A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [18]
But as Timothy Joyner points out in his life of Magellan, this Moluccan plan was a disaster. Indeed, as the leader of the expedition, Magellan was killed before he could even reach there. He had, however, landed in the Philippines. This was of momentous importance, for eastbound Portuguese had reconnoitered the Spice Islands nine years earlier. Therefore, in overlapping them, he had closed the nexus between the 123rd and 124th degrees of east longitude and thus completed the encirclement of the earth.
Yet his achievements were slighted. Death is always a misfortune, at least to the man who has to do the dying. In Magellan’s case it was exceptionally so, however, for as a dead discoverer he was unhonored in his own time. Even Magellan’s discovery of the strait which bears his name was belittled. Only a superb mariner, which he was, could have negotiated the foggy, treacherous, 350-mile-long Estrecho de Magallanes. In the years after his death, expedition after expedition tried to follow his lead. They failed; all but one ended in shipwreck or turned homeward, and the exception met disaster in the Pacific. Frustrated and defeated, skippers decided that Magellan’s exploit was impossible and declared it a myth. Nearly sixty years passed before another great sailor, Sir Francis Drake, successfully guided The Golden Hind through the tortuous passage and survived to tell the tale.
Had fortune and a viceregal role in the Moluccas been Magellan’s real inducement, he would have been a failure by his own lights. But his original motives remain obscure. Desperately searching for sponsorship of his voyage, he may have feigned interest in the Spice Islands. There is no proof of that, but it would have been in character. And were that the case, he would have confided in no one; he was always the most secretive of men. Moreover, the true drives of men are often hidden from them. Magellan’s vision may or may not have been cloudy, but clearly his real inspiration was nobler than profits. And in the end he proved that the world was round.
In so doing, he did much more. He provided a linchpin for the men of the Renaissance. Philosophers, scholars, and even learned men in the Church had begun to challenge stolid medieval assumptions, among them pontifical dogma on the shape of the earth, its size, and its position and movement in the universe. Magellan gave men a realistic perception of the globe’s dimensions, of its enormous seas, of how its landmasses were distributed. Others had raised questions. He provided answers, which now, inevitably, would lead to further questions—to challenges which continue on the eve of the twenty-first century.
The Spanish court was less than ecstatic. It had wanted Magellan to hoist its flag over the Moluccas, thereby breaking Portugal’s monopoly of the Oriental spice trade: cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. Spices made valuable preservatives, but trafficking in them had other, sinister implications. They were also used, and used more often, to disguise the odors and the ugly taste of spoiled meat. The regimes that encouraged and supported the spice trade were, in effect, accomplices in the poisoning of their own people. Moreover, medieval Europeans were extremely vulnerable to disease. This was the down side of exploration. The discoverers and their crews had