There is one thing throughout Portugal that may be unhesitatingly condemned, and here in Braga the evil is as patent as elsewhere. The old traditional and, in many cases, historical names of the praças and streets have been changed wholesale and wantonly for those of passing and second-rate celebrities, political and otherwise. In Braga the ancient Largo da Lapa has been turned into Largo de Hintze Ribeiro, after the leader of the Liberal party in the Cortes, and there is hardly a town in Portugal in which the principal squares and thoroughfares do not bear the name of Hintze Ribeiro, or of his rival politician, Conselheiro João Franco. Serpa Pinto and Mouzinho de Albuquerque, two fire-eating African explorers, who in the jingo colonial fever of a few years ago, when the feeling against England ran high, were made heroes, are commemorated in streets innumerable throughout Portugal, to the exclusion of names which were often quaint and significant landmarks of long ago.
The palace of the Archbishops of Braga hardly corresponds in appearance with the high claims of the primate, for the church in Portugal is sadly shorn of its splendour, and part of the rambling palace is a ruin; but the cathedral offers many points of interest. Enthusiastic local antiquarians are confident that the first edifice was raised by Saint James himself in the lifetime of the Holy Virgin. But, however that may be, the present church certainly dates from the twelfth century; and though, as usual, the seventeenth century did its best to spoil and smother its primitive simplicity; yet, as in the case of Oporto Cathedral, which that of Braga much resembles, the stern solidity of the original work stands out clear from the frippery by which it is overlaid.
The narrow nave is divided from the aisles by massive low clustered granite pillars supporting slightly pointed arches, above which spring the simple groins that form the vaulted roof. At the west end the church is darkened by the gilt wooden ceiling that supports the choir and the great gilded organ with spread trumpet pipes that is the pride of the cathedral. The choir itself, raised upon a loft and occupying the whole west end of the church, is of surprising magnificence; carving and gilding have run wild; cupids, cherubim, angels, musicians, and fabulous monsters jostle each other exuberantly upon choir stalls, lecterns, and panels: all the caprice, skill, and invention of sixteenth and seventeenth century Portuguese art have been lavished upon the work. And the effect is rich in the extreme, but utterly incongruous with the sober early ogival of the church itself. Even in the nave the massive granite pillars have been crowned by later vandals with florid capitals of carved gilt wood. The walls, too, are much covered with pictorial blue and white tiles, and the effect of this, though inartistic, is quaint and not displeasing. From the tiny cloister of plain romanesque there opens the chapel of St. Luke, where in two splendid sepulchres lie the bodies of the Leonese princess, Teresa, and her Burgundian husband, Count Henrique, to whom she brought the county of Portugal in the late eleventh century. These are the progenitors of the Kings of Portugal, the parents of Affonso Henriques, of whom we shall hear much later; and to Donna Teresa is owing the re-foundation of the Cathedral of Braga. In the side chapels, in the cloisters, and in the sumptuous chapel of St. Gerald, the patron saint, there lie dead and mouldering archbishops not a few; one of them, it is said, incorrupt after eight centuries, though in consequence of the flesh having been varnished he has the appearance of a mulatto, and shows to this day the honourable scar across his cheek that the warrior archbishop gained whilst fighting valiantly by the side of the Master of Avis at the ever-memorable battle of Aljubarrota, that gave the regal crown of Portugal to the illegitimate scion of the House of Burgundy. Another coffin there is, just inside the west door, that has for most people a still more human interest. It is of gilt copper, apparently French in design, bearing upon its lid an effigy of a pretty boy of ten, the little Prince Affonso, whose bones lie within, and who died at Braga in the year 1400.