Century XVIII
The parish church of Fonte Boa is a Baroque Mannerist inspired building, composed of a rectangular longitudinal floor plan with a sober but harmonious façade. In 1953, two side chapels were added, establishing the present configuration in Latin cross.
The main façade ends in a gable torn by a straight winged main portal, framed, overlaid by a rectangular window and flanked by two diamond-shaped glasses. Two windows, on the left and on the right, side the main window in symmetry. In the tympanum of the façade is the niche with the patron saint, Christ, Saviour of the World. The raised pediment is Baroque in style and topped by two stone flower motifs and a trilobe-shaped central cross.
To the right of the façade is the bell tower, with a square floor plan and three floors (1831), with a window in the second section and a bell tower in the third. The interior is covered with a decorated wooden coffered and vaulted ceiling.
Saturdays, 09h00-18h00.
Festivities 4th Sunday of July.
Divine Saviour
The Divine Saviour (or sometimes Holy Saviour) is Christ, the Son of God, who died for the salvation of humanity. Parishes with the Divine Saviour as their patron saint are testimony of their antiquity because, together with the invocation of St. Mary, the first Christian martyrs and the apostles, the Divine Saviour is one of the oldest invocations.
The figure of Christ, the Divine Saviour, presents himself in majesty, holding the sceptre of his power over the earth. To have Christ Himself as patron saint in the invocation of the Divine Saviour is a privilege of many parishes, since it sums up the Christian mystery: the affirmation that Jesus Christ is the Lord, of divine origin, and the Saviour, through the sacrifice of the cross, of all humanity. Divine Saviour, Holy Saviour or Divine Saviour of the World are invocations which reveal the mission of Jesus (=God Saves), the Christ (=The Anointed One). On August 6, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ, where the role of Christ within the Holy Trinity as Saviour is revealed.
Legend of Fonte Má
The Legend of Fonte Má means within the relationship established between the former and the name of the parish, Fonte Boa. To counteract the so-called pagan cults to the waters and, especially, those related to the exorcism of evil in acts of magic, the religious authorities have sacralised certain places, mountains and springs, to bring the rituals celebrated therein to Christian good faith. Saint Martin of Braga was particularly involved in this transformation of the imaginary world of the Early Middle Ages. Hence, the parish was also called Fonte Boa (Good Fountain) in order to overcome all the imaginary associated with the legend of the Bad Fountain (“Fonte Mala” in 1589).
Fonte do Couto was called Fonte Má, a name, which was also attributed to neighbouring lands (‘Land of Fonte Má’), because of its proximity and ‘contagion’. Tradition has that it was St. Bartholomew of the Martyrs, Archbishop of Braga, who changed the name from Fonte Má to Fonte Boa, in the 16th century. At that time, the people of the land, no longer gave much importance to the pagan cults and were not so attached to the name of this spring, which made the change of name easier. Thus, what was once Fonte Má, became Fonte Boa, being adorned by civil and Christian iconography. Many authors speak of another origin for the name Bad Fountain. Some people have seen the toponymic term ‘Fonte Mar’, in documents, because of its proximity to the seashore, and because water becomes brackish in some wells for the same reason. The new name may have arisen, at a given moment, because of the bad waters that were sprouting there before they have been transformed into good waters, which have come to our days. In any case, the transformation of evil into good, of impurity into purity, of pagan witchcraft into the symbolic source of Christian life, is celebrated.
