. Nothing
is said as to when the church was begun, but we are told that Dom Miguel
gave 124 morabitinos to Master Bernardo[43] who had directed the
building for ten years; the presents too of bread and wine made to his
successor Soeiro are also mentioned, so that it seems probable that the
church may have been begun soon after Dom Miguel became bishop, and that
it was finished some time before the end of his episcopate.

Though the nave is like that of Santiago, the transepts and choir are
much simpler. There the transept is long and has an aisle on each side;
here it is short and aisleless. There the choir is deep with a
surrounding aisle and radiating chapels, here it is a simple apse
flanked by two smaller apses. Indeed throughout the whole of the
Peninsula the French east end was seldom used except in churches of a
distinctly foreign origin, such as Santiago, Leon or Toledo in Spain, or
Alcobaca in Portugal, and so it is natural here to find Bernardo
rejecting the elaboration and difficult construction of his model, and
returning to the simpler plan which had already been so often used in
the north. (Fig. 18.)

Inside the piers are square with four half-shafts, one of which runs up
in front to carry the barrel vault, which is about sixty feet high. All
the capitals are well carved, and a moulded string which runs along
under the gallery is curiously returned against the vaulting shafts as
if it had once been carried round them and had afterwards been cut off.
Almost the only light in the nave comes from small openings in the
galleries, the aisle windows being nearly all blocked up by later
altars, and from a large window at the west end. The transept on the
other hand is very light, with several windows at either end, and eight
in the square lantern, so that the effect is extremely good of the dark
nave followed by the brilliant transept and ending in a great carved and
gilt reredos. This reredos, reaching up to the blue-and-gold apse vault,
was given to the cathedral in 1508 by Bishop D. Jorge d'Almeida, and was
the work of 'Master Vlimer a Framengo,' that is, a Fleming, and of his
partner, Joao D'ipri, or of Ypres, two of the many foreigners who at
that time worked for King D. Manoel. There are several picturesque tombs
in the church, especially two in the north-east corner of the transept,
whose recesses still retain their original tile decoration. Later tiles
still cover the aisle walls and altar recesses, but