Although some, and especially the last two of the buildings described above belong, in part at least, to the time of transition from romanesque to first pointed, and although the group of churches at Coimbra are wholly romanesque, it would be better to have done with all that can be ascribed to a period older than the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy before following Affonso Henriques in his successful efforts to extend his kingdom southwards to the Tagus.
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FIG. 14. Church, Paço de Souza. Nave. |
FIG. 15. Paço de Souza. Tomb of Egas Moniz. |
Guimarães, Castle.
Although Braga was the ecclesiastical capital of their fief, Count Henry and his wife lived usually at Guimarães, a small town some fifteen miles to the south. Towards the beginning of the tenth century there died D. Hermengildo Gonçalves Mendes, count of Tuy and Porto, who by his will left Vimaranes, as it was then called, to his widow, Mumadona. About 927 she there founded a monastery and built a castle for its defence, and this castle, which had twice suffered from Moslem invaders, was restored or rebuilt by Count Henry, and there in 1111 was born his son Affonso Henriques, who was later to become the first king of the new and independent kingdom of Portugal. Henry died soon after, in 1114, at Astorga, perhaps poisoned by his sister-in-law, Urraca, queen of Castile and Leon, and for several years his widow governed his lands as guardian for their son.
Thirteen years after Count Henry's death, in 1127, the castle was the scene of the famous submission of Egas Moniz to the Spanish king, and this, together with the fact that Affonso Henriques was born there, has given it a place in the romantic history of Portugal which is rather higher than what would seem due to a not very important building. The castle stands to the north of the town on a height which commands all the surrounding country. Its walls, defended at intervals by square towers, are built among and on the top of enormous granite boulders, and enclose an irregular space in which stands the keep. The inhabited part of the castle ran along the north-western wall where it stood highest above the land below, but it has mostly perished, leaving only a few windows which are too large to date from the beginning of the twelfth century. The square keep stands within a few feet of the western wall, rises high above it, and was reached by a drawbridge from the walk on the top of the castle walls. Its wooden floors are gone, its windows are mere slits, and like the rest of the castle it owes its distinctive appearance to the battlements which crown the whole building, and whose merlons are plain blocks of stone brought to a sharp point at the top. This feature, which is found in all the oldest Portuguese castles such as that of Almourol on an island in the Tagus near Abrantes, and even on some churches such as the old cathedral at Coimbra and the later church at Leça de Balio, is one of the most distinct legacies left by the Moors: here the front of each merlon is perpendicular to the top, but more usually it is finished in a small sharp pyramid.
Church.
The other foundation of Mumadona, the monastery of Nossa Senhora and São Salvador in the town of Guimarães, had since her day twice suffered destruction at the hands of the Moors, once in 967 when the castle was taken by Al-Coraxi, emir of Seville, and thirty years later when Almansor[39] in 998 swept northwards towards Galicia, sacking and burning as he went. At the time when Count Henry and Dona Teresa were living in the castle, the double Benedictine monastery for men and women had fallen into decay, and in 1109 Count Henry got a Papal Bull changing the foundation into a royal collegiate church under a Dom Prior, and at once began to rebuild it, a restoration which was not finished till 1172. Since then the church has been wholly and the cloisters partly rebuilt by João i. at the end of the fourteenth century, but some arches of the cloister and the entrance to the chapter-house may very likely date from Count Henry's time. These cloisters occupy a very unusual position. Starting from the north transept they run round the back of the chancel, along the south side of the church outside the transept, and finally join the church again near the west front. The large round arches have chamfered edges; the columns are monoliths of granite about eighteen inches thick; the bases and the abaci all romanesque in form, though many of the capitals, as can be seen from their shape and carving, are of the fourteenth or even fifteenth century, showing how Juan Garcia de Toledo, who rebuilt the church for Dom João i., tried, in restoring the cloister, to copy the already existing features and as usual betrayed the real date by his later details. A few of the old capitals still remain, and are of good romanesque form such as may be seen in any part of southern France or in Spain.[40] To the chapter-house, a plain oblong room with a panelled wood ceiling, there leads, from the east cloister walk, an unaltered archway, flanked as usual by two openings, one on either side. The doorway arch is plain, slightly horseshoe in shape, and is carried by short strong half-columns whose capitals are elaborately carved with animals and twisting branches, the animals, as is often the case,
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FIG. 16. Door of Chapter House, N.S. da Oliveira. Guimarães. |
FIG. 17. Cloister. Leça do Balio. |
being set back to back at the angles so that one head does duty for each pair. Above is a large hollow hood-mould exactly similar to those which enclose the side windows. The two lights of these windows are separated by short coupled shafts whose capitals, derived from the Corinthian or Composite, have stiff leaves covering the change from the round to the square, and between them broad tendrils which end in very carefully cut volutes at the angles. The heads themselves are markedly horseshoe in shape, which at first sight suggests some Moorish influence, but in everything else the details are so thoroughly Western, and by 1109 such a long time, over a hundred years, had passed since the Moors had been permanently expelled from that part of the country, that it were better to see in these horseshoes an unskilled attempt at stilting, rather than the work of some one familiar with Eastern forms. ([Fig. 16].)