Columbus

All reasonable and remotely educated of us can already intuit the real history, affiliations and motivations of Christopher Columbus. But we may not have all of the facts layed out at our disposal, here they are.

Timeline:

March 31, 1492:

Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand sign the Alhambra Decree ordering all Jews in Spain to convert to Catholicism or leave Spain. The deadline to leave or convert was July 31, 1492 by which an estimated 130,000-800,000 Jews fled spain and around 50,000 Jews converted1 . During this time Columbus was at the royal camp in Santa Fe, negociating with the Crown.

April 29, 1492:

The Decree is announced in major cities. The very same day Columbus recieves Royal approval for his expedition West2. This was done because the Crown anticipated using confiscated Jewish assets and forced loans from wealthy conversos to finance the voyage.

August 2, 1492:

The ships Santa María, Niña and Pinta were readied at the port of Palos de la Frontera in Andalusia. However the voyage was postponed by Columbus himself, by one day. August 2 of 1492 fell on the Ninth of Av in the Jewish Calendar, a Jewish holiday for mourning various tragedies throughout Jewish history, notably the destruction of the Temples.

August 3, 1492:

Columbus leaves Andalusia.

October 12, 1492:

Columbus makes landfall in the Bahamas.

Columbus remarked about the Decree matter-of-factly as criticizing it would put his voyage at jeopardy.

Jewish and Converso Crew Members

At least six crew members on the 1492 voyage were conversos, most likely trying to escape persecution in Spain.

• Luis de Torres - the voyage's interpreter, born Yosef ben Halevi Halvri, had converted to Catholicism just one day before the voyage. He was a polyglot who spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Spanish and Portugese. Columbus brought Luis de Torres along because he thought that he might encounter the Lost Tribes of Israel and believed that he had been "Moved by the Holy Spirit to undertake the journey." In later writings he cites Isaiah and other Hebrew Prophets who refer to the "ingathering" of the exiled tribes of Israel and says that the expeditions were an attempt to fulfill divine prophecy. Legend holds that Luis de Torres was the first of the expedition to smoke Tobacco, however when he introduced the practice to Spain, unfortunately he was jailed by the inquisition, which found the practice suspicious. After the Santa Maria shipwrecked on Hispanionla, de Torres was one of the men left at Fort Navidad; his ultimate fate is uncertain. Although some stories say that he named the Turkey, Tukki, the Hebrew word for parrot as he thought that it was a type of parrot.
• Maestre Bernal - the ship's physician, identified as a converso from the town of Tortosa3.
• Marco - listed in some records as a surgeon (cirujano) on Columbus’s crew. He is thought to have been a converso as well3. Having two surgeons (Bernal and Marco) was unusual for such a small fleet, and both are believed to have had Jewish roots.
• Alonso (or Alfonso) de la Calle - a sailor on the voyage, also identified as a converso5. Settled in Hispaniola after the expedition. His surname de la Calle was a common family name among conversos at the time.
• Rodrigo de Triana - a Spanish sailor (born Juan Rodriguez Bermejo) often credited as the first crewman to sight land on October 12, 1492 was often cited as a converso 6. Rodrigo de Triana traveled back to Spain with Columbus and some legends say he then traveled to North Africa and ironically converted to Islam.
• Rodrigo Sanchez de Segovia - appointed directly by Queen Isabella as the offical inspector for the expedition, essentially the Crown's observer on Columbus' ship. He was the cousin of Gabriel Sanchez, the Royal Treasurer of Aragon and a prominent converso who helped finance the voyage. Rodrigo Sanchez de Segovia was also had some navigational knowledge and is described by some accounts as a navigator and strangely by a few others as a surgeon.

Beyond the crew, Luis de Santangel(a baptized descendant of Jews) was King Ferdinand's finance minister who advanced a large sum of his own money to fund Columbus.

Columbus was aware of his crew's backgrounds.

Columbus Himself

Columbus was a Genovese Catholic weaver's son.
Note that Genovese Jews were restricted from:

• Owning land
• Joining trade guilds
• Practicing many skilled crafts(which were tightly controlled by Christian guilds) notably excepting textile-related work.
• Holding government or military posts

As a result many were:

• Moneylenders (Christians were barred from charging interest)
• Second-hand traders
• and textile workers, such as weavers

Columbus' sirname is Spanish is Colón, not uncommon amongst Iberian Jews. Columbus was unusually conversant with the Hebrew Bible and Jewish traditions for a lay Catholic. His logs and letters contain frequent references to the Old Testament – he invokes figures like Moses, King David, and Abraham routinely – and he even computed dates according to the Hebrew calendar in his writings. In one instance, Columbus calculated the age of the world from the Jewish date of the destruction of the Second Temple, and he cited the current year in Anno Mundi terms alongside the Christian year.

His Last Will and Testament

In his last will and testament, Columbus left money to be given as dowries for poor girls and aid to the poor “in such a way that they do not know who the benefactor is” – a manner of secret charity often associated with Jewish tzedakah (charitable giving.)

His Signature

Columbus also adopted a curious triangular signature of dots and letters that some have speculated was a Kabbalistic-style monogram.

Columbus benefited from close partnerships with conversos and Jews. In Portugal and Spain he consulted mapmakers and astronomers who were Jewish or New Christian, such as Joseph Vecinho and Abraham Zacuto. Zacuto, a renowned Jewish astronomer at Salamanca, provided Columbus with astronomical tables that were crucial for navigation.

In his own writings, Columbus does not voice opposition to the Edict of Expulsion – unsurprising, as openly criticizing the monarchs’ religious policy would be unthinkable for an ambitious explorer seeking their favor. However, he clearly took note of it. Some historians interpret certain passage as Columbus subtly lamenting the expulsion by entwining it with his voyage’s commencement.

The Book of Prophecies

We do know Columbus harbored millenarian goals: later in life, he compiled a “Book of Prophecies” in which he argued that his discovery was part of a divine plan to enrich Christendom and enable the recapture of Jerusalem from the Muslims. In a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus even proposed using New World wealth to fund a new crusade to reconquer Jerusalem (a goal also cherished by many Jewish apocalyptic thinkers of the era.)

Columbus did not exhibit the virulent antisemitism common to many Spaniards of his day in any recorded writings. He seemed pragmatic and focused on his mission. His cordial dealings with conversos indicate a level of comfort with people of Jewish heritage. It is possible he even sympathized with their plight. For instance, when Luis de Torres asked to remain as a settler in Cuba after the first voyage, Columbus granted it and secured him a royal pension a kind fate for a man who, had he stayed in Spain, might have faced the Inquisition. Columbus’s attitude toward Jews can perhaps be summed up as ambivalently positive: he absorbed Jewish knowledge, relied on Jewish-derived funds, and employed Jewish associates, all while serving monarchs who expelled Jews from their realm.

Columbus' Familial Ties to Crusading Orders

Columbus’s wife, Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, was the daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrelo, a Portuguese explorer and captain who was a Knight of the Order of Santiago (St. James.) The Order was a Catholic military/religious order closely related to the Portugese Knights of Christ, a rebranding of Portugals Knight's Templar made to subvert persecution. Members of these orders took part in the Reconquista of Spain and Portugal, fighting Muslims – and occasionally persecuting Jews or heretics as well. While the Order of Santiago’s primary foes were Moors in Iberia, there is an implicit connection between the crusading mentality and anti-Jewish hostility.

During the First Crusade many Jews were massacred in Europe, on the way to Jerusalem and in Jerusalem itself. But, Columbus' views in the Book of Prophecies specifically involve joining sides with the exiled tribes of Israel against the Muslims rather than the mainstream view, that the Jews should be killed.

Linguistic Legacy: Ladino Loanwords in Latin American Spanish

Many modern mexican Jewish communities use certain Ladino loanwords, such as "kal" instead of "sinagoga". Traditional Ladino expressions like "Bendicho su Nombre!" and "Ojalá" which comes from Arabic but is also in Ladino. However, such phrases are not widespread outside of expressly Jewish circles.