FILIPPINO LIPPI, MADONNA WITH FOUR SAINTS
This position taken by Professor Briggs has come to be more and more recognized as the true one from the historical standpoint in recent years. What has been called the Reformation had in it so many unfortunate political elements that its force for good was frittered away by the abuses inevitably connected with political associations. The counter-reformation, which represented the reaction from the religious revolt of the early sixteenth century, carried with it the truer spirit of Christianity and gradually gathered round it those forces for culture, social uplift and political liberty which mean most for the benefit of mankind and which thrived so well under the fostering care of Christianity. It is only with the breaking up of the ideas and institutions fostered by the reformers that modern progress along these lines has come. Protestantism hurt art, sadly hampered education, ruined architecture, shackled philosophy, discouraged scholarship and, above all, destroyed educational and humanitarian foundations for mere personal profit, and took away the incentive for true charity, its doctrine of salvation by faith only obliterating [{261}] the divine significance of good works. In the Appendix, some of these points are emphasized by quotations from well-known authorities, who have summed up various phases of Reformation influence. These writers, though themselves in sympathy with the reform movement in its ideals, see its evil effects and lament them.
CHAPTER VI
GREAT EXPLORERS AND EMPIRE BUILDERS
Columbus was not the first great successful explorer of this century that we have called by his name. Many daring navigators, particularly during the half century preceding the discovery of America, had braved the perils of the ocean, so literally trackless for them, in order to add to man's knowledge. A great stimulus to the spirit of navigation and exploration came with the rediscovery of the Cape Verde Islands by the Portuguese in 1447. Men dared after this to sail with the definite purpose of finding hitherto unknown land, and their bravery was rewarded in 1460 by the discovery of Sierra Leone. Prince Henry of Portugal then realized that the future of his country, hemmed in as it was in Europe, would largely depend upon the success of her navigators. He gathered together and systematized all the knowledge obtainable in nautical matters, and well deserves the name of Henry the Navigator. It was under his inspiration that the coast of Africa and the Senegal and the Gambia were explored. Probably no one more than he helped to remove the imagined terrors of the deep and gave men courage to venture ever farther and farther in exploration. His great purpose was the spread of Christianity, and to this he brought every incentive from patriotism and every possible help that could be obtained from science in any way. His name gloriously opened Columbus' Century.
It is possible that the old tradition that Henry established a college of navigation and even, as some have declared, an astronomical observatory at Sagres, near Cape St. Vincent, with the special purpose of making observations on the declination of the sun so as to secure more accurate nautical tables, may be a pious exaggeration of ardent admirers. Undoubtedly, however, he did a great deal for the scientific [{263}] development of navigation and established a tradition that was well followed in Portugal. John II of Portugal appointed a commission on navigation consisting of Roderick and Joseph, his physicians, and Martin of Bohemia. They invented the astrolabe, though the cross staff continued to be used for some time by navigators and was one of the few instruments possessed by Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Martin Cortez described the astrolabe and shows how much more convenient it is than the cross staff for taking altitudes.
During the latter part of Columbus' Century, the Portuguese made a series of magnificent discoveries. In 1486 King John II appointed Bartholomew Dias as the head of an expedition whose purpose was to sail around the southern end of Africa. Henry the Navigator had been attracted by the story of Prester John, the legendary Christian king of Abyssinia, who was said to rule over a large part of Africa. The Christian monarchs of the West hoped to get in touch with him. Recent reports had arrived apparently confirmatory of the tradition, and the Portuguese under King John wanted to enter into friendly relations with them. Dias sailed in 1487, reached the mouth of the Congo, which had been discovered the year before, followed the African coast, entered Walfisch Bay and erected a column near the present Angra Pequeña. He was driven by a storm then far to the south, but after the storm sailed easterly and, turning northward, he landed in Mossel Bay. He followed the coast as far as Algoa Bay and the Great Fish River. On his return he discovered the cape and gave it the name of Cabo Tormentoso (Stormy, Dangerous Cape), but on his arrival home King John proposed the name it still bears--the Cape of Good Hope--with the desire apparently of dissipating, if not its dangers, at least the dread of them that so filled men's minds. After this it was a comparatively easy matter to reach India, at least Dias had shown the way, and the problem which had occupied Prince Henry of joining the East and the West, so that the peoples might learn to exchange their riches, the costly materials of the East and the religious treasures of the West, was solved.
The great Portuguese Empire in India is an example of [{264}] empire building under the most difficult circumstances, which shows the energy and the enterprise, the courage and the successful achievement of the men of this period. India was a very long distance from Portugal in those days. To think of sending out a colony, the men for which had to make the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope with all its dangers, was a daring thought reaching almost to hardihood. In the course of a single generation, however, that empire became a wonderful source of added power and income to the mother country. Bartholomew Dias more than any other accomplished this for Portugal, but there were a large number of men of bravery and high administrative ability who helped in the work. Portugal had the advantage at this time of producing a supremely great poet, Camöens, who could celebrate the work of his fellow-countrymen and immortalize the story of their achievement. Nearly always the poet comes when a work worthy of his genius has been accomplished. India proved to be a school of courage and enterprise for the Portuguese of that generation, which lifted a little country (the smallest of Europe) to almost the highest plane of influence and greatness.
While Columbus' great discovery has overshadowed the work of all the other explorers and navigators in the Western Ocean at this time, it must not be forgotten that during this century a large number of hardy, heroic men, with a determination not due to ignorance or to mere foolhardiness, but with purposes as sincere and courage as high as our Arctic explorers, accomplished wonderful results in the enlargement of human knowledge of the Western Continent and its inhabitants and varied products. Even before Columbus himself had reached the American continent, Amerigo Vespucci as well as the two Cabots had already touched it. Vespucci's biographers insist that his first voyage to America was made in 1497 and that he coasted along the northern shore of South America and into the Gulf of Mexico, returning to Spain November 15, 1498. It was in this latter year that Columbus first touched the mainland. In 1499 Vespucci went out with a second fleet and, keeping his former course, he succeeded in reaching the mouth of the Orinoco River, and returned [{265}] to Cadiz in 1500. He made a third voyage in 1501 and reached as far south as 52° of latitude, having coasted the South American shore from 5° south latitude to within 4° of Cape Horn. The fourth voyage was undertaken the next year, and on this Vespucci explored portions of the coast of Brazil. While it is usually said, and it must be confessed with some justification, that Columbus was deprived of what may be considered his proper privilege as first discoverer in not having the continent of America named after him, there is no doubt that Vespucci deserved highly of mankind for his daring explorations and his expert seamanship and hardy navigation. The scientific world owes him still more for the publication of his maps and detailed description of the American coast. These served to spread widely definite knowledge with regard to the new continent. Above all others, with the single exception of Columbus, even if that exception must be made, he deserved to have the Continent named after him. [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: The news of Amerigo Vespucci's discovery seems to have spread rapidly throughout Europe and his writings became familiar within a few years to a much greater number of people than we would think possible in the limited means of communication at the time. In discussing "The Four Elements," the Morality Play, in the chapter on English Literature lines are quoted to show that the play was written within twenty years of the discovery of America. Ordinarily it would be assumed that this would mean Columbus' discovery in 1492, but the whole passage shows that the reference was to Amerigo's, in Latin Americus', discovery of the Continent. The complete passage is: