Although Christopher Columbus is remembered as much today for unleashing destruction on native peoples as for discovering new lands, one thing about him has remained a mystery: What is his own lineage?
Now, Spanish scientists believe he was born into a Sephardic Jewish family from Western Europe and converted to Catholicism to avoid religious persecution.
On this Columbus Day, news of the explorer’s lineage has made news with the BBC, Reuters and Fox News, among others.
Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus, 1519 — Metropolitan Museum of Art
Born in 1450 or 1451, Columbus hailed from Genoa, Italy, according to the conventional story. But scholars and tour guides alike have questioned that story since the 19th century. Now, new DNA research tells a different story.
José Antonio Lorente, professor of forensic medicine at Granada University, and the historian Marcial Castro led the 22-year investigation that tested tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, said to be the final burial place of Columbus.
Even that claim has been contested, however, with other locations claiming the great explorer is buried elsewhere. Inside Seville Cathedral, the traditional burial site is a shrine with gilded ironwork and ornate decoration.
Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506. He wanted to be buried on the island of Hispaniola, which today is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. His remains were taken there in 1542, moved to Cuba in 1795 and then, reportedly to Seville in 1898.
Researchers took samples from inside the Seville casket and compared the DNA results with those of known relatives and descendants of Columbus. The results were released last Saturday in a Spanish documentary titled Columbus DNA: The True Origin.
“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente explains in the program. “And both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”
That aligns with one of the theories about Columbus’ origin. About 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country. The word “Sephardic” comes from Sefarad, or Spain, in Hebrew.
About 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith.
Lorente said his team analyzed 25 possible birthplaces for Columbus but concluded it was only possible to say he was born in Western Europe.
Some Jewish scholars, however, urged caution in the new story of Columbus’ origins, even while conceding it could be true.
“The DNA issue that focuses on the so-called tomb of Columbus in Seville is fraught with political issues pertaining to national pride and, with it, which country can claim Columbus as its own,” Ori Soltes, an author and former director of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, told Jewish News Syndicate.
Previous studies by Peter Dickson of Virginia have shown “Columbus was a child of his era and his bloodline mixed Spanish, Genoese and French strains — indeed, more than just these three — as well as intertwining Jewish and Christian strains,” Soltes said.
DNA evidence aside, there are other indicators of a possible Jewish ancestry, he added: “He set sail from a country that had spent a century producing various sorts of conversos by the time of his first voyage. Other aspects of his story, from the way he signed his letters to his son to his insistence that his ships sail before midnight of the day (Aug. 3) when the edict of expulsion was to go into effect also point to the interweave of religious and national identities that would have comprised him.”
JNS also cited comments by Matt Goldish, history professor and chair of Jewish history at Ohio State University, who asked, “Why did a Genoese mariner speak and write in Spanish?” and “Why did Columbus leave some money to certain Jews or conversos?”
Goldish added: “DNA, for example, does not actually tell you that someone is or is not Jewish — it says that most Jews from a certain region seem to have common ancestors, and a given person shares to whatever extent in the DNA of those ancestors.”