The discovery of America must be brought forward by at least a year compared to the traditional date of 12 October 1492. In all likelihood, Christopher Columbus landed in the New World at least in 1491, when Pope Innocent VIII, born the Genoese Giovanni Battista Cybo, was still reigning died on 25 July 1492. This is the hypothesis of the new reconstruction carried out by the journalist, writer and historian Ruggero Marino who for more than thirty years has devoted himself to studies on Christopher Columbus, as evidenced by his four books on the subject and his website www.ruggeromarino-cristoforocolombo.com.
The occasion to reiterate the hypothesis is the presentation of the new book by Marino, “Dante, Colombo and the end of the world” (Xpublishing) which is held on Monday 11 July, at 6 pm, in Rome, at Palazzo Firenze, headquarters of the Dante Alighieri. The author will be joined by Gianni Letta, vice president of the Dante Alighieri Society, and Claudio Strinati, general secretary of the National Academy of San Luca and vice president of the Rome Committee of the Dante Alighieri Society, and Michele Canonica.
Ruggero Marino, on the basis of multiple documentation, argues that the expedition of Christopher Columbus was largely financed by Pope Innocent VIII and not as is generally believed by Isabella of Castile. “We can consider Innocent VIII as the great sponsor of Columbus”, says Marino. The Genoese navigator would have completed his enterprise in earlier times, discovering the new continent during the Innocent pontificate and therefore not under the infamous Rodrigo Borgia, who ascended to the papal throne with the name of Alexander VI on 11 August 1492.
The backdating of at least one year (if not more) of the discovery to 1491 for Ruggero Marino is also based on the testimony of the “PseudoPetraca”, entitled “Chronica of the lives of popes and Roman emperors”, a rare incunabulum printed in Venice in 1507 , “that is, almost close to events and one year after Columbus’s death”: here we explicitly speak of the Genoese navigator’s landing in the ‘New Indies’ during the reign of Innocent VIII while he is completely ignored in that of Pope Borgia. A fact, moreover, argues Marino, supported by the plaque on the tomb of the pontiff in San Pietro which says “Novi orbis sua aevo inventi gloria” (“In the time of his pontificate the glory of the discovery of the New World”), from Panvinio, from Oviedo , from Guicciardini, from the famous Piri Reis paper and from other historians such as Sansovino and Cancellieri. Furthermore, the contract stipulated with the kings states that Columbus, before his departure on 3 August, goes to the Indies “which he discovered”, a time referring to the past and to a journey that has probably already taken place, but canceled from history, observes Ruggero Marino .