Any doubts in his mind were resolved by Imago mundi, a comprehensive world geography by Pierre d’Ailly, a fourteenth-century cardinal and master of the College of Navarre. D’Ailly took the Aristotelian view that Europeans could reach India by sailing westward. Imago mundi became Columbus’s favorite bedside book. His copy, with heavy marginal scribblings, is preserved in Seville’s Biblioteca Colombina.
