Noronha (Dom Manuel de)

Simão de Noronha, second son of the captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) João Gonçalves da Câmara and Dona Maria de Noronha, and grandson of the discoverer João Gonçalves Zarco, took the name Simão Gonçalves da Câmara when he inherited the captaincy of Funchal on the death of his elder brother. He was the third donatary (donatário) of this captaincy, and we have already dealt with him at some length on p. 20 ff. of vol. I of this work. This third captain-donatary and his first wife, Dona Joana Valente, were the parents of Manuel de Noronha, who must have been born in the old town (vila) of Funchal in the last quarter of the 15th century.

We know nothing of his life until the moment when we find him raised to the rank of prelate and already holding important and honourable offices.

It seems that, having gone to Rome on a mission entrusted to him by the monarch, he received his investiture as a prelate there and was appointed to an important office in the Vatican. It is not to be believed that the great Leo X, at a time when so many prelates shone for their talents and virtues, would have summoned a foreigner to his side had he not recognised in him merits and qualities that set him apart from his contemporaries. One of his biographers states that Dom Manuel de Noronha even became a nuncio, an office then of the greatest responsibility because of the political role it had to play at the courts where it represented the Roman pontiff. We do not know, however, in which European capital he held this post, nor any circumstances of how he conducted himself in so difficult and delicate a mission.

We know that, on the death of the pope or for some other reason, he left the capital of the Catholic world and settled in Portugal. In 1547 he was appointed bishop of Lamego, then regarded as one of the foremost sees of the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal). The chroniclers of that bishopric are unanimous in counting Dom Manuel de Noronha among its most distinguished prelates. His name is linked to works of note, such as the building of several churches and above all of the chapel of São Nicolau (St Nicholas) in the cloister of the Cathedral, to which he left substantial revenues for the upkeep of daily worship, with the attached obligation of maintaining a college for eight aspirants to the ecclesiastical life. He endowed the city with various improvements, chief among them the channelling of drinking water. He reformed many points of ecclesiastical discipline and convened a diocesan council. He died on 23 September 1569 and lies buried in the chapel of São Nicolau, which he founded and where the following epitaph can be read: ‘Here lies Dom Manuel de Noronha, formerly bishop of Lamego, son of Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, captain of the Island of Madeira, and of Dona Joana Valente, his wife; he died on 23 September 1569.’