Historia, filosofía-biografia-pensamiento

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS , THE SPANISH COURT. 1492. While Ferdinand and Isabella were at Santa Fe, the capitulation was signed, that opened the way to an extent of empire, compared with which their recent conquests, and indeed all their present dominions, were insignificant. The extraordinary intellectual activity of the Europeans in the fifteenth century, after the torpor of ages, carried them forward to high advancement in almost every department of science, but especially nautical, whose surprising results have acquired for the age, the glory of being designated as peculiarly that of maritime discovery. This was eminently favored by the political condition of modern Europe. Under the Roman empire, the traffic with the east naturally centred in Rome, the commercial capital of the west. After the dismemberment of the empire, it continued to be conducted principally through the channel of the Italian ports, whence it was diffused over the remoter regions of Christendom. But these countrie...

Reflecting on these things, studying Perestrello's and Correo's charts and accounts of their voyages, corresponding with Toscanelli and other savans, himself an adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for a time his occupation in Lisbon, cruising here and there, once far northward to Iceland, and talking with navigators from every Atlantic port, Columbus became acquainted with the best geographical science of his time. This had convinced him that India could be reached by sailing westward. The theoretical possibility of so doing was of course admitted by all who held the earth to be a sphere, but most regarded it practically impossible, in the then condition of navigation, to sail the necessary distance. Columbus considered the earth far smaller than was usually thought, a belief which we find hinted at so early as 1447, upon the famous mappe-Monde of the Pitti Palace in Florence, whereon Europe appears projected far round to the northwest. Columbus seems to have viewed this e...

From 1470 to 1484 we find him in Portugal, the country most interested and engaged then in ocean-going and discovery. Here he must have known Martin Behem, author of the famous globe, finished in 1492, whereon Asia is exhibited as reaching far into the same hemisphere with Europe. Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patronized all schemes for exploration and discovery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one of his captains, Perestrello, Columbus married. With her he lived at Porto Santo in the Madeiras, where he became familiar with Correo, her sister's husband, also a distinguished navigator. The islanders fully believed in the existence of lands in the western Atlantic. West winds had brought to them strange woods curiously carved, huge cane-brakes like those of India described by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned canoes, and corpses with skin of a hue unknown to Europe or Africa. See also: Enterprise of the Indies

Chronology of Poverty until 1534: 10th century B.C.E.: The first use of the word poverty surfaces in the biblical world, referring to landowners who forced peasants to sell land. 495–429 B.C.E.: Under the rule of Pericles, Athens undertakes large-scale public works projects as a means of providing employment for the poor. 550 C.E.: Pope Gregory I of the Roman Catholic Church establishes the world’s first orphanage in the city of Milan, Italy. 1349: King Edward III of England issues the Statute of Labourers, giving greater power to feudal lords and prohibiting begging and giving, except for senior citizens and the physically disabled. Edward made a distinction between the “worthy poor,” which included widows, dependent children, and the disabled, and the “unworthy poor,” which included able-bodied adults. 1351: Pedro the Cruel of Castile orders all able-bodied, unemployed men in his kingdom to be flogged. 1381: Wat Tyler leads a peasant revolt against King Richard II of England. ...