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Some of the detail of the cresting is not all unlike that of the great reredos in the Sé Velha at Coimbra, and like it has a Flemish look, so that it may have been made perhaps, if not by Master Vlimer, who finished his work at Coimbra in 1508, at any rate by one of his pupils.
It was in fact the work of Mestre Nicolas, the Nicolas Chantranez who worked first at Belem and then on the Portal da Magestade at Santa Cruz, and who carved an altar-piece in the Pena chapel at Cintra. Though much larger in general design, it is not altogether unlike the altar-piece in the Sé Velha. It is divided into two stories.
In December Massena, having exhausted the country round, fell back to a very strong position at Santarem; and Terence withdrew his whole force, save those guarding the defiles, to the neighbourhood of Abrantes; so that he could either assist the force stationed there, should Massena retire up the Tagus; and prevent his messengers passing through the country between the river and the range of mountains, south of the Alva, by Castello Branco or Velha; posting strong parties to guard the fords of the Zezere.
More material memorials are the milestones which still stand in the Gerez, some tombstones, and some pavements and other remains at Condeixa a Velha, once Conimbriga, near Coimbra and at the place now called Troya, perhaps the original Cetobriga, on a sandbank opposite Setubal, a town whose founders were probably Phoenicians.
Such are, except for the church at Idanha a Velha and that of Castro de Avelans near Braganza, nearly all the early buildings in the country. Castro de Avelans is interesting and unique as having on the outside brick arcades, like those on the many Mozarabic churches at Toledo, a form of decoration not found elsewhere in Portugal.
Somewhat older than the cathedral, but not unlike it, was the church of São Christovão now destroyed, while São Thiago still has a west door whose shafts are even more elaborately carved and twisted than are those at the Sé Velha. There is more than one building, such as the Templar
The Tua may mean the 'gushing' river, and the Ave recalls the many Avons. Ebora, now Evora, is very like the Roman name of York, Eboracum. Briga, too, the common termination of town names in Roman times as in Conimbriga Condeixa a Velha or Cetobriga, near Setubal in Celtic means height or fortification.
Though the reredos is very much larger and of finer design, the figures have sufficient resemblance to those in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the Sé Velha at Coimbra, put up in 1566, to show that they must be more or less contemporary, the Guarda reredos being probably the older.
It has a round nave of Dom Manoel's time with a nuns' choir to the west and a chancel to the east, and is entered by a picturesque door of the later sixteenth century. More interesting is the second type which was commonly used when a cloister with a vault was wanted; and of it there are still examples to be seen at the Sé Velha Coimbra, at Alcobaça, Lisbon Cathedral, Evora, and Oporto.
The first stone was laid in 1158, but the church was barely finished when King Sancho I. died in 1211 and was not dedicated till 1220, while the monastic buildings were not ready till 1223, when the monks migrated from Sta. Maria a Velha, their temporary home.
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