isle was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown
into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel
arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well
designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed
period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple
French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class are those of
Sao Christovao do Rio Mau not far from Villo do Conde, and Sao Pedro de
Rates, a little further up the Ave at the birthplace of the first bishop
of Braga and earliest martyr of Portugal. Sao Pedro is a little later,
as the aisle arches are all pointed, and is a small basilica of nave and
aisles with short transepts, chancel and eastern chapels.

[Sidenote: Villar de Frades.]

The two earliest examples of the third and most highly developed type,
the church of Villar de Frades and the cathedral of Braga, have
unfortunately both suffered so terribly, the one from destruction and
the other from rebuilding, that not much has been left to show what they
were originally like--barely enough to make it clear that they were much
more elaborately decorated, and that their carved work was much better
wrought than in any of the smaller churches already mentioned. A short
distance to the south of the river Cavado and about half-way between
Braga and Barcellos, in a well-watered and well-wooded region, there
existed from very early Christian times a monastery called Villar, and
later Villar de Frades. During the troubles and disorders which followed
the Moslem invasion, this Benedictine monastery had fallen into complete
decay and so remained till it was restored in 1070 by Godinho Viegas.
Although again deserted some centuries later and refounded in 1425 as
the mother house of a new order--the Loyos--the fifteenth-century church
was so built as to leave at least a part of the front of the old ruined
church standing between itself and the monastic building, as well as the
ruins of an apse behind. Probably this old west front was the last part
of Godinho's church to be built, but it is certainly more or less
contemporary with some portions of the cathedral of Braga.

At some period, which the legend leaves quite uncertain, one of the
monks of this monastery was one day in the choir at matins, when they
came to that Psalm where it is said that 'a thousand years in the sight
of God are but as yesterday when it is gone,' and the old m