Qualla: Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei)

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei): Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aleijadinho, Public domain. Sir Richard Burton - the 19th-century English explorer who translated the Arabian Nights and tried to find the source of the Nile - pronounced the facade of this church 'the most spectacular in Sao Joao del-Rei, if not in all Minas Gerais.' He did not give praise easily. The building was a collaboration that Aleijadinho drew, another architect built, and a third finished. An incomplete autograph elevation survives in the Inconfidencia Museum in Ouro Preto, signed by Aleijadinho's own hand, which is how we know the design was his. What he drew and what was built are not quite the same thing, and the gap between them is where the story lives.

Image: Aleijadinho | Public domain

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei): The Secular Order That Needed a Bigger Church

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tissiana de A. de Souza, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Secular Franciscan Order of Sao Joao del-Rei - a lay brotherhood of white devotees - was canonically erected on March 8, 1749 by Friar Manoel da Cruz, the Bishop of Mariana. They used an earlier chapel for a generation. By 1772 that building had deteriorated, and the brotherh...

Image: Tissiana de A. de Souza | CC BY-SA 4.0

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei): Cerqueira Makes It His Own

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Filipo Tardim, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1774 Francisco de Lima Cerqueira was commissioned to do the masonry work. Cerqueira was a Portuguese-trained mestre-de-obras who had worked at the Carmo church in Ouro Preto, and he had ideas of his own. He changed the towers. He changed the pilasters of the crossing. He chang...

Image: Filipo Tardim | CC BY-SA 4.0

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei): A Building Finished Over Generations

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Flaviacpinheiro84, CC BY-SA 4.0. Colonial churches in Minas Gerais were almost never built by one generation. By 1804 the nave and the body of the church were done. In 1809 Aniceto de Souza Lopes completed the towers and the choir, and according to IPHAN also executed the reliefs on the pediment and the frontisp...

Image: Flaviacpinheiro84 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei): Where the Bells Speak

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo André Frantz, CC BY 3.0. Sao Joao del-Rei calls itself the city 'where the bells speak,' and at the Church of Saint Francis they are not exaggerating. A colonial-era tradition called the combate dos sinos - the battle of bells - still plays out every Lent. The city's churches compete to ring their bells ...

Image: Ricardo André Frantz | CC BY 3.0

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Sao Joao del-Rei): Music Old as the Walls

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit adaptação de foto de Eliane Kobayakawa, CC BY 2.0. The church has been a musical institution from its beginning. An 18th-century musical group performed for its festivities, which later split and reorganized in the 19th century as the Lira Sanjoanense and the Orquestra Ribeiro Bastos. Both are among the oldest continuously active...

Image: adaptação de foto de Eliane Kobayakawa | CC BY 2.0