Besides losing her independence Portugal lost her trade, for Holland and
England both now regarded her as part of their great enemy, Spain, and
so harried her ports and captured her treasure ships. Brazil was nearly
lost to the Dutch, who also succeeded in expelling the Portuguese from
Ceylon and from the islands of the East Indies, so that when the sixty
years' captivity was over and the Spaniards expelled, Portugal found it
impossible to recover the place she had lost.
It is then no wonder that almost before the end of the century money for
building began to fail, and that some of the churches begun then were
never finished; and yet for about the first twenty or thirty years of
the Spanish occupation building went on actively, especially in Lisbon
and at Coimbra, where many churches were planned by Filippo Terzi, or by
the two Alvares and others. Filippo Terzi seems first to have been
employed at Lisbon by the Jesuits in building their church of São Roque,
begun about 1570.[162]
[Sidenote: Lisbon, São Roque.]
Outside the church is as plain as possible; the front is divided into
three by single Doric pilasters set one on each side of the main door
and two at each corner. Similar pilasters stand on these, separated from
them only by a shallow cornice. The main cornice is larger, but the
pediment is perfectly plain. Three windows, one with a pointed and two
with round pediments, occupy the spaces left between the upper
pilasters. The inside is richer; the wooden ceiling is painted, the
shallow chancel and the side chapels vaulted with barrel vaults, of
which those in the chapels are enriched with elaborate strapwork. Above
the chapels are square-headed windows, and then a corbelled cornice.
Even this is plain, and it owes most of its richness to the paintings
and to the beautiful tiles which cover part of the walls.[163]
The three other great churches which were probably also designed by
Terzi are Santo Antão, Sta. Maria do Desterro, and São Vicente de Fora.
Of these the great earthquake of 1755 almost entirely destroyed the
first two and knocked down the dome of the last.
[Sidenote: São Vicente de Fora.]
Though not the first to be built, São Vicente being the least injured
may be taken before the others. It is a large church, being altogether
about 236 feet long by 75 wide, and consists of a nave of three bays
with connected chapels on each side, a transept with the fallen dome at
the crossing, a square chancel, a retro-choir for the monks about 45
feet deep behind the chancel, and to the west a porch between two tall
towers.
On the south side are two large square cloisters of no great interest
with a sacristy between--in which all the kings of the House of Braganza
lie in velvet-covered coffins--and the various monastic buildings now
inhabited by the patriarch of Lisbon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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