Thus, in considering this in himself, he aimed first of all to propagate the name of Christianity and the benefits of Christian charity in the West. As a fact, as soon as he presented himself to the sovereigns of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, he explained the cause for which they were not to fear taking a warm interest in the enterprise, as their glory would increase to the point of becoming immortal if they decided to carry the name and the doctrine of Jesus Christ into such distant regions. And when, not long afterward, his prayers were granted, he called to witness that he wished to obtain from God that these sovereigns, sustained by His help and His mercy, should persevere in causing the gospel to penetrate upon new shores and in new lands.
He conceived in the same manner the plan of asking Alexander VI. for apostolic men, by a letter in which these words are found: "I hope that it will some day be given to me with the help of God to propagate afar the very holy name of Jesus Christ and his gospel." Also can one imagine him all filled with joy when he wrote to Raphael Sanchez, the first who from the Indies had returned to Lisbon, that immortal actions of grace must be rendered to God in that he had deigned to cause to prosper the enterprise so well, and that Jesus Christ could rejoice and triumph upon earth and in heaven for the coming salvation of innumerable people who previously had been going to their ruin. That, if Columbus also asks of Ferdinand and Isabella to permit only Catholic Christians to go to the New World, there to accelerate trade with the natives, he supports this motive by the fact that by his enterprise and efforts he has not sought for anything else than the glory and the development of the Christian religion.
This was what was perfectly known to Isabella, who, better than any other person, had penetrated the mind of such a great man; much more, it appears that this same plan was fully adopted by this very pious woman of great heart and manly mind. She bore witness, in effect, of Columbus, that in courageously giving himself up to the vast ocean, he realized, for the divine glory, a most signal enterprise; and to Columbus himself, when he had happily returned, she wrote that she esteemed as having been highly employed the resources which she had consecrated and which she would still consecrate to the expeditions in the Indies, in view of the fact that the propagation of Catholicism would result from them.
Also, if he had not inspired himself from a cause superior to human interests, where then would he have drawn the constancy and the strength of soul to support what he was obliged to the end to endure and to submit to; that is to say, the unpropitious advice of the learned people, the repulses of princes, the tempests of the furious ocean, the continual watches, during which he more than once risked losing his sight.
To that add the combats sustained against the barbarians; the infidelities of his friends, of his companions; the villainous conspiracies, the perfidiousness of the envious, the calumnies of the traducers, the chains with which, after all, though innocent, he was loaded. It was inevitable that a man overwhelmed with a burden of trials so great and so intense would have succumbed had he not sustained himself by the consciousness of fulfilling a very noble enterprise, which he conjectured would be glorious for the Christian name and salutary for an infinite multitude.
And the enterprise so carried out is admirably illustrated by the events of that time. In effect, Columbus discovered America at about the period when a great tempest was going to unchain itself against the Church. Inasmuch as it is permitted by the course of events to appreciate the ways of divine Providence, it really seems that the man for whom the Liguria honors herself was destined by special plan of God to compensate Catholicism for the injury which it was going to suffer in Europe.
To call the Indian race to Christianity, this was, without doubt, the mission and the work of the Church in this mission. From the beginning, she continued to fulfill it with an uninterrupted course of charity, and she still continues it, having advanced herself recently so far as the extremities of Patagonia.
Thus, when compelled by the Portuguese, by the Genoese, to leave without having obtained any result, he went to Spain. He matured the grand plan of the projected discovery in the midst of the walls of a convent, with the knowledge of and with the advice of a monk of the Order of St. Francis d'Assisi, after seven years had revolved. When at last he goes to dare the ocean, he takes care that the expedition shall comply with the acts of spiritual expiation; he prays to the Queen of Heaven to assist the enterprise and to direct its course, and before giving the order to make sail he invokes the august divine Trinity. Then, once fairly at sea, while the waters agitate themselves, while the crew murmurs, he maintains, under God's care, a calm constancy of mind.
His plan manifests itself in the very names which he imposes on the new islands, and each time that he is called upon to land upon one of them he worships the Almighty God, and only takes possession of it in the name of Jesus Christ. At whatever coast he approaches he has nothing more as his first idea than the planting on the shore of the sacred sign of the cross; and the divine name of the Redeemer, which he had sung so frequently on the open sea to the sound of the murmuring waves—he is the first to make it reverberate in the new islands in the same way. When he institutes the Spanish colony he causes it to be commenced by the construction of a temple, where he first provides that the popular fêtes shall be celebrated by august ceremonies.
Here, then, is what Columbus aimed at and what he accomplished when he went in search, over so great an expanse of sea and of land, of regions up to that time unexplored and uncultivated, but whose civilization, renown, and riches were to rapidly attain that immense development which we see to-day.