The new bull granted Spain sovereignty over the lands and islands it had discovered in the west, as well as others yet to be discovered in that direction, providing that these territories did not already belong to any Christian prince (an oblique reference to the elusive Prester John). It forbade any person or nation to enter those lands and their contiguous waters without permission. The Spanish sovereigns were to assume their powers to be equivalent to those that the Portuguese kings exercised along the coast of Africa, that is, exclusive rights to trade and for colonization.
The document was extraordinary. Implicit in it was the authority of the pope as the overlord of the Christian world. He had dominion over the souls of all men, and therefore, only he could decide who and what nation would conduct the evangelizing of the Lord’s children. In the preamble, the pope praised Ferdinand and Isabella for their service to the Catholic faith in the reconquest of Granada. He had always hoped that new and unknown islands and lands might be found, so that the Catholic faith might be brought to their inhabitants. Discovery was, by its nature, a holy enterprise. And now with these new discoveries, “All things considered and especially the exaltation and expansion of the Catholic Faith, you are to subject these lands and islands and their inhabitants, and with the help of God’s mercy, bring them to the Catholic Faith.”
A day later (at least by its official dating), a second amending bull was issued. In it the question of west versus south was addressed. Now, the pope drew an imaginary line across the globe, north to south, beginning 100 leagues or about 300 miles west of the Azores, partitioning the oceanic world between Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence. Everything west of that line, from the North to the South Pole, was given to Spain. This had been Columbus’s specific recommendation to Ferdinand and Isabella, and its language was now reproduced almost exactly in the papal bull as it had been proposed in Barcelona. On his second voyage, Columbus had every intention of exploring farther south than he had on his first, for he had heard rumors from Indians of a large mass of continental lands there.
Three weeks later, on May 28, even before the Spanish royals learned of the papal sanction, they asserted their right to the entire Western world.
The all-important papal bull that drew the line of demarcation was officially dated May 4, 1493. But it was actually crafted many weeks later, on June 28, and then backdated to make it appear to be an afterthought to the first bull of May 3. Mere sanction of sovereignty was not enough, and the Spanish embassy was dissatisfied. Negotiations for the amendment stretched on for weeks. Given his preoccupation with his personal affairs and with the French saber-rattling and the tensions in the Italian Papal States, it was hard to get Alexander to focus. Once the careful language of the second bull emerged from the papal office, it made its way slowly through the arcane bureaucracy of the Roman Curia. Under the watchful eye of the pope’s personal secretary, it needed to be drawn up by the papal “abbreviator” and then sent to the Bureau of Scribes to be beautifully and painstakingly written up for the ages. That the pronouncement was of tremendous historical significance, no less perhaps than the discovery of Tarsis or Cathay or Ophir or the Rivers of Paradise, no one had any doubt. Once the papal scribes produced the document as a work of art, with the magnificent calligraphy of careful, packed lettering, sweeping capital letters, and marvelous decorative flourishes, it had to be registered and collated and taxed. The process took many more days. So, news of the papal donation did not reach Spain until early August.
In the interim, Ferdinand and Isabella remained in a state of high anxiety about what was happening. A favorable papal sanction would be immensely helpful in a political sense, but it was not essential to their right of discovery and conquest. They had already taken their own steps to assert the right of Spain to undiscovered lands on May 28, 1493, proclaiming, in the so-called “privileges” to Columbus:
“This sea belongs to us to the west of a line passing through the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and extending from north to south, from pole to pole.”
Nor was the decision of a Spanish pope, illegally elected and personally corrupt as Alexander VI was, likely to stay the hand of Portugal. They supposed that a Portuguese armada was already on its way to the New World, prepared to plant the Portuguese flag in the new territories and then claim its own right of dominion, based upon previous treaties and papal bulls, produced by more honorable popes. Meanwhile, their own admiral was still dawdling in Cádiz outfitting his fleet.
On July 27, the sovereigns wrote again to Columbus to spur him along and maybe even to scare him a little. “The truth is we have been told that the Portuguese fleet left from the ports of Portugal a while ago. It is possible that inclement weather has slowed them. As you have speculated, it is also possible that the armada from Portugal is waiting to leave until you have left on your journey for the New World, but we doubt that this is the case. As a result, we suggest that you stay the course of your present agenda and not modify any plans to adapt to anything the Portuguese may do. Please expedite your departure, and keep us advised of any further needs that you may have for your journey. We can supply you with any of these further needs through a second armada. Please leave as soon as possible.” If Columbus had little credentials to be a discoverer before his first voyage, he had even less to be a naval commander now in a bloody sea battle between armadas.
At last, on August 4, the bulls arrived from Rome, and the exultant Spanish monarchs informed Columbus. “The authority has come today, and we send you an authentic copy of it to publish, so that all the world may know that no one can enter into these regions without authorization from us. Take it with you that you may be able to show it in every land.”
The news of the papal donation to Spain reached Portugal at about the same time, and João II must have appreciated immediately that he had been effectively outmaneuvered. In fact, the Portuguese armada had not left Lisbon. Nor, in light of the papal bulls and in recognition of the priority of first discovery, was it ever to leave. For the priority of first discovery was a principle Portugal was eager to maintain with its African dominion and forthcoming voyages around the Cape of Good Hope to India. Africa and spice-rich India were far more important than this new land of blockheaded savages. Still, the Portuguese king saw that he had a strong position to bargain from. For his restraint and high-mindedness, he was owed. If Spain would enter into negotiations, he would not challenge the Spanish on the high seas, nor would he quarrel with the abrogation of past treaties and papal bulls.
On August 18, only two weeks after the papal bulls reached Iberia, Spain and Portugal entered into formal negotiations over their respective rights in the New World. At first, King João seemed to be in a conciliatory mood, for he was now engaged in an internal battle over succession, and he was eager to arrange a marriage of his son to the daughter of the Spanish sovereigns, the infanta Isabel. To a king, the perpetuation of his dynastic line could be more important than ruling half the world.
Hard bargaining lay ahead for the negotiators, and the talks dragged on for months, into the spring of 1494. The main sticking point was the placement of the pope’s line of demarcation. Portugal was unwilling to accept a line only 100 leagues west of its domain in the Azores. It held out for a line considerably farther west. Eventually, the Spanish relented and agreed to move the line another 270 leagues or over 500 miles farther into the ocean. With that concession, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed and ratified on July 2, 1494.
Christopher Columbus had taken to Cádiz the royal patents and licenses that authorized the fleet of the second voyage. With this authority, the voyage of conquest and colonization and conversion was ready. Besides its provisions for securing and arming, its seventeen ships, with a total manpower of twelve hundred, the royal “Instructions” breathed good intentions and lofty pieties. Since the Indians of the New World espoused no serious religious dogma or doctrine, other than their pagan spirit gods, and since the sovereigns had been informed that they were there
fore “very ripe to be converted,” the principal concern of the mission was to be the increase of the Holy Catholic Faith.
The Admiral was given wide latitude to strive for this conversion “by all ways and means.” Assisting him in this endeavor was a Benedictine friar, Father Bernardo Boil. (Boil’s main efforts in the second voyage were to attempt to execute the Taino chieftain, Guacanagari, and to lead a mutiny against Columbus. He converted no Indians.) The Indians “must be carefully taught the principles of Our Holy Faith,” read the Instructions, “for they must already know and understand much of our language.” In case the tens of thousands of natives did not understand the Spanish language (or in case something had happened to the wretches who had stayed behind in Navidad), the one Indian who had remained healthy after the transatlantic voyage, and who had been baptized with the name Diego Colón, would be sent back as the fleet interpreter. All who sailed on the second voyage, the sovereigns demanded, were to treat the Indians “very well and lovingly, abstaining from doing them any injury, so that both people could hold much conversation and intimacy, each serving the other to the best of their ability.”
On September 25, the fleet of the second voyage was ready. Cheerful colors and flowing banners draped the seventeen ships, while pipers and trumpeters and harpers serenaded the brave sailors. After twelve ecclesiastics performed the customary rites on dockside, anchors were weighed, and the fleet was escorted out of Cádiz harbor by Venetian galleys. The Christian crusade for America had begun. The great discoverer had joined the inquisitors and the Iberian conquerors as one of God’s most important hounds.
It was a moment to savor. Columbus was at the zenith of his power and glory. From here out, his course would be decidedly downhill. These noble sentiments in the royal Instructions would soon enough be discarded, as the subsequent Columbian voyages dissolved into a tale of greed, slavery, disease, genocide, shipwreck, disappointment, and for Columbus himself, narcissism and humiliation. And yet, as consolation, the bad news that came in the following years would be largely overlooked in popular imagination.
It is the Revelation of 1492, its triumphant celebration and the consequent division of the New World into Spanish and Portuguese spheres, that has been remembered through the ages. World history was lurching into a new epoch.
The Age of Empire had begun.
• EPILOGUE •
In the years that followed 1492, the seeds that had been planted in the run-up to that epochal year grew and flourished. Some, like the Inquisition, propagated wildly and uncontrollably like poison ivy throughout Europe, and it would be another two hundred years before the hideous practice of burning human beings for supposed heresy from Catholic doctrine was finally stopped.
On the diplomatic front, the tough stance of Portugal in the negotiations at Tordesillas in mid-1494 seems utterly prescient. Four years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama made his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India and claimed that spicy paradise for his tiny kingdom. Two years later, in the Jubilee of 1500, in order to secure its claim to India militarily, as Columbus had done for America with his second voyage, Portugal dispatched a formidable armada to the rich land of spice, under the command of Pedro Alvars Cabral. Drawn up by Vasco da Gama, Cabral’s route adopted a southerly course far out to the west of Africa to avoid the doldrums in the Gulf of Guinea and the strong headwinds off the southern shores of the African continent that had so bedeviled Bartholomew Dias. In this far westerly course, on April 22, 1500, Cabral’s fleet came upon the coast of Brazil by accident and immediately claimed it for Portugal under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
In the skill of the Portuguese negotiators at Tordesillas emerges another sidelight of history. A second clause of the treaty provided that each party was not to explore in lands reserved to the other and was to yield any territory it might discover by chance in the dominion of the other. In fact, earlier in the year 1500, and by chance, Vicente Yañez Pinzón, the commander of the Niña on Columbus’s first voyage, came upon the coast of Brazil before Cabral. But in this case Spain made no claim of first priority.
And thus, by 1500, Portugal reached the height of its empire, one that stretched from the spice islands of the Malay peninsula to India to the African coast to Brazil. In that mix, which realized the dream of King João II of a worldwide empire, there would be one major disappointment. In about 1520, the stout explorer whom João II had dispatched overland in 1486 in search of the great and powerful Christian emperor called Prester John finally found his quarry in Ethiopia. Far from the Christian potentate in a magical land of precious stone and gold that was imagined, the Ethiopian prince was a poor and bedraggled character, living in a dusty wasteland. So there would be no broad-shouldered ally for tiny Portugal to challenge Spain and rule the world. The Ethiopian was indeed Christian, and his sect has come down to us as the Coptic religion.
What then of the other major players in the drama of 1492?
By 1495, Tomás de Torquemada was growing old and feeble. In May 1498, the Grand Inquisitor issued his last instructions to his Inquisition before he died a few months later. As Torquemada receded from the scene, an equally scary figure took his place. In 1492, Queen Isabella had discharged her scholarly and sensitive confessor, Hernando de Talavera, and with that sacking, the hope for a tolerant, inclusive policy toward the Moors began to die. Talavera was replaced by a stern, inflexible, and austere Franciscan named Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. Surpassing even Torquemada in his self-denial, Jiménez wore the hair shirt, doubled his fasts, and scourged himself regularly. He was attached to the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, which had been established by Queen Isabella in fulfillment of a vow she had made during the siege of Granada. Jiménez eschewed the convivial fraternity of monastic life and chose instead to live alone as a hermit in a hut in a grove of chestnut trees where he slept on a plank.
Upon the death of Cardinal Mendoza in 1495, Jiménez became the archbishop of Toledo, the richest and most powerful of the Spanish sees. After the death of Torquemada, Jiménez was made Inquisitor-General of Castile. In this bloodless fanatic were combined the three most powerful positions in the land: Grand Inquisitor, queen’s confessor, and archbishop of Toledo. To him was entrusted the final and complete betrayal of the promise of religious freedom made to Islamic Spain in 1492.
Not long after Jiménez’s appointment as Inquisitor-General, with the approval of Ferdinand and Isabella, the principle of religious tolerance was replaced with the principle of “the unity of faith.” The forced conversion of Muslims to the Christian religion began. In Granada, various threats and inducements and punishments were used to secure conversion of the recalcitrants. The mosque of the Albaicín was converted into the Church of San Salvador, and the famous public baths by the Río Darro were closed, for the Inquisition considered bathing to promote erotic behavior (although for the pleasure of the royal entourage, the baths in the Alhambra were quietly restored).
These measures inevitably created great tensions. When one royal constable entered the Arabic barrio to arrest an apostate, he was killed, and the Muslim community rose up in arms. The governor, Count Tendilla, moved in mercilessly, and Ferdinand, ever the paragon of Machiavellian intrigue, used the insurgency to issue the proclamation that everyone must convert and that “there is no salvation for the soul in any other law, only that of Jesus Christ.” On December 18, 1499, with evocations of hellfire hanging in the air, three thousand Muslims were baptized into a faith they knew nothing about. A few months later, in the Rambla square of Granada, the acrid smell came from burning Korans. On one occasion alone some five thousand Korans, many of which possessed exquisite, priceless calligraphy and decoration, were burned in a public spectacle.
On February 12, 1502, Isabella administered the coup de grâce with a royal order that gave all remaining Moors in realms of the new unified Spain the choice she had given the Jews ten years before: baptism or expulsion. And the sad process of history repeating itself went forward.
Boabdil the Unfortunate was not there to witness the final humiliation of his people. Ten years before, after he swiveled around on his horse for his last glimpse of the Alhambra—and uttered his last sigh—his melancholy retinue had passed down a slope of the Sierra Nevada to the village of Lanjarón and turned into the long, narrow valley of the Alpujarras, known to the Moors as “the Hills of the Sun and the Moon.” The party passed through the fertile fields that had been his breadbasket in his final years as sultan and beneath the shadow of Mulhacén, the 13,000-foot peak that was named for his ferocious and foolish father, Muley Aben Hassan.
In the dry eastern portion of the valley, his exile was in the village of Fondón. In his Taa of Purchena, smaller and more remote than the Taa of Andarax that had been the temporary dominion of his uncle, El Zagal the Valiant, Boabdil remained for only a year. With nothing to do, a figure of shame and scorn, depressed and grieving, deserted by all but a few followers, he soon tired of his imprisonment. Through his spies, Ferdinand kept a close watch on his prisoner, doing what he could to make life difficult and to encourage Boabdil, with both carrot and stick, to leave the country altogether.
In the year 898 in the Mohammedan calendar (1493), Boabdil fled to Morocco, carrying with him a bag of gold ducats from the Catholic king. There he came under the protection of his cousin, the King of Fez. For some thirty-six years he assumed an honored place in the Moroccan court, until he took the field of battle in some long-forgotten challenge to the throne of his kinsman and was killed. By all accounts, in this struggle of another, Boabdil the Unfortunate fought hard and valiantly.
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