survived the beautiful alterations of Dom Manoel, the details of the cloister must have been very like those of the church. The refectory to the west of the cloister is a plain room roofed with a pointed barrel-vault; but the chapter-house is constructively the most remarkable part of the whole convent. It is a great room over sixty feet square, opening off the east cloister walk by a large pointed door with a two-light window each side. This great space is covered by an immense vault, upheld by no central shaft; arches are thrown across the corners bringing the square to an octagon, and though not very high, it is one of the boldest Gothic vaults ever attempted; there is nowhere else a room of such a size vaulted without supporting piers, and probably none where the buttresses outside, with their small projection, look so unequal to the work they have to do, yet this vault has successfully withstood more than one earthquake.
The inside of the church is in singular contrast to the floridness of the outside. The clustered piers are exceptionally large and tall; there is no triforium, and the side windows are set so far back as to be scarcely seen. The capitals have elaborate Gothic foliage, but are so square as to look at a distance almost romanesque. In front of each pier triple vaulting shafts run up, but instead of the side shafts carrying the diagonal ribs as they should have done, all three carry bold transverse arches, leaving the vaulting ribs to spring as best they can. Each bay has horizontal ridge ribs, though their effect is lost by the too great strength of the transverse arches. The chancel, a little lower than the nave and transepts, is entered by an acutely pointed and richly cusped arch, and has a regular Welsh groined vault, with a well-developed ridge rib. Unfortunately almost all the church furniture was destroyed during the French retreat, and of the stained glass only that in the windows of the main apse survives, save in the three-light window of the chapter-house, a window which can be exactly dated as it displays the arms of Portugal and Castile quartered. This could only have been done during the life of Dom Manoel's first wife, Isabel, eldest daughter and heir of Ferdinand and Isabella. Dom Manoel married her in 1497, and she died in 1498 leaving a son who, had he lived, would have inherited the whole Peninsula and so saved Spain from the fatal connection with the Netherlands inherited by Charles v. from his own father. ([Fig. 34].)
The most elaborate part of the interior is not unnaturally the Capella do Fundador: though even there, the four beautiful carved and painted altars and retables on the east side, and the elaborate carved presses on the west, have all vanished from their places, burned for firewood by the invaders in 1810. In the centre under the lantern, lie King João who died in 1433, and on the right Queen Philippa of Lancaster who died seventeen years before. The high tomb itself is a plain square block of stone from which on each side there project four lions: at the head are the royal arms surrounded by the Garter, and on the sides long inscriptions in honour of the king and queen. The figures of the king and queen lie side by side with very elaborate canopies at their heads. King João is in armour, holding a sword in his left hand and with his other clasping the queen's right hand. The figures are not nearly so well carved as are those of Dom Pedro and Inez de Castro at Alcobaça, nor is the tomb nearly as elaborate. On the south wall are the recessed tombs of four of their younger sons. The eldest, Dom Duarte, intended to be buried in the great unfinished chapel at the east, but still lies with his wife before the high altar. Each recess has a pointed arch richly moulded, and with broad bands of very unusual leaves, while above it rises a tall ogee canopy, crocketed and ending in a large finial. The space between arch and canopy and the sills of the windows is covered with reticulated panelling like that on the west front, and the tombs are divided by tall pinnacles. The four sons here buried are, beginning at the west: first, Dom Pedro, duke of Coimbra; next him Dom Henrique, duke of Vizeu and master of the Order of Christ, famous as Prince Henry the Navigator; then Dom João, Constable of Portugal; and last, Dom Fernando, master of the Order of Aviz, who died an unhappy captive in Morocco. During the reign of his brother Dom Duarte he had taken part in an expedition to that country, and being taken prisoner was offered his freedom if the Portuguese would give up Ceuta, captured by King João in the year in which Queen Philippa died. These terms he indignantly refused and died after some years of misery. On the front of each tomb is a large panel on which are two or three shields—one on that of Dom Henrique being surrounded with the Garter—while all the surface is covered with beautifully carved foliage. Dom Henrique alone has an
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FIG. 34. Church, Batalha. Interior. |
FIG. 35. Batalha Capella Do Fundador and Tomb of Dom João i and Dona Filippa. |
effigy, the others having only covers raised and panelled, while the back of the Constable's monument has on it scenes from the Passion.
The eight piers of the lantern are made up of a great number of shafts with a moulded angle between each. The capitals are covered with two tiers of conventional vine-leaves and have octagonal, not as in the church square abaci, while the arches are highly stilted and are enriched with most elaborate cusping, each cusp ending in a square vine-leaf. ([Fig. 35].)
Such then are the main features of the church, the design of which, according to most writers, was brought straight from England by the English queen, an opinion which no one who knows English contemporary buildings can hold for a moment.
First, to take the entirely native features. The plan is only an elaboration of that of many already existing churches. The south transept door is a copy of a door at Santarem. The heavy transverse arches and the curious way the diagonal vaulting ribs are left to take care of themselves have been seen no further away than at Alcobaça; the flat-paved terraced roofs, whose origin the Visconde di Condeixa in his monograph on the convent, sought even as far off as in Cyprus, existed already at Evora and elsewhere.
Secondly, from France might have come the general design of the west door, and the great height of the nave, though the proportion between the aisle arcade and the clerestory, and the entire absence of any kind of triforium, is not at all French.
Thirdly, several details, as has been seen, appear to be more English than anything else, but they are none of them very important; the ridge ribs in the nave, the Welsh groining of the chancel vault, the general look of the pinnacles, a few pieces of stone panelling on buttresses or door, a small part of a few of the windows, the moulding of the chapter-house door, the leaves on the capitals of the Capella do Fundador, and the shape of the vine-leaves at the ends of the cuspings of the arches. From a distance the appearance of the church is certainly more English than anything else, but that is due chiefly to the flat roof—a thoroughly Portuguese feature—and to the upstanding pinnacles, which suggest a long perpendicular building such as one of the college chapels at Oxford.