Page 258 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

258 from Italy to the Canary Islands

To this must be added the problem of the Eastern Mediterranean pre-
sented by the advance of the Ottoman Turks (named after one of their
leaders, Osman); unlike the more tolerant Arabs, the Turks not only proved
to be more fundamentalist in their Islamism but also far more belligerent
from the military point of view, so much so as to prevent normal commer-
cial traffic with the Christian West (see Garzanti, Storia [History], Vol. II,
p. 88).
This bellicosity of the Ottoman Turks made increasingly difficult the
procurement of spices, silk, and other exotic products from the Far East.
th
The demographic and economic revival of the West in the 11 and 12
th
centuries had made it increasingly eager to raise its standard of living. This
st
nd
situation is comparable to that of the rich Roman Empire of the 1 and 2
centuries AD; the only difference being that - where Rome had unified
Europe by force of arms - the Christian West was unified by the power
of religion (the so-called “Ecumene”, from the Greek “oikumene” of the
Church Fathers).
And here we should recall the fascinating thesis advanced by Professor
Giorgio Padovan in his report entitled “Gli Ulissidi dell’Atlantico” [The
Ulyssides of the Atlantic]. The part that concerns us was published in Oc-
tober 1998 in the number 9 issue of Veneti nel Mondo [Veneto’s People in
the World]. Briefly stated, the thesis of this scholar is that in the face of a
lack of knowledge of the Atlantic, limited to the legendary “Ultima Thule”
(Iceland?) and religious voyages such as the one by Saint Brendan, who
inspired Dante, the reborn commercialism of the mercantile bourgeoisie
of the cities tried to open new trade routes for the promotion of wealth.
To solve the problem of the Ottoman Turks, the only solution that seemed
most logical was to reach the Far East via the West by circumnavigating
Africa, thus avoiding them geographically.
In this case, the discovery of the Atlantic archipelagos would have been
a matter of chance, but it would also have been a “springboard” for further
and farther discoveries.
This view was taken in a 1950 text by Giotto Dainelli, la conquista
della terra [The conquest of Earth], published by UTET, which on page
179 refers also to the argument that the islands of the Canaries and the
Azores were already known in ancient times, thanks to the voyages of the
Phoenicians, the Greeks, and - later on - the Arabs.
The general decay of the navigation techniques of the Middle Ages
would have resulted in the loss of historical memory, until they were dis-