2013 Catholic Textbook Project

Chapter 1 Explorers and Conquistadors

The Genovese Mariner

he year 1492 was a turning point for Spain. In January of that year, Isabel and Fernando, los Reyes Catlicos (the Catholic Monarchs) of Castile and Aragon, concluded a 700-year war by conquering the Moorish kingdom of Granada, the last stronghold of the Muslims in Spain. This 700-year war, or rather series of wars, had been

a crusade for Spain, a holy war to retake lands lost to the Muslims in the eighth century. Yet, with the close of this war, the Spanish monarchs found themselves faced with a new and perhaps more arduous task -- the conquest of a hitherto unknown world. Even the strange sea captain, who for seven long years had been belaboring the Spanish monarchs to allow him to pursue this quest, did not understand the nature of it. This tall, long-faced mariner with the gray, dreaming eyes this Cristbal Coln from the Italian seafaring city of Genoa had labored, until his red hair had turned white, to convince the monarchs that by sailing west one could reach the East the fabled lands of China, Cipangu (Japan), and India. Coln, better known to us as Christopher Columbus, was the son of a wool weaver. Born in 1451 in the seafaring city Genoa, he went to sea in his youth. In his early twenties, he joined an expedition against the Barbary corsairs and another to the Greek island of Chios (then under Genoese control) to defend Genoas interests there against the Turks. In 1476, he sailed with a fleet of Genoese trading ships that was bound for Lisbon, England, and
Dom Henrique

Flanders. Off the southern coast of Portugal, enemy ships attacked the fleet, and Columbus was wounded. When his ship went down, he jumped into the sea, and grabbing hold of a sweep, swam the six or so miles to shore. In the Portuguese city of Lagos he found help for his wounds. When he recovered, he made his way to Lisbon, a port city and the capital of Portugal. For a seaman of Columbus time, Portugal was the place to be. Since infante: the heir to the Portuguese or Spanish throne 1415, the infante, Dom Henrique (Prince Henry the Navigator), had been promoting Portuguese navigation, and he had built a seamans town at Cape St. Vincent. Under Dom Henriques impetus, Portuguese navigators had by 1459 discovered the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic. Hoping to forge an alliance against the Muslims with the legendary Christian monarch, Prester John, Dom Henrique had sent ships southward along the coast of Africa to see what lay around the continents great western cape. After Dom Henriques death in 1460, Portugals quest to sail farther down the African coast was inspired by a more practical concern to reach India and establish a direct spice trade with East Asia. For centuries, the only way

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European merchants could obtain spices from the Indies was by trade with Muslim middlemen. To cut out the middleman, the Portuguese king Alfonso V sought a direct trade route with the East. In the 1470s, Portuguese mariners discovered the Gold and Ivory Coasts of Africa, and kept pushing south. The discovery of these regions of Africa proved immensely profitable. By the 1470s and 1480s, when Columbus arrived in Lisbon, Portugal was flourishing with a trade of pepper, ivory, and Africans slaves. Chests of gold dust from Africa filled the coffers of the Portuguese king. The port of Lisbon, in the late 1400s, was thus an exciting place for a sailor. There, Columbus joined his brother Bartolom, who worked as a cartographer in the city. There he married Dona Felipe Perestrello e Moniz, and there his son, Diego, was born in 1480. In those years, Columbus sailed to the Gold Coast and, for a time, lived on Madeira Island in the Atlantic.

The Visionary
No one knows when Columbus first formulated what he called the Enterprise of the Indies the conviction that one could reach the Indies by sailing west across the Atlantic. This rather bold conviction arose from a miscalculation Columbus had underestimated the circumference of the earth. Not only did he reckon the earths circumference to be 25 percent smaller than it actually is. he exaggerated the eastward stretch of Asia. These errors led him to conclude that the distance from the Canary Islands to Cipangu would be some 2,400 nautical miles. It is actually 10,600 nautical miles. It was not mathematics however that inspired the Enterprise of the Indies. Columbus was a visionary, certain he was called to a special task. He saw himself as a true Christopher Christumferens, the Christ-bearer destined to carry the Catholic Faith to the heathen oversea. His interests, of course, were not wholly spiritual, for he longed to find gold in the Indies both to enrich himself and the monarch he served. Yet, even Columbus cupidity evinced spiritual goals, for he hoped his monarch, flush with the wealth of the Indies would finance a new crusade against the Muslims to recover the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem for Christendom. In 1484 or 1485, Columbus presented his Enterprise to Dom Joo, king of Portugal. The king rejected the plan, though he continued to show an interest in it. In 1485, Columbus left Portugal for Castile, where in 1486 he presented the Enterprise to Queen Isabel of Castile and Len. The queen referred Columbus
Christopher Columbus

Enterprise to a team of scholars and put Columbus on the royal payroll. In 1488 he returned to Portugal at Dom Joos invitation to

discuss the Enterprise. The Portuguese king, however, soon lost all interest in a westward route to the Indies, for in 1488 the Portuguese mariner, Bartolomeu Das, returned to Portugal after rounding the southern tip of Africa. Das called Africas southern tip the Cape of Good Hope, for it gave him and Portugal a very great hope it opened a southern route to the wealth of the Indies, completely bypassing Muslim lands. Ten years later, in 1498, another Portuguese captain, Vasco da Gama, followed this route to the port of Calicut in India. Though spurned by Dom Joo, Columbus did not despair. There was still Isabel. Yet, Columbus received scant attention from the queen when he returned to Spain; she was, after all, involved in the war with Granada. It was not

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until 1488, when at last Isabel paid some attention to him by cutting him off from the royal payroll. This was no good omen; Columbus decided to look elsewhere and sent his brother Bartolom to gauge the interest of the courts of England and France in the Enterprise. Then, in 1491, Columbus learned that Isabels commission of scholars had rejected his Enterprise. This decided matters for him; he would leave Castile for France. And to France he would have gone had not an old friend, the Franciscan priest Fray Juan Prez, persuaded him to remain in Castile. Moreover, Fray Juan obtained an audience for him with the queen. Columbus met with Isabel before the walls of besieged Granada in the summer of 1491. The meeting, however, did not lead to the result Columbus wanted, for again the queen referred his Enterprise to a commission, and from the commission to the Audiencia Real which rejected it. A few days after the fall of Granada on January 2, 1492, Isabel and Fernando told Columbus that they would have nothing further to do with his Enterprise. To be turned down after six years of waiting was too much to bear. No wonder a disgruntled Columbus packed his bags for France! But, the mariner had a powerful friend at court, Luis de Santangel, Keeper of the Privy Purse to King Fernando; Santangel persuaded Queen Isabel to reconsider Columbus case. Why she changed her mind about Columbus and his Enterprise is unclear. It was the mystic in Columbus, perhaps, that appealed to the devout and mystical queen. But whatever the reason for the change, Columbus had at last achieved his desire. On April 17, 1492, the Catholic Monarchs agreed to confirm and finance Columbus Enterprise to the Indies. Audiencia Real: the highest court of Spain

Admiral of the Ocean Sea

With a crew of 90 men and boys and a fleet of three small ships, or caravels, Columbus set sail from Palos harbor on August 3, 1492. The largest of his ships, the Santa Mara, served as the flagship. The other two caravels, the Pinta and the Nia, were piloted by the brothers Pinzn -- Martn Alonso and Vicente Yez. Columbus set off for the Indies laden with proud titles and wide powers. In confirming his expedition, the Catholic Monarchs agreed to Columbus demands, naming him Admiral of the Ocean Sea, viceroy and governor general over all the islands and parts of the mainland he should discover. These titles meant that Columbus was, under the monarchs, sole ruler of these lands. Isabel and Fernando also granted Columbus the privilege of keeping a tenth of all the wealth found in the lands he discovered. The sea crossing, though not difficult on the outward voyage, was yet a novelty to the sailors. In those days, most sailing ships hugged the coasts, rarely venturing out onto the open sea. The sailors did not fear sailing off the end of the world, for they knew that the earth is a sphere; but they did not know how far west land actually lay and, they
Queen Isabel

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were worried that, so far out at sea, they would find no wind to blow them back again to Spain. To assuage their fear that they were sailing too far from Spain, Columbus kept two log books. In one (for himself) he marked down what he thought was the actual distance they had sailed each day; in another (for the sailors), he jotted a shorter distance. The voyage revealed new wonders. In late September, the ships entered the Sargasso Sea in the mid-Atlantic, where the prows plowed through miles of thickly matted seaweed. From September 23-25, the three caravels hit calms where no wind blew and the sea was smooth as glass. The sailors bathed in the still, salt waters. Finally on September 25, after about two months of sailing, the sea-weary sailors heard the long hoped-for cry, Tierra! Tierra! Seor, albricias! (Land! Land! Sir, the good news!) The cry lifted the hearts of the mariners, but their spirits deflated when they discovered it was a false landfall probably the watch saw a bank of clouds on the horizon. It was not long before disappointment changed to resentment, and resentment to growing insubordination. For the next five days the fleet made little headway, and the crew began to grumble and contemplate mutiny. Columbus used all his powers of persuasion on his men, who only wanted to return to Spain, coaxing them with soft words and hopes for fame and riches. On October 7, the disappointed Columbus turned the fleet to follow the course of migratory birds he had seen, thinking they would surely head toward land. By October 10, the crews had had enough. Open mutiny broke out. Columbus, hiding his own uneasiness that they had not yet reached land, again tried to encourage his men. But matters had gone too far. In the end he was forced to agree that, if after two or three days no one sighted land, the fleet would return home. As the day passed from morning, to afternoon, to night, how long the hours must have seemed to Columbus! But, then, it came, and the history of the world changed forever. It was 2 a.m. on the second day, October 12, 1492. A moon just past full rode in the western sky. The lookout on the Pinta spied a dark line on the horizon. It was flanked by what looked to be white sand cliffs. Then captain and crew heard the cry Tierra! Tierra! This time it was no false landfall.

Lands of Hope and Promise: Chapter 1