Tag: day to day men

Calendar: January 6

Year: Day to Day Men: January 6

Just Slightly Peeking

On the sixth of January in 1501, construction began on Portugal’s Jerónimos Monastery in the parish of Belém of the Lisbon Municipality. This monastery became the necropolis of the Portuguese royal dynasty, the House of Aviz, in the sixteenth-century until its secularization in December of 1833 by state decree. Its ownership was then transferred to the Real Casa Pia de Lisboa, a charitable institution. 

The Jerónimos Monastery was designed by architect Diogo de Boitaca, an influential architect and engineer of some of the most important buildings in Portugal. In this church, he continued his concept of a nave, the central part of the church, and two side aisles of equal height which unified the inner space as in a hall church. The richly ornate vaulting in the main chapel shows ribs with the shape of a twisted rope, a common theme of the Manueline style which incorporated maritime elements. The Jerónimos Monasteryis considered the most prominent of the late Portuguese Gothic Manueline style of Lisbon architecture. 

The Jerónimos Monastery was erected near the Tagus River launch point of Vasco de Gama’s first journey; its construction was funded by a five percent tax on the profits of the yearly Portuguese India Armadas. With the influx of such riches as imported spices and the redirection of funds from other proposed monasteries, Diogo de Boitaca was not limited to small-scale plans. He chose calcário de lioz, a gold-colored limestone for its construction. During his span of overseeing the construction, De Boitaca was responsible for drawing the plans and contracting work on the monastery, the sacristy and the refectory. 

Architect Juan de Castillo succeeded Diogo de Boitaca in 1517. He moved from the Manueline to the Spanish Plateesque style, an ornamentation that included decorative features constructed of silverware, plata. With the death of King Manuel I, construction halted until 1550, at which time architect Diogo de Torralva was in charge. He was followed by Jérôme de Rouen who added some classical elements. Throughout the following years, construction was halted several more times before the monastery’s completion, a span of work that lasted over one hundred years.

The Jerónimos Monastery became in 1640 a burial place for the Portuguese royal families. Among those entombed within the monastery were four of the eight children of John IV, King Alfonso VI, the Infanta Joana, and Catarina de Bragança. In 1880, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s remains and those of poet Luís de Camões, who wrote “The Lusiad, a celebration of da Gama’s first voyage, were moved to newly carved tombs in the monastery’s nave, just a few feet from the tombs of Kings Manuel I and John III, who da Gama served. The monastery is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Calendar: January 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of January

Being Yourself

Born on January 1st in 1735 (modern calendar) in the city of Boston, Paul Revere was an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and a member of the Sons of Liberty. He is best known for his April 1775 midnight ride to alert the local colonial militia to the approach of the British forces. This event later became popularized by the publication of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 “Paul Revere’s Ride”. 

The second of eleven children, Paul Revere left school at the age of thirteen and became an silversmith apprentice at the workshop of his father, Apollos Riveire whose work is now housed in the collections of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the De Young Museum. Through the silversmith trade, Paul Revere made many connections across British society, which aided him when he became active in the American Revolution. Too young to officially be the master of the family silver shop after his father’s death in 1754, Revere enlisted in the provincial army in February of 1756. 

Commissioned a second lieutenant in the artillery regiment, Revere spent the summer of 1756 at Fort William Henry at New York’s Lake George. He did not stay long in the army; he returned to Boston and took control of the silver shop in his own name. Revere married Sarah Orne on the fourth of August in 1757. Together they had eight children of whom two died young. Revere’s business started to suffer when the British economy entered a recession due to the Seven Year’s War, a global conflict that involved most of Europe’s great powers. With the enactment of the Stamp Act of 1785 by the British government, the Massachusetts economy made a further downturn. 

Paul Revere did not participate in the more raucous protests against the policies of the British government; but he did become in 1765 a member of the Sons of Liberty, a loose organization active in the American colonies to advance the rights of colonists and fight taxation by the British government. From 1765 onwards, Revere produced engravinga and other artifacts with political theme, among which was one depicting the Boston Massacre in March of 1770. From 1773, the year of the Boston Tea Party, to November of 1775, he served as a courier for the Boston Committee of Public Service, a service in which he reported to New York and Philadelphia on the political unrest in Boston. 

In 1774, General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts, dissolved the provincial assembly, closed the port of Boston, and forced private citizens to provide lodging in their homes for British soldiers. At this time, Revere began meeting with others to coordinate the gathering and dissemination of intelligence on the movements of British soldiers. In December of 1774, a false alert prompted him to ride to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to warn its citizens of a British troop landing. This ride later sparked a rebel success with a gunpowder supply raid at Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth. 

Paul Revers’s famous midnight ride was an alert to the American colonial militia in April of 1775 as to the approach of British forces. The ride occurred on the night of April 18th immediately before the first engagements of the American Revolutionary War. When activity by the British Army indicate a crackdown on the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, Rever and William Dawes prepared the alert. Robert Newman used a lantern to alert colonist in Charlestown to the Army’s advance of the Charles River. 

Revere and Dawes rode ten miles to meet John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Lexington, a ride which alerted forty other riders along the way. Revere and Dawes, along with Samuel Prescott rode on to Concord. The three riders were captured by the British in Lincoln. Dawes and Prescott escaped but Revere was returned to Lexington and eventually freed after questioning. By giving the colonists advance waring of the British Army’s movement, the ride played a crucial role in the colonists’ victories in subsequent battles.