Columbus's Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem


Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem

C A R O L D E L A N E Y

Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The Quincentennial of Columbus’s Discovery of the Americas has come and

gone. Some people celebrated, others protested. The Discovery has been

called either “The greatest event since the creation of the world, save the incar-

nation and death of Him who created it” (Francisco Lopez de Gomera writing

in 1552),
1

or the greatest disaster in world history. Columbus is either a saint

(who was actually proposed for canonization), or he is a sinner responsible for

genocide. Can one even say that Christopher Columbus discovered America

when there were already millions of people living in these lands? Did he dis-

cover America when he thought he had found a new route to Asia?
2

The

debates are interminable and the issues have become so politicized that an

informed and informative discussion has been all but impossible; one steps

warily into the fray. Yet, despite the voluminous literature by and about

Columbus, Americans outside the rarefied circle of Columbus scholars still

know little about the man and his mission. In this paper I discuss some

of the little known religious beliefs that underpinned the “Enterprise of

the Indies,” for I think they have the potential to change fundamentally our

assessment of Columbus and relocate some of the responsibility for the

consequences of the encounter.

Many people are unaware that Columbus made not just one voyage but four;

others are surprised to learn that he was brought back in chains after the third

Acknowledgments: I am deeply indebted to the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University
not only for providing me with a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to conduct
this research, but also for its unparalleled resources and helpful staff, and for creating one of the
most stimulating research environments that I have encountered. As I struggled to keep afloat in
the tumultuous sea of Columbus scholarship, it was with great relief to find scholars who had been
there before and who threw a lifeline by generously sharing their knowledge and perspectives.
Thank you Pauline Moffitt Watts, Carla and William Phillips, and Nicolas Wey-Gomez.

1
In the text of this paper I will give the original dates, where possible, and then the date and

page of the modern translation/edition I am using. Thus, when I quote from Columbus, I will put
the original date, then the date of the modern edition and page. The reference information can be
found under Columbus. This quotation, from Gomera’s Historia General de las Indias, is fre-
quently cited. See Jane 1988[1930 – 1933]: xv; also Keen’s translation of Ferdinand Columbus’s
biography of his father 1992[1959]: xxiii.

2
For discussions about the notion of “discovery” see Bataillon 1972; Keen 1992; O’Gorman

1961; Sale 1990; Todorov 1985[1984]; Washburn 1962; and Zamora 1993, among others.

260

0010-4175/06/260 – 292 $9.50 # 2006 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History



voyage. Even fewer know that his ultimate goal, the purpose behind the enter-

prise, was Jerusalem! The 26 December 1492 entry in his journal of the first

voyage, hereafter referred to as the Diario,
3

written in the Caribbean, leaves

little doubt. He says he wanted to find enough gold and the almost equally

valuable spices “in such quantity that the sovereigns. . . will undertake and
prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulchre; for thus I urged Your Highnesses

to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem”

(Diario 1492[1988: 291, my emphasis]).
4

This statement implies that it was

not the first time Columbus had mentioned the motivation for his undertaking,

nor was it to be the last.
5

Columbus wanted to launch a new Crusade to take

back the Holy Land from the infidels (the Muslims). This desire was not

merely to reclaim the land of the Bible and the place where Jesus had

walked; it was part of the much larger and widespread, apocalyptic scenario

in which Columbus and many of his contemporaries believed. That scenario,

derived from the biblical book of Revelation, claims that the conversion of all

peoples to Christianity and the re-conquest of Jerusalem are necessary precon-

ditions for the “Second Coming” when Christ will return before the “End of

Days.” Columbus felt strongly the imminence of this event; he also came to

feel that he had a providential role to play in the drama. There is considerable

evidence from his contemporaries and his own writings, especially in the little

known Libro de las profecı́as, or Book of Prophecies, that these were long-

standing beliefs of Columbus.

A discussion of Columbus’s piety and religious beliefs occupies the first

part of this paper; the second part asks why these beliefs are so little known

3
Columbus’s day-to-day log of the first voyage has come to be known simply as the Diario,

and my quotations are taken Dunn and Kelley’s 1989 edition, The Diario of Christopher
Columbus’s First Voyage to America 1492–1493 (Dunn and Kelley 1989). They followed the
Diario de Colón, a line-by-line translation by Dr. Carlos Sanz (Madrid 1962) and may not have
known of Robert Fuson’s The Log of Christopher Columbus, published just before theirs. There
are too many translations and editions to cite here; consult those above for more information.
The original diary was lost, but Bartolomé de las Casas, who knew Columbus and had a
scribe’s copy called Diario de a bordo (Diary from on board), made an abstract, including
extensive verbatim passages. Las Casas titled his abstract El libro de la primera navegación,
and included it in his Historia de las Indı́as written between 1527 and 1562, but not published
until 1875! Except for short excerpts, no English translation has been published of this most
important source of the early period of the encounter. Columbus’s son Ferdinand also had a
copy of the Diario and included much of it in his biography of his father written sometime in
the early part of the sixteenth century. Mary Campbell rightly argues that this is no mere ship’s
log but perhaps the first of its kind—a diary that included impressions, reactions, and anthropolo-
gical descriptions and possibly also drawings and charts (1988: 188).

4
Ironically, then, the purpose of “the New World was to redeem the Old City” (Cummins 1976,

quoted in West 1987: 52).
5

Phelan claims, “Columbus’s idea of delivering the Holy Sepulchre with the gold of the Indies
was a hope that he first expressed to Ferdinand and Isabela on the eve of his departure from Palos
on August 3, 1492” (1970: 22). But he may have mentioned it even earlier, during the siege of
Granada in 1489 when an embassy from the Sultan of Egypt arrived demanding that the
Spanish stop fighting Muslims or he would destroy the Holy Sepulchre (see Morison 1942,
vol. I: 131).

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 261



among the general public. My analysis suggests that part of the problem lies in

the assumptions of conventional historiography and the (mis)understanding of

religion among academics. Then I show how his religious worldview, particu-

larly its notions of space and time, affected both his conception of the enter-

prise and its unfolding. Telling this story about Columbus in his cultural

context not only changes our assessment of him and the framing of American

history, but also provides a perspective from which to interpret the resurgence

of apocalyptic thought among certain groups of Christians today. Ultimately,

I suggest, this demands a critical examination of the apocalyptic scenario

itself, before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

T H E E V I D E N C E

That Columbus was a religious man is attested by his son and others who knew

him, including Bartolomé de las Casas, the great historian of the Indies and

defender of the Indians. Here is what he says of Columbus: “He observed

the fasts of the church most faithfully, confessed and made communion

often, read the canonical offices like a churchman or member of a religious

order, hated blasphemy and profane swearing, was most devoted to Our

Lady and to the seraphic father St. Francis; seemed very grateful to God for

benefits received from the divine hand. . . . And he was especially affected
and devoted to the idea that God should deem him worthy of aiding somewhat

in recovering the Holy Sepulchre” (c.1527 [Morison 1942, I: 63]).
6

The Diario is full of evidence that during the voyages, Columbus prayed

often and kept canonical hours on board, especially those of Prime, Terce,

Vespers, and Compline. At “Vespers all hands were called, a brief service

read, the Salve Regina sung, and the watch changed” (Morison 1963: 44).

He prepared diligently for Sunday mass and believed in the saving grace of

pilgrimage (see Flint 1992; Milhou 1983). On several occasions noted in

the diary he and the crew made vows to conduct pilgrimages to holy sites if

they survived some of the treacherous seas and storms they encountered.

His devotion is also illustrated by the names he bestowed, like Adam, on

the islands he “discovered,” for example, San Salvador (for their salvation),

Trinidad (for the Trinity), Santa Maria (for the Virgin Mary), Isla de la

Ascunción (for the Assumption). He counted as friends a number of priests

and men in religious orders and often stayed at monasteries for weeks and

months at a time.

Furthermore, an eyewitness to his return from the second voyage, Andrés

Bernáldez (chronicler, priest, and friend of Columbus), notes that when he

“arrived in Castile in the month of June 1496, (he was) dressed as an Obser-

vatine Friar of the Order of St. Francis and resembling one in appearance, little

6
This passage is cited and translated by Morison, 1942, I: 63, from a 1927 edition of Las

Casas’s Historia de las Indias, edited by Gonzalo de Reparaz.

262 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



less than in his dress, with the cord of the Order, which he wore for devotion”

(quoted in West and Kling 1991: 58). Some scholars believe that he may have

joined the Third Order of St. Francis, meaning that he became a Tertiary—a

lay monk of the Observant Franciscans.
7

He was buried in these robes. His

religiousness is also evident from the way he began to sign his reports and

letters during and ever after the first voyage, when he created a mysterious

new symbolic signature that ended with: “Xpo-ferens,” or Christ bearer.
8

By this time, he had come to believe he was carrying Christianity across the

sea as his namesake, St. Christopher, carried Christ across the waters.
9

We also find ample evidence of Columbus’s religious convictions and ideas

in his own writings. More than ninety documents written by Columbus have

survived. These include not just the abstract of the Diario, but also accounts

of the third and fourth voyages, legal depositions, a will and testament,

numerous letters (to the sovereigns, to one of his sons, and to his relatives

and friends including several monks), and over 3,000 marginal notes in his

books (West 1992a: 267). New finds still emerge from time to time. But

perhaps most important is his little known Libro de las profecı́as (Book of

Prophecies), a collection of classical and biblical passages that Columbus

believed prophesied both the discovery and its relevance to the approaching

apocalypse. Before turning to that document, let me briefly mention some

of the other evidence.

Pauline Moffitt Watts, who has written persistently and eloquently about

Columbus’s religious ideas, has determined that two interconnected themes

7
Milhou (1983: 42 – 51) and others believe this may be the reason he did not marry Beatriz de

Arana, the mother of his second son, Ferdinand. It is possible that by then he had taken a vow of
celibacy for, unlike the crew, there is no indication that Columbus ever had sexual relations with
Indian women.

8
The first instance is a letter written in Hispaniola, dated 4 January 1493 (Varela 2003: 218), a

fragment dated 20 February 1493 (Varela 2003: 226), and a letter before departure on the second
voyage dated 9 April 1493 (Morison 1963: 199; and Thacher, III: 111). There are many more
examples. See Thacher (1903 – 1904) for photographs of the letters and signature. The full signa-
ture was composed of 4 lines:

.S.

S.A.S.

X M J

Xpo-ferens

Numerous scholars have tried to decipher it, and the effort will no doubt continue (e.g., Thacher
1903 – 1904; Milhou 1983).

9
A map by Juan de las Cosa (c. 1500) has a drawing of St. Christopher bearing Christ across the

waters, which some believe may actually be a portrait of Columbus. If so, it may be the only
known portrait drawn during his lifetime, but see Phillips (1992). She suggests that a painting
of Columbus, allegedly by Pedro Berruguete, if proved authentic may be the earliest since it
had to have been painted before his death on 6 January 1504. The absence of a portrait,
however, has not kept artists from filling the gap with imaginary ones. Too often, they show
him as corpulent and with a round face. Yet all accounts describe him as handsome and of digni-
fied bearing, tall with a long face, aquiline nose, and reddish hair turning gray.

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 263



reverberate throughout his writings: (1) conversion of all peoples to the

Christian faith, and (2) the re-conquest of Jerusalem (Watts 1985: 92). The

first is conventional knowledge, the second is little known beyond Columbus

scholars. Columbus mentioned the first of these themes in the prologue
10

that

prefaced the Diario, which he intended, at journey’s end, to present to the

“Most Christian and Very Noble and Very Excellent and Very Powerful

Princes, King and Queen of Spain.” He goes on to mention the events of

1492 leading up to his departure, namely the end of the war with the Moors

in Granada and the expulsion of the Jews, events that put his own venture

in a religious context.
11

He reminds the King and Queen of how many

times the Great Khan (of China) had,

. . .sent to Rome to ask for men learned in our Holy Faith in order that they might
instruct him in it and how the Holy Father had never provided them; and thus so
many peoples were lost, falling into idolatry and accepting false and harmful sectas
[incorrectly translated as religion, see below]; and Your Highnesses, as Catholic
Christians and Princes, lovers and promoters of the Holy Christian Faith, and
enemies of the false doctrine of Mahomet and of all idolatries and heresies, you
thought of sending me, Christóbal Colón to the said regions of India to see the said
princes and the peoples and the lands, and the characteristics of the lands and of every-
thing, and to see how their conversion to our Holy Faith might be undertaken. And you
commanded that I should not go to the East by land, by which way it is customary to go,
but by the route to the West, by which route we do not know for certain that anyone
previously has passed (Diario 1492[1989: 19, my emphasis]).

12

In case he should encounter the Great Khan or other emperors, kings, or

princes, it was deemed appropriate for Columbus to carry letters of greeting

from the sovereigns (with space left blank for the addressee)
13

and to take

10
Like everything else about Columbus, there is debate about the “prologue.” Zamora, for

example, calls it a letter, and believes it was written sometime after the departure and addressed
to the Crown as a way to legitimize the voyage (1993: 21 – 38). The timing seems irrelevant since
many authors write a “preface” after a work is completed. To me the prologue seems to confirm, in
writing, what had been discussed previously.

11
His linking of these events can be seen as part of the larger spiritual context in which his

voyage is included (see Milhou 1983; Sweet 1986: 373; Zamora 1993: 32). See Menocal
(1994: 3 – 14) for a critical view of the lack of attention paid to the synchronicity of these
events by historians.

12
Columbus had read Marco Polo’s book of travels and knew that the Great Khan had

requested emissaries from the Pope but had not received them. Kublai Khan also asked
Marco’s father and uncle that “upon their return they should bring with them, from Jerusalem,
some of the Holy Oil from the lamp which is kept burning over the Sepulchre of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who he professed to hold in veneration and to consider as the true God”
(Komroff, trans. 1930: 8). The “customary” route to China had become perilous for Christians
due to its control by Muslims, and especially so after the conquest of Constantinople by the
Ottomans in 1453. If Europeans were to reach China and its fabled riches, they would have to
find another way. Portuguese explorers began to search for a sea-route around the tip of Africa,
but because of the 1479 treaty of Alcáçovas, Spanish explorers could not enter “their” waters.
Columbus had already presented his plan to the King of Portugal who rejected it, which is
why, in 1485, Columbus left for Spain.

13
Copies of these letters exist, dated 30 April 1492. See Morison 1942, I: 141; 1963: 30.

264 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



along as an interpreter Luis de Torres, a converso who knew Hebrew,

Chaldean, and some Arabic. It was highly unlikely that anyone in Spain

knew Mongolian or Chinese, but since “it was supposed that Arabic was the

mother of all languages” (Morison 1942, vol. I: 187), it was assumed that

Arabic would suffice.
14

When they arrived in Cuba, Columbus sent Luis de

Torres and Rodrigo de Xerez inland with two Indians, “with instructions as

to how they were to inquire about the king of that land and what they

should say to him on behalf of the sovereigns of Castile . . . [and to] give
him their letters and a present, and in order to learn of his circumstances

and to obtain his friendship” (Diario 2 Nov. 1492[1989: 129]).

Throughout the pages of the Diario Columbus speaks of the gentle nature of

the natives and how easily they would become Christian if only the sovereigns

would send religious persons who would learn their language and instruct

them.
15

He writes that at their very first encounter he wants them to be friendly

and that he “recognized that they were a people who would be better freed

[from error] and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force” (Diario

11 Oct. 1492[1989: 65]). He also marvels at the beauty of the place, yet

despite having endured a voyage across the ocean that all believed no one

had ever crossed, neither its beauty nor the kindness of the natives induced

him to tarry. He pushes onward; he wants to find the mainland and needs to

find valuable commodities—spices, aloe, mastic, and, of course, gold.
16

In

my first reading of the diary I could not understand why he seemed so

driven to find gold; no wonder people have assumed his motives were

purely mercenary. But this understanding changes when one realizes that

finding the gold was necessary not only to repay the people who had invested

in the voyage (and to induce them to finance another), but also, as seen from

the diary entry cited above, essential if he was ever to finance another Crusade.

Today, we might disapprove of that motive, but at the time it was felt to be a

worthwhile and Christian duty.

In a letter dated 4 March 1493, purportedly written at sea to King Ferdinand

and Queen Isabela just before he arrived back from the first voyage, Columbus

claimed “that in seven years from today I will be able to pay Your Highnesses

14
Hamdani (1979, n. 39) suggests, instead, that Columbus brought an Arabic speaker to con-

verse with Arab merchants, navigators, or envoys he might encounter in the area of the Indian
Ocean and who, thus, might be able to direct him to the Khan. This makes sense given Columbus’s
reading of Marco Polo, though I can find no mention of such a motive in the Columbus documents.
There is tremendous irony, however, in speaking Arabic in the New World when it was being out-
lawed in the Old (Menocal 1994: 12).

15
This implies that it was the sovereigns, not Columbus, who decided not to send priests or

missionaries on the first voyage.
16

Spices provided another reason for the Spanish monarchs to back Columbus’s voyage. Not
only had the overland route been cut off by the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople but, according
to Dugard, the Venetians had a stranglehold on what spices came via Egypt, “[T]hanks to an exclu-
sive arrangement between the Arabs and the merchants of Venice who were the sole European
outlet for India’s pepper and spices” (Dugard 2005: 23).

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 265



for five thousand cavalry and fifty thousand foot soldiers for the war and con-

quest of Jerusalem, for which purpose this enterprise was undertaken” (Letter,

1493 [Zamora 1993: 190 – 97]).
17

Almost ten years later, he is still dwelling on

the theme. A letter written in February 1502, but perhaps never sent, to Pope

Alexander VI stated, “This enterprise was undertaken with the purpose of

expending what was invested in aiding the holy temple and the holy

Church,” (Letter 1502 [Rusconi 1997: 17]),
18

and he specifies the same

number of horsemen and soldiers he hopes to finance.

In still another letter, referred to as Lettera Rarissima, written on 7 July

1503 in Hispaniola and addressed to the Sovereigns, Columbus describes

the events of the fourth voyage. Toward the end of the letter the theme

of the re-conquest of Jerusalem recurs: “Jerusalem and Mount Sion are to

be rebuilt by the hand of a Christian; who this is to be God declares by the

mouth of His prophet in the fourteenth psalm. Abbot Joachin said that he

was to come from Spain.”
19

Finally, on 19 May 1506, the day before he died, Columbus ratified his

Majorat or will, originally drawn up on 22 February 1498 and appended on

25 August 1505, stipulating that a fund be set up for the purpose of liberating

Jerusalem.
20

Such evidence should be more than enough to quell the doubters

of the sincerity of his motivations, but there is more.

T H E L I B R O D E L A S P R O F E C Í A S

It is in the Libro de las profecı́as where his ideas are most manifest. The Libro

is not really a book in the conventional sense, but rather a collection of

passages culled from the Bible (Genesis to Revelation); numerous ancient

authors such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Seneca; church fathers such as Augustine,

Jerome, Chrysostom; and medieval authors including Aquinas, d’Ailly,

Joachim of Fiore, and Roger Bacon. It also includes extracts from the

Qur’an and the writings of a number of Muslims such as Alfraganus and Aver-

roes.
21

This collection was meant to be used in the composition of a long poem

to be presented to the King and Queen. The poem was never completed, but

17
This letter, which surfaced in 1989, is published in Libro Copiador de Cristóbal Colón,

(Antonio Rumeau de Armas, ed., [Madrid 1989], vol. 2: 435 – 43). An English translation is pub-
lished in Zamora 1993: 190 – 97). Its provenance was highly unusual and its authenticity is still
being debated. It is included, however, in the latest edition of Varela’s Textos y documentos com-
pletos. If authentic, it is an extremely important find and resolves the question of why the first letter
announcing the discovery was apparently sent to Luis de Santangel rather than to the Sovereigns.
If not from Columbus’s pen, whoever wrote the letter must have believed his motivation.

18
For the Spanish text see Varela 2003: 479 – 81; also Kadir 1992: 202 – 3.

19
See Jane 1988, bk. II: 104. Joachin is more often written “Joachim”; see also Morison 1963:

383. The standard study of Joachim de Fiore is by Marjorie Reeves (1969). For his influence on
Columbus, see Watts 1985, Phelan 1970, and Milhou 1983.

20
An English translation can be found in Thacher (1904, vol. 3, 646 – 60); see also Sweet

(1986: 381), for discussion.
21

For a list of all the works cited, see West and Kling (1991: 23 – 26).

266 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



the original manuscript has, amazingly, survived, and today it is housed at the

Biblioteca Columbina attached to the Cathedral in Seville.

It is believed the Libro de las profecı́as was compiled during the period

between Columbus’s return from the third voyage in late October 1500

and the beginning of the fourth voyage in May 1502. However a passage

referring to being in Jamaica in 1504 may indicate that he took a draft

along on the final voyage in order to make additions or corrections suggested

by his friend Fray Gaspar Gorricio, a Carthusian monk. Columbus stayed

with Gorricio at the monastery of Nuestra Senora Santa Maria de las

Cuevas in Seville when not involved in the litigations related to his activities

and claims.
22

This was a very difficult juncture in Columbus’s life: the crown had been

receiving reports that the colony in Española/Hispaniola was in disarray

and, at Columbus’s request, sent, someone to investigate. The investigator,

Francisco de Bobadilla, was shocked by what he found, and when Columbus

returned from the countryside he had him arrested and sent him back to Spain

in chains.
23

Although Queen Isabela and King Ferdinand absolved him, he

saw little chance of recovering his post as Viceroy and Governor of the

islands that he had been granted in the Capitulations of Santa Fe on

17 April 1492. It may well be that the monarchs wanted to reduce the privi-

leges they had granted to this foreigner at a time when they had no idea

what, if anything, would be found in the colony. Some scholars believe

that, given these difficulties, the primary motivation for the Libro was to

restore himself in the eyes of the monarchs;
24

others, like myself, while not

22
See The Book of Privileges (Nader 1996). It should be noted that not all of the Libro de las

profecı́as is written in Columbus’s hand. Indeed, four hands have been discerned: his own, his son
Ferdinand’s, Father Gorricio’s, and one other. Nevertheless, it is believed that they are following
Columbus’s plan; not only was he very busy at the time but it was painful for him to write because
his hands were arthritic. Some of Columbus and Gorricio’s correspondence about the project
survives.

23
Columbus was, after all, a mariner and not trained to be a colonial administrator. Bad things

began to happen as early as 1493 when men were left behind after the Santa Maria went aground.
They had gone against his explicit orders to do no harm to the Indians, to respect the cacique to
whom they owed so much, not to scatter themselves but stay together, and to avoid doing violence
against the women; in short to set a good example (see Thacher, I: 632). Instead, their behavior
was outrageous: they raped the women and tried to force the natives to work for them. All of
them were murdered before Columbus returned on the second voyage. The colonists he brought
with him on the second voyage also assumed they could live a life of ease using the natives as
servants. In Columbus’s words, ‘they were a greedy lot.’ Las Casas always spoke with respect
and admiration of Columbus even as he criticized some of his expedient policies. We should
not forget that Las Casas was himself a slaveholder before being converted to their defense
several years after hearing a 1511 sermon by Antonio de Montesinos. Columbus never had the
opportunity to hear that sermon since by then he had been dead for five years. Yet even as a defen-
der of the Indians, Las Casas cannot be exonerated since he proposed importing slaves from Africa
and is, in large part, responsible for that tragedy.

24
Among those who believe it was self-aggrandizing or a product of senility and paranoia

include: Harrisse, Vignaud, Granzotto, Flint, Sale, and Fernández-Armesto.

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 267



denying the ingratiating tone of the cover letter, view the project more as the

outcome of a long process of religious conviction and messianic zeal, as well

as an attempt to claim his rightful place in history.
25

I suggest that the Libro cannot be understood simply as a response to his

immediate troubles, but rather had a long gestation. There is evidence from

highlighted passages in his books, some of them dating from before the first

voyage, of his interest in apocalyptic and prophetic themes. Over the years

Columbus had been marking passages in his books;
26

sometimes drawing a

hand with a finger pointing at an important passage, and he often made

notes, called postilles (early “post-its”), in the margins. Some of the high-

lighted passages had to do with geographical and nautical information that

helped him make his case for the first voyage before committees of court

experts, while others had to do with his eschatological beliefs. As I will

show, these cannot be separated.

The first sentence of the Libro proclaims its purpose: “Here begins the book,

or handbook, of sources, statements, opinions and prophecies on the subject of

the recovery of God’s Holy City and Mount Zion, and on the discovery and

evangelization of the islands of the Indies and of all other peoples and

nations. To Ferdinand and Elizabeth [Isabela], etcetera, our hispanic rulers”

(Libro 1500 – 1502 [West and Kling 1991: 101; cf. Rusconi 1997].) Although

it was highly unusual for a layperson to read, let alone interpret and comment

on the Bible, Christopher Columbus knew what he was doing (see Avalos

1994 and 1996 for Columbus as biblical exegete). To demonstrate this, and

perhaps to forestall criticism, he goes on to describe his methods of biblical

interpretation. The first is the four-fold method taken from Aquinas,

Gerson, and others in which the commentator must attend to historical, alle-

gorical, tropological, and anagogical interpretation. The second method,

known as “prefigurement,” Columbus attributes to St. Augustine, Isidore of

Seville, and Nicolas of Lyra. In this method a prophecy in the Old Testament

is shown to be fulfilled in the New Testament. For example, the story of

Abraham and the near sacrifice of Isaac is thought to prefigure God’s sacrifice

25
This must have seemed all the more urgent as the news of Vasco de Gama’s voyage to India

and Cabot’s to the North American continent began to circulate. Cabot, like Columbus, assumed
he had reached Asia, but it was Newfoundland. An Englishman by the name of John Day sent
Columbus a letter in 1497 informing him of this discovery.

26
Books extant that Columbus owned are: Pierre d’Ailly’s Imago Mundi printed between 1480

and 1483, which contains 898 postilles; Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II)’s Historia
rerum ubique gestarum (1477, 861 postilles); Marco Polo’s De consuetudanibus et conditionibus
orientalium regionum (1485, 366 postilles); the Italian translation of Pliny’s Historia naturalis
(1489, 24 postilles); Plutarch’s Las vias de los ilustres Varones (1491, 437 postilles); Concordan-
tiae Bibliae Cardinalis (fifteenth century, n.d., no postilles but many highlightings of important
passages); St. Antoninus of Florence’s Sumula confessionis (1476); a fifteenth-century palimpsest
containing Seneca’s Tragedies; and Abraham Azcuto’s Almanach perpetuum, cuius radix est
annum (1473).

268 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



of his only begotten son. Both of these methods are still being used today, the

latter especially by Christian fundamentalists.
27

The cover letter that Columbus inserted in the notebook begins: “Most

Christian and very exalted princes, the reason which I have for the restitu-

tion of the Holy Sepulchre to the Holy Church militant is the following”

(Libro 1500 – 1502 [Thacher 1904, vol. III: 660]).
28

It is an urgent letter

that warns them the end of the world will take place in 155 years. This

date was arrived at by the common practice of using biblical genealogies

to calculate the number of years from Creation, to Christ, to the current

year. In this instance Columbus cites Elucidario astronomice concordie

cum theological & hystorica veritate by his most crucial source—Pierre

d’Ailly: “From Adam to our Lord Jesus Christ there are 5343 years and

318 days, according to the account of the King Don Alonso [sic; should

be Alfonso] . . . adding to this 1501 incomplete years [i.e., the year he is
writing], makes in all 6845” (Libro 1500 – 1502 [Thacher 1904, vol. III:

662]). The end point is fixed—the duration of the world is only seven mil-

lennia based on the notion that the seven days of Creation compute to seven

thousand earth years. Columbus cites “St. Augustine who says that the end

of this world is to come in the seventh millenary of years from its

creation. . . [so] according to this account, there are only lacking 155
years to complete the 7000, in which year . . . the world must end” (op.
cit). His calculations about the end of the world seem to date long before

this, possibly predating the first voyage by ten years if we can take as evi-

dence one of the 861 postilles, written in 1481, in his copy of Historia rerum

ubique gestarum, by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II): “desde el

comienc del mundo fasta estra era de 1481, son 5241 años,” (from the

beginning of the world to our year 1481, there are 5241 years) (Libro

[West and Kling 1991: 22, my emphasis]).
29

In any case, for Columbus

little time remains to fulfill all the prophecies that must be fulfilled before

Christ returns, before the end of the world.

The rest of the manuscript is a collection of passages Columbus considered

prophetic. A fair number of them focus on islands, for example, “Give ear, ye

islands, and hearken, ye people from afar” (Isaiah 51: 5b). The “Discovery of

new islands took on enhanced significance as signs that the Second Coming

27
See Delaney 1998: 137 – 51; Auerbach 1953; Frei 1974; Harding 2000; Kolve 1996, among

others.
28

Here the quotations are from the English translation by Thacher (1904, vol. 3: 660), because
in this case I feel he more closely followed the Spanish. In addition, he correctly translated
Columbus’s statement that the world would come to an end in 155 rather than 150 years, as in
West and Kling (1991: 105).

29
The Historia, published in 1477, was one of Columbus’s favorite sources. West and Kling,

Watts (1985: 85 – 86), Flint (1992: 46 – 48), and others take this entry as evidence of his pre-voyage
interest in eschatology. Taviani disputes this and believes Columbus did not read the book until
later (1985: 451). Regardless, it was still before the first voyage.

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 269



was close at hand” (Gillis 2004: 43),
30

and thus indicated to Columbus the

need to convert all the peoples he has found. He may have thought himself

or the discovery to be the sign referenced in the following: “And I will set a

sign among them . . . to the islands afar off, to them that have not heard of
me and have not seen my glory” (Isaiah 66: 19). Other passages in the

Libro and in the enclosed letter point to the coming of the Antichrist, the

annihilation of the sect of Mohammed, and finally the restoration of

Jerusalem.

G O L D

Still other passages are about Solomon’s mines and the gold of Ophir that was

thought by some to abound in the Indies. That this was the gold Columbus was

looking for is made clear by his references to Josephus, Nicolas of Lyra, and

by his notes in the books by d’Ailly and Pope Pius II, and especially the Bible.

For example, “Solomon’s ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Hiram;

once every three years the ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver,

ivory, peacocks, and apes” (2 Chronicles 9: 21). Since he assumed “three

years” was the time it took for the round trip, Columbus “concluded that

the Asian land mass must be so vast as to require more than a year’s travel

between Jerusalem and its eastern edge” (Romm 2001: 29 – 30).
31

This con-

firmed his beliefs that Asia extended much farther than hitherto suspected

and that the ocean, therefore, was not as wide as was believed.

Columbus had clearly been thinking about Solomon’s gold mines prior to

the Libro. Five years before, his friend Peter Martyr wrote to Cardinal Bernar-

dinus to inform him that Columbus had found mines that “he thinks may be the

gold-producing Ophir of Solomon.” At that time, Columbus thought they were

in Española/Hispaniola (Martyr, 9 Aug. 1495 [Thacher 1904, vol. I: 75]).

Later, during the fourth voyage, he thought he had found them near

Veragua, along the coast of South America. One can feel the mounting excite-

ment in a letter known as Lettera Rarissima, that Columbus wrote to the sover-

eigns from Jamaica: “Gold is a metal most excellent above all others and of

gold treasures are formed, and he who has it makes and accomplishes what-

ever he wishes in the world and finally uses it to send souls into Paradise”

(Lettera 3 July 1503 [Thacher 1904, vol. II: 695]).
32

The search for gold, then, was, at least for Columbus, less a commercial

venture than “a spiritual quest,” a medium not so much of exchange as

30
John Gillis, a social/cultural historian and sometime lecturer at Stanford, has written a fas-

cinating study of the history of the meaning of “islands” in western imagination (2004). The
western sea, in medieval thought, was presumed to be dotted with islands, and it is probably
not coincidental that in “the lower dexter corner” of Columbus’s coat of arms are a number of
gilded islands. See Thacher (1903, vol. II: 536 – 40) for illustrations.

31
Romm (2001) and West (1992b) are crucial reading for this story. See also West and Kling

(1991: 223, 247).
32

See also Jane 1988, vol. II: 104; Morison 1963: 383.

270 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



“a medium of redemption” (Sweet 1986: 383). He goes on to say that just as

Solomon used the gold of Ophir to build the temple, “Jerusalem and Mt. Zion,

as it is written, must be rebuilt by Christian hands” (op. cit.).
33

The gold and

other precious metals filled the coffers of Spain. Paolo Emilio Taviani, the

great Italian biographer of Columbus, noted that the crown “in the century

following the discovery, received in precious metals alone exactly one

million seven hundred and thirty-three thousand maravedis for every maravedi

invested in financing Columbus’s voyage” (1985: 500)!

Yet gold had much more than monetary meaning; it was no mere metal.

According to popular alchemical theories circulating at the time, gold grows

or matures (Milhou 1983: 125 – 28; Phillips and Phillips 1992: 219). Metal

begins as one substance then, depending on the environment in which it

occurs and the forces acting upon it, reaches different stages of perfection

and purity, with gold being the purest form.
34

This is not unlike Aristotle’s

theory of reproductive fluid; that fluid begins as blood and goes through a

series of concoctions whereby breast milk and menstrual blood are of

impure form while semen is the most fully concocted, active agent capable

of being the vehicle for the transmission of the eternal soul.
35

Since gold

was thought to “increase and multiply” the wealth of those who had it,

perhaps it is behind the custom, in some societies, of throwing gold at

weddings to wish the new couple (re)productive success.
36

In any case, the

Torrid Zone or belt of the Tropics, formerly thought to be uninhabitable,

was the place believed to be the most conducive to maturing and purifying

metal into gold—the heat of the sun being the major agent in this process,

along with the spin of the earth which caused it to collect.
37

Gold had

already been found in Africa and so it was assumed it would be found at

the same latitude in “India,” where d’Ailly said there were mountains of gold.

T H E P R O P H E T I C R O L E O F T H E D I S C O V E R Y

The selections in the Libro were meant as evidence pointing to the discovery’s

essential role in the unfolding of biblical prophecy. That is, it was no mere

accident, but an integral part of providential history. Not surprisingly,

Columbus began to see his own role as prophesied and divinely inspired,

most tellingly in the way he saw himself as the intended of prophecies in

Revelation (21: 1) and Isaiah (65: 17; 66: 22): “Of the new heaven and

earth which our Lord made, as St. John wrote in the Apocalypse, after he

33
See Thacher 1904, vol. II: 696.

34
I am indebted to Nicolas Wey-Gomez for pointing me in this direction.

35
See Aristotle’s Generation of Animals for his theory of reproduction.

36
That, at least, was the case in the Turkish village where I lived for two years conducting

anthropological research (Delaney 1991: 140).
37

Jaime Ferrer, an advisor to the Queen, told Columbus, “gold was found most abundantly near
the equator where people had dark skins and where the spin of the earth caused it to collect” (West
1992a: 275, n.79). See also Nicolas Wey-Gomez (n.d.).

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 271



had spoken it by the mouth of Isaiah, He made me the messenger thereof, and

showed me where to go” (Letter October 1500 [Morison 1942, I: 69]).
38

He

had also long been captivated by the prophecy in Seneca’s Medea, and had

highlighted it in his own copy: “An age will come when the Ocean will

break his chains, a huge land will lie revealed, Tiphys will discover new

worlds, and Thule no longer be ultimate.” He cites the original in the Libro

and then repeats it, emending it by adding a phrase that a new sailor, like

Tiphys, will discover a new world and the island of Thule will no longer be

ultimate.
39

The odd metaphor of an ocean locked by chains provides a

glimpse into the symbolic repertoire of Columbus and his contemporaries

who thought that he had been given the key.

He tells the sovereigns that God had given him the ability to acquire the

skills necessary for maritime exploration—astronomy and astrology, geogra-

phy, and arithmetic, and map reading
40

—and had also “opened my mind to the

fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies, and he opened my

will to desire to accomplish the project. This was the fire
41

that burned within

me when I came to visit Your Highnesses.” Immediately thereafter, however,

he claims, “All the sciences which I mentioned above were of no use to me.

Quotations from learned opinions were no help.” Instead, it was “the Holy

Spirit who encouraged me with a radiance of marvelous illumination from

his sacred Holy Scriptures” (Libro 1500 – 1502 [West and Kling 1991:

105]). He judiciously added that the faith the Sovereigns had placed in him

also encouraged him and made the journey both possible and successful.

The Libro de las profecı́as, then, can be seen as his effort to encourage and

hasten them in the further project of Jerusalem.

In late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Spain there was a widely cir-

culated notion of “a last world emperor” who would fulfill what was known

as the unum ovile et unun pastor prophecy of John, 10: 16: “And other

sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they

shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (my

emphasis). This emperor would fight the Antichrist and reestablish Christian

sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Holy Land. As noted, Columbus believed

38
The letter was written to Dona Juana de Torres, sister of Luis. The full text can be found

in a number of places. I have cited from Morison (1963: 289 – 98), and Thacher (1903, Vol. 2:
423 – 38). The latter includes the Spanish text.

39
I have cited Morison’s translation (1942: 79) because it is more familiar to Americans than

that in either Rusconi (1997: 291) or West and Kling (1991: 227). Columbus said he had been to
Thule (Iceland), but the truth of this is debated. Next to Columbus’s highlighted passage in Medea,
Ferdinand added a postille saying: “This prophecy was fulfilled by my father . . . the Admiral in the
year 1492” (Morison 1942, I: 69). There is a copy in Harvard library.

40
For the skills necessary and the instruments available at the time, see Morison (1942, vol. I:

240 – 53).
41

The word “fire” means more than simply “passion.” According to West, it is a “typical med-
ieval symbol for the Holy Spirit as derived from the fire which came down at Pentacost” (1987: 54,
n. 6)

272 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



this ruler was to come from Spain; in the Libro he included a letter from

Genoese Ambassadors to the Spanish Court in 1492: “we did read that

Joachim the Abbot of Southern Italy has foretold that he is to come from

Spain who is to recover again the fortunes of Zion” (Libro 1500 – 1502;

West and Kling 1991: 239]).
42

Sometime between 1569 and 1576, ten

pages of the Libro, directly following this prophecy, were deliberately cut

out, for the historian Ambrosio de Morales who saw the manuscript during

that time admonished, “Whoever removed these pages acted badly, for this

was the best prophecy in the book.”
43

R E A C T I O N S A N D T H E I R D I S C O N T E N T S

The Libro de las profecı́as is clearly a work that took a great deal of energy,

time, and devotion, and Columbus clearly thought long and cared deeply about

it. But if these religious ideas were an intimate part of Columbus’s understand-

ing of “the Enterprise of the Indies,” why are they not better known among the

general public?
44

Why has the Libro “remained unstudied and untranslated for

nearly 500 years” (West 1992a: 272)? Indeed, when Delno West found a copy

at Firestone Library at Princeton in 1984, the pages were still uncut! The lack

of attention can be attributed, in part, to the delay in its publication, but, as I

shall argue, only in part.

After the death of Columbus’s sons in the sixteenth century, the manuscript

seems to have moved a number of times, and ultimately it was housed with

other Columbus documents in the library of the cathedral in Seville, where

it remains (see Rusconi 1997: 10 – 12 for a brief history of its movements).

In the following centuries, the manuscript was known—certainly by those

who oversaw the collection—but little was done to publicize it. Finally,

early in the nineteenth century, Martin Fernández de Navarrete published a

short description of it in his edition of Columbus documents.
45

Washington

Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, was fas-

cinated by Columbus, and Navarrete granted him access to this material. The

result was Irving’s 1827 multi-volume The Life and Voyages of Christopher

42
It is immaterial whether the foregoing prophecy actually came from Joachim or from Arnold

of Villanova’s rendition of him, as Phelan suggests (1970: 136, n. 27; see also Flint 1992: 192); the
important point is that many at the time believed it.

43
See Rusconi (1997: 9). Regarding these prophecies, he says, “It makes no sense to enumerate

the many hypotheses that have been advanced without documentary support” (n. 49).
44

No one I have told about this remarkable book, including some scholars of Hispanic and
related studies, had ever heard of it and all were very surprised to learn of it. The work of scholars
who have written about the Libro de las profecı́as and Columbus’s religious, even apocalyptic
ideas seems to have reached only a very specialized audience.

45
See de Navarette’s Colección (1825). A decade later, Alexander von Humboldt published a

five-volume study of Columbus’s voyages wherein he “recognized the ‘persuasive force’ of a
‘mystical theology’ . . . yet was basically puzzled by this ‘strange combination of ideas and senti-
ments in a superior man” who was not only courageous, of high intelligence but also practical in
business (Watts 1985: 79).

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 273



Columbus. By the 1866 edition Irving had perused the manuscript of the Libro,

and although that was not his focus, he noted: “It is essential to a full compre-

hension of the character and motives of Columbus, that this visionary project

should be borne in recollection. It will be found to have entwined itself in his

mind with his enterprise of discovery, and that a holy crusade was to be the

consummation of those divine purposes, for which he considered himself

selected by Heaven as an agent” (Irving 1866, I: 286). But that same year a

very different reaction to the document began to make its appearance.

Henry Harrisse, a French-American scholar, wrote in his Notes on Columbus

the following:

It must also be stated that the great navigator, after having made for many years a
display of his cosmographical erudition, when old and somewhat insane, if we may
judge from his Libro de las profecı́as which forcibly reminds every one of Newton’s
similar condition when he wrote his Observations upon the Prophecies and Apoca-
lypse, denied that he ever borrowed any notions from the old authors (1866: 84).
It is in this deplorable lucubration, which I sincerely hope will never be published in
full, that Columbus continually invokes the Bible and the Prophets, claiming to owe
all he knew and all he had accomplished to inspiration from on high,—having been
chosen by the Almighty to discover the New World before the whole earth came to
an end, which momentous event was certainly to take place within the next fifty
years (ibid.: 156).

Harrisse must not have read the manuscript carefully, given that Columbus

calculates the date for the end to be 155 (not 50) years away. In any case,

Harrisse’s assessment must have impeded its publication and had a chilling

effect on anyone wishing to undertake a study of it. It was not translated

from its original mix of Latin and Spanish into any modern language, or

published, until 1894. The first English translation was published in 1991,

just in time for the Quincentennial!
46

Despite Harrisse’s negative assessment, the Quadricentennial (1892 – 1893)

was primarily a celebratory event that focused on the great “Discovery” and

Columbus’s skill as a mariner rather than his religious beliefs and motivations.

It fostered renewed interest and a spate of books appeared that helped to dispel

some of the romantic legends about Columbus. Here I will focus on a few

representative examples (see Keen 1992[1959] and West 1987 for fuller dis-

cussion). Two general reactions to the Libro, not specific to any particular

nationality, emerged in the late nineteenth century and endured into the twen-

tieth. One, like Harrisse, sees the Libro as the product of a weakened mind or

46
Columbus knew and wrote in Latin and Spanish, rarely in Portuguese or Italian. The first

publication (1894) of the Libro, however, was an Italian translation included in the Raccolta di
documenti e studi pubblicati della R. Commissione Colombiana, a collection of Columbus’s writ-
ings edited by Cesare de Lollis. The English versions are: Brigham (1991), West and Kling (1991),
and Rusconi (1997). Most of my citations are taken from West and Kling, except where noted.
West’s introductory articles provide excellent background to the religious meanings and
significance.

274 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



evidence of senility; the other acknowledges the document and Columbus’s

motives, but then lays them to one side.

Henry Vignaud, like Harrisse a French American, was one of the most

important detractors of Columbus during the early twentieth century. He

viewed Columbus’s belief in divine inspiration as “an order of ideas that

permits no critical discussion and one into which we will not enter here; it suf-

fices to have mentioned it” (Watts 1985: 83, n. 20). These types of reactions

remind me very much of the way scholars reacted to the publication of Freud’s

Moses and Monotheism, namely that it was an embarrassment (to them), evi-

dence of Freud’s advancing age, a veiled statement about his religiousness or

his Jewish identity, or about his own Oedipal relationship with his father. I, on

the other hand, feel the book is key to understanding Freud’s entire corpus

(Delaney 1998: 190ff). Similarly with the Libro de las profecı́as—I believe

it opens up a dimension of Columbus that clarifies rather than obscures his

vision.

A more positive reading at mid-century is that by Harvard historian Samuel

Eliot Morison in his superb, classic study, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942).

While he barely mentions the Libro, he does comment on Columbus’s ulti-

mate goal to liberate Jerusalem. Regarding Columbus’s diary entry for 26

December 1492, the day the Santa Maria grounded, Morison says: “There

can be no doubt of Columbus’s sincerity in this matter. Even in such a

crisis of the voyage his thoughts ran to Jerusalem regained” (1942, I: 392).

Despite this, and that almost every chapter is headed by a biblical quotation,

Morison’s interest was in Columbus’s skill as mariner not as prophet. Morison

was part of the Harvard Columbus Expedition 1939 – 1940 that used the Diario

to follow as closely as possible the itinerary of the first voyage.

More recently, Italian scholar Granzotto acknowledges the Libro and

Columbus’s goal of recapturing Jerusalem, but he feels that he was “lost in

dreams and drifted farther and farther away from reality . . . because of his
advancing age, his infirmity, and his continual disappointments—Columbus’s

imagination turned more and more into a vehicle for mad ravings. In his mild

delirium he came to believe that he had been chosen by God for his exploits”

(1985: 246). Another Italian, Taviani, has no problem with Columbus’s reli-

giosity or with the idea of the Crusade to retake Jerusalem. He says it was

part of the spirit of the age and nothing unusual (1985[1974]: 79, 113). On

the other hand, Spanish historian Fernández-Armesto gives short shrift to

the religious side of Columbus and envisions him as a “socially ambitious,

socially awkward parvenu; the autodidact, intellectually aggressive but

easily cowed; the embittered escapee from distressing realities; the adventurer

inhibited by fear of failure” (1991: viii) whose overriding goal was to acquire

wealth and establish a noble lineage. A more extreme view “branded him as

cruel and greedy, and linked him to the process whereby ‘the West has

ravaged the world for five hundred years, under the flag of a master-slave

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 275



theory which in our finest hour of hypocrisy was called the white man’s

burden’” (Keen 1992: lii, citing Konig).

While Columbus’s contemporaries acknowledged his sincere religiosity

and “noticed immediately the eschatological significance Columbus attached

to his discoveries” (West 1987: 49), scholars since the Enlightenment seem to

have had a hard time dealing with, or accepting, the vision or version of

Columbus as a millennialist because it conflicts with both the romantic,

heroic image promoted by Washington Irving and that of Morison’s scientific

mariner.

“None of these scholars took seriously the possibility that Columbus’s per-

sonal spirituality or the spirituality of his age might also have inspired him to

undertake his voyages of discovery” (Watts 1985: 83), and even less that the

conquest of Jerusalem was his true goal. But if we are ever to understand the

man and his mission from his own point of view, we need to attend to this.

Beginning at mid-century and increasing with the approach of the Quincenten-

nial and the millennium, a few scholars became interested in Columbus’s mil-

lennial, apocalyptic views. It began, perhaps, with Phelan’s The Millennial

Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (1956, revised in 1970), and

continued with Alain Milhou’s Colon y su mentalidad mesianica en el

ambiente franciscanista español (1983), still unavailable in English, and

several publications by Pauline Moffitt Watts (1985; 1992; 1993). Others

have made significant contributions to this scholarship and I have benefited

greatly from their work,
47

but their publications have typically appeared in

specialized journals (e.g., Medievalia et Humanistica, The Catholic Historical

Review) and series like Repetorium Columbianum that are rarely consulted by

the general population.

C R I T I C A L I S S U E S

I now wish to critically address three problems in the various readings and

interpretations, including sympathetic ones, of the Libro de profecı́as. The

first is the inability of many academics to see religion, especially its apocalyp-

tic forms, as a constitutive element in worldviews that have real impact on

people’s lives and historical events. The second problem I call “the humanist

convention,” which assumes that human beings are always and everywhere

the same, that culture is epiphenomenal. This view, I suggest, has allowed

critics to blame Columbus for the consequences of the “encounter” rather

than examining crucial beliefs and assumptions common to his culture—

many of which still persist in our own. The third problem follows directly

from the second; that is, even those historians most sympathetic to Columbus

47
For example, Hector Avalos, Kay Brigham, Valerie Flint, Abbas Hamdani, Carla and

William Phillips, Roberto Rusconi, Leonard Sweet, and Delno West and August Kling. I have
had to leave to one side here a number of scholars writing about Columbus whose interest and
focus are not his religiosity or the Libro.

276 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



have failed to make palpable his worldview and cultural milieu, that is, to

“restore the radical presentness of the medieval past” (Menocal 1994: 18)

so we might gain a vivid, even visceral understanding of how it affected his

actions. In the following sections I address each of these problems in turn.

(1) Religion

Academics trained when a modernist, progressivist worldview prevailed

assumed that reason and science would supercede myth, magic, and religion

and make them irrelevant. Indeed, many of them believed that religion

would be dead by the end of the twentieth century. They tended to dismiss reli-

gion or, in a Marxist or capitalist mode, interpreted it as a cover for more

‘real,’ practical, economic, and political interests, or, in a psychoanalytic

mode, as a mass delusion assuaging the thought of death. Not surprisingly,

they have been mystified by the phenomenal growth in religious affiliations

and conflicts, in particular by the rise of fundamentalism in the United

States and elsewhere.

Problems also arise when religion is treated as a separate and circumscribed

domain of life analogous to the supposedly separate domains of economics,

politics, and kinship (family), rather than as an encompassing worldview

that affects all aspects of social life. As a separate domain it can easily be

set to one side. Furthermore, studies of religion have tended to focus on

beliefs, practices, sacred texts, rituals, and religious personnel relating to

people’s private spiritual concerns, rather than analyzing the cosmological

orientation and the way it affects the interpretation of historical events.

Although Clifford Geertz noted more than a quarter-century ago, “religion

tunes human action to an envisaged cosmic order and projects images of

cosmic order onto the plane of human experience” (1973: 90), he said that

this dynamic relationship was hardly ever investigated, especially, I would

add, in the West. There seems to be (or have been) a taboo against critically

analyzing the master narrative of Christianity and its entanglements with

secular life and institutions.

Another aspect of the modernist view of religion is the widespread accep-

tance of the idea that there are many religions, and that one can even choose

which to believe in. For example, Valerie Flint’s observation that Columbus

chose the thought-world he moved in (1992: 195) represents a fundamental

misunderstanding of the core of the “imaginative landscape” she tries to estab-

lish. Religion is held to be a domain that one can step into or out of at will, that

it does not envelope one’s life. This was hardly the understanding of religion

during the time of Columbus, and it is still not a useful way to understand a

wide variety of religious beliefs, practices, and cultures today. Such a view

would have kept me from comprehending the lives of the Turkish villagers

with whom I lived for several years conducting my anthropological research

(Delaney 1991). But I think it also distorts the reality of our contemporary

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 277



society, for despite the “separation of church and state,” Christian concepts

and institutions continue to exert tremendous power in ostensibly secular

domains.

The modern understanding of religion did not fully emerge until the late

nineteenth century when scholars began to attach “-ism” to make substantives

out of adjectives—Buddhism rather than Buddhist, Hinduism rather than

Hindu—thus making a ‘religion’ by separating out the spiritual elements

from a whole way of life or culture that included ethnicity, language, food,

dress, and other practices (see Smith 1962; Rawlings 2002).

In reality, however, science, technology, and religion can be and are easily

and seamlessly combined. For example, I found Turkish villagers, while

mostly illiterate and uneducated, could discuss, understand, make, use, and

fix a variety of modern machines and equipment including automobiles, tele-

phones, and television sets; they could talk about international and national

politics with more sophistication than most Americans, and they understood

the economic networks with which their lives were entangled. They would

appear to have a thoroughly modern consciousness. But staying long, getting

to know them, and “pushing the envelope,” revealed to me how, at a much

deeper level, they lived within a completely Islamic cosmology or worldview.

That worldview encompassed their lives, it was the context within which they

lived, and it provided answers to the perennial questions: who are we, why are

we here, where are we going? It also affected the way they dressed, the food

they ate, their practices of personal hygiene, the way they moved, and their

spatial and temporal orientations (see Delaney 1991). It was inseparable

from the rest of their lives, not something they practiced only on Fridays, the

Muslim holy day, or by keeping the fast of Ramadan. Though they evinced

varying degrees of devoutness, secularism was not an option. They believed

their views were self-evident to any thinking person and they could not under-

stand why I could not accept Islam and, in their terms, submit and become

Muslim. Islam, to them, is not one religion among others; it is “Religion.” It

is the one true religion given in the beginning to Abraham, and Muhammad

was merely a prophet recalling people to that original faith. They had heard

of Christianity, of course, and questioned me about it. But to them it was not

a separate, equally valid religion,
48

but rather a distortion of the one true

word, the one true faith. Just so did Columbus and his contemporaries view

the sectas of the Jews and Muslims. His statement about freeing the Indians

from error shows that religion was not a matter of choice but of right or

wrong—there was only one right way. Indeed, they really had no conception

of alternatives. The Reformation had not yet begun, and Judaism and Islam

48
The idea of separate plural religions that are equally valid is a very modern, Western, liberal

view that is not shared by much of the world, including devout persons of the monotheistic
religions.

278 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



were seen not as different religions but as erroneous, heretical sects. Of course,

there were people skeptical of specific aspects of this worldview, and some

were less devout and fastidious in their practices and customs (cf. Edwards

1988), but secularism, and with it the confinement of religion to its own

domain, was not an alternative, and atheism even less so.

When one understands that there was only one “religion,” one true way to

achieve salvation, one cosmological picture within which one’s life and

aspirations were made meaningful, it becomes understandable why, if one

was compassionate, the conversion of others was an urgent responsibility.

This is not to deny that Christianity was also a means for Queen Isabela

and King Ferdinand to unify their kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Leon

into a more centralized state—one motive does not cancel the other.

While the conversion or expulsion of Jews and Muslims was seen as necess-

ary to establish one Christian nation, the methods used in pursuing this goal

varied. In some areas there were mass baptisms but without any theological

instruction—a situation in which the community could continue sub rosa to

follow their own practices such as daily prayer and abstaining from pork.

Eventually, however, there were demands for conformity in the practices of

everyday life—“in your dress and your shoes and your adornment, in eating

and at your tables and in cooking meat as they [the Christians] cook it; in

your manner of walking, in giving and receiving, and, more than anything,

in your speech, forgetting in so far as you can the Arabic tongue” (Rawlings

2002: 17, citing Elliott 1989: 53). This is very close to the way I have

described the impact of Islam on Turkish village life (Delaney 1991).

“Religion” in both cases meant not simply a set of beliefs, but modes of

living. Precisely because such habits are very difficult to change, some in

fifteenth-century Spain preferred exile to conversion.

(2) The Humanist Convention

The anthropological critique of this position has been insistent: “[T]he image

of a constant human nature independent of time, place, and circumstance, of

studies and professions, transient fashions and temporary opinions, may be an

illusion, that what man is may be so entangled with where he is, who he is, and

what he believes that it is inseparable from them” (Geertz 1973: 35). In other

words, there is no backstage where we can go to find the generic human;

humans are formed within specific cultures. This does not mean that cultures

are totally closed or that there is no overlap; one can learn another culture—

that is, indeed, what anthropologists do during fieldwork. But if we are to

understand Columbus (or anyone else), we must attempt insofar as is possible

to reconstruct the world in which he lived. While some historians writing

about Columbus appear to do this, they still, in my reading, project a

modern consciousness onto him, leaving the impression that the time and

place are merely “transient fashions.” They acknowledge that his world was

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 279



different, but the differences are presented primarily as differences of fact

rather than feeling and perception and, thus, they fail to give a sense of the

way in which the worldview affected both what he was seeing and his

interpretation of it. Boas, a founder of American anthropology, is said to be

the originator of a view that has become commonplace among anthropolo-

gists: “The seeing eye is the organ of tradition,” that is, we see what our

culture has trained us to see. What, therefore, did Columbus ‘see’? How did

he perceive the world and how did that image affect his enterprise and its

interpretation?

(3) The Geoeschatology of Columbus’s World

Columbus lived in a Christian, Catholic world; it enveloped his life and situ-

ated it in the widest cosmological sense. Christianity provided both spiritual

guidance and orientation in time and space, what Delno West in relation to

Columbus termed “geoeschatology.”
49

Not only did this worldview provide

the terms for the conceptualization of the enterprise, but also for interpreting

what he saw, what he found, and its significance. At the same time, he was an

experienced sailor and had traveled a great deal. His more scientific knowl-

edge about the physical earth and navigation did not conflict with the religious

worldview, but rather was easily contained within it. The science-religion con-

flict is a modern one, born of a conception that they are mutually exclusive.

Contrary to the popular Gershwin song (“They all laughed at Christopher

Columbus when he said the world was round”), Columbus and many of his

contemporaries knew that the earth was round, not flat (see Russell 1991).
50

The primary issue in the disputes between Columbus and the scientists and

theologians who formed the committees to study his plan was not about

whether the earth was flat or round, but about its circumference and the

width of the Ocean Sea and, thus, whether it was passable (see Figure 1).

The committees repeatedly rejected Columbus’s plan not because it chal-

lenged Christian cosmology (it did not) but because they thought his calcu-

lations were wrong. According to his calculations Columbus believed that

the ocean was much narrower than did the learned scientists and theologians.

49
Others, in trying to articulate the conjuncture of time and space within a particular religious

or philosophically constructed worldview, have coined “chronogeography” (e.g., Bertrand Russell
in Woodward 1985: 519); and “geosophy” (Wright 1966: 83). The latter term is picked up and
expanded by Gillis (2004).

50
The erroneous notion that it was Columbus who proved the earth was round is still current in

popular culture, and indeed I heard it in 2004 at an academic conference! Russell claims that the
“flat earth” theory was a nineteenth-century invention by scholars trying to distance themselves
from the “irrationality” of the medieval world. Most of Columbus’s contemporaries knew it
was a sphere, though, to be sure, some of the mappaemundi (world maps), while round, could
imply circularity and not necessarily sphericity (see also Andrews 1926). Ironically, during the
third voyage Columbus decided it was pear-shaped with Paradise at the tip like a woman’s
nipple (Columbus, 18 Oct. 1498; see Morison 1963: 286; Jane 1988, vol. II: 30ff; West 1992a:
275).

280 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



Informing Columbus’s views were the theories and methods of Pierre

d’Ailly (1350 – 1420), an influential astronomer/astrologer
51

and important

cardinal who, as emissary to the Council of Constance in 1414, helped to

heal the Great Schism between rival popes—an internal division often seen

as presaging the “end of times.” Columbus avidly read d’Ailly’s Imago

mundi, which cited the authoritative opinions of Bacon, Aristotle, Seneca,

FIGURE 1 What Columbus thought he would find versus what is there. From Columbus, by
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (1991). Used with permission of David Higham Associates.

51
D’Ailly believed in a universe in which the celestial influence of the planets and stars

affected all phenomena—not just an individual’s life but human history. D’Ailly even drew up
Christ’s horoscope (Smoller 1994: 7)!

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 281



and Pliny that the ocean did not cover as much of the earth’s surface as many

believed. Rather than a conflict between science and religion, d’Ailly’s work

shows that, at least for a time, the two were intertwined.

Columbus also drew on the Bible (i.e., to calculate the time ships took to

reach the gold mines of Ophir and return to Jerusalem) and the Apocrypha,

“where it is written that six-sevenths of the world is dry (therefore inhabitable)

and only one-seventh covered by water (2 Esdras 6: 42)” (Watts 1985: 82). All

of these implied that Asia was more extensive and the Ocean not so wide as

had been thought. From his sailing experience and his study of these and

other references, “Columbus estimated that he had only to sail approximately

twenty-five hundred miles westward from the Canary Islands in order to reach

the Orient” (ibid.). Rather than an insurmountable barrier, Columbus seemed

to think of the Ocean Sea as a different kind of highway that would link

Europe and Asia (West 1992a: 260).

Although Columbus believed the earth was round, he still lived in a Ptole-

maic, geocentric universe; Copernicus’s views had not yet been published and

Galileo was not yet born. In Columbus’s universe, the sun, moon, planets, and

stars revolved around the earth, suspended in transparent crystalline spheres,

the outermost controlled by the prime mover, a view that made it acceptable to

the Church. These words do not, however, convey much of a sense of how

people felt. Andrés Bernáldez, a contemporary and friend of Columbus,

does it better. It is worth quoting at length a passage from his early

sixteenth-century Historia de los Reyes Católicos:

In the name of God almighty. There was a man of Genoa, a dealer in printed books,
trading in this land of Andalusia, whom they called Christoval de Colón, a man of
very high intellect without much book-learning, very skilful in the art of Cosmography
and of the divisions of the world; who perceived, by what he read in Ptolemy, and
in other books, and by his own discernment, how and in what wise is formed the
world into which we are born and in which we move. This he placed within the
sphere of the heavens, so that it touches them upon no side, nor has aught of firmness
to rest upon, but is only earth and water globed by heat within the hollow vault of
the sky.

52

This was, clearly, a much smaller and cozier universe than the one we are

familiar with. There was no notion of an expanding universe, “light years,” or

the infinity of space and time, let alone “black holes,” instead the earth floats in

a hollow but enclosed vault, surrounded by heat (presumably from the sun),

and the spheres that held the planets and stars.

A geocentric worldview did not impede Columbus’s nautical calculations

since the heavens had been plotted and the movements of the stars were

known, yet, according to Morison, “(C)elestial navigation formed no part of

the professional pilot’s or master’s training in Columbus’s day, or for long

52
The Historia was not printed until the mid-nineteenth century, but manuscript copies existed.

The English translation of the passage is from Young (1893, my emphasis, n.p.).

282 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



after his death” (1942, vol. I: 243). Instead, Columbus depended on what is

called “dead reckoning” which involved little more than a compass,

compass card, and some way of calculating the speed of the vessel and

distance, none of which were very accurate at the time.
53

However, in plotting how to get from one known place to another he also

used portolan charts, which were fairly accurate maps depicting landmasses

and coastal outlines, currents and winds, but were hardly useful in uncharted

waters. These were his practical maps, used for the craft of navigation. But

other maps, known as mappaemundi (world maps), furnished the religious

significance of geography—they “were meant to illustrate biblical geosophy

rather than provide precise locations or directions . . . they lack a single
point of temporal or spatial perspective that would allow the viewer to differ-

entiate between near and far, or between then and now” (Gillis 2004: 39).

They were never intended to be used as practical maps or even to portray

an accurate picture of the physical world; instead they were “the cartographic

equivalent of narrative medieval pictures” and were even referred to as

histories (Woodward 1985: 514). They portrayed significant events in the

history of Christianity from Creation to the Last Judgment, along with sche-

matic geographic locations. Woodward, an eminent historian of cartography,

had earlier moved away from the modernist progressivist narrative and,

perhaps unwittingly, taken a (cultural) anthropological turn—studying these

maps not as precursors of modern maps—“repositories of then current

geographical knowledge”—but in their own terms “as illustrated histories or

moralized, didactic displays in a geographical setting” (ibid.: 515), where

time and space were represented simultaneously.

The best known of the medieval mappaemundi are the T-O maps

(Figure 2),
54

which show a world consisting of three continents often symbo-

lized by the three sons of Noah: Japheth ¼ Europe, Shem ¼ Asia, and Ham ¼

Africa). These continents formed the ecumene (the inhabited world) and were

surrounded by the world ocean (see Andrews 1926: 69; also Campbell 1987;

Westrem 2002; Woodward 1987). The T-O maps with the three-part world

may be one reason that Columbus was unable to “see” what he had found;

53
See Laura Ackerman Smoller (1994: 12ff) for ways medieval astrologers understood and

plotted the movement of the stars. See Morison (1942, vol. I: 243 – 53) for the method of “dead
reckoning” and other mariner’s skills available to and used by Columbus.

54
“In the seventh century Isidore Bishop of Seville drew a world map that shaped European

geographical concepts for nine hundred years. It is simply a “T” inside and “O.” The upper
half of the circle represented Asia, the lower two quarters Europe and Africa. The crossing of
the “T”—the center of the earth—as Jerusalem, the spiritual and historical center of Christian
culture. The expansion of geographical knowledge broke down this world concept. How difficult
the new concepts were to accept is shown in this Florentine book, published slightly more than
three years after Columbus had returned. The Isidorian world map is still present in abstract
form, and Bishop Lilio is skeptical about news of discoveries, ‘unless anyone believes very extra-
ordinary news that the King of Spain, so they say, is sending ships these days to explore new
shores’” (Hough 1980: 33; the embedded quote is of Lilio).

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 283



since there was no place for a four-part world in his imagination, he struggled

valiantly to fit the islands of the Caribbean and the north coast of South

America into his cultural model. It took quite some time before people in

Europe were able to assimilate the notion that there were four parts to the

world, not just three.

Jerusalem was not always in the center of the mappaemundi, but became so

from the thirteenth century on, the period relevant for Columbus’s worldview

(Woodward 1985: 515). Nevertheless, Jerusalem had long been imagined as

the (spiritual) center of the world, the axis mundi—the world’s navel

(cf. Flint 1992: 3 – 41). This was important both because it is the place

where so many biblical events took place and because for Columbus and

his contemporaries it was the place where prophesied events will take place

(as it is for today’s fundamentalists). But first, it had (has) to be back into

Christian hands.

If the medieval maps gave a sense of the spatial configuration of the world,

the temporal element was provided by the Christian apocalyptic worldview

taken from Revelation. In this view, preceding the end of the world will be

plagues and pestilences, earthquakes, and other unusual and horrific natural

disasters. The Antichrist, associated with the “Whore of Babylon,” will try

to dissuade believers from their faith. The faithful must expend efforts to

convert the Jews and other unbelievers to Christianity, recapture Jerusalem,

and rebuild the Temple before Christ can come again.

FIGURE 2 Example of a T-O Map. From, De Origine & laudibus scientiarum, by Bishop
Zachaias Lilio (Florence 1496). Used with permission of The John Carter Brown Library at
Brown University.

284 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



Apocalypticism has always been a strong strand of monotheistic religious

traditions. In Christianity, German theologian Kasemann proclaims that the

“apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology” (quoted in McGinn

1979: 1), though more prominent at some times than at others. In the medieval

period it was quite widespread, especially among certain groups such as the

Franciscans. This was the group Columbus was most associated with, begin-

ning, perhaps, from the time when he lived with his wife Felipa Perestrella y

Moniz on Porto Santo, where his son Diego was born. It is known that a

Franciscan friary was nearby (West and Kling 1991: 56). His association

with the Franciscans becomes better known from the time he arrived as a

widower in Spain in 1485, when it is believed he called at the monastery of

La Rabida with young Diego in tow. It seems highly likely that he stayed

there for some time and discussed his plans for the voyage, because a resident

monk, Fray Antonio de Marchena, arranged for Columbus’s first meeting with

Queen Isabela. Another monk at La Rabida, Fray Juan Perez, became

Columbus’s closest friend and personal counselor. In 1491 when Columbus’s

plan had been rejected, seemingly for the last time, and he planned to try his

luck with the King of France, Perez arranged another audience with the Queen

who, in turn, asked for one more assessment from the committee. When they

rejected it again and Columbus had left the Spanish court determined to

present it to the Kings of England or France, Luis de Santangel stepped in

and persuaded Ferdinand and Isabela to reconsider. They did so, and

quickly dispatched a courier to command that Columbus return to them.

Perez also performed the mass on 2 August 1492 just before the departure

from Palos. Upon his return from the first voyage Columbus stayed at La

Rabida for several weeks, told Perez about the marvelous things he had

seen, and tried to convince him join the second voyage to see to the conversion

of the Indians (West and Kling 1991: 56 – 57).

The Franciscans, influenced by the views of the medieval abbot Joachim of

Fiore, elaborated the apocalyptic schema by outlining three stages or ages:

“The age from Adam to Christ corresponded to God the Father. This was

the layman’s church. The age from Christ to 1260 corresponded to God the

Son. This was the priest’s church. Joachim prophesied that a third age of

the Holy Ghost would begin in 1260. This was to be the friars’ Church”

(Phelan 1970: 14). The friars’ church would be a period of peace and apostolic

poverty in which all people would lead a contemplative life. Some Joachites

believed the third age, also known as the Age of the Spirit or, significantly, the

Age of Gold, had begun in 1254/5. In any case, Columbus believed he was

living in the third age and “the eschatological clock was ticking.”

C R I T I C A L I S S U E S R E V I S I T E D

We can never know for sure what Columbus was like, what he was thinking, or

what motivated him; we cannot get into his mind. But meaning is not

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 285



something hidden inside the mind or brain; it is constructed from the symbolic

repertoire available in a culture, and “culture is public because meaning is”

(Geertz 1973: 12). Thus, it can be investigated. “[F]rom the fourth century

until the middle of the nineteenth the Christian religion was the principal

force molding the European and American mind. . . . [that] the Church
proved herself, when not the mater, at least the matrix of Western thought”

(White 1942: 45).
55

Christianity provided the dominant symbolic repertoire

and the narrative pattern within which the symbols derived their meaning.

Acknowledging the contributions of cultural anthropologists on this issue,

the well-known historian, William McNeill, wrote a book called Mythistory

to show the kinship between myth and history. For the past to become

history, he says, “facts have to be put together into a pattern that is under-

standable. . . [and furthermore] the arrangement of facts to make history
involve(d) subjective judgments and intellectual choices” (1986: 4 – 5); it is

the mythical substrate that most often provides the pattern that determines

the arrangement. Myth, in this sense, is not about false things, but is the

widest cosmological context in which people situate and interpret their

lives. As anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski said long ago, “myth is not

merely a story told, but a reality lived” (1954: 100). While Malinowski was

speaking of the Trobriand Islanders among whom he was living, it is just as

applicable to Columbus, and to our own society. Religious myth has social

implications; conversely social events are made to speak to religious

themes.
56

The Christian myth is not about just the past, but the future.

In his brilliant article “Christian Myth, Christian History,” Lynn White

who, prior to McNeill coined the term “myth-history,” claimed that

“Christianity above all other religions has rashly insisted that its myth really

happened in time. It was not merely a dramatization of the common denomi-

nator of all religious experience; it was likewise a sequence of historic events”

(1942: 155). One of the characteristics of living within a Christian worldview,

White says, is its bifocal nature—every event has double significance. A

Christian lives both in time and eternity and tends to interpret things from

this dual perspective of both history and myth. “Myth is defined as the drama-

tization in temporal terms of things seen from the non-temporal standpoint of

eternity” (White 1942: 148). Thus could Columbus imagine his discovery both

as an historical feat accomplished in the year 1492 under the auspices of the

Catholic monarchs and, more importantly, as an eschatological event that had

been foretold. Once the event was situated in that context, it was reasonable to

assume that certain other prophesied events would surely follow. In short,

55
With great prescience, he goes on to say that even when not ostensibly religious the secular-

ized versions of Christianity became the “liberal creed of the Enlightenment” (1942: 145).
56

Western history is rarely taught this way and therefore an important door to understanding
remains shut. I remember how suddenly western history began to make much more sense when, as
a student at Harvard Divinity School, I took courses in Christian history.

286 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



biblical myth informed what he saw, what he found, and what it meant. If this

is the way Columbus was thinking, then what he accomplished was not so

much a “discovery” but a revelation—an important step in uncovering

God’s plan. Perhaps it is not coincidental that Apocalypse means Revelation.

C O N C L U D I N G P O I N T S

Why should we care about the thoughts and actions of a man who lived over

500 years ago? What, if anything, might it contribute to contemporary society?

Situating Columbus and the encounter within a Christian apocalyptic scenario

helps to relocate some of the responsibility for the consequences of the

encounter. Many of us may find the scenario disturbing, even reprehensible,

but we can hardly blame Columbus personally for holding it. Not only were

there no viable alternatives available to him, as there are for today’s funda-

mentalists, but he had been dead for more than six years by the time his

friend Las Casas changed his views about the Indians.
57

In no way is this

meant to excuse the devastation that occurred, but it broadens the terrain of

the debate. To criticize and excoriate Columbus as so many have done and

continue to do, ignores the cultural context in which he moved and the

religious ideas that informed it.

To criticize historians for their lack of attention to this context only goes so

far. Even the sympathetic commentators who have presented the religious

context have failed to undertake a critical investigation of the religious

ideas themselves and their destructive implications. A critical assessment of

religion seems to be taboo even among secular historians. Such a critique is

beyond the scope of an already long paper, but it is part of my broader

project; here I will briefly indicate what I think must be done.

The millennial, apocalyptic scenario that stirred Columbus did not die with

him but made the transatlantic crossing with the Puritans who founded the

“New Jerusalem” in New England. Through the Puritans these ideas entered

into the American mainstream where they have had a powerful grip on

American imagination, helping to shape a particular vision of the place of

the United States in history and the way Americans understand themselves

and their destiny. For many people, the Christian myth still forms the basis

for the construction of meaning and for understanding world events. More-

over, the apocalyptic strain in Christianity has been growing stronger. One

need only enter a Christian bookstore to become aware of this. At the time

of the first Gulf War there was an efflorescence of apocalyptic books

portending the end of the world. For example, The Rise of Babylon: Sign of

57
Spanish views about enslaving Indians were changing. Queen Isabela made it clear that her

subjects could not be enslaved, a command that Columbus ignored with the excuse that those
enslaved had resisted and been captured in war. Nevertheless, the debate between Las Casas
and Sepulveda in 1550 – 1551, long after Columbus’s death, showed that many prominent
Spaniards condoned slavery.

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 287



the End Times (Dyer 1991) asked on the front cover whether “ours could be

the last generation?” Saddam Hussein was portrayed as the Antichrist and

his rebuilding of Babylon was taken as a sign that Armageddon was nigh.

More recently he was labeled the Evil One and Babylon was literally

bombed.
58

The extraordinarily popular Left Behind series of Christian

apocalyptic novels is clear indication that this way of thinking is alive and

well in the United States.
59

Ever since the turn of the millennium, it is becoming clearer that the Chris-

tian apocalyptic scenario is a very popular one not just for interpreting current

events, but also for bringing them about. Many see the war in Iraq in this light,

yet Jerusalem remains at center stage, the focus of apocalyptic desire. A small

but dedicated group of Christian fundamentalists have joined with a similar

group of Zionists to blow up the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, currently

the site of a Muslim mosque, on which Abraham is thought to have placed

his faith, so that the third temple may be built.
60

If such should come to

pass, Armageddon will surely follow. We need to be asking: What is the

attraction of the apocalyptic scenario? Why do some people want to be part

of this cosmological but devastating drama? Do they really want to be

present at the “end of days,” and if so, why? Or do they assume they will

be among the elect, the saved, the “raptured”? What are the social conse-

quences of such exclusionary beliefs? Why is the next world, or heaven,

seen as a better goal than making this world a haven for all? With biological,

chemical, and nuclear weapons at our disposal we need to explore ways to

diffuse the power of the apocalyptic myth before its destructive, self-fulfilling

prophecy becomes a reality.

R E F E R E N C E S

Andrews, Michael C. 1926. The Study and Classification of Medieval Mappae Mundi.
Archaelogia 75: 61 – 76.

Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis. Willard R. Trask, trans. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.

Avalos, Hector Ignacio. 1994. The Biblical Sources of Columbus’s “Libro de las
profecı́as.” Traditio 49: 331 – 35.

58
Biblical language, especially apocalyptic references, have been part of the Bush presidency

and his 2004 reelection campaign. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney conjured fears of
Armaggedon if President Kerry should be elected (New York Times, 19 Oct. 1904).

59
The series of ten novels, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, have together sold over

60 million copies and have often topped best seller lists.
60

See The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, by noted
Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg (2000). Also see, “The Oslo Accords and the Temple
Mount: A Case Study of the Movement for the Establishment of the Temple,” a paper by Moti
Inbari presented at the seventh annual conference of the Center for Millennial Studies, November
2002, and published in 2003 (Hebrew Union College Annual 74: 279 – 323); “Israel’s Y2K
Problem” by Jeffrey Goldberg (New York Times Magazine, 3 Oct. 1999).

288 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



———. 1996. Columbus as Biblical Exegete: A Study of the Libro de las profecı́as.
In, Bryan F. Le Beau and Menachem Mor, eds., Religion in the Age of Exploration:
The Case of Spain and New Spain. Creighton, Nebr.: Creighton University Press,
59 – 80.

Bataillon, Marcel. 1972. The Idea of the Discovery of America among the Spaniards of
the Sixteenth Century. In, Roger Highfield, ed., Spain in the Fifteenth Century,
1369–1516. Frances M. Lopez-Morillas, trans. London and Basingstoke: The
Macmillan Press.

Brigham, Kay. 1991 Christopher Columbus’s Book of Prophecies: Reproduction of the
Original Manuscipt with English Translation. Quincentenary Edition. TSELF, Fla.
Printed in Spain.

———. 1998. The Importance of the Book of Prophecies in Understanding Columbus.
In, Joseph C. Schnaubelt, O.S.A. and Frederick Van Fleteren, eds., Columbus and
the New World. New York: Peter Lang, Inc.

Campbell, Mary. 1988. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel
Writing 400–1600. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Campbell, Tony. 1987. Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500. The
History of Cartography, vol. 1: 371 – 463.

Columbus, Christopher. 1492 – 1493. Diario. In, Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr.,
eds. and trans., The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America
1492–1493. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

———. 1493. Letter to the Sovereigns. In, Antonio Rumeau de Armas, ed., Libro
Copiador de Cristóbal Colón. Madrid: Testimonio Compania Editorial, 1989.
[An English translation is in Zamora 1993.]

———. 1500. Letter to Dona Juana de Torres. In, Samuel Eliot Morison, ed. and trans.,
Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.
New York: The Heritage Press, 1963.

———. c.1500 – 1502. Libro de las profecı́as. In, Delno West and August Kling, trans.
and commentary, The Libro de las profecı́as of Christopher Columbus. Gainesville,
Fla.: University of Florida Press, 1991.

———. 1504. Lettera Rarissima. In, Samuel Eliot Morison, ed. and trans., Journals
and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.
New York: The Heritage Press. 1963.

Columbus, Ferdinand. 1992[1959]. The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus.
Translated, annotated, and with a new introduction by Benjamin Keen. New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. [The original is undated, but is pre-
1539. This work often is cited as the Historie, an abbreviation of the long title of
an Italian published version of 1571.]

Cummins, J. 1976. “Christopher Columbus: Crusader, Visionary and Servus Dei.”
In, A. Deyermond, ed., Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton.
London: n.p.

d’Ailly, Pierre. 1948[1410]. Imago Mundi. Edwin F. Keever, trans. From copy in
British Museum. Printed by Linprint Company, Wilmington, North Carolina.
[A photocopy was made in 1944 and sent to a number of libraries including
Harvard.]

Delaney, Carol. 1991. The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish
Village Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

———. 1998. Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.

De Lollis, Cesare. 1892 – 1894. Raccolta di documenti e studi pubblicati dalla
R. Commissione Colombiana. Rome: Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione.

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 289



Dugard, Martin. 2005. The Last Voyage of Columbus. New York and Boston: Little,
Brown and Company.

Dyer, Charles H. (with Angela Elwell Hung). 1991. The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the
End Times. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Edwards, John. 1988. Religious Faith and Doubt in Late Medieval Spain: Soria Circa
1450 – 1500. Past and Present 120: 3 – 25.

Elliott, J. H. 1989. Spain and Its World, 1500–1700. New Haven: Yale University
Press.

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. 1991. Columbus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Flint, Valerie I. J. 1992. The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Frei, Hans. 1974. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Gillis, John R. 2004. Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the
Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gorenberg, Gershom. 2000. The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the
Temple Mount. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goldberg, Jeffrey. 1999. Israel’s Y2K Problem. New York Times Magazine, 3 Oct.
Granzotto, Gianni. 1985. Christopher Columbus. New York: Doubleday and Company,

Inc.
Hamdani, Abbas. 1979. Columbus and the Recovery of Jerusalem. Journal of the
American Oriental Society 99, 1: 39 – 48.

Harding, Susan. 2000. The Book of Jerry Falwell. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.

Harley, J. B. and David Woodward, eds. 1987. The History of Cartography.
vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Harrisse, Henry. 1866. Notes on Columbus. New York: Privately Printed.
Hough, Samuel J. 1980. The Italians and the Creation of America. Catalog prepared for

an exhibition at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence,
Rhode Island.

Inbari, Moti. 2003. The Oslo Accords and the Temple Mount: A Case Study of the
Movement for the Establishment of the Temple. Hebrew Union College Annual
74: 279 – 323. [The paper was originally presented at a 2 Nov. 2002 conference of
the Center for Millennial Studies.]

Irving, Washington. 1866[1827]. The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.
3 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam; Hurd and Houghton.

Jane, Cecil. 1988[1930, 1933]. The Four Voyages of Columbus. New York: Dover
Publications.

Kadir, Djelal 1992 Columbus and the Ends of the Earth. Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press.

Keen, Benjamin, trans. 1992[1959]. The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by His
Son Ferdinand. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Kolve, V. A. 1996. A Play Called Corpus Christi. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Komroff, Manuel. 1930. The Travels of Marco Polo. Garden City, N.J.: Garden City

Publishing Co., Inc.
Las Casas, Bartolomé. 1971[c.1527]. History of the Indies. Excerpts trans. and ed. by

Andrée Collard. New York: Harper & Row.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1954[1948]. Magic, Science and Religion. New York:

Doubleday.
McGinn, Bernard. 1979. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages.

New York: Columbia University Press.

290 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



McNeill, William. 1986. Mythistory and Other Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

Menocal, Maria Rosa. 1994. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric.
Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Milhou, Alain. 1983. Colon y su Mentalidad Mesianica en el Ambiente Franciscanista
Español. Valladolid: Seminario Americanista de la Universidad.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. 1942. Admiral of the Ocean Sea. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown
& Co.

———. trans. 1963. Journals and other Documents on the Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus. New York: The Heritage Press.

Nader, Helen, ed. and trans. 1996. The Book of Privileges Issued to Christopher
Columbus by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, 1492–1502. Berkeley: University
of California Press.

Navarette, Martin Fernández de 1825. Colección de los viages y descubrimientos.
Madrid: Imprenta real.

O’Gorman, Edmundo. 1961. The Invention of America. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.

Phelan, J. L. 1970. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Phillips, Carla Rahn. 1992. The Portraits of Columbus: Heavy Traffic at the Intersec-
tion of Art and Life. Terrae Incognitae: The Journal for the History of Discoveries
24: 1 – 28.

Phillips, William D., Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips. 1992. The Worlds of Christopher
Columbus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rawlings, Helen. 2002. Church, Religion and Society in Early Modern Spain.
Hampshire, England and New York: Palgrave.

Reeves, Marjorie. 1969. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study
of Joachimism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Romm, James. 2001. Biblical History and the Americas: The Legend of Solomon’s
Ophir, 1492 – 1591. In, P. Bernardini and Norman Fiering, eds., The Jews and the
Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800. New York and Oxford: Berghahn
Books.

Rumeau de Armas, Antonio. 1989. Libro Copiador de Cristóbal Colón. Madrid:
Testimonio Compania Editorial.

Rusconi, R., ed. 1997. The Book of Prophecies Edited by Christopher Columbus.
B. Sullivan, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Russell, J. B. 1991. Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians.
New York: Praeger.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. 1990. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the
Columbian Legacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1962. The Meaning and End of Religion. New York:
A Mentor Book, The New American Library.

Smoller, Laura Ackerman. 1994. History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian
Astrology of Pierre D’Ailly, 1350–1420. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Sweet, Leonard. 1986. Christopher Columbus and the Millennial Vision of the New
World. The Catholic Historical Review 72, 3: 369 – 82, 715 – 16.

Taviani, Paolo Emilio. 1985. Christopher Columbus: The Grand Design. Novara, Italy:
Instituto Geografico de Agostini.

Thacher, John Boyd. 1903 – 1904. Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His
Remains. 3 vols. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker
Press.

C O L U M B U S ’ S U L T I M A T E G O A L 291



Todorov, Tzvetan. 1985[1984]. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.
Richard Howard, trans. New York: Harper Colophon Books.

Varela, Consuelo. 2003[1982]. Cristóbal Colón: Textos y documentos competos.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1962. The Meaning of “Discovery” in the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Centuries. The American Historical Review 68, 1: 1 – 21.

Watts, Pauline Moffitt. 1985. Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of
Christopher Columbus’s “Enterprise of the Indies.” American Historical Review
90, 1: 73 – 102.

———. 1992. The New World and the End of the World: Evangelizing Sixteenth-
Century Mexico. In, Irma B. Jaffe, Gianni Eugenio Viola, and Franca Rovigatti,
eds., Imagining the New World: Columbian Iconography. Catalogue for a quincen-
tenary exhibit sponsored by the New York Historical Society, 29 – 39. Rome and
New York: Istituto Della Enciclopedia Italiana.

———. 1993. Apocalypse Then: Christopher Columbus’s Conception of History and
Prophecy. Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, no. 19: 1 – 10.

West, Delno C. 1987. Wallowing in a Theological Stupor or a Steadfast and
Consuming Faith: Scholarly Encounters with Columbus’s Libro de las Profecı́as.
In, Donald T. Gerace, ed., Columbus and His World. Proceeedings of the First
San Salvador Conference. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: College Center of the Finger Lakes.

———. 1992a. Christopher Columbus and His Enterprise to the Indies: Scholarship of
the Last Quarter Century. The William and Mary Quarterly 49, 2: 254 – 77.

———. 1992b. Christopher Columbus, Lost Biblical Sites, and the Last Crusade. The
Catholic Historical Review 77, 4: 519 – 41.

West, Delno and August Kling, eds. 1991. The Libro de las profecı́as of Christopher
Columbus. Trans., with commentary by the editors. Gainesville, Fla.: University
of Florida Press.

Westrem, Scott D. 2002. Making a Mappamundi: The Hereford Map. Terrae
Incognitae 34: 19 – 33.

Wey-Gomez, Nicolas. N.d. (forthcoming). The Machine of the World: Place and
Colonialism in Columbus’s Invention of the American Tropics. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.

White, Lynn, Jr. 1942. Christian Myth and Christian History. Journal of the History of
Ideas 3: 145 – 58.

Woodward, David. 1985. Reality, Symbolism, Time, and Space in Medieval World
Maps. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75, 4 (Dec.): 510 – 21.

———. 1987. Medieval Mappaemundi. In, Harley, J. B. and David Woodward, eds.
The History of Cartography. vol. 1: 286 – 370.

Wright, John Kirtland. 1966. Terrae Incognitae: The Place of Imagination in
Geography. Human Nature in Geography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
68 – 88.

Young, George, ed. 1893. The Columbus Memorial. Philadelphia: Jordan Bros.
Zamora, Margarita. 1993. Reading Columbus. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

292 C A R O L D E L A N E Y



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.