Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 7

To determine the exact relations.h.i.+p between the various French and Italian Colombos and Coulons of the fifteenth century would be hazardous. It is enough to say that no evidence that stands a critical test remains to connect these famous mariners with the line of Christopher Columbus. The genealogical tables which Spotorno presents, upon which Caleb Cus.h.i.+ng enlightened American readers at the time in the _North American Review_, and in which the French family is made to issue from an alleged great-grandfather of Christopher Columbus, are affirmed by Harrisse, with much reason, to have been made up not far from 1583, to support the claims of Bernardo and Balda.s.sare (Balthazar) Colombo, as pretenders to the rights and t.i.tles of the discoverer of the New World.

Ferdinand is made in his own name to say of his father, "I think it better that all the honor be derived to us from his person than to go about to inquire whether his father was a merchant or a man of quality, that kept his hawks and hounds." Other biographers, however, have pursued the inquiry diligently.

[Sidenote: Columbus's family line.]

In one of the sections of his book on _Christopher Columbus and the Bank of Saint George_, Harrisse has shown how the notarial records of Savona and Genoa have been worked, to develop the early history of the Admiral's family from doc.u.mentary proofs. These evidences are distinct from the narratives of those who had known him, or who at a later day had told his story, as Gallo, the writer of the _Historie_, and Oviedo did. Reference has already been made to the prevalence of Colombo as a patronymic in Genoa and the neighboring country at that time. Harrisse in his _Christophe Colomb_ has enumerated two hundred of this name in Liguria alone, in those days, who seem to have had no kins.h.i.+p to the family of the Admiral. There appear to have been in Genoa, moreover, four Colombos, and in Liguria, outside of Genoa, six others who bore the name of Christopher's father, Domenico; but the searchers have not yet found a single other Christoforo. These facts show the discrimination which those who of late years have been investigating the history of the Admiral's family have been obliged to exercise. There are sixty notarial acts of one kind and another, out of which these investigators have constructed a pedigree, which must stand till present knowledge is increased or overthrown.

[Sidenote: His grandfather.]

What we know in the main is this: Giovanni Colombo, the grandfather of the Admiral, lived probably in Quinto al Mare, and was of a stock that seemingly had been earlier settled in the valley of Fontanabuona, a region east of Genoa. This is a parentage of the father of Columbus quite different from that shown in the genealogical chart made by Napione in 1805 and later; and Harrisse tells us that the notarial acts which were given then as the authority for such other line of descent cannot now be found, and that there are grave doubts of their authenticity.

[Sidenote: His father.]

It was this Giovanni's son, Domenico, who came from Quinto (where he left a brother, Antonio) at least as early as 1439, and perhaps earlier, and settled himself in the wool-weaver's quarter, so called, in Genoa, where in due time he owned a house. Thence he seems to have removed to Savona, where various notarial acts recognize him at a later period as a Genoese, resident in Savona.

The essential thing remaining to be proved is that the Domenico Colombo of these notarial acts was the Domenico who was the father of Christopher Columbus. For this purpose we must take the testimony of those who knew the genuine Colombos, as Oviedo and Gallo did; and from their statements we learn that the father of Christopher was a weaver named Domenico, who lived in Genoa, and had sons, Christoforo, Bartolomeo, and Giacomo. These, then, are the test conditions, and finding them every one answered in the Savona-Genoa family, the proof seems incontestable, even to the further fact that at the end of the fifteenth century all three brothers had for some years lived under the Spanish crown.

It is too much to say that this concatenation of ident.i.ties may not possibly be overturned, perhaps by discrediting the doc.u.ments, not indeed untried already by Peragallo and others, but it is safe to accept it under present conditions of knowledge; though we have to trust on some points to the statements of those who have seen what no longer can be found. Domenico Colombo, who had removed to Savona in 1470, did not, apparently, prosper there. He and his son Christopher pursued their trade as weavers, as the notarial records show. Lamartine, in his _Life of Columbus_, speaking of the wool-carding of the time, calls it "a business now low, but then respectable and almost n.o.ble,"--an idealization quite of a kind with the spirit that pervades Lamartine's book, and a spirit in which it has been a fas.h.i.+on to write of Columbus and other heroes. The calling was doubtless, then as now, simply respectable. The father added some experience, it would seem, in keeping a house of entertainment. The joint profit, however, of these two occupations did not suffice to keep him free from debt, out of which his son Christopher is known to have helped him in some measure. Domenico sold and bought small landed properties, but did not pay for one of them at least. There were fifteen years of this precarious life pa.s.sed in Savona, during which he lost his wife, when, putting his youngest son to an apprentices.h.i.+p, he returned in 1484, or perhaps a little earlier, to Genoa, to try other chances. His fortune here was no better. Insolvency still followed him. When we lose sight of him, in 1494, the old man may, it is hoped, have heard rumors of the transient prosperity of his son, and perhaps have read in the fresh little quartos of Plaanck the marvelous tale of the great discovery. He lived we know not how much longer, but probably died before the winter of 1499-1500, when the heirs of Corrado de Cuneo, who had never received due payment for an estate which Domenico had bought in Savona, got judgment against Christopher and his brother Diego, the sons of Domenico, then of course beyond reach in foreign lands.

[Sidenote: Domenico's house in Genoa.]

Within a few years the Marquis Marcello Staglieno, a learned antiquary in Genoa, who has succeeded in throwing much new light on the early life of Columbus from the notarial records of that city, has identified a house in the Vico Dritto Ponticello, No. 37, as the one in which Domenico Colombo lived during the younger years of Christopher's life.

The munic.i.p.ality bought this estate in June, 1887, and placed over its door an inscription recording the a.s.sociations of the spot. Harrisse thinks it not unlikely that the great navigator was even born here. The discovery of his father's owners.h.i.+p of the house seems to have been made by carefully tracing back the t.i.tle of the land to the time when Domenico owned it. This was rendered surer by tracing the t.i.tles of the adjoining estates back to the time of Nicolas Paravania and Antonio Bondi, who, according to the notarial act of 1477, recording Domenico's wife's a.s.sent to the sale of the property, lived as Domenico's next neighbors.

[Sidenote: Columbus born.]

If Christopher Columbus was born in this house, that event took place, as notarial records, brought to bear by the Marquis Staglieno, make evident, between October 29, 1446, and October 29, 1451; and if some degree of inference be allowed, Harrisse thinks he can narrow the range to the twelve months between March 15, 1446, and March 20, 1447. This is the period within which, by deduction from other statements, some of the modern authorities, like Munoz, Bossi, and Spotorno, among the Italians, D'Avezac among the French, and Major in England, have placed the event of Columbus's birth without the aid of attested doc.u.ments. This conclusion has been reached by taking an avowal of Columbus that he had led twenty-three years a sailor's life at the time of his first voyage, and was fourteen years old when he began a seaman's career. The question which complicates the decision is: When did Columbus consider his sailor's life to have ended? If in 1492, as Peschel contends, it would carry his birth back no farther than 1455-56, according as fractions are managed; and Peschel accepts this date, because he believes the unconfirmed statement of Columbus in a letter of July 7, 1503, that he was twenty-eight when he entered the service of Spain in 1484.

[Sidenote: 1445-1447.]

But if 1484 is accepted as the termination of that twenty-three years of sea life, as Munoz and the others already mentioned say, then we get the result which most nearly accords with the notarial records, and we can place the birth of Columbus somewhere in the years 1445-47, according as the fractions are considered. This again is confirmed by another of the varied statements of Columbus, that in 1501 it was forty years since, at fourteen, he first took to the sea.

[Sidenote: 1435-1437.]

There has been one other deduction used, through which Navarrete, Humboldt, Irving, Roselly de Lorgues, Napione, and others, who copy them, determine that his birth must have taken place, by a similar fractional allowance of margin, in 1435-37. This is based upon the explicit statement of Andres Bernaldez, in his book on the Catholic monarchs of Spain, that Columbus at his death was about seventy years old. So there is a twenty years' range for those who may be influenced by one line of argument or another in determining the date of the Admiral's birth. Many writers have discussed the arguments; but the weight of authority seems, on the whole, to rest upon the records which are used by Harrisse.

[Sidenote: His mother, brothers, and sister.]

The mother of Columbus was Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo de Fontanarossa, and Domenico married her in the Bisagno country, a region lying east of Genoa. She was certainly dead in 1489, and had, perhaps, died as early as 1482, in Savona. Beside Christoforo, this alliance with Domenico Colombo produced four other children, who were probably born in one and the same house. They were Giovanni-Pellegrino, who, in 1501, had been dead ten years, and was unmarried; Bartolomeo, who was never married, and who will be encountered later as Bartholomew; and Giacomo, who when he went to Spain became known as Diego Colon, but who is called Jacobus in all Latin narratives. There was also a daughter, Bianchinetta, who married a cheesemonger named Bavarello, and had one child.

[Sidenote: His uncle and cousins.]

Antonio, the brother of Domenico, seems to have had three sons, Giovanni, Matteo, and Amighetto. They were thus cousins of the Admiral, and they were so far cognizant of his fame in 1496 as to combine in a declaration before a notary that they united in sending one of their number, Giovanni, on a voyage to Spain to visit their famous kinsman, the Admiral of the Indies; their object being, most probably, to profit, if they could, by basking in his favor.

[Sidenote: Born in Genoa.]

[Sidenote: Claim for Savona,]

[Sidenote: and other places.]

If the evidences thus set forth of his family history be accepted, there is no question that Columbus, as he himself always said, and finally in his will declared, and as Ferdinand knew, although it is not affirmed in the _Historie_, was born in Genoa. Among the early writers, if we except Galindez de Carvajal, who claimed him for Savona, there seems to have been little or no doubt that he was born in Genoa. Peter Martyr and Las Casas affirm it. Bernaldez believed it. Giustiniani a.s.serts it. But when Oviedo, not many years after Columbus's death, wrote, it was become so doubtful where Columbus was born that he mentions five or six towns which claimed the honor of being his birthplace. The claim for Savona has always remained, after Genoa, that which has received the best recognition. The grounds of such a belief, however, have been pretty well disproved in Harrisse's _Christophe Colomb et Savone_ (Genoa, 1887), and it has been shown, as it would seem conclusively, that, prior to Domenico Colombo's settling in Savona in 1470-71, he had lived in Genoa, where his children, taking into account their known or computed ages, must have been born. It seems useless to rehea.r.s.e the arguments which strenuous advocates have, at one time or another, offered in support of the pretensions of many other Italian towns and villages to have furnished the great discoverer to the world,--Plaisance, Cuccaro, Cogoleto, Pradello, Nervi, Albissola, Bogliasco, Cosseria, Finale, Oneglia, Quinto, Novare, Chiavari, Milan, Modena. The pretensions of some of them were so urgent that in 1812 the Academy of History at Genoa thought it worth while to present the proofs as respects their city in a formal way. The claims of Cuccaro were used in support of a suit by Balthazar Colombo, to obtain possession of the Admiral's legal rights.

The claim of Cogoleto seems to have been mixed up with the supposed birth of the corsairs, Colombos, in that town, who for a long while were confounded with the Admiral. There is left in favor of any of them, after their claims are critically examined, nothing but local pride and enthusiasm.

The latest claimant for the honor is the town of Calvi, in Corsica, and this cause has been particularly embraced by the French. So late as 1882, President Grevy, of the French Republic, undertook to give a national sanction to these claims by approving the erection there of a statue of Columbus. The a.s.sumption is based upon a tradition that the great discoverer was a native of that place. The princ.i.p.al elucidator of that claim, the Abbe Martin Casanova de Pioggiola, seems to have a comfortable notion that tradition is the strongest kind of historical proof, though it is not certain that he would think so with respect to the twenty and more other places on the Italian coast where similar traditions exist or are said to be current. Harrisse seems to have thought the claim worth refuting in his _Christophe Colomb et La Corse_ (Paris, 1888), to say nothing of other examinations of the subject in the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue Critique_, and of two very recent refutations, one by the Abbe Casabianca in his _Le Berceau de Christophe Colomb et la Corse_ (Paris, 1889), and the last word of Harrisse in the _Revue Historique_ (1890, p. 182).

CHAPTER IV.

THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS.

The condition of knowledge respecting Columbus's early life was such, when Prescott wrote, that few would dispute his conclusion that it is hopeless to unravel the entanglement of events, a.s.sociated with the opening of his career. The critical discernment of Harrisse and other recent investigators has since then done something to make the confusion even more apparent by unsettling convictions too hastily a.s.sumed. A bunch of bewildering statements, in despite of all that present scholars.h.i.+p can do, is left to such experts as may be possessed in the future of more determinate knowledge. It may well be doubted if absolute clarification of the record is ever to be possible.

[Sidenote: His education.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAWING ASCRIBED TO COLUMBUS.]

The student naturally inquires of the contemporaries of Columbus as to the quality and extent of his early education, and he derives most from Las Casas and the _Historie_ of 1571. It has of late been ascertained that the woolcombers of Genoa established local schools for the education of their children, and the young Christopher may have had his share of their instruction, in addition to whatever he picked up at his trade, which continued, as long as he remained in Italy, that of his father. We know from the ma.n.u.scripts which have come down to us that Columbus acquired the manual dexterity of a good penman; and if some existing drawings are not apocryphal, he had a deft hand, too, in making a spirited sketch with a few strokes. His drawing of maps, which we are also told about, implies that he had fulfilled Ptolemy's definition of that art of the cosmographer which could represent the cartographic outlines of countries with supposable correctness. He could do it with such skill that he practiced it at one time, as is said, for the gaining of a livelihood. We know, trusting the _Historie_, that he was for a brief period at the University of Pavia, perhaps not far from 1460, where he sought to understand the mysteries of cosmography, astrology, and geometry.

[Sidenote: At Pavia.]

Bossi has enumerated the professors in these departments at that time, from whose teaching Columbus may possibly have profited. Harrisse with his accustomed distrust, throws great doubt on the whole narrative of his university experiences, and thinks Pavia at this time offered no peculiar advantages for an aspiring seaman, to be compared with the practical instruction which Genoa in its commercial eminence could at the same time have offered to any sea-smitten boy. It was at Genoa at this very time (1461), that Benincasa was producing his famous sea-charts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDREAS BENINCASA, 1476.

[From St. Martin's _Atlas_.]]

[Sidenote: Goes to sea.]

After his possible, if not probable, sojourn at Pavia, made transient, it has been suggested but not proved, by the failing fortunes of his father, Christopher returned to Genoa, and then after an uncertain interval entered on his seafaring career. If what pa.s.ses for his own statement be taken he was at this turn of his life not more than fourteen years old. The attractions of the sea at that period of the fifteenth century were great for adventurous youths. There was a spice of piracy in even the soberest ventures of commerce. The s.h.i.+ps of one Christian state preyed on another. Private ventures were buccaneerish, and the hand of the Catalonian and of the Moslem were turned against all. The news which sped from one end of the Mediterranean to the other was of fight and plunder, here and everywhere. Occasionally it was mixed with rumors of the voyages beyond the Straits of Hercules, which told of the Portuguese and their hazards on the African coast towards the equator.

[Sidenote: Prince Henry, the Navigator.]

Not far from the time when our vigorous young Genoese wool-comber may be supposed to have embarked on some of these venturesome exploits of the great inland sea, there might have come jumping from port to port, westerly along the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es, the story of the death of that great maritime spirit of Portugal, Prince Henry, the Navigator, and of the latest feats of his captains in the great ocean of the west.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.h.i.+P, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

[From the _Isolario_, 1547.]]

[Sidenote: Anjou's expedition.]

It has been usual to a.s.sociate the earliest maritime career of our das.h.i.+ng Genoese with an expedition fitted out in Genoa by John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, to recover possession of the kingdom of Naples for his father, Duke Rene, Count of Provence. This is known to have been undertaken in 1459-61. The pride of Genoa encouraged the service of the attacking fleet, and many a citizen cast in his lot with that naval armament, and embarked with his own subsidiary command. There is mention of a certain doughty captain, Colombo by name, as leading one part of this expeditionary force. He was very likely one of those French corsairs of that name, already mentioned, and likely to have been a man of importance in the Franco-Genoese train. He has, indeed, been sometimes made a kinsman of the wool-comber's son. There is little likelihood of his having been our Christopher himself, then, as we may easily picture him, a red-haired youth, or in life's early prime, with a ruddy complexion,--a type of the Italian which one to-day is not without the chance of encountering in the north of Italy, preserving, it may be, some of that northern blood which had produced the Vikings.

The _Historie_ of 1571 gives what purports to be a letter of Columbus describing some of the events of this campaign. It was addressed to the Spanish monarchs in 1495. If Anjou was connected with any service in which Columbus took part, it is easy to make it manifest that it could not have happened later than 1461, because the reverses of that year drove the unfortunate Rene into permanent retirement. The reb.u.t.tal of this testimony depends largely upon the date of Columbus's birth; and if that is placed in 1446, as seems well established, Columbus, the Genoese mariner, could hardly have commanded a galley in it at fourteen; and it is still more improbable if, as D'Avezac says, Columbus was in the expedition when it set out in 1459, since the boy Christopher was then but twelve. As Harrisse puts it, the letter of Columbus quoted in the _Historie_ is apocryphal, or the correct date of Columbus's birth is not 1446.