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The Religious Motives of Christopher Columbus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2009

William Kendall Gillett
Affiliation:
Professor of the French and Spanish Languages, University of the City of New York
Charles Ripley Gillett
Affiliation:
Librarian of Union Theological Seminary, New York City.

Extract

The question has been often asked whether there were any religious motives dominant in the mind of Columbus and his royal patrons when the expedition toward the unknown West was undertaken. Those who would fain canonize the discoverer of a new world appear unable to see any other guiding motive, and they also earnestly desire to impress their belief upon all the world. Others, differently inclined, seem to have difficulty in finding anything other than a base and ignoble love of gold and an overweening desire for power and fame in the proposals or the subsequent career of the adventurer. The question is then, first as to the very existence of such motives at all, and secondarily, if they are found to exist, as to the position which they occupied in the minds of the parties concerned, and the extent to which later occurrences stamped them as genuine or spurious; formative in their influence, or merely put forward as a pretext and makeweight in argument.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Church History 1892

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References

page 7 note 1 See Appendix, i.

page 8 note 1 See Appendix, ii.

page 11 note 1 See Appendix, iii.

page 11 note 2 See Appendix, iv.

page 11 note 3 See Appendix, v.

page 11 note 4 See Appendix, vi.

page 12 note 1 See Appendix, vii.

page 12 note 2 See Appendix, viii.

page 12 note 3 See Appendix, ix.

page 12 note 4 See Appendix, x.

page 13 note 1 See Appendix, xi.

page 13 note 2 See Appendix, xii.

page 14 note 1 See Appendix, xiii.

page 14 note 2 See Appendix, xiv.

page 15 note 1 See Appendix, xv.

page 15 note 2 See Appendix, xvi.

page 16 note 1 See Appendix, xvii.

page 18 note 1 See Appendix, ix.

page 18 note 2 See Appendix, ix.

page 18 note 3 See Appendix, x.

page 19 note 1 See Appendix, xiii.

page 19 note 2 See Appendix, xi.