COLUMBUS LEAVES PORTUGAL FOR SPAIN.
[Sidenote: Columbus's obscure record, 1473-1487.]
It is a rather striking fact, as Harrisse puts it, that we cannot place
with an exact date any event in Columbus's life from August 7, 1473,
when a document shows him to have been in Savona, Italy, till he
received at Cordoba, Spain, from the treasurer of the Catholic
sovereigns, his first gratuity on May 5, 1487, as is shown by the entry
in the books, "given this day 3,000 maravedis," about $18, "to Cristobal
Colomo, a stranger." The events of this period of about fourteen years
were those which made possible his later career. The incidents connected
with this time have become the shuttlecocks which have been driven
backward and forward in their chronological bearings, by all who have
undertaken to study the details of this part of Columbus's life. It is
nearly as true now as it was when Prescott wrote, that "the
discrepancies among the earliest authorities are such as to render
hopeless any attempt to settle with precision the chronology of
Columbus's movements previous to his first voyage."
[Sidenote: His motives for leaving Portugal.]
[Sidenote: Chief sources of our knowledge.]
The motives which induced him to abandon Portugal, where he had married,
and where he had apparently found not a little to reconcile him to his
exile, are not obscure ones as detailed in the ordinary accounts of his
life. All these narratives are in the main based, first, on the
_Historie_ (1571); secondly, on the great historical work of Joam de
Barros, pertaining to the discoveries of the Portuguese in the East
Indies, first published in 1552, and still holding probably the loftiest
position in the historical literature of that country; and, finally, on
the lives of João II., then monarch of Portugal, by Ruy de Pina and by
Vasconcellos. The latter borrowing in the main from the former, was
exclusively used by Irving. Las Casas apparently depended on Barros as
well as on the _Historie_. It is necessary to reconcile their
statements, as well as it can be done, to get even an inductive view of
the events concerned.
The treatment of the subject by Irving would make it certain that it was
a new confidence in the ability to make long voyages, inspired by the
improvements of the astrolabe as directed by Behaim, that first gave
Columbus the assurance to ask for royal patronage of the maritime scheme
which had been developing in his mind.
[Sidenote: Columbus and Behaim.]
Just what constituted the acquaintance of Columbus with Behaim is not
clearly established. Herrera speaks of them as friends. Humboldt thinks
some intimacy between them may have existed, but finds no decisive proof
of it. Behaim had spent much of his life in Lisbon and in the Azores,
and there are some striking correspondences in their careers, if we
accept the usual accounts. They were born and died in the same year.
Each lived for a while on an Atlantic island, the Nuremberger at Fayal,
and the Genoese at Porto Santo; and each married the daughter of the
governor of his respective island. They pursued their nautical studies
at the same time in Lisbon, and the same physicians who reported to the
Portuguese king upon Columbus's scheme of westward sailing were engaged
with Behaim in perfecting the sea astrolabe.
[Sidenote: Columbus and the king of Portugal.]
The account of the audience with the king which we find in the
_Historie_ is to the effect that Columbus finally succeeded in inducing
João to believe in the practicability of a western passage to Asia; but
that the monarch could not be brought to assent to all the titular and
pecuniary rewards which Columbus contended for as emoluments of success,
and that a commission, to whom the monarch referred the project,
pronounced the views of Columbus simply chimerical. Barros represents
that the advances of Columbus were altogether too arrogant and fantastic
ever to have gained the consideration of the king, who easily disposed
of the Genoese's pretentious importunities by throwing the burden of
denial upon a commission. This body consisted of the two physicians of
the royal household, already mentioned, Roderigo and Josef, to whom was
added Cazadilla, the Bishop of Ceuta.
Vasconcellos's addition to this story, which he derived almost entirely
from Ruy de Pina, Resende, and Barros, is that there was subsequently
another reference to a royal council, in which the subject was discussed
in arguments, of which that historian preserves some reports. This
discussion went farther than was perhaps intended, since Cazadilla
proceeded to discourage all attempts at exploration even by the African
route, as imperiling the safety of the state, because of the money which
was required; and because it kept at too great a distance for an
emergency a considerable force in ships and men. In fact the drift of
the debate seems to have ignored the main projects as of little moment
and as too visionary, and the energy of the hour was centered in a
rallying speech made by the Count of Villa Real, who endeavored to save
the interests of African exploration. The count's speech quite
accomplished its purpose, if we can trust the reports, since it
reassured the rather drooping energies of the king, and induced some
active measures to reach the extremity of Africa.
[Sidenote: Diaz's African voyage, 1486.]
[Sidenote: Passes the Cape.]
[Illustration: PORTUGUESE MAPPEMONDE, 1490.
[Sketched from the original MS. in the British Museum.]]
In August, 1486, Bartholomew Diaz, the most eminent of a line of
Portuguese navigators, had departed on the African route, with two
consorts. As he neared the latitude of the looked-for Cape, he was
driven south, and forced away from the land, by a storm. When he was
enabled to return on his track he struck the coast, really to the
eastward of the true cape, though he did not at the time know it. This
was in May, 1487. His crew being unwilling to proceed farther, he
finally turned westerly, and in due time discovered what he had done.
The first passage of the Cape was thus made while sailing west, just as,
possibly, the mariners of the Indian seas may have done. In December he
was back in Lisbon with the exhilarating news, and it was probably
conveyed to Columbus, who was then in Spain, by his brother Bartholomew,
the companion of Diaz in this eventful voyage, as Las Casas discovered
by an entry made by Bartholomew himself in a copy of D'Ailly's _Imago
Mundi_. Thirty years before, as we have seen, Fra Mauro had prefigured
the Cape in his map, but it was now to be put on the charts as a
geographical discovery; and by 1490, or thereabouts, succeeding
Portuguese navigators had pushed up the west coast of Africa to a point
shown in a map preserved in the British Museum, but not far enough to
connect with what was supposed with some certainty to be the limit
reached during the voyages of the Arabian navigators, while sailing
south from the Red Sea. There was apparently not a clear conception in
the minds of the Portuguese, at this time, just how far from the Cape
the entrance of the Arabian waters really was. It is possible that
intelligence may have thus early come from the Indian Ocean, by way of
the Mediterranean, that the Oriental sailors knew of the great African
cape by approaching it from the east.
[Sidenote: Portuguese missionaries to Egypt.]
Such knowledge, if held to be visionary, was, however, established with
some certainty in men's minds before Da Gama actually effected the
passage of the Cape. This confirmation had doubtless come through some
missionaries of the Portuguese king, who in 1490 sent such a positive
message from Cairo.
But while the new exertions along the African coast, thus inadvertently
instigated by Columbus, were making, what was becoming of his own
westward scheme?
[Sidenote: The Portuguese send out an expedition to forestall Columbus.]
The story goes that it was by the advice of Cazadilla that the
Portuguese king lent himself to an unworthy device. This was a project
to test the views of Columbus, and profit by them without paying him his
price. An outline of his intended voyage had been secured from him in
the investigation already mentioned. A caravel, under pretense of a
voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands, was now dispatched to search for
the Cipango of Marco Polo, in the position which Columbus had given it
in his chart. The mercenary craft started out, and buffeted with head
seas and angry winds long enough to emasculate what little courage the
crew possessed. Without the prop of conviction they deserted their
purpose and returned. Once in port, they began to berate the Genoese for
his foolhardy scheme. In this way they sought to vindicate their own
timidity. This disclosed to Columbus the trick which had been played
upon him. Such is the story as the _Historie_ tells it, and which has
been adopted by Herrera and others.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Columbus leaves Portugal, 1484.]
At this point there is too much uncertainty respecting the movements of
Columbus for even his credulous biographers to fill out the tale. It
seems to be agreed that in the latter part of 1484 he left Portugal with
a secrecy which was supposed to be necessary to escape the vigilance of
the government spies. There is beside some reason for believing that it
was also well for him to shun arrest for debts, which had been incurred
in the distractions of his affairs.
[Sidenote: Supposed visit of Columbus to Genoa.]
There is no other authority than Ramusio for believing with Muñoz that
Columbus had already laid his project before the government of Genoa by
letter, and that he now went to reënforce it in person. That power was
sorely pressed with misfortunes at this time, and is said to have
declined to entertain his proposals. It may be the applicant was
dismissed contemptuously, as is sometimes said. It is not, however, as
Harrisse has pointed out, till we come down to Cassoni, in his _Annals
of Genoa_, published in 1708, that we find a single Genoese authority
crediting the story of this visit to Genoa. Harrisse, with his skeptical
tendency, does not believe the statement.
[Sidenote: Supposed visit to Venice.]
Eagerness to fill the gaps in his itinerary has sometimes induced the
supposition that Columbus made an equally unsuccessful offer to Venice;
but the statement is not found except in modern writers, with no other
citations to sustain it than the recollections of some one who had seen
at some time in the archives a memorial to this effect made by Columbus.
Some writers make him at this time also visit his father and provide for
his comfort,--a belief not altogether consonant with the supposition of
Columbus's escape from Portugal as a debtor.
[Sidenote: The death of his wife.]
[Sidenote: Shown to be uncertain.]
Irving and the biographers in general find in the death of Columbus's
wife a severing of the ties which bound him to Portugal; but if there is
any truth in the tumultuous letter which Columbus wrote to Doña Juana de
la Torre in 1500, he left behind him in Portugal, when he fled into
Spain, a wife and children. If there is the necessary veracity in the
_Historie_, this wife had died before he abandoned the country. That he
had other children at this time than Diego is only known through this
sad, ejaculatory epistle. If he left a wife in Portugal, as his own
words aver, Harrisse seems justified in saying that he deserted her, and
in the same letter Columbus himself says that he never saw her again.
[Sidenote: Convent of Rabida.]
Ever since a physician of Palos, Garcia Fernandez, gave his testimony in
the lawsuit through which, after Columbus's death, his son defended his
titles against the Crown, the picturesque story of the convent of
Rabida, and the appearance at its gate of a forlorn traveler accompanied
by a little boy, and the supplication for bread and water for the child,
has stood in the lives of Columbus as the opening scene of his career in
Spain.
This Franciscan convent, dedicated to Santa Maria de Rabida, stood on a
height within sight of the sea, very near the town of Palos, and after
having fallen into a ruin it was restored by the Duke of Montpensier in
1855. A recent traveler has found this restoration "modernized,
whitewashed, and forlorn," while the refurnishing of the interior is
described as "paltry and vulgar," even in the cell of its friar, where
the visitor now finds a portrait of Columbus and pictures of scenes in
his career.
[Illustration: PÈRE JUAN PEREZ DE MARCHENA.
[As given by Roselly de Lorgues.]]
[Sidenote: Friar Marchena.]
This friar, Juan Perez de Marchena, was at the time of the supposed
visit of Columbus the prior of the convent, and being casually attracted
by the scene at the gate, where the porter was refreshing the vagrant
travelers, and by the foreign accent of the stranger, he entered into
talk with the elder of them and learned his name. Columbus also told him
that he was bound to Huelva to find the home of one Muliar, a Spaniard
who had married the youngest sister of his wife. The story goes further
that the friar was not uninformed in the cosmographical lore of the
time, had not been unobservant of the maritime intelligence which had
naturally been rife in the neighboring seaport of Palos, and had kept
watch of the recent progress in geographical science. He was
accordingly able to appreciate the interest which Columbus manifested in
such subjects, as he unfolded his own notions of still greater
discoveries which might be made at the west. Keeping the wanderer and
his little child a few days, Marchena invited to the convent, to join
with them in discussion, the most learned man whom the neighborhood
afforded, the physician of Palos,--the very one from whose testimony our
information comes. Their talks were not without reënforcements from the
experiences of some of the mariners of that seaport, particularly one
Pedro de Velasco, who told of manifestation of land which he had himself
seen, without absolute contact, thirty years before, when his ship had
been blown a long distance to the northwest of Ireland.
[Sidenote: Columbus goes to Cordoba.]
The friendship formed in the convent kept Columbus there amid congenial
sympathizers, and it was not till some time in the winter of 1485-86,
and when he heard that the Spanish sovereigns were at Cordoba, gathering
a force to attack the Moors in Granada, that, leaving behind his boy to
be instructed in the convent, Columbus started for that city. He went
not without confidence and elation, as he bore a letter of credentials
which the friar had given him to a friend, Fernando de Talavera, the
prior of the monastery of Prado, and confessor of Queen Isabella.
[Sidenote: Doubts about the visits to Rabida.]
This story has almost always been placed in the opening of the career of
Columbus in Spain. It has often in sympathizing hands pointed a moral in
contrasting the abject condition of those days with the proud expectancy
under which, some years later, he sailed out of the neighboring harbor
of Palos, within eyeshot of the monks of Rabida. Irving, however, as he
analyzed the reports of the famous trial already referred to, was quite
sure that the events of two visits to Rabida had been unwittingly run
into one in testimony given after so long an interval of years. It does
indeed seem that we must either apply this evidence of 1513 and 1515 to
a later visit, or else we must determine that there was great similarity
in some of the incidents of the two visits.
The date of 1491, to which Harrisse pushes the incidents forward,
depends in part on the evidence of one Rodriguez Cobezudo that in 1513
it was about twenty-two years since he had lent a mule to Juan Perez de
Marchena, when he went to Santa Fé from Rabida to interpose for
Columbus. The testimony of Garcia Fernandez is that this visit of
Marchena took place after Columbus had once been rebuffed at court, and
the words of the witness indicate that it was on that visit when Juan
Perez asked Columbus who he was and whence he came; showing, perhaps,
that it was the first time Perez had seen Columbus. Accordingly this, as
well as the mule story, points to 1491. But that the circumstances of
the visit which Garcia Fernandez recounts may have belonged to an
earlier visit, in part confounded after fifteen years with a later one,
may yet be not beyond a possibility. It is to be remembered that the
_Historie_ speaks of two visits, one later than that of 1484. It is not
easy to see that all the testimony which Harrisse introduced to make the
visit of 1491 the first and only visit of Columbus to the convent is
sufficient to do more than render the case probable.
[Sidenote: 1486. Enters the service of Spain.]
We determine the exact date of the entering of Columbus into the service
of Spain to be January 20, 1486, from a record of his in his journal on
shipboard under January 14, 1493, where he says that on the 20th of the
same month he would have been in their Highnesses' service just seven
years. We find almost as a matter of course other statements of his
which give somewhat different dates by deduction. Two statements of
Columbus agreeing would be a little suspicious. Certain payments on the
part of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon do not seem to have begun,
however, till the next year, or at least we have no earlier record of
such than one on May 5, 1487, and from that date on they were made at
not great intervals, till an interruption came, as will be later shown.
[Sidenote: Changes his name to Colon.]
In Spain the Christoforo Colombo of Genoa chose to call himself
Cristoval Colon, and the _Historie_ tells us that he sought merely to
make his descendants distinct of name from their remote kin. He argued
that the Roman name was Colonus, which readily was transformed to a
Spanish equivalent. Inasmuch as the Duke of Medina-Celi, who kept
Columbus in his house for two years during the early years of his
Spanish residence, calls him Colomo in 1493, and Oviedo calls him Colom,
it is a question if he chose the form of Colon before he became famous
by his voyage.
[Sidenote: The Genoese in Spain.]
The Genoese had been for a long period a privileged people in Spain,
dating such acceptance back to the time of St. Ferdinand. Navarrete has
instanced numerous confirmations of these early favors by successive
monarchs down to the time of Columbus. But neither this prestige of his
birthright nor the letter of Friar Perez had been sufficient to secure
in the busy camp at Cordoba any recognition of this otherwise unheralded
and humble suitor. The power of the sovereigns was overtaxed already in
the engrossing preparations which the Court and army were making for a
vigorous campaign against the Moors. The exigencies of the war carried
the sovereigns, sometimes together and at other times apart, from point
to point. Siege after siege was conducted, and Talavera, whose devotion
had been counted upon by Columbus, had too much to occupy his attention,
to give ear to propositions which at best he deemed chimerical.
[Sidenote: Columbus in Cordoba.]
We know in a vague way that while the Court was thus withdrawn from
Cordoba the disheartened wanderer remained in that city, supporting
himself, according to Bernaldez, in drafting charts and in selling
printed books, which Harrisse suspects may have been publications, such
as were then current, containing calendars and astronomical predictions,
like the _Lunarios_ of Granollach and Andrès de Li.
[Sidenote: Makes acquaintances.]
It was probably at this time, too, that he made the acquaintance of
Alonso de Quintanilla, the comptroller of the finances of Castile. He
attained some terms of friendship with Antonio Geraldini, the papal
nuncio, and his brother, Alexander Geraldini, the tutor of the royal
children. It is claimed that all these friends became interested in his
projects, and were advocates of them.
[Sidenote: Writes out the proofs of a western land.]
We are told by Las Casas that Columbus at one time gathered and placed
in order all the varied manifestations, as he conceived them, of some
such transatlantic region as his theory demanded; and it seems probable
that this task was done during a period of weary waiting in Cordoba. We
know nothing, however, of the manuscript except as Las Casas and the
_Historie_ have used its material, and through them some of the details
have been gleaned in the preceding chapter.
[Sidenote: Mendoza.]
These accessions of friends, aided doubtless by some such systemization
of the knowledge to be brought to the question as this lost manuscript
implies, opened the way to an acquaintance with Pedro Gonzales de
Mendoza, Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain. This prelate,
from the confidence which the sovereigns placed in him, was known in
Martyr's phrase as "the third king of Spain," and it could but be seen
by Columbus that his sympathies were essential to the success of plans
so far reaching as his own. The cardinal was gracious in his
intercourse, and by no means inaccessible to such a suitor as Columbus;
but he was educated in the exclusive spirit of the prevailing theology,
and he had a keen scent for anything that might be supposed heterodox.
It proved necessary for the thought of a spherical earth to rest some
time in his mind, till his ruminations could bring him to a perception
of the truths of science.
[Sidenote: Gets the ear of Ferdinand for Columbus.]
According to the reports which Oviedo gives us, the seed which Columbus
sowed, in his various talks with the cardinal, in due time germinated,
and the constant mentor of the sovereigns was at last brought to prepare
the way, so that Columbus could have a royal audience. Thus it was that
Columbus finally got the ear of Ferdinand, at Salamanca, whither the
monarchs had come for a winter's sojourn after the turmoils of a
summer's campaign against the Moors.
[Sidenote: Characters of the sovereigns of Spain.]
We cannot proceed farther in this narrative without understanding, in
the light of all the early and late evidence which we have, what kind of
beings these sovereigns of Aragon and Castile were, with whom Columbus
was to have so much intercourse in the years to come. Ferdinand and
Isabella, the wearers of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, were linked
in common interests, and their joint reign had augured a powerful,
because united, Spain. The student of their characters, as he works
among the documents of the time, cannot avoid the recognition of
qualities little calculated to satisfy demands for nobleness and
devotion which the world has learned to associate with royal
obligations. It may be possibly too much to say that habitually, but not
too much to assert that often, these Spanish monarchs were more ready at
perfidy and deceit than even an allowance for the teachings of their
time would permit. Often the student will find himself forced to grant
that the queen was more culpable in these respects than the king. An
anxious inquirer into the queen's ways is not quite sure that she was
able to distinguish between her own interests and those of God. The
documentary researches of Bergenroth have decidedly lowered her in the
judgments of those who have studied that investigator's results. We need
to plead the times for her, and we need to push the plea very far.
[Sidenote: Isabella.]
"Perhaps," says Helps, speaking of Isabella, "there is hardly any great
personage whose name and authority are found in connection with so much
that is strikingly evil, all of it done, or rather assented to, upon the
highest and purest motives." To palliate on such grounds is to believe
in the irresponsibility of motives, which should transcend times and
occasions.
She is not, however, without loyal adulators of her own time and race.
We read in Oviedo of her splendid soul. Peter Martyr found commendations
of ordinary humanity not enough for her. Those nearest her person spoke
as admiringly. It is the fortune, however, of a historical student, who
lies beyond the influence of personal favor, to read in archives her
most secret professions, and to gauge the innermost wishes of a soul
which was carefully posed before her contemporaries. It is mirrored
to-day in a thousand revealing lenses that were not to be seen by her
contemporaries. Irving and Prescott simply fall into the adulation of
her servitors, and make her confessors responsible for her acquiescence
in the expulsion of the Jews and in the horrors of the Inquisition.
[Sidenote: Ferdinand.]
The king, perhaps, was good enough for a king as such personages went in
the fifteenth century; but his smiles and remorseless coldness were
mixed as few could mix them, even in those days. If the Pope regarded
him from Italy, that Holy Father called him pious. The modern student
finds him a bigot. His subjects thought him great and glorious, but they
did not see his dispatches, nor know his sometimes baleful domination in
his cabinet. The French would not trust him. The English watched his
ambition. The Moors knew him as their conqueror. The Jews fled before
his evil eye. The miserable saw him in his inquisitors. All this
pleased the Pope, and the papal will made him in preferred phrase His
Most Catholic Majesty,--a phrase that rings in diplomatic formalities
to-day.
Every purpose upon which he had set his heart was apt to blind him to
aught else, and at times very conveniently so. We may allow that it is
precisely this single mind which makes a conspicuous name in history;
but conspicuousness and justness do not always march with a locked step.
He had, of course, virtues that shone when the sun shone. He could be
equable. He knew how to work steadily, to eat moderately, and to dress
simply. He was enterprising in his actions, as the Moors and heretics
found out. He did not extort money; he only extorted agonized
confessions. He said masses, and prayed equally well for God's
benediction on evil as on good things. He made promises, and then got
the papal dispensation to break them. He juggled in state policy as his
mind changed, and he worked his craft very readily. Machiavelli would
have liked this in him, and indeed he was a good scholar of an existing
school, which counted the act of outwitting better than the arts of
honesty; and perhaps the world is not loftier in the purposes of
statecraft to-day. He got people to admire him, but few to love him.
[Sidenote: Columbus's views considered by Talavera and others.]
[Sidenote: At Salamanca.]
The result of an audience with the king was that the projects of
Columbus were committed to Talavera, to be laid by him before such a
body of wise men as the prior could gather in council. Las Casas says
that the consideration of the plans was entrusted to "certain persons of
the Court," and he enumerates Cardinal Mendoza, Diego de Deza, Alonso de
Cardenas, and Juan Cabrero, the royal chamberlain. The meeting was
seemingly held in the winter of 1486-87. The Catholic writers accuse
Irving, and apparently with right, of an unwarranted assumption of the
importance of what he calls the Council at Salamanca, and they find he
has no authority for it, except a writer one hundred and twenty years
after the event, who mentions the matter but incidentally. This source
was Remesal's _Historia de Chyapa_ (Madrid, 1619), an account of one of
the Mexican provinces. There seems no reason to suppose that at best it
was anything more than some informal conference of Talavera with a few
councilors, and in no way associated with the prestige of the university
at Salamanca. The registers of the university, which begin back of the
assigned date for such Council, have been examined in vain for any
reference to it.
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA.
[_España_, p. 132]]
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO COLUMBUS ERECTED AT GENOA, 1862.]
The "Junta of Salamanca" has passed into history as a convocation of
considerable extent and importance, and a representation of it is made
to adorn one of the bas-reliefs of the Admiral's monument at Genoa. We
have, however, absolutely no documentary records of it. Of whatever
moment it may have been, if the problem as Columbus would have presented
it had been discussed, the reports, if preserved, could have thrown
much light upon the relations which the cosmographical views of its
principal character bore to the opinions then prevailing in learned
circles of Spain. We know what the _Historie_, Bernaldez, and Las Casas
tell us of Columbus's advocacy, but we must regret the loss of his own
language and his own way of explaining himself to these learned men.
Such a paper would serve a purpose of showing how, in this period of
courageous and ardent insistence on a physical truth, he stood manfully
for the light that was in him; and it would afford a needed foil to
those pitiful aberrations of intellect which, in the years following,
took possession of him, and which were so constantly reiterated with
painful and maundering wailing.
[Sidenote: Find favor with Deza.]
Discarding, then, the array of argument which Irving borrows from
Remesal, and barely associating a little conference, in which Columbus
is a central figure, with that St. Stephen's convent whose wondrous
petrifactions of creamy and reticulated stone still hold the admiring
traveler, we must accept nothing more about its meetings than the scant
testimony which has come down to us. It is pleasant to think how it was
here that the active interest which Diego de Deza, a Dominican friar,
finally took in the cause of Columbus may have had its beginning; but
the extent of our positive knowledge regarding the meeting is the
deposition of Rodriguez de Maldonado, who simply says that several
learned men and mariners, hearing the arguments of Columbus, decided
they could not be true, or at least a majority so decided, and that this
testimony against Columbus had no effect to convince him of his errors.
This is all that the "Junta of Salamanca" meant. A minority of unknown
size favored the advocate.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1487. The Court at Cordoba.]
[Sidenote: Malaga surrenders, 1487.]
When the spring of 1487 came, and the court departed to Cordoba, and
began to make preparations for the campaign against Malaga, there was no
hope that the considerations which had begun in the learned sessions at
Salamanca would be followed up. Columbus seems to have journeyed after
the Court in its migrations: sometimes lured by pittances doled out to
him by the royal treasurer; sometimes getting pecuniary assistance from
his new friend, Diego de Deza; selling now and then a map that he had
made, it may be; and accepting hospitality where he could get it, from
such as Alonso de Quintanilla. In these wandering days, he was for a
while, at least, in attendance on the Court, then surrounded with
military parade, before the Moorish stronghold at Malaga. The town
surrendered on August 18, 1487, and the Court then returned to Cordoba.
[Illustration: SPAIN, 1482.
[From the _Ptolemy_ of 1482.]]
[Sidenote: 1487. Intimacy of Columbus with Beatrix Enriquez.]
[Sidenote: Ferdinand Columbus born, 1488.]
It was in the autumn of 1487, at Cordoba, that Columbus fell into such
an intimacy as spousehood only can sanction with a person of good
condition as to birth, but poor in the world's goods. Whether this
relation had the sanction of the Church or not has been a subject of
much inquiry and opinion. The class of French writers, who are aiming to
secure the canonization of Columbus, have found it essential to clear
the moral character of Columbus from every taint, and they confidently
assert, and doubtless think they show, that nothing but conjugal right
is manifest in this connection,--a question which the Church will in due
time have to decide, if it ever brings itself to the recognition of the
saintly character of the great discoverer. Even the ardent supporters of
the cause of beatification are forced to admit that there is no record
of such a marriage. No contemporary recognition of such a relation is
evinced by any family ceremonies of baptism or the like, and there is no
mention of a wife in all the transactions of the crowning endeavors of
his life. As viceroy, at a later day, he constantly appears with no
attendant vice-queen. She is absolutely out of sight until Columbus
makes a significant reference to her in his last will, when he
recommends this Beatrix Enriquez to his lawful son Diego; saying that
she is a person to whom the testator had been under great obligations,
and that his conscience is burdened respecting her, for a reason which
he does not then think fitting to explain. This testamentary behest and
acknowledgment, in connection with other manifestations, and the absence
of proof to the contrary, has caused the belief to be general among his
biographers, early and late, that the fruit of this intimacy, Ferdinand
Columbus, was an illegitimate offspring. He was born, as near as can be
made out, on the 15th of August, 1488. The mother very likely received
for a while some consolation from her lover, but Columbus did not
apparently carry her to Seville, when he went there himself; and the
support which he gave her was not altogether regularly afforded, and was
never of the quality which he asked Diego to grant to her when he died.
She unquestionably survived the making of Diego's will in 1523, and then
she fades into oblivion. Her son, Ferdinand, if he is the author of the
_Historie_, makes no mention of a marriage to his mother, though he is
careful to record the one which was indisputably legal, and whose fruit
was Diego, the Admiral's successor. The lawful son was directed by
Columbus, when starting on his third voyage, to pay to Beatrix ten
thousand maravedis a year; but he seems to have neglected to do so for
the last three or four years of her life. Diego finally ordered these
arrears to be paid to her heirs. Las Casas distinctly speaks of
Ferdinand as a natural son, and Las Casas had the best of opportunities
for knowing whereof he wrote.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Columbus sends his brother to England.]
[Sidenote: Relations of England to the views of Columbus.]
While all this suspense and amorous intrigue were perplexing the ardent
theorist, he is supposed to have dispatched his brother Bartholomew to
England to disclose his projects to Henry VII. Hakluyt, in his _Westerne
Planting_, tells us that it "made much for the title of the kings of
England" to the New World that Henry VII. gave a ready acceptance to the
theory of Columbus as set forth somewhat tardily by his brother
Bartholomew, when escaping from the detention of the pirates, he was at
last able, on February 13, 1488, to offer in England his sea-card,
embodying Christopher's theories, for the royal consideration.
[Sidenote: The Cabots in England.]
William Castell, in his _Short Discovery of America_, says that Henry
VII. "unhappily refused to be at any charge in the discovery, supposing
the learned Columbus to build castles in the air." It is a common story
that Henry finally brought himself to accede to the importunities of
Bartholomew, but only at a late day, and after Christopher had effected
his conquest of the Spanish Court. Columbus himself is credited with
saying that Henry actually wrote him a letter of acceptance. This
epistle was very likely a fruition of the new impulses to oceanic
discovery which the presence, a little later, of the Venetian Cabots,
was making current among the English sailors; for John Cabot and his
sons, one of whom, Sebastian, being at that time a youth of sixteen or
seventeen, had, according to the best testimony, established a home in
Bristol, not far from 1490.
If the report of the Spanish envoy in England to his sovereigns is
correct as to dates, it was near this time that the Bristol merchants
were renewing their quests oceanward for the islands of Brazil and the
Seven Cities. We have seen that these islands with others had for some
time appeared on the conjectural charts of the Atlantic, and very likely
they had appeared on the sea-card shown by Bartholomew Columbus to Henry
VII. These efforts may perhaps have been in a measure instigated by that
fact. At all events, any hazards of further western exploration could be
met with greater heart if such stations of progress could be found in
mid ocean. Of the report of all this which Bartholomew may have made to
his brother we know absolutely nothing, and he seems not to have
returned to Spain till after a sojourn in France which ended in 1494.
[Sidenote: Columbus invited back to Portugal.]
It was believed by Irving that Columbus, having opened a correspondence
with the Portuguese king respecting a return to the service of that
country, had received from that monarch an epistle, dated March 20,
1488, in which he was permitted to come back, with the offer of
protection against any suit of civil or criminal nature, and that this
had been declined. We are left to conjecture of what suits of either
kind he could have been apprehensive.
Humboldt commends the sagacity of Navarrete in discerning that it was
not so much the persuasion of Diego de Deza which kept Columbus at this
time from accepting such royal offers, as the illicit connection which
he had formed in Cordoba with Doña Beatrix Enriquez, who before the
summer was over had given birth to a son.
On the other hand, that the permission was not neglected seems proved by
a memorandum made by Columbus's own hand in a copy of Pierre d'Ailly's
_Imago Mundi_, preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, where,
under date of December, 1488, "at Lisbon," he speaks of the return of
Diaz from his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. This proof is indeed
subject to the qualification that Las Casas has considered the
handwriting of the note to be that of Bartholomew Columbus, but Harrisse
has no question of its identity with the chirography of Columbus. This
last critic ventures the conjecture that it was in some way to settle
the estate of his wife that Columbus at this time visited Portugal.
[Sidenote: Spanish subsidies withheld.]
Columbus had ceased to receive the Spanish subsidies in June, 1488, or
at least we know no record of any later largess. Ferdinand was born to
him in August. It was very likely subsequent to this last event
that Columbus crossed the Spanish frontier into Portugal, if Harrisse's
view of his crossing at all be accepted. His stay was without doubt a
short one, and from 1489 to 1492 there is every indication that he never
left the Spanish kingdom.
[Sidenote: Duke of Medina-Celi harbors Columbus.]
We know on the testimony of a letter of Luis de la Cerda, the Duke of
Medina-Celi, given in Navarrete, that for two years after the arrival of
Columbus from Portugal he had been a guest under the duke's roof in
Cogulludo, and it seems to Harrisse probable that this gracious help on
the part of the duke was bestowed after the return to Spain. All that we
know with certainty of its date is that it occurred before the first
voyage, the duke himself mentioning it in a letter of March 19, 1493.
[Sidenote: 1489. Columbus ordered to Cordoba.]
It was not till May, 1489, when the court was again at Cordoba,
according to Diego Ortiz de Zuñiga, in his work on Seville, that the
sovereigns were gracious enough to order Columbus to appear there, when
they furnished him lodgings. They also, perhaps, at the same time,
issued a general order, dated at Cordoba May 12, in which all cities and
towns were directed to furnish suitable accommodations to Columbus and
his attendants, inasmuch as he was journeying in the royal service.
[Sidenote: Columbus at the siege of Baza.]
[Sidenote: Friars from the Holy Sepulchre.]
The year 1489 was a hazardous but fruitful one. The sovereigns were
pushing vigorously their conquest of the Moor. Isabella herself attended
the army, and may have appeared in the beleaguering lines about Baza, in
one of those suits of armor which are still shown to travelers. Zuñiga
says that Columbus arrayed himself among the combatants, and was
doubtless acquainted with the mission of two friars who had been
guardians of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. These priests arrived
during the siege, bringing a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt, in
which that potentate threatened to destroy all Christians within his
grasp, unless the war against Granada should be stopped. The point of
driving the Moors from Spain was too nearly reached for such a threat to
be effective, and Isabella decreed the annual payment of a thousand
ducats to support the faithful custodians of the Sepulchre, and sent a
veil embroidered with her own hand to decorate the shrine. Irving traces
to this circumstance the impulse, which Columbus frequently in later
days showed, to devote the anticipated wealth of the Indies to a crusade
in Palestine, to recover and protect the Holy Sepulchre.
[Sidenote: Boabdil surrenders, December 22, 1489.]
[Sidenote: Columbus's views again considered.]
The campaign closed with the surrender on December 22 of the fortress of
Baza, when Spain received from Muley Boabdil, the elder of the rival
Moorish kings, all the territory which he claimed to have in his power.
In February, 1490, Ferdinand and Isabella entered Seville in triumph,
and a season of hilarity and splendor followed, signalized in the spring
by the celebration with great jubilation of the marriage of the Princess
Isabella with Don Alonzo, the heir to the crown of Portugal. These
engrossing scenes were little suited to give Columbus a chance to press
his projects on the Court. He soon found nothing could be done to get
the farther attention of the monarchs till some respites occurred in the
preparations for their final campaign against the younger Moorish king.
It was at this time, as Irving and others have conjectured, that the
consideration of the project of a western passage, which had been
dropped when events moved the Court from Salamanca, was again taken up
by such investigators as Talavera had summoned, and again the result was
an adverse decision. This determination was communicated by Talavera
himself to the sovereign, and it was accompanied by the opinion that it
did not become great princes to engage in such chimerical undertakings.
[Sidenote: Deza impressed.]
[Sidenote: Delays.]
It is supposed, however, that the decision was not reached without some
reservation in the minds of certain of the reviewers, and that
especially this was the case with Diego de Deza, who showed that the
stress of the arguments advanced by Columbus had not been without
result. This friar was tutor to Prince Juan, and it was not difficult
for him to modify the emphatic denial of the judges. It was the pride of
those who later erected the tombstone of Deza, in the cathedral at
Seville, to inscribe upon it that he was the generous and faithful
patron of Columbus. A temporizing policy was, therefore, adopted by the
monarchs, and Columbus was informed that for the present the perils and
expenses of the war called for an undivided attention, and that further
consideration of his project must be deferred till the war was over. It
was at Cordoba that this decision reached Columbus.
[Sidenote: Columbus goes to Seville; but is repelled.]
In his eagerness of hope he suspected that the judgment had received
some adverse color in passing through Talavera's mind, and so he
hastened to Seville, but only to meet the same chilling repulse from the
monarchs themselves. With dashed expectations he left the city, feeling
that the instrumentality of Talavera, as Peter Martyr tells us, had
turned the sovereigns against him.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE.
[From Parcerisa and Quadrado's _España_.]]
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF CORDOBA.
[From Parcerisa and Quadrado's _España_.]]
[Sidenote: Seeks the grandees of Spain.]
[Sidenote: Medina-Sidonia and Medina-Celi.]
Columbus now sought to engage the attention of some of the powerful
grandees of Spain, who, though subjects, were almost autocratic in their
own regions, serving the Crown not so much as vassals as sympathetic
helpers in its wars. They were depended upon to recruit the armies from
their own trains and dependents; money came from their chests,
provisions from their estates, and ships from their own marine; their
landed patrimonies, indeed, covered long stretches of the coast, whose
harbors sheltered their considerable navies. Such were the dukes of
Medina-Sidonia and Medina-Celi. Columbus found in them, however, the
same wariness which he had experienced at the greater court. There was a
willingness to listen; they found some lures in the great hopes of
Eastern wealth which animated Columbus, but in the end there was the
same disappointment. One of them, the Duke of Medina-Celi, at last
adroitly parried the importunities of Columbus, by averring that the
project deserved the royal patronage rather than his meaner aid. He,
however, told the suitor, if a farther application should be made to the
Crown at some more opportune moment, he would labor with the queen in
its behalf. The duke kept his word, and we get much of what we know of
his interest in Columbus from the information given by one of the duke's
household to Las Casas. This differs so far as to make the duke, perhaps
as Harrisse thinks in the spring of 1491, actually fit out some caravels
for the use of Columbus; but when seeking a royal license, he was
informed that the queen had determined to embark in the enterprise
herself. Such a decision seems to carry this part of the story, at
least, forward to a time when Columbus was summoned from Rabida.
[Sidenote: Columbus at Rabida.]
A consultation which now took place at the convent of Rabida affords
particulars which the historians have found difficulty, as already
stated, in keeping distinct from those of an earlier visit, if there was
such. Columbus, according to the usual story, visited the convent
apparently in October or November, 1491, with the purpose of reclaiming
his son Diego, and taking him to Cordoba, where he might be left with
Ferdinand in the charge of the latter's mother. Columbus himself
intended to pass to France, to see if a letter, which had been received
from the king of France, might possibly open the way to the fulfillment
of his great hopes. It is represented that it was this expressed
intention of abandoning Spain which aroused the patriotism of Marchena,
who undertook to prevent the sacrifice.
[Sidenote: Marchena encourages him.]
[Sidenote: Talks with Pinzon.]
We derive what we know of his method of prevention from the testimony of
Garcia Fernandez, the physician of Palos, who has been cited in respect
to the alleged earlier visit. This witness says that he was summoned to
Rabida to confer with Columbus. It is also made a part of the story that
the head of a family of famous navigators in Palos, Martin Alonso
Pinzon, was likewise drawn into the little company assembled by the
friar to consider the new situation. Pinzon readily gave his adherence
to the views of Columbus. It is claimed, however, that the presence of
Pinzon is disproved by documents showing him to have been in Rome at
this time.
[Sidenote: Cousin's alleged voyage, 1488,]
[Sidenote: and Pinzon's supposed connection with it.]
An alleged voyage of Jean Cousin, in 1488, two years and more before
this, from Dieppe to the coast of Brazil, is here brought in by certain
French writers, like Estancelin and Gaffarel, as throwing some light on
the intercourse of Columbus and Pinzon, later if not now. It must be
acknowledged that few other than French writers have credited the voyage
at all. Major, who gave the story careful examination, utterly
discredits it. It is a part of the story that one Pinzon, a Castilian,
accompanied Cousin as a pilot, and this man is identified by these
French writers as the navigator who is now represented as yielding a
ready credence to the views of Columbus, and for the reason that he knew
more than he openly professed. They find in the later intercourse of
Columbus and this Pinzon certain evidence of the estimation in which
Columbus seemed to hold the practiced judgment, if not the knowledge, of
Pinzon. This they think conspicuous in the yielding which Columbus made
to Pinzon's opinion during Columbus's first voyage, in changing his
course to the southwest, which is taken to have been due to a knowledge
of Pinzon's former experience in passing those seas in 1488. They trace
to it the confidence of Pinzon in separating from the Admiral on the
coast of Cuba, and in his seeking to anticipate Columbus by an earlier
arrival at Palos, on the return, as the reader will later learn. Thus it
is ingeniously claimed that the pilot of Cousin and colleague of
Columbus were one and the same person. It has hardly convinced other
students than the French. When the Pinzon of the "Pinta" at a later day
was striving to discredit the leadership of Columbus, in the famous
suit of the Admiral's heirs, he could hardly, for any reason which the
French writers aver, have neglected so important a piece of evidence as
the fact of the Cousin voyage and his connection with it, if there had
been any truth in it.
[Sidenote: Pinzon aids Columbus,]
So we must be content, it is pretty clear, in charging Pinzon's
conversion to the views of Columbus at Rabida upon the efficacy of
Columbus's arguments. This success of Columbus brought some substantial
fruit in the promise which Pinzon now made to bear the expenses of a
renewed suit to Ferdinand and Isabella.
[Sidenote: and Rodriguez goes to Santa Fé, with a letter to the queen.]
[Sidenote: Marchena follows.]
[Sidenote: The queen invites Columbus once more.]
A conclusion to the deliberation of this little circle in the convent
was soon reached. Columbus threw his cause into the hands of his
friends, and agreed to rest quietly in the convent while they pressed
his claims. Perez wrote a letter of supplication to the Queen, and it
was dispatched by a respectable navigator of the neighborhood, Sebastian
Rodriguez. He found the Queen in the city of Santa Fé, which had grown
up in the military surroundings before the city of Granada, whose siege
the Spanish armies were then pressing. The epistle was opportune, for it
reënforced one which she had already received from the Duke of
Medina-Celi, who had been faithful to his promise to Columbus, and who,
judging from a letter which he wrote at a later day, March 19, 1493,
took to himself not a little credit that he had thus been instrumental,
as he thought, in preventing Columbus throwing himself into the service
of France. The result was that the pilot took back to Rabida an
intimation to Marchena that his presence would be welcome at Santa Fé.
So mounting his mule, after midnight, fourteen days after Rodriguez had
departed, the friar followed the pilot's tracks, which took him through
some of the regions already conquered from the Moors, and, reaching the
Court, presented himself before the Queen. Perez is said to have found a
seconder in Luis de Santangel, a fiscal officer of Aragon, and in the
Marchioness of Moya, one of the ladies of the household. The friar is
thought to have urged his petition so strongly that the Queen, who had
all along been more open to the representations of Columbus than
Ferdinand had been, finally determined to listen once more to the
Genoese's appeals.
[Sidenote: Columbus reaches Santa Fé, December, 1491.]
[Sidenote: Quintanilla and Mendoza.]
Learning of the poor plight of Columbus, she ordered a gratuity to be
sent to him, to restore his wardrobe and to furnish himself with the
conveniences of the journey. Perez, having borne back the happy news,
again returned to the Court, with Columbus under his protection. Thus
once more buoyed in hope, and suitably arrayed for appearing at Court,
Columbus, on his mule, early in December, 1491, rode into the camp at
Santa Fé, where he was received and provided with lodgings by the
accountant-general. This officer was one whom he had occasion happily to
remember, Alonso de Quintanilla, through whose offices it was, in the
end, that the Grand Cardinal of Spain, Mendoza, was at this time brought
into sympathy with the Genoese aspirant.
[Sidenote: Boabdil the younger submits.]
[Sidenote: The Moorish wars end.]
Military events were still too imposing, however, for any immediate
attention to his projects, and he looked on with admiration and a
reserved expectancy, while the grand parade of the final submission of
Boabdil the younger, the last of the Moorish kings, took place, and a
long procession of the magnificence of Spain moved forward from the
beleaguering camp to receive the keys of the Alhambra. Wars succeeding
wars for nearly eight centuries had now come to an end. The Christian
banner of Spain floated over the Moorish palace. The kingdom was alive
in all its provinces. Congratulation and jubilation, with glitter and
vauntings, pervaded the air.
[Sidenote: Talavera and Columbus.]
Few observed the humble Genoese who stood waiting the sovereigns'
pleasure during all this tumult of joy; but he was not forgotten. They
remembered, as he did, the promise given him at Seville. The war was
over, and the time was come. Talavera had by this time gone so far
towards an appreciation of Columbus's views that Peter Martyr tells him,
at a later day, that the project would not have succeeded without him.
He was directed to confer with the expectant dreamer, and Cardinal
Mendoza became prominent in the negotiations.
Columbus's position was thus changed. He had been a suitor. He was now
sought. He had been persuaded from his purposed visit to France, in
order that he might by his plans rehabilitate Spain with a new glory,
complemental to her martial pride. This view as presented by Perez to
Isabella had been accepted, and Columbus was summoned to present his
case.
[Sidenote: The mistake of Columbus.]
Here, when he seemed at last to be on the verge of success, the poor
man, unused to good fortune, and mistaking its token, repeated the
mistake which had driven him an outcast from Portugal. His arrogant
spirit led him to magnify his importance before he had proved it; and he
failed in the modesty which marks a conquering spirit.
True science places no gratulations higher than those of its own
conscience. Copernicus was at this moment delving into the secrets of
nature like a nobleman of the universe. So he stands for all time in
lofty contrast to the plebeian nature and sordid cravings of his
contemporary.
[Sidenote: His pretensions.]
When, at the very outset of the negotiations, Talavera found this
uplifted suitor making demands that belonged rather to proved success
than to a contingent one, there was little prospect of accommodation,
unless one side or the other should abandon its position. If Columbus's
own words count for anything, he was conscious of being a
laughing-stock, while he was making claims for office and emoluments
that would mortgage the power of a kingdom. A dramatic instinct has in
many minds saved Columbus from the critical estimate of such
presumption. Irving and the French canonizers dwell on what strikes them
as constancy of purpose and loftiness of spirit. They marvel that
poverty, neglect, ridicule, contumely, and disappointment had not
dwarfed his spirit. This is the vulgar liking for the hero who is
without heroism, and the martyr who makes a trade of it. The honest
historian has another purpose. He tries to gauge pretense by wisdom.
Columbus was indeed to succeed; but his success was an error in
geography, and a failure in policy and in morals. The Crown was yet to
succumb; but its submission was to entail miseries upon Columbus and his
line, and a reproach upon Spain. The outcome to Columbus and to Spain is
the direst comment of all.
Columbus would not abate one jot of his pretensions, and an end was put
to the negotiations. Making up his mind to carry his suit to France, he
left Cordoba on his mule, in the beginning of February, 1492.