Christopher Columbus: His Life and His Work

by Charles Kendall Adams

It is said that councils of war never fight, and that advisory boards regard the promoters of new schemes as their natural enemies. The committee to whom the king referred the proposal of Columbus was made up of two Jewish physicians and a bishop. Although the physicians, Roderigo and Joseph, were reputed as the most able cosmographers of the realm, they had not much hesitation in deciding that the project was extravagant and visionary. With this judgment the ecclesiastical member of the council seems to have agreed.

The king, however, as if unwilling to lose any valuable opportunity, does not appear to have been satisfied with this answer. As the story goes, he convoked his royal council, and asked their advice whether to adopt this new route, or to pursue that which had already been opened.

Von Concelos, the historian of King John II., has given a graphic account of the discussion held before this council. The Bishop of Ceuta, the same important dignitary that had been a member of the committee of three, opposed this scheme in a cool and deliberate speech. The opposite side was presented by Dom Pedro de Meneses with so much eloquence and power that the impression he made quite surpassed that of the colder reasonings of the bishop. What followed was apparently prompted by a consciousness that the advocates of the scheme were likely to be successful. The bishop now proposed a very unworthy scheme. He asked that Columbus might be kept in suspense while a vessel should be secretly despatched by the king to discover whether there was any foundation for his theory. The king appears not to have been above the adoption of so base a proposition. Columbus was required to furnish for the consideration of the council a plan of his proposed voyage, together with the charts and maps with which he intended to guide his course. A small vessel was despatched, ostensibly to the Cape de Verde islands, but with private instructions to proceed on the route pointed out by Columbus. The officer had no heart in the enterprise, and it was a complete failure. Sailing westward for several days, they encountered storms, and the sailors, losing their courage, returned to ridicule the project as impossible.

When these facts came to be known, they produced a very natural impression on the mind of Columbus. Disgusted with the treatment he had received from the Portuguese, he quitted Lisbon for Spain at a date which cannot be determined with precision, but probably in the latter part of the year 1484 or in the early part of 1485. His departure had to be secret, lest he should be detained either by the king or his creditors. Color is given to the supposition that he was under grave charges of some kind by the fact that King John, when, some years later, inviting him to return to Portugal, deemed it necessary to insure him “against arrest on account of any process, civil or criminal, that might be pending against him.”

Now, in considering all these accounts, it is not difficult to imagine that in his efforts to promote his great schemes, Columbus had been kept in poverty. But the reasons for his leaving in secret, and even his movements on leaving Portugal, are involved in uncertainty.

It has also very often been held by modern historians that Columbus, immediately after entering Spain, found his way to the monastery of La Rabida, near Palos. The authority for this belief, moreover, is nothing less than a circumstantial account given by Fernando. But the assertion has been proved to be incorrect. In the trial of 1513, in which Diego Columbus attempted to establish certain claims against the Government, two witnesses gave sworn testimony in regard to the meeting at La Rabida. This testimony is still to be seen in the records of the trial; and the details of the evidence make it almost absolutely certain that the visit of Columbus to that famous monastery was not when he first entered Spain in 1484 or 1485, but as late as September or October of 1491.

Of another interesting effort, however, we have more positive information. It was probably before leaving Portugal that he despatched his brother Bartholomew to make application to the king of England. But whatever the date of the application, it was not successful. Whether the presentation of the case was made orally or in writing can perhaps never be determined. It is known that he was in England for a considerable period; but no trace of the application itself has ever been found in the English authorities of the time. After remaining in England probably until 1488, Bartholomew went to France, where he remained until 1494. Though it seems probable that he received some encouragement at the French court, even the probability rests upon no documentary evidence except the assertion of Columbus, already quoted. That hopes were held out, may perhaps be inferred from the fact that when, almost at the last moment, Columbus turned his back upon the Spanish court, he decided to go to France.

As to the course pursued by Columbus after he reached Spain, there is also some uncertainty. This is owing to the impossibility of reconciling some of the statements of Fernando with many of the other statements found in the contemporaneous records. If the narrative of the son in regard to the course of the father is followed, the student will find himself in a labyrinth of difficulties. Fernando would have us believe that immediately after entering Spain his father went to the court of Medina Celi, and a little later had his famous experience at the monastery of La Rabida. But it is impossible to reconcile such a statement with the subsequent current of events. We know, as we shall presently see, that Columbus was two years in the house of the Duke of Medina Celi, and that at the end of that period he took a letter of introduction and commendation to Cardinal Mendoza at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. We know also that the visit to La Rabida was the cause of a letter being written which induced Columbus to take that journey to the court, which resulted in the ultimate adoption of his cause. The letter of Medina, moreover, assured the monarch that Columbus was on the point of taking his enterprise to the court of France. This assertion appears to be altogether incompatible with the supposition that the abode of Columbus with Medina Celi was in the early part of his residence in Spain. Not to present a tedious array of irreconcilable details, it is perhaps enough to say that if the statement of Fernando is once rejected, the way is, for the most part, easy and clear. If we once adopt the supposition that the abode with Medina Celi began in 1489, and that the visit to La Rabida was in September or October of 1491, we shall rest on the authority of Las Casas, and shall find that the difficulties in the way of accounting for the movements of Columbus are chiefly removed. Against this supposition, moreover, there is no evidence except the statement of Fernando, published not less than eighty years after the events it purports to describe.

With this explanation let us endeavour to point out the course of Columbus in the light of the original evidence.

Before we can understand the course that was taken, we must glance at the general condition of Spain.