s almost impossible to take the different buildings in
chronological order, because at this time so many different schools
began to struggle for supremacy. There was first the Gothic school
which, though increasing in elaboration of detail, went on in some
places almost uninfluenced by any breath of the renaissance, as for
instance in the porch and chancel of Braga Cathedral, not built till
about 1532. Elsewhere this Gothic was affected partly by Spanish and
partly by Moorish influence, and gradually grew into that most curious
and characteristic of styles, commonly called Manoelino, from Dom Manoel
under whom Portugal reached the summit of its prosperity. In other
places, again, Gothic forms and renaissance details came gradually to be
used together, as at Belem.

To take then first those buildings in which Gothic detail was but little
influenced by the approaching renaissance.

[Sidenote: Graca, Santarem.]

One of the earliest of these is the west front, added towards the end of
the fifteenth century to that Augustinian church of the Graca at
Santarem whose roof the Devil knocked down in 1548. Here the ends of the
side aisles are, now at any rate, quite plain, but in the centre there
is a very elaborate doorway with a large rose-window above. It is easy
to see that this doorway has not been uninfluenced by Batalha. From
well-moulded jambs, each of which has four shafts, there springs a large
pointed arch, richly fringed with cusping on its inner side. Two of its
many mouldings are enriched with smaller cuspings, and one, the
outermost, with a line of wavy tracery, while the whole ends in a
crocketed ogee. Above the arch is a strip of shallow panelling,
enclosed, as is the whole doorway, in a square moulded frame. May it
not be that this square frame is due to the almost universal Moorish
habit of setting an archway in a square frame, as may be seen at Cordoba
and in the palace windows at Cintra? The rest of the gable is perfectly
plain but for the round window, filled with elaborate spiral flowing
tracery. Here, though the details are more French than national, there
is a good example of the excellent result so often reached by later
Portuguese--and Spanish--builders, who concentrated all their elaborate
ornament on one part of the building while leaving the rest absolutely
plain--often as here plastered and whitewashed.

[Sidenote: Sao Joao Baptista, Thomar.]

Not long after this front was built, Dom Manoel in 1