The Nonexistent Island: Cartography and Territorial Legitimation of Saint Brendan (15th–18th Centuries)

Abstract

This article offers a historical analysis of cartography as a practice that produces territory and spatial legitimacy through the case of the Island of Saint Brendan or San Borondón. Unlike approaches focused on hagiographic tradition or empirical verification of the myth, this study identifies a historiographical gap: the absence of research explaining how European maps transformed a medieval narrative into an authorized territory, comparable to observable geography. The central hypothesis argues that, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, cartography operated as an epistemological and political device capable of materializing the imaginary through graphic inscription, integrating myths into the spatial order of Atlantic expansion. This study proposes a methodology grounded in the cultural history of cartography, understood as a field in which maps do not merely represent the world but define the limits of what is possible and establish hierarchies of spatial truth. The case of San Borondón reveals how medieval and early modern cartography granted material persistence to an inexistent territory, demonstrating that maps can found mythical geographies that endure beyond their empirical refutation.