1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Emanuel I. (original) (raw)

​EMANUEL I. [Portuguese _Manoel_] (1469–1521), fourteenth king of Portugal, surnamed the Happy, knight of the Garter and of the Golden Fleece, was the son of Duke Ferdinand of Vizeu and of Beatrice of Beja, grandchildren of John I. of Portugal. He was born at Alcochete on the 3rd of May 1469, or, according to Barbosa Machado, on the 1st of June. His early education was directed by a Sicilian named Cataldo. In 1495 he became king in succession to his cousin John II. In 1497 he married Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, who had previously been married to Alphonso, the heir of John II. She died in the next year in giving birth to a son named Miguel, who until his death two years later was considered heir to the entire Iberian Peninsula. Emanuel’s next wife was Maria, another daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he married in 1500. Two of their children, John and Henry, later became kings of Portugal. Maria died in 1516, and in 1518 her niece Leonora, a sister of the emperor Charles V., became Emanuel’s third wife. Emanuel’s reign is noteworthy for the continuance of the Portuguese discoveries and the extension of their chain of trading-posts, Vasco da Gama’s opening an all-sea route to India, Cabral’s landing in Brazil, Corte-Real’s voyage to Labrador, the exploration of the Indian seas and the opening of commercial relations with Persia and China, bringing Portugal international prominence, colonial pre-eminence and a hitherto unparalleled degree of national prosperity. His intense religious zeal variously manifested itself in his persecutions of the Jews, whom at the beginning of his reign he had been disposed to tolerate, his strenuous endeavours to promote an international crusade against the Turks, his eager missionary enterprise throughout his new possessions, and his erection of twenty-six monasteries and two cathedrals, including the stately monastic church of the Jeronymos at Belem (see Lisbon). His jealously despotic character was accentuated by the enormous increase the Indies furnished to his personal wealth, and exemplified in his assumption of new titles and in a magnificent embassy to Pope Leo X. He died at Lisbon on the 13th of December 1521.

The best authorities for the history of Emanuel’s reign are the contemporary 16th-century Chronica d’el Rei D. Manoel, by Damião de Goes, and De rebus Emanuelis, by J. Osorio. El Rei D. Manoel, by M. B. Branco (Lisbon, 1888), is a valuable but ill-arranged biography. See also the Ordenações do S. R. D. Manoel (Coimbra University Press, 1797). For further bibliography see Barbosa Machado, Bibliographica Lusitana, vol. iii. pp. 161–166.