Amerigo Vespucci

For other uses, see Amerigo Vespucci (disambiguation).

Amerigo Vespucci
Born	March 9, 1454 Florence, Republic of Florence
Died	February 22, 1512 (aged 58) Seville, Crown of Castile
Other names	Améric Vespuce (French) Américo Vespúcio (Portuguese) Americus Vesputius (Latin)
Signature

Amerigo Vespucci (Italian: Amerigo Vespucci [/ameˈriɡo vesˈputtʃi/]) (Florence, March 9, 1454 – Seville, February 22, 1512) was a Florentine merchant, explorer and cosmographer, naturalized as a Castilian in 1505, who took part in at least two voyages of exploration to the New World, the continent which today is called America in his honor.

Vespucci held important posts in the Casa de Contratación of Seville, in which he was appointed pilot major in 1508; but his universal fame is due to two works published under his name between 1503 and 1505: the Mundus Novus and the Letter to Soderini, which attribute to him a leading role in the Discovery of America and in its identification as a new continent. For this reason the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, in his map Universalis Cosmographia of 1507, coined the name "America" in his honor as the designation for the New World. The often fanciful and contradictory account of his voyages has made him one of the most controversial figures of the Age of Discovery.

Biography

Florence

Tombstone over the grave of Amerigo Vespucci's grandfather and namesake, who died in 1468, with the coat of arms of the Vespucci family. Church of Ognissanti, Florence.

Amerigo Vespucci was the second son of Nastagio Vespucci, a Florentine notary specializing in currency exchange, and of Lisa di Giovanni Mini. He was named after his grandfather, who died in 1468. The eldest of the brothers, Antonio, studied law, and the second, Girolamo, became a priest. Amerigo also had a younger brother, Bernardo, and several others who died shortly after birth. His paternal uncle was the learned Dominican friar Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, a friend of Lorenzo de' Medici "the Magnificent," of the occultist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and of the geographer Toscanelli; and he was in charge of the young man's education.

In 1450 Giorgio had donated his important collection of books to the city, and around the same time he had opened a school for the sons of Florentine aristocrats in his convent of San Marco. There he trained Amerigo and other young men in the teachings of Aristotle, Ptolemy and Strabo on astronomy, cosmography and geography; in the reading of the classics and particularly in the mastery of the learned language, Latin (in the Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence there is a small codex of his authorship, titled Dettati da mettere in latino, written in that language). Amerigo acquired a fondness for Virgil, Dante and Petrarch, and probably read the travel books of Marco Polo. He left a written record of his skepticism toward Christian beliefs:

...Finally, I hold the things of heaven in little esteem and I am even close to denying them.

In the early 1470s, the Vespucci clan commissioned the Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, then still little known, to paint a family portrait to decorate a chapel in the Church of Ognissanti. In the 16th century Giorgio Vasari claimed that one of the sitters was Amerigo, but there is no objective evidence of this.

In 1478 the reaction of the Medici to the failed Pazzi conspiracy precipitated the confrontation of Florence with Pope Sixtus IV and caused the war with Naples. Lorenzo the Magnificent decided to send an ambassador to the court of Louis XI in Paris so that the French Monarch would declare war on Naples. For this he chose Guidantonio Vespucci, another of the illustrious members of the Vespucci clan. Amerigo, then 24 years old, accompanied his relative in an unknown role, perhaps as servant or personal secretary. The mission was a failure because Louis XI was still digesting the annexation of the Duchy of Burgundy and refused to go to war in Italy. Uncle and nephew were called back to Florence in 1480 after the signing of peace with Naples and the normalization of relations with the Papacy.

The fortune of the Vespucci had been in slow decline for decades. His father wanted Amerigo to devote himself exclusively to the clan's business. He got him to give up studying at the University of Pisa and, thanks to Guidantonio's efforts, to take employment in Florence as a commercial agent under Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and his brother Giovanni. While he was in Florence, his main occupation was as a commission agent in the buying and selling of precious stones on behalf of third parties.

Amerigo's father died in April 1482, at a time when Florence was beginning to be convulsed by the moral denunciations of the friar Girolamo Savonarola. His two brothers, Girolamo and Bernardo, were of a wandering and bohemian character, and had found other paths far from the city.

In Florence, Amerigo had a daughter with a woman to whom he was not married. The names of both are unknown and the fact is known only from a letter received from Spain on an uncertain date:

Tell me how your daughter and her mother are, and a certain woman called Francesca. A thousand regards to them all. I would like to know if Lisandra is well. Not because I love her, but to know whether she is alive or dead. She has a poor opinion of me, and I a worse one of her. Many regards to everyone at Lorenzo's house, and especially to master Giacomo, the shoemaker.

Seville

Drawing of 16th-century Seville

In 1489 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici dismissed his commercial agent in Seville and entrusted Amerigo with finding a replacement for the post. Amerigo proposed Juanoto Berardi, a Florentine businessman established in Seville since 1485, and Lorenzo hired him. The Iberian Peninsula was at this time a prosperous mercantile center, and Seville the most important economic center of the Crown of Castile. The monarchs of Castile and Aragon, Ferdinand and Isabella, were then completing the conquest of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada.

Amerigo moved to Seville at the end of 1491 or the beginning of 1492, in principle still under the orders of Pierfrancesco but in practice becoming the agent of Juanoto Berardi, who was engaged in the slave trade and in the fitting out and provisioning of ships, an activity that had grown considerably throughout the 15th century after the so-called Gold Mine was located in Guinea. Berardi took part as an investor and as a subcontractor in the preparations for the first voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World, and through him Vespucci and Columbus became friends. The business, however, proved ruinous for Berardi, who died in December 1495. Amerigo was one of the executors of his will, in which he claimed 180,000 maravedís from Columbus. Between 1495 and 1497 he was officially replaced as agent of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco by Piero Rondinelli. In January 1496, Amerigo was in Sanlúcar de Barrameda provisioning a fleet of four caravels chartered by the late Berardi to carry supplies to Hispaniola. A few days after leaving Sanlúcar, a storm caught the ships and ran them aground on the coasts of Cádiz. Alice Gould formulated the hypothesis that Vespucci perhaps embarked himself on the flagship of this ill-fated flotilla, but more recent studies consider it more likely that he stayed on land to prepare other fleets to which he had committed himself.

In mid-1496 Columbus returned from his second voyage, set out in 1498 on his third voyage to the Indies, and finally in 1499 was arrested on Hispaniola and brought in chains before the monarchs, who definitively put an end to the Columbian monopoly on navigation to the Indies. From then on they authorized numerous voyages to explore and obtain riches from the new lands. Amerigo embarked on the first of them, the one captained by Alonso de Ojeda in 1499 to the present-day coast of Venezuela. He returned ill but with 14 pearls, whose sale brought him more than 1,000 ducats.

Some texts attributed to Vespucci claim that he took part in an earlier expedition, between 1497 and 1498-99. The consensus among present-day historians is that such a voyage never existed.

In Portugal

Engraving of the City of Lisbon in the 16th century

At the end of 1500 or the beginning of 1501 Vespucci moved to Lisbon, where he embarked on a Portuguese expedition. The reason why he left Castile has been the subject of controversy among historians. Vespucci's version is that he received an invitation from the Portuguese King. It has been speculated that it may have been an espionage maneuver arranged with the Castilian Crown. On the other hand, in 1499 a wave of xenophobia had broken out in Castile which led the monarchs to forbid foreigners from sailing to the Indies.

This Portuguese expedition to the New World is well documented and researchers have no doubt that it took place, although its purpose is not entirely clear: perhaps to reconnoiter the land discovered by Cabral in 1500. Vespucci's role in it seems to have been above all commercial, although he would later write that he had taken part out of mere curiosity, "to see the world." In any case the ships returned to Lisbon with no economic results.

The Letter to Soderini recounts another voyage by Vespucci on Portuguese ships, in 1503-1504, which bears a certain resemblance to an expedition led by Gonçalo Coelho. Opinions are divided as to whether Vespucci actually took part in that voyage.

Back in Spain

There is evidence of Vespucci's presence in Seville in 1502 and again in February 1505, when a letter from Christopher Columbus to his son Diego praises the Florentine and says that he had him living in his house.

Vespucci married a woman named María Cerezo, very probably that same year. She was the daughter, perhaps out of wedlock, of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. The relationship between the two is believed to date back to the navigator's first period in Seville. Meanwhile, in 1504 and 1505 two works were published in Paris and in Florence, usually called Mundus Novus and Lettera or Letter to Soderini, which recount supposed voyages made by Vespucci and which would ultimately give him universal fame.

By this time Queen Isabella had died and her husband Ferdinand, now King only of Aragon, had assumed the regency of Castile in the name of their daughter and heir to both, Joanna, later called "the Mad." Vespucci went to work in the service of the Crown and was declared a native of the "kingdoms of Castile and León" in 1505:

Doña Juana, by the grace of God (...) To do good and grant favor to you, Amerigo Vezpuche, Florentine, in acknowledgment of your fidelity and some of your good services that you have done me, and which I hope you will do me from now on, by these presents I make you a native of these my kingdoms of Castile and León, so that you may have and hold any public Royal and municipal offices that may be given and entrusted to you, and so that you may enjoy all the good honors and graces and favors, franchises and liberties, exemptions, preeminences, prerogatives and immunities (...)

Building of the General Archive of the Indies, where the documents of the Casa de Contratación of Seville are preserved.

King Ferdinand entrusted Vicente Yáñez Pinzón with an expedition to find the western passage to the Spice Islands, aboard a flotilla whose ships would be built in Biscay. Vespucci was in charge of providing the supplies for the fleet and was appointed Captain of one of the ships. However, although all of his preparations were completed, this voyage never took place, since the rivalry between Ferdinand and the new Castilian King, Philip the Handsome, introduced a series of delays and uncertainties into the project, which ended up being canceled.

By 1506 Vespucci had become an indispensable figure in the Casa de Contratación of Seville, organizing and supplying expeditions bound for the Indies. At the end of 1507 and the beginning of 1508 he was ordered to transport a cargo of gold to the court and was summoned by the King to take part in a meeting of cosmographers and navigators together with Yáñez Pinzón, Juan de la Cosa and Juan Díaz de Solís. This meeting, called the Junta of Burgos, took place in February 1508, presided over by King Ferdinand, who had by then recovered the government of Castile after the death of his son-in-law Philip. There it was decided to resume the plans for exploration of the New World, especially those concerning the Southern Passage, which had lost momentum during the Habsburg interregnum. The King commissioned Yáñez Pinzón and Díaz de Solís to search for this route to the Spice Islands. Vespucci was given a new role that would keep him on dry land: on March 22 King Ferdinand appointed him "pilot major of Castile," dependent on the Casa de Contratación. His duties would be to teach navigation skills (especially the use of the quadrant and the astrolabe), cosmography and piloting at the city's new naval school; to follow and grade the progress of the apprentices; to apply sanctions for violations of the rules; to inspect navigational instruments and to investigate problems related to the activity. He was also responsible for the cartographic and hydrographic records, a central task being the preparation of the Padrón Real, the map on which all new findings would appear.

The King appointed him pilot major so that he would introduce Spanish pilots to the use of astronomical navigation methods, replacing their old practices of dead reckoning, and so that he would examine them, ensuring their competence. Vespucci would later complain that his students were reluctant to learn his lessons. The historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto is of the opinion that the astronomical techniques proposed by the Florentine were "essentially useless" owing to the technical inadequacy of the instruments of the time, and that the Andalusian pilots were right to feel humiliated at having to be examined by someone with so little practical experience of navigation. Vespucci never completed the Padrón Real and no cartographic work signed by him has survived, although two anonymous world maps have been attributed to him: the so-called Kunstmann II and the Egerton MS. 2803. On the other hand, he was reprimanded in 1510 for selling maps on the black market.

Amerigo continued supplying provisions for exploration expeditions and in 1509 invested in the attempt to establish a colony in Veragua, which ended in failure and significant economic losses. Vespucci is credited with the idea of building ships in Biscay with hulls sheathed in lead to give them greater resistance in the treacherous reefs and sandbanks of Caribbean waters.

As pilot major he had a salary of 75,000 maravedís a year, which allowed him to live comfortably but without great luxuries. He lived in a house on Calle Del Rey, rented from his next-door neighbor, Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca. He had two white servants and five slaves: four women and one man. One of them, named Isabel, a Canarian, gave birth to a boy and a girl in that same house. Based on certain indications in Vespucci's will, Consuelo Varela Bueno does not rule out that, as was not unusual at the time, they were the navigator's own children.

Amerigo Vespucci died on February 22, 1512. In his only known will he left his property in Seville to his wife, including 144,000 maravedís still owed to him by Berardi's heirs and another smaller sum owed to him by Juan de la Cosa; his property in Florence to his mother, if she was still alive, and if not to his brothers Antonio and Bernardo; and his clothes, books and instruments (including a metal astrolabe) to his nephew Juan Vespucci, son of his brother Antonio. He appointed as executors of his will the Florentine merchant Piero Rondinelli and the Canon Manuel Castaño. His wife received a pension from the Crown by royal decree of March 28, 1512, on account of the services rendered by her husband as pilot major. On the death of María Cerezo, a decree of December 26, 1524 granted the remainder of the pension to her sister Catalina, which proves that she left no heirs. His will is preserved in the Archive of Notarial Protocols of Seville.

In his will he asked to be buried in the Church of San Miguel and, if that were not possible, in the church of the Convent of San Francisco. He was buried in the Church of San Miguel, where the family of his wife, María Cerezo, had its family vault. The Convent of San Francisco was demolished after the disentailment of 1835 and the Church of San Miguel was demolished by the Revolutionary Junta of 1868. There is a belief that his tomb is currently located in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence.

Accounts of voyages attributed to Vespucci

Vespucci awakens "America" (engraving, 1638).

Several texts written by Amerigo Vespucci or published using his name survive, which mainly recount voyages of exploration to the New World. Many historians have taken them as documentary evidence from which to deduce which expeditions Vespucci took part in and what their dates and itineraries were, trying to distinguish the authentic from the invented and what was actually written by the Florentine from what was added by other hands. This has generated great controversy and theories that credit Vespucci with anywhere from only two transoceanic voyages to six. Felipe Fernández-Armesto has recommended that these works be considered not so much as historical sources but above all as autobiographical literature and therefore subjective, propagandistic and probably a mixture of reality and fiction.

Six texts attributed to Vespucci narrating his voyages, real or invented, have come down to us; of these, four (or perhaps five) are addressed to his former employer, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. All are in letter format, even those that were printed for public distribution. In chronological order:

1. Letter addressed to Pierfrancesco from Seville on July 18, 1500, which recounts a Castilian expedition carried out "with two caravels" in 1499-1500. Six manuscript copies survive, none in Vespucci's hand but agreeing with one another.
2. Manuscript letter addressed to Pierfrancesco from Cape Verde on June 4, 1501 during his voyage on Portuguese ships; it was found and published in 1827. It essentially recounts an earlier Portuguese expedition to India, the one captained by Pedro Álvares Cabral.
3. Third manuscript letter, also sent to Pierfrancesco from Lisbon on returning from the Portuguese expedition, in the year 1502. It is known as the "Lisbon Letter" and was discovered and published in 1789.
4. Letter printed in Paris in 1504 with the title Mundus Novus, in Latin. It recounts the two voyages mentioned in the preceding manuscript letters and adds for the first time an earlier one, a supposed Castilian expedition of 1497. It was a great publishing success and was translated into several languages.
5. Fragments of a manuscript letter in Italian, without heading or date. It was discovered by Roberto Ridolfi and published in 1937, which is why it is called the Ridolfi Fragment or Fragmentary Letter. It is written in the form of a defense against those who object to the plausibility of the assertions of earlier letters. The addressee is unknown.
6. Letter printed in Florence circa 1505 with the title Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quatro suoi viaggi (Letter of Amerigo Vespucci concerning the islands recently discovered on his four voyages), commonly abbreviated Lettera. To the three voyages narrated by Mundus Novus it adds a later one carried out under the Portuguese flag.

In addition, a multitude of copies, editions and translations of this private correspondence survive, generally riddled with transcription and typographical errors. The main controversy centers on the so-called "public" letters: the fourth (Mundus Novus) and the sixth (Lettera).

Abundant correspondence from Amerigo's youth also survives, which was found and presented to scholarship by Ida Masetti Bencin and Mary Howard Smith only in 1902. It consists of 71 letters that were never compiled in a book and that saw hardly any circulation in print. There is also an exercise book of the navigator's that was never published. These documents shed light on aspects of his life unrelated to his voyages.

Letter of July 18, 1500

15th-century reconstruction of Ptolemy's world map, based on descriptions in his Geographia (circa 150). The countries of Seres and Sinae (China) can be seen at the far right, beyond the island of Taprobane (Sri Lanka, greatly out of proportion) and the Aurea Chersonesus (Malay Peninsula). From Vespucci's letter of 1500 it can be deduced that he believed he was sailing in these waters.

Six manuscript copies survive of a letter addressed to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici from Seville on July 18, 1500, which recounts a Castilian expedition carried out "with two caravels" in 1499-1500. The six copies are practically identical, although none is in Vespucci's hand. It was first published by the Florentine abbé Angelo Maria Bandini in his Vita e lettere di Amerigo Vespucci gentiluomo fiorentino of 1745.

Vespucci does not explain what role he played in the expedition but, since he does not mention the name of the Captain and always recounts the events in the first person, the reader might infer that he was the one in command. According to the letter, the squadron set out on May 18, 1499 and called at the Canary Islands. From there they crossed "the Ocean Sea" and after 24 days of sailing sighted land. Vespucci describes an island inhabited by cannibals and a heavily populated continental "mainland"; then an island whose inhabitants were very tall compared with Europeans, and another with "a very great population that had its houses built in the sea like Venice." He provides some data on latitude, longitude and distances but mentions only one place name: the Gulf of Paria. This makes it difficult for historians to establish the itinerary followed by the expedition, assuming that Vespucci's account is reliable. The letter insists on the nakedness of the inhabitants of the lands discovered and narrates several battles in which the explorers killed a large number of natives and plundered and burned their dwellings, with only two Europeans dying. It highlights the great linguistic diversity of these territories and mentions two abundant resources: cotton and brazilwood. During this exploration Vespucci was convinced that he was traveling along "the confines of Asia on the eastern side, and the beginning on the western side."

After 700 leagues, the letter continues, they decided to withdraw to Hispaniola to repair the ships and rest. They then set out on the return to Europe heading north, passing some islands where they captured 232 natives to sell as slaves. Vespucci states that on the return they passed by the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira and finally reached Cádiz 13 months after setting out. On the return voyage 32 of the enslaved Indians died. Vespucci says he is ill with quartan fever and states that he is preparing a new expedition to go and discover the island of Taprobana.

At the end of the letter he gives news of the voyage of the Portuguese Vasco da Gama (whom he does not name), who had just returned to Lisbon after circumnavigating Africa and reaching Calicut in India. He tries to belittle his merits ("it is a route of which all the authors of cosmography speak") but acknowledges his great commercial success. The results of the Castilian expedition were probably considered disappointing compared with those of the Portuguese.

Astronomical observations

The letter includes several pieces of astronomical information that were already well known both to academic cosmographers and to 15th-century navigators. Thus, he explains that at the equator day and night were of equal length and mentions that after passing the Tropic of Cancer they were able to observe the phenomenon of the zenith sun.

We sailed so far toward the southern part that we entered the torrid zone and within the circle of Cancer: and you must take it as certain that in a few days, sailing through the torrid zone, we saw the four shadows of the Sun, inasmuch as the sun was at the zenith at midday.

— Modern Spanish translation of the letter of July 18, 1500

He also indicates that they crossed the terrestrial equator and reached a latitude of 6°S (further on he says "six and a half degrees"), losing sight of the Pole Star. Sailing at these latitudes was nothing extraordinary at the time since, for example, Bartolomeu Dias had reached the 34°S of the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1488. Determining latitude south of the equator could theoretically be done by measuring the altitude of the Sun and correcting with the analemma, just as in the northern hemisphere, but Vespucci does not mention this technique in his letter.

We sailed so far through the torrid zone toward the southern part that we found ourselves beneath the equinoctial line, having one pole and the other at the edge of our horizon, and we passed it by six degrees, entirely losing the tramontane star.

Engraving from around 1600 depicting Vespucci observing the Southern Cross.

Vespucci states that he searched without success for a southern equivalent of the Pole Star of the northern hemisphere. His best candidate seems to have been a group of four stars that formed "something like an almond," drawing inspiration from some verses of Dante that he quotes:

And turning to the right, I raised my mind to the other Pole, and saw four stars that only the primeval people saw.
How joyful the sky with their beautiful sparks! O widowed North, which are eternally deprived of the sight of them!

The scene was immortalized at the end of the 16th century by the painter Jan van der Straet, who depicted Vespucci measuring the position of the Southern Cross. This constellation had already been sighted by many other European sailors and had also been known to the ancient Greeks, but celestial precession had ended up hiding it below the European horizon. However, Vespucci's letter mentions no celestial cross but rather four stars "like an almond." Moreover, on the date and at the latitude indicated, the stars of this constellation would not have been forming a cross.

Vespucci also states in the letter that he applied an astronomical method to calculate longitude, based on conjunctions of the Moon with Mars, whose precise date and time he knew for the meridian of Ferrara from his astrological tables. By observing the time of the conjunction at his position he could calculate the distance in degrees between the reference meridian and his own longitude. He thus claims to have obtained, on the night of August 23, 1499, a longitude value of 82.5° west of the meridian of Cádiz (not that of Ferrara).

As for longitude, I say that in order to know it I found so much difficulty that I had very great labor in finding with certainty the way I had traveled following the line of longitude, and I labored so much that in the end I found nothing better than to observe and see at night the position of one planet with another, and the movement of the Moon with the other planets, because the planet of the Moon is swifter in its course than any other, and I checked it against the Almanac of Giovanni da Monteregio, which was composed according to the meridian of the city of Ferrara, making it agree with the calculations of the Tables of King Don Alfonso: and after many nights that I spent in observation, one night among others, being the twenty-third of August 1499, on which there was a conjunction of the Moon with Mars, which according to the Almanac was to occur at midnight or half an hour before: I found that when the Moon rose on our horizon, which was an hour and a half after sunset, the planet had passed to the eastern side, I mean, that the Moon was farther east than Mars by about one degree and some minutes more, and at midnight it was farther east by 15 and a half degrees, more or less, so that, making the proportion, if 24 hours are worth 360 degrees to me, what will 5 and a half hours be worth to me?, I find that they are worth 82 and a half degrees, and so distant was I in longitude from the meridian of the city of Cádiz, that assigning 16 leagues to each degree, I found myself 1,366 and two-thirds leagues farther west than the city of Cádiz, which are 15,466 and two-thirds miles. The reason why I assign to each degree 16 and two-thirds leagues is because, according to Ptolemy and Alfraganus, the earth has a circumference of 24,000 [miles], which are worth 6,000 leagues, which, dividing them into 360 degrees, correspond to 16 and two-thirds leagues for each degree, and this proportion I checked many times with the pilots' reckoning, finding it true and good.

Vespucci gives no indication of the territory where he was on that August 23, 1499. According to the researcher Rolando Laguarda Trías, Vespucci's expedition could have been off Cabo de la Vela (present-day Colombia).

Some historians, mainly Pohl, have given this astronomical observation great relevance in the history of maritime voyages. However, Fernández-Armesto has pointed out that the value given by Vespucci (82.5° from the meridian of Cádiz) is a mere copy of the one obtained by Christopher Columbus in 1494 when observing a lunar eclipse from Hispaniola, which suggests that Vespucci did not take any measurement but simply plagiarized the Admiral.

In later writings Vespucci claims to have sent a detailed report of his method of calculating longitudes to King Manuel I of Portugal, but the latter dismissed it. Today it is thought that this technique was unfeasible in practice owing to the imprecision of the clocks and observation instruments available on board a ship in the 16th century.

Cape Verde Letter (June 4, 1501)

This is a manuscript letter addressed to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco from Cape Verde on June 4, 1501. It was found and published by Giovanni Battista Baldelli Boni in 1827.

In the letter Vespucci maintains that he went from Seville to Lisbon at the request of the King of Portugal. He says that he embarked on a squadron that set out on May 13, 1501, passed within sight of the Canaries and reached Cape Verde, "beginning of the province of Ethiopia," where it met two other Portuguese ships returning from India. There is an independent report of this encounter, in the account written by one of the pilots returning to Portugal. This lends credibility to the fact that Vespucci actually took part in that expedition.

The rest of the letter consists of a summary of what the participants in the expedition to India told him, which is the one that had set out in 1499 captained by Pedro Álvares Cabral, whose name is not mentioned. Vespucci reports that the Portuguese, after calling at the Cape Verde islands, had crossed the Atlantic westward and found a land (present-day Brazil) that "is the same land that I discovered for the King of Castile, except that it is farther east." He then gives details about the lands visited by the Portuguese, mentioning a great number of cities and islands of the Indian Ocean, among them Calicut and an island that he believes must be Taprobana. He mentions the existence of "very great ships" whose "sails are of rushes" and which are not "made with iron but sewn with ropes." He makes an inventory of the cargo brought by the vessels, citing cinnamon, ginger and other spices; porcelain, opium and precious stones.

Lisbon Letter (1502)

A manuscript letter sent, like the previous ones, to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici from Lisbon on returning from the Portuguese expedition in the year 1502. It was discovered in the Strozzi Collection and published by Francesco Bartolozzi in 1789. It survives in two practically identical manuscript copies, neither in Vespucci's own hand.

In this missive Vespucci recounts a Portuguese voyage of exploration on which he embarked in a role he does not mention, continuing the narrative begun in the Cape Verde Letter of June 4, 1501. There is independent confirmation of the existence of this expedition, but Vespucci's letter is almost the only source on its itinerary and vicissitudes. He states that they sailed to the Cape Verde islands and from there crossed the ocean westward. After 64 days they made landfall at a place that Vespucci does not specify and explored the coast as far as a latitude of 32°S. They then went out into the ocean as far as a latitude that the letter puts at 50°S, without explaining how it was measured. Since the latitude of Lisbon is around 40°N, this allowed Vespucci to claim that he had traveled "a fourth part of the world," since fifty and forty add up to ninety degrees, which is a quarter of the earth's circumference. Years later this phrase would be misinterpreted as meaning that Vespucci had traveled through a fourth continent.

The letter describes the flora, fauna and inhabitants of these southern regions, who go naked, are beardless and have neither religion nor state but do have wars. He says that they live in very large houses and describes their diet and customs, including ritual cannibalism.

Vespucci acknowledges that the expedition did not obtain any economic profit but excuses this on the grounds that the mission was only one of exploration. He concludes the letter by announcing a forthcoming work titled Voyages and saying that he is waiting to see what the King of Portugal decides to do with him.

Mundus Novus

Illustration of cannibalism in the edition of Mundus Novus printed in German in Augsburg in 1505.

In 1504 a work in Latin titled Mundus Novus appeared in print in several European cities, claiming to be a translated summary of a letter written in Italian by "Albericus Vespuccius" from Lisbon to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. The first edition, at least of those of which copies have survived, is believed to have been the one produced in Augsburg, and the publishing success of the work led to new Latin editions in Venice and Paris (both in that same year of 1504), and later ones published in Rome, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Rostock, Cologne and Antwerp. It was also translated into German, Dutch and Czech, but not into Castilian. In 1507 Fracanzio de Montalbodo retranslated the Latin text into Italian (although he says he translated it from Spanish) and titled his work Paesi novamente retrovati et Novo Mondo da Alberico Vesputio florentino intitulato. This Italian version was so popular that Archangelo Madrignano translated it back into Latin and published it in Milan in 1508.

Mundus Novus recounts the voyage made by Vespucci in 1501 in a flotilla of three Portuguese ships, with data that seem correct but are written in a confused manner. As in the Cape Verde Letter, it states that the coasts explored are continental mainland, not islands, and adds that this continent is "more densely populated (...) than our Europe or Asia or Africa" and that it is legitimate to call it Novum Mundum (New World). The author criticizes the incompetence of the Portuguese pilots and presents himself as a hero who, thanks to his knowledge of cosmography, saves the expedition. The work seems to be based on Amerigo's authentic letters to Lorenzo written in 1501 and 1502 in Cape Verde and Lisbon, respectively, mixed with third-party edits that introduce embellishments, sensationalist news and significant contradictions. For example, it details the beautiful bodies and active sexual life of the native women, claims to have met a man who had eaten 300 others, and maintains that the Earthly Paradise must be located near the lands visited. There is an edition that contains a paragraph called Jocundus, derived from the surname of Giovanni del Giocondo, its translator, which maintains that determining latitude based on the position of the stars is a "sacrilegious audacity," revealing the dogmatic-religious outlook of whoever drafted this portion of the document and his ignorance of the techniques of astronomical navigation advocated by Vespucci.

Toward the end the work mentions two voyages that Vespucci had supposedly made previously under the orders of the King of Castile "toward the west," which it does not detail. It also announces that he is preparing a new expedition with two ships.

The Ridolfi Fragment

These are fragments of a manuscript letter in Tuscan, the Italian dialect of Florence, without heading or date. It was discovered by Roberto Ridolfi in the Conti Archive and published in 1937, which is why it is called the Ridolfi Fragment or also the Fragmentary Letter. Only one manuscript copy survives, which was not written by Vespucci himself. The addressee is unknown, but from the language and content it can be deduced that he was a Florentine humanist versed in cosmography. The indignant tone suggests that it was not addressed to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco but to someone in whom he had greater confidence, perhaps the scholar and geographer Zenobio Acciaiuoli or Vespucci's uncle, Giorgio Antonio.

This letter is a written reply to a list of objections raised by readers of his earlier letters, for example about the distances he claims to have traveled or about his descriptions of the natives. In response to skepticism about his ability to measure longitude by means of astronomical observations, Vespucci replies that he used lunar eclipses as well as the conjunctions of the Moon with the planets, and that he was 150 degrees east of Alexandria. This information differs from that found in the famous letter of July 18, 1500. In this text Vespucci states, moreover, that he took part in three voyages: two "to the parts of the west through the Ocean Sea" and a third "toward the south through the Atlantic Sea."

Today no historian doubts the authenticity of this manuscript or that its author really was Vespucci. However, when its discovery was announced, two leading experts on Vespucci at the time, Alberto Magnaghi and Giuseppe Caraci, declared it apocryphal and tried to conceal it, since the Ridolfi fragment demolished a large part of the arguments they had upheld until then.

The Letter to Soderini

Illustration from the first edition of the Lettera, which was recycled from an earlier edition of Columbus's letter announcing the Discovery of the Indies.

The sixth letter, which had several different titles and is usually abbreviated Lettera, The Four Voyages or Letter to Soderini, was first printed in 1505 or perhaps at the end of 1504, in Italian. A separate edition in Latin, derived from a French translation, was printed at St. Dié by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507. The letter is dated at Lisbon on September 10 (or September 4, depending on the version) 1504 and addressed to the head of State of Florence, an office then held by Piero Soderini. The Italian text of this letter also survives in several manuscripts. On the basis of philological analyses, it seems that the manuscripts could predate the printed editions of the Lettera.

The letter narrates in the first person four transatlantic voyages, with numerous highly sensationalist episodes; specifically:

1. Expedition with four ships authorized by King Ferdinand of Castile; departure from Cádiz on May 10, 1497 and return in 1498 or 1499.
2. Castilian expedition with three ships; departure from Cádiz on May 16, 1499 and return on September 8.
3. Portuguese expedition with three ships; departure from Lisbon on May 10, 1501 and return via Sierra Leone and the Azores on September 7, 1502.
4. Portuguese expedition with six ships toward "Melacca"; departure on May 10, 1503 via the Cape Verde islands and Sierra Leone and return on June 18, 1504.

Pohl argues that in reality Amerigo could never have written this letter to Soderini, since the Vespucci family was at odds with the magistrate, to the point that at that time several of its members were implicated in a plot to assassinate him. Vespucci's own nephew and disciple, Giovanni, was among the conspirators.

According to Pohl, the Lettera was written with the childish presumption that, in order to surpass the spectacular nature of Columbus's four voyages, Vespucci would also have had to make four explorations. The text claimed that the first voyage had begun in 1497, which would have given Amerigo the title of first European to set foot on the American continental landmass, a year before Columbus. However, in different places in the Lettera a conflict is evident in the date of the supposed Vespucci's return to port: one paragraph mentions October 8, 1498, while another moves it to the 18th of the same month and a third takes it to a year later, October 1, 1499. The second voyage recounted in the work, which took place in 1499, coincides in time with the real undertaking in which Vespucci would have taken part under the flag of Castile. Likewise, the third is none other than the authentic Portuguese voyage on which he enlisted in 1501. By contrast, opinions are divided as to whether or not Vespucci took part in the Portuguese expedition of 1503.

The earliest texts of the Lettera contain gross linguistic errors, and include words that are nothing but corruptions of terms that were a mixture of Castilian and Italian, which is difficult to explain in someone who, like Vespucci, enjoyed a privileged education. In reality—Pohl continues—its writers added and described in detail a large number of fantastic elements in their fabrications of the Florentine's explorations, in order to arouse even more curiosity in readers and increase sales, which nevertheless proved disappointing. In contrast, Vespucci's letters to Lorenzo were relatively cold, dispassionate and objective.

Henry Harrisse gave a very different explanation for the linguistic errors. According to him, Vespucci wrote his original account in Castilian or in Portuguese. Northup specified that the source language was almost certainly Castilian. The work was later translated into Italian by someone who did not master the source language. This theory has been supported by later linguistic analyses.

For Fernández-Armesto, the editors of the Lettera did a cut-and-paste of many different sources, including some authentic texts by Vespucci and others published by Peter Martyr d'Anghiera. In particular, in the account of the first voyage the editor used passages taken from Vespucci's manuscript letter of July 18, 1500, which however refers to the voyage of 1499-1500 that in the Lettera is presented as the second. The intention of the editor or editors is not clear. Ilaria Caraci is of the opinion that it was not a cunning forgery operation, as Pohl claimed, but that the Lettera is rather a celebration of the exploits of a fellow countryman in which historical truth is left in the background.

The Lettera was never published in Spain or in Portugal, possibly because there the population was more familiar with the real history, and the Italian edition does not seem to have had much commercial success. By contrast, the Latin version of Saint Dié spread rapidly throughout Europe. In 1509 a German translation was published in Strasbourg, and in 1532 the Latin text of the Lettera was included in the cosmographical work published by Simon Grynaeus in Basel. A partial Italian translation was included in the monumental compilation Navigationi et Viaggi published in Venice in 1550.

As has been said, these supposed epistles also place Vespucci in the role of the first European to land on the mainland of the New World, a year before Columbus. They were published at a time when Columbus's son, Ferdinand, was busy with lawsuits over the titles promised to his father as discoverer, so any eventual attempt by Vespucci to claim those territories would have outraged him; however, among Ferdinand's letters there is no mention of the Lettera or of Amerigo's claims, even though he owned an edition of the Lettera in his library.

Third-party accounts

There are two texts, called "Venetian," written by third parties, which recount two further supposed transatlantic voyages by Amerigo Vespucci. These documents are almost unanimously considered apocryphal and the voyages they recount never to have taken place:

• Letter from Girolamo Vianello to the Signoria of Venice, dated at Burgos on December 23, 1506, which recounts a fifth voyage, found by Leopold Ranke in Sanuto's Diary, in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, and first published by Alexander von Humboldt in 1839.
• Letter from Francesco Corner to the Signoria of Venice, dated June 19, 1508, which briefly mentions what would be a sixth voyage, first published by Henry Harrisse in 1892.

The name of the New World

Paragraph of the Cosmographiæ introductio that proposes the name America.

The islands and mainland found by the Iberian discoverers on the other side of the Atlantic had received several names, whose application and acceptance were generally regional. Thus, the Castilians called it "the Indies" or "the Antipodes," a term also very widespread among the Italian humanists; the Portuguese named the Brazilian coasts "Vera Cruz" or "Land of Santa Cruz." Christopher Columbus discovered in August 1498, during his third voyage, the mouth of the Orinoco River and, seeing its enormous flow, deduced that the land he was in was "another world (...) an enormous land." According to Fernández-Armesto, this must have been the source on which Vespucci relied to claim that the coast he traveled along on his 1499 voyage was continental mainland. In 1504 at the latest, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera coined the term "New World" for the new lands, which also appears in the Mundus Novus attributed to Vespucci.

However, recent studies have pointed out that recognizing the discovered coasts as mainland or continental rather than as an island does not mean that Vespucci thought it was a new continent, distinct from the three known since Antiquity. On the contrary, Vespucci probably thought that the new lands were an extension of Asia.

At the printing press of the abbey of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in Lorraine, there worked several editors who were impressed by reading the publications that claimed to narrate Vespucci's exploits: a copy of the Lettera translated into French and another of the Mundus Novus, of the many that circulated throughout Europe, had come into their hands.

Martin Waldseemüller, Universalis Cosmographia (1507).

They decided to make the new reports known in the form of a small treatise called Cosmographiae introductio accompanied by a Latin translation of the Lettera under the title Quattuor Americi navigationes (Four Voyages of Amerigo), and to publish them in the form of a pamphlet. On April 25, 1507 the first two editions came off the press. In chapter IX of the text it was suggested that the name of the New World should be America (feminine by analogy with Europe, Asia and Africa) in honor of the one who had recognized it as such: ab Americo Inventore (...) quasi Americi terram sive Americam (From Amerigo the discoverer (...) as if it were the land of Amerigo or America). It is not known for certain which of the printers invented the name. The Gymnase Vosgien (Vosges Gymnasium) was made up of Vautrin Lud, Nicolas Lud, Jean Basin, Mathias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller. Specialists lean toward Ringmann or toward Jean Basin de Sandacourt, the translator of the Mundus Novus into Latin.

Martin Waldseemüller, a prominent humanist of the German people and professor of cartography who worked as draftsman and proofreader for the group, inscribed the resonant name on a large wall map titled Universalis Cosmographia that he included in the pamphlet. There it appears applied to South America (the first of the three Americas to be so called). At the top of the map, on the left, next to a terrestrial globe on whose hemisphere the Old World is represented, appears a portrait of Ptolemy; on the right, next to a similar globe with the New World, that of Vespucci. In addition, Waldseemüller made a globular version, also called a gore map, with which a small globe about 11 cm in diameter could be constructed, one of whose copies would be given as a gift to the Duke of Lorraine. The word is so euphonious and so consonant with the words "Asia" and "Africa" that it immediately took root in the northern European languages. The Cosmographiae Introductio was a great publishing success, and the word "America" rapidly spread to other cartographic works: the Green Globe (ca. 1514), a book and a gore globe by Johann Schöner in 1515, a map printed in Salamanca in 1520 and a reduced and modified version of Waldseemüller's map published by Petrus Apianus also in 1520 with the title Tipus Orbis Universalis, although its definitive consolidation came with its inclusion in the maps of Sebastian Münster from 1540 onward.

However, Waldseemüller himself corrected this in a slightly later map (1513) included in an edition of the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy, calling the new continent "Terra incognita" and stating that its discoverer had been Columbus, not Vespucci. The name America was also slow to be adopted in the Iberian Peninsula and its colonies, where the name predominantly used remained for quite a long time that of "West Indies."

Waldseemüller's planisphere, of which a print run of a thousand copies was made, was lost but was found in 1901 by Professor Joseph Fischer inside a forgotten book in Wolfegg Castle. The gore map used to construct the sphere had been recovered in 1871.

Legacy

Amerigo Vespucci is remembered mainly because the American continent today bears his name, owing to the accounts of voyages collected in the Letter to Soderini, which today are considered largely imaginary. There is consensus only on his participation in the fifth European expedition that landed on the coasts of Brazil and in Ojeda's voyage of 1499-1500 that visited present-day Venezuela, whose name has historically been attributed to him. According to that theory, in what is today known as the Gulf of Venezuela, Ojeda's crew observed the aboriginal dwellings erected on wooden piles protruding from the water, built by the Añú natives. These dwellings, which bore the name of palafitos, would have reminded Vespucci of the city of Venice in Italy, which inspired him to give the name Venezziola (Little Venice), later Hispanicized to "Venezuela," to the region and to the gulf of the American country.

His work as a cosmographer is less famous. He was one of the first to describe the Gulf Stream, previously discovered by Antón de Alaminos. He explained a method for estimating positional longitude by studying lunar cycles and planetary conjunctions. It has also been claimed that he was the first to state that the new lands discovered by Columbus did not belong to Asia but were a separate continent, although other authors consider this interpretation mistaken, since the writings attributed to Vespucci never stated that the "new world" was entirely surrounded by water. In his time he was considered a good cartographer but today none of his maps survives.

16th century

Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci that styles him "discoverer and conqueror of the Brazilian land."

The attribution of the discovery of America to Vespucci, on his voyage of 1497, by the authors of the Cosmographiae introductio achieved wide dissemination in the 16th century. Peter Apian took up this thesis in his influential manual published in 1524 under the title Cosmographicus liber, which spread throughout Europe. In the 1540s Nicolaus Copernicus mentioned in his work that America was so called in honor of its discoverer.

In Spain, however, criticism soon arose. Sebastian Cabot accused Vespucci shortly after his death of having lied in order to appropriate the glory of the discovery of the New World.

Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, a great defender of the figure of Columbus, who was unaware that the Lettera had probably not actually been written by Vespucci, accused the Florentine of being a "liar" and a "thief," denouncing that he had stolen the glory that, according to him, rightfully belonged to the Admiral:

(...) [in] tacitly claiming to apply to his voyage and to himself the discovery of the mainland, usurping from Admiral Christopher Columbus what was so justly due to him. (...) The new continent should have been called Columba, and not, as it is unjustly called, America.

In his Historia general de Indias, Las Casas lambasts Vespucci's name and denies his achievements, in view of what he considers a long-premeditated plan by Vespucci to get the world to recognize him as the discoverer of the greater part of the Indies.

17th and 18th centuries

Statue of Amerigo Vespucci at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Antonio de Herrera, a 17th-century Spanish historian, identified the falsehoods of the Letter to Soderini. During the following century and a half the majority opinion was that the name America had been the result of a fraud.

Friar de Espinosa, in a work of 1623, sums up the thinking of the Spain of the time about Vespucci:

(...) he says it should be called Colonia, after Colón, and not America. And I do not know on what grounds Amerigo Vespucci has usurped it, a poor sailor, who neither went to those parts among the first, nor did anything notable for his name to be immortalized with the glory of such a discovery, since he was not the one who made it.

The 18th-century Scottish historian William Robertson, in his History of America, calls Vespucci "a fortunate impostor." The Frenchman Voltaire was of the same opinion.

Only in Florence, Vespucci's native city, did people continue to defend his priority as discoverer of the American continent. In 1745 the Florentine Angelo Maria Bandini published the first of the manuscript letters in which Vespucci narrated his voyages. At the end of the century Francesco Bartolozzi published the one of 1502. Both used their findings to defend the truthfulness of the writings published under Vespucci's name, the Mundus Novus and the Letter to Soderini.

19th century

Alexander von Humboldt was the first to apply the scientific method to the study of Vespucci's voyages, in the second volume of his Examen de l'histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent aux XV et XVI siècles. Humboldt concluded that the priority of the discovery of America belonged to Columbus and not to Vespucci, but he exonerated the latter of the accusations of fraud made against him because, according to Humboldt, the printed letters (Mundus Novus and Lettera) had been edited and distorted in a confused and inept manner by other hands. He was followed by countless research works, such as those of Armand Pascal d'Avézac (1858), Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1858 to 1872), Henry Harrisse (1892), John Fiske (1892), Henry Vignaud (1916), etc. The methodical scholar Gustavo Uzielli managed to gather 280 works on Vespucci in 1892, and even so his collection was far from complete.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the controversy between Vespucci's supporters and detractors continued. Among those skeptical of his merits are the Portuguese geographer Manuel Ayres de Cazal, the Spanish historian Martín Fernández de Navarrete, the Portuguese astronomer and essayist Duarte Leite, the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Briton Clements Markham, editor of Vespucci's letters in English. These authors, in view of the contradictions of Mundus Novus with the Lettera and of these with the rest of the correspondence, minimize the documentary value of these writings, reducing them to mere opportunistic fabrications made with the purpose of gaining notoriety and titles.

20th and 21st centuries

In the 20th century new documents relating to Vespucci were discovered, among them his will and the Ridolfi Fragment. In 1924 the Italian scholar Alberto Magnaghi concluded, like Humboldt, that the Mundus Novus and the Lettera were apocryphal; in his opinion the former constitutes a juxtaposition of earlier notes plus various alterations made with a certain skill, and the latter an almost total forgery; however, in his view, it is the private correspondence to Pierfrancesco that does offer authentic and invaluable evidence. Magnaghi thus rejects the existence of Vespucci's "first" and "fourth" voyages (the Castilian voyage of 1497 and the Portuguese one of 1502), arguing that there is solid proof that he never made them. The American historian Frederick J. Pohl reached similar conclusions in 1944, as did Felipe Fernández-Armesto in 2006.

The greatest dispute among historians, above all Hispanic American ones, has centered on the controversy over the discovery of the Río de la Plata. Magnaghi credited the Portuguese expedition of 1501 recounted by Vespucci with the discovery of the Río de la Plata and of eastern Patagonia as far as 50 degrees south. The Uruguayan historian Rolando Laguarda Trías qualified this thesis, limiting the exploration to the 45°S parallel, while the Argentine academic Enrique de Gandía credited Vespucci with the discovery of the Plata, the Patagonian coast and the Malvinas Islands and maintained that the Florentine had made five voyages in total.

In the 1985 Compton's Encyclopaedia, a work for school use, Vespucci is described as "an unimportant Florentine merchant." The first monument in the Americas in his memory was erected in 1987 in the city of Bogotá.

In the 1990s, the Italian Ilaria Luzzana Caraci published a compilation of all the documents relating to Vespucci and an analysis of his life and work in which, although she acknowledged that his experience as a navigator was "debatable," she insisted on the importance of his having identified South America as a new continent distinct from Asia. In 2002 this author directed, on commission from the Italian government, a congress on Vespucci's Portuguese voyage of 1501-1502, the culmination of several exhibitions and lectures on this figure.

Real or imaginary voyages attributed to him

Castilian voyage of 1497–1498/99

The Castilians attack the natives of the island of Iti. Engraving from the late 16th century

According to the Lettera, Vespucci's first voyage would have taken place in 1497. The name of the fleet's commander is not given; various historians have suggested Juan Díaz de Solís, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Juan de la Cosa. The Lettera, the only source for this supposed voyage, says that after setting out on May 10, 1497 with four caravels, they headed for the Canary Islands, and after stopping there they set their course westward. After twenty-seven or thirty-seven days of sailing, they made landfall at a point at 16 degrees north and 75 degrees west of the Canaries, where they were well received by the natives with feasts and magnificent meals; the natives also offered them various material gifts and even their own women. The text provides little geographical information from that point on, merely saying that they followed the coast northwest for 870 leagues and that they passed through a region called Lariab or Parias, which lay beneath the Tropic of Cancer. Varnhagen, however, speculated in 1858 that they sailed through the Gulf of Mexico and followed the east coast of the United States as far as the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; this theory was accepted by authors such as Harrisse, Vignaud, Levillier and Germán Arciniegas. After fighting a battle with the natives, they decided to return to Castile, stopping at the island of Iti, where they again fought with the natives, taking some 250 prisoners. They arrived in Cádiz in October 1498 or 1499 (the Lettera is contradictory about the date).

Today, most historians believe that this voyage is a later invention unconnected with Vespucci, whose account includes true parts of the authentic 1499 voyage under the command of Alonso de Ojeda. Others, however, believe it was real, basing their view on two maps made immediately after 1499 (the Juan de la Cosa world map of 1500 and the Cantino planisphere of 1502), in which, according to them, the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida peninsula can be seen. This interpretation is not shared by most historians of cartography.

Castilian voyage of 1499–1500

Juan de la Cosa world map (1500), which shows, in addition to the discoveries of Pinzón, who is named as the discoverer of Brazil, those of the expedition of Ojeda, whom Vespucci accompanied. It is the oldest surviving map of the New World.

On May 16 or 18, 1499, Vespucci claims to have departed from Cádiz on an expedition that historians identify with the one captained by Alonso de Ojeda, who was accompanied by Juan de la Cosa and other famous navigators such as Diego Martín Chamorro, Juan Sánchez, José López and Francisco Morales. Vespucci's role in the expedition is unknown. According to his later writings, he was supreme commander of two ships, which is known to be false. Nor could he have been a pilot, since at that time he had no nautical experience. Perhaps his knowledge of pearls was the reason for his presence.

Vespucci's account of this expedition is found in copies of two letters and a fragment of another. One of them is dated in Seville on July 18, 1500 and addressed to a "magnificent Lorenzo" who is probably Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. Amerigo's version contradicts all the other sources on the voyage, and makes the reconstruction of his itinerary difficult.

The most widely accepted reconstruction of Ojeda's voyage is the following. After leaving Andalusia they headed for the Canary Islands, and from there they sailed for 24 days until they sighted land, then followed the northern edge of South America. Vespucci advanced as far as the Cape of San Agustín (also called Consolación), at about 6° south latitude; there he believed he was close to a route to Asia. In June 1500, after advancing two more degrees, he decided to return to Europe because his crew was tired and in low spirits, first taking the route to the Caribbean along the coast: there he explored the mouth of the Amazon River. He reached the island of Trinidad, sighted the mouths of the Essequibo and Orinoco rivers and explored the latter in some detail. He crossed the Gulf of Paria, passed by Margarita Island and then by the one he called "Of the Giants" (present-day Curaçao), where he tried to abduct a young woman to take her to Castile as a sample and failed because of the resistance of the inhabitants. The name of Venezuela has historically been attributed to Vespucci, who would have accompanied Alonso de Ojeda on this 1499 expedition along the northwestern coast of the country, today known as the Gulf of Venezuela. The crew observed the native dwellings built by the Añú natives, raised on wooden piles that stood out of the water. These dwellings, which were called palafitos, would have reminded Vespucci of the city of Venice in Italy (Venezia in Italian), which inspired him to give the region the name Venezziola or Venezuela ('Little Venice'). The expedition skirted the Guajira Peninsula as far as Cabo de la Vela. Throughout this route he took notes on the fauna and flora; he also described the appearance and customs of the natives; in Cubagua he exchanged trinkets for pearls and other treasures of the natives. The following month he arrived at Hispaniola.

They continued on to the Lucayas to capture slaves. Amerigo was still convinced that he was sailing along the eastern end of Asia, where Ptolemy believed there was a peninsula on which the market of Catigara was located. He then searched for the tip of this extension of land, which he called "Cape Catigara". He believed that, past this point to the south, one reached the great sea that washed the southern coasts of Asia.

Amerigo states that he returned to Spain sick with fevers.

Portuguese voyage of 1501–1502

Cantino planisphere (1502), the oldest known Portuguese map that includes America.

Map from the Miller Atlas (1519) showing the coast of Brazil and the Río de la Plata.

King Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploring expedition to Brazil to investigate the territories described by Pedro Álvares Cabral. Vespucci took part in it, in a role that is unknown. The name of the captain of the enterprise is not known either; according to some authors it was Gonzalo Coelho.

In May 1501 (the sources give May 10, 13 or 31) the expedition set sail with the purpose, according to Pohl, of finding the strait of Catigara, which Ptolemy had believed led to Asia. They passed the Canary Islands without stopping, reached Bezeneghe (present-day Dakar) and then headed for the islands of Cape Verde. After a brief stay there, the small fleet began crossing the Atlantic on June 15. This passage was very arduous, and it took more than sixty days to cross the narrow part of the ocean, whereas Columbus had taken only thirty-seven to cross the wide part. At the beginning of August they arrived at the coast of present-day Brazil, at a point that Vespucci does not mention and that modern historians place between Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte.

They sailed south along the coast of South America. According to Varnhagen, they first sighted the Cape of San Agustín again (October 28); they then went on naming geographical features in the custom of the time, based on the Catholic calendar of saints: Cape San Roque (October 16), All Saints Bay (November 1), the Santa Lucía River (December 13), etc. On January 1, 1502 they arrived at Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro.

According to Arciniegas, on February 15, upon reaching the point on the coast where the Portuguese believed the Treaty of Tordesillas had set the boundary between the jurisdictions of Portugal and of Castile and Aragon, a dispute would have arisen among the navigators over the route to follow. Vespucci considered it essential to continue revealing the extent of the New World to the south, while the Commander held the opposite view, in light of the illegality of the act. In the end the Florentine would have prevailed. Father Ayres de Cazal mentions the discovery, at a coastal point at 25°35'S (referred to as the entrance of the "Cananea River", a name coined after Vespucci's time), of a piece of marble measuring 80 by 40 by 20 centimeters set in the ground and carved with the coat of arms of Portugal. Magnaghi believes that the column could only have been placed in 1502 by the expedition in which Vespucci sailed.

The expedition continued south, but its exact route is unknown. Vespucci merely states that they reached a latitude of 50°S and noted the disappearance of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor below the horizon during the four months and twenty-six days they remained south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Pohl supposed that they would have continued skirting the continent, discovering the Río de la Plata and then Patagonia, in present-day Argentina; Arciniegas has him reach as far as the Strait of Magellan, the Malvinas Islands and South Georgia. On the other hand, other authors such as Ernesto Basilico hold completely opposite opinions: "Vespucci discovered neither the Río de la Plata nor Patagonia, and, therefore, he was not the forerunner of Solís or of Magellan".

Finally they began the return journey. According to the Lettera, the small fleet arrived at the coast of Sierra Leone on May 10, 1502, burned one of its ships, which was in very poor condition, and remained on land for fifteen days. It continued on to the Azores, arriving at the end of July. It stayed there another fortnight and returned to Lisbon on September 7, 1502. According to the author of Mundus Novus, supposedly Vespucci, the lands visited by the Portuguese on this voyage formed part of a continent that he calls the New World.

Portuguese voyage of 1503–1504

Aerial view over the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago.

According to the Lettera, the only and doubtful account of this supposed voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, King Manuel I of Portugal would have prepared another expedition under the command of Gonzalo Coelho, which displeased the Florentine, since he did not share the Commander's navigation plans and considered him presumptuous and stubborn. Financed, according to Levillier, by Fernando de Noronha, the small fleet of six ships set out on May 10, 1503, and its main objective was to discover the location of the Island of Malacca.

As the Lettera goes on to relate, they headed for Sierra Leone, where they spent some time exploring in very bad weather conditions. On June 10, 1503, they made landfall in the islands of Cape Verde; shortly afterward they set course for All Saints Bay. In the middle of the Atlantic crossing, they came upon the small archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, which Vespucci judged a "true marvel of nature". There the fleet was dispersed: in the Lettera the supposed Vespucci states that the flagship of Coelho, whom he constantly criticizes, sank. The documentary records of the period make no mention of or reference to the incident. Vespucci continued the voyage to Brazil with the only two ships he had. He sailed along the coast of the continent as far as the vicinity of the Río de la Plata and returned by the same route. He built a small fort, in which he left twenty-four sailors together with food for six months, twelve bombards and other weapons, loaded the ships with brazilwood and, forced by the small size of his crew and the lack of rigging, returned to Portugal, anchoring in Lisbon on June 18, 1504.

Castilian voyage of 1504–1506

According to a letter from Girolamo Vianello, a Venetian in the service of the Crown of Castile, to the Signoria of Venice, dated in Burgos on December 23, 1506, Vespucci ("Almerigo fiorentino") would have taken part in a voyage led by "Zuan biscaino" (probably Juan de la Cosa), whose survivors had returned to Spain some time before.

Again according to Vianello, this fleet explored undefined coasts of the American continent, where it fought the natives several times, both on land and at sea. The Castilians obtained many pearls but lost all their ships, of which there were more than three, and were stranded on the mainland for 96 days, suffering a siege by the Indians in an improvised fortress and many deaths from disease. At the end of that time, 34 survivors set out for the island of Hispaniola aboard boats whose gunwales they had built up, while 10 volunteers remained in the fortress. The boats managed to reach Hispaniola, and from there some survivors returned to Spain aboard two caravels.

Vianello's earlier correspondence shows him to be a credible source, and the official records of Venice and the dates on which the letter was sent and received prove that it is authentic. Moreover, there is evidence that Juan de la Cosa returned in 1506 from a voyage to the Indies that he had undertaken two years earlier, in 1504. However, there is abundant documentation in the archives of the Casa de Contratación showing that Vespucci was in Castile in June 1505 and also from September 1506 onward.

In general, historiography tends to deny the existence of this voyage, or at least Vespucci's participation in it. Only Arciniegas admitted that Vespucci may have taken part in a short voyage of at most three months, barely enough time to make a very brief visit, perhaps to the Pearl Coast in the Caribbean.

Castilian voyage of 1507/1508

The route of the 1505 voyage would have been repeated by De la Cosa and Vespucci two or three years later. As with the previous voyage, there is no direct documentary evidence that this actually happened, and it is therefore usually rejected by modern historiography. The only, very brief, reference to this enterprise is given by the ambassador of Venice at the court of Castile, Francesco Corner, in one of his letters to his Signoria, written from Burgos on June 19, 1508, in which he states that the purpose of the expedition would be to reach the mainland in order to ship gold.

See also

• Discovery of America
• European colonization of the Americas
• Letter of Amerigo Vespucci from Seville
• Avenida Circunvalación Américo Vespucio

References

Bibliography

• Arciniegas, Germán (2005) [1954]. América, 500 años de un nombre. Vida y época de Amerigo Vespucci (in español). Colombia: Villegas Editores. ISBN 978-958-8160-31-3. Archived from the original on February 5, 2009. Retrieved September 9, 2017.
• Bandini, Angelo Maria (1754). Vita e lettere di Amerigo Vespucci, gentiluomo fiorentino raccolte ed illustrate dall’abate Angelo Maria Bandini (in italiano). Firenza: Stamperia all’insegna di Apollo.
• Cazal, Manuel Ayres de (1817). Corografia Brazilica, Vol. I (in português). Rio de Janeiro: s/d.
• Cohen, Jonathan (1991). "The Naming of America: Vespucci's Good Name". The Encounters. 7: 16–20.
• Commissione Colombiana del quarto centenario della scoperta dell' America (1892). Raccolta dei Documenti e studi pubblicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana del quarto centenario della scoperta dell' America, Parte III, Vol. I (in italiano). Rome: s/d.
• Espinosa, Antonio Vázquez de (1969). Compendio y descripción de las indias occidentales (in español). Madrid: Ediciones Atlas.
• Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (2006). Amerigo. The man who gave his name to America. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Fernández de Navarrete, Martín (1954). Colección de viajes y descubrimientos, Vol. III (in español). Madrid: s/d.
• Formisano, Luciano (1992). Letters from a New World: Amerigo Vespucci's Discovery of America. New York: Marsilio Publishers.
• Gandía, Enrique de (1991). Amérigo Vespucci y sus cinco viajes al Nuevo Mundo (in español). Buenos Aires: Fundación Bank Boston.
• — (1977). "Los enigmas del descubrimiento del Río de la Plata". Buenos Aires: Diario La Nación (in español) (July 17).
• Harrisse, Henry (1892). The Discovery of North America. London: Henry Stevens.
• Heinrich, Charles (1926). The Romance of the Name America. New York: Author's edition.
• Humboldt, Alexander von. Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du Nouveau Continent et des progrès de l'astronomie nautique aux quinzième et seizième siècles (in français). Paris: s/d.
• Laguarda Trías, Rolando (1987). "Pilotos portugueses en el Río de la Plata durante el siglo XVI". Lisboa: Revista da Universidade de Coimbra (in español). XXXIV (s/d).
• Leite, Duarte (1931). "A Exploracao do Litoral do Brasil na Cartografía da Primeira Década do Seculo XVI". Historia da Colonizaçao Portuguesa do Brazil, Descobridores do Brasil (in português). s/d: Oporto.
• Lester, C. Edwards and Foster, Andrew (1903). The Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius. New York: New Amsterdam Publishing.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Levillier, Roberto (1951). "Estudio preliminar". Vespucio, Américo, El Nuevo Mundo. Cartas relativas a sus viajes y descubrimientos (in español). Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova.
• Levillier, Roberto (1957). Mundus Novus. Ediciones Anales de la Universidad de Chile N.º 3 Serie Verde.
• — (1954). "New Light on Vespucci's Third Voyage: Evidence of His Route and Landfalls". London: Imago Mundi. 11 (s/d).
• Magnaghi, Alberto (1924). Amerigo Vespucci: studio critico, con speciale riguardo ad una nuova valutazione delle fonti (in italiano). Rome: Istituto Cristoforo Colombo.
• Marcou, Jules (1888). Nouvelles recherches sur l'origine du nom d'Amérique (in français). Paris: Société de Géographie.
• Markham, Clements R. (1894). The Letters Of Amerigo Vespucci. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Ober, Frederick A. (1907). Amerigo Vespucci. London: Harper & Brothers Publishers.
• Pohl, Frederick J. (1966). Amerigo Vespucci Pilot Major. New York: Octagon Books.
• Romero, Fernando (1971). "Sailing By Caravel". s/d: Americas. XXIII (s/d).
• Thomas, Hugh (2003). El imperio español, de Colón a Magallanes (in español). Barcelona, Editorial Planeta. ISBN 84-08-04951-8.
• Varela, Consuelo (1988). Colón y los florentinos (in español). Madrid: Alianza América. ISBN 84-206-4222-3.
• Varnhagen, Francisco Adolpho (1927). Historia géral do Brasil, Vol. I (in português). São Paulo: Melhoramentos.
• Vignaud, Jean Henry (1917). Améric Vespuce (in français). Paris: Leroux.
• Wills, Garry (1992). Foreward. Letters From A New World. New York: Marsilio Publishers.

External links

• Vespucci's letter of July 18, 1500:
  • transcription of the original in Italian, by Ilaria Caraci.
  • modern Spanish translation, on the website Memoria política de México.
• Letter from Cape Verde of June 4, 1501:
  • transcription of the original in Italian, by Ilaria Caraci.
• Letter from Lisbon of 1502:
  • transcription of the original in Italian, by Ilaria Caraci.
• Mundus Novus:
  • Latin version printed in Augsburg in 1504 and Italian translation of 1507, reproduced by Ilaria Caraci.
  • English translation of the Augsburg edition (George Tyler Northup, 1916)
  • Mundus Novus Ediciones de los Anales de la Universidad de Chile N.º 3 Serie Verde (Roberto Levillier, 1957)
• Ridolfi Fragment:
  • transcription of the original in Italian, by Ilaria Caraci.
• The Lettera or Letter to Soderini:
  • original Italian version and 1507 Latin translation, reproduced by Ilaria Caraci.
  • modern Spanish translation of part of it
  • English translation, preceded by a translation of Mundus Novus
• Will of Amerigo Vespucci of April 9, 1511:
  • Original, on the archives portal of Andalusia.
  • Transcription of the original and Italian translation, by Ilaria Caraci (pp. 197–208)
• Document collections:
  • Compilation of 146 archival documents relating to Amerigo Vespucci by Ilaria Caraci: 1451–March 1492, December 1492–May 1508 and June 1508–1515.
  • List of documents relating to Amerigo Vespucci in the Provincial Historical Archive of Seville, on the archives portal of Andalusia.