A Story To Tell: Seeing Through the Minds of Two Admirals
- Eda Ozyesilpinar -
Christopher Columbus: What He Had in Mind before His Voyages
It is crucial for this project to understand what Christopher Columbus had in mind before he went on his voyages since his own world map has been lost. The possible sources Columbus used – the Ptolemic world map, Pierre de’Ailly’s Imago Mundi, and an Anonymous Genoese chart discovered by Charles de la Ronciere – play an important role in this project in helping to understand what Columbus had in mind before he landed in America. This section will focus on these sources to explore Columbus’s mind and what he hoped to find.
These three essential sources Columbus probably used before his voyages shaped his vision of the earth and formed his cosmographic theory that a shorter way to Asia was possible by sailing to the west. In addition to revealing what Columbus had in mind before his voyages, three sources also help this study to explore significant connections between Columbus and Reis in terms of the parallelism in the sources Reis used to Columbus’s sources.