A - TWO LETTERS OF KING MANUEL, 1499

Summary

THE first of these letters is addressed to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, of Castile, whose daughter, Dona Isabella, King Manuel had married in October 1497. The letter is dated July 1499, and may have been written immediately after the arrival of Coelho's vessel on July 10.

The draught, or copy, of this letter in the Torre do Tombo has been published by A. C. Texeira de Aragão in the Boletim of the Lisbon Geographical Society, vi, 1886, p. 673. It was published a second time in Alguns Documentos do Archivo National da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, 1892, p. 95. There are several omissions in the latter version, due probably to the illegibility of the manuscript. In our rendering of this valuable document, all passages omitted in Alguns Documentos are printed in italics, while attention is directed to other differences by means of foot-notes.

The draught of the letter addressed to the “Cardinal Protector” also exists in the Torre do Tombo, but is evidently very illegible, for the text published by Texeira de Aragão is full of blanks. The original, as also the letter to Pope Alexander VI, to which reference is made, may possibly be discovered in Rome. The letter is dated August 28, 1499, that is, the day before Vasco da Gama's supposed return to Lisbon. It was certainly written after the arrival of the S. Gabriel, for it refers to the “Moor of Tunis” or Monçaide, to the “Jew”, who subsequently became known as Gaspar da Gama, and to the men carried off from Calecut, none of whom is likely to have been on board Coelho's small vessel.