Carol Delaney, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, Free Press, 2012, 319 pp. $17.00 (softcover)
What sort of man was
Christopher Columbus? Why did he cross the Atlantic and what did he do in the
New World? The fashion is to despise him as a greedy, genocidal racist and
slave driver, but Prof. Carol Delaney of Brown University refutes these
charges. His motives were almost entirely — even fanatically — Christian, and
he was kind to Indians. She is mystified by the evil reputation he has
acquired.
As Prof. Delaney explains, it
is impossible to understand Columbus without understanding what committed
Catholics thought in the 15th century. Most believed Christianity was the one
true faith and that unbelievers went to hell. Evangelism was a duty. Many
Christians were millenarians and believed that the End Times and the return of
Christ — as described in Revelation — were coming soon. A series of
catastrophes intensified this belief and prompted Christians to action.
According to Revelation, Christ
could not return until Jerusalem was in Christian hands. The Crusader conquest
of the Holy Land in 1099 was a gigantic step forward, but its loss to Saladin
in 1187 shocked all Christendom. Then in 1347, the Black Plague killed an
estimated 25 million Europeans and up to three-quarters of the people in parts
of Italy and Spain. Another sign of the coming End Times was the Great Schism
of 1378 to 1417, during which there were two competing Popes, but even worse
was the fall of the Constantinople — the Eastern capital of Christianity — to
the Turks in 1453. That year, Columbus was two years old; he grew up at a time
when Catholics were desperately trying to understand how God could have
permitted these horrors — loss of Jerusalem, plague, schism, fall of
Constantinople — and were determined to win back lost ground. Columbus’ most
fervent wish his entire life was to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem.
Prof. Delaney explains that
Columbus was convinced he could help retake the Holy Land by sailing to China
across the Atlantic. First, he would bring back gold, which was supposed to be
plentiful in China, and this would finance a new crusade. Second, he could
avoid the Silk Road land route to China, which was blocked after the fall of
Constantinople. Third, he would meet the Chinese ruler, the Great Khan, convert
him to Christianity, and persuade the Christian Chinese to attack from the East
and help liberate Jerusalem. Fantastic as it now sounds, the idea of enlisting
the Chinese to help bring on the Second Coming dated back to the time of Marco
Polo and the publication of his Travels in 1300. Columbus owned a copy of the Travels and made many notes in
the margins.
It was unusual for lay people
to read the Bible, but Columbus read it diligently. His contemporaries wrote of
his passionate Christianity, and he was strongly influenced by the Franciscans,
who thought Christians should not wait passively for the End Times but work to
bring them on. Columbus also took very seriously the duty to convert heathen
peoples and save their souls.
Before
the voyage
Columbus was an Italian who
grew up in Genoa. He was nine years old when ships sailed from Genoa on a
failed crusade, a sight that must have made a deep impression. When he was 14,
he was apprenticed to the sea, and he got his first taste of the Atlantic on a
voyage to England in 1476 when he was 25. In 1481 or ’82, he sailed to what is
now Ghana, and stopped in the Canary Islands. He was a gifted navigator, with a
widely admired talent for dead reckoning (navigation without instruments).
Columbus didn’t care which
Christian sovereign financed his voyage to China. He met with King João II of
Portugal, but the Portuguese were exploring the route around Africa, and were
not interested. Columbus approached the British and the French, but it was the
Spanish under Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who showed the most interest.
Still, it took 13 years from Columbus’ first audience with the queen until his
first voyage in 1492. She put him off until the Moors were finally driven out
of Spain, but even after the Reconquista, she hesitated. Ferdinand always doubted Columbus, and Isabella’s
advisors tried to dissuade her, but she finally agreed to pay for three small
ships and a crew of 90.
Shmuel
Thaler/Sentinel, a replica of the Nina that crossed the Atlantic in 1492 with
Christopher Columbus. (Credit: ©/Santa Cruz Sentinal/ZUMA Press)
Discovery
Columbus kept a detailed dairy
of which only abridged versions survive, but they still tell us a great deal.
After 31 days of sailing, so many of the crew insisted on turning back that
Columbus promised that if they didn’t sight land in three days, he would give
up and return to Spain. Two days later, the ships made landfall on what is now
Watling Island in the Bahamas. There, Columbus found naked people, whom he
thought handsome and intelligent. He gave them trade trinkets “in which they
took so much pleasure and became so much our friends that it was a marvel.”
Columbus believed he was in the Indies, so he called the Arawaks Indios, or Indians.
The Arawaks did not appear to
have any kind of religion, and since they would not have to unlearn a pagan
faith, Columbus thought they could be easily converted to Christianity. He
wrote to his patrons: “They should be treated courteously because they are the
best and most gentle people in the world, and especially, because I have much
hope in Our Lord that Your Highnesses will make all of them Christian.”
Columbus had much more trouble
with his own men. As the ships sailed from island to island, the natives were
always gentle, but some ran away, and Columbus had to restrain his men from
looting. In his diary, he wrote of his dissatisfaction with his men, especially
compared to the natives: “I believe that in the world there are no better
people or a better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have
the sweetest speech in the world and they are gentle and always laughing.”
Columbus was entranced by the beauty of the islands, the vegetation, the birds
and fishes. The natives slept in hammocks, which were then unknown in Europe,
and soon all European sailors were sleeping in hammocks rather than on deck.
“First
Tribute to Christopher Columbus” José Garnelo, 1892. Credit: Album / Oronoz
One of his captains, Martin
Pinzon, disappeared for six weeks, looking for gold. When he rejoined the
fleet, Columbus learned his crew had captured men and women; he ordered them
freed and returned. Columbus kept hoping to find someone who could lead him to
the Great Khan so he could present letters of greeting from Ferdinand and
Isabella and teach him Christianity. Columbus persuaded six Arawaks to go back
to Spain with him; they would prove he had reached India, and he wanted them to
learn Spanish and Christianity so they could come back as missionaries.
The Santa Maria grounded and was wrecked
on Christmas day. The crew set up a camp called Navidad, and Columbus left
behind 40 men with instructions to be kind to the Indians. On the way back, the
ships stopped at what is now the Dominican Republic and found a war-like tribe,
very different from the Arawaks. In their first skirmish with Indians, his crew
wounded several men with swords and crossbows. The Arawaks told Columbus these
“Caribs” were cannibals and took slaves.
Columbus’ ships sailed back
across the Atlantic and limped into port seven months and 11 days after they
had initially set out. Columbus was a hero, and proudly presented his Indians
to the queen, along with several gold pieces he had found. He promised her as
many slaves as she might want, but only from among the man-eating Caribs. This
was in accordance with Papal rules that permitted slavery only of savages who
resisted Christianity and practiced vile habits such as sodomy or cannibalism.
Isabella never had much interest in slaves; she wanted Indians converted where
they were.
The queen financed a much
larger second voyage: 17 ships and 1,200 men. They were to build a trading
station for business with the Chinese, and Columbus was to receive one tenth of
the profits. The queen commanded the settlers to treat the Indians “very well
and lovingly.”
When the fleet returned to
Navidad, Columbus found everyone dead. Friendly Indians told him the men had
defied his orders and gone raping and looting. This angered a neighboring chief
who attacked and slaughtered them. Columbus, who had had only good relations
with these Indians, believed this account, well aware that the Spaniards could
have deserved what they got, but many of the newcomers mistrusted the Indians
and wanted revenge. Columbus managed to restrain them, and the fleet found a
different site on Hispaniola for a new settlement.
Failure
Columbus was a genius at sea,
but Prof. Delaney writes that he was a bad administrator. He thought men of
different classes could work well together, but the high-ranking hidalgos who had come on the
voyage refused to work and expected easy riches. They would not farm, would not
eat the local food — which Columbus and others enjoyed — and wrote letters back
to Spain complaining about Columbus. When Columbus went on further voyages of
discovery looking for gold and the Khan, men he left behind went into the
interior to rape and plunder.
Columbus put his brother Bartholomew
in charge of the settlement and went back to Spain. He arrived dressed in the
coarse, brown habit of a Franciscan, which he wore for the rest of his life.
Prof. Delaney suspects this was a reaction to the greed and cruelty of the
Spanish. Columbus thought the settlers were bad missionaries. When he saw the
queen, he asked for better friars than the ones she had sent on the second
voyage. They thought baptism was enough to turn anyone Christian, but Columbus
thought Indians should get careful instruction in the faith. For the rest of
his life, he stressed the importance of missionaries who could speak Indian
languages.
Columbus was in Spain for two
years between his second and third voyages, and this time set out with just 330
people, of which 30 were women. Prof. Delaney says it is not clear whether they
were wives, servants, or prostitutes who were supposed to keep the Spaniards
from raping Indians. When Columbus got back to the settlement, he found that
dissidents had up risen up against Bartholomew’s strict government. Columbus
did his best to end what was a low-level civil war and restore order. He was
furious at continuing reports of Spaniards who had mistreated Indians, and
hanged the worst offenders. He never permitted enslavement of Indians but,
under pressure, he imposed a tax on Indians to be paid in crops or in gold.
Some hidalgos defied Columbus’
authority, so he wrote to the queen, asking her to send an arbitrator to back
up his authority. Prof. Delaney writes that it is now known why Isabella chose
Francisco de Bobadilla, whose mind was already poisoned against Columbus by men
who had returned to Spain. He sided with the insurgents and sent Columbus back
to Spain in chains. The settlers far preferred Bobadilla, who let them exploit
and even murder Indians. Isabella freed Columbus after his return, but he kept
the chains for the rest of his life as a reminder of his humiliation.
Christopher
Columbus chained on his ship, pl. 33, after p. 474 (vol. 2), Credit: Album /
quintlox
While in Spain, Columbus wrote
what is called the Book of Prophecies, a long theological justification of his life and travels. He saw
his discoveries as an important part of a great cosmological drama that was to
culminate in the End Times. The book quotes scripture to claim that his voyages
were divinely inspired and fulfilled Biblical prophecy. It explains why he was
so conscious of the meaning of his first name, Christopher, which means the
Christ-bearer. He believed he was carrying Christ to the East.
Prof. Delaney notes that most
Columbus scholars are shocked by the Book of Prophecies and try to ignore it.
Whatever they think of him, they don’t like to think he was a religious nut,
and the book was not translated into English until 1992. It is, however, a
clear statement of his motives.
Columbus set out on his last
voyage in 1502. He had orders only to explore; the colonies had several
thousand inhabitants, and the queen took administration out of his hands. He
made more discoveries, especially in Central America, but suffered a series of
mishaps that included a shipwreck that left him marooned on Jamaica for a year
and five days.
Shortly after his return to
Spain, Isabella died. Ferdinand never had much faith in Columbus and financed
no more voyages. Columbus did not live in poverty or obscurity but never
regained anything like the glory he won after his first voyage.
“The
last moments of Christopher Columbus” by Claude Jacquand. Credit: Album / Fine
Art Images
Prof. Delaney is baffled by
Columbus’ bad reputation. She notes that, by contrast, Bartolomé de Las Casas —
who knew and admired Columbus — is now considered a hero because he defended
the rights of Indians at the Valladolid debate of
1550–1551. Las Casas insisted that Indians be recognized as free men with the
same rights as Spaniards. Prof. Delaney writes: “Las Casas is remembered only
for his defense of the Indian; what is forgotten is that he owned slaves and
endorsed and operated encomiendas [plantations on which Indians were serfs] while Columbus,
who never owned slaves, is reviled and blamed for everything that went wrong in
the Indies.”
Academics may consider Las
Casas a humanitarian, but the people now pulling down statues of Columbus have
probably never heard of him. Nor would they care if someone told them Columbus
was kind to Indians and hanged Spaniards who mistreated them. Columbus’ crime
is to have come here; he brought white people to the New World. He used to be
honored for this, but today, that makes him a villain.
