Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 11

[Sidenote: Story of a sailor dying in Columbus's house.]

The fact of such relations.h.i.+p 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."

[Sidenote: Pomponius Mela, Strabo, etc.]

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's theory.]

[Sidenote: His letter to Columbus.]

Just when we know not, but some time earlier than this, Alfonso V. of Portugal had sought, through the medium of the monk Fernando Martinez (Fernam Martins), to know precisely what was meant by the bruit of Toscanelli's theory of a westward way to India. To an inquiry thus vouched Toscanelli had replied to Fernando Martinez (June 25, 1474), some days before a similar inquiry addressed to Toscanelli reached Florence, from Columbus himself, and through the agency of an aged Florentine merchant settled in Lisbon. It seems probable that no knowledge of Martinez's correspondence with Toscanelli had come to the notice of Columbus; and that the message which the Genoese sent to the Florentine was due simply to the same current rumors of Toscanelli's views which had attracted the attention of the king. So in replying to Columbus Toscanelli simply shortened his task by inclosing, with a brief introduction, a copy of the letter, which he says he had sent "some days before" to Martinez. This letter outlined a plan of western discovery; but it is difficult to establish beyond doubt the exact position which the letter of Toscanelli should hold in the growth of Columbus's views.

If Columbus reached Portugal as late as 1473-74, as seems likely, it is rendered less certain that Columbus had grasped his idea anterior to the spread of Toscanelli's theory. In any event, the letter of the Florentine physician would strengthen the growing notions of the Genoese.

As Toscanelli was at this time a man of seventy-seven, and as a belief in the sphericity of the earth was then not unprevalent, and as the theory of a westward way to the East was a necessary concomitant of such views in the minds of thinking men, it can hardly be denied that the latent faith in a westward pa.s.sage only needed a vigilant mind to develop the theory, and an adventurous spirit to prove its correctness.

The development had been found in Toscanelli and the proof was waiting for Columbus,--both Italians; but Humboldt points out how the Florentine very likely thought he was communicating with a Portuguese, when he wrote to Columbus.

This letter has been known since 1571 in the Italian text as given in the _Historie_, which, as it turns out, was inexact and overladen with additions. At least such is the inference when we compare this Italian text with a Latin text, supposed to be the original tongue of the letter, which has been discovered of late years in the handwriting of Columbus himself, on the flyleaf of an aeneas Sylvius (1477), once belonging to Columbus, and still preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville. The letter which is given in the _Historie_ is accompanied by an antescript, which says that the copy had been sent to Columbus at his request, and that it had been originally addressed to Martinez, some time "before the wars of Castile." How much later than the date June 25, 1474, this copy was sent to Columbus, and when it was received by him, there is no sure means of determining, and it may yet be in itself one of the factors for limiting the range of months during which Columbus must have arrived in Portugal.

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's visions of the East.]

The extravagances of the letter of Toscanelli, in his opulent descriptions of a marvelous Asiatic region, were safely made in that age without incurring the charge of credulity. Travelers could tell tales then that were as secure from detection as the revealed arcana of the Zuni have been in our own days. Two hundred towns, whose marble bridges spanned a single river, and whose commerce could incite the cupidity of the world, was a tale easily to stir numerous circles of listeners in the maritime towns of the Mediterranean, wherever wandering mongers of marvels came and went. There were such travelers whose recitals Toscanelli had read, and others whose tales he had heard from their own lips, and these last were pretty sure to augment the wonders of the elder talebearers.

Columbus had felt this influence with the rest, and the tales lost nothing of their vividness in coming to him freshened, as it were, by the curious mind of the Florentine physician. The map which accompanied Toscanelli's letter, and which depicted his notions of the Asiatic coast lying over against that of Spain, is lost to us, but various attempts have been made to restore it, as is done in the sketch annexed. It will be a precious memorial, if ever recovered, worthy of study as a reflex, in more concise representation than is found in the text of the letter, of the ideas which one of the most learned cosmographers of his day had imbibed from mingled demonstrations of science and imagination.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOSCANELLI'S MAP AS RESTORED IN _DAS AUSLAND_.]

[Sidenote: The pa.s.sage westward.]

It is said that in our own day, in the first stages of a belief in the practicability of an Atlantic telegraphic cable, it was seriously claimed that the vast stretch of its extension could be broken by a halfway station on Jacquet Island, one of those relics of the Middle Ages, which has disappeared from our ocean charts only in recent years.

[Sidenote: Antillia.]

Just in the same way all the beliefs which men had had in the island of Antillia, and in the existence of many another visionary bit of land, came to the a.s.sistance of these theoretical discoverers in planning the chances of a desperate voyage far out into a sea of gorgons and chimeras dire. Toscanelli's map sought to direct the course of any one who dared to make the pa.s.sage, in a way that, in case of disaster to his s.h.i.+ps, a secure harbor could be found in Antillia, and in such other havens as no lack of islands would supply.

Ferdinand claimed to have found in his father's papers some statements which he had drawn from Aristotle of Carthaginian voyages to Antillia, on the strength of which the Portuguese had laid that island down in their charts in the lat.i.tude of Lisbon, as one occupied by their people in 714, when Spain was conquered by the Moors. Even so recently as the time of Prince Henry it had been visited by Portuguese s.h.i.+ps, if records were to be believed. It also stands in the Bianco map of 1436.

[Sidenote: Fabulous islands of the Atlantic.]

There are few more curious investigations than those which concern these fantastic and fabulous islands of the Sea of Darkness. They are connected with views which were an inheritance in part from the cla.s.sic times, with involved notions of the abodes of the blessed and of demoniacal spirits. In part they were the aerial creation of popular mythologies, going back to a remoteness of which it is impossible to trace the beginning, and which got a variable color from the popular fancies of succeeding generations. The whole subject is curiously without the field of geography, though entering into all surveys of mediaeval knowledge of the earth, and depending very largely for its elucidation on the maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose mythical traces are not beyond recognition in some of the best maps which have instructed a generation still living.

[Sidenote: St. Brandan.]

To place the island of the Irish St. Brandan--whose coming there with his monks is spoken of as taking place in the sixth century--in the catalogue of insular ent.i.ties is to place geography in such a marvelous guise as would have satisfied the monk Philoponus and the rest of the credulous fictionmongers who hang about the skirts of the historic field. But the belief in it long prevailed, and the apparition sometimes came to sailors' eyes as late as the last century.

[Sidenote: Antillia, or the Seven Cities.]

The great island of Antillia, or the Seven Cities, already referred to, was recognized, so far as we know, for the first time in the Weimar map of 1424, and is known in legends as the resort of some Spanish bishops, flying from the victorious Moors, in the eighth century. It never quite died out from the recognition of curious minds, and was even thought to have been seen by the Portuguese, not far from the time when Columbus was born. Peter Martyr also, after Columbus had returned from his first voyage, had a fancy that what the Admiral had discovered was really the great island of Antillia, and its attendant groups of smaller isles, and the fancy was perpetuated when Wytfliet and Ortelius popularized the name of Antilles for the West Indian Archipelago.

[Sidenote: Brazil Island.]

Another fleeting insular vision of this pseudo-geographical realm was a smaller body of floating land, very inconstant in position, which is always given some form of the name that, in later times, got a constant shape in the word Brazil. We can trace it back into the portolanos of the middle of the fourteenth century; and it had not disappeared as a survival twenty or thirty years ago in the admiralty charts of Great Britain. The English were sending out expeditions from Bristol in search of it even while Columbus was seeking countenance for his western schemes; and Cabot, at a little later day, was instrumental in other searches.

[Sidenote: Travelers in the Orient.]

Foremost among the travelers who had excited the interest of Toscanelli, and whose names he possibly brought for the first time to the attention of Columbus, were Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and Nicolas de Conti.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MODERN EASTERN ASIA, WITH THE OLD AND NEW NAMES.

[From Yule's _Cathay_.]]

[Sidenote: Marco Polo,]

It is a question to be resolved only by critical study as to what was the language in which Marco Polo first dictated, in a Genoese prison in 1298, the original narrative of his experiences in Cathay. The inquiry has engaged the attention of all his editors, and has invited the critical sagacity of D'Avezac. There seems little doubt that it was written down in French.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EASTERN ASIA, CATALAN MAP, 1375.

[From Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i.]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARCO POLO.

[From an original at Rome.]]

There are no references by Columbus himself to the Asiatic travels of Marco Polo, but his acquaintance with the marvelous book of the Venetian observer may safely be a.s.sumed. The multiplication of texts of the _Milione_ following upon his first dictation, and upon the subsequent revision in 1307, may not, indeed, have caused it to be widely known in various ma.n.u.script forms, be it in Latin or Italian. Nor is it likely that Columbus could have read the earliest edition which was put in type, for it was in German in 1477; but there is the interesting possibility that this work of the Nuremberg press may have been known to Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger then in Lisbon, and likely enough to have been a familiar of Columbus. The fact that there is in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville a copy of the first Latin printed edition (1485) with notes, which seem to be in Columbus's handwriting, may be taken as evidence, that at least in the later years of his study the inspiration which Marco Polo could well have been to him was not wanting; and the story may even be true as told in Navarrete, that Columbus had a copy of this famous book at his side during his first voyage, in 1492.

At the time when Humboldt doubted the knowledge of Columbus in respect to Marco Polo, this treasure of the Colombina was not known, and these later developments have shown how such a question was not to be settled as Humboldt supposed, by the fact that Columbus quoted aeneas Sylvius upon c.i.p.ango, and did not quote Marco Polo.

[Sidenote: Sir John Mandeville.]

Neither does Columbus refer to the journey and strange stories of Sir John Mandeville, whose recitals came to a generation which was beginning to forget the stories of Marco Polo, and which, by fostering a pa.s.sion for the marvelous, had readily become open to the English knight's bewildering fancies. The same negation of evidence, however, that satisfied Humboldt as respects Marco Polo will hardly suffice to establish Columbus's ignorance of the marvels which did more, perhaps, than the narratives of any other traveler to awaken Europe to the wonders of the Orient. Bernaldez, in fact, tells us that Columbus was a reader of Mandeville, whose recital was first printed in French at Lyons in 1480, within a few years after Columbus's arrival in Portugal.

[Sidenote: Nicolo di Conti.]

It was to Florence, in Toscanelli's time, not far from 1420, that Nicolo di Conti, a Venetian, came, after his long sojourn of a quarter of a century in the far East. In Conti's new marvels, the Florentine scholar saw a rejuvenation of the wonders of Marco Polo. It was from Conti, doubtless, that Toscanelli got some of that confidence in a western voyage which, in his epistle to Columbus, he speaks of as derived from a returned traveler.

Pope Eugene IV., not far from the time of the birth of Columbus, compelled Conti to relate his experiences to Poggio Bracciolini. This scribe made what he could out of the monstrous tales, and translated the stories into Latin. In this condition Columbus may have known the narrative at a later day. The information which Conti gave was eagerly availed of by the cosmographers of the time, and Colonel Yule, the modern English writer on ancient Cathay, thinks that Fra Mauro got for his map more from Conti than that traveler ventured to disclose to Poggio.

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's death, 1482.]

Toscanelli, at the time of writing this letter to Columbus, had long enjoyed a reputation as a student of terrestrial and celestial phenomena. He had received, in 1463, the dedication by Regiomonta.n.u.s of his treatise on the quadrature of the circle. He was, as has been said, an old man of seventy-seven when Columbus opened his correspondence with him. It was not his fate to live long enough to see his physical views substantiated by Diaz and Columbus, for he died in 1482.

[Sidenote: Columbus confers with others.]

In two of the contemporary writers, Bartholomew Columbus is credited with having incited his brother Christopher to the views which he developed regarding a western pa.s.sage, and these two were Antonio Gallo and Giustiniani, the commentator of the Psalms. It has been of late contended by H. Grothe, in his _Leonardo da Vinci_ (Berlin, 1874), that it was at this time, too, when that eminent artist conducted a correspondence with Columbus about a western way to Asia. But there is little need of particularizing other advocates of a belief which had within the range of credible history never ceased to have exponents. The conception was in no respect the merit of Columbus, except as he grasped a tradition, which others did not, and it is strange, that Navarrete in quoting the testimony of Ferdinand and Isabella, of August 8, 1497, to the credit of the discovery of Columbus, as his own proper work, does not see that it was the venturesome, and as was then thought foolhardy, deed to prove the conception which those monarchs commended, and not the conception itself.