Christopher Columbus, The Last Templar

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.

Ruggero Marino is a journalist who has worked for Il Tempo in Rome since 1963 and has served as a special correspondent in over 50 countries. He has been researching the history of Columbus’s life and times for more than 16 years, and his first book about Columbus won the Scanno Prize in Italy. He lives in Rome.