BIOGRAPHERS AND PORTRAITISTS.
[Sidenote: Contemporary notices.]
[Sidenote: Giustiniani.]
We may most readily divide by the nationalities of the writers our
enumeration of those who have used the material which has been
considered in the previous chapter. We begin, naturally, with the
Italians, the countrymen of Columbus. We may look first to three
Genoese, and it has been shown that while they used documents apparently
now lost, they took nothing from them which we cannot get from other
sources; and they all borrowed from common originals, or from each
other. Two of these writers are Antonio Gallo, the official chronicler
of the Genoese Republic, on the first and second voyages of Columbus,
and so presumably writing before the third was made, and Bartholomew
Senarega on the affairs of Genoa, both of which recitals were published
by Muratori, in his great Italian collection. The third is Giustiniani,
the Bishop of Nebbio, who, publishing in 1516, at Genoa, a polyglot
Psalter, added, as one of his elucidations of the nineteenth psalm, on
the plea that Columbus had often boasted he was chosen to fulfill its
prophecy, a brief life of Columbus, in which the story of the humble
origin of the navigator has in the past been supposed to have first been
told. The other accounts, it now appears, had given that condition an
equal prominence. Giustiniani was but a child when Columbus left Genoa,
and could not have known him; and taking, very likely, much from
hearsay, he might have made some errors, which were repeated or only
partly corrected in his Annals of Genoa, published in 1537, the year
following his own death. It is not found, however, that the sketch is in
any essential particular far from correct, and it has been confirmed by
recent investigations. The English of it is given in Harrisse's _Notes
on Columbus_ (pp. 74-79). The statements of the Psalter respecting
Columbus were reckoned with other things so false that the Senate of
Genoa prohibited its perusal and allowed no one to possess it,--at least
so it is claimed in the _Historie_ of 1571; but no one has ever found
such a decree, nor is it mentioned by any who would have been likely to
revert to it, had it ever existed.
[Sidenote: Bergomas.]
The account in the _Collectanea_ of Battista Fulgoso (sometimes written
Fregoso), printed at Milan in 1509, is of scarcely any original value,
though of interest as the work of another Genoese. Allegetto degli
Allegetti, whose _Ephemerides_ is also published in Muratori, deserves
scarcely more credit, though he seems to have got his information from
the letters of Italian merchants living in Spain, who communicated
current news to their home correspondents. Bergomas, who had published a
chronicle as early as 1483, made additions to his work from time to
time, and in an edition printed at Venice, in 1503, he paraphrased
Columbus's own account of his first voyage, which was reprinted in the
subsequent edition of 1506. In this latter year Maffei de Volterra
published a commentary at Rome, of much the same importance. Such was
the filtering process by which Italy, through her own writers, acquired
contemporary knowledge of her adventurous son.
The method was scarcely improved in the condensation of Jovius (1551),
or in the traveler's tales of Benzoni (1565).
[Sidenote: Casoni, 1708.]
[Sidenote: Bossi.]
Harrisse affirms that it is not till we come down to the Annals of
Genoa, published by Filippo Casoni, in 1708, that we get any new
material in an Italian writer, and on a few points this last writer has
adduced documentary evidence, not earlier made known. It is only when we
pass into the present century that we find any of the countrymen of
Columbus undertaking in a sustained way to tell the whole story of
Columbus's life. Léon had noted that at some time in Spain, without
giving place and date, Columbus had printed a little tract, _Declaration
de Tabla Navigatoria_; but no one before Luigi Bossi had undertaken to
investigate the writings of Columbus. He is precursor of all the modern
biographers of Columbus, and his book was published at Milan, in 1818.
He claimed in his appendix to have added rare and unpublished documents,
but Harrisse points out how they had all been printed earlier.
Bossi expresses opinions respecting the Spanish nation that are by no
means acceptable to that people, and Navarrete not infrequently takes
the Italian writer to task for this as for his many errors of statement,
and for the confidence which he places even in the pictorial designs of
De Bry as historical records.
There is nothing more striking in the history of American discovery than
the fact that the Italian people furnished to Spain Columbus, to England
Cabot, and to France Verrazano; and that the three leading powers of
Europe, following as maritime explorers in the lead of Portugal, who
could not dispense with Vespucius, another Italian, pushed their rights
through men whom they had borrowed from the central region of the
Mediterranean, while Italy in its own name never possessed a rood of
American soil. The adopted country of each of these Italians gave more
or less of its own impress to its foster child. No one of these men was
so impressible as Columbus, and no country so much as Spain was likely
at this time to exercise an influence on the character of an alien.
Humboldt has remarked that Columbus got his theological fervor in
Andalusia and Granada, and we can scarcely imagine Columbus in the garb
of a Franciscan walking the streets of free and commercial Genoa as he
did those of Seville, when he returned from his second voyage.
The latest of the considerable popular Italian lives of Columbus is G.
B. Lemoyne's _Colombo e la Scoperta dell' America_, issued at Turin, in
1873.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Portuguese writers.]
We may pass now to the historians of that country to which Columbus
betook himself on leaving Italy; but about all to be found at first hand
is in the chronicle of João II. of Portugal, as prepared by Ruy de Pina,
the archivist of the Torre do Tombo. At the time of the voyage of
Columbus Ruy was over fifty, while Garcia de Resende was a young man
then living at the Portuguese court, who in his _Choronica_, published
in 1596, did little more than borrow from his elder, Ruy; and Resende in
turn furnished to João de Barros the staple of the latter's narrative in
his _Decada da Asia_, printed at Lisbon, in 1752.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Spanish writers.]
[Sidenote: Peter Martyr.]
We find more of value when we summon the Spanish writers. Although Peter
Martyr d'Anghiera was an Italian, Muñoz reckons him a Spaniard, since he
was naturalized in Spain. He was a man of thirty years, when, coming
from Rome, he settled in Spain, a few years before Columbus attracted
much notice. Martyr had been borne thither on a reputation of his own,
which had commended his busy young nature to the attention of the
Spanish court. He took orders and entered upon a prosperous career,
proceeding by steps, which successively made him the chaplain of Queen
Isabella, a prior of the Cathedral of Granada, and ultimately the
official chronicler of the Indies. Very soon after his arrival in Spain,
he had disclosed a quick eye for the changeful life about him, and he
began in 1488 the writing of those letters which, to the number of over
eight hundred, exist to attest his active interest in the events of his
day. These events he continued to observe till 1525. We have no more
vivid source of the contemporary history, particularly as it concerned
the maritime enterprise of the peninsular peoples. He wrote fluently,
and, as he tells us, sometimes while waiting for dinner, and necessarily
with haste. He jotted down first and unconfirmed reports, and let them
stand. He got news by hearsay, and confounded events. He had candor and
sincerity enough, however, not to prize his own works above their true
value. He knew Columbus, and, his letters readily reflect what interest
there was in the exploits of Columbus, immediately on his return from
his first voyage; but the earlier preparations of the navigator for that
voyage, with the problematical characteristics of the undertaking, do
not seem to have made any impression upon Peter Martyr, and it is not
till May of 1493, when the discovery had been made, and later in
September, that he chronicles the divulged existence of the newly
discovered islands. The three letters in which this wonderful
intelligence was first communicated are printed by Harrisse in English,
in his _Notes on Columbus_. Las Casas tells us how Peter Martyr got his
accounts of the first discoveries directly from the lips of Columbus
himself and from those who accompanied him; but he does not fail to tell
us also of the dangers of too implicitly trusting to all that Peter
says. From May 14, 1493, to June 5, 1497, in twelve separate letters, we
read what this observer has to say of the great navigator who had
suddenly and temporarily stepped into the glare of notice. These and
other letters of Peter Martyr have not escaped some serious criticism.
There are contradictions and anachronisms in them that have forcibly
helped Ranke, Hallam, Gerigk, and others to count the text which we have
as more or less changed from what must have been the text, if honestly
written by Martyr. They have imagined that some editor, willful or
careless, has thrown this luckless accompaniment upon them. The letters,
however, claimed the confidence of Prescott, and have, as regards the
parts touching the new discoveries, seldom failed to impress with their
importance those who have used them. It is the opinion of the last
examiner of them, J. H. Mariéjol, in his _Peter Martyr d'Anghera_
(Paris, 1887), that to read them attentively is the best refutation of
the skeptics. Martyr ceased to refer to the affairs of the New World
after 1499, and those of his earlier letters which illustrate the early
voyage have appeared in a French version, made by Gaffarel and Louvot
(Paris, 1885).
The representations of Columbus easily convinced Martyr that there
opened a subject worthy of his pen, and he set about composing a special
treatise on the discoveries in the New World, and, under the title of
_De Orbe Novo_, it occupied his attention from October, 1494, to the day
of his death. For the earlier years he had, if we may believe him, not a
little help from Columbus himself; and it would seem from his one
hundred and thirty-five epistles that he was not altogether prepared to
go with Columbus, in accounting the new islands as lying off the coast
of Asia. He is particularly valuable to us in treating of Columbus's
conflicts with the natives of Española, and Las Casas found him as
helpful as we do.
These _Decades_, as the treatise is usually called, formed enlarged
bulletins, which, in several copies, were transmitted by him to some of
his noble friends in Italy, to keep them conversant with the passing
events.
[Sidenote: Trivigiano.]
A certain Angelo Trivigiano, into whose hands a copy of some of the
early sections fell, translated them into easy, not to say vulgar,
Italian, and sent them to Venice, in four different copies, a few months
after they were written; and in this way the first seven books of the
first decade fell into the hands of a Venetian printer, who, in April,
1504, brought out a little book of sixteen leaves in the dialect of that
region, known in bibliography as the _Libretto de Tutta la Navigation
de Re de Spagna de le Isole et Terreni novamente trovati_. This
publication is known to us in a single copy lacking a title, in the
Biblioteca Marciana. Here we have the first account of the new
discoveries, written upon report, and supplementing the narrative of
Columbus himself. We also find in this little narrative some personal
details about Columbus, not contained in the same portions when embodied
in the larger _De Orbe Novo_ of Martyr, and it may be a question if
somebody who acted as editor to the Venetian version may not have added
them to the translation. The story of the new discoveries attracted
enough notice to make Zorzi or Montalboddo--if one or the other were its
editor--include this Venetian version of Martyr bodily in the collection
of voyages which, as _Paesi novamente retrovati_, was published at
Vicentia somewhere about November, 1507. It is, perhaps, a measure of
the interest felt in the undertakings of Columbus, not easily understood
at this day, that it took fourteen years for a scant recital of such
events to work themselves into the context of so composite a record of
discovery as the _Paesi_ proved to be; and still more remarkable it may
be accounted that the story could be told with but few actual references
to the hero of the transactions, "Columbus, the Genoese." It is not only
the compiler who is so reticent, but it is the author whence he borrowed
what he had to say, Martyr himself, the observer and acquaintance of
Columbus, who buries the discoverer under the event. With such an
augury, it is not so strange that at about the same time in the little
town of St. Dié, in the Vosges, a sequestered teacher could suggest a
name derived from that of a follower of Columbus, Americus Vespucius,
for that part of the new lands then brought into prominence. If the
documentary proofs of Columbus's priority had given to the Admiral's
name the same prominence which the event received, the result might not,
in the end, have been so discouraging to justice.
Martyr, unfortunately, with all his advantages, and with his access to
the archives of the Indies, did not burden his recital with documents.
He was even less observant of the lighter traits that interest those
eager for news than might have been expected, for the busy chaplain was
a gossip by nature: he liked to retail hearsays and rumors; he enlivened
his letters with personal characteristics; but in speaking of Columbus
he is singularly reticent upon all that might picture the man to us as
he lived.
[Sidenote: Oviedo.]
[Sidenote: Ramusio.]
When, in 1534, these portions of Martyr's _Decades_ were combined with a
summary of Oviedo, in a fresh publication, there were some curious
personal details added to Martyr's narrative; but as Ramusio is supposed
to have edited the compilation, these particulars are usually accredited
to that author. It is not known whence this Italian compiler could have
got them, and there is no confirmation of them elsewhere to be found. If
these additions, as is supposed, were a foreign graft upon Martyr's
recitals, the staple of his narrative still remains not altogether free
from some suspicions that, as a writer himself, he was not wholly frank
and trustworthy. At least a certain confusion in his method leads some
of the critics to discover something like imposture in what they charge
as a habit of antedating a letter so as to appear prophetic; while his
defenders find in these same evidences of incongruity a sign of
spontaneity that argues freshness and sincerity.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Bernaldez.]
The confidence which we may readily place in what is said of Columbus in
the chronicle of Ferdinand and Isabella, written by Andrès Bernaldez, is
prompted by his acquaintance with Columbus, and by his being the
recipient of some of the navigator's own writings from his own hands. He
is also known to have had access to what Chanca and other companions of
Columbus had written. This country curate, who lived in the neighborhood
of Seville, was also the chaplain of the Archbishop of Seville, a
personal friend of the Admiral, and from him Bernaldez received some
help. He does not add much, however, to what is given us by Peter
Martyr, though in respect to the second voyage and to a few personal
details Bernaldez is of some confirmatory value. The manuscript of his
narrative remained unprinted in the royal library at Madrid till about
thirty-five years ago; but nearly all the leading writers have made use
of it in copies which have been furnished.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Oviedo.]
In coming to Oviedo, we encounter a chronicler who, as a writer,
possesses an art far from skillful. Muñoz laments that his learning was
not equal to his diligence. He finds him of little service for the times
of Columbus, and largely because he was neglectful of documents and
pursued uncritical combinations of tales and truths. With all his
vagaries he is a helpful guide. "It is not," says Harrisse, "that Oviedo
shows so much critical sagacity, as it is that he collates all the
sources available to him, and gives the reader the clues to a final
judgment." He is generally deemed honest, though Las Casas thought him
otherwise. The author of the _Historie_ looks upon him as an enemy of
Columbus, and would make it appear that he listened to the tales of the
Pinzons, who were enemies of the Admiral. His administrative services in
the Indies show that he could be faithful to a trust, even at the risk
of popularity. This gives a presumption in favor of his historic
fairness. He was intelligent if not learned, and a power of happy
judgments served him in good stead, even with a somewhat loose method of
taking things as he heard them. He further inspires us with a certain
amount of confidence, because he is not always a hero-worshiper, and he
does not hesitate to tell a story, which seems to have been in
circulation, to the effect that Columbus got his geographical ideas from
an old pilot. Oviedo, however, refrains from setting the tale down as a
fact, as some of the later writers, using little of Oviedo's caution,
and borrowing from him, did. His opportunities of knowing the truth were
certainly exceptional, though it does not appear that he ever had direct
communication with the Admiral himself. He was but a lad of fifteen when
we find him jotting down notes of what he saw and heard, as a page in
attendance upon Don Juan, the son of the Spanish sovereigns, when, at
Barcelona, he saw them receive Columbus after his first voyage. During
five years, between 1497 and 1502, he was in Italy. With that exception
he was living within the Spanish court up to 1514, when he was sent to
the New World, and passed there the greater part of his remaining life.
While he had been at court in his earlier years, the sons of Columbus,
Diego and Ferdinand, were his companions in the pages' anteroom, and he
could hardly have failed to profit by their acquaintance. We know that
from the younger son he did derive not a little information. When he
went to America, some of Columbus's companions and followers were still
living,--Pinzon, Ponce de Leon, and Diego Velasquez,--and all these
could hardly have failed to help him in his note-taking. He also tells
us that he sought some of the Italian compatriots of the Admiral, though
Harrisse judges that what he got from them was not altogether
trustworthy. Oviedo rose naturally in due time into the position of
chronicler of the Indies, and tried his skill at first in a descriptive
account of the New World. A command of Charles the Fifth, with all the
facilities which such an order implied, though doubtless in some degree
embarrassed by many of the documentary proofs being preserved rather in
Spain than in the Indies, finally set him to work on a _Historia General
de las Indias_, the opening portions of which, and those covering the
career of Columbus, were printed at Seville in 1535. It is the work of a
consistent though not blinded admirer of the Discoverer, and while we
might wish he had helped us to more of the proofs of his narrative, his
recital is, on the whole, one to be signally grateful for.
Gomara, in the early part of his history, mixed up what he took from
Oviedo with what else came in his way, with an avidity that rejected
little.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Historie_ ascribed to Ferdinand Columbus.]
But it is to a biography of Columbus, written by his youngest son,
Ferdinand, as was universally believed up to 1871, that all the
historians of the Admiral have been mainly indebted for the personal
details and other circumstances which lend vividness to his story. As
the book has to-day a good many able defenders, notwithstanding the
discredit which Harrisse has sought to place upon it, it is worth while
to trace the devious paths of its transmission, and to measure the
burden of confidence placed upon it from the days of Ferdinand to our
own.
The rumor goes that some of the statements in the Psalter note of 1516,
particularly one respecting the low origin of the Admiral, disturbed the
pride of Ferdinand to such a degree that this son of Columbus undertook
to leave behind him a detailed account of his father's career, such as
the Admiral, though urged to do it, had never found time to write.
Ferdinand was his youngest son, and was born only three or four years
before his father left Palos. There are two dates given for his birth,
each apparently on good authority, but these are a year apart.
[Sidenote: Career of Ferdinand Columbus.]
The language of Columbus's will, as well as the explicit statements of
Oviedo and Las Casas, leaves no reasonable ground for doubting his
illegitimacy. Bastardy was no bar to heirship in Spain, if a testator
chose to make a natural son his heir, as Columbus did, in giving
Ferdinand the right to his titles after the failure of heirs to Diego,
his legitimate son. Columbus's influence early found him a place as a
page at court, and during the Admiral's fourth voyage, in 1502-1504, the
boy accompanied his father, and once or twice at a later day he again
visited the Indies. When Columbus died, this son inherited many of his
papers; but if his own avowal be believed, he had neglected occasions in
his father's lifetime to question the Admiral respecting his early life,
not having, as he says, at that time learned to have interest in such
matters. His subsequent education at court, however, implanted in his
mind a good deal of the scholar's taste, and as a courtier in attendance
upon Charles the Fifth he had seasons of travel, visiting pretty much
every part of Western Europe, during which he had opportunities to pick
up in many places a large collection of books. He often noted in them
the place and date of purchase, so that it is not difficult to learn in
this way something of his wanderings.
The income of Ferdinand was large, or the equivalent of what Harrisse
calls to-day 180,000 francs, which was derived from territorial rights
in San Domingo, coming to him from the Admiral, increased by slave labor
in the mines, assigned to him by King Ferdinand, which at one time
included the service of four hundred Indians, and enlarged by pensions
bestowed by Charles the Fifth.
It has been said sometimes that he was in orders; but Harrisse, his
chief biographer, could find no proof of it. Oviedo describes him in
1535 as a person of "much nobility of character, of an affable turn and
of a sweet conversation."
[Sidenote: Biblioteca Colombina.]
When he died at Seville, July 12, 1539, he had amassed a collection of
books, variously estimated in contemporary accounts at from twelve to
twenty thousand volumes. Harrisse, in his _Grandeur et Décadence de la
Colombine_ (2d ed., Paris, 1885), represents Ferdinand as having
searched from 1510 to 1537 all the principal book marts of Europe. He
left these books by will to his minor nephew, Luis Colon, son of Diego,
but there was a considerable delay before Luis renounced the legacy,
with the conditions attached. Legal proceedings, which accompanied the
transactions of its executors, so delayed the consummation of the
alternative injunction of the will that the chapter of the Cathedral of
Seville, which, was to receive the library in case Don Luis declined it,
did not get possession of it till 1552.
The care of it which ensued seems to have been of a varied nature. Forty
years later a scholar bitterly complains that it was inaccessible. It is
known that by royal command certain books and papers were given up to
enrich the national archives, which, however, no longer contain them.
When, in 1684, the monks awoke to a sense of their responsibility and
had a new inventory of the books made, it was found that the collection
had been reduced to four or five thousand volumes. After the librarian
who then had charge of it died in 1709, the collection again fell into
neglect. There are sad stories of roistering children let loose in its
halls to make havoc of its treasures. There was no responsible care
again taken of it till a new librarian was chosen, in 1832, who
discovered what any one might have learned before, that the money which
Ferdinand left for the care and increase of the library had never been
applied to it, and that the principal, even, had disappeared. Other
means of increasing it were availed of, and the loss of the original
inestimable bibliographical treasures was forgotten in the crowd of
modern books which were placed upon its shelves. Amid all this new
growth, it does not appear just how many of the books which descended
from Ferdinand still remain in it. Something of the old carelessness--to
give it no worse name--has despoiled it, even as late as 1884 and 1885,
when large numbers of the priceless treasures still remaining found a
way to the Quay Voltaire and other marts for old books in Paris, while
others were disposed of in London, Amsterdam, and even in Spain. This
outrage was promptly exposed by Harrisse in the _Revue Critique_, and in
two monographs, _Grandeur et Décadence_, etc., already named, and in his
_Colombine et Clément Marot_ (Paris, 1886); and the story has been
further recapitulated in the accounts of Ferdinand and his library,
which Harrisse has also given in his _Excerpta Colombiana: Bibliographie
de Quatre Cents Pièces Gothiques_ _Francaises, Italiennes et Latines du
Commencement du XVI Siecle_ (Paris, 1887), an account of book rarities
found in that library.
[Illustration: SPECIMENS OF THE NOTES OF FERDINAND COLUMBUS ON HIS
BOOKS.
[From Harrisse's _Grandeur el Décadence de la Colombine_ (Paris,
1885).]]
[Sidenote: Perez de Oliva.]
We are fortunate, nevertheless, in having a manuscript catalogue of it
in Ferdinand's own hand, though not a complete one, for he died while he
was making it. This library, as well as what we know of his writings and
of the reputation which he bore among his contemporaries, many of whom
speak of him and of his library with approbation, shows us that a habit,
careless of inquiry in his boyhood, gave place in his riper years to
study and respect for learning. He is said by the inscription on his
tomb to have composed an extensive work on the New World and his
father's finding of it, but it has disappeared. Neither in his library
nor in his catalogue do we find any trace of the life of his father
which he is credited with having prepared. None of his friends, some of
them writers on the New World, make any mention of such a book. There is
in the catalogue a note, however, of a life of Columbus written about
1525, of which the manuscript is credited to Ferdinand Perez de Oliva, a
man of some repute, who died in 1530. Whether this writing bore any
significant relation to the life which is associated with the owner of
the library is apparently beyond discovery. It can scarcely be supposed
that it could have been written other than with Ferdinand's cognizance.
That there was an account of the Admiral's career, quoted in Las Casas
and attributed to Ferdinand Columbus, and that it existed before 1559,
seems to be nearly certain. A manuscript of the end of the sixteenth
century, by Gonzalo Argote de Molina, mentions a report that Ferdinand
had written a life of his father. Harrisse tells us that he has seen a
printed book catalogue, apparently of the time of Muñoz or Navarette, in
which a Spanish life of Columbus by Ferdinand Columbus is entered; but
the fact stands without any explanation or verification. Spotorno, in
1823, in an introduction to his collection of documents about Columbus,
says that the manuscript of what has passed for Ferdinand's memoir of
his father was taken from Spain to Genoa by Luis Colon, the Duke of
Veragua, son of Diego and grandson of Christopher Columbus. It is not
known that Luis ever had any personal relations with Ferdinand, who died
while Luis was still in Santo Domingo.
[Sidenote: Character of the _Historie_.]
It is said that it was in 1568 that Luis took the manuscript to Genoa,
but in that year he is known to have been living elsewhere. He had been
arrested in Spain in 1558 for having three wives, when he was exiled to
Oran, in Africa, for ten years, and he died in 1572. Spotorno adds that
the manuscript afterwards fell into the hands of a patrician, Marini,
from whom Alfonzo de Ullua received it, and translated it into Italian.
It is shown, however, that Marini was not living at this time. The
original Spanish, if that was the tongue of the manuscript, then
disappeared, and the world has only known it in this Italian _Historie_,
published in 1571. Whether the copy brought to Italy had been in any way
changed from its original condition, or whether the version then made
public fairly represented it, there does not seem any way of determining
to the satisfaction of everybody. At all events, the world thought it
had got something of value and of authority, and in sundry editions and
retranslations, with more or less editing and augmentation, it has
passed down to our time--the last edition appearing in
1867--unquestioned for its service to the biographers of Columbus. Muñoz
hardly knew what to make of some of "its unaccountable errors," and
conjectured that the Italian version had been made from "a corrupt and
false copy;" and coupling with it the "miserable" Spanish rendering in
Barcia's _Historiadores_, Muñoz adds that "a number of falsities and
absurdities is discernible in both." Humboldt had indeed expressed
wonder at the ignorance of the book in nautical matters, considering the
reputation which Ferdinand held in such affairs. It began the Admiral's
story in detail when he was said to be fifty-six years of age. It has
never been clear to all minds that Ferdinand's asseveration of a
youthful want of curiosity respecting the Admiral's early life was
sufficient to account for so much reticence respecting that formative
period. It has been, accordingly, sometimes suspected that a desire to
ignore the family's early insignificance rather than ignorance had most
to do with this absence of information. This seems to be Irving's
inference from the facts.
[Sidenote: Attacked by Harrisse.]
In 1871, Henry Harrisse, who in 1866 had written of the book, "It is
generally accepted with some latitude," made the first assault on its
integrity, in his _Fernando Colon_, published in Seville, in
Spanish, which was followed the next year by his _Fernand Colomb_, in
the original French text as it had been written, and published at Paris.
Harrisse's view was reënforced in the _Additions_ to his _Bibliotheca
Americana Vetustissima_, and he again reverted to the subject in the
first volume of his _Christophe Colomb_, in 1884. In the interim the
entire text of Las Casas's _Historia_ had been published for the first
time, rendering a comparison of the two books more easy. Harrisse
availed himself of this facility of examination, and made no abatement
of his confident disbelief. That Las Casas borrowed from the _Historie_,
or rather that the two books had a common source, Harrisse thinks
satisfactorily shown. He further throws out the hint that this source,
or prototype, may have been one of the lost essays of Ferdinand, in
which he had followed the career of his father; or indeed, in some way,
the account written by Oliva may have formed the basis of the book. He
further implies that, in the transformation to the Italian edition of
1571, there were engrafted upon the narrative many contradictions and
anachronisms, which seriously impair its value. Hence, as he contends,
it is a shame to impose its authorship in that foreign shape upon
Ferdinand. He also denies in the main the story of its transmission as
told by Spotorno.
So much of this book as is authentic, and may be found to be
corroborated by other evidence, may very likely be due to the manuscript
of Oliva, transported to Italy, and used as the work of Ferdinand
Columbus, to give it larger interest than the name of Oliva would carry;
while, to gratify prejudices and increase its attractions, the various
interpolations were made, which Harrisse thinks--and with much
reason--could not have proceeded from one so near to Columbus, so well
informed, and so kindly in disposition as we know his son Ferdinand to
have been.
[Sidenote: Defended by Stevens and others.]
So iconoclastic an outburst was sure to elicit vindicators of the
world's faith as it had long been held. In counter publications,
Harrisse and D'Avezac, the latter an eminent French authority on
questions of this period, fought out their battle, not without some
sharpness. Henry Stevens, an old antagonist of Harrisse, assailed the
new views with his accustomed confidence and rasping assertion. Oscar
Peschel, the German historian, and Count Circourt, the French student,
gave their opposing opinions; and the issue has been joined by others,
particularly within a few years by Prospero Peragallo, the pastor of an
Italian church in Lisbon, who has pressed defensive views with some
force in his _L'Autenticità delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_ (1884),
and later in his _Cristoforo Colombo et sua Famiglia_ (1888). It is held
by some of these later advocates of the book that parts of the original
Spanish text can be identified in Las Casas. The controversy has thus
had two stages. The first was marked by the strenuousness of D'Avezac
fifteen years ago. The second sprang from the renewed propositions of
Harrisse in his _Christophe Colomb_, ten years later. Sundry critics
have summed up the opposing arguments with more or less tendency to
oppose the iconoclast, and chief among them are two German scholars:
Professor Max Büdinger, in his _Acten zur Columbus' Geschichte_ (Wien,
1886), and his _Zur Columbus Literatur_ (Wien, 1889); and Professor
Eugen Gelcich, in the _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu
Berlin_ (1887).
Harrisse's views cannot be said to have conquered a position; but his
own scrutiny and that which he has engendered in others have done good
work in keeping the _Historie_ constantly subject to critical caution.
Dr. Shea still says of it: "It is based on the same documents of
Christopher Columbus which Las Casas used. It is a work of authority."
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Las Casas.]
Reference has already been made to the tardy publication of the
narrative of Las Casas. Columbus had been dead something over twenty
years, when this good man set about the task of describing in this work
what he had seen and heard respecting the New World,--or at least this
is the generally accredited interval, making him begin the work in 1527;
and yet it is best to remember that Helps could not find any positive
evidence of his being at work on the manuscript before 1552. Las Casas
did not live to finish the task, though he labored upon it down to 1561,
when he was eighty-seven years old. He died five years later. Irving,
who made great use of Las Casas, professed to consult him with that
caution which he deemed necessary in respect to a writer given to
prejudice and overheated zeal. For the period of Columbus's public life
(1492-1506), no other one of his contemporaries gives us so much of
documentary proof. Of the thirty-one papers, falling within this
interval, which he transcribed into his pages nearly in their
entirety,--throwing out some preserved in the archives of the Duke of
Veragua, and others found at Simancas or Seville,--there remain
seventeen, that would be lost to us but for this faithful chronicler.
How did he command this rich resource? As a native of Seville, Las Casas
had come there to be consecrated as bishop in 1544, and again in 1547,
after he had quitted the New World forever. At this time the family
papers of Columbus, then held for Luis Colon, a minor, were locked up in
a strong box in the custody of the monks of the neighboring monastery of
Las Cuevas. There is no evidence, however, that the chest was opened for
the inspection of the chronicler. He also professes to use original
letters sent by Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella, which he must have
found in the archives at Valladolid before 1545, or at Simancas after
that date. Again he speaks of citing as in his own collection attested
copies of some of Columbus's letters.
In 1550, and during his later years, Las Casas lived in the monastery of
San Gregorio, at Valladolid, leaving it only for visits to Toledo or
Madrid, unless it was for briefer visits to Simancas, not far off. Some
of the documents, which he might have found in that repository, are not
at present in those archives. It was there that he might have found
numerous letters which he cites, but which are not otherwise known. From
the use Las Casas makes of them, it would seem that they were of more
importance in showing the discontent and querulousness of Columbus than
as adding to details of his career. Again it appears clear that Las
Casas got documents in some way from the royal archives. We know the
journal of Columbus on his first voyage only from the abridgment which
Las Casas made of it, and much the same is true of the record of his
third voyage.
In some portion, at least, of his citations from the letters of
Columbus, there may be reason to think that Las Casas took them at
second hand, and Harrisse, with his belief in the derivative character
of the _Historie_ of Ferdinand Columbus, very easily conjectures that
this primal source may have been the manuscript upon which the compiler
of the _Historie_ was equally dependent. One kind of reasoning which
Harrisse uses is this: If Las Casas had used the original Latin of the
correspondence with Toscanelli, instead of the text of this supposed
Spanish prototype, it would not appear in so bad a state as it does in
Las Casas's book.
[Illustration: LAS CASAS.]
If this missing prototype of the _Historie_ was among Ferdinand's books
in his library, which had been removed from his house in 1544 to the
convent of San Pablo in Seville, and was not removed to the cathedral
till 1552, it may also have happened that along with it he used there
the _De Imagine Mundi_ of Pierre d'Ailly, Columbus's own copy of which
was, and still is, preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina, and shows the
Admiral's own manuscript annotations.
It was in the chapel of San Pablo that Las Casas had been consecrated as
bishop in 1544, and his associations with the monks could have given
easy access to what they held in custody,--too easy, perhaps, if
Harrisse's supposition is correct, that they let him take away the map
which Toscanelli sent to Columbus, and which would account for its not
being in the library now.
[Sidenote: His opportunities.]
We know, also, that Las Casas had use of the famous letter respecting
his third voyage, which the Admiral addressed to the nurse of the Infant
Don Juan, and which was first laid before modern students when Spotorno
printed it, in 1823. We further understand that the account of the
fourth voyage, which students now call, in its Italian form, the
_Lettera Rarissima_, was also at his disposal, as were many letters of
Bartholomew, the brother of Columbus, though they apparently only
elucidate the African voyage of Diaz.
In addition to these manuscript sources, Las Casas shows that, as a
student, he was familiar with and appreciated the decades of Peter
Martyr, and had read the accounts of Columbus in Garcia de Resende,
Barros, and Castañeda,--to say nothing of what he may have derived from
the supposable prototype of the _Historie_. It is certain that his
personal acquaintance brought him into relations with the Admiral
himself,--for he accompanied him on his fourth voyage,--with the
Admiral's brother, son, and son's wife; and moreover his own father and
uncle had sailed with Columbus. There were, among his other
acquaintances, the Archbishop of Seville, Pinzon, and other of the
contemporary navigators. It has been claimed by some, not accurately, we
suspect, that Las Casas had also accompanied Columbus on his third
voyage. Notwithstanding all these opportunities of acquiring a thorough
intimacy with the story of Columbus, it is contended by Harrisse that
the aid afforded by Las Casas disappoints one; and that all essential
data with which his narrative is supplied can be found elsewhere,
nearer the primal source.
[Sidenote: Character of his writings.]
This condition arises, as he thinks, from the fact that the one
engrossing purpose of Las Casas--his aim to emancipate the Indians from
a cruel domination--constantly stood in the way of a critical
consideration of the other aspects of the early Spanish contact with the
New World. It was while at the University of Salamanca that the father
of Las Casas gave the son an Indian slave, one of those whom Columbus
had sent home; and it was taken from the young student when Isabella
decreed the undoing of Columbus's kidnapping exploits. It was this event
which set Las Casas to thinking on the miseries of the poor natives,
which Columbus had planned, and which enables us to discover, in the
example of Las Casas, that the customs of the time are not altogether an
unanswerable defense of the time's inhumanity and greed.
As is well known, all but the most recent writers on Spanish-American
history have been forced to use this work of Las Casas in manuscript
copies, as a license to print such an exposure of Spanish cruelty could
not be obtained till 1875, when the _Historia_ was first printed at
Madrid.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Herrera.]
Herrera, so far as his record concerns Columbus, simply gives us what he
takes from Las Casas. He was born about the time that the older writer
was probably making his investigations. Herrera did not publish his
results, which are slavishly chronological in their method, till half a
century later (1601-15). Though then the official historiographer of the
Indies, with all the chances for close investigation which that
situation afforded him, Herrera failed in all ways to make the record of
his _Historia_ that comprehensive and genuine source of the story of
Columbus which the reader might naturally look for. The continued
obscuration of Las Casas by reason of the long delay in printing his
manuscript served to give Herrera, through many generations, a
prominence as an authoritative source which he could not otherwise have
had. Irving, when he worked at the subject, soon discovered that Las
Casas stood behind the story as Herrera told it, and accordingly the
American writer resorted by preference to such a copy of the manuscript
of Las Casas as he could get. There is a manifest tendency in Herrera to
turn Las Casas's qualified statements into absolute ones.
[Sidenote: Later Spanish writers.]
The personal contributions of the later writers, Muñoz and Navarrete,
have been already considered, in speaking of the diversified mass of
documentary proofs which accompany or gave rise to their narratives.
The _Colon en España_ of Tomas Rodriguez Pinilla (Madrid, 1884) is in
effect a life of the Admiral; but it ignores much of the recent critical
and controversial literature, and deals mainly with the old established
outline of events.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: German writers.]
[Sidenote: Humboldt.]
Among the Germans there was nothing published of any importance till the
critical studies of Forster, Peschel, and Ruge, in recent days. De Bry
had, indeed, by his translations of Benzoni (1594) and Herrera (1623),
familiarized the Germans with the main facts of the career of Columbus.
During the present century, Humboldt, in his _Examen Critique de
l'Histoire et de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent_, has borrowed the
language of France to show the scope of his critical and learned
inquiries into the early history of the Spanish contact in America, and
has left it to another hand to give a German rendering to his labors.
With this work by Humboldt, brought out in its completer shape in
1836-39, and using most happily all that had been done by Muñoz and
Navarrete to make clear both the acts and environments of the Admiral,
the intelligence of our own time may indeed be said to have first
clearly apprehended, under the light of a critical spirit, in which
Irving was deficient, the true significance of the great deeds that gave
America to Europe. Humboldt has strikingly grouped the lives of
Toscanelli and Las Casas, from the birth of the Florentine physician in
1397 to the death of the Apostle to the Indians in 1566, as covering the
beginning and end of the great discoveries of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.
[Sidenote: Henry Harrisse.]
It is also to be remarked that this service of broadly, and at the same
time critically, surveying the field was the work of a German writing in
French; while it is to an American citizen writing in French that we
owe, in more recent years, such a minute collation and examination of
every original source of information as set the labors of Henry
Harrisse, for thoroughness and discrimination, in advance of any
critical labor that has ever before been given to the career and
character of Christopher Columbus. Without the aid of his researches, as
embodied in his _Christophe Colomb_ (Paris, 1884), it would have been
quite impossible for the present writer to have reached conclusions on a
good many mooted points in the history of the Admiral and of his
reputation. Of almost equal usefulness have been the various subsidiary
books and tracts which Harrisse has devoted to similar fields.
Harrisse's books constitute a good example of the constant change of
opinion and revision of the relations of facts which are going on
incessantly in the mind of a vigilant student in recondite fields of
research. The progress of the correction of error respecting Columbus is
illustrated continually in his series of books on the great navigator,
beginning with the _Notes on Columbus_ (N. Y., 1866), which have been
intermittently published by him during the last twenty-five years.
Harrisse himself is a good deal addicted to hypotheses; but they fare
hard at his hands if advanced by others.
[Sidenote: French writers.]
[Sidenote: Attempted canonization of Columbus.]
[Illustration: ROSELLY DE LORGUES.]
The only other significant essays which have been made in French have
been a series of biographies of Columbus, emphasizing his missionary
spirit, which have been aimed to prepare the way for the canonization of
the great navigator, in recognition of his instrumentality in carrying
the cross to the New World. That, in the spirit which characterized the
age of discovery, the voyage of Columbus was, at least in profession,
held to be one conducted primarily for that end does not, certainly,
admit of dispute. Columbus himself, in his letter to Sanchez, speaks of
the rejoicing of Christ at seeing the future redemption of souls. He
made a first offering of the foreign gold by converting a mass of it
into a cup to hold the sacred host, and he spent a wordy enthusiasm in
promises of a new crusade to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems.
Ferdinand and Isabella dwelt upon the propagandist spirit of the
enterprise they had sanctioned, in their appeals to the Pontiff to
confirm their worldly gain in its results. Ferdinand, the son of the
Admiral, referring to the family name of Colombo, speaks of his father
as like Noah's dove, carrying the olive branch and oil of baptism over
the ocean. Professions, however, were easy; faith is always exuberant
under success, and the world, and even the Catholic world, learned, as
the ages went on, to look upon the spirit that put the poor heathen
beyond the pale of humanity as not particularly sanctifying a pioneer of
devastation.
[Sidenote: Roselly de Lorgues.]
It is the world's misfortune when a great opportunity loses any of its
dignity; and it is no great satisfaction to look upon a person of
Columbus's environments and find him but a creature of questionable
grace. So his canonization has not, with all the endeavors which have
been made, been brought about. The most conspicuous of the advocates of
it, with a crowd of imitators about him, has been Antoine François Félix
Valalette, Comte Roselly de Lorgues, who began in 1844 to devote his
energies to this end. He has published several books on Columbus, part
of them biographical, and all of them, including his _Christoph Colomb_
of 1864, mere disguised supplications to the Pope to order a deserved
sanctification. As contributions to the historical study of the life of
Columbus, they are of no importance whatever. Every act and saying of
the Admiral capable of subserving the purpose in view are simply made
the salient points of a career assumed to be holy. Columbus was in fact
of a piece, in this respect, with the age in which he lived. The
official and officious religious profession of the time belonged to a
period which invented the Inquisition and extirpated a race in order to
send them to heaven. None knew this better than those, like Las Casas,
who mated their faith with charity of act. Columbus and Las Casas had
little in common.
The _Histoire Posthume de Colomb_, which Roselly de Lorgues finally
published in 1885, is recognized even by Catholic writers as a work of
great violence and indiscretion, in its denunciations of all who fail to
see the saintly character of Columbus. Its inordinate intemperance gave
a great advantage to Cesario Fernandez Duro in his examination of De
Lorgues's position, made in his _Colon y la Historia Postuma_.
Columbus was certainly a mundane verity. De Lorgues tells us that if we
cannot believe in the supernatural we cannot understand this worldly
man. The writers who have followed him, like Charles Buet in his
_Christophe Colomb_ (Paris, 1886), have taken this position. The
Catholic body has so far summoned enough advocates of historic truth to
prevent the result which these enthusiasts have kept in view,
notwithstanding the seeming acquiescence of Pius IX. The most popular of
the idealizing lives of Columbus is probably that by Auguste, Marquis de
Belloy, which is tricked out with a display of engravings as idealized
as the text, and has been reproduced in English at Philadelphia (1878,
1889). It is simply an ordinary rendering of the common and conventional
stories of the last four centuries. The most eminent Catholic historical
student of the United States, Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in a paper on this
century's estimates of Columbus, in the _American Catholic Quarterly
Review_ (1887), while referring to the "imposing array of members of the
hierarchy" who have urged the beatification of Columbus, added, "But
calm official scrutiny of the question was required before permission
could be given to introduce the cause;" and this permission has not yet
been given, and the evidence in its favor has not yet been officially
produced.
France has taken the lead in these movements for canonization,
ostensibly for the reason that she needed to make some reparation for
snatching the honor of naming the New World from Columbus, through the
printing-presses of Saint Dié and Strassburg. A sketch of the literature
which has followed this movement is given in Baron van Brocken's _Des
Vicissitudes Posthumes de Christophe Colomb, et de sa Beatification
Possible_ (Leipzig et Paris, 1865).
* * * * *
[Sidenote: English writers.]
[Sidenote: Robertson.]
Of the writers in English, the labors of Hakluyt and Purchas only
incidentally touched the career of Columbus; and it was not till Stevens
issued his garbled version of Herrera in 1725, that the English public
got the record of the Spanish historian, garnished with something that
did not represent the original. This book of Stevens is responsible for
not a little in English opinion respecting the Spanish age of discovery,
which needs in these later days to be qualified. Some of the early
collections of voyages, like those of Churchill, Pinkerton, and Kerr,
included the story of the _Historie_ of 1571. It was not till Robertson,
in 1777, published the beginning of a contemplated _History of America_
that the English reader had for the first time a scholarly and justified
narrative, which indeed for a long time remained the ordinary source of
the English view of Columbus. It was, however, but an outline sketch,
not a sixth or seventh part in extent of what Irving, when he was
considering the subject, thought necessary for a reasonable presentation
of the subject. Robertson's footnotes show that his main dependence for
the story of Columbus was upon the pages of the _Historie_ of 1571,
Peter Martyr, Oviedo, and Herrera. He was debarred the help to be
derived from what we now use, as conveying Columbus's own record of his
story. Lord Grantham, then the British ambassador at Madrid, did all the
service he could, and his secretary of legation worked asssiduously in
complying with the wishes which Robertson preferred; but no solicitation
could at that day render easily accessible the archives at Simancas.
Still, Robertson got from one source or another more than it was
pleasant to the Spanish authorities to see in print, and they later
contrived to prevent a publication of his work in Spanish.
[Sidenote: Jeremy Belknap.]
The earliest considerable recounting of the story of Columbus in America
was by Dr. Jeremy Belknap, who, having delivered a commemorative
discourse in Boston in 1792, before the Massachusetts Historical
Society, afterward augmented his text when it became a part of his
well-known _American Biography_, a work of respectable standing for the
time, but little remembered to-day.
[Sidenote: Washington Irving.]
It was in 1827 that Washington Irving published his _Life of Columbus_,
and he produced a book that has long remained for the English reader a
standard biography. Irving's canons of historical criticism were not,
however, such as the fearless and discriminating student to-day would
approve. He commended Herrera for "the amiable and pardonable error of
softening excesses," as if a historian sat in a confessional to deal out
exculpations. The learning which probes long established pretenses and
grateful deceits was not acceptable to Irving. "There is a certain
meddlesome spirit," he says, "which, in the garb of learned research,
goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and
marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to
vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition."
Under such conditions as Irving summoned, there was little chance that a
world's exemplar would be pushed from his pedestal, no matter what the
evidence. The _vera pro gratis_ in personal characterization must not
assail the traditional hero. And such was Irving's notion of the upright
intelligence of a historian.
Mr. Alexander H. Everett, who was then the minister of the United States
at Madrid, saw a chance of making a readable book out of the journal of
Columbus as preserved by Las Casas, and recommended the task of
translating it to Irving, then in Europe. This proposition carried the
willing writer to Madrid, where he found comfortable quarters, with
quick sympathy of intercourse, under the roof of a Boston scholar then
living there, Obadiah Rich. The first two volumes of the documentary
work of Navarrete coming out opportunely, Irving was not long in
determining that, with its wealth of material, there was a better
opportunity for a newly studied life of Columbus than for the proposed
task. So Irving settled down in Madrid to the larger endeavor, and soon
found that he could have other assistance and encouragement from
Navarrete himself, from the Duke of Veragua, and from the then possessor
of the papers of Muñoz. The subject grew under his hands. "I had no
idea," he says, "of what a complete labyrinth I had entangled myself
in." He regretted that the third volume of Navarrete's book was not far
enough advanced to be serviceable; but he worked as best he could, and
found many more facilities than Robertson's helper had discovered. He
went to the Biblioteca Colombina, and he even brought the annotations of
Columbus in the copy of Pierre d'Ailly, there preserved, to the
attention of its custodians for the first time; almost feeling himself
the discoverer of the book, though it was known to him that Las Casas,
at least, had had the advantage of using these minutes of Columbus.
Irving knew that his pains were not unavailing, at any rate, for the
English reader. "I have woven into my book," he says, "many curious
particulars not hitherto known concerning Columbus; and I think I have
thrown light upon some points of his character which have not been
brought out by his former biographers." One of the things that pleased
the new biographer most was his discovery, as he felt, in the account by
Bernaldez, that Columbus was born ten years earlier than had been
usually reckoned; and he supposed that this increase of the age of the
discoverer at the time of his voyage added much greater force to the
characteristics of his career. Irving's book readily made a mark.
Jeffrey thought that its fame would be enduring, and at a time when no
one looked for new light from Italy, he considered that Irving had done
best in working, almost exclusively, the Spanish field, where alone "it
was obvious" material could be found.
When Alexander H. Everett, pardonably, as a godfather to the work,
undertook in January, 1829, to say in the _North American Review_ that
Irving's book was a delight of readers, he anticipated the judgment of
posterity; but when he added that it was, by its perfection, the despair
of critics, he was forgetful of a method of critical research that is
not prone to be dazed by the prestige of demigods.
In the interval between the first and second editions of the book,
Irving paid a visit to Palos and the convent of La Rabida, and he got
elsewhere some new light in the papers of the lawsuit of Columbus's
heirs. The new edition which soon followed profited by all these
circumstances.
[Sidenote: Prescott.]
Irving's occupation of the field rendered it both easy and gracious for
Prescott, when, ten years later (1837), he published his _Ferdinand and
Isabella_, to say that his predecessor had stripped the story of
Columbus of the charm of novelty; but he was not quite sure, however, in
the privacy of his correspondence, that Irving, by attempting to
continue the course of Columbus's life in detail after the striking
crisis of the discovery, had made so imposing a drama as he would have
done by condensing the story of his later years. In this Prescott shared
something of the spirit of Irving, in composing history to be read as a
pastime, rather than as a study of completed truth. Prescott's own
treatment of the subject is scant, as he confined his detailed record to
the actions incident to the inception and perfection of the enterprise
of the Admiral, to the doings in Spain or at court. He was, at the same
time, far more independent than Irving had been, in his views of the
individual character round which so much revolves, and the reader is not
wholly blinded to the unwholesome deceit and overweening selfishness of
Columbus.
[Sidenote: Arthur Helps.]
Within twenty years Arthur Helps approached the subject from the point
of view of one who was determined, as he thought no one of the writers
on the subject of the Spanish Conquest had been, to trace the origin of,
and responsibility for, the devastating methods of Spanish colonial
government; "not conquest only, but the result of conquest, the mode of
colonial government which ultimately prevailed, the extirpation of
native races, the introduction of other races, the growth of slavery,
and the settlement of the _encomiendas_, on which all Indian society
depended." It is not to Helps, therefore, that we are to look for any
extended biography of Columbus; and when he finds him in chains, sent
back to Spain, he says of the prisoner, "He did not know how many
wretched beings would have to traverse those seas, in bonds much worse
than his; nor did he foresee, I trust, that some of his doings would
further all this coming misery." It does not appear from his footnotes
that Helps depended upon other than the obvious authorities, though he
says that he examined the Muñoz collection, then as now in the Royal
Academy of History at Madrid.
[Sidenote: R. H. Major.]
The last scholarly summary of Columbus's career previous to the views
incident to the criticism of Harrisse on the _Historie_ of 1571 was that
which was given by R. H. Major, in the second edition of his _Select
Letters of Columbus_ (London, 1870).
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Aaron Goodrich.]
There have been two treatments of the subject by Americans within the
last twenty years, which are characteristic. The _Life and Achievements
of the So-called Christopher Columbus_ (New York, 1874), by Aaron
Goodrich, mixes that unreasoning trust and querulous conceit which is so
often thrown into the scale when the merits of the discoverers of the
alleged Vinland are contrasted with those of the imagined Indies. With a
craze of petulancy, he is not able to see anything that cannot be
twisted into defamation, and his book is as absurdly constant in
derogation as the hallucinations of De Lorgues are in the other
direction.
[Sidenote: H. H. Bancroft.]
When Hubert Howe Bancroft opened the story of his Pacific States in his
_History of Central America_ (San Francisco, 1882), he rehearsed the
story of Columbus, but did not attempt to follow it critically except as
he tracked the Admiral along the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and
Costa Rica. This writer's estimate of the character of Columbus conveys
a representation of what the Admiral really was, juster than national
pride, religious sympathy, or kindly adulation has usually permitted. It
is unfortunately, not altogether chaste in its literary presentation.
His characterization of Irving and Prescott in their endeavors to draw
the character of Columbus has more merit in its insight than skill in
its drafting.
[Sidenote: Winsor.]
[Sidenote: Bibliography of Columbus.]
The brief sketch of the career of Columbus, and the examination of the
events that culminated in his maritime risks and developments, as it was
included in the _Narrative and Critical History of America_ (vol. ii.,
Boston, 1885), gave the present writer an opportunity to study the
sources and trace the bibliographical threads that run through an
extended and diversified literature, in a way, it may be, not earlier
presented to the English reader. If any one desires to compass all the
elucidations and guides which a thorough student of the career and fame
of Columbus would wish to consider, the apparatus thus referred to, and
the footnotes in Harrisse's _Christophe Colomb_ and in his other germane
publications, would probably most essentially shorten his labors.
Harrisse, who has prepared, but not yet published, lists of the books
devoted to Columbus _exclusively_, says that they number about six
hundred titles. The literature which treats of him incidentally is of a
vast extent.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Varied estimates of Columbus.]
In concluding this summary of the commentaries upon the life of
Columbus, the thought comes back that his career has been singularly
subject to the gauging of opinionated chroniclers. The figure of the
man, as he lives to-day in the mind of the general reader, in whatever
country, comports in the main with the characterizations of Irving, De
Lorgues, or Goodrich. These last two have entered upon their works with
a determined purpose, the Frenchman of making a saint, and the American
a scamp, of the great discoverer of America. They each, in their twists,
pervert and emphasize every trait and every incident to favor their
views. Their narratives are each without any background of that mixture
of incongruity, inconsistency, and fatality from which no human being is
wholly free. Their books are absolutely worthless as historical records.
That of Goodrich has probably done little to make proselytes. That of De
Lorgues has infected a large body of tributary devotees of the Catholic
Church.
The work of Irving is much above any such level; but it has done more
harm because its charms are insidious. He recognized at least that human
life is composite; but he had as much of a predetermination as they, and
his purpose was to create a hero. He glorified what was heroic,
palliated what was unheroic, and minimized the doubtful aspects of
Columbus's character. His book is, therefore, dangerously seductive to
the popular sense. The genuine Columbus evaporates under the warmth of
the writer's genius, and we have nothing left but a refinement of his
clay. The _Life of Columbus_ was a sudden product of success, and it has
kept its hold on the public very constantly; but it has lost ground in
these later years among scholarly inquirers. They have, by their
collation of its narrative with the original sources, discovered its
flaccid character. They have outgrown the witcheries of its graceful
style. They have learned to put at their value the repetitionary changes
of stock sentiment, which swell the body of the text, sometimes,
provokingly.
[Sidenote: Portraits of Columbus.]
[Sidenote: Columbus's person.]
Out of the variety of testimony respecting the person of the adult
Columbus, it is not easy to draw a picture that his contemporaries would
surely recognize. Likeness we have none that can be proved beyond a
question the result of any sitting, or even of any acquaintance. If we
were called upon to picture him as he stood on San Salvador, we might
figure a man of impressive stature with lofty, not to say austere,
bearing, his face longer by something more than its breadth, his cheek
bones high, his nose aquiline, his eyes a light gray, his complexion
fair with freckles spotting a ruddy glow, his hair once light, but then
turned to gray. His favorite garb seems to have been the frock of a
Franciscan monk. Such a figure would not conflict with the descriptions
which those who knew him, and those who had questioned his associates,
have transmitted to us, as we read them in the pages ascribed to
Ferdinand, his son; in those of the Spanish historian, Oviedo; of the
priest Las Casas; and in the later recitals of Gomara and Benzoni, and
of the official chronicler of the Spanish Indies, Antonio Herrera. The
oldest description of all is one made in 1501, in the unauthorized
version of the first decade of Peter Martyr, emanating, very likely,
from the translator Trivigiano, who had then recently come in contact
with Columbus.
[Sidenote: La Cosa's St. Christopher.]
Turning from these descriptions to the pictures that have been put forth
as likenesses, we find not a little difficulty in reconciling the two.
There is nothing that unmistakably goes back to the lifetime of Columbus
except the figure of St. Christopher, which makes a vignette in colors
on the mappemonde, which was drawn in 1500, by one of Columbus's pilots,
Juan de la Cosa, and is now preserved in Madrid. It has been fondly
claimed that Cosa transferred the features of his master to the
lineaments of the saint; but the assertion is wholly without proof.
[Illustration: ST. CHRISTOPHER.
[The vignette of La Cosa's map.]]
[Sidenote: Jovius's gallery.]
[Illustration: JOVIUS'S COLUMBUS, THE EARLIEST ENGRAVED LIKENESS.]
Paolo Giovio, or, as better known in the Latin form, Paulus Jovius, was
old enough in 1492 to have, in later life, remembered the thrill of
expectation which ran for the moment through parts of Europe, when the
letter of Columbus describing his voyage was published in Italy, where
Jovius was then a schoolboy. He was but an infant, or perhaps not born
when Columbus left Italy. So the interest of Jovius in the Discoverer
could hardly have arisen from any other associations than those easily
suggestive to one who, like Jovius, was a student of his own times.
Columbus had been dead ten years when Jovius, as a historian, attracted
the notice of Pope Leo X., and entered upon such a career of prosperity
that he could build a villa on Lake Como, and adorn it with a gallery of
portraits of those who had made his age famous. That he included a
likeness of Columbus among his heroes there seems to be no doubt.
Whether the likeness was painted from life, and by whom, or modeled
after an ideal, more or less accordant with the reports of those who may
have known the Genoese, is entirely beyond our knowledge. As a
historian Jovius professed the right to distort the truth for any
purpose that suited him, and his conceptions of the truth of portraiture
may quite as well have been equally loose. Just a year before his own
death, Jovius gave a sketch of Columbus's career in his _Elogia Virorum
Illustrium_, published at Florence in 1551; but it was not till
twenty-four years later, in 1575, that a new edition of the book gave
wood-cuts of the portraits in the gallery of the Como villa, to
illustrate the sketches, and that of Columbus appeared among them. This
engraving, then, is the oldest likeness of Columbus presenting any
claims to consideration. It found place also, within a year or two, in
what purported to be a collection of portraits from the Jovian gallery;
and the engraver of them was Tobias Stimmer, a Swiss designer, who
stands in the biographical dictionaries of artists as born in 1534, and
of course could not have assisted his skill by any knowledge of
Columbus, on his own part. This picture, to which a large part of the
very various likenesses called those of Columbus can be traced, is done
in the bold, easy handling common in the wood-cuts of that day, and with
a precision of skill that might well make one believe that it preserves
a dashing verisimilitude to the original picture. It represents a
full-face, shaven, curly-haired man, with a thoughtful and somewhat sad
countenance, his hands gathering about the waist a priest's robe, of
which the hood has fallen about his neck. If there is any picture to be
judged authentic, this is best entitled to that estimation.
[Sidenote: The Florence picture.]
Connection with the Como gallery is held to be so significant of the
authenticity of any portrait of Columbus that it is claimed for two
other pictures, which are near enough alike to have followed the same
prototype, and which are not, except in garb, very unlike the Jovian
wood-cut. As copies of the Como original in features, they may easily
have varied in apparel. One of these is a picture preserved in the
gallery at Florence,--a well-moulded, intellectual head, full-faced,
above a closely buttoned tunic, or frock, seen within drapery that falls
off the shoulders. It is not claimed to be the Como portrait, but it may
have been painted from it, perhaps by Christofano dell' Altissimo, some
time before 1568. A copy of it was made for Thomas Jefferson, which,
having hung for a while at Monticello, came at last to Boston, and
passed into the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[Illustration: THE FLORENCE COLUMBUS.]
[Sidenote: The Yanez picture.]
The picture resembling this, and which may have had equal claims of
association with the Jovian gallery, is one now preserved in Madrid, and
the oldest canvas representing Columbus that is known in Spain. It takes
the name of the Yanez portrait from that of the owner of it, from whom
it was bought in Granada, in 1763. Representing, when brought to notice,
a garment trimmed with fur, there has been disclosed upon it, and
underlying this later paint, an original, close-fitting tunic, much like
the Florence picture; while a further removal of the superposed pigment
has revealed an inscription, supposed to authenticate it as Columbus,
the discoverer of the New World. It is said that the Duke of Veragua
holds it to be the most authentic likeness of his ancestor.
[Illustration: THE YANEZ COLUMBUS.]
[Sidenote: De Bry's picture.]
[Illustration: COLUMBUS.
[A reproduction of the so-called Capriolo cut given in Giuseppe
Banchero's _La Tavola di Bronzo_, (Genoa, 1857), and based on the
Jovian type.]]
Another conspicuous portrait is that given by De Bry in the larger
series of his Collection of Early Voyages. De Bry claims that it was
painted by order of King Ferdinand, and that it was purloined from the
offices of the Council of the Indies in Spain, and brought to the
Netherlands, and in this way fell into the hands of that engraver and
editor. It bears little resemblance to the pictures already mentioned;
nor does it appear to conform to the descriptions of Columbus's person.
It has a more rugged and shorter face, with a profusion of closely waved
hair falling beneath an ugly, angular cap. De Bry engraved it, or rather
published it, in 1595, twenty years after the Jovian wood-cut appeared,
and we know of no engraving intervening. No one of the generation that
was old enough to have known the navigator could then have survived,
and the picture has no other voucher than the professions of the
engraver of it.
[Illustration: DE BRY'S COLUMBUS.]
[Sidenote: Other portraits.]
[Sidenote: Havana monument.]
[Sidenote: Peschiera's bust.]
These are but a few of the many pictures that have been made to pass,
first and last, for Columbus, and the only ones meriting serious study
for their claims. The American public was long taught to regard the
effigy of Columbus as that of a bedizened courtier, because Prescott
selected for an engraving to adorn his _Ferdinand and Isabella_ a
picture of such a person, which is ascribed to Parmigiano, and is
preserved in the Museo Borbonico, at Naples. Its claims long ago ceased
to be considered. The traveler in Cuba sees in the Cathedral at Havana a
monumental effigy, of which there is no evidence of authenticity worthy
of consideration. The traveler in Italy can see in Genoa, placed on the
cabinet which was made to hold the manuscript titles of Columbus, a
bust by Peschiera. It has the negative merit of having no relation to
any of the alleged portraits; but represents the sculptor's conception
of the man, guided by the scant descriptions of him given to us by his
contemporaries.
[Illustration: THE BUST OF COLUMBUS ON THE TOMB AT HAVANA.]
If the reader desires to see how extensive the field of research is,
for one who can spend the time in tracing all the clues connected with
all the representations which pass for Columbus, he can make a
beginning, at least, under the guidance of the essay on the portraits
which the present writer contributed to the _Narrative and Critical
History of America_, vol. ii.
When Columbus, in 1502, ordered a tenth of his income to be paid
annually to the Bank of St. George, in Genoa, for the purpose of
reducing the tax upon corn, wine, and other provisions, the generous
act, if it had been carried out, would have entitled him to such a
recognition as a public benefactor as the bank was accustomed to bestow.
The main hall of the palace of this institution commemorates such
patriotic efforts by showing a sitting statue for the largest
benefactors; a standing figure for lesser gifts, while still lower
gradations of charitable help are indicated in busts, or in mere
inscriptions on a mural tablet. It has been thought that posterity,
curious to see the great Admiral as his contemporaries saw him, suffers
with the state of Genoa, in not having such an effigy, by the neglect or
inattention which followed upon the announced purpose of Columbus. We
certainly find there to-day no such visible proof of his munificence or
aspect. Harrisse, while referring to this deprivation, takes occasion,
in his _Bank of St. George_ (p. 108), to say that he does not "believe
that the portrait of Columbus was ever drawn, carved, or painted from
the life." He contends that portrait-painting was not common in Spain,
in Columbus's day, and that we have no trace of the painters, whose work
constitutes the beginning of the art, in any record, or authentic
effigy, to show that the person of the Admiral was ever made the subject
of the art. The same writer indicates that the interval during which
Columbus was popular enough to be painted extended over only six weeks
in April and May, 1493. He finds that much greater heroes, as the world
then determined, like Boabdil and Cordova, were not thus honored, and
holds that the portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella, which editions of
Prescott have made familiar, are really fancy pictures of the close of
the sixteenth century.