Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 by Laurence Bergreen Page B

according to a description written much later by his son Ferdinand, a “well built man of more than medium stature, long visaged with cheeks somewhat high, but neither fat nor thin. He had an aquiline nose and his eyes were light in color; his complexion too was light, but kindling to a vivid red. In his youth his hair was blond”—or, in some accounts, reddish in hue—“but when it came to his thirtieth year it all turned white. In eating and drinking and the adornment of his person he was always continent and modest. Among strangers his conversation was affable, and with members of his household very pleasant, but with modest and pleasing dignity.”
    He was, as his son took pains to note, extremely pious. “In matters of religion he was so strict that for fasting and saying all the canonical offices he might have been taken for a member of a religious order. And he was so great an enemy to cursing and swearing, that I never heard him utter any other oath than, ‘By San Fernando!’” If true, Columbus’s aversion to foul language made him an absolute rarity among men of the sea. “When he was angry with anyone, his reprimand was to say, ‘May God take you!’ for doing or saying that. And when he had to write anything, he would not try the pen without first writing these words, Jesus cum Maria sit nobis in via , and in such fair letters that he might have gained his bread by them alone.” This is one of the most detailed and accurate physical descriptions of Columbus to survive, idealized by filial piety, yet perceptive.
    It was, for Columbus, a strikingly advantageous match. The son of a weaver, tavern keeper, and local politician allied with the losing faction in Genoese politics suddenly enjoyed promising connections and standing in the exclusive world of Portuguese nobility and exploration. Although Genoa was known for being antiroyalist, he let stand the mistaken impression that he was somehow allied with Genoese nobility. (Eventually his air of mystery would lead to speculative fantasies about his origins: Portuguese, or Jewish, or Catalan. It would be left to his son Ferdinand—his earliest biographer—to offer corrections, later confirmed by historians.)
    Felipa had more authentic connections to nobility. On her mother’s side, she traced a relationship to the Portuguese royal family from the twelfth century. Her grandfather Gil Ayres Moñiz had ruled a wealthy estate in the Algarve region of Portugal, a prize wrested with difficulty from Arabs who had controlled it, and he had fought alongside Prince Henry the Navigator in the Battle of Ceuta in 1415. The Genoese navigator with the red or blond hair appeared capable of taking his place in their midst, bold and capable of bringing new wealth from somewhere—Greece? Asia? Africa?—to the family and taking his place beside his wife’s distinguished ancestors. With royal patronage assured by his marriage into the Portuguese elite, Columbus could be forgiven for thinking that the way was clear: discovery, acquiring distant lands and glorious titles, and the dutiful creation of a large family to inherit them and perpetuate his name.
    On her father’s side, Felipa brought even more interesting, if complex, credentials. The Perestrellos were known as much for their indiscretions and illegitimate children as they were for their political and ecclesiastic connections. Bartolomeo married several times, and Felipa was the product of his second or, according to some accounts, third union. Her siblings consisted of Bartolomeo junior and a sister, Violante, with whom Columbus was said to have enjoyed cordial relations. According to well-established legend, Columbus’s father-in-law had been granted rights to tiny Porto Santo, lying thirty miles northeast of Madeira Island, by Prince Henry the Navigator. Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was personally acquainted with—and deeply conflicted about—the subject of his scholarly inquiries, surmises that Perestrello