Columbus: Origins
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This post is the second in a series on Christopher Columbus. If you missed it, read Part I here.
Columbus first steps into the light of recorded history quite late in life. His origins thus remain shrouded in mystery, partly fostered by the man himself, who seems embarrassed of his humble beginning. As such, there have been many competing theories as to his birthplace. His later achievements on behalf of Spain have led many nationalist historians there to claim him as one of their own. Others have said he was Portuguese, still others Corsican, Greek, Basque. Some have even argued he was a converted Jew. None of these are particularly plausible. Instead it’s most likely he was Genoese, a fact conceded by his son Ferdinand in his biography, and seemingly confirmed by a collection of records and deeds that have survived from mid-15th century Genoa.
One particular sheet of parchment tells us that a Giovanni Colombo signed his eleven year-old son, Domenico, off to become an apprentice weaver in 1429. Sons often followed fathers in their trades, so it’s probable that this was the family business. Domenico grew up to own property in Genoa, and was considered trustworthy enough by his fellow tradesmen to be admitted into the local wool-weaving guild. He must have known key figures in the city, for in 1447 the Doge of Genoa granted him wardership of the Tower and Gate dell’Olivella, one of the city gates, for a modest wage. He married a woman called Susanna Fontanarossa,1 about whom we know very little. Together they had five children: Bartholomeo, Giovanni, Giacomo, a daughter named Bianchinetta, and of course, the eldest, Cristoforo.
From clues in the legal records, we can tentatively place Cristoforo’s birth in the summer of 1451. The boy was unlikely to have received much, if any, formal education. When Cristoforo was eight(ish), he lived about fifty yards from the site where the Doge, a man named Pietro Fregoso, was attacked by his enemies in the street. He was clubbed in the head with a mace, eventually dying a few hours later from his injuries. His body was dismembered by a mob in public. We can’t say if the young Cristoforo saw this himself, but if he did it must have left quite the impression.
The Doge’s death was bad news for the Colombo family. Domenico had thrown his lot in with the faction of the city that had supported Fregoso, and now he was dead, power in Genoa had swung decisively towards the other side. He wasn’t rich before, and being out of favour politically would only make things more difficult. Not long afterwards, the family moved out of the city to a nearby village called Savona, where Cristoforo’s father plied his trade on behalf of the guild. Business can’t have been great, because he took up another venture there too, opening a public-house. Whether Cristoforo was still living at home at this stage, or had already gone to sea, is unclear.
Whatever life was like in the house of a middling merchant in 15th century Genoa, the Admiral later found his upbringing a source of great embarrassment. He never once in his own letters admitted where he was from. Sometimes the contradictions in the contemporary biographies makes it seem as if he had been deliberately muddying the waters, all the better to conceal his past. Today, we tend to find a rags-to-riches story a greater achievement than being born into land and titles, but in the Late Middle Ages pedigree was all. One wonders if his father’s fall from grace in Genoa, after backing the wrong political horse, left a lasting wound, a chip on the shoulder. Whatever the case, Columbus seems to have emerged from his childhood looking away from his birthplace, and with a point to prove.
To understand Columbus, we must understand the world he was born into. Late Middle Age Europe was in something of a spiritual crisis. The burning of heretic Jan Hus, the ensuing Hussite wars, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the steady encroachment of Muslim Ottoman armies ever further into Eastern Europe, set the stage for a Christian millenarianism that would be turbocharged by the nailing of Luther’s 95 theses to a door in the following century. Similarly, the ongoing Reconquista — the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula by the Christian kingdoms of Castile, León, Aragon, and Portugal — was viewed as part of a cosmic struggle between the true faith and unbelievers. There was a small but growing sense that the end times might be approaching. In the halls of both kings and cardinals, there were mutterings of reviving the Crusades. If they could retake Jerusalem, perhaps the Second Coming could be induced.
Columbus’ native city, Genoa, was also undergoing profound change. The prior century had seen the mercantile republic’s power and wealth reach its zenith. Fourteenth century Genoa had dominated the Black Sea trade: their colonies in Caffa, Galata, and Chios brought their merchants rich profits from trade in spices, mastic (known as the ‘Tears of Chios’), and slaves. The Genoese trade network stretched across the entire breadth of the Mediterranean and out into the Atlantic, while at home, silk textile production provided the engine to a domestic manufacturing economy.2 Innovations in finance had given rise to some of the world’s first banks.
But by the time of Columbus’ birth, the city’s fortunes had begun to wane. A disastrous defeat to Venice in the War of Chiogga saw Genoa’s great rival surpass them once more as the supreme mercantile republic in the Mediterranean. Things were even worse on land. Rivalries between larger powers — namely France, Milan, Aragon, and Sicily — led to the loss of the city’s political autonomy. Not that politics stopped business: Genoese ships were employed in the merchant navies of all the sea powers of Europe.
Nowhere was this more evidenced than in the burgeoning Portuguese Empire. Under Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), Portugal had conquered the city of Ceuta, its first overseas colony, in 1415. The following decades saw waves of nimble caravel ships — newly invented — make forays down the western coast of Africa. Though these discoveries were made in the name of the Portuguese crown, many of the ships were sailed by Genoese captains. Antoniotto Usodimare was among the first to explore the Gambia River and coast of Guinea, while Cape Verde was named and discovered by Antonio de Noli — the Genoese navigator was even named the archipelago’s first colonial governor.
Not to be outdone, the Castilians soon claimed the Canary Islands. This was to be the first true instance of settler colonialism in the Age of Discovery; while the Portuguese tended to restrict their activities to hastily built coastal forts, trading rather than warring with the local polities that neighboured their outposts, Castile oversaw the full conquest and resettlement of the Canaries. The Castilians enslaved the indigenous Guanches, who were soon exterminated by disease and the brutalities of forced labour on plantations. In a practice that would eventually be emulated on the other side of the Atlantic, the Castilians replaced the shrinking indigenous labour with slaves brought from the African continent.
Speaking of slavery, the trade formed a key part of the Mediterranean and Atlantic economy. Arab slave traders of North Africa had for centuries dragged enchained thousands across the Sahara to be sold in markets across the southern Mediterranean. But they were almost all bound for service in the Islamic caliphates. The Christian kingdoms sourced their servants from among the Orthodox populations of Eastern Europe, bought from the Crimean Tartars on the shores of the Black Sea.3 Women were in particular demand, employed as they were in households across North Africa and Europe. During Columbus’ youth, almost all noble and middle-class houses in Genoa kept domestic slaves; it was a similar story in Iberia. It was only after the expanding Ottoman Empire closed off the Black Sea routes to Genoa and Venice that merchants turned to Africa as a source of labour. In their adventures down the West African coast, the Portuguese soon found easy profits in bypassing the Arab middlemen, collecting slaves straight from the source and selling them for high margins back in Iberia and the new Atlantic island colonies, like the Azores and Canaries.
At some stage during his youth, the young Cristoforo made the decision to go out to sea. For an enterprising young Genoese looking to better himself, this was a natural decision to take.
In one letter, Columbus suggests that he first boarded a ship at fourteen. This could be an exaggeration, designed to boost his seafaring credentials, or it could be the truth. It’s very possible he started life as a ship’s boy, slowing working his way up the ranks. If he began his career on a Genoese ship, it’s likely he sailed to many of the city’s colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean; indeed, Columbus later claimed to have visited Chios in person. At sea for weeks at a time, it’s here in the ship’s hold that we must imagine Columbus received the bulk of his education, through self-study. He would have had many idle hours to read and read and read.4 We know he was fascinated by cosmography, by stories of exploration — especially Marco Polo’s Travels, which had been written from a Genoese prison cell only a century before Columbus’ birth. Columbus was a true autodidact, teaching himself to read and write Latin and Spanish,5 to reckon by the stars above and navigate the currents below. How often he visited home in those early years can’t be known.
The story only comes into clearer focus when Columbus was shipwrecked during a battle off the coast of Portugal in 1476. Early sources contend this was a battle between Portuguese and Genoese ships; there’s hints that the young sailor might have been fighting on the opposite side to his countrymen. If true, it seems he was not a patriotic man, though in this he would have been by no means unusual for his time. Flung into the waves, Columbus survived by clinging to an oar. The current eventually took him to shore, where he must have collapsed in desperate thanks for his salvation. For a man as intensely devout as Columbus — and he was very, very devout6 — being delivered to dry land when the rest of his crew had sunk to the bottom of the sea was taken as a sign: the Lord had preserved him for a special purpose. He was alive for a reason.
After his shipwreck, we know Columbus took up residence in Lisbon. Here he owned a cartography workshop with his brother, Bartholomeo. In 1477, Columbus sailed on trading expeditions to Ireland and Iceland. Upon the former he claimed to have seen people of Asian appearance; upon the latter it would not be a stretch to imagine he heard rumour from the Norse of lands out west. The Viking colonies in Greenland had been abandoned only a century before; we know now that some of their more intrepid captains had made it all the way to the coasts of northeast Canada, or as they called it in their sagas, Vinland. Columbus would have heard too of rumours of an Atlantic island known as Antillia — said to have been settled by seven Visigothic bishops and their flocks after the Muslim conquest of Hispania in the 8th century. Folk said they were still out there, forgotten and alone in the midst of the churning sea. On a visit to Madeira in 1478, as the sugar he’d bought was being loaded into the hold, I imagine Columbus looking out to the western horizon. What could be beyond that shimmering line?
In 1479, Columbus fell helplessly in love. He first glimpsed Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, daughter of an impoverished Portuguese noble family, in church. Somehow, the awkward sea captain managed through intermediaries to win his bride. His marriage to Felipa is interesting for two reasons. First, by marrying into nobility, even a family fallen on hard times, Columbus demonstrates an impressive degree of social mobility — few sons of a woolweavers marry ladies. I’d wager his wife’s pedigree meant a great deal to the socially conscious, chip-on-shoulder Cristóvão, as they called him in Portugal. So too, I’d guess, did the fact that his new father-in-law held a hereditary title over Porto Santo, one of the newly Portuguese islands in the Atlantic. The lands were poor so the title was worth little — not that Columbus had any hope of inheriting it; Felipa had a brother — but it must have opened the eyes of the Genoese navigator to the possibility that new lands brought with them potential for titles. Often it was the discoverer who was granted possession.
Columbus’ first son, Diego, was born in 1480. In the following years we know the captain traded along the Guinea and Gold coasts of West Africa. On at least one of many voyages undertaken during this time, he visited the Portuguese fortress of São Jorge da Mina (in what is today Ghana). He wasn’t to know it then, but these expeditions would prove a vital education in the vagaries of Atlantic winds. There’s no documentary evidence we can point to, but I think it extremely likely that at least part of his business in West Africa was trade in slaves. When Columbus returned to Portugal in 1485, he found his wife had died while he had been away.
At least part of the impetus for European trade southwards along the African coast was a search for a new route to the East. Ottoman expansion had cut off the old Silk Road routes once walked by Marco Polo to Christian traders; goods which had been common in his parents’ day had by Columbus’ adulthood become almost impossible to find in European markets. In the wake of this economic calamity, geographers and merchants alike began to wonder at a new route eastwards. One scholar in particular had a great effect on the impressionable mind of Christopher Columbus; his name was Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397-1482 AD).
The Florentine astrologer and mathematician had transcribed a long-lost-to-Italy map of the world by the ancient geographer, Strabo. Toscanelli was adamant that the widely accepted calculation for the circumference of the Earth — first made by Eratosthenes in the third century BC — was incorrect. He preferred the theories of Marinus of Tyre (c. 70–130 AD), who had believed the world was about 17% smaller than its true value. The expanse to the west of Europe was in fact much smaller than claimed, he said, meaning it was possible to sail westwards from Europe across the bare and boundless ocean to the far eastern edge of Asia. The Florentine presented his theory to King Alfonso V of Portugal some time in the 1470s, but was rebuffed.
For reasons not entirely clear, Toscanelli later took up correspondence with Columbus, even sending him a copy of his map. Perhaps the Genoese had already by this stage established a reputation among the sailors of the Atlantic as a believer in a western passage, or perhaps his hybrid profession as both experienced sea captain and cartographer meant he was seen as an interesting intellectual interlocutor by Toscanelli. Whatever the case, the Florentine’s theories made a great impression upon Columbus, who cross-referenced the measurements with the observations of Marco Polo. The Venetian traveller had written of a great island off the coast of Cathay (China), which he called Cipangu (Japan). A possible route began to take shape in the Genoese’s mind. Sailing out from the Iberian Peninsula, an adventurous captain could island-hop from the Canaries to Antillia to Cipangu to Cathay. Whomever could be the first to do so would undoubtedly be lauded as the greatest explorer of his day. Imagine the titles he would be showered with for such a discovery. Imagine the riches. God would reserve such an accomplishment for only a very special captain. Columbus began to believe himself to be just such a man.
The Columbus brothers began to work on a plan. By circa 1484, they had approached King João II of Portugal, and asked him for funding. Once again, the Portuguese crown rejected the opportunity to attempt a western passage. The reason for this was twofold: first, the Portuguese were having such great success in their African trade they had no need for a crackpot scheme out west. Why spare ships that were making huge sums of money along the coasts of Africa for almost certain ruin out on the open ocean? Secondly, the experts at the Portuguese court, brought together in a special commission by King João to consider Columbus’ proposal, deemed correctly that the Genoese had no idea what he was talking about. The Columbus-Toscanelli calculation that the distance from the Canaries to Cathay was only 2,300 miles — in other words, possible to do in a single leg without resupply — was more than five times off the true figure (12,200 miles). Any ship that attempted such a journey would undoubtedly see its entire crew starve to death long before reaching its destination, if they hadn’t already mutinied long before.
But Columbus was not a man to let rejection dampen his spirits. As he will prove time and again in this story, he was nothing if not dogged. He approached the councils of both his native Genoa and his city’s great rival, Venice; again, he was rejected. No doubt the memory of the Vivaldi brothers lingered in the ports of Italy; Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi had set out upon a much vaunted expedition from Genoa in 1291 with the aim of reaching India by rounding Africa. After sailing out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic, they were never seen or heard from again.7
Still undiscouraged, the Columbus brothers decided to split up. Bartholomeo headed to England to petition King Henry VII; Cristoforo set out for Castile.
Cristóbal Colón, as they called him in Spain, sailed from Lisbon to Palos, on the southwest coast of Castile, in 1485. Here lived two of his brothers-in-law by way of his late wife, with whom he could leave his young son, Diego. Whether by chance or design, the visit would prove opportune for another reason too. He met at La Rábida, the local monastery, Franciscan monks who studied cosmography, and who were supportive of his ideas of a western route. These men would later prove useful allies in the Spanish court. That was where he headed next.
Spain then was not as Spain now. Instead of a unified whole it was made up of a patchwork of distinct kingdoms. The two most important were the Kingdom of Castile and León, ruled by Queen Isabella, and the Kingdom of Aragon, ruled by King Ferdinand II. Their marriage brought their respective kingdoms into a union, though they were still governed as distinct polities until the 18th century. To avoid the precedence of one kingdom over the other, there was no fixed capital, and the Catholic Monarchs (as convention calls them) ruled from an itinerant court — one that moved from city to city. When Columbus first travelled to meet them, they were in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. Once again, he made his case before a European crown; once again he failed to secure backing.
Though rebuffed, the Genoese was not dismissed. Isabella in particular, who like Columbus, was very, very devout, was interested in the scheme. She ordered a commission to look into his proposal, and in the meantime offered him a pension, keeping him on at court with a modest stipend. Despite this generous offer, the Catholic Monarchs were in truth far too preoccupied to seriously consider funding Columbus’ adventure at this stage. All their focus was on the ongoing Reconquista; they were in the midst of conquering the last vestige of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula, the Emirate of Granada. For over five years, Columbus followed the court around southern Spain, from castle to military camp, awaiting to hear the verdict.8 A less determined man would surely have given up.
Finally, in 1490, the commission reported its findings. Just like the geographers of Portugal, the Spanish scholars all agreed that Columbus was completely wrong in his estimation of the size of the ocean ahead of him. They determined (correctly) that it was impossible to sail from Europe to Asia without a resupply. Strangely though, the Monarchs did not dismiss Columbus after their advisors called his scheme crackpot. Instead they kept him on at court, continuing his stipend.
There must have been something about the mad captain, a blazing fire behind the eyes perhaps, an unshakeable conviction in the truth of his claims, that meant the Monarchs couldn’t quite bring themselves to dismiss him altogether. His unpopularity with the men who later served under him suggests it couldn’t have been a natural charisma that led to his favour with the Monarchs, particularly Isabella, whom of the two he was able to build the greater rapport, but something else. I suspect it was his unrelenting certitude, in himself, in God, in his messianic sense of mission. When a man as unyielding as Christopher Columbus remains adamant in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence that he can sail off the edge of the known world, I think a part of you just wants to see if he can do it.
Whatever the case, he was kept on retainer for another year. News likely arrived from Portugal: Bartolomeu Dias had returned to Lisbon triumphant, the Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. But the Spanish soon had their own reasons to celebrate: after a decade-long war and an eight-month siege, Granada, last city of the Moors, surrendered to the Christian kingdoms on the 2nd January 1492.
With the completion of the Reconquista, the Christian missionary and anti-Islamic fervour of the Catholic Monarchs did not abate; it was only emboldened, made more ambitious. The millenarianist streak of 15th century Christendom led some to wonder if it would be possible now to revive the Crusades: today Iberia, tomorrow North Africa… could Jerusalem be within reach? If so, they would need money. The Spanish coffers were all but exhausted after the protracted war, and to make matters worse, the Monarchs had already decided, though not yet announced, that they would be issuing a decree: all Jews must now convert to the true faith, or leave Spain. An exodus of Jewish merchants and bankers would only worsen a cash-strapped economy. Perhaps it was worth rolling the dice on a harebrained scheme, perhaps it would be worth taking a punt on some very long odds.
Just before Granada fell, Columbus is asked to make his case before the committee once more. They are camped in a specially built town, constructed in the shape of a cross outside the walls of the infidels. In his later letters, Columbus claims to have appealed to the Monarch’s religiosity, promising new converts to Christianity among the peoples he will encounter, while suggesting too that the profits from his venture could be used to retake the Holy Land. He says that they smiled in response. But no firm answer is given. The committee continue to debate over the following weeks and months. Then, Granada falls. With the victory comes a defeat; the decision comes: it’s a no. Columbus, dejected, perhaps more miserable than he has ever been, forty years old and with nothing to show for the last decade of his life, leaves camp on a mule. Where he is headed isn’t known. Perhaps to France, to try his luck with another king. But then, a miracle.
Columbus’ friends at La Rábida monastery have helped convince a key figure at court — Luis de Santángel, the crown’s treasurer. He makes the point to the King and Queen: financing this venture would not require a lot of money. It’s unlikely to work, but who knows? If the Genoese can pull this off, the payoff would be huge. A direct trade route with India? We’d be the richest kingdom in Europe. The order is given. A rider dispatched. He catches up with Columbus a few miles outside of town. Permission is granted. Sail west.
Among those who argue Columbus was a converted Jew, his mother’s name is held up as evidence in favour of that theory. But this was a fairly common name for Christians in Italy in the 15th century. She was probably named after the Church of Santa Susannah in Rome.
Incidentally, Domenico Colombo’s own trade, wool-weaving, was a lot less profitable than the more important silk business. Each had separate guilds, and were considered distinct professions.
Such was the volume of ethnic Slavs sold into slavery, it gave us the English word ‘slave’.
The printing press had just been invented, so for the first time in history it was easy for a poor sailor like Columbus to get his hands on all kinds of books and texts.
His first language was presumably Ligurian, the dialect then spoken in Genoa.
Some historians have suggested that his own name, Christopher Columbus, might have helped inspire his burning religiosity. Christopher means “Christ-bearer”, literally he who carries Christ with him, while Columbus is Latin for “dove”, which in Christian symbology is often taken to represent the Holy Spirit. Columbus was exactly the sort of man who would take his own name as evidence that God had some special missionary purpose for him. Perhaps taking the Word of God to a new part of the world?
Antoniotto Usodimare, the aforementioned Genoese navigator sailing on behalf of Portugal, later claimed to have met and spoken with the last descendants of those on the ill-fated Vivaldi expedition near the mouth of the Gambia. I don’t believe him.
It was on these travels around Spain that Columbus fell in love for the second time, this time with a woman called Beatriz Enríquez de Harana of Córdoba, by whom he had his second son, Ferdinand. Though he was born out of wedlock, Columbus proved as devoted to him as his first son, Diego.
Great reading, loving this series! And good to see my home island of Chios mentioned .
I wonder how this complicated man might take being called an “American” knowing that label was derived from that of Amerigo Vespucci?