C. S. Lewis. (he brilliant and graceful historian of sixteenth-century English literature, summarizing the impact on Europe of the discovery of America, observed: “The existence of America was one of the greatest disappointments in the history of Europe.” Lewis was referring to Europe’s unfulfilled expectations that the winds and currents of the Atlantic would bring her bankers, merchants, soldiers, and priests to the Orient. This disillusionment was, however, less significant than other negative reactions that accompanied Columbus’s news. Renaissance Europe was forced, not without reluctance, to rethink its own place in history, its philosophy, theology, anthropology, linguistic theories, geographic knowledge. When the Renaissance got down to the task of comprehending the explosive announcement, and Europe’s writers, commentators, and observers employed what John H. Elliott has called a “selective eye” and not Ruskin’s “innocent eye.” From this vision classical antiquity, Christian tradition, humanist aspirations, and the politics of Europe determined what would be seen when Europe encountered the New World; what would be admitted into the collective consciousness of scholars, clerics, popes, adventurers, and poets. Pride, the not so hidden inflexibility at the heart of Renaissance civilization, framed and fixed what America would be permitted to mean.