Academics Assert Christopher Columbus Was "Portuguese-Born"

May 31, 2012 - PRLog -- LISBON, PORTUGAL: The age-old Christopher Columbus controversy reached a tipping point earlier this month with a new biography titled “Kolumb. Historia nieznana” (REBIS) published by historian Manuel Rosa in Poland.
Providing a fresh look at the 15th and 16th Century documentation and very well documented, Kolumb. Historia nieznana (Columbus. Unknown History), contradicts the conventional belief that Christopher Columbus was a Genoese peasant weaver by showing the Genoese account to be an inaccurate reporting of the facts based sometimes on invention, other times on forged and falsified documentation. http://www.rebis.com.pl/rebis/public/news/news.html?co=print&id=3096&instance=1000&lang=pl&parent=0

The Portuguese-born historian, who resides in the USA, was invited to present his research at the Portuguese Academy of History, May 16, 2012. It was standing room only as nearly 200 Portuguese historians, researchers and academics packed the Portuguese Academy of History to listen to the latest results of Rosa’s 21-year investigation. The focused debate soon confronted the often-peddled idea that the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo, a poor peasant weaver, could marry the noble Filipa Moniz in Portugal, some 15 years before his monumental voyage. Academics agree that it was not possible in Medieval Times for peasants to marry nobles and, facing that impossibility, the man who discovered America had to be a nobleman by birth just like his Portuguese wife was.
Facilitating their conclusion were other facts presented in Mr. Rosa's lecture, such as; Christopher Columbus did not know Italian because all his letters, even to Italians, are written in a Portuguese-flavored Spanish, Christopher Columbus wrote on March 1493 that Portugal was his “homeland” and a Spanish court document from 1487 was presented which describes Christopher Columbus as “a Portuguese.”

Convinced by Rosa’s presentation, the President of the Portuguese Academy of History, Professor Maria Manuela Mendonça, declared in an interview on May 19 to the Diario do Alentejo newspaper http://da.ambaal.pt/agenda/?id=691, that, “Columbus was Portuguese. If he was not born in Portugal, then he had to have arrived in Portugal at a very, very young age” [to acquire the Portuguese language as his mother tongue.] This declaration contradicts the established history, which claims that the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo arrived in Portugal in 1476 at age 25, and, by hiding his peasant identity, fooled the court and married a high noble lady two years later.

It is a fact that Columbus hid his true identity and lied about his past, some have claimed this was done because Christopher Columbus was a Jew. History books maintained that it was because Christopher Columbus was a poor Italian wool-weaver. However, Rosa realized early on in his investigation that historians had mixed up facts and personalities and he spent 21 years of his life weeding through the evidence.
The new Polish biography presents Christopher Columbus as the false identity of the Portuguese-born Prince Segismundo Henriques, son of Ladsilau III, King of Poland who was self-exile in Portugal after a shameful defeat by the Ottomans in Varna, November 1444. Employed as a double agent for King John II, Prince Segismundo Henriques\Christopher Columbus was on a secret mission to take Spain to a false India thus succeeding in protecting the real India for Portugal.

More and more historians now accept that the history was incorrect and that the man we came to call Christopher Columbus is a clear case of mistaken identity: “Another nutty conspiracy theory! That’s what I first supposed … I now believe that Columbus is guilty of a huge fraud carried out over two decades,” wrote professor James T. McDonough, Jr., who taught at St. Joseph’s University for 31 years.

Mr. Rosa, who is currently working with actor Christopher Michael Siepietowski to turn his book into a movie script, further declared, “there's plenty of evidence supporting this theory and we will try to back this up indisputably with DNA.” He hopes to accomplish DNA tests with the help of the Polish people, once Poles read the book explaining how Columbus had Polish blood.

When asked by a Polish journalist to “describe briefly” the facts that support this new identity of Columbus, Rosa replied, “I find it amusing when asked to describe 21 years of research as a sound bite. The evidence I collected is carefully presented in 400 pages [of Kolumb. Historia nieznana.] Please read the book and it will all become clear.”