There are people finding secret cryptic evidence in his texts or his funding streams. They are not persuasive. Spanish crypto-Jews in the service of the crown don't leave secret Hebrew messages. Also, Columbus was not a secret Spanish crypto-Jew.
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What bugs me that I still haven't seen mentioned: why the claim?
I mean, is it an attempt to say, "CC's reputation is trash now, but *if he were Jewish* would you care?" Or something else/opposite? I just don't get why *this* would be the pseudo-scientific claim made (without getting more cringe).
My sense is that while the reaction to it plays into all kinds of different issues internationally, it emerges out of a very specific Iberian context and their relationship to the past. Spain celebrates its national day on 10/12 based on Columbus arrival in the Caribbean.
There is kind of a weird – look, we didn’t eradicate the Jews – vibe to some of this, even though the argument would be that he had to go into hiding because of the inquisition. But that’s more a vibe for me. There’s a lot of defensiveness in modern conservative Catholic Spain about that.
There is also the traditional Spanish view that discovery of the Americans was gods reward to Spain for the Alhambra decree and the expulsion of jews and Muslims. Its part of the foundational myth.
This is a way to rewrite that myth ...in a less genocidal way (as to jews)
As there should be. My husband once had a long talk with a Spanish intellectual who argues that the fall of Spain as a world power began when they threw out the Jews.
And he was like stupendously, obnoxiously, ostentatiously Catholic. So even if he somehow did have Jewish ancestors, he himself was definitely not of that religious belief.
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I mean, is it an attempt to say, "CC's reputation is trash now, but *if he were Jewish* would you care?" Or something else/opposite? I just don't get why *this* would be the pseudo-scientific claim made (without getting more cringe).
This is a way to rewrite that myth ...in a less genocidal way (as to jews)
Also the brief discussion in the El País article with a scholar who defends CC’s “catalanidad” which, erm, what
https://buttondown.com/ModernMedieval/archive/christopher-columbus-was-not-jewish/
Why would anyone want to claim that rampaging lunatic anyway? Dude’s got a more violent record than most Hollywood slashers!