Giovanni Battista Ramusio, in D. Thomas-J. Chesworth, Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical...

Christian-Muslim Relations A Bibliographical History

Volume 6. Western Europe (1500-1600)

Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth

with John Azumah, Stanisław Grodź, Andrew Newman, Douglas Pratt

LEIDEN • BOSTON2014

This is a digital offfprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV

CONTENTS

Foreword ....................................................................................................... vii

Abbreviations ............................................................................................... xi

Martha Frederiks, Introduction: Christians, Muslims and empires in the 16th century .................................................................................... 1

Nabil Matar, The Qur’an in English writings, 1543-1697 ......................... 11

Thomas E. Burman, European Qur’an translations, 1500-1700 ............ 25

Works on Christian-Muslim relations 1500-1600 ................................ 39

Spain ............................................................................................................... 41

Portugal .......................................................................................................... 295

Italy and Malta ............................................................................................. 395

France and Northern Europe ................................................................... 603

Index of Names ............................................................................................ 867

Index of Titles ............................................................................................... 880



Giovanni Battista RamusioDate of Birth 20 June 1485Place of Birth TrevisoDate of Death 25 April 1557Place of Death Venice

BiographyGiovanni Battista Ramusio began his career with the Venetian state in 1505 as straordinario di cancelleria (secretary to the chancery). His career as a public offfĳicial, which would last for 52 years until his death, saw him rise to the prestigious position of secretary of the Council of Ten, which he held for the last four years of his life. Alongside his career, he pursued and developed, without interruption, his interests in subjects that could broadly be defĳined as humanistic and scientifĳic. For Ramusio, these two ambits of his life existed in constant dialogue with one another. The cul-ture of humanism provided him with an important professional set of tools. His career, in turn, allowed him daily access to a wealth of infor-mation from a variety of countries. Venice was a prime point of conver-gence for this type of knowledge and the period was one in which the geographical understanding of the world was undergoing many transfor-mations. In addition, his service abroad as secretary to various ambassa-dors provided him with an opportunity to acquire considerable linguistic skills (at least in French and Spanish), and also to familiarise himself with foreign countries (France in particular) and to create contacts and form relationships.

His relatively calm life of study and work (his only child, Paolo, was born in 1532 from his marriage, in 1524, to Franceschina Navagero, who died in 1536) was marked by a few important friendships with prominent members of the cultural scene: Pietro Bembo, for whom he often worked, assisting him in the administration of the Marciana library; Girolamo Fracastoro, a Veronese doctor, from whom Ramusio received seven let-ters between 1533 and 1550, and to whom he dedicated the three volumes of the Navigationi; Andrea Navagero (until Navagero’s death in 1529), a poet and philologist, with whom Ramusio had distant ties of kinship. Through Navagero, the young Ramusio would come into contact with

giovanni battista ramusio 529


the printing offfĳice of Aldo Manuzio, who would dedicate his edition of Quintiliano’s Institutio oratoria (1514) to him.

The fĳirst texts of geographical interest published by Ramusio are the three Libri della historia delle Indie occidentali. Published in 1534, they con-tain Italian translations of works by Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (Book 1), Oviedo (Book 2) and a text on the conquest of Peru (Book 3). In 1536, Ramusio published an Italian translation of the French edition (1525?) of Viaggio fatto da gli Spagniuoli a torno a’l mondo, written by Anto-nio Pigafetta, who had survived the expedition with Magellan. Though Ramusio’s name does not appear in any of these books, scholars agree that he was responsible for editing them. During these years, he met fĳig-ures such as Damião de Gois and Olaus Magnus, the Bishop of Uppsala, who helped him obtain material on world travel. Diego Hurtado de Men-doza, brother of the viceroy of New Spain and the Spanish ambassador to Venice, provided him with material and information on the Americas. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, cronista de las Indias, was also in contact with Ramusio, though not just for matters of cultural exchange; in 1538 the two completed an agreement for the sale of leather and sugar from the Americas. Unfortunately we do not have any information about the outcome of the venture. Some years later, he was in contact with Sebas-tiano Caboto and the orientalist Guillaume Postel, who gave him a copy of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s Taqwīm al-buldān (‘A sketch of the countries’).

Between 1544 and 1548, he started a school in his own house for the education of his son and other adolescents. Among his collaborators on the project was Giacomo Gastaldi, the most important Italian cartogra-pher of the 16th century. Gastaldi’s work was greatly enriched by his rela-tionship with Ramusio, as can be seen in his maps of Africa and Asia and in the world map written in Turkish, created in Venice in 1568.

At the time of his death, in addition to the second volume of Navi-gationi, Ramusio was busy working on the Italian and Latin translation of Geofffroy de Villehardouin’s chronicle of the Fourth Crusade (1204), a project that had been entrusted to him by the Council of Ten.

MAIN SOURCES OF INFORMATIONPrimary

H. Fracastorii, De sympathia et antipathia rerum, Venice, 1546, fols 26v-28r (‘De quibusdam dubiis a Rhamnusio scriptis’)

530 giovanni battista ramusio


MS Venice, Biblioteca Marciana – It.VII.138 (8749) and It.VII.139 (8324) (Ramu-sio’s Italian trans. of G. de Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople) (16th century)

MS Venice, Archivio di Stato – Notarile, Testamenti, Atti Marsilio 1209 (454), 25 aprile 1557 (Ramusio’s last will)

Lettere di XIII huomini illustri, Venice, 1576 (Navagero’s and Fracastoro’s letters to Ramusio, fols 326v-367r)

P. Manuzio, Epistolarum libri XII, Venice, 1584, pp. 149-52MS Venice, Biblioteca Marciana – It.X.143 (6535) (letters to Ramusio by

P. Bembo, G. Cortese and others) MS Venice, Biblioteca Marciana – It.VII.325 (8839), Cronaca Ramusia (17th

century)E.A. Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane, Venice, 1827, ii, pp. 315-30M. Sanudo, I diarii, ed. R. Fulin et al., Venice, 1879-1902 (references to Ramusio

in vols 7, 16, 21, 23-31, 33, 37, 40-41, 43, 49, 51-52, 54, 56-58)F. Tarducci, Di Giovanni e Sebastiano Caboto. Memorie raccolte e documentate,

Venice, 1892 A. Gerbi, La natura delle Indie Nove, Milan, 1975, pp. 272-78 (contract between

Ramusio and Oviedo)M. Donattini, ‘G.B. Ramusio e le sue “Navigationi”. Appunti per una biografĳia’,

Critica Storica 17 (1980) 55-100P. Bembo, Lettere, ed. E. Travi, 4 vols, Bologna, 1987-93A. Del Ben, G.B. Ramusio cancelliere e umanista. Con l’edizione di 45 lettere a

P. Bembo, Trieste, 2004

Secondary

M. Donattini, ‘Ombre imperiali. Le Navigationi et viaggi di G.B. Ramusio e l’immagine di Venezia’, in M. Donattini, G. Marcocci and S. Pastore (eds), L’Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi. Per Adriano Prosperi, Pisa, 2011, ii, 33-44

M. Donattini, ‘Etica personale, promozione sociale e memorie di famiglia nella Venezia del Rinascimento. Note su Paolo Ramusio seniore (1443?-1506)’, in G.P. Brizzi and G. Olmi (eds), Dai cantieri della storia. Liber amicorum

per Paolo Prodi, Bologna, 2007, 317-29B. Jestaz, ‘Ramusio et le baume du Caire. Une curiosité à Venise au XVIe siècle’,

in O. Bonfait, V. Gerard Powell and P. Sénéchal (eds), Curiosité. Études

d’histoire de l’art en l’honneur d’Antoine Schnapper, Paris, 1998, 269-75M. Milanesi, ‘G.B. Ramusio e i cosmografĳi portoghesi’, in M.L. Cusati (ed.), Il Por-

togallo e i mari. Un incontro tra culture. Atti del Convegno internazionale

(Napoli, 15-17 dic. 1994), Naples, 1996, 231-48A. Del Ben, ‘La prima edizione della “Storia Veneta” del Bembo e una lettera

inedita di G.B. Ramusio’, Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Patavina di

Scienze Lettere ed Arti. Classe di Scienze Morali 107 (1994-5) 203-16A. Holzheimer and D. Buisseret, The ‘Ramusio’ map of 1534. A facsimile edition,

Chicago IL, 1992



M. Donattini, ‘Una famiglia riminese nella società e cultura veneziane. I Ramu-sio’, in D. Bolognesi (ed.), Ravenna in età veneziana. Materiali presentati al

convegno di studio, svoltosi nei giorni 9-11 dic. 1983, Ravenna, 1986, 279-94Donattini, ‘G.B. Ramusio e le sue “Navigationi”. Appunti per una biografĳia’R. Almagià, ‘A proposito del mappamondo in lingua turca della biblioteca Mar-

ciana’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Classe di Scienze

Morali e Lettere 118 (1959-60) 53-59G.B. Parks, ‘Ramusio’s literary history’, Studies in Philology 52 (1955) 127-48G. Levi della Vida, Ricerche sulla formazione del più antico fondo dei mss. orientali

della Vaticana, Vatican City, 1939, pp. 326, 336S. Grande, ‘Relazioni geografĳiche tra P. Bembo, G. Fracastoro, G.B. Ramusio e

G. Gastaldi’, Memorie della Società Geografĳica Italiana 12 (1905) 93-197A. del Piero, ‘Della vita e degli studi di G.B. Ramusio’, Nuovo Archivio Veneto

n.s. 2 (1902) 5-112E.A. Cicogna, Inscrizioni veneziane, Venice, 1827, ii, 315-30

Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsDelle navigationi et viaggi, ‘Navigations and voyages’ Navigationi, ‘Navigations’

Date Between 1543 and 1559Original Language ItalianDescriptionAs far as is known, Ramusio’s Navigationi et viaggi project began slowly and later in his life, when he was already more than 50 years old. The fĳirst record of it dates back to 1543, when a request to print one volume of the work was presented to the Venetian senate. The volume in question was diffferent from those he would eventually publish. His correspon-dence with Fracastoro was essential for the mounting and fĳinal stages of the work.

The three volumes of Navigationi were published in Venice over the span of a decade. During Ramusio’s lifetime, the fĳirst volume (1550, 405 folios; a second edition, expanded to include new texts followed in 1554, 436 folios) and the third volume (1556, 455 folios) were published. The second volume, published posthumously (1559, 191 folios), was introduced with a note to its readers signed by Tommaso Giunti. The note revealed the identity of the author, Ramusio, and attributed the late publication date to the loss in a fĳire of part of the material ready to print and the death of the author. The edition was indeed smaller than the others (the



second edition, in 1574, 256 folios, was greatly expanded). The notice-able imbalances and diffferences between the three volumes testify to the extensive labour that must have been required to compile them. In the case of the fĳirst, the abundance of travel accounts (26 in all), coupled with 14 contributions by the editor, give a clear indication that he dedi-cated more time to this volume. Defĳined as ‘discorsi’ by Ramusio, these interventions are at times long and dense (for example, the one describ-ing the flooding of the Nile, followed by a ‘risposta’ by Fracastoro; or his long text on the sale of spices). In this volume, contemporary accounts are often alternated with material from Antiquity, with the intent of demonstrating how much new knowledge of the world had been gained in comparison to the period of classical Antiquity. This aspect is much less present in the second volume (19 accounts and fĳive discourses, in the edition of 1574) and in the third volume (25 accounts and seven dis-courses, which in general are very brief). Though this defĳicit in the third volume is related to the novelty of material on the subject, the Americas, the same cannot be said of the second volume, which remains the least fĳinalised of the three. Together, the three volumes provided the contem-porary reader with the best possible description of the continents outside Europe, by documenting the great discoveries that had revolutionised Europe’s understanding of the world over the last half-century; with this very goal in mind, Ramusio embellished the fĳirst and the third volumes with geographical maps (three in the second edition of the fĳirst volume, drawn by Giacomo Gastaldi, on Africa, India and South East Asia; nine in the third).

Though Ramusio’s layout of the material shows no explicit programme, it follows a clear geographical and political order that can easily be reconstructed. The fĳirst volume contains texts on Africa and South Asia, and also on the coastal regions of Brazil, the territories around which the Portuguese Empire was constructed. In the third volume, concen-trated on the Americas, there is an evident distinction between materi-als related to the Spanish Empire (the majority) and those dedicated to the cold regions of the north-east, i.e. the French colonial effforts. In the second volume, dedicated to continental Asia, the material is divided into three unequal sections. Some accounts are about the expanses of Muscovy, under the growing power of the Tsar. Another two (Pietro Querini’s text, and an account of the Zeno brothers’ trip to Greenland in the second edition) take the reader towards more northern lands and seas. However, the texts that characterise the volume most, and which



are contextualised and elaborated by Ramusio, deal with the regions extending from the Caucasus towards Persia and China, areas that were known and written about by generations of Venetian travellers. Besides that of Marco Polo, considered a civilising hero by Ramusio, the most important accounts are provided by a group of Venetian ambassadors (Barbaro, Contarini, Zeno) sent to Persia to negotiate an alliance with the Shiʿī ruler Uzūn Ḥasan (d. 1478), the scope of the alliance being anti-Ottoman in nature. In its entirety, the volume is a knowing exaltation of the great influence exerted by Venice on that part of the world during this period.

Two other important aspects characterise the layout of the work. First, Ramusio’s investigation is focused on world geography and its recent transformations, but excludes any discussion of the anthropo-logical problems brought about by European colonial expansion (a stark contrast with the perspective of Las Casas or Acosta). Second, the work is focused on the parts of the world that were still unknown, or at least little known. Therefore, regions such as the Near East or the Ottoman world, which were so present in Italian and Venetian writings of the time, are completely ignored.SignificanceNavigationi et viaggi deals only indirectly with the relationship between Christianity and Islam, a question outside the direct interests of Ramu-sio, who ignores the relationship between civilisations or religious beliefs in his discourses. Ramusio’s cultural openness (not uncommon for a humanist) is, however, worth underlining. A good Venetian, he is convinced of the civilising power of commerce, and of the capacity of European law to establish colonies in the most distant of lands, follow-ing the Roman model. At the same time, he evaluates his sources on the basis of their intrinsic value, without ethnic or religious prejudice. Thus, not only does he offfer the reader accounts by travellers such as Niccolò de’ Conti and Ludovico Varthema, both of whom converted in order to extend their travels in the Islamic world (this is a known fact in the case of Conti and can be hypothesised in the case of Varthema), but he also admiringly includes texts by Muslim authors such as Leo Afri-canus and Abū l-Fidāʾ. The former’s La descrittione dell’Africa opens the fĳirst volume, and makes up a fourth of it. And according to Ramusio, the Taqwīm al-buldān by Abū l-Fidāʾ, ‘gran principe di Soria’ (which Ramusio received from Postel, including a small section in the second volume, fol. 18r), was essential for understanding the itinerary of the fĳirst trip of the



Polo brothers, and for guaranteeing the credibility of the most important text of the second volume.

To conclude, for Ramusio, openness and exchange between cultures was an essential condition for understanding the macchina del mondo (‘system of the world’), for mastering its structures and attributes, and for controlling it with reason – a necessary preparatory basis for any aspiration to political domination. Within this universal perspective, the knowledge supplied by the learned fĳigures of the Islamic world carries just as much weight as that coming from their Christian counterparts.

In similar works that came after Ramusio’s Navigationi et viaggi, this attitude gave way to another perspective. At the end of the 16th century, the culture of the Counter-Reformation gave life to a diffferent reading of the world – exemplifĳied by Giovanni Botero’s Relationi universali – in which Christianity’s spiritual conquest of the world becomes the central theme (Descendre, ‘Dall’occhio della storia’). In the same period, but out-side Italy, Richard Hakluyt, who knew Ramusio’s volumes well and cited them at length, would diminish the universal scope of the original work by putting the knowledge collected by the Venetian secretary at the ser-vice of a national colonial project: indeed, his Principal navigations deals exclusively with ‘the English nation’.Editions & Translations

Marco Polo, Il Milione nell’edizione di G.B. Ramusio, ed. F. Ursini, Rome, 2012

Léon l’Africain, Description de l’Afrique, trans. A. Époulard, Paris, 1980

M. Milanesi (ed.), Navigazioni e viaggi, 6 vols, Turin, 1978-88R.A. Skelton (ed.), Navigationi et viaggi. Venice, 1563-1606, 3 vols,

Amsterdam, 1967-70Marco Polo, Milión o záležitostech Tatarů . . . ve zpracování G.B. Ramu-

sia, ed. M. Mattušová, Prague, 1961Léon l’Africain, Description de l’Afrique, trans. A. Époulard, Paris,

1956Marco Polo, Delle cose de’ Tartari e dell’Indie Orientali . . . nella versione

di G.B. Ramusio, Venice, 1954Marco Polo, Il Milione nell’edizione di G.B. Ramusio, ed. R. Giani, Rome,

1954Marco Polo and G.B. Ramusio, Á la découverte de l’Amérique du

Nord . . ., ed. L. Langlois and M.J. Simon, Paris, 1933



Léon l’Africain, Description de l’Afrique, ed. C. Schefer and H. Cordier, Paris, 1896-98

C. Zeno and G.B. Ramusio, A narrative of Italian travels in Persia, with a preface by G.B. Ramusio, ed. C. Grey, London, 1873

H.E.J. Stanley of Alderley (ed.), Travels to Tana and Persia, by J. Bar-baro and A. Contarini, London, 1873

M.H. Michelant and A. Ramé (eds), Voyage de J. Cartier au Canada en 1534 d’après l’edition de 1598 et d’après Ramusio, Paris, 1865

‘El conquistador anonimo. Relación de algunas cosas de la Nueva España y de la gran ciudad de Temixtitán Mexico escrita por un compañero de H. Cortés’, in J. García Icazbalceta, Colección de documentos ineditos para la historia de Mexico, Mexico City, 1858, i, pp. 368-98 (edition of the text edited by Ramusio in Navigationi, vol. 3, in the Spanish trans. by J. García Icazbalceta)

G.B. Ramusio, Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e le navigazioni di Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto, di Pietro di Cintra, di Annone, di un piloto portoghese e di Vasco di Gama . . .Venice, 1837

Léon l’Africain, De l’Afrique, Paris, 1830 (modern edition of the Histo-riale description de l’Afrique, Lyon, 1556)

‘A relation of the discovery which . . . the fleet of . . . F. Cortéz made . . . Taken out of the third volume of J.B. Ramusio’, in Hak-luyt’s collection of the early voyages, vol. 3, London, 1809

H. Fracastorii . . . Carminum editio, vol. 1, Padua, 1739 (contains Ramu-sio’s Discorso on the Nile flood and Fracastoro’s answer)

Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 1, Venice, 1613Marco Polo, Chorographia Tartariae, oder Warhaffftige Beschreibung

der überaus wunderbahrlichen Reise . . . sampt einem Discurs Herrn J.B. Rhamnusii, Leipzig, 1611

Navigationi et viaggi, 3 vols, Venice, 1606Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 1, Venice, 1588Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 2, Venice, 1583Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 2, Venice, 1574Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 3, Venice, 1565Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 1, Venice, 1563Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 2, Venice, 1559F. Alvares, Historiale description de l’Ethiopie, Antwerp, 1558 (pirated

edition of the 2nd vol. of Historiale description de l’Afrique below)Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 3, Venice, 1556



Léon l’Africain, Historiale description de l’Afrique, tiers partie du monde, Antwerp, 1556 (French trans. of the fĳirst volume of Navigationi et viaggi)

Léon l’Africain, Historiale description de l’Afrique, tiers partie du monde, Lyons, 1556 (French trans. of the fĳirst volume of Navigationi et viaggi)

Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 1, Venice, 1554Navigationi et viaggi, vol. 1, Venice, 1550

studiesT. Veneri, ‘G.B. Ramusio, molto più di uno spettatore. Le quinte delle

Navigationi et viaggi’, Italica 89 (2012) 162-201Giovanni Battista Ramusio ‘editor’ del ‘Milione’. Trattamento del testo

e manipolazione dei modelli. Atti del seminario di ricerca (Venezia, 9-10 settembre 2010), Rome, 2011

R. Descendre, ‘Dall’occhio della storia all’occhio della politica. Sulla nascita della geografĳia politica nel Cinquecento (Ramusio e Botero)’, in E. Mattioda (ed.), Nascita della storiografĳia e organiz-zazione dei saperi, Florence, 2010, 155-79

F. Romanini, ‘Se fussero più ordinate, e meglio scritte . . .’ G.B. Ramusio correttore ed editore delle Navigationi et viaggi, Rome, 2007

J.M. Headley, ‘The sixteenth-century Venetian celebration of the earth’s total habitability. The issue of the fully habitable world for Renaissance Europe’, Journal of World History 8 (1997) 1-27

M. Milanesi, ‘G.B. Ramusio e le Navigazioni e viaggi (1550-1559)’, in R. Zorzi (ed.), L’epopea delle scoperte, Florence, 1994, 75-101

L. Stegagno Picchio, ‘Navigationi et viaggi’, in A. Asor-Rosa (ed.), Letteratura italiana. Le opere, Turin, 1993, ii, pp. 479-515

M. Donattini, ‘Orizzonti geografĳici dell’editoria italiana’, in A. Prosperi and W. Reinhard (eds), Il Nuovo Mondo nella coscienza italiana e tedesca del Cinquecento, Bologna, 1992, 79-154

L. Binotti, ‘Liburnio e Ramusio lettori delle crónicas delle conquiste spagnole’, Annali d’Italianistica 10 (1992) 80-95

S. Albertan-Coppola and M.C. Gomez Géraud, ‘La collection des Navigationi et viaggi (1550-1559) de G.B. Ramusio. Mécanismes et projets d’après les para-textes’, Revue des Etudes Italiennes, n.s. 36 (1990) 59-70

M. Milanesi, ‘Introduzione’, in Milanesi, Navigazioni e viaggi, v, 1985, xi-xxiii

M. Milanesi, Tolomeo sostituito. Studi di storia delle conoscenze geogra-fĳiche nel XVI secolo, Milan, 1984



L. Stegagno Picchio, Portugal e Portugueses no Livro das “Navigationi” de G.B. Ramusio, Lisbon, 1984

M. Milanesi, ‘Introduzione’, in Milanesi, Navigazioni e viaggi, i, 1978, xi-xxxvi

R.A. Skelton, ‘Introduction’, in Skelton, Navigationi et viaggi. Venice, vol. 1

D.F. Lach, Asia in the making of Europe, 1. The century of discovery, Chicago IL, 1965, pp. 204-8

M. Böhme, Die grossen Reisesammlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts und ihre Bedeutung, Amsterdam 19622, pp. 73-95

G.B. Parks, ‘The contents and sources of Ramusio’s “Navigationi” ’, Bul-letin of the New York Public Library 59 (1955) 279-313

S. Grande, Le carte d’America di G. Gastaldi, Turin, 1905

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