Posted on 10/14/2024 5:40:48 PM PDT by xoxox
“Columbus noster est!” “Christopher Columbus is ours!” These words of Leo XIII, in his encyclical Quarto Abeunte Saeculo, issued July 16, 1892, on the IV Centenary of the discovery of America, are like a distant echo to us, at a time when iconoclastic fury in the United States of America is destroying the figure of the Italian navigator.
Leo XIII states in this encyclical that Christopher Columbus’s venture: «is in itself the highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he who achieved it, for the greatness of his mind and heart, can be compared to but few in the history of humanity. By his toil another world emerged from the unsearched bosom of the ocean: hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed from savagery to gentleness and humanity; and, greatest of all, by the acquisition of those blessings of which Jesus Christ is the author, they have been recalled from destruction to eternal life. (…) For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum, and also the manner in which he endeavored to execute the design, it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was the strongest motive for the inception and prosecution of the design; so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church. (…) This view and aim is known to have possessed his mind above all; namely, to open a way for the Gospel over new lands and seas. (…) Columbus certainly had joined to the study of nature the study of religion, and had trained his mind on the teachings that well up from the most intimate depths of the Catholic faith. For this reason, when he learned from the lessons of astronomy and the record of the ancients, that there were great tracts of land lying towards the West, beyond the limits of the known world, lands hitherto explored by no man, he saw in spirit a mighty multitude, cloaked in miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain gods. Miserable it is to live in a barbarous state and with savage manners: but more miserable to lack the knowledge of that which is highest, and to dwell in ignorance of the one true God. Considering these things, therefore, in his mind, he sought first of all to extend the Christian name and the benefits of Christian charity to the West, as is abundantly proved by the history of the whole undertaking”».
Hence, Christopher Columbus belongs to the Church, and any affront to him is directed at the Church, which has the duty to defend his memory. This spirit inspired Count Antoine-François-Félix Roselly de Lorgues (1805-1898) who dedicated his life to promoting the cause for Christopher Columbus’s canonization. Encouraged by Pius IX, in 1856, in Paris, Roselly de Lorgues published a two-volume work entitled: Cristophe Colomb. Histoire de sa vie et de ses voyages; d’après des documents authentiques tirés d’Espagne et d’Italie, which achieved world-wide success. In this work, Roselly de Lorgues, for the first time, offers his thesis for the canonization of the “Admiral of the Ocean”. He writes in a subsequent work: “…he was the ambassador of God to unknown nations that the ancient world were unaware of” and “ the natural legate of the Holy See in those new regions”. (Della vita di Cristoforo Colombo e delle ragioni per chiederne la beatificazione, tr. it., per Ranieri Guasti, Prato 1876, p. 83)
I saw a post today maintaining that Christopher Columbus was in fact a Jew ... but this post destroys the flimsy claims that Columbus was Jewish ...
somebody found some “remains” of someone, somewhere, and decided they must be Columbus’ so they did a “dna test” and, voila.
Catholic is a Religon, Jewish is a People group.
In fairness, the DNA analysis was of the remains in, well, the tomb of Christopher Columbus in the cathedral of Seville in Spain. Allegedly, the DNA is not inconsistent with *some* Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Whether that’s true, I will leave to the experts. As I understand it, the hypothesis also is built on the notion that many of the men in Columbus’ mother’s line had popularly Jewish first names like Abraham. Does it matter? Columbus himself was a Catholic Christian. Many people around the mediterranean had some Jewish ancestry. It’s interesting, I guess, but isn’t terribly meaningful as far as the man’s impact on history is concerned.
Jews were the first people to become Christians. So there’s that.
His mother’s family is thought to be from Valencia and were conversos, that is, Jews who had converted to Christianity. There were many conversos in Spain, which had had a large Jewish population since the days of the Romans.
The Jews were merchants and traders in the early world and thus there were Jewish communities scattered all over the world, particularly in areas stabilized by the Roman military presence.
The first Apostles scattered throughout the world to preach the Gospel at a time prior to St Paul and the inclusion of Gentiles as a missionary target, so the places the Apostles went at that time were places that had existing Jewish communities.
Saint James (Santiago) went to Spain to preach because there were several Jewish colonies in the Roman cities there. St Paul himself was on his way to Spain at the time of his shipwreck. And a very large percentage of Spaniards have some Jewish DNA.
So yes, Columbus may have been at least partially of Jewish converso descent, but he was a Christian and a very devout one who saw evangelization as the primary goal of his voyages.
well, Chris Columbus may very well have been of Jewish origin, but his religious beliefs are of course, open to speculation despite the fact that he was outwardly a devout Christian.
I think this jockeying over pride is senseless. We can’t take credit for our parents actions, leave alone by co-religionists.
One of my favorite books is “The Velvet Doublet”, by James Street, describing fictional events surrounding Columbus.
I don’t recall Columbus being labeled a jew but do recall that the first sighting of land from the ship’s crow’s nest was made by a Moor.
noted!
When Leo XIII made hat statement, he was head of state and supreme ruler of the Vatican.
Columbus was never a citizen of the Vatican state.
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