This inscription is supposed to mean “Discoverer of America, first Admiral.” Opening the case, which in this situation presented the appearance shown in the cut on page 80, the under surface of the lid was found to bear the following legend:—
This legend is translated, “Illustrious and renowned man, Christopher Columbus.”[320] A fac-simile of the inscription found on the small silver plate is given on page 82, the larger of which is understood to mean “A part of the remains of the first Admiral, Don Christopher Columbus, discoverer.”[321] The discovery was made known by the Bishop, Roque Cocchia, in a pastoral letter,[322] and the news spread rapidly.[323] The Spanish King named Señor Antonio Lopez Prieto, of Havana, to go to Santo Domingo, and, with the Spanish consul, to investigate. Prieto had already printed a tract, which went through two editions, Los restos de Colon: exámen histórico-critico, Havana, 1877.
In March, 1878, he addressed his Official Report to the Captain-general of Cuba, which was printed in two editions during the same year, as Informe sobre los restos de Colon. It was an attack upon the authenticity of the remains at Santo Domingo. Later in the same year, Oct. 14, 1878, Señor Manuel Colmeiro presented, in behalf of the Royal Academy of History of Madrid, a report to the King, which was printed at Madrid in 1879 as Los restos de Colon: informe de la Real Academia de la Historia, etc. It reinforced the views of Prieto’s Report; charged Roque Cocchia with abetting a fraud; pointed to the A (America) of the outside inscription as a name for the New World which Spaniards at that time never used;[324] and claimed that the remains discovered in 1877 were those of Christopher Columbus, the grandson of the Admiral, and that the inscriptions had been tampered with, or were at least much later than the date of reinterment in the Cathedral.[325] Besides Bishop Roque Cocchia, the principal upholder of the Santo Domingo theory has been Emiliano Tejera, who published his Los restos de Colon en Santo Domingo in 1878, and his Los dos restos de Cristóbal Colon in 1879, both in Santo Domingo. Henry Harrisse, under the auspices of the “Sociedad de Bibliófilos Andaluces,” printed his Los restos de Don Cristóval Colon at Seville in 1878, and his Les sépultures de Christophe Colomb: revue critique du premier rapport officiel publié sur ce sujet, the next year (1879) at Paris.[326] From Italy we have Luigi Tommaso Belgrano’s Sulla recente scoperta delle ossa di Colombo (Genoa, 1878). One of the best and most recent summaries of the subject is by John G. Shea in the Magazine of American History, January, 1883; also printed separately, and translated into Spanish. Richard Cortambert (Nouvelle histoire des voyages, p. 39) considers the Santo Domingo theory overcome by the evidence.
[J.] Date and Place of Birth of Columbus, and Accounts of his Family.—The year and place of Columbus’ birth, and the station into which he was born, are questions of dispute. Harrisse[327] epitomizes the authorities upon the year of his nativity. Oscar Peschel reviews the opposing arguments in a paper printed in Ausland in 1866.[328] The whole subject was examined at greater length and with great care by D’Avezac before the Geographical Society of Paris in 1872.[329] The question is one of deductions from statements not very definite, nor wholly in accord. The extremes of the limits in dispute are about twenty years; but within this interval, assertions like those of Ramusio[330] (1430) and Charlevoix[331] (1441) may be thrown out as susceptible of no argument.[332]
In favor of the earliest date—which, with variations arising from the estimates upon fractions of years, may be placed either in 1435, 1436, or 1437—are Navarrete, Humboldt, Ferdinand Höfer,[333] Émile Deschanel,[334] Lamartine,[335] Irving, Bonnefoux, Roselly de Lorgues, l’Abbé Cadoret, Jurien de la Gravière,[336] Napione,[337] Cancellieri, and Cantù.[338] This view is founded upon the statement of one who had known Columbus, Andres Bernaldez, in his Reyes católicos, that Columbus was about seventy years old at his death, in 1506.
The other extreme—similarly varied from the fractions between 1455 and 1456—is taken by Oscar Peschel,[339] who deduces it from a letter of Columbus dated July 7, 1503, in which he says that he was twenty-eight when he entered the service of Spain in 1484; and Peschel argues that this is corroborated by adding the fourteen years of his boyhood, before going to sea, to the twenty-three years of sea-life which Columbus says he had had previous to his voyage of discovery, and dating back from 1492, when he made this voyage.
A middle date—placed, according to fractional calculations, variously from 1445 to 1447—is held by Cladera,[340] Bossi, Muñoz, Casoni,[341] Salinerio,[342] Robertson, Spotorno, Major, Sanguinetti, and Canale. The argument for this view, as presented by Major, is this: It was in 1484, and not in 1492, that this continuous sea-service, referred to by Columbus, ended; accordingly, the thirty-seven years already mentioned should be deducted from 1484, which would point to 1447 as the year of his birth,—a statement confirmed also, as is thought, by the assertion which Columbus makes, in 1501, that it was forty years since he began, at fourteen, his sea-life. Similar reasons avail with D’Avezac, whose calculations, however, point rather to the year 1446.[343]
A similar uncertainty has been made to appear regarding the place of Columbus’ birth. Outside of Genoa and dependencies, while discarding such claims as those of England,[344] Corsica,[345] and Milan,[346] there are more defensible presentations in behalf of Placentia (Piacenza), where there was an ancestral estate of the Admiral, whose rental had been enjoyed by him and by his father;[347] and still more urgent demands for recognition on the part of Cuccaro in Montferrat, Piedmont, the lord of whose castle was a Dominico Colombo,—pretty well proved, however, not to have been the Dominico who was father of the Admiral. It seems certain that the paternal Dominico did own land in Cuccaro, near his kinspeople, and lived there as late as 1443.[348]