Many Europeans were convinced that if only they could reach the peoples east of Islam—who if not Christian were at least “not as yet infected by the Mahometan plague,” to quote Pope Nicholas6—together they could crush Islam between them.* This comes out clearly in Columbus’s own letters: in one he refers to Ferdinand and Isabella as “enemies of the wretched sect of Mohammet” who are “resolve[d] to send me to the regions of the Indies, to see” how the people thereof can help in the war effort;7 in another written to the monarchs after he reached the New World Columbus offers to raise an army
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