This was the tumultuous era into which Christopher Columbus was born, and in which he came of age.
In 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.
Milan’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.
In 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.
Clothing worn by the Genoese was strictly regulated by the Office of Virtue, beginning in 1439. The Office enforced a series of sumptuary laws to regulate morality by curbing luxury and excess, as well as prostitution. These laws limited the amount of money Genoese could spend on luxury items, and even on weddings, limited to fifty guests. They regulated the days on which prostitutes, a staple of Genoese nightlife, could roam the streets. They measured their time with clients by the half hour, marked by a flickering candle. “Girls with a candle,” as the prostitutes were known, were forbidden to enter a cemetery or approach a church, and had to wear insignia indicating their profession. If caught out of bounds, the prostitutes were punished by having their noses amputated, and their livelihood ruined.
The same Office of Virtue governing matters of dress and prostitution also regulated marital transactions; romance rarely entered into the equation. Married women were meant to maintain their homes; they were supposed to be as somber as their husbands. Given half a chance, the Genoese could be lavish spenders, especially when it came to weddings, but ultimately rules and regulations prevailed, down to the smallest details.
Sumptuary laws dictated that men wore sober gray attire. Red and purple were out of bounds. The value of jewelry and dresses owned by women was sharply limited, and if it exceeded the prescribed limit, the owners were fined. Fines extended to personal conduct, as well. A woman who committed adultery was fined thirty lire; if she failed to pay, she was beheaded. A husband who put his wife out on the street to make room for a lover was fined twenty-five lire. Marriages occurred when women—girls, actually—reached age fifteen, the bargain sealed with a handshake, and the bride not present, only the family representatives, notary, and matchmaker. In Genoa, a deal was a deal, whether for love or money.
Slavery was deeply woven into the fabric of the Genoese economy, especially traffic in girls who were only thirteen or fourteen years old. Every Genoese household, even modest ones, had one or two female slaves. Although Christianity prohibited bondage, an exception was made for these non-Christian slaves; they were Russian, Arab, Mongol, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Albanian, and Chinese. Slave traders and pirates sold them on a regular basis to Genoa; occasionally their wide net included a Christian girl, whom they kidnapped and would return for a high ransom. The transactions were formal, notarized and deeded. Most slaves were sold “as is.” If others, whose health had been guaranteed, developed epilepsy or other health problems, the owner demanded an annulment of the contract. Some cautious buyers kept the girl of their choice on a trial basis to judge whether she would remain charming and adapt to a life of slavery in Genoa. Once acquired by a Genoese master, girls became mere property, bound to gratify his sexual wants, as well as those of his friends. Merchants able to afford a concubine, and many in this prosperous city could, maintained them in households separate from their families. The master of the house specified the terms of the arrangement with the local notary public, especially concerning sensitive matters such as inheritance rights for children born out of wedlo
ck.
Not all slaves were obedient, and occasionally one attempted to escape, or even poison her master. If caught, she would be subjected to prolonged torture until she confessed her crimes, and in addition, confessed to witchcraft and heresy. She was then subjected to the “penance of fire,” that is, burned at the stake. Less serious infractions committed by the slaves met with frequent lashings in private. This was the slavery with which Christopher Columbus was familiar.
Merchants gathered around the Piazza Banchi, Genoa’s commercial center, dotted with the scagni, or stalls, of bankers, money changers, and moneylenders, who did business with customers at a counter using a scale for weighing gold and silver. Heavily laden mules trudged through narrow winding streets, with large bales of goods strapped tightly to their backs. Some mules bore sacks of woven jute—zerbini—on either flank, similar to saddlebags, as they made their way between impossibly tall houses, the monotonous shade occasionally broken by sunlight pouring down from a garden or a flower-bedecked sundeck. In hot weather and in cold, the constricted streets sent up a stench consisting of dung, spices, tar employed in caulking the leaky ships, and the grease used by tanners to preserve and soften stiff hides. Amid the reek, bastagi, or porters, loaded and unloaded the wares carried by the mules off and on the ships. Their racket reverberated off the stones of Genoa, a cacophony composed of hammers beating hot iron on cool anvil, of the softer thud of mallets on barrel hoops, of piercing commands delivered to the ships’ crews, and of sailors chanting as they rowed or coiled ropes. Peddlers sang odes to their fish, their cloth, their fruit, anything they hoped to turn into money, and behind them, shopkeepers patiently waited for seagoing customers. Guilds for sailmakers, caulkers, coopers, carpenters, lantern makers, welders of anchors and cannon, and other trades associated with shipbuilding and maintenance clustered around the base of the docks.
The city’s mind and heart, no less than its economy, focused on the sea. “The Genoese, while loving the family above himself, was always ready to leave it behind to cross the seas to foreign countries,” the Genoese historian Emilio Pandiani has written. “He was a trader and navigator first.”
In the cramped harbor, the ships, the focus of Genoa’s pride and commercial frenzy, jostled for space and attention. They consisted mostly of traditional galleys distinguished by a row of oars on either side, each oar powered by five or six oarsmen. More than a hundred oarsmen were at the ready if the wind died, under the command of the pilot, or comito. When necessary, they crowded on deck with body-length shields bearing brilliant coats of arms, to form a human shield against attack. Others carried bows and arrows, and catapults for throwing “Greek fire”—probably blazing petroleum—along with devices for grappling and boarding other craft in battle. On the forecastle, near the prow, engines of war known as mangonels stood ready. These were giant slingshots capable of bombarding an enemy with a lethal array of objects, including stones and firebombs.
Galleys extended to well over one hundred feet in length, and at the widest part ranged from twelve to fifteen feet. Their keels and decks were usually fashioned from oak. They sported two tall, slender masts, seventy-five feet high, both rigged with triangular sails at an angle to the mast. The distinctive, highly maneuverable lateen, or Latin, sail is believed to have originated with Roman vessels as early as the third century AD, although they have long been identified with daring Arab sailors, especially pirates raiding vulnerable European or African coastlines. The principal types of galleys with which Columbus was familiar were the narrow, maneuverable galley known as the zenzil, and the bastard galley, distinguished by a round stern and greater width. The former were generally used for battle and the latter for transport and trade.
Personnel consisted of the captain, or patrono; the pilot; a ship’s clerk; a gunsmith, or insegnator; carpenters and caulkers to maintain the ship; a barber who doubled as a surgeon; a barrel keeper to mind the precious stores of water; a waiter and many other servants; a cook; twenty jack-of-all-trades sailors; weapons specialists; and several ship’s boys. In Columbus’s youth, most oarsmen were freemen, later supplanted with slaves or prisoners condemned to hard labor. Under this grim regimen, oarsmen-slaves were chained to rowing benches and tortured by an overseer’s stinging whip while a whistle marked time. It was aboard such ships that Genoese navigators such as Columbus learned their harsh trade.
As an apprentice seaman, Columbus likely participated in maritime expeditions along the Ligurian Riviera, extending as far west along the sparkling cobalt Mediterranean Sea as Nice, as far east as the town of Porto Venere in the province of La Spezia, and as far south as Corsica, the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and a prized colony of Genoa.
He later sailed a thousand miles to the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean Sea. Despite its distance from Liguria, Chios was tightly controlled by the Genoese. Although outnumbered ten to one, the commercial invaders retained their hold by allowing religious freedom for the inhabitants while exploiting the island for its economic potential by means of a financial organization known as a maona, overseen by a chief magistrate, or podestá, appointed by Genoa. With this system, the Genoese established trading posts and warehouses for profitable commodities such as salt and pitch. They also traded in “Chios tears,” the ivory-colored resin that dripped from the mastic trees (Pistacia lentiscus) dotting the hillsides. (With its smoky, astringent taste, mastic is still used for chewing gum.)
By the time Columbus returned from Chios, his father had moved the family residence from Vico Dritto di Ponticello to the nearby hills of Savona, perhaps because he was allied with the losing faction in Genoa’s political strife, or, just as likely, for the sake of a safer environment.
Columbus was soon aboard the ship Bechalla, carrying a cargo of mastic from Chios, bound for Portugal, Flanders, and England. It was May 1476, and he was almost twenty-five years old. Military conflict embroiled many of the Mediterranean states; in response, Genoa dispatched ships in convoys. The one in which he found himself included three galleys, a battleship, and Bechalla, with a crew from Liguria. Despite his age, he probably shipped out as an ordinary seaman.
August 13 found the convoy off the coast of Portugal when a massive fleet of French and Portuguese ships under the command of Guillaume de Casenove, a daring privateer (or naval mercenary), suddenly struck. In theory, Genoa and France were at peace, and Casenove had no cause for attack, but he could always find a technicality to justify his aggression. Although outnumbered, the Genoese bravely grappled with the enemy, that is, they harnessed themselves to their attackers, and attempted to defeat them in hand-to-hand combat. At day’s end, three Genoese and four enemy ships had been sunk in battle, with a loss of life in the hundreds. The surviving craft fled for safe harbors. Bechalla was not among them.
When Columbus’s ship sank, he jumped into the sea. Few sailors prided themselves on their swimming ability at that time, and his best hope was rescue, or, failing that, grabbing onto some buoyant piece of shipwreck. This Columbus did. At times he pushed it as he swam to shore, and when he was too tired to swim, he climbed atop it to rest. He was wounded, exactly how and where is not clear, and the injury deepened his exhaustion and desperation. Eventually he covered six miles, perhaps the longest six miles he would ever travel, to the shore and the ancient town of Lagos, at the extreme southeastern edge of Portugal, not far from the city of Sagres, originally the “Sacrum Promontorium” in Latin, or Holy Promontory, that offered refuge to sailors about to round Cape St. Vincent, the most westerly point of the Iberian Peninsula. It was here, at Sagres, that Prince Henry the Navigator had gathered an eclectic group of followers—mariners, cosmologists, and shipbuilders—a generation earlier. It is difficult to imagine the castaway Columbus, grasping the lumber of his lost ship, washing up on a more propitious location than this narrow, windswept plateau reaching into the Atlantic. Accustomed to studying natural phenomena for signs and premonitions, sailors are by nature superstitious, and Columbus was no excepti
on. It seemed as if fate, in the form of the shipwreck, was lifting the ambitious young mariner out of Genoa and positioning him at the brink of the unknown.
The inhabitants of Lagos treated shipwrecked sailors such as Columbus humanely, and when he recovered from his ordeal, he traveled to Lisbon, where he found refuge in the city’s Genoese colony.
The following year he undertook an even more hazardous journey, this time to the north. “I sailed in the year 1477, in the month of February, a hundred leagues beyond the island of Tile”—mostly likely “Thule,” or Iceland, which maintained trade with Lisbon—“and to this island, which is as big as England, come English with their merchandise, especially those from Bristol. And at the season when I was there, the sea was not frozen, but the tides were so great that in some places they rose 26 braccia”—about fifty feet, in his estimation—“and fell as much in depths.” It is unlikely that Columbus experienced anything like a fifty-foot tide, unless he confronted a giant tsunami triggered by one of the frequent volcanic eruptions in the vicinity of Iceland. On this or another voyage he traveled to Ireland, where he encountered “men of Cathay,” that is, China. In Galway, he reported seeing “a man and a woman of extraordinary appearance in two boats adrift.” Who were they? Where had they originated? Were they Asian, or some other unknown people?
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