Model
Digital Document
Publisher
Florida Atlantic University
Description
Religious ideology played a powerful role in the shaping of the Spanish Empire as
seen in the writings of Christopher Columbus, the first widely documented European
explorer to reach the Americas. Columbus was driven by intense feelings of divine
providence and saw his project in biblical and prophetic terms. In his diaries and letters,
as well as his Book of Prophecies, Columbus' religious fervor shows a messianic zeal
and his rhetoric mimics that of the newly emerging Spanish Empire who, in tum,
mimicked the messianic and imperialist rhetoric of the Catholic Church. This zeal was
not particular to Columbus' personality but rather it reflects the common beliefs of his
times. The cosmology of Columbus was a composite ofvarious Medieval and early
Renaissance philosophers whose erroneous conceptions of geography and apocalyptic
visions of the future were based on astrological patterns and various prophecies in the
Bible rather than empirical facts.
seen in the writings of Christopher Columbus, the first widely documented European
explorer to reach the Americas. Columbus was driven by intense feelings of divine
providence and saw his project in biblical and prophetic terms. In his diaries and letters,
as well as his Book of Prophecies, Columbus' religious fervor shows a messianic zeal
and his rhetoric mimics that of the newly emerging Spanish Empire who, in tum,
mimicked the messianic and imperialist rhetoric of the Catholic Church. This zeal was
not particular to Columbus' personality but rather it reflects the common beliefs of his
times. The cosmology of Columbus was a composite ofvarious Medieval and early
Renaissance philosophers whose erroneous conceptions of geography and apocalyptic
visions of the future were based on astrological patterns and various prophecies in the
Bible rather than empirical facts.
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