It is true that Columbus’s plan was based on the correct idea that the world was round; but if he had known the real distance of India—if he had not been fettered by the ancient dogmas of the Greeks about the great extension of the continent to the east, and their low estimate of the earth’s circumference, which made India appear so enticingly near—if he had not believed in myths of lands in the west—he certainly would never have been the discoverer of a new world.
The people of the Middle Ages lived, as we have seen, to a great extent on remnants of the geographical knowledge and conceptions of the Greeks. It was the age of superstition and speculation; with the exception of the Norsemen and the Arabs, and in some degree also the Irish monks, there was during the earlier part of this period no enterprise that broke through the bounds of the known, except in the mythical world of fancy. It was not until the Crusades that the horizon began to be widened. The eastern trade of the Italian republics and the development of capable Italian seamen were of great significance. At an early date they made discoveries along the west coast of Africa. Of even greater importance was it that the Portuguese learned seamanship from them, and no doubt from the Arabs as well, and displayed great enterprise on the ocean along the shores of Africa, finding groups of islands in the west, and finally the Azores in 1427; but these must have been discovered earlier, since similar islands occur on Italian maps of the fourteenth century (cf. the Catalan Atlas of 1375).
When Ptolemy’s work, and through it the geography of the Greeks, became known in Western Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth century, it created a greater stir in the learned world than even the discovery of America did later; the circle of geographical ideas was greatly changed, and the world was regarded with new eyes as a sphere. The doctrine of the possibility of circumnavigating the earth was especially framed and scientifically established by the celebrated astronomer Toscanelli of Florence. But this was not a new doctrine; for the Greeks, Eratosthenes and Posidonius, for example (cf. vol. i. pp. 77, 79), had already announced it clearly enough, and even in the Middle Ages it was not forgotten. We saw that Mandeville, the writer of fabulous narratives, fully understood the possibility of sailing round the globe, and related ancient tales about such a voyage (cf. [p. 271]). But at the close of the fifteenth century the idea was seriously taken up by two men of action, both Genoese. One of them was Columbus, the other Cabot. Whether the latter had already conceived the idea before the first voyage of Columbus we do not know for certain, but it is not improbable; the thought was latent in the age, and many must have come near it. Another force impelling men to the western voyage, and perhaps as powerful a one as these scientific speculations, was the belief in the mythical world of enticing islands that lay out in the ocean to the west of Europe and Africa; the Isles of the Blest of the Greeks and the Atlantis of Plato, conceptions, originally derived from the East, which were still alive, though in other forms. There lay Antillia, the Isle of the Seven Cities, mythical islands of the Arabs, and the Irish legendary world, Brandan’s isles and many others; some of them had had a part in creating the Norse idea of Wineland and the White Men’s Land; now they were given a fresh lease of life, and power over the imagination of Western Europe. Possibly in connection with echoes of tales of the Norsemen’s discoveries—coming from Iceland to Bristol, and thence to the continent—these mythical islands helped to form a widespread belief in countries in the far west across the ocean. The fact that the Portuguese, as has been said, really found islands, the Azores, out in the Atlantic in 1427, also contributed to establish this belief. From these islands many expeditions set out in the course of the fifteenth century to search for new lands farther west.[278]
Connection of Bristol with Iceland
From the beginning of the fifteenth century Bristol was in frequent communication with Iceland, both for the fishery and for trade. As already pointed out, this was certainly due in no small degree to the number of Norwegians who had settled in the town. Sailors and merchants returning from voyages to Iceland doubtless brought thence many tales of marvels and of unknown islands and countries out in the ocean; legends of the Icelanders’ voyages to Greenland and Wineland may have served to entertain the winter evenings in Bristol.[279] It was therefore surely not an accident that attempts to find land in the west should originate precisely in this enterprising sea-port.
The Isle of Brazil
On the maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there lay out in the ocean to the west of Ireland the Isle of Brazil (cf. [p. 228]). It was the Irish fortunate isle Hy Breasail, of which it is sung:
“On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,
A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;
Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,
And they called it O’Brazil—the isle of the blest.
From year unto year, on the ocean’s blue rim,
The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;
The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,
And it looked like an Eden, away, far away.”
[Gerald Griffin.]
Expedition to find Brazil, 1480
We have seen that on certain maps this round fabled isle was brought into connection with an “Insula verde,” probably Greenland, and this conception of the latter probably came from Iceland by way of England. We do not know what myths were associated with Brazil at that time; but the belief in it was so much alive that ships were sent out from Bristol to search for the island. A contemporary account of such an attempt made in 1480 has come down to us:[280]