Note 494 — Chapter V

The viscount of Santarem, to whose most extensive learning in history and geography, I fortunately had an opportunity in Paris of applying for information upon the above mentioned fact, gave me the following notice: “In no town of Portugal do I find any indication of the existence of these relics. I think that there is, in the statement of the Dabistán, an error and a confusion with the fact related by Brandâo, in 1643, viz.: the famous Portuguese prince don Pietro, son of John I., having, on his return from Jerusalem to Spain, in 1428, married in the town of Alcoba in Catalonia, the countess Isabella, daughter of D. Jayme, count of Urgel, gave to the bishop of Valenza an image of our Saviour, taken by St. Veronica. These relics were still preserved in the cathedral of Valenza in Spain, called by distinction ‘the royal town,’ in the year 1643.” It was a few years after this (see p. 305), that the author of the Dabistán might have received from father Francia, the Portuguese missionary, the account above stated.