RECENT DISCLOSURES CONCERNING PRE-COLUMBIAN VOY- 

 AGES TO AMERICA IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE VATICAN 



BY 

 WILLIAM ELEHOY CURTIS 



Several eminent Scandinavian scholars, and others who have 

 made the early voyages of the Norsemen the subject of special 

 study, have for years contended that the archives of the Vatican 

 contained important evidence bearing upon the pre-Columbian 

 discoveries of America. Some have even had the courage to 

 assert that the legends and traditions of the Icelandic sagas 

 would be established as facts if the records of the church could 

 be called as witnesses, while others have gone even still farther 

 and have insisted that, through the secret aid of the pope, Colum- 

 bus enjoyed full knowledge of the vo3^ages of the Norsemen and 

 the country they called Vinland the Good, and simply followed 

 the course over which they had cruised across the ocean four 

 hundred years before his birth. But until Leo XIII came to 

 the Vatican no amount of argument or influence Avas able to 

 unlock the mysterious manuscrii3ts, which for eighteen hundred 

 years have been accumulating upon the shelves of the Holy See. 

 Some years ago a woman went to Congress and asked the pas- 

 sage of a resolution directing the President of the United States 

 to use his influence with the pope to have them examined, but 

 no notice was taken of her petition, and yesir after year applica- 

 tions from students -and historians were made in vain. The 

 officers of the church denied nothing. They simply said that 

 they did not know what the early archives of the church con- 

 tained ; that they had not been disturbed for centuries, and that 

 no one with access to them had either the time or the disposi- 

 tion to make an examination. 



In the summer of 1892 Congress passed a resolution request- 

 ing the governments of Spain, France, Great Britain, the Pope 

 of Rome, the Duke of Veragua and others to loan for exhibition 

 in the convent of La Rabida, at the World's Columbian Exposi- 

 tion, certain manuscripts, maps, and printed volumes relating 



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