Meanwhile, the residents of Málaga were herded onto the plain and divided into groups like cattle. In all, over four thousand were sold into slavery. One group was sequestered to be exchanged for Christian captives who had been taken to Africa. The second group was distributed among Ferdinand’s courtiers and any commander who had distinguished himself in battle. The Cardinal of Spain himself got seventy slaves, while fifty Moorish maidens were sent to Ferdinand’s sister, the Queen of Naples, and thirty lesser maidens went to the Queen of Portugal. The third group was sold to slave merchants of Andalusia to cover the costs of the battle. And finally, one hundred prize Gomeres were sent to Pope Innocent VIII. Some of these black slaves no doubt served in the lavish wedding ceremony for the pope’s son in November of that year, when for the first time the son of a pope was publicly introduced and extravagantly celebrated in the Vatican.
Within a few days, the solemnity and enslavement in Málaga turned to bloodthirsty revenge. In a public spectacle, twelve Christian turncoats who had been found among the defenders were fastened by reeds to poles in a public square, and Christian knights galloped past, discharging cane spears into the victims until they were dead. The deadly game was said to be of Moorish origin. After that, for good measure, a few lapsed conversos were burned at the stake.
“These were the feasts and illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety of our sovereigns,” wrote an eyewitness from Aragon.
A few matters remained to be dealt with. What, for example, was to be done with the 450 Jews captured in Málaga? Here, the chief rabbi of the court and its chief tax collector, Abraham Senior, along with his lieutenant, Don Isaac Abravanel, stepped forward, for they could not bear to see Jews enslaved. Raising a considerable sum from the Jews of Castile and supplementing the ransom fund by selling the jewelry of Málaga’s Jewish women, the court rabbis succeeded in purchasing the freedom of their brethren for a royal price.
And what was to be done with the empty houses of the enslaved? With the help and encouragement of the crown, thousands of loyal Christians from Old Castile flooded in to repopulate the city, along with a phalanx of priests to deal with the Moors who remained. And so down through the ages came the saying from the Church,
“Mother, here is your son. You gave him to me a Moor, and I hand him back to you a Christian.”
17
Upstaged
LISBON
If Christopher Columbus hoped that supplying the Spanish court with commercial intelligence on the businessmen of Málaga might help his proposal for a western voyage, he was quickly disabused. Though he received a fourth payment of 3,000 maravedis in October 1487, the monarchs were preoccupied with weightier matters. That fall they had left for Saragossa, where through the winter lull in the war they were to concern themselves with various problems in Aragon. By 1487, the Inquisition had spread its reach to Catalonia under Torquemada’s rule.
Barcelona greeted the new year with its first auto-da-fe on January 25, 1488. In the plaza in front of the Royal Palace, attached to the Palacio del Lugarteniente (the Palace of the Lieutenants) where the Inquisition had its offices, twelve effigies of refugees were consumed by flames and four people were burned at the stake. Four months later, on May 23, three more persons were burned along with forty-two effigies of accused who had fled. Meanwhile, down south, the head of the Commission of Inquiry into Columbus’s project, Hernando de Talavera, was busy organizing the episcopal see at Málaga.
Now thirty-seven years old, his hair turned a snowy white, Columbus languished in Córdoba, watching vainly for the royal messenger. Restless and frustrated, he cast his gaze toward other monarchs in Europe, especially those in France and England, who might welcome his proposal. The English king, Henry VII, was the wealthiest potentate in Europe. He had forged an alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella, and Columbus’s friendliness with the Spanish court might open doors. Consequently, Columbus dispatched his brother, Bartholomew, to the north, armed with maps and persuasive arguments. The French court would be a harder sell. The King of France was Charles VIII, then merely seventeen years old. The power behind the teenager was his sister, Anne of Beaujeu. Yet the traditional antagonism between France and Spain might work to Columbus’s advantage. If his intuition proved correct, the state that backed him could instantly become the preeminent empire of Europe.
But before receiving word from any of these monarchs, he got a surprise invitation from the King of Portugal to return there for further discussions. João II referred to Columbus as his “special friend” and promised that if he would come, he would be safe from the creditors to whom he still owed money. Eagerly, Columbus scurried back to Lisbon.
But Columbus’s relations with Portugal seemed destined always to be star-crossed. No sooner had he arrived in Lisbon and attempted to shift João II’s attention away from Africa and toward an audacious, if desperate, thrust across the unknown sea toward the western sun than he was eclipsed by a spectacular event. Through the mouth of the Tagus came triumphantly two caravels of the naval commander Bartholomew Dias, returning from a sixteen-month voyage of discovery down the African coast. The news spread rapidly. Dias had navigated his way to the end of Africa, around a glorious cape, and some distance up the northern coast of eastern Africa. So, Africa did not extend all the way to the South Pole. Ptolemy had been wrong! A ship could pass between the hemispheres! The way to India was open around the tip of the African continent!
This impressive commander was soon brought before his king. Christopher Columbus was once again forced to the wings as a silent witness to history.
The tale Dias had to tell was riveting. In August of the previous year, 1487, he had set out with three caravels with orders from his king to navigate beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, beyond the last stone marker of Diogo Cão, and to follow the African landmass as far as it went. Along the way, he was commanded to find the magical land of Prester John.
The commander had taken with him six black slaves, four of whom were female. In the female slaves the Portuguese rested special hope, for it was surmised that a woman could pass harmlessly through hostile tribal lands of darkest Africa, while a strange man would more readily be attacked. They were to be dropped off one by one as the fleet moved down the African coast, and they were to hike inland as far as they could go in search of the magical kingdom while they spread the word of the glorious white king named João. As they encountered African natives, they were to distribute trinkets of gold and silver, and samples of spices from the civilized north.
Dias’s caravels called at St. George of the Mine on the Guinea coast, inched through the doldrums of the equitorial low-pressure belt, and past the great Congo delta. Along the way the black scouts were dropped off as ordered. When the explorers were near the Tropic of Capricorn, they left their smaller supply ship (which was under the command of Dias’s brother, Pero Dias) at a place known as the Bay of Tigers (in southern Angola).
After this, the voyage turned ominous. The two caravels pressed southward another 5 degrees toward the horse latitudes, until bad weather drove them into a large bay they named Bahia das Voltas (Bay of the Tacks) because of the many tacks it had taken to reach calm water. There they had tarried for five days waiting for the weather to break. When it did not, Dias ventured out anyway, only to find himself blown south and west far out to sea by squalls, known to subsequent mariners as the “roaring forties.” This tempest lasted for thirteen full days.
With Columbus on the fringe of the royal audience, the king and his entourage listened raptly to this presentation. Dias told his story matter-of-factly, with marine charts spread out on the royal table. By Columbus’s later estimate, Dias’s position at its most southerly was 45 degrees (or halfway between the tip of Africa and Antarctica). Once back in control of his vessel, Dias had charted a course due east, tacking across the prevailing westerlies in hopes of reaching the safety of the African coast once again.
When he did not, he turned north and finally came upon land at
about 34 degrees south. On the headlands the Portuguese spied a number of cattle grazing and tended by shepherds. The shepherds were “negroes with wooly hair like those of Guinea,” a Portuguese historian would write several decades later. The explorers landed, only to find themselves pelted with stones by the native Hottentots. The sailors reacted by killing one of the shepherds with a bolt from a crossbow, prompting the natives to run away before the sailors could interrogate them. Even so, the encounter held an important revelation. To its very end, the African continent was populated by blacks.
Dias named this place the Bay of the Cowherds (now Mossel Bay in South Africa). From there, the caravels followed the coast eastward past Algoa Bay (the present location of Port Elizabeth) and onward as the coastline turned north to a major river. This Dias named Rio Infante, after the commander of his second ship, João Infante (later renamed the Great Fish River). By the warmth of the current, Dias knew that he had entered the Indian Ocean.
Having weathered the terrible, thirteen-day cyclone, the captain now encountered a storm of a different sort. His men, including his officers, had become increasingly querulous. The scent of mutiny was in the air. With one voice, the crew advocated that the ships turn back. Supplies were running low; the men were tired and cold; and the seas were dangerous. Dias argued with them, for they had not found Prester John, and therefore, had not accomplished their primary mission. When he could not tamp down the dissension, he ordered everyone ashore where, according to procedures, the sailors were administered an oath and then asked to vote on what they should do “for the service of their king.” The vote was unanimous for turning back. Dias made them sign their name to a document, which he now showed to João II, as if to deflect any royal questions about the authority of his command.
It was well that Columbus listen carefully to this tale of near mutiny on uncharted seas. He would face the same in a few years.
Now the caravels had retraced their path along the coast of South Africa. Well past the Bay of the Cowherds, they came upon a glorious cape with lovely prominent headlands. Dias gave it the banal name of the Cape of Storms to mark the perils of his journey. At this, João II scowled. Why not name it Cabo de Boã Esperancoã, the king said, the Cape of Good Hope? As a result of this remarkable voyage, there was good hope, if not absolute certainty, that India could now be reached by sailing around Africa.
The excitement over Dias’s revolutionary voyage consumed the Portuguese court. How should they proceed? Who should command the next voyage? Were the caravels of current design large enough to navigate across the Indian Ocean, about which nothing was known? What would be their destination in India, if Portuguese caravels were lucky enough to reach that fabulous, spice-rich land?
João II was far ahead of them, for he had been thinking about these questions for some time. Several months before Dias’s departure from Lisbon in August 1487, the king had authorized a very different mission. Its objective was to reach India by an overland route, from Egypt and then across the Middle East. As with the Dias voyage, the maps for this epic undertaking were prepared by the king’s Jewish cosmologist, Master José Vizinho. For this mission, the king tapped one of the most accomplished members of his inner circle, a man named Pero da Covilhã. This bold confidant had handled a number of sensitive missions for the king before, and he spoke several languages, including Arabic. Once he reached India, he was to discover where the great ports were, how Arabic ships conducted trade along the Indian and East African coasts, where the valuable spices were principally grown. Everywhere he was to listen for tales of a great Christian king called Prester John.
And thus, the king was in no hurry to launch the next mission around the Cape of Good Hope, until his emissary could return from the Orient. Only then could he know what the purpose of the next sea voyage of discovery should be, and what its true destination was. The king was a careful planner. He wanted his ships to navigate on real intelligence, not on blind and dumb luck. This was not the time for celebrations and ceremonies. The next mission had to be done right, and when it was, it would become the crowning achievement of João II’s reign.
As Columbus watched from the sidelines while the court became consumed with Africa and India, his importance began to shrink. He had been flattered by his royal invitation, but what was its real purpose? It occurred to him that he had been used. Perhaps he had not been summoned to Portugal at all to present again his proposal for a voyage of discovery due west across the unknown sea but to provide intelligence about the royal court of Spain, Portugal’s traditional enemy, and about the current situation in the war against Granada. The contempt and even mockery of the king’s advisers lay just below the surface: Columbus was seen as a navigator of no particular skill or prominence, an average cartographer, a hustler from humble roots, a foreigner who was secretive about his origins, a braggart and exaggerator… and worst of all, the promoter of a very weak proposal.
Against the accomplishments and the deportment of Bartholomew Dias, the contrast was all too clear. With the discovery of the route to India by this impressive commander, Portugal was close to realizing the dreams of Henry the Navigator and four Portuguese kings. A national goal of fifty years’ standing was at hand. Why take a flyer on a far-fetched proposal that was based on hypotheticals and fantastic tales? By the technical advice of his worthy advisers and by the evidence of his own intuition, João II knew full well that the Orient could not be reached by sailing due west. Let this Italian romantic flee back to Spain. Let him infatuate the monarchs there with visions of Cathay and Cipangu. João II wanted no interference with his route to India. In Portugal, there was much work to be done on the real and the tangible. By establishing trade with India and by allying itself with Prester John, Portugal stood to be the most powerful empire of Europe.
The Dias triumph was a pivotal point for Columbus. Dispirited, he turned back to Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella were now his last and best hope.
18
The Holy Innocent
LA GUARDIA
In May 1490, a supplicant named Benito Garcia traveled to the great pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain with the ostensible desire to worship at the font of St. James the Moorslayer and thereby to defray half of his allotted time in purgatory. He was an itinerant woolcomber and, as it happened, a converso who was reasonably well off by the standard of the time. He had been baptized a Christian thirty-five years earlier, but it had not been a happy occasion, for his father had cursed him for abandoning the faith of his Jewish ancestors, and thereafter, Benito had consigned all his problems in life to this paternal curse.
On his return journey to his home in the village of La Guardia in the province of Toledo, he stopped overnight in the Roman town of Astorga. At an inn there he fell in with a rowdy crowd of locals, drank too much, and when he passed out, he was robbed. The thieves fell greedily upon his knapsack. As they were rummaging through it, a communion wafer fell out on the floor.
Recoiling in fear, the thieves sensed something sinister, even by their grubby standards. And yet this seemed like a piece of special good luck, a chance to get in the good graces of the authorities to cover up their petty crimes. The scoundrels shook their prey back to consciousness and hustled him along to the ornate cathedral and into the presence of the most powerful prelate in town. He was the bishop’s vicar, an ambitious upstart named Pedro de Villanda, who had fond hopes of becoming an inquisitor one day. The vicar saw the possibilities immediately, most especially for his own career. More than sinister, a communion wafer in the possession of a false Christian who was returning from a sham pilgrimage to the most holy site in all of Europe: this smacked of heresy, sacrilege, and conspiracy… and the chance of advancing the vicar’s career in the Church.
The woolcomber protested his innocence vigorously, even after he was dragged to the dungeon and administered two hundred lashes. And so the vicar resorted to more stringent measures. Under Article 15 of Torquemada’s Instructio
ns, torture was acceptable if a heresy was only “half proven.” Under no circumstances was the priest to shed blood, for this would contravene the laws of the Church. If the suspect should happen to die under torture, the priest would be held responsible and would have to seek absolution from his bishop. This could be embarrassing and might harm a career.
And thus, “the Question,” as torture was called, was put to Benito Garcia cruelly but bloodlessly. Given the gravity and the potential of the suspicion, it is likely that the vicar was impatient and put his suspect through an accelerated version of the five normal steps. First torture was merely to be threatened. If that did not compel a confession, the culprit was to be taken to the torture chamber and shown the instruments. If the stout fellow was still untalkative, he was then to be stripped in readiness; and if that was not enough, the naked person was to be strapped onto the rack. Only then, in step number five, which was rarely needed, was the winch on the rack actually to be turned.
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