The mariner arrived at Cordova on the 20th January 1486, with letters of introduction from the Duke to the Queen and his friends at court. The sovereigns were detained by business in Madrid and Toledo for three months after Colon came to Cordova; but his letters procured for him some friends amongst the courtiers there, with whom he discussed the theories he had formed, especially with the Aragonese Secretary of Supplies, the Jewish Luis de Sant’angel, who, throughout, was his enlightened and helpful friend. Most of the idle hangers-on of the court at Cordova, clerical and lay, made merry sport of the rapt dreamer who lingered in their midst awaiting the coming of the sovereigns. His foreign garb and accent, his strange predictions, absurd on the face of them—for how could one arrive at a given place by sailing directly away from it?—all convinced the shallow pates that this carder of wool turned sailor was mad.
When Isabel and Ferdinand at last arrived at Cordova, on the 28th April 1486, the season was already further advanced than usual to make preparations for the summer campaign: and there was little leisure for the sovereigns to listen to the vague theories of the sailor. But early in May Colon was received kindly by Isabel and her husband, and told his tale. Their minds were full of the approaching campaign, and of the trouble between Aragon and the new King of France about the two counties on the frontier unjustly withheld from Ferdinand; and after seeing Colon for the first time Isabel instructed the secretary, Alfonso de Quintanilla to write to the Duke of Medina Celi that she did not consider the business very sure; but that if anything came of it the Duke should have a share of the profits.
In the meanwhile Ferdinand and his wife were too busy to examine closely themselves into the pros and cons of Colon’s scheme, and followed the traditional course in such circumstances, that of referring the matter to a commission of experts and learned men to sift and report. The president of the commission was that mild-mannered but arrogant-minded confessor of the Queen, Father Talavera; the man of one idea whom the conquest of Granada for the cross blinded to all other objects in life. With him for the most part were men like himself, saturated with the tradition of the church, that looked upon all innovation as impiety, and all they did not understand as an invention of the evil one. So, when Colon sat with them and expounded his theories to what he knew were unsympathetic ears, he kept back his most convincing proofs and arguments; for his treatment in Portugal had taught him caution.[55] There were two, at least, of the members of the commission who fought hard for Colon’s view, Dr. Maldonado and the young friar Antonio de Marchena, but they were outvoted; and when the report was presented it said that Colon’s project was impossible, and that after so many thousands of years he could not discover unknown lands, and so surpass an almost infinite number of clever men who were experienced in navigation.[56]