Postscript

After the foregoing chapter had been completed, there came to hand the first volume of Christophe Colomb, son origine, sa vie, ses voyages, sa famille, et ses descendants, d’après des documents inédits tirés des Archives de Gênes, de Savone, de Séville, et de Madrid, études d’histoire critique par Henry Harrisse, Paris, 1884.

The book is essentially a reversal of many long-established views regarding the career of Columbus. The new biographer, as has been shown, is not bound by any respect for the Life of the Admiral which for three hundred years has been associated with the name of Ferdinand Columbus. The grounds of his discredit of that book are again asserted; and he considers the story as given in Las Casas as much more likely to represent the prototype both of the Historia general of this last writer and of the Historie of 1571, than the mongrel production which he imagines this Italian text of Ulloa to be, and which he accounts utterly unworthy of credit by reason of the sensational perversions and additions with which it is alloyed by some irresponsible editor. This revolutionary spirit makes the critic acute, and sustains him in laborious search; but it is one which seems sometimes to imperil his judgment. He does not at times hesitate to involve Las Casas himself in the same condemnation for the use which, if we understand him, Las Casas may be supposed, equally with the author or editor of the Historie, to have made of their common prototype. That any received incident in Columbus’ career is only traceable to the Historie is sufficient, with our critic, to assign it to the category of fiction.

This new Life adds to our knowledge from many sources; and such points as have been omitted or slightly developed in the preceding chapter, or are at variance with the accepted views upon which that chapter has been based, it may be well briefly to mention.

The frontispiece is a blazon of the arms of Columbus, “du cartulaire original dressé sous ses yeux à Seville en 1502,” following a manuscript in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris. The field of the quarter with the castle is red; that of the lion is silver; that of the anchors is blue; the main and islands are gold, the water blue. It may be remarked that the disposition of these islands seems to have no relation to the knowledge then existing of the Columbian Archipelago. Below is a blue bend on a gold field, with red above (see the cut, ante, p. 15).

In writing in his Introduction of the sources of the history of Columbus, Harrisse says that we possess sixty-four memoirs, letters, or extracts written by Columbus, of which twenty-three are preserved in his own autograph. Of these sixty-four, only the Libro de las profecias has not been printed entire, if we except a Memorial que presentó Cristóbal Colon á los Reyes Catolicos sobre las cosas necesarias para abastecer las Indias which is to be printed for the first time by Harrisse, in the appendix of his second volume. Las Casas’ transcript of Columbus’ Journal is now, he tells us, in the collection of the Duque d’Osuna at Madrid. The copy of Dr. Chanca’s relation of the second voyage, used by Navarrete, and now in the Academy of History at Madrid, belonged to a collection formed by Antonio de Aspa. The personal papers of Columbus, confided by him to his friend Gaspar Gorricio, were preserved for over a century in an iron case in the custody of monks of Las Cuevas; but they were, on the 15th of May, 1609, surrendered to Nuño Gelves, of Portugal, who had been adjudged the lawful successor of the Admiral. Such as have escaped destruction now constitute the collection of the present Duque de Veraguas; and of them Navarrete has printed seventy-eight documents. Of the papers concerning Columbus at Genoa, Harrisse finds only one anterior to his famous voyage, and that is a paper of the Father Dominico Colombo, dated July 21, 1489, of whom such facts as are known are given, including references to him in 1463 and 1468 in the records of the Bank of St. George in Genoa. Of the two letters of 1502 which Columbus addressed to the Bank, only one now exists, as far as Harrisse could learn, and that is in the Hôtel de Ville. Particularly in regard to the family of Columbus, he has made effective use of the notarial and similar records of places where Columbus and his family have lived. But use of depositions for establishing dates and relationship imposes great obligation of care in the identification of the persons named; and this with a family as numerous as the Colombos seem to have been, and given so much to the repeating of Christian names, is more than usually difficult. In discussing the evidence of the place and date of Columbus’ birth (p. 137), as well as tracing his family line (pp. 160 and 166), the conclusion reached by Harrisse fixes the humble origin of the future discoverer; since he finds Columbus’ kith and kin of the station of weavers,—an occupation determining their social standing as well in Genoa as in other places at that time. The table which is given on a previous page (ante, p. 87) shows the lines of supposable connection, as illustrating the long contest for the possession of the Admiral’s honors. His father’s father, it would seem, was a Giovanni Colombo (pp. 167-216), and he the son of a certain Luca Colombo. Giovanni lived in turn at Terrarossa and Quinto. Domenico, the Admiral’s father, married Susanna Fontanarossa, and removed to Genoa between 1448 and 1551, living there afterward, except for the interval 1471-1484, when he is found at Savona. He died in Genoa not far from 1498. We are told (p. 29) how little the Archives of Savona yield respecting the family. Using his new notarial evidence mainly, the critic fixes the birth of Columbus about 1445 (pp. 223-241); and enforces a view expressed by him before, that Genoa as the place of Columbus’ birth must be taken in the broader sense of including the dependencies of the city, in one of which he thinks Columbus was born (p. 221) in that humble station which Gallo, in his “De navigatione Columbi,” now known to us as Printed in Muratori (xxiii. 301), was the first to assert. Giustiniani, in his Psalter-note, and Senarega, in his “De rebus Genuensibus” (Muratori, xxiv. 354) seem mainly to have followed Gallo on this point. There is failure (p. 81) to find confirmation of some of the details of the family as given by Casoni in his Annali della republica di Genova (1708, and again 1799). In relation to the lines of his descendants, there are described (pp. 49-60) nineteen different memorials, bearing date between 1590 and 1792—and there may be others—which grew out of the litigations in which the descent of the Admiral’s titles was involved.

The usual story, told in the Historie, of Columbus’ sojourn at the University of Pavia is discredited, chiefly on the ground that Columbus himself says that from a tender age he followed the sea (but Columbus’ statements are often inexact), and from the fact that in cosmography Genoa had more to teach him than Pavia. Columbus is also kept longer in Italy than the received opinion has allowed, which has sent him to Portugal about 1470; while we are now told—if his identity is unassailable—that he was in Savona as late as 1473 (pp. 253-254).

Documentary Portuguese evidence of Columbus’ connection with Portugal is scant. The Archivo da Torre do Tombo at Lisbon, which Santarem searched in vain for any reference to Vespucius, seem to be equally barren of information respecting Columbus, and they only afford a few items regarding the family of the Perestrellos (p. 44).

The principal contemporary Portuguese chronicle making any reference to Columbus is Ruy de Pina’s Chronica del Rei Dom João II., which is contained in the Colleccão de livros ineditos de historia Portugueza, published at Lisbon in 1792 (ii. 177), from which Garcia de Resende seems to have borrowed what appears in his Choronica, published at Lisbon in 1596; and this latter account is simply paraphrased in the Decada primeira do Asia (Lisbon, 1752) of João de Barros, who, born in 1496, was too late to have personal knowledge of earlier time of the discoveries. Vasconcellos’ Vida y acciones del Rey D. Juan al segundo (Madrid, 1639) adds nothing.

The statement of the Historie again thrown out, doubt at least is raised respecting the marriage of Columbus with Philippa, daughter of Bartholomeu Perestrello; and if the critic cannot disprove such union, he seems to think that as good, if not better, evidence exists for declaring the wife of Columbus to have been the daughter of Vasco Gil Moniz, of an old family, while it was Vasco Gill’s sister Isabel who married the Perestrello in question. The marriage of Columbus took place, it is claimed there is reason to believe, not in Madeira, as Gomara and others have maintained, but in Lisbon, and not before 1474. Further, discarding the Historie, there is no evidence that Columbus ever lived at Porto Santo or Madeira, or that his wife was dead when he left Portugal for Spain in 1484. If this is established, we lose the story of the tie which bound him to Portugal being severed by the death of his companion; and the tale of his poring over the charts of the dead father of his wife at Porto Santo is relegated to the region of fable.

We have known that the correspondence of Toscanelli with the monk Martinez took place in 1474, and the further communication of the Italian savant with Columbus himself has always been supposed to have occurred soon after; but reasons are now given for pushing it forward to 1482.

The evidences of the offers which Columbus made, or caused to be made, to England, France, and Portugal,—to the latter certainly, and to the two others probably,—before he betook himself to Spain, are also reviewed. As to the embassy to Genoa, there is no trace of it in the Genoese Archives and no earlier mention of it than Ramusio’s; and no Genoese authority repeats it earlier than Casoni in his Annali di Genova, in 1708. This is now discredited altogether. No earlier writer than Marin, in his Storia del commercio de’ Veneziani (vol. vii. published 1800), claims that Columbus gave Venice the opportunity of embarking its fortunes with his; and the document which Pesaro claimed to have seen has never been found.

There is difficulty in fixing with precision the time of Columbus’ leaving Portugal, if we reject the statements of the Historie, which places it in the last months of 1484. Other evidence is here presented that in the summer of that year he was in Lisbon; and no indisputable evidence exists, in the critic’s judgment, of his being in Spain till May, 1487, when a largess was granted to him. Columbus’ own words would imply in one place that he had taken service with the Spanish monarchs in 1485, or just before that date; and in another place that he had been in Spain as early as January, 1484, or even before,—a time when now it is claimed he is to be found in Lisbon.

The pathetic story of the visit to Rábida places that event at a period shortly after his arriving in Spain; and the Historie tells also of a second visit at a later day. It is now contended that the two visits were in reality one, which occurred in 1491. The principal argument to upset the Historie is the fact that Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo, in the lawsuit of 1513, testified that it was “about twenty-two years” since he had lent a mule to the Franciscan who accompanied Columbus away from Rábida!

With the same incredulity the critic spirits away (p. 358) the junto of Salamanca. He can find no earlier mention of it than that of Antonio de Remesal in his Historia de la Provincia de S. Vincente de Chyapa, published in Madrid in 1619; and accordingly asks why Las Casas, from whom Remesal borrows so much, did not know something of this junto? He counts for much that Oviedo does not mention it; and the Archives of the University at Salamanca throw no light. The common story he believes to have grown out of conferences which probably took place while the Court was at Salamanca in the winter of 1486-1487, and which were conducted by Talavera; while a later one was held at Santa Fé late in 1491, at which Cardinal Mendoza was conspicuous.

Since Alexander Geraldinus, writing in 1522, from his own acquaintance with Columbus, had made the friar Juan Perez, of Rábida, and Antonio de Marchena, who was Columbus’ steadfast friend, one and the same person, it has been the custom of historians to allow that Geraldinus was right. It is now said he was in error; but the critic confesses he cannot explain how Gomara, abridging from Oviedo, changes the name of Juan Perez used by the latter to Perez de Marchena, and this before Geraldinus was printed. Columbus speaks of a second monk who had befriended him; and it has been the custom to identify this one with Diego de Deza, who, at the time when Columbus is supposed to have stood in need of his support, had already become a bishop, and was not likely, the critic thinks, to have been called a monk by Columbus. The two friendly monks in this view were the two distinct persons Juan Perez and Antonio de Marchena (p. 372).

The interposition of Cardinal Mendoza, by which Columbus secured the royal ear, has usually been placed in 1486. Oviedo seems to have been the source of subsequent writers on the point; but Oviedo does not fix the date, and the critic now undertakes to show (p. 380) that it was rather in the closing months of 1491.

Las Casas charges Talavera with opposing the projects of Columbus: we have here (p. 383) the contrary assertion; and the testimony of Peter Martyr seems to sustain this view. So again the new biographer measurably defends, on other contemporary evidence, Fonseca (p. 386) as not deserving the castigations of modern writers; and all this objurgation is considered to have been conveniently derived from the luckless Historie of 1571.

The close student of Columbus is not unaware of the unsteady character of much of the discoverer’s own testimony on various points. His imagination was his powerful faculty; and it was as wild at times as it was powerful, and nothing could stand in the way of it. No one has emphasized the doleful story of his trials and repressions more than himself, making the whole world, except two monks, bent on producing his ignominy; and yet his biographer can pick (p. 388) from the Admiral’s own admissions enough to show that during all this time he had much encouragement from high quarters. The critic is not slow to take advantage of this weakness of Columbus’ character, and more than once makes him the strongest witness against himself.

It is now denied that the money advanced by Santangel was from the treasury of Aragon. On the contrary, the critic contends that the venture was from Santangel’s private resources; and he dismisses peremptorily the evidence of the document which Argensola, in his Anales de Aragon (Saragossa, 1630), says was preserved in the archives of the treasury of Aragon. He says a friend who searched at Barcelona in 1871, among the “Archivo general de la Corona de Aragon,” could not find it.

Las Casas had first told—guardedly, to be sure—the story of the Pinzons’ contributing the money which enabled Columbus to assume an eighth part of the expense of the first voyage; but it is now claimed that the assistance of that family was confined to exerting its influence to get Columbus a crew. It is judged that the evidence is conclusive that the Pinzons did not take pecuniary risk in the voyage of 1492, because only their advances of this sort for the voyage of 1499 are mentioned in the royal grant respecting their arms. But such evidence is certainly inconclusive; and without the evidence of Las Casas it must remain uncertain whence Columbus got the five hundred thousand maravedis which he contributed to the cost of that momentous voyage.

The world has long glorified the story in the Historie of 1571 about the part which the crown jewels, and the like, played in the efforts of Isabella to assist in the furnishing of Columbus’ vessels. Peter Martyr, Bernaldez, and others who took frequent occasion to sound the praises of her majesty, say nothing of it; and, as is now contended, for the good reason that there was no truth in the story, the jewels having long before been pledged in the prosecution of the war with the Moors.

It is inferred (p. 417) from Las Casas that his abridgment of Columbus’ Journal was made from a copy, and not from the original (Navarrete, i. 134); and Harrisse says that from two copies of this abridgment, preserved in the collection of the Duque d’Osuna at Madrid, Varnhagen printed his text of it which is contained in his Verdadera Guanahani. This last text varies in some places from that in Navarrete, and Harrisse says he has collated it with the Osuna copies without discovering any error. He thinks, however, that the Historie of 1571, as well as Las Casas’ account, is based upon the complete text; and his discrediting of the Historie does not prevent him in this case saying that from it, as well as from Las Casas, a few touches of genuineness, not of importance to be sure, can be added to the narrative of the abridgment. He also points out that we should discriminate as to the reflections which Las Casas intersperses; but he seems to have no apprehension of such insertions in the Historie in this particular case.

The Ambrosian text of the first letter is once more reprinted (p. 419), accompanied by a French translation. In some appended notes the critic collates it with the Cosco version in different shapes, and with that of Simancas. He also suggests that this text was printed at Barcelona toward the end of March, 1493, and infers that it may have been in this form that the Genoese ambassadors took the news to Italy when they left Spain about the middle of the following month.

The closing chapter of this first volume is on the question of the landfall. The biographer discredits attempts to settle the question by nautical reasoning based on the log of Columbus, averring that the inevitable inaccuracies of such records in Columbus’ time is proved by the widely different conclusions of such experienced men as Navarrete, Becher, and Fox. He relies rather on Columbus’ description and on that in Las Casas. The name which the latter says was borne in his day by the island of the landfall was “Triango;” but the critic fails to find this name on any earlier map than that first made known in the Cartas de Indias in 1877. To this map he finds it impossible to assign an earlier date than 1541, since it discloses some reminders of the expedition of Coronado. He instances other maps in which the name in some form appears attached to an island of the Bahamas,—as in the Cabot mappemonde of 1544 (Triangula), the so-called Vallard map (Triango), that of Gutierrez in 1550 (Trriango), that of Alonso de Santa Cruz in his Islario of 1560 (Triangulo). Unfortunately on some of the maps Guanahani appears as well as the name which Las Casas gives. Harrisse’s solution of this conjunction of names is suggested by the fact that in the Weimar map of 1527 (see sketch, ante, p. 43) an islet “Triango” lies just east of Guanahani, and corresponds in size and position to the “Triangula” of Cabot and the “Triangulo” of Santa Cruz. Guanahani he finds to correspond to Acklin Island, the larger of the Crooked Island group (see map, ante, p. 55); while the Plana Cays, shown east of it, would stand for “Triango.” Columbus, with that confusion which characterizes his writings, speaks in one place of his first land being an “isleta,” and in another place he calls it an “isla grande.” This gives the critic ground for supposing that Columbus saw first the islet, the “Triango” of Las Casas, or the modern “Plana Cays,” and that then he disembarked on the “isla grande,” which was Acklin Island. So it may be that Columbus’ own confused statement has misled subsequent writers. If this theory is not accepted, Fox, in selecting Samana, has, in the critic’s opinion, come nearer the truth than any other.