bably finished sooner than the church
at Caldas, and is the best example in the country of a late Gothic
church modified by the addition of certain Manoelino details.
Unfortunately it was a good deal injured by the great earthquake in
1755, when it lost all pinnacles and parapets. The church consists of a
nave and aisles of three and a half bays and of a square chancel.
Inside, the side aisles are vaulted with a half barrel and the central
with a simple vault having large plain chamfered ribs. The columns,
trefoils in section, are twisted, and have simple moulded caps. The
chancel which is higher than the nave is entered by a large pointed
arch, which like its jambs has one of its mouldings twisted. The chancel
vault has many ribs, most of which are also twisted. All the piers and
jambs as well as the windows are built of Arrabida marble, a red breccia
found in the mountains to the west of Setubal; the rest is all
whitewashed except the arches and vaulting ribs which are painted in
imitation of the marble piers.

Outside, the main door, also of Arrabida marble, is large and pointed,
with many mouldings and two empty niches on each side. It has little
trace of Manoelino except in the bent curves of the upturned drip-mould,
and in the broken lines of the two smaller doors which open under the
plain tympanum. The nave window is of two lights with simple tracery,
but in the chancel, which was ready by 1495, the window shows more
Manoelino tendencies. It is of three lights, with flowing tracery at the
head, and with small cusped and crocketed arches thrown across each
light at varying levels. There are niches on the jambs, and the outer
moulding is carried round the window head in broken curves, after the
manner of Resende's house at Evora. Though the chancel is square inside,
the corners outside are cut off by a very broad chamfer, and a very
curious ogee curve unites the two.

The cloisters to the north are more usual. The arches are round or
slightly pointed, and like the short round columns with their moulded
eight-sided caps and sides, are of Arrabida marble. Half-way along each
walk two of the columns are set more closely together, and between them
is a small round arch, with below it a Manoelino trefoil; there is too
in the north-west corner a lavatory with a good flat vault.

[Sidenote: Beja, Conceicao.]

At Beja the church of the Conceicao, founded by Dom Manoel's father, has
been very much pulled about, but the