Of the chancel little has been left inside but the vault and the tombs of Dona Theresa (the first independent ruler of Portugal) and of her husband Count Henry of Burgundy--very poor work of about the same date as the chancel. The outside, however, has been unaltered. Below it is square in plan, becoming at about twenty feet from the ground a half-octagon having the eastern a good deal wider than the diagonal sides. On the angles of the lower square stand tall clustered buttresses, rising independently of the wall as far as the projecting cornice, across which their highest pinnacles cut, and united to the chancel at about a third of the height, by small but elaborate flying buttresses. On the eastern face there is a simple pointed window, and there is nothing else to relieve the perfectly plain walls below except two string courses, and the elaborate side buttresses with their tall pinnacles and twisted shafts. But if the walling is plain the cornice is most elaborate. It is of great depth and of considerable projection, the hollows of the mouldings being filled with square flowers below and intricate carving above. On this stands a high parapet of traceried quatrefoils, bearing a horizontal moulding from which springs an elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding. [Sidenote: Conceiçao, Braga.] Opposite the east end of the cathedral there stands a small tower built in 1512 by Archdeacon João de Coimbra as a chapel. It is of two stories, with a vaulted chapel below and a belfrey above, lit by round-headed windows, only one of which retains its tracery. Just above the string which divides the two stories are statues[93] under canopies, one projecting on a corbel from each corner, and one from the middle, while above a cornice, on which stand short pinnacles, six to each side, the tower ends in a low square tile roof. The chapel on the ground floor is entered by a porch, whose flat lintel rests on moulded piers at the angles and on two tall round columns in the centre, while its three openings are filled with plain iron screens, the upper part of which blossoms out into large iron flowers and leaves. Inside there is on the east wall a reredos of early renaissance date, and on the south a large half-classical arch flanked by pilasters under which there is a life-size group of the Entombment made seemingly of terra cotta and painted. So, rather later than in most other lands, and many years after the renaissance had made itself felt in other parts of the country, Gothic comes to an end, curiously enough not far from where the oldest Christian buildings are found. CHAPTER VII THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS