The Discovery of America Part 35

On the following day Alexander issued a second bull in order to prevent any occasion for quarrel between Spain and Portugal.[546] He decreed that all lands discovered or to be discovered to the west of a meridian one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands should belong to the Spaniards. Inasmuch as between the westernmost of the Azores and the easternmost of the Cape Verde group the difference in longitude is not far from ten degrees, this description must be allowed to be somewhat vague, especially in a doc.u.ment emanating from "certain knowledge;"[547] and it left open a source of future disputes which one would suppose the "plenitude of apostolic power" might have been worthily employed in closing. The meridian 25 W., however, would have satisfied the conditions, and the equitable intent of the arrangement is manifest. The Portuguese were left free to pursue their course of discovery and conquest along the routes which they had always preferred.

King John, however, was not satisfied. He entertained vague hopes of finding spice islands, or something worth having, in the western waters; and he wished to have the Line of Demarcation carried farther to the west. After a year of diplomatic wrangling a treaty was signed at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, in which Spain consented to the moving of the line to a distance of 370 leagues west from the Cape Verde islands.[548]

It would thus on a modern map fall somewhere between the 41st and 44th meridians west of Greenwich. This amendment had important and curious consequences. It presently gave the Brazilian coast to the Portuguese, and thereupon played a leading part in the singular and complicated series of events that ended in giving the name of Americus Vespucius to that region, whence it was afterwards gradually extended to the whole western hemisphere.[549]

[Footnote 546: The complete text of this bull, with Richard Eden's translation, is given at the end of this work; see below, Appendix B. The official text is in _Magnum Bullarium Romanum_, ed. Cherubini, Lyons, 1655, tom. i. p. 466. The original doc.u.ment received by Ferdinand and Isabella is preserved in the Archives of the Indies at Seville; it is printed entire in Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii.

No. 18. Another copy, less complete, may be found in Raynaldus, _Annales ecclesiastici_, Lucca, 1754, tom. xi. p. 214, No.

19-22; and another in Leibnitz, _Codex Diplomaticus_, tom. i.

pt. i. p. 471. It is often called the Bull "Inter Cetera," from its opening words.

The origin of the pope's claim to apostolic authority for giving away kingdoms is closely connected with the fict.i.tious "Donation of Constantine," an edict probably fabricated in Rome about the middle of the eighth century. The t.i.tle of the old Latin text is _Edictum domini Constantini Imp._, apud Pseudo-Isidorus, _Decretalia_. Constantine's transfer of the seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus tended greatly to increase the dignity and power of the papacy, and I presume that the fabrication of this edict, four centuries afterward, was the expression of a sincere belief that the first Christian emperor _meant_ to leave the temporal supremacy over Italy in the hands of the Roman see. The edict purported to be such a donation from Constantine to Pope Sylvester I., but the extent and character of the donation was stated with such vagueness as to allow a wide lat.i.tude of interpretation. Its genuineness was repeatedly called in question, but belief in it seems to have grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX., who was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054 to the Normans their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be held as a fief of the Roman see. (Muratori, _Annali d' Italia_, tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It was next used to sustain the papal claim to suzerainty over the island of Corsica. A century later John of Salisbury maintained the right of the pope to dispose "of all _islands_ on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness, hath shined," and in conformity with this opinion Pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman) authorized in 1164 King Henry II. of England to invade and conquer Ireland. (See Adrian IV., _Epist._ 76, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom.

clx.x.xviii.) Dr. Lanigan, in treating of this matter, is more an Irishman than a papist, and derides "this nonsense of the pope's being the head-owner of all Christian islands."

(_Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, vol. iv. p.

159.)--Gregory VII., in working up to the doctrine that all Christian kingdoms should be held as fiefs under St. Peter (Baronius, _Annales_, tom. xvii. p. 430; cf. Villemain, _Histoire de Gregoire VII._, Paris, 1873, tom. ii. pp. 59-61), does not seem to have appealed to the Donation. Perhaps he was shrewd enough to foresee the kind of objection afterwards raised by the Albigensians, who pithily declared that if the suzerainty of the popes was derived from the Donation, then they were successors of Constantine and not of St. Peter.

(Moneta Cremonensis, _Adversus Catharos et Waldenses_, ed.

Ricchini, Rome, 1743, v. 2.) But Innocent IV. summarily disposed of this argument at the Council of Lyons in 1245, when he deposed the Emperor Frederick II. and King Sancho II. of Portugal,--saying that Christ himself had bestowed temporal as well as spiritual headship upon St. Peter and his successors, so that Constantine only gave up to the Church what belonged to it already. The opposite or Ghibelline theory was eloquently set forth by Dante, in his treatise _De Monarchia_; he held that inasmuch as the Empire existed before the Church, it could not be derived from it. Dante elsewhere expressed his abhorrence of the Donation:--

Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre, Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!

_Inferno_, xix. 115.

Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the most popular poets from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Walther von der Vogelweide was sure that if the first Christian emperor could have foreseen the evils destined to flow from his Donation, he would have withheld it:--

Solte ich den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min, So spraeche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din, Ir zunge sunge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin, Gedaehten daz ouch si dur Got waeren almuosenaere.

Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin, Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik waere, So het er wol underkomen des riches swaere, Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete laere.

Hagen, _Minnesinger-Sammlung_, Leipsic, 1838, bd. i. p. 270.

Ariosto, in a pa.s.sage rollicking with satire, makes his itinerant paladin find the "stinking" Donation in the course of his journey upon the moon:--

Di varii fiori ad un gran monte pa.s.sa, Ch' ebber gia buono odore, or puzzan forte, Questo era il dono, se per dir lece, Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.

_Orlando Furioso_, x.x.xiv. 80.

The Donation was finally proved to be a forgery by Laurentius Valla in 1440, in his _De falso credita et ement.i.ta Constantini donatione declamatio_ (afterward spread far and wide by Ulrich von Hutten), and independently by the n.o.ble Reginald Pec.o.c.k, bishop of Chichester, in his _Repressor_, written about 1447.--During the preceding century the theory of Gregory VII.

and Innocent IV. had been carried to its uttermost extreme by the Franciscan monk Alvaro Pelayo, in his _De Planctu Ecclesiae_, written at Avignon during the "Babylonish Captivity," about 1350 (printed at Venice in 1560), and by Agostino Trionfi, in his _Summa de potestate ecclesiastica_, Augsburg, 1473, an excessively rare book, of which there is a copy in the British Museum. These writers maintained that the popes were suzerains of the whole earth and had absolute power to dispose not only of all Christian kingdoms, but also of all heathen lands and powers. It was upon this theory that Eugenius IV. seems to have acted with reference to Portugal and Alexander VI. with reference to Spain. Of course there was never a time when such claims for the papacy were not denied by a large party within the Church. The Spanish sovereigns in appealing to Alexander VI. took care to hint that some of their advisers regarded them as already ent.i.tled to enjoy the fruits of their discoveries, even before obtaining the papal permission, but they did not choose to act upon that opinion (Herrera, decad. i. lib. ii. cap. 4). The kings of Portugal were less reserved in their submission. In _Valasci Ferdinandi ad Innocentium octauum de obedientia oratio_, a small quarto printed at Rome about 1488, John II. did homage to the pope for the countries just discovered by Bartholomew Dias. His successor Emanuel did the same after the voyages of Gama and Vespucius. In a small quarto, _Obedientia potentissimi Emanuelis Lusitaniae regis &c. per clarissimum juris consultum Dieghum Pacett[=u] oratorem ad Iuli[=u] Pont. Max._, Rome, 1505, all the newly found lands are laid at the feet of Julius II. in a pa.s.sage that ends with words worth noting: "Accipe tandem orbem ipsum terrarum, Deus enim noster es," i. e.

"Accept in fine the earth itself, for thou art our G.o.d."

Similar homage was rendered to Leo X. in 1513, on account of Albuquerque's conquests in Asia.--We may suspect that if the papacy had retained, at the end of the fifteenth century, anything like the overshadowing power which it possessed at the end of the twelfth, the kings of Portugal would not have been quite so unstinted in their homage. As it came to be less of a reality and more of a flourish of words, it cost less to offer it. Among some modern Catholics I have observed a disposition to imagine that in the famous bull of part.i.tion Alexander VI.

acted not as supreme pontiff but merely as an arbiter, in the modern sense, between the crowns of Spain and Portugal; but such an interpretation is hardly compatible with Alexander's own words. An arbiter, as such, does not make awards by virtue of "the authority of Omnipotent G.o.d granted to us in St. Peter, and of the Vicarship of Jesus Christ which we administer upon the earth."

Since writing this note my attention has been called to Dr.

Ignaz von Dollinger's _Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages_, London, 1871; and I find in it a chapter on the Donation of Constantine, in which the subject is treated with a wealth of learning. Some of my brief references are there discussed at considerable length. To the references to Dante there is added a still more striking pa.s.sage, where Constantine is admitted into Heaven _in spite of_ his Donation (_Paradiso_, xx. 55).]

[Footnote 547: The language of the bull is even more vague than my version in the text. His Holiness describes the lands to be given to the Spaniards as lying "to the west and south" (versus occidentem et meridiem) of his dividing meridian. Land to the south of a meridian would be in a queer position! Probably it was meant to say that the Spaniards, once west of the papal meridian, might go south as well as north. For the king of Portugal had suggested that they ought to confine themselves to northern waters.]

[Footnote 548: For the original Spanish text of the treaty of Tordesillas, see Navarrete, tom. ii. pp. 116-130.]

[Footnote 549: See below, vol. ii. pp. 98-154.]

[Sidenote: Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca.]

Already in April, 1493, without waiting for the papal sanction, Ferdinand and Isabella bent all their energies to the work of fitting out an expedition for taking possession of "the Indies." First, a department of Indian affairs was created, and at its head was placed Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville: in Spain a man in high office was apt to be a clergyman. This Fonseca was all-powerful in Indian affairs for the next thirty years. He won and retained the confidence of the sovereigns by virtue of his executive ability. He was a man of coa.r.s.e fibre, ambitious and domineering, cold-hearted and perfidious, with a cynical contempt--such as low-minded people are apt to call "smart"--for the higher human feelings. He was one of those ugly customers who crush, without a twinge of compunction, whatever comes in their way. The slightest opposition made him furious, and his vindictiveness was insatiable. This dexterous and pushing Fonseca held one after another the bishoprics of Badajoz, Cordova, Palencia, and Conde, the archbishopric of Rosano in Italy, together with the bishopric of Burgos, and he was also princ.i.p.al chaplain to Isabella and afterwards to Ferdinand. As Sir Arthur Helps observes, "the student of early American history will have a bad opinion of many Spanish bishops, if he does not discover that it is Bishop Fonseca who reappears under various designations."[550] Sir Arthur fitly calls him "the unG.o.dly bishop."

[Footnote 550: _History of the Spanish Conquest_, vol. i. p.

487.]

[Sidenote: Friar Boyle.]

The headquarters of Fonseca and of the Indian department were established at Seville, and a special Indian custom-house was set up at Cadiz. There was to be another custom-house upon the island of Hispaniola (supposed to be j.a.pan), and a minute registry was to be kept of all ships and their crews and cargoes, going out or coming in. n.o.body was to be allowed to go to the Indies for any purpose whatever without a license formally obtained. Careful regulations were made for hampering trade and making everything as vexatious as possible for traders, according to the ordinary wisdom of governments in such matters. All expenses were to be borne and all profits received by the crown of Castile, saving the rights formerly guaranteed to Columbus. The cost of the present expedition was partly defrayed with stolen money, the plunder wrung from the worthy and industrious Jews who had been driven from their homes by the infernal edict of the year before. Extensive "requisitions" were also made; in other words, when the sovereigns wanted a ship or a barrel of gunpowder they seized it, and impressed it into the good work of converting the heathen. To superintend this missionary work, a Franciscan monk[551] was selected who had lately distinguished himself as a diplomatist in the dispute with France over the border province of Rousillon. This person was a native of Catalonia, and his name was Bernardo Boyle, which strongly suggests an Irish origin. Alexander VI. appointed him his apostolic vicar for the Indies,[552] and he seems to have been the first clergyman to perform ma.s.s on the western sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic. To a.s.sist the vicar, the six Indians brought over by Columbus were baptized at Barcelona, with the king and queen for their G.o.dfather and G.o.dmother. It was hoped that they would prove useful as missionaries, and when one of them presently died he was said to be the first Indian ever admitted to heaven.[553]

[Footnote 551: Irving calls him a Benedictine, but he is addressed as "fratri ordinis Minorum" in the bull clothing him with apostolic authority in the Indies, June 25, 1493. See Raynaldus, _Annales ecclesiastici_, tom. xi. p. 216. I cannot imagine what M. Harrisse means by calling him "religieux de Saint-Vincent de Paule" (_Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. p. 55).

Vincent de Paul was not born till 1576.]

[Footnote 552: Not for "the New World," as Irving carelessly has it in his _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 346. No such phrase had been thought of in 1493, or until long afterward.]

[Footnote 553: Herrera, _Hist. de las Indias_, decad. i. lib.

ii. cap. 5.]

The three summer months were occupied in fitting out the little fleet.

There were fourteen caravels, and three larger store-ships known as carracks. Horses, mules, and other cattle were put on board,[554] as well as vines and sugar-canes, and the seeds of several European cereals, for it was intended to establish a permanent colony upon Hispaniola. In the course of this work some slight matters of disagreement came up between Columbus and Fonseca, and the question having been referred to the sovereigns, Fonseca was mildly snubbed and told that he must in all respects be guided by the Admiral's wishes.

From that time forth this unG.o.dly prelate nourished a deadly hatred toward Columbus, and never lost an opportunity for whispering evil things about him. The worst of the grievous afflictions that afterward beset the great discoverer must be ascribed to the secret machinations of this wretch.

[Footnote 554: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xliv.]

[Sidenote: Notable persons who embarked on the second voyage.]

At last the armament was ready. People were so eager to embark that it was felt necessary to restrain them. It was not intended to have more than 1,200, but about 1,500 in all contrived to go, so that some of the caravels must have been overcrowded. The character of the company was very different from that of the year before. Those who went in the first voyage were chiefly common sailors. Now there were many aristocratic young men, hot-blooded and feather-headed hidalgos whom the surrender of Granada had left without an occupation. Most distinguished among these was Alonso de Ojeda, a dare-devil of unrivalled muscular strength, full of energy and fanfaronade, and not without generous qualities, but with very little soundness of judgment or character. Other notable personages in this expedition were Columbus's youngest brother Giacomo (henceforth called Diego), who had come from Genoa at the first news of the Admiral's triumphant return; the monk Antonio de Marchena,[555] whom historians have so long confounded with the prior Juan Perez; an Aragonese gentleman named Pedro Margarite, a favourite of the king and destined to work sad mischief; Juan Ponce de Leon, who afterwards gave its name to Florida; Francisco de Las Casas, father of the great apostle and historian of the Indies; and, last but not least, the pilot Juan de La Cosa, now charged with the work of chart-making, in which he was an acknowledged master.[556]

[Footnote 555: He went as astronomer, from which we may perhaps suppose that scientific considerations had made him one of the earliest and most steadfast upholders of Columbus's views.]

[Footnote 556: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp.

55, 56; Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 498; Fabie, _Vida de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1879, tom. i. p. 11; Oviedo, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 467; Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii. pp. 143-149.]

[Sidenote: Cruise among the cannibal islands.]

The pomp and bustle of the departure from Cadiz, September 25, 1493, at which the Admiral's two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, were present, must have been one of the earliest recollections of the younger boy, then just five years of age.[557] Again Columbus stopped at the Canary islands, this time to take on board goats and sheep, pigs and fowls, for he had been struck by the absence of all such animals on the coasts which he had visited.[558] Seeds of melons, oranges, and lemons were also taken. On the 7th of October the ships weighed anchor, heading a trifle to the south of west, and after a pleasant and uneventful voyage they sighted land on the 3d of November.[559] It turned out to be a small mountainous island, and as it was discovered on Sunday they called it Dominica. In a fortnight's cruise in these Caribbean waters they discovered and named several islands, such as Marigalante, Guadaloupe, Antigua, and others, and at length reached Porto Rico. The inhabitants of these islands were ferocious cannibals, very different from the natives encountered on the former voyage. There were skirmishes in which a few Spaniards were killed with poisoned arrows. On Guadaloupe the natives lived in square houses made of saplings intertwined with reeds, and on the rude porticoes attached to these houses some of the wooden pieces were carved so as to look like serpents. In some of these houses human limbs were hanging from the roof, cured with smoke, like ham; and fresh pieces of human flesh were found stewing in earthen kettles, along with the flesh of parrots. Now at length, said Peter Martyr, was proved the truth of the stories of Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians, and the reader must look out lest his hair stand on end.[560] These western Laestrygonians were known as Caribbees, Caribales, or Canibales, and have thus furnished an epithet which we have since learned to apply to man-eaters the world over.

[Footnote 557: "E con questo preparamento il mercolede ai 25 del mese di settembre dell' anno 1493 un' ora avanti il levar del sole, essendovi io e mio fratel presenti, l' Ammiraglio lev le ancore," etc. _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xliv.]

[Footnote 558: Eight sows were bought for 70 maravedis apiece, and "destas ocho puercas se han multiplicado todos los puercos que, hasta hoy, ha habido y hay en todas estas Indias," etc.

Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. ii. p. 3.]

[Footnote 559: The relation of this second voyage by Dr. Chanca may be found in Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 198-241; an interesting relation in Italian by Simone Verde, a Florentine merchant then living in Valladolid, is published in Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 68-78. The narrative of the curate of Los Palacios is of especial value for this voyage.]

[Footnote 560: Martyr, _Epist._ cxlvii. _ad Pomponium Laetum_; cf. _Odyssey_, x. 119; Thucyd. vi. 2.--Irving (vol. i. p. 385) finds it hard to believe these stories, but the prevalence of cannibalism, not only in these islands, but throughout a very large part of aboriginal America, has been superabundantly proved.]

[Sidenote: Fate of the colony at La Navidad.]

It was late at night on the 27th of November that Columbus arrived in the harbour of La Navidad and fired a salute to arouse the attention of the party that had been left there the year before. There was no reply and the silence seemed fraught with evil omen. On going ash.o.r.e next morning and exploring the neighbourhood, the Spaniards came upon sights of dismal significance. The fortress was pulled to pieces and partly burnt, the chests of provisions were broken open and emptied, tools and fragments of European clothing were found in the houses of the natives, and finally eleven corpses, identifiable as those of white men, were found buried near the fort. Not one of the forty men who had been left behind in that place ever turned up to tell the tale. The little colony of La Navidad had been wiped out of existence. From the Indians, however, Columbus gathered bits of information that made a sufficiently probable story. It was a typical instance of the beginnings of colonization in wild countries. In such instances human nature has shown considerable uniformity. Insubordination and deadly feuds among themselves had combined with reckless outrages upon the natives to imperil the existence of this little party of rough sailors. The cause to which Horace ascribes so many direful wars, both before and since the days of fairest Helen, seems to have been the princ.i.p.al cause on this occasion. At length a fierce chieftain named Caonabo, from the region of Xaragua, had attacked the Spaniards in overwhelming force, knocked their blockhouse about their heads, and butchered all that were left of them.

[Sidenote: Building of Isabella.]