TRIP AMONG TWO WORLDS

51 The Calabrian monk to Valencia was kindly entertained by the monks of a near monastery the coast. From that position a splendid landscape could be admired, above all to the sunset, with the ships that sailed to the horizon with the fierce sails and you explain. Monk Carlo could feel among itself the voices of the men of edge, that you/they finally saw earth, you/he/she could rejoyce with them some arrival very desired, since, every trip or almost you/he/she was an unknown, the sea could also swallow with its violence the greatest and strong veliero, and for the crew there would not have been homeward return. During the Spanish stay it had the opportunity of sailing on the coast, directing himself/herself/itself toward North, touching various harbors, and visiting the hinterland, even if sometimes in almost fleeting way, since it needed to leave again after the I unload some commodity. Among the places that it visited, that more next to Valencia it was Castellon de it Planes her/it, but they pushed him over also touching Badalona in Catalogna, in the wild Good Coast, and he/she was spellbound from the city of Barcellona, full of vivacity and desire to live, in which you/he/she could remain two days, because the ship attended commodity to load, coming from Gerona. But the monk didn't limit him to sail toward North, since you/he/she directed him with the crew, toward Villajoyosa and Alicante, also touching Head de Palos and Cartagena but the longest journey, you/he/she faced him/it when you/he/she again directed him toward the Columns of Ercole, to reach the Coast of the Sol to Malaga. The Calabrian, forgot never for a moment that had to do the possible one. As he imposed for spreading the figure of S.Francesco, that however, already before his/her arrival in Spanish earth, he was spreading among the religious communities, definite therefore, during the longest stay in the city of Valencia, with the support of the monks of the monastery, to build a small chapel near the I bring and to devote her/it to the Protecting Saint of the People of Sea, where the sailors would be been able to pick up in prayer. 52 To the reentry in the I bring of Genoa, from where it missed from few more than three months, monk Carlo, you/he/she could see again after a few days father Armand, that in the meantime, it made a lot of discoveries. The two could discuss some his/her own experiences, and if father Armand had a lot to tell on the discoveries from him finished, monk Carlo it was not from less, for the visited places and the stay to Valencia. In the years that followed the finished trip with Cristobal Colon, father spent Armand them in the study of the testimonies left before almost three centuries by sailors that you/they were pushed I pour distant and unknown earths, while monk Carlo, continued in his/her trips to spread the word of the Saint, and he met, in the years, men prepared to follow the order founded by the "Calabrian monk". They began to follow with rigor of it the rules and they brought forth the diffusion of the words and the facts happened through their voice. One day father Armand, received a letter from Portugal, and it came to knowledge of the fact that the Genoese admiral was transferred, in the autumn of 1477, to Lisbon. Here, in 1479, he/she married the sister of the governor of the island of I Bring Saint where you/he/she was transferred. In the brief period spent in the Portuguese capital you/he/she had taken contacts with the junta of the Mathematicians, Rodrigo Vizinho, in fact, he/she wrote Armand to father, to have conversed with a: Italian navigator, such Columbus, that said to have completed yes so many studies to nearly possess her/it certainty of the possible rout to west for Indies. He, continued the letter, Lisbon was transferred to perform studies on the regime of the Atlantic winds and you/he/she had observed some wood pieces transported by the tide, pines type unknown in the region, some trunks worked with non metallic utensils and plants neither Africans, neither European. In a following letter, Rodrigo affirmed to have heard of a monastery not too far the Atlantic coast, in which they were kept in big account the scientific speculations and you/he/she was encouraged in the clergymen the interest for the astronomy and his/her applications to the navigation. It dealt with the present monastery to You Rabida, and in more Rodrigos it revealed the name of father Anthony de Marchena, to contact for getting a transfer. Father Armand neither he/she talked to monk Carlo and he/she asked him to again follow him/it in Spain, where however you/he/she would have acquitted, and continued his "religious appointments". The Calabrian monk, without thinking of us very, it accepted the invitation of the Spaniard, and of this, it was pleasantly of it stricken. Even if he/she knew that its studies aroused a strong curiosity in monk Carlo, it was not waited of certain a so rapid and definite choice. Monk Carlo thought that the country, which entertained the monastery, would have been the point of beginning to let the Calabrian Saint to the monks and the people that he/she lived in that place to know. Father Marchena made to approve the transfer of the religious, and it sent a letter of thanks to the family Spinola, from which you/they dismissed later him around eight years of assiduous collaboration, and they reached the monastery in February 1481. In the 1483 monk Carlo it came to know from Spanish brothers, of return from France, that the Saint Hermit was found to the court of the king, to save his life, and definite to pray for the Saint man that you/he/she would ever have liked to leave his/her beloved earth. It was here that they met father Juan Pérez, introduced him by the merchant Enrico Spinola with a letter of introduction as father Armanio from Castellon de Planes her/it, and monk Carlo, follower of the Saint Francis from Paola, coming from Calabria. Henry Spinola reserved a lot of words, choices with care and devotion to describe the Calabrian Saint, admired by now from more parts in Europe. Father Juan Pérez asked Armanio to father: "For which motives you have asked to transfer you and to be welcomed to her Rabida? " He responded illustrating shortly his/her finished studies to Lisbon with the Junta of the Mathematicians and father Pérez, he/she pleasantly remained struck by his/her knowledges, then it turned the same question to the Calabrian monk, but only for pure formality, in how much it imagined his/her noble spiritual motives, but it also had the opportunity of appreciating a taste of his/her culture. The two monks were welcomed with a lot of benevolence, and you/they had immediately involved in the conversations that developed him around the navigation on the coasts of Africa. One day then, father Anthony from Marchena showed to Armanio a printed copy of the Geography of Tolomeo, published before only four years. Father Anthony was a man endowed with exceptional acumen and had indeed knowledges in astronomic field amazing. Father Armand decided therefore, to tell with serenity every particular of his/her studies and of his/her maritime consignments, maintaining the most narrow silence on the confidences received by Colon on the island of Frixlanda. Father Anthony was spellbound in particular way from admiral Cristobal's figure, and you/he/she is following the description that Armanio did him, that a faithful and brave supporter of the trips became that Colon wanted to realize. Father Anthony reported some death of King Alfonso V, to Armanio and monk Carlo, and of the slope to the throne of Giovanni II, that opened new perspectives on possible financings from the real house for consignments toward the west. They knew subsequently that Cristoforo had advanced to King Giovanni II the proposal of a trip toward west to reach Indies. The monarch had refused for the exorbitant application of money from the Genoese admiral, and because you/he/she was more interested in the progress that were already in action on the African coasts, in fact after 6 years, Bartholomew Diaz, reached the Head of the Storms. But the destiny of the admiral and that of the two monks were again crossed, against every forecast of theirs, when in 1485, he reached the monastery to submit his/her child Diego, that had had from his/her wife from little deceased, and it recognized father Armand: "I am pleased to leave his/her child in an environment so rich in astronomers and researchers of the navigation! But where is it found the Calabrian monk that years back sailed with us? " It was a surprise when he/she saw him/it arrive in his/her direction. The admiral greeted him/it with a lot of humility and respect, happy and incredulous in to see him/it again. Subsequently, also father Marchena succeeded in having an interview with Cristoforo, to which it promised the whole support of which you/he/she would have required in ecclesiastical environments for his/her consignment. The following year the Genoese navigator got the support of the dukes of Medina Sidonia and Medina Coeli but not a financing suitable to the enterprise that wanted to complete. In the summer of 1486, father Anthony asked Armand to complete some astronomic surveys on a high ground that rose in the hinterland of Palos to father. The two monks spent a lot of nights with the eyes aimed to the sky, and to light of candle they filled many sheets of data and positions. Father Anthony didn't hold him/it to the dark of nothing, and more times you/he/she hocked him to the function of the revelations to make clear that was completing. Father Anthony, told then him to have heard for the first time, to speak of spherical earth, when Paul from the Well Toscanelli had sent Fernando Martins to the Portuguese canon a relationship detailed of his/her studies. His/her father had, so, taken back in hand a text of the Greek astronomer Ipparco, in which he spoke of a "axle of the Earth", he, had believed always that you/he/she could treat him of an imaginary perpendicular straight line to the terrestrial disk, but the theory of the Florentine made him think to an axle that the terrestrial sphere crossed from extremity extremity, Ipparco, in fact, it sustained that, for a called phenomenon Precessio Equinotialis. The terrestrial axle was not completely firm but it performed some undulated movements that brought him/it, within the centuries, to vary its direction. From this it came down that in the past, to the time of the universal downpour, such axle didn't have to aim toward the polar star, but I pours another star and the finished studies, you/they had brought Father Anthony, to the conclusion that, then, in North it was suitable from Alpha Draconis. It was not this the only learned intuition of which the monk astronomer made partecipe father Armand in fact some days after the Spanish monk, you/he/she still questioned him/it on the phenomenon of the Precessio, that so much had fascinated him/it. He said: "A second tied up phenomenon exists to the oscillation of the axle of the Earth, in the day of the equinox, when, the sun rises to East exactly in front of the constellation of the fishes." Father Armand arranged with his/her words: you/he/she had been witness of it Cristoforo Colombo when you/he/she had studied the rout to follow through the sundial, and the symbol of the fishes appeared on the papers of Aramburu, really under the three "S" of the Sine Sun Sileo. According to father de Marchena, because of the Precessio Equinotialis the constellation before which the sun rose would not have remained forever the same one. As the hand of a gigantic clock, the sun would have risen in the constellation of the fishes up to the first years of the XXI century, when you/he/she would have entered that some aquarium. Then, father Armand asked him: "Every how old the sun be migrates from a constellation to the other? " It is father Anthony he/she answered: "The interval is equal to the time who divides us from the foundation in Rome." Father Armand calculated, therefore, that if the sun had reached the constellation of the aquarium in the century XXI, the passage from the ram to the fishes would be had to complete in the III century before Christ, while the precedent, from the bull to the ram, you/he/she would have happened in the century XXV before Christ, he/she deduced of it that the sun, was created in front of the constellation of the bull, and this would have held absolute truth, if you/he/she had not seen subsequently what you/he/she would have upset every hypothesis of his and theory on the date of the creation. In April that precedette that summer, Cristoforo Colombo, that had already received a benevolent reception from the big treasurer of Castile, Alfonso of Quintanilla, which had introduced him to the archbishop of Toledo, Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza, met for the first time the Spanish sovereigns Isabella and Ferdinando. The attention of the monarches was turned, in that period, to the conquest of the region Granada, that the Moor still occupied, and taking advantage of the fact that, in 1479 the Spaniards had lost the control of the whole coast African, past to the Portuguese, the Genoese navigator proposed to King Ferdinando an unexpected result: the exploitation of Indies through the street of the west. The King founded an errand of researchers presided by Hernando de Talavera, man whose unfortunately ampleness of views in subject of astronomy and navigation was not equal to the holiness. Subsequently, father Armand I heard more times father Marchena to complain about himself/herself/themselves some absolute lack of rigor of the studies of the errand, and of the incapability to appraise without prejudices the theory of Christopher Columbus. The Spanish monk, years later he/she read the relationships compiled following the finished studies, and it found again you about ten quotations from biblical texts that seemed to deny the possibility of west earths. The Auctoritas that was named it was more often Sant'Agostino, but they didn't miss references to pagan authors as Epicuro, which it believed that an opposite hemisphere to ours unattainable existed because to enter you, would have been necessary to cross a torrid zone, whose shippings would be him in an instant reduced in ash. Since from Adamo it derived the human kind everything whole and neither Adamo and neither did his/her children ever cross the ocean, how come could the antipodes be populated? After 6 years Hernando de Talavera sent a long epistle, in which it sustained to Queen Isabella that to surpass the limits fixed by God to the world, meant to sin and to lose forever his/her own soul, and besides you/he/she would have begun an epoch of terrible calamities. The monk reached even to propose Colòn to the Saint Inquisition, and there was therefore, the unanimous negative reaction to the proposal of the admiral, so the monks de You Rabidas agreed to send a long missive to the errand in which you/they criticized some based conclusions on wrong interpretations of the Sacred Writings, but they never received an answer. However to the monastery of You Rabida there was an I live interest for the proposals of Christopher Columbus to the monarches of Europe: father Armand, father Marchena, monk Carlo, together with the other brothers, clergymen, were held above all constantly adjourned on the movements of the admiral, and they knew that Cristoforo he still turned to the King of England Henry VII and to French Charles VIII but both the proposals failed. But there was another navigator of whom the monks heard projects similar to that of the Genoese admiral: it dealt with Fernao of Ulmo, that was signalled enthusiastically by Martin Behaim in a letter from the tone, that the Flemish origins of the man affirmed, whose undertaken you/he/she had carefully been studied by an errand presided by the same Martin, which informed them about the happened departure of Fernao for the island of the Seven Cities, but he never made return. It was, this, a fact that still more it increased the skepticism of the errand of study: this was another negative response from researchers' group named by Queen Isabella, directed by his/her monk confessor Hernando de Talavera.