Was Columbus Madeiran?
“Famous people hail from these islands. Cristiano Ronaldo springs to mind! Who else, I wonder? ”
Christopher Columbus has always been a sketchy character! The history books tell us he was born in 1451, the son of a lowly wool weaver and a cheese vendor in Genoa, Italy. Yet by 1492, the year of his first trans-Atlantic voyage, he had risen to become a master navigator and “Admiral of the Ocean Sea”!
Quite an astonishing ascent for a poor peasant’s son! He went on to court the support and financial backing of the most powerful monarchies in Europe and married into one of Portugal’s most influential, aristocratic families!
Seriously! Does this even begin to add up?
Let’s give this conundrum some context and see if we can even get close to the truth of the matter!
THE SILK ROUTE
At the time of our young hero’s astronomic ascent, the world was in turmoil. When is it never?
The Silk Route consisted of a series of land & sea routes linking Asia to Europe with Chinese silk being the main commodity along with spices, grains, ivory, wood & metalwork and… slaves!
Much like the West’s reliance on Chinese manufactured goods today, Middle Age Europe had become dependent on the flow of such sought-after commodities with their attendant financial benefits.
The fall of Constantinople (Istanbul) to the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453 effectively cut that ribbon of commerce to Christian traders. Finding an alternative passage to the Far East became paramount to the collective crown heads of Europe, particularly the Atlantic-edged communities of Spain and Portugal.
THE COLUMBUS CONNECTION
Reenactment of Christopher Columbus and his wife in Porto Santo during the annual Columbus Festival
Enter Christopher Columbus!
We are told that the young Genoese went to sea at the age of 14, working as a lowly deckhand on merchant ships. At the same time, he managed to educate himself in mathematics, astronomy, cartography, Latin, geography and history not to mention navigation, a course only Europe’s brightest and most entitled were even allowed to partake in.
He was a precocious, persistent lad which is all the more remarkable as, rumour has it, he couldn’t speak nor write Italian! But, we thought he was Italian!
I was beginning to suspect, we’ve all been fed an extra long sausage of ‘Bologna’ regarding young Christopher's chronology!
THE PRINCESS & THE PAUPER
Columbus’s marriage in 1479 is yet another large, paradoxical part of the puzzle!
Filipa Moniz Perestrelo was the daughter of the Lord and governor of the Island of Porto Santo who, together with João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira in 1419 discovered and colonised the mid-Atlantic islands of Madeira and Porto Santo.
Columbus’ house in Porto Santo which you can still visit. There’s a small museum inside.
Once again, the humble Genoese had scored big-time! (Cristiano Renaldo would have been proud of his performance). The couple set up a home on the island of Porto Santo (the building can still be visited). This was 15 years before Columbus’s first westward voyage!
REALITY CHECK
OK! Time for a reality check! First of all, that marriage…!
In late 15th-century Europe, there was no way in Christendom a peasant’s son could marry into such an aristocratic family, seriously, one of the top families in Europe!
“Absolutely impossible! ”
The nobility of 15th-century Europe was wholly impenetrable to anyone other than their own elite class and marriages were almost always strategic alliances between powerful families.
PULLING THE WOOL
“So the lowly wool weaver’s progeny had somehow pulled the ‘proverbial’ over everyone’s eyes”
So the lowly wool weaver’s progeny had somehow pulled the proverbial over everyone’s eyes and was weaving a veil of deceit that went as far as ‘stitching up’ the collective crown heads of Spain and Portugal!
Or could it be that Christopher Columbus was actually Portuguese, born on the island of Madeira and of royal blood?
There is mounting evidence that this could be the case!
DUPLICITY & DECEPTION
Spain and Portugal were huge rivals at the time, especially in the race to discover a westward passage to the Orient.
If you want to keep an eye on your rival’s plans and activities, what do you do? Plant a spy, a decoy, a double agent right at the heart of proceedings. And dress him up as a lowly Italian sailor looking for a handout to discover a westward passage.
If you’ve read my article (here) on ‘Henry the German’ or Henrique Alemão as he was also known, we establish that this enigmatic figure was ‘also’ not who he said he was - especially when he too married into the top-level of Portuguese aristocracy with no less than the King of Portugal being best man at the wedding! Come on!
“Duplicity and disguise were hallmarks of the Alemão family. ”
THE KING OF POLAND
It is now fairly well established that Henry was the King of Poland, Supreme Duke of Lithuania, King of Hungary and crown head of Croatia… one of the most powerful figures in Medieval Europe!
Having been defeated at the Battle of Varda in 1444, our Henry travelled to the Holy Land disguised as a pilgrim and spent another decade wandering around Europe.
“Then in 1455, he arrives on the shores of Madeira!”
Then in 1455, he arrived on the shores of Madeira! Just a year before his arrival, the critically important city of Constantinople had fallen to Lad’s old enemy, Sultan Mehmed II.
The road to the Orient’s riches was well & truly snookered!
WHY MADEIRA?
Why did the most powerful king in Europe choose to come to Madeira of all places? The islands had only recently been discovered! There was no Savoy Palace, Reid’s or even Burger King to welcome him!
I speculate that King Ladislaus and the Portuguese crown were in cahoots and very much aware there was land on the other side of the Atlantic not to mention a much-desired route to the East Indies, the name given to the Indian subcontinent and Indochina at the time.
Portugal dominated maritime exploration at the time during their ‘Age of Discoveries’ and there was no way they were going to let their Spanish neighbours steal the lead when it came to finding a new route to the opulent East.
“Madeira was the perfect jumping-off point!”
HAT TRICK
I think Lad knew exactly what he was up to! His migration to Madeira was part of an elaborate plan to:
Find alternative trade routes
Get a slice of the action for Portugal and
Get back at his Muslim adversaries for cutting off the lucrative Silk Road.
Cristiano Ronaldo would consider it a perfect ‘hat trick’!
And Madeira was the perfect jumping-off point!
DOMESTIC LIFE
Meanwhile, in the little Madeira hamlet of Magdalen do Mar, ‘Henry the German’ and his aristocratic wife, Senhorinha Anes had two children, Segismundo and Barbara.
There’s not much information about the family except Segismundo, the son is said to have disappeared in his early 20s, presumed drowned on a trip to Lisbon. This was shortly before the character of Christopher Columbus appeared, a Genoese sailor basing himself initially in Lisbon from 1476 to 1485.
QUEEN OF SPAIN
The authorised story continues that this Columbus character sought sponsorship and was initially turned down by the kings of Portugal, France and England. He was eventually granted an audience with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in 1486 and they agreed to finance his first journey west.
It’s interesting that the replica of Santa Maria was built in Madeira
ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE
There are several key points to unlock the truth about Cristopher Columbus.
For instance, why, after his first historic voyage in March 1493 did he stop in Lisbon, reporting to King Joao II before carrying on to Castille and the court of Queen Isabella, his main sponsor?
About that meeting, it was recorded: “Don Juan (King Joao) seemed to be in an extremely good mood. He talked to Columbus as to a close friend with great candour and sweetness, insisting that his guest not stand, bow or accord him any special deference but sit beside him at table as an equal, man to man, prince to prince.”
An earlier letter from King Joao II to Columbus dated 1488 addresses him as “nosso especial amigo”, our special friend!
THE COLUMBUS CONTROVERSY
There is a growing number of academics and well-qualified authors contesting the given Columbus narrative.
In his book, ‘They Came before Columbus’, Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima explores pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas. If you look at a world map, the coast of West Africa is a lot closer to the Americas than Europe.
He also supports the theory that Columbus wanted to keep the Spaniards away from South America, most likely well known to the Portuguese long before the “official” discovery of Brazil in 1500.
WAITING ON COLUMBUS
I believe human beings were far more capable of inter-continental travel than we give credit for long before Columbus sailed west. There are many elements pointing to multiple pre-Columbian contacts between Polynesia, Africa and Scandinavia.
THE ITALIAN CONNECTION
Another interesting aspect is Columbus’s apparent ‘persona non grata’ in his native Italy. In the early 1500s Columbus’s son, Hernando Colón visited numerous northern Italian cities including Genoa looking for relatives along with his father’s actual birthplace. No contacts or records could be found!
Italian researcher Maurizio Tagliattini found the same. He could not find any trace of Genoese connections in the archives of chronicles and historians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact, in the acclaimed work of Uberto Foglietta, called ‘Della Republica di Genova’ (1559), Columbus - presumably the most famous of all Genoese captains, was not even mentioned!
Another element for consideration is, between 1477 and 1485, Columbus sailed with the Portuguese fleet. By royal decree, only Portuguese citizens were allowed to become crew members of the fleet.
THE CUBAN CONNECTION
Columbus made another three trans-Atlantic voyages and during that time he named forty Caribbean islands after Portuguese towns and villages including Cuba.
Not one Italian name can be identified!
Regarding Columbus’s Last Will of 1498, Manuel Rosa explains in his book ‘COLUMBUS - the Untold Story: A Fraud of History and a History of Fraud’ that the Will is a forgery created probably a century later by Bernardo Colombo because it contains so many contradictions.
THE BOTTOM LINE
There are many more fragments of evidence pointing to the fact that Columbus was not who the history books tell us. It’s easy to jump to conclusions on such matters… and jump we must…
The bottom line is, then as per today, you just can’t believe the propaganda and ‘fake news’ that is promulgated by the state, historians and churches, then and now!
Manuel Rosa in his book I believe comes closest to my conclusions. Christopher Columbus was born in Madeira, the son of the King of Poland and was positioned as a decoy in one of the most elaborate duplicities of the Medieval world!
Christopher Columbus arrives in America. L. Prang & Co., Boston - although he never actually did.
