Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, n. • 8 (200 J ), pp. 11 · 26 

EXILES AND ARRIVALS IN CHRISTOPHER 
COLUMBUS AND WILLIAM BRADFORD* 

JOSÉ MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ GARCÍA 
Universidade da Con1ña 

I will be concerned in this essay with a few key passages in Christopher 
Columbus's Journal of the First Voyage (1492-1493) and William Bradford's Of 
Plymouth Planta/ion (1630-1650; pub. 1856) in which the two authors invest their 
respective plans for a voyage across the ocean with a transcendental significance, 
linking them to important movements of population caused by religious persecution. 
In both cases persecution altemately takes on positive and negative connotations: 
depending on the perspective being adopted, it can be a sign of divine favor or a sign 
of divine punishment. While Columbus sees the expulsion of the Jews of Sepharad 
and the fall of Granada's last Moorish king, Boabdil, as an ornen of the discovery of a 
Christian paradise on earth -the original Garden of Eden- Bradford sees the exodus of 
the Pilgrim Fathers through England, Holland, and America as the ultimate test of 
faith in divine Providence that the English Israel must undergo. In the course of the 
fifteenth century, as «Israel» and «the Jewish people» acquired the c ultural status of 
the rejected other of Christendom, they also became the symbol of an e1Tant people 
continually striving for an interpretation of their own deferred destiny. 

Sixteenth -and seventeenth- century theories of national election inspired by 
the Reconquest of Spain and by massive religious migrations often emphasized two 
interdependent historical time frames , each deploying a different understanding of 
history and progress, and each promoting also a characteristic sense of purpose. This 
dual time scheme appears in Andrés de Bernáldez, Christopher Columbus, Tommaso 
Campanella, Robert Cushman, John Eliot, John Winthrop, and Edward Johnson, 
amo ng others. On the one hand, only the elect people were destined to achieve 
terrestrial success in this world, their lives being the culmination of a completed cycle 

* This essay is part of a collective research project funded by the Xunta de Galicia (S pain) for 
lhe ycars 1998-2000 (grant code: XUGA 10404A98). 



12 José María Rodríguez García 

of fall and redemption.' Thus, both Columbus and the New England Puritans thought 
they were living in the penultimate moment of human history- the time immediately 
preceding the revelation of God's grand design and the Second Coming of the Messiah. 
On the other hand. however, the same Renaissance theorists also insisted that all 
contemporary events amounted to simply one more episode in the progressive history of 
redemption of ali humankind, a history that was to have further moments of redemption 
and declension in future generations. As these cataclysmic changes took place, the 
prerogative of imperium or dominion was transferred, according to the open-ended logic 
of translatio imperii, from one people to another: in each historical period God chose 
one people over another as his main agent to reunite the world under the rule of Christ. 

Although Bradford makes as many references to God's acts of Providence as a 
Robinson Crusoe, he does not indulge in frightful anticipations of the Apocalypse 
(representations of the end of the world and Judgment Day), as the third-generation 
Puritans will do toward the end of the seventeenth century. Bradford professed the 
ideology of Separatist Congregationalism, in which the individual Christian sought a 
direct contact with God, uncontaminated by política! institutions. This persuasion 
notwithstanding. he knew from the beginning that severa] churches were to rival with 
Separatist Plymouth. The rival forms of organized worship included the Church of 
England (indicted in the opening two chapters and mentioned in the Mayflower 
Cornpact) and Thomas Morton's bacchanalian revels (described in detail in the 
Merrymount chapter).2 The Pilgrims' penchant for states of extreme spiritual alert was 
reinforced by their living in close proximity to the Native Indians and by the 
establishment of the first Nonseparalist Puritan colony in Massachusetts in 1630, the 
same year in which Bradford set out to write his chronicle. 

Like most seve nteenth-cenl ur y Chrislians, regardless of their churches , 
Bradford seems aware of the insignificant role allotted to him in the unfolding of 
God 's preordained plan for the entire history of the world from the moment of 
creation to the Apocalypse. At the same time , however, he knows he exists in the 
microhistory of the Puritan nation, which is specifically informed by a smaller pattem 
of periodic changes of fortune, of loss and recovery or great peri! and triumph. As 
noted by Walter P. Wenska, the Pilgrims, «simply by being part of history, were part of 
the first pattern, and their experience until their arrival in New England was part of the 
second» ( 158). They were living in the autumn of world, at thc end of history, and 
believed that the advent of the messianic rule over the world (the acknowledged 
clímax of the Millennium), although not immediately close at hand, was bound to 
occur sometime in the near future. The Puritans' slow but steady march toward the 
Millennium in tum authorized their clairn to moral superiority over Israel, and to the 
New World's superiority over the bíblica] Canaan: «they declared the New World 
another promised land, counterpart of Canaan of old but greater, because closer to the 

l. Scc Pagdcn 51-54; Liss 263-90; Zagorin 163-71; Bercovitch, «Puritan New England 
Rhctoric» 64-69; Rifes of Asse11t 14041. 

2. On Bradford's and Morlon's verbal indictmenls of each other, see Cartelli. Morton's views 
on the Spartan discipline dccreed at Plymouth appear in his New E11glish Ca11aan ( 1637). 



Exiles und Arrivuls in Christopher Columbus and William Bmdford 13 

millennium, and they documented their claim with scriptural prophecies as befit a 
chosen people» (Bercovitch, Rites of Assent 77). 

The use of a dual time scheme in the interpretation of history helps explain the 
alternate feelings of optimism and despair that inform much of early Puritan literature. 
The emphasis on wordly success as a sign of divine favor also explains why neither 
the average Spanish explorer nor the average Puritan felt that by pursuing his own 
interest he was betraying the teachings of his religion. While it is true that the 
capitulación or charter privileges issued to Columbus did not entrnst him with any 
evangelical mission, and that it was the Admira! who first invoked one such purpose in 
his widely circulated «Letter of 1492» (also known as «Prologue to the Sovereigns» ), 
the invocation had the effect of endowing ali future enterprises with the appearance of 
a mercantile crusade. Columbus, for one, wanted to claim the Indies back from the 
hands of the pagans, assuming that the trading expeditions to the Orient were only a 
first step toward evangelizing Asia. As Margarita Zamora has put it, with Columbus it 
became customary to replace the earlier, medieval purposes of «comprar, trocar, 
hallw; haber (buy, barter, locate, possess)» with the modern ones of «ganar, 
descubrir, regir (acquire, discover, govern)» (Reading Columbus 27-28).3 This plan 
was inspired by the process of Christian Reconquest of Spain just completed with the 
fall of Granada in 1492. If the conquest of America soon became a displacement anda 
continuation of the medieval Reconquest, the Native Indians became willy-nilly the 
successors, in the Castilian imaginary, of the bellicose Moors of Muslim Spain.4 

Together with the overtly commercial interests supported by the Castilian and 
English monarchs, one must also look at the political and spiritual reasons for the 
colonization of American territories that Columbus and Bradford adduce in their 
writings. It is interesting to note that, despite the century-and-a-half that separates 
Columbus 's first voyage from Bradford's Mayflower expedition, the two authors 
invoke the same two fo1ms of religious zeal as the immediate causes prompting their 
crossing of the ocean. The first cause is the desire lo conve11- to appeal to the minds 
and hearts of the unbelievers (the peoples of the Far East in the case of Columbus, and 
the Native Indians and Virginia and New England Anglicans in the case of the 
Puritans). The process of conversion was to be carried out by preaching and the force 
of example, eventually to bring unbelievers into the community of belief. The second 
cause was the more simple-minded desire to ensure by military and political means 
the safety and independence of one's own religious community (Christendom at large 
in the case of Columbus), and, better still, its predominance over others. Bradford, 
however, did not profess the same view of the nation put fo11h by the leaders of the 
Church of England. Because Bradford and the Separatists publicly refused allegiance 
to any institutional authorily, including the Middle-Way Congregationalists (e.g., John 

3. On Columbus's use of the «descubri r y ganar» topos. sec Kadir 69-72. For its ironic 
occurrcnce. as «conquistados y perdidos,» in Berna! Díaz de l Cas tillo, who finished writing his 
eycwitncss account of thc Spanish cm,qucst of Ncw Sp'Jin s1)me seventy-fivc years aftcr Columbus's 
firsl voyage. see Rodríguez García 490-9 l. 

4. Th.is is now a lucw dassicus in Hispanic historiography. For a gooil <;ummary of thc main 
thesis, <;ee Pcrez 58-62. 



14 J osé María Rodríguez García 

Winthrop) and the Presbyterians (the representative ecclesiastical government put in 
praclice by the Church of Scotland), they did not envision the immediate appearance 
of a nation that mediated between their small scattered, self-goveming congregations 
and the New England Canaan. Instead , they «hoped to join the progress of tbe 
' universal invisible church' in small congregations, modelled after the first Christian 
communities» (Bercovitch, Rites of Assent 73 ). The Separatists for the most part 
accepted the as-yet unredeemed nature of humankind, and so did not explicitly 
address the imminence of the Apocalypse, as later Puritans would do . 

Columbu s had a slightly different view of human his tory. He thought that 
America, given its exuberan! landscapes and riches, was the original Garden of Eden, 
which he even dared to locate somewhere up the Orinoco River (Zamora, Reading 
Cofumbus 137-5 1). This important difference goes a long way toward explaining why 
Columbu s and Bradford have very rarely be en brought together, in th e s ame 
discussion on the millennial rhetoric of colonialism, by either historians or literary 
scholars. To be sure , Bradford (unlike the Nonseparatists J ohn Winthrop and John 
Eliot) was more interested in having his community repeat the errand of the Old 
Testament prophets than he was in paving the way for the doctrinal arrival at the 
Terrestrial Paradise, the New England Canaan. In fact, for the older, more introverted 
Bradford, if he could lay his eyes on a new Canaan at ali, this was to be found in a 
text. In a short piece often referred to as the «Jewish Preface» to his «Hebrew 
Exercises,» which itself can be read as a belated poslcript to Of Plymouth Plantation , 
the Governor explains that while Moses discovered Canaan, he, Bradford, is content 
with discovering the original meanings contained in the Hebrew Scripture: 

Though 1 arn grown aged, yet I have had a longing 
desire, to see with my owne eyes, som[e]thing of that most 

ancient language, and holy tangue, in which the Law, 
and oracles of God were write ; and in which God, 

and angels, spake to the holy patriarks of old 
time; and what names were given to things 

from the creation. And though 1 cannot 
attaine to much herein, yet I am refresh-
ed, to have seen sorne glimpse hereof ; 

(as Moyses saw the land of Ca-
naan a farr off) My aime and 

desire is, to see how the words 
and phrases lye in the 

holy texte; and to 
disceme somewhat 

of the same, 
formy owne 

contente.s 

S. The text was first published, in a facsímile reproducti on preceded by a critica! introduction, 
by lsidore S. Meyer in 1949. ft is transcribed in a s li ghtly modemi zcd re ndering by Frankli n on p. 178 
of hi s st udy, from where I have taken it. 



Exi/es and Arrivals in Christnpher Columhus and William Bradford 15 

Bradford and Columbus seem equally fond of interpreting events in light of 
scriptural doctrine, setting those events either in contrast or in parallel to similar 
episodes narrated in the Bible. Contrary to Bradford, Columbus also identifies his own 
travels of exploration with the physical discovery of the ancient Canaan , the 
Terrestrial Paradise promised by God to David. Here I wish to argue that the 
frequency with which both authors resort to the tropes of exodus and errancy, their 
emphasis on what it means to be always on the move (both spiritually and socially), is 
what brings them together at the same time as it sets them apart from other figures like 
John Winthrop and Hernán Cortés. The only modern historian who has briefly 
touched on Columbus apropos of Bradford, Wayne Franklin, has noted other points of 
contact, although by no means does he attempt a thorough comparison. First, the two 
governors ended their careers reverting to a state approaching self-defensive 
solipsism, unable to cope with the competitors that launched altemative projecls of 
exploration and settlement (Winthrop eclipsed Bradford; Vespucci rivaled with 
Columbus), and, in Colurnbus's case, with legends of «unknown pilots» who landed 
on America's mainland before the Admiral.6 And second, as cosmographers and 
theologians, both looked for a «paradise of the mind,» Columbus imagining it in the 
recondite source of the Orinoco while Bradford displaced it into his study of the 
Hebrew Ianguage, to which he devoted his last scholarly efforts (Franklin 177-78, 
182-83 ). Sin ce Columbus was not granted the opportunity to search for the 
Venezuelan Canaan, which he identified with the lost Garden of Eden, he turned to the 
composition of the Book of Prophecies (Libro de las profecías (1501-1502]). This 
work, like Bradford's Hebrew studies, providcd its author with sorne consolation for 
the failure of his plan for the establishment of an uninterrupted lineage of saints in the 
New World.7 As reco rds of a religious patriarch struggling to overcome his feelings of 
loss and nostalgia, Bradford's comments on the Hebrew Bible and Columbus 's 
annotation of select prophecies take their authors out of historical contingency and 
into the realm of the imagination. They both enact a nominalist retnrn to the language 
of revelation, in which ideals cannot be tainted or thwarted, and in which words are 
spiritual events in their own right. 

By contrast with Columbus, whose expedition was sponsored directly by the 
all-powerful crown of Castile-Aragon, Bradford did not have the full support of the 
same state power that granted him a charter in the first place . Yet the Plymouth 
Governor, a largely self-taught man and a religious ideologue like Columbus, had also 
a medieval imagination that made him look for analogies between bíblica! and 

6. On the early efforts to dispossess Columbus, even in his own lifetíme, of the honorific title 
of «discoverer,» see Fcmández-Armesto 185-87. 

7. The Libro de las profecías, which was compíled under Columbus' s direc tion, is best 
described as a not ebook of Bible studies, a repository of source materials that the Admira! 
occasionally u sed to argue for the immincnt fulfillmcnt of other prophecíes foretold in the Bible and in 
thc works of s uch ancient authorities as Sencca and Augustine. The complete tcx.t of the Libro was first 
published in the rare 1892-94 ltalian anniversary editio n of Columbus 's p apers (Raccolta di 
documenti), was translated into Spanish in 1984, and translated into English for thc first time only in 
1991, in anticípation of thc Columbian quincentennial. 



16 Jo"é María Rodríguez García 

contemporary episodes, read prophecy as history, and present personal convictions as 
revealed truths. An important bíblica! episode that caught Bradford 's imagination was 
the narration, in the Old Testament , of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and 
their crossing of a wilderness of waters (the Red Sea) in search of the Te rrestrial 
Paradise.R A crucial point to make here is that Bradford was from the oucset more 
concerned wilh lhe possibilily that the Separatists escape the bondage of body and 
conscience represented by European Catholicism and Lutheranism than he was with 
a rriving al the Promised Land, for which his Puri ta ns were not yet prepared . 
Accordingly, he uglifies America to avoid the temptation to see in it signs of Paradi se. 
He also famously compares himself to a new Moses who, af!er leading bis pilgrim 
saints through a «Sea of troubles» and a «desolate wilderness» cannot «go up to the 
top of Pisgah to view a more goodly country to feed [his people's] hopes» (69). From 
its first occu1Tence in the book of the same title and in Deuteronomy, «Exodus» m e ans 
the emancipation of God's chosen people from their bondage to an illegitimate ruler 
(the Pharaoh) by means of a depm·ture from the land of the oppressor. Beginning in 
the early seventeenth centu ry it also came to signify, according to the Oxford English 
Dictionary. any removal and relocation of a grou p of people because of religious, 
political, and even economic reasons. 

Columbus, who carne from a family of converso weavers and merchants and 
fanc ied himself, like Bradford, an interpreter of prophecies, also mentions Moses by 
name in the joumal entry for 23 September 1492: 

Como la mar estuviese mansa y llana, murmurava la gente diziendo que, pues 
por al lí no avía mar grande, que nunca ventaría para volver a España. Pero 
después ali:;óse mucho la mar y sin viento. que los asombrava, por lo cual dize 
aquí e l Almirante: «Así que muy ne i:;essario me fue la mar alta, que no parei:;ió 
salvo el tiempo de los judíos cuando salie ron de Egipto contra Moisén, que los 
sacava del captiverio.» (Varela ed., 23-24) 

The sea was a flat calm, and the crew were complaining, saying that as the sea 
was never roug h here there would never be a wind to take us home to Spain, but 
then they were as tonished w he n a heavy sea rose with no wi nd , and the 
Admira! wrote accordingly: «So this heavy sea came very opportunely for me; 
it was just like the Jews, on their way out of Egypt, arguing with Moses as he 
led them out of captivity.» (Cummins ed .. 89; trans. amcnded) 

8. Gay ohscrvcs in a footnotc that the popularity of thc «desola te wilde mess» mctaphor did 
not dec line aftcr Bradford. On the contrary, for late r autho rs likc Collo n Mather (who uses the word 
«Wildcrnc~s» 94 times in thc MaRnalia Christi Ameri«tma [ 1702)), it hecamc «an alt-purpose, and 
he r.ce a lm ost meaninglc <; s. mctaphor. embrncing the Am erican ~nv .ronrn<>r~'" th; tcmptation of Jes us. 
Luthcr·~ ~uffering in his cxilc, King Davi d's v,.inJcr in g. nnd, <lhO\ ~ all, the ch lldren of Israel fleeing 
Egypt» (29 n5). 



Exiles and Arrivals in Christopher Columbus and William Bradford 17 

Consuelo Vareta adds the following note to this passage: «¿Se identifica aquí 
Colón con Moisés? No hay que olvidar que emprende el viaje el mismo día de la 
exp ulsión de los judíos, y que parece ser que en el rol de esta primera navegación 
aparece gran cantidad de hebreos» (24 n22). Another episode from Scripture that also 
fascinated Columbus was the Lord's promise to King David of bringing the en-ancy of 
the Jewish nation to a conclusion by letting the Israelite king conquer the last of the 
four corners of the earth and build there a temple. 1 would like to propose that 
Columbus literalizes the relationship between the Lord and David in his own 
relationship with the Catholic Monarchs, whom he addresses performatively, in the 
«Letter of 1492», demanding that they grant him, as promised in the «Capitulaciones 
de Santa Fe (17 April 1492)» and the «Carta de Merced (30 April 1492)», a title of 
nobility in keeping with his lofty mission. While the royal docurnents insisted on 
Columbus's status as a subject anda vassal, he insists on the separate unfolding of bis 
succession as bis family becornes more powerful with each new discovery:9 

Vuestras Altezas ... me hizieron grandes mercedes y me anoblei;ieron, que 
dende en adelante yo me llamase Don y fuesse Almirante Mayor de la mar 
Occéana y Visorey e Governador perpetuo de todas las islas y tien-a firme que 
yo descubriese y ganasse, y de aquí en adelante se descubriesen y ganasen en la 
mar Occéano, y así sucediese mi hijo mayor, y él así de grado en grado para 
siempre jamás. (Varela ed., 16)10. 

Your Majesties ... granted me great concessions and ennobled me, allowing me 
to cal! myself Don from then onwards, with the title of Grand Admira! of the 
Ocean Sea, and Viceroy and Governor in perpetuity of all the islands and 
mainland that I might discovcr and win, or which rnay be henceforth 
discovered and won in the Ocean Sea, and you ordained moreover that my 
eldest should succeed me in this, and so on through future generations forever. 
(Cummins ed .. 82) 

This passage summarizes the terms of the commission that he was granted 
through the «Capitulaciones» and the «Carta de Merced», which were generous in 
bestowing on CoJumbus unheard-of privilegcs (including the new title of viceroy ) 
simply because no one at the time could suspect the magnitude of the lands he was to 

9. Although the history of thc composition and carly circulation of the «Letter of 1492» is far 
from clear, Zamora believes it was written aftcr Columbus's rcturn from his lirst voyage to America, 
whcn he became fully conscious of the way in which he coulcl rhetorically transform what was 
ini tially only a trading expedition into a large-scale enterprise of conques! govemed by a providenti al 
clesign. This cover letter probably was enclosed with Culumbus's revised version of the ship-log that 
he scnt to the Catholic Monarchs, presenting it as a day -by-day record of the navigation («El prólogo 
al Diario» 16; Reading Columbus 23-24, 27). 

1 O. In chapter 8 of his Crónica de Jos Reyes Católicos, Alonso de Santa Cruz summarizes the 
privilcgcs granted Columhus in words that restate what Columbus wrote in thc «Letter of 1492» 
almost verbatim (chapter reproduced in Perez 102-05). 



18 José María Rodríguez García 

conquer. No sooner did he return than the monarchs realized they had made Columbus 
legally the most powerful feudal seigneur of Castile, with ful! legitimate powers to 
dispense thc highest form of justice in his vast dominions (Kadir 66-71 ). He now held 
simultaneously the offices of admira], viceroy, and governor. According to Felipe 
Fernández-Armesto, this unforeseen development rnade tbe Catbolic Monarchs 
«apprehensive and alert to tbe need to curtail [Columbus's] powers» , since such 
powers wcre now large enough to threaten «the triumph of a centralizing monarchy.» 
Commenting on Columbus's thirst for titlcs of nobility, Fernández-Armesto has also 
argued that while Columbus was at times able to temper bis higb pecuniary demands, 
he could never attenuatc bis genealogical obsession, wbich goes from considering 
himself thc new prophet of the Messiah's Second Coming to claiming for bis lineage 
thc hereditary title of viceroy (69-72). 11 

Columbus anticipatcs the belief of the Puritans that God will show his grace to 
bis people in this world by allowing them to pursue and achieve terrestrial goals in 
America, goals tbat in turnare rcalized ad majorem Gloriam De;. 12 After lhe success 
of the first and second joumeys, Columbus recast his earlier role of conqueror in to the 
new role of messenger. Thus . in the «Letter to Prince Juan's Nurse. Doña Juana de la 
Torre» («Carta a Doña Juana de Ja Torre, ama del Príncipe Don Juan» [1499)), he 
explains how he came lo serve the Catholic Monarchs for exclusively religious 
reasons. In this and other autobiographical texts . Columbus silences his earlier 
pilgrimage, in the late 1480s. through other European courts (notably those of 
P011ugal's Joao JI and England's Henry VII) in search of a sponsor.IJ He also neglects 
to mention the legal bond of vassalage that from lhe beginning subjected him to the 
will of Isabel and Fernando. with rights and obligations on both parts. lnstead. 
Columbus chooses to fashion himself asan appointee of God: «Yo vine con amor tan 
entrañable a servir a estos Príncipes, y e servido de servicio de que jamás se oyó ni 
vido. Del nuevo cielo y tierra que dezía nuestro Señor por Sant Juan en el Apocalipsi, 
después de dicho por boca de Isaías, me hizo mensajero y amostró aquella parte» [ «l 
carne to serve their Majeslies like no one was seen or heard to serve them before, 
driven by my tender love for them. God made me the messenger of tbe new heaven 
and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John after having spoken 

1 1. Columhus saw his dynastic ambitions fullilled when king Fernando restored Diego Colón 
in thc office of Governor of Hispaniola and had him married to thc gra nddaughtcr of the heredita ry 
Admira! of Castile. On the matter of pccuniary rcwards, howevcr. the king made no concessions to 
him that could supplement the already ~ubstantial remittances in gold thal reached him intermittently 
from Hispaniola (Fcrnández-Armesto 178-79 ). 

12. 1 n one suc h cosmology. both the monarch and thc individ ual Christian appear as passive 
subjccls of a transcendental plan. It is God who chooscs who will light and defeat His enemies and so 
entcr the Pro miscd Land. This line of interpretation corresponds to what Nader has called the 
prov iclcntialist «letrado theory of history» (besl reprcscnted by Andrés de Bernáldez) by opposition to 
the secular. more Machiavellian , «caballero theory of history» (bcst represcn ted by Diego de Valcra). 
Nader situatcs thc apcx of thc confront ation betwccn rcpresentat ives of thc two theori es in Caslile in 
the 1480s (27-30). 

13. On Columbus's qucsI for patronage. before and after he removed to Castilc in 1488, sce 
Fcrnández-Armcslo 45-65. 



Exi/es and Arrivals in Christopher Co/umbu.s and Wil/iam Bradford 19 

of it through the mouth of Isaiah, and he showed me where to find it»] (Varela ed. , 
263-64; my translation). 14 By means of the word «mensaj ero» Columbus alludes here 
to the games with Greek and Roman etymology to which different spellings of his 
name lent themselves. To give an example, one of his preferred signatures, the Greco-
Roman «Christo Ferens», can be rnade to mean the «transporter or bearer [ferens ] of 
Christ» or even, in a metaphorical extension, «one who bears testimony to Christ's 
(the Messiah's) Second Coming». 1s 

The references to John and Isaiah evince Columbus's interest in the prophetic 
aperture of Christian history. Yet he also had an interest in institutional closure. in 
moments that announce an end to the joint processes of errancy and revolution, 
ushering in instead a period of stability in which the original prophet and his 
successors achieve institutional consecration. In the Libro de las profecías, in which 
Columbus meant to gather all scriptural prophecies of the Terrestrial Paradise that he 
thought might prefigure bis own arrival in the New World, he included the passage 
from Chronicles 1.1 7 in which Nathan reveals to David God's designs for him: 

fui tecum quocumque perrexisti; et interfeci omnes inimicos tuos coram te , 
fecique tibi nomen quasi unius magnorum, qui celebrantur in terra. Et dedi 
locum populo meo Israel; plantatibur, et habitabit in eo, et ultra non 
co[m]movebitur .... A[n]nuntio ergo tibi, quod edificaturus sit tibi Dominus 
dornum. Cumque impleveris dies tuos , ut vadas ad patres tuos, suscitabo semen 
tuum pot fe, quod erit de filiis tuis; et stabiliam regnum eius. (West and Kling 
eds., 218. 220) 

I have been with thee withersoever thou hast gone: and have slain all thy 
enemies before thee, and have made thee a name like that of one of the great 
ones that are renowned in the earth. And I have given a place to my people 
Israel. They shall be planted, and shall dwell therein, and shall be moved no 
more .... And I declare to thee, that the Lord will build thee a house. And when 
thou shalt have ended thy days to go to thy fathers, I will raise up thy seed after 
thee. which shall be of thy sons: and I will establish his kingdom. (West and 
Kling eds., 219, 221) 

14. Isabel of Castilc was hcrsclf, likc lhc Admira!, an avid reader of St. John 's apocalypti c 
cosmography and of Sir John Mandcvillc's Book of rhe Man·els of rlze World und \i1yage tlirough 
Jerusalem. Asill. and Africa, an intcrcst awakcncd in her by thc travels of her adventurous great-un cle 
Don Pedro and by two of Columbus's backers, th e Observatine Franc iscans Fray Antonio de 
Marchena (her astrologer) and Fray Juan Pérez (one of her confessors). There were also severa! 
humani st scho lars at her Court, like Andrés de Bcmáldcz (later to becom e an importan! chronicler), 
wh o in te rpreted rnany momenlous cpisodes during her rule as part of her divine mission to assume the 
role of the new Virgin M ary, the mother of the redeemcr or Messiah who was going to restore the 
kingdom of God on earth after the conques! of Granada and of the Holy Scpulchre. See West and 
Kling cds., 56-58; Liss 284-88, 152-61, 254-58. 

15. Sce Kadir 1-2, 32-33, 153-54. 



20 José María Rodríguez García 

Thinking no doubt of his own relationship with his earthly lords, the Catholic 
Monarchs, Columbus yokes together, in the authoritative exercise of appl ying 
Scripture to his experiences in America, David's mission to establish a new lineage of 
prophet-kings (a «house», as he calls it) in Israel and his own mission to found a 
Columbian dynasty in America. Both are symbolically given perpetuity through the 
rehearsal of a succession of generations as a material sign of God's promise of 
redemption to bis people. In summary: both Columbus and the Puritans repeatedly 
intersperse situations of immediate danger with references to events that hark back to 
a preexisting sacred text and therefore illustrate their assurance of being the 
protagonists of a divinely ordained scheme. 

In the «Letter of 1492» Columbus effectively links h is own departure westward 
with the departure of the Jews and Muslims of Spain: 

[E]ste presente año de 1492, después de Vuestras Altezas aver dado fin a la 
guerra de los moros, que reinavan en Europa, y aver acabado la guerra en la 
muy grande ciudad de Granada, adonde este presente año, a dos días del mes de 
Enero, por fuer\a de armas vide poner las vanderas reales de Vuestras Altezas 
en las torres de la Alfambra, que es la fortaleza de Ja dicha ciudad, y vide salir 
al rey moro a las puertas de la ciudad, y besar las reales manos de Vuestras 
Altezas y del Príncipe mi señor, y luego en aquel presente mes, por la 
informa\ión que yo avía dado a Vuestras Altezas de las tierras de India y de un 
Príncipe que es llamado Gran Can (que quiere dezir en nuestro roman\e Rey de 
los Reyes) , como muchas vezes él y sus ante\essores avían enbiado a Roma a 
pedir doctores en nuestra sancta fe porque le enseñasen en ella, y que nunca el 
Sancto Padre le avía proveído y se perdían tantos pueblos , cayendo en 
idolatrías e resr;ibiendo en sí sectas de perdir;ión; y Vuestras Altezas, como 
cathólicos cristianos y prín\ipes amadores de la sancta fe cristiana y 
acrei;entadores d' ella y enemigos de la secta de Mahoma y de todas idolatrías y 
heregías, pensaron de enbiarme a mí, Cristóval Colón, a las dichas pm1idas de 
Indias para ver los dichos prínr;ipes y los pueblos y las tierras y la disposir;ión 
d 'ellas a nuestra sancta fe .... ; así que, después de aver echado fuera todos los 
judíos de todos vuestros reinos y señoríos, en el mismo mes de Enero, 
mandaron Vuestras Altezas a mí que con armada suffir;iente me fuese a las 
dichas partidas de India .... (Varela ed., 15-16) 

In this year of 1492 Your Majesties brought to an end the war against the 
remaining Moorish kingdom on European soil, terminating the campaign in the 
great city of Granada, where on 2 January this year I witnessed Your Majesties' 
royal standards raised by force of arms on the Alhambra, the fortress of that 
city, and the Moorish king emerge from the gates to kiss Your Majesties' hands 
and those of My Lord the Prince. 
In that same month, on the information which I had given Your Majesties about 
the lands of India and a ruler known as the Great Khan (which means in 
Spanish «King of Kings» ), of whom I told you that he, like bis predecessors, 
had many times appealed to Rome for men learned in our Holy Faith to instruct 



Exiles and Arrivals in Christopher Columbus and Wi/liam Bradford 21 

him, an appeal to which the Holy Father had not responded, and about the 
many peoples who were being lost through belief in idolatries and the 
acceptanc e of religions of damnation, Your Majesties, being Catholic 
Christians and rulers devoted to the Holy Christian Faith and dedicated to its 
expansion and to combating the religion of Mahomet and ali idolatries and 
heresies, decided to send me, Christopher Columbus, to those lands of India to 
rneet their rulers and to see the towns and lands and their dislribution, and all 
other things, and to find out in what manner they might be converted to our 
Holy Faith .... 
After expelling all the Jews from your kingdoms and territories, in the same 
month of January Your Majesties commanded me to sail to those regions of 
India with a suitable fleet.... (Cummins ed., 81-82) 

In the passage just quoted, Columbus variously represents his enterprise of 
conquest as an exodus (the Jews abandon Spain), a crusade (the Christians advance into 
Granada), and an evangelical mission (the Great Khan and his people wish to be 
christened). Peggy K. Liss has intelligently noted that here Columbus inverts the actual 
order of events: by making it look that the Jews' leaving preceded his royal comrnission 
(which it did not), he inserts himself in the proper sequence of prophetic conditions 
announcing the coming of the Last Days, intermingling his personal destiny with that of 
the monarchs and of the nation (286). Along with the Sephardic exodus and the voyage 
of Columbus, the main event lhat caused a major readjustment of power relations in 
Spain in 1492 was the surrender of Granada, the last Muslim hold over Iberia, to the 
siege of the Catholic Monarchs. Muslims who declined conversion were also forced , 
Iike the Jews of Sepharad, to go into exile. The synchronicity of all three movements of 
population has been aptly commented upon by maritime historian D.W. Meinig, for 
whom the events of 1492 were the end-result of a process long in the making. According 
to Meinig, just as the conquest of Granada simply culminated the Castilian warriors' 
reclaiming of the richest lowlands of Andalusia, pushing the Muslims progressively to 
the West, so too was Columbus's first transoceanic voyage 

the culmination of a long prelude of lberian Atlantic reconnaissance and island 
conquests. Yet this superficial coincidence can be given significant meaning, 
for it was in thanksgiving for the fall of Granada that Is abel equipped 
Columbus's expedition, and it is quite appropriate to see the reconquista in 
Europe and the range of the conquistadores over the Americas as successive 
phases in the same broad movement : the powerful outward expansion of 
Western Christian society. Viewed at such a scale these events of 1492 do mark 
an ending in the Old World, a beginning in the New, anda convenient symbolic 
concatenation in the larger structure of history. ( 4) 

A well-known phenomenon of early modem Europe was the migration of 
minority groups from one country to another because of religious persecution. Both 



22 José María Rodríguez García 

Colu mbus and Bradford repeatedly recall situations and events that ill ustrate the 
physical and emotional afflictions ioherent in this plight. Col umbus neatly and 
cunningly represents the banishment of the Jews and Muslims as the fulfillment of a 
propbecy- the ins tauration of the monarchia hispanica. Instead of lamenting the 
demise o f the situation known a~ convivencia, Columbus mentions approvingly the 
near-sim ultaneous surrender of the «Moorish king» and the «expelling [of] a li the 
Jews». 

In Of Plymouth Pfantation Bradford also devotes severa) long passages to the 
topic of banishment and rnigration, listing the principal motives advising the Pilgrims 
to choose what he calls «self-rernoval» and «exile» from England to Holland and on to 
America. These motives include the impending threat of imprisonment in England; 
the appearance there of the «plague,» which itself takes on a biblical resonance 
through its intertextual allusion to the «seven plagues of Egypt;» and the series of 
schisms taking place within Protestantism , which he compares to the «prophets crying 
out the high places in Israel» (5-7). Furthermore, in Holland the Pilg1ims were forced 
by necessity to seek employment with other Egyptian- like oppressors-the Catholic 
and Lutheran artisans and merchants-thus «admitting of bondage with danger of 
conscience» (23-24). 16 

Book I of Bradford's work is full of references to the positive and negative 
aspects of migration. For example, in chapter 4 we read: 

After they had lived in this city [of Amsterdam ] about sorne e leven or twelve 
years (which is the more observable being the whole time of that famous truce 
betwccn the state and the Spaniards) and sundry of them were taken away by 
death and many others hegan to he well stricken in years ... those prudent 
governors with sundry of the sagest members began both deeply to apprehend 
their present dangers and wisely to foresee the future and think of timely 
remedy. In the agitation of their thoughts, and much discourse of things 
hereabout. at length they began to incline to this conclusion: of rcmoval to 
sorne other place. (23) 

This series of removals from one place to another, enacted in the form of an 
exodus from the 1and of the Plwraonic oppressor (the Stuart king) to the Sod om-like 
lihertine ci ty (Amsterdam) and on to the Ncw World causes the dispersion of the 
Separatist Church, a veri table d iaspora which opens up a new horizon of trials and 
opportunities for the dissenters. This modern diaspora was to entaiL first of al!, thc 
spread of the true faith and its testing in what Bradford called, deliberately and 
hyperbolically, a «desolate wilderness.» As is well known , although the Mayflmrer 

16. On Brad ford 's cxaggcration of thc dissulu1cness of Amstcrdam and Leyden, dcsigned to 
hidc the Scparatists' fear of assirnitation in thc «lovcly hospitahle citics» of the Dutch provinces. sce 
Gay 27-29. 



Exiles and Arri1•als in Cliristopher Columbus mu/ William Bradford 23 

Pilgrims were quick to realize the vast natural resources of Massachusetts (as made 
clear in the collective work known as Mourt' s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth. written between che years 1620 and 1621), Bradford, as civil and religious 
leader, shows a rnarked tendency to uglify the New World by making it resemble the 
deserts, the wildernesses, and other hellish places found in the Bible.11 

The main drawback to the enactment of a diaspora is the dilution, 
hybridization, and ultimate weakening of the original culture and foith as the rnembers 
of the group move forther away from the center wbere their identity originated. By the 
time Bradford set out to write his history, the Mayflmver colonists were no longer 
destitute immigrants in a strangc land. They were now living in the vicinity of John 
Winthrop's Middlc-Way Congregationalists, whose colony and church provided the 
nucleus of the genteel and commercial Boston in thc later seventeenth century. 
Bradford was quick to apprehend that the economic prosperity of his neighbors (a 
prosperity announced in Old Testament tex.ts, from Moses to Jeremiah) was to bring 
about the diaspora of the Pilgrims in the New World. As both Separatists and 
Nonscparatists found additional signs of their elect s tatus in the thriving prosperity of 
some oftheir fcllow Puritans, they also felt the temptation to go wcstward, in search of 
more land to explore and claim for themselves. This situation replicates Columbus's 
inveterate tendency to go always plus ultra - he wishes to «descubrir y ganar nuevas 
tierras» as he puts it in the Journal <1( the First Vciyage - inste ad of staying in the places 
over which he has airead y claimed jurisdiction. 

Bradford's role in the early stages of New England history is twofold: as a 
historical agent. he participated directly in the creation of the first «Community of 
saints» in America: and as a historical writer. he narrated retrospectively the 
vicissitudes of the foundatiou of the first Puritan colony in America (in Book l of Of 
Plymouth Pla11tatio11). and chronicled its ecl ipse against the background of 
Massac.:husetts Bay's rise (in Book Il). At the moment of writing Book l. in 1630, 
Brac.lford was aware that the Plymouth settlers now looked at the Massachusetts Bay 
Colony as the place where the promise made to Abraham and Moses of a new Canaan 
could be achievcd. Here the two altemate ai1iculations of history and progress studied 
by Bercovitch carne into play. Plymouth. on the one hand. with its shortage of lands 
and its policy of voluntary isolation, represented a single episode in the history of 
suc.:cessive tlourishings and dccays (or redemptions and declensions). Massachuselts 
Bay. on the other. represented to the world the foundation of a godly c ity on earth. 
Almost from the beginn ing. Plymouth was overshadowed by Massac.:husetts Bay, into 
wh ich it was merged in 1691, when the Ncw Charter for the colony was approved. 

By contrast with Bradford 's Separatist ploughmen. Winthrop's Puritan 
tradcsmen did not rejoice in thcir isolation from England nor did they welcome the 
additional hardships and trials involved in settling down in America. lnstead. thcy 
willing ly took the lcss traumatic path of progressively reforming their doctrines to 
makc them fit their immediatc need to ac hi evc cconomic success and emotional 

17. For two illuminating comparisons or thc two documents. sec Hovey 5 1-56; Jehkn ~4-89. 



24 José María Rodríguez García 

relaxation. This success would be later equated, during the years of the Antinomian 
controversy, with assurance of eternal salvation. But Bradford was not prepared to 
make such concessions, not even in 1644, when he sat down to write chapter 34 of 
Book Il, in which he strikes an elegiac note in the representation of Plymouth's decay: 

And thus was this poor church left, like an ancient mother grown old and 
forsaken of her children, though not in their affections yet in regard of their 
bodily presence and personal helpfulness; her ancient members being most of 
them wom away by death, and these of later time being like children trans lated 
into other families, and she like a widow left only to trust in God. Thus, she that 
had made many rich became herself poor. (334)t x. 

Columbus uses the imagery of the Israelite exodus and the centrifuga! 
movement of populations to legitimate his own process of upward social mobility. 
Bradford actualizes a similar diasporic movement in his representation of Plymouth as 
an old mother who has been abandoned physically and economically by her ambitious 
younger children. Neither Columbus nor Bradford realizes the dream of genealogical 
continuity in which the parents transmit their authority and their spiritual and material 
patrimony to their c hildren. In the years when he wrote each and every one of the 
episodes involving an exodus-like movement, Bradford knew that the Separatist 
experiment at Plymouth was bound to fail. lt probably did not surprise him that a large 
number of second-generation colonists already chose to place themselves under the 
tutelage of a Nonseparatist Puritan colony (Massachusetts Bay), a decision that was to 
grant them new opportunities for social and economic betterment. 19 

What a joint reading of Columbus and Bradford teaches us is that the language of 
religious emancipation is inextricably bound up with the language of economic 
promotion. Both discourses insist on the self-differentiation of the individual Christian, 
firsl from the alíen culture constructed asan other, and later from one's own community. 
Columbus's arnbitions to become Grand Admira! of the Ocean Sea and have that title 
inherited by his descendant'> are parallel to the desire of the first-generation Plymouth 
colonists to have their children follow in their doctrinal footsteps , to define their identity 
not as colonists of a fertile land but as custodians of a legacy of persecution and 
suffering. Columbus's and Bradford's respective emphases on the exilie and nomadic 
condition of their pursuits result as much from the authority of the biblical intertext of 
Exodus as they do from the realization that the as-yet unclaimed American territoties in 
which they landed opened up a whole new horizon of possibilities for the economic and 
social a:melioration of their families and their churches. 

18. For a detailed rcading of thi s passage that emphasizes Bradford's sensc of personal loss 
and bctrayal, see Franklin 168-69. 

19. Jn a well-argued cssay on the various strands of Puritan utopianism, Peñalba García 
provides an apt summary of thc diluúon of Plymouth's ideals into those of Massachusetts Bay (130-35). 



Exiles andArrivals in Christopher Columbus and William Bradford 25 

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