Alcobaça: Tombs, a Wedding, and One Amazing Woman
Sunday, July 16th, 2006Yesterday I went to Alcobaça, Portugal´s largest church, built over a long period of years starting in 1178. It´s the home of the famous tombs of Don Pedro and Ines de Castro, whose romance has been the subject of many plays, including one written by Catharine Trotter, which was in my first anthology and which had its first modern production at Smith when Karena Rahall, Angelique von Halle, and a powerful group of young women decided to do a revival. I wish I had their email addresses. They would love to know I have come here at last. In the Trotter version, written in 1695, Ines was in love with Costanza, and Pedro was in love with Ines, but Pedro´s father was outraged by the trio and had Ines murdered. The production was so successful that the actors were asked to perform it at the WOW Cafe in NYC. In the Portuguese version that meets the tourist´s eye here, Don Pedro was in love with Ines but was forced to marry Costanza; Pedro´s father, fearing Ines´s influence, had Ines murdered. Then, continuing the Portuguese version, when Pedro´s father died, Pedro personally tore the hearts out of two of her murderers, had her body disinterred and crowned, and then made all the people at court kiss her mostly-decomposed hand. Then he had two astonishing tombs made, one for her and one for himself, and decreed that the tombs face each other across the nave of the Cathedral. They are still there. Whichever version of the story you prefer, the tombs are incredible: intricately carved, Gothic in their elaboration and lines, with carved angels holding the bodies of each of the two, she with a little Italian Greyhound at her feet, and he with a mastiff at his. (I didn´t know the bit about the dogs till I saw the tombs myself.) But here´s the wild part: yesterday there was a wedding taking place smack in the center of the main aisle, between the two tombs. And that´s not all. [read on]
Kendall