Rewards
In December 1499, Vasco da Gama was rewarded by King Manuel I of Portugal with the town of Sines as a hereditary fief (the very town which his father, Estêvão, had once held as a commenda). This turned out to be a rather complicated affair, for Sines still belonged to the Order of Santiago. On the face of it, it should not have been a problem for Jorge de Lencastre, the master of the Order, to endorse the reward - after all, Gama was a Santiago knight, one of their own, and a close associate of Lencastre himself. But the fact that Sines was awarded by the king's hand, provoked Lencastre to refuse out of principle - lest it encourage the king to make other donations of the Order's properties. Gama would spend the next few years attempting to take hold of Sines - an effort which would estrange him from Lencastre and eventually prompt Gama to abandon his beloved Order of Santiago, switching over to the rival Order of Christ in 1507.
In the meantime, Gama made do with a substantial hereditary royal pension of 300,000 reis, and the award of the noble title of Dom (lord) in perpetuity for himself, his siblings and their descendants. In early 1502 (some say as early as 1500), Vasco da Gama was awarded the title of Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente ("Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and all the Orient") - an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by Christopher Columbus. (Evidently, Manuel must have reckoned that if Castile had an 'Admiral of the Seas' running around, then surely Portugal should have one too.) Another royal letter, dated October 1501, gave Vasco da Gama the personal right to intervene and exercise a determining role on any future India-bound fleet.
Around 1501, Vasco da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde, daughter of Álvaro de Ataíde, the alcaide-mór of Alvor (Algarve), and a prominent nobleman connected by kinship with the powerful Almeida family (Catarina was a first cousin of D. Francisco de Almeida).
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