Wedding portrait of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, married in 1469
Nobody believed Columbus could reach the Indies (Asia - home to the magnificently wealthy mythical Grand Khan). So why did Ferdinand of Isabella back him?
Theory 1: he had family connections with the Spanish royals
Columbus was a Genoese map-maker, living in Seville in the Genoese quarter. He was a widower of a daughter of a Portuguese family involved in the colonisation and enslavement of an island in the Azores. His sons had jobs at court and he was said to be distantly related to Isabella.
But Columbus was just one of hundreds who claimed to be related to the royals, or to have some get-rich-quick scheme on offer. And it was a very long way from adding a man to the payroll in some minor sinecure, to handing him command of an expedition on behalf of the crown
#125 The torrid affair - Ep 2 Columbus - legend and loser
Vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, from the Bamberg Apocalypse,
1000–20; Bamberg State Library, Germany
Theory 2: he offered Isabella a way to convert more heathens
Isabella cherished some kind of millenarian hopes. In other words, she believed that that the final conversion of the world to Christianity was at hand and that it would in turn usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The Franciscan order was at this time pushing this notion of the end of the world, including from its La Rábida monastery, at Palos, from where Columbus set sail. They had sent missionary friars to West Africa and to the Canary Islands.
Bringing the Gospel to new places – whether in the east or somewhere out in the Atlantic – might fit with the millenarian craze
After Columbus's death, Franciscans led the evangelisation of the Spanish Caribbean, particularly Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico
So, it was a mission to convert the heathen?
But if the intention was to send missionaries to new lands, then Columbus was not your man.
if the intention was to send missionaries to new lands, then Columbus was not your man. He was intending to sail to Japan, China and India, which had long been accessible to missionaries overland.
And notice this. We know the identity of 87 of the 90 men who sailed with Columbus and there is not a priest among them.
A long-standing belief among Franciscans that one of the brothers from La Rábida went along was dismantled by historian E Ward Laughran in a paper published in July 1930. So the notion that Columbus was on a mission to convert the heathen cannot be true.
Indeed, for a man who loudly and insistently paraded his Catholic piety, to propose taking 90 Catholic men to sea for a period of many months without a priest to give them Mass, tells you everything you need to know about the kind of hypocrite we are dealing with.
Funny how no historian seems to have noticed.
The Santa Fe Capitulaciones - the agreement signed in 1492 between the Spanish royals and Columbus. Santa Fe was the royal encampment outside Granada
Theory 3: he would open up a new sea trade route to Asia
With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, overland trade to the east had become more difficult. In 1488 the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias returned to Lisbon having shown that there was an alternative sea-route to China around Africa. But the 1474 Treaty of Alcácovas with the Portuguese banned Spanish ships using that southern route. So for the Spanish, finding a new way west to Asia looked very attractive.
We know, however, that this was not what Ferdinand and Isabella were hoping for. Their experts said it was impossible and they believed them.
What were they after? Take a look at the royal agreement signed before Columbus set sail:
the monarchs would take 90% of any pearls, precious stones, gold, silver and spices that Columbus found. But wasn’t Columbus supposed to be heading for Japan, China and the court of the Great Khan?
Where were all these pearls, precious stones and other treasures supposed to come from? Was he going to steal them?
The answer lies in an ancient theory. It's a TORRID STORY.
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