Word: madariaga
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CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS - Salvador de Madariaga-Macmillan...
Latest answer to these riddles was offered this week in a shrewd and seductive biography by erudite, witty, sparrowish Salvador de Madariaga, Spain's famed philosopher-journalist-diplomat. He declares that Cristóbal Colón was a Genoa-born, converted Spanish Jew; that his family fled Catalonia during the Jewish pogroms around...
Unlike Shakespeare, Columbus has baffled biographers by a plethora rather than a lack of contemporary witnesses. Catch is that one contradicts the next, while Columbus' own plentiful writing contradicts both them and himself. Ingenious Author de Madariaga culls through the lot. His best technical evidence: 1) Columbus' Spanish resembled the language of the 14th rather than the 15th Century (suggesting that he learned it from his parents) ; 2) his mistakes in Latin were those of a Spaniard, not an Italian or Portuguese...
Convinced that Colón was a Spanish Jew, Biographer de Madariaga satisfies himself about the rest. Explained (for him) is Colón's mysterious caginess about his origins-only Nazi Germany is unhealthier for Jews than was Spain under the Inquisition. (De Madariaga's account of Spain's complex Jewish problem of that day is a model of lucidity.) This explains to de Madariaga the reason why Colón's sponsors were invariably converted Jews, who formed a sort of braintrust for Ferdinand and Isabel...
...such "proof" is only a starter for de Madariaga's deductive pièce de resistance. Now he traces Colon's Jewish origin in his character-in his Messianic bent; in his preoccupation with human "contracts"; in his studious avoidance of editorial judgment on the expulsion of the Jews at a time when such sentiments were as conventional as Heil! in Nazi Germany; in his fascination with gold and jewels (rather more esthetic and symbolic than mercenary...