John Cabot
Life
Venice
Little is known about Cabotos childhood. His family could be related to cabotaggio, a term which described the coastal shipping.
By no later than 1461, he lived in Venice, where he in 1476 applied for recognition as citizens. This presupposed that he had been permanently resident in the city at least for 15 years. In 1482 he married the Venetian Mattea, with whom he had three sons. Their names were Ludovico, Sebastiano and Sancio. In Chioggia and Venice in the actual earned and he sold real estate to more in 1551 arguing that his descendants with the Venetian Council of Ten.
Spain
According to the studies of the Juan Gil Caboto had to leave no later than 1490 totally in debt from Venice. He will be referred to explicitly in a payment instruction from 1494 as " Venetian ". No later than the middle of this year, he appeared in Valencia. Whether he, as he claimed in 1497 in Portugal, the Middle East in the spice trade was active and even had visited Mecca, can no longer occupy. 1492-1493 he was involved with Port works in a location near Valencia. At the turn of 1493/94 he was in Seville, where he worked in the second half of 1494 on a bridge construction project, which was, however, canceled the end of the year. Already here and later in Lisbon he was trying to get crew and ship.
England
In 1496, four years after Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean, Caboto was looking for a more northern, shorter route from Europe to Asia. He was supported by King Henry VII of England. The king stood on March 5, 1496 from a letter of protection for John Cabot and his three sons in Westminster. Cabot sailed from Bristol, but reached only Greenland, as he was forced because of a dispute with the crew, food shortages and bad weather to return - as we know from a letter from merchant John Day. In January 1496 the Spanish ambassador reported at the English court of " a like Columbus ," a statement to which the response of the royal couple explicitly referring to.
It is no coincidence that Caboto Bristol to the starting point selected, because the local merchants had been trying since the 1480s to explore the North Atlantic. They may be penetrated as far as Newfoundland.
Discoveries
In May 1497 he broke with the ship Matthew at Bristol. On board next to 18 -man crew was his son Sebastian. On June 24 he met on uninhabited land, which he considered China and Terra de prima vista called. In fact, he'd Newfoundland, New England or Labrador entered. Where exactly is unclear. Cabot returned to Bristol in August.
Despite the limited success they now hoped certainly to reach the other route, Asia. On February 3, 1498 was " Kabotto, venecian " a new privilege. It is the last source that mentions him. Caboto was allowed it to dig teams and equip up to six ships, to continue his journey. The fate Cabotos and the route of the journey is not known.
Sources to the voyages of discovery
Besides the two royal privileges, the mention of discoveries as the trips or the June 24, 1497, we have little evidence of Cabotos landing in North America. In a letter of Lorenzo Pasquaiigo, a trader residing in London to his brother in Venice, the trip is mentioned. The letter is dated August 23, 1497th Among the sources, were more remote also includes the 1589 quoted by Hackluyt map Cabotos, more precisely their legend. In this June 24, 1497 is referred to as the date of discovery. In an Oxford copy of the map of his son Sebastiano, however, the year 1494 appears as a time of discovery.
Reception
As a kind of counterpoint to the Spanish discovery and conquest of southern America Caboto was used from the outset for the support of the English, later British claim to North America, especially since he had a mandate to take all the land for England in possession of what he discovered new. Moreover, brought with him "Wild ", who dressed in skins, and eating raw meat, to legitimize the occupation of " unused " land served.
It was just too much of his life and of his travels unknown. Did about to see Johann Georg Kohl from the dry details, he sailed southward to the level of North Carolina, as Gottlieb August Wimmer saw the southernmost point of his journey at Virginia.
A completely different direction took the reception in Italy and in the Italian community in Canada. Firstly, put the Italian community in Montreal Frenchman Jacques Cartier an older explorers, namely Caboto contrary. In the 1920s, they continued through the construction of a statue in memory of him. At the annual celebrations on 24 June, the local fascists appeared in black shirts. With the declaration of war against fascist Italy not only numerous supporters of Mussolini were interned, but the Italian community disappeared after a few attacks almost in the public perception. French as Italians insisted on their national identity, while the language was of great importance. Therefore, about Filippo Salvatore 1978 regretted in a poem: " Giovanni, ti hanno eretto un monumento, ma ti hanno cambiato nome, qui ti chiamano John " (Giovanni, they have you built a monument, but they have changed your name, here they call up John ).
Others, such as Giovanni Casini, put him a monument that stands at the corner of Atwater and Ste - Caterine Street in Montreal. The Veneto Region 1997 it installed a commemorative plaque at the Port of Halifax. In Edmonton, the park was renamed near the Italian community in Giovanni Caboto Park in Windsor and there was a 1925 Giovanni Caboto Club, which built a Cabotostatue of granite from Newfoundland in 1997.
In Italy, which in the conquest and colonization of America initially had a large share, turned the dispute over the origin Cabotos if he so was Genoese or Venetian. So it looked about 1762 the painter Giustino Menescardi ( 1720-1806 ) in his painting in traditional Venetian clothes ( see picture above).
For Canadians Caboto was downright reinterpreted as a Newfoundland fisherman. In contrast, in turn defended Nova Scotia, whose Historical Society had erected on Breton Iceland a plaque on the landing Cabotos is claimed "near ". The place is now called Cabot 's Landing.