Portuguese Architecture
by Walter Crum Watson · English · Gutenberg #29370 · 689,764 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Portuguese Architecture
Author: Walter Crum Watson
Release date: July 10, 2009 [eBook #29370]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PORTUGUESE ARCHITECTURE ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by the
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[Note of transcriber: $ is used to indicate the cifrão, symbol for
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[Illustration: FROM THE MARVILLA, SANTAREM.]
[Illustration: FROM THE MARVILLA, SANTAREM; ALSO IN THE MATRIZ, ALVITO,
AND ELSEWHERE.]
PORTUGUESE ARCHITECTURE
BY
WALTER CRUM WATSON
_ILLUSTRATED_
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY
LIMITED
1908
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
AOS MEUS QUERIDOS PARENTES E AMIGOS
A ILL^{MA} E EX^{MA} SN^{RA}
M. L. DOS PRADOS LARGOS
E OS
ILL^{MOS} E EX^{MOS} SNR^{ES}
BARONEZA E BARÃO DE SOUTELLINHO
COMO RECONHECIMENTO PELAS AMABILIDADES E ATTENÇÕES
QUE ME DISPENSARAM NOS BELLOS DIAS QUE PASSEI
NA SUA COMPANHIA
COMO HOMENAGEM RESPEITOSA
O.D.C.
O AUCTOR
PREFACE
The buildings of Portugal, with one or two exceptions, cannot be said to
excel or even to come up to those of other countries. To a large extent
the churches are without the splendid furniture which makes those of
Spain the most romantic in the world, nor are they in themselves so
large or so beautiful. Some apology, then, may seem wanted for imposing
on the public a book whose subject-matter is not of first-class
importance.
The present book is the outcome of visits to Portugal in April or May of
three successive years; and during these visits the writer became so
fond of the country and of its people, so deeply interested in the
history of its glorious achievements in the past, and in the buildings
which commemorate these great deeds, that it seemed worth while to try
and interest others in them. Another reason for writing about Portugal
instead of about Spain is that the country is so much smaller that it is
no very difficult task to visit every part and see the various buildings
with one's own eyes: besides, in no language does there exist any book
dealing with the architecture of the country as a whole. There are some
interesting monographs in Portuguese about such buildings as the palace
at Cintra, or Batalha, while the Renaissance has been fully treated by
Albrecht Haupt, but no one deals at all adequately with what came before
the time of Dom Manoel.
Most of the plans in the book were drawn from rough measurements taken
on the spot and do not pretend to minute accuracy.
For the use of that of the Palace at Cintra the thanks of the writer are
due to Conde de Sabugosa, who allowed it to be copied from his book,
while the plan of Mafra was found in an old magazine.
Thanks are also due to Senhor Joaquim de Vasconcellos for much valuable
information, to his wife, Senhora Michaelis de Vasconcellos, for her
paper about the puzzling inscriptions at Batalha, and above all the
Baron and the Baroneza de Soutellinho, for their repeated welcome to
Oporto and for the trouble they have taken in getting books and
photographs.
That the book may be more complete there has been added a short account
of some of the church plate and paintings which still survive, as well
as of the tile work which is so universal and so characteristic.
As for the buildings, hardly any of any consequence have escaped notice.
EDINBURGH, 1907.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
Portugal separated from Spain by no natural division geographical or
linguistic; does not correspond with Roman Lusitania, nor with the
later Suevic kingdom--Traces of early Celtic inhabitants; Citania,
Sabrosa--Roman Occupation; Temple at Evora--Barbarian Invasions--Arab
Conquest--Beginnings of Christian re-conquest--Sesnando,
first Count of Oporto--Christians defeated at Zalaca--Count
Henry of Burgundy and Dona Theresa--Beginnings of Portuguese
Independence--Affonso Henriques, King of Portugal--Growth of
Portugal--Victory of Aljubarrota--Prince Henry the Navigator--The
Spanish Usurpation--The Great Earthquake--The Peninsular
War--The Miguelite War--The suppression of the Monasteries--Differences
between Portugal and Spain, etc. 1-10
PAINTING IN PORTUGAL
Not very many examples of Portuguese paintings left--Early connection
with Burgundy; and with Antwerp--Great influence of
Flemish school--The myth of Grão Vasco--Pictures at Evora, at
Thomar, at Setubal, in Santa Cruz, Coimbra--'The Fountain of
Mercy' at Oporto--The pictures at Vizeu: 'St. Peter'--Antonio
de Hollanda 10-17
CHURCH PLATE
Much plate lost during the Peninsular War--Treasuries of Braga,
Coimbra, and Evora, and of Guimarães--Early chalices, etc., at
Braga, Coimbra, and Guimarães--Crosses at Guimarães and at
Coimbra--Relics of St. Isabel--Flemish influence seen in later
work--Tomb of St. Isabel, and coffins of sainted abbesses of
Lorvão 17-20
TILES
Due to Arab influence--The word _azulejo_ and its origin--The different
stages in the development of tile making--Early tiles at Cintra
Moorish in pattern and in technique--Tiles at Bacalhôa Moorish in
technique but Renaissance in pattern--Later tiles without Moorish
technique, _e.g._ at Santarem and elsewhere--Della Robbia ware at
Bacalhôa--Pictures in blue and white tiles very common 20-28
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE NORTH
The oldest buildings are in the North--Very rude and simple--Three
types--Villarinho--São Miguel, Guimarães--Cedo Feita, Oporto--Gandara,
Boelhe, etc., are examples of the simplest--Aguas Santas,
Rio Mau, etc., of the second; and of the third Villar de Frades,
etc.--Legend of Villar--Sé, Braga--Sé, Oporto--Paço de Souza--Method
of roofing--Tomb of Egas Moniz--Pombeiro--Castle
and Church, Guimarães 29-43
CHAPTER II
THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE SOUTH
Growth of Christian kingdom under Affonso Henriques--His vow--Capture
of Santarem, of Lisbon--Cathedral, Lisbon, related to Church
of S. Sernin, Toulouse--Ruined by Great Earthquake, and badly
restored--Sé Velha, Coimbra, general scheme copied from Santiago
and so from S. Sernin, Toulouse--Other churches at Coimbra--Evora,
its capture--Cathedral founded--Similar in scheme to
Lisbon, but with pointed arches; central lantern; cloister--Thomar
founded by Gualdim Paes; besieged by Moors--Templar Church--Santarem,
Church of São João de Alporão--Alcobaça; great wealth
of Abbey--Designed by French monks--Same plan as Clairvaux--Has
but little influence on later buildings 44-63
CHAPTER III
THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES DOWN TO
THE BATTLE OF ALJUBARROTA
The thirteenth century poor in buildings--The Franciscans--São
Francisco Guimarães--Santarem--Santa Maria dos Olivaes at
Thomar--_Cf._ aisle windows at Leça do Balio--Inactivity and
deposition of Dom Sancho II. by Dom Affonso III.--Conquest of
Algarve--Sé, Silves--Dom Diniz and the castles at Beja and at
Leiria--Cloisters, Cellas, Coimbra, Alcobaça, Lisbon, and Oporto--St.
Isabel and Sta. Clara at Coimbra--Leça do Balio--The choir
of the cathedral, Lisbon, with tombs--Alcobaça, royal tombs--Dom
Pedro I. and Inez de Castro; her murder, his sorrow--Their tombs
64-78
CHAPTER IV
BATALHA AND THE DELIVERANCE OF PORTUGAL
Dom Fernando and Dona Leonor Telles--Her wickedness and unpopularity--Their
daughter, Dona Brites, wife of Don Juan of Castile, rejected--Dom
João I. elected king--Battle of Aljubarrota--Dom João's
vow--Marriage of Dom João and Philippa of Lancaster--Batalha
founded; its plan national, not foreign; some details seem English,
some French, some even German--Huguet the builder did not copy
York or Canterbury--Tracery very curious--Inside very plain--Capella
do Fundador, with the royal tombs--Capellas Imperfeitas 79-92
CHAPTER V
THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Nossa Senhora da Oliveira Guimarães rebuilt as a thankoffering--Silver
reredos captured at Aljubarrota--The cathedral, Guarda--Its likeness
to Batalha--Nave later--Nuno Alvarez Pereira, the Grand
Constable, and the Carmo, Lisbon--João Vicente and Villar de
Frades--Alvito, Matriz--Capture of Ceuta--Tombs in the Graça,
Santarem--Dom Pedro de Menezes and his 'Aleo'--Tomb of
Dom Duarte de Menezes in São João de Alporão--Tombs at
Abrantes cloister--Thomar 93-103
CHAPTER VI
LATER GOTHIC
Graça, Santarem--Parish churches, Thomar, Villa do Conde, Azurara
and Caminha, all similar in plan--Cathedrals: Funchal, Lamego,
and Vizeu--Porch and chancel of cathedral, Braga--Conceição,
Braga 104-115
CHAPTER VII
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS
Few buildings older than the re-conquest--But many built for Christians
by Moors--The Palace, Cintra--Originally country house of the
Walis--Rebuilt by Dom João I.--Plan and details Moorish--Entrance
court--Sala dos Cysnes, why so called, its windows;
Sala do Conselho; Sala das Pegas, its name, chimney-piece; Sala
das Sereias; dining-room; Pateo, baths; Sala dos Arabes;
Pateo de Diana; chapel; kitchen--Castles at Guimarães and at
Barcellos--Villa de Feira 116-128
CHAPTER VIII
OTHER MOORISH BUILDINGS
Commoner in Alemtejo--Castle, Alvito--Not Sansovino's Palace--Evora,
Paços Reaes, Cordovis, Sempre Nova, São João Evangelista,
São Francisco, São Braz 129-135
CHAPTER IX
MOORISH CARPENTRY
Examples found all over the country--At Aguas Santas, Azurara,
Caminha and Funchal--Cintra, Sala dos Cysnes, Sala dos Escudos--Coimbra,
Misericordia, hall of University--Ville do Conde Santa
Clara, Aveiro convent 136-142
CHAPTER X
EARLY MANOELINO
João II. continues the policy of Prince Henry the Navigator--Bartholomeu
Diaz, Vasco da Gama--Accession of Dom Manoel--Discovery
of route to India, and of Brazil--Great wealth of King--Fails
to unite all the kingdoms of the Peninsula--Characteristic
features of Manoelino--House of Garcia de Resende, Evora--Caldas
da Rainha--Setubal, Jesus--Beja, Conceição, Castle, etc.--Cintra,
Palace--Gollegã, Church--Elvas, Cathedral--Santarem,
Marvilla--Lisbon, Madre de Deus--Coimbra, University Chapel--Setubal,
São Julião 143-156
CHAPTER XI
THOMAR AND THE CONQUEST OF INDIA
Vasco da Gama's successful voyage to Calicut, 1497--Other expeditions
lead to discovery of Brazil--Titles conferred on Dom Manoel
by Pope Alexander VI.--Ormuz taken--Strange forms at Thomar
not Indian--Templars suppressed and Order of Christ founded
instead--Prince Henry Grand Master--Spiritual supremacy of
Thomar over all conquests, made or to be made--Templar church
added to by Prince Henry, and more extensively by Dom Manoel--João
de Castilho builds Coro--Stalls burnt by French--South
door, chapter-house and its windows--Much of the detail emblematic
of the discoveries, etc., made in the East and in the West
157-170
CHAPTER XII
THE ADDITIONS TO BATALHA
Dom Duarte's tomb-house unfinished--Work resumed by Dom
Manoel--The two Matheus Fernandes, architects--The Pateo--The
great entrance--Meaning of 'Tanyas Erey'--Piers in Octagon--How
was the Octagon to be roofed?--The great Cloister, with
its tracery--Whence derived 171-180
CHAPTER XIII
BELEM
Torre de São Viente built to defend Lisbon--Turrets and balconies
not Indian--Vasco da Gama sails from Belem--The great monastery
built as a thankoffering for the success of his voyage--Begun by
Boutaca, succeeded by Lourenço Fernandes, and then by João de
Castilho--Plan due to Boutaca--Master Nicolas, the Frenchman,
the first renaissance artist in Portugal--Plan: exterior; interior
superior to exterior; stalls; cloister, lower and upper--Lisbon,
Conceição Velha, also by João de Castilho 181-195
CHAPTER XIV
THE COMING OF THE FOREIGN ARTISTS
Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, founded by Dom Affonso Henriques, rebuilt by
Dom Manoel, first architect Marcos Pires--Gregorio Lourenço
clerk of the works--Diogo de Castilho succeeds Marcos Pires--West
front, Master Nicolas--Cloister, inferior to that of Belem--Royal
tombs--Other French carvers--Pulpit, reredoses in cloister,
stalls--Sé Velha reredos, doors--Chapel of São Pedro 196-210
CHAPTER XV
THE INFLUENCE OF THE FOREIGNERS
Tomb at Thomar of the Bishop of Funchal--Tomb in Graça, Santarem--São
Marcos, founded by Dona Brites de Menezes--Tomb of
Fernão Telles--Rebuilt by Ayres da Silva, her grandson--Tombs
in chancel--Reredos, by Master Nicolas--Reredos at Cintra--Pena
Chapel by same--São Marcos, Chapel of the Reyes Magos--Sansovino's
door, Cintra--Evora, São Domingos--Portalegre,
Tavira, Lagos, Goes, Trofa, Caminha, Moncorvo 211-221
CHAPTER XVI
LATER WORK OF JOÃO DE CASTILHO AND EARLIER CLASSIC
João III. cared more for the Church than for anything else--Decay
begins--Later additions to Alcobaça--Batalha, Sta. Cruz--Thomar,
Order of Christ reformed--Knights become regulars--Great
additions, cloisters, dormitory, etc., by João de Castilho--His
difficulties, letters to the King--His addition to Batalha--Builds
Conceição at Thomar like Milagre, Santarem--Marvilla, _ibid._;
Elvas, São Domingos--Cintra, Penha Longa and Penha Verde--Vizeu,
Cloister--Lamego, Cloister--Coimbra, São
Thomaz--Carmo--Faro--Lorvão--Amarante--Santarem, Santa Clara, and
Guarda, reredos 222-239
CHAPTER XVII
THE LATER RENAISSANCE AND THE SPANISH USURPATION
Diogo de Torralva and Claustro dos Filippes, Thomar--Miranda de
Douro--Reigns of Dom Sebastião and of the Cardinal King
Henry not noted for much building--Evora, Graça and University--Fatal
expedition by Dom Sebastião to Morocco--His death and
defeat--Feeble reign of his grand-uncle--Election of Philip--Union
with Spain and consequent loss of trade--Lisbon, São
Roque; coming of Terzi--Lisbon, São Vicente de Fora; first use
of very long Doric pilasters--Santo Antão, Santa Maria do
Desterro, and Torreão do Paço--Sé Nova, Coimbra, like Santo
Antão--Oporto, Collegio Novo--Coimbra, Misericordia, Bishop's
palace; Sacristy of Sé Velha, São Domingos, Carmo, Graça, São
Bento by Alvares--Lisbon, São Bento--Oporto, São Bento 240-253
CHAPTER XVIII
OTHER BUILDINGS OF THE LATER RENAISSANCE, TILL THE
EXPULSION OF THE SPANIARDS
Vianna do Castello, Misericordia--Beja, São Thiago--Azeitão, São
Simão--Evora, Cartuxa--Beja, Misericordia--Oporto, Nossa
Senhora da Serra do Pilar--Sheltered Wellington before he crossed
the Douro--Besieged by Dom Miguel--Very original plan--Coimbra,
Sacristy of Santa Cruz--Lisbon, Santa Engracia never
finished--Doric pilasters too tall--Coimbra, Santa Clara, great
abuse of Doric pilasters 254-260
CHAPTER XIX
THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The expulsion of the Spaniards--Long war: final success of Portugal
and recovered prosperity--Mafra founded by Dom João V.--Compared
with the Escorial--Designed by a German--Palace, church,
library, etc.--Evora, Capella Mor--Great Earthquake--The
Marques de Pombal--Lisbon, Estrella--Oporto, Torre dos
Clerigos--Oporto, Quinta do Freixo--Queluz--Quinta at
Guimarães--Oporto, hospital and factory--Defeat of Dom
Miguel and suppression of monasteries 261-271
BOOKS CONSULTED 272
INDEX 273
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_To face page_
1. Guimarães, House from Sabrosa } 4
2. Evora, Temple of 'Diana' }
3. Oporto, Fountain of Mercy 14
4. Vizeu, St. Peter, in Sacristy of Cathedral 16
5. Coimbra, Cross in Cathedral Treasury }
6. " Chalice " " } 20
7. " Monstrance " " }
8. Cintra, Palace, Sala dos Arabes } 24
9. " " Dining-room }
10. Santarem, Marvilla, coloured wall tiles } _frontispiece_.
11. " " }
12. Vallarinho, Parish Church } 32
13. Villar de Frades, West Door }
14. Paço de Souza, Interior of Church } 40
15. " " Tomb of Egas Moniz }
16. Guimarães, N. S. da Oliveira, Chapter-house Entrance } 42
17. Leça do Balio, Cloister }
18. Coimbra, Sé Velha, Interior } 50
19. " " West Front }
20. Evora, Cathedral, Interior } 54
21. " " Central Lantern }
22. Evora, Cloister } 56
23. Thomar, Templar Church }
24. Santarem, São João de Alporão } 58
25. Alcobaça, South Transept }
26. Santarem, São Francisco, West Door } 66
27. Silves, Cathedral, Interior }
28. Alcobaça Cloister } 72
29. Lisbon, Cathedral Cloister }
30. Coimbra, Sta. Clara 74
31. Alcobaça, Chapel with Royal Tombs } 78
32. " Tomb of Dom Pedro I. }
33. Batalha, West Front 86
34. Batalha, Interior } 88
35. " Capella do Fundador }
36. Batalha, Capellas Imperfeitas 92
37. Guimarães, Capella of D. Juan I. of Castile } 94
38. Guarda, North Side of Cathedral }
39. Santarem, Tomb of Dom Pedro de Menezes } 102
40. " Tomb of Dom Duarte de Menezes }
41. Villa do Conde, West Front of Parish Church 108
42. Vizeu, Interior of Cathedral } 112
43. Braga, Cathedral Porch }
44. Cintra, Palace, Main Front } 120
45. " " Window in 'Sala das Sereias' }
46. Cintra, Palace, Ceiling of Chapel 126
47. Alvito, Castle } 132
48. Evora, São João Evangelista, Door to Chapter-house }
49. Caminha, Roof of Matriz } 138
50. Cintra, Palace, Ceiling of Sala dos Cysnes }
51. Coimbra, University, Ceiling of Sala dos Capellos 142
52. Cintra, Palace, additions by D. Manoel 152
53. Santarem, Marvilla, West Door } 154
54. Coimbra, University Chapel Door }
55. Thomar, Convent of Christ, South Door } 166
56. " " " Chapter-house Window }
57. Batalha, Entrance to Capellas Imperfeitas 174
58. Batalha, Window of Pateo } 178
59. " Upper part of Capellas Imperfeitas }
60. Batalha, Claustro Real } 180
61. Batalha, Lavatory in Claustro Real }
62. Belem, Torre de São Vicente } 184
63. Belem, Sacristy }
64. Belem, South side of Nave } 190
65. " Interior, looking west }
66. Belem, Cloister } 194
67. " Interior of Lower Cloister }
68. Lisbon, Conceição Velha 196
69. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, West Front } 200
70. " " Cloister }
71. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, Tomb of D. Sancho I. } 202
72. " " Pulpit }
73. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, Reredos in Cloister } 206
74. " " Choir Stalls }
75. Coimbra, Sé Velha, Reredos } 209
76. " " Reredos in Chapel of São Pedro}
77. Thomar, Sta. Maria dos Olivaes, Tomb of the Bishop of Funchal } 212
78. São Marcos, Tomb of D. João da Silva }
79. São Marcos, Chancel } 218
80. " Chapel of the 'Reyes Magos' }
81. Cintra, Palace, Door by Sansovino } 220
82. Caminha, West Door of Church }
83. Alcobaça, Sacristy Door } 224
84. Batalha, Door of Sta. Cruz }
85. Thomar, Claustro da Hospedaria } 228
86. " Chapel in Dormitory Passage }
87. Thomar, Stair in Claustro dos Filippes } 230
88. " Chapel of the Conceição }
89. Santarem, Marvilla, Interior } 236
90. Vizeu, Cathedral Cloister }
91. Guarda, Cathedral Reredos } 240
92. Thomar, Claustro dos Filippes }
93. Lisbon, São Vicente de Fora } 246
94. " " " Interior }
95. Coimbra, Sé Nova } 250
96. " Misericordia }
97. Vianna do Castello, Misericordia 254
98. Oporto, N. S. da Serra do Pilar, Cloister} 258
99. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, Sacristy }
100. Mafra, West Front } 266
101. " Interior of Church }
[Illustration: map of Portugal]
INTRODUCTION
No one can look at a map of the Iberian Peninsula without being struck
by the curious way in which it is unequally divided between two
independent countries. Spain occupies by far the larger part of the
Peninsula, leaving to Portugal only a narrow strip on the western
seaboard some one hundred miles wide and three hundred and forty long.
Besides, the two countries are separated the one from the other by
merely artificial boundaries. The two largest rivers of the Peninsula,
the Douro and the Tagus, rise in Spain, but finish their course in
Portugal, and the Guadiana runs for some eighty miles through Portuguese
territory before acting for a second time as a boundary between the two
countries. The same, to a lesser degree, is true of the mountains. The
Gerez and the Marão are only offshoots of the Cantabrian mountains, and
the Serra da Estrella in Beira is but a continuation of the Sierra de
Gata which separates Leon from Spanish Estremadura. Indeed the only
natural frontiers are formed by the last thirty miles of the Minho in
the north, by about eighty miles of the Douro, which in its deep and
narrow gorge really separates Traz os Montes from Leon; by a few miles
of the Tagus, and by the Guadiana both before and after it runs through
a part of Alemtejo.
If the languages of the two countries were radically unlike this curious
division would be more easy to understand, but in reality Castilian
differs from Portuguese rather in pronunciation than in anything else;
indeed differs less from Portuguese than it does from Cataluñan.[1]
During the Roman dominion none of the divisions of the Peninsula
corresponded exactly with Portugal. Lusitania, which the poets of the
Renaissance took to be the Roman name of their country, only reached up
to the Douro, and took in a large part of Leon and the whole of Spanish
Estremadura.
In the time of the Visigoths, a Suevic kingdom occupied most of Portugal
to the north of the Tagus, but included also all Galicia and part of
Leon; and during the Moorish occupation there was nothing which at all
corresponded with the modern divisions.
It was, indeed, only by the gradual Christian re-conquest of the country
from the Moors that Portugal came into existence, and only owing to the
repeated failure of the attempt to unite the two crowns of Portugal and
Castile by marriage that they have remained separated to the present
day.
Of the original inhabitants of what is now Portugal little is known, but
that they were more Celtic than Iberian seems probable from a few Celtic
words which have survived, such as _Mor_ meaning _great_ as applied to
the _Capella Mor_ of a church or to the title of a court official. The
name too of the Douro has probably nothing to do with gold but is
connected with a Celtic word for water. The Tua may mean the 'gushing'
river, and the Ave recalls the many Avons. _Ebora_, now Evora, is very
like the Roman name of York, Eboracum. _Briga_, too, the common
termination of town names in Roman times as in Conimbriga--Condeixa a
Velha--or Cetobriga, near Setubal--in Celtic means _height_ or
_fortification_. All over the country great rude stone monuments are to
be found, like those erected by primitive peoples in almost every part
of Europe, and the most interesting, the curious buildings found at
various places near Guimarães, seem to belong to a purely Celtic
civilisation.
The best-known of these places, now called Citania--from a name of a
native town mentioned by ancient writers--occupies the summit of a hill
about nine hundred feet above the road and nearly half-way between
Guimarães and Braga. The top of this hill is covered with a number of
structures, some round from fifteen to twenty feet across, and some
square, carefully built of well-cut blocks of granite. The only opening
is a door which is often surrounded by an architrave adorned with rough
carving; the roofs seem to have been of wood and tiles.
Some, not noticing the three encircling walls and the well-cut
water-channels, and thinking that the round buildings far exceeded the
rectangular in number, have thought that they might have been intended
for granaries where corn might be stored against a time of war. But it
seems far more likely that Citania was a town placed on this high hill
for safety. Though the remains show no other trace of Roman
civilisation, one or two of the houses are inscribed with their owner's
names in Roman character, and from coins found there they seem to have
been inhabited long after the surrounding valleys had been subdued by
the Roman arms, perhaps even after the great baths had been built not
far off at the hot springs of Taipas. Uninfluenced by Rome, Citania was
also untouched by Christianity, though it may have been inhabited after
St. James--if indeed he ever preached in Bracara Augusta, now Braga--and
his disciple São Pedro de Rates had begun their mission.
But if Citania knew nothing of Christianity there still remains one
remarkable monument of the native religion. Among the ruins there long
lay a huge thin slab of granite, now in the museum of Guimarães, which
certainly has the appearance of having been a sacrificial stone. It is a
rough pentagon with each side measuring about five feet. On one side, in
the middle, a semicircular hollow has been cut out as if to leave room
for the sacrificing priest, while on the surface of the stone a series
of grooves has been cut, all draining to a hole near this hollow and
arranged as if for a human body with outstretched legs and arms. The
rest of the surface is covered with an intricate pattern like what may
often be found on Celtic stones in Scotland. Besides this so-called
Citania similar buildings have been found elsewhere, as at Sabrosa, also
near Guimarães, but there the Roman influence seems usually to have been
greater. (Fig. 1.)
The Romans began to occupy the Peninsula after the second Punic war, but
the conquest of the west and north was not completed till the reign of
Augustus more than two hundred years later. The Roman dominion over what
is now Portugal lasted for over four hundred years, and the chief
monument of their occupation is found in the language. More material
memorials are the milestones which still stand in the Gerez, some
tombstones, and some pavements and other remains at Condeixa a Velha,
once Conimbriga, near Coimbra and at the place now called Troya, perhaps
the original Cetobriga, on a sandbank opposite Setubal, a town whose
founders were probably Phoenicians.
But more important than any of these is the temple at Evora, now without
any reason called the temple of Diana. During the middle ages, crowned
with battlements, with the spaces between the columns built up, it was
later degraded by being turned into a slaughter-house, and was only
cleared of such additions a few years since. Situated near the
cathedral, almost on the highest part of the town, it stands on a
terrace whose great retaining wall still shows the massiveness of Roman
work.
Of the temple itself there remains about half of the podium, some eleven
feet high, fourteen granite columns, twelve of which still retain their
beautiful Corinthian capitals, and the architrave and part of the frieze
resting on these twelve capitals. Everything is of granite except the
capitals and bases which are of white marble; but instead of the
orthodox twenty-four flutes each column has only twelve, with a
distinctly unpleasing result. The temple seems to have been hexastyle
peripteral, but all trace of the cella has disappeared. Nothing is known
of the temple or who it was that built it, but in Roman times Evora was
one of the chief cities of Lusitania; nothing else is left but the
temple, for the aqueduct has been rebuilt and the so-called Tower of
Sertorius was mediæval. Yet, although it may have less to show than
Merida, once Augusta Emerita and the capital of the province, this
temple is the best-preserved in the whole peninsula. (Fig. 2.)
Before the Roman dominion came to an end, in the first quarter of the
fifth century, Christianity had been for some time firmly established.
Religious intolerance also, which nearly a thousand years later made
Spain the first home of the Inquisition, had already made itself
manifest in the burning of the heretical Priscillianists by Idacius,
whose see was at or near Lamego.
Soon, however, the orthodox were themselves to suffer, for the Vandals,
the Goths, and the Suevi, who swept across the country from 417 A.D.,
were Arians, and it was only after many years had passed that the ruling
Goths and Suevi were converted to the Catholic faith.
The Vandals soon passed on to Africa, leaving their name in Andalucia
and the whole land to the Goths and Suevi, the
[Illustration: FIG. 1.
HOUSE FROM SABROSA.
NOW IN MUSEUM, GUIMARÃES.
]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.
EVORA.
TEMPLE OF "DIANA."
]
Suevi at first occupying the whole of Portugal north of the Tagus as
well as Galicia and part of Leon. Later they were expelled from the
southern part of their dominion, but they as well as the Goths have left
practically no mark on the country, for the church built at Oporto by
the Suevic king, Theodomir, on his conversion to orthodoxy in 559, has
been rebuilt in the eleventh or twelfth century.
These Germanic rulers seem never to have been popular with those they
governed, so that when the great Moslem invasion crossed from Morocco in
711 and, defeating King Roderick at Guadalete near Cadiz, swept in an
incredibly short time right up to the northern mountains, the whole
country submitted with scarcely a struggle.
A few only of the Gothic nobles took refuge on the seaward slopes of the
Cantabrian mountains in the Asturias and there made a successful stand,
electing Don Pelayo as their king.
As time went on, Pelayo's descendants crossed the mountains, and taking
Leon gradually extended their small kingdom southwards.
Meanwhile other independent counties or principalities further east were
gradually spreading downwards. The nearest was Castile, so called from
its border castles, then Navarre, then Aragon, and lastly the county of
Barcelona or Cataluña.
Galicia, in the north-west corner, never having been thoroughly
conquered by the invaders, was soon united with the Asturias and then
with Leon. So all these Christian realms, Leon--including Galicia and
Asturias--Castile, and Aragon, which was soon united to Cataluña, spread
southwards, faster when the Moslems were weakened by division, slower
when they had been united and strengthened by a fresh wave of fanaticism
from Africa. Navarre alone was unable to grow, for the lower Ebro valley
was won by the kings of Aragon, while Castile as she grew barred the way
to the south-west.
At last in 1037 Fernando I. united Castile and Leon into one kingdom,
extending from the sea in the north to the lower course of the Douro and
to the mountains dividing the upper Douro from the Tagus valley in the
south. Before Fernando died in 1065 he had extended his frontier on the
west as far south as the Mondego, making Sesnando, a converted Moslem,
count of this important marchland. Then followed a new division, for
Castile went to King Sancho, Leon to Alfonso VI., and Galicia, including
the two counties of Porto and of Coimbra, to Garcia.
Before long, however, Alfonso turned out his brothers and also extended
his borders even to the Tagus by taking Toledo in 1085. But his
successes roused the Moslem powers to fresh fanaticism. A new and
stricter dynasty, the Almoravides,[2] arose in Africa and crossing the
straits inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christians at Zalaca. In
despair at this disaster and at the loss of Santarem and of Lisbon,
Alfonso appealed to Christendom for help. Among those who came were
Count Raymond of Toulouse, who was rewarded with the kingdom of Galicia
and the hand of his daughter and heiress Urraca, and Count Henry of
Burgundy, who was granted the counties of Porto and of Coimbra and who
married another daughter of Alfonso's, Theresa.
This was really the first beginning of Portugal as an independent state;
for Portugal, derived from two towns Portus and Cales, which lie
opposite each other near the mouth of the Douro, was the name given to
Henry's county. Henry did but little to make himself independent as he
was usually away fighting elsewhere, but his widow Theresa refused to
acknowledge her sister Urraca, now queen of Castile, Leon and Galicia,
as her superior, called herself Infanta and behaved as if she was no
one's vassal. Fortunately for her and her aims, Urraca was far too busy
fighting with her second husband, the king of Aragon, to pay much
attention to what was happening in the west, so that she had time to
consolidate her power and to accustom her people to think of themselves
as being not Galicians but Portuguese.
The breach with Galicia was increased by the favour which Theresa, after
a time, began to show to her lover, Don Fernando Peres de Trava, a
Galician noble, and by the grants of lands and of honours she made to
him. This made her so unpopular that when Alfonso Raimundes, Urraca's
son, attacked Theresa in 1127, made her acknowledge him as suzerain, and
give up Tuy and Orense, Galician towns she had taken, the people rose
against her and declared her son Affonso Henriques old enough to reign.
Then took place the famous submission of Egas Moniz, Affonso's governor,
who induced the king to retire from the siege of Guimarães by promising
that his pupil would agree to the terms forced on his mother. This,
though but seventeen, Affonso refused to do, and next year raising an
army he expelled his mother and Don Fernando, and after four wars with
his cousin of Castile finally succeeded in maintaining his independence,
and even in assuming the title of King.
These wars with Castile taught him at last that the true way to increase
his realm was to leave Christian territory alone and to direct his
energies southwards, gaining land only at the expense of the Moors.
So did the kingdom of Portugal come into existence, almost accidentally
and without there being any division of race or of language between its
inhabitants and those of Galicia.
The youngest of all the Peninsular kingdoms, it is the only one which
still remains separate from the rest of the Spains, for when in 1580
union was forced on her by Philip II., Portugal had had too glorious a
past, and had become too different in language and in custom easily to
submit to so undesired a union, while Spain, already suffering from
coming weakness and decay, was not able long to hold her in such hated
bondage.
It is not necessary here to tell the story of each of Affonso Henriques'
descendants. He himself permanently extended the borders of his kingdom
as far as the Tagus, and even raided the Moslem lands of the south as
far as Ourique, beyond Beja. His son, Sancho I., finding the Moors too
strong to make any permanent conquests beyond the Tagus, devoted himself
chiefly--when not fighting with the king of Castile and Leon--to
rebuilding and restoring the towns in Beira, and it was not till the
reign of his grandson, Affonso III., that the southern sea was reached
by the taking of the Algarve in the middle of the thirteenth century.
Dom Diniz, Affonso III.'s son, carried on the work of settling the
country, building castles and planting pine-trees to stay the blowing
sands along the west coast.
From that time on Portugal was able to hold her own, and was strong
enough in 1387 to defeat the king of Castile at Aljubarrota when he
tried to seize the throne in right of his wife, only child of the late
Portuguese king, Fernando.
Under the House of Aviz, whose first king, João I., had been elected to
repel this invasion, Portugal rose to the greatest heights of power and
of wealth to which the country was ever to attain. The ceaseless efforts
of Dom Henrique, the Navigator, the third son of Dom João, were crowned
with success when Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in May 1498, and when
Pedro Alvares Cabral first saw the coasts of Brazil in 1500.
To-day one is too ready to forget that Portugal was the pioneer in
geographical discovery, that the Portuguese were the first Westerns to
reach Japan, and that, had João II. listened to Columbus, it would have
been to Portugal and not to Spain that he would have given a new world.
It was, too, under the House of Aviz that the greatest development in
architecture took place, and that the only original and distinctive
style of architecture was formed. That was also the time when the few
good pictures which the country possesses were painted, and when much of
the splendid church plate which still exists was wrought.
The sixty years of the Spanish captivity, as it was called, from 1580 to
1640, were naturally comparatively barren of all good work. After the
restoration of peace and a revival of the Brazilian trade had brought
back some of the wealth which the country had lost, the art of building
had fallen so low that of the many churches rebuilt or altered during
the eighteenth century there is scarcely one possessed of the slightest
merit.
The most important events of the eighteenth century were the great
earthquakes of 1755 and the ministry of the Marques de Pombal.
Soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century came the invasion led
by Junot, 1807, the flight of the royal family to Brazil, and the
Peninsular War. Terrible damage was done by the invaders, cart-loads of
church plate were carried off, and many a monastery was sacked and
burned. Peace had not long been restored when the struggle broke out
between the constitutional party under Pedro of Brazil, who had resigned
the throne of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Maria da Gloria, and
the absolutists under Dom Miguel, his brother.
The civil war lasted for several years, from May 1828, when Dom Miguel,
then regent for his niece, summoned the Cortes and caused himself to be
elected king, till May 1834, when he was finally defeated at Evora
Monte and forced to leave the country. The chief events of his
usurpation were the siege of Oporto and the defeat of his fleet off Cape
St. Vincent in 1833 by Captain Charles Napier, who fought for Dona Maria
under the name of Carlos de Ponza.
One of the first acts of the constitutional Cortes was to suppress all
the monasteries in the kingdom in 1834. At the same time the nunneries
were forbidden to receive any new nuns, with the result that in many
places the buildings have gradually fallen into decay, till the last
surviving sister has died, solitary and old, and so at length set free
her home to be turned to some public use.[3]
Since then the history of Portugal has been quiet and uneventful. Good
roads have been made--but not always well kept up--railways have been
built, and Lisbon, once known as the dirtiest of towns, has become one
of the cleanest, with fine streets, electric lighting, a splendidly
managed system of electric tramways, and with funiculars and lifts to
connect the higher parts of the town with its busy centre.
It is not uninteresting to notice in how many small matters Portugal now
differs from Spain. Portugal drinks tea, Spain chocolate or coffee; it
lunches and dines early, Spain very late; its beds and pillows are very
hard, in Spain they are much softer. Travelling too in Portugal is much
pleasanter; as the country is so much smaller, trains leave at much more
reasonable hours, run more frequently, and go more quickly. The inns
also, even in small places, are, if not luxurious, usually quite clean
with good food, and the landlord treats his guests with something more
pleasing than that lofty condescension which is so noticeable in Spain.
Of the more distant countries of Europe, Portugal is now one of the
easiest to reach. Forty-eight hours from Southampton in a boat bound for
South America lands the traveller at Vigo, or three days at Lisbon,
where the brilliant sun and blue sky, the judas-trees in the Avenida,
the roses, the palms, and the sheets of bougainvillia, are such an
unimaginable change from the cold March winds and pinched buds of
England.
There is perhaps no country in Europe which has so interesting a flora,
especially in spring. In March in the granite north the ground under the
pine-trees is covered with the exquisite flowers of the narcissus
triandrus,[4] while the wet water meadows are yellow with petticoat
daffodils. Other daffodils too abound, but these are the commonest.
Later the granite rocks are hidden by great trees of white broom, while
from north to south every wild piece of land is starred with the
brilliant blue flowers of the lithospermum. There are also endless
varieties of cistus, from the small yellow annual with rich brown heart
to the large gum cistus that covers so much of the poor soil in the
Alemtejo. These plains of the Alemtejo are supposed to be the least
beautiful part of the country, but no one can cross them in April
without being almost overcome with the beauty of the flowers, cistus,
white, yellow, or red, tall white heaths, red heaths, blue lithospermum,
yellow whin, and most brilliant of all the large pimpernel, whose blue
flowers almost surpass the gentian. A little further on where there is
less heath and cistus, tall yellow and blue Spanish irises stand up out
of the grass, or there may be great heads of blue scilla peruviana or
sheets of small iris of the brightest blue.
Indeed, sheets of brilliant colour are everywhere most wonderful. There
may be acres of rich purple where the bugloss hides the grass, or of
brilliant yellow where the large golden daisies grow thickly together,
or of sky-blue where the convolvulus has smothered a field of oats.
PAINTING IN PORTUGAL.[5]
From various causes Portugal is far less rich in buildings of interest
than is Spain. The earthquake has destroyed many, but more have perished
through tasteless rebuilding during the eighteenth century when the
country again regained a small part of the trade and wealth lost during
the Spanish usurpation.
But if this is true of architecture, it is far more true of painting.
During the most flourishing period of Spanish painting, the age of
Velasquez and of Murillo, Portugal was, before 1640, a despised part of
the kingdom, treated as a conquered province, while after the rebellion
the long struggle, which lasted for twenty-eight years, was enough to
prevent any of the arts from flourishing. Besides, many good pictures
which once adorned the royal palaces of Portugal were carried off to
Madrid by Philip or his successors.
And yet there are scattered about the country not a few paintings of
considerable merit. Most of them have been terribly neglected, are very
dirty, or hang where they can scarcely be seen, while little is really
known about their painters.
From the time of Dom João I., whose daughter, Isabel, married Duke
Philip early in the fifteenth century, the two courts of Portugal and of
Burgundy had been closely united. Isabel sent an alabaster monument for
the tomb of her father's great friend and companion, the Holy Constable,
and one of bronze for that of her eldest brother; while as a member of
the embassy which came to demand her hand, was J. van Eyck himself.
However, if he painted anything in Portugal, it has now vanished.
There was also a great deal of trade with Antwerp where the Portuguese
merchants had a _lonja_ or exchange as early as 1386, and where a
factory was established in 1503. With the heads of this factory,
Francisco Brandão and Rodrigo Ruy de Almada, Albert Dürer was on
friendly terms, sending them etchings and paintings in return for wine
and southern rarities. He also drew the portrait of Damião de Goes, Dom
Manoel's friend and chronicler.
It is natural enough, therefore, that Flanders should have had a great
influence on Portuguese painting, and indeed practically all the
pictures in the country are either by Netherland masters, painted at
home and imported, or painted in Portugal by artists who had been
attracted there by the fame of Dom Manoel's wealth and generosity, or
else by Portuguese pupils sent to study in Flanders.
During the seventeenth century all memory of these painters had
vanished. Looking at their work, the writers of that date were struck by
what seemed to them, in their natural ignorance of Flemish art, a
strange and peculiar style, and so attributed them all to a certain
half-mythical painter of Vizeu called Vasco, or Grão Vasco, who is first
mentioned in 1630.
Raczynski,[6] in his letters to the Berlin Academy, says that he had
found Grão Vasco's birth in a register of Vizeu; but Vasco is not an
uncommon name, and besides this child, Vasco Fernandes, was born in
1552--far too late to have painted any of the so-called Grão Vasco's
pictures.
It is of course possible that some of the pictures now at Vizeu were the
work of a man called Vasco, and one of those at Coimbra, in the sacristy
of Santa Cruz, is signed Velascus--which is only the Spanish form of
Vasco--so that the legendary personage may have been evolved from either
or both of these, for it is scarcely possible that they can have been
the same.
Turning now to some of the pictures themselves, there are thirteen
representing scenes from the life of the Virgin in the archbishop's
palace at Evora, which are said by Justi, a German critic, to be by
Gerhard David. Twelve of these are in a very bad state of preservation,
but one is still worthy of some admiration. In the centre sits the
Virgin with the Child on her knee: four angels are in the air above her
holding a wreath. On her right three angels are singing, and on her left
one plays an organ while another behind blows the bellows. Below there
are six other angels, three on each side with a lily between them,
playing, those on the right on a violin, a flute, and a zither, those on
the left on a harp, a triangle, and a guitar. Once part of the cathedral
reredos, it was taken down when the new Capella Mor was built in the
eighteenth century.
Another Netherlander who painted at Evora was Frey Carlos, who came to
Espinheiro close by in 1507. Several of his works are in the Museum at
Lisbon.[7]
When Dom Manoel was enriching the old Templar church at Thomar with
gilding and with statues of saints, he also caused large paintings to be
placed round the outer wall. Several still remain, but most have
perished, either during the French invasion or during the eleven years
after the expulsion of the monks in 1834 when the church stood open for
any one to go in and do what harm he liked. Some also, including the
'Raising of Lazarus,' the 'Entry into Jerusalem,' the 'Resurrection,'
and the 'Centurion,' are now in Lisbon. Four--the 'Nativity,' the 'Visit
of the Magi,' the 'Annunciation,' and a 'Virgin and Child'--are known to
have been given by Dom Manoel; twenty others, including the four now at
Lisbon, are spoken of by Raczynski in 1843,[8] and some at least of
these, as well as the angels holding the emblems of the Passion, who
stand above the small arches of the inner octagon, may have been painted
by Johannes Dralia of Bruges, who died and was buried at Thomar in
1504.[9]
Also at Thomar, but in the parish church of São João Baptista, are some
pictures ascribed by Justi to a pupil of Quentin Matsys. Now it is known
that a Portuguese called _Eduard_ became a pupil of Matsys in 1504, and
four years later a Vrejmeester of the guild. So perhaps they may be by
this Eduard or by some fellow-pupil.
The Jesus Church at Setubal, built by Justa Rodrigues, Dom Manoel's
nurse, has fifteen paintings in incongruous gilt frames and hung high up
on the north wall of the church, which also have something of the same
style.[10]
More interesting than these are two pictures in the sacristy of Santa
Cruz at Coimbra, an 'Ecce Homo' and the 'Day of Pentecost.' It is the
'Pentecost' which is signed Velascus, and in it the Apostles in an inner
room are seen through an arcade of three arches like a chapter-house
entrance. Perhaps once part of the great reredos, this picture has
suffered terribly from neglect; but it must once have been a fine work,
and the way in which the Apostles in the inner room are separated by the
arcade from the two spectators is particularly successful.
In Oporto there exists at least one good picture, 'The Fountain of
Mercy,' now in the board-room of the Misericordia,[11] but painted to be
the reredos of the chapel of São Thiago in the Sé where the brotherhood
was founded by Dom Manoel in 1499. (Fig. 3.)
In the centre above, between St. John and the Virgin, stands a crucifix
from which blood flows down to fill a white marble well.
Below, on one side there kneels Dom Manoel with his six sons--João,
afterwards king; Luis, duke of Beja; Fernando, duke of Guarda; Affonso,
afterwards archbishop of Lisbon, with his cardinal's hat; Henrique,
later cardinal archbishop of Evora, and then king; and Duarte, duke of
Guimarães and ancestor of the present ruling house of Braganza.
On the other side are Queen Dona Leonor,[12] granddaughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella, Dom Manoel's third wife[13] and her two stepdaughters,
Dona Isabel, the wife of Charles V. and mother of Philip II., who
through her claimed and won the throne of Portugal when his uncle, the
cardinal king, died in 1580, and Dona Beatriz, who married Charles III..
of Savoy.
The date of the picture is fixed as between 1518 when Dom Affonso, then
aged nine, received his cardinal's hat, and 1521 when Dom Manoel
died.[14]
Unfortunately the picture has been somewhat spoiled by restoration, but
it is undoubtedly a very fine piece of work--especially the portraits
below--and would be worthy of admiration anywhere, even in a country
much richer in works of art.
It has of course been attributed to Grão Vasco, but it is quite
different from either the Velascus pictures at Coimbra or the paintings
at Vizeu; besides, some of the beautifully painted flowers, such as the
columbines, which enrich the grass on which the royal persons kneel, are
not Portuguese flowers, so that it is much more likely to have been the
work of some one from Flanders.
Equally Flemish are the pictures at Vizeu, whether any of them be by the
Grão Vasco or not. Tradition has it that he was born at a mill not far
off, still called _Moinho do Pintor_, the _Painter's Mill_, and that Dom
Manoel sent him to study in Italy. Now, wherever the painter of the
Vizeu pictures had
[Illustration: FIG. 3.
THE FOUNTAIN OF MERCY.
MISERICORDIA, OPORTO.
_From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._]
studied it can scarcely have been in Italy, as they are all surely much
nearer to the Flemish than to any Italian school.
There are still in the precincts of the cathedral some thirty-one
pictures of very varied merit, and not all by the same hand. Of these
there are fourteen in the chapter-house, a room opening off the upper
cloister. They are all scenes from the life of Our Lord from the
Annunciation to the day of Pentecost. Larger than any of these is a
damaged 'Crucifixion' in the Jesus Chapel under the chapter-house. The
painting is full, perhaps too full, of movement and of figures. Besides
the scenes usually portrayed in a picture of the Crucifixion, others are
shown in the background, Judas hanging himself on one side, and Joseph
of Arimathea and Nicodemus on the other, coming out from Jerusalem with
their spices. Lastly, in the sacristy there are twelve small paintings
of the Apostles and other saints of no great merit, and four large
pictures, 'St. Sebastian,' the 'Day of Pentecost,' where the room is
divided by three arches, with the Virgin and another saint in the
centre, and six of the Apostles on each side; the 'Baptism of Our Lord,'
and lastly 'St. Peter.' The first three are not very remarkable, but the
'St. Peter' is certainly one of the finest pictures in the country, and
is indeed worthy of ranking among the great pictures of the world.[15]
(Fig. 4.)
As in the 'Day of Pentecost' there is a triple division; St. Peter's
throne being in the middle with an arch on each side open to show
distant scenes. The throne seems to be of stone, with small boys and
griffins holding shields charged with the Cross Keys on the arms. On the
canopy two other shields supporting triple crowns flank an arch whose
classic ornaments and large shell are more Italian than is any other
part of the painting. On the throne sits St. Peter pontifically robed,
and with the triple crown on his head. His right hand is raised in
blessing, and in his left he holds one very long key while he keeps a
book open upon his knee.
The cope is of splendid gold brocade of a fine Gothic pattern, with
orfreys or borders richly embroidered with figures of saints, and is
fastened in front by a great square gold and jewelled morse. All the
draperies are very finely modelled and richly coloured, but finest of
all is St. Peter's face, solemn and stern and yet kindly, without any
of that pride and arrogance which would seem but natural to the wearer
of such vestments; it is, with its grey hair and short grey beard,
rather the face of the fisherman of Galilee than that of a Pope.
Through the arches to the right and left above a low wall are seen the
beginning and the end of his ministry. On the one side he is leaving his
boat and his nets to become a fisher of men, and on the other he kneels
before the vision of Our Lord, when fleeing from Rome he met Him at the
place now called 'Quo Vadis' on the Appian way, and so was turned back
to meet his martyrdom.
Fortunately this painting has suffered from no restoration, and is still
wonderfully clean, but the wood on which it is painted has split rather
badly in places, one large crack running from top to bottom just beyond
the throne on St. Peter's right.
This 'St. Peter,' then, is entirely Flemish in the painting of the
drapery and of the scenes behind; especially of the turreted Gothic
walls of Rome. The details of the throne may be classic, but French
renaissance forms were first introduced into the country at Belem in
1517, just the time when the cathedral here was being built by Bishop
Dom Diogo Ortiz de Vilhegas. This, and the other pictures in the
sacristy, were doubtless once parts of the great reredos, which would
not be put up till the church was quite finished, and so may not have
been painted till some time after 1520, or even later. Already in 1522
much renaissance work was being done at Coimbra, not far off, so it is
possible that the painter of these pictures may have adopted his classic
detail from what he may have seen there.
It is worth noting, too, that preserved in the sacristy at Vizeu there
is, or was,[16] a cope so like that worn by St. Peter, that the painting
must almost certainly have been copied from it.
We may therefore conclude that these pictures are the work of some one
who had indeed studied abroad, probably at Antwerp, but who worked at
home.
Not only to paint religious pictures and portraits did Flemish artists
come to Portugal. One at least, Antonio de
[Illustration: FIG. 4.
ST. PETER.
IN THE CATHEDRAL SACRISTY.
VIZEU.
]
Hollanda, was famous for his illuminations. He lived and worked at
Evora, and is said by his son Francisco to have been the first in
Portugal 'to make known a pleasing manner of painting in black and
white, superior to all processes known in other countries.'[17]
When the convent of Thomar was being finished by Dom João III., some
large books were in November 1533 sent on a mule to Antonio at Evora to
be illuminated. Two of these books were finished and paid for in
February 1535, when he received 63$795 or about £15. The books were
bound at Evora for 4$000 or sixteen shillings.
By the end of the next year a Psalter was finished which cost 54$605 or
£12, at the rate of 6$000, £1, 6s. 8d. for each of four large headings,
forty illuminated letters with vignettes at 2s. 2d. each, a hundred and
fifteen without vignettes at fivepence-halfpenny, two hundred and three
in red, gold, and blue at fourpence-farthing, eighty-four drawn in black
at twopence, and 2846 small letters at the beginning of each verse at
less than one farthing. Next March this Psalter was brought back to
Thomar on a mule whose hire was two shillings and twopence--a sum small
enough for a journey of well over a hundred miles,[18] but which may
help us the better to estimate the value of the money paid to
Antonio.[19]
CHURCH PLATE.
A very great part of the church plate of Portugal has long since
disappeared, for few chapters had the foresight to hide all that was
most valuable when Soult began his devastating march from the north, and
so he and his men were able to encumber their retreat with cart-loads of
the most beautiful gold and silver ornaments.
Yet a good deal has survived, either because it was hidden away as at
Guimarães or at Coimbra--where it is said to have been only found
lately--or because, as at Evora, it lay apart from the course of this
famous plunderer.
The richest treasuries at the present day are those of Nossa Senhora da
Oliveira at Guimarães, and of the Sés at Braga, at Coimbra, and at
Evora.
A silver-gilt chalice and a pastoral staff of the twelfth century in the
sacristy at Braga are among the oldest pieces of plate in the country.
The chalice is about five inches high. The cup, ornamented with animals
and leaves, stands on a plain base inscribed, 'In n[=m]e D[=m]i Menendus
Gundisaluis de Tuda domna sum.' It is called the chalice of São Giraldo,
and is supposed to have belonged to that saint, who as archbishop of
Braga baptized Affonso Henriques.
The staff of copper-gilt is in the form of a snake with a cross in its
mouth, and though almost certainly of the twelfth century is said to
have been found in the tomb of Santo Ovidio, the third archbishop of the
see.
Another very fine chalice of the same date is in the treasury at
Coimbra. Here the round cup is enriched by an arcade, under each arch of
which stands a saint, while on the base are leaves and medallions with
angels. It is inscribed, 'Geda Menendis me fecit in onore sci. Michaelis
e. MCLXXXX.', that is A.D. 1152.
It was no doubt given by Dom Miguel, who ruled the see from 1162 to 1176
and who spent so much on the old cathedral and on its furniture. For him
Master Ptolomeu made silver altar fronts, and the goldsmith Felix a jug
and basin for the service of the altar. He also had a gold chalice made
weighing 4 marks, probably the one made by Geda Menendis, and a gold
cross to enclose some pieces of the Holy Sepulchre and two pieces of the
True Cross.
At Guimarães the chalice of São Torquato is of the thirteenth century.
The cup is quite plain and small, but on the wide-spreading base are
eight enamels of Our Lady and of seven of the Apostles.
The finest of all the objects in the Guimarães treasury is the reredos,
taken by Dom João I. from the Spanish king's tent after the victory of
Aljubarrota, and one of the angels which once went with it.
The same king also gave to the small church of São Miguel a silver
processional cross, all embossed with oak leaves, and ending in
fleurs-de-lys, which rises from two superimposed octagons, covered with
Gothic ornament.
Another beautiful cross now at Coimbra has a 'Virgin and Child' in the
centre under a rich canopy, and enamels of the four Evangelists on the
arms, while the rest of the surface including the foliated ends is
covered with exquisitely pierced flowing tracery. (Fig. 5.)
Earlier are the treasures which once belonged the Queen St. Isabel who
died in 1327, and which are still preserved at Coimbra. These include a
beautiful and simple cross of agate and silver, a curious reliquary made
of a branch of coral with silver mountings, her staff as abbess of St.
Clara, shaped like the cross of an Eastern bishop, and with heads of
animals at the ends of the arms, and a small ark-shaped reliquary of
silver and coral now set on a high renaissance base.
But nearly all the surviving church plate dates from the time of Dom
Manoel or his son.
To Braga Archbishop Diogo de Souza gave a splendid silver-gilt chalice
in 1509. Here the cup is adorned above by six angels holding emblems of
the Passion, and below by six others holding bells. Above them runs an
inscription, _Hic est calix sanguinis mei novi et eter_. The stem is
entirely covered with most elaborate canopy work, with six Apostles in
niches, while on the base are five other Apostles in relief, the
archbishop's arms, and six pieces of enamel.
Very similar is a splendid chalice in the Misericordia at Oporto,
probably of about the same date, and two at Coimbra. In both of these
the cup is embossed with angels and leafage--in one the angels hold
bells--and the stem is covered with tabernacle work. On the base of the
one is a _pietà_ with mourning angels and other emblems of the Passion
in relief, while that of the other is enriched with filigree work. (Fig.
6.)
Another at Guimarães given by Fernando Alvares is less well proportioned
and less beautiful.
So far the architectural details of the chalices mentioned have been
entirely national, but there is a custodia at Evora, whose interlacing
canopy work seems to betray the influence of the Netherlands. The base
of this custodia[20] or monstrance, in the shape of a chalice seems
later than the upper part, which is surmounted by a rounded canopy whose
hanging cusps and traceried panels strongly recall the Flemish work of
the great reredos in the old cathedral at Coimbra.
Even more Flemish are a pastoral staff made for Cardinal Henrique, son
of Dom Manoel and afterwards king, a monstrance or reliquary at
Coimbra,[21] and another at Guimarães.[22]
Much splendid plate was also given to Santa Cruz at Coimbra by Dom
Manoel, but all--candlesticks, lamps, crosses and a monstrance--have
since vanished, sent to Gôa in India when the canons in the eighteenth
century wanted something more fashionable.
Belem also possessed splendid treasures, among them a cross of silver
filigree and jewels which is still preserved.
Much filigree work is still done in the north, where the young women
invest their savings in great golden hearts or in beautiful earrings,
though now bunches of coloured flowers on huge lockets of coppery gold
are much more sought after.
Curiously, many of the most famous goldsmiths of the sixteenth century
were Jews. Among them was the Vicente family, a member of which made a
fine monstrance for Belem in 1505, and which, like other families, was
expelled from Coimbra to Guimarães between the years 1532 and 1537, and
doubtless wrought some of the beautiful plate for which the treasury of
Nossa Senhora is famous.
The seventeenth century, besides smaller works, has left the great
silver tomb of the Holy Queen St. Isabel in the new church of Santa
Clara. Made by order of Bishop Dom Affonso de Castello Branco in 1614,
it weighs over 170 lbs., has at the sides and ends Corinthian columns,
leaving panels between them with beautifully chased framing, and a
sloping top.
Later and less worthy of notice are the coffins of the two first sainted
abbesses of the convent of Lorvão, near Coimbra, in which elaborate
acanthus scrolls in silver are laid over red velvet.
TILE WORK OR AZULEJOS.
The Moors occupied most of what is now Portugal for a considerable
length of time. The extreme north they held for rather less than two
hundred years, the extreme south for more than five hundred. This
occupation by a governing class, so different in religion, in race, and
in customs from
[Illustration: FIG. 5.
CROSS AT COIMBRA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.
CHALICE AT COIMBRA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.
MONSTRANCE AT COIMBRA.]
those they ruled, has naturally had a strong influence, not only on the
language of Portugal, but also on the art. Though there survive no
important Moorish buildings dating from before the re-conquest--for the
so-called mosque at Cintra is certainly a small Christian church--many
were built after it for Christians by Moorish workmen.
These, as well as the Arab ceilings, or those derived therefrom, will be
described later, but here must be mentioned the tilework, the most
universally distributed legacy of the Eastern people who once held the
land. There is scarcely a church, certainly scarcely one of any size or
importance which even in the far north has not some lining or dado of
tiles, while others are entirely covered with them from floor to ceiling
or vault.
The word _azulejo_ applied to these tiles is derived from the Arabic
_azzallaja_ or _azulaich_, meaning _smooth_, or else through the Arabic
from a Low Latin word _azuroticus_ used by a Gaulish writer of the fifth
century to describe mosaic[23] and not from the word _azul_ or _blue_.
At first each different piece or colour in a geometric pattern was cut
before firing to the shape required, and the many different pieces when
coloured and fired were put together so as to form a regular mosaic.
This method of making tiles, though soon given up in most places as
being too troublesome, is still employed at Tetuan in Morocco, where in
caves near the town the whole process may still be seen; for there the
mixing of the clay, the cutting out of the small pieces, the colouring
and the firing are still carried on in the old primitive and traditional
manner.[24]
Elsewhere, though similar designs long continued to be used in Spain and
Portugal, and are still used in Morocco, the tiles were all made square,
each tile usually forming one quarter of the pattern. In them the
pattern was formed by lines slightly raised above the surface of the
tile so that there was no danger during the firing of the colour running
beyond the place it was intended to occupy.
For a long time, indeed right up to the end of the fifteenth century,
scarcely anything but Moorish geometric patterns seem to have been used.
Then with the renaissance their place was taken by other patterns of
infinite variety; some have octagons with classic mouldings represented
in colour, surrounding radiating green and blue leaves;[25] some more
strictly classical are not unlike Italian patterns; some again are more
naturalistic, while in others the pattern, though not of the old
geometric form, is still Moorish in design.
Together with the older tiles of Moorish pattern plain tiles were often
made in which each separate tile, usually square, but at times
rhomboidal or oblong, was of one colour, and such tiles were often used
from quite early times down at least to the end of the seventeenth
century.
More restricted in use were the beautiful embossed tiles found in the
palace at Cintra, in which each has on it a raised green vine-leaf and
tendril, or more rarely a dark bunch of grapes.
Towards the middle of the sixteenth century the Moorish technique of
tilemaking, with its patterns marked off by raised edges, began to go
out of fashion, and instead the patterns were outlined in dark blue and
painted on to flat tiles. About the same time large pictures painted on
tiles came into use, at first, as in the work of Francisco de Mattos,
with scenes more or less in their natural colours, and later in the
second half of the seventeenth century, and in the beginning of the
eighteenth in blue on a white ground.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century blue seems to have usurped the
place of all other colours, and from that time, especially in or near
Oporto, tiles were used to mask all the exterior rubble walls of houses
and churches, even spires or bulbous domes being sometimes so covered.
Now in Oporto nearly all the houses are so covered, usually with
blue-and-white tiles, though on the more modern they may be embossed and
pale green or yellow, sometimes even brown. But all the tiles from the
beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day are marked by the
poverty of the colour and of the pattern, and still more by the hard
shiny glaze, which may be technically more perfect, but is infinitely
inferior in beauty to the duller and softer glaze of the previous
centuries.
When square tiles were used they were throughout singularly uniform in
size, being a little below or a little above five inches square. The
ground is always white with a slightly blueish tinge. In the earlier
tiles of Arab pattern the colours are blue, green, and brown; very
rarely, and that in some of the oldest tiles, the pattern may be in
black; yellow is scarcely ever seen. In those of Moorish technique but
Western pattern, the most usual colours are blue, green, yellow and,
more rarely, brown.
Later still in the flat tiles scarcely anything but blue and yellow are
used, though the blue and the yellow may be of two shades, light and
dark, golden and orange. Brown and green have almost disappeared, and,
as was said above, so did yellow at last, leaving nothing but blue and
white.
Although there are few buildings which do not possess some tiles, the
oldest, those of Moorish design, are rare, and, the best collection is
to be found in the old palace at Cintra, of which the greater part was
built by Dom João I. towards the end of the fourteenth and the beginning
of the fifteenth century.
Formerly all the piers of the old cathedral of Coimbra were covered with
such tiles, but they have lately been swept away, and only those left
which line the aisle walls.
At Cintra there are a few which it is supposed may have belonged to the
palace of the Walis, or perhaps it would be safer to say to the palace
before it was rebuilt by Dom João. These are found round a door leading
out of a small room, called from the mermaids on the ceiling the _Sala
das Sereias_. The pointed door is enclosed in a square frame by a band
of narrow dark and light tiles with white squares between, arranged in
checks, while in the spandrels is a very beautiful arabesque pattern in
black on a white ground.
Of slightly later date are the azulejos of the so-called _Sala dos
Arabes_, where the walls to a height of about six feet are lined with
blue, green, and white tiles, the green being square and the other
rhomboidal. Over the doors, which are pointed, a square framing is
carried up, with tiles of various patterns in the spandrels, and above
these frames, as round the whole walls, runs a very beautiful cresting
two tiles high. On the lower row are interlacing semicircles in high
relief forming foliated cusps and painted blue. In the spandrels formed
by the interlacing of the semicircles are three green leaves growing out
from a brown flower; in short the design is exactly like a Gothic
corbel table such as was used on Dom João's church at Batalha turned
upside down, and so probably dates from his time. On the second row of
tiles there are alternately a tall blue fleur-de-lys with a yellow
centre, and a lower bunch of leaves, three blue at the top and one
yellow on each side; the ground throughout is white. (Fig. 8.)
Also of Dom João's time are the tiles in the _Sala das Pegas_, where
they are of the regular Moorish pattern--blue, green and brown on a
white ground, and where four go to make up the pattern. The cresting of
green scrolls and vases is much later.
Judging from the cresting in the dining-room or _Sala de Jantar_, where,
except that the ground is brown relieved by large white stars, and that
the cusps are green and not blue, the design is exactly the same as in
the _Sala dos Arabes_, the tiles there must be at least as old as these
crestings; for though older tiles might be given a more modern cresting,
the reverse is hardly likely to occur, and if as old as the crestings
they may possibly belong to Dom João's time, or at least to the middle
of the fifteenth century. (Fig. 9.)
These dining-room tiles, and also those in the neighbouring _Sala das
Sereias_, are among the most beautiful in the palace. The ground is as
usual white, and on each is embossed a beautiful green vine-leaf with
branches and tendril. Tiles similar, but with a bunch of grapes added,
line part of the stair in the picturesque little _Pateo de Diana_ near
at hand, and form the top of the back of the tiled bench and throne in
the _Sala do Conselho_, once an open veranda. Most of this bench is
covered with tiles of Moorish design, but on the front each is stamped
with an armillary sphere in which the axis is yellow, the lines of the
equator and tropics green, and the rest blue. These one would certainly
take to be of Dom Manoel's time, for the armillary sphere was his
emblem, but they are said to be older.
Most of the floor tiles are of unglazed red, except some in the chapel,
which are supposed to have formed the paving of the original mosque, and
some in an upper room, worn smooth by the feet of Dom Affonso VI., who
was imprisoned there for many a year in the seventeenth century.
When Dom Manoel was making his great addition to the palace in the early
years of the sixteenth century he lined the walls of the _Sala dos
Cysnes_ with tiles forming a check of green
[Illustration: FIG. 8.
SALA DOS ARABES.
PALACE, CINTRA.
_From a photograph by L. Oram, Cintra._]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.
DINING-ROOM, OLD PALACE.
CINTRA.
_From a photograph by L. Oram, Cintra._]
and white. These are carried up over the doors and windows, and in
places have a curious cresting of green cones like Moorish battlements,
and of castles.
Much older are the tiles in the central _Pateo_, also green and white,
but forming a very curious pattern.
Of later tiles the palace also has some good examples, such as the
hunting scenes with which the walls of the _Sala dos Brazões_ were
covered probably at the end of the seventeenth century, during the reign
of Dom Pedro II.
The palace at Cintra may possess the finest collection of tiles, Moorish
both in technique and in pattern, but it has few or none of the second
class where the technique remains Moorish but the design is Western. To
see such tiles in their greatest quantity and variety one must cross the
Tagus and visit the Quinta de Bacalhôa not far from Setubal.
There a country house had been built in the last quarter of the
fifteenth century by Dona Brites, the mother of Dom Manoel.[26] The
house, with melon-roofed corner turrets, simple square windows and two
loggias, has an almost classic appearance, and if built in its present
shape in the time of Dona Brites, must be one of the earliest examples
of the renaissance in the country. It has therefore been thought that
Bacalhôa may be the mysterious palace built for Dom João II. by Andrea
da Sansovino, which is mentioned by Vasari, but of which all trace has
been lost. However, it seems more likely that it owes its classic
windows to the younger Affonso de Albuquerque, son of the great Indian
Viceroy, who bought the property in 1528. The house occupies one corner
of a square garden enclosure, while opposite it is a large square tank
with a long pavilion at its southern side. A path runs along the
southern wall of the garden leading from the house to the tank, and all
the way along this wall are tiled seats and tubs for orange-trees. It is
on these tubs and seats that the greatest variety of tiles are found.
It would be quite impossible to give any detailed description of these
tiles, the patterns are so numerous and so varied. In some the pattern
is quite classical, in others it still shows traces of Moorish
influence, while in some again the design is entirely naturalistic. This
is especially the case in a pattern used in the lake pavilion, where
eight large green leaves are arranged pointing to one centre, and four
smaller brown ones to another, and in a still more beautiful pattern
used on an orange tub in the garden, where yellow and dark flowers,
green and blue leaves are arranged in a circle round eight beautiful
fruits shaped like golden pomegranates with blue seeds set among green
leaves and stalks.
But these thirty or more patterns do not exhaust the interest of the
Quinta. There are also some very fine tile pictures, especially one of
'Susanna and the Elders,' and a fragment of the 'Quarrel of the Lapithæ
and Centaurs' in the pavilion overlooking the tank. 'Susanna and the
Elders' is particularly good, and is interesting in that on a small
temple in the background is the date 1565.[27] Rather later seem the
five river gods in the garden loggia of the house, for their strapwork
frames of blue and yellow can hardly be as early as 1565; besides, a
fragment with similar details has on it the letters TOS, no doubt the
end of the signature 'Francisco Mattos,' who also signed some beautiful
tiles in the church of São Roque at Lisbon in 1584.
It is known that the entrance to the convent of the Madre de Deus at
Lisbon was ornamented by Dom Manoel with some della Robbia reliefs, two
of which are now in the Museum.
On the west side of the tank at Bacalhôa is a wall nearly a hundred feet
long, and framed with tiles. In the centre the water flows into the tank
from a dolphin above which is an empty niche. There are two other empty
niches, one inscribed _Tempora labuntur more fluentis aquae_, and the
other _Vivite victuri moneo mors omnibus instat_. These niches stand
between four medallions of della Robbia ware, some eighteen inches
across. Two are heads of men and two of women, only one of each being
glazed. The glazed woman's head is white, with yellow hair, a sky-blue
veil, and a loose reddish garment all on a blue ground. All are
beautifully modelled and are surrounded by glazed wreaths of fruit and
leaves. These four must certainly have come from the della Robbia
factory in Florence, for they, and especially the surrounding wreaths,
are exactly like what may be seen so often in North Italy.
Much less good are six smaller medallions, four of which are much
destroyed, on the wall leading north from the tank to a pavilion named
the _Casa da India_, so called from the beautiful Indian hangings with
which its walls were covered by Albuquerque. In them the modelling is
less good and the wreaths are more conventional.
Lastly, between the tank and the house are twelve others, one under each
of the globes, which, flanked by obelisks, crown the wall. They are all
of the same size, but in some the head and the blue backing are not in
one place. The wreaths also are inferior even to those of the last six,
though the actual heads are rather better. They all represent famous men
of old, from Alexander the Great to Nero. Two are broken; that of
Augustus is signed with what may perhaps be read Doñus Vilhelmus,
'Master William,' who unfortunately is otherwise unknown.
It seems impossible now to tell where these were made, but they were
certainly inspired by the four genuine Florentine medallions on the tank
wall, and if by a native artist are of great interest as showing how men
so skilled in making beautiful tiles could also copy the work of a great
Italian school with considerable success.
Of the third class of tiles, those where the patterns are merely painted
and not raised, there are few examples at Bacalhôa--except when some
restoration has been done--for this manner of tile-painting did not
become common till the next century, but there are a few with very good
patterns in the house itself, and close by, the walls of the church of
São Simão are covered with excellent examples. These were put up by the
heads of a brotherhood in 1648, and are almost exactly the same as those
in the church of Alvito; even the small saintly figures over the arches
occur in both. The pattern of Alvito is one of the finest, and is found
again at Santarem in the church of the Marvilla, where the lower tiles
are all of singular beauty and splendid colouring, blue and yellow on a
white ground. Other beautiful tiled interiors are those of the Matriz at
Caldas da Rainha, and at Caminha on the Minho. Without seeing these
tiled churches it is impossible to realise how beautiful they really
are, and how different are these tiles from all modern ones, whose hard
smooth glaze and mechanical perfection make them cold and anything but
pleasing. (Figs. 10 and 11, _frontispiece_.)
Besides the picture-tiles at Bacalhôa there are some very good examples
of similar work in the semicircular porch which surrounds the small
round chapel of Sant' Amaro at Alcantara close to Lisbon. The chapel
was built in 1549, and the tiles added about thirty years later. Here,
as in the Dominican nunnery at Elvas, and in some exquisite framings and
steps at Bacalhôa, the pattern and architectural details are spread all
over the tiles, often making a rich framing to a bishop or saint. Some
are not at all unlike Francisco Mattos' work in São Roque, which is also
well worthy of notice.
Of the latest pictorial tiles, the finest are perhaps those in the
church of São João Evangelista at Evora, which tell of the life of San
Lorenzo Giustiniani, Venetian Patriarch, and which are signed and dated
'Antoninus ab Oliva fecit 1711.'[28] But these blue picture-tiles are
almost the commonest of all, and were made and used up to the end of the
century.[29]
Now although some of the patterns used are found also in Spain, as at
Seville or at Valencia, and although tiles from Seville were used at
Thomar by João de Castilho, still it is certain that many were of home
manufacture.
As might be expected from the patterns and technique of the oldest
tiles, the first mentioned tilers are Moors.[30] Later there were as
many as thirteen tilemakers in Lisbon, and many were made in the
twenty-eight ovens of _louça de Veneza_, 'Venetian faience.' The tiles
used by Dom Manoel at Cintra came from Belem, while as for the picture
tiles the novices of the order of São Thiago at Palmella formed a school
famous for such work.
Indeed it may be said that tilework is the most characteristic feature
of Portuguese buildings, and that to it many a church, otherwise poor
and even mean, owes whatever interest or beauty it possesses. Without
tiles, rooms like the _Sala das Sereias_ or the _Sala dos Arabes_ would
be plain whitewashed featureless apartments, with them they have a charm
and a romance not easy to find anywhere but in the East.
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE NORTH
Portugal, like all the other Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula, having
begun in the north, first as a county or march land subject to the king
of Galicia or of Leon, and later, since 1139, as an independent kingdom,
it is but natural to find nearly all the oldest buildings in those parts
of the country which, earliest freed from the Moslem dominion, formed
the original county. The province of Entre Minho-e-Douro has always been
held by the Portuguese to be the most beautiful part of their country,
and it would be difficult to find anywhere valleys more beautiful than
those of the Lima, the Cavado, or the Ave. Except the mountain range of
the Marão which divides this province from the wilder and drier
Tras-os-Montes, or the Gerez which separates the upper waters of the
Cavado and of the Lima, and at the same time forms part of the northern
frontier of Portugal, the hills are nowhere of great height. They are
all well covered with woods, mostly of pine, and wherever a piece of
tolerably level ground can be found they are cultivated with the care of
a garden. All along the valleys, and even high up the hillsides among
the huge granite boulders, there is a continuous succession of small
villages. Many of these, lying far from railway or highroad, can only be
reached by narrow and uneven paths, along which no carriage can pass
except the heavy creaking carts drawn by the beautiful large long-horned
oxen whose broad and splendidly carved yokes are so remarkable a feature
of the country lying between the Vouga and the Cavado.[31] In many of
these villages may still be seen churches built soon after the
expulsion of the Moors, and long before the establishment of the
Monarchy. Many of them originally belonged to some monastic body. Of
these the larger part have been altered and spoiled during the
seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, when, after the expulsion of the
Spaniards, the country began again to grow rich from trade with the
recovered colony of Brazil. Still enough remains to show that these old
romanesque churches differed in no very striking way from the general
romanesque introduced into Northern Spain from France, except that as a
rule they were smaller and ruder, and were but seldom vaulted.
That these early churches should be rude is not surprising. They are
built of hard grey granite. When they were built the land was still
liable to incursions, and raids from the south, such as the famous foray
of Almansor, who harried and burned the whole land not sparing even the
shrine of Santiago far north in Galicia. Their builders were still
little more than a race of hardy soldiers with no great skill in the
working of stone. Only towards the end of the twelfth century, long
after the border had been advanced beyond the Mondego and after Coimbra
had become the capital of a new county, did the greater security as well
as the very fine limestone of the lower Mondego valley make it possible
for churches to be built at Coimbra which show a marked advance in
construction as well as in elaboration of detail. Between the Mondego
and the Tagus there are only four or five churches which can be called
romanesque, and south of the Tagus only the cathedral of Evora, begun
about 1186 and consecrated some eighteen years later, is romanesque,
constructively at least, though all its arches have become pointed.
But to return north to Entre Minho-e-Douro, where the oldest and most
numerous romanesque churches exist and where three types may be seen. Of
these the simplest and probably the oldest is that of an aisleless nave
with simple square chancel. In the second the nave has one or two
aisles, and at the end of these aisles a semicircular apse, but with the
chancel still square: while in the third and latest the plan has been
further developed and enlarged, though even here the main chancel
generally still remains square.
[Sidenote: Villarinho.]
There yet exist, not far from Oporto, a considerable number of examples
of the first type, though several by their pointed doorways show that
they actually belong, in part at least, to the period of the Transition.
One of the best-preserved is the small church of Villarinho, not far
from Vizella in the valley of the Ave. Originally the church of a small
monastery, it has long been the parish church of a mountain hamlet, and
till it was lately whitewashed inside had scarcely been touched since
the day it was finished some time before the end of the twelfth century.
It consists of a rather high and narrow nave, a square-ended chancel,
and to the west a lower narthex nearly as large as the chancel. The
church is lit by very small windows which are indeed mere slits, and by
a small round opening in the gable above the narthex.[32] The narthex is
entered by a perfectly plain round-headed door with strong impost and
drip-mould, while above the corbels which once carried the roof of a
lean-to porch, a small circle enclosing a rude unglazed quatrefoil
serves as the only window. The door leading from the narthex to the nave
is much more elaborate; of four orders of mouldings, the two inner are
plain, the two outer have a big roll at the angle, and all are slightly
pointed. Except the outermost, which springs from square jambs, they all
stand on the good romanesque capitals of six shafts, four round and two
octagonal. (Fig. 12.)
[Sidenote: São Miguel, Guimarães.]
Exactly similar in plan but without a narthex is the church of São
Miguel at Guimarães, famous as being the church in which Affonso
Henriques, the first king of Portugal, was baptized in 1111. It claims
to have been the _Primaz_ or chief church of the whole archdiocese of
Braga. It is, like Villarinho, a small and very plain church built of
great blocks of granite, with a nave and square chancel lit by narrow
window slits. On the north side there are a plain square-headed doorway
and two bold round arches let into the outer wall over the graves of
some great men of these distant times. The drip-mould of one of these
arches is carved with a shallow zigzag ornament which is repeated on the
western door, a door whose slightly pointed arch may mean a rather later
date than the rest of the church. The wooden roof, as at Villarinho, has
a very gentle slope with eaves of considerable projection resting on
very large plain corbels, while other corbels lower down the wall seem
to show that at one time a veranda or cloister ran round three sides of
the building. The whole is even ruder and simpler than Villarinho, but
has a certain amount of dignity due to the great size of the stones of
which it is built and to the severe plainness of the walling.
[Sidenote: Cedo Feita, Oporto.]
Only one other church of this type need be described, and that because
it is the only one which is vaulted throughout. This is the small church
of São Martim de Cedo Feita or 'Early made' at Oporto itself. It is so
called because it claims, wrongly indeed, to be the very church which
Theodomir, king of the Suevi, who then occupied the north-west of the
Peninsula, hurriedly built in 559 A.D. This he did in order that, having
been converted from the Arian beliefs he shared with all the Germanic
invaders of the Empire, he might there be baptized into the Catholic
faith, and also that he might provide a suitable resting-place for some
relic of St. Martin of Tours which had been sent to him as a mark of
Orthodox approval. This story[33] is set forth in a long inscription on
the tympanum of the west door stating that it was put there in 1767, a
copy taken in 1557 from an old stone having then been found in the
archives of the church. As a matter of fact no part of the church can be
older than the twelfth century, and it has been much altered, probably
at the date when the inscription was cut. It is a small building, a
barrel-vaulted nave and chancel, with a door on the north side and a
larger one to the west now covered by a large porch. The six capitals of
this door are very like those at Villarinho, but the moulded arches are
round and not as there pointed.
Other churches of this type are Gandara and Boelhe near Penafiel, and
Eja not far off--a building of rather later date with a fine pointed
chancel arch elaborately carved with foliage--São Thiago d'Antas, near
Familicão, a slightly larger church with good capitals to the chancel
arch, a good south door and another later west door with traceried round
window above;
[Illustration: FIG. 12.
CHURCH AT VILLARINHO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.
VILLAR DE FRADES.
W. DOOR.]
and São Torquato, near Guimarães, rather larger, having once had
transepts of which one survives, with square chancel and square chapels
to the east; one of the simplest of all having no ornament beyond the
corbel table and the small slitlike windows.
South of the Douro, but still built of granite, are a group of three or
four small churches at Trancoso. Another close to Guarda has a much
richer corbel table with a large ball ornament on the cornice and a
round window filled with curiously built-up tracery above the plain,
round-arched west door, while further south on the castle hill at Leiria
are the ruins of the small church of São Pedro built of fine limestone
with a good west door.
[Sidenote: Aguas Santas.]
Of the second and rather larger type there are fewer examples still
remaining, and of these perhaps the best is the church of Aguas Santas
some seven miles north-east of Oporto. Originally the church consisted
of a nave with rectangular chancel and a north aisle with an eastern
apse roofed with a semi-dome. Later a tower with battlemented top and
low square spire was built at the west end of the aisle, and some thirty
years ago another aisle was added on the south side. As in most of the
smaller churches the chancel is lower than the nave, leaving room above
its roof for a large round window, now filled up except for a small
traceried circle in the centre. The most highly decorated part is the
chancel, which like all the rest of the church has a good corbel table,
and about two-thirds of the way up a string course richly covered with
billet moulding. Interrupting this on the south side are two
round-headed windows, still small but much larger than the slits found
in the older churches. In each case, in a round-headed opening there
stand two small shafts with bases and elaborately carved capitals but
without any abaci, supporting a large roll moulding, and these are all
repeated inside at the inner face of a deep splay. In one of these
windows not only are the capitals covered with intertwined ribbon-work,
but each shaft is covered with interknotted circles enclosing flowers,
and there is a band of interlacing work round the head of the actual
window opening. Inside the church has been more altered. Formerly the
aisle was separated from the nave by two arches, but when the south
aisle was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown
into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel
arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well
designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed
period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple
French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class are those of
São Christovão do Rio Mau not far from Villo do Conde, and São Pedro de
Rates, a little further up the Ave at the birthplace of the first bishop
of Braga and earliest martyr of Portugal. São Pedro is a little later,
as the aisle arches are all pointed, and is a small basilica of nave and
aisles with short transepts, chancel and eastern chapels.
[Sidenote: Villar de Frades.]
The two earliest examples of the third and most highly developed type,
the church of Villar de Frades and the cathedral of Braga, have
unfortunately both suffered so terribly, the one from destruction and
the other from rebuilding, that not much has been left to show what they
were originally like--barely enough to make it clear that they were much
more elaborately decorated, and that their carved work was much better
wrought than in any of the smaller churches already mentioned. A short
distance to the south of the river Cavado and about half-way between
Braga and Barcellos, in a well-watered and well-wooded region, there
existed from very early Christian times a monastery called Villar, and
later Villar de Frades. During the troubles and disorders which followed
the Moslem invasion, this Benedictine monastery had fallen into complete
decay and so remained till it was restored in 1070 by Godinho Viegas.
Although again deserted some centuries later and refounded in 1425 as
the mother house of a new order--the Loyos--the fifteenth-century church
was so built as to leave at least a part of the front of the old ruined
church standing between itself and the monastic building, as well as the
ruins of an apse behind. Probably this old west front was the last part
of Godinho's church to be built, but it is certainly more or less
contemporary with some portions of the cathedral of Braga.
At some period, which the legend leaves quite uncertain, one of the
monks of this monastery was one day in the choir at matins, when they
came to that Psalm where it is said that 'a thousand years in the sight
of God are but as yesterday when it is gone,' and the old monk wondered
greatly and began to think what that could mean. When matins were over
he remained praying as was his wont, and begged Our Lord to give him
some understanding of that verse. Then there appeared to him a little
bird which, singing most sweetly, flew this way and that, and so little
by little drew him towards a wood which grew near the monastery, and
there rested on a tree while the servant of God stood below to listen.
After what seemed to the monk a short time it took flight, to the great
sorrow of God's servant, who said, 'Bird of my Soul, where art thou gone
so soon?' He waited, and when he saw that it did not return he went back
to the monastery thinking it still that same morning on which he had
come out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which
he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter
asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the
sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all
changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and
wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not
to remember these names. At last he was led to the Abbot, but they did
not know one another, so that the good monk was all confused and amazed
at so strange an event. Then the Abbot, enlightened of God, sent for the
annals and histories of the order, found there the names the old man had
given, so making it clear that more than three hundred years had passed
since he had gone out. He told them all that had happened to him, was
received as a brother; and after praising God for the great marvel which
had befallen him, asked for the sacraments and soon passed from this
life in great peace.[34]
Whether the ruined west front of the older church be that which existed
when the bird flew out through the door or not, it is or has been of
very considerable beauty. Built, like everything else in the north, of
granite, all that is now left is a high wall of carefully wrought stone.
Below is a fine round arched door of considerable size, now roughly
blocked up. It has three square orders covered with carving and a plain
inner one. First is a wide drip-mould carved on the outer side with a
zigzag threefold ribbon, and on the inner with three rows of what looks
like a rude attempt to copy the classic bead-moulding; then the first
order, of thirteen voussoirs, each with the curious figure of a
strangely dressed man or with a distorted monster. This with the
drip-mould springs from a billet-moulded abacus resting on broad square
piers. Of the two inner carved orders, the outer is covered on both
faces with innumerable animals and birds, and the other with a delicate
pattern of interlacing bands. These two spring from strange square abaci
resting on the carved capitals of round shafts, two on each side. A few
feet above the door runs a billet-moulded string course, and two or
three feet higher another and slighter course. On this stands a large
window of two orders. Of these the outer covered with animals springs
from shafts and capitals very like those of the doorway, and the inner
has a billet-moulded edge and an almost Celtic ornament on the face. Now
whether Villar be older than the smaller buildings in the neighbourhood
or not, it is undoubtedly quite different not only in style but in
execution. It is not only much larger and higher, but it is better built
and the carving is finer and more carefully wrought. (Fig. 13.)
It is known that the great cathedral of Santiago in Galicia was begun in
1078, just about the time Villar must have been building, and Santiago
is an almost exact copy in granite of what the great abbey church of S.
Sernin at Toulouse was intended to be, so that it may be assumed that
Bernardo who built the cathedral was, if not a native of Toulouse, at
any rate very well acquainted with what was being done there. If, then,
a native of Languedoc was called in to plan so important a church in
Galicia, it is not unlikely that other foreigners were also employed in
the county of Portugal--at that time still a part of Galicia; and in
fact many churches in the south-west of what is now France have doorways
and windows whose general design is very like that at Villar de Frades,
if allowance be made for the difference of material, granite here, fine
limestone there, and for a comparative want of skill in the workmen.[35]
[Sidenote: Sé, Braga.]
Probably these foreigners were not invited to Portugal for the sake of
the church of a remote abbey like Villar, but to work at the
metropolitan cathedral of Braga. The see of Braga is said to have been
founded by São Pedro de Rates, a disciple of St. James himself, and in
consequence of so distinguished an origin its archbishops claim the
primacy not only of all Portugal, but even of all the Spains, a claim
which is of course disputed by the patriarch of Lisbon, not to speak of
the archbishops of Toledo and of Tarragona. However that may be, the
cathedral of Braga is not now, and can never have been, quite worthy of
such high pretensions. It is now a church with a nave and aisles of six
bays, a transept with four square chapels to the east, a chancel
projecting beyond the chapels, and at the west two towers with the main
door between and a fine porch beyond.
Count Henry of Burgundy married Dona Theresa and received the earldom of
Portugal from his father-in-law, Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon, in
1095, and he and his wife rebuilt the cathedral--where they now lie
buried--before the end of the century. By that time it may well have
become usual, if the churches were important, to call in a foreigner to
oversee its erection. Of the original building little now remains but
the plan and two doorways, the chancel having been rebuilt and the porch
added in the sixteenth, and the whole interior beplastered and bepainted
in the worst possible style in the seventeenth, century. Of the two
doors the western has been very like that at Villar. It has only two
orders left, of which the outer, though under a deep arch, has a
billet-moulded drip-mould, and its voussoirs each carved with a figure
on the outer and delicate flutings on the under side, while the inner
has on both faces animals and monsters which, better wrought than those
at Villar, are even more like so many in the south-west of France. The
other doorway, on the south side next the south-west tower, is far
better preserved. It has three shafts on each side, all with good
capitals and abaci, from which spring two carved and one plain arch. The
outer has a rich drip-mould covered with a curious triple arrangement of
circles, has flutings on the one face and a twisting ribbon on the
other, while the next has leaf flutings on both faces, and both a
roll-moulding on the angle. The inner order is quite plain, but the
tympanum has in the centre a circle enclosing a cross with expanding
arms, the spaces between the arms and the circle being pierced and the
whole surrounded with intertwining ribbons.
[Sidenote: Sé, Oporto.]
Another foundation of Count Henry's was the cathedral of Oporto, which,
judging from its plan, must have been very like that of Braga, but it
has been so horribly transformed during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries that nothing now remains of the original building but part of
the walls; for the fine western rose window must have been inserted
about the middle of the thirteenth century.
[Sidenote: Paço de Souza.]
Except the tragedy of Inez de Castro, there is no story in Portuguese
history more popular or more often represented in the engravings which
adorn a country inn dining-room than that of the surrender of Egas Moniz
to Alfonso VII. of Castile and Leon, when his pupil Affonso Henriques,
beginning to govern for himself, refused to fulfil the agreement[36]
whereby Egas had induced Alfonso to raise the siege of the castle of
Guimarães. And it is the fact that the church of São Salvador at Paço de
Souza contains his tomb, which adds not a little to the interest of the
best-preserved of the churches of the third type. Egas Moniz died in
1144, and at least the eastern part of the church may have existed
before then. The chancel, where the tomb first stood, is rather long and
has as usual a square east end while the two flanking chapels are
apsidal. The rest of the church, which may be a little later, as all the
larger arches are pointed, consists of a nave and aisles of three bays,
a transept, and a later tower standing on the westernmost bay of the
south aisle. The constructive scheme of the inside is interesting,
though a modern boarded vault has done its best to hide what it formerly
was. The piers are cross-shaped with a big semicircular shaft on each
face, and a large roll-moulding on each angle which is continued up
above the abacus to form an outer order for both the aisle and the main
arches, for large arches are carried across the nave and aisles from
north to south as if it had been intended to roof the church with an
ordinary groined vault. However, it is clear that this was not really
the case, and indeed it could hardly have been so as practically no
vaults had yet been built in the country except a few small barrels.
Indeed, though later the Portuguese became very skilful at vaulting,
they were at no time fond of a nave with high groined vault upheld by
flying buttresses, and low aisles, for there seems to have been never
more than three or four in the country, one of which, the choir of
Lisbon Cathedral, fell in 1755. Instead of groined vaults, barrel vaults
continued to be used where a stone roof was wanted, even till the middle
of the fourteenth century and later, long after they had been given up
elsewhere, but usually a roof of wood was thought sufficient, sometimes
resting, as was formerly the case here, on transverse arches thrown
across the nave and aisles. This was the system adopted in the
cathedrals of Braga and of Oporto before they were altered, in this
church and in that of Pombeiro not far off, and in that of Bayona near
Vigo in Galicia.[37] (Fig. 14.)
All the details are extremely refined--almost Byzantine in their
delicacy--especially the capitals, and the abaci against the walls,
which are carried along as a beautiful string course from pier to pier.
The bases too are all carved, some with animals' heads and some with
small seated figures at the angles, while the faces of the square blocks
below are covered with beautiful leaf ornament. But the most curious
thing in the whole church is the tomb of Egas Moniz himself.[38] (Fig.
15.) Till the eighteenth century it stood in the middle of the chancel,
then it was cut in two and put half against the wall of the south aisle,
and half against that of the north. It has on it three bands of
ornament. Of these the lowest is a rudely carved chevron with what are
meant for leaves between, the next, a band of small figures including
Egas on his deathbed and what is supposed to be three of his children
riding side by side on an elongated horse with a camel-like head, and
that on the top, larger figures showing him starting on his fateful
journey to the court of Alfonso of Castile and Leon and parting from his
weeping wife. Although very rude,--all the horses except that of Egas
himself having most unhorselike heads and legs,--some of the figures are
carved with a certain not unpleasing vigour, especially that of a
spear-bearing attendant who marches with swinging skirts behind his
master's horse. Outside the most remarkable feature is the fine west
door, with its eight shafts, four on each side, some round and some
octagonal, the octagonal being enriched with an ornament like the
English dog-tooth, with their finely carved cubical capitals and rich
abaci, and with the four orders of mouldings, two of which are enriched
with ball ornament. Outside, instead of a drip-mould, runs a broad band
covered with plaited ribbon. On the tympanum, which rests on corbels
supported on one side by the head of an ox and on the other by that of a
man, are a large circle enclosing a modern inscription, and two smaller
circles in which are the symbols of the Sun and Moon upheld by curious
little half-figures. The two apses east of the transept are of the
pattern universal in Southern Europe, being divided into three equal
parts by half-shafts with capitals and crowned with an overhanging
corbel table.
[Sidenote: Pombeiro.]
The abbey church of Pombeiro, near Guimarães, must once have been very
similar to São Salvador at Paço de Souza, except that the nave is a good
deal longer, and that it once had a large narthex, destroyed about a
hundred and fifty years ago by an abbot who wished to add to the west
front the two towers and square spires which still exist. So full was
this narthex of tombs that from the arms on them it had become a sort of
Heralds' College for the whole of the north of Portugal, but now only
two remain in the shallow renaissance porch between the towers. As at
Paço de Souza, the oldest part of the church is the east end, where the
two apses flanking the square chancel remain unaltered. They are divided
as usual by semicircular shafts bearing good romanesque capitals, and
crowned by a cornice of three small arches to each division, each cut
out of one stone, and resting on corbels and on the capitals. Of the
west front only the fine doorway is left unchanged; pointed in shape,
but romanesque in detail; having three of the five orders, carved one
with grotesque animals and two with leafage. Above the shallow porch is
a large round window with renaissance tracery, but retaining its
original framing of a round arch resting on tall shafts with romanesque
capitals. Everything else has been altered, the inside being covered
with elaborate rococo painted and gilt plaster-work, and the outside
disfigured by shapeless rococo windows.
Although some, and especially the last two of the buildings described
above belong, in part at least, to the time of transition from
romanesque to first pointed, and although the group of churches at
Coimbra are wholly romanesque, it would be better to have done with all
that can be ascribed to a period older than the beginning of the
Portuguese monarchy before following Affonso Henriques in his successful
efforts to extend his kingdom southwards to the Tagus.
Although Braga was the ecclesiastical capital of their fief,
[Illustration: FIG. 14.
CHURCH, PAÇO DE SOUZA.
NAVE.]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.
PAÇO DE SOUZA.
TOMB OF EGAS MONIZ.]
[Sidenote: Guimarães, Castle.]
Count Henry and his wife lived usually at Guimarães, a small town some
fifteen miles to the south. Towards the beginning of the tenth century
there died D. Hermengildo Gonçalves Mendes, count of Tuy and Porto, who
by his will left Vimaranes, as it was then called, to his widow,
Mumadona. About 927 she there founded a monastery and built a castle for
its defence, and this castle, which had twice suffered from Moslem
invaders, was restored or rebuilt by Count Henry, and there in 1111 was
born his son Affonso Henriques, who was later to become the first king
of the new and independent kingdom of Portugal. Henry died soon after,
in 1114, at Astorga, perhaps poisoned by his sister-in-law, Urraca,
queen of Castile and Leon, and for several years his widow governed his
lands as guardian for their son.
Thirteen years after Count Henry's death, in 1127, the castle was the
scene of the famous submission of Egas Moniz to the Spanish king, and
this, together with the fact that Affonso Henriques was born there, has
given it a place in the romantic history of Portugal which is rather
higher than what would seem due to a not very important building. The
castle stands to the north of the town on a height which commands all
the surrounding country. Its walls, defended at intervals by square
towers, are built among and on the top of enormous granite boulders, and
enclose an irregular space in which stands the keep. The inhabited part
of the castle ran along the north-western wall where it stood highest
above the land below, but it has mostly perished, leaving only a few
windows which are too large to date from the beginning of the twelfth
century. The square keep stands within a few feet of the western wall,
rises high above it, and was reached by a drawbridge from the walk on
the top of the castle walls. Its wooden floors are gone, its windows are
mere slits, and like the rest of the castle it owes its distinctive
appearance to the battlements which crown the whole building, and whose
merlons are plain blocks of stone brought to a sharp point at the top.
This feature, which is found in all the oldest Portuguese castles such
as that of Almourol on an island in the Tagus near Abrantes, and even on
some churches such as the old cathedral at Coimbra and the later church
at Leça de Balio, is one of the most distinct legacies left by the
Moors: here the front of each merlon is perpendicular to the top, but
more usually it is finished in a small sharp pyramid.
[Sidenote: Church.]
The other foundation of Mumadona, the monastery of Nossa Senhora and São
Salvador in the town of Guimarães, had since her day twice suffered
destruction at the hands of the Moors, once in 967 when the castle was
taken by Al-Coraxi, emir of Seville, and thirty years later when
Almansor[39] in 998 swept northwards towards Galicia, sacking and
burning as he went. At the time when Count Henry and Dona Teresa were
living in the castle, the double Benedictine monastery for men and women
had fallen into decay, and in 1109 Count Henry got a Papal Bull changing
the foundation into a royal collegiate church under a Dom Prior, and at
once began to rebuild it, a restoration which was not finished till
1172. Since then the church has been wholly and the cloisters partly
rebuilt by João I. at the end of the fourteenth century, but some arches
of the cloister and the entrance to the chapter-house may very likely
date from Count Henry's time. These cloisters occupy a very unusual
position. Starting from the north transept they run round the back of
the chancel, along the south side of the church outside the transept,
and finally join the church again near the west front. The large round
arches have chamfered edges; the columns are monoliths of granite about
eighteen inches thick; the bases and the abaci all romanesque in form,
though many of the capitals, as can be seen from their shape and
carving, are of the fourteenth or even fifteenth century, showing how
Juan Garcia de Toledo, who rebuilt the church for Dom João I., tried, in
restoring the cloister, to copy the already existing features and as
usual betrayed the real date by his later details. A few of the old
capitals still remain, and are of good romanesque form such as may be
seen in any part of southern France or in Spain.[40] To the
chapter-house, a plain oblong room with a panelled wood ceiling, there
leads, from the east cloister walk, an unaltered archway, flanked as
usual by two openings, one on either side. The doorway arch is plain,
slightly horseshoe in shape, and is carried by short strong half-columns
whose capitals are elaborately carved with animals and twisting
branches, the animals, as is often the case,
[Illustration: FIG. 16.
DOOR OF CHAPTER HOUSE, N.S. DA OLIVEIRA.
GUIMARÃES.]
[Illustration: FIG. 17.
CLOISTER.
LEÇA DO BALIO.]
being set back to back at the angles so that one head does duty for each
pair. Above is a large hollow hood-mould exactly similar to those which
enclose the side windows. The two lights of these windows are separated
by short coupled shafts whose capitals, derived from the Corinthian or
Composite, have stiff leaves covering the change from the round to the
square, and between them broad tendrils which end in very carefully cut
volutes at the angles. The heads themselves are markedly horseshoe in
shape, which at first sight suggests some Moorish influence, but in
everything else the details are so thoroughly Western, and by 1109 such
a long time, over a hundred years, had passed since the Moors had been
permanently expelled from that part of the country, that it were better
to see in these horseshoes an unskilled attempt at stilting, rather than
the work of some one familiar with Eastern forms. (Fig. 16.)
CHAPTER II
THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE SOUTH
In 1057 Fernando, king of Castile, Leon and Galicia crossed the Douro,
took Lamego, where the lower part of the tower is all that is left of
the romanesque cathedral, and is indeed the only romanesque tower in the
country. Vizeu fell soon after, and seven years later he advanced his
borders to the Mondego by the capture of Coimbra. The Mondego, the only
large river whose source and mouth are both in Portugal, long remained
the limit of the Christian dominion, and nearly a hundred years were to
pass before any further advance was made. In 1147 Affonso Henriques, who
had but lately assumed the title of king, convinced at last that he was
wasting his strength in trying to seize part of his cousin's dominions
of Galicia, determined to turn south and extend his new kingdom in that
direction. Accordingly in March of that year he secretly led his army
against Santarem, one of the strongest of the Moorish cities standing
high above the Tagus on an isolated hill. The vezir, Abu-Zakariah, was
surprised before he could provision the town, so that the garrison were
able to offer but a feeble resistance, and the Christians entered after
the attack had lasted only a few days. Before starting the king had
vowed that if successful he would found a monastery in token of his
gratitude, and though its vast domestic buildings are now but barracks
and court-houses, the great Cistercian abbey of Alcobaça still stands to
show how well his vow was fulfilled.
Although Santarem was taken in 1147, the first stone of Alcobaça was not
laid till 1153, and the building was carried out very slowly and in a
style, imported directly from France, quite foreign to any previous work
in Portugal. It were better, therefore, before coming to this, the
largest church and the richest foundation in the whole country, to have
done with the other churches which though contemporary with Alcobaça
are not the work of French but of native workmen, or at least of such as
had not gone further than to Galicia for their models.
[Sidenote: Sé, Lisbon.]
The same year that saw the fall of Santarem saw also the more important
capture of Lisbon. Taken by the Moors in 714, it had long been their
capital, and although thrice captured by the Christians had always been
recovered. In this enterprise Affonso Henriques was helped by a body of
Crusaders, mostly English, who sailing from Dartmouth were persuaded by
the bishop of Oporto to begin their Holy War in Portugal, and when
Lisbon fell, one of them, Gilbert of Hastings, was rewarded by being
made its first bishop. Of the cathedral, begun three years later, in
1150, little but the plan of the nave and transept has survived. Much
injured by an earthquake in 1344, the whole choir was rebuilt on a
French model by Affonso IV. only to be again destroyed in 1755. The
original plan must have been very like that of Braga, an aisleless
transept, a nave and aisles of six bays, and two square towers beyond
with a porch between. The two towers are now very plain with large
belfry windows near the top, but there are traces here and there of old
built-up round-headed openings which show that the walls at least are
really old. The outer arch of the porch has been rebuilt since the
earthquake, but the original door remains inside, with a carved
hood-mould, rich abacus, and four orders of mouldings enriched with
small balls in their hollows. The eight plain shafts stand on unusually
high pedestals and have rather long capitals, some carved with flat
acanthus leaves and some with small figures of men and animals.
Like that of the cathedral of Coimbra, which was being built about the
same time, the inside is clearly founded on the great cathedral of
Santiago, itself a copy of S. Sernin at Toulouse, and quite uninfluenced
by the French design of Alcobaça. The piers are square with a half-shaft
on each face, the arches are round, and the aisles covered with plain
unribbed fourpart vaulting, while the main aisle is roofed with a round
barrel. Instead of the large open gallery, which at Santiago allows the
quadrant vault supporting the central barrel to be seen, there is here a
low blind arcade of small round arches. Unfortunately, when restored
after the disaster of 1755 the whole inside was plastered, all the
capitals both of the main
[Illustration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, LISBON]
piers and of the gallery were converted into a semblance of gilt
Corinthian capitals, and large skylights were cut through the vault.
Only the inside of the low octagonal lantern remains to show that the
church must have been at least as interesting, if not more so, than the
Sé Velha or old cathedral at Coimbra. If the nave has suffered such a
transformation the fourteenth-century choir has been even worse
treated. The whole upper part, which once was as high as the top of the
lantern, fell and was re-roofed in a most miserable manner, having only
the ambulatory and its chapels uninjured. But these, the cloister and a
rather fine chapel to the north-west of the nave, had better be left for
another chapter.[41]
[Sidenote: Sé Velha, Coimbra.]
[Illustration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, COIMBRA]
Smaller but much better preserved than Lisbon Cathedral is the Sé Velha
or old cathedral of Coimbra. According to the local tradition, the
cathedral is but a mosque turned into a church after the Christian
conquest, and it may well be that in the time of Dom Sesnando, the first
governor of Coimbra--a Moor who, becoming a Christian, was made count of
Coimbra by King Fernando, and whose tomb, broken open by the French, may
still be seen outside the north wall of the church--the chief mosque of
the town was used as the cathedral. But although an Arab inscription[42]
is built into the outer wall of the nave, there can be no doubt that the
present building is as Christian in plan and design as any church can
be. If the nave of the cathedral of Lisbon is like Santiago in
construction, the nave here is, on a reduced scale, undoubtedly a copy
of Santiago not only constructively but also in its general details. The
piers are shorter but of the same plan, the great triforium gallery
looks towards the nave, as at Santiago and at Toulouse, by a double
opening whose arches spring from single shafts at the sides to rest on
double shafts in the centre, both being enclosed under one larger arch,
while the barrel vault and the supporting vaults of the gallery are
exactly similar. Now Santiago was practically finished in 1128, and
there still exists a book called the _Livro Preto_ in which is given a
list of the gifts made by Dom Miguel, who ruled the see of Coimbra from
1162 to 1176, towards the building and adorning of the church. Nothing
is said as to when the church was begun, but we are told that Dom Miguel
gave 124 morabitinos to Master Bernardo[43] who had directed the
building for ten years; the presents too of bread and wine made to his
successor Soeiro are also mentioned, so that it seems probable that the
church may have been begun soon after Dom Miguel became bishop, and that
it was finished some time before the end of his episcopate.
Though the nave is like that of Santiago, the transepts and choir are
much simpler. There the transept is long and has an aisle on each side;
here it is short and aisleless. There the choir is deep with a
surrounding aisle and radiating chapels, here it is a simple apse
flanked by two smaller apses. Indeed throughout the whole of the
Peninsula the French east end was seldom used except in churches of a
distinctly foreign origin, such as Santiago, Leon or Toledo in Spain, or
Alcobaça in Portugal, and so it is natural here to find Bernardo
rejecting the elaboration and difficult construction of his model, and
returning to the simpler plan which had already been so often used in
the north. (Fig. 18.)
Inside the piers are square with four half-shafts, one of which runs up
in front to carry the barrel vault, which is about sixty feet high. All
the capitals are well carved, and a moulded string which runs along
under the gallery is curiously returned against the vaulting shafts as
if it had once been carried round them and had afterwards been cut off.
Almost the only light in the nave comes from small openings in the
galleries, the aisle windows being nearly all blocked up by later
altars, and from a large window at the west end. The transept on the
other hand is very light, with several windows at either end, and eight
in the square lantern, so that the effect is extremely good of the dark
nave followed by the brilliant transept and ending in a great carved and
gilt reredos. This reredos, reaching up to the blue-and-gold apse vault,
was given to the cathedral in 1508 by Bishop D. Jorge d'Almeida, and was
the work of 'Master Vlimer a Framengo,' that is, a Fleming, and of his
partner, João D'ipri, or of Ypres, two of the many foreigners who at
that time worked for King D. Manoel. There are several picturesque tombs
in the church, especially two in the north-east corner of the transept,
whose recesses still retain their original tile decoration. Later tiles
still cover the aisle walls and altar recesses, but beautiful examples
of the Mozárabe or Moorish style which once covered the piers of the
nave, as well as the wooden choir gallery with its finely panelled under
side, have been swept away by a recent well-meaning if mistaken
restoration. The outside of the church is more unusual than the inside.
The two remaining original apses are much hidden by the sacristy, built
probably by Bishop Jorge de Castello Branco in 1593, but in their
details they are greatly like those of the church of San Isidoro at
Leon, and being like it built of fine limestone, are much more
delicately ornamented than are those of any of the granite churches
further north. The side aisles are but little lower than the central
aisle or than the transepts, and are all crowned with battlements very
like those on the castle of Guimarães. The buttresses are only shallow
strips, which in the transepts are united by round arches, but in the
aisles end among the battlements in a larger merlon. The west front is
the most striking and original part of the whole church. Below, at the
sides, a perfectly plain window lights the aisles, some feet above it
runs a string course, on which stands a small two-light window for the
gallery, flanked by larger blind arches, and then many feet of blank
walling ending in battlements. Between these two aisle ends there
projects about ten feet a large doorway or porch. This doorway is of
considerable size; some of its eight shafts are curiously twisted and
carved, its capitals are very refined and elaborate, and its arches well
moulded with, as at Lisbon, small bosses in the hollows. The abacus is
plain, and the broad pilasters which carry the outermost order are
beautifully carved on the broader face with a small running pattern of
leaves. The same 'black book' which tells of the bishop's gifts to the
church, tells how a certain Master Robert came four times from Lisbon to
perfect the work of the door, and how each time he received seven
morabitinos, besides ten for his expenses, as well as bread, wine and
meat for his four apprentices and food for his four asses. It is not
often that the name of a man who worked on a mediæval church has been
so preserved, and it is worth noticing that the west door at Lisbon has
on it exactly the same ball ornament as that with which Master Robert
and his four helpers enriched the archway here. Above the door runs an
arched corbel table on which stands the one large window which the
church possesses. This window,[44] which is much more like a door than a
window, is deeply recessed within four orders of mouldings, resting on
shafts and capitals, four on each side, all very like the door below.
Above, the whole projection is carried up higher than the battlements in
an oblong embattled belfry, having two arched openings in front and one
at the side, added in 1837 to take the place of a detached belfry which
once stood to the south of the church, and to hold some bells brought
from Thomar after that rich convent had been suppressed. (Fig. 19.)
Of the two other doorways, that at the end of the north transept, which
has a simple archway on either side, and is surmounted by an arcade of
five arches, has been altered in the early sixteenth century with good
details of the first French renaissance, while the larger doorway in the
third bay of the nave has at the same time been rebuilt as a beautiful
three-storied porch, reaching right up to the battlements. To the south
lie the cloisters, added about the end of the thirteenth century, but
now very much mutilated. They are of the usual Portuguese type of
vaulted cloister, a large arch, here pointed, enclosing two round arches
below with a circular opening above.
The central lantern--the only romanesque example surviving except that
of Lisbon Cathedral--is square, and not as there octagonal. It has two
round-headed windows on each side whose sills are but little above the
level of the flat roof--for, like almost all vaulted churches in
Portugal, the roofs are flat and paved--and is now crowned by a
picturesque dome covered with many-coloured tiles.
Somewhat older than the cathedral, but not unlike it, was the church of
São Christovão now destroyed, while São Thiago still has a west door
whose shafts are even more elaborately carved and twisted than are those
at the Sé Velha.[45]
There is more than one building, such as the Templar
[Illustration: FIG. 18.
COIMBRA.
SÉ VELHA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.
COIMBRA.
WEST FRONT OF SÉ VELHA.]
church at Thomar, older than the cathedral of Evora, and indeed older
than the Sé Velha at Coimbra; but Evora, except that its arches are
pointed instead of round, is so clearly derived directly from the Sé at
Lisbon that it must be mentioned next in order.
[Sidenote: Sé, Evora.]
Although the great province of Alemtejo, which reaches from the south
bank of the Tagus to within about twenty-five or thirty miles of the
Southern Sea, had more than once been entered by the victorious
Portuguese king Affonso Henriques, it was not till after his death in
1185, indeed not till the beginning of the thirteenth century, that it
could be called a part of Portugal. As early as 1139 Affonso Henriques
had met and defeated five kings at Ourique not far from Beja, a victory
which was long supposed to have secured his country's independence, and
which was therefore believed to have been much greater and more
important than was really the case.[46] Evora, the Roman capital of the
district, did not fall into the hands of the Christians till 1166, when
it is said to have been taken by stratagem by Giraldo Sem Pavor, or 'the
Fearless,' an outlaw who by this capture regained the favour of the
king. But soon the Moors returned, first in 1174 when they won back the
whole of the province, and again in 1184 when Dom Sancho, Affonso's son,
utterly defeated and killed their leader, Yusuf. Yusuf's son, Yakub,
returned to meet defeat in 1188 and 1190 when he was repulsed from
Thomar, but when he led a third army across the Straits in 1192 he found
that the Crusaders who had formerly helped Dom Sancho had sailed on to
Palestine, and with his huge army was able to drive the Christians back
beyond the Tagus and compel the king to come to terms, nor did the
Christian borders advance again for several years. It is said that the
cathedral begun in 1185 or 1186[47] was dedicated in 1204, so it must
have been still incomplete when Yakub's successful invasion took place,
and only finished after the Christians had again recovered the town,
though it is difficult to see how the church can have been dedicated in
that year as the town remained in Moorish power till after Dom Sancho's
death in 1211. Except the Sé Velha at Coimbra, Evora is the
best-preserved of all the older Portuguese cathedrals, and must always
have been one of the largest. The plan is evidently founded on those of
the cathedrals of Lisbon and Braga; a nave of eight bays 155 feet long
by 75 wide, leads to an aisleless transept 125 by 30, with lantern at
the crossing, to the east of which were five chapels. Unfortunately in
1718 the Capella Mor or main chancel was pulled down as being too small
for the dignity of an archiepiscopal see, and a new one of many-coloured
marbles built in its stead, measuring 75 feet by 30.[48]
[Illustration: PLAN OF SÉ, EVORA]
To the west are two large square towers; to the south a cloister added
in 1376; and at the end of the north transept a chapel built at the end
of the fifteenth century and entered by a large archway well carved with
rich early renaissance ornament. If there is no advance from the
romanesque plan of older churches, there is none in construction. All
the arches are pointed, but that is the only direction in which any
change has been made. The piers are all cross-shaped with a large
half-shaft on each of the four main faces and a smaller round shaft in
each angle. The capitals have square moulded abaci, and are rather
rudely carved with budlike curled leaves; the pointed arches of the
arcade are well moulded, and above them runs a continuous triforium
gallery like that in the nave at Lisbon, but with small pointed arches.
The main vault is a pointed barrel with bold ribs; it is held up by a
half-barrel over the aisles, which have groined vaults with very large
transverse arches. The galleries over the aisles are lit by small
pointed windows of two lights with a cusped circle between, but except
in the lantern which has similar windows, in the transept ends and the
west front, these are the only original openings which survive. (Fig.
20.) Both transepts have large rose windows, the northern filled with
tracery, like that, common in Champagne, radiating towards and not from
the centre. The southern is more interesting. The whole, well moulded,
is enclosed in a curious square framing. In the centre a doubly cusped
circle is surrounded by twelve radiating openings, whose trefoiled heads
abut against twelve other broad trefoils, which are rather curiously run
into the mouldings of the containing circle. Over the west porch is a
curious eight-light window. There are four equal two-light openings
below; on the two in the centre rests a large plain circle, and the
space between it and the enclosing arch is very clumsily filled by a rib
which, springing from the apex of either light, runs concentrically with
the enclosing arch till it meets the larger circle. The whole building
is surmounted by brick battlements, everything else being of granite,
resting on a good trefoil corbel table, and, as the roofs are perfectly
flat, there are no gables.
The two western towers are very picturesque. The northern, without
buttresses, has its several windows arranged without any regard to
symmetry, and finishes in a round spire covered with green and white
glazed tiles. In the southern plain buttresses run up to the belfry
stage which has round-headed openings, and above it is a low octagonal
spire set diagonally and surrounded by eight pinnacles.
The most unusual feature of the whole cathedral is the fine octagonal
lantern at the crossing. Each face has a two-light window, pointed
outside, with a round-headed arch within, leaving a passage between the
two walls. At each angle are plain buttresses, weathered back a few feet
below the corbel table, above which stand eight octagonal pinnacles each
with eight smaller pinnacles surrounding a conical stone spire. The
whole lantern is covered by a steep stone roof which, passing
imperceptibly from the octagonal to the round, is covered, as are all
the other pinnacles, with scales carved in imitation of tiles. Inside
the well-moulded vaulting ribs do not rise higher than the windows,
leaving therefore a large space between the vault and the outer stone
capping. (Fig. 21.)
Lanterns, especially octagonal lanterns, are particularly common in
Spain, and at Salamanca and its neighbourhood were very early developed
and attained to a remarkable degree of perfection before the end of the
twelfth century. It is strange, therefore, that they should be so rare
in Portugal where there seem now to be only three: one, square, at
Coimbra, an octagonal at Lisbon, and one here, where however there is
nothing of the internal dome which is so striking at Salamanca. Probably
this lantern was one of the enrichments added to the church by Bishop
Durando who died in 1283, for the capitals of the west door look
considerably later.
This door is built entirely of white marble with shafts which look, as
do those of the south transept door, almost like Cipollino, taken
perhaps from some Roman building. It has well-moulded arches and abaci;
capitals richly carved with realistic foliage, and on each side six of
the apostles, all very like each other, large-headed, long-bearded, and
long-haired, with rather good drapery but bodies and legs which look far
too short. St. Peter alone, with short curly hair and beard, has any
individuality, but is even less prepossessing than his companions. They
are, however, among the earliest specimens of large figure sculpture
which survive, and by their want of grace make it easier to understand
why Dom Manoel employed so many foreign artists in the early years of
the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.
EVORA.
SÉ. INTERIOR.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21.
EVORA.
SÉ. FROM CLOISTERS.
SHEWING CENTRAL LANTERN.]
The large cloister to the south must once have been one of the best in
the country. Here the main arches alone survive, having lost whatever
subsidiary arches or tracery they may once have contained, but higher up
under the corbel table are large open circles, not as everywhere else
enclosed under the large arch, but quite independent of it. Many of
these circles are still filled with thin slabs of granite all pierced
with most beautiful patterns, some quite Gothic, but the majority almost
Moorish in design, not unlike the slabs in the circles over the cloister
arcades at Alcobaça, but though this is probably only a coincidence,
still more like those at Tarragona in Cataluña. (Fig. 22.)
[Sidenote: Templar Church, Thomar.]
Like the cathedral at Evora, some of the arches in the Templar Church at
Thomar are pointed, yet like it again, it is entirely romanesque both in
construction and in detail.
The Knights Templars were already established in Portugal in 1126. With
their headquarters at Soure, a little to the south of Coimbra, they had
been foremost in helping Affonso Henriques in his attacks on the Moors,
and when Santerem was taken in 1147 they were given the ecclesiastical
superiority of the town. This led to a quarrel with Dom Gilberto, the
English bishop of Lisbon, which was settled in 1150, when Dom Gualdim
Paes, the most famous member the order ever produced in Portugal, was
chosen to be Grand Master. He at once gave up all Santarem to the
bishop, except the church of São Thiago, and received instead the
territory of Cêras some forty or fifty miles to the north-east. There on
the banks of the river Nabão, on a site famous for the martyrdom under
Roman rule of Sant' Iria or Irene, Dom Gualdim built a church, and began
a castle which was soon abandoned for a far stronger position on a steep
hill some few hundred yards to the west across the river. This second
castle, begun in 1160, still survives in part but in a very ruinous
condition; the walls and the keep alike have lost their battlements and
their original openings, though a little further west, and once forming
part of the fortified enclosure, the church, begun in 1162, still
remains as a high tower-like bastion crowned with battlements. Dom
Gualdim had the laudable habit of carving inscriptions telling of any
striking event, so that we may still read, not only how the castle was
founded, but how 'In the year of the Era of Cæsar, 1228 (that is 1190
A.D., on the 3rd of July), came the King of Morocco, leading four
hundred thousand horsemen and five hundred thousand foot and besieged
this castle for six days, destroying everything he found outside the
walls. God delivered from his hands the castle, the aforesaid Master and
his brethren. The same king returned to his country with innumerable
loss of men and of animals.'[49] Doubtless the size of Yakub the
Almohade leader's army is here much exaggerated, but that he was forced
to retire from Thomar, and by pestilence from Santarem is certain, and
though he made a more successful invasion two years later the Moors
never again gained a footing to the north of the Tagus.
Dom Gualdim's church, since then enlarged by the addition of a nave to
the west, was originally a polygon of sixteen sides with a circular
barrel-vaulted aisle surrounding a small octagon, which with its two
stories of slightly pointed arches contains the high altar.[50] (Fig.
23.)
The round-headed windows come up high, and till it was so richly adorned
by Dom Manoel during his grand mastership of the Order of Christ more
than three hundred years later, the church must have been extremely
simple. Outside the most noticeable feature is the picturesque grouping
of the bell-towers and gable, added probably in the seventeenth century,
which now rise on the eastern side of the polygon, and which, seen above
the orange and medlar trees of a garden reaching eastwards towards the
castle, forms one of the most pleasing views in the whole country.
[Sidenote: São João de Alporão, Santarem.]
If Evora and the Templar church at Thomar show one form of transition,
where the arches are pointed, but the construction and detail is
romanseque, São João de Alporão at Santarem shows another, where the
construction is Gothic but the arches are still all round.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.
EVORA.
SÉ. CLOISTER.]
[Illustration: FIG. 23.
THOMAR.
TEMPLARS' CHURCH.]
This church is said to stand on the site of a mosque and to have been at
first called Al Koran, since corrupted into Alporão, but the present
building can hardly have been begun till the early years of the
thirteenth century. The church consists of an aisleless nave with good
groined vaulting and a five-sided apsidal chancel. The round-arched west
door stands under a pointed gable, but seems to have lost by decay and
consequent restoration whatever ornament its rather flat mouldings may
once have had. Above is a good wheel window, with a cusped circle in the
centre, surrounded by eight radiating two-arched lights separated by
eight radiating columns. The two arches of each light spring from a
detached capital which seems to have lost its shaft, but as there is no
trace of bases for these missing shafts on the central circle they
probably never existed. All the other nave windows are mere slits; and
above them runs a rich corbel table of slightly stilted arches with
their edges covered with ball ornament resting on projecting corbels. In
the apse the five windows are tall and narrow with square heads, and the
corbel table of a form common in Portugal but rare elsewhere, where each
corbel is something like the bows of a boat.[51]
The inside, now turned into a museum, is much more interesting. The
chancel is entered, under a circular cusped window, by a wide round
arch, whose outer moulding is curiously carried by shafts with capitals
set across the angle as if to carry a vaulting rib; in the chancel
itself the walls are double, the outer having the plain square-headed
windows seen outside, and the inner very elegant two-light round-headed
openings resting on very thin and delicate shafts, with a doubly cusped
circle above. The vault, whose wall arches are stilted and slightly
pointed, has strong well-moulded ribs springing from the well-wrought
capitals of tall angle shafts. It will be seen that this is a very great
advance on any older vaulting, since previously, except in the French
Church at Alcobaça, groined vaults had only been attempted over square
spaces. The finest of the many objects preserved in the museum is the
tomb of Dom Duarte de Menezes, who was killed in Africa in 1464 and
buried in the church of São Francisco, whence, São Francisco having
become a cavalry stable, it was brought here not many years ago. (Fig.
24.)
Such are, except for the church at Idanha a Velha and that of Castro de
Avelans near Braganza, nearly all the early buildings in the country.
Castro de Avelans is interesting and unique as having on the outside
brick arcades, like those on the many Mozarabic churches at Toledo, a
form of decoration not found elsewhere in Portugal. The church of
Alcobaça is of course, in part, a good deal older than are some of those
mentioned above; but the whole, the romanesque choir as well as the
early pointed nave, is so unlike anything that has come before or
anything that has come after, that it seemed better to take it by itself
without regard to strict chronological order.
[Illustration: PLAN OF ALCOBAÇA]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.
SANTAREM.
APSE, SÃO JOÃO DE ALPORÃO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.
TRANSEPT.
ALCOBAÇA.]
[Sidenote: Alcobaça.]
The first stone was laid in 1158, but the church was barely finished
when King Sancho I. died in 1211 and was not dedicated till 1220, while
the monastic buildings were not ready till 1223, when the monks migrated
from Sta. Maria a Velha, their temporary home. The abbey was immensely
wealthy: it had complete jurisdiction over fourteen villages whose
inhabitants were in fact its serfs: it or its abbot was visitor to all
Benedictine abbeys in the country and was, for over three hundred years,
till the reign of Cardinal King Henry, the superior of the great
military Order of Christ. It early became one of the first centres of
learning in Portugal, having begun to teach in 1269. It helped Dom Diniz
to found the University of Lisbon, now finally settled at Coimbra, with
presents of books and of money, and it only acknowledged the king in so
far as to give him a pair of boots or shoes when he chanced to come to
Alcobaça. All these possessions and privileges of the monks were
confirmed by Dom João IV. (1640-56) after the supremacy of the Spaniards
had come to an end, and were still theirs when Beckford paid them his
memorable visit near the end of the eighteenth century and was so
splendidly entertained with feastings and even with plays and operas
performed by some of the younger brothers. Much harm was of course done
by the French invasion, and at last in 1834 the brothers were turned
out, their house made into barracks, and their church and cloister left
to fall into decay--a decay from which they are only being slowly
rescued at the present time.
The first abbot, Ranulph, was sent by St. Bernard of Clairvaux himself
at the king's special request, and he must have brought with him the
plan of the abbey or at least of the church. Nearly all Cistercian
churches, which have not been altered, are of two types which resemble
each other in being very simple, having no towers and very little
ornament of any kind. In the simpler of these forms, the one which
prevailed in England, the transept is aisleless, with five or more
chapels, usually square, to the east, of which the largest, in the
centre, contains the main altar. Such are Fontenay near Monbart and
Furness in Lancashire, and even Melrose, though there the church has
been rebuilt more or less on the old plan but with a wealth of detail
and size of window quite foreign to the original rule. In the other, a
more complex type, the transept may have a western aisle, and instead of
a plain square chancel there is an apse with surrounding aisle and
beyond it a series of four-sided chapels. Pontigny, famous for the
shelter it gave to Thomas-à-Becket, and begun in 1114, is of this type,
and so was Clairvaux itself, begun in 1115 and rebuilt in the eighteenth
century. Now this is the type followed by Alcobaça, and it is worthy of
notice that, as far as the plan of choir and transept goes, Alcobaça and
Clairvaux are practically identical. Pontigny has a choir of three bays
between the transept and the apse and seven encircling chapels;
Clairvaux had, and Alcobaça still has, a choir of but one bay and nine
instead of seven chapels. Both had long naves, Clairvaux of eleven and
Alcobaça of thirteen bays, but at the west end there is a change, due
probably to the length of time which passed before it was reached, for
there is no trace of the large porch or narthex found in most early
Cistercian churches.
The church is by far the largest in Portugal. It is altogether about 365
feet long, the nave alone being about 250 feet by 75, while the transept
measures about 155 feet from north to south. Except in the choir all the
aisles are of the same height, about 68 feet.
The east end is naturally the oldest part and most closely resembled its
French original; the eight round columns of the apse have good plain
capitals like those found in so many early Cistercian churches, even in
Italy;[52] the round-headed clerestory windows are high and narrow, and
there are well-developed flying buttresses. Unfortunately all else has
been changed: in the apse itself everything up to the clerestory level
has been hidden by two rows of classic columns and a huge reredos, and
all the choir chapels have been filled with rococo woodwork and gilding,
the work of an Englishman, William Elsden, who was employed to beautify
the church in 1770.[53] Why except for the choir aisle, and the chapels
in choir and transept, the whole church should be of the same height, it
is difficult to say, for such a method of building was unknown in France
and equally unknown in Spain or Portugal. Possibly by the time the nave
was reached the Frenchmen who had planned the church were dead, and the
native workmen, being quite unused to such a method of construction, for
all the older vaulted churches have their central barrel upheld by the
half-barrel vault of the galleries, could think of no other way of
supporting the groining of the main aisle. They had of course the flying
buttresses of the choir apse to guide them, but there the points of
support come so much closer together, and the weight to be upheld is
consequently so much less than could be the case in the nave, that they
may well have thought that to copy them was too dangerous an experiment
as well as being too foreign to their traditional manner of
construction.[54] Whatever may be the reason, the west aisle of the
transept and the side aisles of the nave rise to the full height of the
building. Their arches are naturally very much stilted, and with the
main vault rest on piers of quite unusual size and strength. The
transverse arches are so large as almost to hide the diagonal ribs and
to give the impression that the nave has, after all, a pointed barrel
vault. The piers are throughout cross-shaped with a half-shaft on each
cardinal face: at the crossing there is also a shaft in the angle, but
elsewhere this shaft is replaced by a kind of corbel capital[55] at the
very top which carries the diagonal ribs--another proof, as is the size
of the transverse arches, that such a ribbed vault was still a
half-understood novelty. The most peculiar point about nave piers is the
way in which not only the front vaulting shafts but even that portion of
the piers to which they are attached is, except in the two western bays,
cut off at varying heights from the ground. In the six eastern bays,
where the corbels are all at the same level, this was done to leave room
for the monks' stalls,[56] but it is difficult to see why, in the case
of the following five piers, against which, as at Clairvaux, stood the
stalls of the lay brothers, the level of the corbels should vary so
much. Now all stalls are gone and the church is very bare and desolate,
with nothing but the horrible reredos to detract from that severity and
sternness which was what St. Bernard wished to see in all churches of
the Order. (Fig. 25.)
The small chapel to the west of the south transept is the only part of
the church, except the later sixteenth-century sacristy, where there is
any richness of detail, and there it is confined to the tombs of some of
the earlier kings and queens, and especially to those of D. Pedro and
the unfortunate Inez de Castro which belongs of course to a much later
date.
The windows which are high up the aisle walls are large, round-headed,
and perfectly plain. At the transept ends are large round windows filled
with plain uncusped circles, and there is another over the west door
filled with a rococo attempt at Gothic tracery, which agrees well with
the two domed western towers whose details are not even good rococo.
Between these towers still opens the huge west door, a very plainly
moulded pointed arch of seven orders, resting on the simple capitals of
sixteen shafts: a form of door which became very common throughout the
fourteenth century. The great cloister was rebuilt later in the time of
Dom Diniz, leaving only the chapter-house entrance, which seems even
older than the nave. As usual there is one door in the centre, with a
large two-light opening on each side: all the arches are round and well
moulded, and the capitals simply carved with stiff foliage showing a
gradual transition from the earlier romanesque. In the monastery itself,
now a barrack, there are still a few vaulted passages which must belong
to the original building, but nearly all else has been rebuilt, the main
cloister in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries and the greater part
of the domestic buildings in the eighteenth, so that except for the
cloister and sacristy, which will be spoken of later on, there is little
worthy of attention.[57]
Now none of these buildings may show any very great originality or
differ to any marked degree from contemporary buildings in Spain or even
in the south of France, yet to a great extent they fixed a type which in
many ways was followed down to the end of the Gothic period. The plan of
Braga, Pombeiro, Evora or Coimbra is reproduced with but little change
at Guarda, and if the western towers be omitted, at Batalha, some two
hundred years later, and the flat paved roofs of Evora occur again at
Batalha and at Guarda. The barrel-vaulted nave also long survived, being
found as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century in the church
of Santa Clara at Coimbra, and even about seventy years later in the
church of the Knights of São Thiago at Palmella.
The battlements also of the castle at Guimarães are found not only at
Coimbra, but as late as 1336 in the church of Leça do Balio near Oporto,
and, modified in shape by the renaissance even in the sixteenth-century
churches of Villa do Conde and of Azurara.
Although the distinctively French features of Alcobaça seem to have had
but little influence on the further development of building in Portugal,
a few peculiarities are found there which are repeated again. For
example, the unusually large transverse arches of the nave occur at
Batalha, and the large plain western door is clearly related to such
later doors as those at Leça do Balio or of São Francisco at Oporto.
Again the vaulting of the apse in São João de Alporão is arranged very
much in the way which was almost universal during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in the chancels and side chapels of many a church,
such as Santa Maria do Olival at Thomar, or the Graça at Santarem
itself, and the curious boat-like corbels of São João are found more
than once, as in the choir of the old church, formerly the cathedral of
Silves, far south in the Algarve. The large round windows at Evora do
not seem to be related to the window at São João, but to be of some
independent origin; probably, like the similar windows at Leça and at
Oporto, they too belong to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.
CHAPTER III
THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES DOWN TO THE BATTLE OF
ALJUBARROTA
In Portugal the twelfth century is marked by a very considerable
activity in building, but the thirteenth, which in France and England
saw Gothic architecture rise to a height of perfection both in
construction and in ornament which was never afterwards excelled, when
more great churches and cathedrals were built than almost ever before or
since, seems here to have been the least productive period in the whole
history of the country. In the thirteenth century, indeed, Portugal
reached its widest European limits, but the energies, alike of the kings
and of the people, seem to have been expended rather in consolidating
their conquests and in cultivating and inhabiting the large regions of
land left waste by the long-continued struggle. Although Dom Sancho's
kingdom only extended from the Minho to the Tagus, in the early years of
the thirteenth century the rich provinces of Beira, and still more of
Estremadura, were very thinly peopled: the inhabitants lived only in
walled towns, and their one occupation was fighting, and plunder almost
their only way of gaining a living. It is natural then that so few
buildings should remain which date from the reigns of Dom Sancho's
successors, Affonso II. (1211-1223), Sancho II. (1223-1248), and Affonso
III. (1248-1279): the necessary churches and castles had been built at
once after the conquest, and the people had neither the leisure nor the
means to replace them by larger and more refined structures as was being
done elsewhere. Of course some churches described in the last chapter
may be actually of that period though belonging artistically and
constructionally to an earlier time, as for instance a large part of the
cathedral of Evora or the church of São João at Santarem.
[Sidenote: São Francisco, Guimarães.]
The Franciscans had been introduced into Portugal by Dona Sancha, the
daughter of Dom Sancho I., and houses were built for them by Dona
Urraca, the wife of Dom Affonso II., at Lisbon and at Guimarães. Their
church at Guimarães has been very much altered at different times,
mostly in the eighteenth century, but the west door may very well belong
to Dona Urraca's building. It has a drip-mould covered with closely set
balls, and four orders of mouldings of which the second is a broad
chamfer with a row of flat four-leaved flowers; the abacus is well
moulded, but the capitals, which are somewhat bell-shaped, have the bell
covered with rude animals or foliage which are still very romanesque in
design. The entrance to the chapter-house is probably not much later in
date: from the south walk of the simple but picturesque renaissance
cloister a plain pointed doorway leads into the chapter-house, with, on
either side, an opening of about equal size and shape. In these openings
there stand three pairs of round coupled shafts with plain bases, rudely
carved capitals and large square overhanging abaci, from which spring
two pointed arches moulded only on the under side: resting on these, but
connected with them or with the enclosing arch by no moulding or fillet,
is a small circle, moulded like the arches only on one side and
containing a small quatrefoil.[58] This is one of the earliest attempts
at window tracery in the country, for the west window at Evora seems
later, but like it, it shows that tracery was not really understood in
the country, and that the Portuguese builders were not yet able so to
unite the different parts as to make such a window one complete and
beautiful whole. Indeed so unsuccessful are their attempts throughout
that whenever, as at Batalha, a better result is seen, it may be put
down to foreign influence. Much better as a rule are the round windows,
mostly of the fourteenth century, but they are all very like one
another, and are probably mostly derived from the same source, perhaps
from one of the transept windows at Evora, or from the now empty circle
over the west door at Lisbon.
[Sidenote: São Francisco, Santarem.]
Much more refined than this granite church at Guimarães has been São
Francisco at Santarem, now unfortunately degraded into being the stable
of a cavalry barracks. There the best-preserved and most interesting
part is the west door, which does not lead directly into the church but
into a low porch or narthex. The narthex itself has central and side
aisles, all of the same height, is two bays in length and is covered by
a fine strong vault resting on short clustered piers.[59] The doorway
itself, which is not acutely pointed, stands under a gable which reaches
up to the plain battlemented parapet of the flat narthex roof. There are
four shafts on each side with a ring-moulding rather less than half-way
up, which at once distinguishes them from any romanesque predecessors;
the capitals are round with a projecting moulding half-way up and
another one at the top with a curious projection or claw to unite the
round cap and the square moulded abacus. Of the different orders of the
arch, all well moulded, the outer has a hood with billet-mould; the
second a well-developed chevron or zigzag; and the innermost a series of
small horseshoes, which like the chevron stretch across the hollow so as
to hold in the large roll at the angle.[60] (Fig. 26.)
[Sidenote: Santa Maria dos Olivaes, Thomar.]
In a previous chapter the building of a church at Thomar by Dom Gualdim
Paes, Grand Master of the Templars, has been mentioned. Of this church
and the castle built at the same time, both of which stood on the east
or flat bank of the river Nabão, nothing now remains except perhaps the
lower part of the detached bell-tower. This church, Santa Maria dos
Olivaes, was the Matriz or mother church of all those held, first by the
Templars and later by their successors, the Order of Christ, not only in
Portugal but even in Africa, Brazil, and in India. Of so high a dignity
it is scarcely worthy, being but a very simple building neither large
nor richly ornamented. A nave and aisles of five bays, three polygonal
apses to the east and later square chapels beyond the aisles, make up
the whole building. The roofs are all of panelled wood of the sixteenth
century except in the three vaulted apses, of which the central is
entered by an arch, which, rising no higher than the aisle arches,
leaves room for a large window under the roof. All the arches of the
aisle arcade spring from the simple moulded capitals of piers whose
section is that of four half-octagons placed together. In the
[Illustration: FIG. 26.
SANTAREM.
W. DOOR, SÃO FRANCISCO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.
SÉ SILVES.]
clerestory are windows of one small light, in the aisles of two larger
lights, and in the apses single lancets. The great simplicity of the
building notwithstanding it can scarcely be as old as the thirteenth
century: the curious way in which the two lancet lights of the aisle
windows are enclosed under one larger trefoiled arch recalls the similar
windows in the church at Leça do Balio near Oporto begun in 1336, though
there the elliptical head of the enclosing arch is much less
satisfactory than the trefoiled head here used. The only part of the
church which can possibly have been built in the thirteenth century is
the central part of the west front. The pointed door below stands under
a projecting gable like that at São Francisco Santarem, except that
there is a five-foiled circle above the arch containing a pentalpha, put
there perhaps to keep out witches. The door itself has three large
shafts on each side with good but much-decayed capitals of foliage, and
a moulded jamb next the door. The arch itself is terribly decayed, but
one of its orders still has the remains of a series of large cusps,
arranged like the horseshoe cusps at Santarem but much larger. Above the
door gable is a circular window of almost disproportionate size. It has
twelve trefoil-headed lights radiating from a small circle, and
curiously crossing a larger circle some distance from the smaller.
Unfortunately the spaces between the trefoils and the outer mouldings
have been filled up with plaster and the lights themselves subdivided
with meaningless wood tracery to hold the horrible blue-and-red glass
now so popular in Portugal. Though Santa Maria dos Olivaes cannot be
nearly as old as has usually been believed, it is one of the earliest
churches built on the plan derived perhaps first from Braga Cathedral or
from the Franciscan and Dominican churches in Galicia, of a wooden
roofed basilica with or without transept, and with three or more apses
to the east; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most
common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal
in Madeira.
Dom Sancho II., whose reign had begun with brilliant attacks on the
Moors, had, because of his connection with Dona Mencia de Haro, the
widow of a Castilian nobleman, and his consequent inactivity, become
extremely unpopular, so was supplanted in 1246 by his brother Dom
Affonso III. The first care of the new king was to carry on the
conquest
[Sidenote: Silves.]
of the Algarve, which his brother had given up when he fell under the
evil influence of Dona Mencia, and by about 1260 he had overrun the
whole country. At first Alfonso x., the Wise, king of Castile and Leon,
was much displeased at this extension of Portuguese power, but on Dom
Affonso agreeing to marry his daughter Beatriz de Guzman, the Spanish
king allowed his son-in-law to retain his conquests and to assume the
title of King of the Algarve, a title which his descendants still bear.
The countess of Boulogne, Affonso's first wife, was indeed still alive,
but that seems to have troubled neither Dona Beatriz nor her father. At
Silves or Chelb, for so the Moorish capital had been called, a bishopric
was soon founded, but the cathedral,[61] though many of its details seem
to proclaim an early origin, was probably not begun till the early, and
certainly not finished till near the later, years of the fourteenth
century. It is a church of the same type as Santa Maria at Thomar but
with a transept. The west door, a smaller edition of that at Alcobaça,
leads to a nave and aisles of four bays, with plain octagonal columns,
whose bases exactly resemble the capitals reversed--an octagon brought
to a square by a curved chamfer. The nave has a wooden roof, transepts a
pointed barrel vault, and the crossing and chancel with its side chapels
a ribbed vault. Though some of the capitals at the east end look almost
romanesque, the really late date is shown by the cusped fringing of the
chancel arch, a feature very common at Batalha, which was begun at the
end of the fourteenth century, and by the window tracery, where in the
two-light windows the head is filled by a flat pierced slab. Outside,
the chancel has good buttresses at the angles, and is crowned by that
curious boat-like corbel table seen at Santarem and by a row of
pyramidal battlements. The church is only about 150 feet long, but with
its two picturesque and dilapidated towers, and the wonderful deep
purple of its sandstone walls rising above the whitewashed houses and
palms of the older Silves and backed by the Moorish citadel, it makes a
most picturesque and even striking centre to the town, which, standing
high above the river, preserves the memory of its Moslem builders in
its remarkable and many-towered city walls.[62] (Fig. 27.)
[Sidenote: Beja.]
King Diniz the Labourer, so called for his energy in settling and
reclaiming the land and in fixing the moving sands along the west coast
by plantations of pine-trees, and the son of Dom Affonso and Dona
Beatriz, was a more active builder than any of his immediate
predecessors. Of the many castles built by him the best preserved is
that of Beja, the second town of Alemtejo and the Pax Julia of Roman
times. The keep, built about 1310, is a great square tower over a
hundred feet high. Some distance from the top it becomes octagonal, with
the square fortified by corbelled balconies projecting far out over the
corners. Inside are several stories of square halls finely vaulted with
massive octagonal vaults; below, the windows are little more than slits,
but on one floor there are larger two-light pointed openings.[63]
[Sidenote: Leiria.]
Far finer and larger has been the castle of Leiria, some fifty miles
south of Coimbra: it or the keep was begun by Dom Diniz in 1324.[64] The
rock on which it stands, in steepness and in height recalls that of
Edinburgh Castle, but without the long slope of the old town leading
nearly to the summit: towering high above Leiria it is further defended
on the only accessible quarter by the river Lis which runs round two
sides not far from the bottom of the steep descent. Unfortunately all is
ruined, only enough remaining to show that on the steepest edge of the
rock there stood a palace with large pointed windows looking out over
the town to the green wooded hills beyond. On the highest part stands
what is left of the keep, and a little lower the castle-church whose
bell-tower, built over the gate, served to defend the only access to the
inner fortification. This church, built about the same time, with a now
roofless nave which was never vaulted, is entered by a door on the
south, and has a polygonal vaulted apse. The mouldings of the door as
well as the apse vault and its tall two-light windows show a greater
delicacy and refinement than is seen in almost any earlier building, and
some of the carving has once been of great beauty, especially of the
boss at the centre of the apse.[65]
But besides those two castles there is another building of this period
which had a greater and more lasting effect on the work of this
fourteenth century. In England the arrival of the Cistercians and the
new style introduced or rather developed by them seems almost more than
anything else to have determined the direction of the change from what
is usually, perhaps wrongly,[66] called Norman to Early English, but in
Portugal the great foundation of Alcobaça was apparently powerless to
have any such marked effect except in the one case of cloisters. Now
with the exception of the anomalous and much later Claustro Real at
Batalha, all cloisters in Portugal, before the renaissance, follow two
types: one, which is clearly only a modification of the continuous
romanesque arcades resting on coupled shafts, has usually a wooden roof,
and consists of a row of coupled shafts bearing pointed arches, and
sometimes interrupted at intervals by square piers; this form of
cloister is found at Santo Thyrso near Guimarães, at São Domingos in
Guimarães itself, and in the Cemetery cloister built by Prince Henry the
Navigator at Thomar in the fifteenth century.
[Sidenote: Cloister, Cellas.]
The most remarkable of all the cloisters of the first type is that of
the nunnery of Cellas near Coimbra. Founded in 1210 by Dona Sancha,
daughter of Sancho I., the nunnery is now a blind asylum. The cloister,
with round arches and coupled columns, seems thoroughly romanesque in
character, as are also the capitals. It is only on looking closer that
the real date is seen, for the figures on the capitals, which are carved
with scenes such as the beheading of St. John the Baptist, are all
dressed in the fashion that prevailed under Dom Diniz--about 1300--while
the foliage on others, though still romanesque in arrangement, is much
later in detail. More than half of the arcades were rebuilt in the
seventeenth century, but enough remains to make the cloister of Cellas
one of the most striking examples of the survival of old forms and
methods of building which in less remote countries had been given up
more than a hundred years before.
The church, though small, is not without interest. It has a round nave
of Dom Manoel's time with a nuns' choir to the west and a chancel to the
east, and is entered by a picturesque door of the later sixteenth
century.
[Sidenote: Cloister, Coimbra.]
[Sidenote: Cloister, Alcobaça.]
More interesting is the second type which was commonly used when a
cloister with a vault was wanted; and of it there are still examples to
be seen at the Sé Velha Coimbra, at Alcobaça, Lisbon Cathedral, Evora,
and Oporto. None of these five examples are exactly alike, but they
resemble each other sufficiently to make it probable that they are all,
ultimately at least, derived from one common source, and there can be no
doubt that that source was Cistercian. In France what was perhaps its
very first beginnings may be seen in the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay
near Monbart, where in each bay there are two round arches enclosed
under one larger round arch. This was further developed at Fontfroide
near Narbonne, where an arcade of four small round arches under a large
pointed arch carries a thin wall pierced by a large round circle. Of the
different Portuguese examples the oldest may very well be that at
Coimbra which differs only from Fontfroide in having an arcade of two
arches in each bay instead of one of four, but even though it may be a
little older than the large cloister of Alcobaça, it must have been due
to Cistercian influence. The great Claustro do Silencio at Alcobaça was,
as an inscription tells, begun in the year 1310,[67] when on April 13th
the first stone was laid by the abbot in the presence of the master
builder Domingo Domingues.[68] In this case each bay has an arcade of
two or three pointed arches resting on coupled columns with strong
buttresses between each bay, but the enclosing arch is not pointed as at
Coimbra or Fontfroide but segmental and springs from square jambs at the
level of the top of the buttresses, and the circles have been all filled
with pierced slabs, some of which have ordinary quatrefoils and some
much more intricate patterns, though in no case do they show the Moorish
influence which is so noticeable at Evora. On the north side projects
the lavatory, an apsidal building with two stories of windows and with
what in France would be regarded as details of the thirteenth century
and not, as is really the case, of the fourteenth. A few bays on the
west walk seem rather later than the rest, as the arches of the arcade
are trefoil-headed, while the upper part of a small projection on the
south side which now contains a stair, as well as the upper cloister to
which it leads, were added by João de Castilho for Cardinal Prince
Henry, son of Dom Manoel, and commendator of the abbey in 1518. (Fig.
28.)
[Sidenote: Cloister, Lisbon.]
In the cloister at Lisbon which seems to be of about the same date, and
which, owing to the nature of the site, runs round the back of the
choir, there is no outer containing arch, and in some bays there are two
large circles instead of one, but in every other respect, except that
some of the round openings are adorned with a ring of dog-tooth
moulding, the details are very similar, the capitals and bases being all
of good thirteenth-century French form.[69] (Fig. 29.)
[Sidenote: Cloister, Oporto.]
If the cloister at Evora, which was built in 1376 and has already been
described, is the one which departs furthest from the original type,
retaining only the round opening, that of the cathedral of Oporto, built
in 1385, comes nearer to Fontfroide than any of the others. Here each
bay is designed exactly like the French example except that the small
arches are pointed, that the large openings are chamfered instead of
moulded, and that there are buttresses between each bay. The capitals
which are rather tall are carved with rather shallow leaves, but the
most noticeable features are the huge square moulded abaci which are so
large as to be more like those of the romanesque cloisters at Moissac or
of Sta. Maria del Sar at Santiago than any fourteenth-century work.
[Sidenote: Sta. Clara, Coimbra.]
The most important church of the time of Dom Diniz is, or rather was,
that of the convent of Poor Clares founded at Coimbra by his wife St.
Isabel. Although a good king, Diniz had not been a good husband, and the
queen's sorrows had been still further increased by the rebellion of
[Illustration: FIG 28.
ALCOBAÇA.
CLOISTER OF DOM DINIZ, OR DO SILENCIO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.
LISBON.
CATHEDRAL CLOISTER.]
her son, afterwards Affonso IV., a rebellion to which Isabel was able to
put an end by interposing between her husband and her son. When St.
Isabel died in 1327, two years after her husband, the church was not yet
quite finished, but it must have been so soon after. Unfortunately the
annual floods of the Mondego and the sands which they bring down led to
the abandonment of the church in the seventeenth century, and have so
buried it that the floor of the barn--for that is the use to which it is
now put--is almost level with the springing of the aisle arches, but
enough is left to show what the church was like, and were not its date
well assured no one would believe it to be later than the end of the
twelfth century. The chancel, which was aisleless and lower than the
rest of the church, is gone, but the nave and its aisles are still in a
tolerable state of preservation, though outside all the detail has been
destroyed except one round window on the south side filled in with white
marble tracery of a distinctly Italian type, and the corbel table of the
boat-keel shape. The inside is most unusual for a church of the
fourteenth century. The central aisle has a pointed barrel vault
springing from a little above the aisle arches, while the aisles
themselves have an ordinary cross vault. All the capitals too look
early, and the buttresses broad and rather shallow. (Fig. 30.)
[Sidenote: Leça do Balio.]
A few miles north of Oporto on the banks of the clear stream of the Leça
a monastery for men and women had been founded in 986. In the course of
the next hundred years it had several times fallen into decay and been
restored, till about the year 1115 when it was handed over to the
Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem and so became their
headquarters in Portugal. The church had been rebuilt by Abbot Guntino
some years before the transfer took place, and had in time become
ruinous, so that in 1336 it was rebuilt by Dom Frei Estevão Vasques
Pimentel, the head of the Order. This church still stands but little
altered since the fourteenth century, and though not a large or splendid
building it is the most complete and unaltered example of that
thoroughly national plan and style which, developed in the previous
century, was seen at Thomar and will be seen again in many later
examples. The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays,
transepts higher than the side but lower than the centre aisle of the
nave, three vaulted apses to the east, and at the south-west corner a
square tower. Like many Portuguese buildings Sta. Maria de Leça do Balio
looks at first sight a good deal earlier than is really the case. The
west and the south doors, which are almost exactly alike, except that
the south door is surmounted by a gable, have three shafts on each side
with early-looking capitals and plain moulded archivolts, and within
these, jambs moulded at the angles bearing an inner order whose flat
face is carved with a series of circles enclosing four and five-leaved
flowers. Above the west door runs a projecting gallery whose parapet,
like all the other parapets of the church, is defended by a close-set
row of pointed battlements. Above the gallery is a large rose-window in
which twelve spokes radiate from a cusped circle in the middle to the
circumference, where the lights so formed are further enriched by cusped
semicircles. The aisle and clerestory windows show an unusual attempt to
include two lancets into one window by carrying on the outer framing of
the window till it meets above the mullion in a kind of pendant
arch.[70]
The square tower is exceedingly plain, without string course or buttress
to mitigate its severity. Half-way up on the west side is a small window
with a battlemented balcony in front projecting out on three great
corbels; higher up are plain belfry windows. At the top, square
balconies or bartizans project diagonally from the corners; the whole,
though there are but three pyramidal battlements on each side, being
even more strongly fortified than the rest of the church. Now in the
fourteenth century such fortification of a church can hardly have been
necessary, and they were probably built rather to show that the church
belonged to a military order than with any idea of defence. The inside
is less interesting, the pointed arches are rather thin and the capitals
poor, the only thing much worthy of notice being the font, belonging to
the time of change from Gothic to Renaissance, and given in 1512.[71]
[Sidenote: Chancel, Sé, Lisbon.]
Of the other buildings of the time of Dom Affonso IV. who succeeded his
father Diniz in 1328 the most important
[Illustration: FIG. 30.
COIMBRA.
STA. CLARA.]
has been the choir of the cathedral at Lisbon; the church had been much
injured by an earthquake in 1344 and the whole east end was at once
rebuilt on the French plan, otherwise unexampled in Portugal except by
the twelfth-century choir at Alcobaça. Unfortunately the later and more
terrible earthquake of 1755 so ruined the whole building that of Dom
Affonso's work only the surrounding aisle and its chapels remain. The
only point which calls for notice is that the chapels are considerably
lower than the aisle so as to admit of a window between the chapel arch
and the aisle vault. All the chapels have good vaulting and simple
two-light windows, and capitals well carved with naturalistic foliage.
In one chapel, that of SS. Cosmo and Damião, screened off by a very good
early wrought-iron grill, are the tombs of Lopo Fernandes Pacheco and of
his second wife Maria Rodrigues. Dona Maria, lying on a stone
sarcophagus, which stands on four short columns, and whose sides are
adorned with four shields with the arms of her father, Ruy di Villa
Lobos, has her head protected by a carved canopy and holds up in her
hands an open book which, from her position, she could scarcely hope to
read.[72]
[Sidenote: Royal tombs, Alcobaça. (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 Alcobaça. 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
Costança, 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 Lourenço, whose son afterwards became the great liberator, King
João I., but after Dona Costança'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
Alcobaça, 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 São 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.
ALCOBAÇA.
CHAPEL WITH ROYAL TOMBS.
(DOM PEDRO AND DONA BEATRIZ.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.
ALCOBAÇA.
TOMB OF DOM PEDRO I.]
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
Leça 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 João, 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 João 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 João 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 João, grand master of the Order of
Aviz, and the son of Dom Pedro and Dona Thereza Lourenço, 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 Alcobaça, 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 João dedicated the spoil he had taken in the Castilian
king's tent to Our Lady of the Olive Tree at Guimarães 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
Guimarães 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 João 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 João 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.
[Illustration: PLAN OF BATALHA]
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 Alcobaça, 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 ha
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