8 “absolutely certain”: Ibid.
9 “Subject to such sophistications”: “The Site of the Lost Colony,” p. 202.
10 “of a country very large”: Dello scoprimento, p. 53.
11 “Many are those”: Ibid., p. 54.
12 “a bad omen”: Ibid.
13 “into a sea of gloom”: Ibid., p. 54 verso.
14 “battered and thrown about”: Ibid.
15 “and we never knew”: Ibid.
16 “great torment”: Ibid.
17 “As we reached”: Ibid.
18 “The man said the name”: Ibid.
19 “The interpreter told us”: Ibid.
20 “so they could learn”: Ibid., p 55.
21 “in great hurry”: Ibid., p. 55 verso.
22 “They rushed down”: Ibid.
23 “A vast and well-armed multitude”: Ibid.
24 “to him that found the New Isle”: Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 187–88.
25 “clothed in beast skins and ate raw flesh”: Richard Biddle, A Memoir of Sebastian Cabot (London: Hurst, Chance and Co., 1831), p. 229.
26 “The sea grew rougher”: Dello scoprimento, p. 56.
Chapter Seven: Engroneland
1 “scruffy wimps”: The Frozen Echo, p. 21. Kirsten Seaver writes: “Skraelings—a contemptuous term, loosely translatable as ‘scruffy wimps,’ which the Norse used to describe the natives of Greenland and North America.”
2 “at the start of June”: Dello scoprimento, p. 56 verso.
3 “The air was sweet”: Ibid.
4 “We saw smoke”: Ibid., p. 56.
5 “they immediately gorged”: Ibid., p. 56 verso.
6 “short creatures”: Ibid.
7 “pusillanimous dwarfs”: Isolario, book 1, p. v verso.
8 “Inside was as a great fire”: Dello scoprimento, p. 56 verso.
9 “The air was clean”: Ibid.
10 “They were tired”: Ibid.
11 “Against my will”: Ibid., p. 57.
12 “I knew the island”: Ibid.
13 “both sides of Engroviland”: Ibid.
14 “I describe in it the countries”: Ibid., p. 57 verso.
15 “the life and deeds”: Ibid.
16 “I will add no more”: Ibid.
Chapter Eight: Squaring the Circle
1 “relicta ser Antonii Zeno”: Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cancelleria, folder 170, notaio Marco de Raphanellis.
2 “after twenty days of high fever”: Ennio Concina, L’Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia (Milan: Electa, 1984), p.153.
3 “the squaring of the circle”: From the memoirs of Walter Ghim, quoted in John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers (New York: Vintage, 2001), p. 89.
4 “an authority universally thought”: Remark by Girolamo Ruscelli, quoted in William Herbert Hobbs, “Zeno and the Cartography of Greenland,” Imago Mundi 6 (1949), p. 17.
5 “the North part”: Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, fol. 6, quoted in The North American Review 47 (1838), p. 191.
6 “the best geographer”: Nicholas Crane, Mercator (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 247.
7 “for collecting the maps”: Mercator, p. 248.
8 “most commodious”: John Dee, Mathematical Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (London: 1570).
9 “half challenged by the learned”: Ibid.
10 “and little and little wynne”: Ibid.
11 “It will be universally agreed”: John Dee, The Limits of the British Empire, edited by Ken MacMillan and Jennifer Abeles (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2004), p. 38.
12 “rising like pinnacles of steeples”: The comment is by Christopher Hall, Frobisher’s navigator, and is quoted in Robert McGhee, The Last Imaginary Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 156.
13 “great open sea”: Richard Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1867), p. 83.
14 “This recovery is speedily”: The Limits of the British Empire, p. 48.
15 “the Spaniard occupieth not”: Ibid.
16 “I declared to the Queen”: The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, edited by James Orchard Halliwell (London: Camden Society, 1842), p. 4. Entry for Nov. 28, 1577.
17 “Concerning a New Location”: The Limits of the British Empire, p. 37.
18 “Certain Noteworthy things”: Ibid., p. 38.
19 “We made the land perfect”: The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, p. 124.
20 “appeareth by a description”: Ibid., p. 125.
21 “[The Zens] have in their sea cards”: Ibid.
22 “islands of ice”: Ibid., p. 126.
23 “great bigness and depth”: Ibid.
24 “fresh and sweet to the taste”: Ibid.
25 “bred in the sounds”: Ibid.
26 “lying becalmed”: Ibid., p. 125.
27 “a great fish called a hollibut”: Ibid.
28 “a kind of coral”: Ibid.
29 “may be found very rich”: Ibid.
30 “we plucked down our tents”: Ibid., p. 152.
31 “drew his dagger”: The Last Imaginary Place, p. 165.
32 “He threatened to kill him”: Ibid.
33 “The general and other gentlemen”: The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, p. 232.
34 “much amazed”: Ibid., p. 233.
35 “a box of small nails”: Ibid.
36 “this West England”: Ibid.
37 “the grace to set fast footing”: Richard Hakluyt, Divers Voyages touching the Discoverie of America and the Islands Adjacent (London: 1582), p. 8.
38 “I conceive great hope”: Ibid., p. 23.
Chapter Nine: Venetian Puzzle
1 “one of the most puzzling”: John Pinkerton, History of Scotland, vol. 1, p. 261n, quoted in The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas, in the XIVth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1873), introduction, p. iii.
2 “reared his fabulous structure”: Remarks on the Voyages,” p. 119.
3 “fabrications”: Ibid., p. 128.
4 “[how] difficult [it was] to select”: Ibid., p. 109.
5 “not worth a refutation”: Ibid., p. 112.
6 “It is not from the south”: Ibid., p. 126.
7 “The great majority of geographers”: “Voyages of the Zeni,” Leigh Hunt’s London Journal, August 15, 1835, n. 72.
8 “reviewed with impartiality”: Examen critique, p. 122.
9 “the extreme confusion”: Ibid.
10 “there never existed an island of Frislanda”: “Remarks on the Voyages,” p. 105.
11 “This monastery”: Examen critique, p. 127.
12 “most formidable assailant”: The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, p. vii.
13 “the effort from the pen”: Ibid., p. viii.
14 “a ray of hope”: Ibid.
15 “has expanded into noon day light”: The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, p. viii.
16 “the peculiar phenomenon”: Ibid., p. i.
17 “duty … to track”: Ibid., pp. i and ii.
18 “because I claim the argument”: Ibid., p. xxvi.
19 “good geography”: Ibid., p. xxxvii.
20 “Ignorance of the geography of the north”: Ibid., p. xxv.
21 “The result has been to prove”: Ibid., p. viii.
22 “The honour of a distinguished man”: Ibid., p. cii.
23 “grubbing in the archives”: John Law, “Grubbing in the Archives: Rawdon Brown and Venetian Sources,” in Rawdon Brown and the Anglo-Venetian Relationship, edited by Ralph Griffiths and John Law (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Nonsuch, 2005), p. 135.
24 “The curious Mr. Brown continually talks”: Effie in Venice, edited by Mary Lutyens (London: Pallas Editions, 2001), p. 107.
25 “The book which had been declared”: The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, p. cii.
Postscript
1 “a contemptible literary fraud”: The Annals of the Voyages, p. 143.
2 “a fake”: Roberto Almagià, Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, vol. 35 (Rome: 1949), p. 921.
3 “a figment of the author’s imagination”: Ibid.
4 “conclusively proves”: “Zeno and the Cartography of Greenland,” p. 19.
Select Bibliography
The Zen Controversy
The story of the Zen voyages has generated enough books and articles in the past four and a half centuries to fill a small library. The following is a list of the more significant ones:
Beauvois, Eugène. Les voyages transatlantiques des Zeno. Louvain: Istas, 1890.
Beazley, Raymond. “The Voyages of the Zeni.” The Geographical Journal, 13, no.2 (1899), pp. 166–170.
Buache, Jean Nicolas. “Mémoire sur l’île de Frislande,” in Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences. Paris: 1787, pp. 430–53.
Da Mosto, Andrea. “I navigatori Nicolò e Antonio Zen,” in Ad Alessandro Luzio gli Archivi di Stato Italiano. Miscellanea di studi storici, vol. 1. Florence: Le Monnier, 1933, pp. 293–308.
Eggers, Heinrich Peter von. Uber die Wahre Lage des alten Ostgronlands. Kiel: 1794.
Fiske, John. The Discovery of America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1892.
Forster, John Reinhold. History of the Voyages and Discoveries made in the North. London: Robinson, 1786.
Hobbs, William H. “Zeno and the Cartography of Greenland.” Imago Mundi 6 (1949): pp. 15–19.
Humboldt, Alexander von. Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent, 2 vols. Paris: Gide, 1836–37.
Krarup, F. Zeniers Reise til Norden. Copenhagen: 1878.
Lelewel, Joaquin. “Tavola di navicare di Nicolò e Antonio Zeni.” Geographie di Moyen Age 4 (1852): pp. 77–108.
Lucas, Frederick W. The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno in the North Atlantic about the End of the Fourteenth Century and the Claim found thereon to a Venetian Discovery of America. London: Stevens, Son and Stiles, 1898.
Major, Richard Henry. “The Site of the Lost Colony of Greenland Determined and Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America Confirmed, from 14th Century Documents.” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 43 (1873): pp. 156–206.
———. The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno in the Northern Seas in the XIV Century. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1873.
Malte-Brun, Conrad. Atlas complet du précis de la géographie universelle. Paris: Aimé André, 1832.
Padoan, Giorgio. “Sulla relazione cinquecentesca dei viaggi nord-atlantici di Nicolò e Antonio Zen (1383–1403).” Quaderni veneti 9 (1989): pp. 7–104.
Pohl, Frederick J. Prince Henry Sinclair: His Expedition to the New World in 1398. New York: Potter, 1974.
Rafn, Carl Christian. Antiquitates americanae, sive scriptores septentrionales rerum ante-columbianarum. Copenhagen: Societas Regia Antiquariarum Septentrionalium, 1837.
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista. Navigazioni e viaggi, edited by Marica Milanesi, 6 vols. Turin: Einaudi, 1978.
Smith, Brian. “The Zen Voyages.” The New Orkney Antiquarian Journal 2 (2002); online edition.
Steenstrup, Japetus. Les voyages des frères Zeni dans le nord: compte rendu du Congrès des américanistes. Copenhagen: 1884.
Storm, Gustav. Om Zeniernes rejser. Christiania: Norske Geografiske Selskab, 1891.
Terra Rossa, Padre Vitale. Riflessioni geografiche circa le terre incognite. Padua: Cadorino, 1686.
“The Voyages of the Zeni.” The North American Review 47 (1838): pp. 177–206.
Torfeus, Thormod. Historia Vinlandiae antiquae. Copenhagen: 1705.
“Voyages of the Zeni.” Leigh Hunt’s London Journal 72 (1835), p. 271.
Wood, Tony. “Confections of Zeno.” Cabinet Magazine 18 (2005); online edition.
Zahrtmann, Christian. “Remarks on the Voyages to the Northern Hemisphere Ascribed to the Zenis of Venice.” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 5 (1835): pp. 102–28.
Zen, Nicolò. De i Commentarii del viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno il K. et delle guerre fatte nell’Imperio Persiano, dal tempo di Ussuncassano in qua. Et dello scoprimento dell’isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engroveland, Estotilanda, et Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico, da due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò l K. et M. Antonio. Libro uno. Con un disegno particolare di tutte le dette parti di tramontana da lor scoperte. Venice: Marcolini, 1558.
Zurla, Placido. Dissertazione intorno ai viaggi e scoperte settentrionali di Nicolò ed Antonio fratelli Zeno. Venice: Zerletti, 1808.
Venice in the Late Middle Ages
In the 1980s Giorgio Padoan, eminent scholar of medieval and Renaissance studies and a longtime professor at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University, combed the Archivio di Stato for information on Nicolò and Antonio Zen: birth and death certificates related to their families, official appointments, property deeds, wills, etc. I made ample use of his prodigious research during my own hunt for archival material on the Zen family. Padoan’s exhaustive 1989 essay (see above) contains a detailed list of documents and their classification.
The following is a short bibliography on the late-medieval world of Nicolò and Antonio Zen:
Balard, Michel. “La lotta contro Genova,” in Storia di Venezia dalle origini della Serenissima alla caduta della Repubblica, vol. 3. Rome: Enciclopedia Treccani, 1997, pp. 87–126.
Blanc, Alberto. Le flotte mercantili dei veneziani. Venice: Ongania, 1896.
Carus-Wilson, Eleanora Mary. Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies. London: Methuen, 1954.
Cessi, Roberto. Politica ed economia di Venezia nel Trecento. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1952.
Chinazzo, Daniele di. Cronica de la guerra di veneciani a zenovesi, edited by Vittorio Lazzarini. Venice: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Venezie, 1958.
Doumerc, Bernard. “Le galere da mercato,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 12, Il mare. Rome: Enciclopedia Treccani, 1991, pp. 357–95.
Hocquet, Jean Claude. “I meccanismi dei traffici,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3. Rome: Enciclopedia Treccani, 1997, pp. 529–616.
———. “L’armamento privato,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 12, Il mare. Rome: Enciclopedia Treccani, 1991, pp. 397–434.
Lane, Frederick C. Venice: A Maritime Republic. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
———. Andrea Barbarigo, Merchant of Venice 1418–1449. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944.
———. Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1934.
Luzzatto, Gino. Storia economica di Venezia dall’ XI al XVI secolo. Venice: Centro Internazionale dell’Arte e del Costume, 1961.
———. “Navigazione di linea e navigazione libera.” Studi di Storia Economica Veneziana. Padua: 1954, pp. 53–58.
Molmenti, Pompeo. La storia di Venezia nella vita privata dalle origini alla caduta della Repubblica, 3 vols. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1908.
Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice. New York: Knopf, 1982.
Sapori, Armando. The Italian Merchant in the Middle Ages. New York: Norton, 1970.
Stokly, Doris. Le système de l’Incanto des galées du marché de Venise (fin du 13ième siècle—milieu du 15ième siècle). Leiden, New York, Koln: Brill, 1995.
Tenenti, Alberto, and Corrado Vivanti. “Le film d’un grand système de navigation: les galere marchandes vénitiennes (XV-XVI siècles).” Annales d’economie, société et civilisation 16, no. 1 (1961): pp. 83–86.
Tucci, Ugo. “L’impresa marittima: uomini e mezzi,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 2. Rome: Enciclopedia Treccani, 1995, pp. 627–59.
Zen, Jacopo. Vita Caroli Zeni. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1940–41.
On the Renaissance World of Nicolò the Younger
Barbaro, Daniele. I dieci libri del’architettura di Vitruvio. Venice: Marcolini, 1556.
Bordone,
Benedetto. Isolario. Venice: Zoppino, 1534.
Broc, Numa. La geografia del Rinascimento. Modena: Panini, 1996.
Casali, Scipione. Gli annali della tipografia veneziana di Francesco Marcolini. Bologna: Gerace, 1953. Reprint of the 1861 edition, with an introduction by Luigi Servolini.
Concina, Ennio. Dell’Arabico: a Venezia tra Rinascimento e Oriente. Venice: Marsilio, 1990.
———. “Fra Oriente ed Occidente: gli Zen, un palazzo e il mito di Trebizonda,” in Tafuri, Manfredo, Renovatio Urbis: Venezia nell’età di Andrea Gritti. Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1986.
———. L’Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia. Milan: Electa, 1984.
Cozzi, Gaetano. Repubblica di Venezia e Stati Italiani. Torino: Einaudi, 1882.
Crouzet-Pavan, Elizabeth. Venezia trionfante: gli orizzonti di un mito. Torino: Einaudi, 2001.
Epstein, Marion. Francesco Marcolini, Anton Francesco Doni and Pietro Aretino: Facts, Figures and Fancies. Unpublished manuscript, 1979. Venice: Biblioteca Marciana.
Frommel, Sabine. “Sebastiano Serlio e il palazzo Zen a Venezia.” Annali di architettura 13 (2001): pp. 53–69.
———. Sebastiano Serlio architetto. Milano: Electa, 1997.
Magnus, Olaus. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Rome: 1555.
Penrose, Boies. Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, 1420–1620. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952.
Procaccioli, Paolo, ed., Studi per “Le Sorti”: Gioco, immagini, poesia oracolare a Venezia nel Cinquecento. Treviso-Roma: Fondazione Benetton Studi e Ricerche—Viella, 2007.
Procaccioli, Paolo, and Angelo Romano, eds. Cinquecento capriccioso e irregolare: Eresie letterarie nell’Italia del classicismo. Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 1999.
Quondam, Amedeo. “Nel giardino del Marcolini: un editore veneziano tra Aretino e Doni,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 97 (1980): pp. 75–116.
———. “La letteratura in tipografia.” Letteratura italiana, vol. 2. Torino: Einaudi, 1983, pp. 555–686.
Richardson, Brian. Print Culture in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia città nobilissima et singolare descritta in XIII libri. Venice: Martinioni, 1663.
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