nowledge, and a wish to shut
out the sun as much as possible, and besides there is really no
resemblance between the tracery in the church and that in the cloister.

In the lowest floor of the Torre de Sao Vicente, begun by Dom Joao II.
and finished by Dom Manoel to defend the channel of the Tagus, the
central hall is divided from a passage by a thin wall whose upper part
is pierced to form a perforated screen. The original plan for the tower
is said to have been furnished by Garcia de Resende, whose house we have
seen at Evora, and if this screen, which is built up of heart-shaped
curves, is older than the cloister windows at Batalha, he may have
suggested to Matheus Fernandes the tracery which has a more or less
reticulated form, though on the other hand it may be later and have been
suggested by them. Most probably, however, Matheus Fernandes thought out
the tracery for himself. He would not have had far to go to see real
reticulated panelling, for the church is covered with it; but an even
more likely source of this reticulation might be found in the beautiful
Moorish panelling which exists on such buildings as the Giralda or the
tower at Rabat, and if we find Moors among the workmen at Thomar there
may well have been some at Batalha as well. As for the naturalistic
tracery, it is clearly only an improvement on such windows as those of
the Pateo behind the church, and there is no need to go to Ahmedabad and
find there pierced screens to which they have a certain resemblance.

However, whatever may be its origin, this tracery it is which makes the
Claustro Real not only the most beautiful cloister in Portugal, but
even, as that may not seem very great praise, one of the most beautiful
cloisters in the world, and it must have been even more beautiful before
a modern restoration crowned all the walls with a pierced Gothic parapet
and a spiky cresting, whose angular form and sharp mouldings do not
quite harmonise with the rounded and gentle curves of the tracery below.

After the suppression of the monastic orders in 1834, Batalha, which had
already suffered terribly from the French invasion--for in 1810 during
the retreat under Massena two cloisters were burned and much furniture
destroyed--was for a time left to decay. However, in 1840 the Cortes
decreed an annual expenditure of two contos of reis,[126] or about L450
to keep the buildings in repair and to restore such parts as were
damaged.

The first director was