The question has been often asked whether there were any religious motives dominant in the mind of Columbus and his royal patrons when the expedition toward the unknown West was undertaken. Those who would fain canonize the discoverer of a new world appear unable to see any other guiding motive, and they also earnestly desire to impress their belief upon all the world. Others, differently inclined, seem to have difficulty in finding anything other than a base and ignoble love of gold and an overweening desire for power and fame in the proposals or the subsequent career of the adventurer. The question is then, first as to the very existence of such motives at all, and secondarily, if they are found to exist, as to the position which they occupied in the minds of the parties concerned, and the extent to which later occurrences stamped them as genuine or spurious; formative in their influence, or merely put forward as a pretext and makeweight in argument.