There is no greater reward in teaching than to have the esteem of one's students, and I am particularly grateful for the letters of several of my former students naming me as their favorite professor. However, for those who have followed these letters, they will recall that in two of them there is a difference of opinion as to the correct location of the tomb of Christopher Columbus.

After Allan Colton '62 took exception to my position that Columbus is buried in Spain and not in Santo Domingo, I wrote to thank him for his kind words on my behalf in his letter ["The Mailbag," summer 2001], but also to advise him that he is still wrong about Columbus' burial site, citing the source of my information which I will presently do in this letter.

Lo and behold, in the latest issue of the magazine, Carol Kent Carlson '53 honored me by writing that I was her favorite professor, but repeating Allan's error. In my reply to her, I thanked her for her warm memories of me, but declared that the time had come for me to set the record straight. I know of no professor who enjoys being corrected by his students, but those I have taught know that I will willingly acknowledge an error if I am proved wrong. In the case of Christopher Columbus' final resting place, I am not mistaken.

My source is the biography "Christopher Columbus: The Dream and the Obsession" by Gianni Granzotto (Doubleday, 1985). On page 282 of this work, the author goes into considerable detail on the fate of Columbus' earthly remains. It seems that the great mariner's voyages did not end with his death.

After being interred in a crypt in a Franciscan monastery in 1506, his body was transferred a few years later to the Carthusian monastery at the gates of Seville, Spain. Many years later, at the request of his daughter-in-law, the emperor Charles V granted permission for the body to be transferred to the cathedral of Santo Domingo in America.

There the coffin was placed in the underground chambers beneath the cathedral, where the remains of his son, Diego, were also placed alongside those of his father. For the next two centuries Columbus slept undisturbed, but in 1795, the French arrived to occupy all of the island of Hispaniola, and the Spanish authorities, not wanting the remains to fall into French hands, transferred them to Havana, where they rested until 1899, when Cuba won its independence (with some help from the United States!). When that happened, Spain got Columbus back and the Admiral of the Ocean Sea made his final voyage home, back to the Cathedral of Seville.

Having said all of that, the author notes that there is indeed a dispute about the burial site. Reputable scholars have been in disagreement about whether it is Diego's bones in Santo Domingo, or Diego who lies in Seville. For those who wish to pursue this further, read pages 283 and 284.

But to pique your curiosity, Mr. Granzotto, a respected historian in Italy, holds that the Franciscans never gave up the real bones of Columbus, but palmed off a substitute corpse in a coffin that was never opened. In other words, Columbus never left home.

So, are the mortal remains of Christopher Columbus in a burial chamber beneath the monastery of St. Francis? Not exactly. That monastery has long since disappeared and the Café del Norte now occupies the site. If the author's research is valid, and I believe that it is, Christopher Columbus lies directly beneath the billiard room of an old Spanish café. After all of those fruitless voyages, the old mariner is at least among his own, even if the location is less than exalted. Pool, anyone?

- G. William Whitehurst
Kaufman Lecturer in Public Affairs
Old Dominion University