Vandino (sometimes
Vadino or
Guido) and
Ugolino VivaldiVivalso, Ugolino and Sorleone de , Genoese explorers, connected with the first known expedition in search of an ocean way from Europe to India...
(sometimes
Ugolino de Vivaldo) (fl. 1291) were two brothers and
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
explorers and merchants from
GenoaGenoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000...
.
In the spring of 1291 they sailed from Genoa with the intention of reaching
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
by sea in ten years. The expedition was financed by
Teodisio D'OriaDoria, originally de Auria , meaning "the sons of Auria", and then de Oria or d'Oria, is the name of an old and extremely wealthy Genoese family who played a major role in the history of the Republic of Genoa from the 12th century to the 16th century.-Origins:According to legend, a noble Genoese...
(Doria) and piloted by Majorcan sailors. In two galleys, they sailed along the coast of present-day
MoroccoMorocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
after passing through the Straits of Gibraltar.
Vandino (sometimes
Vadino or
Guido) and
Ugolino VivaldiVivalso, Ugolino and Sorleone de , Genoese explorers, connected with the first known expedition in search of an ocean way from Europe to India...
(sometimes
Ugolino de Vivaldo) (fl. 1291) were two brothers and
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
explorers and merchants from
GenoaGenoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000...
.
In the spring of 1291 they sailed from Genoa with the intention of reaching
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
by sea in ten years. The expedition was financed by
Teodisio D'OriaDoria, originally de Auria , meaning "the sons of Auria", and then de Oria or d'Oria, is the name of an old and extremely wealthy Genoese family who played a major role in the history of the Republic of Genoa from the 12th century to the 16th century.-Origins:According to legend, a noble Genoese...
(Doria) and piloted by Majorcan sailors. In two galleys, they sailed along the coast of present-day
MoroccoMorocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
after passing through the Straits of Gibraltar. They may have followed the African coast as far as Cape Non. Their subsequent fate is unknown. Whether they attempted to sail west across the Atlantic or circumnavigate the
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
n continent is also unknown.
Jean Gimpel suggests that the two Franciscan monks who accompanied the Vivaldi Brothers may have read the
Opus majus written by their fellow Franciscan,
Roger BaconRoger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism...
. Bacon suggests in this work that the distance separating
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
and
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
was not great, a theory that was later repeated by
Pierre d'AillyPierre d'Ailly , was a French theologian, astrologer, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church....
and tested by
Christopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
.
They may have seen or landed on the
Canary IslandsThe Canary Islands are a Spanish archipelago which, in turn, forms one of the Spanish Autonomous Communities and an Outermost Region of the European Union. The archipelago is located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the disputed border between Morocco and the...
, which in subsequent decades became firmly established on maps as an actual geographical location rather than as a mythological place. The expedition of the Vivaldi Brothers was certainly one of the first recorded voyages that sailed out from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic since the fall of the
Western Roman EmpireThe Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire, from its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, today widely known as the Byzantine Empire....
in the 5th century AD.
It is believed that when
Lancelotto MalocelloLancelotto Malocello was an Italian navigator from Genoa, who gave his name to the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands....
set sail from
GenoaGenoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000...
in 1312, he did so in order to search for Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi. Malocello ended up remaining on the island that is named for him,
LanzaroteLanzarote, a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km
2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
, one of the Canary Islands, for more than two decades.
The historian
José de Viera y ClavijoJosé de Viera y Clavijo , Spanish ecclesiastic, historian, botanist, ethnographer, and professor, best known for his exhaustive History of the Canary Islands . Born in Realejo de Arriba, on the island of Tenerife, he was the son of the town's mayor, Gabriel Viera del Álama...
writes that Father Agustín Justiniani, in the
Anales de Génova, includes the information that two Franciscans also joined the Vivaldi expedition. Viera y Clavijo also mentions the fact that
PetrarchFrancesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
states that it was a local tradition that the Vivaldis did indeed reach the Canary Islands. Neither Justiniani nor Petrarch knew of the expedition's fate. Papiro Masson in his
Anales writes that the brothers were the first modern discoverers of the islands.
The Vivaldi brothers subsequently became the subjects of legends that featured them circumnavigating Africa before being captured by the mythical Christian king
Prester JohnThe legends of Prester John , popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular...
. The Vivaldis’ voyage may have inspired
Dante’sDANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
Canto 26 (
InfernoThe Divine Comedy , written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife is a...
) about
UlyssesOdysseus or Ulysses , in Greek mythology , was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey...
’ last voyage, which ends in failure in the
Southern HemisphereThe Southern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is south of the equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half ball'...
. According to one scholar, Ulysses' fate was inspired "...partly from the fate which there was reason to suppose had befallen some adventurous explorers of the Atlantic ocean."
Sources
- José Juan Acosta; Félix Rodríguez Lorenzo; Carmelo L. Quintero Padrón, Conquista y Colonización (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Centro de la Cultura Popular Canaria, 1988), p. 23.
- José de Viera y Clavijo, Historia de Canarias: Tomo I (Madrid: Biblioteca Básica Canaria, 1991), p. 107 (XX. Los Genoveses).