“The philosophy of the discoveries, the emigration, and the colonisation was Christianity. Ferdinand and Isabel, King and Queen of a new, if precariously united, Spain, had conquered Granada in 1492. They had been hailed by the Pope not only as the “Catholic kings” but as “athletes of Christ’’. The primate of Spain, Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, likened himself, not wholly inappropriately, given his fighting spirit, to a new Joshua.”