Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (9 page)

Tragic events at sea formed an essential part of Genoa’s culture, and that of the surrounding Ligurian region, the setting for some of Europe’s most ancient human settlements. The steep, rocky Ligurian coast offered rich and fertile soil, but in limited quantities. The meager amount of arable land forced farmers to carve narrow terraces into mountainsides. The most reliable crop happened to be Savona wine, produced west of Genoa. These restrictions spurred Ligurians to look to the sea for sustenance and survival. Of necessity, Ligurian sailors and pilots, rowers and riggers, emerged as the best and the bravest in Italy, or perhaps the most foolhardy. A Ligurian proverb warned, “
O mare o l’é male
” : The sea is evil.

A necessary evil, however.

All along its length, the region, known as the Ligurian Riviera, sheltered harbors and ports for sailors venturing into the sea for their livelihood. The port of Genoa, with its generous harbor, reigned over all, a semicircle jutting out from the hills of Sarzana, highlighted by a pier. Ships sought the port’s
mandraccio
, or shelter. “The harbor curves around in an arc here and, lest the fury of the sea damage the ships, comes protected by a jetty, which, it is said, would have cost only a little more had it been made of silver,” wrote Enea Silvio Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) of Columbus’s home port in 1423.

It was here that Columbus was born in 1451. Questions and alternative theories about Columbus’s origins have long located his birth and upbringing in places as varied as Portugal, Spain, and northern Africa, but the evidence, including 453 legal and commercial documents, overwhelmingly places him in Genoa, the son of Domenico Columbus, a weaver, tavern keeper, and local politician.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, later a remorseless critic of the explorer, plainly states that “Christopher was universally acknowledged to be Genoese by birth.” Stories about his ancestors insist that “his forebears were people of rank and had once been wealthy,” as if to suggest that Columbus sought to restore the status of his family, who “appear to have lost their fortune during the wars and internecine squabbles that one finds at every turn throughout the history of Lombardy,” the dominant region of northern Italy.

Concerning the name Columbus, Las Casas relates that in antiquity it had been “Colonus,” but he “elected to style himself Colón,” a transformation Las Casas ascribed to the “will of the Lord, who had chosen him to carry out the task conveyed by the name Christopher Colón.” Following his subject’s interpretation of his name, “he was named Christopher, that is to say,
Christum ferens
, which is Latin for the bearer or carrier of Christ.”

Columbus took to signing his name with elaborate flourishes to underscore his reputation as the man “adjudged worthy above all others to bring these numberless peoples who had lain in oblivion throughout so many centuries to the knowledge and worship of Christ.” Las Casas explained that Colón meant “new settler,” which he judged a “fitting title for a man whose industry and whose labors led to the discovery of numberless souls.”

The adult Columbus appeared in Genoese records in October 1470 in connection with a commercial transaction. “In the name of our Lord,” it begins, “Christopher Columbus, son of Domenico, more than nineteen years of age, and in the presence of, and by the authority, advice and consent of Domenico, his father, present and authorizing, voluntarily . . . confessed and in truth publicly recognized, that he must give and pay to Pietro Belesio of Porto Maurizio, son of Francesco, present, forty-eight lire, thirteen soldi and six denari di genovini, and this is for the remainder owed for wine sold and consigned to the same Christopher and Domenico by Pietro.” Domenico promised to guarantee his son’s obligation in the presence of several witnesses including Raffaele of Bisagno, a baker.

Domenico’s trade as a wool weaver and carder signified to his fellow Genoese that, given wool’s prestige, he was a presence in Genoa’s commercial scene. Wool weavers maintained their own guild. More than a trade union, a guild offered its members a way of life. There were over eighty at the time of Columbus’s childhood in La Superba, as Genoa called itself. They settled trade disputes, represented their members before the doge, administered exams to those seeking to gain entry, and organized weddings and funerals for their members, including gifts and the specifics of religious observance.

They educated their members’ children, and it was under the guild’s auspices that Christopher studied arithmetic, geography, and navigation. The schools offered two curricula. Those who studied Latin, the Latinantes, paid ten soldi for the privilege; all others paid five. Latin was employed for documents, scientific papers, and other formal utterances; otherwise, the Genoese dialect with its mellifluous French inflection prevailed. “
Son zeneize, rizo rœo, strenzo i denti e parlo ciœo
” runs a popular regional expression. “I’m Genoese, I seldom laugh, I grind my teeth, and I say what I mean”: attitudes Columbus epitomized. By the time he left Genoa, he knew at least two languages, Genoese and Latin, and he later acquired Portuguese and Spanish.

Columbus’s mother, Susanna Fontanarossa, belonged to a prosperous landowning family in Quezzi, a village of the valley of Bisagno, near Genoa. Her father was Jacobi di Fontanarubea, or, as he came to be known, Giacomo Fontanarossa. Susanna was a popular name in the region, and associated with the church of Santa Susanna in Rome. She was born about 1425, and upon her marriage brought a dowry consisting of a house and land, both of which were subsequently sold. She and her husband Domenico, Columbus’s father, bore at least five children: Giovanni Pelegrino, Bartholomew, Diego, Bianchinetta, and the infant who would be called Christopher Columbus. She died about 1480, little known to the world at large, though she had influenced it greatly through her children.

 

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aritime trade was vital to Genoa’s existence, and local authorities managed it with great care. At the top of the regulatory pyramid, the Office of the Sea had final say over the harbor and shore, and the Office of the Commune Fathers oversaw the docks and piers, as well as the excavation of the harbor necessary for the ships’ safety. Equally critical, the Office of Health worked strenuously to prevent ships from returning with the plague and similar diseases. No one aboard an arriving ship was permitted to set foot on terra firma without obtaining a permit, available for a fee from the Office of Health’s representative on Genoa’s Spinola Bridge. If a ship’s crew might have been exposed to plague in their travels, they were subjected to a strict quarantine. Beggars, if caught, were subjected to a penalty of three lashings, and lepers were forbidden to enter the city, nor was anyone allowed to feed or shelter them. Despite these regulations, the plague was a frequent and dreaded visitor in Genoa, worse in summer, milder in winter. In self-defense, households burned clothes and other goods thought to be contaminated.

The Genoese bureaucracy extended beyond the entrance to the harbor, keeping track of ships as they traveled to and from their destinations across the Mediterranean. Vessels departing from Genoa were generally observed by sentries at the Lanterna, and by other sentries posted along the shore. If they spied an unusual occurrence—a dangerous-looking craft or an accident at sea—they reported their suspicions to the Lanterna by means of smoke signals during the day or fires at night.

In 1490, smoke signals alerted Genoa to an attack by corsairs from Nice. The city mounted a rapid retaliation, catching the aggressors by surprise, rescuing its own men, in the process contributing to the city-state’s fierce reputation. Genoa punished its enemies, and took care of its own. It posted consuls to strategically important cities, and they regularly communicated by ship-borne letter, or, when urgent, by smoke signals. This intelligence network gave Genoa military and strategic advantage over its rivals, who took out their frustrations and grievances with reprisals, and, when possible, by capturing Genoese galleys and imprisoning all those on board. (Marco Polo of Venice was one of thousands of enemies of the Republic of Genoa who were subjected to this treatment.) Genoa responded to the increased threats by ordering ships to travel in convoys, heavily armed, and prepared to respond to attack. Genoese pirates earned a reputation for savagery, as well as for slave trading. They constantly did battle with Catalans and with the French, who gradually overtook the Genoese Republic by force, and by marriage. Gradually the republic lost its influence, as newer, larger powers emerged. The spices, especially pepper, and gems that had formerly arrived by ship in Genoa now went to Lisbon and later to Madrid as the commercial center of gravity drifted from the Mediterranean to the Iberian Peninsula. In its shrunken universe, Genoa focused on trade with North African ports, which could be extremely profitable, as well as extremely dangerous, and on currency exchange, an arena in which its bankers became known as swift and hard negotiators.

This was the tumultuous era into which Christopher Columbus was born, and in which he came of age.

 

I
n the year of Christopher Columbus’s birth, 1451, western Europe was slowly advancing, inspired by ideas and art disseminated from Italy, but Genoa succumbed to waves of political instability. Two years later, the city suffered a commercial blow with the fall of Constantinople, bringing with it a steady decline in Mediterranean commerce. During Columbus’s earliest years, the French fortunes revived, and in 1458, when Christopher was seven years old, the Genoese doge ceded Genoa to King Charles VII of France, reaping a personal fortune from the sale of his kingdom to its enemies. This outrageous turn of events came about because the rival Genoese factions preferred to invite a foreign power—the French—to rule rather than one side or the other. For once, Genoa hovered on the brink of peace.

After this victory, which could have led to political unification, the two main Genoese factions, the Fregoso and the Adorno, resumed battling each other. There were riots and assassinations, and civil strife that fed on itself and festered on the doorstep of the Columbus household.

In the fall of 1459, when Columbus was about to turn eight years old, he lived about fifty yards from Genoa’s Porta di Sant’Andrea, the scene of a violent confrontation. At that moment, the doge, Pietro Fregoso, after losing round after round of battles with the French, and further undercut by the rival Adornos, found himself cornered within the city walls, with only three knights for protection, the remnant of a once-formidable army. Galloping from one gate to another in search of freedom, he was confronted by his pursuers. One of them, Giovanni Cosa, caught up with him and struck him twice on the head with a deadly iron mace; Pietro, the doge, escaped this attack, only to confront a barrage of stones hurled at him from the rooftops. Unable to flee the city, the wounded leader rode uncertainly to his palace, where he collapsed and died within hours. Soon after, his body was returned to the street, where his political enemies gathered to dismember his corpse. Meanwhile, his troops, along with his brother Massimo, also tried to flee, only to meet with similarly appalling executions.

One hundred yards from the spot where the corpse of the doge Pietro was mutilated lived the Columbus family, in Vico Dritto di Ponticello, in a house owned by Domenico. It was possible that the young boy witnessed the gruesome event—stoning, the mutilation—and heard the shouts of the bloodthirsty victors. And if he was aware of the outrage, he would have had reason to tremble with dread, because his father, Domenico, was allied with the Fregoso faction, and his fortunes declined with theirs.

Then a way out of the deadly rivalry presented itself.

 

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ilan’s ruler, Francesco Sforza, with the support of Genoese citizens who had sickened of the internecine political warfare, won appointment in 1463 as lord of the city. Compared with the ceaseless strife that had preceded it, Sforza’s regime was a great success, a time of relative peace and prosperity. Yet the Sforza clan demonstrated little appreciation of Genoa’s distinguishing feature: its maritime trade. Neglected, Genoese shipping withered, and the few colonies the city had acquired were lost; the Genoese empire, always tentative and fragile, dwindled until even Corsica’s surpassed it. The prospects for ambitious navigators and explorers such as Christopher Columbus vanished.

Coming of age as an outcast in his hometown, and taking to the sea at an early age, Columbus devoted the rest of his life struggling to replace this lost empire. At first personal, the search turned political, and drove Columbus farther than he ever imagined, beyond Italy and Europe, beyond the Mediterranean, England, and Iceland, beyond the Canaries, all the way to the New World. Only an epic quest could match his ambition; nothing less would suffice. What began as recovery would end as discovery.

 

I
n Columbus’s youth, Genoa was in the throes of a rapid transformation. Shops, warehouses, stables, and markets piled atop each other in raucous and foul-smelling confusion. The wooden houses characteristic of the medieval era gave way to stone dwellings with tiled floors, massive fireplaces, and loggias arrayed along the narrow, winding streets called
carrugi
. The newer homes contained bathrooms with washbasins, bowls, and jugs with water, and soap in ivory boxes from Savona. In Columbus’s time, sailors aboard ships in the
mandraccio
gazed upward to the west to the somber gray stone palaces highlighted with towers of reddish brown and vertiginous battlements.

It was one of the largest cities in western Europe, with a population approaching 75,000, the equal of London, Paris, or Venice. In prosperous times, the port churned with ships and travelers from Genoa’s most popular destinations, instantly distinguishable by their garb and dialect. Lombards stood apart from Tuscans and from Levantines in billowing breeches. Turks in their turbans clustered in small groups, as did Greeks, recognizable from their short pleated blouses known as
fustanellas
. Catalans were readily identified by the
barretinas
they wore on their heads; Sardinians in black breeches and hood, and a loose white shirt, easily stood out.