A fresh look at Christopher Columbus’ own letters, journals, and devotional writings makes it hard to separate his celebrated “discovery” from a self-consciously religious campaign of conquest. As highlighted in a recent analysis of his manuscripts, Columbus repeatedly cast his voyages as victories for Christendom, rejoicing that new lands and peoples would glorify God once they were converted to the “Holy Faith.”
In his 1492 journal, Columbus described Indigenous Caribbean peoples in utilitarian terms, remarking that they “should be good servants” and could “easily be made Christians,” weaving potential enslavement and evangelization into the same thought. Early letters home similarly stress that the worth of his enterprise lay not only in gold and spices but in the number of souls that could be brought under the Catholic monarchs’ spiritual and political authority. By 1500, in a letter to the noblewoman Juana de la Torre, Columbus insisted he should be judged as a captain sent to conquer a “numerous and warlike people” whose religion and customs were “very contrary to ours,” emphasizing that by “divine will” he had placed “another world” under the dominion of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Historians have noted that Columbus’ religious imagination was intensely apocalyptic and millennial, seeing his voyages as part of a divine countdown to world conversion and the restoration of Christian control over Jerusalem. He wrote of seeking gold in such quantities that the Spanish crown could fund the “conquest of the Holy Sepulchre,” and his shipboard diary uses the word “conquista” primarily in reference to retaking the Holy Land with wealth extracted from the Indies. In triumphant letters, he urged all Christian provinces to give thanks to Christ for the victory and reward bestowed on Spain, promising that untold numbers of previously “lost” souls would now be saved along with an “increase of temporal prosperity” for all of Christendom.
This fusion of piety and power fed directly into the broader doctrine of discovery, the religious-legal framework that granted Christian European rulers a supposed right to claim, exploit, and rule non-Christian lands and peoples. Church leaders and theologians framed the destruction of Indigenous religions and forced conversion to European Christianity as holy work, demanding submission from newly baptized communities in ways that smoothed the path to total conquest and economic exploitation. Theologians in this tradition often portrayed territories outside Christendom as realms without true religion or culture, “only darkness and death,” a logic that helped justify mass killing and dispossession when Indigenous peoples resisted colonization.
Columbus’ language around servitude and conversion foreshadows the tight knot between Christianity and slavery that would define the Americas from the late fifteenth century through the early seventeenth. Commentators on his journal point out that presenting Indigenous people as future Christians made their subjugation seem benevolent, even as it laid the groundwork for systems of forced labor and captivity. Across the colonial world, missionaries and clergy became central agents of imperial expansion, with conversion to Christianity touted as “civilizing” non-European peoples while simultaneously legitimizing European control over their lands and bodies.
For modern audiences raised on adventure stories, strategy games, and fantasy epics that still romanticize exploration, these texts complicate the familiar image of Columbus as a lone visionary braving the unknown. His own words reveal a character much closer to the crusader-explorer archetype: someone who saw maps and mission work as two halves of the same project, expanding sacred geography while enriching his patrons. That framing echoes in countless narratives where “bringing civilization” justifies conquest, and it pushes creators and fans alike to question how religious zeal and imperial ambition are depicted—or quietly excused—in genre fiction.
Ongoing scholarship, including the recent deep reading of Columbus’ devotional manuscripts and navigational records, suggests there is still more to uncover about how thoroughly he wove theological goals into every stage of his Caribbean campaigns. As debates over Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and the legacy of European colonization continue, returning to the explorer’s own writings makes clear that faith, profit, and violence were never separate columns in his ledger—they were the same story written in different ink.
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In-Article Image Credits
Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus dead via Wikimedia Commons by Sebastiano del Piombo with usage type - Public Domain. before 1519Featured Image Credit
Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus dead via Wikimedia Commons by Sebastiano del Piombo with usage type - Public Domain. before 1519
