Customer Reviews

Christopher Columbus, the Last Templar

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ruggero Marino's CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, THE LAST TEMPLAR asks whether Columbus was a Templar - and according to historic documents and maps, he was. Marino examines Columbus' sea voyages and reveals the sources of Columbus' routes and wanderings, consider his studies and the myth that Columbus stumbled on the New World rather than deliberately charting his course.

There are connections to the Templars, the Vatican, the Genoese merchants and Marco Polo that the author makes that take the Columbus story from 2-D to 3-D. A must for anyone researching the man and the events leading to the European colonization of America.

If the writer was attempting to give us a first hand experience of the agony caused by the Inquisition, he has done a fine job. I suffered through the Intro hoping the overblown, overly flowery writing style would improve when it got to the actual meat of the research, but I was disappointed to find that it did not. The book is completely impossible to follow as the writer bounces from one subject to another without any order or cohesion. He spends a great deal more time fancifully and eloquently (although incomprehensibly) attending to his conclusions, but very little time on the research and facts he used to draw his conclusions.

I have to admit I did not make it through the entire book. I simply couldn't manage it, so it's possible (although I doubt it) that somewhere in the book are some actual facts to back his assertions, but I will never know, buried as they are in hyperbole and rhetoric. I can't believe the writer spent 16 years researching this subject and all we have is this confusing chaotic dribble. I want my $5 back!!!!

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.

In this book, Italian journalist Ruggero Marino challenges centuries-old myths and deliberate disinformation to re-affirm the dominant roles that Pope Innocent VIII and Christopher Columbus played in the 1492 discovery of the New World.
''Marino's thesis is that for more than 500 years, Pope Innocent VIII has been deliberately slighted by historians and researchers and the part he played in the discovery of America has been intentionally expunged by Spanish King Ferdinand and his Roman cohort Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia. Their intent was to dishonor Innocent and to ensure that Spain, not Italy, was acclaimed as the dominant power in the discovery of America.
''To substantiate his claims, Marino spent more than 16 years researching archives, libraries, and even sites at the Vatican, including Innocent VIII's tomb. He confesses to constantly puzzling over a cryptogram of Columbus' reproduced in the final pages of the book but indecipherable still.
''Marino details why he believes Columbus was Pope Innocent's illegitimate son and presents the logic for seeing Columbus as an educated renaissance man. He explains the relationships among practitioners of the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions and alludes to present-day parallel struggles between the East and the West. He stresses how all knowledge and political power at the time was centered in Rome but was being threatened by the barbarians at the gate, hence Innocent's call for a crusade.
''He forges links between Columbus and the Templars, including in the use of the term "Master" as applied to Columbus and more tellingly, in the fact that Columbus' father-in-law was a Templar. And he expounds about the numerous world maps of the time with their mysterious markings and references to the New World, Atlantis, Antilya, Cipango, and the "fourth peninsula." Marino even posits that Columbus' voyage of 1492 was a hoax, of sorts, since Marino asserts that he had already discovered America during a previous voyage.
''Marino's suppositions are interesting and worth considering. Readers may find, however, that the book can be confusing because of the way subjects are introduced, then dropped, then re-introduced, a technique better suited to fiction than non-fiction. North American readers with an average knowledge of and Interest in Italian and European history may also find the references to the multitude of persons and events difficult to follow. But those who have a desire to uncover more about the mysteries of the discovery of America will be well rewarded.
--M. Wayne Cunningham
Mysteries Magazine issue #20

I persevered for four chapters before abandoning this book. The book is impossible to read - this may be partly the fault of the translator, for the english is clumsy, but the author seems to have been unable to organise his thoughts and the book is muddled, to say the least. The author seems at great pains to restore the reputation of Innocent VIII - but though the writing is emotional, little in the way of fact or sensible argument is offered.
Not worth the paper it is printed on