Humanities 3
II. Spain and the New World
Botticelli, Venus and Mars, 1483
Lecture 6
A New World Order
Outline
• Review: Religion, Identity and Politics
• Voyages of Discovery
• How ‘America’ Got Its Name
• First Impressions: Columbus, Vespucci
Roman Catholic Church ca. 1500
• the “one true Church,” which offers the only path
to salvation (re-affirmed by the pope in 2007)
• stresses conversion (Jews, Muslims, indigenous
peoples of the “new world”)
• concerned to eradicate heresy:
– early Church: Arianism (denial of Jesus’ divinity);
Pelagianism (salvation through works)
– Spanish Inquisition: exposure of marranos, converts to
Catholicism (conversos) who secretly practice Judaism
Roman Catholic Church, cont’d
• Pope claims absolute spiritual power and temporal
power as prince of the Papal States
• Spiritual power trumps temporal power (pope
confers right to rule on princes)
• Challenges to the pope’s authority: i) from critics
within the Church; ii) from sources of competing
knowledge (philosophy, science); iii) from the
political and military power exercised by princes
Politics
• Two models of government (sovereignty):
– republicanism: free citizens are self-governing
– principality: the right to rule belongs to a single individual,
who exercises supreme power
• Strengthening the state:
Machiavelli suggests a prince is best able to do this
– through religion (war against Moors; Ferdinand initiates the
Spanish Inquisition)
– through dynastic marriages (Ferdinand & Isabella;
Habsburgs => Charles V)
– through conquest (Spain and the new world)
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
• Columbus sailed from
Spain on August 3, 1492
and landed at “San
Salvador” on October 11,
1492.
• Site of first landfall is
contested: it is somewhere
in the islands east of
Cuba.
• Four voyages to the New
World: 1492, 1493, 1498,
1502.
Why Did Columbus Set Sail?
• Personal glory and profit: looking for a
route to the east: to China (Cathay) and the
East Indies. This is where he thought he
had landed.
• Economic motives: gold, mastic, aloewood, slaves. Spain is broke after costly
war against Moors.
• Religious motives: conversion of the native
peoples to Catholicism.
“Since thus our Redeemer has given to our
most illustrious King and Queen, and to
their famous kingdoms, this victory in so
high a matter, Christendom should take
gladness therein and make great festivals,
and give solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity
for the great exaltation they shall have for
the conversion of so many people to our
holy faith; and next for the temporal benefit
which will bring hither refreshment and
profit, not only to Spain, but to all
Christians.” -- Columbus
Papal Bull Granting Spain the Right to
the New World (1493)
“…kingdoms granted
and entrusted by God
and His Church so that
they might be properly
ruled and governed,
converted to the Faith,
and tenderly nurtured to
full material and
spiritual prosperity” (Las
Casas, 6)
Columbus was the first one there…
So even if he didn’t know where he
was going, why don’t we live on the
continent of “North Columbia” in the
“United States of Columbia”?
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512)
• Member of prominent Florentine family,
long associated with Medici.
• Made either four or (more likely) two
voyages: 1499-1500 (Spain) and 1501-2
(Portugal)
• In 1503 his letter to Lorenzo di
Pierfrancesco de’ Medici announcing the
discovery of a “New World” (Mundus
Novus) is published.
• This letter and related writings (his letter to
Piero Soderini) are reprinted many times
and circulated throughout Europe.
• They come to the attention of a group of
scholars and mapmakers in the Strasbourg
region, who in 1507 literally remake the
world.
• In short: America is called “America”
because Vespucci had better PR.
“It is well here to consider the injury and injustice
which that Americo Vespucio appears to have done
to the Admiral, or that those have done who
published his Four Navigations, in attributing the
discovery of this continent to himself, without
mentioning anyone but himself. Owing to this, all
the foreigners who write of these Indies in Latin, or
in their own mother-tongue, or who make charts or
maps, call the continent America, as having been
first discovered by Americo. For as Americo was a
Latinist, and eloquent, he knew how to make use of
the first voyage he undertook, and to give the credit
to himself, as if he had been the principal captain of
it.” (B. De Las Casas)
Ptolemy, Cosmographia (Ulm 1482)
Map of the Discoveries of Columbus, (Carolus
Verardus, 1493)
Frontispiece
De Ora Antartica,
Americus
Vespuccius
(Strasbourg, 1505)
Martin Waldseemueller,
Cosmographia Introductio, 1507
Waldseemueller, Globe Map
(1507)
Waldseemueller, 1513 edition of
Ptolemy
Perception of Natives: Columbus
• They are human: “Thus I have not found, nor had
any information of monsters, except of an island...
which is inhabited by a people... who eat human
flesh.”
• For the rest, the people are “very comely,” childlike, timid, generous, naïve.
• They can be made Christians: “for they are inclined
to the love and service of their Highnesses and of all
the Castilian nation.... And they knew no sect, nor
idolatry; save that they all believe that power and
goodness are in the sky.”
• But “idolators” can be enslaved
Vespucci
• Similarly stresses innocence and “naturalness” of
people he encounters, but lays greater emphasis on
violence and slavery as an outcome of war.
• They are truly primitive, without law or religion:
“they have no shame of their shameful parts... We
did not learn that they had any law, nor can they be
called Moors nor Jews, and [they are] worse than
pagans; because we never saw them offer any
sacrifice; nor even had they a house of prayer; their
manner of living I judge to be Epicurean…. They
live and are contented with that which nature gives
them.” (10-11)
Piero di Cosimo, The Discovery
of Honey, c. 1505-10