Posted on 10/13/2014 9:59:24 AM PDT by Salvation
The Portuguese, to whom he first turned for funds thought he was a charlatan, as he claimed the Earth was about 13,000 miles around the equator. They knew that was simply nonsense, as it had been known since the Greeks that it was 25,000 miles in circumference. Columbus had misinterpreted the units of measurement. The Portuguese (who consider other Europeans somewhat slow-witted and are really good at numbers) suspected that he had fudged his data on purpose to better "sell the deal!" They also thought he might have been working for Venice on some sort of spice shedazzle. BTW, every seafaring nation knew there was something out there to the west. After all, Iceland and Greenland already had settlers.
More columbian factoids: He was a Genoese, which means he spoke the city dialect which is really Catalan, so Ferdinand (a Catalan) and Isabella understood him very well. He also wised up a bit, and like a Hollywood guy selling a movie idea, he signed up with an agent!
It took a few years, but eventually, Ferdinand and Isabella really figured something like the 15th C equivalent of: "Whatever, he's not asking for that much, let's roll the dice with him."
PS: no one who could read and write thought the "Earth was flat." Nonetheless, Christopher Columbus, who took his first name Christus Ferens, i.e., the Bearer of Christ very seriously was a man for the ages and the fellow who got our New World on the map. But, he was human, too, one of us. And he deserves this day
BTW, the religious warfare endemic in Europe is why those from Protestant countries, particularly the Anglo-Saxon peoples, tend to denigrate Spanish culture and all things Hispanic. That's also true in the other direction, of course. But since we live in the English-Speaking World, (for a while longer anyway) we never get the whole picture.
Stop and think that the original 13 colonies and the first United States were tiny indeed compared with the Spanish possessions in the New World, and that major Spanish cities in the New World were already over 100 years old when the Pilgrims arrived.
Indeed.
Interesting tidbit there. Thanks.
I was taught the ships were named
the Nina,
The Pinta
and the Santa Maria.
I don’t know of any dispute about the names of Columbus’ ships, but I don’t know who named them. It could be that they were named before he got them.
Does Domingo mean this?
Sunday(noun)
the first day of the week, the day following Saturday, kept for rest and worship among Christians.
The Spanish-speaking Jews kept speaking Spanish where they moved to--many of them to the Ottoman Empire.
I once heard someone tell about a Turkish consul stationed in Chicago whose wife did not speak English. She had no trouble there because she was of Sephardic Jewish background and could go to the Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago and get along fine in the stores using her Spanish.
Sounds reasonable. I just know the Spanish.
And they are not taught about how powerful the Ottoman Turks were. Not only did they control the trade in the Eastern Med; they actually menaced the freedom of Europe. In the 1520s, they conquered Hungary and threatened to capture Vienna.
And it was Spain that kept the Turks from Invading Italy and dominating the whole med. Not many people know about the Battle of Lepanto.
St. Teresa of Avila came from a Jewish Christian family.
There is a theory that the Vikings had navigated the Arctic Sea,in the 12th century which was relatively Ice free at the time and drawn maps of a northwest passage to the Bering straits. That Columbus had seen such a map and based his math on a great circle distance to that point, with no knowledge of the length of the ocean routes at the latitude of Spain. The Portuguese, had decades before reached the Azores and perhaps Labrador, which is why they might have dismissed his project.
But it was Columbus, Vespucci, Cabot, Verazzano, Hudson etc. who had at least a semi-methodical approach, the backing of nation-states and big business who finally got the New World show on the road. They also had the printing press by then, the 16th C answer to the Internet.
What always amazes me is that the strongest rigging on their ships which carried them thousands of miles, wasn't as tough as the rigging on my Thistle sailboat! To top it off, they had no real idea of where TF they were in those days, no charts and with no reliable way to fix longitude. Remember too, that we have forgotten all the explorers and colonists who never made it over ... or back.
But forget all that. Join me in celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day, won't you? After all, their cultures of incessant intertribal warfare, followed by human sacrifices, enslavement of the conquered, cannibalism, etc should make us all celebrate them in a politically correct way, because it would cause them great loss of self-esteem to point out that they were bloody frickin' heathens. And they did give us the potato.
The Portuguese probably knew what Columbus did not, that there was an uncivilized land not Asia, a relatively short distance across the Atlantic. Certain they did not waste much time after Columbus came back, sending an expedition to claim Brazil, before heading east around the Cape. By that time they had already got the Pope—a Spanish popes, BTW— to split the territorial rights with Spain. When Cortez finally struck gold, literally, there must have been some unhappy people in Lisbon.
It’s just a shame they are going to have to change
their name to Knights of Indigenous.
“and that major Spanish cities in the New World were already over 100 years old when the Pilgrims arrived. “
Pilgrims? Who cares about those late coming self promoters?
Jamestown had been in operation for more than a decade when that Pilgrim crew made their beer run on the Massachusetts coast.
About the Knights of Columbus History of the Knights of Columbus
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.