Columbus's son Diego born.
The issue of this marriage was one son, Diego, but there is no distinct evidence as to the date of his birth. Sundry incidents go to show that it was somewhere between 1475 and 1479. Columbus's marriage to Doña Felipa had probably taken place at Lisbon, and not before 1474 at the earliest, a date not difficult to reconcile with the year (1473-74) now held to be that of his arrival in Portugal. It is supposed that it was while Columbus was living at Porto Santo, where his wife had some property, that Diego was born, though Harrisse doubts if any evidence can be adduced to support such a statement beyond a sort of conjecture on Las Casas's part, derived from something he thought he remembered Diego to have told him.
Perestrello's MSS.
The story of Columbus's marriage, as given in the Historie and followed by Oviedo, couples with it the belief that it was among the papers of his dead father-in-law, Perestrello, that Columbus found documents and maps which prompted him to the conception of a western passage to Asia. In that case, this may perhaps have been the motive which induced him to draw from Paolo Toscanelli that famous letter, which is usually held to have had an important influence on the mind of Columbus.
Story of a sailor dying in Columbus's house.
The fact of such relationship of Columbus with Perestrello is called in question, and so is another incident often related by the biographers of Columbus. This is that an old seaman who had returned from an adventurous voyage westward had found shelter in the house of Columbus, and had died there, but not before he had disclosed to him a discovery he had made of land to the west. This story is not told in any writer that is now known before Gomara (1552), and we are warned by Benzoni that in Gomara's hands this pilot story was simply an invention "to diminish the immortal fame of Christopher Columbus, as there were many who could not endure that a foreigner and Italian should have acquired so much honor and so much glory, not only for the Spanish kingdom, but also for the other nations of the world."
Pomponius Mela, Strabo, etc.
Manilius, Solinus, Ptolemy.
It is certain, however, that under the impulse of the young art of printing men's minds had at this time become more alive than they had been for centuries to the search for cosmographical views. The old geographers, just at this time, were one by one finding their way into print, mainly in Italy, while the intercourse of that country with Portugal was quickened by the attractions of the Portuguese discoveries. While Columbus was still in Italy, the great popularity of Pomponius Mela began with the first edition in Latin, which was printed at Milan in 1471, followed soon by other editions in Venice. The De Situ Orbis of Strabo had already been given to the world in Latin as early as 1469, and during the next few years this text was several times reprinted at Rome and Venice. The teaching of the sphericity of the earth in the astronomical poem of Manilius, long a favorite with the monks of the Middle Ages, who repeated it in their labored script, appeared in type at Nuremberg at the same time. The Polyhistor of Solinus did not long delay to follow. A Latin version of Ptolemy had existed since 1409, but it was later than the rest in appearing in print, and bears the date of 1475. These were the newer issues of the Italian and German presses, which were attracting the notice of the learned in this country of the new activities when Columbus came among them, and they were having their palpable effect.