Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/41

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INTRODUCTION.
17

The fall of the French Empire, and the reorganization of Italian States, postponed the discussion, without terminating it.

In 1816, The Edinburgh Review renewed the debate.

In 1817, Luigi Bossi prepared, at Milan, his life of Christopher Columbus.

In 1818, Cardinal Zurla spoke of Columbus in his Voyages of the Most Illustrious Venetians.

In 1819, Father Spotorno, a Barnabite and a bibliographer, published, at Genoa, his work entitled, Of the Origin and Country of Christopher Columbus, in three volumes.

In 1823, the Municipal Council of Genoa caused, by the aid of subscriptions, all the title-deeds and documents relative to Columbus to be published, and had them united in a magnificent volume, bearing the title of Codice diplomatico Americano, which it charged Father Spotorno to grace with a biographical introduction.

The year following, France, which could not remain indifferent to this ardor for the glory of Columbus, had a translation made of his life, by Bossi.[1] Spain did not remain a stranger to the current of thought. The director of the Royal Academy of History of Madrid, Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, hastened the collection of the documents relative to the history of America, and the progress of the marine, which he made by order of the Crown. In 1825, the first volume was consigned to the press.[2]

In the course of 1826, while the advocate Giambattista Belloro renewed at Genoa the pretensions of Sacone to be considered the birthplace of Columbus, and inserted his dissertation in the Astronomical Correspondence of Baron de Zach, Mexico published the two works of La Vega and of Bustamente on the discovery of the New World. The same year, an American writer who sojourned in Spain,

  1. Histoire de Christophe Colombe. Paris, 1824.
  2. Coleccion de los Viages y Descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Españioles desde el fin del siglo, xv.