Manuel

Manuel, 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 Álvares 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 East Asia. During Manuel's reign, commercial relations were established with Persia and China, and great wealth was acquired from New World possessions. Manuel 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 Ottoman Empire. 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 Manuel the Great or Manuel the Fortunate.