“Terraaa!”
: a cry that crosses the centuries and the dreams of men.
Around two in the morning
of 12 October 530 years ago, after more than a month of sailing, the Spanish sailor
Rodrigo of Triana
aboard the
Pinta caravel
he was finally sighting the coast of the New World. Columbus “stumbles” in the Americas – which for him are the land of
A tree
in Asia – and meets indigenous peoples for the first time. However, that of 1492 would not be Columbus’ first voyage to the New World, but only the “official” one.
To shake the belief that
Europe was aware of the existence of the New World well before Columbus’ voyage
a very recent study by the State University of Milan
finding an unpublished reference in an unpublished medieval work written around 1340 by the Dominican friar
Galvano Fiamma
. In addition to the now established landing of the
Vikings
on the coasts of Canada
around the year 1000
. But now comes a new theory put forward by the scholar
Ruggero Marino
who for decades has dedicated his life to Christopher Columbus through essays and a dedicated site.
Columbus in America before 1492: the outline in a book
– Columbus got there too easily in America, despite the difficulties of the non-direct route. For centuries fine historians have been amazed by this “ease” of navigation, without hitches, with calculations on winds and currents too precise to be “improvised”. A sign that he knew the route, probably because he had traveled it before. Interviewed by Osvaldo Baldacci for Focus HistoryMarino reveals an unpublished clue: a book printed in 1507 in Venice, of which only 17 copies exist. In this volume, entitled Chronica of the Lives of Popes and Roman Emperorsthere is talk of Columbus’ voyage to the “New Indies”. “But it is done in the life of Pope Innocent VIII, while there is no mention of Columbus in the biography of Pope Alexander VI”.
The Pope who financed the expedition
– The accounts don’t add up, Marino observes. Because Innocent VIII died on July 25, 1492, just before the most famous navigator in history set sail from Palos on August 3. The discovery of America would then take place under the pontificate of the Spanish Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia. This discovery, however, should be anticipated by at least a few months, in the light of other clues. First of all, the tombstone of Innocent VIII, on which we read “Novi orbis di lui aevo inventi gloria”: “In the time of his pontificate, the glory of the discovery of the New World”. “Current history attributes the credit to Spain, but it was an Italian Pope, Innocent VIII, who found the capital with the bull of a crusade and sums of Genoese and Florentines to finance the expedition,” says Marino. “An Italian discovery, regardless of Columbus’s homeland. It is no coincidence that the first gold of the new continent is found in some Italian churches”.
The “rewritten” history
– But then why have we always and always said and repeated that America was discovered in 1492? For propaganda, it seems. “Pope Alexander VI was Spanish and probably snatched the discovery from the Church to give it to Spain,” explains Marino. In the glory and name of the very Catholic kings Isabella and Ferdinando, “he took on the task of evangelizing America as well as governing it and perhaps it was no longer convenient for anyone to change version”.
Three clues make (more than) proof
– There are also two other clues to support the “early” discovery. Beginning with the contract that Columbus signed with the Spanish royals on April 17, 1492, in which we read that the Genoese had to go to the Indies “which he discovered”, with the significant use of the verb in the past tense. If that were not enough, there is also the annotation of the Spanish court historian, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, for some the first chronicler of the Indies: “As is well known, Don Cristoforo Colombo, first admiral of the Indies, discovered them at the time of the Catholics Don Fernando and Dona Isabella in the year 1491 “. As it always reports Focus Historyfinally there is also a third clue: on the map made in 1513 by the Turkish admiral Piri Reis, the coasts of “Antylia”, that is of the New World discovered by Columbus, the date of discovery is indicated in the year of the Islamic Hegira 890 or 896 (the numbers are no longer so recognizable). In any case, these are dates prior to 1492, corresponding to 1485 or 1491 of the Christian calendar.
The false myths about Christopher Columbus: from the flat Earth to the egg
– The most unbearable of all: Columbus was the only one convinced that the Earth was spherical against a host of flat-earthers. Including the scholars of Salamanca, to whom he would have demonstrated the sphericity of the globe thus obtaining the funds from the Spanish sovereigns. Nothing could be more false, given that since the dawn of the Middle Ages all the learned were absolutely certain that the Earth was a sphere. In support of this truth, see the thousands of illustrations of emperors depicted with the globe in one hand, symbolizing their power over the whole world. In reality, the wise men of Salamanca hinder Colombo because they are worried by the calculations on the real distance of the destination, judged too far.
It is then said
“Columbus’s egg”
when you want to indicate an undertaking that is discounted only after someone else has completed it. But one could safely say too
“Brunelleschi’s egg”
. It is said that during a party a Spaniard told Columbus that, if he failed, the Indies would find them some subjects of Isabella and Ferdinando. The navigator had an egg brought and challenged those present to make it stand upright: after the clumsy and unsuccessful attempts, Columbus took the egg and beat it on the table, breaking one end slightly, making it stand upright. The episode is told for the first time not by a contemporary, but several years later by Girolamo Benzoni in his book Historia of the new world (1565). And the exact same episode appears 15 years earlier in another tome, the speed by Giorgio Vasari, starring another great Italian name: Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). With the same “trick” of the egg, the architect replied to the skeptics who rejected his project for the dome of the Florence Cathedral.
