Malaga surrenders, 1487.
When the spring of 1487 came, and the court departed to Cordoba, and began to make preparations for the campaign against Malaga, there was no hope that the considerations which had begun in the learned sessions at Salamanca would be followed up. Columbus seems to have journeyed after the Court in its migrations: sometimes lured by pittances doled out to him by the royal treasurer; sometimes getting pecuniary assistance from his new friend, Diego de Deza; selling now and then a map that he had made, it may be; and accepting hospitality where he could get it, from such as Alonso de Quintanilla. In these wandering days, he was for a while, at least, in attendance on the Court, then surrounded with military parade, before the Moorish stronghold at Malaga. The town surrendered on August 18, 1487, and the Court then returned to Cordoba.
SPAIN, 1482.
[From the Ptolemy of 1482.]
1487. Intimacy of Columbus with Beatrix Enriquez.
Ferdinand Columbus born, 1488.
It was in the autumn of 1487, at Cordoba, that Columbus fell into such an intimacy as spousehood only can sanction with a person of good condition as to birth, but poor in the world's goods. Whether this relation had the sanction of the Church or not has been a subject of much inquiry and opinion. The class of French writers, who are aiming to secure the canonization of Columbus, have found it essential to clear the moral character of Columbus from every taint, and they confidently assert, and doubtless think they show, that nothing but conjugal right is manifest in this connection,—a question which the Church will in due time have to decide, if it ever brings itself to the recognition of the saintly character of the great discoverer. Even the ardent supporters of the cause of beatification are forced to admit that there is no record of such a marriage. No contemporary recognition of such a relation is evinced by any family ceremonies of baptism or the like, and there is no mention of a wife in all the transactions of the crowning endeavors of his life. As viceroy, at a later day, he constantly appears with no attendant vice-queen. She is absolutely out of sight until Columbus makes a significant reference to her in his last will, when he recommends this Beatrix Enriquez to his lawful son Diego; saying that she is a person to whom the testator had been under great obligations, and that his conscience is burdened respecting her, for a reason which he does not then think fitting to explain. This testamentary behest and acknowledgment, in connection with other manifestations, and the absence of proof to the contrary, has caused the belief to be general among his biographers, early and late, that the fruit of this intimacy, Ferdinand Columbus, was an illegitimate offspring. He was born, as near as can be made out, on the 15th of August, 1488. The mother very likely received for a while some consolation from her lover, but Columbus did not apparently carry her to Seville, when he went there himself; and the support which he gave her was not altogether regularly afforded, and was never of the quality which he asked Diego to grant to her when he died. She unquestionably survived the making of Diego's will in 1523, and then she fades into oblivion. Her son, Ferdinand, if he is the author of the Historie, makes no mention of a marriage to his mother, though he is careful to record the one which was indisputably legal, and whose fruit was Diego, the Admiral's successor. The lawful son was directed by Columbus, when starting on his third voyage, to pay to Beatrix ten thousand maravedis a year; but he seems to have neglected to do so for the last three or four years of her life. Diego finally ordered these arrears to be paid to her heirs. Las Casas distinctly speaks of Ferdinand as a natural son, and Las Casas had the best of opportunities for knowing whereof he wrote.
Columbus sends his brother to England.