COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER. - The great navigator was born in Genoa, as is unanimously attested by archival documents, by declarations of Columbus himself or of his family members, and by highly authoritative contemporaries such as A. Giustiniani, in 1451, between August and October, into a modest family of Ligurian artisans. His father was engaged in commerce, especially in woolens, and Christopher at first assisted him, then entered the service of important Genoese commercial firms, above all the Centurione and the Dinegro, who had a wide network of business in many Mediterranean countries. In this capacity, which might be described as that of a commercial agent, he probably made a voyage to Chios; in this capacity he is found in 1476 in Lisbon, where those firms had a trading house, and in 1478 in Madeira. From 1479 he was definitively settled in Lisbon, and here, 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 procured for him acquaintances in the circles of the Portuguese court and brought him into contact with Portugal's movement of commercial and maritime expansion. That country then held, by privileges sanctioned by papal bulls, the monopoly of maritime expeditions in the Atlantic; on a Portuguese ship Columbus made at least one voyage to Guinea, after 1482. At that time he conceived his great project, which consisted in reaching eastern Asia, or the Indies as it was then said, by sailing westward across the open Ocean, rather than by the long route of the African circumnavigation. Such a voyage, based on ideas certainly very erroneous but widely current in his time, was held by Columbus to be much shorter than the circumnavigation of Africa.
Columbus, who had not pursued regular studies, in these years acquired a cosmographic preparation for himself, reading works widely circulated in his time (among them the Imago mundi of Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly), in which he found numerous testimonies that confirmed him in his conviction. Of a similar project of navigation across the Atlantic, presented as early as 1474 to the Portuguese government by a learned Florentine, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, Columbus probably learned only later and made use of it to perfect and corroborate his own. Columbus too proposed his project to Portugal, which rejected it, and then Columbus, around 1485, left Portugal with a son, Diego, moving to southern Spain, where the relatives of his wife, already dead by that time, resided, along with other agents of Genoese commercial firms. With the help of his fellow countrymen and of highly placed acquaintances, he soon gained access to the circles of the Spanish court, set forth his project, favored by some, above all by Queen Isabella, hindered by others; but long years of hard trials and hardships passed before he could obtain a serious hearing. The last difficulties were overcome through the intervention of the prior of the convent of La Rábida, F. Pérez, and of other personages of that monastery, at which Columbus and his son Diego had found hospitality in difficult moments. A special agreement stipulated at Santa Fe near Granada, on 17 April 1492, crowned Columbus's perseverance: he was granted three small ships to carry out the attempt to reach Asia by crossing the Atlantic, and was assured of very generous compensations and privileges in case of success.
The three ships (the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María, the flagship) were fitted out in the port of Palos with the concourse of a family of local shipowners, the Pinzón. The names of almost all the members of the crew are known, which on the whole always performed its duty very well. There was no ecclesiastic on board. The departure took place on 3 August; and after a four weeks' stop at the Canaries, on 6 September the three caravels began the crossing of the unknown Ocean, which, favored by the blowing of the northeast trade wind, proceeded on the whole without mishaps until 12 October, the day on which an island was sighted, baptized San Salvador by Columbus and usually identified with Watling in the Bahamas group. In the course of the subsequent navigation were discovered Cuba, which Columbus believed to be a strip of the Asiatic mainland, and Haiti, identified with the Cipango of Marco Polo, that is, Japan. On the coasts of the latter Columbus left a small colony, the Navidad; then on 16 January 1493 he resumed the return voyage with two ships, the S. Maria having been wrecked. On the return, made along a much more northerly route, in the zone of the westerly winds, the ships escaped a cyclone that put the commander's seamanship to the test, and, having reached the Iberian shores unscathed, they landed at Palos on 15 March 1493. Columbus received a triumphal welcome; the twofold crossing was celebrated as a maritime enterprise without precedent and seemed to the commander himself to be beyond human possibility, so that he became persuaded that he had been guided by Divine Providence. From this originates the faith in his divine mission, which was to accompany Columbus for the rest of his life.
COLOMBO, CRISTOFORO. - Original autograph letter of Columbus to the protectors of the Banco di S. Giorgio in Genoa (Seville, 2 April 1502) - Genoa, Palazzo del Comune, Sala del Podestà." loading="lazy" />Once the diplomatic disputes that had immediately arisen with Portugal were provisionally settled by means of three bulls of Pope Alexander VI (3-4 May 1493) most favorable to Spain, a second expedition of 17 ships was fitted out, colonial in character, in which took part a mission of priests directed, on the basis of instructions imparted by the same Pontiff with a bull of 25 June, by Fr. Bernardo Boyl of the Minims. This second expedition, which set out on 23 September 1493, resulted in the discovery of several of the Less-
the Lesser Antilles and a better knowledge of Cuba and Hispaniola, where the city of Isabella was founded; but it yielded nothing, or almost nothing, of the hoped-for riches in gold, gems and precious products with which the Asiatic shores that Columbus still believed he had reached were fabled to abound. From these disappointments discontent proliferated among the colonists and also among certain notables of the court, envious of the rapid rise of the foreigner.
On a third voyage (May 30, 1498-Nov. 1500) Columbus touched the mainland of present-day South America near the mouth of the Orinoco, which he believed to be the Asiatic mainland; but, having returned to Hispaniola, he had to confront revolts, which had degenerated, in his absence, into open anarchy.
Trusting in his evangelical mission (he is the bearer of Christ, Christophorus or Christoforens as he more often signs himself) beyond the Ocean, Columbus nevertheless showed himself unequal to the very grave problems of organizing the colonial territories of which he was viceroy and governor under the conventions of Santa Fe; the party opposed to him in Spain took advantage of this to obtain from the sovereigns the sending of an inspector, Francisco Bobadilla, who, abusing the mandate he had received, had Columbus arrested together with his brother Bartholomew and sent him back to Spain in chains.
The humiliation he suffered, and which was not adequately made good, the many disappointments, the bitterness arising from failures, misunderstandings and hostility, had the effect of strengthening Columbus's religious feeling, now conscious of being a persecuted man, and guided him toward a mysticism that would dominate the rest of his life. But, unshakable in his blind confidence of having found the direct sea route to Asia and of having touched that continent, Columbus asked for and obtained command of a fourth expedition (May 1502-Nov. 1504), during which, having reached the isthmian 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, whence, had fortune smiled upon him, he perhaps meditated returning by way of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, even attempting the reconquest of the Holy Land! The voyage, an endless succession of misfortunes, concluded with the sheltering of the now damaged and worn-out ships in a port of the lonely island of Jamaica, where it seemed to Columbus, now racked in body and broken in his last indomitable energies, that he must end his days "so far from the Holy Sacraments of Holy Church that this soul will be forgotten if it departs here from the body," as he himself wrote in a famous letter, invoking the compassion of "whoever holds charity, truth and justice!" Salvation came unexpectedly from the desperate but successful attempt of two trusted men, who, after a very long period of almost slow agony, managed to bring him a rescuing ship. Having returned to Spain on Nov. 7, 1504, Columbus died forgotten at Valladolid on May 20, 1506, the eve of the Ascension, attended by his sons and by very few familiars. His last words were: "In manus tuas Domine commendo animam meam."
The mortal remains of Columbus were buried first in the cloister of the Franciscans at Valladolid, then in 1509 in the chapel of St. Anne of the convent of Las Cuevas in Seville. In 1537 they were interred in the cathedral of S. Domingo, whence in 1796 they were transferred to the cathedral of Havana. When Spain lost Cuba it wished the bones of the great navigator to be brought back to Seville, and since 1898 they have been enclosed in a monumental ark in the cathedral of that city. It is a tenacious but unconfirmed tradition that at the time of the transfer from S. Domingo the bones were deliberately switched.
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 a soul of an apostle, one who did not lack the halo of martyrdom: of the apostle he had the unflagging faith, overcoming every obstacle, and the mysticism that rooted, ever more tenaciously with the passing of the years, in his spirit the conviction that he had been predestined to the most lofty mission of propagating the Catholic faith beyond the Ocean. Proof of this are the Libro de las profecías, which he went on composing in the last period of his life in collaboration with his close friend Fr. Gaspare Gorresio (Gorricio) of Novara, in which are gathered passages of ancient and medieval authors prophesying his mission; proof of it are visions and callings, such as the celestial voice heard on the coasts of Veragua, confirming that God had entrusted to him the keys of the oceanic barriers. This spiritual orientation begins, as has been said, on the return from the first voyage and grows ever more consolidated with the passing of the years and of events, so that C. draws all the closer to God the more he feels persecuted, humiliated and unrecognized on earth. Within the Church a possible elevation to the altars has several times been discussed; an essential impediment to it is the illegitimate relationship that he had, after his wife's death, in the most critical period of his life, with a Beatrice Enriquez de Harana, from which was born in Cordova in 1488 an illegitimate son, Fernando, a great humanist and cosmographer. C. commended the fortunes of this woman in his last will, with moving words to his heirs; it is unknown what the reasons were that prevented a regular union.
Bibliography10 works
Roberto Almagia