Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 2

Las Casas is said to have once possessed a treatise by Columbus on the information obtained from Portuguese and Spanish pilots, concerning western lands; and he also refers to _Libros de Memorias del Almirante_.

He is also known by his own statements to have had numerous autograph letters of Columbus. What has become of them is not known. If they were left in the monastery of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where Las Casas used them, they have disappeared with papers of the convent, since they were not among the archives of the suppressed convents, as Harrisse tells us, which were entrusted in 1850 to the Academy of History at Madrid.

[Sidenote: Work on the Arctic pole.]

In his letter to Dona Juana, Columbus says that he has deposited a work in the Convent de la Mejorada, in which he has predicted the discovery of the Arctic pole. It has not been found.

[Sidenote: Missing letters.]

Harrisse also tells us of the unsuccessful search which he has made for an alleged letter of Columbus, said in Gunther and Schultz's handbook of autographs (Leipzig, 1856) to have been bought in England by the Duke of Buckingham; and it was learned from Tross, the Paris bookseller, that about 1850 some autograph letters of Columbus, seen by him, were sent to England for sale.

[Sidenote: Columbus's maps.]

After his return from his first voyage, Columbus prepared a map and an accompanying table of longitudes and lat.i.tudes for the new discoveries.

They are known to have been the subject of correspondence between him and the queen.

There are various other references to maps which Columbus had constructed, to embody his views or show his discoveries. Not one, certainly to be attributed to him, is known, though Ojeda, Nino, and others are recorded as having used, in their explorations, maps made by Columbus. Peter Martyr's language does not indicate that Columbus ever completed any chart, though he had, with the help of his brother Bartholomew, begun one. The map in the Ptolemy of 1513 is said by Santarem to have been drawn by Columbus, or to have been based on his memoranda, but the explanation on the map seems rather to imply that information derived from an admiral in the service of Portugal was used in correcting it, and since Harrisse has brought to light what is usually called the Cantino map, there is strong ground for supposing that the two had one prototype.

[Sidenote: Italian notarial records.]

Let us pa.s.s from records by Columbus to those about him. We owe to an ancient custom of Italy that so much has been preserved, to throw in the aggregate no small amount of light on the domestic life of the family in which Columbus was the oldest born. During the fourteen years in which his father lived at Savona, every little business act and legal transaction was attested before notaries, whose records have been preserved filed in _filzas_ in the archives of the town.

These _filzas_ were simply a file of doc.u.ments tied together by a string pa.s.sed through each, and a _filza_ generally embraced a year's acc.u.mulation. The photographic facsimile which Harrisse gives in his _Columbus and the Bank of Saint George_, of the letter of Columbus preserved by the bank, shows how the sheet was folded once lengthwise, and then the hole was made midway in each fold.

We learn in this way that, as early as 1470 and later, Columbus stood security for his father. We find him in 1472 the witness of another's will. As under the Justinian procedure the notary's declaration sufficed, such doc.u.ments in Italy are not rendered additionally interesting by the autograph of the witness, as they would be in England. This notarial resource is no new discovery. As early as 1602, thirteen doc.u.ments drawn from similar depositaries were printed at Genoa, in some annotations by Giulio Salinerio upon Cornelius Tacitus.

Other similar papers were discovered by the archivists of Savona, Gian Tommaso and Giambattista Belloro, in 1810 (reprinted, 1821) and 1839 respectively, and proving the general correctness of the earlier accounts of Columbus's younger days given in Gallo, Senarega, and Giustiniani. It is to be regretted that the original entries of some of these notarial acts are not now to be found, but patient search may yet discover them, and even do something more to elucidate the life of the Columbus family in Savona.

[Sidenote: Savona.]

There has been brought into prominence and published lately a memoir of the ill.u.s.trious natives of Savona, written by a lawyer, Giovanni Vincenzo Verzellino, who died in that town in 1638. This doc.u.ment was printed at Savona in 1885, under the editorial care of Andrea Astengo; but Harrisse has given greater currency to its elucidations for our purpose in his _Christophe Colomb et Savone_ (Genoa, 1877).

[Sidenote: Genoa notarial records.]

Harrisse is not unwisely confident that the nineteen doc.u.ments--if no more have been added--throwing light on minor points of the obscure parts of the life of Columbus and his kindred, which during recent years have been discovered in the notarial files of Genoa by the Marquis Marcello Staglieno, may be only the precursors of others yet to be unearthed, and that the pages of the _Giornale Ligustico_ may continue to record such discoveries as it has in the past.

[Sidenote: Records of the Bank of St. George.]

The records of the Bank of Saint George in Genoa have yielded something, but not much. In the state archives of Genoa, preserved since 1817 in the Palazzetto, we might hope to find some report of the great discovery, of which the Genoese amba.s.sadors, Francesco Marchesio and Gian Antonio Grimaldi, were informed, just as they were taking leave of Ferdinand and Isabella for returning to Italy; but nothing of that kind has yet been brought to light there; nor was it ever there, unless the account which Senarega gives in the narrative printed in Muratori was borrowed thence. We may hope, but probably in vain, to have these public archives determine if Columbus really offered to serve his native country in a voyage of discovery. The inquirer is more fortunate if he explores what there is left of the archives of the old abbey of St.

Stephen, which, since the suppression of the convents in 1797, have been a part of the public papers, for he can find in them some help in solving some pertinent questions.

[Sidenote: Vatican archives.]

[Sidenote: Hidden ma.n.u.scripts.]

[Sidenote: Letters about Columbus.]

Harrisse tells us in 1887 that he had been waiting two years for permission to search the archives of the Vatican. What may yet be revealed in that repository, the world waits anxiously to learn. It may be that some one shall yet discover there the communication in which Ferdinand and Isabella announced to the Pope the consummation of the hopes of Columbus. It may be that the diplomatic correspondence covering the claims of Spain by virtue of the discovery of Columbus, and leading to the bull of demarcation of May, 1493, may yet be found, accompanied by maps, of the highest interest in interpreting the relations of the new geography. There is no a.s.surance that the end of ma.n.u.script disclosures has yet come. Some new bit of doc.u.mentary proof has been found at times in places quite unexpected. The number of Italian observers in those days of maritime excitement living in the seaports and trading places of Spain and Portugal, kept their home friends alert in expectation by reason of such appetizing news. Such are the letters sent to Italy by Hanibal Januarius, and by Luca, the Florentine engineer, concerning the first voyage. There are similar transient summaries of the second voyage. Some have been found in the papers of Macchiavelli, and others had been arranged by Zorzi for a new edition of his doc.u.mentary collection. These have all been recovered of recent years, and Harrisse himself, Gargiolli, Guerrini, and others, have been instrumental in their publication.

[Sidenote: Spanish archives.]

[Sidenote: Simancas and Seville.]

[Sidenote: Simancas.]

It was thirty-seven years after the death of Columbus before, under an order of Charles the Fifth, February 19, 1543, the archives of Spain were placed in some sort of order and security at Simancas. The great ma.s.ses of papers filed by the crown secretaries and the Councils of the Indies and of Seville, were gradually gathered there, but not until many had been lost. Others apparently disappeared at a later day, for we are now aware that many to which Herrera refers cannot be found. New efforts to secure the preservation and systematize the acc.u.mulation of ma.n.u.scripts were made by order of Philip the Second in 1567, but it would seem without all the success that might have been desired. Towards the end of the last century, it was the wish of Charles the Third that all the public papers relating to the New World should be selected from Simancas and all other places of deposit and carried to Seville. The act was accomplished in 1788, when they were placed in a new building which had been provided for them. Thus it is that to-day the student of Columbus must rather search Seville than Simancas for new doc.u.ments, though a few papers of some interest in connection with the contests of his heirs with the crown of Castile may still exist at Simancas. Thirty years ago, if not now, as Bergenroth tells us, there was little comfort for the student of history in working at Simancas. The papers are preserved in an old castle, formerly belonging to the admirals of Castile, which had been confiscated and devoted to the uses of such a repository. The one large room which was a.s.signed for the accommodation of readers had a northern aspect, and as no fires were allowed, the note-taker found not infrequently in winter the ink partially congealed in his pen. There was no imaginable warmth even in the landscape as seen from the windows, since, amid a treeless waste, the whistle of cold blasts in winter and a blinding African heat in summer characterize the climate of this part of Old Castile.

Of the early career of Columbus, it is very certain that something may be gained at Simancas, for when Bergenroth, sent by the English government, made search there to ill.u.s.trate the relations of Spain with England, and published his results, with the a.s.sistance of Gayangos, in 1862-1879, as a _Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers relating to Negotiations between England and Spain_, one of the earliest entries of his first printed volume, under 1485, was a complaint of Ferdinand and Isabella against a Columbus--some have supposed it our Christopher--for his partic.i.p.ancy in the piratical service of the French.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCHIVO DE SIMANCAS.

[From Parcerisa and Quadrado's _Espana_.]]

[Sidenote: Seville.]

Harrisse complains that we have as yet but scant knowledge of what the archives of the Indies at Seville may contain, but they probably throw light rather upon the successors of Columbus than upon the career of the Admiral himself.

[Sidenote: Seville notarial records.]

The notarial archives of Seville are of recent construction, the gathering of scattered material having been first ordered so late as 1869. The partial examination which has since been made of them has revealed some slight evidences of the life of some of Columbus's kindred, and it is quite possible some future inquirer will be rewarded for his diligent search among them.

It is also not unlikely that something of interest may be brought to light respecting the descendants of Columbus who have lived in Seville, like the Counts of Gelves; but little can be expected regarding the life of the Admiral himself.

[Sidenote: Santa Maria de las Cuevas.]

The personal fame of Columbus is much more intimately connected with the monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas. Here his remains were transported in 1509; and at a later time, his brother and son, each Diego by name, were laid beside him, as was his grandson Luis. Here in an iron chest the family muniments and jewels were kept, as has been said. It is affirmed that all the doc.u.ments which might have grown out of these transactions of duty and precaution, and which might incidentally have yielded some biographical information, are nowhere to be found in the records of the monastery. A century ago or so, when Munoz was working in these records, there seems to have been enough to repay his exertions, as we know by his citations made between 1781 and 1792.

[Sidenote: Portuguese archives. Torre do Tombo.]

The national archives of the Torre do Tombo, at Lisbon, begun so far back as 1390, are well known to have been explored by Santarem, then their keeper, primarily for traces of the career of Vespucius; but so intelligent an antiquary could not have forgotten, as a secondary aim, the acts of Columbus. The search yielded him, however, nothing in this last direction; nor was Varnhagen more fortunate. Harrisse had hopes to discover there the correspondence of Columbus with John the Second, in 1488; but the search was futile in this respect, though it yielded not a little respecting the Perestrello family, out of which Columbus took his wife, the mother of the heir of his t.i.tles. There is even hope that the notarial acts of Lisbon might serve a similar purpose to those which have been so fruitful in Genoa and Savona. There are doc.u.ments of great interest which may be yet obscurely hidden away, somewhere in Portugal, like the letter from the mouth of the Tagus, which Columbus on his return in March, 1493, addressed to the Portuguese king, and the diplomatic correspondence of John the Second and Ferdinand of Aragon, which the project of a second voyage occasioned, as well as the preliminaries of the treaty of Tordesillas.

[Sidenote: Santo Domingo archives.]

[Sidenote: Lawsuit papers.]

There may be yet some hope from the archives of Santo Domingo itself, and from those of its Cathedral, to trace in some of their lines the descendants of the Admiral through his son Diego. The mishaps of nature and war have, however, much impaired the records. Of Columbus himself there is scarce a chance to learn anything here. The papers of the famous lawsuit of Diego Colon with the crown seem to have escaped the attention of all the historians before the time of Munoz and Navarrete.

The direct line of male descendants of the Admiral ended in 1578, when his great-grandson, Diego Colon y Pravia, died on the 27th January, a childless man. Then began another contest for the heritage and t.i.tles, and it lasted for thirty years, till in 1608 the Council of the Indies judged the rights to descend by a turn back to Diego's aunt Isabel, and thence to her grandson, Nuno de Portugallo, Count of Gelves. The excluded heirs, represented by the children of a sister of Diego, Francisca, who had married Diego Ortegon, were naturally not content; and out of the contest which followed we get a large ma.s.s of printed statements and counter statements, which used with caution, offer a study perhaps of some of the transmitted traits of Columbus. Harrisse names and describes nineteen of these doc.u.mentary memorials, the last of which bears date in 1792. The most important of them all, however, is one printed at Madrid in 1606, known as _Memorial del Pleyto_, in which we find the descent of the true and spurious lines, and learn something too much of the scandalous life of Luis, the grandson of the Admiral, to say nothing of the illegitimate taints of various other branches.

Harrisse finds a.s.sistance in working out some of the lines of the Admiral's descendants, in Antonio Caetano de Sousa's _Historia Genealogica da Casa Real Portugueza_ (Lisbon, 1735-49, in 14 vols.).

[Sidenote: The Munoz collection.]

The most important collection of doc.u.ments gathered by individual efforts in Spain, to ill.u.s.trate the early history of the New World, was that made by Juan Bautista Munoz, in pursuance of royal orders issued to him in 1781 and 1788, to examine all Spanish archives, for the purpose of collecting material for a comprehensive History of the Indies. Munoz has given in the introduction of his history a clear statement of the condition of the different depositories of archives in Spain, as he found them towards the end of the last century, when a royal order opened them all to his search. A first volume of Munoz's elaborate and judicious work was issued in 1793, and Munoz died in 1799, without venturing on a second volume to carry the story beyond 1500, where he had left it. He was attacked for his views, and there was more or less of a pamphlet war over the book before death took him from the strife; but he left a fragment of the second volume in ma.n.u.script, and of this there is a copy in the Lenox Library in New York. Another copy was sold in the Brinley sale. The Munoz collection of copies came in part, at least, at some time after the collector's death into the hands of Antonio de Uguina, who placed them at the disposal of Irving; and Ternaux seems also to have used them. They were finally deposited by the Spanish government in the Academy of History at Madrid. Here Alfred Demersey saw them in 1862-63, and described them in the _Bulletin_ of the French Geographical Society in June, 1864, and it is on this description as well as on one in Fuster's _Biblioteca Valenciana_, that Harrisse depends, not having himself examined the doc.u.ments.

[Sidenote: The Navarrete collection.]