The Pope of Rome, whose authority was at this period supreme among the princes who were in communion with the Church, now thought proper to anticipate a possible collision between Spain and Portugal, the two monopolists of commerce and discovery. He declared by a bull, or papal decree, that all new countries which should be thereafter discovered to the east of the Azores were to belong to the crown of Portugal, while all that were discovered to the west should be the property of Spain. Thus, a potentate who claimed to be infallible issued a decree based upon the pontifical conviction that the world was flat, even after the very solid arguments to the contrary of Columbus and da Gama. His Holiness, in his wisdom, imagined that one nation might sail to the right, the other to the left, and go on forever: he did not foresee, what was now almost palpable to every eye but that of Roman infallibility, that the Spaniards and the Portuguese would at last meet at the antipodes. There, in time, they did meet, and the very pretty dispute which arose in consequence we shall narrate in the sequel. But a more immediate effect of the decree was this:--a Spaniard, if he felt himself neglected or maltreated by his own sovereign, would offer his services to the Portuguese king, confident of employment at his hands, as the latter would thus weaken Spain and profit by discoveries made by her subjects. A Portuguese, if similarly aggrieved, would in the same way desert to the Spanish king and accept service from the Spanish crown. It so happened that one Fernâo Magalhaens, known in English as Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese by birth, and who had served with distinction in the East Indies under Albuquerque, addressed himself to the court of Lisbon for the recompense which was his due. His application was treated with disdain. He forthwith withdrew to Spain with a learned man who had been similarly neglected, one Ruy Falero, an astronomer, whom the Portuguese regarded as a conjurer and charlatan. Magellan made overtures for new discoveries to Cardinal Ximenes, then Prime Minister of Spain, and in reality its ruler during the absence of Charles V. The Portuguese ambassador sought by every means in his power to baffle his designs, and demanded of the court that he and Falero should be given up as deserters. He even offered Magellan a reward if he would desist from his purpose, or, at least, execute it in the service of Portugal. But the cardinal listened with favor to the plan presented by Magellan, which was briefly as follows: