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Table of Contents

Date of his arrival.

1470.

It has been held by Navarrete, Irving, and other writers of the older school that Columbus first arrived in Portugal in 1470; and his coming has commonly been connected with a naval battle near Lisbon, in which he escaped from a burning ship by swimming to land with the aid of an oar. It is easily proved, however, that notarial entries in Italy show him to have been in that country on August 7, 1473. We may, indeed, by some stretch of inference, allow the old date to be sustained, by supposing that he really was domiciled in Lisbon as early as 1470, but made occasional visits to his motherland for the next three or four years.

Supposed naval battle.

The naval battle, in its details, is borrowed by the Historie of 1571 from the Rerum Venitiarum ab Urbe Condita of Sabellicus. This author makes Christopher Columbus a son of the younger corsair Colombo, who commanded in the fight, which could not have happened either in 1470, the year usually given, or in 1473–74, the time better determined for Columbus's arrival in Portugal, since this particular action is known to have taken place on August 22, 1485. Those who defend the Historie, like D'Avezac, claim that its account simply confounds the battle of 1485 with an earlier one, and that the story of the oar must be accepted as an incident of this supposable anterior fight. The action in 1485 took place when the French corsair, Casaneuve or Colombo, intercepted some richly laden Venetian galleys between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent. History makes no mention of any earlier action of similar import which could have been the occasion of the escape by swimming; and to sustain the Historie by supposing such is a simple, perhaps allowable, hypothesis.

Probable arrival in 1473–1474.

Rawdon Brown, in the introduction to his volumes of the Calendar of State Papers in the Archives of Venice, has connected Columbus with this naval combat, but, as he later acknowledged to Harrisse, solely on the authority of the Historie. Irving has rejected the story. There seems no occasion to doubt its inconsistencies and anachronisms, and, once discarded, we are thrown back upon the notarial evidence in Italy, by which we may venture to accept the date of 1473–74 as that of the entrance of Columbus into Portugal. Irving, though he discards the associated incidents, accepts the earlier date. Nevertheless, the date of 1473–74 is not taken without some hazard. As it has been of late ascertained that when Columbus left Portugal it was not for good, as was supposed, so it may yet be discovered that it was from some earlier adventure that the buoyancy of an oar took him to the land.

Italians as maritime discoverers.

This coming of an Italian to Portugal to throw in his lot with a foreign people leads the considerate observer to reflect on the strange vicissitudes which caused Italy to furnish to the western nations so many conspicuous leaders in the great explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, without profiting in the slightest degree through territorial return. Cadamosto and Cabot, the Venetians, Columbus, the Genoese, Vespucius and Verrazano, the Florentines, are, on the whole, the most important of the great captains of discovery in this virgin age of maritime exploration through the dark waters of the Atlantic; and yet Spain and Portugal, France and England, were those who profited by their genius and labors.

It is a singular fact that, during the years which Columbus spent in Portugal, there is not a single act of his life that can be credited with an exact date, and few can be placed beyond cavil by undisputed documentary evidence.

Occupation in Portugal.

It is the usual story, given by his earliest Italian biographers, Gallo and his copiers, that Columbus had found his brother Bartholomew already domiciled in Portugal, and earning a living by making charts and selling books, and that Christopher naturally fell, for a while, into similar occupations. He was not, we are also told, unmindful of his father's distresses in Italy, when he disposed of his small earnings. We likewise know the names of a few of his fellow Genoese settled in Lisbon in traffic, because he speaks of their kindnesses to him, and the help which they had given him (1482) in what would appear to have been commercial ventures.

It seems not unlikely that he had not been long in the country when the incident occurred at Lisbon which led to his marriage, which is thus recorded in the Historie.

His marriage.

During his customary attendance upon divine worship in the Convent of All Saints, his devotion was observed by one of the pensioners of the monastery, who sought him with such expressions of affection that he easily yielded to her charms. This woman, Felipa Moñiz by name, is said to have been a daughter, by his wife Caterina Visconti, of Bartolomeo Perestrello, a gentleman of Italian origin, who is associated with the colonization of Madeira and Porto Santo. From anything which Columbus himself says and is preserved to us, we know nothing more than that he desired in his will that masses should be said for the repose of her soul; for she was then long dead, and, as Diego tells us, was buried in Lisbon. We learn her name for the first time from Diego's will, in 1509, and this is absolutely all the documentary evidence which we have concerning her. Oviedo and the writers who wrote before the publication of the Historie had only said that Columbus had married in Portugal, without further particulars.

The Perestrellos.

But the Historie, with Las Casas following it, does not wholly satisfy our curiosity, neither does Oviedo, later, nor Gomara and Benzoni, who copy from Oviedo. There arises a question of the identity of this Bartolomeo Perestrello, among three of the name of three succeeding generations. Somewhere about 1420, or later, the eldest of this line was made the first governor of Porto Santo, after the island had been discovered by one of the expeditions which had been down the African coast. It is of him the story goes that, taking some rabbits thither, their progeny so quickly possessed the island that its settlers deserted it! Such genealogical information as can be acquired of this earliest Perestrello is against the supposition of his being the father of Felipa Moñiz, but rather indicates that by a second wife, Isabel Moñiz by name, he had the second Bartolomeo, who in turn became the father of our Felipa Moñiz. The testimony of Las Casas seems to favor this view. If this is the Bartolomeo who, having attained his majority, was assigned to the captaincy of Porto Santo in 1473, it could hardly be that a daughter would have been old enough to marry in 1474–75.

The first Bartolomeo, if he was the father-in-law of Columbus, seems to have died in 1457, and was succeeded in 1458, in command of the island of Porto Santo, by another son-in-law, Pedro Correa da Cunha, who married a daughter of his first marriage—or at least that is one version of this genealogical complication—and who was later succeeded in 1473 by the second Bartolomeo.

The Count Bernardo Pallastrelli, a modern member of the family, has of late years, in his Il Suocero e la Moglie di Cristoforo Colombo (2d ed., Piacenza, 1876), attempted to identify the kindred of the wife of Columbus. He has examined the views of Harrisse, who is on the whole inclined to believe that the wife of Columbus was a daughter of one Vasco Gill Moñiz, whose sister had married the Perestrello of the Historie story. The successive wills of Diego Columbus, it may be observed, call her in one (1509) Philippa Moñiz, and in the other (1523) Philippa Muñiz, without the addition of Perestrello. The genealogical table of the count's monograph, on the other hand, makes Felipa to be the child of Isabella Moñiz, who was the second wife of Bartolomeo Pallastrelli, the son of Felipo, who came to Portugal some time after 1371, from Plaisance, in Italy. Bartolomeo had been one of the household of Prince Henry, and had been charged by him with founding a colony at Porto Santo, in 1425, over which island he was long afterward (1446) made governor. We must leave it as a question involved in much doubt.

Columbus's son Diego born.

The issue of this marriage was one son, Diego, but there is no distinct evidence as to the date of his birth. Sundry incidents go to show that it was somewhere between 1475 and 1479. Columbus's marriage to Doña Felipa had probably taken place at Lisbon, and not before 1474 at the earliest, a date not difficult to reconcile with the year (1473–74) now held to be that of his arrival in Portugal. It is supposed that it was while Columbus was living at Porto Santo, where his wife had some property, that Diego was born, though Harrisse doubts if any evidence can be adduced to support such a statement beyond a sort of conjecture on Las Casas's part, derived from something he thought he remembered Diego to have told him.

Perestrello's MSS.

The story of Columbus's marriage, as given in the Historie and followed by Oviedo, couples with it the belief that it was among the papers of his dead father-in-law, Perestrello, that Columbus found documents and maps which prompted him to the conception of a western passage to Asia. In that case, this may perhaps have been the motive which induced him to draw from Paolo Toscanelli that famous letter, which is usually held to have had an important influence on the mind of Columbus.

Story of a sailor dying in Columbus's house.

The fact of such relationship of Columbus with Perestrello is called in question, and so is another incident often related by the biographers of Columbus. This is that an old seaman who had returned from an adventurous voyage westward had found shelter in the house of Columbus, and had died there, but not before he had disclosed to him a discovery he had made of land to the west. This story is not told in any writer that is now known before Gomara (1552), and we are warned by Benzoni that in Gomara's hands this pilot story was simply an invention "to diminish the immortal fame of Christopher Columbus, as there were many who could not endure that a foreigner and Italian should have acquired so much honor and so much glory, not only for the Spanish kingdom, but also for the other nations of the world."

Pomponius Mela, Strabo, etc.

Manilius, Solinus, Ptolemy.

It is certain, however, that under the impulse of the young art of printing men's minds had at this time become more alive than they had been for centuries to the search for cosmographical views. The old geographers, just at this time, were one by one finding their way into print, mainly in Italy, while the intercourse of that country with Portugal was quickened by the attractions of the Portuguese discoveries. While Columbus was still in Italy, the great popularity of Pomponius Mela began with the first edition in Latin, which was printed at Milan in 1471, followed soon by other editions in Venice. The De Situ Orbis of Strabo had already been given to the world in Latin as early as 1469, and during the next few years this text was several times reprinted at Rome and Venice. The teaching of the sphericity of the earth in the astronomical poem of Manilius, long a favorite with the monks of the Middle Ages, who repeated it in their labored script, appeared in type at Nuremberg at the same time. The Polyhistor of Solinus did not long delay to follow. A Latin version of Ptolemy had existed since 1409, but it was later than the rest in appearing in print, and bears the date of 1475. These were the newer issues of the Italian and German presses, which were attracting the notice of the learned in this country of the new activities when Columbus came among them, and they were having their palpable effect.

Toscanelli's theory.

His letter to Columbus.

Just when we know not, but some time earlier than this, Alfonso V. of Portugal had sought, through the medium of the monk Fernando Martinez (Fernam Martins), to know precisely what was meant by the bruit of Toscanelli's theory of a westward way to India. To an inquiry thus vouched Toscanelli had replied to Fernando Martinez (June 25, 1474), some days before a similar inquiry addressed to Toscanelli reached Florence, from Columbus himself, and through the agency of an aged Florentine merchant settled in Lisbon. It seems probable that no knowledge of Martinez's correspondence with Toscanelli had come to the notice of Columbus; and that the message which the Genoese sent to the Florentine was due simply to the same current rumors of Toscanelli's views which had attracted the attention of the king. So in replying to Columbus Toscanelli simply shortened his task by inclosing, with a brief introduction, a copy of the letter, which he says he had sent "some days before" to Martinez. This letter outlined a plan of western discovery; but it is difficult to establish beyond doubt the exact position which the letter of Toscanelli should hold in the growth of Columbus's views. If Columbus reached Portugal as late as 1473–74, as seems likely, it is rendered less certain that Columbus had grasped his idea anterior to the spread of Toscanelli's theory. In any event, the letter of the Florentine physician would strengthen the growing notions of the Genoese.

As Toscanelli was at this time a man of seventy-seven, and as a belief in the sphericity of the earth was then not unprevalent, and as the theory of a westward way to the East was a necessary concomitant of such views in the minds of thinking men, it can hardly be denied that the latent faith in a westward passage only needed a vigilant mind to develop the theory, and an adventurous spirit to prove its correctness. The development had been found in Toscanelli and the proof was waiting for Columbus—both Italians; but Humboldt points out how the Florentine very likely thought he was communicating with a Portuguese, when he wrote to Columbus.

This letter has been known since 1571 in the Italian text as given in the Historie, which, as it turns out, was inexact and overladen with additions. At least such is the inference when we compare this Italian text with a Latin text, supposed to be the original tongue of the letter, which has been discovered of late years in the handwriting of Columbus himself, on the flyleaf of an Æneas Sylvius (1477), once belonging to Columbus, and still preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville. The letter which is given in the Historie is accompanied by an antescript, which says that the copy had been sent to Columbus at his request, and that it had been originally addressed to Martinez, some time "before the wars of Castile." How much later than the date June 25, 1474, this copy was sent to Columbus, and when it was received by him, there is no sure means of determining, and it may yet be in itself one of the factors for limiting the range of months during which Columbus must have arrived in Portugal.

Toscanelli's visions of the East.

The extravagances of the letter of Toscanelli, in his opulent descriptions of a marvelous Asiatic region, were safely made in that age without incurring the charge of credulity. Travelers could tell tales then that were as secure from detection as the revealed arcana of the Zuñi have been in our own days. Two hundred towns, whose marble bridges spanned a single river, and whose commerce could incite the cupidity of the world, was a tale easily to stir numerous circles of listeners in the maritime towns of the Mediterranean, wherever wandering mongers of marvels came and went. There were such travelers whose recitals Toscanelli had read, and others whose tales he had heard from their own lips, and these last were pretty sure to augment the wonders of the elder talebearers.

Columbus had felt this influence with the rest, and the tales lost nothing of their vividness in coming to him freshened, as it were, by the curious mind of the Florentine physician. The map which accompanied Toscanelli's letter, and which depicted his notions of the Asiatic coast lying over against that of Spain, is lost to us, but various attempts have been made to restore it, as is done in the sketch annexed. It will be a precious memorial, if ever recovered, worthy of study as a reflex, in more concise representation than is found in the text of the letter, of the ideas which one of the most learned cosmographers of his day had imbibed from mingled demonstrations of science and imagination.

TOSCANELLI'S MAP AS RESTORED IN DAS AUSLAND.

The passage westward.

It is said that in our own day, in the first stages of a belief in the practicability of an Atlantic telegraphic cable, it was seriously claimed that the vast stretch of its extension could be broken by a halfway station on Jacquet Island, one of those relics of the Middle Ages, which has disappeared from our ocean charts only in recent years.

Antillia.

Just in the same way all the beliefs which men had had in the island of Antillia, and in the existence of many another visionary bit of land, came to the assistance of these theoretical discoverers in planning the chances of a desperate voyage far out into a sea of gorgons and chimeras dire. Toscanelli's map sought to direct the course of any one who dared to make the passage, in a way that, in case of disaster to his ships, a secure harbor could be found in Antillia, and in such other havens as no lack of islands would supply.

Ferdinand claimed to have found in his father's papers some statements which he had drawn from Aristotle of Carthaginian voyages to Antillia, on the strength of which the Portuguese had laid that island down in their charts in the latitude of Lisbon, as one occupied by their people in 714, when Spain was conquered by the Moors. Even so recently as the time of Prince Henry it had been visited by Portuguese ships, if records were to be believed. It also stands in the Bianco map of 1436.

Fabulous islands of the Atlantic.

There are few more curious investigations than those which concern these fantastic and fabulous islands of the Sea of Darkness. They are connected with views which were an inheritance in part from the classic times, with involved notions of the abodes of the blessed and of demoniacal spirits. In part they were the aërial creation of popular mythologies, going back to a remoteness of which it is impossible to trace the beginning, and which got a variable color from the popular fancies of succeeding generations. The whole subject is curiously without the field of geography, though entering into all surveys of mediæval knowledge of the earth, and depending very largely for its elucidation on the maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose mythical traces are not beyond recognition in some of the best maps which have instructed a generation still living.

St. Brandan.

To place the island of the Irish St. Brandan—whose coming there with his monks is spoken of as taking place in the sixth century—in the catalogue of insular entities is to place geography in such a marvelous guise as would have satisfied the monk Philoponus and the rest of the credulous fictionmongers who hang about the skirts of the historic field. But the belief in it long prevailed, and the apparition sometimes came to sailors' eyes as late as the last century.

Antillia, or the Seven Cities.

The great island of Antillia, or the Seven Cities, already referred to, was recognized, so far as we know, for the first time in the Weimar map of 1424, and is known in legends as the resort of some Spanish bishops, flying from the victorious Moors, in the eighth century. It never quite died out from the recognition of curious minds, and was even thought to have been seen by the Portuguese, not far from the time when Columbus was born. Peter Martyr also, after Columbus had returned from his first voyage, had a fancy that what the Admiral had discovered was really the great island of Antillia, and its attendant groups of smaller isles, and the fancy was perpetuated when Wytfliet and Ortelius popularized the name of Antilles for the West Indian Archipelago.