The Voyage of Trezenzonio to the Great Island of the Solstice: English Translation and Commentary

摘要

This article presents a study and the first English translation of a brief eleventh-century Latin text about a voyage to a mythical paradise island in the Atlantic, which is preserved in two fourteenth-century manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon. The narrator travels alone, and finds on the island a basilica dedicated to St Thecla. The relationship of the story with medieval Irish narratives, such as the immrama and St Brendan's voyage, is explored. The island appears on one of the Beatus mappaemundi of Burgo de Osma. The story is a precursor of the tale of the Island of the Seven Cities, to which seven bishops fled from Spain during the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.