w square tile roof. The chapel on the ground floor is
entered by a porch, whose flat lintel rests on moulded piers at the
angles and on two tall round columns in the centre, while its three
openings are filled with plain iron screens, the upper part of which
blossoms out into large iron flowers and leaves. Inside there is on the
east wall a reredos of early renaissance date, and on the south a large
half-classical arch flanked by pilasters under which there is a
life-size group of the Entombment made seemingly of terra cotta and
painted.

So, rather later than in most other lands, and many years after the
renaissance had made itself felt in other parts of the country, Gothic
comes to an end, curiously enough not far from where the oldest
Christian buildings are found.

CHAPTER VII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS

It is now time to turn back for a century and a half and to speak of the
traces left by the Moors of their long occupation of the country.
Although they held what is now the northern half of Portugal for over a
hundred years, and part of the south for about five hundred, there is
hardly a single building anywhere of which we can be sure that it was
built by them before the Christian re-conquest of the country. Perhaps
almost the only exceptions are the fortifications at Cintra, known as
the Castello dos Mouros, the city walls at Silves, and possibly the
church at Mertola. In Spain very many of their buildings still exist,
such as the small mosque, now the church of Christo de la Luz, and the
city walls at Toledo, and of course the mosque at Cordoba and the
Alcazar at Seville, not to speak of the Alhambra. Yet it must not be
forgotten that, while Portugal reached its furthest limits by the
capture of the Algarve under Affonso III. about the middle of the
thirteenth century, in Spain the progress was slower. Toledo indeed fell
in 1085, but Cordoba and Seville were only taken a few years before the
capture of the Algarve, and Granada was able to hold out till 1492.
Besides, in what is now Portugal there had been no great capital like
Cordoba. And yet, though this is so, hardly a town or a village exists
in which some slight trace of their art cannot be found, even if it be
but a tile-lining to the walls of church or house. In such towns as
Toledo, Moorish builders were employed not only in the many parish
churches but even in the cathedral, and in Portugal we find Moors at
Thomar even as late as the begin