>Christopher Columbus
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In Spanish he is called Cristobal Colon, in Portuguese Cristovio Colombo and in Italian Cristoforo Colombo. Italian mariner and navigator Christopher Columbus was widely believed to be the first European to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and successfully land on the American continent. Born between August and October 1451, in Genoa, Italy, Columbus was the eldest son of Domenico Colombo, a wool-worker and small-scale merchant, and his wife, Susanna Fontanarossa; he had two younger brothers, Bartholomew and Diego. He received little formal education and was a largely self-taught man, later learning to read Latin and write Castilian.
Columbus began working at sea early on, and made his first considerable voyage, to the Aegean island of Chios, in 1475. A year later, he survived a shipwreck off Cape St. Vincent and swam ashore, after which he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where his brother Bartholomew, an expert chart maker, was living. Both brothers worked as chartmakers, but Columbus already nurtured dreams of making his fortune at sea. In 1477, he sailed to England and Ireland, and possibly Iceland, with the Portuguese marine, and he was engaged as a sugar buyer in the Portuguese islands off Africa (the Azores, Cape Verde, and Madeira) by a Genoese mercantile firm. He met pilots and navigators who believed in the existence of islands farther west. It was at this time that he made his last visit to his native city, but he always remained a Genoese, never becoming a naturalized citizen of any other country.
Returning to Lisbon, he married the well-born Dona Filipa Perestrello e Moniz in 1479. Their son, Diego, was born in 1480. Felipa died in 1485, and Columbus later began a relationship with Beatriz Enríquez de Harana of Cordoba, with whom he had a second son, Ferdinand. (Columbus and Beatriz never married, but he provided for her in his will and legitimatized Ferdinand, in accordance with Castilian law.)
By the time he was 31 or 32, Columbus had become a master mariner in the Portuguese merchant service. It is thought by some that he was greatly influenced by his brother, Bartholomew, who may have accompanied Bartholomew Diaz on his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and by Martin Alonso Pinzon, the pilot who commanded the Pinta on the first voyage. Columbus was but one among many who believed one could reach land by sailing west.
By the mid-1480s, Columbus had become focused on his plans of discovery, chief among them the desire to discover a westward route to Asia. In 1484, he had asked King John II of Portugal to back his voyage west, but had been refused. The next year, he went to Spain with his young son, Diego, to seek the aid of Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon. Though the Spanish monarchs at first rejected Columbus, they gave him a small annuity to live on, and he remained hopeful of convincing them. In January of 1492, after being twice rebuffed, Columbus obtained the support of Ferdinand and Isabella. The favorable response came directly after the fall of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, which led Spanish Christians to believe they were close to eliminating the spread of Islam in southern Europe and beyond. Christian missionary zeal, as well as the desire to increase Spanish prominence in Europe over that of Portugal and the desire for gold and conquest, were the primary driving forces behind Columbus’ historic voyage.
Columbus would make four voyages to the West Indies, but by the end of his final voyage, Columbus’ health had deteriorated; he was suffering from arthritis as well as the aftereffects of a bout with malaria. With a small portion of the gold brought from Hispaniola, Columbus was able to live relatively comfortably in Seville for the last year of his life. He was emotionally diminished, however, and felt that the Spanish monarchs had failed to live up to their side of the agreement and provide him with New World property and gold, especially after Isabella’s death. Columbus followed the court of King Ferdinand from Segovia to Salamanca to Vallodid seeking redress, but was rejected. He died in Vallodid on May 20, 1506. His remains were later moved to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, where they were laid with those of his son Diego. They were returned to Spain in 1899 and interred in Seville Cathedral.
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