Early career and preparation for the first voyage
Little is known of Columbus’s early life. The vast majority of scholars, citing Columbus’s testament of 1498 and archival documents from Genoa and
Savona
, believe that he was born in
Genoa
to a
Christian
household; however, it has been claimed that he was a converted
Jew
or that he was born in
Spain
,
Portugal
, or elsewhere. Columbus was the eldest son of Domenico Colombo, a Genoese
wool
worker and merchant, and Susanna Fontanarossa, his wife. His career as a seaman began effectively in the Portuguese
merchant marine
. After surviving a shipwreck off
Cape Saint Vincent
at the southwestern point of Portugal in 1476, he based himself in
Lisbon
, together with his brother
Bartholomew
. Both were employed as chart makers, but Columbus was principally a seagoing
entrepreneur
. In 1477 he sailed to
Iceland
and
Ireland
with the merchant marine, and in 1478 he was buying sugar in
Madeira
as an agent for the Genoese firm of Centurioni. In 1479 he met and married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, a member of an impoverished noble Portuguese family. Their son,
Diego
, was born in 1480. Between 1482 and 1485 Columbus traded along the
Guinea
and
Gold
coasts of tropical
West Africa
and made at least one voyage to the Portuguese fortress of Sao Jorge da Mina (now Elmina,
Ghana
) there, gaining knowledge of Portuguese navigation and the Atlantic wind systems along the way. Felipa died in 1485, and Columbus took as his mistress Beatriz Enriquez de Harana of Cordoba, by whom he had his second son, Ferdinand (born c. 1488).
In 1484 Columbus began seeking support for an Atlantic crossing from King
John II
of Portugal but was denied aid. (Some
conspiracy
theorists have
alleged
that Columbus made a secret pact with the monarch, but there is no evidence of this.) By 1486 Columbus was firmly in Spain, asking for patronage from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. After at least two rejections, he at last obtained royal support in January 1492. This was achieved chiefly through the interventions of the Spanish treasurer, Luis de Santangel, and of the
Franciscan
friars of La Rabida, near
Huelva
, with whom Columbus had stayed in the summer of 1491. Juan Perez of La Rabida had been one of the queen’s confessors and perhaps
procured
him the crucial audience.
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Exploration and Discovery
Christian missionary and anti-Islamic fervour, the power of Castile and Aragon, the fear of Portugal, the lust for gold, the desire for adventure, the hope of conquests, and Europe’s genuine need for a reliable supply of herbs and spices for cooking, preserving, and medicine all combined to produce an explosion of energy that launched the first voyage. Columbus had been present at the siege of
Granada
, which was the last
Moorish
stronghold to fall to Spain (January 2, 1492), and he was in fact riding back from Granada to La Rabida when he was recalled to the Spanish court and the vital royal audience. Granada’s fall had produced euphoria among Spanish Christians and encouraged designs of ultimate triumph over the
Islamic world
,
albeit
chiefly, perhaps, by the back way round the globe. A direct assault eastward could prove difficult, because the
Ottoman Empire
and other Islamic states in the region had been gaining strength at a pace that was threatening the Christian monarchies themselves. The Islamic powers had effectively closed the land routes to the East and made the sea route south from the
Red Sea
extremely hard to access.
In the letter that prefaces his journal of the first voyage, the admiral vividly evokes his own hopes and binds them all together with the conquest of the infidel, the victory of Christianity, and the westward route to discovery and Christian alliance:
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…and I saw the Moorish king come out of the gates of the city and kiss the royal hands of Your Highnesses…and Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians…took thought to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said parts of India, to see those princes and peoples and lands…and the manner which should be used to bring about their
conversion
to our holy faith, and ordained that I should not go by land to the eastward, by which way it was the custom to go, but by way of the west, by which down to this day we do not know certainly that anyone has passed; therefore, having driven out all the Jews from your realms and lordships in the same month of January, Your Highnesses commanded me that, with a sufficient fleet, I should go to the said parts of India, and for this accorded me great rewards and ennobled me so that from that time henceforth I might style myself “Don” and be high admiral of the Ocean Sea and
viceroy
and
perpetual
Governor of the islands and continent which I should discover…and that my eldest son should succeed to the same position, and so on from generation to generation forever.
Thus a great number of interests were involved in this adventure, which was, in essence, the attempt to find a route to the rich land of
Cathay
(
China
), to
India
, and to the fabled gold and spice islands of the East by sailing westward over what was presumed to be open sea. Columbus himself clearly hoped to rise from his humble beginnings in this way, to accumulate riches for his family, and to join the ranks of the nobility of Spain. In a similar manner, but at a more
exalted
level, the Catholic Monarchs hoped that such an enterprise would gain them greater status among the monarchies of Europe, especially against their main rival, Portugal. Then, in alliance with the papacy (in this case, with the
Borgia
pope
Alexander VI
[1492?1503]), they might hope to take the lead in the Christian war against the infidel.
At a more elevated level still,
Franciscan
brethren were preparing for the eventual end of the world, as they believed was prophesied in the
Revelation to John
. According to that eschatological vision, Christendom would recapture
Jerusalem
and install a Christian emperor in the
Holy Land
as a precondition for the coming and defeat of
Antichrist
, the Christian conversion of the whole
human race
, and the
Last Judgment
. Franciscans and others hoped that Columbus’s westward project would help to finance a
Crusade
to the Holy Land that might even be reinforced by, or coordinated with, offensives from the legendary ruler
Prester John
, who was thought to survive with his descendants in the lands to the east of the infidel. The emperor of Cathay?whom Europeans referred to as the Great Khan of the
Golden Horde
?was himself held to be interested in Christianity, and Columbus carefully carried a letter of friendship addressed to him by the Spanish monarchs. Finally, the Portuguese explorer
Bartolomeu Dias
was known to have pressed southward along the coast of West Africa, beyond Sao Jorge da Mina, in an effort to find an easterly route to Cathay and India by sea. It would never do to allow the Portuguese to find the sea route first.