The Dulcert Map of 1339
The second cartographical appearance of the saint’s name seems to be in the portolan map[53] of Angelinus Dulcert, the Majorcan, dated 1339, where three islands corresponding to those now known as the Madeiras (Madeira, Porto Santo, and Las Dezertas) and on the same site are labeled “Insulle Sa Brandani siue puelan.” Since “u” was currently substituted for “v,” and “m” and “n” were interchangeable on these old maps, the last two words should probably be read “sive puellam.” However the ending of the inscription be interpreted, there can be no doubt about St. Brendan and his title to the islands—according to Dulcert. And that this island group must be identified with Madeira and her consorts (though Madeira is named Capraria and Porto Santo is named Primaria) hardly admits of any question.
If the identification of them with the Fortunate Islands especially favored by St. Brendan were no more than a conjecture of Dulcert or some predecessor, it still had a certain plausibility from the facts of nature and the favorable report of antiquity. Strabo may have borne these islands in mind when he wrote: “the golden apples of the Hesperides, the Islands of the Blessed they speak of, which we know are still pointed out to us not far distant from the extremities of Maurusia, and opposite to Gades.”[54] Apparently, too, Diodorus Siculus, writing half a century or so before the Christian era about what happened a thousand years earlier still, means Madeira by the “great island of very mild and healthful climate” and “in great part mountainous but much likewise champaign, which is the most sweet and pleasant part of all the rest;”[55] whereto the Phoenicians were storm-driven after founding Cadiz and which the Etrurians coveted but the Carthaginians planned to hold for themselves. Even since those old days there has been a general recognition of Madeira’s balminess and slumberous, flowery, enticing beauty.