The Last Voyage of Columbus Page 2
The idea of a flat earth was widely accepted at the time. One theory even supposed the horizontal sphere rested atop the backs of four elephants, all balanced atop the shell of a mighty tortoise. Both these notions troubled the Greek philosopher Aristotle, for they made no sense. When a ship sailed out to sea, its hull disappeared over the horizon before its sails. A flat earth would mean both hull and sail would diminish from view together. Just as illogically the earth cast a circular shadow on the moon during eclipses. The world, Aristotle concluded, was most obviously round. His theory was soon accepted, and as Greek and Roman cartographers mapped this new worldview, east-west and north-south lines were added, and the terms “latitude” and “longitude” given them.
In the second century AD, Claudius Ptolemy, a scholar at Egypt’s Alexandria library, undertook his comprehensive study of the cosmos, Geography. Ptolemy evinced a certain arrogance, fortified by his immense knowledge. He once wrote a tome on mathematics with a lengthy title that he shortened to Almagest—the “Greatest.” He was just as zealous about propagating his world knowledge in Geography. Ptolemy ruminated over the text, exhaustively analyzing and rejecting many widely held theories about the earth in his attempts to make the book definitive. The final result was a work of genius that still influences mankind nineteen centuries later. It includes a world map, more than two dozen regional maps, and a comprehensive listing of the earth’s known cities by latitude and longitude. His world map was the first to be oriented north and showed a planet of three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Ptolemy’s map of the world, however, was also horribly flawed. The Atlantic and Indian oceans were too small. The Pacific was nonexistent. Asia was shown to be far broader than in actuality, covering more than half the world. The coast of China ran south and west until it connected with the African coast, totally enclosing the Indian Ocean. Grievous mistakes all, based on speculation and the deductions of “world” travelers. Ptolemy’s map, however, was accepted as fact.
When the Roman Empire fell, the Alexandria library was looted, and its museum destroyed. In AD 391, a mob of Christian agitators, believing all things secular and intellectual to be evil, burned the library’s contents. Geography was among the books lost. A copy had been spirited away before the fire, which was a lucky break for later generations, for as Europe settled into the Dark Ages, cartography became a dead science. Ptolemy’s work was dismissed as pagan propaganda and then forgotten altogether. Once again it became popular for Europeans to believe that the world was flat. Most maps drawn during this time were speculative, more interested in showing pilgrims the way to Paradise than serving as an accurate outline of land and sea.
Even after the Dark Ages came to an end, the route to Eden remained a fixture of world maps. In keeping with a passage from the book of Genesis—“And the Lord God planted a Garden eastward in Eden”—it was always shown in the east. The seventh-century writings of Isidore of Seville presented these theories as fact. More than seven hundred years later, Sir John Mandeville reinforced the notion. The well-meaning, if self-aggrandizing and misinformed, Englishman’s Travels and Voyages was an account of his various journeys, real and imagined. Based on what he had learned, Mandeville gave clues to Eden’s earthly location. “Of Paradise can I not speak properly, for I have not been there,” he wrote. “This paradise lay near the Orient.” Four mighty rivers—the Nile, Ganges, Euphrates, and Tigris—flowed from its center. He spoke of 7,549 islands nearby, populated by savages.
But the cartographic focus on the east wasn’t solely because of Eden. In 1271 a seventeen-year-old Venetian named Marco Polo traveled to China via ship and camel. By the time he returned home twenty-four years later, Polo had ample knowledge of a part of the world known to few Europeans. The following year Genoa conquered Venice, and Polo was thrown in prison. There he dictated the story of his travels. Completed in 1298 and copied by hand as it was distributed throughout Europe, The Book of Ser Marco Polo told of a land with such ingenious devices as paper money, coal burned for fuel, and a pony express-style mail service. More important to Columbus, Polo vividly described the topography of Asia.
Meanwhile, Geography was quietly making its presence felt in the non-European world. Throughout the centuries Muslim Arabs had used it to produce their own detailed maps of Africa and the Indian Ocean. In the fourteenth century, just as cartography began a European revival, a Benedictine monk came across a rogue copy of Geography while prowling through a used-book store in Constantinople. He purchased the book and took it back to Europe, where, despite the astonishing amounts of forgotten knowledge on its yellowed pages, it languished for another century. In 1478 it was rediscovered yet again and translated into Latin. Thanks to the birth of the printing press, it was finally disseminated throughout Europe. Polo’s writings, which had quietly endured as a travel classic for two centuries, also underwent a surge in popularity as they were printed en masse and widely distributed for the first time.
For mariners like Columbus, who had seen the dawn of maritime maps that showed the European coastline in minute detail, Geography’s long lost guide to the planet was a godsend. That its information dovetailed with Polo’s accounts gave Geography the gravitas of biblical truth. Also, thanks to his work as a chart maker, Columbus’s knowledge of the most modern concepts of the design and construction of maps put him at the forefront of medieval knowledge. He could cite specific references rather than merely speculate. And by his reckoning his voyages across the Atlantic had confirmed his theories. His knowledge was encyclopedic. He considered Cuba to be the Chinese province of Mangi. His impromptu colony of La Navidad was located on the outlying island of Cipangu. Coincidentally, by the time he returned to Spain in 1493, a German navigator and merchant named Martin Behaim had produced a twenty-inch-wide globe showing Ptolemy’s ideas. Although mankind had long considered the world round, that was an abstract intellectual ideal on par with concepts like social equality and the Holy Trinity. Behaim’s globe allowed thinkers and commoners alike to see the world in tactile, three-dimensional fashion—to wrap their hands as well as their minds around Columbus’s theories. The Atlantic was narrower on Behaim’s globe than Columbus knew from firsthand experience, but China was exactly where he had thought. Even the northern tip of Cuba angled in the same direction indicated by Behaim and Ptolemy.
The 1492 voyage had convinced Columbus and the sovereigns that his theories were correct. Clearly this New World, based on all existing knowledge of the planet earth, was actually the outer fringes of the Asian continent. The decision was crucial. Ferdinand and Isabella were not as interested in a new world as in the riches of an old world, the Oriental world. The wealth they sought was not just gold and pearls, but something far more precious: pepper.
And pepper was found only in the East.
CHAPTER THREE
Good Taste
Spices of all kinds were a medieval fixation, but they had been a part of daily life for millennia. In 2600 BC Egyptians fed spices to slaves building the Cheops pyramid. Wealthy Romans slept on pillows scented with saffron to ward off hangovers. A spice market on Via Piperatica—Pepper Street—was vital to the lifeblood of ancient Rome. It was the Romans who invaded Arabia over the cost of pepper and whose legionnaires—rugged men fond of marching into battle wearing perfume—introduced spices to northern Europe and Britain. In addition to aesthetic qualities, salt, pepper, and other spices concealed the aroma of spoiled food and helped preserve slaughtered meat, sometimes for months. As spices became a functional part of all levels of societies, it was only natural that they also became a powerful economic force.
Spices weren’t indigenous to Europe, though. They came from a tropical belt spreading from the monsoon-drenched Asian subcontinent east to the fragrant islands of Malacca, Ceylon, Java, and Sumatra. The journey from there to European palates was long and involved. Arab merchants traveled to India and the “Spice Islands,” then filled their dhows with cargoes of pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cassia, cloves, nutmeg, and vanilla. Then they sailed west again, riding the trade winds across the Arabian Sea to the Horn of Africa and into the Red Sea, that saber-shaped inlet bordered by northern Africa on one side and the Arabian Peninsula on the other. The cargo was offloaded in Syria, near the isthmus that would someday become the Suez Canal. It was then hauled overland by mule and camel caravans into Egypt. After being loaded aboard a new fleet of ships in Alexandria, the spices were shipped northwest across the Mediterranean to Venice, where wholesalers waited to purchase them for disbursement to the apothecary shops and kitchens of Europe. Thanks to an exclusive arrangement between the Arabs and the merchants of Venice dating to the seventh century, the Venetians were the sole European outlet for India’s pepper and spices.
Controlling Europe’s leading commodity allowed Venice to control Europe. When the demand for pepper increased, the Venetians raised prices but artificially reduced supplies. Egypt drove the cost higher by levying a 30 percent tariff on all pepper passing through their ports. Making matters worse, the lone overland route was shut down in 1453, when the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople. This ensured the Venetian and Egyptian stranglehold on the market. The price of pepper increased thirtyfold in the fifteenth century. Venetian merchants flaunted their prosperity by building opulent marble mansions.
By 1492, however, Europeans could not imagine life without spices. Those with the money paid willingly, and those without it found a way to pay. It was a turning point in history, a time when the medieval world’s fixation on the hereafter was being replaced by the Renaissance’s sensual focus on the here and now. Spices were the currency of that transition. One pound of nutmeg was equal trade for seven fattened oxen. One method of preparing rabbit called for cloves, ground almond, saffron, cypress root, s
ugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, while one recipe for stag demanded that the entire animal be roasted in a fireplace, then drawn and quartered and slathered in pepper sauce. Fruit was often boiled and then topped with vinegar, pepper, and cinnamon. People floated spices in their wine or served them on small platters as an after-dinner condiment.
Social position could even be judged by the amount and types of spices served to company. A peasant might offer guests veal seasoned with salt and local spices, but a member of the ruling class would go a step further, adding exotic pepper, nutmeg, and cinnamon. An individual’s status was discernible to the palate, giving rise to a new definition of “taste.” No longer did it refer merely to flavor but also to pedigree and class.
For those with great taste, nothing was more esteemed than pepper. Six and a half million pounds were consumed annually in Europe. The gritty black berry was used to pay debts, bequeathed in wills, and presented as gifts of state. A man would willingly marry below his social position if the bride’s dowry included enough of the spice. Pepper and power were synonymous. As Venice accumulated more and more wealth, it became clear to other nations that breaking Venice’s grasp on the spice trade would make those riches theirs. This desire was foremost on the Spanish sovereigns’ minds, and Columbus knew they might lose faith in his theories should he return empty-handed. So when he was unable to find traditional black pepper on that maiden journey to the New World, he came up with an ingenious hoax: he brought back a quantity of brightly colored dried chilies and rechristened them “red” peppers in his presentation to the sovereigns.
“He who is lord of Malacca,” it was said of the small island where spices grew like weeds, “has his hand on the throat of Venice.” Columbus’s deceit bought him time, but it also whetted the appetites of the Spanish king and queen. They now could reach India via the Atlantic. The era of the Venetians was over, they thought. But Venice’s would not be the only throat they attempted to squeeze.
CHAPTER FOUR
Power
Columbus was not a simple man, nor was he a stranger to court intrigue. But as a traveler of the known world, forced to trust strangers in lands from Africa to Iceland, he took it on faith that a man’s word was binding. A signed contract meant evermore. Thus when Ferdinand and Isabella started to reverse the balance of power in their partnership—indeed, began a sly campaign to reverse the Capitulations of Santa Fe and rob him of all claims in the New World—Columbus’s faith that no such thing would ever occur was almost childlike. But within two months of his return from the first voyage, they commenced an ongoing effort to make their Admiral of the Ocean Sea—also quietly referred to as the Genovese, the outsider, the commoner, and even per rumor, the Jew—expendable. As with all deceptions it began in a most plausible fashion. And as with the many involvements of Ferdinand and Isabella, the primary characteristic of the plot was its ruthlessness.
The two rulers had married in 1469. Isabella was by far the more attractive of the two: petite and beautiful, with auburn hair, calm blue eyes, and a gracious nature. Her devout Catholic character and worldly intellect made her the better of many men—including Ferdinand. She was polished and insightful, an advocate of the arts and literature. Yet she was also a warrior, with battle armor tailored to her boyish physique. Isabella was firm and even ruthless when matters of state demanded, yet loving and maternal to her five children. In many ways that affection extended to all the people of Spain. Her reign was not defined by acts of self-glorification but by acts that glorified her nation.
Their desire to see Spain prosper financially and to see it rise from a fragmented assortment of kingdoms to become the most dominant nation in Europe—if not the entire world—was the most powerful bond between Isabella and Ferdinand. Although something of an egomaniac, Ferdinand was no less committed to Spain’s greatness. Ferdinand was only slightly taller than his diminutive bride, with a ruddy face, bushy auburn eyebrows, and male pattern baldness that accentuated his forehead. His teeth were small and crooked, and he spoke in rapid bursts. Ferdinand was fond of one-upmanship, whether through war, diplomacy, or intrigue.
Ferdinand and Isabella’s marriage had been arranged. She was heir apparent to the mighty Crown of Castile. With its population of six million, Isabella’s massive kingdom cut a swath through the heart of Spain, stretching from the Portuguese border on the west, south to the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, north to the Bay of Biscay, and east as far as San Sebastian and Cartagena. The Moorish kingdom of Granada lay at the southern edge of Castile, a heathen dagger in the heart of her Catholic homeland. It was the only vestige of the Muslim invasion of Spain seven centuries earlier, and Isabella deeply resented the alien incursion. Even in the early days of her reign, the reconquest of Granada was never far from her thoughts.
Ferdinand’s Aragon was elfin in comparison. The lands from the eastern border of Castile to the French border in the Pyrenees were subdivided into the four kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia—their combined population was a fourth of Castile’s total. Yet Ferdinand was a larger-than-life figure, not cowed by Isabella’s more expansive landholdings. He had first proved himself on the battlefield at the age of twelve and had fathered three children out of wedlock soon after. The first time he met Isabella was on October 14, 1469, in Valladolid. Her emissaries had escorted him there, straight from presiding over the Aragon parliament in Zaragoza. Five days later they married. Ferdinand was seventeen. Isabella was just a year older.
Juan of Aragon, Ferdinand’s father, advised the young royals that their true power lay in working together. It was advice that they never forgot. In an arrangement undertaken by few monarchies before or since, Isabella and Ferdinand ruled equally as king and queen. Their likenesses appeared together on coins, and all public documents contained both signatures. Through warfare and diplomacy, Ferdinand and Isabella transformed a land (divided by kingdoms)—characterized by civil war, vigilante justice, and corruption—into a unified country whose powerful influence was felt from Rome to London. Their youngest daughter, Catherine of Aragon, would become the first wife of Henry VIII, a marriage aligning Spain and England until long after Isabella’s untimely death finally separated Ferdinand and Isabella.
They demanded total obedience from the Spanish nobility, installed a code of laws and a judicial system, and ordered that every Spaniard be considered a free man—no serfs or slaves. Additionally, Isabella and Ferdinand reformed the corrupt Spanish clergy, put an end to the sexual debauchery that once defined the royal court, and established a militia to arrest the thieves overwhelming Spain’s highways. And all this was done with an air of frugality. Ferdinand and Isabella preferred to spend the nation’s riches on improving Spain, not on themselves.
Yet for all that progressive brilliance, the sovereigns sometimes seemed mired in the Dark Ages. What became known as the Spanish Inquisition, their ethnic cleansing of Spain that began in 1478, was a revival of the secretive, thirteenth-century papal court that investigated suspected heretics and forced them to change their beliefs. The Spanish Inquisition’s original goal was not to prosecute Jews or Muslims but to determine whether Jews and Muslims who had converted to Catholicism—conversos—were backsliding to their prior faith. Those reverting or practicing Judaism in secret were called Marranos—“pigs”—a reference to the Mosaic laws against pork consumption.
Isabella was the more devout of the two sovereigns, yet she strenuously protested the Inquisition. Ferdinand would hear none of it. He had a bigot’s heart and considered foreigners and heretics the root of all evil. Unifying the Iberian Peninsula and eradicating heresy had been his pet project since becoming king. Ferdinand was so convinced of the need for the Inquisition that even the Catholic Church, in his eyes, could not be trusted to handle such a delicate spiritual matter.