"Irving did indeed have a target -- medieval obscurantism, associated
in the early 19th-century American (protestant) mind with Spain and
Catholicism."
He writes:
<<The same suggestion of anti-Catholic purpose is found in the book
_Inventing the Flat Earth_, by Jeffrey Burton Russell (mentioned by
Gordon Fisher on August 7).>>
And continues:
<<I don't think this idea will stand up to investigation. The test
case is the ultra-Catholic aristocrat Roselly de Lorgues, whose
_Christophe Colomb: Histoire de sa vie et de ses voyages_ appeared
in Paris in 1856. The work was encouraged, it was said, by Pope
Pius IX; it presented Columbus as the "Ambassador of God" and a
candidate for sainthood, and it went through at least 24 editions
in five languages after its original publication. It does accuse
Irving (and the Catholic Navarrete and others) of "semi-protestant
ideas"; but that is because (1) they don't believe that Columbus
was led entirely by divine inspiration, and (2) they think [as does
everyone else] that he had an illegitimate son. Its subtitle says
that it is drawn "from authentic Spanish and Italian documents,"
and it presents nearly the same account of the confrontation as
Irving does.>>
I am delighted to have this reference to Roselly de Lorgues, whose book I
had not known about, confirming the historian's suspicion that everything
does, indeed, have a source.
But Irving preceded de Lorgues, and, I said, he was opposing "medieval
obscurantism." Recognizing that in largely protestant America,
contemporaneously celebrating its expulsion of the Spanish from Florida
(1819) and the Mexicans from Texas (1837) and California (1849), it was
possible to associate "medieval obscurantism" with Catholic Spain,
rescuing Columbus from the charge of being a mere Spanish hireling and
sparing him for hero status in Dutch and English North America.
Deliberate, conscious anti-Catholicism would certainly be hard to prove
of Irving. He went with the flow.
Bill Everdell, Brooklyn