al of Evora, Rodrigo Affonso de Mello,
count of Olivenca, in 1485 founded a monastery for the Loyos, or Canons
Secular of St. John the Evangelist. The church itself is in no way
notable; the large west door opening under a flat arched porch is one of
these with plain moulded arches and simple shafts which are so common
over all the country, and is only interesting for its late date. At the
left side is a small monument to the founder's memory; on a corbel
stands a short column bearing an inscribed slab, and above the slab is a
shield under a carved curtain. Inside are some tombs--two of them being
Flemish brasses--and great tile pictures covering the walls. These give
the life of Sao Lorenzo Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, and canon of
San Giorgio in Alga, where the founder of the Loyos had been kindly
received and whence he drew the rules of his order, and are interesting
as being signed and dated 'Antonius ab oliva fecit 1711.'

The cloisters are also Gothic with vine-covered capitals, but the
entrance to the chapter-house and refectory is quite different. In
general design it is like the windows at Sempre Noiva, two horseshoe
arches springing from the capitals of thin marble shafts and an ogee
moulding above. The three shafts are twisted, the capitals are very
strange; they are round with several mouldings, some fluted, some carved
with leaves, some like pieces of rope: the moulded abaci also have four
curious corbels on two sides. The capitals are carried across the jambs
and the outer moulding, which is of granite, as is the whole except the
three shafts and their caps, and between the shafts and this moulding
there is a broad band of carved foliage. The ogee and the side finials
or pinnacles, which are of the same section as the outer moulding from
which they spring, are made of a bundle of small rolls held together by
a broad twisted ribbon. Lastly, between the arches and the ogee there is
a flat marble disk on which is carved a curious representation of a
stockaded enclosure, supposed to be memorial of the gallant attack made
by Affonso de Mello on Azila in Morocco.[99] The whole is a very curious
piece of work, the capitals and bases being, with the exception of some
details at Thomar and at Batalha, the most strange of the details of
that period, though, were the small corbels left out, they would differ
but little from other Manoelino capitals, while the bases may be only an
attempt of a Moorish workman to c