UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA.
[España, p. 132.]
MONUMENT TO COLUMBUS ERECTED AT GENOA, 1862.
The "Junta of Salamanca" has passed into history as a convocation of considerable extent and importance, and a representation of it is made to adorn one of the bas-reliefs of the Admiral's monument at Genoa. We have, however, absolutely no documentary records of it. Of whatever moment it may have been, if the problem as Columbus would have presented it had been discussed, the reports, if preserved, could have thrown much light upon the relations which the cosmographical views of its principal character bore to the opinions then prevailing in learned circles of Spain. We know what the Historie, Bernaldez, and Las Casas tell us of Columbus's advocacy, but we must regret the loss of his own language and his own way of explaining himself to these learned men. Such a paper would serve a purpose of showing how, in this period of courageous and ardent insistence on a physical truth, he stood manfully for the light that was in him; and it would afford a needed foil to those pitiful aberrations of intellect which, in the years following, took possession of him, and which were so constantly reiterated with painful and maundering wailing.
Find favor with Deza.
Discarding, then, the array of argument which Irving borrows from Remesal, and barely associating a little conference, in which Columbus is a central figure, with that St. Stephen's convent whose wondrous petrifactions of creamy and reticulated stone still hold the admiring traveler, we must accept nothing more about its meetings than the scant testimony which has come down to us. It is pleasant to think how it was here that the active interest which Diego de Deza, a Dominican friar, finally took in the cause of Columbus may have had its beginning; but the extent of our positive knowledge regarding the meeting is the deposition of Rodriguez de Maldonado, who simply says that several learned men and mariners, hearing the arguments of Columbus, decided they could not be true, or at least a majority so decided, and that this testimony against Columbus had no effect to convince him of his errors. This is all that the "Junta of Salamanca" meant. A minority of unknown size favored the advocate.
1487. The Court at Cordoba.