Convent And Church Of Our Lady Of Grace

Goa [Velha Goa/Old Goa], Goa, India

Religious Architecture

The ruins of the convent and church of the Augustinian order in Old Goa comprise a large archaeological group of major historical value and were classified as part of the World Heritage in 1986. The vestiges of the architectural structures situated on the vanished city’s Monte Santo, along with various coeval documentary sources, allow us to form an image of the monumental scale and artistic wealth of this complex comparable to the Monastery of Saint Vincent Outside the Walls [de Fora] in Lisbon. The Augustinian missionaries arrived in Goa in 1572 and probably began to build an initial church and convent on a hill west of Old Goa’s city centre, more precisely on the open ground by Saint Anthony’s Chapel. As the Augustinian’s mission in the Orient developed, these dependencies became too small, so in 1596 work began on a new church and convent, both dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. At the time the archbishop of Goa was Friar Aleixo de Meneses, a member of the Augustinian order who played a crucial role in the reconstruction work, influencing its architectural conception and stimulating work at the respective construction yard. The construction process essentially lasted about 20 years and resulted in one of Old Goa’s best-known buildings – the architectural model for new churches in Goan territory. In 1602 the Augustinians began building the College of Our Lady of Popolo, with its own church, on a site next to the convent under construction. Nowadays practically nothing remains of the college, which was linked to the convent by a passageway over the Street of the Jews [Rua dos Judeus], whose course still exists. The Convent of Our Lady of Grace was the Augustinian order’s mother-house in the Orient, where it eventually boasted 22 monasteries or residences, many of them with adjacent colleges or seminaries, as in Old Goa. Although this building’s designer is unknown, it is possible to associate the name of the architect Júlio Simão and the master masons Manuel Coelho and João Teixeira to the work on the Church of Our Lady of Grace. On the other hand, the Jesuit Church of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, begun three years beforehand (1594), influenced the Augustinian church’s spatial arrangement and façade. It is also probable that Friar Aleixo de Meneses brought with him in 1596 information about the new church and monastery of Saint Vincent Outside the Walls then being built in Lisbon. This explains the genesis of the first major novelty introduced by the Church of Our Lady of Grace in Goa, in a manner very similar to its counterpart in Portugal, anticipating the spread of façades flanked by two towers. This feature was previously almost solely used on bishop’s churches, and was tried for the first time in the Orient when the new Goa Sé Cathedral was built. But the cathedral’s construction, begun 35 years before the Augustinians’ church, progressed very slowly and its main façade was only ready years after the Augustinian towers dominated Monte Santo and the urban landscape of Old Goa. The second major novelty consisted of the barrel vault over the single nave running from the inner side of the façade to the triumphal arch. This solution was considered a notable technical feat at the time, especially given the tendency for large buildings raised by the Portuguese in Goa to be affected by structural problems. Our Lady of Grace thus followed the single nave type introduced in Goa by Bom Jesus, with spaces backed on to the rectangular groundplan. In the Augustinian church’s case, these consisted not just of the chancel and the two large compartments on either side (replacing the arms of a transept), but also the side chapels. The church was thus closer to the model for this spatial configuration type – the Holy Spirit in Évora [Portugal], in turn descended from Saint Francis’s in the same city. The third major innovation consisted of the ample inner chamber of the high altar’s retable, which appeared for the first time in Goa and where an elaborate tabernacle was exhibited, illuminated by openings in the far wall of the apse. Outside, the church presented the then usual features of Christian architecture in Goa, as shown in a historic photograph by D’Souza and Paul: the grille arrangement, framing openings distributed individually by the panels; the contrast between this thicker articulation and the erudite architectural arrangement of the doors, windows and aedicula; the three ground floor entrances, the centre one recalling the Triumphal Arch of Pula (> Saint Paul’s Church); the extra floor for the skylights; and the central upper panel as a way to top the gable façade. For all these reasons, the Church of Our Lady of Grace (or what we know of it) seems to have been the most perfect and complete example of the architectural archetype that underlies Portuguese-influenced Christian religious architecture in Goa built during the two following centuries. As in other Goa churches, the interior of Our Lady of Grace boasted retables with carved giltwork, canvases and sculptures, as well as walls with painted relief work and decorative tiles – a feature that seems to have been disseminated in Goa via the Augustinians’ religious buildings. All this apparatus converged toward the large retable of the chancel, which comprised eight sculptures around the opening to the inner chamber where the sacred host was kept in a filigree pavilion, in turn placed in a tabernacle made of gilt wood. The Augustinian convent was located south of the church building and arranged around two cloisters (separated by the chapter room) and also a small patio. At present, the ruins of the convent’s ground floor remain, along with some fragments of the upper floor. The cloister closest to the church, called the superior, is slightly smaller than the inferior or novitiate cloister. The convent’s rooms were distributed on three floors. There were four chapels, cells for novices and friars, a library, two refectories, a kitchen, infirmary, pharmacy, parlour, chapter room, provincial chapter room and the church’s sacristy, among other support spaces and access areas. Located just to the building’s west were the laterite quarries, lime kilns and other convent support infrastructures. A service patio was likewise located at the south end of the complex, with various annexes used for the purpose of maintaining and supplying the convent. This was where the aforementioned elevated passageway led to the College of Our Lady of Popolo. The convent’s enclosure began on the north side of the convent, with orchards and wells in this area. Besides the architecture, this sumptuous monastery also contained a notable collection inventoried when it closed in 1835. Among the most charismatic objects were an image of Our Lady of the Snows from Ceylon which is now venerated at Saint Peter’s Church in Panelim (> Saint Peter’s Church). Also noteworthy are the six urns used to contain relics deposited in the chapter chapel, which was also used as a pantheon for the order’s Oriental Congregation. Archaeological excavations carried out at the site since 1990 and overseen by the Archaeological Survey of India revealed ruins of the convent, which are still the subject of extensive archaeological work