(Newser)
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Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer from Genoa, right? Not according to a recent round of scholarship, which portrays him as secretly Jewish and seeking a new land for his people during the Spanish Inquisition, CNN reports. Evidence suggests that Columbus was a "Marrano," meaning he secretly practiced Judaism to avoid persecution and a 1492 decree that banished all Jews from Spain. Among the more intriguing points in his last will and testament:
- Columbus ordered that a tenth of his income be tithed to the poor and given to poor girls as dowries—both part of Jewish customs.
- He used a signature of triangular letters and dots that resembled inscriptions on Jewish gravestones. He told heirs to use that signature, which would effectively let his sons say Kaddish, a mourning prayer, for him after he died.
- He left money for crusaders seeking to liberate the Holy Land.
What's more, his famous (or
infamous) voyage to the New World was funded by a prominent Jew and two Jewish converts to Catholicism. Read the full article
here. (Or read another theory: that his father was
a Polish king.)
