ventured to assert publicly that he had made two voyages by order of the King of Spain prior to entering the service of the King of Portugal. To induce him to leave Spain and come to Portugal, Vespucci says, in the letter addressed to Pietro Soderini, that the King sent to him one Giuliano Bartholomeo del Giocondo, then a resident of Lisbon. Jocundus (the latinized pseudonym of Giocondo) is named as the translator of the Augsburg edition of 1504, addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici. This Jocundus, Humboldt thinks, was Giuliano Giocondo. But Major, in his _Henry the Navigator_, says that the translation was made, not by Giuliano Giocondo, but by his kinsman Giovanni Giocondo, of Verona. His authority for this statement is apparently Walter Lud’s _Speculum_. Varnhagen thinks it possible that the work may have been done by one Mathias Ringman,—of whom more presently. Varnhagen says also, in another place, that the translator of the Italian version—published in the _Paesi novamente_ at Vicenza in 1507—unwittingly betrayed that he lied (_son mensonge_) when he said that he followed a Spanish copy; for while he failed to comprehend the use of the word Jocundus, he showed that it was before him in the Latin copy, as he rendered _Jocundus interpres_—Jocundus the translator—as _el iocondo interprete_, the agreeable translator. This is only one example of the confusion in which the subject is involved. It was due, however, to the _Cosmographiæ introductio_ of St.-Dié, in which the letters appeared as a sort of appendix, that the name of America, from Amerigo, was given to the western hemisphere. But how it happened that the _Quatuor navigationes_ should have been first published in that little town in the Vosges mountains; and what the relation was between Vespucci and René II., the Duke of Lorraine,—are among the perplexing questions in regard to the letters that have been discussed at great length. Major finds in the fact, or assumed fact, that Fra Giovanno Giocondo was the translator of the narrative of the third voyage, the first published, in 1504, an important link in the chain of evidence by which he explains the St.-Dié puzzle. This Giocondo was about that time at Paris as the architect of the bridge of Notre Dame. A young student, Mathias Ringman, from Alsace, was also there at that period; and Major supposes he may have become acquainted with Giocondo, who inspired him with great admiration for Vespucci. It is certain, at any rate, that Ringman, whose literary pseudonym was Philesius Vogesina,—that is, Philesius of the Vosges,—on his return to his native province edited the Strasburg edition (1505) of Giocondo’s translation, appending to it some verses written by himself in praise of Vespucci and his achievements.