"We praise your name, O God...": The theography of Christopher Columbus' Travels

Abstract

In modern spiritual, humanitarian and cultural studies, the problems of the sacred justification of geographical discoveries of the XV–XVI centuries are not fully presented, given the role played by these discoveries in the history of world culture in determining the key vectors of the development of world civilization. The purpose of this study is to clarify the circumstances under which the great geographical discoveries and, above all, the discoveries of Christopher Columbus changed the perception of the planet, opened up new opportunities for the spread of culture on a planetary scale. In order to clarify the hidden cultural and transformative potentials of civilization, the influence of Christianity, the Christian way of perceiving the world on the dynamics and sequence of Columbus' travels is analyzed. The study of the problem of the sacred justification of geographical discoveries allowed us to identify the main characteristics of the ways and directions of the transformation of the discovered geographical world through a special religious toponymy, the assignment of names associated with the Christian value system to the discovered lands. The analysis revealed the influence of religious worldview on the development of knowledge about the world. The thesis that Columbus' toponymy was determined by his religious position is substantiated. The results of the study open up a new theoretical direction in the study of the problems of religious and cultural assessment of Columbus' geographical discoveries and allow us to conclude that the productivity of the Christian attitude to the world, expressed in the expansion of the horizons of geographical representations.