The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 by William H. Prescott
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William H. Prescott >> The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2
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[5] Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, pp. 373, 374, 398.--Zurita, Anales, tom.
iv. lib. 20, cap. 30, 34.--Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages.
[6] Spotorno, Memorials of Columbus, (London, 1823,) p. 14.--Senarega,
apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiv. p. 535.--Antonio Gallo, De
Navigatione Columbi, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiii. p.
202.
It is very generally agreed that the father of Columbus exercised the
craft of a wool-carder, or weaver. The admiral's son Ferdinand, after some
speculation on the genealogy of his illustrious parent, concludes with
remarking, that, after all, a noble descent would confer less lustre on
him than to have sprung from such a father; a philosophical sentiment,
indicating pretty strongly that he had no great ancestry to boast of.
Ferdinand finds something extremely mysterious and typical in his father's
name of _Columbus_, signifying a _dove_, in token of his being ordained to
"carry the olive-branch and oil of baptism over the ocean, like Noah's
dove, to denote the peace and union of the heathen people with the church,
after they had been shut up in the ark of darkness and confusion."
Fernando Colon, Historia del Almirante, cap. 1, 2, apud Barcia,
Historiadores Primitivos de las Indian Occidentals, (Madrid, 1749,) tom.
i., tom. i. Introd., sec. 21, 24.--Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. vii. p.
548.
[7] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 131.--Munoz, Historia del Nuevo-
Mundo, (Madrid, 1793,) lib. 2, sec. 13.
There are no sufficient data for determining the period of Columbus's
birth. The learned Munoz places it in 1446. (Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib.
2, sec. 12.) Navarrete, who has weighed the various authorities with
caution, seems inclined to remove it back eight or ten years further,
resting chiefly on a remark of Bernaldez, that he died in 1506, "in a good
old age, at the age of seventy, a little more or less." (Cap. 131.) The
expression is somewhat vague. In order to reconcile the facts with this
hypothesis, Navarrete is compelled to reject, as a chirographical blunder,
a passage in a letter of the admiral, placing his birth in 1456, and to
distort another passage in his book of "Prophecies," which, if literally
taken, would seem to establish his birth near the time assigned by Munoz.
Incidental allusions in some other authorities, speaking of Columbus's old
age at or near the time of his death, strongly corroborate Navarrete's
inference. (See Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. Introd., sec. 54.)--Mr.
Irving seems willing to rely exclusively on the authority of Bernaldez.
[8] Antonio de Herrera, Historia General de las Indias Occidentales,
(Amberes, 1728,) tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7.--Gomara, Historia de las
Indias, cap. 14, apud Barcia, Hist. Primitivos, tom. ii.--Bernaldez, Reyes
Catolicos, MS., cap. 118.--Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i.
Introd., sec. 30.
Ferdinand Columbus enumerates three grounds on which his father's
conviction of land in the west was founded. First, natural reason,--or
conclusions drawn from science; secondly, authority of writers,--amounting
to little more than vague speculations of the ancients; thirdly, testimony
of sailors, comprehending, in addition to popular rumors of land described
in western voyages, such relics as appeared to have floated to the
European shores from the other side of the Atlantic. Hist. del Almirante,
cap. 6-8.
[9] None of the intimations are so precise as that contained in the well-
known lines of Seneca's Medea,
"Venient annuis saecula," etc.,
although, when regarded as a mere poetical vagary, it has not the weight
which belongs to more serious suggestions, of similar import, in the
writings of Aristotle and Strabo. The various allusions in the ancient
classic writers to an undiscovered world form the subject of an elaborate
essay in the Memorias da Acad. Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, (tom. v. pp.
101-112,) and are embodied, in much greater detail, in the first section
of Hnmboldt's "Histoire de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent;" a work in
which the author, with his usual acuteness, has successfully applied the
vast stores of his erudition and experience to the illustration of many
interesting points connected with the discovery of the New World, and the
personal history of Columbus.
[10] It is probably the knowledge of this which has led some writers to
impute part of his work to the learned Marsilio Ficino, and others, with
still less charity and probability, to refer the authorship of the whole
to Politian. Comp. Tasso, Opere, (Venezia, 1735-42,) tom. x. p. 129.--and
Crescimbeni, Istoria della Volgar Poesia, (Venezia, 1731,) tom. iii. pp.
273, 274.
[11] Pulci, Morgante Maggiore, canto 25, st. 229, 230.--I have used blank
verse, as affording facility for a more literal version than the
corresponding _ottava rima_ of the original. This passage of Pulci,
which has not fallen under the notice of Humboldt, or any other writer on
the same subject whom I have consulted, affords, probably, the most
circumstantial prediction that is to be found of the existence of a
western world. Dante, two centuries before, had intimated more vaguely his
belief in an undiscovered quarter of the globe.
"De' vostri sensi, ch' e del rimanente,
Non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
Diretro al sol, del mondo senza gente."
Inferno, cant. 26, v. 115.
[12] Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Dipl., no. 1.--Munoz,
Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 17.--It is singular that Columbus, in
his visit to Iceland, in 1477, (see Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante,
cap. 4,) should have learned nothing of the Scandinavian voyages to the
northern shores of America in the tenth and following centuries; yet if he
was acquainted with them, it appears equally surprising that he should not
have adduced the fact in support of his own hypothesis of the existence of
land in the west; and that he should have taken a route so different from
that of his predecessors in the path of discovery. It may be, however, as
M. de Humboldt has well remarked, that the information he obtained in
Iceland was too vague to suggest the idea, that the lands thus discovered
by the Northmen had any connection with the Indies, of which he was in
pursuit. In Columbus's day, indeed, so little was understood of the true
position of these countries, that Greenland is laid down on the maps in
the European seas, and as a peninsular prolongation of Scandinavia. See
Humboldt, Geographie du Nouveau Continent, tom. ii. pp. 118, 125.
[13] Herrera, Indias Occidentals, tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7.--Munoz,
Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 19.--Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap.
15.--Benzoni, Novi Orbis Historia, lib. 1, cap. 6.--Fernando Colon, Hist.
del Almirante, cap. 10.--Faria y Sousa, Europa Portuguesa, tom. ii. part.
3, cap. 4.
[14] Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., dial. de Talavera.
[15] Salazar de Mendoza, Cron. del Gran Cardenal, p. 214.--Herrera, Indias
Occidentales, tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.--Fernando Colon, Hist. del
Almirante, cap. 11.
[16] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.--Zuniga,
Annales de Sevilla, p. 104.--Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. sec.
60, 61, tom. ii., Col. Dipl., nos. 2, 4.
[17] This prelate, Diego de Deza, was born of poor but respectable
parents, at Toro. He early entered the Dominican order, where his learning
and exemplary life recommended him to the notice of the sovereigns, who
called him to court to take charge of Prince John's education. He was
afterwards raised, through the usual course of episcopal preferment, to
the metropolitan see of Seville. His situation, as confessor of Ferdinand,
gave him great influence over that monarch, with whom he appears to have
maintained an intimate correspondence, to the day of his death. Oviedo,
Quincuagenas, MS., dial. de Deza.
[18] Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 11.--Salazar de Mendoza,
Cron. del Gran Cardenal, p. 215.--Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2,
sec. 25, 29.--Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i., Introd., sec. 60.
[19] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.--Munoz, Hist.
del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 27.--Spotorno, Memorials of Columbus, pp.
31-33.--The last dates the application to Genoa prior to that to Portugal.
A letter from the duke of Medina Celi to the cardinal of Spain, dated 19th
March, 1493, refers to his entertaining Columbus as his guest for two
years. It is very difficult to determine the date of these two years. If
Herrera is correct in the statement, that, after a five years' residence
at court, whose commencement he had previously referred to 1484, he
carried his proposals to the duke of Medina Celi, (see cap. 7, 8.) the two
years may have intervened between 1489-1491. Navarrete places them between
the departure from Portugal and the first application to the court of
Castile, in 1486. Some other writers, and among them Munoz and Irving,
referring his application to Genoa to 1485, and his first appearance in
Spain to a subsequent period, make no provision for the residence with the
duke of Medina Celi. Mr. Irving indeed is betrayed into a chronological
inaccuracy, in speaking of a seven years' residence at the court in 1491,
which he had previously noticed as having before begun in 1486. (Life of
Columbus, (London, 1828,) comp. vol. i. pp. 109, 141.) In fact, the
discrepancies among the earliest authorities are such as to render
hopeless any attempt to settle with precision the chronology of Columbus's
movements previous to his first voyage.
[20] Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. pp. 129, 130.--Munoz, Hist. del
Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 31.--Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib.
1, cap. 8.--Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i., Introd., sec. 60.
[21] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.--Primer Viage
de Colon, apud Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. pp. 2, 117.--
Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 13.
[22] Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 28, 29.--Fernando Colon,
Hist. del Almirante, ubi supra.
[23] Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.--Munoz, Hist.
del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 32, 33.--Fernando Colon, Hist. del
Almirante, cap. 14.--Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 15.
[24] Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Diplomat., nos. 5, 6.
--Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 412.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii.
p. 605.
[25] Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis et Novo Orbe, (Coloniae, 1574,) dec.
1, lib. 1.--Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Col. Diplomat., nos.
7, 8, 9, 10, 12.--Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 9.--
Fernando Colon, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 14.--Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo-
Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 33.--Benzoni, Novi Orbis Hist., lib. 1, cap. 6.--
Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 15.
The expression in the text will not seem too strong, even admitting the
previous discoveries of the Northmen, which were made in so much higher
latitudes. Humboldt has well shown the probability, _a priori_, of
such discoveries, made in a narrow part of the Atlantic, where the
Orcades, the Feroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland afforded the voyager so
many intermediate stations, at moderate distances from each other.
(Geographie du Nouveau Continent, tom. ii. pp. 183 et seq.) The
publication of the original Scandinavian MSS., (of which imperfect notices
and selections, only, have hitherto found their way into the world,) by
the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, at Copenhagen, is a matter of
the deepest interest; and it is fortunate that it is to be conducted under
auspices, which must insure its execution in the most faithful and able
manner. It may be doubted, however, whether the declaration of the
Prospectus, that "it was the knowledge of the Scandinavian voyages, in all
probability, which prompted the expedition of Columbus," can ever be
established. His personal history furnishes strong internal evidence to
the contrary.
[26] How strikingly are the forlorn condition and indomitable energy of
Columbus depicted in the following noble verses of Chiabrera;
"Certo da cor, ch' alto destin non scelse,
Son l' imprese magnanime neglette;
Ma le bell' alme alle bell' opre elette
Sanno gioir nelle fatiche eccelse;
Ne biasnio popolar, frale catena,
Spirto d'onore, il suo cammin reffrena.
Cosi lunga stagion per modi indegni
Europa disprezzo l'inclita speme,
Schernendo il vulgo, e seco i Regi insieme,
_Nudo nocchier, promettitor di Regni._"
Rime, parte 1, canzone 12.
[27] Columbus, in a letter written on his third voyage, pays an honest,
heartfelt tribute to the effectual patronage which he experienced from the
queen. "In the midst of the general incredulity," says he, "the Almighty
infused into the queen, my lady, the spirit of intelligence and energy;
and, whilst every one else, in his ignorance, was expatiating only on the
inconvenience and cost, her Highness approved it, on the contrary, and
gave it all the support in her power." See Carta al Ama del Principe D.
Juan, apud Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. p. 266.
CHAPTER XVII.
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN.
1492.
Excitement against the Jews.--Edict of Expulsion.--Dreadful Sufferings of
the Emigrants.--Whole Number of Exiles.--Disastrous Results.--True Motives
of the Edict.--Contemporary Judgments.
While the Spanish sovereigns were detained before Granada, they published
their memorable and most disastrous edict against the Jews; inscribing it,
as it were, with the same pen which drew up the glorious capitulation of
Granada and the treaty with Columbus. The reader has been made acquainted
in a preceding chapter with the prosperous condition of the Jews in the
Peninsula, and the pre-eminent consideration, which they attained there
beyond any other part of Christendom. The envy raised by their prosperity,
combined with the high religious excitement kindled in the long war with
the infidel, directed the terrible arm of the Inquisition, as has been
already stated, against this unfortunate people; but the result showed the
failure of the experiment, since comparatively few conversions, and those
frequently of a suspicious character, were effected, while the great mass
still maintained a pertinacious attachment to ancient errors. [1]
Under these circumstances, the popular odium, inflamed by the discontent
of the clergy at the resistance which they encountered in the work of
proselytism, gradually grew stronger and stronger against the unhappy
Israelites. Old traditions, as old indeed as the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, were revived, and charged on the present generation, with all
the details of place and action. Christian children were said to be
kidnapped, in order to be crucified in derision of the Saviour; the host,
it was rumored, was exposed to the grossest indignities; and physicians
and apothecaries, whose science was particularly cultivated by the Jews in
the Middle Ages, were accused of poisoning their Christian patients. No
rumor was too absurd for the easy credulity of the people. The Israelites
were charged with the more probable offence of attempting to convert to
their own faith the _ancient Christians_, as well as to reclaim such
of their own race as had recently embraced Christianity. A great scandal
was occasioned also by the inter-marriages, which still occasionally took
place between Jews and Christians; the latter condescending to repair
their dilapidated fortunes by these wealthy alliances, though at the
expense of their vaunted purity of blood. [2]
These various offences were urged against the Jews with great pertinacity
by their enemies, and the sovereigns were importuned to adopt a more
rigorous policy. The inquisitors, in particular, to whom the work of
conversion had been specially intrusted, represented the incompetence of
all lenient measures to the end proposed. They asserted, that the only
mode left for the extirpation of the Jewish heresy, was to eradicate the
seed; and they boldly demanded the immediate and total banishment of every
unbaptized Israelite from the land. [3]
The Jews, who had obtained an intimation of these proceedings, resorted to
their usual crafty policy for propitiating the sovereigns. They
commissioned one of their body to tender a donative of thirty thousand
ducats towards defraying the expenses of the Moorish war. The negotiation,
however, was suddenly interrupted by the inquisitor-general, Torquemada,
who burst into the apartment of the palace, where the sovereigns were
giving audience to the Jewish deputy, and, drawing forth a crucifix from
beneath his mantle, held it up, exclaiming, "Judas Iscariot sold his
master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell him anew
for thirty thousand; here he is, take him, and barter him away." So
saying, the frantic priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the
apartment. The sovereigns, instead of chastising this presumption, or
despising it as a mere freak of insanity, were overawed by it. Neither
Ferdinand nor Isabella, had they been left to the unbiassed dictates of
their own reason, could have sanctioned for a moment so impolitic a
measure, which involved the loss of the most industrious and skilful
portion of their subjects. Its extreme injustice and cruelty rendered it
especially repugnant to the naturally humane disposition of the queen. [4]
But she had been early schooled to distrust her own reason, and indeed the
natural suggestions of humanity, in cases of conscience. Among the
reverend counsellors, on whom she most relied in these matters, was the
Dominican Torquemada. The situation which this man enjoyed as the queen's
confessor, during the tender years of her youth, gave him an ascendency
over her mind, which must have been denied to a person of his savage,
fanatical temper, even with the advantages of this spiritual connection,
had it been formed at a riper period of her life. Without opposing further
resistance to the representations, so emphatically expressed, of the holy
persons in whom she most confided, Isabella, at length, silenced her own
scruples, and consented to the fatal measure of proscription.
The edict for the expulsion of the Jews was signed by the Spanish
sovereigns at Granada, March 30th, 1492. The preamble alleges, in
vindication of the measure, the danger of allowing further intercourse
between the Jews and their Christian subjects, in consequence of the
incorrigible obstinacy, with which the former persisted in their attempts
to make converts of the latter to their own faith, and to instruct them in
their heretical rites, in open defiance of every legal prohibition and
penalty. When a college or corporation of any kind,--the instrument goes
on to state,--is convicted of any great or detestable crime, it is right
that it should be disfranchised, the less suffering with the greater, the
innocent with the guilty. If this be the case in temporal concerns, it is
much more so in those which affect the eternal welfare of the soul. It
finally decrees, that all unbaptized Jews, of whatever sex, age, or
condition, should depart from the realm by the end of July next ensuing;
prohibiting them from revisiting it, on any pretext whatever, under
penalty of death and confiscation of property. It was, moreover,
interdicted to every subject, to harbor, succor, or minister to the
necessities of any Jew, after the expiration of the term limited for his
departure. The persons and property of the Jews, in the mean time, were
taken under the royal protection. They were allowed to dispose of their
effects of every kind on their own account, and to carry the proceeds
along with them, in bills of exchange, or merchandise not prohibited, but
neither in gold nor silver. [5]
The doom of exile fell like a thunderbolt on the heads of the Israelites.
A large proportion of them had hitherto succeeded in shielding themselves
from the searching eye of the Inquisition, by an affectation of reverence
for the forms of Catholic worship, and a discreet forbearance of whatever
might offend the prejudices of their Christian brethren. They had even
hoped, that their steady loyalty, and a quiet and orderly discharge of
their social duties, would in time secure them higher immunities. Many had
risen to a degree of opulence, by means of the thrift and dexterity
peculiar to the race, which gave them a still deeper interest in the land
of their residence. [6] Their families were reared in all the elegant
refinements of life; and their wealth and education often disposed them to
turn their attention to liberal pursuits, which ennobled the character,
indeed, but rendered them personally more sensible to physical annoyance,
and less fitted to encounter the perils and privations of their dreary
pilgrimage. Even the mass of the common people possessed a dexterity in
various handicrafts, which afforded a comfortable livelihood, raising them
far above similar classes in most other nations, who might readily be
detached from the soil on which they happened to be cast, with
comparatively little sacrifice of local interests. [7] These ties were now
severed at a blow. They were to go forth as exiles from the land of their
birth; the land where all whom they ever loved had lived or died; the
land, not so much of their adoption, as of inheritance; which had been the
home of their ancestors for centuries, and with whose prosperity and glory
they were of course as intimately associated, as was any ancient Spaniard.
They were to be cast out helpless and defenceless, with a brand of infamy
set on them, among nations who had always held them in derision and
hatred.
Those provisions of the edict, which affected a show of kindness to the
Jews, were contrived so artfully, as to be nearly nugatory. As they were
excluded from the use of gold and silver, the only medium for representing
their property was bills of exchange. But commerce was too limited and
imperfect to allow of these being promptly obtained to any very
considerable, much less to the enormous amount required in the present
instance. It was impossible, moreover, to negotiate a sale of their
effects under existing circumstances, since the market was soon glutted
with commodities; and few would be found willing to give anything like an
equivalent for what, if not disposed of within the prescribed term, the
proprietors must relinquish at any rate. So deplorable, indeed, was the
sacrifice of property, that a chronicler of the day mentions, that he had
seen a house exchanged for an ass, and a vineyard for a suit of clothes!
In Aragon, matters were still worse. The government there discovered, that
the Jews were largely indebted to individuals and to certain corporations.
It accordingly caused their property to be sequestrated for the benefit of
their creditors, until their debts should be liquidated. Strange, indeed,
that the balance should be found against the people, who have been
everywhere conspicuous for their commercial sagacity and resources, and
who, as factors of the great nobility and farmers of the revenue, enjoyed
at least equal advantages in Spain with those possessed in other
countries, for the accumulation of wealth. [8]
While the gloomy aspect of their fortunes pressed heavily on the hearts of
the Israelites, the Spanish clergy were indefatigable in the work of
conversion. They lectured in the synagogues and public squares, expounding
the doctrines of Christianity, and thundering forth both argument and
invective against the Hebrew heresy. But their laudable endeavors were in
a great measure counteracted by the more authoritative rhetoric of the
Jewish Rabbins, who compared the persecutions of their brethren to those
which their ancestors had suffered under Pharaoh. They encouraged them to
persevere, representing that the present afflictions were intended as a
trial of their faith by the Almighty, who designed in this way to guide
them to the promised land, by opening a path through the waters, as he had
done to their fathers of old. The more wealthy Israelites enforced their
exhortations by liberal contributions for the relief of their indigent
brethren. Thus strengthened, there were found but very few, when the day
of departure arrived, who were not prepared to abandon their country
rather than their religion. The extraordinary act of self-devotion by a
whole people for conscience' sake may be thought, in the nineteenth
century, to merit other epithets than those of "perfidy, incredulity, and
stiff-necked obstinacy," with which the worthy Curate of Los Palacios, in
the charitable feeling of that day, has seen fit to stigmatize it. [9]
When the period of departure arrived, all the principal routes through the
country might be seen swarming with emigrants, old and young, the sick and
the helpless, men, women, and children, mingled promiscuously together,
some mounted on horses or mules, but far the greater part undertaking
their painful pilgrimage on foot. The sight of so much misery touched even
the Spaniards with pity, though none might succor them; for the grand
inquisitor, Torquemada, enforced the ordinance to that effect, by
denouncing heavy ecclesiastical censures on all who should presume to
violate it. The fugitives were distributed along various routes, being
determined in their destination by accidental circumstances, much more
than any knowledge of the respective countries to which they were bound.
Much the largest division, amounting according to some estimates to eighty
thousand souls, passed into Portugal; whose monarch, John the Second,
dispensed with his scruples of conscience so far as to give them a free
passage through his dominions on their way to Africa, in consideration of
a tax of a _cruzado_ a head. He is even said to have silenced his
scruples so far as to allow certain ingenious artisans to establish
themselves permanently in the kingdom. [10]
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