Note 46 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 6)

(p. 27). St. Brandan ... returned.—On this Santarem writes:—

[The voyage of St. Brandan, to which Azurara refers, is reputed fabulous, like the island of the same name. According to this tradition, it was said that St. Brandan arrived in the year 565 at an island near the Equinoctial(?). This legend was preserved among the inhabitants of Madeira and of Gomera, who believed that they were able to see Brandan's isle towards the west at a certain time of the year. This appearance was, however, the result of certain meteorological circumstances. Azurara became acquainted with this tradition of the Middle Ages from some copy of the MS. of the thirteenth century, entitled Imago Mundi de dispositione Orbis, of Honorius of Autun; and this circumstance is so much the more curious as Azurara could not have been acquainted with the famous Mappemonde of Fra Mauro, which was only executed between the years 1457-9; and still less with the Planisphere of Martin of Bohemia (Behaim), which is preserved at Nuremburg, on which appears depicted at the Equinoctial a great island, with the following legend: In the year 565 St. Brandan came with his ship to this island. The famous Jesuit, Henschenius, who composed a critical examination of the life of St. Brandan, says of it:—"Cujus historia, ut fabulis referta, omittitur."] The Bollandists speak with equal distrust of the Brandan story.

To this we may add:—It is possible Azurara may have read the original Navigatio Sti. Brendani. The legendary voyage of Brandan is usually dated in 565, but this is probably a mere figure of speech. He was supposed to have sailed west from Ireland (his home was at Clonfert on the Middle Shannon) in search of Paradise, and to have made discoveries of various islands in the Ocean, all associated with fantastic incidents: as the Isle of St. Patrick and St. Ailbhé, inhabited by Irish Cœnobites; the isle of the Hermit Paul, at or near which Brandan met with Judas Iscariot floating on an iceberg; the Isle of the Whale's Back, and the Paradise of Birds; to say nothing of the Isle of the Cyclops, the Mouth of Hell, and the Land of the Saints—the last encircled in a zone of mist and darkness which veiled it from profane search. It is more than probable that the Brandan tradition, as we have it, is mainly compiled from the highly-coloured narratives of some Arab voyagers, such as Sinbad the Sailor in the Indian Ocean, and the Wanderers (Maghrurins) of Lisbon in the Atlantic (as recorded in Edrisi, Jaubert, ii, 26-29), with some help from classical travel-myth; that it is only in very small part referable to any historical fact; that this fact is to be found in the contemporary voyages of Irish hermits to the Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes, and Iceland; that a certain special appropriateness may be found in the far western Scottish island of St. Kildas (Holy Culdees) or the islet of Rockall; and that some of the matter in the Brandan story is derived from the travels of early Christian pilgrims to Palestine, e.g., Bernard the Wise, c. 867. It is important to remember that the tradition, though professing to record facts of the sixth century, is not traceable in any MS. record before the eleventh century; but, like so many other matters of mediæval tradition, its popularity was just in inverse proportion to its certainty, and "St. Brandan's isle" was a deeply-rooted prejudice of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and even fifteenth centuries. Down to the middle of the sixteenth century it usually found a place on maps of the Western Ocean, usually due west of Ireland (see Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 230-240, and references in same to other works, p. 239, n. 2, especially to De Goeje's La légende de Saint Brandan, 1890; Avezac's Iles fantastique de l'Océan Occidental, 1845; Schirmer, Zur Brendanus Legende, 1888; and the study of Schröder, 1871). We may note that Azurara is (for his time) somewhat exceptional in his hesitating reference to the Brandan story; but of course his object led him, however unconsciously, to minimise foreign claims of precedence against the Portuguese on the Western Ocean. As far as Brandan goes, no one would now contradict the Prince's apologist; but more formidable rivals to a literal acceptance of the absolute Portuguese priority along the north-west coasts of Africa are to be found in Italian, French, and Catalan voyagers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one of which is perhaps alluded to here by Azurara. For "the two galleys which rounded the Cape (Bojador) but never returned" were probably the ships of Tedisio Doria and the Vivaldi, who in 1291 (aliter 1281) left Genoa "to go by sea to the ports of India to trade there," reached Cape Nun, and, according to a later story, "sailed the sea of Ghinoia to a city of Ethiopia." In 1312, we are told, enquiry had failed to learn anything more of them (see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. lxi-lxiii).