Was Columbus a Catalan 'Converso'?
The exact origins of Christopher Columbus, the man whose voyage to the Americas began a new era of European conquest abroad, have long been debated. Now a professor of linguistics has entered the debate. Estelle Irizarry, of Georgetown University, has examined over a hundred examples of Columbus' writing and discovered that he uses a grammatical tool - a slash - which at the time was peculiar to only Catalan speaking areas of Iberia, leading to the conclusion that Columbus was a Catalan, or at least raised in that region.
Irizarry goes further, arguing that the reason he was unclear about his origins - a fact that publishers should be happy about - was because he was a 'converso', a person born into a Jewish family who later converted to Christianity. The converso's were frequently under suspicion, and people did indeed try to hide their original religion. Medieval News goes into a bit more depth, but if you're really interested you should look at Irizarry's book 'Christopher Columbus: The DNA of his Writings'.
Comments
Very interesting and worth looking into more!
Samuel Eliot Morison, who had absolutely no reason to be anything but completely objective, wrote the following in Chapter II of his book “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” pp.7-8.
“There is no mystery about the birth, family or race of Christopher Columbus. … There is no more reason to doubt that Christopher Columbus was a Genoese-born Catholic Christian, steadfast in his faith and proud of his native city, than to doubt that George Washington was a Virginia-born Anglican of English race, proud of being an American.
“Every contemporary Spaniard or Portuguese who wrote about Columbus and his discoveries calls him Genoese. Three contemporary Genoese chroniclers claim him as a compatriot. Every early map on which his nationality is recorded describes him as Genoese. Nobody in the Admiral’s lifetime, or for three centuries after, had any doubt about his birthplace.
“If, however, you suppose that these facts would settle the matter, you fortunately know little of the so-called ‘literature’ on the ‘Columbus Question.’ By presenting farfetched hypotheses and sly innuendos as facts, by attacking documents of proven authenticity as false, by fabricating others (such as the famous Pontevedra documents), and drawing unwarranted deductions from things that Columbus said or did, he has been presented as Castilian, Catalan, Corsican, Majorcan, Portuguese, French, German, English, Greek, and Armenian.”
Morison noted that many existing legal documents demonstrate the Genoese origin of Columbus, his father Domenico, and his brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo (Diego). These documents, written in Latin by notaries, were legally valid in Genoese courts. When notaries died, their documents were turned over to the archives of the Republic of Genoa. The documents, uncovered in the 19th century when Italian historians examined the Genoese archives, form part of the “Raccolta Colombiana”. On page 14, Morison wrote:
“Besides these documents from which we may glean facts about Christopher’s early life, there are others which identify the Discoverer as the son of Domenico the wool weaver, beyond the possibility of doubt. For instance, Domenico had a brother Antonio, like him a respectable member of the lower middle class in Genoa. Antonio had three sons: Matteo, Amigeto and Giovanni, who was generally known as Giannetto (the Genoese equivalent of ‘Johnny’). Giannetto, like Christopher, gave up a humdrum occupation to follow the sea. In 1496 the three brothers met in a notary’s office at Genoa and agreed that Johnny should go to Spain and seek out his first cousin ‘Don Cristoforo de Colombo, Admiral of the King of Spain,’ each contributing one third of the traveling expenses. This quest for a job was highly successful. The Admiral gave Johnny command of a caravel on the Third Voyage to America, and entrusted him with confidential matters as well.”
The medieval scholar Diana Gilliland Wright “casts doubt on Irizarry’s belief.”
http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2009/10/scholar-casts-doubt-on-claims-that.html