Note 13 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 2)

(p. 8). Wisdom of the Italians ... labyrinth.—Here we have another original MS. note. [Labyrinth is so much as to say anything into which a man having entered cannot go out again (so Prince Henry, in Azurara, vol. i, p. 8 (ch. ii), has "entered a labyrinth of Glory"). And therefore, saith Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, that Pasiphaë, wife of Minos, king of Crete, conceived the Minotaur, who was half man and half bull. The which was imprisoned by Daedalus in the Labyrinth into which whatsoever entered knew not how to come out, and whosoever was without knew not how to enter. And of this Labyrinth speaketh Seneca in the Tragedy, where he treated of the matter of Hippolytus and Phedra].

Azurara's reference to the distinctive virtues of the four great peoples here noticed is interesting, especially from the fact that Prince Henry's mother was an Englishwoman; that the Emperor (now a purely German sovereign, though still in name "holy and Roman"), invited him to enter his service (see ch. vi); that the Pope (like Henry VI (?) King of England) made him similar offers; that his scientific and practical connections with Italy were very important; and that his sister Isabel was married to the Duke of Burgundy. "The wisdom of the Italians" was nowhere more conspicuous at that time than in geography. Italians initiated the great mediæval and renaissance movement of discovery both by land and sea (cf. John de Plano Carpini, Marco, Nicolo, and Matteo Polo, Malocello, Tedisio Dorio, the Vivaldi, the Genoese captains and pilots of 1341, precursors of Varthema, the Cabots, Verrazano, and Columbus). Italians also constructed the first scientific maps or Portolani (existing specimens from 1300 show out of 498 examples 413 of Italian origin, including all the more famous and perfect). Lastly, Italians probably brought the use of the magnet to higher efficiency; though they did not "invent" the same, it is likely that they were the first to fit the magnet into a box and connect it with a compass-card. "Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis."

Also, we may recall that the Infant Don Pedro, Henry's brother, brought home from Venice in 1428 a map illustrating a copy of Marco Polo (see p. liv of the Introduction to this volume), and that the most important map-draughtsmen of the Prince's lifetime were Andrea Bianco, Fra Mauro, and Gratiosus Benincasa. From 1317, when King Diniz appointed the Genoese Emmanuele Pesagno Admiral of Portugal, and contracted for a regular supply of Genoese pilots and captains, down to the Infant's earlier years, when the Genoese tried to secure a "lease" of Sagres promontory as a naval station, and even to the time when the Venetian Cadamosto sailed in his service (1455-6), and Antoniotto Uso di Mare and Antonio de Noli were to be found in the same employment, the connection between Portuguese and Italian seamanship was very close—a relationship almost of daughter and mother.