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 Alcobaca still stands to
show how well his vow was fulfilled.
Although Santarem was taken in 1147, the first stone of Alcobaca 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 Alcobaca
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: Se, 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 Alcobaca. 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
Se 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: Se Velha, Coimbra.]
[Illustration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, COIMBRA]
Smaller but much better preserved than Lisbon Cathedral is the Se 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
Alcobaca 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, Joao 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 Mozarabe 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 Guimaraes. 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 mediaeval 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
Sao Christovao now destroyed, while Sao Thiago still has a west door
whose shafts are even more elaborately carved and twisted than are those
at the Se Velha.[45]
There is more than one building, such as the Templar
[Illustration: FIG. 18.
COIMBRA.
SE VELHA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.
COIMBRA.
WEST FRONT OF SE VELHA.]
church at Thomar, older than the cathedral of Evora, and indeed older
than the Se Velha at Coimbra; but Evora, except that its arches are
pointed instead of round, is so clearly derived directly from the Se at
Lisbon that it must be mentioned next in order.
[Sidenote: Se, 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 Se 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 SE, 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.
SE. INTERIOR.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21.
EVORA.
SE. 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 Alcobaca, but though this is probably only a coincidence,
still more like those at Tarragona in Cataluna. (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 Sao Thiago, and received instead the
territory of Ceras some forty or fifty miles to the north-east. There on
the banks of the river Nabao, 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 Caesar, 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: Sao Joao de Alporao, 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, Sao Joao de Alporao at Santarem shows another, where the
construction is Gothic but the arches are still all round.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.
EVORA.
SE. 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 Alporao, 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 Alcobaca, 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 Sao Francisco, whence, Sao 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
Alcobaca 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 ALCOBACA]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.
SANTAREM.
APSE, SAO JOAO DE ALPORAO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.
TRANSEPT.
ALCOBACA.]
[Sidenote: Alcobaca.]
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
Alcobaca. All these possessions and privileges of the monks were
confirmed by Dom Joao 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-a-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 Alcobaca, and it is worthy of
notice that, as far as the plan of choir and transept goes, Alcobaca 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 Alcobaca still has, a choir of but one bay and nine
instead of seven chapels. Both had long naves, Clairvaux of eleven and
Alcobaca 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 Sao Thiago at Palmella.
The battlements also of the castle at Guimaraes are found not only at
Coimbra, but as late as 1336 in the church of Leca 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 Alcobaca 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 Leca do Balio or of Sao Francisco at Oporto.
Again the vaulting of the apse in Sao Joao de Alporao 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 Graca at Santarem
itself, and the curious boat-like corbels of Sao Joao 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 Sao Joao, but to be of some
independent origin; probably, like the similar windows at Leca and at
Oporto, they too belong to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.