*76 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



There was nothing to prevent them becoming scholars had they been 

 80 inclined. Albert the Great, Bishop of BoUstadt, lectured publicly 

 at Cologne, and recorded in his writings his belief in the existence of 

 antipodes. So did Friar Bacon and, from his writings. Cardinal 

 d'AUly adopted similar opinions. The Imago Mundi of d'Ailly was the 

 abiding solace of Columbus in his passionate struggles and it was also 

 the chief source of his cosmological knowledge ; since from it, chiefly, 

 he gathered his knowledge of the theories and conclusions of the Gi^eek 

 and Arabian geographers. It is not true that the theories of Columbus 

 were an^agonized especially by churchmen. On the contrary, the 

 Dominican monks at Salamanca were in advance of the lay pro- 

 fessors in their scientific views. Those who mainly assisted Columbus 

 to obtain access to the Catholic sovereigns were Fray Juan Perez (Fran- 

 ciscan) Prior of La Kabida, Fray Hernando Talavera (Dominican) 

 Prior of Prado and Confessor to the Queen, Fray Diego Deza, Pro- 

 fessor of Theology at Salamanca, and Cardinal de Mendoza, who was 

 a minister of the Crown. It \vias not the scholars nor the churchmen, 

 qua churchmen, who opposed Columbus ; but the "clear headed prac- 

 tical common sense folk,'' of all classes ; supported by the men, and 

 they are not all dead yet, who have an infallible gift for finding their 

 own notions in the Scriptures. Writing in 1-1:98, from St. Domingo to 

 the King and Queen, Columbus expresses his gratitude; "all others,'' he 

 writes, "who had thought of the matter, or heard it spoken of, unani- 

 " mously treated it with contempt, with the exception of two friars, 

 " who always remained constant in their belief in its practicability." 



It is no part of the object of this paper to discuss the beliefs and 

 dogmas of the church ; but it is due to geographical science to say that 

 it is simply untrue that Pope Alexander, as President White asserts,. 

 {Warfare of Science, Appleton, 1876, p. 19) laid down "a line of de- 

 " marcation upon the earth as upon a flat disk," and it will be seen, 

 as we proceed, that it is also untrue that " this was hailed as an exercise 

 " of divinely illuminated power in the church " (p. 20). Globes were 

 not in the least uncommon then. The year Columbus sailed, Martin 

 Behaim made a large globe still to be seen at Nuromburg. Long before 

 that (in 1474) Columbus had sent a globe to Toscanelli at Florence, 

 and we read of a globe before 1497 upon which John Cabot taught 

 his son the properties of the sphere. It may readily be supposed that 

 all the globes then in existence are not spoken of in the books. It is 

 not necessary to think, moreover, with Mr. Harrisse" that the Pope was 

 probably basing his partition uj)on a plane chart, when he sent the Bull 

 to the Spanish monarchs. It was quite unnecessary, because the line was 

 clearly enough indicated — north and south, from pole to pole, one 



