Columbus’ Catalan origins

Christo­pher Colum­bus, the dis­cov­erer of Amer­ica, was in fact the Cata­lan noble born in Barcelona, Joan Colom Bertran, ac­cord­ing to the his­to­rian from Arenys, Jordi Bil­beny. In his lat­est book on the issue of Colum­bus’s ori­gins, which was re­cently pub­lished by Li­brooks, Bil­beny, who had al­ready iden­ti­fied Colum­bus as Ad­mi­ral Joan Colom Bertran, now deals with the birth date of the aris­to­crat, sol­dier and nav­i­ga­tor born into Cata­lan high so­ci­ety. Bil­beny sets the year of his birth as 1414, which would ob­vi­ously mean his dis­cov­ery of the Amer­i­cas took place when he was 78 years of age, and that he died aged 92, in 1506.

The fact that this time­line would have Colum­bus vis­it­ing Amer­ica be­tween 1502 and 1504, at  al­most 90 years of age, is not a prob­lem for Bil­beny, who refers the reader to var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sources de­scrib­ing the dis­cov­erer at that time as a “ven­er­a­ble” old man with white hair who spent the end of his life al­most pros­trate in bed be­cause of the dis­eases that af­fected him and who, for ex­am­ple, had to beg the king’s per­mis­sion “to travel on a stretcher”. In fact, Colum­bus com­pared him­self to the fig­ure of the bib­li­cal Abra­ham, who died at more that 100 years of age. The writer also lists a num­ber of peo­ple who at the time lived to a very old age, in­clud­ing Cata­lan philoso­pher Ramon Llull.

Bil­beny ex­plains that de­spite the cur­rent be­lief that peo­ple in those days lived far shorter lives than we do today, there are many well known fig­ures who in fact lived to a ripe old age. Apart from the afore­men­tioned Ramon Llull (84), he gives the ex­am­ples of the Bishop Joan Mar­garit (86), artist Michelan­gelo (89), Papa Luna (95), Pope Gre­gory IX (98) and Ramon Penyafort (100).

So how does Bil­beny ar­rive at his con­clu­sions? The writer is well known for his re­search into the great nav­i­ga­tor and so far has pro­duced nine works in var­i­ous for­mats on dif­fer­ent as­pects of the ad­mi­ral’s life. If in fact he was the Cata­lan Joan Colon i Bertan, then he is men­tioned in his grand­fa­ther’s will as Joanet in 1419. There are also records of his logs at sea giv­ing spe­cific dates, as well as records re­lat­ing to legal dis­putes with the Crown and the Ad­mi­ralty, as well as law­suits fol­low­ing his death.

The Cata­lan the­ory does of course have com­pe­ti­tion, and Bil­beny has dealt with this in his pre­vi­ous work. The strongest con­tender is an Ital­ian, the Gen­ovese wool mer­chant Cristo­foro Colombo. How­ever, to Bil­beny, it seems un­likely that such a man with no ed­u­ca­tion, mil­i­tary or naval back­ground, and most es­pe­cially bereft of aris­to­cratic lin­eage, could come near the pro­file of a man who had ac­cess to the court and was a re­spected naval of­fi­cer. The time­line does not fit ei­ther, be­cause the his­to­rian has Colom Bertran fight­ing in the Cata­lan civil war along­side Renat d’Anjou, king of the Cata­lans, when Ital­ian doc­u­ments have Columbo work­ing as a weaver with his fa­ther.

For Bil­beny, the final nail in the cof­fin of the Columbo claim lies in the fact that pre­vi­ously recorded de­tails of his life only co­in­cided with the life and ex­ploits of the great man be­cause they were “forcibly al­tered” to make an im­pos­si­ble story pos­si­ble.