General Notes

Emanuel, called Manuel I (1469-1521), king of Portugal (1495-1521),
great-grandson of King John I. During his reign, called the golden era of
Portuguese history, great explorations and discoveries took place. He
sponsored the epoch-making expedition of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da
Gama, which resulted in the opening of a sea route to India around the Cape of
Good Hope; the voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral, on which Cabral reached Brazil,
claimed it for Portugal, and then sailed westward to India, where he
established a trading post on the site of Calicut (now Kozhikode); the
exploration of Gaspar Corte-Real of the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland;
and the expedition of Afonso de Albuquerque, who established the Portuguese
empire in the Far East. During Emanuel's reign, commercial relations were
established with Persia and China, and great wealth was acquired from New
World possessions. Emanuel made his court a center of the arts and sciences
and issued a code of laws that bears his name. His great religious zeal led
him to sponsor missionary enterprises in his overseas possessions and endeavor
to promote a crusade against the Turks. It also, however, led him to persecute
the Jews in Portugal and to expel them from the country in 1497-98, an act
that deprived Portugal of many brilliant people. He has sometimes been called
Emanuel the Great or Emanuel the Fortunate.