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Updated: May 11, 2025
When all was over Dom João dedicated the spoil he had taken in the Castilian king's tent to Our Lady of the Olive Tree at Guimarães where may still be seen, with many other treasures, a large silver-gilt triptych of the Nativity and one of the silver angels from off the royal altar.
The cup is quite plain and small, but on the wide-spreading base are eight enamels of Our Lady and of seven of the Apostles. The finest of all the objects in the Guimarães treasury is the reredos, taken by Dom João I. from the Spanish king's tent after the victory of Aljubarrota, and one of the angels which once went with it.
Another at Guimarães given by Fernando Alvares is less well proportioned and less beautiful. So far the architectural details of the chalices mentioned have been entirely national, but there is a custodia at Evora, whose interlacing canopy work seems to betray the influence of the Netherlands.
Early in the fourteenth century there grew at São Torquato, a few miles off, an olive-tree which provided the oil for that saint's lamp. It was transported to Guimarães to fulfil a like office there for the altar of Our Lady. It naturally died, and so remained for many years till 1342, when one Pedro Esteves placed on it a cross which his brother had bought in Normandy.
For him Master Ptolomeu made silver altar fronts, and the goldsmith Felix a jug and basin for the service of the altar. He also had a gold chalice made weighing 4 marks, probably the one made by Geda Menendis, and a gold cross to enclose some pieces of the Holy Sepulchre and two pieces of the True Cross. At Guimarães the chalice of São Torquato is of the thirteenth century.
The Franciscans had been introduced into Portugal by Dona Sancha, the daughter of Dom Sancho I., and houses were built for them by Dona Urraca, the wife of Dom Affonso II., at Lisbon and at Guimarães. Their church at Guimarães has been very much altered at different times, mostly in the eighteenth century, but the west door may very well belong to Dona Urraca's building.
Such cloisters, differing only from the romanesque in having pointed arches and capitals carved with fourteenth-century foliage, may still be seen at Santo Thyrso and at São Domingos, Guimarães, in the north.
In 1640, the very year in which Santa Engracia was begun, the regent was Margaret of Savoy, whose ministers, with hardly an exception, were Spaniards. It will be remembered that when Philip II. was elected in 1580, Dona Catharina, duchess of Braganza and daughter of Dom Manoel's sixth son, Duarte, duke of Guimarães, had been the real heir to the throne of her uncle, the Cardinal King.
Below, on one side there kneels Dom Manoel with his six sons João, afterwards king; Luis, duke of Beja; Fernando, duke of Guarda; Affonso, afterwards archbishop of Lisbon, with his cardinal's hat; Henrique, later cardinal archbishop of Evora, and then king; and Duarte, duke of Guimarães and ancestor of the present ruling house of Braganza.
The other foundation of Mumadona, the monastery of Nossa Senhora and São Salvador in the town of Guimarães, had since her day twice suffered destruction at the hands of the Moors, once in 967 when the castle was taken by Al-Coraxi, emir of Seville, and thirty years later when Almansor in 998 swept northwards towards Galicia, sacking and burning as he went.
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