As we wind down the hill again from the poverty-stricken town beneath the castle walls, carts of little black grapes meet us winding up the hill for the belated vintage, and through the open doors of granges we see the wide shallow tubs being filled with grapes trodden under the feet of swarthy lads. The air is soft and close as the sun sets red and orange behind the tree-clad hills, and I pass the hour waiting for the train at Pinhal Novo under a grove of lofty eucalyptus trees, whilst the shrill twittering of millions of cicadas, and the languorous perfume in the air tell me that I have left the strenuous land behind, and am in a clime where to strive is folly.

The next morning Evora revealed its quaint charms to me, for in the night when I arrived all seemed gloomy and threatening in its narrow tortuous ways. Under a glowing blue sky and the fierce sun the place was charming, and few cities in Portugal, if any, present so many attractions to the archæologist, the antiquarian, or the simple seeker after the picturesque. The long irregular space of the principal praça is lined by ancient arcades like the plazas in Spanish towns, and the people who flock hither and thither under the covered ways are purely Andalusian in appearance, the men wearing sheepskin zamarras over gaudy waistcoats, and upon their heads wide-brimmed velvet calañeses surmount bright-coloured kerchiefs. We have almost lost sight now of the ox as a draught animal, and big mules, drawing a somewhat light waggon, are universal.

At unexpected corners and unlikely angles relics of unfathomed antiquity meet you: a Roman tower built into a sixteenth-century wall, a Moorish arch, a low-browed doorway that may go back to the time of the Goths, though the house to which it gives entrance may be comparatively modern, fragments of palaces and beautiful bits of Manueline are everywhere. For this city of Evora is an epitome of the historical vicissitudes of Portugal, and under each successive régime has played a principal part. Ebora of the Phœnicians and Iberians, Liberalitas Julia of the Romans, seat of government of the patriot rebel Sertorius, who here defied the legions of the Cæsars (80 B.C.), Gothic capital of Lusitania, Yebora of the Moslems for four hundred years, and now chief city of Alemtejo and the south—the walls and towers of its Latin and Gothic masters are still clearly traceable, and the mediæval defences still surround the ancient city.

Its modern Portuguese history dates from its capture from the Moors in 1165 by the freebooter Gerald and his band of desperadoes, who surrendered the place to King Affonso Henriques in exchange for pardon and reward; and from that time its archbishops have vied with those of Braga in the north in wealth and dignity. Infantes of Portugal have often worn its mitre, and one of them, Cardinal Henry, the last of his race, became king. It is difficult to realise, looking at this crumbling old city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, the magnificence of which it was the scene in times when the population must have been much smaller than at present. I have before me as I write an account written at the time by an Italian ecclesiastic in the train of the papal Legate, who came to Portugal in 1571, of the reception of the embassy by the Archbishop of Evora (João de Mello), on which occasion lavishness seems to have outdone itself. The king’s lieutenant, with five hundred followers and ten thousand armed militia of the province, had met the Legate some miles outside the city, and at the gates the governor and magistracy awaited the visitors in full panoply, with several bands of trumpeters dressed in cloth of gold and scarlet caps, many companies of halberdiers smartly garbed in various uniforms, black drummers and cymbal players on velvet-draped mules, the mayor and aldermen and civic officers with their respective armed escorts, followed by—

“Ten boys dressed in green, dancing a Morris-dance to the sound of tambourines, and then ten more dressed in yellow with fife and drum, also dancing, each one carrying an arch which they intertwined and disentangled with great rapidity and dexterity. Then came ten boys dressed as pilgrims dancing round a drum, and singing the praises of the Legate. Then came ten women gipsies dancing their usual dance to the sound of the drum, and performing dexterous tricks with wands and scarfs. Following them came ten gipsy men with a drum, and placing themselves alternately with the women, they made a very pretty chain. Finally at the gate of the city there were ten boys dressed in white with branches in their hands, dancing round a carrying chair of red velvet striped with gold, which was carried by eight little boys with white kilts, and golden haloes round their heads. They bowed low to the Legate as the rest did separately when they danced their measure, and then all together, the dances continuing all the while before the Legate. The archbishop of Evora entertained the Legate and prelates sumptuously at his palace, and the fidalgos splendidly received the rest in their houses. The apartments were lined with the finest Flanders hangings, and the floors were covered with green sprigs and rushes, which is the custom here at weddings and feasts. They usually remain at table two or three hours. Each person has a separate cup, and when dinner is half through the tablecloth is changed. The roast meats are placed upon the table already cut up and covered, and they are wont to put into these dishes and others, eggs, many spices, and sugar. The viands are not sumptuous, but are abundant, and they say most of the dishes are Moorish. They only serve one dish at a time, and this it is that makes their dinners last so long, whilst they pass the time chatting, drinking healths, and helping each other to what is brought to table, they being very gay the while.”[[9]]

Of this splendour in the Evora of the past little is now apparent to the visitor, though the modern Barahona palace, of which, and its wealthy owner, the Eborenses seem very proud, could probably furnish forth a good twentieth-century equivalent for it; and behind the closed doors and frowning walls of many ancient noble palaces, now mostly in the hands of rich landowners and cultivators of the district, are doubtless luxurious interiors.

From the Hotel Eborense, with its sixteenth-century outside staircase and trellised balcony-landing, looking upon a quaint, tree-shaded, little praça, I descend through narrow streets, that remind me of Toledo—streets that for the most part still bear historic names, though of course the inevitable “Serpa Pinto” has modernised one of them. Peace and stillness reign over all, for the sun stings shrewdly; and those who are obliged to be out linger drowsily under white walls and the frequent shade of acacias, cork-trees, and vine-trellises. A ruined church and a vast monastery attached, and now used as a barrack, first attract my attention, for the edifice shows signs of past magnificence, and the white, roofless walls and façade against the indigo sky form a beautiful picture even in their decay. An Augustinian monastery-church, that of Our Lady of Grace, I am told it is; and over the broken portico I read that it was built “sub imp. Divi Joannis III., Patris Patriæ.” This John III. was the son of the “Fortunate” Manuel, and was one of the principal builders of Belem; so that we are justified in expecting something good from him in architecture. The expectation is not disappointed, for the work is a gem in its uncommon way. It is, indeed, but little touched with the Manueline taste of the time it was built (1524); and has more affinity with the fine cloister of John III. at Thomar, built by the same monarch. It is, in fact, almost the only specimen I have seen in Portugal of the pure Italian Renaissance in the style of Michael Angelo. Columns, trophies, shields, and decorative statuary, all tell the same story of direct Florentine influence, as apart from the less virile Raphaelesque tendency of the French Renaissance, which is much more common in Portugal, and, indeed, elsewhere. Even in the later decorations of this very church of Graça the graved medallions, festoons, and delicate panel carving in low relief, show that, even a few years after the church was built, the French style was preferred.

It is but a step from the Graça to a splendid church which is deservedly one of the boasts of Evora, and, for skilful solidity of construction, one of the most extraordinary churches in Portugal, if not in Europe. Situated in a wide praça, and flanked on one side by shady groves of cork-trees, stands the great square church of S. Francisco, all that remains intact of an important Franciscan monastery of immense antiquity. Adjoining it, until recent times, stood a royal palace, of which this church and monastery were privileged to form a part; and the Franciscans of Evora were altogether very lordly monks indeed. Without a tower, as is usual with monastery churches, the big square building, with its rows of battlemented roof ridges, looks more like a fortress than a church; and from the peculiarity of its construction, it is safe to say that, unless the hand of man or some great natural convulsion destroys it, the next four centuries will have as little effect upon it as the last four have had since its construction at the end of the fifteenth century.

The great west porch extends the whole width of the building in fine Romanesque-Gothic. The arches of this porch are almost Moorish in form, with elaborated twisted-cord capitals; and the peculiar arrangement of supports noticed in the nave at Alcobaça is also seen here, where the great inner supports of the arches do not reach the ground, but start suddenly three-quarters up the pillar, producing the effect of the lower portion having been cut away. The double doorway itself is fine early Manueline marble, surmounted by the pelican and young, the device of John II., and the armillary sphere, which was that of his son, King Manuel the Fortunate. The inside of the church is very striking. The immense width of nave (42 feet) is unbroken by pillars or aisles, the side chapels being apparently embedded in the walls and separated from each other by fine pure Gothic pillars on the wall surface, each pillar being carried right up to the spring of the roof and its uninterrupted arch carried over to the corresponding pillar on the other side, the effect being one of great width and spaciousness, as the length of the nave to the chancel arch is no less than eighty-eight feet.

The chapels, some of which are very beautiful with carved figures of the good sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish period, are separated from the nave by a handsome black and white marble balustrade of the same period. The transepts are exceptionally majestic, and, like the nave, of good unadorned Romanesque-Gothic, but the tiled walls and overloaded altars—the latter still greatly venerated by the faithful—sadly mar the simple grandeur of their main plan. The chancel is magnificent, with its elaborately bossed and groined roof, and fine carved choir-stalls, the work of the Fleming, Oliver of Ghent, who carved the now plundered stalls for the Templars’ church at Thomar; and over the noble chancel arch again the devices of John II. and Manuel, with the arms of Portugal, are carved.