THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: Guimaraes.]
Besides building Batalha, King Joao dedicated the spoils he had taken at
Aljubarrota to the church of Nossa Senhora da Oliviera at Guimaraes,
which he rebuilt from the designs of Juan Garcia of Toledo. The most
important of these spoils is the silver-gilt reredos taken in the
Spanish king's travelling chapel. It is in the shape of a triptych about
four feet high. In the centre is represented the Virgin with the Infant
Christ on a bed, with Joseph seated and leaning wearily on his staff at
the foot, the figures being about fourteen inches high; above two angels
swing censers, and the heads of an ox and an ass appear feeding from a
manger. All the background is richly diapered, and above are four cusped
arches, separated by angels under canopies, while above the arches to
the top there rises a rich mass of tabernacle work, with the window-like
spaces filled in with red or green enamel. At the top are two
half-angels holding the arms of Portugal, added when the reredos was
dedicated to Our Lady by Dom Joao. The two leaves, each about twenty
inches wide, are divided into two equal stories, each of which has two
cusped and canopied arches enclosing, those on the left above, the
Annunciation, and below the Presentation, and those on the right, the
Angel appearing to the Shepherds above, and the Wise Men below. All the
tabernacle work is most beautifully wrought in silver, but the figures
are less good, that of the Virgin Mary being distinctly too large.[82]
(Fig. 37.)
Of the other things taken from the defeated king's tent, only one silver
angel now remains of the twelve which were sent to Guimaraes.
Of the church rebuilt in commemoration of this great victory, only the
west front has escaped a terrible transformation carried out not so long
ago, and which has made it impossible to see what the inside was once
like. If the builder was a Spaniard, as his name, Juan Garcia de Toledo,
seems to imply, there is nothing Spanish about his design. The door is
like many another door of about the same period, with simple mouldings
ornamented with small bosses, but the deeply recessed window above is
most unusual. The tracery is gone, but the framing of the window
remains, and is far more like that of a French door than of a window. On
either jamb are two stories of three canopied niches, containing
figures, while the arches are covered with small figures under canopies;
all is rather rude, but the whole is most picturesque and original.
To the left rises the tower, standing forward from the church front: it
is of three stories, with cable moulding at the corners, a picturesque
cornice and battlements at the top; a bell gable in front, and a low
octagonal spire. On the ground floor are two large windows defended by
simple but good iron grilles, and in the upper part are large belfry
windows. This is not the original tower, for that was pulled down in
1515, when the present one was built in its stead by Pedro Esteves
Cogominho. Though of so late a date it is quite uninfluenced, not only
by those numerous buildings of Dom Manoel's time, which are noted for
their fantastic detail, but by the early renaissance which had already
begun to show itself here and there, and it is one of the most
picturesque church towers in the country.
A few feet to the west of the church there is a small open shrine or
chapel, a square vault resting on four pointed arches which are well
moulded, enriched with dog-tooth and surmounted by gables. This chapel
was built soon after 1342 to commemorate the miracle to which the church
owes its name. Early in the fourteenth century there grew at Sao
Torquato, a few miles off, an olive-tree which provided the oil for that
saint's lamp. It was transported to Guimaraes to fulfil a like office
there for the altar of Our Lady. It naturally died, and so remained for
many years till 1342, when one Pedro Esteves placed on it a cross which
his brother had bought in Normandy. This was the 8th of September, and
three days after the dead olive-tree broke into leaf, a miracle
[Illustration: FIG. 37.
CAPELLA OF D. JUAN OF CASTILLE.
TAKEN AT THE BATTLE OF ALJUBARROTA BY JOAO I, 1385, AND NOW IN THE
TREASURY OF N.S. DA OLIVEIRA GUIMARAES.]
[Illustration: FIG. 38.
GUARDA.
N. SIDE OF CATHEDRAL.]
greatly to the advantage and wealth of the church and of the town. From
that day the church was called Our Lady of the Olive Tree.
[Sidenote: Guarda.]
Far more interesting than this church, because much better preserved and
because it is clearly derived, in part at least, from Batalha, is the
cathedral of Guarda, begun by Joao I. Guarda is a small town, not far
from the Spanish border, built on a hill rising high above the bleak
surrounding tableland to a height of nearly four thousand feet, and was
founded by Dom Sancho I. in 1197 to guard his frontier against the
Spaniards and the Moors. Begun by Joao I. the plan and general design of
the whole church must belong to the beginning of the fifteenth century,
though the finishing of the nave, and the insertion of larger transept
windows, were carried out under Dom Manoel, and though the great reredos
is of the time of Dom Joao III. Yet the few chapels between the nave
buttresses are almost the only real additions made to the church. Though
of but moderate dimensions, it is one of the largest of Portuguese
cathedrals, being 175 feet long by 70 feet wide and 110 feet across the
transepts. It is also unique among the aisled and vaulted churches in
copying Batalha by having a well-developed clerestory and flying
buttresses.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL. GUARDA.]
The plan consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, a transept
projecting one bay beyond the aisles, and three apses to the east. At
the crossing the vault is slightly raised so as to admit of four small
round windows opening above the flat roofs of the central aisle and
transepts. The only peculiarity about the plan lies in the two western
towers, which near the ground are squares set diagonally to the front of
the church and higher up change to octagons, and so rise a few feet
above the flat roof. About the end of the fifteenth century two small
chapels were added to the north of the nave, and later still the spaces
between the buttresses were filled in with shallow altar recesses.
The likeness to Batalha is best seen in the Capella Mor. As the apse has
only three instead of five sides, the windows are rather wider, and
there are none below, but otherwise the resemblance is as great as may
be, when the model is of fine limestone and the copy of granite. The
buttresses have offset string courses, and square crocketed pinnacles
just as at Batalha; there has even been an attempt to copy the parapet,
though only the trefoil corbel table is really like the model, for the
parapet itself is solid with a cresting of rather clumsy fleurs-de-lis.
These pinnacles and this crested parapet are found everywhere all round
the church, though the pinnacles on the aisle walls from which the plain
flying buttresses spring are quite different, being of a Manoelino
design. Again the north transept door has evidently been inspired by the
richness of Batalha. Here the door itself is plain, but well moulded,
with above it an elaborately crocketed ogee drip-mould, which ends in a
large finial; above this rises to a considerable height some arcaded
panelling, ending at the top in a straight band of quatrefoil, and
interrupted by a steep gable. (Fig. 38.)
No other part of the outside calls for much notice except the boat-keel
corbels of the smaller apses, the straight gable-less ends to transept
and nave which show that the roofs are flat and paved, and the western
towers. These are of three stories. The lowest is square at the bottom
and octagonal above, the change being effected by a curved offset at two
corners, while at the third or western corner the curve has been cut
down so as to leave room for an eighteenth-century window, lighting the
small polygonal chapel inside, a chapel originally lit by two narrow
round-headed windows on the diagonal sides. In the second story there
are again windows on the same diagonal sides, but they have been built
up: while on the third or highest division--where the octagon is
complete on all sides--are four belfry windows. The whole is finished by
a crested parapet. The west front between these towers is very plain. At
the top a cresting, simpler than that elsewhere, below a round window
without tracery, lower still two picturesque square rococo windows, and
at the bottom a rather elaborate Manoelino doorway, built not many
years ago to replace one of the same date as the windows above.
Throughout the clerestory windows are not large. They are round-headed
of two lights, with simple tracery, and deep splays both inside and out.
The large transept windows with half octagonal heads under a large
trefoil were inserted about the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Inside the resemblance to Batalha is less noticeable. The ribs of the
chancel vault are well moulded, as are the arches of the lantern, but in
the nave, which cannot have been finished till the end of the fifteenth
century, the design is quite different. The piers are all a hollow
square set diagonally with a large round shaft at each corner. In the
aisle arches the hollows of the diagonal sides are carried round without
capitals, with which the round shafts alone are provided; while the
shaft in front runs up to a round Manoelino capital with octagonal
abacus from which springs the vaulting at a level higher than the sills
of the clerestory windows.[83] The most unusual part of the nave is the
vaulting of all three aisles, where all the ribs, diagonal as well as
transverse, are of exactly the same section and size as is the round
shaft from which they spring, even the wall rib being of the same shape
though a little smaller. At the crossing there are triple shafts on each
side, those of the nave being twisted, which is another Manoelino
feature. The nave then must be about a hundred years later than the
eastern parts of the church, where the capitals are rather long and are
carved with foliage and have square abaci, while those of the nave are
all of the time of King Joao II. or of King Manoel. At about the same
time some small and picturesque windows were inserted above the smaller
apses on the east side of the transept, and rather later was built the
chapel to the north-east of the nave, which is entered through a
segmental arch whose jambs and head are well carved with early
renaissance foliage and figures, and which contains the simple tomb of a
bishop. The pulpits, organs, and stalls, both in the chancel and in the
western choir gallery, are fantastic and late, but the great reredos
which rises in three divisions to the springing of the vault is the
largest and one of the finest in the country, but belonging as it does
to a totally different period and school must be left for another
chapter.
[Sidenote: Nossa Senhora do Vencimento do Monte do Carmo, Lisbon.]
Much need not be said about the Carmo at Lisbon, another church of the
same date, as it has been almost entirely wrecked by the earthquake of
1755. The victory of Aljubarrota was due perhaps even more to the grand
Constable of Portugal, Dom Nuno Alvares Pereira, than to the king
himself, and, like the king, the Constable commemorated the victory by
founding a monastery, a great Carmelite house in Lisbon. The church of
Nossa Senhora do Vencimento do Monte do Carmo stands high up above the
central valley of Lisbon on the very verge of the steep hill. Begun in
July 1389 the foundations twice gave way, and it was only after the
Constable had dismissed his first master and called in three men of the
same name, Affonso, Goncalo, and Rodrigo Eannes, that a real beginning
could be made, and it was not finished till 1423, when it was
consecrated; at the same time the founder assumed the habit of a
Carmelite and entered his own monastery to die eight years later, and to
become an object of veneration to the whole people. In plan the church
was almost exactly like that of Batalha, though with a shorter nave of
only five bays.[84] To the east of the transept are still five
apses--the best preserved part of the whole building--having windows and
buttresses like those at Batalha. The only other part of the church
which has escaped destruction is the west door, a large simple opening
of six moulded arches springing from twelve shafts whose capitals are
carved with foliage. From what is left it seems that the church was more
like what Batalha was planned to be, rather than what it became under
the direction of Huguet: but the downfall of the nave has been so
complete that it is only possible to make out that there must have been
a well-developed clerestory and a high vaulted central aisle. What makes
this destruction all the more regrettable is the fact that the church
was full of splendid tombs, especially that of the Holy Constable
himself: a magnificent piece of carving in alabaster sent from Flanders
by Dom Joao's daughter, Isabel, duchess of Flanders.[85]
After this catastrophe an attempt was made to rebuild the church, but
little was done, and it still remains a complete ruin, having been used
since the suppression of all monasteries in 1834 as an Archaeological
Museum where many tombs and other architectural fragments may still be
seen.
[Sidenote: Villar de Frades.]
Towards the end of King Joao's reign a man named Joao Vicente, noting
the corruption into which the religious orders were falling, determined
to do what he could by preaching and example to bring back a better
state of things. He first began his work in Lisbon, but was driven from
there by the bishop to find a refuge at Braga. There he so impressed the
archbishop that he was given the decayed and ruined monastery of Villar
de Frades in 1425. Soon he had gathered round him a considerable body of
followers, to whom he gave a set of rules and who, after receiving the
papal sanction, were known as the Canons Secular of St. John the
Evangelist or, popularly, Loyos, because their first settlement in
Lisbon was in a monastery formerly dedicated to St. Eloy. The church at
Villar, which is of considerable size, was probably long of building, as
the elliptical-headed west door with its naturalistic treelike posts has
details which did not become common till at least the very end of the
century. Inside the church consists of a nave of five bays, flanked with
chapels but not aisles, transepts which are really only enlarged
chapels, and a chancel like the nave but without chapels. The chief
feature of the inside is the very elaborate vaulting, which with the
number and intricacy of its ribs, is not at all unlike an English
Perpendicular vault, and indeed would need but little change to develop
into a fan vault. Here then there has been a considerable advance from
the imperfect vaulting of the central aisle at Batalha, where the
diagonal ribs had to be squeezed in wherever they could go, although
there are at Villar no side aisles so that the construction of
supporting buttresses was of course easier than at Batalha: and it is
well worth noticing how from so imperfect a beginning as the nave at
Batalha the Portuguese masters soon learned to build elaborate and even
wide vaults, without, as a rule, covering them with innumerable and
meaningless twisting ribs as was usually done in Spain. In the
north-westernmost chapel stands the font, an elaborate work of the early
renaissance; an octagonal bowl with twisted sides resting on a short
twisted base.
[Sidenote: Matriz, Alvito.]
Not unlike the vaulting at Villar is that of the Matriz or mother church
of Alvito, a small town in the Alemtejo, nor can it be very much later
in date. Outside it is only remarkable for its west door, an interesting
example of an attempt to use the details of the early French
renaissance, without understanding how to do so--as in the pediment all
the entablature except the architrave has been left out--and for the
short twisted pinnacles which somehow give to it, as to many other
buildings in the Alemtejo, so Oriental a look, and which are seen again
at Belem. Inside, the aisles are divided from the nave by round
chamfered arches springing from rather short octagonal piers, which have
picturesque octagonal capitals and a moulded band half-way up. Only is
the easternmost bay, opening to large transeptal chapels, pointed and
moulded. The vaulting springs from corbels, and although the ribs are
but simply chamfered they are well developed. Curiously, though the
central is so much higher than the side aisles, there is no clerestory,
nor any signs of there ever having been one, while the whole wall
surface is entirely covered with those beautiful tiles which came to be
so much used during the seventeenth century.
In the year 1415 her five sons had sailed straight from the deathbed of
Queen Philippa to the coast of Morocco and had there captured the town
of Ceuta, a town which remained in the hands of the Portuguese till
after their ill-fated union with Spain; for in 1668 it was ceded to
Spain in return for an acknowledgment of Portuguese independence, thus
won after twenty-seven years' more or less continuous fighting. This was
the first time any attempt had been made to carry the Portuguese arms
across the Straits, and to attack their old enemies the Moors in their
own land, where some hundred and seventy years later King Joao's
descendant, Dom Sebastiao, was to lose his life and his country's
freedom.
[Sidenote: Tomb in Graca, Santarem.]
The first governor of Ceuta was Dom Pedro de Menezes, count of Viana.
There he died in 1437, after having for twenty-two years bravely
defended and governed the city--then, as is inscribed on his tomb, the
only place in Africa possessed by Christians. This tomb, which was made
at the command of his daughter Dona Leonor, stands in the church of the
Graca at Santarem, a church which had been founded by his grandfather
the count of Ourem in 1376 for canons regular of St. Augustine. Inside
the church itself is not very remarkable,[86] having a nave and aisles
with transepts and three vaulted chapels to the east, built very much in
the same style as is the church at Leca do Balio, except that it has a
fine west front, to be mentioned later, that the roof of the nave was
knocked down by the Devil in 1548 in anger at the extreme piety of Frey
Martinho de Santarem, one of the canons, and that many famous people,
including Pedro Alvares Cabral, the discoverer of Brazil, are therein
buried.
In general outline the tomb of the count of Viana is not unlike that of
his master Dom Joao, but it is much more highly decorated. On eight
crouching lions rests a large altar-tomb. It has a well-moulded and
carved base and an elaborately carved cornice, rich with deeply undercut
foliage, while on the top lie Pedro de Menezes and his wife Dona Beatriz
Coutinho, with elaborately carved canopies at their heads, and pedestals
covered with figures and foliage at their feet. Beneath the cornice on
each of the longer sides is cut in Gothic letters a long inscription
telling of Dom Pedro's life, and lower down and on all four sides there
is in the middle a shield, now much damaged, with the Menezes arms. On
each side of these shields are carved spreading branches, knotted round
a circle in the centre in which is cut the word 'Aleo.' Once, when
playing with King Joao at a game in which some kind of club or mallet
was used, the news came that the Moors were collecting in great numbers
to attack Ceuta. The king, turning to Dom Pedro, asked him what
reinforcements he would need to withstand the attack; the governor
answered: 'This "Aleo," or club, will be enough,' and in fact, returning
at once to his command, he was able without further help to drive back
the enemy. So this word has been carved on his tomb to recall how well
he did his duty.[87] (Fig. 39.)
[Sidenote: Tomb in Sao Joao de Alporao.]
Not far from the Graca church is that of Sao Joao de Alporao, of which
something has already been said, and in it now stands the tomb of
another Menezes, who a generation later also died in Africa, fighting to
save the life of his king, Dom Affonso V., grandson of King Joao.
Notwithstanding the ill-success of the expedition of his father, Dom
Duarte, to Tangier, Dom Affonso, after having got rid of his uncle the
duke of Coimbra, who had governed the country during his minority, and
who fell in battle defending himself against the charge of treason, led
several expeditions to Morocco, taking first Alcazar es Seghir or
Alcacer Seguer, and later Tangier and Arzilla, thereby uselessly
exhausting the strength of the people, and hindering the spread of
maritime exploration which Dom Henrique had done so much to extend.
This Dom Duarte de Menezes, third count of Viana, was, as an inscription
tells, first governor of Alcacer Seguer, which with five hundred
soldiers he successfully defended against a hundred thousand Moors,
dying at last in the mountains of Bonacofu in defence of his king in
1464.[88]
The monument was built by his widow, Dona Isabel de Castro, but so
terribly had Dom Duarte been cut to pieces by the Moors, that only one
finger could be found to be buried there.[89] Though much more
elaborate, the tomb is not altogether unlike those of the royal princes
at Batalha. The count lies, armed, with a sword drawn in his right hand,
on an altar-tomb on whose front, between richly traceried panels, are
carved an inscription above, upheld by small figures, and below, in the
middle a flaming cresset, probably a memorial of his watchfulness in
Africa, and on each side a shield.
Surmounting the altar-tomb is a deeply moulded ogee arch subdivided into
two hanging arches which spring from a pendant in the middle, while the
space between these sub-arches and the ogee above is filled with a
canopied carving of the Crucifixion. At about the level of the pendant
the open space is crossed by a cusped segmental arch supporting
elaborate flowing tracery. The outer sides of the ogee, which ends in a
large finial, are enriched with large vine-leaf crockets. On either side
of the arch is a square pier, moulded at the angles, and with each face
covered with elaborate tracery. Each pier, which ends in a square
crocketed and gabled pinnacle, has half-way
[Illustration: FIG. 39.
SANTAREM.
CHURCH OF THE GRACA.
TOMB OF D. PEDRO DE MENEZES.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40.
SANTAREM.
TOMB OF DOM DUARTE DE MENEZES IN S. JOAO DE ALPORAO.]
up a small figure standing on an octagonal corbel under an elaborate
canopy. The whole at the top is finished with a cornice running straight
across from pier to pier, and crested with interlacing and cusped
semicircles, while the flat field below the cornice and above the outer
moulding of the great arch is covered with flaming cressets. (Fig. 40.)
This is perhaps one of the finest of the tombs of the fifteenth century,
and like those at Alcobaca is made of that very fine limestone which is
found in more than one place in Portugal.
[Sidenote: At Abrantes.]
Farther up the Tagus at Abrantes, in the church of Santa Maria do
Castello, are some more tombs of the same date, more than one of which
is an almost exact copy of the princes' tombs at Batalha, though there
is one whose arch is fringed with curious reversed cusping, almost
Moorish in appearance.
[Sidenote: Cloister at Thomar.]
Before turning to the many churches built towards the end of the
fifteenth century, one of the cloisters of the great convent at Thomar
must be mentioned. It is that called 'do Cemiterio,' and was built by
Prince Henry the Navigator, duke of Vizeu, during his grandmastership of
the Order of Christ about the year 1440. Unlike those at Alcobaca or at
Lisbon, which were derived from a Cistercian plan, and were always
intended to be vaulted, this small cloister followed the plan, handed
down from romanesque times, where on each side there is a continuous
arcade resting on coupled shafts. Such cloisters, differing only from
the romanesque in having pointed arches and capitals carved with
fourteenth-century foliage, may still be seen at Santo Thyrso and at Sao
Domingos, Guimaraes, in the north. Here at Thomar the only difference is
that the arches are very much wider, there being but five on each side,
and that the bell-shaped capitals are covered with finely carved
conventional vine-leaves arranged in two rows round the bells. As in the
older cloisters one long abacus unites the two capitals, but the arches
are different, each being moulded as one deep arch instead of two
similar arches set side by side.