the House of the Lord. It is the church bells to call the community and a door wide open at the right schedule to take in everyone who needs it. The bells and the doors are elements of connection, and my job is to keep them both in good condition. There is an element of respect in all of this, and this is how I impact our heritage. By keeping things balanced, between sacred and profane, between community and the outside, I keep things alive, but still evolving.” Standing up, we left the sacristy and went back into the main body of the church. “Thank you again for all your help,” I tell him. “Oh, it was nothing. Just promise me, the next time you go to Santiago, you’ll say a prayer for me….and walk to Finisterra. Fátima may be the center of the modern world’s prayers, but Finisterra was the center of the ancient world’s prayers. It’s a journey like no other,” he replied before we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

The Sinagoga of Tomar is a nondescript building on a narrow street, on the second street to the right side of the church I had just exited. It’s not hard to see how the narrow street was, once upon a time, the Jewish neighborhood in Tomar, and on one of the ends of it, the indentations on the walls where once a gate stood to close off the Judiaria4 for the safety of the inhabitants during the night. Getting Figure 20- Facade of Tomar's Synagogue and Museum Abraão Zacuto around 2016 closer to it, I instantly noticed how the renovations had impacted the quaint and peaceful building that had fascinated me so much during the few months I had lived in Tomar, a few years ago. The beautiful foliage and the paper flower Star of David, Magen David in Hebrew, meaning shield of David, made during the Festa dos Tabuleiros, had disappeared, and in its place, gleaming white fresh paint. The old wooden door that was always cranked open and kept that way with a board so people could see the archaeological excavations next door had been replaced by a modern-looking glass window with words etched along with the glass that in nothing resembled the buildings around and now stuck out like a sore thumb. I had been looking forward to reconnecting with D. Teresa Vasco, the voluntary groundskeeper back in 2016, but the one who greeted me, smoking a cigarette outside, was someone else. A lady, short in stature and very energetic, shot a glance at me, crushed her cigarette on the floor and told me, rather loudly, that I could go in and that the entrance is free, but that the newly built interpretative center was closed.

4 Jewish Neighbourhood 32

Going in, another shock. Where once before had been several cultic objects, all of them donated by Jewish visitors from across the world that would offer them to explain the Jewish way of life to visitors, now was a long counter with only the two ancient stellae, one from the 14th century and the other from the 15th century referring to the existence of a Figure 21 - Interior of Tomar's Synagogue and Museum Abraão Zacuto around large synagogue in Lisbon. The 2016 large number of chairs that used to surround the ancient, slanted table serving as a bimah, the pulpit from which the Torah is read, had been replaced by a modern, aseptic table and rows of benches with stickers prohibiting people from sitting on them.

“What happened to everything that was here?” I ask, trying to hide my shock.

“In storage. Oh, you were looking for Dona Teresa, weren’t you? She smiled as I nodded and adjusted my hat. “I’m sorry dear.... she passed away three years ago. Didn’t even got to see the construction work finished....but yes, City Hall has everything in storage.”

“Why? I was hoping to take a look at a prayer book I saw before here...” I replied, seeing if I could get some more information.

“Because this place is a can of worms. When D. Teresa was in charge, she curated everything. People could donate things to the Synagogue Museum, and the connecting thread was to show how the Jewish People lives and prays. But with her gone, the Culture Cabinet decided that everything that isn’t original from the 15th century is worthless and that we can only have 15th-century artifacts on display. And then came the architects and the construction company, who wanted this junk furniture here instead of the classic Figure 22 - Tomar's Synagogue and Museum Abraão Zacuto around 2021 ones that we had, and which was a lot closer to the original....”

“Well, that is truly a shame. The place looked a lot more authentic before...” I remarked, before presenting myself and stating why I was taking up her time.

“I’m Maria,” she smiled ”and yes, I’m a native from Tomar. I was born here in the hospital and grew up in the new town until I moved to Ilha Terçeira in the Azores...do you know the Azores?” She asked with a smile. I nodded. “I lived there for three years, but returned about five years ago...I’ve started working for the city hall around that time too...”

“What do you think of the history and the traditions of the city?”

“They’re extremely important! They are what makes us Nabantinos and not people from Lisbon or somewhere else!” She replied, mildly offended as if my question implied that I was dismissive of the city’s heritage. “We Nabantinos safeguard traditions from the times of the Romans! You are standing on what was once Sellium, and then Nabância, the capital of a Visigoth kingdom. Where do you think that the Festa dos Tabuleiros came from? It was the offerings to the Great Mother, done before the Romans came and took our land. This is holy ground, and the Templars knew it and tried to keep the balance so the ancient Pagan knowledge was not lost. That was why they made this place their Mother House in Portugal. The Order may not exist on paper anymore, but it still continues in our hearts.”

“Do you take part in the traditions in Tomar since your childhood?”

“Unfortunately, no. I lived outside the city and was about thirty years old when I finally managed to get a house in the historical center. Now yes, I take part every year in Santa Iria, where I help carrying the saint’s statue before I used only to throw petals on the river… and in the Tabuleiros, where I help repairing the flower lines that don’t make it to the next year and carry my own Taboleiro.”

“Could you please tell me which are the city hall’s politics towards heritage in general?”

“They’re a load of rubbish! The only good thing they did was to make sure some landmarks stay open without pay, but there’s plenty around here that they Figure 23 - Old Rua da Judiaria (Jewish Quarter Street), then renamed Rua don’t even bother opening or Nova (New Street) and currently Rua Joaquim Jacinto, where the Synagogue is located. maintaining. Just look at the Santa Iria chapel and convent! The place is falling apart, and the city hall is doing nothing to keep it. All their focus when it comes to culture is the Templar Week, the Convent of Christ, and the Casa dos Cubos….Modern art, pff…” She replied in a quite aggressive tone, namedropping what would be my next stop “...not to mention I keep getting skipped on raises and such for not belonging to the ruling party and people who actually work on the field have no say in what so ever. Their culture office doesn’t have a single anthropologist or conservationist! They hire by kinship and not qualifications or skill, it’s atrocious! And worst, we can’t even hope that the ones that get the job after are any different. The system is all rigged so that the same two parties always take turns on the City Hall, no matter on whom the population votes. No chance on changing anything like that, if the game is rigged from start!”

“Well, if it’s so bad, what would you change if you had a chance to?” I asked, interrupting her rant and feeling that my question had opened a genuine Pandora’s box and that the next one wouldn’t be much better.

“Honestly? There is only one thing I would immediately change if it was on my hands. Which is a certain local couple who thinks that this is still a Synagogue and not a Museum. We’re in a Museum, not a cultic location. They come in here in prayer shawls and those black things in their heads....” she gestured, referring to the teffilin, or phylacteries which adult Jews (male only in more orthodox circles) don every day for morning prayers minus on Saturdays, “Pull out the scroll from the cabinet, read it… they don’t have permission to do it, and they shouldn’t be doing it!”

“Do you feel that your work has an impact on the local heritage?”

“Absolutely none whatsoever. We are nothing but Green Receipts, we’re invisible and people think we’re dumb, so they don’t even bother asking anything or talking to us,” she replied, alluding to her situation as a sub-sub-contracted employee like all other watchmen of the heritage sites. I wish there were more people like you, that care about what we invisible people think. It would certainly make this job a lot more interesting.”

“Well, we’re almost finished…. Would you like to share a bit of local folklore that you recall from your childhood?”

“Oh, there’s so many….Like, they say that underneath that table over there, in the floor, there’s a big chest buried with all the ritual items that the Jews used in this esnoga, but that couple says it would most likely be a lot of old papers, that is if anything made it past the time in which this was a haystack or a prison. I know Samuel Schwartz wanted to have dug the floor looking for the Gernizah5” She replied, using the Ladino, Judeo-Portuguese term to refer to a synagogue “Best of lucks on your thesis, and I hope it will make people see this place for what it truly is! A museum!”

5 In Jewish culture, damaged religious books and items are still regarded as sacred items, since they either contain the Names of God, or were used to perform a commandment. Due to this, they are usually repaired whilst possible, and when beyond repair, stored in a room or attic, and later buried with a ceremony in a graveyard alongside the community’s dearly departed. 36

I left and followed the narrow street to the river, crossing over at the “Ponte Velha”, a bridge first edified in around the same time as the Esnoga. On the other side, the Convent and Chapel of St Iria awaited in the dimming light.

Built in its present form in the 18th century, legend has it that the Convent of St Iria dates to the 7th century when Tomar was known as Figure 24 - St Iria Convent seen from Ponte Velha Nabancia and the seat of a Visigoth Chieftain or Dux.

According to the legend, St Iria, the daughter of a wealthy local family, would have been well educated and professed as a nun in a local Benedictine convent in which her uncle Séllius would’ve been director. Séllius would later appoint Brother Remigius as her spiritual director,6 a practice common among Catholics. Iria’s beauty, wisdom, and piety would soon win over not only the congregation’s favor but also the attention of young men and local nobles, who would fight each other over who could win Iria’s favors. Amongst those young men was Britaldus, son of the local Chieftain, who developed an obsessive passion for Iria, and Brother Remigius himself.

Tired of Britaldus’ attention and stalking every time she would attend church, Iria made it clear that she would never forsake her vows and marry him, and that she had professed a vow of chastity as a nun. In the meanwhile, Brother Remigius would’ve also made improper advances towards the young woman and got rejected as well, to the point Iria would’ve excluded him as her spiritual director and tutor. As revenge, he got hold of a poisonous brew which he gave Iria, causing her lower abdomen to swell gradually as if she was with child. When Séllius asked Remigius why he was no longer giving her spiritual direction, Remigius replied that it was due to her pregnancy.

6 Spiritual Direction is a practice according to which a Catholic devotee ”entrusts to her priests in the confessional, not only the part of judge to absolve or retain the sins presently confessed, but also the part of a director of consciences. In the latter capacity he must instruct his penitents if ignorant of their duties, point out the wrong or the danger in their conduct, and suggest the proper means to be employed for amendment or improvement. The penitent, on his part, must submit to this guidance. He must also, in cases of serious doubt regarding the lawfulness of his action, ask the advice of his director.” (Coppens, 1909) 37

Her apparent breaking of the vows caused her to be expelled from the convent, although Iria continued to keep her monastic life despite her tarnished reputation. Britaldus, seeing the bump under her habit, became enraged due to her infidelity and having rejected him for another man, and ordered her to be killed. Her assassin Figure 25 - Location traditionally held as Iria's murder site. Notice the statue of the saint on the niche and the stone carving underneath with a lion. This stone is believed to have been part of the roman found her by the river ruins of Sellium, and later on of the original Benedictine memorial chapel. praying and cut her down with his sword, disposing of the martyr’s body in the river afterward. There it floated down the river Zêzere and then the Tagus, washing ashore near Santarém, known in those days as Scalabis7. The body was properly buried by another Benedictine congregation in the place of her finding, in a marble sepulcher which was eventually swallowed by the Tagus river; it was only discovered by Queen Saint Isabel in the 11th century who ordered the current mole over which the tomb is situated to be built. Séllius would have had an ecstatic vision on which Christ would have revealed to him his niece’s fate and location and he would’ve had the place of her murder marked by a small chapel, which in time became a female Benedictine convent, and later on a Poor Clare Sisters convent, with the place of her murder signaled by the tiling on the wall. Her memory was kept in the Mozarabic Rite of the Catholic Church, but Iria is not canonically recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, being, such as Emperor Charlemagne in the city of Aachen/Aix-la- Chapelle, St George in England or St Christopher, a saint by popular acclamation.

7 Scalabis Julia was the Roman name of modern day Santarém, which got its current name due to having adopted Saint Iria as its patron saint and the intense devotion the population had to her during the Visigothic times, the name Santa Iréne gradually morphing into Santarém with the passage of time. 38

As mentioned before, the current convent with 18th-century architecture is in an advanced state of degradation and there are talks with the Grupo Pestana, a Portuguese large hotel consortium, to transform the convent into a five-star hotel, whilst the chapel itself is still private property. It was built as a mausoleum for the Moniz da Silva family in the early 16th century on top of the ruins of a 15th-century chapel and house. Along the last half of the 16th century, the property was bought by Miguel de Valle, who had been appointed Feitor of Goa, once he returned to the Kingdom, alongside with the Farm of Santa Ana da Guerreira8 in 1550, the time in which he commissioned the construction of the chapel of the Valles, on which he would later be Figure 26 - Interior of the chapel of St Iria buried. Alongside the portal way into the church itself is the Calvary, crafted in Pedra de Ançã by João de Ruão, a legendary sculptor from the Portuguese Renaissance, in this funerary chapel is labeled as National Heritage.

Surprisingly, both the Quinta and the Chapel still belong to the descendants of the original de Valle family, who despite all the financial burdens strive to restore the heritage of their family and allow the chapel to be visited, and they have adapted the Quinta to serve as a Figure 27 - Outside of the chapel of St Iria hostel.

8 More popularly known as Quinta do Valle 39

Approaching the entrance of the Chapel I notice how, despite the door being wide open, the doors of the convent are covered with panels featuring ancient photos from the turn of the century, and the whole place looks degraded, a lot more than from the riverside view of the building. The structure is very large, occupying two blocks, and after the expulsion of the religious orders upon the implementation of Liberalism in Portugal, it was turned into a boarding school for young ladies which was abandoned in the late 1970s. Now it’s scheduled to be turned into a 5-star hotel by the end of 2024.

Figure 28 - Aerial View of the convent, with its area marked in red

The first thing I noticed was how the lighting was so contrasting inside from outside. In the other heritage sites I had previously entered, there was good lighting, either electrical or pouring in from the windows. In this case, the side windows are tiny and there are no conditions to turn on the fully electric system due to the amount of moisture that the chapel is Figure 29 - Valle Funerary Chapel featuring plagued with, to the point of puddles of water being visible the Calvary carved in Pedra de Ançã by João de Ruão over the organized tombstones that could be seen in the floor. The moisture itself was the second most notorious thing about the chapel. It sticks to your skin and all around you can see the damage it has done and is doing to the delicate woodwork and gold leaf, and to the mortar holding the stones in place over the Calvary in the Valle Funerary Chapel. Near the entrance, a modern desk is set and a smiling lady rushes to me and greets me as soon as I enter the steps.

“Oh, your family told me you were coming! You must be Ana!” She welcomed me, alluding to the fact that my family was indeed doing their sightseeing as I conducted my research. “Indeed I am! I suppose you were already informed on what I am doing?”

“Yes I was, and I am glad to help! It’s not every day there’s someone genuinely interested in us. I’m also Ana by the way.”

“So, may I ask where are you from?” I replied.

“I’m from Angola, but I’m here for a very very long time. My family moved in with the war in Africa. I took a management degree at ISCTE in Lisbon but couldn’t finish it.” She replied sheepishly.

“I took my BA in ISCTE too! Cultural Anthropology.” I grinned, making her feel at ease “Can’t say it was for much worth.”

“Indeed, not with the politics Figure 30 - Details of the main altar at the chapel of St Iria we have. Every city hall should have at least one anthropologist in their culture cabinet and instead, we have the Mayor’s nephews and third cousins once removed with no qualifications just taking up space,” she replied before taking me on a short tour of the building, which I summarized earlier in the presentation of the Chapel. We finished near the communion rail, on which I rested my notebook and pen, ready to take notes.

“How long have you been working for the City Hall?”

“About three years. I used to work for the Convento de Cristo before. It was cool although we’d get such crazies there.”

“What do you think of the history and the traditions of the city? And what do you consider important of them?” 41

“I’d say the Templars, absolutely! They founded this city, and up to some extent, founded the country itself. D. Afonso Henriques would’ve never been able to hold what he conquered to the Moors had it not been for the Templar Order holding the lines here and at Almorol.”

“Do you feel integrated into the community as part of the city?”

“Absolutely. This may not be my town, but it sure is adopted.”

“Could you please tell me which are the City Hall’s politics towards heritage in general?”

“Honestly? I feel like all the politics are mostly around appointing the wrong people for the wrong jobs. But there Figure 31 - Quinta de S. Ana a Guerreira, also known as Quinta do Valle are also good points. They do work trying to open as many spaces as possible, even if some of the places are run by volunteers like the Esnoga used to be. They are giving good steps, but we need more investment, and still have a very long way to go! There should be funds to help fix this chapel, being private property, they expect the owners to repair it, but then we’re the ones keeping it open and visited. You saw that stone over the calvary….when the Grupo Pestana starts with the construction work, I’m sure it’s going to collapse!” she gestured at the chapel, on which one of the original stones in the vaulted ceiling’s nervures indeed seemed attached by very little mortar.

“And to wrap this up….one final question,” I say, checking the time and noticing we were at closing time, “Do you feel that your work has an impact on the local heritage?”

“Depends. I don’t feel that I impact directly, but I do try. Sometimes we take suggestions from visitors and forward them to the culture cabinet, but like I’m sure someone told you before, we’re just Recibos Verdes9. We have no pull whatsoever.”

9 Recibos Verdes, translates to Green Receipts, being officially independent workers subcontracted by companies to work without signing contracts, meaning no job protection and possibility of being let go at any moment. 42

“Thank you so much for participating, you’ve been a great help and I’m sorry I kept you after closing time,” I replied with a smile.

“Oh, it’s alright. You’re a great company! If you need anything after, feel free to email me! Or call!” She smiled, giving me her contact before we exited the church and she locked the door.

My next stop was a local bookstore. Whilst information about the Knights Templar is widespread, due to the way the Order was so abruptly and violently suppressed under accusations of heresy lead to the collective imagination of the 18th and 19th-century elites creating a cloud of speculation around the Order, which leads to the current climate of Conspiracy Theory and Occultist Theories around it, with very little actual historical data being available to the general public. This means that getting reliable information fit for academic work is problematic, to say the least, and under the parting advice of one of the people I had interviewed before, I found my way to an old styled bookstore in the historical side of town, looking for a book by General Vizela Cardoso on the

Templar History of Tomar. Figure 32 - Typical street in Tomar's old city

The ground level of the store matched the height of the medieval times in which the houses once had been built, meaning someone coming from the street had to go down three or four steps and lower their heads to go into the stores, avoiding a painful hit of one’s head against the doorframe, set lower to conform with the original house’s height before the ground level rose. Inside, hundreds of aged books lined the walls, heaped around the corners of the two small rooms, and burdened an 18th-century table made of Pau Brazil over an Arraiolos rug.10 The store owner was sitting at an equally aged desk in the same style and wood, surrounded by books with a sound system playing classical music.

10 Arraiolos in Alentejo is a town renowned for their craftsmanship in manual looms and hand embroidery dating from the Middle Ages. The carpets are still manufactured by hand to this day and are highly sought after by collectors. 43

“Excuse me, would you happen to have anything by General Vizela Cardoso for sale?” I asked him, hopefully. The gentleman, around sixty years of age and tall, stood up and looked at me, stroking his short beard.

“Hum…Vizela Cardozo…. the book on the Templars, I suppose that is what you are looking for. I’m sorry, but no…I sold the only copy I had last week, my apologies.” He replied politely, “I can point you to another store if you happen to have a town map. I am assuming you are not local, else you would know that those books are quite too recent to be sold in my store normally.” He smiled.

“No, no…I’m from Lisbon. And I’m here researching for my master’s thesis at Uppsala University. Would you mind if I asked a few questions?” I replied.

“Of course. I came from Lisbon as well, around thirty years ago. Moved to Tomar when we won the lawsuit against the State and managed to regain our ancient family estates here in Tomar. It’s a shame they left everything to degrade itself when they appropriated themselves of my family’s heritage.” He replied.

“Do you feel integrated into the local community?”

“Absolutely. I am part of the organization behind the Festa dos Tabuleiros, and my Figure 33 - Tomar's Old Town seen from across the Ponte Velha bookstore is specialized in older books on Tomar and people who wrote about Tomar’s heritage. Heritage is the best thing we all own, but sadly the current mentality is to relegate what is standing to become museums, what is culture to the folkloric ranch,11 and what is Templar is relegated to the Templar Tourism, most of the times in a bastardized way. It is not correct. We had a prodigy of traditional crafts that could be stimulated and revived, but no, those are left to disappear. Tomar had a thriving industry of Talheiros.12 People would switch the plastic containers they use for talhas if they could find them readily in stores. The talhas are just an example. Younger people are always rallying for the

11 Folkloric Ranches are re-enactment societies devoted to illustrating how life was before the urbanization trend set in at the beginning of the 20th century. 12 Talhas are special clay containers traditionally used to store olives, olive oil, preserve meats in either salt or a mix of garlic and red wine, and to store produce in general, like filling with sand and bury carrots in the sand to preserve them. Talheiros are the artisan manufacturers of Talhas. 44

environment, and for the creation of green technologies but it feels like they often forget that in our pre-industrialized past, in the age of artisan craftsmanship, that we had green technologies. Clay was the plastic before oil was discovered. And by resurrecting these crafts, not only can we give new life to our lore, as we take it out of the museum, and it becomes relevant once again. The Folkloric ranch is good to keep the memory, but only the memory. Memory without living is just re-enactment. And it is the direct path to gentrifying what we have. I do what I can to maintain our heritage alive. I let the historical properties of my family be visited, I try to recuperate what the years of miscuration at the hands of the state did to them and have them open to the public. I keep this bookstore, although it is rare to see youngsters come in…looks like everyone below thirty these days either don’t read or can’t read outside a screen, and I chat with people. It’s not much, but if everyone did some, we could be able to save our heritage and renew it.”

Thanking the gentleman’s attention, I chose and bought a book from his store to not only express gratitude for his work but also to appreciate the time he took answering my questions.

By the time I left the store the sun was setting, and Café Paraiso was my next stop. A landmark in its own right, Café Paraíso was the Figure 34 - Current Façade of Café Paraiso, pre-pandemic. One of the measures for opening restaurants and coffee shops involves spreading the tables 2 meters apart. first coffee shop opening in Tomar, on the distant day of 20th May 1911. It quickly became a popular hangout spot for the local people. Currently with the pandemic, the second one this coffee shop witnesses, enjoying a cup of coffee and a Fatia de Tomar13 or a Queijinho Doce14 inside is no longer allowed, but you can order inside and find a seat at the tables outside at a distance safely from others. Being a meeting point in Tomar, this meant I could easily find a local whom to interview. Sitting at my table and waiting for the waitress to come and take my order, I noticed a familiar face sitting next to me and started a

13 Literally translated as “Slice of Tomar”, this is a pastry made by cooking scrambled egg yolks in a specially designed double boiler, slicing them thinly whilst still warm and soaking in can syrup. The pastry was invented in the mid 20th century and popularized by the tinner who invented the specially conceived double boilers, which were sold with the recipe inside. 14 Translatable to Sweet Cheeses, these are small pastries made of almond paste filled with egg cream. 45

conversation with a gentleman in his late thirties, who kept staring at me curiously since I had arrived at the coffee shop.

“Good evening, would you mind suggesting me a local pastry to try?” I asked him in a friendly tone, as I recognized a former class colleague of mine from my BA.

“Ah, I thought you look familiar. How have you been, Ana! And where are you from? You never told me… You look like foreigner, but you speak perfect Portuguese, I always liked that about you….and I’d go for the Fatias de Tomar or the Tamares.15 Not overly sweet unlike the rest.”

“I’m Swiss, but I’ve been living in Portugal for a while…and I’m here to get to know the city, now that there aren’t many people,” I reply with a smile, being interrupted by the waitress who came to take my order, a Latte macchiato and both a fatia and a tamare. “And what better way to do it than talking to the people?”

“Indeed, indeed. I’m César, just so you don’t go about and call me my nickname here…I live in Casal da Azinheira, outside of town. Not as historical or as beautiful though. That’s why I come here, to breathe in history. I’m from Santa Maria, in the Açores…Moved here to attend university, then moved to Lisboa for some more, then returned here so I would not be in a place without the Culto, like back where I grew up. It’s been years since I’ve moved here and I don’t intend on leaving, and I’m practically a local. Tomar is my home and my family is all here.”

“You mentioned breathing in history….why?” what does it represent to you?”

“To me, it represents where we come from. It represents the knowledge our people had before the internet made knowledge easy to access…. It represents how we were able to do everything and built things of beauty before machines became the norm and houses that look like storage crates from sci-fi movies instead of houses started sprouting everywhere, alongside their standard-issue Renault Zoé and vegan families. It represents times in which the food tasted like food, and you knew how it was raised because you had raised it and everyone in town had raised it the same way. At least we still have the Festa dos Tabuleiros, even though it’s not like it was before. When I started participating, there were a lot fewer people, it was homier in a way. Nowadays it’s more tourists than anything, and the fact Tomar became a big city ruins part of its beauty, not to mention the number of things they left out…. With the enlargement of the town, they cut parts of the Culto because they couldn’t do a cohesive thing with so many people, and then with the comissão changing the route to showcase the town and some businesses’ doors to tourists and that waters

15 Small boat-shaped wafer full of egg cream and coated with dark chocolate. 46

down the whole thing…..kills the original meaning, which was of common hope for a better future and the sacrifices that a people are willing to commit for that brighter future.”

“Looks like it means a lot for you then.”

“Yes, it does. And I try to make it that newcomers understand that they’re not just moving into a city, but they’re crossing into a place that has managed somehow to keep progress at a minimum despite its industrial past and become a crossroad of history… That they too have the responsibility of keeping what they find here and ensure it doesn’t die. That and to make sure that tourists know that they are to respect what they see and not demand that we change ourselves to please them. Oh, sorry…” He patted himself, looking for his phone which had just started ringing, “My wife must be wondering where I’m at…. It was nice chatting with you. Hope you will love your stay enough to move in! I’d love if we were to be neighbors… Stay safe!” He said as parting words, getting up and rushing down the street in the direction of the river.

Discussion Analyzing the interviews, we can see that there are not many differences between institutional workers’ opinions and non-institutional-related people, mostly because it's a small city. Tomar is a district capital, with about 40k inhabitants, in which kinship relations tend to be extensive. As a Portuguese saying goes, “Em terra pequena, todos são primos”16 and there isn’t a family which has set down roots in the city for over thirty years which does not have one or two members of the extended family working at a local institution, from the City Hall to any of the sub-hired companies that work with it. This facilitates the circulation of knowledge about institutional inner workings amongst locals, and at the same time, the emergence of a pattern amongst the general opinions of the locals. And news travels fast on mediums like this: For instance, two of the informants were first cousins, and a third knew I was on my way to interview her even before I had decided to go there, as she had been warned by one of the previously interviewed. This small-medium is prone to lead to less diverse opinions and uniformization due to overexposure, not unlike the effects of globalization, only at a local level.

Due to my informal approach to the interviews and the geographical distance of my university of origin, my informants were more at ease and thus more confident in sharing potentially socially- politically disapproved opinions, with less fear of repercussions.

It seemed that there is a general consensus that, without both the tangible and intangible heritage, Tomar would lose its uniqueness, and that the current policies are frowned upon by the residents from several angles, from the inaction of the city hall in pressing matters, focus only on the Templar history whilst forgetting everything else, to lack of sufficient support to remedy damages done to heritage whilst it was under the government's ownership, which is the case of the Chapel of St. Iria which was appropriated by the State in 1975 alongside the majority of buildings that were private landmarks of interest and left to crumble until the descendant of the family who owned the property since the 15th century managed to win it back in the court and now has to pay for the restoration in full. Part of this consensus is also that the population makes a collective effort to preserve what they can, despite institutional inaction, to ensure that the next generations will still have some sense of belonging, and for the continuance of their heritagescape.

Nabantinos, either by birth or by having put down roots in the area, seem to be fiercely protective of the town’s heritage, adopting it as part of the town’s identity and perceiving themselves more as

16 “In small towns, everyone is a cousin.” 48

guardians than participants of the intangible heritage. The heritagescape is seen as a vital part of their self-identification as belonging to the city, and in several cases, the population seems revolted against the determinations of the local powers, namely concerning the gentrification of their own traditions, but feel powerless to stop it due to a perceived lack of political voice in a system that is seen as rigged to suit the designs of an empowered minority. At the same time, every individual seems to analyze the reasons behind the current situation and develop ideas for potential solutions for the current issue. What we can infer from the scenario revealed by the interviews is that we are in a situation in which community participation in local governance is not functioning. In a country whose political mindset has been wary of community participation, public consultation is not mandatory at any level of the local governance (Coentrão, 2020), albeit not forbidden and rarely implemented. The only online platform for public consultation belongs to the Ministry of the Environment and does not contemplate other dimensions apart from environmental zones. This comes over/is in line with the dominant political paradigm at the constitutional level, determining that community participation ends after having elected representatives, and that governance depends solely on those elected representatives, a trait typical of Presidential and Semi-Presidential Regimes (Teixeira, 1992). In other words, there is an uncrossable trench between what the community wishes and what is implemented since local decisions are, in the vast majority of cases, taken with no community participation.

“Improving the relevance and effectiveness of contributions of those already involved in conservation and management of heritage, as well as facilitating the engagement of new audiences, has become a priority for many countries in the twenty-first century” (Wijesuriya, Thompson and Court, 2017) doesn’t seem to be a reality in Portugal, according to the data provided by the interviews. We’re facing the need for a paradigm shift at the governmental level, which still regards heritage as a static, abstract entity with no direct relevance in the local actor’s mindscape, serving only as a touristic asset to attract foreign revenue.

Tomar, like most of Portugal’s historical locations, is a place where heritage is alive, and in change. We can see that in the case of the Esnoga of Tomar, built as a synagogue, turned into a warehouse, then a prison, then a barn, a closed building open to the public through the activist efforts of a local couple, now an aseptic museum which is disputed with part of the community which wishes to return it to its original purpose. The legal frame under which heritage like this is protected does not account for the case of living heritage and attempts to turn it into a crystalized form, detached from the culture that brought it into existence and thus meaningless.

“The term living heritage emphasizes the living dimension of heritage sites (people dwelling within the site), their recognition and relevance to contemporary life within a heritage location and their interest and capacity to continuously care and become long-term custodians of the heritage sites under consideration” (Wijesuriya, 2012). Living heritage is a relatively new concept, and as one of my informants mentioned, the law in Portugal is thought and approved without regard for the evolution neither of science or society as a whole, and even if there would be projects to change the legal framework in which heritage included the definition of living heritage, e.g. to include the local’s views, and thus fitting the Portuguese heritage management into sustainable development, it would be an extremely lengthy and morose process that would take several decades, and the law would be obsolete by the time it was to be implemented due to legislative inertia.

The impact of heritagescape in self-identification as Nabantinos seems to be vital even for people whose origins hail from distant regions but who made Tomar their home, regardless of origin. It is intrinsically attached to their sense of belonging, alongside an awareness that they alone are the sole barrier protecting their living heritage against gentrification brought upon them by the governmental, profit-driven policies. “Excessive gentrification could disrupt the sense of place and the way of life of the host community of this living heritage site by commodification of its cultural landscape (Daher, 1999). This could eventually lead to a total displacement and out-migration of the community (Zukin, 1987).” (Rajapakse, 2018). As stated by one of the informants, this is already the case in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, in which gentrification has driven the housing prices up the chart and led to the displacement and dispersion of the local communities whilst wealthier, foreign- originated individuals move in, whilst the city hall and the television networks keep organizing the traditional celebrations completely detached from their original. There is a collective fear in Tomar that left to its own devices, the city hall may turn the Festa dos Tabuleiros into something akin to today’s Marchas Populares in Lisbon.

Heritage decontextualized loses part of its cultural significance, and it can only be considered heritage while it still has some sort of cultural relevance attached. Whilst “The Burra Charter (1999, p. 2) defines cultural significance as a concept which helps in estimating the value of places. The places that are likely to be of significance are those which help an understanding of the past or enrich the present, and which will be of value to future generations. The values, in turn, are defined as aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual values for past, present or future generations” (Rajapakse, 2018), when dealing with living heritage in cases such as Tomar and other cases in which heritage is still part of the locals’ mindscapes, the local’s voice should be taken into account

when addressing subjects which will be essential for their self-conception as locals and the way they perceive the medium around them.

As Silva (2017) states, strategies for heritage conservation and management should be based on the understanding of the evolving and dynamic living systems whose significance is rooted in the interaction of people with the places that they live in. Comprehension of the above enables us to prioritize and be holistic in the approach to conservation and management decisions to include the collective well-being of the cultural and living heritage of the place.

“A society weaves webs of significance, in the famous phrase of Clifford Geertz, in which the individual members of that society are suspended. We do not, upon entering the world, begin from scratch.” (Mullen, 2010) Heritage, whether tangible or intangible, serves as this metaphorical ledge which enables us not to start from scratch. It may change over the centuries, grow larger or thinner, but it’s up to us who stand on that step already, to make sure there will be a step for those who come after us. A community that loses its heritage loses the fundamental asset which enables individuals to identify as a community, and it is the community members’ place to do what they can to defend it, whether by fighting for a political voice that enables them to protect their heritage, or by simply engaging a friendly stranger on the street and sharing what the tourist guides will not tell. The rest, it's up to curiosity to drive people to discover and through that, attempt to become agents in defending this heritage themselves. Perhaps, despite the legal framework being hostile towards asking the people what they would like to see done with what they cherish about their city, the road to progress could take the path of the creation of a participative forum, in which the population and local associations could engage in dialog with the local government and reach common ground on the decisions on heritage. As I stated before, heritage is a delicate component of a culture’s mindscape, and as such, it is not a commodity that should be sold or carelessly exploited. This approach would allow the community to have a say on what can be done with what belongs to the community, instead of its management being limited and centralized in the hands of an institution whose leadership changes every 3 years and whose record, up to the date, has been considered less than approved by the local community.

Perhaps, this would be the way to keep Tomar, the City of the Templars and the former line that defended the Kingdom of Portugal from invasions, once again become a bastion, to safeguard its heritage this time.

References:

Image References per order of appearance:

View of the Castelo dos Templários from the Old City, photo taken by Ana de Lacerda on 15-04-21

Nabão river by Alvesgaspar - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tomar_December_2008-8.jpg

Convent of Christ diagram By CristianChirita at English Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3145035

Cortejo dos Rapazes (2003) by Diogo Medina https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FESTATABULEIROS2.jpg

Charola dos Templários By Duca696- Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charola_6.jpg

Blueprint of the Charola dos Templários by Manuelvbotelho Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficheiro:Planta_do_interior_da_Charola_do_Convento_de_Cristo.jpg

12th century manuscript based upon the descriptions of the Holy Sepulcher Church by Arculfe (7th century) And Saint Adamnan (≈624 – 704) in De Locis Sanctis.

Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre#/media/File:Saint- S%C3%A9pulcre_(plan_d'Arculfe).jpg

Front of Tomar Synagogue, retrieved from https://www.traveleuropa.ro/obiective-turistice-tomar- sinagoga-tomar/ in 19-04-21

Interior of Tomar Synagogue, retrieved from Fatima Hotels board on Pintrest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/439663982350821776/ in 19-04-21

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St Iria Chapel Interior, photo taken by Cristiana de Lacerda on 15-04-21

Details of St Iria’s main altar, photo taken by Cristiana de Lacerda on 15-04-21 52

Aerial map of the St Iria Convent, retrieved from https://tomarnarede.pt/economia/quem-quer- comprar-o-convento-de-santa-iria/ in 22-04-21

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Current Façade of Café Paraiso, retrived from http://cafeparaiso.pt/galeria_paraiso/ in 23-04-21

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Appendices Question guidelines to ask the population who took part of my research. The questions were formulated in Portuguese, in accordance to the cultural context in which they were asked. In the case of non-institutionally affiliated informants, the questions took merely the role of pointers to guide the informal interviews.

By “lore” as I allude to in the English version, I refer to it as “Accumulated knowledge or beliefs held by a group about a subject, especially when passed from generation to generation by oral tradition.” Definition by American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. I use this term colloquially to designate intangible heritage.

English Version

Questions for non-institutional subjects (People not affiliated with the City Hall and UNESCO World Heritage Site):

1. Are you a natural from the city of Tomar?

If No:

1. when did you decide to move in? 2. why did you decide to move in? 3. Do you feel integrated in the local community? 4. How do you feel about the history and the traditions of the city? What do you consider important of them? 5. Do you identify yourself with the lore and tangible heritage of the city? 6. Do you try to keep the traditions and lore alive by teaching them or taking part in them? 7. Have these traditions played any role in how you interact with people that have no connections to the city? Ie: Newcomers, Tourists

If Yes:

1. Have you left Tomar to live somewhere else and then returned? 2. How do you feel about the history and the traditions of the city? What do you consider important of them? 3. Do you think that growing up near so much heritage has played a role in how you perceive heritage globally? 4. Do you try to keep the traditions and lore alive by teaching them or taking part in them? 5. Have these traditions played any role in how you interact with people that have no connections to the city? Ie: Newcomers, Tourists 6. Do you identify yourself with the lore and tangible heritage of the city?

Questions for Institutional Personnel only: 1. Are you a natural from the city of Tomar?

If No:

1. How long since you moved into Tomar? 2. What prompted you to move to the city? 3. How long have you worked for the [insert name of the institution]? 4. What do you think of the history and the traditions of the city? 5. What do you consider important of them? 6. Do you feel integrated in the community as part of the city? 7. Could you please tell me which are [insert name of the institution]’s politics towards heritage in general? 8. What would you change if you had the option to? 9. Do you feel that your work has an impact on the local heritage? If Yes:

1. Have you ever moved out of Tomar? If yes, what prompted you to return? 2. How long have you worked for the [insert name of the institution]? 3. What do you think of the history and the traditions of the city? 4. What do you consider important of them? 5. Do you take part of the traditions in Tomar since your childhood?

6. Could you please tell me which are [insert name of the institution]’s politics towards heritage in general? 7. What would you change if you had the option to? 8. Do you feel that your work has an impact on the local heritage? 9. Would you like to share a bit of local folklore that you recall from your childhood?

Portuguese Version

Perguntas para informantes não afiliados com instituições

1. É natural de Tomar? Se Não:

1. Quando decidiu mudar-se para Tomar? 2. E o que o/a levou a faze-lo? 3. Sente-se integrado na comunidade local? 4. O que pensa das tradições e História locais? O que acha mais relevante quanto a elas? 5. Tem alguma identificação pessoal com a tradição local? 6. Tenta manter as tradições vivas atravez de participação ou ensinando-as ás gerações futuras? 7. Estas tradições tiveram alguma influência na maneira como interage com pessoas que não tem nenhuma ligação com a cidade? Se Sim:

1. Já viveu for a de Tomar? 2. O que pensa das tradições e História locais? O que acha mais relevante quanto a elas? 3. Considera que a sua infância rodeado de tanta história influenciou a maneira como vê o Património a nível global? 4. Tenta manter as tradições vivas atravez de participação ou ensinando-as ás gerações futuras? 5. Estas tradições tiveram alguma influência na maneira como interage com pessoas que não tem nenhuma ligação com a cidade? 6. Tem alguma identificação pessoal com a tradição local?

Perguntas para Informantes afiliados com Instituições 1. É natural de Tomar? Se Não:

1. Quando decidiu mudar-se para Tomar? 2. E o que o/a levou a faze-lo? 3. Há quanto tempo está empregado/a por [insert name of the institution]? 4. O que pensa das tradições e História locais? 5. O que acha mais relevante quanto a elas pessoalmente? 6. Pode dizer-me quais são as politicas de [insert name of the institution]em relação ao património cultural? 7. O que pessoalmente mudaria se tivesse a oportunidade? 8. Sente que o seu trabalho impacta o Património Cultural? Se Sim:

1. Alguma vez viveu fora de Tomar? Se sim, porque regressou? 2. Há quanto tempo está empregado/a por [insert name of the institution]? 3. O que pensa das tradições e História locais? 4. O que acha mais relevante quanto a elas pessoalmente? 5. Toma parte das tradições desde a sua infância? 6. Pode dizer-me quais são as politicas de [insert name of the institution]em relação ao património cultural? 7. O que pessoalmente mudaria se tivesse a oportunidade? 8. Sente que o seu trabalho impacta o Património Cultural? 9. Gostaria de partilhar uma historia sobre o folklore local?