court to court a scheme for crossing the ocean from Spain to China and opening up direct trade route to the west, by which the gold, jewels and spices of the Orient could be brought to the ports of Castile: a reasonable trading venture, which he made more attractive to the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabela, by offering them the prospect that the inhabitants of the intervening lands . . . might be converted to Christianity on the way.
The prospect of converting non-Christians to Christianity was a secondary motive for the voyages to the New World. The lust for material wealth, land, heroism and various forms of personal and political power were the primary motives. The settlers themselves were even more blatantly after material advancement. They "were difficult men, all bent on making swift profits. . . . Those that came on the second [voyage] consisted largely of men under sentence for crimes, who had been pardoned on condition that they joined Columbus's expedition." These were hardly the sort of men bent on converting anybody to Christianity, having demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to even live the Christian life themselves.
Even when Columbus directly claims to be seeking souls for Christ, he resorts to material bait in order to half-heartedly accomplish his spiritual goals, and then immediately emphasizes the material goods he will win for himself, the royals he represents, and the nation of Spain. Christ seems to be a brief pause in the tho
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