Encounters Unforeseen- 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

  King Ansa, the paramount King of Edina,7 observed the fleet was of unprecedented size and was pleased. His people, an Akan tribe, traded gold mined in local hillside tunnels and Guinea’s interior to other coastal kingdoms, obtaining in return slaves to work the tunnels, farm, and do other labor. Ansa also had traded gold to the Portuguese for almost a decade, obtaining cloth, iron, and slaves the Portuguese purchased from the Wolof (Senegal) or Beny (Benin, Nigeria). The trade with the Portuguese always had been profitable and peaceful, and they valued gold more dearly than others. They had never sought to claim his land as their own.

  But the pale men who landed at the beach the next morning didn’t resemble previous traders. Some were finely dressed noblemen. Others obviously bore concealed weapons—and there were far more of them than necessary to accomplish any trade. They gathered at the foot of a large tree, hoisted their king’s shields on it, and set a table with a wooden cross in the shade of its limbs, and their apparent prince sat in a high chair, waiting.

  King Ansa grew angry and fearful. He knew the hidden arms, the shields, the cross, and the prince’s throne were not about trade. But he hid distrust and alarm and ceremoniously led his warriors, armed with spears and bows and arrows, onto the beach to the beat of drums and other instruments.

  D’Azambuja rose and advanced to greet him, whereupon Ansa pronounced, “Peace, peace,” in Akan, and d’Azambuja’s interpreter translated. Greetings to and from King João continued some moments.

  “King João has always appreciated that King Ansa loads the Portuguese ships rapidly when they call here,” d’Azambuja began, waiting for the interpreter to translate. “King João wishes to reciprocate this love and invite you and your people to embrace Christianity so that your souls may be saved. If you receive the baptismal water, the eyes of your soul will see clearly and João will regard you as friend and brother and help you in all your need. As a token of João’s esteem, he has dispatched myself and other noblemen to trade merchandise never before seen in Guinea.”

  D’Azambuja studied King Ansa’s reaction as the interpreter caught up, but Ansa neither smiled with pleasure nor winced with concern.

  “If you permit, King João wishes to build a fortress here to house these riches and my men,” d’Azambuja continued. “It would be the base for future merchandise trafficking and available to defend you and your people. It would be an honor for a Guinean king to have it built, and João has selected you over King Bayo of Samma because of his high esteem for you and the love you have shown. You would become powerful in this land and the lord of your neighbors.”

  King Ansa watched d’Azambuja’s gestures as he spoke, reflecting with trepidation that Portuguese weaponry was far superior to his warriors’ own. When d’Azambuja finished, Ansa gazed at the ground to collect his thoughts.

  “I appreciate King João’s gracious concern,” Ansa responded through the interpreter, pausing to raise his eyebrows and linger on the words chosen, “with my soul and well-being. I do deserve that. For years, I have fairly traded with João’s people. I’m surprised by your arrival. Previous Portuguese traders have been ill dressed and ragged, desirous of quickly trading and then returning to their homes. But you come with many people, including noblemen bedecked in finery, and now ask to establish a residence.”

  Ansa gazed directly into d’Azambuja’s eyes, commanding that he listen.

  “This profoundly disturbs me. You and your men should depart. Men of nobility always require things on a lavish scale and would not endure the simplicity of my kingdom. Friends who meet occasionally remain better friends than they would be if neighbors. The human heart is like the waves of the sea crashing upon a rock, whereby both the wave and the rock are damaged by the contact. I do not wish to disobey King João. To the contrary, I believe peace, trade, and openness to learning of King João’s god would better flourish if you depart.”

  The men on the beach—black and white, minimally and fully clothed, and armed—paused in silence for d’Azumbuja’s reply, gripping their weapons.

  D’Azambuja stared steadfastly back at Ansa. “King João has sent me here because he desires peace and closer friendship with you. João trusts you to allow and assist my men to live without harm in a strange land where we will depend on assistance for food and survival. João is fair and immensely powerful. My men and I are the least of his subjects, and we fear him more than death itself. We will strictly perform João’s command that peace and concord be maintained.”

  King Ansa again paused to consider the situation. He reflected that perhaps there could be a benefit from the proposed relationship and that, regardless, his people on the beach could be slaughtered if he did not accept. After a moment, he replied curtly, “I will permit the fortress to be built so long as peace and truth are kept. If not, I and my people can easily depart this village and leave you unassisted.”

  Ansa stepped back to signal the meeting was over. He chose not to commit to learning about Christianity. He suspected that d’Azambuja, having obtained permission to build a fortress, did not truly care about the response. King Ansa would continue to worship his own gods and the spirits of his ancestors who kept watch over the living. He left the beach to a drumbeat.

  On the following day, d’Azambuja’s men commenced preparing for the fortress’s construction on a low rock tableau on the sea. Some of King Ansa’s subjects attacked them because the site chosen was holy ground for their spirit worship. D’Azambuja rushed to quell the disturbance, rebuking the builders and distributing gifts to the attackers. The construction proceeded on the same site, and the fortress wall was completed within twenty days. But the gifts were insufficient. King Ansa’s subjects remained unhappy, quarrels continued, and d’Azambuja soon decided to burn Ansa’s village. He said he was establishing peace firmly.

  The Portuguese quickly built a church near the tree where d’Azambuja’s chair had been set, and Mass was said daily for the soul of Prince Henrique. The church graveyard steadily filled as jungle diseases beset them. The fortress and settlement were named São Jorge da Mina and grew rapidly as King Ansa’s people traded gold for slaves—most bought by the Portuguese from the Wolof and Beni—who in return produced more gold.

  Many Europeans came to believe that Mina was the Ophir from which King Solomon had annually imported gold. Mina augmented João’s stature among Christian princes, and many of his subjects now wondered whether it was their own king—not Fernando of Castile— who would retake Jerusalem from the infidel.

  The fort at Mina de Oro, taken from the Cantino World Map of 1502.

  ISABEL AND FERNANDO

  Inquisition, 1480–1483

  By 1480, Cardinal Mendoza and Fray Talavera’s two-year campaign to bring conversos to the faith was viewed by all as a failure. There was little change in the rituals and practices of Catholicism in Andalusia, and Seville’s leading conversos were openly dismissive that an inquisition would be initiated.

  In September, Isabel and Fernando issued an edict accepting the pope’s 1478 bull and establishing an inquisition of the conversos in Andalusia, explaining that they were appointing two Dominicans as inquisitors for Seville in furtherance of preserving the faith, saving souls, and punishing bad Christians, as well as clearing the reputation of good Christians. Their edict quashed the issue whether the inquisition could apply to those whose conversions had been absolutely forced, stating simply that conversos hadn’t been pressured or forced. The sovereigns expected the inquisitors, whom Torquemada approved, would be zealous and uncompromising. But, when the inquisitors published the edict in Seville, they found themselves ignored.

  Affronted, Isabel and Fernando ordered all Andalusian noblemen to support the inquisitors. The Sevillian conversos became alarmed, some began preparations to emigrate to Portugal, Grenada, or Africa, and thousands fled Seville to reside in Andalusian towns controlled by Guzmán, Ponce de León, and other noblemen, many of whom took pity and gave shelter. In January 1481, the inquisitors responded by
advising the nobility to seize and deliver the conversos who had fled and their property to the prison in Seville, warning the nobility they risked their own excommunication, trial as heretics, and property seized if they harbored heretics. Years earlier the nobility would have scorned and punished such a demand from two friars, but Isabel and Fernando’s authority to discipline powerful nobility— and over the inquisition itself—now could be ignored only at the risk of grave peril. Many conversos returned to Seville.

  The inquisitors gathered evidence and, by February, the first six men and women were charged, arrested, and imprisoned in Fray Hojeda’s monastery and their properties sequestered. Their identities were not publicly revealed, nor were they informed of the witnesses against them. They were given a nonpublic audience before the inquisitors, afforded the opportunity to confess, judged guilty of heresy, and then taken to Seville’s great cathedral, where Hojeda pronounced the sentence—burning at the stake—whereby they would be reconciled to Christ. Soldiers marched them to a field outside the city walls, the Tablada, and tied them to stakes, where they were given a final opportunity to repent and receive mercy—strangulation before the fires were lit. None accepted Christ, and they slowly expired in horrific agony, their flesh roasting from the feet up, their lungs suffocating in billows of smoke.

  Within days, the inquisitors alleged that three of the wealthiest conversos in Seville had conspired armed resistance to the inquisition. Their property was confiscated and they, too, were burned at the stake.

  Few people witnessed these spectacles as the plague had returned to Andalusia, and Sevillians were reluctant to leave their homes, no less gather with strangers publicly. Perhaps fifteen thousand persons would die of the plague in the following months in Seville alone, a third of the city’s population.

  As the plague raged during the summer, the inquisitors traveled from town to town, congregation to congregation, refining their operating procedures and augmenting their staff to include fiscal assessors, lawyers, and clerks. They instituted the practice used in prior inquisitions of affording a term of grace in which a converso could repent and reconcile to Christianity—and during which every Christian had a duty to provide incriminating evidence. A converso who denounced heresies within the grace period would be reconciled to the church and required to serve penance—such as payment of fines and wearing a yellow robe emblazoned with an X and a conical hat (a sanbenito and coroza) for months. Those failing to denounce themselves were accused and tried, bearing the burden of proving innocence and forfeiting a fraction of their property to witnesses for the inquisitors. Conversos quickly came to understand that the result of trial audiences almost always was conviction.

  The inquisitors wanted the conversos to fear not only damnation and the inquisitors but their neighbors—friend or enemy—and family, who might act as informants. Fear of thy neighbor was meant to extend the inquisitors’ limited reach, with mass denunciation and reconciliation the principal objective, not trial audiences, and during 1481 most Sevillian conversos chose denunciation. Perhaps three hundred in total were burned at the stake—a number and spectacle dwarfed by thousands of diseased, dead bodies taken by the plague to be burned, buried, or simply decay throughout the city and its environs. But the inquisitors instilled fear in every converso and implicated every old Christian’s duty to provide evidence, and this fear vastly exceeded their actual reach. Some conversos wrote Pope Sixtus IV to decry the arbitrariness and cruelty of the proceedings.

  There was other converso resistance, and Isabel was deeply affronted by an anonymous pamphlet circulating in Seville that asserted Judaism was superior to Christianity and could be practiced concurrently. She directed Talavera to respond, and he wrote a vitriolic counterattack refuting the doctrinal errors of the heretic, explaining Catholic doctrines and practices were irreconcilable to Judaism—the synagogue of Satan—and admonishing that heretics deserved punishment. He remained steadfast to the principles that a true convert was as much a Christian as any other, and that Jews and Mudejar never baptized were not heretics. Yet, while he had opposed the inquisition, he now warned that Christ was armed and God’s justice was cruel and vengeful. Isabel drew comfort from her confessor’s publication, particularly his characterization of God’s justice.

  In 1481, Fernando requested papal permission to increase the number of inquisitors in Andalusia and began to implement the inquisition in Aragón based on preexisting papal authorization. Pope Sixtus IV responded by expressing his disappointment with the Andalusian inquisition, criticizing the behavior of the inquisitors. In reply, Fernando indicated his displeasure with the criticisms, and the pope granted Fernando’s request, including the appointment of Fray Torquemada as an inquisitor.

  But the pope’s discomfort hardened, and he published a bull publicly charging that the inquisition in Aragón was not motivated by faith and the salvation of souls but by lust for wealth, indicating that the identities of witnesses could no longer be kept secret and sentences rendered were appealable to Rome. Fernando responded that he would not implement these changes, and Isabel sent the pope her own handwritten letter, explaining that the sovereigns were motivated by faith, not wealth. The pope soon withdrew his conditions and authorized the inquisition in Aragón on Fernando’s terms.

  Isabel and Fernando were pleased by the process of the inquisition and proud of it. The mass reconciliations and repentances confirmed the beneficence of their endeavor—the saving of souls and aggrandizement of Christianity throughout their realm. The burnings at the stake and other punishments confirmed the endeavor’s righteousness—the purification of their realms and the faith. They came to perceive that both conversions and reconciliations under threat of force were true, at least from the perspective of Christ’s teachings. For them, there was but one true faith to which a man could rightly believe, whether or not he arrived at this belief on his own initiative.

  With papal approval, Isabel and Fernando appointed Torquemada Grand Inquisitor in charge of Castile’s inquisition in 1482 and, following papal approval for Aragón’s inquisition, of Aragón’s inquisition, as well. In 1483, Isabel and Fernando took steps to separate Jews from the rest of Andalusian society by expelling most of them from Andalusia. They understood that the inquisition and this expulsion contributed to the economic dislocation of Andalusia and all Spain and thereby financial injury to everyone. But they felt this dislocation a necessary price to achieve a purer faith, and they appreciated the inquisition as a source of Crown revenue.

  They had a use for this revenue. Each now felt destined as the Lord’s servant to pursue the completion of the Reconquista, to which they had now turned their full energy.

  CRISTÓVÃO

  Voyage to Mina, (1482–1483)

  Cristóvão learned King João was commissioning a fleet to resupply Mina. Filipa’s health was declining, doctors were unable to identify the cause or cure, and it was an inopportune time to leave her. But Cristóvão recognized he needed more accomplishment to be noticed at court and merit an audience with the king, and the credentials of having sailed to Mina and met with d’Azambuja were enticing. He longed to visit the source of gold, to confirm for himself that the earth could be sailed below the equator, and to investigate how best to sail west on the Ocean Sea. He explained the importance of participating on the voyage to his family and shipped to Lisbon to enlist on it as a common seaman, leaving Isabel to nurse Filipa and raise Diogo.

  After departing Lisbon, as his ship coursed south, Cristóvão attempted to estimate the length of a degree upon the earth,8 and thereby calculate the circumference of the earth, by estimating the distance between two points of known latitude. He confirmed for himself that one degree was 56.67 Roman miles (or 52.1 modern statutory miles), shorter than Ptolemy’s estimate9 and, Cristóvão believed, the same as estimated by the Arab geographer Al-Farghani (Alfraganus, ninth century AD). He concluded the earth’s circumference was about 20,400 Roman miles (or about 18,800 statutory miles), almost 10 percent
shorter than estimated by Ptolemy.10

  He grew excited when the fleet passed the Canaries, pleased that the winds and currents continued to flow southwest offshore as he remembered and thrilled to enter seas new to him. He was astonished by the enormous cloud of dust rising above the African desert, captivated by the desert’s abrupt termination at the Río de Senega, and roused in anticipation of Mina as the fleet veered southeast and the days and nights grew hotter. Lookouts sighted sirens swimming in the sea, and he peered to behold their faces, observing they did not resemble women as much as sailors said.11

  At night, the heavens revealed new constellations, including a southern cross spoken of by mariners returning from Mina. Cristóvão remembered as a boy being taught in church that the Lord held the earth aloft and that the heavens were the earth’s roof, extending just over the earth’s Northern Hemisphere. The ancients had taught that the heavens were a sphere encircling the entire globe, and he realized the ancients were correct and the church wrong. He pondered that men in Europe stood toe to toe to men in Cathay and that rain fell in opposite direction onto the earth, and he confessed astonishment how the Lord made it work. He was enthralled when the coastline fell away to the east and, at dawn, the ships sailed into the rising sun.

  Cristóvão’s heart pounded as he beheld the landing and beach at Mina, which thronged with people, almost all black. João’s castle sat tiny and alone, remote and nigh inconsequential, the only European structure within hundreds of miles. Cristóvão believed he had crossed the equator12 and verified for himself that Aristotle, St. Augustine, and common knowledge were all wrong—thousands of people lived there.

  In the blazing sun, Cristóvão and crewmates supervised local slaves unloading the vessels’ cargos into the fortress. He listened to their speech and surmised their language held no words common to those he spoke. He prayed at Mina’s church, where the graveyard was full, and reflected that Europeans frequently died there. He overheard the soldiers departing warn their replacements of the horrors of the post—terrible food, no wine, swarming insects, wrenching diseases, and diarrhea—and some of its marvels, such as beasts and serpents of the jungle and slaves that worked and died in the gold tunnels. The gold was King João’s property, but each man had hoarded and hidden his own stash, which, for those who survived, justified the hardships endured.