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Translatio Imperii : Virgil and Peter Martyr's Columbus

2009; Penn State University Press; Volume: 46; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cls.0.0107

1528-4212

Elise Bartosik-Vélez,

Philippine History and Culture

Translatio Imperii:Virgil and Peter Martyr's Columbus Elise Bartosik-Vélez (bio) The Milanese humanist Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (1457–1526) was the first historiographer to write about Christopher Columbus and to recognize the significance of the first Columbian voyage by coining the term "New World." His eight-volume account of Spain's "discoveries" in the Americas, the Decades de Orbe Novo, which he began writing in 1493, was a primary source of information for European princes and elites about the Western hemisphere. While Martyr was instrumental in framing one of the principal discourses about Columbus and the Spanish conquest of the New World, his role in this regard has been overlooked by most scholars.1 Martyr, who was born in Arona in 1457, was one of the most important representatives of Renaissance humanism living in Spain during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.2 At the age of twenty, he moved to Rome where he circulated in elite circles and enjoyed the patronage of the cardinals Arcimboldi and Sforza. There he also consolidated his intellectual and cultural foundations in the humanist tradition, studying with the renowned Pomponius Laetus. In 1486 Martyr met the Count of Tendilla, Iñigo López de Mendoza, who had been sent to Rome by Ferdinand and Isabel to officially pledge their obedience to the pope and to negotiate peace between the papacy and the king of Naples. After Martyr wrote a poem extolling the count's successes, the latter invited Martyr to return to Spain with him in the capacity of a man of letters. To the dismay of Martyr's friends and patrons, he accepted the invitation, later explaining to Ascanio Sforza in a letter written from Spain that his future there was more promising than it would have been in Italy, where success depended on noble rank and political calamity was imminent. [End Page 559] It is commonly believed that Martyr met Columbus, with whom Martyr said he was "tied in close friendship,"3 at the royal encampment outside of Granada. Both men witnessed on 2 January 1492 the sovereigns' triumphant entrance into Granada after it had fallen in the last battle of the Spanish reconquest of Moorish territory. Shortly after being ordained and nominated in March to the post of canon at the cathedral of Granada, Martyr sought and received an invitation to be called back to serve at court. He remained at the court until his death in 1526 during the reign of Carlos V. Martyr had a variety of occupations in the course of his career as royal courtier, including those of professor, special ambassador, member of the Council of the Indies, and advisor on political and family matters. In addition, he also served the court as royal historiographer. The first book of the Decades de Orbe Novo was published in 1511 in Sevilla by the Spanish humanist Antonio Nebrija in a compendium of four works by Martyr. In 1516 Nebrija published the first three decades and in 1530 the entire Decades de Orbe Novo was published for the first time in Alcalá de Henares.4 Translatio Imperii Martyr was the first of many to characterize Columbus by framing him within a preexisting discourse of colonization and imperial transfer. This was the discourse of the translatio imperii, the transfer of empire, according to which occidental empire and Western civilization itself was believed to have moved progressively from east to west, first from Asia to Greece and then to Rome (and sometimes to Germany), and thought by Martyr's time to be anchored somewhere in Western Europe, depending on the national context in which the story of empire was being told. This discourse was Christianized over a period of time, starting in the fourth century with Constantine's efforts to Christianize Rome. When Charlemagne in 800 was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, the fusion between empire and Christianity was complete. The classic story about the transfer of empire is the Aeneid, a foundational text for Renaissance humanists like Martyr who interpreted it through their Christian lens as they sought to know the pasts of Greece and Rome. Martyr's representations of Columbus in books 1–3 of the first...