| Raph's Girl |
12-07-2010 05:03 PM |
Christopher Columbus was Polish.....
Quote:
A new biography of Christopher Columbus claims that the man who discovered the Americas was neither Italian nor Spanish but the son of an exiled Polish king who lied to keep his real lineage secret.
Portuguese historian Manuel Rosa says he spent 20 years digging through medieval documents and genealogy for his book "Columbus: The Untold Story," published this month in Spain. A professor at Duke University in North Carolina, Rosa believes that Columbus was actually the son of exiled Polish King Vladislav III and a Portuguese noblewoman, and that he lied to protect his father's true identity.
Conventional wisdom has said that Columbus was from a family of humble Italian weavers, born in 1451 to Domenico Columbo, a weaver who also ran a cheese stall in the city of Genoa. But Rosa believes the explorer was able to woo monarchs into funding his seafaring adventures only because he was in fact descended from royalty himself -- from Poland.
He cites documents that he claims reveal that Columbus and his brother both had access to four European royal courts -- a rare feat for supposedly poor Genoese weavers. Rosa also believes that Columbus himself was married to a woman from the Portuguese aristocracy in 1479, years before his first Atlantic voyage, and that the marriage helped him secure contacts and funding for his trips.
"The sheer weight of the evidence presented makes the old tale of a Genoese wool-weaver so obviously unbelievable that only a fool would continue to insist on it," Rosa told London's Daily Mail newspaper.
In 1498, Columbus signed his last will and testament with the words "being I born in Genoa" -- but Rosa writes that the document is now believed to be a forgery, written 80 years after his 1506 death by Italians who wanted to lay claim to his legacy.
Rosa's work has caught the attention of National Geographic, which sent a producer to Spain and Portugal this month to begin researching a documentary on his findings, according to a press release from the book's publisher.
Columbus' ancestors have long been a topic of intrigue and speculation among historians. Even though the explorer claimed to have been born in Genoa to a textile family, other theories have claimed his true roots lie in Portugal, Greece, Spain or even Scotland. There's some evidence that Columbus sought to obscure his origins, which could reveal that he was really Jewish or a double agent working for the Portuguese royal family.
"Our whole understanding of Christopher Columbus has for 500 years been based on misinformation. We couldn't solve the mystery because we were looking for the wrong man, following lies that were spread intentionally to hide his true identity," Rosa told The Daily Telegraph.
The new book, Rosa's third about Columbus, says the great navigator's father was in fact Vladislav, who is long thought to have died in the Battle of Varna against the Ottomans in 1444. Rosa believes that he actually survived and fled to live in exile on the island of Madeira, a Portuguese territory, where he married a Portuguese noblewoman who gave birth to Columbus. On Madeira, Vladislav was known as "Henry the German," the book says.
Many paintings of Columbus show that he was red-haired, fair-skinned and blue-eyed -- all features more common in Poland than in Italy. Columbus' coat of arms was also strikingly similar to that of the Polish king, and a painting of the explorer housed in Seville, Spain, shows a crown hidden in his sleeve.
Rosa said there's plenty of evidence to support his theory, but his next project will try to back up his thesis indisputably -- with DNA evidence.
"I have made a request to the Cathedral in Krakov to examine remains from the tomb of Vladislav II, who could turn out to be the grandfather of Columbus," Rosa told the Telegraph. "It would prove the truth of my theory."
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http://www.aolnews.com/world/article...-king/19735940
um.. sure yes... red hair totally proves he was Polish...sure...not like he could also be Scottish too... http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y72...leys/blink.gif |
