Information was different from knowledge. For instance, by 1491, people no longer believed the Earth was round, even though the Ancient Greeks had measured the prime meridian in Ptolemy's time and believed the Earth was round.
By 1493, when that Genoese man who had proposed "going west to find the East" returned to Europe, his crew had encountered a terrible storm and all their lives had hung in the balance. Rather than docking at a Spanish port, their ship arrived in France.
He first wrote to the Spanish royal family, then to the King of France. In the letters, he promised that whoever delivered them to the Spanish royal family would receive a reward of 10,000 ducats.
After writing to the Spanish royal family, Columbus wrote again to the Spanish financial officer in Barcelona, to the people who had raised funds for his expedition, and to his friends.
During the Roman Empire, correspondence between Rome and London took more than four weeks. It took almost the same amount of time in the Middle Ages, except the sender had to pay an enormous additional fee, nearly a university professor's annual salary.
Meanwhile, Venice swiftly learned of the news through its powerful network of foreign ambassadors. At the time, the most famous postal route was Barcelona—Florence—Bruges. It passed through Paris, Milan, Cologne, and the Genoa post office, linking Bruges and Barcelona. Rome, Florence, and Venice were connected through another postal network, which opened routes to Germany and Byzantium.
Only bankers and the Church could afford the costly expense of rotating horses and riders, but information had always been worth investing in. It was scarce and precious. Yet when the Venetians received this news, they did not attach much importance to it. Perhaps precisely because information was scarce and valuable, there were many