São Francisco, Guimarães.
The Franciscans had been introduced into Portugal by Dona Sancha, the daughter of Dom Sanchoi., and houseswere built for them by Dona Urraca, the wife of Dom Affonsoii., 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.
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 lowporch 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.)
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.
FIG. 26.SantaremW. Door, São Francisco.FIG. 26.SantaremW. Door, São Francisco.
FIG. 27.Sé Silves.FIG. 27.Sé Silves.
In the 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 Sanchoii., 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 Affonsoiii.The first care of the new king was to carry on the conquest
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 theriver, preserves the memory of its Moslem builders in its remarkable and many-towered city walls.[62](Fig. 27.)
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]
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 vaultedapse. 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.
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 Sanchoi., 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 Cellasone 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.
Cloister, Coimbra.
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 piercedslabs, 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.)
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.)
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.
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
FIG 28.Alcobaça.Cloister of Dom Diniz, or do Silencio.FIG 28.Alcobaça.Cloister of Dom Diniz, or do Silencio.
FIG. 29.LisbonCathedral Cloister.FIG. 29.LisbonCathedral Cloister.
her son, afterwards Affonsoiv., 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.)
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 atthe 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]
Chancel, Sé, Lisbon.
Of the other buildings of the time of Dom Affonsoiv.who succeeded his father Diniz in 1328 the most important
FIG. 30.CoimbraSta. Clara.FIG. 30.CoimbraSta. 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]
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 Affonsoiii., 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 cornerby 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 Pedroi.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 Joãoi., 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.
FIG. 31.Alcobaça.>Chapel with Royal Tombs.Dom Pedro and Dona Beatriz.)FIG. 31.Alcobaça.Chapel with Royal Tombs.(Dom Pedro and Dona Beatriz.)
FIG. 32.Alcobaça.Tomb of Dom Pedro i.FIG. 32.Alcobaça.Tomb of Dom Pedro i.
BATALHA AND THE DELIVERANCE OF PORTUGAL
Towardsthe 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 himfor 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 Juani.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.
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 whichhad 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.
PLAN OF BATALHAPLAN 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 anyprevious 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 Pateobuilt by Dom Manoel to unite the church with the Capellas Imperfeitas, or unfinished chapels, beyond. Here there is nothing very unusual: the smaller chapels all end in three-sided apses, at whose angles are buttresses, remarkable only for the great number of string courses, five in all, which divide them horizontally; these buttresses are finished by two offsets just below a plain corbel table which is now crowned by an elaborately pierced and cusped parapet which may well have been added later. Each side of the apse has one tall narrow single-light window which, filled at some later date from top to bottom with elaborate stone tracery, has two thin shafts at each side and a rather bluntly-pointed head. The central apse has been much the same but with five sides, and two stories of similar windows one above the other. So far there is nothing unexpected or what could not easily have been developed from already existing buildings, such as the church at Thomar or the Franciscan and Dominican churches no further away than Pontevedra in Galicia.
Coming to the south transept, there is a large doorway below under a crocketed gable flanked by a tall pinnacle on either side. This door with its thirteenth-century mouldings is one of the most curious and unexpected features of the whole building. Excepting that the capitals are well carved with leaves, it is a close copy of the west door of São Francisco at Santarem. Here the horseshoe cuspings are on the out-most of the five orders of mouldings, and the chevron on the fourth, while there is also a series of pointed cusps on the second. Only the innermost betrays its really late origin by the curious crossing and interpenetrating of the mouldings of its large trefoiled head. All this is thoroughly Portuguese and clearly derived from what had gone before; but the same cannot be said for the crockets or for the pinnacles with their square and gabled spirelets. These crockets are of the common vine-leaf shape such as was used in England and also in France early in the fourteenth century, while the two-storied pinnacles with shallow traceried panels on each face, and still more the square spirelets with rather large crockets and a large bunchy finial, are not at all French, but a not bad imitation of contemporary English work. On the gable above the door are two square panels, each containing a coat-of-arms set in a cusped quatrefoil, while the vine-leaves which fill in thesurface between the quatrefoils and the outer mouldings of the square, as also those on the crowns which surmount the coats, are also quite English. The elaborate many-sided canopies above are not so much so in form though they might well have been evolved from English detail. Above the gable comes another English feature, a very large three-light window running up to the very vault; at the top the mullions of each light are carried up so as to intersect, with cusped circles filling in each space, while the whole window to the top is filled with a veil of small reticulated tracery. Above the top of the large window there is a band of reticulated panelling whose shafts run down till they reach the crocketed hood-mould of the window: and above this an elaborately pierced and foliated parapet between the square pinnacles of the angle buttresses, which like these of the apses are remarkable for the extraordinary number (ten) of offsets and string courses.
The next five bays of the nave as well as the whole north side (which has no buttresses) above the cloister are all practically alike; the buttresses, pinnacles and parapet are just the same as those of the transept: the windows tall, standing pretty high above the ground, are all of three lights with tracery evidently founded on that of the large transept window, but set very far back in the wall with as many as three shafts on each side, and with each light now filled in with horrid wood or plaster work. The clerestory windows, also of three lights with somewhat similar tracery, are separated by narrow buttresses bearing square pinnacles, between which runs on a pointed corbel table the usual pierced parapet, and by strong flying buttresses, which at least in the western bays are doubly cusped, and are, between the arch and the straight part, pierced with a large foliated circle and other tracery. The last three bays on the south side are taken up by the Founder's Chapel (Capella do Fundador), in which are buried King João, Queen Philippa, and four of their sons. This chapel, which must have been begun a good deal later than the church, as the church was finished in 1415 when the queen died and was temporarily buried before the high altar, while the chapel was not yet ready when Dom João made his will in 1426, though it was so in 1434 when he and the queen were there buried, is an exact square of about 80 feet externally, within which an octagon of about 38 feet in diameter rises above the flat roof of the square, rather higher than tothe top of the aisles. Each exposed side of the square is divided into three bays, one wider in the centre with one narrower on each side. The buttresses, pinnacles and corbel table are much the same as before, but the parapet is much more elaborate and more like French flamboyant. Of the windows the smaller are of four lights with very elaborate and unusual flowing tracery in their heads; small parts of which, such as the tracery at the top of the smaller lights, is curiously English, while the whole is neither English nor French nor belonging to any other national school. The same may be said of the larger eight-light window in the central bay, but that there the tracery is even more elaborate and extravagant. The octagon above has buttresses with ordinary pinnacles at each corner, a parapet like that below, and flying buttresses, all pierced, cusped and crocketed like those at the west front. On each face is a tall two-light window with flowing tracery packed in rather tightly at the top.
As for the west front itself, which has actually been compared to that of York Minster, the ends of the aisles are much like the sides, with similar buttresses, pinnacles and parapet, but with the windows not set back quite so far. On each side of the large central door are square buttresses, running up to above the level of the aisle roof in six stories, the four upper of which are panelled with what looks like English decorated tracery, and ending in large square crocketed and gabled pinnacles. The door itself between these buttresses is another strange mixture. In general design and in size it is entirely French: on either side six large statues stand on corbels and under elaborate many-sided canopies, while on the arches themselves is the usual French arrangement of different canopied figures: the tympanum is upheld by a richly cusped segmental arch, and has on it a curiously archaistic carving of Our Lord under a canopy surrounded by the four Evangelists. Above, the crocketed drip-mould is carried up in an ogee leaving room for the coronation of the Virgin over the apex of the arch. So far all might be French, but on examining the detail, a great deal of it is found to be not French but English: the half octagonal corbels with their panelled and traceried sides, and still more the strips of panelling on the jambs with their arched heads, are quite English and might be found in almost any early perpendicular reredos or tomb, nor are the larger canopies quite French. (Fig. 33.)
Above the finial of the ogee runs a corbel table supporting a pierced and crested parapet, a little different in design from the rest.
Above this parapeted gallery is a large window lighting the upper part of the nave, a window which for extravagance and exuberance of tracery exceeds all others here or elsewhere. The lower part is evidently founded on the larger windows of the Capella do Fundador. Like them it has two larger pointed lights under a big ogee which reaches to the apex of a pointed arch spanning the whole window, the space between this ogee and the enclosing arch being filled in with more or less ordinary flowing tracery. These two main lights are again much subdivided: at the top is a circle with spiral tracery; below it an arch enclosing an ogee exactly similar to the larger one above, springing from two sub-lights which are again subdivided in exactly the same manner, into circle, sub-arch, ogee and two small lights, so that the whole lower part of the window is really built up from the one motive repeated three times. The space between the large arch and the window head is taken up by a large circle completely filled with minute spiral tracery and two vesicae also filled in with smaller vesicae and circles. Now such a window could not have been designed in England, in France, or anywhere else; not only is it ill arranged, but it is entirely covered from top to bottom with tracery, which shows that an attempt was being made to adapt forms suitable in a northern climate to the brilliant summer sun of Portugal, a sun which a native builder would rather try to keep out than to let in. Above the window is a band of reticulated tracery like that below, and the front is finished with a straight line of parapet pierced and foliated like that below, joining the picturesque clusters of corner pinnacles. The only other part of the church which calls for notice is the bell-tower which stands at the north end of a very thick wall separating the sacristy from the cloister; it is now an octagon springing strangely from the square below, with a rich parapet, inside which stands a tall spire; this spire, which has a sort of coronet rather more than half-way up, consists of eight massive crocketed ribs ending in a huge finial, and with the space between filled in with very fine pierced work.[79]From such of the original detail which has