Ренессанс и Новый Свет

[bouzyges]

"...most humanist scholars were more concerned with the re-discovery of the ancient world, which could be carried on through words, the study of texts, than with paying attention to the discovery of the new, which involved a fresh visualisation of space. Thoroughly typical was the reaction of Marineo Siculo, who was teaching at Salamanca when Columbus was discussing geographical theory with his colleagues there and who was one of Ferdinand of Aragon's official historians. In all his voluminous writings there is only one reference to the New World. He records the discovery of a (presumed) Roman coin in Central America and smugly comments that 'this took the glory from our soldiers who were boasting of their navigation, since the coin is proof that the Romans had sailed to the Indies long before'. Marineo kept his mind's eye firmly on the past; to the great majority of learned men the more absorbing challenge lay not in space but in time".

from Renaissance Europe 1480-1520 by J.R. Hale