The Columbian Fruition

AFTER a four-years’ progress through the press, we have fifteen large quarto volumes,¹ which constitute the most comprehensive outcome of that wide research incited all over the world by the occurrence of the four hundredth anniversary of the gazing of exultant eyes upon a stretch of glimmering sand, one moonlit night in October, 1492. It was one of the marked characteristics of that time that Italian influence dominated so largely the spirit of discovery which was then rife. This same national exclusiveness has a larger share than we could wish, in this resultant monumental record.

Regarding Columbus himself, however, there is little more to be desired than is here gathered. The future historian of his life can now with Case examine the original sources which illustrate the career of the great admiral, and appreciate the difficulties of his predecessors in the wide wanderings which were necessary to secure material. By the instigation of Henry Harrisse, the Italian government was induced to take this commensurate part in the great commemoration of 1892. It has sought in this publication to emulate the devotion of Spain, Portugal, and America, as well as the civic ambition of such cities as Berlin and Hamburg, and to do honor to the memory of the great deed in some more lasting memorial than pageant and exposition. This Italian production far exceeds the others in value and extent, and it has been produced under the care of distinguished scholars, associated in a Royal Commission. During its preparation six of the collaborators have died. It is owing to a misunderstanding of Harrisse with its responsible promoters that we miss that scholar’s hand in the editorial direction.

We do not recall that the memorials of any other man have ever been so exhaustively gathered. The two characters most conspicuously associated with the history of the American continent are doubtless its discoverer and its greatest regenerator. Of Columbus we now have every scrap that he wrote which has been preserved, whether treatise, letter, or marginal comment, both in modern type and in photo - facsimile ; while of Washington, not a quarter of his literary compositions has ever yet been collected in any edition of his works. It is questionable if his fame had not been better cherished by an official edition of his works, leaving nothing out, and showing perhaps a range of fifty portly volumes, than by the passing ceremony and rhetorical effusions which gave an ephemeral recognition of the centenary of the first President’s inauguration.

Cesare de Lollis, in the editing of that portion of this collection which is given to the scritti of Columbus, has taken great pains with his collations. In this way, we have every variation of text of the famous first letter ; the sea journal as preserved by Las Casas ; the accounts in Peter Martyr and Bernaldez as emanations from the discoverer himself ; his instructions to subordinates ; his contracts and reports to the Spanish monarchs ; his familiar letters, and other illustrative documents, as well as his grandiose will and his unbalanced Libro de las Proficias, written when his miseries had bewildered his brain. To the two large volumes which contain this material in type is added a third under the same editing, giving in photo-facsimile every scrap of Columbus’s writings which could be drawn from the Seville and Genoa archives, from the Royal Academy at Madrid, from the private collections of the Duke of Veragua and the Duchess of Alba, and from the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, where sundry books like the Imago Mundi and Seneca’s Medea, which belonged to Ferdinand Columbus, are preserved, and show the marginal comments of his father. Modern scholars rejoice in similar records of a few other great characters, as in the studies of the autographs of Milton and Da Vinci, for instance, but in no other case have the reproductions been so exhaustively made. Columbus had a habit, when reading a book, of drawing in the margin an indexhand, to call attention to a particular passage. Even these are all individually portrayed through the camera.

A fourth volume is the most complete gathering yet made of the documents concerning the family relations of Columbus, his ancestors and descendants, in which the editors of this section, Staglieno and Belgrano, whom Columbian students have long known for their successes in these fields, have profited by their earlier periodical contributions. We know that Columbus caused several books to be made, embracing manuscript engrossed copies, of his patents and privileges. These he deposited in different places to insure their preservation. One of them, which cannot now be found, was picked up in Florence early in this century by Edward Everett, then on his travels, as appears by a note to the original edition of that orator’s Plymouth address in 1825. The most famous, however, of the existing copies of this personal record of Columbus are those preserved at Paris and Genoa. It may be remarked that the student will find interest in the striking facsimile of the Paris manuscript, which was not long ago issued by Mr. B. F. Stevens, of London, as well as in the printed copy which the present work has preserved. The Italian editors have minutely collated all the existing texts, and have added the petition to the Spanish king for the restoration of his rights, which was dictated by Columbus when at Española in 1494. This print follows a copy formerly owned by the late Samuel L. M. Barlow, of New York, and now in the Carter-Brown collection at Providence.

Another volume, the sixth of the series, is devoted to a consideration of mooted questions connected with the life of Columbus. The leading place is given to a general survey of the controversies by Desimoni, the venerable archivist of Genoa, with whom the present writer spent several hours in discussing some of them, a few years ago. This gentle cavalier had been so long connected with the study of early American discovery that, many years ago, he was made a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, — the only collaborator of this great work, we believe, who has had any such American connections. Those who have followed the Columbian controversies know that they are not few nor of easy solution; and the questions begin with the admiral’s ancestry and his birth, and end with the identification of his bones. A few of these inquiries are treated in the same volume by other hands. One of them concerns the connection of the navigator with the old family of his name which afforded so powerful an addition to the freebooters of the Mediterranean, and another discusses the uncertainties respecting the almost innumerable and well-diversified representations of the human figure which pass for likenesses of Columbus. Arising out of the show of them at the Chicago Exhibition there has been on this point a useless profusion of counter - beliefs, as illustrated in the more than fifty monographs which are cited in the discussion before us. The reproductions which are here given sufficiently represent the subject. It is well known that an Italian savant, Paolo Giovio, or Paulus Jovius, as he is usually called, had a portrait of Columbus in his villa at Lake Como, as one of a gallery of distinguished men whose likenesses he had collected. Our records of its existence are dated many years after the death of the admiral, and there is no evidence that Columbus ever sat for his picture ; nor indeed was there any time, except during the few months intervening between his first and second voyages, when his position was likely to induce any one to paint or to desire to possess his likeness. The only representation of this Giovio picture which can be unmistakably connected with its owner is the woodcut which Giovio himself used in one of his own publications. There is, however, a picture, much too opportunely brought forward for a perfect assurance, as found in an existing house on Lake Como, for which the claim is made that it is the canvas of which Vasari speaks as belonging to Giovio. Though the chain of evidence has missing links, Neri, the author of the present essay, accepts this new picture as the only authentic likeness, and as creating the type which is preserved in other claimants. It is also unquestioned by Sir Clements Markham, who uses it in his life of Columbus. Among the pictures which it is held received their characteristics from this Giovio representation is the one preserved in the gallery at Florence ; Jefferson caused a copy to be made of this, and the copy is now in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It is significant of the fidelity which photography gives to reproduction, to observe that the expression of this Florence picture shown by the camera, as here presented, is far from the same as that in Jefferson’s copy. Neri gives us some forty reproductions, which only serve to convince us, in their diversity, how misguided are the eager beliefs of credulous collectors.

We come now to the seventh and eighth volumes, which are given to the Italian official documentary sources and contemporary narratives of the early discoveries. The principal depositories upon which Signor Berchet, the editor of this section, has drawn are those of Rome, Venice, Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Genoa, and Florence. The Vatican archives yielded, of course, the bulls of Alexander VI., but not much else of great value. This is rather surprising, whether it be owing to the difficulty of discovering what those archives contain, or to the fact that the relations of the Italian and papal thrones are strained. It is certain that there is a liberal spirit in the present librarian of the Pope, Father Ehrle, who is just now, with the Pope’s permission, inaugurating a photographic series of reproductions of Vatican manuscripts.

The active commercial and political Spirit of Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led us to expect a good deal of serviceable material in her wellguarded archives, from which Rawdon Brown and his present successor have drawn so much for the English Master of the Rolls. The ambassadors of Venice to other countries were men alert to discover what was going on, and the reports which her policy expected them to make to the Council of Ten, and which they did make, are the chief sources now presented. They are the letters of Trevisan, Pasqualigo, Contarini, and others. The resources of Rome and Venice fill the greater part of one volume. Those of Ferrara, Genoa, Florence, and Milan are of much less importance. From Mantua we get the recital by Pigafetta of Magellan’s voyage.

The related section of contemporary narratives is rich in assistance to the student. They include such well-known matter as the accounts of Peter Martyr, Fregoso, Bergamo, Scillacio, Pasqualigo, Sabellico, Verrazano, and Vespucius, — not to name others, — and from the library of the University of Bologna we get a letter of one Cuneo, which is the most marked contribution of late years to indicate the true character of Columbus. This witness was a companion of the admiral on his second voyage, when his crew, under their leader’s violent compulsion, swore to a statement that Cuba was the Asiatic main, when more than half the number, as Cuneo testifies, knew they were perjuring themselves under the tyranny of their master.

To these documentary sources are added full extracts from contemporary printed books, all before 1550, which supplement the other narratives. This combined presentation forms the best collection of such material that has been got together.

The editors turn again to disquisitions, and in the ninth volume Signor d’Albertis surveys what we know of ships and navigation in the time of Columbus, — a subject which has engaged much attention of late years.

The succeeding volume is given to two special topics. The first concerns the rise of the knowledge of magnetic declination, which is not without a spice of controversy between Bertelli and Gelcich as to the agency of Columbus in elucidating this question during his first voyage. It will be remembered that the claim of Sebastian Cabot to have solved the application of this natural law to the determining of longitude has been sharply controverted of late.

The next essayist, in discussing the early maps of America which are preserved in Italy, leads us again to regret that this work is compiled from a too strictly national point of view. Bellio, the present commentator, finds the earliest of these Italian maps to be that which has within a few years been made known in a large colored facsimile as the Cantino chart. This is kept at Modena, and the present enumeration covers also those which are found at Pesaro, Parma, Turin, Venice, Mantua, Florence, Rome, and Milan. The descriptions are accompanied by various facsimiles, and a table giving in parallel columns the geographical names found on the maps. A chart gives the contour of the American continent with superposed coasts in different colors to correspond with the outlines as presented on the different maps, — a graphic way of representing conflicting geographical views never so well employed before.

One of the most interesting volumes of the whole series is the eleventh in order, containing Uzielli’s treatise on the great Florentine physicist whose influence upon Columbus was so effective. It is evident from this dissertation that the surprising scientific perception of Toscanelli found but a weak and erratic reflection in the great navigator, but the beliefs of his mentor were made in the admiral far more conspicuous by a stirring courage. In some respects this volume surveys anew the field which we have seen Desimoni compassing in an earlier section, but Uzielli’s treatment is much more comprehensive. It covers lucidly the complicated cartographical problems in their relation to the past of geographical science, and to the earlier explorations towards Asia, Africa, the north of Europe, and out upon the sea of darkness. Toscanelli’s studies of all these placed him in the forefront as a commanding spirit, under whose influence Columbus fell. With it all there is opened a curious question as to the date when the man of science and the practical seaman were brought into communion. It is hardly to be expected that there can be any positive and concurrent belief on this point, though the two were known to have been in correspondence from a period later than 1474 to the year following upon Columbus’s first voyage.

Much that was practical in the adventurous undertaking of 1492 depended upon the accuracy of the views which Columbus held regarding the size of the earth. As to the diverse opinions then entertained on this point, Uzielli gives a striking picture. Columbus found Española where he supposed the Cipango, or Japan, of Marco Polo to be. Uzielli plots the world according to the descriptions of Toscanelli in 1474 and the globe of Behaim in 1492. In the former case he puts the coveted island directly across the modern Gulf of Mexico, while in the Behaim model it is made to lie athwart the gulf and coast of California. This indicates that the views of Toscanelli had aroused the conception of Columbus. Since Ruge first plotted the outline of the actual America on a delineation of Behaim’s globe, this method has been a favorite way of indicating how the Great Discoverer stumbled on the New World.

The next two volumes of the series show how other Italians of this era were associated with the records or acts of discovery. Such were Peter Martyr, Benzone, Vespucius, Cabot, Verrazano, and Pigafetta. The great work ends with a very full bibliography of the life of Columbus, and allied subjects, recounted from the Italian side, but revealing also versions from other tongues into the vernacular of Columbus. It is made by Fumagalli and Amat di San Filippi, both scholars well known in this kind of erudition, and the last named has been particularly conspicuous in the study of the early American cartography.

It is doubtful if any historic event of the Old World, unless possibly the French Revolution and the Reformation, has ever been so voluminously represented in literary memorials as that which is the centre of interest in this series of volumes. Any one who has endeavored to keep abreast of this literary production is appalled at the vastness of it. The results have not been great in conspicuous additions to the knowledge of a decade ago. What is absolutely new could be readily included in a small volume, but all of the material upon which that genuine growth is based can be found in this marvelous collection.