Pope Alexander VI legitimized navigation to the New World when he made clear his desire that the Christian faith be indoctrinated amongst any civilizations discovered. The Pope issued a number of bulls to this affect. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull, the Piis Fidelium to Father Bernardo Buil, who was to sail with Columbus on the second expedition. This bull decreed the right of the clerics to establish a church and a clerical hierarchy upon arrival to Hispaniola. With the issuing of bulls such as the one just described, the Pope legitimized Fernando and Isabel’s enterprise by defining it as a mission to spread the Christian faith (Sullivan and Symcox p.19). These bulls also gave the colonists the expressed right to dominate the Indians and to exploit their labor on the condition that the colonists indoctrinate the Christian faith amongst the indigenous peoples. (Sullivan and Symcox p.19). By the time of his third voyage between 1498 and 1500, Christopher Columbus had convinced himself that his voyages were part of God’s predesigned plan to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth (Sullivan and Symcox p.25).
Pope Alexander VI issued Papal Bull “Inter Cetera II,” This bull made clear the desire to see the Christian faith spread anywhere exploration and discovery took the two crowns. It stated, “It is certainly foremost that the Catholic faith and Christian religion should especially be exalted in our times and be expanded and spread everywhere, and that the salvation of the souls should be secured and barbarous nations be subdues and led to faith.”[1]. Over the passage of time and through his subsequent voyages to the Americas, Columbus often predicted that he had been chosen by God to fulfill the prophesy made in the bible that the Christian faith would be spread by a man voyaging to different lands.[2] So, Columbus was not just a man of science and exploration, he was also a man on a mission to spread Christian ideology even if this was not the intention from the outset.
The marriage between exploration and science with religion was a difficult balance at times. Scientific investigation and education was only occurring in two places in the fifteenth century, monasteries and universities. However, most universities were affiliated with the Catholic Church. To continue exploration and to colonize the new land with the support of the papacy, it was important that any new theories or discoveries not conflict with the ideology of the Christian faith.
Columbus must have been aware of this sentiment and rode the line between science and religion his whole career, though he seemed to sway back and forth from the side of science to religion and back again.
