FOOTNOTES
[1] Aragon, or rather Catalonia, maintained an extensive commerce with the Levant, and the remote regions of the east, during the Middle Ages, through the flourishing port of Barcelona. See Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias Históricas sobre la Marina, Comercio y Artes de Barcelona, (Madrid, 1779-92,) passim.
[2] A council of mathematicians in the court of John II., of Portugal, first devised the application of the ancient astrolabe to navigation, thus affording to the mariner the essential advantages appertaining to the modern quadrant. The discovery of the polarity of the needle, which vulgar tradition assigned to the Amalfite Flavio Gioja, and which Robertson has sanctioned without scruple, is clearly proved to have occurred more than a century earlier. Tiraboschi, who investigates the matter with his usual erudition, passing by the doubtful reference of Guiot de Provins, whose age and personal identity even are contested, traces the familiar use of the magnetic needle as far back as the first half of the thirteenth century, by a pertinent passage from Cardinal Vitri, who died 1244; and sustains this by several similar references to other authors of the same century. Capmany finds no notice of its use by the Castilian navigators earlier than 1403. It was not until considerably later in the fifteenth century, that the Portuguese voyagers, trusting to its guidance, ventured to quit the Mediterranean and African coasts, and extend their navigation to Madeira and the Azores. See Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viages y Descubrimientos que hicieron por Mar los Españoles, (Madrid, 1825-29,) tom. i. Int. sec. 33.—Tiraboschi, Letteratura Italiana, tom. iv. pp. 173, 174.—Capmany, Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iii. part. 1, cap. 4.—Koch, Tableau des Révolutions de l'Europe, (Paris, 1814,) tom. i. pp. 358-360.
[3] Four of the islands were conquered on behalf of private adventurers, chiefly from Andalusia, before the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella, and under their reign were held as the property of a noble Castilian family, named Peraza. The sovereigns sent a considerable armament from Seville in 1480, which subdued the great island of Canary on behalf of the crown, and another in 1493, which effected the reduction of Palma and Teneriffe after a sturdy resistance from the natives. Bernaldez postpones the last conquest to 1495. Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía, tom. i. pp. 347- 349.—Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, pp. 136, 203.—Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 64, 65, 66, 133.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. Introd., sec. 28.
[4] Among the provisions of the sovereigns enacted previous to the present date, may be noted those for regulating the coin and weights; for opening a free trade between Castile and Aragon; for security to Genoese and Venetian trading vessels; for safe conduct to mariners and fishermen; for privileges to the seamen of Palos; for prohibiting the plunder of vessels wrecked on the coast; and an ordinance of the very last year, requiring foreigners to take their return cargoes in the products of the country. See these laws as extracted from the Ordenanças Reales and the various public archives, in Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 11.
[5] Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, pp. 373, 374, 398.—Zurita, Anales, tom. iv. lib. 20, cap. 30, 34.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages.
[6] Spotorno, Memorials of Columbus, (London, 1823,) p. 14.—Senarega, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiv. p. 535.—Antonio Gallo, De Navigatione Columbi, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiii. p. 202.
It is very generally agreed that the father of Columbus exercised the craft of a wool-carder, or weaver. The admiral's son Ferdinand, after some speculation on the genealogy of his illustrious parent, concludes with remarking, that, after all, a noble descent would confer less lustre on him than to have sprung from such a father; a philosophical sentiment, indicating pretty strongly that he had no great ancestry to boast of. Ferdinand finds something extremely mysterious and typical in his father's name of Columbus, signifying a dove, in token of his being ordained to "carry the olive-branch and oil of baptism over the ocean, like Noah's dove, to denote the peace and union of the heathen people with the church, after they had been shut up in the ark of darkness and confusion." Fernando Colon, Historia del Almirante, cap. 1, 2, apud Barcia, Historiadores Primitivos de las Indian Occidentals, (Madrid, 1749,) tom. i., tom. i. Introd., sec. 21, 24.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. vii. p. 548.
[7] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 131.—Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo- Mundo, (Madrid, 1793,) lib. 2, sec. 13.
There are no sufficient data for determining the period of Columbus's birth. The learned Muñoz places it in 1446. (Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 12.) Navarrete, who has weighed the various authorities with caution, seems inclined to remove it back eight or ten years further, resting chiefly on a remark of Bernaldez, that he died in 1506, "in a good old age, at the age of seventy, a little more or less." (Cap. 131.) The expression is somewhat vague. In order to reconcile the facts with this hypothesis, Navarrete is compelled to reject, as a chirographical blunder, a passage in a letter of the admiral, placing his birth in 1456, and to distort another passage in his book of "Prophecies," which, if literally taken, would seem to establish his birth near the time assigned by Muñoz. Incidental allusions in some other authorities, speaking of Columbus's old age at or near the time of his death, strongly corroborate Navarrete's inference. (See Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. Introd., sec. 54.)—Mr. Irving seems willing to rely exclusively on the authority of Bernaldez.
[8] Antonio de Herrera, Historia General de las Indias Occidentales,
(Amberes, 1728,) tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7.—Gomara, Historia de las
Indias, cap. 14, apud Barcia, Hist. Primitivos, tom. ii.—Bernaldez, Reyes
Católicos, MS., cap. 118.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i.
Introd., sec. 30.
Ferdinand Columbus enumerates three grounds on which his father's conviction of land in the west was founded. First, natural reason,—or conclusions drawn from science; secondly, authority of writers,—amounting to little more than vague speculations of the ancients; thirdly, testimony of sailors, comprehending, in addition to popular rumors of land described in western voyages, such relics as appeared to have floated to the European shores from the other side of the Atlantic. Hist. del Almirante, cap. 6-8.
[9] None of the intimations are so precise as that contained in the well- known lines of Seneca's Medea,
"Venient annuis saecula," etc.,
although, when regarded as a mere poetical vagary, it has not the weight which belongs to more serious suggestions, of similar import, in the writings of Aristotle and Strabo. The various allusions in the ancient classic writers to an undiscovered world form the subject of an elaborate essay in the Memorias da Acad. Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, (tom. v. pp. 101-112,) and are embodied, in much greater detail, in the first section of Hnmboldt's "Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent;" a work in which the author, with his usual acuteness, has successfully applied the vast stores of his erudition and experience to the illustration of many interesting points connected with the discovery of the New World, and the personal history of Columbus.
[10] It is probably the knowledge of this which has led some writers to impute part of his work to the learned Marsilio Ficino, and others, with still less charity and probability, to refer the authorship of the whole to Politian. Comp. Tasso, Opere, (Venezia, 1735-42,) tom. x. p. 129.—and Crescimbeni, Istoria della Volgar Poesia, (Venezia, 1731,) tom. iii. pp. 273, 274.
[11] Pulci, Morgante Maggiore, canto 25, st. 229, 230.—I have used blank verse, as affording facility for a more literal version than the corresponding ottava rima of the original. This passage of Pulci, which has not fallen under the notice of Humboldt, or any other writer on the same subject whom I have consulted, affords, probably, the most circumstantial prediction that is to be found of the existence of a western world. Dante, two centuries before, had intimated more vaguely his belief in an undiscovered quarter of the globe.
"De' vostri sensi, ch' è del rimanente,
Non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
Diretro al sol, del mondo senza gente."
Inferno, cant. 26, v. 115.
[12] Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Dipl., no. 1.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 17.—It is singular that Columbus, in his visit to Iceland, in 1477, (see Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 4,) should have learned nothing of the Scandinavian voyages to the northern shores of America in the tenth and following centuries; yet if he was acquainted with them, it appears equally surprising that he should not have adduced the fact in support of his own hypothesis of the existence of land in the west; and that he should have taken a route so different from that of his predecessors in the path of discovery. It may be, however, as M. de Humboldt has well remarked, that the information he obtained in Iceland was too vague to suggest the idea, that the lands thus discovered by the Northmen had any connection with the Indies, of which he was in pursuit. In Columbus's day, indeed, so little was understood of the true position of these countries, that Greenland is laid down on the maps in the European seas, and as a peninsular prolongation of Scandinavia. See Humboldt, Géographie du Nouveau Continent, tom. ii. pp. 118, 125.
[13] Herrera, Indias Occidentals, tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 19.—Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 15.—Benzoni, Novi Orbis Historia, lib. 1, cap. 6.—Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 10.—Faria y Sousa, Europa Portuguesa, tom. ii. part. 3, cap. 4.
[14] Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., dial. de Talavera.
[15] Salazar de Mendoza, Crón. del Gran Cardenal, p. 214.—Herrera, Indias Occidentales, tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.—Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 11.
[16] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.—Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 104.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. sec. 60, 61, tom. ii., Col. Dipl., nos. 2, 4.
[17] This prelate, Diego de Deza, was born of poor but respectable parents, at Toro. He early entered the Dominican order, where his learning and exemplary life recommended him to the notice of the sovereigns, who called him to court to take charge of Prince John's education. He was afterwards raised, through the usual course of episcopal preferment, to the metropolitan see of Seville. His situation, as confessor of Ferdinand, gave him great influence over that monarch, with whom he appears to have maintained an intimate correspondence, to the day of his death. Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., dial. de Deza.
[18] Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 11.—Salazar de Mendoza, Crón. del Gran Cardenal, p. 215.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 25, 29.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i., Introd., sec. 60.
[19] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 27.—Spotorno, Memorials of Columbus, pp. 31-33.—The last dates the application to Genoa prior to that to Portugal.
A letter from the duke of Medina Celi to the cardinal of Spain, dated 19th March, 1493, refers to his entertaining Columbus as his guest for two years. It is very difficult to determine the date of these two years. If Herrera is correct in the statement, that, after a five years' residence at court, whose commencement he had previously referred to 1484, he carried his proposals to the duke of Medina Celi, (see cap. 7, 8.) the two years may have intervened between 1489-1491. Navarrete places them between the departure from Portugal and the first application to the court of Castile, in 1486. Some other writers, and among them Muñoz and Irving, referring his application to Genoa to 1485, and his first appearance in Spain to a subsequent period, make no provision for the residence with the duke of Medina Celi. Mr. Irving indeed is betrayed into a chronological inaccuracy, in speaking of a seven years' residence at the court in 1491, which he had previously noticed as having before begun in 1486. (Life of Columbus, (London, 1828,) comp. vol. i. pp. 109, 141.) In fact, 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.
[20] Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. pp. 129, 130.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 31.—Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i., Introd., sec. 60.
[21] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.—Primer Viage de Colon, apud Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. pp. 2, 117.— Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 13.
[22] Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 28, 29.—Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, ubi supra.
[23] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 32, 33.—Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 14.—Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 15.
[24] Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Diplomat., nos. 5, 6. —Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 412.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. p. 605.
[25] Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis et Novo Orbe, (Coloniae, 1574,) dec. 1, lib. 1.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Diplomat., nos. 7, 8, 9, 10, 12.—Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 9.— Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 14.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo- Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 33.—Benzoni, Novi Orbis Hist., lib. 1, cap. 6.— Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 15.
The expression in the text will not seem too strong, even admitting the previous discoveries of the Northmen, which were made in so much higher latitudes. Humboldt has well shown the probability, a priori, of such discoveries, made in a narrow part of the Atlantic, where the Orcades, the Feroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland afforded the voyager so many intermediate stations, at moderate distances from each other. (Géographie du Nouveau Continent, tom. ii. pp. 183 et seq.) The publication of the original Scandinavian MSS., (of which imperfect notices and selections, only, have hitherto found their way into the world,) by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, at Copenhagen, is a matter of the deepest interest; and it is fortunate that it is to be conducted under auspices, which must insure its execution in the most faithful and able manner. It may be doubted, however, whether the declaration of the Prospectus, that "it was the knowledge of the Scandinavian voyages, in all probability, which prompted the expedition of Columbus," can ever be established. His personal history furnishes strong internal evidence to the contrary.
[26] How strikingly are the forlorn condition and indomitable energy of Columbus depicted in the following noble verses of Chiabrera;
"Certo da cor, ch' alto destin non scelse,
Son l' imprese magnanime neglette;
Ma le bell' alme alle bell' opre elette
Sanno gioir nelle fatiche eccelse;
Nè biasnio popolar, frale catena,
Spirto d'onore, il suo cammin reffrena.
Così lunga stagion per modi indegni
Europa disprezzò l'inclita speme,
Schernendo il vulgo, e seco i Regi insieme,
Nudo nocchier, promettitor di Regni."
Rime, parte 1, canzone 12.
[27] Columbus, in a letter written on his third voyage, pays an honest, heartfelt tribute to the effectual patronage which he experienced from the queen. "In the midst of the general incredulity," says he, "the Almighty infused into the queen, my lady, the spirit of intelligence and energy; and, whilst every one else, in his ignorance, was expatiating only on the inconvenience and cost, her Highness approved it, on the contrary, and gave it all the support in her power." See Carta al Ama del Principe D. Juan, apud Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. p. 266.