The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (65 page)

111
merchants soon followed:
By 1340 the nine-month journey from
the Crimea to Beijing was common enough to merit its own guidebook. Its author, a Florentine merchant named Francesco Pegolotti, assured his readers that the road was “perfectly safe whether by day or by night,” though he advised growing a long beard as a precaution. Italian merchants settled along the route, and a few other Europeans eventually followed. One papal envoy arrived at the Mongol court only to find several Russians, an Englishman, a Parisian goldsmith, and a Frenchwoman who had been abducted in Hungary already there. See Pegolotti,
Pratica della Mercatura
, in Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, trans. and eds.,
Cathay and the Way Thither
,
Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1913–1916), 3:143–71.

112
two missionary friars:
The two were John of Montecorvino, the future archbishop of Beijing, and the Dominican Nicholas of Pistoia. John spent more than a year preaching on India’s Coromandel Coast; Nicholas died there.

112
Odoric of Pordenone:
The friar was among the best traveled of all medieval Europeans. Setting out from Constantinople, he headed for Tabriz, Baghdad, and Hormuz, took ship to India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and struck out for Sumatra and Java before arriving in China.

112
the Malabar Coast:
The narrow coastal plain of southwest India between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, now in the states of Kerala and Karnataka.

114
“Who could count the many shops”:
Canon Pietro Casola, quoted in Brotton,
Renaissance Bazaar
, 38. The Milanese priest visited Venice in 1494.

115
One deputation arrived in Florence:
Ibid., 2.

115
“Everything that is sold in Egypt”:
Quoted in C. F. Beckingham, “The Quest for Prester John,” in C. F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton, eds.,
Prester John: The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes
(Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1966), 276. In 1322 Adam became archbishop of Sultaniyah and thus head of the Catholic Church in Persia.

116
“If our lord the Pope”:
Quoted in Harry W. Hazard, ed.,
A History of the Crusades
, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), 3:543. Sévérac was made bishop of Quilon, now Kollam.

116
an elaborate manual for reviving the Crusades:
Sanudo’s work,
Liber secretorum fidelum crucis
, was first submitted to Pope Clement V in 1309 and then, with revisions, to King Charles IV of France in 1323. As well as maps, Sanudo supplied ready-made battle plans and a wealth of logistical information.

117
the mapmakers did not think the earth was flat:
The notion that everyone before Columbus believed the earth was flat is a nineteenth-century fable, largely propagated by Washington Irving’s 1828 fantasy
The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
. See Jeffrey Burton Russell,
Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians
(New York: Praeger, 1991).

117
they would have been unreachable by the Gospel:
Romans 10:18.

118
Niccolò de’ Conti:
Conti’s story amply repays further study. The Venetian learned Arabic in Syria and Persian in Iran, then traveled with Muslim merchants to India. There he married, and he dragged his growing brood around Indonesia and Indochina, Arabia and East Africa. In Cairo he converted to Islam to protect them, but almost immediately the plague carried off his wife and two of his four children. He set out for home and sought a papal audience to ask forgiveness for renouncing his faith; as penance, the pope ordered him to dictate an account of his travels to Poggio Bracciolini, an apostolic secretary and leading humanist. Despite its occasional fantasies—including two neighboring islands, one inhabited solely by men and the other by women, whose amorous exchanges were curtailed by the fact that anyone who stayed off their own island for six months dropped dead on the spot—his report corroborated many of Marco Polo’s claims, clarified others, and was a major step forward in Europe’s knowledge of the Indian Ocean. An English translation by John Winter Jones was published in 1857 by the Hakluyt Society and is reprinted, revised by Lincoln Davis Hammond, in
Travelers in Disguise: Narratives of Eastern Travel by Poggio Bracciolini and Ludovico de Varthema
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).

118
Fra Mauro’s map:
The cartographer monk also displaced Jerusalem from its customary bull’s-eye position, a move so radical that he felt it necessary to mount an ingenious self-defense. “Jerusalem is indeed the center of the inhabited world latitudinally, though longitudinally it is somewhat to the west,” he carefully inscribed on
his map, “but since the western portion is more thickly populated by reason of Europe, therefore Jerusalem is also the center longitudinally if we regard not empty space but the density of population.” See Piero Falchetta,
Fra Mauro’s World Map
(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006).

119
a junk had rounded Africa:
The caption actually reads “an Indian ship or junk,” which suggests that it may not have been Chinese at all. Despite the ambiguities, Fra Mauro’s comment has been taken as a major plank of evidence that the Chinese explored the Atlantic Ocean and may have reached the Americas before the Spanish or Portuguese.

120
much farther to the north:
Given the topographical details Fra Mauro draws in the hinterland, the region he puts at the continent’s southern extremity may be the Horn of Africa; or perhaps, given the large island he places off Africa’s southern tip, the channel he shows flowing around Africa is the Mozambique Channel and the island is Madagascar.

Chapter 6: The Rivals

121
La Beltraneja:
Joan’s cause was not helped by the fact that her mother subsequently had two children with the nephew of a bishop, a flagrant demonstration of fecundity that finally drove Henry to divorce her.

121
War broke out:
The War of the Castilian Succession was fought from 1475 to 1479, when the two nations concluded the Treaty of Alcáçovas. As well as settling the succession on Isabella, the treaty also tidied up, for a while, the competing Portuguese and Spanish claims in the Atlantic. Portugal was finally forced to accept Castilian control of the Canaries; Spain confirmed Portugal’s possession of the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde islands and its sole rights to “lands discovered or to be discovered . . . from the Canary Islands down toward Guinea.” Frances Gardiner Davenport, ed.,
European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), 44.

122
Abraham Zacuto:
Zacuto was a famous teacher of astronomy in
Spain until 1492, when he joined the exodus of Jews to Portugal and became John II’s astronomer royal. Five years after arriving, he escaped Manuel I’s forced conversions and moved to Tunis and Jerusalem. As well as drawing up astronomical tables that were developed by his pupil Joseph Vizinho for practical use at sea, he designed the first metal astrolabe and was an influential proponent of Vasco da Gama’s expedition. Joseph Vizinho arrived in Portugal shortly after John II’s accession in 1481; in 1485 he went to sea to conduct experiments in calculating a ship’s latitude. According to the chronicler João de Barros, also on the junta were Rodrigo, the king’s physician, and the German cartographer and astronomer Martin Behaim, who was in Lisbon from 1480.

123
“In the year 6681”:
Quoted in Edgar Prestage,
The Portuguese Pioneers
(London: A. & C. Black, 1933), 208.

123
Whale Bay:
Or Walvis Bay, as it was renamed by the Dutch and, along with the Namibian port it shelters, is still known.

123
he died on his way home:
Years later, a carved stone inscribed with Cão’s name was found on the banks of the Congo (which the Portuguese named the Zaire). Barros, though, says Cão returned to Portugal, while other sources say he died at Cape Cross. See Prestage,
Portuguese Pioneers
, 210.

124
proselytization was painfully slow:
The rate increased with the baptism of the king of Kongo, the dominant ruler of western Central Africa, in 1491; named Nzinga Nkuwu, he took the Christian name John. Though he and many of his court soon returned to their traditional beliefs, his son and heir Afonso defeated his lapsed brother with the aid of Portuguese weapons and, he claimed, a timely apparition of St. James. Afonso’s descendants entrenched the Catholic Church at the cost of a fraught relationship with the Portuguese and much damage to Kongo’s traditional culture.

124
a more promising pair:
The fullest account of Covilhã and Paiva’s mission is still that of the Conde de Ficalho,
Viagens de Pedro da Covilhan
(Lisbon: A. M. Pereira, 1898). The report of the priest who discovered Covilhã in Ethiopia is in Francisco Alvares,
Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia During the Years 1520–1527
, trans. and ed. Lord Stanley of Alderley (London: Hakluyt Society, 1881); a revised edition edited by C. F. Beckingham and G. W. B.
Huntingford was published in 1961. The Portuguese chronicles supply more details, and I have used the accounts of near-contemporary travelers to fill in the background of the journey.

124
Pêro da Covilhã:
His first name is also given as Pedro (of which Pêro is an archaic form), João, João Pêro, or Juan Pedro; his last name as da Covilhã, da Covilhã, de Covilhã, de Covilham, or Covilhão. In an entertaining coincidence, the Indian Embassy in Lisbon is today located on Rua Pêro da Covilhã.

125
Afonso de Paiva:
His birthplace was Castelo Branco, a little to the south of the town of Covilhã. On its conquest from the Moors it had been given to the Templars, who defended the town against the frequent attacks from across the nearby Spanish border.

125
Joseph Vizinho:
The third expert is named Master Moyses (or Moses) in some sources. Ficalho concludes that Moyses was christened Joseph Vizinho when he was baptized; see
Viagens de Pedro da Covilhã
, 55.

125
whether it was really possible to sail around Africa:
According to Giovanni Battista Ramusio, in his
Navigazioni e Viaggi
, a famous compendium of travel writing published in Venice between 1550 and 1559. This last instruction is not mentioned in the Portuguese sources; see Ficalho,
Viagens de Pedro da Covilhã
, 56–63.

126
“his capacity was not greater”:
Alvares,
Portuguese Embassy
, 267.

126
“which were so long”:
Damião de Goís, quoted in Henry H. Hart,
Sea Road to the Indies
(London: William Hodge, 1952), 239. Goís also says that Manuel was of good stature, held his head erect, and had a pleasant expression, but his description is unusually free of the usual airbrushing.

126
a powerful Florentine banker:
The banker was named Bartolomeo Marchionni; he was reputedly the richest man in Lisbon. By now there was a sizable Florentine community in Portugal involved in banking and shipping; Marchionni was its most prominent member and did a good deal of business with the crown.

126
cashed in their check:
The bank they visited was run by the sons of Cosimo de’ Medici; the hugely wealthy Florentine family had offices throughout Italy.

127
“At this time [Alexandria] looks very glorious without”:
Ibid., 392.

127
“sav’d a great part”:
“The Travels of Martin Baumgarten . . . through Egypt, Arabia, Palestine and Syria,” in Awnsham Churchill, ed.,
A Collection of Voyages and Travels
(London: A. and J. Churchill, 1704), 1:391.

129
“one little hand”:
Wilfred Blunt,
Pietro’s Pilgrimage: A Journey to India and Back at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
(London: James Barrie, 1953), 58.

129
“in sport”:
Ibid., 55.

129
dated back to classical times:
“On the pyramid,” wrote Herodotus, “there is an inscription in Egyptian characters which records the quantity of radishes, onions, and garlic consumed by the laborers who constructed it.” Ibid., 57.

129
“They do positively aver”: “
Travels of Martin Baumgarten,” 397. For more on medieval Cairo and other Islamic cities, see Joseph W. Meri, ed.,
Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia
(New York: Routledge, 2006); Michael Dumper and Bruce E. Stanley, eds.,
Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopedia
(Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2007).

130
“metropolis of the world”:
Quoted in Albert Habib Hourani,
A History of the Arab Peoples
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 3.

130
“
surpasses reality”:
Ibn Khaldun,
An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332–1406)
, trans. and ed. Charles Issawi (Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1987), 4.

132
“and tho’ one should deface them”:
“Travels of Martin Baumgarten,” 401.

134
the same sewn planks:
Nails were unknown in Indian Ocean ships; superstitious sailors were said to believe that great undersea magnets would pull them out, while the more practical prized the dhow’s flexibility, which made it easier to beach and more resilient if it struck a shoal.