An American Accident: How Columbus's Landing Amounted to Sheer Luck

In the popular culture, we afford Christopher Columbus a peculiar degree of reverence. My childhood books and history lessons portrayed him as a visionary, fighting against the ridicule of ignorant, flat-Earth scholars and kings to sail West to India, and who through grit and perseverance achieved both the discovery of the Americas and that the world was round. This, of course, is nonsense—which, I’m happy to say, most adults I’ve met seem to understand. Scholars knew the earth was round since antiquity, and the Renaissance was no different in this respect. Furthermore, while Columbus may have been ignorant of the Americas’ existence, I do believe the Aztecs, Mayans, Inca, Mississippian and various other inhabitants of this land were quite aware of the fact.

Telling Time in the Renaissance, Part I: A Change in Calendars

Time is a slippery beast. You may believe otherwise, if you live in today’s West. Here, the moments march lockstep in time with the news ticker, Twitter feeds and the stock market bell—every event branded with a number. The precision of industry disguises the artifice that is our experience of time.

In the world of our ancient forbears, however, we had less evidence of time’s passage. The seasons flowed one into another with each year’s refrain, and the phases of the moon signaled the strength of the tides. When those cultures saw fit to measure these intervals, they faced a panoply of decisions in the face of the elements. As civilizations grew, they sometimes saw fit to change those decisions and alter their measure of time. The Renaissance saw at least one such change to fruition.

The Renaissance: Real and Reimagined

This is the first part of a series in which I discuss a portion of the research behind Rosaria of Venice, my forthcoming alternate-history novel, and other matters related to that research. If you like what you read, please keep an eye out for new updates, and tell your friends!

There was a time, centuries after the fall of Rome, when northern Italy blossomed with the rediscovery of ancient culture. Perspective returned to painting, form to sculpture, and new artists expanded upon the ancient techniques. These times saw the rise of the printing press and the spreading of literacy. The new age brought political turmoil and religious revolution through the Protestant Reformation. The works of figures such as Copernicus and Galileo shaped science into a semblance of its modern form. Through the cracks of feudal Europe, the modern era broke soil.

We call this period the Renaissance.