Lampedusa is the Lopadussa of Strabo. In 1555 Andrew Doria anchored the vessels of Charles V. at Lampedusa, after an engagement with the Turks. Alphonso of Aragon made the island a fief of one of his courtiers, who sold it in 1677 to the prince Ferdinand Tommasi. But no permanent settlement seems to have been effected; the place, according to popular belief, was too terribly haunted by apparitions. Sir Kenelm Digby relates (1628) that his m m told him “there dwelt no persons in Lampedusa, but there is a lamp perpetually burning. The Turks have great reverence to the place, and always leave oil or bread or something behind them through devotion, but they know not for whom, and it hath proved very fatal to carry away anything from thence as well to Christians as to Turks.” Dumont, who personally visited the island, mentions a “little chapel dedicated to the Virgin, in which there is an altar with a turban laid upon it, which is usually called Mohammed’s tomb,” and adds the popular belief that any one attempting to carry off the gifts would be miraculously prevented escaping the island. The earl of Sandwich (1737) found Lampedusa with but a solitary inhabitant; and Captain Smyth states that about 1815 it was leased by an Englishman, Fernandez, who lived alone with his family. Ferdinand II. of Bourbon claimed it as Government property, and from 1843 attempts were made to establish a regular colony at the national expense. About £17,000 per annum was expended on the project, but the result was far from satisfactory. The population, introduced from Sicily, remained stationary during twenty years. Catherine II. at one time proposed to purchase Lampedusa for the purpose of making it a Russian naval station.

If it could be shown that Shakespeare derived the material of The Tempest from an Italian original, Lampedusa would have very strong claims to be considered the first prototype of the enchanted isle. It is the Lipadosa of Orlando Furioso, the scene of the shipwreck of Roger of Sicily and of his conversion by the hermit. A Sicilian legend which forms the subject of Wieland’s poem Klelia und Sinibald, oder die Bevölkerung von Lamped use, tells how two ladies of Palermo were cast ashore on the island, and found there two hermits who fell so deeply in love with them as to renounce their ascetic life. In Sicilian the “hermit of Lampedusa” corresponds to the English Vicar of Bray, lighting up the chapel near his cell with equal readiness for the Crescent or the Cross.

See Crusiιιs, Turco-Graecia, Ba-el, 1584; Digby, Journal of a Voyage into the Mediterranean, Camden Society, 1868: Dumont, 'Nouvelle Voyage au ierant, The Hague, 1694, London, 1702; Captain Smyth, Memoir Descriptive of the Resources of Sicily, 1824; Joseph Hunter, New Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i., 1845.