tion has survived about the stalls at Coimbra,
surely, had there been one, it might have survived at Thomar as well.

At the same time it must be admitted that the bases of the jambs inside
the west window in the chapter-house are very unlike anything else, and
are to a Western eye like Indian work. However, a most diligent search
in the Victoria and Albert Museum through endless photographs of Indian
buildings failed to find anything which was really at all like them, and
this helped to confirm the belief that this resemblance is more fancied
than real; besides, the other strange features, the west window outside,
and the south window, now a door, are surely nothing more than Manoelino
realism gone a little mad.

Thomar has already been seen in the twelfth century when Dom Gualdim
Paes built the sixteen-sided church and the castle, and when he and his
Templars withstood the Moorish invaders with such success.

As time went on the Templars in other lands became rich and powerful,
and in the fourteenth century Philippe le Bel of France determined to
put an end to them as an order and to confiscate their goods. So in 1307
the grand master was imprisoned, and five years later the Council of
Vienne, presided over by Clement V.--a Frenchman, Bertrand de
Goth--suppressed the order. Philippe seized their property, and in 1314
the grand master was burned.

In Portugal their services against the Moors were still remembered, and
although by this time no part of Portugal was under Mohammedan rule,
Granada was not far off, and Morocco was still to some extent a danger.

Dom Diniz therefore determined not to exterminate the Templars, but to
change them into a new military order, so in 1319 he obtained a bull
from John XXII. from Avignon constituting the Order of Christ. At first
their headquarters were at Castro-Marim at the mouth of the Guadiana,
but soon they returned to their old Templar stronghold at Thomar and
were re-granted most of their old possessions.

The Order of Christ soon increased in power, and under the
administration of Prince Henry, 1417 to 1460, took a great part in the
discoveries and explorations which were to bring such wealth and glory
to their country. In 1442, Eugenius IV. confirmed the spiritual
jurisdiction of the order over all conquests in Africa, and Nicholas V.
and Calixtus III. soon extended this to all other conquests made, or to
be made anywhere, so that the knights had spiritual authority ove