Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Faith Drove the Voyages that Led to America

“One of many 100 greatest books of the yr.” —The Occasions Literary Complement

Christopher Columbus is reevaluated as a person of deep ardour, persistence, and non secular conviction—on a mission to save lots of Jerusalem from Islam.

5 hundred years after he set sail, Columbus remains to be a controversial determine in historical past. Debates painting him both because the hero within the nice drama of discovery or as an avaricious glory hunter and ruthless destroyer of indigenous cultures. In Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, Carol Delaney presents a radically new interpretation of the person and his mission, claiming that the true motivation for his voyages remains to be extensively unknown.

Delaney argues that Columbus was impressed to discover a western path to the Orient not solely to acquire huge sums of gold for the Spanish Crown however primarily to fund a brand new campaign to take Jerusalem from the Muslims earlier than the top of the world—a purpose that sustained him till the day he died. Drawing from oft-ignored sources, some from Columbus’s personal hand, Delaney depicts her topic as a considerate interpreter of the native cultures that he and his males encountered, and tells the tragic story of how his preliminary makes an attempt to ascertain good relations with the natives turned badly bitter. Exhibiting Columbus within the context of his instances slightly than by way of the prism of present-day views on colonial conquests reveals a person who was neither a grasping imperialist nor a quixotic adventurer, however a person pushed by an abiding spiritual ardour. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem will not be an apologist’s take, however a clear-eyed, thought-provoking, and well timed reappraisal of the person and his legacy.