When Two Worlds Met

The historic moment from Columbus’s journal

Columbus’s journal, or Diario, has been lost for centuries. But we have an abridged paraphrase of it by Bartolomé de Las Casas. Here, Las Casas gives our best account of the momentous encounter:

At two hours after midnight the land appeared, from which they were about two leagues distant. They hauled down all the sails … passing time until daylight Friday, when they reached an islet of the Lucayas, which was called Guanahani in the language of the Indians.

Soon they saw naked people; and the Admiral went ashore in the armed launch.… The Admiral brought out the royal banner and the captains two flags with the green cross, which the Admiral carried on all the ships as a standard, with an F and a Y, and over each letter a crown, one on one side of the + and the other on the other.

Thus put ashore they saw very green trees and many ponds and fruits of various kinds. The Admiral … [took] possession of the said island for the king and for the queen his lords.…

Soon many people of the island gathered there. What follows are the very words of the Admiral in his book about his first voyage to, and discovery of, these Indies:

“I,” he says, “in order that they would be friendly to us—because I recognized that they were people who would be better freed [from error] and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force—to some of them I gave red caps, and glass beads which they put on their chests, and many other things of small value, in which they took so much pleasure and became so much our friends that it was a marvel.

“Later they came swimming to the ships’ launches where we were and brought us parrots and cotton thread in balls and javelins and many other things, and they traded them to us for other things which we gave them, such as small glass beads and bells. In sum, they took everything and gave of what they had very willingly.

“But it seemed to me that they were a people very poor in everything. All of them go around as naked as their mothers bore them; and the women also, although I did not see more than one quite young girl. And all those that I saw were young people, for none did I see of more than 30 years of age.

“They are very well formed, with handsome bodies and good faces. Their hair [is] coarse—almost like the tail of a horse—and short. They wear their hair down over their eyebrows except for a little in the back which they wear long and never cut. Some of them paint themselves with black, and they are of the color of the Canarians, neither black nor white; and some of them paint themselves with white, and some of them with red, and some of them with whatever they find. And some of them paint their faces, and some of them the whole body, and some of them only the eyes, and some of them only the nose.

“They do not carry arms nor are they acquainted with them, because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and through ignorance cut themselves. They have no iron. Their javelins are shafts without iron and some of them have at the end a fish tooth and others of other good things.

“All of them alike are of good-sized stature and carry themselves well. I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking what they were; and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves.…

“They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe that they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak. No animal of any kind did I see on this island except parrots.”

History

Tying Their Own Hands

Thomas S. Giles

How Christian missionaries sometimes thwarted their own evangelism

Several factors kept native Americans from clearly hearing the gospel:

•Restrictions on native clergy: Until 1588, natives were barred from being ordained or joining a monastic order. This led to great racial inequality within the church hierarchy.

Throughout the 1700s, church officials usually assigned top posts to Spanish-born whites. Secondary positions went to Creoles [whites born in the New World]. Mestizo [mixed European and Indian ancestry] priests usually received difficult parishes. At the bottom of the racial ladder stood Indian priests; though Indians made up more than 44 percent of the population, they were appointed to low prestige parishes.

As a result, by the early 1800s, most priests were foreigners.

•Loss of evangelistic zeal: Reports of missionary work in the early 1500s, described thousands of baptisms and great fervor among the friars. During the late 1500s, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, Rome moved to centralize the church’s political organization. As this occurred, many evangelizing efforts seemed to lose their zeal. As one missionary complained in 1562, “The old fervor and enthusiasm for the salvation of souls seems to have disappeared.” Many of the secular clergy who arrived during this period preferred to preach only to Spaniards. They despised the Indians and were unwilling to endure the hardship of ministering to them.

•Quarrels among the clergy: Infighting had a negative impact on the conversion of the natives. For many years orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians had been the only representatives of the church in the New World. They squabbled among themselves. But they mastered native languages and established good rapport with many indigenous communities. Naturally, they carried out parish work.

But by the middle of the sixteenth century, members of the secular clergy—who, according to canonical law, were supposed to administer parishes—increasingly sought to assert this authority. Power struggles multiplied.

•Hostile or indifferent settlers: Although friars earnestly sought to school Indian children, Spanish encomenderos [masters] often were unwilling to allow the Indians time away from their work to learn. To make the Indians afraid of Christian teaching, Spaniards in New Spain (Mexico) twice burned the church and monastery at Valladolid.

In the words of Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, “From the beginning to the present time [1552], the Spaniards have taken no more care to have the faith of Jesus Christ preached to those nations than they would to have it preached to dogs or other beasts. Instead, they have prohibited the religious from carrrying out this intention, and have afflicted them and persecuted them in many ways, because such preaching would, they deemed, have hindered them from acquiring gold and other wealth they coveted. And today in all the Indies there is no more knowledge of God, whether He be of wood, or sky, or earth, and this after one hundred years in the New World.”

Thomas S. Giles is project editor for Christianity Today.

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History

Voices in the Controversy

“The greatest event since the creation of the world, excluding the Incarnation and death of Him who created it.”

—Francisco López de Gómara (1552)

“What some historians have termed a ‘discovery,’ in reality was an invasion and colonization with legalized occupation, genocide, economic exploitation, and a deep level of institutional racism and moral decadence.”

—National Council of Churches

“[This is] the 500th anniversary of one of the great achievements of human endeavor.”

—George Bush

“[Based] on statistical analyses of Indian deaths, [the Spanish conquest was] the greatest demographic catastrophe in recorded history.”

—Peter Winn

“The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.”

—Adam Smith (late 1700s)

“Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent!”

—Native American demonstrator

“After 500 years the Columbian legacy has created a civilization that we ought not, in all humble piety and cultural relativism, declare to be no better or worse than that of the Incas. It turned out better. And mankind is the better for it. Infinitely better. Reason enough to honor Columbus and bless 1492.”

—Charles Krauthammer

“If Columbus could discover a country that was already occupied, I can go into the parking lot and discover your car—with you in it.”

—Comedian Dick Gregory

“The systematic violence, both physical and spiritual, done first to indigenous people and then to black Africans was, indeed, the original sin of the American nations. In other words, the United States of America was conceived in iniquity.”

—Jim Wallis

“Should we, then, celebrate Columbus? Certainly. [His voyages’ effects?] Of course not, but then neither did many of his contemporaries.… To reject Columbus is in effect to reject the modern world.”

—James Muldoon

History

Lights in the Darkness

Justo L. González

As sincere believers marched to subjugate a continent, other Christians had to oppose them

Dominican Antonio de Montesinos

Wikipedia

It was one of the bleakest times in the history of Christianity. In the name of Christ, thousands were slaughtered, millions enslaved, entire civilizations wiped out.

When the first Europeans settled in Hispaniola, there were some 100,000 native inhabitants on the island. Half a century later, there were scarcely 500. In Mexico, in seventy-five years the population declined from more than 23 million to 1.4 million; in Peru, in fifty years, from 9 million to 1.3 million. Military conquest, new diseases, wanton slaughter, forced labor, poor nutrition, and mass suicides contributed to these gruesome statistics. Behind all of it, as ultimate justification for the enterprise, stood the name of Christ.

In the name of Christ, natives were dispossessed of their lands by means of the Requerimiento. This document informed the native owners and rulers of these lands that Christ’s vicar on earth had granted these lands to the crown of Castile. They could accept and submit to this, or be declared rebel subjects and destroyed by force of arms.

In the name of Christ, the natives were dispossessed of their freedom by means of the encomiendas. The crown entrusted natives—sometimes hundreds of them—to a Spanish conquistador to be taught the rudiments of the Christian faith. In exchange, the natives were to work for the conquistador—the encomendero. The system soon became a veiled form of slavery. Even worse, some encomenderos left the natives underfed and overworked to the point of death.

It was also in the name of Christ that native women were baptized before being raped or taken as concubines against their will. After all, Saint Paul had clearly said, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.”

The explorers and conquistadors were not hypocrites who pretended to have faith. On the contrary, they were sincere believers. Columbus himself was something of a mystic. Hernando Cortés attended mass regularly—and especially before taking military action against the natives. The last action of Francisco Pizarro, perhaps the cruelest of the major conquistadors, was to draw a cross with his blood so he could die gazing upon it.

From their perspective, they were serving Christ by bringing millions to faith in him. They were serving the church by expanding her boundaries as never before. If, in the process, some were made to suffer, that was nothing compared to the sufferings of hell from which the natives were being saved. If, in the process, those who were bringing such great benefits to these lands became masters of the lands and their inhabitants, that was not to be begrudged. After all, “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”

Protest Erupts

That, however, was not the total picture. Many, because of their faith and their commitment to Jesus Christ, saw things differently.

Foremost among these were the Dominicans in Hispaniola. Their order had been founded by Dominic (1170–1221), who saw voluntary poverty as a means to render credible his friars’ preaching. This attitude set apart his followers, when the Albigensians, among others, were cruelly being forced by the church to recant heresy. Now in Hispaniola, Dominic’s spiritual descendants came to the conclusion that the often-cruel encomiendas were not proper means to bring the natives to Christ.

On December 21, 1511, Dominican Antonio de Montesinos mounted the pulpit. His text was Matthew 3:3, “A voice crying in the wilderness.” He said the conscience of the encomenderos seemed to be as sterile as a desert. But even in the desert the voice of God must be proclaimed:

“I have climbed to this pulpit to let you know of your sins, for I am the voice of Christ crying in the desert of this island, and therefore, you must not listen to me indifferently, but with all your heart and all your senses.… This voice tells you that you are in mortal sin; that you not only are in it, but live in it and die in it, and this because of the cruelty and tyranny that you bring to bear on these innocent people.

“Pray tell, by what right do you wage your odious wars on people who dwelt in quiet and peace on their own lands? [By what right have you] destroyed countless numbers of them with unparalleled murders and destruction? Why do you oppress and exploit them, without even giving them enough to eat, or caring for them when they become ill as a result of your exploitation? They die, or rather, you kill them, so that you may extract and obtain more and more gold every day.…

“Are they not human? Have they no souls? Are you not required to love them as you love yourselves? How can you remain in such profound moral lethargy? I assure you, in your present state you can no more be saved than Moors or Turks who do not have and even reject the faith of Jesus Christ!”

Montesinos’s audience sat almost too stunned to celebrate the Mass. Then they recovered their wits and angrily demanded a retraction. But the encomenderos soon learned that Montesinos’s sermon had been previously reviewed and signed by the other Dominicans in Hispaniola Furthermore, their vicar, Pedro de Cordoba, followed Montesinos’s sermon with harsher action: All encomenderos would be excommunicated until their Indians were freed.

The encomenderos protested before the crown. King Ferdinand was incensed. On March 20, 1512, he wrote to Columbus: “I have seen the sermon to which you refer … and although he [Montesinos] was always a scandalous preacher, I am much surprised by what he said, which has no basis in theology, or canon or civil law, as all the learned declare, and I agree.”

The Dominicans in Hispaniola did not flinch. Their provincial (immediate superior) in Spain ordered them to recant. They stood firm. Eventually, the matter came to a debate before the king, and Montesinos himself participated. As a result of that debate, a special commission issued seven principles for the treatment of the natives, and these principles became law in December 1512.

Given the settlers’ greed and the difficulty of communicating over long distances, these laws were never obeyed (or, as the Spaniards said at the time, they were obedecidas y no cuinplidas, “obeyed but not done”). Therefore, the protest continued.

Spreading Opposition

The best-known leader in this second stage of the protest was Bartolomé de Las Casas, also a Dominican. Las Casas had once owned an encomienda but had relinquished it to protest the system’s abuses. He lived almost a century and traveled repeatedly across the Atlantic, going before the royal court to plead the case of the natives. He attempted to obtain new laws and rulings, then returned to the colonies—only to discover the settlers had found new ways to disobey and continue their exploitation of the natives.

The fame of Las Casas has eclipsed that of others who took a similar stance. Decades later in Chile, for example, stood another Dominican, Gil Gonzalez de San Nicholas. Gonzalez declared that anyone who waged war against the natives (in this case, the Araucanians of southern Chile) in order to take their lands should be excommunicated and denied confession. His fellow Dominicans agreed with him, and the Franciscans followed suit. As a result, the war effort faltered for lack of soldiers, and the Araucanians had a brief respite. Eventually, Gonzalez was silenced through a subterfuge, being declared a heretic on an unrelated matter.

In Paraguay, when European settlers began invading to capture slaves, the Jesuits armed the Indians and even organized them into an army that won several important victories against the slave hunters. According to an unsympathetic witness, the attitude of these Jesuits cost the crown forty million pesos—the tax due if the settlers had been allowed to exploit the lands and the natives.

As a result, according to another witness, “[The settlers] hate the Fathers of the Company [the Jesuits], because they are convinced that it is the Jesuits that keep them from all the profit that they could obtain for their farms and settlements from [the work of] the Indians of Paraguay.”

The list could be prolonged endlessly. Many early saints of South America—Luis Beltron, Toribio de Mogrovejo, Francisco Solano as well as hundreds of lesser figures were noted for defending the natives. Later, with the coming of black slaves, another generation of saints came to their defense: Pedro Claver and Martin de Porres, himself a mulatto.

In Spain, the question of natives’ rights in the “Indies” gave rise to a vigorous debate. Foremost among those who participated was Francisco de Vitoria, a Dominican professor at the University of Salamanca, who defended the natives as legitimate owners of their lands and possessions.

Light in Darkness

It is said that Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish king, because of concern about Conquest abuses, considered abandoning the American enterprise. While that report is probably exaggerated, it indicates the impact of these voices of protest. Undoubtedly, some natives enjoyed a brief respite thanks to the work of the “lights in the darkness.”

Yet the Conquest continued. To this day the native inhabitants of these regions continue to be exploited and harassed out of their ancestral lands. The protest over the natives’ treatment was seldom translated into practical action, except in limited areas for a short time.

Still, the light shone in the darkness. It is true that the exploitation and immense cruelties of the Conquest were done in the name of Christ, but it is also true that some in the same Name chose to live in solidarity with the exploited, and they persisted in their denunciations even before kings and prelates. If it is true that the Spanish Catholic church generally acquiesced in and supported one of the most inhumane episodes in history, it is also true that it produced internal protest and self-criticism.

Protestant Europeans later launched similar colonial enterprises in the Western Hemisphere. They were similarly inhumane toward Native Americans. In those ventures, though, the earlier level of internal protest was never matched.

Dr. Justo L. González is adjunct professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia; and a member of the editorial advisory board of Christian History. Among his numerous books, in both Spanish and English is The Story of Christianity (Harper &Row 1985).

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History

The Father of California

James D. Smith III

Junipero Serra launched a remarkable enterprise on Spain’s final frontier

On the morning of July 16, 1769, on a windswept hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Father Junipero Serra celebrated High Mass before a hewn wooden cross. The Mass signaled the sunset of Spain’s mission colonization of the New World but the dawn of Father Serra’s greatest work.

By the 1760s Spain’s empire had been drained by far-flung battles and internal decay. When the Russians began moving from Alaska down the western coast of North America, the Spanish became alarmed. In 1768, a plan to permanently settle California was formulated. This movement, spearheaded by Captain Gaspar de Portolá, would move north from Baja California to reach Monterey’s bay, where a garrison would be established. Each wave of settlement, by land or sea, would pass through San Diego, with coastal mission settlements planned between the two points.

Taking seriously the name of this “Sacred Expedition” was Serra, a 55 year-old Franciscan friar who, despite a badly infected leg, insisted on making the trip: “I have placed all my confidence in God, of whose goodness I hope that he will grant me to reach not only San Diego but also Monterey.” His prayers were answered.

Giving Up Success

Miguel José Serra was born November 24, 1713, on the island of Majorca. Schooled at a Franciscan friary, he requested admission to the Franciscan order at age 16. Serra chose the religious name “Junipero,” recalling the simplicity and good humor of St. Francis’s early companion.

His superb teaching gifts were soon recognized and sharpened through doctoral study. But his promising career did not satisfy the young professor. Late in 1748, he requested that he and Fray Francisco Palou (his future biographer) become apostolic missionaries to the New World.

While waiting at port in Spain before the Atlantic crossing, Serra wrote a letter that spoke of the “great joy” in his heart and expressed a life theme: “Surely [my parents] would always encourage me to go forward and never to turn back.… The office of an apostolic preacher, especially its actual exercise, is the greatest calling to which they would wish me to be chosen.”

In late 1749, Serra embarked for New Spain and eventually began working in the Sierra Gorda Mountains, north of Mexico City. For eight years, the slight (5-feet, 2-inch) and impatient Serra translated Christian doctrine and prayers into the language of the Pames Indians. Serra also worked alongside the Indians to build a large stone church in Jalpan that is still used for worship today. His intensity and hard work combined with an uninhibited joy and a delight in God’s creation, and these qualities impressed his followers.

He was transferred to the College of San Fernando in 1758, where he earned a reputation as an able administrator and fervent preacher. Often he would dramatize his sermons by scourging himself with chains or pounding his chest with heavy stones. And he refused to have his infected leg treated—in the tradition of the mystics, he felt pain was a delight.

Sacred Expedition

In early 1767, King Charles III suddenly expelled the Jesuits from Spain and its colonies. The orphaned Jesuit missions on the parched Baja California peninsula were entrusted to a handful of Franciscans, with Fray Serra chosen presidente of the mission. Within weeks, his missionary band began serving the Indian population of the scattered Baja missions, which were connected only by primitive roads. The following year, Serra committed himself to propagate the faith among the unreached peoples (“gentiles”) in Alta (upper) California.

This new venture was not without its costs. Two ships carrying supplies to meet Serra’s overland party in San Diego lost thirty-four men to scurvy, over a third of their crew. Of forty-four Indian helpers, thirty-two died or deserted the overland party. Thus, San Diego’s first institution was not a mission or presidio (military outpost) but an infirmary.

Serra’s initial letter from California bore a warning: “Let those who are to come here as missionaries not imagine that they are coming for any other purpose but to endure hardships for the love of God and for the salvation of souls.”

San Diego de Alcalá (in modern San Diego) was the first of twenty-one missions founded in California; Serra was responsible for nine. For fifteen years, whether by ship or, less frequently, on California’s Camino Real (royal highway), Serra regularly traveled a five-hundred mile stretch on painful legs.

It took the San Diego mission a year before it could baptize a convert. At Carmel (the second mission established), it took Serra six months to gain a follower—and that was a child. By the fifth year, though, there had been over 900 baptisms. And by the time of Serra’s death in another ten years, some 5,000 neophytes were living in the missions, along with 500 Spanish soldiers and settlers.

A great deal of that success can be credited to Serra’s enthusiasm. Near the future site of San Antonio de Padua, Serra’s mule train had hardly been unburdened and a bell hung from an oak when he suddenly rang the bell and shouted, “O Gentiles! Come, come to the holy church!” His companions had to remind him there was not yet a church, nor an Indian, in sight.

The missions were designed not only to convert, but also to “civilize” and educate the Indians. And once Indians joined the mission they could not leave without permission. They were expected to attend services several times daily, and they were taught basic skills of building, farming, and various crafts.

Some native Americans resisted the regimented lifestyle. Serra was known to whip recalcitrant Indians at times for their own good, he felt, since the system was moving them toward redemption.

But mission life wasn’t all austere. Nearly every feast day on the calendar yielded processions, feasts, and games. The Indians were fed three substantial meals a day, which relieved them of their perpetual search for food.

Spiritual Sheep, Real Goats

After Serra died in 1784, at Mission San Carlos in Carmel, the missions continued to expand both spiritually and economically. Within fifty years, another twelve missions were established, and by 1832, 17,000 Indians were attached to them. The missions that year harvested 120,000 bushels of grain and herded 150,000 cattle, 15,000 horses, and 140,000 hogs, sheep, and goats. Sixty-three years earlier California had contained not one cow, horse, hog, sheep, goat, or grain of wheat—nor a single Christian.

After Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, and an 1834 Secularization Act that put mission property in secular hands, the missions quickly fell into decay.

Nonetheless, the missions were a monumental spiritual and organizational feat. Yet the intense, chocolate loving friar who began them observed once, “The only quality that I can feel fairly sure I have by the kindness and grace of God is my good intentions.”

James D. Smith III is pastor of Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church and adjunct professor of church history at Bethel Seminary—West, both in San Diego, California. He is a member of the editorial adisory board of Christian History.

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History

Why Did Columbus Sail?

Kevin A. Miller

What your history textbooks may not have told you

David Dibert / Unsplash

The bright noon sun beat down on the stone walls of the Church of St. George in Palos, Spain. Inside, in the cool quiet, knelt Cristóbal Colón, captain general of three small ships anchored in the town’s inlet below. With Columbus saying confession and hearing mass, were some ninety pilots, seamen, and crown appointed officials. Later that day they would row to their ships, Colón taking his place on the Santa María, a slow but sturdy flagship no longer than five canoes.

The next morning, Friday, August 3, 1492, at dawn, the Santa María and its companion caravels caught the ebb tide and drifted toward the gulf. Their sails began to fill, and the crosses boldly emblazoned on them caught the light. Their mission—the wild-eyed idea of their foreigner captain—was to sail west, away from all visible landmarks. They would leave behind Spain and Portugal, the “end of the world,” and head straight into the Mare Oceanum, the Ocean Sea.

In that Ocean of Darkness, some feared, the water boiled and sea monsters gulped down sailors so foolish as to sail there. Beyond—if they lived to see it—lay the fabled island of Cipangu. There, in the land of the Great Khan, houses were roofed with gold, streets paved with marble. And this was but one of 7,448 islands Marco Polo had said were in the Sea of China. But even if they reached the Indies, how would they get back, since currents and winds all seemed to go one way?

Why Take the Risky Voyage?

Commander Cristoforo Colombo (as he was known in his hometown of Genoa, Italy) was taller than most men; so tall, in fact, he couldn’t stand inside his cabin on the Santa María. He’d had “very red” hair in his younger years, but since he’d passed age 40, it had turned prematurely white. His face boasted a big nose and freckles.

Columbus, as we know his name today, was an experienced mariner. He had sailed the Mediterranean and traveled to parts of Africa, to Ireland, and probably even to Iceland. He boasted later in life, “I have gone to every place that has heretofore been navigated.” He knew the Atlantic as well or better than anyone, and he probably knew more about how to read currents, winds, and surfaces of the sea than do sailors today. “He [our Lord] has bestowed the marine arts upon me in abundance,” Columbus said.

For nearly seven years, the “socially ambitious, socially awkward” Italian had become a fixture at the Spanish court, ceaselessly lobbying for his crazy “enterprise of the Indies.” A royal commission in 1490 had judged “that the claims and promises of Captain Colón are vain and worthy of rejection.… The Western Sea is infinite and unnavigable. The Antipodes are not livable, and his ideas are impracticable.” Yet Columbus had pressed on, proving, as he said, “If it strikes often enough, a drop of water can wear a hole in a stone.”

Why? Why would someone, anyone, doggedly spend years getting funding for a death-defying feat?

The Misleading Textbook Answer

The textbook answer, as any schoolchild could recite, is that Columbus wanted to find a trade route to the Orient. Writer Robert Hughes expressed the conventional wisdom: “Sometime between 1478 and 1484, the full plan of self-aggrandizement and discovery took shape in his mind. He would win glory, riches, and a title of nobility by opening a trade route to the untapped wealth of the Orient. No reward could be too great for the man who did that.”

That’s true, but incomplete so incomplete it’s misleading. At least later, Columbus saw his voyage in much greater terms: “Who can doubt that this fire was not merely mine, but also the Holy Spirit who encouraged me with a radiance of marvelous illumination from his sacred Scriptures, … urging me to press forward?”

Columbus felt that Almighty God had directly brought about his journey: “With a hand that could be felt, the Lord opened my mind to the fact that it would be possible … and he opened my will to desire to accomplish that project.… The Lord purposed that there should be something miraculous in this matter of the voyage to the Indies.”

There may be many things we don’t know about history’s most famous mariner. We don’t know exactly what Columbus looked like. We don’t know the precise design of his three ships. And most bizarre of all, we don’t know—and will probably never know—the spot where he came ashore.

But we know beyond doubt that Columbus sailed, in part, to fulfill a religious quest. Columbus’s voyages were intense religious missions. He saw them as the fulfillment of a divine plan for his life—and for the soon-coming end of the world. As he put it in 1500, “God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John [Rev. 21:1] after having spoken of it through the mouth of Isaiah; and he showed me the spot where to find it.”

Saint Christopher?

Columbus was visibly and verbally “an exceptionally pious man,” writes historian Delno C. West. “Throughout his journals and letters, we find him constantly in prayer, invoking the names of Christ, Mary, and the saints and solemnly giving praise to God.”

It was typical for Spanish crewmen daily to recite the “Our Father” and other prayers. Columbus’s men did, too. But Columbus went far beyond conventional practice.

His son Ferdinand wrote, “He was so strict in matters of religion that for fasting and saying prayers he might have been taken for a member of a religious order.” He knew his Vulgate Bible thoroughly, and he probably took it (or a collection of Scriptures) on his voyages. Whenever he faced a storm, a waterspout (tornado-like whirl of seawater), or rebellious crewmen, he made vows to God. “Religion was always his first refuge in adversity,” writes Columbus scholar Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

A main source for information about Columbus is his contemporary Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas. Las Casas fearlessly criticized many fellow Spaniards, yet he did little but praise the mariner: “He was calm and serious, friendly to strangers, gentle and kind to his family.… In nearly everything he undertook to plan or to accomplish, he would begin with ‘In the name of the Holy Trinity I will do this or look to that.’ … He fasted most observantly on all the fast days of the church; he participated frequently in confession and Communion; he prayed at all the daily canonical hours, just as the priests and monks; … He was extremely zealous for the honor and glory of God; with deep longing he yearned for the evangelization of these peoples and for the planking and flourishing everywhere of people’s faith in Jesus Christ.”

Medieval “Evangelical”

The overwhelming evidence has led Delno C. West to conclude that Columbus “is best viewed as an ‘evangelical’ Christian—not in the modern sense of the word ‘evangelical’ but in the sense of the Catholic tradition and church of the times.”

Evangelical? In 1501 Columbus wrote, “I am only a most unworthy sinner, but ever since I have cried out for grace and mercy from the Lord, they have covered me completely. I have found the most delightful comfort in making it my whole aim in life to enjoy his marvelous presence.” He constantly associated with reform minded Franciscans and spent perhaps five months at the white-walled monastery of Santa María de La Rabida. He may have been a member of the Franciscan Third Order (for lay people). At least once he appeared in public wearing a Franciscan habit and the order’s distinctive cord.

But he and his faith were wholly medieval. He died more than a decade before Martin Luther would post his 95 Theses protesting the abuse of indulgences. In fact, advances on indulgences helped pay for Columbus’s voyage. He read from the Vulgate Bible and the church fathers but, typical for his era, mingled astrology, geography, and prophecy with his theology. Columbus and his faith reflected, to use Alexander von Humboldt’s phrase, “everything sublime and bizarre that the Middle Ages produced.”

But only in the last 40 years—and particularly in the last 10 have scholars examined Columbus’s religious motivations. Not until last year was his most important religious writing—the Libro de las profecías, or Book of Prophecies—translated into English.

Columbus’s deep Christian faith still causes academic bewilderment. Some scholars attribute his recurring encounters with a heavenly voice to mental instability, illness, or stress. Others complain that Columbus’s biographers described him as more religious than he really was. Some protest that Columbus was greedy and obsessively ambitious, so he couldn’t have been truly religious, as if competing qualities cannot exist in one person.

But why explain away his intense religious devotion, when it was obvious to those who knew him and persistent throughout his writings?

Concludes Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographer Samuel Eliot Morison, “There can be no doubt that the faith of Columbus was genuine and sincere, and that his frequent communion with forces unseen was a vital element in his achievement.”

Reaching Land—But Where?

Columbus would need that vital element. The voyage was immediately beset by calamities a broken rudder, leaks so bad they needed immediate repair, and threatened capture by the Portuguese. A week after losing sight of the Canary Islands, the pilots discovered to their consternation that the compasses no longer worked right. (They varied a full degree at various fumes of the day, because of the rotation of the North Star, which pilots had thought was fixed in its location.)

On September 23, the ship hit a calm, causing the seamen to complain they’d never be able to get back to Spain. But later, the sea rose without the aid of any wind. This “astonished them,” and Columbus compared it to the miracles that accompanied Moses.

After going a month without seeing land, the men belly-ached about the endless voyage. But on October 11, the ship’s log records, they began seeing signs of shore: seabirds, bits of green plants, stacks that looked they had been carved, a small plank. At 10 that evening, Columbus saw a faint, flickering light like a candle in the distance. Few took it as a sign of land, but when the crew gathered to sing Salve Regina (“Hail, Queen”), Columbus instructed his men to keep careful lookout. He would give the first person to sight land a silk jacket and 10,000 maravedis.

Then the Pinta (“Painted One”), the fastest of the three ships, sailed ahead. At about 2 A.M., a crewman yelled “Tierra!”—land.

At daylight, the wide-eyed Europeans saw people “as naked as their mother bore them” and many ponds, fruits, and green trees. Columbus and his captains went ashore in an armed launch and unfurled the royal banner and two flags. Each was white with a central bright green cross flanked by a green F and Y for “Ferdinand” and “Isabella.” Columbus declared that these obviously inhabited lands now belonged to the Catholic sovereigns.

But what land was this? Where was he? The navties called the island Guanahaní. Columbus dubbed it San Salvador, “Holy Savior.” He probably figured he was, in one writer’s words, at the “gateway to the kingdom of the Grand Khan.”

Columbus had woefully miscalculated—by thousands of miles. Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell explains, “In six stages of calculations, Columbus had cooked the figures to suit himself and reduced the width of the Ocean Sea to 60 degrees, less than a third of the modern figure of 200 degrees for the distance between the Canary Islands and Japan.… Providence or fool’s luck—placed America in the middle of the sea to save him.”

Columbus said it was Providence. As he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella late in his life, “I spent six years here at your royal court, disputing the case with so many people of great authority, learned in all the arts. And finally they concluded that it all was in vain, and they lost interest. In spite of that it later came to pass as Jesus Christ our Savior had predicted and as he had previously announced through the mouths of His holy prophets.… I have already said that reason, mathematics, and maps of the world were of no use to me in the execution of the enterprise of the Indies. What Isaiah said was completely fulfilled.”

Now here he was, standing in the distant isles of the Indies. So he called the Taino-speaking peoples of the Arawak tribes “Indians.” The name, though flatly wrong, stuck.

Good Christians, Good Slaves

Soon many natives gathered. They had coarse black hair—“almost like the tail of a horse”—with “handsome bodies and good faces” painted with black, red, or white paint. “I recognized that they were people who would be better freed [from error] and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force,” Columbus concluded.

“To some of them I gave red caps, and glass beads which they put on their chests, and many other things of small value, in which they took so much pleasure and became so much our friends that it was a marvel.” The natives soon brought “parrots and cotton thread in balls and javelins and many other things,” which they traded for “small glass beads and bells.”

“They should be good and intelligent servants,” Columbus wrote, “for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe that they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak.”

In other words, they would make good Christians and good slaves. The cross and sword had come together. The modern concept of separating church and state had never entered Columbus’s mind. His sovereigns were Christian princes; to extend his nation’s borders was to extend Christianity; to conquer and enslave new lands was to spread the gospel. Even when Columbus forcibly subjugated Hispaniola in 1495, he believed he was fulfilling a divine destiny for himself and for Aragon and Castile and for the holy church.

The “Christ-Bearer”

Indeed, he saw himself on an evangelistic mission. In the prologue to his account of the first voyage, Columbus wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella: “I had given [a report] to your Highnesses about the lands of India and about a prince who is called ‘Grand Khan,’ … how, many times, he and his predecessors had sent to Rome to ask for men learned in our Holy Faith in order that they might instruct him in it … and thus so many peoples were lost, falling into idolatry and accepting false and harmful religions; and Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes, lovers and promoters of the Holy Christian Faith … thought of sending me, Cristóbal Colon… to see how their conversion to our Holy Faith might be undertaken.”

Columbus was the advance man for a mighty evangelistic campaign. He would open new worlds and unseen peoples to the gospel. In a sense, he would be like the legendary giant Christopher, who carried Christ on his back across a wide river. He also, a Christopher, a “Christ-bearer,” would carry Christ across the wide Ocean Sea to peoples who had never heard the Christian message.

In his later Book of Prophecies, he cited various Scriptures that validated that mission:

• John 10:16 “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

• And especially Isaiah 60:9—“For, the islands wait for me, and the ships of the sea in the beginning: that I may bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord thy God.” In Columbus’s mind, the islands were waiting for him; he would bring their sons to the Lord (and not incidentally, bring their silver and gold as well).

Las Casas agreed that “Columbus showed the way to the discovery of immense territories” and many peoples “are now ready and prepared to be brought to the knowledge of their Creator and the faith.” As a sign of that work, on every island he explored, Columbus erected a large wooden cross.

Voice in the Storm

After ten weeks of exploring the coastline of Cuba and Hispaniola, continually trading trinkets for gold, Columbus and his men hit a problem. In the wee hours of Christmas morning, a sailor decided to catch some sleep and left the tiller in the hands of a boy. The Santa María ran aground.

But what most would have viewed as a calamity, Columbus did not: “It was a great blessing and the express purpose of God” that his ship ran aground so he would leave some of his men. Yes, the ship was wrecked beyond repair, but now he had lumber—lots of it—for building the necessary fort. He left a small garrison of men with instructions: treat the natives well and don’t “injure” the women; explore for gold; seek a place for permanent settlement.

The Niña and Pinta sailed for home in January. On February 12, the ships encountered a frightening storm. Waves broke over the ships, sails had to be lowered, and soon they were driven by the wind until they were wildly lost. “I knew that my life was at the disposal of Him who made me,” Columbus wrote, “and I have been near death so often.… What made it so unbearably painful this time was the thought that after our Lord had been pleased to enflame me with faith and trust in this enterprise, and had crowned it with victory, … His divine Majesty should now choose to jeopardize everything with my death.… I tried to console myself with the thought that our Lord would not allow such an enterprise to remain unfinished, which was so much for the exaltation of His Church.”

The storm raged on. On February 14th, Columbus gathered his crew on the heaving and rolling deck to pray and make vows. They put chick-peas in a cap and had sailors draw to see which one picked the chick-pea with a cross cut into it. That sailor would go on a holy pilgrimage to a shrine of the Virgin Mary if they landed safely. Columbus drew the cross-marked bean.

Apparently, on that frightening day, Columbus also heard a celestial voice. In his youth, he felt God had promised him that his name would be proclaimed throughout the world. And at age 25, he had survived a shipwreck and six-mile swim—a sign, he told his son Ferdinand, that God had a plan for him. But this was different.

Although the words are recorded only indirectly, God spoke to Columbus and assured him that God would take him to safety. God had given him great favor in allowing him to accomplish this great feat. God would allow him to complete what he had begun.

The next day Columbus’s men spotted an island in the Azores; less than three weeks later they landed triumphantly on the Iberian peninsula.

“Communion with Celestial Joys”

When Columbus anchored the Niña in Palos, seven months after he’d left, shops closed and church bells rang. Columbus had forwarded a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella: “Our Redeemer has given this triumph… for all of this Christendom should feel joyful and make great celebrations and give solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity … for the great exaltation which it will have in the salvation of so many peoples to our holy faith and, secondly, for the material benefits which will bring refreshment and profit.”

Columbus was greeted in the Barcelona court as “Don Cristóbal Colón, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy and Governor of the Isles discovered in the Indies.”

According to Las Casas, “The King and Queen heard [Columbus’s report] with profound attention and, raising their hands in prayer, sank to their knees in deep gratitude to God. The singers of the royal chapel sang the ‘Te Deum laudamus’ … and indeed it seemed a moment of communion with all the celestial joys.”

Spain had now emerged, in one historian’s words, “as the greatest empire since antiquity.” In “a year of marvels,” to quote historian Carry Wills, three profound changes had occurred:

1. Ferdinand and Isabella, who had just united their kingdoms, soundly defeated the Moors, signaling the end of an Islamic presence in Europe.

2. The Catholic sovereigns had expelled all Jews and seized their assets. Columbus had used the port of Palós, in fact, because the larger Cádiz was flooded with thousands of fleeing Jewish refugees.

3. A Spanish pope had been elected.

And now this—a new gateway to the Indies. A new country, militantly united behind Christianity, had arisen and would dominate the world for a hundred years.

An End-Times Crusade

To Columbus, all this was a sure sign of the end times.

For years a prophecy had circulated that “the restorer of the House of Mt. Zion will come from Spain.” For hundreds of years, the holy sites of Jerusalem had been held captive by the infidel Muslims. But according to ancient prophecy, that day would soon end. And Columbus believed he would be part of making it happen.

Following St. Augustine’s teaching, Columbus knew that all history fell into seven ages—and he was in the sixth, the next to last. Furthermore, Augustine had said the world would end 7,000 years after its creation. That was a mere 155 years away, and much had to happen: all peoples of the world would convert to Christianity, the Holy Land would be rescued from the infidels, the Antichrist would come.

Columbus thought that Ferdinand and Isabella were God’s chosen instruments to recapture Jerusalem and place the Holy City under Christian control. This was not some sidelight in Columbus’s mind; it was a central passion. As scholar Pauline Moffitt Watts has written, “This was Columbus’s ultimate goal, the purpose of all his travels and discoveries—the liberation of the Holy Land.”

Not that he would personally lead the armies. No, he would help pay for the expensive crusade. The Crusaders’ Book of Secrets, written in the early fourteenth century, said it would take 210,000 gold florins to mount a crusade. If Columbus could find enough gold in the Indies especially if he could find the lost mines of Solomon, which were known to be in the East—he could pay for a Holy Land crusade.

When Columbus had left his men on Hispaniola in early January, he told them he hoped “in God that on the return … he would find a barrel of gold that those who were left would have acquired by exchange; and that they would have found the gold mine and the spicery, and those things in such quantity, that the sovereigns before three years will undertake and prepare to conquer the Holy Sepulcher.”

Columbus thirsted for gold; he was obsessed by it. When he says sincerely,“Our Lord in his goodness guides me so that I may find this gold,” we cringe. But writers who accuse Columbus of raw greed miss part of the point. Columbus wanted gold not only for himself, but also for a much larger reason: to pay for the medieval Christian’s dream, the retaking of the Holy Land. “The primary motivation in his quest for gold was spiritual,” argues Delno C. West.

As soon as Columbus had returned to Spain, he told Ferdinand and Isabella he would provide 50,000 soldiers and 4,000 horses for them to free Christ’s Holy Tomb in Jerusalem. “You are assured of certain victory in the enterprise of Jerusalem,” Columbus later wrote to them, “if you have faith.”

But much to Columbus’s disappointment, the longed-for crusade to recapture the Holy City was never undertaken. Although Ferdinand and Isabella made military strikes into Muslim-held North Africa, they never mounted a grand crusade.

High Point of His Life

Columbus was at the high point of his life. In his remaining 14 years, difficulties would only intensify the qualities in his life:

•His wanderlust. He took three more voyages across the Atlantic, each lasting several years and filled with harrowing storms, crew rebellions, illnesses (at one point his eyes bled), and encounters with native Americans.

•His passion for evangelism. In May 1493, he asked Ferdinand and Isabella to set aside 1 percent of all gold taken from the islands to pay for establishing churches and sending monks. They instructed him “to win over the peoples of the said islands and mainland by all ways and means to our Holy Catholic Faith” and sent 13 religious workers on his second voyage. In his will, Columbus instructed his son Diego to support from his trust four theology professors to live on Hispaniola and convert the Indians.

•His inflexibility. To his death he continued to argue (against other evidence) that he had landed in Asia. As a colonial governor, he ruled the farmers and settlers with such a heavy hand they rebelled. Columbus was arrested and shipped back to Spain in chains.

•His drive for titles and money. Columbus became absolutely wealthy, “a millionaire by any standard.” But he had driven such a hard bargain with the crown—hereditary titles and “the tenth part of the whole” of gold he found—that the monarchs continually had to limit his power and wealth. Columbus spent his last years in legal battles and worries that his estate would be whitled away.

•His encounters with the voice of God. Columbus had at least two more, both in dark hours.

In 1499, he said, “When all had abandoned me, I was assailed by the Indians and the wicked Christians the Spanish settlers who were rebelling against his inept administration]. I found myself in such a pass that in an attempt to escape death I took to the sea in a small caravel. Then the Lord came to help, saying, ‘O man of little faith, be not afraid, I am with thee.’ And he scattered my enemies and showed me the way to fulfill my promises. Miserable sinner that I am, to have put all my trust in the vanities of this world!”

In the Americas again four years later, he found himself alone. His worm eaten ship was trapped by low waters from getting out into the open sea. A local Indian cacique [ruler] had vowed to massacre the Spaniards. Some of Columbus’s men had been killed. Feverish and in deep despair, he wrote, “I dragged myself up the rigging to the height of the crow’s nest.… Still groaning, I lost consciousness. I heard a voice in pious accents saying, ‘O foolish man and slow to serve your God, the God of all! What more did he accomplish for Moses or for his servant David? From the hour of your birth he has always had a special care of you.’ ” The voice continued at length and closed with “Be not afraid, but of good courage. All your afflictions are engraved in letters of marble and there is a purpose behind them all.”

•His belief in his role in end-times prophecy. Late in life, with the help of a friend, a monk, Columbus assembled excerpts from the Bible and medieval authors. The unfinished work, titled Book of Prophecies, uses Scriptures to show that God had ordained his voyages of discovery and that God would be doing further wonderful things for the church. Some have criticized Columbus for the “providential and messianic delusions that would come to grip him later in life” and accused him of megalomania.

Columbus was often egocentric and, by today’s standards, loose in his hermeneutics. But he wasn’t the first or last Christian to read his personal destiny into a Scripture verse. Scholar Kay Brigham writes that he was “a man who had an extensive knowledge of God’s plan for the world, revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and of the particular role that he was to play in the fulfillment of the divine purposes.”

So why did Columbus sail? Certainly he sailed to “make a great lord of himself,” as his crew members grumbled. But he sailed for far more. As Samuel Eliot Morison wrote, “This conviction that God destined him to be an instrument for spreading the faith was far more potent than the desire to win glory, wealth, and worldly honors, to which he was certainly far from indifferent.”

Columbus concluded the log of his first voyage with one simple desire: “I hope in Our Lord that it [the recent voyage] will be the greatest honor to Christianity that, unexpectedly, has ever come about.”

Kevin A. Miller is editor of Christian History.

- More from Kevin A. Miller

History

The Clamor over Columbus

Martin E. Marty

What should Christians think about the hotly debated anniversary?

Artem Dunaev / EyeEm

“The Columbus quincentenary has been the occasion for more controversy than celebration,” writes one scholar with massive understatement. From Newsweek to the Smithsonian Institution, from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to the National Council of Churches, people have loudly debated what Columbus’s landing really means.

Was it “the expansion of Christianity into our hemisphere [that] brought to the people of this land the gift of the Christian faith with its power of humanity and salvation, dignity and fraternity, justice and love”? Or was it the beginning of “invasion, genocide, slavery, ‘ecocide’ and exploitation ” ?

The editors asked one distinguished historian and friend of Christian History to venture into the fray and suggest what Christians in 1992 should think of this momentous 500th anniversary.

Christian History cannot not notice the landing of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Anyone writing world history has to regard the event among the four or five most noticeable and notable in recorded history.

Christian History pays special attention to the branch of world history that deals with the story of Christianity. By bringing in Christ, his church, and the culture called Christianity, the magazine cannot avoid Columbus, 1492, and all that. His enterprise cannot be presented without reference to his faith.

Accusations against Columbus and his enterprise are manifold, and Christians today cannot escape being implicated. Whether and how the accusations are just needs some exploring.

Picture An Islamic America

Imagining away the landings, explorations, conquests, and settlements has become a big part of the quincentenary observance: “If only Spain hadn’t come to the Americas, how much better things would be for natives of the Americas” runs the sentiment. Yet consider this:

Early in 1492 the Christian troops of Ferdinand and Isabella ended an era of Islamic domain in Western Europe. Islamdom at the time was in as expansive a mood as was Christendom. Had Islam won a few more military victories—and had it commanded more nagging entrepreneurs like Columbus and his cohorts—the landscapes of the Americas would be vastly different.

Imagine a cityscape in which the minaret, not the church steeple, dominates. Picture a New York that looks like Tehran, a San Francisco that resembles Malaysian cities. Imagine a United States with 1–4 million Christians, instead of 1–4 million Muslims, fighting for attention. In neither script—the actual or imagined—do the people of the hemispheres remain unaware of each other.

Had the voyages of Columbus not been successful, certainly in 1493 or 1494 some other Spaniard would have made the crossing after which permanent contact would have occurred. Or not many decades later, England would have brought ships, troops, plunderers, and adventurers. If not Spain or England, then the Netherlands or France.

This provides a common-sense check when writers suggest that native peoples of the Americas should have been left alone. The explorers and conquerors from Spain may have done nearly everything wrong—sometimes it appears that way—but there is no way the American hemisphere would always have been left alone, free from diseases and swords, unaware of the Bible and the churches of Europe.

Competitive Repentance

During this year of observance, narrators tell—some eagerly—a story of almost unrelieved exploitation, dehumanization, death, and murder. Experts in exaggeration seem to be contending to see who can bring the longest and most fierce list of charges against Spain and Europe.

But no one needs to exaggerate a story that includes rivers of blood, oceans of tears. As with the story of the Holocaust in Hitler’s Germany, one is tempted to resist telling it, so inadequate are imaginations to reconceive each mother’s cry, each slash of the sword, each experience of pain. Yet since most of history is suffering, not to tell the story of sufferers is to dishonor their dying, and to deprive ourselves of a fuller humanity.

So the story gets told with a vengeance, by various tellers.

Native Americans could not forget the story of this hemispheric Holocaust. And in almost every nation in which they remain a presence, from the United States to Brazil, the infliction of misery and the suppression of rights goes on.

Christians have a stake in their story, because Christianity not only did little to mitigate the horrors but also often legitimated them. In the United States Christians stole the land or bought it cheaply. They killed the Indians who were in their way, and those whom they did not kill they put on reservations. The English colonists, if anything, did less well than the Spanish and French in this respect.

Thus Christians are another major group telling the story, and among this group, one finds few defenders of the Columbus venture.

Yet are Columbus-bashing and Europe-bashing appropriate for Christians?

Ostensibly, the anniversary calls for repentance, and Christians can never get too much of that. But many churches’ “Calls to Repentance” are not so much expressions of repentance as they are boasts—“We are more repentant than you” or “We are more sensitive and aware than you.”

Repentance, though, is not saying “Look what your ancestors did!” or “Look what our ancestors did!” It is not even saying “Look what we, their heirs, have done!” At the center of repentance lies the cry, “Alas, what kind of people are we, that we are capable of doing bad things to the environment and the native peoples—and we are doing such things now!”—and to follow that with policy and action.

One listens and watches for such expressions—and action—but often the self-justifying or other-accusing language obscures.

Christian Reckonings

Once we get past competitive repentance and actually repent, we see in bolder relief enduring issues illuminated by the Columbus events. This is not the place to resolve them (each has produced shelves full of literature), but let me offer a catalog of Christian reckonings.

Crusade. Medieval Christians—and Columbus was among them—did not conceive of missions as have heirs of nineteenth-century Protestant missions. But medieval Christians were good at crusading, at trying to purge sacred places of infidels and the waste places of savages—all in the interest of extending pure Christian domains. Columbus the adventurer thought that as Spain circled the world, it would pick up the riches of Cathay along the way. It could then stab the Muslim in the back, as it were, from the East, and crusade to restore the Holy Land.

Christians use the concept of the crusade, at least metaphorically, but they rarely revisit the past to see the assumptions that lie behind a genuine crusade.

Mission. Columbus had missionary interests. His detractors, though, see all Christian endeavor of the sixteenth century as exploitation. Though missionary friars often criticized the conquerors, everyone agrees that Catholics first and Protestants later related poorly to Indians. But many critics are hostile to all missions. The issue is quickened in 1992.

Prophecy. Not until recently, as historians have reread Columbus’s Libro de las Profecias[Book of Prophecies], have they seen the extent to which Columbus saw his voyage as fulfilling prophecy. He read the Bible and Christian commentators to draw pictures of how the world was to end—and then sketched himself into them. Millennial readings of American history did not begin with Jonathan Edwards in the 1740s or Dwight L. Moody in the 1870s; they inspired the voyages of 1492. How to apply prophecy to current events remains an issue to ponder.

Conquest. Columbus and those who followed him assumed that if they came upon a place, they had a right to determine its destiny. What gave him the right to claim “Asia” (as he thought) for Ferdinand and Isabella, for pope and empire? Imperial ambition has received Christian support in the five centuries since. Debate over it comes up whenever the United States exercises its muscles, as it did recently in the Persian Gulf. The issues posed by Columbus’s presumption remain on the Christian conscience.

Stewardship. The newcomers to the continents despoiled them. To get the quickest possible yield from mines and plains, fields and forests, and peoples, they did whatever was necessary. Five centuries later, battles over ozone layers, deforestation, and endangered species, among others, are urgent extensions of issues posed by the explorers of the 1500s. (Revisionists might remember, however, that many studies show the Indians themselves often ruined their environments and were consequently forced to move on.)

Double-Sided History

Most Christians in 1492 saw native Americans as weak and evil while Europeans were right and true, servants of the Good God.

Today, some historians make Europeans all evil and the American natives all good.

Likewise, Columbus used to be overpraised as the perfect pioneer. Now he is often overaccused as the hemisphere’s arch-villain.

Yet Columbus and what he did live on in billions of expressions, almost all double-sided. Christian historians, if they stay true to the record, have to show this ambiguity.

In 1992, few simply defend Columbus, his Europe, and their aftermath. But many simply attack him. These attackers might have some biblical homework to do.

God effects things in the world in ironic ways. The very pride, intellect, and virtue that motivated Columbus and his contemporaries also did them in. God inspires men and women—and also expects of them responsible action. God visits the world not only with judgment but also with mercy and motivation. That double-sided view of history, if acquired by large numbers of Christians, could be a valid legacy of the Columbus year.

Dr. Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago and is a member of the editorial advisory board of Christian History. He is author of numerous books, including Pilgrims in Their Own Land: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America (Chicago, 1984).

- More from Martin E. Marty

History

Columbus and Christianity in the Americas: A Gallery of Champions for the Oppressed

John Maust

Courageous Christians who worked on behalf of “the least of these” in the Americas

Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566)

“Apostle of the Indies”

Against the dark backdrop of Spanish mistreatment of Native Americans during the Conquest, Bartolomé de Las Casas stood like a lighthouse. The fiery friar was the leading defender of the Indians against cruelty and abuses.

His father sailed on Columbus’s second voyage. Las Casas himself came to Hispaniola in 1502 as a priest, but he lived as most Spanish gentlemen, with land and Indian servants.

Several factors combined to change Las Casas’s life. In 1511 he heard the Dominicans’ preaching campaign against Spanish mistreatment of Indians. That same year he accompanied the Spanish expedition to Cuba and witnessed its cruelty toward the natives.

Then in 1514, Las Casas, age 40, turned around. He was preparing a sermon, searching the Scriptures for an appropriate text, when he chanced on this passage from the (apocryphal) Book of Sirach: “If one sacrifices from what has been wrongfully obtained, the offering is blemished; the gifts of the lawless are not acceptable” (34:18 RSV). The following Sunday, he announced from the pulpit that he was divesting himself of the natives entrusted to him (in effect, his slaves) and would now serve and defend the Indians.

For the next seven years, he spent most of his time traveling between Spain and America, seeking the crown’s help to protect Indians. After several years of agitation, Las Casas was granted by King Charles V a territory in present-day Venezuela. There, Las Casas could test his theory that the Indians would be better evangelized by persuasion than by force. But the project failed when the Indians rebelled against the settlement.

Las Casas went through a time of self-examination, finally entering the Dominican Order in 1522. He evangelized in Santo Domingo, Central America, and Mexico, where he was Bishop of Chiapas from 1544 to 1547. Often, he met stiff opposition from Spanish land owners and even fellow missionaries.

In an age that viewed Indians as little more than animals, Las Casas passionately preached the Indians’ dignity, sometimes overstating the case: “God created these simple people without evil and without guile.”

Las Casas wrote various books, including the famous General History of the Indies and his most controversial A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies. He described in detail—many would say with exaggeration—the cruelty of Spaniards toward Indians. But his entries bear the horrifying and unmistakable touch of reality. Consider his description of an event in Mexico:

“Soon after [the 30,000 natives of Cholula had welcomed and offered to lodge the Spaniards,] the Spaniards agreed to carry out a massacre—or as they called it, ‘a punitive attack’—in order to sow terror and apprehension, and to make a display of their power.…

“The Spaniards had asked for five or six thousand Indians to carry their cargo. When all the chiefs had come, they and the burden bearers were herded into the patios of the houses.…

“When they were all placed close together, they were bound and tied. At the closed doorways, armed guards took turns to see that none escaped. Then, at a command, all the Spaniards drew their swords or pikes, and while their chiefs looked on, helpless, all those tame sheep were butchered, cut to pieces.

“At the end of two or three days some survivors came out from under the corpses, wounded but still alive, and they went, weeping, to the Spaniards, imploring mercy, which was denied.”

Such writings influenced Charles V in 1542–43 to approve The New Laws, which were designed to limit Spanish control and abuse of Indians. Unfortunately, they had little effect.

Las Casas returned to Spain at age 73 with more battles to fight. He entered a famous debate with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who used Aristotle’s theories to argue that the Indians were inferior people, slaves by nature who should be subjected for their own good. The controversy came to a head when King Charles V convened a formal debate between Sepúlveda and Las Casas in Valladolid in 1550–1551. (See “The Great Debate”.)

Ironically, in his eagerness to protect the Indians, Las Casas once advocated bringing in Africans to replace the Indian slaves. However, he later bitterly repented of that position.

Until his death at age 92, the so called Defender of the Indians actively lobbied in Spain on the Indians behalf, becoming increasingly radical. For example, he advocated the withdrawal of all Spaniards from the Indies.

Opponents considered Las Casas a fanatic and sensationalist. Admirers have called him the greatest philanthropist the Iberian race has ever produced.

Pedro Claver (1580–1654)

Slave of the slaves

Members of Catholic religious orders customarily took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But Jesuit missionary Pedro Claver pledged himself to a fourth vow: Petrus Claver, aethiopum semper serous—“Pedro Claver, slave to the Negroes forever.” He proved true to his word.

Born into a wealthy family near Barcelona, Spain, Claver joined the Jesuit order at age 22, and eight years later, in 1610, sailed for Cartagena in Nueva Granada (present-day Colombia).

There he was appalled by the Spaniards’ treatment of African slaves. To minister to the slaves, he began boarding slave ships docked in port. He also visited slaves in the hellish warehouses where they were held. It was not unusual for Claver to find untended naked corpses covered with flies.

Claver and fellow workers would dispense fruit, clothing, and medical care, and he would preach to the slaves. Later he helped start a hospital and leprosarium.

Claver succeeded in his effort to let the slaves hear Christian preaching before their masters came to get them. He is said to have baptized up to 300,000 slaves during 40 years of ministry.

Fellow Jesuits complained when Claver insisted that slaves be welcomed into the church on equal terms with whites. And wealthy slave owners feared Claver would, by making slaves feel equal, incite revolt. On the street Claver greeted only Africans and the whites who supported his work. When wealthy Spaniards sought to make confession to him, he usually declined, saying slaves were his first priority.

In his latter years, Claver suffered paralysis. Ironically, his companions entrusted him to the care of a slave who cruelly neglected him. Yet he never complained, even when visitors stole items from his room (as relics of a saint) while he lay there. In 1896 Claver was recognized as the patron saint of missions to the Negroes.

Luis Beltrán (1526–1580)

The Americas first saint

Luis Beltrán often doubted his missionary call. But the Dominican friar never wavered in protesting Spanish mistreatment of Indians in Nueva Granada (modern Colombia), nor in showing concern for their spiritual welfare. Beltrán made such an impact during only seven years of Indian ministry (1562–1569), he became the first canonized saint of the Americas.

Hearing about thousands of Indians without God, the 36-year-old sailed for Cartagena in 1562. He taught and baptized by day (an estimated 25,000 in seven years) and prayed and did penance by night.

He also confronted rich landlords over their harsh treatment of Indian laborers. The landlords in turn tried to impede his work among the Indians. One whom he had rebuked sent a woman to Beltrán to try to seduce him and discredit his ministry.

A great admirer of Bartolomé de Las Casas, Beltrán was deeply troubled when Las Casas challenged his practice of granting absolution to cruel landholders. Las Casas had asked him to deeply examine his conscience before doing so. Beltrán concluded he was incapable of cutting through the complexities of missionary work.

Soon thereafter, Beltrán requested to return to Spain, where he continued in ministry. His seven years of service were so impressive, though, he was declared in 1690 the patron saint of Nueva Granada.

Juan De Zumárraga (1468–1548)

“Protector of the Indians”

While others his age began to slow down, Juan de Zumárraga at age 60 was sent to Mexico by Charles V as “Protector of the Indians” and the country’s first bishop.

He quickly made his mark. The Audiencia (ruling council) that followed Cortés treated Indians with unparalleled cruelty, which Zumárraga publicly denounced. The Audiencia then forbade him to preach or to communicate with higher authorities, especially the Council of the Indies.

Zumárraga defied the ban and sent a protest letter to the Council of the Indies. The letter was intercepted.

The bishop then traveled to the coast and convinced a sailor to smuggle a letter (inside a cake of wax) to the Council. Because of his letter, the corrupt Audiencia was ultimately replaced.

He also founded schools for Indian children of both sexes, using education to evangelize both children and parents. He also helped start the first seminary and high school in the Americas, imported the first printing press, and helped found what became the University of Mexico.

Still Zumárraga, like many of his day, remained paternalistic to Indians. He insisted they needed some sort of compulsion to work; thus, he approved of the encomienda system.

The Protector of the Indians also acted as inquisitor in Mexico and processed 130 cases. On the whole, though, Zumárraga did more than most in his day to alleviate the sufferings of Native Americans. In 1547, he was named Mexico’s first archbishop, but he died before his installation.

John Maust is editor of Latin America Evangelist magazine and is author of several books, including New Song in the Andes (William Carey, 1992).

- More from John Maust

History

Columbus and Christianity: Did You Know?

Thomas S. Giles

Little-known facts about Christopher Columbus and Christianity in the Americas

David Berkowitz/Flickr

Contrary to legend, Columbus did not sail to prove the earth was round. Most educated Europeans and mariners already knew that.

Columbus estimated the size of the Atlantic Ocean partially from reading his Bible. He had read in the Second Book of Esdras (in the Apocrypha) that God created the world in seven parts, six of them dry land and the seventh water. He thus calculated that the ocean separating Portugal from Cipangu (Japan) was one-seventh of the earth’s circumference, or about 2,400 miles. He figured that by sailing 100 miles per day, he could reach the Indies in 30 days.

Unlike many sailors then and now, Christopher Columbus never used profanity.

During Columbus’s voyages, the ships’ crews observed religious rites. Every time they turned the half-hour glass (their primary means of keeping time), they cried: “Blessed be the hour of our Savior’s birth / blessed be the Virgin Mary who bore him / and blessed be John who baptized him.” They finished each day by singing vespers together (although reportedly they sang out of tune).

Not until his third voyage did Columbus actually land on the American mainland. Seeing four rivers flowing from the landmass, he believed he had encountered the Garden of Eden. He died in 1506 unaware he had landed thousands of miles short of the Orient.

Irish and French Catholics have argued that Columbus, who “brought the Christian faith to half the world,” should be named a saint. Though the move had the approval of Pope Pius IX (reign 1846–1878), Columbus was never canonized because he fathered an illegitimate child, and there was no proof he had performed a miracle.

Between 1493 and 1820, Spain sent some 15,585 missionaries to the Americas. Typically the government of Spain paid their full expenses.

In the first fifteen years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Franciscans baptized about 5,000,000 Indians; priests in Mexico sometimes baptized thousands in a day.

Spanish missionaries attempted to establish colonies in present-day Georgia and South Carolina in 1526. In 1542, Dominican Juan de Padilla planted a cross in present-day Kansas.

Reformer John Calvin sent two Protestant pastors to accompany a Protestant expedition to Brazil in 1556. Upon arrival, however, the leader of the expedition betrayed the settlers, and the project was abandoned.

A Catholic-Protestant “holy war” nearly erupted in present-day Florida in the late 1560s. Spanish leader Menendez de Avilez attacked and murdered French Protestant (Huguenot) settlers. Later the French sent a party to kill the Spaniards.

There was an Inquisition in the New World. It was established in 1570 and lasted until the 1800s. Yet the Inquisition was relatively lenient toward Indians, saving most of its ire for Spaniards. In fact, mistreated Indians and African slaves learned to cry, “I deny God!” They would then be placed under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, which was more benevolent than their masters.

San Diego, Santa Barbara, and the rest of the famous 21 missions of California, most founded by Franciscan Junipero Serra, were not the most successful North American enterprise of the Spaniards. They established 25 missions in New Mexico and 44 in Florida.

Usually, native Americans could serve in churches as interpreters, acolytes, and even teachers, but they were not allowed to become priests or friars.

Conquistador Hernando Cortes was greedy and violent, yet deeply religious. He sometimes preached the gospel, and he allowed himself to be publicly whipped for neglecting to attend worship. He once cried upon seeing a cross beside the road.

The first Christian worship service in North America was celebrated in Florida on August 25, 1563, the feast of St. Augustine. Formally founded in 1565, St. Augustine remains the oldest continuing settlement in the U.S.

Because of Columbus’s voyage and the resulting Spanish evangelistic efforts, Latin America has a higher percentage of professing Christians than that of any other region in the world.

Thomas S. Giles is project editor for Christianity Today.

- More from John Calvin

History

Protestantism Explodes

Interview conducted by Thornley B. Wood

Why is a traditionally Catholic region turning Protestant?

Since Columbus, Roman Catholicism has dominated the history and culture of Latin America. Protestantism was virtually unknown in the region until last century, and then only in a marginal way.

But beginning in the 1940s, Protestantism began mushrooming in Latin America. In 1938 Protestants totaled about 600,000. A decade later they had multiplied five times to 3 million. Another explosion has occurred in the last twenty years—from 15 million to more than 40 million.

To understand the historical causes of this extraordinary transformation, Christian History sat with Samuel Escobar, Thornley B. Wood Professor of Missiology at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Christian History: What did religious life in a typical Latin American town look like 400 years ago?

Escobar: In the 1600s, the life of the town would be determined by the church. The Spanish planted their churches in the main square, right beside the government building. The church’s presence was felt nearly everywhere.

For instance, people kept time by the church bells. When the bells rang in early morning, you knew it was just before six—time for morning mass. When they rang at late afternoon, it was about four—time for prayer.

The calendar was also governed by the church. In addition to Easter week and Christmas, elaborate festivities were held in each country (and many cities) to honor its patron saint. In Peru, it was Santa Rosa on August 30, and in Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 6.

The intellectual life was also thoroughly controlled by the church. Every book read and every teaching offered would be checked. The Catholic church controlled nearly every sphere of life.

Where were the Protestants in Latin America at this time?

The church’s control was so strong, hardly any Protestants could survive. Even as late as the nineteenth century, we find stories like this: An American visits a small town in Argentina during a religious procession. Everybody kneels, of course, except this American. As a result, he is publicly beaten and jailed and left there for months—just because he didn’t kneel.

Reformer John Calvin sent two Protestant missionaries to Brazil in 1556, but that experiment failed almost immediately. The Dutch occupied northeast Brazil for about thirty years. There were also experimental Lutheran colonies in Venezuela. But these are isolated cases.

How does religious life in a modern Latin American city compare?

Society has become increasingly secularized. When countries celebrate their independence from Spain, for instance, they also see it as a break from rigid Catholic control. In some countries, secularization has gone to an extreme. In Uruguay, Christmas is called “Family Week,” and Holy Week is called “Tourism Week.”

Another example: family-planning legislation has passed recently in Peru and Mexico. In each country, the Catholic church tried to dissuade government officials from pursuing such legislation. When that attempt failed, the church began a media campaign against contraception. It showed clearly the church’s voice no longer determines government policy.

Add to that the large percentage of Catholics who practice birth control, and you realize that Catholicism cannot exert its former hold over its members, let alone social institutions.

Then today there’s more freedom to be non-Catholic?

That’s another new reality: religious competition. In the 1600s Roman Catholicism had a monopoly. Today, most countries honor religious freedom. It’s a religious open market.

You see this especially in mass media. Protestantism pioneered the use of the media for religious purposes, especially in radio with the opening of radio station HCJB in Ecuador in the 1930s. The Catholic church reacted, and particularly in Brazil developed a strong radio network. But such open competition was unthinkable 400 years ago.

In Latin America, there’s still an overwhelming social pressure to stay Catholic, but the church has lost the means of exerting political pressure to enforce conformity.

When did Protestantism first enter Latin America in a significant way?

Not until the early 1800s, when the Latin American nations broke free of Spain and the Spanish church. That’s when pioneers like James Thomson began their work.

Sponsored by the British and Foreign Bible Society, Thomson came from England to Buenos Aires in 1816 and worked until 1827. He went from Argentina to Uruguay to Chile to Peru to Mexico, just as these independence movements were beginning.

He wasn’t as interested in establishing Protestant churches as in promoting Bible reading within the Catholic church. In every city he found a group of priests who were interested in promoting Scripture reading, and he even created a Bible society in Colombia.

At the end of the century, we have the famous Francisco Penzotti, an illiterate Italian who came to Uruguay, where he was converted. He started to read and study, became a colporteur, peddling devotional material, and traveled all over Latin America in the 1880s, taking Bibles with him. He went town by town on horse, from Argentina to Bolivia, then on to Peru. In many places, Penzotti was either the founder or among the founders of the town’s First Methodist Church.

Once he was jailed in Peru because of his Protestantism. Some American traveler took his picture there, and it was published in a New York newspaper. Because of Penzotti’s Italian heritage and his connection with the American Bible Society, the incident became an international scandal. It brought to people’s attention the religious intolerance of Latin America, and it opened the door for greater religious freedom there.

How have Protestants evangelized in Latin America?

Catholics aimed at the elites. They believed that if you reach the elites and educate them, the rest of society will follow.

Protestants set their sights on the people. James Thomson is a case in point.

Thomson was a member of the Lancasterian Society, which had arisen in an England that was becoming rapidly industrialized. There, crowds of children flocked to city schools, and there weren’t enough teachers. What do you do then? You take the best students and make them mentors to the others, multiplying the effect of the teacher. In the 1820s, the Lancasterian system was the latest word in education.

Thomson thus became an educational adviser to many of the independence leaders. He would tell them, “You’re beginning your life as an independent, democratic nation. I offer you a method to educate not the elites but the masses.”

Why did Protestantism start mushrooming in the 1940s and 1950s?

Generally speaking, change in social structures causes significant change in people’s behavior. In the case of Latin America, the significant structural change was land reform.

In Bolivia, for instance, land was redistributed in 1952. That was the year we see significant Protestant growth among the Aymaná and Quechua tribes, the native communizes in Bolivia and Peru who descended from the Incas. Why? Before people owned their land, they had to go to the local Catholic church because the landowner was Catholic; it was the only church he would allow in his territory. After land reform, no one held enough land to control the religious environment, and so choice became a reality.

About the same time, more and more people began moving to cities. In villages, the Catholic priest remains a key person. He knows where people go, what they do. A Protestant has a difficult time getting converts because of the social coercion.

In the city, no church is able to control all that goes on. So when people move to the city, they are more free to choose their own religion.

What makes Protestant Christianity appealing to today’s Latin Americans?

They see a Christianity that accepts their culture. Protestants, Pentecostals in particular, have adapted themselves better to the Latin American mentality.

Chile has the largest Pentecostal denomination in Latin America—the Methodist Pentecostal Church. It began early in this century when Willys Hoover, a Methodist, had a Pentecostal experience and began a healing ministry. The Methodist Church could not handle this, so he eventually left and formed the Methodist Pentecostal Church.

These Methodist Pentecostals were less dependent on North American church practices. They created their own hymns, preached in a Latin style, were more expressive in worship. This church mushroomed. The Methodist Church they left has only 8,000 members today. The offshoot denomination has 800,000.

Second, Protestantism helps people organize their lives. Marginalized people tend to have difficulty holding down jobs, controlling drinking, keeping families intact. Pentecostals have gone to the poorest sections of cities and brought these people a Bible centered Christianity. They’ve gotten people to stop drinking, and taught them to read and to take family responsibilities seriously. Consequently, Protestantism has created upward mobility. As people become more self-disciplined and responsible, they start to become leaders in their businesses and communities.

In addition, such churches become places where people who are nobodies can become somebodies. People whose voice does not matter in society can prophesy in the church.

At the same time, networks are created. In a thousand-member church—not an uncommon phenomenon in Latin America today—people have a great many contacts. A businessman will naturally draw many of these people as customers. Or if you lose a job, it’s likely someone in that church can give you a new one.

In addition, Protestantism is tremendously flexible. In Catholicism you need a priest to administer Communion, the most important element of Catholic piety. Protestants need only a Bible and perhaps a hymnbook. And anyone can preach or lead singing.

If we add to that the spiritual gifts the Pentecostals stress, like healing, you have a powerful catalyst for people to become Protestants.

What are the weaknesses in contemporary Latin American Protestantism?

Perhaps the most troubling is the tendency to be dualist. Especially in Pentecostalism, the world is seen primarily as a fight between light and darkness, between the church and the world. Soon governments become the work of the Devil or the visitation of God.

A Baptist sociologist studied the sermons of Pentecostal pastors in Chile. He noted that when military dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew Marxist Salvador Allende, the preachers said that the Angel of Jehovah had come to expel the Devil from the nation. Thus Pentecostals can sometimes be manipulated for political ends.

Protestant growth in Latin America today is phenomenal. Is it a new Reformation?

To some extent. Just as in the 1500s in northern Europe, a spiritual and theological revival is having great social and political consequences within a Catholic environment.

There’s a better historic analogy, though: the revivals under John Wesley in the 1700s. Those Wesleyan revivals took place during a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization in England. Industry and urban areas are growing rapidly in this century in Latin America, and once again, Protestantism is helping people make adjustments.

That comparison, in fact, gives me hope for Latin America. The Wesleyan revivals enabled positive social change without the poor having to resort to violence. Given the power of Protestantism to improve the lives of people, I see the possibility of peaceful social change occurring in Latin America as well.

- More from Interview conducted by Thornley B. Wood

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Protest Erupts

Spreading Opposition

Light in Darkness

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Giving Up Success

Sacred Expedition

Spiritual Sheep, Real Goats

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In this series

Why Take the Risky Voyage?

The Misleading Textbook Answer

Saint Christopher?

Medieval “Evangelical”

Reaching Land—But Where?

Good Christians, Good Slaves

The “Christ-Bearer”

Voice in the Storm

“Communion with Celestial Joys”

An End-Times Crusade

High Point of His Life

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In this series

Picture An Islamic America

Competitive Repentance

Christian Reckonings

Double-Sided History

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Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566)

“Apostle of the Indies”

Pedro Claver (1580–1654)

Slave of the slaves

Luis Beltrán (1526–1580)

The Americas first saint

Juan De Zumárraga (1468–1548)

“Protector of the Indians”

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In this series

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