Tears Fountain

Continuing the walk, and near the chapel of the Anointing (or the Tears), is to our right a fountain, that, in ancient times, was in front of the chapel, and now to the side. It was also called “erratic,” because it was devoid of inscriptions and figures. According to Father Martinho da Silva, in the Manual do Romeiro (5th ed., Paris, p.103), it was the primitive fountains where the source of the five wounds is currently found.

We attribute the designation of Tears to be found next to the chapel with the same name. It is a simple font, without mythological emblems and devoid of motifs and couplets.

On this fountain, Camilo Castelo Branco left us some elegant cuts from his book on Bom Jesus mountain hill: «And I drank two sips of lymph from the Fountain of Tears, and I went up the path of the Mother of Water, so that my uncle would not interfere with me … What I did later was to go to the mall of the Mother of Water to dig the best gold of nostalgia and poetry, or to cool the heats of blood in the Fountain of Tears. ».