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The island of Satanazes (also called the Island of Devils, or the Hand of Satan) is a phantom island once thought to be located in the Atlantic Ocean, and depicted on many 15th-century maps.
The island was first depicted in the 1424 portolan chart of Venetian cartographer Zuane Pizzigano. It is drawn as a large, blue rectangular island, indented with bays and five or six settlements, with the inscription ista ixolla dixemo satanazes, which has been translated as "this is the island called of the devils".
In his 1424 chart, Pizzigano placed Satanazes some sixty leagues north of the large Antillia island. Pizzigano capped Satanazes with a little umbrella-shaped island he labels Saya (which later cartographers will call Tanmar or Danmar). These three islands, plus Royllo (later called Royllo, a little companion west of Antillia), would be collectively drawn together in many later 15th-century maps, with the same relative size, position and shape Pizzigano originally gave them, and known collectively as the "Antillia group" or (to use Bianco's label) the insulae de novo rep(er)te ("islands newly reported").
In Grazioso Benincasa's 1463 atlas, the settlements on Satanazes island are named Araialis, Cansillia, Duchal, Jmada, Nam and Saluaga.Cortesão (1954 (1975), p.140)
Cartographic appearances of Satanazes:List from Cortesão (1954 (1975): p.134)
Significantly, the island of Satanazes is omitted on the maps of Bartolomeo Pareto (1455), Cristoforo Soligo (c. 1475) Grazioso's son Andrea Benincasa (1476) and the Nuremberg globe of Martin Behaim (1492), even though they all include Antillia and some retain Saya/ Tanmar.Cortesão (1954 (1975): p.134)
Satanazes disappears on practically all maps after Christopher Columbus's voyages of the 1490s. It was possibly transplanted (in smaller form) to the Isle of Demons, between Newfoundland and Greenland, e.g. the 1508 map of Johannes Ruysch.
Historians have conjectured the "Devils" of Satanazes might be a reference to the Skrælings (indigenous peoples of Greenland and Vinland) reported in the Norsemen sagas, notably the Grœnlendinga saga and the saga of Erik the Red, which began to filter south around this time. Pizzigano may have constructed Satanazes island to capture their rough geographic location.Cortesão (1954 (1975), p.137ff).
The possible connection between the Satanazes and the Skrælings was first proposed by Nordenskiöld (1889), his attention drawn by an inscription on some islands between Newfoundland and Greenland in the 1508 map of Johannes Ruysch, which notes how "devils" located there attacked sailors (See Isle of Demons).Nordenskiöld (1889: p.65). The connection need not require direct knowledge of the Norse sagas themselves, e.g. Fridtjof Nansen has drawn attention to how Norse encounters with North American "demons" were adopted in Irish .Fridtjof Nansen (1911: vol.2, p.9) Given the tendency of the legends of Atlantic seafarers – Norse, Irish, Arab and Iberian – to move quickly and cross-fertilize each other,Nansen (1911: vol. 2, p.54). the news of an Isle of Devils out in the North Atlantic may have arrived to Italian cartographers via several channels.
Georg Hassel conjectured that, by their size and shape, the large islands of Satanazes and Antillia may represent the coasts of North America and South America respectively,Hassel (1822: p.6) thus making it a possible testament of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. Babcock conjectures the representation might be of the Caribbean, that Satanazes represents Florida (and Antillia Cuba, Roylla Jamaica and Tanmar the Bahamas).Babckock, (1922: p.155; p.188)
Andrea Bianco's 1436 long label Ya de la man santanaxio provoked Vicenzo Formaleoni (1783) to read it as the isle of "the Hand of Satan", an alternative name for Satanazes still found in some sources.Formaleoni (1783: p.48. Buache (1806: p.17) and Humboldt (1837: p.179) read it the same way. Formaleoni proposed it might be connected to a legend from India, about a giant hand that arose each day from the sea and carried off the inhabitants into the ocean. This legend is told in the Perigrinaggio di tre giovani ( The Three Princes of Serendip) first published in Venice in 1557 by Michele Tramezzino (alleged to be a translation from the Persian language of a certain Christopher of Armenia, Christoforo Armeno). The story might have been circulating earlier among Atlantic Ocean seafarers, traced in Irish and Arab tales, about a giant hand in the Sea of Darkness that plucked sailors and sometimes entire boats, and dragged them to the bottom of the ocean.A fanciful version of the tale of the Hand of Satan is related in Higginson (1883: p.134). Gaffarel suggests this might be a reference to the of the North Atlantic Ocean.This is proposed by Paul Gaffarel (1882: p.211)
The Marquis d'Avezac (1845) launched yet another theory, reading "satanaxio" as S. Atanaxio, i.e. the island of St. Athanasius.D'Avezac (1845: p.31). Oddly, this reading was pursued by Nordenskiöld (1897: p.164), who sought to connect it to St. Anastasius, even though he had earlier (1889) proposed the Satanazes = Skrælings connection. D'Avezac also makes the credible argument that the de la man satanaxio in Bianco's label is actually referencing two separate islands, Satanazes and Delaman, probably the nearby Danmar or Tanmar of other maps, believed to be a reference to the legendary Isle of Mam (Babcock proposed an alternate reading of Delaman/Danmar/Tanmar as I la Mar, or "Island of the Sea".)Babcock (1922: p.155)
The discovery of the 1424 Pizzigano map in the 20th century, with its Satanazes clearly indicated, has allowed modern historians to set aside the old Hand of Satan/St. Athanasius theories, and embrace the Isle of Devils reading.Cortesão (1953, 1954, 1970)
Despite all these conjectures, there is little agreement. Unlike its southern counterpart Antillia (which seems rather solidly connected to the Iberian legend of the Seven Cities), Satanazes has been characterized as a legendary island in need of a legend.e.g. Morison, 1971 p.101
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