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However, before visiting São Marcos mention must be made of two tombs, one in Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes at Thomar, and one in the Graça church at Santarem. Both are exceedingly French in design, and both were erected not long after the coming of the foreigners. The tomb in Thomar is the older. It is that of Diogo Pinheiro, the first bishop of Funchal which he never visited who died in 1525.
Though Santa Maria dos Olivaes cannot be nearly as old as has usually been believed, it is one of the earliest churches built on the plan derived perhaps first from Braga Cathedral or from the Franciscan and Dominican churches in Galicia, of a wooden roofed basilica with or without transept, and with three or more apses to the east; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal in Madeira.
It rests on the Corinthian capital of a very bulbous baluster, is square, and has on each side four beautiful little Corinthian columns, fluted and surrounded with large acanthus leaves at the bottom. Almost exactly like it, but round and with balusters instead of columns, is the pulpit in the church of Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes at Thomar.
This church, Santa Maria dos Olivaes, was the Matriz or mother church of all those held, first by the Templars and later by their successors, the Order of Christ, not only in Portugal but even in Africa, Brazil, and in India. Of so high a dignity it is scarcely worthy, being but a very simple building neither large nor richly ornamented.
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