Perhaps the chancel of the cathedral at Braga ought rather to be left to a chapter dealing with what is usually called the Manoelino style—that strange last development of Gothic which is found only in Portugal—but it is in many respects so like the choir chapels of the church at Caminha, and has so little of the usual Manoelino peculiarities, that it were better to describe it now. Whatever may be thought of the chancel, there is no doubt about the large western porch, which is quite free of any Manoelino fantasies.
Both porch and chancel were built by Archbishop Dom Diego de Souza about the year 1530—a most remarkable date when the purely Gothic work here is compared with buildings further south, where Manoelino had already been succeeded by various forms of the classic renaissance. The porch stretches right across the west end of the church, and is of three bays. That in the centre, considerably wider than those at the side, is entered from the west by a round-headed arch, while the arches of the others are pointed. The bays are separated by buttresses of considerable projection, and all the arches, which have good late mouldings, are enriched with a fine feathering of cusps, which stands out well against the dark interior. Unfortunately the original parapet is gone, only the elaborate canopies of the niches, of which there are two to each bay, rise above the level of the flat paved roof. Inside there is a good vault with many well-moulded ribs, but the finest feature of it all is the wrought-iron railing which crosses each opening. This, almost the only piece of wrought-iron work worthy of notice in the whole country, is very like contemporary screens in Spain. It is made of upright bars, some larger, twisted from top to bottom, some smaller twisted at the top, and plain below, alternating with others plain above and twisted below. At the top runs a frieze of most elaborate hammered and pierced work—early renaissance in detail in the centre, Gothic in the side arches, above which comes in the centre a wonderful cresting. In the middle, over the gate which rises as high as the top of the cresting, is a large trefoil made of a flat hammered band intertwined with a similar band after the manner of a Manoelino doorway.[92] ([Fig. 43].)
Of the chancel little has been left inside but the vault and the tombs of Dona Theresa (the first independent ruler of Portugal) and of her husband Count Henry of Burgundy—very poor work of about the same date as the chancel. The outside, however, has been unaltered. Below it is square in plan, becoming at about twenty feet from the ground a half-octagon having the eastern a good deal wider than the diagonal sides. On the angles of the lower square stand tall clustered buttresses, rising independently of the wall as far as the projecting cornice, across which their highest pinnacles cut, and united to the chancel at about a third of the height, by small but elaborate flying buttresses. On the eastern face there is a simple pointed window, and there is nothing else to relieve the perfectly plain walls below except two string courses, and the elaborate side buttresses with their tall pinnacles and twisted shafts. But if the walling is plain the cornice is most elaborate. It is of great depth and of considerable projection, the hollows of the mouldings being filled with square flowers below and intricate carving above. On this stands a high parapet of traceried quatrefoils, bearing a horizontal moulding from which springs an elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding.
Conceiçao, Braga.
Opposite the east end of the cathedral there stands a small tower built in 1512 by Archdeacon João de Coimbra as a chapel. It is of two stories, with a vaulted chapel below and a belfrey above, lit by round-headed windows, only one of which retains its tracery. Just above the string which divides the two stories are statues[93] under canopies, one projecting on a corbel from each corner, and one from the middle, while above a cornice, on which stand short pinnacles, six to each side, the tower ends in a low square tile roof. The chapel on the ground floor is entered by a porch, whose flat lintel rests on moulded piers at the angles and on two tall round columns in the centre, while its three openings are filled with plain iron screens, the upper part of which blossoms out into large iron flowers and leaves. Inside there is on the east wall a reredos of early renaissance date, and on the south a large half-classical arch flanked by pilasters under which there is a life-size group of the Entombment made seemingly of terra cotta and painted.
So, rather later than in most other lands, and many years after the renaissance had made itself felt in other parts of the country, Gothic comes to an end, curiously enough not far from where the oldest Christian buildings are found.
CHAPTER VII
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS
It is now time to turn back for a century and a half and to speak of the traces left by the Moors of their long occupation of the country. Although they held what is now the northern half of Portugal for over a hundred years, and part of the south for about five hundred, there is hardly a single building anywhere of which we can be sure that it was built by them before the Christian re-conquest of the country. Perhaps almost the only exceptions are the fortifications at Cintra, known as the Castello dos Mouros, the city walls at Silves, and possibly the church at Mertola. In Spain very many of their buildings still exist, such as the small mosque, now the church of Christo de la Luz, and the city walls at Toledo, and of course the mosque at Cordoba and the Alcazar at Seville, not to speak of the Alhambra. Yet it must not be forgotten that, while Portugal reached its furthest limits by the capture of the Algarve under Affonso iii. about the middle of the thirteenth century, in Spain the progress was slower. Toledo indeed fell in 1085, but Cordoba and Seville were only taken a few years before the capture of the Algarve, and Granada was able to hold out till 1492. Besides, in what is now Portugal there had been no great capital like Cordoba. And yet, though this is so, hardly a town or a village exists in which some slight trace of their art cannot be found, even if it be but a tile-lining to the walls of church or house. In such towns as Toledo, Moorish builders were employed not only in the many parish churches but even in the cathedral, and in Portugal we find Moors at Thomar even as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, when such names as Omar, Mafamedi, Bugimaa, and Bebedim occur in the list of workmen.
It is chiefly in three directions that Moorish influence made itself felt, in actual design, in carpentry, and in tiling, and of these the last two, and especially tiling, are the most general, and long survived the disappearance of Arab detail.