[Sidenote: Royal tombs, Alcobaca. (Fig. 31.)]

Far more interesting both historically and artistically than these memorials at Lisbon are the royal tombs in the small chapel opening off the south transepts of the abbey church at Alcobaca. This vaulted chapel, two bays deep and three wide, was probably built about the same time as the cloister, and has good clustered piers and well-carved capitals. On the floor stand three large royal tombs and two smaller for royal children, and in deep recesses in the north and south walls, four others. Only the three larger standing clear of the walls call for notice; and of these one is that of Dona Beatriz, the wife of Dom Affonso III., who died in 1279, the same lady who married Dom Affonso while his wife the countess of Boulogne was still alive. Her tomb, which stands high above the ground on square columns with circular ringed shafts at the corners, was clearly not made for Dona Beatriz herself, but for some one else at least a hundred years before. It is of a white marble, sadly mutilated at one corner by French treasure-seekers, and has on each side a romanesque arcade with an apostle, in quite archaic style, seated under each arch; at the ends are large groups of seated figures, and on the sloping lid Dona Beatriz herself, in very shallow relief, evidently carved out of the old roof-shaped cover, which not being very thick did not admit of any deep cutting. Far richer, indeed more elaborate than almost any other fourteenth-century tombs, are those of Dom Pedro I. who died in 1367, and of Inez de Castro who was murdered in 1355. When only sixteen years old Dom Pedro, to strengthen his father Affonso the Fourth's alliance with Castile, had been married to Dona Costanca, daughter of the duke of Penafiel. In her train there came as a lady-in-waiting Dona Inez de Castro, the daughter of the high chamberlain of Castile, and with her Dom Pedro soon fell in love. As long as his wife, who was the mother of King Fernando, lived no one thought much of his connection with Dona Inez, or of that with Dona Thereza Lourenco, whose son afterwards became the great liberator, King Joao I., but after Dona Costanca's death it was soon seen that he loved Dona Inez more than any one had imagined, and he was believed even to have married her. This, and his refusal to accept any of the royal princesses chosen by his father, so enraged Dom Affonso that he determined to have Dona Inez killed, and this was done by three knights on 7th January 1355 in the Quinta das Lagrimas—that is, the Garden of Tears—near Coimbra. Dom Pedro, who was away hunting in the south, would have rebelled against his father, but was persuaded by the queen to submit after he had devastated all the province of Minho. Two years later Dom Affonso died, and after Dom Pedro had caught and tortured to death two of the murderers—the third escaped to Castile—he in 1361 had Dona Inez's body removed from its grave, dressed in the royal robes and crowned, and swearing that he had really married her, he compelled all the court to pay her homage and to kiss her hand: then the body was placed on a bier and carried by night to the place prepared for it at Alcobaca, some seventy miles away. When six years later, in 1367, he came to die himself he left directions that they should be buried with their feet towards one another, that at the resurrection the first thing he should see should be Dona Inez rising from her tomb. Unfortunately the French soldiers in 1810 broke open both tombs, smashing away much fine carved work and scattering their bones.[73] The two tombs are much alike in design and differ only in detail; both rest on four lions; the sides, above a narrow border of sunk quatrefoils, are divided by tiny buttresses rising from behind the gables of small niches into six parts, each of which has an arch under a gable whose tympanum is filled with the most minute tracery. Each of these arches is cusped and foliated differently according to the nature of the figure subject it contains. Behind the tops of the gables and pinnacles of the buttresses runs a small arcade with beautiful little figures only a few inches high: above this a still more delicate arcade runs round the whole tomb, interrupted at regular intervals by shields, charged on Dom Pedro's tomb with the arms of Portugal and on that of Dona Inez with the same and with those of the Castros alternately. At the foot of Dom Pedro's is represented the Crucifixion, and facing it on that of Dona Inez the Last Judgment. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and beauty of the figure sculpture, the drapery is all good, and the smallest heads and hands are worked with a care not to be surpassed in any country. (Fig. 32.)

On the top of one lies King Pedro with his head to the north, on the other Dona Inez with hers to the south; both are life size and are as well wrought as are the smaller details below. Both have on each side three angels who seem to be just about to lift them from where they lie or to have just laid them down. These angels, especially those near Dom Pedro's head, are perhaps the finest parts of either tomb, with their beautiful drapery, their well-modelled wings, and above all with the outstretching of their arms towards the king and Dona Inez. There seems to be no record as to who worked or designed these tombs, but there can be little or no doubt that he was a Frenchman, the whole feeling, alike of the architectural detail and the figures themselves, is absolutely French; there had been no previous figure sculpture in the country in any way good enough to lead up to the skill in design and in execution here shown, nor, with regard to the mere architectural detail, had Gothic tracery and ornament yet been sufficiently developed for a native workman to have invented the elaborate cuspings, mouldings, and other enrichments which make both tombs so pre-eminent above all that came before them.[74] These tombs, as indeed the whole church, as well as the neighbouring convent of Batalha, are constructed of a wonderfully fine limestone, which seems to be practically the same as Caen Stone, and which, soft and easy to cut when first quarried, grows harder with exposure and in time, when not in a too shady or damp position, where it gets black, takes on a most beautiful rich yellow colour.

These tombs, beautiful as they are, do not seem to have any very direct influence on the work of the next century: it is true that a distinct advance was made in modelling the effigies of those who lay below, but apart from that the decoration of these high tombs is in no case even remotely related to that of the later monuments at Batalha; nor, except that the national method of church planning was more firmly established than ever, and that some occasional features such as the cuspings on the arch-mould of the door of Sao Francisco Santarem, which are copied on an archaistic door at Batalha, are found in later work, is there much to point to the great advance that was soon to be made alike in detail and in construction.



CHAPTER IV

BATALHA AND THE DELIVERANCE OF PORTUGAL

Towards the end of the fourteenth century came the most important and critical years that Portugal had yet known. Dom Pedro, dying after a reign of only ten years, was succeeded by his only legitimate son, Fernando, in 1367. Unfortunately the new king at his sister's wedding saw and fell in love with the wife of a northern nobleman, and soon openly married this Dona Leonor Telles de Menezes, though he was himself already betrothed to a Castilian princess, and though her own husband was still alive. At the first court or Beja Manos held by Dona Leonor at Leca near Oporto, all the Portuguese nobility except Dom Diniz, the king's half-brother and a son of Inez de Castro, acknowledged her as queen. But soon the evil influence she exercised over the king and the stories of her cruelty made her extremely unpopular and even hated by the whole nation. The memory of the vengeance she took on her own sister, Dona Maria Telles, is preserved by an interesting old house in Coimbra which has indeed been rebuilt since, in the early sixteenth century, but is still called the House of the Telles. To the dislike Queen Leonor felt for the sons of Inez de Castro, owing to Dom Diniz's refusal to kiss her hand, was added the hatred she had borne her sister, who was married to Dom Joao, another son of Dona Inez, ever since this sister Dona Maria had warned her to have nothing to do with the king; she was also jealous because Dona Maria had had a son while her own two eldest children had died. So plotting to be rid of them both, she at last persuaded Dom Joao that his wife was not faithful to him, and sent him full of anger to that house at Coimbra where Dona Maria was living and where, without even giving his wife time to speak, he stabbed her to death. Soon after Dona Leonor came in and laughed at him for having believed her lies so as to kill his own wife. Failing to kill the queen, Dom Joao fled to Castile.

When Dom Fernando himself died in 1383 he left his widow as regent of the kingdom on behalf of their only daughter, Dona Brites, whom they had married to Don Juan I. of Castile. It was of course bad enough for the nation to find itself under the regency of such a woman, but to be absorbed by Castile and Leon was more than could be endured. So a great Cortes was held at Coimbra, and Dom Joao, grand master of the Order of Aviz, and the son of Dom Pedro and Dona Thereza Lourenco, was elected king. The new king at once led his people against the invaders, and after twice defeating them met them for the final struggle at Aljubarrota, near Alcobaca, on 14th August 1385. The battle raged all day till at last the Castilian king fled with all his army, leaving his tent with its rich furniture and all his baggage. Before the enemy had been driven from the little town of Aljubarrota, the wife of the village baker made herself famous by killing nine Spaniards with her wooden baking shovel—a shovel which may still be seen on the town arms. When all was over Dom Joao dedicated the spoil he had taken in the Castilian king's tent to Our Lady of the Olive Tree at Guimaraes where may still be seen, with many other treasures, a large silver-gilt triptych of the Nativity and one of the silver angels from off the royal altar.[75] Besides this, he had promised if victorious to rebuild the church at Guimaraes and to found where the victory had been won a monastery as a thankoffering for his success.

[Sidenote: Batalha.]

This vow was fulfilled two years later in 1387 by building the great convent of Sta. Maria da Victoria or Batalha, that is Battle, at a place then called Pinhal[76] in a narrow valley some nine or ten miles north of Aljubarrota and seven south of Leiria. Meanwhile John of Gaunt had landed in Galicia with a large army to try and win Castile and Leon, which he claimed for his wife Constance, elder daughter of Pedro the Cruel; marching through Galicia he met Dom Joao at Oporto in February 1387, and then the Treaty of Windsor, which had been signed the year before and which had declared the closest union of friendship and alliance to exist between England and Portugal, was further strengthened by the marriage of King Joao to Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt and of his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. Soon after, the peace of the Peninsula was assured by the marriage of Catherine, the only child of John of Gaunt and of Constance of Castile, to Enrique, Prince of the Asturias and heir to the throne of Castile.



But it is time now to turn from the history of the foundation of Batalha to the buildings themselves, and surely no more puzzling building than the church is to be found anywhere. The plan, indeed, of the church, omitting the Capella do Fundador and the great Capellas Imperfeitas, presents no difficulty as it is only a repetition of the already well-known and national arrangement of nave with aisles, an aisleless transept, with in this case five apsidal chapels to the east. Now in all this there is nothing the least unusual or different from what might be expected, except perhaps that the nave, of eight bays, is rather longer than in any previous example. But the church was built to commemorate a great national deliverance, and by a king who had just won immense booty from his defeated enemy, and so was naturally built on a great and imposing scale.[77]

The first architect, Affonso Domingues, perhaps a grandson of the Domingo Domingues who built the cloister at Alcobaca, is said to have been born at Lisbon and so, as might have been expected, his plan shows no trace at all of foreign influence. And yet even this ordinary plan has been compared by a German writer to that of the nave and transepts of Canterbury Cathedral, a most unlikely model to be followed, as Chillenden, who there carried out the transformation of Lanfranc's nave, did not become prior till 1390, three years after Batalha had been begun.[78] But though it is easy enough to show that the plan is not English but quite national and Portuguese, it is not so easy to say what the building itself is. Affonso Domingues died in 1402, and was succeeded by a man whose name is spelt in a great variety of ways, Ouguet, Huguet, or Huet, and to whom most of the building apart from the plan must have been due. His name sounds more French than anything else, but the building is not at all French except in a few details. Altogether it is not at all easy to say whence those peculiarities of tracery and detail which make Batalha so strange and unusual a building were derived, except that there had been in Portugal nothing to lead up to such tracery or to such elaboration of detail, or to the constructive skill needed to build the high groined vaults of the nave or the enormous span required to cover the chapter-house. Perhaps it may be better to describe the church first outside and then in, and then see if it is possible to discover from the details themselves whence they can have come.

The five eastern apses, of which the largest in the centre is also twice as high as the other four, are probably the oldest part of the building, but all, except the two outer apses and the upper part of the central, have been concealed by the Pateo built by Dom Manoel to unite the church with the Capellas Imperfeitas, or unfinished chapels, beyond. Here there is nothing very unusual: the smaller chapels all end in three-sided apses, at whose angles are buttresses, remarkable only for the great number of string courses, five in all, which divide them horizontally; these buttresses are finished by two offsets just below a plain corbel table which is now crowned by an elaborately pierced and cusped parapet which may well have been added later. Each side of the apse has one tall narrow single-light window which, filled at some later date from top to bottom with elaborate stone tracery, has two thin shafts at each side and a rather bluntly-pointed head. The central apse has been much the same but with five sides, and two stories of similar windows one above the other. So far there is nothing unexpected or what could not easily have been developed from already existing buildings, such as the church at Thomar or the Franciscan and Dominican churches no further away than Pontevedra in Galicia.

Coming to the south transept, there is a large doorway below under a crocketed gable flanked by a tall pinnacle on either side. This door with its thirteenth-century mouldings is one of the most curious and unexpected features of the whole building. Excepting that the capitals are well carved with leaves, it is a close copy of the west door of Sao Francisco at Santarem. Here the horseshoe cuspings are on the out-most of the five orders of mouldings, and the chevron on the fourth, while there is also a series of pointed cusps on the second. Only the innermost betrays its really late origin by the curious crossing and interpenetrating of the mouldings of its large trefoiled head. All this is thoroughly Portuguese and clearly derived from what had gone before; but the same cannot be said for the crockets or for the pinnacles with their square and gabled spirelets. These crockets are of the common vine-leaf shape such as was used in England and also in France early in the fourteenth century, while the two-storied pinnacles with shallow traceried panels on each face, and still more the square spirelets with rather large crockets and a large bunchy finial, are not at all French, but a not bad imitation of contemporary English work. On the gable above the door are two square panels, each containing a coat-of-arms set in a cusped quatrefoil, while the vine-leaves which fill in the surface between the quatrefoils and the outer mouldings of the square, as also those on the crowns which surmount the coats, are also quite English. The elaborate many-sided canopies above are not so much so in form though they might well have been evolved from English detail. Above the gable comes another English feature, a very large three-light window running up to the very vault; at the top the mullions of each light are carried up so as to intersect, with cusped circles filling in each space, while the whole window to the top is filled with a veil of small reticulated tracery. Above the top of the large window there is a band of reticulated panelling whose shafts run down till they reach the crocketed hood-mould of the window: and above this an elaborately pierced and foliated parapet between the square pinnacles of the angle buttresses, which like these of the apses are remarkable for the extraordinary number (ten) of offsets and string courses.

The next five bays of the nave as well as the whole north side (which has no buttresses) above the cloister are all practically alike; the buttresses, pinnacles and parapet are just the same as those of the transept: the windows tall, standing pretty high above the ground, are all of three lights with tracery evidently founded on that of the large transept window, but set very far back in the wall with as many as three shafts on each side, and with each light now filled in with horrid wood or plaster work. The clerestory windows, also of three lights with somewhat similar tracery, are separated by narrow buttresses bearing square pinnacles, between which runs on a pointed corbel table the usual pierced parapet, and by strong flying buttresses, which at least in the western bays are doubly cusped, and are, between the arch and the straight part, pierced with a large foliated circle and other tracery. The last three bays on the south side are taken up by the Founder's Chapel (Capella do Fundador), in which are buried King Joao, Queen Philippa, and four of their sons. This chapel, which must have been begun a good deal later than the church, as the church was finished in 1415 when the queen died and was temporarily buried before the high altar, while the chapel was not yet ready when Dom Joao made his will in 1426, though it was so in 1434 when he and the queen were there buried, is an exact square of about 80 feet externally, within which an octagon of about 38 feet in diameter rises above the flat roof of the square, rather higher than to the top of the aisles. Each exposed side of the square is divided into three bays, one wider in the centre with one narrower on each side. The buttresses, pinnacles and corbel table are much the same as before, but the parapet is much more elaborate and more like French flamboyant. Of the windows the smaller are of four lights with very elaborate and unusual flowing tracery in their heads; small parts of which, such as the tracery at the top of the smaller lights, is curiously English, while the whole is neither English nor French nor belonging to any other national school. The same may be said of the larger eight-light window in the central bay, but that there the tracery is even more elaborate and extravagant. The octagon above has buttresses with ordinary pinnacles at each corner, a parapet like that below, and flying buttresses, all pierced, cusped and crocketed like those at the west front. On each face is a tall two-light window with flowing tracery packed in rather tightly at the top.

As for the west front itself, which has actually been compared to that of York Minster, the ends of the aisles are much like the sides, with similar buttresses, pinnacles and parapet, but with the windows not set back quite so far. On each side of the large central door are square buttresses, running up to above the level of the aisle roof in six stories, the four upper of which are panelled with what looks like English decorated tracery, and ending in large square crocketed and gabled pinnacles. The door itself between these buttresses is another strange mixture. In general design and in size it is entirely French: on either side six large statues stand on corbels and under elaborate many-sided canopies, while on the arches themselves is the usual French arrangement of different canopied figures: the tympanum is upheld by a richly cusped segmental arch, and has on it a curiously archaistic carving of Our Lord under a canopy surrounded by the four Evangelists. Above, the crocketed drip-mould is carried up in an ogee leaving room for the coronation of the Virgin over the apex of the arch. So far all might be French, but on examining the detail, a great deal of it is found to be not French but English: the half octagonal corbels with their panelled and traceried sides, and still more the strips of panelling on the jambs with their arched heads, are quite English and might be found in almost any early perpendicular reredos or tomb, nor are the larger canopies quite French. (Fig. 33.)

Above the finial of the ogee runs a corbel table supporting a pierced and crested parapet, a little different in design from the rest.

Above this parapeted gallery is a large window lighting the upper part of the nave, a window which for extravagance and exuberance of tracery exceeds all others here or elsewhere. The lower part is evidently founded on the larger windows of the Capella do Fundador. Like them it has two larger pointed lights under a big ogee which reaches to the apex of a pointed arch spanning the whole window, the space between this ogee and the enclosing arch being filled in with more or less ordinary flowing tracery. These two main lights are again much subdivided: at the top is a circle with spiral tracery; below it an arch enclosing an ogee exactly similar to the larger one above, springing from two sub-lights which are again subdivided in exactly the same manner, into circle, sub-arch, ogee and two small lights, so that the whole lower part of the window is really built up from the one motive repeated three times. The space between the large arch and the window head is taken up by a large circle completely filled with minute spiral tracery and two vesicae also filled in with smaller vesicae and circles. Now such a window could not have been designed in England, in France, or anywhere else; not only is it ill arranged, but it is entirely covered from top to bottom with tracery, which shows that an attempt was being made to adapt forms suitable in a northern climate to the brilliant summer sun of Portugal, a sun which a native builder would rather try to keep out than to let in. Above the window is a band of reticulated tracery like that below, and the front is finished with a straight line of parapet pierced and foliated like that below, joining the picturesque clusters of corner pinnacles. The only other part of the church which calls for notice is the bell-tower which stands at the north end of a very thick wall separating the sacristy from the cloister; it is now an octagon springing strangely from the square below, with a rich parapet, inside which stands a tall spire; this spire, which has a sort of coronet rather more than half-way up, consists of eight massive crocketed ribs ending in a huge finial, and with the space between filled in with very fine pierced work.[79] From such of the original detail which has



survived the beautiful alterations of Dom Manoel, the details of the cloister must have been very like those of the church. The refectory to the west of the cloister is a plain room roofed with a pointed barrel-vault; but the chapter-house is constructively the most remarkable part of the whole convent. It is a great room over sixty feet square, opening off the east cloister walk by a large pointed door with a two-light window each side. This great space is covered by an immense vault, upheld by no central shaft; arches are thrown across the corners bringing the square to an octagon, and though not very high, it is one of the boldest Gothic vaults ever attempted; there is nowhere else a room of such a size vaulted without supporting piers, and probably none where the buttresses outside, with their small projection, look so unequal to the work they have to do, yet this vault has successfully withstood more than one earthquake.

The inside of the church is in singular contrast to the floridness of the outside. The clustered piers are exceptionally large and tall; there is no triforium, and the side windows are set so far back as to be scarcely seen. The capitals have elaborate Gothic foliage, but are so square as to look at a distance almost romanesque. In front of each pier triple vaulting shafts run up, but instead of the side shafts carrying the diagonal ribs as they should have done, all three carry bold transverse arches, leaving the vaulting ribs to spring as best they can. Each bay has horizontal ridge ribs, though their effect is lost by the too great strength of the transverse arches. The chancel, a little lower than the nave and transepts, is entered by an acutely pointed and richly cusped arch, and has a regular Welsh groined vault, with a well-developed ridge rib. Unfortunately almost all the church furniture was destroyed during the French retreat, and of the stained glass only that in the windows of the main apse survives, save in the three-light window of the chapter-house, a window which can be exactly dated as it displays the arms of Portugal and Castile quartered. This could only have been done during the life of Dom Manoel's first wife, Isabel, eldest daughter and heir of Ferdinand and Isabella. Dom Manoel married her in 1497, and she died in 1498 leaving a son who, had he lived, would have inherited the whole Peninsula and so saved Spain from the fatal connection with the Netherlands inherited by Charles V. from his own father. (Fig. 34.)

The most elaborate part of the interior is not unnaturally the Capella do Fundador: though even there, the four beautiful carved and painted altars and retables on the east side, and the elaborate carved presses on the west, have all vanished from their places, burned for firewood by the invaders in 1810. In the centre under the lantern, lie King Joao who died in 1433, and on the right Queen Philippa of Lancaster who died seventeen years before. The high tomb itself is a plain square block of stone from which on each side there project four lions: at the head are the royal arms surrounded by the Garter, and on the sides long inscriptions in honour of the king and queen. The figures of the king and queen lie side by side with very elaborate canopies at their heads. King Joao is in armour, holding a sword in his left hand and with his other clasping the queen's right hand. The figures are not nearly so well carved as are those of Dom Pedro and Inez de Castro at Alcobaca, nor is the tomb nearly as elaborate. On the south wall are the recessed tombs of four of their younger sons. The eldest, Dom Duarte, intended to be buried in the great unfinished chapel at the east, but still lies with his wife before the high altar. Each recess has a pointed arch richly moulded, and with broad bands of very unusual leaves, while above it rises a tall ogee canopy, crocketed and ending in a large finial. The space between arch and canopy and the sills of the windows is covered with reticulated panelling like that on the west front, and the tombs are divided by tall pinnacles. The four sons here buried are, beginning at the west: first, Dom Pedro, duke of Coimbra; next him Dom Henrique, duke of Vizeu and master of the Order of Christ, famous as Prince Henry the Navigator; then Dom Joao, Constable of Portugal; and last, Dom Fernando, master of the Order of Aviz, who died an unhappy captive in Morocco. During the reign of his brother Dom Duarte he had taken part in an expedition to that country, and being taken prisoner was offered his freedom if the Portuguese would give up Ceuta, captured by King Joao in the year in which Queen Philippa died. These terms he indignantly refused and died after some years of misery. On the front of each tomb is a large panel on which are two or three shields—one on that of Dom Henrique being surrounded with the Garter—while all the surface is covered with beautifully carved foliage. Dom Henrique alone has an



effigy, the others having only covers raised and panelled, while the back of the Constable's monument has on it scenes from the Passion.

The eight piers of the lantern are made up of a great number of shafts with a moulded angle between each. The capitals are covered with two tiers of conventional vine-leaves and have octagonal, not as in the church square abaci, while the arches are highly stilted and are enriched with most elaborate cusping, each cusp ending in a square vine-leaf. (Fig. 35.)

Such then are the main features of the church, the design of which, according to most writers, was brought straight from England by the English queen, an opinion which no one who knows English contemporary buildings can hold for a moment.

First, to take the entirely native features. The plan is only an elaboration of that of many already existing churches. The south transept door is a copy of a door at Santarem. The heavy transverse arches and the curious way the diagonal vaulting ribs are left to take care of themselves have been seen no further away than at Alcobaca; the flat-paved terraced roofs, whose origin the Visconde di Condeixa in his monograph on the convent, sought even as far off as in Cyprus, existed already at Evora and elsewhere.

Secondly, from France might have come the general design of the west door, and the great height of the nave, though the proportion between the aisle arcade and the clerestory, and the entire absence of any kind of triforium, is not at all French.

Thirdly, several details, as has been seen, appear to be more English than anything else, but they are none of them very important; the ridge ribs in the nave, the Welsh groining of the chancel vault, the general look of the pinnacles, a few pieces of stone panelling on buttresses or door, a small part of a few of the windows, the moulding of the chapter-house door, the leaves on the capitals of the Capella do Fundador, and the shape of the vine-leaves at the ends of the cuspings of the arches. From a distance the appearance of the church is certainly more English than anything else, but that is due chiefly to the flat roof—a thoroughly Portuguese feature—and to the upstanding pinnacles, which suggest a long perpendicular building such as one of the college chapels at Oxford.

Lastly, if the open-work spire is a real copy of that destroyed in 1755, and if there ever was another like it on the Capella do Fundador,[80] they suggest German influence, although the earliest Spanish examples of such German work were not begun at Burgos till 1442, by which time the church here must have been nearly if not quite finished.

It is then not difficult to assign a great many details, with perhaps a certain amount of truth, to the influence of several foreign countries, yet as a whole the church is unlike any building existing in any of these countries or even in Spain, and it remains as difficult, or indeed as impossible, to discover whence these characteristics came. So far there had been scarcely any development of window tracery to lead up to the elaborate and curious examples which are found here; still less had any such constructive skill been shown in former buildings as to make so great a vault as that of the chapter-house at all likely, for such a vault is to be found perhaps nowhere else.

Probably the plan of the church, and perhaps the eastern chapel and lower part of the transept, are the work of Affonso Domingues, and all the peculiarities, the strange windows, the cusped arches, the English-looking pinnacles, as well as all the constructive skill, are due to Huguet his successor, who may perhaps have travelled in France and England, and had come back to Portugal with increased knowledge of how to build, but with a rather confused idea of the ornamental detail he had seen abroad.

When Dom Joao died in 1433 his eldest son, Dom Duarte or Edward, determined to build for himself a more splendid tomb-house than his father's, and so was begun the great octagon to the east.

Unfortunately Dom Duarte's reign was short; he died in 1438, partly it is said of distress at the ill success of his expedition to Morocco and at the captivity there of his youngest brother, so that he had no time to finish his chapel, and his son Affonso V., the African, was too much engaged in campaigning against the Moors to be able to give either money or attention to his father's work; and it was still quite unfinished when Dom Manoel came to the throne in 1495, and though he did much towards carrying on the work it was unfinished when he died in 1521 and so remains to the present day. It is in designing this chapel that Huguet showed his greatest originality and constructive daring: a few feet behind the central apse he planned a great octagon about seventy-two feet in diameter, surrounded by seven apsidal chapels, one on each side except that next the church, while between these chapels are small low chambers where were to be the tombs themselves. There is nothing to show how this chapel was to be united to the church, as the great doorway and vaulted hall were added by Dom Manoel some seventy years later. When Dom Duarte died in 1438, or when Huguet himself died not long after,[81] the work had only been carried out as far as the tops of the surrounding chapels, and so remained all through his son's and his grandson's reigns, although in his will the king had specially asked that the building should be carried on. In all this original part of the Capellas Imperfeitas there is little that differs from Huguet's work in the church. The buttresses and corbel table are very similar (the pinnacles and parapets have been added since 1834), and the apses quite like those of the church. (Fig. 36.)

The tracery of the chief windows too is not unlike that of the lantern windows of the founder's chapel except that there is a well-marked transome half-way up—a feature which has been attributed to English influence—while the single windows of the tomb chambers are completely filled with geometric tracery. Inside, the capitals of the chapel arches as well as their rich cuspings are very like those of the founder's chapel; the capitals having octagonal abaci and stiff vine-leaves, and the trefoiled cusps ending in square vine-leaves, while the arch mouldings are, as in King Joao's chapel, more English than French in section. There is nothing now to show how the great central octagon was to be roofed—for the eight great piers which now rise high above the chapel were not built till the time of Dom Manoel—but it seems likely that the vault was meant to be low, and not to rise much above the chapel roofs, finishing, as everywhere else in the church, in a flat, paved terrace.

The only important addition made during the reigns of Dom Affonso V. and of Dom Joao II. was that of a second cloister, north of the Claustro Real, and still called the Cloister of Affonso. This cloister is as plain and wanting in ornament as everything else about the monastery is rich and elaborate, and it was probably built under the direction of Fernao d'Evora, who succeeded his uncle Martim Vasques as master of the works before 1448, and held that position for nearly thirty years. Unlike the great cloister, whose large openings must, from the first, have been meant for tracery, the cloister of Affonso V. is so very plain and simple, that if its date were not known it would readily be attributed to a period older even than the foundation of the monastery. On each side are seven square bays separated by perfectly plain buttresses, each bay consisting of two very plain pointed arches resting on the moulded capitals of coupled shafts. Except for the buttresses and the vault the cloister differs in no marked way from those at Guimaraes and elsewhere whose continuous pointed arcades show so little advance from the usual romanesque manner of cloister-building. Above is a second story of later date, in which the tiled roof rests on short columns placed rather far apart, and with no regard to the spacing of the bays below. Round this are the kitchens and various domestic offices of the convent, and behind it lay another cloister, now utterly gone, having been burned by the French in 1810. Such are the church and monastery of Batalha as planned by Dom Joao and added to by his son and grandson, and though it is not possible to say whence Huguet drew his inspiration, it remains, with all the peculiarities of tracery and detail which make it seem strange and ungrammatical—if one may so speak—to eyes accustomed to northern Gothic, one of the most remarkable examples of original planning and daring construction to be found anywhere. Of the later additions which give character to the cloister and to the Capellas Imperfeitas nothing can be said till the time of Dom Manoel is reached.



CHAPTER V

THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Guimaraes.]

Besides building Batalha, King Joao dedicated the spoils he had taken at Aljubarrota to the church of Nossa Senhora da Oliviera at Guimaraes, which he rebuilt from the designs of Juan Garcia of Toledo. The most important of these spoils is the silver-gilt reredos taken in the Spanish king's travelling chapel. It is in the shape of a triptych about four feet high. In the centre is represented the Virgin with the Infant Christ on a bed, with Joseph seated and leaning wearily on his staff at the foot, the figures being about fourteen inches high; above two angels swing censers, and the heads of an ox and an ass appear feeding from a manger. All the background is richly diapered, and above are four cusped arches, separated by angels under canopies, while above the arches to the top there rises a rich mass of tabernacle work, with the window-like spaces filled in with red or green enamel. At the top are two half-angels holding the arms of Portugal, added when the reredos was dedicated to Our Lady by Dom Joao. The two leaves, each about twenty inches wide, are divided into two equal stories, each of which has two cusped and canopied arches enclosing, those on the left above, the Annunciation, and below the Presentation, and those on the right, the Angel appearing to the Shepherds above, and the Wise Men below. All the tabernacle work is most beautifully wrought in silver, but the figures are less good, that of the Virgin Mary being distinctly too large.[82] (Fig. 37.)

Of the other things taken from the defeated king's tent, only one silver angel now remains of the twelve which were sent to Guimaraes.

Of the church rebuilt in commemoration of this great victory, only the west front has escaped a terrible transformation carried out not so long ago, and which has made it impossible to see what the inside was once like. If the builder was a Spaniard, as his name, Juan Garcia de Toledo, seems to imply, there is nothing Spanish about his design. The door is like many another door of about the same period, with simple mouldings ornamented with small bosses, but the deeply recessed window above is most unusual. The tracery is gone, but the framing of the window remains, and is far more like that of a French door than of a window. On either jamb are two stories of three canopied niches, containing figures, while the arches are covered with small figures under canopies; all is rather rude, but the whole is most picturesque and original.

To the left rises the tower, standing forward from the church front: it is of three stories, with cable moulding at the corners, a picturesque cornice and battlements at the top; a bell gable in front, and a low octagonal spire. On the ground floor are two large windows defended by simple but good iron grilles, and in the upper part are large belfry windows. This is not the original tower, for that was pulled down in 1515, when the present one was built in its stead by Pedro Esteves Cogominho. Though of so late a date it is quite uninfluenced, not only by those numerous buildings of Dom Manoel's time, which are noted for their fantastic detail, but by the early renaissance which had already begun to show itself here and there, and it is one of the most picturesque church towers in the country.

A few feet to the west of the church there is a small open shrine or chapel, a square vault resting on four pointed arches which are well moulded, enriched with dog-tooth and surmounted by gables. This chapel was built soon after 1342 to commemorate the miracle to which the church owes its name. Early in the fourteenth century there grew at Sao Torquato, a few miles off, an olive-tree which provided the oil for that saint's lamp. It was transported to Guimaraes to fulfil a like office there for the altar of Our Lady. It naturally died, and so remained for many years till 1342, when one Pedro Esteves placed on it a cross which his brother had bought in Normandy. This was the 8th of September, and three days after the dead olive-tree broke into leaf, a miracle



greatly to the advantage and wealth of the church and of the town. From that day the church was called Our Lady of the Olive Tree.

[Sidenote: Guarda.]

Far more interesting than this church, because much better preserved and because it is clearly derived, in part at least, from Batalha, is the cathedral of Guarda, begun by Joao I. Guarda is a small town, not far from the Spanish border, built on a hill rising high above the bleak surrounding tableland to a height of nearly four thousand feet, and was founded by Dom Sancho I. in 1197 to guard his frontier against the Spaniards and the Moors. Begun by Joao I. the plan and general design of the whole church must belong to the beginning of the fifteenth century, though the finishing of the nave, and the insertion of larger transept windows, were carried out under Dom Manoel, and though the great reredos is of the time of Dom Joao III. Yet the few chapels between the nave buttresses are almost the only real additions made to the church. Though of but moderate dimensions, it is one of the largest of Portuguese cathedrals, being 175 feet long by 70 feet wide and 110 feet across the transepts. It is also unique among the aisled and vaulted churches in copying Batalha by having a well-developed clerestory and flying buttresses.



The plan consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, a transept projecting one bay beyond the aisles, and three apses to the east. At the crossing the vault is slightly raised so as to admit of four small round windows opening above the flat roofs of the central aisle and transepts. The only peculiarity about the plan lies in the two western towers, which near the ground are squares set diagonally to the front of the church and higher up change to octagons, and so rise a few feet above the flat roof. About the end of the fifteenth century two small chapels were added to the north of the nave, and later still the spaces between the buttresses were filled in with shallow altar recesses.

The likeness to Batalha is best seen in the Capella Mor. As the apse has only three instead of five sides, the windows are rather wider, and there are none below, but otherwise the resemblance is as great as may be, when the model is of fine limestone and the copy of granite. The buttresses have offset string courses, and square crocketed pinnacles just as at Batalha; there has even been an attempt to copy the parapet, though only the trefoil corbel table is really like the model, for the parapet itself is solid with a cresting of rather clumsy fleurs-de-lis. These pinnacles and this crested parapet are found everywhere all round the church, though the pinnacles on the aisle walls from which the plain flying buttresses spring are quite different, being of a Manoelino design. Again the north transept door has evidently been inspired by the richness of Batalha. Here the door itself is plain, but well moulded, with above it an elaborately crocketed ogee drip-mould, which ends in a large finial; above this rises to a considerable height some arcaded panelling, ending at the top in a straight band of quatrefoil, and interrupted by a steep gable. (Fig. 38.)

No other part of the outside calls for much notice except the boat-keel corbels of the smaller apses, the straight gable-less ends to transept and nave which show that the roofs are flat and paved, and the western towers. These are of three stories. The lowest is square at the bottom and octagonal above, the change being effected by a curved offset at two corners, while at the third or western corner the curve has been cut down so as to leave room for an eighteenth-century window, lighting the small polygonal chapel inside, a chapel originally lit by two narrow round-headed windows on the diagonal sides. In the second story there are again windows on the same diagonal sides, but they have been built up: while on the third or highest division—where the octagon is complete on all sides—are four belfry windows. The whole is finished by a crested parapet. The west front between these towers is very plain. At the top a cresting, simpler than that elsewhere, below a round window without tracery, lower still two picturesque square rococo windows, and at the bottom a rather elaborate Manoelino doorway, built not many years ago to replace one of the same date as the windows above.

Throughout the clerestory windows are not large. They are round-headed of two lights, with simple tracery, and deep splays both inside and out. The large transept windows with half octagonal heads under a large trefoil were inserted about the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Inside the resemblance to Batalha is less noticeable. The ribs of the chancel vault are well moulded, as are the arches of the lantern, but in the nave, which cannot have been finished till the end of the fifteenth century, the design is quite different. The piers are all a hollow square set diagonally with a large round shaft at each corner. In the aisle arches the hollows of the diagonal sides are carried round without capitals, with which the round shafts alone are provided; while the shaft in front runs up to a round Manoelino capital with octagonal abacus from which springs the vaulting at a level higher than the sills of the clerestory windows.[83] The most unusual part of the nave is the vaulting of all three aisles, where all the ribs, diagonal as well as transverse, are of exactly the same section and size as is the round shaft from which they spring, even the wall rib being of the same shape though a little smaller. At the crossing there are triple shafts on each side, those of the nave being twisted, which is another Manoelino feature. The nave then must be about a hundred years later than the eastern parts of the church, where the capitals are rather long and are carved with foliage and have square abaci, while those of the nave are all of the time of King Joao II. or of King Manoel. At about the same time some small and picturesque windows were inserted above the smaller apses on the east side of the transept, and rather later was built the chapel to the north-east of the nave, which is entered through a segmental arch whose jambs and head are well carved with early renaissance foliage and figures, and which contains the simple tomb of a bishop. The pulpits, organs, and stalls, both in the chancel and in the western choir gallery, are fantastic and late, but the great reredos which rises in three divisions to the springing of the vault is the largest and one of the finest in the country, but belonging as it does to a totally different period and school must be left for another chapter.

[Sidenote: Nossa Senhora do Vencimento do Monte do Carmo, Lisbon.]

Much need not be said about the Carmo at Lisbon, another church of the same date, as it has been almost entirely wrecked by the earthquake of 1755. The victory of Aljubarrota was due perhaps even more to the grand Constable of Portugal, Dom Nuno Alvares Pereira, than to the king himself, and, like the king, the Constable commemorated the victory by founding a monastery, a great Carmelite house in Lisbon. The church of Nossa Senhora do Vencimento do Monte do Carmo stands high up above the central valley of Lisbon on the very verge of the steep hill. Begun in July 1389 the foundations twice gave way, and it was only after the Constable had dismissed his first master and called in three men of the same name, Affonso, Goncalo, and Rodrigo Eannes, that a real beginning could be made, and it was not finished till 1423, when it was consecrated; at the same time the founder assumed the habit of a Carmelite and entered his own monastery to die eight years later, and to become an object of veneration to the whole people. In plan the church was almost exactly like that of Batalha, though with a shorter nave of only five bays.[84] To the east of the transept are still five apses—the best preserved part of the whole building—having windows and buttresses like those at Batalha. The only other part of the church which has escaped destruction is the west door, a large simple opening of six moulded arches springing from twelve shafts whose capitals are carved with foliage. From what is left it seems that the church was more like what Batalha was planned to be, rather than what it became under the direction of Huguet: but the downfall of the nave has been so complete that it is only possible to make out that there must have been a well-developed clerestory and a high vaulted central aisle. What makes this destruction all the more regrettable is the fact that the church was full of splendid tombs, especially that of the Holy Constable himself: a magnificent piece of carving in alabaster sent from Flanders by Dom Joao's daughter, Isabel, duchess of Flanders.[85]

After this catastrophe an attempt was made to rebuild the church, but little was done, and it still remains a complete ruin, having been used since the suppression of all monasteries in 1834 as an Archaeological Museum where many tombs and other architectural fragments may still be seen.

[Sidenote: Villar de Frades.]

Towards the end of King Joao's reign a man named Joao Vicente, noting the corruption into which the religious orders were falling, determined to do what he could by preaching and example to bring back a better state of things. He first began his work in Lisbon, but was driven from there by the bishop to find a refuge at Braga. There he so impressed the archbishop that he was given the decayed and ruined monastery of Villar de Frades in 1425. Soon he had gathered round him a considerable body of followers, to whom he gave a set of rules and who, after receiving the papal sanction, were known as the Canons Secular of St. John the Evangelist or, popularly, Loyos, because their first settlement in Lisbon was in a monastery formerly dedicated to St. Eloy. The church at Villar, which is of considerable size, was probably long of building, as the elliptical-headed west door with its naturalistic treelike posts has details which did not become common till at least the very end of the century. Inside the church consists of a nave of five bays, flanked with chapels but not aisles, transepts which are really only enlarged chapels, and a chancel like the nave but without chapels. The chief feature of the inside is the very elaborate vaulting, which with the number and intricacy of its ribs, is not at all unlike an English Perpendicular vault, and indeed would need but little change to develop into a fan vault. Here then there has been a considerable advance from the imperfect vaulting of the central aisle at Batalha, where the diagonal ribs had to be squeezed in wherever they could go, although there are at Villar no side aisles so that the construction of supporting buttresses was of course easier than at Batalha: and it is well worth noticing how from so imperfect a beginning as the nave at Batalha the Portuguese masters soon learned to build elaborate and even wide vaults, without, as a rule, covering them with innumerable and meaningless twisting ribs as was usually done in Spain. In the north-westernmost chapel stands the font, an elaborate work of the early renaissance; an octagonal bowl with twisted sides resting on a short twisted base.

[Sidenote: Matriz, Alvito.]

Not unlike the vaulting at Villar is that of the Matriz or mother church of Alvito, a small town in the Alemtejo, nor can it be very much later in date. Outside it is only remarkable for its west door, an interesting example of an attempt to use the details of the early French renaissance, without understanding how to do so—as in the pediment all the entablature except the architrave has been left out—and for the short twisted pinnacles which somehow give to it, as to many other buildings in the Alemtejo, so Oriental a look, and which are seen again at Belem. Inside, the aisles are divided from the nave by round chamfered arches springing from rather short octagonal piers, which have picturesque octagonal capitals and a moulded band half-way up. Only is the easternmost bay, opening to large transeptal chapels, pointed and moulded. The vaulting springs from corbels, and although the ribs are but simply chamfered they are well developed. Curiously, though the central is so much higher than the side aisles, there is no clerestory, nor any signs of there ever having been one, while the whole wall surface is entirely covered with those beautiful tiles which came to be so much used during the seventeenth century.

In the year 1415 her five sons had sailed straight from the deathbed of Queen Philippa to the coast of Morocco and had there captured the town of Ceuta, a town which remained in the hands of the Portuguese till after their ill-fated union with Spain; for in 1668 it was ceded to Spain in return for an acknowledgment of Portuguese independence, thus won after twenty-seven years' more or less continuous fighting. This was the first time any attempt had been made to carry the Portuguese arms across the Straits, and to attack their old enemies the Moors in their own land, where some hundred and seventy years later King Joao's descendant, Dom Sebastiao, was to lose his life and his country's freedom.

[Sidenote: Tomb in Graca, Santarem.]

The first governor of Ceuta was Dom Pedro de Menezes, count of Viana. There he died in 1437, after having for twenty-two years bravely defended and governed the city—then, as is inscribed on his tomb, the only place in Africa possessed by Christians. This tomb, which was made at the command of his daughter Dona Leonor, stands in the church of the Graca at Santarem, a church which had been founded by his grandfather the count of Ourem in 1376 for canons regular of St. Augustine. Inside the church itself is not very remarkable,[86] having a nave and aisles with transepts and three vaulted chapels to the east, built very much in the same style as is the church at Leca do Balio, except that it has a fine west front, to be mentioned later, that the roof of the nave was knocked down by the Devil in 1548 in anger at the extreme piety of Frey Martinho de Santarem, one of the canons, and that many famous people, including Pedro Alvares Cabral, the discoverer of Brazil, are therein buried.

In general outline the tomb of the count of Viana is not unlike that of his master Dom Joao, but it is much more highly decorated. On eight crouching lions rests a large altar-tomb. It has a well-moulded and carved base and an elaborately carved cornice, rich with deeply undercut foliage, while on the top lie Pedro de Menezes and his wife Dona Beatriz Coutinho, with elaborately carved canopies at their heads, and pedestals covered with figures and foliage at their feet. Beneath the cornice on each of the longer sides is cut in Gothic letters a long inscription telling of Dom Pedro's life, and lower down and on all four sides there is in the middle a shield, now much damaged, with the Menezes arms. On each side of these shields are carved spreading branches, knotted round a circle in the centre in which is cut the word 'Aleo.' Once, when playing with King Joao at a game in which some kind of club or mallet was used, the news came that the Moors were collecting in great numbers to attack Ceuta. The king, turning to Dom Pedro, asked him what reinforcements he would need to withstand the attack; the governor answered: 'This "Aleo," or club, will be enough,' and in fact, returning at once to his command, he was able without further help to drive back the enemy. So this word has been carved on his tomb to recall how well he did his duty.[87] (Fig. 39.)

[Sidenote: Tomb in Sao Joao de Alporao.]

Not far from the Graca church is that of Sao Joao de Alporao, of which something has already been said, and in it now stands the tomb of another Menezes, who a generation later also died in Africa, fighting to save the life of his king, Dom Affonso V., grandson of King Joao. Notwithstanding the ill-success of the expedition of his father, Dom Duarte, to Tangier, Dom Affonso, after having got rid of his uncle the duke of Coimbra, who had governed the country during his minority, and who fell in battle defending himself against the charge of treason, led several expeditions to Morocco, taking first Alcazar es Seghir or Alcacer Seguer, and later Tangier and Arzilla, thereby uselessly exhausting the strength of the people, and hindering the spread of maritime exploration which Dom Henrique had done so much to extend.

This Dom Duarte de Menezes, third count of Viana, was, as an inscription tells, first governor of Alcacer Seguer, which with five hundred soldiers he successfully defended against a hundred thousand Moors, dying at last in the mountains of Bonacofu in defence of his king in 1464.[88]

The monument was built by his widow, Dona Isabel de Castro, but so terribly had Dom Duarte been cut to pieces by the Moors, that only one finger could be found to be buried there.[89] Though much more elaborate, the tomb is not altogether unlike those of the royal princes at Batalha. The count lies, armed, with a sword drawn in his right hand, on an altar-tomb on whose front, between richly traceried panels, are carved an inscription above, upheld by small figures, and below, in the middle a flaming cresset, probably a memorial of his watchfulness in Africa, and on each side a shield.

Surmounting the altar-tomb is a deeply moulded ogee arch subdivided into two hanging arches which spring from a pendant in the middle, while the space between these sub-arches and the ogee above is filled with a canopied carving of the Crucifixion. At about the level of the pendant the open space is crossed by a cusped segmental arch supporting elaborate flowing tracery. The outer sides of the ogee, which ends in a large finial, are enriched with large vine-leaf crockets. On either side of the arch is a square pier, moulded at the angles, and with each face covered with elaborate tracery. Each pier, which ends in a square crocketed and gabled pinnacle, has half-way



up a small figure standing on an octagonal corbel under an elaborate canopy. The whole at the top is finished with a cornice running straight across from pier to pier, and crested with interlacing and cusped semicircles, while the flat field below the cornice and above the outer moulding of the great arch is covered with flaming cressets. (Fig. 40.)

This is perhaps one of the finest of the tombs of the fifteenth century, and like those at Alcobaca is made of that very fine limestone which is found in more than one place in Portugal.

[Sidenote: At Abrantes.]

Farther up the Tagus at Abrantes, in the church of Santa Maria do Castello, are some more tombs of the same date, more than one of which is an almost exact copy of the princes' tombs at Batalha, though there is one whose arch is fringed with curious reversed cusping, almost Moorish in appearance.

[Sidenote: Cloister at Thomar.]

Before turning to the many churches built towards the end of the fifteenth century, one of the cloisters of the great convent at Thomar must be mentioned. It is that called 'do Cemiterio,' and was built by Prince Henry the Navigator, duke of Vizeu, during his grandmastership of the Order of Christ about the year 1440. Unlike those at Alcobaca or at Lisbon, which were derived from a Cistercian plan, and were always intended to be vaulted, this small cloister followed the plan, handed down from romanesque times, where on each side there is a continuous arcade resting on coupled shafts. Such cloisters, differing only from the romanesque in having pointed arches and capitals carved with fourteenth-century foliage, may still be seen at Santo Thyrso and at Sao Domingos, Guimaraes, in the north. Here at Thomar the only difference is that the arches are very much wider, there being but five on each side, and that the bell-shaped capitals are covered with finely carved conventional vine-leaves arranged in two rows round the bells. As in the older cloisters one long abacus unites the two capitals, but the arches are different, each being moulded as one deep arch instead of two similar arches set side by side.



CHAPTER VI

LATER GOTHIC

During the last ten or fifteen years of the fifteenth century there was great activity in building throughout almost the whole country, but it now becomes almost impossible to take the different buildings in chronological order, because at this time so many different schools began to struggle for supremacy. There was first the Gothic school which, though increasing in elaboration of detail, went on in some places almost uninfluenced by any breath of the renaissance, as for instance in the porch and chancel of Braga Cathedral, not built till about 1532. Elsewhere this Gothic was affected partly by Spanish and partly by Moorish influence, and gradually grew into that most curious and characteristic of styles, commonly called Manoelino, from Dom Manoel under whom Portugal reached the summit of its prosperity. In other places, again, Gothic forms and renaissance details came gradually to be used together, as at Belem.

To take then first those buildings in which Gothic detail was but little influenced by the approaching renaissance.

[Sidenote: Graca, Santarem.]

One of the earliest of these is the west front, added towards the end of the fifteenth century to that Augustinian church of the Graca at Santarem whose roof the Devil knocked down in 1548. Here the ends of the side aisles are, now at any rate, quite plain, but in the centre there is a very elaborate doorway with a large rose-window above. It is easy to see that this doorway has not been uninfluenced by Batalha. From well-moulded jambs, each of which has four shafts, there springs a large pointed arch, richly fringed with cusping on its inner side. Two of its many mouldings are enriched with smaller cuspings, and one, the outermost, with a line of wavy tracery, while the whole ends in a crocketed ogee. Above the arch is a strip of shallow panelling, enclosed, as is the whole doorway, in a square moulded frame. May it not be that this square frame is due to the almost universal Moorish habit of setting an archway in a square frame, as may be seen at Cordoba and in the palace windows at Cintra? The rest of the gable is perfectly plain but for the round window, filled with elaborate spiral flowing tracery. Here, though the details are more French than national, there is a good example of the excellent result so often reached by later Portuguese—and Spanish—builders, who concentrated all their elaborate ornament on one part of the building while leaving the rest absolutely plain—often as here plastered and whitewashed.

[Sidenote: Sao Joao Baptista, Thomar.]

Not long after this front was built, Dom Manoel in 1494 began a new parish church at Thomar, that of Sao Joao Baptista. The plan of this church is that which has already become so familiar: a nave and aisles with wooden roof and vaulted chancel and chapels to the east, with here, the addition of a tower and spire to the north of the west front. The inside calls for little notice: the arches are pointed, and the capitals carved with not very good foliage, but the west front is far more interesting. As at the Graca it is plastered and whitewashed, but ends not in a gable but in a straight line of cresting like Batalha, though here there is no flat terrace behind, but a sloping tile roof. At the bottom is a large ogee doorway whose tympanum is pierced with tracery and whose mouldings are covered with most beautiful and deeply undercut foliage. The outside of the arch is crocketed, and ends in a tall finial thrust through the horizontal and crested moulding which, as at the Graca, sets the whole in a square frame. There are also doorways in the same style half-way along the north and south sides of the church. The only other openings on the west front are a plain untraceried circle above the door, and a simple ogee-headed window at the end of each aisle.

The tower, which is not whitewashed, rises as a plain unadorned square to a little above the aisle roof, then turns to an octagon with, at the top, a plain belfry window on each face. Above these runs a corbelled gallery within which springs an octagonal spire cut into three by two bands of ornament, and ending in a large armillary sphere, that emblem of all the discoveries made during his reign, which Dom Manoel put on to every building with which he had anything to do.

Inside the chapels are as usual overloaded with huge reredoses of heavily carved and gilt wood, but the original pulpit still survives, a most beautiful example of the finest late Gothic carving. It consists of four sides of an octagon, and stands on ribs which curve outwards from a central shaft. Round the bottom runs a band of foliage most marvellously undercut, above this are panels separated the one from the other by slender pinnacles, and the whole ends in a cornice even more delicately carved than is the base. At the top of each panel is some intricate tabernacle work, below which there is on one the Cross of the Order of Christ, on another the royal arms, with a coronet above which stands out quite clear of the panel, and on a third there has been the armillary sphere, now unfortunately quite broken off. But even more interesting than this pulpit itself is the comparison between its details and those of the nave or Coro added about the same time to the Templar church on the hill behind. Here all is purely Gothic, there there is a mixture of Gothic and renaissance details, and towards the west front an exuberance of carving which cannot be called either Gothic or anything else, so strange and unusual is it.

[Sidenote: Villa do Conde.]

Another church of almost exactly the same date is that of Sao Joao Baptista, the Matriz of Villa do Conde. The plan shows a nave and aisles of five bays, large transeptal chapels, and an apsidal chancel projecting beyond the two square chapels by which it is flanked. As usual the nave and aisles have a wooden roof, only the chancel and chapels being vaulted. There is also a later tower at the west end of the north aisle, and a choir gallery across the west end of the church. Throughout the original windows are very narrow and round-headed, and there is in the north-western bay a pointed door, differing only from those of about a hundred years earlier in having twisted shafts. One curious feature is the parapet of the central aisle, which is like a row of small classical pedestals, each bearing a stumpy obelisk. By far the finest feature of the outside is the great west door. On each side are clusters of square pinnacles ending in square crocketed spirelets, and running up to a horizontal moulding which, as so often, gives the whole design a rectangular form. Within comes the doorway itself; a large trefoiled arch of many mouldings of which the outermost, richly crocketed, turns up as an ogee, to pierce the horizontal line above with its finial. Every moulding is filled with foliage, most elaborately and finely cut, considering that it is worked in granite. Across the trefoil at its springing there runs a horizontal moulding resting on the flat elliptical arch of the door itself. On the tympanum is a figure of St. John under a very elaborate canopy with, on his right, a queer carving of a naked man, and on his left a dragon. The space between the arch and the top moulding is filled with intricate but shallow panelling, among which, between two armillary spheres, are set, on the right, a blank shield crowned—probably prepared for the royal arms—and on the left the town arms—a galley with all sails set. Lastly, as a cresting to the horizontal moulding, there is a row of urnlike objects, the only renaissance features about the whole door. (Fig. 41.)



Inside, all the piers are octagonal with a slender shaft at each angle; these shafts alone having small capitals, while their bases stand on, and interpenetrate with, the base of the whole pier. All the arches are round—as are those leading to the chancel and transept chapels—and are moulded exactly as are the piers. All the vaults have a network of well-moulded ribs.

The tower has been added some fifty years later and is very picturesque. It is of four stories: of these the lowest has rusticated masonry; the second, on its western face, a square-headed window opening beneath a small curly and broken pediment on to a balcony with very fine balusters all upheld by three large corbels. The third story has only a clock, and the fourth two plain round-headed belfry windows on each face. The whole—above a shallow cornice which is no bigger than the mouldings dividing the different stories—ends in a low stone dome, with a bell gable in front, square below, and arched above, holding two bells.

[Sidenote: Azurara.]

Scarcely a mile away, across the river Ave, lies Azurara, which was made a separate parish in 1457 and whose church was built by Dom Manoel in 1498.

In plan it is almost exactly the same as Villa do Conde, except that there are no transept chapels nor any flanking the chancel. Outside almost the only difference lies in the parapet which is of the usual shape with regular merlons; and in the west door which is an interesting example of the change to the early renaissance. The door itself is round-headed, and has Gothic mouldings separated by a broad band covered with shallow renaissance carving. On each side are twisted shafts which run up some way above the door to a sort of horizontal entablature, whose frieze is well carved, and which is cut into by a curious ogee moulding springing from the door arch. Above this entablature the shafts are carried up square for some way, and end in Gothic pinnacles. Between them is a niche surmounted by a large half-Gothic canopy and united to the side shafts by a broken and twisted treelike moulding. What adds to the strangeness of this door is that the blank spaces are plastered and whitewashed, while all the rest of the church is of grey granite. Higher up there is a round window—heavily moulded—and the whole gable ends in a queer little round pediment set between two armillary spheres.

Inside the piers are eight-sided with octagonal bases and caps, and with a band of ornament half-way up the shaft. The arches are simply chamfered but are each crossed by three carved voussoirs.

The tower is exactly like that at Villa do Conde except that the bottom story is not rusticated, and that instead of a dome there is an octagonal spire covered with yellow and white tiles.



[Sidenote: Caminha.]

As at Azurara, the parish church of Santa Maria dos Anjos at Caminha is in plan very like the Matriz at Villa do Conde. Caminha lies on the Portuguese side of the estuary of the Minho, close to its mouth, and the church was begun in 1488, but was not finished till the next century, the tower indeed not being built till 1556. Like the others, the plan shows a nave and rather narrow aisles of five bays, and two square vaulted chapels with an apsidal chancel between to the east. Three large vaulted chapels and the tower have been added, opening from the north aisle. Probably the oldest part is the chancel with its flanking chapels, which are very much more elaborate than any portion of the churches already described. There are at the angles deep square buttresses which end in groups of square spire-capped pinnacles all elaborately crocketed, and not at all unlike those at Batalha. Between these, in the chancel are narrow round-headed windows, whose mouldings are enriched with large four-leaved flowers, and on all the walls from buttress to buttress there runs a rich projecting cornice crowned by a wonderfully pierced and crested parapet; also not unlike those at Batalha, but more wonderful in that it is made of granite instead of fine limestone. The rest of the outside is much plainer, except for the two doorways, and two tall buttresses at the west end. These two doorways—which are among the most interesting in the country—must be a good deal later than the rest of the church, indeed could not have been designed till after the work of that foreign school of renaissance carvers at Coimbra had become well known, and so really belong to a later chapter.

Inside the columns are round, with caps and bases partly round and partly eight-sided, the hollow octagons interpenetrating with the circular mouldings. The arches of the arcade are also round, though those of the chancel and eastern chapels are pointed. Attached to one of the piers is a small eight-sided pulpit, at whose angles are Gothic pinnacles, but whose sides and base are covered with cherubs' heads, vases, and foliage of early renaissance.

But the chief glory of the interior are the splendid tiles with which its walls are entirely covered, and still more the wonderful wooden roof, one of the finest examples of Moorish carpentry to be found anywhere, and which, like the doorways, can now only be merely mentioned.

The tower, added by Diogo Eannes in 1556, is quite plain with one belfry opening in each face close to the top and just below the low parapet which, resting on corbels, ends in a row of curious half-classic battlements.[90]

[Sidenote: Funchal.]

This plan was not confined only to parish churches, for about 1514 we find it used by Dom Manoel at Funchal for the cathedral of the newly founded diocese of Madeira. The only difference of importance is that there is a well-developed transept entered by arches of the same height as that of the chancel. Here the piers are clustered, and with rather poorly carved capitals, the arches pointed and moulded, but rather thin. As in the other churches of this date, the round-headed clerestory windows come over the piers, not over the arches. The chancel, which is rather deeper than usual, is entered by a wide foliated arch, and like the apsidal chapels is vaulted. As at Caminha, the nave roof is of Moorish design, but of even greater interest are the reredos and the choir-stalls. This reredos is three divisions in height and five in width—each division, except the two lower in the centre where there is a niche for the image of the Virgin, containing a large picture.

The divisions are separated perpendicularly by a series of Gothic pinnacles, and horizontally by a band of Gothic tabernacle work at the bottom, and above by beautifully carved early renaissance friezes. The whole ends in a projecting canopy, divided into five bays, each bay enriched with vaulting ribs, and in front with very delicately carved hanging tracery. Above the horizontal cornice is a most elaborate cresting of interlacing trefoils and leaves having in the middle the royal arms with on each side an armillary sphere. Some of the detail of the cresting is not all unlike that of the great reredos in the Se Velha at Coimbra, and like it has a Flemish look, so that it may have been made perhaps, if not by Master Vlimer, who finished his work at Coimbra in 1508, at any rate by one of his pupils. The stalls, which at the back are separated by Gothic pilasters and pinnacles, have also a continuous canopy, and a high and splendid cresting, which though Gothic in general appearance, is quite renaissance in detail.

Outside, the smaller eastern chapels have an elaborate cresting, and tall twisted pinnacles. The large plain tower which rises east of the north transept has a top crowned with battlements, within which stands a square tile-covered spire.

[Sidenote: Se, Lamego.]

Before going on to discuss the long-continued influence of the Moors, three buildings in which Gothic finally came to an end must be discussed. These are the west front of Lamego, the cathedral of Vizeu, and the porch and chancel of the Se at Braga. Except for its romanesque tower and its west front the cathedral of Lamego has been entirely rebuilt; and of the west front only the lower part remains uninjured. This front is divided by rather elaborate buttresses into three nearly equal parts—for the side aisles are nearly as wide as the central. In each of these is a large pointed doorway, that in the centre being at once wider and considerably higher than those of the aisles. The central door has six moulded shafts on either side, all with elaborately carved capitals and with deeply undercut foliage in the hollows between, this foliage being carried round the whole arch between the mouldings. Above the top of the arch runs a band of flat, early renaissance carving with a rich Gothic cresting above.

The side-doors are exactly similar, except that they have fewer shafts, four instead of six, and that in the hollows between the mouldings the carving is early renaissance in character and is also flatter than in the central door. Above runs the same band of carving—but lower down—and a similar but simpler cresting.

[Sidenote: Se, Vizeu.]

Unlike Lamego, while the cathedral of Vizeu has been but little altered within, scarcely any of the original work is to be seen outside. The present cathedral was built by Bishop Dom Diego Ortiz de Vilhegas about the year 1513, and his arms as well as those of Dom Manoel and of two of his sons are found on the vault. The church is not large, having a nave and aisles of four bays measuring about 105 feet by 62; square transept chapels, and a seventeenth-century chancel with flanking chapels. To the west are two towers, built between the years 1641 and 1671, and on the south a very fine renaissance cloister of two stories, the lower having been built, it is said, in 1524,[91] and the upper about 1730. A choir gallery too, with an elaborate Gothic vault below and a fine renaissance balustrade, crosses the whole west end and extends over the porch between the two western towers. But if the cathedral in its plan follows the ordinary type, in design and in construction it is quite unique. Instead of there being a wooden roof as is usual in churches of this period, the whole is vaulted, and that too in a very unusual and original manner. Throughout the piers consist of twelve rounded shafts set together. Of these the five towards the central aisle are several feet higher than the other seven from which spring the aisle arches as well as the ribs of the aisle vault. Consequently the vault of the central aisle is considerably lower at the sides than it is in the middle, and in this ingenious way its thrust is counteracted by the vaults of the side aisles; and at the same time these side vaults are not highly stilted as they would of necessity have been, had the three aisles been of exactly the same height. All the ribs are of considerable projection and well moulded, and of all, except the diagonal ribs, the lowest moulding is twisted like a rope. This rope-moulding is repeated on all the ridge ribs, and in each it is tied in a knot half-way along, a knot which is so much admired that the whole vault is called 'a abobada dos nos' or vault of the knots.

The capitals are more curious than beautiful; the lower have clumsy, early-looking foliage and a large and curious abacus. First each capital has a square abacus of some depth, then comes a large flat circle, one for each three caps, and at the top a star-shaped moulding of hollow curves, the points projecting beyond the middle of the square abaci below. The higher capitals are better. They are carved with more elaborate foliage and gilt, and the abaci follow more exactly the line of the caps below and are carved and gilded in the same way. (Fig. 42.)

Perhaps, however, the chief interest of the cathedral is found in the sacristy, a fine large room opening from the north transept chapel. On its tiled walls there hang several large and some smaller paintings, of which the finest is that of St. Peter. Other pictures are found in the chapter-house, and a fine one of the crucifixion in the Jesus Chapel below it; but this is not the place to enter into the very difficult question of Portuguese painting, a question on which popular tradition throws only a misleading light by attributing everything to a more or less mythical painter, Grao Vasco, and on which all authorities differ, agreeing only in considering this St. Peter one of the finest paintings in the country.

[Sidenote: Se, Braga.]

Perhaps the chancel of the cathedral at Braga ought rather



to be left to a chapter dealing with what is usually called the Manoelino style—that strange last development of Gothic which is found only in Portugal—but it is in many respects so like the choir chapels of the church at Caminha, and has so little of the usual Manoelino peculiarities, that it were better to describe it now. Whatever may be thought of the chancel, there is no doubt about the large western porch, which is quite free of any Manoelino fantasies.

Both porch and chancel were built by Archbishop Dom Diego de Souza about the year 1530—a most remarkable date when the purely Gothic work here is compared with buildings further south, where Manoelino had already been succeeded by various forms of the classic renaissance. The porch stretches right across the west end of the church, and is of three bays. That in the centre, considerably wider than those at the side, is entered from the west by a round-headed arch, while the arches of the others are pointed. The bays are separated by buttresses of considerable projection, and all the arches, which have good late mouldings, are enriched with a fine feathering of cusps, which stands out well against the dark interior. Unfortunately the original parapet is gone, only the elaborate canopies of the niches, of which there are two to each bay, rise above the level of the flat paved roof. Inside there is a good vault with many well-moulded ribs, but the finest feature of it all is the wrought-iron railing which crosses each opening. This, almost the only piece of wrought-iron work worthy of notice in the whole country, is very like contemporary screens in Spain. It is made of upright bars, some larger, twisted from top to bottom, some smaller twisted at the top, and plain below, alternating with others plain above and twisted below. At the top runs a frieze of most elaborate hammered and pierced work—early renaissance in detail in the centre, Gothic in the side arches, above which comes in the centre a wonderful cresting. In the middle, over the gate which rises as high as the top of the cresting, is a large trefoil made of a flat hammered band intertwined with a similar band after the manner of a Manoelino doorway.[92] (Fig. 43.)

Of the chancel little has been left inside but the vault and the tombs of Dona Theresa (the first independent ruler of Portugal) and of her husband Count Henry of Burgundy—very poor work of about the same date as the chancel. The outside, however, has been unaltered. Below it is square in plan, becoming at about twenty feet from the ground a half-octagon having the eastern a good deal wider than the diagonal sides. On the angles of the lower square stand tall clustered buttresses, rising independently of the wall as far as the projecting cornice, across which their highest pinnacles cut, and united to the chancel at about a third of the height, by small but elaborate flying buttresses. On the eastern face there is a simple pointed window, and there is nothing else to relieve the perfectly plain walls below except two string courses, and the elaborate side buttresses with their tall pinnacles and twisted shafts. But if the walling is plain the cornice is most elaborate. It is of great depth and of considerable projection, the hollows of the mouldings being filled with square flowers below and intricate carving above. On this stands a high parapet of traceried quatrefoils, bearing a horizontal moulding from which springs an elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding.