While this Jewish scholar helped the Portuguese to many notable achievements in their daring voyages, another one, at a later period, was almost the direct cause of their being overtaken by the Spaniards in the race for new discoveries. For it was Joseph Vecinho, physician to King João, of Portugal, considered by the high court functionaries to be the greatest authority in nautical matters, who influenced the King to reject the plan submitted by Christopher Columbus (1446?–1506), and thereby caused the latter to leave Portugal for Spain in 1484.
Columbus came to Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella, with the aid of the newly introduced Inquisition, were despoiling the wealthy Marranos, who were burned at the stake in large numbers. The last war with the Moors had already begun.
Another and more famous Jewish scholar was to make amends for whatever suffering was caused to the great discoverer by Vecincho’s fatal advice. Abraham Ben Samuel Zacuto, who was born in Salamanca, Spain, about the middle of the 15th century and died an exile in Turkey after 1510, was famous as an astronomer and mathematician, and in his capacity as one of the leading professors in the university of his native city was formerly the teacher of the above named Vecinho. He was more discerning than his pupil, and when he learned to know Columbus, soon after the latter’s arrival in Spain, he encouraged him personally and also gave him his almanacs and astronomical tables, which were a great help in the voyage of discovery. Zacuto was among the first influential men in Spain to favor the plans of Columbus, and his favorable report caused Ferdinand and Isabella to take him into their service in 1487. The explorer was then ordered to proceed to Malaga, which was captured several weeks before, and there made the acquaintance of the two most prominent Jews of Spain in that time—the chief farmer of taxes, Abraham Senior, and Don Isaac Abravanel. These two men were provisioning the Spanish armies which operated against the Moors, and were in high favor at Court. Abravanel was one of the first to render financial assistance to Columbus.
Louis de Santangel and other Marranos interposed in favor of Columbus when he was about to go to France in January, 1492, because Ferdinand refused to make him Viceroy and Life-Governor of all the lands which he might discover. Santangel’s pleadings with Isabella were especially effective, and when the question of funds remained the only obstacle to be overcome, he who was saved from the stake by the King’s grace at the time when several other members of the Santangel family perished, advanced a loan of seventeen thousand florins—nearly five million maravedis—to finance the entire project. Account books in which the transfer of money from Santangel to Columbus, through the Bishop of Avila, who afterwards became the Archbishop of Granada, were recorded, are still preserved in the Archive de India of Seville, Spain.
“After the Spanish monarchs had expelled all the Jews from all their Kingdoms and lands in April, in the same month they commissioned me to undertake the voyage to India”—writes Christopher Columbus. This refers to the Decree of Expulsion, but the coincidence of the actual happening was still more remarkable. The expulsion took place on the second day of August, 1492, which occurred on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Ab, the day on which, according to the Jewish tradition, is the anniversary of the destruction of both the first Holy Temple of Jerusalem in the year 586 B. C. and also of the second Temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70 C. E. The day, known as “Tishah be’Ab,” was observed as a day of mourning and lamentation among the Jews of the Diaspora in all countries and is still so observed by the Orthodox everywhere to this day. Columbus sailed on his momentous voyage on the day after—the third of August. The boats which were carrying away throngs of the expatriated and despairing Jews from the country which they loved so well and in which their ancestors dwelt for more than eight centuries, sighted that little fleet of three sailing craft which was destined to open up a new world for the oppressed of many races, where at a later age millions of Jews were to find a free home under the protection of laws which were unthought of in those times.
Neither all the names nor even the number of men who accompanied Columbus on his first voyage are known to posterity. Some authorities place the number at 120, others as low as 90. But among the names which came down to us are those of several Jews, the best known among them being Louis de Torres, who was baptized shortly before he joined Columbus. Torres knew Hebrew, Chaldaic and some Arabic, and was taken along to be employed as an interpreter between the travellers and the natives of the parts of India which Columbus expected to reach by crossing the Ocean. Others of Jewish stock whose names were preserved are: Alfonso de Calle, Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, the physician Maestro Bernal and the surgeon Marco.
Land was sighted October 12, 1492, on “Hosannah Rabbah” (the seventh day of the Jewish Feast of the Booths), and Louis de Torres, who was sent ashore with one companion to parley with the inhabitants, was thus the first white man to step on the ground of the New World. As the place proved to be not the Kingdom of the Great Khan which Columbus had set out to reach, but an island of the West Indies, with a strange hitherto unknown race of copper-colored men, it is needless to say that the linguistic attainments of the Jewish interpreter availed him very little. After he managed to make himself somewhat understood, he was favorably impressed with the new country and finally settled for the remainder of his life in Cuba. He was the first discoverer of tobacco, which was through him introduced into the Old World. It is also believed that in describing in a Hebrew letter to a Marrano in Spain the odd gallinaceous bird which he first saw in his new abode, he gave it the name “Tukki” (the word in Kings I, 10 v. 22, which is commonly translated peacock) and that this was later corrupted into “turkey,” by which name it is known to the English-speaking world.
It may also be remarked, in passing, that the belief identifying the red race which was surnamed Indian with the lost ten tribes of Israel, began to be entertained by many people, especially scholars and divines, soon after the discovery of America. It attained the dignity of a theory in the middle of the 17th century when Thorowgood published his work: “The Jews in America; or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race.” (London, 1650.) This view was supported among our own scholars by no less an authority than Manasseh Ben Israel, who wrote on the same subject in his “Esperança de Israel” which was published in Amsterdam in the same year.
Columbus wrote the first reports of his wonderful discovery to Louis de Santangel and to Gabriel Sanchez. The letter to the first is dated February 15, 1493, and was written on the return voyage, near the Azores or the Canaries.
It was decreed by a royal order of November 23, 1492, that the authorities were to confiscate for the State Treasury all property which had belonged to the Jews, including that which Christians had taken from them or had appropriated unlawfully or by violence. This gave Ferdinand sufficient means to provide for the second voyage of Columbus (March 23, 1493). The King and the Queen signed a large number of injunctions to royal officers in Soria, Zamora, Burgos and many other cities, directing them to secure immediate possession of all the precious metals, gold and silver utensils, jewels, gems and other objects of value that had been taken from the Jews who were expelled from Spain or had migrated to Portugal, and everything that these Jews had entrusted for safe keeping to Marrano, relatives or friends, and all Jewish possession which Christians had found or had unlawfully appropriated. The royal officers were later ordered to convert this property into ready money and to give the proceeds to the treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, in Seville, to meet the expenditure of Columbus’ second expedition.
One of the specific instances of these confiscations which deserves to be mentioned, is the order to Bernardino de Lerma to transfer to Pinelo all the gold, silver and various other things which Rabbi Ephraim (who is sometimes referred to in contemporary documents as Rabi Frayn, also as Rubifrayn, and who was perhaps the father of the great Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulhan Aruk, etc.), the richest Jew in Burgos, had before emigrating left with Isabel Osoria, the wife of Louis Nunez Coronel of Zamora. Not merely the clothing, ornaments and valuables which had been taken from the Jews were converted into money, but also the debts which they had been unable to recover were declared by order of the Crown to be forfeited to the state treasury, and stringent measures were adopted to collect them. A moderate estimate places the sum thus obtained at six million maravedis, to which ought to be added the two millions contributed by the Inquisition of Seville