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Two letters attributed to Vespucci were published during his lifetime. Mundus Novus (New World) was a Latin translation of a lost Italian letter sent from Lisbon to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. It describes a voyage to South America in 1501-1502. Mundus Novus was published in late 1502 or early 1503 and soon reprinted and distributed in numerous European countries. Lettera (Letter of Amerigo Vespucci concerning the isles newly discovered on his four voyages), was printed in 1504 or 1505 and it claimed to be an account of four voyages to the Americas made by Vespucci between 1497 and 1504. In 1508, King Ferdinand made Vespucci chief navigator of Spain at a huge salary and commissioned him to found a school of navigation, in order to standardize and modernize navigation techniques used by Iberian sea captains then exploring the world. Vespucci even developed a rudimentary, but fairly accurate method of determining longitude. Some have suggested that Vespucci, in the two letters published in his lifetime, was exaggerating his role and constructed deliberate fabrications. However, many scholars now believe that the two letters were not written by him but were fabrications by others based in part on genuine letters by Vespucci. It was the publication and widespread circulation of the letters that might have led Martin Waldseemüller to name the new continent America on his world map of 1507 in Lorraine.  The book accompanying the map stated: "I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part, after Americus who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerige, that is, the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women".

waldeseemuller_map

Universalis Cosmographia, Waldseemüller's 1507

The First World Map to Show the Americas Separate from Asia

The two disputed letters claim that Vespucci made four voyages to America, while at most two can be verified from other sources. Vespucci's real historical importance may well rest more in his letters, whether he wrote them or not, than in his discoveries. From these letters, the European public learned about the newly discovered continents of the Americas for the first time; its existence became generally known throughout Europe within a few years of the letters' publication. He died on February 22, 1512 in Seville, Spain, of an unknown cause.

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