by Andrew Rowen
The commission quickly reviewed the same geographic arguments as before. Ptolemy’s analytics persuaded some the voyage was impossible to sail, and St. Augustine’s views were so interpreted by others. A few believed it had been so long since Creation that it was unlikely that significant new lands would be found. Proponents quoted Aristotle, Seneca, and Esdras, and the papal nuncio himself observed that St. Augustine was great for both learning and holiness but had not been a cosmographer.
Cristóbal definitively proposed the terms on which he would sail. He was to be knighted admiral of all islands and mainland discovered or acquired on behalf of the Crown, a hereditary title in perpetuity, meaning he would be the Crown’s lord over maritime matters in these jurisdictions. He also would become viceroy and governor of these lands, such offices also hereditary in perpetuity, signifying his authority extended over nonmaritime matters, as well. He would share one-tenth of all profits derived from gold, spices, and other merchandise of whatever kind obtained in these lands, with the sovereigns entitled to the remaining profits and bearing the cost of outfitting the vessels and crews. He would have the option to underwrite one-eighth of the cost of vessels and to share in that portion of those vessels’ profits, too.
Talavera was offended and disgusted by this proposal. Colón was expecting the extraordinary simply for the council to approve the voyage’s feasibility, and the excessive recognition and compensation sought substantially diminished the commission’s appetite to do so. Many members found the foreigner’s demand for an important Castilian title of nobility outrageous.
Colón’s supporters implored him to soften his terms and strike a deal. He responded he would not do so, having suffered seven years of scorn by most everyone but the queen, and that two other kings were interested in sponsoring the voyage. He believed he was no longer but a merchant and negotiation no longer appropriate. The Lord had destined that he achieve the voyage—with Fernando and Isabel if that was their destiny or with another sovereign if not. He refused to negotiate a single term, and his supporters cringed.
With João’s advantage looming before them, some members of the commission were inclined to confirm the voyage’s potential feasibility, but the majority was not. Talavera promptly delivered the majority’s conclusion to the sovereigns. He also explained he agreed with the majority but had no objection to proceeding with the voyage as a matter of commercial risk if appropriate terms could be agreed. The king and queen understood the majority’s view that sailing west to the Indies was a fantasy, and they also found Colón’s terms pretentious and incredible. They had pressing matters to resolve regarding Grenada’s administration and were weary of further discussion. One January morning, they summoned Colón and told him they would not sponsor his voyage and that he should depart from the court.
Cristóbal was astounded to be denied. Breathless, he gazed at the floor, betrayed beyond comprehension by the queen’s rejection. He recovered slowly, and, for a brief moment, Cristóbal and Isabel stared into each other’s eyes. Isabel knew she had led him on and let him down and that the time for final separation had come. Her eyes betrayed no sympathy or warmth to the proposal, though her heart held much for him.
Colón departed his audience and, with Fray Pérez, promptly left by mule for Córdoba, oblivious to most about him, the weight of his denial, failure, and poverty—and the utter waste of seven years— crushing upon his consciousness. Yet he had admitted the possibility of the result and steeled himself for it and his resolve was unbroken. As the mule trod slowly toward Córdoba, his misery was tempered by release from the endless futility of Castile and a determination to succeed in France.
Santángel learned of the rejection immediately and also was astounded. He spoke to Fernando, who was irritated to be discussing Colón’s proposal yet again.
“Your Majesty, putting aside the geography, this decision makes little mercantile sense. If Colón finds nothing, he gets nothing— neither wealth nor title—and all the Crown loses is the expense, which is an inconsequential trifle in comparison to the war. It’s a pittance compared to the cost of Princess Isabel’s wedding two years ago.” He paused, but refrained from contrasting it to the expense of the king’s considerable wardrobe, no less the queen’s enormous one. “If he discovers some island—even be it but another Canary Island—the Crown might find enduring profit. If he achieves a route to Cathay before João, either directly or through new discoveries, the Crown would achieve extraordinary trade and wealth.”
“You believe he can sail to the Indies across the Ocean Sea?”
“No. But I know merchants take risks that frequently pay off. The Duke of Medinaceli was ready to underwrite this, and he’s no one’s fool.”
Fernando shook his head, unwilling to spend more time on the topic. “Talk to the queen.”
Luis met with Isabel, who also was irritated to be discussing Colón again.
“Your Majesty, the cost of this voyage is little, and I can arrange that it be borrowed. Sponsoring Colón will not interfere with your consolidation of the conquest. If he finds nothing, he gets nothing. Your reputation and glory have never been greater, and Colón’s failure would not diminish them. João and his father tried this voyage many times and failed without any injury to their reputations. They failed for two decades in Guinea, and look where they are now— they’re almost upon the Indies. The greatest threat to your reputation is that you refuse Colón and he then successfully sails for another, which is precisely what he will do.”
“What does the king think?”
“I believe he’s willing to engage Colón if you are. A possibility of achieving new discoveries before João should be pursued.”
Isabel and Fernando spoke briefly, quickly agreed, and dispatched a messenger to catch Colón to bring him back to court. For the second time that day, they were relieved to be done discussing the proposal—which they believed held scant or no prospect—so they could turn to other business. Colón was found but miles from Santa Fe and brought to Santángel, who informed him that the sovereigns would sponsor his voyage on his terms, except they would not fund the full cost of the voyage. Cristóbal came undone and wept, raptured and stupefied by his fortune’s reversal. He was profoundly grateful to Luis for his intervention. He found a chapel and knelt for hours, honoring the Lord for answering his prayers.
By the end of April, crown advisers and Fray Pérez on Cristóbal’s behalf negotiated written documents regarding the arrangements. Ancillary to his hereditary title and offices, Colón was granted judicial authority over civil and criminal cases with power to punish delinquents and to resolve disputes regarding the profits owing him. In sum, he was titled to islands and mainland possessed on behalf of Castile and delegated executive, administrative, military, and judicial power—including to impose the death penalty—in those lands, with profits inuring to the Crown and Colón.
The sovereigns thus conceded entitlements exceeding those typically granted other maritime explorers. But they retained more for the Crown than retained in the Reconquista or the conquest of the Canary Islands. Neither land nor vassals subjugated would be shared with nobility other than Colón. The sovereigns would retain the lion’s share of any profit, rather than a mere slice by taxation. In the unlikely event something were found, the venture was theirs and Colón’s alone.
In the Alhambra on April 30, the sovereigns signed the title grant knighting Colón contingent upon his discoveries. They provided him a passport to present to those he met confirming their authorization to send him over the ocean seas towards the regions of India for mercantile and religious purposes. They furnished a number of letters introducing him to foreign princes, one addressed to the Grand Khan and others with the name of the prince left blank, expressing their greetings to the recipient and that Colón was authorized to speak on their behalf.
The sovereigns shied from publicizing Colón’s claims that countless peoples would be brought to the faith and scoffed at his frequent boasts that the
voyage’s profits—if the voyage ever returned—would fund the recapture of Jerusalem, and they did not require Colón to enlist missionaries on the voyage. The arrangements also did not mention slaves as merchandise. Later that summer, the sovereigns would authorize Alonso de Lugo to subjugate Las Palmas, welcoming the inhabitants who had agreed to peaceful alliances as the sovereigns’ free vassals and conducting a military conquest of the others, with those captured sold into slavery to fund the conquest after deducting one-fifth of the proceeds as Alonso’s share.
The sovereigns’ advisers set about financing the voyage inexpensively—from the Crown’s perspective—and incentivizing its prompt readiness in light of the race with João to achieve the Indies. The town of Palos recently had been ordered to provide the Crown two equipped vessels for one year because its mariners had violated Portuguese ships or waters. On April 30, the sovereigns issued a decree to Palos ordering that these two vessels be manned and provisioned within ten days of the town’s receipt of the decree, ready to depart on Colón’s order to where he directed in the Ocean Sea. The decree indicated that Colón would pay the crews four months’ salary in advance at customary rates and prohibited Colón or the ships from sailing to Mina. Sovereign orders were issued suspending prosecution of criminals who enlisted to sail, requiring carpenters, merchants, and others to provide Colón goods and services at fair prices, and suspending taxes on such transactions.
Santángel gave and arranged loans covering other expenses, including from his friend the Genoese merchant Francesco Pinelo,1 who lived in Seville and had provided financing for Gran Canaria’s conquest. Indulgences were sold. Cristóbal found another Italian merchant to fund a portion himself—Juanoto Berardi, who also had participated in financing Canarian conquests and its slave trade. Cristóbal had met a shipowner in Puerto de Santa María—Juan de la Cosa—interested in participating in the duke’s proposed voyage and decided to procure the third ship from him. The financiers and shipowner were comforted that additional Canary Islands might be discovered regardless of achieving the Indies.
As the time came to depart Grenada, Cristóbal pondered the guardianship arrangements—whether he returned from the voyage or not—to be made for Diego, then almost twelve, and the need to provide the guardian, be it Violante or Beatriz, appropriate resources. Little Fernando, then three, of course would remain with Beatriz. In early May, Isabel appointed Diego as a page to Prince Juan with an annual salary, although Diego would remain with the guardian selected until later called to court.
Within days, Cristóbal left for little Fernando and Beatriz in Córdoba. Beatriz and the Arana family were amazed, ecstatic, and immensely proud Beatriz’s lover had reached agreement with the king and queen to be knighted upon his discovery of foreign lands. After years of contributing to his support, they expected to become part of his court. Cristóbal asked Beatriz to care for Diego in his absence so the two boys could be together, relying on Diego’s salary as page for his support, and Beatriz happily agreed. In Bartolomé’s absence, Cristóbal asked his friend Diego de Arana—Beatriz’s second cousin with whom she had been raised—to act as the voyage’s alguacil, the quartermaster in charge of drinking water, discipline, justice, and punishment, trusting loyalty over experience.
In mid-May, Cristóbal embraced Beatriz and held little Fernando dearly. Then forty, he understood as well as any man his mortality on the Ocean Sea. He recognized the weather and currents west of the Canaries were unknown and that there was no assurance easterly winds blew across the entirety of the Ocean Sea to Cipangu. He knew it was his conjecture and boasts alone that islands lay east of Cipangu. He promised Beatriz and little Fernando he would return and discussed with Beatriz what to do if he didn’t.
Cristóbal reflected that the struggle to convince the sovereigns had been but intellectual, religious, political, and financial. He departed for Palos to convince experienced seamen to sail with him, a matter of life and death.
ISABEL, FERNANDO, ABRAHAM SENEOR, AND ISAAC ABRAVANEL
Expulsion of the Jews, 1492
With the Reconquista accomplished, Isabel and Fernando reflected together on Torquemada’s admonishment that heresy wouldn’t be eliminated in their kingdoms until they eliminated its root cause, the presence of the Jews. Over the past year, Torquemada had extended the Inquisition’s reach to publicly prosecute both conversos and Jews for the alleged ritual crucifixion of a young Christian boy, securing confessions from multiple witnesses by rack and water torture regardless of the absence of a record of a child missing or the identity of his parents. Torquemada had achieved both the Jews’ burning at the stake and resounding public outrage at the Jewish involvement in the alleged crime.
Yet each sovereign still believed as St. Augustine and Talavera that a Christian became such upon baptism and belief regardless of his father, mother, people, nation, or skin. Isabel had always asserted she was the Jews’ protector and tolerated their separate existence. Fernando had always relied substantially on Jews and conversos to administer Aragón. Together, they had just relied significantly on Jews to finance the Reconquista—and, in particular, on two men, Abraham Seneor and Isaac Abravanel.
Abraham, Castile’s head rabbi and leader of its aljamas, had known and supported Isabel for decades—since when she stood alone upon Brother Alfonso’s death—and had served as the sovereigns’ head tax collector and treasurer of the militia,2 as well as Torquemada’s tax collector in his hometown. Isaac came from a wealthy Castilian family that had fled to Portugal in response to the 1391 pogroms. After serving as a principal financial adviser to King Afonso V, Isaac had fled back to Castile in 1483 to escape punishment for allegedly conspiring with Castile, and then rebuilt his career supporting Isabel and Fernando, farming taxes and serving as treasurer for Cardinal Mendoza’s family and, since 1491, acting as Isabel’s personal financial representative. Isaac also had devoted years to writing philosophic commentaries on the Old Testament, which would become renowned. He believed he was a descendant of David and felt passionately that Jews who abandoned Judaism either lacked reason or had insincere motives and that conversos were insincere opportunists, traitors to their religion and people, and enemies of God. He judged the Inquisition gave conversos what they deserved as traitors and should have anticipated. Perhaps both men believed the Inquisition was not directed at their people but at conversos solely because they were Christian religious criminals. Both had amassed fortunes they believed would continue to buy their and their people’s protection.
Regardless of her beliefs and these attachments, Isabel had grown weary of the continuing strife occasioned by the Jews’ presence, whosoever’s fault. After a decade of decisions dictating the fate of thousands of people, she now had the conviction to contravene her ancestors’ approach and devastate an entire people. Fernando recognized that the Jews’ expulsion might be used to strip their wealth at least as effectively as extorting payments from them to remain in Spain. They both may have foreseen their course of action years earlier and simply shied from it to not disrupt the Jews’ financial contribution to the war effort or avoid the economic dislocation occasioned by the departure of Jewish merchants and professionals. But the triumph at Grenada confirmed to them their destiny as the Lord’s servants—as well as their absolute authority and power—to take the action they would take.
When they decided, Isabel and Fernando did focus on Christ’s teachings and their duty to prepare the world for his return. They chose a path that preserved according to the church and in their perception the voluntary choice of each individual regardless of his father or mother—a choice of conversion to Christianity or exodus.
On March 20 in Santa Fe, Torquemada issued an order of the Inquisition directing the bishop of Gerona to expel all Jews from his diocese in Catalonia by July 31. Closely following, on March 31 in the Alhambra, the sovereigns signed an Edict of Expulsion providing that all Jews had until July 31 to depart their realms under penalty of death and confiscation of all property.
The Edict explained that communication between Jews and Christians continued to harm Christians regardless of segregation of the aljamas, the expulsion of the Jews from Andalusia, and twelve years of inquisition. Conversion was welcome, and Jews who converted would be exempt from the Inquisition for an extended period of grace. Jews who did not convert had to sell their homes, farms, and animals and could take their portable property, but not gold, silver, or other money. The church would undertake a special evangelical effort to convert those willing.
Fernando wrote principal noblemen that he and the queen had been persuaded to adopt the Edict by the Inquisition and had done so preferring to save their souls above profit. He signed a similar edict applicable to Aragón alone explaining that he and the queen acted at the request and persuasion of Torquemada.
But the sovereigns refrained from publishing the Edict, and Fernando awaited Abravanel’s and Seneor’s demand for an audience. While some Jews may have anticipated it, and while Torquemada’s abiding hatred was known, the two Jewish leaders were shocked the sovereigns had issued the Edict on their own authority without consultation. They sought the audience with Fernando, which he granted in the Alhambra, and Abraham brought his son-in-law who had succeeded as Castile’s tax collector.
“Your Majesty, our people have proven their love and loyalty to you and the queen over and over again for decades,” Abravanel began. “We have financed your greatest conquest and faithfully and devotedly administered your and your fathers’ and grandfathers’ affairs for decades, in fact centuries. Our people love Spain and Your Highness and the queen.” He hardened his tone. “But we must love our God first. We have come to plead whether things might be done differently to avoid this draconian choice of renouncing our faith or leaving your kingdom, which also has been ours as your loyal subjects.” Abravanel refrained from criticizing the choice as cruel, unlawful, unjust, and anti-Jewish, believing such unpersuasive to the king. Nor did he challenge that a voluntarily choice had been offered, as he perceived it had been.