Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [170]
But that was a temporary aberration, to Columbus’s way of thinking, and he was determined to set matters right.
Now fifty-one, Columbus had become an old man, half-blind, afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis and fits of “paludal poison,” or malarial fever. He was more volatile and spiritually intense than ever. He had returned to the Carthusian monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, where he led an austere, eremitical existence in a solitary cell.
In a Carthusian monastery, the hermit eats in his cell, twice a day or, during days of fasting, only once a day. Meals and other necessities are passed through a small turntable to the occupant, so he does not meet or even see the person who has delivered the items. Anything else he needs—bread, for instance—he may request by means of written communication. Speech is not permitted, even on feast days.
With the cooperation of a Carthusian monk by the name of Gaspar Gorricio, Columbus assembled a work known as Libro de las profecías, or Book of Prophecies, an idiosyncratic amalgam of biblical texts, commentary, and observations gleaned from ancient authorities, in both Latin and Spanish. It is difficult to know how much of it was composed by Columbus himself—it was written primarily in the monk’s hand, with additional entries by his son Ferdinand—but the result was intended to reflect Columbus’s spiritual vision of his life’s work and destiny. In the explorer’s words, it gathered together the “sources, statements, opinions, and prophecies on the subject of the recovery of God’s Holy City and Mount Zion and on the discovery and evangelization of the islands of the Indies and of all other peoples and nations,” all with Columbus playing a leading, and divinely ordained, role. In it, he appears not as the explorer preoccupied with gold, pearls, and other tokens of greed, nor with titles and his share of the fruits of the Indians’ arduous labor, but as a devout servant of the Lord. “The Lord opened my mind to the fact it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies,” he reflected, “and He opened my will to desire to accomplish the project.”
Columbus portrayed himself as a man who earned scorn and ridicule for his vision from rival mariners, bureaucrats, scientists, and scholars. Only the Sovereigns, to their undying glory, heeded his call. Buttressing his message with biblical citations, he entertained the notion that the time had come to launch a new Crusade to recapture the Holy Sepulchre and spark conversions to Christianity around the world. “I believe that there is evidence that our Lord is hastening things,” he declared. According to his calculations, there were only 150 years before the end of the world.
The Book of Prophecies reflected Columbus’s circumstances of the moment, serving as an apologia pro vita sua, and announcing to his critics at court and to posterity that everything he did, all the violence, all the lives lost, was done according to a larger plan. Even in his most ascetic frame of mind, he courted grandeur. Having prepared himself, he yearned for an endeavor he might never live to complete: a fourth voyage.
Inspired by Marco Polo’s voyage across Asia with his father and uncle, Columbus decided to bring his son Ferdinand on the fourth voyage to the New World. Polo was about seventeen years old at the time he embarked on his journey, and Ferdinand Columbus only a few years younger, thirteen years old. By voyaging with their families, both Ferdinand and Polo amassed a lifetime of experience and secured their dynastic legacies.
In maturity, Ferdinand recognized that as a young man he had been lucky enough to participate in one of the great events of his era, the exploration of a new world. But he was not merely a propagandist. As a scholar and amateur