Christopher Columbus (ca. 1451–1506)
Thus the eternal God, Our Lord, grants to all those who walk in his way victory over apparent impossibilities, and this voyage was pre-eminently a victory of this kind. (letter to Luis de Santángel)
I am ruined, as I have said; till now I have wept for others. May Heaven now have pity on me and earth weep for me. Weep for me whoever has charity, truth and justice! (letter to Ferdinand and Isabel)
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write” (Wilford x). Everything about his life, from his origins to his motives in crossing the Atlantic to his death, has been debated. Precious few questions have been defi nitively answered. On this alone there seems to be consensus among historians. One of the greatest controversies surrounding Christopher Columbus concerns his nationality. Though it was accepted during his lifetime that he was Italian, as his historical importance became more apparent, a series of articles and books appeared over the years attempting to demonstrate that his origin was French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Greek, or English. These claims reached their apogee during the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s fi rst transatlantic voyage (Phillips and Phillips 6). While Columbus himself claimed Italian as his native tongue, he wrote in Castilian and often mixed in Portuguese and Catalan words. But as J. M. Cohen notes, this was not uncommon for men who spent most of their time at sea (20). Columbus himself played a principal role in creating confusion regarding his origins, rarely writing about them or his family. The biographers William and Carla Phillips suggest that this is probably due to the fact that his humble background did not match
hristoforo Colombo, as he would have been called in his native Genoese dialect, was above all else a man of destiny. His fervent belief in what historians have referred to as a “supernatural sense of mission” led to his discovery of a New World for Europeans, an event that would have immeasurable consequences on both sides of the Atlantic for centuries (Cohen 20). Historians have lauded Columbus’s courage and skill as a mariner just as they have derided his ability to govern the Spanish settlements in the Caribbean. Many hold him responsible for initiating the slave trade in the Western Hemisphere while others praise his tenacity in realizing his dream. A serious analysis of his life, however, must take into account the vast amount of information that is not known as well as the embellishments, misconceptions, propaganda, and legends surrounding the few confi rmed facts. In his quintessential work on Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, Samuel Eliot Morison highlights the fact that an “authentic portrait” of Columbus does not exist (xviii). Columbus himself was notoriously secretive and “could be vague, contradictory, and self-serving in what he did
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