History does not have to be made by nice people; in fact our tour of the Middle Ages to this point probably demonstrates that it very rarely is. So whatever Columbus’s failings, his flaws, and his prejudices, which are assuredly even more out of step with twenty-first-century pieties than they were with those of his own time, he was—and remains—one of the most important figures in the whole of the Middle Ages. And from the moment he returned from the Caribbean, it was clear he had opened up a new age in human history.
