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Updated: May 15, 2025
The fine arcades, with their cylindrical columns and circular abaci, are too obvious to escape notice, but particular attention should be paid to the twisted pillar on the N.E. The chancel has an extremely low quadripartite vault, the effect of which is rather spoilt by the distortion of the chancel arch through some defect in the foundations.
Above the point of this window is a small circular one, with a cusped treatment of perhaps the same date as the ones in the east end of the chapels at the end of the aisles of the presbytery. The #North Porch# has a pointed outer arch in two orders. The abaci to the capitals are square; but now there are no shafts or bases in the jambs.
John and Paul we find the two arrangements beautifully united, though in great simplicity; the string courses of the walls form the capitals of the shafts of the traceries; and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the apse.
This was the system adopted in the cathedrals of Braga and of Oporto before they were altered, in this church and in that of Pombeiro not far off, and in that of Bayona near Vigo in Galicia. All the details are extremely refined almost Byzantine in their delicacy especially the capitals, and the abaci against the walls, which are carried along as a beautiful string course from pier to pier.
But there are no sub-arches to any of the flying buttresses, and the slopes of each are protected by lead coverings. And in the exterior of the north aisle the same elements of structure and design may be discovered, even to the presence of twelfth-century remains, the curve of the old encircling apse, and the position of the first sills, abaci, and string-courses.
The capitals are more curious than beautiful; the lower have clumsy, early-looking foliage and a large and curious abacus. First each capital has a square abacus of some depth, then comes a large flat circle, one for each three caps, and at the top a star-shaped moulding of hollow curves, the points projecting beyond the middle of the square abaci below. The higher capitals are better.
Of these, the two which look south and west are like each other, and like the other of Dom João's time except that the arches are not cusped; that the outer frame is omitted and that the abaci are moulded in front as well as at the ends; but the third window looking north is rather different.
Most of the original windows for those on the main front have been replaced by plain square openings are even more Eastern than those at Cintra. They are nearly all of two lights there is one of a single light in the passage but are without the square framing. Each window has three very slender white marble shafts, with capitals and with abaci moulded on each side.
The three shafts are twisted, the capitals are very strange; they are round with several mouldings, some fluted, some carved with leaves, some like pieces of rope: the moulded abaci also have four curious corbels on two sides.
The eight piers of the lantern are made up of a great number of shafts with a moulded angle between each. The capitals are covered with two tiers of conventional vine-leaves and have octagonal, not as in the church square abaci, while the arches are highly stilted and are enriched with most elaborate cusping, each cusp ending in a square vine-leaf.
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