Portugal Part 2 - Convento la Batalha, Monasterio de Alcobaçah

Okay all you architecture freaks and Marilyn Manson fans... You´re all in for a treat this week because today´s blog entry is totally GOTHIC.

During my Portugal trip of two weeks hence, after Coimbra, I hit up two sweet cathedrals. The first was called the Convento de La Batalha, which means 'Nunnery of the Battle'...



It was built in the 15th century to commemorate the battle of Alijubarrota, which happened on August 14th, 1385. Basically what happened is this: the Spanish we´re constantly trying to invade Portugal, and the Portuguese constantly fighting them off. Meanwhile, over in England, this lairy geezer called John of Gaunt, who held the bad-ass post of Duke of Lancaster, was charming the pants of this bird called Costanza, who happened to be daughter of the Spanish king Pedro. John of Gaunt was so lairy, in fact, that according to Shakespeare, here´s what he said on his deathbed:

¨This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings...¨

For all the Whelans reading this, you might remember that Uncle Wake (or maybe Grandma) has a book at Thurmont called ¨This Realm, This England¨, which is pretty distinctively Whelan, and pretty cool, now that we know where it comes from.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So after John of Gaunt marries Constanza, he tries to take over Spain, unsuccessfully, several times. One of the ways he does this is by supporting the Portuguese. So in 1385 he sent 500 drunken Brits with crossbows to Alijubarrota and they helped the Portuguese beat the tar out of the Spaniards. The Portuguese celebrated with several decades of hard labor, hauling and hoisting stone, not sleeping in on Sundays, all to build this convent that I saw, which was, admittedly, rather impressive. Here it is in black and white, because really, all cathedrals shouls be shot in black and white:



It had a sweet doorway with dozens of saints carved in intricate detail. Here´s Evan standing in it (which, by the way, is part of a series I have of Evan standing in doorways)...



And here´s the doorway by itself...



It had a little statue of some saint with a hideous demonic beast on a leash...



It had a sweet gothic ceiling (Kelly modelling),



It had Jesus...



You better believe it had buttresses...



And it had a sweet equestrian statue of Nuno Alvarez Pereira, the lairy general who won the battle for the ´Guese... He was so lairy, in fact, that he got out of control and had to join a Dominican Order at the end of his life. But for a while, he kicked ass. Just look at this...



The next cathedral we went to was called Alcobaçah, and it was rife, rife, I tell you, with romance, stonework, and GOTHICNESS. Here´s Jorge, one of the goofball IES staffers standing out front...



Here´s Matt looking introspective by the inner cloisters. This photo is, incidentally, part of a series that I have of pictures of Matt looking introspective...



And the best part about Alcobaçah was the story of Dom Pedro the Cruel and his boo Dona Inez de Castro. She was a hot noble from Galicia, who came as a lady-in-waiting to Costance of Castile, who was getting married to Dom Pedro, the rising king of Portugal. Pedro and Inez met. They danced. They sucked face. Sparks flew. It was a lot like that J-Lo movie The Wedding Planner, in fact. But the powers that be wouldnt let Pedro marry his boo, so he made a wifey out of Constance, and when she died, Pedro was all set to marry his true love. Not so easy. In the meantime, Constance´s brothers had decide that in order to preserve the purity of the throne, they had to off Inez, who was, as I mentioned, totally hot and ready to get it on with Pedro. Pedro was so infuriated that he killed ALL of Constance´s brothers, as well as several hundred other people who had nothing to do with the situation, and became a really ornery old geezer who loved killing people, eating steak tartar, and playing darts in dive bars for the rest of his life. He also loved GOTH stuff and first-person shooter video games.

Pedro and Inez are buried toe to toe in Alcobaçah so that when Jesus comes back, they´ll both stand up and be able to play some tonsil hockey together again, like old times... It looked like this...

Dom Pedro...



Dona Inez...



If you don´t believe my version of the story, here´s what Portugal´s main man of letters, Luis de Camões, has to say about it...

As filhas do Mondego a morte escura
Longo tempo chorando memoraram,
E, por memória eterna, em fonte pura
As lágrimas choradas transformaram.
O nome lhe puseram, que inda dura,
Dos amores de Inês, que ali passaram.
Vede que fresca fonte rega as flores,
Que lágrimas são água e o nome amores.

This act of horror, and black night obscure,
Mondego's daughter long resented deep;
And, for a lasting tomb, into a pure
Fountain transformed the tears which they did weep.
The name they gave it (which doth still endure)
Was Ines' loves, whom Pedro did keep.
No wonder, such sweet streams water those flowers:
Tears, are the substance; and the name Amours.

- Luiz de Camões, Os Lusíadas, Canto III

Also, when we were at Alcobaçah, there was a wedding party waiting outside for the bride and groom, to throw rice at them. We, like proper tourists, walked right through the affair, all 60 of us, without noticing what was going on, but just before that, I scored these two artsy shots, which I think are shoe-ins for the Robert Doisneau / Henri Cartier-Bresson school of pretentious black and white character shots. They could be called ¨Waiting for the Bride, No. 1¨and ¨Waiting for the Bride, No. 2¨ or something creative like that. Or maybe I should title them in French. That would be sweet.





Love,
Robbie