Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/253

Rh and the Moors, took place in the last years of the heroic founder. The inhabitants carried all their possessions up the hill and fought the pagans outside the castle walls. After the destroyers' flight the town revived rapidly, for in a century's time the number of its population exceeded 20,000 souls.

A mystic sanctuary was that first strong chapel of the warrior monks. Beneath the cupola originally crowning the edifice a Byzantine arcade was erected concentric with the polygon exterior but octagon in form, composing in its entirety what was called the Charola, or great recess for figures of saints, surrounding the high altar, which was erected beneath the east arch, according to the rites of the ancient Free Masons, supposed to have been practised by the Templars. It was a sanctuary corresponding to the mirghab of the Orient. The chapel was used chiefly during times of siege, for at other times the knights lived without the walls, and performed their orisons in the mother church of S. Maria. It is well to call to mind that churches in those days were the nucleus of the social life of the district in which they were erected.

Under King Diniz the power of the Templars, with their vast wealth, was transmuted into the new Order of Christ. Prince Henry the Navigator, one of its most distinguished Grand Masters, adapted the Templars' chapel to public worship, and added to the convent two cloisters, uniting his own dwelling, now in ruins, with the church. One of these, called the Cloister of the Cemiterio, is pure Gothic, the pointed arches raising themselves above handsome capitals, which are noted for the beauty of their sculptured foliage. The epitaphs and names on the pavement over the graves of heroic knights of Christ are undecipherable, but three tombs of the sixteenth century stand back in the arches of the walls. Through a glazed 189