Page 5 - Italian American Herald - October 2021

HISTORY
In 1503 Vespucci may have participated in another expedition for the Portuguese crown. There is evidence of the journey but no recorded confirmation that Vespucci was involved.
So why did our country end up being named after Vespucci even though Columbus is credited with discovering the Americas landmass? Vespucci wrote letters and kept detailed records of these journeys and was the one who recognized it was not just
an island but was a new continent. In
his Mundus Novus, a letter to Lorenzo
di Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici (1502/1503) he wrote, “A few days ago
I wrote to you at length about my return from those regions we searched for and found with the fleet, at the expenses and by the command of the most serene King of Portugal, and which can be properly called
a “New World” since our forebears had absolutely no knowledge of it, nor do any
of those who are hearing about it today. On Aug. 7, 1501, we dropped anchor off the shores of that new land, thanking God with solemn prayers and the celebration of the Mass. Once there, we determined that the new land was not an island but a continent.”
Vespucci’s accounts of these voyages became widely known in Europe. The Soderini
letter came to the attention of a group of scholars studying geography and two of them, Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller, published their Introduction to Cosmography with included a world map. The map was created using Vespucci’s description from the Soderini letter and
a Portuguese maritime map as well as a geographical map created by Ptolemy circa A.D. 956. A thousand copies of the map were published with prominent portraits
of Ptolemy and Vespucci. They marked the landmass America after the explorer who recognized that it was a continent. Successive maps printed also used the name America for the continent and in 1538 Gerardus Mercator used it to name both the northern and southern continents. By this point the use of Vespucci’s’ first name was firmly set. Vespucci died on Feb. 22, 1512, possibly not aware
of this honor.
It is likely that things would have been
different if he had not written the letters describing these journeys and ascertaining that the “New World” was a new continent. Once the first maps of the continent were marked as “America” the name became standard and Columbus was deprived of his discovery of the continent bearing his name. IAH
This wood cutting is thought to depict Amerigo Vespucci's 1497-98 voyage to the New World.
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