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The modern times
Church of Senhor da Pedra (Vila Nova de Gaia)
Monasteries and architecture
The beginning of the modern times is a moment of deep change and
transformation in two catholic monarchies like the Portuguese and the Spanish.
In the transition from the 15th to the 16th centuries, different projects to
remodel the monasteries were carried out. In the case of Spain, this came with
the Observer Reform from San Benito de Valladolid, as well as with the creation
of the Congregation of Castile, by which many small monasteries disappeared
and were incorporated to bigger ones, in order to improve the monitoring of the
rule and the control over the rents. These changes also came to the Mendicants,
who were put through a greater surveillance. In Portugal, these reforms did not
affect in the same way but, still, they ended up creating a monastery that worked
as the headquarters of the congregation in Brazil and Portugal. This was São
Martinho de Tibães, in Braga.
A place where one can easily observe the consequences of this process if the
Cistercian monastery of Oseira, close to O Carballiño, which was born closely
linked to its condition as a transit point towards this monastery. Founded in the
12th century, a fire destroyed a great part of its facilities, rebuilt in the 16th and
17th centuries thanks to the resurgence of the community as a result of the reform.
In Portugal, the best example of the reforms and
changes that the monastic orders underwent
at the beginning of the modern times is the
monastery of Serra do Pilar, in Vila Nova
de Gaia. This building was built in the 16th
century, at the request of the king, who decided
to move a monastery in ruins, Grijó, to the range
of San Nicolás, in front of the city of Porto. The
most peculiar of this construction is that both the
church and the cloister present a circular floor
plan. But it is also meaningful that the community
to which it was handed was the one of Saint
Agustine, an order that mixed elements of the
Mendicant orders and the hermit life.
Monastery of Grijó (Vila Nova de
Gaia)
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