Flavio Gioia

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Monument to Flavio Gioja in Amalfi by Alfonso Balzico, 1900

The navigator Flavio Gioia (13th / 14th century) is venerated in Amalfi , the former maritime republic in Italy , as the supposed inventor of the compass with a monument at the port and a place named after him. However, the person is not historically guaranteed and is also claimed as a citizen by the neighboring municipality of Positano , today mainly for tourist reasons.

The compass itself is said to have been widespread in the Mediterranean before Gioia, but improvements are ascribed to it. The compass rose is understood as a tribute to Gioia's honor to Charles of Anjou , King of Naples at the time .

The origin of the legend can be traced back to two sources. First of all, in Flavio Biondos Italia Illustrata (1474) the following sentence can be found:

The people of Amalfi boast of having invented the use of the magnet to orient the course to the north, which may well be correct as this aid was certainly unknown to seafaring in ancient times.

Subsequently, Giovanni Battista Pio (1460–1540) wrote in his Lucretian commentary In Carum Lucretium poetam Commentarii (1511, p. 207):

Amalphi in Campania veteri magnetis usus inventus a Flavio traditur.

That can be translated as:

According to Flavio [Biondo] the use of the magnet [for seafaring] was invented in Amalfi, Campania.

Alternatively, the translation can also be:

The use of the magnet [for seafaring] was invented by Flavio in Amalfi, Campania.

According to legend, the surname Gioia goes back to a town of the same name.

In 1935, in honor of Gioia, the Gioja crater near the North Pole of the Moon was named after him.

literature

  • A. d'Arrigo: La Bussola amalfitane. In: Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Navale, Napoli. Vol. 26, No. 4 (1957), pp. 247-272
  • Konrad Kretschmer : The Italian Portolane of the Middle Ages . Berlin 1909, reprint Hildesheim 1962, pp. 73–81
  • Sophus Ruge , Walther Ruge , Konrad Kretschmer: The literature on the history of geography from the Middle Ages. Gotha 1895-1926, reprint Hildesheim 1980, p. 210f

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Discovery from 9th to 13th Century: Mariner's compass ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on sevenoceans.com, as of: September 29, 2007, in the Internet Archive at archive.org, viewed August 12, 2010 (English)
  2. ↑ Sacred Texts: Naval and Military on sacred-texts.com (English)
  3. ↑ Fama est qua Amalphitanos audivimus gloriari, magnetis usum, cuius adminiculo navigantes ad arcton diriguntur, Amalfi fuisse inventum, quidquid vero habeat in ea re Veritas, certum est id navigandi auxilium priscis omnino fuisse incognitum.
personal data
SURNAME Gioia, Flavio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian navigator
DATE OF BIRTH 12th century or 13th century or 14th century
DATE OF DEATH 13th century or 14th century or 15th century