Beatrice Enríquez de Arana

Beatriz Enríquez de Arana (* around 1465/67 probably in Santa María de Trassierra , Province of Córdoba , Spain ; † around 1521 there) was the lover of Christopher Columbus and mother of his second son, Fernando Columbus .

origin

Little is known about Beatriz Enríquez de Arana's living conditions. She probably came from a Basque family who had settled in Santa María de Trassiera in the Spanish province of Cordoba. The family owned houses and vineyards and had achieved comparatively modest prosperity.

In 1471 Beatrice lost both parents and grew up in the city of Córdoba in the house of relatives. The fact that she was able to read and write suggests that the family may have been in upper class circles and thus may have been in contact with the Italians and Genoese resident there .

Cordoba: "Wild marriage" with Columbus

Around 1487 she met Christopher Columbus in the house of her relative , who was currently in Córdoba and wanted to convince the Catholic kings who were there that he was planning to cross the Atlantic. The love affair between the strikingly beautiful young woman and the widower, who was around 15 years older, gave birth to son Fernando Columbus in 1488 . During his stay in Cordoba, Columbus lived with Beatrice and, before his first voyage across the Atlantic, even entrusted her with his son Diego , who came from his first marriage to Filipa de Perestrelo e Moniz . However, he did not marry Beatrice.

Later, however, Columbus accompanied two close relatives of Beatrice on his journeys, on the first her cousin Diego de Arana , on his third journey her nephew Pedro der Arana .

End of relationship with Columbus

After returning from his first trip in 1493, Columbus, meanwhile a celebrated hero, obviously broke off his relationship with Beatrice, because from this point on Beatrice is only mentioned twice in his written notes. His two sons were taken out of their care and sent to the court of Queen Isabella I as pages of the Infante Don Juan . From 1502 Columbus had Beatrice instructed an annual annuity of 10,000 maravedís , which, however, were never claimed. It was only shortly before his death that he asked his son Diego in a letter “to take care of Beatríz Enríquez, the mother of my son Don Hernando, to provide her with the necessary means so that she can make a worthy living from it, because she is a person, to which I am deeply indebted; this should be done to relieve my conscience, because it weighs heavily on my soul. It is not appropriate to talk about it in more detail here. ”However, Beatrice never claimed her inheritance and did not appear at Columbus' funeral. She outlived him by almost two decades.

Why beloved, not wife?

In science there is much speculation about the reasons why the widowed Columbus did not marry his unmarried lover, since nothing would have formally stood in the way of a marriage. Most researchers agree that the reason for this is to be found in the humble circumstances from which the potential bride came. As viceroy , admiral and governor , Columbus would have married far below the state, violated the then valid Castilian law and enormously damaged his reputation at court. Proponents of Columbus' Jewish descent, however, see this as proof of their theory: As a Jew, it was impossible for Columbus to marry members of another faith unless they were of a Jewish mother. On the other hand, the theory that Beatrice was only aiming for fame and fortune from the start and had become unfaithful to the much older man, whereupon he broke off the connection, met with rejection.

literature

• Andreas Venzke : The discoverer of America. The rise and fall of Christopher Columbus. Berlin, construction of Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 2006. ISBN 978-3-7466-2207-1
• Ulrich Offenberg: Christopher Columbus. The departure into a new world. Grünwald near Munich: Complete Media GmbH, 2005. ISBN 978-3-8312-6068-3 (audio book)

Web links

• Literature by and about Beatriz Enríquez de Arana in the bibliographic database WorldCat .
• Detailed treatise on Beatriz Enríquez de Arana with additional literature (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andreas Venzke: The discoverer of America. The rise and fall of Christopher Columbus. Structure of Taschenbuchverlag, Berlin, 2006, p. 113.