Columbus, Christopher

(1451–1500)

   Discoverer of America. Until 1914 it was believed that Columbus was born in Genoa, the son of a weaver, and worked as a wool carder before going to sea at the age of fourteen. The discovery of documents by a Spanish scholar revealed the existence of one Cristobo Colon, son of Susan Fonterosa, a recently converted Jew, who was born in Pontevedra, in northwest Spain. Since then it has been a matter of scholarly controversy whether the discoverer of America was the Spanish Cristobo Colon or the Italian Christoforus Columbus. Another theory is that Columbus is the Italian version of Colon, a name not uncommon among 15–century Italian Jews, and that Christoforus’ parents were Jewish converts. Certainly Columbus himself was deliberately mysterious about his origins and various cryptic statements he made could be interpreted as references to a Jewish origin. He pointed out that ‘in the same month in which the Spanish rulers determined to expel the Jews from the entire kingdom, they gave me my commission to undertake a voyage to the Indies’. Columbus had Jewish backers, among them Isaac ABRABANEL and Abraham Seneor, who supported him until forced to leave Spain (or in Seneor’s case accept baptism). He was also supported by influential new Christian converts from Judaism, Luis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez. Among his crew were several Marranos (Christians who were secretly Jews), perhaps attracted by the idea of a voyage to a country where religious persecution might be unknown.