Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery

by Justin Winsor

Las Casas tells us how commanding Columbus looked when he entered the room, surrounded by a brilliant company of cavaliers. When he approached the royal dais, both monarchs rose to receive him standing; and when he stooped to kiss their hands, they gently and graciously lifted him, and made him sit as they did. They then asked to be told of what he had seen.

As Columbus proceeded in his narrative, he pointed out the visible objects of his speech,—the Indians, the birds, the skins, the barbaric ornaments, and the stores of gold. We are told of the prayer of the sovereigns at the close, in which all joined; and of the chanted Te Deum from the choir of the royal chapel, which bore the thoughts of every one, says the narrator, on the wings of melody to celestial delights. This ceremony ended, Columbus was conducted like a royal guest to the lodgings which had been provided for him.

It has been a question if the details of this reception, which are put by Irving in imaginative fullness, and are commonly told on such a thread of incidents as have been related, are warranted by the scant accounts which are furnished us in the Historie, in Las Casas, and in Peter Martyr, particularly since the incident does not seem to have made enough of an impression at the time to have been noticed at all in the Dietaria of the city, a record of events embodying those of far inferior interest as we would now value them. Mr. George Sumner carefully scanned this record many years ago, and could find not the slightest reference to the festivities. He fancies that the incidents in the mind of the recorder may have lost their significance through an Aragonese jealousy of the supremacy of Leon and Castile.

It is certainly true that in Peter Martyr, the contemporary observer of this supposed pageantry, there is nothing to warrant the exuberance of later writers. Martyr simply says that Columbus was allowed to sit in the sovereigns' presence.

Whatever the fact as to details, it seems quite evident that this season at Barcelona made the only unalloyed days of happiness, freed of anxiety, which Columbus ever experienced. He was observed of all, and everybody was complacent to him. His will was apparently law to King and subject. Las Casas tells us that he passed among the admiring throngs with his face wreathed with smiles of content. An equal complacency of delight and expectation settled upon all with whom he talked of the wonders of the land which he had found. They dreamed as he did of entering into golden cities with their hundred bridges, that might cause new exultations, to which the present were as nothing. It was a fatal lure to the proud Spanish nature, and no one was doomed to expiate the folly of the delusion more poignantly than Columbus himself.

Spread of the news.

Now that India had been found by the west, as was believed, and Barcelona was very likely palpitating with the thought, the news spread in every direction. What were the discoveries of the Phœnicians to this? What questions of ethnology, language, species, migrations, phenomena of all sorts, in man and in the natural world, were pressing upon the mind, as the results were considered? Were not these parrots which Columbus had exhibited such as Pliny tells us are in Asia?

The great event had fallen in the midst of geographical development, and was understood at last. Marco Polo and the others had told their marvels of the east. The navigators of Prince Henry had found new wonders on the sea. Regiomontanus, Behaim, and Toscanelli had not communed in vain with cosmographical problems. Even errors had been stepping-stones; as when the belief in the easterly over-extension of Asia had pictured it near enough in the west to convince men that the hazard of the Sea of Darkness was not so great after all.

Peter Martyr records the event.

Spain was then the centre of much activity of mind. "I am here," records Peter Martyr, "at the source of this welcome intelligence from the new found lands, and as the historian of such events, I may hope to go down to posterity as their recorder." We must remember this profession when we try to account for his meagre record of the reception at Barcelona.