was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class are those of São Christovão do Rio Mau not far from Villo do Conde, and São Pedro de Rates, a little further up the Ave at the birthplace of the first bishop of Braga and earliest martyr of Portugal. São Pedro is a little later, as the aisle arches are all pointed, and is a small basilica of nave and aisles with short transepts, chancel and eastern chapels.
Villar de Frades.
The two earliest examples of the third and most highly developed type, the church of Villar de Frades and the cathedral of Braga, have unfortunately both suffered so terribly, the one from destruction and the other from rebuilding, that not much has been left to show what they were originally like—barely enough to make it clear that they were much more elaborately decorated, and that their carved work was much better wrought than in any of the smaller churches already mentioned. A short distance to the south of the river Cavado and about half-way between Braga and Barcellos, in a well-watered and well-wooded region, there existed from very early Christian times a monastery called Villar, and later Villar de Frades. During the troubles and disorders which followed the Moslem invasion, this Benedictine monastery had fallen into complete decay and so remained till it was restored in 1070 by Godinho Viegas. Although again deserted some centuries later and refounded in 1425 as the mother house of a new order—the Loyos—the fifteenth-century church was so built as to leave at least a part of the front of the old ruined church standing between itself and the monastic building, as well as the ruins of an apse behind. Probably this old west front was the last part of Godinho's church to be built, but it is certainly more or less contemporary with some portions of the cathedral of Braga.
At some period, which the legend leaves quite uncertain, one of the monks of this monastery was one day in the choir at matins, when they came to that Psalm where it is said that 'a thousand years in the sight of God are but as yesterday when it is gone,' and the old monk wondered greatly and began to think what that could mean. When matins were over he remained praying as was his wont, and begged Our Lord to give him some understanding of that verse. Then there appeared to him a little bird which, singing most sweetly, flew this way and that, and so little by little drew him towards a wood which grew near the monastery, and there rested on a tree while the servant of God stood below to listen. After what seemed to the monk a short time it took flight, to the great sorrow of God's servant, who said, 'Bird of my Soul, where art thou gone so soon?' He waited, and when he saw that it did not return he went back to the monastery thinking it still that same morning on which he had come out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not to remember these names. At last he was led to the Abbot, but they did not know one another, so that the good monk was all confused and amazed at so strange an event. Then the Abbot, enlightened of God, sent for the annals and histories of the order, found there the names the old man had given, so making it clear that more than three hundred years had passed since he had gone out. He told them all that had happened to him, was received as a brother; and after praising God for the great marvel which had befallen him, asked for the sacraments and soon passed from this life in great peace.[34]
Whether the ruined west front of the older church be that which existed when the bird flew out through the door or not, it is or has been of very considerable beauty. Built, like everything else in the north, of granite, all that is now left is a high wall of carefully wrought stone. Below is a fine round arched door of considerable size, now roughly blocked up. It has three square orders covered with carving and a plain inner one. First is a wide drip-mould carved on the outer side with a zigzag threefold ribbon, and on the inner with three rows of what looks like a rude attempt to copy the classic bead-moulding; then the first order, of thirteen voussoirs, each with the curious figure of a strangely dressed man or with a distorted monster. This with the drip-mould springs from a billet-moulded abacus resting on broad square piers. Of the two inner carved orders, the outer is covered on both faces with innumerable animals and birds, and the other with a delicate pattern of interlacing bands. These two spring from strange square abaci resting on the carved capitals of round shafts, two on each side. A few feet above the door runs a billet-moulded string course, and two or three feet higher another and slighter course. On this stands a large window of two orders. Of these the outer covered with animals springs from shafts and capitals very like those of the doorway, and the inner has a billet-moulded edge and an almost Celtic ornament on the face. Now whether Villar be older than the smaller buildings in the neighbourhood or not, it is undoubtedly quite different not only in style but in execution. It is not only much larger and higher, but it is better built and the carving is finer and more carefully wrought. (Fig. 13.)
It is known that the great cathedral of Santiago in Galicia was begun in 1078, just about the time Villar must have been building, and Santiago is an almost exact copy in granite of what the great abbey church of S. Sernin at Toulouse was intended to be, so that it may be assumed that Bernardo who built the cathedral was, if not a native of Toulouse, at any rate very well acquainted with what was being done there. If, then, a native of Languedoc was called in to plan so important a church in Galicia, it is not unlikely that other foreigners were also employed in the county of Portugal—at that time still a part of Galicia; and in fact many churches in the south-west of what is now France have doorways and windows whose general design is very like that at Villar de Frades, if allowance be made for the difference of material, granite here, fine limestone there, and for a comparative want of skill in the workmen.[35]
Sé, Braga.
Probably these foreigners were not invited to Portugal for the sake of the church of a remote abbey like Villar, but to work at the metropolitan cathedral of Braga. The see of Braga is said to have been founded by São Pedro de Rates, a disciple of St. James himself, and in consequence of so distinguished an origin its archbishops claim the primacy not only of all Portugal, but even of all the Spains, a claim which is of course disputed by the patriarch of Lisbon, not to speak of the archbishops of Toledo and of Tarragona. However that may be, the cathedral of Braga is not now, and can never have been, quite worthy of such high pretensions. It is now a church with a nave and aisles of six bays, a transept with four square chapels to the east, a chancel projecting beyond the chapels, and at the west two towers with the main door between and a fine porch beyond.
Count Henry of Burgundy married Dona Theresa and received the earldom of Portugal from his father-in-law, Alfonso vi. of Castile and Leon, in 1095, and he and his wife rebuilt the cathedral—where they now lie buried—before the end of the century. By that time it may well have become usual, if the churches were important, to call in a foreigner to oversee its erection. Of the original building little now remains but the plan and two doorways, the chancel having been rebuilt and the porch added in the sixteenth, and the whole interior beplastered and bepainted in the worst possible style in the seventeenth, century. Of the two doors the western has been very like that at Villar. It has only two orders left, of which the outer, though under a deep arch, has a billet-moulded drip-mould, and its voussoirs each carved with a figure on the outer and delicate flutings on the under side, while the inner has on both faces animals and monsters which, better wrought than those at Villar, are even more like so many in the south-west of France. The other doorway, on the south side next the south-west tower, is far better preserved. It has three shafts on each side, all with good capitals and abaci, from which spring two carved and one plain arch. The outer has a rich drip-mould covered with a curious triple arrangement of circles, has flutings on the one face and a twisting ribbon on the other, while the next has leaf flutings on both faces, and both a roll-moulding on the angle. The inner order is quite plain, but the tympanum has in the centre a circle enclosing a cross with expanding arms, the spaces between the arms and the circle being pierced and the whole surrounded with intertwining ribbons.
Sé,