as
founded, but how 'In the year of the Era of Caesar, 1228 (that is 1190
A.D., on the 3rd of July), came the King of Morocco, leading four
hundred thousand horsemen and five hundred thousand foot and besieged
this castle for six days, destroying everything he found outside the
walls. God delivered from his hands the castle, the aforesaid Master and
his brethren. The same king returned to his country with innumerable
loss of men and of animals.'[49] Doubtless the size of Yakub the
Almohade leader's army is here much exaggerated, but that he was forced
to retire from Thomar, and by pestilence from Santarem is certain, and
though he made a more successful invasion two years later the Moors
never again gained a footing to the north of the Tagus.

Dom Gualdim's church, since then enlarged by the addition of a nave to
the west, was originally a polygon of sixteen sides with a circular
barrel-vaulted aisle surrounding a small octagon, which with its two
stories of slightly pointed arches contains the high altar.[50] (Fig.
23.)

The round-headed windows come up high, and till it was so richly adorned
by Dom Manoel during his grand mastership of the Order of Christ more
than three hundred years later, the church must have been extremely
simple. Outside the most noticeable feature is the picturesque grouping
of the bell-towers and gable, added probably in the seventeenth century,
which now rise on the eastern side of the polygon, and which, seen above
the orange and medlar trees of a garden reaching eastwards towards the
castle, forms one of the most pleasing views in the whole country.

[Sidenote: Sao Joao de Alporao, Santarem.]

If Evora and the Templar church at Thomar show one form of transition,
where the arches are pointed, but the construction and detail is
romanseque, Sao Joao de Alporao at Santarem shows another, where the
construction is Gothic but the arches are still all round.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.

EVORA.

SE. CLOISTER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 23.

THOMAR.

TEMPLARS' CHURCH.]

This church is said to stand on the site of a mosque and to have been at
first called Al Koran, since corrupted into Alporao, but the present
building can hardly have been begun till the early years of the
thirteenth century. The church consists of an aisleless nave with good
groined vaulting and a five-sided apsidal chancel. The round-arched west
door stands under a pointed gable, but seems to have lost by decay and
conseque