A THOUGHT-PIECE ON

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Tracking a Greek Theory in the Institución Colombina de Seville

Thomas H. Tutt

From research conducted in Seville, Spain and Athens, Greece in

2006-7

Revised in Fall 2012

Introduction

The doubts about Christopher Columbus’s

origins

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While few men in history have had as much written about them,

Christopher Columbus truly remains an enigma. His early life is

clouded in mystery, perhaps deliberately so. While there are

numerous primary documents by or about Columbus existent in the

archives of Spain, notably in Seville’s Archivo General de Indias and

Institución Colombina, these documents were mostly intended to

persuade other people of his mission, or to justify his actions

against numerous accusers, and thus, to a degree must be regarded

as tools of manipulation and possible deceit. There was no

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safety in correspondence in his day, and his precarious position

demanded more than simple prudence.

Spain had only recently unified under a common Christian King and

Queen. Religious turmoil was still resurgent. In fact, one can

easily imagine Columbus passing thousands of Jewish refugees on

the road between Granada and Cádiz on his way to the small port

of Rabida, as they headed for the coast and exile. It was the

summer of 1492. Six months before, the last Muslim Caliphate in

Spain had fallen, and now hundreds of thousands of Spanish Jews

were being expelled, and likewise were in search of ships for

their own New Worlds.1 He would have to compete with them for

the few small ships left to hire.

If Columbus felt any pity for those poor souls, he was too aware

of the danger of expressing it. His later four voyages and

governorship would be full of contention and he would even return

1 See James Reston, Jr., Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition and the Defeat of the Moors, (NewYork: Doubleday Publishing, 2005).

3

one time in chains and disgrace. His most serious problems would

be by his own making. Gross exaggerations, generated from his

self-aggrandizement, enthusiasm and optimism, were excellent

marketing tools to generate interest and backing from the Crown,

but when his mythic descriptions of the East did not produce the

promised riches, he became an easy target for courtier

jealousies. Later, he had to watch his every utterance.

Interestingly, the secretive Columbus even left the world

wondering about his national origins. The many theories about

his past posit him as a Converso Sephardic Jew, a Catalan, a

Galician, a Basque, the son of an exiled Polish-Lithuanian king,

a Norwegian (!), a Greek, and the long-accepted nationality, an

Italian of the city of Genoa -- although 15 other Italian cities

also claim him as their lost son. Both national pride and the

pressures of economics have encouraged a modern day pamphleteers

war, reinforced by the global internet, but most of these

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claimants limit their works to fodder for their local tourist

brochure.

This research paper examines one of those theories that has taken

on a life of its own and is readily accepted in its local

environs of a Greek island that was a commercial charter of the

Republic of Genoa during the period 1346 to 1566 when roughly 10%

of the permanent population of Chios island were Genoese. The

first chapter will examine the elements of the Greek claim. The

second chapter employs documents allegedly penned by Columbus’s

own hand to support or disprove the Greek claim. The third

chapter provides a recommendation for further pursuit of the

mysterious connections between Genoese merchants in Seville,

Cádiz and Lisbon.

Man of Mystery

The epitaph left on Christopher Columbus’ tomb was, at his own

suggestion, the Latin phrase “Non confundar in aeternam” the final

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line of the4th Century Christian Te Deum hymn, meaning “Let me

never be confounded”. Even with these, his final words, he has

left the world wondering whether this was about his belief in the

Divine Mysteries, of the Savior and all the Saints, or if it were

an allusion to his own personal mystery. If the later were part

of his final message, what was he trying to hide and why? Even

his own sons did not know, but they understood that was for their

own protection. The paper trail is thin, so satisfyingly complete

answers to those questions are well beyond the scope of this

paper, but certainly some of the questions, and thus some of the

proofs, must invariably overlap.

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Chapter One

The Greek Case for Christopher Columbus’ Origin

The Setting

Columbus was and is a common surname on Chios, an island close to

the Turkish coast. Greek claimants of Christopher Columbus’

legacy usually cite their proofs coming from a mixture of facts

and theories of Western authors2 backed by local anecdotal

information. It is more strongly felt there than a simple ploy

for tourism would suggest.

Many people on the island of Chios firmly believe he was Greek

and convinced their national government to issue a stamp in 1992

commemorating his Chios origins. They have even persuaded the 2 Most of the argument for a Genoese-Greek or Greek-Genoese lineage for Columbus are published in English, see Ruth G. Durlacher-Wolper , A New Theory Clarifying the Identity of Christophoros Columbus: A Byzantine Prince from Chios, Greece, The New World Museum, (SanSalvador, Bahamas: 1982), and Lionel Cecil Jane, Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus, (London: The Haklut Society, 1930).

European Union (EU) to fund a plaque on a house attributed as the

Columbus family dwelling in Pirghi village, although the EU

clearly did not seek any proof of this claim before providing the

funds.

Chios, the birthplace of Homer, has a long tradition of seafaring

and maritime trade. Even today, approximately 9% of the global

shipping fleet is owned by a few shipping families of Chios, such

as the Chandris, Los, and Livanos. Some of Greece’s best

yachtsmen come from the island. Besides olives, figs and wine,

Chios has long been famous for one unique and highly valuable

product, the resin from the Mastic tree, which has been used

since antiquity in both the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe

as incense, flavorings, medicines and candies.3

These trees are native only to the southern part of this single

island and have never propagated elsewhere. As such, the island

passed between various hands as rivals sought to gain control of

the mastic trade. With the weakening of the Eastern Byzantine

3 See Nikos Merouses, Xιος. Φυσικές περιβάλλον και κατοικία από τη νεολιθική ηλικία στο τέλος της αρχαιότητας (Chios. Natural Environment and Habitation from the Neolithic Age to the end of Antiquity), (Athens and Thessaloniki: Papyros, 2002).

Empire, exacerbated by the Western Christians’ sacking of

Constantinople in 1204, Venetian and Genoese claimed numerous

Aegean Islands, ostensibly to prevent their seizure by Muslim

armies. Thus, Chios was wrested back and forth between rulers

over several centuries.

The Genoese had control of the island, which they called Scio,

during two periods, the second one lasting 150 years, thus

covering the period of Christopher Columbus’ lifetime. Genoese

had come to represent 10% of the islands’ population by 1395.

The Genoese rulers of the island, the Zacharia family and later

the Giustiniani, were blood-related to the Byzantine Paleologos

Emperor, and later to the Giustiniani Pope, which secured them a

niche between east and west.

After the fall of Constantinople to Sultan Mehmet II in 1453,

Chios’ days as a semi-independent island were limited. The

Sultan allowed their self-government under the condition of a

substantial annual contribution of tribute in the form of mastic,

and he further encouraged this trade via a tax-free status for

the island.4

The fall of Constantinople, however, had other impacts on the

Mediterranean world. First, it flooded the Latin West with

Byzantine scholars who sought refuge there. They further fueled

the Renaissance, particularly in Italy where there was both

scholarly and popular admiration for the Classics of Greco-Roman

tradition. Second, it cut off the land route to Asia, which

increased the need to find an alternate route from Europe to the

spices and other riches of the fabled East. Third, it displaced

the remaining Byzantine nobility and merchant class who would now

have to make their futures elsewhere.

And finally, it engendered a new breed of corsair. These were

pirates who would prey upon the Ottoman possessions and trade-

routes, out of the necessity for replacing former livelihoods,

and possibly, for revenge. Chians, with their noble blood

4 See William Miller, “The Zaccaria of Phocaea and Chios”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 31, 1911, and see Benjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton and David Jacob, Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean After 1204, (Oxford: Routledge, 1989).

lineage and maritime skills, would make up a good number of these

Greek Πειρατές, from which comes our English word “pirate”.

The Main Arguments for Columbus’ Chios Origin

While we know much about Columbus’ life after 1476, when he

rejoined his brother in Lisbon, claiming to have swum ashore in

southern Portugal following a sea battle with corsairs, we do not

know if that is true. What little we know of his life before

that is equally suspect. The Greek claims are usually about this

period of obscurity, and about certain language preferences

Columbus supposedly had. While some references, such as

Durlacher-Wolper, cite up to 22 “facts” confirming his Greek

identity, most of the various Chios origin theories boil down to

these elements:

1. Columbus’ signature of Xpo FERENS is a mix of Greek and

Latin.

2. Columbus kept two logs on his journey, one real and one

false. The true log used measurements in Greek leagues and

the false one in Roman leagues.

3. Though Columbus dressed in the Genoese style, he never said

he came from the city of Genoa. He said he was a “citizen

of Genoa”, which could be something quite different.

Although he banked at St. George in Genoa, that was the

bank used at the time by the Greeks (thus, Saint George) in

the colonies of Genoa, but his letters from Spain to his

banker, Antonio Kallo, were written in Spanish, not

Italian.

4. In the 1493 letter to the Spanish Crown announcing his

discoveries of a new route to the East, he reports

(erroneously) on having seen Mastic trees, which he points

out were “hitherto found only in Greece, in the island of

Chios...”.

5. Columbus spelled Chios with an “X” - Xios, instead of the

Genoese form of Scio or the Italian form of Chio, but he

properly drops the final “s” when the noun is used in the

accusative case, as Xio, something that only someone with

knowledge of Greek grammar would do.

6. Columbus never asked Italy for ships or aid for food and

shelter when he needed help. Nor did he ever mention any

family in Italy. In fact, he never spoke nor read Italian.

7. In his precious cosmological book Imago Mundi, by Cardinal

Pierre d’Ailly, Columbus makes marginal notations in Greek.

Supposedly, there are other works in his private library

where he also makes annotations in his “native Greek”

language.

8. Columbus likely had some noble blood himself, or he would

have found it difficult, if not impossible to have been

invited into the Portuguese and Spanish courts, and he

could not have married Doña Filipa Perestrello e Muniz, one

of the twelve elite Comendadorsa of Lisbon’s All Saints

Monastery and a Portuguese nobleman’s daughter, as he did

in 1479. Thus, he was probably NOT the son of a poor,

illiterate wool-weaver who married into the educated and

knighted family of the governor of the island of Porto

Santo, as the Genoese claim. It begs the question: What

other noble families would have to hide their background

from the Portuguese and Spanish, except those coming from

the Orthodox East?

9. For some time in his earlier life, before earning the title

“Admiral of the Ocean”, he called himself, “Columbus de

Terra Rubia”, a possible reference to the distinct red soil

of southern Chios where the mastic tree grows.

10. According to the legend on Chios, Columbus came to the West,

initially to France, with his corsair cousin, Colon-the-

Younger, who was a direct descendent of the Byzantine

Emperor, and thus a Paleologi, noble descendents from the

Biblical family of David. As such, Columbus was a

Byzantine noble, who wanted to hide both his Orthodox

Christianity from the Catholics and his corsair past with

his cousin. Official French documents today cite Amiral

Colon Le Jeune’s real name as George Disypatos Paleologos.

11. Columbus’ son, Fernando Colón, would write that his

ancestors always followed the sea and that his father

claimed to have two cousins who were descendants of a

Byzantine Emperor. That he made no claim of this connection

for himself indicates that his uncle had married into the

Paleologi line. This infers, but does not prove some prior

noble standing of the Columbus family.

Chapter TWO

The Greek Case begins to crumble

Key Documents in the Columbus Puzzle

Hernando Colón, Columbus’ son, gave his father’s personal library

for perpetual safekeeping to the Cathedral of Seville. Five

books survive from his library. These works include Imago Mundi,

that provided Columbus with a “picture of the universe”, Pope

Pius II’s Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum, a Latin version of Marco

Polo’s account of his Travels, a Castilian translation of

Plutarch’s Lives, and a copy of Pliny’s Natural History.5

Most probably, Columbus had read at least the first two works

before his first voyage of discovery, but some of his notes are

clearly the product of later readings he made after he thought he

had discovered a new and shorter route to Asia. If Columbus was

not widely read, he certainly read with a close and studious

5 See Nuria Casquete de Prado, Avatares de los libros del Almirante en la Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina, in Cristóbal Colón: Los libros del Almirante, (Madrid: Biblioteca Histórica ‘Marqués de Valdecilla’, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2006), pp. 111-128.

intensity. He carefully annotated his notes in the margins,

sometimes only a word, and at other times entire treatises.6

By the late 1480s Columbus had in his possession a copy of the

15th Century cosmographical masterpiece, Imago Mundi. This

incunabulum had been written about 1420 by the Bishop of Cambrai,

later Cardinal, Pierre d’Ailly, yet remained the most

authoritative work on the nature of the universe and the

geography of the Earth. The Institución Colombina maintains

Columbus’ original copy of the manuscript, which was printed

around 1480 in Louvain by John of Westphalia.

Columbus’ copy of Imago Mundi contains 898 annotations, accepted

as being by the Admiral’s own hand. These notations are cited by

the Chios Theory proponents as proof of Columbus’ Greek origins.

Almost all of these notes, however, are written in Latin, not

Greek, and the few additional non-Latin words are in Spanish.

How was this confused with Greek? Perhaps it was because this

form of Latin contains more accents, diacritical markings and

6 See Valerie J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus,(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 42-48.

contractions than classic Latin, a casual observer might not

recognize it as Latin. A close examination shows, however, that

is clearly 15th Century Spanish style Latin, as shown in the

following example from the right hand margin of page 13 of Imago

Mundi:

This example begins with the Latin “hoc ano 1411”, clearly a

Latin reference for the year 1411. It also uses several

contractions for Latin words, such as the symbol shown at the

center of the third line for “qui” before the word “hoc”. These

abbreviations, pen stroke contractions and use of the tilde to

show nasalization, also confirm the style and period as being

what is variously referred to as Visigothic, Mozarabe, Gothic or

Hispanic Latin.7

7 See Ángel Riesco Terreo, Elisa Ruiz García, Jesús Domínguez Aparcio and Ana Belén Sanchez Prieto, Aproximación a la Cultura Escrita:

Other examples clearly show that Columbus felt no need to express

himself in Greek, even when the topic of Pierre d’Ailly’s

dissertation referred to Greek geography, philosophy, history or

other references that a native Greek-language speaker might have

otherwise annotated. In the example below from page 23 of Imago

Mundi, the Latin text on line two mentions “macedonia” which

Columbus explains in the marginal note, goes by the “accepted

name of Grecía”. If he had written the name of the country in

Greek it would appear as “Ελλάδα”, and transliterated from Greek

into Western script it would appear as “Hellas or Hellada“. He

never used either of these Greek terms in his notations.

Similarly, he writes the name of the famous Greek philosopher,

Aristotle, on page 42 of Imago Mundi, in Latin script,

“aristotilus”, shown below, and not in the Greek original form of

“Αριστοτέλης”.

Material de Apoyo, (Madrid, Editorial Playor, 1995), especially Lamina 13 on page 41 and explanatory treatise on pages 156-157.

In fact, the only Greek alphabet annotations he uses in any of

the surviving five books of his personal library are standard

abbreviations expected during the period in which he wrote. It

was certainly not unusual for anyone to use the Greek letters X

“chi”, ρ “rho”, and o “omicron” or ι “iota” in many of the

abbreviations for “Christ”, “Christians”, or “Christmas”.

The most famous example of his use of “Xpo” is in his Greek-

Byzantine Latin signature “Xpo FERENS”, but these few and

exceptional Greek letters are found as a broadly-accepted

contractions in Spain’s 15th Century Visigothic Latin.8

8 See M. A. Novoa G., Nociones de Paleografía, (Santiago: Tórculo Artes Gráficas, S.A.L., no date), and see Ángel Riesco Terreo, Elisa Ruiz García, Jesús Domínguez Aparcio and Ana Belén Sanchez Prieto, Aproximación a la Cultura Escrita: Material de Apoyo, (Madrid, Editorial Playor, 1995), especially page 139 and pages 184-185.

Thus, the Greek language elements are not supportive for the

theory of Columbus’ supposed Chios heritage. Certainly, the

accepted “proofs” that he annotated Imago Mundi in Greek are

totally incorrect.

Whether he kept any of his voyage notes in Greek, or maintained a

second and separate Ship’s Log in Greek, can now only be regarded

as unsubstantiated speculation. Certainly, there is no surviving

documentation currently known that disproves the existence of a

Greek Ship’s Log, but with none of his other note writing in

Greek, it doesn’t appear likely, either.

Chapter THREE

Is there a Greek Case?

What was Chios to Columbus?

There are connections between Columbus and Chios, however, that

cannot be dismissed. Even in his brief letter to King Fernando

and Queen Isabella upon his glorious return after the first

voyage to the New World, he mentioned Chios. Most authors agree

that he must have spent some time there. Most assume that he

visited Chios on a ship of the Genoese merchant fleet as part of

the spice and mastic trade. Historian Helen Nader writes:

“Columbus was obviously familiar with this lucrative trade; he mistakenly reported finding the Chios variety of acacia trees on more than one Caribbean island. This seems conclusive evidence that Christopher Columbus traveled to Chios as a young man. This trip could have taken place onlyon Genoese fleets, and that fact places the voyage in 1474 or 1475, the only years during Columbus’ youth when Genoese fleets went to Chios.”9

9 See article by Helen Nader, “Early Maritime Experience”, in The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, Silvio A. Bedini, Editor, (New York:

Interestingly, there is no discussion that Columbus could have

been living on the island as part of the Genoese community that

ruled the Greek island. As such, he would have been a “Genoese”

from Chios, and not “Greek”, yet presumably familiar with the

spice trade, gum mastic, and perhaps even with the Greek theories

of a round or even spherical Earth.

Any Christian merchant or trader in the Mediterranean would have

viewed the challenge in a similar manner, though. It was the

Muslim world, both Turks and Arabs, who were preventing the West

from commerce with the fabulous spice wealth of India. Every

theory and description of the routes to the East, where the

support of the fabled Eastern Christian King Prester John must

surely live, was tantalizing, believable and potentially very

profitable to the daring explorer. Gentlemen of Commerce

frequently banded together to exchange ideas on how to reach

their goals in both geographic and financial terms.

Further research should be conducted with the many links that are

tantalizingly present. Even Helen Nader points out that:

Simon and Schuster, 1992), Volume I, page 170.

“Two of the ships in the 1475 voyage were owned by Paolo di Negro and Nicolo Spinola. Although Columbus’ name does not appear on the passenger or crew lists, he probably sailed onthe ships of one or both of these men; he named them and their heirs among his creditors in the codicil to his will.”10

Once again, the words “probably”, “presumably” and “possibly”

predominate in any theory of Columbus’ origins. Columbus’

apparently close collaborative connections later with Paolo di

Negro in Lisbon, Portugal, does not resolve the matter, either.

Only deepening the mystery, Paolo di Negro is another “Genoese”

in service to the King of Portugal, with mysteries of his own who

leads researchers on a cryptic trail.

Were these Genoese merchants in Seville, Cádiz and Lisbon

something of a secret society, of practical Christians who

bridged both the Eastern and Western Churches, developing and

protecting unique commercial secrets while forming an alliance of

convenience with the Spanish, Portuguese and English? Did they

need to conceal their association with the former Byzantine

10 See article by Helen Nader, “Early Maritime Experience”, in The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, Silvio A. Bedini, Editor, (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1992), Volume I, page 170.

Empire for their own protection from their devout Catholic

supporters? “Probably,” and that’s where the next research must

lead.