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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 Leça 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.
Inside the church itself is not very remarkable, having a nave and aisles with transepts and three vaulted chapels to the east, built very much in the same style as is the church at Leça do Balio, except that it has a fine west front, to be mentioned later, that the roof of the nave was knocked down by the Devil in 1548 in anger at the extreme piety of Frey Martinho de Santarem, one of the canons, and that many famous people, including Pedro Alvares Cabral, the discoverer of Brazil, are therein buried.
The large round windows at Evora do not seem to be related to the window at São João, but to be of some independent origin; probably, like the similar windows at Leça and at Oporto, they too belong to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.
The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, transepts higher than the side but lower than the centre aisle of the nave, three vaulted apses to the east, and at the south-west corner a square tower. Like many Portuguese buildings Sta. Maria de Leça do Balio looks at first sight a good deal earlier than is really the case.
The great simplicity of the building notwithstanding it can scarcely be as old as the thirteenth century: the curious way in which the two lancet lights of the aisle windows are enclosed under one larger trefoiled arch recalls the similar windows in the church at Leça do Balio near Oporto begun in 1336, though there the elliptical head of the enclosing arch is much less satisfactory than the trefoiled head here used.
At the first court or Beja Manos held by Dona Leonor at Leça near Oporto, all the Portuguese nobility except Dom Diniz, the king's half-brother and a son of Inez de Castro, acknowledged her as queen. But soon the evil influence she exercised over the king and the stories of her cruelty made her extremely unpopular and even hated by the whole nation.
It spoke for itself in the ring of his voice, in the glooms and lights of his eyes, as we lay on either side of our wood fire; and I listened, till the embers died down, to the deeds of Jean Paul de Leca, of Giudice della Rocca, of Bel Messer, of Sampiero di Ornano, of the great Gaffori and other chiefs, all famous in their day, each in his turn assassinated by Genoese gold.
Dinner at the Crystal Palace, Oporto. 26th. Drove to Carvalho with Elles. 27th. Drove to Leca do Balio with Oswald Crawford, the consul. Interesting Templars' church. 28th-30th. By rail from Oporto to Madrid, thirty-six hours by Badajos, Merida, Alcazar. 31st. Madrid. Gallery.
The battlements also of the castle at Guimarães are found not only at Coimbra, but as late as 1336 in the church of Leça do Balio near Oporto, and, modified in shape by the renaissance even in the sixteenth-century churches of Villa do Conde and of Azurara.
For example, the unusually large transverse arches of the nave occur at Batalha, and the large plain western door is clearly related to such later doors as those at Leça do Balio or of São Francisco at Oporto.
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