Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 60

Dominico Susanna Colombo, of DOMENICO = Fontanarosa. _Cuccaro_.

| | _a_---------------+-------------+------------+-------------+ | | | | | Bartolomeo. Giovanni Giacomo Blanchinetta | Pelegrino, or Diego, = Giacomo | d. s. p. priest. Paravello.

| | Maria, nun, | | b. 1508. .----.----.----.----.----.----.

| | _b_---------------+--------------------+ | | | | Ana = Cristoval = Magdalena Diego de | | de = Isabel | | Pravia | | Guzman. Justenian.

| | | | +------+-----+ +---------+ | | | | | _c_ = DIEGO, Francesca Maria =4= d.s.p. = Diego = Luis de | | 1578. | Ortegon. Avila.

| | | | | | Josefa | Bernardo Balthazar = De Paz de la _Luis de_ Colombo, Colombo, | Serra. AVILA, of Cogoleto. of Cuccaro.

| d. 1633.

| Josefa = Martin de | LARREATEGUI.

| Diego.

| | Francisco.

| | Pedro Isidoro.

| | MANIANO(1790). =13= | | PEDRO. =14= | | CRISTOVAL. =15= | | Son b.

1878.

[Sidenote: His heirs.]

[Sidenote: His daughter marries her cousin Diego, the male heir.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's male line extinct.]

Luis left two illegitimate children, one a son; but his lawful heirs were adjudged to be the children of Maria de Mosquera, two daughters, one a nun and the other Filipa. This last presented a claim for the t.i.tles in opposition to the demands of Diego, the nephew of her father.

She declared this cousin to be the natural, and not the lawful, son of Luis's brother. It was easy enough to forget such imputations in coming to the final conclusion, when Filipa and Diego took each other in marriage (May 15, 1573) to compose their differences, the husband becoming Duke of Veragua. Filipa died in November, 1577, and her husband January 27, 1578. As they had no children, the male line of Columbus became extinct seventy years after his death.

[Sidenote: The long lawsuit and its many contestants.]

The lawsuit which followed for the settlement of the succession was a famous one. It lasted thirty years. The claimants were at first eight in number, but they were reduced to five by deaths during the progress of the trials.

The first was Francesca, own sister of Diego, the late Duke. Her claim was rejected; but five generations later the dignities returned to her descendants.

The second was the representative of Maria, the daughter of Luis, and sister-in-law of Diego. The claim made by her heir, the convent of San Quirce, was discarded.

The third was Cristoval, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of Luis, who claimed to be the fruit of a marriage of Luis, concluded while he was in prison accused of polygamy. Cristoval died in 1601, before the cause was decided.

The fourth was Alvaro de Portogallo, Count of Gelves, a son of Isabel, the sister of Luis. He had unsuccessfully claimed the t.i.tles when Luis died, in 1572, and again put forth his claims in 1578, when Diego died, but he himself died, pending a decision, in 1581. His son, Jorge Alberto, inherited his rights, but died in 1589, before a decision was reached, when his younger brother, Nuno de Portogallo, became the claimant, and his rights were established by the tribunal in 1608, when he became Duke of Veragua. His enjoyment of the t.i.tle was not without unrest, but the attempts to dispossess him failed.

The fifth was Cristoval de Cardona, Admiral of Aragon, son of Maria, elder sister of Luis. This claimant died in 1583, while his claim, having once been allowed, was held in abeyance by an appeal of his rivals. His sister, Maria, was then adjudged inheritor of the honors, but she died in 1605, before the final decree.

The sixth was Maria de la Cueva, daughter of Juana, sister of Luis, who died before December, 1600, while her daughter died in 1605, leaving Carlos Pacheco a claimant, whose rights were disallowed.

The seventh was Balthazar Colombo, a descendant of a Domenico Colombo, who was, according to the claim, the same Domenico who was the father of Columbus. His genealogical record was not accepted.

The eighth was Bernardo Colombo, who claimed to be a descendant of Bartholomew Columbus, the Adelantado, a claim not made good.

These last two contestants rested their t.i.tle in part on the fact that their ancestors had always borne the name of Colombo, and this was required by Columbus to belong to the inheritors of his honors. The lineal ancestors of the other claimants had borne the names of Cardona, Portogallo, or Avila.

[Sidenote: Nuno de Portogallo succeeds, and the line later changes.]

From Nuno de Portogallo the t.i.tles descended to his son Alvaro Jacinto, and then to the latter's son, Pedro Nuno. His rights were contested by Luis de Avila (grandson of Cristoval, brother of Luis Colon), who tried in 1620 to reverse the verdict of 1608, and it was not till 1664 that Pedro Nuno defeated his adversaries. He was succeeded by his son, Pedro Manuel, and he by his son, Pedro Nuno, who died in 1733, when this male line became extinct.

The t.i.tles were now illegally a.s.sumed by Pedro Nuno's sister, Catarina Ventura, who by marriage gave them to her husband, James Fitz-James Stuart, son of the famous Duke of Berwick, and by inheritance in his own right, Duke of Liria. When he died, in 1738, the t.i.tles pa.s.sed to his son, Jacobo Eduardo; thence to the latter's son, Carlos Fernando, who transmitted them to his son, Jacobo Filipe. This last was obliged, by a verdict in 1790, which reversed the decree of 1664, to yield the t.i.tles to the line of Francesca, sister of Diego, the fourth holder of them.

This Francesca married Diego Ortegon, and their grandchild, Josefa, married Martin Larreategui, whose great-great-grandson, Mariano (by decrees 1790-96), became Duke of Veragua, from whom the t.i.tle descended to his son, Pedro, and then to his grandson, Cristoval, the present Duke, born in 1837, whose heir, the next Duke, was born in 1878. The value of the t.i.tles is said to-day to represent about eight or ten thousand dollars, and this income is chargeable upon the revenues of Cuba and Porto Rico.

In concluding this rapid sketch of the descent of the blood and honors of Columbus, two striking thoughts are presented. The Larreateguis are a Basque family. The blood of Columbus, the Genoese, now mingles with that of the hardiest race of navigators of western Europe, and of whom it may be expected that if ever earlier contact of Europe with the New World is proved, these Basques will be found the forerunners of Columbus. The blood of the supposed discoverer of the western pa.s.sage to Asia flows with that of the earliest stock which is left to us of that Oriental wave of population which inundated Europe, in the far-away times when the races which make our modern Christian histories were being disposed in valleys and on the coasts of what was then the Western World.

APPENDIX.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS.

[Sidenote: Progress of discovery.]

There was a struggling effort of the geographical sense of the world for thirty years and more after the death of Columbus, before the fact began to be grasped that a great continent was interposed as a substantial and independent barrier in the track to India. It took nearly a half century more before men generally recognized that fact, and then in most cases it was accepted with the reservation of a possible Asiatic connection at the extreme north. It was something more than two hundred and twenty years from the death of Columbus before that severance at the north was incontestably established by the voyage of Bering, and a hundred and thirty years longer before at last the contour of the northern coast of the continent was established by the proof of the long-sought northwest pa.s.sage in 1850. We must now, to complete the story of the influence of Columbus, rehea.r.s.e somewhat concisely the narrative of this progressive outcome of that wonderful voyage of 1492. The spirit of western discovery, which Columbus imparted, was of long continuance.

[Sidenote: The influence of Ptolemy and his career.]

"If we wish to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted," says Dr. Kohl, "with the history of discovery in the New World, we must not only follow the navigators on their s.h.i.+ps, but we must look into the cabinets of princes and into the counting-houses of merchants, and likewise watch the scholars in their speculative studies." There was no rallying point for the scholar of cosmography in those early days of discovery like the text and influence of Ptolemy.

We know little of this ancient geographer beyond the fact of his living in the early portion of the second century, and mainly at Alexandria, the fittest home of a geographer at that time, since this Egyptian city was peerless for commerce and learning. Here he could do best what he advises all geographers to do, consult the journals of travelers, and get information of eclipses, as the same phenomena were observed at different places; such, for instance, as that of the moon noted at Arbela in the fifth, and seen at Carthage in the second hour.

[Sidenote: Portolanos.]

The precision of Ptolemy was covered out of sight by graphic fancies among the cosmographers of succeeding ages, till about the beginning of the fourteenth century Italy and the western Mediterranean islands began to produce those atlases of sea-charts, which have come down to us under the name of "portolanos;" and still later a new impetus was given to geographical study by the ma.n.u.scripts of Ptolemy, with his maps, which began to be common in western Europe in the beginning of the fifteenth century, largely through the influence of communications with the Byzantine peoples.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PTOLEMY.

[From Reusner's _Icones_.]]

The portolanos, however, never lost their importance. Nordenskiold says that, from the great number of them still extant in Italy, we may deduce that they had a greater circulation during the sixteenth century than printed cartographical works. About five hundred of these sea-charts are known in Italian libraries, and the greater proportion of them are of Italian origin.

[Sidenote: Latin text of Ptolemy.]

[Sidenote: The Donis maps.]

It is a composite Latin text, brought into final shape by Jacobus Angelus not far from 1400-1410, which was the basis of the early printed editions of Ptolemy. This version was for a while circulated in ma.n.u.script, sometimes with copies of the maps of the Old World having a Latinized nomenclature; and the public libraries of Europe contain here and there specimens of these early copies, one of which it is thought was known to Pierre d'Ailly. It is a question if Angelus supplied the maps which accompanied these early ma.n.u.scripts, and which got into the Bologna edition of 1462 (wrongly dated for 1472), and into the metrical version of Berlingieri. These maps, whether always the same in the early ma.n.u.scripts or not, were later superseded by a new set of maps made by a German cartographer, Nicolaus Donis, which he added to a revision of Angelus's Latin text. These later maps were close copies of the original Greek maps, and were accompanied by others of a similar workmans.h.i.+p, which represented better knowledge than the Greeks had. In 1478 these Donis maps were first engraved on copper, and were used in the later editions of 1490, and slightly corrected in those of 1507 and 1508. The engravers were Schweinheim and Buckinck, and their work, following copies of it in the edition of 1490, has been admirably reproduced in _The Facsimile Atlas_ of Nordenskiold (Stockholm, 1889).

[Ill.u.s.tration: DONIS, 1482.]

[Sidenote: Greenland in maps.]

Meanwhile, editions of the text of Angelus had been issued at Ulm in 1482, and giving additions in 1486, with woodcut maps, the same in both issues on a different projection, a.s.signed to Dominus Nicolaus Germa.n.u.s, who had, according to Nordenskiold, completed the ma.n.u.script fifteen years earlier. It is significant, perhaps, of the slowness with which the bruit of Portuguese discoveries to the south had traveled that there is in the maps of Africa no extension of Ptolemy's knowledge. But if they are deficient in the south, they are remarkable in the north for showing the coming America in a delineation of Greenland, which, as we have already pointed out, was no new object in the ma.n.u.script portolanos, even as far back as the early part of the same century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUYSCH, 1508.]

Two years after the death of Columbus, we find in the edition of 1508, and sometimes in the edition of 1507,--there is no difference between the two issues except in the t.i.tle-page,--the first engraved map which has particular reference to the new geographical developments of the age.