Departing from the Port of Palos in 1492. Oil painting by Evaristo Domínguez, in the town hall of Palos de la Frontera.
Today the world remembers the discovery of America was discovered with the children’s rhyme, “Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-Two”. We have learned in the Destination Yisra’el blog, “The Mystery of the Kabbalist Jew and Explorer of America, Christopher Columbus” that Christopher Columbus’ real birth name was Salvador Fernando Zarco, and his pen name or pseudo name was Cristobal Colon. Not only was the name of this man called Christopher Columbus a mystery, his religious identity an enigma, but even the date of his departure from Spain has been enshrouded in a great mystery.
What was even more enigmatic was the historical connection between the date that Christopher Columbus set sail and the date that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered that all Jews were expelled. It was not the historians nor the American historical revisionists that identified the identity of these two dates but Columbus himself in his private letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. This was documented in the Jewish Virtual Library article titled, “Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress: Columbus sets Sail” in which Columbus writes in his “Journal of the First Voyage” these words;
Christopher Columbus – “So after having expelled the Jews from your dominions, Your Highnesses, in the same month of January, ordered me to proceed with sufficient armament to the said region of India.”
It is interesting that while the order to all the provinces of Spain that the Jewish people were to be expelled from the Nation of Spain was officially declared on March 31, 1492 by the signatures of the King and Queen along with the signature of Juan de Coloma, the secretary of the King and Queen, this expulsion decree was already known to Christopher Columbus in January of that same year. This expulsion was extensive, and complete in its totality. The Alhambra Decree ordered by King Ferdinand I in 1492, reads as follows;
The Alhambra Decree – “Therefore, with the council and advice of the eminent men and cavaliers of our reign, and of other persons of knowledge and conscience of our Supreme Council, after much deliberation, it is agreed and resolved that all Jews and Jewesses be ordered to leave our kingdoms, and that they never be allowed to return.
And we further order in this edict that all Jews and Jewesses of whatever age that reside in our domain and territories that they leave with their sons and daughters. their servants and relatives, large and small, of whatever age, by the end of July of this year, and that they dare not return to our lands, not so much as to take a step on them not trespass upon them in any other manner whatsoever.
Any Jew who does not comply with this edict and is to be found in our kingdom and domains, or who returns to the kingdom in any manner, will incur punishment by death and confiscation of all their belongings. We further order that no person in our kingdom of whatever station or noble status hide or keep or defend any Jew or Jewess, either publicly or secretly, from the end of July onwards, in their homes or elsewhere in our reign, upon punishment of loss of their belongings, vassals, fortresses, and hereditary privileges.
So that the said Jews may dispose of their household and belongings in the given time period, for the present we provide our assurance of royal protection and security so that , until the end of the month of July, they may sell and exchange their belongings and furniture and other items, and to dispose of them freely as they wish; and that during said time, no one is to do them harm or injury or injustice to their persons or to their goods, which is contrary to justice, and which shall incur the punishment that befalls those who violate our royal security.
Thus we grant permission to the said Jews and Jewesses to take out their goods and belongings out of our reigns, either by sea or by land, with the condition that they not take out either gold or silver or minted money or any other items prohibited by the laws of the kingdom…”
This was not a surprising order by the throne of Spain, for in the year 1480, Spain ordered all the Jews to leave and towns and cities and sequester themselves in separate regions away from the Spanish populations. They also ordered that the Spanish Inquisition be established in order to prosecute the Jews for doing “great harm to the Christian either with conversation or communications…to subvert our holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christian away from their beliefs.” In real terms, the Jews were expelled for becoming missionaries to the Christians and converting the Christians to the Jewish faith. As documented in the Alhambra Decree:
The Alhambra Decree – “These Jews instruct these Christians in the ceremonies and observances of their Law, circumcising their children, and giving them books with which to pray, and declaring unto them the days of fasting, and meeting with them to teach them the histories of their Law, notifying them when to expect Passover and how to observe it, giving them the unleavened bread and ceremonially prepared meats, and instructing them in things from which they should abstain, both with regard to food items and other things requiring observances of their Law of Moses, making them understand that there is no other law or truth besides it. All of which then is clear that, on the basis of confessions from such Jews as well as those perverted by them, that it has resulted in great damage and detriment of our holy Catholic faith…
It is left for this Holy Mother Church to mend and reduce the matter to its previous state inasmuch as, because of our frailty of humanity, it could occur that we could succumb to the diabolical temptation that continually wars against us so easily if its principal cause were not removed, which would be to expel the said Jews from the kingdom. Because whenever a grave and detestable crime is committed by some members of a given group, it is reasonable that the group be dissolved or annihilated, the minors for the majors being punished one for the other; and that those who pervert the good and honest living on the cities and villages and who by their contagion could harm others, be expelled from the midst the people, still yet for other minor causes, that would be of harm to the Republic, and all the more so for the major of these crimes, dangerous and contagious as it is.”
The Map of the New World by the Cartographer, Juan de la Cosa
The only Jews that were left in Spain were those who converted to Christianity with the provision that if they did not convert they would be killed. Even so over the centuries, the Sephardic Jews of Spain who remained continued to observe the Jewish laws secretly. Those Jews who clandestinely remained are known as “Marranos” or “Crypto-Jews” for secretly continuing to observe Jewish Torah laws.
Officially Columbus departed from Palas de la Frontera with three ships, financed by Italian investors, the Royal crown of Spain, and certain provinces of Spain, especially the Palas de la Frontera. The larger carrack was called the Santa María yet was nicknamed the Galician. The two smaller caravels, were called the Pinta (the Painted) and the Niña, after her owner’s name, Juan Niño of Moguer.
The Santa María was also the property of Juan de la Cosa, a Spanish cartographer, who was the captain of the Santa María and went with Columbus on all four of Columbus’ four voyages. Juan later went on to become a Spanish conquistador and explorer of the Americas.
Officially Columbus left Spain on Friday, August 3, 1492. This was the day of infamy when the temples of Solomon and Herod were both destroyed by Kings Nebuchadnezzar, and the Roman Emperor Vespasian.
The official expulsion of the Spanish Alhambra Decree singed into law on March 31, 1492 went into effect four months later. Before the sun set on the eve of the 1st of August (31st of August, it was reported that Columbus ordered all his men to be on board ship prepared to set sail. Off the Mediterranean coastline of Spain, at Palas de la Frontera, Columbus on this repeat of the day of infamy, another pogrom, expulsion, holocaust, and potential genocide had now come again upon his people; Columbus and his Jewish crew fasted on this Jewish day of mourning.
As the sun was settling over the Atlantic Ocean on the eve of the 9th of Av, the 1st day of August (evening of July 31, 1492), the four month deadline for the Jews in Spain to convert to Christianity, leave the country or face death had now arrived. Columbus, a secret Jew, probably not an Italian, though may have been born in Genoa, Italy was now officially identifying with his Jewish brethren.
Associated with Columbus, were also several Jews in history, who accompanied Columbus to the islands off the Americas and eventually to the continent of the Americas. Luis de Torres, the expedition’s interpreter was born a Jew and converted to Christianity just before the expedition set sail. Two other “New Christians”, Luis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez were part of the financing of the expedition.
Abraham Zacuto (c. 1452-1515) was a historian yet as an astronomer, he had already written a major astronomical treatise titled, “Ha-Hibur ha-Gadol” while in service under the patronage of the Bishop of Salmanca. He served under Kings John II and Manuel I of Portugal as the royal court astronomer, where he returned after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain to live in Portugal.
The navigational charts written by Zacuto, was used by the Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gama as he successfully navigated around the Horn of Africa to India. Even so, five years later, the Portuguese monarchy, followed the lead of Spain and in 1497, forced the Portuguese Jews to exile or flee. Living in Tunis on the African coastline of Tunisia, Zacuto completed his historical treatise titled, “Sefer he-Yuhasin, called the Book of Genealogies where he wrote, “My astronomical charts circulate throughout all the Christian and Muslim land.”
Abraham Zacuto, Tabulae astronomicae, Leiria, 1496. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
The Hebrew Astronomical Navigational Tables of Rabbi Abraham Zacuto used by Christopher Columbus on his Voyages to America. They were published by Abraham Orta, the last of the Jewish printers in Portugal, one year before the Jews were expelled from Portugal.
Though neither Zacuto nor Vecinho sailed with Columbus, Rabbi Zacuto's Hebrew Table of Navigation and charts provided the expert technical experience that assisted Columbus in his navigational challenges in across the Atlantic Ocean. As a Kabbalist Jew, Columbus were have probably read Hebrew, yet, Joseph Vecinho, the court physician to King John II of Portugal, and himself a student of Zacuto, did translate the astronomical texts of Zacuto from Portuguese to Spanish and gave them to Columbus.
Known by his peers and historian scholars after himself, Columbus was known to be Intelligent and ambitious. It was believed that he did learn Latin, as well as being conversant in the Portuguese and Castilian Spanish languages. He read extensively about astronomy, geography, includign historical works such as the works of 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.
As written by the American historian Edmund Morgan from Yale University; he wrote this about Columbus in an article for Smithsonian Magazine titled, "Columbus' Confusion about the New World":
Edmund Morgan – “Columbus was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong, the kind of ideas that the self-educated person gains from independent reading and clings to in defiance of what anyone else tries to tell him.”
What Morgan failed to comprehend was that Columbus did not think like a European or westerner. He was Jewish and his mind was filled with Jewish biblical concepts and apocalyptic imagery. He was a student of the prophets, yet saw them from the mystical ideas of Judaism, which were literally “outside the box” of western concepts and ideology. When he sought an understanding of traveling to India by going west, he was clearly a student of the spherical concepts of the 4th century BCE, Aristotle, whom Middle Age scholars were keenly aware and admired. Celestial astronomy was quickly becoming the norm of navigating the international oceans by mariners.
He accepted Alfraganus’s (Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī ) calculations that the degrees if latitude, as a degree of longitude along the equator as about 56 ⅔ miles yet failed to comprehend that the circumference of the globe was calculated in Arabic meters (about 1,830 meters per longitude) rather than the Italian miles which were shorter (1,238 meters per longitude). The difference to these calculations led Columbus to suspect that the circumference of Planet Earth was maximized at 25,255 kilometers rather than about 40,000 kms. (25,000 mi.)
The scholars of Columbus’ day believed in Ptolemy’s estimate that the Eurasian landmass spanned about 180 degrees of longitude, or over halfway around the world. On the other hand, Columbus, a student of Marinus of Tyre, incorrectly calculated the Eurasian landmass at 225 degrees. This left only 135 degrees of water between Europe/Africa to India. There was also no comprehension that an entire continent lay in between. In his readings of the travels of Marco Polo, Columbus calculated that the islands of Japan were farther to the east than Cathay (China) and closer to the equator. Even then, he believed that there were also islands in between such as the mythical Antillia, considered to be only a ways beyond the Azores Islands.
The significance of these errors in these calculations, Christopher Columbus was anticipating of traveling about 2,300 statute miles between the Canary Islands and his destination to Japan. The reality was that the true mileage today known today is closer to 12,200 miles. This was a distance that no maritime vessel could travel and carry enough food and water plus allowance for traveling through uncharted waters.
Even so, the cash-strapped Spaniards, now again in possession of their own country were now competing with Portugal and England in a desperate competitive race to conquer the trade routes to the Indies. Columbus provided the Andalusian royal palace the promise of a competitive advantage, and in the final end opened up a new world market that soon brought gold flowing into Spain in such an abundance that they didn’t know what to do with it. As travelers explore the regions of England today, they are amazed at the austere, cold, and plain cathedrals that exist on the British Isles. Those same travelers exploring the regions are amazed at the opulence of gold with exquisite ornamentation and detail carvings that exist in the Spanish cathedrals. For one time in history, since the days of Kings David and Solomon, gold was more abundant than silver, and the Spanish rulers failed to thank the Jewish descendant of the House of Judah, for providing them with this time of history.
As noted, Columbus’ failure to comprehend distances correctly that were computed by a different calculations than his peers, led to a difference by a sizable margin for the westward distances from Europe to Asia. These were guided by three factors; a lower estimate of the size of the earth, a higher estimate of the size of the Eurasian continental landmass, and the idea that Japan and the other land islands lay farther to the east of China.
Columbus’ miscalculations made have served him well, for with the courage of a quicker journey, he ventured into the unknown that no other had dare to go before, almost straight west from the western coastline of Africa near the Canary Islands. As such he succeeded where others may have failed.
Christopher Columbus, the Apocalyptic Quest of a Secret Jew
Go to Part One – “The Mystery of the Kabbalist Jew and Explorer of America, Christopher Columbus”
Go to Part Two – “The Mysterious Date Christopher Columbus set Sail to Find the Land of India”
Go to Part Three – “The Influence of the Final Apocalypse upon the Jewish Life of Columbus”
Go to Part Four – “The Legacy of the Jewish Explorer of the Americas: Christopher Columbus”
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