A famous Italian navigator, born at Florence, 9 March, 1451; died at Seville, 22 February, 1512. He was the third son of Ser Nastagio, a notary of Florence, son of Amerigo Vespucci. His mother was Lisabetta, daughter of Ser Giovanni, son of Ser Andrea Mini; her mother was Maria, daughter of Simone, son of Francesco di Filicaia.
The date of Vespucci's birth, formerly much discussed, is now definitively established by the books of the Ufficio delle Tratte, preserved in the Reale Archivio di Stato of Florence, where the following passage is found: "Amerigo, son of Ser Nastagio, son of Ser Amerigo Vespucci, on the IX day of March MCCCCLI" (1452, common style). The mother of Amerigo's father was Nanna, daughter of Mestro Michele, of the Onesti of Pescia, and sister of Mestro Michele, the father of Nicol and of Francesco, who resided in the of the Priors in the Republic of Florence. Vespucci received his first instruction from his uncle Giorgio Antonio, a Platonic philosopher who was a teacher of the greater part of the Florentine nobility.
Amerigo cultivated the study of literature, including that of the Latin language, as is shown by a small autograph codex in the Biblioteca Ricardiana of Florence, entitled "Dettati da mettere in latino" at the end of which there is written the following: "This booklet was written by Amerigo Se Anastagio Vespucci." He also wrote a letter in Latin to his father, dated 19 October, 1476, in which he gives an account of his studies. Possibly Vespucci had relations with Toscanelli, who, as is known, died in 1482, two years after Amerigo left for Spain.
Thereafter, Amerigo devoted himself to the study of physics, geometry, astronomy, and cosmography, in which sciences he made rapid progress. After the death of his father, which occurred about the year 1483, Amerigo, perhaps on account of the unfortunate circumstances of his family, became steward in the house of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, with various charges that were multiplied in proportion as he acquired the confidence and the affection of the sons of Pierfrancesco, of whose rural and commercial interests he became superintendent, as appears from numerous letters written to him, which have recently been published. From 1478 to 1480 he was attached to the embassy at Paris, under his relative Guido Antonio Vespucci, ambassador of Florence to Louis XI of France.
Accordingly, he wrote many reports to the Signoria, which are preserved in the Archivio di Stato at Florence. The sojourn of Vespucci at Paris, and that of Duke Rene of Lorraine at Florence, earlier, explain why Vespucci should have sent to Duke Rene a copy, in Latin, of the letter of the four voyages, written in Italian to the Piero Soderini, and why one of the earliest editions of Vespucci's voyages (the third) should have been made at Paris in 1504. The offices that Vespucci held from the younger branch of the house of Medici explain why the former, between November of 1491 and February of 1492, joined, at Seville, Giannetto di Lorenzo Berardo Berardi, chief of a house, established at that city, which had close financial relations with the younger branch of the Medici, that is, with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his son.
Through his intelligence, he became one of the chief agents of that firm, which, later, had a leading part in fitting out the oceanic expeditions that led to the discovery of the New World. The successful voyages of Christopher Columbus increased Vespucci's desire to take a part in the general European movement to seek a western passage to the Indies. Having obtained three ships from Ferdinand, King of Castille, Vespucci was able to undertake his first voyage.
Accordingly, he set sail from Cadiz on 10 May, 1497, sailing toward the Fortunate Islands, and then laying his course towards the west. After twenty-seven or thirty-seven days, on 6 or 10 April, he touched the mainland (Guiana or Brazil?), and was well received by the inhabitants.
In this first voyage he may have entered the Gulf of Mexico and coasted along a great portion of the United States, as far as the Gulf of St. Then he returned to Spain, and landed at Cadiz on 15 October, 1498. There is no other relation of this first voyage than that contained in the first letter of Amerigo Vespucci concerning the islands newly found in his four voyages, addressed to Piero Soderini, of Florence.
On 16 May, 1499, Vespucci sailed from Cadiz on his second voyage, with Alonzo de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. He directed his course to Cape Verde, crossed the Equator, and saw land, on the coast of Brazil, at 4 or 5 S., possibly near Aracati.
From there, he coasted along the Guianas and the continent, from the Gulf of Paria to Maracaibo and Cape de la Vela; he discovered Cape St. Augustine and the River Amazon, and made notable observations of the sea currents, of the Southern Cross and other southern constellations. He returned to Spain in September, 1500.
There two expeditions were undertaken in the service of Spain; the third and the fourth, in that of Portugal. In consequence of the long fatigues of his second voyage, Vespucci was taken ill of the quartan ague. When his health was re-established, he wrote an account of his voyage to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici.
On 14 May, 1501, he sailed from Lisbon to Cape Verde, and thence westward, until, on 1 January, 1502, he came to a gulf at 13 S., to which he gave the name of Bahia de Todos Santos, and upon the shores of which the city of Bahia now stands. From there he coasted along South America, as far as the Plata.
On his return, he discovered the island of South Georgia, at 54 S., and 1200 miles east of Tierra del Fuego. He arrived at Lisbon on 7 September, 1502.
On his fourth voyage, he sailed with Gonzal Coelho from Lisbon, on 10 June, 1503, touched land at the Cape Verde Islands, and bent his course towards the Bay of All Saints. At Cape Frio, having found great quantities of brazil-wood, he established an agency, exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn. Thereafter, he coasted along the continent, nearly to the Rio de la Plata, and then returned to Lisbon, where he arrived on 18 June, 1504.
Vespucci made a fifth voyage with Juan de la Cosa, between May and December, 1505; they visited the Gulf of Darien, and sailed 200 miles up the Atrato River. During that voyage, they collected gold and pearls, and received information of there being a great abundance of those substances in that region. This voyage was repeated by the two navigators in 1507.
Of these two expeditions, however, there is no special account by Vespucci. It should be added that, in 1506, Vespucci was busy in Spain, fitting out the expedition of Pinz n, which was abandoned in March, 1507. The facts regarding the voyages of Vespucci are accepted as given in the above narrative by the majority of the authoritative biographers of that navigator; but the inexactness of the printed texts, the difficulty of identifying the names of places, used by Vespucci, with the modern ones, and the error of attributing sincerity to all assertions contained in official documents, especially in those relating to legal proceedings, have given rise to enormous confusion in all that relates to the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, of which the chief base for future criticism will be the investigation of the apocryphal codices of the narratives of the voyages of Vespucci, written at the time when the authentic ones appeared.
Vespucci was certainly held in high esteem in Spain, where he established himself after his voyages in the service of Portugal. In 1505, by a royal decree of 14 April of that year, he had received Spanish naturalization, and a decree of 6 August, 1508, named him , a title corresponding to the modern one of head of the admiralty, and which was borne by Vespucci until his death. Amerigo Vespucci married Maria Cerezo, apparently in 1505.
The only precise information concerning her is furnished by the royal decree of 28 March, 1512, according her a pension, on account of the satisfaction given by her husband as , which pension was confirmed by the decree of 16 November, 1523. On the other hand, a decree of 26 December, 1524, grants the remainder of her pension to her sister Catalina Cerezo; which proves that Maria died between the two latter dates, and that she left no children. With Amerigo Vespucci, however, was the son of his brother Antonio, Giovanni, who was born on 6 March, 1486, and who was named in 1512, upon the death of his predecessor and uncle, Amerigo.
For information concerning him, see Harrisse, "The Discovery of North America" (1892), 744-5. It is impossible to determine, here, the place of Amerigo Vespucci in the history of the discovery of the New World, in relation to those of Christopher Columbus, of Sebastian Cabot, and of the brothers Pinz n. First it is necessary to distinguish between the geographical, and the social, discovery of America.
The former is due to the Icelanders, who established, on the eastern coast of Greenland, a colony that was maintained from the tenth to the fifteenth century, of the history of which a very good compendium is given by Fischer in "The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America" (London, 1902); in connection with this work there should be consulted the collection of documents concerning the relations of the Church of Rome with Greenland during these centuries, published by order of Leo XIII. The discovery of America was due to the failure of the crusade against the Turks which was attempted by Pius II, and the success of which was frustrated by the rivalry and corruption of the states of Europe at that time. Europe then felt the necessity of going to the East by another way, of seeking the East by way of the West, a motto that became the flag of the navigators of that age.
Paolo Toscanelli, whose sincerity of religious sentiment was not less than his great merit of scientific attainment (see the present writer's work on Toscanelli, I, 1894, in the "Raccolta Colombiana", part V), foresaw, before Portugal foresaw it, that the time had come for that country to take the place of Italy as the intermediary of the commerce between Europe and Asia, and therefore, as the starting-point of navigators and adventurers, seduced by the desire of being the executors of the great emprise. Columbus was the first to reach land to the west one of the islands of the Bahamas on 12 October, 1492, convinced that he had reached one of the islands of eastern Asia. He was followed by Vespucci, Cabot, and many others, each proposing to himself to reach the land of spices, that is, India.
We may not, here, enter into the very intricate question of which, of the three navigators named, was the first to tread the mainland of the New World. For that, it would be necessary to have before us the correct texts of all the fundamental documents concerning those navigators. As regards Columbus, the "Raccolta Colombiana", published by the Italian Government on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the discovery of America, is an exhaustive document.
Very important, for all the history of the discovery of America, are the collection of Navarrete, the books and documents published by Harrisse, the Duchess of Alba, and many others. But as regards Vespucci, there are, at Florence, the apocryphal synchronous copies of all the accounts of his voyages, except the text that was used for the publication of the "Mundus novus", of which accounts, as will be seen further on, a correct edition is lacking.
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