We meet the island name, for the first time unmistakably, on the map
of Beccario (Becharius) of 1435[122] (Fig. 20). It is applied to the
chief of a group of four large islands, comparable to nothing actually
in the western Atlantic except the Greater Antilles, or three of them
with Florida (Bimini). They are collectively designated “Insulle a Novo
Repte”--the “Newly Reported Islands.” Antillia itself is shown as an
elongated quadrilateral having its sides indented by seven two-lobed
bays of identical form, beside another and larger bay in the southern
end. Several subsequent maps repeat the delineation with little change,
and the map of Benincasa (1482;[123] Fig. 22) supplies local names for
the bays or the regions adjoining excepting only the lowest but one on
the eastern side, which bay is opposite the middle of the island name
Antillia. The other names as read by Dr. Kretschmer are Aira, Ansalli,
Ansodi, Con, Anhuib, Ansesseli, and Ansolli. It will be observed
that five of them borrow the first syllable of Antillia. Nobody has
explained these names, and they seem mere products of linguistic fancy.
But again the coincidence in number is impressive, although somewhat
offset by the fact that the next largest island in the group, Saluaga,
has a similar arrangement of five bays of like form and carries the
names, similarly applied, of Arahas, Duchal, Imada, Nom, and Consilla.
They can hardly be extra bishops’ towns. At least we are in the
dark about them. The anonymous map sometimes attributed to 1424 and
preserved at Weimar[124] shows in photographic copy traces of names, or
at least letters, on the part of Antillia which it represents. Its true
date is believed to be about that of Benincasa’s map above cited. But
the markings do not seem to be identical and are very meager.
THE LEGENDARY HOME OF PORTUGUESE REFUGEES
However, there can be no doubt of Toscanelli’s meaning at an earlier
date in the passage quoted. The same is true of Behaim’s globe (1492),
though he discards the accepted form of Antillia. He appends a long
inscription, translated by Ravenstein as follows:
In the year 734 of Christ, when the whole of Spain had been won
by the heathen (Moors) of Africa, the above island Antilia,
called Septe citade (Seven cities), was inhabited by an
archbishop from the Porto in Portugal, with six other bishops,
and other Christians, men and women, who had fled thither from
Spain, by ship, together with their cattle, belongings, and
goods. 1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without being
endangered.[125]
Again, in Ruysch’s map of 1508 there is “a large island in the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean between Lat. N. 37° and 40°. It is called Antilia
Insula, and a long legend asserts that it had been discovered long ago
by the Spaniards, whose last Gothic king, Roderik, had taken refuge
there from the invasion of the Barbarians.”[126]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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