Page 218 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

218 from Italy to the Canary Islands

in Latin that read as follows:

decem spacium denotat mediana quinquaginta……..tis per terram dpt
unas interislas.

The Latin verb “deponere” (lay down) was frequently used next to the
noun “terra” (land), therefore (although the complete text of the sentence
has gone lost over the centuries), if we take “dpt” to be “deponet”, we
might hypothesize a meaningful sentence such as, “there lay down lands
forming an archipelago” or something similar to that.
All of the historic guidelines exposed above are brought up again by the
more recent Michel Vergè – Franceschi, Henri Le Navigateur, un dècou-
vreur au XV° siécle [Henri the navigator, a discoverer in the 15 century],
th
published by Editions du Félin – who devotes page 64 of his work to our
Lanzarotto, without adding anything new, however.
The historian Charles Verlinden, whom we already mentioned, comes
up instead with a completely opposite theory to said historic guidelines.
He examines the letter by King Afonso IV of Portugal dated 12 February
th
1345 and addressed to Pope Clement VI, who had donated the Canary
Islands to Spanish Prince Don Luis de la Cerda in 1344. In his letter, King
Afonso claimed Portugal had discovered the archipelago, allegedly prior
to the war against the Kingdom of Castile of 1335-1340, and had de facto
completed the occupation of the islands after the war against the Arabs
th
(referring to the battle “do Salado” of 30 October 1340).
Lanzarotto would have landed on the island on behalf of Portugal dur-
ing this time. Verlinden claims that the navigator was one of the techni-
cians under the orders of Manuel Pessagno, an admiral in the service of
Portugal.
Not so according to the more recent Georges Maffait, in Des voiles vers
l’Amerique [Setting sails to America], published by Cy Editions in 2002,
and George Jehel on occasion of his paper to the International Conference
“Genova e Cristoforo Colombo” [Genoa and Christopher Columbus], pub-
lished in Cominciai a navigare in giovanissima età… [I started navigating
at a very young age...], edited by Gabriella Airaldi and Centro di Studi
Paolo Emilio Taviani, published by Fratelli Frilli Editori 2004, who go
back to the traditional thesis, which states that Lanzarotto arrived in the
Island in 1312.