ermined that his building
should contain a palace as well as a monastery--indeed it may almost be
said to contain two palaces, one for the king on the south, and one on
the north for the queen.

[Sidenote: Mafra.]

A son was born, and the poorest monastery in the kingdom was found at
Mafra, where a few Franciscans lived in some miserable buildings. Having
found his site, King Joao had next to find an architect able to carry
out his great scheme, and so low had native talent fallen, that the
architect chosen was a foreigner, Frederic Ludovici or Ludwig, a German.

The first stone of the vast building was laid in 1717, and the church
was dedicated thirteen years later, in 1730.[169]

The whole building may be divided into two main parts. One to the east,
measuring some 560 feet by 350, and built round a large square
courtyard, was devoted to the friars, and contained the convent
entrance, the refectory, chapter-house, kitchen, and cells for two
hundred and eighty brothers, as well as a vast library on the first
floor.

The other and more extensive part to the west comprises the king's
apartments on the south side, the queen's on the north, and between them
the church.

It is not without interest to compare the plan of this palace or
monastery with the more famous Escorial. Both cover almost exactly the
same area,[170] but while in the Escorial the church is thrust back at
the end of a vast patio, here it is brought forward to the very front.
There the royal palace occupies only a comparatively small area in the
north-west corner of the site, and the monastic part the whole lying
south of the entrance patio and of the church; here the monastic part is
thrust back almost out of sight, and the palace stretches all along the
west front except where it is interrupted in the middle by the church.

Indeed the two buildings differ from one another much as did the
characters of their builders. The gloomy fanaticism of Philip of Spain
is exemplified by the preponderance of the monastic buildings no less
than by his own small dark bed-closet opening only to the church close
to the high altar. Joao V., pleasure-loving and luxurious, pushed the
friars to the back, and made his own and the queen's rooms the most
prominent part of the whole building, and one cannot but feel that,
though a monastery had to be built to fulfil a vow, the king was
actuated not so much by religious zeal as by an ostentatious megalomania
which led hi