Note 447 — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

Footnote 447: It was formerly assumed, without hesitation, that the letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was written and sent in 1474. The reader will observe, however, that while the enclosed letter to Martinez is dated June 25, 1474, the letter to Columbus, in which it was enclosed, has no date. But according to the text as given in Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. viii., this would make no difference, for the letter to Columbus was sent only a few days later than the original letter to Martinez: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago (alquanti giorni fa) to a friend of mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. This friend, Martinez, had evidently been a gentleman of the household of Alfonso V. since before the civil wars of Castile, which in 1474 had been going on intermittently for nine years under the feeble Henry IV., who did not die until December 12, 1474. Toscanelli apparently means to say "a friend of mine who has for ten years or more been a gentleman of the royal household," etc.; only instead of mentioning the number of years, he alludes less precisely (as most people, and perhaps especially old people, are apt to do) to the most notable, mentionable, and glaring fact in the history of the Peninsula for that decade,—namely, the civil wars of Castile. As if an American writer in 1864 had said, "a friend of mine, who has been secretary to A. B. since before the war," instead of saying "for four years or more." This is the only reasonable interpretation of the phrase as it stands above, and it was long ago suggested by Humboldt (Examen critique, tom. i. p. 225). Italian and Spanish writers of that day, however, were lavish with their commas and sprinkled them in pretty much at haphazard. In this case Ferdinand's translator, Ulloa, sprinkled in one comma too many, and it fell just in front of the clause "before the wars of Castile;" so that Toscanelli's sentence was made to read as follows: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago to a friend of mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal, before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. Now this unhappy comma, coming after the word "Portugal," has caused ream after ream of good paper to be inked up in discussion, for it has led some critics to understand the sentence as follows: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago, before the wars of Castile, to a friend of mine," etc. This reading brought things to a pretty pass. Evidently a letter dated June 25, 1474, could not have been written before the civil wars of Castile, which began in 1465. It was therefore assumed that the phrase must refer to the "War of Succession" between Castile and Portugal (in some ways an outgrowth from the civil wars of Castile) which began in May, 1475, and ended in September, 1479. M. d'Avezac thinks that the letter to Columbus must have been written after the latter date, or more than five years later than the enclosed letter. M. Harrisse is somewhat less exacting, and is willing to admit that it may have been written at any time after this war had fairly begun,—say in the summer of 1475, not more than a year or so later than the enclosed letter. Still he is disposed on some accounts to put the date as late as 1482. The phrase alquanti giorni fa will not allow either of these interpretations. It means "a few days ago," and cannot possibly mean a year ago, still less five years ago. The Spanish retranslator from Ulloa renders it exactly algunos dias há (Navarrete, Coleccion, tom. ii. p. 7), and Humboldt (loc. cit.) has it il y a quelques jours. If we could be sure that the expression is a correct rendering of the lost Latin original, we might feel sure that the letter to Columbus must have been written as early as the beginning of August, 1474. But now the great work of Las Casas, after lying in manuscript for 314 years, has at length been published in 1875. Las Casas gives a Spanish version of the Toscanelli letters (Historia de las Indias, tom. i. pp. 92-97), which is unquestionably older than Ulloa's Italian version, though perhaps not necessarily more accurate. The phrase in Las Casas is not algunos dias há, but há dias, i. e. not "a few days ago," but "some time ago." Just which expression Toscanelli used cannot be determined unless somebody is fortunate enough to discover the lost Latin original. The phrase in Las Casas admits much more latitude of meaning than the other. I should suppose that há dias might refer to an event a year or two old, which would admit of the interpretation considered admissible by M. Harrisse. I should hardly suppose that it could refer to an event five or six years old; if Toscanelli had been referring in 1479 or 1480 to a letter written in 1474, his phrase would probably have appeared in Spanish as algunos años há, i. e. "a few years ago," not as há dias. M. d'Avezac's hypothesis seems to me not only inconsistent with the phrase há dias, but otherwise improbable. The frightful anarchy in Castile, which began in 1465 with the attempt to depose Henry IV. and alter the succession, was in great measure a series of ravaging campaigns and raids, now more general, now more local, and can hardly be said to have come to an end before Henry's death in 1474. The war which began with the invasion of Castile by Alfonso V. of Portugal, in May, 1475, was simply a later phase of the same series of conflicts, growing out of disputed claims to the crown and rivalries among great barons, in many respects similar to the contemporary anarchy in England called the Wars of the Roses. It is not likely that Toscanelli, writing at any time between 1475 and 1480, and speaking of the "wars of Castile" in the plural, could have had 1474 in his mind as a date previous to those wars; to his mind it would have rightly appeared as a date in the midst of them. In any case, therefore, his reference must be to a time before 1465, and Humboldt's interpretation is in all probability correct. The letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was probably written within a year or two after June 25, 1474.