Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi

Last updated
Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi
Born
Genoa
Disappeared1291
Occupation(s)Explorers and merchants
Known forAttempted voyage from Europe to India via Africa
Parent(s)Amighetto Vivaldi and Giovannina Vivaldi (née Zaccaria)

Vandino (sometimes Vadino or Guido) and Ugolino Vivaldi (sometimes Ugolino de Vivaldo) (fl. 1291) were two brothers and Genoese explorers and merchants who are best known for their attempted voyage from Europe to India via Africa. They set sail west from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and were never heard from again.

Contents

History

Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi were connected with the first known expedition in search of an ocean way from Europe to India (Cape Route). Ugolino, with his brother Guido or Vandino Vivaldo, was in command of this expedition of two galleys, which he had organized in conjunction with Tedisio Doria, and which left Genoa in May 1291 with the purpose of going to India "by the Ocean Sea" and bringing back useful things for trade. Planned primarily for commerce, the enterprise also aimed at proselytism. Two Franciscan friars accompanied Ugolino. The galleys were well armed and sailed down the Morocco coast to a place called Gozora (Cape Nun), in 28º 47' N., after which nothing more was heard of them. The expedition of the Vivaldi brothers was one of the first recorded voyages that sailed out from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. [1]

It is believed that when Lancelotto Malocello set sail from Genoa in 1312, he did so in order to search for Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi. Malocello ended up remaining on the island that is named for him, Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, for more than two decades. [1]

Early in the 14th century, Sorleone de Vivaldo, son of Ugolino, undertook a series of distant wanderings in search of his father and uncle, and even reached, it is said, Mogadishu on the Somali coast, but was prevented by the King of Mogadishu from going to Aksum, because the road to the collapsed ancient kingdom was no longer secure. [2] In 1455 another Genoese seaman, Antoniotto Uso di Mare, sailing with Cadamosto in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, claimed to have met, near the mouth of the Gambia, with the last descendant of the survivors of the Vivaldo expedition. The two galleys, he was told, had sailed to the Sea of Guinea; in that sea one was stranded, but the other passed on to a place on the coast of Aethiopia (here meaning Black Africa) — Mena or Amenuan, near the Gihon (here probably meaning the Senegal River) where the Genoese were seized and held in close captivity. [1]

Sources

The principal documentary source is the Genoese annals of Jacopo Doria, presented to the city of Genoa in 1294. Under the entry of the year 1291, Doria writes the following:

"Tedisio d'Oria, Ugolino Vivaldi and a brother of the latter, together with a few other citizens of Genoa, initiated an expedition which no one up to that time had ever attempted. They fitted out two galleys in splendid fashion. Having stocked them with provision, water and other necessities, they sent them on their way, in the month of May, toward the Strait of Ceuta in order that the galleys might sail through the ocean sea to India and return with useful merchandise. The two above-mentioned brothers went on the vessels in person, and also two Franciscan friars; all of which truly astonished those who witnessed them as well as those who heard of them. After the travelers passed a place called Gozora there was no further news of them. May God watch over them and bring them back safely" [3]

Additional documents identify the other brother as "Vadino", that Tedesio Doria (Jacopo's nephew) did not embark, that the supplies were for "ten years", that the names of the vessels were Sanctus Antonius and Alegranzia, and that the ship made a brief stop at Majorca before proceeding. [4]

In Galvano Fiamma's book, Cronica universalis, Galvano claims the Vivaldi expedition reached Ethiopia, from where the survivors gave up returning to their city. [5]

Geography

Jean Gimpel suggests [6] that the two Franciscan friars who accompanied the Vivaldi brothers may have read the Opus Majus written by their fellow Franciscan, Roger Bacon, in which Bacon suggested that the distance separating Spain and India was not great, a theory that was later repeated by Pierre d'Ailly and tested by Christopher Columbus.

It is uncertain how far the Vivaldi brothers reached. The Vivaldi brothers may have seen or landed on the Canary Islands. "Gozora" is a name found in some Medieval charts for Cape Nun, which lies before the Canary Islands (e.g. Caput Finis Gozole in the maps of Giovanni da Carignano, early 1300s, and the Pizzigani brothers, 1367). The name of the ship Alegranzia may be the source for the Canary Island of Alegranza, and has led to the supposition that the brothers landed there (or that at least one of the ships capsized there).

An allusion to the Vivaldi galleys is given in the Libro del Conoscimiento , a semi-fantastical travelogue written by an anonymous Spanish friar in c.1350–1385. There are two passages relating to the Vivaldi brothers. In the first, the narrator, traveling in what seems like the Guinea region (sub-Saharan Africa) reaches the city of Graçiona, capital of the black African empire of Abdeselib, which is allied to Prester John. "They told me in this city of Graciona that the Genoese who escaped the galley that was wrecked at Amenuan were brought (betrayed?) here, but it was never known what became of the other galley which escaped." [7] When the traveling friar moves on to the neighboring city of Magdasor, he came across a Genoese man named Sor Leone who was in this city "searching for his father who had left in two galleys, as I have already explained, and they gave him every honor, but when this Sor Leone wanted to traverse to the empire of Graciona to search for his father, the emperor of Magdasor did not allow it, because way was doubtful and the path was dangerous" [8] As it happens, Sorleone is the real name of Ugolino's actual son. [9]

The locations of these kingdoms have been the subject of speculation. The references to Prester John and Magdasor (which sounds much like Mogadishu) have led some to assume that the other galley circumnavigated Africa but was intercepted around the Horn of Africa. However, the narrator's geographical references (e.g. to the Senegal-Niger River, the gold trade, the Mali Empire, even the Gulf of Guinea) suggest that Abdelsalib and Magdasor were in non-Muslim sub-Saharan West Africa. The localization of "Amenuan", the place where the first galley capsized, is suggestive of the Senegambia region. If there is a grain of truth in any of this, it would not stretch credulity to imagine that the Vivaldis got as far as Senegal, and that their adventures ended there.

A century later, in late 1455, Antoniotto Usodimare, a Genoese navigator in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator, claims rather improbably in a letter that while traveling up the Gambia River in West Africa, he came across a man who spoke the Genoese dialect and claimed to be the last descendant of the survivors of the Vivaldi expedition. [10] (Usodimare's travelling companion, Alvise Cadamosto, mentions no such meeting in his memoirs.) Usodimare gives more details of the Vivaldi expedition in another document in the Genoese archives:

In the year of 1285 (sic), two galleys sailed out of the city of Genoa commanded by the brothers Ugolino and Guido Vivaldi (Hugolinum et Guidum de Vivaldis fratres) with the purpose of going, by the east (per Levantum), to the parts of India. These galleys sailed much; but when they entered the sea of Guinea (mari de Ghinoia), one of the galleys tore its hull, and could not continue sailing further; the other, however, continued through this sea until it reached a city of Ethiopia named Menam; they were captured and detained by the inhabitants of this city, who are Christians of Ethiopia, subjects of Prester John. The city is by the sea-coast, near the river Gion. They were so tightly detained that none of them managed to return home. This is what is related by the Genoese noble Antoniotto Usodimare [11]

Gion is the name of the biblical Gihon river, which stems from the Garden of Eden and flows through Ethiopia. In this instance, it may be a reference to the Senegal River. [12] Usodimare's narration seems to be a mere repetition of the tale told in the Libro del Conoscimiento.

The historian José de Viera y Clavijo writes that Father Agustín Justiniani, in the Anales de Génova, includes the information that two Franciscans also joined the Vivaldi expedition. Viera y Clavijo also mentions the fact that Petrarch states that it was a local tradition that the Vivaldis did indeed reach the Canary Islands. Neither Justiniani nor Petrarch knew of the expedition's fate. Papiro Masson in his Anales writes that the brothers were the first modern discoverers of the Canary Islands.

The Vivaldi brothers subsequently became the subjects of legends that featured them circumnavigating Africa before being captured by the mythical Christian king Prester John. [13] The Vivaldis' voyage may have inspired Dante’s Canto 26 of the Inferno about Ulysses’ last voyage, which ends in failure in the Southern Hemisphere. [14] According to Henry F. Cary, Ulysses' fate was inspired "...partly from the fate which there was reason to suppose had befallen some adventurous explorers of the Atlantic ocean." [15]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Wikisource-logo.svg One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Vivaldo, Ugolino and Sorleone de". Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 152.
  2. ↑ History of Portuguese Cartography - Volume 2 - Page 61 by Armando Cortesão · 1971
  3. ↑ Jacopo d'Oria, 1294, as translated in Rogers (1955: p.36)
  4. ↑ Rogers (1955: p.37)
  5. ↑ Chiesa, Paolo (2021-05-04). "Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340)". Terrae Incognitae. 53 (2): 88–106. doi:10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792. hdl: 2434/860960 . ISSN   0082-2884. S2CID   236457428.
  6. ↑ Gimpel, Jean (1976). The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. New York: Penguin. p. 196.
  7. ↑ Libro del Conoscimiento, 1877 edition, p.63
  8. ↑ Libro del Conoscimiento, 1877 edition, p.67.
  9. ↑ Rogers, p.43
  10. ↑ For a copy of Usodimare's letter, see R.H. Major (1868) Life of Prince Henry of Portugal, p.104
  11. ↑ Own translation from the Latin as it is reproduced in d'Avezac (1845:p.25)
  12. ↑ Usodimare's travelling companion Alvise Cadamosto in his Navigazione (1460s: p.111) makes the independent note that the Senegal River was sourced from the Biblical Gihon.
  13. ↑ Ugolino and Vadino Vivaldi Biography
  14. ↑ Peter d’Epiro; Mary Desmond Pinkowish; Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World (Anchor, 2001), 105.
  15. ↑ Cary's notes in The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (Harvard Classics) New York, 1909: vol. i:112.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Senegal River</span> River in West Africa

The Senegal River is a 1086-kilometre-long (675 mi) river in West Africa; much of its length marks part of the border between Senegal and Mauritania. It has a drainage basin of 270000 km2, a mean flow of 680 m3/s (24,000 cu ft/s), and an annual discharge of 21.5 km3 (5.2 cu mi). Important tributaries are the Falémé River, Karakoro River, and the Gorgol River. The river divides into two branches once it passes Kaédi The left branch, called the Doué, runs parallel to the main river to the north. After 200 km (120 mi) the two branches rejoin a few kilometers downstream of Podor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Preveza</span> 1538 battle of the Third Ottoman–Venetian War

The Battle of Preveza was a naval engagement that took place on 28 September 1538 near Preveza in the Ionian Sea in northwestern Greece between an Ottoman fleet and that of a Holy League. The battle was an Ottoman victory which occurred in the same area in the Ionian Sea as the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. It was one of the three largest sea battles that took place in the sixteenth century Mediterranean, along with the Battle of Djerba and the Battle of Lepanto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Doria</span> Admiral of the Republic of Genoa (1466–1560)

Andrea Doria, Prince of Melfi was an Italian statesman, condottiero, and admiral, who played a key role in the Republic of Genoa during his lifetime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Republic of Genoa</span> Italian maritime republic (1099–1797)

The Republic of Genoa was a medieval and early modern maritime republic from the years 1099 to 1797 in Liguria on the northwestern Italian coast. During the Late Middle Ages, it was a major commercial power in both the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, it was one of the major financial centres in Europe.

Alvise Cadamosto (Portuguese pronunciation:[alˈvizɨkɐðaˈmoʃtu]; Italian pronunciation:[alˈvizeˌkadaˈmosto])(c. 1432 – 16 July 1483) was a Venetian explorer and slave trader, who was hired by the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator and undertook two known journeys to West Africa in 1455 and 1456, accompanied by the Genoese captain Antoniotto Usodimare. Some have credited Cadamosto and his companions with the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands and the points along the Guinea coast from the Gambia River to the Geba River, the greatest leap in the Henrican discoveries since 1446. Cadamosto's accounts of his journeys, including his detailed observations of West African societies, have proven invaluable to historians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doria (family)</span> Italian noble family

The House of Doria originally de Auria, meaning "the sons of Auria", and then de Oria or d'Oria, is an old and extremely wealthy Genoese family who played a major role in the history of the Republic of Genoa and in Italy, from the 12th century to the 16th century. Numerous members of the dynasty ruled the republic first as Capitano del popolo and later as Doge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European exploration of Africa</span> Period of history

The geography of North Africa has been reasonably well known among Europeans since classical antiquity in Greco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt was considered part of Asia.

Antoniotto Usodimare or Usus di Mare (1416–1462) was a Genoese trader and explorer in the service of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator. Jointly with Alvise Cadamosto, Usodimare discovered a great stretch of the West African coast in two known voyages in 1455 and 1456. They notably discovered the Cape Verde islands, and the Guinea coast from the Gambia River to the Geba River

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lancelotto Malocello</span> 13th and 14th century Genoese navigator

Lancelotto Malocello was an Italian navigator, citizen of the Republic of Genoa, who gave his name to the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. Lancelotto is the Italian form of the proper name Lancelot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War of Chioggia</span> Conflict between Venice and Genoa from 1378 to 1381

The War of Chioggia was a conflict fought by the Republic of Genoa against the Republic of Venice between 1378 and 1381, the conclusion of an open confrontation that had lasted for years and which had already included some occasional and limited military clashes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Meloria (1284)</span> Naval battle between Pisa and Genoa; decisive Genoan victory

The Battle of Meloria was fought near the islet of Meloria in the Ligurian Sea on 5 and 6 August 1284 between the fleets of the Republics of Genoa and Pisa as part of the Genoese-Pisan War. The victory of Genoa and the destruction of the Pisan fleet marked the decline of the Republic of Pisa.

Cape Chaunar, Cap Uarsig, Cape Nun, Cap Noun, Cabo de Não or Nant is a cape on the Atlantic coast of Africa, in southern Morocco, between Tarfaya and Sidi Ifni. By the 15th century it was considered insurmountable by Arabs and Europeans, thus resulting in the name meaning cape "no" in Portuguese. Cape Chaunar is the true northern coastal limit of the Sahara desert, although nearby Cape Bojador is frequently mistakenly called this.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Genoa</span> History of the Italian city and former republic

Genoa, Italy, has historically been one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean.

Jaume Ferrer was a Majorcan sailor and explorer. He sailed from Majorca on 10 August 1346 to find the legendary "River of Gold," but the outcome of his quest and his fate are unknown. He is memorialized in his native city of Palma, Majorca.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medici-Laurentian Atlas</span>

The Medici-Laurentian Atlas, also known simply as the Medici Atlas, is an anonymous 14th-century set of maps, probably composed by a Genoese cartographer and explicitly dated 1351, although most historians believe it was composed, or at least retouched, later. The atlas is currently held by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antoniotto I Adorno</span> Genoese doge

The Most Serene Prince Antoniotto Adorno was the 6th doge of the Republic of Genoa and rose four times to the nominally lifelong position, making him the person most often elected to the Doge office in the history of the republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Girolata</span> 1540 battle

The Battle of Girolata was a naval action fought between Genoese, Spanish, and Ottoman ships on 15 June 1540 in the Gulf of Girolata, on the west coast of the island of Corsica, amidst the war between Charles V of Spain and Suleiman the Magnificent. A Spanish squadron of 21 galleys led by the Genoese Gianettino Doria and the Spaniard Berenguer de Requesens surprised an Ottoman squadron of 11 galleys, anchored at Girolata, led by the Ottoman admiral Dragut, whom the commander of the Ottoman Navy, Hayreddin Barbarossa, had committed to raid the Italian coast after his victories in the Adriatic Sea the year before. As the crews of the Ottoman warships were ashore, distributing the booty from recent raids, the Spanish-Genoese fleet easily overtook them, taking all 11 Ottoman galleys and making 1,200 prisoners, among them Dragut, who was carried to Genoa and put, together with his captains, to row in Andrea Doria's galleys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genoese navy</span> Military unit

The Genoese navy was the naval contingent of the Republic of Genoa's military. From the 11th century onward the Genoese navy protected the interests of the republic and projected its power throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It played a crucial role in the history of the republic as a thalassocracy and a maritime trading power.

The Campaign of Cherchell occurred in July 1531, when Charles V sent the admiral Andrea Doria, to take Cherchell as a bridgehead in North Africa.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.