"Hic est Chorus"

«Tão cansados, tão chorosos,/ Tão doentes da partida,/ Da morte mais desejosos/ Cem mil vezes que da vida» ("So weary, so tearful,/ Sick at heart for leaving, / For death now longing,/ dearly more than for living"). There are literary riches that on little profusion lay, as is with this João Ruiz (or Rodrigues) from CasteloBranco, who, having little more than these sublime verses made, will be remembered and repeated white the Portuguese language lasts. A man comes to this world, takes a couple of strolls and leaves - this sufficed to give shape and consistency to an expression of feeling that comes to mingle in collective behaviours.

While he was thus pondering, the traveller came to face the Cathedral, which is at a loss with the expressionless façade it was given. Inside, one can see that those who were meant to enrich with art the temple devoted to St. Michael did not take great pains in their mission: let us trust that the archangel, in his magnanimity, will pardon the disregard. Many more pardons will be needed; and from the sin of pride the bishop D. Vicente will not be freed, for, over the door to the sacristy, he had his coat of arms set, which is, to put it short, a stone folly. Christ had as sole emblem a rough cross, but his bishops will obstruct the heavens with heraldic conundrums that will keep occupied for all eternity.

This part of town is so provincial - or countrylike, to take what can be perceived as depreciative in the first word - that the traveller can hardly believe that around these streets and small squares there may be traces of a throbbing, agitated, modern life, as he was told. This notion will remain with him, and through his entire visit it will not be changed. Slowly he will come close to the palace gardens. Here is Cruzeiro de S. João (St. John's Cross), ornamented stone, pierced like filigree, where, hard as one may seek, he will not find a smooth surface. It is the triumph of the curve, the weaving, the embellishment. But this cross, forlorn in a great square with only a lateral way, appears displaced in the space around it, as if it had been the victim of an ill-conceived transplantation. The traveller imagines it has always been there. However, at a certain moment, the cross detached itself from the square, it despised, or was despised.

The traveller passes by the garden, but he will not yet go in. First he goes to the museum, where he expects to see a good archaeological exhibition, the reconstitution of the Tagus' valley rupestral art with the vigorous hunter carrying a deer on his shoulders, and, much nearer, the delicate roman statue. The traveller is moved in presence of the evocation stone slab to the goddess Trebaruna, to whom Leite Vasconcelos dedicates such bad verses and such genuine love; and he takes notice of the documented case of conjoined twins, realistically illustrated in this sadly mutilated tomb stone. This is not a great museum, but one visits it with pleasure. That Santo António (Saint Anthony) ascribed to Francisco Henriques is magnificent: he has the face of an artless man and is holding a book, where, sitting, is the Child, whom he dare not touch. His face of roughly-shaven tough beard is enraptured, his eyelids are downcast; and it is more than plain that this simple monk is not the superb preacher who evangelised the fish, nor is his humbleness affected by the sumptuous background of the panel, with its porphyry column and the bedizened tapestry. The traveller also observes, in that other 16th century painting, the annunciatory angel entering through the window made to his measure, more like a hummingbird than an angel, and delights in two thoughts, each of its nature. The first dwells on the gain that would come from the study of the mosaics emerging in these 16th century paintings, as well as in works before and after this golden age of our arts. This thought believes that thence could be drawn data concerning chronology, the kinship of the motifs, the reciprocal influence between painting and mosaic workshops. Surely the informative potential of such structural and ornamental elements was not drained with the findings of Almada Negreiros on the panels of São Vicente de Fora. As to the second thought, it might displease those more nitpicking in matters of religious orthodoxy. It concerns the frequency with which the painter insists on showing the sleeping alcove, framing it under a depressed arch, as in this case, or drawing apart heavy drapings, as it happens in others. It is true that, at this moment, Mary was already married to Joseph, but being the descent of the Holy Spirit incorporeal, the bed was not needed, except if - as it seems to the traveller - the painter could not forget that in this place are usually conceived the children of men, and had it exposed in this manner. Having thus produced two original considerations, the traveller went to see the ethnography exhibition, where he noticed the ancientness of the ballot boxes, the delirious machined used to draw the numbers that told the soldier's fortunes, and the farming implements and primitive loom. Near by there are splendid regional bedspreads, and the voices of embroidering pupils come from behind a curtain; by now is the traveller already regretting not having drawn the curtain apart to say "good-morning". In one other room, there are flags of Misericórdia, but so heavily repainted are they, that how they originally were cannot be perceived.
Though the traveller came in on the ground floor, but he goes out by the first floor staircase, which tries to descend in the most Episcopal way it can. And now, at last, he goes for a walk in the gardens. In Monsanto live the people of the stones, while this is a gallery of erudite statues, angelic, apostolic, royal, symbolical, but all of them familiar, close at hand, by the just-trimmed foliage of the boxwoods. The traveller wonders whether there is other such garden in the world. If so, we have copied well; if this one is unique, it should be praised. It has only one fault: this is no garden for resting, for reading a book, and he who comes in must be aware of that. When the bishops of old came here, certainly their attendants would carry a chair for them to rest and pray when the need pressed. However, the common visitor can take as long a stroll as he desires, take as long as he wishes, but he can only sit down on the floor, or on the steps of the staircase. These statues are magnificent, not only for their artistic value - which is certainly arguable - but also for the candour of the representation, conveyed by an erudite plastic vocabulary. Here stand the kings of Portugal, all of them card figures evoking the small king of Salzedas, and here is the patriotic revenge: the Spanish kings are depicted in reduced scale - as they could not be ignored, they were diminished. And now come the symbolic statues: Faith, Charity, Hope, Spring and the remaining seasons, and here, in this corner, forced to face the wall, is Death. The visitors, of course, do not like him. In his empty eye-sockets they put chewed bubble-gums, and they stick cigarette buts in his twisted jaws. One supposes Death does not mind the insults. He knows well there is a time for everything.

The traveller finished his stroll, he counted the apostles, he saw the small cistern in the flooded garden, adorned like an altar-cloth; and, back at Praça do Município, he could find no resemblance between the statue of João Ruiz and his verses: what one can see there is a dummy showing how people dressed at the time, and not a man who could write: "Partem tão tristes os tristes/ Tão fora de esperar bem/ Que nunca tão tristes vistes/ Outros nenhums por ninguém" (They leave so sad, the sad/ So far from hoping for fortune/ That so sad you've never seen/ Any others for anyone.) The traveller leaves as well, not happy nor sad, only worried about the great clouds coming from the north. He will have a wet trip. But them the heavy hand of history shakes the traveller by the shoulder, rousing him from the reverie he had fallen into since entering Castelo Branco: 'He who left his bones in the church of Santa Maria, and whose effigy is in the square, is not the poet, dear sir, but rather Amato Lusitano, a doctor who shared the poet's name but made no verses himself.' Feeling piqued, the traveller stops the car, throws the inconvenient authority on the road, and follows his way, still whispering to himself the immortal words of João Ruiz, from Castelo Branco, such as they are, bones and statues of poetry