Manuel I of Portugal

Manuel I of Portugal, nicknamed the Fortunate (Alcochete, May 31, 1469-Lisbon, December 13, 1521) was king of Portugal. He was the eighth son of the infant Ferdinand of Portugal, Duke of Viseo and grandson of Edward I, and Beatrice, granddaughter of John I. In 1495 he succeeded to the throne of Portugal to his cousin John II who, at the time, was also his brother-in-law at the time. being married to his sister Leonor de Viseo. He was nicknamed or Venturoso and or Bem-Aventurado for the great achievements and events that occurred during his reign, among them the discovery of the Atlantic route to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of Brazil.

Childhood

Manuel grew up in the midst of a war of intrigue and conspiracies between the Portuguese aristocratic nobility and John II. He saw how many of those around him were executed or exiled, with his own brother Diego, Duke of Viseo, murdered by the king himself. It is not surprising then that, when he was summoned in audience in 1493, he had many reasons to worry. But without reason, since Juan had proposed to name him heir to the throne, after the death of the king's own son, the infante Alfonso, and several frustrated attempts to legitimize his bastard son Jorge de Lencastre. For many, this was the first event in his life that would earn him the nickname "The Lucky One."

Time of exploration and foreign policy

Without a doubt, Manuel I would prove to be a worthy successor to John II, as his support was fundamental for the Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic Ocean and the development of Portuguese commercial monopolies. In this sense, during his reign many events took place. Among them the following:

• 1498 – Vasco de Gama discovers the Atlantic sea route to India.
• 1500 – Pedro Álvares Cabral discovers Brazil.
• 1505 – Francisco de Almeida becomes the first virrey of India.
• 1504-1511 – Admiral Albuquerque Afonso assures for Portugal the monopoly of the maritime routes of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

All these events contributed to the formal constitution of the Portuguese commercial empire that made this country one of the richest and most powerful in the world. Portuguese discoveries and enterprises were reinforced with the establishment of commercial treaties and diplomatic relations with China and Persia. And even the Pope himself received a monumental embassy in Rome that sought to impress all of Europe with the riches accumulated by the Portuguese crown.

With the intention of attracting the best scientists and artists to his Lisbon court, Manuel I used part of the wealth obtained from this commercial dominance to construct various royal buildings with a new appearance that is now known as the Manueline style, of which Notable examples are the Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower, facing the mouth of the Tagus.

His marriage to the Infanta Isabel of Aragón had eminent political overtones. Following the Treaty of Alcaçovas, the heir to the throne of Portugal, Alfonso, had been married to the first-born daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel of Aragon. Upon the death of Alfonso, Manuel was left as successor to the crown and in 1497 it was agreed that he would marry the widow Isabel. Shortly after, the only male child of the Catholic Monarchs, Juan, died, so Isabel became the heir to the thrones of Castile and Aragon. As a result of the marriage between Manuel and Isabel, Miguel de Paz was born and for several years he was the legitimate heir to all the crowns of the Iberian kingdoms, except Navarra. But Isabel died while giving birth to Miguel, and when Miguel himself died prematurely in the year 1500, the possibility of the crowns of Portugal, Castile and Aragon being united on the same head vanished. Manuel remarried another daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, María de Aragón, but his older sister Juana, who was married to Felipe I of Castile, was the direct heir to the throne and not María; Only an improbable series of deaths could allow a son of his to be the legitimate heir to the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.

Internal issues

With regard to internal politics, Manuel I perpetuated the ways of his predecessor with absolutist tendencies. The Cortes (the assembly that brought together the royal power with the different social classes of the kingdom) were only convened three times during his reign of more than twenty-five years, and always in Lisbon, a territory not exactly neutral. He reformed the courts of justice and the tax system, adapting them to the economic progress that his kingdom was experiencing.

With regard to religion, it can be said that Manuel I was a quite religious man who invested an important part of the country's fortune in the construction of churches and monasteries, as well as in sponsoring the construction of Catholic missions. and the evangelization of the natives of the new colonies. He also attempted to promote a new crusade against the Turks. Against him is that, following the example of other European kingdoms such as England in 1290 or the neighbors of Castile and Aragon in 1492 (Edict of Granada), between 1496 and 1498 he promoted actions to end the presence of Jews and Jews in his kingdom. Muslims, forcing the forced conversion of those members of both religions who wanted to remain in Portugal. Although there are those who indicate that this extremist policy was intended to satisfy the Catholic Monarchs in a clause that was agreed upon before his marriage to Isabel of Aragon, which would only order the forced conversions of Muslims after the rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499-1501). On the other hand, it is true that it did not allow a legal distinction between Catholics and Jewish converts, and that those who decided to be baptized were protected from any abuse. None of which prevented, however, the massacre of Jews on April 19, 1506, in which nearly 4,000 Jews were murdered by mobs in Lisbon.

Manuel I of Portugal died peacefully in 1521 and is buried in the Jerónimos Monastery, which he ordered to be built. His son John succeeded him to the throne as John III.

In literature

In the novel The King's Ladies (2011), by the Spanish writer María Pilar Queralt del Hierro, the figure of Manuel the Fortunate is the axis around which the book's intrigue revolves. The novel "Two Sisters for a King" (2020), by the Portuguese writer Isabel Stilwell, is a work focused on the figure of King Manuel I of Portugal, almost autobiographical, recounting the different phases of his life, from his youth in his family home in Beja, to his reign, with the main facts of the discoveries of India and Brazil, until his death in 1521.

Ancestors

Marriages and offspring

From his first wife, Isabel of Aragón, Infanta of Castile and Aragon (1470–1498), whom he married on September 30, 1497, he had:

• Miguel de la Paz (1498-1500), heir to the crowns of Castile, Aragon and Portugal. His mother died in childbirth.

He contracted a second marriage on October 30, 1500 with his sister-in-law María de Aragón, (1482-1517) and they were the parents of:

• Juan el Piadoso (1502-1557), king of Portugal with the name of John III;
• Isabel (1503-1539), married to her cousin Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman German Empire;
• Beatriz (1504-1538), married to Duke Carlos III of Saboya;
• Louis (1506-1555), Duke of Beja, prior of Cratus and accountant of the kingdom. He had a natural son, Antonio, prior to Cratus;
• Fernando (1507-1534), Duke of Guarda and Trancoso, married to Guiomar Coutinho, Countess of Marialva;
• Alfonso (1509-1540), cardinal of Portugal;
• Mary (1511-1513);
• Enrique the Cardinal (1512-1580), Cardinal and King of Portugal with the name Enrique I;
• Eduardo (1515-1540), Duke of Guimarães, married to Isabel de Braganza, great-grandfather of John IV of Portugal;
• Antonio (1516), infant of Portugal who lived a few days.

His third wife was Eleanor of Austria (1498-1558), niece of his two previous wives, Isabel and María, Infanta of Spain and Archduchess of Austria, sister of Emperor Charles V, with whom he married in 1518, who had:

• Carlos (1520-1521);
• Mary (1521-1577).

Succession

Predecessor: Alfonso de Portugal	Crown Prince of Portugal 1491-1495	Successor: Miguel de la Paz
Predecessor: John II	King of Portugal and Algarves 1495-1521 under the rule of Leonor de Viseu (1497-1499)	Successor: John III