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The medieval world of Christopher Columbus Two notions may be guaranteed to disturb that serene calm which is the mark of the medieval historian. The first is that the middle ages was a period of unrelieved intellectual gloom whose only saving grace lay in its capacitytoawait the Renaissance; the second, that the whole was bathed in a single all-illuminating glow of Faith, trapped, as it were, in amber. Though, of course, wholly incompatible at root, these notions are nonetheless perfectly capable of being held together and by the same person; and there is in fact a passage about Columbus which, to m y mind, is a perfect summary of the simultaneous (and, I must suggest, just a little patronizing) subscription to these two notions. I should like to start with it, for this passage was the original stimulus to m y enquiry into Columbus's medieval world—and I mean to devote the papertoan attempt to rend it into fragments. The passage in questionrefersto the apparent discovery of the fabled Terrestrial Paradise by the admiral—a discovery which took place on the third voyage of discovery (in August 1498). It comes from Boies Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, published in 1955 (a book for which, I should say, I have for the most part the highest admiration) and it reads: . . . he had found the southern land mass, as the low shores of Venezuela hove in view off the port bow. His course took him through the serpent's Mouth into the Gulf of Paria; he spent some days in exploring the Paria peninsula which he claimed for Spain . . . and from the great volume of water flowing from the mouths of the Orinoco, he rightly concluded that the land must be of continental dimensions, since no island could have such a watershed. But even here his perverse medievalism destroyed his rationalisation—for be was convinced that the Orinoco flowed from the Terrestrial Paradise.1 I was electrified when Ifirstread this passage. H o w was he so convinced that he had actually discovered the Terrestrial Paradise? O n what supports did such a conviction rest? Did it truly destroy his rationalization—and was his medievalism really perverse? In the course of investigating all of these * I. B. Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, Harvard, MA, p. 86. P A R E R G O N ns 12.2 (January 1995) 10 V. /. J. Flint questions I have come to a conclusion that is, in truth, very opposite of of Penrose. This is, that Columbus's medievalism did not merely not destroy, but was an essential part of the 'rationalisation, of his discoveries. Without his so-called 'perverse medievalism' it is, I hope to prove, indeed exceedingly unlikely that he would have made his discoveries at all. The medieval world of Columbus pours all through the admiral's letters and through his journals about his discoveries from the veryfirstone. I shall, therefore, begin this enquiry by reviewing some of the constituent parts of this world (Columbus's maps and readings, that is) and by saying a litde of what some few beyond Penrose have made of it and still seem to be making of it. In the second half I shall indulge myself by pressing upon you m y own theories about Columbus's use of his medieval world theories, to the best of m y knowledge, as yet oddly unsupported by any other of the persons interested in Columbus. Try as one might—and I have tried—it is impossible to prove that Columbus ever saw the great globe Martin Behaim was making in Nuremberg, just as the admiral departed on hisfirstvoyage in 1492. This is, to m y mind, one of the most frustrating refusals of end to meet end in the whole tale of Columbus's discoveries. The admiral, however, certainly had access to many of the mappae mundi upon which Behaim drew; to medieval maps, for instance, of the kind often called T O maps. These depicted the world as a great circle, the O, with the known land-masses of Europe, Africa, and Asia placed upon it on the front (with Asia and...

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