Le mythique et la quête de l'or à la Renaissance (1400-1700) - Avant le débarquement de Colomb. «In 1474, Toscanelli, a cosmographer of Florence, being consulted by Christopher Columbus as to the prospects of a westward voyage, sent him a copy of a letter which he had written to a friend in the service of the King of Portugal. In it occurs this passage:"From the island of Antillia, which you call the Seven Cities and of which you 'have knowledge, there are ten spaces [2,500 miles] on the map to the most noble island of Cipango [Japan]".» [180] Toute une armada d'envoyés de différents pays cherchent l'or de ces "Cités d'or" et de toutes ces légendes, que ce soit chez les Aztèques ou les Incas. «Pedro de Ayala, Spanish Ambassador to Great Britain, found occasion in 1498 to report English exploring activities to Ferdinand and Isabella, he wrote: "The people of Bristol (England) have, for the last seven years (1491), sent out every year two, three, or four light ships (caravels) in search of the island of Brasil and the seven cities."» [181] In a letter of late 1497 or early 1498, the English merchant John Day wrote to Columbus about Cabot's discoveries, saying that land found by Cabot was "discovered in the past by the men from Bristol who found 'Brasil' as your lordship knows". [Seaver (1995) p. 222] (Deux faits à prendre en compte, Colomb sait que l'Asie est for loin de l'Amérique, secondement on cherche déjà les Sept Cités de la légende de Rodéric, ou Cibola, avant même la "découverte des Amériques". La cabale des chefs européens qui supervise la quête de l'or est l'Ordre de la Toison d'Or.) Un récit de dernière minute avant le départ de Colomb : Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, né en août 1478 à Madrid, était un historien espagnol éduqué à la cour de Ferdinand II d'Aragon et d'Isabelle de Castille. À l'âge de 13 ans (1491) il devient le page de leur fils, le prince héritier Don Juan, et voit là Christophe Colomb avant son départ pour les Amériques. Le 4 octobre 1497, il part pour l'Italie comme secrétaire de Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba. En 1514, il est nommé inspecteur des fonderies d'or d'Hispaniola, et, à son retour en Espagne, il est nommé historiographe des Indes. Il retourne encore cinq fois en Amérique avant de mourir à Valladolid en 1557. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records in his Historia general de las Indias of 1526. He discusses the Spanish caravel swept off its course on its way to England, and wound up in a foreign land populated by naked tribesmen. The crew gathered supplies and made its way back to Europe, but the trip took several months and the captain and most of the men died before reaching land. The caravel's ship pilot, a man called Alonso Sánchez, and a few others made it to Portugal, but all were very ill. Columbus was a good friend of the pilot, and took him to be treated in his own house, and the pilot described the land they had seen and marked it on a map before dying. People in Oviedo's time knew this story in several versions, though Oviedo himself regarded it as a myth. [Columbus, Christopher; Cohen, J. M. (translator) (May 5, 1992). The Four Voyages, pp. 27–37]. - Légende autour de Christophe Colomb (1492) : «Some ancient historians tell the following tale about that: Columbus found a rotten wooden box. Inside it there was many human bones (even a skull) and among those bones Columbus found some papyri documents. Columbus gave his uncle what he had found, and he took them to one of his colleagues in the Spanish Royalty. Those papers were descriptive maps made by a sailor from Tripoli (Trabulus) which had been buried many centuries before the fifteenth century when the place where Columbus' house was had been the sea's border. Afterwards, Columbus got an opinion from a very important cartographer about those exceptional findings. He declared that region as being a huge territory located beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). He also said that its wealth was so great and there were such valuable treasures kept in that place that he who could dominate it would be considered "the Lord of the World". Then from that day on and protected by his uncle, Columbus started to visit the Portuguese and the Spanish courts in order to obtain concession, financing and support to be the
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Fernando Colon: The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 1811, Vol. 3, Part II, Bk. 2, Ch. 1, Sec. 2, p. 26. Cabot's Discovery of North America, G. E. Weare, 1897
