Note 62 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

G. Lives and Notices of Columbus.—Ferdinand Columbus—if we accept as his the Italian publication of 1571—tells us that the fatiguing career of his father, and his infirmities, prevented the Admiral from writing his own life. For ten years after his death there were various references to the new discoveries, but not a single attempt to commemorate, by even a brief sketch, the life of the discoverer. Such were the mentions in the Commentariorum urbanorum libri of Maffei,[219] published in 1506, and again in 1511; in Walter Ludd’s Speculi orbis, etc.;[220] in F. Petrarca’s Chronica;[221] and in the Oratio[222] of Marco Dandolo (Naples),—all in 1507. In the same year the narrative in the Paesi novamente retrovati (1507) established an account which was repeated in later editions, and was followed in the Novus orbis of 1532. The next year (1508) we find a reference in the Oratio[223] of Fernando Tellez at Rome; in the Supplementi de le chroniche vulgare, novamente dal frate Jacobo Phillipo al anno 1503 vulgarizz. per Francesco C. Fiorentino (Venice);[224] in Johannes Stamler’s Dyalogus;[225] in the Ptolemy published at Rome with Ruysch’s map; and in the Collectanea[226] of Baptista Fulgosus, published at Milan.