Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage
Encyclopedia
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
was written by Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
on February 15, 1493, on board the caravel
Caravel
A caravel is a small, highly maneuverable sailing ship developed in the 15th century by the Portuguese to explore along the West African coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. The lateen sails gave her speed and the capacity for sailing to windward...
Niña
Niña
La Niña was one of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage towards the Indies in 1492. The real name of the Niña was Santa Clara. The name Niña was probably a pun on the name of her owner, Juan Niño of Moguer...
at sea with a postscript
Postscript
A postscript, abbreviated P.S., is writing added after the main body of a letter . The term comes from the Latin post scriptum, an expression meaning "written after" .A postscript may be a sentence, a paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added, often hastily and...
written on March 14 when he arrived back into port at Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
. The open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....
to the Catholic Monarchs
Catholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...
described his discoveries and unexpected items he came across.
Letter to Luis de Santangel
Luis de Santangel
Luis de Santángel was a baptized Jew and finance minister to Ferdinand II who made the case to Isabella I in favor of Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492.-Funding:...
, finance minister
Finance minister
The finance minister is a cabinet position in a government.A minister of finance has many different jobs in a government. He or she helps form the government budget, stimulate the economy, and control finances...
to Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...
and the high steward or comptroller of the king's household expenditures. He had been the one who made the case to Isabella I
Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
in favor of Columbus's voyage eight months earlier. The Catholic Monarchs
Catholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...
were swayed by Santangel's arguments to back Columbus's project. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand first heard of Columbus's successful undertaking from the lips of Santangel.
Columbus then sailed to Palos de la Frontera
Palos de la Frontera
Palos de la Frontera is a town and municipality located in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is situated some from the provincial capital, Huelva...
on March 15, 1493. The earliest Spanish news that Columbus had arrived in Lisbon and found all that he went to seek is evidenced by a letter of Luis de la Cerda y de la Vega, Duke of Medinaceli
Duke of Medinaceli
Duke of Medinaceli is a Spanish noble title given to Luis de la Cerda y de la Vega on 31 October 1479, by the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon when the old title of Count of Medinaceli, awarded to his grandfather, Bernal de Foix, in 1368, whereby was transformed...
, of March 19, 1493.
Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage was placed into the hands of a printer by Luis de Santangel to be widely circulated throughout Spain. Columbus's letter was printed at Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, in Spanish, as early as April 1, 1493, soon after Ferdinand and Isabella had received the news. A surviving Italian letter about Columbus' arrival was written by Hannibal Zenaro to his brother at Milan on April 9, 1493. Columbus did not arrive at the port of Barcelona until mid-April.
Letter to Raphael Sanchez
Columbus wrote an almost identical letter March 14, 1493, to Raphael Sanchez, the treasurer of AragonAragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
. It is sometimes described as the letter "to Gabriel Sanxi" or "to Gabriel Sánchez". Raphael Sanchez (d. 1505) was one of the three influential New Christians that Luis de Santangel got help from to finance Columbus' first voyage. He was the high treasurer of the Kingdom of Aragon. Sanchez was of the family of converso
Converso
A converso and its feminine form conversa was a Jew or Muslim—or a descendant of Jews or Muslims—who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. Mass conversions once took place under significant government pressure...
s who traced their origins back to a Jew named Alazar Goluff of Saragossa. One of Columbus' crew members was Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia
Segovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...
, a surgeon, who was a relative of Raphael Sanchez.
History records that the inquisitor
Inquisitor
An inquisitor was an official in an Inquisition, an organisation or program intended to eliminate heresy and other things frowned on by the Roman Catholic Church...
Pedro de Arbues
Pedro de Arbués
Pedro de Arbués was an official of the Spanish Inquisition who was assassinated in the Zaragoza Cathedral in 1485 in an alleged plot by conversos and Jews...
was murdered. The three brothers of Raphael Sanchez (a.k.a. Gabriel Sanchez) - Juan, Alfonso, and Guillen - were accused of this murder or at least participated in a conspiracy to eliminate the inquisitor. Juan managed to escape but was condemned to death in effigy
Effigy
An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...
. Alfonso managed to flee Aragon before the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
could lay hands on him. Alfonso was also accused of being a Marrano
Marrano
Marranos were Jews living in the Iberian peninsula who converted to Christianity rather than be expelled but continued to observe rabbinic Judaism in secret...
. Guillen was allowed by the Inquisition to repent. Sanchez's father-in-law, who was also implicated, was less fortunate than Guillen. He was charged with Judaizing and sentenced to death. Sanchez was also accused of having participated in the conspiracy, but it could not ultimately be proved. Had it been proven the Inquisition would have tarred him as a heretic
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
. He continued to have the support of King Ferdinand.
Columbus regarded Sanchez as one of his staunchest supporters like Santangel since he also had a hand in the voyage's finances. Sanchez's letter of Columbus' "discovery" of the first voyage to the New World was reproduced by Sanchez and a copy was forwarded to his brother Juan in Florence. Juan passed it on to his cousin Leander de Cosco (a Marrano) who translated it into Latin and had it published by April 29, 1493. It was then distributed throughout Rome in May. Within a year, the Latin translation ran through nine editions, thus spreading the news of the New World throughout Europe.
Papal bull
Pope Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI , born Roderic Llançol i Borja was Pope from 1492 until his death on 18 August 1503. He is one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, and his Italianized surname—Borgia—became a byword for the debased standards of the Papacy of that era, most notoriously the Banquet...
issued the bull Inter caetera
Inter caetera
Inter caetera was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on , which granted to Spain all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands.It remains unclear to the present whether the pope was issuing a...
May 4 and extracts were taken on the subject from Columbus' letter. Columbus had sent a letter to the Pope as soon as he arrived in Castile
Crown of Castile
The Crown of Castile was a medieval and modern state in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then King Ferdinand III of Castile to the vacant Leonese throne...
to prevent the Portuguese from attempting to claim the results of his voyage. The papal bull
Papal bull
A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....
granted control to Spain of every island Columbus had encountered. An imaginary line, called the "Line of Demarcation", was drawn in the ocean about 300 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. All previously unknown land west of the line not belonging to a Christian sovereign was declared to belong to Spain, but the bull did not mention Portugal or its lands. This resulted in an immediate conflict. A resolution was reached in 1494 when the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas
Treaty of Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas , signed at Tordesillas , , divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagueswest of the Cape Verde islands...
, which moved the Line of Demarcation about 1,000 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands.
History of letter
The first printed pamphlet in Spanish was shortly followed by an improved translation, an 8-page quartoQuarto
Quarto could refer to:* Quarto, a size or format of a book in which four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper* For specific information about quarto texts of William Shakespeare's works, see:...
leaflet printed in Latin. Columbus' Letter appeared in nine Latin editions during the year following the initial printing in Spanish. It was so popular that copies were printed in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Antwerp, Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
, and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
before the end of 1493. It was from the Latin version that the rest of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
was given the knowledge of Columbus' new discoveries. Giuliano Dati published in Rome a poetical paraphrase of Columbus' letter in June 1493, which is reprinted in Major's Select Letters of Columbus. By 1497 a German translation was being offered for sale in Strassburg.
Columbus' Letter on the First Voyage is the first eyewitness report to become a best seller. In Italy, Columbus' letter was known as Epistola. Between 1493 and 1500 approximately 3,000 copies of his letter were published throughout Europe, over half this amount came from Italy alone.
Other views
Columbus' Letter on the First Voyage usually refers to one of the 1493 printed editions of a letter from his first voyage announcing his "discovery" of the New World. A traditional view holds that Columbus wrote three letters:- one addressed to Luis de Santangel, keeper of accounts of Aragon, dated February 15, 1493
- another almost identical letter sent to Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of Aragon, dated March 14, 1493.
- an individual letter addressed specifically to Ferdinand and Isabella, of which no copy has survived today.
Recent thinking on the subject is that all three letters were derived from a single manuscript sent to Ferdinand and Isabella, from which copies were then made and endorsed to several court officials.
Journal of first voyage
The New York Public LibraryNew York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
states: