Page 200 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

200 from Italy to the Canary Islands

How Jean de Bethencourt and Gadifer departed from the island of Lanzarote to
go to the Island of Erbania (Fuerteventura). Plate found in “Le Canarien”.

brothers’ map of 1367, which shows the island “Lanzarota”; the Atlas of
1375 by Majorcan Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques, which bears
the words “insula de Lanzaroto Maloxelo”; and finally, a 1413 world map
by another Majorcan Jewish cartographer, Mecia de Viladestes, that calls
the island “Malocela”.
From all this mass of data we can draw a number of considerations that
allow us to establish a few certainties on Lanzarotto Malocello.
He was probably born in Varazze, rather than Celle or Albissola. It
is very likely that he arrived in Lanzarote in 1312, for the oldest source
on this is from 1659, coming from his direct descendants, who moved
to France with the new name Maloisel; this being the source closest to
the year of discovery (1312, according to these descendants), it is clear
that some direct memory had been preserved in the family. After all, from