Christopher Columbus*

Columbus's intentions and presuppositions may be better understood by examining the few books still extant from his own library. Some of these were extensively annotated, often by the admiral and sometimes by his brother Bartholomew, including copies of the Imago mundi by the 15th-century French theologian Pierre d'Ailly (a compendium containing a great number of cosmological and theological texts), the Historia rerum ubique gestarum of Pope Pius II, published in 1477, the version of The Travels of Marco Polo known as the De consuetudinibus et condicionibus orientalium regionum of Francesco Pipino (1483-85), Alfonso de Palencia's late 15th-century Castilian translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, and the humanist Cristoforo Landino's Italian translation of the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Other books known to have been in Columbus's possession are the Guide to Geography of the ancient astronomer and geographer Ptolemy, the Catholicon of the 15th-century encyclopaedist John of Genoa, and a popular handbook to confession, the Confessionale produced by the Dominican St. Antoninus of Florence. The whole shows that the admiral was adept in Latin, Castilian, and Italian, if not expert in all three. He annotated primarily in Latin and Spanish, very rarely in Italian. He had probably already read and annotated at least the first three named texts before he set out on his first voyage to the "Indies." Columbus was a deeply religious and reflective man as well as a distinguished seaman, and, being largely self-taught, he had a reverence for learning, perhaps especially the learning of his most influential Spanish supporters. A striking manifestation of his sensibilities is the Book of Prophecies, a collection of pronouncements largely taken from the Bible and seeming to bear directly on his role in the western voyages; the book was probably compiled by Columbus and his friend the Carthusian friar Gaspar Gorricio between September 1501 and March 1502, with additions until circa 1505.