It is the usual story, given by his earliest Italian biographers, Gallo and his copiers, that Columbus had found his brother Bartholomew already domiciled in Portugal, and earning a living by making charts and selling books, and that Christopher naturally fell, for a while, into similar occupations. He was not, we are also told, unmindful of his father's distresses in Italy, when he disposed of his small earnings. We likewise know the names of a few of his fellow Genoese settled in Lisbon in traffic, because he speaks of their kindnesses to him, and the help which they had given him (1482) in what would appear to have been commercial ventures.
It seems not unlikely that he had not been long in the country when the incident occurred at Lisbon which led to his marriage, which is thus recorded in the Historie.
His marriage.
During his customary attendance upon divine worship in the Convent of All Saints, his devotion was observed by one of the pensioners of the monastery, who sought him with such expressions of affection that he easily yielded to her charms. This woman, Felipa Moñiz by name, is said to have been a daughter, by his wife Caterina Visconti, of Bartolomeo Perestrello, a gentleman of Italian origin, who is associated with the colonization of Madeira and Porto Santo. From anything which Columbus himself says and is preserved to us, we know nothing more than that he desired in his will that masses should be said for the repose of her soul; for she was then long dead, and, as Diego tells us, was buried in Lisbon. We learn her name for the first time from Diego's will, in 1509, and this is absolutely all the documentary evidence which we have concerning her. Oviedo and the writers who wrote before the publication of the Historie had only said that Columbus had married in Portugal, without further particulars.
The Perestrellos.
But the Historie, with Las Casas following it, does not wholly satisfy our curiosity, neither does Oviedo, later, nor Gomara and Benzoni, who copy from Oviedo. There arises a question of the identity of this Bartolomeo Perestrello, among three of the name of three succeeding generations. Somewhere about 1420, or later, the eldest of this line was made the first governor of Porto Santo, after the island had been discovered by one of the expeditions which had been down the African coast. It is of him the story goes that, taking some rabbits thither, their progeny so quickly possessed the island that its settlers deserted it! Such genealogical information as can be acquired of this earliest Perestrello is against the supposition of his being the father of Felipa Moñiz, but rather indicates that by a second wife, Isabel Moñiz by name, he had the second Bartolomeo, who in turn became the father of our Felipa Moñiz. The testimony of Las Casas seems to favor this view. If this is the Bartolomeo who, having attained his majority, was assigned to the captaincy of Porto Santo in 1473, it could hardly be that a daughter would have been old enough to marry in 1474-75.
The first Bartolomeo, if he was the father-in-law of Columbus, seems to have died in 1457, and was succeeded in 1458, in command of the island of Porto Santo, by another son-in-law, Pedro Correa da Cunha, who married a daughter of his first marriage,—or at least that is one version of this genealogical complication,—and who was later succeeded in 1473 by the second Bartolomeo.
The Count Bernardo Pallastrelli, a modern member of the family, has of late years, in his Il Suocero e la Moglie di Cristoforo Colombo (2d ed., Piacenza, 1876), attempted to identify the kindred of the wife of Columbus. He has examined the views of Harrisse, who is on the whole inclined to believe that the wife of Columbus was a daughter of one Vasco Gill Moñiz, whose sister had married the Perestrello of the Historie story. The successive wills of Diego Columbus, it may be observed, call her in one (1509) Philippa Moñiz, and in the other (1523) Philippa Muñiz, without the addition of Perestrello. The genealogical table of the count's monograph, on the other hand, makes Felipa to be the child of Isabella Moñiz, who was the second wife of Bartolomeo Pallastrelli, the son of Felipo, who came to Portugal some time after 1371, from Plaisance, in Italy. Bartolomeo had been one of the household of Prince Henry, and had been charged by him with founding a colony at Porto Santo, in 1425, over which island he was long afterward (1446) made governor. We must leave it as a question involved in much doubt.