Was He or Wasn’t He?
The Impossible Question of Columbus’s Jewish Ancestry
Was Christopher Columbus Jewish? According to a Spanish TV channel last week, he undoubtedly was. A documentary reported that Jose Lorente, a forensic expert at the University of Granada, had analysed DNA from Columbus’s remains, and from those of his son and cousin. His findings, the programme claimed, conclusively showed that Columbus was of Jewish heritage.
The theory that Columbus was Jewish is not new. It is generally thought Columbus was born in Genoa in Italy, where his family name was Colon (Columbus is its Latinised form). However, around 1912, a Spanish scholar, Don Garcia de la Riega, claimed to have discovered documents relating to a 15th century, Jewish family called Colon in the town of Pontevedra in Spain. After much digging around and speculation, Garcia de la Riega declared that the documents he had found were those of Columbus’s family. This proved, he said, that Columbus had been born, not in Genoa, but in Pontevedra, and that like many Jews at the time, his family had been pressurised to convert to Christianity. Columbus, de la Riega insisted, was of Jewish ancestry.
De la Riega’s theory was pooh-poohed almost as soon as he announced it. His research was denounced as flawed and the documents he claimed to have found may well have been forged. But the theory that Columbus was Jewish didn’t go away. In the 1930’s, a Jewish American, Maurice David, came up with the bizarre and incomprehensible suggestion that Columbus’s very strange signature, written in the form of a triangle, was “an abbreviation of the ‘last confession’ of the Jews and also a substitute for the Kaddish.”
Maurice David’s theory was also given short shrift but the Jewish Columbus theory persisted. In 1940 Salvador de Madariaga, in his biography of Columbus, tried to show that his personality traits were typically Jewish. He explained that the reason why the mariner spoke poor Italian and good Spanish was that his Jewish parents had travelled from Spain to Genoa but continued to speak their native language in their new home. Columbus, according to de Madariaga, was indisputably Jewish.
Columbus seems to have encouraged speculation about his origins. He may even have had messianic pretensions. In one letter he wrote “I am not the first Admiral of my family . . . David, that most prudent king, was first a shepherd and afterwards chosen king of Jerusalem, and I am a servant of that same Lord who raised him to such a dignity.” In his ship’s log he mentions the Hebrew Bible frequently and calculates the number of years since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Nevertheless, it is a bold step from these and other similar assertions to the conclusion that Columbus was Jewish.
Books about the Jewish Columbus are still being written. Mike Evans’s 2014 book, Christopher Columbus, Secret Jew, argues that the mariner set off on his expedition across the Atlantic to find somewhere that would be a refuge for Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and their impending expulsion from Spain. Even the noted mid-20th century Jewish historian Cecil Roth was swayed by the theory that Columbus was Jewish. Writing in the Encyclopaedia Judaica he cites some of the claims made by previous researchers but admits that it is impossible to reach any conclusions from their evidence. However, the reason why the theory can’t be proved, Roth insists, is only because of Columbus’ ‘own mendacity’, the mysterious way that he spoke about his origins and his cryptic suggestion that he had a connection to King David. It sounds very much as if Roth would like to believe that Columbus was Jewish, and that he blames the man himself for not being more assertive about his origins.
Columbus may or may not have been Jewish but there is no doubt that Jews played an important part in his voyage to America. The Santangel family had been obliged to convert from Judaism to Christianity in 1415 but like most converts still secretly retained some Jewish traditions. Luis Santangel, the royal court’s finance minister, told the Spanish king that Columbus was hoping for his support for a voyage to discover a westward route to India. When the king proved to be less than enthusiastic about Columbus’s idea, Santangel introduced him instead to Queen Isabella. It took three meetings until she was convinced of the importance of Columbus’ voyage and she only agreed to sanction it if Santangel paid a substantial proportion of the expedition’s costs himself. He agreed. Had it not been for Luis Santangel, Columbus’s world-changing voyage may never have taken place.
When Columbus finally reached, not India, but the islands of the Caribbean, the first letter he sent home was addressed to Santangel. He had the letter translated into Latin, printed and circulated across Europe. Columbus may or may not have been a Jew but it was the Jewish Santangel who made sure that the world was first informed about the existence of lands, still assumed to be India, on the far side of the Atlantic.
Columbus was given permission to sail on the same day that the Spanish monarchs announced that the Jews were to be expelled from the country. It was no coincidence. Luis Santangel’s contribution did not cover the full costs of the expedition. The balance was paid by the Queen, out of the money confiscated from Spain’s Jews as they fled. Columbus himself confirmed this, writing that “after the Spanish monarchs had expelled all the Jews from all their kingdoms and lands they commissioned me to undertake the voyage to India with a properly equipped fleet.”
Columbus set sail on August 2, 1492, the same day as the deadline given to the Jews for their departure. Several of his crew were Jews, or former Jews, using the voyage as an opportunity to make a new life for themselves in whichever lands the voyage ended up.
After his successful return from his initial voyage, Columbus set sail across the Atlantic again. This time the royal family fully funded the voyage, by once again plundering the property and goods of the Jews who had now left the country. They raised four times the amount they had needed for the first voyage. Columbus set sail for America again, this time in style, all his needs paid for by Spain’s absent Jews.
Luis Santangel did not travel with Columbus; he had no need to do so. Like all converted Jews, the Spanish Inquisition kept a suspicious eye on him, just waiting to pounce should he show any hint of a lapse back towards Judaism. He had been forced to do penance on a previous occasion for doing something that suggested he was not fully committed to his Christian faith. But now that his protégé Christopher Columbus had furnished Spain with vast territories in the New World, the King placed Santangel under his personal protection. He and his family became free from the persecutions of the Inquisition.
So, was Columbus Jewish, or not? The latest evidence seems to side conclusively with those who maintain that he was. After all, you can’t argue with DNA. Or can you? The DNA that Jose Lorente analysed came from Columbus’s tomb in Seville Cathedral. However, there is some doubt as to whether the tomb really contains Columbus’s remains. The explorer died in Spain in 1502, in the Spanish town of Valladolid. He had wanted to be buried on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and in 1524 his remains were shipped there. In 1795 they were taken back across the Atlantic, to Havana, and then in 1899 they were eventually buried in Seville. After such toing and froing, there is considerable uncertainty about whether the bones in the tomb are indeed those of Christopher Columbus.
Forensic experts have also thrown a mantle of doubt over Jose Lorente’s conclusions. Typically, scientific researchers ensure that their work is peer-reviewed; scholarly journals are unlikely to publish the results of research unless they have been scrutinised independently and confirmed. Jose Lorente did not arrange for his research to be peer-reviewed. He said that he would, but he hasn’t done so yet. Criticisms have also been made of his methodology. DNA notwithstanding, it seems that the question of Columbus’s Jewish ancestry remains as open as it ever has been.
Recently a twist has been added to the Columbus ancestry saga. The topic caught the popular imagination at the 500th anniversary commemorations of Columbus’s voyage in 1992. Several articles at the time pointed out that Columbus’s arrival in America heralded the mass slaughter, over several centuries, of the native population and the separate horror of slavery. In the circumstances, the writers of these articles asked, did Jews really want to claim Columbus as one of their own?