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IN 1493, as news of Christopher Columbus's contact with the Americas spread across Europe, Alexander VI penned Inter Caetera Divinae, the bull that divided the round world into Spanish and Portuguese hemispheres. The pope predicated this generous donation on the credibility of assurances that the indigenous people in the newly encountered lands "seem to be well fitted to embrace the Catholic faith ... and there is hope that, were they instructed, the name of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, could be easily introduced into these lands and islands."1 Columbus had claimed as much both in his journal and in the widely published and translated letter of 1493. The letter records Columbus's belief in reports of people "born with tails," though he cannot verify them, "hav[ing] so far found no human monstrosities, as many expected."2 Since most of the people are not monstrous, Columbus hopes that his masters "will determine upon their conversion to our holy faith, towards which they seem very inclined."3 In his journal, Columbus significantly expands these two points; he intends his first words to the uncomprehending natives to be soothing, "because I knew that they were a people to be delivered and converted to our holy faith rather by love than by force."4 Throughout his extensive narrative, the admiral records the continually deferred appearance of monstrosities, juxtaposing reports of "men with one eye, and others with dogs' noses who ate men" with his conviction that the people he encountered "would easily be made Christians."5 This pattern, with its record of the surprisingly human inhabitants of the New World and its emphasis on their readiness to accept Christianity, recurs throughout the early narratives of European colonialism. What would convince so many Europeans that the people they encountered in the Americas would be so strongly "inclined" and prepared to accept Christianity?
One text that exerted a powerful influence on late medieval and early modern European perceptions of cultural difference was the fourteenth-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville.6 This popular text, a synthesis of several other medieval travel and pilgrimage narratives, was translated into every European language and survives in over three hundred manuscripts and numerous printed editions.7 In its description of a voyage to the Holy Land and the Far East, an expedition...