First Use of “Porto Santo” as Name of One of the Madeiras
A claim has been set up by the Portuguese that Porto Santo (Holy Port) was first applied to this island by their rediscoverers of the next century in honor of their safe arrival after peril, but this is abundantly confuted by its presence on divers fourteenth-century maps, notably the Atlante Mediceo[57] of 1351. Also the Book of the Spanish Friar,[58] dating from about the middle of that century, contains in his enumeration of islands the words “another Desierta, another Lecname, another Puerto Santo.” It would seem to have been a familiar appellation about 1350 or earlier, and the suggestion naturally occurs that it may have originated in the tradition of the visit and blessing of the Irish saint. At any rate, the Portuguese, in the fifteenth-century rediscovery, can have had nothing to do with conferring it.