There yet exist, not far from Oporto, a considerable number of examples
of the first type, though several by their pointed doorways show that
they actually belong, in part at least, to the period of the Transition.
One of the best-preserved is the small church of Villarinho, not far
from Vizella in the valley of the Ave. Originally the church of a small
monastery, it has long been the parish church of a mountain hamlet, and
till it was lately whitewashed inside had scarcely been touched since
the day it was finished some time before the end of the twelfth century.
It consists of a rather high and narrow nave, a square-ended chancel,
and to the west a lower narthex nearly as large as the chancel. The
church is lit by very small windows which are indeed mere slits, and by
a small round opening in the gable above the narthex.[32] The narthex is
entered by a perfectly plain round-headed door with strong impost and
drip-mould, while above the corbels which once carried the roof of a
lean-to porch, a small circle enclosing a rude unglazed quatrefoil
serves as the only window. The door leading from the narthex to the nave
is much more elaborate; of four orders of mouldings, the two inner are
plain, the two outer have a big roll at the angle, and all are slightly
pointed. Except the outermost, which springs from square jambs, they all
stand on the good romanesque capitals of six shafts, four round and two
octagonal. (Fig. 12.)
[Sidenote: São Miguel, Guimarães.]
Exactly similar in plan but without a narthex is the church of São
Miguel at Guimarães, famous as being the church in which Affonso
Henriques, the first king of Portugal, was baptized in 1111. It claims
to have been the _Primaz_ or chief church of the whole archdiocese of
Braga. It is, like Villarinho, a small and very plain church built of
great blocks of granite, with a nave and square chancel lit by narrow
window slits. On the north side there are a plain square-headed doorway
and two bold round arches let into the outer wall over the graves of
some great men of these distant times. The drip-mould of one of these
arches is carved with a shallow zigzag ornament which is repeated on the
western door, a door whose slightly pointed arch may mean a rather later
date than the rest of the church. The wooden roof, as at Villarinho, has
a very gentle slope with eaves of considerable projection resting on
very large plain corbels, while other corbels lower down the wall seem
to show that at one time a veranda or cloister ran round three sides of
the building. The whole is even ruder and simpler than Villarinho, but
has a certain amount of dignity due to the great size of the stones of
which it is built and to the severe plainness of the walling.
[Sidenote: Cedo Feita, Oporto.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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