ke anything that has come before or
anything that has come after, that it seemed better to take it by itself
without regard to strict chronological order.

[Illustration: PLAN OF ALCOBACA]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.

SANTAREM.

APSE, SAO JOAO DE ALPORAO.]

[Illustration: FIG. 25.

TRANSEPT.

ALCOBACA.]

[Sidenote: Alcobaca.]

The first stone was laid in 1158, but the church was barely finished
when King Sancho I. died in 1211 and was not dedicated till 1220, while
the monastic buildings were not ready till 1223, when the monks migrated
from Sta. Maria a Velha, their temporary home. The abbey was immensely
wealthy: it had complete jurisdiction over fourteen villages whose
inhabitants were in fact its serfs: it or its abbot was visitor to all
Benedictine abbeys in the country and was, for over three hundred years,
till the reign of Cardinal King Henry, the superior of the great
military Order of Christ. It early became one of the first centres of
learning in Portugal, having begun to teach in 1269. It helped Dom Diniz
to found the University of Lisbon, now finally settled at Coimbra, with
presents of books and of money, and it only acknowledged the king in so
far as to give him a pair of boots or shoes when he chanced to come to
Alcobaca. All these possessions and privileges of the monks were
confirmed by Dom Joao IV. (1640-56) after the supremacy of the Spaniards
had come to an end, and were still theirs when Beckford paid them his
memorable visit near the end of the eighteenth century and was so
splendidly entertained with feastings and even with plays and operas
performed by some of the younger brothers. Much harm was of course done
by the French invasion, and at last in 1834 the brothers were turned
out, their house made into barracks, and their church and cloister left
to fall into decay--a decay from which they are only being slowly
rescued at the present time.

The first abbot, Ranulph, was sent by St. Bernard of Clairvaux himself
at the king's special request, and he must have brought with him the
plan of the abbey or at least of the church. Nearly all Cistercian
churches, which have not been altered, are of two types which resemble
each other in being very simple, having no towers and very little
ornament of any kind. In the simpler of these forms, the one which
prevailed in England, the transept is aisleless, with five or more
chapels, usually square, to the east, of which the largest, in the
cent