ABSTRACT
After the Portuguese had discovered the Prester John’s3 kingdoms and lordships and had begun to have commerce and communication with them via India, Emperor David, who later called himself Onâg Çaguêd, and King Dom Manoel of Portugal thereby came to develop a great friendship with each other and visited each other through their ambassadors. By this means, the emperor came to have more understanding and knowledge of the matters of the Roman Church because, even though he and all or most of his kingdoms were Christian, they had had neither communication nor commerce with the Roman Church for many hundreds of years. This was both because of the vast distance between them over seas and lands populated by barbarous nations that were enemies of our holy faith, and because the people of this empire considered the patriarch of Alexandria to be their head in matters of religion, and they turned to him for the rule of their faith, which could not avoid being full of many errors since it came from such an impure source, which is so distant from the clear source and true head and obedience <[f. 268v/258v]> of the Apostolic See. In addition, alongside baptism, the Abexins observe many things from the Law of Moses and Judaism, as we stated in Book 2. But Emperor David was instructed and enlightened in these errors by the Portuguese who came to this land and by means of everything else that King Dom Manoel did in this respect, and he came to write and send his ambassador to the pope, who was Clement VII at the time, giving him obedience and acknowledging him as supreme pastor and head {[f. 324v]} of the universal Church and, as such, he asked him, since he was the master of all, to send him fathers and masters to teach him what they were obliged to know of the holy Christian faith and religion. He also wrote to King Dom Manoel, asking him to intervene on his behalf with the supreme pontiff on such a just and holy matter. He wrote the same to his son, King Dom Joam III, after he learnt that King Dom Manoel had died. King Dom Joam inherited not only the kingdom but also his zeal for the holy faith, and soon afterwards he received further letters from Emperor Claudio, who had by then succeeded his father, Emperor David, and called himself Atanâf Çaguêd and also commanded that the same obedience be given to the Apostolic See. King Dom Joam duly performed his offices in this matter, intervening with the pope, who at the time was Julius III and afterwards Paul IV. The latter was informed about everything and, considering the importance of the matter, decided to make Father Joam Nunes Barreto of the Society of Jesus patriarch of this empire (and he did so), giving him considerable powers, and at the same time he appointed Fathers Belchior Carneiro, who was also Portuguese, and Andre de Oviedo, a Spaniard, who at the time was the rector of the College of Naples, as bishops to accompany him and succeed him in the patriarchate.
