About a month ago I returned from being away on vacation with a friend in New Zealand and Australia for 3.5 weeks. In case you also want to follow that really fun trip, here's a link to the newest blog: www.bergersadventures7.blogspot.com
Steven and I took one of Lisbon's ubiquitous trams about five miles west of downtown to the city's Belem district. That was where so many sights were located from Portugal's Golden Age of Discovery when Vasco da Gama and other explorers turned the minuscule country into Europe's wealthiest power. Before leaving from Belem on voyages during the Age of Discovery which began at the beginning of the 15th century and lasted until the end of the 18th century, sailors would stay and pray at the impressive white limestone Monastery of Jeronimos. It stretched for an amazing 300 yards along Belem's waterfront and was built by King Manuel 1 who ruled from 1495 as a 'thank you' for the discoveries made by his country's first explorers. Prior to that, sailors prayed at a humble church close by. The monastery was financed partially with 'pepper money,' a five percent tax on spices brought back from India.
As the monks who lived at the monastery were Hieronymites or followers of St. Jerome, the edifice was called Jeronimos. I had never known before coming to the monastery that many monks joined the sailors/pirates on their trading/pillaging trips as they hoped to convert the heathens in the far off lands to Christianity. In addition, it was also news to me that many expeditions were financed by the Order of Christ, a brotherhood of soldier monks, according to travel writer Rick Steves.
Steven and I took one of Lisbon's ubiquitous trams about five miles west of downtown to the city's Belem district. That was where so many sights were located from Portugal's Golden Age of Discovery when Vasco da Gama and other explorers turned the minuscule country into Europe's wealthiest power. Before leaving from Belem on voyages during the Age of Discovery which began at the beginning of the 15th century and lasted until the end of the 18th century, sailors would stay and pray at the impressive white limestone Monastery of Jeronimos. It stretched for an amazing 300 yards along Belem's waterfront and was built by King Manuel 1 who ruled from 1495 as a 'thank you' for the discoveries made by his country's first explorers. Prior to that, sailors prayed at a humble church close by. The monastery was financed partially with 'pepper money,' a five percent tax on spices brought back from India.
As the monks who lived at the monastery were Hieronymites or followers of St. Jerome, the edifice was called Jeronimos. I had never known before coming to the monastery that many monks joined the sailors/pirates on their trading/pillaging trips as they hoped to convert the heathens in the far off lands to Christianity. In addition, it was also news to me that many expeditions were financed by the Order of Christ, a brotherhood of soldier monks, according to travel writer Rick Steves.
After walking around much of the enormous building, we returned to the fancy South Portal to look at the sculpture of Prince Henry the Navigator standing between the doors. Prince Henry was King Manuel's uncle and had built the original sailors' chapel on this site.
Above him was the king's patron saint, St. Jerome, with the lion.
Over the main entrance to the church was the kneeling statue of King Manuel I and another image of whom I think was St. Jerome.
The exquisite monastery was constructed in the Manueline style, Portugal's unique decorative style which was ornate, elaborate, intertwined and featured symbols from a family's coat of arms or motifs from the sea.
The restored Cloister has been described as the architectural jewel of the many sights in Belem with its Manueline-style arcade where heads of state are received and many treaties are signed, including the one admitting Portugal to the European Union in 1986.
In one corner of the cloister was a large fountain topped by a lion where monks washed up before entering the Refectory or dining hall.
The former dining hall, occasionally now used as a concert venue, had a fan-vaulted ceiling that was a typical example of the Manueline style. Under the thick stone ropes on the walls were lovely paneled tiles dating from 1780-1785 that depicted the flight into Egypt. On the wall opposite the windows there used to be a small wooden pulpit for the reading of the Holy Scripture and the lives of the saints during meals.
The painting at the far end of the humongous dining room portrayed a nativity scene by an unknown artist from the 16th century.
We wandered back out to the gorgeous cloister again.
This was the burial spot for Portugal's most popular modern poet, Fernando Pessoa.
The light was just perfect to take pictures of the intricate carvings and also try to find a monkey, kitten and cricket among the functioning rainspouts above the lower set of arches!
I could see how the Cloister was a pleasant place of mediation and recreation for the monks. With two stories and vaulted ceilings, it was built on a square plan with cross-cut corners.
Marveling at the exquisite stonework, I could certainly appreciate how the monastery was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
If this was the kitten, it sure looked pretty ferocious!
Upstairs, we found both the cricket and alligator rainspouts!
The medieval imagery of the fantastic animals was superb and we hadn't even seen the church yet!
With hordes of other people we finally entered the monastery's church and noticed right away how the space seemed more open than earlier medieval churches, thanks in part to the slender, palm-tree-like columns.
Rope-like arches evoked the mystery of undiscovered lands.
We made our way to the memorial to Luis Vaz de Camoes (1525-1780), one of the greatest Portuguese poets who wrote the maritime epic Os Lusiades, an account of the exploits of the Portuguese navigators, particularly of da Gama, and the history of the Portuguese people.
I strongly recommend you to click on this picture to make it larger so you can see more clearly the detailed array of rope and knot features in the ceiling - they're incredible!
Just below them was the tomb belonging to Vasco da Gama (1468-1524), the Portuguese navigator who established the sea link between Portugal and India in 1497, thereby setting a new trade route which gave the Portuguese supremacy in the Indian Ocean for over a century. The night before he left, da Gama prayed for a safe voyage in the small chapel that was located here prior to the monastery. The next day, he and 150 men set sail from Belem with four ships armed with state-of-the-art maps and sailing technology.
It was pretty mind-blowing being at da Gama's stunning tomb as I'd grown up learning about his exploits in school. Da Gama, called the "Admiral of the Seas of India," died there on Christmas Eve, 1524. He became so famous due to the tribute of King Manuel I who erected this large church, and the poet, Camoes, who turned da Gama's history-making voyage into his epic poem.
On the side of the tomb was a carving of one of da Gama's caravels or ships.
Beside the ship was a carved globe surrounded by movable rings that was called an armilliary sphere. It was designed to determine the positions of the sun or other stars to help sailors track their locations on earth.The diagonal slash represented the path of the planets as they moved across the heavens.
We only had a glimpse from a distance of the magnificent Renaissance Altar as it was closed off to visitors. In the niches surrounding the altar, elephants - which were a Far Eastern symbol of power and more powerful and kingly than a lion - supported two kings and queens, including King Manuel I.
There were seven wooden confessional doors along one aisle, each one with ornamental carving around the doorway.
Just one of the doors, though, had what Steves described as a "festival of faces from newly discovered corners of the world."
You'd think some of these gruesome expressions would surely put you off from wanting to confess your sins, don't you think?!
In the park across from the breathtaking monastery was a beautiful pond and this sculpture of two horses. I didn't see any explanation, however, of why they were there!
To give you a sense of the scale of what we'd just gawked at, here's a photo of Steven in front of the immense monastery on the left and the attached church on the right.
A short walk away was the Monument to the Discoveries, a giant riverside monument built in 1960 to honor the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator. The shape was of a huge caravel ship - just like the one on da Gama's tomb - in full sail.
You can see I got a little bit dizzy holding the camera and looking at the optical illusion of waves on the flat, cobbled surface as we walked closer to the monument!
Henry the Navigator was at the helm holding the model of the caravel and a map.
The great navigators, sailors, and explorers on board were shown behind him. Various monks, crusaders with flags, and navigators with maps completed the crew.
The pillory, decorated with the Portuguese coat of arms and a cross, was placed in each spot discovered by the Portuguese.
This section recognized those who Christianized foreign lands with their mighty swords.
Luis de Camoes was depicted holding his famous poem The Lusiads on a scroll.
What a glorious day it must have been to go sailing on the Rio Tejo and passing by the eye-popping monument!
A view from the monument's other side:
The only woman depicted on the monument was Philippa of Lancaster, Henry's British mother.
In front of the monument was a marble map in the pavement that was a gift from South Africa. We could follow Portugal's explorers as they made their way from their tiny nation in Europe, first heading south to the coast of Morocco in 1415 where they conquered the Muslims in God's name; they then headed west and southwest on the open waters of the Atlantic, discovering the Madeiras and the remote Azore Islands in 1420 and 1427 respectively.
The Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of South Africa was rounded in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias. That enabled da Gama to discover the sea route to Asia where he and others would use to colonize India, Indonesia, Japan and China between 1498 and 1557.
In 1500, Diaz and Pedro Cabral - an explorer I'd never heard of before that day - landed on the tip of Brazil hoping to avoid windless seas on their way down the African coast. The country ended up being an agricultural goldmine for Portugal. Two hundred years later, gold and gems were found in Brazil which kick started the Portuguese economy again.
According to Rick Steves, Portugal's global empire peaked by 1560 with the filthy-rich country claiming, but not occupying, the entire coastline of Africa, Arabia, India, the Philippines, and south China, plus Brazil! But all the wealth was wasted on the country's ruling class who neglected to reinvest it in the future. The eventual result was, over the next four centuries, all of their colonies were lost to other European countries or to local revolutions. From the once mighty empire, it is more than a tad ironic that the first places to be discovered, the Madeiras and the Azores, are all that remain and the latter ones are largely autonomous.
Having had our fill of Portuguese history and explorers for at least a while by then, we just strolled along the pretty waterfront.
Behind me was the Vasco da Gama Bridge and the monument.
The towering Christ the King statue on the far side of the river was very much like the one in Rio we saw in 2017 while we explored much of South America.
About a half hour's walk along the waterfront was the Belem Tower that was built in 1515 and was the last sight sailors spotted as they left their homeland and the first they eyed when they returned home. When the tower was built, the river nearly went to the walls of the monastery and the tower was mid river.
The float plane on the grassy lawn was a monument to the first flight across the South Atlantic from Portugal to Brazil in 1923. The original plane beat Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis across the North Atlantic by five years.
We really enjoyed every lick of the ice cream cones on our stroll back along the waterfront!
We didn't want to leave the Belem district without stopping at Casa Pasteis de Belem cafe, the birthplace of the custard tart that's called pastel de nata throughout the country but was simply pastel de Belem here. Since 1837, residents have been stopping at the cafe to pick up their beloved tarts piping hot out of the oven. There was a pretty long line to buy some of the 20,000 tarts the cafe cranks out each day. Steves attributed part of the cafe's popularity to the fact that supposedly only three people know the exact proportions of the ingredients and that they're always available so fresh.
My Steven was pretty happy with his custards - I don't think they even made it back to our apartment in Lisbon!
Next post: Later that afternoon we went to the superlative Gulbekian Museum, a treasure trove of art.
Posted on April 22nd, 2019, from Littleton, Colorado.
Those custards were so good!
ReplyDeleteI don't think you got sick of eating those plus the ones our apartment hosts kindly treated us to in Lisbon, Coimbra AND Porto, too. Me, I'd go back to Porto in a heartbeat for the mouthwatering Napoleon pastries with all the gooey chocolate!
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