A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [146]
They were achievers. Genuine paladins are even likelier to have been objectionable. Yet their flaws, though deplorable, are irrelevant; in the end their heroism shines through untarnished. Had Ferdinand Magellan met Jesus Christ, the Galilean might have felt a pang of disappointment—which the capitán-general might have shared—but Magellan, like Christ, was also a hero. He still is. He always will be. Of all the tributes to him, therefore, the Magellanic Clouds are the most appropriate. Like them, his memory shines down upon the world his voyage opened, illuminating it from infinity to eternity.
THE FULL significance of the great voyage was not grasped until much later, but its most profound implication had begun to emerge two months before the Victoria’s return to Spanish waters, when she was anchored off Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands. There the shore party became entangled with the Portuguese over what at first appeared to be a trivial argument. They disagreed over which day of the week it was. Throughout their long absence, now approaching three years, Pigafetta had scrupulously dated each day’s entry, beginning with “Tuesday, September 20, 1519,” when the Armada de Molucca left Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and continuing with “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” and so on. Arriving here he noted that the date was Wednesday, July 9, 1522. But crewmen who landed to pick up supplies reported that in Santiago it was Thursday, July 10.
Don Antonio was puzzled. It was inconceivable that he could have missed a day. He checked with Albo, who, on instructions from Magellan, had also kept a record of the days in his ship’s log. Albo agreed: It was Wednesday, no question about it. The Cape Verde Portuguese, they decided, had somehow fallen into error. However, when they reached Sanlúcar on what they knew to be Saturday, September 6, the Spaniards greeting them insisted that it was Sunday, September 7. Somehow the flota had dropped twenty-four hours out of the calendar.
None of the great geographers, neither Aristotle, Ptolemy, nor Pierre d’Ailly, had anticipated this riddle. Sixteenth-century European men of science, as startled as Pigafetta and Albo, toiled over their desks until they came up with what, they unanimously agreed, was the only possible solution. Copernicus, they concluded, was right. The earth was rolling eastward, completing a full cycle every day. Magellan and his men had been sailing westward, against that rotation; having traversed a full circle, the circumnavigators had gained exactly twenty-four hours. Geocentrism—the age-old conviction that the earth was the center of the universe—was therefore discredited. The earth was not only round; it was moving. In fact, it was revolving around its own axis.
Magellan was not there to savor the moment, but it was his finest. In many ways it was the crowning triumph of the age, the final, decisive blow to the dead past. Those with the most to lose ignored their defeat, denied the discovery, and denounced those who endorsed it as heretics. Couriers had galloped off to report both the circumnavigation and the confusion over dates to the pope. He now rejected the obvious explanation. Actually, he would have been betraying his predecessors in Saint Peter’s chair if he had accepted it. The Church had always held that whenever observed experience conflicted with Holy Scripture, observation had to yield. And the authority of the Bible, historically interpreted, denied the possibility of a heliocentric system.
Accordingly, the Holy Office in Rome declared that the notion of a moving earth circling the sun was “philosophically foolish and absurd and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrines of Holy Scripture