Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 28

[Sidenote: 1493. May 20. Receives a coat of arms.]

We find the sovereigns bestowing upon him, on the 20th of May, a coat of arms, which shows a castle and a lion in the upper quarters, and in those below, a group of golden islands in a sea of waves, on the one hand, and the arms to which his family had been ent.i.tled, on the other.

Humboldt speaks of this archipelago as the first map of America, but he apparently knew only Oviedo's description of the arms, for the latter places the islands in a gulf formed by a mainland, and in this fas.h.i.+on they are grouped in a blazon of the arms which is preserved at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris--a duplicate being at Genoa.

Harrisse says that this design is the original water-color, made under Columbus's eye in 1502. In this picture,--which is the earliest blazonry which has come down to us,--the other lower quarter has the five golden anchors on a blue ground, which it is claimed was adjudged to Columbus as the distinctive badge of an Admiral of Spain. The personal arms are relegated to a minor overlying s.h.i.+eld at the lower point of the escutcheon. Oviedo also says that trees and other objects should be figured on the mainland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARMS OF COLUMBUS.

[From Oviedo's _Cosmica_.]]

The lion and castle of the original grant were simply reminders of the arms of Leon and Castile; but Columbus seems, of his own motion, so far as Harrisse can discover, to have changed the blazonry of those objects in the drawing of 1502 to agree with those of the royal arms. It was by the same arrogant license, apparently, that he introduced later the continental sh.o.r.e of the archipelago; and Harrisse can find no record that the anchors were ever by any authority added to his blazon, nor that the professed family arms, borne in connection, had any warrant whatever.

The earliest engraved copy of the arms is in the _Historia General_ of Oviedo in 1535, where a profile helmet supports a crest made of a globe topped by a cross. In Oviedo's _Coronica_ of 1547, the helmet is shown in front view. There seems to have been some wide discrepancies in the heraldic excursions of these early writers. Las Casas, for instance, puts the golden lion in a silver field,--when heraldry abhors a conjunction of metals, as much as nature abhors a vacuum. The discussion of the family arms which were added by Columbus to the escutcheon made a significant part of the arguments in the suit, many years later, of Balda.s.sare (Balthazar) Colombo to possess the Admiral's dignities; and as Harrisse points out, the emblem of those Italian Colombos of any pretensions to n.o.bility was invariably a dove of some kind,--a device quite distinct from those designated by Columbus. This a.s.sumption of family arms by Columbus is held by Harrisse to be simply a concession to the prejudices of his period, and to the exigencies of his new position.

The arms have been changed under the dukes of Veragua to show silver-capped waves in the sea, while a globe surmounted by a cross is placed in the midst of a gulf containing only five islands.

[Sidenote: His alleged motto.]

There is another later accompaniment of the arms, of which the origin has escaped all search. It is far more familiar than the escutcheon, on which it plays the part of a motto. It sometimes represents that Columbus found for the allied crowns a new world, and at other times that he gave one to them.

Por Castilla e por Leon Nuevo Mundo hallo Colon.

A Castilla, y a Leon Nuevo Mundo dio Colon.

Oviedo is the earliest to mention this distich in 1535. It is given in the _Historie_, not as a motto of the arms, but as an inscription placed by the king on the tomb of Columbus some years after his death. If this is true, it does away with the claims of Gomara that Columbus himself added it to his arms.

[Sidenote: Diplomacy of the Bull of Demarcation.]

But diplomacy had its part to play in these events. As the Christian world at that time recognized the rights of the Holy Father to confirm any trespa.s.s on the possessions of the heathen, there was a prompt effort on the part of Ferdinand to bring the matter to the attention of the Pope. As early as 1438, bulls of Martin V. and Eugene IV. had permitted the Spaniards to sail west and the Portuguese south; and a confirmation of the same had been made by Pope Nicholas the Fifth. In 1479, the rival crowns of Portugal and Spain had agreed to respect their mutual rights under these papal decisions.

The messengers whom Ferdinand sent to Rome were instructed to intimate that the actual possession which had been made in their behalf of these new regions did not require papal sanction, as they had met there no Christian occupants; but that as dutiful children of the church it would be grateful to receive such a benediction on their energies for the faith as a confirmatory bull would imply. Ferdinand had too much of wiliness in his own nature, and the practice of it was too much a part of the epoch, wholly to trust a man so notoriously perverse and obstinate as Alexander VI. was. Though Munoz calls Alexander the friend of Ferdinand, and though the Pope was by birth an Aragonese, experience had shown that there was no certainty of his support in a matter affecting the interest of Spain.

[Sidenote: 1493. May 3. The Bull issued.]

A folio printed leaf in Gothic characters, of which the single copy sold in London in 1854 is said to be the only one known to bibliographers, made public to the world the famous Bull of Demarcation of Alexander VI., bearing date May 3, 1493. If one would believe Hakluyt, the Pope had been induced to do this act by his own option, rather than at the intercession of the Spanish monarchs. Under it, and a second bull of the day following, Spain was ent.i.tled to possess, "on condition of planting the Catholic faith," all lands not already occupied by Christian powers, west of a meridian drawn one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape de Verde Islands, evidently on the supposition that these two groups were in the same longitude, the fact being that the most westerly of the southern, and the most easterly of the northern, group possessed nearly the same meridian. Though Portugal was not mentioned in describing this line, it was understood that there was reserved to her the same privilege easterly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POPE ALEXANDER VI.

[A bust in the Berlin Museum.]]

There was not as yet any consideration given to the division which this great circle meridian was likely to make on the other side of the globe, where Portugal was yet to be most interested. The Cape of Good Hope had not then been doubled, and the present effect of the division was to confine the Portuguese to an exploration of the western African coast and to adjacent islands. It will be observed that in the placing of this line the magnetic phenomena which Columbus had observed on his recent voyage were not forgotten, if the coincidence can be so interpreted.

Humboldt suggests that it can.

[Sidenote: Line of no variation.]

To make a physical limit serve a political one was an obvious recourse at a time when the line of no variation was thought to be unique and of a true north and south direction; but within a century the observers found three other lines, as Acosta tells us in his _Historia Natural de las Indias_, in 1589; and there proved to be a persistent migration of these lines, all little suited to terrestrial demarcations. Roselly de Lorgues and the canonizers, however, having given to Columbus the planning of the line in his cell at Rabida, think, with a surprising prescience on his part, and with a very convenient obliviousness on their part, that he had chosen "precisely the only point of our planet which science would choose in our day,--a mysterious demarcation made by its omnipotent Creator," in sovereign disregard, unfortunately, of the laws of his own universe!

[Sidenote: Suspicious movements in Portugal.]

Meanwhile there were movements in Portugal which Ferdinand had not failed to notice. An amba.s.sador had come from its king, asking permission to buy certain articles of prohibited exportation for use on an African expedition which the Portuguese were fitting out. Ferdinand suspected that the true purpose of this armament was to seize the new islands, under a pretense as dishonorable as that which covered the ostensible voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands, by whose exposure Columbus had been driven into Spain. The Spanish monarch was alert enough to get quite beforehand with his royal brother. Before the amba.s.sador of which mention has been made had come to the Spanish Court, Ferdinand had dispatched Lope de Herrera to Lisbon, armed with a conciliatory and a denunciatory letter, to use one or the other, as he might find the conditions demanded. The Portuguese historian Resende tells us that Joo, in order to give a wrong scent, had openly bestowed largesses on some and had secretly suborned other members of Ferdinand's cabinet, so that he did not lack for knowledge of the Spanish intentions from the latter members. He and his amba.s.sadors were accordingly found by Ferdinand to be inexplicably prepared at every new turn of the negotiations.

In this way Joo had been informed of the double mission of Herrera, and could avoid the issue with him, while he sent his own amba.s.sadors to Spain, to promise that, pending their negotiations, no vessel should sail on any voyage of discovery for sixty days. They were also to propose that instead of the papal line, one should be drawn due west from the Canaries, giving all new discoveries north to the Spaniards, and all south to the Portuguese. This new move Ferdinand turned to his own advantage, for it gave him the opportunity to enter upon a course of diplomacy which he could extend long enough to allow Columbus to get off with a new armament. He then sent a fresh emba.s.sy, with instructions to move slowly and protract the discussion, but to resort, when compelled, to a proposition for arbitration. Joo was foiled and he knew it. "These amba.s.sadors," he said, "have no feet to hurry and no head to propound."

The Spanish game was the best played, and the Portuguese king grew fretful under it, and intimated sometimes a purpose to proceed to violence, but he was restrained by a better wisdom. We depend mainly upon the Portuguese historians for understanding these complications, and it is to be hoped that some time the archives of the Vatican may reveal the substance of these tripart.i.te negotiations of the papal court and the two crowns.

[Sidenote: 1493. May. Honors of Columbus confirmed.]

[Sidenote: May 28. Columbus leaves Barcelona.]

[Sidenote: June. In Seville.]

[Sidenote: Fonseca.]

Before Columbus had left Barcelona, a large gratuity had been awarded to him by his sovereigns; an order had been issued commanding free lodgings to be given to him and his followers, wherever he went, and the original stipulations as to honors and authority, made by the sovereigns at Santa Fe, had been confirmed (May 28). A royal seal was now confided to his keeping, to be set to letters patent, and to commissions that it might be found necessary to issue. It might be used even in appointing a deputy, to act in the absence of Columbus. His appointments were to hold during the royal pleasure. His own power was defined at the same time, and in particular to hold command over the entire expedition, and to conduct its future government and explorations. He left Barcelona, after leavetakings, on May 28; and his instructions, as printed by Navarrete, were signed the next day. It is not unlikely they were based on suggestions of Columbus made in a letter, without date, which has recently been printed in the _Cartas de Indias_ (1877). Early in June, he was in Seville, and soon after he was joined by Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville, who, as representative of the Crown, had been made the chief director of the preparations. It is claimed by Harrisse that this priest has been painted by the biographers of Columbus much blacker than he really was, on the strength of the objurgations which the _Historie_ bestows upon him. Las Casas calls him worldly; and he deserves the epithet if a dominating career of thirty years in controlling the affairs of the Indies is any evidence of fitness in such matters. His position placed him where he had purposes to thwart as well as projects to foster, and the record of this age of discovery is not without many proofs of selfish and dishonorable motives, which Fonseca might be called upon to repress. That his discrimination was not always clear-sighted may be expected; that he was sometimes perfidious may be true, but he was dealing mainly with those who could be perfidious also. That he abused his authority might also go without dispute; but so did Columbus and the rest. In the game of diamond-cut-diamond, it is not always just to single out a single victim for condemnation, as is done by Irving and the canonizers.

It was while at Seville, engaged in this work of preparation, that Fonseca sought to check the demands of Columbus as respects the number of his personal servitors. That these demands were immoderate, the character of Columbus, never cautious under incitement, warrants us in believing; and that the official guardian of the royal treasury should have views of his own is not to be wondered at. The story goes that the sovereigns forced Fonseca to yield, and that this was the offense of Columbus which could neither be forgotten nor forgiven by Fonseca, and for which severities were visited upon him and his heirs in the years to come. Irving is confident that Fonseca has escaped the condemnation which Spanish writers would willingly have put upon him, for fear of the ecclesiastical censors of the press.

[Sidenote: Council for the Indies.]

The measures which were now taken in accordance with the instructions given to Columbus, already referred to, to regulate the commerce of the Indies, with a custom house at Cadiz and a corresponding one in Espanola under the control of the Admiral, ripened in time into what was known as the Council for the Indies. It had been early determined (May 23) to control all emigration to the new regions, and no one was allowed to trade thither except under license from the monarchs, Columbus, or Fonseca.

[Sidenote: New fleet equipped.]

A royal order had put all s.h.i.+ps and appurtenances in the ports of Andalusia at the demand of Fonseca and Columbus, for a reasonable compensation, and compelled all persons required for the service to embark in it on suitable pay. Two thirds of the ecclesiastical t.i.thes, the sequestered property of banished Jews, and other resources were set apart to meet these expenses, and the treasurer was authorized to contract a loan, if necessary. To eke out the resources, this last was resorted to, and 5,000,000 maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. All the transactions relating to the procuring and dispensing of moneys had been confided to a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo; with the aid of an accountant, Juan de Soria. Everything was hurriedly gathered for the armament, for it was of the utmost importance that the preparations should move faster than the watching diplomacy.

Artillery which had been in use on s.h.i.+pboard for more than a century and a half was speedily ama.s.sed. The arquebuse, however, had not altogether been supplanted by the matchlock, and was yet preferred in some hands for its lightness. Military stores which had been left over from the Moorish war and were now housed in the Alhambra, at this time converted into an a.r.s.enal, were opportunely drawn upon.

[Sidenote: Beradi and Vespucius.]

The labor of an intermediary in much of this preparation fell upon Juonato Beradi, a Florentine merchant then settled in Seville, and it is interesting to know that Americus Vespucius, then a mature man of two and forty, was engaged under Beradi in this work of preparation.

[Sidenote: 1493. June 20.]

From the fact that certain hors.e.m.e.n and agriculturists were ordered to be in Seville on June 20, and to hold themselves in readiness to embark, it may be inferred that the sailing of some portion of the fleet may at that time have been expected at a date not much later.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSSBOW-MAKER.

[From Jost Amman's _Beschreibung_, 1586.]]

[Sidenote: Isabella's interest.]

[Sidenote: Indians baptized.]

The interest of Isabella in the new expedition was almost wholly on its emotional and intellectual side. She had been greatly engrossed with the spiritual welfare of the Indians whom Columbus had taken to Barcelona.

Their baptism had taken place with great state and ceremony, the King, Queen, and Prince Juan officiating as sponsors. It was intended that they should reembark with the new expedition. Prince Juan, however, picked out one of these Indians for his personal service, and when the fellow died, two years later, it was a source of gratification, as Herrera tells us, that at last one of his race had entered the gates of heaven! Only four of the six ever reached their native country. We know nothing of the fate of those left sick at Palos.

[Sidenote: Father Buil.]