born the fifteenth of August, 1488."[1] Such is the conclusion of Humboldt. He pledges imprudently his great name, with out having examined the matter by himself.
We affirm that upon this matter Humboldt has read nothing with his own eyes in original sources; that he has depended for it on Navarrete, who derived it from Spotorno, who received it from Napione, who derived it from the chicanery of an attorney in a lawsuit! Still, this accusation has been so generally admitted, that it holds the place of a fixed fact. More than eighty writers of different stamp have repeated it, one after the other. At the present time, this calumny of fifty years' duration is so much accredited, that it takes the airs of an historical fact, supporting itself on certain dates aad respectable names. And perhaps no single writer will be found, of the first or the last rank, who, in treating of this subject, dares dispense himself from repeating, for the eighty-first time, this error.
We are going, however, please God, to put an end to it.
We formally protest against this calumnious assertion. We deny the fact of an illicit connection. We deny the details that are connected with it. We assert that Doña Beatrix Enriquez of Cordova was, in the eyes of the Church, the wife of Christopher Columbus. We deny her poverty. We deny her plebeian condition. We deny her state of pregnancy at the time of the message of the King of Portugal. We deny the pretended passion of Columbus for Beatrix that could alone have retained him in Spain, contrary to his other interests.
And all that we have here said, we shall prove forthwith.
SECTION V.
During the lifetime of Columbus, never was there any suspicion cast on the nature of his connection with Beatrix
- ↑ Humboldt. Examen Critique de l'Histoire et de la Geographie, etc. T. I., p. 104.
