Columbus, Christopher, 1451-1506
Christopher Columbus born Before 31 October 1451, Genoa, Republic of Genoa; Died 20 May 1506 (aged c. 54), Valladolid, Crown of Castile; The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Ligurian is Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian Cristoforo Colombo, in Spanish Cristóbal Colón, and in Portuguese, Cristóvão Colombo. He was born before 31 October 1451 in the territory of the Republic of Genoa (now part of modern Italy), though the exact location remains disputed. His father was Domenico Colombo, a middle-class wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked as a helper. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo were his brothers. Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood. He also had a sister named Bianchinetta. Columbus never wrote in his native language, which is presumed to have been a Genoese variety of Ligurian: his name in the 16th-century Genoese language would have been Cristoffa Corombo In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of 10. In 1470, the Columbus family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. In the same year, Christopher was on a Genoese ship hired in the service of René of Anjou to support his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. Some modern historians have argued that he was not from Genoa but, instead, from the Aragon region of Spain or from Portugal. These competing hypotheses have generally been discounted by mainstream scholars; In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the important Centurione, Di Negro and Spinola families of Genoa. Later, he allegedly made a trip to Chios, an Aegean island then ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe. He docked in Bristol, England and Galway, Ireland. In 1477, he was possibly in Iceland. In the autumn of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartolomeo, and they continued trading for the Centurione family. Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485. He married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, daughter of the Porto Santo governor and Portuguese nobleman of Lombard origin Bartolomeu Perestrello. In 1479 or 1480, his son Diego Columbus was born. Between 1482 and 1485, Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa, reaching the Portuguese trading post of Elmina at the Guinea coast (in present-day Ghana). Some records report that Filipa died sometime around 1485, while Columbus was away in Castile. He returned to Portugal to settle her estate and take his son Diego with him. He had left Portugal for Castile in 1485, where he found a mistress in 1487, a 20-year-old orphan named Beatriz Enríquez de Arana. It is likely that Beatriz met Columbus when he was in Córdoba, a gathering site of many Genoese merchants and where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located at intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to Columbus's natural son Fernando Columbus in July 1488, named for the monarch of Aragón. Columbus recognized the boy as his offspring. Columbus entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for her following his death, but Diego was negligent in his duties. Ambitious, Columbus eventually learned Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. He read widely about astronomy, geography, and history, including the works of Claudius Ptolemy, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius II's Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum; Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile. On his first voyage, he independently discovered the Americas and magnetic declination. These voyages marked the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the American continents, and are thus of enormous significance in Western history. Columbus always insisted, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the lands that he visited during those voyages were part of the Asian continent, as previously described by Marco Polo and other European travelers. Columbus's refusal to accept that the lands he had visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia might explain, in part, why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci and not after Columbus;
Citations
BiogHist
Unknown Source
Citations
Name Entry: Columbus, Christopher, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "colu",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "LC",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "harvard",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "umi",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "byu",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "cjh",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "NLA",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "SIA",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nypl",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "crnlu",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "oac",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "rmoa",
"form": "authorizedForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colombo, Cristoforo, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "authorizedForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colom, Cristodfor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "authorizedForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colombo, Cristóvão, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "authorizedForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumbus, Kryštof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "authorizedForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: كولومبس, كريستوفر, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "authorizedForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: קאלומבוס, קריסטאף, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Fontanarrosa, Cristóbal Colón y, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolon, Kristobal, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolombos, Kʻristapʻor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumb, Krzysztof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kholupus, Khristov, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolombos, Kristapor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Columbus, Christophorus, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colom, Cristobal, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumb, Khristofor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colombus, Christophorus, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumbo, Kristof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colón, Cristóbal, 1450-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Ḳolon, Ḳrisṭobal, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Ḳolumbus, Ḳrisṭof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolomb, Kristof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumbus, Kristof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colom, Cristóbal, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colombo, Cristovao, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colom, Cristoforus, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colom, Cristoferus, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: كولومبوس, كريستوف, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colón y Fontanarrosa, Cristóbal, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: קאלומבוס, קריסטופר, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colon, Cristobal, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: コロン, クリストーバル, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Ko-lun-pu, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumbus, Krystof, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Goulm, Kristol, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: كولمبوس, كريستوفر, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolampacu, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Fontanarrosa, Cristobal Colon y, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Gelunbu, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colomb, Christophe, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Колумб, Христофор, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolompos, Kristapor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colom, Cristòfor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolomvos, Christophoros, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colon, Christophe, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolompos, Kʻristapʻor, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: קולומבוס, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colombo, Christovam, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: 哥伦布, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colón, Christophe, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Kolumbus, Christoph, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Columbus, Ch. (Christopher), 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: Colonne, Cristoforo, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
},
{
"contributor": "nara",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
Name Entry: コロンブス, 1451-1506
Found Data: [
{
"contributor": "VIAF",
"form": "alternativeForm"
}
]
Note: Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest
