It is a long and tiring walk from here to Belem, but two lines of electric trams go thither, one along the river-bank and the other by the parallel route past Alcantara, and either will serve our turn. Belem is now but a suburb of Lisbon, continuous lines of houses covering the two miles of the route. There still remains, however, something of distinction in this royal village, full of memories as it is of Portugal’s great day of power and wealth. For here it was that at length the dream came true, and those long vigils of the Fortunate King on the savage peak of Cintra were rewarded by the coming of Vasco da Gama to the squat, sturdy old tower of Belem, that had been in his yearning thoughts through so many trials and dangers. King Manuel greeted his great subject, who had brought to his native land the potentiality of wealth illimitable, here in the village of Belem, at the mouth of the Tagus; and as the explorer stepped ashore, the king, overjoyed at his coming, swore to build upon that very spot a Jeronomite monastery splendid enough to be worthy even of that great occasion. And he kept his word; for two years afterwards, in 1500, the first course was laid of a building which surpasses all others in its particular style, and in some respects is one of the most remarkable ecclesiastical structures in the world.
A long line of church and monastery adjoining runs parallel with the sea, the conventual portion partly in ruins but now in course of reconstruction, and the eye is at first perfectly bewildered by the richness of the details of the doors and windows of the edifice. Here Manueline architecture is at its earliest and best, before extravagance like that of the unfinished chapels at Batalha overwhelmed it. Here the orthodox florid Gothic and Renaissance styles are leavened, but not obliterated, by the new spirit of expansion and aspiration that found its national expression in what is called Manueline. The west door of the church, where the monastic buildings join it, is extremely beautiful. On each side are rich canopies under which kneel the king and queen with their patron saints, and smaller figures exquisitely carved surround the rest of the door, which is surmounted by flamboyant pinnacles in the Manueline taste. The general idea of the windows, which are very large and high, is of a round-topped arch three or four courses or orders deep, each course being set with bosses of a different, but always elaborate, pattern, an outer moulding representing a twisted cable or twined branches in infinite variety, ending in a series of pinnacles, surrounding the window on the surface of the wall.
The great south doorway facing the road and the Tagus, the principal door of entrance, almost defies description by its richness and complexity of ornament, this and the cloisters of the church being perhaps the best specimen of Gothic Manueline in Portugal. Between the two doorways into which the entrance is divided there is a pillar or column, upon which, under a rich Gothic canopy, stands a large figure of a man wearing a tabard. The scheme of decoration is carried up by a series of flamboyant pinnacles and canopied figures beautifully interlaced to the top of the aisle wall. The two great windows flanking this gorgeous doorway match it in magnificence, and one feels on turning away from this monument of human skill and ingenuity that here the short-lived art of the Portuguese Renaissance has reached its highest flight.
The South Door at Belem
The impression, however, hardly survives the moment when you cross the threshold and enter the church itself; for here you see an interior unlike any other great temple. The first impression is one of immense unencumbered spaciousness. The ordinary arrangement of nave and aisles does not exist, but from the floor there spring straight up to a height that seems prodigious six slender isolated marble pillars, three on each side. They form no continued arcade, although, of course, they are aligned, and each pillar is decorated lavishly in high relief with Renaissance ornamentation in panels, with canopied niches half-way up their height. From the top of each column spring a series of branches like the fronds of a palm-leaf, which, meeting in beautiful graceful curves, form the intricate series of bossed groins which compose the vaulted marble roof. At the west end of the church three low-pointed Manueline arches support the choir-loft, and along the north wall twelve Manueline doorways are ranged, with rich canopied niches above them, whilst the magnificent transept, with its gorgeous ceiling and royal chapels and tombs, and its vast Manueline chancel arch of twisted cables and cordage supporting rich canopied pulpits, altogether produce an effect of overpowering majesty.
Here in the chancel repose, in splendid tombs, the ashes of the king, Manuel the Fortunate, and his son, John III., the two great builders of the fane; and here too lie, in a transept chapel, Vasco da Gama himself, and Camões, who enshrined in deathless epic the spirit of exalted enterprise of which the great explorer was the personification, and the Infante, Prince Henry, the prophetic inspirer. Kings, queens, princes, and princesses lie around in fretted sepulchres—that ill-used Catharine of Braganza, Queen-Consort of England, amongst them, here where she passed the long years of her widowhood—but their very names are for the most part forgotten now; and this memorable church of Belem, whilst its daring beauty stands, will remain the shrine of the two greatest figures of Portugal’s golden age, and of the “Fortunate Monarch,” Manuel, in whose reign the vision of the Infante was realised.
The cloisters of the monastery vie with those of Batalha in beauty, which is saying much. Each of the twenty arches, four on each face and one at each corner, is filled with Manueline tracery, exhibiting inexhaustible caprice and invention, no two being alike in pattern; whilst highly decorated Manueline doorways line the inner walls. The upper ambulatory is wider and, if possible, more elaborate than the lower, an unusual arrangement, each upper arch buttress being capped by a beautifully decorated finial. The chapter-house, as usual, leads out of the cloister, an exquisitely rich specimen of Manueline, and is now devoted to the stately tomb of Alexandre Herculano, the nineteenth-century Portuguese historian. Pompous as are the sepulchres of kings and heroes in the adjoining church, this monument to the historian—a respectable figure in literature, it is true, but by no means a genius of universal fame—surpasses them all. Here, alone in the midst of this grandiose chapter-house of the monks, the dead man-of-letters rests more splendidly than monarch or millionaire. Modern Portugal, at least, can honour the gifted pen; for the names of Camões, of Almeida-Garrett, the nineteenth-century poet, and Herculano, the historian, are all through the country commemorated by street names. How long shall we have to wait before Englishmen, so ready to bow the knee before successful finance, will thus do homage to an historian? Verily, little as we may relish the truth, we have much to learn from Portugal, and not in this alone.
The monastery buildings of Belem shelter twelve hundred orphan boys, who are there clothed, fed, and educated by the State, and it was a fine sight to witness them all at table in the great Manueline refectory of the vanished monks, and pleasant to hear the ringing of their youthful laughter as they played joyously in the stately cloisters. In the museum adjoining there is a collection of ancient royal coaches, some of them very imposing and curious, but generally speaking not so interesting a collection as that in the royal caballerizas at Madrid.
Sated almost with sculptural richness, I left the monastery, and rested beneath the grateful shade of palms in the public garden opposite, with the broad Tagus before me and the glowing blue sky overhead until the perfect day began to wane. Then through the fine Praça de Dom Fernando, with its handsome Manueline pillar and statue of Albuquerque, the great viceroy of the Indies, I slowly wended my way back by the chaotic river-bank to Lisbon. Belem is beautiful and suggestive enough to provide reflection for one day without allowing other impressions to disturb it, and the sordid sights and sounds of the water-side were nothing to me, for the airy fancies of the artist in stone and the romantic memories of the heroic days surrounded me as with a mantle.