# Lisbon and Cintra/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII
THE ancient city of Thomar, overlooked by its wonderful Convent of the Order of Christ upon the hill behind, is one of the most interesting spots in Portugal from an æsthetic, as well as from an historic point of view. It can be reached from Coimbra in three, or Lisbon in four hours, the nearest station to it, Payalvo, being situated on the east line of the two railroads which converge at Coimbra for the north. The route from the capital skirts the Tagus, sometimes near, sometimes at a distance, for the greater part of the way. Scattered olive orchards, quintas with their vineyards, diversify the view with long, marsh-like stretches broken up with salt pans, and the deep red or white sails of boats moving up some narrow channels in the flat lending an aspect almost Dutch to the picture as seen from the train.
The Valley de Santarem is a wooded, fertile hollow between hills, with houses here and there; vines spread to the plain of the Tagus, aloes are a frequent feature, and the cactus barrier; heath-like patches spread between the trees, and the banks have flowering cistus bushes as prolific as the wild rose. A long, narrow bridge spans the Tagus beneath the picturesque high site of the city of Santarem, which has figured in all the wars of the country. From the olive groves in the vicinity comes the finest oil in Portugal. In the distance, on a rock in the river, stands the old castle of Almourel, the subject of many a poetic legend, and considered one of the most unique, beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture in the Peninsula. Cork trees seem abundant everywhere, and we pass through a vast forest of them, the Matto de Miranda, with long vistas and stretches of heath and rolling ground reminiscent of the New Forest.
​A beautiful panorama spreads to view at the last bend of the five miles' drive from Payalvo station to Thomar. Below is a verdant plain, fertile in fruit and olive trees as a garden, and in the midst winds a river. To the left, on the hill above, the towers and battlements of an ancient castle show up strongly against the blue. The white houses of the town are at the foot of the hill. Right below the road as we slowly descend are the plain, unmistakable buildings of a large convent with its church. It is that of the Franciscans, serving to-day as a barracks, bordering the greensward and avenues of the Alameda of the Varzea Grande or cultivated plain.
Further away across the river stands out a square tower, and close to it the brown façade of a church, in which an immense rose window is conspicuous from afar. This is the mother church of the district, S. Maria dos Olivaes, built in the twelfth century, upon ruins of a Benedictine monastery of Gothic times. Roman relics unearthed in the vicinity incline archæologists to the opinion that the noted Nabantia of the Romans and Goths was situated on that side of the river. A torrential inundation is supposed to have destroyed the town, which revived in the site where we now see Thomar when D. Affonso Henriques included the fertile plain in lands he gave to the sixth, most famous Grand Master of the Templars, D. Gualdim Paes, after the battle of Ourique. With the erection of the fine castle-fortress on the brow of the steep hill, a new town sprang up between the river and the hill base, taking the name of Thomar from the river, which was given in exchange that of Nabão after the ancient city. Artists, stone-cutters, builders, carpenters, settling there without number, to carry on the great constructive works, contributed to the rapid growth of Thomar, which soon received a charter, and became renowned as the ​headquarters of the powerful knights. S. Maria dos Olivaes, which was made the See of the Order, after its erection by Gualdim Pacs, became later the mother of all the churches founded by the Order of Christ throughout the world. The surrounding soil has so accumulated through the ages that a broad, deep flight of steps now descends to the church, which is in the Gothic style, and interesting, apart from its antiquity, through being the burial-place of Gualdim Paes, and other famous knights of the illustrious Templars. The tower is said to have been erected to protect the builders at work from Moorish raiders. Another legend connects it with a subterranean passage said once to have existed between the castle on the hill and the church. Following the river south a little distance on the other side a pyramidal stone is to be seen commemorating the spot where the troops of D. João I and the great Constable Pereira united for the march to Aljubarrota.
At the end of the shady road leading from S. Maria to the town a deep arch connects the ancient buildings on either side. We turn to the left into the street, which opens on the bridge, and pass a Manueline door with the date 1560, and see in a niche of the same ruined edifice, overlooking the river, the figure of a saint, and on a stone in the wall below the symbol of old Nabantia, a bull, outlined. This is the extinct Convent of St Iria or Irene, concerning whom there is a pretty though pathetic legend which has been sung by poet and pictured by painter for long generations. When the Gothic Count de Castinaldo was Governor of Nabantia, Celio, Prior of the Benedictine monastery, had a beautiful niece named Irene, daughter of a noble family residing outside the city, who confided her to the care of two aunts in the Convent of S. Clara by the river. The girl's beauty, intelligence and devotion to the Christian faith made her beloved and renowned in the ​whole district. Close to the Governor's palace stood the little chapel of S. Pedro—on the site of the cemetery now close to S. Maria dos Olivaes—where, on the feast of the saint's day, Britaldo, son of Castinaldo, saw Irene, and at once fell passionately in love with her. She had already made up her mind to become a nun, and refused to listen to any proposal that would compel her return to the outside world. Opposition but fed the young Count's ardour, and fearful lest another might grasp what he had failed to win—for those were days when passion, brooking no resistance, was often the prelude to forcible abduction—he caused her to be assassinated. Irene was in the habit of retiring to a little grotto in the river bank, where nothing but the murmuring water and songs of the birds intruded upon the ecstatic reveries of her devotions, and here at dawn, one fair October day of the year 653, she was surprised by the assassin, who threw her body into the river, and carried her blood-stained garments to Britaldo in proof of the accomplished death. The remainder of the legend concerns the finding of the body on the river bank at Santarem, which derived its name and patron saint from that source.
The stone bridge of Thomar is very ancient, the present structure dating from D. Manuel's reign, being only a renewal of the former one. It has six strong round arches, the foundations of every one showing their stone surface projecting diamond-shaped above the water on either side of the bridge. These are flanked by stout buttresses, with arched passages between to assist the flow of water when the river is in spate. The iron railings are of recent erection, taking the place of the thick walls which made the bridge too narrow for increased traffic. This interesting landmark of the past adds to the charm of the beautiful river, which is the chief source of the wealth of the ​town. A broad, briskly-flowing weir stretching to the right of the bridge divides the stream, which is the mainspring of important factories on the banks, paper, corn, wool weaving, and extensive cotton mills, employing two thousand workpeople, putting elements in motion that promote the local well-being of one of the most industrious populations of Portugal, and feed the national markets. And in spite of the industrial use to which its waters are put the Nabão still remains a beautiful river. The huge, lichen-stained water-wheels do but add to the picturesque aspect of the sparkling stream and verdant banks. Private gardens deck the margin with tall, thick hedges of multi-hued roses. Weeping willows dip their deliciously green streamers to the limpid surface. The Public Gardens border the opposite bank, where avenues of acacias and other flowering trees perfume the whole atmosphere. Everywhere the freshness of the verdure is charming, while the near presence of factory chimneys and buildings is veiled by tall poplars, the leafy ash, mulberry, olive and a host of other trees. Six o'clock has struck, and over the bridge stream the factory hands in their scores, women and girls, their gay head-kerchiefs, yellow, rose, green, white, blending into the colours of a moving ribbon above the railings of the bridge.
We follow them across, looking down for a moment on a sandy stretch on the other side, where figures of women washing in groups by the river-side make another bright spot of animated colour. Down the broad road to the left stood once an ancient royal palace, to which came D. Duarte, in 1438, to avoid the plague raging in Lisbon, but he was seized with illness, and died in the Convent of Christ on the hill at the age of forty-seven. A little beyond this site, long ago converted into a factory, but still possessing an old gate topped by a cross, is the Rua dos ​Arcos, where many of the old arches of a street of arcades are seen built into the walls of present-day houses. These arcades were shops ordered to be built by the same D. Duarte I, just outside the city, that he might rent them to the Jews, who were the chief shopkeepers of that epoch.
From the bridge the Rua de Serpa Pinto leads direct to the Praça of D. Manuel, passing on the way the chief hotel, the Uniao Commercial, whose proprietor, Senhor Araujo, having a keen appreciation of the historic and artistic interests of his town, welcomes with a more than ordinary enthusiasm those travellers who have the discrimination to select Thomar for one of their resting-places. I use the word discrimination advisedly, for even Batalha itself is not a more striking and important expression of the ancient grandeur of Portugal than the Convent of Christ on the hill above the restful, quaint old town and its garden plain. It is not an exaggeration to call it a wonderful Convent, unique in the variety of its beautiful edifices, and as the embodiment of distinct epochs in the nation's history.
Two buildings facing each other at either end of the Praça at the foot of the hill were built by D. Manuel. One is the church of St John the Baptist, with its fine doorway, and a pointed tower which is considered the most beautiful on Portuguese soil. The sculptured pulpit is of refined workmanship, and the pictures of the capella-mor are attributed to Grão Vasco, Every one of them is set in a background of gold and white carved woodwork covering the walls and ceiling, but the dim light makes it difficult to judge of their real value. The other Manueline edifice is the Town Hall, or Paço do Concelho, long and plainly outlined, but possessing a decided Moorish aspect, with the three high arches of its entrance and the vaulted arcades of both stories to the rear.
​Now we are at the foot of the historic hill which is crowned by "the most national, characteristic and patriotic of Portuguese architectural works, one of the most splendid and rich models bequeathed by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." To the left of the Paço do Concelho a calçada climbs in a broad zigzag up the steep ascent to the old fortifications of the Templars, which have defied the attacks of time for seven centuries. Bastions crown the walls, and before the principal tower the remains of an ancient barbican are visible. We pass beneath the noted gateway into a gardened space, and leaving the ruined castle on the left look straight where the powerful Roman-built walls and massive buttresses of the Templars' chapel raise their battlements against the azure. The edifice is polygon in form, and a bell-tower of later date rises above, but closely built upon it, so as to appear part of the same structure. On mounting the steps to the terrace before the entrance we see the inscription engraven on a stone in the wall to the right. The translation runs after this manner:
"In the year 1168, in the reign of Alfonso, King of Portugal, Galdino, Master of the Portuguese Knights Templars, began with his brethren on the 1st day of March to build the Castle called Thomar, which when finished was offered by the King and God to the Knights Templars. In 1228, on the 3rd day of July, the King of Morocco came with 400,000 cavalry and 500,000 footmen to besiege the castle for six days, and destroyed all that he found outside the walls. God delivered the Castle, its Master and brethren from his hands. The same King returned to his country with innumerable loss of men and beasts."
​Christians and the Moors, took place in the last years of the heroic founder. The inhabitants carried all their possessions up the hill and fought the pagans outside the castle walls. After the destroyers' flight the town revived rapidly, for in a century's time the number of its population exceeded 20,000 souls.
A mystic sanctuary was that first strong chapel of the warrior monks. Beneath the cupola originally crowning the edifice a Byzantine arcade was erected concentric with the polygon exterior but octagon in form, composing in its entirety what was called the Charola, or great recess for figures of saints, surrounding the high altar, which was erected beneath the east arch, according to the rites of the ancient Free Masons, supposed to have been practised by the Templars. It was a sanctuary corresponding to the mirghab of the Orient. The chapel was used chiefly during times of siege, for at other times the knights lived without the walls, and performed their orisons in the mother church of S. Maria. It is well to call to mind that churches in those days were the nucleus of the social life of the district in which they were erected.
Under King Diniz the power of the Templars, with their vast wealth, was transmuted into the new Order of Christ. Prince Henry the Navigator, one of its most distinguished Grand Masters, adapted the Templars' chapel to public worship, and added to the convent two cloisters, uniting his own dwelling, now in ruins, with the church. One of these, called the Cloister of the Cemiterio, is pure Gothic, the pointed arches raising themselves above handsome capitals, which are noted for the beauty of their sculptured foliage. The epitaphs and names on the pavement over the graves of heroic knights of Christ are undecipherable, but three tombs of the sixteenth century stand back in the arches of the walls. Through a glazed ​aperture in one of these is seen the skeleton of Balthasar de Faria, counsellor of the four kings, D. João III, D. Sebastião, D. Henrique and Spanish Philip, Ambassador to Rome, and one of the chief promoters of the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. Dissolved into dust are the costly robes of interment, only the mummified, hideous form remains in what is considered miraculous preservation; perhaps, suggests a Portuguese writer, that it might be the flouted cynosure of inquisitive eyes in expiation for sins committed in life. It is a relief to turn to the lovely gardens of these cloisters, where flowers and shrubs are enclosed in deep octagonal barriers of ancient azulejos. Through a window is seen the second cloister of two galleries, now in ruins, but still showing its substantial, yet beautiful architecture.
With lapse of years considerable alterations and additions were made to suit the new necessities of the increased number of knight-monks and the monastic troops attached to the Order of Christ. The simplicity of the Templars' chapel was modified, the clustered columns and arches of the Charola being worked upon in silver and tinted arabesques, the walls painted with allegorical figures, the niches filled with gilded and coloured statues of saints, all demonstrating the strong artistic influence of the East, while presenting a dazzling effect now toned by the mellow brush of Time. D. João I, as well as his son, Prince Henry, contributed to the changes in the monastery, but the grand restoration was due to D. Manuel, who as Duke of Beja, before his accession to the throne, was Grand Master of the Order, and a great lover of the Convento de Christo.
A massive pointed arch opened out the west face of the ancient chapel, and there arose on the hill crest a splendid structure in the regular lines of a parallelogram, consisting ​of the body of the new church, the choir and the famous Chapter House. The Charola remained the High Altar, its solemn aspect enhanced by three magnificent Gothic canopies, while recessed on the walls of the polygon were pictures, painted when art was at its zenith, by the famous school called Gothic-Portuguese, of which Grão Vasco was the noted representative. Only four of these really valuable paintings now remain. After hearing from many sources that the French were responsible for the loss of the others, it came as a shock to be told by Senhor Pinheiro, a resident in the town, that two of the missing paintings were to be found in a London gallery, where he had seen them himself, and marked them in the catalogue as pictures from the Convent of Thomar. The woodcarvings of the choir and stalls of the monks were superb, according to historical records and ancient engravings, rivalling the most famous of European cathedrals, but of all the magnificence not a trace remains. Only a dark stain on the stone floor witnesses to a fire which was fed with costly fuel of this ornamentation by soldiers of the French invading army, though Veira Guimarães, in his learned and highly interesting work on the Order of Christ, magnanimously attributes the loss to ignorance and national rapine rather than to the foreigner.
The south exterior is marked by elaborately carved, pinnacled buttresses, with two fine windows between, sunk in a diminishing series of pointed arches, and decorated with dainty coral tracery and niches for statues. The famous portal, one of the most characteristic of the Manueline works of art of the period, is beneath an arch, carried to the height of the church. Beneath the pendant, lace-like ornamentation of the arch, is carved the armillary sphere, entwined with decorative mouldings of flower and foliage drooping to a graceful pedestal, which ​supports a statue of the Virgin and Child within a setting of carved trunks of the evergreen oak, and two elegant pilasters, and surrounded by no less than ten other statues in richly manipulated niches.
The west façade is considered the most symbolic expression of the apogee of Portugal's glory. The wealth of the sculptured decoration of the celebrated window is indescribable. "The artist has engraved there an epic poem of our history," writes J. M. Sousa, the historian. "It is the epic of a great people. Camões wrote it in verse, the artist traced it on the hard stone in striking and regular lines, in symbolic figures expressive of sublime, elevated thought; the one with the pen, the other with the sculptor's tools, were inspired by the identical sentiment and idea of showing to a future generation the glories of his epoch." From the figure of a man, whose bending shoulders appear to support the weight of the stupendous decoration, mount up on each side of the window trunks and foliage of the tree of life, stems of palm trees, coral, seaweed and shells from the newly discovered worlds, cables rings and anchors of ships, all in amalgamation, yet clearly defined masses, right up to the Cross of Christ at the apex, with the spheres of D. Manuel on either side. This allegorical poem in sculptured stone is crowned by a lovely rose window, with a deep-sunk setting of carved sails, lightly inflated by ropes, suggesting the galleons of Vasco da Gama. The tower-like buttresses with their high pinnacles seeming to frame the picture are similarly decorated, and bear on their face four statues whose escutcheons declare them to be Aflfonso Henriques, Gualdim Paes, D. Diniz and D. Manuel. A gigantic stone cable is slung round the left tower, while the right is clasped by a broad band and buckle, probably a symbol of the Order of the Garter, possessed by D. Manuel.
​The Cloister of S. Barbara is contiguous to the west façade of the church; it is small, but of good architecture, in the Renaissance style, probably the work of D. Manuel. It is in communication with the Hospedaria, or Guests' Cloister, and the handsome Cloister of the Philips, which is often called the Cloister of João III. After the Golden Age of the apogee of maritime discovery D. João III, the Pious, reformed the Order of Christ, transforming the knights into real monks, and their palace into a vast monastery. The cloisters bearing his name, built on to the walls of the Chapter House, were commenced by Queen Catherine in memory of the ill-fated D. Sebastião, and finished during the time of the Spanish intruders. The work is considered by connoisseurs to be the most imposing and beautiful existing in Portugal in the Greco-Roman style. Raczynski calls it magnificent. The grandeur and rigour of the lines are seen in the picture of the Chapter House, which includes a portion of these cloisters. The architect was Diogo de Tarralva. From the terrace above these cloisters—Terraço da Céra, so called through being the drying ground for the candles and waxlights made in the monastery—the upper part of the Chapter House is seen to perfection, also a magnificent panorama of the country around, and every point of interest in the vicinity, including the 228 steps of the long, white pilgrimage ascent to the Chapel of our Lady of Pity on a near hill.
In addition to the cloisters already mentioned there were others connecting with the immense corridors of the monastery, the refectory, the kitchen. Above the Claustro do Mixo there were three halls, called the Salas of the Cortes: of the clergy, nobility and the people. It was in Thomar the Cortes was convoked for the proclamation of the first Philip, the Intruder, when he ​was right loyally entertained by the brothers. All the Philips had a particular partiality for the Convent of Christ, and it was at that epoch that the beautiful city of Thomar had to submit to the horrible spectacle of an auto-da-fé, not within the walls of the monastery but at the old pelourinho, at the end of the Rua da Graça. Near the kitchen of the monastery are some low, sinister rooms, badly lighted with windows, defended with great bars of iron, which are supposed to have been the prisons of the Inquisition.
Before passing out of the truly enchanted site of so many crowded interests I went again into the precincts of Gualdim Paes' splendid old fortress castle, saw the ruined bareness of the palace of Prince Henry, and mounted to a balcony or mirante of the alcaçova. The brown and white roofs of the town spread out below, the Paço do Conselho was exactly beneath the hill. The winding river could be traced through the plain, the richly treed avenues, the silvery olive groves, all presented an idyllic picture of sylvan serenity and remoteness from worldly strife that will often recur to mind, together with the suave, kindly effect that this environment has produced on the disposition of the Thomarense.
​town of Monchique, thence to Bucellas, and to the Tagus, where both lines almost met at Alverca. The forts, redoubts and batteries, numbered in all one hundred and thirty. Infinite pains was bestowed on the lines of fortification to procure a favourable field of action. Communication was rendered facile by a system of well-engineered roads, which shortened the distance between each corps and point by at least one mile, and by having these communications commanded by defensive works only possible to capture by help of artillery, the enemy was not able to use them. The commanding hill of Monte Junto was in front of the lines, "the ramifications of which," says Major Jones, who is also accounted an excellent authority by Portuguese officers of to-day, "extending to the very works render the enemy's movements in front of the line tedious and difficult, and give to a body of troops posted within a superiority of movement, rendering them equal to twice the number without."
Torres Vedras gave its name to these famous lines against the French invasion through possessing the strong fort of S. Vicente on one hill above the town, a fine redoubt, and the Castle on another, and the fort of the Força, to-day in ruins, on a third. The origin of the ancient town is unknown, but it had an existence in the Roman times, for they named it, Turras Viteres. It was famous in the Gothic and Moorish epochs, the castle as praça da guerra being considered impregnable. To-day it is a mere shell, and has no military classification. Kings in bygone years were wont to make of Torres Vedras a residence but of their palace no vestige remains. The Cortes was convoked here on more than one occasion. Various battles have taken place there, the latest and most sanguinary being in the civil war of 1846, when the town surrendered to the great Saldanha. The ​Restoration movement of 1640 found early support here.
A fine, double-tiered aqueduct attracts notice upon approaching Torres Vedras; it winds through the valley for nearly two miles, bringing its water to the old fountain dos Canos, a really beautiful little structure of Gothic architecture, with five faces separated by columns. The date of erection is 1560, and there is another of 1831, indicating the period of restoration. There is a new fountain now considered very superior by the populace. One of the old churches boasts of a handsome Manueline portal, and in passing through the narrow streets of the town it is interesting to note here and there an old carved doorway or window, and many traces of ancient stones and legends. As usual in Portuguese towns of to-day there is a pretty public garden, and fine boulevards with flowering trees. There are medicinal springs within a mile or so of the town, and important baths called the Cucos, which are visited by rheumatic and gouty sufferers in great numbers during the summer time. There is a pleasant hotel there under the same capable management as that called the Natividade, near the station of Torres Vedras.
The fertile environs of vineyards and orchards soon tail off into less cultivated regions as we travel north. The rich red soil pales into sandy yellow, scattered with small pine trees and brushwood, concentrating at intervals into thick plantations. The white broom and cistus bushes are in bloom, and as in Alemtejo the pink and yellow balsam is ubiquitous. Here and there are clearings planted with vines, where peasants are busy weeding and hoeing after the rains. Fine, wooded stretches of poplars and ash trees line the country roads, and windmill upon windmill stand out, as around Torres Vedras, on all the hills.
The city of Obidos is the next point of interest, for the ​first combat between the French and Anglo-Portuguese troops was fought almost beneath its walls in the month of August, 1808. Wellesley had landed near the Mondego, and advanced as far as Leiria. Junot, still in occupation of Lisbon, sent Delaborde to check the British advance. After trying to find a position at Batalha, Delaborde withdrew to Obidos, where he took his stand on high ground in the middle of the valley. Driven from there his next defence was made at Roliça, which closes in the long valley further south. After a fierce engagement, in which the English, though victorious, lost an unnecessary number of men through the impetuous charge of the main body without waiting for the flanking columns to come up, the French office was forced to retreat to Lisbon.
Apart from the Anglo-historical interest of this district Obidos has a cachet peculiarly its own as one of the few completely walled cities still existing in the Peninsula. On the west the ramparts, with their turreted angles, stretch along the brow of a steep, arid slope, like those of a miniature Jerusalem. The south wall climbs the ridge of a lofty crag, which is crowned by a mediæval castle, strong and imposing, attributed to the reign of D. Diniz, and from here looking north to the houses of Caldas far away, the view is magnificent. Ancient convents of curious build are below in the well-watered plain, which is called the Varzea da Rainha, probably after Queen Catharine, wife of D. João III, who built the aqueduct of the city. The little river Arnoia bathes the foot of the hill. The town is entered by two pointed archways in the walls, and is a veritable museum of old architecture, few buildings being less than two centuries old, some of the sixteenth century, and others more ancient still. A quaint hexagon-shaped church is among these, inclining one to the opinion that Obidos Castle may at one time have been a ​stronghold of the Templars. The work of a famous woman painter of the seventeenth century is seen in the churches of Obidos. Her name was Josepha d'Ayala, but she is better known as Josepha d'Obidos, for she lived in the plain close by in the Domaine da Capelleira. Though she painted many religious subjects, it was through her portraits she became renowned. After discovering these details it was interesting to read in Murphy of a portrait he admired at Alcobaça painted by a lady named Josepha, worth all the other pictures he saw there.