Grumpy Cat
10-21-2010, 01:59 AM
Italian bank backed Cabot voyage to Newfoundland, new research reveals
1998 file photo of The Matthew, a replica of the 15th century ship sailed by John Cabot from Bristol to Newfoundland, arrives in Douarnenez, France after recreating the return leg of that voyage.
1998 file photo of The Matthew, a replica of the 15th century ship sailed by John Cabot from Bristol to Newfoundland, arrives in Douarnenez, France after recreating the return leg of that voyage.
Photograph by: Handout, Clive Mason /Allsport
Italy has just moved from the periphery toward centre stage in the opening act of Canadian history.
Historians probing medieval archives and a dead scholar's research notes have unearthed surprising new details about the financing of John Cabot's 1497 expedition across the Atlantic Ocean — the voyage that led to the European rediscovery of Canada some 500 years after the Vikings landed on Newfoundland's shores.
Cabot's landmark journey to the New World aboard the Matthew, completed just five years after Italian-Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus had reached the Americas in 1492, has been viewed by historians as a wholly English enterprise — despite Cabot's Italian birth — because of the ship's departure from Bristol and the royal charter granted to the transplanted sailor by King Henry VII.
But a team of researchers led by University of Bristol historian Evan Jones says it has found documents proving Cabot's voyage was made possible by a loan from a London-based Italian bank — recasting the famous 15th-century expedition as more of a multinational endeavour and rewriting the first chapter of the story of Canada.
With help from Jones and another British researcher, Margaret Condon, a third historian located documents in Italy that "confirm that Cabot was financed by an Italian bank in London," the University of Bristol-based Cabot Project has announced.
The discovery by Francesco Guidi Bruscoli, a leading expert in the history of Italian merchant banks, includes a ledger reference to "a 1496 loan made to 'Giovanni Chabotte viniziano' (John Cabot, Venetian) to undertake his exploration voyages," the team stated.
Further information about the find is not being released until the planned publication of a detailed study in an academic journal, said Jones.
The bank revelation is the latest in a string of discoveries related to the Cabot expeditions, all flowing from the research of the late British historian Alwyn Ruddock. The distinguished scholar had been preparing what exploration-era researchers expected would be a revolutionary biography of Cabot when she died in 2005.
But bizarrely, before her death, Ruddock ordered the destruction of much of her research for the never-published book.
In 2007, Jones published an article based on some of Ruddock's private writings — including a book outline she'd submitted to her publisher — that had escaped destruction by the executor of her will.
Among those materials were tantalizing clues about a previously unknown, short-lived Christian mission built in 1498 during Cabot's second voyage to Canada. That revelation, reported by Postmedia News in 2007, has prompted plans for an archeological survey in Newfoundland and fuelled further interest among discovery-era historians in trying to recreate Ruddock's lines of research.
Among the subsequent findings were documents supporting Ruddock's claim that a previously unknown voyage to North America was led in 1499 by English explorer William Weston.
The latest find, Jones told Postmedia News, appears to confirm another of Ruddock's major discoveries.
"One of the things that was particularly noteworthy about her book proposal (was that) she had clearly identified the bank involved, had worked on their account books and had found within them a reference to Cabot receiving a loan 'to go and discover new lands,' " Jones said.
"The Italians (notably the Venetians, the Genoese and the Florentines) were the most advanced merchants and financiers in late medieval Europe, with the big houses — the most famous being the Medici — having branches across Europe."
Jones hinted that several other significant discoveries about Cabot's voyages are taking shape and await formal publication.
He said retracing Ruddock's steps, though frustrating at times, has proven fruitful for the Cabot Project researchers.
The breakthrough on Cabot's financial backers, he noted, came about following the discovery of material found during a recent visit to the house Ruddock lived in until her death.
"It all got a bit 'Dan Brown' for a bit — with us piecing things together from annotations in books, a lost diary, scraps of paper that had survived the shredder, and, believe it or not, the sticky labels on an old shoe cabinet," said Jones.
It was, he added, "certainly the most bizarre primary source I've ever worked on."
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Italian+bank+backed+Cabot+voyage+Newfoundland+rese arch+reveals/3700925/story.html#ixzz12xFPGt00
1998 file photo of The Matthew, a replica of the 15th century ship sailed by John Cabot from Bristol to Newfoundland, arrives in Douarnenez, France after recreating the return leg of that voyage.
1998 file photo of The Matthew, a replica of the 15th century ship sailed by John Cabot from Bristol to Newfoundland, arrives in Douarnenez, France after recreating the return leg of that voyage.
Photograph by: Handout, Clive Mason /Allsport
Italy has just moved from the periphery toward centre stage in the opening act of Canadian history.
Historians probing medieval archives and a dead scholar's research notes have unearthed surprising new details about the financing of John Cabot's 1497 expedition across the Atlantic Ocean — the voyage that led to the European rediscovery of Canada some 500 years after the Vikings landed on Newfoundland's shores.
Cabot's landmark journey to the New World aboard the Matthew, completed just five years after Italian-Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus had reached the Americas in 1492, has been viewed by historians as a wholly English enterprise — despite Cabot's Italian birth — because of the ship's departure from Bristol and the royal charter granted to the transplanted sailor by King Henry VII.
But a team of researchers led by University of Bristol historian Evan Jones says it has found documents proving Cabot's voyage was made possible by a loan from a London-based Italian bank — recasting the famous 15th-century expedition as more of a multinational endeavour and rewriting the first chapter of the story of Canada.
With help from Jones and another British researcher, Margaret Condon, a third historian located documents in Italy that "confirm that Cabot was financed by an Italian bank in London," the University of Bristol-based Cabot Project has announced.
The discovery by Francesco Guidi Bruscoli, a leading expert in the history of Italian merchant banks, includes a ledger reference to "a 1496 loan made to 'Giovanni Chabotte viniziano' (John Cabot, Venetian) to undertake his exploration voyages," the team stated.
Further information about the find is not being released until the planned publication of a detailed study in an academic journal, said Jones.
The bank revelation is the latest in a string of discoveries related to the Cabot expeditions, all flowing from the research of the late British historian Alwyn Ruddock. The distinguished scholar had been preparing what exploration-era researchers expected would be a revolutionary biography of Cabot when she died in 2005.
But bizarrely, before her death, Ruddock ordered the destruction of much of her research for the never-published book.
In 2007, Jones published an article based on some of Ruddock's private writings — including a book outline she'd submitted to her publisher — that had escaped destruction by the executor of her will.
Among those materials were tantalizing clues about a previously unknown, short-lived Christian mission built in 1498 during Cabot's second voyage to Canada. That revelation, reported by Postmedia News in 2007, has prompted plans for an archeological survey in Newfoundland and fuelled further interest among discovery-era historians in trying to recreate Ruddock's lines of research.
Among the subsequent findings were documents supporting Ruddock's claim that a previously unknown voyage to North America was led in 1499 by English explorer William Weston.
The latest find, Jones told Postmedia News, appears to confirm another of Ruddock's major discoveries.
"One of the things that was particularly noteworthy about her book proposal (was that) she had clearly identified the bank involved, had worked on their account books and had found within them a reference to Cabot receiving a loan 'to go and discover new lands,' " Jones said.
"The Italians (notably the Venetians, the Genoese and the Florentines) were the most advanced merchants and financiers in late medieval Europe, with the big houses — the most famous being the Medici — having branches across Europe."
Jones hinted that several other significant discoveries about Cabot's voyages are taking shape and await formal publication.
He said retracing Ruddock's steps, though frustrating at times, has proven fruitful for the Cabot Project researchers.
The breakthrough on Cabot's financial backers, he noted, came about following the discovery of material found during a recent visit to the house Ruddock lived in until her death.
"It all got a bit 'Dan Brown' for a bit — with us piecing things together from annotations in books, a lost diary, scraps of paper that had survived the shredder, and, believe it or not, the sticky labels on an old shoe cabinet," said Jones.
It was, he added, "certainly the most bizarre primary source I've ever worked on."
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Italian+bank+backed+Cabot+voyage+Newfoundland+rese arch+reveals/3700925/story.html#ixzz12xFPGt00