Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [132]
Columbus, in contrast, believed that he had been unfairly penalized for his empire building rather than generously rewarded, as he deserved. He decried the “cursing and the scorn for the enterprise” that he had risked his life to set in motion, all because “I had not sent back ships right away laden with gold.” No one bothered to take into account the “enormous difficulties” that he faced. “For my sins, or rather, for my salvation, I was held in aversion, and obstacles were raised to whatever I said and asked.” He reminded his Sovereigns that he had, in the past, “brought you enough samples of gold and told you about the existence of gold mines and very large nuggets and also copper, and I delivered to you so many kinds of spices that it would be too long to write down,” but, he said bitterly, “all of this made no difference to some people”—his critics and rivals at court—“who had very consciously begun speaking ill of the enterprise.” He had performed the tasks that explorers through the ages had accomplished on behalf of their rulers and princes: “to serve God while expanding their own dominion.” Yet, “the more I argued for [the enterprise], the more the detractors redoubled their jokes on the subject.” He had implored Ferdinand and Isabella to hear his plea, but “Your Highnesses responded to me with a smile, saying that I should not be troubled at all by it because you did not view those who spoke ill of this enterprise as deserving authority or credence.” Nevertheless, he feared they hovered on the verge of betraying the sacred cause he shared with them.
His many discoveries had whetted his appetite for more. He was driven in part by greed and self-aggrandizement, and in part by a need to exonerate himself, to prove to the Sovereigns that he had kept his sacred promises to them, despite the incomplete and often contradictory evidence of his voyages. Even more troubling, he refused to address his monstrous blunders: the oath he had made his men swear on pain of death that Cuba belonged to the mainland of India, the fifty thousand Indians who had committed suicide in protest of his occupation of their lands, and his failure to locate the Grand Khan.
To proclaim his humility and piety, and perhaps unconsciously atone for the fatal outcome of his administration, Columbus took to wearing the habit of a Franciscan friar, woven of coarse brown cloth. Following the precepts of St. Francis of Assisi, members of this mendicant religious order emphasized penance. Presumably he belonged to the Third Order, the most secular Franciscan subdivision, which did not require its members to live in a Franciscan community but instead to work zealously to improve their lives. He scarcely resembled the imperious Admiral of the Ocean Sea, celebrated discoverer of an empire, and intimate of the Sovereigns. He had carefully concealed signs of worldly ambition and vanity in favor of devotion and humility.
Garbed in plain attire, he had visited at length with Andrés Bernáldez, who appreciated Columbus without challenging him. He entrusted his journals of the second voyage to the curate, who was compiling an ambitious history of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Sovereigns who had driven the infidels from Spanish soil. Columbus claimed a small but significant place in this history, one that had more to do with his discovery of gold than of new lands and peoples. A goldsmith named Fermín Zedo claimed that the walnut-size nuggets that Columbus had transported to Spain were alloys. No, Columbus insisted, the gold was pure, and he showed samples to prove his point, justifying himself in Bernáldez’s eyes.
Columbus showed Bernáldez the massive gold collar worn by Caonabó’s brother. “This I saw and held in my hands,” he exclaimed, together with Indian “crowns, masks, girdles, collars, and many articles woven of cotton.” On closer inspection, the curate