494 began a new
parish church at Thomar, that of Sao Joao Baptista. The plan of this
church is that which has already become so familiar: a nave and aisles
with wooden roof and vaulted chancel and chapels to the east, with here,
the addition of a tower and spire to the north of the west front. The
inside calls for little notice: the arches are pointed, and the capitals
carved with not very good foliage, but the west front is far more
interesting. As at the Graca it is plastered and whitewashed, but ends
not in a gable but in a straight line of cresting like Batalha, though
here there is no flat terrace behind, but a sloping tile roof. At the
bottom is a large ogee doorway whose tympanum is pierced with tracery
and whose mouldings are covered with most beautiful and deeply undercut
foliage. The outside of the arch is crocketed, and ends in a tall finial
thrust through the horizontal and crested moulding which, as at the
Graca, sets the whole in a square frame. There are also doorways in the
same style half-way along the north and south sides of the church. The
only other openings on the west front are a plain untraceried circle
above the door, and a simple ogee-headed window at the end of each
aisle.

The tower, which is not whitewashed, rises as a plain unadorned square
to a little above the aisle roof, then turns to an octagon with, at the
top, a plain belfry window on each face. Above these runs a corbelled
gallery within which springs an octagonal spire cut into three by two
bands of ornament, and ending in a large armillary sphere, that emblem
of all the discoveries made during his reign, which Dom Manoel put on to
every building with which he had anything to do.

Inside the chapels are as usual overloaded with huge reredoses of
heavily carved and gilt wood, but the original pulpit still survives, a
most beautiful example of the finest late Gothic carving. It consists of
four sides of an octagon, and stands on ribs which curve outwards from a
central shaft. Round the bottom runs a band of foliage most marvellously
undercut, above this are panels separated the one from the other by
slender pinnacles, and the whole ends in a cornice even more delicately
carved than is the base. At the top of each panel is some intricate
tabernacle work, below which there is on one the Cross of the Order of
Christ, on another the royal arms, with a coronet above which stands out
quite clear of the panel, and on a third there has been