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Updated: June 4, 2025
There is, perhaps, no one towards whom it is so tempting to play the idle game of retrospective Providence as towards the describer of Batalha and Alcobaça, the creator of Nouronnihar and the Hall of Eblis.
Owing to various delays, it was three years before Alvaro reached Portugal, but when he arrived he carried with him the heart of Fernando, which was borne at the head of a long procession clad in black to the abbey of Batalha, where John and Philippa, Duarte, and a little brother and sister lay buried.
Little had been done to the monastery of Batalha since the death of Dom Duarte left his great tomb-chapel unfinished.
Between these, in the chancel are narrow round-headed windows, whose mouldings are enriched with large four-leaved flowers, and on all the walls from buttress to buttress there runs a rich projecting cornice crowned by a wonderfully pierced and crested parapet; also not unlike those at Batalha, but more wonderful in that it is made of granite instead of fine limestone.
Altogether, splendid as it is, Belem is far less pleasing, outside at least, than the contemporary work at Batalha or at Thomar, for, like the tower of São Vicente near by, it is wanting in those perfect proportions which more than richness of detail give charm to a building. Inside it is not so, and though many of the vaulting ribs might be criticised as useless
These tombs, as indeed the whole church, as well as the neighbouring convent of Batalha, are constructed of a wonderfully fine limestone, which seems to be practically the same as Caen Stone, and which, soft and easy to cut when first quarried, grows harder with exposure and in time, when not in a too shady or damp position, where it gets black, takes on a most beautiful rich yellow colour.
They form four more or less trefoiled spaces with wavy outlines, and two of them not the remaining one at the top end in large well-carved vine-leaves, very like those at the ends of the cusps on the arches in the Capella do Fundador at Batalha.
The Angolan orchilla was first sent to Lisbon by Sr. F. R. Batalha: it is a moss, like the tillandsia of the Southern United States, and I afterwards recognized it in the island of Annobom. Passing Pembe and other outlying hamlets, after nine hours of burning sun, we entered Calumbo Town, and were hospitably lodged by the Portuguese Commandant.
I am no architect; but things which are stately always strike me deeply; and there is no doubt about it, Batalha is stately, simple, severe, with that religious stamp about it which I look for vainly in the churches of our own day. The doorway, delicately carved, and in beautiful preservation, represents terrestrial paradise, and every one of the statues of the saints is a little masterpiece.
About the end of the fifteenth century two small chapels were added to the north of the nave, and later still the spaces between the buttresses were filled in with shallow altar recesses. The likeness to Batalha is best seen in the Capella Mor.
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