Christopher Columbus World

Almost all schoolchildren around the world know the name Christopher Columbus. Many stories have been told and read in many classrooms. One thing for sure, his history is a magnificent one. He would be glorified and vilified.

Christopher Columbus was an important historical figure. Despite centuries of academic research, many aspects of Columbus’s life are still a mystery and subject to considerable academic arguments and contradictions.

Some facts have been broadly agreed upon, the dates that Columbus said sails for his ventures and that of his marriage and the birth of his son. Further, that is lived for a while in Porto Santo and Madeira.

The entire narrative surrounding Christopher Columbus constitutes a political concealment. It is a political cover-up right from the start, preventing us from uncovering the genuine account.

Numerous American cities, counties, and institutions bear the name of Christopher Columbus, underscoring the esteemed position he occupies in American civic life. Early Americans portrayed Columbus as the first frontiersman of America, a hero who departed from the comforts of Europe in pursuit of a new beginning in a fresh world. They hailed him as an enlightened advocate of science, challenging obscure European ideas.

Nevertheless, Columbus exhibited the resilience and determination to overcome formidable obstacles.

Compelling evidence, challenging to conceal, reveals that Christopher Columbus named Cuba. At his time, the sole location Cuba was in Portugal. Furthermore, he assigned names to 40 islands and places, all within a 50-kilometre radius of Cuba in Portugal, and not even one was named after Italian locales. These included names like Santiago, Trinidad, San Juan, Nervis, Santa Lucia, Guadalupe, Saint Barthelme, Isabella, Vera Crus, Santa Clara, Meron, and Sata Spiritus (in Cuba).

He even named a place Porto Santo (after Porto Santo) and San Vincent, a village in Madeira.

A considerable amount of falsification of documents and indeed historical facts, took place back in the 15th century when the Italians went to court to get hold of this estate. In looking at the various academic stories about Christopher Columbus “CC” it is clear that history is a lie commonly agreed upon. Italy, Spain and Portugal all had their historical motives to create stories that he belonged to their countries.

However, after reading various academic research, I believe that CC was Portuguese and either born in Portugal or indeed was born in Madeira. One thing is for sure, CC was Portuguese and of aristocratic birth.

After reading now so much about Christopher Columbus, the fact, that he may be the son of a Polish king, who lived in Madeira, and was buried only ten minutes away from where we live, in Magdalene do Mer, caused me to write the latest information about Christopher Columbus.

An important book “Columbus-The Untold Story” by Manuel Rosa has accomplished a great deal by bringing a realistic picture of CC’s background. Through his extensive research, familiarity with traditions and customs of the times, and his mastery of Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish, he has managed to piece together and expose a history, taught to us and our children.

Many questions: 

• How could a lowly foreigner marry a highborn Portuguese lady? Moreover, at the young age of early twenties?
• Why did he name Cuba (after the town in Portugal and more than 40 islands around in the Caribbean, after Portuguese names of villages and towns, within a 50-kilometre radius around Cuba in Portugal? No island was called after Italian places.
• CC spoke Portuguese and Spanish, not Italian. He learned Latin later in life.
• How could a common weaver son, an Italian, associate himself with the Royal Courts of Spain and Portugal?
• How could CC’s brother have lived at the French and Spanish Royal Court?
• Columbus has been identified with unquestioned consistency as an Italian of humble beginnings from the Republic of Genoa. Yet in over 536 existing pages of his letters and documents, not once does the famous explorer claim to have come from Genoa.
• Columbus’s son went to Geneo three times looking for some evident of the family, he never found any relatives or family members. What is more intriguing is that this same son of a lowly wool carder was addressed as don, had his own coat-of-arms, and married a Portuguese noblewoman, all before his historic voyage of discovery. This would have been impossible in the rigidly class-conscious Iberian society of the 15th century if Columbus had not himself been of noble birth.
• Columbus’s 1479 marriage to Filipa Moniz, who was an elite member of the Order of Santiago, required the approval of King John II of Portugal indicating the recognition by the King of Columbus’s aristocratic lineage.

Now regarded as the world’s foremost authority on Columbus, Rosa’s own “voyage of discovery” began during the Columbus Quincentennial, when his doubts were stirred by the marriage of a lowly foreigner to a highborn Portuguese lady. Such a union might pass muster as a fairy tale today, but it would have been unthinkable back then. The closer Rosa looked, the more certain he became that he was on to something, and before long he was spending all of his free time on research.

Rosa has spent over a quarter-century investigating America’s legendary “discoverer.” He has authored six books on Columbus and has appeared on BBC, NPR, the Travel Channel’s “Expedition Unknown,” and numerous foreign-language media. His work was featured on the cover of Newsweek’s Polish subsidiary in 2011.,

Remarkably neither Porto Santo apart from a small museum, nor Madeira does not celebrate much about Columbus. They do have an annual Columbus gathering in Porto Santo, but nothing special is held around this great explorer.

Christopher Columbus’s True Identity Unmasked

The fact that Columbus used some 80 Portuguese toponyms to name the New World, that he never wrote in Italian, but did write in Portuguese-flavoured Spanish, and referred to Portugal as his homeland constitute clues to his Portuguese identity. To substantiate the noble birth, Rosa points out that Columbus and his two brothers had easy access to four courts in Europe, and one brother even lived as a guest of the King of France, all of this long before 1492.

Christopher Columbus’s Last Will a Forgery

Among the more intriguing new pieces of evidence, Rosa shows that the Last Will of 1498 (Mayorazgo or deed of primogeniture), where Columbus supposedly claimed to be “born in Genoa,” is a forgery written by a Genoese interloper long after Columbus died. Henry Harrisse had considered the 1498 Last Will a forgery from a later period, but Rosa was the first to prove that the document was falsified.

After reading the known biographies of Columbus, one realizes that there are enough bits and pieces to support the idea that Columbus, his biographer son Fernando, and the court of Spain made herculean efforts to obscure his true identity and origins. Columbus even changed his name in Spain to that of Cristóbal Colón in order to distance himself from his true lineage.

Cristóbal Colón is the only name he ever used during his public life and there is no record in Spain of what his original name was. That by itself does not prove Columbus was royalty, but it appears that, if the identity was successfully obscured during his lifetime, it is almost impossible at this point in history to definitively prove Columbus’s true identity without forensic research. All that remains is the evidence that the obscuring was done and a few clues pointing to his true identity.

Over the centuries, many respected historians came up with different opinions about the true birthplace of Columbus. They had to speculate about what the truth might be since little evidence remains. The majority of scholars came to a conviction that Cristóbal Colón, the discoverer, was the same person as Cristoforo Colombo, a Genoese wool-weaver, while other historians supported their own convictions that the wool-weaver and the discoverer could not be the same person.

The Italian historian, Paolo Emilio Taviani, a fierce proponent of the Genoese Colombo wrote: “What wild imaginings could have generated a Greek Columbus, an English Columbus, three French Columbuses, and, as if that were not enough, a Corsican Columbus, a Swiss Columbus, and three Portuguese Columbuses? For an explanation, we can look only to the immeasurable greatness of Columbus’s achievement and to its profound consequences on the course of human history.”

Antonio Ballesteros Beretta wrote: “One person is responsible for the polemics about the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, and that person is his own son Ferdinand, who, in his biography of his father, displayed ignorance and doubts on a subject which, on the contrary, he should have known well. His dubious attitude” continues Ballesteros, “about the Discoverer’s origins has given rise to an endless series of hypotheses, some of which are farfetched and fantastic.” Ballesteros adamantly stuck to the belief that Christopher and his son Ferdinand were peasants who wanted to conceal, with a “claim of noble ancestry, their humble wool-weaving origins.”

Another historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto wrote that “The Catalan, French, Galician, Greek, Ibizan, Jewish, Majorcan, Polish, Scottish, and other increasingly silly Columbuses concocted by historical fantasists are agenda-driven creations.” Like many, Fernández-Armesto, claimed that the“evidence of Columbus’s origins in Genoa is overwhelming,” referring to certain Genoese documents purported to be “beyond the possibility of doubt” about Columbus’s early life. They claim those documents identify the discoverer Colón as the son of Domenico Colombo, a wool-weaver from Genoa.

These Genoese documents were proudly published by the City of Genoa in 1892 and 1896 in a collection of books known for their short title of Raccolta Colombiana. There one can clearly see that the Cristoforo Colombo of Genoa was by trade nothing more than a lanaiolo: a lowly wool-weaver, son of another wool-weaver.

The Genoese theory discarded many inconvenient truths and invented details to mesh the weaver’s life with the discoverer’s life.

Mr Taviani and the other supporters of the Genoese Columbus, however, completely downplayed the fact that the discoverer was a man with extensive schooling who moved within noble circles and that, in Spain, Columbus’s origins were kept secret from the public. Thus, the Genoese theory discarded many inconvenient truths and invented details to mesh the weaver’s life with the discoverer’s life.

One of the questions we asked Mr Rosa was how could these accepted documents be contested.

“In actuality, there should not even be a need to contest them, because anyone who spends a few hours looking at them will realize that the documents from Genoa are related to a completely different person and have nothing to do with the life of the discoverer. However, since those documents have been accepted for over a century as being related to the discoverer, one is forced to explain them,” Mr Rosa stated.

When pressed for more specifics, he advises reading his books carefully as they cover 22 years of scientific research that tackles each issue step by step. “However”, he cautioned, “keep in mind that most of the documents in the Raccolta Colombiana are fodder and irrelevant to the solution of Columbus’s identity. Some of the documents do not even exist from the date they were supposedly created but are only referenced in other documents centuries later. Other documents are forged to add information that was not there initially.”

In fact, copies of documents that made it out of Genoa prior to the start of the Columbus controversy, such as Antonio Gallo’s chronicle, do not even mention Columbus, while Gallo’s copy found in Genoa today does. Of the four manuscripts that are attributed to Gallo, where the “Columbus brothers” are mentioned, (British Codex, Torino Codex, Civica Genoa Codex and Federici Codex) NOT ONE is from 1506, when Gallo wrote his chronicle. They are copies done in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Interestingly the Codex stored in the Library of Copenhagen “Ms. Reale antico fondo n. 2205″ the oldest writing from the sixteenth century – therefore written long before the British, Torino, Civica and Federici codexes – has nothing in it about “Columbus brothers”! Clearly, Gallo had not written this additional text about Columbus before he died, someone added it later. The famous Asseretto Document was doctored in Italian publications to remove several blank pages, fraudulently making it look like the text was continuous.

These are only some examples that show how unreliable the Genoese documents and the Raccolta Colombiana are in solving the mystery of Columbus’s identity. “What the Raccolta Colombiana did was help to cover up the truth for yet another 100 years” claims Rosa.

Considered one of today’s leading scholars on the life of Columbus, Mr Rosa points out that Ferdinand Colón, the discoverer’s son, claimed that his father descended not only from Italian aristocracy but from the legendary Roman General Colonius and that people were wrong to call him “Christopher Columbus” in Latin, warning that the correct Latin form is “Christopher Colonus.”

While historians widely inferred that Christopher Columbus used this noble persona to ingratiate himself to the good graces of the Spanish court in an elaborate illusion to mask a humble weaver background, Rosa thinks Ferdinand was telling the truth. The historians, going against solid evidence in Spain and Portugal, came up with the wrong solution swapping “Cristobal Colón” for a “Genovese Cristoforo Colombo.”

The particulars were not always obvious, but because of his familiarity with the Portuguese history of the discoveries and fluency in several languages, Rosa was able to see that something was not right in the official narrative. His biggest clue came when he learned that Columbus had married a Portuguese noblewoman in 1479, a full 14 years before becoming famous in Spain. Knowing that peasants and wool weavers could never marry nobility, it was apparent something was not correct.

By examining Columbus’s assumed identity carefully, he was able to show how historians had made several simple mistakes that completely changed the course of their research.

First, they mistranslated the name Colón to Columbus, even though Ferdinand alerted us that Colón is not the same as Columbus. Colombo is Italian, Colombe is French, Colom is Catalan, Palomo is Spanish, Pombo is Portuguese and Columbus is Latin. All these names are the same for the mean Pigeon. However, the discoverer’s name was Colón, as in the English colon, and semi-colon, coming from the Greek κωλον (kólon) meaning Member, just as Ferdinand also informed us.

Second, although many contemporary Spanish writers referred to Cristobal Colón as “ginovés” historians missed the important point that in 15th Century Spain, ginovés were slang for “foreigner” and not necessarily confirmation that Columbus was from Genoa. These are two honest mistakes that have led historians on a wild-goose chase to Genoa.

Instead of relying on previously published biographies, Rosa went directly to medieval sources from multiple kingdoms, plus ancient genealogy and heraldry, in order to cross-reference the historical events with the personalities. In addition, Rosa’s mastery of Spanish and Portuguese, allowed him a more accurate interpretation of these primary source documents, so often prone to errors of translation into English.

By reviewing the ancient documents, chronicles and manuscripts, and taking an active involvement in the DNA studies of Columbus’s bones at the University of Granada, Spain, Mr Rosa was able to disprove the official narrative as nothing more than a fairytale that was based on repeated misinterpretations of the original facts.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Columbus married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo. Filipa was not only the daughter of a high noble and Captain of the Portuguese Island of Porto Santo but also a member of the elite Portuguese Military Order of Santiago, as the newly presented documents show. This makes it impossible for her husband to be a wool weaver from anywhere. Filipa required the approval of the King of Portugal, Master of the Order of Santiago, in order to marry anyone. Such a granting was a procedure reserved only for someone of high noble standing in Portugal.

It becomes irrelevant what the writers of the last century, such as Tavianni and Morison concocted about the noble Filipa Moniz. Today we have valid documentation that Filipa Moniz was one of the twelve elite “donnas” of the Portuguese Military Order of Santiago. This new Portuguese document alone, according to Rosa, makes the entirety of the history of an Italian wool weaver’s son named Colombo a false account.

Aside from the Order of Santiago document, Rosa was also the first to show Columbus’s original coat of arms and to publish the similarities that exist between it and that of the Polish king. The evidence appears irrefutable that Columbus, who had been housed in the palaces of the nobility, had access to royal courts, and married into nobility, could not be, as our history books tell us, the illiterate son of a poor weaver from Genoa.

“Another nutty conspiracy theory! That’s what I first supposed. I now believe that Columbus is guilty of a huge fraud carried out over two decades.” Wrote Prof. James T. McDonough Jr., of St. Joseph’s University.

Columbus never wrote in Italian or Genoese

not even to his two brothers, and the scholars who have dedicated themselves to in-depth research of Christopher Columbus’s language have declared it to be a rough Castilian punctuated by noteworthy and frequent Portuguese words. This is clearly a clue to his Portuguese birth as are Columbus’s own words written to the Spanish court on March 4, 1493, saying that he “left wife and homeland” (Portugal) to go serve the court of Spain.

Now, 21st-century science is shedding more light on the Centuries-old Italian invention of a Genoese Colombo. Prof. José Lorente’s DNA studies prove that the discoverer Cristóbal Colón’s DNA did not match 477 Colombo families from the Genoa area. This constitutes 477 proof that Colón was not a Colombo.

So, who was Christopher Columbus, or better Cristóbal Colón, if not a poor weaver’s son from Genoa? With so much uncertainty, how can we be sure of what is the truth?

When pressed to further expound on his theory, pointing to his extensive research, Rosa confidently, and with source documents to verify his assertions, claims “Colón was a royal prince, son of a Portuguese noblewoman from the Italian Colonna family and a man named Henrique Alemão (Henry the German) resident on the Portuguese island of Madeira.”

 

 

King Wladyslaw III

The Battle of Varna 1444

Turns out that Henrique Alemão was the false name of none other than King Wladyslaw III (a direct descendent of one of Europe’s greatest ruling dynasties, Lithuania’s Gedimin dynasty). After disappearing in the Battle of Varna in 1444, King Wladyslaw III went into self-exile on the Island of Madeira and hid his identity from the public at large. Ferdinand Colón also claimed that his father was a resident of Madeira.

Rosa has pieced together many previously missed clues, including the fact that Prince Georges Paleologue de Bissipat, an exiled Byzantine nobleman living in France nicknamed “Colombo the Younger”, said to be a relative of Christopher Columbus was also a relative of King Wladyslaw III and that Wladyslaw III descended from the “Kings of Jerusalem” just as Ferdinand states Columbus did.

According to Rosa’s book, documents show that some of Europe’s courts knew exactly who Henrique Alemão was and who Cristóbal Colón was. Their high connections explain why the mystery was perpetrated to hide the famous discoverer’s true identity.

Rosa theorizes that Columbus’s original name was Prince Segismundo Henriques, born on Madeira and son of King Władysław III and his wife Senhorinha Annes, a noblewoman from the Portuguese Sá and Italian Colonna families.

Thus the navigator descended from Italian aristocracy as Ferdinand claimed and shortened his mother’s last name Colonna to end up with his new Spanish identity of Colón. The last name, Colón, was mistakenly changed to Colom (Catalan for Pigeon) by the publisher Pedro Posa in April 1493 and picked up by many other printers all over Europe. But all who utilized the names Colom/Colombo/Columbus were referencing the wrong person.

Is this just another run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory? Not according to historians from the University of Lisbon and St. Joseph’s University, and most recently renowned Greek historian, Miltiades Varvounis, who wrote that Rosa’s book “is a magnum opus and by no means should be considered a work of pseudo history or just another source of nutty conspiracy theories. Rosa’s numerous reliable findings and solid theories would make Sherlock Holmes jealous. The History of Columbus has many mixed-up facts and personalities, and maybe the time has come for the discoverer’s life to be finally rewritten.”

Although in Portugal and Poland, academics have taken to debating and supporting the new findings, it is lamentable that, up until now, there is little or no debate in America or Lithuania to either accept or contradict Rosa’s findings.

It is hoped that Lithuanian publishers, historians and researchers will take an interest in this history-altering evidence, as this book deserves an audience not only in Lithuania but worldwide since Columbus is a world-renowned figure who changed the course of our human history.

Prof. D. Félix Martínez Llorente, of the University of Valladolid, affirmed: “The book is an extensive and well-documented work on the still-enigmatic figure of Christopher Columbus, with evocative and notorious contributions that will, with absolute certainty, be talked about for a long time.”

Based on the extensive research, one can now be assured that the discoverer of America was not the poor wool weaver’s son from Genoa. Hopefully, in the near future, forensic DNA evidence can be obtained to prove that Christopher Columbus descended from Lithuania’s Royal House but hid his royal lineage to protect a paramount secret. The secret that his father, King Wladyslaw III, did not die at the Battle of Varna in 1444, but survived, and rejecting the crown of Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, went to live out his days in secret exile in Portugal, was the reason for the whole mystery surrounding his identity.

King Wladyslaw III’s tomb can be found, not far from our place, in the Madelena do Mar Church. Known as Henrique Alemão, the exiled monarch had the misfortune to drown off Cape Girao when his ship was wrecked as he returned home from Lisbon after a meeting with Manuel I, the King of Portugal.

There can be no doubt that Christopher Columbus was born in Portugal and Portuguese. He spoke Portuguese and Spanish and could move around in Royal circles.

If he was not born in Madeira, he could be the Duke of Beja illegitimate son, I do find many arguments and considerations to the claim that Columbus was born in Cuba Portugal. He named the first island he landed on, Cuba and another 40 other islands, after the names from the surrounding area of Cuba in Portugal, the many villages, and towns which he must have known from childhood. Why would he name all these islands after anywhere else than the area of his Home. No place he ever named after Italian places. This fact must be very important.

He left on his first travel on the day that Jews were forced to leave Portugal or convert. The 8th of August 1492.

The latest academic research as to Christopher Columbus’s origin have establish a totally different background of the explorer.

Dr. Manuel Rosa, a highly respected historian and researcher, has presented arguments challenging the traditional narrative that Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. Instead, he argues that Columbus was of Portuguese origin, with strong ties to Madeira. His claims are based on extensive archival research, linguistic analysis, and geopolitical reasoning. Below are the key points of his argument:
1. Columbus’s Noble Portuguese Ancestry
• Rosa argues that Columbus was not a poor Genoese wool weaver but rather a Portuguese nobleman.
• He suggests that Columbus was actually the son of Dom Fernando, Duke of Beja, and a noblewoman from Madeira or mainland Portugal.
• This theory aligns with the idea that Columbus had knowledge and connections that a commoner from Genoa would not have had.
2. Madeira as Columbus’s Birthplace or Early Residence
• Rosa presents evidence that Columbus had strong ties to Madeira, possibly being born there or spending part of his youth there.
• The island of Porto Santo, part of the Madeira archipelago, was home to Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, Columbus’s wife, whose family had connections to Portuguese royalty.
• Rosa argues that Columbus’s marriage to Filipa Moniz indicates that he was a nobleman, as she belonged to the prestigious Order of Santiago, which only accepted noble members.
3. Columbus’s Allegiance to Portugal
• Rosa contends that Columbus was a Portuguese agent who deliberately misled the Spanish Crown to protect Portugal’s strategic interests.
• He suggests that Columbus’s 1492 voyage was part of a secret Portuguese plan to misdirect Spain away from known Atlantic trade routes.
• Columbus’s navigation skills and detailed knowledge of Atlantic currents indicate training that a simple Genoese merchant would not have received.
4. Language and Signatures
• Rosa highlights that Columbus wrote almost exclusively in Portuguese or Spanish, not Italian.
• His signature, which includes cryptic symbols, has been analysed as having Templar or noble Portuguese connotations.
• He never referred to himself as “Colombo,” the Italian version of his name, but rather “Colón,” which Rosa argues is more consistent with Portuguese nobility.
5. The Genoese Columbus is a Different Person
• Rosa asserts that the historical records referring to a Genoese wool-weaver named Cristoforo Colombo actually belong to a different man and not the famous explorer.
• He argues that the Spanish court would never have entrusted such a critical mission to a foreign commoner without noble status or a proven background in navigation.

Conclusion
Dr. Manuel Rosa’s research challenges the mainstream historical narrative, arguing that Columbus was a Portuguese nobleman with ties to Madeira. His theories remain controversial, but they have gained attention for questioning long-accepted historical assumptions. Would you like more details on any of these points?

Dr. Manuel Rosa claims that Christopher Columbus was not the son of a Genoese wool weaver but rather the illegitimate son of Dom Fernando, Duke of Beja, a high-ranking Portuguese nobleman.

Key Points Supporting This Theory:
1. Noble Bloodline

– Dom Fernando was a member of the Portuguese royal family, closely related to King João II.
– Rosa argues that Columbus’s access to royal courts, marriage into Portuguese nobility, and advanced education suggest he was of noble descent rather than a commoner from Genoa.
2. Illegitimacy and Secrecy

– Rosa suggests that Columbus was born out of wedlock and therefore could not officially claim his noble status.
– To maintain secrecy, his identity was deliberately obscured, and he operated under the alias Cristóbal Colón.

3. Connection to Madeira
– Some theories suggest that Columbus’s mother may have been a noblewoman from Madeira or mainland Portugal, further reinforcing his ties to the island.
– His marriage to Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, a noblewoman from Porto Santo, aligns with the idea that he had noble status himself, as she belonged to the prestigious Order of Santiago.

4. Portuguese Royal Influence
– Rosa argues that Columbus was loyal to Portugal and may have been working as a secret agent for King João II.
– His first voyages were to Portuguese-held territories, and his navigation skills suggest formal training in Portuguese maritime academies.

Implications of This Theory
If Columbus were truly the son of Dom Fernando, it would mean that the traditional Genoese narrative is incorrect, and Columbus was part of a much larger geopolitical strategy by Portugal. This would also explain why he had privileged access to European courts and why he never wrote in Italian.

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