João Vaz Corte-Real

João Vaz Corte-Real, history painting,
19th century

João Vaz Corte-Real [ ʒu̯ɐ̃u̯ vaʃ ˈkoɾtɯ ʁiˈaɫ ] (also Corte Real or Cortereal ; * approx. 1429 in Faro ; † 1496 in Angra do Heroísmo ) was a noble knight and seafarer from Portugal . He was the son of Vasco Anes Corte Real , who had lived on the Azores island of Terceira since 1450 .

Exploration trips

First journey

From fragmentary evidence it appears that Corte-Real, as the envoy of the Portuguese King Alfonso V, took part in a Danish expedition co-financed by the latter , which was led by the seafarers Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst . On behalf of King Christian I of Denmark and Norway, this company was supposed to restore the connection to Greenland , which was then broken off . In this context, Corte-Real reached Greenland with the other participants across the north-west Atlantic before 1473.

There are, however, suspicions that Corte-Real - either together with all the other expedition participants or alone with a ship - then reached North America . On-board records of this suspected part of the journey are not yet known. The details of the entire expedition have to be reconstructed from scattered sources and are therefore controversial in research.

Discovery of the Terra Nova do Bacalhau

According to other assumptions, Corte-Real is said to have discovered the island of Bacalhau , in Portuguese Terra Nova do Bacalhau, on a second trip accompanied by his sons Miguel and Gaspar . This name literally means "New Land of Cod". To this day it is unclear which island it was exactly, but it could have been Newfoundland .

If so, Corte-Real would have landed on the shores of North America about twenty years before Columbus . However, he would have been neither the only nor the first explorer of America in historical times, because the Vikings had already got there under the leadership of Leif Eriksson around the year 1000.

Governor of the Azores

As a reward for discovering Terra Nova do Bacalhau , João Vaz Corte-Real was given the title of Capitão-Donatário de Angra do Heroísmo in 1474 . He was thus feudal lord and governor of Terceira / Azores and consequently received lands on this island as a gift.

In 1483, João Vaz Corte-Real achieved a rank comparable to Terceira or an equivalent position in the Capitanía of the island of São Jorge .

Corte-Real's sons

His sons Gaspar , Miguel and Vasco Anes followed in their father's footsteps and also went to sea as captains. The first two are considered lost on expeditions to eastern North America, the first in 1501, the second in 1502. Vasco Anes wanted to go in search of his brothers, but the king refused his permission, as he was his father's successor as Capitão-Donatário was.

literature

• História de Portugal XIII - Dicionário de Personalidades . QuidNovi 2004, ISBN 989-554-118-X . (translated from English Wikipedia)
• Norman Berdichevsky: The role of "sibling rivalry" in the "(re) discovery" of America controversy . In: Journal of Cultural Geography . Vol. 12, No. 1, 1991, pp. 59-68.
  (Berdichevsky suggests that national rivalries between Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Denmark resulted in a joint Danish-Portuguese expedition involving Pothorst, Pining, and Corte-Real, which discovered mainland North America.)
• Thomas L. Hughes: The German discovery of America. A review of the controversy over Pining's 1473 voyage of exploration . In: German studies review . Vol. 27, No. 3, 2004, pp. 503-526.
  (Current research overview, which lists the open questions of the various interpretations and comes to the conclusion that it cannot be clearly decided how far Pining's journey led; cf. the report on a symposium of the GHI Washington on February 25, 2003, PDF , 37 kB.)
• Helge Ingstad: The Norse discovery of North America . In: Lund studies in English . Vol. 78, 1988, pp. 149-155.
• Klaus-Peter Kiedel: An expedition to Greenland in 1473 . In: German Shipping Archive . Vol. 3, 1980, pp. 115-140.
• Anton Josef Knott, Günther EH Baumann, Hans Schlotter: Dietrich Pining from Hildesheim landed in America 20 years before Columbus . Hildesheim 1992 ( publications of the Hildesheimer Heimat- und Geschichtsverein ).
• Robert McGhee: Northern Approaches. Before Columbus: Early European Visitors to the Shores of the "New World" . In: Beaver . Vol. 72, 1992, pp. 6-23.
• João Vaz Corte-Real - O algarvio que descobriu a América (pt)

Web links

• Corte-Real as a participant in a Portuguese-Danish expedition that is said to have reached America in 1473
• 19 years before Columbus: How two North Germans discovered America. , glossing piece in the Kieler Nachrichten, Oct. 10, 1992

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the page of the Portuguese edition of Wikipedia
2. ↑ Archivo dos Azores Vol. 4, page 473 ff.
3. ↑ Kirsten A. Seaver : The frozen echo: Greenland and the exploration of North America, approx. AD 1000–1500 , Stanford University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8047-3161-4 , pp. 199 ff. ( Limited preview in Google Book Search). However, Seaver's argument, which is largely based on Morrison, is not convincing and its weaknesses are highlighted by Janus Möller Jensen Denmark and the Crusades ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 1st ed., 2005, p. 164, clearly shown. 
4. ↑ Primary sources on the sea voyages of the Corte Real family ( Memento from August 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English)