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A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

economist.com

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Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#41

Post by jcranmer »

btilly wrote: post #21
namenotrequired wrote: post #9

How likely is this to be real? If real, was this work originally widely read in its time?

This is certainly real. An unfinished and unpublished work in an era before the printing press is guaranteed to not have been widely read. But the voyages to Vinland went from Greenland. And Greenland had a bishop who wrote to the church. And priests sent letters to each other. It is hardly surprising that one seeking to write a book on distant history and lands would have encountered information from so far afield.

> And Greenland had a bishop who wrote to the church.

Most of the bishops of Greenland never actually lived in Greenland. Certainly, the bishops never found out that the Greenland settlements had been abandoned, and bishops were appointed until 1537 despite all contact with Greenland ceasing circa 1400.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#42

Post by interestica »

krapp wrote: post #29
jmchuster wrote: post #19

> But it could help explain why Columbus, a Genoese, was prepared to set off across what most contemporaries considered a landless void. I had always thought that Columbus made the trip because he miscalculated the distance around the globe, while everyone else was saying they'd starve before reaching Asia. He was just lucky enough there happened to be land halfway there, and then mistakenly assumed he made it, since…

> and then mistakenly assumed he made it, since the Caribbean was where he wrongly thought Asia was going to be. ... which is why Native Americans have been referred to as "Indians," because Columbus was certain he'd reached the Indies.

And why the Caribbean is alternatively known as the West Indies.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#43

Post by masswerk »

jcranmer wrote: post #23
exdsq wrote: post #15

And even if they were written down, the Catholic church sure did love to burn books back then!

The "love to burn books" mostly happened during the Counter-Reformation, which is several centuries after this book would have been written.

However, there was also the Albigensian Crusade and not a single piece of catharian writing survived this.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#44

Post by tootie »

blfr wrote: post #31
tootie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pandemics would be pretty unlikely in the days of such low population density. Epidemics definitely happened pretty routinely though.

There was a bubonic plague pandemic (1346-1353) right after the time this book was wrtten (1339-1345 according to OP).

Sure, but the topic was pandemics we don't know about because they weren't written down. The bubonic plague was written about pretty extensively. Even earlier disease outbreaks were written about.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#45

Post by masswerk »

Thorentis wrote: post #11

There are probably many discoveries thought to be more modern, that were actually made earlier than we realise but were never written down. Word of mouth stories are often lost during mass population upheavals like war and famine.

It may be even worse, as history was eventually established, competing narratives were probably dismissed and neglected as weird tales without foundation or merit, and eventually suppressed. For which they eventually weren't retold anymore and eventually forgotten.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#46

Post by earksiinni »

This find is not as surprising as the Economist article would have you believe.

First, what was written about areas beyond Europe's periphery tended to lag behind actual common knowledge of those areas by hundreds of years. An example would be the concept of "the torrid zone," part of an ancient Greek climatic theory that divided the world into two habitable temperate zones, two uninhabitable frigid zones (at the poles), and one uninhabitable torrid zone (basically the equatorial region). You had European textbooks being printed well into the seventeenth century describing the torrid zone's literal uninhabitability. Like, literally describing areas colonized by Europeans and integrated into European economies as unable to sustain any human life.

Second, there are many mentions in medieval European literature of pre-Columbian and, in the case of Africa, pre-Henrician explorers going beyond Europe's periphery, directly contradicting the easy school narratives most of us learned about European "discovery". E.g., the voyage of the Zeno brothers [1]. Most of these mentions are just that, mentions. The Marckalada/Markland manuscript seems notable in that it has a bit more evidentiary heft behind it, but my point is that it's not an entirely unique document.

I should add that generally speaking, there's a rich tradition in history of mercantile contact going well beyond the surviving documentary record. The ancient Romans were almost certainly in regular contact with the Indian subcontinent and possibly China through trade, even though the written record is sketchy. Archaeology has helped in this regard. Michael McCormick is the authority in this area when it comes to the early medieval period or so-called "dark ages" [2].

Edit: In history, be wary of any narrative that presupposes isolation. If you dig deep enough, you'll find that it's often written by someone long dead with an agenda. Hence medievalists' disdain for the "dark ages," which are basically an Italian Renaissance construct that got blown up by nationalist Germans in the nineteenth century.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Zeno_brothers

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Origins-European-Economy-Communicatio...

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#47

Post by abecedarius »

masswerk wrote: post #45
Thorentis wrote: post #11

There are probably many discoveries thought to be more modern, that were actually made earlier than we realise but were never written down. Word of mouth stories are often lost during mass population upheavals like war and famine.

It may be even worse, as history was eventually established, competing narratives were probably dismissed and neglected as weird tales without foundation or merit, and eventually suppressed. For which they eventually weren't retold anymore and eventually forgotten.

A relevant case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas#Literary_influence

(I linked to where he's getting dismissed as a liar centuries later, but the main story about the voyage is way more interesting.)

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#49

Post by oh_sigh »

earksiinni wrote: post #46

This find is not as surprising as the Economist article would have you believe. First, what was written about areas beyond Europe's periphery tended to lag behind actual common knowledge of those areas by hundreds of years. An example would be the concept of "the torrid zone," part of an ancient Greek climatic theory that divided the world into two habitable temperate zones, two uninhabitable frigid zones (at the pol…

From [1]: Modern historians and geographers have disputed the veracity of the map and the described voyages, with some accusing the younger Zeno of forgery.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#50

Post by HarryHirsch »

jbay808 wrote: post #30
hprotagonist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite: you have copyist monks to thank for the survival of the vast majority of written material that remains from pre-christian antiquity.

I thought that was mostly due to Islamic scholars. Weren't the monks mostly erasing and repurposing old scrolls to make copies of the Bible?

The monasteries of Ireland and Scotland survived the crisis and disorder of the Migration Period and re-christianized the Continent from the 8th century onwards. Yes, some texts from antiquity have come down to us only as palimpsest, but the classical writers were copied.
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