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Gothic Tales from Portugal

This Alcobaca monastic church (c.1150) was once Portugal’s largest.

Central Portugal is filled with historic towns, castles, and beautiful churches. It was while visiting a rather plain but historically significant mediaeval church that I came across a pair of breathtakingly beautiful tombs. So completely out of place were they, that my curiosity was not satisfied until I had uncovered their gruesome tale of love, deceit, murder and revenge, which begs now to be told.

So harken, readers, that ye may know

Of the grizzly tale of Inés de Castro…

About 100 km (60 mi.) north of Lisbon in the town of Alcobaca stands a Cistercian monastery which incorporates Portugal’s largest early (12th century) gothic church. The stark simplicity of its interior contrasts dramatically with the two exquisitely carved white marble tombs which embellish its transept. Therein lie the remains of King Pedro I and his young mistress, Inés de Castro. In the mid 1300s after the death of his wife, the young Prince Pedro fell in love with Inés, one of his late wife’s ladies-in-waiting, and proceeded to father several illegitimate children with her. But since Inés was a Spaniard, Pedro’s father King Alfonso foresaw problems of succession, so while the Prince was away with his troops fighting the Moors, he had his courtiers murder her and hide the body.

Ines would be forever attended by guardian angels.

When he returned from the war, Pedro was more than a little annoyed. Once he became king he sent servants far and wide to find out what had happened. Sure enough, they located the murderers and found Inés’ body in an unmarked grave near Coïmbra. King Pedro had her dug up and brought back to the Court, where he dressed her rotting corpse in regal finery, sat it on a throne and made all the courtiers come and kiss it as an act of loyalty. Then, to prove his everlasting love, he had twin tombs built flanking the altar of what was at the time the country’s largest church. She was entombed in one, facing the other, which he eventually came to occupy. The idea was that when they rose on Judgement Day, the first person each would see would be their loved one.

The murderers, of course, met a suitably gory fate. And now that your appetite has been whetted for gothic tales, let’s move on to something a bit different – and more than a little weird…

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, most lives were short and brutish. Most, but not all – the nobility and the clergy, including monks and nuns, lived quite well. In fact, so many people became monks, and so many monks eventually passed away, that monastic graveyards became overcrowded. As recently as the 18th century, if there was a shortage of traditional building materials ecclesiastical authorities would sometimes build chapels out of disinterred skeletons, since bones really stand the test of time. Such “bone chapels” are found in several European countries: in Portugal two are well-known tourist attractions, and there are a couple of others as well.

Nothing but the best in Evora’s bone chapel – the skulls are gilded.

The one most often visited by tourists is located behind the Carmo church in downtown Faro, capital of the Algarve. It is small, probably not more than 4-by-5 meters (13 ft-by-16), with a curved ceiling about 3 meters (10 ft) high. It was built in the 1700s entirely of stacked bare bones, held in place by metal bands and something similar to plaster, and ornamented here and there with skulls. There is a small admission charge, and visitors are reminded that it’s a place for contemplation, not a sideshow. Underscoring this fact are small signs in four languages above the simple altar, reminding visitors to “think about how you live, for you too will join us some day”.

In contrast Evora, a magnificent 2,000-year-old walled city in central Portugal near the Spanish border, has a huge and impressive bone chapel. Its plastered and beautifully decorated ceiling is supported by many substantial columns constructed, like the walls of the room, of bones faced with skulls. Many of the skulls have been gilded, so that the overall appearance is not stark, but actually rather warm and “elegant,” in a ghoulish sort of way. As a final macabre touch, the complete gilded skeleton of a monk was hanging from a hook on a side wall during my visit. In case anyone wonders why the skulls are so small, this skeleton shows that people back then were much shorter. Probably anyone measuring much over five feet (1.6 m) would have been considered “tall”.

These gothic tales wouldn’t be complete without a few words about “autos da fe” (public demonstrations of “faith”). During the seven centuries that they controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula, the Moors generally treated their Christian and Jewish subjects kindly. However, everything changed when the last Moorish troops were finally expelled from Spain in 1492, and the remaining non-Christians were considered potential “subversives”. Muslims and Jews were required to leave or convert to Catholicism, and many fled to more tolerant Portugal, so terrified were they of the Spanish Inquisition. Church authorities eventually reacted by extending the Inquisition to Portugal, and from 1531 to 1765 thousands of suspects were arrested, sometimes exonerated, often fined, frequently tortured, but “only” an estimated 1800 (according to the Encyclopedia Judaïca) suspected of being genuine heretics were burned at the stake. (Sometimes out of “kindness” they were strangled first before being torched.) These spectacles are said to have been as well-attended as bullfights.

This has been just a brief introduction to “the way it was” a few centuries ago in Portugal. The next time you head for the Algarve’s sunny beaches or enjoy a glass of fine Port, you might wish to give a passing thought to the less pleasant aspects of the nation’s history, and be glad you didn’t live back then.