Through Portugal

by Martin A. S. Hume

In the chapels, and especially in one of the transepts, are some paintings of the highest interest; but the light is so bad that it is impossible to inspect them carefully. They can, however, be seen sufficiently well—notwithstanding their deplorable condition—to prove that some of the great mysterious Flemish-Portuguese masters of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries must have painted them. One representing St. Anthony preaching to the fishes is perfectly exquisite in its minute conscientiousness. I was informed that in the bishop’s palace twelve fine paintings of the same school, attributed to the brothers Van Eyck, are kept in similar semi-darkness and neglect; but these I could not see. It is a thousand pities that these art treasures and others of the same sort which I have mentioned,[^[10]] should not be rescued and reverently kept.

A peculiarity of this church of St. Francisco, as of the cathedral of Evora, which I shall mention presently, is that the brown granite blocks of which it is constructed are clearly marked out with staring white divisions of cement, either real or simulated. The effect is one of very questionable taste, but the peculiarity is not a modern innovation, and the series of white transverse lines traced upon the brown background has some attraction from its very strangeness. The story goes that this monastery-church, founded originally in 1224, twice fell down, and when, after the second disaster late in the fifteenth century, the famous architect, Martin Lourenço, was commissioned to construct a new church, he swore that his building, at least, should never share the fate of its predecessors. Instead of a single main outer wall he built two on each side of the church, all of similar height, the space between the inner and outer walls being about five feet or less, and in the lower portion of this space the side chapels are accommodated. The two walls were tied together by transverse walls of similar strength and height between the chapels, and upon each of these transverse walls, which are carried over the roof to the opposite pair of walls, similarly constructed, the roof arches rest. The roof is, therefore, divided into six independent sections, each one supported by its own separate walls and arch. As if this were not enough, a similar arrangement was made below the ground, where corresponding sets of transverse walls were carried across to the other side, and thus the whole nave consisted of six complete and self-supporting bodies joined together. Even this did not satisfy Martin Lourenço. He built yet another wall longitudinally along the central ridge of the roof, and a similar one underground along the same axis binding together both above and below the transverse sections from end to end, and increasing the stability of the building by the added weight. All this it is, of course, impossible to see from the inside, but from the praça the top battlements of the four long lines of wall and the roof-ridge are discernible, and the skeleton of the church, so to speak, can be understood.

A door in the transept leads to an extraordinary chapel of considerable size (58 feet long by 34 broad), divided into a nave and two aisles, the whole of the walls, pillars, and ceiling of which are lined or constructed of skulls and other human bones, arranged in symmetrical patterns. The remains of many thousands of human beings are contained in this ghastly chamber, probably constructed by the monks in the seventeenth century from the contents of ancient crypts and charnel-houses. The specially venerated figure of our Lord, of which this was formerly the chapel, has now been transferred to an adjoining apartment better adapted for modern worship.

Evora stands upon a gentle eminence in the midst of a vast fertile plain, surrounded by distant mountains, and upon the very summit of the hill, hidden away between narrow, winding streets leading up from the main arcaded praça, stands the venerable Sé—the cathedral of the archbishopric. In a quiet little open space it rears its two solid, square, granite Romanesque towers of the twelfth century, flanked by the whitewashed, monastic-looking palace of the archbishop, the two towers being united by a pure Gothic doorway porch which fills the space between them. The inner doorway pillars are adorned by early Gothic statues of the disciples, all so direct and vivid as to put to shame the affected elaborations of a later time. Slabs in the porch over ancient sarcophagi in Gothic niches tell that all this has been restored in recent years; but it is easy to see that here, at least, the restorer has been reverent and has spoilt nothing.

Like most of the Portuguese cathedrals of the period the first effect produced by the interior is that of grave massiveness. The narrow nave and aisles separated by clustered Romanesque pillars, supporting early Gothic arches, very slightly pointed, and a graceful triforium, have all the beauty of serene severity.[^[11]] Here again, the clustered pillars shoot sheer up to the spring of the roof, and carry an arch over to the other side, and the cimborio or lantern at the intersection of the transepts and the nave is especially striking. The pillars that support it on four sides, chancel, nave, and two transepts, are as bold and aspiring as those of Ely, and seem to cry out aloud in exalted triumphant devotion. To gaze up at this cimborio with its lovely groining and its graceful spandrils carried to a prodigious height at one sweep is a sensation worth coming from England to experience.

High up on the wall of the nave there is roughly sculptured the life-sized figure of a man, bearing upon his breast a cartouche with the Gothic letters C. C. E. cut upon it, representing, as local antiquarians insist, the figure of the twelfth-century architect of the building, Martin Dominguez, and the coats-of-arms and sepulchral figures in chapels and on walls are many. One florid Gothic sarcophagus in the south transept is that of André de Resende, a relative of Garcia de Resende, the earliest Portuguese historian, whose house, with its beautiful Manueline windows, still stands in Evora. The chapels on each side of the cathedral are much disfigured by tawdry decorations and curly gilt wood carvings, but several have finely painted altar-pieces, badly lit and uncared for; and one altar, Our Lady of the Angel, against a pillar in the nave, evidently much venerated, for it is hung all over with votive offerings, is grotesquely hideous, with its ill-carved, big, staring doll upon a gilt monstrosity of a stand.

The little choir loft over the west end of the nave, like that at Braga, is filled with finely carved oaken choir-stalls, and the episcopal throne, with Scripture scenes in high relief carved upon the panelling, probably French or Italian work of the Renaissance period. The Eborenses complain that the French plundered the cathedral of most of its valuable treasures; but the church plate and vestments are still of very great richness, and I was much struck by a great jewelled altar cross said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. The precious stones upon it amount altogether to 1425, of which 840 are diamonds; and a chalice of enamel and gold of the sixteenth century is a veritable thing of beauty. The chancel and high altar of the eighteenth century, though of precious marbles, are quite out of keeping with the church, and I was glad to turn away from them and linger in the pretty little ruined cloister of the monks, of simple devotional Gothic.

But the exterior of the old Sé after all is more picturesque than the interior. Glimpses of shady little white courtyards, with acacias, orange-trees, and abundant flowers; corners and gateways of ancient palaces, with florid and beautiful Manueline doorways; here and there a Roman tower or arch; narrow white streets, almost alleys, with supporting arches from side to side across the way; and over all a blue, blue sky. The bold, long, battlemented ridges of the aisles and nave of the cathedral, and the pointed round tower of the wonderful cimborio, with its eight turrets ranged around it, seem to force upon the mind the dignified antiquity of the place, hardly marred by the modern classicism of the trivial chancel apse tacked on to it. Outside the north-west corner of the cathedral is a Roman tower and arch in perfect preservation, and adjoining it a quaint triangular praça called S. Miguel, gives entrance to a ruined mediæval palace of the Counts of Basto. But, take a few steps to the north of this, turn the corner of the archbishop’s palace and the choir-boys’ college, and there bursts upon your view, silhouetted against the blue sky, an object that draws an exclamation of surprise and delight from the most apathetic. In an open space, almost surrounded by ancient battlemented buildings, there stands alone in the midst a majestic ruin, which makes even their hoary antiquity but a thing of yesterday. A Roman temple, almost complete, with six Corinthian columns at the end of its parallelogram and five out of the ten that formerly existed on each side. The supporting wall upon which they stand is of rough stone with well-dressed granite plinths and corners, all perfect and complete, and standing over eleven feet from the ground. Upon this rise the beautiful fluted columns of granite, with bases and carved capitals of white marble, the granite entablature over the pillars being almost perfect.

At what was the entrance of the temple the remains of a noble flight of steps, the whole width of the edifice and twelve feet high, exist, and it requires no effort of the imagination, turning one’s back to the cathedral, to repeople the space before us with figures of the long past. Up the steps to the lovely temple under the blue sky mount the white-clad citizens of imperial Rome. Slaves there are in many, and half-civilised Iberian tribesmen, still, perhaps, recalcitrant to the yoke. Trembling, perchance, for the savage vengeance of Diocletian, they sullenly look upon the sacrifice to the pagan gods, whilst they in their hearts hold with the strange new creed of the Nazarene; for this temple must have been raised in the second century after the advent of Christ, when already the trumpet sound of Christianity had pierced the hearts of the Celtiberian peoples, and had awakened vague longings for emancipation from the oppressive unconsoling gods of old.

And I turn back and contemplate the grave old mediæval cathedral close by, with its modern addition covered with flourishing cardinals hats and saintly frippery; and I see there, too, the temple of a creed that is losing its hold upon the hearts and minds of men. For the great cathedral I have just left is as empty and silent now as the temple to the unknown God before me. In successive ages surely the same old yearning is re-born for direct appeal and nearer personal access to God, free from the trammels and man-made mediations with which all creeds in time burden the simplicity of their faith. Here in this temple—called of Diana with no historical warrant—devout souls offered their sacrifice without misgiving; and in the old Sé hearts have pierced the church-raised clouds and reached the Throne any day this nine hundred years. But as the thirst for equal direct appeal for all souls overthrew the gods of the temple, so the same longing empties the great fane that has departed from the severe sincerity of the age that founded it; and thus the gods do come and go, whilst God lives on for ever.