The legend of St. Brendan is treated in the general histories of American discovery. In Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America,” volume I, page 48, there is a list of some of the different texts of the legend. Payne’s “History of America” gives a brief summary of the legend. He says: “No story was more popular in the end of the fifteenth century. The critic who does not absolutely reject it, as the Bollandists have done, may take his choice of original versions of it in eight different languages: and St. Brandan occupies ten dense pages in William Caxton’s version of the Golden Legend.” An English version of the legend was published by the Percy Society in 1844 under the title, “St. Brandan, a mediæval legend of the sea, in English prose and verse (London, 1844).”
Gaffarel’s “Histoire de la dècouverte de l’Amerique,” volume I, contains a chapter entitled “Les Irlandais en Amerique avant Colomb,” in which he gives an extended account of the story of St. Brendan, with references to authorities.
HON. THOMAS B. FITZPATRICK,
Of Boston, Mass.
Vice-President-General of the Society.
De Roo, in his “History of America Before Columbus,” published in 1900, says: “The story of St. Brendan was one of the most remarkable and widely spread of the middle ages. The number of its ancient copies, carefully preserved to the present day, its various translations and its learned commentaries, published of late, sufficiently testify to the living interest which the ‘Navigatio’ of St. Brendan excited. There is scarcely a MSS. Collection in Europe, of any account, where it cannot be found.” There is a copy of the “Navigatio” in the Vatican Library since the Ninth Century. De Roo gives full credence to the St. Brendan narrative.
Learned writers like Moosmuller of Germany, Gravier of France, Palfry and De Costa of America, not to speak of Irish scholars, have written much on St. Brendan and prehistoric America. Cardinal Moran of Australia has recently written a very able work on St. Brendan. O’Donoghue’s Brendaniana and Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography make mighty interesting reading.
There are several ancient maps in the European Libraries which mention St. Brendan’s Land or “Great Ireland” and those maps are being closely examined by historical students interested in pre-Columbian discoveries.
Columbus himself, while he was endeavoring to fit out his first expedition, wrote these words: “The land of St. Brendan is the land of the Blessed, towards the West, which no one can reach except by the power of God.”
It is not too much to claim that the Irish chapter in American history began with St. Brendan. It is to be hoped and expected that the future historians of this Western Hemisphere will recognize Brendan, the Irish monk and famous navigator, as America’s first discoverer and give credit to whom credit is due.
There is still extant in the Monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, an ancient MS. containing the prayer of St. Brendan for the safety of himself and his companions in his trans-Atlantic voyage.