materials. Although controlled to a certain extent by their influence, and not daring to come in opposition with Navarrete, he admits only a part of their accusations, mitigates them, and does not hazard the interpretations of Spotorno but with a hesitation bordering on repugnance.
Far from pardoning in growing older, Father Spotorno embittered against Fernando Columbus; and, taking pride in the conjecture of bastardy welcomed so warmly by Navarrete, returns to the charge with a puerile ostentation. He boasts of his pretended discovery, while the shameful merit of this error belongs of right to Napione. In his annotations to the Genoese edition of Irving, Spotorno, the true inspirer of the anonymous notes, reproaches the American author with timidity. He attributes it to the circumstance that Irving had not read his own work on the "Origin and the Country of Christopher Columbus." He sifts again what he had already written in the work Della Origine, in the Codice Colombo Americano, in the Literary History. Not content with repeating his assertions, he adds, by way of induction, new blunders to his preceding mistakes, and finishes with proving how little he was acquainted with Columbus.
This can be judged of from a single example: Spotorno, having mistaken the meaning of some words of Peter Martyr in regard to an Indian of the Lucaya isles baptized in Spain, having for godfather Don Diego Columbus, and therefore named Diego, according to Christian custom, confounds this Diego, who served as an interpreter to the Admiral, with his godfather Don Diego, brother of the Admiral; and speaks seriously of the marriage of the Genoese, Don Diego Columbus, with an Indian lady of Hayti; whereas it was the Lucayian interpreter, Diego, who espoused the Indian lady. It is still only an error in regard to person, to situation, — a gross improbability. But what becomes culpable is, that upon this absurd notion Spotorno dares to bring an accusation against the character of Columbus.
