Christopher Columbus, the Last Templar

by Ruggero Marino

The untold story of the secret alliance behind the “discovery” of America

• Reveals how a utopian dream of brotherhood among Christians, Muslims, and Jews fueled a murderous power struggle involving secret societies, popes, and kings

• Explains why King Ferdinand of Spain supported Columbus’s voyages openly, but, secretly, sought to undermine their purpose

• Shows how Columbus knew, sailing west, he would find the “New World,” not Asia

Was Columbus a Templar? According to the historic documents and maps revealed by Ruggero Marino, Columbus shared their dream of Christians, Muslims, and Jews living in peace in a New Jerusalem, and his voyage across the Atlantic was both to find a new passage to Asia and to find the place where the New Jerusalem could be built.

Marino draws parallels between Marco Polo’s journey east over the Silk Route and Columbus’s sea voyages and reveals that Columbus studied ancient texts and maps from the Vatican Library, access to which was granted by Pope Innocent VIII--who Marino shows to be Columbus’s true father. Innocent VIII (whose own father was Jewish and grandmother was Muslim) was the perfect individual to further the Templars’ plan to create a universal religion combining the spiritual wisdom of the three faiths. Marino shows that Innocent’s “disappearance” and the story that Columbus merely stumbled onto the New World were part of a calculated political and theological cover-up. While King Ferdinand (the model for Machiavelli’s The Prince) and Queen Isabella of Spain are heralded with funding Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was Innocent VIII who was the main sponsor and master-mind of the expedition. To obscure the purpose of the voyages, and give Spain the credit for the New World discovery, Ferdinand and his agent Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), Pope Innocent VIII’s successor, initiated the disinformation campaign that has lasted for over 500 years.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[José Campos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I rather found this book to follow a highly speculative and fancy approach to Christopher Columbus origins and life and about the discovery of the New World. Reading is difficult. The author has a particular writing style of short sentences that break the reasoning in an unnatural and annoying way. On top of that, the arguments are never put in simple, objective terms, but instead in a rhetorical, fancy, speculative fashion.
The authors shows a great deal of knowledge and is always trying to speculate new connections between persons and seemingly historical facts (in fact, it's hard to find a sound argumentation about historical facts, because of its speculative style).
The author points out interesting speculations, though. Like Columbus being a related to the pope Innocent VIII and that America was pre-discovered long before Columbus' official discovery. This is, in fact, in line with the theory that Columbus was a portuguese secret agent working for John II of Portugal in Spain, trying to take the spanish royalty out of the African cost and of the route to India by circumnavigate South-Africa.
Because of its speculative nature, it brings out a large number of entry points for further investigations about the historical context of Columbus time, like a reference to the turk admiral Piri Reis and a lot of forgot painting evidences that suggest that America was already known before it was officially discovered.
It's not an answering book, but rather a questioning one.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Columbus was never a member of the Knights Templar. This book is an academic work studying the social, economic, political, and religious events leading up to the mid to late fifteenth century. The goals of Christianity and Islam are explored.

[Randy Dineen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is pretty rough. Definitely not a light read. Reads alot like a history textbook. Tough not to to fall asleep when reading it.

[Jánelle Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

His writing style is translated from academic-Italian so is challenging to read. The book in and of itself presents ideas that are worth looking into for deeper levels of research. This book does a fantastic job of exploring the intents of Christianity and Islam in the 14th and 15th centuries.

[Kelly Korby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and interesting even if he can't quite present enough proof to validate his claims.