A ROSARY OF MEMORIES: 1817-1928

As we walk through the streets of a city like Campinas, we are faced with the varied layers of time that cover them. Different stories and memories are present in the configurations assumed by the urban space over time. Marks of the presence of a diversity of subjects, worldviews, ways of living, feeling and thinking about the city are inscribed, often silently, in its streets, avenues, squares, buildings.

The construction of the chapel started with the Ituano lieutenant Pedro Gonçalves Meira (1743-1813) who, due to conflicts with the local vicar on account of the chosen land, ended up moving from Campinas. The construction of a new temple, close to the land targeted by clashes, started in 1817. The work was carried out, first by Father Antônio Joaquim Teixeira de Camargo and, with his death, by Father Manoel José Fernandes Pinto, who also died before its completion. The care and completion of the chapel, in turn, were handed over to the Brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do Rosário, which has existed since about 1810 and was formed by blacks, mainly slaves, and later mulattos. According to documentation, the lay religious association was still active in 1935, but the year of its extinction is unknown.

The chapel was built with both the support of the fellowship and benefactors. In 1870, due to the population increase, the Parish was divided into two: the new Parish of Santa Cruz, with headquarters in Matriz Velha, and the Parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, with provisional headquarters in Capela do Rosário, due to the works da Matriz Nova (current Metropolitan Cathedral of Nossa Senhora da Conceição), inaugurated in 1883. Around 1870, the church received the complementation of its facade and the erection of two side towers that in 1887, were demolished for presenting risks to the population.

An important space was the square in front of the Chapel of the Rosary. It concentrated religious acts, such as processions and field masses, in addition to parties based on the religious syncretism of black Africans. Gradually, the square was separated from the church, being present in several improvement plans, such as afforestation (1871), installation of fountains (1874) and pavement (1909). In 1887, the street was renamed Praça Visconde de Indaiatuba and, on November 15, 1895, it became a large garden with sidewalks, benches, a new fountain and gas lighting. During the 20th century it received new changes.

The Congregation of Missionaries Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, known as Claretian missionaries, was founded on July 16, 1849, when Antônio Maria Claret gathered in Vic, Spain, a group of priests whose mission was to evangelize the people. Within this pastoral proposal, they started to found new provinces, and in 1895 the first house was installed in Brazil, in the city of São Paulo, formed by a group of 10 missionaries.

In 1897, Father Manoel Ribas D'Avila, the new parish priest of the matrix and also a judge of the Irmandade do Rosário, offered the Chapel of the Rosary to two Claretian priests who were passing through Campinas. Besides the caring for the temple, the idea was to be able of constituting a starting point in the city for missions in the interior of the state due to it’s location at important railway junctions, which would facilitate the movement to other regions of São Paulo.

After ecclesiastical authorizations, the Claretian missionaries installed their second Brazilian house in Campinas in September 1889, occupying not only the chapel, but also an annex building. The Claretian priests helped to strengthen the feeling of belonging of the Campinas community towards the temple, above all due to the great amount of religious activities developed, although still as a chapel belonging to the Parish of Nossa Senhora do Carmo (former Parish of Santa Cruz).

The Claretians had the desire to renovate the Chapel of the Rosary. Still during the reconstruction works of their new accommodations, around 1907 they started to undertake a modern church, now in brick masonry. Although the exterior part was completed around 1910, the work was only opened in November 1913 under the direction of Father Baldomiro Ciriza, CFM. The new Rosário temple has recovered its side towers, with the one on the left side being tapered in its final part. In 1915, the main altar and the six side altars in Carrara marble arrived from Italy.

Years later, the church underwent a major decorative project, developed by the Austrian artist Thomaz Scheuchl (1867-1947). His artistic-religious language was immersed in the canons of the Beuron Art School, organized in the Benedictine monastery of Beuron in Germany in the 1870s, crossing formal and chromatic elements of the Egyptian, Byzantine and Romanesque arts. His imagery proposal also extended to the facade, which gained neorromic features with reliefs in the Beuron style. The towers became quadrangular, the left being larger than the right. 

In addition to Scheuchl's paintings, stood out in the temple the stained glass sets and sacred images in gilt and polychrome wood of Spanish origin, measuring between 1.8 and 2 meters in height.