Mexico - A Land Of Volcanoes From Cortes To Aleman

By Joseph H. Schlarman

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446547243

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MEXICO

A Land of Volcanoes

FROM CORTÉS TO ALEMÁN

By Joseph H. L. Schlarman

MONTEZUMA MEETS CORTÉS

Volcanoes have always been impressive as awe-inspiring outbursts of the powers of nature. They arouse wonderment by their majesty and they excite terror because of their devastation. But once their activity has subsided, they leave us as souvenirs fascinating rock formations, enchanting lakes, refreshing springs, healing waters, playful geysers, delightful waterfalls, sylvan mountain scenery, and often majestic snow-covered peaks (Luz Esperanza Yarza, Los Volcanes de Mexico).

The behavior of human beings, individuals or groups, sometimes resembles the destructive activity and subsequent subsidence of volcanoes.

Foreword

IN THE soul of the Ibero-American mestizo, the mode of thinking and the character of the Indian and those of the white man are in ceaseless struggle for balance and definite orientation. The ancient Indian ideas clash daily with paleface ideas, and this want of harmony accounts for the mestizo’s volubility and his inclination to rebellion and tumult. The mental constitution of the Indian is different from the mentality of the white man, and the mestizo has not yet found his level. The ancient Indian race, with its millennial traditions interrupted by the Conquest, furnishes an enormous human reserve, with possibilities we cannot foresee. We do not share the opinion of the North American pioneers that the only good Indian is the dead Indian. Mexico is not a nation. In the sociological meaning of the word, Mexico is still a seed bed of nations, although they appear to be formed into one state. That is why it is so difficult to govern us with laws that are the expression of the general will. Since there is no unity of race there cannot be regulations directed toward the common good and promulgated by authority." — José Castillo Torre¹

Prologue

THOMAS GILLOW¹ was a scion of an old English Catholic family of Liverpool that had survived the confiscations, fines, imprisonments, and executions through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth, keeping the Catholic faith intact. His father owned and operated a brewery in Liverpool.

His three brothers took over the brewery, and Thomas began the study of horology and worked in Roskel’s jewelry shop in Liverpool. After two years he was sent to New York to assist Roskel’s son in establishing a branch house in that city. In 1819 Thomas Gillow proceeded to Mexico City via Havana.

Thomas Gillow set up his jewelry business in the calle de la Profesa, across the street from the magnificent church of la Profesa, built by the Jesuit Fathers in 1720, largely with money given by Doña Getrudis de la Peña, Marquesa de las Torres de Rada. When Thomas Gillow opened his jewelry shop the Jesuit Fathers were no longer in charge of the Profesa. They had been expelled from Mexico in 1767. However, in Gillow’s time, in November, 1820, historic conferences were held in the casa de la Profesa, conferences which led to the formulation of the Plan de la Profesa, out of which came the Plan of Iguala, which ultimately secured the independence of Mexico and placed Agustín de Iturbide on the throne of Mexico for a few brief months.

Gillow’s business flourished and he found entree into the cultured society of Mexico City. In due time, he married María J. Zavalza y Gutiérrez, Marquesa de Selva Nevada, so named because her hacienda lay at the foot of the volcano Iztaccíhuatl (the White Woman), near Amecameca. Now, it was not in keeping with the social ideas of the time that the husband of a marquesa should be selling goods over a counter, no matter how profitable the business. Thomas, therefore, disposed of his jewelry business and became an hacendado, a gentleman farmer.

The first child died as an infant. Ramón Puente² relates that the Marquesa was sickly and went into a deep coma sometime in January or February, 1841. Her body, clothed in a shroud and adorned with jewelry, was laid in a casket and placed in a niche in St. Brigid’s Church, Mexico City.³ During the night the sacristan and a companion decided to appropriate some of the jewelry, but when they used force to remove a ring from her finger, the Marquesa came to life. Horrified at finding herself laid out in a casket, and at the same time fearing she might be killed by the ghouls, she promised to pay them a large sum of money and guard the secret.

Shortly afterward (March 11, 1841) Eulogio Gregorio Gillow was born at Puebla. In 1851 his father took him to London to see the first World’s Fair and placed him in the Jesuit school at Stonyhurst. Then followed six years of study in Belgium, and his course in theology at the Gregorian University, Rome, and ordination to the priesthood.

In 1861, his mother, the Marquesa de Selva Nevada, undertook a journey to Europe to visit her son. She stopped at Havana, Cuba, and on the fifth day out at sea she died of yellow fever and was buried in the Atlantic.

Eulogio Gregorio Gillow was appointed chamberlain to Pope Pius IX and functioned in that capacity until his return to Mexico.

Thomas Gillow had increased his landholdings and had purchased the hacienda known as Chautla, near Puebla, affording a magnificent view of the volcanoes. After his father’s death Monsignor Gillow managed the estates. He had been around in the world and was eager to introduce more modern farm machinery. For this purpose he bought a threshing machine, one that had received the gold medal at the Philadelphia World’s Fair in 1876. Hundreds of people gathered at Chautla for the great demonstration. The thresher refused to perform and was banished to a shed.

A few years later a group of some eighty American tourists came to Mexico via Vera Cruz. They took lodgings in Hotel Iturbide in what is now called Avenida Francisco I. Madero, Mexico City. President Porfirio Díaz and other government officials were trying to do all they could to make the visitors’ stay in Mexico agreeable. The United States General John Frisbi, who then lived in Mexico, presented Monsignor Gillow to the American tourists.

Gillow’s father had once worked in Roskel’s jewelry shop in New York. Monsignor Gillow’s European culture, his keen interest in the social and economic development of Mexico, and the British accent of his English made it appear desirable that the American tourists should meet him. He talked to them about the status of agriculture, cattle raising, mining, and other economic developments in Mexico. Since wheat and corn were then the chief agricultural products in the northern states, he invited them to spend a few days on his hacienda Chautla, near Puebla, and see for themselves.

About forty accepted the invitation, and they made the trip partly by train and partly by stage coach via Tlaxcala to Chautla. In the course of the inspection tour they came across the shed that housed the famous threshing machine. In the group was a manufacturer of threshing machines. He could not understand why the thresher was not used. He was told it did not work. The machinist insisted that it must work.

The next day he doffed his New York suit and went to work. He worked for hours, but the thresher refused to perform. The reason was very simple. The Mexican grain was thicker than the grain in the United States, and the cylinder would not take it.

At lunch Monsignor Gillow had his hour of satisfaction and he pointed a lesson for all time to all American tourists who are inclined to judge Mexico by United States standards. Gentlemen, he said, not everything that works in the United States works in Mexico. I will donate this threshing machine to the Smithsonian Institute, provided you put on it these words printed in large letters: THIS THRESHING MACHINE WAS AWARDED THE GOLD MEDAL AT THE WORLD’S FAIR IN PHILADELPHIA, BUT IT IS WHOLLY USELESS IN MEXICO.⁴

Contents

FOREWORD

PROLOGUE

PART I

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

PART II

INDEPENDENCE

PART III

GROPING TOWARD POLITICAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

REVERIE

PRINCIPAL DIPLOMATIC AGENTS OF U. S. TO MEXICO

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

MAPS

ROUTE OF CORTÉS

THE MOHAMMEDAN PINCER ATTACK ON EUROPE

AREA OF FIRST DISCOVERIES

ROUTE OF CORTÉS TO HONDURAS

THE ROUTE OF NUÑO DE GUZMÁN

EXPEDITION OF CORONADO

MISSION AREAS OF THE FRANCISCANS, DOMINICANS, AND AUGUSTINIANS

MISSIONARY AREAS OF THE JESUITS

MILITARY OPERATIONS OF HIDALGO AND MORELOS

TEXAS WAR

MEXICAN WAR

REVOLUTIONARY MEXICO AFTER DÍAZ

THE LAGUNA REGION

ILLUSTRATIONS

MONTEZUMA MEETS CORTÉS

HUMAN SACRIFICE

TEOCALLI

ZUMÁRRAGA

QUIROGA

PEDRO DE GANTE

ANTONIO MENDOZA

HIDALGO

MORELOS

JOSEFA ORTIZ

GUADALUPE VICTORIA

NICOLÁS BRAVO

ANASTASIO BUSTAMANTE

MOUNTAIN WARFARE

EMPEROR ITURBIDE

ANTONIO LÓPEZ DE SANTA ANNA

PEDRO CELESTINO NEGRETE

EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN — CARLOTA

BENITO JUÁREZ

MIRAMÓN

VALENTÍN GÓMEZ FARÍAS

LUCAS ALAMÁN

PORFIRIO DÍAZ — CARMELITA

FRANCISCO I. MADERO

VICTORIANO HUERTA

VENUSTIANO CARRANZA

ALVARO OBREGÓN

PANCHO VILLA

EMILIANO ZAPATA

PLUTARCO ELÍAS CALLES

LÁZARO CÁRDENAS

AVILA CAMACHO

MIGUEL ALEMÁN

PART I

The Colonial Period

CHAPTER I

The European Background

MAY 29, 1453, is the boundary between the Middle Ages and modern history. On that day Constantinople fell. On that day Mohammed II walked over the lifeless body of Constantine Paleologus, the valiant defender of the city founded by Constantine the Great. On that day the Christian Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. On that day the Crescent of the Mohammedans conquered the Cross, and the fanatical Mohammedans entered southeastern Europe via the Golden Horn. It was the struggle of Asia against Europe; on that day, and for more than two centuries, Asia won.

To understand how and why this happened, it is indispensable to take a look at the European background and even beyond. That brief survey is necessary for the understanding of the Spanish character; and without this prelude, which sketches the sequence of causes and effects, it is impossible to understand the deeds of the Spaniards in the Americas.

MOHAMMED

About A.D. 570 Mohammed, the son of Abdallah, was born at Mecca, Arabia. During his adolescent years he was a shepherd and camel driver of caravans that took him to Palestine and Syria. In this manner he absorbed a certain amount of information about Jewish and Christian religions and traditions.

Mohammed may have been a psychopathic abnormality, but we must admit that he was a man of extraordinary power and could sway the multitude. He was simple in his habits, of a highly nervous temperament, taciturn, but gifted with great powers of imagination. In his fortieth year he declared he had received a call from the Angel Gabriel.

The religious creed he preached was simple: (1) bearing witness that there is but one God (Allah), and Jesus Christ and Mohammed are his prophets; (2) reciting the daily prayers; (3) giving legal alms; (4) observing the Ramadan, or the month’s fast; (5) making the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime.

His first converts were about forty, including his wife, his daughter (Fatima), his father-in-law, and his adopted son, Ali Omar. When Mohammed began his marvelous career of religious reforms, writes J. A. Zahm, his countrymen in Arabia were deeply sunk in vice. They were idolaters addicted to the grossest and most absurd fetishism. The Arabians were noted not only for their loathsome idolatry, but also for their inhuman practice of disposing of female children at their birth by burying them alive.¹

His preaching (at first merely religious and social) encountered strong opposition and he was forced to flee from Mecca to Medina in 622. That was the famous Hegira (flight). Capitalizing on the incident, a few years later he returned at the head of forty thousand. He had become master of Arabia and had united all the tribes under one emblem and one religion. He was a man of dauntless courage, great generalship, strong patriotism, and ruthlessness, if occasion called for strong action. Thus he set the pace for world conquest which his followers carried on till 1683, when their attempts were checked in the famous siege of Vienna, in which Jan Sobieski, king of Poland, played such an important and dramatic role.

MOHAMMEDANISM ASPIRES TO WORLD POWER

After Mohammed’s death, writes Gabriel Oussani, Mohammedanism aspired to become a world power and a universal religion. The weakness of the Byzantine Empire (Constantinople), the easy moral code of the new religion, the power of the sword and of fanaticism, the hope of plunder and the love of conquest — all these factors combined with the genius of the caliphs, the successors of Mohammed, to effect the conquest, in considerably less than a century, of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, and the South of Spain. The Moslem even crossed the Pyrenees, threatening to stable their horses in St. Peter’s at Rome, but were at last defeated by Charles Martel at Tours in 732.²

The Crusades, writes Hilaire Belloc, were, in their entirety (1097–1187), a continuous struggle between our civilization and the hostile world of Islam, which all but overwhelmed Europe. They were one continuous campaign, or even one battle, a battle of ninety years, a battle with a political objective, the Holy Places . . . a battle that began with a victorious offensive and ended in full defeat.³

Islam defiantly threw down the gauntlet to Christendom. An inveterate hatred between the Cross and the Crescent developed. To the Mohammedans, Christians were the hated Giaouls (unbelievers). To the Christians, the followers of Islam were infidel dogs.

To anyone who passes through the Straits of Gibraltar the thought comes that there must have been a time when Europe and Africa were connected by a very narrow neck of rock. Then one of nature’s cataclysms split the rock, leaving the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and the Rock of Ceuta on the African side, and between them a thirteen-mile strait of water connecting the Atlantic with the Mediterranean and the waters that lie beyond to the Black Sea and the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnieper, the Don, and the rivers of Russia that flow into it.

Before the time of Mohammed no Arabic national feeling or an Arabic political state existed. The Arabs led a tribal life, not as one great tribe but as many tribes, all were independent and they engaged in endless strife. The religion and the political principles of Mohammed bound them into one. For the purposes of conquest they had formed themselves into a single state under the rule of a caliph, who centered religious and political authority in his own person. The caliphs’ aim was world conquest, as the world was then known, and the total annihilation of Christianity and Christian civilization.

The strategy of the leaders of Islam was a pincer movement on a gigantic scale. The invasion of Spain by the Moors was the western pincer attack. It was broken by Charles Martel at the battle of Tours in 732. But nearly eight centuries of warfare were needed to drive the invaders across the straits back into Africa. The eastern pincer attack was aimed at Constantinople. The Crusades delayed the attack a century, but the Mohammedans never lost sight of their objective. Let us first follow the western attack, the invasion and conquest of Spain.

MOHAMMEDAN CONQUEST OF SPAIN

Spain’s struggle for eight centuries against Islam is an important fact in the history of Spain; it is even one of the great turning points in the history of the western world. But it is only an episode in the endless struggle of the East against the West, a struggle that has reached a white-heat stage in our own day.

Carthage fell to the Moors A.D. 693. From that day on there were no more Christians on the North African shores across from Spain to check the desert hordes. Spain lived continually under the dread of piratical attacks from Africa and was suspicious of persons who held commerce with the Africans. The Jews were so suspected.

In 710 a reconnoitering expedition led by Tarik, a Moslem military leader of Persian or Berber origin, landed 400 men in four boats. The present city of Tarifa marks the spot of the landing. Tarik returned with rich booty: gold, goods, and many women for Moorish harems.

The raid was so easy and so successful that the following year Tarik crossed the straits again and gathered 7000 men at the foot of the rock that bears his name — Gibraltar, from Jebel-Tarik, the rock of Tarik. (So long as Gibraltar remains in foreign hands, it reminds the Spaniards of their first and most humiliating defeat.) At about the same time another general, Muza, attacked the eastern coast of Spain and moved up the valley of the Ebro. The Spaniards at first thought Muza’s invasion was merely another raid. But the unexpected happened: Islam triumphed, and in a short time Moorish armies overran all Spain. Only Galicia and the Basque countries remained in the hands of Christians.⁴

Don Rodrigo was the last Visigoth king of Spain. A certain Don, Julian and others had aided and abetted the invasion of Tarik. They soon regretted their treasonable deed. Infidels had taken over the inheritance and civilization of Christians. Christian temples were defiled; their cities became heaps of ruins; the conquerors devoured the substance of the country and laid waste its fertile fields.

At no time during the eight centuries of occupation did the Moors become numerically dominant. Even in the caliphate of Cordova they did not exceed half the population. After the first rush and destruction of conquest was over, the invaders felt they had to respect the framework of the old state. The people, therefore, in the majority Christian, retained its nobility, counts and dukes, its governors, bishops, clergy, judges, courts, tax collectors, and so on.

The conquistadores, Tarik and Muza, set up a feudal system in southern Spain. The first beneficiaries of the land distribution were their soldiers. Of certain lands one fifth fell to the Moorish state. In other parts of Spain, especially in the north, the Christians remained owners, but were despoiled of most valuable chattels and were obliged to pay heavy taxes.⁵

The serfs, the tillers of the soil, had to maintain their Moorish lords as they had furnished the foodstuffs under the Visigoth regime. In other words, the Spaniards, that is, the Christians and those who had become Mohammedans (renegados), tilled the fields the same as before.

MOORISH INFLUENCE IN SPAIN

The Moors did not introduce irrigation. The Romans and Carthegenians had practiced it centuries before them. In truth, the Moors being nomads, knew little about agriculture, and were too proud to work the land. When North Africa became Moorish it became an arid country, as it is today, except where French and Italians had reintroduced irrigation.

Since the coming of Islam, writes Belloc, the trees have been massacred and, as everybody knows, trees preserve the soil of a country and store up its water. It is still true that throughout Christendom, wherever Islam has overrun Roman land, it has destroyed the trees, for Islam cuts down but is too slack to replant. Sicily and Tunis are two outstanding examples.⁶

Only the Jews and the serfs, writes Bertrand, derived some advantage from the change of regime. In many places the Jews made friends with the invaders. Captured cities were often entrusted to Jewish garrisons. That was something the Spaniards never forgot nor forgave. The expulsion of the Jews under Ferdinand and Isabella was largely prompted by the memory of their aid to the Moors.⁷

Even today, adds Bertrand, Spain, in many sections arid and insufficiently populated, bears the marks of the conquest, both in the character of the people and in the appearance of the soil. When you travel across the dreary and solitary planes of the Mancha or Extremadura, you note very distinctly that the Berber of Africa passed through here. The least that one can say is that the Moorish domination of Spain was a great disaster for the Spanish people.⁸

The three most important Moorish monuments in Spain are the Alhambra of Granada, the Alcazar of Seville, and the great mosque, now the cathedral, of Cordova.

Two distinct races of people lived side by side in Spain: the Moors and the Spaniards. They lived in the same country, but had nothing in common except their bitter hatred one for the other. The Moors wore the turban and wide-flowing garments. The Spaniards wore the helmet and tight breeches or hose.

Still the Moorish influence made itself felt in science, in art, in literature, and in many other ways. The Moors brought Greek culture, the construction of the dome, the decoration of flat surfaces with arabesques; they introduced the use of paper instead of the Roman parchment or papyrus, the enclosed court or patio, and the Mudéjar style of architecture, astrology, and alchemy. They made no contribution to navigation and exploration. In general, they were parasites attaching themselves to something already existing. Yet Bertrand objects to the use of the terms Arabic art and Arabic civilization for the reason that the Arabs had neither an art nor a civilization of their own. They did no more than influence Spanish art and Spanish civilization.

The most notable trace of the Moors in Spain was their impress on the Spanish character. The mere contact of centuries Arabianized and Africanized the Spaniards. Christians copied the easy morals of the Moslems, if not to the point of introducing harems, at least to keeping concubines. The Islam concept of slaves influenced the view of Christians in Spain in the matter of slavery. It is quite certain, writes Bertrand, the Spaniards got from the Arabs their stubbornness, their claim to be, if not the chosen people of God, at least the most Catholic in Christendom. Philip II, the same as Abd-er-Rhaman or Al-Manzor, is the protector of the faith. The Spaniards could not live for centuries side by side with a people who crucified their enemies and who boasted in piling up mountains of skulls without being scorched. The cruelty of the Arabs and Berbers found disciples in the Peninsula.⁹

The Moorish character betrayed an excessive individualism. No two Arab chiefs could ever agree. Says Belloc: Monarchy is inherited from Rome. Islam knows nothing of it.

Belloc further calls attention to the fact that the very early caliphs, those of the first dozen years after Mohammed, were assassinated one after another. This tradition of fickleness and of massacre was carried over into Spain. The Spaniards saw it with their own eyes, got used to it, and copied it.

When Yusuf-ben-Tachefin captured the kingdom of Granada from Abdallah, he had the latter’s treasures brought to him: piles of gold and silver and precious stones, and the like. But Yusuf, suspecting that Abdallah’s mother had hidden some of the treasures, had her tortured with the result that she revealed the hiding place. This was the example later copied by some of the conquistadores in Mexico.

CHRISTIANS UNDER MOORISH DOMINATION

With certain exceptions, the conquerors did not, as a rule, insist on the conversion of the people. They could remain Christian and pay poll tax, an arrangement which the Moslems in many cases preferred. The serf could acquire his liberty by abjuring the Christian religion; but once a Mohammedan the renegado could not return to the Christian faith. To do so meant death. Economically, socially, and politically the Jews enjoyed a favorable position. The harsh Visigoth laws against them were repealed, and often they found employment in government and administration as allies of the conquerors.

The condition of the Christians under the emirs and caliphs in Spain was in general bearable, if they were willing to pay the greater part of the taxes, take various kinds of arbitrary insults and abuse, not rebel against wrongs, and, in short, be content to be treated as an inferior race in their own land. In the course of centuries it became evident that Spain was not big enough for Spaniards and Moors. One of the groups had eventually to go. That realization on the part of the Spaniards was the beginning of the hard-fought battles between Spaniards and Africans, between Christians and Moslems.

The Christians of the north began to fight back. Their forces were small and their equipment was poor. They copied the Moslem system and made little wars (guerrillas). This strife developed into a bitter struggle: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, cruelty for cruelty. Internal feuds between Arab and Berber chieftains broke up the Moslem regime into petty states. Strong Spanish wines, harems, court intrigues and jealousies, the enervating climate of southern Spain, and many other causes incident to such a sort of life degenerated the Moslem rulers into effeminate, sensual, pseudoliterary fops, who retained, however, all the atrocious barbarian cruelties of their ancestors. The time was ripe for the reconquest from the north. The Mane, Tekel, Phare was clearly written on the walls of the Alhambra.

May 25, 1085, the King of Castile and León entered Toledo, the former capital of the kingdom of Spain. Then appeared the great Cid, who captured Valencia, as hard and inconsiderate as any Moslem leader before him. At the battle of las Navas de Tolosa, July 12, 1212, the Moors suffered a crushing defeat. That was the real beginning of the reconquest of Spain by the Spaniards. But 280 years more of determined struggle were required before Ferdinand and Isabella could make their solemn entry into the Alhambra of Granada, January 2, 1492.

THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

The eastern pincer attack was aimed at Constantinople. The Crusades (1097–1187) delayed the attack a century, but the Mohammedans never lost sight of their objective.

The Roman Empire with its seat at Constantinople, which in the days of the great Emperor Justinian (527–565) had extended from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar and Ceuta), had in the course of centuries fallen to the low level of a Byzantine Empire, of no more importance than a former Roman province. The decline of Byzantium, once known as New Rome, can be attributed to many causes. Perhaps the most potent single cause was the complete break with the West after the coronation of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor (800) and the break with the Church of Rome, known as the Great Eastern Schism, tragically linked with the name of Photius.

Photius (815–897) belonged to one of the great families of Constantinople. While yet a layman, he was a prominent member of the Byzantine court of Constantinople. His insatiable ambition goaded him on to desire to become patriarch of Constantinople. He rushed through holy orders in six days and had himself ordained patriarch by an excommunicated bishop on Christmas Day, 857. With the aid of the Byzantine court he drove out Ignatius, the lawful patriarch.

The party headed by Photius was bitterly anti-Roman in a political and ecclesiastical sense. This animus appears in the fact that Photius, despite his great learning, would not study Latin.

In the course of time the schismatic patriarchs of Constantinople and the schismatic bishops became mere political tools in the hands of the effete Byzantine políticos. To the Byzantines, Photius became the hero of independence who broke the pride of Old Rome and of the West.

The last reconciliation of the Orthodox (Greek) Church with the Holy See (Latin Church) took place at the Council of Florence in 1439. But racial and political antagonism to the West was so deeply rooted that the Union could not gain any ground.

In the flow of anti-Western, anti-Latin, anti-Roman political oratory, the Byzantines failed to note that the Mohammedan Turks under their able leader Mohammed II had approached the very gates of Constantinople. For the moment the Turks by-passed Constantinople and attacked Hungary and Albania.

The names of Hunyady the Hungarian and Skanderbeg the Albanian are generally linked together as two great military heroes and defenders of Europe and the faith in their valiant warfare against the ancestral foes of Christendom. János Hunyady (1400–1456), governor of Hungary, fought the Turks in many a battle. George Kastriota, prince of Albania, generally known as Skanderbeg, a man of Slavonian origin and a contemporary of Hunyady, fought the Turks valiantly. The Pope and Hunyady and Skanderbeg appealed to the Western princes to awaken from their lethargy, to lay aside their petty dissensions, and with all their powers to obtain liberation of the Christian world and secure the future. The response was most disheartening. Pastor relates what happened.

On the 23rd of March, 1453, Mohammed II left Adrianople and on the 6th of April he took up his position within a mile of Constantinople. According to the lowest, and therefore most probable estimate, his army numbered a hundred and sixty thousand men. To meet this powerful, rapacious and fanatical host, the Emperor [Constantine Paleologus, the last Greek Emperor] had, in all, four thousand nine hundred and seventy-three Greeks, and about two thousand foreigners, Genoese, Venetians, Cretans, Romans, and Spaniards.

On the 29th of May [1453], the Janissaries made another desperate attack. The Emperor with a great many of his faithful followers fell. The infidels [Turks] meanwhile had become masters of the city and had slain thousands of its inhabitants before the idea of making money out of them as slaves arrested the work of bloodshed. Sixty thousand prisoners were taken; the spoil taken was enormous, and for a long time afterwards the Turks used to say, when speaking of a very rich man, he was at the sack of Constantinople.

It would be difficult to describe the terror of Western Christendom on learning that the centre of the old world and the bulwark which protected European civilization from Asiatic barbarism had fallen into the hands of the infidels. Men felt the event to be a turning point in the history of the world. The year 1453 marks the boundary between the Middle Ages and Modern Times.¹⁰

CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

After the fall of Constantinople the Ottomans (Mohammedans, Turks) became the most dangerous conquerors that had ever stepped on European soil. Slowly but surely the way was prepared for the complete closing up and barbarizing of the glorious lands bordering on the Mediterranean. The overland and water trade routes to the Orient were blocked by a power inimical to commerce and still more hostile to those Christian nations for whose benefit intercourse between the East and West was mainly carried on. All over Europe men began to study the possibility of a water route to the Indies, among them a Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus.

The Ottoman dominion, at the period of its greatest extension, stretched from Buda (Budapest) on the Danube to the Euphrates, from Poland and Russia to the Red Sea, from the shores of the Caspian Sea through northern Africa to Gibraltar and Spain. It was no vain boast of the Ottoman sultan that he was master of many kingdoms, the ruler of three continents, and the lord of two seas. That is the significance of the fall of Constantinople.

The Turkish hordes fanned out into all parts of southeastern Europe after the tragic collapse of the Byzantine Empire. Only two Christian leaders remained in the field to check the armies of Mohammed II: Hunyady and Skanderbeg. Hunyady routed the victor of Constantinople at Belgrade in July, 1456. John Capistran had traveled all over southern and eastern Europe preaching a Crusade against the Turks. The moral effects of the great victory were most important, for it broke the charm of supposed invincibility which had grown up around the Crescent. The victory over the Turks had a powerful influence in far-off Spain, where the Moors still held the kingdom of Granada. The Christian world breathed more freely after hearing of Hunyady’s triumph.

Venice, writes Pastor, the greatest naval power in Europe, steadily pursued her huckster’s policy of giving her support to whatever state of things seemed most advantageous for her commerce. Throughout the negotiations [concerning a Crusade] she kept the Sultan thoroughly informed of all the transactions.

THE RECONQUEST OF SPAIN

The joint reign of Ferdinand of Aragon (1479–1516) and Isabella of Castile (1474–1504), who are known in history as the Catholic monarchs (Reyes Catolicos), marks the transition from medieval to modern Spain. It also witnessed the fulfillment of nearly eight centuries of Spanish aspirations for deliverance from the Moorish domination. The struggle, lasting almost 800 years, from 711 to 1492, was brought to a conclusion in the conquest of Granada. The reconquest of Spain was not all a military affair. Religion and charity played an important role.

The fall of Constantinople and the invasion of eastern Europe by the Turks (Moslems) spurred the Spaniards to drive the Moors from their last stronghold in Spain, the kingdom of Granada.

In population and configuration of soil the kingdom of Granada showed great contrasts. The inhabitants of the cities were chiefly Berbers and some Arabs; the rural population was chiefly of Spanish stock.

The rainfall in the kingdom of Granada is sparse, and the productivity of the soil depends largely on irrigation. The fields and gardens and orchards were worked by Spanish farmers, whose ancestors had been there since the Roman days. But at the time of the Moorish invasion they had accepted the Moslem religion for the sake of convenience and advantages and liberties offered them by the conquerors. The Christians gave the name renegados to these Spanish Mohammedans. They called themselves muladíes. But they were not of Moorish blood; they were descendants of Spaniards.

As in most Moorish states that had already been reconquered by the Spaniards, the downfall of Granada was in part prepared by internal factions. At this particular time, it was a jealous quarrel between two women: Aisha, the first wife of Abdul-Hassan, king of Granada, and Isabel de Solis, who had embraced Islamism and the king. Aisha’s son, Boabdil, dethroned his father and unheroically lost Granada.

Ferdinand and Isabella considered the battle for Granada a formidable undertaking and prepared ten years for it. A whole new city was built near Granada, complete with towers and battlements. The soldiers wished to call it Isabella. The Queen named it Santa Fe. Again the Crescent and the Cross. Isabella came with all her court and her children. Catherine, the later unfortunate wife of Henry VIII of England, was six years of age.

Granada was not taken by assault; it was starved into submission. The last stronghold of the Moors fell, or, rather, was surrendered January 2, 1492. The army’s standard, a banner with a great silver crucifix, was planted on the walls of the Alhambra.

Boabdil, the last Moorish governor, and the Crescent returned to Africa, whence his ancestors under Tarik had brought the Moslem emblem with their invasion in the year 711.

In the Sierra Nevada, between Granada and the Mediterranean, there is a peak known as El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro: The Last Sigh of the Moor. Here Boabdil turned for a last tearful look at the city he had lost. His mother Aisha, who had helped her son dethrone his father, her husband, rebuked him with the taunting words: Weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man.

About 500 Christians languishing for years in Moorish prisons were set free. It must be admitted there is a vast difference between the fall of Granada into the hands of the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Moslem, Mohammed II.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL OF GRANADA

The fall of Granada sent a thrill of joy through the whole of Christian Europe. It was looked upon as a compensation for the loss of Constantinople (1453). A Mass of thanksgiving attended by Pope Innocent VIII was celebrated in the Spanish national church in Rome. In St. Paul’s, London, a Te Deum was chanted by order of King Henry VII.

The blood that flowed in the veins of Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was Phoenician, Iberian, Celtiberian, Greek, Carthagenian, Roman, Visigoth, Vandal, Moslem. The Iberians had brought the culture of the Orient; the Celts, their knowledge of iron and metals; the Romans, law and administration; the Goths, agriculture and more warfare; the Moslems, the compass, paper, and Greek learning, but also love of pleasure.

This mixture of blood and the hard battles for survival developed in the Spaniards a proud, vibrant, and militant patriotism that culminated in the expulsion of the Moors, a stubborn loyalty to the Catholic faith, a crusading spirit under the banner of the Santa Cruz to spread the Santa Fe. In such a country and of such stock an Ignatius of Loyola, a Dominic, a Francis Xavier, a Peter Claver, a Teresa of Ávila, but also a Cortés and the Spanish conquistadores were sired.

Of course all over Spain there were still some Moors, who continued to be Moors in language, in religion, in customs; at heart they hated the Spaniards among whom they lived. The difference of religion was only one of many reasons that brought about the expulsion of the Moors.

Under the emirs of Cordova and the Almohades, whole towns had been exterminated by fire and sword, had been given the choice to abjure Christianity or die, to be exiled and banished or to accept Islamism.

The terms of the Treaty of Granada (some 500 articles) gave the Moors many liberal conditions: they could keep their mosques, their minarets, their muezzins, their customs, their real and personal property, and they were exempted from military service.

But the plan did not work out. The Moors of Andalusia were African Berbers who hated the Spaniards. The hatred was racial much more than religious. We must also admit that since the fall of Constantinople the threat of the Turks was a nightmare to Europe. In their battles no quarter was sought or given.

Spain was trying to forge one strong united kingdom. But the fall of Granada did not solve all her problems. Ferdinand and Isabella vainly hoped that by conversion to Christianity the Moors scattered throughout the country would become good Spaniards. But the Moriscos, as the converts were called, remained Moors at heart. The Jewish peddler carried on his trade from one end of Spain to the other and became the natural message bearer for the Moors and Moriscos. The forced conversions attempted by Ferdinand and Isabella had unhappy results. The Spanish sovereigns needed money to pay for the war. Every conquest, therefore, involved expropriation, which was sometimes covered with a religious label. March 30, 1492, the decree expelling the Jews from Spain was signed.

The big landowners objected to the expulsion of the Moors and Moriscos who tilled their lands. In 1596, Philip II compelled the Moriscos to sincere conversion or banishment. All this was done with the ultimate goal of achieving political unity. The excesses of the Inquisition must be interpreted in that light. Inhuman as this policy appears today, it did free western Europe from the peril of the Moslem which threatened Europe until the battle of Vienna in 1683.

At Santa Fe, Christopher Columbus, that dreamy Genoese navigator with a fixed idea in his head that he could reach India by sailing westward, obtained his first sympathetic hearing with Queen Isabella. The conquest of Granada had changed the sentiment in his favor. The Articles of Agreement between the Catholic sovereigns and Cristóbal Colón were signed at Santa Fe, April 17, 1492. On August 3 of that same year he sailed from Palos, Spain, on the greatest voyage of exploration ever undertaken in the history of the world.

CHAPTER II

The Amazing Discovery

THE legendary impenetrability of the Atlantic had always checked human adventure. But this very impenetrability had something mysterious and alluring about it and stirred the interest and pricked the curiosity of Europe to discover the secrets of the western ocean: its extent, its fantastic islands, its legendary continent of Atlantis, and so forth.

In various countries of Europe books on this exciting topic were being written. Some gave extravagant descriptions of voyages, others were serious studies that furnished data required for the realization of this dream project. Arabs, Germans, Netherlanders, Frenchmen, Italians, Castilians, Aragonese, and Portuguese worked together and supplemented, in one form or another, their findings, which eventually led to the great discovery.

Two things were a prerequisite: direction and astronomical position. The compass brought to Europe by the Moors and perfected by the Italians in the thirteenth century assured the direction. The sextant and the calendars showing the solar declinations for each day and the nautical maps, such as they were, gave confidence about the astronomical positions.

Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), son of King John I of Portugal, by the voyages he sponsored or undertook personally, removed many of the imagined terrors of the deep. At the age of twenty-one he commanded the expedition that captured Ceuta from the Moors. He desired to learn the extent of the Mohammedan power, to know more of the African coast, to open up trade relations, and, being a Crusader, to spread the Christian faith. These voyages led to the chance discovery of the Madeira Islands, the Azores, and the Cape Verde Islands. In 1486 Bartholomew Diaz passed the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope.

PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES

The pre-Columbian discoveries made in the northern Atlantic are, roughly speaking, as follows:

1. About the year 983 the Norseman Gunnbjörn discovered Greenland, and Eric the Red of Iceland settled there in 986.

2. In 999 or 1000 Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, accidentally touched the shores of North America and called it Vinland the Good, because of the abundance of wild grapes he saw.

3. In 1003 Thorfinn Karlsefni and others undertook a voyage of exploration. The first land they found was remarkable for long, flat stones. They named it Helluland, that is, Stoneland (Labrador). Then they sailed southward and sighted a land rich in timber. This they named Markland, that is, Woodland (Newfoundland).

Christianity was introduced into Greenland by St. Olaf II, king of Norway, between 1015 and 1030. It was difficult to keep that far-off mission supplied with priests. A curious message, sent by Greenlanders and received by Pope Innocent VIII (1484–1492), stated that in eighty years no foreign ship had anchored there. The only relic remaining to those who still cherished Christianity was the corporal used by the last priest in the celebration of the last Mass. This was brought out once a year and publicly venerated.¹

As for Vinland, Helluland, and Markland, the waves blotted out the paths of the Norse ships, icebergs continued to crash into the cold waters of the North Atlantic and float southward unnoticed by human eye. Europe forgot that a new continent had been seen and forgot it for five hundred years. To give that message to the world was the great honor and distinction reserved to Christopher Columbus.²

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

A dreamer, a poet, tremendously and even offensively and irritably ambitious, Columbus was firmly convinced he had something to offer to the world. This faith in his own destiny he clung to with stubborn determination, despite poverty and other difficulties. Born in Genoa in 1451 and leading a sailor’s life since 1477, he said he had traveled as far as Iceland and beyond. He had the idea; all he needed was some king to sponsor his cause.

He tried Portugal. There the traditions of Henry the Navigator still lived on. In fact, it was in Portugal that he got the idea of sailing westward on the Atlantic. He read every book that might furnish information, such as the Imago mundi by d’Ailly written in 1410; he consulted ancient authors such as Pliny and Seneca, who believed in the existence of Atlantis; he studied the maps of Toscanelli (1474) which indicated the ship’s course and even calculated, erroneously of course, the distance to India; and he was fascinated by the writings of Marco Polo (1250–1323), who had visited the country of the Great Khan (China) and knew how to tell a tale. He listened to the stories of Spanish and Portuguese mariners and studied the maps and papers and notes of his father-in-law, the mariner Perestrello.

Columbus submitted his ideas and plans to King John II of Portugal, but Portugal was interested in the coasts of Africa. In fourteen years, Columbus wrote, I could not make him understand what I was talking about. But perhaps the shrewd John II was but following the policy of absolute secrecy, to conceal Portugal’s activities from its rivals, as the Phoenicians had done two thousand years before him.

Columbus turned to Spain. For seven years (1485–1492) he struggled before he obtained a favorable hearing. There was diversity of opinion concerning the merits of his theories; there were misconceptions and errors common to himself and to those from whom he sought aid. Moreover, at that time Spain was preparing to drive the hated invaders, the Moors, out of Granada. And he was confronted by his worst enemy, himself: his impatient temperament and arrogant ambition. But through all the vexing delays and misunderstandings and setbacks he found loyal friends in Fray Juan Pérez, the prior of the Franciscan monastery of La Rábida near Palos, and Fray Antonio Marchena of the same monastery. The reaching of the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz in 1486 nettled Columbus. He wanted to leave Spain and try the King of France or England. But it was again the sympathetic Juan Pérez who calmed the impetuous Genoese.

GHASTLY SCENE BEHIND THE VEIL

In 1487 Columbus was impatiently chafing at the bit in Spain. He was convinced that by sailing westward he could reach India and that he could open new lands where Spain could spread the light of faith to pagans sitting in the darkness of idolatry. Such was the honest ambition of Spaniards who had seen the ravages of the infidel Moors. Could he for one short moment have lifted the veil that concealed the idolatrous practices of the peoples in a yet unknown western continent, a veil that was removed thirty-two years later, he could have shown Isabella a picture so dark, so gruesome, bloody, and inhuman, in that year 1487, it would have dismayed her with creeping horror.

In that year 1487 Ahuitzotl, emperor of the Aztecs and uncle of a little boy, later to be known as Montezuma,³ had just completed the teocalli (god’s house) or the chief temple of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). The solemn dedication was celebrated in that year by the sacrifice of a vast number of human victims. Torquemada (Monarchía Indiana) estimated this number at 72,344; Ixtlilxóchitl (Historia Chichimeca) reckoned 80,000, and the Tellerian and Vatican Codices give the still shocking figure of 20,000.⁴

Dark, gruesome chambers, smelling like a slaughterhouse, contained hideous idols. In these dim recesses, demoniacal priests, clad in black robes, with grotesquely painted faces framed in blood-clotted locks, celebrated their inhuman rites, smeared the idols with human blood, and offered smoking hearts to the monstrous deities there enthroned.

The presiding figure of this theocratic charnal house was that of the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. Its face was distorted and had terrible eyes; the body was covered with gold and jewels, and was wound about with the coils of golden serpents; and the worship of this horrible god was coiled tightly around the natural life of the Aztecs. In the right hand he held a bow, and in the left a bundle of arrows. Suspended from the idol’s neck was a necklace of human heads and hearts made of gold and silver with precious stones set in them.

Pretexts for wars with various tribes were invented in order to procure the victims for this ghastly hecatomb. Slave hunters scoured the territories of surrounding tribes to capture victims, who were then caged up and fattened. Prisoners taken in war were the most highly prized victims; but, failing these, the surrender of victims was imposed as a fine for failure to pay tribute or for some other reason. For the celebrations of minor festivals slaves were easily bought.

The table-shaped stone was about waist high. Six pagan priests officiated. Five priests or temple attendants held the arms, legs, and head of the victim, who was stretched lying on his back upon a stone in such a way as to throw his chest well forward. These five attendants had their faces and bodies painted black. The head of the sixth priest, the celebrant, was adorned with colored plumes.

Ann Axtell Morris⁵ describes an altar of human sacrifice found in Yucatán, measuring nine by thirteen feet. The High Priest, she writes, paces slowly toward the victim, knife [of Obsidian stone] in hand, while prayers are chanted by the onlookers in guttural excited tempo. A pause of dead quiet except for the captive’s moans — a shriek as the knife plunges — then hellish pandemonium breaks loose, while the dripping, still-struggling heart is torn out and lifted high and triumphantly in the air. Blood spurts wildly, then drips slowly and soaks into an already blood-dyed altar and floor. A dreadful and sickening sight! The heart was deposited at the feet of the image of the god. The fresh blood was smeared on the lips of the idol.⁶

It is the Moloch worship amplified, the sacrifice of children, the passing through fire perhaps of Chanaanite origin, practiced among idolatrous Israelites, according to the idols of the nations, which the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel [came into the land] (4 Kings 16:3). It is the sacrifice forbidden by Moses: If any man of the children of Israel, or of the strangers, give his seed to the idol of Moloch, dying let him die: the people of the land shall stone him (Lev. 20:2).

But Columbus could not lift the curtain hiding the blood-stenched chamber of sacrifice behind Orizaba. The curtain shrouding the mysterious deeds of darkness was cut down thirty-two years after 1487.

THE VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS

And then came the great day of Santa Fe, April 17, 1492, after nearly eight centuries of occupation, in whole or in part, of Spain by the hated infidel Moors. After eight hundred years of chafing, struggle, and fighting, the Crescent had been lowered on the tower of the Alhambra, and the banner of Castile had been hoisted. By the end of the fifteenth century Spain was the one really great nation in Europe. Queen Isabella, the last crusader, saw the opportunity of spreading Christianity in a new world. Columbus pledged to find it. He had triumphed. He was an admiral and viceroy, and the highest office was to be hereditary in his family.

The geographical contributions by Columbus may be summarized as follows:

First voyage. Sailed from Palos, August 3, 1492; returned to Palos March 15, 1493. He had discovered San Salvador (Guanahani), one of the Bahamas (October 12, 1492); Cuba, first named Juana⁷ (in honor of el Infante Don Juan, son of Ferdinand and Isabella and heir to the throne, d. 1497), later named Fernandina; Haiti (Quisqueya), later named Española, now Santo Domingo or Haiti.

The coat of arms of Castile had up to then shown the columns of Hercules (Gibraltar and Ceuta) with the legend, Ne plus ultra (nothing beyond). After the discoveries by Columbus the legend was changed. The word ne was deleted, and the motto now read plus ultra (more beyond). And Spain claimed all beyond by reason of discovery.

Second voyage. Sailed from Cádiz, September 25, 1493; returned to Cádiz, June 11,1496. He discovered Puerto Rico (Boriquén), Jamaica, and the Lesser Antilles.

Third voyage. Sailed from Sanlúcar, May 30, 1498; returned to Cádiz, November, 1500. He had discovered Trinidad, Tierra Firme (Isla Sancta and Isla de Gracia) in the mouth of the Orinoco.

Fourth voyage. Sailed from Cádiz, May 10, 1502; returned to Sanlúcar, November 7, 1504. He had discovered Central America from Honduras to Panama. Queen Isabella died November 26, 1504. With the help of King Ferdinand, Columbus was preparing to colonize Veragua (Jamaica), when he died of gout and heart trouble, in the city of Valladolid, May 20, 1506, aged 55 years.⁸

Columbus could not know he had discovered a new world. He thought he had reached a tierra ignota, an unknown land of the Indies,⁹ and therefore he named the inhabitants Indians. He was satisfied that he had proved something which no one in Europe had believed, that it is possible to sail from Europe westward and reach India.

It rarely happens that a great scientist or medical man or even explorer is at the same time a great executive. Columbus’ administration of the new colonies was weak. Soon malcontents got the upper hand. Realizing the turbulent condition of affairs as well as his own impotence to deal effectively with it, he appealed to the Catholic monarchs of Spain for immediate help. A visitador was sent to Santo Domingo, the seat of the colonial administration; and then Columbus’ troubles began. While becoming more and more unfitted, physically and mentally, he was planning new and fantastic schemes, such as sailing westward, then reaching the Red Sea and liberating the Holy Land.

But all this does not detract one iota from the greatness of the man. Columbus was unquestionably a man of genius, a bold, skillful navigator, better acquainted with the principles of cosmography and astronomy than the average skipper of his time, a man of original ideas, fertile in his plans and persistent in carrying them out. Columbus was essentially a seafarer and not a landlubber. He had a deeply religious nature. Whatever influence scientific theories and the ambition for fame and wealth may have had over him in pressing his enterprise, he never failed to insist on the conversion of the pagan peoples that he would discover, as one of the primary purposes of his undertaking. And in this he and others were sincere.¹⁰

WHY AMERICA AND NOT COLUMBIA

In 1507, Martin Waldseemueller, a native of Wolfenweiller near Fribourg, cosmographer of Count René d’Anjou, and later canon of St.-Dié in Lorraine, published a book entitled Cosmographiae Introductio (Introduction to Cosmography)¹¹ with an account of the four voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, who had become acquainted with extensive coastal tracts of the South American continent. So in two passages (p. XXV and p. XXX) he states that, since quarta pars orbis was discovered by Americus, it should be called America (Americam nuncupare licet). This booklet had a wide circulation in Europe, and men began to call the New World America. In 1507 he also published his Mappemonde (Map of the World). On it he marked the South American continent America. Subsequently Waldseemueller became convinced that Amerigo Vespucci should not be considered the true discoverer as he had believed in 1507. However, his attempt to withdraw the name proved a failure. Then, in 1538, Gerhard Mercator, also a famous cartographer, published a map on which he inscribed the northern part of the New World Americae pars septrionalis and the southern part Americae pars meridionalis. In other words, Mercator conceived the New World as consisting of two continents. It was he who definitively fixed the name America and introduced into geography and literature the names North America and South America. The District of Columbia and Colombia, South America, remained loyal to the greatest discoverer of all times.

DISCOVERY OF NEW WORLD SPURS EUROPE

The discovery of an entirely new world of which Europe had known nothing sent a thrill of excitement through all the capitals. Human knowledge expanded. Spain had become potentially enormously rich overnight. Geography and astronomy revised their theories. Here was raw material in abundance, foodstuffs, medical herbs, metals, silver, and gold. For the Church there were heathen peoples to be freed from their false worships and to be taught the sweet lessons of the gospel of Christ.

But there were other consequences of an important nature. Up to 1492 the Mediterranean had been the center of all the commerce of Europe and of part of Asia. This condition was suddenly changed. The Mediterranean lost much of its former importance, and the Atlantic came into first position. The countries and cities of the Atlantic seaboard became the commercial and social centers. Thus began a social and economic revolution. Every seaboard country itched for its share of the new land and wealth. The commercial rivalry had begun.

Holland did not exist in those days. England and France were weak and unprepared. But Portugal, thanks to the seafaring tradition bequeathed to it by Henry the Navigator, was prepared to challenge the claims of Spain.

THE LINE OF DEMARCATION

In 1497–1499 Vasco da Gama had discovered the sea route to India via the Cape of Good Hope. Two years later Cabral discovered Brazil, although Duarte Pachecho Pereira later claimed he had been in Brazil in 1498. A hot dispute arose almost immediately between Spain and Portugal concerning the possession of the newly found territory. War threatened. Pope Alexander VI was called upon to mediate and arbitrate between them. Pastor writes:

The Holy See was still regarded by all Christian princes and nations as the international arbiter, the highest tribunal for the decision of all national rights and important political questions.

On May 4, 1493, Alexander put his signature to a highly important document. It defined the limits of what we should now call the spheres of influence of Spain and Portugal. The boundary line between the two powers was drawn from the North to the South Pole, 100 Spanish leagues to the West of the most westerly island of the Azores: all that was East of the line belonged to Portugal, and all that was West of it to Spain.

The Line of Demarcation fixed by Alexander VI, which was pushed 270 leagues further to the West by the Treaty of Tordesillas on 7th June, 1494, formed the basis of all negotiations and agreements between the two great colonizing powers in regard to the partition of the New World. The peaceful settlement of a number of thorny boundary questions between Spain and Portugal was entirely due to Papal decisions. Nothing but complete misunderstanding and blind party spirit could turn it into