COLOMBO, CRISTOFORO. — The great navigator, born in Genoa, as is unanimously attested by archival documents, by statements of C. himself or of his relatives, and by highly authoritative contemporaries such as A. Giustiniani, in 1451, between August and October, into a modest family of the Ligurian artisan class. His father was engaged in commerce, especially in woolens, and Cristoforo initially assisted him; later he entered the service of important Genoese commercial firms, above all the Centurione and Dinegro families, which conducted extensive business in many Mediterranean countries. In this capacity, which might be defined as that of a commercial agent, he probably made a voyage to Chios; in the same capacity he is found in Lisbon in 1476, where those firms had a trading house, and in Madeira in 1478. From 1479 he was permanently established in Lisbon, and there, or in Madeira, he married Filipa Moniz Perestrello, daughter of a Bartolomeo Perestrello of Italian origin, governor of the island of Porto Santo. It seems that this marriage gave him connections in the circles of the Portuguese court and brought him into contact with Portugal’s movement of commercial and maritime expansion. At that time, by privileges sanctioned by papal bulls, this country held a monopoly on maritime expeditions in the Atlantic; aboard a Portuguese ship, C. made at least one voyage to Guinea, after 1482. At that time he conceived his great project, which consisted in reaching East Asia, or the Indies, as they were then called, by sailing westward across the open ocean, rather than taking the long route around Africa. This navigation, based on ideas certainly very erroneous but widely circulated in his time, was considered by C. much shorter than the circumnavigation of Africa.
C., who had not pursued regular studies, in these years acquired a cosmographic education by reading works widely circulated in his time (among them the Imago mundi of Cardinal Pietro D’Ailly), in which he found numerous assertions confirming his conviction. C. probably learned only later of a similar project for navigation across the Atlantic, presented as early as 1474 to the Portuguese government by a learned Florentine, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, and made use of it to perfect and substantiate his own. C. also proposed his project to Portugal, which rejected it; then, around 1485, C. left Portugal with a son, Diego, moving to southern Spain, where his wife’s relatives, already deceased by that time, resided, as did other agents of Genoese commercial firms. With the help of his countrymen and of influential acquaintances, he soon gained access to the circles of the Spanish court and presented his project, which some—above all Queen Isabella—favored, while others opposed it; but many long years of hard trials and hardship passed before he could obtain serious consideration. The final difficulties were overcome through the intervention of the prior of the convent of La Rabida, P. Pérez, and other figures from that monastery, where C. and his son Diego had found hospitality in difficult moments. A special agreement concluded at S. Fe near Granada on 17 April 1492 crowned C.’s perseverance: he was granted three small ships to undertake the attempt to reach Asia by crossing the Atlantic, and was assured extremely generous rewards and privileges in the event of success.
(from P. Rivilli, Cristoforo Colombo e granatos, in Emporium, 2 [1921], p. 5)
COLOMBO, CRISTOFORO. – Original autograph letter of C. C. to the protectors of the Banco di S. Giorgio in Genova (Seville, 2 April 1502) – Genova, Palazzo del Comune, Hall of the Podestà.
with the support of a family of local shipowners, the Pinzón. The names of almost all the members of the crew are known, and they essentially always performed their duty very well. There was no ecclesiastic on board. The departure took place on 3 August; after four weeks’ stopover in the Canaries, on 6 September the three caravels began the crossing of the unknown Ocean, which, aided by the blowing of the north-east trade wind, proceeded essentially without mishap until 12 October, the day on which an island was sighted, christened San Salvador by C. and usually identified with Watling in the Bahama group. During the subsequent voyage Cuba was discovered, which C. believed to be a portion of the Asian mainland, and Haiti, identified with Marco Polo’s Cipango, that is, Japan. On the coasts of the latter C. left a small colony, La Navidad; then, on 16 January 1493, he resumed the return journey with two ships, since the S. Maria had been wrecked. On the return voyage, made along a much more northerly route, in the zone of the westerly winds, the ships escaped a cyclone that tested the commander’s nautical skill, and, having reached the Iberian shores unharmed, put in at Palos on 15 March 1493. C. received triumphant welcomes; the twofold crossing was celebrated as an unprecedented maritime undertaking, and to the commander himself it seemed beyond human possibilities, so that he became convinced that he had been guided by Divine Providence. Hence arose his belief in his divine mission, which would accompany C. for the rest of his life.
(courtesy of Fr. Alberto Vaccari)
COLOMBO, CRISTOFORO - Agostino Giustiniani’s Psalterium Octaplum, Genoa 1516. Beginning of the biographical notes on C. C. (“patria Genuensis”), added as a marginal gloss to Ps. 18:5. Copy of the Pontifical Biblical Institute—Rome.
the Lesser Antilles and a better knowledge of Cuba and Haiti, where the city of Isabella was founded; but little or nothing came of the hoped-for riches in gold, gems, and precious products, with which the Asian shores, which C. still believed he had reached, were fabulously said to abound. From these disappointments there sprang up discontent among the colonists and even among certain leading figures at court, who were envious of the foreigner’s rapid rise.
On a third voyage (30 May 1498–November 1500), C. reached the mainland of present-day South America near the mouth of the Orinoco, which he believed to be the Asian mainland; but on returning to Haiti he had to face revolts that, in his absence, had degenerated into open anarchy.
Confident in his evangelizing mission beyond the Ocean (he is the bearer of Christ, Christophorus or Christoforens, as he more often signed himself), C. nevertheless proved unequal to the extremely serious problems involved in organizing the colonial lands over which he was viceroy and governor by virtue of the agreements of S. Fe; the party opposed to him in Spain took advantage of this to obtain from the sovereigns the dispatch of an inspector, Francesco Bobadilla, who, abusing the mandate he had received, had C. arrested together with his brother Bartolomeo and sent him back to Spain in chains.
The humiliation he suffered, and which was not adequately remedied, the many disappointments, and the bitterness arising from failures, misunderstandings, and hostility had the effect of strengthening C.’s religious sentiment. Now conscious of being persecuted, he was guided toward a mysticism that would dominate the remainder of his life. Yet, immovable in his blind confidence that he had found the direct maritime route to Asia and had reached that continent, C. requested and obtained command of a fourth expedition (May 1502–November 1504), during which, having reached the isthmic region of present-day Central America, he sailed as far as the coast of Veragua, not far from present-day Panama, in search of a passage toward India and the mouths of the Ganges. If fortune had smiled upon him, he perhaps intended to return by way of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, even attempting the reconquest of the Holy Land! The voyage, an interminable succession of hardships, ended with the ships, by then damaged and worn out, being sheltered in a port on the solitary island of Jamaica. There C., now tortured in body and weakened in his final indomitable energies, seemed destined to end his days “so far from the Holy Sacraments of the Holy Church that she will forget this soul if it departs from the body here,” as he himself wrote in a famous letter, invoking the compassion of “whoever holds charity, truth, and justice!” Salvation came unexpectedly to the desperate man through the successful attempt of two trusted men who, after a very long period resembling a slow agony, managed to send him a rescue ship. Having returned to Spain on 7 November 1504, C. died forgotten at Valladolid on 20 May 1506, the vigil of the Ascension, attended by his sons and only a very few relatives. His last words were: “In manus tuas Domine commendo animam meam”.
C.’s mortal remains were first buried in the Franciscan cloister at Valladolid, and then in 1509 in the
COLOMBO, CRISTOFORO - Psalterium Octaplum by Agostino Giustiniani, Genoa 1516. End of the biographical notes on C. C. added as a marginal gloss to Ps. 18:5. Copy of the Pont. Biblical Institute - Rome.
chapel of S. Anna in the convent of Las Cuevas in Seville. In 1537 they were buried in the cathedral of S. Domingo, from where they were transferred in 1796 to the cathedral of Havana. When Spain lost Cuba, it wished the bones of the great navigator to be returned to Seville, and since 1898 they have been enclosed in a monumental ark in the cathedral of that city. It is a persistent, though unconfirmed, tradition that at the time of the transfer from S. Domingo the bones were deliberately changed.
C., exalted not without reason as the greatest navigator of all times and all countries and certainly endowed with exceptional nautical skill and intuition, was also an apostolic soul, not lacking the aureole of martyrdom: from the apostle he possessed an inexhaustible faith, overcoming every obstacle, and the mysticism that, ever more tenaciously as the years progressed, rooted in his spirit the conviction that he had been predestined to the supreme mission of propagating the Catholic faith beyond the Ocean. Proof of this is the Libro de las profecías, which he composed during the final period of his life in collaboration with his intimate friend, Fr. Gaspare Gorresio (Gorricio) of Novara, in which passages from ancient and medieval authors prophesying his mission are collected; proof of it are visions and appeals, such as the heavenly voice heard on the coasts of Veragua, confirming that God had entrusted him with the keys to the oceanic barriers. This spiritual orientation began, as has been said, on his return from the first voyage and grew ever stronger with the passing of the years and events, so that C. drew closer to God the more he felt persecuted, humiliated, and unrecognized on earth. Within the Church, the possibility of his elevation to the altars has been discussed several times; the essential obstacle is the illegitimate relationship that, after his wife’s death, he maintained during the most critical period of his life with a Beatrice Enriquez de Harana, from which an illegitimate son, Fernando, was born at Cordova in 1488; he became a great humanist and cosmographer. C. commended the fortunes of this woman to his heirs in his final testament, in moving words; it is unknown what reasons prevented a regular union.