Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Gamboa, Yolanda

Abstract

Religious ideology played a powerful role in the shaping of the Spanish Empire as seen in the writings of Christopher Columbus, the first widely documented European explorer to reach the Americas. Columbus was driven by intense feelings of divine providence and saw his project in biblical and prophetic terms. In his diaries and letters, as well as his Book of Prophecies, Columbus' religious fervor shows a messianic zeal and his rhetoric mimics that of the newly emerging Spanish Empire who, in tum, mimicked the messianic and imperialist rhetoric of the Catholic Church. This zeal was not particular to Columbus' personality but rather it reflects the common beliefs of his times. The cosmology of Columbus was a composite ofvarious Medieval and early Renaissance philosophers whose erroneous conceptions of geography and apocalyptic visions of the future were based on astrological patterns and various prophecies in the Bible rather than empirical facts.

Extent

83 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2006.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FA00000926

Format

pdf

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