Page 314 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

314 from Italy to the Canary Islands

sime vel ab Indis absunt, vel ab Artho, terra multorum sed in primis Flacci
lirico carmine nobilis, cuius per vetusta fama est et recens. Eo siquidem
et patrum memoria, lanuensium armata classis penetravit, et nuper Clem-
ens VI illi patrie principem dedit, quem vidimus, hispanorum et gallorum
regum mixto sanguine generosum quondam virum. Qui, meministi enim,
dum eo die corona ac sceptro per urbem spectandus incederete, repente
tantum celo imber effluxit, atque ita domum madidus rediit, ut omen esset
incubuisse illi vere pluviali set acquose patrie principatum. Cui quidam in
dominio extra orbem sito qualiter successerit non novi; scio tamen quod
multa feruntur et scribuntur, propter que non plene fortunatarum cogno-
mini terrarum fortuna conveniat. Ceterum gentem illam pre cuntis ferme
mortalibus solitudine gaudere, moribus tamen incultam adeoque non ab-
similem beluis ut, nature magis instinctu quam electione sic agentem, non
tam solitarie vivere quam in solitudinibus errare seu cum feris seu cum
gregibus suis dicas. Sed iam satis curiositate hac longe lateque disiunctos
mundi angulos pervagatus sum, quorum omnium non apud me, qui lecta
vela udita refero, sed apud auctores rerum primarios fides erit; ego autem,
his decursis, ad clariora et nobis notiora progredior.”
According to Petrarca, the dwellers of the Fortunate Isles are not exact-
ly ideal, for he compares them to the Hyperboreans in the north and the
Brahmins of India. This poignant passage of De vita solitaria views the
other as primitive, someone still untouched by civilization. As has been
noted by many scholars, primitive men err, their lives are as if incomplete,
still missing something. In other words, the inhabitants of the Canary Is-
lands are here interpreted and judged according to the Christian worldview
of the “subject”.
It seems that from this angle all arguments against the “primitive pa-
gans” will be good to justify the occupation of those places, thus reducing
into slavery those people who simply lived well beyond the Pillars of Her-
cules.
Although Boccaccio had provided information regarding Pier Damiani
and Moggio Moggi to collaborate on De vita solitaria in 1361, his own
work De Canaria et de insulis reliquis ultra Hispaniam in Oceano noviter
repertis offers a different interpretation of the encounter with the other.
This is actually an “artist’s proof” and the beginning of a new literary gen-
re: a translation from the vernacular into Latin of an informal letter from
the Florentine mercantile colony of the Bardi family in Seville; it was a let-