History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

by John William Draper

Among the Genoese sailors who entertained these views was Christopher Columbus.

He tells us that his attention was drawn to this subject by the writings of Averroes, but among his friends he numbered Toscanelli, a Florentine, who had turned his attention to astronomy, and had become a strong advocate of the globular form. In Genoa itself Columbus met with but little encouragement. He then spent many years in trying to interest different princes in his proposed attempt. Its irreligious tendency was pointed out by the Spanish ecclesiastics, and condemned by the Council of Salamanca; its orthodoxy was confuted from the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the writings of the Fathers—St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Basil, St Ambrose.

At length, however, encouraged by the Spanish Queen Isabella, and substantially aided by a wealthy seafaring family, the Pinzons of Palos, some of whom joined him personally, he sailed on August 3, 1492, with three small ships, from Palos, carrying with him a letter from King Ferdinand to the Grand-Khan of Tartary, and also a chart, or map, constructed on the basis of that of Toscanelli. A little before midnight, October 11, 1492, he saw from the forecastle of his ship a moving light at a distance. Two hours subsequently a signal-gun from another of the ships announced that they had descried land. At sunrise Columbus landed in the New World.

On his return to Europe it was universally supposed that he had reached the eastern parts of Asia, and that therefore his voyage had been theoretically successful. Columbus himself died in that belief. But numerous voyages which were soon undertaken made known the general contour of the American coast-line, and the discovery of the Great South Sea by Balboa revealed at length the true facts of the case, and the mistake into which both Toscanelli and Columbus had fallen, that in a voyage to the West the distance from Europe to Asia could not exceed the distance passed over in a voyage from Italy to the Gulf of Guinea—a voyage that Columbus had repeatedly made.

In his first voyage, at nightfall on September 13, 1492, being then two and a half degrees east of Corvo, one of the Azores, Columbus observed that the compass needles of the ships no longer pointed a little to the east of north, but were varying to the west. The deviation became more and more marked as the expedition advanced. He was not the first to detect the fact of variation, but he was incontestably the first to discover the line of no variation. On the return-voyage the reverse was observed; the variation westward diminished until the meridian in question was reached, when the needles again pointed due north. Thence, as the coast of Europe was approached, the variation was to the east. Columbus, therefore, came to the conclusion that the line of no variation was a fixed geographical line, or boundary, between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. In the bull of May, 1493, Pope Alexander VI. accordingly adopted this line as the perpetual boundary between the possessions of Spain and Portugal, in his settlement of the disputes of those nations. Subsequently, however, it was discovered that the line was moving eastward. It coincided with the meridian of London in 1662.

By the papal bull the Portuguese possessions were limited to the east of the line of no variation. Information derived from certain Egyptian Jews had reached that government, that it was possible to sail round the continent of Africa, there being at its extreme south a cape which could be easily doubled. An expedition of three ships under Vasco de Gama set sail, July 9, 1497; it doubled the cape on November 20th, and reached Calicut, on the coast of India, May 19, 1498. Under the bull, this voyage to the East gave to the Portuguese the right to the India trade.

Until the cape was doubled, the course of De Gama's ships was in a general manner southward. Very soon, it was noticed that the elevation of the pole-star above the horizon was diminishing, and, soon after the equator was reached, that star had ceased to be visible. Meantime other stars, some of them forming magnificent constellations, had come into view—the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. All this was in conformity to theoretical expectations founded on the admission of the globular form of the earth.

The political consequences that at once ensued placed the Papal Government in a position of great embarrassment. Its traditions and policy forbade it to admit any other than the flat figure of the earth, as revealed in the Scriptures. Concealment of the facts was impossible, sophistry was unavailing. Commercial prosperity now left Venice as well as Genoa. The front of Europe was changed. Maritime power had departed from the Mediterranean countries, and passed to those upon the Atlantic coast.

But the Spanish Government did not submit to the advantage thus gained by its commercial rival without an effort. It listened to the representations of one Ferdinand Magellan, that India and the Spice Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, if only a strait or passage through what had now been recognized as "the American Continent" could be discovered; and, if this should be accomplished, Spain, under the papal bull, would have as good a right to the India trade as Portugal. Under the command of Magellan, an expedition of five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men, was dispatched from Seville, August 10, 1519.

Magellan at once struck boldly for the South American coast, hoping to find some cleft or passage through the continent by which he might reach the great South Sea. For seventy days he was becalmed on the line; his sailors were appalled by the apprehension that they had drifted into a region where the winds never blew, and that it was impossible for them to escape. Calms, tempests, mutiny, desertion, could not shake his resolution. After more than a year he discovered the strait which now bears his name, and, as Pigafetti, an Italian, who was with him, relates, he shed fears of joy when he found that it had pleased God at length to bring him where he might grapple with the unknown dangers of the South Sea, "the Great and Pacific Ocean."