Manuel I

King of Portugal (r. 1495-1521)

• Born: May 31, 1469
• Birthplace: Alcochete, Portugal
• Died: December 13, 1521
• Place of death: Lisbon, Portugal

Manuel I was one of Portugal’s most illustrious monarchs. His reign represents the zenith of Portuguese imperial strength. Continuing the centralizing trends and overseas expansion policies of his predecessors, Manuel brought both to a climax, while presiding over a court remarkable for its splendor.

Early Life

Manuel I (mahn-WEHL) of Portugal was born in the town of Alcochete on the east bank of the Tagus River. He came from a prominent family, the youngest of nine children of Prince Fernão, the duke of Viseu. He was a grandson of King Afonso V, a cousin to King John II , and the younger brother of John’s queen Leonor. Despite the prominence of his family, Manuel’s upbringing was filled with turmoil. Four of his elder brothers died before he reached adulthood. In 1484, in reaction to the growing threat of royal absolutism, his brother, the duke of Viseu, became involved, along with other members of the nobility, in a plot against John. The plot was discovered, and the duke died by the king’s own hand. Yet the intervention of his sister the queen protected Manuel’s interests.

When John’s only legitimate son, Afonso, died in 1491, Leonor was able to block his attempts to have his illegitimate son, Jorge, declared his heir. Instead John was forced to accept Manuel, Leonor’s last surviving brother, as the future king. When John died on October 25, 1495, Manuel, duke of Beja and Master of the Order of Christ, ascended the throne as the fifth monarch from the House of Avis. Historian H. V. Livermore describes the twenty-six-year-old monarch as “fair, rather thin, diligent, sparing in his food and drink, musical, vain, and fond of display.” These personal traits would also be characteristic of Manuel’s administration.

Life’s Work

As king, Manuel continued the centralization of royal power begun by his predecessors. Ironically, he benefited from the results of John’s ruthless policy of breaking the independent power of the nobility, the very policy that had led to his elder brother’s death. There was now much greater acceptance of royal authority. Manuel was able to strengthen royal authority further in a number of ways. The three military orders came under the control of the Crown, and memberships were dispensed as rewards for royal service. A system of royal allowances encouraged the nobility to reside at court, where their actions could be more easily monitored, while at the same time increasing their financial dependency on the Crown.

The system of justice was centralized and the laws codified by the compilation of the first modern legal code, called the Ordinances of King Manuel. Administrative power began to pass from the old privileged groups into the hands of an expanding royal bureaucracy, much of it consisting of university-trained legists dependent on the monarch for their livelihood. Manuel called the Cortes only four times in his twenty-six-year reign, reflecting the Crown’s lessening dependence on it as a source of revenue. Weights and measures were standardized after 1499 to facilitate national trade. In the early sixteenth century, Manuel introduced Portugal’s first postal system, which helped to link the countryside to Lisbon and the royal court.

The greatest achievements attributed to Manuel’s tenure as king came in overseas expansion. After nearly a century of success in exploring and mapping the African coast, as Manuel took the throne, Portuguese navigators were poised to open an all-water trade route to India. Vasco da Gama’s groundbreaking voyage (1497-1499) had been authorized and planned before John’s death, and it was left to Manuel to implement his predecessor’s plans. Following da Gama’s triumphal return from India, the king obtained papal confirmation of the discoveries and assembled a huge fleet under Pedro Álvares Cabral to follow up on contacts. On this voyage, Cabral made contact with lands on the western side of the southern Atlantic, thus establishing Portugal’s claim to Brazil. He then completed his voyage to India.

Portuguese trade contacts in India and other lands bordering the Indian Ocean continued to expand during Manuel’s reign. This trade, transacted at enormous profit, made Portugal the richest kingdom in Europe. Manuel maintained the Portuguese presence in North Africa and, during this same time, Portuguese explorers visited Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia, failing to find the fabled Northwest Passage, but in the process opening the bountiful waters off Newfoundland to Portuguese fishermen.

Manuel not only sought to enlarge the empire through further exploration but also hoped to increase his dominions by marriage alliances with other royal houses. Yet these dreams came to nothing in the end. Manuel hoped to join the crown of Portugal with those of Ferdinand II and Isabella of Aragon and Castile by producing a joint heir. As this coincided with Ferdinand’s own dynastic designs, a marriage was arranged in 1497 between Manuel and their eldest daughter, Princess Isabella, the widow of John’s son Afonso and second in the line of royal succession after her brother Juan. Following the death of Juan, Manuel and Isabella were proclaimed heirs of Castile (although not Aragon); Isabella died in childbirth, however, and their son died soon after. Manuel then married a younger daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Maria, who produced his heir in 1502.

One major aspect of Manuel’s reign that brought him no glory was his vacillating policy toward the Jewish population of Portugal. Prior to Manuel’s tenure, the small but significant Jewish community was generally tolerated and allowed to follow its religious and cultural traditions. In fact, many Spanish Jews were allowed to settle in Portugal following their 1492 expulsion from Spain. The Jewish community made important intellectual and economic contributions that served the Crown in a number of important ways in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Manuel began his reign continuing this liberal policy of toleration, but he soon changed his mind.

Manuel had wished to marry Isabella for reasons of dynastic union. Under Spanish pressure, as part of that marriage agreement, Manuel promised to expel all unconverted Jews. All were ordered out of the country by October, 1497, the month the marriage took place. This decree proved to have far-reaching economic consequences as large numbers of Jews prepared to liquidate their holdings and move their families out of the country. Faced with financial dislocations, the king settled on a controversial policy of forced conversion as a way to meet his obligations yet preserve for Portugal the Jewish community’s financial assets. To soften the blow of forced conversion, Manuel embarked on a policy of gradual assimilation of the so-called New Christians. They were to be given a twenty-year grace period, during which their religious practices and social customs would not be scrutinized. Yet even converted Jews would not be allowed to leave, underscoring the essentially economic rather than religious motivation of this policy.

Manuel’s policy of gradual assimilation, tied to the trend toward royal centralization, created an atmosphere of resentment against the New Christians, many of whom continued to practice Judaism under the protection of the royal decrees. Only after serious rioting in Lisbon in 1506 and the massacre of thousands of New Christians did Manuel give in to the converts’ pleas and again grant permission to leave and reenter Portugal at will. Nevertheless, at the same time Manuel secretly requested from the pope the establishment of the Inquisition (a request granted only in the reign of Manuel’s successor), apparently as a means of controlling Judaization among the population he had agreed to protect from such scrutiny.

The fabulous material wealth flooding in from Portugal’s overseas trade, estimated at more than one million cruzados a year, created opulence at home. Manuel’s court was known for its splendor and ostentation. In 1513, for example, Manuel sent to Rome richly bejeweled vestments, an Eastern manuscript, and a selection of exotic animals that included a trained elephant as gifts to the newly elected Pope Leo X. Yet the money went for more than luxury and waste. The wealth pouring in from the empire not only supported a sumptuous court but also financed patronage for artists and intellectuals.

The reign of Manuel saw the first blossoming of Humanism in Portugal, which would reach its rather modest peak in the reign of John III. Manuel provided patronage for Portuguese students abroad and undertook the reform of the University of Lisbon in the early sixteenth century. The wealth arriving from the Portuguese Indies also provided commissions for buildings, decorative sculptures, and numerous paintings. The buildings were often designed in the late Gothic style (marked by lavish decoration on a basic Gothic structure) called “Manueline” by art historians, although the style remained popular in Portugal long after Manuel’s death.

Manuel died in Lisbon on December 13, 1521. His son John inherited a prosperous kingdom, but one beginning to show the strains of rapid growth, which would lead to a noticeable decline in Portuguese fortunes by the end of John III’s reign.

Significance

Manuel I, aptly called the Fortunate, ruled Portugal at the high point of its imperial fortunes. His reign represents the culmination of several trends begun earlier in the fifteenth century by the Avis monarchs, most notably the growth of royal power and the search for a water route to India, which Manuel completed. His tenure marks the clear emergence of the Renaissance state in Portugal. He was an able administrator who built on John II’s accomplishments to establish firmly the dominance of royal authority and completed the centralization of bureaucratic power.

Manuel’s approach to government was practical. Even his inconsistencies with regard to the Jews are best understood in terms of administrative rather than religious imperatives. It was Manuel’s good luck to ascend the throne at the precise moment in which the all-water trade route to India, proved by the voyage of Bartolomeu Dias, was about to be activated. The enormous profits accruing to the Crown provided the funds to support Manuel’s other policies. He is justly credited with generously patronizing intellectuals, artists, and architects, and in so doing helping to usher in a golden age in Portugal. Yet his royal absolutism, harsh treatment of the economically important Jewish community, and lavish spending of the Indies wealth on ostentation blocked modern economic development and thus hastened the decline in Portugal’s economic fortunes that would follow his reign.

Bibliography

Anderson, James M. The History of Portugal. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Brief but comprehensive political, social, economic, and cultural history of Portugal. Manuel is discussed in the chapter on the early House of Avis. Includes timeline, appendices, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Bedini, Silvio A. The Pope’s Elephant. Nashville, Tenn.: J. S. Sanders, 1998. Original, offbeat, and illuminating study; uses Hanno the elephant, a gift from Manuel to Pope Leo X, as a lens through which to explore Leo, Manuel, and Renaissance culture.

Diffie, Bailey W., and George D. Winius. Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977. The best summary in English of Manuel’s involvement in the Portuguese overseas expansion in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Voyages of discovery and the evolution of Portuguese policy are both addressed. Includes an extensive bibliography.

Greenlee, William Brooks. The Voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil and India from Contemporary Documents and Narration. London: Hakluyt Society, 1938. Reprint. St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1972. The extensive introduction to this volume of documents gives considerable information on Manuel’s involvement in the voyages of discovery undertaken under his auspices. The work is also valuable for its translated documents, which include letters written to Manuel describing the discovery of Brazil and from Manuel to other monarchs concerning Cabral’s voyage.

Katz, Israel J., and M. Mitchell Serels, eds. Studies on the History of Portuguese Jews from Their Expulsion in 1497 Through Their Dispersion. New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 2000. Details Manuel’s role in the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Livermore, H. V. A New History of Portugal. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Gives a chapter-long overview that covers the main aspects of Manuel’s reign. While royal centralization, the Jewish question, and Manuel’s dreams of dynastic union with Spain are all addressed, the greatest attention is given to Portugal’s successes in overseas expansion.

Oliveira Marques, A. H. de. History of Portugal. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. Presents a concise description of the development of the Renaissance state under kings John II, Manuel I, and John III. Useful in tracing institutional developments in Manuel’s reign. This work covers intellectual and artistic achievements in addition to tracing political and religious change.

Payne, Stanley G. A History of Spain and Portugal. Vol. 1. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973. Contains an overview describing major political, economic, religious, and cultural aspects of Manuel’s reign. Gives attention to fiscal and economic matters as well as social and demographic factors contributing to the rise and eventual decline of Portuguese power in the sixteenth century. Includes a bibliography, but most works cited are written in Portuguese or Spanish.

Resende, André de. Biographies of Prince Edward and Friar Pedro. Edited and translated by John R. C. Martyn. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1997. Biographies of Manuel’s son and of one of his contemporaries, written in the sixteenth century by Prince Edward’s tutor, which provide much information about Manuel and his court, as well as the life and education of the young prince. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and a brief biography of the author.

Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the “Shebet Yehudah.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1976. A critical view of Manuel’s relationship with the New Christian community in Portugal and his handling of the 1506 riot in Lisbon. It cites resentment of royal centralization as the real cause of the 1506 pogrom and the New Christians as the convenient targets for pent-up frustration. The notes provide a bibliography on the subject of the Jews in Portugal.