Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem

by Carol Delaney

Overview

“One of the 100 best books of the year.” —The Times Literary Supplement

Christopher Columbus is reevaluated as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction—on a mission to save Jerusalem from Islam.

Five hundred years after he set sail, Columbus is still a controversial figure in history. Debates portray him either as the hero in the great drama of discovery or as an avaricious glory hunter and ruthless destroyer of indigenous cultures. In Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, Carol Delaney offers a radically new interpretation of the man and his mission, claiming that the true motivation for his voyages is still widely unknown.

Delaney argues that Columbus was inspired to find a western route to the Orient not only to obtain vast sums of gold for the Spanish Crown but primarily to fund a new crusade to take Jerusalem from the Muslims before the end of the world—a goal that sustained him until the day he died. Drawing from oft-ignored sources, some from Columbus’s own hand, Delaney depicts her subject as a thoughtful interpreter of the native cultures that he and his men encountered, and tells the tragic story of how his initial attempts to establish good relations with the natives turned badly sour. Showing Columbus in the context of his times rather than through the prism of present-day perspectives on colonial conquests reveals a man who was neither a greedy imperialist nor a quixotic adventurer, but a man driven by an abiding religious passion. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem is not an apologist’s take, but a clear-eyed, thought-provoking, and timely reappraisal of the man and his legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439109960
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	09/20/2011
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	260,104
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Carol Delaney received an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of Boston University. She was the assistant director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, and a visiting professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. She is now a professor emerita at Stanford University and a research scholar at Brown University.  Delaney is the author of several books, including The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth, Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Criticism, and Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology.
Carol Delaney received an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of Boston University. She was the assistant director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, and a visiting professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. She is now a professor emerita at Stanford University and a research scholar at Brown University.  Delaney is the author of several books, including The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth, Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Criticism, and Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology.

Table of Contents

Prologue vii

Introduction The passions of Columbus ix

Chapter 1 Omens of the Apocalypse 1

Chapter 2 Learning the "Secrets of the World" 19

Chapter 3 The Plan Begins to Take Shape 43

Chapter 4 Vision Becomes Reality 68

Chapter 5 Days of Wonder 91

Chapter 6 Triumph and Disaster 117

Chapter 7 Unruly Passions: The Colonies 144

Chapter 8 Paradise Found and Lost 166

Chapter 9 Privileges and Prophecies: Columbus's Stake in the Future 186

Chapter 10 Marooned 202

Chapter 11 The Final Passion: Disillusion and Death 224

Afterwards Columbus, Apocalyptic, and Jerusalem 236

Acknowledgements 245

Appendix What Happened to that Major Players 247

notes 253

Bibliography 292

Index 305

Editorial Reviews

Cultural anthropologist and Stanford professor emerita Delaney introduces us to an unfamiliar Christopher Columbus as a product of his times, when, she says, apocalyptic millennialism dominated Europe. Columbus thus believed that his role was to obtain enough of the fabled gold of the East to launch a crusade to conquer Jerusalem and prepare for the Second Coming of Christ. Delaney argues that Columbus believed that the discovery of the Caribbean islands was an integral part of an unfolding cosmological drama. Using the writings of medieval theologians, the author writes, Columbus calculated that the world would end in 155 years. He attempted to convince Spain's sovereigns that the Gospel had to be preached everywhere so all the world's peoples could be saved, and that Jerusalem had to come under Christian control. As Delaney points out, Ferdinand instead sent Peter Martyr to negotiate with the sultan to protect the Holy Sepulchre and Christian pilgrims. While Delaney's take is fresh, it's encumbered by repetitious writing. And even her careful reading of a little-studied compilation called the Book of Prophecies—that may or may not have been written by Columbus—as a basis for her argument about Columbus's motives provides thin evidence for her conclusions. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Cultural anthropologist Delaney offers an interpretation of Christopher Columbus's career based on the apocalyptical millenarianism she identifies in his thinking.

The author argues that the reconquest of Jerusalem was the passion of Columbus's life and also the purpose of his voyages. Her substantiation is found in works like theBook of Prophesies, produced near the end of his life, his letters to the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI and the comparison of the flow of the Orinoco with the book of Genesis and the hinterland of the Terrestrial Paradise. Delaney believes these kinds of views have been downplayed in consideration of the explorer's life and work. Focusing on this less-iconic side of Columbus, author casts new light on the policies of the monarchs under whom he worked, first in Portugal and then Spain. His 1492 voyage began on August 2, the day set for Spain's Jews to convert or face execution. The "reconquista" of Al-Andalus from the Moors was considered by Spain's monarchs to be just a step on the road to Jerusalem. As Delaney and others have shown, Columbus was neither open nor truthful about his motives or ultimate plans, so his writings cannot necessarily be taken at face value. His "sail west to go east" strategy failed to find the Indies and their riches and was associated with heterodox cosmological views. As his stories were discredited, he probably had good reason to fear his own monarch's inquisitors.

A welcome reappraisal of Columbus and his legacy.

Kirkus Reviews