Only one other church of this type need be described, and that because
it is the only one which is vaulted throughout. This is the small church
of São Martim de Cedo Feita or 'Early made' at Oporto itself. It is so
called because it claims, wrongly indeed, to be the very church which
Theodomir, king of the Suevi, who then occupied the north-west of the
Peninsula, hurriedly built in 559 A.D. This he did in order that, having
been converted from the Arian beliefs he shared with all the Germanic
invaders of the Empire, he might there be baptized into the Catholic
faith, and also that he might provide a suitable resting-place for some
relic of St. Martin of Tours which had been sent to him as a mark of
Orthodox approval. This story[33] is set forth in a long inscription on
the tympanum of the west door stating that it was put there in 1767, a
copy taken in 1557 from an old stone having then been found in the
archives of the church. As a matter of fact no part of the church can be
older than the twelfth century, and it has been much altered, probably
at the date when the inscription was cut. It is a small building, a
barrel-vaulted nave and chancel, with a door on the north side and a
larger one to the west now covered by a large porch. The six capitals of
this door are very like those at Villarinho, but the moulded arches are
round and not as there pointed.
Other churches of this type are Gandara and Boelhe near Penafiel, and
Eja not far off--a building of rather later date with a fine pointed
chancel arch elaborately carved with foliage--São Thiago d'Antas, near
Familicão, a slightly larger church with good capitals to the chancel
arch, a good south door and another later west door with traceried round
window above;
[Illustration: FIG. 12.
CHURCH AT VILLARINHO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.
VILLAR DE FRADES.
W. DOOR.]
and São Torquato, near Guimarães, rather larger, having once had
transepts of which one survives, with square chancel and square chapels
to the east; one of the simplest of all having no ornament beyond the
corbel table and the small slitlike windows.
South of the Douro, but still built of granite, are a group of three or
four small churches at Trancoso. Another close to Guarda has a much
richer corbel table with a large ball ornament on the cornice and a
round window filled with curiously built-up tracery above the plain,
round-arched west door, while further south on the castle hill at Leiria
are the ruins of the small church of São Pedro built of fine limestone
with a good west door.
[Sidenote: Aguas Santas.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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