![Pizzigano 1424 map (Antilia islands detail)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Pizzigano_1424_map_%28Antilia_islands_detail%29.JPG)
The island of Satanazes (also called the Island of Devils, or the Hand of Satan) is a
legendary island once thought to be located in the
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
, and depicted on many 15th-century maps.
Cartographic depiction
In 15th-century
portolan chart
Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word ''portolan'' comes from the Italian ''portulano'', meaning "related to ports or harbors", and wh ...
s, the island of Satanazes is depicted as lying out in the north
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
, due west of the
Azores
)
, motto =( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace")
, anthem= ( en, "Anthem of the Azores")
, image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg
, map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union
, map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...
and
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
, and just north of the legendary island of
Antillia
Antillia (or Antilia) is a phantom island that was reputed, during the 15th-century age of exploration, to lie in the Atlantic Ocean, far to the west of Portugal and Spain. The island also went by the name of Isle of Seven Cities (''Ilha das S ...
.
The island was first depicted in the 1424
portolan chart
Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word ''portolan'' comes from the Italian ''portulano'', meaning "related to ports or harbors", and wh ...
of
Venetian cartographer
Zuane Pizzigano
Zuane Pizzigano (sometimes given as Giovanni Pizzigano), was a 15th-century Republic of Venice, Venetian cartographer. He is the author of a famous 1424 portolan chart, the first known to depict the phantom islands of the purported Antillia archip ...
. It is drawn as a large, blue rectangular island, indented with bays and five or six settlements, with the inscription ''ista ixolla dixemo satanazes'', which has been translated as "this is the island called of the devils".
In his 1424 chart, Pizzigano placed Satanazes some sixty leagues north of the large ''
Antillia
Antillia (or Antilia) is a phantom island that was reputed, during the 15th-century age of exploration, to lie in the Atlantic Ocean, far to the west of Portugal and Spain. The island also went by the name of Isle of Seven Cities (''Ilha das S ...
'' island. Pizzigano capped Satanazes with a little umbrella-shaped island he labels ''Saya'' (which later cartographers will call ''Tanmar'' or ''Danmar''). These three islands, plus ''
Ymana'' (later called ''Royllo'', a little companion west of Antillia), would be collectively drawn together in many later 15th-century maps, with the same relative size, position and shape Pizzigano originally gave them, and known collectively as the "Antillia group" or (to use Bianco's label) the ''insulae de novo rep(er)te'' ("islands newly reported").
In
Grazioso Benincasa's 1463 atlas, the settlements on Satanazes island are named Araialis, Cansillia, Duchal, Jmada, Nam and Saluaga.
Cartographic appearances of Satanazes:
* 1424 map of
Zuane Pizzigano
Zuane Pizzigano (sometimes given as Giovanni Pizzigano), was a 15th-century Republic of Venice, Venetian cartographer. He is the author of a famous 1424 portolan chart, the first known to depict the phantom islands of the purported Antillia archip ...
of
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
as ''ista ixolla dixemo satanazes''
* 1435 map of
Battista Beccario
Battista Beccario, also known as Baptista Beccharius (name also sometimes given as "Beccaria", "Beccari" or "Bedrazio"), was a 15th-century Genoese cartographer.
Virtually nothing is known of his life. Battista is probably a relative (perhaps a ...
of
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...
as ''Satanagio''
* 1436 map of
Andrea Bianco
The Bianco World Map is a map created by ''Andrea Bianco'', a 15th-century Venetian sailor and cartographer. This map was a part of a nautical atlas including ten pages made of vellum (each measuring 26 × 38 cm). These vellum pages w ...
of
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
as ''Ya de la man satanaxio''
* 1463, 1470 and 1482 maps of
Grazioso Benincasa of
Ancona
Ancona (, also , ) is a city and a seaport in the Marche region in central Italy, with a population of around 101,997 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region. The city is located northeast of Rome, on the Adriatic ...
as ''Saluaga''/''Salvaga'' (u and v are equivalent)
* 1460s anonymous
Weimar map (attrib. to Conte di Ottomano Freducci of Ancona) as ''Salvagio''.
* 1480 and 1489 maps of Pedro Roselli of
Majorca as ''Salvatga''
* 1480 and 1489 maps of Albino de Canepa of Venice as ''Salvagia''
* 1487 map of anonymous Majorcan cartographer as ''Salvaja''
* 1493 Laon globe as ''Salirosa''
Significantly, the island of Satanazes is omitted on the maps of
Bartolomeo Pareto
Bartolomeo Pareto was a medieval priest and cartographer from Genoa who is best known for his sole surviving work, a 1455 nautical chart of the known world. The chart is highly ornate and is notable for its depiction of Antillia, a phantom island ...
(1455), Cristoforo Soligo (c. 1475) Grazioso's son Andrea Benincasa (1476) and the Nuremberg globe of
Martin Behaim
Martin Behaim (6 October 1459 – 29 July 1507), also known as and by various forms of , was a German textile merchant and cartographer. He served John II of Portugal as an adviser in matters of navigation and participated in a voyage to W ...
(1492), even though they all include
Antillia
Antillia (or Antilia) is a phantom island that was reputed, during the 15th-century age of exploration, to lie in the Atlantic Ocean, far to the west of Portugal and Spain. The island also went by the name of Isle of Seven Cities (''Ilha das S ...
and some retain ''Saya''/''Tanmar''.
Satanazes disappears on practically all maps after
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
* lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo
* es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón
* pt, Cristóvão Colombo
* ca, Cristòfor (or )
* la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...
's voyages of the 1490s. It was possibly transplanted (in smaller form) to the
Isle of Demons, between Newfoundland and Greenland, e.g. the 1508 map of
Johannes Ruysch.
Etymology and legend
According to Cortesão, Pizzigano's 'Satanazes' is
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
for "satans" or "devils", Beccaria's 'Satanagio' is the same word in
Ligurian dialect and Bianco's 'Satanaxio' the same in
Venetian. The island disappears from maps after 1436, and reappears only in 1462 when Benincasa switches it to ''Salvaga'', meaning 'savage' – possibly a misreading, more probably a deliberate adjustment by Benincasa to avoid using the
profanity
Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...
of "devil". The Laon globe's 'Salirosa' is an apparent mis-transcription of 'Salvaga'.
Historians have conjectured the "Devils" of Satanazes might be a reference to the ''
Skræling
''Skræling'' (Old Norse and Icelandic: ''skrælingi'', plural ''skrælingjar'') is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the ...
s'' (
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
of
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...
and
Vinland
Vinland, Vineland, or Winland ( non, Vínland ᚠᛁᚾᛚᛅᚾᛏ) was an area of coastal North America explored by Vikings. Leif Erikson landed there around 1000 AD, nearly five centuries before the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John ...
) reported in the
Norse sagas, notably the
Grœnlendinga saga
''Grœnlendinga saga'' () (spelled ''Grænlendinga saga'' in modern Icelandic and translated into English as the Saga of the Greenlanders) is one of the sagas of Icelanders. Like the '' Saga of Erik the Red'', it is one of the two main sources on ...
and the
saga of Erik the Red
The ''Saga of Erik the Red'', in non, Eiríks saga rauða (), is an Icelandic saga on the Norse exploration of North America. The original saga is thought to have been written in the 13th century. It is preserved in somewhat different version ...
, which began to filter south around this time. Pizzigano may have constructed Satanazes island to capture their rough geographic location.
The possible connection between the Satanazes and the ''Skrælings'' was first proposed by Nordenskiöld (1889), his attention drawn by an inscription on some islands between Newfoundland and Greenland in the 1508 map of
Johannes Ruysch, which notes how 'devils' located there attacked sailors (See
Isle of Demons). The connection need not require direct knowledge of the Norse sagas themselves, e.g.
Fridtjof Nansen has drawn attention to how Norse encounters with North American 'demons' were adopted in Irish ''
immram
An immram (; plural immrama; ga, iomramh , 'voyage') is a class of Old Irish tales concerning a hero's sea journey to the Otherworld (see Tír na nÓg and Mag Mell). Written in the Christian era and essentially Christian in aspect, they pres ...
a''. Given the tendency of the legends of Atlantic seafarers – Norse, Irish, Arab and Iberian – to move quickly and cross-fertilize each other, the news of an Isle of Devils out in the North Atlantic may have arrived to Italian cartographers via several channels.
Georg Hassel Johann Georg Heinrich Hassel (30 December 1770 in Wolfenbüttel – 18 January 1829 in Weimar) was a German geographer and statistician. He was an influential figure in the early 19th century and published several large books of geography and ...
conjectured that, by their size and shape, the large islands of Satanazes and Antillia may represent the coasts of
North America and
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
respectively, thus making it a possible testament of
pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that possible visits to the Americas, possible interactions with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from Africa, Asia, Europe, ...
. Babcock conjectures the representation might be of the
Caribbean, that Satanazes represents
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
(and Antillia Cuba, Roylla Jamaica and Tanmar the Bahamas).
Andrea Bianco
The Bianco World Map is a map created by ''Andrea Bianco'', a 15th-century Venetian sailor and cartographer. This map was a part of a nautical atlas including ten pages made of vellum (each measuring 26 × 38 cm). These vellum pages w ...
's 1436 long label ''Ya de la man santanaxio'' provoked Vicenzo Formaleoni (1783) to read it as the isle of "the Hand of Satan", an alternative name for Satanazes still found in some sources. Formaleoni proposed it might be connected to a legend from
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, about a giant hand that arose each day from the sea and carried off the inhabitants into the ocean. This legend is told in the ''Perigrinaggio di tre giovani'' (''
The Three Princes of Serendip
''The Three Princes of Serendip'' is the English version of the story ''Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo'' published by Michele Tramezzino in Venice in 1557. Tramezzino claimed to have heard the story from one Cristofor ...
'') first published in Venice in 1557 by Michele Tramezzino (alleged to be a translation from the
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
of a certain Christopher of Armenia, ''Christoforo Armeno''). The story might have been circulating earlier among
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
seafarers, traced in Irish
immram
An immram (; plural immrama; ga, iomramh , 'voyage') is a class of Old Irish tales concerning a hero's sea journey to the Otherworld (see Tír na nÓg and Mag Mell). Written in the Christian era and essentially Christian in aspect, they pres ...
a and Arab tales, about a giant hand in the Sea of Darkness that plucked sailors and sometimes entire boats, and dragged them to the bottom of the ocean. Gaffarel suggests this might be a reference to the
icebergs of the North Atlantic Ocean.
The Marquis d'Avezac (1845) launched yet another theory, reading 'satanaxio' as ''S. Atanaxio'', i.e. the island of
St. Athanasius. D'Avezac also makes the credible argument that the ''de la man satanaxio'' in Bianco's label is actually referencing two separate islands, Satanazes and ''Delaman'', probably the nearby ''Danmar'' or ''Tanmar'' of other maps, believed to be a reference to the legendary
Isle of Mam (Babcock proposed an alternate reading of Delaman/Danmar/Tanmar as ''I la Mar'', or "Island of the Sea".)
The discovery of the 1424 Pizzigano map in the 20th century, with its ''Satanazes'' clearly indicated, has allowed modern historians to set aside the old Hand of Satan/St. Athanasius theories, and embrace the Isle of Devils reading.
Despite all these conjectures, there is little agreement. Unlike its southern counterpart
Antillia
Antillia (or Antilia) is a phantom island that was reputed, during the 15th-century age of exploration, to lie in the Atlantic Ocean, far to the west of Portugal and Spain. The island also went by the name of Isle of Seven Cities (''Ilha das S ...
(which seems rather solidly connected to the
Iberian legend of the Seven Cities), Satanazes has been characterized as a legendary island in need of a legend.
[e.g. Morison, 1971 p.101]
References
Sources
* Christoforo Armeno (1557) ''Perigrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo'' as translated into Italian and published by Michele Tramezzino, Venice. (Eng. trans. as "The Three Princes of Serendip'')
* Babcock, W.H. (1922) ''Legendary islands of the Atlantic: a study in medieval geography'' New York: American Geographical Society
online* Buache, Jean-Nicholas (1806) "Recherches sur l'île Antillia et sur l'époque de la découverte de l'Amérique''Mémoires de l'Institut des Sciences, Lettres et Arts'', Vol. 6, Paris: Baudoin
p.1-29* Cortesão, Armando (1953) "The North Atlantic Nautical Chart of 1424" ''Imago Mundi'', Vol. 10
JSTOR* Cortesão, Armando (1954) ''The Nautical Chart of 1424 and the Early Discovery and Cartographical Representation of America''. Coimbra and Minneapolis. (Portuguese trans. "A Carta Nautica de 1424", published in 1975, ''Esparsos'', Coimbra
vol. 3
* Cortesão, Armando (1970) "Pizzigano's Chart of 1424", ''Revista da Universidade de Coimbra'', Vol. 24
offprint,
* D'Avezac, M.A.P. Marquis (1845) ''Les îles fantastiques de l'océan occidental au moyen âge: fragment inédit d'une histoire des îles de l'Afrique''. Paris: Fain & Thunot
online* Formaleoni, Vicenzio (1783) ''Saggio sulla Nautica antica de' Veneziani, con una illustrazione d'alcune carte idrografiche antiché della Biblioteca di S. Marco, che dimonstrano l'isole Antille prima della scoperta di Cristoforo Colombo''. Venice
online* Gaffarel, Paul (1882) "L'île des Sept Cités et l'île Antilia", ''Congresso Internacional de Americanistas, Actas de la Cuara Reunión, Madrid'', Madrid: Fortanet, vol. 1
p.198*
Georg Hassel Johann Georg Heinrich Hassel (30 December 1770 in Wolfenbüttel – 18 January 1829 in Weimar) was a German geographer and statistician. He was an influential figure in the early 19th century and published several large books of geography and ...
(1822) "America – Einleitung" in Caspari, et al. editors, ''Vollständiges Handbuch der neuesten Erdbeschreibung'', Weimar: Geographischen Instituts. vol. 1
p.6* Higginson, Thomas Wentworth (1899) ''Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic''. New York: Macmilla
online*
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, ...
(1837) ''Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent et des progrès de l'astronomie nautique aux quinzième et seizième siècles'', Paris: Gide
vol. II.* Morison, S.E. (1971) ''The European Discovery of America: The northern voyages, A.D. 500–1600''. Oxford University Press.
*
Fridtjof Nansen (1911) ''In Northern Mists; Arctic exploration in early times''. New York: F.A. Stokes
vol. 1vol. 2* Nordenskiöld, Adolf Erik (1889) ''Facsimile Atlas to the Early History of Cartography: with reproductions of the most important maps printed in the XV and XVI centuries'', Stockholm: Norstedt.
* Nordenskiöld, Adolf Erik (1897) ''Periplus: An Essay on the Early History of Charts and Sailing Directions'', tr. Frances A. Bather, Stockholm: Norstedt.
{{refend
Phantom islands of the Atlantic
Mythological islands
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact