No, we are not surrendering the Columbus statue in NYC or anywhere. Harlem dudes knowl the story of the Renaissance and the discovery of America.
Columbus and Toscanelli
by Ricardo Olvera
One of the most controversial matters relating to
the discovery of the Americas relates to the
Italian Renaissance. In the scientific seminars
held during the Council of Florence, Paolo dal Pozzo
Toscanelli presented his idea of the project. Based upon
the scientific information brought by cosmographers,
geographers, and experts in the science of navigation
gathered there together, the general lines were traced of
what would, fifty-three years later, become the "greatest
event after Creation," according to one Spanish author-- the
discovery of the New World.
The direct connection between the Italian Renaissance
and the Spanish exploit is established by the correspondence
between Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and
Christopher Columbus. In Toscanelli's letter to Columbus
in 1480, and in the ones written by him six years
before to Fernao Martins, agent of the Portuguese King
Alfonso V, the Florentine scholar urged the Iberian
powers-Portugal and Spain-to realize the transatlantic
project discussed in Florence, and he laid out for
them the map and the scientific information required
for its success (SEE Map I).
As Fernando Columbus, Christopher's son, reports in
his Life of the Admiral, the basis upon which his father
founded his project was as follows:
A Master Paolo, physician of Master Domenico, a
Florentine contemporary to the same Admiral, was
the cause in great measure of his undertaking this
This article, translated by Rick Sanders, has been excerpted
and adapted from "The Discovery of the Americas and the
Great Scientific Project of the Renaissance, " which appeared
in the Spanish -language magazine Benengeli, Vol. 2, No.
1 (1987).
voyage with greater spirit. The fact that the cited
Paolo was a friend of Fernao Martins, canon of Lisbon,
and that the two were writing letters to each
other about the sea voyages made to the country of
Guinea during the time of King Alfonso of Portugal,
and about what could be done in the westward direction,
came to the ears of the Admiral who was most
curious about these things. And he hastened to write,
by way of one Lorenzo Girardi, a Florentine who
was in Lisbon, to the said Master Paolo, about this,
and sent to him an armillary sphere, revealing to him
his intent. Master Paolo sent him a reply in Latin ....
Later Fernando Columbus transcribes the first letter
from Toscanelli to Christopher Columbus:
To Christopher Columbus, Paolo, physician, greetIllgs.
I see this magnificent and grand desire of yours to
see how to get to [the regions] where spices are born,
and in reply to your letter I send you a copy of another
letter which I wrote some time ago to a friend and
familiar of the most serene King of Portugal, before
the Castillian war, in reply to another letter which
by commision of his Highness was written to me
about the said matter; and I send you another such
map of sailing, as the one I wrote to him, through
which your questions will be satisfied.
Toscanelli affixed to the bottom of his letter to Columbus,
a copy of the letter which he had sent earlier to
Fernao Martins, the canon who operated as an intermediary
between the republican networks of Florence, and
those republicans who were trying to convince the King
of Portugal to put the navigational capacity of that country
in the service of this great project. This letter had
been directed at awakening the commercial interest of the powerful, painting with vivid colors the fantastic
riches of the Far East; and attached to it was the carta
de marear or "navigational map," which Columbus never
let out of his sight for even a moment, during his first
voyage.
Did Toscanelli believe that following his navigational
plan, the coasts that one would see rise on the horizon
would be those of the Orient? Or did he perhaps expect
those of a new continent?
One fact makes us suspect
the latter: the distance at which Columbus encountered
America, and likewise the principal geographic and nautical
characteristics of the route, were precisely those of
Toscanelli's navigational map. Instead of fantastic palaces
covered in gold and the refined civilization of the
Orient, Columbus encountered an almost savage continent,
in which everything still needed to be done. The
prevailing mentality of the courts of Europe at the time,
would have made it very difficult to find support for a
project involving so much nature and so little art.
Either way, Toscanelli and the strategists of the Renaissance
succeeded in their plan to mobilize the maritime-commercial
powers to an enterprise which the "experts"
of the age considered "not income-producing"
(just as today, the cost-accountants consider the project
of colonizing the Moon and Mars as not "income producing"),
and such experts notwithstanding, there was
opened up for humanity the most formidable period of
development of which we have memory.
Are Toscanelli's Letters Genuine?
At the Congress of Americanists held in Paris in 1 900,
Henry Vignaud, then First Secretary of the American
Embassy in France, denied for the first time the authenticity
of the famous correspondence between Toscanelli,
Martins, and Columbus, in a document which was immediately
widely diffused through the press of the day.
Over the years since 1 900, the vital and previously wellknown
link of Columbus to Toscanelli-and thus, to
the Council of Florence-was hidden, and ultimately,
forgotten.
In essence, Vignaud said that the discovery of the
Americas was not the result of any scientific project,
but rather of chance. According to Vignaud, Columbus
never had any intention of reaching Asia, let alone the
New World, but only of reaching one of the islands
located west of the Canaries. If by chance Columbus did
have any scientific theory, he would not have gotten this
from Toscanelli, nor from any of the cosmographers of
the Renaissance, but from Ptolemy, Aristotle, and other
"authorities" of medieval geography and cosmography.
Vignaud based this on his "demonstration" that the
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letters ofToscanelli to Christopher Columbus, and above
all from Toscanelli to Fernao Martins, were apocryphal.
In refuting this assertion, the historian Clement Markham
argued that
[fJew documents of this period are so well certified
[as this letter]. Las Casas, an absolutely trustworthy
and honest historian, not only furnishes us with a
Spanish translation, but informs us that one part of
the original, it seems, the navigational map adjoined,
was in fact in his possession at the moment of writing.
In the Life of the Admiral, by Fernando Columbus,
MAP 1. Reconstruction of Toscanelli's map sent to
Columbus in 1480.
there is included an Italian translation. And one copy
of the original version in Latin was found in the
Columbus Library in Seville in 1 860, in the frontispiece
of a book by Pius II which had belonged to
Christopher Columbus, written in the Admiral's own
hand. I
In a reply to Markham, Vignaud attempted to bolster
his claim by arguing that Fernao Martins never existed,
and that he was a mere invention, created to explain the
inexplicable: the tie between Columbus and Toscanelli-which
was impossible according to Vignaud, because
Columbus was never in Florence, and Toscanelli
never left Italy.
,
Did Fernao Martins Exist?
Ironically, by questioning the existence of Fernao Martins,
Vignaud actually helps us to highlight the point of
conception of the Renaissance exploration project.
For in the work of Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa entitled
Tetralogus de Non Aliud (Tetralogue on the Not-Other),
there unfolds a Socratic dialogue between "Nicolaus"
and three interlocutors, of whom the main one is Ferdinando
Martin Portugaliensi natione, canon of Lisbon,
whose full name is Fernao Martins de Roritz (from the
town of Roritz in Portugal). The other two are Oanes
Andrea Vigerius, or Gian Andrea, from Vigevano in
northern Italy; and Petrus Balbus Pisanus, or Pietro
Balbi, born in Pisa, a former study companion of Cusa
and Toscanelli in Padua. This same Fernao (Martins) of
Roritz, relative and private councillor to Alfonso V,
would, together with Toscanelli, later sign on Aug. 6,
1464, the last will and testament of Nicolaus of Cusa, as
a witness and as his personal doctor; a few days later, he
would attend Cusa's funeral.
A relative of Fernao Martins also enjoyed the confidence
of Cardinal Cusa: Antonio Martins, the bishop of
Oporto, born in Chavez, a town near Roritz. It is this
Antonio Martins who had accompanied the cardinal's
delegation to Constantinople in 1 437, sent by Pope Eugene
IV to convince the Emperor and the Patriarch of
Constantinople of the need to be present at the Council.
Toscanelli also played the role of interlocutor in one
of Nicolaus of Cusa's dialogues, on the squaring of the
circle, entitled De Arithmeticis Complementis (On Arith
metical Complements). Born in 1397, one of the most
outstanding participants in the Council of Florence,
Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli died at age 88, in 1 482, a
decade before the realization of his great project. He had
been Cusa's fellow student in Padua, and Cusa dedicated
to him, besides the cited book, another one entitled De
Geometricis Transmutationibus (On Geometrical Transformations).
Thus we see, contrary to Vignaud, that Nicolaus of
Cusa, Toscanelli, and Martins formed a close intellectual
circle, whose scientific work was unified in and grew
out of the great Florentine Council. One indication of the
educational efforts which the leaders of the Renaissance
undertook to win over the "best mariners of the world"
to their cause, is the fact that Columbus' most treasured
book, which he carried with him in his voyages of discovery,
was the Historia rerum ubique gestarum (Universal
History of Facts and Deeds) of Pope Pius I I-the humanist
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini-in whose frontispiece Columbus
himself had copied in his own hand Toscanelli's
map. It had been Piccolomini who penned the great
lament at the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453:
"This is a second death for Homer, a second death for
Plato: now where will we be able to find the works of
genius of the Greek poets and philosophers?"
Pope Pius II died on Aug. 14, 1464, three days after
Cardinal Cusa, and the chances of an immediate Christian
crusade to liberate Constantinople and free the Mediterranean
from Turkish control, were sharply reduced;
this thread would be picked up later, through the Reconquest
of the Iberian peninsula, brought to a close in
1492 by the same Ferdinand and Isabella who would
dispatch Columbus that same year on the greatest military
flanking move in history-to bypass the VenetianTurkish
stranglehold, and reach the east by the rear,
going west across the feared ocean-sea. And thus it was
that, after the deaths of Cusa and Pius II, the scientist
Toscanelli returned to Florence "to continue his studies,
turning his face not to the east, but to the west, thinking
about a new route for commerce and for civilization.,,2
NOTES
I. Clement R. Markham, Toscanelli and Columbus: A Letter from
Clement R. Markham to Henry Vignaud (London: Sands and Company,
1 903).
2. Angel de Altolaguirre y Duvale, Cristobal Colon y Pablo del Pozzo
Toscanelli (Madrid: I mprenta de Administracion Militar, 1 903).
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