Diocesan Archive – Museum

The Diocesan Archive – Museum (Arquivo – Museu Diocesano) is housed in the Casa do Poço, a mansion that belonged to Poço Estate. The families that owned it belonged to the highest echelons of the Portuguese aristocracy and were linked by marriage to the leading noble houses, with the Carvalho family owning the property at the end of the 19th century. 

The main façade of the mansion is embellished with a coat of arms in granite, facing the Cathedral, and another crowning the wrought iron gate leading to the entrance courtyard. It has two fine sculptured windows that look onto Rua dos Loureiros; their balcony and frames date back to the original 12th century building, while the arches and columns are from the 16th century. 

The mansion was acquired by the Diocese of Lamego in 1920 and it was occupied by the seminary until 1961 and the bishop’s house until 1945. In 2008, after extensive restoration works, it was opened to serve as the Diocesan Museum. A number of exhibitions have been held there, mostly focusing on religious art, and there a permanent exhibition of sacred art on display. 

The same building houses the diocesan archive. The completed registers (Livros Findos) of parish records, the oldest of which date from around 1525, were handed over by the parish priests in the Coura Seminary, built at the end of the 18th century on the foundations of the former College of St Nicholas on the instructions of Bishop João António Píncio. 

There was a major fire in the building on the night of 12-13 May 1834, but the officers of the diocese managed to save them, taking them to one of the outbuildings of the Bishop’s Palace, which stood in front. 

The seminary was rebuilt in 1859 by Bishop José de Moura Coutinho, and the registers went back there shortly afterwards. 

When the republican law of 18 February 1911 made civil registration compulsory, ruling that religious records had no value for civil purposes, it meant that the registers held in parishes or filed in ecclesiastical chambers were handed to the Civil Registry Offices then created, being subsequently sent to the Viseu District Archive. Reportedly, in compliance with the above-mentioned law, the diocesan record books were taken to the archive in boxes but, since there was not enough room, most of them were sent back. 

After its acquisition in 1920 for use as the seminary, the Casa do Poço provided a room for the documents on the ground floor of the building, which were taken there in baskets soon afterwards. This room had formerly been an inn, run by a woman called Emília, and the books were stacked there in terrible storage conditions. 

When Ernesto Sena de Oliveira came to the palace on Rua das Cortes, at the end of 1945, on the death of its last benefactor, two or three people told him about the shameful and inexcusable state of the books.

 In the wake of these warnings, Ernesto had them brought to the back part of the palace, where they remained at the disposal of many researchers until 2011. In that year they were relocated to the Diocesan Archive and Museum to be properly organized and scanned.