Why Columbus Sailed
Posthumous portrait of Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519 (Public Domain)
“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” goes the classic children’s mnemonic couplet. But why did Columbus sail?
That is the question posed by a 1992 Christian History article by Kevin A. Miller, then-editor of the publication. “The textbook answer…” he writes, “is that Columbus wanted to find a trade route to the Orient.” He offers as typical the words of writer Robert Hughes:
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.
Quickly: if you’re not getting Project 18:15 in your inbox each week, here’s your chance.
Miller’s rejoinder: “That’s true, but incomplete—so incomplete it’s misleading.” The fuller picture is that Columbus “saw his voyage in much greater terms,” reflecting upon his journey with these words:
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?
and,
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.
Of course, he was mistaken about the Indies, thinking he had landed on the easternmost part of South or Southeast Asia. In fact, Thomas S. Giles reports, “[Columbus] died in 1506 unaware he had landed thousands of miles short of the Orient.”
But, mistaken though he was, it cannot be denied that his motivations were religious. In fact, he believed himself to be the fulfillment of biblical prophecy who was helping to usher in the end of the world:
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.
This article is an excerpt from Project 18:15.
If you haven’t already, I invite you to subscribe to Project 18:15 for free:
Know someone who would enjoy this?
Please SHARE it.