Columbus's Libros de las proficias.
He set himself to the composition of a maundering and erratic paper, which, under the title of Libros de las proficias, is preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville. The manuscript, however, is not in the handwriting of Columbus, and no one has thought it worth while to print the whole of it.
Isaiah's prophecy.
Conquest of the Holy Land.
In it there is evidence of his study, with the assistance of a Carthusian friar, of the Bible and of the early fathers of the Church, and it shows, as his letter to Juan's nurse had shown, how he had at last worked himself into the belief that all his early arguments for the westward passage were vain; that he had simply been impelled by something that he had not then suspected; and that his was but a predestined mission to make good what he imagined was the prophecy of Isaiah in the Apocalypse. This having been done, there was something yet left to be accomplished before the anticipated eclipse of all earthly things came on, and that was the conquest of the Holy Land, for which he was the appointed leader. He addressed this driveling exposition, together with an urgent appeal for the undertaking of the crusade, to Ferdinand and Isabella, but without convincing them that such a self-appointed instrument of God was quite worthy of their employment.
End of the world.
The great catastrophe of the world's end was, as Columbus calculated, about 155 years away. He based his estimate upon an opinion of St. Augustine that the world would endure for 7,000 years; and upon King Alfonso's reckoning that nearly 5,344 years had passed when Christ appeared. The 1,501 years since made the sum 6,845, leaving out of the 7,000 the 155 years of his belief.
Defeated by Satan.
He also fancied, or professed to believe, in a letter which he subsequently wrote to the Pope, that the present deprivation of his titles and rights was the work of Satan, who came to see that the success of Columbus in the Indies would be only a preparation for the Admiral's long-vaunted recovery of the Holy Land. The Spanish government meanwhile knew, and they had reason to know, that their denial of his prerogatives had quite as much to do with other things as with a legion of diabolical powers. Unfortunately for Columbus, neither they nor the Pope were inclined to act on any interpretation of fate that did not include a civil policy of justice and prosperity.
His geographical whimsies.