Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 3

Martin Fernandez de Navarrete was guided in his career as a collector of doc.u.ments, when Charles the Fourth made an order, October 15, 1789, that there should be such a work begun to const.i.tute the nucleus of a library and museum. The troublous times which succeeded interrupted the work, and it was not till 1825 that Navarrete brought out the first volume of his _Coleccion de los Viages y Descubrimientos que hicieron por Mar los Espanoles desde_ _Fines del Siglo XV._, a publication which a fifth volume completed in 1837, when he was over seventy years of age.

Any life of Columbus written from doc.u.mentary sources must reflect much light from this collection of Navarrete, of which the first two volumes are entirely given to the career of the Admiral, and indeed bear the distinctive t.i.tle of _Relaciones, Cartas y otros Doc.u.mentos_, relating to him.

[Sidenote: The researches of Navarrete.]

Navarrete was engaged thirty years on his work in the archives of Spain, and was aided part of the time by Munoz the historian, and by Gonzales the keeper of the archives at Simancas. His researches extended to all the public repositories, and to such private ones as could be thought to ill.u.s.trate the period of discovery. Navarrete has told the story of his searches in the various archives of Spain, in the introduction to his _Coleccion_, and how it was while searching for the evidences of the alleged voyage of Maldonado on the Pacific coast of North America, in 1588, that he stumbled upon Las Casas's copies of the relations of Columbus, for his first and third voyages, then hid away in the archives of the Duc del Infantado; and he was happy to have first brought them to the attention of Munoz.

There are some advantages for the student in the use of the French edition of Navarrete's _Relations des Quatre Voyages entrepris par Colomb_, since the version was revised by Navarrete himself, and it is elucidated, not so much as one would wish, with notes by Remusat, Balbi, Cuvier, Jomard, Letronne, St. Martin, Walckenaer, and others. It was published at Paris in three volumes in 1828. The work contains Navarrete's accounts of Spanish pre-Columbian voyages, of the later literature on Columbus, and of the voyages of discovery made by other efforts of the Spaniards, beside the doc.u.mentary material respecting Columbus and his voyages, the result of his continued labors. Caleb Cus.h.i.+ng, in his _Reminiscences of Spain_ in 1833, while commending the general purposes of Navarrete, complains of his attempts to divert the indignation of posterity from the selfish conduct of Ferdinand, and to vindicate him from the charge of injustice towards Columbus. This plea does not find to-day the same sympathy in students that it did sixty years ago.

[Sidenote: Madrid Academy of History.]

Father Antonio de Aspa of the monastery of the Mejorada, formed a collection of doc.u.ments relating to the discovery of the New World, and it was in this collection, now preserved in the Academy of History at Madrid, that Navarrete discovered that curious narration of the second voyage of Columbus by Dr. Chanca, which had been sent to the chapter of the Cathedral, and which Navarrete included in his collection. It is thought that Bernaldez had used this Chanca narrative in his _Reyes Catolicos_.

[Sidenote: _Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos Ineditos._]

Navarrete's name is also connected, as one of its editors, with the extensive _Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos Ineditos para la Historia de Espana_, the publication of which was begun in Madrid in 1847, two years before Navarrete's death. This collection yields something in elucidation of the story to be here told; but not much, except that in it, at a late day, the _Historia_ of Las Casas was first printed.

In 1864, there was still another series begun at Madrid, _Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos Ineditos relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Colonizacion de las Posesiones Espanolas en America y Oceania_, under the editing of Joaquin Pacheco and Francisco de Cardenas, who have not always satisfied students by the way in which they have done their work.

Beyond the papers which Navarrete had earlier given, and which are here reprinted, there is not much in this collection to repay the student of Columbus, except some long accounts of the Repartimiento in Espanola.

[Sidenote: Cartas de Indias.]

The latest doc.u.mentary contribution is the large folio, with an appendix of facsimile writings of Columbus, Vespucius, and others, published at Madrid in 1877, by the government, and called _Cartas de Indias_, in which it has been hinted some use has been made of the matter acc.u.mulated by Navarrete for additional volumes of his _Coleccion_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PART OF A PAGE IN THE GIUSTINIANI PSALTER, SHOWING THE BEGINNING OF THE EARLIEST PRINTED LIFE OF COLUMBUS.

[From the copy in Harvard College Library.]]

CHAPTER II.

BIOGRAPHERS AND PORTRAITISTS.

[Sidenote: Contemporary notices.]

[Sidenote: Giustiniani.]

We may most readily divide by the nationalities of the writers our enumeration of those who have used the material which has been considered in the previous chapter. We begin, naturally, with the Italians, the countrymen of Columbus. We may look first to three Genoese, and it has been shown that while they used doc.u.ments apparently now lost, they took nothing from them which we cannot get from other sources; and they all borrowed from common originals, or from each other. Two of these writers are Antonio Gallo, the official chronicler of the Genoese Republic, on the first and second voyages of Columbus, and so presumably writing before the third was made, and Bartholomew Senarega on the affairs of Genoa, both of which recitals were published by Muratori, in his great Italian collection. The third is Giustiniani, the Bishop of Nebbio, who, publis.h.i.+ng in 1516, at Genoa, a polyglot Psalter, added, as one of his elucidations of the nineteenth psalm, on the plea that Columbus had often boasted he was chosen to fulfill its prophecy, a brief life of Columbus, in which the story of the humble origin of the navigator has in the past been supposed to have first been told. The other accounts, it now appears, had given that condition an equal prominence. Giustiniani was but a child when Columbus left Genoa, and could not have known him; and taking, very likely, much from hearsay, he might have made some errors, which were repeated or only partly corrected in his Annals of Genoa, published in 1537, the year following his own death. It is not found, however, that the sketch is in any essential particular far from correct, and it has been confirmed by recent investigations. The English of it is given in Harrisse's _Notes on Columbus_ (pp. 74-79). The statements of the Psalter respecting Columbus were reckoned with other things so false that the Senate of Genoa prohibited its perusal and allowed no one to possess it,--at least so it is claimed in the _Historie_ of 1571; but no one has ever found such a decree, nor is it mentioned by any who would have been likely to revert to it, had it ever existed.

[Sidenote: Bergomas.]

The account in the _Collectanea_ of Battista Fulgoso (sometimes written Fregoso), printed at Milan in 1509, is of scarcely any original value, though of interest as the work of another Genoese. Allegetto degli Allegetti, whose _Ephemerides_ is also published in Muratori, deserves scarcely more credit, though he seems to have got his information from the letters of Italian merchants living in Spain, who communicated current news to their home correspondents. Bergomas, who had published a chronicle as early as 1483, made additions to his work from time to time, and in an edition printed at Venice, in 1503, he paraphrased Columbus's own account of his first voyage, which was reprinted in the subsequent edition of 1506. In this latter year Maffei de Volterra published a commentary at Rome, of much the same importance. Such was the filtering process by which Italy, through her own writers, acquired contemporary knowledge of her adventurous son.

The method was scarcely improved in the condensation of Jovius (1551), or in the traveler's tales of Benzoni (1565).

[Sidenote: Casoni, 1708.]

[Sidenote: Bossi.]

Harrisse affirms that it is not till we come down to the Annals of Genoa, published by Filippo Casoni, in 1708, that we get any new material in an Italian writer, and on a few points this last writer has adduced doc.u.mentary evidence, not earlier made known. It is only when we pa.s.s into the present century that we find any of the countrymen of Columbus undertaking in a sustained way to tell the whole story of Columbus's life. Leon had noted that at some time in Spain, without giving place and date, Columbus had printed a little tract, _Declaration de Tabla Navigatoria_; but no one before Luigi Bossi had undertaken to investigate the writings of Columbus. He is precursor of all the modern biographers of Columbus, and his book was published at Milan, in 1818.

He claimed in his appendix to have added rare and unpublished doc.u.ments, but Harrisse points out how they had all been printed earlier.

Bossi expresses opinions respecting the Spanish nation that are by no means acceptable to that people, and Navarrete not infrequently takes the Italian writer to task for this as for his many errors of statement, and for the confidence which he places even in the pictorial designs of De Bry as historical records.

There is nothing more striking in the history of American discovery than the fact that the Italian people furnished to Spain Columbus, to England Cabot, and to France Verrazano; and that the three leading powers of Europe, following as maritime explorers in the lead of Portugal, who could not dispense with Vespucius, another Italian, pushed their rights through men whom they had borrowed from the central region of the Mediterranean, while Italy in its own name never possessed a rood of American soil. The adopted country of each of these Italians gave more or less of its own impress to its foster child. No one of these men was so impressible as Columbus, and no country so much as Spain was likely at this time to exercise an influence on the character of an alien.

Humboldt has remarked that Columbus got his theological fervor in Andalusia and Granada, and we can scarcely imagine Columbus in the garb of a Franciscan walking the streets of free and commercial Genoa as he did those of Seville, when he returned from his second voyage.

The latest of the considerable popular Italian lives of Columbus is G.

B. Lemoyne's _Colombo e la Scoperta dell' America_, issued at Turin, in 1873.

[Sidenote: Portuguese writers.]

We may pa.s.s now to the historians of that country to which Columbus betook himself on leaving Italy; but about all to be found at first hand is in the chronicle of Joo II. of Portugal, as prepared by Ruy de Pina, the archivist of the Torre do Tombo. At the time of the voyage of Columbus Ruy was over fifty, while Garcia de Resende was a young man then living at the Portuguese court, who in his _Choronica_, published in 1596, did little more than borrow from his elder, Ruy; and Resende in turn furnished to Joo de Barros the staple of the latter's narrative in his _Decada da Asia_, printed at Lisbon, in 1752.

[Sidenote: Spanish writers.]

[Sidenote: Peter Martyr.]

We find more of value when we summon the Spanish writers. Although Peter Martyr d'Anghiera was an Italian, Munoz reckons him a Spaniard, since he was naturalized in Spain. He was a man of thirty years, when, coming from Rome, he settled in Spain, a few years before Columbus attracted much notice. Martyr had been borne thither on a reputation of his own, which had commended his busy young nature to the attention of the Spanish court. He took orders and entered upon a prosperous career, proceeding by steps, which successively made him the chaplain of Queen Isabella, a prior of the Cathedral of Granada, and ultimately the official chronicler of the Indies. Very soon after his arrival in Spain, he had disclosed a quick eye for the changeful life about him, and he began in 1488 the writing of those letters which, to the number of over eight hundred, exist to attest his active interest in the events of his day. These events he continued to observe till 1525. We have no more vivid source of the contemporary history, particularly as it concerned the maritime enterprise of the peninsular peoples. He wrote fluently, and, as he tells us, sometimes while waiting for dinner, and necessarily with haste. He jotted down first and unconfirmed reports, and let them stand. He got news by hearsay, and confounded events. He had candor and sincerity enough, however, not to prize his own works above their true value. He knew Columbus, and, his letters readily reflect what interest there was in the exploits of Columbus, immediately on his return from his first voyage; but the earlier preparations of the navigator for that voyage, with the problematical characteristics of the undertaking, do not seem to have made any impression upon Peter Martyr, and it is not till May of 1493, when the discovery had been made, and later in September, that he chronicles the divulged existence of the newly discovered islands. The three letters in which this wonderful intelligence was first communicated are printed by Harrisse in English, in his _Notes on Columbus_. Las Casas tells us how Peter Martyr got his accounts of the first discoveries directly from the lips of Columbus himself and from those who accompanied him; but he does not fail to tell us also of the dangers of too implicitly trusting to all that Peter says. From May 14, 1493, to June 5, 1497, in twelve separate letters, we read what this observer has to say of the great navigator who had suddenly and temporarily stepped into the glare of notice. These and other letters of Peter Martyr have not escaped some serious criticism.

There are contradictions and anachronisms in them that have forcibly helped Ranke, Hallam, Gerigk, and others to count the text which we have as more or less changed from what must have been the text, if honestly written by Martyr. They have imagined that some editor, willful or careless, has thrown this luckless accompaniment upon them. The letters, however, claimed the confidence of Prescott, and have, as regards the parts touching the new discoveries, seldom failed to impress with their importance those who have used them. It is the opinion of the last examiner of them, J. H. Mariejol, in his _Peter Martyr d'Anghera_ (Paris, 1887), that to read them attentively is the best refutation of the skeptics. Martyr ceased to refer to the affairs of the New World after 1499, and those of his earlier letters which ill.u.s.trate the early voyage have appeared in a French version, made by Gaffarel and Louvot (Paris, 1885).

The representations of Columbus easily convinced Martyr that there opened a subject worthy of his pen, and he set about composing a special treatise on the discoveries in the New World, and, under the t.i.tle of _De Orbe Novo_, it occupied his attention from October, 1494, to the day of his death. For the earlier years he had, if we may believe him, not a little help from Columbus himself; and it would seem from his one hundred and thirty-five epistles that he was not altogether prepared to go with Columbus, in accounting the new islands as lying off the coast of Asia. He is particularly valuable to us in treating of Columbus's conflicts with the natives of Espanola, and Las Casas found him as helpful as we do.

These _Decades_, as the treatise is usually called, formed enlarged bulletins, which, in several copies, were transmitted by him to some of his n.o.ble friends in Italy, to keep them conversant with the pa.s.sing events.

[Sidenote: Trivigiano.]

A certain Angelo Trivigiano, into whose hands a copy of some of the early sections fell, translated them into easy, not to say vulgar, Italian, and sent them to Venice, in four different copies, a few months after they were written; and in this way the first seven books of the first decade fell into the hands of a Venetian printer, who, in April, 1504, brought out a little book of sixteen leaves in the dialect of that region, known in bibliography as the _Libretto de Tutta la Navigation de Re de Spagna de le Isole et Terreni novamente trovati_. This publication is known to us in a single copy lacking a t.i.tle, in the Biblioteca Marciana. Here we have the first account of the new discoveries, written upon report, and supplementing the narrative of Columbus himself. We also find in this little narrative some personal details about Columbus, not contained in the same portions when embodied in the larger _De Orbe Novo_ of Martyr, and it may be a question if somebody who acted as editor to the Venetian version may not have added them to the translation. The story of the new discoveries attracted enough notice to make Zorzi or Montalboddo--if one or the other were its editor--include this Venetian version of Martyr bodily in the collection of voyages which, as _Paesi novamente retrovati_, was published at Vicentia somewhere about November, 1507. It is, perhaps, a measure of the interest felt in the undertakings of Columbus, not easily understood at this day, that it took fourteen years for a scant recital of such events to work themselves into the context of so composite a record of discovery as the _Paesi_ proved to be; and still more remarkable it may be accounted that the story could be told with but few actual references to the hero of the transactions, "Columbus, the Genoese." It is not only the compiler who is so reticent, but it is the author whence he borrowed what he had to say, Martyr himself, the observer and acquaintance of Columbus, who buries the discoverer under the event. With such an augury, it is not so strange that at about the same time in the little town of St. Die, in the Vosges, a sequestered teacher could suggest a name derived from that of a follower of Columbus, Americus Vespucius, for that part of the new lands then brought into prominence. If the doc.u.mentary proofs of Columbus's priority had given to the Admiral's name the same prominence which the event received, the result might not, in the end, have been so discouraging to justice.

Martyr, unfortunately, with all his advantages, and with his access to the archives of the Indies, did not burden his recital with doc.u.ments.

He was even less observant of the lighter traits that interest those eager for news than might have been expected, for the busy chaplain was a gossip by nature: he liked to retail hearsays and rumors; he enlivened his letters with personal characteristics; but in speaking of Columbus he is singularly reticent upon all that might picture the man to us as he lived.

[Sidenote: Oviedo.]

[Sidenote: Ramusio.]

When, in 1534, these portions of Martyr's _Decades_ were combined with a summary of Oviedo, in a fresh publication, there were some curious personal details added to Martyr's narrative; but as Ramusio is supposed to have edited the compilation, these particulars are usually accredited to that author. It is not known whence this Italian compiler could have got them, and there is no confirmation of them elsewhere to be found. If these additions, as is supposed, were a foreign graft upon Martyr's recitals, the staple of his narrative still remains not altogether free from some suspicions that, as a writer himself, he was not wholly frank and trustworthy. At least a certain confusion in his method leads some of the critics to discover something like imposture in what they charge as a habit of antedating a letter so as to appear prophetic; while his defenders find in these same evidences of incongruity a sign of spontaneity that argues freshness and sincerity.

[Sidenote: Bernaldez.]