1494

An “exciting” account of the feud between monarchs, clergy, and explorers that split the globe between Spain and Portugal and made the oceans a battleground ( Kirkus Reviews ). When Columbus triumphantly returned to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smoldering conflict between Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal’s João II. Which nation was to control the world’s oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI—the notorious Rodrigo Borgia—issued a proclamation