Influences upon Columbus
In the career of Columbus, Portugal was the first turning-point.
Hither he returned in 1477 or 1478; and here, in 1479 or 1480, after
a trip back to Genoa, he married. This event was the reward of his
piety. In Lisbon there was a convent of the religious Order of St.
Jacques, called the Convent of Saints. Its protegees were bound to
vows of chastity — conjugal chastity, not celibacy — and among them
was Felipa, a daughter of two of the noblest of Portuguese houses,
and Felipa was beautiful. Coming daily to the chapel of this convent
to make his devotions, Columbus saw Felipa, fell in love with her,
and they were wed. To the couple, in 1480 or 1481, a child was born
— Columbus's first son, Diego. At this period, too, Columbus became
associated in Lisbon with his younger brother, Bartholomew, a
prepossessing youth of about nineteen, astute, of some education,
and skilled in the art of limning marine charts.
The father of Felipa Columbus was Bartholomew Perestrello, Governor
of Porto Santo of the Madeira Group, and it is a firm tradition
that, at his death in 1457, he left to his wife Isabel, Felipa's
mother, charts and papers which served first to direct Columbus's
mind toward great projects in the West. Another tradition — long
credited, then long discredited, and now revived — was that
Columbus, upon his marriage, settled in the island of Madeira, which
is near to that of Porto Santo, and that, while he was here, a
Spanish ship, which had been driven westward to the island
afterwards found by Columbus and named Española, came forlornly
back, getting as far only as Madeira. Here, so the tradition ran,
the pilot of the ship, together with such of the crew as survived,
debarked; but the crew, famished and sick, all died, leaving only
the pilot. Then he, too, died in the house of Columbus; but not
before he had imparted to his host the amazing story of his voyage
and had given to him his log and a chart of his route.
Be the truth of these two traditions what it may, it is a
well-settled fact that in Portugal Columbus met pilots and captains
and was enabled to accompany Portuguese expeditions down the coast
of Africa. "I was," he says, "at the Fortress of St. George of the
Mine, belonging to the King of Portugal, which lies below the
equinoctial line." The object of such voyages was largely the
discovery of new islands. The Canaries and the Madeiras, the
outermost of the Azores and the Cape Verde Group, all were
treasure-trove of the fifteenth century, and there might well be
others. In these times, indeed, islands rose smiling to greet the
discoverer on his approach. Nay more: where actual islands were not
forthcoming, imaginary ones developed in their stead. But were these
isles as mythical and imaginary as they were represented? The
question is pertinent, for upon the answer depends in good measure
what we shall think of the nature of the incentive which underlay
the voyage of 1492, the voyage resulting in the discovery of
America.
The very appearance of islands like Antillia, Salvagio, Reyella, and
Insula in Mar on charts such, for example, as the "Beccaria" of 1435
attests the prevalence of a tradition — and that a mature one — that
such a group existed. Such a tradition could probably have had but
one origin: chance voyages across the Atlantic from Europe to North
America, and especially to the West India Islands of North America.
Indeed, in 1474 or 1475, Fernão Telles sought the mythical Antillia
— sometimes called the Isle of the Seven Cities — under express
warrant from the King of Portugal, Alfonso V. And in his journal of
1492 Columbus records that "many honorable Spanish gentlemen [of the
Canary Group] declared that every year they saw land to the west of
the Canaries." Again he records that in 1484, when he was in
Portugal, a man [Domimguez do Arco] came to the King "[John II] from
the island of Madeira to beg for a caravel to go to this island that
was seen"; and that "the same thing [the existence of an island in
the West] was affirmed in the Azores." How, therefore, there might
arise a story, true or false, of a shipwrecked pilot who gave to
Columbus the clue to the finding of the island of Española, may
readily be perceived. But, concerning stories of and by pilots, more
anon.
Columbus had now acquired some knowledge of the theory and art of
navigation, and, incidentally, some knowledge of Latin; and having
made up his mind, as had Telles before him, that in the Atlantic to
the west there yet remained "islands and lands" to be discovered, he
obtained an audience with the King of Portugal and laid before him a
definite proposal. He asked for three caravels equipped and supplied
for a year; and, in the event of lands being found, for the
viceroyalty and perpetual government therein, a tenth of the income
therefrom, the rank of nobleman, and the title of grand admiral.
According to Portuguese chroniclers writing in the sixteenth
century, the particular " land " Columbus had in view was Cipangu or
Japan. But, whatever Columbus may have disclosed or reserved with
respect to Japan, or with respect to Antillia, at this first
interview with the Portuguese King, so affronted was the monarch by
what he felt to be the vanity and presumption of the petitioner that
he promptly referred his plea to a council of three experts, by
whom, after some deliberation, it was dismissed. Thereupon Columbus,
late in 1485 or early in 1486, left Portugal for Spain.
At this point in the fortunes of Christopher Columbus, there arises
for consideration a peculiar circumstance. Columbus had a double,
the well-known cosmographer of Nuremberg, Martin Behaim. Like
Columbus, this man was born near the middle of the fifteenth
century; like him, he lacked university training; like him, his
early activities were commercial; like him, he settled in Portugal
(1480-84) ; like him, he voyaged to Africa; like him, he was
identified with an Atlantic island, Fayal in his case, and married
the daughter of the Governor; like him, he was busied with nautical
studies in Lisbon; like him, he was not highly regardful of
veracity; and finally, like him, he died in neglect early in the
sixteenth century. Behaim, however, unlike Columbus, was of
patrician ancestry, was instructed in the use of nautical
instruments, became a Knight of Portugal, and at Lisbon had the
entrée to aristocratic and scientific circles.
The extent of his geographical knowledge may be inferred from a
globe which he completed at Nuremberg in 1492, before the return of
Columbus from his first voyage. His authorities included Aristotle
and Strabo, Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and Sir John Mandeville; but his
chief authority was Pierre d'Ailly, whose Imago Mundi [World
Survey], written in 1410, formed a compendium of the geographical
and cosmographical notions of authors such as Marinus of Tyre and
Alfraganus the Arabian. To put the matter briefly, the ideas of
Pierre d'Ailly and Marco Polo are strikingly expressed in this
globe, which shows Cathay and India, both marked rich, opposite to
Portugal and Africa, and about 120° west of the Cape Verde Islands
and the Azores instead of the actual distance of over 200°. Cathay
is thus brought forward nearly to the position of California;
Cipango [Cipangu] or Japan, marked as especially rich, falls athwart
the position of Mexico; while Antillia lies northeast of the
position of Hayti or Española; and St. Brandan occupies, in part,
the position of northern South America.
But why did Behaim take pains to construct a globe? The answer is
clear. He had recently (1486) adventured in a project to confirm his
geographical ideas; he had attempted a secret voyage westward to
Asia in partnership with two fellow islanders---- Fernam Dulmo of
Terceira, a navigator, and Joao Affonso Estreito of Madeira, his
patron. The enterprise had failed; and yet he did not wish his ideas
to be lost or appropriated by another.
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