Through Portugal . the last time in its ex-istence, was a blaze of splendour for those sixfeverish weeks ; for Spanish and Portuguese nobles,jealous of each other, vied in lavish expenditure;and then the fortress of the Knights was leftto its solitude: gradually royal encroachmentsstripped the Order of its wealth and power, andThomar lived in memory alone. The upper chamber of the Manueline buildingover the choir is the chapter-house of the Orderof Christ. A grand, low, pillared hall, with thetwisted cables and the repeated cross and sphere,testifying once more to the reigning idea of theperio
Through Portugal . the last time in its ex-istence, was a blaze of splendour for those sixfeverish weeks ; for Spanish and Portuguese nobles,jealous of each other, vied in lavish expenditure;and then the fortress of the Knights was leftto its solitude: gradually royal encroachmentsstripped the Order of its wealth and power, andThomar lived in memory alone. The upper chamber of the Manueline buildingover the choir is the chapter-house of the Orderof Christ. A grand, low, pillared hall, with thetwisted cables and the repeated cross and sphere,testifying once more to the reigning idea of theperiod of the Navigator Grand-Master. Hereit was that the Portuguese Cortes sat to confirmthe religious act of allegiance to Philip, and setthe seal of subservience upon the nation fornearly a century. Every carved stone andcrocket has a story to tell if we could but hearit. Here in the older monastic building theNavigator himself held his chapters, dwellingin the adjoining palace, in the intervals of his 154 ?*«M^!. C4 < D o aH 1 COIMBRA, THOMAR, AND LEIRIA life-task upon his eyrie at Sagres; here in the cloisters of the Philips, dull Philip III. held hismonastic court upon his one visit to Portugal;and the magnificent cloister of John III. testifiesto the classical reaction after the exuberance ofthe times of his father Dom Manuel. In the quaint little Gothic cloister around theburial-place of the monks, called the Cloisterof Dom Henrique, a strange sight is to be seenin the upper ambulatory. Baltasar de Faria wasthe instrument of Philip II. in forcing the Spanishform of Inquisition ruthlessly upon Portugal,and in cruelty surpassed his master. So bitterlyhated was he that the saying ran that earth itselfwould reject and refuse to assimilate the body ofsuch a monster. In the lid of a stone coffin inthe cloister a pane of glass is set, and he who willmay gaze and see how Baltasar de Faria looksnow. He was a splendid courtier in his time,and doubtless a gallant-looking one too, f
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Keywords: ., bookauthorhumemartinandrewsharp, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900
