Columbus Day

"You may call me Grand Admiral
of the Oceanic Sea."

Today is Columbus Day, which as far as holidays go, is now a source of some modern embarrassment, as well as irritation that banks and Post Offices are closed. Everyone is quick to point out that Columbus didn't technically discovered America, and Native Americans do have reason to be angry with him, as he was a vanguard of the Conquistadors. He did take natives back as human zoo specimens, an action that one would think would be immoral even through the lens of 1492 European values. The Spanish were okay with this, but the natives started killing themselves in a mass display of suicide after their women and goods were taken.

If Christopher Columbus should be honored as a historical personality, it's because of his personal magnetism, that stood out even in the rampant egotism of courtly noble life. We may not like Columbus today, but the nobles he consorted with, were enchanted by his personality.

Columbus wasn't a noble, but invented an elaborate back-story for himself that he was somehow descended from a certain Count Columbo of the Castle of Cuccaro. He also claimed the Roman general Colonius as direct descendent. He was actually the kid of a successful Italian cheese maker and wine merchant, but his nobility story was plausible enough, that he married up into a prominent Portuguese family. When I was a kid in Elementary School, there was a brief trend with some of my classmates to make the claim to be a direct descendant of the outlaw Jessie James. The impulse to lie about one's ancestry to seem more interesting is still with us.

Through his in-laws, he finagled his way into a meeting with the Portuguese King, Joãl II. Columbus, bold as brass, demanded that the King finance an expedition to Asia, by going West of course, and he wanted the modest and humble title, Grand Admiral of the Oceanic Sea. Columbus also demanded 10% of any loot that he discovered as a binding, ancestral title to his family, which would have made them some of the richest people on the planet.

King Joãl II was impressed with the sheer audacity of Columbus, but ultimately the King said something to the extent of, "Um...let's see. I think rather not."

Columbus would later move to Spain, and repeat this give-me-everything-I-want-because-I-deserve-it schtick to Spanish nobles, who through the force of Columbus' personality were receptive to the idea, but powerless to grant Columbus the titles he craved. This would change with the meeting of Queen Isabella, who did give Columbus everything he wanted, but not the 10% of the booty.

"This is for your own good, and you'll thank us later."

At the same time Columbus' exhibition was being financed, Queen Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand II, started a little something called the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was institutionalized torture and murder on a mass scale, a movement so awful, that we still feel the pain of it after all these years.  In some respects, they were fundamentalist religious revolutionaries like Oliver Cromwell and the Ayathollah Khomeni, but they didn't take over the Spanish government – they were the government.  Isabella had a redeeming human quality; she disagreed with Columbus plans to enslave natives, but to no avail.

Of course, this is guilt by association. Isabella and Ferdinand were awful people, but one gets the feeling that Columbus would have accepted money from anyone. Columbus wasn't exactly a Conquistador, more like a Conquistador Lite.

Columbus was a megalomanic, but in his defense, he could pull off all the things he dreamt up, much like the late Steve Jobs. Isabella started one of the cruelest terror campaigns ever inflicted in Europe, as well as bloody adventures in the New World. I see no reason to celebrate Columbus Day, unless you work at a bank, and are needing a three-day weekend.