The Beccario Map of 1426
The alternative names, which had been given the Madeira group by Dulcert and the Pizigani, commemorating both the general fact of repose or blessedness and the delighted visit of St. Brendan, were closely blended (in what became the accepted formula) by the 1426 map of Battista Beccario, which unluckily had never been published in reproduction. Before the war, however, the writer obtained a good photograph of a part of it from Munich and herewith presents a section recording the words “Insulle fortunate santi brandany” ([Fig. 3]).[60] The first “a” of the final name may possibly be an “e,” having been obscured by one of the compass lines; but I think not. Beccario repeats the same inscription in his very important and now well-known map[61] of 1435, substituting “sancti” for “santi” by way of correction.
With no serious variations, this name, “The Fortunate Islands of St. Brandan” (or Brendan), is applied to Madeira and her consorts by Pareto (1455;[62] [Fig. 21]), Benincasa (1482;[63] [Fig. 22]), the anonymous Weimar map formerly attributed to 1424 but probably of about 1480 or 1490,[64] and divers others. In several instances (the Beccario maps, for example) the words are almost as near to the most southerly pair of the Azores, next above them, as to the Madeiras below, and it is possible that the condition of special beatitude was understood as extending to the former also.