San Nicolás, Portomarín

It's a church with battlements: a rectangular block of stone with the look of a fortress. San Nicolás de Portomarin belonged to military monks, the knights of the Order of St John, who guarded the bridge across the Rio Miño from which the town gets its name- pontus minei - Portomarin. When General Franco dammed the river to create the Belesar reservoir his engineers moved the church from its position in the valley to where it now stands on the hillside commanding the main square of the new town. You can still see the traces of the painted numbers they used to reassemble this giant 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle alongside the masons' marks of the original builders.

The church's west front is dominated by a large rose window which gives the interior considerably more light than is typical. This later romanesque church shows a sophisticated but simple iconographical programme and some fine quality carving. The main doorway is a typical 'apocalyptic' portal. On the tympanum above the double doors Christ sits in majesty surrounded by a mandorla indicating his glory and holding the book of judgement in his left hand and blessing with his right hand. He is crowned. The flat spaces to left and right were probably painted with legends or the figures of the tetramorphs- we can't know for sure as any traces of paint that are currently visible would be of a later date.

Surrounding him in the archivolts are the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse who lack the spontaneous naturalism that is the mark of Master Mateo's genius on the Portico de Gloria, which clearly inspired this work. However, the musical instruments are well descibed. Just as in Santiago they are mainly string instruments, following an ancient bias that gave a higher spiritual status to the heirs of the lyre (Apollo) than the heirs of the flute (Pan) or the drum (Tubal). Both wind and percussion are associated with dancing and debauchery with the sole exception of the organ, which is the ecclesiastical instrument par excellence and is represented by an elder with a portable version.

Below Christ on the door jambs there is a devil on the left, with two tuskers emerging from his mouth, and an angel on his right. Casting our eyes downwards from here to the step we can see the side that most people preferred to enter: the angel's side is worn away.

On the north side there is another door. The tympanum shows the archangel Gabriel raising his right hand in salutation as he approaches the Virgin Mary. She has a look of surprise on her face and is lifting both her hands with palms forward as if to fend him off. This is the moment from the gospel of Luke where the Virgin says, 'Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.' It is the moment of the incarnation of the word of God in her womb and the curioous plant that sprouts between the two figures is a combination of a stylised lily (purity) and pomegranate (fertility). Between the archangel Gabriel's hand and face is a censer. Incense shows that this is a holy moment and we shall see in Leboreiro that there are two censer bearing angels on that church flanking an enthroned Madonna. It may also make us think of the botafumerio, the enormous censer that swings on cords through the transept of the cathedral in Santiago da Compostela.

The south side door completes the iconographical programme. If up to now we have had the judgement and the incarnation, on this side we have the means by which the faithful can attain the salvation that the incarnation promises. In the centre is the titular saint with his bishop's mitre flanked by two deacons, one holding a missal, the other holding his crozier and a peculiarly shaped rod which may be intended to represent a harp (?). The jambs supporting this tympanum show devils' heads devouring people: from the mouth of one emerges a leg; the other has seized a man by the arm and foot, leaving his testicles clearly visible. The message is that the fleshly side of man leads to corruption and death, spiritual salvation is achieved through the mass and the church.

Look out on the north and south doorways for the capitals with good examples of intertwined serpents and fantastic birds with males and female heads and serpent tails. I am far too cautious to assign any meaning to this, but they are a good example of what St Bernard of Clairvaux called "beautiful deformity and deformed beauty".