3
“IF GOLD BE YOUR ALMIGHTY”
Without stopping, the Niña rode the tide on up to the major port of Rastelo, where the sailors finally lowered anchor. There they learned that some of the ships in the harbor had been pinned there for four months by the worst storms in Rastelo’s history. Columbus recorded in his journal that twenty-five ships had gone down that winter off the coast of Flanders alone.
News of the battered caravel’s triumphant return from the Indies spread rapidly. Columbus, mindful of their recent experience in the Azores, took immediate steps to ensure the safety of himself and his crew. Making use of several highly placed and trusted friends from his days in Lisbon, he sent abbreviated reports of his voyage to Ferdinand and Isabella by different routes to make sure word would get through.
That done, they could breathe more easily and begin to enjoy their growing fame. Since the continuing storm precluded their sailing for Palos, Columbus felt that he could accept the invitation that had just arrived bearing the seal of the King of Portugal.
John II was all smiles and silken words as he greeted Columbus and subsequently sought to glean morsels of useful information from Columbus’s glowing but careful generalities. Though the Admiral seemed relaxed and expansive, underneath he was on guard, for this was the man who had very nearly stolen the Indies from him—twice. What happened next is best described in Las Casas’s words, from his Historia de las Indias:
While the King was speaking with the Admiral, he commanded that a bowl of beans should be placed on a table beside them, and then indicated by signs that one of the Indians who was there should arrange the beans in such a way as to show the many islands in that kingdom which Columbus claimed to have discovered. The Indian immediately showed him Española, Cuba, the Lucayos Islands, and others. The King watched this sullenly, and a short while later brushed the beans away, as if by accident. He then told another Indian to replace the beans, and this one arranged them as quickly, and as readily, as the first Indian had done, and went on to lay out more countries and islands, explaining all the reasons in his own language, which, of course, nobody could understand. And when the King fully realized the extent of the new discoveries, and the wealth they contained, he could not conceal his sorrow at the loss of such invaluable treasures, but beat his breast and cried out in passion: “Oh, man of little understanding! Why did you let such an enterprise fall from your hands?”1
For Columbus this was a moment of supreme vindication. Although in the past he had been able to forgive, as in the case of Martin Pinzón, now the temptation to drink of the cup of retribution proved too much for him. According to Columbus’s biographer Björn Landström, “The Portuguese chroniclers write that the Admiral was so boastful and supercilious, saying that it was the King’s fault for having rejected his proposals in the first place, that the courtiers, when they saw the Admiral so insolent and the King so unhappy, offered to kill Columbus and prevent his taking the news to Castile. But the King would not agree to that.”2
Columbus may have gloated that night, but it is doubtful that God shared his delight. Because Christopher had dedicated his life to serving Christ, God had given him an assignment that would test him to the limit, and indeed, much of the hardest testing had come before he set sail for the Indies. For the sake of Christ, Columbus had been willing to be taken for a fool—not once or twice, but over and over again, for seven long years. And then, as the days at sea became weeks and pressure mounted on him to turn back, he had remained obedient to his call and pressed on into the dim unknown, when perhaps not another ship captain on earth would have done so.
Despite all his shortcomings, Columbus had time and again remained faithful to the point of death. He had poured himself out totally, holding nothing back. And God intended to honor his obedience.
Before the voyage had begun, Columbus had been a beggar before God, all his hopes hanging on Ferdinand and Isabella’s approval. But the moment they had agreed to back him, he decided that he could not be sure that God would sufficiently reward him through them. So, he dictated to the King and Queen how they were to compensate him for his services.
Columbus chose the three things the world prizes most: money (his percentage of the wealth), position (the titles of Viceroy and Admiral of the Ocean Sea), and power (governorship over all he discovered). Though God might well have bestowed on His gifted explorer financial blessing and titles, it is unlikely that he would have been rewarded with power. For, although Columbus was immensely gifted as a navigator and explorer at sea, he was totally unsuited to govern ashore. Quick to judge others, he demanded absolute submission from his subordinates, yet he refused to come under authority himself, except for that of the King and Queen. When things went wrong, he would succumb to anger, self-pity, or unreality rather than assume any responsibility. Moreover, he was incapable of delegating authority, ashore or at sea. In the last storm, when he was too weak to stand, he had a shelter rigged on the sterncastle so that he might continue to con the ship from his bed. He had to be in total control—of his ship and of his life.
Before his discoveries, Columbus really had no choice but to trust God. But once he gained all he had sought, he decided that being in control was infinitely preferable to trusting in God. Henceforth, Columbus would trust only Columbus.
On March 15, 1493, the Franciscan brothers in the fields at La Rábida rested for a moment, leaning on their hoes and looking down at the river, where a weather-beaten little ship with spanking new sails and long pennants flying was making her way upriver to Palos. The Niña was coming home!
The village erupted with joy. Families were reunited and stories told, and while those whose husbands or fathers had elected to stay on Española were disappointed, the overall mood was jubilant—for word had also reached them that the Pinta was not lost as had been supposed. Blown nearly to Africa, she had finally reached the southern coast of Spain and was on her way home even now.
As much as Columbus might have liked to tarry, he had vows to fulfill, and he now set out on his pilgrimages.
Soon after he completed them, a letter reached him, addressed to:
DON CRISTÓBAL COLÓN,
OUR ADMIRAL OF THE OCEAN SEA,
VICEROY AND GOVERNOR OF THE ISLAND
HE HAS DISCOVERED IN THE INDIES.
He was directed to immediately commence preparations for a return expedition and then to come to Their Majesties’ winter court in Barcelona as soon as possible. By return messenger he sent detailed plans for colonization, which he had drawn up on the long voyage home. Having purchased a suitable wardrobe for court, he set out for Barcelona, bringing with him several of his officers, the two Indian interpreters who had survived the voyage, and numerous artifacts and curiosities.
A grateful Ferdinand and Isabella had Barcelona decorated as if for a festival. What a splendid entrance Columbus must have made! It is easy to imagine him riding at the head of a small column, tall and erect in the saddle, one hand holding the reins, the other resting proudly on his hip. The morning sun had not yet burned away the low-lying mists, and as he emerged from the fog—first a silhouette and then a reality—the sun behind him surrounded his broad-brimmed hat and flowing cape with a corona of gold.
Word spread ahead of him, and courtiers and a mounted escort were sent forth from the Alcazar, Their Majesties’ winter palace, to accompany him. Soon he was flanked by Spanish nobility and preceded by a color guard, the sun dancing on their burnished helmets.
All the way to the Alcazar the crowds lining the streets grew larger, their cheers more deafening. From upper balconies draped with colorful capes, dark-eyed senoritas showered the procession with rose petals. As the Admiral reached the entrance of the palace, a tremendous roar of acclamation went up, and he could not help raising his hand to acknowledge it.
It was a moment too vivid ever to be forgotten. Yet what transpired that evening surpassed it. As Columbus made his entrance into the grand throne room, with its marble columns softly glowing in the light of a thousand candles, the court chroniclers record that his deeply tanned complexion, white hair, long nose, and noble bearing reminded them of a Roman senator.
Respectfully he approached the throne of his beloved Sovereigns. As he did so, they did something no one had ever seen them do before: they rose to meet him. And when he knelt to kiss their hands, they raised him up and ordered that a chair be brought for him—another unprecedented honor.
At their invitation he began to tell his spellbinding story. Time and space seemed to drop away as he unfolded before them visions of dense, green rain forests with sweet exotic perfumes and parrots of startling colors and even more startling cries. He told of unbelievably blue waters, so clear that you could see schools of fish swimming at a depth of several fathoms—strange fish of bizarre shapes and colors. He told of naked natives, shy and innocent, and of an island more beautiful than the plains and hills of Castile. And he told of the loss of the Santa Maria, and how, largely through the friendly reception of the natives, it turned out to be such a tremendous gain.
And with that, he summoned the Indian interpreters, clothed in little more than their native attire and carrying parrots, live jungle rats two feet in length, dogs that could not bark, and strange salted fish. The courtiers were astonished.
He then had valuable trade goods brought in—aloes, cotton, and spices. But he had saved the best for last. In his narrative he had told them in passing that these naive Indians had gold ornaments, which they were delighted to exchange for hawks’ bells and other worthless trinkets. Now he had a large, oaken chest brought in, which he dramatically threw open. An exclamation of amazement greeted the sight; there, gleaming in the candlelight, were crowns of gold, strange masks covered with beaten gold, necklaces and bracelets of gold, and raw nuggets of gold. The last jaded skeptics were won over—the Indies were indeed as fabulous as he had said.
As the excitement and whispering died away, a silence fell upon the court. Then, without warning, the Sovereigns fell on their knees, and all others did the same. Lifting their faces heavenward, Ferdinand and Isabella thanked God for all his bountiful mercy, and the Te Deum was sung. At the last line, the Sovereigns were in tears and so was Columbus: “O Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded.”3
From that time forth, whenever the King went out in his carriage, Columbus was seated beside him, an honor hitherto accorded only to royalty. But gradually, imperceptibly, the Admiral began to think of it as, after all, no more than his due. After that, there was no reaching Columbus, not by circumstances, not by Father Perez, not even by God Himself.
On the surface, however, things could not have been going better. Even the Pope sent his congratulations to Their Catholic Majesties:
We heard indeed that . . . you had some time ago designed in your minds to send for and discover some islands and mainlands, remote and unknown, and hitherto undiscovered by others, in order to induce the natives and inhabitants thereof to worship our Redeemer . . . you appointed our beloved son Christopher Columbus. . . . Who, at length, by divine aid, having used diligence, discovered while navigating in the Ocean, certain very remote islands and also mainland which had hitherto not been found by others; herein dwell multitudes of people living peaceably and . . . imbued with good morals; and the hope is entertained that if they were instructed, the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ might easily be introduced to the aforesaid lands and islands.
Alexander VI to Ferdinand and Isabella, May 4, 14934
The preoccupation with gold, which had subtly insinuated itself into the fabric of Columbus’s first explorations in the New World, was now becoming an obsession. On May 18 he was given an outright gift of 335,000 maravedis as an expression of appreciation from a grateful country. Yet not content with the gift, on that same day Columbus claimed the 10,000 maravedis that were to be paid annually to the first person to sight land, despite the fact that in his own journal he had recorded that someone else, a crewman aboard the Pinta, had made the sighting. Columbus was fast losing sight of the original purpose of his mission—and his life. The verse in Job said, “If the Almighty be your gold . . .”; for Columbus, it had become reversed.
Soon he was outfitting a fleet of seventeen vessels and raising a company of twelve hundred men. This time he had no trouble getting men to sign on. Indeed, two hundred were “gentlemen volunteers” who were paying their own way in order to seek gold and adventure. Here at last was a command worthy of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. The dream continued; he was on his way to colonize his Indies.
They departed the port of Cádiz and sailed down to the Canaries, there heading west again in perfect weather and sighting land in a remarkable twenty-two days. Even more incredible was Columbus’s landfall at Dominica, the navigating target that mariners would recommend for the next four centuries. To aim further north meant possibly missing the strong trade winds; to aim farther south was to risk hitting dangerous reefs.5 No wonder the sailors of his era considered Columbus to be the best dead-reckoning navigator of them all. By the grace of God, he was.
But the dream turned to a nightmare when they finally reached La Navidad. Every one of the thirty-nine colonists had been killed—some by each other, most of them by tribes of Indians other than those they had befriended.
When they found Indians who were not too frightened to talk to their interpreters, the story came out. No sooner had the Niña departed the year before, than the Spaniards who were left behind had started indulging their lust with Indian women. Nor were they satisfied with one each but took as many as they could get.
No longer did they barter for gold. They simply seized it, doing violence to any Indians who protested. Quarrelling among themselves and killing one another, they had split into factions, and were thus easily ambushed and overrun.
There was no doubting the truth of the tale that they were able to piece together. From then on, Columbus’s men detested the Indians, whom they regarded as lying and devious, and against whom they constantly sought opportunities for revenge. It was only with threats of capital punishment that Columbus was able to prevent a bloodbath.
The Admiral’s own authority had been seriously undermined. His men were increasingly rebellious, having lost all respect for this grandiose, mercurial Italian, who had apparently lied so blatantly about the gentleness of the Indians and the abundance of gold. So Columbus chose not to take note of many of the things that were going on—for example, turning his back on their taking native women for their pleasure—and did anything to appease and avoid open confrontation.6
Columbus then tried to use the hunt for gold to unite his expedition, dividing the force into several discovery parties that were assigned to establish outposts at various strategic places on the island. But from the beginning everything went wrong. The food supplies deteriorated in the heat, the mosquitoes were a deadly torment, and several of the men contracted terrible fevers.
It soon became apparent that there was no fountainhead of gold on the island. Finally, the inevitable happened, and the Viceroy of the Indies had open rebellion on his hands.
At sea, Columbus knew what to do when faced with a raging storm: get on his knees and seek God’s deliverance. Now, faced with a storm on land and long out of touch with God, in panic he tried to work things out himself. The result was a fiasco that was rapidly compounding itself into a catastrophe of major proportions. Columbus was driven almost to distraction—but not back to his Savior.
Meanwhile, word of the massacre at La Navidad, of the absence of gold, and of the Admiral’s gross mismanagement of the island expedition went back to Spain with the first ships to return for more supplies. Columbus was now all the more anxious to wrest some kind of victory from the dream-turned-nightmare. He had caught a terrible fever himself, and for months he was desperately sick. His two brothers, Diego and Bartolomeo, arrived, and even though he lacked the authority to do so, he immediately installed them as his lieutenants. Gradually under the care of Bartolomeo, Columbus found that his health improved, but other conditions did not.
The gold was the bitterest disappointment of all. To bring in more, he commanded that each Indian had to pay an annual tribute of gold or be punished. But there were no mines or fields on Española, which meant that the Indians had to pan for whatever gold they could find. Most were unable to meet their quota, even after it was reduced by half. As a result, they were savagely punished by Spanish tax collectors, whose own percentage depended on how much they collected. Many Indians ran away to escape them. At the same time, because the Indians were finally turning hostile, more forts were being constructed all over the island. The Indians themselves were forced to do this work and all other physical labor, having become virtually slaves on their own land. Las Casas writes:
Since violence, provocation and injustice from the Christians never ceased, some fled to the mountains, and others began to slay Christians, in return for all the wrongs and the torture they had suffered. When that happened, vengeance was immediately taken; the Christians called it punishment, yet not the guilty alone, but all who lived in a village or a district, were sentenced to execution or torture.7
In two years, an appalling one-third of the entire native population of Española, originally numbering around three hundred thousand, had died or been killed. By the time another count was made eight years later, the number of those who had died had more than doubled, and four years after that it was reckoned that only twenty thousand remained alive. The nightmare holocaust went on; there was no waking up from it.
For Columbus, the memory of what Española had been like when he first came must have been too painful to recall. He dreaded returning home to the accounting he would have to give Their Majesties. But he could not think about that now; he had to put down a major Indian uprising. Finally, thanks to superior weaponry, he was successful, and a Spaniard could now walk anywhere on the island without fear.
But there was now no more putting off his return home. Leaving his brothers in charge, Columbus sailed north to catch the Prevailing Westerlies, which this time proved anything but prevailing. The crossing seemed to take forever; the sailors’ food and water ran out, and they were tortured by hunger and thirst. But eventually they arrived, and the Admiral was summoned immediately to court.
To his surprise, the Sovereigns chose to believe much of Columbus’s version of why everything had gone wrong, which, of course, held him nowhere at fault. He was even more surprised that they seemed far less disturbed about the lack of gold than he was. On the other hand, they were far more concerned than he was about the welfare of the Indians, whom they now considered to be their subjects, and for whose safety and protection they held themselves personally responsible before God. They remonstrated with Columbus for the way he had permitted them to be treated.
Yet while it was obvious that they had grave reservations about his ability to govern such a volatile situation, they felt morally bound by their original agreement to permit him to continue. Therefore, they shored up his authority as best they could, instituting drastic reforms in the treatment of the Indians. And because the Portuguese were preparing a major expedition of their own to the New World, they sent him back as soon as a small fleet could be readied.
Once again, nothing went right. Three-quarters of the way across, the ships were suddenly becalmed for eight days. Such was the heat that none of the crew members could bear to go below decks. The wheat was scorched, the salted meat went rotten, and Columbus and his men listened to the sound of their water and wine casks bursting. After much prayer and what seemed like an eternity of this torment, a breath of wind stirred the pennants in the rigging. Soon there was a freshening breeze, and they were on their way again. The Lord had mercifully sent the Trade Winds to them, something that never happens at that time of year in the doldrums.8 They finally sighted an island with three mountain peaks close together, and Columbus named it Trinidad, for the Holy Trinity.
Eventually they worked their way up through the Antilles to Española, where chaos reigned. Columbus had been away for a year and a half, during which time word had reached the island that he was out of favor with Their Majesties. This so undercut the authority of his brothers that rebellion had broken out again, and it had now reached the point that there were two armed camps on the island. Columbus handled the situation by giving in to every demand of the rebels, reinstating them with full pardons and full rights, and making their leader a mayor.
Not surprisingly, the same rebellion broke out again within six months, and with even more serious ramifications. More alarming reports were sent back to Spain. Finally the Sovereigns, despite all their fondness of Columbus, felt that they no longer had any choice but to intervene for the best interests of all their subjects on Española—Spanish and Indian. They sent an old and trusted officer, Francisco de Bobadilla, to straighten out the mess, and they empowered him with whatever authority he needed. Bobadilla carried with him the following letter to Columbus:
Don Cristobal Colón, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea: we have sent the Commendador, Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer of this letter, to say certain things to you on our behalf. We desire you to place your full trust in him and pay him all respect, and to act accordingly.9
The first thing that Bobadilla saw when he landed on Española was the sight of seven Spaniards’ bodies dangling from nooses. When he learned that five more Spaniards were to be executed on the following morning, he acted without further delay. Summoning all parties, Bobadilla read the proclamation that installed him as acting governor. When Columbus refused to acknowledge his authority, stating that the King and Queen had no right to depose him as Governor, Bobadilla had him and his brothers put in irons and sent them back to Spain to stand trial.
A compassionate captain offered to remove the fetters as soon as Columbus was on board, but the Admiral tearfully refused, saying that he would not permit it until the Sovereigns themselves so ordered and that he would wear them as a token of how he was rewarded for his services.
The Sovereigns were shocked to see him in irons when he reported to them in December of 1500. They ordered that the chains be removed, and they restored his house and all other properties on Española that had been confiscated. Then they listened with great understanding and compassion to his woeful tale. Yet they said nothing of his being reinstated as Governor.
Columbus went home, expecting to be ordered at any time to ready another expedition. But the months went by, and no further word was heard from the court. Finally, he turned his attention to preparing a book of prophecies gathered from the Scriptures and the writings of leaders of the early Church. Through them, he intended to prove that God had predestined Spain to be the nation that would free the Holy Land from infidels, and that none other than he himself was the man to lead the crusade.
But such a crusade would take much gold to finance it. He needed, therefore, to make one more westward voyage of discovery. After more than a year’s entreaties, and possibly just to get him out of Spain, where he was becoming an increasing embarrassment to them (he was being mocked as “the Admiral of the Mosquitoes” behind his back), Ferdinand and Isabella gave him four ships and their permission to go exploring. They made only one stipulation: he was expressly forbidden to return to Española, because they feared that his presence there might spark yet another rebellion.
As soon as he departed from the Canaries, Columbus, pleading ship trouble, sailed directly for Española, where he was refused entrance at the harbor. His ship trouble now apparently no longer a problem, he sailed to Cuba and struck southwest for the mainland (Honduras, in Central America). Despite unbelievable headwinds, despite being sick and feverish (he again had his bed brought out on deck so that he could command the ship lying down), and despite the fact that God Himself seemed to be blocking him every inch of the way, such was Columbus’s willfulness that he finally reached the mainland. He declared it to be the easternmost shore of the province of Chiambra (India). It had taken him thirty-eight days to cover what would normally have taken no more than three or four days, but it never occurred to Columbus to even consider that he might be defying God’s will.
He decided to follow the coast to the south, expecting it to turn toward the west at any moment. And so they proceeded down the coast of what is now Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—where he finally found the source of gold that had been eluding him for so many years. (This may explain why God’s hand seemed to be set against his reaching this part of the mainland.)
Here the natives had such heavy artifacts of gold that a major source had to be nearby. The Indians took the Spaniards to the gold fields, where the mineral was right on the surface, and in a very short space of time they were able to dig out more than a thousand maravedis’ worth with their bare fingers.
That discovery ushered in a drama far different from that which God had in mind for America. This new drama, which would shortly begin in earnest, was to feature such stars as Cortez, Pizarro, and a supporting cast of hundreds of Conquistadors. It would eventuate in bloody rape and conquest—and all for the love of gold. For although the Spaniards undoubtedly would have colonized Mexico and Central America eventually, it was the lust for gold that whetted the steel of the Spanish blades.
Columbus had at last found his gold; the final desire of his heart had been fulfilled. But at what a price! His health was ruined, and his sanity was nearly gone; two of his four ships would soon be too worm-eaten to go on, and he and his men would be stranded for months in the other two.
In the meantime he carried on with his exploration, enduring in the month of December 1502 the worst battle against the elements of all his voyages. He wrote:
The tempest arose and wearied me so that I knew not where to turn; my old wound opened up, and for nine days I was as lost without hope of life; eyes never beheld the sea so high, angry and covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke forth with such violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought the ships would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I don’t say it rained, because it was like another deluge. The people were so worn out that they longed for death to end their dreadful sufferings.10
In addition to all these horrors, his son, Ferdinand, tells us that on Tuesday, December 13, a waterspout passed between the ships; “the which had they not dissolved by reciting the Gospel according to Saint John, it would have swamped whatever it struck without a doubt; for, it draws the water up to the clouds in a column thicker than a water-butt, twisting it about like a whirlwind.” Columbus’s biographer, Samuel Eliot Morison, continues: “It was the Admiral who exorcised the waterspout. From his Bible he read an account of that famous tempest off Capernaum, concluding, ‘Fear not, it is I!’ Then, clasping the Bible in his left hand, with drawn sword he traced a cross in the sky and a circle around his whole fleet.”
Yet except for shipboard crises when he automatically turned heavenward for help, nothing seemed to induce him to turn back to God in repentance, not even what would soon prove to be the greatest moment of need in his life. As the Spaniards were starting to build a settlement near the gold fields under the supervision of Columbus’s brother Bartolomeo, they learned through their interpreters that the local tribe of Indians was planning an attack. So they launched a preemptive strike, taking a number of hostages, including the chief, and more than 100,000 maravedis’ worth of golden ornaments.
After this adventure, they were up a nearby river, getting water and provisions, when Columbus, who had been left almost alone with the ships at the mouth of the river, heard shouts and shooting. Then there was silence, and toward evening when the tide changed, down the river floated the bodies of several of his men. Here, in his own words, is what happened next:
I toiled up to the highest point of the ship, calling in a trembling voice, with fast-falling tears, to the war captains of our Highnesses, at every point of the compass, for succour, but never did they answer me. Exhausted, I fell asleep, groaning. I heard a very compassionate voice, saying: “O fool and slow to believe and to serve thy God, the God of all! What more did He for Moses or for His servant David? Since thou wast born, ever has He had thee in His most watchful care. When He saw thee arrive at an age with which He was content, He caused thy name to sound marvelously in the land. The Indies, which are so rich in a part of the world, He gave thee for thine own; thou hast divided them as it pleased thee, and He enabled thee to do this. Of the barriers of the Ocean Sea, which were closed with such mighty chains, He gave thee the keys; and thou wast obeyed in many lands and among the Christians thou hast gained honorable fame. What did He more for the people of Israel when He brought them out of Egypt? Or for David, whom from a shepherd He made to be King in Judea? Turn thyself to Him, and acknowledge thine error; His mercy is infinite; thine old age shall not prevent thee from achieving great things; He has many heritages very great. Abraham had passed a hundred years when he begat Isaac and was Sarah young? Thou criest for uncertain help. Answer: who has afflicted thee so greatly and so often? God or the world? The rewards and promises which He gives, He does not bring to nothing, nor does He say, after He has received service, that His intention was not such and that it is to be differently regarded, nor does He inflict suffering in order to display His power. His deeds agree with His words; all that He promises, He performs with interest; is this the manner of men? I have said that which thy Creator has done for thee and does for all men. Now in part He shows thee the reward for the anguish and danger which thou hast endured in the service of others.”
I heard all this as if I were in a trance, but I had no answer to give to words so true, but could only weep for my errors. He, whoever he was who spoke to me, ended saying: “Fear not; have trust; all these tribulations are written upon marble and are not without cause.”11
In His infinite mercy, God stopped at nothing to reach His beloved Christopher. “Have trust,” he said, and Columbus wept for his errors.
Yet only a few entries further on, he writes:
I declare that I am at the fountainhead [of the gold in the New World]. Genoese, Venetians, and all who have pearls, precious stones and other things of value, all carry them to the end of the world to exchange them, to turn them into gold. Gold is most excellent. Gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it may do what he will in the world, and may so attain as to bring souls to Paradise.
It is doubtful that he who does what he will in the world is going to be used to bring many souls to paradise. This particular narrative goes on to reveal just how far off-center Columbus’s thinking had wandered. For by the same sort of weird, convoluted reasoning that characterizes Gnosticism and so much of occult metaphysics, Columbus arrived at a monumental conclusion: he was convinced that he had found King Solomon’s mines!
Columbus may have turned away from God, but God did not turn away from Columbus. By sheer grace God brought him and his remaining crew members safely home to Spain. But this time there was no royal summons inviting him to court. Queen Isabella was dying. It was the end of an era—for Castile and for Columbus. Far older than his fifty-three years and too infirm to put to sea again, Columbus spent the next two years fretting about not receiving his proper share of the Indies gold, which had finally begun to arrive in some quantity.
In the spring of 1506 what remained of his health began to fail quickly. The tall, proud old captain could no longer walk down to the harbor to see the bright sails in the morning sun or hear the latest news from the most recent landings, or mutter that “even tailors” were going discovering these days.
But we can imagine him lying in his bed and reliving with great delight his first glimpse of the moonlit cliffs of San Salvador and the joy of his sailors as they yelled with glee and danced on the decks . . . the awe of the following morning as they watched the dawning sun illuminate a new world unfolding before their eyes and realized what they had done . . . the sun gleaming on the helmets of his escort as he rode in triumph into Barcelona, the greatest hero Spain had ever known . . . and that night, as he knelt with the King and Queen and sang the Te Deum before their God, tears streaming down their faces.
The old man brushed away the tears at the corners of his eyes, and perhaps he spoke to God again for the first time in a long while.
“Father, it is over now, isn’t it?”
Yes, son, he might have heard in his heart.
“Father, I’m afraid I have not done well in carrying the Light of Your Son to the West. I’m sorry. I pray that others will carry the Light further.”
They will. You are forgiven.
“It’s time now, isn’t it?”
Yes.
On Ascension Day 1506 after receiving the sacraments of the Church, Christopher Columbus said these words: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” and went to be forever with the Savior whose name he bore.