american-holocaust

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS VIEWED himself as a man of divine destinyin an age of apocalyptic promise. He was unequivocally sure ofhimself. And one thing of which he was especially certain was thatthe world was going to end in 150 years. He had made the calculationshimself, but they were based on his careful reading of a work entitledImago Mundi, by the Catholic Cardinal and late Chancellor of the Universityof Paris-and high priest at the Inquisition and execution of JohnHuss for heresy-Pierre d'Ailly. Written in 1410, though Columbus's copywas printed in Louvain around 1480, Imago Mundi was an encyclopediaof sorts for the instruction of lay people in the fields of Christianity-infusedgeography and cosmology. 1It was from this same book of compiled knowledge and ancient wisdomthat Columbus had derived a potpouri of information (based on Aristotle,Seneca, Pliny, and others) allowing him to calculate that the distanceacross the Atlantic Ocean-known then as the Ocean Sea-was muchshorter than it actually turned out to be. Long before he left on his famousvoyage, more sophisticated navigators knew full well and told Columbusthat his estimate was too short. That is a principal reason why the PortugueseCrown turned down his request for assistance in 1484. But Columbuspressed on. His stubborn unwillingness to be persuaded by superiorevidence and logic ironically resulted in his beating the Portuguese to theislands of the Caribbean. That only deepened his conviction, of course,and to the end of his life he continued to believe the illusion that his originalcalculations had been correct. 2The Imago Mundi contained a wealth of equally dubious informationon other matters that Columbus, like many in that era, readily took to