Cabral, but was afterwards transferred to da Gama, who received the title admiral of India (January 1502). A few weeks later the fleet sailed, and on reaching Calicut da Gama immediately bombarded the town, treating its inhabitants with a savagery too horrible to describe. From Calicut he proceeded in November to Cochin, “doing all the harm he could on the way to all that he found at sea,” and having made favourable trading terms with it and with other towns on the coast, he returned to Lisbon in September 1503, with richly laden ships. He and his captains were welcomed with great rejoicings and he received additional privileges and revenues.
Soon after his return da Gama retired to his residence in Evora, possibly from pique at not obtaining so high rewards as he expected, but more probably in order to enjoy the wealth and position which he had acquired; for he was now one of the richest men in the kingdom. He had married, probably in 1500, a lady of good family, named Catherina de Ataide, by whom he had six sons. According to Correa, he continued to advise King Emanuel I. on matters connected with India and maritime policy up to 1505, and there are extant twelve documents dated 1507–1522 which prove that he continued to enjoy the royal favour. The most important of these is a grant dated December 1519 by which Vasco da Gama was created count of Vidigueira, with the extraordinary privileges of civil and criminal jurisdiction and ecclesiastical patronage. During this time the Portuguese conquests increased in the East, and were presided over by successive viceroys. The fifth of these was so unfortunate that da Gama was recalled from his seclusion by Emanuel’s successor, John III., and nominated viceroy of India, an honour which in April 1524 he left Lisbon to assume. Arriving at Goa during September of the same year, he immediately set himself to correct with vigour the many abuses which had crept in under the rule of his predecessors. He was not destined, however, to prosecute far the reforms he had inaugurated, for, on the Christmas-eve following his arrival, he died at Cochin after a short illness, and was buried in the Franciscan monastery there. In 1538 his body was conveyed to Portugal and entombed in the town of Vidigueira. In 1880 what were supposed on insufficient evidence to have been his remains were transferred to the church of Santa Maria de Belem. His voyage had the immediate result of enriching Portugal, and raising her to one of the foremost places among the nations of Europe, and eventually the far greater one of bringing to pass the colonization of the East by opening its commerce to the Western world.
Bibliography.—Vasco da Gama’s First Voyage, by Dr E. Ravenstein (London, Hakluyt Society, 1898), is a translation with notes, &c., of the anonymous Roteiro (Journal or Itinerary), written by one of Vasco da Gama’s subordinates who sailed on board the “S. Raphael,” which was commanded by the admiral’s brother Paulo da Gama. This is the most important of the original authorities; five accounts of the voyage in letters contemporary with it are appended to the Hakluyt Society’s translation. See also J. de Barros, Decadas da India (Lisbon, 1778–1788, written c. 1540); F. L. de Castanheda, Historia do descobrimento da India (Coimbra, 1551, largely based on the Roteiro); The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama and his Viceroyalty, by Gaspar Correa (Hakluyt Society, 1869), chiefly valuable for the events of 1524; The Lusiads of Camoens, the central incident in which is Vasco da Gama’s first voyage; Calcoen (i.e. Calicut), a Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco da Gama, written by some unknown seaman of the expedition, printed at Antwerp about 1504, reprinted in facsimile, with introduction and translation, by J. Ph. Berjeau (London, 1874); Thomé Lopes, narrative (1502) in vol. i. of Ramusio.
GAMALIEL (גמליאל). This name, which in Old Testament
times figures only as that of a prince of the tribe of Manasseh
(vide Num. i. 10, &c.), was hereditary among the descendants of
Hillel. Six persons bearing the name are known.
1. Gamaliel I., a grandson of Hillel, and like him designated Ha-Zaqen (the Elder), by which is apparently indicated that he was numbered among the Sanhedrin, the high council of Jerusalem. According to the tradition of the schools of Palestine Gamaliel succeeded his grandfather and his father (of the latter nothing is known but his name, Simeon) as Nasi, or president of the Sanhedrin. Even if this tradition does not correspond with historic fact, it is at any rate certain that Gamaliel took a leading position in the Sanhedrin, and enjoyed the highest repute as an authority on the subject of knowledge of the Law and in the interpretation of the Scriptures. He was the first to whose name was prefixed the title Rabban (Master, Teacher). It is related in the Acts of the Apostles (v. 34 et seq.) that his voice was uplifted in the Sanhedrin in favour of the disciples of Jesus who were threatened with death, and on this occasion he is designated as a Pharisee and as being “had in reputation among all the people” (νομοδιδάσκαλος τίμιος παντὶ τῷ λαῷ). In the Mishna (Giṭṭin iv. 1-3) he is spoken of as the author of certain legal ordinances affecting the welfare of the community (the expression in the original is “tiqqun ha-ʽolam,” i.e. improvement of the world) and regulating certain questions as to conjugal rights. In the tradition was also preserved the text of the epistles regarding the insertion of the intercalary month, which he sent to the inhabitants of Galilee and the Darom (i.e. southern Palestine) and to the Jews of the Dispersion (Sanhedrin 11b and elsewhere). He figures in two anecdotes as the religious adviser of the king and queen, i.e. Agrippa I. and his wife Cypris (Pesahim 88 b). His function as a teacher is proved by the fact that the Apostle Paul boasts of having sat at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts. xxii. 3). Of his teaching, beyond the saying preserved in Aboth i. 16, which enjoins the duty of study and of scrupulousness in the observance of religious ordinances, only a very remarkable characterization of the different natures of the scholars remains (Aboth di R. Nathan, ch. xl.). His renown in later days is summed up in the words (Mishna, end of Soṭah): “When Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, regard for the Torah (the study of the Law) ceased, and purity and piety died.” As Gamaliel I. is the only Jewish scribe whose name is mentioned in the New Testament he became a subject of Christian legend, and a monk of the 12th century (Hermann the Premonstratensian) relates how he met Jews in Worms studying Gamaliel’s commentary on the Old Testament, thereby most probably meaning the Talmud.
2. Gamaliel II., the son of Simon ben Gamaliel, one of Jerusalem’s foremost men in the war against the Romans (vide Josephus, Bellum Jud. iv. 3, 9, Vita 38), and grandson of Gamaliel I. To distinguish him from the latter he is also called Gamaliel of Jabneh. In Jabneh (Jamnia), where during the siege of Jerusalem the scribes of the school of Hillel had taken refuge by permission of Vespasian, a new centre of Judaism arose under the leadership of the aged Johanan ben Zakkai, a school whose members inherited the authority of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. Gamaliel II. became Johanan ben Zakkai’s successor, and rendered immense service in the strengthening and reintegration of Judaism, which had been deprived of its former basis by the destruction of the Temple and by the entire loss of its political autonomy. He put an end to the division which had arisen between the spiritual leaders of Palestinian Judaism by the separation of the scribes into the two schools called respectively after Hillel and Shammai, and took care to enforce his own authority as the president of the chief legal assembly of Judaism with energy and often with severity. He did this, as he himself said, not for his own honour nor for that of his family, but in order that disunion should not prevail in Israel. Gamaliel’s position was recognized by the Roman government also. Towards the end of Domitian’s reign (c. A.D. 95) he went to Rome in company with the most prominent members of the school of Jabneh, in order to avert a danger threatening the Jews from the action of the terrible emperor. Many interesting particulars have been given regarding the journey of these learned men to Rome and their sojourn there. The impression made by the capital of the world upon Gamaliel and his companions was an overpowering one, and they wept when they thought of Jerusalem in ruins. In Rome, as at home, Gamaliel often had occasion to defend Judaism in polemical discussions with pagans, and also with professed Christians. In an anecdote regarding a suit which Gamaliel was prosecuting before a Christian judge, a converted Jew, he appeals to the Gospel and to the words of Jesus in Matt. v. 17 (Shabbath 116 a, b). Gamaliel devoted special attention to the regulation of the rite of prayer, which after the
