Historical story

The missing bones of Pedro Álvares Cabral

Currently, there is no exact location of Pedro Álvares' bones. This is due to the fact that there are several mysteries surrounding his sepulcher. After commanding the famous fleet in 1500, with which he discovered Brazil, Pedro Álvares Cabral died in 1520, in Satarém, Portugal. Being buried in a temporary tomb, his body was exhumed in 1526, when his wife, Isabel de Castro, had also died, and buried again next to her, only this time in the Nossa Senhora da Graça church. align:justify;">The tomb remained forgotten for a long time, even many tourists began to question why the tombstone only honored Pedro Álvares' wife. With this, an inquiry was opened to investigate the case, in 1882, it was found that in the tomb there were remains of a sheep and bones of three humans, two women and one man. The fact was mysterious, as it should only contain two male and one female bones:Cabral and his son and that of Isabel, his wife. Not having many resources at the time, they were unable to identify the bodies.

In 1903, the nationalist campaign initiated in 1871 by Dom Pedro II, required the transfer of Cabral's remains to Rio de Janeiro. However, at this moment, the tomb that was supposed to contain the bones of Pedro Álvares Cabral already had five male, one female and two children's bones. A part of the bones that came to Brazil were all mixed up. In addition, in 1961, the Church of São Tiago, in Belmonte, the city where Cabral was born, received an offer from Santarém:to keep what would be his real bones. For this reason, there is no real location of Cabral's true bones. Some scholars surmise that the tomb had been breached during the French invasions.

Trivia