Abstract
Anyone who has ever seen a late medieval atlas or sea chart will be able to appreciate the sentiments of a Sicilian songster (captured in a mass setting of the mid-fifteenth century), who turned to maps in search of images of beauty.1 The finest surviving specimen, the ‘Catalan Atlas’ of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, generally attributed to Cresques Abraham of Majorca, is as rich and intricate as a spilled jewel casket, resplendent with images of exotic beings and untold wealth.2 Maps of even greater magnificence, larger and more densely illuminated, are recorded but lost.3 These were royal gifts, intended for ostentation as well as use, but the most modest and practical portolan chart would be drawn with grace and adorned with illustrations or, at least, with fine calligraphy and a delicate web of rhumb lines. It was a period in which maps could inspire more than music. It was almost certainly a map – perhaps even the Catalan Atlas itself – that in 1402 induced the Poitevin adventure, Gadifer de la Salle, to embark on a quest for the mythical ‘River of Gold’, which led him to his ruin.
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6. MAPPING THE EASTERN ATLANTIC
1. R. L. Gerber (ed.), Johannes Comago, Complete Works: Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages, XV (Madison, 1984), pp.viii-ix. This chapter is based on passages from F. Fernández-Annesto, ‘Atlantic Exploration before Columbus: the evidence of maps’, Renaissance and Modem Studies (1986), pp.1—23.
2. The best reproduction is G. Grosjean (ed.), Mappamundi: the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375 (Zurich, 1978); where the map is cited hereafter a reference to sheet III of this edition may be assumed.13752. The best reproduction is G. Grosjean (ed.)
3. R. A. Skelton, ‘A Contract of World Maps at Barcelona, 1399–1400’, Imago Mundi, XXII (1968), 108–9.
4. P. E. Russell, El Infante Dorn Henrique e as Ilhas Canárias (Lisbon, 1979), p. 19; Fontes Rerum Canariarum, XI, 106; M. Jiménez de la Espada (ed.), Libro del conoscimiento de todos los reynos, tierras y señoríos que hay en el mundo (Madrid, 1877). Professor Russell will argue for a very late fourteenth or very early fifteenth-century date for this text in a forthcoming work.
5. J. Martins da Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses (3 vols, Lisbon, 1940–70), I, 435; Monumenta henricina (15 vols, Lisbon, 1960–74), VIII, 107.
6. De Vita Solitaria, II, VI, 3, ed. A. Altamura (Naples, 1943), p. 125; Le familiari, ed. V. Rossi (4 vols, Florence, 1933), I 106; R. Caddeo, La navigazioni atlantiche di Alvise da Cà da Mosto, Antoniotto Usodimare e Niccoloso da Recco (Milan, 1928), p.51.
7. Y. Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Ægypti (5 vols in 16, Cairo, 1926–51), IV (fasc. 2), no. 1222; K. Kretschmer, Die Italianische Portolane (Berlin, 1909), p.118. ,
8. Naturalis Historia, VI, 37; J. Álvarez Delgado, ‘Las Islas Afortunadas en Plinio’, Revista de historia (La Laguna), XI (1945), 26–51.
9. Plutarch, Vita Sertorii, VII and IX; Horace, Epodi., XVI, 42; A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), pp.280–303; G. Boas, Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, 1948), pp. 168—9; E. Faral, La légende arthurienne (3 vols, Paris, 1929–34), III, 334; E. Benito Ruano, ‘Nuevas singladuras por las Canarias fabulosas’, Homenaje a E. Serra Ràfols (3 vols, La Laguna, 1970), I, 203–21.
10. La géographie d’Aboulféda, ed. J. T. Reinaud (2 vols, Paris, 1848), II, 263–4; Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne par Edrisi, eds R. Dozy and M. J. de Goeje (Paris, 1866), p. 197; R. Mauny, Les navigations médiévales sur les côtes sahariennes (Lisbon, 1960), pp.81–8.
11. Monumenta henricina, I, 201–6, replaces earlier editions.
12. C. Verlinden, ‘Les génois dans la marine portugaise avant 1386’, Actas do Congresso de Portugal Medievo (3 vols, Braga, 1966), III, 388–407.
13. F. Sevillano Colom, ‘Los viajes medievales desde Mallorca a Canarias’, Anuario de estudios atlánticos, XXIII (1978), 27–57; A. Rumeu de Armas, ‘Mallorquines en el Atlántico’, Homenaje a E. Serra Ràfols, III, 265–76.
14. A. Lütolf, ‘Zur Entdeckung und Christianisung der Westafrikanischen Inseln’, Theologische Quartalschrift, XLVII (1877), 319–32; Rumeu de Armas, El obispado de Telde (Madrid, 1960), p.31.
15. Mapamundi, ed. Grosjean, sheet III; Mauny, op. cit., pp.96–7.
16. P. Chaunu, L’Expansion européenne du XIIe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1969), pp.95–8.
17. Rumeu, ‘Mallorquines’, pp.264—73.
18. M. Mitjà, ‘Abandó des liles Canaries per Joan d’Aragó’, Anuario de estudios atlánticos, VIII (1962), 329.
19. Rumeu de Armas, ‘La expedición mallorquína de 1366 a las Islas Canarias’, Ibid., XXVII (1981), 15–23.
20. Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica, IV (fase. 2), no. 1246; G. H. T. Kimble, ‘The Laurentian World Map with Special Reference to its portrayal of Africa’, Imago Mundi, I (1935), 29–33.
21. Kamal, op. cit., iv (fase. 3), no. 1307.
22. Ibid., iv (fase. 3), nos 1316–19, 1333; A. Cortesäo, Historia da cartografia portuguesa (2 vols, Coimbra, 1969–70), π, 49–50.
23. Information of Mr Tony Campbell.
24. Kamal, op. cit., iv (fase. 2), no. 1222.
25. Ibid., iv (fase. 1), no. 1289.
26. ed. Jiménez de la Espada, p.50.
27. Kamal, op. cit., iv (fase. 3), nos 1320–2.
28. Ibid., iv (fase. 3) 1337, 1350.
29. IXe Colloque International d’Histoire Maritime (Seville, 1969), pp.276–9; G. Winius and B. W. Diffie, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire (Minneapolis, 1977), pp.25, 61; G. V. Scammell, The World Encompassed (London, 1981), p.245; S. E. Morison, The European Discovery of America: the Northern Voyages (New York, 1971), p.95.
30. Fernández-Armes to, ‘Atlantic Exploration’, pp.15–17.
31. P. Adam, ‘Navigation primitive et navigation astronomique’, Vie Colloque International d’Histoire Maritime (Paris, 1966), pp.91–110; C. Verlinden, ‘La découverte des archipels de la “Méditerrannée Atlantique” (Canaries, Madères, Açores) et la navigation astronomique primitive’, Revista portuguesa de historia, XVI (1978), 129–30.
32. Morison, op. cit., p.82; H. Stommel, Lost Islands: the Story of Islands that have Vanished from Nautical Charts (Vancouver, 1984).
33. S. E. Morison, The Portuguese Voyages to America before 1500 (Harvard, 1940), P-12-7.
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© 1987 Felipe Fernández-Armesto
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Fernández-Armesto, F. (1987). Mapping the Eastern Atlantic. In: Before Columbus. New Studies in Medieval History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18856-7_7
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