Portugal was recognised as a separate kingdom by neighbouring Leon, Castile and Aragon in 1143. Afonso Henriques, the son and heir of the late Count of Portugal, Henry of Burgundy, was declared King.

The Founding of the Abbey

Afonso Henriques decided to expand his new kingdom, and, as he did not wish to antagonise the neighbours who had recognised him, he decided to move against the Arabs, who had overrun all the Christian Visigothic lands to the south. Having heard much of the sanctity of St Bernard, and the reputation of Clairvaux, in his father's home country of Burgundy, Afonso Henriques made a vow that should he succeed in his enterprise, he would endow the Cistercians with the whole tract of country between the Serra d'Albardos and the sea.

In 1147, Afonso Henriques asked St. Bernard to aid him in his prayers, as he set out to deliver the town of Santarem from the Moors. He then renewed his promise to found a monastery in celebration of the capture of Santarem and to express his gratitude for the victory over Lisbon, which had followed soon after.

St. Bernard accepted the promise, and sent a group of monks to help fulfil the project.

In 1153, accompanied by the court and the newly arrived Cistercian monks (sent by St. Bernard himself), the king set out inland from Nazaré, and there between the rivers Alcoa and Baça¹, searched out the most suitable location and commenced to dig the foundations with his own hands. Dom Afonso Henriques had started the building of the Abadia de Santa Maria (Abbey of Saint Mary), the Monastery of Alcobaça. This was to be the largest Cistercian foundation in the world².

The first church was completed within a few years. This was later to serve as the Igreja Matriz or Parish Church, when a further great church was constructed in the Gothic style.

This later project started in 1178, and foreign architects were employed to recreate the Abbey Church of Clairvaux³ on Portuguese soil.

The History of the Abbey

In 1222, the Monastery at Alcobaça was completed and consecrated, with room for over nine hundred monks. The monks were divided into deaneries, and as soon as one office was completed by one deanery, the next started, so that worship carried on continuously.

The white brothers, skilled in the agriculture that had been introduced by the founding members, had already planted vineyards. The Abbey paid a triple tithe⁴ to the State and, for the first hundred and fifty years after its completion, also carried the task of supplying the reigning monarch with a pair of new boots whenever he visited. The public school, which was begun in 1269, and the use of the land for farming purposes, providing a genuine agricultural training ground, the fruits of which are still visible today.

By 1288, even the rich monasteries were finding it too expensive to finance their overseas students and Alcobaça, Santa Cruz, São Vicente and Santa Maria applied to the Pope asking for help in establishing General Studies in Lisbon. This was shortly moved to Coimbra, to become the foundation of the university.

Like most of Europe, Portugal suffered much from the Black Death. The Abbey was much affected, as the number of serving brothers was reduced drastically to nine monks.

In 1357, after the macabre ceremony of the crowning of Queen Inêz, she was reburied, with pomp, in the magnificent sarcophagus prepared for her at Alcobaça. The heavily and intricately carved tomb is decorated with scenes from her life, and supported on six gargoyle-like representations of her murderers and enemies. At his death, King Pedro I was interred in an equally elaborate tomb placed opposite to that of his murdered Queen.

In 1385, however, sufficient manpower allowed the Abbot of Alcobaça to send eleven vassals to help João, Master of Aviz, in the Battle of Aljubrotta⁵.

Three Castilian cauldrons were captured from the baggage train by João's victorious troops. One disappeared shortly after the battle. One was kept at Alcobaça, and the third was installed in a house in Aljubarrota until 1834. King Philip I of Portugal⁶, when it was proposed that the one from the Abbey be melted down and turned into a bell, was said to have scorned the proposal, stating that he did not wish to be reminded of his problems with the Portuguese, by yet another din.

Some building work was carried out in the early sixteenth Century, during the reign of King Manuel I, but luckily before the style of architecture known as manuelin, after this king, had developed into the riot of tracery and carving which would have looked out of place against the simple, pure lines of the Cistercian construction.

Around this time the population had recovered to around three hundred monks at Alcobaça, but they were greatly outnumbered by the more than four thousand rabbits in the kitchen hutches.

More work was carried out in the 18th century, but again the monastery was fortunate in that little of the original structure was touched by the baroque embellishments of the Western facade.

Later in the eighteenth century, however, all the monasteries and convents were suppressed. The most important of these had already be recognised as national monuments, so the destruction and wholesale selling off of these large properties did not occur to the extent of that suffered during the English suppression of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, under King Henry VIII.

During the Peninsular Wars of the early nineteenth century, Alcobaça came to the attention of the French. Considering the demoralising effect of destroying the Portuguese national monuments, Napoleon's General, Masséna, ordered that Alcobaça Monastery be totally destroyed. Luckily the order fell into the wrong hands, or was never delivered, and the building only suffered minor violence. The bases of some of the nave pillars are slightly eaten away where fires had been set. The gothic tombs of King Pedro and Inêz were damaged where the French troops had tried to break them open in their search for valuables.

The Abbey Church

The monastery's façade is an eighteenth century reconstruction in the baroque style. All that remains from the original Gothic front is the main doorway. Above this is a narrow balcony added in the sixteenth century, which supports the statues of the four cardinal virtues - Fortitude, Justice, Prudence and Temperance.

On each side of the doorway are two statues; one of St. Benedict and the other of St. Bernard, standing on consoles and covered with profusely carved canopies. These contrast with the heavy decoration of the façade and bell towers. This gives the monastery's exterior a grandeur that greatly contradicts the simplicity that was the rule of the Cistercians.

The church within is an excellent example of this pure Cistercian design. Simple, yet almost stern, the work of a French or Burgundian architect, it resembles the abbey church of Pontigny, near Auxerre. Constructed of white limestone, the twelve towering pier-arches soar purely and majestically to over twenty metres, as do those of the narrower aisles. The huge space, devoid of any ornamentation, still envelopes the visitor with a feeling of calm and spirituality. The columns and pilasters have been cut away at a certain height, a feature that is typical of Cistercian churches, allowing the three choirs - the monks, the sick and the lay brethren - to occupy the eastern part of the nave more comfortably.

In the spacious north transept is the extremely beautiful and profusely carved tomb of Inês de Castro, on which lies the reclining figure of the dead Queen. This is matched in the south transept by the high tomb of her beloved, King Pedro I. The rose at the head of the tomb tells the story of the love that this king bore for Inês de Castro, until the end of time.

To the east of the King's tomb is a chapel-altar which houses a beautiful terracotta tableau, made in the seventeenth century by the monks of Alcobaça and depicting the death of St. Bernard. On the opposite side is the entrance to the royal pantheon, built in the eighteenth century and now housing the tombs of a number of queens and princes from the first dynasty.

Afonso Henriques died in 1185, before the abbey was finished and is buried at one of his earlier foundations, the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra. However, his son, King Afonso II died in 1223 and he and his Queen, Urraca, are buried here, together with his grandson, Afonso III buried in 1279, and his wife, Queen Brites.

The chancel is surrounded by an elegant ambulatory with nine chapels. Within these there is now the entrance to the sacristy, which is reached through a beautiful door framed with Manueline-Renaissance motifs carved into the stone and attributed to the sculptor João de Castilho. Rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake, the sacristy ends in an octagonal chapel-reliquary, containing numerous relics from the baroque period in Alcobaça.

Returning to the nave, there is a door on the north transept, which the monks used to enter the cloister that is named that of King Dinis I, or the Cloister of Silence.

The Abbey

The abbey is one of the few European monuments that has managed to preserve intact an entire group of medieval buildings and its church is the largest early Gothic construction in Portugal.

The history of its foundation in 1153 is recounted in the eighteenth century azulejo⁷ panels that line the walls of the Sala dos Reis⁸. The story starts with King Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, promising St. Bernard his lands in Alcobaça if he managed to capture Santarém from the Moors. The statues of the Kings of Portugal⁹ stand on baroque consoles around the walls of the room. In the centre is the cauldron that is said to have been taken from the Castilians at the Battle of Aljubarrota.

Entering the Cloister of Silence from the nave of the church, the beautiful garden of the cloister is spread out, surrounded by four galleries supported by Romanesque-Gothic arches surmounted by tracery circles, each one with a different pattern. The second storey was built in the reign of King Manuel I in the sixteenth century.

The first gallery in the Cloister of King Dinis contains the door to the Chapter House. After this comes the parlour, one of the few rooms in the monastery where the monks could talk, which led to the large medieval dormitory and the cells of the Abbot and Prior. The next room, also known as the Monk's Room, was used in the last few centuries as the monastic storeroom and wine cellar. This space provided access to the huge eighteenth century kitchen, across which a tributary of the river Alcoa has been channelled. There is also a stone fresh fish tank and large central fireplace.

Returning once more to the cloister, the Renaissance Lavabo stands outside the spacious Refectory, itself a magnificent example of architectural planning, whose most distinctive feature is the staircase leading up to the pulpit, where the scriptures would be read at mealtimes.

From the square in front of the monastery, there is a view of the castle of Alcobaça, the old sentry that stood guard over the vast estates of the monastery, granted by the King, so many centuries ago.

References and Acknowledgements

Murrays Handbook to Portugal. 1875 3rd Edition. Rev.J.M.Neale

Breve História de Portugal. José Hermano Saraivo 1979

UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE of Alcobaça.

A plan of Alcobaça monastery and virtual visit