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[1485 A.D.] upon schemes of vast benefit to mankind, he had suffered his own affairs to go to ruin, and was reduced to struggle hard with poverty; nor is it one of the least interesting circumstances in his eventful life that he had, in a manner, to beg his way from court to court, to offer to princes the discovery of a world.

Columbus in Spain (1485–1492 A.D.)

The immediate movements of Columbus on leaving Portugal are involved in uncertainty. It is said that about this time he made a proposition of his enterprise, in person, as he had formerly done by letter, to the government of Genoa. The republic, however, was in a languishing decline, and embarrassed by a foreign war. Thus Genoa, disheartened by her reverses, shut her ears to the proposition of Columbus, which might have elevated her to tenfold. splendour, and perpetuated within her grasp the golden wand of commerce. While at Genoa, Columbus is said to have made arrangements, out of his scanty means, for the comfort of his aged father. It is also affirmed that about this time he carried his proposal to Venice, where it was declined on account of the critical state of national affairs. This, however, is merely traditional, and unsupported by documentary evidence. The first firm and indisputable trace we have of Columbus after leaving Portugal, is in the south of Spain, in 1485, where we find him seeking his fortune among the Spanish nobles, several of whom had vast possessions, and exercised almost independent sovereignty in their domains.

Columbus had many interviews with the duke of Medina Sidonia, who was tempted, for a time, by the splendid prospects held out; but their very splendour threw a colouring of improbability over the enterprise, and he finally rejected it as the dream of an Italian visionary. The duke of Medina Celi was likewise favourable at the outset, but he suddenly changed his mind. Finding, however, that Columbus intended to make his next application to the king of France, and loth that an enterprise of such importance should be lost to Spain, the duke wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending it strongly to her attention. The queen made a favourable reply, and requested that Columbus might be sent to her. He accordingly set out for the Spanish court, then at Cordova, bearing a letter to the queen from the duke, soliciting that, in case the expedition should be carried into effect, he might have a share in it, and the fitting out of the armament from his port of St. Mary, as a recompense for having waived the enterprise in favour of the crown.

The time when Columbus thus sought his fortunes at the court of Spain coincided with one of the most brilliant periods of the Spanish monarchy. The union of the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, had consolidated the Christian power in the peninsula, and put an end to those internal feuds, which had so long distracted the country, and insured the domination of the Moslems. The whole force of united Spain was now exerted in the chivalrous enterprise of the Moorish conquest. Ferdinand and Isabella, it has been remarked, lived together not like man and wife, whose estates are common, under the orders of the husband, but like two monarchs strictly allied. They had separate claims to sovereignty, in virtue of their respective kingdoms; they had separate councils, and were often distant from each other in different parts of their empire, each exercising the royal authority. Yet they were so happily united by common views, common interests, and a great deference for each other, that this double administration never prevented a unity of purpose and of action. All acts of sovereignty were

[1487 A.D.]

executed in both their names; all public writings were subscribed with both their signatures; their likenesses were stamped together on the public coin; and the royal seal displayed the united arms of Castile and Aragon.

When Columbus arrived at Cordova, he was given in charge to Alonzo de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile. This was an unpropitious moment to urge a suit like that of Columbus. In fact the sovereigns had not a moment of leisure throughout this eventful year.

While thus lingering in idle suspense in Cordova, he became attached to a lady of the city, Beatrix Enriquez by name, of a noble family, though in reduced circumstances. Their connection was not sanctioned by marriage; yet he cherished sentiments of respect and tenderness for her to his dying day. She was the mother of his second son, Fernando, born in the following year (1487), whom he always treated on terms of perfect equality with his legitimate son Diego, and who after his death became his historian.

In the winter, Columbus followed the court to Salamanca. Here his zealous friend, Alonzo de Quintanilla, exerted his influence to obtain for him the countenance of the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo and grand cardinal of Spain. This was the most important personage about the court; and was facetiously called by Peter Martyr, the "third king of Spain." Through his representations Columbus at length obtained admission to the royal presence. We have but scanty particulars of this audience, nor can we ascertain whether Queen Isabella was present on the occasion; the contrary seems to be most probably the case.

Ferdinand was cool and wary, and would not trust his own judgment. He determined to take the opinion of the most learned men in the kingdom, and to be guided by their decision. Fernando de Talavera, prior of the monastery of Prado and confessor of the queen, one of the most erudite men of Spain, and high in the royal confidence, was commanded to assemble the most learned astronomers and cosmographers for the purpose of holding a conference with Columbus, and examining him as to the grounds on which he founded his proposition. After they had informed themselves fully on the subject, they were to consult together, and make a report to the sovereign of their collective opinion.

Columbus Before the Council of Salamanca

The interesting conference relative to the proposition of Columbus took place in Salamanca, the great seat of learning in Spain. It was held in the Dominican convent of St. Stephen, in which he was lodged and entertained with great hospitality during the course of the examination. Religion and science were at that time, and more especially in that country, closely associated. The treasures of learning were immured in monasteries, and the professors' chairs were exclusively filled from the cloister. The domination. of the clergy extended over the state as well as the church, and posts of honour and influence at court, with the exception of hereditary nobles, were almost entirely confined to ecclesiastics. The era was distinguished for the revival of learning, but still more for the prevalence of religious zeal, and Spain surpassed all other countries of Christendom in the fervour of her devotion. The Inquisition had just been established in that kingdom, and every opinion that savoured of heresy exposed its owner to odium and persecution.

Such was the period when a council of clerical sages was convened in the collegiate convent of St. Stephen, to investigate the new theory of Columbus. It was composed of professors of astronomy, geography, mathematics, and

[1487 A.D. other branches of science, together with various dignitaries of the church, and learned friars. Before this erudite assembly, Columbus presented himself to propound and defend his conclusions. Columbus appeared in a most unfavourable light before a scholastic body: an obscure navigator, a member of no learned institution, destitute of all the trappings and circumstances which sometimes give oracular authority to dulness, and depending upon the mere force of natural genius. Some of the junto entertained the popular notion that he was an adventurer, or at best a visionary; and others had that morbid impatience of any innovation upon established doctrine, which is apt to grow upon dull and pedantic men in cloistered life. What a striking spectacle must the hall of the old convent have presented at this memorable conference! A simple mariner, standing forth in the midst of an imposing array of professors, friars, and dignitaries of the church; maintaining his theory with natural eloquence, and, as it were, pleading the cause of the New World.

Several of the objections proposed by this learned body have been handed down to us, and have provoked many a sneer at the expense of the University of Salamanca; but they are proofs, not so much of the peculiar deficiency of that institution, as of the imperfect state of science at the time, and the manner in which knowledge, though rapidly extending, was still impeded in its progress by monastic bigotry.

Thus, at the very threshold of the discussion, instead of geographical objections, Columbus was assailed with citations from the Bible and the Testament: the book of Genesis, the psalms of David, the prophets, the epistles, and the gospels. To these were added the expositions of various saints and reverend commentators: St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. Gregory, St. Basil and St. Ambrose, and Lactantius Firmianus, a redoubted champion of the faith. Doctrinal points were mixed up with philosophical discussions, and a mathematical demonstration was allowed no weight, if it appeared to clash with a text of Scripture, or a commentary of one of the fathers. Thus the possibility of antipodes, in the southern hemisphere, an opinion so generally maintained by the wisest of the ancients, as to be pronounced by Pliny i the great contest between the learned and the ignorant, became a stumbling-block with some of the sages of Salamanca. Several of them stoutly contradicted this fundamental position of Columbus, supporting themselves by quotations from Lactantius and St. Augustine, who were considered in those days as almost evangelical authority. But, though these writers were men of consummate erudition, and two of the greatest luminaries of what has been called the golden age of ecclesiastical learning, yet their writings were calculated to perpetuate darkness in respect to the sciences.

The passage cited from Lactantius kk to confute Columbus, is in a strain of gross ridicule, unworthy of so grave a theologian. "Is there any one so foolish," he asks, "as to believe that there are antipodes with their feet opposite to ours; people who walk with their heels upward, and their heads hanging down? That there is a part of the world in which all things are topsy-turvy: where the trees grow with their branches downward, and where it rains, hails, and snows upward? The idea of the roundness of the earth," he adds, "was the cause of inventing this fable of the antipodes, with their heels in the air; for these philosophers having once erred, go on in their absurdities, defending one with another."

Objections of a graver nature were advanced on the authority of St. Augustine. He pronounces the doctrine of antipodes to be incompatible with the historical foundations of our faith; since to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite side of the globe would be to maintain that

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there were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening ocean. This would be, therefore, to discredit the Bible, which expressly declares that all men are descended from one common parent. Such were the unlooked-for prejudices which Columbus had to encounter at the very outset of his conference. To his simplest proposition, the spherical form of the earth, were opposed figurative texts of Scripture. They observed that in Psalm 104, verse 3, the heavens are said to be extended like a hide, that is, according to commentators, the curtain or covering of a tent which, among the ancient pastoral nations, was formed of the hides of animals; and that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, compares the heavens to a tabernacle, or tent, extended over the earth, which they thence inferred must be flat.

Columbus, who was a devoutly religious man, found that he was in danger of being convicted not merely of error but of heterodoxy. Others more versed in science admitted the globular form of the earth, and the possibility of an opposite and habitable hemisphere; but they brought up the chimera of the ancients, and maintained that it would be impossible to arrive there, in consequence of the insupportable heat of the torrid zone. Even granting this could be passed, they observed that the circumference of the earth must be so great as to require at least three years to the voyage, and those who should undertake it must perish of hunger and thirst, from the impossibility of carrying provisions for so long a period. He was told, on the authority of Epicurus, that admitting the earth to be spherical, it was only inhabitable in the northern hemisphere, and in that section only was canopied by the heavens; that the opposite half was a chaos, a gulf, or a mere waste of water. Not the least absurd objection advanced was, that should a ship even succeed in reaching in this way, the extremity of India, she could never get back again; for the rotundity of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up which it would be impossible for her to sail with the most favourable wind. Such are specimens of the errors and prejudices, the mingled ignorance and erudition, and the pedantic bigotry, with which Columbus had to contend throughout the examination of his theory. Can we wonder at the difficulties and delays which he experienced at courts, when such vague and crude notions were entertained by the learned men of a university?

There were no doubt objections advanced more cogent in their nature, and more worthy of that distinguished university. It is but justice to add, also, that the replies of Columbus had great weight with many of his learned examiners. In answer to the Scriptural objections, he submitted that the inspired writers were not speaking technically as cosmographers, but figuratively, in language addressed to all comprehensions. The commentaries of the fathers he treated with deference as pious homilies, but not as philosophical propositions which it was necessary either to admit or refute. The objections drawn from ancient philosophers he met boldly and ably upon equal terms; for he was deeply studied on all points of cosmography. He showed that the most illustrious of those sages believed both hemispheres to be inhabitable, though they imagined that the torrid zone precluded communication; and he obviated conclusively that difficulty; for he had voyaged to St. George la Miña in Guinea, almost under the equinoctial line, and had found that region not merely traversable, but abounding in population, in fruits and pasturage.

When Columbus took his stand before this learned body, he had appeared the plain and simple navigator; somewhat daunted, perhaps, by the greatness of his task, and the august nature of his auditory. But he had a degree of religious feeling which gave him a confidence in the execution of what he con

[1488 A.D.] ceived his great errand, and he was of an ardent temperament that became heated in action by its own generous fires. Las Casas,dd and others of his contemporaries, have spoken of his commanding person, his elevated demeanour, his air of authority, his kindling eye, and the persuasive intonations of his voice. How must they have given majesty and force to his words, as, casting aside his maps and charts, and discarding for a time his practical and scientific lore, his visionary spirit took fire at the doctrinal objections of his opponents, and he met them upon their own ground, pouring forth those magnificent texts of Scripture, and those mysterious predictions of the prophets, which, in his enthusiastic moments, he considered as types and annunciations of the sublime discovery which he proposed! One great difficulty was to reconcile the plan of Columbus with the cosmography of Ptolemy, to which all scholars yielded implicit faith. How would the most enlightened of those sages have been astonished, had any one apprised them that the man, Copernicus, was then in existence, whose solar system should reverse the grand theory of Ptolemy, which stationed the earth in the centre of the universe.

Columbus the Victim of Spanish Procrastination

The Castilian court departed from Salamanca early in the spring of 1487 and repaired to Cordova, to prepare for the memorable campaign against Malaga. Fernando de Talavera, later Bishop of Avila, accompanied the queen as her confessor, and as one of her spiritual counsellors in the concerns of the war. The consultations of the board at Salamanca were interrupted by this event, before that learned body could come to a decision, and for a long time Columbus was kept in suspense, vainly awaiting the report that was to decide the fate of his application.

It has generally been supposed that the several years which he wasted in irksome solicitation, were spent in the drowsy and monotonous attendance of antechambers; but it appears on the contrary, that they were often passed amidst scenes of peril and adventure, and that, in following up his suit, he was led into some of the most striking situations of this wild, rugged, and mountainous war. Several times he was summoned to attend conferences in the vicinity of the sovereigns, when besieging cities in the very heart of the Moorish dominions; but the tempest of warlike affairs, which hurried the court from place to place and gave it all the bustle and confusion of a camp, prevented those conferences from taking place, and swept away all concerns that were not immediately connected with the war. Whenever the court had an interval of leisure and repose, there would again be manifested a disposition to consider his proposal, but the hurry and tempest would again return and the question be again swept away.

Wearied and discouraged by these delays, he began to think of applying elsewhere for patronage, and appears to have commenced negotiations with King João II for a return to Portugal. He wrote to that monarch on the subject, and received a letter in reply dated the 20th of March, 1488, inviting him to return to his court, and assuring him of protection from any suits of either a civil or criminal nature, that might be pending against him. He received, also, a letter from Henry VII of England, inviting him to that country, and holding out promises of encouragement. There must have been strong hopes, authorised about this time by the conduct of the Spanish sovereigns, to induce Columbus to neglect these invitations; and we find ground for such a supposition in a memorandum of a sum of money paid to him by the

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