The Franciscans had been introduced into Portugal by Dona Sancha, the daughter of Dom Sancho i., and houses were built for them by Dona Urraca, the wife of Dom Affonso ii., at Lisbon and at Guimarães. Their church at Guimarães has been very much altered at different times, mostly in the eighteenth century, but the west door may very well belong to Dona Urraca's building. It has a drip-mould covered with closely set balls, and four orders of mouldings of which the second is a broad chamfer with a row of flat four-leaved flowers; the abacus is well moulded, but the capitals, which are somewhat bell-shaped, have the bell covered with rude animals or foliage which are still very romanesque in design. The entrance to the chapter-house is probably not much later in date: from the south walk of the simple but picturesque renaissance cloister a plain pointed doorway leads into the chapter-house, with, on either side, an opening of about equal size and shape. In these openings there stand three pairs of round coupled shafts with plain bases, rudely carved capitals and large square overhanging abaci, from which spring two pointed arches moulded only on the under side: resting on these, but connected with them or with the enclosing arch by no moulding or fillet, is a small circle, moulded like the arches only on one side and containing a small quatrefoil.[58] This is one of the earliest attempts at window tracery in the country, for the west window at Evora seems later, but like it, it shows that tracery was not really understood in the country, and that the Portuguese builders were not yet able so to unite the different parts as to make such a window one complete and beautiful whole. Indeed so unsuccessful are their attempts throughout that whenever, as at Batalha, a better result is seen, it may be put down to foreign influence. Much better as a rule are the round windows, mostly of the fourteenth century, but they are all very like one another, and are probably mostly derived from the same source, perhaps from one of the transept windows at Evora, or from the now empty circle over the west door at Lisbon.
São Francisco, Santarem.
Much more refined than this granite church at Guimarães has been São Francisco at Santarem, now unfortunately degraded into being the stable of a cavalry barracks. There the best-preserved and most interesting part is the west door, which does not lead directly into the church but into a low porch or narthex. The narthex itself has central and side aisles, all of the same height, is two bays in length and is covered by a fine strong vault resting on short clustered piers.[59] The doorway itself, which is not acutely pointed, stands under a gable which reaches up to the plain battlemented parapet of the flat narthex roof. There are four shafts on each side with a ring-moulding rather less than half-way up, which at once distinguishes them from any romanesque predecessors; the capitals are round with a projecting moulding half-way up and another one at the top with a curious projection or claw to unite the round cap and the square moulded abacus. Of the different orders of the arch, all well moulded, the outer has a hood with billet-mould; the second a well-developed chevron or zigzag; and the innermost a series of small horseshoes, which like the chevron stretch across the hollow so as to hold in the large roll at the angle.[60] ([Fig. 26].)
Santa Maria dos Olivaes, Thomar.
In a previous chapter the building of a church at Thomar by Dom Gualdim Paes, Grand Master of the Templars, has been mentioned. Of this church and the castle built at the same time, both of which stood on the east or flat bank of the river Nabão, nothing now remains except perhaps the lower part of the detached bell-tower. This church, Santa Maria dos Olivaes, was the Matriz or mother church of all those held, first by the Templars and later by their successors, the Order of Christ, not only in Portugal but even in Africa, Brazil, and in India. Of so high a dignity it is scarcely worthy, being but a very simple building neither large nor richly ornamented. A nave and aisles of five bays, three polygonal apses to the east and later square chapels beyond the aisles, make up the whole building. The roofs are all of panelled wood of the sixteenth century except in the three vaulted apses, of which the central is entered by an arch, which, rising no higher than the aisle arches, leaves room for a large window under the roof. All the arches of the aisle arcade spring from the simple moulded capitals of piers whose section is that of four half-octagons placed together.
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FIG. 26. Santarem W. Door, São Francisco. |
FIG. 27. Sé Silves. |
In the clerestory are windows of one small light, in the aisles of two larger lights, and in the apses single lancets. The great simplicity of the building notwithstanding it can scarcely be as old as the thirteenth century: the curious way in which the two lancet lights of the aisle windows are enclosed under one larger trefoiled arch recalls the similar windows in the church at Leça do Balio near Oporto begun in 1336, though there the elliptical head of the enclosing arch is much less satisfactory than the trefoiled head here used. The only part of the church which can possibly have been built in the thirteenth century is the central part of the west front. The pointed door below stands under a projecting gable like that at São Francisco Santarem, except that there is a five-foiled circle above the arch containing a pentalpha, put there perhaps to keep out witches. The door itself has three large shafts on each side with good but much-decayed capitals of foliage, and a moulded jamb next the door. The arch itself is terribly decayed, but one of its orders still has the remains of a series of large cusps, arranged like the horseshoe cusps at Santarem but much larger. Above the door gable is a circular window of almost disproportionate size. It has twelve trefoil-headed lights radiating from a small circle, and curiously crossing a larger circle some distance from the smaller. Unfortunately the spaces between the trefoils and the outer mouldings have been filled up with plaster and the lights themselves subdivided with meaningless wood tracery to hold the horrible blue-and-red glass now so popular in Portugal. Though Santa Maria dos Olivaes cannot be nearly as old as has usually been believed, it is one of the earliest churches built on the plan derived perhaps first from Braga Cathedral or from the Franciscan and Dominican churches in Galicia, of a wooden roofed basilica with or without transept, and with three or more apses to the east; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal in Madeira.
Dom Sancho ii., whose reign had begun with brilliant attacks on the Moors, had, because of his connection with Dona Mencia de Haro, the widow of a Castilian nobleman, and his consequent inactivity, become extremely unpopular, so was supplanted in 1246 by his brother Dom Affonso iii. The first care of the new king was to carry on the conquest
Silves.
of the Algarve, which his brother had given up when he fell under the evil influence of Dona Mencia, and by about 1260 he had overrun the whole country. At first Alfonso x., the Wise, king of Castile and Leon, was much displeased at this extension of Portuguese power, but on Dom Affonso agreeing to marry his daughter Beatriz de Guzman, the Spanish king allowed his son-in-law to retain his conquests and to assume the title of King of the Algarve, a title which his descendants still bear. The countess of Boulogne, Affonso's first wife, was indeed still alive, but that seems to have troubled neither Dona Beatriz nor her father. At Silves or Chelb, for so the Moorish capital had been called, a bishopric was soon founded, but the cathedral,[61] though many of its details seem to proclaim an early origin, was probably not begun till the early, and certainly not finished till near the later, years of the fourteenth century. It is a church of the same type as Santa Maria at Thomar but with a transept. The west door, a smaller edition of that at Alcobaça, leads to a nave and aisles of four bays, with plain octagonal columns, whose bases exactly resemble the capitals reversed—an octagon brought to a square by a curved chamfer. The nave has a wooden roof, transepts a pointed barrel vault, and the crossing and chancel with its side chapels a ribbed vault. Though some of the capitals at the east end look almost romanesque, the really late date is shown by the cusped fringing of the chancel arch, a feature very common at Batalha, which was begun at the end of the fourteenth century, and by the window tracery, where in the two-light windows the head is filled by a flat pierced slab. Outside, the chancel has good buttresses at the angles, and is crowned by that curious boat-like corbel table seen at Santarem and by a row of pyramidal battlements. The church is only about 150 feet long, but with its two picturesque and dilapidated towers, and the wonderful deep purple of its sandstone walls rising above the whitewashed houses and palms of the older Silves and backed by the Moorish citadel, it makes a most picturesque and even striking centre to the town, which, standing high above the river, preserves the memory of its Moslem builders in its remarkable and many-towered city walls.[62] ([Fig. 27].)