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Henry (Portuguese: Henrique [ẽˈʁikɨ]; 31 January 1512 – 31 January 1580), dubbed the Chaste (Portuguese: o Casto) and the Cardinal-King (Portuguese: o Cardeal-Rei), was king of Portugal and an inquisitor and cardinal of the Catholic Church, who ruled Portugal between 1578 and 1580.
- 4 August 1578 – 31 January 1580
- Maria of Aragon
Henry (born Jan. 31, 1512, Lisbon—died Jan. 31, 1580, Almeirim, Port.) was the king of Portugal and a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic whose brief reign (1578–80) was dominated by the problem of succession. His failure to decisively designate a successor left the Portuguese throne at his death prey to its Spanish claimant, King Philip II.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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- Early life
- Sponsorship of expeditions
Henry the Navigator (born March 4, 1394, Porto, Portugal—died November 13, 1460, Vila do Infante, near Sagres) Portuguese prince noted for his patronage of voyages of discovery among the Madeira Islands and along the western coast of Africa. The epithet Navigator, applied to him by the English (though seldom by Portuguese writers), is a misnomer, a...
Henry was the third son of King John I and Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt of England. Henry and his older brothers, the princes Duarte (Edward) and Pedro, were educated under the supervision of their parents. Henry emerged with pronounced tastes for chivalric romance and astrological literature, as well as with ambitions to take part in military campaigns and, if possible, win a kingdom for himself.
The starting point of Henry’s career was the capture of the Moroccan city of Ceuta in 1415. According to Henry’s enthusiastic biographer, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, the three princes persuaded their still-vigorous father to undertake a campaign that would enable them to win their knightly spurs in genuine combat instead of in the mock warfare of a tournament. King John consented and, with Ceuta in mind, began military preparations, meanwhile spreading rumours of another destination, in order to lull the Moroccan city into a feeling of false security.
Although a plague swept Portugal and claimed the queen as a victim, the army sailed in July 1415. King John found Ceuta unprepared, as he had hoped, and its capture unexpectedly easy. Though Zurara later claimed the principal role in the victory for Henry, it would seem that the experienced soldier-king actually directed the operation. That Henry distinguished himself, however, is indicated by his immediate appointment as the king’s lieutenant for Ceuta, which did not require his permanent residence there or confer civil authority or administrative responsibilities but did oblige him to see that the city was adequately defended.
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Exploration and Discovery
An emergency arose in 1418, when the Muslim rulers of Fez (Fès) in Morocco and the kingdom of Granada in Spain joined in an attempt to retake the city. Henry hastened to the rescue with reinforcements but on arrival found that the Portuguese garrison had beaten off the assailants. He then proposed to attack Granada, despite reminders that this would antagonize the kingdom of Castile, on whose threshold it lay. But his father, who had spent years fighting the attempts of the Castilians to annex Portugal, wanted peace with them and sent peremptory orders to return home.
Funds appropriated from the Order of Christ largely financed the Atlantic voyages along the western coast of Africa that Henry began to promote in the mid-1420s. He sought opportunities to take part in West African commerce, especially the trade of gold and of enslaved persons, and to establish potentially profitable colonies on underexploited islands, the most successful of which he helped to found on Madeira.
Henry’s interest in geography unquestionably was influenced by the travels of Prince Pedro, his older and perhaps more brilliant brother. In 1425 Pedro set out on a long tour of Europe on which he visited England, Flanders, Germany, Hungary, and the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia (now Romania) before returning home through Italy, Aragon, and Castile. In eastern Europe he was close enough to Ottoman Turkey to appreciate the Muslim danger. From Italy Pedro brought home to Portugal, in 1428, a copy of Marco Polo’s travels that he had translated for Prince Henry’s benefit.
Henry’s other older brother, Duarte, succeeded King John in 1433. During the five years of Duarte’s reign, lack of success in the Canary Islands induced Henry’s captains to venture farther down the Atlantic coast in search of other opportunities. Tradition has claimed that the most important achievement was the rounding of Cape Bojador in 1434 by Gil Eanes, who overcame a superstition that had previously deterred seamen. It seems, however, that this is at best an exaggeration, resulting from the vagueness of the sailing directions reported in Portuguese sources. What Eanes mistakenly called Cape Bojador was actually Cape Juby, which had already been passed by many earlier navigators. During the next years, Henry’s captains pushed southward somewhat beyond the Río de Oro. They also began the colonization of the recently discovered Azores, through the orders of both Henry and Pedro.
In 1437 Henry and his younger brother, Fernando, gained Duarte’s reluctant consent for an expedition against Tangier. Ceuta had proved an economic liability, and they believed that possession of the neighbouring city would both ensure Ceuta’s safety and provide a source of revenue. Pedro opposed the undertaking. Henry and Fernando nevertheless attacked Tangier and met with disaster; Henry had shown poor generalship and mismanaged the enterprise. The Portuguese army would have been unable to reembark had not Fernando been left as hostage in exchange for Henry’s broken promise to surrender Ceuta. Fernando’s death at Fez in 1443 seems to have been felt by Henry as a grave charge upon his conscience.
King Duarte died in 1438, shortly before Henry’s return. His heir, Afonso V, was only six at the time, and Pedro assumed the regency over the bitter opposition of the boy’s mother, Leonor of Aragon, who would willingly have accepted Henry as regent. Nevertheless, for most of the next decade Pedro and Henry worked in harmony.
In 1441 a caravel returned from the West African coast with some gold dust and enslaved persons, thus silencing the growing criticism that Henry was wasting money on a profitless enterprise. One of Henry’s voyagers, Dinís Dias, in 1445 reached the mouth of the Sénégal (then taken for a branch of the Nile), and a year later Nuño Tristão, another of Henry’s captains, sighted the Gambia River. By 1448 the trade in enslaved persons to Portugal had become sufficiently extensive for Henry to order the building of a fort and warehouse on Arguin Island.
When King Sebastian of Portugal died, the throne passed to his Grand-uncle, Henry of Portugal (he might be called Henry II because Henry, Count of Portugal, father of Alphonso I of Portugal, was the first of that name to rule Portugal).
NameLifespanReign StartReign EndAfonso I The Conqueror; The Great; The ...1106/09/11 – 6 December 1185 (aged ...25 July 11396 December 1185Sancho I The Populator11 November 1154 – 26 March 1211 (aged ...6 December 118526 March 1211Afonso II The Fat; The Leprous; The ...23 April 1185 – 25 March 1223 (aged ...27 March 121125 March 1223Sancho II The Caped; The Hooded ...8 September 1209 – 4 January 1248 (aged ...26 March 12234 December 1247- 25 July 1139
- Manuel II
Born March 3, 1394 in Portu, Portugal, the third surviving son of King John (João) I and Queen Philippa, Prince Henry (Henrique) was better known as Henry the Navigator. He earned his title despite not venturing on many expeditions himself.
Dom Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu (4 March 1394 – 13 November 1460), better known as Prince Henry the Navigator (Portuguese: Infante Dom Henrique, o Navegador), was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime
Aug 2, 2023 · History & Culture. European Explorers. Henry the Navigator, a 15th-century Portuguese prince, helped usher in both the Age of Discovery and the Atlantic enslaved people trade. Updated: Aug 2,...
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