said, they listened kindly; and the conference ended
by their referring the business to the Queen's Confessor, Fra Hernando de
Talavera, who was afterwards Archbishop of Granada. This important
functionary summoned a junta of cosmographers (not a promising
assemblage!) to consult about the affair, and this junta was convened at
Salamanca, in the summer of the year 1487. Here was a step gained; the
cosmographers were to consider his scheme, and not merely to consider
whether it was worth taking into consideration. But it was impossible for
the jury to be unprejudiced. All inventors, to a certain extent, insult
their contemporaries by accusing them of stupidity and of ignorance. And
the cosmographical pedants, accustomed to beaten tracks, resented the
insult by which this adventurer was attempting to overthrow the belief of
centuries. They thought that so many persons wise in nautical matters as
had preceded the Genoese mariner never could have overlooked such an idea
as this which had presented itself to his mind. Moreover, as the learning
of the middle ages resided for the most part in the cloister, the member's
of the junta were principally clerical, and combined to crush Columbus
with theological objections. Texts of Scripture were adduced to refute his
theory of the spherical shape of the earth, and the weighty authority of
the Fathers of the Church was added to overthrow the "foolish idea of the
existence of antipodes; of people who walk, opposite to us, with their
heels upwards and their heads hanging down; where everything is topsy
turvy, where the trees grow with their branches downwards, and where it
rains, hails, and snows upwards." King David, St. Paul, St. Augustine,
Lactantius, and a host of other theological authorities were all put in
evidence against the Genoese mariner: he was confronted by the
"conservatism of lawyers united to the bigotry of priests." Las Casas
displays his usual acuteness when he says that the great difficulty of
Columbus was, not that of teaching, but that of unteaching: not of
promulgating his own theory, but of eradicating the erroneous convictions
of the judges before whom he had to plead his cause. In fine, the junta
decided that the project was "vain and impossible, and that it did not
belong to the majesty of such great princes to determine anything upon
such weak grounds of information."

Ferdinand and Isabella seem not to have taken the extremely unfavourable
view of the matt