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Life

Illustration of the birthplace of Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci was born and raised in the Florence, in what is now Italy. He was the third son of Ser Nastagio (Anastasio), a Florentine notary, and Lisabetta Mini. Amerigo Vespucci was educated by his uncle, Fra Giorgio Antonio Vepsucci, a Dominican friar of San Marco in Florence. One of Vespucci's fellow students was Piero Soderini, who would later arise to the high office of Gonfaloniere of Florence from 1502 to 1512.^{[Note 1]}

The eldest brother Antonio was sent to the University of Pisa c.1476 to pursue a scholarly career, the younger brothers Girolamo and Amerigo Vespucci embraced the mercantile life. Girolamo left Italy in 1480 to pursue his fortune overseas in the Levantine trade, albeit he was ruined by 1489.

Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci, part of the Madonna della Misericordia by Domenico Ghirlandaio at the Ognissanti church in Florence

Amerigo may have been slated initially for a diplomatic career in state service. In April 1478, his cousin, Piero Vespucci, was implicated in the Pazzi conspiracy to overthrow the Medici in Florence. Papal emissaries being roughly handled in the process, Pope Sixtus IV placed Florence unter interdict and began rousing the rest of Italy against her. The Florentine strongman Lorenzo de' Medici dispatched Piero's own brother, the lawyer Guidantonio Vespucci, to Rome to plead the Florentine case at the Lateran. The twenty-four year old Amerigo Vespucci accompanied the mission, probably as his cousin's private secretary. But the Pope intent on war, the Roman mission failed. Upon their return, Guidantonio (with Amerigo in tow) was immediately dispatched as the Florentine ambassador to Paris to seek the assistance of King Louis XI of France. The Vespuccis passed through Bologna and Milan en route to France. After a two-year stint in Paris, the war effectively over, they returned to Florence in 1480. Amerigo's next couple of years were probably occupied with his father's ailment and the wrapping up of his affairs after his death.. It was during this time that the young Vespucci was used as a model in a painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Probably on Guidantonio's recommendation, Amerigo was hired sometime before 1483 as a clerk by the Florentine commercial house of Medici, headed by Lorenzo de Medici. Vespucci soon acquired the favor and protection of Lorenzo Pierfrancesco de Medici il Popolano, who became the head of the business after the elder Lorenzo's death in 1492. In 1489, the Medici dispatched the forty-year old Amerigo Vespucci and Donato Niccolini to Spain as confidential agents to look into the affairs of the Medici factor Tommaso Caponi in Cadiz, whose dealings were under suspicion. After the fulfillment of that mission, Vespucci returned briefly to Italy, but Sometime between 1490 and January 1492, set out for Spain once again. In early 1493, Vespucci appears as a clerk or trader in the commercial house of his Florentine compatriot Gianetto Berardi in Seville.^{[Note 2]}

In April, 1495, by the intrigues of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the Crown of Castile broke their monopoly deal with Christopher Columbus and began handing out licenses to other navigators for the West Indies. Berardi immediately secured a contract with the Castilian crown to outfit twelve 900t naval vessels for the Indies - the first four were delivered in April, another four in June, and the final four in September (although this last batch was wrecked before delivery). Berardi died in December 1495, and Vespucci (promoted to factor or partner) became the executor of Berardi's affairs, and organized the fulfillment of the royal contract. Vespucci outfitted and delivering the four remaining ships, being paid 10,000 maravedis by the Crown on January 12, 1496.

Voyages

Amerigo Vespucci

There is no documentary record of Amerigo Vespucci's presence in Spain (or anywhere else) from April 1496 until February 1505. Nonetheless, there are a slew of letters by Vespucci himself claiming to have undertaken four separate voyages to the New World in that interval - the first two for the Crown of Castile in 1497-98 and 1499-1500, the last two for the Kingdom of Portugal in 1501-02 and 1503-04.

The veracity of Vespucci's claims has proven a headache for historians to resolve. There is a good deal of controversy over the authenticity of these letters, and a great degree of doubt whether Vespucci actually undertook all these expeditions. Paucity of documentary evidence, and Vespucci's unusual habit (in his letters) of withholding the names of the commanding captains or other persons on board has made it hard to follow up on his claims.

If Vespucci is telling the truth, the question remains as to why Vespucci, already nearing fifty, decided to abandon his commercial activities and contracting business in Seville to take to the sea. In his own account, he alludes to his commercial misfortunes, suggesting the affairs of the Berardi business he inherited were not in great shape. Exhausted by business setbacks, "I resolved to abandon trade, and to aspire to something more praisworthy and enduring" Having heard of the "marvels" of the West Indies from returning crews and his friend Christopher Columbus (an old associate of Berardi), he decided to apply for positions on royal ships heading for the Indies. His family situation at the time is uncertain: Vespucci was married at some point to a certain Spanish woman, Maria Cerezo, but there are no details as to when and where.

First Voyage

In his letters, Vespucci claims to have sailed on his first voyage in a royal expedition to the West Indies, which set out in May 10, 1497, and returned in October 15, 1498, allegedly discovering the American mainland in the process. Vespucci wrote about this first voyage in his 1505 Letter to Soderini.

According to Vespucci, the royal expedition was composed of four ships under unnamed captains (speculated to have been Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and/or Juan Díaz de Solís). The royal expedition set out from Cadiz on May 10, 1497, just one month before Columbus finally managed to successfully recover his monopoly privileges from the Crown of Castile (June, 1497). Vespucci claims that the expedition sailed straight west from the Canary islands, and "after a passage of thirty-seven days, we reached a land which we judged to be continental". If the dates are correct, that implies Vespucci's expedition is the first to have reached American mainland - preceding Christopher Columbus (August 1, 1498) by a full year, and perhaps even John Cabot (June 24, 1497) by a whisker.

Where exactly Vespucci went on his first voyage is unclear. The only familiar name is "Parias", which was interpreted by some earlier writers to mean the Gulf of Paria (in the Orinoco delta), and thus a direct challenge to Columbus's 1498 claim. However, that location is not consistent with the directions and latitudes of Vespucci's navigational account and, at any rate, it is only called "Parias" in the 1507 Latin version; in other versions it reads "Lariab" or "Cariah". The only other place mentioned - "Ity" - is not very revealing (some take it, too hopefully, to sound like "Haiti", but that is improbable). Reconstructions of his voyage generally have him hitting the mainland around Honduras, then sailing an arc along the Gulf of Mexico, seeing the mainland coasts of Mexico and Florida. This trajectory suggests Vespucci circumnavigated Cuba, determining it to be an island for the first time.

In the most generous reconstructions of his first voyage, Vespucci sailed through the Caribbean, and made landfall on the bend of the coast of Honduras (16° N, 75° W; or possibly Costa Rica, 10° N), then sailed "northwest" (sic) for two days along the coast of Yucatan peninsula, swung around it and continued along the Mexican coast until reaching a bay with a town with houses on piles he characterized as being "like Venice" (Veracruz?). Some 80 leagues further along the coast, he came across another port on the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer, which can be read as "Parias", "Lariab" or "Cariah" (Tampico?), where they travelled 18 leagues inland, before returning to the ships. Vespucci continued on along the coast another 870 leagues along the Gulf of Mexico ("ever to the northwest" (sic)). (It is possible they came across the Mississippi river along the way, and climbed up it for some 150 miles. He then continued along the coast and reached what seems like the bottom tip of Florida at the end of April 1498. He then turned up the Atlantic coast of North America for some thirty days, reaching a port near a gulf in June ("best port in the world", Cape Hatteras or the Chesapeake Bay? Or even the Gulf of St. Lawrence?), where they relaxed for 37 days. They then set sail eastwards, passing by the island of "Iti" (Bermuda? Or Matha Ithik near Belle-Isle?), where they took some natives captive, before crossing back along the ocean. They arrived in Cadiz in October 1498, having brought back 222 slaves from the New World. On the whole, a voyage of eighteen months.

Vespucci's account makes ample anthropological notes on the local peoples and native customs, including cannibalism, the use of hammocks and sweat lodges. He evinces little interest in gold, and curiously notes: "They asked us whence we came, and we gave them to understand that we came from heaven and that we were going to see the world; and they believed it." He also expresses some shock at the iguana ("a serpent without wings").

Veracity

The veracity of this expedition is the one most disputed by historians. Some historians allege that from April 1497 to May 1498, Vespucci was working as a nautical provision contractor in Spain, "constantly travelling from Seville to San Lucar", making preparations for the third voyage of Christopher Columbus (which set out in May, 1498). However, no documentary evidence has been found to that effect - that is, there is no evidence that Vespucci was in Spain after 1496. Thus, time-wise, Vespucci's first voyage remains a possibility.^{[Note 3]}.

Critics of the first voyage also sometimes allege that Vespucci only mentions this voyage in his letter to Soderini, and that its absence in his prior letters suggest he might have been waiting for Columbus to die (November, 1506) before daring to publish this usurping "falsehood". This is also untrue. Recent research has shown that the Letter to Soderini was probably first published in Italian in 1505, (before Columbus's death). At any rate, in his widely-published 1503 Mundus Novus, Vespucci notes explicitly that he took two prior trips for Spain ("Nam alii duo dies fuerunt quas ex mandato Serenissimi Hispaniarum regis")^{[Note 4]}.

More damingly, the first voyage is not mentioned in the court records in the course of a celebrated lawsuit by Columbus's son, Diego Columbus, against the Crown of Castile, which dragge on from 1508 to 1513. Diego sought to assert that his inheritance extended to the American mainland, by the "right of discovery" of his father. If Vespucci had discovered the mainland before Columbus, then Diego's lawsuit would have sunk. Yet this expedition is mentioned neither by the crown, nor any of the witnesses (including Alonso de Ojeda, no friend of Columbus, who in his deposition does mention Vespucci in connection to a later expedition, but neglects to mention this first voyage), nor was Vespucci himself summoned as a witness (although he was available in Spain at the time). True, Diego's suit was focused on the South American mainland, whereas Vespucci's 1497-98 expedition probably went North or Central America, on the other side of the Caribbean Sea. But while distant, it would have still been relevant to the court case, and its absence is indeed puzzling.

There are nonetheless, several arguments in its favor of the voyage, e.g.

• (1) The sudden absence of any document mentioning Vespucci in Spain between 1496 and 1500, when he was supposedly a major contractor and provisioner for Indies ships, would been consistent with him simply not being there, i.e. sailing abroad for most of that period;
• (2) despite having no prior nautical experience, Vespucci was hired "as a pilot" in the 1499 expedition; and later, from 1505 to 1508, he was bestowed with ample rewards and was constantly consulted by the Crown of Castile on nautical and Indies matters, leading up to his significant appointment as pilot-major; this suggests Vespucci must have performed some significant navigational service to the crown, beyond provisioning beef supplies.
• (3) it is consistent with the trajectory of Columbus's fourth voyage (1502); Columbus did not return to Orinoco, but aimed directly for Honduras, and prodded south of it for a sea passage to Asia, which would be consistent if the areas north of it were already known to be impassable. Several contemporary authors (Anghiera, Gómara, Oviedo ) commenting on Columbus's fourth voyage, noted that the coast Columbus discovered in 1502 had already been discovered before ("three years earlier" in one estimation), by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Juan Díaz de Solís (putative captains of Vespucci's 1497-98 expedition).^{[Note 5]}
• (4) The cartographic evidence is also supportive. The 1500 map of Juan de la Cosa and the 1502 Cantino planisphere both show Cuba already circumnavigated and a mysterious large stretch of closely-explored mainland that looks very like either the Florida or the Yucatan peninsula. These cartographic features are utterly incompatible with any known expedition before this time, and very compatible with the first voyage described by Vespucci. It is widely acknowledged that Vespucci was instrumental in supplying information to the anonymous Portuguese draughtsman of the Cantino map in late 1502.^{[Note 6]}

On the whole, the matter remains in dispute. The evidence suggests that some unknown expedition before Columbus's fourth voyage probably did reach the central American mainland. And it is possible Vespucci might have been aboard. Otherwise, the evidence is not very strong.

Later Career

If Vespucci's first voyage 1497-98 is dubious, there is a little more confidence that Vespucci joined the 1499 expedition of Alonso de Ojeda, organized by the Crown of Castile. Vespucci was apparently hired as a pilot-navigator, alongside Juan de la Cosa, for Ojeda's expedition. This was a position for which he had barely any qualifications, having hardly any prior experience at sea (if we discard his alleged first voyage of 1497-98). But his career as a contractor may have given him access and connections to high Castilian officials, such as Bishop Fonseca. One possibility is that Vespucci may have actually been primarily hired for his commercial expertise, but was given the rank of "pilot" as a harmless indulgence, after impressing officials with his smattering of Classical learning and training in mathematics and cosmography (whether learned from his uncle back in Florence, or taught himself since.) Ojeda's expedition left Spain in May 1499, explored much of the mainland coast of Venezuela, and returned by February 1500.

Vespucci left Spain for Portugal in 1501, either on his own account or (as he claims) at the request of King Manuel I of Portugal. In his letters, Vespucci claims to have participated in two expeditions for the Portuguese crown: the first (his third voyage) under an unnamed captain, which set out on a mission to map the coast of Brazil in March 1501 and returned in September, 1502; the other (his fourth voyage) was another expedition to Brazil, under Gonçalo Coelho, which set out in May, 1503 and returned in June or September 1504. There is no independent documentary evidence in the Portuguese archives mentioning the presence of Vespucci in Portugal throughout this period. Nonetheless, Vespucci's participation on the 1501 mapping expedition (his third voyage) is not much doubted by historians, given that he produced at least three independent letters relating to it, although some still hold reservations about the fourth voyage.

The next we hear of Vespucci is in early 1505, when he had already left Portugal and was back in Seville, ostensibly at the request of King Ferdinand II of Aragon-Castile. Armed with a letter of introduction given to him by Christopher Columbus, Vespucci left Seville and showed up in the Spanish court on February 5, 1505.^{[Note 4]} At Ferdinand II's request, on April 11, Queen Joanna of Castile gave Vespucci a grant of 12,000 maravedis, in a document that describes him as a "resident of Seville" . On April 24, 1505, Joanna issued a patent naturalizing Vespucci as a subject of the Crown of Castile, enabling him to hold office. From May 1505 to August 1506, he was at Palos de la Frontera and Moguer, helping outfit an upcoming expedition with Vicente Yáñez Pinzón.^{[Note 5]} In 1506, Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa were assigned to vessels (Vespucci to the caravel La Medina) on a projected new expedition to the New World, but the expedition was canceled on account of the death of King Philip I in September 1506.

Amerigo Vespucci was summoned to court on November 26, 1507, and by a royal letter issued March 22, 1508, Vespucci was appointed to the newly-created position of piloto mayor (chief pilot) of the Indies, at the Casa de Contratación, with an annual salary of 500 maravedis (soon bumped up by another 250). His official letter of appointment, outlining his duties and responsibilities, was issued later that year, on August 6, 1508. . As pilot-major, Vespucci was responsible for supervising the training of pilot-navigators for the Indies, the provision of nautical instruments and charts, and the maintenance of the Padrón Real, the secret master-map of the Casa, where all details of all explorations an new discoveries by Spanish captains were recorded, and upon which all nautical charts were based.

Amerigo Vespucci died on February 22, 1512 in Seville, survived by his wife Maria Cerezo (alternative accounts have him die a little later, in Terceira island, of the Azores in 1516 or 1518).

Letters of Vespucci

There are six known letters on the voyages attributed to Amerigo Vespucci. Two of them (Mundus Novus and Letter to Soderini) were published within his lifetime, and, if he did not publish them himself, they have at least the assent of his silence. The other manuscript letters were found several centuries later.

In his letters, Amerigo Vespucci repeatedly refers to a book he has written, entitled The Four Voyages, in which he provides greater details of his expeditions. Neither a copy, nor a manuscript, of any such book has been found (some historians believing it was merely projected by Vespucci, and never written).

Letters, in chronological order of composition:

• (A) (manuscript) Letter to Lorenzo Pier Francesco de Medici, dated July 18, 1500, from Seville, in Vespucci's own hand. Found in the Biblioteca Riccardiana and first published 1745 by Bandini. It details the Ojeda expedition of 1499-1500.^[A]

• (B) (manuscript) Letter to Lorenzo Pier Francesco de Medici, written June 4, 1501, from Angra de Bezeguiche (Bay of Dakar, Senegal), a contemporary copy made by Valglienti. Found in the Riccardiana library and first published 1827 by G.B. Baldelli Boni. It was written during the Brazilian mapping expedition, and relates Vespucci's discussions with the crew of the returning fleet of the Second India Armada of Cabral.^[B]

• (C) (manuscript) letter to Lorenzo Pier Francesco de Medici, undated but estimated to be written 1502, from Lisbon. Discovered in the Strozzi collection at the Archives of State in Florence and first published 1789 by F. Bartolozzi. It details the course of the 1501 mapping expedition of Brazil.^[C]

• (D) Mundus Novus, a four-page letter written in 1502 (in Italian or Spanish, original lost), authored by "Albericus Vesputius". It was first printed in Latin translation by Fra Giovanni del Giacondo of Verona, between 1503 and 1505, in Florence. It was reprinted in a re-translation back to Italian in the famous anthology Paesi nuovamente retrovati et Novo Mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitulato, collected by Francanzano Montalbado and published in Vicenza in November 1507. It details the course of the 1501 Brazilian mapping expedition, and contains the first explicit declaration of the "New World" hypothesis.^[D]

• (E) The Lettera al Soderini, a 32-page letter addressed to "Magnificent lord" (Piero Soderini, Gonfaloniere of Florence), was written from Lisbon and dated September 4, 1504. It was first pubished c.1505 as Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovament trovate in quattro suoi viaggi (in mangled Italian vernacular) by Pietro Pacini in Florence.^[E] A French copy (now lost) was sent to René II, Duke of Lorraine, and subsequently translated into Latin, with the title Quattuor Americi Vespuccij navigationes, and published in April 1507 by the Gymnasium Vosagense in Saint-Dié (Lorraine), as an appendix to a volume on comsography, Cosmographiae introductio by Martin Waldseemüller (under pseudonym "Hylacomulys"). This volume also contains the famous "America" map.^[F] There is a third version, a Florentine manuscript copied by the hand of Lorenzo di Piero Choralmi and dated February 1504 (sic, prob. 1505), found in the Magliabechiana Library of Florence, with the title Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci a Piero Soderini, Gonfaloniere, l'Anno 1504 ^[G] . The Soderini letter gives the account of four separate voyages, the first of which had been unmentioned before and is the source of greatest controversy. The second is Ojeda's expedition and the third is the Brazilian mapping expedition (both already mentioned in previous letters). The fourth is the as-yet unreported 1503-04 Coelho expedition.

• (F) (manuscript) Fragmentaria, contemporary copy of letter (in Italian), discovered in the Conti Archives by Marques Ridolfi and published in 1937.^[H]

There are several apocryphal letters that have at one time been attributed to Vespucci, but have since been determined to be by him.

• (apocryphal) a 12-page letter attributed to Vespucci and first published in Flemish in 1508 by Jan van Doesborch of Antwerp. It is generally considered a forgery.^[I]

• (apocryphal) "Relazione d'un Gentil'huomo Fiorentino", an anonymous letter published in the collection of Giovanni Ramusio (1550). Once mistakenly believed to be by Vespucci, it is now confidently attributed to Girolamo Sernigi.^[J]

The authenticity of the Vespucci's three early manuscript letters (A, B and C) to his patron Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici has previously been challenged by historians, with the result that they do not always appear in collections of Vespucci's works.^[K]

Veracity, authenticity and controversy

Until his death in 1512, Amerigo Vespucci's accounts of his four voyages were not disputed by the Castilian crown or anybody else. But the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, (c.1526-61), reviewing the records of the fiscal court, is the first to make the allegation that Vespucci had lied, and sought to "injure" Columbus with claims of priority of discovery of the American mainland. This condemnation is repeated by Spanish historians Antonio de Herrera (1601) , and then again by Juan Bautista Muñoz (1793) and Martín Fernández de Navarrete (1829). They argued strongly against the veracity of Vespucci's first voyage and ascribe to Vespucci the base motive of deliberately attempting to "steal" Columbus's laurels.

Foreign writers were hardly more confident. Alexander von Humboldt (1837) argued Vespucci's first and second voyages were just alternate descriptions of the same trip under Ojeda. D'Avezac (1858) goes further, and doubts both the first and second, suggesting that Vespucci's first voyage is in fact just a veiled plagiarized account of Alonso de Ojeda's 1499 trajectory along the Venezuelan coast, and the second voyage is pinched from Vicente Yáñez Pinzón or Diego de Lepe's voyage of 1499-1500 along the northern Brazilian coast. The Viscount of Santarem (1842) rejects practically all of Vespucci's works as fabrications, and in this is largely followed by Sir Clements Markham (1894), the president of the Hakluyt Society, who only reluctantly concedes the possibility of his second voyage. Imbibing all this, the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, went on to grumble:

"Strange that America must bear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out in 1499 a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and baptise half the world with his own dishonest name."

On the other side, F.A. Varnhagen (1858, 1865), followed by John Fiske (1892), argued strongly for the veracity of all four voyages. Washington Irving (1828), Henry Harrisse (1866, 1895) and Bancroft (1882) are roughly neutral. The principal defense is threefold:

A separate but related issue is the matter of authenticity, i.e. whether Vespucci actually wrote the accounts ascribed to him. Varnhagen, Fiske and Harrisse, while accepting the two published works, nonetheless doubted the authenticity of the three known manuscript letters, and, as a result, the latters were excluded from the famous Raccolta Colombiana (1892). Uzielli (1899) protested their exclusion and went some way towards restoring the value of the manuscript letters.

In the 20th C., Roberto Magnaghi (1924) has been a strongest voice against Vespucci, alleging that both the first and fourth voyages as fabrications. In a step that has since revolutionized Vespucci scholarship, Magnaghi declared Vespucci's two published works - the Mundus Novus and the Lettera al Soderini (in both its 1505 and 1507 incarnations) - to be forgeries, leaving only the three manuscript letters as authentic (thus only the second and third voyages). Unlike his predecessors, Magnaghi does not impugn Vespucci personally, commending him as a accomplished navigator and cosmographer, but rather puts the blame on unscrupulous publishers. Magnaghi believes that after the death of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici in 1503, Florentine printers got their hands on the disparate letters in his possession and, without Vespucci's permission, cobbled them together for a quick buck.

However, Magnaghi's thesis has several weak points. For starters, Vespucci was alive at the time of publication and allowed - or at least did not speak against - the two publications, which circulated quite widely. Moreover, the existence of these tracts, with their implicit claims of priority of discovery, did not prevent his appointment as pilot-major of Castile. (the counter-argument is that the appointment was secured by his patron, Bishop Fonseca, who was always eager to undermine and discredit Columbus, although there is no evidence the bishop ever made use of Vespucci's claim.) Ferdinand Columbus, who was eager to preserve his uncle's memory, had a copy of the Cosmographia Introductio, well-annotated, and never made a protest. Nor do early chroniclers, like Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, etc. There is also

Magnahi adequately explain why the language of these tracts - allegedly forged by Florentines, after the death of Lorenzo de Pierfrancesco de Medici in 1502 - would be written in a barbarous Spanish-infused Italian (suggesting an Italian living in Spain, like Vespucci), rather than proper Italian of Florence. Finally,

The discovery of the Fragmentaria, the fragment of a manuscript letter by Vespucci, found by Ridolfi (1937), which refers to four voyages (Magnaghi simply asserted it was likely forged by the same forgers).

Nonetheless, Magnaghi's thesis has found widespread support. For instance, Pohl (1944), Marcondes de Sousa (1949), Caraci (1951), Penrose (1955), Diffie and Winius (1973) and Fernández-Armesto (2008) accept Magnaghi's thesis of only two voyages. At the other extreme, Vignaud (1917), Revelli (1926), Levillier (1948, 1951, 1965), Almagià (1954) and Arciniagas (1955) have argued for the authenticity of all four voyages. For a recent survey on the state of the Vespucci debate, see Luzzana Caraci (1996).

Notes

1. ^{^} There is an early letter from Amerigo Vespucci to his father, dated October 18, 1476, detailing his studies. For a copy see Varnhagen (1865: p.91), and for an English translation, Lester and Foster (p.62-63). See also Harrisse (1866: p.56). Vespucci's Letter to Soderini, dated September 1504, refers to Vespucci and Soderini studying together under his uncle in Florence (Northup ed., p.2) Uniquely, Irving (1928: p.172-75) interprets the reference to "studying together" to be to Rene II, Duke of Lorraine, and that a copy was sent to Soderini, rather than the other way around.
2. ^{^} The first letter by Amerigo and Donato written from Spain is dated January 30, 1492. (Varnhagen, 1865: p.92). A letter dated December 30, 1492, to Corradolo Stanga (in the State Archives at Mantua), signed "Ser. Amerigho Vespucci, merchante fiorentino in Sybilia", definitively places him in Spain at that time (Harrisse, 1895: p.9-10). Alone among historians, Canovai (1817:p.123) suggests Vespucci joined the 1493 second voyage of Christopher Columbus as an apprentice navigator. This allegation has been discarded by all historians since.
3. ^{^} Historians, following Humboldt (1837: vol. iv: p.268) and Harrisse (1866: p.57), have cited the authority of Spanish historian Juan Bautista Muñoz, whom they claim found documents in Libro de gastos de armadas, held in the archives of the Casa de Contratación in Seville. But there is, in fact, no such mention in Muñoz. Humboldt's citation of Muñoz's 1793 Historia Lib. VI,sec.20 turns up no such claim. There is a suggestive statement in Martín Fernández de Navarrete's Colección de los viages (vol. 3, p.317) which claims that after January 1496, "Vespuccio continued to attend to matters about the dispatch of the fleet from San Lucar" but it does not specifically mention that fleet was Columbus's. Varnhagen (1858:p.18-19) pillories Humboldt for unjustifiably extending Navarrete's statement. Markham (1894: p.vi) makes a similar mistake, claiming the Vespucci worked as a "beef contractor" in Spain from 1497 through 1498, and is duly taken to task by a now repentant Harrisse (1895: p.12-13), who goes on to conclusively state "that no entry, referring, directly or indirectly, to those dealings of Vespuccius, and of a date posterior to January 12th 1496, has ever been found in the archives of the Casa, and still less among the 127 volumes containing all the extracts and notes made by Muñoz, when, in 1779, Charles III commissioned him to write a history of America" (Harrisse, 1895: p.13-14). Nonetheless, Humboldt's mistaken statement seems to have been repeated and perpetuated uncorrected in later histories (e.g. Ober, 1907: p.81).
4. ^{^} The passage in Mundus Novus (1503) in original Latin reads and Italian is found in Varnhagen (1865: p.25) : "Hec fuerent notabiliora que viderim in hac mea ultima navigatione quam apellodiem tertium. Nam alij duo dies fuerunt due alie navigationes quas ex mandato Serenissimi Hispaniarum regis feci versus occidentem". In English translation, "These are the most notable things that I have seen in this my last navigation, or as I call it, the third voyage. For the other two voyages were made by order of the Most Serene King of Spain to the west" (Markham, 1894: p.51).
5. ^{^} That Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Juan Díaz de Solís reached the "gulf of Higueras" (Honduras, Central America), before Columbus's fourth voyage of 1502 is claimed by several contemporary authors:
   • Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, (1511) De Orbe Novo, Dec. I, Lib. 10. (p.120) "Percurrisse quoque ferentur ea littora occidentalia Vicintins Agnes, de quo supra, & Joannes quidam Diaz Solisius Nebrissensis, multique alii quorum res nondum bene didici" ("This coast was also travelled by Vicent Yanez, of whom I have spoken above, and Juan Diaz Solis of Nebrissa, and several others, of which I have not good details")
   • Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1526) La historia general y natural de las Indias, 1526, Lib. XXI, ch.8 (vol. 2.1, p.140) "el golpho de Higueras, que algunos atribuyen al almirante primero don Chripstóbal Colom, diçiendo que él lo descubrió. Y no es assi; porque el golpho de Higueras lo descubrieron los pilotos Viçente Yañez Pinçon é Johan Diaz de Solis é Pedro de Ledesma con tres caravelas" ("the gulf of Higueras, which some attribute to the first admiral Christopher Columbus, saying that he discovered it. But it is not so; because the gulf of Higueras was discovered by the pilots Pinzon, Solis and Ledesma with three caravels")
   • Francisco López de Gómara (1552) Hispania Victrix, fol.28b "Descubrio Christoval Colon 370 leguas de costa, que ponen de rio grande de Higueras al Nombre de Dios, el ano de 1502; dicen algunos que tres anos antes lo avian andado Vicente Yanez Pinçon y Juan Diez de Solis, que fueron grandissimos descubridores". ("Christopher Columbus discovered 370 leagues of coast, from the great river of Higueras to Nombre de Dios, in the year 1502; some say that to here, three years earlier, travelled Vicente Yanez Pinzon and Juan Diaz de Solis, who were great discoverers")
6. ^{^} Much of the mainland coast depicted in the Cosa map of 1500 seems conjectural, but the Cantino map seems to indicate intensive exploration. The Canerio map (c.1502-05) showed the Cantino coast of Florida, continued around the Gulf of Mexico down to Honduras. The Waldseemüller map (1507) connected the Canerio coast down to the South American mainland. Florida is clearly shown in the last two, yet there are no known expeditions. Officially, Christopher Columbus hit the Orinoco delta on his third voyage in 1498, Alonso de Ojeda the coast of Venezuela in 1499, Rodrigo de Bastidas cruised the coast of Colombia down to Darien in 1502, Columbus on his fourth voyage explored Honduras to Panama (1504), Hernández de Córdoba Yucatan in 1517, Martín de Pinedo Florida and the Gulf Coast in 1517, the coast of Mexico in 1519 and Esteban Gómez the Atlantic coasts of Florida and Virginia in 1524. However, Davies (1952) contends these coasts are inconsistent with Vespucci's account, which seems to suggest that after landfall, the ship sailed persistently northwest, which is inconsistent with the great curve of the Gulf of Mexico and the accounts of native customs more similar to that of South America. The 1507 map of Johannes Ruysch depicts a piece of the mainland coast with the label that it was discovered by the ships of "King Ferdinand". (Huc usq naves Ferdinadi, Regis Hispaniae P. Venerut"). The labels, according to the liturgical calendar, coincide with the timing of Vespucci's first voyage, e.g. Cape St. Mark (June 18), bay of the Nativity (of St. John, June 24). (Varnhagen, 1858: p.21) Curiously, the 1503 chart of Bartholomew Columbus (Columbus's brother), shows Cuba as part of the mainland.
7. ^{^} Vespucci's presence on Ojeda's 1499 expedition is confirmed by the testimony of Ojeda himself. During his deposition in the course of a lawsuit by Diego Columbus in 1508, Ojeda claimed, on his 1499 trip, trujo consigo á Juan de la Cosa, piloto, é Morigo Vespuche é otros pilotos ("brought with himself Juan de la Cosa, pilot, and Americo Vespuche, and other pilots") (Navarrete, 1829: vol.3, p.317-18, p.544) For an English translation, see Markham (1894: p.30)
8. ^{^} The February 5, 1505 letter of introduction from Christopher Columbus to Diego Columbus (who was then at court), can be found in Navarrete (1825: v.i, p.351). For an English translation, see Markham (1894: p.57). Vespucci's presence at court is further confirmed in a letter dated February 25, 1505 from Christopher Columbus to his son, Diego. (Navarrete, 1825: p.352). See also Navarette (1829: v.iii, p.320)
9. ^{^} On May 24, 1505, Queen Joanna sent an emissary, named Pero de Miranda, to Palos to consult with Pinzon and Vespucci, about a fleet. Miranda returned on the same errand on June 5, 1505. A document issued by King Philip I on August 16, 1506, shows they were still in preparations, (Document V in Navarrete, 1829: p.294). See also Harisse (1866: p.58).

1. ^{^} "Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci indirizzata a Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici, che contiene un' esatta descrizione del suo secondo viaggio fatto per i Re di Spagna, ora per la prima volta data alla luce", in Angelo Maria Bandini, editor, (1745) Vita e lettere d'Amerigo Vespucci, Gentiluomo Florentino, raccolte ed illustrate dall' Abate Angelo Maria Bandini, Florence. (p.64-86) Reprinted in F.A. de Varnhagen (1865: p.69-77.)
2. ^{^} "Copia d'una lettera scritta da Amerigo Vespucci dall' Isola del Capo Verde e nel mare Oceano a Lorenzo di Piero Francesco de' Medici sotto di 4 di Guigno 1501, relativa a quese prime scoperte orientali", in Giovanni Battista Baldelli, editor, 1827, Il milione di Marco Polo, testo di lingua del secolo decimoterzo ora pra la prima volta pubblicato ed illustrato dal Conte Gio. Batt. Baldelli Boni, Florence: G. Pagni, vol. 1, p.liii-lix. Reprinted in F.A. de Varnhagen (1865: p.78-82). An English translation can be found in W.H.Greenlee (1938: p.151ff).
3. ^{^} "Relazione d'Amerigo Vespucci riguardante il suo' terzo viaggio, che si pubblica per la prima volta: lettera scritta da Amerigo Vespucci a Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici l'anno 1502, a Lisbona alla lor tornata dall nuova terra mandata a cercare, per la Maesta del Re di Portogallo", in F. Bartolozzi, editor, Ricerche istorico-critiche circa alle scoperte d'Amerigo Vespucci, con l'aggiunta di una relazione del medesimo fin ora inedita, Florence, 1789, Ch. 17 p.168-80. Reprinted in F.A. de Varnhagen (1867: p.83-86).
4. ^{^} Varnhagen (1865: p.13-26) provides side-by-side reproductions of both the 1503 Latin translation, "Mundus Novus" (of Giacondo) and the 1507 Italian re-translation "El Nuovo Mondo de Lengue Spagnole interpretato in Idioma Ro. Libro Quinto" (from Paesi Nuovamente retrovati). The Latin version of Mundus Novus was reprinted many times (see Varnhagen, 1865: p.9 for a list of early reprints). An English translation can be found in Markham (1894: p.42-52)
5. ^{^} The vulgar Italianate Pacini edition of the Soderini letter, entitled Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovament trovate in quattro suoi viaggi, is dated 1505 by Kerney (1885) and 1506 by Varnhagen (1865). It does not have a dedication to Piero Soderini, and instead has a woodcut as frontispiece. The 1505 Pacini edition was a printed text and there are five known copies. One of the extant copies, once owned by Thomas Grenville, has on its title page, the name "Baccio Valori", a librarian of the Laurentian library in Florence, and so it is sometimes referred to as the Grenville or Valori text. It was first discovered by Bandini and published in his 1745 volume (p.1-63) with obvious printing errors, reprinted with some innovations by Stansislaus Canovai as Viaggi d'Amerigo Vespucci (1817: online) and reproduced, more correctedly by Varnhagen (1865: p.27-64). For a photographic fascimile edition of the 1505 Pacini text, see 1893 First Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, London: B. Quaritch Primo, Secondo, Terzo, Quarto. A close English translation of this 1505-06 edition is by Michael Kerney ("M.K."), 1885, The First Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, (First p.3, Second: p.24, Third: p.34, Fourth: p.42). Some early historians (e.g. Harrisse, 1866: p.62) dated the Pacini text 1516 (that is, after the 1507 Latin version), and Napione (1811) even suggests it was an Italian translation of the Latin version. This is disputed by Varnhagen (1865), who dates it prior and claims it is the source of the Latin. Northrup (1916: p.5) doubts one is the source of the other, but that both were drawn from an earlier (lost) Italian edition.
6. ^{^} The 1507 Latin version of the Soderini letter is titled "Quattuor Vespuccij navigationes" in Martin Waldseemüller (pseud. "Hylacomylus"), Cosmographiae introductio. It is reprinted in the 1907 Latin edition in F.V.Wieser, ed. Strassurg: Heitz. For an English translation, see the 1908 English edition in P.G. Herbermann, editor, New York: United States Catholic historical Society. See also C.R. Markham, editor, The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci (1894: First: (p.1), Second: p.21, Third: p.34, Fourth: p.52). Until the discovery of the Pacini text in the 18th C., this Latin version was the one most commonly cited.
7. ^{^} The Choralmi manuscript, "Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci a Piero Soderini, Gonfaloniere, l'Anno 1504", was found in the Magliabechiana Library of Florence. If indeed it is from February 1505, that would make it the earliest known edition, and (unlike the others) the first one with a title explicitly mentioning Soderini. Scholars have disputed on the primacy of the various editions of the Soderini letter. Napione (1811) has argued that the 1505 Pacini text was actually a later translation of the 1507 Latin edition, while Varnhagen (1865) argued the opposite, that the Latin edition stems from the Pacini text. Northrup (1916: p.16) argues that both are incorrect. In Northup's hypothesis, both the 1505 Pacini text and 1505 Choralmi manuscript stem from one (lost) Italian version, while the 1507 Latin translation stems (via a French translation) from a different Italian text (also lost). Northrup uses all three versions - Choralmi's 1505 Italian, Pacini's 1505-06 Italo-Spanish and Waldseemüller's 1507 Latin - to attempt a reconstructed varorium English translation of the Letter to Soderini: First, Second, Third, Fourth
8. ^{^} Ridolfi (1937) "Fragmentaria in Una lettera inedita di Amerigo Vespucci sopra il suo terzo viaggio, Archivo Storico, Florence.
9. ^{^} The Flemish letter, Die Reyse van Lissebone om te vare na die Eylandt Naguaria in Groot Indien gheleghen, was first published in 1508 in Antwerp. Although long-rumored, an extant copy was only found in 1892, its discovery announced in the Athenaeum (Nov 5, 1892). It alleges Vespucci joined a Portuguese expedition from Lisbon to Calicut (India) from March 1500 to November 1501. The timing coincides roughly with the Second India Armada of Pedro Álvares Cabral, which is an impossibility: the timing contradicts the timing of Vespucci third voyage (the 1501 mapping expedition of Brazil), and probably the second (the 1499-1500 Ojeda expedition) as well. As an alternative, it has been suggested that the Flemish letter actually relates to the 1505-06 expedition of the 7th India Armada of Francisco de Almeida, and an English translation of the Flemish letter was published by C.H. Coote in 1894 as Voyage from Lisbon to India, 1505-6, being an Account and Journal by Albericus Vespuccius, translated from the contemporary Flemish. But it also contradicts the known chronology about Vepsucci's life, who is recorded in Spain during 1505. Harrisse (1895) attributes the Reyse to the German commercial agent Balthazar Sprenger, who is known to have traveled with Almeida. See Markham (1894: p.xii.n.)
10. ^{^} Given the full title "Navigatione di Vasco di Caman Capitano dell'armata del Re di Portogallo fatta nell anno 1497, oltre il Capo di Buona Speranza a fino in Calicut, scritta per un gentilhuomo Fiorentino, che si trovo al tornate detta armata in Lisbona", in Giovanni Battista Ramusio, editor, 1550, Primo volume delle navigationi et viaggi nel qua si contine la descrittione dell'Africa, et del paese del Prete Ianni, on varii viaggi, dal mar Rosso a Calicut,& infin all'isole Molucche, dove nascono le Spetierie et la navigatione attorno il mondo., published in Venice, p.130a-138a. The anonymous "Venetian Gentleman" (i.e. Girolamo Sernigi) wrote it after the arrival of Vasco da Gama's fleet in Lisbon in 1499, making it impossible to square with the known timing of Vespucci. It was attributed to Vespucci by Bandini (1745: p.87-89). For criticism, see Varnhagen (1865: p.86). The Ramusio edition does have legitimate Vepsucci pieces, in particular there is a section called Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci Fiorentini", which reproduces (in Italian) the third and fourth voyages of the Letter to Soderini as "Lettera I" (3rd p.138b), and "Lettera II" p.139b), followed by the Mundus Novus (labelled "Sommario Scritto per Amerigo Vespucci", p.140b-143b).
11. ^{^} Doubts about the authenticity of the three manuscript letters to Medici were raised by Varnhagen (1854), and although they were reprinted in Varnhagen (1865: pp.69-86), they were labelled as "false" letters. The rejection of the three letters was followed by Harrisse (1866, 1892), Fiske (1892: vol.2, p.29-30)

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Navigational Significance

Besides discovering that Africa did have an endpoint at the Cape of Good Hope, the other major navigational discovery of Dias's journey was the existence of the prevailing westerlies below the 30°S latitude and the existence of the eastbound South Atlantic Current (implying the existence of a South Atlantic Gyre). Prior to Dias's journey, no European ship had reached that far south. These discoveries allowed the charting of a much more efficient route to the Cape that the route Dias himself had followed.

Up until Dias, all ships sailing into the South Atlantic had followed what was then called the rota da Mina (Mina route). That is, when a south-bound they reached the equatorial doldrums (an area of little or no winds, in the environs of Sierra Leone), they struck southeast and allowed their ship to drift with the equatorial counter-current (or 'Guinea current') east into the Gulf of Guinea. This was the way to the fort of São Jorge da Mina on the Portuguese Gold Coast (hence, rota da Mina). But sailing further south from here along the African coast was particularly tiresome, as ships would have to continuously tack against the southeaterly trade winds and fight the contrary Benguela Current - feasible for a lateen-rigged caravel, but not so easy for larger square-rigged carracks.

Dias himself followed the Mina route down to southern Africa until he reached 30°S, the wind-changing horse latitude, where the southeasterly trade winds ended and the prevailing westerlies blowing in from the northwest began. The existence of these winds was unknown to European sailors before Dias. And Dias used the westerlies to round the Cape, charting a loop, first tacking against them to the southwest, then swinging around and letting them carry him around the Cape. This loop brought Dias into his second navigational discovery - the end of the northbound Benguela Current and the existence of an eastbound South Atlantic Current (the bottom segment of the counter-clockwise South Atlantic Gyre).

Dias discovery of the existence of the westerlies at 30°S and the eastbound current had momentous implications. Any experienced navigators would have immediately noticed that it implied the South Atlantic wind and current patterns exactly mirrored the North Atlantic patterns. From this information, it was not difficult to deduce there was a better and faster route to the Cape - that is, follow the South Atlantic gyre (volta do mar, literally, 'turn of the sea'), rather than the rota da Mina. In other words, in the environs of Sierra Leone, instead of going southeast with the Guinea current, strike southwest and catch the westbound South Equatorial Current (top arm of the gyre) into open ocean. That current should take them (eventually) to a latitude where the westerlies begin and an eastbound current appears, which will rapidly and easily carry the ships straight to the Cape of Good Hope.

The only thing that remained uncertain was whether the westbound South Equatorial Current would carry ships south enough to catch the westerlies. As it turns out, the Brazil Current did the job quickly, but the existence of that current was unknown to Dias or any other navigator. But its existence would have been natural for any navigator to hypothesize by combining Dias's discoveries with existing knowledge of the North Atlantic.

Dias's 1488 wind and current discoveries naturally set up the wide South Atlantic arc route (volta to mar route) that proved to be substantially easier and quicker (around three months to reach the Cape of Good Hope, albeit all out of sight of land) than the old and tiresome coast-hugging rota da Mina. After Dias, the volta do mar route to the Cape was followed by all subsequent Portuguese India Armadas - including the first by Vasco da Gama in 1497, where many pilots and men of the Dias 1488 expedition - notably Pêro de Alenquer - participated. Dias himself sailed with Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, who struck a volta do mar route so wide that he inadvertently hit the landmass of Brazil.

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