COLOMBO, Cristoforo. — The great navigator was born in Genoa, as is unanimously attested by archival documents, by declarations from C. himself or his relatives, 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 wool, and Cristoforo first assisted him, then served important Genoese commercial firms, particularly the Centurione and the Dinegro, which had extensive business dealings 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 there, or in Madeira, he married Filipa Moniz Perestrello, daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, an Italian by origin, governor of the island of Porto Santo. It seems that this marriage procured him acquaintances in the circles of the Portuguese court and brought him into contact with the movement of commercial-maritime expansion of Portugal. At that time, this country held, by privileges sanctioned by papal bulls, the monopoly of maritime expeditions in the Atlantic; on 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 eastern Asia, or the Indies as they were then called, 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 held in his time, was considered by C. to be much shorter than the circumnavigation of Africa.
C., who had not pursued regular studies, educated himself in these years in cosmography by reading widely circulated works of his time (among them the *Imago mundi* of Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly), in which he found numerous attestations that confirmed him in his conviction. Of a similar project for an Atlantic crossing, presented as early as 1474 to the Portuguese government by a certain Florentine, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, C. probably learned of it only later and made use of it to refine and corroborate his own. C. also proposed his project to Portugal, which rejected it; then, around 1485, he left Portugal with a son, Diego, moving to southern Spain, where the relatives of his wife—already deceased at that time—and other agents of Genoese commercial firms resided. With the help of his fellow countrymen and influential connections, he soon gained access to the Spanish court, presented his project—favored by some, especially Queen Isabella, opposed by others—and after many years of hardship and privation finally succeeded in being taken seriously. The last obstacles were overcome through the intervention of the prior of the convent of La Rábida, Juan Pérez, and other figures from that monastery, where C. and his son Diego had found refuge in difficult times. A special agreement drawn up at Santa Fe near Granada on 17 April 1492 crowned C.'s perseverance: he was granted three small ships to attempt to reach Asia by crossing the Atlantic, and generous rewards and privileges were assured in case of success.
The three ships (the *Niña*, the *Pinta*, and the *Santa María*, the flagship) were prepared in the port of Palos with the assistance of a local shipowning family, the Pinzón. The names of almost all the crew members are known, and they performed their duties admirably throughout. There was no clergyman aboard. The departure took place on 3 August; after a four-week stop in the Canaries, on 6 September the three caravels began the crossing of the unknown ocean, which, favored by the northeast trade winds, proceeded essentially without incident until 12 October, when an island was sighted, which C. named San Salvador and usually identified with Watling in the Bahamas group. During the subsequent navigation, Cuba was discovered, which C. believed to be a part of the Asian mainland, and Haiti, identified with Marco Polo’s Cipango (i.e., Japan). On the coasts of the latter, C. left a small colony, La Navidad; then, on 16 January 1493, he set out on the return voyage with two ships, the *Santa María* having been wrecked. On the return journey, undertaken on a much more northerly route in the zone of the westerly winds, the ships escaped a cyclone that tested the commander’s seamanship, and, reaching the Iberian shores unharmed, they landed at Palos on 13 March 1493. C. received a triumphant welcome; the double crossing was celebrated as an unprecedented maritime feat, and even the commander himself seemed to regard it as beyond human possibility, so much so that he came to believe he had been guided by Divine Providence. Hence arose the faith in his divine mission that accompanied C. for the rest of his life.
Once the diplomatic disputes that immediately arose with Portugal were provisionally resolved by three bulls of Pope Alexander VI (3–4 May 1493) highly favorable to Spain, a second expedition of 17 ships, of a colonial character, was prepared, in which a mission of priests participated, sent in accordance with instructions issued by the Pope himself in a bull of 25 June by Father Bernardo Boyl of the Minims. This second expedition, which departed on 23 September 1493, resulted in the discovery of several of the
and a better knowledge of Cuba and Haiti, where the city of Isabella was founded; but it yielded little or nothing of the hoped-for riches in gold, gems, and precious products, of which the Asian shores—still believed by C. to have been reached—were fabled to be teeming. Disillusionment bred discontent among the colonists and even among certain high-ranking courtiers envious of the foreigner’s rapid rise.
On a third voyage (May 30, 1498–Nov. 1500), C. reached the mainland of present-day South America near the mouth of the Orinoco, mistaken for Asian terra firma; but upon returning to Haiti, he had to confront revolts that, in his absence, had degenerated into open anarchy.
Confident in his evangelical mission—he saw himself as the bearer of Christ, Christophorus or Christoferens, as he more often signed himself—C. proved unequal to the daunting challenges of organizing the colonial territories over which he ruled as viceroy and governor under the Capitulations of Santa Fe. His adversaries in Spain exploited this weakness to secure from the sovereigns the dispatch of an inspector, Francisco Bobadilla, who, abusing his mandate, had C. and his brother Bartolomeo arrested and sent back to Spain in chains.
The humiliation he suffered, inadequately redressed, the manifold disappointments, and the bitterness born of failure, misunderstanding, and hostility only strengthened C.’s religious sentiment. Now conscious of being a persecuted man, he was drawn toward a mysticism that would dominate the remainder of his life. Yet, unwavering in his blind conviction that he had found the direct sea route to Asia and had reached that continent, he secured permission to lead a fourth expedition (May 1502–Nov. 1504). During this voyage, having reached the isthmian region of present-day Central America, he sailed along the coast of Veragua, near present-day Panama, in search of a passage to India and the mouths of the Ganges. If fortune had favored him, he may even have contemplated returning by way of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, attempting the reconquest of the Holy Land! The voyage, an endless succession of hardships, ended with the sheltering of the ships, now battered and worn, in a port on the solitary island of Jamaica. There, C.—his body broken, his indomitable energies spent—felt he must end his days “so far from the holy sacraments of the Holy Church that if I depart this life here, my soul will be forgotten,” as he wrote in a famous letter, invoking the pity of “those who hold charity, truth, and justice!” Salvation came unexpectedly to the desperate man through the successful efforts of two trusted companions, who, after a long period of near-slow agony, managed to send a rescue ship. Returning to Spain on November 7, 1504, C. died forgotten in Valladolid on May 20, 1506, on the vigil of the Ascension, attended by his sons and a handful of relatives. His last words were: “Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”
C.’s mortal remains were first interred in the cloister of the Franciscans in Valladolid, then in 1509 in the chapel of St. Anne at the Las Cuevas convent in Seville. In 1537 they were transferred to the cathedral of Santo Domingo, and in 1796 to the cathedral of Havana. When Spain lost Cuba, it was decreed that the great navigator’s bones should be returned to Seville, and since 1898 they have rested in a monumental setting within the city’s cathedral. A persistent but unconfirmed tradition holds that at the time of the transfer from Santo Domingo, the bones were deliberately switched.
C., justly hailed as the greatest navigator of all time and certainly endowed with exceptional nautical skill and intuition, was also an apostolic soul who glimpsed the dawn of martyrdom: like an apostle, he possessed an unflagging faith that overcame every obstacle, and a mysticism that, as the years advanced, ever more firmly implanted in his spirit the conviction that he had been predestined for the lofty mission of spreading the Catholic faith beyond the Ocean. Proof of this is the *Libro de las profecías*, which he composed in his final years in collaboration with his close friend, Fr. Gaspare Gorresio (Gorrico) of Novara; it collects passages from ancient and medieval authors prophesying his mission. Proof also lies in his visions and intimations, such as the heavenly voice heard on the shores of Veragua, affirming that God had entrusted to him the keys to the ocean’s barriers. This spiritual orientation, as noted, began after his first voyage and grew ever stronger with the passage of years and events, so that C. drew closer to God the more he felt persecuted, humbled, and unrecognized on earth.
Within the Church, the possibility of his canonization has been discussed more than once; the chief obstacle is the illegitimate relationship he entered into after his wife’s death during the most critical period of his life with a woman named Beatriz Enríquez de Harana, by whom he had an illegitimate son, Fernando, born in Córdoba in 1488 and later a noted cosmographer. C. made provision for this woman in his final will with moving words to his heirs; the reasons that prevented a regular union remain unknown.
