american-holocaust

196 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTheart. For what Columbus saw in the Cardinal's work, and what was intendedby its author to be seen, was an outline of the history of the worldpast,present, and future. By combining and folding together the ideas ofsuch writers as Roger Bacon, the ninth-century Arabian astronomer Albumasar,and others, Pierre d' Ailly had laid out for his readers, writesPauline Moffitt Watts, "the 'horoscopes' of the great religions and empiresin much the same way that one would cast a personal horoscope." Onceone has learned the proper techniques, believed all these writers and Columbusas well, one could "predict the future, for all events are imprintedon the present." 3Columbus read Ailly with the burning intensity of an autodidact whodiscovered in the Cardinal's writings nothing less than the divine path totruth. The margins of the Admiral's copy of Imago Mundi, which survivestoday in Seville's Biblioteca Colombina, are covered with almost 900 separateannotations by Columbus on matters of theology, geography, andhistory. Africa, he notes, is half the size of Europe-and south of the equatorthe days are only 12 hours long. Chinese people in small boats havedrifted across the Atlantic to Europe, including a man and a woman whohave turned up in Ireland. "Aristotle [says] between the end of Spain andthe beginning of India is a small sea navigable in a few days." Other ancientauthors are called upon who allegedly say the same or similar things,all of which indicate to Columbus that the earth is small and that Indiaand China can be reached rather easily by sailing west. Alongside thesetemporal if fanciful observations are comments on Scripture, along withcalculations for determining when the Muslims finally will be destroyedand when to expect the arrival of Antichrist. 4It was through the exploration of sources such as this, apparently inaddition to lengthy conversations with Franciscan monks who were convincedthat the end was near, that Columbus figured out to his satisfactionprecisely when the Second Coming would occur. He did this through akind of simplistic biblical numerology he had worked out, but he alsoknew it from the historical signs that were all around him. 5 Failure as wellas success always has been absorbed easily into the all-embracing chiliasticlogic of those convinced that the millennium is at hand; even contradictoryevidence is interpreted so that it leads to the same desired conclusion. Thus,the obstinate resistance of the Jews to conversion, like the alarming successesof the Muslims in Turkey, were only part of God's great plan, histesting of the Christians-the inevitable dark before the dawn-Columbusthought. Conversely, the even more recent expulsion of the Jews from Spain(along with the baptism of those who repented), like the fall of the Muslimsat Granada, were equally clear indications that a new and gloriousday was arising.What was present in Columbus's mind and marginal jottings before hisdeparture in 1492 became a fully elaborated (if wildly confused and un-