ABSTRACT
The striving to fulfill prophecy on a cosmic or global scale was a major stimulus to travel and discovery, from the early Franciscan missions into Asia to Christopher Columbus's Enterprise of the Indies, which led to his discovery of "a new heaven and a new earth" in the Americas. None of Christopher Columbus scholars took seriously the possibility that Christopher Columbus's personal spirituality or the spirituality of his age might also have inspired him to undertake his voyages of discovery. Christopher Columbus's apocalypticism must be recognized as inseparable from his geography and cosmology if a balanced picture of the historical significance of his Enterprise of the Indies is to be achieved. Modern study of the origins of Christopher Columbus's Enterprise of the Indies can be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Christopher Columbus's theoretical basis for the assumption that the western ocean was not vast was borne out by his practical experience as a sailor.
