[Sidenote: Santa Maria dos Olivaes, Thomar.]
In a previous chapter the building of a church at Thomar by Dom Gualdim Paes, Grand Master of the Templars, has been mentioned. Of this church and the castle built at the same time, both of which stood on the east or flat bank of the river Nabão, nothing now remains except perhaps the lower part of the detached bell-tower. This church, Santa Maria dos Olivaes, was the Matriz or mother church of all those held, first by the Templars and later by their successors, the Order of Christ, not only in Portugal but even in Africa, Brazil, and in India. Of so high a dignity it is scarcely worthy, being but a very simple building neither large nor richly ornamented. A nave and aisles of five bays, three polygonal apses to the east and later square chapels beyond the aisles, make up the whole building. The roofs are all of panelled wood of the sixteenth century except in the three vaulted apses, of which the central is entered by an arch, which, rising no higher than the aisle arches, leaves room for a large window under the roof. All the arches of the aisle arcade spring from the simple moulded capitals of piers whose section is that of four half-octagons placed together. In the
clerestory are windows of one small light, in the aisles of two larger lights, and in the apses single lancets. The great simplicity of the building notwithstanding it can scarcely be as old as the thirteenth century: the curious way in which the two lancet lights of the aisle windows are enclosed under one larger trefoiled arch recalls the similar windows in the church at Leça do Balio near Oporto begun in 1336, though there the elliptical head of the enclosing arch is much less satisfactory than the trefoiled head here used. The only part of the church which can possibly have been built in the thirteenth century is the central part of the west front. The pointed door below stands under a projecting gable like that at São Francisco Santarem, except that there is a five-foiled circle above the arch containing a pentalpha, put there perhaps to keep out witches. The door itself has three large shafts on each side with good but much-decayed capitals of foliage, and a moulded jamb next the door. The arch itself is terribly decayed, but one of its orders still has the remains of a series of large cusps, arranged like the horseshoe cusps at Santarem but much larger. Above the door gable is a circular window of almost disproportionate size. It has twelve trefoil-headed lights radiating from a small circle, and curiously crossing a larger circle some distance from the smaller. Unfortunately the spaces between the trefoils and the outer mouldings have been filled up with plaster and the lights themselves subdivided with meaningless wood tracery to hold the horrible blue-and-red glass now so popular in Portugal. Though Santa Maria dos Olivaes cannot be nearly as old as has usually been believed, it is one of the earliest churches built on the plan derived perhaps first from Braga Cathedral or from the Franciscan and Dominican churches in Galicia, of a wooden roofed basilica with or without transept, and with three or more apses to the east; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal in Madeira.