We need to reawaken interest in the "forgotten story" about how the continent we now call the Americas, was

discovered. or actually rediscovered, in the late 15th century,

even if the authors of these editions feel uncomfortable about

the full implications of this "forgotten story."

Paolo Emilio Taviani is an Italian parliamentarian and

former cabinet minister from Genoa who was, at the time of

English-language publication of his study in 1985, chairman

of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian Senate; Gianni Granzotto was president of Italy's largest news agency

until his death in 1985. Both their books were originally issued in

Italian. "What unites this oddball coalition, against the discovery

of America"?

The answer to this question of course, is that

this oddball coalition shares hatred for a major result of the

discovery/rediscovery, namely the American Revolution that

happened on the continent that Columbus and friends "found."

Without going into the heart of the matter in the brief space

available here, the American Revolution was brought about

by the republican elites of Europe, such as the group around

John Milton in 17th-century Britain, saw the "New

World" across the seas, as the target area for "republican

colonization."(republican with a small r) These elites, in turn, were the continuation of

the tradition of the 15th-century Golden Renaissance; there

is a connection, understood negatively by those who own

Kissinger, Castro, Ben Bella, et aI., between the Golden

Renaissance and the American Revolution, mediated by the

Columbian expeditions, if the latter are properly understood.

Columbus's "discovery" was actually a "rediscovery."

He was not, entirely, voyaging into the "unknown." The

Columbus Project was one important product of the greatest

project known to humanity, the Florentine-centered, but European-wide Renaissance. And, as "Renaissance" means

being "reborn," an investigation of the Columbus Project

shows that those, like Paolo Toscanelli, who caused his expedition

to happen, were busy, for decades before the expedition even before Columbus was born!-regathering, reevaluating, recreating, and recomposing the evidence of great thinkers of time past, about "crossing the ocean," while making

the breakthroughs in perspective, geography, cartography,

navigation, astronomy, mathematics, painting, and so on,

that would provide the body of knowledge for Columbus to

embark on his adventure."If anything, the "Columbus Project" was, fundamentally,

a "Toscanelli Project," a historical fact which makes both

Taviani and Granzotto quite uncomfortable, in the end.

Toscanelli and Columbus

In an empirical sense, we will never have the answer,

since almost all of Toscanelli's works, including but not

exclusively, on geography, were, through one means or another, destroyed. Some knowledge of him is available in

English-language studies of the Columbian expeditions, but

the most thorough studies, by the Florentine historian Uzielli,

were also crimped by this extraordinary "disappearance" of

the writings of one of humanity's most important figures.

A full commemoration of the discovery/rediscovery of

America, would have to take into account, three periods.

First, there would be the period 1418-20, when Toscanelli, Nicolaus of Cusa, and the future master of geometry

and perspective, Leon Battista Alberti, were all young students in Padua. The seeds of the Renaissance, in significant part, were planted there, at that time. Toscanelli's tutelage

of Brunelleschi, in the necessary mathematical principles to

build that glorious edifice to human creativity, the Dome of

Florence Cathedral, is one manifestation of that Padua period, available for all, today, to see .

Second, there would be the Council of Florence , of 1438-

43. Partial accounts of this appear in the Taviani and Granzotto studies, but a much fuller account is needed. Toscanelli

and others spent hours, literally debriefing the delegation of

Gemisthos Plethon from Byzantium, and travelers from different parts of the globe, recreating the geographical conceptions of the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, the geographical and geometrical conceptions of Plato, and so on. Certainly, in the milieu of the Council of Florence, the ancient

idea of the "fourth continent" was re-awakened for the conscience of the 15th century. Even if Granzotto and Taviani

stick with the more-common hypothesis, that Toscanelli was

recreating the idea of an oceanic route to Asia-still a breathtaking idea, comparable to the conquest of space in this

century-enough evidence has been compiled by collaborators of this reviewer, in published and unpublished studies,

to provisionally prove that it was the "Fourth continent" idea,

which actually catalyzed this circle.

The third moment would be, as Taviani writes, "perhaps

at the bedside of the dying Cardinal Cusano" (Nicolaus of

Cusa), ca. 1464. Taviani suggests that it was here that Toscanelli the executor of the great Cusano's will, would have

engaged in "long nocturnal discussions" with Portuguese

Canon Martins, about the "astounding idea" of traversing the

ocean, to reach "the Indies, where the Spice is produced."This brings us close to the heart of the matter. On June

25, 1474, Taviani reports, a letter from Toscanelli reached

Martins, "a confidant of the King of Portugal." The letter

presented the case, as worked out by Toscanelli and friends,

for the plausibility of crossing the ocean. According to Taviani, this letter reached Columbus in 1480-12 years before

the ocean crossing!

One of the interesting points is that Columbus

carried around a copy of that letter, re-written in his own

handwriting, in the folds of his own copy of a book, written

by Enea Silvio Piccolomini of Siena, the man who became

Pope Pius II, and who was another of the Cusanos Golden

Renaissance circle in Europe.