Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

Beja.

Beja, in the heart of Alemtejo, rightly has an ox in its city arms, a strong frontier town transformed into a centre of agriculture since the days of King Diniz. It is seen from far across the level plain, a beautiful old town on a hill, its outline of crumbling walls and towers clear against the sky. Its castle, with the magnificent Torre de Menagem, was built, as so many other Portuguese castles, by King Diniz, who clearly saw the importance of Beja as a centre for his “nerves of the republic,” the peasants of the soil. The whole town is extraordinarily picturesque, with no lack of colour in its narrow lanes and streets. The water-carriers wheel their handcarts with holes for twenty-four or a dozen jars from far outside the town, and the peasants go out in troops to till the soil or gather the harvest, returning at nightfall to Beja’s sheltering walls, as if some sudden attack of the Moors were to be feared. This daedal of steep streets enshrines beautiful churches, as that of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, but it is the streets themselves and the lovely ruins of Beja that are its chief attraction. Both the Kings Manoel bore the title of Duke of Beja before coming to the throne, which is to say, that neither of them was the heir apparent, this being the title borne by the King’s second son.

Evora.

The capital of Alemtejo is Evora, which thus keeps something of the importance that formerly made it the second city of Portugal. It has now sunk to a provincial life, although in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it figured largely in Portuguese history as a favourite residence of the Court. It remains, however, the paradise of the archaeologist and student of architecture, as it was in the time of André de Resende. Even before entering the town the old church of São Braz, of curious and forbidding exterior, arrests the attention. It is more like a turreted fortification than a church. Within the walls of the town one comes at every step on some fine old building or ruin, or rather within what remains of these magnificent walls. It was at the entrance of the town that Trancoso in the sixteenth century placed an incident in one of the most entertaining of his “profitable histories.” The poor man of his tale, reduced to the extreme of misery, persecuted by all, and made desperate by such injustice, threw himself over the battlement. Now it happened that an old paralysed man was seated taking the sun beneath the wall, and the poor man fell on top of him. He himself escaped unhurt, but he killed the old man. Here was another charge against him, and the old man’s son demanded a life for a life. The judge was the father of Sancho, of the island of Barataria. He decreed that the poor man should sit in the chair of the paralysed and take the sun beneath the wall of Evora, and that the dead man’s son should throw himself from the wall on top of him and so kill him. The whole town of Evora has been described as an archaeological museum, and the narrow streets sometimes ascending steeply with quaint wooden arcades on either side, the houses of massive stone and ironwork and green shutters, the squares and chafarizes (fountains), the hanging gardens of private houses, and the public gardens brimming with flowers, the tiny shops, dark beneath arcades, the fairs and markets, all make of Evora one of the most peculiar and interesting of cities. And there is the fine imposing sixteenth-century church of São Francisco, with its massive exterior walls and pillars, and, inside the famous chapel, the Room of Bones (Casa dos Ossos)—

Nós ossos

Que aqui estamos

Pelos vossos

Esperamos.

(We bones that lie here wait for yours to appear.)

The early Gothic cathedral was originally finished in 1204, but is, of course, as it stands, largely of later date. Its interior contains much fine work of both the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Almost touching it is one of the finest Roman ruins in existence, the “Temple of Diana,” nearly 2,000 years old, its magnificent Corinthian columns still supporting massive blocks of granite. It stands at the top of the town, having thus little to fear from the encroachment of modern buildings, and is outlined proudly against the sky. One may hope, since so many pillars have escaped as by a miracle from the peril of earthquake, that it may stand there during another score of centuries and escape destruction and mutilation at the hands of man, though indeed to the materialist it is as valueless as a flower, a crimson sunset, or a Cathedral evensong.