A carta de D. Manuel ao Papa Leão X (1513)

Abstract

D. Manuel’s letter to Pope Leon X (1513) about the victories he achieved in India and Malaca narrates, according to the stilus epistularum, with an almost journalistic sensationalism, the heroic exploits that constitute the main theme of this elegant obedience oration pronounced by Diogo Pacheco in Tristão da Cunha’s embassy, the following year (1514) — the most famous of all for its splendor and for the exoticism of the elephant offered to the Pope. The letter, aiming at international propaganda, centered on the laudatio principis as imperator and rex inuictissimus, and is the most complete expression of the rhetoric of power and of epic glorification in the golden period of our History of overseas expansion.