Origin theories of Christopher Columbus


The exact ethnic or national origin of Christopher Columbus has been a source of speculation since the 19th century. The general consensus among [|historians] is that Columbus's family was from the coastal region of Liguria, that he spent his boyhood and early youth in the Republic of Genoa, in Genoa, in Vico Diritto, and that he subsequently lived in Savona, where his father Domenico moved in 1470. Much of this evidence derives from data concerning Columbus's immediate family connections in Genoa and opinions voiced by contemporaries concerning his Genoese origins, which few dispute.

Genoese origin

Documents

In a 1498 deed of primogeniture, Columbus writes:
Many historians, including a distinguished Spanish scholar, Altolaguirre, affirm the document's authenticity; others believe it apocryphal. Some believe that the fact that it was produced in court, during a lawsuit among the heirs of Columbus, in 1578, does not strengthen the case for its being genuine.
A letter from Columbus, dated 2 April 1502, to the Bank of Saint George, the oldest and most reputable of Genoa's financial institutions, begins with the words:
Although a few people consider this letter suspect, the vast majority of scholars believe it genuine. The most scrupulous examination by graphologists testifies in favour of authenticity. The letter is one of a group of documents entrusted by Columbus to a Genoese friend, after the bitter experiences of his third voyage, before setting out on his fourth.
In the spring of 1502, Columbus collected notarized copies of all the writings concerned with his rights to the discovery of new lands. He sent these documents to Nicolò Oderico, ambassador of the Republic of Genoa. To this same Oderico he handed over the letter to the Bank of Saint George, in which he announced that he was leaving the bank one-tenth of his income, with a recommendation for his son Diego. Oderico returned to Genoa and delivered the letter to the bank, which replied, on 8 December 1502 lauding the gesture of their "renowned fellow-citizen" towards his "native land". The reply, unfortunately, never reached its destination; Columbus, back in Castile after his fourth voyage, complained about this in another letter to Ambassador Oderico, dated 27 December 1504, and promptly annulled the bequest.
The first letter was preserved in the archives of the Bank of Saint George until it was taken over by the municipality of Genoa; the other three remained in the Oderico family archives until 1670, when they were donated to the Republic of Genoa. After the fall of the Republic, they passed to the library of one of its last senators, Michele Cambiaso, and were finally acquired by the city of Genoa. There are also public and notarial acts — copies of which are conserved in the archives of Genoa and Savona — regarding Columbus's father, Columbus himself, his grandfather, and his relatives.
Another doubt remains to be settled: can we be sure that all of the documents cited concern the Christopher Columbus who was later to become Cristóbal Colón, admiral of the Ocean Sea in Spanish territory? The list of contemporary [|ambassadors] and historians unanimous in the belief that Columbus was Genoese could suffice as proof, but there is something more: a document dated 22 September 1470 in which the criminal judge convicts Domenico Colombo. The conviction is tied to the debt of Domenico — together with his son Christopher — toward a certain Girolamo del Porto. In the will dictated by Admiral Christopher Columbus in Valladolid before he died, the authentic and indisputable document which we have today, the dying navigator remembers this old debt, which had evidently not been paid. There is, in addition, the act drawn in Genoa on 25 August 1479 by a notary, Girolamo Ventimiglia. This act is known as the Assereto document, after the scholar who found it in the State Archives in Genoa in 1904. It involves a lawsuit over a sugar transaction on the Atlantic island Madeira. In it, young Christopher swore that he was a 27-year-old Genoese citizen resident in Portugal and had been hired to represent the Genoese merchants in that transaction. Here was proof that he had relocated to Portugal. It is important to bear in mind that at the time when Assereto traced the document, it would have been impossible to make an acceptable facsimile. Nowadays, with modern chemical processes, a document can be "manufactured", made to look centuries old if need be, with such skill that it may be difficult to prove it is a fake. In 1960, this was still impossible.
In addition to the two documents cited, there are others that confirm the identification of the Genoese Christopher Columbus, son of Domenico, with the admiral of Spain. An act dated 11 October 1496 says:
In a fourth notarial act, drawn in Savona on 8 April 1500, Sebastiano Cuneo, heir by half to his father Corrado, requested that Christopher and Giacomo, the sons and heirs of Domenico Colombo, be summoned to court and sentenced to pay the price for two lands located in Legine. This document confirms Christoforo and Diego's absence from the Republic of Genoa with these exact words: "dicti conventi sunt absentes ultra Pisas et Niciam."

A fifth notarial act, drawn in Savona on 26 January 1501, is more explicit. A group of Genoese citizens, under oath, said and say, together and separately and in every more valid manner and guise, that Christopher, Bartholomew and Giacomo Columbus, sons and heirs of the aforementioned Domenico, their father, have for a long time been absent from the city and the jurisdiction of Savona, as well as Pisa and Nice in Provence, and that they reside in the area of Spain, as was and is well known.

Finally, there is a very important sixth document from the notary of Bartolomeo Oddino, drawn in Savona on 30 March 1515. With this notarial act, Leon Pancaldo, the well-known Savonese who would become one of the pilots for Magellan's voyage, sends his own father-in-law in his place as procurator for Diego Columbus, son of Admiral Christopher Columbus. The document demonstrates how the ties, in part economic, of the discoverer's family with Savona survived even his death.

''The life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by his son Ferdinand''

A biography written by Columbus's son Ferdinand, Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; nelle quali s'ha particolare, et vera relatione della vita, et de' fatti dell'Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre; Et dello scoprimento, ch'egli fece delle Indie Occidentali, dette Nuovo Mondo, exists.
In it, Ferdinand claimed that his father was of Italian aristocracy. He describes Columbus to be a descendant of a Count Columbo of the Castle Cuccaro. Columbo was in turn said to be descended from a legendary Roman General Colonius. It is now widely believed that Christopher Columbus used this persona to ingratiate himself with the aristocracy, an elaborate illusion to mask a humble merchant background. Ferdinand dismissed the fanciful story that the Admiral descended from the Colonus mentioned by Tacitus. However, he refers to "those two illustrious Coloni, his relatives." According to Note 1, on page 287, these two "were corsairs not related to each other or to Christopher Columbus, one being Guillame de Casenove, nicknamed Colombo, Admiral of France in the reign of Louis XI". At the top of page 4, Ferdinand listed Nervi, Cogoleto, Bogliasco, Savona, Genoa and Piacenza as possible places of origin. He also stated:
In chapter ii, Ferdinand accuses Agostino Giustiniani of telling lies about the discoverer:
In chapter v, he writes:
Ferdinand also says that before he was declared admiral, his father used to sign himself "Columbus de Terra rubra," that is to say, Columbus of Terrarossa, a village or hamlet near Genoa. In another passage, Ferdinand says that his father went to Lisbon and taught his brother Bartholomew to construct sea charts, globes and nautical instruments; and sent this brother to England to make proposals to Henry VII of his desired voyage. Finally, Ferdinand says incidentally that Christopher's brother, Bartholomew Columbus named the new settlement Santo Domingo in memory of their father, Domenico.
The publication of Historie has been used by historians as providing indirect evidence about the Genoese origin of Columbus.

The testimony of the ambassadors

It is significant that no one protested at the court of Spain when in April 1501, in the feverish atmosphere of the great discovery, Nicolò Oderico, ambassador of the Genoese Republic, after praising the Catholic Sovereigns, went on to say that they "discovered with great expenditure hidden and inaccessible places under the command of Columbus, our fellow-citizen, and having tamed wild barbarians and unknown peoples, they educated them in religion, manners and laws". Furthermore, two diplomats from Venice — no great friend of Genoa, indeed, a jealous rival — added the appellation "Genoese" to Columbus's name: the first, Angelo Trevisan, in 1501, the second, Gasparo Contarini, in 1525. In 1498, Pedro de Ayala, Spanish ambassador to the English court, mentioned John Cabot, "the discoverer, another Genoese, like Columbus". All these references were published, along with reproductions of some of the original documents, in the City of Genoa volume of 1931.

Support for the Genoese origin from contemporary European writers

The historian Bartolomé de las Casas, whose father traveled with Columbus on his second journey and who personally knew Columbus' sons, writes in chapter 2 of his Historia de las Indias:
The historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, writes that Domenico Colombo was the Admiral's father; and in chapter 2, book 3 of his Historia general y natural de las Indias:
Many contemporary writers agree that the discoverer was Genoese:
Columbus's Genoese birth is also confirmed by the works of the English Hakluyt, of the Spaniard Antonio de Herrera, the great Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega, a paper manuscript dated 1626, conserved in Madrid's National Library, the works of the German Filioop Cluwer, the German Giovanni Enrico Alsted, the French Dionisio Petau, and the Spaniard Luigi de Marmol. This list represents the early writings of non-Italians. There were sixty-two Italian testimonies between 1502 and 1600. Of these fourteen are from Ligurian writers. It may be obvious, but not useless, to underline that the Venetians' recognition of Columbus's Genoese birth constitutes a testimony as impartial as that of the Spaniards, French, and Portuguese.
Conformable to the testament in Seville is the evidence of Ferdinand Columbus, who states that his father was conterraneo with Mons. Agostino Giustiniani, who was, beyond all doubt, born at Genoa:

Other information

Other testimony of contemporary or succeeding authors include:
Scholars from all over the world agree that Columbus was Genoese.
Samuel Eliot Morison, in his book Christopher Columbus: Admiral of the Ocean Sea, notes that many existing legal documents demonstrate the Genoese origin of Columbus, his father Domenico, and his brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo. These documents, written in Latin by notaries, were legally valid in Genoese courts. The documents, uncovered in the 19th century when Italian historians examined the Genoese archives, form part of the Raccolta Colombiana. On page 14, Morison writes:
Besides these documents from which we may glean facts about Christopher's early life, there are others which identify the Discoverer as the son of Domenico the wool weaver, beyond the possibility of doubt. For instance, Domenico had a brother Antonio, like him a respectable member of the lower middle class in Genoa. Antonio had three sons: Matteo, Amigeto and Giovanni, who was generally known as Giannetto. Giannetto, like Christopher, gave up a humdrum occupation to follow the sea. In 1496 the three brothers met in a notary's office at Genoa and agreed that Johnny should go to Spain and seek out his first cousin "Don Cristoforo de Colombo, Admiral of the King of Spain," each contributing one third of the traveling expenses. This quest for a job was highly successful. The Admiral gave Johnny command of a caravel on the Third Voyage to America, and entrusted him with confidential matters as well.
On the topic of Columbus' being born somewhere besides Genoa, Morison states "Every contemporary Spaniard or Portuguese who wrote about Columbus and his discoveries calls him Genoese. Four contemporary Genoese chroniclers claim him as a compatriot. Every early map on which his nationality is recorded describes him as Genoese or Ligur, a citizen of the Ligurian Republic. Nobody in the Admiral's lifetime, or for three centuries after, had any doubt about his birthplace" and that "There is no more reason to doubt that Christopher Columbus was a Genoese-born Catholic Christian, steadfast in his faith and proud of his native city, than to doubt that George Washington was a Virginia-born Anglican of English race, proud of being an American."
The position of Morison, is adopted by the British historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, who writes in his book:
The Catalan, French, Galician, Greek, Ibizan, Jewish, Majorcan, Polish, Scottish, and other increasingly silly Columbuses concocted by historical fantasists are agenda-driven creations, usually inspired by a desire to arrogate a supposed or confected hero to the cause of a particular nation or historic community - or, more often than not, to some immigrant group striving to establish a special place of esteem in the United States. The evidence of Columbus's origins in Genoa is overwhelming: almost no other figure of his class or designation has left so clear a paper trail in the archives.
Paolo Emilio Taviani, in his book Cristoforo Colombo: Genius of the Sea discusses "the public and notarial acts - original copies of which are conserved in the archives of Genoa and Savona - regarding Columbus's father, Columbus himself, his grandfather, and his relatives." In Columbus the Great Adventure he further claims that Columbus named the small island of Saona "to honor Michele da Cuneo, his friend from Savona."
This is fully accepted by Consuelo Varela Bueno, "Spain's leading authority on the texts, documents, and handwriting of Columbus." She devotes several pages to the question of Columbus native land, and concludes that "all chroniclers of that period wrote that he was from Liguria in northern Italy." The evidence supporting the Genoese origin of Columbus is also discussed by Miles H. Davidson. In his book Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined, he writes:
Diego Méndez, one of his captains, in testimony given in the Pleitos, he said that Columbus was "Genoese, a native of Savona which is a town near Genoa." Those who reject this and the more than ample other contemporary evidence, given by both Italian and Spanish sources as well as by witnesses at these court hearings, are simply flying in the face of overwhelming evidence. What is the reason behind so much futile speculation? It can be mostly attributed to parochialism. Each of the nations and cities mentioned wants to claim him for its own. Since no effort was made to locate the supporting data until the early nineteenth century, and since at that time not all of the archives had been adequately researched, there was, initially, justification for those early efforts to establish who he was and where he came from. To do so today is to fulfill Montaigne's maxim, "No one is exempt from talking non-sense; the misfortune is to do it solemnly."

Language

The spoken language of Genova and the Ligurian coast would primarily have been the Ligurian language. The Italian language was originally based on the fourteenth century vernacular of Florence in the adjacent region of Tuscany, and would not have been the main spoken language of Genova in the fifteenth century.
Although Columbus wrote almost exclusively in Spanish, there is a small handwritten Genoese gloss in a 1498 Italian edition of Pliny's Natural History that he read after his second voyage to America: this shows Columbus was able to write in Genoese and read Italian. There is also a note in Italian in his own Book of Prophecies exhibiting, according to historian August Kling, "characteristics of northern Italian humanism in its calligraphy, syntax, and spelling". Phillips and Phillips point out that 500 years ago, the Romance languages had not distanced themselves to the degree they have today. Bartolomé de las Casas in his Historia de las Indias claimed that Columbus did not know Spanish well and that he was not born in Castile.
Valiant scholars have dedicated themselves to the subject of Christopher Columbus's language. They have conducted in-depth research both on the ship's log and on other writings of his that have come down to the modern day. They have analyzed the words, the terms, and the vocabulary, as well as rather frequent variations often bizarre in style, handwriting, grammar, and syntax. Christopher Columbus's language is Castilian punctuated by noteworthy and frequent Lusitanian, Italian, and Genoese influences and elements.

Catalan hypothesis

Since the early 20th century, researchers have attempted to connect Columbus to the Catalan-speaking areas of Spain, usually based on linguistic evidence. The first to propose a birthplace under the Crown of Aragon was Peruvian historian Luis Ulloa in a book originally published in 1927 in French. Antonio Ballesteros Beretta, University of Madrid historian of America, said that Ulloa's "fiery imagination" had placed abstruse interpretations on court documents to support his thesis, had found no positive proof, and had dismissed as false any evidence supporting a Genoese origin.
Throughout Columbus's life, he referred to himself as Christobal Colom; his contemporaries and family also referred to him as such. It is possible that Colom is the shortened form of Columbus used for the Italian surname Colombo. Colom can also be a Portuguese, French, or Catalan name, and in the latter means "dove".
Some more recent studies also state Columbus had Catalan origins, based on his handwriting, though these have been disputed. Charles J. Merrill, a specialist in medieval Catalan literature at Mount St. Mary's University, claims Columbus's handwriting is typical of a native Catalan, and his mistakes in Castilian are "most likely" transfer errors from Catalan, with examples such as "a todo arreo", "todo de un golpe", "setcentas", "nombre", "al sol puesto". Merrill states that the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo was a modest wool carder and cheese merchant with no maritime training and whose age does not match the one of Columbus. Merrill's book Colom of Catalonia was published in 2008.
However, Samuel Eliot Morison has cast no doubts regarding Columbus's marriage to the Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Perestrello.

Catalan-Jewish hypothesis

Some researchers have postulated that Columbus was of Iberian Jewish origins. Estelle Irizarry, in addition to arguing that Columbus was Catalan, also claims that Columbus tried to conceal a Jewish heritage. In "Three Sources of Textual Evidence of Columbus, Crypto Jew," Irizarry notes that Columbus always wrote in Spanish, occasionally included Hebrew in his writing, and referenced the Jewish High Holidays in his journal during the first voyage.
In a 1973 book, Simon Wiesenthal postulated that Columbus was a Sephardi, careful to conceal his Judaism yet also eager to locate a place of refuge for his persecuted fellow countrymen. Wiesenthal argued that Columbus' concept of sailing west to reach the Indies was less the result of geographical theories than of his faith in certain Biblical texts—specifically the Book of Isaiah. He repeatedly cited two verses from that book: "Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them," ; and "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth". Wiesenthal claimed that Columbus felt that his voyages had confirmed these prophecies.
Jane Francis Amler argued that Columbus was a marrano. In Spain, even some converted Jews were forced to leave Spain after much persecution; it is known that many conversos were still practicing Judaism in secret.
In a footnote to his translation of George Sand's Un hiver à Majorque, Robert Graves remarks: "There is strong historical evidence for supposing that Cristobal Colom was a Majorcan Jew; his surname is still common in the island."

Greek hypothesis

The theory that Columbus was a Byzantine Greek nobleman was first proposed in scholarly fashion in 1943 by Seraphim G. Canoutas, a Greek-American lawyer and independent scholar. The hypothesis rested mainly on statements attributed to Columbus by his son Ferdinand that Columbus had sailed for many years with Colombo the Younger, a famous seaman "of his name and family." Canoutas pointed out that other scholars had convincingly identified Colombo the Younger as Georges Paléologue de Bissipat, an exiled Byzantine nobleman who was living in France by 1460 and rendering valuable service to the French king. However, these scholars rejected Columbus’s claim of kinship with de Bissipat.
Accepting the kinship claim as true, Canoutas established that Georges de Bissipat was in fact Georgios Palaiologos Dishypatos, scion of an ancient Byzantine noble family, who fled to France sometime after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and, until his death in 1496, rendered important service to French kings Louis XI and Charles VIII, including as vice-admiral. According to Canoutas, accepting that Dishypatos and Columbus were noble kinsmen and longtime sailing companions helped explain many anomalies that had to be ignored, or attributed to error or imposture in order to reconcile the accepted account of Columbus's early life as a wool-worker's son with his later life as a nobleman and Admiral.
Canoutas did not identify Columbus’s parents or place of birth, nor did he analyze Columbus’s claimed kinship bond with Dishypatos. However, Canoutas observed that the Byzantine imperial house of Palaiologos, to which Dishypatos was related on his mother’s side, was closely connected by blood or marriage to the ruling families of Italy, including those of Genoa and Montferrat, such as the Doria, Spinola, Centurione, and Gattelusio families. For example, the Palaiologos family were the rulers of Montferrat for more than 200 years. This connection, he argued, might explain why Columbus’s contemporaries and others considered him to be Genoese or Ligurian.
Another book written on his Greek origins is called "Christopher Columbus Was a Greek Prince and His real Name Was Nikolaos Ypsilantis from the Greek Island of Chios" by Spyros Cateras, New Hampshire, 1937. There is also a section in "The Secret Destiny of America" by Manly P. Hall, New York, 1944. pp 62–63.

Portuguese hypothesis

The first author who claimed Portuguese nationality for Christopher Columbus was Patrocínio Ribeiro in 1916. The same text with some additions was again published in 1927, after his death, with a complementary study by the medical doctor Barbosa Soeiro relating Columbus' signature with the Kabbalah.
In 1988 José Mascarenhas Barreto published a book which claims that Columbus was a Portuguese national and spy who hatched up an elaborate diversion to keep the Spanish from the lucrative trade routes that were opening up around Africa to the Indies. Barreto, through his interpretation of the Kabbalah and other research, suggested Columbus was born in Cuba, Portugal, the son of a nobleman and related to other Portuguese navigators. According to this claim, his real name was concealed, Christopher Columbus being a pseudonym, meaning Bearer of Christ and the Holy Spirit. His real name was supposedly Salvador Fernandes Zarco and he was the son of Dom Fernando, Duke of Beja, Alentejo and maternal grandson of João Gonçalves Zarco, discoverer of Madeira. Mascarenhas Barreto, however, has been put into doubt by Portuguese genealogist Luís Paulo Manuel de Meneses de Melo Vaz de São Paio in his works Carta Aberta a um Agente Secreto, Primeira Carta Aberta a Mascarenhas Barreto and Carta Aberta a um "Curioso" da Genealogia.
Proponents of the Portuguese hypothesis also point to a court document which stated that Columbus' nationality was "Portuguese" and in another Columbus uses the words "my homeland" in relation to Portugal.
This theory was popularized among the Portuguese public by the 2005 novel Codex 632, a best-seller written by José Rodrigues dos Santos.
A recent theory also proposes the possibility that Columbus was in fact the Portuguese corsair Pedro de Ataíde.

Polish hypothesis

Writing in The Polish Review, Krystyna Lukasiewicz commented on rumours that King Władysław III of Poland did not die in 1444 but hid on the island of Madeira:
Beginning in all probability around the time of Henrique 's death, such rumors were for the first time recorded in the early eighteenth century. Further popularized by Leopold Kielanowski in the twentieth century, they became the starting point for a bizarre hypothesis that Christopher Columbus was actually the son of King Wladyslaw III Jagiellon hiding on Madeira under the name of Henrique Alemão.

Other hypotheses

Sardinia

The Spanish historian Marisa Azuara has hypothesized that Columbus could be a Sardinian noble from the town of Sanluri, called Christòval Colòn: she claimed that he was son of Salvatore of Siena and Alagon and Isabella Alagon of Arborea, related to Pope Pius II. At the time of his birth, the island of Sardinia was partially under Genoese economic and political rule, until it was conquered at the end of 15th century by the Kingdom of Aragon.
Christòval Colòn would be born in 1436 and he spent his youth studying nautical science, and he spoke both Italian and Spanish.

Corsica

In Calvi, a town on the north coast of Corsica, France, which used to be part of the Genoese Empire, one can see the ruins of a house that locals believe to be Columbus' birthplace.

Norway

Norwegians Svein Grodys and writer Tor Borch Sannes have investigated the anecdote that Columbus was born in Nordfjord, Norway. In his 1991 book Christopher Columbus – en europeer fra Norge, Borch Sannes highlights Ferdinand Columbus' claim that the name Colonus was a translation of a foreign name. Sannes points out that if Columbus were of Scandinavian descent, Colonus would be derived from Bonde, as in the House of Bonde. He points out that the coat of arms of both Columbus and the royal Bonde lineage of Sweden were similar and at the time used a bend. More specifically, Borch Sannes claims that Iohannes Colon, the grandfather of Christopher Columbus, was one Johannes Bonde, the grandson of Tord Bonde and thus a first cousin of King Charles VIII of Sweden/Charles I of Norway, and a second cousin of Erik Johansson Vasa. Borch Sannes further points out that two of Columbus' father's neighbours had the name Bondi. Columbus also had close acquaintances called Galli, almost the name of another important Norwegian noble family at the time, Galle, as well as Scotto, a name Sannes speculates could be Scottish-Norwegian. According to Borch Sannes, the Bonde lineage originally had its seat in Hyen, Nordfjord, but disappeared from Nordfjord with the Black Death. Based on what he admits is circumstantial evidence, Borch Sannes nevertheless outlines a scenario in which Columbus could have been born in Nordfjord. Sannes' book also claims that Columbus may have visited Devon Island in 1477, based on Columbus' description of the 73rd parallel north. Other writers have highlighted Columbus' links to the Justiniani family of Genova, pointing out that the Genovese Paulus Justiniani was the bishop of Bergen from 1457-60. A monument to Columbus has been raised in Hyen.

Scotland

On 10 March 2009, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported that Spanish engineer and amateur historian Alfonso Ensenat de Villalonga claimed that Christopher Columbus was "the son of shopkeepers not weavers and he was baptised Pedro not Christopher" and "his family name was Scotto, and was not Italian but of Scottish origin".

Footnotes