Christopher Columbus is probably the most famous adventurer of all time – and perhaps the most mysterious. Even to his contemporaries he was a riddle, and was largely responsible for the speculation about his origins. In his autobiographical writings, he always omitted certain aspects of his past. On the other hand, both friends and enemies were only too happy to spread stories and rumours about him. This has made it very difficult for historians to sort out the facts from a mass of hypothesis and speculation. Who was the man who talked Queen Isabella into sending him forth on the great journey?

Off to sea

For a long time, even his exact birthdate was unclear, but it is now generally agreed that Columbus was born near the Italian port of Genoa in 1451, and that he came from a family of weavers. In some documents he appears as Cristofero Colombo, while others use the Spanish form, Cristobal Colon. Biographers have shown that this is the same person.

Columbus began his adventurous life at the age of 10, when he went to sea. At 15, he is supposed to have served on a privateer (raiding ship) launched by Rene of Anjou in his fight against King Alfonso V of Aragon and Sicily for the throne of the Kingdom of Naples. The young Columbus was probably involved in the seizure of Spanish ships, which might explain why he later concealed this phase of his youth.

As a young man, Columbus made his way to Portugal. From there, he went to the court of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand 2 of Aragon – their marriage in 1469 had united the two kingdoms – to present his proposal to sail westward. He had contacts with scholars of the time, men who knew that the earth was not a flat disc – as was widely believed during the Middle Ages – and who advised him to travel towards the west.

In August 1492, he was allowed to set sail, and reached the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti. It was not until his third voyage (1498-1500) that he set foot on the American continent, near the island of Trinidad.

A Genoese-speaking Castilian

But certain things about this remarkable man are unclear. Shortly after Columbus’s death, both Spanish and Italian sources claimed him as one of their own citizens. In this context, some researchers mention an interesting point: Columbus almost never spoke or wrote Italian, but chose to use Castilian – the dialect of Castile, now accepted as the standard form of European Spanish. In his biography of the explorer, the Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga claimed that Columbus’s family was Jewish, and had fled Spain towards the end of the 14th century because of the persecution of their religion. Within their family they had continued speaking their mother tongue. One question was left unanswered: Why would Columbus return to the country of his supposed forebears just at the time when the Inquisition against the Jews was being ruthlessly implemented? In 1492, the year of Columbus’s historic voyage, the Spanish authorities crowned almost a century of persecution by expelling the Jews.