Portuguese Architecture Part 5

PAcO DE SOUZA.

TOMB OF EGAS MONIZ.]

[Sidenote: Guimares, Castle.]

Count Henry and his wife lived usually at Guimares, a small town some fifteen miles to the south. Towards the beginning of the tenth century there died D. Hermengildo Goncalves 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Leca 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.

[Sidenote: Church.]

The other foundation of Mumadona, the monastery of Nossa Senhora and So Salvador in the town of Guimares, 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 Joo 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 Joo 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,

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16.

DOOR OF CHAPTER HOUSE, N.S. DA OLIVEIRA.

GUIMARES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.

CLOISTER.

LEcA 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 pa.s.sed 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.)

CHAPTER II

THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE SOUTH

In 1057 Fernando, king of Castile, Leon and Galicia crossed the Douro, took Lamego, where the lower part of the tower is all that is left of the romanesque cathedral, and is indeed the only romanesque tower in the country. Vizeu fell soon after, and seven years later he advanced his borders to the Mondego by the capture of Coimbra. The Mondego, the only large river whose source and mouth are both in Portugal, long remained the limit of the Christian dominion, and nearly a hundred years were to pa.s.s before any further advance was made. In 1147 Affonso Henriques, who had but lately a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of king, convinced at last that he was wasting his strength in trying to seize part of his cousin's dominions of Galicia, determined to turn south and extend his new kingdom in that direction. Accordingly in March of that year he secretly led his army against Santarem, one of the strongest of the Moorish cities standing high above the Tagus on an isolated hill. The vezir, Abu-Zakariah, was surprised before he could provision the town, so that the garrison were able to offer but a feeble resistance, and the Christians entered after the attack had lasted only a few days. Before starting the king had vowed that if successful he would found a monastery in token of his grat.i.tude, and though its vast domestic buildings are now but barracks and court-houses, the great Cistercian abbey of Alcobaca still stands to show how well his vow was fulfilled.

Although Santarem was taken in 1147, the first stone of Alcobaca was not laid till 1153, and the building was carried out very slowly and in a style, imported directly from France, quite foreign to any previous work in Portugal. It were better, therefore, before coming to this, the largest church and the richest foundation in the whole country, to have done with the other churches which though contemporary with Alcobaca are not the work of French but of native workmen, or at least of such as had not gone further than to Galicia for their models.

[Sidenote: Se, Lisbon.]

The same year that saw the fall of Santarem saw also the more important capture of Lisbon. Taken by the Moors in 714, it had long been their capital, and although thrice captured by the Christians had always been recovered. In this enterprise Affonso Henriques was helped by a body of Crusaders, mostly English, who sailing from Dartmouth were persuaded by the bishop of Oporto to begin their Holy War in Portugal, and when Lisbon fell, one of them, Gilbert of Hastings, was rewarded by being made its first bishop. Of the cathedral, begun three years later, in 1150, little but the plan of the nave and transept has survived. Much injured by an earthquake in 1344, the whole choir was rebuilt on a French model by Affonso IV. only to be again destroyed in 1755. The original plan must have been very like that of Braga, an aisleless transept, a nave and aisles of six bays, and two square towers beyond with a porch between. The two towers are now very plain with large belfry windows near the top, but there are traces here and there of old built-up round-headed openings which show that the walls at least are really old. The outer arch of the porch has been rebuilt since the earthquake, but the original door remains inside, with a carved hood-mould, rich abacus, and four orders of mouldings enriched with small b.a.l.l.s in their hollows. The eight plain shafts stand on unusually high pedestals and have rather long capitals, some carved with flat acanthus leaves and some with small figures of men and animals.

Like that of the cathedral of Coimbra, which was being built about the same time, the inside is clearly founded on the great cathedral of Santiago, itself a copy of S. Sernin at Toulouse, and quite uninfluenced by the French design of Alcobaca. The piers are square with a half-shaft on each face, the arches are round, and the aisles covered with plain unribbed fourpart vaulting, while the main aisle is roofed with a round barrel. Instead of the large open gallery, which at Santiago allows the quadrant vault supporting the central barrel to be seen, there is here a low blind arcade of small round arches. Unfortunately, when restored after the disaster of 1755 the whole inside was plastered, all the capitals both of the main

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, LISBON]

piers and of the gallery were converted into a semblance of gilt Corinthian capitals, and large skylights were cut through the vault.

Only the inside of the low octagonal lantern remains to show that the church must have been at least as interesting, if not more so, than the Se Velha or old cathedral at Coimbra. If the nave has suffered such a transformation the fourteenth-century choir has been even worse treated. The whole upper part, which once was as high as the top of the lantern, fell and was re-roofed in a most miserable manner, having only the ambulatory and its chapels uninjured. But these, the cloister and a rather fine chapel to the north-west of the nave, had better be left for another chapter.[41]

[Sidenote: Se Velha, Coimbra.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, COIMBRA]

Smaller but much better preserved than Lisbon Cathedral is the Se Velha or old cathedral of Coimbra. According to the local tradition, the cathedral is but a mosque turned into a church after the Christian conquest, and it may well be that in the time of Dom Sesnando, the first governor of Coimbra--a Moor who, becoming a Christian, was made count of Coimbra by King Fernando, and whose tomb, broken open by the French, may still be seen outside the north wall of the church--the chief mosque of the town was used as the cathedral. But although an Arab inscription[42]

is built into the outer wall of the nave, there can be no doubt that the present building is as Christian in plan and design as any church can be. If the nave of the cathedral of Lisbon is like Santiago in construction, the nave here is, on a reduced scale, undoubtedly a copy of Santiago not only constructively but also in its general details. The piers are shorter but of the same plan, the great triforium gallery looks towards the nave, as at Santiago and at Toulouse, by a double opening whose arches spring from single shafts at the sides to rest on double shafts in the centre, both being enclosed under one larger arch, while the barrel vault and the supporting vaults of the gallery are exactly similar. Now Santiago was practically finished in 1128, and there still exists a book called the _Livro Preto_ in which is given a list of the gifts made by Dom Miguel, who ruled the see of Coimbra from 1162 to 1176, towards the building and adorning of the church. Nothing is said as to when the church was begun, but we are told that Dom Miguel gave 124 morabitinos to Master Bernardo[43] who had directed the building for ten years; the presents too of bread and wine made to his successor Soeiro are also mentioned, so that it seems probable that the church may have been begun soon after Dom Miguel became bishop, and that it was finished some time before the end of his episcopate.

Though the nave is like that of Santiago, the transepts and choir are much simpler. There the transept is long and has an aisle on each side; here it is short and aisleless. There the choir is deep with a surrounding aisle and radiating chapels, here it is a simple apse flanked by two smaller apses. Indeed throughout the whole of the Peninsula the French east end was seldom used except in churches of a distinctly foreign origin, such as Santiago, Leon or Toledo in Spain, or Alcobaca in Portugal, and so it is natural here to find Bernardo rejecting the elaboration and difficult construction of his model, and returning to the simpler plan which had already been so often used in the north. (Fig. 18.)

Inside the piers are square with four half-shafts, one of which runs up in front to carry the barrel vault, which is about sixty feet high. All the capitals are well carved, and a moulded string which runs along under the gallery is curiously returned against the vaulting shafts as if it had once been carried round them and had afterwards been cut off.

Almost the only light in the nave comes from small openings in the galleries, the aisle windows being nearly all blocked up by later altars, and from a large window at the west end. The transept on the other hand is very light, with several windows at either end, and eight in the square lantern, so that the effect is extremely good of the dark nave followed by the brilliant transept and ending in a great carved and gilt reredos. This reredos, reaching up to the blue-and-gold apse vault, was given to the cathedral in 1508 by Bishop D. Jorge d'Almeida, and was the work of 'Master Vlimer a Framengo,' that is, a Fleming, and of his partner, Joo D'ipri, or of Ypres, two of the many foreigners who at that time worked for King D. Manoel. There are several picturesque tombs in the church, especially two in the north-east corner of the transept, whose recesses still retain their original tile decoration. Later tiles still cover the aisle walls and altar recesses, but beautiful examples of the Mozarabe or Moorish style which once covered the piers of the nave, as well as the wooden choir gallery with its finely panelled under side, have been swept away by a recent well-meaning if mistaken restoration. The outside of the church is more unusual than the inside.

The two remaining original apses are much hidden by the sacristy, built probably by Bishop Jorge de Castello Branco in 1593, but in their details they are greatly like those of the church of San Isidoro at Leon, and being like it built of fine limestone, are much more delicately ornamented than are those of any of the granite churches further north. The side aisles are but little lower than the central aisle or than the transepts, and are all crowned with battlements very like those on the castle of Guimares. The b.u.t.tresses are only shallow strips, which in the transepts are united by round arches, but in the aisles end among the battlements in a larger merlon. The west front is the most striking and original part of the whole church. Below, at the sides, a perfectly plain window lights the aisles, some feet above it runs a string course, on which stands a small two-light window for the gallery, flanked by larger blind arches, and then many feet of blank walling ending in battlements. Between these two aisle ends there projects about ten feet a large doorway or porch. This doorway is of considerable size; some of its eight shafts are curiously twisted and carved, its capitals are very refined and elaborate, and its arches well moulded with, as at Lisbon, small bosses in the hollows. The abacus is plain, and the broad pilasters which carry the outermost order are beautifully carved on the broader face with a small running pattern of leaves. The same 'black book' which tells of the bishop's gifts to the church, tells how a certain Master Robert came four times from Lisbon to perfect the work of the door, and how each time he received seven morabitinos, besides ten for his expenses, as well as bread, wine and meat for his four apprentices and food for his four a.s.ses. It is not often that the name of a man who worked on a mediaeval church has been so preserved, and it is worth noticing that the west door at Lisbon has on it exactly the same ball ornament as that with which Master Robert and his four helpers enriched the archway here. Above the door runs an arched corbel table on which stands the one large window which the church possesses. This window,[44] which is much more like a door than a window, is deeply recessed within four orders of mouldings, resting on shafts and capitals, four on each side, all very like the door below.

Above, the whole projection is carried up higher than the battlements in an oblong embattled belfry, having two arched openings in front and one at the side, added in 1837 to take the place of a detached belfry which once stood to the south of the church, and to hold some bells brought from Thomar after that rich convent had been suppressed. (Fig. 19.)

Of the two other doorways, that at the end of the north transept, which has a simple archway on either side, and is surmounted by an arcade of five arches, has been altered in the early sixteenth century with good details of the first French renaissance, while the larger doorway in the third bay of the nave has at the same time been rebuilt as a beautiful three-storied porch, reaching right up to the battlements. To the south lie the cloisters, added about the end of the thirteenth century, but now very much mutilated. They are of the usual Portuguese type of vaulted cloister, a large arch, here pointed, enclosing two round arches below with a circular opening above.

The central lantern--the only romanesque example surviving except that of Lisbon Cathedral--is square, and not as there octagonal. It has two round-headed windows on each side whose sills are but little above the level of the flat roof--for, like almost all vaulted churches in Portugal, the roofs are flat and paved--and is now crowned by a picturesque dome covered with many-coloured tiles.

Somewhat older than the cathedral, but not unlike it, was the church of So Christovo now destroyed, while So Thiago still has a west door whose shafts are even more elaborately carved and twisted than are those at the Se Velha.[45]

There is more than one building, such as the Templar

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.

COIMBRA.

Se VELHA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.

COIMBRA.

WEST FRONT OF Se VELHA.]

church at Thomar, older than the cathedral of Evora, and indeed older than the Se Velha at Coimbra; but Evora, except that its arches are pointed instead of round, is so clearly derived directly from the Se at Lisbon that it must be mentioned next in order.

[Sidenote: Se, Evora.]

Although the great province of Alemtejo, which reaches from the south bank of the Tagus to within about twenty-five or thirty miles of the Southern Sea, had more than once been entered by the victorious Portuguese king Affonso Henriques, it was not till after his death in 1185, indeed not till the beginning of the thirteenth century, that it could be called a part of Portugal. As early as 1139 Affonso Henriques had met and defeated five kings at Ourique not far from Beja, a victory which was long supposed to have secured his country's independence, and which was therefore believed to have been much greater and more important than was really the case.[46] Evora, the Roman capital of the district, did not fall into the hands of the Christians till 1166, when it is said to have been taken by stratagem by Giraldo Sem Pavor, or 'the Fearless,' an outlaw who by this capture regained the favour of the king. But soon the Moors returned, first in 1174 when they won back the whole of the province, and again in 1184 when Dom Sancho, Affonso's son, utterly defeated and killed their leader, Yusuf. Yusuf's son, Yakub, returned to meet defeat in 1188 and 1190 when he was repulsed from Thomar, but when he led a third army across the Straits in 1192 he found that the Crusaders who had formerly helped Dom Sancho had sailed on to Palestine, and with his huge army was able to drive the Christians back beyond the Tagus and compel the king to come to terms, nor did the Christian borders advance again for several years. It is said that the cathedral begun in 1185 or 1186[47] was dedicated in 1204, so it must have been still incomplete when Yakub's successful invasion took place, and only finished after the Christians had again recovered the town, though it is difficult to see how the church can have been dedicated in that year as the town remained in Moorish power till after Dom Sancho's death in 1211. Except the Se Velha at Coimbra, Evora is the best-preserved of all the older Portuguese cathedrals, and must always have been one of the largest. The plan is evidently founded on those of the cathedrals of Lisbon and Braga; a nave of eight bays 155 feet long by 75 wide, leads to an aisleless transept 125 by 30, with lantern at the crossing, to the east of which were five chapels. Unfortunately in 1718 the Capella Mor or main chancel was pulled down as being too small for the dignity of an archiepiscopal see, and a new one of many-coloured marbles built in its stead, measuring 75 feet by 30.[48]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF Se, EVORA]

To the west are two large square towers; to the south a cloister added in 1376; and at the end of the north transept a chapel built at the end of the fifteenth century and entered by a large archway well carved with rich early renaissance ornament. If there is no advance from the romanesque plan of older churches, there is none in construction. All the arches are pointed, but that is the only direction in which any change has been made. The piers are all cross-shaped with a large half-shaft on each of the four main faces and a smaller round shaft in each angle. The capitals have square moulded abaci, and are rather rudely carved with budlike curled leaves; the pointed arches of the arcade are well moulded, and above them runs a continuous triforium gallery like that in the nave at Lisbon, but with small pointed arches.

The main vault is a pointed barrel with bold ribs; it is held up by a half-barrel over the aisles, which have groined vaults with very large transverse arches. The galleries over the aisles are lit by small pointed windows of two lights with a cusped circle between, but except in the lantern which has similar windows, in the transept ends and the west front, these are the only original openings which survive. (Fig.

20.) Both transepts have large rose windows, the northern filled with tracery, like that, common in Champagne, radiating towards and not from the centre. The southern is more interesting. The whole, well moulded, is enclosed in a curious square framing. In the centre a doubly cusped circle is surrounded by twelve radiating openings, whose trefoiled heads abut against twelve other broad trefoils, which are rather curiously run into the mouldings of the containing circle. Over the west porch is a curious eight-light window. There are four equal two-light openings below; on the two in the centre rests a large plain circle, and the s.p.a.ce between it and the enclosing arch is very clumsily filled by a rib which, springing from the apex of either light, runs concentrically with the enclosing arch till it meets the larger circle. The whole building is surmounted by brick battlements, everything else being of granite, resting on a good trefoil corbel table, and, as the roofs are perfectly flat, there are no gables.

The two western towers are very picturesque. The northern, without b.u.t.tresses, has its several windows arranged without any regard to symmetry, and finishes in a round spire covered with green and white glazed tiles. In the southern plain b.u.t.tresses run up to the belfry stage which has round-headed openings, and above it is a low octagonal spire set diagonally and surrounded by eight pinnacles.