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

orary n

tini

f Genoa, both of which recitals were published by Muratori, in his great Italian collection. The third is Giustiniani, the Bishop of Nebbio, who, publishing 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

gom

o 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'

e condensation of Jovius (1551), or in

ni,

ss

entury that we find any of the countrymen of Columbus undertaking in a sustained way to tell the whole story of Columbus's life. Léon 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 Bo

nd Navarrete not infrequently takes the Italian writer to task for this as for his many errors of statem

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 wa

ives of Columbus is G. B. Lemoyne's Colombo e la

uese w

y 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

sh wr

r Ma

or 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 J

s 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 altoget

tins, which, in several copies, were transmitted by him to some of his

vig

ls 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

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 rum

ie

mu

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

nal

o what Chanca and other companions of Columbus had written. This country curate, who lived in the neighborhood of Seville, was also the chaplain of the Archbishop of Seville, a personal friend of the Admiral, and from him Bernaldez received some help. He does not add much, however, to what is given us by Peter Martyr

ie

confidence, because he is not always a hero-worshiper, and he does not hesitate to tell a story, which seems to have been in circulation, to the effect that Columbus got his geographical ideas from an old pilot. Oviedo, however, refrains from setting the tale down as a fact, as some of the later writers, using little of Oviedo's caution, and borrowing from him, did. His opportunities of knowing the truth were certainly exceptional, though it does not appear that he ever had direct communication with the Admiral himself. He was but a lad of fifteen when we find him jotting down notes of what he saw and heard, as a page in attendance upon Don Juan, the son of the Spanish sovereigns, when, at Barcelona, he saw them receive Columbus after his first voyage. During five years, between 1497 and 1502, he was in Italy. With that exception he was living within the Spanish court up to 1514, when he was sent to the New World, and passed there the greater part of his remaining life. While he had been at court in his earlier years, the sons of Columbus, Diego and Ferdinand, were his companions in the pages' anteroom, and he could hardly have failed to profit by their acquaintance. We

up what he took from Oviedo with what else came

ibed to Ferdi

for the personal details and other circumstances which lend vividness to his story. As the book has to-day a good many able defenders, notwithstanding the discredit which Harrisse has

this son of Columbus undertook to leave behind him a detailed account of his father's career, such as the Admiral, though urged to do it, had never found time to write. Ferdinand was his

Ferdinan

ing the Admiral's fourth voyage, in 1502-1504, the boy accompanied his father, and once or twice at a later day he again visited the Indies. When Columbus died, this son inherited many of his papers; but if his own avowal be believed, he had neglected occasions in his father's lifetime to question the Admiral respecting his early life, not having, as he says, at that time learned to have interest in such matters. His subsequent educ

torial rights in San Domingo, coming to him from the Admiral, increased by slave labor in the mines, assigned to him by King Fe

rapher, could find no proof of it. Oviedo describes him in 1535 as a person of

eca Col

aving searched from 1510 to 1537 all the principal book marts of Europe. He left these books by will to his minor nephew, Luis Colon, son of Diego, but there was a considerable delay before Luis renounced the legacy, with the conditions attached. Legal proceedings, whi

e again taken of it till a new librarian was chosen, in 1832, who discovered what any one might have learned before, that the money which Ferdinand left for the care and increase of the library had never been applied to it, and that the principal, even, had disappeared. Other means of increasing it were availed of, and the loss of the original inestimable bibliographical treasures was forgotten in the crowd of modern books which were placed upon its shelves. Amid all this new growth, it does not appear just how many of the books which descended from Ferdinand still remain in it. Something of the old carelessness-to give it no worse name-has despoiled it, even as late as 1884 and 1885, when large nu

TES OF FERDINAND CO

ur el Décadence de la C

de O

. None of his friends, some of them writers on the New World, make any mention of such a book. There is in the catalogue a note, however, of a life of Columbus written about 1525, of which the manuscript is credited to Ferdinand Perez de Oliva, a man of some repute, who died in 1530. Whether this writing bore any significant relation to the life which is associated with the owner of the library is apparently beyond discovery. It can scarcely be supposed that it could have been written other than with Ferdinand's cognizance. That there was an account of the Admiral's career, quoted in Las Casas and attributed to Ferdinand Columbus, and that it existed before 1559, seems to be nearly certain. A manuscript of the end of the sixteenth cen

r of the

inal condition, or whether the version then made public fairly represented it, there does not seem any way of determining to the satisfaction of everybody. At all events, the world thought it had got something of value and of authority, and in sundry editions and retranslations, with more or less editing and augmentation, it has passed down to our time-the last edition appearing in 1867-unquestioned for its service to the biographers of Columbus. Mu?oz hardly knew what to make of some of "its unaccountable errors," and conjectured that the Italian version had been made from "a corrupt and false copy;" and coupling with it the "miserable" Spanish rendering in Barcia's Historiadores, Mu?oz adds that "a number of falsit

d by Ha

b, in 1884. In the interim the entire text of Las Casas's Historia had been published for the first time, rendering a comparison of the two books more easy. Harrisse availed himself of this facility of examination, and made no abatement of his confident disbelief. That Las Casas borrowed from the Historie, or rather that the two books had a common source, Harrisse thinks satisfactorily shown. He further throws out the hint that this source, or prototype, may have been one of the lost essays of Ferdinand,

k of Ferdinand Columbus, to give it larger interest than the name of Oliva would carry; while, to gratify prejudices and increase its attractions, the various interpolations were made,

y Stevens

the issue has been joined by others, particularly within a few years by Prospero Peragallo, the pastor of an Italian church in Lisbon, who has pressed defensive views with some force in his L'Autenticità delle Historie di Fernando Colombo (1884), and later in his Cristoforo Colombo et sua Famiglia (1888). It is held by some of these later advocates of the book that parts of the original Spanish text can be identified in Las Casas. The controversy has thus had two stages. The first was marked by the stren

in others have done good work in keeping the Historie constantly subject to critical caution. Dr. Shea still says

Ca

as, professed to consult him with that caution which he deemed necessary in respect to a writer given to prejudice and overheated zeal. For the period of Columbus's public life (1492-1506), no other one of his contemporaries gives us so much of documentary proof. Of the thirty-one papers, falling within this interval, which he transcribed into his pages nearly in their entirety,-throwing out some preserved in the archives of the Duke of Veragua, and others found at Simancas or Seville,-there remain seventeen, that would be lost to us but for this faithful chronicler. How did he command this rich resource? As a native of Seville, Las Casas had come there

at present in those archives. It was there that he might have found numerous letters which he cites, but which are not otherwise known. From the use Las Casas makes of them, it would seem that they were of more importance in showing the discontent and querulousness of Columbus than as

torie of Ferdinand Columbus, very easily conjectures that this primal source may have been the manuscript upon which the compiler of the Historie was equally dependent. One kind of reasoning which Harrisse uses i

CA

n Pablo in Seville, and was not removed to the cathedral till 1552, it may also have happened that along with it he used there the De Imagine Mundi of P

could have given easy access to what they held in custody,-too easy, perhaps, if Harrisse's supposition is correct, that th

portun

laid before modern students when Spotorno printed it, in 1823. We further understand that the account of the fourth voyage, which students now call, in its Italian form, the

him into relations with the Admiral himself,-for he accompanied him on his fourth voyage,-with the Admiral's brother, son, and son's wife; and moreover his own father and uncle had sailed with Columbus. There were, among his other acquaintances, the Archbishop of Seville, Pinzon, and other of the contemporary navigators. It has been claimed by some, not accurately, w

r of his

World. It was while at the University of Salamanca that the father of Las Casas gave the son an Indian slave, one of those whom Columbus had sent home; and it was taken from the young student when Isabella decreed the undoing of Columbus's kidnapping exploits. It was this

to use this work of Las Casas in manuscript copies, as a license to print such an exposure of

rr

close investigation which that situation afforded him, Herrera failed in all ways to make the record of his Historia that comprehensive and genuine source of the story of Columbus which the reader might naturally look for. The continued obscuration of Las Casas by reason of the long delay in printing his manuscript served to give Herrera, through many generations, a prominence as an auth

panish

have been already considered, in speaking of the diversified mass of

life of the Admiral; but it ignores much of the recent critical and controver

n wri

bol

how the scope of his critical and learned inquiries into the early history of the Spanish contact in America, and has left it to another hand to give a German rendering to his labors. With this work by Humboldt, brought out in its completer shape in 1836-39, and using most happily all that had been done by Mu?oz and Navarrete to make clear both the acts and environments of the Admiral, the intelligence of our own time may indeed be said to

Harr

l source of information as set the labors of Henry Harrisse, for thoroughness and discrimination, in advance of any critical labor that has ever before been given to the career and character of Christopher Columbus. Without the aid of his researches, as embodied in his Christophe Colomb (Paris, 1

f a vigilant student in recondite fields of research. The progress of the correction of error respecting Columbus is illustrated continually in his series of bo

cted to hypotheses; but they fare ha

h wri

anonization

Y DE L

admit of dispute. Columbus himself, in his letter to Sanchez, speaks of the rejoicing of Christ at seeing the future redemption of souls. He made a first offering of the foreign gold by converting a mass of it into a cup to hold the sacred host, and he spent a wordy enthusiasm in promises of a new crusade to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems. Ferdinand and Isabella dwelt upon the propagandist spirit of the enterprise they had sanctioned, in their appeals to the Pontiff to confirm t

y de L

orgues, who began in 1844 to devote his energies to this end. He has published several books on Columbus, part of them biographical, and all of them, including his Christoph Colomb of 1864, mere disguised supplications to the Pope to order a deserved sanctification. As contributions to the historical study of the life of Columbus, they are of no importance whatever. Every act and saying of the Admiral capable of subserving the purpose in view ar

great violence and indiscretion, in its denunciations of all who fail to see the saintly character of Columbus. Its inordinate intemperan

Pius IX. The most popular of the idealizing lives of Columbus is probably that by Auguste, Marquis de Belloy, which is tricked out with a display of engravings as idealized as the text, and has been reproduced in English at Philadelphia (1878, 1889). It is simply an ordinary rendering of the common and conventional stories of the last four centuries. The most eminent Catholic historical student of the United States, Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in

nor of naming the New World from Columbus, through the printing-presses of Saint Dié and Strassburg. A sketch of the literature which has followed th

sh wr

ert

71. It was not till Robertson, in 1777, published the beginning of a contemplated History of America that the English reader had for the first time a scholarly and justified narrative, which indeed for a long time remained the ordinary source of the English view of Columbus. It was, however, but an outline sketch, not a sixth or seventh part in extent of what Irving, when he was considering the subject, thought necessary for a reasonable presentation of the subject. Robertson's footnotes show that his main dependence for the story of Columbus was upon the pages of the Historie of 1571, Peter Mart

y Bel

ommemorative discourse in Bos ton in 1792, before the Massachusetts Historical Society, afterward augmented his text when it

gton I

ould approve. He commended Herrera for "the amiable and pardonable error of softening excesses," as if a historian sat in a confessional to deal out exculpations. The learning which probes long established pretenses and grateful deceits was not acceptable to Irving. "There is

d from his pedestal, no matter what the evidence. The vera pro gratis in personal characterization must

from the Duke of Veragua, and from the then possessor of the papers of Mu?oz. The subject grew under his hands. "I had no idea," he says, "of what a complete labyrinth I had entangled myself in." He regretted that the third volume of Navarrete's book was not far enough advanced to be serviceable; but he worked as best he could, and found many more facilities than Robertson's helper had discovered. He went to the Biblioteca Colombina, and he even brought the annotations of Columbus in the copy of Pierre d'Ailly, there preserved, to the attention of its custodians for the first time; almost feeling himself the discoverer of the book, though it was known to him that Las Casas, at least, had had the advantage of using these minutes of Columbus. Irving knew that his pains were not unavailing, at any rate, for the English reader. "I have wo

at Irving's book was a delight of readers, he anticipated the judgment of posterity; but when he added that it was, by its perfection

s and the convent of La Rabida, and he got elsewhere some new light in the papers of the lawsu

sco

life in detail after the striking crisis of the discovery, had made so imposing a drama as he would have done by condensing the story of his later years. In this Prescott shared something of the spirit of Irving, in composing history to be read as a pastime, rather than as a study of completed truth. Prescott's own treatment of the subject is scant, as he confined his detail

ur H

ultimately prevailed, the extirpation of native races, the introduction of other races, the growth of slavery, and the settlement of the encomiendas, on which all Indian society depended." It is not to Helps, therefore, that we are to look for any extended biography of Columbus; and when he finds him in chains, sent back to Spain, he says of the prisoner, "He did not know how ma

. Ma

the criticism of Harrisse on the Historie of 1571 was that which was given by R.

Good

drich, mixes that unreasoning trust and querulous conceit which is so often thrown into the scale when the merits of the discoverers of the alleged Vinland are contrasted with those of the imagined Indies. Wit

Banc

g the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. This writer's estimate of the character of Columbus conveys a representation of what the Admiral really was, juster than national pride, religious sympathy, or kindly adulation has usual

ns

aphy of

t run through an extended and diversified literature, in a way, it may be, not earlier presented to the English reader. If any one desires to compass all the elucidations and guides which a thorough student of the career and fame of Columbus would wish to consider, the apparatus thus referred to, and the footnotes in Harrisse's

timates o

Irving, De Lorgues, or Goodrich. These last two have entered upon their works with a determined purpose, the Frenchman of making a saint, and the American a scamp, of the great discoverer of America. They each, in their twists, pervert and emphasize every trait and every incident to favor their views. Their narratives are each with

mbus's character. His book is, therefore, dangerously seductive to the popular sense. The genuine Columbus evaporates under the warmth of the writer's genius, and we have nothing left but a refinement of his clay. The Life of Columbus was a sudden product of success, and it has kept its hold on the public very constantly; but it has lost ground in t

ts of C

us's p

omething more than its breadth, his cheek bones high, his nose aquiline, his eyes a light gray, his complexion fair with freckles spotting a ruddy glow, his hair once light, but then turned to gray. His favorite garb seems to have been the frock of a Franciscan monk. Such a figure would not conflict with the descriptions which those who knew him, and those who had questioned his associates, have transmitted to us, as we read them in the page

s St. Ch

ck to the lifetime of Columbus except the figure of St. Christopher, which makes a vignette in colors on the mappemonde, which was drawn in 1500, by one of Columbus's pilots, Juan de la

HRIST

tte of La

s's g

S, THE EARLIEST

no doubt. Whether the likeness was painted from life, and by whom, or modeled after an ideal, more or less accordant with the reports of those who may have known the Genoese, is entirely beyond our knowledge. As a historian Jovius professed the right to distort the truth for any purpose that suited him, and his conceptions of the truth of portraiture may quite as well have been equally loose. Just a year before his own death, Jovius gave a sketch of Columbus's career in his Elogia Virorum Illustrium, published at Florence in 1551; but it was not till twenty-four years later, in 1575, that a new edition of the book gave wood-cuts of the portraits in the gallery of the Como villa, to illustrate the sketches, and that of Columbus appeared among them. This engraving, then, is the oldest likeness of Columbus presenting any claims to consideration. It found place also, within a year or two, in

rence p

the Como original in features, they may easily have varied in apparel. One of these is a picture preserved in the gallery at Florence,-a well-moulded, intellectual head, full-faced, above a closely buttoned tunic, or frock, seen within drapery that falls off the shoulders. It is not claimed to be t

RENCE C

nez pi

of the owner of it, from whom it was bought in Granada, in 1763. Representing, when brought to notice, a garment trimmed with fur, there has been disclosed upon it, and underlying this later paint, an original, close-fitting tunic, much like the Florence

NEZ CO

UMB

iven in Giuseppe Banchero's La Tavola di Bronzo

y's p

nto the hands of that engraver and editor. It bears little resemblance to the pictures already mentioned; nor does it appear to conform to the descriptions of Columbus's person. It has a more rugged and shorter face, with a profusion of closely waved hair falling beneath an ugly, angular cap. De Bry engrave

'S COL

port

a mon

iera'

Isabella a picture of such a person, which is ascribed to Parmigiano, and is preserved in the Museo Borbonico, at Naples. Its claims long ago ceased to be considered. The traveler in Cuba sees in the Cathedral at Havana a monumental effigy, of which there is no evidence of authenticity worthy of consideration. The traveler in I

LUMBUS ON THE

es connected with all the representations which pass for Columbus, he can make a beginning, at least, under the guidance o

It has been thought that posterity, curious to see the great Admiral as his contemporaries saw him, suffers with the state of Genoa, in not having such an effigy, by the neglect or inattention which followed upon the announced purpose of Columbus. We certainly find there to-day no such visible proof of his munificence or aspect. Harrisse, while referring to this deprivation, takes occasion, in his Bank of St. George (p. 108), to say that he does not "believe that the portrait of Columbus was ever drawn, carved, or painted from the life." He contends that portrait-painting was not common in Spain, in Columbus's day, and th