Humboldt, with reference to this map, remarks that it is singular that the name Frislanda should have been applied by Columbus to an island south of Iceland. Washington Irving (in his Life of Columbus) explains the book by a desire to appeal to the national pride of Italy, since, if true, the discovery of the brothers would antedate that of Columbus by a century.
Malte-Brun, the distinguished geographer, distinctly accepted the Zeni narrative as true, and believed that it was by colonists from Greenland that the Latin books had reached Estotiland. Another strong advocate afterward appeared in Mr. Major, an official in the map department of the British Museum, who believed that much of the map in question represented genuine information of the fourteenth century, mixed with some spurious parts inserted by the younger Zeno. Mr. Major's paper on The Site of the Lost Colony of Greenland Determined, and the pre-Columbian Discoveries of America Confirmed, appeared in R. Geog. Soc. Journal, 1873; v. also Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1874. Nordenskjöld also accepted the chief results of this Italian discovery, and as an arctic explorer of experience, his opinion carries weight. Mercator and Hugo Grotius were also believers in the Zeni account.
CHAPTER II
"DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN"
At the beginning of this book a reference was made to the great upheaval in European history called the "Renascence" (Fr. renaissance) or Revival of Learning. In 1453 the Turks took Constantinople, driving the Greek scholars to take refuge in Italy, which at once became the most civilized nation in Europe. Poetry, philosophy, and art thence found their way to France, England, and Germany, being greatly assisted by the invention of printing, which just then was beginning to make books cheaper than they ever had been. At the same time feudalism was ruined, because the invention of gunpowder had previously been changing the art of war. For example, the King of France, Louis XI, as well as the King of England, Henry VII, had entire disposal of the national artillery; and therefore overawed the barons and armored knights. Neither moated fortresses nor mail-clad warriors, nor archers with bows and arrows, could prevail against powder and shot. The middle ages had come to an end; modern Europe was being born. France had become concentrated by the union of the south to the north on the conclusion of the "Hundred Years' War," the final expulsion of the English, and the abolition of all the great feudatories of the kingdom. England, at the same time, had entirely swept away the rule of the barons by the recent "Wars of the Roses," and Henry had strengthened his position by alliance with France, Spain, and Scotland. Spain, by the expulsion of the Moors from Granada in A. D. 1492, was for the first time concentrated into one great state by the union of Isabella's Kingdom of Castile-Leon to Ferdinand's Kingdom of Aragon-Sicily.
From the importance of the word renaissance as indicating the "movement of transition from the medieval to the modern world," Matthew Arnold gave it the English form "renascence"—adopted by J. R. Green, Coleridge, and others. In Germany, this great revival of letters and learning was contemporaneous with the Reformation, which had long been preparing (e. g., in England since John Wyclif) and was specially assisted by the invention of printing, which we have just mentioned. The minds of men everywhere were expanded: "whatever works of history, science, morality, or entertainment seemed likely to instruct or amuse were printed and distributed among the people at large by printers and booksellers."
Thus it was that, though the Turks never had any pretension to learning or culture, yet their action in the middle of the fifteenth century indirectly caused a marvelous tide of civilization to overflow all the western countries of Europe. Another result in the same age was the increase of navigation and exploration—the discovery of the world as well as of man. When the Turks became masters of the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the European merchants were prevented from going to India and the East by the overland route, as had been done for generations. Thus, since geography was at this very time improved by the science of Copernicus and others, the natural inquiry was how to reach India by sea instead of going overland. Columbus, therefore, sailed due west to reach Asia, and stumbled upon a "New World" without knowing what he did; then Cabot, sailing from Bristol, sailed northwest to reach India, and stumbled upon the continent of America; and during the same reign (Henry VII) the Atlantic coast of both North and South America was visited by English, Portuguese, or Spanish navigators. The third expedition to reach India by sea was under De Gama. He set out in the same year as Cabot, sailing into the South Atlantic, and ultimately did find the west coast of India at Calicut, after rounding the cape.
The mere enumeration of so many events, all of first-rate importance, proves that that half century (say from A. D. 1460 to 1520) must be called "an age of marvels," sæclum mirabile. The concurrence of so many epoch-making results gave a great impulse, not only to the study of literature, science, and art, but to the exploration of many unknown countries in America, Africa, and Asia, and the universal expansion of human knowledge generally.
I.—We shall now consider the first of these discoverers, who was also the greatest.