Columbus sighted land October 12, 1492
American Minute with Bill Federer
Columbus was looking for a SEA route to India and China because 40 years earlier Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 cutting off the LAND routes.
A biography of Columbus was written by Washington Irving in 1828, filled imaginative dialogue, such as Europeans arguing that the Earth was flat.
Washington Irving was known for imaginative stories such as “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hallow,” Dutch tales of visits from St. Nick, and coining New York City’s nickname “Gotham.”
Europeans knew the Earth was round from as far back as Aristotle in the 4th century BC.
In the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes computed the circumference of the Earth with geometry and measurements of shadows cast by tall objects in Alexandria and Aswan.
In the 1st century BC, Posidonius used stellar observations at Alexandria and Rhodes to confirm Eratosthenese’s measurements.
In the 2nd century AD, astronomer Ptolemy had written a Guide to Geography, in which he described a spherical earth with one ocean connecting Europe and Asia.
St. Isidore of Seville, Spain, wrote in the 7th century that the earth was round.
Around the year 723 AD, Saint Bede the Venerable wrote in his work “Reckoning of Time” that the Earth was spherical.
Columbus knew the Earth was round, but the question was, how far around.
The confusion was over the length of a mile.
Columbus read Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s “Imago Mundi,” which gave Alfraganus’ estimate that a degree of latitude (at the equator) was around 56.7 miles.
What Columbus did not realize was that this was expressed in longer Arabic miles rather than in shorter Roman miles.
Therefore Columbus incorrectly estimated the Earth to be smaller in circumference, about 19,000 miles, rather than the actual nearly 25,000 miles.
Columbus knew there was land to the west, as he had heard stories of Irish monk St. Brendan sailing in 530 AD to “The Land of the Promised Saints which God will give us on the last day.”
He knew of the Christian Viking Leif Erickson’s voyage in the year 1000 to Vinland.
Columbus read of Marco Polo’s travels to China and India in 1271.
He studied Pliny’s “Natural History,” Sir John Mandeville, and Pope Pius II’s “Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum.”
Columbus corresponded with Florentine physician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, who suggested China was just 5,000 miles west of Portugal.
Columbus may have possibly seen maps, rumored to have been in Portugal’s royal archives, from China’s treasure fleets which were sent out in 1421 by Ming Emperor Zhu Di.
Based on this, Columbus estimated that Japan, or as Marco Polo called it “Cipangu,” was only 3,000 Roman miles west of the Canary Islands, rather than the actual 12,200 miles.
Since no ship at that time could carry enough food and water for such a long voyage, Columbus would have never set sail if he had known the actual distance.
As a young man, Columbus began sailing on a trip to a Genoese colony in the Aegean Sea named Chios.
In 1476, he sailed on an armed convoy from Genoa to northern Europe, docking in Bristol, England, and Galway, Ireland, and even possibly Iceland in 1477.
When Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 and hindered land trade routes from Europe to India and China, Portugal, which had been freed from Muslim domination for two centuries, began to search for alternative sea routes.
Portugal, under Prince Henry the Navigator, led the world in the science of navigation and cartography (map-making), and developed a light ship that could travel fast and far, the “caravel.”
During Portugal’s Golden Age of Discovery under King John II, Columbus sailed along the west coast of Africa between 1482-1485, reaching the Portuguese trading port of Elmina on the coast of Guinea.
In 1498, Portuguese sailor Vasco de Gama did make it around South Africa to India.
But six year before that, in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella finished driving the Muslims out of Spain and wanted to join the quest for a sea trade route to the India.
They backed Columbus’ plan.
Though Columbus was wrong about the miles and degrees of longitude, he did understand trade winds across the Atlantic.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail on the longest voyage to that date out of the sight of land.
Trade winds called “easterlies” pushed Columbus’ ships for five weeks to the Bahamas.
On OCTOBER 12, 1492, Columbus sighted what he thought was India.
He imagined Haiti was Japan and Cuba was the tip of China.
Naming the first island “San Salvador” for the Holy Savior, Columbus wrote of the inhabitants:
“So that they might be well-disposed towards us, for I knew that they were a people to be. ..converted to our Holy Faith rather by love than by force, I gave to some red caps and to others glass beads…
They became so entirely our friends that…I believe that they would easily be made Christians.”
The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.
Christopher Columbus and “The Travels of Marco Polo”
Marco Polo was 17-years-old when he left Venice with his father, Niccolo, and uncle, Matteo in the year 1271.
Together they traveled 5,600 miles to the east to meet Kublai Khan, grandson of Ghengis Khan.
Kublai Khan was Emperor of China, Korea, North India, Persia, Russia and Hungary.
Marco Polo’s father and uncle had met the Kublai Khan on a previous journey and he had requested they bring back 100 teachers of the Holy Christian Faith and a flask of oil from Christ’s empty tomb in Jerusalem.
Because of wars in Europe and the death of Pope Clement IV, only two preaching Dominican friars were sent by the new Pope, Gregory X.
These friars turned back in fear while crossing an area being attacked by Turkish Muslims.
Nevertheless, the Polos returned to China where Marco Polo was employed by Kublai Khan as an envoy for over 20 years.
Finally returning to Italy, Marco Polo was captured during the Battle of Curzola in 1298.
While imprisoned in Genoa, Marco Polo dictated his stories of Persia, China, Mongolia, the Far East and India to a fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa, who wrote them down into what became Medieval Europe’s best-seller, “The Travels of Marco Polo.”
Marco Polo’s book was nicknamed “Il Milione” or One Million Lies, as it described many things unbelievable to Europeans, such as:
spaghetti noodles, gunpowder, paper currency, ice-cream, eye glasses, thread from worms (silk), porcelain dishes (china), burning black stones (coal), exotic herbs and spices, pinatas, wine from rice, asbestos from a mineral, women’s feet bound since childhood, worship of cattle with homes smeared with cow dung, naked holy men, fields of cotton cloth being dyed, arrows shot from a recurve bow, and an imperial “pony-express” style postal system.
Marco Polo surprised Europeans with a report that the Magi, who brought gifts to baby Jesus, were buried in Saveh, a town in Persia (Iran).
Marco Polo stated:
“I believe it was God’s will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.”
In Genoa, 127 years after Marco Polo’s death, Christopher Columbus was born in 1451.
As Muslim warriors raided caravans along the China Silk Road, land trade routes from Europe to India and China became increasingly dangerous.
All trade finally ended when the Ottoman Muslims conquered Constantinople in 1453.
Columbus grew up hearing stories of the Grand Khan in a strange land on the other side of the world.
Columbus owned a copy of Marco Polo’s book, and wrote numerous personal notes in the margins.
At the age of 41, Christopher Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain in 1492:
“Concerning the lands of India, and a Prince called Gran Khan…
How many times he sent to Rome to seek doctors in our Holy Faith to instruct him and that never had the Holy Father provided them, and thus so many people were lost through lapsing into idolatries…
And Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes devoted to the Holy Christian Faith and the propagators thereof, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet and of all idolatries and heresies, resolved to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said regions of India,
to see the said princes and peoples and lands and the dispositions of them and of all, and the manner in which may be undertaken their conversion to our Holy Faith…”
Columbus continued:
“And ordained that I should not go by land (the usual way) to the Orient, but by the route of the Occident, by which no one to this day knows for sure that anyone has gone.”
On OCTOBER 10, 1492, Columbus wrote in his Journal how his sailors were tired of the long voyage, growing scared, and wanted to turn back:
“Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage…but the Admiral…added that it was useless to complain.
He had come to the Indies, and so had to continue until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.”
At the present time, in Mongolia, we have 2 american missionary couples that have planted “Rich heart Baptist Church” and this church has sent out native missionaries to begin other churches. We thank the Lord for these two couples. Under their leadership, the New Testament has been translated and printed in the Mongolian language. They are in the process of translating the Old Testament and when completed and printed, the Mongolian people will have the Bible in their language.
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Tagged as China, Christopher Columbus, Ghengis Khan, God Ghengis Kahn, Holy Christian Faith, Kublai Khan, Marco Polo, Messer Niccolo Polo, North India, Religion, spiritual