Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 13

  Soon the friar was summoned to Rome, and he brought the figure with him with the intention of placing it in the Nativity Scene at the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, located on the top of the Campidoglio hill. He traveled to Italy by boat, but during the voyage a violent storm forced the passengers to throw their cargo overboard, and the friar despairingly dropped the Holy Child into the sea. Incredibly, however, the encased statue floated into the port of Livorno not long after the boat from which it was dropped arrived. The Holy Child’s reputation became even more widespread, and people flocked to admire it. Eventually, the custom arose of petitioning the divine infant for miracles.

  Deemed a miracle worker, the Bambino had its own share of close calls. During the sacking of Rome in 1527, the statue was stolen, but it was later recovered; in 1798, after Napoleon had swept through Italy, some of his soldiers in Rome started a fire and began throwing valuables into it. A local citizen urgently offered money for the statue and saved the Bambino from being incinerated.

  The reforms and liberal goals of Pope Pius IX, who was elected in 1846, were opposed by the common people and sparked revolts throughout Italy in what became known as the War of 1848 and 1849. Hostilities abounded, and in one episode Romans stormed the pontiff’s stable to seize his coaches and burn them in the People’s Square. But even the wrath of the people at this incendiary moment was no match for their love of the Holy Child. A local public official named Sturbinetti suggested the rioters spare Pius’s finest carriage and let it be used to transport the statue to the homes of the sick. The Holy Child was frequently taken to the very ill to give benediction. Indeed, many stories were told about the miraculous recovery of terminally ill people after the Bambino was brought before them. So revered was the Holy Child that formal recognition was accorded on May 2, 1897, when Pope Leo XIII crowned the statue in a solemn rite.

  The Holy Child of Aracoeli, venerated for its miraculous healing powers and charitable favors.

  Veneration of the Bambino continues today, primarily by mail. The envelopes are inspected to see whether they contain money, offerings of gratitude for the benign favors asked of the statue. Any money found in the letters goes to help the poor. The letters are placed around the Holy Child for a period of time, after which they are destroyed to make room for new ones.

  Every Christmas, thousands of letters from children around the world arrive at the cathedral on the Campidoglio. Often whimsical but always sincere, the notes express special hopes and desires. By tradition, the Bambino’s benediction and miracles reach everywhere and to anyone who believes in its workings—young and old alike.

  With its glowing boyish face and fine physical condition, it sometimes is difficult to appreciate that the Holy Child is half a millennium old. That in itself is a small miracle.

  LOCATION: Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome, Italy.

  COLUMBUS’S BOOKS OF

  PRIVILEGES

  DATE: 1498 and 1502.

  WHAT THEY ARE: Compilations of documents setting forth titles, honors, prerogatives, and financial benefits granted to Christopher Columbus between 1492 (before his first voyage to the New World) and 1502 (prior to his fourth and last voyage) by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.

  WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE: The so-called Genoa, Paris, and Washington codices are written on vellum, the Veragua codex on paper. The Genoa and Paris codices contain forty documents, the Washington codex has thirty-six documents (on forty-seven leaves). The Veragua codex contains twenty-nine documents (on thirty-six leaves); it is encased in a dark brown leather binder with pieces of iron, and painted on the back cover is the shield, or coat of arms, of Columbus. The other codices are bound also, and the Genoa and Paris codices also bear Columbus’s coat of arms.

  The world at the dawn of the sixteenth century was on the brink of remarkable change. Just fifty years earlier Johannes Gutenberg of Germany had invented movable type, opening the gateway for mass dissemination of the printed word. Leonardo da Vinci of Italy was performing ingenious scientific and engineering experiments, foreshadowing the spirit, imagination, and brilliance with which people would one day make great discoveries and usher in technological eras. Nicolaus Copernicus of Poland was peering into the firmament and making observations that would lead him to disprove the long-held Ptolemaic theory of an Earth-centered universe in favor of a solar system composed of planets revolving around the sun. But perhaps the most extraordinary change for Europeans was the discovery of the other half of the planet by Christopher Columbus for Spain, opening extraordinary new vistas for trade and colonization. Leading men westward in three caravels across an expansive, dangerous, and unknown ocean in his maiden voyage in 1492, Columbus chased a wild dream and changed the world forever.

  Now, in the year 1500, the admiral of the Indies stood in the royal court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. The once-mighty mariner was weeping, proclaiming his allegiance, importuning for benign consideration from the sovereigns, with an abject humbleness previously inconceivable. Less than two months before, he had been arrested in the New World, shackled, and put on a caravel to be returned to Spain. It was a prodigious fall from grace for Don Cristóbal Colón, who just a handful of years earlier had been exalted as the world’s most renowned navigator.

  Inspired by Marco Polo’s grand and romantic tales of the exotic mineral-and spice-opulent Indies, Christopher Columbus in the 1480s longed for a seagoing mission west to Asia. He sought financial backing from various royal patrons, but his plan was rejected as too costly and impractical. Interest later came from the rulers of Spain, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, although they too thought the cost of the mission prohibitive—supplying vessels, fitting out the crew, and financing other aspects of it—especially at a time when their soldiers were trying to expel the Moors from Spain. There was also the matter of mercedes, or rewards. It was the practice of the day for explorers to negotiate concessions for their discoveries: rights, property, benefits, honorary titles, and so forth. Columbus demanded such extensive privileges that even Ferdinand and Isabella were taken aback.

  The sovereigns ordered a study of the planned mission, but because they were preoccupied with more pressing matters they were in no rush for its completion. Columbus waited patiently for six years, hoping the king and queen would finance his mission and grant him his requested privileges, only to be eventually turned down. Disappointed, he left the court in Santa Fé. Shortly afterward, however, a friend of Columbus’s, a royal treasurer named Luis de Santángel, convinced Isabella that the risks of financing the expedition would be small in comparison to the potential gains, and that if Columbus sought out another ruler to sponsor him he could go on to make discoveries that would be disadvantageous to Spain. Negotiations resumed between the explorer and the sovereigns, and finally Columbus received the royal backing he wanted.

  Among the concessions granted Columbus in April 1492 were the title of admiral, his appointment as governor over all the lands he might discover, and a tax-free income of 10 percent of all revenues—gold, silver, and spices—obtained in these lands. Through the years Columbus would collect more rights, or privileges, and the documents conferring these privileges were in various instances signed by Ferdinand and Isabella and royal officials.

  Columbus’s 1492 expedition resulted, of course, in the discovery of the New World.* The small Spanish fleet landed in the Bahamas and went on to discover Hispaniola, an island of the West Indies, now the site of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On December 25, 1492, one of Columbus’s ships, the Santa Maria, was wrecked in Hispaniola. Columbus had to leave forty crew members behind, but he returned to Spain with gold trinkets bartered from the natives, slaves, and the monumental news of the world across the ocean. Columbus was honored on his return, and granted the titles Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and Viceroy and Governor of the Indies.

  El almirante’s exultation was short-lived, however. Sent by Ferdinand and Isabella back to the New World in 1493, Columbus found to his
dismay that the men left in Hispaniola had been killed in clashes with the natives. Columbus, who brought approximately one thousand men to the New World on his second voyage, discovered more islands but returned to Spain three years later with little of value for Ferdinand and Isabella.

  After he arrived in Spain, Columbus began to compile the privileges that he had collected in the New World. His reputation diminished, he believed that the Spanish monarchs now favored other navigators over him, and he wanted to safeguard what had been conferred on him, which was so immensely important to him. The admiral had some of the original documents granted to him through the years, but others were missing. Columbus requested authorized copies of what he did not have and compiled them in a set. As a wayfarer, he needed to deposit them with someone he could trust. This quality he found in his friend Fray Gaspar Gorricio, who resided in the Monastery de las Cuevas in Seville.

  A third opportunity to travel to the New World came in 1498, after Ferdinand and Isabella decided to back Columbus once again. He sailed to new places and returned to Hispaniola, finding turmoil on the island. From inedible food to a lack of gold, the colonists were restless and unhappy. Many returned to Spain denouncing Columbus, and it wasn’t long before their criticism reached the ears of the king and queen.

  The sovereigns grew concerned about reports that Columbus was performing incompetently, as well as about other reports they heard about sickness and rebellion, lack of conversions to Christianity among the native population, and meager profits. Action had to be taken.

  In the summer of 1500 a fleet of Spanish ships arrived at Hispaniola, and a man named Francisco de Bobadilla presented to Columbus a royal letter of commission confirming his appointment as governor of the island. Incredulous that the king and queen would usurp his position, Columbus would not recognize Bobadilla’s claim, even with the letter. Bobadilla had him arrested and chained and put on a vessel to return to Spain. He also seized all of Columbus’s possessions, including the documents of privileges he had in his possession on the island.

  Several weeks after he arrived in Spain, Columbus was ordered released by Ferdinand and Isabella, who dispatched funds to enable him to come to court at Granada. When he appeared in court, Columbus, now forty-nine years of age and somewhat infirm, wept before them and apologized. The sovereigns, in consideration of his fantastic accomplishments, reinstated all his privileges and revenues that had been halted when he was arrested. (They did not grant, however, Columbus’s request that Bobadilla be punished.)

  Eventually the king and queen approved a fourth voyage for Columbus. By 1502 Columbus was in Seville, and preparations were well under way for the expedition, which would return him one final time to the New World. Before he was to embark on this voyage, however, there was one thing he wanted to accomplish.

  Afraid that the transcripts of the coveted privileges bestowed upon him by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella could be lost, damaged, stolen, or confiscated, he wanted to have multiple copies of the original documents conferring these privileges made and disseminated to different locations and stored for safekeeping. Columbus’s position in Spain was certainly tenuous now, and he intended to ensure as best he could that he and his descendants would be entitled to those rights and privileges he was accorded and which he felt he had rightfully earned.

  Columbus obtained official authorization from the king and queen to have authenticated copies of his privileges transcribed, and on January 5, 1502, magistrates and public notaries of Seville gathered at Columbus’s house. The magistrates examined Columbus’s original titles and privileges and then authorized the notaries to make copies.

  The tenor of the privileges may be appreciated from a scribe’s introduction:

  In the most noble and most loyal city of Seville, Wednesday the fifth day of the month of January, in the year of the nativity of our Saviour Jesus Christ one thousand five hundred and two. On this said day, at the hour when Vespers are said, or a little before or after, being in the dwelling house of the Lord Admiral of the Indies which is in this said city in the parish of St. Mary, before Stephen de la Roca and Peter Ruys Montero, ordinary Alcaldes in this said city of Seville for the King and Queen our Lords, and in the presence of me Martin Rodrigues, public scrivener of this said city of Seville, and of the undermentioned witnesses, did appear there present the very magnificent Lord Don Christopher Columbus, High Admiral of the Ocean, Viceroy and Governor of the Islands and Main Land, and laid before the said Alcaldes certain patents and privileges and warrants of the said King and Queen our Lords, written on paper and parchment, and signed with their royal names, and sealed with their seals of lead hanging by threads of coloured silk, and with coloured wax on the back, and countersigned by certain officers of their royal household, as appeared in all and each of them. The tenor whereof, one after the other, is as follows.*

  The first vellum page of Columbus's Books of Privileges, now at the Library of Congress. It is the only copy that begins with the May 4, 1493, proclamation of Pope Alexander VI, specifically acknowledging Columbus's discoveries.

  Copies were made on vellum and paper. Not each copy was derived in total from the original set; a comparison of the codices has revealed variations that would be consistent with successive generations of copying. (Columbus scholar Frances G. Davenport reported in a 1909 study that the so-called Genoa codex was made from the original book, and, at least partially, the Paris copy was based on the Genoa codex, and the Washington copy was based on the Paris version.)

  Columbus made provisions for his Books of Privileges to be disbursed as follows: One vellum copy (ultimately known as the Genoa codex) was to be delivered to Nicolò Oderigo in Genoa via Francisco de Rivarola; another vellum copy (the Paris codex) was to be delivered to Oderigo via Francisco Catano. The paper copy was to be delivered by Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, an agent of Columbus, to Hispaniola. The remaining vellum, or file copy, was to be dispatched with the original set to the Monastery de las Cuevas, where the admiral’s close friend Fray Gaspar Gorricio resided.

  In May 1502 Columbus departed from Cadiz on his last voyage to the New World. As Columbus embarked westward across the ocean, his “privilege codes” began their own circuitous journeys.

  The two vellum copies that were sent to Oderigo were retained by him for safekeeping and passed on to his descendants, one of whom presented them to the republic of Genoa in 1670. These copies were later to take different routes.

  Around 1805 one of the Genoa copies was seized and taken to Paris, one of the many cultural and artistic appropriations of Napoleon in his zealous attempt to enrich France with the antiquities of foreign lands. Envoys of the French Institute traveled to major cities of Europe to take inventories of their museums and archives and submitted reports of what they found. Crates of treasures poured into Paris, which was gradually fulfilling Napoleon’s vision as a central repository for the continent.

  That status was transient, however. Within about ten years, after Napoleon abdicated and France signed treaties providing for the restitution of property to the countries it had ransacked, most of the treasures were returned. One that was not, however, was the Columbus codex, which subsequently lay unrecognized for years.

  The other Genoa copy ended up in the patrician family of Count Michelangelo Cambiaso. Cambiaso’s descendants had planned to sell his historic collection of documents, but the city’s governing body appealed to the king of Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele I, who in 1816 ordered the papers, including Columbus’s Libro dei priuilegi, to be returned to Genoa. This set of privileges today resides in the same Genoa archives as three letters written by Columbus between 1502 and 1504, including one in which he discusses his codices of privileges.

  It is not known what happened to the paper copy taken to Hispaniola by Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, for it was never seen again.

  The fates of the original Book of Privileges and the vellum file copy that were sent to the Monastery de las Cuevas in Seville are also shrouded in mystery.
They were used in a lawsuit in 1511, and what remained of the family archives in the monastery was removed by a Columbus descendant in 1609. After that, what happened to these two volumes is not precisely known, except that at some point they were separated.

  But more than two hundred years later, in 1818, there was a curious development. Edward Everett, a Harvard professor of Greek literature who would become a prominent statesman in America (most remembered for the speech he delivered at Gettysburg prior to President Lincoln’s address), purchased in Florence, Italy, a set of vellum documents containing various privileges conferred upon Christopher Columbus by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Could this be the missing vellum file copy that was the partner of the original set in the Seville monastery?

  One of the documents contained the notation that it was made under the authorization of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, copied from the originals by Martin Rodrigues. Everett read the Genoa codex when it was published in Italy in 1823, and the next year he described his Columbus documents in a published speech. The historical value of the transcripts went largely unnoticed, however, and Everett kept them filed away.

  For the 1892 quatercentenary celebration of Columbus’s arrival in the New World, the city of Genoa produced a facsimile of its vellum copy, and Henry Harrisse and Benjamin F. Stevens published an elaborate facsimile edition of a copy that Harrisse had found in 1880 in the archives of the Department of French Foreign Affairs in Paris—the copy confiscated in Genoa during Napoleon’s military sweep. While researching his introductory essay, Harrisse had read Everett’s 1824 description of his Columbus documents. Intrigued by the possibility that Everett’s copy was the missing vellum file copy, Harrisse wanted to compare it with the Paris and Genoa codices.